My 2016 new year's resolutions

I decided to put some of my new year's resolutions down in a post. These are non professional goals, here is what my goals are

Learn a new language

I want to learn a new language in 2016. I already know Croatian and Dutch, in addition to those I can understand most of German, I also have some knowledge of Italian and Spanish. The more languages you know, the easier it is to learn another language. To make it more difficult for me, I am picking a non European language. I decided to try to learn Chinese this year. 

When I say learn, what I mean is that I must be able to communicate with a person in Chinese as well as being able to watch a movie in Chinese while understanding 80% of the movie. By Chinese, I mean Mandarin, it would be really funny if I picked a movie in Cantonese and then couldn't understand anything. 

I work with a bunch of people from China and Taiwan, so I can always check with them to see if I am pronouncing words correctly.

If learning the Chinese language goes well, I want to then learn these 4 languages the next 4 years following 2016: Greek, Japanese, Portuguese, Korean. 

Read 30 books

In 2015, I read 20 books, this year I want to read 30 books. I want 5 of those books to deal with American history, I have been living in the US for 20+ years and most of the history books I read were about European history or World War i and World War II history. I also want to read more technical books, so 6 of those books should be technical.

Do a handstand, walk 30 feet on my hands

I can barely hold a handstand for 2 seconds, this year, I want to try to improve on that. My goal is to be able to do a handstand and hold it for 30 seconds. I also want to be able to walk 30 feet on my hands.

Improve on lifts

I would like to be be able to bench press 200 pounds, squat 300 pounds and deadlift 400 pounds by the end of the year. All of the lifts should be raw.

Blog more

I want to write 100 blog posts in 2016, this should not be that difficult, it is only 2 fricking posts per week, but sometimes I don't write anything for 6 months straight. In 2016 this will change, one thing that will make this easier is I will document the progress of my goals, this will be mostly focused on my progress learning the Chinese language.

So there you have it, that is my list, seems very doable and I will keep you and me posted on the progress of these lofty goals.......

2009 resolutions or better yet my to do list for 2009

I was working on my resolutions post yesterday and was going to post it here 

I noticed last night on my twitter feed that Jason Massie tagged me
My list is more a to-do list for the year than new year's resolutions, since I am as perfect as Chrissie1 having a list resolutions would mean I wasn’t perfect, this clearly isn’t so.

Here is what I intend to do in 2009

Reading more books (at least 2 books a month)
When I commuted to New York City from Princeton I read about 60 books a year. This was easily accomplished because my commute was about an hour each way. Now that I have a 6 minute commute this becomes a little harder. I have three kids under the age of five; two of them just entered their terrible two stage. While they are awake you cannot read because you want to spend some time with them, then there is the wife who doesn’t want to be ignored either. Luckily I don’t watch that much TV a week, maybe 3 hours max. All this leaves me with about 4 or 5 hours to read per week at home. I could read at work during lunch for 30 minutes a day and surf the other 30 minutes. I don’t know yet how this will work out but somehow I hope I can manage it.

Answering at least 10 questions a day on various sites
This should be no problem; I should be able to do this at lunch, before I start working and just before I leave to go home. I still think participating in newsgroups is one of the best ways to learn and keep up to date on a technology

Learning Powershell
I have played around for a little with PowerShell lately and must say that I really like it, since it now also comes with SQL Server 2008 there is no reason not to learn it. I can already see where I can use it for a couple of different things

Mastering C#
I admit I am not nearly as good in C# as in SQL; this is of course because 90% of the time I am using SQL Server and not C#. I would like to change that by diving deeper into the language itself, I purchased 3 C# books last month and will read them and do all the examples. Just in case you wonder what those 3 books are, they are listed below
C# in Depth
More Effective C#: 50 Specific Ways to Improve Your C#
The C# Programming Language (3rd Edition)


Finishing the SQL admin hacks
This is another thing I just can’t seem to finish, I wrote the SQL Server Programming Hacks in the first half of this year; I started the SQL Server Admin Hacks the second half of this year but I am just pushing it off. just like Peter in Office Space I am thinking "Where is the motivation Bob?"

Eating better foods and not skipping meals
Sometimes during weekends I skip breakfast because I get too involved with the kids and just forget to eat. Of course later on I am famished and eat way more than I should and ruin my lunch. I also like to snack on empty calorie foods because I am too lazy to cut up an apple or make something to eat instead. This has to stop; I am not 20 anymore and have to improve by getting rid of some bad habits.


Starting to work out again
I have not worked out since the twins were born; so that means almost two and a half years. This is pathetic but there was just no way to do it, if you only sleep 5 hours a night and this sleep interrupted then you don’t want to work out period.

Having more patience with kids + wife
I am a pretty impatient person, I don’t like to wait and I hate when people are late. My wife is the master of being late. This year I will not get upset at that and just have more patience, some people are just not on time…ever

Drinking less soda
Soda is another of these empty calorie drinks that have no purpose except for the caffeine to keep you awake. I don’t drink coffee so my only option left is tea. There are only a handful of teas that I drink, I like Lady Grey tea and Green tea, I drink Lady Grey hot and Green tea cold.

There, that is all, nothing impressive but then again I don’t smoke/drink am not overweight so that eliminated 80% of what other people put on their list.