- Lose 60lbs. (ideal goal: Lose 30lbs): I actually started off excellently. I started at 207.5lbs, and when the baby was born in February, I was down to 194, just doing the 10-minute trainer videos 6 nights a week. That said, having a baby makes working out difficult. I started seriously training for a 5k back in July, but running doesn't really make me lose weight anymore, so while I felt great, I was still over 200lbs. After some recent sickness I'm at about 203lbs. I've still got a few weeks before the year is over. Perhaps I can start the 10-minute trainer again and try to get under 200 before New Year's.
- Win the lottery (ideal goal: Find a better paying job): Like I said before, I started a new job in January, and I've been very happy here, for the most part. I've been constantly looking for new opportunities, but the market is just very dry, especially for a programmer with less than 1 year of real, viable experience (yeah, I suck).
- Write a program, sell it, retire (ideal goal: work in Python with etank, and write software of my own): This I actually made some progress on. With etank and shaden (another guy from the BGLUG, I wrote a CLI-based version of Mancala. We were planning to turn it into a graphical networked multiplayer game, but there were time issues and it just hasn't happened yet. However, I did redesign Tucky Williams' website (http://www.tuckywilliams.com/wordpress), though it's not officially in use yet. I also learned Django, C#, and ASP.NET MVC for work this year, and every day you learn something is worthwhile.
- Gain internet notoriety (ideal goal: Pick something, run with it): While I'm definitely not internet famous, I have been recognized on at least one occasion by my username. One of the guys I work with was discussing Linux with me, and I mentioned that I co-run the BGLUG, and he said "You're THAT jkeyes0??". Yeah. I win. Other than that, I've been working hard to learn more about video production, open source video tools, and linux, and I'm planning to start a web series on YouTube sometime in the next few months. I've also been doing lots of video work for the BGLUG at our meetings (speaking of which, BGLUG has become much more active lately, and I'm extremely proud of that, so if you haven't checked us out before and you're interested, go to our website and come to a meeting!)
- Be a good father / role model to my (then) unborn son (ideal goal: one day at a time, teach him): I like to think this is where I really shined this year. I made it my mission to be there for everything I could with my son. I was there when he was born, when he took his first bottle, when he first laughed, when he sat up, when he said "da da" (his first word, yay!), and I've been having a blast with him.
I'll definitely give this a shot for next year, so expect a post right around New Year's with some updated goals.
