Category: Daily Life

Another year has passed and here’s my scorecard:

Overall a pretty good year, 80% of goal in raw numbers, although they aren’t really relevant here. I don’t show all the details to maintain my own privacy, but here’s a deeper look:

Family: Our family has grown by one and I did get to spend time with my relatives in both Michigan and California, and that’s everything I really wanted to do. There’s always more I could do here, but there’s only so much vacation time to go around.

Financial Goals: In spite of the recession, it was a pretty good year. The goals of aggressive savings, and better management of the portfolio and insurance were met, hitting 100%

Professional: My 5th year at work was a big one, and M Show productions continues to run at break even, meaning that I’m paying for my gadgets and getting to go to a few conferences. Another goal where 75% completed of what I planned at the start of the year is a huge win given the state of the economy.

Personal: This was where I fell short, although I’m happy with 50%. I was hoping to shoot more video, I did have some 4th quarter heroics getting a chance to really play with iMovie this month, and GH hooked me up huge with the new HD Flip cam, so that’s pretty cool. I was hoping to have the house painted, but other maintenance took precedence. This is one of those things where it pays to adjust your goals if possible – I got a zero percent for house painting but if I had updated it at mid-year to “maintenance projects” I could take 100%. I’m in the same shape I was at the start of 2009, I finished Falmouth, but one of my worst times. Give my home situation I’m happy just to be getting enough sleep to function and not being sick. I will again shoot at Falmouth, but 2010 Goals will be coming soon!

I hope your 2009 goals were met and wish you the best in 2010.

With some time to read I dug into a few things over the holidays:

Thinking with Type: An interesting book about design and fonts. I picked up a lot of interesting little things (such as the fact that the upper case letters were stored in the top case near the printing press, the “smaller” letters in the case below that – the lower case), but I didn’t walk away from it thinking that I would do a better job of laying out type. The book would be perfect if you were taking a course but like most design books I’ve read, they don’t make you a pro.

The Accidental Millionaire: If you know who Gary Fong is, then you should read this book. He’s had an interesting life and tells a good story, many of them funny. There are some weird grammatical things in it but I got the feeling that they were there to keep a conversational tone. If you are not into photography or the owner of a “Fong Dong” you should probably move along. I’ve been impressed with the great job he does teaching people about his products on his website, and you actually don’t feel ripped off buying a $2 piece of plastic from him for $50 because he tells a great story and the product does completely kick ass.

I also fired up the Apple TV to watch:

The Prisoner: A remake of a classic late 60’s early 70’s TV show. Amazing visuals, but like the Torchwood miniseries I recently watched, having to sit through 5 or 6 hours for a 20 minute payoff is not worth it. I would recommend watching the original and taking a pass on this one.

As a gift I got Spiderman: Web of Shadows for Xbox 360 – It’s pretty good but the graphics aren’t the best that the Xbox can do. I haven’t found a Marvel game that beats the Hulk game for the original Xbox, and Batman: Arkham Asylum is, hands down, the best I’ve played.

I’ve also started The Design of Everyday Things, and will report back on that.

Although I called Reverse NaBloPoMo, my Q3 review is actually left over from October… So here we go:

Results so far for 2009 Goals:

Family keeps me grounded and so it rates first. It’s been a good year, the only problem is not being able to get out to California to see my nephew. Unfortunately there’s not enough vacation time to go around between my family in Michigan and the West Coast. On the plus side was Carin’s birthday trip to swim with the dolphins in Orlando.

Financial Goals will be hit this year thanks to aggressive saving all year long. I’ve also reviewed all investments and insurance. The only thing remaining is to hit the Charity Goal, and all that requires is checking how much we’ve given in December and writing checks to hit the goal. No real effort to hit that one.

My Personal goals were kind of lame this year. I’ve lost about 1/3 of the weight I wanted to so that one will not get hit this year, even though I did run Falmouth. I wanted to shoot more video, and I did a little bit, but I ended up getting wrapped up more with photography.

Professionally it’s been another great year at AccuRev, in a year where everyone in software fears the unemployment line, we’ve been hitting bonus targets. Marketing Over Coffee is having another strong year too.

Time to start thinking about what to work on in 2010…

This is National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo). The idea is that you do a post a day for the month. It’s an extension of a similar thing where you write a whole book in one month. I’m to tired to google that right now.

I’m going to do Reverse NaBloPoMo and take the rest of the month off. If you’re looking for something to read while I’m gone, Clarence pointed me to Machine Man months ago and it is the coolest thing I have read in a long time. If the idea of augmenting human performance through machinery fascinates you, you have to check it out.

See you in December…

While the blog languishes to good news is that all projects are moving along nicely.

The most important news is that the day job has been on fire, bonus with a baby coming is a wonderful thing.

I got down to the Inbound Marketing Summit for part of a day, and 2 nights. I pulled a Forrest Gump and fell out of the sky on Wednesday to get dinner with the show team which was cool. I also got to hang out with Tim Street and that will show up on Marketing Over Coffee as soon as I can get to it.

A good week working with Matthew Ebel too. After a few months of work the major plumbing on his email system is up and we surveyed over 200 of his fans for feedback on his live shows. Some interesting there that will include testing some SMS stuff, very excited about that.

I’m also completing final edits on an eBook about email tactics, that should also end up on the best marketing podcast fairly soon.

Until then, I found this great video – Seth Godin talking about the behind the scenes strategy of his books. Buried in the last 5 minutes is why he doesn’t do email and sticks to blogging.

Right now I have the time honored New England tradition of moving the air conditioner to the basement. Have a good weekend!

I first learned about the MATCH School at the Nantucket Conference a few years back. Most of the students are from neighborhoods that have a poor track record of academic success. MATCH School increases the workload and tutoring for students and shows impressive results.

Congratulations to them all!

The MATCH School received the state-wide MCAS rankings on September 16 from Duce Productions/ Ariadne Media on Vimeo.