Last year around this time I decided to make a resolution. However, I knew that most resolutions tend to fail after about a week, so I wanted to make mine simple. I decided on something that I thought wouldn’t be too difficult: Do everything better in 2011 than 2010. I think it worked out fairly well.

Programming is the first thing that comes to mind, as I have recently been working on creating a PHP-powered CMS from scratch with my friend Dakota (xSSKT). It’s been going well and I feel like I’m understanding programming now like I never have before. I was also hired for my first job at a Barnes & Noble college bookstore. However, the best decision I made all year was attending the was attending the BCM (Baptist Collegiate Ministries) at Virginia Tech. Not only is there a plethora of regular food-serving events to attend, but the services are solid and the messages are good. Naturally this year hasn’t been all great (It was probably one of the worst of my 19 years, to be honest), but I believe having the plan to improve upon 2010 helped me do things better than I would have otherwise.

Now looking forward to 2012, I look forward to doing a number of things, but mainly I look to do them with consistency. I have my moments when I can program fluently, win a ping pong game (yes, Dakota, I know it’s rare), or get a lot done, but I seem to not be able to do such things on a regular basis. Consistency is one of my two resolutions for this year – I want to learn to consistently do things such as sleep, study, blog, program, and think about others before I do or say things. Basically, I want to do 3/4 of this on a regular basis.

My other resolution is to get out of some ruts I have gotten into over the last few years. I have some things I constantly end up doing that I would really like to start mixing up with different things. For example, I always tend to eat the same foods. I want to try some new things, or if you want to get really cheesy about it, expand my horizons.

Finally, (ending the post on a completely different note) I want to mention that this blog will probably be going in a slightly different direction in the future. We’re not saying much about it at this point, but that project I’m working on with my friend is going to be a more technically-oriented website. With that said, posts with a more technical twist that may have ended up on this blog will probably be posted at the new site in the future. This blog will stick around, but there will be a certain difference on which I have yet to completely decide. Expect it to remain about computers, the internet, and the like, but the content will change slightly.

My first niece was born on the 5th! Her name is Mia.

Here’s the exciting (to me) news I promised: I got a job!

My new employer is a college Barnes & Noble Bookstore. Although it’s not exactly computer work, the job appears to be a decent one. Apparently, most of my duties will consist of book buybacks (it’s the end of the semester, you know), rental returns, and back-room duties such as applying bar codes, shipping books to other libraries, and the like.

What amazes me though is the number of employees the store is hiring in one fell swoop. I have met at least 7 new hires that are being brought in at the same time, which I can assume means that the store is typically very busy during the month of May. I don’t know what that means for my employment post-May, but for now, we’ll see how it goes.

It seems like another two months have passed without me updating. Such is life I guess. So, what have I been doing? Well, without getting into it, we’ve had a death in the family. That’s about as detailed as I would like to get, but that has kept me away for a while. Also, I’ve generally been sick on and off for the last few months. Put shortly, 2011 hasn’t been a good year for my family so far, but I hope it is starting to change.

Here soon I will have to be switching my server over, so every website on my hosting plan (there’s 5) will have to have it’s database, files, mailboxes, possibly nameservers, etc. moved. That’s going to be more work than I would care to think of at the moment, but hopefully it will all be worth it. Look for a bit of downtime in my network of websites in the next month or so, although hopefully it will be very limited. That downtime will naturally include this blog.

I miss blogging and I hope to get back into the swing of regularly blogging soon. I do still look forward to doing a marketing case study on Technofyed and reporting the results here. Someday those posts will come, but for now, getting my offline and online lives back to normal is my priority.

P.S: Some exciting (to me) personal news may be forthcoming! Check back Monday-ish for that update.