Jason’s Fresh Produce

Every year Ben, Jason, and I try to make a New Year’s Resolution. In its original conception, we’d each put $20 in a pool, and the successful resolvers would draw out of the pool at the end of the year. This was designed not only as a way for Jason and me to make $10 each from Ben, but also as a way of improving ourselves.It has long been my assertion that there are 4 keys to a successful resolution:
1) Quantization
2) Accountability
3) Realism
4) Consistency

Our “resolution pool” nicely incorporates at least three of these aspects. We won’t even allow a resoultion that’s as vaguely defined as “get in shape” or “have better self-esteem,” as these are hard to track for payoff purposes, and probably doomed to failure anyway. The accountability is obviously the money put in. Desire to attain that money balances the realism factor nicely.
The “consistency” requirement is usually built into any resolution we make, in the form of “once per week” or “once per month.” My favorite resolution ever was to

“do 1 situp per day”

when I wanted to get better abs. “Get[ting] better abs” is a nebulous goal. Obviously losing weight and doing situps would help, but how much weight? How many situps? I took this desire and extracted one aspect–doing situps–and applied the key ideas of quantization, realism, and consistency.
Could a single situp a day improve my abdominal definition? Almost certainly not. So why this goal? Because, in my experience, the hardest part of doing situps is getting on the ground and doing the first one! The next hardest part, of course, is keeping it up. I hoped that my goal would force consistency, and never give me any excuse to be lazy. One situp!

Our pool has evolved a little over the years, given the difficulty of getting together to make payoffs, not to mention that Ben The Mormon has foolish and religiously misguided notions about “gambling.” But its spirit remains in the same.

So here’s the plan…

Recognizing the accelerating pace of technological change in our modern world and desiring a job in a technical field, I decided that the best goal I could have for 2006 is to smarten myself up, technologically speaking. This blog is designed to be that “Accountability” mentioned earlier. That being said, my resolution is

“[To] make an average of one blog post per week, to this site, on the subject of technology. Specifically, I hope to discover one website, gadget, tool, software, hardware, invention or innovation each week that will increase my tech-usefulness in this techy world.”

For example, a couple of weeks ago I discovered www.pandora.com, which I would describe as a “free (with registration) customizeable personalized web radio station.” You input a song title or artist name to set your “station” and the music genome project database hunts down stuff you’ll like. Give it a try.

I’m sending the address of this blog out to my friends so they can observe my progress and post comments, and maybe even improve themselves in the process.

Wish me luck.