Yep, it's the New Year's Resolution post. I tend to have a pretty good followthrough on my resolutions, so it's hardly a process I take lightly. This year I have a few normal ones and one not-so-normal.

New Year's Eve itself I spent mostly on a train. I finally got back to my house a little stinky from three days aboard the California Zephyr, so I hit the shower. At the stroke of midnight, I shared a Times Square moment with my cat and roommate, donning festive hats and whirling noisemakers for approximately 8 seconds before returning to what we were doing.

As the buzz of the New Year is coming to an end, the real work must begin in earnest. As I mentioned before, I normally actually do whatever it is that I resolve to do on New Year's. In the past I have decided to go vegetarian, leave Indiana, and throw a rave. Done, done, and done.

My 2000 resolution, coming true.

Beginning with the standard resolutions, I resolve to better manage my time and money. I further resolve to do it using cool programs only available for the Mac so that 1) it doesn't feel like work and 2) my PC friends are not only jealous of how well I manage my time and money but would be forced to buy a Mac in order to keep up. I am a Jones, afterall; keeping up with me is the Usonian way of life.

GTD is powerful enough, but MidnightBeep's Inbox is taking my practice to that next level. It's less lightweight than kGTD, which I had been using previously, but so far I've found the added rigamarole forces me to think my projects through a little more.

On the money front, I'm using IGG's iBank. It has everything I was looking for (most notably a pie chart telling me how much I spend on Soy Mochas), but also gives me projections on how much I'll be worth 5 years from now. It's possible that I haven't configured it properly yet, but otherwise I'll be sitting on $65k. Ladies, that qualifies me as a "strong buy". Plus, all of this money will be in the friendly and capable hands of San Francisco's brand new New Resource Bank, so my money can be the root of rooftop solar home equity projects instead of, you know, evil.

My final New Year's Resolution declared me instead of me declaring it (which sounds like one of those "In Soviet Russia..." jokes). I was hitting the snooze bar on my alarm clock—which I've done consistently since my mom stopped waking me up—and I noticed that my alarm clock didn't have a snooze bar. It quite clearly has a "drowse" bar.

Sometimes we hit the ones we love.

This gave me great pause, as I've had this same alarm clock since high school. How could I have never, in 10 years not noticed that I had a drowse bar? Something must be done about this oversight. Thus, my final resolution is this, "to try to observe the world with new eyes each day, taking as little as possible for granted."

So far, I've noticed some very interesting things. First, almost all of my pants are 2 inches too short. So it's off to thrift stores with them. Second, dentists are a very strange cultural phenomenon. Why do we pay people to shove sharp metal objects in our mouth? Finally, Apple has some sort of cellphone now. How long have they had that?

I urge everyone to take a look at your world today and try to find something that surprises you. Post your findings below.