As we all know, it is traditional to present resolutions for the new year. A nice list of all the fun things that we want to do this year to better ourselves and so I give you mine.

What I’d Like to do in 2008:

• Bicycle 100 Miles
  The Problem: I don’t do nearly enough athletic things and it bothers me. A sedentary lifestyle is just begging for problems.
  Proposed Solution: Well, I have a bike so that’s a good start. I got it in September or October of last year and I’ve ridden in here and there. I think my longest trip was about 3 miles. I haven’t ridden it much lately due to the fact that it’s been rainy and snowy and what have you and I don’t have any interest in busting my ass out on the open road. However, once the weather breaks, I want to try and ride at least two times a week steadily increasing my ride length and by mid to late Summer I’d like to participate in some charitable rides like the Pan Mass Challenge.
• Learn to Sail and to achieve the Helmsman rating
  The Problem: See above
  Proposed Solution: I’m going to try my damnedest to learn to sail this year. It’s kind of hard because I work so far from the city so I can’t really do it during the week unless I leave work early, but I’m going to try and go at least every weekend once the sailing season starts. I learned to swim (somewhat) last year and definitely need to improve, but I hopefully shouldn’t be too far away from being good enough at it to pass the swimming test (though I don’t think they actually make you take a swimming test at Community Boating, though I’d like to be better at it for my own benefit regardless).
• Read 50 Books
  The Problem: I don’t feel that I read enough.
  Proposed Solution: I had given myself a similar but vaguer resolution in a previous January and I read a few books but I didn’t read all that many over the course of the year. This time I’m giving myself a definite measurable number.
• Deliver 6 Toastmasters Speeches
  The Problem: I’ve been in Toastmasters off and on for 18 or so months. I’ve yet to deliver my icebreaker speech. They say that this is the easiest speech that one writes, but for me that is extremely far from the truth.
  Proposed Solution: I’d been putting it off for as long as I can remember and in an effort to stop putting things off I signed myself to give my icebreaker next week. I still don’t have the speech conceived though. I’ll upload it to Youtube or something since the club president provides us with a recording of our presentation afterwards.

That’s everything that I could think of for the moment. I had a few that I wanted to write, but one important aspect of motivating oneself to accomplish goals is to set goals with measurable results. Being able to see your progress helps you to maintain your motivation. The other things, may or may not get done, but I would like to think that the ones outlined above definitely will.

And once again, Happy New Year.

In addition I’ve gotten an idea for a new project that I’m going to work on for a bit involving Ruby and Ruby On Rails. I’ll provide more info about that later.

I’ve also started reading the book to one of my favorite movies: American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis.

I recently realized that I want to go to law school at some point. The plan is to work to bring my GPA up to a respectable level so that I can at least apply to the schools that I’d like. I want to at least apply to one of the top 100 law schools since I honestly don’t see the point in going to anything less. The contacts that you make at the better schools are some of the best you’ll ever have. These contacts are similar to those someone who went to a top business school would recieve.

So, while browsing around in my local Barnes and Noble, I happened across One L. I picked it up and read the back cover. It was enough to draw me in. I bought it immediately and started reading it.

This is the author’s autobiographical account of his first year at Harvard Law School (herein know as HLS), the #2 law school in the country (second only to Yale), in 1975. The author recounts his emotions and the emotions of those he is closest with during the first two semesters. The range of emotions felt during this time, from elation, to down-right terror are exhibited. At the beginning everyone is excited about learning the law. When the semesters finally come to a close and exams are looming the mood quickly becomes quite worrisome.

Overall, I thought the book was an excellent telling of the author’s journey ( he was a writer before becoming a lawyer ) which kept me engaged throughout. I would recommend it to anyone who thinks they would want to go to law school. While some of the tendencies of the professors described in the book are no practiced with such intensity, such as the Socratic method, the book is still an enlightening guide into the world that is Law School.

I found this book an interesting read. The authors are Ph.D.s who have spent a great deal of time researching the affluent portions of the American population. They have found some interesting corollaries about the way that people save and spend and how wealthy they become later in life.

They present information from the various surveys they administered to members of the affluent community ( those with more than $1 million in assets ). They noticed that many of these people manage to amass their wealth by living well below their means. People who made $60,000 a year in income each year would live like they only made $50,000 in income. The remainder went into saving and investments. It makes a lot of sense and most books will tell you the same thing. In addition to giving advice in terms of saving and investing they also provide anecdotes and case studies about people who spent more than they made and some of the reasons why.

A significant portion of the book talked about the reasons why people overspend. The authors went over several reasons. The primary reason they noticed was a phenomena called “Economic Out-patient Care.” This occurs when affluent parents give significant gifts to their offspring to “help” them. It turns out that these gifts often cause more harm then they help. The children end up becoming reliant on these annual gifts and basically factor these gifts into their spending habits. In many occasions these parents will help their children buy homes ( which, realistically, are too expensive for the child to afford on their income alone ) in upper-middle class neighborhoods, put their grandchildren through private school, and many other benefits that generally come with having money. These children, who are now living in their expensive house in their expensive neighborhood, feel compelled to emulate the lifestyle of everyone else who lives in their neighborhood. They buy luxury cars, expensive clothes, eat out at expensive restaurants, join the local country club, and partake in many other facets of upper-middle class lifestyle. They end up spending more than they make because of these gifts from parents. It’s a vicious cycle.

Overall, the book is interesting and a very nice read. It’s not too long at 245 pages. It really opened my eyes to the ways that people put themselves into the rat race despite having decent incomes or having affluent parents. I recommend it to anyone who wants to get at least some grasp on their spending and saving habits. The rat race sucks.