In the next couple months, I plan on restarting my 1001 days with many of the remaining objectives my previous list, as well as some new ones thrown into the mix. I look forward to starting a new challenge, along with the new year.

You can see my line-up of bicycles in the static pages, along with a detailed write-up about my 1983 Schwinn Voyageur SP

Well, I’m on as much of a vacation as I’ve managed the last 10 years or so. I’ve been bouncing around a bit for the last week, and I’ll be at it a couple more.

Three days in New York City for a conference, very little in the way of relaxation, but I did manage to meet up with Peter for dinner.

Two days back home, decompressing from a long week of releasing a tiny bit of software, and I had what will probably be the last chance to hang out with Aram in a very long time.

Two days in Iceland, mostly sleeping due to continued stress relief from the previous week, jet lag, and the on set of some kind of illness. No pictures, which is a shame really, the people and landscapes were both beautiful and strangley exotic.

Just landed in Frankfurt and now on the ICE to Dusseldorf.

The interesting thing is that a week ago I was on the “high-speed express” to New York City–Amtrak’s Acela Express. And the difference is night and day. Here I sit in second class, in seats that are as nice, in a cabin that is nicer than the business class on board the American train. But the real difference in the ride itself: quieter, smoother, and faster than it’s American counterpart, this European train makes the entire process of moving between cities painless and easy. We appear to be traveling almost twice as fast, through more rolling terrain, and you begin to wonder where we went wrong in the U.S.

Stopping by the photoclub meeting last week dropped one more item from the list, and a couple of movies brings us to:

remaining: 91 items, 83 movies, 48 lbs. in the next 956 days.

1. Man, these people are young.
2. There were surprisingly few photos of people

I know taking pictures of people is difficult. You have to overcome the inherent sense of voyeurism, but I think photographing the human condition has the widest reach as a photographic art form. Maybe that’s why I’m drawn to street photography, peering into the .

The meeting itself was mostly composed of viewing 30-70 photos taken by club members and providing commentary. Praise was given liberally and genuinely, and the occasional suggestion for improvement was always constructive. Novice photographers would benefit greatly from the format they used. The advice was a bit too textbook for most experienced photogs to get much from, although it’s always nice to have your intuitions confirmed. I felt that the audience didn’t give enough artistic license to the photographer — a larger problem overall than anything else that night.

I don’t know if I’ll attend regularly, but it was an interesting experience. My best photos are always taken when I have the time and inclination to become part of particular flow — to view people and events from the inside. I find that other photographers move at too fast or disjoint a pace for me to capture anything I truly appreciate. It makes wanting to be part of photo club a tough thing for me. What I’d like the most in a photo club is a push (or the occasional shove) of motivation to get out of my normal routine and connect with new experiences and spaces. Depending on what the Terrapin Photo Club does for activities this year, maybe I’ll participate more, maybe not.

remaining: 92 items, 85 movies, 52 lbs. in the next 965 days.

I should start off by pointing out that:

1. I’m sick (flu-like symptoms, and I spent most of the week running mild fever)
2. I had a colleague in town, so I had to go to the office everyday
3. I’m sick and I hate being sick
4. I spent a lot of time eating junk to make me feel better about being sick
5. Did I mention that I’m sick
6. My foot is now in pain from what I can only guess is metabolic arthritis (better known as gout)
7. I’m sick (and tired of being sick)

I’ve known since high school that I’m prone to gout, but attacks are pretty infrequent (although it’s been more frequent since I started grad school). I think this is the third or forth attack in 6 years. If I watch my diet it seems to be OK, but I think the combination of being sick, dehydration caused by being sick, and crappy diet (also caused by illness) has led to a flare up. I’m currently lying in bed, foot propped up, trying to down as much water as possible.
But enough whining; here’s the update. Nothing from list was actually completed this week. I made some marginal progress on a couple of items, but slid on others. First the bad news… I missed breakfast everyday last week and didn’t manage to do any walking, so I have to reset the counters on #42 and #48.

In the not that bad column, the illness conspired to keep my binge eating from totally derailing my weight-loss goals (#47), so I ended the week where I started at 248 lbs.

As far as progress, a big pot of basil chicken chili (recipe forthcoming after some tweaking) managed to keep me on track with the cooking by providing lots of leftovers. I rounded out my weeks cooking duties with a bunch of tquick and simple meals to squeak by with just 4 meals cooked. But hey, it’s counts. Three weeks of cooking down, approximately 22 to go.

The good part about being in bed is that it’s pretty easy to watch movies. I saw Tom Yum Goong (the Protector in the US) on DVD, but have decided not to count it on the foreign language movie list since large sections are in English. A bit of a film noir streak took 3 more movies of Ebert’s 102 (#66).

remaining: 95 items, 90 movies, 49 lbs. in the next 980 days.

I sent my Rolleiflex camera in for service (#55), it works out that the taking lens has a small chip in it (grrr…), but apparently it’s pretty minor, and I went ahead and approved the repairs to the mechanicals (shutter and transport overhaul as weil as a new hi-lux focusing screen). Total bill $456, and an 11 week turn-around… Well I don’t use that camera often anyway.

Most of this week’s activities centered around small-scale financial housekeeping. I’ve already posted about the portfolio diversification (#88).

I finally bothered getting rid of long-distance service to the house (#80). Attempts to cancel through AT&T (our actual long-distance provider), led to hours on hold and finally being told that I had to contact my local provider to cancel my LD service (huh?). So back on hold to get Verizon (which wasn’t too bad), and continually turning down enhanced Verizon services (long distance, regional toll, DSL, DirectTV, etc), and we’re no longer paying for long-distance service on our landline (which pretty much exists for a DSL endpoint and 911 service).

CraigsList came through with a quick sale for my old G4 Powerbook (#91). My sale ad (for about $100 less than the going price) produced a bunch of prospective buyers, and this time I only had to deal with 2 no-shows to find an actual honest to god party interested in actually buying the laptop. He bought the laptop, but only one of the 1GB memory chips, so I still have an extra GB laying around.

I only managed to watch 2 movies from the 102 list this week, but got out to the theater and saw Curse of the Golden Flower, which means I’ve covered 1 movie in a foreign language.

Walked on 3 days this week for a total of 2 hours, and continued eating breakfast (6 days this week) and cooking meals (5 days). Overall things are going pretty well. The only real setback came over the weekend. One of my fellow graduate students finally finished up his Ph.D after a significant amount of time. The resulting parties (going away and oddly enough his 34th birthday), meant that I spent lots of time in bars and restaurants, and the scale showed it. I tipped the scales at 248 lbs, up 3 lbs from last week, and not a good sign.
remaining: 95 items, 93 movies, 49 lbs. in the next 987 days.

by Industry

by Region of the World

There’s still some tinkering to do, but there are some trading limitations I have to work around to finalize the portfolio for the next year or two. I should probably also look for more diversification opportunities, but — gosh darn it — things have been humming along for the last 4 years, and I’m not really in the mood to mess with success too much.

On the other hand, if anyone has any good stock advice, I’m perfectly willing to accept investment tips

]]> http://sandro.knot.org/blog/2007/01/diversification/feed/ -378 http://sandro.knot.org/blog/2007/01/beginning-of-the-new-year/ http://sandro.knot.org/blog/2007/01/beginning-of-the-new-year/#comments Tue, 09 Jan 2007 03:21:29 +0000 sandro http://sandro.knot.org/blog/?p=140 Just a quick update after one week of the New Year, and 1001 days. With 7 days down, I’ve managed to knock-off a couple of minor items from the 101, mostly just buying small stuff around the house. A quck trip to Ikea and the local big-box home stores yielded a $50 faux-persian rug for the living room (#81), as well as five plants for my room (#83). I also took the liberty of starting an herb garden, it’s not on the list, but I figured it was a good thing to knock out while messing with plants in general.

In terms of some of the longer term goals, I managed to knock off 7 movies from the 102 (let’s face it this one is going to be cake), and I’ve managed breakfast everyday (although one was a frozen dinner, which I’m not counting). I also managed to make dinner 4 times, and ate leftovers once, so 5 homecooked meals. (I should ammend #41 to, “4 home-cooked meals a week”, since I’m counting left-overs). My current weight is 245 lbs., down 5 from a couple of weeks ago, and about 20 lbs. lighter than my max in the fall of 2005.

I had tried to get the dentist thing out of the way, and went to an appointment with a nearby office. Let’s just say I’ve never felt like I was being railroaded so hard outside of a used car lot. Needless to say I’m not going back, and I’m still looking for a good dentist. Hopefully I can knock out that item in the next week or two.

So the current stats are:

99 items, 95 movies, 46 lbs. in the next 994 days.

Stay tuned, it’s going to get interesting soon… (I hope).