www.itowler.com

End of the quarter Review :

Well 3 months have passed since the start of the year, which means that it is time to do an end of the quarter review. I am going to see how I am doing on the goals that I established at the start of the year.

• 52 posts on itowler.com : So far this year there have been 14 weeks (if you count this week) and I will have posted 10 of 14 weeks so….I am a little behind, but I am on track for doing better than I did last year. So on this point I am going to say that I am making pretty good progress. In the future I do see these posts dealing more and more with the family tree.
• iTowler.com Goes Drupal 6.0 : Drupal 6.1 has been released, so everything is heading in the right direction for this step, but I do not think that this will happen until the end of third quarter, or maybe even sometime in the fourth quarter of the year.
• Read 8 books : I am on track for with this goal for the year. I have already finished 2 books, which is what I need to read each quarter. I do not know what I am going to read next, but I guess that means that I have to go to the library. Among other things, School has been keeping me busy, so I have not had as much time to read as I wanted to.
• Reach a weight of 170 or lower : I have not made any progress on this goal at all. I plan on getting back to the gym in April so that should help. In addition Roller Hockey season starts at the end of April. So even though I have not started on this goal, I still think that it is within reach. That being said 170 is still a pretty strong goal, so I need to get started on this.
• Expand the family tree to include 2,650 people : If I were to average the number of people I need to add to meet my 2650 goal, I would need to average a little less than 4 people per day, or 336 people added per quarter. As of 31 March 2008, there are 1520 people in the family tree, so a net gain of 214 people for the quarter, which means that I am behind. I only added 64% of the people that I needed to for this quarter. So….I have some work to do. That being said, I have a plan to meet that goal. One of the things that is slowing me down with this goal, is that I do not want to add people without adding a source for that person, so that really means that I am adding 4 people per day with a source, which is a little more challenging. None the less, the 2650 people will happen.
• Pay off my Debt : This year I filed my tax returns very early, and I have already received my refund. I used my refund to help pay down debt. This is a pretty big departure from years past, where I have used my refund to buy myself a “treat”. Instead, this year I used about 98% of my refund to pay off debt, the other 2% was used to buy a textbook for school. As such, I have reduced my debt by about 30% from the Jan 1 amount. I plan on using the “Economic Stimulus” package money to pay down more of the debt, and I have looked at a few other options for increasing my income as well. Things are looking to be on track for this goal.
• Stop Drinking COKE/Soda : As I predicted, this is one of the hardest goals on the list, and I am not doing very well at meeting this goal at all. I am going to start fresh on April 1, I will buy no more Coke or Soda.

Overall I think that I am doing OK with my goals, not great, but OK. I still think that they all can be reached by the years end. I am just going to have to work harder on making some of them a priority.

Till next time.

Ian