www.itowler.com - Ian's Home on the web

Every year I have set some goals and then through out the year post about my progress.  This year will be no different.  I hope to accomplish a few more of them this year.  I did not have a lot of luck in accomplishing last years goals.  

I use goals and not resolutions because a goal is something you work toward.  A resolution, one mistake, and the resolution is "blown" but a goal is the finish line, you just need to get there.  Does not matter how fast.

So on to the goals:

Lose weight

This one seems to show up at the top of the list every year for the last few years.  In the past I have not really recorded my weight, rather just said that I need to lose weight.  The year I am going to actually post my weight and let you know how I am doing.  I hope that this will provide me with a little motivation to lose the weight.  Ok...  With that said, I will try to "Weigh In" every other week or so.  my first "Weigh In" was today, and I am at 199.8 lbs.  My target goal is 165-170.  That means that I have 34.8 pounds to lose.

Stop Drinking non diet Coke / SODA

I still drink a fair amount of Coke / Soda that is non diet.  I need to drink more diet / low carb soda.  Better yet, I need to start drinking more water.  To that end, I have a plan in place, If you see me drinking "Regular" Soda, I owe you a dollar.  This will help provide some motivation to stop drinking

Add 50 posts to Itowler.com

50.  It's about 1 a week.  It's a nice even number.  It's a number that has proven difficult to achieve.

Sort through my 2.1 gigs of "Unsorted" genealogy files 

I have a folder on my main desktop that is labeled "Unsorted-Genealogy"  The folder is around 2.1 gigs large.  One of my goals this year is to reduce that to zero or around 250 megs.  This is not going to be a hard goal, but it will take some time.  

Get the Family Tree up to 2750 people

At the end of 2011, I had 2585 individuals in my tree.  I will need to add 165 this year, or about 3 a week.  This is a goal that I can achieve.  More importantly, no new individual will be added without at least one source citation.  

Have 65% (or Better) of the individuals in my family tree have at least 1 source citation.

At the end of 2011, I had 2585 individuals in my tree, and 1352 or ~52% of them had at least a single source citiation.  I think this is great, becuase it was much lower, and at least now, over half (If barely) of my tree is sourced to some extent.  To get to 65% of 2750 individuals, I will need 436 citations this year.  Does not sound hard, but if you figure that I will be adding new individuals to the tree, and every one of them is sourced, I still would need to find 271 additional individuals that need source citations.  This is going to be a tough one.... but it's what is best for the data and the Familytree.

Upload more pictures to Google PicasaWeb

I have around 30 gigs worth of pictures on my desktop.  Currently they are backed up monthly to an external hard drive, but that is the only back up that I have.  I also have a Google picasaweb account, and I need to upload all of my pictures there as another form of backup.  This goal has a few other "Sub-goals" as well.  See below.

GEO Tag photos

In Google picasa you can add location's to you photo's.  I want to add Geo-tags to all my photos if I can.

People / Event Tag photos

You can also tag a photo with the names of people and events.  This makes searching for pictures much easier.  I will be doing that as well.

Move my pictures on my desktop "into" Shotwell

I have a ton of digital pictures.  It is now getting a little difficult to manage them, so I am turning to a photo management software solution.  Shotwell is the program that I will be using, and allows for tagging etc.  This will make things easier to find in the future.

Setup a backup Server for use in my home

I have the box, just need to get it done.

Setup a backup Server for use in my home

Read 4 books.  Seems easy right?  Finding time is always the issue.  

Get Genealogy-tech.com up to par with 100 sites or more reviewed

About a year ago I purchased the genealogy-tech.com domain with the intent to setup a review site for genealogy websites.  I have most of the frame work in place, but have not really done anything with it.  I am going to try to change that this year.

Well there are the goals... Lets see what I can do to get them checked off.

Hope that everyone has a Happy and prosperous 2012!