• Read more novels. I haven’t been an avid reader since I lived in Seattle in 2005. Back then I would go through a book a week. I want to do more of that.
• Shoot more video. We got puppies in June of last year and I’m already surprised at how few photos and video I shot. And a little regretful.
• Lose some weight. In the last 2 years I’m up 15 pounds. I remember when I weighed over 300 and that Scott is never coming back. This year I’m going to swing the pendulum back.
• Stop drinking soda. I’m not yet convinced diet soda hinders weight loss, but Alton Brown believes it. So I’m stopping cold turkey.

And I just finished my first week at my new job. I think I’m really going to like it, but it’s a long walk to the coffee maker.

• ifttt.com and Evernote. The best way I’ve seen to create a searchable repository of your “Likes”, “Faves”, “Reblogs”, and “Stars”.
• Multigrain Tostitos Scoops. best chip on the market.
• Hypercritical, Back to Work, and The Incomparable podcasts. These podcasts have introduced me to new ideas, reinforced and also debunked long held opinions, and made me a fan of the medium.
• Frozen Butterbeer. Only available at Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Orlando. I need to learn to make this at home.
• Nylabone and Kong dog toys. Especially the durable toys for active chewers.
• Ender’s Game. I had never read it. I might just re-read it in a couple of months.
• AppleTV Airplay. THIS. more of this, lots more.
• Clay Christensen’s lecture on successful innovation. He gave it at an IT Symposium in October and it is the best hour long video I’ve watched all year. Changed how I think. Watch it here.
• Keurig. I’m not a coffee snob, so it’s perfect for me.
• Married Life. So great. Not always easy.

On a seemingly unrelated note, my wife complains that I’m impossible to shop for. So I directed her to my Amazon Wish List for ideas this Christmas. Where the Correlation t-shirt was pinned as a wish list item. And I got it for Christmas. My wife and in-laws admitted they really didn’t get the nerd humor, but they got it for me anyway.

The Christmas gifts I love the most are the ones where the “thing” represents the “mission”. This year my cousin gave me Fair-Trade coffee through World Vision, proceeds of which goes to their Maximum Impact Fund. I gave my dad a Pancake Pen so he could make pancakes with fun shapes for his grandkids  (my nephews) when they sleepover. And my in-laws bought me this t-shirt. In so doing, they financially supported my favorite web comic.

I hardly ever stop and think about gift giving on a metaphysical level; mostly I just buy an thing/artifact/stuff that looks nice or sounds nice, but doesn’t serve a deeper purpose. I am now convinced the best gifts aren’t just something the recipient might like, but serve their interest/passion/mission. I think this will help me give better gifts. And might make me less impossible to shop for.

So:

1. look for old database backups I can delete
2. look for temp files I delete
3. look in the Users (or Documents and Settings) folder for profiles that I can delete and notice some names of people that haven’t been with the company in almost a year and hey do you remember that one time when we were out to lunch and…

Another good place to find old friends is an office-wide and company-wide distribution lists.

Clearly I have a charmed life. I have a lot to be thankful for.

Happy Thanksgiving.

• finish reading the Steve Jobs biography
• take one 2.5 hour nap
• eat at Chuy’s
• teach these puppies to “Sit”
• eat at Germantown Cafe
• do the dishes
• see Wicked at TPAC
• get my hands on some 1792 bourbon at the Beer, Bourbon, and BBQ festival
• find a recipe for Crock Pot Pizza that doesn’t use pasta
• rip the DVDs of my original theatrical versions of the Star Wars trilogy (IV – VI) and convert to MP4
• buy dog food
• eat at Carrabba’s

The iTunes Media folder, along with the Music, TV Shows, and Audiobooks folders, also contains:

an “Automatically Add to iTunes” folder. When iTunes-compatible content is placed in this folder, iTunes analyzes it for compatibility and adds it to your iTunes library. While iTunes is open, files are immediately analyzed and added to your iTunes library when you add files to this folder. If you add files to this folder when iTunes is closed, iTunes analyzes and adds them the next time you open iTunes.

So my home PC is running Windows 7. I just added the Automatically Add to iTunes folder as a favorite in Windows Explorer, it shows up in the left navigation, and I just tried it out. 3 albums and an audiobook just added WITHOUT ANY ISSUE.

Now I’m going to create a Smart Playlist for recently added.

So I created a .bat file with these two lines:

sc stop servicename
sc config servicename start= disabled

I created a scheduled task on the server to run this .bat file at 7:01pm, when the data conversion was expected to begin. The site would be closed by then and the database would have been taken offline as well. And I didn’t have to login and work on a Friday night.

I can’t wait until our new platform is off of Windows 2003 and we move forward to Windows 2008 R2. I’m eager to start using PowerShell.

• Computer Management: compmgmt.msc
• Control Panel: control
• Microsoft Paint: mspaint
• Notepad: notepad
• Registry Editor: regedit
• Task Manager: taskmgr

Here’s a big list: http://mypchell.com/guides/34-guides/69-156-useful-run-commands