This is a reminder to all you programmers and lovers of programmers, that Programmer Day falls on September 12th this year.   Go ahead and mark your calenders now so you don’t forget!  Programmer Day falls on the 256th day of the year, normally September 13th.  But since it’s a leap year, we get to celebrate on September 12th this year!

Since I’m in a new launch sort of mood this week, I also want to announce that the greatly improved design for ProgrammerDay.info has been completed. There will be some tweaks and I’ll add sponsors as they come on board, but overall I think this is a huge improvement over the hastily thrown together WordPress site from last year. Since it’s a standalone site with no database behind it, it should hold up to the traffic demands a little better than last year as well.  Please check it out and let me know what you think!

Recap:
Resolution #1: Read a self-improvement book
Resolution #2: Learn a new Skill
Resolution #3: Lose weight
Resolution #4: Take more chances

This week I’ve been covering my New Years resolutions and I hope that you might like some of them enough to go for them yourself. It’s still early in the year and there’s no reason you can’t resolve to do any of these things right now!  You may look at these resolutions and think to yourself that you it’s just too much to do, and that leads me to my fifth and final resolution for the year:

Resolution #5: Watch less TV

The writers strike is certainly making this easier right now.  I don’t watch a ton of TV, but I will still sit and watch something I don’t really care about or that I’m only moderately interested in.  I have TiVo which has helped to reduce the amount of time I’m in front of the TV, but I still find myself watching crap several times a week and I’m just going to cut that out.  No reality TV, no game shows, no reruns (exceptions made for Scrubs).  How much would that cut out of your TV viewing, would your life be better if you spent that time working on #1 – #4?  The answer for me is a definite YES.

Recap:
Resolution #1: Read a self-improvement book
Resolution #2: Learn a new Skill
Resolution #3: Lose weight

My next resolution is the most scary and exciting and it’s a continuation of last year and the spirit that led me to start the Knight Knetwork.

Resolution #4: Take more chances

Now don’t take this the wrong way, I’m not talking about running with scissors.  I’m talking about measured risks and putting myself out there more.  I’ll give you my first example for the year.  I had to have a new heat pump installed and the company that did it for me didn’t have a website or their own company e-mail address.  I had just been working on the new ProgrammerDay.info site and felt confident enough to put together a simple site and set up the domain and e-mail on GoDaddy.  I’m inexperienced and by no means an expert so I’m charging only a small amount but the owner of the company jumped right on the idea.  One of my regular resolutions is to learn new skills, putting myself out there a little bit so I can use them is the next step.

Recap:
Resolution #1: Read a self-improvement book
Resolution #2: Learn a new Skill

My next resolution is my least favorite of the group, but probably the most important.

Resolution #3: Lose weight

Statistically, most Americans could stand to lose a few pounds and it certainly wouldn’t hurt me any.  The problem is that losing weight is hard work and generally no fun.  Results can come slowly and it can be hard to stay motivated with temptation around every corner.  To really succeed in losing weight you need to change your lifestyle and your habits, you have to have a long term plan as well as a short term one.

I’m not much of a fad dieter, as far as I’m concerned to lose weight you need to watch what you eat and exercise more.  One thing that really worked well for coworkers and I was to lose weight together and to turn it into a competition.  We tracked our weight over the course of 3 months and all of us did very well and as we start up again this year, our starting weights are lower than they were the previous year meaning at least some of the loss stuck.  3 months might seem a little bit on the long side but I think you need to have your competition last that long for a few reasons:

• It’s enough time for the good habits you take on to sink in and become routine
• It gives you enough time to lose a significant amount of weight
• It makes it harder for people to cheat (if there is something worth cheating for)

Good tracking tools are a must, a spreadsheet is good enough but if you want something better you should certainly check out our article on 15 Web 2.0 Diet/Fitness Sites.  And since we’re all programmers we’re working on something home grown this year, if it’s good enough maybe I can talk the guy doing most of the programming into releasing the code.

Recap:
Resolution #1: Read a self-improvement book

As I mentioned yesterday, the Pragmatic Programming book inspired me for:
Resolution #2: Learn a new Skill

For me, this usually means I learn a new programming language. I’ve picked PHP for this year since WordPress is written in PHP, I’m pretty sure it’ll come in handy and I’ll be more likely to use it and not let the skill rust away. I always find learning a new language is easier if you have a project in mind and so I’ve decided to play around with Google‘s chart API and see what I can so with it. I also have been thinking about putting together a PHP/mySQL site to help with another resolution, the one I’ve gotten some much needed motivational help with which I’ll go over tomorrow.