101 Things In 1001 Days (2008-2011)

From what I hear on the street, this "101 Things To Do In 1001 Days" thing is all the rage. So I'm officially jumping on the bandwagon - seems like it should be fun! (Note that I didn't include "Make 101 things list" as my first item, that would have taken precious time away from my doing-stuff phase.)

Oh, and I'm starting tomorrow, so by my calculations (hooray for writing quick Python scripts!), I have until end of day, July 27th, 2011.

Here's my list, broken up into arbitrary categories:

(Progress: 60 done out of 101. 41 to go. Most recently done: 101, 100, 69, 67, 31.)

Travel - 5/10
1. Go to Tofino in storm season.
2. Take the train out of Vancouver and back. (Update: Looks like the only trains that go towards the interior go overnight.)
3. Ride the Dayliner on Vancouver Island.
4. Take a weekend trip to Seattle.
5. Go overnight backpack hiking with Holly and Sophie.
6. See an orca in the wild.
7. Take Sophie to see the woolly mammoth in Victoria.
8. Go to the top of Mt Prevost.
9. Take Sophie to Dinotown/water slides out in the valley.
10. Spend a few days in the San Juan islands.

Health/Exercise - 11/14
11. Get a hat trick in a hockey game.
12. Bike to work and back 40 work days in a row.
13. Take Sophie and Holly skating. (Nov. 30, 2008 - Took Sophie skating on her new bob skates at Kits rink with Holly (skating) and Jan and Ken (fans in the stands, taking pictures). Soph loved it, wanting more, more.)
14. Swim in Kits pool.
15. Do the Grouse Grind.
16. Walk to work at Radical.
17. Walk home from work at Radical. (Nov. 7, 2008 - Walked home, in the rain, without an umbrella. Stopped for a wrap and to see a movie. Total walking time: roughly 1 hour 20 minutes.)
18. Climb a tree.
19. Try indoor rock climbing.
20. Tube down the Cowichan River.
21. Swim in the Pacific Ocean.
22. Drink nothing but water for an entire month.
23. Bike to SFU and back.
24. Take Holly 10-pin bowling.

Family - 6/7
25. Leave Sophie with Star & Russ and have a weekend getaway with Holly.
26. Leave Sophie with Jan & Ken and have a weekend getaway with Holly.
27. Teach Sophie to read. Simple words count.
28. Give Holly a group of tangled-up necklaces to sort out.
29. Make a will.
30. Either get life insurance, or decide not to.
31. Write a birthday email to Sophie each year.

Entertainment - 11/18
32. Watch all six Star Wars movies plus Clone Wars in one weekend.
33. Watch all four Indiana Jones movies in one weekend.
34. Beat a computer/video game made before 1990.
35. Beat a computer/video game made after 2005.
36. Ask five friends/family members what their favourite books are, and read them. (Update: Have asked for recommendations and have received replies. List contains:

• Song of the Dodo - David Quammen (Davo)
  
• The Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley (Alissa)
  
• The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian - Sherman Alexie (Janet)
  
• In a Sunburned Country - Bill Bryson (Trish)
  
• The Book Nobody Read - Chasing the revelations of Nicolaus Coprenicus - Owen Gingerich (Erik)
  

)
37. Read 3 books from Handy's book list:
Anthony Burgess's "A Clockwork Orange" (A pretty quick read. Great book. At first, I hated the lingo. Usually, books that rely on their own made-up language are weak and annoying, but in this case, it really worked to draw you in. By the end of the book, I was starting to think in nadsat.)
Joseph Heller's "Catch-22"
John Milton's "Paradise Lost" (Started reading this, and I'm vaguely worried that this may be my Achilles' heel... Seems like a tough read.)
38. Find and buy a copy of Peggy Parish's "Key to the Treasure" in a used bookstore.
39. Take Holly to the opera or symphony.
40. Take Holly to Bard on the Beach.
41. Finish a Sunday NY Times crossword with help from only three people, chosen beforehand.
42. Get to level 50 in n0tpr0n, documenting the steps required to get there. (Update: Getting closer. Stuck on level 30. All steps documented so far.)
43. Attend at least one Olympic event, either qualifying round or medal round.
44. Lose $27.50 at a casino.
45. Take Sophie to a movie.
46. See an Imax or Omnimax film.
47. Ask five friends/family members what their favourite movies are, and watch them.
48. Go to a double-header at the Hollywood. (Nov. 8, 2008 - Saw the double-header matinee: Clone Wars and Tropic Thunder. I thought Clone Wars was very well done, very engaging. Glad I saw it on the big screen. And Tropic Thunder was stupid humour, just what I was in the mood for.)
49. Send something unexpected and stupid to Trish in the mail. (Update: Bwa ha ha! Ha ha! Snicker. Haven't sent anything yet, but found a good possibility.)

Creative - 2/11
50. Write a short story including 20 snippets of conversations overheard while walking along the seawall.
51. Write a text-based adventure game, make it available on the Internet.
52. Plan, film, and produce a short film (final format: watchable DVD with menus), possibly starring Sophie.
53. Draw five episodes of a webcomic and put it online.
54. Make a significant effort to have a cool Hallowe'en costume at least one year.
55. Enter a photo in a photo contest.
56. Go outside somewhere and either sketch or paint an interesting scene.
57. Plan (but don't execute) an elaborate heist.
58. Finish that darned soapstone owl.
59. Make an awesome mixed-tape-style CD.
60. Make a list of 20 predictions for the future, seal the envelope, and put it in a safety deposit box for 20 years.

Work - 1/4
61. Update my resume, both the long master copy and the ready to use copy.
62. Design and create a website (for money) for two small businesses not related to me through friends/family.
63. Create a web design company with a website and small portfolio.
64. Write a treatise on the evils of video games.

Computers - 4/8
65. Buy a big widescreen computer monitor.
66. Make media player (music and video) completely runable from remote control.
67. Make camera (still and video) download/organization system.
68. Finish Remindomatic V2.
69. Finish digitizing CD collection and get rid of a lot of it.
70. Write a Rubix-cube solving program that doesn't blow up my computer.
71. Digitize our VHS tapes and get rid of them.
72. Go 100 days without a major computer malfunction.

Home - 9/12
73. Put in new flooring, can be carpet, wood, self-installed, professionally done, whatever.
74. Have bathroom renovated - new shower, towel rack, shelves.
75. Do another big frame full of bizarre/unusual/interesting pictures.
76. Finish going through the Dean-piles of paper.
77. Paint a mural on a wall in our apartment.
78. Make a pie for myself.
79. Make a pie for someone else.
80. Set up emergency supplies - water, food, candles, etc. (Nov. 16, 2008: 36L of water, 6 cans of soup, some dried fruit, 4 cans of beans (fun fact: apparently, beans don't expire!), some apple juice, some candles and matches, and a printed out list of phone numbers. Oh, and we set up automatic reminders for us to replace the food when it expires. There's more we could add, but I'm pretty happy with this as a good start.)
81. Go to three open houses.
82. Paint one of our rooms something other than off-white.
83. Learn to bake oatmeal raisin cookies.
84. Fix (properly) the broken bit of wall that's currently held together with duct tape.

Social/Volunteer - 3/7
85. Volunteer for three different charities or non-profit organizations.
86. Donate to three other different charities or non-profit organizations. (Food bank, Pacific Post Partum Support Society, Cancer Society.)
87. Give blood at least twice.
88. Ride in a June Critical Mass with Sophie and Holly.
89. Write a letter to my MP about the deficiencies in our electoral system.
90. Write a letter to the city about Burrard Bridge's bike lanes.
91. Clean up the garbage in a park, or along one block of a street, or along a stretch of beach.

Self - 8/10
92. Get new glasses and contacts. (Dec. 4, 2008 - Picked up new glasses and contacts today. I'm officially slightly hipper-looking than before.)
93. Get an autograph from a famous person.
94. Eat an entire pizza (medium or large) in one sitting.
95. Take a course.
96. Buy a new tshirt on the Internet.
97. Invent a bold (i.e. stupid) new recipe, possibly involving cheese and a blender.
98. Try an exotic new fruit that I've never eaten before.
99. Write a fan letter to a favourite author or TV star or something.
100. Leave a 100% tip (or $20, whichever is greater) at a restaurant to a deserving server.
101. Retroactively claim something awesome that I did as this last item.

There we go. I'll try to update the list as I do stuff, and I'll add commentary as appropriate.

Wish me luck, especially on the stuff I'll need Holly's permission to do! :D

1001 things list

Man, the last 7 pounds, er, items on my 1001-things list are the hardest! I'm up to 94, and I'm having trouble thinking up more. Holly's helping, though, so I'm sure I'll have them all thought up in no time, even if a bunch of them are like "get rid of my university textbooks" and "get rid of my childhood toys".

Stupid Windows

Have I mentioned lately how much I loathe Windows? I had a whole big annoying morning which started with Windows' brand new inability to read DVD-R disks (e.g. all of our backups), progressing to reading all about similar problems of the general populace of the Interwebs, leading to following one person's instructions on removing Service Pack 2, and culminating in the complete borkedness of my computer - it won't even boot. (The Windows half, at least - Ubuntu is not only still working great, but has now completely taken over the video editing from Windows. Take that, Windows!)

Now I'm just hoping Wine will be good enough to let me install and play Diablo II. Then I'll be happy never to boot into anything Microsoft again.

gnome-blog

This is a test of gnome-blog (a.k.a. Blog Entry Poster), a Linux application that runs directly from the desktop. I'm typing this in a little window that popped up from an icon on my desktop - it gives me a place to put a title, content, and I can add links and do simple text formatting. The downsides are that I can't do images, and I can't easily choose who I am / what blog I'm writing for. Still, pretty cool!

Dean out.

Update: Looks like you can do images, but it's not intuitive - you can drag and drop them from Nautilus. Also annoying is that it doesn't heading-ify my title. Boo.

1 thing to do in 7 or so days

This post is partly:
a) to show a certain stupidhead that my blog is updated regularly, and
b) to motivate myself.

The aforementioned stupidhead somehow stumbled upon a neat idea, this 101 Things in 1001 Days fad. While I openly mock her list (except the bit where I get to make her read a terrible book, that's awesome!), the idea itself appeals to me, so I've been working on my own list. So far, I have 64 items out of the required 101. When I'm done, I'll post it here, and then keep you (my enormous global audience) informed as to my progress.

If I can't get to 101 ideas, I'll ask my studio audience for suggestions, most of which I will discard with much derision. If you pay me, I may consider your ideas more seriously.

Stay tuned. I hope to have this list sorted out within the week.