2007 Focus - Brains & Bots

2006 was about reflection, change and relief. Not just for me, but I believe the country "exhaled" too..... American voters decided to start anew and chose a new Congress ... the President got rid of Rumsfield and a bi-partisan panel issued the Iraq War Report recommending fundamental changes in Iraq War strategy. Another savage year in Iraq ended with the savage execution of a savage man ... Saddam Hussein was executed.

Personally, I decided to mentally "reboot" in 2006. Took on a mostly part-time schedule throughout the year, took the first sabbatical of my career, forced myself to read books I've been wanting to read and continued my favorite hobby - running. After my great west-coast sabbatical I came back to center city Philly, quietly settled into a nice little apartment and picked up my software consulting hours at a south jersey client (sabbaticals are great -- but you dont make much money) and started laying the groundwork for what I plan to focus on during 2007.

2007 Resolutions

1. Fitness - pick up the running another notch - Initial Goal: 5 miles - no stops - at an average below 7 minutes/per mile. Also will do more trail & hill running in beautiful Valley Green - Philly Fairmount Park.
2. Mental - continue the aggressive reading pace that I initiated in 2006. Goal: To get a comprehensive understanding of cognitive science and neuroscience by year end.
3. Career - picking up the consulting hours to fund my 2007 geek hobby (below). Goal: To increase consulting revenues by 40% over 2006.
4. Geek Hobby - using most of my personal free time ramping up on robotics, artifiical intelligence and advanced multicore/multithreaded programming. Goal: To build a small mobile robot driven by a generalized AI prototype - by year end with a small 3 man team.

Sounds like another year without a girlfriend :)