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As is much the case, I continue to get caught up in an ever changing cycle of interests where old ones are abandoned in favor of new ones. This year most of my free time was spent playing video games, reading books, or riding my motorcycle. Trying to do some of that was even difficult given the problems I am experiencing at my workplace. They’re not bad problems but they tend to be tiresome over the long run. I found many weeks where my free time was spent napping in an effort to recuperate from the day’s toils.

However, I was able to maintain some productivity on my own time. Some accomplishments of 2011 have been:

• Riding my motorcycle almost exclusively throughout the Spring, Summer and Fall seasons.
• Rode the bike down from Cleveland to Columbus and back twice, with a trip to Toledo and back once.
• Took part in a few Patriot Guard Rider missions for the first time this year.
• Finished reading 12 books this year. That is about average for me.
• Managed to maintain my weight this year mostly through the (not-so-)strict elimination of sugar infused soft drinks.
• Recycled a lot of plastic containers that were previously just being thrown out (IE: soda pop, condiments, retail packaging.)

From a technical standpoint:

• My Thinkpad T61p died after a few short years. I could have probably fixed it but with my job being the way it was this year, I decided to just buy a new laptop. I went with an Aspire Ethos, replaced the stock drive with a Samsung SSD, tossed Ubuntu on it and haven’t looked back.
• Because of the recent revelation of key logging software CarrierIQ having been installed on a lot of smartphones, I migrated my HTC EVO Shift 4G away from Sprint’s stock rom onto Cyanogenmod 7 and kicked myself for not having done it sooner.
• I successfully moved my small collection of domain names away from GoDaddy to Name.com as a result of GoDaddy’s original support for the SOPA bill that has recently been introduced to the US Congress. GoDaddy has since backed away from supporting it but hasn’t spoken out against it.

I was fortunate to have the remaining two weeks of the year off from work. Part of that time has been used for reflection. Time moves so fast some days that it’s difficult to see how things are progressing. I originally thought that I hadn’t been able to accomplish as much as I always seem to intend. I could have certainly done more and plan to during 2012. But looking back has brought some closure to the year for me and has provided me with some insight for setting goals for the year to come.

I created a new set of OpenPGP keys on the recommendation from Debian regarding the weaknesses of DSA and its use of the SHA-1 digest algorithm. I tried to post my official transition message but WordPress furks some of the characters making it a broken message. Instead, I’ve updated my Contact page with the new info and uploaded the transition message as a static page HERE existing outside of WordPress’s influence.

Happy Birthday to Me!
Happy Birthday to Me!!
Haaapppyyyy Biiiiirthday Toooo Meeeee!!!
Happy Birthday to Me!

I’ve got nothing else.

I used to feel younger than my actual age. Now I feel older. I’ve got to reverse that.