Today was a good day. Any day I have 3 serv­ings of straw­berry pie is a good one. Don’t worry, they were small ones.

Today was ded­i­cated to watching col­lege bas­ket­ball. Duke Uni­ver­sity started the day as one mem­bers of the Elite 8 and the only top seeded team still alive in the tour­na­ment. Their oppo­nent was Baylor Uni­ver­sity. Because of this, I know that the Baylor campus is located in Texas not far from Houston. I can also tell you they have a ser­vice­able but unin­spiring web­site. I once worked on the design of a web­site for The Baylor School, and that one is far more interesting.

I got a few birthday gifts. I’m was not expecting much this year because I’m get­ting mar­ried in Sep­tember. It’s a des­ti­na­tion wed­ding, so my birthday, wed­ding, and Christmas gift from sev­eral people will be that they’ll show up. My fiancee pur­chased ses­sions with a per­sonal trainer for me. Is there a mes­sage there? The biggest gift was the one I gave myself: new soft­ware to help me learn Man­darin Chi­nese. It’s seems quite simple (espe­cially for how much it cost) but then I think about how dif­fi­cult it is to make some­thing that is simple and effec­tive and my respect for the product increases. I’ve had a devil of a time cre­ating a simple and effec­tive per­sonal website.

Now that I’m 34, I should prob­ably get that resolved.

I feel a number of per­sonal res­o­lu­tions coming on. It’s the side effect of looking back at the pre­vious year and real­izing that I’ve not suc­ceeded in many of the goals I set for myself. There are no excuses. It’s just failure. I know it doesn’t have to be that way, and I know what it will take to change those fail­ures into poten­tial successes.

So here’s to my 35th year: may I take steps for­ward and not back­ward. I make this effort not just for myself any­more. There’s a family to build for as well.