So, 2012 is upon us, hey?

After jotting down my thoughts on 2011, I really wanted to spend some time looking ahead to this new year. In fact, I’ve been downright excited to write this post. So then, it figures that I start having problems with the site that I have to address before I can keep going.

First, the site went down… again. This was a fairly common occurrence this past year, and I don’t want to risk it happening again. So, I switched servers, which took most of last week. I figure there is no reason to slap together a new post and try to drive traffic to it if the site doesn’t work. So I waited.

Then, yesterday, I notice that MailChimp had screwed up my signup forms for The “I Can” Movement. After hassling with customer service, I decided to switch over to Aweber, which I am still in the process of doing.

So, after all of this, I am ready to start some serious writing, and the site and community should be happier for it (and if the signup form on the right side of this page looks bland, just be patient. I’ll get it jazzed up soon).

So, I find a great exercise is to sit down and figure out what you plan on doing this year. After discovering all the cool stuff I was able to accomplish last year, I was even more excited to put this list together. There’s a great mix of travel, professional, and personal stuff (much of it from my bucket list) on here that should make 2012 a rousing success. If you keep up with what I’m doing here or elsewhere, then here’s what you have to look forward to:

I’m going to totally dominate Europe this year.

This is the big one. In October, my wife and I are going to celebrate our two-year anniversary by flying into London and doing a giant figure-8 across the continent. We’ll be visiting my old college roommate in Scotland, as well as hitting up Germany, Ireland, England, Rome, Paris, and Austria. It’s going to be the trip of a lifetime.

After visiting Taiwan a few years ago, I’m doubly excited to hit another continent, as well as immerse myself in the cultures of the world – and the food!

Attend a Packer game while they’re good.

I’m from Wisconsin. That means I’m a Green Bay Packer fan. They only lost one game all season this year, and as of this writing, they are defending Super Bowl champions. In other words, they’re good. I plan on heading up to historic Lambeau Field to enjoy it in person next season.

Make $50,000/year.

This is the next income goal on my bucket list, and I think it’s very doable this year. It’s going to take a lot of effort on my part, but I look forward to the challenge. As I expand my business, this should become more and more of a possibility. I did not come close to this income level in 2011, but I am poised to make a run for it if I play my cards right in 2012.

Get 1,000 Twitter followers.

It’s not the be-all, end-all in terms of influence, but I do feel that having over 1K followers on Twitter will really give me the opportunity to spread the word about what I’m doing, as well as connect with more awesome people. One thousand is a completely arbitrary number, but it’s a big one for me. As of this writing, I’m sitting at just under 800.

Play guitar at a performance level.

I don’t have clear parameters on this yet. I’d like to record myself playing, or even hit up an Open Mic night somewhere. I love playing guitar, but I’m generally pretty bad at it because I don’t practice enough. This is the year I dedicate myself to the craft so that I can be at a level that I can be proud of for a change.

Attend a bloggers’ conference.

There are lots of these available, but I’m headed to Portland, Oregon in July of 2012 to attend the World Domination Summit. It’s much more than a bloggers’ conference, but it will give me the chance to connect with so many more like-minded individuals.

Take a train somewhere.

I’ve never really been on a train (Disney World doesn’t count). We’ll be taking it around Europe, so this should take care of that.

Run a half marathon.

Yep, last year I ran a 5K independently. Twice. Now, I’m taking it up a notch. I planned on working on this sometime later in the summer, but a friend of mine convinced me to sign up for one on May 5th. So I guess this one will be crossed off a lot sooner than I had originally planned!

Write more epic stuff.

One reason I really enjoyed the 2011 review is because I was able to write a much longer post. That’s the goal this year. I find that it will be better for me as a writer, and it will force me to come up with stuff that you guys will enjoy and be able to learn from. In my head, I’ve got this post from Corbett Barr over at Think Traffic stuck in my head.

Implement “No TV Tuesday”.

Last night, my wife and I had our first full-scale “No TV Tuesday”. We have struggled with leaving the TV on and watching “just one more” episode of something, effectively killing our desire and resolve to get stuff done. Instead of leaning on that, we are now actively not watching television on Tuesdays. The result? We got a lot done, and we spent time playing a board game instead, which was actually a lot of fun.

TV isn’t evil. As I’ve written in the past, I love TV. But it can control your life if you’re not careful. When I was hanging out with Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus when they were in town last month, Joshua said that he didn’t own a TV, but only because he knew he would watch it constantly.

It’s not as simple as saying something is “good” or “bad”. It’s about recognizing your own weaknesses and shortcomings, and taking steps to fight them. That’s what “No TV Tuesdays” are about for us.

Migrate from SEO writing into full-time direct mail copywriting.

SEO writing has gotten me out of the office job, and for that I am grateful. However, it’s not a very challenging or fulfilling occupation. With direct mail, I’ll be able to make a lot more money and work less, creating more freedom in my life while we pay down our debts. I’ve  igotten my foot in the door at several companies, but I have to make sure I perform to the highest level so that I can establish myself. Once that happens, I can ditch the SEO work. It’s a switch that I’ve been waiting to make for 6 years.

50 Guest Posts in 2012

According to Caleb Wojcik of Pocket Changed, I’ve got a little competition for this one. The only way I can grow the audience here and at HustleLife Magazine is by getting my name out there, which means I have to make guest posting a priority. That’s what this year is all about. So I’m hoping that I will be able to knock out 50 guest posts on various sites to really start gaining some traction!

Smarter consumption of information.

A lot of people feel that there is an information overload in today’s online world, and I would be inclined to agree. But I don’t think that we necessarily need to cut it all out. In fact, you can limit your information overload by having a better system of managing it. Some people will use different tools, but here is what I have:

• My Kindle + Readability. With my Kindle, I can read books anywhere – quickly and easily. This is great, but the real power of the Kindle comes from combining it with Readability. With the combination, I can find long-form content online and send it to my Kindle with one click for later reading. So instead of managing magazine subscriptions for my long-form content, I just keep my Kindle. One of my favorite places to find great content that I can read is LongForm.org, which allows me to click “Send to Kindle” and be done with it.
• Google Reader. I keep trying other tools, but Reader still can’t be beat for clean and simple feed reading. I manage a lot of feeds from Google Reader, but I don’t read everything within their interface. Sure, I will if I have the time, but if I want to batch my stuff and save it for later, I use…
• ifttt and Evernote. With these two tools, I can save links from Google Reader and Twitter that I want to review later, eliminating my need to constantly consume information. With ifttt, as I’ve written about before, I can star items in Google Reader that will go into my “Links to Review” notebook in Evernote. Then, when I see an interesting tweet or link on Twitter I want to look into, I just “favorite” the tweet and it is sent to the same notebook in Evernote. Then, I can just read them at my leisure on my…
• Netbook. With my new netbook (see the goofy picture above), I now have the laptop I’ve always wanted/needed. I can use it for quick access to links and content that I want to review, and I can use it for portable working (or blogging – which I’m doing on it now).

Having an organized system of digesting content allows me to read on my own time, where and when I am comfortable. Then, I am able to weed out the important stuff and keep my brain learning new interesting and valuable information without becoming overloaded. Oh, and the entire system uses free services, which is awesome.

Okay, what about you?

What do you want to do this year? Let’s chat in the comments section!

The result was an interesting group of experiences, news, apps, and a lot of rambling nonsense. So, in a nutshell, here’s what 2011 looked like for me:

I completed a full year of self-employment, and I’m poised for growth.

After quitting my job in 2010, I was able to make it through all of 2011 with a fairly consistent income, which was fantastic on many levels. I was afforded freedom and flexibility that you just don’t get with an office job, and it’s been wonderful for my marriage. In July, I was able to further my copywriting expertise and I am now cracking into the direct mail market, which is one of the most competitive and lucrative markets available to copywriters. I’m gaining some traction, so 2012 is fixing to be an exciting year professionally!

The Month of Brogan was upon us in the spring.

I kicked around other names: BroganMania, BroganFest 2011, etc. In the end, I almost met Chris Brogan, and because of that, I had a huge surge in traffic in March. Using that experience, I was able to get a guest post up on ProBlogger, which led to a crap-ton more traffic. I learned that Chris is a very giving fellow, and I was (and still am) very thankful that he shared my story with his thousands of readers. Now, I just have to actually meet the guy.

Wisconsin sports in 2011 experienced unprecedented success.

For the first time in almost three decades, the Milwaukee Brewers won the pennant. They made it to the National League Championship Series, and came within a game of making it to the World Series. As big of a bummer as losing was, the truth is that baseball in Milwaukee hasn’t been this fun in a very long time. On the football front, our beloved Green Bay Packers not only won the Super Bowl, but they only lost one game in 2011 (stupid Kansas City Chiefs!). They dominated the game all year, and it was so much fun to be a part of it. Now, we’re pulling for a repeat championship. Being a Wisconsin sports fan was truly a good time all year, after so many decades of pitiful teams.

I wrote some pretty good stuff here.

Here is a listing of ten of my favorite posts of the past year:

• 20 Average Goals from Extraordinary Achievers
• Dust Yourself Off and Keep Fighting
• Go Home and Get Better
• “Get mean and go do it.”
• Use Your Pain to Fuel Your Fire (a tribute to a lost friend)
• “The hard is what makes it great.”
• 34 Things You Probably Don’t Know About Me
• 7 Reasons Why On-Demand TV Kicks Cable/Satellite TV Square in the Teeth
• Six Lessons About Hard Work and Persistence from My Six-Year Old Nephew
• Stop Complaining and Make Change

And you enjoyed some of it, too.

Here are the top 5 most-read posts this year, according to Google Analytics:

• 20 Average Goals from Extraordinary Achievers
• 9 Reasons Why Being a Nerd is Awesome
• How Almost Meeting Chris Brogan Led to Personal Growth
• 4 Movies to Fight Your Feeling of Hopelessness
• Why You’re Not Getting That Promotion/Guy/Girl/Life

After a ten-year hiatus, I returned to competitive distance running (and ditched my running shoes).

I signed myself up for a 5K race in May, and completed it in decent time, crossing something off my bucket list (see below). Then, after announcing my retirement, I signed up for another race in September – and ran it barefoot. Now, I’ve added a few more running-related items to my bucket list, and I plan to run a half-marathon in 2012. I’m loving every minute of it.

I started my bucket list, and I crossed things off like a madman.

• Stay at a Disney resort (October 2011)
• Tour the White House (September 2011)
• Take Amanda to Disney World as a couple (October 2011)
• Run a 5K independently. (5/21/2011 – 25 minutes, 10 seconds)
• Get 100 HustleLife subscribers. (October 21, 2011)
• Ride a horse. (October 21, 2011)
• Take a hot air balloon ride. (October 21, 2011)
• Go jet skiing. (August 13th, 2011 – Castle Rock Campground)
• Brew a drinkable beer. (July 2011 – Thank you, Mr. Beer!)
• Run a 5K barefoot (9/10/11 – 27:04)

My gadget crush on the Kindle grew, and I read some awesome books.

Last Christmas, my wife bought me a Kindle (now called the “Kindle Keyboard”). It has rapidly become my favorite gadget. I love reading anyway, and now I don’t have to hold open a big book or read in awkward positions. Instead, I can just focus on the reading, which I love. A few months ago, I discovered the usefulness of my Kindle email address, where I can send documents to read on my Kindle. If I see a cool article on the Web that is really doggone long, I can send it to my Kindle to read in bed later for free. Also, I signed up for a weekly article from SendMeAStory.com (a similar service is Delivereads), and they send me a cool feature article (usually topical) from a publication of the last 25 or so years, formatted for my Kindle. I just flip on my Kindle and it downloads! Add to that the free books to Amazon Prime members at the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library, and this gadget has become my #1 source for content in the past year. Love. It.

A few of my favorite books this year include:

• Accidental Genius by Mark Levy
• Born to Run by Christopher McDougall
• The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
• Do The Work by Steven Pressfield
• The Last Lecture by Randy Pautsch
• The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris

I failed to start a few series of blog posts.

I love blog post series, so I wanted to start some of my own. Given that this site focuses on small goals, I tried to create a list of 237 small goals. Unfortunately, nobody really seemed all that interested in the list, and it died a quiet death at #14. The same is true of the Cool 30, which was a Thanksgiving-related series I started. I didn’t make it a priority, and it died. Both of these are pretty public failures, but hopefully I will learn from them when I put together my next series effort.

Some awesome connections were made, and I met up with quite a few people as well.

This was the year that I finally was able to pound the pavement and meet with some really cool people that I had been following for years. I met Milwaukee restaurant guru Joe Sorge earlier this year on the same day that I shook hands and chatted with author and respected entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk. Impossible-doer Joel Runyon moved to Milwaukee for a few months, and I had the privilege of getting to know him while he was here, and he connected me with a ton of other interesting people as well, including Josh and Ryan over at The Minimalists just last night. I was also able to meet up with J. Money of Budgets Are Sexy and Love Drop (see below) when I visited Washington, D.C., which was a load of fun as well. Sean Ogle of Location 180 started a new community called Location Rebel, and I was honored to be interviewed as an expert on building a location independent business, which also gave me the chance to meet Sean (via Skype). Through HustleLife (also see below), I have been able to connect with new people every single month, which has been incredibly rewarding.

I did some pretty awesome traveling.

From touring the White House in Washington, D.C. to strolling down Main Street, USA in Walt Disney World, I got to see some cool sights of the country. Add to that my buddy’s bachelor party in Chicago, and I got around a little bit this year!

HustleLife debuted.

In May of this year, I launched HustleLife Magazine – a free digital magazine dedicated to helping people achieve their dreams by rolling up their sleeves and getting to work. With interviews and other resources, it has become one of my favorite projects to work on. I’ve been very blessed to interview plenty of great people this year, and I’m looking forward to talking with many more. In October, the subscriber count grew to over 100 people, which is really humbling and way awesome.

Some cool apps and online services became essential tools in my life.

Don’t tell me the internet is a waste of time – I’ve discovered plenty of great tools and resources that I use every day:

• XBMC (XBox Media Center) – This is on our home theater PC, where we stream lots of shows and movies to our television in a slick interface.
• Netflix – Yeah, it got some bad press this year, but it is a serious resource for great TV shows, movies, and a ton of brilliant documentaries. And a lot of the content is in HD, which is just a bonus. It’s the best $8 a month that we spend.
• Google Reader – I tried Feedly, I really did. But Google Reader continues to be a clean, simple, and useful resource for my blog reading.
• ifttt – Many of these tools are run through ifttt, which lets you connect different web services with hundreds of uses. It, for example, allows me to automatically save certain items into my Evernote account for later reading with one click. A very powerful and underutilized tool.
• Evernote – Post ideas, magazine plans, ideas for stuff I can do later, future projects, current projects, recipes, blog posts to read, gift ideas, shopping lists, quotes, book excerpts, store hours. You get the idea?
• Amazon Prime – We used the trial to quickly get a wedding present for my buddy and his wife. At the end of the 30 days, we decided to drop the under-$80 for a year’s worth of the service. We’re never looking back. Prime gives us access to the Kindle library (from above), as well as unlimited two-day shipping on anything Amazon keeps in its warehouse. Virtually all of our Christmas shopping was done through Amazon this year, and we are even starting to order grocery items from there to save money. They even have a streaming library of TV shows and movies (still small, though) included in the service.
• Google Music – My new favorite way to store my music. With my Android phone, I can just stream my entire library to my phone through the data connection instead of carrying around another MP3 player or having to sync devices.
• Twitter – Networking made simple. Most of this review would be impossible to achieve without Twitter. Seriously.
• Endomondo – I don’t run without Endomondo anymore. It got me through my race training, and I plan on using it for my half-marathon training next year.
• Google Maps – With the turn-by-turn Navigation feature, I don’t get lost anymore. Heck, I used it to navigate the public transit and walk to destinations in DC. Must have, all the time.

My fellow bloggers knocked it out of the park this year.

• The Art of Nonconformity – Chris Guillebeau just kept doing his thing, inspiring a kerbillion people while he traveled the world. Favorite post this year: Second Chances
• 11 Points – A hilarious series of “Top 11″ lists. Yeah, that’s really all it is, but it’s really funny and cleverly written. Favorite post this year: 11 Worst Movie Posters of the 90s
• Advanced Riskology – Tyler Tervooren takes a really smart approach to risk, and it allows him to do things that others are afraid to do. Favorite post this year: 9 Tricks to Avoid Becoming a Mistrusted Hypocrite
• Blog of Impossible Things – After saying so many nice things about Joel, he’d probably be offended if I didn’t include him. Seriously though, Joel has accomplished so much in the past couple years, and he’s a very cool dude to know. Favorite post this year: Choose Doing
• Lifehacker – Half of my life is based on Lifehacker. Full of insanely useful tips every day, it is my #1 source for information. Favorite post this year: 50 Free Apps We’re Most Thankful For
• Location 180 – Sean Ogle, as mentioned before, is killing it with great business advice here. Plus, in his travels, he occasionally has some gems for life advice too. Favorite post this year: Inquiring Minds
• Nerd Fitness – Talking to Steve Kamb was one of the most fun interviews I did all year. His site takes a “nerd” approach to fitness, and he has uncovered some interesting stuff. His posts are always well-researched and thorough, and they are a lot of fun to read too. Favorite post this year: Simplify the **** Out of Everything
• Sensophy – I think Jacob Sokol is awesome. If nothing else, I want his office walls. I’ve chatted with him a couple times this year, and he is truly dedicated to finding his way in the world. Favorite post this year: 3 Things That Optimistic People Do Differently
• The Art of Manliness – A perennial favorite, I love what Brett McKay is doing here. With AoM, he is helping guys understand what it really means to be a man, without the stupid barbarism or the foofiness that comes with today’s guy. Old-fashioned and respectful – that’s what it’s about. Favorite post this year: Lose With Dignity. Celebrate With Grace. (Part II)

Love Drop was one of the most fulfilling moments of my entire life.

I met J. Money in DC as stated above, and he mentioned his business partner, Nate. Nate was from Milwaukee, and they ran a cool thing called Love Drop – where they raise funds for a needy family every month and then do a big “love drop” of gifts to help them right the ship. So I started following Nate on Twitter. The next thing you know, Nate’s looking for a family in Milwaukee to do a drop in December. I connected Nate with my former pastor, who operates a church in a rather needy area of Milwaukee. Diomi and Nallee were selected for Love Drop’s December push, and I was invited to join them when they bestowed the gifts on the family.

Watching Nallee try to comprehend that the piles of gifts were all theirs, or watching Diomi and her children embrace in tears when it’s announced that they are getting two new beds and a washer and dryer (they had been doing laundry in the sink and line drying in their apartment) were hard for me to sit through without losing it myself. Among thousands in gift cards and food, Diomi received tons of new dress clothes and a phone so that she can go to job interviews, and career coaching and counseling for free. Nallee, who had one school uniform and no socks (in winter – in Wisconsin), got plenty of socks, and five new uniforms. To be a part of helping a really needy family get some help is something I’m going to hold with me for the rest of my life.

It was announced that Arrested Development is returning for a new run of episodes and a movie.

The new season will be filmed and released exclusively through Netflix. It was officially the best year ever.

I hope your 2011 was as awesome as mine was. Next week, let’s get together and plan out what we’re going to do in 2012! Happy New Year!

Keeping things in the cloud is a godsend, pure and simple.

Yeah, there are sometimes a few hiccups here and there, but think about this: ten years ago, when your computer crashed, you might have been out of your email for a week or more, depending on your resources/finances. Today, when your computer crashes, you can still grab your email on your phone, or you can hop on another computer and access it through a web browser.

The opposition to cloud-based services is what if the server crashes? In other words, if I keep all of my information on Google’s computers, what happens when their computer goes down?

Well, Google spends a sizable amount of money on their computers, and they keep backups of everything. I’d much rather rely on Google’s state-of-the-art computers, which cost thousands of dollars, rather than on my four-and-a-half year old Toshiba Satellite laptop that I bought for $500 or so when it came out.

The cloud is changing everything that we do, and we don’t even realize it. My favorite? Publishing. This blog is completely run by the cloud. I have backups emailed to me every week, but that’s about it. It is 100% run in the cloud. I’m even writing this in a web browser. Thanks to the cloud, I am publishing the 7th issue of my own digital magazine, an ongoing project that I’ve always wanted to do. My books are stored in the cloud.

We use the cloud for communication. I use Google Voice for my business communication, Facebook to communicate with most of my friends, and Twitter to network with and meet new people in various industries.

The cloud houses most of my entertainment. Whereas I spent my younger years meticulously recording TV shows onto video tapes (remember those?), so that I would never be short of entertainment, I now use Netflix for much of my entertainment, along with Hulu, and I read a number of hilariously entertaining and thoughtful blogs.

I house my thoughts in the cloud with Evernote, I keep my day-to-day life in Google Calendar, and I even used the cloud to complete a correspondence course on direct response copywriting to expand my business. We manage our finances in the cloud with ClearCheckbook, and I can travel to new destinations and enjoy classic moments from movies and television with YouTube. You can even expand your knowledge about almost any subject with Wikipedia and a Google search.

The cloud houses your information, teaches you new stuff, keeps you entertained, and organizes your life. Heck, the cloud even makes me money every month. That is so cool.

If you are trying to reach a goal of yours, but feel like you don’t have the time, then it’s time to get more productive. But there are endless blog posts written on productivity – from systems like Getting Things Done, perhaps. But those all generally fall under the category of “work productivity”: trying to get things done that will move you closer to your goals. There’s nothing wrong with them at all, and you definitely need to be productive when you are working.

But there is also the little matter of wasting your personal time. Today’s average web surfer is trying to do a lot of things with a lot of different services. For example, some services that I use most often are:

• Twitter
• Google Reader
• Google Photos (Picasa)
• Evernote
• Facebook
• Gmail

With so many services to manage, I need to work with them as efficiently as possible to keep my time from spiraling out of control. Enter If This Then That.

If This Then That (or IFTTT) is a web service that links these different services together however you want them to, simply and quickly. I first discovered this tool from a post on Lifehacker called, “How to Supercharge All Your Favorite Webapps with ifttt”. There are loads of different uses for this tool, with services like the ones listed above, as well as Foursquare, Dropbox, RSS Feeds, Instagram, Last.fm, and others.

Once you link up the different services you use, you can create “tasks” that tell the services to do something when you take an action. For example, when somebody tags a photo of me on Facebook, that photo is automatically grabbed and uploaded to Google Photos for additional backup. When I click “Share” in Google Reader on a post I like, it will automatically be tweeted. There are seemingly endless possibilities, and the interface is very easy to use.

If you are unsure of where to get started, they have a “recipes” page, with tasks that others have created. Just browsing through those items can get you going. Here are the ones I currently have set up:

• If I am tagged in a Facebook photo, it is uploaded to Google Photos immediately
• If I star an item in Google Reader to read later, it is sent to Evernote as a new note in a notebook called “Links to Review”
• If I mark a tweet as a “favorite” for later viewing, it also is sent to Evernote as a new note in the same notebook (this means that links I save are now stored in one central location from both Google Reader and Twitter)
• If I share an item in Google Reader, a tweet is automatically sent with the link to share with my followers
• If I upload photos or a photo album to Facebook, then the photo(s) are automatically uploaded to Google Picasa

This is just the beginning of how you can use this tool. Other ways include:

• Receiving a text when it’s going to rain
• Sending automatic direct messages to new followers on Twitter (DON’T do this one though – it’s really annoying!)
• Save all Instagram photos to Dropbox
• Put Foursquare check-ins on your Google Calendar
• Sync Instagram photos to a Facebook album
• Receive a text alert when something specific pops up on Craigslist

…and so on. It’s a free tool, and it has eliminated many steps that I used to have to take on a daily basis. Do you use IFTTT? If not, try it out and play around for a bit. If so, what’s your favorite “recipe”? Share in the comments!

I don’t believe the earth is going to blow up if we keep using paper. I’m all for going “green” and everything, but I also believe that the environment is stronger than we give it credit for.

That said, I’m a huge advocate for going paperless in your life whenever possible.

• It’s more secure. Security is always an issue with documents on computers, and if done poorly, then you can leave your documents open to certain vulnerabilities. But at the same time, how secure is a piece of paper? If you have a fire in your house, those papers are gone. All those records, all those photos, and everything in between: history. Meanwhile, all of my important documents are scanned into my computer and saved securely in Dropbox, so I can restore them at any point.
• It’s easy. Going paperless is not that much work. It might take a little bit of legwork at the beginning when you are starting, but this is a goal that is pretty much automatic once it’s set up.
• It’s cleaner. I mean clean in two ways. First, there’s nothing more unsightly than a desk full of piles of papers. Scanning them and getting rid of the papers makes for a clean house. Second, I’m a left-handed writer. For those of you lefties out there, you know the pain that we all grew up with: smudgy handwriting as your hand crosses over what you’ve written. As I stay paperless, I don’t have to bother with that smudgeness because I type everything out instead.
• It’s searchable. “Now, which document had that information on it?” “Where did I put that…” Two common problems with paper documents. You might know what information you need, but have no idea which piece of paper has that information on it. Or you know the exact page you need, but you can’t find it. Keeping it on a computer saves you that trouble because you can search all of your documents for what you need quickly.

So how do we do it?

• First, get a scanner. Think you can’t afford one? You are sorely mistaken. The price of printers with scanners built in to them have dropped to hilarious levels. Our printer recently went belly-up, and I was able to find this bad boy at Target for $40 (though it’s listed online at $50). It’s not fancy, but it does exactly what we need it to do.
• Get software to scan to PDF. I use Simple Scan for most documents on Ubuntu, but if you are a Windows user, you can use Scan2PDF. All you Mac lovers can use Image Capture to grab documents (you can save as an image file instead of a PDF if you want). They are all free and easy to use. You stick the document face-down on the scanner, open up the software, and click “scan”. Boom – you have a file that can be read on any computer.
• Store your important documents on Dropbox. This includes letters you want to save, receipts, and legal documents. Dropbox will give you 2 GB of free storage, which is plenty for what you’ll be using it for. It will back up any files in the Dropbox folder and you can restore it at any time. Instant relief.
• Start using technology in place of paper. Now that you have scanned documents in, you can start using your computer for stuff that you used to use paper for. Take notes in Evernote. Keep your to do lists in Google Tasks or Remember The Milk. Grocery lists can be stored in Google Tasks, Evernote, or Cozi, and they can all be accessed and checked off from your mobile phone, eliminating the need to write it down on paper and take it to the store. Store your recipes in Evernote (seeing a pattern here?) and tag them, so you can access them anywhere, at any time.
• Sign up for paperless statements. Most of your bank accounts offer email statements. Take advantage of them. Pay the bills online with your bank’s online bill pay, which is usually free to use. Track your finances in a Google Docs spreadsheet or in ClearCheckbook. Forward your new statements from your email into, you guessed it, Evernote.

Going paperless will save you postage, paper costs, printing costs, and will keep your life a little more organized. Got a favorite tip for going paperless? Share in the comments!

It's one idea of many.

Growing up, I didn’t have a ton of friends. Whichever friends I had, I didn’t live by them. So when I needed something to do, more often than not, I was on my own. So I sat in front of that beautiful idiot box and watched an endless stream of sitcoms and professional wrestling. And while I have fond memories for both of those things, I started realizing as I grew older how much time was being wasted on that stuff – but I couldn’t stop. When I moved into my first apartment, we got a DVR, and I kept taping stuff and watching it. I still spent hours every day watching TV. When I moved in with my brother’s family, I got my own DVR box and recorded everything under the sun – if it was on, I’d watch it.

When I finally broke out on my own, and I started to build my business, I needed to cut living costs, so I dropped my cable. My family laughed at me, knowing my love for television, and they said, “I could never live without ESPN/Lifetime/Disney Channel, etc.”. And while I had a place in my heart for the Travel Channel and ESPN myself, I forged ahead. And I survived.

Actually, not only did I survive, I thrived! I had more time to really accomplish things and more time to spend with people, instead of staring at that box. I started reading more, and writing more. It’s a wonderful feeling. But here’s the kicker: had I not needed to cut costs, I’d still have cable today. If I had not went cold turkey, I’d have lost approximately (quick calculation here, based on $70/month for cable and DVR service): $2,940. Nearly THREE GRAND. What can you do with that kind of money?

And those who argue that three grand over three years isn’t that much are usually the same people who have cable and then complain that they don’t have a dime extra to spend on going out or getting a book or taking a vacation or whatever. What would you do with an extra $70 per month?

So I’m going to issue a challenge: take this week and don’t watch cable. You want to watch network shows? Go ahead. But take a week and don’t turn on any of the cable channels. The Monday Night Football game is the Ravens-Texans and should be something of a snoozer anyway. If you want to force yourself even further, unhook the cable box and get yourself a set of rabbit ears. If you live in a city, you’ll likely get good reception, and you’ll still get all the HD channels. And here’s a list of things you can do to get yourself through the week:

• Ditch the DVR and watch your favorite shows on your computer the next day. Virtually all network shows have their new episodes on the morning after. Or hop on Hulu. Get your sports fix by watching “America’s Game” on Hulu, which is a miniseries of documentaries on all the Super Bowl winners – it’s fantastic.
• Go to InstantWatcher.com and browse the Netflix Watch Instantly library. It’s growing all the time. Start entertaining the idea of signing up at least for their streaming-only option if you watch a lot of movies ($70/month vs $8/month).
• Go get a book from the library, or order one from Amazon. Find something on a topic you like. You like sports? There are TONS of fantastic and gripping sports books out there that chronicle great, dramatic stories that makes the latest “Brett-Favre-Is-Still-Questionable-So-We-Should-Keep-Talking-About-Him” headlines seem ridiculous by comparison. Like celebrity gossip? Read about the sordid lives of celebrities of the past – you’ll have the same scandal, but at least those people were famous for DOING something.
• Get your news from sites like Google News or BBC. You can even watch local news, but watch with discretion: most stories are local violence stories and are not indicative of the state of the world as a whole. Online news sources update in real-time (for the most part), and you can browse the news quickly and get back to your life.
• Start a blog. Yup. Go to WordPress and sign up for a free blog. Just start writing about something you love. Create something. It doesn’t matter if you’re good or not. Hate writing? That’s because you never wrote about something you wanted to write about.
• Get a hobby. Pick up that old guitar and start browsing some tabs over at Ultimate Guitar. Go to Instructables and find a tutorial on how to make something you really want to make. Dive in.
• Work on your relationships. When was the last time you sat down and played a board game with your friends? Your parents? Your wife/husband/girlfriend/boyfriend? Your kids? I don’t mean Madden, I mean Scrabble. I mean Catchphrase. I mean Monopoly. Invest some time in your personal relationships and have fun doing it.
• It’s winter – go ice skating. Go sledding. Go outside and build a snowman. Grab some friends and go play some tackle football. Have a snowball fight. I don’t care how old you are. It’s good for you and it gets your blood moving.
• Find the one thing you’ve always been meaning to do, and do it.

And that list is just off the top of my head. Nobody cares if you miss the latest I’m a teenager and I got pregnant so I get to be on TV now-type show. When someone says, “Hey, did you see [insert name of show here]?”, you can respond by saying, “No, last night I [insert meaningful activity here].”

Uncomfortable with the idea? Hey, this site’s tagline is “Try something new today.” Go for it and see what happens. You can always go back to your old ways if you hate it. But stick to it for a week and see what kinds of cool things you can dream up.

It is backed-up

It is independent

It is searchable

A while back, I posted an article detailing my switch to Google Chrome as my main web browser. Even as I have switched to Ubuntu (and also to the awesome Chromium daily builds – all the latest features of Chrome come to my browser every day), I believe that Chrome is the best browser on the market right now: it’s quick, it has great extensions, and it keeps innovating the web experience. While updating and improving my Chrome setup, I discovered two extensions that give my browsing more speed, and are easy to install and implement.

AdThwart

FlashBlock

It’s a time of maturation for The Practical Nerd. As you can see, a lot of changes have been made to the site, and I’m really excited about where it’s going to take us! There have been some problems on the backend in the last few months or so, and I took some time to finally clean them out and update the site. Let’s take a look at what’s new:

Cleaner site design

I have a soft spot in my heart for the last design – it was an uncommon theme and it grabbed the eye. However, the theme itself caused quite a bit of problems for the way the site ran. After a while, it felt like the site design was getting cluttered and bogged down. I was not a fan of that.

This new theme is simple, but still has a nice splash of color to it. There’s a sophistication to it – just like us nerds. I think this will go a long way in making this site more pleasant to spend some time on.

The return of the podcast

You bet. The podcast has been strangely absent, but that has mainly been due to a month-long battle with bronchitis that saw me fluctuate between endless coughing and sounding like Barry White. The fiance and I both had to load up with antibiotics and cough medicine, and it just wouldn’t make for a very good podcast to listen to. I’ve since cleared up and I’m excited to record one this week. I also have since upgraded my microphone, so we will have a nice, clear sound – again, a little more professional!

ACTUAL related posts

One of my pet peeves over the past few months has been the "Related Posts" section of each post. Previously, it would just list the most recent posts for some reason. I have since fixed that, and now you can see posts actually related to the one you’re reading from the full Nerd Archives! How cool is that?

Condensed categories

As a baby blogger, I thought having a bunch of categories would help in organizing the site. Now, I realize simpler is better, and tags are where it’s at. So I pulled back on the categories for a more streamlined approach to organization.

New tagline

I have retired the "Helping Cooler People improve and enjoy their lives." I had a dream that I could make "Cooler People" the official buzzword of the blog – a derogatory term for people who live in the mainstream. I now know that I should be focusing my efforts on the word "nerd". So now I am redefining the word "nerd" and the tagline zeroes in on that. This was also aided by the surprise popularity of my "9 Reasons Why Being a Nerd is Awesome" post.

A return to WLW

This one doesn’t mean a whole lot to you, but I have installed Windows XP on a virtual machine within my Ubuntu operating system just to use Windows Live Writer. If you are a blogger, you understand why: WLW is quite possible the best thing Microsoft has ever put out. Ubuntu just didn’t have a comparable solution. I wanted consistency in formatting and WLW is the way to do it, so we’re back in that regard.

More focused sidebar

As of press time, there are 236 posts on The Practical Nerd. That’s not a lot of content for some bloggers, but that’s a good chunk for me. And I want people to be able to navigate through some of that and enjoy all of this great content that I’ve put up here over the last year and a half (if I do say so myself). The simpler sidebar highlights the "Random Posts" section and the tags. Start browsing around and enjoy some classic Nerd stuff!

FIXED FEED!

My most hindering complaint about the site, technically-speaking, over the past year has been the broken feed, which screwed up how the posts looked if trying to subscribe to the site (via Google Reader and others). Happily, we can chalk that one up to the previous design as well, as the feed is fixed! This means I will be setting up the Facebook feed once again, and those looking to subscribe can finally see the content as it is supposed to be presented!

Cleaned up backend

Once again, I believe the last design caused a number of problems on the backend of this blog. You probably won’t notice much of a difference in performance, but all the blog plugins have been updated and the entire system is running remarkably better. To be honest, this whole update has restored my faith in WordPress, and it gives me a better feeling to be writing in a nice, clean blog again.

This update was a long time coming and is a big step for the future of this site. I thank everybody who has stuck around, and I hope to continue to see you guys (and more) throughout the near future!

It’s the most recent operating system to date

Less bloat

Ubuntu Software Center

Slick, not overbearing animation

Multiple desktop support out of the box

FREE

Mac-like simplicity without Mac-like prices

No viruses

Great support

Breathes new life into old hardware

GNOME-Do

Ubuntu One