My Tech Life

The new year is just 15 days old. It’s not too late to begin in clean slate.

Finance

Today I resolve to track my expenses more closely.

Not that I have not tried it before. Last year I have succesfully recorded all my financial transactions using my Palm Tungsten E2 PDA and FreeCoins software for a month. Then I slacked, and I lost track. At the time I thought it was not a big deal, since I didn’t think my spending patterns and my income would change much. FreeCoins also has a stability problem, which was quite a nuisance.

Of course it turned out to be completely wrong. By then I have acquired new laptop and decided to use it to control my finance. But I found it was somewhat harder. First of all I have to find a new suitable software, and with a laptop I could not jot down the expenses at once. I struggled for a while and in the end I gave up. But not for long. I have been formulating a new system, and I hope it will work out.

The new strategy is to reuse the Palm for tracking expenses. But I am abandoning FreeCoins. It is excellent, but it does not have a sync conduit, which limits its usefulness when working with a computer. So in its stead I am just going to use the simple bundled Expense software. It is somewhat limited, only suitable for tracking expenses and no other. No bank account tracking, salary, or any other income recording. But those transactions can be tracked more comfortably on the laptop.

On the laptop I am using Gnucash to record all transactions. I will have to reenter all the expense records from the PDA, daily. Fortunately it will be somewhat easier thanks to the Expense sync conduit.

GTD

Another thing I would like to address is my system of organisation. I had tried the Getting Things Done system, and had some success with it. My implementation is again using the PDA. But again I slacked, and I also has some problems adjusting the system with Linux softwares. The Palm, which was essential to the system before, had difficulties when synchronising with Evolution PIM software. This particular problem has been largely solved, but my GTD system is still in a mess. It is high time to rebuild it.

Wishlist, not resolution. Because I am not resolute enough.

1. Learning a foreign language or two. So far the candidates are French and German. I have enjoyed books written by French and German-speaking authors in English, and wish to read the originals. It could be beneficial to my career too, but it would be a side-effect. The plan is to take courses, but they are expensive and my funds are limited. I will take one course (German, probably), and do self-study on others (French).
2. Learn to program computers, again. I have done some programming in high school and college, but nowadays I cannot call myself a programmer. I am just too rusty. Again I can study it independently, but it will not hurt to take classes.
3. Drag my arse off to write a fiction or two. A novel would be good. I am allowed to dream, am I not?