2008 In Review… Just a bit late…

This seems like the kind of posting I should have made weeks ago, one would think. Unfortunately, work has been such the past few weeks that I haven’t had an opportunity to breath let alone write blog entries.

So if I were going to give a review to 2008, the analytical part of me would want to devise some sort of scoring system assigining a point value plus or negative to different events throughout the year based on significance, impact, time period, relevance, involvement of pie, and other important factors. Then normalize against some standard scale say 1 to 10 and posting such score with the supporting analysis and regressions and such. However, the lazy part of me on this Saturday afternoon – especially being about three weeks late for such an entry – is going to prevail and I’m going to somewhat randomly generalize such a scoring to this: 6.2

That’s right. 6.2 / 10. That’s my score for 2008. Given most academic scoring, with the exception of CS 282 which has such a curve that a score of 3/100 would be considered above average, that’s right a 6.2 out of 10 would be considered failing, or a very low passing. Quite frankly, 2008 wasn’t all that great to me. Lets review…

I’m not one to gripe too much (hah), so I’m not going to go into all of the things that made 2008 below average but there is one particular stand out.

The passing of my grandmother in May hit me hard. I was close with her and I miss her ever day. She was an amazing woman and I have many fond memories including her sitting on my cousin’s motorcycle, the look on her face when she got excited by something, and her wacky stories of mischief from when she was a kid. But missing her – that’s somewhere around negative one million points give or take.

Some friends of mine went through some sad times. Minus a bunch of points.

Stocks. Bow. Minus the net percentage loss of my 401k excluding prior gains factoring for the comparitave loss of the market whole and whatever. Whatever. Bow.

Didn’t really stick to plans to stay healthy and keep my weight at least even. Bow. Minus the net gains in my lbs. Bow.

I decided to take a new job this fall. I was getting frustrated with what I was doing before, not for any particular reason but maybe staleness and the need to move on. So I took a new position in the same company on a startup program. Let’s call that program “Project Bob Evans.” If you get it, you get it – if not, don’t think about it too much it’s not worth it. Suffice it to say – even more frustration with this job. I mean, it put me three weeks behind on this blog entry – that alone is like minus half a point. The full venting about Project Bob Evans will have to be for another blog post, but suffice it to say – minus approximately 12 points.

There were some good things in 2008 too.

Two of my close friends got married and they had the kick-assest party of a wedding ever – plus 17 points.
Got to do some sight seeing and visit a friend in Denver over the summer – plus 8 points.
And again to Denver in November with sight seeing and friend visiting – plus another 8 points.
A good friend of mine from work had a baby – plus 4 points. Though I still haven’t seen this beautiful little girl (minus 0.5 points) and it meant she couldn’t make PBJ (minus 0.6 points).
Oh yeah – helped with the MS 150 Lunch Stop again, helping to make THOUSANDS of PBJ sandwiches for the bike riders – plus 2 points.
Made a switch on my job – ok yeah, the new job itself is a pain but I still made a change that I wanted to and in the long run it’s probably a good move – plus 3 points (netting the new job thing to only minus 9, on the metric scale of course).
Friends of mine announced they are expecting a baby in 2009 – plus another 4 points.

So how does that math add up to 6.2 – who cares. Stop thinking, it’s better that way.

I do however have a positive outlook to 2009. I’ve got a list of resolutions that I am really hoping to stick to this year. And though it will make it even later on my schedule of anticipated blog posts, I’m gonna have to make that for another post for now cause I’m tired of typing. Until next time (which will be sooner than 3 weeks this time).

Updated additions: