TechGirl's New Year's Resolutions...

Top 10 time... here are the Top 10 things I want to get done in 2006

10. Watch more sunsets.

9. Learn to play the violin with my eldest daughter. We both got a violin for Christmas, and she is at the ripe age to start learning.

8. Have a date night with my hubbie once a month. It's just too easy to get in the rut of staying home every night and enjoying Keith Olberman wax about the Oddballs of the world.

7. Get even more coverage for the clients I work. We've gotten a lot of good coverage this year for them, but this is a need that will never be satiated.

6. Be a better friend - send thank you notes more often, call people I care about, do more kind gestures for friends in crisis and just care more about others.

5. Give a large anonymous gift to someone who needs it but is too proud to ask for help.

4. Stay relatively healthy. Not saying I want to lose weight or be able to run 100 miles without missing a beat or anything, but it would be nice to get back in the gym and not lose my breath chasing my daughters up the stairs for a tickle fight.

3. Take a trip to see some relatives we don't normally get to see. A couple of them are getting closer to death's doorstep, and I just want to share another moment with a few of them before they cross it.

2. Find a solution to the never ending laundry pile. Starting my own private nudist colony is one thought I had. Throwing away dirty clothes and just buying a new wardrobe every week was another.

1. You probably thought I'd say something cheesy for #1... well... I just can't resist. I just want to live and take each moment and appreciate it for what it is - a gift.

Happy New Years! From the cynical TechGirl.

The No Man's Land Week Doldrums

OK - this is just a ridiculous week to try and work... it is INSANE! If you are one of the lucky ones who either works at a company that already realizes productivity is a lost cause the week between Christmas and New Year's... or if you have saved up a bunch of meaningless tasks to do during this slow, dry, draught of a week... well... hurray for you. I'm happy for you. No, really I am.

PR people and salesmen (non retail) just might as well kiss any hope of generating leads this week goodbye. It's hopeless. This morning, I sent out a press release this morning (yes, please tell me why a client decided to drop ANYTHING this week... still trying to figure that one out myself), and out of a good 100 contacts - more than half came back with the lovely "Out of Office" reply.

Well... goodie goodie for these people. In the mean time, I need to get coverage for my clients. Why does the whole world just shut down during this horrific week? Are the after Christmas sales just that hard to resist? Are people in a comatose state from eating too much turkey and partaking of too much holiday cheer? I just don't get it...

I'm actually in a mild state of depression today... and it SUCKS! I hate it. Someone, please... give me a bottle of vodka, some olives and a martini glass. It's a desperate situation here for the Tech Girl. Someone gimme a "yeah-haw" It's a bleak, bleak world, and this incredible 75 degree weather is making it that much worse as I stare at it from behind my desk.

Math professor solves decades-old problem

COLUMBIA, Mo. - A professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia is being recognized for solving a math problem that had stumped his peers for more than 40 years.

The achievement has landed Steven Hofmann an invitation to speak next spring at the 2006 International Congress of Mathematicians in Madrid, Spain."