For the last few months I’ve been doing 30 day challenges:

- In May 2009, I walked 10,000 steps a day.
- For June 2009, I didn’t watch television for 30 days.
- For July 2009, I biked to work.
- In August 2009, I tried to read 15 books in 30 days. I only made it to twelve that month, but I knocked out three more later.
- For October 2009, I stopped using Microsoft software (both Windows and Office). That went so well that I’ve switched to Linux as my primary operating system.
- For November 2009, I needed something easy to do. I unsubscribed to Robert Scoble on both Twitter and FriendFeed. Robert is a fantastic guide to what’s new (and I like him personally)–if you’re just starting out there, he’s like training wheels to show you cool things. But back then he was going on about Twitter’s lists feature. It’s a fine feature, but I find talking about it as dry as dust, so I went Scoble-free.
- In December 2009, I went off caffeine.

So the question is: what to do for January 2010? Well, I’ve already been off Twitter for a week. I think I’m going to stay off Twitter/Facebook/FriendFeed for the rest of January.

Do you have suggestions for other 30 day challenges I should try? If so, leave me a suggestion.

P.S. We have some new webmaster videos almost ready. Normally I tweet about those instead of blogging them. So if you want to hear when those videos are released, follow googlewmc on Twitter.

Evan a husband with a thick skull like me learns a few things over the years. So here’s a little piece of advice for the software-engineer-husbands out there: take a few days off for your ten-year anniversary.

If you’re expecting an email reply from me, please be patient. I’m spending some quality time with my wife.

That’s right, I’m going Twitter-free for a week. I don’t really use Facebook, so that’s not a problem. The only other social networking website I use is FriendFeed, so I’m cutting that out too. To keep me on track this week, here’s what I did:

• Tweeted that I was doing the digital cleanse and changed my Bio line to mention that I was doing the digital cleanse.
• Removed all Twitter apps from my mobile phone.
• Removed the Twitter and FriendFeed shortcuts from Chrome’s new tab page.
• Hard-coded a bunch of websites so that I can’t even access them. In Linux, you can type “sudo vi /etc/hosts” and add the following lines:
  
127.0.0.1 twitter.com
127.0.0.1 www.twitter.com
127.0.0.1 facebook.com
127.0.0.1 www.facebook.com
127.0.0.1 friendfeed.com
127.0.0.1 www.friendfeed.com


  What these lines say is “Computer, when you try to use the domain name system (DNS) to resolve twitter.com to an IP address, hard-code the IP address to be 127.0.0.1.” Note that 127.0.0.1 is a special IP address that corresponds to your own computer. In essence, these entries make it impossible to browse to Twitter, Facebook, or FriendFeed. You might need to reboot your computer too for the settings to take effect.

I’m thinking that I might blog a little more now that I’ve stopped tweeting for a week, so I’m doing one extra step–I’m linking my blog in Feedburner so that when I publish a blog post, it will tweet a link to that blog post. Here’s how to do it:
1. Log in to http://feedburner.google.com/ and click on your blog’s feed.
2. Click on the “Publicize” tab and then the “Socialize” service on the left.
3. Add your Twitter account and select the options you want. Here’s how it looks:

Then click “Save” and that’s all you need to do.

So far, I’ve been Twitter-free for twelve hours. In that time, I’ve
- worked out
- taken down our Christmas tree, chopped it into sections and put it out on the street
- typed in three months’ worth of data for a project that I’m working on
- taken down our Christmas lights and packed them away
- stored all our various Christmas decorations
- run a couple loads of laundry
- put out the trash
- gone shopping and had a couple meals with my wife
Oh, and written a blog post. We’ll see how the digital cleanse works for the rest of the week.

So here we go: what organizations, charities, or good causes are you supporting this year? Lately I’ve been interested in transparency and reform in government, so organizations like the Sunlight Foundation, MAPLight (Money and Politics), and Change Congress are on my list. I’m also looking at Free Press and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

I’d also be interested in hearing about 501(c)(3) organizations that support open-source software, ideally with very low administrative costs. Does anyone know of good groups in that area?

Finally, is there a charity or group that wants to make videos of college journalism classes? Right now if a blogger wanted to take an online journalism class, I’m not aware of many resources in that area. I found a good book called Electronic Media Law that I like, but it would be nice if people around the world could learn the basics of journalism by watching a series of college lectures on video.

Okay, now it’s your turn. What charities would you like to mention, support, or call out?

I am currently an employee of Google. I receive a salary from them and I also own Google stock and options.

Other than compensation from Google, I don’t accept any money or other gifts of value from any companies or individuals. I don’t accept speaking fees, consulting fees, honoraria, or trips. I don’t accept free, discounted, or loaned products. When I receive unsolicited gifts of value from companies or individuals in the scope of work, I give away those gifts.

When I speak at a conference or event, I generally do not pay a registration fee for that event. Some conferences also waive registration fees for that event for one or more of my colleagues or a traveling companion. Either my company or I pay my own travel and hotel expenses when I speak at an event.

I do not run advertisements or otherwise receive any monetary compensation from the operation of my website.

Added January 16, 2010: A few years ago my wife and I formed a non-profit foundation. Neither of us are paid a salary from the foundation. Example groups that the foundation has donated to include the Electronic Frontier Foundation, MAPLight, Change Congress, the Sunlight Foundation, Free Press, the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, charity: water, and Room to Read. The Employer Identification Number (EIN) of our foundation is 203865461.

I have also invested in Perfect Third, the company that makes the WakeMate.

I’ve been having an ongoing bad experience with U.S. Airways over their Dividend Miles. I’d accumulated about 15,000 miles with them and the miles were about to expire. I didn’t have any trips coming up, so I looked for a way to redeem those frequent flyer miles before they expired. U.S. Airways provided a way to subscribe to magazine and newspapers using miles — great! I signed up to get a bunch of magazines and dutifully waited the several weeks that it would take for magazines to start showing up. But instead of newspapers and magazines, I started to get little white post cards back in the mail. The first one let me know that I wouldn’t be getting The Economist:

Bummer. Then I found out that I wouldn’t be getting the Wall Street Journal:

Bigger bummer. But after a while, I started to notice a trend. See if you can tell what the trend was:

Doh!

Doh!

Doh!

Doh!

Doh!

Doh!

That’s right — not a single magazine or newpaper showed up. Instead, eight different times I was told that an “overwhelming response” meant that title wasn’t available.

So where do things stand now? Well, in the 4-10 weeks that I had to wait for the subscriptions to start, those 15,000 frequent flier miles expired. I can’t try to subscribe to any other magazines or even donate the miles to charity at this point.

To add a cherry on top, I keep getting emails from U.S. Airways, which apparently can’t understand why I would let my miles expire and would be happy to sign me up for a credit card to resurrect those miles from the dead:

You know what, U.S. Airways? Just keep the miles. Or better yet, if anyone from the U.S. Airways Dividend Miles program sees this post and wants to do something nice, please donate those miles to charity.

If you fly with U.S. Airways, be aware that redeeming miles for magazine/newspaper subscriptions might not work as well as you’d like. And will I be avoiding 321mags.com (which now redirects to magazineoutlet.com) in the future? Yes, I will be avoiding them.

Update: Some new developments have happened since I wrote this blog post. US Airways wrote the day after I blogged to apologize for a bad experience, said that they’d investigate what happened, and then they reinstated the miles. That’s about as much as I could ask for, and I appreciate their response. I donated the miles to charity.

A couple days later, the vendor for the “Magazines for Miles” program contacted me. They said that when they verified the zip code for the magazines with the zip code on file with the airline, it didn’t match, so the order was sent to the airline for verification. When US Airways confirmed my address, the vendor re-processed the order. But then by the time the order reached US Airways for decrementing, the miles had already expired, so the order was cancelled. Due to a different glitch, the cancellation notice implied that the magazine inventory wasn’t available. The magazine vendor offered to send the magazines now, but I declined. I’d already donated the miles to charity and that’s enough to resolve the situation in my mind.

As a software engineer, I can easily imagine this happening. I guess the takeaway as a flier would be to use your miles before they get too close to expiring.

This month is really busy with some internal Google projects–don’t worry, not related to webspam–so I’m not planning to do a new 30 day challenge this month. I have kept biking in to work and I’m enjoying it more lately. I think I’ll enjoy biking even more after I bling my bike out with the full-color LED lights I bought from MonkeyLectric at Maker Faire. Here’s an image from MonkeyLectric’s gallery to show you what they look like:

I have to say, they’re a big step up from my Tireflys, which are just LEDs that stick on the stem valve of your bike tire.

For the month of June, I tried to walk 10,000 steps a day. I learned that a walk in the evening is a nice way to wind down and relax.

For the month of July, I biked into work. I learned:
- I don’t much like to bike to work. Part of it is probably that I have pretty old/crappy bike that doesn’t change gears quite right. The fastest path to work is on car-dense road, which also isn’t much fun.
- For the iPhone, I found a program for $3 called MotionX-GPS that does a very solid job of recording times and GPS tracks.
- But the best program I found was for Android. It’s called My Tracks and it’s free. It’s better than MotionX-GPS for a couple reasons. First, in addition to “total time,” the My Tracks application also tracks “moving time.” In other words, if you’re stuck at a traffic light, your “total time” keeps counting but your “moving time” doesn’t. Second, the My Tracks application can easily upload your GPS track to a Google Map.
- I can tell a notable improvement in my fitness level. It’s deeply satisfying to shave a few seconds off my biking time every day.
- The easiest way to improve your speed is to ensure that your bike tires are fully inflated.
- I get hungrier when I bike to work. I can also eat more without gaining much weight.
- Google has a program that lets bike-to-workers earn donations for their favorite charity.

After biking to work for July, I ended up doing a short sprint triathlon (swim 400 yards, bike 11 miles, run 3 miles) this past weekend. I did it in about an hour and 20 minutes, which I’m pretty happy with–especially with my crappy bike.

For the month of August, I’m shooting to read 15 books in 30 days. I’ve only read 6-7 books so far, so I’m behind, but I figure I’ll read 15 books and if that takes a little while longer, no biggie. I love to read.

So I need some good workout music, because my current tunes are getting tired. What songs get you pumped up when you’re exercising? Here’s some tunes that work for me:
- Blink 182
- music from the Mortal Kombat soundtrack (hey, don’t mock it until you try it!)
- “Ready Steady Go” by The Meices
- The Mountain Goats
- Foo Fighters
- The Killers
- sometimes the Pixies or the Ramones

How about you? What workout music goes into your playlist mix and gets you ready to exercise?