New Years Resolutions for 2012

In the spirit of OR bloggers Mike Trick, Paul Rubin, John Poppelaars, and Thaddeus Sim, here are a few New Year’s Resolutions:

1. Punk Rock OR will try to gain weight: I blogged 74 times this past year. I’d like to average about two blog posts per week (>100 per year). It’s hard with twitter: would-be short blog posts tend to turn into tweets. I have achieved 3% of this goal so far.
2. Figure out a way to reduce the amount of academic spam I receive.  Most of the spam I get is to attend conferences that are not in my area. I can simply “unsubscribe” to get off of these lists (I’ve been deleting lately). I’m not sure what to do about the emails that advertise “microarray technologies” and “maximize cell viability with uniform ultra-low storage.” I don’t even open these suspicious emails. Your feedback is welcome.
3. Reduce the amount of service I perform at my university to make more time for research, professional service, and blogging. This is easier said than done, especially since I went up for tenure this year and the service load should only go up from here. See the PhD comic below to understand what I mean.
4. Do some international travel. This is my sixth year as a faculty member and I haven’t gone an international trip yet. I have cabin fever. Please send me recommendations and invitations!
5. Get a hobby. After having my third daughter in March, I’ve essentially stopped all of my hobbies. I don’t know if I’ll have the energy to train for another marathon. I need to run a half-marathon, read a few books, or plan a big sewing project or I will go crazy.