Well, this year has been alright. A little less exciting perhaps than 2003. But a whole hell of a lot more biking and risking life and limb on the streets of Washington. Biking through blizzards and inches of snow has given me a severe aversion to winter. Whoever sings about dreaming of a white Christmas never rode a 26" Rincon to work in January.

Speaking of which, I spent the past year working in Washington, DC, for the New America Foundation, a non-profit, public policy think tank as a telecom and radio spectrum policy researcher. Learning about Washington's dirty little secrets and back-room deals gives me an appreciation for why society advances in such an awkward and haphazard way.

Washington's filled with a lot of 20-somethings too, which was beneficial as I did a fair amount of partying, meeting a lot of good people that I miss now. I joined a reading circle/book club which will forever be headed by a humble booktator named Susan. I remember stumbling through parts of the Sound and Fury and getting ridiculously frustrated by Benjy's section in the beginning, and I remember more than occasionally not reading the books... but still listening intently.

I wrote a lot throughout the year, I was published in a small engineering magazine, and I completed a whole slew of research projects, which now provide the bulk of the website traffic on vilimpoc.org. On September 21, 2003, I got slashdotted, which led to a multifold increase in my site's traffic to 20 gigabytes for the month. Amazingly enough, the server didn't crash.

I visualized a lot of data [1] [2] [3] this year, which isn't perhaps the sexiest thing to boast about, but it's important to mention. I mapped out my trip across the West during the dog days of last summer, my various DC spending habits, and the contents of an FCC database.

My Kodak digital camera broke about three months after the warranty expired, and the last photo it took was on July 4, 2003. So there are fewer photos, up to the point where I decided to buy my new Sony digital camera, which, by way of 1 Day Air (the best invention on Earth), arrived the morning of the Dec. 10.

On the whole, the year went pretty well, ignoring the fact that I for the most part forgot to take vacations... I met a nice girl who went to Europe and came back, and who I now miss heaps. There seemed to be quite a number of instances where other people would push me to take a vacation, and the reminder would catch me by surprise, which is weird when you think about it.

I suppose I did a bit of traveling, counting on my fingers the number of times I left Washington would include trips to -- Columbus in February, Baltimore in June, Cleveland in September, Madison in November, and NYC/Washington/Columbus/Cleveland in December. Immediately following the end of my stint at New America, I sort of went gangbusters on the tripmaking.

Whether or not I return to the city is up in the air now, subject to a number of vagaries beyond my control. But the future is bright, the present is happening nicely, and my motivation is spiraling out of control (not really).

Lots of love 'til the next year ends... [MV/12/28/2003 - 03:29:35]. enter