Monthly Meet Up: December Goals

Wasn't feeling too well for much of month, so relatively little accomplished.

Let's review:

Monthly Goals for November '09

1. Primary goal is now developing the HepCat Industries blog and brand. At their best any of my blogging efforts are entertaining, insightful and, ah, educational.

HepCat Industries encompasses and incorporates those three strengths best. Need to further reach out to the graphic design community in an effort to create visually interesting t-shirts and net presence, and need to trust my own design capabilities, my own ability to flesh out my vision, pick up the tech pieces later.

OK. Did start the new blog. Dropped the "u" in Industries, to match the link to cafepress store. www.cafepress.com/hepcatindstries. Planning on producing hand-drawn and hand-colored shirts for holiday wear and moving forward. Put at least 10 on line here, at HCI blog, and via Facebook.

2. Re-frame Pragmatic Alternative as a once a week blog, or at least a couple, three times a work, instead of an every day blog, which it hasn't been for a while. A better way to grow that brand, as well as the HepCat Industries brand, which is inherently more umbrella-like.

Little work done on PA in November. Laid up in bed. And not in the good way.

4. It's NaNoWriMo. National Novel Writing Month, for you neophytes.

First attempted this in '06, for few words. All still there, but that story's for another day. Or year. Not too much to incorporate into AOAYA, but many tangents. They're both all about sex, death, politics, and love.

It's all about sex, death, politics, and love.

Bought Eric Maisel's What Would Your Character Do? to aid in the construction of characters for novel. Wrote a few 100, maybe 2000 words near beginning of month, but again, not feeling well, and so, not much accomplished. 1,000 word the other day had some value, though drafty. Will carryt on here. Have organized a few trusted friends to critique. That's a positive.

5. Keep 'em (monthly goals) all integrated best by focusing on HCI as the central organizing idea.

HepCat Indstries will see growth in December, due to production of hand-made, hand-colored t-shirts offered for sale. There will be more production.

Spending extra time on Let's Play SAT! brand and blog is the most important goal for December. Continue to write book and make regular entries on blog. Write new word list, and publish first list in pdf form.

6. Not sure how I overlooked this one: Score at least 2100+ on the SAT.

Managed this one just fine, in fact, should have been 2200 even. Official SAT Study Guide indicates an essay score of 10/12, paired with a multiple-choice score of 48/49 in Writing = 790. They only gave me 770. When I wrote asking why, College Board gave me the run around, offering to re-score my test for another $50.

I wasn't questioning the number right out of 49--I remembered answering them all correctly
; ^ ) --but the discrepancy between their official "guide" to scoring, and their actual scoring. When I pointed this out to their representative, she simply repeated the offer to re-score, again avoiding the simple question: Why does The Official SAT Study Guide show a result of 790, while my score remains at 770?

No matter. Be nice to get a straight answer, but 770 is still a 99th percentile score. Scored 800 on Critical Reading, also a 99th percentile score. Broke 600 on Math, 610, a 77th percentile score. When I scored 620 in high school, that was a 95th percentile score. Goes to show how many more are intensively prepping for SAT these days. Total = 2180.

Will redouble efforts to develop Let's Play SAT! blog, and keep working on SAT prep book.