PopSyndicate.com

This year, I’m going to eat better and drink less.  I’m going to quit smoking crack.  I’m going to write that novel.  I’m going to the gym more often, and not for cruising.  Whatever your new year’s resolution may be, good luck with them.  Really though, how successful has anyone been at keeping their resolutions? They seem more like lofty ambitions that require a change in lifestyle rather than simple goals that people often overlook.

New year’s resolutions don’t have to be life altering.  These five easy suggestions for your “to do” are not only achievable, but don’t require a 24-hour Fitness enrollment fee.

Back up your personal data - Hard drive crash all the time.  It doesn’t matter if you have the latest Western Digital, it will eventually fail and your data will be forever lost.  If you don’t believe me, just ask that Mac Genius everyone hates now.  Do yourself a favor and pick up a spool of CD-R’s from Office Depot and start burning.  If you have the capital to get an external hard drive, all the better.  The point is the data on your hard drive is your life.  Your photos, music, emails getting stored somewhere other than your primary hard drive is the best thing you can do to keep your memories from disappearing.

Get to know your PC - Something is going on with your PC and you don’t know what it is.  It might be your homepage always going to a spam site, or maybe your computer claims your software isn’t registered.  You’ve had your tech-savvy friends look at it and they cant figure it out.  Chances are that whatever software issue you are experiencing (and hopefully it’s just software related) is not uncommon and that other people online have had a similar experience.  Don’t take the problem lying down.  Google it and see if there is a workaround or solution to your problem.  You’ll have to learn more about how your computer operates, but it will help to know that stuff should another issue arise.

Organize your files - Messy folders and cluttered desktops can be production killers.  Your wallpaper has disappeared behind the wall of icons and yor files are so disorganized that your college homework is saved in a Netscape Navigator folder you didn’t know you had.  Time to clean up this mess!  Go through your address book and start filling in the blanks.  Clean off your desktop of shortcuts and temp folders you’ve got saved and move them somewhere more appropriate.  Clear out cache folders and Temporary Internet Files.  Macs should cycle through their cron jobs and delete old log files as well as fixing file permissions through Disk Utility.  The Trash or Recycle Bin is not storage unit.  Empty it.  Any emails you haven’t read in the past six months, archive it or delete it.  Same goes for all those episodes of Battlestar Galactica; do you really need to keep Season One?

Go paperless - Online bill pay is not only a convenient and secure way to take care of your monthly bills, but it saves on paper and waste.  Most major utility companies and service providers offer paperless billing as well as automated payments.  AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Wells Fargo, etc. let their customers manage their accounts exclusively online.  Not only that, but it dramatically reduces the amount of regular mail you receive saving precious mailbox space for Blockbuster rentals and International Male Ikea catalogs.

Change your passwords - Is your WEP password the same as your computer’s login password?  How long have you been using your girlfriend’s name as your password?  Most people will keep the same password for multiple accounts including ones on their personal computers.  That means, if someone were to crack your wireless network password (which isn’t that secure), they could use that password to access the computer on that network and access online accounts as well. Whatever passwords you have on any of your accounts, change them.  A good rule of thumb is to keep your passwords different from one another and to change them every few months. Throw out your old passwords and get new ones.

Happy new year, everyone.  Whatever resolutions you go with this year, I hope you are successful.  Tell me how it goes!

Chris Williams writes a weekly column for PopSyndicate.  This year, he swears he’s going to try really hard to stop stalking Kevin Rose.

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