An Unlikely Set of Constraints
Because of some recent financial blunders and a lack of roommates in my residence, I find myself with far less cash than I usually have available. Coupled with the recent computer troubles necessitating a new laptop, this prompts me to take drastic steps to increase my liquidity.
I will therefore live the month of March with some elective constraints, listed below:
I am interested in the degree to which you think I will be successful here. I have listed more constraints than I intend to follow, and I’d love to hear in the comments which ones you think I will be able to meet.
If I had a lot of time on my hands, in fact, I’d love to take odds on these and make this an ongoing market—I think it would be interesting and motivational if a community helped itself improve by posting resolutions and paying out when they’re broken (and vice versa - if you bet me I won’t make it to the gym and I do, you lose the bet). This encourages people to push their limits and propose something that gets better odds, and discourages them from lowballing and going the comfortable route. Sasha would probably have a better system to implement this, so if you read this, Sasha, chime in!
In other news, I have snuck some fun into my workday by assigning myself the task of designing better visualizations for the tech support staff’s telephone data. Right now, I’m adapting Ben Fry’s excellent zipdecode applet to accept timestamped call data.