It’s now 2010, and the holidays are over. We are officially in January. No question about it. Just look at your friendly neighborhood thermometer if you have any doubts.

This isn’t about resolutions. This is about plans. A to-do list. It’s getting filled up. Only thing is, where do I start?

In no particular order …

–It’s time for me to get another desktop computer. I made the decision a few months ago, but I opted to hold off on deciding the specs for it until after the hectic holidays. The hectic holidays are now history.

I think I got my present computer in early 2006–it’s a Windows XP machine. In the last few months, it has been developing more and more problems. When you turn it on, it takes 15 to 20 minutes before you can actually use it. That’s been the case for a while. It’s slow. Lately, it has had problems installing new software–the pop-up box claims that the downloaded file is corrupt. But the same file works on my other machines. Lots of old programs clutter up its hard drive and its registry–even those I got rid of long ago.

My older son has already put in a claim for the machine–wants to experiment, turning it into a server. I have two external hard drives, where the photo and music files are stored, so transferring that stuff shouldn’t be much of a challenge. As for everything else … it’s not going to take overnight.

First things first. I need to decide what specs I want, and then look to see what I can get for what price. My old one is a Dell. The one before that was an HP. Both developed problems as they got older. Computers seem to do that.

Not sure which brand I will get this time, but it will be a Windows 7 machine. That much is certain. I am nowhere near cool enough to even think of getting an Apple.

–Another thing is the big back-up. At times last year, I worked on copying all my old blog posts from efx2blogs.com. I hadn’t done that for a long time–just did a batch of them earlier today.

That has to be a priority item because hardly anyone is using efx2blogs.com, and when the current domain registry ends in March, I think it may go bye-bye forever. Keith, who used to run the place there, surfaced last spring just long enough to renew the registry and then disappeared again. Flyingdutchman.com.

I have 338 entries there (so they say), and I am copying them to my Blogger blog, one at a time. I still have 10 pages of listings to go. Once I finish copying them all to Blogger, I can import them over here. The photo links won’t work, but I don’t expect people to look at them anyway. Just for the archives. I spent a lot of time writing those posts, and I don’t want that “creativity” to be lost.

–My other big project is over here, at efx3. I don’t like that purple theme I now have, and I need to find a new one, a brighter one, one that can accommodate photos the width I like to post.

Once I look through all the efx3 themes–haven’t had a lot of time for that lately–and choose one I like, I’ll ask Welshpixie to make a few modifications to make it look the way I want (such as changing to the Georgia font and making the main display area wide enough). I tried doing that myself in the past, but it took a lot of time and was amateur work at best. Let’s call in the professionals and get the job done right.

Once it’s done, things will be much brighter and cheery over here. That cheery outlook then will help inspire me to write more and play around with more pictures from my many adventures. And misadventures.

Because I like to write over here … even if I haven’t done much of it in recent months. I also enjoy reading and commenting on others’ posts. Another thing I haven’t done a lot. Now is a good time to get back to that, too.

So I’m not going away. In fact, I’m coming back. That’s another item in my 2010 to-do list.