New Year's resolutions are great, unless you don't really resolve to do anything. Then they become a list of wishes. Unless you are going to determine steps to make your wishes turn into goals AND you're going to follow through with those steps, you probably should not make New Year's resolutions. Full disclaimer before we completely dive in: I'm not against setting goals. I have always been a goal setter and sometimes even a goal achiever. If you're the same, you may enjoy this audible, or if you're interested in developing and achieving SMART goals try this e-book or this book. Why You Shouldn't Make New Year's Resolutions You'll probably write the same things on a sheet of paper that you did the year before. Some of the common resolutions we've all heard are: Lose weight, exercise, spend less, save more, travel, go to church, and so on and so forth. There's a reason these are common. We hear them (or write them) time and time again andnothing changes. By mid-January, they'll be long forgotten. Maybe even before January 15th, they aren't a thought in our minds. They were good ideas two weeks prior (and the years before that), but that's what they have remainedideas. You didn't think of a route to your destination. Saving money sounds great, but do you know what you're already spending? Do you know what you need to cut and where you'll put that amount? Have you factored in your new gym membership? What will you do with it? Will the autodraft payment that comes out each month help you shed those pounds? What churches are in your area? Do they have programs your family will be interested in? Do you know when the services are? You're overwhelmed. You try to better yourself constantly. Maybe. Let's say some of you try to better yourselves constantly. Which can be a good thing. But it can also be the reason you fail yourselves time and time again. You say yes when you should say no, sign up when you should wait a few more months, and have a list of ten New Year's resolutions when you should focus on two. Question: After the end of this story, the narrator probably is === The answer to the above question is
OPTIONS:
- not enough information
- Still cynical
- Happy
- Annoyed
Still cynical

The sweet taste of cold and wood smoke hung in the air. Marlin rode low in the saddle, his shoulders curled against the hungry wind. His hat was pulled down tight and his eyes didn't move as he passed the crude shacks at the edge of town. He tied his horse in front of the saloon, unwinding his long body as if a sudden movement might snap it. He turned down the collar of his greatcoat and checked to make sure his big Army Colt was loose in its holster. The saloon door was a single chunk of white pine, still oozing sap, and he had to put his shoulder to it to force it open. The long room inside was quiet, and not much warmer than the street. Clusters of people sat nursing coffee and drinks, talking quietly if they talked at all. Marlin spotted a few farmers the railroad had brought in from Europe: rounded hats, nervous eyes, skin as red as blood. At the far end of the room a half-dozen cowboys turned over cards with patient boredom. Marlin walked up to the bar. "Whiskey," he said, and when the drink came he tossed it straight down and felt it pull his lips into a grimace. He nodded for a refill. When he turned to face the room they were all watching him. "I'm looking for a man named Kraamer," Marlin said. "Anybody here know of him?" One of the cowboys turned casually and rang the spittoon with a stream of tobacco juice. Marlin knew the long, thin face from somewhere, the blond hair that fell limply to his shoulders. He smiled at Marlin and showed his brown-stained teeth. Marlin felt the lines in his own face, the gray in his hair, the chill in his bones. He was too old for this. He set a half dollar on the bar and started for the door. "Don't get in a huff," the bartender said. Marlin looked back. "Kraamer lives about a mile west of town. Follow the railroad and take the first trail south." Question: Why did Marlin check if his gun was easily retrievable? === The answer to the above question is
OPTIONS:
- Because he was going to have a whiskey
- not enough information
- Because he liked his gun
- Because there could be trouble in the saloon

Answer: Because there could be trouble in the saloon

My love affair with technology began at an early age. On my seventh birthday, my parents bought me a second-hand ZX Spectrum and, in a foretaste of my life to come, I immediately set about learning how to use it to get attention. It's a sign of how rapidly technology develops that my crappy Spectrum, with its 48k of memory, already had 12k more storage power than the computer that had guided the Apollo 11 moon landing eighteen years earlier* With power like that, there seemed to be no limit to what I could do. While my other computer-owning peers would sit for hours while their tape drives squawked away loading 'Manic Miner' or 'Bubble Buster' I was more fascinated by learning to write my own programs. The first of these consisted of just two lines of code* that made the word 'shit' appear again and again on my screen, to the huge amusement of my friends and the irritation of my parents, who obviously had more educational motives for bringing a computer into the house. From that day on, the possibilities offered by technology to both subvert the norm and get attention had me hooked. Years later, at secondary school, I convinced my English teacher, Mr Coen, to teach me desktop publishing, ostensibly to work on the official school magazine, but in reality to produce an alternative underground version - complete with less than flattering articles about teachers and fellow pupils and distributed via the publicly accessible shared hard drive that was supposed to be used for collaborative coursework. That particular stunt got me banned from the school computer room for half a term. And then, in 1997, I discovered the Internet. Throughout history, every fame-hungry media dickhead has found his preferred medium for pursuing fame and wealth (in that order). For Tony Parsons - and Hitler, for that matter - it was books. William Randolph Hearst chose newspapers. Don Imus and Howard Stern preferred radio. For Nick Griffin it's inflammatory leaflets. For Tracy Emin it's art. Or at least an approximation of it. With the... Question: What is probably true about the narrator? === The answer to the above question is
OPTIONS:
- not enough information
- He likes to read.
- He is an English teacher.
- He is a hacker.
He is a hacker.