Daily Entry: April 23rd, 2017

Sun Apr 23 07:31:58 EDT 2017

Review incoming soon. Yesterday went very well. I need to start working on coding interview stuff soon, but I think it might be ideal to do yesterday's review first.

Sun Apr 23 07:41:54 EDT 2017

It's cold, so I put on a jacket. Let's do this review thing.

Yesterday Review

Okay, we can start with reading the review I wrote yesterday whilst I write my review.

Sun Apr 23 07:47:06 EDT 2017

Oh, wait, first, gots to go through my tickler. I skipped it the past couple days.

Aw, I missed wishing someone a happy birthday yesterday. That's life.

Oh, wait, yesterday was Saturday and today is Sunday. It'd only really make sense to wish her a happy birthday on a workday. Perhaps I'll call her tomorrow.

Sun Apr 23 07:51:33 EDT 2017

Tickler stuff may be something I want to write about a bit. I'm having a pretty bad habit of throwing stuff into the future that doesn't need to be thrown to the future. I mean, it wouldn't take much effort or time to do the things, and they need to be done. True, there's no priority for them to be done, but they should be done. Today, it makes sense not to do those things (and in fact they had already been thrown to tomorrow), because I need to call people on workdays to do it.

So, I guess what I'm saying is I'm making a promise to myself to actually tackle all the tickler items tomorrow instead of just throwing them into the future.

Sun Apr 23 07:55:26 EDT 2017

Let's actually review yesterday now.

Current editor: VSCode

Future editors and IDEs being considered:

  • Wing IDE 101 version 6.0.x
  • Atom

Exercise of the day:

  • 40 minutes of Just Dance dancing, yeah!
  • 4 sets of pull ups, starting with 3 and then barely being able to do 2 by the end
    • I should probably properly count throughout the day
  • Throwing around lil' cousins throughout the day
  • Some random pushups
  • Some random upside-down pushups (or bridge pushups)
  • Calf stretches

Should've done more stretching overall, especially considering that I thought about how I should repeatedly stretch certain ares to achieve flexibility goals (like being able to do the splits eventually).

Eating habits: I cooked food yesterday! Lots of food. Made vegan pancakes, vegan waffles (an original recipe made from several other waffle recipes and some research into flours), french fries, and ate some food cooked prior (and also some food cooked by the wife).

And also plenty of cereal.

Diet overall yesterday was good. Still more eating sessions than I would like, but I was hungry after throwing lil' kids around all day.

I'm actually surprised I'm not that sore today, thinking on it. Just a little fatigued.

Watched:

  • A bunch of kid's cartoons that I don't remember what they're called (one's a Netflix Original where a girl goes to an imaginary place called Amazia).
  • One episode of Elementary

Rewatching Elementary has been fun. My aunt's not that into the show, however, so I think we may stop watching it soon. Which is too bad. I legit prefer it to Sherlock. Can't wait for the "Everyone" episodes.

Played:

  • About 40 minutes of Just Dance

I've improved a lot, and even the game is noticing (scoring higher on songs). Got my first Superstar two days ago, and repeated that yesterday (same song). Superstar doesn't mean I'm properly good at the dance yet, just means my hand motions are good enough, still got a lot of subtleties to master. That's why I'm recording myself, need to review, and practice specific bits.

Read:

  • Another two posts of Daylight Atheism's review of the Foutainhead
  • Some politics on reddit (not a good habit)
  • Some other random reddit stuff (also not a good habit)
  • Various other blogs and webcomics

Responsibilities:

  • Another solid step on website with some thinking on what to do next
  • Narrowed down version of Wing IDE I'll be playing with

Plan for Today

I don't really need to log the scattered thoughts I had yesterday, because I actually logged them while they were happening, more-or-less. I may want to compile those thoughts and save them somewhere they'll be referenced, but that's something for a weekly review.

....

Wait, should I do a weekly review today? It is Sunday.

Hmmmm....

Let's do it first thing tomorrow, actually. Today will be the end of the week, and I review things first things now.

Sun Apr 23 08:11:06 EDT 2017

All right, it's 0811 EDT right now. I'll be logging into a coding assignment by 0830, I believe. I have 24 hours allotted to complete that coding assignment, but I doubt I'll need so much time. I'll instead allot 3 hours, as that's how much time I'll have for my coding assignment that I'm doing tomorrow.

If that goes well, I'll start setting up Wing IDE and playing with it a bit. Let's say 1230 to 1330 (giving myself an hour break for stuff). After that I'd like to setup a website environment locally to work on it locally and in Wing IDE. 1330-1430.

After that, I'm promising nothing as far as digital work goes. There'll be some dancing and maybe some cooking.

I think that's a good enough plan for today. Going to take a ten minute break to just sit and think.

Sun Apr 23 08:24:27 EDT 2017

I find myself thinking about the "just do it" mantra. Specifically, I have, many times, asked someone how to go about, say, start working on personal projects, and been told to "just do it". I had, even, for a long time told myself similar things.

This is not helpful. Or rather, if I'm at the point where I'm asking how to do something, telling me to "just do it" is not helpful. It's kinda like telling an alcoholic looking for ways to stop to "just stop". Trying to stop comes shortly after admitting alcohol dependency, which many say is "the first step". So, if it were as easy as "just stopping", there'd only be one step to no longer being an alcoholic.

But.

I am beginning to appreciate the logic. One needs to try and then assess what's blocking them. It's just sometimes it seems as though even trying is itself impossible. Like, there's something that needs to be done to make trying possible.

I'm thinking about this because I don't know where to start on some things, but Just Dance helped me start on dancing and perhaps I simply need to make a game out've trying while being bad and clueless at the things I would like to eventually be good at. "Fake it until you make it" if you will.

Sun Apr 23 08:29:34 EDT 2017

Time for the coding challenge.

Sun Apr 23 09:10:20 EDT 2017

Lost some thoughts on the coding challenge because I accidentally broke the connection to my server, so my writing didn't save properly.

It was basically: I want to finish this by 1000, and I'll do it in python first as that's an option. I'd like to port the python to C++ afterwards, because I want to start doing C++ and this is an opportunity, as C++ is the other option. There are some memory and speed constraints, but first I'm focusing on correctness via getting their example output with their example input.

I've downloaded some VSCode extensions for C++ and Python.