Timeblock

Thinking

Budget computer is in a good place now. Installed a Noctua NH-L9x65 CPU cooler this morning.

Now the computer is quite quiet. Which is nice.

Anyways, I need to do update the daily work log now.

At Work

I'm going to try doing some stretches here and there throughout the day and see what happens. Usually, this doesn't work, but potentially it could and I could gain a half-hour of the timeblock back (the stretching would fit between pomodoros).

Timeblock

Thinking

Really "practicing flexibility" today. Was sick over weekend and also had a bit of OCD keeping me awake until 2300 last night. I was still compelled to finish the problem keeping me up last night when I woke up, so I did.

I then wanted to be in a good spot WRT data classification, so I skipped proper planning and dove into that before my meeting.

Some weekend notes:

• Saturday was "sleep sickness off" day
• Sunday was budget day and half-wife-day and half-my-day

I also have a personal project that I'm giving myself a week to complete. Calling it "One FIRE at a Time" and hopefully I'll link to something by this Sunday. Which is part of the reason for my OCD with my PC yesterday. It's general slowness was really starting to annoy me.

I looked into fixing my (previously "good", now) tower computer. But upon analysis of the parts of my tower computer and my (previously "bad", now) budget computer, the only thing making the tower computer superior were:

• the RAM (budget had 8 GB and tower had 16 GB)
• the memory (budget had 1 TB HDD, tower had 512 MB SSD)
• the CPU (budget has cheap AMD 6-core processor, tower has Intel i7)

Now, the CPU couldn't be ported over to the budget computer, but the RAM and memory certainly could. And that significantly sped all the things up. It is more than sufficient for my current purposes. Also, Overwatch can be run at about 85 FPS, which isn't at all important, but a good gauge of where the system is.

Also, the whole computer situation has inspired "One FIRE at a Time" to be my first real project after some basic base-react-app setup. When I built my Quakecon Travel Build, I saved $18K for it. $3K for the build, and $15K so I could spend $3K again in 5 years.

But how I did all that makes tracking the value of that computer fund difficult. It's just in the same 90/10 Betterment fund as everything else. And moving things around in the stock market just to keep track of which fund has what amount of money has tax implications. So, I'd like to keep it in a lump fund, but pretend it's divied up based on what chunk is paying for what regular expense.

So, this week, I'll be taking my stock market savings, and dividing it up imaginarily into "paid-for" things. I'll also make "withdrawal" rules and stuff that really just use my paycheck, but allow "spent" funds to move to other types of accounts.

I also have to consider my withdrawal rules. With things that are aggressive, like my 90/10 betterment account, I can't do the 4% withdrawal. I think a better setup is only being allowed access to 50% of all accrued interest. But with the 50/50 accounts, 4% is a safe number.

None of this will be done in a week, mind you. I think really, by the end of this week, I want to query YNAB's API endpoints, grab my accounts, and have a sqlite database that splits things accordingly and accurately updates gains/losses based on distribution.

Timeblock

Thinking

Weekly review today! Work one, but maybe I'll start doing some personal weekly review stuff in there.

Today I'm back to the normal schedule. Woke up between 0430 and 0500, did some coffee and YouTube between 0500 and 0530 and, well, am doing the planned pomodoros now. I'm in the first weekly review pomodoro right now.

Timeblock

Thinking

Tried to do a simplified version of my morning routine to get back into the flow.

Tomorrow I'm going to have a lot of organizing to do. Today, though, I want to rush towards a finished classification setup within query-api.

Which is exactly what I'll be switching to right now.

Timeblock

Thinking

Getting some quick work in at the airport. Tomorrow probably won't be a normal day as I'm going to be in bed pretty late. I'll sleep in as necessary and head to work shortly after waking up, I think.

....

We'll see what I do.

Timeblock

Thinking

Pomodoro strats are not working in Indiana. Which is not to say they can't work, it's just that for the amount of time I'll be in Indiana, the practice needed to make the pomodoros work will not be worth it. Nor will that practice be retained by the time I return here.

Better to work at 50% power (or less) consistently while I'm here, and then transition to 100% power with my routines when I'm back in Seattle. Forcing the pomodoros, as I tried yesterday, led to a sudden incapability of doing work. Today, I shall practice flexibility.

Timeblock

A Quick Recap

Hello! The last time I had a log entry was on Friday, November 22nd. I have been on vacation in Indiana (where I was funemployed for a bit).

Things worth noting:

• taught my nephew how to play Euchre
• kept up with YNAB and moved budget around to roll with the punches (still have some receipts to split, however)
• went climbing with my brother, my niece, and my nephew
• cooked some delicious vegan thanksgiving food
  • vegan mac and cheese
  • beyond beef wellington
  • vegan mashed potatoes
  • chickpea, rice, and vegetable stuffing
  • vegan gravy
  • vegan pumpkin pie
• played a lot of made-up games with nieces and nephews
• gave my aunt a cat shirt
• played on a zipline installed on the property by my cousin-in-law (cool dude)
• argued politics with my mom and dad (and am still reflecting on it)
• spent a lot of quality time with a lot of family
• played Golf Story

And I think that's really everything worth noting. Which is to say, if future me is curious what I did on a specific day that I haven't logged, anything of note is in the list above.

Though, also, some neat things that I didn't expect:

• my sleep schedule wanted to slide back to going to sleep at 2100 and waking up at 0430 and I had to fight it to fall asleep later in the day
• Maintained my nap habit naturally, even though I've been drinking way too much caffeine (I think)
• Had a pretty good stretching habit for a couple days but it was hard to maintain, got to reinvigorate the habit when I get back home
• Got a lot of natural exercise playing with nieces/nephews, but exercised way less than normal
• Kept up with counting calories, though as expected I overate most everyday (as in, ate enough to gain weight, not just stay even)
• Almost reignited the twitter habit yesterday, which is probably because I haven't been keeping up with my anki habit, I have managed to fight it back, but it's important to know that Twitter is there if I don't maintain the habits that replace it

Anyways, time to eat lunch and then focus on work.

Timeblock

Timeblock

Thinking

Coffee after nap is great, but it does lead to a much more sudden crash when bedtime comes near. Around 2000 my brain becomes close to non-functional. Not a bad thing, I don't think, but something I need to plan around for. For instance, can't procrastinate the Japanese studying to end of day.

Another heavy meeting day means limited pomodoro time. That plus climbing day means not very many pomodoros today. I'll do the best with what I've got, though.

Timeblock

Thinking

Only one buffer in today's timeblock.... That's a bit dangerous. Hopefully I can make it work. Going to need to avoid conversation during today's lunch.

Coffee-after-nap experiment going really well. And I have to say that I love coffee. Black, with non-dairy milk. With non-dairy creamer. Sweetened. Unsweetened. It's delicious. And I'm happy at the thought of it being okay to have it twice a day.

Side-Projects

This morning, I added some typescript stuff to the minimal react webapp.

What I want to do now is add tslint and prettier to enforce strict typing and formatting rules.