Timeblock

Thinking

Didn't have energy for side-projects yesterday. Want to make up for that a bit.

Timeblock

Thinking

Orthodontist appointment going to hurt productivity for day if I don't maximize buffer possibilities. Should get ready and go to work now.

Did some twittering today.... Don't like that at all. I've added a "Say out loud, 'The next time I want to go to Twitter, I will instead pick an item in my reading list.'" to my morning checklist. I may not be going to twitter to read, though, so this may not be an effective switch, but we will see. If I'm doing it for social reasons, I can try chatting with friends....

But considering I don't say anything when I go to Twitter, reading may work. I mean, the thing that ended my Twitter habit before was counting calories, so... I'm guessing I want to use my brain in some way that isn't work or properly active? Worth trying the reading idea.

Timeblock

Thinking

All right, I really want something usable out of my FIRE project today. Doesn't have to be a website, but ideally it's something that tracks my progress on "paid off" things. An example would be a system that says how much money I can take out of my index fund to pay for computer stuff. Or even how much is in my computer fund.

Timeblock

Thinking

Want to do side-project stuff, but don't want to skip timeblocking. I should also process my daily tasks.

Twitter is becoming a habit again.... I will work to eradicate it again.

Timeblock

Thinking

Woke up early and couldn't fall back asleep. Finally starting to hit me now, but I'm trying to be awake now.... I both found out about the UK election and found out it had a terrible result. The Tories (basically the Republican party in UK) won in a landslide and got a majority of seats in parliament.

This fueled a backslide into Twitter, which fueled a fruitless rage, which could've fueled a failure to fall asleep but I have strategies for that. Basically, I listen to an audiobook until I notice myself dozing off. Been how I slowly make progress on Capital in the 21st Century But then I woke up at 0200 and my strat for falling asleep doesn't work there, because I can't risk waking up the wife. Will need to reflect on that in the future if this becomes a thing to worry about.

Timeblock

Thinking

Today is one of those irregular days. You know, Stephan, the kind that typically destroy my productivity for the day. But that's what "practice flexibility" is for.

Now, in all honesty, the day was funked with via me waking up and literally going to deploy code. Something that kinda seems like it should be the precursor to an amazing day of productivity. But that's not how my brain works, nor how I've trained it to work. Gotta do my morning routine. Gotta plan the day. Gotta go slow before I can go fast.

So, my pomodoro count is going to take a hit, but that's fine, I'm already at 31 for the week. I haven't hit 50 in a long while. Or even 40. Yet my productivity is considered pretty good as of late. 40 may be my new "good" number.... Not sure how I feel about that, but pomodoros that aren't pure code are much more draining and my job is a lot more thinking and grokking. Coding is just the grind that comes at the end.

Timeblock

Thinking

So, on startup, the HDD (for storage, OS is now on SSD) in my computer gets into some sort of resonant frequency and is noisy. Have to tap the computer near where it rests to have it quiet down. Maybe something I should deal with later.

Stretching throughout the day did not work, at all. I managed to fit in the important bits for sleep quality before bed. Will try normal stretching routine today.

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.