Young Hands Club

January 20, 2020

RMD review, Jan 11-19th, 2020

Filed under: Robinson Dorion — Robinson Dorion @ 7:18 am

Overall, the week was productive on several fronts :

  1. I got caught up on providing feedback on the various TMSR OS articles that had been published as the calendar turned from 2019 to 2020.
  2. Clarified TMSR OS priorities and deliverables and timelines with spyked, lobbes and trinque. Discussed, with bvt and MP the porting of the former’s work on the Linux kernel to the 2.6 line. Need to circle back there to get a clarified timeline. jfw’s plate has been full with the wallet work, which at present is expected to be delivered by months end. We’ve talked about TMSR OS, but I’ve been waiting for the wallet to be cleared from his queue and seeing if ave1 will resurface before having jfw really consider what he wants to own in TMSR OS.
  3. I said hi via email to Roderick Smith, the maintainer of rEFInd, received a positive response from him and invited him to #trilema, we’ll see how the final leg shakes out.
  4. I spent 3 quality evenings with Will Haack : on Monday I met him at his hostel in Casco Viejo for a couple drinks, on Tuesday he joined Jacob, myself and a few friends at a business networking event and the three of us grabbed a bite to eat afterwards, Wednesday he joined the Junto which covered an introduction to music theory by our resident composer in training. Everyone enjoyed and perhaps more than we were expecting to.
  5. I wasn’t aware of the business networking event until Monday afternoon and in fact we re-scheduled the Junto from Tuesday to Wednesday to accommodate. Attending caused some timelines to be moved, but I reckon it was worth it. New contacts I met were : an owner of an insurance company, a senior account executive at CenturyLink who I’ve subsequently introduced to BingoBoingo, and a banker from MMG bank who said they’ve had clients interested in the BTC, but can’t do anything to accommodate. Older contacts I saw again were : an investor who I’m developing a friendship with, the executive president of the Panama China Investment Group, and the owner of a business consultancy that also deals precious metals and Bitcoin.
  6. I spent more time than I’d planned on JWRD sales, but the pipeline has got to be worked. A new prospect with potential that was referred through the Junto is an ex-Goldman quant from Ukraine who is working on implementing a decentralized exchange.
  7. While I didn’t get the Hawaii article out, talking about the embarrassment of losing my pictures was cathartic and I worked through the process of photo-articles.
  8. Sunday’s conversation about shifting from straight jacket planning to flexible roadmap was helpful and I’m looking forward to trying that mindset on and seeing how I feel and what results I can produce from that frame.
  9. I missed the review/plan on Friday, but expect to get back to that rhythm this week. I went to a meditation around 6pm locally that was calming and refreshing, then slept from about 8pm to midnight, to wake up and get this and my plan out.

JFW plan, week of Jan 20 2020

Filed under: Jacob Welsh — Jacob Welsh @ 6:04 am

Required Tasks

1. #trilema catchup: 2h daily, ETA end of the week

2. Blogging: .5h planning + 1.5h writing daily (planned topics: some mixture of finishing gbw-node draft writeups; return to family topics; trip photos; #t logs)

3. gbw signer development: 10h

4. Forum interaction + misc. reading: 1-2h/day

5. Weekly review + plan (still including that missed December week!): 5h (still aiming to do Saturday!)

6. End-of-day journal: .5h/day

JFW review, week of Jan 13 2020

Filed under: Jacob Welsh — Jacob Welsh @ 5:54 am

Somehow, getting moving on this week’s review has been even more fitful than usual. I keep planning to do them on Saturdays; of course this requires choosing to do it at the expense of something else at that time, and there’s never a shortage of easier (or at least more comfortable) yet still important things to get done at every juncture up until deferring is no longer possible. It also requires enforcing my own deadline and working well rather than worshiping stupidity so as not to lose time on Saturday AND still have to finish on Sunday, and perhaps I’m not yet confident enough in my ability to do that without the external pressure.

Of course I have nothing to lose from looking honestly at the week. I spoke up about my failings… well not always, but then spoke up about that too:

jfw: ahoy, I’ve again failed to get my article written; I did make good headway on organizing my loose pile of thoughts on the family, so I won’t consider the time a waste.
jfw: I’ve noticed that one time-stretching self-delusion I’m prone to is “I haven’t yet sat down and logged a start time on task X, thus I’m now ‘preparing myself’ or something and can drag feet and it totally doesn’t count as time spent on X

jfw: I’ve made slow headway on the drafting, but I’m falling on face again as far as getting it done. whaack’s arriving momentarily. Will get back to it either tonight or more likely first thing tomorrow.

jfw: diana_coman: another day of failure to publish here. Seeing the spinning and wondering why I couldn’t stop, I turned to writing whatever thoughts, which turned into a kind of internal dialogue. If I’m not willing to put forward my thoughts as truth, I can at least posit and consider them

jfw: I also let myself get worked up / stressed yesterday from being again behind on my plan. And hesitated to speak up along the way because of… perhaps some shame at how slow things were going plus a vain hope that I’d somehow still get it all in.
jfw: Specifically – I’m not getting my 5 hours of wallet dev, and while I caught up on the #o log from break and got assorted blog reading in, I’ve barely made a dent in a mountain of #t backlog

Indeed this did not get me eaten; rather I received helpful feedback and course adjustments. Once back on the technical series I got four articles out with minimal fuss.

Further positives included getting out some blog responses on Gales Linux, completing training session delivery for our twice-weekly pilot clients, and spending two quality evenings with Will.

A regression was not keeping up with the daily journal. I had put it under “time permitting”, figuring I had a lot on the plate, and naturally time didn’t permit of its own accord. I’d like to get back to that and perhaps also use that time for closer examination of my time logs to get more value out of them.

ejb plan: week 5 (Jan 20 – Jan 26)

Filed under: Eric Benevides — Eric Benevides @ 3:01 am

Mp-wp bot testing and production prep. Due Tuesday [Estimated time: 12 hrs | Actual time: ]

Final prep for mp-wp bot. I have got the LAMP up and running on prod server. ((I was not used to CentOS so it took some extra wrestling)) I still must stand up bot on prod server and test. I also need to make sure that the log archives I give to MP this time around are A) in the format he is expecting and B) all the logs that he is expecting are present.

Mp-wp bot delivery. Due TBD [Estimated time: ? hrs | Actual time: ]

Once the testing is complete I will ping MP in #t to coordinate a time when we can

Gales build, install, and write-up. Due Sunday [Estimated time: 8 hrs | Actual time:  hrs ]

Time permitting I would like to continue the Gales install.

Spend time researching remote work /abroad work opportunities throughout week: Due Sunday [Estimated time: 1 hr  | Actual time: 1 hr ]

Ongoing.

Total estimated time: 21, total actual time:

Timings on tasks per day

Things that I need to think on for future weekly plans:

  • Install Gales
  • Penance article series (Two articles remain)
  • mp-wp bot ‘spillover’ of code review / testing
  • mp-wp bot install guide once review / testing complete
  • Recode auctionbot’s “check if previous line was an announce” check to the auction announcing (I know what this means at least, even if that was not well stated…)
  • Finish auctionbot autobidding
  • How to make the most of my current geographic location
  • Other remedial/learning debts that need paying
  • Somewhere down the line I’d also like to slim down my archive-process and publish it. As of now it relies too much on python where it doesn’t need to; lotsa kludge, etc.

Prior week: Week 4 [Jan 13 – Jan 19]

ejb review: week 4 (Jan 13 – Jan 19)

Filed under: Eric Benevides — Eric Benevides @ 2:47 am

While I was able to finish Penance Article #2 and picked work back up on the mp-wp bot, I missed my deadline on said article by a full day pretty much. This in turn left me with less time to work on the bot/logger and will push the remaining work there into the start of next week.

Sometimes the key actions that need to be taken are the boring ones, in my case I need to work on making clear my own priorities to myself. Here’s one to start: I need to increase my *waking* hours dedicated to things that matter, and it is clear to me from these recent failures that I may want to try simply waking up early each day and working on TMSR items *before* I head into saltmine work. It would be an action I can take immediately while I continue looking for remote work. So for this next week I will focus on making this small tweak in my routine.

WH Review of Week 14 (Jan 13th – Jan 19th)

Filed under: Will Haack — Will Haack @ 1:31 am

The Panama and Fiesta Week:

I had a wonderful time in Panama, the trip was a success on almost all fronts. ((The one mistake I paid for is a week prior I had I booked the wrong dates for the hostel.)) It was a pleasure to meet dorion and jfw, both one on one and then together for a networking event and their weekly junto meeting. Selina’s was a great place to stay ((dorion’s recommendation)) and I enjoyed walking through the surrounding neighborhood, Casco Viejo. I went one day for a bike ride, and then the next day I saw the Miraflores Lockes and went long boarding along Cinta Costera. ((Details to follow in an upcoming article.))

Throughout the trip I made a concerted effort to talk to more people than I usually do. During college / my year surfing opportunities to meet new people were ever present. But now, living in a low population town, I only get a countable number of (Spanish) interactions on a weekly basis. I am considering looking for some group activities I can do once/twice a week. Two ideas that come to mind are salsa and jiu jitsu classes. ((If I were to do this I would need to once again make an effort to get a car.))

As for the failures, the last few days of the vacation were wasted days. My sleep schedule was blown apart by the late night fiestas. And I did only a tiny bit of saltmines work. Two more glaring problems must be announced: (1) I made only ~30 pages of progress into The Odyssey. I put a few explicit reading blocks for the week’s plan to make sure I progress on this front. (2) I never followed up with another comment to address the points in mp’s comment that I had neglected in my first response. I listed responding to the comment as a TODO item for next Sunday, although I hope to respond before then.

WH Plan For Week 15 (Jan 20th – Jan 26th)

Filed under: Will Haack — Will Haack @ 1:00 am

Annnnd we are back! No more chased-by-bulls-bullshit this week. I only have one day planned of saltmines. EOD reports will resume.

1. Monday 01/20

   1.1 Daily Writing Exercise (Publish Day) (1.5h)
   1.2 Publish a plan for building computer (4h)
   1.3 TheFleet (4h)
   1.4 Allocated reading time (1h)
   1.5 Spanish Study (1hr)

2. Tuesday 01/21

   2.1 Daily Writing Exercise (Prepare Day) (1.5h)
   2.2 Build Computer (4h)
   2.3 TheFleet (4h)
   2.4 Allocated reading time (1h)
   2.5 Spanish Study (1hr)

3. Wednesday 01/22

    3.1 Daily Writing Exercise (Publish Day) (1.5h)
    3.2 Continue setting up my computer (2h)
    3.3 Saltmines (8hr)
    3.4 Spanish Study (1hr)

4. Thursday 01/23

    4.1 Daily Writing Exercise (Prepare Day) (1.5h)
    4.2 Continue setting up my computer (2h)
    4.3 TheFleet (8hr)
    4.4 Spanish Study (1hr)

5. Friday 01/24

    5.1 Daily Writing Exercise (Publish Day) (1.5h)
    5.2 Continue setting up my computer (2h)
    5.3 TheFleet (8hr)
    5.4 Spanish Study (1h)

6. Saturday 01/25

    6.1 Daily Writing Exercise (Prepare Day) (1.5h)
    6.2 Plan and review for next week (4h)
    6.3 Write up FleetBot Pseudocode (4hr 45min)
    6.4 Spanish Study (1h)

7. Sunday 01/26

    7.1 Daily Writing Exercise (Publish Day) (1.5h)
    7.2 Open Slot / Makeups (5h)
    7.3 Reading time (?h)
    7.3 Respond to blog comment (if not yet done)

January 13, 2020

JFW plan, week of Jan 13 2020

Filed under: Jacob Welsh — Jacob Welsh @ 6:05 am

Required tasks

1. Catch up on recent logs and blogs: 15h (last ETA I gave was Tuesday and I will push for this). ETA Tuesday for #ossasepia, Friday for #trilema.

2. Meeting Will; attending Junto: 4h (Tuesday+Wednesday evening)

3. Training development + delivery: 5h on Thursday (overflowed final session of the pilot run).

4. gbw signer (offline wallet) development: 5h (planning increase to 10 going forward)

5. Daily blogging (topics include finishing “what’s on my mind”, continuing gbw-node code writeup series, though maybe vacation photos first): 14h

6. Daily forum interaction: 10h total, 1-3h/day

7. Weekly review and plan: 4h5h including the missed December week, aim to finish by Saturday.

Time permitting

8. Blog: thoughts on how V-based OS might work.

9. End-of-day journalling: 3h.

WH Plan For Week 14 (Jan 13th – Jan 19th)

Filed under: Will Haack — Will Haack @ 5:50 am

Monday-Thursday 01/13-01/16

I’ll be exploring the city and meeting with Dorion and Jacob in Panama.

Friday-Sunday 01/17-01/19

I will be catching up with saltmines work. I would also like to spend one or two evenings at a festival in Santa Cruz. ((This is a large rodeo that goes from Jan 14th – Jan 20th. My cab driver amigo has been telling me about for some time now.))

TheFleet and the computer will be resumed the following week.

JFW review, week of Jan 6 2020

Filed under: Jacob Welsh — Jacob Welsh @ 5:47 am

My old enemy the writing block/spinning/phobia/whatever was back in force this week, and I allowed this to mess up my other plans. In this moment I find myself glum about it: “couldn’t I have picked a path that didn’t need this? How’s the brick-laying profession these days?” I take heart by observing my stack of more prose output in the past three months than the previous however-many years; recalling that good things don’t tend to come easy; that strong help is here for the asking. I keep my faith that the results will be worth it.

As to the snowballing, or more to the point, believing that what Diana Coman said and I picked up about it is as useful as I say, it looks like I’d even have been better off saying “screw it, I’m not writing today” at least in the cases of Thursday and Friday. A less petulant improvement, then, would be more consciously (and publicly) admitting defeat and re-evaluating when time limits hit. Or better still, seeking help when I first get stuck and rescheduling to do something else if no one’s available to talk at the time. Overall, putting pride to the side.

The damage in detail: I got what I think are decent articles out on Tuesday and Saturday, leaving five days high and dry. Today included, yep; after the helpful discussion in channel I managed to soak up some time puttering around avoidantly then oh look, it’s the last chance to get to that review that I’d planned to have done already. For Monday there was mayyybe the excuse that I found more research was needed; though my journal for the day still confesses to some distraction and foot-dragging. On reading catchup, I got only 10 of the planned 25 hours. Preparedness for training sessions suffered too in the form of software/hardware difficulties, and while given my knowledge I was able to employ the class time productively, a result is that we’ve had to extend by one more session to reach the original goal.

I found the journalling helpful and enjoyable, though I didn’t keep it up every day.

I had also undertaken to review the partial week before my holiday, but again haven’t left myself the time. I’m unsure if I should now re-schedule this or write it off. In brief, I’d say I got the critical things done but did miss some plans.

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