Young Hands Club

This week I need to focus 4 days on saltmines work during prime hours. I have been consistently only working reduced evening hours on saltmines and so have fallen a bit behind.

I bumped the 1.5h allocated time for writing to 2.5h. I usually spend closer to 2.5 hours writing anyways, and since I will be working in the evening the process will take more time.

Note: I have meatwot friends visiting from March 4th-March 12th. During that time I will have very limited/no availability for tmsr work.

1. Monday 02/24

   1.1 Take care to the mechanic (3h)
   1.2 Saltmines (6h)
   1.3 Daily Writing Exercise (Publish Day) (2.5h)

2. Tuesday 02/25

   2.1 Saltmines (8h)
   2.1 Daily Writing Exercise (Prepare Day) (2.5h)

3. Wednesday 02/26

    3.1 Saltmines (8h)
    3.2 Daily Writing Exercise (Publish Day) (2.5h)

4. Thursday 02/27

    4.1 Saltmines (8h)
    4.2 Daily Writing Exercise (Prepare Day) (2.5h)

5. Friday 02/28

    5.1 Daily Writing Exercise (Publish Day) (2.5h)
    5.2 Write and publish a plan to mirror wot.deedbot.org (5hr)
    5.3 Create a function for checking if a channel on a network has been successfully logged for 2 weeks. (5h) Diagnose bot that crashed. (5h)

6. Saturday 02/29

    6.1 Daily Writing Exercise (Prepare Day) (1.5h)
    6.2 Plan and review for next week (4h)
    6.3 Work on publishing mirror of wot.deedbot.org (4h) Grocery shopping / trip to Santa Cruz (4h)

7. Sunday 03/01

    7.1 Daily Writing Exercise (Publish Day) (1.5h)
    7.2 Open Slot / Makeups (5h)

The best thing that happened to me this week was the car breaking down. The realization of the cost of my stupidity was a motivational wakeup call. I thought of a footnote from a trilema article:

Same thing with people : “unde-i multa minte si prostie destula” quite literally means that people, irrespective of how tall, fat or intelligent, are nevertheless homeostatic, systems in equilibrium. An intelligent fellow will, voluntarily if disavowedly, balance himself out with stupidity. If he’s ten pounds intelligent he’ll find in the environment ten pounds’ worth of stupid, and go about like that, at the same pace as another, one pound intelligent, who therefore has the smarts (involuntary, he just can’t drag more around) to only carry one pound stupid, and also at the same pace as another, ten thousand tons’ intelligent, who’s decked himself in a small cruiser and goes about thusly. Among humans, the conservation of pace’s the foremost concern (a problem aggravated by an overvocal female herd, but not created by them). I, on the other hand, am not particularly intelligent — I’m just very systematicaly dedicated to not being stupid. A ten gram’s intelligence saddled with merely a gram’s stupidity will (unsurprisingly) blow out of the water a ten ton’s intelligence saddled with a battleship.

Be less stupid. I’m not even fucking kidding here.

Overcoming past problems (for example, spinning for hours before writing) has afforded me more time to be stupid. This past week I returned/created some bad habits such as: waking up late, eating unhealthy, playing the guitar and surfing as avoidance behavior, and doing subpar saltmines work.

At various times during the week I was making decisions that were against my better judgement. I knew when the fatlogic was taking hold but I still let it let play its tricks. I had the contiuous “this is the last time I make this stupid decision before I fix the problem for good” mindset.

Being more aware of my stupidity as I engage in it has brought a sense of guilt and worthlessness that I am struggling against. That sense of worthlessness my stupidity fosters is debilitating and I can see that if it’s not stopped in its tracks I will quickly spiral back down to ~my weed addiction state.

On the bright side this problem is within my ability to solve. I don’t have to move a mountain or anything, I only need to change my mindset. ((Maybe moving the mountain is easier.))

And in good news, I recovered from my bad sleeping schedule and woke up at 7:50AM today. I did this by reading Candide before going to bed (I’ve now finished the book.) I have found bliss in taking the time to learn new topics/fix misunderstandings instead of answering one-off questions. TheFleet has been humming along nicely, it has logged over 1.5million lines and has done some successful reconnects. ((It has disconnected from 4 of the 100 original networks it was logging on the first day.))

This week I’m dedicating the time I previously set for “computer setup” to handle the misc tasks in my life that have fallen to the wayside.

Brainstorm for future ways to get cash / what to do with my saltmine hours:

a) Look through Stuyvesant and MIT alumni portals for freelance work. Scrape various heathen lists for jobs. Email personal contacts. Update resume.
b) Live off accumulated cash and dedicate more time to tmsr / other work.
c) Live off accumulated cash, and dedicate a few hours a week to tutoring high school students in math over Skype ((I had a short stint as a tutor in NYC.))
d) Live off accumulated cash and find a local job (such as a bartender) that gives me lots of opportunities to meet people and speak in Spanish.
e) Look for full time job in a LATAM city.

List of some misc tasks (copied/updated from last week):
1. Figure out how to connect my new machine to the backup internet provided by my cellphone. ((I may be able to connect the phone to my computer via a USB and tether that way.))
2. Create a proper food shopping list, with a list of ingredients for different (more complex) dinners.
3. Make a mirror of the republican wot
4. Search through local bitcoin meetups for people who do business in otc.
5. Make a box for storing phone while working / people are over. This box, while practical, will be made for symbolic reasons. It will be near an outlet and contain plugs so myself and guests can charge their phone when they place it in the box. A bonus feature is to make it sound proof so the mic cannot pick up anything while the box is closed.
6. Discuss hot water options with my landlord.
7. Call BAC to see what information they need from me to open a bank account.
8. Look into Panama residency.
9. Look for more saltmines work. ((Email possible leads from Stuyvesant and MIT connections. And look at companies that offer remote jobs.))
10. Plan trip to Europe during rainy season.
11. Publish my how/what/why of V article.
12. Write my own V.
13. Remove DNS already.
14. Start syncing a copy of the blockchain on my new comp. (I need to disable the stupid lights on the comp so I can leave it on at night.)

1. Monday 02/17

   1.1 Daily Writing Exercise (Publish Day) (1.5h)
   1.2 Handle misc tasks (Attempt to connect comp via tether, find 3 recipes that I like and make a shopping list for ingredients, scrape heathen search for bitcoin meetups in Guanacaste) (2h)
   1.3 Saltmines (8h)

2. Tuesday 02/18

   2.1 Daily Writing Exercise (Prepare Day) (1.5h)
   2.2 Handle misc tasks (Discuss hot water with landlord, call BAC, look into Panama residency)
   2.3 Saltmines (8h)

3. Wednesday 02/19

    3.1 Daily Writing Exercise (Publish Day) (1.5h)
    3.2 TheFleet – Prepare for launch, test new version with small subset of networks. Test reconnect ability specifically. (4h)
    3.3 Saltmines (4h)

4. Thursday 02/20

    4.1 Daily Writing Exercise (Prepare Day) (1.5h)
    4.2 TheFleet – Fix any problems found in yesterday’s test run and then release (10hr)

5. Friday 02/21

    5.1 Daily Writing Exercise (Publish Day) (1.5h)
    5.2 Either work on TheFleet if there are any problems, or begin writing my own V (10hr)

6. Saturday 02/22

    6.1 Daily Writing Exercise (Prepare Day) (1.5h)
    6.2 Plan and review for next week (4h)
    6.3 Take care of miscellaneous open tasks (4hr 45min)

7. Sunday 02/23

    7.1 Daily Writing Exercise (Publish Day) (1.5h)
    7.2 Open Slot / Makeups (5h)
    7.3 Reading time – Aristotle’s Poetics

I’ve enjoyed writing the new EOD reports. The benefit of listing something good for the day is it makes me think throughout the day: what can I do to gain a small victory that I would not have done otherwise.

A list of summaries of the advice I gave to myself:

1. Turn off heathen comms in the morning.
2. Learn command line tools while working in saltmines.
3. Keep updated TODO list in plan for the week (I did a poor job of this.)
4. Dedicate 15 mins to miscellaneous tasks.
5. Correctly write what needs to be done for a task (wrong: Fix AC right: Schedule AC Appointment)
6. Create a list of options for next potential jobs / ways to get cash.
7. Use tired time to snipe a few easy tasks rather than fumbling on a hard one or doing nothing.
8. Constantly make permanent fixes while using new comp.
9. Use republican tools (and sign them!)
10. Do not use computer before going to sleep – read some Aristotle instead.
11. Focus again on proper outlining. Research a topic and make sure that I have the right perspective I want to take before I commit to putting my thoughts into words. (Not from an EOD report, but an important piece of advice.)
12. Carefully choose words while writing, watch out for accidental use of homophones.
13. Review plan for day in the morning.

Although planned, I did not get to writing a command to see what channels TheFleet is currently connected to. This feature should not be too complicated now that I am running the bots in one sbcl process. I should be able to start the program within the slime repl in a tmux session. So to view the state of my program (including what channels I’m connected to) I can just ssh back into my VM and reattach to the session. I managed to squeeze in this task today.

I did not complete the task of writing a script / curl command that uploads a file into a wordpress draft. This may be worth continuing because others may want this script as well.

This week I was in a much better mood than last week although that may be in part because I spent more hours hedonistically. The car gives a lot more freedom, which feels great but opens up more opportunities to waste time. Also, the waves were excellent the past few days and I put in roughly 15 hours surfing. I need to be cautious to not let my realized higher comfort level lead to derealization.

My previous weeks’ plans have not contained concrete items that hold me accountable. I’ve been allocating huge chunks of time to unspecific items like “TheFleet” and “Computer Installation”. This week I made a list of definitive tasks to get done so that I have more direction. I also reduced my time commitment for each day by removing my 1hr Spanish study blocks. I will still aim to make use of all hours in the day, but I can’t allocate a task that I failed to complete for over an entire week straight.

I also am prefacing this weeks plan with a personal TODO list of various lingering items, some of which are copied over from my review of the previous week. The list is currently in no particular order.

TODO:
1. Figure out how to connect my new machine to the backup internet provided by my cellphone. ((I may be able to connect the phone to my computer via a USB and tether that way.))
2. Call AC technician to get that thing blowing a little harder. In progress. ((It is ‘working’ but it can’t keep up with the recent temperature. It’s been a hot in here… i’m sitting here at 32 degrees with the AC running and the shades closed etc.))
3. Change front door lock so it is impossible to be locked inside. ((It is common in LATAM to have doors where you need the key to exit as well as to enter.))
4. Create a proper food shopping list, with a list of ingredients for different (more complex) dinners.
5. Make a mirror of the republican wot
6. Use search and surfer wot to find people who do btc otc In progress..
7. Get widgets on the side of individual article pages for the kuberick theme. https://rubenlaguna.com/post/2009-03-09-how-to-display-sidebar-in-single-post-in-wordpress-15-20-27x-default-kubrick-theme/
8. Make a box for storing phone while working / people are over. This box, while practical, will be made for symbolic reasons. It will be near an outlet and contain plugs so myself and guests can charge their phone when they place it in the box. A bonus feature is to make it sound proof so the mic cannot pick up anything while the box is closed.
9. Setup tiling window manager (figure out problems with xmonad or use a different tool.) Deemed unnecessary.
10. Create a script that saves my current file in emacs, and then does a curl request to insert the text as a draft in my blog.
11. Look into getting hot water for my shower. ((I’ve gotten accustomed to cold showers and so stopped thinking about this problem. But I don’t want to develop the attitude of acceptance to matters such as these.))
12. Create a bank account at another bank, BAC, in Costa Rica.
13. Look into Panama residency. ((dorion informed me that you can get a lifetime visa by starting a company and putting 5k into the bank account. ATM this seems the easiest path to residency outside of the US.))
14. Look for more saltmines work. ((Email possible leads from Stuyvesant and MIT connections. And look at companies that offer remote jobs.))
15. Plan trip to Europe during rainy season.
16. Publish my how/what/why of V article.
17. Write my own V.
18. Remove DNS already.
19. Start syncing a copy of the blockchain on my new comp.

1. Monday 02/10

   1.1 Daily Writing Exercise (Publish Day) (1.5h)
   1.2 Computer Setup – Create script (possibly in elisp) that inserts current file into mpwp draft and opens up a preview. (2h)
   1.3 Saltmines (8h)

2. Tuesday 02/11

   2.1 Daily Writing Exercise (Prepare Day) (1.5h)
   2.2 Computer Setup – Either connect yrc to a tmux session or connect to znc through yrc ((ATM I am still connected to irc through the tolietbox)) (2h)
   2.3 Saltmines (8h)

3. Wednesday 02/12

    3.1 Daily Writing Exercise (Publish Day) (1.5h)
    3.2 Computer Setup – Install a tiling window manager. (2h)
    3.3 TheFleet – Get a bot connected on my new computer (setup postgres etc.) (4h)
    3.4 Saltmines (4h)

4. Thursday 02/13

    4.1 Daily Writing Exercise (Prepare Day) (1.5h)
    4.2 Computer Setup – Begin teaching myself the awk language (2h)
    4.3 TheFleet – Apply fixes detailed in my first TheFleet overview article. (8hr)

5. Friday 02/14

Note: I will likely have to pick up my car today.

    5.1 Daily Writing Exercise (Publish Day) (1.5h)
    5.2 TheFleet – Design a command that figures out what channels TheFleet is currently connected to. Devise a plan to check channels off a list after they’ve been logged for N days. (10hr)

6. Saturday 02/15

    6.1 Daily Writing Exercise (Prepare Day) (1.5h)
    6.2 Plan and review for next week (4h)
    6.3 Take care of miscellaneous open tasks (4hr 45min)

7. Sunday 02/16

    7.1 Daily Writing Exercise (Publish Day) (1.5h)
    7.2 Open Slot / Makeups (5h)
    7.3 Reading time (?h)

Failures:

a. I only logged 11 hours of saltmines out of the planned 16.
b. I was short two articles. I delayed my publishing day by 1 and then I didn’t publish an article on Saturday (Feb 8th)
c. I didn’t do my 1hr Spanish study sessions.
d. Progress on TheFleet was minimal.

Reasons for falling short.

1. Regression into a few behaviors. I played the guitar at peak hours of the day (i.e. before noon) as a form of avoidance. This totaled to roughly only 3 hours for the week, but that 3 hours could have been another article. Second, I spent about 10 hours surfing. Fwiw, there was no time wasted on this bs.

2. I spent time buying a car. This process is almost over, but I am waiting on fiat gears to turn before the vehicle is in my possession.

3. Just about everything I set out to do takes longer than usual as I get acquainted with my new computer. Once I get accustomed to my new keyboard, set keybinds, install programs I need, etc. I should get a return on my investment. The biggest win from this new computer comes not from what it has, but what it lacks – gigabytes of software that exists to distract me. I may want to push this advantage further by taking actions such as turning off my reliance on DNS.

4. I spend too much time in the morning chatting in #o. While I see responding and engaging of upmost importance, I think that I should use long blocks in the morning to for preparing/writing articles and working on TheFleet. Maybe I should wait until 7:00 UTC (1PM my time) to begin conversing.

..

I felt melancholy this week for a few reasons: not being productive, dealing w/ old friendships harmed from coming out wrt politics, putting effort in getting something I wanted personally (a car) against my master’s advice, and having failed previously to secure my eulora credentials. I know that these types of problems are within my control to prevent from occurring again in the future.

I reviewed all of my previous weeks plans + reviews + comments and made a list of notes of lingering TODO items, advice from diana_coman, and advice from my past self. Here is a dump of the notes below:

1. TODO: Publish my how/what/why of V article.
2. TODO: Write my own V.
3. TODO: (self assigned) Remove DNS and whitelist IPs.
4. Read Popper
5. Don’t eat canned shit out of laziness. Proper meal planning (full recipes instead of grabbing a bunch of ingredients and seeing what I can throw together.) ((The home cooked meals have been getting better, but I’ve been on rice+bean repeat mode. I need to work on my salad skills, so far the only salads I’ve made here are word salads.))
6. The second I get the sensation of “worrying” I have begun spinning. Snap out of it ASAP.
7. Copy the people you respect instead of participating in anything like flattery.
8. For reading – read for the longest stretch as possible (maybe 1.5 pages) without letting the mind wander. Then stop. Gradually increase the interval.
9. Anything worth reading requires at least 3 passes, not just 2. ((It’s time for The Odyssey, round 3.))
10. TODO: (self assigned) Get waterproof watch
11. Articles that are akin to ‘annotating code’ need to give clarity, not be a full review of everything that was done to prepare for said article.
12. Reminder: Take time to see how my internal feelings / emotions distort my world view.
13. Take notes of small behavior differences ((In my case, of ticos.)), they reveal important information about cultures.
14. Don’t be a recluse. Make out time to get out and meet people. Discriminate when doing so.
15. From BingoBoingo – have a lot of small Spanish conversations (fruit vendors, etc.).
16. “Up the discipline and get through a few more items this week.”
17. Carry camera around at all times. ((billymg couriered a replacement camera for me.))
18. Do not consider Sunday night a time to finish leftover work.
19. Plans must be *clear* *concrete* and *accountable*
20. No more manual anything, proper backups , hard drives put to use. ((I need to setup my backup system on my new computer.))
21. Turn conscious understanding of ongoing problems into visceral disgust, and take pleasure in the problem solving aspect.
22. Keep the diana_coman simulator running.
23. Enumerated lists should allow for unique referencing.
24. The past is to learn from, not to beat myself up with.
25. TODO: Make a mirror of the republican wot
26. Resume studying Spanish.
27. Large gains can be obtained from even small 15 minute windows.
28. It should not take 30 minutes to brainstorm.
29. I need to evaluate my own thoughts more seriously while they’re in my head, just like how I evaluate them seriously after putting them in writing.
30. Don’t waste too much time on polishing words when writing. Problems with my articles come from reasons deeper than that. ((as mp pointed out, I produced grammatically correct trash. Just because the output of my writing compiles doesn’t mean it’s worth anything and in fact can be worth the opposite.))
31. Plans are for knowing what you are aiming for and why and in what way. They are a reflection of current knowledge of the task at hand. Thus they are usually incomplete and must be updated as new knowledge comes in.
32. White box testing > black box testing.
33. Any event worth doing/going to is worth writing about.
34. My failure to engage in talking to people irl is reflected in my lack of responses to blog comments.
35. Doing what works is more important than following principles.
36. Developing a niche=negrate.