On Productivity: Meditation

Meditation allegedly helps programmers focus on what their doing.  I don't know if it does yet, but I do perceive short term cognitive benefits after trying it.  I also know that I have trouble focusing, especially when I'm doing something I really, really, really don't want to be doing.  Like when I'm trying to figure out (whats new on reddit?) why there is no internal or external documentation (maybe reddit has a documentation category) on the product key (i'm so fucking bored) a piece of software (reddit) is asking for, when that piece of software (reddit again!) is not only made by my company but isn't supposed to require a product key anyway.

Anyway, I've started to meditate for 2 minutes every day, except for days when I forget, am distracted, or don't feel like it.  So I think this is the 3rd time I've tried it this month.

Which brings me to the point of this post.  Android timers seem to suck, so here is an online one.

[politics] Small Steps?

Lately I've been trying to only care about politics where there is some action that I can personally take, even if its effect is negligible.  

Cell Phones

First of all, all the major carriers are assholes.  We all know this.  Cue:  https://ting.com/ -- what may be an honest company.  Unfortunately they don't support my phone, which I just paid full price to replace after dropping it.  I'm going to keep my eye on them and switch if I can though.

They seem pretty awesome--they offer, simply, X minutes, Y texts, and Z bits of data per month for W dollars.  This is all I want from my fucking carrier!  This is what a carrier is supposed to do.  Carriers should be letting us buy minutes, texts and bits.  Carriers should not be arranging monopolies, locking us in, price gouging us and destroying the internet.

So, go Ting.  Sincerely, future customer.  I hope.


Banks

I have been trying to shift more of my banking business to credit unions, who are known for not gambling drunkenly with our investments, and for being such a threat to evil banks that anti-competitive legislation has been written to sabotage them.  However, because of said sabotage, those credit unions may never be able to take on the banks.  What if, though, we all simply shifted our efforts into just boycotting the "too big to fail" assholes.  This legislation will probably be sniped by lobbysists--but would it be that hard to at least not do business with these banks?

1. J.P. Morgan Chase
2. Bank of America
3. Citigroup
4. Wells Fargo
5. Goldman Sachs
6. Morgan Stanley

I have accounts with some of them.  I think I am going to slowly migrate all of my bank accounts, investment accounts and credit cards to anyone who is not owned by them.

Assuming this is feasible, that means that ordinary citizens could just vote with our money by moving accounts, and bypass a government that is currently unable to do anything.  The biggest weakness I see here is getting enough people to do it.  I feel like if the right amount of people had ever cared about the natural problems that arise with for-profit banking, everyone would already be with credit unions.

I have accounts all over the fucking place (long story) so I will start looking up who owns all of those places, and seeing if I can move them elsewhere.  I'll let you know of my progress if I get around to it.

So Much for Sleep

I just discovered this amazing thread.  Half of the articles are posted on tiny websites that are pathetic attempts at biased journalism, but the other half are real news sources and raw youtube footage.  I honestly don't know why I'm addicted to watching police officers lie, hurt people, and make unlawful arrests, but its addicting.

It also makes me grateful that the few times I've left my window mostly rolled up in order to be a dick to traffic cops, that I didn't get dragged onto the pavement, tasered in the face and beat with night sticks.

Pots and Kettles

I thought of a new idea for my 3-SAT algorithm.  Really not anything complicated.  I had the idea months ago, actually, and didn't think it would work until now.  Should have been easy to implement.  I mean all I need to do is run the entire existing algorithm 2*n times, where each run of the algorithm is a search node.

Unfortunately, the dumb fucker who programmed this shit was a moron and didn't think about how to structure the code so it would be easy to modify.  There's commented out shit everyone and the classes have no discernible structure or pattern to them.

Super unfortunately, that dumb fucker was me.














[Edit]
Ok actuall I lied.  It took about 2 minutes to refactor what I wrote.  I did use the write design, and I am a badass programmer.  I just wanted to whine.  Also I happen to be really sloppy about cleaning shit up in prototypes.

Washington State Government: Go to Hell

Century ballroom is not my favorite place to dance;  it is the most convenient.  However they are the victims of an alleged misinterpretation of a law.  Apparently some pig fucker thought it was not retarded to levy a tax on places that provide an "opportunity to dance."  And so century is apparently fucked:

http://www.centuryballroom.com/Century_Ballroom_Tax_Relief_Fund.pdf

Now, since companies like Axciom might read this blog and find out who I am and mark my political beliefs down in their database for future asshole employers to reference, I will simply say that events like this are the reason a guy I know has nothing by sympathy for everyone, everywhere who illegally evades taxes.

What's in a Name?

My business partner is a...real peach to work with.  I actually filled an entire page bitching about her, and before I get started here, all I will say is we're ending up making two separate LLC's (mine and her's) for one App, and she's constantly freaking out about me stealing her worthless idea, and she thinks that calling some lawyers is the equivalent to spending days writing code.

Anyway.

So I need to create an LLC, and I need something to name it.  It needs to be catchy, easy to remember, easy to spell, and sophisticated enough to sound like it was another stupid name coined by another developer forming yet another limited liability corporation just to sell an Android app.  Partly because I need to be better than everyone else, and partly because I might want to use the company for something else.  Anyway.

My twenty year old self would have rolled out something with the word "dragon" in it and called it a day.  Unfortunately, in my elder years I now realize that the rest of the world doesn't realize how fucking awesome dragons are, and so I'm forced to search for a more...common and less epic word.  I've though of four that are fun:

glow
glass
mojito
ranger


I was going to call it "Glass Rifle " however some music group already has that name.  Fuckers.  Fortunately I actually found a business name generator;  only problem is all of the suggestions are dumb.

So please, send me your suggestions if you like.  I really can't figure out what to name it.

[Edit]
Ok maybe Glass Torch.

[Edit]
Hash Globe

Resonance Cascade (if I have no shame)

Codeslingers   (for Stephen King fans)

Glass Knight

White Method

Sugar Code (this is my favorite)

Hammerlock  (from dancing)

Code Captains (from my favorite drink)

My favorite mechanical devices are the torque converter and the ATC.  Unfortunately neither make a good company name.

Mercator Injection

Artificial Ignorance

Brainstorming this shit is now making me want to bring back Telefrag.

[Edit]
Maybe "Glass Pattern" ...I like that a lot and it means something to me.

Save a Penny...

I chose to purchase a super cheapass tablet for Android App testing because I thought all I needed was a large screen.  It didn't occur to me that its possible for some companies to be so idiotic they don't offer driver downloads on their website, and so obscure that a simple google search can't even unearth the drivers.  However, I did finally com across this page.  The trick, for me, was to search for the phrase "USB debugging" instead of drivers.

By the way, don't buy the device I linked to if you need an actual tablet, for real life.  The touch screen is not as responsive as a good android device.  It could be because of something about resistive vs capacitive screens, but I don't care.

[Edit]
The drivers are still not working, so I can't debug life on the device (and see stack traces as soon as errors happen) and deploying to it will take longer.  Too lazy to return it.  Not sure if I should resell it, use it for testing anyway, or  use it for something else (control music playing, post it on the wall to report the weather, glorified digital picture, watch movies while I work, control a LEGO robot that cleans my shower?).


Maybe this is an opportunity to design an apk delivery system.  I wonder if that would be useful.

Status

After cutting out everything I could, I am left with these priorities:

1. work
2. fitness
3. app
4. social
5. salsa
6. band

Don't tell my band they're at the bottom.  Ironically, band is the only thing where I'm satisfied with my performance.  Work is good, but not great.  I want to be doing better.  And I literally can't cut anything;  not without significant damage being done or time being wasted.  Mostly because of the other people involved.  So I'm kind of stuck with these hobbies...or endeavors.  I think my best shot is to figure out a way to get more done with the time I have.  I think I would be find if I could cut two of them out, which means I only have to supercharge my productivity to account for two extra hobbies.

Fitness wise, I was unfortunately surprised that losing weight is more difficult that I had always assumed it would be.  When I first set out to look good naked again, I did some research and typed the weight difference into a calculator and figured out that, roughly speaking, all I needed to do was run at 6 mph for 10 hours and I'd be done.  Apparently, though, the human body can't do that.  Which sucks.  So instead of losing weight, I've actually instead been training my body to simply be able to do enough exercise to lose weight, whenever I get around to it.  The best I can manage so far is 6 mph for 20 minutes, which is nowhere near the 10 hours I need.

I think my next strategy will be to add some hill climbing and make my workouts last longer.  I really, really really wanted to get to 3 miles in 30 minutes, however my aggressive drive for speed is killing my hamstrings and causing problems when I go salsa dancing.  So we're gonna dial it back a little, and focus more on time spent on the treadmill...or whatever.  I don't know what the fuck I'm doing.  I'm just going to do more of it.  Oh, and, since my legs can't really take me all the way, I've decided to make my arms do some of the work.  I discovered hundredpushups.com and plan to do that or something similar.  I am hoping that between sets of pushups and bicep curls, I can get a half hour or maybe an hour out of my arms, which I could do on the days where I didn't get a chance to go running.  I need to haul ass though.  I have like shirts that don't fit well any more because my stomach is fat.  And I still look skinny overall, so all my friends are bitching about me needing to lose weight.  Whatever.

I stayed home sick from work today and worked on this android app.  Instead of making the significant progress I hoped to make, I instead actually just learned that many aspects of android programming are not as straightforward as you would assume reading the documentation.  Sure, you can get 70% there, but then simply things like entering text into a box, and not having the keyboard cover that up, end up being incredibly complicated.  I'm telling myself that I learned a lot today, or some bullshit, because otherwise I've basically just wasted an entire day.  Also the girl I'm doing the app with is paranoid that I am going to screw her over by running away with her idea and...continue doing all of the coding work myself, without her to explain the domain knowledge?  I tried to explain the party line from startup gurus about how ideas are worthless and its the execution that matters, but I don't think she likes that school of thought, and so...well we've made no progress on the legal framework with which to do business.  I think that she thinks some detail of how we incorporate this venture will protect her if I suddenly decide to fuck her over, as if it can solve the problem with me owning the domain and all the source code and being the only programmer involved.  And its not like there is any money to embezzle.  On the bright side this is a learning opportunity...to learn...about...people.

Social wise...I have a lot going on, but I am not drinking enough with enough of the people I need to drink with in order to keep up those acquaintanceships.  It doesn't help that a good portion of my current friends/acquaintances like to go drinking in Bellevue (across the water from me) and refuse to ever come to Seattle.  Their attitude is reminiscent of the annoying vibe that people from New York City give off, except that Bellevue is not a big city.  It is the small, overpriced, mini city.  So they don't even come of as pretentious; just lazy.

Salsa...fuck.  My attempts at keeping a group of friends together are failing because I can't make it out dancing enough, because I'm busy with all this other shit.  Also, one of the girls in the group keeps wanting to dance on different days, which I kind of said I was interested in back when my life was not ridiculously busy.  Also, I haven't been dancing enough to make the expensive private lessons worth it.  Also, my first attempt at having a serious dance partner was to invite the girl singer in our band to go.  She has come to the private lessons, and come out dancing a total of two times, and shows no interest in doing it for serious.  My other female friends knows street-style/cumbia and doesn't want to learn ballroom style (what I'm trying to learn).  My other other female friend loves salsa but has no money for lessons.  This other girl I know...expressed an interest, but, from her point of view, I asked her out to go dancing and then abandoned her to hit on other girls.  That wasn't actually what I meant to do, and she had told me she wasn't going to date anyone and made jokes about being my wingman which caused me to assume I was in the friend zone, however, nonetheless she has been looking for opportunities to infer that I am being rude or blowing her off in some way.  I don't understand anything about what is going on in her head, except that she is operating with social rules I've never heard of.  So I am giving up on trying to include her in salsa.

Band is actually going ok.  We are performing a couple of songs at a party.  I have to buy a new guitar and an amp though.  The guy whose house we are going to play at does not have guitar amps, and seems to think that his PA system is fine, except that every time we go to his house the balance is off and we can barely hear the guitars and there is a buzzing sound involved that he insists must be our pedals, even though our pedals work find elsewhere.  So I guess I'm buying an amp.

3-SAT.  I thought of another modification to the algorithm.  I don't have time to implement it.  :(

Writing this all down was supposed to make me feel less stressed but I don't think that worked.  And optimizing my life doesn't seem like enough.  The old college trick of figuring out how to organize my life in order to be efficient as possible doesn't seem to be working;  back in college all school work basically had the same priority--some things may be due sooner but they were all due eventually, so you could work on whatever task you would be the quickest at, at that moment, and it didn't matter.  In real life, though, things I do all have different priorities that are constantly shifting, and I can't do things whenever I want.  I can't get my social drinking done at 10 am, and I can't postpone all of my hangovers until monday night, and I can't go skiing,  or even to the gym, at 2 am.  The worst, actually, is that is very hard to get any work done at work.  My office at my current job is much better than at my last job, but I still feel like I'm trapped in an environment designed to prevent me from doing work.  I have like an hour break between meetings, which is about enough time to get basically nothing done, and then there are always stupid tasks to do, and on top of the normal distractions, and I can barely go more than 4 hours without getting hungry, and then I have to go find food, and also my work colleagues have now decided to frequently burst in and shoot me with nerf guns, an activity I was hoping to opt out of because participating would waste even more time.  Its kind of surprising that even being as boring as possible while standing there getting hit by nerf darts doesn't make one any less enticing of a target.


So...random list of ideas to be more productive:

0.  Work.  Skip more meetings.
1. use pushups/bicep curls as fat loss activity for days I couldn't make it to the gym
2. use vacation days to get work done on android app.  This is important because weekends keep getting taken up by friends and other distractions
3.  stop trying to write everything correctly in the android app.  Need to get to version 1 fast, so I should probably just cave in and write a shitty version that isn't perfect.  Then, rewrite it in increments, or hand the code to someone else.  For once I'd love to be on the pitching end of the legacy shitwagon.
4.  maybe reserve a single weekend day for drinking??
5.  get up earlier, so I have time to plan my day instead of just rushing to get to work in time for the daily standup
 6.  maybe just plan a week at a time, and try to cram together as many activities as possible.

Sometimes I've been doing that have helped:
 1. keeping food, like frozen pizza, in your apartment is great because then you don't have to stop working to go out and find food
2. not playing Terraria, ever, has been a good idea.

On the bright side, I have discovered a great soundtrack for programming.

On the down side, the next Starcraft 2 game is coming out very soon.

On Productivity, Part 4

Advice on learning to do everything on the keyboard is valid.  Unfortunately, this doesn't mean that you will save time by trying to replicate an IDE using screen and vim (although props to you if you can use those as fast as I use Eclipse).

The only downside, is that you may not realize there is a shortcut to be learned.  I just learned ctrl+page[up|down] for switching tabs in Eclipse.

Maybe the best thing to do is ask yourself if there is a keyboard shortcut every time you notice your hand moving to your mouse.

Also, some day, I really should type "vim as eclipse editor" into google.  I'm just so damn lazy.