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.