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Weekly Recap 1525/5000, the first in what will hopefully be a lifetime of weekly updates.
- Read: Principles, by Ray Dalio.
- Read: 99 Bottles of OOP, A Practical Guide to Object-Oriented Design
- Reading: Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain, by David Eagleman.
- Reading: Programming Elixir.
- Writing: Summary/Learnings from Mindset, by Carol Dweck.
- Writing: Blog article on decluttering/my 100 things.
- Biked: 123km.
- Coding:
- Forever project: Daryllxd, a bunch of tools I use to help keep track of my life.
- Added tagging to expenses.
- Added presentation to help me keep track of expenses better.
- Transcripto/conference talk website. I’ve compiled some talk summaries when I was a noob at Ruby here and it got some stars, hehe.
- Still working on it, I need more transcripts because the older ones are YOLO.
- Thinking of hiring someone to transcribe conference talks, then I’ll summarize them.
Life updates:
So I’ve been unemployed as of the end of November last year. I’ve done some things since then (travelling, hiking, getting the flu) but I’ve primarily been in hermit mode for the last weeks.
Every day has been the same: Wake up in the afternoon. Write things in my journal. Read personal development books. Read programming books.. Listen to podcasts. Practice my atrocious writing. Bike indoors for my exercise (though I still skip some sessions 😞). Occasionally, coo. Watch Boston Celtics highlights. Code. Repeat.
When things get too monotonous, I go out and go to a coffee shop to see actual people. But for the most part my days are the same as when I was an employee. I think it’s actually more intense, since I don’t have my homies (project managers, other developers) as support. So I am accountable for my own actions.
Being accountable means I can’t really waste days. But I enjoy the process. I enjoy trying to squeeze out every productive moment I can.
Why am I doing this? Well, in order for me to get a decent next job (which I hope will be overseas), I need to work my ass off. I need to know all the algorithms asked in interviews. I need to know all parts of the web stack, even if I haven’t touched the front-end in a year. I need to get better at interacting with people so the interviewer will like me. Basically, I need to show to a future employer that I have such-and-such skills, so it would be
It’s not as bad as it sounds. Before I got to Sourcepad, I was at full-on hermit mode for my last college semester. I was just telling myself, I need to outwork every guy who wants MY Ruby job. I wanted to make sure that I did everything I could to get a job I want. And I got one at Sourcepad! Now, after 3 and a half years, I’m doing it over again. And honestly, I’m enjoying the whole process.
I’ve given myself a deadline of March 7-8 for this. Let’s see what happens then.