It was, indeed, a good week.

Finished 6 lessons of math.
Was productive at work.
Got taxes filed.
Fixed leaking tub.
Submitted kids\’ financial application for school.
Avoided time-wasters for the most part.

First, why isn\’t \”strategizing\” a word? COME ON? I can guarantee it\’s on 60% of LinkedIn profiles. Then again… Anyway, moving on….

A habit I\’ve gotten into (and kept up, mostly), is sending my wife a list of goals for each month. It\’s more doable than saying \”I\’m gonna do this crazy thing for a year.\” This month, I decided to try something a little different. I\’ve struggled with wasting time on the Internet (shock!). Facebook, Twitter, ESPN, news sites, even good ol\’ Wikipedia. And most of the time wasting is done on my phone or my Chromebook. Rather than saying, \”None of this stuff at all,\” which is kind of like saying \”No alcohol ever,\” I decided to try this: Fun sites *only* on my home desktop computer. Not on my phone, not on my work computer, not on this here Chromebook. It\’s been surprisingly effective already. Yesterday, a Saturday, I finished my flashcards on my phone. Then I read some of a book I\’ve been wanting to read on my Kindle instead of wasting 1 hour on Facebook. But I\’ve not abandoned Facebook or Twitter entirely; I\’ve gone on each a few times Friday, yesterday, and today. But way less than normal.

Anyway, Mark Zuckerberg would probably not approve, but it\’s using his tool/toy in a space more appropriate to its actual usefulness. So far, I like it. I hope I will keep it up.

The baby is here, Christmas is over now, the new year is upon us, we seem to be getting over whatever sickness has ailed us, and I have a car that I will probably keep for a long time again. Time to get back at it.

Had my first run in a while today. Well, I guess I had one about 1.5 weeks ago, but somehow this one felt more real. And more necessary.

First lesson of math finished since December 20th today. Yesterday, I cracked the book for the first time in, well, since then, but I only did one question before getting distracted. Today, I made myself go downstairs to the lunchroom. Doing so allowed me to finish the 6 problems left in the lesson. Haha. Baby steps. Somehow going somewhere else helps. I felt inept and stupid trying to remember stuff from less than a month ago, but still, I made progress.

Tomorrow is my last day of \”freedom\” regarding alcohol. I haven\’t set any goals regarding it, so I\’ve basically been doing whatever I want (within reason). Friday is the start of a new \”week\” as far as how I track alcohol consumption. Needs to happen. Don\’t want to, but I don\’t want to drink more than I should every day for the rest of my life.

I also had a rather productive day at work. It felt good. It feels like things are slowly getting back to normal.

So, apparently you can mess up access to Gallium OS by simply hitting the space key at the bootup screen. Oops. I had no idea. I\’m guessing that I did or maybe one of my kids did.

Anyway, it makes it so that you can\’t get back into it. I did after a bit of mucking around and wanted to write down my steps as best as I can recall.

1. Get back into Developer Mode.
2. Open a terminal (control shift T, I believe).
3. Your root password won\’t work here. You\’ve got to get to another shell. Hit control alt forward arrow (what would be F2).
4. There, enter \”root\” and whatever password you set previously.
5. Then enable legacy boot again: sudo crossystem dev_boot_legacy=1

That should be it. You should be able to reboot and do the control L shortcut to get back into Gallium.

I\’m not sure if that\’s the write string of text to refer to what I mean. But it\’s what I mean. Basically, I want the ability to easily add handwritten images to my flashcards. Ultimately, I want to be able to do that on Anki. But so far, this has eluded me (but has not alluded me).

Anyway, if Anki could add this feature, that\’d be greeeeat. But so far, they haven\’t.

My shoulder has been hurting. That definitely wasn\’t the reason for taking up \”pen,\” but it came to mind when I started typing. Oh well.

I\’m kind of anonymous here. I don\’t know if I\’ve mentioned that. I used to have a blog that included both my first and last name. When I was promoted to supervise other people, I suddenly had to become public (albeit very slightly) while seeking to hire someone. It freaked me out when a guy I was interviewing mentioned several things about my background he had found out online. I suddenly felt vulnerable. This Private Life I live online was…n\’t. I think I killed that blog that day.

But, some of my favorite engineers were famous people. How would I handle that? People I think of as famous, even, that really aren\’t in the grand scheme of things, are more vulnerable. Engineers I see at work are doubtless googled regularly (I\’ve done it multiple times on at least two that come to mind). As I mature as a professional, that will happen to me–I hope…I guess.

Other thought: Flashcards. I really like them, at least in theory. But I am having a hard time incorporating them in a meaningful way into my daily life. When I was working to go from technician to engineer, I studied religiously. I made new cards constantly. I rarely went to the bathroom without studying. I learned a lot. But I have not kept it up. It reminds me of a diet. You think, \”Gosh, I feel great, and not eating donuts feels outstanding. I\’ll never go back to eating junk!\” But then something happens. You have that one donut because you had a dentist appointment (or whatever), then a snack at work, then, then, then… And all of a sudden you\’re grabbing a couple of donuts on the way back to work from some unusual events. It\’s a small slide from there to going for a donut every day–or two.

That was supposed to be about flashcards, but it ended up being about donuts. Donuts…mmmmm…

Whiskey is another interesting thing. Or, more broadly, alcohol. I really like whisky (giving equal opportunity to the two spellings I know of). I used to drink Scotch, but I\’ve developed a taste for bourbon and it\’s cheaper, so that\’s what I go for now. Evan Williams, at present, which is kind of funny since I didn\’t like it almost at all when I first tried it.

Anyway, I bring it up because I\’ve got a pattern going with it that I find intriguing. I\’ve committed to drinking 17 shots a week (note that Evan Williams is 43% alcohol, so this is technically more than 17, but that\’s an aside). I start my \”alcohol week\” on Friday. This is voluntary, so I can make whatever rules that are helpful for me. I want to have drink available Friday, so that\’s what I do at present. My wife thinks 5 is too many to have in a single night (even at my size), so I\’ve silently chosen 4.5 shots as my max per evening (I\’m 3.5 in at the moment). What, lately, has ended up happening is that I have 4.5 Friday night, 4 or 4.5 Saturday night, 4 Sunday night, and 4 or 4.5 Monday night.  Then I\’m totally dry Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. It\’s kind of a weird bargain. I *want* to drink those other nights, too, but I\’ve found that if I let myself drink as much as I want (under 5 shots), I quickly enjoy it less. Diminishing returns and all that. Doing this, I still want it the other nights, but I say \”no.\”

Anyway, that\’s what\’s been on my mind.

That sounds like a self-help book title. Maybe I\’ll write it some day.

This has happened to me recently, though. I was asked if I wanted to be promoted to my previous boss\’s position. I recognized that no one else in our group was really ideal for it, so I accepted without a lot of thought. But it\’s had more trials than I expected. For example:

1. I have less formal education than all of my supervises. That\’s awkward.
2. I\’m younger than the two that I immediately inherited. That\’s awkward.
3. I have an innate fear of becoming Dilbert\’s boss. That\’s not awkward, but it\’s unfun.
   1. Unfun should be a word.
4. I regularly have people asking me to make decisions that I haven\’t felt prepared to make.

That\’s about the size of it. On Thursday of last week, in the midst of dealing with an issue with one of the most experienced, oldest people I supervise, I kind of snapped. I had about a 15 minute case of histrionics with my amazingly patient boss, and got to watch him try different tactics with someone he expected to behave better.

Anyway, though it wasn\’t fun for either of us, I think it was ultimately valuable for me (at least). I realized while talking to him that I was A) Whining. That\’s really an uncool realization. B) Not really doing as bad a job as I thought. C) I was making excuses. And D) If I were in the military, and I had been given this position, it would be totally inappropriate for me to attempt to get out of it. \”Requested and required\” is a statement that I\’ve heard forever in a different context, and it\’s one I need to keep in mind. In a sense, that\’s what\’s going on here. Trumpkin going for the kids is another. There\’s a time for giving advice and a time for taking orders. That time has come.

More to say about this, but that\’s a start.

I recently bought The Hunt for Red October on Audible. It\’s a book I\’ve read before, and listened to before once, but the recording I had previously was horrible. Do not listen to the J. Charles one. It\’s just atrocious. So bad. The accents are mindbogglingly bad and distracting. The Scott Brick one I\’ve got now is far better. Still has some accents, but nothing nearly as revolting and distracting.

(Spoilers ahead.)

Anyway, in both the book and the movie, Marko Ramius begins the offensive by killing the political officer assigned to his boat. It\’s a kind of shocking moment, really. In the movie, Sean Connery does a pretty good job mimicking what is described in the book. He breaks the guy\’s neck brutally. The \”killee\” is an unlikable, self-important, chekist jerk, sure, but does that mean murder is acceptable?

The other thing that\’s weird about this is that it\’s pretty darn out of character for Marko. He\’s presented as kind of a grandfatherly sailorman (though brilliant) elsewhere.

I\’ve thought about this a little and think it really was murder and not justified. Here\’s why:

1. Marko was not at war. He was a traitor to his own country, yes, but that\’s hardly the same thing. Granted, his country was arguably at war with us, but still, he wasn\’t a citizen of our country.
2. Even if at war, there are limits as to what is moral in killing others.
3. His life was not in imminent danger.
4. The ends don\’t justify the means.

That\’s pretty much it. The only way I can think of justifying his actions is to attribute it to war. But he wasn\’t at war. Well, actually, I just considered the letter… He had fired that off already, which could be interpreted as a declaration of war… But probably not. If the shoe were on the other foot, a US sailor wanted to defect, mailed a letter, then murdered his political officer, would we be similarly OK with it because he was at war? Methinks no.

The Stand was an interesting but disappointing book. In one sense, I enjoyed it. It was captivating at times, the story over all was interesting (though it petered out), and I liked some of the characters.

On the other hand, it was vulgar a ton, had an amazing amount of blasphemy (even by white hats), had way too much and graphic sexual content, and was downright depressing with regards to some of its characters. I suppose that\’s real life for you in some respects, though.

That \”realism\” element is confusing. Sure, it\’s real to throw in a bunch of swear words and sex, but is it good? Is it profitable? Is it of good report? Obviously, Tolkien wouldn\’t have been better without Mordor. But what if they had Sauron raping every elf that got caught? Would that have made it better? What if Gimli dropped f-bombs? Frodo had a crush on Gollum? What then?

In the end, I returned the audiobook. It\’s definitely not something I would want to revisit (a major criteria I use for deciding if I want to keep a book). I wish Stephen King would write in a non-gross way. He\’s definitely got skill, but he needs to be sanctified.

Unfortunately, I haven\’t done much math lately. It\’s not that I haven\’t wanted to. Well, I guess if I *REALLY* wanted to and put enough emphasis on it, it\’d happen, but still, point being that I\’m not opposed to it or something. There\’s just been a lot going on.

But I\’m going to get back into it. I have to. It\’s going to matter long term for my career.