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February 8, 2016 5:44 PM

Work, work, work

I feel like I'm working too much. Last Sunday, I had to work for five hours because of something I screwed up earlier in the week. I decided to leave early on Friday to compensate for that, but I still ended up staying at work an hour later then I planned, and I was thinking about work the whole time on the bus ride home. I've been thinking about work so much that it's seeping into my dreams at night. And I hate my dreams.

I've been thinking about the fact that work eats up so much time in my day, and I really do want to start working remotely at some point this year. I just have some goals I want to achieve before that point.

• Go to sleep by 10pm
• Get to work at 7am
• Leave work at 4pm

On another note, I filed my taxes! So early this year. Eagerly awaiting my refund.

I really do want to get back to adding more things to this site as well. I've just been really busy with work and by the time I've showered, had dinner, and cleaned everything, I realize it's 9pm already. And I don't like to have too much mental stimulation after 9.

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January 24, 2016 2:11 PM

Happy New Year

Use the Continue Reading link to see some 2021 commentary

Yeah, I know. I'm almost a month late.

So the blog was down for a bit, and because my status updates are linked to the blog those ended up being down as well. I've finally put them back up again! And maybe I've fixed the problem. Not sure though. Anyway, a new year means new resolutions.

• Go to sleep by 10
• Wake up at 6
• Get to work by 7
• Exercise at least twice a week
• Keep food spending under $150 a month
• Work at person pace at work (currently going between snail and turtle)
• Read 12 books this year
• Learn something...tech-y
• Get more comfortable with Teochew
• Go to meetups every month
• Keep my apartment clean and organized
• Stop wasting time on the internet

I realized I make a lot of these lists. I tried to quantify as much as I could this time though. I guess using the term 'person' or 'people' pace is a bit vague, but I've always thought that I moved really slowly at work, and I could do better to not waste too much time. I'm still not exactly sure what I want to learn that's tech-related. Perhaps some type of assembly or something reverse engineering related.

As always, I can't seem to get enough sleep. I did wake up before 8am today all on my own though!

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November 4, 2015 10:17 PM

October Review

In the beginning of October I set a budget for myself: $500, excluding rent. How did I do? I was $350 over budget. Terrible. I am still spending way too much. But even though I was way over budget, I think October was a great success. I'm only starting my journey to financial independence, and I made some good changes to my life.

• I canceled my Comcast subscription. This brings down my monthly internet bill from $90 to $36. (Of course Verizon decided to charge me insane activation fees but they are one-time only, so I won't have to deal with that again.)
• I stopped machine drying my clothes. (Okay, I still used the dryer when I visited my family for a week)
• I did a lot more cooking.
• I went to more meetups. (Some of which provided free dinner!)
• I managed to move my bed time from 1am to 11pm.
• I made sure to not leave any dishes in the sink before I went to bed.

Clearly I still have a lot of things to improve on. Here are my goals for November:

• Get my bedtime down to 10pm.
• Don't spend more than $500.
• Read all of those books I got from the library.
• Organize my clothes and all my junk in this apartment.
• Arrive at work before 8am.
• Get my productivity at work up to turtle pace. (I feel like I am currently at snail pace)

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October 17, 2015 2:03 PM

Happiness

Use the Continue Reading link to see some 2021 commentary

About a month ago I posted that I was in a funk. I was wasting so much of my time and not doing anything about it. Well, now I am pleased to say I am out of my funk and back to being one of the happiest people I know! How did that happen? I think reading Mr. Money Mustache was the big motivational push I needed to start making some changes in my life. Along with that, I also read some other personal finance blogs, like Early Retirement Extreme, The Mad Fientist, and jlcollinsnh. It turns out the point of these blogs isn't just to teach you how to be frugal and invest your money. It's about finding the joy in the simple things in life and learning to love what you currently have. It's amazing what the world has to offer on such a small price.

I'm slowly getting myself to exercise more, cook more, spend time with others more, and sleep earlier. The sleeping too late thing is still a problem, but I'm working on it. I also stumbled upon Budget Bytes which has some awesome, easy-to-follow recipes. It's actually made me a little excited to cook things each night.

On the technical side of things, I finally was able to add support for viewing issues under multiple tags in my Issue Tracker. It was way more complicated than I expected it to be, but I'm glad I finished it and I think I worked out all the kinks. Lesson learned: remember to explicitly set values to NULL!

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October 9, 2015 12:31 AM

Slow[er] Internet

Two weeks ago, I decided that I was fed up with Comcast. My last bill was almost $90. All for fast-ish internet that dropped every day and cable that I didn't even use. First I tried negotiating with some customer service reps to try and get a better deal. The most I could save was $10 if I switched to 25Mbps and cut cable. So I thought, screw it, I'm getting Verizon. However, Fios isn't even available in my apartment. The best they could find was DSL for 7Mbps. This sounded extremely slow. But then I remembered still having dial-up in my high school days, and I figured, I can live with it.

Turns out, I'm not even getting close to the advertised 7Mbps. It's more like 0.5Mbps. Then again, I was only getting about 20Mbps with my "150Mbps" internet from Comcast. When I first got the internet set up, it was noticeably slower. Sites that used to load in about a second were now taking a few seconds. At this point though, I think I'm used to it.

I fired up Spotify today (I have a premium account) and tried to stream one of their playlists. It did take about half a minute of loading before I heard any music, but once it started playing, it was perfectly fine! No need to buffer again. If the quality is any worse, my ears aren't good enough to notice it.

I also just decided to watch a youtube video. It worked. No pausing in the middle. Haven't tried streaming on Netflix yet, but will update this post when I do.

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