Tabletop

Yesterday was a surprisingly good day. I cooked a Mexican-inspired “hash”—basically beans, potatoes, and other veggies fried with a bit of bacon. It tasted fine but was a bit dry. Considering how simple it was and the fact that I didn’t use a recipe, I was happy with it.

Unfortunately, I had a lot of difficulty sleeping. It was probably partially because I found a fanfiction about Worm characters in Westeros. The characters are real and interesting, and the plot is gripping even though it lacks the overwhelming power that usually draws me into fanfiction. I should really exercise today, but I anticipate that I’ll be too tired. Is that a good thing to anticipate? Probably not.

SCHOOLWORK
I exceeded my time goal and made decent progress. One assignment was frustrating me a bit, but having slept on it I was more able to do it, and I took care of it this morning. It really makes a big difference to be able to sleep and return later after hitting a block—I need to remember this to stay motivated about being ahead on my schoolwork.

JOB

Maybe I should just write this section once or twice a week? It feels like padding to always include it when I’m not even trying to make daily progress. Yeah, maybe I’ll include it on Mondays only.

EXERCISE
The planking is getting ridiculous, and I’m looking forward to being done with it. I should have done another set of decline push-ups yesterday.

SPANISH
I had a little trouble distinguishing the preterite and imperfect, particularly in translating the sentences “I was a carpenter for three years” vs. “I once was a carpenter.” The answers claimed that the former was preterite and the latter was imperfect, but the latter definitely sounds like a completed action to me, which (I thought) would make it perfect. So I wonder if my confusion stems from a misapprehension about the imperfect, or from a pedantic reading of the translation, or from an ambiguity in the translation itself. In other news, I didn’t read El Nombre del Viento or listen to a podcast, so I need to do that for sure today.

DIY

I feel like I’ve reached the final stretch! I sanded the bottom of the legs again with the electric sander so that the wobbling is so slight it’s barely even audible. However, I did this because when I tried demonstrating the lack of wobble to my parents, it was a lot more significant than I remembered. In other words, I suspect that the wobble is being affected by the climate. More excitingly, I started putting together the tabletop! It took me a long time to figure out how to space the boards, but I finally just decided to drive screws in the side boards which are up against the edges. With that done, the two support boards won’t be moving, so I only have to worry about keeping one board in place at a time. I wish I could use a clamp somehow, but I don’t see how, and I think this will work fine. So I’ll probably finish the table top today and maybe even attach it. The next steps will just be sanding and painting/staining.

PROGRAMMING

I made slow progress on my idle game, really not even enough to mention. I think I need to make a product backlog to give myself a better idea of where I’m going and what the logical and/or easy step is. My website deadline is tomorrow though, so I really need to work on that during my programming time.

PEOPLE JOURNAL

I really don’t feel like it today.

BIBLE MEMORY
Psalm 19 still does not come easily for me, even though I’ve reviewed it probably more times than any other in the past couple of months. I even like the Psalm pretty well and it’s unusual, but the words and their order are confusing. I think I need to read it in a different version and maybe read a commentary about it.

BIBLE READING AND PRAYER
Woke up late and sleepy, so I skipped.

Brotherly visits

On Saturday Jared came over and we played cornhole. On Sunday he came over again (after doing his merchandising job) and we watched a little TV and youtube and chatted. Hence, my free time this weekend was kind of short. I finally finished Timon of Athens this morning. Act 1 was painful, and act 2 was predictable and unhappy, but I enjoyed the rest of the play. Timon becomes misanthropic (even calling himself Misanthropos) and while I recognize that it isn’t viable, I can sympathize with the view.

SCHOOLWORK
I worked very well on Saturday and finished my assignments for the week. In the end, my slump didn’t sabotage me too much.

JOB

Nada.

EXERCISE
On Saturday I rowed again, only for 18 minutes. I felt exhausted after that time and incapable of pushing myself, which is silly. I think I need a better goal than “row for 25 minutes.” It would also be beneficial to change up my form of exercise. The planking program is getting ridiculous—the workout I’m in the middle of now started out with 2:40 of straight arm planking, continued to 2:30 minutes of normal planking, and there were still nine exercises left. Can anyone (who isn’t a pro athlete or some kind of ironman) actually do this whole workout in a single session? I doubt it. I should see it as a challenge, and I do, but it’s one that I’m not close to achieving.

SPANISH
I started studying preterite and imperfect, which was extremely helpful and not terribly difficult. I’m looking forward to learning other verb voices and tenses.

DIY
I attached supports to the legs so that the table is sturdier. The table was flat on the ground with the supports clamped, but after I attached the second support it wobbled considerably. Yesterday I put the table upside down and used an electric sander to grind down the length, so now it wobbles only a slight amount. I’m almost ready to attach the top of the table, but I need to find something that is a quarter inch thick to put under the boards so that I can make the tabletop slightly recessed. My search yesterday didn’t turn up anything, but I’m hoping that consulting with Dad will give me an idea. All of the tabletop boards were too long to fit, so I had to saw off very small pieces at the end and sand them again. Thanks to this, I’ve decided that in the future I will figure out when I need boards cut and not do so before that time, so that I can make sure the length is practical. Doing a better job of measuring would probably help too, but I don’t have any ideas for how I could do that differently.

PROGRAMMING

I had more ideas for idle incrementals, but there’s so much that I don’t know how to do and my progress is so slow that I’m easily distracted. I got started converting the little I had written for the coding idle game to use bootstrap, but I don’t think I’ve even tested it yet.

PEOPLE JOURNAL

I wrote about someone at church whose name escapes me at the moment. It's on the tip of my tongue though.

BIBLE MEMORY
I’m up to 27:8 now, but ended up skipping yesterday, contrary to my intentions.

BIBLE READING AND PRAYER
Actually skipped this today, I guess because I was home alone and I wanted to prove to myself I could get up and going early even when no one else is around. It’s not a good excuse.

As a bird to my mountain or to my high tower and God of my salvation?

I’ve had a rough few days since Tuesday. I think it started because I felt overconfidently ahead on my schoolwork, and combined with procrastination for one school assignment in particular (a forum post), I ended up fleeing to a rather absorbing idle game that was not very idle at all. It inspired me to work harder on my own idle game, though I wasn’t inspired enough to actually drop it. I was negligent in most of my other projects, and I got an email from my bank in Japan that makes me extremely anxious every time that I think about it. I need to contact some people, mostly from church but also a few others, and that makes me nervous because it’s a stressful thing. Furthermore, Mom started hinting this week that I should get a job. I need these anxieties to light a fire under me but without disturbing my sleep like they did last night. I’ve also determined that while I can skip a day without a schedule, it’s better not to, and two days is out of the question. Furthermore, starting the day with exercise rather than putting it off gives me a better frame of mind.

I did finally register for my public speaking class, and I cooked a couple of things that were quite tasty. On Monday I made cajun shrimp and vegetables. It probably would have been fine like that, but I mentioned to Mom that I had also planned to put sausage in it, so she whipped that up real quick and added it. With the sausage it was a little too fatty, but still quite good. Last night I made General Tso’s chickpeas. It was about as good as I could expect.

SCHOOLWORK
I got my assignments done for this week except for a couple of short ones that I’m confident I can finish today. Next week is kind of a heavy week though, so I need to maintain discipline. Furthermore, my public speaking class will start on Wednesday.

JOB

Hmm, nothing. I’m going to have to work very hard to meet the goal I set on Tuesday, because I haven’t made progress since.

EXERCISE

On Tuesday I rowed. Since then I’ve done one planking session per day.

SPANISH
I finished unit five and finally will soon start the preterite case. I’ve been wanting to reread the Name of the Wind because it’s a good book and apparently the third one is coming out this summer, so I bought the Spanish version for Kindle. I read the first (very short) chapter.

DIY
On Tuesday I attached pieces to the bottom of the square, but then I realized that my screws were too close to the end. On Wednesday I removed them and put them back in closer to the center so that I could drive the legs into those pieces. So I now have a table without a top. The top requires 1¼ inch screws that I thought we had but we don’t, so I can’t do anything with that yet. I’m also going to attach supports to the legs though, which I can do at any time. I’ll plan to do that today, after a bit of research about how to minimally adjust the length of a piece of wood, since I suspect that the length may not be quite ideal.

PROGRAMMING
Eventually I fixed the component (called a scrollspy) that I mentioned in the last entry. That’s pretty much the only thing I did, though.

PEOPLE JOURNAL
I wrote one more entry this morning and was again convicted of the importance of it.

BIBLE MEMORY

Psalm 27 has some really long verses. I haven’t had difficulty remembering them though. I’ve studied up to verse four, so it’s going slowly.

BIBLE READING AND PRAYER

I read Luke 22 today and was confused because of recently hearing about John’s account of the crucifixion, but when I remembered the source, the differences intrigued me. I read an article recently on Yahoo that talked about how Jesus didn’t give any sign of believing in heaven or hell, so I keep finding examples to disprove that. The devotionals talked about how we like to control our lives even though only God is in control, and that really spoke to me given my recent failings in control. Prayer was a pressing need—I was convicted.

Wooden square

I woke up late today. It’s a beautifully dreary day, my favorite kind, but it also makes me sleepy. I drank a lot of coffee.

SCHOOLWORK
I met my time goal, and enjoyed studying professional ethics, even if I disagreed with some of the answers. The philosophy reading is fatiguing and long—about 25 pages per chapter, and I have to read three chapters per week. 75 textbook pages is a whole lot of philosophy. Also, I’m not enthusiastic about the forum topic for this week, which is due on Thursday. But I’m going to take it one step at a time.

JOB
I worked on my website. If I’m going to meet my goal of ten applications for the month, I need to hurry and finish it, then find some places to apply. Okay, I’ll make a goal (and write it down somewhere that I can see it)—I’ll have a working website and a few places to apply by the 27^th. This is the day that my public speaking class should start, and thus will signify a reduction in my free time.

EXERCISE
I did the usual two reps of my daily exercises.

SPANISH
So at the moment I’m doing 15-20 minutes of grammar study, and possibly listening to a podcast. I need to do more. It would be nice if I could find a book that I was interested in reading—I’ll use the extra time in my half hour of Spanish to look for possibilities there. I’m also thinking about using a website to practice conversation. The idea is to agree to meet and speak half in one language and half in the other. If I found the right partner, I think it would be a very useful tool, but getting started will undoubtedly be difficult. I’ll make setting this up one of my free time activities.

DIY
Mom bought me some pipe clamps, so I was able to put screws in with confidence and made a square! The drill battery ran out (surprise!) and I wasn’t exactly sure what to do next, but at least I finally got started putting something together. I’m actually excited about this hobby, especially since I watched the video. However, some of the equipment seems like it will be quite expensive. I guess I’ll just make projects that don’t require table saws or miter saws until I’m confident that purchasing them will be worthwhile.

PROGRAMMING
I worked on my website for about half an hour, but got frustrated with a component that was not working as it should. It was a bad time of day to be programming, and I was tired from lack of sleep, too.

PEOPLE JOURNAL
Yay! I forgot to do this yesterday, but today I wrote about a friend from church. I decided that I need to do it at the beginning of my blogging/planning session, before I get fired up about getting back to work.

BIBLE MEMORY
The first half of Psalm 26 is okay. Psalm 25 is good up until the last three verses. Today I start Psalm 27, possibly my favorite.

BIBLE READING AND PRAYER
I agreed with the devotionals today, but I didn’t have any particular thoughts about them. Both of the prayers seemed almost irrelevant to the actual devotional.

Emotional Dreams

I went to church yesterday. Once I turned off the highway, it got more and more difficult to breathe. By the time I parked at the church, I was sweating, shaking, and forcing myself to take deep breaths. Was it because it had been so long since I met these people? Or because it had been a couple of months since I interacted with people I wasn’t so comfortable with, or in such a great multitude? I don’t know. It was difficult to talk to all those people, and maybe I’ll feel better knowing that not as many people will be approaching me. If I wanted to go to a church where I don’t have to talk to people, there are plenty of those, or I could stay at home and watch online/TV broadcasts. I wonder how much of it is psychosomatic, too. I think it comes down to the fact that I’m entirely too worried about other people’s opinions—that’s the spiritual component of the condition.

I didn’t sleep very well last night because I was reading and I ate junk food late. I had an emotionally charged dream in which I was reunited with students that I had taught. When I first awoke, I was trying to remember their names, but as the dream got more distant, I decided that the whole idea that I had taught them before was a fiction. In other words, I dreamed up students, met them for the first time, but at the same time created a memory that I had taught them before and therefore my meeting them was a joyful reunion. The emotion was so strong that it nearly swayed my perspective on reality, making me think that I really had interned somewhere several years ago and taught ESL classes to middle and high school students. Although the emotion was completely different, it reminded me of the romantically charged dreams that I’ve had in the past. I can only remember three specifically. They were the most wonderful dreams, but I was actually heartbroken when I woke up. My emotions were so strong that I might even use them as my standard for the definition of romantic love.

SCHOOLWORK
On Saturday I quickly and efficiently dispatched my forum responses. I got started with this week’s forum post, but it’s going to be a doozy. In the end I met my time goal for the week’s schoolwork.

JOB
Nothing new

EXERCISE
I rowed on Saturday for 23 minutes and did my usual bicep curls, decline push-ups and planks. I also signed up for Fitocracy, but I wasn’t impressed with any of the eight or so pre-made workouts. Most of them required barbells, which I have no desire to obtain. I might look for other workouts and create my own on the website, which would be my replacement for the planking app. On Sunday I rested.

SPANISH
I studied more grammar. My enthusiasm is not very high, and I’m tired of doing the Drops app. It uses some obscure vocabulary, doesn’t do refreshing well, trains recognition more than production, among other things. The five minutes is a nice and approachable time limit, but I think I’m at the point of giving it up.

DIY
On Saturday I put some screws in the wood, but joints ended up being very uneven. Yesterday I watched a bunch of woodworking videos, which was enjoyable. I learned that clamps are very important, and right now I only have one that I can use. Mom went to get me two pipe clamps which should serve my purpose.

PROGRAMMING
I looked at some samples, made notes, then started working on my website. I also redesigned the browser window of my Bible memory program. I’m mostly happy with it, but in the end I decided that my indices need to be created elsewhere. In my new design I have an “add” button which pops up a submenu to allow the selection of adding a new text or importing. I was going to have this also allow adding indices, but since I’m putting that elsewhere, a pop-up menu with two options seems silly. So, I’ll probably add an import button and take out the popup menu. That’s my next step, and then I’ll work on creating the ability to make indices.

BIBLE MEMORY
I finished Psalm 26. On Sunday I reviewed 1-18 in the car, and I meant to review 25-26 on the computer, but I forgot.

BIBLE READING AND PRAYER
Luke hasn’t gotten less strange yet. Something stood out to me in Luke 18 or in the devotionals for today, but I can’t remember what it was. I need to keep some small sticky notes on my bedside table so that I can jot down a word or two to help me recall my thoughts.

Block and reorientation

I worked a good hour on my Bible memory project and more or less achieved my goals, reaching a good stopping point. For the rest of the night I wanted to work on Javascript. Here’s what happened: I’m not very familiar with javascript in the first place, but I really want to learn react, so I installed that as the base of the project. I know that it’s easier to make things look good if I use bootstrap, so I installed that too. Then I realized that I have no idea how to synthesize the two, and the base of my project (what I’ve already done) uses html, while react apparently has no need for that.

What can I do? I’m pretty sure that I can use the base that I have, add bootstrap and jquery, and make a decent game with that. In fact, I think that Kittens Game uses jquery and nothing else. Alternatively, I could write the program in react, more or less starting from scratch. Or, I could write it the first and then convert it to the second, which would allow me to learn how to do things without having to waste time on design. That sounds like a clear winner to me.

This year, I’m all about reflection. Can I use that as a part of my personal brand? There’s also analysis. I wasn’t sure that that was the right word, but it does involve breaking things down so that their distinctive parts can be identified, which is what I’m talking about. Analysis alone isn’t what I’m interested in, though.

Programming creativity

I’m feeling really pumped today, bizarrely. I only got about 6 hours of sleep, and I didn’t even exercise yesterday. It could be because I was productive and felt motivated yesterday, or it could be that I just resolved last night that I was going to be positive and active today. I played some Tales of Maj’Eyal and tried out Stellaris briefly, but I spent a lot of time on programming. I also started a new Harry Potter fanfiction that was inspired by one of my all-time favorites. In most ways, it’s a lot better quality, but it’s not quite as much fun. I’m enjoying reading it, but I’m not obsessing over it, which is good.

SCHOOLWORK
I took it easy on schoolwork yesterday, but still worked for over an hour, which was my goal. I struggled writing a forum post response. I could have worked on something different, but I think the more pressing assignment would have led to decreased concentration.

JOB
Nothing new.

EXERCISE
I resumed going through the intermediate planking course. The day was really rough though—it started out with 100 seconds of straight arm planking, followed by two minutes of regular planking. I couldn’t even do those two back to back, much less continue on to more exercises. I finished it by the end of the day though. I can tell that I have more definition in my abs, though I’ve still gone a long way to go to be happy with them. The happy point is, I guess, when my abs are defined even when I’m relaxed. I’m not sure that this is even possible.

I expect that at the end of this month, I will have finished the intermediate course, so I’ve started looking for a replacement. I’m considering programming one—similar to the app I use now, but one that adapts the difficulty to the user’s progress and consistency.

SPANISH
I skipped this for no good reason.

DIY
I’ll definitely work on this today.

PROGRAMMING
For my Bible memorization program, I can now save and load settings. I also talked to Mom about the window I need to redesign and made a solid plan for it. There’s one part that I’ve never done before, but I have an idea about how to do it nonetheless.

I also finished the Javascript React tutorial that creates a tic tac toe game. I set up the whole thing on my computer, too. I’m not completely comfortable with all of it, but I think I’ll give it a shot and maybe once I’ve made some progress in another program I’ll come back and be able to understand it all.

BIBLE MEMORY
I studied Psalm 26:8-10.

BIBLE READING AND PRAYER
I read and stayed awake, but nothing really stuck out to me today.