Jack's Diary

Not so encouraged - I took another practice JLPT N3 test on youtube and kind of got blown out of the water - probably got 50% or so right. I can't believe my daughter got 100% on the listening part - of course, she's gone to Japanese school every Saturday when she was a kid plus had a couple of months of intensive studying - I think it's going to be a tough test, though. Maybe I should shoot for the N4, which is one level lower - there will be less pressure. There are some many ways to say the same thing in Japanese - and they use most of them, it seems like. I might not take the test at all, for that matter.
 
Glad the weekend gave you some time to get your mind off work and onto something you enjoy. You had a lot of projects run into bumps at the same time. Hope this week goes more smoothly.
 
I ran into a roadblock at work this week - the new Redhat absolutely does not clone. The RAID partitioning is at the core of the problem. I asked them if they really needed RAID, and the answer was, maybe not. If so, the problem goes away. It seems like they're ready to lean in that direction.

I saw a guy at guitar center yesterday playing some absolutely sweet blues licks. Really old school stuff, like Missippi John Hurt style. He showed me a little of what he was doing. One of the main things was playing 7ths, another was playing at different positions on the neck. A third was alternating thumb picking, and a fourth was kind of throwing in brushdowns with you your strumming hand.

So, I thought, this is what I need to do. Instead of playing songs, play blues. I've always loved the blues. It's easy - just three chords, but the improvisation possibilities are endless.

I'm still putting a lot of time into Japanese. Right now, I'm thinking about taking the N3 level test in December, just to have something to shoot for. N3 is no simple thing, though. My concern is with my listening, but I'm not so sure where my reading / writing / vocab skills are at either.

My weight was around 167 yesterday. But at least I got the gym. My knee is sore on and off. I really have to think about finding a job with actual benefits, health plan, 401k, etc. It's definitely do-able. There's a lot of demand out there. Recruiters always emailing me. But, I really wish I could just retire. I just don't think I have quite enough in the bank yet.
 
jackbenimble said:
I saw a guy at guitar center yesterday playing some absolutely sweet blues licks. Really old school stuff, like Missippi John Hurt style. He showed me a little of what he was doing. One of the main things was playing 7ths, another was playing at different positions on the neck. A third was alternating thumb picking, and a fourth was kind of throwing in brushdowns with you your strumming hand.

So, I thought, this is what I need to do. Instead of playing songs, play blues. I've always loved the blues. It's easy - just three chords, but the improvisation possibilities are endless.
Click to expand...

This sounds AWESOME!!
 
I've been gaining weight - up to 169.5 this morning.

Jogging isn't really an option with my knee and hip - anyway, walking is less wear and tear. But I've been eating at night AND buying a cheezit snack during the day. I need to make those two go away, like now.

I've dumped most of my investments into the S&P 500. I know it's considered too risky for someone my age, but screw it. Bonds just don't go down as much when things go down, but really drag the market when things go up. I have 25, maybe 30 years left - that gives the market time to recover if there's a down period. Now, I might have to take some money out during a down period, but overall, I'm going to roll with an aggressive approach.

I'm trying to do meditation and walking. And do "the most important thing first".

I didn't have anything to do at work yesterday and have a knowledge transfer meeting with the offshore team on Wednesday. My contract ends in May sometime. I'm suddenly thinking, oh, this could be it after all.
 
So, I'm back up to 169.5 after a Mother's day meal. I want to get down to 165 before vacation in July. I have to make it my main focus.

I've been getting into Eckhardt Tolle recently. After the initial rush, though, the bumps of the reality of life kind of take you back to who you are. But, the general concept of living in the now, and not identifying and getting pulled into negative thoughts obviously makes a ton of sense. And since most negative thoughts are probably associated with your ego, the idea that the ego is just an illusion then takes away the source of your negative thoughts, it's pretty compelling.

I watched the second to last episode of the game of thrones last night. It was pretty dull, which is unusual. I'm sure the finale will be much more interesting, though.

I'm still working, as of the middle of May. I'm interested to see if my contract gets extended beyond May. There's a new project that I've been working on, but they're attempting to outsource it. The guys in India finally manage to get a piece of it done, but I had to give them exact instructions for the most part.

Oh, I just had this dream where my boss, not my current one, but a mythical one, accused me of not putting in enough hours. What a horror show.

As far as the Japanese study is going, it's a little tough. My memory has never been that great, and it's harder than something like French, where you can usually make an association with a similar English word in terms of vocabulary building.
 
I was at 170.5 this morning. Usually, that's my red-line, you can't ignore the problem any longer weight, 170. So, I went to the beach this morning and did a mostly-walk but also threw some jogging in there.

I'm going to Japan on July 9, so getting down to 165 by then should be pretty do-able.

I also have to get back into my 3x week weightlifting mode. I was doing that for years and somehow fell out of it.

Also, I'm going to try doing pushups again. It seemed to mess up my knee the last couple of times, so we'll see.

Oh, yeah, and I obviously have to just cut down on all the eating. It's just volume, like grapes, bananas, it's not really too many sweets. But of course I did have a bunch on Mother's day, so, there is that.

Anyway, at least I have a deadline.
 
So, I was still 170 this morning, although I mixed a little jogging with my walk last night. I did about 1/3 jog the rest walking this morning, but I also went weightlifting. Plus I did 25 pushups when I got up. So I was down to 167 by the time I got back home.

I had lunch, but also some almonds. I didn't kill myself with them, but that adds to it.

I slept a little on the beach wall, so I finally got some color, just right.

I've been heavily into Japanese for a while, but I kind of goofed off this afternoon, just on a Japanese forum and a Japanese language site where the guy explained his theory. They have made a great tool for memorizing sentence, but I don't know if it will work with the version of the flashcard software that I have.
 
So, I forgot to weigh myself this morning, but I was 168.5 this afternoon after a light jog. So, not much to report yet. I didn't eat last night.

I'm having a banana right now - but, I resisted having some nuts, at least.

Tomorrow for sure I have to jog in the morning. I want to make this a six-day a week thing, at least until the Japan trip. Also, weightlifting after work. Or, vice-versa.
 
So, I was 168.5 this morning, down from 170.5 a few days ago. I did some light jogging yesterday and went weightlifting this morning.

I ended up having those almonds, but I was so full that I just had a couple of bites of chicken for dinner.

So it's already May 20th - the Japan trip is July 9. So maybe 6 or 7 weeks - plenty of time to get down to 165.
 
So, I was at 168 this morning, same as yesterday. I have 3 pounds to go to hit my goal of 165 by July 9. That gives me about 6 weeks. Should be a piece of cake as long as I continue to abstain from eating at night, which is the hardest part.

I'm stoked for the 3-day weekend. It's a little chilly now but will get warmer. I plan to jog every day and weightlift two of the 3 days.

The good news is I've also got 27 hours of "sick" time accumulated. My contract was extended through the end of June (it was a 6-week extension, so that's six more weeks of work), so I'll plan to take those hours in the upcoming weeks. The problem is they have to be sick days, so I kind of have to play it by ear when I take them. Because I can't tell my boss I'm taking a vacation day, then turn around and tell the agency I'm taking a sick day. Or can I? Actually, this week upcoming would be a good day to take one. A 3-day week, can you imagine?
 
I have a Dr's appt and a Japanese meetup today. I'm trying to figure when I'll do my jogging/weightlifting.

I've been doing a lot of watching Japanese movies, but not to much else. A little bit of flash-carding. But, my wife is starting to speak to me in Japanese a little bit. First time ever. I have a long, and I mean long way to go to gain actual fluency, but it's encouraging that she thinks enough about my Japanese that's it's bearable to her at this point.
 
I just got back from weightlifting and jogging. This was my first time this year where I mostly jogged the whole time - I only stopped a bit because I was coughing.

I'm hoping my knee holds up. It's a bit sore right now. That comes and goes, but I'm learning to live with it, maybe?

My weight was 166 after the jog. I know I'll get that right back, but I always like to weigh myself after exercise - it's great motivation.

I'm a little concerned about finding my next job. I just read an article by a developer who said what he looks for in a resume - stuff like unit testing, what code you've done on your own, stack overflow account, best practices. So, I'm not so great with any of that stuff, and I should be preparing, because my boss clearly doesn't intend to keep me around long term. But, at the same time, I'm finally getting into Japanese, and I want to learn as much as possible for the trip. So, I know I'm screwing up by not getting ready, but I'm just going to have to live with that. I have money in the bank for a year without working, and plus I can withdraw from my 401k without penalty at my age. We fully own the house. It's not like when I was out of work in 2002, and ran out of money after six months and started mounting up debt.

So, I'm just going to kind of focus on Japanese for now. Que serra, serra.
 
jackbenimble said:
My weight was 166 after the jog. I know I'll get that right back, but I always like to weigh myself after exercise - it's great motivation.
Click to expand...

weighing after exercise will not usually give a good measure, however if you weigh before and after it will tell you if you are drinking enough during your exercise session.
 
Yeah, the thing I need to do is to keep hydrated. For some reason, I never got into that habit. It seems like a lot to carry around if you're jogging

I got slammed with a full-blown cold yesterday - I think it was a little cool-ish in the morning, and the temp in the doctor's waiting room was chilly, and me with just my t-shirt.

I was sneezing and coughing and my eyes were tearing and my nose was running like a faucet. So I went to CVS and got zinc, the CVS brand of Thera-flu, packet style. I hung in there the rest of the day, but when I went to bet at 10, which is way early for me, I took not one but two sleeping pills, and I took another when I woke up at three.

Anyway, the worst of it seems to be gone now, although I have a headache and some stiffness.

I was down to 166 on the scale today, so I'm only one lbs. short of by goal weight of 165. It's really nice not go around feeling stuffed all the time. 166 on the low end though, i'm more likely 167 range but anyway, I'm making progress.
 
Wahoo - I took the day off. And it will be paid, because it's one of the 27 hours of accrued vacation I have. I could've gone in, but since I caught the cold, I figured I might as well give myself another day to recover.

It hasn't been that bad since the first, day, but I might as give myself extra time to recover.

I'm 167.5 as of this morning. I didn't really work out over the last 3 days due to the cold, but I'm holding the line on weight gain at least.

Anyway, I'm still coughing, so it's probably a good idea. The worst day was Saturday.

The thing I need to do is get out of the house. I did get to the beach a little bit yesterday, although by the time I got there it was pretty chilly. I was the only one wearing a jacket, though, so I guess i wasn't that bad.

I'm kind of burning out on the Japanese studying. But it is kind of fun to parse through the subtitles and try to guess when the pronunciation's going to be. It's hard to find good subject matter, though. It's mostly cartoons.
 
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Well, they finally dropped the hammer at work today. The boss was pretty nice about it, and offered the option of working independently for them - but only when they needed it. There is a margin crunch and I guess my recruiter was raising my rate every six months (none of which I received, of course). So, I don't expect much from that, but the advantage is I can list myself as a freelance contractor for them on my resume.

So, there it is. Well, at least I have money in the bank and can collect. My plan says I can retire, but I don't think I have quite enough there yet - especially with the market tumbling away as it has been recently.

So, it's back to the grindstone of practicing Java questions, working on my habits app, and taking java courses. It's a grind, but I went through a year and 1/2 ago so it's still kind of fresh in my mind.

I hope I'm not considered too old/slow to get a job, but times have changed. I didn't blow them away at the last job, right? Or else they would've found something for me.

Anyway, I was at 165.5 this morning, pretty close to my target goal. With my extra time, I might just get some extra jogging in and drop down to 162 or 163 or so.

At least the cost of the health plan drops drastically when you're out of work.
 
This morning I was 165 on the scale exactly, so, goal achieved. I'm onto a new phase of my life. I'm going to upgrade my Java skills in anticipation of interview questions.

Probably the first thing I'm going to do is get my habits/todo app back online. I will also probably put my app back on the market, when the time is right. So, those are a couple of URLs I'll be able to put on my resume. I might even post the source code, but I dunno.

One thing I really want to do is get through a course on Java testing. They really take that stuff seriously these days, and it's weak point on my resume.

I'm also considering updating my certification to Java 8. It costs $245, but it will be a good refresher and upgrade.

But probably the most important of all is to go through the standard Java interview questions and make sure I have a good handle on all of them.

Sigh. Lots to do. Posting the apps are easy kills, though. I'll probably work on them first.
 
So, my wife told me this morning to 1) keep good posture and 2) go the gym first thing everyday. So, those are two goals for now.

Because of the Japan trip, which is 5 weeks away, I don't want to start searching in earnest until I get back - but I do want to prepare in earnest for the job interviews.

My recruiter is already after me for my resume, but their benefits are so poor, I don't know if I want to go through them again. They're more of a consulting than a full-time agency.

The other thing is, I wonder if I should consider free-lancing? I dunno - sometimes it's tough to get companies to pay you. Plus, you pay double! social security. Plus you're on your own for benefits. I don't know.

The other thing I need to do is make a schedule for the day and follow it.
 
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