Jack's Diary

Hi guys, thanks for taking the time to check out my journal. I don't always respond in kind, but it's nonetheless much appreciated.

I hung out with B last night to watch the game. It was pretty good, the Celtics stomped Philly and Jaylen Brown made a couple of amazing moves. It's really fun hanging out with B. He's very easy to talk with and has a nice, low-key wit about him. Unfortunately, I asked him if he wanted to watch the Super Bowl today, and he agreed. I didn't really want to commit to watching it, because it's going to take all night and honestly I'd rather have the time to myself. But I kind of got carried away, so whatever.

The problem is it's also my wife's birthday, so I'm taking her out to lunch. So the better part of my day is gone. But it will be good to take her to lunch - her concerts are now done and she has freed up. I will practice my Japanese and impress the people around us ;)

I was down one pound today - 167. My weight has been consistent recently, between 167 and 168, but I'd like to get back to a stable weight of say 165, max. I did year one good tip (on a Japanese practice test of all things) that when you feel the urge to eat, you should wait until you have that urge 30 times. That will be proof you're hungry. It already worked once, yesterday after dinner. I was going to the fridge to eat some cheddar cheese when I asked myself the question. It was quite obvious that not only was I not hungry, but I was also feeling rather bloated. The same thing when the bartender asked us if we were hungry, I wasn't and said nah. Saved a few bucks that way as well.
 
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I think developing that kind of awareness is a really good thing. Being able to stop and ask yourself, "Am I actually hungry," definitely forces you to be more in tune with what your body actually needs.
 
jackbenimble said:
Hi guys, thanks for taking the time to check out my journal. I don't always respond in kind
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No need to respond in kind to every post, no one is keeping score. Its just good to see and hear from you now and again.

Hope the birthday lunch with your wife went well. And congrats on being down a pound, measured as % of the way to your goal that's a lot better than I usually do.
jackbenimble said:
when you feel the urge to eat, you should wait until you have that urge 30 times
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That sounds like good advice, I will try to remember it. My problem is its hard for me to tell when one urge ends and the next begins. But as Cory says maybe its just about thinking things through, if we can do that I think we will realize that eating on an urge is almost never a very good idea.
 
-Cory- said:
I think developing that kind of awareness is a really good thing. Being able to stop and ask yourself, "Am I actually hungry," definitely forces you to be more in tune with what your body actually needs.
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Hi Cory - I think subconsciously I've been trying that. It's especially good if you're full already and think you want more - it makes you say, hold on, I'm not even remotely hungry.

alligatorob said:
Hey Jack, how did your week go?
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Hey Rob - how kind of you to inquire. I didn't get to my journal yesterday because of laziness. But, work, well, Friday was kind of a rough day. I won't get into it, Monday's a new week and a fresh start.

I'm still hammering away at the Japanese. One funny story, P at work was wearing a sweatshirt with some sporty printing on it, English along with some kanji and the name of a Japanese company (written in English). So I was trying to read it, and didn't recognize a couple of the kanji. That combined with the fact that there was no kana made me think it was probably Chinese, which I told him.

He laughed (he does that a lot, he's fun) and asked if I knew all the Japanese characters. I told him no, but I can recognize the common ones (about 2200). He let me take pic of it, which I sent to my wife, and she couldn't read it either. I think he was a little disappointed, but I just gave him a hard time about it...pretty funny.

Anyway, my hours were reasonable this week - about 70 instead of 80. I'm thinking of trying to move this mindless license generation thing to someone else, and I might have a willing taker. But I know the boss likes the way I respond quickly to those, so I have to check with him first. I was thinking, well it's easy money, but in fact it's time-sensitive, repetitive, boring and error-prone. So why exactly is that easy? Plus I'm supposed to be reducing hours, and this is a nice opportunity.

I got my invoice out this morning. Despite all my best efforts, it still took a full hour. The mail bounced, they copy from Excel to Word was as usual a hassle, and I accidentally did the work on the last invoice instead of this one, so I had to swap them back. Anyway, it's done.

I skipped lunch yesterday and got a beach walk in. It was chilly and windy, but above freezing so tolerable. That got me down to 166 as of this morning, which is nice. It was 166.5 yesterday but I was skeptical because sometimes the scale will have you fake number before it settles down. So that looks like it's real, and I'm happy about it because I've been on the 168 plateau for months now.

I had an idea for my Japanese vocabulary app, which might give it a leg-up on the other ones. That is to get a hook into the RTK method. That's proprietary, but the keywords are standard translations, and they can't really do anything if I provide a standard translation, can they? But I think it best suited as an audio file, with first the Japanese word, then corresponding RTK words that map to the Japanese. I know that every time I hear a Japanese word I don't understand, I wish I knew what the RTK keywords were. Anyway, I have to flesh this one out a little. For now, I'm going with my wife shopping for Valentine chocolates.

Did you know that in Japan they women give the valentines to the man, not the reverse? What a country! Of course, my wife immediately adopted the American custom of expecting the husband to do the flowers/card/chocolates/do cartwheels as soon as she figured out that's how it worked here, and naturally I got in hot water more than once about it, like most guys do. It doesn't take them long to figure out what's up once they get here. What a bad idea the whole thing is. Just another way to suck money out of people who could use it for better things.
 
Hi Jack sounds like you are still on more than full time hours . Agreed here too on valentines and all hallmark days .
 
Hi guys - that 70 hours was for two weeks, not one! Good lord, I would die.

Kind of a rough day at work today. And I ended up with a time-consuming assignment to track down any erroneous tickets issued to a certain department. Ugh. And they have been messing with the email archives, so I'm not sure I can track them all down. Blech. And there's a chance I can't find the one for the guy who's been complaining, which would shoot the credibility of the list. Yuck. So, gross.

Anyway, I'll get through all this. It's all temporary. My boss said I should let him know when the hours get high, which was part of the deal. But with this, there's no way I can keep it under 25 for this week. But I just think he wants to know.

He also was discussing my contract situation. It looks like I'm good through June. Possibly through the end of the year. I get a sense that he would be open to hiring me full-time, but I can't even think about that right now. There's too much fire-fighting on this job. I like programming. Firefighting is stressful. Programming can actually be relaxing.

I'm getting stuck back into these chess videos recently. There is one youtuber I really like. His name is John Bartholomew. He has a conservative, but intelligent approach to chess. His number one lesson is don't hang pieces, i.e. accidentally leave pieces unprotected. He has these videos where he takes on lower-ranked players, gradually increasing the level of opponent. You see the different types of players at different levels. But in the end, most of them hang pieces. Of course, this is blitz chess, where you have say 10 or 15 minute games, so you have to move and think fast.

But what's cool about chess is there is a kind of elegance to it. You gradually realize it as you go through the videos. It's about attack, defense, economy of motion, deception, strategy - and not hanging pieces. But in a way, it's a reflection of life. Like, when you're attacked, or lose a piece especially, don't lose your cool and get all aggressive and move fast. Take your time. Think through the ramifications of the new situation.

Oh, yeah, the other thing he said was, try to be dispassionate. For example, what would your attitude be if you were in a chess tournament, and you got up from your own game to stretch your legs, and you were just walking around checking out other's player's games. You wouldn't really care which one was winning - you would just notice the strengths and weaknesses of each position and wouldn't be all emotional about it, clouding your judgment and making rash moves.

It's the same thing if someone is attacked on Twitter. If they respond immediately, it's usually not a great response. But if they take a day or two and let their emotions settle, and think on it a little, they would probably have a much better response.

But, you can't take forever either, at some point, you have to act. Same as chess.

It's the dispassionate angle that I like. I'm going to strive to approach life like that. I think this is one of the things Eckhard Tolle is always pushing. When ego gets caught up in it, it's harder act rationally, and you suffer. Life isn't game, but there are a lot of game-like aspects to it.
 
That's pretty interesting. I don't know much about chess other than the very basics. I can see how good advice and strategies for the game would be helpful in your real life.
 
-Cory- said:
That's pretty interesting. I don't know much about chess other than the very basics. I can see how good advice and strategies for the game would be helpful in your real life.
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Cory - I've always been drawn to chess, although victories over random guys who think they know what they're doing doesn't translate when you playing actual legit players. I understand that which is why I like the chess videos - they allow me to experience chess without all the work and time that would go into actually learning the game. It's never been a priority because of the time and work involved - to what end? But I certainly understand while people get addicted to it. And there is something to be said for enjoying it simply for the aesthetic beauty of the game.
 
I know nothing about chess but I love a game of draughts lol . I know it’s not the same .

Relieved to hear the working week was not 70 hours
 
So, I decided to play the chess game that comes with my macbook, and it absolutely kicks my ass. I've lowered the level of difficulty twice and it still wins. So, I could either dedicate myself to improving or get back on track with the Japanese and guitar.

My wife had the idea to exchange chocolates on Valentine's day (weird how she did that at the same time I complained about it in my diary), plus I had some free cookies, a cupcake and a bag of pretzels in the past couple of days. So I feel like my weight is probably up, but I haven't confronted the scale yet.

Work was a bit challenging this week, but I did manage to offload a lot of the license generation stuff to one of our offshore resources. This is a godsend because it's a partially manual task that should be fully automated. I am getting along better with V, who has a way of annoying me because she doesn't pay attention to all the docs I generated on how to do this other thing, and thinks she's better than everyone. But in the end she seems to be getting the job done and that means I don't have to do it. I just try to keep it light and joke around a bit and not argue. Arguing is a thing I'm definitely not into. You know how some people have a way that naturally leads you into an unproductive, unnecessary debate? She's like that, but she's also smart enough to finally get things sorted, albeit with a lot of help.

I have a couple of projects lined up for today. First, I want to change my Anki deck to one with audio, and it looks like it's going to be a fairly convoluted process. Secondly, I want review some of the audio lessons so I know what all the words are. I'm also determined to get to the gym. Tonight we're visiting friends so that cuts into the day. Oh, yeah, I'm going to get my guitar restrung. I got the strings off, but haven't put them back in yet. It's a chore. I might try it myself, I've done it before.

It's been pretty chilly the last couple of days, so I haven't walked the beach. I might shoot for it tomorrow.
 
Chess, Japanese, guitar ... you've got so many great things going on! Let alone work and your mildly annoying workmate. (Sounds like you've got it all worked out, letting her annoyingness wash over you without impact.)
I had to smile at this:
jackbenimble said:
Tonight we're visiting friends so that cuts into the day.
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!!! and :D , because social interaction is part of what makes the day!
 
Uhff - I spent hours yesterday playing the chess machine.
Petal001 said:
Jack maybe your wife is telepathic . Lol
Good luck with the beach walk tomorrow
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Maybe so, P. It was a good idea.

aiminglow said:
Chess, Japanese, guitar ... you've got so many great things going on! Let alone work and your mildly annoying workmate. (Sounds like you've got it all worked out, letting her annoyingness wash over you without impact.)
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Sound advice, Aiminglow. I should keep that in mind. Life is too short.

Speaking of chess, I allowed my self to get sucked into a few - well, a bunch of games with the chess program yesterday. When I set it to the lowest level, sure enough, it stars playing stupid, more or less giving pieces away. The next level I was able to win easily enough. It's at the third level where things get a little dicey. I was able to snag a couple of wins, but it's the openings that trip me up. The good news about openings is that if you learn the basic ones, especially at my level, it can get you into the middle-game relatively unscathed. The bad news is - why am I even entertaining the idea of studying openings? I'm supposed to be Japanese/guitar/software. Maybe just 15 minutes a day? Arggh. I have no self-discipline.

I shouldn't say that. I did finally get to the gym yesterday, and it was nice - I felt a bit sore later on and this morning. Also, I've been very faithful about my Japanese flashcard decks. I've done both of them every single day except one for the past month-plus. A good motivator on that is, if you skip a day, the reviews double. You really can't skip a day. I've turned off the new words on the vocabulary one, because 25 new words a day was getting to be too much with all the reviews. I'm down to 70 or 80 a day on that one from about 120 or so. Yesterday was easy enough.

The lady from work called twice yesterday, once Friday She's under a lot of pressure to get this thing done, so I helped her out. I would have anyway, I suppose. But she let it slip that she had complained to her boss that I hadn't been available Friday morning when the tech came in to review where we were at. She had to help him out, and her boss (my former boss) had said why did I have him in when I was "unprepared". Of course, she knew I had a high-priority fire on my hands that showed up in my inbox that morning and demanded an immediate and detailed response (another group had ordered a bunch of PCs with the wrong OS and I had to explain why they needed a different one), but apparently she didn't mention that part.

And you see, that's how she is. It's always the documentation wasn't good enough, she had to fix everything herself, I "took" her computers, the image wasn't working when she got it, etc. All slander, propaganda, half-truths and outright lies. Heck, she even lied - twice - when I was in the same meeting with her. I called her out on it, and she turned red and pretended she was joking. It's just so habitual with her she can't help it anymore, which is why she let it slip that she threw me under the bus on the phone call yesterday. As if that was news.

Ah, so much negativity on a nice Sunday morning. I have my health. I was under (167.5) despite my recent bad food choices. I have good teeth. I don't hate my boss. I have money in the bank. I have to get back to enjoying the day. It's supposed to be warmer out today, I'll get to the beach. No chess.
 
Wow Jack she sounds a bit toxic .i would keep all your interactions in writing . Not nice of her to complain like that .

sounds like you are addicted to chess now .
Well done on keeping weight healthy .
 
It does sound like she is toxic, Jack. People like that are just not good to be around.
Jack.....easing himself into retirement......
 
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