The highlight of the week is the fact that I went to spin class today. What was crazy was that I the way and situation that happened. Yesterday I decided to be retarded and was watching netflix until 3am. And so, today I was retardedly dead and sleepy at work. When I got home at 6:15pm. I took a nap. Yup, I took a nap. My alarm went off at 6:45 and I was *really* tempted to stay in bed. It's been raining all week in San Francisco. Today was no exception, and there was still a slight rain when I got home. It was raining - the perfect rationalization. I'm so freaking comfy in my bed. You have no idea how comfy my bed is. Actually you probably do, I'm sure your bed is just as comfy. But for some reason.. I managed to get out of my bed, pack all my shit and leave the building. I don't know how I managed to do it. But that has got to be the highlight of the week. Attending spin class despite rain and napping in my bed.

I'm still listening to the art of learning from some Chess / Taichi grand master and it's actually very interesting. Like all books, there's quite a bit of unnecessary crap and fluff. But the underlying concepts are sound and very informative. Basically, whenever you learn something. You should always try and learn it in such a way that it suits your personal style. I'm not really the aggressive / outgoing type of person so when I learn martial arts - I should focus on counter attacking and defense. Stuff like that.

I accidentally turned off my brain and something stupid happened. I used my old toothbrush (that I used to clean cups and dishes) to brush my teeth. Ugh. Gross. But then stupid thing was I didn't realize it until my brain started working. Which was one minute into the tooth brushing. Something feels weird. Are you sure you're using the right toothbrush? Aw, fuck. I need to stop turning off my brain. Auto pilot happens too much. Too damn much.

The other thing in the art of learning book is that you need to train yourself to push past resistance. You'll never feel like doing anything. But each time that you do something when you don't feel like it. It trains you to make it easier for the future. Even though you might not notice it. I never feel like doing shit. I just wanna watch anime and eat food. But, I need to do the right thing even when I don't feel like it. That's how you grow in any skill and area of growth. Doing the right thing and consistency.

The last thought that I had was that I need to start blogging twice a week. So from now on I'll blog the weekly on the Wednesday and on the Saturday I'll try and write a more meaningful article distilled from my rambling thoughts. It's weird because there's so much that I want to do. Actually that's not weird. The weird thing is growing yourself or pushing yourself in areas that are good for you versus what I feel is pointless struggle, learning for the sake of learning.

Learning for the sake of learning is good. But you should only learn and focus on areas that are interested and critical to your goals. I'm really tempted to just learn random shit on a whim and read a ton of books. That's good, but I don't think those books will help me attain my goals. There was a period of time where I would learn for the sake of learning and now I think that it's not my style and not good for me. I previously tried to force myself to learn new programming languages that I have no interest in because 'people' say you should learn a new programming language every year. Now, it might be good for the people who say it. And I'm sure learning a new language helped them. I believe it *would* help me as well.

But it's not my style. I hate learning for the sake of learning because I think it's bullshit. And then I spend a shit ton of my willpower forcing myself to learn even when I don't want to. And then the rest of my goals and work goes to shit. I like to learn by building stuff. I'll learn mobile development by building stuff. I learned Python by building stuff. Building stuff is fun for me. So from now on, I'm not going to do things just because other people say it's good - unless I actually want to and it is in line with my goals.

The thing is having said that, it's hard to differentiate vs what I want and what is actually good. If given the choice, I would rather never work out and just eat food all day. But that's not the right or good choice for me. So I guess the difficulty is finding the right balance in doing the right thing even when you don't want to. And not forcing yourself down the wrong path because you think it would be good or because of outside influence. I guess that's something personal that I still need to work through.

tl;dr - I went to the gym after waking up from a short nap, and walked in the rain. some crazy ass shit I overcame today.</strong></p>

So I woke up today and I was working from home because of the storm. Then my power went out around 9:30am. Lucky for me my cellphone, laptop and tablet was charged. I tethered internet from my cellphone and then I was good to start working on my laptop.

Technology is so marvelous. There's almost no way that I would've imagined being able to work remotely when the power is out. Tethering from a cellphone gives me 3M of internet, which is faster than what I use to use to download anime. I used to only have 1M which let me download at a fast speed of 128 kb /s. Good old days. My Macbook pro actually lasted a surprising amount of time. I was using it from 10am til about 4pm. That's 6 hours of solid use. I was running vagrant, and cranking through test cases and what not. I had a bunch of programs open and stuff and it still lasted 6 hours.

The strange thing that I wanted to write about was towards the end of the day... at around 4pm when my juice was running low. I was somehow really scared. I don't know why. It's like how I read about people being scared to be disconnected from the internet. People always say that you should disconnect when you're on vacation and stuff. I was just really scared that electricity was not going to come back on for multiple days. It's not like I would starve or anything.

It occurred to me that without electricity I can't really function at all. Or rather, there isn't much for me to do besides sleep and meditate. It was dark out and there was no light indoors without electricity. Without electricity I can't read books on my tablet, play video games or code. I can't even plan and just write stuff on my book because it's pitch black. But still - I don't know why I was feeling fear. It was scary. I guess I'm scared of the dark.

I guess electricity is a necessity of my life now. Much like food and water. I don't think I'd function very well without electricity. I guess I wouldn't be able to caveman it up. Or would I? I guess if it was caveman or die I'd be able to survive. Don't even know why I'm writing at this point. Electricity is back so it's time to do some reading / video games.

tl;dr - no electricity scares me.</strong></p>

This Sunday I finally hit the gym. It was glorious. I was rationalizing and making excuses to not go. But honestly, the second I left my apartment complex and walked onto the streets at night in the cold win. I started grinning uncontrollably. Life is awesome. I get to walk to the gym and then work out in a nice place uncrowded and what not.

There's been articles on starting small and being consistent and what not. I think just getting out the door for me is enough of a catalyst to trigger me to work out. So from now on whenever I'm lazy. I'll just pack my shit. And walk out the building. If i feel like lazy after walking out the building, I'm welcome to return and walk right back home. Maybe one day I'll actually return but I think that most days I'll end up going to the gym once I'm dressed and out the door.

This Sunday I also pushed myself to do 3x intervals to hit 10 mph. So I did 3x 30 second intervals of 10 mph. I think I'll need to reach 5x 30 second intervals of 10mph in order to be able to sprint at a constant 9 mph. I want to break a 5 minute mile. But first I need to break a 6 minute mile. My current best is a 7 minute mile so I'm way off. But it's good to have goals.

My hard work at work finally got released. It's live. Hallelujah. I wrote the most ab(used) endpoint. It's the endpoint that must be used in order to do anything.  The top of the conversion tunnel - so to speak. It's super amazing and fun that developers are using my code. It's exciting. Even though previously, I worked on web projects that's being hit by millions. Each new release is just exciting and fun. People are using shit that I built.

Last weekend I wasted most of it. But it was okay. It's cool to have a break from time to time. I watched IEM San Jose, Hot6Cup, and UFC. Anthony Pettis is a god. He's Anderson Silva / Jose Aldo level and it's super exciting to watch him defend the lightweight title. He could possibly be better than BJ Penn in his prime. He's too slick and well rounded.

Spin class got canceled todays so I'm disappointed. And the weight room was closed and the gym was packed so I didn't get to do weights. But - some beats none. And the fact that I showed up and ran a mile. Life is good. Tomorrow is predicted to be torrential rain so I packed my laptop and am working from home. I'm excited to be able to work from home because my standing desk is amazing and I can code so much more comfortable at home

I've been reading the happiness book and it says that a big part of being happy is just simply expressing gratitude. And now I've been trying to express 3 things per day that I'm grateful for.

Today - I'm grateful that I work with amazingly smart people and that my work is satisfying and fun. I'm grateful that I got to have coffee with Cole - he's like a mentor and a friend all in one. I'm grateful that I get to watch hd movies on demand on my TV/Tablet/Laptop. Technology has improved so much.

I forgot about writing a weekly analysis last week because I was sick with the plague. I still wrote a post on the movie Detective Dee which was awesome entertainment so I think I'm good.

Since last week... I did some pretty amazing things. I'd rate the past week as a 9/10 in terms of enjoyment and growth. I had Thanksgiving dinner with Stan the Man and we just chilled and caught up. Stan is a badass. He helped me learn and grow so much. I'm sure I helped him as well. Growth man. Stan inspires growth and I inspire growth.

In the thanksgiving / recovery weekend I finally finished Bioshock Infinite. I beat it in ~16 hours or two solid afternoon gaming sessions. In addition to beating Bioshock Infinite I was active in developing my side project otakuhomepage. Python is just such a joy to code in. Coding in python just brings me delight. Now I know why Loren was all about the Python kool-aid. I got to use twitter-python and instagram-python which are python libraries for the respective API services. Now every hour my cron runs and it helps me like people's tweets / pictures and I get organic exposure.

I didn't go to the gym this Sunday. So I missed twice. It's one of the rare misses that I don't go to the gym twice in a row. But it was a conscious choice. I decided that rest was more important in the off chance that the flu strikes back and I'm incapacitated for even longer.

This weekend I also applied for and got the Chase Freedom credit card with $200 cash back. My credit line from the Freedom... is pretty insane.  I don't even know why they gave me such a high credit limit considering the Freedom isn't even a high level card. I hope this means that when I apply for the Chase Sapphire Preferred / Other travel cards that I'll be able to get them no problem.

My twitter and instagrams are growing while I sleep. That is crazy shit. It's so amazing how I can code something like that on a whim in less than 3 hours. Part of that is the power of Python... the other part of that is me. I'm a badass now. I guess I've become the kind of Software Engineer that I've always aspired to be. I get shit done and make shit happen. It's pretty damn satisfying.

I also bought another pair of Sennheiser HD 598s in the amazon black friday sale for $120. It was an amazing discount and more than 50% off. Why did I get another pair when I already have one? Now I can leave a pair at work and I'll have heavenly music at both work and home.

I've learned so much from Stan. He is a true badass. This week I relearned or re-experienced the idea: there is no right time. There is no right time for anything. It's never too late. And it's too early. Just go for it. Also, I really scared this girl at night as she was listening to her music. It was all good though because she was only freaked out for 2 seconds or so.

tl;dr - Thanksgiving week was amazing. If every week was like thanksgiving week... I'd be a 200% better version of me by next year</strong></p>

I'm still sick. But then I can't sleep. I'm like so fatigued and tired but yet I can't sleep. I do not enjoy this state. On the other hand, I just watched one the better movies in recent times so I feel compelled to write about it.

Young Detective Dee: Rise of the Sea Dragon is an amazing movie. You should go watch it right now. As to why it's so amazing. As to why it's so amazing... I guess I'd have to say it's because it kept me guessing, had amazing action, and is just so much fun.

It's been awhile since I couldn't really predict the flow of a movie. I guess it comes from being older and haven read / seen so much literature. I didn't realize that Detective Dee was like the Asian Sherlock Holmes. This movie actually reminds me of the Sherlock Holmes reboot movies with Robert Downey Jr. Anyways, Detective Dee is essentially Sherlock Holmes. He's uber smart, and decent at martial arts. Of course, he relies on his brain and not his brawn.

I won't talk about the plot, but suffice to say that it was exciting. It's the kind of story where.. once they reach the explaining part... or like a couple scenes after it happens.. you realize what's up. Like.. Shiet, so THATS what happened. As expected of a detective movie - it's good.

The action scenes were decent. I really liked how they had the captain of the army assist Dee so he got to do all the fight scenes and Dee was mostly about detective work. I just realized Dee is short for detective. Mind Blown.

I kinda passed out towards the end because once everything was solved the denouement or whatever is kinda boring for me. Angelababy was pure fanservice. Not that I'm complaining.

tl;dr - watch this movie for the amazing plot and decent action scenes</strong></p>

Too jokes. Today the funniest thing happened. So we were interviewing this Engineer and part of the interview process is just having lunch with the regular engineers. So when it was my turn to introduce myself - I said "Hi, I'm Han". Then I laughed because I'm not Han. It's just super funny because Han is one of the engineers on the team and everyone at the table was laughing.

I blame it on my fevered and delirious sick state. So what happened was she shook hands with Henry and then I saw hand. I think my brain was thinking Hand -> Han. Hi, I'm Hand -> Han. Anyways, it was a really weird experience because I knew I done goofed the second I said it.

Of course, me being the logical and guy with interest in psychology.. time to dig into this. My first takeaway is that... Introducing myself - for me is still a conscious activity. =_=. Despite being fevered and delirious I was able to code and deliver features. Programming takes less conscious effort than introducing myself. o.O

As to why I chose to use Han. I'm gonna go with Hand -> Han. I think I was gonna say Hi, I'm Hand. But then it auto-corrected to the nearest name. /shrug. Too jokes... I don't unconsciously know who I am? Who am I? (kingdom hearts reference).  Well, the good thing is that I wasn't feeling nervous or anxious even after that. I guess that's the upside... no more anxiety even when I mis-introduce myself.

tl;dr - I can code unconsciously but I can't introduce myself unconsciously. SAP meme?</strong></p>

I officially got sick on Sunday of this week. I was just feeling like utter shit on Sunday. I ended up sleeping for most of the day to recover. Today, I went to work and my brain was kinda weak. Lucky for me Philz coffee made me somewhat functional.

Coffee is like the ultimate pancea. It honestly cures most of my sicknesses... or pretty much always makes me feel slightly better. I always think that I'm extremely mentally tough. You know... I'll keep trying until I win. I don't quit or give up etc etc.

But shit, when I'm sick I feel so weak. All I want to do is sleep and watch tv when I'm sick. Even though reading a book is essentially the same as watching TV. I wonder if scientists can measure mental fortitude yet.

Well... I guess I gotta go back to my yoga learnings. A lot of it is accepting your limits but still pushing yourself. I accept that when I'm sick my productivity will go way down and my willpower is therefore also lower. But I still wrote this article... and I tried to do some reading. So... good enough? Acceptance and struggles.

tl;dr - sick. sickness > my mental toughness. I'm going to will myself back to health before thanksgiving</strong></p>

So I just read this article: http://blog.memsql.com/cache-is-the-new-ram/

It was a super interesting read. With diagrams and shit. It's really funny because I feel like I'm out dated. Memcached is so 2004?! Damn, I'm still struggling to use Memcached.

noSQL is 2008?! I feel robbed. I learned nothing about NoSQL in University. Well... I did get to learn Map/Reduce so maybe my University wasn't totally outdated.

I think I need to work on my Software Engineering communications. The RFCs that I write at work are so bare bones and simple. Other people write such eloquent and understandable RFC's. It's like reading poetry. I can't wait till I become an artist level Software Engineer. It's good that I still have room to grow I guess.

tl;dr - hackernews is a good source of programming reads</strong></p>

So I've decided that Wednesday will henceforth be weekly blog day. I haven't been writing or keeping a diary consistently so now is the time.

First - the title. I got the thought today... I'm actually surprised that I'm not fat. The reason being is that I consume a copious amount of sugar and junk food. This morning I had three chocolate chip cookies for breakfast. And two glasses of whole milk. I've been having this breakfast the past week because I 'accidentally' bought a box of chocolate chip cookies. For lunch I eat the catered food that my company provides but I probably eat 2x the amount of a regular person. In the afternoon I usually get a boba tea or a mocha coffee. And consume a chocolate bar. And then for dinner I usually eat out.

It's weird because I was having the fat thought as I was speed walking to the gym to get to my Wednesday spin class. I was actually borderline sick today. There's been an office plague going around the Engineering team. I still haven't succumbed. But there's been many days where I felt not so well and borderline sick. Today was a particularly bad day - I was a dead man working for most of the day. Then around 4 pm I just told myself to give up on brute forcing my dead brain on working... and just get some more food. Another plate of food later I was feeling slightly recovered. Talked to a coworker about the way our caching is working and brainstormed possible solutions. Caching is hard. Incidentally - I just read a super interesting article here : http://blog.memsql.com/cache-is-the-new-ram/

After the chat on caching it felt like my brain was working. Quickly got back to work and then built the feature I was suppose to build. It wasn't a difficult feature at all - I would say it's even straightforward. Just that when you're braindead and struggling to keep your eyes open... any programming task is difficult. After making a pull request I was good to leave since it was quite the accomplishment considering how sick I was feeling.

Left work at 6 to get home by 6:30 in order to make the 7pm spin class. I've been consistently going to my 7pm Wednesday spin class which is good. Last week was my recovered week. Halloween caused me to mess up my workout schedule. But generally speaking I workout consistently. There's 2 days of 5x5, yoga day, and spinning. So I actually exercise 4 days / week. Maybe that's why I'm not fat.

Last weekend was interesting. My friend was visiting San Francisco from Toronto. He flew into SF for an interview with crunchyroll. I showed him around town and it was really fun hanging out with him. We talked about some of the programming questions he got and he said he got pretty much all of them except some of them he needed hints. I asked him what the hardest question was and he was like the stock question on calculating the maximum profit. It's funny because I read the hackernews article on the solution to that problem. When I first encountered the article... I failed so fucking hard. It was like here is the problem. Do you have the solution? Yep. Click here! What about gotcha #1? Me: Shit. I just failed. Okay. Gotcha #1 is easy to fix. Click here. gotcha #2. Shit shit. Okay. Also easy to fix. Click here. Gotcha #3. Fuck. I must be a horrible programmer. No wait, I'm not actually thinking that hard. Okay click here for the real solution. Shiet son - just use the greedy algorithm.

I feel like so much of interviewing is just experience. And interviewing experience doesn't even translate to real engineering skills. So many people probably interview better than me but can't code. I feel so bad for interviewers who actually have to determine if you're good. It was funny because I got that exact interview question as I was job searching. I just went use the greedy algorithm. Then the guy was like. How do you *prove* the correctness of your algorithm. I *know* that it's correct unless I mis-implemented the greedy algorithm (unlikely). /shrug. I failed that interview because I felt it was too confrontational. I get annoyed when interviews become confrontational because it's not the way that I work well in and the way that real work happens. Even after I 'proved' that the algorithm worked he was like. I'm not convinced and then I just gave up. Well.. I didn't give up. I was like - prove that it doesn't work and I'll just leave. We were at an impasse and that was funny. Funny memories.

My friend wasn't that good in salary negotiations though. So I sent him this article I read and learned from on salary negotiations. It's funny because there's so many jobs that require x number of years of experience. And then there are recruiters who screen candidates by years of experience. And I think that while experience is really important - there are so many engineers that just do the same thing repeatedly. They have 5x the same 1 year experience. Which translates to one year experience. Or 10x the same 1 year experience which translates to 1 year experience. /shrug. End rant on recruiters.

I recently saw the ted talk on pushing your comfort zone. Which is something that I'm a big fan of. Experiencing new things make you grow and stuff. So what did I do this week that was new..? Hmmm. Well, I've been consistently updating otakuhomepage.com so that's one. Then besides that I finished reading the book Smartcuts - How Hackers, Innovators, and Icons Accelerate Success. Books are so amazing.

It's kinda strange because today as I was in my lyft line ride talking to the other passenger. He asked me what I did in my spare time - and I said I read and exercise which is true. But then I actually realized that this past week... I haven't played video games that much. I haven't been playing FFX remaster. I'm close to getting the platinum trophy. The only hard parts left is dodging lightning x200 and the chocobo race. I think I'll just pay Yojimbo to kill Penance and the other superboss for me.

I did play Street Fighter IV with my friend. Damn, I feel so rusty. Muscle memory helps but I was dropping combos left and right. I finally asked for my vacation. I'll be starting 2015 with -32 hours of vacation time accrued. =|

Right... I think exercise and sweat cures sickness. I was feeling really sick today and after going to spin class and sweating it out. I'm actually feeling much better.

tl;dr - when you're feeling sick... do some cardio</strong></p>

Growing up I was forced to learn piano as a kid. I hated learning piano as a kid. I was forced to practice piano for 30 minutes a day and then it eventually raised to an hour a day. An hour a day of forced practice. Sometimes it would be 2 hours per day as I was nearing exams. I really hated all aspects of learning piano growing up. The constant criticisms of not working hard enough and being forced to do shit that I didn't want to do.

I guess that's why I've placed so much emphasis on the price of freedom. Maybe I'm just trying to relive my childhood now that I have complete freedom. I guess that's why so many adults go to Disneyland and buy model toys to build. I really didn't like being forced to learn songs that sounded bad.

I guess it's interesting though because now that I'm interested in learning how to play the guitar. I'm learning it completely without supervision and essentially hacking it. Learning how to play the most popular chords and then learning random songs. Rather than learning the basics and then building on. I feel that if I keep up the guitar learning I'll probably end up better - but I digress.

Recently I've been listening to more music on my beautiful Sennheiser 598. It really makes me appreciate the various instruments. Now I have newfound respect for the violin, guitar and piano. I actually really want to play the piano now because there are so many good songs that I would want to be able to play and listen to.

I'm actually tempted to buy an electronic piano off amazon for $400. But then it feels like a waste of space because my studio is really small here in San Francisco. I already don't have enough space for the regular use stuff that I have. Maybe I should just find a university that has a piano that I could then go to practice. Hmmm.... I wonder if AAU has a piano faculty.

I guess I'm just surprised that I actually want to play the piano. Of all the years that I've lived with a piano and grown up with a piano - I haven't once felt like playing the piano on my own. And now that I'm all alone and don't got a piano... I suddenly want to play piano. Weird.

tl;dr - music is awesome on Sennheiser 598. and there are so many songs I want to play on the piano</strong></p>

I've made a huge mistake. It's a mistake that I make a lot. I didn't save. And then I got bodied by a dark aeon. This has happened to me 3 times now. FML

First, it was Dark Ifrit as I was doing the Cactus challenge. I've been doing this 30 minute+ quest and I haven't saved. And then I talk to this random person and boom. Dark Ifrit and then game over. FML. I lost 45 minutes of work.

Then... thunder plains. Doing the cactus praying and monster capturing. And lightning dodging for about 45 minutes. Randomly talk to someone - boom Dark Ixion. FML. 45 minutes of my life gone.

Today, I was capturing all the monsters on Mushroom Rock Road or Djose highroad. I just finished the two previous areas. I had a chance to save. But then... it's totally unnecessary to save because I'm stat maxed at this point. 255 atk/def/agi/mdef with 210 luck. Nothing to fear yo. I *could've* saved. I just chose not to because... I felt safe. Even though saving wouldn't have cost me anything. It was a 30 second investment to protect against losing 1.5 hours of my life. I didn't save.

Move forward... and then fucking magus sisters show up. I'm like... hmmm I don't want to beat them yet but I guess I have no choice. So time to face them.  Doing 99999 and mug attacks I'm getting some cool shit. Fuck - they start with full overdrive. FML. I'm gonna summon an aeon to shield me from certain death. Summon aeon. First two turns kill my aeon. Then 3rd turn overdrive my party. FML. FML. FML. I just lost 1.5 hours of my life. So much rage.

tl;dr - always save. always be safe. don't be arrogant. FML. dark aeons fucking suck. it's a trap!</strong></p>

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So I recently read this article - http://okepi.wordpress.com/2014/08/21/how-to-become-a-programmer-or-the-art-of-googling-well/

Reading through that article was an interesting experience. I think I've already reached the level where I have the belief that I can build anything in Software. There's nothing that I can't figure out in the Software world. And a large part of that is pretty much googling.

In the past, I too saw programming gods everywhere. But now I don't really see programming gods. I see people who are better than me. They are more solid than me through dedication and experience. Ever since I started seriously investing in my technical education. Reading programming books, doing side projects, volunteering for the hard shit at work - I've been seeing noticeable improvements in my code quality and results.

It's kind of scary though. As I just started my new job. Within my 3rd week I was touching areas of the code that affected payments and stuff. I had to do a refactoring on price calculations. That's some scary stuff because a mistake would mean losing money or charging people the wrong amount.

I was recently sitting around at lunch and the more senior engineers were talking about hiring. So what happened with me is that I always get way too much time for the 'ask me questions' part of the interview. Turns out the reason for that is because you finished all the interviewer's planned questions. Too jokes. I had a huge grin on my face because it's like a TIL moment. So *that's* why I always have so much time for questions in interviews. I'm too fast. =/

On the subject of interviews I think I've already developed a sense of arrogance. It's probably not good for me. In a sense that I feel that there's a large majority of interviewer's who are weaker than me. I guess I get annoyed when I'm being interviewed by someone who hasn't shown me how amazing they are. I was recently browsing the code schools and it's like. Learn from our amazing instructors - they built websites with ruby on rails. And I'm just like... how is that an achievement? Cool. They're google engineers. That doesn't really tell me how great they are.

I kind of wish that I still saw programming gods everywhere. I think back when I saw programming gods... It felt like I still had so much to work towards. As in the gap between us was so great I had to work really hard to get closer. Not that I don't work hard at getting better. I still read programming books, and do side projects. It's just that... I guess I missed having the goal of reaching for the stars. It's so much cooler to reach for godhood.. than reach the peak of humans.

Reading through the article it's weird how I understand all the programming lingo in italics. It's really weird because growing up I dreamed of working at google. And recently a google recruiter reached out to me... during the period I was job searching. And now - I don't even want to work at google. It's like here's this cool opportunity to interview and work at google and in my mind I'm thinking ~ waste of my life. I think start ups really do provide a much better learning environment - although life is harder.

I guess I miss the time when I was impressed by the accomplishments of almost everyone I met. Like in the story of the person who built something from nothing and had it work with twilio. It might have been impressive to me back when I was in college. But now in my mind - I can do it. And all my peers can do it. It's not really impressive. I miss having my mind blown by stuff that people could do. You built that iOS app in 8 hours?! I know people who could do it. In the case of iOS... I could probably do it myself.

tl;dr - there are no programming gods. only really experienced and competent software engineers</strong></p>

So I recently read this article on hacker news - http://thebillfold.com/2014/10/my-day-interviewing-for-the-service-economy-startup-from-hell/</a></p>

I feel really spoiled when reading it. As a Software Engineer it was so easy for me to find employment after graduation. Right after graduating I was making a 'low' salary. 75k per year. In my job I had complete autonomy in a sense that I can get up and leave the office for coffee whenever I want. I can make personal phone calls / go see the dentist etc. I've never had a micro-manager and I don't think I'd ever stay at a company that micro-managed me. After a year there I got a 20k raise. But then I wanted more. Some of the more senior engineers left and I was suddenly a senior engineer. I guess it was time for me to leave.

Recently... it's almost as if I don't even know what I want. So one of my close friends got married recently... and I wasn't invited to his wedding. I say close friend because I feel like if I needed his help I would reach out to him anytime. And if he reached out to me for help - I definitely would try to help him. Or whatever. I guess for my friendship is like the Social Link in Persona 4. Once you reach level 10 you can't go back. And this friend of mine is definitely a level 10.

So he recently got married and I didn't get invited to his wedding. On one hand... I'm kinda relieved because I don't think going to his wedding would've been something that I wanted or enjoyed. You only get so many hours in a week and there's so much shit that I want to do. I want to read books. Code. Watch shows. I should be meditating and exercising more. The list goes on and on.

But on the other hand I'm kind of bummed that I didn't get invited. I guess it's strange in that way. There was so much time for me to reach out to him to hang out and stuff. But I never did. I guess it's because I'm too focused on me recently. It's like - I want to hang out with my friends but I also want to just say home and do my own shit. Shrug. I don't even know what I want.

On one hand I kind of want to go out more. Yet when my friends invite me to go out... I don't really want to go out. bleh. I guess I should just distill it down the first principles. And when I look at things in that way it makes knowing what I want and the decisions that I want easier to make. I'm working towards freedom.

Wow... I guess writing shit out really helps. I kinda feel better about the decisions that I've been making recently because it helps that I wrote it down. Everything boils down to your principles and what you want in life.

tl;dr - follow your principles. make decisions based on what you want in your life</strong></p>

I still can't believe that Naruto is ending. On one hand... I've wanted it to end for awhile. Ever since Itachi turned good I was sad. After all, he was the perfect villain. I'm not really a fan of Naruto (the character) and so I guess I didn't like how the focus of the manga was all Naruto and it got boring for me.

It's kind of crazy though. The manga has been going on since 1999... so it's been going on for 15 years. It's been  a constant in my life - every Wednesday/Thursday I'd look forward to the big 3 of bleach / one piece / naruto. And now Toriko.

Naruto has so much nostalgic value to me. The chuunin exam arc is possibly my favorite arc of all time. Lee taking of the weights... still losing to Gaara. And then Neji losing to Naruto. whoops spoilers. meh.

I think the beginning was just really fun because you got to see them grow and at the same time the ninja world was growing too. You slowly got introduced to more and more uber ninjas. But then when Naruto reached the god tier level... it just kinda became lame for me.

I remember as a kid reading up on theories of Naruto...  there was this theory of tobi being Obito / the 4th. I guess the theorizers were right. I was really depressed how the 4th isn't unstoppable SS tier since that's how they depicted him.

In the past... I couldn't wait for the future to come. And I guess... now that the future has arrived. I kinda wish it didn't. Maybe this is more about just enjoying every chapter and living in the present. Well. I guess I should stop bashing Sasuke and Naruto and just enjoy the last couple of chapters.

tl;dr - I feel old and nostalgic now that Naruto is ending</strong></p>