Late night express

@2021/05/12 2:40 (UTC)

0X00

Damn, this is therapeutic. During our daily standup this week I mentioned that I have finally started blogging again, my colleagued dubbed my behavior "stress blogging", which I think is quite appropriate, and quite frankly I think this behavior is really quite therapeutic. I'm glad to report that after blogging I have been able to wake up refreshed, I think blogging can really be a good method for treating stress and sleep apnea — besides CPAP machines (not a medical advice).

So I was able to keep up with my work, I'm impressed with myself, am I finally up the ladder to become a leader after all these years of devotion to my company (exaggeration, two and half to be exact)? Or maybe it is just because that I have acquire a method for venting myself, this is debatable.

0X01

As I have not yet said before, I have some kinks (not touching that part ♂), mainly that I have a habit of collecting electronic devices — hard drives to be exact, and I for some reason loves the concept of database(s) and API(s), I also collects a bunch of paper products and I love flip-flops more than sandals.

If I had to describe it, I like the idea of storing things, organizing things and creating things, even though it is mainly in my head as I seldom implements my ideas, I still describe myself as a guy who like to do a bunch of researches and experiments and stops at that stage. I would constantly read news, documents and papers regarding these technologies, and would fantasize what kind of project that I can utilize these fancy new technologies. For a period during my college years, I have read so much about SQLite, GDBM, LevelDB, Memcached, Redis, MongoDB and MySQL etc. that I have been in a trance that whenever I created a project I would try to combine as much of these databases as possible.

Don't tell me that you don't find a program that can manage key-values pairs for you is appealing, at least they are very powerful and are getting more features and efficiency as they evolve. I distinctively remember that older versions of SQLite were actually implemented on top of GDBM; InnoDB is simply a key-value store that powers millions of MySQL(-family) databases; WiredTiger — which is yet another key-value store — was chosen to be the default storage engine of MongoDB; and of course Memcached is just an in-memory key-value store that dramatically increases your application speed.

It is amazing how a simple idea can be used to derive, combine and create so much powerful utilities. Kind of like Lego, and my professor's motto of "develop incrementally". Once you have learnt the most basic fundamentals, you are able to finish the most complex tasks.

0X02

This blog marks a (potential) mile stone for me, if I remember correctly, this post increments my blog posts by one, which means I am continuing to make progress. Good job myself!

I also restarted my process of calendar blocking and todo list making, which I find greatly improved my focus and helps me anchor my goal for the rest of the day, which in turn give me a better mood 🌩. I have all this thanks to my manager, I'm not sure if it is respectful to mention her name so I'm not going to, but I did learn a lot from her and my previous manager who became her manager. Good colleagues and managers are hard to come by, luckily I have only seen fantastic co-workers who are just awesome!

So in the process of calendar blocking, you designate a portion of your calendar for today to just do one task and nothing else, reserve some time for resting, and follow your plans according to these blocks. Using this in combination with a post-it for a simple summary of the tasks you wanted to do — a.k.a. todo list, I was able to feel accomplishment in my day-to-day routine. Nobody needs to follow them to the dot, however when you finish one task, always cross out the todo item, and I think eventually I will be able to tightly schedule my days to the fullest work-wise.

I found out that the post-it holder that my colleague gave me is especially useful as it puts the note up so I can clearly see my progress throughout the day. This, I think is a better system than Jira tickets. I do like Jira tickets, which creates the same effect as the post-it note todo list, however I do not have much screen estate to constantly show the task list, so often times after using Jira to its fullest for about a week I would start to slack off. Being visible all the time definitely promotes you to be more conscious about what you do, this might actually be the reverse application of the minimalism — intentionally putting your attention on the things, not just anything, but things that matters to you at the moment.

0X03

I certainly do hope that by writing a lot of articles I would gain some experiences, during my education the one thing that I got headaches most is to write essays. But for every developer, being able to write concise and easy to understand documentations for your project would save a whole lot of times for one's self and other's.

I don't think I will read what I have wrote often if ever, but I think it helps clear my mind and helps me sort through all the overflowing information that my brain is processing. For example, I think it is time to have a video chat with my loving mom and dad, and it has been a while since I have seen my brother and his wife and their lovely daughter; and it is time for me to renew some of my domains again, sigh 😮‍💨. They say the most painful thing is that the domains you decided for some side project that was never used is due for renewal, I can feel it.

Hmm, so can I get rid of my stuff so I can have a clearer mind? The most obvious thing is to discard them, but that is too wasteful to my taste, so while I am still not overwhelmed by my belongings, I should "use them to their fullest" while not purchasing any more useless stuff. If I am not bending their words, Fumio-san and Marie-san thinks this is a bad idea, let me try it out for a month and see how it goes.

And for the digital collections, I will let the source sit in my hard drive and let the backup float on the cloud for now until I "find some time to deal with them". I still need to refine my process of managing servers as FreeBSD has just been upgraded to version 13, OpenWRT is about to release version 21 series, I need to figure out a way to manage the self-compiled software libraries more efficient that what I have now. Maybe it is finally time to pick up Ansible skills. Also for the resources like servers and buckets etc., I need to figure out whether if I should import them to a Terraform workspace. Much things to be figured out.

0X04

Too much written, in the format of a teenager's diary where everything is mixed in a fashion which important information randomly discarded all around like a teenager's bedroom where comic books are spread all over the place to which his mom would definitely sigh and argue that this is not the way to go to which the teenager would reply it is not like someone would ever see.

Well, good night, gotta take my beauty sleep at midnight otherwise I won't be sleepy all day long.

0XFF

Buh-byte, be seeing you around.