jmjunmai

[jmjunmai]

New Years Goal 2015

If still at current job, be considered competent enough to care/influence what prod does on NYE next year. 

[jmjunmai]

holiday feels

I feel old and like learning is hard and like I might never do anything useful 

[jmjunmai]

someone plz tell me what SSC is?

Latest SSC post is giving me FEELS

[jmjunmai]

stop freaking out and do your research

There was a period of time when I was switching jobs / moving cities / having exciting relationship fail when I just constantly felt that feeling of constant impending doom + indigestion + short of breath. Do not recommend. 

Sometimes the only way out is through. 

^ overgenerality but basically means "stop freaking out and do your research"

[jmjunmai]

the rationalists guide to caring for aging parents

I wish that someone had written this already

[jmjunmai]

tiny development wins

I successfully ran this on my machine, after several rounds of installing various dependencies and finding which line had been left out of the tutorial (it was 'import numpy as np') but fortunately it was on stackoverflow and also the github page,so easy to find once I got to the point where that was what it was failing on.

And it makes a pretty picture (you can see it in the link)

And I feel pathetic for feeling proud of this but it was a thing and I did it and now I have done a thing, which is better than not having done a thing even if it took more than the ten minutes which I think it should have taken. 

http://mahotas.readthedocs.org/en/latest/wally.html

[jmjunmai]

I want you to imagine someone for me. Her name is Jessica and she is 17 years old. She lives in a two bedroom apartment with her mother and uses an old laptop she got from one of her mom’s ex boyfriends. With it, she browses the portals that serve as her connection to the community constructed...

[jmjunmai]

[jmjunmai]

my opinions on birthdays

I am not excited about birthdays. Not mine, not others'. 

If person X is very excited about their birthday, I wonder why the are excited. Is it because they think that it will be awesome? Because of previous memories of awesomeness? Or some other reason?

I like wishing people happy birthday on facebook. It is a way of reconnecting. 

I accept that coworkers have birthdays and that it is probably healthier corporate culture to acknowledge them than not. Because... 

[jmjunmai]

Oh, also have a high res of the Circle kids bookmarks c:

[jmjunmai]

The $ of my bicycle in 2014

ughhh when I have time I will add the ~70 I spent today on getting a quality front wheel / tire change / arrrrgh at Marin bikes to the below numbers/math

valencia cyclery

81.73

16.51

48.92

28.26

13.68

652.45 (new bike - current primary bike)

freewheel

17.40

125.06

63.08

performance bicycle

16.50

27.15

parts bought on amazon

29.06

15.98

18.46

The New Wheel bike shop

317.70 (repairs to a bike that turned out to still be unridable)

Exclusions:

Bike-related items that I bought as gifts for other people

I forgot to include $20 on bikelink

Not exclusions:

items which were stolen and/or replaced

shipping (but there is none to count because of amazon prime)

items which I bought using a gift card

total spent on Clipper card in 2014 as of 17Dec2014:

1155.0

Total actual spent on transit this year up until 17Dec2014 (for all purposes, not just work):

1471.94 (total bicycle expenses, including new bike and repairs to unused bike) + 1155.0 (clipper card) = 2626.94

Theoretical $ that I would have spent on commuting if I only used public transit:

bart +muni $4.10 one way * 2x / day * (250 working days / year - 14 days vacation) = ~$1935 / year

Other notes:

I am excluding plane tickets. 

I am excluding lyft/uber charges 

I am excluding taxi charges (because they were all going to / away from an airport)

I traded to a friend an old bike for a new bike without $ being exchanged, then repaired the bike that I received but did not use it

I previously owned several bike tools; I believe that none of the above $ is bike tools. All of it is lights, tubes, wheels, helmets, lock, replacement seatpost / seat, cyclometer, rain fender, repair costs, etc. 

I got a "free for some repairs" card with the bought bicycle that reduced some repair costs (but no parts costs)

I have been commuting primarily on bicycle for most of this year- an increasing amount since a while before June.

Methodology:

Numbers aggregated using mint.com searches, exports, and ruby (irb) using ` require 'csv' ; CSV.foreach("transactions.csv").map { |r| r[3].to_f  }.inject(&:+)`

a = "81.73\n16.51\n48.92\n28.26\n13.68\n652.45\n17.40\n125.06\n63.08\n16.50\n27.15\n29.06\n15.98\n18.46\n317.70" # individual bicycle expenses, seen above

a.split("\n").map {|n| n.to_f}.inject(&:+) # 1471.94

Expectations / Questions / Answers: 

How much is commuting via bike worth to me? More than $1 per work day. Less than $10 per work day. Emotionally, several hundred. Say $700 per year. (i.e. "what amount of $ above the estimated. public transit cost above ($1935) are you willing to pay for the privilege of commuting via bicycle?"

What is my expected total bicycle expenditure this year without new bike included? And also excluding the repairs for the Rust Bike. (Before calculating the numbers) About 500 (possibly I have cheated at expectation prediction accuracy since I have gathered some of the numbers already.) Actual amount: 1471.94 - 652.45 - 317.70 = 501.79 # this is excessive accuracy. I suspect my subconscious of doing some adding after seeing the numbers but before adding them up. Even so... not bad. I am not sure how I am cheating if I am cheating to be this accurate. Hmm. 

What is my expected public transit equivalent? $5/day * 5 days/wk * 250 working days - some vacation = ~$6250 ?? Actual public transit calculation, after using google maps: $1935  # wow I was off by a lot. 

Going forward:

I spent an unexpectedly large amount of $ on lyft/uber. Some of it was for other people, but probably not a decision-affectingly-large % of it. 

That is an unexpectedly low $ spent on bicycle stuff. 

Monetarily, bicycling seems worth it to me even though it appears to cost slightly more than commuting via public transit. My reasons for this: saves time, increases fitness, makes me happy, lets me get to post-work meetups more easily, lets me meet with friends for lunch more easily (faster)

I feel embarrassed by my money management skills

Admitting to places that I have been makes me uncomfortable because I am afraid of people stalking me even though I currently am not experiencing any kind of internet harassment. 

[jmjunmai]

Before the Hogwarts Express, some young wizards and witches made their way to Hogwarts on broomsticks and in enchanted carriages

There are other fractional platforms at King’s Cross station. Try 7 1/2 for a trip to wizard-only...

[jmjunmai]

saying “you are a burden on society” is just such a weird framing of priorities It’s like saying “wow, think how much better gas mileage your car would get if you weren’t sitting in it” or “think how dry that umbrella would be if you weren’t holding it in between you and the rainstorm”. the things we create? they’re for us. they are meant to carry us. they are meant to protect us. we are meant to hold them up to keep us dry. 

[jmjunmai]

I really really really want to be part of this social group that I have heard about where there are cuddles

Pleeeeeeeeez

But it is far away and what if they look at me funny

Argh why is my brain trying to imitate fears that I think that I should have

Possibly because it knows that I handle doing difficult things by rationalizing to myself why they are not So Very Important Or Wanted but this backfires when I want something that can only be enjoyed if it is wanted, like human contact

I think I will just stay home and try to code

[jmjunmai]

We will never know their names.

The first victim could not have been recorded, for there was no written language to record it. They were someone’s daughter, or son, and someone’s friend, and they were loved by those around them. And they were in pain, covered in rashes, confused, scared, not knowing why this was happening to them or what they could do about it - victim of a mad, inhuman god. There was nothing to be done - humanity was not strong enough, not aware enough, not knowledgeable enough, to fight back against a monster that could not be seen.

It was in Ancient Egypt, where it attacked slave and pharaoh alike. In Rome, it effortlessly decimated armies. It killed in Syria. It killed in Moscow.  In India, five million dead. It killed a thousand Europeans every day in the 18th century. It killed more than fifty million Native Americans. From the Peloponnesian War to the Civil War, it slew more soldiers and civilians than any weapon, any soldier, any army (Not that this stopped the most foolish and empty souls from attempting to harness the demon as a weapon against their enemies).

Cultures grew and faltered, and it remained. Empires rose and fell, and it thrived. Ideologies waxed and waned, but it did not care. Kill. Maim. Spread. An ancient, mad god, hidden from view, that could not be fought, could not be confronted, could not even be comprehended. Not the only one of its kind, but the most devastating.

For a long time, there was no hope - only the bitter, hollow endurance of survivors.

In China, in the 10th century, humanity began to fight back.

It was observed that survivors of the mad god’s curse would never be touched again: they had taken a portion of that power into themselves, and were so protected from it. Not only that, but this power could be shared by consuming a remnant of the wounds. There was a price, for you could not take the god’s power without first defeating it - but a smaller battle, on humanity’s terms. By the 16th century, the technique spread, to India, across Asia, the Ottoman Empire and, in the 18th century, Europe. In 1796, a more powerful technique was discovered by Edward Jenner.

An idea began to take hold: Perhaps the ancient god could be killed.

A whisper became a voice; a voice became a call; a call became a battle cry, sweeping across villages, cities, nations. Humanity began to cooperate, spreading the protective power across the globe, dispatching masters of the craft to protect whole populations. People who had once been sworn enemies joined in common cause for this one battle. Governments mandated that all citizens protect themselves, for giving the ancient enemy a single life would put millions in danger.

And, inch by inch, humanity drove its enemy back. Fewer friends wept; Fewer neighbors were crippled; Fewer parents had to bury their children.

At the dawn of the 20th century, for the first time, humanity banished the enemy from entire regions of the world. Humanity faltered many times in its efforts, but there individuals who never gave up, who fought for the dream of a world where no child or loved one would ever fear the demon ever again. Viktor Zhdanov, who called for humanity to unite in a final push against the demon; The great tactician Karel Raška, who conceived of a strategy to annihilate the enemy; Donald Henderson, who led the efforts of those final days.

The enemy grew weaker. Millions became thousands, thousands became dozens. And then, when the enemy did strike, scores of humans came forth to defy it, protecting all those whom it might endanger.

The enemy’s last attack in the wild was on Ali Maow Maalin, in 1977. For months afterwards, dedicated humans swept the surrounding area, seeking out any last, desperate hiding place where the enemy might yet remain.

They found none.

35 years ago, on December 9th, 1979, humanity declared victory.

This one evil, the horror from beyond memory, the monster that took 500 million people from this world - was destroyed.

You are a member of the species that did that. Never forget what we are capable of, when we band together and declare battle on what is broken in the world.

Happy Smallpox Eradication Day.

[jmjunmai]

I love the future

I was just looking through some old photos and one of the people was tagged with a different name than they went by in college; clicked and she (formerly he) seems to be doing well. I love rediscovering facebook friends I've fallen out of communication with. I love that my friends are happy. I love that my friends can be the people they want to be. 

[jmjunmai]

little steps in ruby

Today I learned about a thing in ruby.

a = "foo" ; a.replace("bar") ; a # "bar"

Mutates the object (same object id)

wheras a = "bar" results in a different object id

this is apparently also the difference between += and << for arrays in ruby