Yeah why not.

I don't like goals.

Goals are a small part of the story.

Goals are the end result. 

If I had a goal to be rich I would NOT want to fast-foward to a state of richness. I would not want to instantly be rich. Nor if offered the chance to trade 5 years of my life to fast-forward to a later state of when-i-am-rich would I accept. No and No. 

If being rich is the goal and these two scenarios are valid means of reaching such a goal, what then is the problem?

The goal is the problem.

The goal is only a topical description and outcome for a duration of time in which various actions have occured.

To achieve a goal usually means to necessarily step through these various actions in some duration of time. 

That's called living life.

Life itself is the STUFF we do throughout various goals we either consciously or subconscously set. Life is the journey, goals are the end.

I am less concerned with the end; the end makes me sad.

The journey is what i want. 

So when I think I have a goal what I really am signalling to myself is the need to establish a journey to get to that goal.

What are the steps I can do everyday or every week or every month to work towards achieving this supposed goal.

No these are not "immediate goals". Get your head off of goals. Goals are no good; they deal with the END. The end is sad =(

Actions, doing stuff, activities, planning, journeys - its called life!

Be concerned with living your life today, tomororw, and the next day.

Not some goal.

Hello, 

It is important for me to maintain some consistency with writing.

Days and weeks seem to pass by quite fast! It's not so noticable for me when my mind is away thinking about work.

I am pretty obsessed with working. I wonder why? I like to do a good job. I like to progress.

I think not going to college was good for me because it made me have a mindset that I need to prove my skills in whatever I do. This is not to say having a college degree frees one from this mindset. It's just a personal thing, and maybe I would be the same had I went to college anyway.

I feel a greater sense of accomplishment knowing I started from the beginning. Is that the wrong mentality to have? I worry sometimes that me deliberitely wanting the "hard" way is selfish. Shouldn't I be taking the path of least resistance so as to further my impact on the world? Isn't the the more self-less thing to do?

I really enjoy earning things. It's weird. Maybe I'm just being dramatic. I wear my lack of formal training like a badge of honor. It means I am responsible for where I am - it means litterally every grinding step has been a choice. Is that to say formal training is a non-choice? Of course not, but what the hell do I know. To me, being formally trained means trusting people to guide you through your choices. This is actually a great thing. Why don't I like it? Because I'm a hard-headed asshole probably. But nevertheless its best to find a positive in it. Being an independent-learner means every freaking grueling ass choice is yours to own. It is indeed quite grueling. But it's mine.

Why do I have the job I have? Because I worked to make that happen. I consiously set into action every step it took to get there. And stay there mind you. 

My goal now is to be some badass programmer that just blows away my expectations. Why not? 

I surely have a long way to go but working full time has no doubt hastened the pace of my progression.

I want to become more proficient at git.

I want to learn how to be a more productive programmer. This to me, as of now, means optimizing the systems I utilize through the creation and completion of developing new products and features.

Now I'm just rambling.

Being more efficiently productive means having greater control of my life. I could essentially exceed the requirements and expections of my team while still having ample time for my personal projects and exploring the world.

Sounds like a good goal to have.

It's about trust. 

The world needs leaders as much as it needs followers. "Follower" has a negative connotation to it. Of course you shouldn't follow anything blindly. As we grow up it is correct to encourage self-thought and coming-into-your-own. Of course =)

But being a follower is not bad. The world needs followers - that's how everything gets done. There are lots of followers on a team and a couple of leaders. Leaders are no more or less important than followers. Followers are the compliment of leaders and vice versa. Nothing wrong with that word nor that concept. 

So being a follower is important.

Being a leader is important.

Leadership is about trust. The team must trust the person in the leadership role. Lots of problems arise without that trust.

Being on a team entails that you trust the leadership. If you do not trust the leadership, you are poisoning that team by being on it. 

Teams require a lot of management. Ideally a team should consist of people that don't need to be managed. We don't live in a perfect world so people will have to manage people. Trust between both parties makes this job very straightforward and quite clean. Problems arise when there is a lack of trust. The issue is not of right and wrong. Strangely I don't think being right or wrong is actually the important thing. Leaders can be wrong - that is OK. What is most important is that we trust that our team will know what to do with "wrongs" and know what to do with "rights". 

Trust is important.

I am working on organizing my expenses. Ideally I should be spending money on 4 core areas:

• Shelter
• Food
• Transportation
• HappySeeding

There are other areas of course, clothing, entertainment, education. But these should take up the bulk of my income with the other necessary bulk being debt payments.

What are the things I really need?

1. Backpack (to carry stuff)
2. Duffle bag (to carry stuff)
3. Laptop (work, learning, entertainment and goals)
4. Smartphone (being a social jackass, taking pictures, navigating)
5. Good jacket (protection from the elements)
6. Good hoody (to keep warm inside at starbucks)
7. 10-15 t-shirts (i think thats a good number)
8. 3 pairs of pants, 2 pairs of shorts maybe. (for some reason all my pants are stupidly uncomfortable. should find better ones)
9. tupperware (i don't carry this anymore but its still a good idea. transport food)
10. A book, (maybe more fiction, better to entertain my brain a bit)
11. family and friend pictures, cards, etc to keep the homeliness close at hand.
12. Good shoes. This is hard. No such thing as all weather shoes. Boots keep out the cold and water but are not good for prolonged walking. Walking shoes let in rain and cold. Need basketball shoes to play basketball. And finally dress shoes to look halfway decent =/ (boots can fit this role but boots suck for long walking ...)

That's about it. Maybe I'm talking out of my ass and i really need more stuff.

Goodnight =)

I want to have a document of things I've experienced, tried, and accomplished. Let's try it for the billionth time this year.

This week I will need to settle in my new place of residence. I should practice my independence.

Peldi from http://balsamiq.com gave me great advice on how I might improve http://pluspanda.com.
After some thought I think his advice is golden, I need to work on implementing the MVP.

I very rarely read verbose blogs. I understand many people like to read a story. For that I will buy a fiction book. A blog to me (as of now) is for digesting information. This means I will try my theory of writing in statements and minimizing verbosity. I am not a good writer so look for this as a work in progress.

I have some good projects for my work at Seeing Interactive. I should work on being a better programmer. Learn some mobile development for the hell of it too. I should keep busy.

Pandabots season starts on the 9th. A good chance to get in shape.

So far no sugar-via-liquids is working well. 
It is hard. 

In going over 2010's experiences and accomplishments I got sad that I was not able to remember much about past years. What have I done? What have I experienced? If I don't remember, it might as well have never occurred! =(

2010 Quick rap up before I forget: 

Late 2009 I made http://pluspanda.com - used to be a review widget, turned it into testimonials widget.

January April , I did some work with pluspanda but mostly did not have any money so worked for my friend AJ in doing embroidery work. 

May - Got to go to Boulder for Startup Week http://boulderstartupweek.com/ Really solidified my outlook on programming. The community is great and Boulder is a really beautiful town. Thanks to Andrew Hyde and Pivotal Labs for giving me the chance to go - really great experience. I met Michael Dwan of http://snapjoy.com who gave me great career advice: "The bar is lower than you think". I am a self-motivated programmer (self-taught is a misnomer, plenty of people have contributed to my learning). it is hard to gauge ones experience and aptitude if you have nothing to measure it against, so I've always been hesitant at applying for jobs; I don't want to let my employer's down.

There also I decided to commit to learning Ruby and ruby on rails. (and linux since it is very hard to run ruby on windows)

From this point I installed ubuntu on my 5 year old dell 700m <3 and set out to learn ruby on rails. Which meant learning git and exploring github and long story short - these are all great tools, and I am very appreciative of such things. 

End of May - July? Set out to create test projects in ruby on rails. Programmed 3 projects, and I think this was the time I rewrote pluspanda from php to ruby on rails.  Also continued to work. 

August was around the time I was absolutely the poorest I have ever been. I did not have the $2 needed to go to starbucks to buy an iced coffee so that I could camp there and use the internet. This was very weird! It was not bad or a sob story in the least. I just ran out of money and it was super weird to actually not have a nickel to your name. Very good experience.

I owe a fair amount of money to Wells Fargo so the plan was to get a job once I had something to show for myself. I started the job search. Applied to some places in Boulder and caught a listing on HN for a position. I applied to 4 positions I think? Never heard from 2 and got interviews with other 2. Got accepted to both and after much deliberation, even though I really like the Boulder vibe, decided to be  a rails developer for Seeing Interactive. 

September - Fake moved to San Francisco for my new job! <3 Great experience. I've never been many places. Very fun. Got the pictures that will tell a better story. Ah growing up =s. 

September - lived in Portrero Hill.

October - Lived in El Cerrito (North of Berkeley) very nice housemates! <3 

November - Lived in Philly PA with Steph Lo. Never been to east coast - thanks Steph!
End of November I was to fly home. I took a flight from PA to Boston for a layover. Like an idiot I missed the flight! Luckily my friend Mai is going to school in Boston so I got to spend a night and one day with her in Boston. Super cool! Boston is quite nice. I must go back for an official visit =) 

December - Came home for the holidays and stayed home the whole time <3 home sweet home

- January - Somewhere in Temple City as of now. New plan is to save some money and live close to home so I can play basketball with the pandabots. Look to plan some moves once I get my financial situation worked out. 

Writing that out makes it seem like it was a good year.

Because it was. 

Thanks everybody, this is my attempt at getting everything out on digital paper. Hopefully I can be better at this for 2011 and much more will be conveyed. 

Happy New year =D

We'll See... There is a Taoist story of an old farmer who had worked his crops for many years. One day his horse ran away. Upon hearing the news, his neighbors came to visit.

"Such bad luck," they said sympathetically.

"We'll see," the farmer replied.

The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it three other wild horses.

"How wonderful," the neighbors exclaimed.

"We'll see," replied the old man.

The following day, his son tried to ride one of the untamed horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. The neighbors again came to offer their sympathy on his misfortune.

"We'll see," answered the farmer.

The day after, military officials came to the village to draft young men into the army. Seeing that the son's leg was broken, they passed him by. The neighbors congratulated the farmer on how well things had turned out.

"We'll see" said the farmer.

Hi this is my first post. I plan to post and occasionally discuss information I deem useful, funny, and/or interesting. Most things will most likely end up being things from Hacker News, and things having to do with building. I would like to share those things that I think are influential to me. Of course I can't possibly cover everything but I also believe that we sometimes overvalue "learning". There is a time to learn and a time to do. One should be balanced in these matters.

Some thoughts on how to be warrior (read man): http://books.google.com/books?id=ps6bRp92y8AC&lpg=PP1&dq=Budoshoshins...&q&f=false

I like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LkusicUL2s