🆕 New team, new me (Feb '24)

I switched teams at work and have been much happier. I went back to my old team, so, technically, it's old team, new me haha. It’s mostly due to having the ability to make an impact with my work and lack of unnecessary stress from my manager. In the past, I completely underestimated how much joy I get from being able to create solutions that actually make an impact. It sounds obvious when I say it out loud, but I didn't realize it in the moment. With regards to my manager, we just weren't a good fit at all. In hindsight, the biggest issue was that interactions with him were demotivating. I've come to realize an important characteristic that I want from my manager is the ability to motivate me. That's what helps me get the best work out of me.

Thy built a sandbox for Micah. My god she's an amazing mother. We're all lucky to have her in our lives. I can't understate how much better my life has been with her in it. I love you!

I received a diagnosis for ADHD later in life. I still struggle with accepting that I actually have it. Regardless, the benefits of treating it have made it so much easier to stay on top of my life. I updated medication's dosage this month, and it's helped minimize some of the issues that were starting to resurface.

I had two ideas that I found interesting this month. The first was sports betting in pools. Essentially, a pool of players will compete to see who can get the most correct picks. There were two variations: pre pick and live battle royale game. With pre picks, players make their picks from a set of bets that will occur over the next day or week. Then the player with the most correct picks wins. The more interesting variation was to have a battle royale style game with the bets occuring in real time for a live game. I tried both variations of the ideas out with friends using texts and google sheets. Both went ok, unfortunately haha. The pre pick one was more successful simply because it was easy to make picks on your own time. It was difficult for folks to stay focused on a live game and make picks in time. The second was using generative ai to play multiplayer word games. I played a word game with friends, but we left the game early due to Micah's bed time. When we got home, I still had the urge to play the game, but I didn't have anyone to play with. Then it hit me that LLMs would be great AIs for word game bots. I hacked together a word game session on ChatGPT, and it worked surprisingly well. I wanted to tinker around with it more, but I wasn't able to find time.

Ever since last year's injury, I've slowly come to the conclusion that I need to change my playstyle if I want to play basketball long term. The conclusion I've reached is improving my shooting would be the best area for me to focus on first. I've slowly started building up the habit of practicing shooting, and things are starting to click. The coolest part is to tinker and try different techniques to figure out my optimal shooting form. I'm still working on it though haha.

Slightly related to above, I've been on an unsuccessful, multi-month journey to start working out again haha. The biggest challenge is not being to drop Micah off early enough to have time for a workout session in the morning. That's the only time where I can fit in a workout into my schedule.

And slightly related to above, I'm struggling with sleeping enough due to not sleeping on time. It's a bad chain effect.

I'm big into FIRE. My goal for a long time has been 4M-5M. Thy and I recently crossed 2M in liquid-ish assets. We crossed 2M in net worth a bit ago, but it feels weird to count the value of our house. It's not like we plan to sell it or can easily liquidate it. On top of that, you can't even know an accurate value for your house. 2M in liquid assets feels more satisfying to hit. That's actual money we can utilize. Still a long way to go until we hit the FIRE number, but now we can coast FIRE for the next ten-ish years and hit our number.