Life Is An Adventure

- December 21, 2019

New York, New York

In the 4 years since my previous post, I’ve had 2 amazing children, sold our house and vehicles in Washington, and got an apartment and software development job in the middle of Manhattan, New York City. I’ll say that it’s nice living in the same time zone as the rest of my family, and it’s a bit easier to have visitors here because of the closer distance. In the span of 1 year, I think we’ve had 5 different sets of visitors join us in new york for a few days. I suppose that the touristy feeling of New York city probably helps out with this too. :D

Programming With Python

For my job I’ve had to learn a new programming language, Python, and I’ve been having a bunch of fun with it. I think the statement, “Programming is fun again!”, is an appropriate description for how it makes me feel. I’ve got several Python projects that I’m working on, and it’s pure joy to jump back and forth between them. They are all related to video game simulations in some way - visualization of data, decision optimization, and using AI to build the simulation from only the image data available. I’m confident I will make separate web posts on these topics - probably with multiple parts as I slowly make progress on them.

Reprogramming Myself

On a personal level I’ve also been working hard to try to build better habits on a daily and weekly basis. In the past I’ve tried one-off techniques, like requiring myself to think for 30 seconds before reading news on my phone or navigating to youtube or netflix. It works for a while, but I inevitably forget about my rules and fall back into old habits after a week or two. Well, not anymore! I’ve got a new framework for making and enforcing simple rules for myself that has worked surprisingly well so far. I’ll say that I’ve gone about a month and a half with this new approach and I honestly feel that it is transformative on a weekly basis. I hope to eventually write about it in more detail - perhaps after a longer period of use.