Resolutions

I've often been told that New Year's Resolutions are something we tell ourselves to make ourselves feel better. Or at least something along those lines. How many times have I told myself, "I'm going to start working out this year!" Too many to count.

However, something I try to live by is learning or doing something new every day. Especially if it seems small and inconsequential. Small and inconsequential things are the foundations of greater things. Today, I may finally grasp what monads are. You might learn how to make a bechamel. Someone else might learn how to thread a needle. Somewhere, a child is kicking a soccer ball for the first time.

Taken by themselves, these things are small and inconsequential. However, monads are the foundation for complex Haskell (and other functional) programs. Bechamels are used to form all sorts of sauces. Threading a needle leads to becoming a designer. That kid kicking a ball for the first time might become the next Pele.

Learning these small things lead to so much more. Giving up after not noticing any progress after a week, two weeks, a month. But if you stick with it and push yourself every day on some front, you'll be able to look back and say, "I didn't even know what a roux was back then. Now, I run a restaurant!"

Why share all this?

I've made a short list of resolutions that quite honestly, will mutate and change over the year and the years to come. These things are specific to me so you might be wondering, "Alec, why do I care?" It's fine if you don't. However, I'm sharing them in an attempt to keep myself accountable for what I set out to do. In fact, being more public is one of my goals.

1: Becoming Less Introverted

I don't find anything necessarily wrong with being introverted. It's gotten me this far in life, why not another 26 years? I'm not expecting to become the life of the party and go out every night to hang out with a large group of people. That's not me, nor do I envision that happening.

However, just a few days I gave a presentation at my local Python meetup. I knew my topic well (Decorators) but speaking publically is terrifying to me. Even though I had done everything I'd ever heard of when attempting to give a presentation, I got really nervous. Not because I was worried about the well-known guys in the room, but because I don't like being the center of attention at all -- so much to the point, I don't tell many people when my birthday is. I've done things where I'm forced to be the center of attention at least some of the time -- running a D&D campaign is kinda hard to do if the DM doesn't draw any attention to himself. But being in front of six friends is quite different than being in front of thirty-five people you don't know.

I don't make friends easy because of this. I'd rather be at home reading something or watching a movie than where ever I am currently. And because of that, I miss out on experiences and potential friends.

It's also hindered me professionally. I don't interview well. I know my stuff when it comes to Python webdev or running a retail store. But in an interview, I choke up and get nervous. I can sell you ice in a snowstorm or whip up a basic CRUD app in no time, but when it comes to selling myself...eh, I'm not so great. Part of it is being introverted and another part of it is my self-esteem. But, I keep finding myself wishing I had taken that chance or done something bold. Instead, I end up beating myself up for something "stupid" I did rather than at least looking for the learning opprotunity in it. Or completely half-assing something so I'm not overly committed when I get cold feet.

Throwing myself into stuff with reckless abandon would be the complete opposite of what I am now. While I don't want to be that, I want to be a little more like that. There's no reason why I shouldn't be able to give a presentation of something I know well to thirty-something people. There's no reason why I shouldn't be able to sell myself.

2: Linux and BASH

I use Linux and BASH every day. The only time I'm not using a Linux system is at work (which uses probably the worst POS system I've ever seen). My laptop's had some variant of Linux on it almost from day one. My tower, my RasPis. I'll even technically count my phone.

However, a few weeks ago my uncle quizzed me on the Linux filesystem. Turns out I don't know as much as I thought I did. Yeah, I got Arch up and running (third times a charm) and I can modify my .bashrc and .bash_alias files to make my life easier. I use ssh and ~/.ssh/config and do most of my work from the command line. But really, at the heart of it, I feel like a script kiddy living in a hacker's world.

Currently, I'm experience a strange networking issue that seems to be two fold:

• My tower's networking process seems to live in a quantum state of running and stopped. And it's always the opposite of what I expect it to be (even if I try tricking it).
• My bridge router selectively hinders traffic behind it. Sometimes the tower connects just fine and other times, I'm about two steps from pulling my hair out. Everything behind the bridge communicates just fine. And the bridge and main router talk just fine. But moving beyond the bridge is...difficult sometimes.

I got no idea what to do. Sure, I can ifconfig eth0 and traceroute and ping and dhcp -r eth0 all day long. But I'm just aping what I've seen other people say. Looks like it's happening right now despite the WiFi dongle.

I'm not saying that I want to be network adminstrator (though, that'd be continuing the family tradition), but I should know enough to actually figure out what the heck is going on here. I know enough to be dangerous but that's about it.

And there's still quite about BASH itself I don't know. I'm not wanting to develop complex shell scripts, but there's so much that can be done with a few lines of BASH that would take many more in Python. I'm not saying BASH is better than Python, but if I want to create sequential backups of a drive and store a log of each backup and do this every night at 3AM, I can do that in a few lines of BASH. Python's great for gluing programs together, BASH is better at this task.

3: Bass

I have a bass. It's a decent Peavy four string. I've played it some over the years, but I never really devoted a ton of time to learning how to play. In high school, I took some lessons, but like people who commit to working out, I gave up after two months of not noticing gains -- despite that they were happening. Now that I'm a little older and a little wiser, I figure it's time to give it a real shot.

Music is something that is important to me. I enjoy listening to it, working with it and sharing it. Why not produce some of my own? Not necessarily forming a band or putting videos on youtube. But just playing to play and enjoy it. Besides, since I stopped working on cars, my hands have gotten soft.

4: Enroll in School

I've always kicked myself for not enrolling in college. Even though I would have ended up an English major -- probably -- if I'd done right out of high school, having a college degree is now more important than ever. I can self-teach myself Python and SQL and Haskell all day but the truth is, I know just enough to get by and recognize that there's so much more that I don't know. The worst part of knowing there's so much more out there is that I don't even know where to start or if I have the right skills for it to make sense to me.

Endofunctors? Linked lists? Pointers? Or even something as seemingly mundane as SOLID. Like I get the idea, but I truly have no idea. It's a thing that does a thing and holds the data.

I know there's the whole circlejerk of "You don't need a degree to get a job in CompSci!" and I'm sure that's technically true: You're not going to bring the piece of paper that says, "Alec Reiter graduate from University of Derp blah blah blah blah" to an interview. But it's what the degree represents, "Alec Reiter has successfully completely a program ensuring he knows the basics of CompSci!"

I can self-teach CompSci and I might learn it better that way than through sitting in a class room two or three times a week. But in twelve years of teaching myself compsci, I've had one interview and I've produced only a handful of non-impressive projects. Just being a 100% honest here. I'm not impressed with any of my works. And that's because I feel like I'm grasping at straws with some of the things I do and write because I don't have the full picture. I feel the inner rockstar wizard ninja programming in me, but I'm not sure how to let it out.

On top of all of that, there's other stuff I'm interested in that seem completely daunting to self-teach (at least to me): Electrical Engineering (ask me about my Grand Unified Coffee Pot sometime), Physics, Mathematics and Philosphy have piqued my interests many times. I'm not saying that I expect to great at all these, but I'd like to know more.

5: Become a marketable Web Developer

This ties in with the last resolution. I can't and won't say that my heart will always lie with Web Development. It's surely a bustling and busy field that is as varied as CompSci in general. But it's what I'm pretty good at right now. I like the internet. I like programming. Why not program the internet?

However, despite the fact that I'm a passable backend programmer (or is the term engineer now?), I'm a dreadful frontend guy. It comes to make the front end and I'm just like, "Javascript...oh wait, this query's busted let me fix that first."

Time to stop that. I can make the most beautiful REST Api in the world, have a gorgeous query and it's all wrapped in a nice neat OOP app, but if I can make even a generic frontend for it...what's the point? I know not ever company is looking for a "full-stack" or "end-to-end" developer -- someone that that implements a feature from database to CSS -- but many are at least looking for someone who can do that in a pinch.

I don't know Javascript. Frankly, I don't want to learn Javascript. An acquaintance told me, "Javascript is what happens when you drink too much, smoke too much and have to design a language in too little time." However, in order to do any modern web programming, Javascript is the only answer. Which saddens me, I'd love to see Python gain a true client side implementation (not just compiling to Javascript). But until that day, I'll guess I'll be learning me a Javascript for great good.

On top of that, I'm resolving myself to using Django. Django's another thing I don't like (though, I've only used it some). I much prefer the completely indifferent Flask (and I mean that affectionately). However, there's precisely zero job opportunities for Flask here -- well, that's probably not entirely true, I just haven't found any. While I may find Flask to be superior and use it for my personal projects, if I want to be marketable I'll have to pick up Django. Besides, being a one trick pony is no-good.

Other stuff

Of course, there's always smaller stuff that I'd like to do. I have a short list of languages I'd like to be passable in:

• Python
• BASH
• Haskell
• C/C++
• Javascript
• SQL

Some of these I know alright or have a decent grasp on and other's not so much. But I feel it's a well rounded list. BASH, Python and Javascript are all scripting languages but lend themselves to wildly different tasks. SQL, to me, is a complete must to anyone interacting with a database (even if it's through an ORM, and especially in that case). C/C++ for "actual programming" or at least to familiarize myself with them, plus many extensions to the other languages are written in C/C++. And Haskell because it interests me and it's radically different to the others. Not to mention the little bit I've learned has already helped me understand things like "The Clean Architecture" (the idea of separating I/O and data transformation completely) and OOP (Haskell's typeclasses are just data holders and rules for how functions interact with the data...sounds like OOP to me!) And of course, I'd like to explore the new hotness languages like D, Clojure/Scala, Go, Rust and others just because.

I'd like to actually stop smoking. I vaped on a custom 50watt box mod for a while and enjoyed it...until it was time to wrap my own coils. Given I have an IGO-W2 with a stripped post, a piece of shit something that's drilled out poorly and a 454 Big Block which has horizontal coils, I'm not making it the easiest on myself. But you know what? I actually enjoyed it otherwise. And if a little bit of elbow grease is needed, all the better.

Working on my car again is another thing. I'd be surprised if there wasn't at least one place in Atlanta where I can rent a bay and some tools for a day. I'm not at the point where I'm gonna rebuild the motor, but there's a few things I need to do to make my ride smoother -- motor mounts, inspecting the suspension, determining if I should replace the tranny fluid (rule of thumb: if you need to ask, the answer's probably don't).

Making use of my Raspberry Pis. I have two. What the heck do I do with them? Operate a coffee pot? A quick and dirty NAS? Emulate a smart TV? Emulate vidya? Run a music server? They just kinda sit there and blink at me from time to time. I kinda feel like Richmond, "And this one: flash, flash, flash and then wait for it. Nothing for a while. Here it comes. Double flash."

I'd love to start playing D&D or at least some game on a regular (or semi-regular) basis again.

Accountability

Like I said, I'm sharing all this to hold myself more accountable. To continue to do that, I'm going to keep writing about these topics. Maybe not every day and not exclusively about these topics, but as much and as often as I can. Different things I've learned or done that have built up into something bigger and better.

I look forward to 2015 and seeing how it shapes and changes my life. Hopefully you are, too!