Operation Warp Speed: Moolah Edition - Money Magnet 5.11G

[Ampersnd]

Day 87,

"Putting your mind to something" is a very real concept. From my experience, when something is psychologically difficult to me, I have found success by entering the headspace of being just about to start to take action and experiencing the anguish of conflicting emotions. The more instances I've done so, and the longer I've done it, the easier it gets psychologically, as though you're wearing down resistance and piercing through to the other side.

Attempted text to speech for this message.

[Ampersnd]

Day 89,

The last couple days, I've had tears building up in one of my eyes, yet I'm feeling normal psychologically.
Had an eye issue back in May, but I'm not sure if this is the same.
Noticed that it was easier to jump on the phones and make calls yesterday.
Connected with an L.A. health professional who gave me a gold mine of a call from the perspective of niche research; the call lasted 25-30 minutes.

Note: On some deeper level, I am feeling a strange form of tiredness; a form of depletion.
Also, I've got a sushi lunch paid for by my work today. So that's a win, but my colleagues (under my direct boss) got that benefit, too.

[Ampersnd]

Day 90,

Finally. It occurred to me today that I could ask my work if they would reimburse me for the exam costs of Network+. An instantaneous 'yes', and a tentative 'yes' for future exams - so long as they aren't ridiculously high-priced (he said 10K) - that is, I'm paid back as long as I pass the exam.

I might be saving myself 1-2 thousand dollars over the next 18 months, assuming that they accept each concurrent one.

[Ampersnd]

Day 91,

Had a dream where I saw a bunch of vans/buses roll up with men in balaclavas and AK-47s; I was with an ex (girl I used to hook up with) and I led her across the giant mall-like building I was in.
Got into an employee-only area and bumped into staff that I used to work with; I brought up these news to them, and they didn't seem shocked.
They said that a guy intervened on some of their business the other day, and they want to retaliate.
I don't think that I dreamed it, but I had the memory of intervening.
"Oh shit", they were coming for me. I had no weapons and no feeling that I could properly defend myself.
I wasn't worried about being shot, but rather that I would be captured and t*rtured.
It woke me up and it took about 45 minutes for me to calm down enough to return to sleep.

[Ampersnd]

Day 97,

Had a couple of quick wins these last couple of days.
* I learned that work will reimburse me for the fees involved with passing a network certification exam, and for any other IT certification that isn't too expensive (described as 'thousands and thousands of dollars')
* I played a music gig for an ex-boss. My initially stated price was $175 for 1.5 hours of music. I had set that price, really wishing that I had set it to 225. That number lingered in my head. I performed and over-delivered on time. In the end, she gave me 220, and I got a 20 dollar tip from another guest.
* My uncle said that she would give me a family heirloom - a projective firer, of sorts (read between the lines) - free of charge, with a locking case with key. Might also be a bandolier belt for the shells. He said that I can get it once he finds the key (ongoing).

Celebrating Christmas with my immediate family on the 30th this year due to family being apart.

[Ampersnd]

Day 101,

After spending a week with my family, I experienced a surge of sexual energy on the drive back.
I've since managed to mitigate that energy so that I didn't do anything stupid with it.
Back on track, and I'll try to refocus myself into goal setting for 2024.
This year around, I've lost a lot of motivation to really push the pedal to the floor for a lot of goals, because of my track record of success; I get success randomly and independent of my efforts, so it's hard to go by the notion that it's 100% in my hands.

I also think a lot about culmination; I do BJJ, and have a goal of getting to purple belt; but why do I want that goal? I suppose that it's to get me closer to black belt, the culmination of my efforts. But is that it? Will I try to be a big name in the sport, or to compete heavily? No. Will I teach and get highly involved? Likely not. So what use is it, really, besides the nominal benefits of skill, self-defense, and the social aspect?

I see that Ultra Success will be up, and this might adjust my attitude, but I will stick to Money Magnet until something shifts.

[Ampersnd]

Day 124,

I'm becoming more squeamish, acutely sensitive to my own humanness and the humanness of others.
Our tissues tear and fail us, our bones can snap suddenly under an unusual stress, our constitutions are imperfect. We have one shot at life and things can go south all of a sudden, with few people who can truly save you. If you're lucky, you're surrounded by people who can help you.

This is leading me to lean back from my edge, especially in my grappling. Normally, I'm game for a lot of things, but I'm now not as much.
A few years ago, I was full of the energy needed to travel and explore the world around me; now, I don't see the use. More specifically, the upside seems smaller, and the downside (the effort required and costs) seems much greater.

[Ampersnd]

Day 128,

Something has happened to me in the last 3 months; definitely the last year and most certainly in the last five years.
Five years ago, I was commuting to work, then fitting in long drives and doing short trips within my state; here and there.
Did my first international trip, and was almost naïve to how open and exploratory I was.

A lot of that spirit went away these last few months; it's not a matter of feeling down or glum or depressed. It's simply that my interests have narrowed significantly.
It might be winter getting the better of me, but it might also be that I'm realizing that it takes more time, attention, energy, and investment to get the things I want from life than I initially thought, and the upside of getting those things is predictable. The equation is no longer really worth it; if I truly take time away, I have to play catch up; if I spend money, I see its lack in my account a few weeks later; if I go somewhere else, then my house gets out of order.
Not really looking for a woman to spend my time with. Just phoning it in on my weight lifting, martial arts, and IT learning. Dropped my language learning. Musical interest dropped precipitously.

Outside of myself, I remember considering a summer trip to a big city and checked the AirBnBs and found that the prices were outrageous; probably double what it used to be 5 years ago. I opted against it.
Prices for everything going up, so I can enjoy less on the same money.
I'm a bit stuck in my ways; preparing and eating the same food every day for the most part.
Feels like the weekends, and any free time for that matter, just slips away, though I'm filling it with mostly productive things.

Worst of all, I'm not very motivated to improve my money situation; the saving grace is that I'm running full steam towards gaining my Security+ certification.
It's unclear how I'll want to parlay that certificate once I gain that certificate.

[Topaz]

Day 128,

Something has happened to me in the last 3 months; definitely the last year and most certainly in the last five years.
Five years ago, I was commuting to work, then fitting in long drives and doing short trips within my state; here and there.
Did my first international trip, and was almost naïve to how open and exploratory I was.

A lot of that spirit went away these last few months; it's not a matter of feeling down or glum or depressed. It's simply that my interests have narrowed significantly.
It might be winter getting the better of me, but it might also be that I'm realizing that it takes more time, attention, energy, and investment to get the things I want from life than I initially thought, and the upside of getting those things is predictable. The equation is no longer really worth it; if I truly take time away, I have to play catch up; if I spend money, I see its lack in my account a few weeks later; if I go somewhere else, then my house gets out of order.
Not really looking for a woman to spend my time with. Just phoning it in on my weight lifting, martial arts, and IT learning. Dropped my language learning. Musical interest dropped precipitously.

Outside of myself, I remember considering a summer trip to a big city and checked the AirBnBs and found that the prices were outrageous; probably double what it used to be 5 years ago. I opted against it.
Prices for everything going up, so I can enjoy less on the same money.
I'm a bit stuck in my ways; preparing and eating the same food every day for the most part.
Feels like the weekends, and any free time for that matter, just slips away, though I'm filling it with mostly productive things.

Worst of all, I'm not very motivated to improve my money situation; the saving grace is that I'm running full steam towards gaining my Security+ certification.
It's unclear how I'll want to parlay that certificate once I gain that certificate.

Hey sorry to hear that
Try to raise your energy with yoga, meditation and supplements

Social interactions also release motivational hormones in our body

[Ampersnd]

Day 130,

I've turned some kind of corner.
Deliberately seeking out music and enjoying it. I had the inclination to turn on some French-language news for some language input.
Hitting at my Security+ studies reasonably hard today. Things are doing alright, despite a poor performance at the gym.

[Ampersnd]

Day 135,

I'm in a cruising mode, but things are shifting gradually.
Strongly considering shaving the handlebar mustache that I have been growing and cultivating until August; my only real objection is the occasional approval I get from it. If I factor that out, then it might have run its course.
It's been especially bothersome today by getting in the way of things, and the downsides are replacing the upside.

I've also been devouring educational materials of computing, especially lower-level processes such as encryption, security keys, and data compression.

[Frosted]

Are you preparing for how AI is going to explode in the next few years? It’s likely to take a lot of jobs including coding jobs… If you keep up to speed you can likely have a job managing AI or something.

[Ampersnd]

Are you preparing for how AI is going to explode in the next few years? It’s likely to take a lot of jobs including coding jobs… If you keep up to speed you can likely have a job managing AI or something.

Yes, I am strongly considering how AI will change things. That's what shook me out of my job in the health field; though person-to-person and highly accredited, it involved a LOT of report writing, and I had been made aware in 2019 about the advent of AI.
I took a bootcamp in 2021 and studied the foundations of AI in 2022.
I'm now aware of the limitations of AI and how the training data - the information that fuels the 'new' decisions that AI takes - acts as the bottleneck for how effective it can be, or which decisions it winds up taking. 

On the other hand, you could make an argument that human likes and dislikes follow some foundational principles, so the training data that feeds into it might be enough for most jobs and processes. If we rely on it too much, it will bottleneck and delay genuinely transformational ideas and paradigm shifts.

Generative AI is based on training a model over an 'embedding' - a set of numerical values placed on a mostly-English vocabulary, which determines its relative usage and context. That allows it to pick the next 'best' word when given a topic and a prompt. But that might legitimately be enough in a lot of circumstances. Currently, Open AI limits how frankly or practical it wants to be, largely due to wanting universal appeal or to avoid certain political topics; it likes to fence-ride and be very moderate when anything controversial comes up, but it can shake you out of complacency and give you some good ideas.
It can even debug your code very quickly and fix it for you, something that I started making use of last March.

So, yes. I do think about it. But, strategy and big-picture architectural planning are not easily done by a robot.

You'd also be surprised how many web developers don't really know how to do their jobs, just phone it in and do what is necessary.
They don't understand networking principles such as IP addresses, switches, WiFi, port numbers. They don't really know much about cybersecurity principles. They don't really understand their database engine and how its execution plan works. Nor do they care to understand the deeper levels such as encryption technology, the OS kernel, firmware, etc.
So for them, 'technology' is this cloudy soup; the most concrete part of their framework is HTML (which is where my bootcamp began).
  
Those kinds of developers - who don't care to learn these things - will be the first on the chopping block. 
So, given that I'm accumulating these surrounding certificates, I believe that I've been positioning myself higher up on the Titanic (visual: its stern is pointed up towards the sky) while it's sinking.

[Ampersnd]

Day 136,

Strongly considering cutting loose from MM at Day 150. Then, probably on to EHPRA.
There have been no major changes to report.