Don't be a bystander

This post and the last started to sound like me giving advice, but again, it's still addressed mostly to myself. Often I find myself in, let's say new situations. I can explain it all away by saying, oh, I'm introverted and I like to observe and think before getting involved, but really. That can really get out of hand.

The lesson is, don't be a bystander.

The worst of you

Don't let anyone bring out the worst in you. Then you stoop to their level.

Deadlines

Goals need deadlines. Seriously.

Don't leave home without it

You know what VISA taught us about never leaving home without a credit card? I learned that lesson too well, but it's stupid, because nobody forgets their credit cards. They either had their wallets with them or not. People these days only forget CASH. CASH, CASH, CASH is used for so much. Donations. Restaurants. Chipping in for stuff. What is the correct amount of cash to carry around? My friend J.P. (name deleted to protect him from muggers) says $50 should be enough for day-to-day existence. I guess that means to carry it in various denominations.

Forgot to wear protection

The age old problem of eating spaghetti while wearing a white shirt...

It's not that I'm not a good speller

I seem to chronically omit rs from the word your. I think your, but you gets typed... I think it has something to do with my corpus callosum and you all being on the right side of the keyboard and the message to type the R gets lost somehow.

Lesson... remember this tendency...

What's the good of writing down your mistakes if you just forget them?

Ok, so move out was a disaster. And, I got sick (and missed out on Great fun) from all the staying up and other unsavory things, etc. Is this a part of know your limits as well as review you stupid flagged-out-so-you-can-avoid-them tendencies? Yes.

I belong in a cult

So as we're working on our Operating Systems project, I repeatedly have myself proven wrong by believing/assuming things without substantiating them with evidence. First, I confuse ppid and uid (they're actually totally different values), and then assume that processes are displayed in order of CPU usage, even when they show zero usage down the line (they're actually displayed in order of PID). The sad thing is that I was so adamant about them.

The last point was about what does or doesn't invoke the scheduler, which prompted Mike, who usually won arguments to ask me whether or not I had ever participated in a cult. Well, not really, unless you consider the Catholic Church a cult. Even there, I regret that I'm not too faithful. Kinda like the time I was adamant about the spelling of definitely and insisting that it was spelled definately.

I think what's symptomatic here is me jumping to conclusions without thinking things through, and then stubbornly refusing to budge. The up-side is that I usually admit that I'm wrong, but that happens way too often. The lesson is that I should think things through and justify to myself logically my decisions and actions.

On waking up...

Now, regarding waking up in the morning. How many close calls and missed classes/flights do I have to experience before I learn? Phone alarms are not trustworthy and staying up all night may be the only way. That or planning ahead and getting enough sleep or something else.

A major close call was when I had work the day before and Will McG woke me up to go to our last regional tournament for table tennis. Then I missed my flight coming home from Texas, although luckily catching a standby seat on the next flight. Then I miss the second algorithms lecture in a row right before an exam...

BTW, the scarcity of posts here in no way represents a decrease in mistakes... and in this case, no news doesn't necessarily mean good news :/

MORE INSIGHT ON PROCRASTINATION: Removing things from your "stack" of things to do ASAP is not merely a preference, but essential to getting things done on time.

Know your audience

So in trying to get corporate sponsors for the table tennis team's trip to our national championships, we tried to sell the sponsorship as a good business decision and an opportunity to gain a stronger foothold in a fast-growing market. Well, one response went something like, "This idea has merit, but it'll have to be approved by marketing. [Therefore] We won't fund this."

The lesson of the day (I've been bad about keeping this updated) is that the paid philanthropists in a corporation don't care about marketing. They want to know why you are a good cause and not why you'll make them money. Now, this might vary from company to company, but generally, super-large ones are more horizonatally structured (?) and focused on accomplishing their purpose, not some other department's purpose. This is sad, because we had what I thought was a pretty compelling case.

You gotta play the game...

I made a pretty big mistake in finding out about Sony's flash new line of flash players and still not selling. This was about 9:00 AM on Tuesday morning, me having gotten about 3 hours of sleep the day before. AAPL was trading a dollar lower than the previous day in extended-hours trading. Fast forward one day, AAPL is down 3-4 dollars a share. Well, it's not the end of the world.

The other big mistake is overestimating the value of "the webcast" that was aired yesterday and not today as I had expected. Probably the combination of none-too interesting news, combined with the flash announcement lifted any pressure to boost the stock price.

I'm not worried that the price will go back up, just that I didn't capitalize from this significant dip that could have netted more shares. And I really like Sony's players, too. Shoud've stayed out, but now that I'm back in the game... AHHHH this is disastrous. It's like Apple's price dropped 14 dollars had it not split (remember the whole naptersnapster announcement). END DISORGANIZED RANTING.

Communication in this day and age...

Still isn't as easy as I thought. Rule number one: Never assume people check their emails daily. Never assume they check their emails weekly. Never assume people check their emails. That is, unless they're reading this blog. Don't learn the hard way.

Lesson for next time: Don't assume people check their voicemail.

Choose your battles wisely...

Having been on the losing end of several blogging debates, I think I finally know the meaning of the phrase, pick your fights wisely. That's why being on the offensive is so important when fighting a battle. Your opponents will focus on your weaknesses, and you need to focus on the weaknesses of your opponents. We're assuming neither side is perfect. Of course, ideally, you'd be able to defend your positions as well.

I'm not saying that I should be going on the offensive, but should stop just fighting battles I tend to lose against an enemy that has the higher ground.

Who'd have thought IE was less forgiving...

Beginning Javscripters beware: IE refuses to believe an object exists unless you pre-define it first (outside any conditionals). I'm tempted to say it's like C.
(UPDATE: I am a big idiot. I had to do this because I didn't use the declaration operator "var".

Also, thanks Simon for having a link to MS's script debugger.
To use it, insert debugger in your code. I inserted it as debugger; but I have limited experience with it. It also acts as a break point, so put it after the problem areas. Just remember to take it out when you're done.

PHPness

Do not use bare double quotes within a php echo statement!

Rudimentary Programmin Lesson in Java

I started and my partner finished our programming project for our Internet Technology class. Dumbest errors that wasted a lot of time? Redefining global variables locally and getting NullPointerExceptions. Other error is multi-threading related, but Mike was able to find an interesting workaround. More on that eventually, I hope. Otherwise, Eclipse is a great IDE! Unfortunately, they didn't have it at the lab as I thought. AH! I actually remember now, it was at the Engineering lab that they had Eclipse.

Stock trading lessons

When placing stop-loss orders, remember to take into account the intrinsic price volatility. I set my limit on Apple a bit low (sold at 53.50) and by closing time it jumped back to ~55. I didn't have the brains to just buy again (partly because I wasn't aware of the cause of the sudden fluctuation, Now, I know it was probably due to some institutional shareholder dumping a lot of shares). The next day, the price jumped a couple of dollars. The next day, again. The same principle that would've kept me out of trouble (don't be too conservative) got me into trouble because I assumed the price would drop back down. Well, the stock isn't that volatile. Finally bought back in at 65 :/ What's happening in the background? Analysts are predicting that the iPod could be doing a lot better in sales and that PC users who buy iPods (who have an almost insurmountable market share in MP3 players in general and iTunes music sales) are significantly more likely to buy Macintosh computers.

Next lesson... When I actually bought the same number of shares back at over 10 dollars more each share, I bought it when the market opened.. now, granted it was after Thanksgiving, but before-hours trading had the price almost a dollar over what it had closed the previous trading day.. I guess I should've let things cool down and let the real traders takes hold first.

Here's to that $100/share price target that crazy analyst set.

UPDATE 10:41 EST 11/29/04: I'm good for now! Apple rose 3 points today to $68.44 probably due to Bank America raising AAPL's price target to $73 dollars. Merril Lynch also supposedly raised its target.

Post exam analysis

I was burned this week from 3 exams that were all much easier than they could've been. Why? Asides from the class that I was really behind in, I thought I understood concepts I didn't really have a good grasp of. So the lesson is that you don't know it until you can prove it. Eh.. whatever... the real lesson is study in advance and don't fall asleep in class. There's always the finals, right?

Update concerning procrastination: it's not only possible to underestimate the time it takes to accomplish tasks, it's almost certain to happen. Compound these miscalculations with interruptions and set-backs and you're surely screwed.

Boring post again... but this is for my own good anyway.

Taking the bus back to college avenue in the evening

On weeknights, after 9:30, I believe, the A bus becomes the only bus running from College Avenue to Busch Campus. It takes the H bus route, however. Good to know, right? Why am I writing about this? I missed the A going back to College Ave by waiting on the wrong side of Werblin and had to take the A as it entered the Busch Campus.

"It has been said that idleness is the parent of mischief

, which is very true; but mischief itself is merely an attempt to escape from the dreary vacuum of idleness."—George Borrow.

While waiting for the bus to go back to College Ave, I got bored and started throwing my keys high straight up into the sky and trying to catch them. Unfortunately, I'm not very good at this activity and my keys often ended up in the street. So I turn around and face the lawn in front of the Werblin Rec. Center—standing in front of a nice-sized tree. It takes me one throw to lose my keys to the nebulous branches of the tree and my heart sinks.

I immediately begin pondering the consequences of my idiocy: relying on Mike (my roommate) to open get access to our dorm room, paying the $60 fee to replace the lock, waiting until winter for the leaves to abscize off the tree to get my wonderful Fleet bank compass keychain. I tried in vain to shake the tree, the branches, doing so only half-heartedly because I couldn't see my keys anywhere in the tree through the darkness.

Having already prepared myself to accept the worst case scenario, one of two guys waiting at the bus stop asked me what I was staring at. I tell him I was really stupid and threw my keys into the tree. Quickly, one of the guys spots my keychain and the other suggests using my shoe to knock the keys down. I try and miss, but
the other's throw was true. Soon after, I was putting my shoe back on and asking for the names of my benefactors. Now I forget their names, but I will try to remember their faces. Both were business majors who were on their way to the College Avenue Gym to play basketball after finishing up playing at Werblin. What have I learned?

1. Don't do idle things with important objects of critical value (i.e. your keys).
2. Now, I'm not sure whether I would've eventually found the keys in the tree by myself, but don't panic or give up too easily in the face of adversity or you might miss seeing boat on the horizon.
3. Anything else?