Entered @CompSol (where I work as a computer programmer/software consultant). I actually decided to start journaling again using this feature of emacs (org-journal) because I needed to keep track of my hours and spreadsheets are boring. Also I can just start typing random stuff in here and pass it off as me doing something for work.

I live in Shelby, NC and my job is in Indian Trail (around Charlotte). It’s a 90 minute drive. My coworker is ENFP which means he can’t get on my ass for being late without being a hypocrite. Sometimes I abuse that and sleep in for an extra 30 minutes, but that means I can be more productive while working.

I need to work on a VB6 application, converting it from using parallel port to serial. There’s some NDA bullshit but basically VB6 is an old ass language, parallel port is obsolete, and serial port is obsolete but slightly newer than parallel. All invented before I was born.

Also I need to book a room at a hotel (I spend 3 days in Charlotte so I just have to drive 10 minutes to work everday instead of 90 - I usually work Wednsdays to Fridays or Tuesdays to Thursdays depending on a few things), just got upgraded to gold status. I stay in a hilton hotel. Write now I get paid as a contractor and have to do my own taxes with a 1099 form. I’m going to make an LLC so I can write off gas and hotel room costs as bussiness expenses.

Also will read the feynman book after work bc I told discord person (ScarletTest) I would.

Begin testing boards @CompSol. Psych! The testing device was broken so I couldn’t test anything

I was looking into how to more efficiently learn new programming languages (I want to learn guile scheme and rust) and thought of or saw these projects

Projects to learn new languages

• Gtk3.0 Todo List/Personal Planner
• Stopwatch/Timer App
• Breakout Game
• Tic Tac Toe/2048 Game
• Webscraper The first language I actually tried learning for real was python a few years ago, making a webscraper was the first big thing I did.
• Tetris Game My other coworker (not sure his type, infp or intp maybe, probably a 9) asked me to learn LabView and suggested that I make tetris with it. I didn’t because the language actually isn’t free (which is extremely rare, first time I’ve ever heard of a paid language) and they put me on a project where I had to use Java instead (not a fan of java)

Then I saw a cool github repo with project ideas: https://github.com/karan/Projects

Need to get better at emacs. Emacs is a text editor built upon a lisp interpretor. I wrote this because I haven’t use most of its features yet which should make me more productive. It’s been extended to send and recieve emails, browse the internet, be an rss feed reader, communicate with those keurig coffee machines, manage windows, and other stuff. Pretty cool but large learning curve. The Guix operating system was actually inspired by emacs. Ideas behind emacs is that you can pretty much accomplish anything by modifying and extending its source code written in elisp.

Idea for a messaging app:

• Steps
  • Create a gui with a textbox to type message, a send button, and a read-only box to show messages
  • Send the message to a server, and recieve messages from the server into the read-only box
  • Encrypt message when sending to the server, decrypt message when recieving the message
  • Have multiple clients send a recieve things from the server
  • Add Usernames to the clients and messages
  • Have multiple discord-like channels
  • Send and Recieve Images and other filetypes
  • Create a page for adding a username and checking to see if it already exists in the server
• Extensability
  • Show the various functions the user can call
  • Have an init file (code or settings the user can write before the program loads)
  • Add hooks (before an event occurs in the app, the user can write something in the init file that will get executed first)
  • See if I can write multiple frontends for it

Idea for a function to write in emacs:

Writing-Mode:

• Start Olivetti-mode (centers text)
• Switch to Poet-Monochrome Theme (nice theme for writing)
• Center Title of Document
• Hide Line Numbers
• Disable hl-line-mode (highlights the line the cursor is on)

Exiting Writing Mode:

• End Olivetti-mode
• Uncenter Document Title
• Switch to default emacs theme
• Show Line Numbers
• Enable hl-line-mode

I ate a 4 cheese pepperoni pizza I accidentally ordered a big gulp mtn dew from 7/11 on doordash Elaina’s bf joined the homiehood - Elaina is an internet friend that joined a discord server for an irl friend group - she was actually invited by another online friend that I met on discord, that friend and I dated for a little bit and then she ghosted me and everyone else on the server (infj lol) kinda sucked. the homiehood was a joke thing I made up in middle school and my friends and I did some stuff with it, we have a wikipage: https://homiehood.fandom.com/wiki/Homie_Wiki. My favorite articles are “Russia” and “The Conquest of The Monitor” - I wrote both so I’m a little biased.

I read part one of Feynman’s book

Using my windows laptop (CompSol wanted me to use a Windows laptop bc they didn’t know how to use linux and humans are afraid of what they understand [jk, mostly]) to install guix iso but it’s iso.xz.sig, so windows won’t be able to do anything with that file

Some guy @’d me on discord and asked me to help him with a python problem, but it was a docker issue and have never used docker in a meaningful way.

I installed etcher, which lets me burn iso files to an usb drive so I can install the operating system within it.

My friend “Big Shauf” (we gave him that name ironically) @’d me 55 times to call me gay

Told ScarletTest that I would send them this file, so I added context to make this journal entry more understandable.

Finally flashed the Guix iso to the USB drive and I can install the Guix operating system. But I’ll probably save that for tomorrow’s journal entry.