While I've made my return to Goodreads these past few days, it's proving not to be a good fit. Whereas LibraryThing provides recommendations based on the books entered, Goodreads chose to punt that obvious in lieu of user ratings of titles—I get it, gotta feed that Big Data machine. So, as a user with 110 entries, I get NO recommendations.

Should I go back to my ul/li approach? It's far too unwieldy and I cannot seem to implement DataTables as its broken with this particular Jekyll theme—even if it was working, I don't think I would be satisfied in both its rendering and its update process.

I flirted with returning to WordPress and gave it a go overnight, but, it's hard to beat GitHub Pages as it relates to price (free) and security: these are flat files. Eastern European and Chinese Bots were my prodigious readers with WordPress as my CMS!

Once I import my books into LibraryThing and clean up its data, I'll likely shutdown my Goodreads account; it fails to meet my demographic and aptitude expectations. That said, I'm also testing out a new player on the block, TheStoryGraph.com, though my first impression of it, is that everything is just too big.

Speaking of testing, I considered signing back up with Habitica, not for the site itself, rather, I wanted to evaluate the things that work and the things that are underwhelming as I develop my own desktop platform to parallel my studies in Python (ultimately, however, I didn't want to be influenced by Habitica's approach).

Along with a task RPG, I'd also like to develop an alternative to Gnucash. I've loved it for years, but, it could made more effective in providing information for decision making.

Two ideas to sharpen my skills—HEY, learning is FUN when you've got Nassim Nicholas Taleb's "skin in the game!"

Let us return to pathemata mathemata (learning through pain) and consider its reverse: learning through thrills and pleasure. People have two brains, one when there is skin in the game, one when there is none. Skin in the game can make boring things less boring. When you have skin in the game, dull things like checking the safety of the aircraft because you may be forced to be a passenger in it cease to be boring. If you are an investor in a company, doing ultra-boring things like reading the footnotes of a financial statement (where the real information is to be found) becomes, well, almost not boring.

If you've been following my writing since 2002 or have just started in 2020, you'll agree that I LOVE to test ways to better optimize my approach in whatever I'm doing. I won't say I'm open-minded, because that actually comes off as the close-minded "progressive." If you grab someone who claims to be open-minded, have them balance on a wire—or even a 2x4 for that matter! Not only will will they tumble down into safety net, they'll fall off the edge of that, too! The problem is that people are...people.

No, like everyone else, my mind is a closed system. However, I'd like to think I've got an effective R&D team on staff whom understands the value of in-house development, while champions the value of outsourcing! And frankly, most of the great ideas are already out there, even if they're obscured by dirt or wearing a silly, little mouse outfit.

As part of that, I test things out. Perhaps, I toss them before a thorough test can be completed. I felt that way about my move away from the genre of productivity apps, but, if my user experience for 14 days is indicative of what I'd experience for the next 14 weeks, then why invest any more time into those platforms?

And the thing is, there is a solution out there that works for me. I just don't want to custom build it!

Which makes a nice segue to my next topic! After reading Payne and Barnett's The Economists' Diet: The Surprising Formula for Losing Weight and Keeping It Off—a book with some good ideas, but, fails to push the envelope for my palate—it got me thinking about modularization to minimize decision fatigue.

I was reminded of being a high school kid again and my ability to bag groceries, when my friends gave affectionately the title of super sacker to me. Sacking with speed wasn't hard; it was all about modularization. In fact, I didn't have to think; I just had to react because I had rules in place while adding another set of code, my middle school Tetris on a PC. A lot of life is that way. We have DLL's or libraries that we import old algorithms to add to new content in solving a problem.

I got to thinking further: I know how the 3AM something hour is a great space for personal projects and I've done just that for workouts and meditation. Of late, I haven't felt the push for workouts, and my wrastling with Ortho GroundClear likely has something to do with that—not only did the poison's mist enter my eyes, but it also poured down my bare leg as I wrapped up another installment of Yardwork: For The Loss.

Still, it's a GREAT time slot for projects that I cannot seem to otherwise get to in a day. What if I use it to finally knock out my desire to develop in Python?

While I'm sure I've written about it, perhaps not in this sequence of posts from 2020, my objective of weightloss is accomplished by diet. While in the past, I wanted workouts to help drive losses further, I now recognize that in the aftermath of a training session, I want to eat more, and if I don't, then my body will find a way to make up the difference.

Therefore, since I don't have to workout to achieve weightloss, I can apply that time slot for any endeavor I choose. Do I want increased stamina? I don't have an application for that right now. Even if I was at weight and conditioned, where would I race? No, my time can be utilized more effectively by exploring an area that has been my Matt Damon on Kimmel, an interest of mine that has been kicked off my New Year's Resolutions ship, time and time again due to a lack of opportunity.

If I may borrow from Ozzy:

Times have changed and times are strange
Here I come, but I ain't the same.
(Coding), I'm coming home.

Times gone by, seems to be
You could have been a better friend to me.
(Coding), I'm coming home.
...
I've seen your face a hundred times
Everyday we've been apart.
I don't care about the sunshine, yeah.
'Cause (coding), (coding), I'm coming home!

My brief foray into Todoist adoption has ended: I just didn't have my shoes blown off. It seems like another screen that demands attention; it's another AI that queries for input.

It wasn't bad, it just...made life feel like a pseudcode:

while X condition is true, do y

That basically boils down every day of my life. Throw in an armload of instances of that and BAM: any task management software pines for attention.

Maybe I shouldn't put so much of my life into apps?

We are organic creatures! And I'm led to believe that we aren't even linear entities, much less algorithmic ones.

And still...I recognize that I want to find some place in my schedule to shove in Python and JavaScript classes. And yet...I don't desire those studies because of an If C, then $ dynamic—I know, most think it's All About the Benjamins, however in my case, it's forever been All About the Pentiums.

With my aptitude toward technology, why am I not barn dancing with every "productivity" app out there? I don't know...maybe on some level, I wonder if we fail to set the parameters of what it means to be productive? Is my existence project management? Is it about hitting quotas? Is it simply outlined by statistical analysis in quantitative research? Am I defined by my relation to N standard deviations away from the mean? I suspect it would be easier to catalog if it was, launching the I am the sum of my parts scientist into an ebullient ecstasy, not unlike her popping back a handful of strawberry Nerds followed by a cascading Pixy Stix chaser.

And yet...is that reality? Or, should I just plug-and-chug my life into a smart phone?