Yesterday was wonderfully productive. I started using the Pomodoro Technique to manage my time spent working on web development and I had wonderful results in doing so. I got up and took breaks to stretch or walk. When during a work period, I had an incredible focus on the task. I set task intentions for each work period. When I had an urge to distract myself with youtube or useless research, I would remind myself that this is a work period, and I’d schedule the distraction for the next rest period.

I only had 5 minute breaks, so usually the important self-care items like meditation would occur. The useless researching that I tend to do late at night primarily on Youtube didn’t end up happening, because I didn’t want to use my precious break periods to do such a thing.

I made a rule that break periods must be done away from the keyboard. I figure I spend enough of my time in front of my computer screen that such a thing is important. My breaks were meditation, yoga, preparing food, walking, and reading. I read aloud because I think it’s good to practice using my voice. I hardly use it nowadays, I hardly visit with anybody in person because of SARS-CoV-2.

Speaking of SARS-CoV-2. I think the quarantine is stupid. I think our economy is going to suffer too much. The quarantine isn’t even a good one. I can go to the grocery store and get sick, and the 6 foot rule isn’t going to do jack shit. If we’re breathing the same air, that’s enough to be infected. Ok so maybe the 6 foot rule is my major gripe. I think it’s ridiculous unless masks are used by everyone.

Lex Fridman in his latest appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience said that the scientific evidence suggests that everybody needs to wear a mask if social distancing is to be effective.

I don’t have a mask though. My mom offered me a fabric mask via text. I haven’t got back to her yet.

Apparently masks are to protect the people around me. Say I’m infected, the mask will help prevent me from infecting others. So it’s not really a thing I do for myself, but it’s a thing I do for the people around me. So anyone not wearing a mask is an asshole! Too bad the CDC is spreading information for the wrong reasons. They’re saying don’t wear masks because they’re not important. That’s a lie because the CDC is trying to get a certain outcome– an outcome where people don’t use masks in order to give priority to healthcare professionals.

Then there’s the madness of healthcare workers being told not to wear masks in waiting rooms because it freaks people out. Such bullshit. Masks are commonplace at hospitals, I don’t think that’s a reasonable thing to be worried about.

These are all just stories that propagate very well because my brain is infected with Coronavirus. Coronavirus the meme. It’s infected a lot of people because fear is such a strong influencer. These stories spread like a virus between people, and a lot of people had made decisions based on the fear, not the science.

I’m dealing with it one day at a time. Today I’m going to learn more about how to use Jest! Apparently it’s maintained by Facebook engineers. That’s not an immediate turnoff, as long as it doesn’t have some sort of dependency on Facebook itself! I know it doesn’t though. It’s a test framework meant to be the best test framework out there.

Yesterday I read a bunch of Jest documentation. I used a jest commandline tool to convert my Mocha/chai test code to Jest. With Jest I have a lot fewer require statements. Before, I was using chai, and chai-as-promised to extend Mocha, but now I’m seeing that Jest has a lot of that functionality built right in.

Jest has really pretty output. I’m just using the default, but there’s all sorts of formatters which make it even nicer. Here’s an example but it’s kind of a bad one at the moment. I have a lot of test files not even implemented yet, so there’s lots of errors.

My pictures folder needs organization! Lots of lewd Mikus immediately visible when I open up my pictures. Not that lewd Miku is a problem at all! There’s a time and a place for lewd Mikus. I just don’t want to wear them out!

Okee doke, I used my break period to organize some pictures. I went against my rule to not have breaks at the computer. I couldn’t help myself, I really felt compelled to organize!

Oh yeah, I don’t think I mentioned that I’m using my Pomodoro timer to write my blog today. I have such a difficult time staying focused, so the Pomodoro technique is really helping me today!

So there’s an issue with organizing documents– I don’t think it makes sense to do so unless I have a backup in place! I could see myself dumping thousands of hours into organizing my files, but what if I lose it all and that works becomes null and void? Doesn’t make much sense.

My long term goals include some sort of network attached storage. Ideally, a 45drives Storinator. I’d put that at my office where it has kickass internet, and store all my files there. I’d need some sort of off-site backup as well, in case there was a fire or other catastrophic event. Maybe amazon glacier or something. Maybe IPFS/Filecoin would be good enough at that point to contract other miners to store my files!

I haven’t even been thinking of mining Filecoin lately. I don’t have the infrastructure required for such a thing. I’m realizing that my internet connection is about as shoddy as they get in 2020. I’m excited to switch to an AT&T unlimited data plan for my home internet, but I realize that most people wouldn’t dream of doing such a thing. The speeds one can get from cable internet are vastly superior to the 7Mbps down 5Mbps up that I’ll be getting with AT&T. 7 down and 5 up is AMAZING for me. The only better internet I’ve had access to is Comcast Business internet at my old IT job. That was something like 80Mbps down, 30Mbps up, and that blew my mind.

I’d like to get an office with that kind of connectivity in the future. When that happens, I’ll think about filecoin. Until then, it doesn’t make any sense.

I suppose I could try mining filecoin in the cloud. I’m not sure what kind of return I can expect in doing that, but it might be worth a shot. The time to get mining is probably now. Filecoin doesn’t have a mainnet yet. I think they have a testnet though, which would give me an opportunity to set up lotus and figure out how to run it correctly.

There was a Filecoin newsletter that I forgot to read. It’s in my inbox. Perhaps I will read that during my next break. I think I should get off the computer for a few minutes though. Maybe read a few pages from I Thought it was just me. It’s a good book!

I’m 9 minutes from a break. I wanna take my break right now! Oh hey, 8 minutes until I need to cycle my laundry. That’s a good coincidence!

I’m afraid to say hi to my brother D. who appears to be home from school. I don’t know if his semester is over, or if he came home because there’s no physical classes at the moment. Not sure. Anyway, I would like to say hi, but I don’t want to invade his personal space, especially during this social distancing mandate. Fuck, what a stupid mandate. Joe Rogan said more people are dying right now from the flu than from SARS-CoV-2. I seriously think the COVID-19 meme is more dangerous than the virus itself.

Dangerous for my wallet. I look at my charte which keeps track of card sales.

• Week 10 — 7 cards
• Week 11 — 8 cards
• Week 12 — 4 cards
• Week 13 — 5 cards
• Week 14 — 3 cards
• Week 15 — 1 card

I’m seeing a trend here, what about you? It’s not like I slowed down on my efforts to list cards every day. Well, I did now that I’m out of cards to list, but my point is that I don’t think people are buying because they aren’t working. My whole entrepreneurial effort to make a store which appeals to Japanese anime Otakus depends on people having disposable incomes! Such incomes are wiped out by the natural disaster that is the COVID-19 meme!

I’m hopeful that the incoming stimulus package will give my fellow Otaku reason to buy again. Until then, I’m just enjoying the silver lining of the COVID-19 meme. I have lots of time to myself to work on my longest passion– software development!

I’m making a Weiss Schwarz card image scraper. I call it weiss-is-nice. I’m taking my time in learning Jest because I want this project to withstand the test of time. Continuous Integration Tests are supremely important for that goal. The whole reason I started using Jest is because I was looking for a robust method for testing code which depends on network connectivity. I had a problem with that kind of test in my previous project, precious-data. precious-data has a similar goal of scraping and creating a card data repository for the card game Precious Memories, and has an extensive test suite which takes way too long to run. It would probably take 24 hours to run the test suite in it’s entirety, because I hadn’t figured out a good way to test the code without also testing the website being scraped.

I found a good article, A Node.js Guide to Actually Doing Integration Tests. There was some really good information in that article which explained stubs and a method for avoiding API calls in test suites. This was just what I was looking for. The code style was very different from what I’m used to, and that would take additional study to get working in my own project.

Luckily, there was a reader comment at the end of the article which suggested Jest. I headed over to that website and discovered that Jest is likely going to work well for what I need!

Just cycled my laundry. It’s 8:16PM by the way. I woke up around 6PM. This is a crazy sleep schedule. I go to sleep on the 12th of April, and I wake up on the 12th of April. This is what my best friend M. must go through every day! He works nights driving a refrigerated truck for Penske in Las Vegas. He restocks the refrigerator displays at several Wal-Mart locations throughout the city. Foods like refrigerated sandwiches and fruit trays. Sometimes he does runs to Arizona and back.

I couldn’t do that job. Too many moving parts. Literally and figuratively. I suppose I could handle figurative moving parts, but I think it’s really the physically moving parts that would overwhelm me.

I worked for O. for a grand total of four days. Holy crap, I really appreciate money after that job. Or rather, I recognize that there was good money to be made there, if I had it in me to do the job. I made $400 after taxes in that 4 days. That’s an incredible wage to me. Absolutely incredible. To think that O. could even afford to pay their employees $100 a day is beyond me. They must love their employees!

For perspective, I brought in $640.64 last month. That’s GROSS. As in, I had to pay like $200 in eBay seller fees, and probably $150 in shipping. That left me with around $290. And that’s not even taking into account taxes. I probably owe taxes on that $640.64. Basically I’m in the poverty income bracket. And somehow I gotta pay $400 in rent at the end of this month.

LOL, it’s a good thing I’m getting a stimulus check. That’s one good thing about this ugly COVID-19 situation. It’s one reason why I want this to continue for another few months. I’d gladly accept a check if it means I can have breathing room to develop my skills in software development. That check is going towards inventory so I can grow my eBay store and hopefully support myself sometime soon.

I think It’s not enough though. Not yet, anyway. I keep coming back to the conclusion that I need to find a part time job. I’m a broken record at this point.

I’m going to wrap this up for today.

48. Today is a new day; I will see what adventure it holds.
49. I choose to be proud of myself.
50. I will do my absolute best in all things.

I’m grateful for my brother D. because I enjoy his personality and his company. I’m happy to see that he’s home, even though I’m hesitant to say hi. I suppose I could say hi. I could keep it brief and still respect social distancing.

I’m grateful for potatoes because they’re nutritious and delicious. I had some with rice, beans, and asparagus spears yesterday. It might have been an odd mixture, but the potatoes were splendid.

I’m grateful for Jest, because it’s a full-featured test library that I think will help me produce good code. I’m grateful that there are so many free, open source technologies out there at my disposal, because they all contribute to the quality of my projects and my personal learning edification.

Excelsior!