Hello my fellow bass players. Sorry for that long intro, let’s get into the music.

bass playing intensifies

I just woke up. It’s 11:05 AM. It feels like I could have slept all day, had I allowed myself to do so.

I was woken at 8AM this morning my my dad knocking on my door. He was accepting some kind of truck delivery and he needed me to move my suburban so the truck could get to where it needed to dump it’s load. I was half awake so he offered to move it for me. I happily obliged and handed him my keys.

A few minutes later he brought back my keys, and I went back to sleep.

Today’s todo list is

• journal
• read one page each of the 6 books I have
• brush teeth
• exercise
• shower
• shave
• pack & ship eBay sales
• list a box of cards on eBay
• Code
• CoDA telemeeting @ 6PM
• Chill

If I do everything on this list, I will have a full day and I am sure to feel good at the end of it. I suppose I’ll make it happen. I will simply make it happen, rather than committing halfway.

First thing is first. Journalling. Journalling has been a large challenge the past few days, primarily because I have been putting it off. I will start the journal entry, then allow myself to get distracted by something on my computer, and this process repeats until hours have passed and I’m sick of the vicious cycle of staring at my journal, only to be bored with it and switch to something else.

Today I’m focusing. I’m also doing journalling first, which always gives me an advantage. The first thing I do in the morning sets the mood for the rest of the day. This is why I enjoy studying so much first thing in the morning. My mind is fresh, ready to go, and it is easiest to concentrate in this state. I find that exercising discipline in this way allows me to delay gratification later in the day, and helps me accomplish my tasks.

I’ve got my budget app open on my monitor to the left of where I’m writing. I have an urge to jump to that app and figure out a plan for paying for classes, but I am holding back. If I allow myself to get distracted with budgeting, I will surely repeat the journalling trend from the past few days, and I’m not going to allow myself to do that!

I am going to talk about what’s on my mind, so that’s going to alleviate the urge. I am thinking I want to make a new item in my budget for Japanese courses. That’s really all I want to study. No, I take that back. I want to study communications. I want to figure out techniques for talking to people I don’t know I want to figure out how to be a good leader. I want to do these things so I can live a better life, be open to talking to strangers, and be a good Squad Leader when I play video games.

I don’t think I’ll pursue Duolingo anymore. I don’t get much out of Duolingo. I got much more out of Wanikani and Hiragana battle than I got out of Duolingo. Duo is too easy to game, and simply memorize the look of the tiles that have to be matched. I don’t think I was doing enough learning in Duolingo for it to make sense as an education tool.

Right now I really wan to take Yuta Aoki’s course. It’s $400 which is the amount I pay for a month of rent. I figure if I can put a hundred dollars aside for four months, I’ll be able to take his course then. I’m going to add an item to my budget when I’m done journalling for this exact goal. That’s the beauty of YNAB.. I choose what is important enough to save for. It’s not about restricting my goals, it’s about enabling them!

I haven’t been doing so good on YNAB lately. A big part of that is because I’m so far in the hole, that it’s hard to make a budget. My amount to be budgeted has been negative for so long, that every purchase I’ve been making has been one which hasn’t followed the budget.

Finally, I caught up to the budget and I have some money to assign to categories. I probably have some account reconciliation to do, because my amount to budget doesn’t really match up with what I’m seeing.

I’ll get to that after journalling, and figure out where the discrepancy is.

I’m excited to list on eBay today. It’s a nice activity to do which allows me to catch up on JRE and I get into a nice groove of cracking packs and sorting and photographing.

I’m even more excited to get back to coding precious-decks. I made good headway yesterday with my deck builder page. Specifically, I added a card table which shows all the cards in a set. There are still a bunch of things I need to do which will make the UI better, but I like the direction it’s going in.

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I actually created a modal dialog. I used to hate modal dialogs, but it seems that so many apps use them, and a modal made a lot of sense here. I’ve got this really dense list of cards in a table, and somehow I want the user to be able to select one and add it to their deck, so I went with a modal dialog which pops up when a card in the table is clicked.

The wording in the modal needs adjusted, but the button in the second screenshot above that says save will get changed to “add to deck” or something like that. Also I need a way to add more than one card to the deck. Maybe the modal won’t close until the close button is specifically clicked.

Anyway, that’s the rough idea at the moment. The way encoredecks goes about this problem is by displaying a preview of the clicked card in a left column.

I really dislike this layout. The card preview on the left looks like it’s floating atop the card list. There is no way to remove that card layout and show the card list below it! Actually, it’s a deceptive look. The card preview is not an overlay at all. It’s a permanent element and it isn’t hiding the card list. The card list ends right before it reaches the card preview. I can illustrate this by scrolling the card list all the way down.

Hm? Ah, Yes, I see that the card preview does not block the card list after all. But you see what I mean about this layout? Super ugly and I feel like I should have much more room for the card list, because there is a lot of data there which I have to grok to find exactly the cards I’m looking for.

This is why I’m not adding a permanent card preview to my card table. If the user is interested in seeing the preview, they can click on the card, at which point the card image will display and they can then add the card or close the modal preview.

That’s the idea at present. I have a feeling that this will change in time, as I build out the UI of the app and get everything situated.

I just want to take a moment to recognize a success. It’s not a large feat, but I am proud of it. I have english/japanese localization built into my app!

The button I highlighted with a red circle is the language button. Clicking it presents a dropdown menu to the user, which contains two languages. English and Japanese. My goal is to create quality translations for every UI element in the app. This will be good practice for me, and it will make the app more useful for the people who are most likely to use the app!

The whole goal is to make an app for English users, so they can figure out how to play the game, figure out what their cards say, and ultimately make P-Memories more popular in the USA and boost my card sales!

That’s my evil plan for world domination!

I just noticed a few elements which don’t have translations. “Cards,” and “Search by name…” Soon enough, these things will be translated as well!

It would be nice to get some third party translation validation. Right now I just search between google translate and Jisho, and look for common words which seem to fit. I could always get feedback from users, as well.

There’s a lot of work to do on this app before I can launch it. User accounts are probably the most daunting part. I think it might be good to get accounts set up first… Maybe not. I think I’ll get core functionality in there before I add accounts… I’m not sure. Perhaps I should consult the internet, and find out what more experienced devs recommend!

I’m sure there’s going to be a whole slew of authentication processes that each request initiated by users will have to go through. For that reason, it might make sense to first figure out how I’m going to handle accounts.

I’ll probably use Auth0 as I’ve done in the past. I’d rather not maintain a database of authentication shit, and focus solely on P-Memories data. My app isn’t important enough for unique accounts! Users already have shit tons of those anyway, so I think it makes a lot of sense for them to be able to log in using twitter or Discord or steam or facebook or something like that. Auth0 makes that part relatively simple, and I appreciate having help on such a complex part of the app!

I just got up to turn off my ceiling fan in my bathroom. I washed my hands in my kitchen sink afterwards, because I’m a germaphobe and I just touched a lightswitch. In doing so, I noticed my mom’s vegan corn bread recipe which I have posted to the wall. That stuff is really really yummy! It would be wonderful to prepare it again! I’ll add the ingredients to my shopping list.

I’m reminded of a girl I dated. I see her on occasion at the grocery store where she works. She seems to get fatter and fatter. I wonder how much of a hand I played in her gaining weight? I pretty much lied to her face when she asked me if she could see me again. I said yes and that I had fun. Honestly I didn’t have fun. I felt like she held me back at the roller rink. I was disgusted by her obesity as well. I think I talked about this before in the journal, but it’s on my mind so I’m writing it again.

At that point, I hadn’t learned about codependency. I hadn’t learned the importance of saying what I meant and meaning what I say. Long story short, I ghosted her because I wasn’t in to her. The last time we met, I said what I thought she wanted to hear because I didn’t think I was allowed to say what I really felt. I felt ashamed for lying and this made ghosting easier than owning up to my lie.

I don’t understand why people can get so fat, and just keep getting fatter. I wonder if people who have eating problems black out when they eat, to the point where they are finished eating and they don’t realize how much they’ve eaten? Not blacking out like loss of consciousness, but blacking out like their mind is elsewhere and they aren’t living in the moment and they are not experiencing the sensation of the food in their mouth.

I can’t know what it’s like, because I’ve never been obese.

A part of me wants to take responsibility. I suppose if I stick with CoDA, and go through the 12 steps, I’ll have to meet the girl again and apologize for lying. I don’t think I can do that.

I really don’t think I can do that.

When I think of doing that, I see painful colors… Streaks of blue, black, purple and red. I feel a sinking feeling. I just want to hide.

I’ll end for today. Here are some affirmations and gratitudes.

29. It is always too early to give up on my goals.
62. I choose to make today amazing.
60. I will stay calm, it will get better.

I’m grateful for my customers via eBay, because they give me money in exchange for products. They give me hope that I can live my dreams.

I’m grateful for my parents. They have been very patient with me and they are supportive of me choosing a life worth living.

I’m grateful for my sister A. she texts me more than any of my other siblings, and always has some interesting trending things to talk about or a funny story to share.