Q4 Progress Report: November Week 2

Big thing this week was the midterm elections. I'll probably write a more detailed post on the subject later, but for now let's just say my decision to stop paying attention to politics was probably the right choice given how watching the results come in (and reading the analysis) negatively affected my productivity.

Among other effects, I continued to fall behind on NaNoWriMo for the first part of the week. I've since recovered and started regaining ground, but I'm still several thousand words behind. I've crossed the 10,000 word boundary I mentioned in my 2018 predictions, though, so that's a positive. Right now, it's unclear whether I'll ever feel like sharing this story with the world, but it's already for a symbolic "first novel" even if it never sees the light of day.

I've also recovered on my sleep schedule, though that's still in the tentative mood. Since cold weather tends to aggravate my tendency to oversleep, I found a hack in my behavior: when I get out of bed to turn off the alarm, go to the thermostat and turn it up to the daytime temperature. Even if I turn back in, I'll be less cold later on—and have a task to motivate moving around keeps me awake longer. Generally speaking, that helps people avoid sleeping.

There's no particularly noteworthy goals for this week besides continuing along all fronts.

Q4 Progress Report: October Week 5/November Week 1

So what happened this week? It's been such a whirlwind that I really haven't managed to catalog all of it narratively. I had to sit down and look over my weekly to do list to properly make this post, if that says anything.

Underlying all of this, of course, was continued work on the house, mostly in the cleaning and yard-work department. I've also started the final round of paint touch-up, which I'm not going to estimate the quantity of thanks to my past experiences with planning fallacy. Overall, though, I would say that I'm satisfied with our progress in that regard.

After a lot of struggle and some forensic computing on my own programs, I finished the astrodynamics project that I've been mentioning all month, which you can read about on my WordPress blog. I'm honestly quite happy with the result and it's given me a lot of ideas for other, less complex writing material.

Speaking of writing, once Halloween was over and all zero of the Trick-or-Treaters we got this year had left, I began my NaNoWriMo project. So far I've done better than in all of my previous attempts, though given that it's only November 4th that doesn't say all that much. I'm under-quota for today, though only by a few hundred words, so I'm not going to worry about it too much. There will be a lot more work before this idea will be remotely ready for widespread consumption.

I can probably catch up tomorrow, though I'm also planning to do up a summary sheet on the candidates that'll be on our ballot Tuesday for the election. I still haven't decided which candidate I prefer for most of the downballot races, so this will be primary for my benefit, though of course I'll be sending to my parents so that they can make a quasi-informed selection.

Aside from that, well, more of the same. Hopefully I can make NaNoWriMo fit in my schedule; my plan is to get my words in before lunchtime and dive into other obligations after that point. The end of daylight savings time works in my favor here: I'm not moving my sleeping hours at all, just getting up a hour "earlier" compared to everyone else. I'd been wanting to make this change regardless, so being reminded about the time change was a present surprise. (For the record, I still favor making Daylight Saving's Time permanent).

October Links

The German Aerospace Center's MASCOT "rover" successfully detached from the Japanese Hayabusa2 spacecraft and landed on the asteroid Ryugu. The probe completed its intended scientific observations before battery power ran out.

NASA's Parker Solar Probe flies by Venus, lowering orbit to approach the Sun. The spacecraft has now set a new record for distance from the Sun. Closest approach is expected for November 5th.

Boeing wins the contract for a new Air Force training airplane, set to replace the aging-but-storied fleet of T-38 Talons.

This month in exponential curves: half of all human experience has happened since the 14th century. 15% happened to people currently living. Almost a third has happened during the life of the oldest person currently living. There's been a bit more turn-over in world's oldest person than usual this year, though it's hard to establish the "normal" range for a sample size this small.

This month is ballistic curves: the Soyuz launch failure. The spacecraft set to carry NASA astronaut Nick Hague and cosmonaut Aleksey Ovchinin aborted after a launch vehicle failure, landing safely in Kazakhstan. At this point, it's unclear how the Soyuz ISS launch schedule will be adapted, but Roscosmos is carrying on with uncrewed Soyuz launches as the investigation continues. Results are expected in the next week, with current speculation focusing on a failure of a side boosters to separate cleanly from the central sustainer stage. The next Soyuz launch date has yet to be announced, but will need to come relatively soon. Neither commercial crew capsule is ready for flight (arguably because Congress raided the funds to pay for the Space Launch System), so either another Soyuz will have to go up by January or the ISS will have to go uncrewed temporarily.

It's been a bad month for space telescopes, as well: Chandra and Hubble both went into safe mode this month, but have since resumed science operations. Kepler, however, has exhausted its fuel supply and was officially retired by NASA. Losing Kepler is less of a blow to the astronomy community given than TESS is now operational, but still a sad moment.

In related news, NASA is winding down the efforts to contact the Opportunity rover, which has been silent since June 10. The probe may still be capable of operations if the solar panels are covered by dust, so listening won't cease for several more months, but NASA wants to focus its resources on Mars InSight's arrival next month.

Internal prediction markets may or may not be something of a corporate fad lately, but Robin Hanson argues that anonymous "bad-news boxes" will work just as well. They're a lot easier to implement and so far seem to have a proven track record.

National Review discusses problems with the technocratic left, in a way that really illustrates the contradictory meanings of the word technocratic in contemporary discourse. The story's examples are interesting but ultimately less important than the fact that "evidence-based policy" often entails cherry-picking the evidence. For me, though, that's not a condemnation of basing your policy on evidence so much as a reminder that epistemic honesty is difficult and rarely cleaves cleanly down ideological lines.

Scott Alexander's latest musings on consciousness.

Sarah Constantin reflects on turning 30.

Q4 Progress Report: October Week 4

Fall allergies are having an effect, but nevertheless I made satisfying progress this week. All of the major remaining action-items on the house are complete, so at this point all remains is basic cleaning and touching up the paint. I'm confident that the house will be market-ready within a fortnight, though I'm not in charge of the paperwork so that might end up delaying matters.

Since we're nearly there, I am still intending to attempt NaNoWriMo this year. My planning is a little spotty but gradually coming together. Most of my writing effort has been directed at some sticky blog posts that I'd like to push out by the end of the month.

The goals for this week, then, are the necessary writing and continuing the cleaning/painting process. I've also instituting a small change in my weekly schedule, swapping Application Mondays with my normal off-day on Tuesday. Normally I find that I'm pretty tired after working on the house over the weekend, so it's easier to recuperate on Monday and then prepare a quality application.

Q4 Progress Report: October Week 3

Despite some hurdles, I made good progress this week. Several of the major remaining items for the move were checked off this weekend, and we should be meeting with the realtor to start the process of putting the house on the market. Most of the remaining tasks are pretty simple (aside from perfectionist touch-up work that I'll probably be doing until we hand over the keys).

There were some challenges at the new house this week as well, primarily a clogged drain that took some proper plumbing work to fix. That's been solved, however, and we shouldn't have serious trouble with it again.

I also spend some time working on various projects of my own, including the astrodynamics project I've alluded to previously. That's been almost entirely wrapped up and I should have the blog post finished within a few days (though I'll admit that I said the same thing last week). I also finished Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy (Goodreads review here) and I'm perilously close to finishing Failure Is Not an Option. All told, it's been a good week for my reading progress.

This coming week has no dramatic plans besides meeting with the realtor and attending a Halloween Party next Saturday. My blog post should be up in a few days, and I've begun my serious NaNoWriMo planning. Aside from that, things are going relatively well provided no new preventable emergencies rear their ugly heads.

Q4 Progress Report: October Week 2

I made decent progress this week, though I wouldn't say I hit all of my targets. The only one I would say that I unequivocally achieved was completing a few solid job applications (plus routine chores which I don't bother mentioning).

However, I made decent progress in a number of areas. First of all, my sleep schedule is nearly under control, and I don't see any major reasons to expect that to change. I'm reworking my morning routine and this will probably help reduce the friction to getting up when there's not a specific deadline, and it's easier to go to bed on time when you've been up since early morning (believe me or not).

I also finished reading Introduction to Flight and have moved on to Rocket Propulsion Elements. I'm not planning to write a proper review, but left a few comments on Goodreads. My astrodynamics project is also wrapping up nicely. Writing it up won't take too long and may be finished by the middle of the week.

The move continues, but incremental progress isn't particularly interesting to report.

Specific goals for this week include maintaining the schedule and, hopefully, getting a haircut. I'd also like to update the about page on my blog (which is a touch out-of-date) and finish reading Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy. It's been an interesting read, but at this point having a third book in the rotation—which I read primarily on my phone, at that—is feeling more complicating than educating.

Q4 Progress Report: October Week 1

Unsurprisingly, my Q4 objectives are already proving difficult to pursue, both for the reasons which I outlined on Monday and some which I didn't adequately foresee. These include a splitting headache yesterday, which more-or-less incapacitated me for the afternoon, and the fact that my Dad took some additional leave around Columbus Day. Given the way my family approaches projects, that's not good for my progress.

I did succeed in submitting some job applications on Monday, plus some smaller applications each day during the week. I have a couple lined up for tomorrow, which I intend to pursue regardless of whatever plans les adultes have concocted. If time permits, I'll join them for a specific task later in the day, but I'm not exactly eager to head back over there.

My engineering studies have continued relatively well. I'm rapidly approaching the end of Introduction to Flight, though working the exercises for the remaining chapters will probably drag it out for another week or two. My progress through the various papers that I've lined up to read has been less impressive, but again there were some disruptions which may or may not prove periodic.

Additionally, I've begun working on a small astrodynamics/programming project, the results of which will appear in a blog post relatively soon. Getting into MATLAB again is frankly quite satisfying and a nice supplement to Anderson's exercises.

Also on the creative front, I've been toying around with ideas for NaNoWriMo, but nothing definite yet.

The goal for this week is merely to maintain the schedule. Once the ground dries somewhat, I'll be devoting more time to dealing with the leaves over at the old house, along with the various projects I need to do inside. A good deal of them are relatively small, but quite a few have to be done a particular order, so getting those ones out of the way has been a major stumbling block in recent weeks.

Objectives for Q4

As we head into the last three months of 2018, I want to lay out my broad-strokes goals to concentrate upon for the remainder of the year. These aren't targets to hit, exactly, so much as areas in which to focus my efforts.

This is partially motivated by the fact that my output during the third quarter, despite being better than the first part of the summer, still leaves me feeling unsatisfied. Generally speaking, I've found over the years that living with my parents seriously impedes my productivity. There are a lot of potential explanations for this, which I've explored before at-length. We won't be rehashing those in detail today; suffice to say that certain individuals in my family wouldn't recognize priorities if an ordered list knocked on the front door. It seems that I'm constantly pulled between contradicting goals, with insufficient time to manage any of them adequately.

I suspect, however, that a big part of the problem is switching costs. These are really easy to underestimate if one isn't used to thinking in those terms, but are almost always non-trivial. My new strategy in Q4 is to break down my days of the week by objective, and, hopefully, focus on those objectives each day. This is, to some extent, a self-signalling strategy. By committing a certain amount of time to each major activity area, the emotional parts of my brain will better trust me to work on the various projects that it wants to see completed.

Note, however, that this takes some time to go into effect. I'll probably have to put my foot down on some of these issues, because, again, I'm the only person in this household not completely drowned in planning fallacy.

There are two major objectives for the rest of the year, both of which have some supporting objectives. The first is finding employment (or, alternatively, committing to grad school). The second is finishing the interminable project. Let's look at each of these, and their supporting objectives, in turn.

The single biggest change I'm implementing are Application Mondays. From here on out, the primary goal for every Monday is working on job applications. I don't necessarily have to submit them on Monday, but I would like to make progress. I've held off on a number of openings because I felt the need to really concentrate on them, but no opportunity to do so has ever materialized. Instead of waiting for the improbable, I'm designating an entire weekday to the job search.

There are two weekdays set aside for personal tasks and household chores, during which I may also work on applications. I do not expect to make much progress during the other four days of each week.

Supporting my efforts in that regard, I will be continuing and, hopefully, expanding my program of self-education. I've been reading John Anderson's Introduction to Flight to shore up my foundations in aerospace engineering, and to maintain something of my edge. Unfortunately, this has taken longer than expected. I would like to finish it before the end of the year, and move on to a more interesting book.

Studying engineering materials will remain on the agenda every day of the week, though it will remain a relatively small item (less than an hour each day). This does not mean just reading textbooks, but also working though the maze of technical papers that I've accumulated on my desktop. Several of these are several hundred pages long, so getting them read and filed away before the end of the year may be a real feat.

I would also like to practice my programming skills again, as well as expanding into a few new languages. That is a secondary objective, however.

The other major change which I am instituting is again a matter of compartmentalization. I am reducing the number of days each week which I'm spending on the house. By planning around this fact, however, I hope to dedicate more hours in total to the project. I will be spending two weekdays on whatever tasks I can complete individually. Weekends, if the past several months are any indicator, will be spent on tasks requiring two or more individuals.

This should enable us to finish the project in relatively short order. I'm hoping that the house will be on the market by the end of the month.

Indeed, I would like to have things finished well in advance of November, because I'd really like to participate in NaNoWriMo this year. I have some ideas which would be interesting to attempt, but I need a larger segment of unstructured time than is currently available for that to be practical. I will decide on a particular option closer to November 1 if participation is looking viable.

There are also a number of blog posts I've been meaning to write for some time. My hope is that this new schedule will also better serve my ambitions in that department. I don't think my prediction of two posts per month will end up being accurate, but I can probably manage four or five before the end of the year.

My final motivating for finishing the move in short order is that, should employment not be forthcoming, I need to start the process of applying to graduate school. That will require a good deal more money, which will not be available until the house is sold. I would like to have had that process started by mid-November if nothing turns up in the meantime.

I will attempt to keep the hypothetical reader apprised of my progress along these objectives.

August/September Links

Ocean floor mining may finally happen, though plenty of people are having their usual reaction to any suggestion that technological civilization might need natural resources to continue operation.

Scott Alexander: The Tails Coming Apart As Metaphor For Life. I'm not sure how to describe this, but definitely recommend reading it.

Mental health research: treating the prodrome.

New from LessWrong: Strategies for Personal Growth. Old from LessWrong: Reason as a memetic immune disorder.

Arguably related: Duncan Sabien on the representativeness heuristic and Bryan Caplan discussing understated cultural differences.

Russia plans to stop transporting US astronauts starting early next year. Given the recent Soyuz leak, that might not be the worst thing, but it's unclear whether commercial crew capsules will be flying by that date.

American Enterprise Institute reports that the middle class is shrinking, but because household inflation-adjusted income is rising. Their data suggests that the number of households making less than $35,000 has also been falling over the last fifty years.

On the subject of increasing your income: here's the College Info Geek podcast on how to start investing, even in debt.

Writing: Always Harder Than I Think It Will Be

I'd hoped to write a proper post for my longform blog about Atlas Shrugged day, but it's not really coming together adequately. I'm not ruling out making that post at some point in the future, but it's not going to happen today.

The post I want(ed) to write is an explanation that Atlas Shrugged is not a conservative novel. It's not even really a libertarian novel, either, but that's besides the point. Actually, it's not. Not entirely. The problem I'm running up against is explaining complex philosophical distinctions in language which I can expect my non-philosophical friends and family to understand. I could launch into a rundown of the different epistemological and ethical schools of thought underpinning Objectivism and the various strains of conservatism in post-war America, but that's not really the sort of thing that will fit in a medium-length blog post.

Or at least, not at my current writing level. I need a lot more practice (and more feedback) before I'll feel comfortable making that sort of attempt on such short-order. I would have liked to have written that post over the course of several days, but the circumstances this week did not really permit it.

Complicating the matter for me personally, today marks two years since my parents announced their decision to join America in throwing all caution and sanity to the wind. Because that decision dramatically affected my last two years of schooling, and because the incident which prompted the blog post's original idea also happened at school, it's all quite tied together in my brain. I'm not sure I'll be able to unwrap it all until I'm less tired, and I'm not sure if that will really happen until I get a job or finish that interminable project.

Hence, an underlying theme of my writing attempts over the past eighteen months or so has been trying in vain to communicate the concept of a self-interest beyond immediate vanity and status-seeking. This concept is entirely absent from the conservative (and liberal) vocabulary—Protestant work ethic was born of contradiction—and my efforts to introduce a more consistent alternative have not gone over particularly well.

There's really no reason to expect a blog post explaining that a book where the protagonists have a lot of extra-marital sex and practice extreme civil disobedience maybe isn't the most conservative thing would go over any better.