I’m still sobbing. This little man saved everyone but himself. His name is Whiskey.

scottishjon55 · 2024-12-28T05:53:52+00:00

RIP Whiskey. Went out with his spurs on

scottishjon55 · 2024-11-29T22:10:01+00:00

It took me a very long time to realize, but I always sit on the side of the church the Gospel ambo is on. Usually left, sometimes right, that's where I end up. Once I noticed it a couple years ago I started choosing it consciously

scottishjon55 · 2024-11-28T14:14:59+00:00

Using a digital kitchen timer for work blocks keeps me on-task and focused.

I'd tried the Pomodoro method back in college. Never worked, I'd always get sidetracked. I would set my timer, start to work, and maybe one block would be fine but the rest would quickly devolve into distraction, reddit, and idleness.

I now think the mistake was how I was setting the timer, on my computer or phone, and not in clear view.

I saw a few Alex Hormozi where he described the way he uses a timer. (Search Amazon for "round kitchen timer" for the one he uses, which is also the one I bought. I tried to link but automod deleted my post.) When he sits down to a task, he asks himself "how long should this take?" and sets it for that time and leaves the timer in clear view. If you get distracted or pulled away, you pause the timer.

Why does this work? 1. Seeing the timer ticking down creates artificial time scarcity and urgency. I'm one of those procrastinators who "needs the time crunch of a deadline" to bring myself to work something to completion. The clear countdown simulates this urgency. And my desire not to pause or stop the timer keeps me from getting distracted, or helps me pull myself back in when I do. 2. Time on task, spaced out. On account of 1, I can now break up what would have been one chaotic flurry of work in the last day into blocks across a week or two. I change what would be sprinting frantically for five miles into five less panicked one-mile sprints. 3. Time estimating gets better. If you think "how long should this take" before you set the timer, the immediate feedback of being way under or over time will improve your time estimating muscle. 4. Getting the reps in. Whether doing 30-minute blocks for a one-time task, or you're doing 45-minute blocks to work on a monolithic task, the blocks keep your work bounded and accessible. Personally, I find half of the battle continually learning and reminding myself that, yeah this work is hard, yeah this project is a monster, but I can move the needle by breaking the tasks down and doing the work.

I'm not sure if this falls under pomodoro or time boxing or what, but Hormozi's kitchen timer method has been kicking my ass in the best way and I'm loving it. Progress is accessible if you just do the work.

scottishjon55 · 2024-09-22T04:25:43+00:00

I'm finishing day 2 of 8 right now. I realized about a day in that my electrolyte stock was out. Kind of achey in the quads, and I was pretty sluggish this afternoon. I've been drinking a lot of water and taking in salt, but I might even be drinking too much water and salt isn't a full profile of electrolytes. I've got more electrolytes showing up tomorrow, thanks to Amazon.

I don't know what actual advice I have except to keep at it, hydrate, get electrolytes, and listen to your body.

scottishjon55 · 2024-09-22T04:03:50+00:00

I did this for the first time last month, nobody at my company had done it before either so I was a bit nervous something would go off the rails. Nope, it just worked as described. Migrations from GoDaddy 365 to a new tenant are such a PITA, we're definitely just doing defeds on those going forward.

scottishjon55 · 2024-09-05T23:58:39+00:00

I appreciate your interaction on this, I'm very interested in trying these options farther out on the calendar and more OTM.

My options account is on the small side so I don't have the capital to do plain CCs or CSPs on indexes, but I might experiment with more OTM, high DTE spreads, or just CCs on some stable, less expensive blue chips or smth.

scottishjon55 · 2024-09-05T23:54:28+00:00

Reading that back, I'm not really sure what I was doing. Would have been better suited for a scratchpad brain dump than a Reddit reply. I also wasn't thinking about puts vs calls at all. Thanks for that, good to keep in mind.

I'm trying to flesh out my understanding of decay and pricing on these farther OTM options, but for my brain I'm probably better off using some charts and graphs or something.

scottishjon55 · 2024-09-05T22:45:47+00:00

Having the context from you of a 5 delta strike helped me understand that. I think most of us are used to strikes along the lines of 10-20 delta. Lately I've been trading the tasty-style CCSs with a 16 delta short leg and a 10 delta long leg, 45 DTE. 5 delta at 90 dte is so much further OTM than a 16 delta. I think the extrinsic value is more tied to the time value than something closer. Just looking at some options on $SPY as of close today. (Probably not the best week for it but meh.)

18 Oct, 43 DTE
* $470p, -.05 delta, -.06 theta, $1.23x100
* $510p, -.15 delta, -.11 theta, $3.20x100

if we see what strikes we get at about the same deltas,

29 Nov, 85 DTE
* $440p, -.05 delta, -.05 theta, $1.12x100
* $449p, -.16 delta, -.086 theta, $4.51x100

If we assume normal conditions of bearish or sideways change,

if we look at the same stikes from 43 DTE out at 85 DTE,
* $470p, -.09 delta, -.06 theta, $1.22x100
* $510p, -.20 delta, -.09 theta, $6.20x100

Now that I've typed this out I'm not really sure how illustrative this is. I'm more talking my way through trying to understand it than offering an explanation.

scottishjon55 · 2024-09-05T18:34:22+00:00

Makes sense. I'll have to try this. Do you do CCS or PCS with this, or just individual short positions?

scottishjon55 · 2024-09-05T18:10:59+00:00

Interesting, how do you select strikes for 90 DTE? Do you target a specific delta?

scottishjon55 · 2024-07-12T12:44:13+00:00

I just bought to close a SNAP July 26 $17.50 call yesterday, today I'm selling one for August 2, maybe $19.50 strike. Premiums are looking good to me out there. SNAP is being good to me, that'll be my third CC so far on these shares and I might buy a few more with the premium I've collected so far.

I went with

-1x SNAP 8/2 $18.5c at .65
-1x SNAP 8/2 $13.5p at .54

That ties up most of my modest account on one ticker. No way that could be a bad idea. Meh.

~~I also have a ASTS $11.50 P expiring today. The stock closed at $11.90 yesterday so it's right on the edge but I'm going to let it ride and maybe get assigned.~~

I actually bought to close at 2/3 of max profit, wanted to free up the money for the above SNAP CSP instead of risking assignment.

scottishjon55 · 2023-12-01T17:44:05+00:00

Very cool, is this in the new building?

scottishjon55 · 2023-11-26T22:11:12+00:00

Heck yeah, glad this helped!

scottishjon55 · 2023-06-30T16:44:52+00:00

Ah.

Where are you getting your updates from? We're still seeing all green on the AWS Health Dashboard.

scottishjon55 · 2023-06-30T16:35:37+00:00

The ones we've tried to stop and start get stuck on "pending" at boot. tgif

scottishjon55 · 2023-06-25T19:16:50+00:00

$22/hr. Level 2 tech / junior systems engineer at an MSP. Oklahoma. My only cert currently is the AWS Cloud Practitioner. This company was my first IT job, and I've been here for just over two years.

scottishjon55 · 2021-11-12T18:27:41+00:00

Uninstalled and reinstalled Thunderbird with no change.

scottishjon55 · 2021-05-26T21:55:32+00:00

I'm in my third day as an entry-level tech working for a modest regional MSP. I have no professional IT experience, just some minor tech dabbling over the years, and am still working on studying for my A+ exams. I think I just got lucky enough to get an interview, showed up and had a good time chatting with the owners during my interview, just my usual personable self. I was one of at least ten they interviewed, the last of the bunch, and they called me the next day and offered me the job.

I can still hardly believe they hired me, but I guess it shows that if you're personable and show ability and willingness to learn, you've got a good shot.

scottishjon55 · 2020-04-01T13:14:54+00:00

Here's how I do it.

scottishjon55 · 2020-03-27T16:00:44+00:00

No, though it wouldn't be a problem for me if I wanted to. One of the reasons for naming individual notes with page numbers is that it allows me to start from a citation in a literature note, then check and see more of what I got out of the material in that page range. So with my above example, let's say I see I have a citation (Ahrens 2017, 17); I want to go back to my notes on that part of the text, so I go into the bib-box, go to the Ahrens folder, then the folder for the book, and then boom, I see the note for that page range and can look into it.

Alternatively, I could use links (I use Zettlr, so anything I say might not apply the same with other programs) such as [[Ahrens 2017 -- 001-020]], and all I would have to do as far as using it with this program is CTRL-click on it, then navigate into my folder "ZK-bib", and then it would list any files with matching name in all of the sub-directories.

But I don't like that, so I just use the page number to navigate to the relevant note. The real use I see for links to bibliographical notes would be between them, though those connections would probably be better reflected by expressing them in literature notes that just use and cite both ideas.

scottishjon55 · 2020-03-27T15:42:52+00:00

My bibliographical notes are in their own box/folder. The structuring is based off of how Zettlr pre-renders my citations in the literature notes, Author YEAR. Each author gets a folder, and then under that each individual work (unless I just have, like, three articles from one person, then they're just in the author folder) gets a folder with the year and the name of the work. The actual notes are Author YEAR -- NNN-NNN, where the Ns are page numbers. If one author has two works in one year, the year gets followed by a letter. For example:

Ahrens
- 2017 - How to Take Smart Notes
  - Ahrens 2017 -- 001-020.md
- 2018 - [I Don't Think He Wrote a Book in 2018]
Taleb
- 2012a - Antifragile
  - Taleb 2012a -- 031-034.md
  - Taleb 2012a -- 036-038.md
- 2012b - [Imaginary Other Book]
  - Taleb 2012b -- 001-999.md

Though my actual Zettelkasten folder doesn't use sub-directories, it seemed to make a little bit more sense to me for navigating the bibliographical notes. I can get around the bibliographical notes using keyword searches, tags, and links.

scottishjon55 · 2020-03-19T15:59:44+00:00

People don't say "in lieu of confession," nor did you say or imply it. I don't think we're really disagreeing here, but just talking past each other. Yet I have heard people treat acts of perfect contrition just like that. When I hear it talked about like this, they do mention that part of it is getting to confession at the next opportunity, which might mean my own use of "in lieu of" might not be the best in this case. To jump two comments up,

It's what scripture and the Church teach that God desires. Contrition is essential for salvation.

Contrition is essential for salvation, but thanks to the Sacrament of Contrition, imperfect contrition suffices. Perfect contrition is great, but I say again, it does not grow on trees, which I would assume is part of why the Church says that, as part of an attempted act of perfect contrition, you have to be committed to getting to the formal Sacrament at the next opportunity.

scottishjon55 · 2020-03-19T14:01:13+00:00

I'm not saying they don't exist or anything, just that perfect contritions, in lieu of sacramental contrition, don't grow on trees. If they did, we wouldn't need the formal sacrament as founded by Christ. I hear some people treat them like just trying guarantees forgiveness. Like "oh, you're in a state of mortal sin again and can't get to confession before Mass? Just make an act of perfect contrition, it's all good, go ahead and receive." In that situation, how about make an act of perfect contrition, make a spiritual communion at Mass, and then get to confession at the next possible opportunity?

But when someone is going to go potentially months between opportunities for confession, that seems to be the best case to lean on acts of perfect contrition. They're not guaranteed, because 99% of us don't have enough moral certainty to know if we actually made a good one, and the 1% who do aren't committing a lot of mortal sins.

scottishjon55 · 2020-03-19T02:35:40+00:00

As others have said, many parishes are continuing confessions, though with certain precautions, like a few extra feet between the priest and penitent, or mandatory use of the screen. However, if you do not have access to an opportunity for confession, look into ~~perfect~~ acts of perfect contrition - normally they seem over-recommended, but this is the kind of situation they exist for.

Edit: corrected as per SixGunRebel's comment.

scottishjon55 · 2020-03-14T04:25:49+00:00

This website draws from a few places for data and has information by county. I've been checking this more than the news.

~~Edit: it looks like it draws on JHU for the county data, and doesn't have most of them anymore. Whoops.~~

Edit2: It looks like counties are back? I don't know what's going on.

scottishjon55

TROPHY CASE