Journal of the Week

12/21/2023 Software Programming Developer jobs Salary overview of 2023: A great site that shows the highest pay in U.S. and Europe, etc. Managerial role of these could go as high as 500k-1mil.

12/20/2023 Interestingly, for the first time, two companies I work for held the year end holiday parties on the same day, same time, same street (26th st): Blackbarn by SP, Hill Country BBQ Market by NYGC. Not sure if I was infected by anyone in either party, but I had a 2 week severe cold after that, worst I've ever had in my life I believe. Days of thick mucus coughed out. NYGC folks knew of my feet in two boats that day, but not SP: I don't tell them because either they wouldn't care anyway, or they don't have the capacity to fathom what was going on, such as R, who actually saw me hurrying back to Blackbarn from NYGC after I brought the doggy bags from Hill Country BBQ across the street to stow them in the office. I lied about forgetting my headsets at SP, so I'm going to add this entry to Faults category, should have said something like "looking for my wife near the train station", which is a doable stretch I would say.

12/19/2023 Solving for "do not disturb" work/study when being interrupted. I came across a couple of articles (the other one being related to ADHD: attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) lately on this. It is still an interesting topic for me to look into. Basically, two kinds, by common consensus: interruptible jobs vs. uninterruptible/do not disturb jobs. However, I am not ready to agree with this "two kinds concept" yet. So I add this entry to Projects Category.

More fun AI Toys: These AI tools can help you create something in under a minute

Remote jobs are everywhere after COVID19. Many online job recruiting sites saw the need to list remote jobs as their own category. Hybrids and remote become essential criteria for one looking for jobs. A Good site praised to be popular this year. I am interested to look into this myself. This is still a novel venture, hopefully it's not just a fad and I come in too late.

Signs of Bad Manager, based on this site. This is as well a helpful reminder for myself in managerial role:
Signal #1: Other reports face similar challenges
Signal #2: Your manager doesn’t know what they want

Signal #3: You know something is wrong but you just don’t know what [This point is a bid weak, I don't quite agree, unless it's for dummies who don't even know how to evaluate themselves and things around them with the basics]

Signs of Bad Employee, based on this site:
Unable to hit deadlines. This is different than missing a few, with a proper heads-up.
Get angry when they fall behind. Instead of quietly stepping up and just getting it done.
Refuse to own a quantitative KPI or goal. They don’t want to own a number.
Don’t raise their hand when they need help. They just hide it. Often even to themselves.
Always “very busy”. The best employees always find a way to help, to take a little more on to help the team.
Argue with bosses and other leaders in public. The boss isn’t always right. But understanding someone has to make the call on tough decisions is important.
Argue when you ask them to fix something that wasn’t done that well. The best agree and just go fix it.
Push back on doing core parts of their job. So you end up doing it yourself.
Need folks to do all their work for them. More an issue with mediocre managers. They are often unwilling to do any actual work themselves.
Hire mediocre folks under them. It’s true. This is the worst part.
Hire folks that just do what they are told. Instead of folks that are great.
Blame others. It’s never their fault.
Gossip. A little is OK, but mediocre employees often become toxic ones, spending too much time on office-related gossip.
Claim they did the work that their report or other resource actually did. The best highlight the team member that did the work. The mediocre claim they did it themselves, or obscure who actually did it.
Threatened by a new great hire. Again, a little of this is OK. But great employees embrace all great hires. Even when there is overlap with their role and path.
Take more than 2 hours a week to manage, maximum. That’s just too much. More here.
Lie. Mediocre employees lie. They just lie. They claim they got the project done, but didn’t. They claim they held the date, but didn’t actually do it. They claim they hit the plan, but they didn’t. The lie sort of works a little, at first, if they are in a position of trust. But then they have to lie more.

12/16/2023 Hacking NJ DEP: So it's time for me to renew my NJ Saltwater Recreational Registry Program, basically fishing permit, which is free. Apparently they move the process to a new online site that required me to create a whole new profile, requiring a NJ-only driver's license. I tried random number since mine's NY, didn't work. So I looked up this site (content pasted in comment) that teaches how how NJ Driver's license ID Number is read, thus far, and it worked when I entered some randomized number follow the rules: L09275767608782. I suppose I will correct it when I get an NJ license. After all, I do live in NJ and it's stupid to require NJ Driver's license as a proof.

12/15/2023 How Couples Meet in the US Chart: Interesting survey to look at the trend of dating/courtships. I also noticed that for older guys, it maybe an advantage to use going back to college as a dating source. Online dating is definitely becoming the norm these days. Those who did it through families are probably seen as losers, unless they are independent, meaning not just in having a stable jobs, but actually has his own ventures in his life: running his own business, his own family, his own projects, etc. Active, not passive. Lots of guys these days, especially in churches, stay single because the girls dump them due to lack of activeness in loving and showing care for the ladies. While the guys' excuse is "these girls aren't submissive enough...oops...I mean biblical enough." These guys will not likely go for online dating method, for they are passive losers. They are between dating through friends (the second highest popular method after online dating) or family. But without much friends, they are really stuck.

12/14/2023

In the world of Generative AI, this is probably a good place to start learning about GEMINI. Basically Google's competition against OpenAI's ChatGPT.

4 database types: relational (SQL), NoSQL, NewSQL, and Vector databases. A good overview on these:
A relational database is a type of database that stores and provides access to data points that are related to one another. 
NoSQL, standing for “Not Only SQL,” refers to a broad category of database management systems that differ from traditional relational database management systems (RDBMS) in some key ways.
NewSQL is a term coined to describe a new generation of relational database management systems (RDBMS) that provide the same scalable performance of NoSQL systems for online transaction processing (OLTP) read-write workloads while maintaining the ACID guarantees of a traditional database system.
Time-series databases are specialized database systems designed for handling time-stamped or time-series data—data points indexed in time order.
Vector databases are specialized database systems designed to store, manage, and perform operations on vector data—data represented in high-dimensional space. They are particularly adept at handling complex data types such as images, audio, video, and text, which are commonly used in machine learning models.

SVG Tutorial using HTML: a very simple clear guide: deals with vector animation, interactive buttons, etc.

Learning Distributed Systems using Maelstrom in Go: Seemingly good tutorial on basic understanding of it.

First AI News media: https://www.channel1.ai/
Completely reported using AI characters.
After HeyGen AI, where you can create your own AI presentation, making yourself speaking a foreign language, etc. this is just going more and more unreal.