I got a raise today. It’s off-schedule—a total surprise. I feel it is uncouth to take a victory lap, but I did promise myself last year to celebrate my wins. Right now I feel happy, and think my hard work and change of attitude last year paid off.

Back in 2006, I bought a Nintendo DS and was fanatical about the game Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day. It was a game that promised to make you mentally sharper, as long as you did solved simple cognitive training puzzles every day.

For several months I played it daily, for five minutes or so, before I watched TV or played a more conventional video game. I told everybody about it. My best friend was a fan, too. After several weeks, I became blazingly fast at most of its puzzles, which included performing simple arithmetic, memorization, and doing a Stroop Color and Word Test. (The Stroop test was the hardest for me, due in no small part to my red/green color-blindness.) At the time, I thought that the daily training was making me smarter. Aside from being able to calculate restaurant tips more quickly, however, I noticed no other intellectual gains.

After some time, I stopped playing Brain Age—at least the brain training part. I had read that it didn’t really improve your cognitive abilities, and had come to the same conclusion myself by that point. Despite that conclusion, I still believe that playing games can make you smarter. That’s why I picked up Sudoku (which was included in Brain Age), the New York Times crossword puzzle, and, more recently, chess. I also do computer programming as a hobby, which is a little like playing a game against the compiler sometimes.

I play all these games to stave off what I fear is inevitable in my old age: mental decline. It think it is inevitable because I watched it happen to my father. At the tail end of his career (he worked until age 75), his mind started slipping away, little by little. I thought it was because he no longer had challenging work to do. Eventually, he developed dementia, and it became clear that the cause was medical in nature.

I realize now that I played Brain Age at the very start of his decline. Perhaps it was the trigger. I also realize that I still want there to be something I can do—mentally, that is—so that I don’t end up with the same fate.

I am grateful that I have meaningful work to do today. I hope I can get it all done.

I spent all day coding in VBA for work. I’m creating Excel templates for data submissions. These templates need (at least I think they need) data validation routines that the people filling them out can run. Those routines will help prevent some data quality problems down the line.

The only tool for the job to code those routines is VBA, which is bar far the oldest language I code in on a regular basis. It is creaky, feature-limited, and its runtime is rather unstable. But if it works well enough for federal agencies (I have seen some data input forms in my time), it will work for me.

I used to think VBA was a trash language, and only trash code could be made from it. Once I learned I was stuck with it for certain tasks, though, I tried to make the most of it. Now I treat VBA like the proper object-oriented language it is. The result is that I have a lot more fun writing it, and I think that the code is easier to debug and modify in the future, too.

I keep my code clean. I keep methods as short as possible. I use long, descriptive names for methods, classes, and variables. I structure the code into classes extensively. I create classes for intermediate data structures to make other parts of my VBA code easier to understand. I refactor my code into numerous smaller classes when I find I am writing too many, or overly complex, private methods. I create and use factories to create and set up objects. I apply the principle of least privilege everywhere. I am pedantic about whether arguments are passed by reference or by value. I even use interfaces sometimes, too.

The result is code that is rigorously structured—perhaps hilariously so to the next person who will look at it. It is unlike any VBA code I have ever seen before, but it is probably a lot like many VB6 applications written in the early 2000s.

I’m pretty sure I re-learned long division tonight as I helped my daughter through her homework assignment.

That was a skill that bedeviled me when I took the GMAT twenty years ago. The GMAT, at that time at least, did not allow for the use of a calculator. To make it worse, none of the figures on the math problems divided evenly. Many of the math problems were painful to get through, not because I didn’t know the math, but because I could not remember how to calculate the final answers with long division. At the time, I was a recent college graduate, and I hadn’t done long division since the seventh grade. I’m pretty sure I got a bunch of questions wrong because I had forgotten how to perform long division. In the end, my math score paled in comparison to my language score, all due to me not remembering, or at least reviewing, long division.

I got A’s and A+’s all throughout business school. I concentrated in finance. Never once did I have to perform calculations without a calculator. Sometimes life—or at least the typical qualification exam—is not fair.

We lost power for the second night in a week. I’m not sure what’s going on. My kids do not think it is as fun as I did when I was young.

Since I started intermittent fasting a few days ago, hunger feels less like a had headache and more like disappointment. So far I am doing pretty well with no breakfast, a cheese omelet and coffee for lunch, and a low-carb (but certainly not no-carb) dinner.

My kids are really into playing checkers since winter break. I have played a lot of games with my son and daughter in the past week or so. To get a better handle on the rules and strategies, I also played some games alone on my iPhone (there is an Apple Arcade Checkers game).

Checkers is a game that, until last week, I had not played more than once or twice since I was five. I’m pretty sure I read the rules the first time about a week ago on my son’s checkers set. I never knew that you are forced to capture the opponent’s piece (or pieces) if the opportunity to capture them arises. I don’t think my father or grandfather knew that. I mostly remember card games becoming far more interesting to me soon after I learned how to play (or, actually, not how to play) checkers.

I have realized that the game is deeply flawed. Many games reach an endgame state with a few pieces left (mostly kings) and a wide open board. At that point, unless your opponent makes a mistake, it is impossible to win. Of course, kids and inexperienced players make mistakes, which makes the game more fun. I am teaching my son and daughter checkers strategy when I play with them, and intentionally making mistakes and showing them how the opportunities to jump multiple pieces occur.

I have starting hinting at my kids to play together, too, because they would be on more or less equal footing with each other. The idea hasn’t sunk in yet. Of course I will still play with them, but they have more time available to play.

I never imagined she would use it as a camera and fill it with photos and videos. iCloud Photo Library has been enabled from the start, and we have plenty of cloud storage space. Unfortunately, Photos will not free up space no matter what I do. If you delete a photo or video from Photos, it is deleted everywhere, so that is not an option.

Tonight, as I update iOS via tethering the iPad to my Mac, I am weighing my next move. Do I wipe the iPad and set it up as new, which would at least forestall the problem? Or do I simply turn off iCloud sync, wait a while for the photos on the device to be deleted, and then turn it back on? I can’t remember if I have tried the latter before. I think I may wipe the device because my daughter’s notes app has 39 notes and is taking up over a gigabyte of space, too. Strange things are afoot.

I have a big, scary pile of “important” papers in my office that I have started scanning and shredding this week. It’s something I don’t do often enough. I am finding papers from 2019 at the bottom of the pile. 😳

Last night I started reading Plato’s Republic again. I have been unsuccessful finding a good book to read start-to-finish, and have had a desire to read something intelligent for a change. Naturally, I decided to return to first principles and go back to the dawn of modern Western thought.

I read through Book 1 last night and enjoyed it very much. I had read it—or at least large portions of it—when I was a freshman in college, in a very eye-opening seminar course on justice. I may go back to that syllabus and re-read more of the great works on it.

Work day two of my 16:8 (or no breakfast) fasting regimen has been a greater success than yesterday. I have been more alert and more productive at work, and have not been hungry since before lunch yesterday.

Still no snow where I live.

I started 16:8 intermittent fasting a couple days ago. It basically means I skip breakfast, then eat a normal lunch, dinner, and maybe snacks, between noon and 8 PM. So far, during the tail end of my winter vacation, it has worked out all right. But today is my first day of work in almost two weeks, and I feel very rusty. I don’t know if I am hungry, or if being away from work for so long has slowed down my mental processes. I am looking forward to lunch soon and I hope it gets better.

The Omicron wave has been a source of concern for my family and my town. School systems north of us have pre-emptively closed schools and have gone remote for the week. The school superintendents where I live are adamant that they cannot (or, really, will not) close schools unless (or until) there is a breakout in a particular school building. Because schools have been closed since December 24, there can be no outbreaks inside particular schools.

Early this morning, all the schools in my town were closed for a snow day. Snow is in the forecast, but it has not snowed yet. I think the superintendents took advantage of an iffy weather forecast to close the schools for the day, to push off the whatever outbreaks occur for another day. Parents in town seem to think that the closure has more to due to with teacher- and bus driver shortages than with the weather forecast.

I saw my best friend for the first time since the pandemic started (since February 2020 really). It was great fun and I wish we had gotten together sooner.

My feelings about Christmas are complicated. There are numerous legitimate reasons why, which I won’t go into. But they are there, and they have left me feeling and seeming like a villain in a Christmas movie. I don’t love Christmas (any more). I have heard enough carols. I have seen too many Santa Clauses. I don’t care much for Christmas trees, or elves, or angels. The lights and decorations overwhelm, rather than delight me. I am not proud of this disdain. I disappoints me that I ended up this way.

Still, I have made an effort for today and tomorrow—the second “COVID-ruined” Christmas without travel to the actual Christmas-celebrating side of our family—to be nice for my family. I cooked a big dinner tonight, using an Omaha Steaks package my mom bought us, invited my in-laws over the share it with us, and we had a very nice time. We even played bingo (my kids love bingo) together after dinner. Thanks to a lot of effort from my wife and myself, the bottom floor of our house is clean and ready for more company tomorrow, when my brother-in-law’s family and my in-laws come over. We are having a Jewish Christmas party, I guess, though we will be ordering Kosher deli instead of Chinese food because of my son’s sesame allergy.

Even though we are a Jewish household, I grew up with Christmas, and want my kids to have some special memories associated with it, even if the trappings of Christmas aren’t really for me anymore. I want them to remember that Christ is not about presents and Santa; it’s about family.

Now that my vacation has started, my mind has turned off. I am sinking into a few days of family time, TV, and video games.

My employer has always been generous with holiday time at the end of the year. We always get extra time off. This year, for some reason, it is being especially generous. Today was my last day of work for the year. The rest of the year is paid vacation or holiday time, and none of it comes out of my bank of “self-managed time off” hours.

I also got a gift card from my employer in the mail, and used it to buy an Apple Magic Trackpad, which is something I have always wanted but could not justify spending the money on.

I am not great at having fun during my time off. My wife and kids have school tomorrow, while I am off, and I plan to spend the morning vacuuming, mopping the floor, and cleaning the bathrooms. Not fun at all, I’m afraid. Once everybody is home, though, I can imagine playing board games and watching movies with my kids. We’re also having family over on Christmas Day. Unfortunately, though, due to COVID and an abundance of caution, we are not traveling to see my mom and the rest of my family on Christmas.

I am working on one of my iOS apps for the first time in about half a year. For many different reasons, I couldn’t bring myself to work on it for a long time. The problems I was facing with it seemed insurmountable. In truth, some of those problems still seem insurmountable, but I feel ready to move forward again with it.

Last night I stayed up late (which happens to me a lot when I am coding) and fixed a build that had been broken since the last time I touched it. I had moved a ton of functionality from a mostly-written app into a Swift package, and the transition necessitated updating hundreds of files and a few dozen method calls or property references. It was tedious work, but now that part is done. The app builds and runs, and the parts that still don’t work seem easy to fix. The new parts I have yet to write will still be a challenge, but I feel up for it now. It feels good to be back at it.

My article on Big Data and data call projects was published in my company’s newsletter today. I am happy another one my goals for the year is complete.

I brought the family to a drive-through holdiday lights extravaganza this evening. It was a little underwhelming, but we are all glad we went. I will never forget the animated “prehistoric Christmas” Santa sleigh being pulled by pterodactyls, though, even if I try to.

First, my wife decided to keep our oldest child home from school, out of extreme caution related to the TikTok school shooting challenge, which I immediately dismissed as a hoax. My wife stayed home as well.

At breakfast, my four-year-old son sneezed and coughed once or twice, so I suggested we give him a rapid COVID test before sending him into preschool. He did not seem sick, but I thought we should do the responsible thing. He, being a typical four year old, did not want (loudly!) a cotton swap stuck up his nose at the breakfast table, but we did it anyway, despite his tears. The test confirmed that he was COVID negative, and my wife drove him to preschool shortly after.

I was working by the time my daughter woke up. We let my daughter sleep late, and she woke up crying. She ran into the office and told me she had a nightmare in which she lost her favorite doll. I made her breakfast soon after, during which she complained frequently and loudly that she was missing out on school. With no prompting from me, after she tried to keep to her academic schedule as much as she could, even though she was home.

A couple hours later, in the mid morning, I had to take some time off work to drive to two doctor’s offices and pick up medical records. While I was out driving, my wife called me, saying that my son’s preschool called her saying that our son had thrown up all over and needed to come home. My wife went out to get him, with our daughter in tow.

By lunchtime, we were all back together at home. My son wasn’t coughing or throwing up, but felt very tired and was running a low fever. My wife had already made a doctor’s appointment for him, and planned to take him mid-afternoon while I was working.

At this time, my daughter complained that she was starving, which is very rare. Of course, I had no food to give her, so I had to cook something while she waited, steaming. She complained that she was having a bad day, and explained to me at length what she was supposed to be doing at every hour of the day that had elapsed so far.

By mid-afternoon, I thought things would start to return to normal. Unfortunately, fifteen minutes after my wife left with my son to go to the doctor’s office, she called me saying that her car was making a terrible noise. It was so loud that I could hear it over the phone, over the road noise. I said I thought she had a flat tire (it turns out she did), and I told her to park in the nearest parking lot and wait for me to get her. Of course, I couldn’t just leave by myself—I had to take my daughter…who wasn’t dressed yet and would not get moving as fast as I wanted her to. It took us (her, really, but don’t want to be mean) about twenty minutes to get out of the house. My wife—desperate to make it to my son’s doctor appointment—called me again, livid.

On our drive to my wife’s car, just before reaching the highway, a deer that I had noticed in my peripheral vision leapt out onto the street about five feet in front of my car. I slammed on the breaks and barely missed it. Luckily, the car behind me barely missed me as well. Of course, stopping abruptly caused every loose thing in my car, including my daughter’s favorite doll, to fly forward and crash into the my arm, the center console, and even the dashboard.

When we finally got to my wife and son, I saw a completely deflated rear passenger-side tire on her car. She told me she had called AAA, and they would be there in about an hour. She then took our son in my car (we exchanged keys) and drove him to the doctor’s office, about an hour past her appointment time. My daughter and I waited in my wife’s car for help to arrive. My in-laws came in about half an hour and took my daughter away to bring her home. I stayed in my wife’s car for another half hour, waiting for AAA to come. I had thought that they were going to tow the car to a tire shop, but instead they put the space tire on, which I started to wonder if I could have done myself. (I have not changed a tire since I was a teenager, and that was with my dad.)

After AAA put on the spare, I started the car and found it had almost no gas in it. I drove to the nearest service station and filled the tank. Then I drove home. No one was there. When I got to my front door, I realized that my wife’s keyring had no house-key on it. I was locked out of my house. Out of sheer coincidence, at that exact moment, my in-laws drove up my driveway. They had taken my daughter to her art class, went all the way there, and realized that they had forgotten her face mask. To fetch one, they drove her all the way back home. Fortunately, my father-in-law has a house-key, and was able to let me in before they took my daughter, a second time, to her art class.

Almost an hour later, after my wife brought my son home—he was deemed by the doctor to be doing fine, but he has some non-COVID, non-flu virus—she asked me to pick up our daughter from her art class. When I got into my car, I noticed it had no almost gas left (my wife used it up on her trip to the doctor), so I had to squeeze in a fill-up before getting to my daughter’s art school. Fortunately, I made it in time. On our drive home in my car, the low tire pressure warning light came on, meaning I have a soon-to-be flat tire on my car to contend with as well.

It’s going to be a fun weekend after all this.

Last night I misplaced my AirPods. I didn’t realize it until this morning, when I always take them off of my dresser and put them in my pocket. At 7:15 AM, they were gone.

I didn’t mind at first. I knew they were at home, because I wore them while I was unpacking the groceries, but I had no idea what became of them. I looked for them at breakfast time, and couldn’t find them. After I finished a project at work this morning I looked again, more thoroughly. They weren’t in any of the usual places I put them. They weren’t in my clothes. They weren’t in the couch cushions.

I started to get worried that something weird had happened to them. Perhaps someone threw them out. Perhaps they had fallen somewhere I could never retrieve them. I started to wonder if I would them years from now when we move out.

By lunchtime, which is when I use my AirPods most often, I started to get desperate. Instead of going for my daily walk, I turned over the entire house looking for them. I started looking for my AirPods in crazy places throughout my house where they never could be: inside the refrigerator, inside various drawers and cabinets, and on the floor between my desk and the wall.

I almost ordered new ones from Amazon, just to make the problem go away. The generation 2 AirPods were at an all-time low price today, but they wouldn’t be delivered until sometime in January, so it didn’t seem worth it. But, I saw that the new generation 3 AirPods could be delivered tomorrow. They just cost about $100 more. I almost bought them, but stopped short because I had to go back to work.

At long last, in the middle of the afternoon, when I decided to prepare a load of towels for the wash, I found them hiding at the bottom of the towel hamper. I have no idea how they fell in there, but I was enormously relieved to get them back.

It’s so silly, isn’t it?

Today my group and I presented on InsurTech to for an industry group’s free training day webinar. It went really well, which I expected because it was our second time making the same presentation. Still, I think that we all improved as speakers. We made our points more clearly and more cogently than we did the first time, and did so with greater focus and energy. We did some ad-libbing, answered some questions from the audience, and covered all of our material with only a minimal amount of rushing at the end. The best feeling for me was that I very much enjoyed listening to my speaking partners as they presented their sections.

Overall, I think the presentation went very well. Human nature being what it is, though, I remember the two very minor vocal stumbles I made during the talk more than the thirty minutes of good performance I put into it. I also second-guess whether my reliance on a script—which I was not reading, per se, but did need to remember my lines—makes my part of the talk sound like I am reading an essay, which could be exhausting to listen to. No one has ever said that to me, but I wonder about it just the same.

Working out what I am going to say out loud has always been part of my process when preparing a talk. Writing it down and editing it to exactly what I would want to say is a newer approach, which I think works out very well. It does, however, lead to an unnaturally efficient way of speaking, where no word is wasted—as long as I can remember my script. The next time I present to a live audience, with less accessible speaker notes and interruptions from the audience to handle, will put my new approach to presentations to the test. At this point in the COVID-19 pandemic, though, my next live presentation will likely be somewhat far in the future.