because adulthood is lonely

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#140 — Jan 4, 2026 by Evan Chen

I swear my postegresql always needs a major version upgrade.


#139 — Jan 3, 2026 by Evan Chen

olypack#7 is the stuff of my nightmares. worst code outcome in a while.


#138 — Jan 2, 2026 by Evan Chen

Okay, to get this in writing, my New Year's resolution is to make my task management system actually say what I mean to do. That means:

  1. task next should show immediate next tasks, not a laundry list of things-to-do-at-some-point. Tasks that won't happen until tomorrow or later should be scheduled for future or someday.
  2. Daily routines should be completed in dijo, or marked with X if I need to skip a day.

If both things are done correctly, then as a corollary, my Google Calendar should show a schedule of things to be done in task ready and dijo (this is one of the daily routines in Dijo).

I feel a bit apprehensive because I never paid much heed to task management before, cf XKCD 874. But I also feel like my to-do lists have gotten so long I can no longer have them in my head. So I want to see if this helps me focus on a single task at a time while not having to spend headspace thinking about the other $n-1$. (Well, even if it doesn't, if it increases my dijo success rate it's still a win.)


#137 — Jan 2, 2026 by Evan Chen

imagine being so bad at code that you write unit tests that only fail at certain times of day. couldn't be me 😵‍💫


#136 — Jan 2, 2026 by Evan Chen

The stepmania packages on AUR are such a mess hahahaha. Anyway, starting out 2026 by pulling out the old dance mat (after a year of not playing due to breaking my ankle at the start of 2025). I've missed this game.


#135 — Jan 1, 2026 by Evan Chen

I feel like there's more and more of a tendency to do installations into ~/.local or Docker containers or similar, instead of /usr. I guess I can understand the rationale, but I do miss the times I felt like my package manager took care of everything.


#134 — Dec 31, 2025 by Evan Chen

I really don't have a concept of holiday. Woke up on New Year's Eve and went straight into a 3-hour work meeting.


#133 — Dec 31, 2025 by Evan Chen

oh yeah, I get to update my Common App profile to say "Dr. Evan Chen" instead of "Mr. Evan Chen". One of the few places that might actually make a difference...


#132 — Dec 31, 2025 by Evan Chen

I think a lot of people who write to me asking for advice actually are asking for therapy. And it's like, I do want to help, but I don't actually know how.


#131 — Dec 28, 2025 by Evan Chen

What happens if I wake up one day and my computer won't turn on? It's not like I know anything about hardware or kernels.


#130 — Dec 27, 2025 by Evan Chen

the horrors of realizing that random columns in my database are still on utfmb3 no wonder emoji never worked sigh


#129 — Dec 24, 2025 by Evan Chen

Super enjoyed the boss fight with Gerson Boom in Chapter 4 of Deltarune. I think I just really like this character. Glad to see him getting so much new screen time since Undertale.


#128 — Dec 24, 2025 by Evan Chen

how do you beat the hammer of justice jesus


#127 — Dec 23, 2025 by Evan Chen

Today I learned that "AAAA" records (for IPv6) are named that way because IPv6 address are four times longer than IPv4 addresses. And that you're supposed to say quad-A.


#126 — Dec 22, 2025 by Evan Chen

"rapid life syndrome" is actually such a strong song title


#125 — Dec 21, 2025 by Evan Chen

Today I installed a website I knew nothing about onto a server I knew nothing about, and it was fine because it was all inside a Docker container. I think I better understand the point of Docker now.


#124 — Dec 18, 2025 by Evan Chen

"You don't have to be crazy to be my friend, but it helps."


#123 — Dec 16, 2025 by Evan Chen

I wanted to visit my Korean teacher in January again when I stopped by Boston for Mystery Hunt, but now my Korean is so atrophied I think I'd be too embarrassed.


#122 — Dec 15, 2025 by Evan Chen

I made a folder called ~/Freezer to dump all my old stuff I never look at in and now my ~/Sync folder feels so much lighter


#121 — Dec 15, 2025 by Evan Chen

I miss the time when my workload was light enough that I didn't need to prioritize or triage. (Back then I just used a greedy algorithm: pick whichever task I felt like doing next off a list, without planning ahead.)

All the time spent planning is time not spent working on anything.