This year has been hard. Really hard.

It’s like 2024 decided to be 5 years at once. Maybe it’s a tax thing.

Lately, I’ve been having regular conversations with my mentor and friend, Simon Carcagno, and this man has been on a roll. He will make these, seemingly throwaway, comments and observations that worm there way into my brain and unlock and unblock these mental obstacles I’ve been struggling with since the beginning of 2024.

I’ve never been against gratitude. In fact, I have my whole trifecta of Love – Gratitude – Imagination and how it’s important to tap into all of them.

But I’ve got to be honest.

“Pro-bleeeeeemmmmm?!?!?” she exclaimed, while sticking a microphone taped to a golden mannequin leg into my face.

I stare at her, my eyes wide, slightly panicking while scrambling for a better way to explain what I want to say. I draw a blank. I resign myself to saying “existential dread”.

So there I was, minding my own business, when the Digital Wellbeing app on my phone decides to inform me that I’m spending an average of 15 hours a week on Tiktok.

Sir, I think at the app, how could you say something so controversial, yet so brave?

This concept, introduced by this episode of Fixable, has brought together some of my favorite things: mathematics and working smarter.

They say when you make a plan, God laughs at you. Then, God then sends a man to ruin your plan!

I will not help you.

Nicholas Epley, a Professor of Behavioral Science at the University of Chicago, once wrote “Your brain’s greatest skill is its ability to think about the minds of others in order to understand them better.”

So, I decided to exercise that skill to understand why someone would support the genocide occurring in Palestine. Here are the reasons I came up with…

I didn’t realize I would have actual applications for what I learned in my Automate the Boring Stuff course so quickly! If you have any tasks that require the same sequence of mouse clicks, keyboard taps or anything like that to occur, then I have a time-saver for you!

Have we ever earned anything in our lives?

Determine a fixed amount of money to gamble (e.g. $1,000).

Pick which color to bet on (e.g. Black)

Start by betting the minimum bet (e.g. $5)

Every round, increase your bet by $5, but continue to bet on the same color.

Stop play when either of the two events occur:

• You’ve doubled your total cash.

• The amount of money you have is less than your next bet.

As I near the end of my Automate the Boring Stuff course, I’m learning some very useful tools - especially as a Windows user. In order to synthesize my learning, I decided to do a little project combining a few new python functionalities I learned.

What does it mean to be young? In the broadest of terms, it means to be on the early side of the spectrum, to have a path ahead, to be certain that progress is possible.

While I was reviewing chapter 5 of Automate the Boring Stuff, I learned about using Dictionaries in Python. One of the fun exercises demonstrated by the book was using Python’s Dictionary functionality to create a database for a list of supplies for a picnic.

A few weeks ago, I was listening to a special episode of the Teacher’s Off Duty Podcast with Daymond John and they were talking about teaching kids financial literacy. One idea they mentioned was having an in-class economy, where students earn classroom currency and then have to budget their money accordingly.

I asked ChatGPT to scan through my entire website and then, based on the writing there, suggest some jokes I would make. Previously I’ve asked it to suggest blog posts and their suggestions felt like light roasts, so I was excited to see what it would come up with.

I am currently interested in using Python to Automate the Boring Stuff. Recently, I found an opportunity to apply it in my work at Bleeker and it was a huge time-saver and will add quite a bit of value over time. I figured it would be valuable to write out how I did it here for my own reference, but perhaps you will find it useful too! 

January is a ripe time for wanting to start a new habit, but is it always worth it? I developed the tool below where you answer a few short questions using the Negative Five to Five (NFTF) scale to answer that very question.

In order to maintain my Platinum status at Cinemark, we have to watch 25 movies within the year. What I didn’t realize was that the free movies I get as a benefit do not count towards that total. So, here is a recap of the 28 movies I saw in theaters this year with their rating on the Negative 5 to 5 scale (starting with my least favorite).