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Habits are dying hard. That’s for sure in my case. I seem to have a problem of talking to other guys whenever I have a question. What I do is I try to solve it myself, or try to hit a few walls before I am forced to do the asking. In the meantime I am struggling and stressing. Is this a good way to resolve issues and move at top speed? I don’t think so.
What I should do in the future and the behavior I should follow is whenever I think I am going to have a hard time answering a question/issue, I should ask someone who knows. This will help me become a better developer, a better person, and a more prolific worker. So why am I not doing that? I guess it is because that’s out of my comfort zone. But I cannot let that slow me down. I need to move at top speed and that is actually a roadblock.

This past weekend was an Easter weekend. I had half a day on Thursday (internal furniture movement) and off on Friday. During this time I had planned to do my taxes and other stuff. Yeah, right. I ended up playing with Fabian. It was worth it. He is advancing fast. He moves around easily now. He stands up with almost no effort. He started crawling properly during the weekend. It was tough when Marta went to church at night, as he is used to her putting him to sleep, but overall he’s getting to be a good boy.
Except at night. He gives us some trouble at night. He wakes up several times at night. He wants to eat. Other times, he is just making noise. Plus he moves a lot. It’s funny when he tries to sleep on his stomach. He is almost like a real grown up when he does that.
Easter was colder than Christmas. Imagine that. There were actually snow flakes yesterday. But that will not last for long, I think. It’s going to go to “hot” weather soon.
So, Easter was a good, family oriented event. I enjoyed it.

I still have issues with one of my habits. It’s a habit for which I’m paying incrementally $1 for. I’m at $27 dollars. But I’m thinking before I do what I’m trying to avoid. I think this technique to pay for my misbehavior actually works. I think I’m close to stopping it. I think I’m close, but I’m not sure if it is over. It will have to be seen, but now I have forces working against it, which is a good thing.
I seem to have the right attitude now towards waking up in the morning and reading for an hour. I’ve had issues with it, but now that I realized that I really have a long way to go, I seem to have a new determination and drive. It works. The bottom line, I want to keep getting better, I want to keep improving. I want to prepare for my next job, next task. If I don’t prepare, I am not going to be ready and I can pass up on the opportunity.
I am still shy. I am shy and afraid to look bad in front of the others. I cannot allow that to happen and hinder my progress. I have to open up and bolden up.

For two days last week, I had allergy symptoms. This was on Friday and Saturday. Especially on Saturday, where I was walking with Fabian in Ridgewood. My eyes were a little runny and my nose was itching like hell. Anytime I used a tissue, it got worse. But today it is good without any medicine. It’s early April so it would be great if I could hold for another week or two without any medicine.
I have made a decision about my determination and my daily routine. I have to wake up at 6AM no matter what, unless I go to sleep after 12AM. Why? I have a lot of things to learn, a lot of material to master. I really have to prepare towards being a good architect/designer. I have to get up to speed with the latest J2EE, Hibernate, Jboss, and Ajax, and SOA/Web services. It’s a lot of material. It will probably take me around 1 to 2 years to master. I should not be skipping any days. I should try to learn something everyday.

I noticed that I becoming less determined/focused on waking up in the morning every day. By doing that, I miss out on my daily 1-hour dev reading. This has happened several times during the past weeks. Granted I have less time in the morning now, but either way, I have to become more disciplined. One other area where I’m lacking focus is writing out daily goals. I have not been doing too many times in the last couple of weeks.
I need to change that…
I should wake up in the morning and read for at least an hour every day, at least 6 times a week, but best if it is 7. I should wake up at the same time, and only if I went to sleep after 11:30 or 12 that I should miss that. Even then, I should try to read for an hour.
I am not writing my goals in the evening mainly because I’m tired. What I should do, though, is maybe clean myself up at around 9:30 and then write my goals and spend some time on the internet. This way I am not tired that much.
I should try that. In either case, I should go to sleep when I am tired. But if I am tired, I should go at around 10:00 PM. I then should wake up every day, no matter what.
I shall do that.

One of these days today that nothings seems to work. 🙁 Oh, well. I tried setting up some Jboss apps but I did not get very far. Somehow my eclipse got totally screwed up. How can that happen?
I am really tired today, though. My eyes are tired. I have been staying up till 11:30 or so for the past two nights. When I have to wake up at 5:50 AM, that’s not enough sleep for me. I should go to sleep around 10, 10:30, but no later than that. Otherwise, I’m tired.
I am working on being more outspoken, on doing things out of my comfort zone. I have to continue doing that.

I am finally starting to get the mentoring program working in my Toastmasters club. I created a new Yahoo group and invited the mentors from our group. We have several that were interested in being mentors. I’ll give them a couple of days to sign up. If they don’t, then I’ll just add them.
On a topic of Toastmasters, we’re thinking of meeting in the summer. We can meet every Saturday. I would like to change some things so we can have what I call “Express Meetings.” What I mean by that is to have short and to the point meetings. It would allow us to move quickly and with speed. Plus, we would have a different experience, a summer experience.
I also think we should adopt a mission statement. It has to a be mission statement that is outside of our comfort zone. It has to be mission statement that never gets old. It has to inspire us to do great work every time we read it. Here’s what I came up for now.
“We continuously improve every members’ communication skills. We provide a friendly, supportive, learning, yet very challenging environment. We provide training for future leaders.”

I am thinking of opening a business in Poland. It would be a consulting/offshoring type of a business. I could do it myself for a while. Then, if it kicks off, I could hire some smart college students/graduates. I am thinking it would have to be in Krakow, possibly Tarnow. I could it could be successful. Why? I could propose to do initial contact at the client’s site, which could distinguish me from the competitors. I should do more research.

I am finding out that I am loving Fabian more and more. He is turning out to be an amazing boy. Active and high maintainance for now, that’s for sure. But he is progressing very fast. My mom said yesterday that she has not seen a boy like this before. She said that at 7 months he seems like he’s understanding a lot. Plus, she said before that he is very strong.
What is Fabian up to now? It looks like every week he is growing and doing something new. Standing up in the crib by himself? That’s the thing of the past. He gets better and better at it, though. He stands very easily when I give him my hands. But the new and interesting thing is that is started talking “ba ba ba ba” and “ma ma ma” and other things. It’s so funny. He does it when he’s a little upset or when he wants something. It’s amazing.
When I walk into the room from work, he is just so happy. He smiles and crawls to me right away. How can you not love a kid like that?

There is one thing I sure have to do. I have to become more open. More outspoken. And just talk more. Am I still shy? Am I afraid to talk? I don’t think so! I just have to talk when I know something. I don’t care what others think of me. If I know something, I just have to let it out. I am shy, no doubt about that. But I also know that I have knowledge on a lot of things. I should use that knowledge to my advantage.
We had 3 meetings in a row today. Around 3 hours of meetings/conferences. And what did I say? Not a word. Granted I am not comfortable with the topics under discussion. But I need to be on a lookout for these types of situations and show a sign of life. If I want to move up, I don’t see myself moving up if I don’t become more outspoken in getting my message across. I just don’t. I have a long way to go.