He is fully in motion, working on his many projects and goals.  He congratulated me on getting the job at N, and he believes I will do great things.  He’s always wanted me to have a stable job with a steady income, while I had always been more entrepreneurial.  I gave it my best these past many years, and hopefully the seeds have been sown which may bear fruit in the future.  For now, it’s time to upgrade my skills and knowledge, as well as to replenish my well with life-sustaining water.  I feel I’m heading someplace, though I don’t know quite where yet.

One interesting puzzle came up while talking with him:  how to use the computer as a diagnostic tool to identify key tags in radiologic and pathologic images.  We discovered that this endeavor is a whole sub-field called computer aided diagnosis.  It is cutting edge research in applying computation to medical diagnosis, similar to facial recognition and artificial intelligence technologies.

C’s back home from the Island, too.  We chatted briefly and updated each other about how things are going.  She seems gearing up to come here.  To be honest, I will be quite surprised if she really does, because that is not the rational path to take.

But it seems nothing about our story is very rational, and I’m hoping that by being irrational, life will actually work out fine and dandy.  After all, trying to be rational has not paid off very well for me.  But who knows, perhaps being irrational will be worse.  Only time will tell.  At least I’ve laid out the concerns as I see them, so that she is fully aware of them.  Whatever she decides, I support her, and I’ll leave to Life the outcome.

My fear is that she won’t like it here, and consequently, it will be a big waste of time, money, and energy.  But who knows, miracles can happen, and maybe she will actually like it here after all.  There’s only one way to find out for sure, and that’s for her to come and try.  All I’m saying is that knowing her and how she has reacted in the past, she will be wanting to go home rather quickly.  Her constitution is just well not suited for this.  I wonder why she can’t see it herself.

Right now, perhaps her desire for a change of scenery is blinding her.  When she is there, she can’t stop talking about her fond memories here.  When she is here, she can’t stop mentioning how much she misses her family, home, and life there.  She can’t seem to be completely happy where she is.  And when I say “can’t,” I mean literally “can not.”  For her, it’s not a matter of will, but of raw ability.

I’m glad I was able to help her realize that the constructive way to make money is to offer a product or service that people want to pay for.  In and of itself, speculative trading provides no inherent value to society.  It is a zero-sum game, so what you gain comes entirely from someone else’s pockets.  It is a simple transfer of money, with a little shaved off in terms of the spread or commissions as a transaction fee to the broker.  It is a rich-man’s game, and the only reason why a not-so-rich-man would want to play it is because he bought into the deceptive marketing of brokers running chop-shops, hungry for commissions.  Truly, trading is one of the worst scourges of society, like gambling, and it has ruined more than a few lives.

I’m amazed how very bright people can spend their entire lives in an endeavor that provides nothing of real value.  They are like the gambling addicts who can not see their own failings.  It is truly sad and terrible what the love of money does to people.  Yet, our economic system encourages the pursuit of wealth for the sake of wealth.  Somehow, we have equated wealth with happiness, when nothing could be further from the truth.

Money can’t buy happiness, but it sure can make you more comfortable in your misery.  Much more important to me is the sense that I’m working toward some purposeful and meaningful end.  Otherwise, all seems empty and futile.  Even if one’s mission is artificially conjured, at least the illusion helps you feel better about waking up in the morning to do what needs to be done.

M told me how within 6 years, her friends had gone from nothing to owners of numerous health clinics and making millions of dollars per year.  They would make their patients take unnecessary exams and bill the health insurance companies.  Technically, they were not doing anything illegal, but it is unethical.

Indeed, M felt that the way they were making money was so much worse compared to how traders make their money in the market from each other, zero-sum and all.  Nevertheless, M was quite envious how her friends were able to become multi-millionaires right before her eyes within these few years.  M did not work less than them, yet her efforts did not bear nearly the same level of fruit.  Some people really have all the luck when it comes to amassing material wealth.

Early this morning, C did finally succeed in logging in.  She had to go to a square in the town to get internet reception.  It was good to chat with her, if only briefly.  She seems well, swimming in the warm ocean, enjoying being with her family, resting and relaxing.  I hope she gets to enjoy this kind of life as a daily reality, not just as an occasional break.

I downed a 30 mg capsule of pregnenolone with dinner.  I have a couple of bottles of it left from many, many years ago, when I bought it for its supposed memory enhancing benefits.  Well, when I tried it back then, it didn’t noticeably help my memory or any aspect of my health.  Quite the contrary, it seemed to cause my nose to bleed, which is why I stopped taking it.  I read that one should only take 1 mg to 5 mg a day.  So, I think I should cut back on the dosage next time.  More than anything, I just want to finish the supply, and it seems too wasteful to just throw the capsules away.

Dad arrives tomorrow at noon.  I’m going to greet him up at the airport, and we’ll ride the bus back together.  The timing worked out well.  In some sense, all of the twists, turns, and delays of my recent job search nicely worked out to allow me to not have to work during Dad’s visit.  Of course, there’s nothing inherently special about his visiting, since I won’t get to see him most of the time anyway.  He will be busy visiting his friends, churches, meetings, and conferences.  During what little time we actually have together, he spends most of it talking about the most uninteresting things, and when I try talking, he falls asleep.  Oh well, that’s my reality.

C is spending the holiday with her family on the Island, and though she has internet connection as well as her cellphone, I haven’t heard from her in a couple of days.  It’s good that she’s able to take this break, because she needs to clear her head about all the uncertainties and possible drastic changes upcoming in the future.  She needs to forget about our situation for awhile.  Of course, it’s not so easy for me to forget about her, and I find myself obsessively checking the computer every few minutes to check whether she had logged in.  I’ve forgotten what it’s like to not chat with her daily.  I guess I’m going through a minor withdrawal.

When I start working at N, I won’t have the chance to chat with her much at all anymore.  I’ll be leaving quite early in the morning, so I won’t have a chance to chat with her before leaving the house.  And I’ll be getting back home late at night, well past her bed time.  The only way I’d be able to chat with her is if I get wireless service on a laptop when I’m commuting.  I think, though, I’ll be too sleepy on the train to do anything very productive.  The most I’ll probably do is sleep or read.

I finished G’s program over the weekend and tested it in the live market today.  It works according to specifications.  I feel good about finishing the project on time.  I’m now trying to think how to extend the project to the next level, to provide some automation in determining the price zones themselves.  It’s not a trivial task, since it looks backward in time to identify certain price patterns.  Until then, the program requires manual setup in the primary phase.

I’ve realized that the majority of folks I’ve met at the forums are hopelessly lost in their delusion to find the holy grail.  Despite all I’ve tried to do to show them the objective, mathematical evidence, they still waste their time and energies chasing after the elusive, sure-win methodology.  It really is laughably ridiculous.  They all deserve Darwin Awards.  They will find themselves old and gray, wondering where all their time, energy, money, and life had gone.  They really suffer from an illness, an addiction. They simply can’t see straight, no matter how much someone like me tries to help them.  In many ways, their delusions are just as destructive as a physical addiction to drugs.

The worst offenders are the sellers who push grail hype.  They are no better than the drug dealers pushing addictive drugs.  Sad thing is, some of them seem to actually believe they are telling the truth.  They remind me of the fanatical evangelical fundamentalists.  Both seem to be completely convinced they know what’s true and what works, and their mission in life is to spread the good news and save others.  Unfortunately, they are leading people into ever more darkness.  It seems that such deception, whether intentional or not, fills all manner of adult interactions.  Sadly, the dominant mode of human exchange seems to be based on falsehood.

Of course, I would wish to find some truth for myself.  Who doesn’t want to win and succeed?  The problem seems that in order to do so, one must resort to a dog-eat-dog kind of mentality.  If everyone were honorable and did the right thing, we would all become equal.  No one really wants to be equal in reality; what we really want is to be richer and more successful than most, so that we can enjoy more of limited resources, and feel more secure.  It’s sad, really, but true.

In the mean time, I trudge on to try to find an honorable way to live my life.  I’ve given and sacrificed all of my life, and every step of the way, I’ve helped someone in need.  I’m curious whom I’m to help next.

It wasn’t so easy before.  Mom and Dad ingrained into me the notion of an almighty “God.”  During my youth, I spent an unhealthy amount of time and energy trying to figure out what was “God’s will” for me.  Indeed, my notion of God was so warped that I believed God wanted me to do exactly what I did not want to do, what I disliked most, what I liked least.

I believed this because I believed my natural state was that of a fallen sinner, and thus, my natural interests and desires were evil and thus must be squashed.  On the other hand, what I naturally hated the most must be what was actually right for me, and thus what I did not want to do must be God’s actual will for me.   Believe it or not, I lived according to that sick perspective for most of my youth, what should have been the best years of my life.  The journal entries I wrote as a teenager are filled with accounts of this kind of inner battle against myself.

Of course, now I know better, and I regret having wasted so many years under such a thick fog of delusion.  Thankfully, I was able to rise above the nonsense of my upbringing in time to salvage at least part of my life.  Granted, I did not do myself any favors by following my own interests, because as a result of following my heart I found myself deep in difficulty, struggle, and suffering.  Some would mock, serves you right for turning your back on God!  But at least I was acting according to what I felt was the right way for me, and somehow through it all, except for some over-strained mental muscles, I’m none worse for the wear.

The knowledge that I was doing something I chose, something which felt congruent with what I wanted to do really helped sustain and motivate me through the dark days.  Surely, there were many more dark than bright days, and by the end of the trial of fire which was my doctoral program, I was thoroughly exhausted.  I no longer felt the deep fascination for astronomy, physics, and mathematics I had before starting my academic baptism.  Looking back, I don’t know how I managed to survive.  It was an act of sheer will, of brute force.  Somehow, I managed to graduate, but at terrible psychological expense.

At this juncture, I knew I should not continue forward in the field.  I was simply not well, completely out of balance.  Thereafter followed the lean years, where I was barely making a few thousand dollars a year, despite long, hard hours of work.  But at least I was my own boss, keeping my own schedule, operating completely independently.  Granted, it wasn’t very profitable, but at the very least, it did allow me to rest a bit and watch the world go by.  All the while, I always had a roof over my head and enough to eat.  Well, I don’t eat very much anyway.

It’s getting easier to follow my instincts and intuition.  At a fork-in-the-road decision point, if one path simply doesn’t feel right, I don’t take it.  Seldom will I have enough information to rationally recognize whether I should choose a certain path.  So, my feelings reflect my sub-conscious or other-than-conscious assessment of the situation, allowing me to make a best guess based on less-than-perfect information.

I have to be careful, though, because guessing can also lead to results which are clearly wrong.  Gamblers lose to their hunches all the time.  And a good businessman should never make a significant decision based mostly on his feelings.  But will objective data really make a difference in the ultimate outcome?  What if it doesn’t really matter at all what we decide to do, that any decision we make will result in an equal likelihood that the result will be positive or negative.  What if there is no such thing as a positive or negative result, that there is just simply a result.  After all, what may seem to be positive may in fact be negative from a different perspective, and vice-versa.

C is enjoying the holidays at her grandmother’s house on the Island.  She was able to get a 3G USB stick so that we could keep in touch while she is there.  She told her dad what had transpired regarding her job, and he said that everything was happening at the right time.  Because the company is firing her, she gets a 40% bonus on top the amount of her severance deposit.  Had she quit, she would suffer a 40% deduction from the amount.

But she says she is still afraid about the insecurity of not having a job.  Her severance deposit will be enough for her and her family to live on for a good part of a year, so her financial situation is not critical.  However, she needs to decide her next steps with regards to work, whether to come here to be with me, or to stay there and find another source of income.  What she doesn’t like about coming here is how she will need to depend solely on my income to support her and her family until she is able to readjust, get a work permit, and find a source of income of her own here.

Realistically speaking, this process may require a few years.  It’s not a very practical path, and she’s not the kind of person who would want to make such a huge change in her life.  She has no strong desire to live here or enjoy the culture here.  But in principle, it can happen.  It would simply require a tremendous amount of courage on her part.

My starting date at N has been pushed back to the Monday after next, that is, February 27th.  Orientation begins that Monday at 9:30 AM, but I will need to arrive around 8:00 AM due to the bus schedule.  So, I’ll just wait in the lobby for the first hour or so, no problem.  Having an extra week works out well for Dad, since he will be arriving on Wednesday noon and staying until next week.  Now I’m free to go pick him up at the airport and spend more time talking to him.  After work starts, my time will no longer be my own.

I’m actually looking forward to working at N.  After trying to make a living running my own software service, I know how difficult it is to make money in the real world.  At N, I’ll be getting paid in a few weeks what I would make in a whole year on my own, so I’ll definitely enjoy being doused with cash.  I plan to work very hard at N, to learn all I can about professional software engineering.  I don’t expect to retire from there, since positions are not terribly secure in the tech sector.  But I should be able to pick up enough skills and experience to usher me fairly smoothly into my next position.

There are two entry triggers, a primary and a recovery trigger.  The program must also pick up where it left off when reapplied.

If trades are already in the market at the time of reapplication, the program needs a way to identify whether they are primary or recovery.  I decided to use the order’s comment parameter to keep track of this information.  The alternative was to use a different identifier number for the recovery trades, but this would increase the number of input parameters which the user must enter.  I want to minimize the work required by the user.  Using the comment parameter works just fine, and since it’s internal, the user doesn’t have to do anything extra.  Thus, when the program is first applied and it cycles through the order list, it is able to determine whether the existing orders are primary or recovery by its comment parameter.

Each trade set can have one or two orders.  Again, I needed a way to distinguish between the two orders without having to use unique identifier numbers.  I realized that I actually only needed a way to let the program know when the first order had exited due to taking profit, because that’s when order management routines would begin for the second order.  To do this, I simply tested whether there were only one open order when the user had specified he wanted two orders in a trade set (by toggling SecondOrder parameter to the true state).  Since two orders are initially launched with the same stop loss, the only time when one order would be open by itself is if the first one had exited after hitting its profit target.

Upon detecting this lone order, the program will begin executing order management routines on it.  First, it will move the order’s stop to break-even plus a desired buffer amount (MoveStop).  After doing this, MoveStop is set to false, since the program will not need to keep trying to move the stop.  When the program is reapplied, MoveStop is defaulted to true, to force a check, since it doesn’t remember whether the stops had been moved or not, and afterward, MoveStop is set to false to prevent unnecessary re-checks.

Also, at this point, it program will begin to trail the order’s stop, if this option is selected.

Another challenge was how to signal the program to deactivate.  Normally, I would use the condition of zero open trades to do this, since this means either the trades succeeded or failed, and either way, the program would deactivate until the user reapplied it.  However, between the primary and recovery trades, a certain length of time may elapse when the account has no actual trades in the market, due to fact that the recovery criteria have not yet been satisfied.  That is, there will be times when there are no open trades during which the program must still be actively running.

Along the same lines, I needed to figure out a way to signal the program when to launch primary trades.  Again, I could not use the condition of zero open trades to do this, because that may occur in two different phases: 1) when the trade cycle begins, which is when the primary trades should be launched, or 2) during recovery, which is when recovery trades should be launched.

To solve these problems, I came up with a dual switch system.  One switch is external, which the user must manually toggle, and the other is internal, invisible to the user.

The external switch is called RecoveryOnly.  It should be set to the true state if the program is being reapplied during the recovery phase, or to the false state if the program is applied during the primary phase, that is, freshly when beginning a trade cycle.  The program will launch primary orders when RecoveryOnly=false, and it will monitor recovery criteria when RecoveryOnly=true.

As stated above, when RecoveryOnly is initially set to false, the program will launch primary orders.  Immediately afterward, it then internally sets RecoveryOnly to true.  This is because after the primary trades are in the market, the program might as well be in recovery mode afterward, since the next possible launching of orders is due to recovery conditions being met.

The internal switch is called NoMoreOrders.  When set to true, the program will no longer test for conditions to submit new trades, primary or recovery.  This switch effectively deactivates the trade submission part of the code, while still allowing the order management routines to function.  Thus, the program completely deactivates after all orders have been closed, since by that time, no more orders remain to require managing.

NoMoreOrders is internally set to true if:

1) In the one-order case (TwoOrders=false), there are no open orders and the market is beyond the take-profit point of the first order, implying the primary trade was successful.

2) In the two-order case (TwoOrders=true), there is only one order open, implying the primary trade was successful.

3) The recovery trades have entered the market, since no more order submissions will be considered after this point.

Upon reapplication of the program, if recovery trades are detected from the comment parameter, NoMoreOrders is set to true.

For the recovery phase, the program tests the two recovery conditions both looking backward historically and/or forward in real time.  The historical check is necessary when the program is reapplied, since the program retains no memory of its state after it is shut down.  The historical check consists of iterating over all historical bars until one bar crosses into the exit edge of the price zone, which marks the beginning of the recovery phase.  Because this iteration is unnecessary when moving forward in real time, the historical check is performed only when the program is reapplied.

Most of the problems arise due to restart issues.  If the program were left running constantly with no interruption, many of these problems would not exist.

I’m still trying to figure out a way to eliminate the need for the user to use the RecoveryOnly toggle.  The toggle seems necessary to prevent the re-launching of primary trades when the program is reapplied during the transition between primary and recovery phases, when recovery conditions have not yet been satisfied.  But it is an extra parameter the user must specify, and I’m trying to minimize the work required by the user.

I’m wondering whether the relative order of prices is sufficient to determine which phase of the trade cycle is the current one.  Clearly, if the market is on the “wrong” side of the price zone, then we’re in the recovery phase.  But then again, what if prices return to the “right” side of the price zone, if even just for a little while.  Well, I guess that wouldn’t matter too much, since neither recovery criteria would be satisfied in that case.

I think the only thing I have to do to implement this is remove the error-checking conditions in the primary trade submission routines, which explicitly checks whether the market is on the wrong side of the zone.  This should allow me to get rid of the RecoveryOnly parameter and save the user from having to do unnecessary work.  However, the drawback of doing this is introducing a possible source of human error, what the error-checking conditions were meant to eliminate.

However, instead of starting this coming Monday, the 20th, as he had originally projected, I would be starting the following Monday, the 27th.  G said they usually need about 5 days to find me a desk, phone, and work space.  I don’t understand why they need to delay my start date, because they’ve already had the two weeks during the background check to get these things done.  Besides, it takes at most an hour to do the things G mentioned.  I guess I’m getting my taste for how much longer things take at a big company like N.

At least my position is confirmed, and well, it’s nice I may get another free week before starting to work.  I’m really going to miss my life being my own boss.  It’s no secret that these past six years as an entrepreneur have been rough.  But at least I was my own boss and could set my own schedule and deadlines.  Soon, I’ll be having to answer to a boss and following his agenda.  The loss of freedom and self-determination is the price we must pay in order to be paid.

I said bye to my big white box refrigerator today.  The utility company offered $50 to haul it away for recycling.  The movers had some difficulty moving it through the door, so they banged out its doors.  No problem from there on out.  It’s amazing that the original fridge guy was able to move it in all by himself without having to remove any doors.  Seems like ages ago.  The fridge far outlasted its estimated lifetime.  But I didn’t like it because the defrost cycle resulted in water condensing inside the main compartment, leading to an ever moldy pool of water at the base.  Besides, it was too big, loud, and expensive to run.  I’m glad I was able to get a little back for it.

Tomorrow, C is going to interview for another possible position at her company.  She’s not sure she wants it, though.  She sees this as an opportunity to leave the company and collect the unemployment insurance deposit due to her.  But of course, once out the door, she will never receive another paycheck again.  If she leaves, she will be starting a completely new life, one that is far outside her current comfort zone.  We talked about the possibility of her coming here, and I clearly and gently conveyed to her my concerns regarding whether she will be able to adjust to the culture, lifestyle, and climate here.  She understands, of course, and she feels the weight of the decision bearing down on her.

To be honest, I think if she decides to come here, she would not be making the best choice.  She is simply not up to it.  She is still too attached to her family, country, culture, and climate.  Coming here would be truly a sacrifice on her part, and she would have to endure a lot of suffering.  But she also knows that not coming here would mean we would not have a life together.  So, it’s either give up on us and continue on with the life she knows and loves, or give up her comfort zone and start a brave, new life here.

She wasn’t happy when we said goodnight.  She rather abruptly ended our conversation, because she couldn’t deal with thinking about the choices before her. While I understand her frustration, I must admit that this kind of behavior is the very kind of thing that makes me doubt she’s ready for life here.  Her way of dealing with problems is to avoid having to deal with them.  She shuts herself off way too quickly, ending all discussion.  But at the same time, she tortures herself by constantly thinking about the problems, so much so that she gives herself headaches.

To me, this whole situation is a non-problem.  The obvious solution is for her to stay there, while I support her from here.  True, we will not have the conventional kind of life together, but from the conditions of situation, isn’t it obvious we are not meant to enjoy it in the first place?  She seems to insist on making the impossible a reality.  I’m afraid it would turn out to be not a very nice reality for either of us.

It’s pretty cruel what they do to you in the corporate world, cut you off suddenly like that.  She wasn’t supposed to know until the day before she would be fired!  Imagine that.  Of course, many places fire you the day of.  That’s what happened to my boss when I worked at CF.  He never saw it coming.  He thought everything was honky dory, until one afternoon, the president asked him into his office, told him he was fired, and then an escort watched as he cleared out his desk and ushered him out the door.  Brutal.

These are the realities of the working world.  You can be fired for any reason at any time, no matter how many years or decades of service you’ve dedicated to the company.  They don’t care about you, your family, your life, and especially not about how you feel.  All they care about is protecting their bottom line and surviving.  When they decide you’re no longer worth anything to the company, they kick you out onto the streets.

Such a waste of life all of this is.  The amount of life, time, and energy that have been spent in service of companies must be enormous.  If all of it could somehow be channeled and focused toward some really good, noble purpose, what grand heights we could attain as a race.  What tremendous things we could achieve.  As it is, we crawl and scrape at an existence.  We sell our souls to survive.

I told C not to worry, that everything would be all right.  I would help pay for anything she needs.  I suppose I’m going to have to also help pay for her parents’ bills, too, since they rely on her paycheck for living expenses.  So be it, too.  I just hope I have a job myself, since N has still not confirmed nor denied my position there.  I’m supposed to start work on Monday, and still there is no news about my status.  Not so terribly efficient they are.

Interestingly, I was contacted by yet another recruiter this afternoon.  I guess people with my skills and background are in high demand.  This position is in South Carolina, and the starting salary is $100K/year.  That can go pretty far in South Carolina, to be sure.  I told him I had just accepted a position at N, but that after a few months on the job, we should get back in touch.  I’m hoping that I’ll like working at N so much that I’ll never want to leave and just keep climbing higher and higher in the organization.  But you never know, and if someone is going to offer me more money to do pretty much the same thing I’m already doing, it would only make sense to consider the possibility.

In the mean time, I’m going to work on mastering C++, because that is the language in demand at these places.  So is C#, Python, Perl, and R.  Seems like one can’t have too many languages in his tool belt.

M again reported a strange error in the program I wrote for him awhile back.  When applied to one currency pair’s chart, the program would try to change the stops of another currency pair’s orders.  Of course, this kind of thing isn’t supposed to happen, and ever since M first reported it a couple of weeks ago, I had carefully scrutinized the code for bugs but couldn’t find any.  The only other source of error I could think of is the brokerage firm M is using, but their technical department wasn’t very responsive to client problems.

After digging deeper in the code, I finally found the problem.  It was very subtle, and it’s no wonder I didn’t find it before.  In the order modification routine, the program was using a call to get the last ticket number found from the loop which rotates through all of the orders.  However, it should have been using the second order’s ticket number specifically, since it is that particular order which needs modifying.  Due to the error, the program would sometimes try to modify the wrong order, even of the wrong currency pair.  The fix involved simply specifying the second order’s ticket number in the order modification call.

The bug cropped up because I had used a generic template for my coding, and the original order modification routines in the template were such that they were properly called while the program was looping though the existing orders.  In writing M’s program, however, I kept track of the specific order numbers in the account, and the order modification routines occurred after the looping had completed.  However, after taking those routines out of the looping, I mistakenly failed to edit the routines to now use the specific order number of the second order, which is required since the call is made outside of the loop.

Apparently, this is the only problem M has identified in his testing, so hopefully now it will finally work according to his expectations.

G is gearing up to have me code her latest trading program based on the principles of supply and demand.  I sent her the payment request for the first half, but she hasn’t paid yet.  She tried to get me to include the graphical indicators in the one thousand dollar price, but I simply couldn’t do it, because of the expected work involved.  I had to price the indicators separately, one for two hundred, and another for one hundred.  I don’t know why she is haggling over this small amount, because she has a lot of clients who would pay her at least fifty for the indicators, and she could make back many times what I’m charging her very quickly.  Besides, she claims she is trading successfully with an 80% win rate.  I guess it’s possible she is not winning nearly as much as she claims.

Over the years, G has been quite boastful with regards to understanding how to trade and being a consistently winning trader.  She believes she knows a secret about the markets that very few others do, and that’s why her win ratio is so high.  She is one of the most difficult clients I have, because she can’t seem to clearly explain what she wants in her program.  I need to ask her tons of questions in order to understand where she’s coming from.  It’s almost like talking to someone who doesn’t understand my language.

I notice that women traders tend to be like that.  I’m not trying to be sexist; I’m just making an observation from experience.  Men and women really do seem to speak different languages.  We see the world very differently, and when we try to explain it to someone of the opposite sex, it’s almost like trying to communicate with a different species altogether.  I’ve never read the book Women Are From Venus and Men Are from Mars, but it really does seem to be like that!

I did receive a reimbursement check from I in Sunnyvale for my meals during the interview trip.  I didn’t eat very much, just a dinner on Wednesday night at the hotel restaurant, and dinner at the airport on Thursday night.  Pretty modest bills.  Of course, I didn’t bill them the tips I gave to the limo driver, hotel maid, and the donation to the homeless street lady.  Those were from me entirely.

A lot of our current effort seems to be devoted to solving problems.  Sickness, hunger, inequality, injustice, lack of resources, and lack of purpose.  Suppose we solve all of our material problems.  We cure all our diseases and find the fountain of youth.  We can produce and distribute food to everyone on the planet for free, along with fresh drinking water.  Waste is cleanly recycled with near perfect efficiency.  Crime vanishes, because everyone has everything they need.  Everyone becomes enlightened so that there’s no more silly arguments about things which cannot be proven.  An abundant source of free energy is available to all for free.  Everyone possesses true meaning and purpose in life.  In short, every possible human and social problem has been solved.

So … then what?  What do we do after that?  Venture out into space to find new problems to solve?  Figure out ways to jump into other dimensions, realities, and parallel universes to explore new frontiers?  Manipulate matter, time, and space, and become as gods?  And once we have mastered all there is to master, then what?

Where are we ultimately heading?

Until we figure it out, I must live my rather directionless days doing rather mundane things.

Jogging today was very difficult.  I was barely able to shuffle my feet.  A slowly jogging lady actually passed me!  I felt like an old man.  After washing up after my jog, I became uncontrollably sleepy.  I dozed off at my desk for at least thirty minutes.  I think that’s what happens when you die:  you just can’t keep your eyes open any longer.

I’m still waiting for confirmation from N about my position.  The recruiter G says that it typically takes two weeks for the background check to complete.  If all goes according to plan, this is the last Monday of my freedom.  Next Monday, I will re-enter the rat race.  I’ll have to leave the house around 5:45 AM, and I won’t get back until around 8:00 PM.  Life will be very different for awhile before I readjust to the new routine.  I wonder whether I will be happy or miserable.

I’m already thinking of ways I can spend the 3-hour commute in each direction.  That’s 6 hours a day.  Imagine if I spent that amount of time practicing piano every day.  I could become a pro in a year.  Too bad I can’t practice piano on the train and bus.  I really wish I could.

Perhaps the best thing I could during the time is read.  I’ve been looking at e-readers like the Kindle or Nook.  I think getting an iPad may be overkill.  Too heavy and bulky.  I may have to stand on the train during rush hour, so something I can hold in one hand is definitely better.