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Ask HN: What are your goals for November?
22 points by jlees on Nov 1, 2012 | hide | past | favorite | 47 comments
A problem shared is a problem halved. Or something to that effect.

What will you achieve in November?




Firstly I want to find a new job, higher paying is my main goal at the moment as I feel I am being undervalued by my current company and their refusal to bring my wage in line with my co-workers despite performing equally, if not better than the majority of them doing the same task. (I should mention they get paid 3 times what I do, the only difference being a degree, the fact that we do the same job, with the same deadlines and difficulty being irrelevant for some reason.)

Next, I would like to work on my relationship with my girlfriend, there has been a lot of tension lately, mostly due to the way I've been acting and I feel as if I owe it to my girlfriend to try and improve the person I am, there is no point in saying "it's all her fault" - I know I'm in the wrong and I need to do something to change that.

After that, I want to put aside some personal me time, I've been overloading on work recently and haven't really had time for fun. I don't remember the last time I went out with friends or even spent a day with one and that's quite a sad thing.

Next I want to save up some money to fly to Spain to see my newborn baby niece. When she was born she had internal bleeding and a myriad of other health issues, we didn't think she would make it, but she proved to be strong and my sister just took her home last week. Plus, I haven't seen my family for 7 months now and as lame as it is to say this, I miss my mum.

Outside of that, putting more time aside for personal projects would be nice but at the moment it isn't a priority for me, just one of those "it would be good to have this" things.


Find the needles in the haystack.


By coincidence, I spent a good part of today looking at very powerful magnets to extract needles etc from cut grass! If only we could find the analogue for your problem...



Well, I certainly hope pg isn't putting the non-needles into an incinerator like Jamie...


I would love to hear more about this :)


Seconded.


Sure! Although what I posted is quite literal, and the explanation is rather trivial.

Near where I live, a waste collection center sends grass cuttings to a cattle feedstock blending plant, that a business partner of mine has an interest in. The concern is literally needles (syringe type). Currently a conveyor belt running over a magnetic drum is used to remove ferrous materials, but the magnetic field strength is insufficient. The idea is to place powerful rare earth magnets in a grid through which the cuttings would drop, hopefully improving the removal rate.

So we are looking for needles in a future haystack!


And this is a needle talking to you


To be happier than I have been in October.

To finally give up smoking, which has been a defining struggle in Oct.

To stick with the 5:2 diet.

To do something cool and actually finish it.


What made you choose the 5:2 diet? Are you not worried about having no energy on those 2 days?


Lack of energy is not a worry at all. I had a fast day yesterday, didn't touch breakfast, dinner and had something very small for tea but wasn't completely drained at all. I had walk to and from the convenience store about 3 times after work, which wasn't harder. It even felt easier climbing the stairs too.

I chose the 5:2 since I'm interested in trying intermittent fasting in general but thought alternate-day would be harder to stick to. The plan is to transition to ADF eventually. There was a BBC documentary that shown the benefits, including more controlled IGF-1 and compared them to a group of people who completely like IGF. The people in this group are only around 4ft tall yet have a immunity cancer and a whole host of other diseases.

Another motivation is that my boss has been doing ADF for the past 3 - 4 weeks. He reported a 4in drop in his waist line and felt fantastic overall. He mentioned the story that motivated him to try too. A friend of his followed ADF and within 6 weeks, he looked like a new person. He is also an MD so it makes me much less worried about trying it.


That's really interesting. I'm going to have to look into that, as I have a pretty intense workout schedule (Crossfit + triathlon training) and don't usually do well working out while fasted. Thanks for sharing.


I will wake up at a decent hour every day.

I will reduce clutter in my life, on my desk, and in my head.

I will learn more about App Store marketing so CloudPlay, my music app for Mac, can grow even faster.

The final miracle will be if I can get a shipping beta of CloudPlay for iOS ready by the end of the month. I have no idea; I haven't yet started and this will be my first iOS app.


Have fun with my son. Get more access with my son. Move on with life after a difficult year.


Switching career and get a programming job, would love it to be something in Ruby on Rails. Be it permanent, remote, freelance, part time, whatever.

I tried different approaches this year, so far nothing come out of it. One gig was discontinued as the owner decided to switch to a local developer. The other project took half a year now and still no further progress from the owner. Just attended an interview which didn't work out.

As someone already mentioned, have fun with my son. Am teaching him Scratch at the moment, hopefully can complete a simple game by end of November :-)


Nice to find someone who's sharing goals with me. Though I have to admit I'm not exactly new in programming, my goal for this month is to learn programming concepts (algorithms etc.) in order to prepare myself for the switch to RoR.

I must clarify that I'm beginning with Python mostly because I'm having trouble finding good programming lessons that use Ruby.

This is a comment from a fellow HN user that I use for reference in material https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4709336


Hi Nathan, I think there are quite a few good tutorials for Ruby and Ruby on Rails too, perhaps you already know some of them like

Ruby

http://pine.fm/LearnToProgram

http://rubymonk.com

http://rubykoans.com

http://rubybits2.codeschool.com/levels/1

Ruby on Rails,

http://railscasts.com

http://ruby.railstutorial.org/ruby-on-rails-tutorial-book

https://class.coursera.org/saas/lecture/preview/index #coursera saas course with ruby on rails as medium

Challenges or puzzle

https://www.hackerrank.com


1. Launch a premium wordpress theme I made for personal site/blog/portfolio targeted mainly at freelance hackers/designers. I made it as a side project to be used at my own personal website and I believe there are many others who would love to use it. I will complete its documentation this week end.

2. Decide about what my next side project will be (preferably something that can be a source of passive income). If possible begin working on it.

3. Learn Haskell.

4. Will try to include tabata in my exercise schedule.

5. Will spend a weekend helping someone else.


Nanowrimo. And if I don't own the flat I'm trying to buy by the end of the month, it won't be for lack of trying. (Conveyancing, now there's an industry that needs disruption).


We (Beeminder) just made a tool to force yourself to spread the writing out over the whole month:

http://blog.beeminder.com/nanowrimo

Would love to hear what people think of it!


* Balance work hours - 7:30am to 4pm. Play with kid in beach for an hour, sleep for an hour and get back to work till 11pm.

Today is the first day in this schedule & time to go home. :)


Professionally: Having gone from web design & development into the print design world, I'm looking at getting back into pushing the (and my!) limits of web design & development (starting with building a Personal Portfolio website), and am also interested in continuing my artistic endeavors be it digital or print.

Personally: I have a BJJ grappling competition at the start of December, so by using November to hammer out my game, I will be ready for this tournament.


I want to begin learning programming (algorithms, data structures etc., already have sources to achieve that), become familiar with using the terminal and related tools, take baby steps towards Vim, get familiar with managing a Linux web server and maybe I'll finally decide on a back-end web development language (for now I find both Python and Ruby juicy and attractive).


My main goal for this month is to start applying lean manufacturing principles to my life. I'll be recording all my activities (on paper, since I'm probably the last programmer without an iPhone or Android device), the results of my efforts, and building value stream maps for the important processes.

This will be for all aspects of my life - work, social, health, etc.


Hopefully I'll get a better-paying job. I am currently getting paid ~$13,000 annually developing software for assembly-line robots.


Professionally: Beta launch for my company's (Hey Jimmy) staff timekeeping solution for SME - Team Sheet. Get some funding. Get http://heyjimmy.net finished.

Academically: Get all my undergraduate coursework complete on time.

Personally: Get everything (apart from the meal) paid off for our wedding in December.


I'll try to finish and launch my next startup project, My MD expert (remote medical second opinion from world leading experts). Lots of testing to do, experts to recruit with my co-founder, create the LTD...


Improve my swimming technique, culminating in 50 yards proper freestyle.

Build a Letterpress solver.

Enjoy time with my dog.

Run outside with no goals or time limits, just to be.

Teach my first online course, and see how well that content and format works for future courses.


* play around with C->Python interface. (http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8497)

* complete the wedding preps before Nov 28

* give interviews and find a job


To get my startup into beta no later than the end of the month

For the record it is called Padseeker - http://padseeker.com


Get ramen profitable.


Write a three-voice fugue in ten tone equal temperament.


Integrate several self-tracking services (incl FitBit and Withings) with my generic data collection service, zenobase.com.


Release iOS app & plan what to do next.


Sign a popular webcomic for a merchandising deal (started with musicians, then youtubers).



Good luck with that! It was seeing friends post about NaNoWriMo that inspired me to post this thread, actually; I'm not doing NaNo, which made me think what am I doing?


Good call!


I want to travel Thailand and find out a way to solve my marketing problems!


Eh... wants and goals are not really the same.


:) well flights and ads are planned!


Be more relaxed and happy.


Get 1,000 users at the end of month for my startup.


Quit my job and do what i like


Get married


hire an android dev and close a deal with a CPG.




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