Reflections & Insights on chaosplay

What Would You Do When You Retire?

Mon, 22 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Thinking about what you'd do in retirement can reveal what you truly want to do right now.

LLMs and an old dev

Tue, 10 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

How LLMs helped an older developer keep up with new tech and extend his career.

The things you own end up owning you

Tue, 06 Feb 2024 06:46:37 -0600

“The things you own end up owning you.” - Chuck Palahniuk.

I was a minimalist. It was a very easy and stress-free life. I did own many things, but only after careful planning, and I was quick to sell things that didn’t meet my expectations or once I stopped using them.

I also used to live well below my means. I felt free because loss of job or any other financial crisis would not affect me much.

Past Performance Does Not Guarantee Future Results: A Reflection on Human Nature and Trading Strategies

Mon, 07 Aug 2023 19:40:46 +0000

It’s both intriguing and somewhat disheartening to observe how trading concepts often mirror human behavior. Here’s how:

Follow the Trend

In the investment world, the saying “past performance does not guarantee future results” is well-known. Despite this warning, many successful trend followers have found that stocks moving up generally continue to do so, and vice versa.

Interestingly, this concept applies to humans as well. Those who are happy and kind often continue in the same manner or even improve, while those who are miserable tend to spiral downward.

Zygo: Finally listen to everything while swimming

Mon, 10 Jul 2023 15:58:09 +0000

I love swimming but it is hard to swim for more than 30 mins, not because I get tired but because it gets boring.

I had been looking for headphones for swimming but almost all of them are essentially mp3 players. That is because Bluetooth doesn’t pass through water very well. You need to pre-load songs or mp3s. Which would be fine if you only care for music. But I am mostly listening to news or audiobooks. It seems like too much work to use those headphones for anything but music.

How to find the other end of deck drains?

Mon, 15 May 2023 21:13:18 +0000

In our backyard lay a series of deck drains that perennially harbored standing water. Despite my best efforts, tracing the end of these drains proved to be an elusive task, seemingly due to the fact that it was compacted and buried beneath layers of earth.

I even ventured to employ a drain snake to address the issue, but the screws securing the drain covers were victims of rust, rendering them immovable.

Every day is a vacation

Wed, 23 Nov 2022 18:22:14 +0000

I think a lot of people would love to live their life as if they are on a permanent vacation. Before I was married, I didn’t make a lot of money but felt like every day was a vacation.

For me, vacation means:

Eating out/not cooking
Not cleaning
Spending time outside
Not working
Ready to travel

Eating out is cheaper than cooking, if you are not picky. I ate mostly fast food. Of course, it is not healthy but it is vacation. Also it is still better than overeating home-cooked meals.

Time to plant

Tue, 08 Nov 2022 16:52:19 +0000

Yesterday, I ordered some tissue culture and planting supplies.

The indoor plants market is huge. There is a lot to learn. There are new terms, new communities to join. But it is pretty exciting.

The main reasons I decided to explore this space is because:

It is slower paced. Cannot pull an all-nighter to make plants grow faster.
My kids should enjoy it. And I can get them involved.
There are interesting methods to master, like creating a perfect environment for optimal growth, growing exotic plants, etc.
It can be scaled to more commercial operations, renting a greenhouse or something similar.
Plants are good for the planet.
If it fails, I will have plants for our home.

Heroes

Mon, 07 Nov 2022 17:01:16 +0000

Follow up to my last post, the people I admire the most are usually startup founders or business people. And then creators of open source software.

This weekend, I also met my engineer turned entrepreneur friend and saw Jobs movie. It seems I know what I should do.

I want a business that gives a lot of freedom, especially freedom to be with my kids. If I can involve kids in the business, it would be even better. Would love low stress business but it is not a requirement.

What you should do with your life

Sat, 05 Nov 2022 16:33:13 +0000

“What should you do with your life?” This is the question I almost ask myself daily. I am still not sure what my long-term goals should be.

I have gone back and forth between pursuing my hobbies as a career, focusing on corporate career, and starting businesses.

Recently, I learned a simple question that can provide you insights into your deeper aspirations. The question is:

Who are your heroes?

Ask yourself who are your heroes, who do you feel inspired by, who do you read about, and who were your heroes when you were a child.

Why Midlife Crisis?

Fri, 23 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I am not sure if women experience midlife crisis but I know several men who have experienced or are still in the middle of a midlife crisis. I have a theory that every 20 years, men need a big change.

Usually, there is a big change in 20s, people are moving out of their parents’ homes, going to college or starting their careers.

And when people turn 60, they are getting ready to retire. Downsize their homes.

Don't buy the house

Thu, 22 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

We just recently bought a beautiful single-family home. Before this, we lived in a townhouse. And before the townhouse, I had lived in apartments. Buying a townhouse was a big step, but buying a single-family home is a whole new beast.

First, buying a house is probably a sound financial decision. There are plenty of articles and research that shows people who own homes are financially better off.

But very few people talk about negatives of homeownership. And I think because of the lack of that information, a lot of people make incorrect decisions and end up regretting their home purchase. I did. I had huge buyer’s remorse the day we moved into our new home. I am still getting over it.

10 Years Goals

Mon, 11 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

There is a saying that we overestimate how much we can do in days but underestimate how much we can achieve in years.

Nothing makes a father as proud and happy as his children. My biggest guiding principle for my long term goals is to provide Ayden and Zayn with an environment where they can grow to be happy and successful. Also, it is important to realize that I cannot make anyone happy or successful. The only thing I can do is create an environment for them to grow in.

Digital Minimalism

Sun, 26 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Just the other day, I happened to skim a blog post, “My awakening moment about how smartphones fragment our attention span.” It struck a chord, and I realized that I’m in the same boat. It’s been ages since I’ve properly read a book. Even when I have audiobooks on, I’m doing something else and hardly ever genuinely enjoy them.

I’ve got this habit too, of kicking off loads of projects and then ditching them once it’s time to roll up my sleeves and do the detailed work. Setting up a new project is a rush, but finishing something? That’s a snooze fest.

ROI when using your primary residence as rental too

Thu, 02 Dec 2021 16:28:21 +0000

Calculating rough ROI on rentals is easy:

For example, let’s say one buys a $500,000 single-family home and rents it out for $3000 per month. Since it is an investment property, they will need to make at least a 20% down payment. On $400,000 loan, their monthly payment would be about $2750 at 3.25% interest rate, with $10,000 in property taxes per year and $2000 yearly insurance.

($36,000 - $33,000) / $100,000 = 0.03 or 3% return.

Oculus Quest 2 Review

Mon, 27 Sep 2021 14:51:01 +0000

I was debating between PS5 and Quest 2 (Affiliate link), and yes it is like comparing apples and oranges, but in the end Quest 2 won. I will likely buy PS5 at some point though. But before I buy PS5, I need a new TV with 4K and HDR. It seems pointless to play PS5 on 1080p TV from early 2010s.

Quest 2 is not my first experience with Virtual Reality. I tried PSVR about 2-3 years ago but the mess of wires really turned me off with the idea of VR. When I found out that Quest 2 is completely wireless, I got interested in it again. I was not very excited about needing Facebook account to use it though.

WordPress to Hugo to WordPress to Hugo

Wed, 23 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I moved all my blogs back to Hugo. I have gone back and forth between Wordpress and Hugo several times. WordPress makes it really easy to write and publish content. On this domain, I was using WordPress as a bookmarking service. With PressThis plugin, I was able to use a bookmarklet and publish a new post from any page on the web. But that plugin has not been updated in a while and it seems with every new WordPress release something would break. A few times, I was able to hack it to keep going. But lately, I cannot keep up with it. I will have to figure out a better way to bookmark but for now, I didn’t want to deal with WordPress. And easy bookmarking was the only reason why I was using WordPress.

My experience with Open Water Scuba certification in Dallas

Mon, 29 Jun 2020 15:11:20 +0000

This year I crossed off one of my bucket list items: I got my Open Water Diver certification. I had done scuba diving before in Honolulu. It is among my top 3 best experiences. Ever since that vacation, I had been wanting to get into diving more seriously.

But since we live in land-locked Dallas, I didn’t think it was possible or worth it. Then this year in February I saw a Groupon from International Scuba, and I decided to just go for it. I think the Groupon was for $250, but then there was fine print which said we needed to buy our own mask, fins, snorkel, and boots. I bought all this gear from International Scuba as they offered free gear rental for checkout dives. But this added about an additional $200.

What is this blog about anyways?

Mon, 08 Jul 2019 14:25:09 +0000

I have had this domain since 2003. Originally, I wanted to make video games and Chaosplay was supposed to be a video games studio.

But then it was mostly a blog. I blogged about video games and programming. A bit about personal life. Eventually my focus was on photography, so I blogged about photography.

When we became parents, I was blogging about parenting.

I wasn’t a consistent blogger. I stopped blogging many times. Also several times I wiped old posts and restarted blog with clean slate.