““I’m filled with doubt, especially about my faith,” I say. “Good. It’s doubt that drives a man onward.””

— Aleph by Paulo Coelho https://a.co/6r1XVVl

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“My search for wisdom, peace of mind, and an awareness of realities visible and invisible has become routine and pointless.”

— Aleph by Paulo Coelho https://a.co/hT3kZXY

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www.youtube.com/watch

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“There’s a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don’t, and the secret is this: It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write.”

— The War of Art by Steven Pressfield https://a.co/6sJg1aj

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This year I crossed off one of my bucket list item, got Open Water Diver certification. I had done scuba diving before at 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 GroupOn from International Scuba and I decided to just go for it. I think GroupOn was for $250 but then there was a fine print which said we need 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 additional $200.

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“In my opinion, the most important lesson that you can learn from reading this book is that you will not get rich quickly by day trading.”

— How to Day Trade for a Living: Tools, Tactics, Money Management, Discipline and Trading Psychology by Andrew Aziz https://a.co/fmI1u8k

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I got my iPad Pro at the end of 2017. Before buying it, I had read many blog posts by various developers who were using iPad for programming and web development. But soon after I bought it, I realized that serious web development on iPad is hard. The biggest issue was debugging JavaScript and CSS without web tools. At first, I was having buyer’s remorse but I loved the form factor of iPad and loved drawing on it. I am used to reading on Kindle and iPad was just too heavy for long reading sessions but it was very decent reading device for quick reading sessions. So I kept it.

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“The things we really want to do are usually the ones that scare us the most. The things you’ll not feel conflicted about are the choices that leave no one hurt.”

— What Should I Do with My Life?: The True Story of People Who Answered the Ultimate Question by Po Bronson https://a.co/izynNz8

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Here are some things to consider about consulting:Sales/Selling is the last thing on your list and salesperson is only a maybe. Reverse all of your priorities because selling and relationships are the most difficult things to master for a consulting company and you will die without those skills.In consulting, tech talent < sales/relationship talent. In fact, if you’re great at the latter go ahead and get started now because there are lots of great tech people who don’t want to do it and will come work for you on a nice contract rate.To give you an example of this I once worked with a consultant who was a technical rock star, and another consultant who was supposed to be technical but was actually pretty below average. The below average guy was more successful because he was great when talking with the customers and they loved him. He knew enough to talk through problems at a high level, explained things well, and made them feel comfortable that things we’re on the right track. If he didn’t know something, no problem, he just went and found someone with the answer.Besides those soft skills he knew how to set and manage expectations. You may be used to the best results winning, but if you don’t manage and then exceed expectations it doesn’t matter. People love you when they expect 80 out of 100 and you deliver 88. They will not be happy and often fire you if expecting 100 out of 100 and you deliver 92. You will wonder how you just lost to a competitor who is not “as good” as you.Even if you have pretty good soft skills, do you want to spend time constantly using them? I thought you liked the tech side? If you like both then great because someone has to spends tons of time doing it to sell, maintain, and expand the work and your success depends on how good they are at it.For many people this will all be hard to believe, or they think it’s exaggerated, or that it’s easy to just hire someone to do it. That’s fine, I hope you have great success. Drop me a line in a couple years to say how things turned out.

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“For would-be entrepreneurs (he calls them “wantrapreneurs”), or entrepreneurs who’ve grown a little too comfortable, Noah has a recommendation—ask for 10% off of your next few coffees. “Go up to the counter and order coffee. If you don’t drink coffee, order tea. If you don’t drink tea, order water. I don’t care. Then just ask for 10% off. . . . The coffee challenge sounds kind of silly, but the whole point is that—in business and in life—you don’t have to be on the extreme, but you have to ask for things, and you have to put yourself out there.””

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