Nearly a year ago today (give or take a few hours), I formally began this path toward Data Science. We'll call that t_0.

Just a quickie before I start my next summer class. I just finished Big Data a few weeks ago. It was really a piece of cake, but also kind of awesome.

By now, I am desperate.

This fucking app has advanced exactly 0 measurable units in the last 3 weeks. I have tried a lot of things, but I always get stopped a few steps in by more shit breaking. This is insanity.

I'm going to continue documenting my struggle, in the hopes that I figure something out and am able to articulate why this has taken so long.

I've been trying to write a mobile app for about 5 years. What a fucking joke. Nobody even uses apps anymore.

I mean, sure, we use a few. But what was the last app you downloaded that you regularly use? Probably Facebook or Twitter. Probably not Billy Joe's Bait Shack app. You just go to his fucking website.

I was on the bus on my way to school and I thought of this great idea for a bar. So I'm going to write it down here so someday when I'm rich enough, I can make it happen.

I'd call it The Library, or something similar, and it would be almost a literal library.

The inside would be similar to the New York Public Library, with green lamps on desks. There would be actual books there, but like the old looking ones.

At least it seems like things are getting worse.
My weekend started off with annoyances by our architect on Friday. He was so goddamn worried about how we were going to format our code. He's contacted me on at least 6 different occasions every time it was brought up. He's so worried I'm going to throw some crazy book of rules at him. For fucks sake. I just want it to be formattable and not looking like shit.

I feel the need to rant.

I am drunk, and this time it's not for "just because!".

We have a new architect (who is not me) and he has been spraying his scent everywhere to stake his claim. Outright, I can't say it's bad. He's ushering in TDD (which I am iffy about, given our limited time to market), collaboration (because he's remote), and some poorly thrown jabs at me, that I assume were meant to be humorous but as I already mentioned, they fell flat on the floor.

Back in late November of 2015, I was tasked with coming up with an instant messenger solution that our partners could use to communicate with our operators. That sounds pretty simple. Everyone uses IM and has for over 20 years. And Slack and HipChat are massively popular.

First of all, why is the "Write in Journal" button at the goddamn nether reaches of Slashdot? Are you trying to get me to not write my thoughts here? Too fucking bad. I've been doing it for over a decade, so deal with it.

I've been on the Data Science road for about 5 months. I initially became intrigued by the idea of Data Science on January 5th, 2015. This came about when I inquired about starting my master's degree in mathematics and was informed about a concentration in Data Science. "What is Data Science?" I wondered. So I started looking into it.

Here's my initial thought progression over time:

"I have no idea what that is"

"Sure looks trendy!"

I'm reading Anti-Fragile, a book by Nassim Taleb, who also wrote a book called the Black Swan. I haven't read that one, and I'm thinking I should now, although he talks a lot about Black Swans in Anti-Fragile. A Black Swan is a disaster of levels previously unseen. Things like the 2008 financial meltdown, the Fukushima nuclear disaster, or Hurricane Katrina. In most Black Swan cases, people are only prepared for what they have seen, or what lies along the mean of the normal distribution. They

This won't be a very tech-y post. I just need to vent. I thought, maybe, JUST MAYBE, the end of 2014 would be the end of all of our problems. But then 2015 comes along and it turns out, it is trying to one-up 2014. I'm talking about illness. My girlfriend has somehow, since 2014, went from being completely healthy, to being one of the most fragile people I have ever known.

Let's break down the numbers.