2023 year sum up

December 22, 2024 - 5 mins read

yearly sum up

Series: retrospectives

Summary of important things that I did in 2023

I organized Ukrainian IT Fridays for Ukrainian IT Professionals in Bangkok.
- Photos
I fixed my eye-sight with ReLEX SMILE surgery.
I renewed my car and motorcycle driving licenses.
I started to invest.
I stopped consuming alcohol.
- I never was a big drinker, but overtime I found drinking more and more boring.
- So I stopped altogether.

Most interesting/inspiring people I met during 2023:

Dima Maleev
- Met him at Ukrainian IT Fridays. He is a Senior Engineering Manager at Agoda. Inspiration - what can you do if you dedicate a lot of effort. He made me think about building personal brand and things that person can achieve in IT world. He is the person who passed Google, Meta, Netflix and many others interviews. I would like to get to be there too. Also we had a lot of fun arguing about IT stuff.
Cong Nguyen
- He is an SRE Lead at Batdongsan (PropertyGuru Vietnam). I was really inspired by his deep knowledge of infrastructure and his ability to implement complex things fast and efficient. I would like to be able to do the same.

New hobby this quarter:

I guess playing with NFC cards and RFID tags.
MacroPad building.

Two might-have-been dream in this year:

Fix my sleep pattern
- I improved in sleep - but I still have long way to go
Walk more
- I improved in walking - but I still have long way to go

What did not go well

Electronic clutter started to grow again.
Improvements in sleep are too slow.
I still struggle to reduce my weight.

What went well

I did ReLEX SMILE eye corrective surgery in TRSC clinic
- 1 health problem solved!
- On first day after suregery I could see 20/25, and before with the best glasses I had around 20/32.
- Photos
I fixed CI/CD for my blog and started to write articles again
I preform much better with walking this year
We have a successful trip with kids to neighboring town to visit a zoo and celebrate our daughter 3rd birthday :)
I read some books. 20 minutes of books reading every day. Books I read:
- “Poor Dad - Rich Dad”
- “Think again”
- “Phoenix project”
- “Millionaire teacher”
- “The Little Common Sense Investing”
- “Psychology of Money”
- “How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk”
I changed my hair style to a short one :)
- More time to work on important things.
I started to experiment with energy consumption at home
- Surprisingly very big fridge consume not much - about 30 KWh per month.
- Overall - most of consumption is coming from air conditioners.
I built my first macropad
- I found pretty interesting VIA/QMK firmware compatible macropad: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003500083583.html
- My first usage was volume control, starting pomodoro timer, locking the screen and mute/unmute microphone in video calls.
- Photos
I moved to a new M2 macbook - that was surprisingly hard to move my comfortable environment from old macbook to new one.
- So I documented my setup to avoid that pain in the future.
I started to code more and experimenting with Github Co-Pilot and ChatGPT
- So far I’m quite happy with more coding
I win 8k baht in Thai Lottery :D
- Photos
We went to Van Gogh Alive in Bangkok, that was quite impressive and fascinating
- https://www.iconsiam.com/en/events&activities/van-gogh-alive-bangkok
- Photos
We went for Studio Ghibli exhibition in Bangkok
- Kids were amazed :)
- Photos
I baked a salmon :)
- and it was quite edible.
I renew my knowledge of VIM - I’m still using Emacs (in evil mode :D ), but I started to get back to VIM.
- Finished several VIM courses and configured spacevim in process of renewing my skills :)
I organized a meetings of Ukrainian IT Professionals in Bangkok.
I found a good font - SF-Mono nerd.
Trips:
- Chiang Mai
- Hua Hin
- Korat
  - Jim Thompson Farm
  - Korat Zoo
    - Photos
I researched world of NFC cards and RFID tags.
I went to AWS Dev Days 2023
I started to write technical articles again, even published in company tech blog.
Kids are growing and learning new things.
- Photos

What I would like to achieve in 2024?

I want to:

I want to plan every coming day.
sleep >= 7:30 hours per day for at least 20 days per month.
- Get a better sleeping place for myself.
Have my weight <= 90 kg.
- Do at least 8000 steps every day
fix >= 2 of my health problems
- make my eyesight better than before.
write code >= 3 days per week. programming language doesn’t matter.
earn 5000 USD per month after expenses.
- continue to invest in ETF fund(s)
start speaking Thai, even if it will be very simple talks.

Retrospective on 2023 goals.

I wanted:

I want to plan every coming day.
sleep >= 7:30 hours per day for at least 20 days per month.
- Get a better sleeping place for myself.
- 1 month out of 12.
Have my weight <= 90 kg.
- Do at least 8000 steps every day
- 2 months out of 12.
fix >= 2 of my health problems
- make my eyesight better than before.
write code >= 3 days per week. programming language doesn’t matter.
earn 5000 USD per month after expenses.
- start investing in ETF fund(s)
- That was a good start.
- Books on finances that I read translated in 80/20 VTI/VGSH experimental portfolio.
start speaking Thai, even if it will be very simple talks.