Shaboy Ray-z's New Year's resolutions

My high school pre-calculus teacher advised us to share our goals to everybody we know. As a result, we’d be more likely to follow through. The shame of failing fuels progress.

I’m going to play product manager on myself. The project is Ray. Here are 3 pain points along with user stories and proposed solutions.

1. Ray is tired of being fat at 202 pounds and 5’11”. He wants to dunk on fools during pick-up basketball. He’s been doing Starting Strength, but he’s stalled on his lifts. In order to not be fat and dunk on fools, he’s going to progress to squatting at least 315 lbs (3 plates per side) and deadlifting at least 405 lbs (4 plates per side). His current numbers are 240 for squats and 290 for deadlifts. He’ll meet his targets by following the program exactly and consistently. He’s never going to break the chain. When Ray’s lifting goals are met, he’s going to weigh 180 lbs or have a body fat perentage of at most 10%. Whichever is more reasonable and moisture inducing.
2. Ray wants to be capable of solving any coding problem and make bank. In other words, Ray-z wants to push code and count bills. In order become a crazy smart programmer, ie. a hustler, Ray must attain the reputation of a hustler. Becoming a senior software engineer will signify that Ray has gained street cred. Ray will slowly but surely gain street cred by practicing deliberately and consistently with code katas. He will push at least one kata to this repository after work. PTO, and weekends are purposely exempt because Ray is self conscious and doesn’t want his girlfriend [1] to call him a nerd.
3. Ray has never been strong at math. At one point, Ray’s girlfriend [1] angrily stormed out on him at a restaurant because he took so long to calculate tip. To never be sad about being stupid at math again, Ray will finish Donald Knuth’s Concrete Mathematics: A Foundation For Computer Science. Ray believes he has the potential to make the world a better place by knowing how to code. Having math in his tool-belt will allow him to tackle harder, more meaningful problems. See Steve Yegge’s Video, “What Would You Do With Your Own Google?”. Allow this narrator to proffer some really deep rhetorical questions. Warning, these questions are so deep, that if you jump into them, you will arrive in China. Why are the world’s greatest minds working on social networks for forwarding cat pictures and getting people to see ads? Why isn’t cancer cured? Why does the American education system suck? So deep. Much philosophical.

Notes

[1] Cackling nyahahahahahaha. All your traffic are belong to me.