Welcome to my digital logbook, where I fail miserably at recording all the meaningful and beautiful things that happen to me every day. I'm reviewing this at night before bed and I notice it's chaotic and messy, like days tend to be. It doesn't need to be perfect to be worth sharing with you. May you learn something about yourself, about me, or about the world we share here. # mind stream Hi, It's a beautiful morning here in Guadalajara, Jalisco. We're listening to Lofi Girl's Lofi Study Lounge playlist on spotify. It's 07:53 and I have a cat on my lap (pics later?). Sit back, relax, get some work done with me. Hope you have a mega love overflowing day. *09:05* *back from meeting. quick break.* Happy Moon day everyone! Seems like we might be getting the webcam ready? Stay tuned to find out! Apolo is out enjoying the garden as I supervise on my phone. Sol (Soledad Solsticio) has joined him to file her claws. Should I drink the coffee from the altar now? Just had a banana for breakfast. Back to work I guess. >:( *10:18* Testing taking notes during a call I don't need to pay that much attention to. For the canadian bank, we're reviewing the list of predictive variables we're going to include in our modeling datasets. Project Manager E. is going through each one of the ~1,300 fields and we're deciding whether to keep them or not. *10:55* Attention is stretched thin now. Getting close to an hour of focus time, which is expected. Maybe more? Yeah I started prep a bit after 9:30. My old therapist C. told me that humans have a natural focused attention cycle, somewhere around 60-90 minutes. At this time attention power flags, the mind becomes more distractible, and practically, it's worth it to start considering taking a break if you're doing office-style work. Sitting and problem solving, reading, watching TV. It's a good time for you to go take a break if you've been watching me all this time (*nb: i know no one's been watching.*) Exhausting this cycle, resting, and repeating seems to be the most effective way to structure your day \[citation needed!!]. Resting can be active, but if you were working your attention, make sure you rest that. If you were working your body, rest that with the option of keeping your mind active. Project Manager E. is still going through the variable list, she's up to 515 now! Maybe we will finish the first list in this session. (We, says the man goofing off while a woman does the hard work). **Breaking News** I have just been informed by a trusted source that the CIA has released a document where an agent reports a trusted friend of theirs met Adolf Hitler in Colombia, on his way to Argentina. Picture included in the attached report. Did this villain actually find his happy ending in latin america after initiating the world's largest conflict? Someone needs to investigate this!!!! https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/HITLER%2C%20ADOLF_0003.pdf *12:39* #occultism #anecdotes #brazil I've just received an anonymous tip that some Occultist BDSM enthusiast in Brazil has had an unfortunate interaction with cleaning staff. It seems the young man has an altar in his house, currently with an image of Baphomet and black candles for the Thelemic new year celebration. Recently, this person was set to receive a romantic visit from a BDSM enthusiast, and our protagonist had prepared all of his kinky gear on the couch. My source also reports that this occultist had spilled his own blood accidentally while cutting a lemon the night before. In response to this accident, he hired a cleaner to come in on the morning of his date. Unfortunately for our romantic-minded occultist, he forgot to clean up all his kink gear before the cleaner showed up at 07:30 hrs on the day of the date. The hired cleaner is reported to have stepped into the house, seen the blood, the Baphomet altar, and the kink gear before running for her life. Luckily only the lemon-cutting occultist was harmed in the writing of this story. **Reader review**  *16:19* … # article drafts ## Variable reduction #statistics #predictive-modeling #variable-reduction ### Motivation When developing predictive models (machine learning or otherwise), sometimes you have way more information than will end up being relevant. When computational resources are limited, pruning the list of predictors before beginning the modeling process might be necessary to ensure the model training times are timely. This process is a convenience; we do it to facilitate the development, not because of any purely technical consideration. There are multiple options available for discarding irrelevant predictors, at varying levels of technical complexity. ### Expert Judgement The simplest solution is for the analyst to review the list of predictors by hand and to decide, based on their own judgement, whether this variable will be considered for model inclusion. Extraordinarily difficult to replicate and audit, but effective simple to implement (provided you can get a qualified analyst to sit down and do it). Time consuming (it's taken us around 20 minutes to go through 94 variables) but a very experienced analyst can considerably condense a predictor list. ### Computational Techniques There are a few machine-assisted techniques available. # mysterious omens Day of the Moon #moonday Pulled the 3 of pentacles #3-pentacles for today, my card features two naked yogis petitioning Yeshe Tsogyal for... who knows *It seems my cost rate is logged as something inordinately high on the corporate tracking system. Does this mean I'm secretly more valuable than I appear? Or does this mean that I'm forecasted to be more cost-effective sometime in the future? Cost rate is stuck until 2026 according to my director's email.* *discord friend in dm’s* > woke up feeling mega love overflowing today *advertisement on work station* *(can you believe i get adverts at work? the worker drone’s work time should be sacred! hmph)* > You can select your image and instance to harness the power of AWS. *building models for revolvers and transactors: models to predict loss, balance, revenue, probability of response, and probability of bad* *tried typing an incorrect estimate twice. noticed the estimate I was actually writing was the correct one.* # blog errata Correction submitted by my dear friend blueharpy from [yesterday's](obsidian://open?vault=obsidian-vault&file=proto-blog%2F2025-03-23) portuguese practice section: > Eu sou Gabriel. Eu estou praticando a escrever português. Eu estou trabalhando en* meu jardim *correction*: em*! it's very rare that a word in portuguese ends with -n # no-context screenshots  # gastrolog 1. one banana 2. three and a half bean and beef burritos with yesterday's delicious beef 1. the half burrito seems to be a gift from the secret goddess?? found it there when i finished my meetings. 3. beef and veggie tacos with chopped veggies from the butcher's 4. 3 beef quesadillas with spicy guacamole on the side, and instant alphabet soup # wishes fulfilled * ~~Meet project teammates to review parceling model for the Nicaraguan bank~~ (explain parceling models in blog) * ~~Prep for canadian bank project meeting * ~~Meet project teammates to catch up on Canadian bank project * ~~Meet coworkers for secret company outreach project~~ >:) * Breakfast