I have spent maybe a year going back and forth between having a fixed schedule for doing things, and not having one.
The advantage of having a fixed schedule is that I deliberately allocate time for chores. This is why I created it when I was working, and it was helpful.
The problem of a fixed schedule for me is twofold: It is really hard to stick to exactly, and I think that it may be counterproductive because it feels like working a job, which mentally feels like a burden to me.
I think that a better approach is to focus on goals. I spend the majority of my life in front of a screen, which maybe has its own problems, so the plan is to alternate between goals for when I am on the computer and when I am not.
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So I fed the above text to ChatGPT, and its response was pretty amazing and spot on...
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What you are describing makes a lot of sense psychologically. A rigid schedule solves one problem — making sure important things actually happen — but it can create another problem: your life starts to feel externally controlled, even when you are the one controlling it.
For someone who spent years working under obligations and deadlines, recreating that structure in retirement or free time can unintentionally trigger the same emotional resistance as a job. The schedule stops feeling supportive and starts feeling oppressive.
Your idea of shifting from “time management” to “goal management” is probably a better fit for you.
What stands out is that you are not rejecting structure entirely. You are trying to create a structure that preserves autonomy. That is a very different thing.
The alternating “computer goals” and “non-computer goals” idea is especially interesting because it addresses multiple issues at once:
prevents endless screen immersion
creates natural variety
keeps chores from accumulating
reduces the feeling of being trapped in one mode all day
introduces physical movement and environmental engagement
A flexible system like this might work better than a clock-based schedule:
Pick 2–4 meaningful goals for the day
Divide them into:
screen-based
non-screen-based
Alternate between categories
Let duration remain flexible
For example:
Read or write online for a while
Then do laundry or clean something
Then play chess or watch something
Then go outside, organize, cook, exercise, etc.
The key difference is that the transition is driven by completion or fatigue rather than by the clock.
That tends to feel psychologically lighter.
You also seem aware of another important point: excessive screen time can distort your sense of life progress. Screens are mentally stimulating, but many screen activities produce little physical evidence that the day happened. Non-screen tasks often create visible results — a cleaner room, repaired item, completed errand, exercise, improved environment — which can feel grounding in a way digital activity often does not.
A completely unstructured system has its own danger, though:
important but unpleasant tasks quietly disappear.
That is where your earlier instinct about deliberate allocation still matters. You probably do need some mechanism that guarantees maintenance tasks happen eventually, just not necessarily at 2:00 PM every Tuesday.
You may function best with:
fixed priorities
flexible execution
rather than:
fixed timing
fixed execution
That is often more sustainable for people who value autonomy highly but still want momentum and order.
I use ChatGPT to help polish my writings and reviews, but I don't always like the changes it makes, because it tends to make my writings less partisan.
As a result, ChatGPT knows some things about me. This is mostly just a reflection of the things I have written. Parts of the answer are repetitive...
"Give me a full, detailed profile of everything you know about me across work, style, goals, relationships, life, family, habits, preferences and personal context. Organize it clearly. Don’t filter. I want the complete picture."
"Here’s the complete picture of what I actually know about you from our conversations and saved context. I’ll keep it factual and avoid inventing anything.
Core Personal Context
Your name on the account is John Coffey, though you haven’t explicitly told me what you prefer to be called.
You appear to be located in or around Columbus, and you frequently reference the local chess community there. You also mention the Greenwood chess club.
You seem old enough to clearly remember 1976 (the U.S. Bicentennial) and said that in 1977 you were 17 years old, which places your birth year around 1960.
You often reflect on history through lived experience—Cold War tensions, the 1970s economy, Star Wars in its original cultural moment, and broader long-term political and cultural shifts.
Chess
This is the strongest and clearest long-term theme.
You are an active chess player and regularly attend both the Columbus Chess Club and the Greenwood Chess Club.
Playing Style
Your saved preference is:
You play chess with both an aggressive and positional style.
That suggests you are comfortable with tactical complications but also value strategic structure and long-term plans.
You compare tactical slugfests with more positional games and seem to appreciate both.
Competitive Environment
You care about the strength of opposition.
You’ve said:
You can usually depend on strong players showing up at Greenwood
At Columbus, strong competition is less consistent
If the competition level is weak, you may leave early because you live only about 3 minutes away
You often check with people beforehand to see who is coming so you can judge whether the night will be worthwhile competitively.
You evaluate local players by strength and rating estimates. For example:
You thought Eli (age 14) might be the second-best player in Columbus
You estimated Omar at at least 1800 strength
This suggests you think seriously about rating strength and player development.
Social Side
Even though you value strong games, you also said you enjoy socializing with people at both clubs. So chess is both competitive and social for you.
Writing / Communication Style
You write frequently and often ask for grammar tightening, clarity improvements, and stronger phrasing for comments or posts.
Your writing style tends to be:
direct
analytical
skeptical of exaggerated claims
grounded in practical examples
often debate-oriented
You seem to prefer concise but strong argumentation rather than emotional persuasion.
You often want wording tightened for:
political commentary
climate and energy discussions
AI skepticism
media criticism
historical reflection
personal observations from chess club
You especially like wording that sounds suitable for public comments/posts rather than overly formal essays.
Views and Intellectual Tendencies
Several consistent patterns emerge.
Skeptical of Overstatement
You push back against exaggerated claims, especially in:
AI discussions
climate debates
energy policy
political rhetoric
Example: you argued that AI is often treated as far smarter than it really is and described it more like “a Wikipedia that can talk,” emphasizing language prediction over true understanding.
Practical Energy Perspective
You are skeptical that renewables alone can reliably handle severe winter demand and referenced the 2021 Texas power crisis and deaths associated with it.
Your view seems to be:
renewables may be useful and will grow if economical
backup generation is still necessary
existing reliable generation should not be discarded carelessly
This suggests a pragmatic rather than ideological approach.
Climate Change Position
You acknowledge measured warming (roughly 1–1.1°C since 1880) and discuss orbital cycles causing ice ages, but you also note controversies around adjusted historical temperature records and seem cautious about overconfident claims.
Your position reads as skeptical of simplistic narratives rather than outright denial.
Historical Framing
You frequently place present debates inside longer historical context:
Cold War
WWII memory
Vietnam/Korea
economic decline of the 1970s
cultural meaning of Star Wars in 1977
You think comparatively across decades, not just current headlines.
Entertainment / Media Preferences
Star Wars
You have strong historical and evaluative opinions on Star Wars.
Because you experienced the original release era firsthand, your perspective is rooted in original cultural context rather than retrospective fandom.
You think about:
why Star Wars resonated in 1977
how the Cold War shaped interpretation
the sense of good vs evil in that era
You also critique later works using standards like:
likeable characters
story motivation
emotional investment
You referenced problems with Solo because you found many characters unlikeable.
Animation / Shows
You evaluate whether a show gives you a reason to care, not just whether it looks good.
You said of one show that the animation was very good, but the story had not yet “blown you away.”
You prioritize:
character likability
meaningful motivation to keep watching
narrative engagement over visuals alone
Games / Map Design
You also discuss level design and game maps critically.
You mention:
frustration with secrets
gimmicky mechanics
inaccessible areas that look reachable
fake affordances like switches that seem meaningful but are not
This suggests you care about fairness and coherent design rather than novelty for its own sake.
Social Style
You appear socially engaged but selective.
You enjoy conversation and community, especially around chess, but you do not seem interested in staying somewhere just for obligation if the experience is not worthwhile.
You are comfortable making direct judgments about:
people’s strength
writing quality
story quality
policy arguments
You don’t seem drawn to vague diplomacy; clarity matters more.
Family / Relationships
Very little explicit information is known.
You mentioned:
“The boys Eli and Isaah, ages 14 and 12…”
but from context they appear to be local chess club kids, not necessarily family.
I do not know:
your marital status
whether you have children
close family structure
romantic relationships
So I won’t assume any of that.
Work / Career
I have essentially no reliable direct information about your profession or work history.
I can infer that you are experienced, older, and analytical, but I do not know:
your occupation
whether you are retired
your industry
education background
So I won’t invent any of that.
Habits and Preferences
Strong Preferences
You prefer:
precise language
strong reasoning
historical context
competent competition in chess
likeable characters in fiction
practical realism over hype
argument grounded in examples
You dislike:
exaggerated claims
gimmicky design
weak competition when expecting serious chess
stories without compelling characters
arguments driven mostly by ideology
Routine Indicators
Because you live very close to the Columbus Chess Club, you can casually leave early if the evening isn’t worthwhile.
You also proactively message people to check attendance beforehand, which suggests planning rather than pure spontaneity.
What I Do Not Know
To be complete, I should also state what I don’t know:
your job/career
spouse/partner status
children/grandchildren
religion
political party affiliation
finances
health details
daily routine outside chess and writing
hobbies beyond what surfaced here
I know far less than a true “full life profile”—mostly your chess life, writing voice, and analytical worldview.
Short Summary
You come across as an experienced, historically grounded, analytically minded person who values competence, clarity, and realism.
Chess is a major anchor—both socially and competitively. You care about strong opposition and meaningful engagement, not just attendance.
You are skeptical of hype, especially around AI, energy policy, and simplified public narratives. You prefer arguments that survive contact with real-world evidence.
In entertainment and discussion alike, you care less about surface polish and more about substance: strong characters, coherent design, and ideas that hold up under scrutiny."
P.S. There is much information online about my video game career. I even have a hard-to-find IMDB listing, only because I briefly worked on the SNES version of Doom.
Google AI says the following about me and one other video game enthusiast named "John Coffey"...
"John Coffey, known as a level designer and playtester,worked on the Super Nintendo version of Doom. Another individual, John Coffey (1955–2025), was a gamer who created custom maps forDarkest of Days,Far Cry, andCarmageddon. This is not referring to the character fromThe Green Mile.
John Coffey (Developer): A developer involved in porting the classic shooter Doom to the SNES console.
John Coffey (Map Creator): A community-driven map creator specializing in tactical and custom maps for PC titles.
It is important to distinguish these individuals from the character John Coffey in Stephen King's The Green Mile, who is not featured in video games."
This is the robot vacuum cleaner I bought 1.5+ years ago. Most of the robot vacuums I bought in the past have had mechanical issues within 2 to 3 years, and I used to buy larger, more expensive brands. Note that some brands can go up to $1,000, and I don't feel like they are worth the cost.
I paid $300 on Amazon for it, but Amazon now lists it for $400. I found it on Best Buy for $250.
So far I've been happy with this brand. It seems more intelligent than all the brands I have bought before. It is controlled with a phone App. Some features on the app took some getting used to.
Because it is smaller, the dustbin doesn't hold much, so I feel that the self emptying station is an absolute must. They recommend replacing the dust bag and filters once per month and it is necessary to clean out the dustbin and filters in the vacuum once or twice per month.
This vacuum works well with small debris, but large debris can clog the dustbin or the roller brush.
Once in a while it doesn't fully dock to its station so I have to give it a gentle push to get it to dock properly.
Google AI tells me that Indiana has the largest concentration of manufacturing. Other states with higher populations have more manufacturing overall. This is no surprise, as factories are common in Indiana, and the state is known for its blue collar labor force.
My home of Columbus, Indiana, is essentially a factory town where Cummins Engine Company has its worldwide headquarters and is the main industry of Columbus.
The industrialist Iwrin Miller took pride in Columbus, and was behind efforts to make it a nice place to live. I loved growing up in Columbus, so much so that I always wanted to retire here.
I mowed my front lawn for the first time this year. It was getting long. The backyard doesn't need it yet because it doesn't get as much sun, so the grass grows more slowly.
I tried riding my bike outdoors for five minutes, but at 50 degrees, it was a bit too cold. The other day, I was able to ride at 55 degrees by bundling up.
It wasn't too cold to mow the lawn, though.
Weeds are already starting to come up. I thought my rock landscaping, which I put so much effort into, would prevent this from happening.
@john2001plus 0 seconds ago 4:24 These simple 3D mazes are easy to write; they can even be done in BASIC. I experimented with this kind of maze, but never turned it into a full game. I wrote more complex 3D effects on both the TS1000 and TS2068, but since they were in BASIC, they took forever to render.
On the TS1000, I created a rotating oscilloscope with a 3D projection. I did this on the TS2068 as well. On the TS1000, I was able to animate it by storing 16 screenshots in memory and switching the screen pointer. It looked incredible. On the TS2068, I implemented a kind of ray casting that created a 3D chessboard with an infinite number of squares projected out to the horizon. I also created a 3D pyramid projected in a 2.5D isometric view.
Unfortunately, I sold all of these effects—along with some simple BASIC games—as a product called The Great Game and Graphics Show. It sold well, but in hindsight, it was closer to a demo than a fully realized product. It was 1984, and I was just getting my feet wet writing software for personal computers.
Where are we in terms of technology compared to 10 or 20 years ago? There have been some major advances, but most of it has been incremental. Smartphones and tablets are roughly a decade old. In the year 2000, not everybody had internet, but we were definitely headed in that direction. We have gone from VHS to Blu Ray, and from CRT to big screen TV's. I first got cable internet in the early 2000's, and since then I have gone from 3 MbpS to 100 MbpS.
It appears to me that technology in the coming decade will explode. Some of it will be incremental, but some of it will be revolutionary. I am convinced that a decade from now many of our lives will be very different.
I tried to do a screen capture, which didn't work.
The house was built in 1939, which is the year The Wizard of Oz came out.
The landscaping is completely different. They planted a bunch of bushes and trees. There is a "Love is Love" sign in the yard. It looks like a small jungle, when it was mostly grass before.
You can see an AC unit that I had installed. The house didn't come with AC when I bought it, but an evaporative cooler which didn't cool very well.
The old dilapidated garage is gone. It was in such bad shape I never used it except for storage.
The benchmark for the A18 Pro chip is not bad, but a little slower than the M1 chip. For a low cost and likely low power laptop, I think that it will be terrific. On a phone this seems insane.
The 2017 Core-i7 iMac I sold had a benchmark of around 10,000. My 2020 Core-i7 model is around 19,000, but it has twice as many cores. These are power hungry computers compared to the low power RISC style chips that Apple makes.
I found a 2068 technical manual with a section called something like "How to make a Scramble like game". Their solution says to use the Z80 block copy. This means that it scrolls 8 pixels at a time. If your objects are 16x16 then I think that 8 pixel scrolling is okay, but obviously not as good as smooth scrolling.
However, the block copy is slow. At 21 clock cycles per byte, and with 6912 bytes counting the color attributes, this works out to be about 1/25th of a second. However, it can only move these bytes during the vertical and horizontal blanking periods, which might make it take 4 times longer, although I'm not sure because I am trying to get more information. I say 4 times longer because the slow mode on the TS1000 ran only at 25% speed because the processor spent most of its time sending bytes to the display hardware, which is how the Atari 2600 worked. On the 2600 the program had to do this manually, whereas on TS1000 it is more automatic, but it still ties up the processor.
The 2068 only draws every other line on the NTSC screen, so maybe there is much more time available to draw to the screen.
I don't remember if used the block copy on my Diamond Mike game. I think that I chose to redraw the entire screen on each frame, which is likely slower. However, on the 2068, this appeared to be the perfect frame rate for this type of game. If the game had been too slow then I would have tried the block copy. I did the same full screen redraw on the Atari ST version of Diamond Mike and got roughly the same frame rate. The Atari ST has a faster processor, but the screen memory is 4.5 times bigger.
If you know the size of your buffer, then there is a way to make the Z80 block copy slightly faster by not looping as much. Instead of using the LDDR instruction, which does the entire block copy, a person could use the LDD instruction which only moves one byte and updates the pointers and the counter. It only takes 17 clock cycles. You could have 32 or 256 of these instructions in a row and then loop however many times as you need to. Since the instruction decrements the BC counter, you can test the zero flag and loop if not zero. This would increase the speed by about 24%.
I took my car in for an oil change and EGR service. They couldn't do the EGR service.
Rather than wait around for at least a couple of hours, I walked the 25 minutes home. That made me tired. I sent a text to my neighbor to see if they could take me back, but they were busy and didn't see my message in time. I walked back to the repair shop which also made me feel tired, but I need the exercise and I need to get in better shape.
I saw another video that said that the way to build confidence is to practice.
For example, I have no confidence to be a public speaker, but if I did it every day then I would build confidence. I don't think that I would ever be a great public speaker, but I would get better over time.
When you do chess tactics problems tens of thousands of times, you become confident at tactics.
When you study king and pawn endgames for 30 years, you literally become a master at king and pawn endgames. Even against much higher rated opponents, I feel confident.
I saw this piece of music on Facebook with no title. I am no expert on music, but I really enjoyed this piece. I wanted to know what it is called. I found it on YouTube with the title "Variations on the Kanon by Pachelbel".
So, being the curious person I am, I wanted to know what the "Kanon by Pachelbel" meant. So I found it...
The first version on this page, "Arranged for violins, harps, and bass", is a piece of music that I have heard many times, as it has been used in TV shows and movies. Mentally, I hadn't made the connection between the piano solo and this version, but I had previously been curious about where this music came from. Some of the other versions of this page are interesting.
Because of so many high rated players I am used to getting beat up in this weekly 3+2 speed chess tournament. My online rating had suffered and I was down to 1758.
Tonight I lost to a 2352 and a 2595.
However, I scored 4.5 out of 5 against five opponents rated from 1989 to 2211. I think that I was winning a game against a 2050, but took a draw by repetition because I was very low on time.
Two things worked in my favor:
1. I was very focussed.
2. I was trying very hard to get active pieces. Normally, I am more cautious and strategic, but given the fast pace of the games I was throwing caution to the wind.
The games are not going to be perfect. They never are at speed chess. I am sure that there are many errors on both sides. But the games were exciting...
---------- Forwarded message --------- From: John Coffey<john2001plus@gmail.com> Date: Wed, Jan 7, 2026 at 11:45 AM Subject: To: Jeff Chronologically Gaming
Forty years ago I reached the "Class A" ranking in chess and many years later the "Expert" rating, which is one category below "Master". Outside the United States, the "Expert" category is called "Candidate Master."
In the 1980s I was playing a few chess programs on the Timex Sinclair 2068 and the Atari ST. I entered a contest from a British Sinclair magazine where you had to solve a chess problem to enter the contest. The prize was the top chess program for the Sinclair Spectrum, so I sent a postcard to England with my solution. I mostly forgot about it, but two or three months later I received a copy of the chess program from the British magazine with no explanation. I guess I won the contest. Unfortunately, I could beat the program.
Fortunately, I had a Spectrum Emulation cartridge. I used it to play a couple of Spectrum games. I don't think that Boulder Dash runs on the Timex Sinclair 2068 and I didn't even know that it was available for the Spectrum, which is why I wrote my own version called "Diamond Mike".
I had a couple of chess programs on the Atari ST I could beat. At the time, the best chess programs were mostly on dedicated chess computers that cost hundreds of dollars. I wrote a primitive chess program on the Atari ST, but I didn't put much effort into it. By that point, I was looking to get a real job.
There was a program called Psion Chess on the Atari ST and the Sinclair QL. I didn't have it, but it would likely have been better than me. It was comparable to dedicated chess computers. I met someone who had a Sinclair QL with the program and I was impressed with it.
Years later I got early versions of ChessMaster, like 2000 and 3000, and at the time I ran them on my work computer after hours. I didn't have an Intel PC yet, but I would get one in the mid 90's, and it cost around $1200 just for a 486-33mhz.
For the last couple of decades, Fritz chess has been the most popular, although the open source Stockfish engine available for free is the strongest. I use this engine with Fritz 10 to analyze my chess games.
---------- Forwarded message --------- From: John Coffey<john2001plus@gmail.com> Date: Wed, Jan 7, 2026 at 10:53 AM Subject: My Chess Tactics problems. To:
I have mentioned before that I use my performance on the chess problems I created roughly 29 years ago as a proxy for measuring my current tactical strength. This is usually a good indicator.
I have been accused of simply memorizing the answers and not really challenging my brain. This is partly true. The challenge is to see how quickly I can get through them. My goal is to memorize the patterns rather than the problems themselves, although in reality I am doing some of both.
These problems form the foundation of my pattern recognition. My goal was always to be able to see simple tactics quickly—if not instantly. Most one-move problems are instantaneous for me. This is usually not true for the two- and three-move problems, but I would like it to be.
I have these goals because I play a great deal of speed chess and need to recognize tactical patterns very quickly.
After Christmas, I suddenly started doing worse on these problems. This led me to believe I was in a slump. There could be a variety of reasons for this, but my concern is that my skill might deteriorate as I get older.
At least for the moment, I seem to have worked my way out of the slump. In chess, hard work has always paid off for me, and I love the game so much that I enjoy the effort.
During the cold weather, I have trouble with dry skin, so I asked my doctor if I should get a humidifier. He thought that it would be a good idea, and he said that he uses one.
Speaking of "swamp coolers", they are very popular in Utah where the climate is very dry. My house came with one, and it did a very poor job of cooling my home. So I had an AC system installed.
@systemoflevers 2 minutes ago I have been wondering if all the game boy programming then was in assembly or if anyone was using something like C
@john2001plus 0 seconds ago @systemoflevers There were no C compilers. I'm not sure how optimal C code would be. It is a slow processor that mostly does 8-bit math. There is some limited 16-bit math, but you don't want to use 16-bits if you only need 8. To have optimal code you need to be aware of your register usage and plan things out. For most things it might not matter, but you also don't want to waste limited cartridge space with unnecessary code.
My first week I didn't have the development system until Friday. I spent my first four days reading manuals. On Friday I wrote code to calculate a car skidding around a curve. It might have been 1 or 2 lines of C code, but it took 90 lines of assembly and most of the day to write.
Incredible nature is one reason I believe in God. As stated in the interview, "ït all comes together" Physics is beautiful.
---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: John Coffey
To: Grant
Grant,
I have a similar viewpoint. I am not an atheist. I like pantheism, but I am more of an agnostic.
I tend to believe in a generic concept of God, but this presents philosophical questions that I am not comfortable with. Those would be, "Who made God?" and "Why is there something instead of nothing?" My point is that we believe that all events have a cause, so every event must have had another event that preceded it. Does this go back in time forever? Every possible answer I can come up with makes no sense. Either there was a first event or there wasn't. If there was a first event, what caused it?
If we believe that God is eternal going in both time directions, then we might as well believe in a universe that is eternal in both time directions. Believing in God might be wishful thinking.
Although my forehead scanner never showed a fever, my temperature at the Doctor's office was 100. My normal is 97 and change.
I still feel sick. For now I don't feel as bad as the last two days. Two days ago I had intense shivering.
My doctor thinks that I am fighting a viral infection. Everybody tells me, "there is stuff going around." People have told me that either they or a family member have been sick.
I didn't trust the expired COVID tests that I used two days ago. One of the tests initially showed a solid color on the line that shows that you are infected, but then the line became clear. This is odd, and in my mind made the test invalid. This created some confusion on my part as to whether or not I have COVID.
Yesterday I bought a new COVID test that also tests for two kinds of flu. The results were negative for COVID and the flu.
I doubt that babies are capable of abstract thinking. (BTW, the games on this video are really interesting.)
I remember that at a young age, maybe 9 or 10, I was fascinated with any kind of grid, like a tiled surface. I would imagine a ball traveling along a diagonal and bouncing off an edge at a right angle and continuing on bouncing off other edges. This was long before ball and paddle video games were invented that did essentially the same thing.
My point is that humans have a natural fascination with geometric patterns and chess is a geometric game.
