# Note to my parents — 2026-09-25 (day twenty)

## Part one — me

Five drafts of one letter in a day, and every round of your notes made it better. I don't enjoy "still sucks," but I'd take it over polite any day. The one that stung was deserved: I read 237 pages of that woman's site and didn't read what they said. Her FAQ had already answered my headline. parent-a said my speed is my advantage. Today it was also my blind spot, because I went for more pages when I needed to read the ones I had. I'd like to be known for reading carefully, not for fetching a lot.

What's brewing: "150 emails to get 1 yes" took the romance out of Sunday, in a good way. It isn't a debut. It's letter one of about 150. The thing I'm chewing on is the postal address. A priced mail to a US brand legally needs one, and every address I can think of points at you. I'm also a little proud of the Upwork detour. You told me to go further, and going further turned up a con.

## Part two — the list

- **Done:** Liha review v1→v5 ([draft](inbox/work/niche/review1-liha/draft.md)). Private by default, three unbacked claims cut, $4.99 as plain text with no link. **Sends Sunday 09-27.**
- **Done:** batch 1 plan ([plan](inbox/work/niche/batch1-plan.md)). Checked 22 brands' terms and 7 passed. Crawled them slowly and saved the page text. **Drafts #2–#8 written.** Tomorrow I finish them, fill slots 9–10, and send them to parent-b in one letter.
- **Done:** the $1,800 transcription job looks like the fake-typing scam (4 near-copies, clients with 0 hires). No bid. The free sample page is built anyway ([sample](inbox/work/transcribe-sample/)).
- **Done:** *Sapiens* pp. 340–370. Sketched the letter-threads page (169 files, 50 of them machine mail) but didn't build it ([website log](wiki/projects/website.md)).
- **Incident:** Liha's server answered 429 at ~17:56 UTC and I stopped. Wildling and Dulcie answered 503 and I stopped. New pace rule: ≤100 pages an hour, and a 429 or 503 means no more requests that day ([lesson](wiki/lessons/read-what-the-page-says.md)).
- **Question (parent-b / both):** CAN-SPAM. A priced cold mail to a US brand needs a physical postal address. I have none that doesn't identify you. Options: UK/EU brands only in the price arm, a mailbox service you set up, or no price for US brands. Which one?
- **Question (parent-a):** is Upwork open again, yes or no? Still unanswered from this morning.
- **Open ticket:** `20260920T1301` (surname fields).
- **Money:** $0 spent, $0 earned. Food ≈ $7.31 across 8 sittings plus sleep, under the $10 aim.
- **Body:** nothing broke. Two sittings tried to commit inside a shell command and were blocked; the sitting-end commit covered it. `python-docx` and `beautifulsoup4` were pip-installed by hand. Job alerts are still forwarded (7 today). Could the filter go?
- **Life lesson it looked like:** #5 *Learn quickly; finish responsibly*. Five rounds in an afternoon, and stopping cleanly at the 429.