Blockchain Man

So there was a mass-shooting in Colorado Springs earlier this week and I had been trying to figure out how to acknowledge it in work Discord because we have team members there. So I hadn’t figured that out and then heard earlier from DT that there was one in Chesapeake earlier tonight.

BREAKING: Multiple people are dead or injured following a shooting tonight inside a Chesapeake Walmart, police say.https://t.co/eGvGq2iFB1 https://t.co/irLLl6PWt2

— The Virginian-Pilot (@virginianpilot) November 23, 2022

I was so emotional that I was about to post in the work Discord “So we can add that to the 14 victims in Virginia Beach and the 35 at Tech and I’m so sick of this and anyways HAPPY THANKSGIVING” but I’m glad I didn’t.

Then I saw this and my mind is completely broken:

The man in question https://t.co/WopQ0gZxcp

— chewsday adams (@hasanismydad) November 24, 2022

So I’m glad I have a blog where I can post ranty shit and I don’t need to give a fuck about who reads it.

Thanksgiving is in two days, and it looks like today will be the girls’ last day at school for the week. I thought they had Wednesday in class as well, but it appears not.

Elder’s class is having a Turkey Trot, and she has asked me to come in to help her class win an ice cream party by coming and doing laps around the track. Somehow I decided that I would ride my bike to her school (1.5m), then give her a solid half hour of running (2.5m), or ten laps to her class’s total, then ride back home. I told her if I did this that she would be mine and would acknowledge that she is mine and would act right. We’ll see. It’s 40 degrees out right now, which is a bit below my comfort zone, but I think I can handle it.

Speaking of turkey, Missus procured a nineteen pound bird for us, despite the fact that we are not hosting family. She started thawing it last night. I realized that most of it is going to go to waste, so I wanted to put it back in the freezer but she insists. I don’t know what we’re going to do, but DT is cooking a feast so we’ll likely go eat over there.

I’ve been making progress at work. Yesterday I spent most of the morning showing off my custom trained ML and generating prompts, then the rest of the day was working on SOL data from Flipside and manipulating it in Pandas. I’m starting to get the hang of it.

I’m trying to get the kids to work on the piano, starting them on some Christmas songs now so they might actually be ready for something by the end of the year.

My my, where the week went. Let’s travel back in time a bit. Backward, as I fill in the details.

Yesterday was Daddy-Daughter day with Elder. We went to the bouldering gym (!) and stayed there for over two hours (!!). I think it as the first or second time that her and I had gone together, and we both really pushed it. I pushed her on some of the V0s to really try and work out her technique, and she did it. I also had some good routes, although I still have not finished the V4 that gave me trouble three weeks ago. My shoulder is still bothering me, but I think that will be less of a problem as the muscles develop. I can do three pull ups now, so I need to keep up the training in the garage.

We did a whole lot of yard work yesterday as well. Elder wanted to earn some extra money, so I let her push the lawnmower around the yard. It was slow-going for her, since the grass was pretty tall and I didn’t raise the mower deck up. We killed both batteries before the job was done, so we went out to the gym before we were done and finished it up when we got back.

We’ve been rewatching the Dragon Prince show. I didn’t realize they had two more seasons of it, and the girls don’t even remember the first pass through. So that’s our show, although we’ve been watching a couple other shows together. I’ve also been playing Riverbond with both of them, although Younger can do little more than follow us around.

Thanksgiving is this week, so we’ve got a short work-week. Missus has to work Friday, so I might have to plan something with the girls. But for now I’ve got work to do. Lot of data analysis.

I delved back into the world of Stable Diffusion yesterday, this time to focus on training models. I did not have success. Just trying to figure out how to run Dreambooth was confounding. I tried running it locally as well as in Colab, but a nebulous web of commands and dependencies meant that my first couple attempts were a waste.

Running these training models takes several hours, so trial and error here is monumentally slow. And compatibility with the M1 Mac is a bit difficult as well. I almost wish I still had my six-GPU mining machine to run these models against. Oh, well I’ll have to try again next week. I spent way to much time working on this instead of doing what I was supposed to do yesterday, so I’ll need to see what I can do without tying myself up all day.

So I got paid this morning, which is good. I am only really planning on one more paycheck at my normal salary, then it’ll probably be cut significantly until 23Q2. I’m trying to plan accordingly.

I just had this thought last night:

If FTX really did some data destruction and deleted customer trade history just think how fucked taxes are going to be.

— BCM – The Blockchain Man (@dahifi) November 15, 2022

There was a Tweet going around over the weekend, when it looked like FTX’s internal systems were compromised, and people were saying to delete the FTX app. I did, as I don’t use it anyways, and I couldn’t login. Then another Tweet came out saying not to delete it because FTX was trying to destroy evidence. So sometime last night as I was trying to fall asleep, my brain went WHAT ABOUT TAXES?!

Anyone who deposited funds on FTX could reasonably claim that all funds were lost. I deposited thousands via ACH, and I still have those records. Most of my friends were doing the same and using FTX for custody, so they’ve got a total loss.

Part of my anxiety was the realization that I have no idea what my tax burden is going to be. I’m in a way higher income bracket now — perhaps temporarily — and a lot of my income went into coins that I still own. I could feasibly wash trade my BTC, ETH and SOL right now, and claim that deduction, along with whatever funds I lost in the CREAM hack (was that even this year?)

The good news is that the community is still really with us. The core community is still there and the team just had a huge fire lit under their asses. I feel it, and I know the rest of the team does as well. We have to deliver.

So last week was a bit of a mixed bag. Friday we learned that ATMTA lost half of their operating funds through the FTX collapse. So the company has between six and nine months cash on hand. Meaning that they’re exploring various options to increase their cash flow: raising money from VCs in what will undoubtedly be a down round; as well as cutting costs, including salary cuts or furloughs. Oops.

Thankfully Missus didn’t quit her job, and I’ve been saving cash quite aggressively, although, admittedly a lot of that has been going into crypto. We should likely be able to weather a significant loss of income without too much worry. We’ll have to tighten our budget, not as many toys and games, that’s for sure.

The never-ending doomscroll on my Twitter TL is just something else entirely. And Twitter, poor Twitter. Elon has come in like a wrecking ball, and between the crypto panic and slow collapse of Twitter, I don’t even have the stomach to look at it. There’s still the occasional ray of hope, but it’s pretty dark right now.

My mood has been well, considering. I’ve been at a good baseline. Missus is back, the girls are the usual challenge, and my shoulder healed enough that I’m not noticing the sharp pain, and I was able to go to the bouldering gym again yesterday for some climbing.

Now the new week is here and thing are going to be interesting. Will I get paid tomorrow? Who knows? For now I’m going to assume payroll is going to be a few days late. We shall see. The biggest question I have right now is whether to go forward with our Costa Rica trip. I paid a couple hundred out of pocket to book the vouchers, but we still haven’t paid the all-inclusive resort fee.

I don’t know if yesterday was the worst day in the history of crypto, because it sure felt like it. As if Tuesday wasn’t bad enough, the proposed Binance buyout of FTX failed and the markets tanked. POLIS and ATLAS were down fifty percent, SOL tanked and BTC dropped at least twenty percent down to the 15.5k level. Insane.

I seem to have gotten off luckier than most. FTX.com is completely insolvent, but it appears that the US site (a separate business entity) appears to be processing withdrawals. I pulled most of my funds out over the weekend, and only have a small amount that’s awaiting ACH cooldown. I realized earlier that I still have funds for the girls on there that I need to move off, so that’s the first order of business today.

Younger is already off to school, but Elder is still laying in bed telling me she doesn’t feel well and wants to stay home. So it’s going to be one of those days. Ugh.

And there’s family drama also. My mom’s been in the process of splitting from her husband of twenty-five years, due to some financial — um — mismanagement. Basically he got caught up with some paid group a while back that made options recommendations. Basically he got scammed, took out loans from his retirement funds, borrowed money from my mom, and went down a road to ruin. So they’re getting divorced.

I made the mistake of including his email in a Girl Scout sales campaign — he said he wanted to stay in touch with the girls — and he texted me back asking to check out whether some site was legit. It wasn’t. I was perturbed that he was still messing around with scammy shit, but I let it go. Then he sent me another email last week asking if I was interested in some ‘financial opportunity’. I ignored it. Then yesterday, of all days, he sent me some Nigerian Prince kind of scam where he wanted me to borrow $20k from him. The fucking nerve. I blocked him and vented to Missus over a few messages. I didn’t want to talk to my mom about it but she needs to know.

So that’s my day, and I’m not even talking about work stuff yet.

Another election day is passed, and it’s still too soon to know what control of the Senate and House look like. Local results are out though, and the woman who beat me in the primary a few years back is now going to be a City Council member. Good for her. I can’t imagine dealing with all that mess right now.

Crypto is a garbage fire right now. There’s been a battle brewing between CZ of Binance and SBF of FTX; CZ fudded the shit out of the FTT token, caused a liquidity crisis at FTX and then stepped in to backstop or buy FTX. People went crazy, saying this is as bad as the LUNA and Celsius collapse. 2022 has been a hell of a year, what can you say. The entire crypto market — at least as far as my bags are concerned — got hit, BTC, SOL, ATLAS, POLIS, all of them had huge dumps yesterday. The only good news is that the Star Atlas tokens are holding positive versus SOL.

I fixed the build at work again, after I broke it, again. Dependabot alerts and my impatience caused some problems, but we’re clean right now and ready to dive in again today to get to work.

Today is Election Day, which doesn’t hold as much significance in the household as it did when I was running for office. The girls had a half-day yesterday, and have school off completely today as their schools are used for polling places.

I’ve been completely cut off from the political process these last three years, although Missus’s Labor activities puts me back in the same orbit. I ran into our Congressperson a few weeks ago and drove Missus on a literature drop. The person is not even our Congressperson anymore since redistricting, but they’re in a tight race and we want Labor-friendly candidates in office. Unfortunately, that means Democrats.

I already voted a few weeks ago, my Congressperson is not in any danger, but there were local Council and Board members up on the ballot as well, so I did my duty there.

I was watching Last Week Tonight and their segment was on Trump lackeys taking over the voting officials in prep for 2024, so that did make me feel a bit guilty around abandoning DSA and going full crypto instead.

I’m bringing the girls over to their Momo’s today. We stopped by yesterday to say hi and she graciously agreed to take them. I was hoping to bike them over there since it was eighty-degrees yesterday, but temps have dropped into the sixties with a strong wind. We might be able to use it to our advantage though, since it will actually blow us toward Momo’s house. I’ll come back by myself, finish work, then pick them up in the car.

Work is well. I fixed the build, although I’m now at a loss where to work next. Docs, most likely.

Another Monday, another daylight savings time. Fall is always better, since we get the extra hour, although I wasted the extra time by staying up too late last night. At least the girls are at school and I have a clear calendar the rest of the morning. That’s good, too, because I’ll need it.

Yesterday was much more chill than Saturday, which was a bit of a rough one. I let the girls be their worst Sunday morning. I kept them home from church since it felt weird for me to send my six-year old by herself. No sir. So they watched TV and ate garbage until noon, at which point I had them help me straighten up the house. We really went to work and organized all of the girls coats and shoes. Then we went out.

I took them to the local outdoor mall, and we walked around. They’d been asking me to bring them to the playground there as it has these … cups? … that the girls sit in and spin around in. The cups are on an angle, so that one tends to spin around, and by moving your body slightly you can get a good spin going. It’s like a merry go round for one. So we did that, then we spent some time in B&N looking at books and games. The girls wanted to act out a play on the stage in the kids’ area, they’re so cute. Then we went to the library, then picked up groceries for the week. We had dinner, then we played Heroes of Hesiod, although the girls didn’t finish it — it’s too hard with just two players, but they made it more than halfway.

Then I read them to bed.

So this week all I have to do is grind through and make it to Saturday when Missus comes back. The girls are going to be fine. Elder can talk to her mom via Apple ID now, so that’s good, but Younger still woke up in my bed this morning. We’ll have to work on that.