Posted on

Afternoon slump

I’m forcing myself to bang out this post while I have some time to myself this afternoon. The girls are at their grandmothers for a few hours this afternoon, but I’m not really motivated to do much today. Younger had a bit of a reaction to a vaccine she got yesterday, with a fever and aches, so I spent half the night in bed with her, and I’ve been dragging ass all day.

I managed to wrap up my latest Substack newsletter last night, a three thousand word post about reinventing oneself and which covered three book reviews: ChooseFI, Digital Minimalism, and Atomic Habits. It went out this morning and I’ve already gotten two responses from friends about it. One of them told me she was selling her house and moving into a sailboat!

Getting the piece finished was a challenge. I spent over a month actually getting it done, and wound up cutting a lot from it, including a partial review of the Alexander Hamilton biography. I didn’t want to include any books that I hadn’t finished. My time tracking indicates I spent about ten hours on it, which is probably very conservative, accuracy wise. I don’t think I’m going to take as long for the next one; I’ve already got a theme brewing for the next.

In addition to the Substack, I’m still cross-posting on Medium (tomorrow) as well as LinkedIn on Friday. I’m trying to figure out which one will be the most lucrative, so for now the extra effort is just an experiment. So far my last cross-post on Medium garnered a whopping two views, so I won’t be retiring anytime soon.

Work continues to be a slog, with most of my time spent managing a subcontracted printer service program. It’s a mess, and even if it does manage to be profitable, it’s the kind of hourly-rate limited opportunity that I’m trying to get my Boss to get away from. That is, even if it becomes sustainable, it’s not going to be the type of scalable work that we’ll need in the future.

I spent some time yesterday working on building a C++ development pipeline for a client that builds embedded systems using Texas Instruments ARM and DSP systems. It’s the challenging, and exhausting when I’m not able to get into an uninterrupted flow state that I need. I hope to get a couple of more hours on that this week, and work toward building a full CI/CD pipeline for the client’s new project, and have a nice accomplishment to put on my resume.

Speaking of which, I’m still musing over some job applications that have been coming through LinkedIn, and one came through my alma mater today that I need to look at later. I can’t let my fear hold me back. I fear that I’m not going to find a job that’s better than what I have now. By better I mean that offers me a higher paying salary, and the type of freedom that I have now. Even thinking about it, I feel a bit of anxiousness.

Also, I’m working through the AWS introductory training. I’m not sure if I’m going to go for the certification (it is cheap,) but it’s mainly for my own knowledge and to help me build out some systems that I’m mulling over for my cryptocurrency-related projects.

Posted on

Time for a reset and a fresh week

My mood has been low lately. We’ve been stuck in the house for the past several days due to rain, so everyone has been a bit on edge. The girls have been acting like wild creatures most of the time, and have been very difficult to manage. We should be done with the rain for a few days, but it’s expected to pick back up midweek. The yard is in severe need of a mowing.

Several months ago, near the start of the lockdown, we had promised the girls a trampoline as a reward. We put off the purchase as long as we could, and finally ordered one a month ago. There were delays, likely due to demand and supply issues in Asia, but we expect it to arrive today. Hopefully this will keep the kids from using the living room couches as part of their obstacle courses.

I don’t feel like I got much done this weekend. I got bored with The Outer Worlds Friday and wound up purchasing Detroit: Become Human a game about AI from Quantic Dream, which has made narrative-heavy games like Heavy Rain, which press the boundaries of graphical fidelity and story. I really enjoy them, and hadn’t realized that this one was out. Plus, it was only forty dollars, which is a good price for a triple-A title.

I would up staying up till after three in the morning, and slept in till almost eleven, so I didn’t get anything done. I didn’t write, I even skipped meditation for the first time in forever.

My unfinished Substack article is weighing like an albatross over my head. I just need to sit down and copy/paste my previous review of ChooseFI and give it another edit. I don’t know why I’m procrastinating on it.

I’ve also been struggling with this damn Mobile Device Management project I’m working on. I’ve become convinced that managing devices that aren’t enrolled in a Volume Purchase Program through Apple or the carrier is unmanageable. Enrolling the devices through managed IDs just doesn’t work quite the way it should. I’ll be writing this one up for sure, but it’s probably going to take some time for me to get my client enrolled in the program.

Even though I’m feeling this malaise, it’s important to get back on track. Missing a day or two is ok, as long as I don’t let it fall into a bad habit. Time to get back on that horse.

Posted on

Advice of the elders

It is the blessed end to a long, rough week, I have cracked open what promises to be the first of several El Guapo IPAs this evening, and I am doing the last thing on my to-do list before I begin an evening of letting my hair down. My plans to “take the day off”, didn’t quite work out as planned, as I got a late afternoon call with some urgency that requires completion before noon Monday. For now, I have made no promises to myself other than to complete this daily ritual of writing, and then I will release myself to my whims.

We have finally allowed our new cats, Bodie and Utah, reign of the house. I am mildly anxious about the effect of cat dander on my various computers. So far that have stayed off the table where my mining equipment sits. At night we keep them locked in the master bedroom or bathroom, rather, lest they scamper over the bed at 3AM and wake Missus up, as they did last night. I have been sleeping in Younger’s bed, like a babe.

Besides the sleep deprivation, litter boxes and vomit that we’ve found on the bathroom floor for the past few days, the cats have been a wonderful addition to the family. The girls love them, and Elder actually did the chore of cleaning the litter box today on her own. Wonderful. I myself have flashbacks to a cat-crowded apartment that I stayed in during my twenties whenever I smell cat litter, and have told Missus that she needs to come up with a plan for me to have my shower, where a litter box is sitting, returned to operation.

The girls are doing well. Their TV consumption has come down quite a bit, and we’ve been making progress with their academics, as I’ve called it. I’m especially proud of some progress that Elder made with her piano today. She’s been stuck on a Playground Sessions bootcamp lesson for the Game of Thrones theme that she’s been stuck on for several weeks it seems. It’s not the first two-hand lesson that she’s done, so I’m not sure why she’s having such trouble. The app itself is actually causing her some stress, since playing with the real-time accompaniment and feedback is too much when she’s struggling to play. She wants to rush through them instead of giving herself time to grow, so I’ve been trying to coax her into playing it half-speed or from sheet music, but she resists.

I’ve found that starting each session by backtracking to the individual hands-separate lessons as a warmup before going into the harder one has been working well. And today I had her just look at the music and practice the problem bars over and over until she could put the longer sections together. And she started to get it. I think she’ll need a few more practice session on her own before she does the test again. And hopefully she’ll listen to her old man when he offers advice!

Posted on

Thoughts on work and family

Work, or rather my job, has been taking up entirely too much of my mental power lately, and I am operating at my limit. My limit. I’m basically running myself ragged at this point. I’ve already been responsible for taking care of the kids from the time they wake up at seven in the morning till the time my wife gets off work at five o’clock, and managing my work responsibilities, and now I’ve got the added responsibility of overseeing an employee. I feel like I’ve got another child.

I’m not quite as overwhelmed as I have been in the past as I’m doing a lot better at limiting my workload, but it’s damn near impossible to take care of the girls and work at the same time during the day. I’m just going to start taking every other Friday off.

I had a pretty heated argument with my boss today about things. We’ve been together for eight years this winter, so like any married couple we’ve learned how to fight with each other. I basically abdicated responsibility for this employee several years ago after attempting on several occasions to manage him, but each time found him unable to follow my directions. I don’t know if I’ve become a better leader or if he’s become more focused, but I feel like we’ve turned a corner in the two weeks since he’s been reporting to me.

There are definitely more tools at my disposal this time. I’m basically using Microsoft Planner — a kanban board — to limit his work in progress, and have been micromanaging the shit out of him this entire time. I don’t trust his judgement. He’s been managing two separate business segments and has had absolutely zero accountability. And my boss wants to complain about him taking advantage of us, while it’s been his failure to hold him accountable that has gotten us to where we are now. The employee has been put on part time work, and we’ve brought in an HR representative to put him on notice. So yea, he’s focused now.

I think the real difference between this time and the last attempts I’ve made at managing this employee is that I’ve gotten Boss out of the way. We’re not giving conflicting, or changing priorities. If something goes on the board, it gets finished. Done. Done. Done. It seems like we’ve been operating in a state of constant anxiety, where everything is urgent and important, and today I actually felt somewhat relaxed in that I didn’t feel the need to follow up with this employee every two hours.

The things I’d found out, the way that Boss and this employee had been operating, frankly boggled my mind. So much of what had been allowed was completely unacceptable, and I’ve managed to turn things around pretty quickly.

My own projects however, have been put on hold, mainly from exhaustion, and the absence of the time needed for me to do the deep work needed to get things done.

The kids have compounded things this week as well. I’ve been forced to shift how I deal with their academics. I usually let them work on their school at the same time, either independently while I get stuff done or while taking turns. Since I’ve been using RemNote’s spaced repetition with them, I’ve had to be more hands on, so I’ve been letting one of them take a turn watching a show while I work with the other one. We haven’t been doing a lot lately, but I really need to sit down with both of them or they’ll get frustrated and complain that something is too hard. So sitting with them and working it out together seems to calm things down a bit and allow me to really work with them on something.

I think I may be helping Elder a bit too much with her math. I’ve been drilling her on vocabulary lately, but I’m not really happy with her math skills. She still counts a lot, even for basic things like 8-2, so I’m going to be adding some more flash cards to her routine. I even write a short program to generate the cards needed.

# Addition
x = range(1,10)
y = x 
for i in x:
  for j in y:
    print(i,"+",j,"::",i+j)

# Output
1 + 1 :: 2
1 + 2 :: 3
...
9 + 8 :: 17
9 + 9 :: 18

Changing this for subtraction and multiplication is trivial.

Beyond that though, she’s still flying through some of the questions on the Khan Academy tests, mixing up addition and subtraction, and I should probably let her make more wrong answers.

Still, I’m mostly happy with the way things have been going, even though there’s been some behavioral problems. I’m still being my usual hard-ass self, but they are being creative and playing, and most importantly, not watching a lot of TV.

Tomorrow though, I’m turning off my desk phone, closing my email and messaging apps, and I’m not checking anything until after lunch. I have got to get some project work done, and I want to take the kids to the beach.

The weekend starts early tomorrow.

Posted on

Vaccine coming or permanent pandemic? COVID Day 148

Vaccination

Early this year, as it became apparent that COVID-19 was going to cause a serious pandemic, I remember reading someone who proposed that people start keeping pandemic diaries. These type of first-person accounts would be important from a historical perspective, as they were useful for figuring out what had happened during the past pandemics like the Spanish Flu. I began taking it in all seriousness, and have published twenty-six entries so far, trying to detail my family’s experience.

Some of the first estimates that I read near the start of the lockdown said that we were looking at potentially eighteen months to two years of lockdowns and restrictions before either a vaccine was available for mass production or the disease mutated into a benign form. It’s hard to believe that we’re only five months in at this point. Other predictions about a second wave, worst that the first, have been accurate, but it will be some time before we see whether my initial napkin calculation of five hundred thousand dead will be close.

Several readings of psychology show that human mental outlooks seem to return to baseline six months following a life-changing event. Lottery winners and those suffering new para or quadriplegics lose the elation or despair that circumstances have brought them after half a year, and I myself have noticed how much has become normal that seemed absolutely stressful back in March. Life becomes normal. This has popped up in my readings of stoicism as the hedonic treadmill.

This normalization has been one of the worst things about the Trump era, but I’ll hold off on the political ranting for now. In general, people just became too stir-crazy to adhere to strict lockdown procedures for more than six weeks, and began sliding back to normalcy. We’re guilty of it ourselves. At one point, after raising my voice at the kids, I told Missus that we had to go let them play with their friends, or else we would have no choice but to send them to daycare. I’ve refused to consider sending them back, mainly for financial reasons, less so for the health risk. But aside from moving to an isolated area where they can roam free, there’s no way we can keep them locked away from everyone.

Our isolation pod that we previously formed with our neighbors seems to have become a bit more diffuse over the past few weeks. The girls can still play with their friends down the street, the T’s, but I’ve stopped being concerned about what they do with their time. The most we can do at this point is just wash our hands and wear a mask when we go out, and just stay away from large groups.

Adults I see out in the world without a mask are assumed to be either a sociopath or an idiot. I’m not sure which is worse, those that go without masks or those that leave them down under their nose while they wear them. It’s a stark contrast between going to Barnes and Nobles or Lowes, or heading into stores here in the city versus our trips out to the mountains.

Yesterday’s news said that Putin announced a Russian vaccine was available and that he and his daughter had both received it. Apparently the Chinese have one and have been giving it to their military and scientists working with the disease. There’s been some reports of pushback from the scientific community with regard to safety, but I’m still on the fence as to whether it’s just propaganda at this point. Still, there seemed to be a response from the financial markets, as this hope of normalcy returning caused gold and crypto to dip.

I’m not holding my breath of any resolution here in the US soon. Umair pointed out that Trump would do nothing to stem the virus while he was in office, and by the time Biden would be in place to put measures in effect it would be too late. COVID would be a permanent part of American life until a cure or treatment is found. As I’ve oft repeated from him, American passports are near useless now as most countries with stable COVID rates have banned US travelers.

Our main concern now is the upcoming school year. I’ve practically given up looking for a new job, given my belief that finding a better full-time job which will let me manage the kids will be nigh impossible. That may be my fear talking, or laziness, as most all of my day is taken up with managing the household. I spend most of my time working, reading or writing and taking after the kids. For now, we look for ways to compound our existing finances, mainly bitcoin, cut our expenses, and minimize our lifestyle. I hardly spend any money on myself, and am starting to save up some free cash for the first time since we bought the house.

Schools are going virtual for the first seven weeks or so, and we’ll have to see what that looks like for Elder. My main concern is that she’ll be tied up, leaving me with Younger, which may interfere with my job to the extent that I’ll have to place her back in daycare. I’d rather pull them both and homeschool them, to be honest, but I can’t seriously say whether that is more for my benefit of theirs. Probably mine.

Posted on

Mining operation update

Mining BEAM cryptocurrency, and planning for profits

I started mining again recently, following a brief hiatus while I assessed my performance over the past two and a half years. I decided to take a look at BEAM, simply for the reason that it was listed at the top of the stats on WhatToMine and other calculators. So, I dove in and have been at it for a few weeks now.

One of the reasons that I stopped mining was that the rig management software that I had been using was discontinued. I’d given up Windows and Awesome Miner altogether some time ago and went with HashR8 OS, which was built on Linux. The software was cloud based, and free since I only have one rig, but it appears they were white labeling a product from RaveOS, with whom they decided to split. Rave was unfortunately able to support the influx of new users, as a lot of miners were unable to get support from them, myself included, so I decided to go with Simple Mining OS, (SMOS).

Previously, I’d held all my mining wallets on an old Windows 7 machine, but recently repurposed the hardware for Elder’s workstation upstairs. Having W7 is a security liability these days, and I don’t need the security risk. One thing I decided that I wanted to do differently is run nodes for the various cryptos I’m holding on my home server, so I set up a BEAM node on my Ubuntu 18 machine using Supervisor. 

# /etc/supervisor/conf.d/beam.conf

[program:beam]
command=/home/me/beam/beam-node
directory=/home/me/beam/
autostart=true
restart=true
stderr_logfile=/var/log/beam.log
stdout_logfile=/var/log/beam.log
stdout_logfile_maxbytes=5MB
stderr_logfile_maxbytes=5MB
stdout_logfile_backups=2
stderr_logfile_backups=2

BEAM is quite different from most cryptocurrencies that I’ve worked with in the past. Anonymity is a very important feature of it, and they way they’ve implemented it leads to a very different quirk. Usually, when transacting on a blockchain, the sender just broadcasts a transaction over the network. With BEAM though, the receiver actually has to be online in order to complete the transaction. It’s slightly weird, and causes some additional issues with wallet management. BEAM uses the term bulletin board to describe wallet addresses, and wallets have to be online in listen mode in order to receive a transaction. There are rules about running multiple wallets that have to do with the fact that transactions are only heard by one wallet node and are ethermeral, which can lead to divergences in the transaction databases. UXTOs and balances can be reclaimed if this wallet database is lost.

For a miner, this basically means that the wallet has to be online in order to receive mining payouts from a pool. In fact, after checking last night, I found that my wallet had not been running, and I had several weeks of mining proceeds on my pool. Thankfully, I restarted the wallet last night and it appears the payout was received. To rectify this, I am thinking about creating an additional supervisor service to keep the wallet running.

My entry into mining at the peak of the last bull run in December 2017 was obviously ill timed. While I have not sold any of my bags of RVN, XHV, ARW and others over the years, the value of my portfolio has remained at nearly a constant level, never actually surpassing the capital that we invested to get started. Granted, we bought our GPUs a the top of the market and practically FOMO’ed ourselves into getting some of them at outrageous prices, but I’ve still been dismayed at the performance. This was one of the reasons why I briefly considered shuttering operations last month. Indeed, when I calculate for the power consumption that I’ve used, roughly 800-1100W, (about $60/month) my costs up to this point are doubled.

All signs in the crypto markets point to the beginning of a new bull cycle, so I’m not going to stop quite yet. I have decided that I need a strategy to start taking profits instead of just holding onto coins forever, so I’m going to start taking some of the mining proceeds, and convert them to BTC. My plan is to convert enough to cover the month’s power consumption, and just tuck it in a wallet. This will of course only work for exchange-listed coins or ones with a healthy OTC market, but I’m far too busy to do the research necessary to keep up with spec mining at this point.

Last night I started working on a new Python program to manage this process for me. It involves getting the month’s payout from the mining pool API, calling the wallet command to send BEAM to my exchange, then uses the CCXT library to initiate a market sell order and send the proceeds to my hard wallet. I’ve got a lot of work to do to automate all this, but I think the time is close to take this mining operations from a speculative one to a profitable one.

Posted on

Prime Reading

I sometimes joke with my wife about the dependency that we have on Amazon, and how things might look if Bezos is successful at making Amazon the entire economy. A while back I saw a meme or Tweet that read something like “Hello Prime Citizen, enjoy your Prime Life in your new Prime House with your wonderful Prime Wife,” et cetera, et cetera. We’ve been conflicted for years about the convenience of Amazon versus their less than ideal business practices and seemingly negative effect on local businesses. Still, there is no denying their domination over so many factors in our life.

We’ve had a Prime membership for several years, although we let it lapse for a while last year while trying to reduce the impulse buying. I turned it back on a by accident a while back and decided not to fight it. We’ve got a FireTV, so the free movies and shows are good, and when I discovered Amazon Music, well there was another reason to stay. We even wound up getting an Echo earlier this summer, and have come to use it so much that I’ve thought about getting more. Elder has had a Kids Kindle for a while, and the FreeTime subscription has tons of stuff for it that she loves, although the device is very old and barely usable. I’m looking at getting her an upgraded one for her birthday next month.

I’ve been using an iPad mini to read before bed, but it’s an original. It’s still running an ancient version of IOS from when Apple forced the other web browsers to use Safari’s engine under the hood. Since the device won’t update, I run into a lot of web page rendering issues, which has reduced its effectiveness. And while I’d been using the built in Books app to read my PDFs, getting them on there is a bit of a chore, and I’d been trying to find ways to streamline it.

Enter the Kindle app.

I figured it out, quite by accident, when I was trying to figure out how to get some dowloaded ebooks onto the device. Apple won’t display them at all, but then I figured out that I could Send To Kindle from my computer, and I’ve been in a bit of a frenzy lately. And I’ve discovered that there is also a Prime Reading section of the store where it appears that I have free access to lots of books. Some of them are garbage, but I’ve found a few gems in there.

Posted on

Evening pages

I didn’t realize that we surpassed three hundred posts a few days ago until accident just now. I don’t feel like saying much right now, but wanted to keep the streak going. We had a pretty productive day for a lazy afternoon, and I’m looking forward to turning in tonight and getting a fresh start on the week. I actually woke up this morning thinking it was Monday, so today has been a bit of a bonus day. I cut the grass, did some price comparison shopping for the deck rebuild, and spent the afternoon at the pool with the girls. It was a pretty good day.

I did manage to build a small net worth database in Notion last night. I added all my debt, cash, investment and asset accounts into a table and was able to join them together and get a good sense of my finances. In short, things are looking pretty good. I’m not ready to quit my job yet though. I’m still optimistic that Bitcoin will put me in a position where I won’t have to worry about working unless I want to within the next four years, and I’m trying hard to find evidence that will prove me wrong. It’s a bit hard to come by.

I’ll share two podcasts that I listened to today that touch on financial matters:

Posted on

Evening pages

Today is international cat day, which is fitting given the fact that our family is now bigger by two young tabby cat brothers, Bodie and Utah. We picked them up yesterday evening and they are currently having the run of the master bedroom and bath while we acclimate to each other. Another day or so and we’ll let them start having the run of the rest of the house. They’re lovely, and very affectionate. Utah likes to nibble on fingers a bit too hard, but other than that they are very nice with the girls, although they are a bit mischievous.

I spent most of the day recovering from my party time last night. I eventually turned in at 2:30AM after drinking a sixer of El Guapo and a bit more, but the day was pretty chill and free of drama. I still managed to clean up, cook several meals, catch up on my reading, and practice piano. It’s dusk now, and I’m not sure I have a long writing session in me tonight. We’ll be putting the girls to bed soon, and I may read or watch some tutorials or training videos if Missus decides to turn in early.

My second batch of homebrew IPA was not ready yesterday as I had hoped. I failed to account for the fact that yeast can’t carbonate the bottles when they are in the fridge, so I’ve taken them out to sit at room temperature for another two weeks. In the meantime I got sucked up in the homebrew subculture a bit, starting with this customer review of a Mr. Beer refill that reads more like the diary of a mad scientist. I started wondering what the hell they were talking about, and eventually found myself fantasising over some of the five gallon kits over at Midwest Supplies. Missus will have my head if I make this my new hobby. (Ooh, they even have Kombucha kits!)

And in a bit of good news, I was checking my bank account and saw an eight hundred dollar transaction listed on a credit card that was associated with my main bank account. A credit card I’ve never used. I was a bit freaked out at first, then realized that I had accidently made a payment to it by mistake instead of my main card. I made a call to get the charge reversed, and now I’m back to the point where I’ve got all my bills ready to pay for the next month. It is quite the feeling of security.

So, no alcohol or video games for me tonight. I think I’m going to play around with Notion and see if I can make a net worth tracker. Integrating it with some APIs would be nice, but don’t think I can call scripts from within Notion. We shall see.

Posted on

TGIF

What a week. I’ve taken my work hat off for the week, at least as far as Zombie, LLC is concerned. There may be life left left. I’ve taken over responsibility for the service management of our federal contract and managed to turn the whole thing around in a week. It’s remarkable what I can get done when my boss isn’t getting in the way. Limiting our work in progress has helped tremendously. I’ve been able to keep our tech focused, and have worked out several kinks in our process that should streamline operations, including some major issues that shouldn’t have been tolerated in the first place.

And furthermore, I’ve managed to keep the kids focused as well. We seem to have come to an understanding about the relationship between their academic and other work and television. We haven’t had too many problems this week.

I’ve been shouldering a lot this week, man, have I ever. I’m looking forward to relaxing tonight, and getting this post out of the way is the last thing I told myself I’d do before I take a look and see how my second batch of homebrew has turned out.

In about an hour we’ll be heading out to get ready for the arrival of the newest members of our family. I’ll be heading to the pet store with the girls to grab a litter box and other supplies, and the Missus will be heading to the shelter to pick up the cats. Then it’s beer, video games, and the last two episodes of Dark before I call it a night.

Tomorrow, my focus is on the deck project, for which I’m about ready to order some lumber, and do some light house and yard work. The only other thing I want to do this weekend is finish my Substack and get that ready to publish on Monday. I’ll probably fill the rest of my free time with reading, and maybe plan a trip out with the kids to the beach or a pool somewhere.

Well there, it’s quarter after four. Close enough to five for me. Cheers.