Month: November 2021

Tuesday morning and the creep toward normal life continues. I managed to get some work done yesterday, not much, but the opportunity to focus on a project for two solid, uninterrupted hours was glorious. I made a little progress. Not a lot. The important thing is that progress continues. I wrapped up by the time I picked up Younger at two-thirty, I played with her for a bit, talked to the T’s, our neighbors down the street, whom we hadn’t seen in several weeks since they left the week before Thanksgiving for a funeral. I let Elder play in her room with her friend, but by the time Missus got home the two were already fighting.

Both the girls were acting up, Younger wasn’t following any of my directions to clean up her stuff, and Elder refused to eat my “yucchy” dinner. I told her that if she doesn’t eat her dinner then she’s not allowed to have after school snacks at her Momo’s. That set her off.

We put both the girls to bed a bit early last night because we were late getting up Monday. This morning was much smoother. Younger slept in her bed, by herself, for the first time in a a month, so I gave her a Blow-Pop as a reward. I really need to find a non-sugary reward, but until then this will have to do.

Elder’s school is putting on a Moana play, so she’s excited about rehearsals. When I was her age I had the lead in a school play. I was Santa. I can’t imagine they’re going to choose a blond-headed, blue eyed girl to play Moana, though. I actually think she’d make a good director, but we’ll see how auditions go.

I’ve got some calls to make this morning, several people to catch up with, the most important being my soon-to-be boss over at CompanyX. I still don’t have an offer, and I need to get something formalized so that I can start making arrangements. Younger will need after-school care, and I need to make preparations to pay my student loans come February. Plus the house continues to fall apart – the garage door shrieks like a banshee when we open and close it.

I also want to start buying more bitcoin and other crypto. I have a lot of cash that I’m just sitting on right now, and I need it to get through the next couple months if there’s an emergency. I wanted to BTFD over the weekend, but can’t afford to do anything until I know I’ll have a steady paycheck. Plus I still need to buy Christmas presents. I have no idea what to get Missus, maybe a new iPhone. I didn’t buy gifts for Younger yet, Elder’s getting a Fire tablet and volume two of the Sapiens graphic novels. Then there’s my mom, brother, his wife and daughter, and I told the T’s I’d buy gloves for the kids, since they don’t seem to have them.

Today is the last day of November, and BTC is hovering right around fifty-eight thou. ETH is actually outperforming. The Perp markets are split. My ETH funding is paying out pretty well, meaning interest is mostly short, while the opposite is the case for BTC. It’s mostly positive, but not so much that it is erasing my ETH gains — my BTC position is 2x my ETH one, but isn’t wiping out even half of my funding gains. Position-wise, I’m down about twenty percent from the top.

We’ve got one month till 2022, and we’ll see if the four-year macro cycle will continue. My macro sell target, 3.6x the 200-day EMA, hasn’t moved much since July. It’s currently sitting around $165k. I’m skeptical that we’ll see a blow-off top that’ll hit that price before the end of the year, given that we’ve got ETH and so other many L1/L2s out there sucking up capital. Not to mention the NFT game.

I’ve got a doctor’s appointment tomorrow, super early in the AM. Just a general checkup. I’m in pretty good shape. I’m not working out as much as I need to, but at least I’m not drinking every day like I was a year ago. That’s good news for my health. I’m finding other ways to self-medicate that aren’t as damaging to my health, but that’s all I’ll say for now.

My goal for the next month is to stay on top of things, start this new job and set up a foundation for the next year that will allow me to set savings up on autopilot. It might be a bit too early to set New Year’s resolutions quite yet, or maybe not. We hit some financial goals this year, I think we’ll continue to outperform, so the goal is to have some fun over the next twelve months while shoring up repairs around the house.

The next twelve months should be fantastic.

I finished reading Perdido Street Station for the second time last night. I probably read it for the first time over a decade ago, and picked it up again thinking that I was going to read the other books in China Miéville’s Bas-Lag — or New Crobuzan — trilogy. I forgot how utterly brutal and bleak this book is. It is dark, filthy, and one of the most fantastic examples of world building I’ve ever read. It was quite a shock to go from Asimov’s Foundation books to this one. I’m not going to do a full review of this one as the GoodReads review I linked above has erased any doubt in my mind that I could do it justice. I will probably start on The Scar tonight, glutton for punishment that I am.

It’s Monday, and the girls are all gone to school and work. It’s coming up on nine and I am looking forward to having uninterrupted focus time today. I’ve got a quick update for SAIAdao to write, then I will probably start working on spl-governance, unless I want to take another look at my arbitrage program and see if I can make any improvements to that.

I’ve got a growing list of things to work on. I haven’t been very productive this last week, and I need to get my butt in gear. I’ve got a checkout with my primary care doctor later this week, and hopefully two weeks until I start my new job, which I still haven’t confirmed.

I’m running out of time this morning and need to get rolling before I waste the day.

Today is the last day of the Thanksgiving break. The girls have been home for nine days. I have not gotten much done during this time, so I am looking forward to being able to do some work tomorrow, I’m sure there’s a lot to be done.

We drove back from the FIL’s yesterday afternoon. We didn’t do much, we watched The Princess Bride and A Christmas Story, had prime rib for lunch and went out for ice cream. So we packed the kids in the car around five and hit the road. We had fast food for dinner and the girls fell asleep the last half hour before we got home.

I stayed up till four AM playing Cyberpunk, and didn’t wake up till eleven thirty. The kids had been getting out the Christmas decorations, but the house was too much of a mess for me to set the tree up. So I brought them to the park to play instead. It was very warm today, t-shirt and light jacket weather. Elder got a bow and arrow from her auntie as a late birthday present — a real deal bow and arrow too, like you would use for actual target practice. So we grabbed a pumpkin and found a field in the park where we could shoot.

It didn’t go too well. Elder was nonchalant about my safety rules, and she only got a couple shots off. I nailed the pumpkin on my first shot from about forty feet away, but wound up losing two arrows in the grass. We didn’t have a proper backstop. Anyways the kids wanted to play on the playground so we spent almost two hours there. Younger wanted me to stay with her the whole time so she could work on her monkey bars, Elder was off making friends.

We came back, watched a few shows, and I made General Tso’s for dinner. Now everyone is winding down. Myself included. I think I’m going to read Perdito Street Station in bed until I pass out. I need to get a good night’s rest. Tomorrow morning will come early enough.

We’re at the FIL’s today, we drove up last night after dinner. His birthday is this weekend, so we were going to take him out to lunch, but he had already decided to cook prime rib for us. I don’t know if we’re going to stay here for today or stay tomorrow as well.

I’m a bit distracted writing, since there’s not really a quiet place to write. I’m sitting at the dining room table. The Princess Bride is playing in the living room. Missus is still sleeping. I got woken up by Elder at four this morning because she had an accident in the bed. I slept on the couch.

I’m hoping I can go for a hike in the woods today, but it might be too cold. It’s in the twenties right now, and will only get up to the forties today. We’ll see how things go.

I’m in much better shape than yesterday. I took a nap yesterday before we came up, and I’m rested now.

Chalk another night up to the too much belt. We did Thanksgiving dinner at the SIL’s house. We didn’t stay long, just ate and had a bottle of wine, couple glasses of apple pie moonshine, and got back to the house before it was too late. Missus wasn’t feeling well, so she went to read in bed, the girls watched TV, and I wound up playing video games to the wee hours of the morning.

I bought Cyberpunk finally, and gave that a run last night. This morning is the pain. I’m sticking to my practice, though, as weak as it is today. We’re going to the FIL’s later today, which means we have to do our cleaning day early and I am totally not feeling it. Maybe I’ll get some food in my belly and will feel better.

I wrote up a little arbitrage program for the Star Atlas markets. I have a basic system that will alert for possible arbs. It’s buggy, and there’s not a lot to arb, so I don’t know how much further I’ll go with it. Still, it’s the first TypeScript or node program that I’ve written. It’s not much, but it’s a start. No work today though, I’m just chilling through the rest of this week.

Bitcoin continues its slow dive. Fifty-four thousand today. My Perps are treading water, my PnL is down forty grand since two weeks ago. The entire market is a sea of red.

I don’t want to do shit today, but I’ll be in the driver’s seat later today, three hours with the kids. Hopefully I’ll take it easy tonight and we’ll so some hiking in the mountains tomorrow. I’m thinking about bringing my bike and doing a trail, solo style. We’ll see.

Yesterday was a much better day. I decided to give up on doing coding work and instead decided to focus on the kids. After I did my morning routines we spent several hours organizing the house. I had Elder spend several hours cleaning out her room, and I went through Younger’s room, swapping out clothes and cleaning out all her old toys.

Everything that was in their room either went out into the trash can, or is sitting in the hallway, waiting for further processing. There’s a similar pile of crafts on the dining room table. We’ve got a shelf in the hutch that is overflowing with activity books and materials that has been spilling out onto the mini-fridge. It’s time for a culling on that as well, but it will have to wait till after dinner.

I also went crazy and re-organized some of the kitchen cabinets. Our Tupperware collection was out of control and frequently turns into a disorganized mess, so I moved it to a larger cabinet and moved a bunch of stuff around. I think I’m happy with the results.

So we spent most of the morning and an hour or two after lunch working on this project, I think it was around three before I let the kids have TV time. I had a bottle of port laid out for Missus when she came home, I let her handle dinner while I played DSP for like five hours last night. Went to bed at my usual time though and here I am for another day, mostly fresh. I want to go for a run this morning but think it might be too cold. I’m not sure I want to run in the forties, I will probably wait till noon when it’s in the mid fifties again.

We’re going to the SIL’s for dinner today. Elder wants to make some sort of dessert, a chocolate covered ball of marshmallow and peanut butter. She’s throwing a fit because I won’t let her do it on her own. The kitchen is a bit of a wreck from last night, and frankly, I don’t want to deal with it. Missus needs to make mashed potatoes and she’s not even up yet. Elder is throwing a fit over it. It’s my fault for letting her stay up late last night.

I have a lot to be thankful for. I have heard through the grapevine that the latest round of hirings with CompanyX will be December 9th. I haven’t confirmed it yet, but it makes sense for a variety of reasons, which I can’t really talk about yet. I’m health, probably in some of the best fitness of my life, and the family has everything we need.

Life is good.

Yesterday was rough. I don’t know if it was just me who was sleep deprived, but the general air around this house yesterday was one of war. I had a short temper, the girls threw fits and refused to follow directions and were generally ill-mannered. I was not on my best behavior.

I tried to get some work done yesterday, but I didn’t let the kids watch TV in the morning so while they played outside for a bit in the morning, they spent most of the time arguing and fighting with each other. I couldn’t concentrate. I managed to get the SAIAdao updated out, but it was short, terse, and about the lowest-effort I could put out. Anything else I tried to do in the AM was a waste.

I made sweet potatoes for lunch, but after that the day was a waste. I gave up and took a nap around one or two, then just decided to spend the rest of the day playing video games. I checked out. The girls still continued to test me, so I warned Missus via text that it had been a “very difficult” day. She brought me home a bottle of Scotch, but I felt that drinking was the very last thing I needed to do, given my state, so I managed to relax with some DSP until the kids went to bed. Then I finished her unfinished drink, had another finger, and went to bed on time, reading Perdito Street Station.

I woke rested and got out of bed when the alarm went off for Missus to go into work. I’ve done a better job today setting expectations for the kids, being firm. There will be no screens in this house until they pick up their rooms and the common areas and do the chores that I ask them to do. So far it seems to be working.

Another change today is that I decided I wasn’t going to work on any of my “work” projects. Part of my frustration yesterday was that I kept getting interrupted while I was trying to work, the kids wanted my attention. Well, today they got it. I’ve done my morning routine, meditation, a workout, and now my morning post, but after that, I have nothing that I need to do but spend time with them.

We’re going to clear out some junk, clean up the clutter and get this house back in order so that we can spend the afternoon relaxing in preparation of a wonderful Thanksgiving tomorrow.

I am slightly agitated this morning. Younger came to our bed last night and must have slapped me in the face in her sleep. I woke up at three in the morning and tossed and turned, trying to ignore her teeth grinding and Missus’s snoring before I went downstairs and slept on the couch. It was after four-thirty before I fell back asleep.

I’m not too tired, just a bit cranky. I’m making the kids clean their rooms. Elder’s is particularly cluttered, she’d been building crafts for her “baby” and has left a trail of cut paper and masking tape all over the house. The biggest challenge is keeping this place clean following her projects.

Yesterday we played the longest game of Uno ever. I’ve been teaching Younger by playing with all the cards face-up. It’s helped me coach her, plus she’s unable to keep the cards sorted in her hand, so it’s easier to just put them on the table. Our last couple games have been fine. Instead of keeping score, we just accumulate a pile of winner’s cards each time we win a hand, removing them from the game. Then we play for half an hour and add up the points at the end. Elder joined us after lunch, and we played for an hour. The final hand almost didn’t end. I think I had to shuffle the discard deck twice. Having everyone’s hands out on the table does allow one to drag things out quite a bit, when you have access to total information it changes the game quite a bit.

I spent most of my work day on the governance-ui. It’s been a tough slog, as I’ve been trying to suss out the constraints and assumptions of the system. I got a localnet branch working, but because I forgot to mint tokens I spent two hours trying to trace why no information was showing up in one of the components. The new UI is lacking some specific functionality that the original MVP does, figuring out what’s what is a slog. Regardless, I’m making progress in understanding what it does and what it can do, but I may be wasting time.

I forgot to do my weekly SAIAdao update yesterday morning, as excited as I was to get back to the governance tooling. I remembered half way through the morning but didn’t want to change gears. Part of me wondered whether anyone would notice. No one yet. So I’ll start on it this morning, then get a commit in on the governance-ui so that next time someone like me forgets to mint their tokens they don’t spend hours figuring out why the UI is broken.

The kids are off from school this entire week. The school system decided to give the teachers the extra three days off because everyone was feeling burned out. Also, Missus has been called to work from the office every day this week as well, so I’ll be here with the kids all week. The school offered take home breakfast and lunches, so we went ahead and did that. It should make my life easier, but Elder already threw a tantrum this morning over the fact that her Pop-Tart got broken during handling.

I’m going to work out this morning, I’m well overdue. Then I want to get right to work on getting SAIAdao’s governance-ui setup on devnet. Then I may see about working on a contribution for the project.

I’m not going to be very ambitious about my plans for this week. Having the kids home means I might be able to get about two hours of work done a day, maybe four, but usually not the kind of deep work that I would like. It depends on how many interruptions I get.

Apparently I got white girl wasted last night an passed out at 10PM. According to my wife, I “had a good night”. We had our friends, the Gs over, for dinner and hot tub. Also a bottle of wine and six pack of IPA. So I woke up at seven this morning with only a slight headache and here I am.

Younger is off to church, Elder has a birthday party at the local trampoline park later today. I’ve got a couple hours to recuperate. It’s Sunday, so I’ll need to rotate my Perp positions — funding up almost a grand, best in months — and I should probably tend to the Orca farm for SAIAdao.

I started working on the Serum arb bot for the Star Atlas markets. I didn’t get too far. I did manage to get Serum-vial up and running, now I’ve got to build the business logic around it. I’m not sure how much I’ll work on that today.

The house is pretty clean, considering. I did leaves yesterday while Missus did the downstairs, there’s a load of dishes in the sink that I’ll need to take care of, as well as empty and half-empty beer cans. Otherwise it’s not too bad.

I’m probably going to dick around this morning and see where things go.

Got offered a dev job via Discord, an NFT lending protocol that’s just launching. Not as good as what CompanyA has offered, but if they keep delaying too long I might need to consider it.