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Memorial Day Weekend: COVID Day 71

So many people are acting like this is over. It ain’t over.

Memorial Day is over and now it’s back to our regular lives, so to speak. We went out of town Saturday to my father in law’s, who has a home at a ski resort three hours away. The girls were well behaved; we managed to avoid any meltdowns. We ate like pigs, consuming a large prime rib over the course of two days, and eating lots of sugary garbage while we were there. I managed to meditate Monday morning, but didn’t even try to write. Next time I go on a trip I’ll need to schedule out some posts so I don’t break my streak.

Missus’s dad was really glad to see us, we all enjoyed it as well. This was our first trip out with the kids during COVID, and, while I think we were safe and took precautions, we’ll have to wait a couple of weeks before we find out.

We had a full tank of gas, so we managed to get all the way to the base of the mountain without stopping. There’s a convenience store right at the bottom, so I gassed up and went inside for beer. I wore a mask, and noticed no one in the parking lot was. I got inside and neither was the three employees behind the counter. There were Plexiglas shields at the counter, and social distance markers on the floor, but only one other person in the place was wearing a mask.

The following day we took the entire clan to a drive through zoo. We had to stop by a WalMart for food and drinks. I was much happier with the precautions being taken there. Employees at the entrance had masks, carts were getting sprayed down, and most of the customers were wearing masks.

The zoo was a bit of a mixed bag. Employees at the entrance were wearing masks and gloves, and they were enforcing caps in the gift shop (which we did not go in), and had brought in some fancy bathroom trailers, but a lot of families were just standing in line without masks or any regard for distancing.

We got home without too much trouble. The kids went out to play with their quarantine friends, but we had to split them up. Not only did we have all of the potential exposure that we did, but our friends went to church on Sunday and so we probably just need to chill for a week, maybe two. I’ve yet to see my dad since this started and he’s got comorbidity factors.

And of course there’s was this video going round of the Lake of the Ozarks.

We’ll see how the fallout goes in the next two weeks. Lots of restrictions have lifted, and things are trying to return back to normal, but I still can’t help thinking that we’re just over the first hump.

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The fact that the incubation period for this virus is two weeks is a major challenge. If someone around us does get sick, it’s going to be difficult to pinpoint exactly when it happened. I know I’m going to be watching the kids like a hawk for any cough, fever or wheezing for the next few days. We’ve been very lucky so far; no one that we know has been affected by the virus, health-wise. I’m sure it will happen at some point, it just depends on whether our family can stay safe until a vaccine can be deployed. If one can be deployed at all.

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Daddy Day Care: COVID Day 64

boy wearing gray vest and pink dress shirt holding book

Well we are off to a good start this morning. Had a bit of trouble falling asleep last night, but woke up (was woken up) feeling pretty good. Got my morning meditation done, my cup of tea in hand, and I’m ready to kick ass today.

It’s still unseasonably cold and windy outside, so we’re looking at being stuck in the house again today. I think I’m resigned to this being my life for the next few months, at least until schools open back up. Part of me thinks that they may not open. I went to pick up Elder’s stuff from school yesterday and the teachers were handing out grocery bags while wearing masks. I can’t imagine they’re going to send kids back to school and try to keep them separated using plastic dividers on their desks or something. And I can’t imagine Younger going back to her preschool and not being able to keep from hugging and touching other children.

The most likely scenario, I think, is that families that can afford it are going to keep their kids in some sort of remote homeschooling class, while the rest are going to have to send their kids into whatever public schools there are, or worse yet, just keep them home. Missus has told me on several times that we’re lucky for my tech background, cause I’ve been able to deal with her and Elder’s technical issues. Lots of other families don’t have the same options, and probably aren’t getting exposure to the limited options that schools are offering. It’s going to increase our already divided nation, leaving a good number of kids behind.

The daily Zoom meetings that Elder is participating in are mainly just serving a social function right now; there’s maybe a half hour of math instruction, followed by another half hour or more of the group reading Harry Potter. Half the time, Elder gets bored and I catch her playing video games, so I’ve tried to redirect her to doing Khan’s or Typing.com lessons. Sometimes she’ll sit there and sew, which I don’t mind. The longer this goes on though, the more concerned I am about the progress that her generation may lose out on.

Younger is a bit more of challenge. Elder had a great preschool, and I’m not sure where her sister should be, developmentally. She’ll be four over the summer, can sing her alphabet, and knows about a quarter of it by sight. And she’s already riding a bike, without training wheels. Her education right now is me going over alphabet flash cards, doing Khans Kids activities and watching PBS Kids.

The worst part is just the sheer lack of exposure that she has to other kids her own age. It’s like our world has collapsed down to just the four of us, and the proximity forces the worst out sometimes. The children are like two Tasmanian Devils that leave a path of destruction around the house with their playing. And the fighting, Lord, the fighting. The two of them get into it constantly, and it seems that nigh an hour goes by without the one of them pestering the other into a crying or whining fit. It is so exhausting.

Which gets back to being cooped up in the house with them during days of inclement weather, like we’ve had the past three days. They don’t have many outlets for physical exertion, so it usually winds up being Daddy Jungle Gym time, wrestling and such. We’ve been doing GoNoodle a lot lately. It’s still not as good as them being able to go outside and ride their bikes or play in their clubhouse, but what else is there?

I’m about ready to sign us up for being foster parents for the local cat shelter. Negotiations continue with regard to a trampoline, I just don’t want to mar our already packed yard with a fifteen foot monstrosity. I told them that I would consider it once I remove an old stump near the back of our lot, but it just seems like one of those things that will make things harder for us if we decided to move in then next four years.

For now, the kids are watching their morning hour of television, which means it’s time for me to get to work. Hopefully I’ll be able to stick to my priorities today instead of reacting to whatever tickets have come in. We’ll see.

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Evening pages

I had to go to court for a ticket I got months ago for driving with expired tags. It got dismissed cause I got them taken care of, so I only have to pay court fees instead of anything more serious. Going to court was a bit stressful. I actually put on slacks and a sport coat for the first time in weeks. This also happened to be the first day that the courts were open since the lock down began. Most everyone was wearing mask, except for one young black woman, the attorneys that I saw, and the cop that pulled me over. There was probably three people there out of the two dozen cases that I heard called. Everything else got extended due to the shutdown orders.

It rained all day, so the girls stayed all day except for ten minutes before dinner when they were unable to follow instructions. Today was really rough; they were especially bad. Missus and I just can’t figure out how to deal with their ingratitude and entitlement. The thing that triggers me the most is when Elder tells me something like “we only watched four shows today,” or some complains that she has to do everything. I’d finally had it after dinner, and tried to give her a reality check about her behavior. Younger wasn’t much better, and wound up crying herself to sleep in the bed by herself. She never falls asleep by herself.

Missus and I had more money talk today about getting our bills consolidated and some other subjects. She’s more comfortable keeping large amounts of cash in the bank; I can’t, and am trying to figure out the best way to earn interest on it. We need to have a fair amount saved in case Zombie, LLC goes under, but what do we do with everything beyond that? We’ve had conversations lately about holding cash instead of paying down debts right now, but I feel like I need to figure out way to leverage that cash, safely, otherwise I feel like I’m losing opportunity cost.

I keep looking at the numbers that I wrote on our fridge last week with my debts on it, and the maturation date on the mortgate: 2042. It seems crazy to think that it’s going to take another two decades to get out of this trap. And the chances of this house getting flooded by a hurricane or other storm is non-trivial as well. Looking back, I think we were stupid to consider this house as a long term home. Part of me worries that we’ll never be able to get rid of it. My next door neighbor was about to close on his house before COVID struck and the sale fell through. He’s had a couple of Boomers come out to look at it recently. That’s probably our only hope for getting out of here; I don’t anticipate demand being too high among the younger generations. Things will just get harder.

We discussed selling my car again. I guess I’m stuck paying off the loan for now, it’s a buyers market. I suppose I could put it up on all the local marketplaces as a minimum. We’re not sure if I can just cancel insurance on it and let people test drive it. That’s a whole project for another day.

Work was productive today. I had several trouble tickets that got taken care of, and did an hour pro-bono for a Zombie partner in Iowa that needed help with a firewall issue. Only did it to build clout and hopefully get some projects hours. We shall see.

Anyway, the day is almost over, and I have not applied for a new job today, so I better get to it.

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Blog, interrupted

We are up on time this morning, but as I type these words down I hear movement upstairs, so apparently I’m not up early enough to finish my morning pages. Anyways, I spent last night working on the Python code for my value averaging package, but became frustrated trying to write my tests. I’ve got one convoluted function that I’m trying to get covered before I start trying to refactor it, and it depends on an API call that I want to mock. I monkeypatched two parts of it and ran into additional issues, something to do with hashable dicts, so I figured I’d take a break and take a look at Fluent Python. I read a couple chapters of it and watched an episode of the Mandalorian before bed.

What is most frustrating is that I haven’t come across many resources that go in depth about mocking and patching. Maybe I’m having problems because my code is crap. Maybe this is an opportunity for me to fill the gap, and write some some in-depth mocking examples. Perhaps I just haven’t dug deep enough yet.

I’m going to add my school group project to the CV site, since I need to start building a portfolio. And then, this afternoon, I’m going to apply for a new job. First thing I need to do is find a position that is going to pay six figures. If I can’t do that, then I’ll just pick the highest under that that I realistically think I’m qualified for. I’m not sure if a LinkedIn premium account will help, but there’s several other job sites that I can use if I need to. Maybe I’ll do some API hacking to see if I can automate it.

I set most of my priorities for the day yesterday, so I know what I need to do. I’ve already had to stop and start this entry about five times because of interrputions, so I don’t think I’ve got much to say today. If getting interrupted at work sets you back twenty five minutes to refocus and get back into the zone, then working from home is zone-free. I got the girls to do their rooms and the kitchen by offering double DadPoints. They’re about a week away from hitting their goal, for which I have promised them a cat. After talking it over with Missus last night, I think we’re going to do a foster program. It’ll probably backfire and we’ll wind up adopting, anyways, but this gives us a lower committment. We watch the cat until it’s adopted and the shelter pays for the food. I’m sure the kids (and my wife) are going to become instantly attached and not want to let it go, but this gives us an out if the kids don’t hold up their end of the bargain, or if we ever want to go out of town on an extended trip. I wish!

I love these kids, but god do

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Genius dad

So this is a late post for me today. Woke up the same time as the kids, and forgot to turn my phone on DND before I started meditating, and got a text in the middle of it about an outage at one of Zombie, Inc.’s cornerstone clients. So I felt obliged to take it, and the morning was just shot from there. The day actually improved from there, even though I wasn’t as productive as I wanted to be. So here I am, trying to finish what is for me one of the most important parts of my day. I finished meditating after I put the kids to bed, and I want to put down some thoughts before I get to work on coding. No TV today.

I had a good day with the kids. One of their friends came and knocked on the door. They hadn’t seen her in several weeks, so I let them out for some socially distanced bike riding. I chaperoned. Then after lunch Younger and I took a ride to the pier nearby. She’s totally comfortable on her new pedal bike, only took four or five days. I’m so proud, she’s not even four yet and riding a pedal bike; didn’t even need training wheels. I feel like genius dad.

Elder had a good day also. She had a nine-thirty call with the gifted teacher, which probably broke up our routine for the better. She has this idea that she’s been bringing up for the past couple days about turning the house into a hair salon. I’m trying to humor her but explain the reality about what that really would mean. We also discussed writing a book. She came up with this idea for a story called “Cave of Gold” or “Treasure of Gold”. Her description of it sounds like The Goonies, which we watched over the weekend. I told her the most important thing about making it happen was getting it out of her head and into the real world. We discussed typing it, writing it, and I even showed her some voice dictation options, both on my iPhone and a electronic voice recorder that I have. She wound up writing a scene just before bed. It was a dialog between a mom and an older sibling being asked to take care of their little sibling. Sounded like something right out of our house. Seems like she’s already learned the rule, “write what you know”.

Getting work during the day is hard, though. There’s the distractions from the kids that make most deep work impossible. By the time I actually have the time in the afternoon, my energy is dead. I moved the needle on a few small tasks: ongoing domain migration woes from a crappy reseller; and got a copy of my resume added to my CV site and made a few edits. I’ve got no excuses to start applying now.

I’ve started refactoring my value averaging code. The main function is a hundred lines long, and there’s no tests, so I’m going to to spend some more time on that again today. I run it every day when the market opens. I’m having some problems with it. I give it a list of positions to process, and it takes each one and goes through several steps of calculations before sending a buy or sell order to the exchange. Some of the positions are failing and I’m not sure why, so I’ve got to decouple several of the functions so that I can debug it better. After that I need to pull it out of the package that it’s in and make it a separate library. Right now it’s in my trade plan library, which has turned into a bit of a junk drawer over the past year or so. It’s also tightly coupled to the TDAmeritrade brokerage, and that needs to be abstracted out at some point. I’m getting ahead of myself though.

Tomorrow, I want to get up by six so I can get my meditation and writing done. After the kids are settled in and I’ve done all my morning checks for Zombie, I’m going to focus on the software design pilot project I’m working on there. Then the afternoon, I want to find the best job posted on LinkedIn and apply for it. We’re going to make this happen.

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Just another day in the life: Day 55

It is a beautiful day today. Perfect weather. The girls are playing together nicely in the living room, Missus is upstairs at work. I have half an hour before my scrum call, so I’m going to try to write quickly today.

I finished The Future Is Faster Than You Think. It took me a long time to read because of everything else going on, plus I wanted to let the ideas percolate in my head. A full review is upcoming as there are a lot of takeaways. They have CEO training — I wonder what they charge for that! — plus a venture fund that might lead to some possible opportunities. They have a digital version of their Abundance360 program that might be within my reach.

I downloaded GPT-2 here on this laptop, via their Dockerfile. It needed almost ten gigabyte of downloads for the model, and I still have no idea how to run it. That will need to wait for another day. I’m not quite sure what I want to do with it, but getting it up and running will be an interesting test. I’d like to see what it can do. I imagine prompting it with a subject and have it generate papers and blog posts. I’m sure there’s a business model in there some how. I know AI is used by a lot of financial news sites to generate articles based on firm reporting results, so the question is, how far can it be used.

Using Docker for development is going to be my new baseline, though. I really want to be come proficient with it. Ideally I’d like to have a setup where docker is running on my downstairs Linux server, and I can just connect to it using whichever machine I happen to be on. I currently have three workstations, though, one for “work”, my upstairs rig, and this laptop. It seems a bit much and like something I’ll need to pare down if we want to minimize or downsize. I should probably just get rid of the downstairs one completely, since I don’t really need a headless Linux server right now.

Today is the first day of the week, and I have a couple goals:

  • Provide at least two hours of value this week to my two clients, plus the pilot test I’m doing through Zombie, Inc. (six hours)
  • Sign a third client, at a higher rate than the other two. (two hours)
  • Register my LLC. I need liability protections to operate. (two hours)
  • Finish updating my resume and add it to the website.

Half the day is over, and most of the morning has been taken up with a trouble call and managing the kids and the kitchen.

Yesterday I spent several hours going through old mortgage statements and updating acccounts in GNUCash. I investigating refinancing and changing insurance companies, but both seemed a dead end. Even if we shaved an interest point off our mortgage, by the time you factored in three thousand dollars in fees, we’d save just over four hundred a year. It might make sense if we were going to take twenty five years to finish paying it off, but we don’t. If we roll rental income from Missus starter home into our mortgage, we could have our house paid off in ten years. Anyways, we’re at the point where we can drop our mortgage insurance. Applying that money to our principal will shave another two years off the maturity date.

The homeowners insurance quote I got from Lemonade wasn’t very good. The payments were higher than our current coverage from Nationwide, plus it didn’t seem that the coverage was better either. It was worth the fifteen minutes it took though.

I’ve still got a lot of catching up to do with our accounting, which will wait till next week. I’ve got nine months of utility bills to plug into GNUCash. Anyways, it’s one o’clock, and the girls are fighting.

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We all need a break: Day 52

Well, I’ve done it. Last night I turned in what is hopefully the final assignment for my undergraduate career. I’m still awaiting final confirmation from my instructor, and hopefully tomorrow I will have my diploma conferred over to me and I will be a full-fledged computer scientist! The waiting is killing me.

It’s been very hard to focus these past few days. It’s hard enough keeping the kids from killing each other, seems like I’m constantly intervening to keep them from interrupting my wife’s phone therapy sessions upstairs. Add to that the craziness with the Bitcoin halving happening, and I’m barely able to stay focused on anything acutely work related. The last two days have been crazy. BTC’s runup from nine to ten thousand over the past 48 hours has been quite well for my IRA. My GBTC position is back in the green, and my other positions that I entered following the COVID drop last month have put my account in all-time high territory.

Of course the main question right now is whether this is a fool’s rally or not. The halvening is scheduled for Tuesday next week, and it’s anybody’s guess what’s going to happen. I’m extremely optimistic, long term, anyways, and currently eyeing 15K before I plan on taking profits from GBTC. My BTC target is 2.88 times the Mayer Multiple, currently about 8800, or about 25.4K. Of course a new ATH would likely cause us to surpass this quickly, and an the longer it takes us to get to one the higher my target will be. Ideally it will be somewhere around 40-50, but that could take months or even into next year.

BTC has been playing around either side of the 10K level for the past half day or so, and it seems that alts are having a bit of a rally. ZRX and BAT are up 40 and 25 percent right now, and the daily trade volume on IDEX is up 10x since the last time I took a look at it. My stake is up and I might actually make some money this year off it if things keep up.

Yesterday, my boss told the team that we were out of runway, and that he didn’t think we would make it through next month. I felt absolutely no anxiety about it whatsoever. It probably had something to do with the fact that I was staring at a green number bigger than my monthly salary in my IRA account, or the fact that we’ve got close to six months rent and utility expenses saved up in our joint account.

Yesterday we did a friendly neighborhood bike trade with our neighbors down the street. They’ve got several small children, and since Younger has almost outgrown her balance bike, we were able to swap for a larger pedal bike. I actually took the training wheels off of it and she’s been riding it today, although she’s not very confident about it and is a bit skittish on it. I’m still so proud of her.

That said, this week has felt pretty long. I can’t wait for Missus to sign off work cause keeping these kids occupied is pretty tiring. It’s hard to be a good dad when they don’t listen to anything I say. I had to withhold TV this morning just to get them to clean their room, and they never even had lunch today because they wouldn’t empty the dishwasher. Younger drew on the kitchen table with a Sharpie, so I threw every marker in the trash can. There’s been more yelling and screaming today, but at least the kids aren’t physically fighting. I’ve been doling out lots of spanks today as well, but thankfully more DadPoints. Elder’s on her class Zoom call and doing Khans while they read Harry Potter in the background. I told her it’s the only way she’s getting more TV today. Younger took the iPad upstairs to watch PBS, so I’m going to go get her right now for another try on the bike before I start cooking tenders.

We all need a break.

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Life goes on: Day 51

Life imitates art, as they say, and Groundhog Day is probably the movie that life most represents right now. Life has collapsed to this house, and our street, and while it’s not just me that’s stuck in this time loop but the entire world. Routine has become destiny, and everything seems to be about structuring the day to make things as low-friction as possible. Kids are acting up during morning scrum calls? Move their TV time up an hour so it’s not ending when then call starts. Kids want to horseplay before bed? Don’t forget the afternoon bike ride to let them get it out of their system. Make a little progress on this project, do a little bit here. Pretty soon, ten thousand days will have passed and we’ll masters off the universe.

At the start of this lockdown, I thought I was going to be able to settle into some sort of rhythm between working and taking care of the kids, but deep work is proving impossible to come by; the sisters are fighting. Younger smacked her sister in the face with a doll yesterday, Elder has a mark under her eye now. The crying and whining and yelling pulls me out of whatever I’m trying to do and breaks my train of though. Even now, they’re in the other room. Elder is trying to get her sister to help with some task, and the only way her sister knows how to negotiate is by yelling back at her like some toddler Earl of Lemongrab. I can’t help wondering where they get it from, and fear I know the answer.

The DadPoint bribes have done little to help them focus on picking up after themselves. If anything it’s made me less high-strung about it. Yesterday was a bit much since I slept horribly and needed two naps just to get through the day. We’ll see if today is better. I’ve given them a goal to allow them to get a cat, which Missus and I have been talking about with them for many months, and Elder is very excited about it, although she seems to be more focused on the less routine tasks that I’ve set up for her; mopping the floor is still new enough that she’d rather do that then actually set the table.

Last night in bed, as I was reading about technological unemployment in The Future is Faster Than You Think, Missus remarked that we were so lucky to have chosen the fields that we’re in. “Everyone needs therapy at this point,” she said. I’m still not convinced that the current situation has been traumatic for the kids, any more so than average. We’re just lucky we have a large house with a backyard, and not holed up in some Italian apartment. I can only imagine what that’s like. I keep thinking about the bomb shelters of the Cold War era and thinking it amazing that people thought they were going to survive like that? Life goes on, I suppose.

Grades came in for my numerical methods class: A-. I got penalized because I couldn’t submit my solvers as single files; this was expected. I sent one last email to my professor to try and milk a bit more out of it, I’m not sure quite why, I suppose it was just to say goodbye. Perhaps I was looking for some kind of acknowledgement from him, after much of the extra work I did was ignored. Last night I wrote up a Docker guide for independent study. I have one or two more pages to write, guides for students and faculty on using GitLab for collaborative learning. Degree conferral day is Saturday, and then I will have my BSCS.

I’ve got two retainer clients now, and have a third to sign up. $250/month for two hours a week is not where I want to be in the long run; I’ll start charging more as we start making results. Maybe some project work will come. After I wrap on the schoolwork, I’ll put some more work on the CV site and get a resume posted, then start applying to jobs on LinkedIn and Monster.

Mother’s day is Sunday, and I haven’t bought gifts. I was going to get my mom a pair of socks with my brother and my faces on it — a gag gift — but I haven’t ordered it yet. I think I’ll go ahead and order them along with a copy of Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. I think I’ve seen her do everything related to art: craft painting, stained glass, now felting, but I think drawing is about the only thing I haven’t seen her do. My wife, on the other hand, just wants a clean house and sleep.

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Parent hacking: Chores with Rooster Money

One of the biggest challenges being home with the kids during “the Great Lockdown” is keeping them out of trouble and keeping them busy. It would be super easy to let them watch TV for eight hours a day, but I’m determined not to rely on that. Missus and I have very different outlooks on this, and it’s one of the ongoing sources of frustration in our marriage, along with what type of food we eat. “We both watched and ate garbage all the time,” she likes to remind me, “and we turned out fine.” While I’ll not argue about our shortcomings in that regard, I think the environment in which we grew up is much different from the one which our children are growing up in, and I think it calls for different rules.

At the risk of sounding like an old fogey, we grew up in the days when cable TV was just becoming prevalent, and video games were fairly primitive. There was no internet, no smartphones, and the battle for attention hadn’t reached the level of warfare that we have today, with cognitive neuroscientists being employed by tech firms to make apps more addictive. And we’ve learned a lot more about how the brains of children form, and how screen time can stunt emotional and cognitive growth. So I try to set limits.

Of course, enforcing those limits is another set of challenges. With the whining, complaining and temper tantrums that accompany them. Trying to maintain consistency, while making allowances for the carrot or the stick type of motivation, is a hard balance to pull off. It’s even harder when my spouse is often all to willing to just let them have it when she needs a break. We’re still working out the kinks.

We’re obviously very privileged to both be working from home. Since her job provides health insurance and provides her less freedom than mine, I’m primarily responsible for the kids meals and schedules during the day, while she’s locked in the office. I try to let the kids play on their own as long as they’re behaving, and try to make sure they get outside time, snacks, and some learning time in. Elder has daily school conferences and some homework, so I try to spend half an hour with Younger, doing alphabet flash cards or Khans Academy Kids before I let her watch PBS for an hour.

The kids are usually pretty good about getting themselves ready in the morning, getting dressed, brushing their teeth and eating breakfast. I don’t want them watching TV as soon as they wake up, so I’m making them wait till 8:30 and have an hour of free screen time. They can have a second hour in the late afternoon, to watch whatever show or play games on the computer.

One of my main peeves is the importance that screens seem to play in their lives. I get especially triggered when they throw tantrums when I ask them to stop a show, or when every day turns into a negotiation around how much they’re going to watch. It turns me into a tyrant.

Today I’m starting something different. I’ve been using the free version of the Rooster Money app for several months to track the kids’ allowances. They get a dollar times their age each week, split between save, spend and give buckets. Spend is (mostly) unrestricted, give is for spending on gifts for others, (we’re not charitable givers,) and save is reserved for treating themselves on their birthday or budgeting big-ticket items. This latter one we’re still figuring out. In addition to dollar allowances, Rooster also allows children to earn “points”, which it also considers a currency, so profiles can’t be mixed between both. Kids can earn automatically as a weekly allowance, or a parent can boost their accounts.

One thing I decided early on was that I was not going to tie chores to their allowance, or use it as a punishment. The whole goal around giving them an allowance was to teach them financial skills. Teaching them work ethic and how to contribute to the household is another thing entirely. Motivating them to do so has been hard. Everything has turned into a transaction for Elder. She keeps trying to demand some sort of reward or tit for tat when I ask her to do something. “I’ll do x if you let me do y,” she’ll say when I ask her to do something. I won’t have it. We fight all the time.

Missus has been having some luck getting them to do work with a “MomPoints” system. She wrote a few tasks up on the fridge’s dry erase, with MomPoint rewards and TV time. It worked great for a while, but it seems like the kids lost focus after a few weeks, and the dry erase has been overwritten. So, this morning, after weeks of delay, I finally implemented a DadPoints system. I upgraded our RoosterMoney account ($20 annually,) created a DadPoints account, and loaded up a bunch of chores. One DadPoint is redeemable for a minute of screen time, and I’m trying to maintain a four to one balance between the amount of time it takes to do the work and the reward. Things shouldn’t be that easy, should they?

It’s going to take a while to tune the tasks and the reward, and figure out the best way to implement this system. Rooster is a bit limited; tasks can be either daily, weekly, or monthly, and I don’t want to have to maintain individual lists for each kid. Getting them excited about helping with the kitchen, doing chores, or special projects that need to be done will prove priceless, and will help remove any ambiguity around what they should expect out of me.

We will see what kind of change this has. Hopefully it will be for the better.

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May plans

This weekend we celebrated my wife’s birthday. Saturday night I grilled hot dogs and brats, made cheesy broccoli and rice. I also made dinner rolls from scratch, as well as a pan of brownies for the cake. We gave her presents and then she watched Marvel movies. Somehow, the kids suggested that we camp outside, so I wound up setting up the tent in the dark then tried to do some star gazing with them before telling them a story till they fell asleep.

It was really a beautiful night, very still. We could hear cars, bikes, and the occasional siren off in the distance, but there was no wind, and no insects making noise at all, just the occasional gust of wind. Missus came out at some point and crawled in the tent, the four of us all snug in our sleeping bags and blankets. It didn’t end too well. I didn’t fall asleep till the wee hours because of snoring, and the stillness. Then the baby woke up and her and Missus went inside cause sleeping on the ground was hurting her back. So I stayed out there and slept with Elder till some strange bird cry woke us both up and we went inside, around 5.

The girls also spent some time over at my mother in laws house Saturday morning. Just an hour or two. Was the time the girls went anywhere in six weeks, and will probably be the last for a while. MIL said she was going to a “party” Saturday night, so we’ll be staying away if she’s not going to at least try to isolate.

Sunday was mostly cleaning, and fighting with the kids over chores and television. I spent a few hours working on my independent project, putting a GitLab document together on Git, Markdown , LaTeX, and starting on something for CI/CD, which needs it’s own page. I’m finally done with my numerical methods class, after a bit of a disaster: the professor had originally posted that the exam would be due this Sunday at noon. I actually finished mine Friday night. I was checking my email Saturday and had an email from a classmate that the final was missing. So I checked Blackboard, and, yep, sure was. There were also several discussion board posts to the same. I should mention also that this was following an incident earlier this week where the professor seemed to have lost what was left of his class web page — probably a permissions issue or something, but the point is that he is completely helpless when it comes to dealing with things — great guy though. Anyways, since I had already turned my exam in, I was able to go under my grades and pull up the question. I still had the sample data files, so I posted them up on the Git repo that I had been working on for the class, and emailed it out to everyone, telling them not to panic.

Part of me wonders whether the whole thing was a setup, so that he could blame Blackboard and use it as an excuse to not grade the exams and just give us all a pass/fail on the course. We’ll see.

So I should be completely done with school in another day or two, another hour or two of writing guides on how to deploy static websites via CI/CD and some back in forth with my professor and I should be done. May 8th is supposed to be the day they award our degrees. I can’t believe it.

After talking to Missus yesterday, we both agree that I should stay with my current company as long as possible, since the work is mostly part time at this point, and is paying the bills. After I update my resume, I’m going to start applying for any job with a posted salary at least 130% of what I’m getting right now. I’m also going to make sure that I’m getting at least two hours a week for my two retainer clients, as well as the other FOSS or programming projects that I want to work on.

Now let’s see how May goes.