Category: General

I never finished the last post, about the trip out to see my brother. It had ended at dinner on Saturday night, but ended before the part where my dad and I stayed up almost till midnight waiting for the total lunar eclipse — which was actually the following night. Whoops. Still, it was good bonding time with my dad. Who knows how many more days like that I have, eh?

Since then, we found out that my mom’s husband, Papa (pronounced paw-paw) was at a superspreader event on Thursday and tested positive for the Rona Sunday. Monday, I went for a short run, and felt very sluggish. I didn’t get much work done. Tuesday I knew I was sick. Sore throat, muscle aches. So I called out for work and laid in bed, or the couch. Last night my temperature hit 102 degrees and I finally had to take ibuprofen after my lips started feeling numb. I slept well and woke up this morning feeling better, and confirmed my diagnosis with a home testing kit. I’ve been cloistered in the bedroom for two days now, quarantined in the bedroom while the girls are home. I’ve finally snuck out of the bedroom without a mask to sit in my writing spot.

Of course all this had to happen the week before we were supposed to be going to Hawaii. That’s all a mess now; I’m trying to give the girls the opportunity to go without me, offering to send my mother in law, Momo, the chance to go in my stead, but trying to make all these changes is a fight I don’t have in me at the moment.

I had to go pick Younger up from school on Monday. CDC guidelines say that families that don’t need to quarantine (i.e. vaccinated) should wear masks for ten days after “close contact”, but the school nurse didn’t know our vax status so I picked her up, then went and picked Elder up from Momo’s before she went to class so I wouldn’t have to go out and pick her up later. I sent a message to her teacher, and then got a call from the school nurse. After I explained the situation, she told me the correct school policy and even called over to Younger’s school to talk to the nurse there. By this time Missus was back, so she took them to work and I continued my miserable existence.

I am glad that Elder’s nurse cleared things up, because I was about to have to deal with the kids home for the whole week, and lord knows what kind of problems that would have caused. Missus has been picking up the slack really well, but I can only imagine that having the girls home during the day would have broken her. Either that or I would have had to watch them and probably gotten them sick. So far none of them are showing any symptoms, and just had negative results on their home tests.

When I went to pick Younger up, I told her teacher that if they were going to make her stay home five days, then the Hawaii trip would mean she’d be gone for two weeks. I asked if there was anything we needed to do to help her keep up with the class — I’d already warned her about the trip — and she said no, Younger was well ahead of the rest of the class.

That’s my girl.

We spent the weekend visiting family. My brother has been living overseas for the last decade or so, and has come back to the states for the first time in six and a half years. I’ve never met his daughter, except for Facetime calls, and he’s never seen Younger either.

We had originally booked a hotel for the weekend, but Missus decided to rent a cabin at a campground. I’ve been talking about “outdoor life”, biking, climbing, hiking and so forth, so much, she figured it the campground would be a better fit. Plus, it was closer to where my brother is staying.

The campground was very nice. It had a mix of RV lots and a few trailers, plus the little prefab log cabins that we stayed at. There were tons of activities and amenities for us, although we really didn’t get a chance to do too much there. We took a half day on Friday, and drove the three hours to the resort. We got settled in to the cabin, a two-bedroom unit with a full kitchen. It was right on a lake, and we had lots of geese and duck families come by to see us. There were gosling and ducklings galore.

The weather was a bit drizzly, but it was better than we were expecting. It was clear enough Friday that we were able to meet my brother and took the girls to the playground. We shared sips from a bottle of bourbon while the kids played.

There was rain overnight, and the next morning was pretty wet. I had packed the girls’ bikes so we spent an hour or two exploring the grounds while Missus slept. The area was full of rolling hills, we had to hump our bikes up the hills and then sped down them. There were dams and spillways, other playgrounds and a short wilderness hike around an island that was accessed after walking over a suspended bridge. It was nice.

Our plan for the day was to spend the day at a local amusement park. I spent close to four hundred dollars on tickets for everyone, and rode up there with my dad, who had stayed at a crappy hotel the night before. The park had indoor and outdoor amusements, video games and a climbing area above the games. I took my niece up, and the two of us ran over rope bridges and ziplines, twenty feet above the arcade floor. It was fun. My brother took Younger, then we switched and I took Elder up. She got to the first obstacle at the top of the stairs, then her fear of heights took over. I didn’t press it, so she went back down.

My mom and her husband showed up an hour later, and we took a break for pizza. The sun had come out, and the park finally opened up the go-kart track. I was so glad it did as I would have been super disappointed if we had missed out. I wound up going around it two or three times, once with my niece, once with Younger and an final time without a passenger. The girls wound up taking turns with my brother and their Papa.

My dad was a bit of a sad sack while we were there. He had no interest in video games, and he was too unfit to do any of the more physical activities, so he mostly sat around watching us the whole time we were there. He wanted to take us out for dinner — at Texas Roadhouse of all places, but by the time we finally left the amusement park and go to the restaurant it was prime time Saturday night and the wait was fifty-five minutes. That was a huge nope, so we split off to do dinner at the cabin.

My mom went by the grocery store for steaks, dad and I went to the general store at the campground and got charcoal and some other supplies to start a grill. Dinner was delicious, the steaks, baked potatoes, mac and cheese, beer and wine. I toasted the fact that both my parents were there, despite being divorced for some thirty years. I warrant that is not normal for most families, but everyone was jovial.

Just got back from Missus’s niece’s 18th birthday dinner. It was in the city’s business district, a perpetual Mexican joint that has gone through several different iterations. I wound up spending over two hundred dollars. Dinner: three appetizers, two margaritas, two kids meals and two entrees. Most of my entree will be lunch tomorrow, the appetizers were shared with the whole table. So that came to one thirty-five, I added twenty-five as a tip although the young man wasn’t on top of his game. Throw in a twenty with the birthday card and another twenty-four dollars at 7-11, and we’re close to two hundred dollars for tonight.

I did go for a long run today, so maybe I was overcompensating.

The weather around here has been strange the last few days. It’s been unseasonably cool, very, very windy. Although the rain has died off lately, I saw a lot of high water everywhere I went today. I’m guessing it’s runoff and not just neap tide. Thankfully the weather is returning to normal over the next few days.

I’ve got a lot of travel planned the rest of the month. I’ve got a 4-bike trailer coming tomorrow, and we’ll be on our way this weekend to see my brother.

Neighbor Dan messaged me this morning, asking wtf is up with BTC and asking me for advice. I basically said that I was still buying, and that it wasn’t just BTC in general but an overall collapse of economic assets. Inflation, price gouging, and tapering — by which I mean a combination of COVID stimulus programs ending and the Fed raising interest rates — have all contributed to a drawdown in what some are calling The Everything Bubble. It seems the tail end of the debt bubble is finally catching up with us. There’s evidence that the automobile market rapidly cooled off last month, and that real estate may be doing the same. BTC was just dumping along with the S&P and broader markets in general.

There has been a bit of technical shenanigans going on. A stablecoin is failing, falling off its peg, and has been selling off BTC reserves. That seems to be the general consensus with this dump down to below $32k, and there are likely other factors at play as well, but I’m still buying.

I actually finished buying a large tranche of BTC, SOL and ETH a couple of weeks ago and found myself wishing I had spread out my DCA implementation a bit more. I still have a smaller amount that I’m doing, but it’s about a tenth of what I just went through. I told Dan this, but that you do you, man. I pointed out that we’re only down to the price we were at eighteen months ago, while reminding him of the adage that in the long-run, we’re all dead.

I had another message today from a kid I met playing Tarkov over the weekend. Saw my name was BlockchainMan and asked me to shill my project. I don’t shill. Told him to read the whitepaper. Turns out they just wanted someone to guide them, so I sent him a Robert Breedlove podcast and told him to get back to me after he had listened to it.

We made it to Friday, and the end of another sprint at work. I am definitely less stressed about that latter fact than I have been previously, mainly because I’ve become more comfortable in the role. Delegating and managing is much different that being a loner and doing everything yourself.

I spent a lot of time this sprint going through the wireframes designs and documenting each element in our web task list so that the team can do sprint point estimations. I’ve also been doing the same with Cowboy Cain on the blockchain side. Like me, he’s used to working alone and cranking projects out by himself, so I’ve been working with him to get the task list written out so that we can delegate to other resources. It’s work.

I went to sleep at 10:30 last night, and feel really rested, although my Whoop is telling me I need another hour and a half. I feel caught up, my recovery is over 90%, so I need to do something. We’ve had several rainy days this week, and this afternoon is supposed to be more of the same. So I’ll either need to go for a long run this morning or head off to the gym this afternoon. I’ll probably go do weights, but part of me wants to make the drive to the climbing gym. I’m not sure yet.

Tomorrow morning I’m supposed to get up early and take Elder to a horse farm so she can get her riding merit badge. She’s doing it solo since we have conflicts the next two weekends, but I’m not sure if they’re going to call it off because of the weather. I’m still waiting. It will put a damper on my normal Friday night game night, but it’s probably better that way.

I finished selling the last of the fiat in my IRA this week, bought BTC, ETH, and SOL. Unfortunately the financial markets are tanking, and BTC is currently sitting around $38k. I’m tempted to by more through my regular broker, but I want to build up more of a cash reserve, so I’ll probably just DCA slowly from here.

The first rule of blogging is that thou shall not talk about not blogging. Enough said.

Today is Missus’s birthday.

Happy Birthday to my wife.

May the Fourth be with her always.

— BCM – The Blockchain Man (@dahifi) May 4, 2022

The girls did a great job today. I took them shopping several times this week. Elder decorated the kitchen table: green tablecloth, flowers, ribbons from the door and balloons from the ceiling. Both of them bought her chocolate. Younger gave her a jar of pickles, which I thought was the funniest goddamn thing I’d ever seen when she picked them out. “Mommy loves pickles, and they’re healthy.” So cute.

I bought her a new iPhone, the 7 came out like six years ago, I got her an SE, no probs. Took her out to dinner and … that’s when things went awry. My exact words, to be clear, were “you were fit when I married you, but you’re not now.” So that went well. What I was trying to say was that she was focused on fitness, but wasn’t anymore, which I think is a true statement. The way I said it seems judgy, however I was trying to express the fact that the girls and I are doing all these activities, and we want her to participate. It just came out wrong. I’ve obviously had a waxing and waning focus on fitness over the past few years, and I’ve been taking the girls along with me, rock climbing and mountain biking. I’ve been trying to get us to go on hiking trips for some times. To be honest, I just want her to hang with us, and I’m worried she’s not going to be up to it.

But today is about her, not me. And I think despite my bone-headedness that she had a pretty good birthday thanks to the girls.

What a day. Friday was game night, I tried to reel it in a bit because of today’s activities, so I only stayed up till 1:30. Apparently I made a friend on the Tarkov servers when they saw my name. NFT talk needed to be squelched in favor of in-game coordination. I was not on my A-Game.

Elder woke me up at 6:30, she had a Saturday field trip for school. They had raised trout at the school and released them into the wild today. So she was gone all day.

Younger and I went to the rock gym, again it wasn’t my best performance, but Younger did great while I belayed her. I did manage some tricky routes that I hadn’t done before, but my arms were not strong today.

After the gym we went to DQ for her hot dog and ice cream. She fell asleep on the ride home. We went back out after a pit stop and bought her a mountain bike, then we grabbed mine and went to the local BMX track for more intense activity. I was really proud of Younger, both at the gym and the track, she’s such a trooper. Hopefully she’s going to sleep real well tonight. We also went by the store and bought a card and some gifts for Missus’s birthday next week. Younger bought her a jar of pickles.

We picked up Elder from school, then I called in Thai food and went home. I’m beat. Gonna watch Moon Knight and maybe turn in early.

The week has been going well, but today was very good. We realized a mistake in our understanding of the sabre/snapshots program was completely wrong, and that much of our worrying was for naught. We just cleared some major obstacles for development. Also, I finished filing my taxes today.

I’m not too happy about the later. I basically accounted for all fiat transfers from my exchange accounts into my checking account, and labelled the proceeds as short term investments with zero-dollar cost basis. Somehow I still wound up with a federal refund, so I told them to keep it and apply it to next year’s return. I didn’t even bother with business deductions either. Wound up paying a half-thou in state taxes. That’s as good as it’s going to get for now.

It just goes to show how fucked up crypto-taxes in the US are. And I hear news like Panama removing capital gains from BTC investment. Oh, if only.

Yesterday was rough. I think I may have over extended myself on Sunday. Not only did I do a very strenuous bike ride (road and trail) in the eighty degree heat, but I also did some canoeing during the hottest part of the day. I wound up taking a nap on the couch in the morning and still was so sluggish that I had to take another one mid afternoon. I was just so tired. Today seems OK though, I got plenty of sleep and, according to my Whoop, am fully recovered. I actually regretted taking a shower this morning as it’s such a beautiful day outside that I really want to go for a run.

I was actually productive yesterday, in spite of my sluggishness. A colleague and I converted technical requirements to tasks for the web team, so we’re making progress there. I also handled a lot of my personal business, ordering food and other supplies. And I finally started in earnest on our taxes.

I’ve given up on the CPA I hired. I don’t think I was willing to go through all the bullshit that they wanted me to do. Turbotax is just easier for our W2s and Missus’s real estate. CoinTracker on the other hand, is a complete mess. I am well and totally fucked.

The current gains calculator is showing that I have over two-hundred thousand dollars in profit for 2021. This is just ridiculous. I pulled some seventy grand out in USDC last year, but there’s no way. CryptoTaxCalculator shows some three hundred grand… I don’t even know what to say. I haven’t heard from the NFT.cpa guys in several weeks, so I’m just going to have to figure this out on my own. I think I’ll start by claiming the distributions that I took in fiat and filing my return based off off that. But the way it stands, based off of a couple calculations that I did, is that I’m going to owe Uncle Sam somewhere between twenty and fifty thousand dollars in tax payments. FUCK.

So another week is in the bag. This one went pretty smoothly, for the most part, and we managed to get some fun in. Yesterday we took the girls to an “outdoor enthusiast expo”, but there really wasn’t a lot to be said for it. There was a lumberjack game demonstration, rowing competitions, paddle boats, a hot air balloon, and a bunch of inflatable obstacles for the kids. We probably spent most of our time at this parkour obstacle course. I never knew competitive tag was a real sport, but here you go:

We took it easy last night, Younger and I are up. I’m brewing coffee and waiting to hear back from my brother so we can play some Tarkov while the girls are at church. I plan on going mountain biking with my friend later this afternoon.

Speaking of biking, I scoped out some used bikes for the girls on Friday, and am looking forward to picking up one of those for Elder so I can let her get out on the trails as well. I’m going to have to find a decent trailer that can take four bikes…. (I just spent a few minutes researching these and just figured out that I’ve been using my bike rack wrong. I’d been trying to mount the bike underneath the bar, which has been awkward to set up, but the bikes probably go on top of the rack. Duh me.)

We don’t have a lot going on this week, except for taxes. I haven’t heard from my CPA in weeks, so I’m just about to fire them and do it myself using Turbotax and CoinTracker. I’m not looking forward to it, but it seems doing it myself is the only way that I’m going to get it done — and save $5k in the process.