Blockchain Man

I fell off the habit wagon last night. I think the trigger was Missus cracking open a can of beer. She wanted to take the edge off, but I wound up sanding the edge down to nothing, and stayed up till near midnight playing Baldur’s Gate. She went to bed with Younger and I puttered about on my computer, cleaning up hard drive space by removing old folders and games I hadn’t played in forever. Wanted to kill some time so I picked up BG from where I left off and kept cracking tabs on those beers. Woke up with my usually neck pain, plus some aches from running yesterday.

The girls are upstairs, being unusually quiet. Younger broke a shelf in her room while she was climbing it, trying to stand on top her wardrobe. Elder has been playing with a pirate-themed BirchBox that we got some time ago. Yesterday we played a Battleship-style treasure hunt game, and this morning I woke up to find her drawing a treasure map so she could bury something in the backyard. The two of them have been upstairs for sometime, and I was imagining the kind of mess I’ll find when I go up there later. I’ll perhaps have to condemn someone’s room.

Work on Solana progresses slowly. I figured out why I was having problems with my hardware wallet and the mutisig, but now I’ve got an error trying to perform a transfer with the rest of the group. I also managed to get the Serum swap program to test properly after an NPM update, I was looking through the test to figure out what’s going on. I’ll have to build a program that can accept funds from the multisig and perform a swap before transfering the swapped token back to the multisig. I’ll also have to account for all kinds of failure states. But I get ahead of myself. I’m going to have to figure out the multisig issues, which means abstracting more of the variables out. Hopefully I can get this stuff resolved soon.

Other than that, I’m not getting as much work done as I had hoped. The markets are ranging, so I’m not doing much. I have managed to keep the time on Twitter down, and have managed to keep progressing on the Exercism Rust track. I looked at some of the the hard ones and they seem very challenging. I’m not sure they’ll be pertinent to programming on Solana, which is also going to require a fair amount of Javascript to build tests. I’m not sure it’s worth doing the JS track since all I really need is async functions.

Today has been an interesting morning. I kept to my routine last night and woke up around seven, came downstairs to find Elder was already up and ready for the day. I told her that I was going to brew my tea, meditate, and go for a run, and she insisted that she wanted to come with me. I was against it, but she started by sitting with me while I meditated, for almost the entire twenty minutes. Younger tried to join us for a minute, of course she wanted to come with us on the run. So I went for a full two-mile jog this morning, with the two of them right behind me most of the way. It wasn’t quite the peaceful mindless jog that I’m accustomed to, but it worked enough. By the time we got close to the house they took off without me, and I was able to finish up with my customary, strong all-out sprint.

I can definitely feel the improvement. I’ve been keeping up with it regularly for a couple weeks now, and the workouts and runs are starting to have an effect as my body adjusts. I just need to keep pushing. I’m trying to figure out my daily routine for this break from work, prioritizing exercise is doing me good.

I’m starting to get some things done around the house as well, cleaning out things that need to go and taking care of small things that need taking care of. Sorting through the dozens of kids shoes that don’t fit either of the kids, for example, putting away all the winter gloves and hats that are still sitting by our organizer. I’ve got a lot of my stuff I’ll be taking to the goodwill as well.

Elder is finishing up her math placement test today. She did well on her reading one Tuesday. She had a big blow up over chores yesterday but made up for it by reading her sister books before bed yesterday. Restricting television seems to be having mixed results. It’s not spurring them to do their chores the way I had hoped, but they’re getting along without it for the most part with creative play, which is about all I can ask for anyways. Younger is playing with her toys in the living room, I’m still doing writing with her, reading and skills on IXL most every day, but the IXL skills are getting to the point where she needs more help to get through them. She’s been having issues counting from twelve to fifteen since she can’t enunciate thirteen from fourteen. I tried teaching her how to use a toy abacus that I got a while back, but it’s going to take a bit more work.

So I’ve adjusted my routine a bit and have been working out in the mornings before I write. Yesterday I managed to get a run in before the house woke up, and today I worked out for an hour, or tried to, as the girls were in the living room fighting over pillows. It was a bit annoying but while I was out cutting the grass they decided to have a contest, and when I came back in they needed me to judge the singing and dancing contests. Super cute.

I realize I haven’t really written anything substantial since leaving for Miami. These updates have become rather trivial and inconsequential. I think it’s mainly due to my sense of little accomplishment lately. I’m ploughing through housework and other mundane tasks, doing coding challenges on Exercism, and haven’t really sat down to work on anything that would be useful to others. I’m probably just adjusting to this vacation that I’m on.

I’ve been reading three books before bed, Deep Work, Essentialism, and Ryan Holiday’s The Obstacle is the Way. I think they’re getting my head in the right place, and I feel a bit mellowed out not having to deal with my old job. I guess I’m still in the honeymoon stage. The thing I fear the most is having to cash money out of the reFIREment fund. I think I’m going to start paring down some of my losing altcoin positions first, then try to take some of the other farming rewards where I can take them. VSP didn’t pan out, unfortunately, so I’m going to have to get a bit more risky in the short term if I’m going to keep my stack up. It might be a long summer if the market doesn’t pick back up.

Back to the books I mentioned, the three of them combined make a great combo. Essentialism is helping me cut out a lot of the crap that doesn’t matter, Deep Work is giving me the skill set I need to get things done, and TOISTW will help me deal with any setbacks and challenges that might spring up. Most of it basically boils down to constantly asking myself what is the most important thing I should be doing right now? There’s a lot of good stuff in them, and I’m tempted to start taking a highlighter to them or a pen and start making notes.

I also want to start instilling some of the strategies in the girls. I’m taking screens and music away from them today because Younger had a big meltdown yesterday. She played hard with her friends — I watched the neighbors for a couple hours as D. needed to pick his wife up from the airport — and was acting up most of the day, and really lost it when it was time for bed. Cutting off her melatonin may have something to do with it also, but I need to wean her off of that. And she really needs to start sleeping in her own bed — she’ll be turning five in a few weeks and she needs to start sleeping in her own bed.

My point here is that I think they’re watching too much TV and I want them to be bored. I just don’t know what’s appropriate for them. I would think that Elder is old enough to hear some of the stuff in these books, but I don’t think she’s ready to listen.

So my birthday was pretty chill. Missus ordered dinner from the barbeque place down the street and we watched the pilot of Sweet Tooth. Managed to get the girls to without too much fuss and I worked on Clair de Lune for an hour or so before going to bed at a decent hour. Woke this morning and went for a jog while everyone was still asleep; had a good run.

Missus is going to the office on Tuesdays and Thursdays now, so I’m really glad I’m not working. I spent the morning with the girls making music. They wanted to do special time, which usually involves them beating me up on the trampoline or on the living room floor, but I decided to break out my PA and let them sing on the mic while I mess around on the piano. It has a bunch of rhythm templates that I can add chord progressions to, we can make simple songs out of it. Elder came up with some interesting lyrics, it was fun.

I did some work on Solana and Rust yesterday, trying to get some quirks of the multisig implementation worked out. Serum annoys me, since I’ve had several problem purchasing posters on it. I wound up buying seventeen of the first poster, and messed up a purchase for the dao before I went to Miami. The transaction went through, and I thought I was good, but I checked it yesterday and it wasn’t. Now it appears that I’ve missed the next poster, which is a huge problem. So I’ve got to figure out what to do about that.

Elder is working on one of her end of year tests for school. I’m delaying putting her in Galileo until July since it turns out she’s not actually done with school until the 17th. I was going to start her this week but there was just too much going on in Miami for me to deal with it, so we’ll wait.

I don’t know why I get a little sangfroid on my birthday. I used to think it was contemplation of my own mortality or something, but more likely it’s just the fact that I don’t have many close friends or social networks. Maybe it’s a status thing.

I think that might be what bothered me the most about Miami, the status games that were being played. It wasn’t a technical conference, and for the most part I didn’t even pay attention to any of the talks. I wanted to go to the Bitcoin is DeFi one, but it was late in the day on the first afternoon, and by that time I was well on my way to getting drunk and had probably left by then.

The afterparty especially reminded me of what Naval Ravikant calls status games. I remember looking at two guys sitting by themselves in one of the reserved VIP tables next to some thousand dollar bottle of Dom that they had purchased. Sitting by themselves, looking bored. I assumed they were some hot shot crypto traders, but they didn’t look like they were enjoying themselves any more than I did.

There were glimmers of fun while I was at the party, despite how I made it sound last night. I danced, once by myself and then later with a beautiful Mexican woman after talking with her and her husband for a while. I felt flashbacks to those days when I used to rave. Awkward days.

I’m glad to be home. I finished watching Castlevania last night and slept in a little this morning. Woke up next to Younger, looking at her face upside down and thinking how funny it looked as she blinked her eyes awake. Do you know what day it is? I asked her?

Cleaning day? Nope.

School day? Well, a little of that, but it’s a special day.

Daddy daughter day? Sure, we’ll have some of that, I’m sure we will.

So it is ten-thirty in the evening, and I wanted to keep my streak alive, so a quick update: the B21 afterparty was a bit of a letdown. I really shouldn’t complain, but it just made me feel old and a bit out of place. It was a bit of a spectacle, and it turned into a bit of a mess when a downpour started up halfway through the night. People kept dancing outside in the rain, but I wound up holed up in one of the main rooms. Met Dan Held and Ellie Frost.

I think I felt a lot of guilt on the trip and was blowing a bunch of money. Five hundred for the event ticket, plus two fifty for the afterparty. On top of that drinks were ten dollars a pop. Lyft rides everywhere, hundred dollar dinners. I don’t know if it was worth it. I saved money on the plane tickets because I used rewards points, but I’m still going to get the bill for the Hyatt.

Most of the people down there were networking and doing deals, I just wanted to party. But partying when you’re forty when your wife is back in the hotel room just doesn’t make a whole bunch of sense. Missus and I did have our fun to ourselves though, so there’s that. I think it was good to get away, but I don’t think the conference was the best way to do that. It’s definitely not something I want to do again anytime soon.

Tonight is my last night in Miami. Went out to breakfast with some friends, Lift.Kitchen crew and the CryptoCurrent gang. Spent most of the day in our hotel room recuperating. Ate dinner at a hole-in-the-wall Cuban joint, had a $33 seafood paella, was super good but now I’m stuffed.

Getting ready to call a Lyft to take me to the B21 afterparty. Missus really didn’t want to go so I sold her pass. No big deal. Probably not going to make a big night of it since I overdid it yesterday.

So, some big news out of the conference earlier today. The president of El Salvador is pushing a bill to make bitcoin legal tender in the country, which is pretty fantastic. Markets are still punishing though. That said, there’s also been some pushback on CT about some of the cringe coming out of the conference, Max Keiser especially. Also, this happened:

Doge to the moon #MiamiBitcoin2021 #Bitcoin @elonmusk finally happy 🤣 pic.twitter.com/asJP0jBBu7

— Elliptical 🛡️ (@0xEliptical) June 5, 2021

I loaded some BTC up on Muun wallet to use for lightning payments at the afterparty, just wanted to keep the streak going.

Well we made it to Miami late last night. We got stuck in Baltimore for a few hours because of weather, then delayed further because our flight had maintenance issues. So we finally deplaned after midnight. We wound up taking a “taxi” to our hotel which somehow wound up costing us thirty dollars for the mile and a half trip. Missus didn’t want to haggle with the guy, it was so late, that’s what I get for not setting up Lyft on my phone before we left.

The conference has already started, but I needed the sleep, so I’m going to take my time and read the itinerary before I head out. I’m thinking about walking, as I don’t think it’s too far to the Maya Wynwood, we’ll see. I still need to get cleaned up and make sure I can bring my bag into the event.

I have some friends down here, including some investors that are interested in the Star Atlas deal that we put together. It should be interesting.

Missus is sleeping behind me, and my typing is disturbing her sleep.

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I had fun today, despite myself. I took a Lyft to the conference, but was pretty bored for most of the day. The first highlight was shaking Michael Saylor’s hand as he walked into one of the events. I also ran into Lyn Alden. For the most part I was just walking around being hot, but at some point I decided to grab some drinks and sat down with a group of guys. We started talking and they told me that they were from my area. Literally less than twenty miles from my house. At first I thought they were fucking with me, but after some interrogation I determined that they were, in fact, my neighbor. It’s totally strange, considering the fact that we flew some thirteen hundred miles to hang out with people who live nearby. Insane, honestly.

So I’m off for Miami today. I have mixed feelings about it, which I think are just related to my general post-retirement malaise. I didn’t get a good night’s sleep and have already been up trying to clean the house and make lists of things I want to do, rules for the kids and fun things for my mom to do with them. I’ve got a lot to do this morning.

BTC and ETH are climbing. Nothing dramatic, but I did add to my ETH longs yesterday. I still got a long way until I get back to my big BTC purchase at $50,500. I scaled back my VSP loan yesterday, since my utilization was in the nineties, and the last thing I need is a liquidation while I’m out of town. I also exited out of most of my BSC positions. They’re just too small for me to have to worry about anymore.

It’s a bit more difficult than I expected to have my entire financial stake tied up in the market. My initial $100,000+ BTC thesis shouldn’t be invalidated by the recent drawdown, but there’s a lot of hemming and hawing on CryptoTwitter over whether a bear has returned, or whether we’re going to see a further BTC drawdown to $20,000. That would be pretty catastrophic, personally. I mean it won’t change my cash balance, of course, but I just don’t have the free funds to buy the dip. The pain would be severe, as I’d lose a few thousand in the liquidated longs. Can I live with that? I guess the nagging feeling I’ve been experiencing lately is telling me now.

I had Elder’s onboarding with Galileo yesterday. I’m going to have to start her earlier than I had anticipated, since most of the groups and nano-degrees start on the first of the month and she’s already missed the first classes. It wouldn’t make sense for her to start after she’s already missed the second, so I’m going to get her going next week after I come back. Her teacher, or facilitator or whatever they call it is a former elementary school teacher who is crypto-retired and is actually down in Miami for the conference as well.

There’s so much Miami in my feed right now I have fomo. Seems like everyone is living large and I’m struggling to make myself go to the thrift store and buy some shorts for the trip. I need to get moving, as I got less than six hours to get to the airport. I should probably figure out a budget so I don’t go crazy, put some BTC in a lightning wallet as I know they’ll be prevalent. I want to bring my Trezor in case I need to do anything, but I’m worried about the risk of carrying my main cold wallet with me. I may just bring it to the hotel — there’s no way I would take that into the main conference!

Time to get a move on!

So I’m a little more centered today. I actually spent most of yesterday trying to clean the house. Seems I did five loads of laundry yesterday and spent half the day trying to get the girls to clean their rooms. Didn’t get much done otherwise. I’m trying to get the house ready for our trip. I don’t want my mom coming down to find our house a cesspool. I bought her a nice bottle of wine, hopefully the kids don’t drive her too crazy.

Looked at the calendar this morning and realize we leave tomorrow. I’m not ready. I’m going to go to Miami looking like a bum. I managed to give myself a haircut a few days ago. It’s not bad, but it’s not that flattering either. Missus cleaned up the back, but it still looks like I put a number five guard on the trimmers and went around my head. I’ll have to work on it some more.

And my clothes are another thing. It’s not going to get below seventy-eight degrees while we’re down there and I have no clue what I’m going to wear. I suppose I’m going with business casual, but I’m not even sure what fits my fat ass anymore. I haven’t spent money on shoes or clothes in a year. I think I bought two pairs of jeans and some socks, that’s it. I sound like a teenage girl.

There’s a lot on my Trello board to get into, and Younger is already awake so I better get to it.