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Mining operation update

Mining BEAM cryptocurrency, and planning for profits

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Prime Reading

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

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

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

Enter the Kindle app.

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

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Evening pages

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

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

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

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Evening pages

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

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

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

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

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

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TGIF

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Evening pages

Today has been a whirlwind. Missus actually got up before me this morning, which never happens, and we had a little quiet time around the house before the girls got up. It was nice. I got an early work call which set the tone for the rest of the day. I’ve been busy all day, and have a couple minutes before dinner while the girls are out shopping for cat supplies.

Yes, I said “cat supplies”. We’ve been talking about getting one for some time, and have been looking at candidates from the local cat shelter for almost two months now. We went there yesterday and wound up adopting not one, but two cats. Utah and Bodie, yes, named after the characters from Point Break. And they’re polydactyls, one has six fingers on its front paws, and the other six on the back. So the girls are out right now buying litter boxes and toys, food in anticipation of them coming home with us tomorrow. The kids couldn’t be happier. Me? Meh. I’m more of a dog guy, but don’t want the responsibility of having one.

The girls spent most of the day play acting scenes from Moana all morning. We were watching the Broadway Junior version of it on YouTube yesterday, so they laid blankets out on the floor for the ocean, and stuffed pillows in their shirts to be like Maui. Elder found a basket she could fit on her back and was dancing around like a crab to Shiny. It was super cute, so I’m planning on them doing a performance for Missus and I later this week, if they can stop arguing long enough to figure out who is going to be who.

Work is really a blur. Between managing the helpdesk, onboarding a new telecom partner, and trying to manage our printer tech, I barely have time to deal with my own projects. I’ve got to migrate 11 users’ Apple IDs off of a domain so we can federate it with Apple Business Manager, and I’m trying to figure out how to design a build workflow for C++ ARM and DSP modules, not to mention handling all my other stuff. I was pissed during the day I think I yelled “that’s not my job” at my boss at one point on the phone today. Whew.

As far as side projects go, I’m not getting a lot done, that’s for sure. I did write up a contract template for my web hosting clients that I’m happy with, but I’m going to have to start cutting some costs if some people don’t pay up this month. Basecamp is going to have to go, and I’ve got several other smaller vendors that need to go, like my Adobe CC account that I’ve used once in the last six months.

Other than that, I’m looking forward to relaxing tomorrow with my latest batch of homebrew tomorrow. I ordered another refill and have been researching some bigger kits and working on upping my game as far as quality control goes. Missus will have a fit if I try to buy two hundred dollars worth of vats and supplies though. Maybe I can blame my mom for buying me a kit in the first place.

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Generating spelling flash cards with RemNote

Making alphabet and spelling flash cards with a little help from regex

I’ve been getting used to RemNote for a little over a week now. I haven’t really gotten too much into yet, just taking notes and trying to link things up. I haven’t played with the spaced repetition features yet; I’ve used Anki in the past to get through an accounting class a few years ago, but I haven’t really felt the need to use it much for anything I’ve been dealing with lately. I may start using it for certain CLI commands at some point, we’ll see.

I did start trying to use it for Younger and Elder, though. I set up a document for the alphabet and filled it out like so: 

A:: A
B:: B
C:: C

And so on. It doesn’t look like there’s a way create these cards without having something on either side of the double colons, so I just filled it in with the letters on each side. Of course, Younger can’t do these by herself, so I have to sit there with her and push the answer buttons for her. It’s been working ok so far, it takes a couple minutes, and the app makes a nice little fireworks display when you hit your daily goal. She loves it. It of course makes her big sister a little jealous so I had to find a way to do one for her as well. We settled on third grade vocabulary words.

I found a couple lists online, but I wasn’t trying to copy and paste two hundred words into the proper format, so I did what any programmer worth their salt would do: regex.

Take a list like the following: 

additional	event	region
agreeable	examine	repair
argue	example	ridiculous

We want to separate the non-whitespace \S from the whitespace \S, into two ( ) groups : (\S+)(\s*). Then we can substitute, using \1 as shorthand for the first group: \1::\1\n. This gives us the following output, which exports perfectly into RemNote: 

additional::additional
event::event
region::region
agreeable::agreeable
examine::examine
repair::repair
argue::argue
example::example
ridiculous::ridiculous

Now while this works fine from a technical perspective, it’s a bit flawed in execution. Elder can’t see the words that she’s trying to spell, obviously, so I have to read them to her while she sits across the room from me. It causes her to miss the reward, the fireworks, and caused a bit of distress on her part.

So here I am now, brainstorming ways to generate audio files for these words so that I can put them in with the cards. Do I read a list of 200 words, and then go through the editing process to separate them into individual files and attach them to the proper file, or is there a way to program and automate all this.

Of course there is. There’s a Python module for the Google Text to Speech library, so I could literally generate the files in a few minutes. Then it’s just a question of importing them into RemNote. Unfortunately, RemNote doesn’t seem to support uploading or local audio files, so I would have to either upload them somewhere like an AWS bucket, or just use something like Anki, which supports audio within the card decks themselves. We shall see.

I’ll have to keep quizzing Elder on my own now, she seems to do better with the one on one time anyways. I’ll be sure to share any updates.

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Storm watch

Hurricane Isaias is making itself known. Wind gusts are pounding the house, making it shake like a freight train. The girls are up, Missus let them start a movie this morning despite my protests. She woke up early because of the storm and apparently isn’t planning on doing any work till later this morning.

Alerts have been popping up on my phone all morning as our managed servers have been going dark across the board. Internet and power have been dropping across the region as the storm makes its way across the area. It’s not really that much more work for me, since there’s not much I can do about it. Hopefully I’ll be able to get some work done on my two main goals at work: converting a client over to Microsoft’s mobile device management, and building a C++ build pipeline for some embedded controller software.

The RMM vendor that we work with integrated IBM’s MaaS360 product into their offerings two years ago, and we signed on one of our clients for it. It was a bit more involved than we expected for such a small deployment. We had to get a management certificate issues from Apple, which wasn’t too bad, but then we had to manage eleven Apple IDs, one for each user, before we could even enroll the phones. This involved downloading a special management app and profile. The client wanted content filtering on the phones, which meant the deployment of MaaS’s Secure Browser, which involved several more steps. Then we thought we were done, and I just ignored the deployment until about a month ago.

The client contact me about installing a new service app on the phone, and after figuring out how to login to the management portal I found that nine out of the elven mobile devices hadn’t checked in, some in over eighteen months. After contacting my RMM vendor for some support and getting frustrated at their lack of knowledge, I started searching for solutions. I new Microsoft had been offering some options through O365, and since most all of our clients are 365 clients, I thought that any solution that can be managed through it would be a plus. What I found is that the latest MDM offerings, included free with O365, actually gives us a lot of what we need, which is security profiles on the device itself, and the ability to control the software installed on the device. I did a quick test with our O365 tenant and my personal device, and I’ve been holding on to a client phone for about a week to test and document procedures so that they can setup the rest of the devices. I’ve been talking to other MSPs in our network, and let me say that there’s a lot of interest in the fact that I’ve been able to setup federation between O365 and Apple Business Manager.

The other project I’m trying to work on involves setting up automated deployments for a development project. The developer workstations are based off of an Ubuntu 16 VirtualBox image with a custom IDE and hardware libraries installed. The process to setup runs about five or six pages, and hasn’t been replicated by the client, so I’m hoping to go through the document and create a full script that can be replicated to set things up for new employees, or whenever the developer config changes. I’d like to get them up to Ubuntu 18, at a minimum, but the eventual goal is to make sure that we have a build process that exists outside of the IDE and can be automated via a build job as part of the version control process.

The problem I was running into is that my own computing resources are kind of limited right now. I already run my Windows workstation in a Ubuntu KVM instance, so running another VirtualBox wasn’t really an option. So I decided to use some of my Azure credits that I get from my Microsoft Service Provider benefits. I recently used an Azure VM to stage an on-prem domain deployment, scripting it out using Desired Configuration State (DCS). I was able to validate my AD and DHCP scripts on the Azure server, then copy the files down to the on prem server, run them, and have my deployment up and running in about an hour. The scripts will need some improvements before it’s really useful, but it’s a start.

So before I got started yesterday, I decided to explore deploying my VM via the Azure CLI. I went through a couple exercises yesterday to practice, and today I’m ready to get started with the actual projects.

A couple days ago, a marketing employee at Zombie made a comment to me that they were thinking about becoming a technician, and I told her to look at cloud engineer tracks, cause AWS and Azure jobs are among the highest paying and in demand, besides data scientists. Spurred by my own comments, I started exploring the training options for AWS, and started going through the AWS Cloud Practitioner track. The exam is only $120, and why not. I actually prefer AWS over Azure cause of the pricing — good luck finding a $15 a month Azure VM! — and want to really have a handle on it since that’s where I’ll probably be focusing my own entrepreneurial projects. I’m still locked into Microsoft at work, so learning Azure is going to help me, but everything Microsoft does is convoluted and complicated.

Will having a handle on both AWS and Azure make me a double threat? Doubtful, since I wager most large shops will use one or the other, not both, but that’s just my situation now. So I’m stuck between the two. Jack of all trades, master of none.

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Back in the saddle

I’ve been pretty good about my habits while we’ve been sheltering in place during this great lockdown. I meditate and write every day, but I’ve been breaking my streaks when we take these trips out of town. There’s no place like home, as they say, so I’m glad to be back in my comfort zone.

Journaling in RemNote before I start writing in the morning seems to be weeding out much of the minutia from these posts, and will probably make them more pertinent to others, although I don’t think anyone is reading this regularly. I haven’t paid much attention to traffic from it other than the number I see when I log into the dashboard. That’s fine for now. I need to finish writing my Substack newsletter, but the day has already slipped away from me.

The girls were very troublesome this morning, and after they left to go to their grandmothers I got sucked in to work management. I didn’t get much of what I wanted to get done. Mostly I was micromanaging one of my co-workers, who I’m now having to manage because he’s incapable of any critical thinking. It’s insane. And and I delved into the operations a bit more I figured out that my boss has made some pretty bone-headed decisions around how things are working between the two of them. It’s insane. My boss is focused on this subcontract work that we’re doing for another firm, supporting printers at local facilities. My co-worker, E., who is responsible for doing the work, doesn’t even have clearance to get on the facilities, so my boss has to meet him and take him. And I’m not even getting into the situation around the dispatching. My boss is all in the middle of it. It’s no wonder why we’re dying, he’s having to micromanage E. instead of hiring someone who can think for themselves so that he can work on growing our business. Totally insane.

On the bright side, I did have some fun today. I stopped at Barnes and Nobles over the weekend to pick up some rainy day games, and came across a copy of the Hamilton piano and vocal score. I was planning on picking up a copy on Amazon, but they were out of stock, so of course I went searching online and found a copy via Reddit. I started searching from there and found an archive of Broadway Junior songbooks. Broadway Junior are condensed versions of classic and Disney musicals, and I found a trove of the Disney piano and vocal books. For Frozen, I found the soundtracks and accompaniment tracks on YouTube, as well as a community theater that had put the actor scripts up online. I was showing the girls and we were singing along with them, and I think it’s going to be awesome. Elder has been telling me that she “hates” playing piano and that she just wants to sing, so this is perfect. She even asked me if we could recruit the neighborhood kids to put on a show. So cute.

I seriously spent way too much time thinking about this today, and I have a feeling I’m going to be spending way to much time with the kids, listening to these over and over.

Even for a Monday, I am really exhausted. We’re also preparing for a tropical storm hurricane Isaias to get here in a day or two. It looks like it’s making landfall, which is good for us cause I’m not worried about wind and rain so much as I am about storm surge. We should be fine, but I had to move all of our outdoor things into the shed and the garage, which was tiring. And I’m going to have to do some grocery shopping tomorrow, which is probably bad timing on my part. Well, at least we have plenty of frozen meat in the freezer, canned vegetables and rice in the pantry. Plus, my latest batch of homebrew will be ready next weekend, so I think we’ll be fine.

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Post-vacation debrief

We’re back from our out of town trip, the family is up in the den, the girls are watching Frozen 2 for the umpteenth time, Missus reading the paper. I’ve been up for an hour planning my day out. We’ve got a lot of work to do to unpack from our trip, plus we have tropical storm Isaias tracking our way, and is expected Tuesday, and today is supposed to be the last day of sunshine for the next five days or so. Since it’s the first weekend of the month I have some other financial stuff that I have to take care of, including balancing the house accounts. There’s a lot to be done.

Our trip was pretty good. We left early enough that I didn’t have to drive past my bedtime, and late enough that the girls slept on the way up. They woke up when we got there and we had a bit of trouble getting them back to bed.

Missus’s dad loves to cook huge amounts of bacon for breakfast when we go up there, so we always wind up pigging out. He cooked what must have been two pounds of it and it just sort of laid out all day until we ate it, piece by piece.

We neglected to check the weather before we went up there, which is pretty big fail considering that we were up there for a canoe trip. The weather was forecast for rain all day Friday, but we managed to sneak in a quick forty five minute trip in the afternoon when the precipitation let up. We thought we were going to be holed up for the whole trip, so earlier in the morning we had left the girls with Grandpa to go for ice cream, and Missus and I drove out to a bookstore to pick up some games and activities. I grabbed Exploding Kittens and Munchkin. Missus got Yatzee and some other things for the girls to do on the car ride home.

On Saturday the weather cleared up, so the four of us did a full seven mile stretch on the river, and made pretty good time, less than three hours. We had a picnic near the start, and even let the girls float behind us for a while at one point, which they really enjoyed until they caught some shallow rocks on their legs. After we got home, I took a nap while the girls watched a movie, then we packed and headed home. The girls fell asleep almost immediately, and we got home just before eight.

I listened to some good podcasts on the drives:

Eric Vishria – The Past, Present, and Future of SAAS Software [Invest Like the Best, EP.183] There’s some really good explanations of API and SAAS services in here that I’m going to be sharing with people in my professional network. It gave me a lot to think of, both as an investor, as someone who is looking to build a SaaS platform, and as someone who provide services to SMB clients and has to explain what all this API stuff is about. Basically, when a person consumes a service, they use the UI, when another application uses a service, it consumes the API. It’s about the shift from business using software, to businesses being encoded in software.

Brad Feld — The Art of Unplugging, Carving Your Own Path, and Riding the Entrepreneurial Rollercoaster (#448) – The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss There’s so much to take away from this one. Feld’s quarterly off-the-grid vacations and digital shabbats were right up my alley, and his discussion of his relationship with his wife, their monthly life dinners and the way they deal with conflict in their relationship were all very interesting. Feld talks about his struggles with depression and OCD, as well as finding a therapist. And he knows himself, very well, and this self-knowledge comes through brightly.