And Yet Another Year, are we tired of dumpster fires yet?

As you can tell by the title, things – well – in 2022, they continue…

Rather than a blow by blow for a number of bullet points as I’ve done before, I thought it might be best to focus on some things that really matter, because most of this day to day is just tiring and if you understand what doom-scrolling is, it’s hard to take and very little one can do to change things. Sure, we vote, but the day to day – it’s exhausting. I write about things because it’s therapeutic, at least for me. I do hope they are interesting to you, I’d like to think so.

As a departure from other iterations, this time I decided to focus on what most people fear, and there are usually 3 things:

Not contributing enough toward their families,
that professional success will elude them, and
concerns about health challenges and old age, including memory loss.

Family usually means to provide food, shelter and maybe entertainment. An environment where one can grow, where the kids are safe to experiment and still not die. I exaggerate but this might not be as true as we’d like. When I think of contributing for the family, I think of “are the kids alright” or are “we going to make it”. However, in this go-go world, and since the pandemic is “over” (ha!), we seem to be going faster than ever before. And there’s the rub, in our efforts to “provide” we’re missing out on what contributing actually means.

Since I’ve retired I’ve developed a different perspective, sure to be colored with the fact that I’m a caregiver for my wife (she’s mobility challenged). It’s also by the fact that I was able to take a package at my last job that provided about 12 months of salary and benefits so I didn’t really have to “work”. Actually, this did two things – it bridged me over to social security and Medicare benefits and it provided a period of time where I didn’t worry about money so much (e.g. the “salary” was essentially being provided and I didn’t really have to work, per se). I used the time to get adjusted to my new caregiver role, which is much harder than you’d think, I certainly didn’t think it would be so difficult. I’ve gotten my share of advice with everyone telling you to take care of yourself, don’t get lost taking care of someone else – and for the most part, I’m fine.

For other people that still have to work, well they are back at it, now that the pandemic is “over”. I see them on the freeway (which is clogged again) and I purposely avoid the rush hours (again) and the air pollution is back (remember those clear skies when people were staying home?).

The fear part of this may occur to people when they realize that the family is grown up, or the divorce happens, or some other major event but the family is not “alright” any more. My first Sensei died last year, of Covid (he was only partially vax’d) but the point is we might not live as long as we might want to. Certainly in his family’s case, and certainly for his wife, they certainly do wish that he was still there and there is a lot of grief to process. I have a nephew who has his own struggles with a son that has cancer, I’m sure that was not in anyone’s plan.

In our family, over the last decade we’ve had our major challenges as well, I’m not talking just about my wife here. There were times when I thought we might not be able to keep it together and just like any other unforeseen event, I didn’t expect them. At the end, I could only “do the right thing” and be supportive and then frankly – hope for the best. We’ve weathered it, we were lucky, we’ve got some grit within us to fight for what we want.

Someone once told me: No one “builds a house.” Rather, they lay one brick – again and again and again until the end result is a house. A remarkable, glorious achievement is just what a long series of un-glorious, unremarkable tasks looks like from a distance. Similarly, we might look at those Space-X Falcon-9 launches of the various satellites and consider that these too are glorious achievements, particularly since those 1st stage boosters can land themselves back on the ground or a drone ship for reuse. What we don’t see is a lot of the differences and what must be exhaustive work that goes into one of these launches, not to mention all the experience gained from the previous launches, including the failures. In the Space-X case, there were failures up front where the company might not have survived. You really can refer to that old adage that the journey begins with a single step, and is followed by another step, and another, and so on.

But I think the fear, for many, is a very very real emotion. Is my contribution real? Is it having an effect for the positive? For that matter, is my own head on straight? How do I start? What if I mess up the first step? I think this is where most people’s fears are for their family. Maybe it becomes too much, perhaps focused too much on the job and then the family suffers. I’ve been there. Perhaps we all have been there.

Success is elusive and perhaps for many, not to be had. Recent political exchanges suggest that most are finding success very elusive, if not completely missing and they are looking for someone to blame, ergo what we have in today’s politics. But, what does being successful mean? Success in your relationships or marriage? Success in a career can mean different things to different people, but a commonly accepted definition is “achieving one’s personal and professional goals in a fulfilling and satisfying manner.” This can include factors such as

financial stability,
recognition and advancement in one’s field,
work-life balance,
personal growth and development, and
a sense of purpose and impact in one’s work.

There are some negative consequences of success, however…

Overworking: working long hours and sacrificing personal time. But burnout, poor physical and mental health, and strain on personal relationships can result. It’s not just the “work” environment I speak to here, this can and often does enter into relationships when someone is staying home to care for the family/house. Burnout is very real among caregivers, for the young ones and the old.
Envy and Jealousy: one becomes successful, it leads to feelings of envy and jealousy in others, personal relationships may be harmed and toxic work environments are the result. You’re aware of the YouTube videos of people “keying” a Tesla car? You ask, why would anyone do that? A feeling of envy and jealousy, that person wants to “get back” at the successful person, because they are not successful.
Isolation: maybe there are feelings of loneliness and disconnection as you are separated from your peers and whatever support system you had in place.
Arrogance: breeding arrogance, or a sense of entitlement, and a lack of empathy for others. Harm may come in both personal and professional relationships.

These are just a few examples, but success, in any human activity, can have consequences. You need to be aware of those consequences and manage any drawbacks.

Of course, sometimes it’s hard to even get started on the success “path”. Note the word “elusive” above. Initiating a change in your life where you become independent or start your job or finish school… It can be just as hard. Some people never move forward, they just accept things. In fact, I’d say that if basic human needs are being met, the change will probably never happen. If needs are lacking, then is when the change is sought. Something needs to be in your life to “want to have” success, because the desire to strive for something, it’s just like a race, where the running itself is driven by striving to cross the finish line first.

In the end, perhaps the only way forward are these steps:

Set clear and specific goals: Determine exactly what you want and make a plan.
Break down the goal into smaller, manageable steps, it helps you make progress.
Surround yourself with support: friends, family members, or a support group. But be careful, sometimes these people, even family, can hold you back, e.g. “you’ll never be able to do that!”. Keep this latter group at arm’s length.
Hold yourself accountable: Keep track of progress.
Stay positive and stay focused: Believe in yourself, even when there are challenges. Keep your “eye” on your end goal.
Celebrate achievements: Reward yourself for each step you take towards your goal, no matter how small it may seem.

Health is an integral aspect of an individual’s life, and I had a big reminder of this in November. Your health becomes all the more crucial in a case where the person suffers a heart attack. A heart attack is a life-threatening condition that occurs due to a sudden blockage in the blood supply to the heart. Obviously severe health complications or even death can result. What happened to me was that a spontaneous blood clot lodged in my heart (a cardiac embolism). What could have followed might have been heart failure or a stroke, where the clot travels to the brain. Or an irregular heartbeat (arrhythmia) or the clot could travel to the lungs.

I got lucky, because the obstruction was partial and they took me to the “cath” lab, where Cardiology was able to remove the clot and no stent was needed. I felt so good afterwards, I was ready to go home! But of course, they kept me for 48 more hours…

Maybe it goes without saying, but for situations like this, prompt medical attention is necessary. Listening to your body, the symptoms, chest pain (or it could have been shortness of breath or sudden loss of consciousness) should lead you to seek Emergency Department (call 911 !!!) treatment (in my case, catheterization removed the immediate threat). Blood thinners, they are probably in my life from here on out. Mine was not the typical heart attack involving plaque which breaks off a blood vessel wall and leads to a blood clot forming around the plaque, rather something more rare, and genetic, where the clots are forming spontaneously. It is likely an inherited genetic mutation, known as “Factor V Leiden” and I now know that I have this. Up to 5% of the general population in some countries have this condition which leads to thrombosis. It is generally inherited from one parent. In my case, I suspect my Mom. She had DVT’s in her legs a lot in her later years.

The aftermath has been a little harder to deal with, oh pills and even shots are ok, I can deal, after all this; a heart attack, of course I’m going to treat this seriously. Mostly I’m contending with the psychological aftermath. The physiological are being taken care of. I’m talking to someone, who assures me that in cases like this, it gets easier with time. But every little twinge, every shortness of breath, it starts the alarm bells ringing in my brain. I need to accept that I’m doing all the right stuff, I have good doctors/advice and not to make things worse by increasing my anxiety level.

I think you’d be hard pressed to find any objection to the idea that maintaining good health allows you to lead a fulfilling and productive life, it’s a cornerstone of overall well-being. At the same time, I don’t think anyone ever really expects that my one and only heart organ might not continue to do its job.

So, I think many people worry about not contributing enough to their families, or that professional success might elude them. Perhaps concerns about health challenges and old age intrude upon their thoughts, especially later in life. My own experience: I retired and became a caregiver for my wife and from this, I gained a different perspective on contributing to my family. Sure I had fears of not being as successful as others, but what does success actually mean, is it about the journey? Fears are real, but step in at a time and focus appears to be the right thing.

We all have ongoing challenges in life, particularly with family or our jobs. These concerns are probably common yet that fear is a very real emotion for many people. What’s important is perseverance and taking small steps. Everyone’s journey is unique so don’t add unnecessary stress and anxiety to the mix. Progress and growth are important rather than comparing ourselves to others. Seek support from loved ones or professional resources; it can be helpful for these challenges and achieving success.

Another Year, post dumpster fire

2021, What a Year

Last year, about this time, I posted a 2020 “year in review” – my Dumpster Fire post. This year, things are only slightly better, but as you can tell by taking the temperature of the nation, not all is well. After all we started out the year with an insurrection that a lot of the country is saying now was nothing more than some tourists at the capital. Certainly the economic numbers are better, thanks to the injection of cash directly to taxpayers (due to the crushing issue of the pandemic). This will almost assuredly increase the rhetoric about inflation, but isn’t that to be expected with the pandemic and the following cash inflows to keep people afloat? Once in a century, we should be allowed to have some inflation. However, the question will always be how much can we stand. It’s a non-zero number, in spite of what some republican members of congress will say.

But let’s go by some of my favorite talking points:

Tesla had, by June 10, 2020, reached a stratospheric price of $1,019 per share and a market cap of $188.2 billion – and of course since then there was a 5:1 stock split, which doesn’t affect the market cap, but does make the stock more affordable for the individual investor. Well, we’re back, meaning at least 5x since then since the price at year end is $1,070 hovering around 1100 this past week. The actual peak, which reached approx $1,230 in early November, suffered some setbacks, probably mostly because Elon Musk was selling shares and exercising options, both of which are taxable events for him. Ultimately the last quarter revealed stellar results with record deliveries at the car part of the company. This made his remaining shares even higher in price and thus his net worth.I’m struck by this latter point, since a lot of the “news” talking points and especially tweets from ultra liberal democrats hoping for a “tax the rich” change in tax policy think he doesn’t pay any taxes. Obviously, he will this year (he takes no salary, but will have to pay capital gains on these sales). It might be a record for what one person has to pay in taxes, literally Billions of $$dollars$$. But that truth will not get people to donate to campaigns. You see, it’s not just the Republicans that lie, surely Sen. Elizabeth Warren is aware of how much taxes he is going to pay, WITHOUT a “tax the rich” change in tax policy. So Democrats, they lie, too. She ran a bunch of Facebook ads saying it wasn’t fair for him to pay no tax and would you please, just to get that $10 donation to me so I can make it happen?
Schools – my god; what is wrong with people. I have sisters that are teachers, and it’s very bad with the “freedom” issue, of mask wearing. I’m sure you’ve seen the “school board meeting” skirmishes. Science on the matter would seem to be settled, but if we were to settle for science, we’d be out of this mess, wouldn’t we? All for politics, that we as a country are willing to let people die, families in grief, not to mention shoving disinformation up their ass so far, that they will punch a doctor because their favorite horse medication wasn’t given to their loved one, never mind that it won’t actually work. Again, facts and beliefs – totally reversed.
The vaccines came online this year and many of us got “the jab”, but in a nutshell, If you’re able to stay home, do so. If you need to be out, please take precautions to keep you and those around you safe. I personally know some immunocompromised (weakened immune system) people and wow – what if we all got the vaccine to protect them? Allow them to lead a normal life? Even if the Omicron variant isn’t as bad (if you’re vaccinated) you can still carry it to those that cannot take the vaccine, legitimately. You are wearing the mask to protect those around you. Not the other way around.Obviously, many more people died this year. At this stage those most at risk are those that are knowingly avoiding the vaccine, mostly because of disinformation. Sure there are those with legitimate religious or medical reasons, but frankly those are few and far between. Do you know someone with a fake vaccine card? I have utter disgust at the fact that certain opportunists decided to make vaccination a political issue with the misinformation, make it a political fund raising tool. Unvaccinated deaths account for almost all of the deaths at this point. So many families of the unvaccinated are begging for the vaccine, but it’s too late by the time you have to go to hospital, go on the vent, and perhaps never go home.So much anguish over this, they’ve been told lies and have done or are doing their “research” when they could just do themselves a big favor and talk to their doctor, jeez. There is one lady I read about that says she bleeds rectally when she simply stands next to a vaccinated person. Crazy, misinformed, or perhaps has rectal cancer, she should be seeing her doctor, but won’t because she doesn’t want to hear the truth if it goes against her worldview. There are those that say they don’t want to get the vaccine because it causes you to die if you get infected with Covid, which is the opposite of the truth. Where are these people getting their information? From Joe Rogan and people like him.I mean, really – do you need to research the physics of how an aircraft flies through the air in order to take a trip on an airplane? Do you research the training of the flight crew? Maybe you should individually ask them to submit to a breathalizer? Or do you just rely on scientists and some government agency to mostly get it right and keep you safe in that airplane? Does that doctor with a decade of training vs. what you can read in a week or a month – you really think you can do better? Claiming that vaccines don’t work because you can still contract Covid despite being fully vaccinated, that’s not the purpose of the vaccine. It’s like getting hit by another car while driving…but had your seat belt on and perhaps not badly injured. You were smart. You saved your own and perhaps others’ lives. It’s why you put passwords on your email and websites you visit. Or use an umbrella in the rain. It’s not 100%, but it’s better if you do.
Seriously, shut the fuck up, get the shot, help mankind. Be on the right side of history.
We had more forest fires this year, so did most of the rest of the west coast and even into Canada, even on the eastern side of the divide. Now there are fires on the high plateau in Colorado. I have family in Minnesota that was being smoked out by a fire in central Canada. I don’t know what else to say, other than the climate change, we’ve ignored it so long, it’s not to be ignored any longer. It’s one of the reasons I have solar and batteries and drive an electric car, charging it from the sun. It’s my part.Then this last week of the year, lots of rain (snow in the mountains). A skier had been missing since Christmas. He’s probably dead, but the search continued (he was later found some hundreds of yards from a residential area that he apparently was trying to get to when he succumbed). Food and gas in Lake Tahoe, for example, were in very short supply. Come spring, there will be mudslides, we can count on it.There was the inevitable traffic jam for 48 hrs in Virginia and Tahoe and a “PREDICTION” (Wall Street Journal, no less) that in such a situation, EV owners would freeze. This honestly just begged to be fact checked. First, there were no reports of EV owners being stranded and then 2nd, one Tesla owner did his own experiment, related here: (https://cleantechnica.com/2022/01/09/how-long-can-a-tesla-keep-you-warm-in-a-frozen-traffic-jam-dirty-tesla-finds-out/).And of course, because our social media cannot resist but to amplify a stupid person that would be otherwise ignored, there was a post about California needing to use it’s water (in a drought) more wisely, what with 7 inches of rain in LA and 18 inches in the nearby mountains. Not knowing how this all works is just the same as Ted Cruz complaining about illegal dancing in Washington state, not realizing that the “WA government” reference was to Western Australia. Back to the water, a friend of mine also slapped back on the California water use tweet with her own reference to all of us leaving our garden hoses running all day/night, such water is carried to the ocean and contributes to rising sea levels. If you don’t catch the sarcasm, I can’t help you.
The party that only has the “stop the steal” as anything they have done this year fully expects to overtake the house in this year’s midterms. The party that is progressively building the country back up and making things better has their eyes closed, I guess. The fact is the economy is RAGING! This is what should be on the news programs, not this other crap about how Biden this or Biden that. I have a great sense of fear, because it’s so unnecessary to go backwards. How could we have sunk so far? Some say it’s been going on since Regan, others say stuff like white supremacists have been going on since the civil war, that we as a society have not addressed this for a long time.Of course, the Democrats need to play hardball. Because the other side is and has been playing hardball all this time, that’s why they can’t do anything to actually help the country. The economic news is great now, why isn’t that being shouted from the rooftops? The game has changed, I think everyone can sense this, and the left has not changed tactics. So for that, we can really fear what will happen after the midterms. If they are even close, the “big steal” will be shouted again and this time, the laws in the states have been changed. A third party offering might have value to push the election into the house of representatives, but the two party system is extremely entrenched. There is a story of one man, Stacy Blatt. He was dying. In hospice care, his monthly income was $1,000. He sends $500 to Donald Trump, after Rush Limbaugh says Trump needs money to overturn the election. The next thing that happens is the Trump people tap his bank account again and again until they take every penny the dying man has. He meant to give one contribution, a very generous one. Not just to Mr. Blatt, these people did this to thousands of loyal trumpers, thousands of them. Some people contested the extra charges on their credit cards, but debit cards don’t work that way. Either the credit card company is out the money and they try to get it back or the people themselves are out this money. Some have said that ½ billion dollars has been raked in. Of course, If you or I did this, we would be arrested. I don’t know why Trump and the people around him haven’t been held accountable. This was thievery, plain and simple. And it’s just one example. Is the Justice department ineffective?
My daughter, Julia, has really turned her life around with school and work. She used to be a barista at Starbucks, but it’s not so great a work environment there. Anti mask and anti vax people really make things difficult for front line workers. She did get started with finishing her bachelor’s degree at Arizona State University because Starbucks paid the bulk of the tuition. She’s left Starbucks, doesn’t regret it, but it does mean she has to tap her education account to continue to pay for tuition. She has also found a few grants and scholarships, so it’s not all on her dime. The investments I’ve made in her education account have done well this past 10 years or so, so there is money for her to finish, one way or another. As far as her progress, she’s done really well, progressing far from some of her troubles during community college to where she is now, a young accomplished and very good student. This coming semester she gets to come back to the subjects she likes the best, writing. She is exploring internships at newspapers and the like. Even one at Tesla! She’s had pretty good luck with various internships up to now.
We are getting started on our tiny house project, although we’ve shifted to what California calls an ADU, Accessory Dwelling Unit. It’s on a permanent foundation rather than a tiny house on wheels. After months, we were able to obtain the money needed as a mortgage on the main house, and it’s sort of funny that this little house is going to cost as much as our house did back in 1985, 36 years ago. But considering the housing crisis we have, it’s also sad that inflation in housing has driven things to such an expensive point.We’ve settled on the overall design of the ADU and next the company we’re working with will be submitting plans, etc. to the local building department. Because of a law in California, ADU designs are centrally approved by the state, the local building people only approve the things outside, like electric and water hookups, trenching, etc. The building design is also submitted, but local building division cannot argue much about the design, since these are pre-approved by the state. It’s one of the most progressive things I’ve seen and it should address some of the housing shortages here. The governor also signed a law this year that expands this ADU concept from being limited to only one ADU per parcel to multiple units per parcel, within the limits of the size of the parcel.
Ultimately, perhaps, with Julia being the first resident (it’s more economical for her to start home ownership this way rather than trying to buy a first house or condo) eventually she would move out, and maybe then we move in; the expansion on our parcel can really begin at that point. This house is really positioned wrong for adding other units. It was originally a farmhouse for the walnut orchard that used to be here. Eventually that orchard became a new subdivision built in the late 1960’s with the farmhouse remaining on about 2 acres. Anyway, we expect that the main house could be torn down and 5-6 new houses be built on the parcel in its place. But as time progresses, we’re getting older and such details start to matter less and less. Still, I’d like to be here when this is undertaken, sort of be a supervisor to the contractor, perhaps a partnership. We shall see…
Matt continues at the drug store, CVS, but really doesn’t like it. If you haven’t heard there is pretty much a constant theft problem, more so in San Francisco, but it does happen here as well. Last year, a big theft ring was busted up. Lots of stolen merchandise was seized in a warehouse, which the crooks were re-selling on Amazon and Ebay. It’s amazing to me that they (stores and law enforcement) cannot get control of this problem, but it’s many layered. The luxury stores in San Francisco have resorted to gates and solid barriers, perhaps you’ve seen the video of these stores being robbed in a coordinated fashion. Some arrests have been made, but I suspect the police will have to get more intelligence on how these coordinated activities come together. It seems like a sign of societal deterioration and I for one, do not have any answers that seem right.I do worry about us individually, being targeted, because we look like we might have money. Just this week, in a neighboring town of Danville, a lady had her purse violently snatched and within minutes they were using the credit cards 5 miles away at some upscale stores to buy stuff. When the perps were caught, they were in possession of lots of credit cards.
Matt also has to deal with everyone that comes in without a mask. Some are belligerent, have to be removed (police), some innocently forgot. Every public facing person has to deal with this and he says it is so tiring. He works the evening shift, starts in the afternoon, often gets home after we’ve gone to bed. We don’t see much of him.
Movies – obviously, we refrained from the theater experience for the most part, we did the Netflix and Disney+ thing at home. But Julia and I went to one theater for Black Widow and another time for Eternals. There was only one other person in the theater at the time, an afternoon matinee show.It must be really hard to have a movie theater these days. I used to drive by one during 2020 at the height of the pandemic, and it was closed and boarded up with a sign saying they hoped to be back in a year. Obviously, this is an example of what the government programs were supposed to help. I heard this story about a televangelist that applied for one of those loans that would turn into a grant, designed to keep the staff employed, but instead of using the $3.9 million for that purpose, he bought a jet aircraft with it. After the outcry, he did give the money back, but jeez, everyone is taking advantage. There isn’t much accountability, from what I’ve read. I told Eunice we should open a church, but not worry about any people coming.

So that’s the “way it was”, at least my nine things. Really this is a fair amount like last year’s Dumpster Fire, and frankly it shouldn’t have to be.

The monarch butterfly migration shortly begins in January and a lost dog from the Caldor fire was rescued in the snowy mountains, here in northern CA. Finally Klay Thompson is about to return to regular play for the Warrior’s, so some things are going right.

The public utilities commission is proposing to “tax” those of us with solar installations, which is really bizarre when you think that the opposite should be the way forward. The utility companies really hate homeowners being allowed to own solar panels. Some things are not going right.

Wildlife and, of course, Tesla

It’s been very cold after the rain, this last couple of days. Of course, we need the rain, no doubt. It was getting into the 70’s (Fahrenheit) and no rain in sight and I was seeing this in my back yard and thinking, gawd, lots of weed abatement to come. My usual guy has kind of disappeared, so I need to search out someone new.

Then I noticed, driving over the creek bridge, that a heron was fishing from his perch and I wondered, are there even any minnows in the creek? This thing dries up every year and it’s only this time of year that it has water. It used to overflow before the Army Core of Engineers came in and widened it and put additional rock on the steep banks to prevent erosion. All this asphalt up top, water doesn’t soak into the ground, it runs to the storm sewers and into creeks like this.

This morning, I noticed, in spite of the cold, that I had two “friends” pooping on my pool deck. Notice the male on one leg, which tells you it’s cold out. Maybe it should be called the poop deck. But then, that would not be correct (link). Did you know the origin of the word?

And because no post should be without a cat, I give you my cat, Schrodinger.

Life is tough.

I had a great time at the recent Tesla meet-up in Alameda. Close to the old runway for the base, with a great view of SF. But it’s not so much the view as it is the friendship, talk, product demonstrations and the crazy things we do.

The Dumpster Fire that was 2020

In no particular order

June 10 – $TSLA market price reached $1,019 per share, pushing the company’s market capitalization to $188.2B – higher than Toyota, which was previously the world’s most valuable, publicly-traded automaker. In 2019, the Hyperchange podcast predicted Tesla would beat Toyota in market cap. At the time, Tesla’s market cap was $44B, while Toyota’s was $172B. Since then, there has been a stock split, so today’s market reflects that to a degree, but things have been on a tear. I own some of the stock, so I worry. I also think Elon Musk is a genius, especially in how he runs his companies, Tesla being one of them. So I hold the stock for now.
Sept 14 – A Nikola short seller, Hindenburg Research, published a series of fraud allegations about the hydrogen and electric truck startup (Nikola). The CEO would subsequently resign, valuation of the stock becomes in question, investigations start, GM backs out of a joint venture. I never owned any of this company, it was kind of a too-good-to-be-true story.
March – Schools adopt virtual learning methods to teach kids, even elementary and high school. Hangry kids, IT nightmares, and Zoom bombings ensue. Zoom valuation as a stock becomes stratospheric, but security aspects are lacking. I have sisters that are teachers, they literally started doing two jobs, with no extra pay for the 2nd one. One of them has now retired, the other is thinking about it. As with other things in the pandemic, it’s like we are burning people out, whether it’s first responders or medical support OR teachers.
It was the 50th anniversary of Feliz Navidad in a weird way of showing that Latina music has finally come of age (30% of all Youtube streams). This is showing that streaming has really messed with the way the recording industry can declare something a hit or not. But, check it out:

50th Anniversary – Feliz Navidad

Taylor Swift does not have one single “Top” track in the U.S. or world.
“Top Tracks of 2020 USA”: https://spoti.fi/2WIorFR
“Top Tracks of 2020”: https://spoti.fi/38xYheF

Once again, the media is out of touch with what is really going on. Not that I have anything against Taylor Swift. On a more important level the media had no idea what was going on in the 2020 Presidential race, had no idea so many people would support Trump, and that packing the court was not an issue, although there’s a chance stuff could be happening in Georgia, but odds are … What do odds even mean these days?

What are facts? Well, whatever they are, beliefs come first. Facts are scary, like that you cannot make any money to feed your family. Income gap keeps widening and no one is helping to correct this. The rich stay silent, they keep their money. Will the poor bridge the income gap? They’d be lucky to survive, maybe a few can get comfortable. But then something like a Pandemic comes along and threatens your very survival. If the virus doesn’t get you, maybe the lack of food or medicine will. How is this even a possible situation in our country?

As I write this, 341,000 people have died of Covid-19. Many people don’t believe these numbers, it’s all a hoax to them. Do you see protesting in the streets about the people dying, demanding that something be done? No, partly because there is a pandemic and most of us are in lockdown because of the 3rd (or 4th) wave of infections that are sweeping the country, while our current president continues to play golf.

Actually, I think this more of a reflection upon us as a country, rather than just Trump. We have come to accept that (at current rates) over 3500 people can die in a week (compared to 2606 people that died in the twin towers of New York during the 9-11 crisis). And we all thought 9-11 was absolutely terrible, but now we think this Covid response is acceptable? Remember, for 9-11 commissions were formed, investigations undertaken, changes to air travel, security, our very lives changed.

It started (the current iteration) with a few little lies, then lying all the time. The pandemic is changing our lives, too. Just in any way that I’d say is not positive, at least not now. Even the vaccine delivery is an issue. It’s here, 2 million doses are currently available. At current rates it will take 10 years to vaccinate enough to get herd immunity (70-80% of population), something the administration was trying to achieve by just allowing people to get infected (and a percentage would have died). This week, a hospital worker literally threw away vials of the vaccine, intentionally. All of this is crazy. Workers at a nursing home are going to refuse to take the vaccine. What? I am not an immunologist, but I do understand basic science. So, Crazy. We should be excoriating this administration for screwing up to badly on the vaccine roll-out, not to mention a bunch of the other things. A miracle was just witnessed, a new vaccine was created in under a year. It took 4 years to get a Mumps vaccine. What good is it if the Covid-19 vaccine doesn’t get into arms?

It’s your choice to listen to this president and his lies. You can support your gerrymandered part of the country and how it got that way. Maybe people just want the nightmare to be over. I get it, your average citizen feels powerless and fireside chats used to soothe, and we want this all to go away. The tweets have replaced the news and the chats. Kids have to be back in school, back to work, can’t sacrifice the economy, I want to go to a movie, to a party, traveling to see Mom at Christmas because she’s important, like I said, Crazy. At this point, all I want to say is “No shirt, no shoes, no mask, no service.” Period. I don’t want to hear about any of your excuses. This is the small thing, what your contribution is worth is so much more. The science is in, your “freedom” from a piece of fabric is hurting the country too much. Seat belts and motorcycle helmets are mandatory, what’s the problem? You’re hurting people. Really. That’s it. Enough.

My mother died, actually in November 2019 to be precise. We went through all the motions, funeral, burial, some stuff was a mystery, she didn’t want to tell us much about end-of-life planning.

But I put this into 2020 because it actually happened toward the end of 2019 and I don’t think I much processed any of this until 2020. There was lots of financial stuff for 2020, Mom left a house, annuities, IRAs to us, Dad had died before her. The taxes were done by me and her tax man. We’re trying to sell the house now. I think about her just about every day.

Lots of people talked about how much they loved and respected her, but it was not easy to be her child. As the oldest, lots of expectations were heaped upon me. In the end, 3 of us became her executors, and two of my sisters largely helped her in the last years of her life (she was confined to a memory unit in the assisted living facility after she got a pacemaker implant). My brother and I live in California, while she was in Minnesota. I talked to her at least every other day until she started to mistake the TV remote for her mobile phone, which was hard enough for her to deal with, being 96 years old with dementia.

Reggie Jackson claimed when he went to the Yankees, he was “the straw that stirred the drink.” Mom was kind of like that, although because she really didn’t like alcohol, the analogy would have bothered her. Something in her upbringing and the evils of booze. Dad took care of us, made breakfast before school, gave me an occasional job from his various jobs, like painting barns, refinishing woodwork, etc., but Mom is who we had to really answer to. Mom had to go back to work, teaching. Our family needed the money but we didn’t know that. She only had a 2 year teaching degree and she understood she had to go back to school to get her bachelor’s degree in order to make more money than she was. A strong lady, and all of us are better for her being strong.
I fell while trimming a tree in the backyard, broke my collar bone, the clavicle and scapula, plus ribs on the right side. Ribs, well you probably know, take a long time to heal. In September, I drove to MN to help with the estate sale, house cleanup, and had lots of trouble breathing especially when I was traveling (at altitude) through Utah, Wyoming and South Dakota. When I got back an X-Ray showed fluid around my right lung, so my “something’s wrong” msg to my doctor probably was being pushed aside due to his diagnosis of broken ribs causing this shortness of breath. Pandemic infused logic brought on because we have virtual appointments with our doctors now. Almost 2 liters fluid was removed and I felt better within minutes and within 2 days was normal, with the lung reinflated and doing it’s job. I had stopped in Wyoming and purchased a small tank of oxygen <put in picture of tank>. BTW, driving in the Tesla Model Y was a breeze, it did take 4 days, because of my condition and not wanting to drive much more than 6-8 hrs / day.
I’m looking at a tiny house, to build one, for Julia. Don’t know if it’s going to happen, but we’ll see. Just looking at this stage. The planning commission in our city/county may not allow them. After lots of shit last year, she’s got her head on straight. She’s going to use her Starbucks / Arizona State University (ASU) connection to pick up her activities for a degree.
Matt’s dealing with the public is extremely hard for me, because he is the likely vector for bringing the virus home to Eunice AND because he’s got to deal with the shit where professional shoplifters come into his store, steal a backpack’s worth of merch (like 20 thermometers) and they wind up selling for $1-$2 each to street fences, a criminal crew leader of sorts, who get them to a distributor who sells them below market on Amazon. Major San Francisco Bay Area Retail Theft Ring Busted; Five Suspects Arrested; $8 Million In Stolen Merchandise Recovered

Sure we all like cheaper stuff, but if we receive stolen merch, we have to realize we all are, in a way, subsidizing the shoplifting behavior.

Plus it’s leading to lots of people just leaving San Francisco, by way of example, because of failed policies at the local government level; they are not prosecuting any minor crimes. As things do tighten in SF, the crime just floats out to the suburbs, like at Matt’s store. And guess what, the ringleaders laundered their money through real-estate transactions. Sound familiar? In some ways, less government is not necessarily a good thing.
The George Floyd racist acts and subsequent black lives matter actions that followed, the peaceful protests, the violent responses… I used to live in Minneapolis, and this shocked me to my core. Black (or literally, non-white) people have been living with this for literally decades and somehow I had become dismissive of the issue. Now I’m really disturbed by the racist actions of many people in my orbit. People that on the one hand should be kicked out of my orbit, but I’m going to take the time to listen to them, understand them, hopefully get them to understand me. All people being equal is something my mother and father lived, even though southern Minnesota doesn’t have very many black people to associate with. I have to believe that dialog is a way out of this.

When I started my first real job, at 23, I worked alongside great people and the color of their skin did not even register with me. We had a job to do and we worked together. Black or white, it didn’t matter. Now I understand that maybe my inaction is a contributing factor to lack of change. Unfortunately it appears, too many people are like the Bele and Lokai hatred of each other in Star Trek (TOS) Season 3 Episode 15, aired January 1969. (Let_That_Be_Your_Last_Battlefield )

Sometimes it’s really hard for us to understand, but we really do need to move forward, not backward. At the end of this episode, Lokai and Bele as the last of their kind, probably killed each other, principally because of their hatred. That’s the lesson.

Spock: “The obvious visual evidence, Commissioner, is that he is of the same breed as yourself.”
Bele: “Are you blind, Commander Spock? Well, look at me! Look at me!”
Spock: “You’re black on one side and white on the other.”
Bele: “I am black on the right side.”
Spock: “I fail to see the significant difference.”
Bele: “Lokai is white on the right side. All of his people are white on the right side.”
Star Trek (TOS) Season 3 Episode 15 – c/o MemoryAlpha

Turkey Week

I’m sitting here with my coffee and peanut butter toast thinking about this coming week. I was supposed to get breakfast with friends today, but one of them was sick, which made me think about the pandemic.

So many people are putting these pandemic restrictions on their lives as personal attacks, because of the vitrial from the right. I’m so sorry to witness such cult-like behavior, because unless something changes, we’re doomed to lather, rinse and repeat for many years.

What’s missing is collectively we don’t “know each other” any more. I believe that most people are basically good, but just like the cult, their basic instincts have been used against them. Logic and reason will no longer work to discuss things with them.

Mostly, I fear what will happen should the infection come into our home. With two kids who live here and have contact with the public because of their jobs, the odds are not in our favor. We are trying our extreme best, believe me. Eunice and to a lesser extent, me (at 67, just yesterday) are at risk. I’m usually the one to go grocery shopping and pretty much every other time someone I meet is doing something dumb (see personal attack, above). None of these people are my friends, my friends all “get” it. These are just people out and about, probably now buying up hoards of toilet paper and paper towels to satisfy some inner urge. But, I am extremely careful, with all kinds of precautions, but perhaps I need a face shield. Maybe I should be adding that. Someone was arrested this weekend for “breathing heavily” (assult) on a peaceful protester.

So, it’s turkey week, and I’ve got some cleaning to do in order to make room on the dining room table. Julia’s boyfriend has been staying with us these last few months, so he’s an addition to the family now. Because of all I have to do around here, I opted to do a couple of family favorite meal items, but the basics we are getting from a local restaurant, I pick it up tomorrow and reheat on Thursday. Both kids have work that day, so the meal will probably be late in the day for us.

This makes me think of the time we had kitchen remodeling going on in one year and I cooked everything, including pie, on the barbeque grill. Boy, I was focused that year. Plus, I guess, since Matt was in scouts and I was going to show everyone that anything can be done with what’s at hand. Now days, I just want simple.

Looking ahead, Christmas will probably be subdued. Julia wants the walls in her room redone, she’s tired of the wall-paper after 24 years. I remember when we steamed off the green crap so long ago. For today, I’m going to try to get the tree up in the corner of the living room.

Beyond that, we are still trying to sell Mom’s house in Minnesota, the closing fell apart last week, so we don’t know where that’s going just yet. The buyer’s loan provider is not working out. My sister, Mary, wants me to come back to live in Minnesota. I’m not sure I can get the accent back :-). Still, we have so many things wrong with our existing house, I “get” where Dad was coming from so long ago, he didn’t want to fix anything anymore. Maybe I should build an off-grid tiny house on a trailer and work things that way.

My todo list still remains long, I’m still a caregiver for Eunice, wishing she would get better faster, I so much want to go for walks in the neighborhood with her. We do have some trees finally turning colors, just like my MN family had 5-6 weeks ago.

We are otherwise healthy, Eunice’s skin/suture problems from her foot surgery are done, just have to practice more walking. My ribs are much better, the collar bone is healing, but it will take more time. I am slowly getting my stamina back, not doing anything for 3 months is crap, but then as we age, I think we all know this.

Everything, Theory of

You are never going to be in the “club”. They won’t let you.

When I was in high school, maybe a bit before, I wasn’t sure at all what I would do. I was born and grew up in small-town America. We didn’t have much. I did have a paper route and I saved money for my hobbies: coin collecting, baseball cards. It took many years later for me to realize that there is little to achieve here, the rarefied atmosphere of this kind of collecting was going to take more resources than I had, but I didn’t know that at the time.

As all things, at that age, I eventually moved on to other things. I built a stereo receiver, stereo FM audio was kind of a new radio thing. I think we had 2 FM stations that I could pull in. I even bought a small receiver for my parents, installing the speakers in the ceiling as a built-in audio system for their house. They were never really all that interested in it, oh, they listened to radio, but mostly AM, where the Minnesota Twins were broadcast, or the local news. And everyone got the snowstorm school closures from the radio. Later, they moved their content consumption to the TV, but again, mostly for the major things, like sports or some televised concert. TV was also something I consumed, Outer Limits, Twilight Zone, Star Trek, Lost in Space – these stories lead me to studies of astronomy and a brief time where I thought I might become an astronaut. I mean at this age, who didn’t watch the moon landings. But then I discovered they were only taking Air Force and Navy pilots and certainly no one that wore glasses, oh how I hated those things…

Today we have reality TV because there is more money and less expense involved. But for me, at that time in my life, high school and college were on my doorstep – these TV series helped me focus on an area of study, initially – physics, nuclear mostly, but Three Mile Island had me questioning that choice, and then this crazy thing called computers caught my attention and led me down the path I eventually chose.

Then, at work, was the coincidental meeting of my future spouse (in a work related activity). A handful of girlfriends before that, but mostly what I was looking for was someone that I could talk to at my level, about things I was interested in, not who was what in Hollywood or even the craziness of the Vietnam war (I did not have to go, thankfully). But having escaped that horror, I really wanted to make some significant difference in the world, but caring for someone else, being in a relationship, requires something of an investment, something I didn’t anticipate or really understand. Before long, there was a child and the job continued to get in the way, but I am thankful I finally did get some focus at home. I missed a lot of my son growing up, damn the job, but it was a choice I eventually tried to correct. Conflicted, of course, by the need to provide for my family.

The dot com explosion happened around me, I didn’t take as many chances as I should/could have, so we didn’t become rich beyond our wildest dreams, but we did have a comfortable living, hiccup or two there, like a labor strike, or layoffs. I wasn’t so focused on what was important at home and while we were still together we also spent a lot on therapy, which ultimately didn’t really help, we had to save our marriage by ourselves. It’s hard work.

Work challenged me, left me with a huge “todo” list, things I really wanted to do, but never got the time to do, so I kept these things in a list, they would become, I hoped, the basis of work after “work”. But toward the retirement phase, I started to become more comfortable with where we would be, financially. But, I hadn’t put enough time into the kids, they are not really ready to go off on their own. Blame the high cost of California, too. That had an effect for sure, but maybe my own hesitancy to take chances bled off on my kids. They are afraid to take chances.

Kids absorb from their environment, sure, but they also are enormously affected by the people in their lives, both good and bad. To this day, we are affected by the bad so much more than those that helped them, and us. This is what troubles me most about today’s political climate, the effect it will have on our children, who have little to say in all of this, not to mention the absolute crimes being committed, both in the legal sense as well as in the sense of crimes against humanity. What can we say about the rule of law when the rules are different for different people?

I used to think that getting rich would make a difference, that money could be an insulation from all the bad in the world, but now I realize I cannot amass enough to protect my family from all this. I didn’t take all those chances some of the others did, see above. You see, throughout our lives we are being shown that being a regular person is not enough. You want to be rich and famous. My parents showed me that being a regular person, caring person, WAS enough. Somehow we’ve forgotten that.

Even when I was growing up, the general sense was that parents were telling their kids to not stray from the path, do what your parents say, become a doctor or a lawyer, but now those doctors and lawyers are upset when the risk takers have leap frogged ahead of them. I mean, do you have any idea what Zuckerberg or Bezos have paid for their homes? Zuckerberg even bought up the homes around his home, so he wouldn’t be bothered by all of us, the riff raff, even if some were at the higher end of society.

When I was in college in the 1970’s, there was time to figure out your path, now you have to be on the path already. You don’t want to fall by the wayside, where there is less money, of course. Maybe you can’t make ends meet, if you are on this down side part of the spectrum. There are way fewer opportunities there, and all of the elites of the world, DNC or Trumpers, they have contempt for you. For all the talk, even from the liberal side, those that have truly made it, don’t really want you in the club.

Just go to work, they think, work for the man, don’t rock the boat, and if you’re in an ethnic minority, god help you. BTW, we are not, but we can feel it, day in day out, doesn’t matter if you Democrat or Trumper (there is no Republican party any more), they don’t want to hear from you unless maybe you are in the 1% of the 1%. I don’t think many people even care for the common good any more. It’s about who can take the most toys.

New Hampshire just voted in their primary. From the newspapers you wouldn’t know that Bernie won this primary vote. It’s kind of the same in the next set of primaries. The liberal elite don’t want Bernie to win. The leaders mistakenly believe someone that doesn’t rock the boat is what will defeat Trump. That people will vote for a moral, high ground candidate. The cheese has moved, however. The 99% want change, that’s why Trump to begin with, and that’s what these elites don’t get. But they, even the liberal elite, don’t want to share.

Recently, I was talking with someone about Breaking Bad, the TV series, and how Walter was justifying his choices as “putting food on the table” for his family, even though his behavior was absolutely criminal. Justification? What else could he do, he has cancer, and now he has no time, how is he to provide for his family?

Is this the excuse some of the 1% are using? With the kind of money they have, they can afford to feed their whole damn neighborhood. Like I said before, my parents showed me that being a regular person, caring person, WAS enough. Somehow we’ve forgotten that.

Do you suppose that the elites have forgotten about being a regular person? Can they even care what happens to someone not in their immediate family? What has happened to them, did their parents screw them up, like Fred Trump? Closer to our generation, are all our efforts to improve self-esteem in our children (from trophies for everyone on the team, regardless of game outcome) really harming their true growth into humans that can “do the right thing?”

Educators try to twist criticism into praise so that a budding sense of self-worth is not harmed before it can form properly. “Fake it until you make it.” as if we can manufacture self worth from within. Of course there is a link between self-esteem and well-being/happiness in life. Some psychologists have a middle road approach to this topic, where they believe personality is formed by the time early adulthood happens. The way people behave as adults then depends upon how they were raised as children. Some might believe genetic traits form this behavior, but many suggest these childhood interactions have a much more important role in making a regular, caring person.

The world is vertical for a Narcissist. There’s a pecking order, there are no equals. Thus, the goal is to get ahead in the climb to the top. Those with high self-esteem have a horizontal world, where group members are equal. Get along, rather than getting ahead. Build connections with other people but not as a means to achieving supremacy. Narcissists think themselves superior, those with high self-esteem view themselves as worthy. Studies show parental warmth leads to self-esteem, whereas parental overvaluation leads to narcissism.

I have met too many people that use money as the measure, the yard-stick, of some sort of success valuation. This may be a silicon valley trait. Are we missing aspects of ethics in our lives? Do they even teach ethics in college any more? When we are growing up, do our parents stress the importance of moral principles that govern our behavior?

Money may determine if you are in the club or not. But without some of the guard rails, lack of money means life is not comfortable. Life can be downright hostile. It means life is a real struggle. I would put it to you that what seems to be happening is a real lack of compassion if you aren’t in the club, and most of us are not in the club. If you don’t have a job and you don’t have insurance, when you can’t pay the hospital bill you probably declare bankruptcy, this is not good. But, the elite want the status quo, go to work, support us, don’t rock the boat. There is a job for everyone, if you don’t have a job, you’re not really looking. What’s not accounted for, however, is that the boat no longer works for most of us.

To get some perspective on struggle, consider an extreme case. I would advise a watch of the 2014 movie the wife and I watched last night, “The Theory of Everything” on Netflix. It’s worth a look, not because it’s so deep into the math or the cosmology he worked on most of his life, this movie is adapted from a memoir by Jane Hawking about Stephen and Jane Hawking’s relationship and Stephen’s success in physics while he was at Cambridge. There are little gems about their life together, and if you’re paying attention, their kids. Watching this again, made me think of three of Stephen’s most popular quotes, here they are:

“We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special.”
“We are in danger of destroying ourselves by our greed and stupidity. We cannot remain looking inwards at ourselves on a small and increasingly polluted and overcrowded planet.”
Perhaps most inspiring of all, “There should be no boundaries to human endeavour. We are all different. However bad life may seem, there is always something you can do, and succeed at. While there’s life, there is hope”.

There is a Star Trek Next Gen episode where a man from our time is woken from hibernation after many many years and the money he saved up for this time after he woke no longer mattered in this Roddenberry created universe. Go with me, this is a story with a point. Picard says something to the effect that the challenge, without this old getting ahead or climbing the vertical narcissistic universe, is to “improve and enrich yourself”. Of course in this universe, humans no longer have material wants and needs, so if you can make that leap, then in what ways can you improve and enrich yourself in the Star Trek universe and how does this project onto our own way of thinking? We can flourish. In whatever we want to do, we could become a better person – one with more wisdom and more moral virtue (kindness comes to mind). It may be applicable in the world of Trek or in our world. Being a better person is unrelated to the satisfaction of material desires, but it does require satisfaction of basic needs like shelter, food, water, and safety. And this is what is missing, do we even still have a safety net?

Footnote: In spite of his illness (Lou Gehrig’s disease, he had to deal with it for 50 years), Stephen Hawking lived to the age of 76. He maintained that without the UK National Health Service, he could not have survived to be the major contributor to the field of cosmology that he was.

Americans are not interested in electric vehicles

This statement may be a shocker to you, unless you are part of the subset of Americans that fall into this category. Many of you probably know I bought a Tesla Model 3 over a year ago, and I’ve loved every minute with it, even with some very small issues. Those were fixed really quickly by the customer service center or the mobile rangers. But there is a recent Forbes article with much the same headline as above and they go into a bunch of stats and arguments about how people don’t like to change. That is why no love in the EV space.

Recent Event

Today I want to write about a recent experience with another Tesla owner, not a bad experience, but upon reflection, perhaps an indication of the human condition.

I had recently purchased a glass roof sunshade which further cuts the infrared radiation coming into the cabin on my Model 3 (search for “BougeRV Tesla Model 3 Glass Roof Sunshade” on Amazon). It was easy enough to put in, it simply works, I’ll probably take it down for the winter months (it folds up nicely), so I can look out the glass roof from time to time. Many have written about the roof in this car, a technology milestone on it’s own. The roof does an amazing job with cutting the radiation, I just wanted to have it cut some more, make it easier for the AC. The company I bought the sunshade from, BougeRV, provided me with a gift, unsolicited. A set of cup holder and center console inserts, but I had already purchased these a while ago. They are removable (for cleaning) and protect the cupholders from crumbs, condensation from glasses, and generally make clean up easier. Like I said, I already had some.

A couple of days later I saw another Telsa Model 3 in a parking lot where I used to work. Maybe you can guess what’s going to happen next. Once I saw he did not have any cup holder inserts of his own, I left a note on one of my old business cards. He called, I drove over, he saw my car, he looked at the inserts and he bought them for a whole $7.00. Wow, like, right?

Knowledge

is power, I know. But what has struck me about both the Forbes article and the reaction of this former co-worker is that people just don’t understand what they have or could have in this technology that has 4 wheels.

Yes, its a bit of a joke, I think other people like the joke, too, about Tesla’s are not cars, they are computers with wheels.

Forget the basic high value of the car itself, what my co-worker did not understand that they are a lot of options in the accessory market that can improve your experience with your Model 3 (or X or S). Many people don’t even know how to operate all of it’s features.

The people in the Forbes article that are not interested in electric cars, they don’t understand how they can get a better car, a safer car, a better experience, for less than they are going to pay whichever Japanese car maker. I’ve even had one person on a road trip that came over to look at my car, tell me they don’t like Tesla cars because they are not an American car.

It’s really hard to argue with people like this.

When I bought this car, I sought out knowledge about the car, about the technology. I also found people were 3-D printing accessory parts, for security clips, for phone chargers, lots of things. Maybe I am an outlier and the statement should really not be “Americans are not interested in electric cars” but rather “Americans are not interested in knowledge.” — Even if you are plunking down tens of thousands of dollars for an automobile.

And to that point, I don’t know what to say.

P.S. for the “for less” point above, here is some extra reading for your research “https://cleantechnica.com/2019/06/22/toyota-corolla-vs-tesla-model-3-5-year-cost-comparison/”

P.P.S. there is a referral program, use this link and you can earn 2,000 miles of free Supercharging with the purchase of a new Tesla car delivered before October 1, 2019, https://ts.la/thomas44545 . I can get some miles too. The referral program changes from time to time, sometimes it goes away for a bit, so it may be different than what’s noted here. There is a referral incentive for solar on your roof as well.

A Do Over?

Well, I am just about 20 weeks into my “retirement” and I have some impressions about work and life after work. First and foremost, there are no do-overs, no mulligan’s. Somewhere along the way you realize that you cannot go back and start over. Oh, I have heard, back in my college days, those people who would “take off” a year in order to travel Europe (is that even a thing?) but if you’re like me, where Mom and Dad were not rich, that simply was not an option. You start your career/work and you just keep going. A few bumps along the way. If only you knew then what you know now, that’s what we all think, but the experience, good or bad, you gain just goes into a base of knowledge, a database if you will, which helps to shape you as an individual making you better (or worse) at “stuff”.

Long Ago

Remembering back in high school, oh how important popularity was; to be part of the in-crowd, that would be the best, but now you realize that’s not you, either. A phony, no, not for me. Maybe someone close to you will “get” you, if you are fortunate, or maybe not. My own son has struggled with this, but you don’t like to talk ill of people, especially since the idea of bullying the bully is not really the answer either. At the end of the day, there is only you. Maybe there will be one close friend, maybe two. You should own it, this individualism; it’s all right. You want it to be better than that, but especially now, there is a very large problem with fragmentation in our society. I don’t see this getting any better anytime soon. Don’t be a follower, in our day, it was keeping up with the Jones’ – bunk. Today it’s a lot of how you can be “like” some other person. As if you make yourself into that person by wearing the same clothes or at least the same brands. Rather you should be your own person.

Marketing has figured this part out. Just look at any “lifestyle” ad in print or other media. By presenting these models the way they do, they want you to envy what those models represent, all smiles, all the time. Do you believe anyone in this fanciful universe ever has a bad day? And the marketing works. You WANT to be like that person in the ad. Let me sign up for that club, that vacation, that credit card, there is a lot of psychology involved in every ad that comes out.

Opportunity

Some will say “who your parents are helps”, as if you get a choice in that, also where you were born helps. But does opportunity depend on it? Well some kinds of opportunity makes it easier, but the disadvantaged, assuming you do the work, have opportunity as well. If you have no money, education is still available, but the entitled don’t want you to know this. Education is key, that’s what I tell my daughter… are you wasting time watching TV or doing whatever social media? Instead use the time to get ahead, that’s my advice. Everyone should “get” this. Seriously, you “could” be the next Instagram star, but probably not. The numbers are not there for you. Forget Facebook and Twitter. Unless you work really REALLY hard, and most everyone does not want to. The bulk of society think it’s owed to them, but to work for it, that’s what it is going to take. Sounds like a republican sort of message, but I am not one. It’s an old republican ideal anyway, today’s party has no resemblance to what they used to stand for.

Not that where you went to college doesn’t matter. But the clearest indicator of all is that it all comes down to you. At my last job, I did a few “cross” interviews, where the hiring manager wanted another interviewer’s opinion. These candidates obviously wanted to be hired, but honestly it didn’t really matter that you have a masters degree from MIT or Georgia Tech, or that you eat, sleep, live in Linux… it would help, don’t get me wrong, but what really matters is going to college and getting a degree in something. It proves you can do something from start to finish. For my company, it was these innate problem solving skills that are valuable. We might take you if you didn’t have a degree, but you’d have to prove that start to finish something in a very big way… that you could take it from beginning to the culmination of the “job” and then be able to articulate what you learned, what worked and what didn’t. The most important thing, IMHO, are these critical thinking skills. If I were to manage you, stop – why would I want to manage you? Not on your life. I have too many other things going on. I’ll give you the rules, set you on your path. Mistakes are a way of gaining even more education.

There is a story of an employee that made a terrible mistake one day. It cost the company millions of dollars. He decided he needed to offer his resignation to his boss. He prepared the letter, and sheepishly reported to the boss’ office. His boss didn’t accept the resignation, “are you kidding me? I just spent millions of dollars in education on you! You’ve learned something very valuable today, I want you to spend that capital here at this company making the right decisions.”

College

Look, college doesn’t prepare you for what comes next. You find a job, doing whatever, you’ve just got to pay your bills and maybe student loans. Waste five or six years figuring out that you’re on the wrong path, and then you feel you can’t change, maybe it’s too late. But don’t forget, college is like an entry fee. If you’re six years into the wrong career path, you still have that diploma. People just want to know you have it. So, find a school. Figure out what it takes for the diploma. With honors, even better.

And if you want to take the path without school… be prepared for hardship. Lucky? Maybe you’ve got parents that support you, otherwise you’re gonna find out it takes money to survive.

Or Family

But, life is kind of like a survival game… You could also have started a family with children and maybe get saddled with a mortgage on a house and maybe a car, an expensive one, to “prove” you’re on your way. No one told you to go have a family and all that, but if you want to pursue YOUR dream you’ve got to sacrifice. But who wants to sacrifice anymore? That’s someone else’s story. Especially in America. Other people, immigrants for example, want to sacrifice, because their situation may be pretty bad or they don’t have anything left. You could sacrifice in a different way, hopefully, by taking on the commitment of being truthful to another and supporting a young life as they grow up and make mistakes and don’t want to listen to you. I’ve met many who have not made this commitment, but they have the family anyway, almost a disposable family, based on the divorce rates and all. They want to try it on for size and if it doesn’t fit, then try on another. I tell my daughter, there are 28 boyfriends in her future, because it takes that long to find the right one. The one that will truly commit to you. Figure that out, find that 29th boy before you tie the knot. Divorce is messy.

So, should you marry someone if you think you’re gonna get divorced? To me, this is obviously just too painful. Maybe you don’t start out in a marriage believing you would get divorced, maybe you think it will solve some money problems, but even perfect marriages may be done for, you see we don’t know a lot of what happens behind closed doors… Truth is, marriage takes a lot of work and commitment, it’s an old fangled idea, but look it up. It means trying a 2nd, 3rd, nth time with the same partner because you both made a commitment to make it work. Let me repeat that, marriage takes a lot of work and commitment.

And it is overwhelming. Many don’t want to make that kind of commitment. Or try to save the commitment when things fall apart. The wife and I, even to this day, talk about a marriage counselor we tried to work with for months and months until our own assessment still came up with “no progress” and then even though we’ve got all these problems, at least we agreed to jettison this counselor. We consider this period in our lives a waste of our time and money. Notice: we still work on things, together.

But you don’t know this stuff before you’re married. Maybe you’re working so hard on the “grind-stone” or trying to make the wrong career work, you can’t see where the pitfalls are. Maybe the love-at-first-sight thing happens… But in the end, it comes down to the right people. Sometimes it’s only one. Spend time with losers and you too are a loser. Not that everyone poor or going nowhere is a loser, being a good person counts for a lot, but a lot of the losers are misguided, they’re gonna make it, they could have made it, except for this thing… but if you are the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room. Find the room where you can learn something.

But in marriage: we are animals, and we’re here to reproduce, and your children will make your life worthwhile – meaningful, assuming you pay attention to them and some freak accident doesn’t befall them. If not, then you have a disposable marriage, see above. If you don’t have children, your career or some other pastime has got to work, to make this life meaningful for you.

Getting ahead

Half of getting ahead is showing up. I think there was a movie with that line in it. You’d be surprised who can’t – show up, I mean. And if you’re not a kiss-ass, maybe you tend to work alone, because organizations and upward mobility are all about kissing up. People like to be flattered, and it’s a veritable network of relationships and unfortunately just doing your work is not enough. If you’re not looking for a new job the minute you start the old one the joke is on you. I have had 3 separate cases where I was working really really hard on whatever objective had been set before me, not just a small project, but an honest to god sea-change in the company. Thinking this was THE thing that was going to make sense to anyone that bothered to look, I let my guard down and my gawd, since I didn’t check with all the real people in charge, and there was a sea-change alright, only my objective wasn’t even on the boat any more. It was now officially adrift after that newly announced reorg. Not that these people in charge always have a clue either, but they do get to call the shots.

Rich and Poor

Startups and corporations don’t only make billionaires, they force people to be poor. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer and the poor can’t pay their bills and since they have no money, politicians won’t listen to them. Case in point, Uber’s recent IPO. It all comes down to money, never forget that, a project has to either save money or generate revenue, hopefully it does both. But a lot of “product” out there requires someone to buy the product. If you’re buying it and it’s not making money for you, you’ve lost money on that product because that money is no longer working for you, say as an investment. When everyone has a phone, how do you keep selling that phone product to everyone? When you have an app, is it exclusive or a me-too? Build that factory in China or start advertising? Considering the concept of replacing a mobile phone and selling a new one – that works until differentiation is so slight that it doesn’t make sense to keep upgrading. Sell an attachment to the phone, a watch? Good idea, for a while. If your app doesn’t stand out, forget it. There is too much out there, attention spans are finite and you’re trying to stand out in the hurricane of the “appstore”. Meanwhile, look at your mobile phone bill. Multiply by 12 then by 15. That’s maybe $18-20 thousand dollars your putting into communication over 15 years. It better be earning some money for you or supporting your money earning efforts. By itself this kind of money is equal to a portion of an education, right? People don’t look at it that way. Sometimes they only think I need the phone to stay connected with Facebook. But are those connections helping you or are they helping Facebook sell you to the advertiser?

The truth is your phone, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram – just as your career – they won’t keep you warm at night, which is why spouse and children are good for you. But this also pushes you into the wash, rinse, repeat cycle. I know, it’s a conundrum. That’s the essence of life, everybody keeps telling you how to do it, you feel inadequate, and it’s not until you’re old and tired that you realize no one had a better idea than you, they were just faking it, or bullying.

Outside your comfort zone

Remember, you can’t do anything you want, I’m 5’8″ and I can’t be a basketball player – stop it if you know some exceptions, trivia knowledge is for when you’re on “Jeopardy.” The marketing department doesn’t want an employee who knows history of sales, they want one who can get their salespeople to sell the project! Of course, NASA may want someone with an astro-physics degree, some of this is obvious. So you have to get the degree, and make sure it’s what you like to do. No sense to take up nursing if you don’t like people or when people are at their worst health.

You can find your niche. You have to understand the jungle. You’re on your own. No one will fine tune that niche story like you can, no one will really understand the capability you have like you yourself. But many don’t know how to take stock, how to understand what capabilities you have.

Getting old

I kept working with the idea that my life was in front of me, suddenly it’s behind. Your parents die and then maybe some friends die and then you realize maybe you’re next. Maybe the spouse becomes disabled and all the things you were going to do, the places you were going, it’s too late, time’s up. That’s the deal, you don’t realize all this until it’s too late. You’re drifting along in the sea of life, and then you’re hanging on to the side of the lifeboat.

Some people will tell you the truth, but you don’t listen, you only realize their wisdom in hindsight. No one ever remembers that missing status report when you retire years later. Or that to-do list with it’s outstanding items after your heart attack. But that boss that tells you to just go on your vacation, have a good time, work will be here when you get back… Priceless.

A lot of the “hanging onto the lifeboat” has to do with your health, which is everything… This idea doesn’t mean much when you’re 20, a whole lot more when you’re over 50. I am living that post 50 ideal and really try religiously to train with my group in Karate 2x per week. I think I’m doing ok, but I have my share of aches and pains and I carry too much weight for my long term comfort. We have a lot of reliance upon health care (usually tied to a job) in this country, including some advice (take this pill) or some bad ideas via advertising (use this aging cream) and lots of politics about why health care costs too much and how much is the responsibility of the public sector to manage. Side note: ⅓ of the money raised on Go-Fund-Me goes to someone’s health care problems. Since when is Go-Fund-Me a health care concern? I’m afraid it speaks volumes to the kinds of insurance (or lack there-of) types of problems we have in this country. Myself, I expect to drop into Medicare at the end of the year, but frankly, I’m worried. Could we really fix this? Sure. But, remember, it’s the money that talks, see above. The insurance money lobby is not going to allow change to just happen because we want it, there are other people beholding to them…

At the end, you can only look at your own actions and logic, including critical thought process that will keep you well. You will be tempted by the “marketing machine” for this magic pill to erase that fat, or that new doo-dad that will make life easy without really having to do any work, or that other thing… but really only eating well and getting exercise will help, assuming you don’t have some other condition that must be treated aggressively. On the exercise front, a lot of the research I’ve heard about indicates that vigorous exercise increases blood flow to the skeletal muscles, perhaps 32x more blood than when you are at rest. This makes sense, as the muscles work, the increased oxygen demand needs to be met, it’s classic supply and demand. Blood vessels expand, the vessels become more elastic, the lining becomes slippery. All good things. And what’s being found is that for people that vigorously exercise, the death rate, from all causes, not just cardiac, improves to give you more years of life. Plus recent research is that cognitive function improves; you get to keep your mind as you grow old!

I fear, however, that until our transportation systems (think bikes in Amsterdam vs. cars in Los Angeles) and food policy (how long has the food pyramid had carbs as a good thing?) change, there really isn’t a lot of hope for meaningful change across our population.

Getting along

And since we have touched on meaningless behaviour (magic pills, glued to your phone, addicted to gaming), I’d like to think that we can rise above and “take the high road” but frankly evidence is now straight in front of us that life is meaningless, achievement is, too, it’s all a game that means nothing. You can keep playing, believing you’ll be respected and feel better if you get ahead or “win”, or you can follow your own desires, achieve your own goals, assuming you haven’t been brainwashed by Facebook or political figures so that you don’t know what is right and wrong anymore. Someone is telling you what to do all the time, do you ever get to do what you want to do? A lot of your attitude here has come from your parents, I’m afraid. It’s the only explanation I have for why things like racism or anti-women’s rights still have a foothold today. The local paper the other day had an article on why the county I live in has a really large white supremacist population. Believe me, I had no idea.

Truly you should treat someone like you would want to be treated if you were in their space. No let’s just admit that many don’t care about this “golden rule”, that is an unfortunate fact of life. But you can’t really speak for them or change their mind about this until they are ready to change. And sometimes these people “think” they are on god’s side when even they don’t really know what side they really are on, they just can’t think for themselves. Just look at the abortion debate, which contains every kind of religious argument for why you should be on the side of life. Mixed with this healthy dose of GOD. You know, I’ve read the bible, too. And this GOD certainly loved the children and thru Jesus and his teachings, “bring the little children to me” – sure I get it.

But don’t forget the time of Moses, when every first born of the Egyptians was struck down. Those were real living children, not fetus’. Which makes me think the argument isn’t really about an unborn child, rather it’s about money. And not the money to perform abortions, that’s a drop in the bucket, especially compared to the cost of raising a child. I’m speaking of rich and poor again here, because if you don’t have access to a safe abortion, then you’re likely to be poor and will become or stay poor and, oh – see “follow the money” above. The incentive, I believe, is to truly keep the poor poor because a rich woman, or her rich “man”, is always going to be able to find a safe abortion procedure for the woman. A poor woman just cannot afford to go to where a safe abortion might be available.

So go ahead, talk to me about God, if you want, but then explain, really, this first born thing. Or more importantly, why the Pro-Life contingent doesn’t provide more support for the mother or the family after the birth. A birth, after all, is a 18-20 year process of raising the child. Do they really care about the child or have they been brainwashed into this narrowly focused attitude about life after conception. Maybe they want to be seen as having concern for the child’s life, without really having that true concern. Lookup Matthew 6:5.

Your road

And nothing happens if you don’t take your own action. You’ve got to involve yourself with what you believe in. To walk the journey, you actually have to take those steps. But where you go is always going to be “danger, danger Will Robinson”. Remember, too, there are tons of examples of successful people in the autumn of their life. Colonel (Harland) Sanders (although I hate the current commercials), Laura Ingalls Wilder, Grandma Moses, Ronald Regan. For those that successfully changed and had 2 or more careers, examples include Arnold Schwarzenegger, Julia Child, John Glenn, Martha Stewart, even Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. But let’s face, it doesn’t matter, because these people are not you. Do you have the same drive? Or maybe are you desperate enough?

Self-help books, I have some too, but they don’t work. You see, you’re you. These books are trying to mold you into something you’re not. Public schools are also trying to mold you, too. Stop fighting your whole life to be you.

Moments

What about the moments, laughs, good times, doing things for others… In my family, “What we do now, Mom?” and “I’m going to go meet some people.” have a very special place in my heart. Not much makes me feel better. The wife and I, when the kids were in elementary school, used to volunteer at the curbside when parents were dropping off their kids for school. We’d help the kids safely out of the car, make sure they had their backpack, and kept them from being run over, Mom could then go ahead and drive on out of the parking lot. We felt good about that, but we also felt like we needed a baseball bat to throw the hammer down on that aberrant parent that didn’t get up on time, passed everyone in the 2-3 block long line of cars and honked their way to right in front of you, yells at the kids to “get out” and lordy, where is this world going to end up, hopefully these kids will survive…

But is this feel good stuff in the media? This falls into the category of unsung heroes, so no. It doesn’t sell newspapers. And don’t get me wrong, am I looking for accolades for the good I’ve done? No, I already got my positive feedback from those kids and those parents smiles that were the “normal” part of the group. It’s just that with the internet at 100 miles/hr, you tend to see everybody getting something and maybe you’re doing it wrong, but you’re not. Hopefully, your parents raised you right, with the sense of right and wrong.

Your own thing

You have your own special gift, quit doing what others are doing, trying to duplicate something that’s not you. It’s hard, but respect people, find your own thing; keep your eyes open. Reincarnation, life after death, was created by people who were scared, who couldn’t believe this was it. Accept it and you’ve got new perspective. There are rewards in being a member of the group, you can keep the sabre tooth tiger at bay, but also restrictions, the group will keep you from exploring on your own.

Keep trying to solve your own personal puzzle, this is probably the key to happiness. You’re probably more valuable than you think, for example, ask me a question about a problem in Fortran programming or statistics, got you covered. But talk about Python or Ruby and you see the dilemma, that’s all people are looking for in job advertisements…skills you may not have. Think of it this way, if you’re older, you’re likely a leader, no matter what field you are in. You’re probably good in a crisis, assuming you want to play that role. And HR people are probably going to be looking closely at people over 50, who are looking for stability in the job vs. the 2-3 years maybe they can get out of a younger person trying to “achieve” something in their career. If they care specifically about Python, then they must have a very specific niche to fill and that’s not you.

But it’s very important to accept responsibility for your actions. If you screw up – say so, pick yourself up, get help, move forward. You don’t drive a car by looking in the rear view mirror. Don’t run you life by the failures in your past. What are you going to do from here FORWARD?

I am done

But for me, I am done. I reached a point where I am needed more at home, where no matter what the resources applied to the work problem, it wasn’t going to be solved anytime soon. Sort of like American politics. At this point, I realized, not only did I need an extended “break” – maybe I just needed to retire. So, I’m working on stuff at home, helping my wife, son, and daughter – some of you know why – staying active with karate and visiting places on vacations, worrying if there is going to be enough money, because we don’t live without resources. Normal stuff.

Web Services (part 2)

After my free year was up at AWS, I saw the monthly web services cost and looked around for something more economical. Eventually, I migrated this website (tomposz.com) to Digital Ocean, which I’ve found to be much more economical, especially with the simple wordpress website hosting problem. https://m.do.co/c/ed94cc37cc74 is a referral link for you to gain a $50.00 credit toward the first 30 days to check them out. I get some credit, too, so if you use this, thank you.

This is all getting really simple to host a website nowdays. I can remember in the olde days 🙂

Amazon Web Services

Websites: This week, I’ve been on vacation, but as a diversion, I’ve known my hosting subscription for my website is up for renewal and I’d wanted to move the site to AWS, Amazon’s Web Services technology, anyway. So perhaps over an hour, spread among perhaps 5 separate settings, I accomplished this move.

What I needed to utilize to accomplish this was the following

A better backup mechanism: I’m using WordPress for my site, and there are a number of backup solutions there, the one I was using was easy to create a backup image of the site content and the database, and store it in a set of files on my Dropbox presence (I wanted a separate store for it) but I had never tried to restore the website from any of these backups. After examining other tools, I finally settled on All-in-One Migration by https://servmask.com/ ; they are also in the plugins library.
Creating an EC2 instance with a marketplace app for WordPress via Bitnami was straightforward except for the simple instructions I followed on the AWS community noted to ignore the creation of server keypairs (for SSH access). Attempted to create the keypairs later was never successful and I am not really sure why, reinstantiating the instance and reloading my website content but this time creating the keypairs during that instantiation was successful.

AWS has a free tier (for an initial one year) so if you’ve never done this before, you should try it. The marketplace has a number of apps already available for low or no software cost.