12/27/22 (15:48)
  • Long story, but I'll give a short version. I think I told this story a bit after it happened so it may be familiar, but there are updates...
  • We did some work for a couple this summer before they listed the house for sale. New customers, new agent. Some touch-up paint, some new kitchen counters, new tile floor, new bathroom vanities, new lights, new plants outside, powerwashing the back patio, staging.... Spruce up for sale. We did the demo and quickly realized that the angle stops for the kitchen sink and fridge ice maker weren't holding water. Usually what we do in this situation is cap the lines with a hose so the hose goes from the cold side to the hot side and no water can drip out. In this case I didn't have any caps for the ice maker line (1/4", no 3/8" like the others) and they also had another angle stop for the dishwasher so there were two uncapped lines. We also turned off the water at the main line. The main shut off valve also didn't work 100% so we ended up opening the hose bibb to let the excess water drip outside. Someone closed the hose bibb and water leaked onto the kitchen floor where the new tile was going to go, but it also spread out a bit more until it got to the adjacent dining area. It was cheap Chinese mdf based flooring so it swelled up immediately and was ruined. So, that was awesome. I talked with my flooring guy and he couldn't find the exact same match. He found something very close and proposed we pull out flooring from the bedroom, install it into the dining room, and then put the new stuff into the bedroom. We called the agent and he agreed that we should do that (should have gotten it in writing). Part of me feels like the leak was our fault since it was our job site and another part of me feels like there were faulty valves throughout the house, we opened the hose bibb, and someone unrelated to us closed it so it wasn't our fault. But whatever.
  • The townhouse doesn't sell after being on the market for a few months. They got interest, but no one wanted to give their asking price. We extended the staging for a month for free. At this point the job is at $45k and we've gotten about 10% of that. Meryl will sometimes get paid the staging out of escrow (after home sells) and they thought that meant all the work would be paid out of escrow as well. We let it slide thinking that wouldn't be an issue. 4-5 months later and we pull the staging out per their request so we send a final invoice and then the b.s. starts. They don't have the money...can they pay us $10k now and then the rest in March, they ask. Also, 4-5 months later, they have a few issues with some of the work we did. Some of the issues they have are just incorrect, some are extremely minor and one or two would require a bit more work. Overall, it's half a day's work for my crew. One example, is that the vanity replacement required us to demo the old vanity that was tiled into place. During our demo one of the tiles that was butting up against the vanity broke. They didn't have any extras on site so we glued it back together and color matched the tile with some epoxy to make the repair as seamless as possible. In our contract (for this very reason) we have two clauses that address this sort of thing. Basically: 1. During demo adjacent surfaces are sometimes damaged. We'll do our best, but no promises and you can't hold us liable. 2. We will make minor repairs without notification if it's in the best interest of the project and it doesn't materially affect the home.
  • So, I told him we'd do work fixing the issues he found after we're paid 90% of what we're paid. He flips out. I try to calm him down and say I'll fix whatever deficiencies there are even before he pays us. It doesn't work. Now he's complaining to the CSLB and refusing to pay us anything. Legally, my understanding is that he's on very bad ground here. He hasn't paid us for the staging work (which isn't among his complaints and was completed to everyone's satisfaction). He owes us interest payments for late payments now (per the signed contract). He's not allowing us to fix the problems he's bringing up (against CA law) while withholding payment. He didn't bring up any issues with the work until months after we were done and he's admitted he can't pay.
  • None of this really matters, though, because he's just going to play the game and string this thing out and probably drag us through the mud along the way. It was never our intention to have the work paid for out of escrow (only the staging), but we didn't want to ruffle feathers and since homes have been selling fast anyway, it probably wouldn't matter...well, that didn't work out this time. So now I have to deal with the CSLB and my bond company. We'll have to sue him. Hopefully we can get him to sign a non disparagement agreement or something. Hopefully we can make him pay the interest he agreed to in the contract. He also could be on the hook for paying our legal fees (another clause I have in our contract).
  • Things we did wrong: didn't get approval for the new floor in writing. Didn't insist we get paid prior to escrow. Didn't pull any permits (in our agreement we made it the responsibility of the homeowner, which might bite us later).
  • This is the kind of bullshit you have to deal with as a business owner and it sucks. Being a contractor is tough. Running a restaurant is probably even worse. Difficult customers and more of them. More employees. Slip and fall accusations. Etc. Neverending stream of bullshit. I talked with the owner at Saul's when I did work there and he said they would have lawsuits all the time because some employees just go from job to job looking to play the system.



    • 12/17/22 (15:05)
  • A lot of my political and artistic tastes come down to not wanting to be told what to do. If I watch a movie and it's hitting me over the head with emotion or being preachy in its politics or whatever, then I'm not going to like it. If you have a politics that preaches, scolds, and instructs then I'm probably not going to like it. That's part of why I didn't like the Republicans in the 90s when I was growing up and they were the party of telling people how to live their lives. And it's part of why I don't like the Democrats of today since wokeism is largely about scolding people about what they should and shouldn't do. Of course, I haven't liked either party for 20+ years, so that's only part of the issue.
  • Been watching this series on Netflix called "Away." It's about an international group of astronauts who go to Mars. I'm only a few episodes in, but it's a good marker of where our society is these days - for better or worse. First, it has a bunch of female characters in high positions (I guess literally since they're in space). It has an international cast of characters who aren't all white. A few gay people. A mentally special person. A black bronco rider to buck stereotypes... So those are the good things. Then there's the other stuff - every little bump in the road requires that they call back to CENTCOM to get orders on how to proceed. They can barely brush their teeth without asking Houston how best to do it. Broken fingernail? Let's call CENTCOM and wait to see how to proceed. Then they are constantly contacting people back on earth to see how things are going, playing cards with people back on Earth, etc. You're going to Mars, stop fucking around by checking in every 5 minutes to see how little Sally did on her midterm. JFC. At one point one man in the crew gets sick so they isolate him and all wear masks and hazmat suits. The funny thing is that the masks are just face shields with a mask below it and like 2" of space all around their mouth/nose...so it's helpful, but better for show than anything else.


    • 12/6/22 (16:30)

  • Pimps and cuckolds are supposedly two ends of the masculine spectrum. The pimp is in charge of women and controls multiple women. The cuck isn't in charge of his woman at all and watches as other men have sex with his woman. In reality, though, the woman is getting screwed by other guys in both scenarios. Not exactly the pinnacle of masculinity or control. Maybe that would be a gigilo.
  • With great power comes great responsibility. This is talked about often. Usually it is in reference to great monetary or military/physical power. Maybe it is in reference to social clout or influence as well, especially these days when social influencers are at, or near, the top of our social hierarchy (sad as that may be). But it could also apply to sexual power. Since women are at the top of the sexual hierarchy (at least according to the norms of our society - I'm not talking about when people step outside of the legal or societally acceptable), then they have great power/responsibility in this realm. This isn't new territory, but acknowledging its reality has historically been taboo. Often, saying that women have the power of sexual choice leads to push back saying that 1) women don't have choice when it comes to rape or marriage ("legal rape," according to some) and 2) women shouldn't be seen as the sexual gatekeepers because it lets men off the hook.
  • If I were raising a boy I would do everything my mom did to make him understand that he never lays his hand on a woman without her consent. Since I'm raising girls, I will do what I can to make them understand that guys generally want to get in their pants. It's there responsibility to be more responsible than the boys. The kids you inherit will be your responsibility. You have greater power in the sexual realm. These things combined mean you have a greater responsibility than the boys trying to get with you. It's not fair. Life's not fair.
  • The most predominant way in which men have natural power over women is physically. We have also completely criminalized the use of this advantage. So, in as far as they seek to use this advantage it is de facto illegal; thereby nullifying the natural advantage (unless one wants to risk prison time). In other words, society has taken away man's greatest natural advantage over women by making it illegal. What advantages do women have over men? If I were thinking like an evolutionary biologist it seems to me that a weaker sex would have to have some natural skill, talent, etc. to overcome the physical disadvantage of men in a lawless society. Maybe women made the first laws and they outlawed (socially or legally) physical aggression because it wasn't to their advantage. Maybe they are smarter or more manipulative so they can outwit/control men. Maybe they are better at working in groups or making friends so they can gang up on violent men.
  • Of course these are all generalizations. I've never been in a fight in my life. I don't consider myself a strong person. I'm not trained in fighting at all. In our society it doesn't really happen all that much unless you're looking for trouble anyway. But all that is to say that I'd be only marginally more capable than the average woman (who is only about 5 pounds less than me) in defending myself in a physical altercation.
  • Yet, it's a thing that I hear from women often - that they feel insecure around men because at any moment they could be overpowered. I asked one woman once why she didn't get a gun. She scoffed as if it were a ridiculous notion. Pepper spray, self defense classes, a gun, etc. all can level the playing field if it's something you are truly concerned about. There are a million remedies to level the playing field on the physical front. In other dimensions....maybe not so much.
  • I was at HD the other day picking up some building materials and two guys started yelling at each other. One guy wasn't backing down, but also didn't seem to want the fight as much. He was clearly the type of guy who knew he couldn't punk out and lose face, yet he didn't want to fight either. The more aggressive guy was just looking for trouble and kept pushing the subject. Eventually they started fighting. I yelled at them to stop, but they were both at least 75 lbs bigger than me so I didn't want to get in between them. A couple people were laughing. A couple more were taking video. Pretty pathetic scene overall. The home depot security guard actually did a good job of breaking them up. Had his hand on his pepper spray and told them the cops were on their way, but he didn't escalate anything or go crazy. Eventually they separated. Then the aggressive guy kept yelling at the other guy and, as he was leaving the store, changed his mind and ran at the other guy again. At this point the other guy grabbed a nail puller off a nearby shelf and started hitting the guy over the head with it. That seemed to break the fight up faster than anything else. After both the guys were gone the cops showed up. Pretty typical.
  • After I bought my shit I went to the job site (about 8 minutes away) and dropped off some materials. I went back outside to my truck with my youngest employee (Victor) and as we were going to the truck to get stuff, he said "who's that guy by your truck?" I saw a guy close the door to my truck and he had my jump starting kit in his hand. I yelled at him to "drop my shit." "Drop it right now." I walked up to him and asked him what the fuck he was doing. Meanwhile Victor went over to my truck looking for the stuff we were going to get. I signaled over to him to come with me in case the guy started something stupid. Victor was raised in Oakland so he should know protocol when a friend is confronting a crazy thief...but he was woefully deficient in this case. At any rate, Victor came over and I told the guy "you don't just go through people's truck grabbing shit." He said sorry and that he just needed a jump because his car wasn't working. I told him I'd give him a jump, but he should ask. He said he was sorry again. I noticed that he had a gas can and spilled gas all over the place while filling his car. He was clearly a mess. I jumped his car for him and sent him on his way with another lecture about how you don't know how people are going to respond if you just start messing with their shit. He said sorry and left. The amazing thing is that I was gone from my truck for like 3 minutes and he found probably the one car on the block that had a jump kit in it. Not only that, but he found where it was.
  • That was an interesting 20 minutes in West Oakland.


    • 11/7/22 (21:29)

  • Mid-terms tomorrow. Usually this is bad news for the incumbent party and I think that trend will hold. I think Stacey Abrams will lose and cry about it again. I think Dr. Oz will win because he's going up against someone who is mentally challenged at this point. I think Hershel Walker will barely win.
  • Abrams just doesn't have a wide appeal in GA. She plays well to the NPR types and progressives and would probably win in CA or NY, but she's running in GA and I'm just guessing that the politics there are different.
  • Oz/Fetterman is closer. Fetterman had probably the worst debate performance I've ever seen and he's clearly mentally compromised. PA voters have to choose between a rubber stamp for the Dems or Dr. Oz. I can understand a rubber stamp vote, but I don't know that it will be persuasive enough for the marginal voter so I had Oz there.
  • Walker/Warnock is a tough one. Warnock won in the runoff last time around so I'm tempted to pick him here. Walker has had a slew of personal issues come up and isn't the brightest guy, but the low expectations helped him in the debate, where, from what I saw, he did well enough. Warnock is playing to the middle by running ads bragging he he's worked with Republicans like Ted Cruz on legislation...basically showing that he's willing to work with the other side as long as it helps GA. Hopefully he's rewarded for this, but I would bet on Walker if I were a betting man.
  • Reps will win the House no problem. I think they'll narrowly win the Senate as well.
  • Dems got abortion on the ballot in only 5 states and one of them is CA so they dropped the ball there.
  • There's been an Atlantic article going around from Emily Oster (who I respect). I've yet to read it, but heard the pundits on both sides talking about it. Basically she's calling for a COVID amnesty...I think it's specifically for the people who over-reacted to it and encouraged masking while hiking outside or the officials who closed schools and parks at all costs, etc. Most of the people I listen to have basically had the response of "go fuck yourself" to the amnesty idea because they're very hot about the COVID lockdowns and response from the tight asses who seemed to win the argument (especially in places like CA and NY). And while I agree with this sentiment and have been a long-time under-reactor to the COVID hysteria, I think we do need to exhibit some grace in society. Let's say that my position of continuing to work and not wanting to close schools or have mandatory n95 masks, etc. was the right position in hindsight (I would argue it was). Let's say the Great Barrington Declaration was the right response all along (I would argue it was). As much as we might be tempted to spike the football when that was proven correct, or when someone like a Fauci theoretically admits they overreacted, we can't do that. We must accept "victory" in our correct position with grace. You have to be gracious in your victories. You have to encourage others to admit they were wrong instead of punishing them. If you punish someone for admitting they got something wrong then you create a disincentive for future admissions.
  • One thing I'd do if I were president is practice this type of thinking vigorously. It's kinda like that scene from 8 Mile where Eminem lays out all the ways in which he knows his opposition will attack him and he silences his adversary in the process. Be gracious, be honest, be the first to admit your own shortcomings. I think people will respect that in the long run. Battling the media the entire time is the tough part.
  • I do a fair amount of work for a self storage company that has a bunch of facilities in the bay area. Our job today entailed opening a chain link fence because a deer got stuck between the storage building and the fence and died there. It had been there at least two weeks, but not long enough to have decomposed yet. The smell was pretty thick and the maggots were plentiful. Didn't bother me too much thankfully. We also didn't have to take care of the body so we didn't have the worst job. The funny thing about it was that it was on the storage facility's property, but the only way to get there was through the neighboring property, which was an army base. So the storage company had to coordinate with the army base to provide escorted access. Then they wanted to get animal control there as well, but the schedules didn't work out so the storage guys used a shovel to put the body in a garbage bin. When they did that the remaining guts and maggots stayed behind and I guess I'd say that was the climax of the job. After they got the body out we put the fence back together and got out of there.
  • Pretty messed up way to die...must have been stuck between the building and the fence for a while and just starved to death. This is the kind of thing that motivates me to appreciate what I have each day. I hate the little annoyances in life probably more than most people and I wish I didn't, but I also think about how fortunate we are to have what we have. I think about how fragile life is and try not to take for granted that we have a society that eliminates many of the more grizzly ways of dying. To the extent that I complain about all the ways in which we are screwing things up, I do so because I'm so disappointed in how we are treating what the former generations gave us. I'm disappointed because I know that things could be even better if we just employed some common sense and stuck to some core principles.
  • The worst smell I've ever experienced is a two way tie: lower freeborn hall grease trap being emptied at like 3am while I was a DJ at KDVS and a refrigerator full of rotting meat that was just left on the sidewalk in Oakland. The deer was bad and it's probably the most maggots I've seen in one place, but the smell wasn't the worst ever.


    • 10/27/22 (20:16)

  • Been meaning to talk about Elon and Twitter for a while since it's been in the news. Right after the news was announced I thought it was unlikely to actually happen. I was pretty skeptical because I thought he'd have trouble coming up with the money and I figured it was just one of his trolling side quests that he gets into from time to time. Today it's being reported that it's official and that he's laid off a few top executives. Hopefully he changes things for the better. I don't think much of him as a person...that is, I wouldn't want him as my dad or best friend or lover because he's probably not so good at those things. That said, I think he's pretty good at getting some pretty epic stuff done and I do value people who are able to do things in a time when it feels like everyone talks and no on does anything.
  • Relatedly, I recently listened to a podcast debate about whether or not we should separate the art from the artist. Most of my life I've thought we shouldn't. However, I think I've come around to thinking differently on the topic. Some of this is out of desperation considering our current state of things and some of it is the practicality that comes with age. Basically, I've decided that if we required all our great cultural contributors to also be saints, we wouldn't have much worth writing home about anymore. So, I always think we should be honest and beholden to the truth (by keeping it real by exposing the bad sides of those we otherwise admire), but we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bath water either. I don't think we should we discard the contributions of Thomas Jefferson or Dostoyevsky or Galileo or whomever because we don't like the person they were. Further, the goalline on personal behavior is constantly evolving and we should keep in mind the culture/time in which they grew before casting aspersions.
  • Is it Burma or Myanmar? I think it's Myanmar, but media outlets almost always say "Myanmar, formerly Burma." At what point will it stop being "formerly Burma?" I looked it up...Myanmar has been Myanmar since 1989. So, 33 years of the media calling it "formerly Burma." This has to stop. It's ridiculous. It's kinda like the way the media will report on Joe Schmoe being chosen as only the 3rd black secretary of the Treasury. At what point can we stop counting? I understand reporting on the first woman such and such or whatever, but can we agree that we won't report on the second and third and fourth?
  • Whose beauty standards are so difficult for women to comply with? I've heard about these standards and it has always seemed to me that men are at fault for having impossible beauty standards. But it really seems like it's women who create and uphold these standards of beauty. For example, I've heard that women describing the ideal body type tend to consider the ideal to be skinnier than men consider the ideal. Another example, is the data we have now thanks to Tinder and the like, which is finding that men are swiping right (accepting) something like 3 times more than women. In other words, I've also done informal questioning on my own where I ask women who they are dressing for the most: men, themselves, or other women. In every instance where I asked this question "men" came in last place. I would posit that men aren't all that picky when it actually comes right down to it. Men are pretty simple.
  • I heard a saying the other day that boys will hit and spit, but what you see is what you git. As the father of two girls I think I agree with this. The problems with girls run deeper. They had a study once where they observed kids on the playground and tallied fights and arguments. When the researchers tallied the fights they found that boys fought more than the girls. Then asked the kids to self report how many fights they thought there were and the girls had just as many as the boys. The fights between girls were much more subtle than those between the boys. They also found that boys would fight or argue and then play again later that day. For girls, the fights and resentment would reverberate throughout the social group and would last longer. Of course, as always, these are just generalizations, but we're talking about the meaty part of the bell curve here and all this comports with my experience.
  • On the topic, Richard Reeves has been doing the rounds on a few podcasts because he has a book out about modern boys and their troubles. As we enter a more feminized age I think some of this stuff that's going on with young men is becoming more known and recognized. The good news is that women will probably be better at hearing about the issues than men have been about hearing issues women have historically had. All that said, there are a variety of issues with young men these days and I think I've written about a few of them in the past. I think it's a big reason for the rise of Jordan Peterson, for example. JBP is pretty maligned and misunderstood in my opinion. I won't go into that much for now, but suffice it to say that, just because those who have been in charge have been men (notice how I put that differently that normal), doesn't mean that that can't change or that it's a total state. First - I think it's different to say that "men have historically been in charge" vs. "those who have been in charge have been men." I've never heard anyone make this point, but I think it's an important distinction. I had a teacher in high school (very bright lady and she was even on Jeopardy) who was fond of saying that men started all the wars so it made sense that 99% of combat deaths would be men. Even as a dumb teenager I knew this was horseshit. Can you imagine being in a trench in WW1 as the Paris gun is firing 2,000lb shells all around you and thinking "hey, I may die, but at least the people who sent me here have a penis."? Doesn't make much sense to me.
  • Funny story about her going on Jeopardy...she was doing fairly badly early on in the game and even got into the negative at some point. Then, in double Jeopardy, she went on a tear and went into first place. In final Jeopardy she got the correct question and bid enough to win....but she forgot to phrase it as a question and so she lost. She showed us the video and it was pretty epic. This was before they changed the rules later on to allow people to forget this formality without being penalized.
  • At any rate, young men are falling behind in plenty of ways and it's not going to turn out well for anyone to have a bunch of disaffected young men with spare time on their hands. I'm a big believer in the "idle hands make the devil's workshop" saying. Most men won't go out stealing catalytic converters and shooting up schools, but some will and we don't need to increase our chances there because society falls apart pretty quickly if we do. There's an African saying that "the child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth." So, if you want to see real toxic masculinity then keep expecting young boys to fit into a feminized school structure and figure things out on their own while blaming them for the ills of the world because people who were once in charge shared the same genitalia. Good strategy.
  • Prof G was talking with Richard Reeves about his book and brought up a test of positive masculinity that went something like "a good man is invaluable in a shipwreck and acceptable at a dance." It's a real tragedy to me that we're failing so many in our society. In the past it has meant the missed Einsteins who happened to be black or female. Today it might be the missed Einsteins who didn't have a father and ended up addicted to meth. We should be doing a lot more to squeeze the potential out of our human capital. We've really failed on that the last 40 years or so.
  • Anecdotally I'm noticing a lot of people leaving CA and the country. A have a couple friends who are looking to leave, my aunt is looking to leave...and then there are the celebrity cases like Joe Rogan or Elon Musk. People who can leave are increasingly choosing to do so. It's like Atlas Shrugged or something. Never read it or been a fan of Ayn Rand, but one can't help but think of it in these times. Depressing.
  • There's been more and more talk the last few years about the utility and value of college. I've written about the increasing costs, specifically at UCB, and how these top heavy institutions are raising costs because G will subsidize them. If a family is willing to pay $20k for college and G will contribute $10k then the cost of college moves towards $30k over time. Pretty simple. At any rate, the justification for all this has always been those studies that show that college grads earn $1m (or whatever the number is these days) more over their lifetime. This makes people jump to the conclusion that becoming a college graduate magically makes you earn more. That's not exactly how it works, imo. I think it's more like certain people are going to earn a lot of money and those people go to college to get advanced degrees and maximize their social network, earning potential, and signal that they are elite. Frankly, you're not taking C students, getting them a degree, and magically having them become six figure earners. The kid in class who always turned things in late or fucked around in class doesn't go to college and get transformed. The road to success isn't about going to college. The road to success is about not making dumb ass decisions like having kids before you get married. Get a job (any job), pick a great partner, don't have kids until you can afford it. Do those things and you'll be middle class. It's only 3 things. They're not easy, but that's the prescription - not college and $100k in debt.
  • It's pretty likely that the most important decision in your life will be who you decide to marry. There are lots of books and movies that are sort of about this, but they almost never look at it from the practical standpoint. I don't think I ever had an adult (teacher, parent, etc.) talk to me about the importance of this decision. I had several talk to me about the importance of college. I had some talk to me about the importance of safe sex. I don't think anyone ever sat me down to talk about the types of things to look for in a life partner. It was more like "fall in love and you'll know" and then spend the rest of your life with that person. Of all the extra curricular shit we're teaching in schools these days about gender choices and colonialism and social justice, you'd think they would want to maybe spend a couple hours talking about importance of mate selection. Mate selection, after all, may be as important an evolutionary driver as random DNA mutation. Pick someone you can disagree with in a productive manner. Pick someone you respect and who respects you. Pick someone with whom you have aligned goals.
  • It used to be that families were involved in this process. Maybe not so bad, especially considering people got married younger. Maybe having an adult in the room was an advantage in selection. It also used to be that marriage meant something. There's something to be said for getting married in front of everyone you value. You're saying to the other person, and to all those in attendance, that we're choosing each other. Help us out if we step out of line. We're committing to this thing through thick and thin. Scientists these days talk about "commitment devices," as if they just came up with the idea. "Make a deal with your friend that you'll donate $100 to the KKK if you don't work out 4 times a week so you'll ensure that you stick to your goals!" Marrying your spouse in front of everyone is a commitment device that has been around a few thousand years...nothing new under the sun.
  • Since I wrote about Madonna last time, I guess it's only fair to write about Kanye this time. Another mentally unwell person who is losing it in front of the world. I listen to the Lex Friedman podcast and Kanye was on there recently. Interesting interview, interesting guy. Mostly feel bad for him at this point. I've long known he was a few cards short of a full deck. I remember him being on punk'd and the prank was that they "stole" the film for a video he was filming. He went kinda crazy and went after the thief to recover his "stolen" footage by wresting it away from him. As I remember it, Kutcher had to step in and cut it short because Kanye was taking it too seriously. I saw the crazy in his eyes back then.
  • We do a lot of clean up after people move out of their apartments. People leave things behind all the time. Some people do a good job and leave it clean, but a lot of them will leave a total mess along with personal belongings. Cleaning supplies, clothes, empty bins/plastic containers are the usual things.
  • Reading a book about Columbine. I didn't remember how badly the media covered the whole thing. Lots of fake stories and bad coverage. I also didn't remember how bad a job the cops did....reminiscent of Uvalde (or the other way around, I guess). They didn't respond quickly enough, left the crime scene a mess for a long time, etc. Just a lot of errors. At least with Columbine they were pretty much the first. You'd think by now we'd have figured out how to respond to this shit.
  • Admiral Cloudberg is a guy who breaks down airplane crashes and analyzes where they went wrong. He does an excellent job with the narration and showing where each crash went south. Usually it's bad communication and pilot errors, but you should check it out. The cool thing about reading him for a while is that you see the FAA is one of the few G institutions that is anti-fragile. With each new crash a tweak is made to improve their process for the next time. This seems like the best we could expect from a federally run program. It's not without its problems (like how they handled the Sully crash), but they seem to mostly get it right and make adjustments as needed. Hopefully that continues to be true.
  • Mar-A-Lago was raided by the feds a while back and I never commented on it. I don't know all the details...I know some of the arguments on both sides, but facts are tough to come by these days (oddly). Broadly speaking, though, I'll say that if you go after a former president you had better have the goods on him. If you don't then it looks an awful lot like political retribution and that's one of those things that can kill a political system real fast. You'll notice that Trump didn't go after Hillary, for example, when he clearly could have and it would have made his base plenty happy. Political retribution like that is the kind of thing you see in failed states.
  • A while back Lindsey Graham proposed a 15 week ban on abortion. Instead of trying to work with the guy on it, everyone just shit on him. It occurs to me that this could have been an opportunity to reach across the aisle and say, let's do the 15 week ban with a few exceptions and no shenanigans inside the 15 weeks. At what point are pro choice people going to be happy with a compromise? If Graham proposes a 15 week ban and that allows 90%+ of abortions, is that good enough or are they only happy if they get 100% of what they want? It seems like getting 90% of what you want is pretty good. His proposal, at the very least, seems like an opportunity to discuss the issue.
  • I like David Brower, but I recently found out that the former executive director of the Sierra Club lobbied against nuclear power in Ohio and coal stayed the dominant form of power production as a result. Perfect example of the perfect being the enemy of the good. Nuclear is far better than possibly anything else we have, but most definitely better than coal across every possible dimension. Safer for the community, safer for the workers, safer for the environment, better from a global warming perspective. What makes this worse is that he was paid by Arco to continue his advocacy against nuclear power. So, if you're of the mind that only outcomes matter (and not intentions), then maybe have another look at Brower and take his name off the David Brower Center building in Berkeley.
  • The NYT podcast the other day said that Procter and Gamble and Nestle were both going to raise their prices 10% in the 3rd quarter of the year and that was going to extend inflation. Uh, what? They're raising their prices because of inflation. Them raising their prices doesn't cause inflation. NYT has the causal arrow flipped around on this one. Nutty people.
  • While on the topic, the NYT podcast host Michael Barbaro has one of the most annoying voices in podcast and radio history. I listen to it at 200% speed because he speaks so slowly.
  • People would rather be fucked in the ass by a nice guy than get something nice from someone they don't like. Makes no sense.
  • I was probably a teenager when I learned that most of matter is actually empty space. Most of life is empty space and the mundane. Most of painting a room isn't actually painting, it's prep. Most of a lot of things isn't the actual fun part of the thing. Most of baseball isn't throwing or hitting, it's standing around. Most of football isn't throwing or running, it's getting ready for the next play. If you can embrace the mundane and the grunt work then you'll be a happy person.
  • White male nerds created the internet so the internet is their aboriginal space. I posit that this space should not be colonized by people who are not White Male Nerds (WMN - pronounced Womyn). If you're online and you're not a WMN, then you're a colonizer and engaging in cultural appropriation. Also, since the internet was created in the US and there are more people on the internet who are from China, I no longer feel like I belong. It's horrible to not feel welcomed in my native land of the internet.
  • Cultural appropriation is probably the worst of all the woke buzzwords and forbidden topics. Even worse than toxic masculinity or the double speak on gender, etc. Cultural appropriation should literally be the goal of any diverse, functioning society. The best vision I have of a multi-cultural society includes Koreans taking Mexican tacos and putting in kimchi and spam to make it a uniquely American (Los Angeles) invention. It's a black artist sampling a white artist inspired by another black artist. It's Spanglish. It's people stealing ideas from each other and paying homage to each other and all the rest. Non-Egyptians can't wear dreads? Non-Arabic people can't use Algebra? Where are we stopping with this shit? Get the fuck out of here with that cultural appropriation shit. Dumbest shit I've ever heard.
  • The first few verses of Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos are possibly my favorite in hip-hop history.
  • It's amazing how evil America is. So evil that we still keep the names of those generals we've conquered like General Pico and Santa Ana or French names like Louisiana (named after Louis XIV). Actually, maybe they thought about renaming Louisiana "Georgiana", but they knew the media would just continue to call it "formerly Louisiana" for 300 years so they didn't bother.
  • I remember reading some of Orwell's non-fiction stuff and getting the impression that he thinks you need to make money to be useful in society. Actually, I think it's about pulling your weight. It's a fairness issue. Money measures how much you are pulling your weight, but very imperfectly.
  • Blacks are more likely to live in suburbs than inner city.
  • Horse needs the jockey and vise versa.
  • Meryl has gotten push back on a couple staging jobs for having "problematic" art work (photos of white people or Robinson Crusoe). It's always some annoying person with more good intentions than common sense. If these people could redirect their energies towards something that matters maybe we'd have a better world.
  • When choosing between two options, do the harder thing. It's probably better for you in the long run.
  • There's a game that the chattering class plays sometimes...they'll say that there's no evidence for a thing and then try to shoe horn in an idea based upon a lack of evidence. Every scientist knows that absence of proof isn't proof of absence and yet they try to juijitsu their way into proving things with semantic games.
  • How far back are we expected to go back in order to understand a thing? If you ask someone why Palestine and Israel don't get along and the answer begins with "well, you have to go back about 2,000 years when the Jews were pushed out of their land..." then that's a good sign that the problem is horseshit that people need to get over. I mean, at some point people need to get a fucking clue and figure it out. I don't know what the number is, but there has to be a statute of limitations on these generational conflicts and historic impacts. At some point we need to forget certain things from the past. That's a pretty Liberal idea (usually the Conservatives are the ones trying to conserve history and customs) and yet in many of these cases it seems like Liberals are the ones holding on to the history because they see it as some great historic unfairness that needs to be made right.
  • To what extent is being black a performance vs. a biological reality? Same goes for gender, which seems to have officially become all about feels, not reals. I think race is going that way to some extent as well. Biden said that if you're thinking about voting for Trump "you ain't black." Being black isn't about your birth, it's about your actions. If "acting white" is a thing, then it would make sense the other way as well. Interesting world we live in.
  • Seen a couple cars driving around with writing that says "I'm 21 today, venmo me $ for drinks." Interesting world we live in.
  • We're living in a post-apocalyptic movie, but it's not as fun. We have zombies walking around looking for drugs or addicted to their phones. We have rampant crime. It's crazy what society has become.
  • I once thought that America was the best and could do no wrong - shining city on a hill. Then I grew up and thought that America had a monopoly on violence and was the worst empire ever. Then I grew up more and realized that no people have a monopoly on violence. Everybody's hands are dirty. I teach my kids that America has done a lot of great things and offered a lot of great opportunities, but hasn't always been the most fair or lived up to its ideals. So, by all means, let's talk about how America has treated black people over the years, but let's not forget that Brazil had 10x the slaves as us and that there were 9 black people (and 4 white people) lynched 1950-1968. So, that's 9 more than should have happened, but you watch Mississippi Burning and you'd think this was happening every day in the South. Racism is human nature. It's the human experience to be subjected to discrimination and out group behavior. It's an ugly reality. Let's expose it to hopefully avoid it to the extent that's possible. But let's not pretend that one group is solely responsible for it.
  • That brings up another point I've been thinking about with this racial reckoning we're going through now. We run the risk of going too far with it and alienating people. If we make this whole thing too simple and say that whites are the problem then there will (broadly) be two types of reactions - one group that will genuflect and atone. The other group won't really like it and may get defensive or not take too kindly to the accusations. These are the tiki torch crowd and I'm not sure how you deal with that.
  • 49ers are looking shaky this year. Lance is out. Jimmy G is a mediocre game manager and will never win an important game for you. They have no ability to come from behind. Their league leading defense was exposed and crushed against KC. Overall not looking great, despite a LOT of talent. I think Shanahan is a talented coach, but maybe he should just be a coach and not get everything he wants like a GM/coach might. Maybe he should just be an OC. Not sure how much more leeway they'll give him. That said, what else is out there? Sean Payton could be better if he wanted to work. Who else is there? Try a new guy? I feel bad because the QB situation isn't great, but I feel like he might be running out of runway.
  • 4 hours of writing so I should go to sleep. Need to wake up in 7 hours to work.


    • 10/10/22 (13:50)

  • Apparently Madonna has completely lost her mind at this point. I'm not sure why this news comes into my feed, but I guess google thinks I'm interested in her. I'm not interested in celebrities, but they do offer some instruction as cautionary tales. In the case of Madonna, she's mentally unstable and has destroyed her face. This is what happens when you live a selfish, empty, and vain life. When you're desperate for attention, and aging, and irrelevant, and you have nothing of substance, then weird things happen. We'll see where the Kardashians are in 20 years. So, I guess the lesson here is to not be an attention whore or to have more going on in your life than your own fame and fortune.
  • That said, I also feel sorry for these people who are drawn to the allure of celebrity. For the right (wrong) kind of person it can be very appealing to be the center of things. But fame is a fickle mistress and it will turn on you in a second, so one should never go down that path. You have to be either almost super human or a sociopath to completely disregard the feedback from thousands of detractors or fans. One minute everyone loves you and the next everyone (or at least many thousands/millions) may hate you. Humans just aren't wired for that kind of feedback. I believe we are wired for a Dunbar number level of feedback. In other words, we are evolutionarily able to conceive of maybe 250 people...beyond that it becomes either an abstraction or too much to handle in some real sense. To have a million people telling you that you're great or awful (or both) just doesn't compute and probably fucks with our natural human pyschology. The only way to reliably avoid this is to avoid celebrity of any kind. The other part of this is that not only is it toxic for the celebrity, but it's toxic for the admirer/fan/hater of the celebrity. A fan can't really know a celebrity, and they they feel they do. As a Madonna hater I can't really know Madonna, and yet I feel I know enough to judge her as crazy. I suspect I'm correct, but it probably is wise to consider how little we actually know of anyone and to tame our outrage...or at least keep it modulated to the level of knowledge we can reasonably have about such a person. That is, the less you know about a person the less you should feel justified in being outraged by, or infatuated with, them....lest we become part of an ignorant mob.


    • 10/05/22 (21:13)

  • Getting back to work sucks after a good 3 day weekend.
  • Not sure if I've written about Chloe Valdary and her Theory of Enchantment before, but I've meant to. She's exactly the type of thinker we need today. Empathetic and oriented towards solutions. She's the kind of leader who could change things for the better if only people stopped to listen. Here are her 3 rules: 1. Treat people like human beings, not political abstractions. 2. Criticize to uplift and empower, never to tear down or destroy. 3. Root everything you do in love and compassion.
  • Heard a stat the other day - there are more female fighter pilots in the country than there are male kindergarten teachers.
  • Listened to a bit of Science Friday the other day and found out that the safest sex partner you can have is someone who is HIV positive while they are on antiretrovirals. I think we're just living in 1984 at this point with some of this stuff. Here's the exact quote and entire transcript in case you're interested. "I think it’s as essential– you equals you, which you mentioned– that someone who is HIV-positive, and undetectable because they’re controlling HIV replication with antiretrovirals, it is impossible for that person to transmit HIV. It does not and cannot happen. Which means, actually, that someone who’s HIV-positive is the safest sex partner you can have for HIV transmission.

    • And that broke my brain open in the best way. That biomedical intervention, that really incredible science that took many years to show that incontrovertibly, made me love myself differently. Because I could love myself as someone who is HIV-negative and HIV-positive. And it made me think about sex with people with HIV in a completely different way."
  • John McWhorter has been talking about the importance of teaching kids to read with phonics for a long time. Seems like some people in education are finally waking up to this. McWhorter has been contending for at least 15 years that doing this would help young black kids more than any of the other mumbo jumbo out there related to race education. I don't think the KQED types are listening to McWhorter much, though, because of some of his thoughts on race. BTW, he's black.
  • I was rear ended on the freeway the other day. The traffic slowed pretty quickly and the guy behind me wasn't paying attention or whatever and crashed into the back of the truck. I pull over onto the shoulder and he zoomed by me and went onto the on ramp to SF. So, that was a hit and run and I was only mildly surprised by this because that's just the world I live in now. His car was really fucked up. When I got home I assessed the damage and, luckily, it really was the trailer hitch/receiver that took the brunt of the impact. I ordered a new receiver and installed it a few days later so it wasn't a huge deal. The bumper is a bit bent and so is the hitch, but it all works fine so I was only without the trailer for a few days. I'm guessing he'll need a new bumper and radiator at the very least.
  • Remember how they closed the parks during the pandemic? How was that ever a thing? No school, no parks...our leaders truly failed us. Astonishing even today.
  • Here's the result of the harm reduction thinking....we pass out needles already, I guess we may as well normalize the whole thing.



    • 10/04/22 (22:04)
  • 10/4 at 10:04. spooky.
  • Went to Yosemite Sunday for Meryl's birthday. It actually started as a hike that her brother wanted to do with his wife and a couple friends, but I guess it evolved into a trip with one friend, no wives, Meryl, me, her aunt and uncle, and dad. He wanted to do the half dome hike and I ended up getting invited like 6 days beforehand because someone else dropped out and he had enough permits for me to come. Half dome is said to be the most difficult one day hike in the NPS. Officially it's anywhere from 15-16.5 miles. There are two routes you can take up or down. Basically the Mist trail is shorter and steeper and the John Muir trail is longer, but not as steep. So you can take the same one up and down or one up and the other down. We took Mist up and JMT down. My best guess about distance (from the trackers people in the group used and official numbers along the trail) is that we totalled about 19 miles. We left the parking lot at about 4:40am and all had our headlamps on for light. I don't know if I've ever done any part of this trail before, though it's possible I did with my dad or with Melanie on our 2001 trip around the country. At night none of it looked familiar because you can only see the ground in front of you. Pretty much as soon as you hit the trailhead the climb begins.
  • We had done Lassen (my second time) the week prior and that's a 2.5 mile trek up to the summit with an elevation gain of 2500'. 5 miles round trip since it's an out and back trail. I figured the 2500' over 2.5 miles was a good proxy for the Half Dome trail since that's 8.2 miles up from the trailhead and 4800' elevation gain. So, in theory, Lassen is a more difficult climb on a per mile basis. That said, Half Dome was definitely more difficult of a climb. Lassen is just steady climbing and I didn't have much trouble with it. Half Dome has a lot of steps (rather than a steady grade) and it can take its toll pretty quick. But we all just powered through. Meryl's brother (Adam) is in really good shape and he led the way. I tried to stay with him most of the way and mostly succeeded. We'd stop and wait for others occasionally along the way.
  • I don't work out other than hiking so I usually try to push myself a bit so I can make it count. I never liked hiking until last year, but now I can say that I do. Historically I've been a slow hiker and not very interested in going on long hikes, but now there's something I just like about it. I find a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction from it. It's not rote like lifting weights or running through the neighborhood. For whatever reason, it feels more productive than most kinds of workouts. Other than doing actual work (like digging holes or moving bags of concrete), it's the most enjoyable workout I do these days.
  • There were two moments of awe during the hike. One was the first time I saw Half Dome. I think it was near the meadow in Little Yosemite where there's a bit of a clearing and you finally see it (there was daylight by this time). We had already hiked about 4 miles and you look up and you see this solid slab of granite jutting up from the surroundings and you realize what you're up against. I've done a couple summits and it's kind of amazing to be at the bottom of Mammoth or Lassen, look up and see something so big and realize that you'll end up at the top eventually. It doesn't happen suddenly, but if you put in the work you'll get to the top.
  • The other moment of awe came after about 9 miles of hiking when we got to the "sub dome," which is the area just before the final push to the top of Half Dome. Pictures don't really do it justice. It's a very steep section of rock that is pretty imposing in person. They have cables setup to aid you in getting to the top. If you google half dome cables, then you'll see a lot of pictures...some that make it look vertical and others, like mine below, that don't do it justice. It's just one of those things that doesn't translate well to a picture. Part of it is that the sub dome is a bit raised, then there's a belly and then the cables portions juts out above that, so you get this up and down effect that makes the steep portion even more intimidating.
  • Meryl's dad has a fear of heights so he stopped just a bit before the sub dome. Meryl got to the sub dome and started to freak out a bit after seeing the cables portion to the top. We talked it through a bit and her aunt gave her a pep talk and Meryl decided to do it. I think she was also inspired by this 10-11 year old kid who came up to the cables and didn't even stop to think about it and just started up the mountain. The kid is going places. We talked with his parents briefly and they said he came up with the idea and they went along with it so there they are. About 2/3 of the people go without a harness (including me), but some opt for the harness.
  • By far the worst thing about the hike is the number of people on the trail. Yosemite is a bit overrated in my opinion because of how crowded it is. Once you get on the trails you can avoid the crowds a bit, but Half Dome is probably their most popular difficult hike and even though they limit the summit portion to 300 people a day, you still get crowds forming like the Hillary step. It's got great natural beauty and all that, but the people make the experience less than ideal. That said, the last portion up the cables is so strenuous after hiking 9 miles, that I was a bit happy there was a traffic jam because it gave me an excuse to rest. As long as I was keeping up with Meryl in front of me (and she was keeping up with the person in front of her), we weren't holding anyone up. Physically, this was the toughest part of the hike.
  • Other than the initial awe in seeing the cable portion, I really wasn't afraid of the summit. I'm not a fan of heights. I don't like going on roofs (though occasionally I'll have to for work) and I'm not one of those people who goes to the edge of a cliff just for the thrill of it (Meryl's uncle is one of those guys), but the summit was never frightening for me so take that for what you will.
  • We spend some time at the top and then made our way down. After the summit, Adam, his friend, and Meryl's dad were having a tough time going down the trail because their knees hurt a lot so the rest of us hiked ahead and we ended up picking them up on the road so they didn't have to go to the parking lot. The last two miles my lower legs started to ache, but it was overall not bad and I could have done more if needed. My lungs were probably the weakest link in the whole adventure. I was definitely out of breath on the harder stair climbing portions throughout the hike. That night and the next morning (today) I didn't have much soreness. For whatever reason, my body doesn't seem to get too sore when we do these hikes. I think it's a testament to the work I do more than anything else. Even though I don't work in the field as much as I used to, I'm still running around every day staying busy and I think it keeps me in better shape than I would be if I were at my desk all day. Still not in remotely good shape, but better than I would be if I were a desk worker.
  • I definitely feel like it's one of those things where you go up as one person and come down as someone just a little bit different. Any time you face a big challenge and you take it on, you come out a bit stronger. These challenges show you what you're made of, yet keep you in your place at the same time. On the one hand, we made it to the top despite the challenges. On the other hand, when you're at the top looking at the valley below, you're forced to recognize how puny you really are. Even though you may feel like you conquered the mountain or you're a big deal because you had hiked 4 miles before half your peers were even out of bed - you don't even register on a geological scale.
  • From what I heard, there is the possibility that next year the NPS will require a harness for anyone going on the cables. My initial reaction to this was annoyance that the nanny state and safetyism had struck again. Then I got to the cables and I understood the danger there and softened on the idea of requiring everyone to wear a harness. Ultimately, though, I'm firmly against the idea. A couple arguments...1. fewer than 20 people have died on this section in the last 100+ years. If you figure about 200 a day over 100 years (conservative figures), that means about 7.3 million summits and 20 people dead so that's like 3 deaths per million summits (very conservative guess). This doesn't rise to the point of needing to change anything about anything in my opinion. 2. There's something important about the ability to wrestle with the possibility of death every once in a while. Let's not forget who/what we are and what gift we've been given. Let's allow people a few spaces to contend with their mortality and conquer it in some small way. It's a very minor threat in the real world (see point number 1), but it is a threat. Perhaps it's the very fact that death is a real possibility that causes so few people to actually die. Nothing sharpens the mind and focuses your attention like the real possibility of death. In this attention starved world/existence, should we not preserve a space where one can choose to force themselves into full attention? If you want the safety (like the rest of the people in my group), then you can use a harness and there's no judgment from me about that. If you want to rely only on your own abilities to keep you from death, shouldn't you have that option? Isn't Half Dome a great place to do that?
  • The National Parks have been called America's best idea. I may not agree with that literally, but it's certainly on the right track. The national parks are great in part because they preserve some small imitation of nature. They're not actually real nature in totality, for a variety of reasons (though some are more raw nature than others), but they at least approximate it - especially considering modern society. Part of that imitation of nature is the real risk to life and limb. Bears aren't part of a computer program. Neither is the sand covered granite that is so perfect for slipping on your ass. Neither are the rounded granite stones along the Mist trail - every one of them a potential broken ankle. All this needs to be preserved. All this danger and risk is essential. We have so little of it these days since we live in a Nerfed up simulation we call modern life. The signs are there - "danger, steep incline, watch your step." And so is  the occasional guardrail. But the padded walls, mandatory helmets, and paved trails (mostly) aren't. Let's hold the line and keep nature in at least a few places.

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    9/28/22 (16:48)

  • Another school shooting in Oakland today. That's two in the last month or so. Society continues to fall apart.


    • 9/19/22 (08:39)

  • Fact check on fashion industry greenhouse gas output. Not sure where I originally heard the 10% figure, but it seemed well sourced and now More or Less (BBC podcast) is casting doubt on the number so...


    • 9/11/22 (20:52)

  • Went on another hike today. It's becoming a bit of a weekend habit at this point and that's pretty good overall. Nice to get outside and get some exercise. Also nice to bond with the family. It's relaxing, but at the same time we're doing something so I don't get all fidgety. Today we did 9 miles. That's 50 miles total since we restarted our hikes the first week of July. Merritt really doesn't like it when it's hot, but today it was nice and shaded the entire way so she killed it. Zoe is hit or miss and today she wasn't loving it. But both of them did it and I'm very proud of them. I've never been much of a hiker so 9 miles when I was their age would have been unheard of. But we've basically normalized it to the point that when they do complain about long hikes they say they'd prefer to do "short hikes like 5 miles long."
  • A long standing theme of this page has been how both sides of the political world seem to hate each other so much that they can't even accept the basic humanity of the other side or the possibility that their own side could be to blame for anything of real substance. A lot of what I try to do here is to convince the readers that liberals don't have a monopoly on the Truth or virtue. There was a time when I implicitly felt this was the case and then I slowly realized it wasn't. I was having a conversation the other day with a couple liberal Democrats who believe all the usual party line stuff and I played the devil's advocate. Of course this didn't go over very well and I was mocked and chided for doing this. It just reinforced the belief I have that if you don't follow the orthodoxy you will be ostracized. In this case I wasn't even putting forth any really outlandish beliefs. I made a few basic points 1. Democrats are corrupt and don't have a monopoly on political virtue. 2. I don't see a proof of concept in any predominantly Democrat-run places. 3. We can't malign 50% of the country and expect to be a successful country. There were other minor points along the way like when I pointed out Trump did well with the First Step Act or the bump stock ban or I argued that Democrats don't seem to love the country and not loving a place isn't exactly a good recipe for trying to make it better. But I tried to stick to basically the 3 points outlined and it didn't go over all that well.
  • This is basically my experience when I try to have this type of discussion and it doesn't bode well for things. If that's how that conversation goes with someone you know and love/like then how's the same conversation going to go with a stranger? If that's how it goes with the party of love and empathy and acceptance and lawn signs that read "in this house we believe: black lives matter, women's rights are human rights, no human is illegal, science is real, love is love, kindness is everything" then things aren't looking too good. Now have that same conversation with a stranger online. Now have that same conversation with a stranger online 240 characters at a time. We need to shrink our communities and grow some empathy. When the party of love and kindness is nominating Hillary Clinton and cheering when she's calling many Republicans "deplorable" and all the -ists in the book then we're not on the right track. When Joe Biden can't stick with the script and decide if Republicans are all horrible or not, then we're not on the right track. Neither side seems to have values anymore. They simply use them as bludgeons.


    • 9/10/22 (08:56)

  • Toilet line had a clog yesterday. There are two main lines in the house serving two sides of the house. One line serves two bathrooms. The other line serves the kitchen, another bathroom and laundry room sink. The second one was clogged and started backing up into the shower, so that was cool. First thing this morning I got my water jetting system and pressure washer out to clear the line. After she woke up, Merritt came outside to see what I was doing. She quickly changed into her Meryl & Miller shirt and got to helping me (without my asking). I showed her the cleanout and explained how it works and what I thought was happening. It's a two way cleanout so that means you can run a snake or jetter upstream or downstream. I ran water downstream and there was no blockage (as expected). So we decided that the blockage was upstream and ran the jetter that way. A few feet up the line we hit a blockage and started seeing a lot of white water coming down the line. She was holding the flashlight and I explained that all that white water was toilet paper getting broken up and coming back down the line. I broke through that and kept moving up the line until I thought it was clear. I had her stay inside while I flushed the toilet and she gave me the thumbs up that she could see water coming down the line. Ran water through the shower and sink and it was all good. Then I flushed some TP down the toilet and she saw that as well so I got another thumbs up.  Charge for this would normally be about $350, but Merritt and I took care of it in about 45 minutes. After we were done with the hard work, she helped wrap up the hose and take the tools back while I took the heavy stuff. Satisfying all around. In this scenario she's at least as good a helper as my two least skilled guys.
  • Planned obsolescence is usually thought of as a bad thing, but it isn't always. I may have written about this before, but I was thinking about it again today. If the first water heaters ever made lasted 100 years that would be nice in that you'd never have to fork over $2000 for a leaky water heater on a Sunday, but you'd also be more reluctant to replace a working water heater, even if it was horribly inefficient. Same goes for all sorts of items that are improved with time.
  • In a related topic, there is the concept of engineering a thing to last as long as it needs to last, but not much more. So, let's say you have a bottle of shampoo that comes with a pump to dispense the shampoo. That pump needs to last enough to pump out the 20 oz. (or whatever) of shampoo. If you design a pump that lasts long enough to pump 2000 gallons of shampoo then you have cost the company and the consumer extra money for no reason. You can question the wisdom of dispensers with shampoo or the lack of easy refilling in these cases, but that's another topic. At the Davis Co-op we had bulk item dispensers so that you could refill your containers from home and that was nice to a point, but also somewhat of a pain depending upon what you were filling up and how much of those items you needed, etc. You could envision a shampoo dispenser designed to dispense 2000 gallons, but then they sold bags of shampoo that used less plastic and allowed you to fill up your bottle every once in a while, for example. Less packaging is a good thing, but the point remains that there are certain items for which it makes no sense to overengineer due to the lifespan of the total product.
  • Another related thought is in home construction. There are a lot of ways to skin a cat with any number of projects. Tile, for whatever reason, gets a lot of debate and there are a million products out there and I've looked into many of them and I've looked into the TCNA and and NATC guidelines and read all sorts of opinions and approaches on the best way to lay tile. But something that doesn't get a lot of consideration in laying all this stuff out is that people in many houses will be retiling their bathroom every 20-40 years....sometimes much less depending upon the homeowner, style, etc. This is incredibly wasteful and I've written about that elsewhere. But the issue is when designing your construction method should you be building for something that won't ever be taken apart, or should you keep in mind the next generation of builders who will have to deal with your install in 20-40 years? Should you glue and screw everything like crazy or is there an equally suitable construction method that also can be demolished without great difficulty or reconstruction? So, if you could design a tile job that allows you to just demo the tile and not go down to the studs, I would prefer to do that. So, instead of putting thinset under your backerboard when doing floor tile, you could just screw it down and that way the next person behind you wouldn't need to spend hours taking off the subfloor or scraping thinset off the old subfloor. Same goes for gluing down wood flooring onto plywood, which is an absolute nightmare to demo.

    • In other words, consider the intended lifespan and then engineer your solution with that in mind. Kids shoes could be another example - no reason to build them to last 10 years when they will outgrow them in a year anyway. Passing down from generation to generation is an option, but less so when you're averaging 2 kids per house instead of 6.

    8/30/22 (18:04)

  • Business has slowed a lot lately. Usually a little slower in the summer, but this is worse than normal. Definitely a slowing economy on the real estate front. Home sales are down and prices are slumping as well. If you have a place that is in good shape and ready to go then you can still get a decent price and won't languish on the market. Hopefully things get better by the time we're ready to sell. Hopefully we can keep jobs coming in to keep the guys busy.
  • A day in my life basically looks like this:
  • Wake up at 6 and answer emails and do the wordle or check youtube/news, etc.
  • Out the door between 7-730a, sometimes earlier if we have a lot going on, but usually it's in that range.
  • Set the guys up and run errands.
  • Work on whatever job site needs the most work/supervision.
  • Run all over town getting supplies, checking new jobs, checking potential jobs, going to the bank,
  • Home between 4-6p.
  • Family time and dinner.
  • Girls are in bed at 8p.
  • Time with Meryl until she goes to bed, usually about 9.
  • Additional work or relaxing time until 11p or so.
  • The things that keep me up at night are: selling enough work to keep the guys busy and executing the job without issues.
  • The things that bug me the most: shitty customers, insurance and other red tape stuff that slows everything down and I have little to no control over.
  • I went to look at a couple jobs today. One is a tenant improvement job where they have been living there for two years and want part of the place repainted. They kept complaining about how awful the place was and I kept wondering what the problem was. I mean there are some (light) scuff marks on the walls, but they were acting like it was a big deal. People are so picky.
  • If people actually thought that global warming was an existential threat they wouldn't act the way they do. Their actions reveal their real beliefs. If you actually believed such a thing then maybe you wouldn't have kids or have people make special trips to your apartment to paint a couple lightly scuffed up walls. Maybe they would support nuclear power. Maybe they wouldn't fly all over the place or eat meat. At least I'm consistent in this way. I think global warming is real and is a threat, but I don't think it will wipe out half the population by 2100 or anything like that. I think there are bigger fish to fry. I'm also a cheap skate which means I try to consume less and, thus, am better on the global warming dimension than many others. That said, I do a job for others that can be very wasteful and needlessly consumptive (?). Some of the projects I do for people make no sense to me.
  • "Fashion is responsible for 10 percent of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions and 20 percent of global wastewater, and uses more energy than the aviation and shipping sectors combined."
  • Being self-centered in your thought can go the Trump way where all you really care about is yourself and you're essentially a horrible person (my neighbor is like this also). But it can also go a much more socially productive way which is when you think about your role in society and in your life outcomes much more. This is opposed to thinking you have no role in how things turn out and are merely a leaf blowing in the wind. If you think about your role and how you might be the one determining the outcomes of your life and those around you, it could be very useful. It's a different kind of self-centeredness than you usually consider.
  • I think I've written about learned helplessness before. It's a real phenomenon and it's been written and podcasted about plenty of times. Basically people are taught they have no agency and so they have no agency. They can either learn this through early experiences or through repeatedly being told they have no power (abusive relationship is one example). I would argue that repeatedly telling people that they don't have power doesn't help them. Our education system basically does this with certain groups of people and it doesn't seem to be helping.
  • In this vein...a Hidden Brain episode about framing your reality and how the ways in which we frame our experiences has a profound influence on our outcomes and mental health and ability to have agency in the future.


    • 8/18/22 (22:09)

  • In KS they didn't vote to ban all abortions. This is exactly what I was interested in seeing. Once the hubbub dies down and worrying about bans across the entire country settles a bit...the real work of real governance kicks in. So, in this one case anyway, moderation seems to have won...and it was in Kansas. So, there's some hope despite what the MSM would have you think.
  • In the next 10 years or so, local and state governments will need to figure out what they want to do on the issue and be held accountable accordingly.
  • If the Democrats were smart they would have ballot measures on abortion on as many ballots as possible. This would turn out the vote, and turning out a midterm vote is always a problem for them. You know, because systemic racism and voter suppression is strangely overactive every other election cycle for some reason. Still haven't figured that out. It couldn't possibly be that Democratic voters aren't all that into voting every 2 years and are only really motivated by scare tactics and presidential elections. Definitely not that.
  • School districts ask why your kid missed school so they can determine if it's an "excused" absence. I think this communicates a misunderstanding on their part - it's not them who decides whether an absence is excused - it's the parents. Ask why they're leaving early or why they missed school all you want, it's not really your business unless my kids are coming to school bruised or missing dozens of days a year. Other than that, maybe you should focus on something else.
  • Why do teachers support their unions? A teachers' union is supposed to do 2 things in a perfect world - 1. look out for their union members and 2. look out for the students. Considering the fact that most teachers complain about their salaries and benefits, it doesn't look like the unions are exactly crushing directive #1. Considering our students are consistently underperforming and being left behind, I'd say that #2 is an unmitigated disaster at this point. I guess they fear that without the unions they would be making even less money?
  • Teachers need to hold their unions and underperforming colleagues accountable, just like we expect of dirty cops. None of this thin blue line shit. Throw the bums under the bus. Addition by subtraction. Accountability is paramount. We're running out of time.

    • There are no guarantees in life. It should be obvious. I think most people agree with it, but few seem to take it seriously and hold it front and center in their thinking. Often, life is about increasing your odds. People think that if they do the right thing that they'll be rewarded as if life is an equation. It's not...because there are no guarantees in life. You keep plugging away and doing the right things and hope that the odds will be on your side in the long run. Usually they are, but there are no guarantees in life. Entropy wins in the end, but we can put up a good fight in the meantime.

    7/27/22 (14:21)

  • A month ago Planet Money had a podcast about the "recession referees," which is the first time I heard that there was such a thing. I always thought it was a cut and dried distinction - 2 consecutive quarters of negative growth = recession. Nice and simple. But as soon as I heard that there were referees who officially label the recession it made me think that they would try to game the system this time around. I figured that since unemployment is low and we're coming out of a pandemic, they would probably play politics with it and call it a "slowing recovery" or some other (probably more creative) Orwellian bullshit. We'll see tomorrow when the official numbers come out, but I'm sure they've been working on this for a while. They continue to lay the groundwork: "The administration’s message: what’s often called a “technical recession” isn’t necessarily a real one." source.


    • 7/26/22 (16:20)

  • During our trip to Mammoth we found out that our offer on a new property was accepted. I'll rewind a bit...
  • We've been looking for a new place to live for about 3 years and made 3 offers in that time, but it's never worked out. Originally our plan was to have one big warehouse that could hold all the staging furniture, my shop/work materials and tools, and our living space. We currently have 2500sf for living space and our office, which is more than enough for that so we were looking at probably downsizing to about 2,000sf for living area, 2,000sf for my shop/work space, and 2,000sf for the staging storage. When we first hatched this plan I think Meryl had one or two storage units worth of stuff and it totaled maybe 500sf, so 2000sf sounded like more than enough. We we were looking for 6-10k sf of space and we came up empty for about a year. Our first real hit was a 10k space that had two warehouses and a living space on site, as well as gated parking. Basically seemed perfect, but we were outbid after dragging our feet a bit because of existing tenants living there and the complications that would bring.
  • Then we found another place that was like 22k sf and it was way outside of our price range, but it had some commercial tenants and we felt like we could optimize those spaces more to the point where we could charge more and it would make up for the gap between the cost and what we could afford. Even with that in mind, we had to buy it for about 10% less than it was offered at so we tried for that and our bid was rejected because it was too low.
  • After this one didn't work out we amended our plan to splitting the spaces. Try to find one warehouse for the staging stuff (which was growing all the time) and one warehouse/space for our living area and my work area combined. The staging space didn't really need to be on the same property and this new strategy would open up the number of eligible properties. By this time we were renting like 7 storage units and the lack of security, rising monthly costs, and inaccessibility of the units (the storage place was often closed because of maintenance issues, etc.and, at best, was only open 7a-7p anyway) all led us to think we would need more than the initial 2,000 sf of space anyway.
  • Then we found the warehouse on Miller (fortuitous location). 7200 sf and in good enough shape to make it work for the staging stuff. For a minute Meryl thought we should move into this warehouse and make it all work there. But we had so much staging stuff that there was no way that was going to work. Also, it's in a shitty neighborhood so I don't think either of us would want to live there.
  • The 4th place we found had the best location of the bunch and wasn't a warehouse (it was more like a home that was renovated into an office) and the plan was to convert it into a home upstairs and a workspace downstairs. We had an accepted offer with the contingency that we wait for them to find a new office. A month or so went by and they didn't find anything. We realized that we could potentially be on the hook for many months and decided to back out. We offered again on the property later on thinking that maybe they had figured out where they were going to move, but they hadn't so we gave up on that one.
  • Then the 5th place came up. That's the place we're in contract on now. It's about 5500 sf over 3 "buildings." One is an old ice house up front that's used by a GC as an office. The second "building" is more of a shed and it's used as tool storage for the GC. The third building is a post and beam building that's about 3750 sf that's used as a maker workshop of sorts. It has fenced in parking as well. The entire time we've been looking only in Oakland and Alameda. We like Alameda, but it's more expensive and generally doesn't have these kinds of properties. It would also require the girls changing schools, but they seem fine with that.
  • So, that's the biggest news of the last month or so. It's not official yet, but it's looking good. It will be a large project and we'll have to do it with permits mostly because Alameda isn't Oakland and Oakland de facto doesn't care about laws. Alameda does care about laws which is nice if you're going to live there, but less easy if you're going to be converting a commercial space to a live/work space and need to integrate egress, etc. on a challenging property with a zero lot line and potential seismic upgrades, etc. At any rate, we'll do what we need to do to get it considered a residence and then make it work like we want after the smoke has cleared from that process. In the meantime we'll be carrying 3 properties and trying to push the design process forward as quickly as possible.
  • I like the concept of revealed preference. Basically, people say they want to eat vegetables or whatever and that's fine and dandy, but what actually matters is what they actually buy/eat. So, you look at what they buy and that reveals their actual preference. Society may say they want the WNBA to thrive, but the revealed preference is that they would rather watch the NBA or Real Housewives of Miami. Real Housewives, for example, has ratings twice that of the WNBA finals games. Go into a local bodega in a shitty part of town and see what actually sells. They usually will have a few bananas or apples and 10x as many candies. It's not because they have a limited shelf life. It's because basically no one buys them so why would they have more?
  • At what point is it reasonable to show skepticism of the institutions that we're supposed to trust? How many things do they need to get wrong in order for it to be acceptable amongst the elite intelligensia to doubt what they say? 2 weeks to stop the spread, Herd immunity will kick in at 60% or 80%. Vaccines will prevent you from getting the virus. Vaccines will stop you from spreading the virus. Masks don't work. Masks are necessary. Even cloth masks will help. Masks aren't for you, they're for others. Masks don't help others, but they help you. Only n95 masks work. We're having some "breakthrough cases". Vaccines don't work anymore so you need a booster. Now you need another booster. This variant (delta) is worse than the original. This variant (omicron) is even worse. This variant (BA.4) is even worse. This variant (BA.5) is the worst one yet. At what point do these declarations just become noise from a dying beast? When can you have these conversations in polite society and not be considered a pariah?
  • I have a prediction spreadsheet I started a while back, but I don't add to is at much as I should. One of my predictions is that by 2023 we will have had a recession. I also predict by that time that inflation will be back to 4%. Core inflation is at 9.1% now and it was 8.7% the time before that so it's going the wrong direction. But I think the supply chain stuff will get figured out, the bull whip effect will slow down, and aggressive Fed policy will tamp down demand. That's my guess for the next 18 months or so.
  • Each day I start out by listening to the NYT daily podcast. Usually I also listen to the Megyn Kelly podcast at some point. During the January 6th hearings it was actually a perfect contrast. NYT would say that there were damning revelations and that Trump was basically a stark raving mad lunatic who tried to attack secret service agents and drive the car off the road. He didn't care about the guns being brought to the protests, etc. Then MK would say that it was a show trial and that the witnesses were flawed and exaggerating and their stories weren't corroborated by secret service personnel and that none of them were cross-examined because the hearing isn't a real trial, but it's being portrayed as such. And there was a lot of hand waving and complaints about the process. As far as conservative news goes, she's one of the more fair mainstream ones (which is why I have the show in my feed). It's pretty sad that this is where we are with things.
  • Home Depot started off with the idea that it would be like a huge supply house, but with friendly staff and entirely open to the public. The problem with supply houses has historically been that they are gruff and difficult to deal with. You need to know what you want and ask for it in the right way or they might roll their eyes, etc. You might not know exactly what you need or what it's called (I still don't with some plumbing or mechanical fittings) and that introduces friction into the process. Art Blank had a great idea with Home Depot and I think it started off pretty well. And, actually, it still pretty good in some locations if they take it seriously and hire the right staff. Unfortunately, it's quite shitty in many of the locations around me. Even though the employees don't know anything and the stock is not well rotated or often lacking, I know it well enough that I can use the app to find where things are supposed to be or I can find things in overstock myself and it suits my needs well enough 90% of the time. Lately, however, it's becoming more like a supply house where more and more items are "behind the counter." It's not the same as a supply house where things are actually behind the counter...instead they are behind a locked gate or similar because people steal so much shit. So, you need to hunt down an employee and get them to open it up for you and take it to the front and then retrieve there upon checkout. Thus making the full circle from supply house, to open supply house, to closed supply house minus helpful/knowledgeable employees. At least they're still cheap. I guess if enough stuff gets stolen they'll have to raise their prices and then they'll just be a shitty supply house. Funny how it works.
  • To Art Blank's credit, in his book he talks about the importance of customer service and having knowledgeable employees, but they clearly drifted away from that over the years.


    • 7/6/22 (17:11)

  • Went to Mammoth mountain for my birthday. There were some grumpy moments, but it was good overall. The girls hiked to the summit and I'm really proud of them. 5 miles, 2,000' elevation gain from 9k ft. to 11,053'. Took 2.5 hours and when we got to the top I could tell they were proud of themselves, especially after finding out from the ranger that only 1% of people hike to the top (most take the gondola [$50/person]) and that the ranger was very impressed they could do it after acclimating to the elevation for less than a day. Definitely more than I ever did at that age, so I give them a lot of credit. On the other end of the age spectrum, the fact that I was able to do it without soreness gave me some hope for the future.
  • Now that abortion is officially a state by state decision (notice I didn't say illegal), it will be interesting to see how things shake out. There will be a few states that try to truly make it illegal in every form and they'll have to be held accountable by the voters for that one way or another. As I've pointed out before, this isn't a gender issue as the polling I've seen on the issue generally has women more pro-life than men. It will be interesting to see where the rubber hits the road and how some of the more moderate states land on the issue. I've pointed out before that the US was one of the most liberal countries in the world on abortion rights. After this, there will probably be a plurality of states that are closer to France, Germany, etc. which restrict abortion to 12-15 weeks unless there are extenuating circumstances. Tactically, like the pro-gun nuts, I think the pro-abortion nuts made an error by taking a very hard line on the issue. Had, a moderate Democrat staked out a moderate position on abortion and enshrined it into law then maybe we wouldn't be where we are today. I've written before about some compromise solutions on the issue, but I honestly almost never hear any pundits talking about solutions that could appease both sides. It makes sense to me that birth control could be free or highly subsidized, family planning services and counseling could be a part of that. A cap at 15 weeks could be part of that. Anyway, I've thrown out some good ideas in the past to find common ground, but we're not able to do that anymore so it is what it is.
  • One talking point that comes up a lot is exceptions for rape or incest. This seems like a pro-choice talking point that doesn't actually make much sense. First of all, how much of an issue is incest? What percentage of abortions 1 year ago were because of incest? It's like trans activists talking about intersex people, who are like 0.1% of all people. It's a device employed to make the other side seem horrible. So incest is a dumb thing to bring up as far as I can tell.
  • How about rape? Let's game this out...let's say you can't get an abortion because you live in Alabama, but they decide to listen to the pro-choice crowd and put in an exception for rape or incest. The outcome of this would be a surge in rape and incest. All the people who would be getting abortions normally will simply state that they got drunk and had sex with their brother or whatever and so they need an abortion. Or they'll say they were raped and need an abortion. Will there be mandatory paternity testing with this exception? Pro-choice advocates would fight that. But without it, the exception for incest is pointless. Again, incest is a dumb argument. Back to rape... how does this exception play out in the real world? A woman comes in and says she was raped and then she is granted an abortion? So, that "exception" becomes de facto legalized abortion. If you are a pro-life person with half a brain then of course you couldn't allow such an exception...unless you required some proof. But, again, the pro-choice advocates would never want to allow that. How does one prove it was rape? Do I need to get a court to adjudicate the matter? How long would that take? Do I need to at least report the rape to the local authorities? Then what happens? The cops who don't like abortion will lose the paperwork or take forever processing it and so the abortion clinic won't have the required "proof" that the pregnancy was the result of rape and the woman won't be able to get her abortion in time. There's no way people of either side would give in on these issues, and understandably so.
  • All this is to say that the realities of the rape and incest exception are impossible and totally impracticable. It's just a device used by pro-choice pundits to make the pro-life people look like assholes.
  • I should interject here to say that I'm pro-choice in the first 15 weeks (somewhat arbitrary number) no problem. After that I have some reservations and would want to talk about it some more, but I'm not a pro-lifer. Having said that, it's very easy for me to see how each side plays this stupid game and how they don't talk to each other to gain understanding, but rather yell at each other because they hate the other side.
  • There are some people who claim they like diversity and multi-culturalism. I think these people need to really sit with the idea that happiness is not a guarantee in life. Life is suffering (for the Buddhists out there). Life is compromise. You shouldn't expect to be happy. On these big issues there will necessarily be about 50% of the people who will be dissatisfied if the other gets their way. The best we can hope for is that 100% of the people are only moderately dissatisfied. I'm somewhat of a pessimist so I don't expect great things in life and I don't expect happiness. Find a way to be only moderately dissatisfied in your political life and you'll end up being happier and actually living in the diverse culture you claim to want.
  • Diversity is your neighbor parking his 1980 station wagon on his lawn and your other neighbor mowing his lawn in a speedo while you have a pristine paint job and brand new driveway. Diversity is having your black neighbor flying a Trump/Pence flag while your lesbian neighbor has a Bernie lawn sign. I don't know how many people actually like that kind of diversity.
  • Back on the abortion issue...the other thing that will be interesting to see play out is how much abortion being illegal ends up actually mattering. My guess is that abortion pills will only get easier to acquire with time as back channels open up. Corporations like Tesla, Disney, Chase, Netflix, and others have said they will pay for travel for employees to get abortions if they live in a state that restricts them.
  • I think laws should come with explanations. It could be like a wikipedia article with hyperlinks and such so you could learn more about each topic or idea along the way. It would be easy enough to implement such a system, but it would require the will to do it. We have this in an informal way where you can read court decisions, but it's not compiled in any sort of user friendly way. You could even do it with social norms, if you were so inclined. For example, let's say there's a law against people having kids without getting married. The law would be required to first state its larger purpose. It's not simply about restricting an activity, it's about restricting an activity because society has found that the activity causes problems 1, 2, and 3. You would have to list the problems and provide some proof of those problems being associated with the activity you are seeking to outlaw. The deeper into the law you go, the more information or evidence could be provided.
  • The purpose of such a format is two-fold: 1. I want the lawmakers to think about the law they are making and be explicit in its intent. 2. I want future people to be able to see the reasoning, as laid out by the lawmakers themselves, for the law.
  • Some laws kind of do this already. Some court decisions help flesh this out. But it doesn't seem to be standard practice to do this in an intentional way. There are plenty of laws that are later challenged and require interpretation because the law isn't clear in its intentions. Sometimes historians will look at the contemporary debates over the issue or at documents like the Federalist Papers to interpret intentions of a law or the Constitution, for example. But it seems it would be much better to have the lawmakers interpret their own law the way judges and historians do after the fact.

    • I also think that laying it out like wikipedia article complete with links and evidence and the like makes it more user friendly and invites the public in somewhat. Thinking of Chesterton's fence, I also like the idea of each law (fence) being essentially labeled as to its purpose. The idea of Chesterton's fence essentially says one shouldn't remove a fence unless he knows what the purpose of the fence is first.

    6/25/22 (12:59)

  • Driving on the freeway the other day on the way to a job and saw some trouble up ahead. Slowed down and pulled over since it looked there was a recent crash. Jogged over and they were just pulling out one kid (age 8?) from the window. I checked on him and everything seemed okay, just a couple scratches from glass on his hands. Other kid (age 10?) was on the shoulder crying, but he looked okay. Holding his stomach, probably from the seat belt pinching him. The first guy there asked me if I was from around here and I said yes so he gave me his phone and I told the operator where we were so she dispatched CHP. Ran back towards my car to get my first aid kit. I also got the bag of garbage out of the first lane and threw it onto the shoulder - this is apparently what caused the accident...she swerved out of the way of the bag at highway speed and rolled the car over in the process. Gave the mom and smaller kid some band-aids and helped him put it on his fingers. Talked with them a bit and told them they were really lucky and everything would be okay. CHP got there pretty fast and I left once they arrived. Glad it turned out better this time around.

    • 6/24/22 (16:16)

  • Back to a normal level of busy so that's nice. More around the bend, but nothing as crazy as the last couple months. Having a deadline for all those jobs was really the difficult part. When you're working for a homeowner and they just want it done there is more flexibility than working for an agent and homeowner who are expecting it done by a certain date in order to get the house on the market.
  • Edwin is back working with us. After I let him go I asked if he wanted to work with me while he looked for a new job and he said no. (I think out of pride). But later on he said he would like to work this month while he finds a job. I said okay, but 1. he has to pay back what he owes Carlos and me and 2. it would only be for June. His work has been a lot better the last couple weeks so hopefully he's learned how to work and will keep up the effort. Most recently he's said he wants to keep working for me if I will let him. I told him it comes down to him doing a good job. He said he'll give his best effort. So, long story short, he's back on the crew for now and his debts are paid. Showing up and caring about the job you do gets you like 80% of the way there.
  • One thing I've struggled with is how pay raises should work. Do people earn raises just because the cost of living is going up? That makes sense to me. That's historically been about 2% a year if you believe the official numbers. So, what about beyond that? If one guy tries hard and is able to do tile and electrical and plumbing fairly well should he make more than the guy who tries equally hard, but can only do paint and drywall? I can certainly charge more for the first guy. How about if one guy has two kids and the other guy doesn't have any? I think the communist point of view is that everyone is equally deserving despite their abilities so all those guys should get the same wage. I guess I'm too much of capitalist, though, because I think the more you produce the more you get. That's how it works for me as the owner and that's how I think it should work for the employees. In the end, though, this means that low IQ/skill people will invariably get paid less and that just is what it is. I think everyone who contributes to society in a consistent and valuable way should be assured a wage that will take care of all their needs. I think we're advanced enough to be able to make that pledge. The problem is when people take that as "I exist therefore I deserve all these things (and the list of things always seems to grow - food, healthcare, shelter, internet, cell phone, transit, etc.).
  • So, for Edwin, if he continues to put forth the effort then he'll get COLA increases in wage, but probably not much more. He just hasn't been able to learn how to do more complicated stuff. If he studied youtube videos in his spare time then maybe he'd advance, but I don't think he's doing any of that. There's a ceiling for him unless he changes his approach. He'll make a living, but he'll always have to work and probably will never buy a house in this market. Nothing wrong with any of that, imo, but it's the reality of things.
  • Looking into IRA contributions for the guys so we'll see how that goes.


    • 6/7/22 (21:57)

  • Today was as shitty as yesterday. Don't really see an end in sight in terms of getting a hold on the amount of work we have. I could work 12 hours a day for 6 days a week and still wouldn't catch up...I know because that's what I've been doing. Put some feelers out to see if anyone knows anyone looking for work and nothing real promising so far.


    • 6/6/22 (21:37)

  • Zoe's birthday, but otherwise was a pretty difficult day.
  • Been swamped with more work than we can handle and it's just impossible to help everyone out. Lots of big jobs and now lots of little jobs are piling up. One of the more annoying things is when we have a big job and the people hiring us say it requires items 1-15...over the course of the next few weeks we accomplish all 15 items and then, close to completion, or after completion, they add items 16-20. It happens all the time and I don't know how to avoid it. Since we have so much work going on it creates an issue because we're supposed to be done with that job and moving onto the next one, but we can't because we're kinda locked into the old job even though the original scope has been completed. New and old customers alike don't understand how to define the total scope up front and stick to it. Part of the problem is that often there will be new decision makers entering the process as the project progresses. It depends upon the project, but let's say for a commercial or residential rental, the realtor or property manager will say we want items 1-10 completed and as we are working on items 9 and 10 the leasing manager will stop by and she adds items 11 and 12. Then the unit goes on the market and as more people come through (including the business/individual who ends up renting the place), items 13-16 will get added. So, a 10 item job turns into a 16 item job. Items 11-16 might be a lot smaller and yet somehow more annoying than all the other previous items, as well. This shit drives me nuts to no end. So inefficient.
  • Last week I told the guys we'll work Memorial Day. Edwin told me at the night before that his car isn't working so he can't work. So, the rest of the week I set him up working with his brother so he could get a ride. He had all week to get his car fixed and taken care of. He said he would work Saturday so I told him where to go Saturday. Friday night at almost 10p he tells me he can't work Saturday because his car is getting work done and someone wants to buy it. I told him he should find another job. 3 years he's been working for me, borrowing money from me all the time, ruining my tools, losing materials, etc. and I just couldn't deal with it anymore. He's a nice guy, but his work ethic is crap and he takes the job for granted so I'm done working with him. Made me sad to do it, but I think it's been a long time coming.
  • I've had to let a few people go and it's never a fun thing to do, but it's just the nature of business. It's amazing to me that showing up ready to work is so difficult for so many people.
  • I talked to Jesus about it and he told me he was upset with Edwin for not taking care of his job. He told Edwin that he has a good job and should take care of it. I don't want to toot my own horn, but I think I'm pretty easy to have as a boss. I teach things as needed. I expect you to show up and work. I almost never keep guys overtime and always pay if I do. I never make guys pay for breaking shit or messing things up. I always keep them busy, even if it means paying them to work on my house. I give no interest loans without any issue. I gave Edwin budget advice and offered to go over his budget line by line if he wanted (since he always had to borrow money). I do expect people to show up as close to 100% of the time as possible. I do expect people to stay busy (no standing around watching others work). I do expect you to follow the directions I give (especially after the 10th time).
  • So, we're super busy and we're down one man now. I also had Eli (Edwin's nephew) working for us. I told him about two weeks ago that I had at least a month's worth of work for him because he asked how much work I could give him. He doesn't have a car so I planned on having him work with people who could give him a ride, instead of plugging him in wherever it was most convenient for me. Early on I said I would also be willing to lend him some money so that he could get a car if that's something he wanted. A couple weeks later he asked how much I would lend him and I asked if he had a car in mind. He said no, but he was thinking $5-10k. I said maybe I could help with $3k. "if you make $1k/week then it would take you 10 weeks just to pay me back even if you didn't spend any money." He had been working with me about 3 weeks at this time...I just don't get it. At any rate, the next week we are working and he shows me that his phone is broken and he asks where we will work tomorrow because he doesn't think his phone will be working. I tell him which job we'll be at and I'll see you tomorrow. He never shows up. Two weeks later he texts me from a different phone number and asks if I have any work for him. I tell him no.
  • Two weeks ago I had 2 guys more than I have today. Time to hire.
  • I just don't understand.
  • I remember working at the library in college and there was a supervisor position open. A promotion from my clerk job, it paid like $0.50/hr more or something and it meant you were responsible for closing (iirc). I applied and had an interview scheduled. I slept in and totally forgot about it. Got a call from my manager and she asked what happened. I told her I forgot about it and was sorry...could I reschedule? She said no. I felt bad. Stayed at the job and a while later the position opened up again and so I got another bite at the apple. Applied, scheduled interview, got the job the second time around. It was good that she didn't let me reschedule the first time around. People don't learn unless it's painful. Or, at least, pain teaches lessons quickest.
  • Speaking of painful lessons...Did some kitchen demo taking out the tile floor in a kitchen in a vacant home. Moved the appliances out of the room and into the adjacent dining room. Turn off the valve for the ice maker line and the sink faucet. Keeps dripping a bit so I cap the valve for the sink faucet, put the ice maker hose in a bucket, and turn off the water at the main. Come back a few days later and water is everywhere in the kitchen. Turn on the fan and clean up the water. Open the hose bib and let water out. This time the hose bib is left on so the extra water (which is apparently getting by the main valve) can just leak out at the lowest point. Someone apparently sees the hose bib dripping and closes it. Come back a few days alter and water is everywhere in the kitchen again. This time I see that the adjacent laminate flooring has soaked up some of the water and is damaged beyond repair. Did it get damaged the first time and I didn't notice? No idea, but the effect is the same.
  • I had the flooring guy come by today and he says getting this flooring is a needle in a haystack. Best option is to steal some from bedroom and put it in the dining room and we'll redo the entire bedroom with best possible match. This will cost me thousands. I turned off the local valves. I capped the valve. I put the other line in a bucket. I turned off the water. The second time around I even left the hose bibb on to let all the extra water go out...none of this was sufficient and now I'll pay through the nose for it. Not worth involving insurance (basically never is).
  • What should I have done instead? Well, the first day when I left i was in a hurry to get to the dump before they closed. I should have gone all the way back to the jobsite (on a Saturday night) and replaced the valves or capped them more thoroughly. I should have worked 75 hours that week instead of 72. I don't know. It's a hard knock life I guess.
  • There's been some buzz around the question "what is a woman?" There's a documentary out, and when Ketanji Brown Jackson said she couldn't define a woman because she wasn't a Biologist it kinda put some wind in the sails of the whole issue. This is where people just can't get out of their own way. If the Left would just answer the question like normal people then it wouldn't be an issue. Instead, they insist on "being inclusive" (a good impulse) and it is to their detriment when being inclusive means not being able to answer a question that 99% of the world has no issue answering in a straightforward manner.
  • Some return to sanity from the extremes holding the two dominant political parties hostage would be nice.
  • I was driving down E. 12th street the other day and within about two minutes I came across an absolute parade of shit that you would normally only see in a post-apocalyptic film. First the usual stuff lined the streets - graffiti, burned out cars, cars on bricks because all their wheels were stolen, cars with missing engines, RVs being lived in by multiple people, RVs with makeshift plywood walls on top of the actual roof in order to create a second floor, etc. Then, as I drive down the wide 4 lane road there are 2 cars going in the opposite direction that have stopped in the middle of the road to talk to each other while blocking traffic. Then several seconds ahead there's a head on collision where people are milling about and no emergency personnel on site. Then another few blocks ahead and there's a shitty beat up truck that has lost its load of cardboard in the middle of the street. I have not embellished this at all. This was an actual drive I took down the street the other day and it was a glorious window into the realities of modern city living.
  • BTW, why are the people who salvage cardboard for $ almost always asian?
  • Tried fixing the drop down archive menu by reverting to and old copy and it didn't work. So...javascript no longer supported I guess. Tried Microsoft edge and it works. Chrome and it doesn't. Must be another "upgrade."


    • 5/31/22 (20:24)

  • The Uvalde shooting has been in the news lately. When there's a bombing or terrorist attack I've heard some Muslims secretly praying that it wasn't a Muslim guy. Well, when it's a mass shooting I'm praying it isn't a white guy. It's just such a dumb narrative, but that's where we are with all the race stuff these days.
  • The issue of guns is obviously in the media cycle now and nothing is likely to happen even though Democrats are in charge of the executive and both houses of Congress. I'm not a staunch 2A guy and I've written plenty of times before about my thoughts about the issue...basically I think guns are another tool and they get maligned by people who have never even seen one, much less used one. It's amazing how many reporters and anti-gun people admit that they have panic attacks around guns. It's a piece of metal. I don't get the overreaction, but whatever. Actually, I do. It's about ignorance. They don't understand how it works or that it can be used for a variety of things and so they freak out. I think people have the right to hunt for food or sport. I think people have the right to protect themselves.
  • At any rate, I think the laws need to reflect the seriousness of the power that comes with having a gun. It should be difficult to acquire a gun. Also, if you're serious about people dying from guns then you should be talking about handguns, not long guns like the much maligned AR-15. Hand guns kill many more people than long guns (I think it's like 9:1). Also, most gun homicides are not mass shooting type events. They are gang related or drug related or domestic dispute related. Basically, it's people who know each other who are taking it to the ultimate level. I don't think that changing the gun laws will do much to lower gun homicide. Oddly, criminals don't follow the law. There are some interesting ideas around requiring insurance or going after gun shops that sell to people who then use the gun in a crime. So, on the margin, there are some things we can do to address the issue, but I'm not super hopeful that any of it will be helpful.
  • Of the last 3 presidents, I believe that Trump is the only one to have actually passed any gun restrictions. So, if you care about gun control, perhaps you should applaud Trump. After the Las Vegas mass shooting he passed a ban on bump stocks. I don't think Obama or Biden did anything of substance.
  • Anyway, we need fewer idiots with guns. I'd like to focus on the idiots part of the equation, but I'm not opposed to working on the guns part of the equation at the same time.
  • Other news is that there's a shortage of baby formula. There are some people who don't even try to breast feed and I find this absolutely baffling. But there are some who don't produce enough or it's super painful or for a variety of other reasons they need formula. So this is obviously a big deal and it's another example of G(overnment) meddling and ruining the market. We effectively have 4 producers of formula providing milk for the entire country. G effectively shut down the biggest one (for justifiable reasons) and now we're fucked. This is why having core principles that guide governance is so important. One of those core principals has to be simple stuff like "don't put all your eggs in one (or four) basket(s)." Honestly, if you just govern by aphorisms you're probably 80% of the way there. Sometimes aphorisms conflict and so you need some common sense, critical thinking, localized knowledge, etc. to make a decision, but aphorisms are aphorisms for a reason. They are collective knowledge passed down through the generations. This is a de facto conservative principle, though conservatives don't do a good job of communicating this fact.
  • If you dig into this particular G fuck up you see that G restricted foreign competition (for supposed safety reasons...safetyism fucks us again), they made it onerous to enter into the market (again because of safety)...they highly regulated every aspect of the production and distribution, and, via WIC, they made it so that whatever producer won the WIC business on the state level became the primary provider and thus gave that company got a near monopoly. They effectively claimed they were doing it all to be as safe as possible and reduced competition and increased barrier to entry in the process.
  • With all these issues the particulars are interesting, but usually not all that unique or important. The general is more important. Usually what happens when you reduce competition is you have fewer firms competing over the same number of consumers and the consumers pay the price. Either in higher prices or inferior product. Often the reduction in competition comes as a result of increased barrier to entry via increased regulation. There's a reason FB/Meta wants regulation - not only does it put the ball out of their court, it also raises the bar for entry so startups are less able to compete. G claims they are doing this in our best interest, and they may even believe their own rhetoric. Unfortunately the principle holds that if you decrease competition, the people get screwed. If you put your eggs in fewer baskets, the people get screwed. The important thing when it comes to monopolies isn't if Google or Apple dominates the market, it's the ease with which their excess profits can be competed away. Business is hard enough as it is, but when G makes it even harder, capital allocators will just take their money elsewhere and competition will wither. Allow and encourage competition and the people win. Allow and encourage competition and monopolies won't last.
  • It's pretty hilarious to me that there are a lot of atheist liberal people who claim there is a God, but they don't realize they're making that argument. Let me rewind...The contention is that AI will eventually get so powerful and realistic that you could be in a simulation and not even realize it....basically the same as The Matrix. These same people will then say that since this AI and computing power is essentially inevitable that it means it's much more likely that it's already happened and we are living in one of those simulations than that we are actual real people living outside of a simulation. In other words, 200 years from now computers and AI will be so advanced that any 16 year old will have access to a Sim City like engine that could create an entire world. In this reality there will be thousands, or millions, or billions of simulations running. The likelihood that we are living in one of those simulations is much higher than that we are living in the real life that we think.
  • All this is to say that yes, there is intelligent design and there is a God. It's just that intelligent design is some computer program and God is whatever kid is running the game of this Sim world.
  • I think I've talked about this many times before, but it seems fitting here. There's the horseshoe theory of politics that posits that, on some issues, the left and the right ends are actually closer together than the middle (imagine that they are the ends of the horseshoe that almost meets at the bottom of the upside down U). It's not a great way of explaining the political spectrum, but it's a theory. I think there could be said to be a similar phenomenon with intelligence. Sometimes people are so smart that they actually become pretty close to being dumb. Fed Reserve chair people are a good example...they actually thought that inflation would be transitory. The super geniuses who think that MMT could actually work. Maybe the super geniuses who believe we're living in a simulation, but also think it's crazy to believe in God fit into that category as well. Sometimes you go so far around the world that you end up right back where you started.
  • I continue to be skeptical that Elon will actually buy Twitter. I honestly can't believe it's gone as far as it has. Funny how the media gloms onto these things and basically reports it as if it's a done deal. I never thought he would just up and sell his Tesla stock to overpay for Twitter. Now he's trying to wriggle out of it. Should be interesting to see how he gets out of the deal, or if he's just leveraging for a better price.
  • Another thing I never believed the media on was the war in Ukraine being a quickie. How many times has the media said a war will be quick and then it takes years? Everyone thinks/claims the war will be quick, but it's hardly ever the case. War has its momentum and we're just slaves to it. Vietnam had a gravity to it that just sucked us in more and more. Germany thought both the world wars would be quick. US thought Iraq would be quick. If the adversary doesn't want you there then it's going to be hell. My advice to invading armies is to win quickly or retreat and take your lumps. It hardly ever works out well for the invader if they try to occupy and outlast the host country. Didn't work well for Germany in USSR. Didn't work well for USSR in Finland. Didn't work well for USSR in Afghanistan. Didn't work well for US in Vietnam. Doesn't matter how big your dick is - if they don't want you around, then you'll be pulling out eventually. Ukrainians aren't a bunch of chumps. Russia isn't going to have a good time there and this will drag on as long as Russia wants to keep it up, because I don't see Ukraine giving in. The media don't know shit because they're overeducated morons.
  • I did something with the Java code and now my archive pull down isn't working. Going to be a couple months before I can have the time to fix it. Blah.


    • 5/16/22 (22:02)

  • Long day. 13 hours working and driving. Back hurts.
  • We bit off a lot and we're absolutely drowning in work. One guy taking a week off next week. Another guy took a week off a couple weeks ago. Then the usual missed days here and there because of immigration, family issues, etc. Missed days aside, we just have too much work right now. Luckily I picked up some temporary help - a nephew of two of my current guys. So, we're at 6 guys plus me and still just treading water.
  • Truck is in the shop at the worst possible time, but it was due for a couple things and I don't have the time to do it myself so I'm hoping this new place can take care of things before it leaves me stranded at an even worse time.
  • Edwin finally got his papers...he's been a refugee from Guatemala for 3 years and he finally got the papers. Long process. Good news for him. Now hopefully I can get him to paint a room without destroying a paint brush or dripping everywhere...
  • Lots of things happened in the last month or so...
  • Will Smith slapped Chris Rock. At first I thought it was a publicity stunt/joke, but then I saw the video and it appeared to be genuine. The people sticking up for him are truly lost. I heard some defending him on the grounds that it was great to see a man stand up for a black woman. I mean, we're really losing our minds at this point. And just imagine reactions if the races were different. God, we're living in such fraught and idiotic times. Depressing. That's all the energy I have for that one right now.
  • Roe vs. Wade appears to be going down. The leaking of the draft is a big deal and I think it should lead to professional consequences (accountability being a top priority). I don't know how much I buy that it is putting lives at risk or any of that. I am pretty much a judicial realist at this point. I think that judges essentially have an opinion and then rationalize towards that. In that way I think they are as human as any of us, only more well-equiped to rationalize things, seeing as they are all of greater intelligence than the average person. I've joked before about...from 11/21/06: "i've also thought quite a bit about the abortion issue lately. i think it comes down to this: when do i believe life begins? well, i've looked back at my old ap biology textbook and found a clear definition of life, a definition that includes all lifeforms. comparing this with fetal progression charts i've come to the conclusion that human life occurs 392 hours after conception. so, my stated opinion is that abortion should be legal before this scientifically proven timeframe. after this time we must consider the child a human being, and thus abortion would be considered murder. i am a reasonable person, though. i understand that the woman is also a human with her own will, needs, wants, and rights. thus i have developed a secondary solution for the time frame between the 392 hour non-human window and birth. henceforth we shall treat these baby humans as renters, and the women as landlords. thus, the government will pay the women a small rent on behalf of the child during this window. this, of course, will be worked off by the child at a later date. further, if the woman wishes to abort her child past the 392 hour window she must give her renter one month notice. this notice must be filed in duplicate to HUD (the department of housing and urban development) as well as a new agency which will be created to link vacant landlords with renters looking for a place to live. in other words, potential surrogates with unwanted babies. if, after one month, the renter has not found a new landlord, the woman is allowed to evict the squatter at her discretion.
  • and with that post i bury all thoughts of ever holding public office."
  • In all seriousness, I think neither side is even remotely capable of steelmanning the other side on this issue. It's amazing how these issues (abortion, gun rights, etc.) turn off peoples' brains so thoroughly. If the pro-choice side had adopted a more moderate stance (like that of many European nations) earlier then maybe that would have softened opposition a bit. Instead they took the same hard line as some 2A types take on guns. Of course each party is beholden to the nuts at the extremes and I think it's to each parties detriment.
  • The things we can't say anymore is just so strange. You can say that all lives are precious and should be respected. However, if you say that all lives matter you can get fired from your job. 10 years ago such a thing would be impossible to imagine. To imagine a distinction between "all lives are precious" and "all lives matter" and to imagine the consequences for getting that distinction wrong would have been absurd. It still is, we just accept it now.
  • Back to abortion...it's funny to listen to both the left and right on this and see that each side is employing the racism attack to demonize the other. The right points out that fact that the Planned Parenthood founder (Margaret Sanger) was a eugenicist and they claim this means that abortion is about aborting unfit babies, which would include black babies. Then the left will say that white supremacists wanted to stop black babies from being born and encouraged white women to "open their loins" and procreate to further the race. I don't think any of them really care about the history of abortion. I think one side wants it and the other doesn't. From there they will find whatever facts help their side or hurt the other and deploy those accordingly.
  • Some great 1-2 year stretches in movie/music history - Julie Andrews in Sound of Music and Mary Poppins in back to back years. Black Sabbath first two albums in 1970. Led Zeppelin I and II in 1969. Beatles with Help!, Rubber Soul, Revolver in 1965-1966. Victor Fleming with Gone With The Wind and Wizard of Oz in 1939.
  • Evolution is beautiful, but not pretty.
  • Speaking of film history...There was an antitrust case in 1948 (US vs. Paramount) that was essentially about vertical integration. The film studios wanted to be able to produce and distribute films as they desired. So, MGM would produce a film and then release it in MGM theaters only. Fox did the same, etc. This is why you might still see "Fox" theaters like the famous one in Westwood. The US won the case and so you had theaters that were separated from the film studios. MGM movies could play alongside Warner Brothers, etc. What's funny about this is that it seems to have been completely forgotten. Netflix, Apple, Amazon, etc. all do this today and I've literally never heard a single person bring up this case or how it might be applied to the streaming dispersion we see today.


    • 4/26/22 (18:21)

  • I can't tell you how often Google, or similar, will "improve" a product and it ends up reducing functionality. Google Drive used to backup all the files in a certain folder and it worked pretty well. Now they have the option to "stream" the files so they're not on your computer anymore, or you can continue to "mirror" the files that are on your computer. I chose this so that I can access the files even if I'm not online. It also serves as a backup to Google and vise versa, instead of having all my eggs in one basket. However, for some reason, I'm no longer able to search for anything in that folder. So, if I want to find a particular job folder by searching by street name or whatever I don't get any hits anymore. I'm not sure how the smartest people in the world continually make my life more difficult in an attempt to make it easier. This is but one example of this kind of crap and there are many others. The more I use a software the more I find issues with it.
  • Google constantly sends me emails about changes to features and products they offer that I know nothing about. They're constantly tinkering with shit - like changing Hangouts to Chat. I don't know anything about either of them so I'd rather not get updates about it. I use 1% of the shit they offer and I'd rather they stop fiddling with it.
  • Conversely, I've been using Netscape Composer to make this webpage for over 20 years. Doesn't do anything fancy, but it works. The only thing that keeps it from working are Windows updates that mess with things. Some day they'll update Windows to be even "better" and I won't be able to use Composer anymore. At that point I'll probably regress to Notepad. When in doubt, go backwards instead of deeper into their pile of shit..
  • Totally slammed with work lately and I have two projects with people waiting for me to finish in order for them to move into their new homes.
  • Then I have a couple other projects where people are moving out, but doing so slowly so it's caused delays. I don't understand how people say they'll be vacant from a place at a given time and then they totally ignore that deadline. Kinda hard to prep an entire house for paint while working around furniture.
  • I complain about Google and Apple and the rest pretty often, but I have to say that Capital One has been really good. I've had their CC for a long time and the app is great, the customer service is great, the coupon shopping browser add-on they offer saves me money seamlessly about 1/3 of the time, and I get 1.5% cash back on all purchases, which has saved us probably $10k+ over the years.
  • 2 months ago I was worried about being so slow and now I'm overwhelmed by how much work we have and not being able to get it all done in time. All those jobs we had booked, but weren't able to act on are starting to be ready finally and it's the worst possible time.


    • 4/11/22 (19:11)

  • Most recent This American Life had a little thing about some (women) Russian reporters getting beaten by Putin's henchmen. Good little story and the definition of courage. Meanwhile, in America, Amy Schumer gets called brave because she's chubby and had a naked photo taken of her. To her credit, she made fun of the idea, but it reveals what some in our culture think is bravery...


    • 4/7/22 (16:01)

  • Was talking to Antonio the other day and he said they have a saying in Guatemala - "if you want to help somebody, don't help them." Sounds good.
  • Trump's lawyer (Eastman) plead the 5th 146 times the other day when being asked about the insurrection plot. Why don't they ask these guys if they've ever molested children or murdered grandmas? Make them plead the 5th on that. It would be great TV (all that matters).
  • I wrote about this the other day and then a couple days later the Heterodox podcast had an episode about it basically reiterating what I said about the lack of (intellectual/viewpoint) diversity in academia. Good episode.
  • Here's another one from them where they talk about the importance of disagreement in increasing collective intelligence.
  • One economic mystery lately is why productivity isn't growing along with technology. Apparently productivity is slowing and that's an economic concern. My thoughts are that technology seems to be a double edged sword. It makes some things better, but it's not a panacea. People get all excited to bring computers and tech into everything thinking that it makes everything better because it makes some things a lot better. But it's not a panacea. It's a tool like many other tools. I see this in my work as well where guys learn to use cordless power tools and they make work a lot easier in some applications, but then they reach for the cordless tool to do everything. Sometimes a whack from a hammer or a quick swipe with a hand plane is better than a power tool, but not everyone learned to use those tools and most guys are in the mindset of using power tools so it's the first thing they grab.
  • The other thing that happens with technology is that it can serve to distract us (the other edge of the double edged sword). Not only can we quickly check out twitter or instagram (I'm not on either) and go down a rabbit hole there, but technology also seems to make us more distractible overall. Deep focus is a real challenge for a lot of people these days. It's definitely an issue for me, though I don't think technology is as much to blame as the nature of my job. That said, the fact that I can easily be contacted does definitely contribute to my distractibility. I might be trying to focus on laying out some cabinets or whatever and then I get a call from another job about a problem. Or an email comes in from a supplier. Ideally I would probably put the phone on silent, but then my fear is that there's a leak or emergency somewhere and I don't get that call quickly enough. And, yes, that does happen (happened just last week) and time is of the essence in those situations.
  • Another possibility is that it's death by a thousand cuts working against us being more productive. General ineptitude from the government and our fellow co-workers and citizens could definitely be contributing to slowing productivity. Life is more complicated, we're more distracted, we're surrounded by fewer capable people because of the steady erosion of our schools and vocational training, then there's COVID, social and political unrest, parking tickets, mask mandates, supply shortages, modernity, etc. and it all adds to a culture that is overwhelmed, underprepared, and massively fatigued.
  • It seems that people are more anxious than ever in my life. Maybe I'm just more aware of it because I'm older or because of social media or maybe people talk about it more because we're less stoic and more apt to complain or vent or claim victim status or because mental health is seen as more important nowadays. Some of that may be good and some of it may be bad. Overall, though, I get the sense that people are more stressed in society than they have been in my life.
  • If public libraries didn't exist then we wouldn't ever get them. What I mean is that they would be seen as socialism and there'd be no way that most state/local governments would spend money to create them. Same probably goes for the interstate highway system. Can you imagine trying to create something of that size in today's political environment? There's no way it would get done. We just don't have the tools and will to address an issue that size anymore. Just the process of acquiring land would take forever...between the indigenous peoples lobby and the environmentalist lobby and the BLM lobby. All claiming that the route was passing through sacred land or displacing native species or racist because the emissions would "disproportionately affect black and brown bodies." Environmental racism. On the other side, it would be seen as a massive expenditure and growing of the federal government. Another socialist expansion of the government and it would only be marginally better if Halliburton or whatever (just not the government) was in charge of building it. This is the crux of the problem. We can't solve our problems through the collective action of government because government has been captured by special interests, corporations, bureaucrats, and other entrenched powers. There's no problem too big if we can work together properly. This country took a year to build the greatest economic and industrial power in the world. Took a few more years to harness the power of the atom. We did those things to win our second world war and defeat the Nazis. We should be inspired by that toward further greatness. Instead we hardly care about those people. "They were all racists anyway. This country sucks. Fuck you pay me. Give me mine and I don't care about anything else."
  • How do we get out of this funk? We need great leadership. Obama had a lot of good qualities and maybe could have been that guy, but it didn't take. Maybe because half the country is really that racist or maybe because our media is so fractured and incompetent that people actually bought the Fox News lies. I don't know. I also don't know how up to the challenge he was considering today's landscape.
  • It strikes me that in 1992 Ross Perot bought 30 minutes of air time and had a conversation with Americans that ended up winning him 19% of the vote (would have been more if he hadn't dropped out of the race). He essentially paid for an infomercial and people watched it and voted for him. He was ahead of his time in talking about the federal deficit, though he may have been a one trick pony in that respect. But why hasn't anyone else done that? Dispersion of media is part of the problem, for sure, but I would love to see someone start a real conversation about the problems we're facing and the enormity of them. We're an empire in decline and we need to get serious about action. It starts with recognizing the current problems and the problems caused by our past. But we should also recognize that we're capable of doing great things. We've never really seen what this engine can do because we've never really let all our people reach their full potential. Let's make the next generation of Americans the best yet. Let's help them get there. Let's sacrifice the things that don't matter like our grandparents and great grandparents did, so we can achieve better things. Let's get off China's teet. Let's welcome a new generation of motivated and capable immigrants. Let's be economically fundamentally sound. Let's reach out to those we disagree with and offer them sacrifices first instead of keeping everything close to the chest because we're afraid of losing face to our base or looking weak. Let's do all the things that we all agree we should do, but don't because of politics. Let's offer grace to our fellow Americans. Because if we don't do these things then we're done for, and I don't want that.


    • 4/5/22 (17:51)

  • Inflation is too much money chasing too few goods. Right now we have both. Money supply is high (see below). Too few goods is what the media focuses on - supply chain, Ukraine, etc. The Left points to the few instances (meat industry) where lack of competition is inflating prices artificially and tries to claim that it's all about greedy corporations driving up the cost of goods. Another thing they'll say is that inflation is an international problem so it can't possibly be Biden's fault. The reality is that it's a multivariate problem, but the biggest issues are the money supply and the supply chain. I agree with the Left when they say we should have more competition, especially in certain sectors, but that's not driving the cost of most goods/services. Further, there is some inflation in other countries, but ours is worse. People try to make everything political and that gets us farther from the truth, which is all I really care about. Politics is evil.


    • 4/4/22 (16:02)
  • Inflation high, unemployment low. Yield curve inverted. Basically 90% certain there will be a recession within the next two years.

    • Democrats are already going to get creamed in the midterms. Maybe we can get in and out of the recession quickly enough for 2024 to look good again. This also assumes they have a candidate who can string together sentences without getting contradicted later by his handlers. All in all we have the geriatrics running one party and nut jobs running the other. Economically we're not doing well. Overall, we're an empire in decline. All signs point towards a bad future.

    3/25/22 (17:16)

  • Work picking back up again. Maybe the economy isn't collapsing after all? Not knowing where your next paycheck is coming from is one of the tougher parts of owning your own business. When we got loans for our home or the warehouse we had to pay about 25 basis points more than average because we're self-employed. The rational is that we have less income security. On the one hand I guess that's true because we have to hustle for work every day. But another way of viewing it is we have more income security than most. If we piss off our boss today then we might lose the job or get a bad review, but there are plenty of other bosses (customers) out there. If you're employed by 3M or the local university or whatever you never have to worry about getting more work because that's your boss' job, but you're also at the whim of their management.
  • Anyway, having faith that jobs will be there tomorrow is definitely difficult. We do email marketing and that's it so there's more potential for work out there, but wading into that and dealing with tire kickers never seemed as good a way to go as organic word of mouth growth. With word of mouth growth your potential customer already has an inclination to have you do the job because their friend, neighbor, etc. said something good about you. If your referral source is a Facebook ad, then the conversion rate decreases drastically because of those tire kickers and the the competition increasing. When you get leads like that you need to separate yourself more based upon your expertise or method or price. It's much more of a sales game in that situation and I hate sales. Meryl does a fair amount of the sales at this point so that's been good all around.
  • Worst case scenario I have to start shaking trees for work with previous customers. Hey Bill I know you wanted to fix that door of yours. Hey Sally I'm slow right now do you have anything for me? I've never had to do it, but I know it's always an option
  • One thing that's nice about service work vs. selling widgets is that cash flow is hardly ever an issue. If it is then that's just a sign that either you're not invoicing the work performed quickly enough (often an issue with me) or you're having one job fund the next and actually aren't charging enough. This is called robbing Peter to pay Paul and a lot of guys do it if they don't know how to run a business. Thanks in part to a steady war against wood shops in high schools and general lack of respect for trades programs, I'm competing in a job market that is understaffed. This lucky for me.
  • Last year we did a lot more jobs for homes that were going to go on the market. I like these jobs because we're working in vacant homes for customers who are more sensitive to timeline than they are to being able to pick every last detail to their liking and worrying about you working in their living space. They give us more design latitude and want the job done in time for their agent to get it on the market. The fact that Meryl does home staging and I do everything else makes it really simple for the agent to deal with one point of contact and get the home listed. So, a home may have a very dated kitchen and a list of 50 things from the home inspection including plumbing, electrical, carpentry, etc. Instead of hiring a plumber, an electrician, a carpenter, a painter, a home stager, a cleaner, etc. they just hire us and we do it all. Last year we did a lot of kitchen counters and painting kitchen cabinets because those have a big impact for not too much. Hopefully we continue to do more of that.
  • Lately I've been trying to think of the business as about acquiring customers as opposed to acquiring individual jobs. The customers we want are agents because they have more jobs than homeowners, for example.


    • 3/24/22 (15:59)

  • NYT podcast this morning said they thought the war in Russia was going to be fast. I'm not sure where anyone got this idea. It's one thing to overestimate the power of the Russian military, but we must have learned from history by now that occupation isn't a quick process. If Ukrainians want self-determination and self-rule then they will fight for it. Vietnam, Afghanistan, Germany in France during WW2...it doesn't matter how outgunned they are or how much you destroy their country, they won't give up easily. I don't see any reason to think Ukrainians are any different.
  • Beyond occupation, how does one country really defeat another? In my understanding of things, it requires a pretty thorough destruction of will. When the usual stuff doesn't work (it won't) and Putin doesn't get what he wants (we'll see if he's willing to take a compromise) then what's left? Go further down the path of war (towards nukes?) or retreat. Retreat doesn't seem like Putin, but we'll see. In other words, I don't agree with the NYT and others on the narrative that Russia was going to have an easy time and I don't agree with those who now say Ukraine is winning the war. It will be a battle of wills. I don't see Ukraine giving up because they have the most to lose. It will be a while before this is sorted out. Some are saying a couple weeks, and I hope they're right, but I'm guessing they're wrong. Putin has been laying the groundwork for this for a decade and he's going to let it all fizzle in a couple months?


    • 3/22/22 (21:44)

  • Having a hard time updating the movie page. I don't want it to die, but it's been more than a year since I've updated it in any real way. I still keep track of all my movies, but don't have the energy to write my thoughts.
  • Meryl saw a kid get hit by a car today. He was crossing the street on his way to school and some old guy just plowed into him. Kid was okay so that's good.
  • I like the way economists think...concepts like supply and demand, revealed preferences, scarcity, importance of incentives, etc. They also tend to be the most likely to be heterodox of all the social sciences. That said, I'm not sure they're all that good at knowing how the economy actually works.
  • Speaking of the social sciences and academia...There's a big disparity in liberals to conservatives. In Economics it's about 3:1 (liberals to conservatives). Overall in social sciences it's anywhere from 44-100:1. In Engineering and Business it's close to 1:1. Why is the disparity so great? Self-sorting is probably part of it. Indoctrination is also probably part of it. There's an effect that has been described and predicted by Glenn Loury and others that basically dictates that institutions get more extreme with time. Essentially there is a silencing effect that ends up pushing an institution towards more extreme views over time. We see this in colleges where you can get called out for not being sufficiently liberal on a topic. I've spoken with many people who will admit to not agreeing with the latest gender politics or COVID policy, but they don't stick their head out for fear of having it chopped off. This leaves only the most rabid and vocal people left. Then conservatives see this and 1) think that all liberals have the same views as are being espoused by the most liberal people who are doing 90% of the talking 2) decide they don't want any part of the institution.
  • There's another theory that institutions that aren't stated as being explicitly conservative will tend to become liberal over time.
  • There's an argument to be made that we'd be better off had Obama not won against Romney in 2012. Liberals would be upset and would cry about racism, but they ended up doing that anyway so no big change there. However, it might have been better because having Romney in charge might have gotten some things done with a Republican Congress. Obama was basically worthless in his second term because Republicans decided not to work with him at all. Further, Romney infamously said that Russia was the greatest geopolitical foe in the world. I thought that was silly at the time. Obama made fun of him for it. But, in retrospect, maybe he was right. Also, he likely would have lost a majority in Congress in 2014 and maybe some actual bipartisan things would have been accomplished. Then, in 2016 it would have been him vs. Hillary (presumably) and maybe she would have won and we'd have a woman president and liberals would be happy for a couple days, or Romney would have won and he'd get 8 years of centrist rule. Either way, we wouldn't have Trump in this scenario. Interesting counterfactual.
  • To what degree is it okay that individuals suffer as a result of the sins of the group or vice versa? Some examples - basketball player is late for a meeting or a soldier can't get a drill right and the whole team has to run laps because one person isn't doing what they're supposed to be doing. Putin starts a crazy war and all of Russia gets hurt by economic sanctions. Some whites make laws against all blacks 60 years ago and all whites today have to pay reparations. BLM protesters get smeared by Fox News because a couple people in the same protest start a fight or loot some stores (same could be said about the Unite the Right protesters in Charlottesville).
  • I don't have the answers here. In general I'm an individualist. I don't want to go to a protest because I don't want to be associated with some of the dumb shit that will undoubtedly be said/done during that protest. I'm my own person with my own strange views and I don't think protests generally reflect my opinions. Overall, I prefer not to be part of a group and that's especially true when it comes to being part of a group I don't have control over (like I was born into it).
  • At the same time, maybe Russians should feel the heat when their president is starting wars. Maybe it's the responsibility of the individual protesters to police their own. I've written about this before with regards to cops - cops should cull the herd from time to time and get rid of shitty cops. If you don't do that then it's no wonder that people will start painting you all with the same brush. Same could be said about any number of groups. I'm not sure how to make the right distinctions or decide when a group should suffer because of the sins of a few or individuals should suffer because of what was done by the collective.
  • Liberal mindset is to tear down walls, start anew, and have a low grade contempt for the old guard. Maybe I have a conservative mindset in this dimension because I think the Burkean model is better. Burke thought that each generation has a sort of contract not just with the future generation, but also the previous generations. We shouldn't just throw away what they had done. He famously said that one should know the purpose of a fence before tearing it down. This could be applied to all sorts of things from marriage or gender or specific laws. I started thinking about this "out with the old and in with the new idea" with football...I was opposed to the 49ers letting Montana go when they did and wished they had kept him. And again with Jerry Rice I had the same feeling. But if they hadn't traded Montana then Young wouldn't have been able to emerge as the Hall of Fame QB that he was. Maybe it was just time for Rice to go so it could be Terrell Owens' team. My bias is towards loyalty and going with the guys who brought you to the party.
  • Another riff on this Burkean idea is the totem pole. The saying is that the new guy, or the least respected guy, is at the bottom of the totem pole. My understanding is the exact opposite, though. First of all, a totem pole is about recognizing that you're standing on the shoulders of giants. It's about respecting the previous generations. This is inherently a conservative idea. Again, liberals are of the mindset of starting anew and getting rid of old, staid ideas. Conservatives, meanwhile, revere the past and hold it sacred - sometimes too much so. So, a being the low man on the totem pole means you're actually the one who made it all possible to some extent. My understanding of Burke here is that society's social contract is a contract between generations. We shouldn't tear down the previous generations and take them for granted. Perhaps, too, we should do our best to anticipate and provide the needs of the next generation. Unfortunately, today I see far too much tearing down the previous generations, and preaching about the supposed moral superiority of today's generation. You're fooling yourself if you think that because you recognize your frog-gendered friends and live a vegan lifestyle that you're enlightened. The next generation will think you're tragically uncool and will deride your lack of understanding of their furry friends who identify as cats and only eat food that doesn't cast a shadow (level 5 vegan).
  • I came across a version of this idea from a customer of mine who told me she would approach big life decisions by having a conversation with her past and future self. How do you justify making money and not being in a band to your 20 year old self? How do you justify being 20 pounds overweight or not spending enough time with your kids to your future self? It works on a society and individual level. Be understanding of the previous generations. Maybe they did their best. If you're a boomer, maybe stopping the Nazis was pretty good for the "greatest generation" and tackling Jim Crow is for your generation to sort out and maybe gay rights is for your kids' generation to tackle and maybe none of the generations in that chain should piss on each other too much or minimize the previous ones because you take for granted what they accomplished.
  • As of last week it was okay to be without a mask inside, but you couldn't be without a mask outside if you were on school grounds. This shit makes no sense man. Why are the kids the last ones to be unmasked? Some, like NYC mayor Adams, said it's because 0-5 aren't eligible to be vaccinated, but they're also the least susceptible to the virus even though they're not vaccinated. Whatever. I wish they would just move on already. Our elementary school said they are reluctantly making masks optional, but they used all the guilt trips in the book to try to convince you to wear a mask all day on campus. I'm telling my kids they shouldn't wear their masks, but it's their choice. I'm guessing everyone will still wear their mask.
  • I've heard, though I'm not sure if it's true or not, that you can have an electric fence up for cows and, after they learn the perimeter for a few months, you can take it down and they will respect the old boundary even though the fence is no longer keeping them in. People are the same.
  • Turns out the Johnson and Johnson vax has proven more durable than Pfizer and Moderna. Also fewer breakthrough cases. When I got the JNJ vax I definitely had the feeling that it was seen as the worst of the 3, but I liked their technology more than the Pfizer/Moderna mRNA tech. It was closer to the types of vaccines that were already available and so I preferred it. I also liked that it didn't require a second dose, especially after hearing some data that the second dose was maybe too close to the first, etc. Overall, JNJ seemed like the better choice for me so I went with that one after it had been out for a long while (I didn't get it until July 2021).
  • Also, Pfizer maybe not as effective on younger kids. Oops.
  • Remember this kind of shit when they tell you everything is okay, the science is in, don't worry about anything, we have it all figured out, nothing to see here. They don't know. They have ideas. They have some (not all) data.
  • This is how a culture of safetism and more is better works. Vaccine for measles is good? More vaccines is better. Chickenpox, COVID, etc. More isn't always better. I'm pretty skeptical that kids need to get as many shots as the CDC recommends early in life. 23-26 doses by age 15 months? Honestly, seems like a bit much to me. The same culture that recommends that recommends vaccines and masking and social distancing and closing schools for a disease (COVID) that has killed 800 Americans under 18 in 2 years. Just seems like a bit of an overreaction to me.


    • 3/13/22 (08:41)

  • Lumber prices continue to be near all-time highs. Work is slowing down for me and everyone I know. Several subs have asked me if I have any work for them. Feeling things might get ugly. I have several jobs that are either signed or waiting to be signed (already approved), but aren't ready to go because of dithering, waiting on materials, waiting on permits, etc. It's amazingly frustrating to have a few hundred thousand dollars worth of jobs ready, but not ready. So, I'm scraping up little jobs here and there and having the guys work on my house or warehouse. Last time it was like this was right after COVID started. This is the downside of having a lot of guys.


    • 3/10/22 (17:25)

  • Latest in the running-a-business-is-more-complicated-than-it-should-be department. We had a general liability insurance audit and it turns out we owe an additional $16k. Turns out that they charge insurance based upon gross income. So, if I buy appliances for the customer then I'm paying for insurance on that. I could markup materials and build-in the cost of insurance, but CA requires I have a reseller's license for that. Of course that would mean more bureaucracy and paperwork and trouble. It would mean not having to pay sales tax (assuming I get set up in each suppliers' system as a reseller), but then I'd need to collect sales tax and remit that to the government at the end of the year. More headaches. So I won't be doing that. Instead, I'll be looking for a better deal on insurance and making customers buy expensive materials from now on.
  • I was at the warehouse a few weeks ago during the middle of the day. I think I was working on storage or something. Anyway, I was preparing to leave and I heard a police helicopter calling out "residents of 1234 12th street come out with your hands up." I should note that the warehouse address in this example is 1234 13th street. The street was blocked off and there were about a dozen cop cars. In our interactions with the neighborhood it's come to our attention that that house houses gang members and this isn't the first time there has been police activity there that I've seen (and I'm not at the warehouse that often).
  • When we first got the warehouse it was covered in graffiti and we paid to get it removed. Sure enough the insurance company saw the pictures from the seller's listing and requested we do that, so we were actually ahead of the insurance company for once. At any rate, that was in September and it's been tagged on a few times since then, including recently by someone who brought a ladder with them. Just spent $300 on brick graffiti removal stuff. Plus the labor to get it done. Either I do it for free or I get one of my low skill guys to do it. Either way it's a waste of human capital because we (society, educational system, their parents) can't give these graf guys a real future.
  • I work on a building about half a mile away and graffiti is a major problem there as well. We cleaned the graf off on Monday and there was more there on Wednesday.
  • During the big rain a few months back the two lane road leading home got blocked by a bunch of rocks and dirt. When I drove up there was one guy with a stick trying to clear the road. There was just no way he was going to clear the road with a single tree branch given how much of a mess there was. I went home and came back with a snow shovel and we took turns stopping traffic and clearing the road. Spent 30 minutes until we were both soaking wet and the road was 95% clear. A few people thanked us.
  • Last week I was getting some lunch and I saw a woman in the parking lot trying to get into her car. It was clear that her keys were locked inside. I generally have an electrical fishing rod set with me in the truck, but it was on the job site this day so I couldn't use that to help her. I pried her door open with a pry bar and my air shim (basically an inflatable air bag that you can use as a shim or lifting device or, in this case, to separate a door from a door jamb on a car. That gave me enough space to fit my long whizz fab paint roller inside and actuate the power lock. Much to my dismay the power lock didn't work (I could hear it clicking, but it wouldn't actually move the lock). I did this on both the drive and passenger side. If I had all my tools and her lock was working it would have been a 3 minute job, but things just got more difficult. My only thought is that the lock didn't work because her keys were still in the ignition? At any rate, I moved on to trying to get her lock pulled up. They were the kind of rectangular type with really smooth sides. If they were the cylindrical type then I don't think I would have been able to get it. I used the end of the paint roller, but it wasn't grabbing because both the tool and the lock are smooth. So I taped some sandpaper to the end and it provided enough grip to grab the lock and pull it up after a few tries.
  • NYT is calling Russia part of Europe. Where have I been that Russia is part of Europe now? Ukraine I can see, but not Russia.
  • Around here the last couple years we've had "pothole vigilantes." These are people who are going around filling potholes with their own money or donations. Oakland and Richmond at least have had these people doing work on a consistent basis. This is a great example of the failure of government and it's clear as day. This is a very basic thing that city government should be able to do, but hasn't for many years. Recently we voted to have our property taxes raised to repave roads. I voted for it and they are actually doing it. The problem is that the deferred maintenance is so bad that they are barely putting a dent in the issue. Private citizens coming together to solve the problem themselves. G fails and individuals act. This is what we are seeing around the world, but especially in the US and we can expect more. This is just about the most basic and harmless example.

    • Last point on that - when the Richmond city brass found out about this their response was basically that it's dangerous work that citizens shouldn't be doing. They talked about traffic management and a lack of compaction of the asphalt as problems. These aren't unwarranted points, but it's hilarious that this is their response. Not, "hey we suck for not doing it earlier, here are some ways we can help you or some ways you can help us." Instead it's "you don't know how to do it right and you're going to die so don't do it." G doesn't trust anyone to do anything. Hence their take on COVID precautions, etc. Revelatory.

    2/28/22 (16:26)

  • Running a business has been really grating on me lately. 5 employees, numerous little jobs, too many suppliers, too many supply chain issues, too many bills. We had a great year last year, but we'll see how much we have to pay for that success as the tax bills start coming in. LLC fees already came in and that's over $10k. When we started it was only $800. One of the difficult things is how separated everything is. CPA knows a lot about taxes and can help with that, but not much about the law. So you can hire a lawyer, but he may not know as much about contracting law or tax benefits of one structure over another because he's concerned about liability. Insurance agent knows about insurance, but not legal structure or tax ramifications. Title company and real estate agent knows about purchasing property (warehouse for example), but don't know anything about legal structure of entity that should buy the building or tax ramifications of that. There all these dumb ways to trying to legally avoid taxes and minimize liability. You do them because you'd be dumb not to, but I don't really want to do any of it. I want to run the business and pound nails. I don't want to be an HR director or a tax person or a lawyer. You ask 10 people and you get 10 opinions. It's fucking awful.
  • Here's a list I came up with the other day when thinking about the different hats I need to wear, or headaches I need to deal with, on any given day:

    • WC insurance
    LLC Bond
    GL insurance
    Insurance audits
    Bookkeeping
    Payroll
    Material pickup and handling and returns
    Dump runs and waste management
    Emails
    Inquires
    Site visits for new clients
    Bids
    Sub coordination
    Supplier coordination
    Scheduling employees
    Warehouse upkeep
    Shortages
    Covid protocols
    Permits
    Lender audits
    Vehicle maintenance
    Tool maintenance
    Theft
    Security, lockboxes, cameras
    Office supplies
    IT
    Webpage maintenance
    Inventory management and maintenance
    Employee issues
    Healthcare
    Retirement
    Legal fees
  • Some days it's not worth it. Spinning my wheels a lot lately and not getting much done. Hate it.


    • 2/25/22 (15:29)

  • This short February crap needs to go. I'm in favor of 13 months of 4 weeks each. Haven't thought it out completely, but seems like a good idea.
  • As predicted, Jackson got the nomination for Breyer's seat. She worked with him, has the pedigree, and is a black woman. Seems like a fine pick from what I know, but that's not much. Breyer is my favorite of the current justices.
  • Kind of depressed about Ukraine. Some of my mom's family is from there so there's that, but it's mostly just another dagger in the idea of civility and a world that can keep its shit together.
  • It's no surprise that Putin went into Ukraine when he did. Olympics are over, US is out of Afghanistan, and Biden is president  instead of Trump. Biden is supposed to be a foreign policy wiz, but I'm not seeing it so far. Sanctions don't mean much to Russia and they will fade in a while, but annexing Ukraine will last a long time if Russia is successful. Say what you will about Trump, but his erratic behavior actually has a benefit that when he says shit about nukes with North Korea, some part of basically everyone believes him. Biden or Obama wouldn't ever mention nukes and, even if they did, no one would believe them. Those guys are too rational to use nukes. The same can't be said about Putin or Trump. They're crazy enough to do shit like that.
  • The question about this Russia/Ukraine invasion is whether it's more analogous to WWI or WWII (the third option is that it's not like either). If it's WWI then the lesson is that we need to make sure we don't get dragged into things. During WWI there were a lot of issues, but possibly the biggest is that all those nations had treaties that effectively committed them to war in order to help their allies. This is a cautionary tale about helping Ukraine and being dragged into a war with Russia over it.
  • If it's WWII then it means Putin won't stop until he's forced to. Chamberlain believed that Hitler only wanted Poland, but was proven wrong. Best case scenario, Putin only wants Ukraine and he either stops there or is forced to withdraw (by whom? how? I think this is highly unlikely). Worst case scenario is that Ukraine becomes Georgia becomes Belarus and he goes as far as the world will let him...He already started with Crimea in 2014 with the annexation of that territory; so Ukraine isn't the first.
  • My thought is that this is more WWII than WWI and he will likely need to be stopped by force. I believe Bin Laden when he said he hated America for its presence in the Middle East (as opposed to hating America for its freedoms, as Bush said). I believe Putin when he says he wants to restore the Soviet state. As a result I fall in the WWII camp because we saw what he did with Crimea and what he's doing now with Ukraine. Obama was impotent on Crimea. Biden will be impotent on Ukraine. No one in the region has any military power to do anything about this other than China. China doesn't care because they want to do the same thing with Taiwan. The UN is impotent because Russia and China are on the security counsel and have veto powers.
  • In other words, this only ends well if Putin decides it. Best case scenario is that Ukrainians are the only victims here.
  • Russia has an economy smaller than Italy's so they really have an outsized presence when you consider their economic development.
  • It's been on my list for a while to talk about this, so I may as well do it now. I probably have less of a problem with our military spending levels than most around me or than my former self. Partly because I measure it as a percent of federal outlays (15% doesn't seem that bad) and partly because I recognize the value it brings to the job force, scientific advancement, and overall strength in the foreign arena. That said, I've drunk a bit of the Richard Clarke kool-aid since he started talking about our cybersecurity issues 20 years ago. Clarke has long been pointing out our deficiencies in this regard and I've only grown more concerned with time. So, 15% of our outlays on a military/national security sounds fine to me, but I do have a problem with how we spend it. Not just cupcake deals for crony capitalists, but also the lack of cybersecurity robustness. I think we're behind Russia and China in this regard and that could be a major issue for us now or in the future. We need fewer bombers and more computer security experts. We have the potential, but the government (as is typical the last 50 years) is behind the times and ill-equipped to make the right decisions.
  • It's very possible that if we do anything to upset Russia because of Ukraine, they will retaliate against our computer infrastructure. Wipe out medical records, hack the electrical grid, hack banks, hack military targets, etc. I think we basically have had our pants down on this for 20+ years. If it comes to a traditional war then we'll do fine, but wars are hardly ever fought with the last war's weapons. WWI started out with regiments on horseback until they were wiped out. WWII didn't follow the trench warfare of WWI. Vietnam was guerilla warfare. Afghanistan was as well, but even worse. Some say the it was a good thing that Pearl Harbor got wiped out because all those ships were ancient and we needed to rethink our fleet anyway. I don't know enough to say.
  • What should we do?
  • My thought has been for a while that I don't want any part of any more wars. My criteria for wars now are that they be: 1) necessary either to our life and limb (not just the nebulous "national security") and/or 2) be a genocide level humanitarian disaster. Not only that, but if we're talking about the latter criterion (stopping genocide) we need to have the explicit and material support of UN nations and those in the region. So, if Uganda is having a genocide then other African nations need to ask for our help, provide their own troops/treasure, and I want the majority of UN nations to do the same. Germany needs to provide troops and treasure, same for France and Canada and Japan and Romania. If it's important enough then they can get some skin in the game and help us out. Yes, we're uniquely qualified and prepared for military action, we'll accept that responsibility, but only if you have skin in the game as well. I'm tired of countries calling us colonialists. I'm tired of being even close to colonialist. I want to have moral clarity on what war is about.
  • Further, when we set a red line (as Obama did with Syria) then it better mean something. Unfortunately with Obama it didn't mean anything. We lost credibility there in a major way. Liberals often talk about credibility when Trump and Bush act like maniacs and that's fair enough. But Obama didn't help with the empty rhetoric either. We need to be credible with whatever we say. This is elementary stuff, but, somehow, it needs to be said: say what you'll do and do what you say.
  • Lastly, a point about strength. We have very little at this point. Our economy is a joke. Our society and political situation is in shambles. Our military is strong, but tired and wary of any further engagements after the fiasco of Afghanistan. In short, we don't have it in us to bail the world out of WW3. We did it twice before and, as an American, that's about as much pride as I'm capable of having - thinking about what those who came before us did in those two wars. To be clear, I didn't have anything to do with it and neither did my family so my pride must be limited, but it is there nonetheless. But we're not able to do it again. We've destroyed that best part of our country and I'm not sure it's coming back. I don't know how long a country lasts when a significant portion of its citizens, and those who are supposedly its leaders (intellectually, if not politically and otherwise) don't really like the country or its past. To be clear - I think there are a lot of people who are the smartest people in our country, they run educational institutions and political institutions and the media and they don't really like America. I don't know how long a country lasts when it's hated internally.
  • I don't think it's a mistake that Crimea was annexed under Obama and Ukraine under Biden. I still would rather have Biden than Trump. I point this out not to score cheap political points, but to point out, as I try very hard here to do because it may be the most important thing we need to remember as political individuals, that no one side has a monopoly on the Truth or the best way of governing or all the answers. It's not that we need to learn to live with conservatives or liberals - it's that we NEED both in order to be the best we can be. Everyone reading this is probably a liberal (maybe with the exception of my Canadian friend) and so they (rightly) take pride in the strides we're making on the issues of gender and racial equality and (generally) have the idea that conservatives aren't of much use/good. Much of that pride liberals have for liberal progress is for the good. While it's great to consider feelings and try to talk things out (as liberals generally want to do), there might also be a time where we need to crack some skulls and reckon with a Hitler or Stalin or Pol Pot or Putin. We need each type of thinker in the room when we're making these decisions and forming a political structure. We need liberals to push boundaries and be renegades and make new companies and discover new ideas. We need conservatives to run those companies without going bankrupt and keep social order and keep us from changing too quickly and remind us of the past lest we throw the baby out with the bath water.
  • I don't think this specific case is being made by very many people. I don't think the liberals hear a decent defense of conservative ideas. I think this because I didn't hear one for a very long time and I was a liberal political science major. Hopefully I do a bit of that here. I attack liberals not because I hate them, but because I want you to see that they're not perfect either. As a liberal I used to think other liberals were always smarter and more virtuous. I'd laugh at dumb conservatives because Michael Moore and Jon Stewart made it so easy (and fun) to do just that.
  • CA has finally allowed all but Santa Clara and LA county to be indoors without a mask. Those counties might be open now, haven't kept up with the news, but I think that was the case as of 2/15. At any rate, that's the policy now. In Oakland, Berkeley, and SF essentially everyone still wears a mask - probably 95%. I'm part of the 5%. In Richmond and outer East Bay that number gets inverted. It's amazing how much of a difference there is. I was in a hardware store today in Richmond and one guy was wearing a mask out of a dozen employees and customers. At Home Depot, etc. in Oakland and Emeryville today there are only a few people not wearing masks out of a hundred customers/staff. I think that people continue to wear the mask to help others. This is nice and all, and maybe it's somewhat based on science, but I think it's more important to get back to some level of normalcy. We need to kill the idea that COVID should have anymore control over our lives. We need to kill the idea that schools are an outbreak away from closing again.
  • Remember when people seemed to care about Flint and the lead in the water? Well, those same people are making those same kids learn remotely for the rest of the year. How do you think that will work out? And don't come back in 6 months and show me some fake stats about how everyone got A's and B's and graduated and how remote learning was a big success. All that will prove is that teachers aren't being thorough with remote learning. My newest employee was in high school last year and his reporting to me is that remote learning was a joke - 75% of the kids weren't even present, teachers didn't check homework or tests (he actually submitted homework without any answers and still got full credit), etc. Essentially, remote learning is worthless. But, hey, I really care about black kids in Flint so let's keep them away from school. Let's keep them in their abusive home. Let's keep them away from friends. Let's not have any accountability. Let's put more strain on their parents. Let's make them login remotely with a computer they may not have or on a cell phone that isn't meant for video streaming and remote learning applications. Sounds like a good idea. After all 851 people aged 0-17 have died since January 2020 due to COVID (CDC numbers), so we know it must be a HUGE DEAL. lol, these people are fucking nuts. "Follow the science" you fucking nut jobs.
  • Increasingly depressed about the state of affairs.


    • 2/18/22 (15:19)

  • There are times I definitely feel all the world's suffering. There are so many people and so many unhappy people. So many people living in total poverty economically, spiritually, and otherwise. People with no love in their lives and no opportunities. It's probably the saddest thing there is. I truly don't understand why people are so awful to each other. I understand that hurt people hurt people. I've seen hundreds of videos of people hurting each other or killing each other and read stories and heard podcasts about true crime that runs the gamut from random crimes to crimes against those they should love. I know (probably more than most) the extent of human depravity and cruelty and malevolence on an individual and societal level. But no matter how much I immerse myself in these worlds I never understand how people do these things. Maybe that's my greatest genetic gift - the basic human empathy that we take for granted. The vast majority of people seem to have it, but some do not. I actually feel very bad for these people because without that simple trait the road to being a psychopath is quite easy.
  • One time I was watching a movie in the theater and some popcorn kernel made an old filling pop out. Kinda sucked. The entire time I was watching the movie I was thinking about what it would take to acquire a food grade epoxy that would be suitable for creating a filling. I could put in some clove oil to prevent infection, Mix the epoxy and put it in the hole left from my old cavity. Then I'd use some files or sandpaper to shape it before it hardened too much. I was planning the whole thing. By the end of the movie I came around to thinking this probably wasn't a great idea and I should just go to the dentist. But for a solid hour I was considering it. I'm not sure what this says about me.
  • I remembered this story while I was at the dentist yesterday and they have this ultrasonic teeth cleaner they use. I seems like a basic enough tool and I was wondering how much it would cost to get a used one and then I could do my own dental cleanings for me and the family. I already have dental picks and check the girls' teeth once in a while. Probably would be worth the investment. Then I started thinking about being able to let others use it or maybe I'd do it for other people if they didn't want to do it themselves. Basically I was thinking my way into becoming the neighborhood dentist. This is how my brain works.
  • Speaking of DIY, the Prius was spitting out a timing issue after we did the head gasket replacement. This was my #1 concern because the timing looked kinda difficult to do. The other #1 concern (they were tied for #1, gimme a break) was that there would be a new problem and we'd be chasing codes and replacing the car one piece at a time. Tried the camshaft timing sensor first but that wasn't it. After that I thought the most likely thing was the timing chain tensioner so we replaced that (Jesus found a way of moving the chain without taking everything back apart) and all is good. Definitely saved some money and there's some satisfaction in figuring it out.


    • 2/14/22 (16:47)

  • Work has been slow the last couple weeks so we've finally been able to get our bathroom started. Finished rough plumbing today. We also worked on Meryl's head gasket replacement and got that finished today. Took it all apart last week and took the head to a machine shop. He adjusted some valves and cleaned the head up so we were good for reassembly. Jesus did most of the work and it was good to see how it all went together and help with the process.
  • We have probably 15 jobs that are either approved and waiting on supplies or permits, or recently sent out for bid and waiting to get an answer on. I have a feeling that March is going to be nuts with people saying we're ready to go all at the same time. Lately I've been doing a lot of waiting for materials. There's no rhyme or reason to it - just a bunch of random things that take forever and slow everything down.
  • One funny thing about my job is that I get to see how people live and see some of their secrets. It's not something I talk about to others specifically, but speaking generally it's interesting to see who has lube by the bed or rogaine by the sink, etc. Netflix has a mini series (Maid)  based upon a book and we watched it not too long ago. Pretty good overall. She had a similar experience where you how people live and it's just interesting. She would go through things and eat their food and stuff and I never do that, but if people leave stuff on the sink and I'm working in the bathroom then it's hard to unsee it.
  • A perk of my job is that sometimes we'll turnover a unit or prep it for sale and it's always interesting to see what people leave behind. Usually it's just random trash or cleaning supplies (which I collect and use for the next job), but sometimes they'll leave pictures or jewelry or the keys to their car. It's crazy how unthinking people are with some of their possessions. Overall, people have way too much shit and I witness this reality on a regular basis. Of course I also have too much shit and I hate it. Over the last few months we've worked it into our weekend routine to purge things. Mostly it's kid stuff that accumulates in their rooms. They have so many people who love them and so many projects and extracurriculars and all that means that they tend to collect things. As far as adult stuff, we have a ton of artwork and electronics related cables, etc. Too many files and work-related stuff. Building materials are tough because we sometimes are left with extra after a job, or I might salvage a faucet or light from a job and I don't want to dump it, but I don't have an infinite supply of space either. The warehouse has been great for this because I have space for stuff there, but of course I have to walk the line between salvaging things that will actually be used and hoarding.
  • In general my industry is very wasteful. If we're doing a kitchen remodel, for example, one might throw away perfectly useable items like a sink, faucet, garbage disposal, cabinets, etc. Sometimes I'll save a disposal or something, but usually I just send it all to the dump. The dumps I go to will divert different things to different places. So, they take wood and use that for compost. They take concrete and reuse it as aggregate for new concrete. They recycle the metal. Still don't like it.
  • How has music production been affected by how we listen to it? I assume the vast minority of people listen to music using CD or vinyl, with the majority going to headphones or bluetooth speaker or phone speaker. Phone speaker in particular seems to be an awful way to listen to music, but I see people doing it all the time. I have to assume that music producers take this into mind when considering how their music sounds. Maybe bass guitars and heavy bass show up less today than 30 years ago because phone speakers and headphones have shitty bass response, for example.
  • I wrote the other day about being able to make a compilation of Joe Rogan that showed him as either Left or Right depending upon your narrative. Well here's one that makes him look pretty progressive.
  • One of Meryl's friends is an elementary teacher and she had a student (let's call her Mary) who has a birthday during Summer. Well, the parent of this student wrote an email asking to celebrate Mary's birthday at the half way point of her birthday year so she could celebrate it during the school year. Meryl's friend explained that she already had a solution to this issue - they do all the Summer birthdays the last week of the school year (as a Summer baby I can say I don't remember this ever being offered to me, or being an issue, but whatever). Apparently this wasn't adequate for the parent, who insisted that they celebrate Mary's birthday 6 months before her actual birthday so that she felt special. This is what it's come to. The teacher already had a solution for this so-called problem. It wasn't adequate and the parent pushed the issue to the point that the teacher felt compelled to capitulate. All of this makes zero sense to me.
  • This same teacher, by the way, has a master's in education and is considering a career change. A few fixes with regards to teaching: pay them well, give them autonomy on how they want to teach a curriculum based on local values, hold them accountable (pay them better when they do better, fire them when they underperform).
  • Lately I've been thinking more and more about how much the 10-20% of us are shaping the debate and shaping the perceptions of each other. There's a growing literature on this concept that basically our perception on Republicans or Democrats is way off base and shaped by the most vocal of those (and other) groups. So, Republicans think that 38% of Democrats are gay when it's more like 6%. Democrats think 44% of Republicans earn more than $250k/year and it's more like 2%. There are a lot of these out there and it basically comes down to the media fucking us once again by amplifying the most vocal minority of a particular group. There are incentives to do this of course...things like TOS (time on site as a metric for FB, etc.) and more clicks going to more outrageous and rage-inducing content. The bottom line is that not only are we more polarized than we have been in a long time, but there might not even be very good reasons for this polarization. This is a big way in which the media is fucking us.
  • Along these lines, I think we need to develop some rules for engaging in this new world. So, one possible rule is to not be offended by something you see online. Maybe an improvement on that rule is to not be offended, or take seriously, the writings of people you see online unless you know who they are. If I didn't know this person yesterday then maybe I shouldn't be outraged by the things they think/say online today. Further, much of what you see in online comment sections is created by bots so the rule should be even more strict for this section of the internet. If you're upset by a controversy and you've only heard about it online, then maybe it's not worth being upset about. When the pronouns stuff was gaining speed I thought maybe it was just online nonsense, but that leaked into the real world. But generally, maybe we should only be concerned with the things that actually exist in our actual lives. Maybe an extension of these thoughts is to not be outraged by a thing that was said or happened many years ago when the rules were different. There's a lot of digging up people's old tweets that happens these days and I'm not sure it makes a lot of sense.
  • Can you imagine if all your controversial ramblings and thoughts were put online for everyone to see and dig through and find snippets to place out of context, or even in context? I mean that would probably be pretty rough for a lot of people and it's a good thing it doesn't exist for most people. Oh wait, uh oh. For the record, I only edit the main page archive and movie reviews for spelling and grammar, so it is what it is.


    • 2/12/22 (16:10)

  • We're getting into some weird territory these days.
  • Awkwafina got in trouble recently for something she's been doing for a long time. I don't know if the mob just gets bored or what, but they're upset with her for appropriating black culture with her "blaccent." I'll point out once again it has nothing to do with color and everything to do with culture. A Nigerian doesn't have a "blaccent" and doesn't understand the African-American experience much better than I do. Denzel has pointed this out as well, so hopefully that doesn't come off as wrong-headed. At any rate, she's in trouble for being a total piece of shit for apologizing the wrong way. I'm not sure what the right way is. I think it's purposely a moving goal post so that the mob can always be upset. In the story above, for example, someone is upset with Thandie Newton for apologizing for her light-skinned blackness in the wrong way. “I [...] know what it feels like when somebody is lowkey playing in my face with an “apology” that comes across as more patronizing than it does uplifting,” Genai writes. “I’m sure Newton really felt like what she was saying was coming from the right place, but the delivery of this was, frankly, all wrong.”
  • I've said before that we have to have room in culture for forgiveness. It's impossible to do the right thing all the time and if we don't allow sincere apologies to heal then what signal are we sending? Which brings us to Joe Rogan.
  • I've been listening to Rogan for probably 5 years now. I listen mostly to his political guests. I sometimes listen to the extreme sports athletes or comedians, but never the MMA stuff because it doesn't really appeal to me. Since he went to Spotify I've listened less frequently because I don't like the Spotify app, but he's the only reason I have it. I'm also similar to Rogan in that I consider myself an information omnivore. I'm interested in all sorts of points of view and information. I've always been this way, but it's especially important today when the media is at a nadir and our society is as split as it has been in over 100 years.
  • With all that context, I think what the legacy media and mob are trying to do with Rogan is really predictable and pathetic. First they made it about COVID misinformation. Then they made it about the n word. Next it will be him saying the (other) f word. Whether or not the attacks will work is beyond me. It may squeeze Spotify enough to kick him off the platform, or maybe it'll blow over and people will move on to the next faux outrage. What it reveals (although this was already known by many) is that race isn't a great principle upon which these people base their lives. It's become a bludgeon to attack and control. I've pointed this out in other ways before. I think the majority of people aren't racist and don't want to tolerate racism. However, the vocal 10% are the ones who run media and shift the winds of Twitter and those people use race and sex and whatever else they can to get what they want.
  • Let's assume it's not just a take down, but an earnest attempt to hold Rogan accountable. On the n word angle, I just don't believe the guy is racist. I don't know an argument that would prove this, especially these days. The n word compilation implies that he's racist, right? Once a person has been smeared with that label I'm not sure how you prove the negative. Anything he does now will be considered pandering. Any black friends he has or had or who stick up for him doesn't seem to matter. I've never fully understood why "some of my best friends are black" isn't a good sign that you're not racist. How, exactly, does one prove that they don't harbor racist feelings in their heart? I think it's impossible.
  • On the accusation that he put out COVID misinformation I'd say that's not only possible, but probable. He's has Weinstein and Heying on and, more recently, Robert Malone (he worked on the early development of mRNA vaccines). Malone is the one people seem to have their panties in a bunch over the most. I haven't listened to that podcast yet, but, from what I can tell based upon his resume, Malone knows more about vaccines than most experts on most news programs. So, I think there's definitely merit to this argument that there will be misinformation when two people are speaking informally for 2-4 hours. Rogan does have an assistant ("young Jamie") and he does research on the fly, but obviously this isn't ironclad.
  • So, I don't think Rogan is racist and I think that's pretty obvious if you know anything about him. I do think that the informal nature of his show allows for wild speculation and misinformation and all the other things that happen when two people are just talking. His isn't a new program. It's not a well-researched and edited and fact checked dissertation. It's him talking with experts in their field. As he said, I think he should make an effort to get people with contradictory viewpoints on these subjects on more closely together. No one mentions that he had Sanjay Gupta (defending the vaccines) on his program in October and then Malone in December. I think people should use their brain when getting information and they should consider the source and do their own fact checking as appropriate.
  • Another point about Rogan is that he's one of those guys who could easily be hated by both the Left and Right. If I had the time I could easily put together a compilation of him that would make him look like a hippie dippy liberal; he endorsed Bernie Sanders, after all. But I could also put together a compilation that would make him look like a conservative; he's pro gun rights, for example. He speaks with possibly the widest variety of guests of any host on any media platform. Not only does he have most people/programs beat on breadth, but he also speaks with them for 2-4 hours so he has almost everyone beat on depth as well. The fact that he doesn't fact-check along the way or plan things out is just a byproduct of the format and I'm fine with it. If you want something thoroughly researched and ironclad then read google scholars. If you want information in 30 second clips then watch cable TV. If you want a deep dive on a single subject that is fact-checked then read a book. Podcasts are podcasts and JRE is a particular type of podcast.
  • Perhaps ideas have people and not vice versa. That idea has had me recently.
  • Prof G points out that we're living through a great dispersion. This is part of the anarchy and populism and crypto and erosion of institutions we've been living with recently. The great dispersion is as good a way of describing it as I've heard. Of course it's not one thing or another - there are always competing interests, but dispersion seems to be winning out.


    • 2/10/22 (15:32)

  • Dunbar's number is interesting because it basically implies that we should be living in smaller groups than we currently do (or maybe it exists because that's how we evolved to live). I was thinking about my prior post about the evils of bureaucracies and it occurred to me that maybe they only exist because we exist in societies larger than we can handle. Maybe there's more to Dunbar's number than just an interesting fact about our brain/how society was once organized.


    • 2/7/22 (17:05)

  • Life is beyond frustrating these days. Trying to refinance the warehouse loan since right now it's an interest only loan so it's not paying down the principal at all. It's taken 5+ months, but we're finally almost done. Every step of the way is frustrating. The latest snags have been: meeting with the notary and they didn't have all the documents printed. We printed one of them while we were meeting with her at our house, but then I hear back from her that night that more were missing and we need to meet again tomorrow. I live a very busy life so just taking time off in the middle of the day to meet her for something that should have already been done is annoying. Then I have to run and wire some money to the title company (didn't know about this until it was sprung on me that day and they said "today would be great."). Then I try to fund the new business account I needed to open with the lender. Unfortunately getting the online account setup requires a hundred steps and none of them is easy and they ask for info that hasn't been provided, etc. Then I find out that I need to get it funded in the next day in order to make the payment in time. Then I try to transfer $ from my current account to the new one and come to find out that the online account I've been using for 8+ years is Meryl's online account for our joint bank accounts. Evidently I would need to open my own online access account (or have Meryl present) for the guy to help me send money from my business account. So, I get Meryl to be by the phone while she's working and call them back that way she can conference in on the call and answer whatever questions they need. Get through to someone to help, but instead of asking her info they inform me that they have a policy to not allow transfers from business accounts. I ask why and they don't have an answer. Would have been nice if the first guy had told me that instead of giving me the run around.
  • Part of getting the warehouse is that we're applying for an SBA loan at the same time we're refinancing the original loan. It's been a very long process and the SBA part will take another 4 months most likely. G tells you we have all these great programs, but the reality is that they make it so onerous that only the most committed or resourced individuals/companies actually will jump through the hoops they require. It's a joke. At any rate, we're doing that and they require an environmental report and a ton of paperwork and a lease agreement and they make sure all your operating agreement is consistent with the articles of organization that is required to be filed with the state, etc. It's all a bunch of bullshit that doesn't actually mean anything to anyone except lawyers. This kind of shit bothers the hell out of me. In order to create the business 10 years ago, we had to make an operating agreement. So, I found something online that was a template and made it fit our company. Now it turns out that when Meryl submitted that to the state she didn't check the right box so we need to resubmit this paperwork. So I did that and it wasn't the right paperwork. So I did it again using a different form and as soon as I hit upload on the webpage I realized I had forgotten to sign it. There's no option for amending your paperwork so you have to wait 2 weeks for them to contact you. I immediately gave him the corrected paperwork and he said okay you'll go to the back of the line and we'll get to it in 2 weeks. This is how G works (or doesn't). Bureaucracies are evil. This stuff never ends.
  • Then I'm trying to run some wire from an existing light to another location for a new light in my stairway. I tell Edwin what to do and he does whatever he wants and makes more work for us - per the usual. We removed the handrails in the stairway and I was going to move them into an adjacent room, but apparently they're so long I can't get them out of the stairway. This is amazing. It means they brought the handrails into the stairway before putting up all the drywall. Very surprising and very annoying because it means I have to temporarily have them sitting in the stairway while we do all the patches.
  • A couple years ago we were working on a job for Meryl's brother. It's a building in SF with 3 floors and 4 residential units. The garbage is left inside in the common area hallway because there's no exterior space that would work. The city issued a NOV (notice of violation) for the garbage in the upstairs hallway (this was about 3 years ago) because it blocks the hallway. We had inspectors out and they admitted it was a very difficult situation, but couldn't help us. They want it enclosed in a closet. The closet needs to have 2 layers of 5/8 drywall, plus a layer of steel on top of the drywall, plus a sprinkler head inside. In the upstairs location the only way to make room for the garbage was to take away the closet from one of the occupied units. So we got an architect to draw something up ($) and proposed it to the tenant. She's losing some of her space so we had to pay her $10k for her to lose her closet (3x8). We take all this to the city and they sit on it for months. They look at it and wonder why we're doing any of this work. "We don't see an NOV for this property so you don't need to do the garbage closet." We tell them they're wrong and they figure out that we're right after all. Then they tell us that the fire department needs to look at it. After a while longer they finally look at it and say we can't do it unless we change the main water meter to accommodate the new water load (which will probably never be needed, but whatever). We need to get calculations done ($) and then pay for a new meter ($). Finally get all that lined up and today we get word from the property manager that the city was out there for some reason and we have more NOVs. Usually this is stuff like having to fix peeling paint or a bad bulb in the hallway or whatever. Turns out that this time it's the exact same situation, but for downstairs this time. Why didn't they tell us we needed a closet for the trash downstairs when they told us they needed a closet for the trash upstairs!? The trash upstairs was an egress issue. This trash doesn't have the same issue so I guess it didn't occur to them. Or maybe they see that we're going to work on the one upstairs so they figure they'll hit us up for the one downstairs as well. At any rate, we have to go through the whole shit show again to get a new permit (or update the existing)...new calculations, new drawings, etc. This is the kind of shit that tenants have no clue about. You think that landlords are just sitting back making pure profit, but the city fucks you sideways like this constantly. Glad I'm just the contractor and not the owner. Theoretically I win no matter what since I'm working hourly on this. In reality, we all lose when they have these unreasonable requirements.
  • Prius has been rock solid for us since we got it several years ago. We've put 150k miles on it and nothing more than brake pads and oil changes. The other day it ran rough and the check engine light came on. I looked up the code with my scanner and it said engine misfire. So, it's like 90% chance either spark plugs, wires, or ignition coils. So, the wires are a pain to replace so Jesus and I just replaced the plugs and the coils. Needed to get it done anyway so I figured it was worth a shot no matter what. Probably saved about $400 doing it ourselves and it took about an hour. Took it out for a test drive and it ran fine for a while. But then it happened again and I sunk in my seat. Take it to the local oil change place and they have one mechanic who can do a bit of troubleshooting. He can't figure it out. Take it to the dealer. $400 later and they say it's a leaking head gasket. They want $4733 to do it. We'll see what it costs to have other places do it, but it'll likely be $1.5k+ even at the cheapest places. Jesus has built high performance cars so I know he can help and we can probably figure it out, but not exactly what I wanted to be doing. Probably a full day job and out of my depth.
  • Why are bureaucracies evil? Because they are one example of a system, structure, or mechanism that eliminates accountability and dehumanizes life. Unions are another example. I know that G and unions can be good...they have been in the past in this country and continue to be elsewhere. However, here and now, the unions that exist are those that have survived because they are very powerful. Like all very powerful organizations they abuse their power and they've become a force for evil in the form of a lack of accountability. Teachers unions and police unions are good examples. They start with a good premise and good intentions. I like the idea of cops and most teachers, but the unions that represent them are so powerful that they end up protecting even the worst among the group. Anything that reduces accountability as much as these unions do is working towards destroying our society.
  • Large corporations are evil as well and are bureaucratic, but it manifests differently and they have a host of other issues. Concentrated power is bound to be bad in the long run. In isolated instances, for short periods of time, it may be okay, but in the long run it's a recipe for disaster. Concentrated power must have an expiration date. So, in the recent example of COVID we saw that G allowed for remote voting or took power to restrict movements of people or mandated certain behaviors, etc. This emergency power needs to be explicitly granted and given a sunset clause which means it has an expiration date. Another solution to concentrated power is competition. So, G power must be limited and when it is virtually unlimited in it's strength then it must be limited in its time. Since corporations don't have a monopoly on force or the aura of legality, their power must have competition in order to be checked. Anything that reduces competition becomes a problem.
  • The long and short of it is that G has a monopoly so we need to be very diligent in keeping it in check. Powers granted can't be forever (even though the bureaucrats will want to make them that way). Corporations can't get too large and we can't use G to allow them to entrench themselves (for example) with regulations that make the barrier to entry too great. This is all straightforward, common sense stuff, but it seems like it's lost in today's society.


    • 2/1/22 (20:59)

  • Hit a bit of a slow patch with work. This time of year tends to be slower than usual, but with 5 guys to keep busy I feel it more now than ever. Really is feast or famine. Intellectually I know that this is the way things are and that in 6 months I'll be drowning in work, but it's nerve-wracking nonetheless.
  • Now that we have so much more capacity I need to plan ahead better and get some winter work lined up beforehand so we're not running around doing little jobs to fill in. The other thing that happens every year is we do our taxes around this time and then get the bill in March/April. When you're self-employed you pay the G quarterly estimated amounts. So, if you have 24% tax rate and you made $100k in the prior year (2020) then you pay $24k in 4 installments in 2021 (you generally assume you're going to make the same amount as the prior year). Plus whatever you have to pay to the state (though CA takes it in 3 payments instead of 4 for some reason). So, every two weeks I pay us out of the business account and a certain amount of that pay goes straight to savings. That money is for taxes. Every 3 months I write a check to the state and federal G and that's our tax payment. At the beginning of the next year we do our taxes and, if we made more than the projected $100k (in this example) then we need to make up that difference. So, if we made $200k in 2021 then we would need to write an additional check for the missed tax payment last year $24k (we're assuming no progressive tax rates just to keep it simple). So, in April of 2022 in this example we would pay $24k to cover the underpayment as a result of 2021 being better than 2020. Plus we would need to pay $12k for the first quarter's earnings of 2022 (we are now assuming we're making $200k/year so the quarterly payment has now doubled).
  • All this is to say that the first quarter of a new year is a major bend over and grab your ankles time for us and it's made all the better by it being a generally slower time for business. The good news is that we've been down the road before and so I always put away extra money to prepare for this. The bad news is that you get used to seeing your savings look a certain way and then half of it disappears to pay for (?) and you start all over again.
  • We could assume that we're going to make more money than the previous year and the end of the year big check writing wouldn't happen, but I don't see that as a better way of going. If you guess wrong then you're paying more than you should and essentially loaning the G your $. If you guess right then you're giving them your $ earlier so you don't have as big a check to write later and you save yourself some heartache, but it doesn't seem worth it.
  • Look into the Cantillon effect. Basically it states that the first people to get money have the most buying power and each person who gets the money afterwards is facing decreasing buying power with that same dollar because of its injection into the economy. Interesting.
  • Jimmy G ended the run in predictable style. I say that having actually predicted it before the final drive started. I said to Meryl and Vince that there's a 50/50 chance that this ends in an interception (should have added fumble to that) or a field goal. I really didn't see much chance of a TD or anything else. I knew he'd either hit Samuel for a big gain and we'd extend the game or he'd crash and burn. The truth is that he doesn't make great decisions. If it's a 2 minute drill then he's not your guy. He's a worse version of peoples' vision of Alex Smith. They called him a "game manager" which is code for a not very good QB whose good games are 200 yards 1TD/0INT. That's basically Jimmy G. He's fine at playing ahead when the run game and defense can control the game. If you need him for anything else then good luck with that.
  • Kyle Shanahan meanwhile looks like one of the biggest choke artists in coaching history. I think he gets a bit of a bad rap in that way. The ATL v. NE game (losing after being up 28-3 in 3rd quarter) is rough, but he's the coordinator in that game, not the HC so it's not all on him. The SB loss to the Chiefs being up by 10 in the 4th Q is bad, but if you watch post mortem videos on the playcalling in the 4th Q of the game, he called good plays, but Jimmy G missed throws and the players didn't execute. Definitely to blame a bit, but not completely. Same goes for this loss. Up by 10 in the 4th Q and they lost. Jimmy G made bad decisions on the final drive. The defense didn't hold like you would have liked. I don't think it's all on Shanahan.
  • All that said, I'm close to putting Shanahan in the same category as Lane Kiffin. Both are great OC...they know offense very well and are great at being offensive coordinators...I'm just not sure either is meant to be the HC. People think that if you're a good OC that you should be the HC. They're different jobs. I don't think it needs to go that way. If you're a good carpenter it doesn't mean that you should run your own business. The Peter Principle dictates that you generally get promoted to your level of incompetence. This is how the world works, though. People always want more. Other people always want more for the people who are doing a good job. So, assuming the positions are available, people get promoted until they reach the top, or wherever they are no longer good at what they do. Nick Saban is the best college HC of all-time. He went 15-17 in the NFL. Since 2009 (13 seasons) he's lost 17 games in college. It took him 2 seasons to lose that many in the NFL. He learned the Peter Principle the hard way like most do. The other part of this is that people assume that HC is better than OC. You get more money and prestige, but that doesn't mean it's necessarily better. Nothing wrong with being a great coordinator instead of a mediocre HC.

    • For the first week of each of the first four months of the year I need to do this skin treatment. Twice a day for a week I put these creams on my face and then I don't use it for the rest of the month. The result is supposed to be less pre-cancer shit on your face after the 56 treatments are complete. I did it in January and had skin peeling all over the place. Red face, skin flaking off, etc. It was real pleasant and attractive. The good news is that it's basically giving me all new skin so hopefully that will help in the long run. Not looking forward to aging. I don't think I'm going to be very good at it, but it's better than the alternative.

    1/26/22 (20:49)

  • As part of my job I work almost entirely with immigrants and people who didn't go to college. When I was in high school I felt like the dumb kid in AP classes and the smart kid in the remedial classes. Never felt like I fit in anywhere is pretty much the story of my life. Now, I'm the white guy working with immigrants. I certainly don't jibe with the wine and cheese techies and I'm not sure I'll ever been fully accepted by the immigrants I work with because I'm their boss and I'm the well off white guy. I think that class is often not just about your bank account balance, but more about your state of mind and disposition. Trump sort of taps into this by being a billionaire (depending who you ask and what their motives are. Some claim he's a billionaire when they want to show how different he is from the working class and others claim he's a fraud so they can attack his ego and call him a liar) who has a working class ethos. He talks like the working class - gruff, rough around the edges, unpolished, occasionally violent, unfiltered, etc. No matter how rich I get I will always feel like and relate more to the middle and lower middle class.
  • At any rate, in working with people who didn't go to college (or not even high school graduates) and are sometimes semi-literate, etc. you see the limitations of this upbringing. Where it matters most in my line of work is in math. I had a US educated kid (high school graduate) who worked for us who barely could do basic math. Addition was slow. Simple division (44" divided by 2) was slow or even non-existent. Today at the lumber yard there was a US native (my best guess) who got confused about what cutting a piece of 24' lumber in half meant he needed to measure the board to...he thought he needed to cut it at 14' until I gently helped him with that. With the immigrants I work with they tend to be okay in math, but their spelling and reading aren't as good. Technology helps a lot with all of this because I can understand more spanish this way and they can use speech to text and text translating on the phone to understand me better.
  • Moises (who used to work for us, but is in Mexico now) I think dropped out of school around 6th grade. But he's also worked since he was like 7 years old doing everything from cutting his own lumber out of logs to masonry to carpentry to everything in between. Where you need to be creative to solve a problem on the job site he always had an idea to get us out of a jam. When it comes to working consistently on a project and moving the ball forward, he would be there. Those are the attributes I've come to value a lot more than the type of smarts I used to aspire to when I was younger. Having the answer to everything and knowing a lot of trivia and the like used to be more valuable than it is today. These days I find a lot more value in creativity, problem solving, resourcefulness, etc. Those are the attributes that get the job done day in and day out in unideal circumstances.
  • NYT daily podcast (finally) nailed it on COVID. Better late than never, I suppose. Maybe there's some light at the end of this tunnel. Maybe the Left will change its mind on the zero COVID policy and finally start to think about the broader implications of the Cuomo "save every life" policy. It's the most rational that podcast has been in a while. Have a listen.
  • Was at Alcatraz the other day and they have a tram that takes people from the bottom of the hill up to the top. I think they should have a mandatory physical exertion policy in addition to the mandatory mask policy. Unless you have a note from your doctor that you've got a broken hip or the like, you need to walk your ass up the hill if you want to see the sites. They should institute a minimum trip policy on Uber of 1 mile. I don't care if it's raining or anything. Bring a fucking umbrella and go for a walk. You're not made of sugar, you're not going to melt. Go for a walk you lazy fuck. If you had been going for more walks for the last 60 years then maybe you (and those like you) wouldn't be 80% of the COVID deaths. Why is one policy ubiquitous and the other is completely unheard of? Because I'm not running shit, that's why.
  • Back from fantasy land...
  • Students are threatening a student walk out now. One of the interviews I saw had a student saying they had the right to feel safe from COVID in school. I'm not sure where they got that idea. Where is it written or imagined that one should feel like disease doesn't apply to them? We live in a dangerous world. Make yourself as strong as possible and move on with life. You're not owed anything. This culture of safetyism is really detrimental in the long run. You're responsible for your safety - no one else. Further, life is inherently dangerous so proceed accordingly. This is what happens when you raise kids in a nerfed up world. They expect the jungle to be paved for them and get whiny when it isn't. Kids need to learn how to navigate danger on their own. Making everything safe for them is toxic femininity and a recipe for long term problems. When a kid is 20 years old and they don't have any confidence that they can navigate the world on their own what does that do to their sense of self? How does that strain those around them and the larger society? It's all bad.
  • Fantastic weekend of playoff football. All the games were close and fun to watch. The Niners are over-performing right now. I'm not a Jimmy G fan and tend to think that they win in spite of him, rather than because of him, but I guess we'll see how things go in the next 1-2 games. I used to think that Kittle was the #1 offensive player, but I have to say it's Samuel now. He's really dynamic. I wish they didn't use him the backfield so much because I worry about injuries, but I understand why they do. If Rodgers owns the Bears I wonder how he feels about losing to the Niners all the time. He's so cocky, I can't stand that guy.
  • Worried that we'll have a big slow down economically this year.


    • 1/24/22 (18:40)

  • Sure enough the schools in Oakland are now requesting that students use N95 masks. Meryl said they're required, but the email I saw said it was recommended, so I'm not certain. Also, some places in SF are now requiring everyone aged 2 (two) or older be vaccinated. Everyone 12+ needs to be boosted. And of course masks are required regardless of vaccination status. It's a very odd that vaccination is required even though we now know that it doesn't stop the spread (as was originally claimed and advertised). This whole experience has been one giant bait and switch/moving of the goalposts.
  • When the science is this epically wrong (1) about something this important (2) and visible (3) it's one more giant step away from enlightenment era values. Trust in our institutions is crumbling. Belief in enlightenment values is in the shitter. The smartest people in the country spend most of their politically-oriented time talking about how shitty a country the US is and (possibly more important) has always been. "We've always been colonialist, racist, sexist, etc." Maybe I'm guilty of that here as well. In real life I usually take whatever the opposite point of view is and play the devil's advocate. Around here that usually means defending a conservative point of view and saying maybe we don't have as horrible a history as some would have you believe.
  • Rasmussen (well regarded polling organization, 538 rates them a B) had a recent poll about COVID and the response. Look at the cross tabs if you want to be really depressed. This is the kind of stuff that has some people worrying about an authoritarian Left. To me, it shows how quick each side is to abandoning what they claim as values when the right issue/framing comes along. The majority of people I know vote Democrat the majority of the time. So, you're associated with this stuff just like the Republicans are associated with the racist wing of their party. Here are some low lights....
  • "Nearly half (48%) of Democratic voters think federal and state governments should be able to fine or imprison individuals who publicly question the efficacy of the existing COVID-19 vaccines on social media, television, radio, or in online or digital publications.
  • Forty-five percent (45%) of Democrats would favor governments requiring citizens to temporarily live in designated facilities or locations if they refuse to get a COVID-19 vaccine.
  • While about two-thirds (66%) of likely voters would be against governments using digital devices to track unvaccinated people to ensure that they are quarantined or socially distancing from others, 47% of Democrats favor a government tracking program for those who won’t get the COVID-19 vaccine.
  • Twenty-nine percent (29%) of Democratic voters would support temporarily removing parents’ custody of their children if parents refuse to take the COVID-19 vaccine. That’s much more than twice the level of support in the rest of the electorate – seven percent (7%) of Republicans and 11% of unaffiliated voters – for such a policy."
  • In sum (because I want to reiterate this craziness), about half of Democrats are fine with: 1) locking up people for questioning the efficacy of vaccines 2) temporary detainment in camps if you don't get a vaccine 3) tracking people who don't get a vaccine. Further, 29% are fine taking your kids away if you don't get a vaccine.
  • 15-20 years ago this was the party that fought against Bush, on the grounds of individual freedoms, things like rendition, gitmo, etc. for suspected terrorists. Now they're willing to lock up their own people for not getting a vaccine OR EVEN QUESTIONING ITS EFFICACY.
  • I've used bold and caps in this post so it's not a good day for me.
  • Went to Alcatraz this weekend. First time I'd ever been. Not as good as the Eastern State Penitentiary in PA, but still worth the trip. They had the usual stuff and an exhibit on mass incarceration. It was predictably Left wing in its presentation. I swear the people who make these do so inside a bubble. They play up the black vs. white incarceration rate, but say nothing about the disproportionate incarceration rate/sentencing by gender. You're going to get a worse sentence for being black vs. white (for the same crime), as we all know by now, but the severity in punishment is much worse if you're a man vs. woman. No one mentions this, ever. And of course they left out all the research and facts surrounding black leadership asking for more policing and harsher penalities in their own communities. This is true throughout the 90s and had bipartisan support.
  • I think criminal justice is a big issue and wish it received better attention. If one wanted to actually reform it then one could make a much better appeal than the racial appeal being made today. This is what makes me think that some people care more about division than they do about solutions. If you care about division then you play up things like racial disparities. If you care about solutions then the racial component is one part of your argument, instead of its entirety. You could, for example, appeal to small government types to achieve a coalition on a single issue. "Big government is locking up more of your fellow citizens over small issues than any other country in the world. We should limit the power of the government to put people away forever. We should hold government accountable for the times it wrongly incarcerates people, etc." Instead it's about systemic racism and the rest. Some people hear that as you're fucked up for being white and your country is racist and will always be racist. Doesn't play well in fly over country.


    • 1/10/22 (18:21)

  • Liz Cheney is getting it from both ends these days. She'll be running for re-election and it seems as though she won't have much of a chance. Democrats hate her because she's a Cheney and has conservative views. Republicans hate her because she's calling Trump on his January 6th bullshit. She has to know that this will not play well for her. This is the definition of courage. I have no love for the Cheney family and I don't like her policies, but she's being courageous and that's rare these days. If we were rewarding the right characteristics maybe we would reward her. Instead, the incentives and feedback mechanisms are likely to punish her for her stance against Trump on this narrow issue. Until we reward the right things, we'll continue to be fucked.
  • Meryl went to the dentist the other day. The hygienist had 3 (three) N95 masks, 1 surgical mask, and 1 face shield on.
  • When COVID first came around I said it was obvious that a mask would help - even though Fauci and others said masks wouldn't help. I, like many, thought it was transmitted via droplets and surfaces (this is what the media and doctors were telling us at the time) and so masks made perfect sense to reduce that kind of transmission. Now, however, we know it's airborne and we know that masks are less effective than the experts are now claiming. So, the fabric masks are doing very little to actually slow the spread - it's more theater than anything at this point. If science wins then it will probably be just a matter of time before some places get more strict about the type of mask being used. If science wins then more places will invest in air circulation and the Fauci/Walensky types will emphasize this and physical exercise and a host of other things big and small that have yet to be politicized. The word is already out on vaccination and boosting. There's no amount of talking about it that will help anymore. Same goes for masks. Time to move on to other ways of helping.
  • A question I haven't had answered yet is why this vaccine/virus seems unlike any other I'm aware of. Most vaccines are administered once in your life. Some like tetanus are every 10 years or so. Flu is famously once a year, and kind of hit or miss at that. And while this one was touted as one and done (Biden said we would be free on July 4th) it was quickly discovered to not be that effective. Then they said you should get boosted. Then they said boosted after 6 months. Then they said get boosted after 5 months. What makes this so unusual? Or is this not unusual and I'm just unaware of other vaccine regimens that follow a 5 month schedule?
  • In his book Preventable, Andy Slavitt calls out the Trump administration for a variety of issues (enough to fill a book evidently), but one he mentions that stuck out is that Trump wanted to pick an arbitrary date (Easter) by which the virus should be gone and we should get back to normal. Slavitt thought this was a really awful idea. The facts should determine the date. Instead of choosing a date and then making reality try to fit into that. Unfortunately, though Slavitt was on his transition team, Biden didn't read the book. Instead, Biden made this same mistake twice - once saying that we would get back to normal on the symbolic date of July 4th and once more pulling out of Afghanistan on September 11th. It would be nice if we made new mistakes instead of the same old ones over and over again.
  • Edwin has worked for me for more than two years and he continues to roll walls first when painting, instead of using the brush first as I have told him to do probably a thousand times. "Cut-in primero, roll segundo. Siempre." Said it many times and he still doesn't do it. He understands, but he just doesn't do it for some reason. He's making the same mistake over and over. This is frustrating. Making new mistakes is fine. Making old ones is not.
  • "Charlamagne tha god" (Lenard) is a radio host and he had Kamala on his show a while back after it appeared as though the Build Back Better plan was going to fall apart because they couldn't get the votes. Lenard was giving Kamala a hard time and at one point asked her who the president was. He's upset because Joe Manchin is holding up the BBB plan by not voting for it. The exchange is cringe-worthy. Lenard doesn't understand how the American system of government works. Kamala gets in this weird rut where she's saying "Biden is the president and my name is Kamala Harris and I'm the Vice President." It's really odd that this is where we are. A proper response to all this is to point out that 1) Manchin is part of the Legislative branch and 2) he's one senator who isn't voting for the BBB plan. 3) Not a single Republican supports the BBB plan and Manchin is the one getting all the flak. 4) Meanwhile Biden is president, but that doesn't mean he just gets to do whatever he wants. Separation of powers is a thing. Somehow, though, all this was lost on both Kamala and Lenard. It's really sad that this is what passes as news, an interview, something worthy of comment, etc. Everything about this is horrible.


    • 1/6/22 (16:29)

  • Going into my 25th calendar year of writing crap here. Definitely didn't see that coming when I started. There's actually probably more content than I have on here as some of it was lost in the early days when I was on geocities or whatever. Only started using Netscape Composer later on and that kept everything backed up locally.
  • More schools are closing these days. Locally there are a couple that I've heard about closing for a few days or a week or something. Our school hasn't done that so far. The reactions to COVID continue to be really surprisingly separated from the realities of the disease. I think there's gotta be a knowledge test on COVID before you make decisions like this. Like what percentage of people who get COVID die from it? or How likely are you to die if you're a vaccinated 50 year old? If you can't get within an order of magnitude of the correct response then you shouldn't have any power over making these decisions. I'm guessing that most of the people making these decisions won't the the answers right. From the polling data I've seen Democrats are much more likely to exaggerate the harm done by COVID, just in case you're wondering.
  • I plan on putting together a little statement of purpose for the site one of these days. The reason for this is that a lot of the stuff I write here is critical of Democrats and the Left, yet I identify with them more than Republicans (though I don't like either party). Part of my goal here is to not only police the side I tend to agree with more, but also to point out that both sides have deep issues. To break the echo chamber a bit. To inject humility where haughtiness reigns. To expose others who tend to agree with Democrats or Leftists more to ideas of the Right that might make a lot of sense. Part of the reason for this is that I went through most of my young adult life (including college) without much exposure to earnest, steel man style arguments that presented opposing views. 90%+ of the social and political stuff I encountered in my CA liberal college sphere was about how far left should we take the country. The debate wasn't about how much person responsibility does a person have or freedom and responsibility going hand in hand or limitations on government handouts - it was much more about American imperialism, Marxism, what should the government do for me, etc.
  • Went to HD the other day to pickup something for work and showed the woman behind the counter my store pickup order number and her responded was "What?! All I can say is you can lose some weight working at Home Depot." Apparently she had to walk to the other end of the store to get the order (since it was oversized it wasn't behind the counter like many of the orders). And people wonder why the US had more COVID deaths than other countries.

    • Listening to This American Life the other day and they had a little preface to a story that said (roughly) "by the way we're going to use the word's Rebecca (the subject of the story) typically uses - babies, women, mothers, but of course those aren't the words everyone uses." I mean what the fuck are we even doing anymore? Not sure if I brought this one up a while back, but the Democrats have gone full retard on the language around pregnancy now. They refer to women as "birthing people" now because some pregnant women are actually men. If that sounds totally right to you then you're nuts. If it doesn't make any sense then go ahead and read it again and remember that trans women can have babies and maybe you'll figure it out. War is peace. Ignorance is strength. 1984.