12/13/23 (11:02)
  • People who prioritize money tend to make more of it. If they prioritize relationships they have better/more of them. Funny how that works. But you can't complain when it's your priorities that are determining your reality.
  • A media pet peeve of mine is when (mostly young) reporters describe a person as "sort of an extremist" or how there was a "kinda bloodthirsty mob gathering..." It seems as though they want to describe a thing/person in an extreme and provocative way, but they also want to hedge their language. It's mealy mouth bullshit. If someone is sort of an extremist then they're not an extremist. If you want to describe someone as extreme then go ahead and commit to it and have the receipts to back it up. I've noticed this on NPR and the NYT podcast...there's no escaping the unprofessional, poor reporting these days.
  • By doing well you are doing good. Do your job well and you are doing good for the world. I can't tell you how much irritation is in my life because people didn't do their job properly. Life is difficult enough because of the chaos of nature and general fallibility of humans. To add gross incompetence and uncaring behavior to the mix is just too much. Do your job as well as you can and you do good for the world. If you want to save the world, start by doing a good job.
  • There's been a lot of talk about the genocide of the Palestinian people. It's amazing how bad Jews are at some things. In 1960 there were 1 million Palestinians in the Gaza strip. Today there are over 5 million. Jews are so bad at committing genocide. What the fuck are they doing? A 500% increase in 60 years...an extremely ineffective genocide. They're good at being media overlords and running the global banks and all that, but when it comes to killing Palestinians they are just total garbage. Nazis killed 6 million Jews in like 8 years, you'd think the Jews would have learned how to do commit genocide properly through that experience.


    • 12/5/23 (14:05)

  • Took vacation 11/17-11/27. I'll have to make a trip page for that. Still haven't done one for our trip last year so probably wouldn't hold my breath if I were you. That said, I'm going to make a real effort to get some of that stuff done before the end of the year.
  • Just updated my dad's academy award picks, for example. I haven't done mine, but maybe some day.
  • Was sick the last 1.5 days of the vacation and the last day was pretty miserable. It was snowing and we were outside at the Detroit zoo. Then we were on a flight that was delayed over 2 hours. Then we finally got on the plane and taxied around and waited for 3+ hours while they figured out some weather and mechanical issues. Finally got off the ground and then had another 4.5 hours in the air. Waiting in an airplane for 3+ hours on the runway, while sick, and leaving a fun vacation, qualifies as one of the more miserable experiences of my life. Charmed life I guess.
  • Took a day off work the day after we arrived (didn't get home until about 230a, after all the delays). I was tired and sick and really not up for it. The day after that I left work after about half a day and didn't feel so great. Now I'm still not 100%, but I'm back to work and things are good enough.
  • Worked over the weekend of course to move things along at the new house. Had the union guys there leading the way while a couple of my guys and I made progress on some of the other work on the property.
  • A ton of work to do even before getting MEP (mechanical, electrical, plumbing) in to start their work. Some issues with the foundation that are causing a lot of headaches and extra work for us. The good news is that most of the difficult carpentry is done. The next hardest part, to me anyway, is the concrete work we have. Once we get done with concrete and underground work, I'll be feeling pretty good.
  • Niners have been looking really good this year. A lot of talk about Purdy - even some discussion of him being an MVP contender. I don't see it. I think he's a very good QB and I like him, but he's not even the best player on a team that is really stacked on both sides of the ball. I really hope they don't mess it up this year. Backup skill players should be getting a lot more reps now. No reason to overload CMC or Deebo at this point. Same goes for Bosa and Warner.
  • USC had a pretty shit year, but ended well by getting a new DC. I actually was texting with my dad and some friend of his who is a USC fan that I thought they should go after Ken Norton Jr. (who is LB coach at UCLA now). They did the next best thing by getting the DC at UCLA. The defensive stats at UCLA are so much better than USC and if we get 90% of those stats, then we would have probably been undefeated this year and looking at a National Championship opportunity. We lost 34-32 to Utah, for example. UCLA lost 14-7 to Utah. Riley needs to just get out of Lynn's way and let him run the defense. Riley clearly has no clue how to coach defense so he should delegate that duty away and focus on what he's good at.
  • I agree with the choice to leave FSU out of the playoffs. Yes, they're undefeated, but they're not looking great right now and I think most people would agree that Texas and Alabama would both likely beat FSU if they played today. WA and MI I think are obvious choices. I'm guessing AL will beat MI and WA will beat TX. AL will beat WA for the championship. This is just my guess.
  • We went to the MI/OSU game on the vacation and my feeling was that OSU was actually a slightly better team, but MI made big plays at the right time and that was the difference.


    • 11/5/23 (15:41)

  • Haven't had a day off in the last couple weeks. Trying to get as much done with the new house as possible, especially before Thanksgiving vacation and the rains start.
  • The most difficult beams in the building have been replaced so it's relatively easy carpentry from here on. Still a lot of work, but it's not as difficult.
  • Evidently I didn't upload the page at all last month even though there were a few updates.


    • 10/31/23 (15:08)

  • CTC was pretty much what I expected. Very steep in portions. Relentless and punishing, but doable. Took us 15 hours total including several stops to check the route, eat, drink, rest, admire the view, etc. 21+ miles and almost 11,000 feet in elevation gained. Backpacker Magazine has it as the 5th hardest day hike in the country so there's that. Knee was sore the next day and my traps were sore from wearing a heavy backpack all day. Other than that, no lasting damage. Actually had an easier time that night and the next day than when we did Grand Canyon. Something about that one was really tough for me. I think it was the stopping for an hour at the bottom and having so much downhill to start. Happy to have done it. Happy to be done with it.
  • If everyone buys index funds what are the downsides of that? I don't know enough to say, but it seems like everyone knows by now that index funds are the best strategy for long term growth (at least they have been looking backwards). But what if everyone dumps their money into them? Does that make them better, worse, or the same? Seems like dangerous groupthink, but I have no evidence or theory about why this wouldn't be a good macro level strategy in the long term. We'll see.
  • Been working at the new house a bit lately. Working on framing and structural work. Engineer made assumptions about the shape of the existing foundation that don't make any sense. Unfortunately it looks like we'll need to underpin the existing foundation. This will require a lot of difficult work. Not a simple fix and outside of what I'm comfortable doing so I'm currenly looking for help on this.
  • Currently the entire structure is being help up by steel beams and temporary shoring so we can do our structural work. Had a few union guys out over the weekend and I worked with them on replacing the two main beams in the front of the building. Hopefully we can finish that this weekend. Since they are union guys who work during the week they will only help us out on the weekend, but it's better than nothing and they are better carpenters than me or any of my guys so it's good to have the skilled help. My guys and I will do all the easier stuff.
  • Since 2020 social welfare spending is up, prison population is down, money supply is up, inflation is up, crime is up, drug overdose deaths are up.
  • Liberals my entire life have complained about military spending and remarked on the opportunity cost of spending all that on the military when we could (supposedly) spend small % of it on some pet program that would lift millions out of poverty. That's the narrative. Meanwhile we are now spending more on debt payments than on the military. Media seems silent on this. Liberals are silent on this. I think it's a moral wrong to put our kids and grandkids into debt at this level for the long term just so we can have nice stuff today. Wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine. COVID payouts due to government shut downs. Trump tax cuts. Not going after big corporations to pay their taxes. Social security and other welfare spending which mostly goes to old people who have had their entire lives to get their shit together. It's morally reprehensible.
  • We whould invert our spending. Instead of giving 20%+ of our federal outlays to old people, we should be giving it to babies and kids to make sure they have a better start in life. SS payments to grandma would be better spent on a newborn's family that needs childcare, early education, a birth savings account, etc. I've heard Democrats ask for spending on some of this stuff, but with them it's always "yes and..." And now that we have high interest rates, our debt payments are ridiculous because no one is willing to balance the budget.


    • 10/18/23 (14:42)

  • I fucking hate my job sometimes. It seems cool to fix things and make cool stuff, but half of it is setting up meetings with city inspectors, emailing engineers and architects and homeowners about shit that doesn't matter or is only required because of government bureaucrats. An endless loop of questions and answers that yield more questions. Here's an idea - let's just fucking build things and move on. Insurance and bonding and replacing stolen tools and dealing with employees who can't get their pants on in the morning. People and society have a way of sucking the pleasure out of everything.
  • 10 months into the year and the city still refuses to do anything of substance with the homeless encampment in front of our warehouse. They are going to have a meeting about it soon (supposedly). What a joke.
  • What it comes down to is that I like to get things done and other people like to talk. Talking is nice because it makes people feel heard and validated and they get things off their chest and all that touchy feely girl shit. Not for me. Sorry.
  • This weekend we're going to Palm Springs for CTC. 21 miles, 10,800' gained. Nervous about it. Going to be hot, but we'll be climbing fast so we should get ahead of the heat. Not in the best shape right now and wish I had trained more, but I hate training and really don't have a lot of spare time. Which brings me to...
  • Work at the new house is underway. Contractors were there last week and this week lifting the structure so we can do our work of replacing it piece by piece (not quite, but kinda).
  • Why is every crappy software company constantly "upgrading" their software? Seems like they are just justifying their jobs at this point. It's not all bug fixes and security updates. It's minor graphics changes and crap. Most of the time I get Android updated it actually introduces new bugs into the phone. Often with Bluetooth. It's just amazing that all these people do this shit and software still has problems constantly. I've said it for 25+ years - just make the shit work and stop tinkering with it.


    • 10/11/23 (13:51)

  • When the Golden Gate Bridge was built less than 100 years ago it cost about $600 million (adjusted for inflation). Today it will cost about $400 million to install nets to prevent people jumping to their death from the bridge. This says a lot about modern society. The costs are out of control. But also the fact that we're building nets under a bridge so people don't jump off says a lot as well. Maybe it's good or maybe not. But that's our society today vs. 1937.


    • 9/20/23( 21:40)

  • Today was a good day. Started off not really wanting to go to work and feeling the mid week slog more than usual. Maybe Merritt picked up on it. I sat on the couch with the girls and Merritt snuggled with me for a while and asked me not to go when I told her I had to get going. Then she asked if she could go to work with me and I reflexively said no. Then I thought about it more and she asked more and I said sure let's play hooky. Zoe asked if she could too and I said no and then I thought better of it and said okay. Took them to work and the day turned out to be more fun than usual. Went to the warehouse and set up two guys doing work there. Left the girls at the warehouse with Meryl and the guys. Then went to the new house to setup two more guys there. We should have the permit finally either tomorrow (Thursday) or Monday (building department employees don't work on Fridays). Showed them what to do and they worked on that. Then I went to another job for an inspection and got a little work done there. Passed inspection which is always nice. Also met with PG&E about a new meter array we're going to put in there. They said it's going to likely be several months to get it done. Then I went back to the warehouse to pickup the girls. Meryl went to SF for another inspection there. Then I went with the girls to my favorite lunch/burger spot and the lady who knows me got to meet the girls. We got burgers and fries and an oreo milkshake. Then we went to another job to check out one of the guys who was doing painting there. He's the new guy (Mitchell) and unfortunately I don't think he's going to last in the long term, but that's another story. Then we went back to the new house to drop off trash at the dump truck that I store there now. Went over a few more things with the guys and then went to HD to pickup materials. Girls helped with that. Clerk didn't ring me up for a couple items so we ended up getting a couple freebies. I'm not complaining. Then we went do Jamba for an afternoon snack. Then we went to another supplier to pick up a special order item. Then we went home before 4p. Got a decent amount done and got to hang out with 2 of my favorite people all day.
  • Merritt said she wished she never had to go to school and that they could just hang out with the family and learn that way. I agreed and I've felt that way many times as well.
  • Not sure if I've mentioned it before, but Jesus lives at our new house now. He had some problems with his living situation so we offered for him to live there for a while. He set up a ghetto cold shower situation in the shed, but, other than that, it's basically a studio apartment for free so he's happy.
  • Monday was a bad day. Went around doing the rounds checking out the guys at different jobs. Went to a job in the hills and had intended to only be there a few minutes to drop off materials and check things out. It turned out to be closer to 15 minutes and when I came out all the doors to my truck were open. I knew what happened of course, but I was hopeful that they didn't get everything....but they did. All my cordless power tools were stolen from the truck. $4k worth of stuff. Some form of theft happens every year. It's just the reality of living in Oakland. For me, it's not just a thing that happens on the news. It's not a thing that just happens on Next Door. It's a thing that is a real part of my life consistently. Sometimes it's only a couple hundred bucks (like a few months ago when they stole a bunch of drill bits from the truck in the middle of the night in our driveway). Other times it's thousands, like it was this time or the time 5 years ago when they got $12k+ worth of tools.
  • They also got Jesus' power tools. Carlos had his truck locked so he was spared.
  • Yes, I need to lock my truck every time even if it's for a minute. On the other hand, this is a shitty way to live. People understand that when you say a woman was asking for it by wearing a short skirt - there's absolutely zero tolerance of that argument in polite society. But the "you should always lock your doors" argument is literally enshrined in signs throughout the city. "Always lock up" "Don't leave valuables behind" Just imagine signs in the night club "cover your drink so you don't get roofied" "cover up so you don't get groped" What a world we live in.
  • Anyway, it was a shitty day, but I've moved on.
  • While I was at the warehouse today I talked with a neighbor who was fed up with the homeless people living in front of our warehouse. He asked why I hadn't done anything to get them to go. As best I can figure, people look at me as a white guy and think I have some sort of power. "Surely a white guy complaining to the city will solve this problem immediately." I clued him into the reality that the city doesn't give a shit as evidenced by the 9 months of inaction despite my constant hectoring of them. He was surprised that nothing had been done. He told me his neighbor was a slob and was piling up trash in the backyard. I looked back there and sure enough it was basically a massive dumpster. He said the rats are coming into his yard. This is the reality of how people live. I got his contact info and will loop him into the correspondence, but I doubt anything will be done. I don't want to be a community organizer. That's what city council people are supposed to do. We offload that responsibility to them to keep society running. Unfortunately it doesn't work in Oakland. So, I might become a community organizer in the next few months...gathering signatures, etc. to pressure the idiots in the city to do their fucking job.
  • People have a lot of buzz words/phrases these days. One of them is having a "feeling of belonging." The supposition is that dominant groups have a feeling of belonging that "historically marginalized peoples" don't have. As a person in the dominant group I can say I've never had a feeling of belonging. The implication seems to be that being a white guy means that you automatically fit in and have this magical feeling of belonging that empowers you and "centers" your identity. Lots of buzzwords and not a lot of sense, imo. I don't really feel it. That's my "lived experience" and you're not allowed to deny that anymore so...
  • Didn't really watch the Republican debate, but heard some highlights. Seemed obvious that Vivek won it, but most of the media missed this fact. He did get a bump afterwards and that was predictable despite (maybe because of) most of the media not liking him. Basically the mainstream legacy media doesn't understand the average Republican voter. Unfortunately we have a broken culture that revolves around attention. If you can get attention then you are good. Pathetic formula, but it seems to be pretty simple. It felt like there was a time when other things were valued, but now it's mostly about the clicks and views.
  • For some reason there's been a debate lately about drag queens. One side says that drag queens are perverts and the other side says they're saving the world or whatever. The weird thing is that it seems like it's a hill that people are willing to die on to allow them to have story hour for elementary school kids. I just fail to understand why a person would fight so much for a drag queen story hour for elementary school kids. I don't know the full history of drag, but it seems to me like it's basically guys dressing up like women. They are not trans. Why is that a necessary artistic form of expression for elementary school kids? Why is fighting against parents not wanting that in their school a worthy fight? Conservatives see this as creepy or not age appropriate or "grooming" behavior. Of course you could ask the other question as well - why fight against drag queens reading stories to your kids? Liberals see this as hateful and exclusionary.
  • A lot of the time when I'm talking about these issues I'm referring to polite society, not the trailer park consensus (as a simplistic contrast). There are different norms depending upon where you are. When I'm talking to my guys (who work for me and are mostly immigrants) they will say things that wouldn't fly at the dinner parties I've gone to.
  • In polite society it's much more acceptable to say "the future is female" or "what do we even need men for?" These are popular memes and laugh lines in polite society. In polite society the idea of a patriarchy, in light of these kinds of comments, is kind of comical. In polite society comments about my idiot husband go over just fine compared to my ditsy wife who doesn't know how to drive or whatever. Sure, once you go to Wal-Mart those realities flip. But if you went to Berkeley and run in the circles I'm in, the Wal-Mart reality is not the daily reality you likely experience, and yet that's the world that is depicted in the conversations people have about politics, gender, race, etc. These people get to have the best of both worlds. Freedom to demean men/white people and act like perpetual victims, while also existing in a cultural framework that fully supports them and even puts them on a pedestal.
  • I've seen a lot of "the future is female" shirts in the last couple years. If we're going to play the game of checking the origins of things we don't like then let's do it with that. You know the game - police in America have roots in slave patrols, which is a way of supposedly showing that police in America are racist and maybe we should just abolish the police. That "future is female" idea came from a feminist who argued that future society should only be 10% male (though she didn't argue for genocide, to her credit). From wikipedia:
  • "In her early career, Gearhart took part in a series of seminars at San Francisco State University, where feminist scholars were critically discussing issues of rape, slavery, and the possibility of nuclear annihilation. Gearhart outlines a three-step proposal for female-led social change from her essay, "The Future–-If There Is One–-is Female":

    • I) Every culture must begin to affirm a female future.
    II) Species responsibility must be returned to women in every culture.
    III) The proportion of men must be reduced to and maintained at approximately 10% of the human race.
    Gearhart does not base this radical proposal on the idea that men are innately violent or oppressive, but rather on the "real danger is in the phenomenon of male-bonding, that commitment of groups of men to each other whether in an army, a gang, a service club, a lodge, a monastic order, a corporation, or a competitive sport." Gearhart identifies the self-perpetuating, male-exclusive reinforcement of power within these groups as corrosive to female-led social change. Thus, if "men were reduced in number, the threat would not be so great and the placement of species responsibility with the female would be assured."
    Gearhart, a dedicated pacifist, recognized that this kind of change could not be achieved through mass violence. On the critical question of how women could achieve this, Gearhart argues that it is by women's own capacity for reproduction that the ratio of men to women can be changed though the technologies of cloning or ovular merging, both of which would only produce female births. She argues that as women take advantage of these reproductive technologies, the sex ratio would change over generations.[14]
    Daphne Patai in her book Heterophobia: Sexual Harassment and the Future of Feminism summarizes Gearhart's essay as, "The future must be in female hands, women alone must control the reproduction of species; and only 10% of the population should be allowed to be male".[15]
    Mary Daly supported Gearhart's proposals, stating: "I think it's not a bad idea at all. If life is to survive on this planet, there must be a decontamination of the Earth. I think this will be accompanied by an evolutionary process that will result in a drastic reduction of the population of males."
  • I've pointed out before that this game is silly and inconsistently applied. It's a shit argument and here are a few more examples that I've come up with to test whether or not you want to bring up this argument in the future:
  • public education had roots in the KKK wanting to take students away from private catholic schools and put them into public, protestant schools. Guess we shouldn't be for public education anymore.
  • planned parenthood had roots in the eugenics movement. Oops.
  • holistic college admissions began as a way of excluding Jews who did too well on grades/tests. Guess we should go back to just using grades?
  • the terms gender role and gender identity and sexual orientation were coined by John Money who was an abuser and all around piece of shit. Guess we shouldn't use those terms anymore.
  • minimum wage in the US drove up black unemployment. Bacon Davis prevailing wage law was seen as a way of getting black people to not be in construction. The last time black unemployment was lower than white UE was in 1930, which was when minimum wage began. Hm, abolish minimum wage because of its racist beginnings?
  • gun control laws were originally meant to keep guns away from blacks. Let's not have gun control anymore, then?
  • occupational licensing laws were meant to keep blacks out of certain jobs.
  • pink lemonade was literally invented by a racist clown.


    • 9/12/23 (14:40)

  • Part of being liberal is that you tend to be more open and that usually includes being more inclusive. This manifests itself in being the type to include more letters in the LGBTQAI2S++ community and all that. But it also means you're more likely to put up with wackos running around the city, including the library, making things difficult. Per the linked article, even people in Oakland have their limit when it comes to crazies bothering people in libraries. Hopefully these things are all adding up to a realization to the fact that there should be limits to being inclusive and open and tolerant. Taken alone, these things are fine and dandy. But all things have their limits and this city is beyond reason when it comes to the oftentimes nice inclination to include or tolerate diversity and all that.


    • 8/8/23 (20:46)

  • The other day I was in Oakland driving down the street (International Blvd. which is one of the larger streets in the city) and there was a dude on his bike in the middle turning lane just slowly biking and pouring used oil in the street. One hand on the handlebars and the other holding a 5qt bottle of oil as he carefully dripped it all over the street. This is the kind of Joker "see the world burn" kind of stuff that is not uncommon around here. Purposeless agent of chaos and destruction.
  • Here's a little story about a section of the interstate that I often commute along (I-580 around the 35th street exit)...2 years ago there was a fire on the embankment by the interstate. It was immediately next to a gas station. Fire department came along and put out the fire. Turned out it was a homeless encampment fire that got out of control and burned much of the embankment shrubbery. About 6 months ago the same area had another fire right next to the gas station (same reason). This one went farther and ended up burning some of the neighboring homes. A month after that Caltrans came along and cut down all the brush in that area. A month after that the "atmospheric river" that we had came through and caused that area to flood (in part) because of all the soil erosion that ended up clogging the drain. Two months after that someone came along and made lemonade out of lemons by planting rows of corn in this area right next to the interstate. A few weeks after that, Caltrans came again and cut down all the corn stalks at their base, which caused an unusual amount of traffic. This would be funny if it weren't so pathetic.
  • I recently heard that the city had 4,300 pending abandoned vehicle recovery requests.
  • Last week I heard that the city had only 37 police on duty at the time. For a city of 420k.
  • There's a section of the two lane road that we take to get to the freeway that has been washed out for about 6 months. It's a one lane road in that section. No clue when it will get a permanent fix. Funny thing is I saw that section for years look like it was being undermined and I would always go a bit into the opposing lane to avoid getting too close to the ever-shrinking shoulder. Finally the big rains took it out and it may be years before it gets fixed.
  • Another half a mile down the road from that section there's a guardrail that has been broken and poking out into the road for about a year. They put a cone next to it, but haven't repaired it. A month or so ago they installed a new section of guardrail at the top of the same road. This section is completely unnecessary and just a mile down the road from the section that is 1) broken 2) necessary because it right next to the top of a ravine that goes into a creek below 3) protruding into the actual roadway. The crew that installed the new section of railing at the top of the road would have definitely passed by the broken railing on their way to install the new (unnecessary) section at the top of the road.
  • Fox got sued by a company called Dominion. It was a big story for a while because the NYT and other liberal leaning media outlets love sticking it to election deniers and Fox news, so this was a two for the price of one story. Fox got what they deserved and I shed zero tears for them. The funny thing to me was that I heard very similar claims from the liberal outlets when Bush 2 was president. Perhaps you recall the stories talking about another ballot counting company (Diebold) and how they were rigging the votes for Bush. Much was made out of this at the time. A couple examples here and here for some flavor. A lot of innuendo and conspiracy theory type thinking happened at this time in relation to Diebold and counting votes for the incumbent president. Now we have a different company and a different president and more conspiracy theories, but Fox went too far out on a limb and will pay a hefty sum as a result. Now here's the real kicker, and hopefully you stuck around for it - Dominion acquired Diebold. They're effectively the same fucking company. So we have the same company being accused of fixing an election. The first time the mainstream liberal press was all about it and the second time the conservative press was all about it, but paid the price. It's hilarious to me that this happens. It's also hilarious to me that I've listened to many a podcast about this from both the Left and Right and NO ONE has pointed out the parallels and the fact that Diebold was acquired by Dominion. You can't make this shit up.
  • There seems a growing contingent of people who want to flatten hierarchies. I literally heard the argument that Cate Blanchett has won enough Academy Awards already so they should give it to Michelle Yeoh. This has to be the dumbest argument a person could make. I'm a principled guy, but I also like to think that I like a good argument. There are bad arguments for good principles and there are good arguments for bad principles. I like good arguments. I hate bad arguments, regardless of whether or not I agree with the side they are on. Maybe I think Yeoh did better than Blanchett, but that doesn't mean I'll support the argument that Yeoh should win because Blanchett has enough Academies already. In fact, I might change my mind just because I hate that argument so much. This concept that we should keep the best among us down just to make some people feel like things are more fair is completely ludicrous to me. Though, as a John Stockton fan, I do think Michael Jordan shouldn't have been allowed to win six championships. They should have given one to Stockton and Malone and another to Barkley. Those guys are hard workers and it would have meant so much to them to have a championship. Jordan would still be great with 4 championships. He's just being greedy to win 6 times.

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    8/7/23 (21:15)

  • One update a month isn't a great track record.
  • Still working on getting the permitting through the city for the new house. People wonder why it costs 800k-1mil to construct "affordable" housing in CA. Well, the ridiculous plan check process is part of it. Plus zoning restrictions and public feedback and high cost of materials and restrictive building codes, etc.
  • Building codes are yet another example of a well-meaning government intervention that goes overboard. Codes started out well-intentioned and very common sense. The intention was to have fewer buildings that were poorly constructed, prone to fires, etc. At some point, though, they went away from the basics of safety and expanded into ever shrinking realms of "safety." So, stair codes that outline stair rising heights needing to be a minimum/maximum height and within 3/8" of each other so that one step isn't 4" and the next is 8" and the next is 6", turned into requiring handrails have a return so you don't snag your long sleeve shirt on the railing. Sure, a nice touch, but should there be a 1,000 changes to the code that all have this same level of minutiae? The code book goes from a guide to building a safe enough home to a requirement to build the safest possible structure.
  • More recently the codes have started to include things outside of safety. Things that I would consider merely a nuisance like not allowing a counter to overhang a sink because it creates a "hidden fouling area" between the counter and sink. Codes require no common sense from their users (you, the homeowner or tenant). They increasingly are sculpted with the dumbest, most abusive possible user in mind. And, thus, the price for building such a structure increases. Death by a thousand cuts.
  • All that's without mentioning the other somewhat more recent (like within my lifetime, which I guess isn't that recent anymore) changes to the code which make more and more energy requirements. In CA we need to have solar panels on new builds and renovations over a certain size. Automatic light switches in bathrooms. Dimmers throughout. Title 24 compliance light fixtures. Mechanical engineers to verify that everything will be energy efficient (cost us $16k for our build). Then there are the structural engineer requirements (add another $10k or so). And architect fees (another $20K). Permitting fees (depends on the size of the project and the municipality, but probably $25k+ for a new build). Before a tradesman has even gotten to the jobsite, the land and assorted fees and extras are costing over six figures.
  • In sum, it's basically impossible to build a bare bones, economical box as shelter. And then people scratch their head and wonder why housing costs so much. They make boogie men out of hedge funds that invest in real estate or developers or landlords. I'm not a fan of some of these people, but let's be honest about what's really driving these costs - government zoning and building restrictions.
  • Edwin is one of my employees. He's worked for me about 4 years now. He came as a refugee from Guatemala and has been working me pretty much the entire time since he's been here. I fired him for a week once, but he asked for his job back and I folded. Since then he's been doing better. Anyway, lately I've been giving him work on Saturdays. I used to pay him under the table, but he finally got his work papers so he's above board now. He owed us over $6k (immigration lawyer, rental deposit, car trouble, etc.) and was never going to be able to pay us back unless he got more hours or a raise. I gave him a raise and told him what he needed to do to get even more money. The last few months he's been working on Saturday and I'll usually take some hours to pay down the debt. This pay period he asked to get the whole amount he was owed since he had to pay rent. So, he had 79 hours during the week, plus 16 for two Saturdays. He texted to ask how many hours I paid him for and I told him it was 95 hours. Our conversation after that is below...

  • I guess I'll have to explain that he's helping pay for society and he's lucky because even when he works a lot, they're only taking like 20-25% of his paycheck. Rude awakening for him.
  • One note is that his English is bad so we have to use Google translate all the time. A funny thing about Spanish (I stupidly took Latin in high school so I didn't know this) is that "si" is the word for "yes" and also "if." It can be pretty confusing depending on the context. I often write to him in a way that I think will translate more easily. Another guy who works for me, Jesus, speaks English pretty well, but is basically illiterate so his spelling is awful and I have to try to figure out what he's saying all the time. The other day he wrote "the bring tha cort." Luckily, in that case, he had included a picture of an appliance cord we were talking about earlier so I understood it to mean "they brought the cord."
  • I don't mention any of this to disparage. Jesus is a great guy and he speaks twice as many languages as I do. Half the guys who work for me are illiterate because they don't have any formal education past 6th grade. But they make it work with technology and they can figure out their job when I show them what to do and all that. Communication is a constant struggle, but we're getting better at it. Just one of the many challenges I have to deal with.
  • The warehouse homeless encampment issue hasn't changed at all. We actually met with a city councilman a couple weeks ago. I saw him walking outside and Meryl happened to be at the warehouse also so I went and asked him what he could do to help us out. We then toured the building across the street from the warehouse. A youth program (YEP) has been working on a build out there for over a year and he was touring it. The program director talked about all the good stuff they do...long story short, they seem to do a really good job. They train kids who are having trouble to hold a basic job with some basic construction skills. They are held accountable and they have to pay rent, so they have skin in the game, instead of it being a hand out. I think it's a much better way of doing things than the previous models that are all about giving people free shit without any accountability or rules. It's a similar model to what they have north of Austin, TX where they have affordable units that cost $80k/unit and homeless is much less of an issue. At any rate, we followed up with an email to him and his office and he said he'll put in the request to see if something can come of it. We'll see. Basically every time I got there there's another abandoned vehicle or some other b.s. Fucking 3rd world country.
  • At the end of the block that the warehouse is on there was an illegal casino that was discovered and shut down. Last year there was a house across the street from the casino house that was a gang house and they had a helicopter out while they did a raid. Pretty good neighborhood overall.
  • Every week there are fires in Oakland and SF that are started by homeless people trying to stay warm or cooking food or just having fun. They really don't give a shit and don't mind if the world burns. Last week there was one on Octavia in SF. Construction site that was getting close to done. Neighbors had called about open fires that the homeless were starting, but cops never did anything. Sure enough, a few weeks later and they burned the place down. SF is actually better than Oakland, but, if actions are louder than words, it appears that neither city really cares about this stuff. If they don't care about property damage and the like, you'd think that they would at least care from a climate change standpoint. I have to imagine that wasting all those construction materials and burning them has to have as much impact on climate change as driving a Hummer for the rest of your life.
  • I don't think that most of the people who say they care about that stuff actually care that much anyway. They are often the same people who take more trips around the world than anyone else. Travel as much as you like, but don't pretend one minute that climate change is an existential crisis that will kill us in 12 years and then go on trips all around the world the next minute.
  • If the problem is more technology (nuclear, AI), then I'm pessimistic because I don't think we can put the genie back in the bottle. I don't think we can control ourselves. If the solution is more technology (cancer cure, cold fusion), then I'm optimistic because the best of us can usually come up with a fix to bail out the 99%. So, I think that climate change is probably overrated in its likelihood for causing long term huge issues and I think nuclear is probably underrated in the long run.
  • A couple weeks ago Taylor Swift was in town. Long story short, Meryl was going to get tickets, but they were expensive and she was caught up in the infamous Ticketmaster debacle so her dad and brother chipped in to buy tickets for the girls and us. Going into the concert I knew about 4 TS songs and liked about 2 of them. The concert was about 80% female and the men's bathroom was about 70% female as well. She's a good performer and it was a good experience to be with the girls for their first concert. It's also a pretty unrealistic idea of concerts...she played 45 songs and it was about 3.5 hours long just for her part. After the concert I came to the conclusion that there were about 5 songs I liked, which is more than when the concert started. Some of her stuff I had heard before, but I didn't realize it was her. She has a pretty wide range over her 10 albums. So then I went on YT and listened to more and that ended with me just buying all her albums. So I guess I own all of Taylor Swift's studio albums now. Now that I'm 44 I don't really care about being cool so it kinda works out.
  • The girls have been at sleep away camp 3 out of the last 4 weeks. It was a pretty good break for Meryl and I. We got weekends and nights all to ourselves. Got to see Oppenheimer on the opening night. We ate out too much and got some long hikes in. Finally did a hike that was over 20 miles. Did one that ended up being 24 miles and another this weekend that was 22 miles. Ass chafing seems to be the only thing that slows me down on the longer hikes. Not sure if that's a good or bad thing. I'm sure it's TMI, though.
  • Antonio is the guy on my crew who knows the most about construction. He's slow and a bit of a prima donna sometimes, but overall reliable and he cares. I hired him about 3 years ago when he was working for himself, but didn't have very much work. He's Edwin's brother. Last week he told me he's going to go out on his own again. Part of me wonders if he's doing it because earlier this year things were slow and I asked if he could work on his own projects for a while (he usually works 4 days for me and 2 for his clients). Oh well. I'm in hiring mode now. The thing that makes it worse is that when/if our new house permits are finally approved we'll have to have one crew at that job as much as possible. So, ideally, I have one person I can really trust at that job moving the ball forward every day while also having 2 crews out in the field earning money to keep the whole ship afloat. So, realistically, without Antonio, I'll need two new guys who are good. One who will be somewhat temporary and another full time permanent.
  • Spending money on defense is fine with me. Spend as much as we need. But spending on offense is what I have an issue with. I also think the idea of defense is too limited. Cyber security should be better. I expected this to be more of an issue when the Russians attacked Ukraine. There has been an uptick, but nothing that has gotten a lot of media coverage, so I assume it hasn't been a huge issue so far. You could think of a lot of ways in which we are not prepared for defense. Our military is probably fine. Cyber is probably not as good as it should be. Supply chain was proved to be a weak point. We should have a much better infrastructure and self-reliance situation than we currently have. It's just impossible to change any of this shit because of entrenched interests. Best case scenario we have a benevolent dictator for 1-2 terms to get us back on track.
  • I think I've brought this up before, but I think it needs to be remembered. If Trump were really a fascist and half way intelligent (which I think he is), there were several opportunities for him to seize power that he missed. For example, after defeating Clinton, he could have followed up on his "lock her up" chants and had the Justice Department indict her. He could have gone after all sorts of political enemies if he wanted. Nixon was probably worse in this regard. During Covid there were countless opportunities for him to manipulate things to his benefit. He put Pence in charge of the Covid response. I actually thought he was going to dump Pence close to the election and have him be the scapegoat, but he didn't and that decision ended up being the nail in his coffin since Pence refused to go along with the plan to not certify the election results. Trump could have sought to change the election laws. In reality, many states did this to expand absentee voting. He could have lied about a Covid surge in certain zip codes. He could have called for martial law. I'm not very creative, but I'm sure some of his more evil cronies could have come up with other ideas. Why didn't he do any of these things? Covid was a good enough excuse that he could have used it in all sorts of ways. Was he fascism-lite or not very smart or what? Above all, I think he's a self-promoter. I think that explains a lot of his behavior. Maybe he sees those things as lines that shouldn't be crossed? Hard to imagine he has any lines, but apparently he does.
  • I'm not sure who's running the country right now, but I know it's not all Biden. He's just not mentally aware enough to do it. Whoever is doing it seems to be doing a decent job. I was skeptical for a long time that we were going to be able to get the soft landing. I made a prediction last year that we would have a recession by the end of 2023 (we had two negative quarters in 2022 so I consider that prediction correct, even though they didn't make it official because of low unemployment). I also made a prediction that (annualized) inflation would be under 4% by the end of 2023 and that happened last month so I got that one right also. For some reason, our economy seems to have avoided what I thought were the realities of economics. For years we've been hearing about overspending and the chickens coming home to roost on that issue. It doesn't make any sense to me. Everything I know about economics indicates that all the free money printing can't last and the bill will come eventually, but every time we think it's going to happen the economy exceeds expectations. Good Frontline doc about it.
  • According to NPR interest payments over the last 9 months reached $652 billion - 25% more than during the same period a year ago. Meanwhile we spend about $850b on the military. So, perhaps that's the chickens coming home to roost. What could we do with $652b in 9 months other than paying our debtors? I guess the end result is opportunity cost and lost growth and lost investment. I've been expecting economic calamity or a deep recession, but maybe it's just an albatross around the neck of our economy that limits what it could do going forward.
  • I witnessed a smash and grab burglary in downtown the same day that someone stole tools out of my truck while it was parked in the driveway. Last week there were prowlers in the neighbor's backyard. Things aren't getting better yet. The good news is that everyone is finally paying attention. Only a very few people still have their head buried in the sand or are still making apologies for the people who are committing the crimes. Hopefully that means we're going to start digging our way out of this soon.
  • UCSC has this microaggressions list up still. When it first came out almost a decade ago I thought it was kinda shocking. Now it's just funny to me.
  • Late. Time to sleep.


    • 7/3/23 (15:51)

  • Birthday tomorrow. Plan on working at least part of the day to keep the guys busy since most of them want to work at least part of the day. Had planned on starting a big fence job today, but the fencing supplier was closed. Today isn't a holiday and yet several places seem to be taking the day off. This is annoying as hell. I had two days planned around picking up the materials from this one place today and now I'm not able to get it done. So I had to scramble and get the guys to go do different work.
  • Getting really tired of having to shift my plans around every day because of suppliers or people not showing up to work (thankfully pretty rare with the guys I have) or people changing their schedule. This job requires an insane amount of flexibility. It's hard enough to do renovations where things change as soon as you open a wall or whatever, but then you add in all the other shit that changes and it gets pretty old.

    •  

     

    6/25/23 (21:46)

  • Girls with grandma Friday so we got a date night and long hike in on Saturday. We're pretty lucky with all the grandparents we have around (my mom, Meryl's mom, Meryl's stepdad and his new wife, Meryl's dad/stepmom). It allows for good backup during COVID and the occasional date night.
  • Hike was the toughest we've done in the bay area. 13.5 miles with 4300' gained. This was a tough one for me. Top of my calves are tight today, but otherwise no problems. Definitely huffing and puffing along the way, though. Some pretty steep sections that I think are along the lines of what C2C will be. I think if I work on my cardio I'll be okay for the big hike in October. We have one long (19.8 mile) hike planned for later this year before C2C, which should be a good test for the mileage. I'm not worried as much about the mileage, though - I'm mostly concerned about the constant climbing kicking my ass. Worst case scenario I have to stop for a minute every half mile and it goes real slow. I'd prefer to only take a break every two miles, but with a climb of 1,000' per mile I don't know how realistic that is. Here's a breakdown from hikingguy.com (great site).

  • Today we celebrated Merritt's birthday. She had us have a relaxing morning with donuts for breakfast. Then she had us go to an indoor entertainment place with a ropes course and laser tag and arcade. After that we ran a couple quick errands and went home. At home we did some art and she put makeup on everyone (took a while for me to clean it off and can't say I'm a fan of having makeup). Pizza for dinner. Any day with the family is a good day. We're pretty good about getting family time in and having fun together. It's the best part of my life. I fully expect the teenage years to be different, so I'm trying to soak it all in as much as possible while they are still happy kids who love being around their parents - as opposed to being sassy little shits.
  • There are a lot of things I complain about in the bay area, but one of the best things here is the hiking opportunities. There are so many different places to hike and things to see. Not the tallest mountains by any stretch, but still plenty of challenging hikes (if that's what you like) and plenty of beautiful hikes with nice wildlife and views.
  • Everything can be toxic in the right (wrong) context or with too much of it. Why, then, is masculinity the only thing that gets prefaced with how it can be toxic. For example, I heard two men I respect (Scott Galloway and Kai Ryssdal) speaking about masculinity and one of them (forget who) felt it was necessary to preface his positive comments about masculinity with a note about how toxic it can be. No one says that water, though it can be toxic when mixed with pure potassium or consumed gallons at a time, is a great thing to bring along with you on a hike. Masculinity gets that treatment regularly. It bothers me a bit, but I'm a grown man so it ultimately won't affect me much to hear the intelligentsia constantly remind us about the downsides of being a man. But I do think it will have a detrimental effect on young boys to hear that one of their defining attributes is so dangerous and thought of so negatively by the respected ones in their community.
  • Europeans are often thought of as enlightened environmentalists. This is like praising the poor man for being frugal. A poor man needs to be frugal. When you have possibly the greatest environmental resources in the world, it's no wonder you take it for granted. The rich man (usually) isn't checking every single banking statement and invoice for discrepancies. I don't think they came to their environmentalism because of deeper thought or better morals...rather I'm guessing that they got there more because of their environmental and economic reality. Just a thought.

    •  

     

    6/13/23 (18:42)

  • Latest update on the warehouse homeless (unhoused, sorry) encampment issue is that the city continues to not do anything. We have a liaison helping us, but she's essentially worthless. Probably should fire her and give that salary to someone who exists in the real world to move real, actual objects (like trash and homeless people) where they belong (like in the dumpster and into housing or jail or mental institution). Our homeless neighbor belongs in the latter category. I caught him dealing drugs today. Thankfully I got it on camera with my phone (still haven't hooked up the cameras outside the building yet). I forwarded the video and additional pictures to all the people we have interacted with. I expect they will tow his vehicle and find rehab for him in the next 24-48 hours. lol.
  • I also called 311, which is for reporting dumping, abandoned vehicles, etc. and talked with them for 15 minutes. Told them to tell homeless team to get on this shit. Tell them I'm annoying asshole who won't stop berating you, tell them whatever you want - I don't care - just tell them to get the job done since this has been an issue for 7 months. Not sure how much longer I want to deal with this shit. Getting pretty close to dealing with this the old fashioned way.
  • The good news is that work has picked up and we're basically at normal now. Have a few things in the hopper so that feels good. Wrapping up a whole home renovation in the next week or so and we have things queued up behind it so that will mean we can keep busy for a while. Unfortunately we don't have a lot of customers who are flexible on timing. That would be a nice addition. Some contractors deal with homeowners who want to redo their bathroom or whatever and they are fine waiting 6 months. I don't get many of those. Most of our work needs to be done pretty soon. Tenant improvements and our commercial customers fit into that. Then there are the customers who want to sell there home and have fixes they want done (which has mostly dried up this year). Then there are the homeowners who want to make an upgrade. Sometimes they can wait and other times they're less flexible. Homeowners are the hardest to work for because they live in the space and are the most picky. You also have to cleanup throughout the day and leave things nice for them afterwards. But if we get homeowners who are flexible on project timing, then it probably balances out.
  • When WaMu collapsed people pulled out $17 billion in 10 days. At SVB they pulled out $42 billion in 2 days. We're going to need a bigger boat. Tech types are more connected, have more uninsured money, and are more saavy. Some people have blamed the capital for fleeing and said that the rich people caused the issue...which has some truth to it, because that is the literal cause of the collapse, but it also forgets that they pulled their money because of actual structural issues at the bank. Now, we can say that the issues weren't as problematic as to warrant pulling your money out, but still... In an ideal world, people who have a lot of pull like Peter Thiel, would tweet out that they're keeping their money in because people and companies are always backstopped by the government - even if the bank fails. This would have been a more mature response than just running for the hills. Or maybe G should have stepped in when they saw money fleeing and provded some guidance and reassurance on the issue. Maybe there should be a circuit breaker in the system like there is with stock trading. Lots of things that should have been done differently. I don't think you can just blame the rich people who took their money out, though.

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    6/8/23 (22:29)

  • The old archive form not working anymore has been a thorn in my side. Just want it to work like it used to. Spent too much time that I don't have working on it already. The code is 20 years old and it worked fine for 19 years, but apparently Chrome changed something so now it doesn't work. Works in Microsoft Edge. Also works if you load just the right portion of this page, but when the sidebar is loaded as well then it doesn't work. Frustrating because I know nothing about HTML and searching around hasn't helped at all. gpt and Bard both haven't helped, though they did give me new code I could use if I wanted to rewrite things. I'm just not sure why.
  • Okay, finally figured it out. Bard couldn't figure it out and neither could gpt, so I guess humans can't be replaced yet. Turns out that chrome must have a security setting that won't allow links to unsecured webpages. So, I just changed the link from http://www.aptpupil.org/archive/may22.htm to https://www.aptpupil.org/archive/may22.htm
  • Just adding the "s" to make it "secure" seems to have made all the difference. I have no idea how this shit works, but I think it got it working. I hate software.
  • More important to be loyal or honest?
  • I think I've written about this before, but the NYT podcast picked up the story recently about the debate between phonics vs. "whole word method," or, as they called it, "balanced literacy." Basically, the latter method emphasizes looking at the whole word or context within the sentence or story to figure out what the word means. I think context is important, but I'm firmly on the side of using phonics, especially early on, when learning reading. Basically they've ruined a generation of kids because of this balanced literacy b.s. and it's just hilarious to me how wrong experts can sometimes be. John McWhorter has been a longtime proponent of phonics and has said it would do more for black people than any other single policy (iirc). He's a black linguist so he probably knows better than I.
  • It's weird to me that we've been speaking and writing for thousands and hundred of years...doing math for almost as long as well and yet we still don't have a consensus on how to teach these things. The way they teach even basic math these days is very odd. They have all these weird grouping methods and weird diagrams. Some of it makes some sense, but I mostly think this is just overpaid consultants finding new ways to sell shit.
  • We have more data than ever before in human history. We can organize and search and manipulate and process that data better than ever before. And yet, we can't figure out how best to teach kids to read and write in their earliest years. There's something very wrong with this.
  • Some people are good at making money (hard work or luck or genes or upbringing...whatever, don't care). Some people are good at making friends (hard work or luck or genes or upbringing...whatever, don't care). We tax the people who make money. We should start to tax the people who make friends. If you have 50 people you talk with on a regular basis, it's not fair. I talk to like 2 people on a regular basis. I feel unseen and unheard and unimportant. I feel like I don't have friends. People with a lot of friends should be forced to cut ties with some of their friends and befriend me instead. They will need to spend 1 hour a month on the phone with me. Probably 10 texts or emails every 12 weeks (I'm not greedy). Once a year they should be required to invite me to a meal or ball game or similar. People are social animals. We can't live in solitary confinement. Why should you have 50 friends when some people only have 1 or 2? You don't need that many friends. I need another friend more than you do. The Surgeon General says that loneliness is an epidemic (not joking: 1 and 2) and is the equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. It's not healthy for me to only have a couple friends. Don't be greedy.
  • I'm joking, but not really. We need to have principles that answer the question of when we take a thing from one person and give it to another. Many of the arguments you hear about taxation are pretty bad arguments (some of them are included above).
  • Same goes for giving people free shit. The free shit train seems to never end. At some point in our past there was no government taking from some to give to others. You can argue that that was worse and we're more evolved because we have a system to take care of all our people (less true in U.S. than some other Western Democracies). But what is the question that society asks when deciding what to give for free and what to charge for? Is it need? Everyone needs food, water, and shelter. But we only give those out in some instances. Presumably when people can't provide for themselves. But let's eliminate those people because I think most in polite society agree that those people should be provided for. Let's talk about the middle class. Most in polite society today think that the middle class should get free healthcare, but not free food or shelter (not because they don't need it, but because they can provide it themselves). The free shit crowd, though, is steadily increasing the number of things that they consider a right. I guess it's fine to a point, but I'd like to know what the principles are here. What things should we provide for all citizens? What are human rights and how do you determine that list? Should we give away for free anything that can help the economy (free transportation or cell phones, for example)? What's the test for determining this list?
  • Efficient interactions make me happy. I work in a single location sometimes for a few months, depending upon the job we're doing. Usually I find one or two lunch places that I like and pretty much get the same thing every time. I'll call in my order and pick it up 10 minutes later when it's ready. That makes me happy enough, but what really makes me hard is when I can place my order in under 10 seconds. I've done this a few times and it's a true joy. "Hello, you call Rio Adobe (mexican food place)?" "yes, this is Chris can I have a shrimp burrito for carryout?" "okay 10 minutes." "thanks." (click). It's a thing of beauty. I was at home depot a while back and looking for a cart and there was a guy walking in my direction toward the cart return with an empty cart. I made eye contact and pointed at his cart. He pushed it real hard so it had enough momentum to get to me. I gave a thumbs up and he gave an okay sign. No words were exchanged. This is basically a perfect interaction in my book.
  • When someone wins the lottery it isn't a miracle. To them it's a miracle, but there's a very good chance that someone will win the lottery each time it is conducted. There's a very good chance that person won't be you. Given that humans exist it's not a miracle that any of us is here, but it's a little miracle that each of us individuals happen to be here. I mean, someone was going to exist, but the fact that it's you or me probably means that one (or many) or our ancestors was almost hit by a bullet (my dad was shot at once while waiting at the bus stop) or escaped a pogram (like my great grandma did when she was only 9 and fled Ukraine) or outran a bear 5,000 years ago. Any one of those ancestors not making it means that you or I isn't here. It's only because every single one of those people lasted long enough to make the next generation that you or I exist. Thank you to all of them for doing what they needed to do to make it.
  • What's the opposite of Zen? American media.
  • There's a joke that women only want one thing, but no one knows what it is. I think a better joke is that women only want one thing, but it changes every day.
  • Is there a band that's more elevated by their vocalist than Pearl Jam? There are better singers than Eddie Vedder, but I was listening to Ten recently and thinking that he really made the band work.
  • You are the average of the five people you're closest to. I've said this before in a different way, but that is a more pithy version. I've pointed out (to my sister for example) that it's no coincidence that George Lucas and Spielberg and Scorsese are all friends. Lucas isn't friends with the guy down the street who shits himself and speaks in tongues all day.
  • Montana tried to ban TikTok. Probably won't go through for a variety of reasons, but one of them is that Apple said they can't geofence individual apps like that. So, we can make the internet, send a man to the moon, create the iphone, track people all over the world, collect data on users to "greyball" them as Uber did, etc., but it's just too darn difficult to not give access to specific apps for people in specific areas. Sure. Yeah, I buy that. If they were motivated then they'd find a way. What they mean is that we don't have that switch already built so we can't do it easily. Cry me a river.
  • I don't know much about it, but my understanding is that Quantum physics explains how things on a very small level act. It works very well when it comes to understanding physics on a small level, but not on a galaxy level size. For that, the general theory of relativity seems to work very well. They want to find a grand unifying theory that explains everything equally well. It makes sense that the rules should be the same for the small and large. But maybe things don't work that way. In my family the system that works best is a Communist Dictatorship. On a societal level a Representative Capitalist Democracy works much better.
  • We have a few spots in Oakland that get a lot of prostitutes. There's one by the warehouse that is probably the most well known and it even got some news coverage. What was the city's solution to this? Outreach to the young women doing the work? Sting operation for the Johns or tricks? Increased patrol? Nothing? No...they put up bollards in the roads to sort of block traffic in that area. What makes this even better is that the city councilwoman in our district thought this was a great idea and decided to lobby to make the bollards permanent. I mean you can't make this shit up. I'm wondering what will happen next year when the city realizes that prostitutes have legs and are hooking one street up the block. Maybe they'll move the bollards there.
  • How does the system either find the dumbest possible people or make smart people act so stupidly? What is it about the system that does this?
  • I hate the "died by suicide" change in our language. Here's a person who probably felt pretty helpless and incapable or unseen or whatever and now we say they didn't even have control over their own death? Their death may be the one thing they felt like they could control and then you take that from them. Great move. Plus, it's just a dumb way of saying it. They didn't die by anything but their own hand. I don't understand the point of it and think it's kind of insulting. I'll never do it, but if I do kill myself I forbid you from saying I died by suicide. Just say "he blew his mind out in a car. He didn't notice that the lights had changed"
  • We effectively have a cap on the number of doctors we can make each year (look into it, it's depressing...basically another way the G is failing)...why don't we limit the number of lawyers we can make each year? Seems like a much better thing to limit.
  • Officially have Cloud's Rest on our hike calendar for October. Also have Cactus to Clouds on our calendar for October. Should be a good month of hiking.
  • Did 3 hikes in May. One for Mother's Day was to hike to the top of Mt. Tam...there are a lot of ways to the top, including like 1/4 mile hike from a parking lot. We took the longest hike (with the girls) and it ended up being 14.8 miles with 2350' gained. They did a great job. I'm really impressed by them. I was probably in my 40s when I did my first 15 mile hike. I honestly can't remember doing one that long until recently and they're doing it at 7 and 9 (almost 8 and 10). The week after that we did a 7.8 mile hike that was very flat. When we told them we were hiking again they kinda groaned until we told them it was only 7 miles and then they said "oh that's easy."
  • We've made it a goal to do this peakery challenge of 31 peaks in the bay area. I don't know what the significance of these peaks is...maybe the tallest hikable peaks in the area? Many of them are pretty unremarkable (only give are over a 3k') - they say they are iconic peaks, whatever that means. Anyway, we all like a goal and a challenge, so we'll be doing that. Meryl and I have done 3 of them, but we'll have to redo them to make it official. Some of the hikes are short and others are long. Most of them have variable lengths as there are many ways to the top. When the girls were looking at them they were deciding which hike to take to the top and were scoffing at the 5 mile hikes as too easy.
  • I've done a total of 13 hikes this year so far for a total of 137 miles. I'd like to do more, but it's difficult to schedule. Only have two days a week and most of the time the weekends have softball games or birthday parties or that kind of thing. I'm not in good cardio shape, but my joints and muscles seem to generally be able to handle whatever we do. I'm generally not sore the next day and my feet only start hurting after 10 miles or so. I need to train the cardio end of things more for CTC. 20.2 miles, with the first 9 miles being 8,000' of vertical climb. After that I'm not too concerned about it. But getting out of the hot desert with that kind of climb is going to be a big challenge.

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    6/5/23 (16:21)

  • Working on figuring out the archives link above, which hasn't been working for a while. I liked the drop down menu look, but couldn't figure out how to make it work. Asked Chat GPT to figure it out for me. Asked for a few different menu styles and asked for it to fill it all out for me including all the months for all the years. It's working on it now. Taken about 15 minutes to get it to do what I want, but I think I'll get it by the time I upload this. Definitely a time saver. What's bizarre is that the hardest part hasn't been getting the right HTML, but getting it to fill out all the years for me. I don't want to manually fill out 1999-2023 so I asked gpt to automatically fill it out for me. It would get from 1999-2002 and then skip to 2022. It's as if the program is actually lazy. It should be the simplest part to do and yet, just like people, it doesn't want to do the drudgery. Very odd. I actually couldn't get it to fill out all the months and years for more than just a few years at a time. After doing 5 years, it just skipped ahead to the end. This is hilarious. So, I'll do them in batches and then end by hand. 1999-2004 and then 2005-2010 and then 2015-2020 and then 2021-2023 (see how I spelled it all out instead of just saying "etc." or "Repeat the pattern for the remaining years"?

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    6/5/23 (07:05)

  • Been a lot busier lately, which is good news. No layoffs, so I'm happy about that. Not much time to update. Will try soon.


    • 5/8/23 (13:39)

  • Today I talked with city employees (one who is a liaison for a council member in our district and the other works in the public works department) about the homeless situation in front of the warehouse. Essentially they both said it was horrible what was happening and they felt bad. They told me not to give up. They said they would send someone from public works to take a look at it, but if it's a homeless encampment then they will have to kick it to the homeless encampment team. I told them when it comes to empathy everyone in the city is a 10/10. But when it comes to actually moving physical things in the real world (not emails or phone calls) they have been a 1/10. I told them it's been 5 months of nothing getting done. I asked what the policy is if RVs showed up in front of Jerry Brown's (former Governor who lives in Oakland) home on Skyline and they had nothing to say. They talk all this shit about equity and disparities, but when the rubber meets the road they are worthless. The warehouse is in a shitty neighborhood so it receives no services. They blamed the inaction on the big Wood Street encampment taking all the resources, but that's bullshit because they've only been working on that for the last 3-4 weeks since the Federal judge allowed them to finally clear it out. Professional emailers and bullshitters. I told them I wouldn't have any business if I talked with my customers about getting a door installed for 5 months without actually installing any doors. But the city has a monopoly so they do whatever they want. Pretty fucking simple. I'm looking forward to some competition for the government...we need to bring back the mob to enforce some basic laws.


    • 5/4/23 (07:45)

  • OUSD teachers are going on strike so the kids are home today. It was that or cross the picket lines and have them alone with the principal all day. Since Zoe is already a "racist n-----" we figured it was better to not add "scab" to that list. lol
  • Business is as slow as it's ever been. If it were me and a two guys we'd be fine, but I have 5 guys so it's slow. Told one of them to take as much side work as he could so he's off this week. Told the young kid to look into (carpentry/electrical/etc.) classes at the local community college and I'll help pay for it.
  • We did some email marketing and we're slowly working on our SEO and online stuff to get more business that way. I've known for a long time that we should have marketing in place for times like this, but I never had the time to take the advice. Now I have the time, but I also need all of it to be in place already, so I screwed the pooch there.


    • 4/19/23 (16:27)

  • I've barely had time to play around with chat gpt or similar, but this thing is a huge step above Google search. It's a good high school level researcher that spits things out basically instantly. Marginal content creators and programmers are going to lose their jobs over this, guaranteed. It doesn't come up with original ideas so far as I'm aware, so the people who actually know what they're talking about won't be replaced, but the majority of content creators are just pontificating and rehashing the party line, so they'll be gone. It's a very powerful tool.
  • It can be your best friend or a tutor or it can role play with you. In a perfect world people could use it to steel man a position they disagree with. In reality, people will use it to solidify what they already believe. They could definitely charge for this and maybe that would be a good thing. One of the original sins of the internet is that it's free and so the money had to come from advertising and that has had all sorts of issues.

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    4/13/23 (18:45)

  • As bad as this country is doing right now, if my city could get half the basics at least half way right, I would probably not be so pessimistic. I think the national political situation gets way overrated. Everything becomes a national debate, and that's part of the problem. National politics are important, but they're not everything....in fact, they matter less than what's going on in your city and state. Easy to forget that since the media is so concentrated on the federal level and local media is a shell of what it once was. Another way the internet has absolutely gutted our society. At this point I honestly think the internet has done more harm than good.
  • That said, the national dialogue is in a bad spot now. We need a national pep talk. We need a real leader. We need someone who isn't afraid to tell it like it is and is above politics. Someone has to tell us that it's time to pull up our pants and get to work. We're acting like a bunch of bitches right now. This country took out the Nazis and the Japanese and then made them both our friends after. There's gotta be some of that greatness left in our cultural DNA. We're so fucking spoiled and our system allows us to vote for people who will just continue to give us free shit and tell us what we want to hear.

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    4/12/23 (20:13)

  • Had a little issue with Zoe the last couple days. The other day she was hanging with friends and apparently they "roast" each other sometimes. Zoe got a zinger thrown and her and she threw the exact insult back and it became some kind of incident where people ganged up on Zoe. This is dumb 9 year old shit. It bothers me that Zoe is the odd one out, but I get it. She's kind of different and I don't think she fits in well with the kids in school. Not sure how to help her with that. Besides her feeling bad about getting picked on, the thing that bothers me the most is that she used the same insult back at her "friend" since that shows a lack of creativity. You can tell I'm not real broken up about 9 year old drama...
  • However, after the incident, Meryl and I talked with her about roasts and how they work and how they aren't really appropriate for 9 year olds anyway and that sort of thing. In the conversation, I mentioned that things were a lot worse in my day and Meryl kinda piggy backed on that and told a yo mama joke - "yo mama so fat that when she wears a Malcolm X t-shirt helicopters think she's a landing pad." Meryl added that you shouldn't repeat that joke because people would think it's body shaming and maybe even racist these days because they're so sensitive. Well, Zoe went and told her friend the joke...that friend told another mutual friend (who is mixed race) and from there other kids heard the joke and the joke ended up morphing into "yo mama so dark you can't find her in the shadows." Eventually this ended in one kid (who slapped Zoe in the face last year without any repercussions, despite us telling the principal) calling Zoe a "racist n-----." I honestly can't think about the whole thing without laughing since it's all so ridiculous (Being called a racist n-word is hilarious on its face. The whole telephone game aspect of it is hilarious. The fact that we were explicit about NOT repeating the joke and yet it immediately got repeated...). I'm here typing about 9 year old drama as if any of it matters. And yet, it kinda does. Because the principal finds out and then writes Meryl an email about inappropriate racial comments from Zoe and how Zoe is being told inappropriate jokes at home.
  • So why does any of this matter? Because of the culture we live in here in Oakland, this is the kind of thing that people take really seriously. There is zero humor on any of these subjects. There will probably not be a lot of understanding about the situation and so this kind of thing may now follow Zoe around the rest of the year. Friend #2's mom doesn't want to talk with Meryl about it today because she is still "processing" the incident. The culture here is broken. I hate it. I hate the way people talk. I hate how humorless they are. I hate how dogmatic and unthoughtful they are. Everybody has their head up their ass. Luckily for me I don't care about these people. Meryl actually does because she's probably a better person than I am, but that means this whole thing bothers her more so that sucks.
  • So tonight I went over the whole thing with the girls. 1) listen to us when we tell you not to repeat shit. 2) maybe you can't trust some people with sensitive information 3) don't talk about race with anyone other than the people at this dinner table. Listen to people about it, but don't ask questions or give opinions. You told a joke that wasn't remotely about race and it got turned into you being a racist n-word...think about the implications of that.
  • I also told Zoe about the fable of the frog and the scorpion. It made her cry for some reason. But her goody two shoes friend is a scorpion who is just going to repeat  things because it's what she does. Same goes for Zoe, I suppose.
  • If we lived in Ohio I'm sure there would be church related drama or whatever. Every place has their issues. But I'm over this fucking place. Basically every day there's a new reason to hate it. Bills from the city for bullshit. Shit getting stolen or vandalized. Garbage customers. I don't need to go over the list...you've read these pages.

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    4/11/23 (11:42)

  • I was pretty close on all of these. Household income over $50k I overestimated by 20% (maybe because of where I live). Everything else I was close on. Perception and reality are so different and it tells a big story about where we are these days as a society. People have these crazy views like 1/5 people are transgender (actually it's less than 1%) or 2/5 people are black (actually it's 13%). They think that thousands of black people are being gunned down by cops every year (actual number is less than 300 and it's like 20 who were unarmed). We can't possibly have a reasonable conversation or fix any problems if we don't know the basic facts. If we think that police killing black people is a bigger threat than drugs, then we're not going to help black people. The reality is that drugs are far worse for black (and white) people than cops are. And, I'd argue, that the upside of drugs is less than the upside of police. So, the upside isn't as good and the downside is worse...yet I don't hear the media or BLM or Al Sharpton or anyone else talking about drugs at nearly the same rate as talking about police. Ideally, our outrage would be proportionate to the reality of the problem. I was no fan of the uproar and 3 year TV show that COVID became, but at least it was a real issue. At least a million Americans dying could be said to justify the level of coverage. Now if we could also make the coverage better, then we'd really be on to something. Once again, the media misinforms us, divides us, muddies the issues, makes us dumber, and make society demonstrably worse.
  • This guy is hilarious.
  • I did a job for a lady once who had a pretty rough looking house inside and out. Her kitchen cabinets were put together from a variety of different sources. As she described it, she had gotten free cabinets from a few places and an ex boyfriend put them all together for her to make it work. The kitchen flooring was a disaster as well, with patches and generally bad maintenance. She asked me to install a new tub surround and kitchen counters. She was referred by my #1 customer and he asked that I give her my best deal, so I did. After I gave the price she started asking for freebies like hauling away extra trash or patching the wall adjacent to the shower. I told her what the added price would be, but she declined because she wanted it for free. I hired my usual counter guy to do the counters and they came out great even though her shitty cabinets could barely be described as adequate for supporting them. We made some improvements (no extra charge) to make it work and I gave her the bill. Afterwards she sent me a few pictures of literally the smallest possible issues that she had with things. The caulking was missing a spot that was approx. 1/16" x 1" on the counter to backsplash transition. The caulking in the shower wasn't perfectly smooth. Then she started asking all sorts of questions about what materials we used and how we did things. Of course I gave all the right answers, but it made me wonder why she waited until things were done to ask the questions...
  • I generally forget about about these people pretty quickly. It's one of the good things about having a bad memory - I forget all the difficult people and annoying days. While I forget the specifics, I do have a general sense of things that comports with that experience. So, I have a general disposition that dealing with the city building department is a pain in the ass, and I know it's a justified feeling, but I couldn't give exhaustive evidence that would back those feelings up. I may recall a story or two, but there are 10 more stories I've forgotten for every 1 I remember. At any rate, I thought about her again because the city of Oakland complaining about our bags of soil reminded me of her. It's like a gunshot victim coming into the ER and asking for his ingrown nail to be treated. "what about the massive hole in your stomach, sir?" "can you just fix my fucking ingrown nail already?!" Same goes for my first point in this post - misplaced priorities. Sometimes it's because of bad information and other times it's some kind of mental illness that makes you ignore the most pressing issues and over focus on minutiae. Losing the forest, for the trees. I've seen homeless women in shambles, wearing rags, with open sores on their skin... brushing their hair as if it made a difference. Yes, it's a point of pride and maybe it's all she has left, but for fuck's sake, your hair is not the issue, lady. Get to a hospital.
  • As for the customer, we went back and touched-up the caulking to make her happy. Afterwards I think she was happy, but she did want a discount if she paid cash and I said no. Some people always want more. They want a deal or they want free shit or they want to feel important or something. I don't understand the psychology of it. Why did she wait until the job was all done to ask if we used mold resistant drywall? Maybe because she was hoping to catch me and get a discount? Maybe because she honestly didn't think to ask until right after the job was complete (months after our first meeting)? Maybe because she wanted things to fail so it would fit her view of the world that things always go wrong for her? Some people are like this. Some people play these games. Getting tired of people. I'd have a much better view of humanity if I didn't have to deal with so many people.

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    4/10/23 (10:17)

  • Tested positive for COVID this weekend. Had to go to government mandated re-education camp (I mean...an 8 hour class on how to deal with lead in building materials...need to go every 5 years) on Thursday. Medium sized room with a bunch of guys and no open windows or doors. Pretty sure that's where I got it. First time I've officially gotten it. I suspect I got it in February of 2020 because Merritt's friend came back from China/Korea and got Merritt sick and then everyone in the family got pretty sick (felt like the flu). So, probably the second time I've gotten COVID. But I got vaccinated so I'm not sure how I got sick this time...very strange. As a true purveyor of truth Rachel Maddow once said "Now we know that the vaccines work well enough that the virus stops with every vaccinated person. A vaccinated person gets exposed to the virus, the virus does not infect them, the virus cannot then use that person to go anywhere else." So, anyway, I somehow have mysteriously acquired the virus despite Maddow's proclamation that it's impossible. To doubt her when she said it would have been sacrilege, but today it's fact that she was wrong. Funny how that works out. Just a friendly reminder that science isn't a solid unchanging thing like a rock or a book. It's a process and a way of thinking. I'm an idiot who paints walls and bangs nails for a living and even I understand that. And, actually, books change all the time these days. So I guess that was a bad example.
  • Anyway, I got it and so I took off half a day Friday and took it easy this weekend (watched lots of movies). I'm probably at 80% now. Short of breath and my skin doesn't like the feel of clothes rubbing on it, but pretty good otherwise. Set the guys up this morning and ran a couple errands (with a plastic bag over my head, don't worry) and now I'm working on paperwork at home.
  • Girls are living upstairs while I get downstairs and hopefully I test negative soon. Pretty surprising that it took so long to get it considering how much I have been out in public since day one and how infrequently I wear I mask (not at all since CA lifted the requirement).
  • Got a NOV (notice of violation) from the city of Oakland this weekend. I've dealt with these NOVs many times for other property managers, so it's not really new to me, but this is the first time getting it for my own property. We got it for the warehouse, which they are saying is blighted because of the trash people leave on the corner (city property) and because of a few bits of graffiti - one of which I didn't even know about and one that we took care of before I even received the NOV. This is both hilarious and infuriating for me. As you may recall, we have been trying to get the city to do something about the dumping since the first weeks that we took ownership of the building (about 18 months ago). People in the neighborhood believe that they are legally able to dump things there (in part) because the city continually and consistently picks up the trash. We put up a city sign that says no dumping, but people do anyway.
  • We have been battling the taggers since the first days we owned the building as well. We've paid thousands to have the graffiti removed both professionally and by our guys. The chemicals aren't cheap and neither is labor. We've also spent months trying to get the city to remove the homeless encampment that is a magnet for this kind of shit.
  • Now we get a letter saying that we will need to pay $2,718 if we haven't taken care of things by the reinspection date. If we want to appeal then there is a long and potentially expensive process for that. $137 for the filing fee. Plus (if you lose appeal) $1,009 processing fee and $225/hr fee for review of evidence, etc. I'm sure the appeals process is completely neutral and unbiased considering they are city employees and not a third party...wait, oops.
  • I forgot to mention the other complaint besides the graffiti and trash on the corner...we have a few bags of potting soil that we keep outside, which is apparently a violation: "open storage of recyclables in unapproved locations."
  • The whole thing is just hilarious for so many reasons:
  • Potting soil isn't recyclables.
  • Storing potting soil (in bags) outside is somehow unapproved?
  • I clean up the graffiti off our building more than 95% of the neighborhood does
  • The dumping isn't caused by us and we even offered to have the city put up signage and cameras on our building to help with it...they followed up with the signs, but nothing else.
  • We are taxpaying and law-abiding citizens, but we're getting bills for this stuff while the people who cause the trouble get a pass
  • The appeals process is ridiculous and probably rigged.
  • Oakland has so many more issues to worry about and yet this seems to be one that they're actually able to follow up on?
  • But here's how they think about it - you're a rich landowner. Attacks on capital and capitalism are okay. We don't care if it costs you thousands a year to dump other peoples' trash or scrub graffiti or what extra you have to pay for property insurance. You're rich, so cry me a river.
  • The sooner I can leave and stop paying this city taxes, the better. It's horribly run and needs to be taken over by the state and given an enema.
  • The first picture below highlights what is unacceptable to the city of Oakland. The second picture highlights what is protected by the city of Oakland, within 15' of the first picture. Here are some more images of things that the city apparently has no problem with. This is an album I occasionally add to as I have time to stop and take a picture. It covers maybe 5% of what I see out there.



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    3/29/23 (14:51)

  • This week has been frustrating. Very slow. Rainy. Tenant schedules not aligning with ours. Mostly the issue is that when I don't have enough work for the guys then it's a big drain on my mind. It's enough work as it is keeping them on track and doing things the right way and making schedules work. But it's 10x worse when there isn't enough work to scrape together.

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    3/28/23 (10:51)

  • Guess I'm just an old fogey, but I don't get why everything requires a fucking app these days. Want to go to a baseball game? Need an app and jump through dumb hoops. I do work for a national storage company and now they want me to do everything online. When guys are at the job they need to sign in and be at the job (the app tracks their location) and then we need to upload pictures before, during and after. Need to check in and check out. Just makes everything more difficult for no good reason. And everything requires a new login and password and they all have different standards for it and some of them make you login anew every time and some of them don't let you save the password in your password manager (or maybe they're just not compatible). I hate this shit. Probably half of it is not an improvement over the old way, but because it's new people and companies feel the need to do it.

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    3/20/23 (22:39)

  • Not a great day.
  • Last week we took 4 days off to go to the Grand Canyon. I've been there 5 times now and it's a great place. Not my favorite park, but I think it's the best sight to see in the NPS. The grandeur of the canyon is amazing and it has the best single viewing experience in the NPS system. Yellowstone is my favorite park (been there 3 times), but Grand Canyon is more of a must see.
  • Meryl's aunt has been battling cancer for a while now. She's a pretty amazing lady who used to do a ton of outdoorsy stuff (lots of rock climbing and hiking and white water rafting), but doesn't do as much as she'd probably like these days. But she did some of Half Dome with us (she broke it up into two days) and she did all of this one with us. In a big way, I think she's the reason her family is doing these hikes together so that's the motivation for taking time off and making time to do something I normally wouldn't. It was just the 5 of us (Meryl and her aunt, brother, dad, and me). GC down and up has been on my list for a little while so that was another reason to take the trip.
  • I have to admit that I underestimated the hike a bit. After doing Half Dome and several other 10+ mile hikes I thought it wouldn't be so bad. But there were a few new challenges with this hike. First of all, the NPS system doesn't recommend doing his hike in a day, but I think that's mostly because of the heat (which didn't apply to us in March). But also part of it is that it's a reverse hike in that you do the downhill first and then end with the climb after 7 miles of descent. In our case we also had to battle about 1.5 miles of snow/ice on the top section of the descent and then another 2 miles of snow on the ascent (the last 2 miles of the hike). We took a path that went down South Kaibab trail to Bright Angel campground (about 7 miles) and then took the Bright Angel trail to the top of a different trail head than we left from (another 10-ish miles). Actually, Meryl and I went up the long way and the other 3 went back up the way we went down. Meryl and I also went to the ranger station and campground a bit so we ended up doing about 18.5 miles and they ended up doing about 14.5.
  • After the descent, which I usually don't have a problem with so I went pretty quickly, my left knee started hurting. It didn't get better as the hike went along. Since we stopped a lot along the way down to wait for family and take pictures, we didn't have a lot of daylight left for the trek up hill. Meryl and I also stupidly left our headlamps at the air bnb so we kinda screwed ourselves into having to move quickly on the way up. The first couple miles of Bright Angel are quite flat and it was then that I realized the longer route wasn't actually going to be any less steep. I had read that it was an easier trail than Kaibab, but I guess that's because it's more shaded, not because the climb is any less difficult. My knee was really killing me on the way up, but there wasn't much I could do about it. Meryl brought hiking poles so she let me use one or two of them along the way and that helped. Other than that, I just had to deal with it. It was a pretty unpleasant 5 hours of climbing from the bottom to the top. We stopped twice on the way up for a total of 15 minutes, but climbed the rest without stopping or slowing much. The snow at the top of Bright Angel was definitely worse than Kaibab and it really made things more difficult. We were definitely counting down the steps the last couple miles. It's about 3,000' in elevation gain in 4 miles. The lowest elevation is about 3700' and the highest is about 6800'.
  • I'm no expert hiker, but this was the most brutal hike I've done. I think the descent being first really fucked with me. I thought it would be easier than it was. I never have knee problems on steep descents, but I did here and it was in the first 40% of the hike - which didn't help things for trying to get out of the canyon.
  • The other thing I probably didn't do well is enough prep for this long hike. In the last month I only went on two hikes for a total of less than 16 miles. I probably should have doubled that training for this hike.
  • Next marquee hikes on the horizon are (hopefully): Clouds Rest (12.5 mi, 3200'). Cactus to Clouds (21 mi, 10,800'). We have a bunch of other hikes that are in the area and supposed to be real nice, but those two are the big name hikes I'm looking forward to. I'm hoping the girls can do Clouds Rest with us. They've done at least one 12 mile hike before. Cactus to Clouds is one of the toughest day hikes in the world according to Backpacker Magazine and hiker lore. For whatever reason, doing that appeals to me. A year ago I would have thought it was just dumb to do something like that, but I like it now and I'm not sure why.
  • We're pretty lucky in CA to have so many great hikes and trails. It's amazing that we have such great natural resources and such shitty people/leaders.
  • Part of the reason I guess I like hiking is that it's a distraction free time. I don't have to worry as much about work. I get to talk with Meryl or the kids and have relaxed conversations. Nature also orients you properly in the world. Especially a place like the Grand Canyon, which tells you exactly how much you matter in the world. The canyon took 6 million years to form and the rocks at the bottom are 1.8 billion years old. How much can you matter when you're looking at that? How seriously can you take anything you worry about while being amongst that.
  • One of the more depressing things about going to national parks is a stat I heard once (not sure of the exact numbers, but...), about 90% of park visitors don't go more than .25 miles from their car. It's pathetic. On the one hand, at least they are going to a national park and making some kind of effort. On the other hand, they've gone all this way and then they can't be bothered to get out of eyesight of their vehicle. When you hike these longer trails you see very few people along the way (maybe 30? over 17 miles) and then you see another 30 in the last .5 miles. And the closer you get to the end the dumber and less kind the people get. The first few hours of the hike we were being rained on and it was 40 degrees and we're trying not to slip on the ice and we're all basically just doing what we have to do to keep going. Then we get close to the top at the very end of the hike and it's no longer raining and it's probably 50 degrees and yet teenagers are complaining to their parents about the temperature and not wanting to walk anymore. Meryl and I were blown away.
  • This year is going to be slooow. Definitely depressed today thinking about possibly needing to layoff or curtail hours. Trying to do everything I can to keep the guys busy while keeping the business profitable enough to at least tread water. If we get out of this year with all the guys and don't dip into savings much then I'll consider it a success. Last year we put a lot in savings and also bought our new house (if the city ever approves our plans). This year my expectations are drastically reduced. The Fed giveth and the Fed taketh away. That's about the most generous way I can interpret these events.
  • Merritt said the other day that when you are 13 through your 20s you are not wise at all. A very wise observation.
  • Federal outlays (spending) have tripled in the last 20 years. I mean, wtf. Just look at Bush's first proposed budget compared to Biden's latest. It's ridiculous.
  • Let's say you have a teenager who sucks at riding his bike. He can barely get to the end of the block, is constantly falling over, losing his bike, etc. Then he wants a car and you give it to him for some reason. He can't drive for shit either. Hits an old lady crossing the street, has dents all over the car, never changes the oil. But for some reason you decide to give the kid a big rig, and then a helicopter, and then a plane, and then a rocket ship. This is basically what we're doing with the government. It can't enforce child labor laws. It can't audit billionaire hedge funds.It can't regulate failing banks. It can't regulate trains. It can't even win wars it starts anymore. Yeah, let's give that same government more responsibility and power. Let's start another program. Let's expand its purview. Let's have another department.
  • How well are the recently added departments doing? Homeland Security (2002) is the most recent. I'd say it's a mixed bag with a lot of secondary issues that it created (like lack of privacy).
  • Veteran Affairs (1989). All I ever hear about the VA is how many problems there are. I used to go to camp near a VA hospital. It was basically just a hang out for homeless people. Nothing good seems to be happening there. Total shit show.
  • Department of Education (1979). Do I even need to comment on this one. If you charted US education relative to other OECD nations it would probably be a line straight down starting in 1979. We're not sniffing the top 10 anymore and we used to be at, or near, the top.
  • Just fire these people and start over. Shutter the departments if they're not performing. Accountability over everything at this point. Crack skulls or we're done for.
  • We're done for.
  • Friend Jon is leaving the country for New Zealand.
  • Also found out this week my aunt is leaving the country for Amsterdam.
  • The ship is sinking.
  • Sorry for another depressing post.

    •  

     

    3/13/23

  • Sometimes you just have to fight shit out. Maybe it's more of a guy thing. And that's coming from a guy who has never been in a fight in his life. But an old-fashioned fist fight is sometimes the best thing to set the hierarchy straight and get respect from someone who isn't willing to give it.


    • 3/7/23 (21:08)
  • Meryl's best friend from elementary school is a teacher who lives in Oakland. Today the catalytic converter was stolen off her car. This shit is just getting ridiculous. Oh, wait, I should have mentioned that this is the 3rd time in 5 months. Great city we have here.
  • No movement (or even response) from the multiple people who were on the email chain regarding the homeless encampment in front of the warehouse. Inmates are running the asylum.
  • Business really slow now. Almost as bad as its been since COVID. We have a couple things lined up, but not much. And money is low (though we are owed a lot, including the money from the guy who refuses to pay us $40k). Started putting out feelers and following up on jobs. The toughest thing is having 5 guys who rely on me and not wanting to cut their hours or anything. I think this year will be about 60% of last year.
  • Will try to focus on customer service and quality this year. May need to take some jobs at a loss just to keep everyone busy.
  • It wouldn't be so bad if we were able to get to work on the new house. Unfortunately it (plan set) hasn't even been submitted to the city yet (hopefully this week). Engineer took forever. Zoning took a while. Once the city (Alameda, not Oakland) gets it they will drag their feet and make comments and that dance will take anywhere from 2 weeks (yeah right) to 3+ months, depending upon how much bullshit they come up with and how many days off they take.
  • City of Oakland (RIP) was hacked a few weeks back (possibly more depending on who you ask). They didn't pay the ransom so now a bunch of personal information was leaked. What a shit show. Can't keep schools open. Can't run a police department (still under federal oversight). Can't keep own employees data safe. Can't get voicemails (because of the hack). Can't keep sports teams (Warriors left, Raiders left, A's want to leave). At what point does the State step in and just take over? Shoulda happened already.

    •  

     

    3/1/23 (20:34)

  • it's a long one. hopefully you read it all.
  • Official Oakland encampment management policy. Pretty good for a laugh, especially considering they don't execute their own plan. I wonder how many hours were spent coming up with this and debating it for them to just not enforce it in a meaningful way.
  • In the policy document they have the usual whereas clauses that layout the conditions of the policy. Then they have the exhibit section and the first part of that is the Introduction. After that they get into the meat of laying out the purpose and means of the policy. So what's the first thing they address? Equity. I've gotten past the point of feeling bad about pointing this kind of thing out. Equity is a nice enough idea - though I prefer Equality (yes, I know that saying that is an official microaggresion - like actually listed in a book, I'm not just making this up). But to put Equity above public safety seems a bridge too far.
  • Looked it up because things at our warehouse are not any better despite many calls and emails, etc. to the city about cleaning the area up. I called them today and they told me that their computer system is down so they can't put any new requests in. I said it didn't matter anyway and that I was just calling to see what to do to get something done in the real world (as opposed to creating a new virtual request that gets ignored). He said he understood my frustration. We got to talking a bit and he said that they can actually only shut down a certain number of encampments per month - by law. "So let me get this straight - you can only solve a certain number of murders a month so anything beyond that just doesn't get addressed?" "Uh, yeah there's only so many they're allowed to shut down each month." So I started asking if was a state law or city law or what. He said he didn't know. I asked "so if the quota for the month is already met and there's an encampment in front of the mayor's house or the chief of police then they...oh wait, we don't have a chief of police...but if there's an encampment in front of the mayor's house then they can't shut that down after they've met the monthly limit?" To which he replied in the affirmative. I'm just living in a dystopic movie at this point. And it's not a very good movie.
  • I had another conversation with another middle (wo)man who exists in the useless crevices of bureaucracy about the issue. She was, of course, very sad to hear about what we were dealing with and really wanted to help. She said that abandoned vehicles are not as difficult to get rid of, but when it becomes an encampment then it's a lot harder. I asked her if I could just say I live in my car to avoid getting tickets throughout the city from now on. She laughed and said unfortunately not. But why not? The reason, of course, is that the law only applies to those who are law-abiding. If you pay your taxes and try to do the right thing then you are subject to its control. If you don't give a fuck and just take the license plates off then you can park on the sidewalk. Maybe the law doesn't say that, but the reality of things does.
  • So, if this continues, I'll get closer and closer to hitching these vehicles up to my dump truck and dragging them somewhere else.
  • Other option is private security. Another example of G not doing its job so private enterprise needs to step into the void. Pathetic.
  • Here's what I wrote to the city, designed to hit their talking points as outlined in their own policy document (the things they supposedly want to prioritize)...
  • "The encampment and abandoned vehicles:

    • Are within 50' of a retail business.
    Within 150' of a childcare facility.
    Impede ADA required access on the street.
    Impede egress from my property
    Are within 50' of a residence.
    Are disproportionately affecting BIPOC communities who live in the neighborhood.
    There is an elderly lady who had to walk into the street with her walker because the car pictured was blocking the sidewalk last week.
    Today I hear about an aggressive dog at our entrance as well.
    They store tires on site.
    They are closer than within 6' of each other
    They routinely start fires outside as reported by a nearby resident and business owner
    Sometimes they park over the PG&E gas valve access point on the sidewalk which is a major hazard if there needed to be an emergency shut off.
    There is pervasive criminal activity in the area as previously reported - several instances of graffiti and stolen property (at the very least).
    I have heard from other neighbors who are afraid to say anything because of immigration status or fear of retribution that they are increasingly concerned about the growing encampment and dumping. What will it take to get this situation remedied before things get worse for those in the neighborhood?"
  • Told the city that I'm moving my business to Alameda because Oakland sucks (paraphrasing there). Need to jump through some hoops to close the business account in Oakland, but I'll be doing that.
  • People say, especially when you have kids, to savor the moment because you'll blink and they'll be all grown up and you'll wish you had enjoyed it more. I remember trying very hard to do this when both the girls were babies. I soaked up time with them as much as I could. I can't say that it paid off at all. It doesn't pay dividends today. I just wish that I could go back to those moments sometimes. But that same is true for good times I had with them last week. I think the "savor the moment" advice is just a way of acknowledging (and being sad about) the fact that time marches on. I wish I could pause and rewind, but no one can. I can regret not enjoying the time more, but what does that even mean? Certainly there is something there - don't split your attention between your kids and work, for example. But savoring the moment doesn't make the moment last any longer. And, years later, it doesn't make you feel any better. Or maybe I'm missing something.
  • Stand by Your Man is kind of a controversial song and Tammy Wynette got a fair amount of shit about it over the years. I guess the idea is that standing by your man is anti-feminist because a woman shouldn't put up with men?
  • Here are the lyrics. I don't find any of this controversial. But maybe that makes me a monster. You tell me.

    • Sometimes it's hard to be a woman (seems pro woman/feminist)
    Giving all your love to just one man (maybe monogamy is problematic?)
    You'll have bad times (life)
    And he'll have good times (life)
    Doin' things that you don't understand (real talk)
    But if you love him you'll forgive him (maybe you shouldn't forgive people you love? which part is problematic? loving a man or forgiving one?)
    Even though he's hard to understand (other people are often hard to understand. still not seeing a problem here)
    And if you love him, oh be proud of him (this seems about as innocuous as it gets)
    'Cause after all he's just a man (this seems slightly anti-man, if anything)
    Stand by your man (problem?)
    Give him two arms to cling to (maybe this is bad because it assumes a woman is just a physical play thing for men? seems a stretch. maybe it's ableist assuming people have two arms?)
    And something warm to come to (see above)
    When nights are cold and lonely (maybe it's problematic because it reinforces gender roles of the woman as comforter?)
    Stand by your man (see above)
    And show the world you love him (problem?)
    Keep giving all the love you can (this seems harmless)
    Stand by your man
    Stand by your man
    And show the world you love him
    Keep giving all the love you can
    Stand by your man
  • Okay, I've gone over it one line at a time and I don't see much there. There's one line that seems to indicate that men are less than women (After all he's JUST a man). Other than that it seems like she loves a guy and even though he does things she doesn't really understand, she wants to be there to love and support him (and only him). I'm really having trouble understanding the problem.
  • The state of the union speech was a good one. I guess we're just going towards the Parliamentary style where there's a call and response that's going to happen more. I actually didn't have much of a problem with it. I like that Justin Trudeau has to answer to Pierre Poilievre. I like seeing the back and forth. That said, maybe the SOTU address isn't the place for that and I would lean towards respecting the tradition of silence. I've been tough on Biden and his cognitive issues, but I felt like he mostly did pretty well on the spot here. He botched Tyre Nichols' name and there were other stumbles, but he wasn't in full drool cup Joe mode. He had one line about transgender kids that I didn't agree with, but it mostly seemed like some middle of the road stuff.
  • A pet peeve of mine is how liberals will call tax cuts spending. It's not a pet peeve because I hate liberals or love tax cuts (neither is true), but many of my pet peeves surround the rejection of reality. A tax cut isn't spending. It's allowing a person or business to keep more of their money. It may affect the bottom line like spending, but it is not spending. The geniuses at the NYT and elsewhere are smart enough to figure out how math works and they know the definition of words so I can only conclude that they keep this up for political purposes.
  • I bring this up because the NYT Daily podcast on 1/23/23 had an episode about the debt (because of the debt ceiling bullshit the Republicans are putting us through again). They looked at how the debt grew under different presidents, but they neglected to mention the role Congress plays. Congress holds the purse strings so why shouldn't a Republican Congress get credit for low deficits while Clinton was president? Probably because it's not politically advantageous. I would have respected the reporting had they broken it down both ways. They also had an entire episode on debt and never did they put into context what spending looks like. So, they mention military spending (12 times according to the transcript), but they don't mention the level of spending that social security or medicare or medicaid is. If you knew nothing about federal outlays (most Americans) then you would come away thinking that military spending is the biggest part of our Federal outlays. In reality it isn't. They didn't talk about how much it costs to service the debt, either. So I'll do it here for you since you can't rely on the NYT to educate you anymore apparently. This is from Treasury.gov.
  • By agency:
  • $1.64 T Department of Health and Human Services
  • $1.28 T Social Security Administration
  • $1.16 T Department of the Treasury
  • $727 B Department of Defense--Military Programs
  • $639 B Department of Education
  • By category:
  • $1.22 T Social Security
  • $914 B Health
  • $865 B Income Security
  • $767 B National Defense
  • $755 B Medicare

  • Horrible podcast.
  • Home Depot does self checkout as many places do. What's always funny to me is watching two employees as they look at two customers checking themselves out to make sure the the customers aren't stealing or needing help. They will often have a 1:1 ratio in the worst HD locations. So what's the point? If you have one employee watching 3 customers I can see an argument for it, but that's not the ratio at the two locations I go to most frequently. Just so idiotic.
  • They're rewriting Roald Dahl books now. Making them less mean. Seriously, you can't make this shit up. Writing that someone is fat isn't acceptable apparently (among other things). And yet the people who think this also self identify as fat and call it a fat acceptance movement. To wit. More. NAAFA. These people are more fucking nut jobs. When does this shit end? Put another way...FUCK YOU, YOU FAT-HEADED ROALD DAHL-CENSORING FUCKERS
  • The chief justice who wrote the decision on Plessy v. Ferguson went to Harvard. The thief Sam Bankman-Fried went to Stanford. The architect of the Vietnam war went to Harvard. The list is endless. How many nut jobs, social engineers, warmongers, eugenicists, etc. do these places need to churn out for us to take them off a pedestal?
  • Wonder how many people know about the planned murder of justice Kavanaugh. Seems like a story that went under the radar because the guy was caught/turned himself in. Still odd that it didn't get much play. It wasn't just a spur of the moment thing...he traveled 3,000 miles and brought weapons. If security hadn't been there what would have happened? We're a couple nut jobs getting lucky away from seeing how deep this hole gets.
  • How's that short war in Ukraine going? Media was sure it was going to be a few weeks or months. How often do the experts need to be wrong before they're strung up and fucking killed? I'm tired of this shit. Let's cut to the chase and just kill everyone who's wrong more than twice. Maybe that'll teach people to hedge their bets and be careful with what they say.
  • It's actually funny how this cycle repeats itself. During WWI everyone said the troops would be home by Christmas. A few years later millions dead and a few hundred yards gained/lost in the battle lines. Real great decision making. Fuck all those morons.
  • Do people who think in pictures remember their early life farther back?
  • Kimberle Crenshaw is the super genius who came up with the idea of intersectionality. Basically that you have to consider more than just gender or race (or ability status or whatever else is en vogue these days) in isolation when examining the disadvantage of a person. Eventually an even bigger super genius will figure out that there are so many ways a person can be identified (autism status, gender, race, age, relative fatness, bad daddy issues, etc.) that all intersect to create an "individual" and that you actually have to examine each "individual" on their own. Basically it's intersectionality all the way down until you finally realize that people just need to be judged on their own, rather than as each separate identity they happen to inhabit, which may or may not even be recognized depending upon the wokeness of society at the time. Eventually we'll recognize not only neuro-divergent and gender-fluid identities, but also hair color status, freckle density identity, etc. One can only hope.
  • Cancer survivor cuts off her breasts and everyone says she's a hero and no less of a woman even though she doesn't have boobs.
  • Trans man can't live with breasts because they make him feel like a woman. Hm.
  • According to NYT podcast the abortion rate has gone up from 17% to 20%, meaning 20% of pregnancies now end in an abortion. This is much higher than I would have thought. But the interesting note is that it's gone up since the "abortion ban decision."
  • Black patients get less opiods and antibiotics. The only theory I've heard from the NPR crowd on this is that it's because of anti-black racism. Blacks are seen as less deserving of care. Less trusted in their experience of pain. Another interpretation without actual data, could be that white people complain more or are more likely to sue so there's more defensive medicine or are seen as physically weaker and thus needing more medicine. Unless they report this shit with some data from doctors who are justifying their decisions, it's just random speculation and I think my nonsense speculation is as good as theirs. Further, what does it say about your shitty profession that there would be an appreciable difference in treatments to similar symptoms? Clean that shit up.
  • Earlier this year there was a heat wave and the county decided to shut down the parks. They don't trust people to use their own judgment about how hot it is. How is it possible to have such a nanny state? If I were trying to take the best possible care of every person in a given place, it wouldn't ever occur to me to shut down parks because it's too hot. I'd think of other things that I (in reality) don't believe should happen like: free fans for everyone, free visits to the movie theater or mall or other air conditioned spaces for all, free ice, advise people to stay inside, advise people to check on fragile loved ones and neighbors, information on how to make a homemade swamp cooler, tell the fire department to open fire hydrants in strategic locations. That's 30 seconds of brain storming. I'm just an idiot contractor trying to prove a point and I came up with half a dozen better ideas than chaining parks closed like some idiot fascists.
  • They closed the parks in the entire state during COVID. The thinking was that they wanted to encourage everyone to stay home and that being out in parks hiking or playing was going to lead to spreading.
  • How many times have I seen people wearing things they don't actually believe. Shirts like "mindset over everything" or "the future is female." But these are (likely) the same people who complain about the patriarchy or systemic oppression. If we live in a patriarchy in the present how is the future ever going to be female? If mindset over everything is what you believe then why would systemic oppression be a thing? Just change your mindset to get over it. You can only believe one of the things, so choose one.
  • I love Chloe Valdary.
  • I was at the bank the other day waiting in line and I watched an employee wander around changing out signs. They had a sign up that said you should apply for their cash back credit card. "Earn 3% cash back on every coffee" She spent like 3 minutes changing out that sign to one that read "Earn 3% cash back on every Poke bowl." I mean we really have to be at peak stupidity here. This lady probably has a college degree and she's getting paid to change out this dumb fucking signs with no meaningful difference. I swear to god I wouldn't mind a nuke just dropping on this fucking place. What the fuck are we doing here?
  • Does anyone understand what we're given? Our species has defied all laws of entropy. We're here standing up against the winds of chaos and time, floating on a blue ball in the middle of a fucking infinite nothingness and we're spending our time changing out this sign, scratching our collective head thinking about how the sign looks while our fellow humans have pieces of their bodies rotting while asking for money on the corner? This is how we're going to treat this fucking blessing of life? What a fucking tragedy.
  • Yeah, I saw a guy the other day with an open sore (not the first, second or third time I've seen such a thing) on his leg about the size of a fist. Probably infected as fuck. Probably will end up losing his leg in the future. I called it in and the supposedly sent the fire department. Total waste of human potential. 50 years ago that guy's mom gave birth to him and (probably) loved him more than anything in that moment. Today he's begging for money on the side of the road probably looking for his next fix.
  • And there are people who wear D.A.R.E. t-shirts ironically because it's funny how much the man doesn't want us to drugs. Maybe we should take drugs as seriously as we take racism.
  • I have zero faith that we can keep a hold of any technology we create. We've got a tiger by the tail, best case scenario. Actually, the Church, was probably once a good check on this phenomenon. The Church was once as powerful as G and was probably threatened by "black magic" and science and told all sorts of stories to try to slow technological progress down. Maybe not because the Church saw around the curve and thought this was the best thing for society...probably more likely because those things were a threat to its own power. Nevertheless it seems like that was one of the few checks we've had on technological progress getting out of control. You'll have a Unabomber type every once in a while who has zero effect. You'll have some conservatives telling stories about Pandora's Box and no one really cares much. But it's really just a steady march towards more technology and all that that brings. Nukes. Social Media. AI. To what extent are we better off?
  • There's an idea espoused by lots of philosophers and religions and cultural texts about time as a flat circle. Reincarnation. Reliving the same life over and over. Different variations on the theme that we redo the same thing over and over and repeat the cycle. Graham Hancock proffers a version of this in a way as well. An ancient buried society and we're redoing what's already been done. I have definitely had the feeling that society has a cycle from 1. nothing to 2. something to 3. something great to 4. too much of a good thing to 5. things fall apart. I haven't thought at all about the stages or anything, but it's basically like the quote "Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times." Ray Dalio has his own civilization cycle mapped out and it's essentially the same story of starting off small, doing well and prospering, taking things for granted, going into debt and losing your edge, collapse.
  • We have the opportunity to learn from the past and live the next civilizational life better than the last and I don't see the progress I'd like to see. Maybe it's all been done before and god hit the reset because the whole thing fell apart. The Matrix touches on this as well. If time is a flat circle then it means we're just repeating the same shit over and over. I'd like to think that we get to roll the dice anew each time and maybe some day we'll make the right moves.
  • Listened to "I Am A Rock" with Zoe the other day while driving home alone with her. She didn't think all that much about the song at first. Then I told her to listen to the lyrics a bit and think about it. and we talked about its meaning. She cried and I cried with her. Great song. Hopefully this shit world doesn't ruin her.
  • How do you make home both a respite from the cruelty and stupidity of the world, but also a training ground for it? They seem to be in opposition. I want my kids to be able to laugh off someone who calls them shitty things. I want them to be able to stand up for themselves when cornered. I want them to not be shocked by things that happen in the world. I want them to be able to fend for themselves. But I can't be the one to directly put them through these trials. The school of hard knocks teaches all these lessons most quickly, but it sucks. There doesn't seem to be any way around it - experience teaches better than anything, but you don't want them to have to experience every shitty thing in order to learn every lesson. Some people learn their lessons by watching others. I learned from my parents that getting into drugs wasn't going to be a good life. My sister (who didn't witness as much as I did [fortunately/unfortunately]) didn't learn the same lesson and she went down that path and has experienced its pain. The other day we were trying to decide what activity to do (I forget the specifics) and it was clear that Zoe was going along to get along, and wasn't really telling us what she thought. She sorta grunted her approval with the plan even though she didn't mean it. I told her that she needed to communicate her actual feelings more clearly than with grunts. I roughly said: "There will come a time when you'll need to be very clear about what you do or don't want and you'll need to have the ability to stand up for yourself in that moment so now's the time to practice." You just hope they remember these lessons with your words instead of some other way.
  • NYT podcast on conservatives who are trying to ban books on race and gender identity a while back. Thing that was funny is that they never really got into what the issue was with any of the books. They didn't read any of the supposedly bad passages from the books that the conservative parents were up in arms about. They talk about the existence of controversial passages, but they never quoted any of them. So, does that mean that they didn't have enough time? Or maybe they weren't acceptable for the podcast? I guess we'll never know. Stellar reporting.
  • "You can't have it all" says someone with exasperation. Yeah, who the hell ever thought you could? Was there a promise I missed somewhere where someone said you can have it all if you follow the rules or if you try hard or act nice or whatever? I didn't get that memo. Don't be surprised or upset when you can't have it all because no one can. It's called life. Sack up.
  • Is it wrong to assume people are straight? Is that a microaggresion? I mean that's literally the one way human life continues so I don't think it's much of a stretch to assume such a thing. Would it be wrong to assume that my kids are going to have boyfriends? Or do I have to say "someday when you have a boyfriend I'm going to tell him about such and such embarrassing story. Or girlfriend or non-binary friend. Whatever you choose because it's totally up to you and I wouldn't want to assume and of course there's no judgment and you can do whatever you want." Not sure anymore.
  • "Demisexuality is a sexual orientation. People who identify as demisexual only feel sexual attraction to someone after they've formed a strong emotional bond with them." Hmm.

    • 12:42a.
     

    2/28/23 (12:51)

  • Working at home today. Lots to catch up on.
  • Non-college educated men in their 20s who had not worked at all in the last year - 25% (from 2016 according to book iGen). This is what I'm talking about when I keep hammering on and on about 1) the crisis of boys and 2) the dwindling workforce participation rate. People can point to unemployment rate under 4% and pretend it's meaningful, but it just means there are a lot of people not looking for work. There's a failure to launch with a lot of young men and this stat backs that up. Way too many men who just aren't doing what they're supposed to do. If we have the most potentially problematic segment of our society doing absolutely nothing then what are we going to get? Idle hands are the devil's workshop. I'm no bible thumper, but this is a true statement.

    •  

     

    2/27/23 (16:59)

  • This is going to be a slow year. Last year at this time I was worried about the economy and it proved to be the best year to date, so maybe it's just a matter of economists correctly predicting 8 out of the last 5 recessions (not a typo). That said, I think this slow down is for real for a couple reasons...
  • Housing is already showing slowing in volume and price usually lags behind that. Interest rate are high and that brings prices and velocity (churn rate)/volume down. Something like 70% of single family homes have an interest rate locked in at 4% or less (can't remember exact number). I did find that 85% of households are at the current rate or lower. I also remember that 25% of mortgages are at 3% or less. All this is to say that people are going to be reluctant to leave their cushy rate unless they have to...especially if prices are flat or declining.
  • We also have an inverted yield curve which is very highly correlated with recession. Permits issued are down. Construction jobs will follow. In the Bay Area, in particular, I think the tech layoffs are going to hurt housing/construction. All this is to say that we may or may not have a recession, but my business will likely be slow this year. We employ 5 guys now and 1 office assistant. I'd rather not lay anyone off so hopefully we can scrape together enough work to ride this year out.
  • Google has jumped the shark and Chat GPT (or similar) is going to take market share starting yesterday. I've noticed the last few months that Google is decreasingly effective at finding the things I want. I've also had decreasing confidence and user experience with Maps. Not sure what's going on with them. I'm not saying they won't continue to print money like they have been, but they should feel a fire under their ass soon or they will have their search traffic go from 90%+ to 50%.
  • Maps, in particular, is an annoying experience and I think very easily solvable. There are thousands of super geniuses working at Google and yet Maps has gotten worse so I have to have some humility and assume that it's a problem that is beyond my understanding...that said, it doesn't seem that difficult to configure maps to figure out things that Google already knows. So, I choose to drive from Richmond to Cupertino (an area that is probably as well mapped as any in the world seeing as it is in the tech hub of the world). Google suggest I go through SF and down to Cupertino. It estimates that it will take 1hr 40m. But it also shows another way of going that is $1 more and 22 minutes faster. Why didn't it default to that route? There could be an option to take the cheapest route, but I haven't found that in any of the settings anywhere. In what world is $1 worth 22 minutes with very similar mileage? They now have a fuel efficient option that  is supposed to default to more efficient routes "when arrival times are similar." But I don't consider 22 minutes similar. Further, I could have taken another route that is 20 minutes faster than the default route, but with $0 in tolls. My preference would be for that considering mileage was similar and I'd save $6-7 in tolls. There are many times when I'll ignore a route and the new route that I choose ends up (by Google's own recalculation) save time. If you knew that was a faster route once I chose it, why didn't you select that in the first place? In sum, the routes they select are questionable at best and have tended towards being very unreliable.
  • The big news of the day was that the Energy Department, according to WSJ, has concluded that COVID most likely leaked from a lab. Headline: "Lab Leak Most Likely Origin of Covid-19 Pandemic, Energy Department Now Says" I reached this conclusion about two years ago and wrote about it here in 2021, but I guess better late than never.
  • The fact that it probably leaked from a lab is scandalous and should be a wakeup call for how society conducts research - at the very least. If there was ever a time for G to intervene maybe not starting global pandemics would be a good place to start. But instead G rather require hairdressers to be licensed. Whatever.
  • But the lab leak may not be the biggest scandal of all because, hey it was good intentions and mistakes happen...we're all human. The bigger scandal may be the fact that the so called purveyors of truth - the NYT and NPRs of the world went so far out of their way to call the idea of a lab leak a hoax and a conspiracy. I don't think I ever heard the mainstream legacy media give the idea of a lab leak an honest look. Instead Twitter and FB and others banned people who talked about the possibility. They shut down or throttled the conversation.
  • What are the big stories on the front page of NPR.org? I don't see a single mention of the story (though they did have about 20 seconds of it on All Things Considered). Instead it's the usual NPR stuff these days:

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    2/25/23 (08:41)

  • Spent the last two days taking apart the dump truck bed and rebuilding it with 2" square tubing that we welded together. Unfortunately, after weeks of no rain, it decided to rain and get real cold (even snowed on the way to school the other day). So the paint I put on yesterday afternoon didn't fully dry and then it rained. So there will be some rework. Won't get decent weather until Wednesday. I could drive it to the new house and park it in there and paint it inside, but the temperature isn't going to be that great either so I'm not sure it's worth the trouble. Pretty annoying. Need to use the truck on Monday as well so there's a bit of a time crunch as well. Had I done the work a day earlier everything would have been a lot better.
  • We've started getting some real bids in on the new house work...Basically we're going to be redoing everything and it would be simpler to tear it down and rebuild, but that comes with all sorts of complications so it's almost less headache to do things the annoying way. That sounds paradoxical, but it's true. If you are renovating an existing structure then usually you don't have to worry about as much planning and feedback and limitations from the government. When you go with all new then it triggers all sorts of other shit (setbacks, further design review, triggers more stringent code requirements, etc.), not to mention probably additional fees as well. So, the end result is that you spend more money for a compromised end product in order to avoid all the headaches. In a perfect world, you could tear down and replace similar to the existing for the same fees and headaches as a renovation would be. But we don't live in that world.
  • At any rate, bids have started to come in and we're definitely going to need to revise some plans. The existing structure is just a warehouse with metal siding and roofing (the crappy corrugated kind) and we wanted to match that with a nicer looking painted metal roofing/siding. Looks like that will be out of our budget, though, so we'll have to adjust. The front gate is going to be a lot more than we thought also. We're also likely going to have to get sprinklers in the building so that is going to be a major cost. Then there's the limitation of the live/work zoning that we have. For some reason they only allow 400 s.f. of living space in a live/work building so we have to build the interior to present as 400 s.f. of living area...pass inspections and then redo the inside the way we really want it. This is probably the biggest annoyance for me of the entire project. It's incredibly wasteful and obnoxious...particularly the under slab plumbing portion that we'll have to plan very carefully.
  • At this point I'm just really annoyed with the realities of the work I do. Local government and building codes started off with good intentions, but they've just gone so far beyond their original purview. Things are so bloated and unncessary. It's one thing to make sure a structure is safe and it's another to get to this point where every building needs fire sprinklers and live/work can't be more than a small apartment and all the rest that I don't have time to go into.

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    2/15/23 (18:18)

  • Finally got around to finishing the NYC trip page. We went there for Thanksgiving in 2021 and I started the page shortly thereafter, but didn't finish until today. Yikes.

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    2/4/23 (09:39)

  • City of Oakland sent me a business renewal via email the other day. As always, I have to submit my gross receipts and they take a certain percentage of that. Not of your net profit, but of your gross receipts. I think this is a bad way of doing it, but whatever. Regardless, I sent them an email telling them that due to their inability to respond to my many requests that they remove the homeless people from blocking my driveway and sidewalk at the warehouse, I've decided to move my business to Alameda so please tell me what the process is for non-renewal.
  • Meryl and I have called/emailed/submitted requests via the app to: city council members, homeless intervention team, police, parking enforcement, general city help line, etc. a few dozen times over the last few weeks and everyone says they care and refers to work to someone else. That someone else never does the job. This is typical of bureaucracies and it's why large governments and corporations and bureaucracies are evil. They necessarily deflect blame and accountability. They, by their nature, deflect responsibility and reduce the likelihood of things actually being accomplished. They are antithetical to a society that accomplishes things. And yet they are necessary in some ways because of human nature. Everyone in the chain feels like they are doing their job by referring the work to someone else. They feel accomplished when they mark our issue a high priority. In reality, they've done little to nothing unless there is someone somewhere holding people accountable. Without someone looking at clearance rates, the whole thing is just about making lists. Cops become report takers in a system like this. They are supposed to be detectives and problem solvers and interventionists and agents for prevention. But when the system is clogged and no one is holding people accountable, then it's just an exercise in paper pushing.
  • I called 311 the other day to report that a car was parked on the sidewalk in front of the front entrance to our warehouse. She said she'd report it to parking enforcement. I asked if something would actually get done because I already called them. They had a recording that my call was very important to them, but they didn't answer the phone or return my call. She chuckled.
  • "So, what are the chances this actually gets take care of?"
  • "I'm not sure, I can just put it into the system and make it a high priority."
  • "Okay, how long does it usually take for these issues to get resolved?"
  • "I'm not sure. There are hundreds of homeless encampments in the city so they have a lot to respond to."
  • "Okay, so if they don't do anything what's my next option? I've already talked with my city councilmember and the police and you guys"
  • "I would continue to talk with them about it."
  • "And if they don't do anything what's next? Do I go there with some friends with baseball bats or what?"
  • "I can't advise you on that sir. I would continue with what you were doing."

    • So, this is where the city is and it's no surprise. In SF there was a little hubbub recently about a man spraying down a homeless woman. Lots of people were aghast by it. It's pretty much what you'd expect, however, when the authorities don't do their job. I don't know what you're supposed to do when homeless people are lighting fires outside your property and bringing stolen goods there and blocking the sidewalk and doing drugs. I know that society says you're not supposed to spray them with water because this guy got a backlash for it.
     

    1/25/23 (15:13)

  • I get a lot of requests for information from the government (and other entities) these days. The County Assessor called me today to ask about the new property we bought. "What are your plans?" "I went by today, but the gate was closed so I couldn't get a good look inside." "Did you buy it off market?" "Are you going to demolish part of the building?" I also get myriad forms from various government agencies asking me for information about how much money I make or recent projects I've worked on and what the estimated time for completion is, etc. With all of these I pretty much assume they are asking questions in order to find a way to take more of my money or screw me over somehow. This is maybe not entirely fair, but I don't think it's a paranoid assumption either. I try to be as vague as possible. I get different economic surveys and economic census questionnaires. I generally ignore these because the upside of my answering the questions is zero and the downside is that they decide that the business isn't classified correctly or something and then I owe back taxes or my property tax assessment increases or the warehouse isn't zoned properly for the way we're using it or whatever. Better to just fly under the radar than be the subject of some government official's investigation.
  • I get the same audits from my insurance companies and with them it's definitely them trying to see if I owe more money. Workers' comp audits are great fun and they find new ways of screwing me every year. They redefine who needs to be covered by workers' comp so that it's as broad as possible. California is not a great place to do business.
  • Of course it's possible that the government just wants better data so they can help businesses thrive and grow the economy or share the (anonymized) data with academics so they can study economic trends, etc. This would be a great world to live in, but I don't think it's reality so I ignore and deflect as much as possible.
  • Not sure if I mentioned this one, but our Oakland warehouse, where all the staging stuff is located, is in a pretty ghetto area. There's always dumping on the corner and the garbage guys pick up the trash regularly....which is nice, but it just feeds the perception that it's a legal dumping ground. I've stopped people from dumping and they literally think that the city condones dumping on this corner. We've talked with the city and gotten a sign to put up. We gave them permission to put up a camera, but didn't get any follow-up on that one.
  • At any rate, the newest development is that there's a guy camping right in front of the warehouse. He has a tow trailer camper and he's set up shop with traffic cones and everything. Now he has taken over about 75% of the sidewalk with an awning and his belongings. He tied the awning to our building as well. The whole thing is just hilarious. It's funny to see a society where there are fewer and fewer rules that are enforced in any meaningful way. We're either regressing to the wild west or progressing to Road Warrior. I asked him and the other camper around the corner to not tie their shit to our building and both of them complied with that, so that's good. Lately, though, the guy is acting more wacky and starting fires at night (a neighbor keeps us abreast of the happenings) so it's not a very safe situation. I've put in several requests with the city app designed for reporting this. Yesterday we spoke with a police officer about it and he said he'd have a chat with the guy. Today was street cleaning and the guy was still there (I've been ticketed there before, but I'm guessing he won't suffer the same fate).
  • All this stuff is the natural result of this cock-eyed "thinking" that we have in this city. It's not just wokeness, though that's part of it - it's also the near disregard for authority and common sense. There's an elevation of ideas like equity and other woke buzz words over the basic needs of a society like rule of law and fiscal responsibility. In the fitness community there is a saying that you don't want to "major in the minors." In that context it means the guy who is all about getting the right amino acid supplements and buying the perfect kettle bell and wearing the best gear. Meanwhile he only works out once a week and eats too much dessert. Our city has done the same thing. They have a lot of extracurricular activities that sound great to them because they check the DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion)/woke buzz word checklists, but they don't know how to keep costs under control, pave the roads, and keep their citizens (and their property) safe. You gotta do the first thing before you can do the other stuff.
  • At this point I have zero hope that Oakland will do any of the basic stuff well any time soon. There seem to be too many systemic issues. Too many entrenched interests. Too much overspending and debt for too long. And the worst part is that so few of the people in power (or even candidates to be in power) are even aware of the ball that they should be keeping their eye on. They're totally oblivious.
  • Definitely been seeing an exodus taking place. The data supposedly doesn't support the CA exodus, but there's a lot of "anecdata" to the point where I have to invoke the Grouch Marx line: "Who are you going to believe - me or your own eyes?" It's clear that this is a shitty place to be in a lot of ways and a lot of people who can choose to leave are doing so. The people who are choosing to stay are generally in very nice areas and have good security systems. That's basically where we are. 20 years ago I'd watch videos from Russia and South Africa and Brazil on liveleak.com and so often they were of crazy road rage incidents or people attempting to defraud an insurance company by getting themselves purposely hit by a car or you'd see ambushes at people's homes and they'd pull into their gated driveway only to have two guys with guns on a motorcycle follow them into their property and there would be a shoot out or whatever. The ubiquity of dash cams and security cameras (because of a lack of social trust). The ubiquity of fraud and robbery...The extent to which people had to secure themselves and their property...Those were things that I was thankful we didn't have to deal with here. At least I didn't take it for granted, I guess. Unfortunately, here in Oakland, I think we're now closer to that than we are closer to how things were when I was growing up. Sad to have regressed as a society.
  • The steel man argument against this is that I'm just seeing this stuff more and it's gotten a bit worse, but not much. I see it more because I'm older and out and about more. NextDoor and the media play it up more. Seeing notifications from the Citizen app or NextDoor just amplify the perception that things are bad, but if I had the police scanner on when I was 10, then I would have had the same feeling back then. The FBI crime numbers are actually better now than they were in the 90s. I only care more now because I have multiple properties and I'm paying taxes, so it stings more, but quality of life issues are basically the same as before. And if I were a black man then I'd realize that things are a lot better now than they were before because the BLM movement has shifted awareness for the better in so many ways. It's only because I'm a white property owner that I think things are worse. And even if things are a little worse for white property owners, isn't that worth a bit more dignity for the unhoused? Property crimes against the rich are a sort of progressive taxation that occurs when society fails to do right by its poorest (actual argument I've heard).
  • Some truth in those arguments, but overall, I think things are getting worse.

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    1/12/23 (15:46)

  • At this point I've spent more time responding to the allegations and emails and complaints from the guy who won't pay us, than I would have spent fixing any of the problems he brought up and won't allow us to fix. As long as the problems aren't addressed, he can claim (in his head) that we don't need to be paid. Awesome.

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    1/10/23 (20:35)

  • I'm not a climate change denier. I think that it's real and it's caused mostly by humans. That said, it's not near the top of my list when it comes to problems I'm worried about society dealing with. I think we need to consider it and take some actions towards ameliorating the problem, but I don't think it will cause half the world's population to die in the next 100 years (a prediction I've heard from smart people). I don't think it's as important an environmental issue as clean water. I don't think it's as important an issue as the threats to democracy we're seeing around the world.
  • There are a few reasons I'm not an alarmist about global warming, while being an alarmist about other issues. Firstly, the models all assume that nothing changes (and things always do) and I'm always pretty skeptical of long-term models anyway. That's pretty straightforward. Long-term predictions tend to be quite wrong and I don't think this will be an exception, especially since so many people are aware of the issue.
  • The second reason is that I think we're relatively incapable of fixing issues of a political or social nature, but we're fairly capable of fixing engineering problems. So, if a problem can be solved by technological progress, then I'm much more optimistic about the problem being solved. But, if a problem is political (not technological) in nature, then I'm more worried about it being solved. So, our ability to discern between real and fake news? Worried. Our ability to engineer a fusion power future that dramatically decreases the impact of global warming? Less worried. There's a profit motive to fix this issue so I'm even further optimistic that it will be solved. There's a profit motive to continue with the status quo also, but I think that will decrease relative to the motive for new solutions as time goes on. Either because of people worrying so much, or because of the impact of global warming increasing the cost of the old way.
  • I haven't created a list of greatest problems facing humanity, but my impression is that many in the intelligentsia would place global warming in the top 3. I'm not sure it would crack my top 10.
  • Our new house/warehouse property is still waiting for people to do their job. We were waiting on the architect, then the city, and now the engineer. After that it will be the architect again and then the city and probably the architect and then the city and back and forth a while until we get an approval. In the meantime we've done some demo to gut the main building and I plan on getting some trash out of there this week. I sent a few of the guys there this afternoon to continue with demo and they told me the locks were broken. Apparently someone broke in and stole whatever they could. Luckily I didn't leave anything of great value behind so they only got away with a few hundred bucks worth of extension cords and some hand tools. I fucking hate this place. Meryl thought it would be good to give the Alameda cops a chance so we called them and they were very responsive. That's good news. Hopefully the cops doing their job in Alameda means we're less likely to have this stuff happen at the new place, but it's still the bay area and it's just a part of living here.
  • Can't recall if I told the story of my neighbor who was a high school student and had his prized Ford Mustang stolen from outside his house a few months back. Reported it to the cops and they didn't do anything. Someone on tik-tok said they found it a couple miles away so he went there and, sure enough, there it was just sitting parked on the street. He called the cops and they said they would send a cop over. 6 hours later he called them again and said they still had 160+ calls ahead of him so he should probably just go ahead and take the car back himself. So he did that and drove it home. At 3am the next morning, the cops knocked on his door to clear the case for him. Hilarious.

    • This isn't a one of a kind incident, either. Carlos, who works for me, said the same thing happened to his brother in law. He found his truck on the street after it had been stolen - and he just stole it back himself. My electrician had two vans stolen in the same week just a few months ago. A guy I used to have install flooring for us had his truck stolen a few weeks ago. There are countless local news stories about thefts from contractors. The new wrinkle is that the thieves are doing it in broad daylight and sometimes doing it with a gun.