College barely makes sense these days. In particular, Private colleges are utterly preposterous.

This isn’t about “marketable degress” or pedagogy or woke/MAGA or any such crap. I’m talking about MONEY. Those decades of cost-of-college outpacing inflation have come home to roost, and combined with the demographics crash of the post-2008 cohort going to college, I’m seeing a death spiral.

A Worked Example

My daughter went Early Action at several colleges starting in August, getting a jump on the enrollment process and working to function as a “driver” not a “passenger” in her collegiate journey. She’s been incredibly active since her Sophomore year, and we’ve visited most colleges in Texas that might even be of interest. See some of those details in college search.

“Huh. Looks like rain.”

Indeed. We had a catastrophic flood this summer, and as we sit we’re still at about 40" of rain for the year. Average annual is about 35", and most years we’ve lived here, it’s been more like 25-28". Any way you slice it, it’s been a good year for rain.

So off-and-on today, it looked like low clouds, bright sunshine, thunderstorms, and everything in between.

Book: Embers of War

So after I couldn’t retain the will to live (see next review), I switched over to Gareth J. Powell’s excellent “Embers of War” book, the first of a trilogy

So, by end of week Amazon May Be Smaller. No idea if I’m affected, but it helps me to write about it, so here we are.

I spent seventeen years at a place with only one strategic move: Downsize. In that 17 years, there were constant rumors about “rightsizing”, “downsizing”, “aligning headcount”. The constancy made it gallows humor. It also made me erratic and flinty at home. As sole breadwinner–by choice–I knew that my growing family required me to have a job. There was no plan B.

This is going to be a boring review. I listened to this audiobook, got to the end, found it so utterly unsatisfactory that it deleted itself from my memory.

That’s Katabasis for you.

Let’s begin: I have a soft spot for Hell. I read the Cliffs Notes for Dante’s Inferno when I was 10, then the actual work many times since I was mid-teens. Orpheus, Hades Town, you name it–I like people’s takes on Damnation.

I don’t know where to start.

Politics

So the US Government shut down at the end of the fiscal year, midnight on October 1st. Auspicious beginning, that. Both sides blame one another, and I’d give a slight edge to the R’s blaming the D’s for refusing to pass a continuing resolution. Neither side has its stuff together, particularly, but at least one side was going to keep public employees…well…employed.

Our infant-in-chief has done other things since then but it’s more “flood the zone” crap. Demolishing part of the White House to build a gaudy ballroom named for himself on donated funds from those who bent-the-knee. Canceling negotiations with Canada (Canada?) because they ran an ad he didn’t like. Blowing Venezuelan boats out of international waters because we feel like it. Shelling California from the sea during the 250th Marine Corp Birthday, causing traffic on I-5 to back-up. Threatening to “cancel NASA”.

So, let’s get it out of the way: Tron: Ares is a boondoggle.

This movie comes 15 years after its predecessor, Tron: Legacy, and forms more of a direct sequel to 1982’s Tron. Ares makes reference to Legacy but only in the sparest, “Let’s be in the same universe” way.

In any case, this is a $150 Million movie that, like Legacy will underperform. It doesn’t have broad appeal, but in the following paragraphs I’m going to defend why I actually LIKE this movie, and it might be worth a watch, even if you’re not sold on the Tron universe.

I’m starting to get this blog into shape again. The transition to hugo was never fully complete, and I didn’t fully get the publishing workflow setup. The Blogger-to-jekyll script did scrape the comments into their own posts, but they didn’t actually get segregated and so many of my posts with comments just became the comments posts.

I still don’t fully have the hang of the << ref >> syntax, but I’m getting there. Zed has been a joy thus far. I’m fully off of VS Code and I don’t see compelling reasons to go back as it has MCP integrations of its own.

So, 20 years ago today, I got married. From three days in to the marriage I screwed things up, and have continued to do so since. My wife is honoring her commitment to me, but honestly she signed-up for none of this.

In this post, I’d like to enumerate some things I’d do differently if I had a time machine.

1. I’d still get married. It must be said: I love my wife, and I was head-over-heels in love with her when we married. I firmly believe I would be dead or in prison if not for my wife. And of course I love all our children. No regrets.

So I quit some of my podcasts:

I’m trying to do more audiobooks. Probably some reviews soon

“You know, you could take some time off”

“Yeah, but I know myself well enough to know I won’t.”

I awoke this morning knowing I had to make it to work for a 9:30 meeting…in a former life that’d be laughably late, but now it’s early. Maybe I’ve finally become institutionalized to Austin’s “10am at the earliest” culture, or maybe it’s the 45 to 60-minute drive, or just simple burnout. Since we returned to office 5 days per week this year, it’s just been a grind. Having the flexibility to work-from-home even 1 day a week helped. Now: This is life.

Our last bunny, Joe, died suddenly today. He was about 8 years old.

As we were preparing to walk out the door, I went in to feed Joe his morning pellets as usual and he was sitting in his hutch flaring his nostrils and biting at the air. It seeme like he was struggling to breathe. Well, that’s not good, I thought.

Grace came in and picked him up, taking him to Whitney but he seemed desperate to get out of her arms. Looking back on it, I suppose he was smothering. He bounded down onto the kitchen table and hopped a few times. Then Grace picked him up again.

You really don’t appreciate how attached you are to spending money until you can’t.

We’ve been on a financial diet at my house since February. Last year, between salary and stock, I made X amount of money. I paid nearly 30% of X in taxes, which I found funny, since it was more than I was making before I took a job here in 2016.

In any case, this year I’m on track to make about 60% of X. While that will make filing my 1040 easier, it’s made living a skosh harder from a Cash Flow perspective. On top of that add:

Nine months is a long time–Plenty of time for a baby to be born, or for a cow to birth a calf. Enough time for a madman to be well on his way to dismantling the American Republic.

In my case it took nine months for me to feel…anything about Mom dying. I couldn’t call her “Mom” even. Every discussion was “my mother,” or “my mom.” Somehow this arms-length feeling helped me not feel. I desperately needed to avoid feeling.

Many pithy sayings exist about possessions:

• “A Boat is a hole in the water you throw money in”
• “Boat is an acronym that stands for Break Out Another Thousand”
• “If it has wheels or wings, it’s trouble” (There’s another variant, but this is polite company)

To this I’d suppose to add: “A House is a mechanism to kill you, but at least you get to sleep there. That’s why it’s called a ‘mortgage’.”

In many ways, water frames my life. It’s an obsession of mine.

The Weather Obsessive Goes Soft

The winter of 1977-1978 dumped feet of snow on Kentucky. One notable blizzard led to my birth 9 months later.

As a child, the floods throughout eastern Kentucky were just a fact of life: It rained too hard, and the rivers backed-up, usually in the community of Wolverine. People who lived there would get flooded at least once a year for days. Then in 1991, former governor Bert T. Combs died when he tried to drive home. People would drown.

So, we have a new phenomenon thanks to Return to Office: “Coffeebadging”

As the wiki article indicates:

(Coffeebadging) is the practice of employees clocking in for a brief period at the office, typically long enough to grab a coffee, before departing to work from elsewhere. This is done to fulfill office attendance requirements by hybrid and remote workers which arose following the return to in-person work following the COVID-19 pandemic.

So, the US had its first measles death in 10 years yesterday. We’ve had a scare recently with exposure near austing between San Antonio and San Marcos, and now there are cases in Kentucky.

MMR vaccines are good for about 10 years, apparently, so 3 of 4 of us at home are vulnerable right now. It’s airborne transmissable, and highly contagious.

And then, another “_______ night massacre” in the government as 1,200 NOAA Employees got the axe by EOD today.

From time to time, I like to pause and update what’s going on with our car fleet. As of last May, we’re a 100% “Toyota” Family so it’s interesting. For 2 of the 3 I have long-term fuel economy I track via the excellent Fuelly app, so I can represent long-term ownership costs

As an aside, I really wish I had a license plate this cool:

The Hanger Queen – 2016 Lexus GX460

Seems like yesterday we went to San Antonio and picked-up this 2016 Lexus GX460 CPO, then immediately took it on a 3000 mile round trip to Estes park colorado with a Stowaway hanging from the rear hitch and a Thule bag strapped to the top.

As Thomas Paine coined in The American Crisis

These are the times that try men’s souls.

February is near done. Spring comes, but what Spring will that be? The Spring of destitution? The warm rebirth of tyranny?

Paine would be laughing at us now, handing over our country to either side, frankly. To the feckless Democrats unable to govern, or to the bald-faced Republicans governing only for the “Techn-Anarcho-Fascist Oligarchs”–either way he’d be disgusted.

I maintain the second half of February, after Valentine’s day is just…depressing.

Above: the Author’s house back in Kentucky 10 years ago today

1. The Superbowl is over. This year’s was a terrible game in which the Eagles ran roughshod over the KC Chiefs until the 4th quarter.
2. College basketball’s March Madness hasn’t begun. Kentucky men’s basketball has overperformed this year, but they’re going to get slaughtered in both the SEC tournament and NCAA. Every game is usually exciting, at least. Kentucky Women’s basketball are firing on all cylinders and may be in the hunt for a National Championship.
3. The weather is just…awful. Texas veers from 85+ one day to 25 the next. We’ve survived one cold snap in January and it looks like another coming this week. My hometown is underwater for the 3rd time in 5 years. Extesive swathes of land freeze under ice and snow.
4. At work, we’re in the silly season somewhere between layoffs, promotions, and pay increases (if any are forthcoming). The outlook doesn’t seem great.

I’d write about DOGE and the collapse of our government, but plenty of other people are ahead of me. Seems you wring your hands, threaten revolution, or stick your head in the sand to some degree.