Since moving 45 minutes north of Austin in 2020, I drive at least 90 minutes every work-day. Some days (especially if it’s raining), that can total 2 hours. This year mark’s Amazon’s return to 5 Days per week in-office so that will be 10 hours a week on the road, 50 or so weeks a year.

To maintain sanity, I did two things:

1. I traded-in my 2018 Honda Civic 6MT for a fancy toyota (A used Lexus ES300h). Let’s be honest: It’s a couch on wheels and a quiet place to be for those 90 minutes. Look for details on that coming later.
2. I’ve gotten very acquainted with podcasts and audiobooks.

I’ve loved podcasts for a long time. Here’s my list from 2012 They’re the soundtrack to me doing things: Yardwork, ranchwork, driving, travel. In general they ease the loneliness that is modern life–Someone’s voice in your ear, helping you learn or laugh.

So, it was quite a year, of some advances and pain. I’m still here, so let’s get into it.

Professional Life

A Door Closes

Last January was probably the lowest I’d been in many years. I was looking for a new job. I managed 6 people in Seattle from an office in Austin, I’d been converted in January 2023 officially from Software Development Engineer (SDE) to Software Development Manager (SDM), though I’d been doing the job from April 2022. (This will become important later).

My my how things have changed since I first moved this blog to AWS hosting. For one thing, my previous Hugo Theme is no longer compatible, and hugo itself moved from YAML to TOML for configuration language. So that’s been a fun afternoon.

I’ve been following these excellent instructions that should automate the full deploy from checkin to push. Syncrhonizing the Github action will be interesting, but that’s just it–it’s INTERESTING.

Once I get this sorted, look for updates on the regular.

Am I still alive?

Yes.

Are things rather different now?

Also yes.

I live on a 10-acre ranch. As I type this, my neighbors are doing their regular Saturday target practice (pistol-calibre from the sound of it). I have a nearly 2.5 Year old Toyota Tundra, a tractor, a chainsaw, and two rabbits.

I bought, raised, and sold (for a terrific tax-writeoff loss) 4 Aberdeen steers.

I’m somehow still married with diagnosed mental-health issues that are okay with medication (more on that later). We’ve been through 3 Texas ICE/Snow events and managed to survive.

If I add up all the maladies/mishaps/accidents I’ve had in my life, I should be:

• Functionally blind
• Half-deaf
• Missing half my teeth
• Dying of Colon Cancer in 2019
• Dying of Skin Cancer in 2012
• Lying dead under a crashed car somewhere in Eastern Kentucky in 1996 or so.
• Decapitated by a drainpipe in a creekbed in 1984

That’s just off the top of my head. Modern med’cine has been good to me. The rest is, variously: Probability, Luck, Fate, or Divine Providence. Take your pick.

“When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” - 1 Corinthians 13:11 (KVJ)

I’ve had a subscription to some sort of car magazine, blog, etc. since I was ten years old. I used to covet and read car magazines like more well-adjusted boys used to secret Playboy magazines. (November 1994 was a classic of that particular tome, but I digress.)

Poor sleep last night.

So the Daylight Savings Time switch was this weekend, so everyone felt fully capable of staying up until midnight watching movies. This weekend we watched Raya and the Last Dragon on Friday, the final episode of Agent Carter and the first in the Hobbit trilogy on Sunday.

I’m uneasy. I have my second (well, final) cataract surgery on Wednesday–as luck would have it St. Patrick’s Day. I went to bed before Whitney and Maria and when they went to bed I woke up with my mind swimming from flashbacks from the last cataract surgery: The immense anxiety. The claustrophobia of being draped with just your eye poking out. The general fear of the smells of a surgical center.

Today (well, tomorrow) makes it a year. On 3/13 last year I left my office, picked up my kids from Grace Academy for Spring Break…and the great upside down world of CoViD 2020 happened. Example: WFH Day 2

I was a reliable journalist for awhile, then in June I just…stopped. Overwhelmed didn’t really cut it; I was paralyzed by how much the world was changing.

The 2015-era computer I wrote those blogs on is gone, replaced by another coporate laptop from my employer after the battery decided to die. The house I wrote those in is gone, replaced by a 10.11 acre rance property with cows, rabbits, a tractor, and a new (LEASED!) Toyota tundra.

This seems to be the question occupying those in power right now:

“Is all this crap for real?”

What follows is my attempt to frame the current socio-political situation in the United States, circa June 2020. Namely, weeks of daily protests and nightly riots about systemic racism.

Whether those in power are stoking the fire or co-opting the mob for political agenda–I’ll not name names there–all those in established positions of authority seem to be asking that self-same question:

It was going to be something.

Something was going to wake a nation of people who’ve been quarantined for 80+ days. People are bored, anxious, afraid, and simply tired.

Turns out, that something was the death of George Floyd on 25 May, a week ago today. Today, an independent autopsy indicates he died of asphyxiation

One week. In that time, protests have broken-out in 140 cities, in particular in Louisville, Kentucky, my wife’s hometown. Each day, there are protests, and as night falls, they turn violent. Last night, police in Lousiville felt they were fired upon, and returned fire with live rounds, killing restaurant-owner David McAtee.

The world went to hell on 13 March 2020.

We’d been watching a slow-motion tidal wave from China come our way since January. We’d hoped it’d stop like SARS in mainland China, and we’d get to say “Whew! Close one.” Nope.

We saw it bloom in Europe, but hey–we’re still an ocean away from this thing, right? No.

On March 13, I got the email saying “Work from Home until further notice.” Then a few weeks later, it became “We’ll evaluate but stay home until May 1st at least.”

A Tale of Two Housing Transactions

In 2012, I sold my house at Georgetown, Kentucky. If you look far back enough in this blog, you’ll find posts and pictures from that little builder-grade “story and a half” house on a corner lot sitting within dynamite’s distance from an active limestone quarry, two houses away from a meth house.

Quite the neighborhood, that.

In any case, I sold that house via a realtor, and I never saw the people buying the house until we were at the closing table. Eight years on, I have no recollection of what the buyer looked like, his name, or his family situation. I know he bought the place on a 100%, no-down-payment VA loan. I also know that when I mistakenly had a package delivered to “my” old address, he refused to remit the package into my possession and strongly implied he had a firearm the other side of “his” door if I had a problem with that.

If the “Great Lockdown” or whatever history calls this thing had sight, smell, sound, taste, and feel, what would they be?

Feel is easy: Tired. The feel of a not-so-early morning after a long night of binge-watching whatever (Mandalorian, Picard, Friends). Being tired for no particular reason, like the tired of a long road trip or transcontinental flight: You haven’t exerted yourself, but you’re exhausted, disoriented, and cranky.

CoVid19 tastes like bad breath, that cottonmouth you get from dehydration after too late a night or far too early a morning. It also tastes like the Diet Coke® I secret away in my gun safe so my kids won’t drink any.

So, phase one (shock/denial) appears to be over.

Over 20 million people are out of work, roughly a 20% unemployment rate.

There are almost 700k total cases, and 32k deaths. This is just from people we know had the disease.

Whatever “rainy day funds” most people had are exhausting. Quickly.

It seems clear, this is going to be somewhere between the “Great Recession” and the “Great Depression.” And honestly: There’s no end in sight.

So, it’s official as of today

(Source. As an aside, this ‘worldometers.info’ site is a clinic on how to present and visualize data at scale.)

Eight-three thousand cases, and no sign of let-up after 2 solid weeks of “shelter-in-place” or “stay-home-pretty-please”

New York is simply exploding, especially The City.

I’ve taken to following a former member of disaster preparedness for Obama, @JeremyKonyndyk. Here’s his take as of today:

We’re not “flattening the curve.” We’re accelerating. We’re fighting our health care system.

Well, at least yesterday was good, right?

The stock market went up by 2,000 points. The Congress seemed to agree on–depending how you count it–a SIX TRILLION DOLLAR (!) bailout package, that represents a quarter of the US annual GDP. This comprises:

• 2 Trillion in relief for businesses and regular Folksy
• 4 Trillion in authority for the Fed to buy….stuff. REITs, ETF, Bonds, etc.

Today has been less rosy.

Last night, I was up with grace in immense pain until 11 or so, then I just collapsed in my bed. I finally got to work by 9am…only to find that I had a mandatory 45-minute Mac OS Catalina upgrade (10.15.4, if you’r scoring at home) to do.

“You’re choosing to watch the news. You can choose not to.”

Yesterday, made an excursion to Randall’s to get some supplies after I got my daughter’s medication in Cedar Park. The store had more than I expected, but the necessities had evaporated. Bottled water, paper goods, bread, milk. I saw a yuppie buying all the individual cereal containers, bragging about how he had “Fifteen Gallons of Milk” at home.

For himself.

It continues today. Every day feels like a week.

As of this writing, stocks are down 8%, just today. This a snapshot of the cnn.com headlines:

Not good.

There’s news the executive is invoking War Emergency provisions to get priority production for necessities. Per my recollection, the last time that happened was in World War 2.

Yesterday was a better day; I was able to work a bit. Today has just been staring at headlines. I must stop. I must work.

And so it begins

As I write this, it’s 5pm on St. Patrick’s Day. I’m not wearing green. I’m sitting at home in our spare bedroom, with a 24" monitor ahead of me, and Amazon Basics® Keyboard instead of my beloved CODE Keyboard, and the world aflame.

I agree with this tweet:

Basically, the news since last week has been Through-the-Looking-Glass bad. A Quick rundown for posterity:

• Starting mid February, the stock market is down a third from its highs. February 19th, the Dow closed at 29,386. Today, it closed 21,237. Earlier today, it was under 20,000, briefly. Trillions of dollars of market value have been erased in six weeks. Yeterday in particular, the Dow lost 12% of its value, or about 3000 points. In one day.

So, on the advice of @QuinnyPig on Twitter, I’ve started listening to “The Phoenix Project” on Audible.

In overview, this is a narrative allegory of an IT project gone wrong. I’m up through Chapter 5 as I write this and I’d like to posit a couple things the protagonist is doing wrong. This is one of those books that managers, CIOs, CTOs, and directors will read and treat as Holy Writ, so some perspective seems an order.