about a Politician, then this might be the one. There has been a lot of to do about recently deceased, former president Jimmie Carter. I acknowledged last week, while I was alive during the entire term of Jimmie Carter I don’t remember a single thing. As a result, I have been reading a lot of anecdotes and other things about the man. Dare I say, his legacy as a President might be dubious but his legacy as human is impeccable. Is there anything else more important?
Author: bhayes952
January 10, 2025 – The Fourth Turning, Chapter 1
Finally, it seems like a book that I can get into. I have already read beyond the required chapter as I am writing this. This book seems like one of those that I could read a couple of times because it is pretty deep. Not only is it filled with history and facts but it is deep as well.
I will cover a little more than Chapter One today because the preface is relevant to the whole story of the book. The preface is an update on the span of things that have taken place since the book was written. Unfortunately Strauss has passed away but the book was published in 1997. For you math challenged, that is over 25 years ago. And if you follow the book, that is an entire generation.
I talk about the nineties a lot but it is helpful for perspective. 1997 was squarely in the heyday of Generation X. The oldest Xers were in their early thirties and the youngest were in their mid teens. Not only has twenty-five years of history past but so has the perspective of what those events meant. I will extend some grace to the book as result, but any good and valid theory should be able to stand the test of time.
The key concept in this chapter is the measurements of time. According to the authors, there are three measurements of time. They are described chaotic, linear and circular. Let me give a brief definition of each.
- Chaotic – Random or unrelated
- Linear – Continually evolving or not repeating
- Circular – Repeating
Let me try to explain a little more behind these three from the perspective of Strauss and Howe. It is widely held that Chaotic time is pre-recorded history. What they are saying is that there was no record of events beyond the living. As a result, everything seemed random or unrelated. The hundred year flood probably occurred before the last living soul and therefore it seems cataclymic.
Linear time came into being largely as a result of religion. I am most familiar with Christianity so I can speak to that. When Christ was born, the Jewish belief of the coming of God was fulfilled. As we sit, we are waiting for the rapture or the second coming in 2025 Anno Domini. Once that occurs, life as we know it will no longer exist. Therefore, as far as Christian history is concerned this is a linear pattern.
Many ancient cultures actually believe in circular time. There is much more about this next chapter so I don’t really want to spoil next week. Regardless of religion, the earth has a cycle, seasons have a cycle so why not time? This belief was superseded after the fall of Rome and the heavy dominance of the church but was rediscovered in the Renaissance in the western world.
It should be no surprise that I think the truth is somewhere between the Vin diagram of the three. There has to be some random events, Those would have to lead to linear time but in turn, common existence is circular. Lets go back in time to a controversial or unproven history. What if the meteor had not hit the earth and created a global cloud that killed the dinosaurs? That is random and linear. While the earth’s celestial travel is circular, the chances of a collision again have not been mathematically determined. The odds of it happening again are not known but it at least seems chaotic.
I don’t think that it is foreshadowing or even a spoiler to say that Strauss and Howe believe in circular time. For that matter, I believe I do as well. It is their contention that cycles have highs and lows but that means that we as a society are bound to experience both. When you look at their perspective and timing of the book, they were in the midst of a huge economic boom and the fall of the Soviet Union. The US was unstoppable in the late 1990s. Uh Oh, trouble is bound to follow, but where? Hence the name of the chapter “Winter Comes Again”.
End Your Programming Routine: OK, so we are off to a good start. Next week is going to be all about the origin and particulars of circular time. This is the setup for the whole premise theory so we have to restrain ourselves just a little bit. Let us enjoy the journey a little bit since last year was a difficult one on Friday.
January 9, 2025 – A New Year, New Gear Part 1
When I first announced that I was going to do this, I had over a year. Now I am looking at six months. I am no where near prepared with my biggest worry is my fitness. The bad weather, low daylight, holiday pre-occupation along with my summer interruption last year has really cut into time I feel like I need. This has to become the primary focus as I prepare.
I don’t really want to dwell too much that aspect here. I don’t find it that interesting to write or read. Even though I have a version of most of the gear from the early 1990s, I have a list of gear to get for my modern challenge. All told, I expect the gear-up to cost around $2000. While I could probably get-by, borrow or skip a lot of it. $2000 for a week’s worth of vacation doesn’t seem that unreasonable.
On the scale of continuity, safety follows comfort and then enjoyment. I do plan on getting a satellite beacon for emergency communications. Being of questionable fitness, you never know if I end up rolling my ankle or god forbid some sort of heart attack or even a snake bite. I definitely plan on doing what I can to shore up my fitness, but stuff happens like lightning strikes.
I know from my half marathon days that shoes are important. Recently, I have been getting pain in my hip and knee after my training walks. That is the tell-tale sign that my shoes have broken down. I not only need shoes now, but I need to find the shoe that I don’t want to throw off the cliff (you knew that was coming…). Conventional running wisdom says that shoes are good for about 300 miles before they start breaking down. This also means I will likely go through at least two pairs of shoes before this hike is in the books.
I have loved the heck out of Keens that I bought. I wanted durable, water proof shoes when I was delivering for Amazon. I wanted to step in puddles and not care. They have done that for years. I also like that I don’t have to untie them to get my foot securely in the shoe. But, I don’t like the sole construction. I have had to repair the soles multiple times and I certainly don’t want to have that worry on the trail.
While very comfortable, they also feel heavy and clunky. I tried on a new pair Keens at REI and they felt like an old friend. So, that brand is still on the list due to my four years of heavy use and comfort. I opted to try the Merrill Moab 3 instead. These are still waterproof but the sole looks like it has a propensity to stay stuck on the shoe. I just started breaking these in, so the jury is still out.
I definitely like the water proof aspect for my current training but that is a property that I probably wont need on the trail. Another thing that I like about the Merrill is that they make the same shoe without Gore Tex. So I could have summer and winter shoes that basically fit the same without the extra sweatiness and bulk.
I am not totally in the tank for a light hiker either. I tried on some trail running shoes in this session. Part of me thinks that I want more of a running shoe as I practice around the city and on pavement. The hikers seem to be more rugged but that comes at bulk and weight. Besides durability, I don’t think that hikers are necessarily better shoes for safety or stability. I do think they will provide more miles before breakdown. Soles aside from my Keens, I get no pain from walking in them all day long.
At my wife’s urging, I also picked up a couple pairs of socks. One is a synthetic and the other is a Merino wool. The added advantage of technical socks is that they wick moisture away from your feet. This would be from sweat or puddles. This makes for more comfortable feet and a must for an enjoyable hike. Given that I am going to have a limited wardrobe, probably two pairs of socks, Merino wool had the added advantage of extended odor resistance. This is less muss and fuss about that gear component.
End Your Programming Routine: I had actually planned on talking about all of my new gear but it turns out I had more to say about shoes than I thought I did. Next week, I will discuss my new pack and what I have learned about packs. Because of the pain I have been experiencing after my walks, I have been holding back on my walks recently. I have to correct that first if I am going to get my fitness ready in time. Very important when it is my first worry.
January 8, 2025 – Flavor: The Science of Our Most Forgotten Sense
Flavor was going to be an LCCBC selection for November. That is until circumstances changed but I had bought the book already. It is not a terribly long book. Even so, it took me quite a while to read with all of the interruptions of the holidays. I started it over the Thanksgiving week but finished it only a couple days ago.
The book is a combination of the fascination and the mundane. For instance, flavor is the combination of taste and scent and memory. I had never considered it before, I thought flavor and taste were actually the same thing. Memory had nothing to do with it. How fascinating.
On the contrary, some of the stories and anecdotes are repetitive in certain chapters. About two thirds of the way through the book, I was ready to give it a thumbs down due to just not enough content. But, I kept going and was rewarded with theories on developing flavor in meat and steaks.
What I learned about flavor was definitely interesting. First of all, a lot of flavor is scent. People that lose scent for whatever reason also tend to lose the ability to taste. From that point, eating is only a matter of survival and that can be a push. The author also proclaims that humans ability to detect scent is just as good as other animals (including dogs). The difference is that because we are upright, we are much farther away from most scents on the ground.
Taste is much more of a mystery. Apparently, there are 400 some taste receptors. They are specifically oriented toward specific compounds. Because there are millions of compounds, receptors have to do multiple duty or work in some sort of combination. In addition, some receptors commonly die as we age. For that reason, our preference/tolerance for certain compounds change over time. All of this work is incredibly speculative given the sensitive location of the receptors.
Flavor is the money. We all at least know somebody that cannot stand tequila or gin. The memory of the experience is a survival mechanism to keep us from accidentally poisoning ourselves. Extremely positive and negative memories from certain foods are built into our genetic responses.
It took me years to be able to smell let alone eat the Olive Garden salad dressing. When we arrived from our honeymoon in Mexico we went out to Olive Garden for dinner. I picked up a bug in Mexico that led to 105 degree temperatures amongst the polite symptoms. It was that strong vinegar component. I still loved all other high acid, vinegar forward foods but it was that particular combination (and probably setting). That memory has waned into a laugh now, but the flavor was real.
The other thing this book gets into is artificial flavoring. I am always into learning the dirty little secrets of the food industry. The biggest takeaway I got was that most real foods are way more complicated than what can be duplicated. It is not price competitive. The more a company wants to pay for flavor, the more things that can be put in to get closer to a natural flavor.
Since artificial flavoring is a compromise (even using the real chemicals we taste) there are also doppelgangers. Some flavors mimic or are similar too the real ones. This is the reason artificial grape tastes like artificial grape. The real compounds oxidize instantly and cannot be used realistically.
The most interesting and now defunct element of the book is that IBM developed artificial intelligence for food called Chef Watson. You could add an ingredient and get a suggested pairing or a couple of ingredients and get some recipes. IBM shut down Watson in 2021 but I suspect that newer technologies like Chat GPT has the same capabilities. This opens a whole new world to AI skeptics such as myself.
End Your Programming Routine: Let’s bottom line this. If you accept that there is going to be some repetition it is definitely worth the rest. As a chemist that has spent a large percentage of my career working with the food industry, I didn’t find the science overwhelming. I did find myself trying to visualize the chemical structure rather than accepting the name and moving on. Given my distance from chemical structures, I sometimes wandered off in the weeds. I don’t think a typical reader would have the same problem.
January 3, 2024 – I’ve Got Nothin’
I was expecting to be finished with one book yesterday and begin the Fourth Turning series today. This post is more to inform that I haven’t even started reading yet. I do expect to begin the Fourth Turning next week, I am just unprepared at the moment.
This has been a season that I am ready to move on from. It is hard to explain but it feels like I have been waiting all year to get ready for the next thing only to find that I am still waiting and having things get in the way. That is a frustrating feeling for me and it doesn’t bode well for the upcoming year.
I don’t want to offer excuses but since I said that I intended to start the series this week, I needed to reset expectations. Having holidays in the middle of the week and not taking any additional time off has essentially caused all of the extra curricular activities to occur every day. On the first, I fell asleep on the couch about 6:30 PM out of sheer exhaustion. That was my first down day since early December.
I suppose the prime question is are things going to get better for me? I sure hope so but I also would like to know the answer. We can only do what we do. I plan to try and find some zen in the storm so I can keep on keeping on. Look to getting back on track next week.
December 31, 2024 – Year In Review
It has been kind of a ho-hum year if I have to say so myself. I am going to look back at the AtF4 highlights or favorites today. One thing that kind of sticks out to me is that I think this has been the flattest year of AltF4 to date. It was a year of long book series, long running projects and fighting cancer. I went through the effort of looking back from my entire year to see what it is I did and what I liked.
- January – I started out thinking I was going to build a wine cellar. First, I wanted to move the ducts.
- March – It wasn’t sexy, but it was one of the best projects I should have done years ago. I finished raising the ducts into the stud bays.
- April – Chemo started. I also started buying some radios. I got my GMRS license.
- June – I started planning my PCT hike. I also started spotty walking in an effort to get into shape.
- July – My wife had her stem cell transplant. I spent the entire month away from home.
- August – I survived reading The Devine Comedy
- October – Burn out is realized. I took a nice five day fishing vacation with my dad, uncle and brother.
- November – Family trip to Montana for Thanksgiving. Who could forget the Election results as well.
- December – The theme of this month was fatigue.
Of course, there is nothing more important than fighting for your life and the business that comes with it. As a result when I looked through the year, I felt like my writing was much more diverse and interesting in the first quarter of the year. It has gone steadily down hill since that time. I had a hard time even finding some highlights toward the end of the year.
Not every month got a mention in my summary because I didn’t see a post that I felt was remarkable or fully inspired for the month. I think that was a combination of my selection for what I was talking about and doing and my personal life. Long running works and little time made a diversity of topics scarce.
The trip to Montana was definitely one to remember. That being said, not everything is for sharing here. It also went by so fast and then we launched directly Christmas that it was hard to get any sort of rest as a result. I would say that I am starting the year at a deficit. I have a deficit of topics and plans going into 2025.
I can tell that because despite not posting for the entire last week, I am still struggling to get this out in time. I keep looking for that dose of Vitamin B and is going to turbo charge that feeling I was getting when I started this endeavor in 2019. Intuitively, I knew that the novelty of my series Pursuit of Happiness that I did in 2021 just has not materialized in the last year. I haven’t really even done any projects that I was proud of since I started the duct work.
I always like to look forward and not just back. Guess what? I think it is going to be another year of the same. Plans are moving forward for my hike which means that most of my spare time is going to be dedicated to training and practice. Things have basically slipped since Thanksgiving. I am hoping that the new year will finally clear up the social schedule (but probably not the weather).
We are also planning on hosting our (former) Spanish exchange student’s family for a week of Pacific Northwest touring June. So that will be a week of my vacation plus a week of hiking and I will be mostly tapped out for the year. We talked about travelling to Taiwan over Christmas but that has not been solidified.
End Your Programming Routine: Maybe I shouldn’t be so hard on myself because despite how I feel about my creative output, it was a very successful year from a personal standpoint. My wife beat cancer, my oldest son beat the school system, my younger son beat his exchange and is on his way to his last year in school. That is something worthy of being happy about. So, let’s kick 2024 to the curb to hopefully find a better 2025.
December 30, 2024 – Goal Setting With Meaning
It’s that time of year again that everyone is looking forward. Only 9% of people are still working on New Year’s resolutions by the end of the year. Why is that? I talk a lot about that today and what you can do about it. This topic applies throughout the entire year, not just at the beginning but we all have to start somewhere.
December 20, 2024 – Festivus 2024
For the Rest Of Us… Festivus is becoming a tradition around here for good reason. I’ve got a lot of problems with you people. I talk a lot of sports, some politics and current issues. This is part of wrapping up the year that I am in the midst of at this time. I am warning you that I ran a little long. But, I will give you a break next week. Happy Festivus from AltF4.
December 19, 2024 – Things That Makes You Go, Huh
I am kind of behind the eight ball here. It has been party after party, late night after late night and working like a banshee. Add to that some emotional struggles not just what I wrote yesterday but also some additional drama. So, a normal Christmas season. I need to get my Festivus podcast put together so I am putting out a cheap one here.
I had planned to review a book that I am reading. I thought that I had two weeks to go to finish it and I haven’t read a page since. That is getting pushed to next year since I am taking a break for Christmas. The other day, I checked the mailbox and it was crammed full of envelopes. It took me four handfuls to empty it.
This picture is 41 benefits statements from the insurance company. I couldn’t help but laugh and laugh as I was sorting through the pile. I surmised that the hospital finally got around to submitting to the insurance company for my wife’s treatment over the summer. I only read a couple to make sure they were for the same event. Sure enough, it was.
We are definitely not there yet, but I imagine that this is the kind of practice that is going disappear as Artificial Intelligence gets a real footing. The reason being is that this logic is pretty complicated. A thinking person would say, one claim and one document. Instead of generating a document for every line item, it would be one document with every transaction (think bank statement).
But, this gets into the complication of the logic. You can imagine that each vendor/provider/service ends up with a different task code or billing line. With that each of those equal a transaction. The logic then ties each transaction a letter. This way the system does not have to know if these transactions are related or not. It is the simplest way of laying things out. And simple is always the most robust.
If there is any doubt, this is what I do. Take a scenario, break it down into to the steps, that is critical to getting it right. A warning though, the output is always important. The reason it is critical is that the output changes all of the details within the steps. As an example, I have often had to deliver reports (letters in this case) with the project. And often those are an after thought, with the assumption that all of the data is captured. But when it is not, then sometimes you have to even re-program the steps and step logic to capture.
Because the software process is complicated and technical, what goes on behind the scenes is obscure. For that reason, the industry has become reliant on sloppy practices. Think about electric cars. I hear that a new model (like the Mustang Mach-E) consistently has improved over time. Without substantial infrastructure changes, a 2020 model is essentially the same as a 2024 model. This is because they are running the same operating system if you will.
Because nobody knows what is going on at the consumer level, the industry uses this as cover to release substandard code and iterate to a final or better state. Realize that some of this is a necessary evil, it is not just a conspiracy theory. The reality is that there are deadlines and that a manufacturer would not want to release a 2020 vehicle finally in 2024. That would also be bad for business.
The other day, I had a Windows 10 Blue Screen (of Death). This is the first time I have seen this in years. It used to be fairly common twenty years ago, in fact I didn’t even know that they still existed it has been so long. A Porche 911, is fifty years of evolution. Sure, if you compare today’s to an original, they are not the same car but the result is constant evolution. It didn’t make a leap from one generation to another. That is what software is.
I know that all of the contrarians like to highlight the simplicity of Linux and the advantages of crowd sourcing. I also agree that it is good and I appreciate the benefits. But what cannot be denied is that Microsoft has built a stable and widely accepted operating system. Good luck getting your very specialized TV tuner card to work in Linux unless you are going to program it yourself.
End Your Programming Routine: Choice is good. Sometimes what is seen as ludicrousness, waste or incompetence actually has a reason. Despite the $20 of postage to mail all of those statements out, they have to doing something to make billions in profits last year. Make no mistake, the only way insurance companies make money is by charging the patients so we paid for this but there is a method to the madness. In my book forty-one explanation of benefit statements in one day is mad.
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