Category: Philosophy

December 30, 2021 – Bon Voyage 2021

December 30, 2021 /

Tomorrow is a holiday for me so this is the last post in 2021 and then we will be on to the new year.  As always, there are many things planned for the holiday and the weekend.  I mean this when I say that I am looking forward to getting into the new year and then things start settling down quite a bit.

I have already written about the year in review and my Festivus airing of grievances so I am not going to rehash all of that again.  But, I think it is always good to spend some time reflecting.  In many ways, I think 2021 was more difficult that 2020.  Yes, 2020 was crazy but it was also a new kind of crazy whereas 2021 was the same shit, different year.

I think one of the differences for me was my work situation.  Since I was very driven in 2020 to remodel the apartment, I was hyper focused on that project sun up to sundown.  Driving for Amazon, I had to concentrate on my surroundings, my driving and planning my next steps as well.  For example, I couldn’t really listen to my podcasts while I was delivering because I wasn’t paying any attention to what they were saying.  I tried, but it just didn’t work.

This last year, I have spent most of the working days behind a desk, where my mind wanders at times.  I think about what I want to make for dinner, what my project plans should be next, what do I want to write about for the week, how many chapters do I have to read in a week to keep up with my reviews, etc.  Don’t get me wrong, I can appreciate that kind of luxury, but I think it is kind of like being an addict.  You are kind of anticipating your next hit (I mean until work is over so I start on that project).  That mental mindset is different than you are not punching out until all of you packages are delivered.

People that know me, know that I am not emotional.  My wife on the other hand is.  We are yin and yang.  This has been a very difficult year for her, and by proxy myself as well.  There have been times of spontaneous tears, shouting matches as primary caretaker and patient, extended trips away from home.  I have had to play the role of peacemaker and lighthouse as well as Mr. Mom.  I suppose that is assuming the consequences of assuming the role of Patriarch for that half of the family.

Speaking of Mr. Mom, having teenagers has some benefits and a lot of drawbacks.  With all the time that they spent at home last year, they lost a lot of discipline.  Everywhere they are is a mess, meal time is literally almost anytime of the day and their personalities are driving me crazy sometimes.  One child is vegan every other month and the other picks and eats all the meat out of leftovers.  One child leaves for school at 7AM and returns at 8PM, the other selectively turns in assignments.  Neither feed and care for the animals or perform chores adequately or without prompting.  This causes friction with my wife and me as well as the kids.

I am not saying the calendar changing does anything about any of this.  It does allow me to reflect on what I want to change.  I want to be careful, this is a path that can lead back to where I was a few years ago, marching through time not with passion but because you don’t know how to get off the wheel.  It has the sights of deja vu, only I have been down this road before.  

The next logical step is to decide and make those changes.  This is where I get stuck a bit.  I am pretty good a laying out options, but moving forward is more difficult.  I suppose that it is more like you already know that you don’t like the choices so doing nothing is the easiest.  At least you know the downsides already. 

I think about some of the most radical changes that have occurred in my life, many of them were done without a lot of thought.  For instance, when I moved to South Carolina.  The truth is, I really didn’t want to do it.  I was happy with what I was doing and had only been in our house less than two years.  But, when the opportunity came up, I didn’t say no and everything just happened.  In retrospect, that was one of the best opportunities that I could have ever accepted.  There was so much learning and growing that came from it that if I would have stuck to my instincts would have never happened.

If ever there was a personality trait that I wish I had, I wish that I had to ability to know what I wanted and be decisive.  In contrast, I suppose I have the same type of discipline that makes a good scientist.  I want to collect all of the data, then analyze it and finally make a conclusion that the data supports.  What do you do when the data is inconclusive?  You perform more experiments until a clear analysis is possible.  Life definitely isn’t a well defined experiment with finite outcomes, so I am still collecting data.

Looking back to my first post of this year and my goalsetting, I accomplished none of these things.  The truth is, those are the logical steps to move this endeavor from a hobby to a business.  But, the real question is why didn’t I do any of those things?  I can make up excuses like I was working but the real truth is I didn’t want to.  To be brutally honest, I was lazy and didn’t want to put in the extra work that was required to do all of the small things to accomplish the larger goal.  I wanted to spend my extra time building my office, reading 1984 and writing my daily posts rather than I did working on a business plan.

I would liken it to my process oriented brain.  It is very easy for me to see the endpoint and make up all of the logical steps in between.  What is not as easy is to impart the intangible discipline to do it, primarily driven by desire.  Does that make me a loser who wants to live in misery?  A little bit because there is only so much whining people will tolerate from someone that appears chronically unhappy and it seems to be their own doing, especially when they don’t follow their own plan. 

To stave that off, it is up to me to figure out the motivations and do something different with my situation.  For instance, maybe I should spend my time writing a book rather than this blog?  Or maybe I should stop writing for a while and really figure out if podcasting is what I would rather do?  Or maybe I should narrow the focus of this and stick to one subject to build a targeted audience rather than my daily whatever is top of mind? Or maybe I should keep this as it is because I enjoy it and stop trying to wish I was an entrepreneur type of personality?

End Your Programming Routine: I think it is OK to not know what the future looks like as long as you are aware that is the case.  The lucky few know what they want and are doing it.  The rest of us know that something isn’t quite right. I want to be in the subset that keeps looking rather than accepting this is all there is.  That being said, I am going to make some changes in 2022, just not sure what that is going to be yet.  I am checking off 2021 and wish you a happy new year.

December 22, 2021 – We Are On the Upswing

December 22, 2021 /

Yesterday was one of the days I anticipate starting about the first of November.  Since it was the Winter Solstice, all the days from here to mid June start to get longer.  I say this because this is a mental as well as physical transition point.  It is the wrapping up of the previous year and looking forward to starting the new one. 

At the 45th parallel, sunrise is 7:48a and sunset is 4:34p . That means we have a little over eight hours of daylight.  I noticed it acutely last year when I was delivering packages for Amazon when daylight was precious and made a huge difference in productivity.  Of course, I notice it now because I am alive and observant.  I will say that I start work around 5AM most days so I still get a couple hours of daylight most days that seem to make a big difference on feeling like it is dark all the time.

I thought I would take a look at the year that was and look ahead to the year that is coming today.  There were probably two themes within my control that dominated the year, those were restarting my career and basement cleanup.  Those two things seemed to go hand in hand as I built my office in the mess of the basement.  As I end the year, the cleanup job is finally done.

Ironically, I think the death of my father-in-law and the estate clean-up as much as it interfered with what I wanted to do, it also helped.  The cold, binary function of keep/toss was just a task.  Loads to be donated and to the dump were combined and executed.  

As the rains come each winter, I often haphazardly move items around to get them off of the floor.  That behavior often leaves things more disorganized than they were before I started, protecting my junk.  This year, I had one small area that I finished last week to make room on my bench so I could wrap presents.  Now, the basement is as organized as it will be and protected from the flooding that is possible each year.

I talked a lot about my office build throughout the year.  I still have things that I want to do but for all intents and purposes, that is done.  So, that was two major things that I accomplished this year. 

I did have other plans before my new employment, like I was going to build a wine cellar space in the basement.  I wanted to build a front yard garden, that never got started.  I wanted to spend more time developing this platform and a business plan, that never happened.  I only got a fraction of the range time, hunting, fishing and outdoors time that I wanted.  Those were some of the things that I thought I was going to do, but didn’t like build a new table for the kitchen area which is now a TV lounging area.

Looking forward to next year, there are things that will carry forward.  I think the wine cellar and front yard garden of some sort are some of them.   For sure, I am going to spend time exploring podcasting.  Part of my audio insert yesterday was getting started with that. 

New and easier things… I want to build the sofa table for my office so that I can move the stereo back into the office.  I want to brew some beer and optimize the keezer for fun.  I have a chainsaw that I want to get running and then get rid of.  I have more antenna designs and testing that I want to explore.  

End Your Programming Routine:  I heard a very insightful comment last week.  That was, the danger with a roadmap is that people take it as a promise with a due date.  I do believe that publicly stating is a form of accountability.  I did a great job of stating goals last year, but a poor job of following through.  Goals and purpose change, at least my life did last year.  It doesn’t mean that I don’t want this to be a growing concern, but I need to find my own way through it.  

December 7, 2021 – In Contrast to Yesterday…

December 7, 2021 /

I have an experiment going on. I got this bicycle light for Christmas in 1994. I got the batteries for this light at the same time. Guess what, they still work. That is 27 years later, functioning alkaline batteries.  I like to check the light every couple of years to see if it is still working.  

This is not getting any sort of preferential treatment.  The light has been in the unheated/uninsulated garage since 2005. I am pretty sure they were in my garage in South Carolina for three years and in another garage for two previous years.  While the batteries are not getting the more extreme cold, it it a few degrees above ambient.

There has been a lot of life that has occurred in this time period.  I was doing some thinking over that course of time.

  • 14 vehicles
  • 9 cell phones
  • 6 PCs
  • 5 dogs
  • 3 houses
  • 2 children
  • 1 Bachelor’s Degree
  • 1 Marriage

I purchased my first bicycle in 1992.  I took it to school with me and it got stolen in May 1994.  So, during the summer of 1994 I purchased a replacement.  This light was to comply with night riding law on my new bicycle.  It was my only mode of transportation at the time.  

As a kid, batteries were scarce.  Usually we would get some at Christmas or a birthday with the gift but that was it.  We were on our own after that.  We might buy a four pack with our own money but this was why I largely listened to the radio on my Walkman and not tapes because it was a lot more efficient on battery power.  My boombox stereo never had batteries because it was too expensive to feed it 6, D cell batteries and we didn’t have them in the first place.  Remote control cars sat idle.  Any batteries we did have were moved between devices at the point of use.

This is the reason why I still have the batteries in my bicycle light because I was saving them until I really needed them and then I forgot about the bike and the light.  It is also why I get frustrated when my kids run through a set of batteries every two or three days on the X-box controller.  They have no appreciation for what always having batteries available means.

I have no real explanation what makes this situation different.  I have some theories however and the stem to prior manufacturing techniques.  Yesterday, I was saying that it seemed liked batteries rarely leaked.  I know that batteries have become significantly more prevalent than 25 years ago.  That has driven increased capacity demand which means new machines that don’t work as well as the original.  The other possibility was a tweak in chemistry or materials that make them more susceptible to failure.

When we lived in Lancaster, SC Duracell had a plant that made 2.3 billion AA annually and employed 1200 people.  That plant closed in 2019 and now those batteries are made elsewhere (LaGrange, GA).  So, we know there is a least one recent change.  When we lived there, my mind said that brand loyalty was supporting the local community.

From my research, I found that Radio Shack batteries were largely made by Enercell the parent company of Energizer/Eveready.  The documentation gets lost a little in the mid-1990s and now no one cares so I didn’t find  any smoking guns.  My traditional view held that Energizers failed at a higher rate than Duracell.  Plus, Costco sells a deeply discounted value pack which is convenient.  So my recent preference has been Duracell. As a value brand, I have not had the same problems Panasonic, that may warrant some more investigation as my frustration with the two American consumer brands is shaky at best.

End Your Programming Routine:  I am not correlating everything old is better, even in the battery arena.  The cordless tools of 1994 cannot hold a candle to the tools purchased today.  I think that reduced cost and the proliferation of batteries have lowered customer expectations.  Let’s be honest, most consumer electronics are disposable and a ruined battery is a chance to upgrade.  I have said many times ‘buy once, cry once’ so I really don’t appreciate when my CCrane portable radio is ruined because of some leaking batteries.

December 3, 2021 – Turkey Soup for the Soul

December 3, 2021 /

Still have Thanksgiving leftovers? Believe it or not, we do still. A large part of it was that things were packed for days in the coolers while we travelled and the other was that we ate last Friday with other family members. Finally, we still have a travel hangover.

Today I am making turkey soup.  I have yet to figure out exactly what the end form will be noodle or rice, leaning toward rice.  If I was thinking better last week, I would have done something about leftovers last Friday but it really didn’t occur to me until yesterday as I was planning dinners and thinking about how to use leftovers.

Going even deeper with this… this isn’t simply about using leftovers to make soup.    Yesterday, my mother-in-law had her first chemo here in Oregon.  My wife was the designated caretaker for this round and I was thinking it would be helpful for me to make some dinner to share.  

After a five days on the road on the road last week, I had my fair share of ‘snacks’  and fast food as well as eating out.  My general feeling about all of that is that it is not satisfying and leaves you only temporarily satiated. When you are a caregiver, it can be very tempting to give up on cooking and settle for temporary relief. 

Only having the perspective as a a caregiver, I think that is a much more difficult job than being the patient.  Sometimes you are walking on eggshells and sometimes you are wondering if there is an end in sight.  We still have all of the other aspects of life to manage, particularly the future.  The patients only focus is the current, it is the caregiver that is managing the future for the patient.

To get started, I am going to debone all of the turkey. It doesn’t have to be stripped but I want the bones to make the stock.  I also don’t want a lot of fat because that just sets on the top.  I have covered stock making before but as a refresher, I am going to add aromatics and set it on just under boiling if possible.  I want to try and convert all of the collagen and connective tissues from the bones into the broth. 

Ideally, that is when it is done but that also takes days of preparation before hand and if you don’t have days, it can be done the day of.   So, don’t let the planning stop you, remember Samin Nosrat said use water if you cant make your own stock, so this is the most important step for best results.

I used carrots, celery and onion along with salt and set it on the stove.  I gave it about six hours.  If I have the time, I am also going to cool and filter.  In this step, I can skim off hardened fat and remove all of the bones and vegetables.  It is not really a quality step but mostly for appearance.

I am going to dice turkey, and more carrots and celery.  I am going add rice and some parsley.  From there I will add salt and pepper to taste and that should be it.  I will probably serve with buttermilk biscuits and a side salad.  How does that sound compared to a Big Mac meal?

End Your Programming Routine:  I keep telling myself that I need to do more with food here.  Particularly the aspects that I like such as transforming leftovers.  We need to feed the souls of patients and the caregivers, as it is a difficult and many times thankless job. 

November 25, 2021 – Happy Thanksgiving

November 25, 2021 /

I don’t often wear my Christianity on my sleeve but today I want to put it out there. We can be thankful for all the things we have and have done but I believe in putting the praise to my creator and savior. 

This has been a year of transition. I have been employed all year, some of it with Amazon and the majority with Cognizant. While I am not completely happy with what I am doing, I am grateful that I have a degree of stability and a solid income.

I am happy that my family is thriving. My wife continues to move beyond her health problems of ten years ago. Each one of my kids are becoming their own individuals and in a few short years will become independent. This trip to Texas is part of getting in our last bits of childhood and family as we know it.

I am happy to have this forum. While I haven’t done all the things I have hoped to have done, I find writing cathartic and a form of therapy. In some ways, I don’t know if I would enjoy podcasting as much. I do think that I will make an effort to try next year. While blogging may now be passé, I enjoy it. In some ways, I like the fact that there are few regular readers because it is like my own public journal. Don’t get me wrong, I am pretty sure that I would like making this my full time endeavor, it is little steps at time.

There is a phrase that says stability breeds complacency.  I know that to be true.  I was happier when I was free (read: unemployed) but I was scared and still am to a degree about the future.  I guess when I get to the end, I will know for sure whether I made the right decision.  My retirement account was drained to get us through those two years.  Now, I need to not only build it up but also make up for lost time. 

Was it worth it to essentially end up at the same place?  My going in plan was to build a business that could earn an income such that I could compensate for my future plans, more like passive income.  Since I have not exactly done that, there is a degree of uncertainty that follows me around.  I think that leads directly my next item to be thankful for.

Hopefully, we all continue to grow and I think this year my spirituality has grown. I have had a more intimate relationship where I have ‘heard’ things that I never had.  I always thought that I was open, but this year I have made attempts to reconcile and seek answers with prayer.  It feels right.

End Your Programming Routine:  I don’t know if this is true or not.  It was said that the pilgrims took a break to celebrate and praise God before the long New England winter.  They didn’t know if they would make it to the next year or not but they did what they could and hoped for the best, knowing that this life is only a vessel to the next.  That is Thanksgiving.  

November 22, 2021 – On the Road Again

November 22, 2021 /

This is new. It has been a long time since we have lived significantly apart from close relatives. We are on a big family road-trip from Oregon to Texas so that we can spend Thanksgiving with my wife’s mother. Our family has done some long trips, but we rented a van and we are also going with my sister-in-law’s family.

When you start to look at the economics of the situation, nine tickets costs roughly $3600. We plan on spending half by hot switching drivers and bee lining to Texas. Granted, we will lose time but this is an adventure. We may never do this again but it is something to try.

There are definitely risks. Weather and crossing the Rockies leave uncertainty in the trip. Looking at the weather mid-last week, it was looking clear for the shortest direction, due southeast. The actual decision for the travel route was decided right before we left.  We travelled the Southwest route which was nice because I had never been on that particular freeway.

Being new at my job, I barely have any time off. So, I plan to working a couple of days as well. It kind of sucks, but the real point of the trip is to provide the family with an adventure. I have stubbed out a couple articles for the week, so we will see if I can keep it up this week.

This is the culmination of a difficult fall. My in-laws originally went to Texas in the early summer to seek treatment for my mother-in-law. Between my father-in-law dying and my wife trying to maintain a job and manage treatment at the same time, hopefully this is a celebration of a new season. Because her prognosis is not positive, this may be our last Thanksgiving and so we are pulling out the stops to make it happen.

I am going to write more about this evolving situation, but not now. It is real, it is raw and it is personal. While everyone has the right to manage their own affairs and control information as they see fit, it doesn’t mean that those decisions don’t have a billiard ball effect. One person may be at peace with the situation while others may have different feelings. It may ultimately be your decision and your outcome but those decisions have consequences. We all have a responsibility to handle them in an appropriate fashion even if we perceive them as ‘not what we would do’ particularly when we are observers. That is so difficult.

Most of the post was written before the trip.  I am in Houston now and I will summarize some lessons learned next week.  I already have all of the posts for this week planned out since it was a holiday week and we were on the road I wanted to get a jumpstart on everything.

End Your Programming Routine: The kids are out of school all week, it is a holiday week so why not? Even though we have done similar things, my sister-in-laws family has not.  

After arriving last night at 1 AM, there are definitely things I learned about our choices that I will share.    For now, going to enjoy a little warmer weather and hopefully get a chance to see some new sights and enjoy some family time this week.

November 17, 2021 – What Does Two is One Mean?

November 17, 2021 /

There is a saying in preparedness that is turned into of a nursery rhyme. It ultimately starts to get ridiculous but I think I can build a reasonable use case today. It goes like this “Two is one and one is none, three is for me…” Apparently, it is a saying from the Navy Seals.

As promptly as I noticed my desktop working last Saturday, it stopped working again. I was able to post on Monday and I was back to the laptop yesterday. There was an update Monday night that I purposefully ran and then things stopped working. That of course re-ignited my quest to resolve the problem for a number of reasons. The first was that carrying two laptops was heavy. The second is that we are off to to Texas on Friday and I am going to be working several days while there, so that means two laptops again.

The truth is, I could probably get by using my issued computer, but I don’t really want to do that. All of my linking to One Drive and other services I use to make this work would mess with my business configuration. I still suspect that this problem is something to do with WordPress for reasons I will outline below.

So what does two is one, one is none mean in this scenario?

DeviceOSBuild
DesktopWindows 10 Home21H1Not Working
LaptopWindows 10 Home20H2Working
iPhoneIOS14.8.1 Not Working
iPadIOS15.1 Not Working

The reason I am thinking the problem is with WordPress is the apparent ‘random’ behavior of it working. Doing nothing over the course of a week and it works, after not working for two weeks prior. Then running an update and it stops working.

The real reason however is that it works on one device and not three others. Device problems should manifest as working on three out of four devices or working on one operating system and not the other or working with one browser but not another. There are of course other variables that I have also tried

  • WAN connection type
  • Browser
  • Hardware configuration
  • Other installed applications

Looking at my list of variables, I do have some things that I haven’t tried. For instance, I have tried wired and wi-fi but I haven’t tried cellular. Although, for my one device that is working is on wireless. Low and behold, when I switched off of wi-fi to cellular only, I can login to the post editor on my phone.

That potentially rules out operating system. It also narrows down my focus to something to do with the internet. I have already rebooted my equipment, refreshed my DNS setting and cleared my browser cache, but I will keep looking in this area for the answer.

End Your Programming Routine: I am sure the Navy Seals meant that if you didn’t have an extra magazine and the one you have is broken, you are ‘f’-d. In this case, I am trying to convey that without extra devices and connections, I would never be able to troubleshoot, let alone continue to post. Maybe, I would put more urgency if I only had one device but I have tried pretty hard already. I do think I am getting close.

November 16, 2021 – I Have the Need to be Doing Something

November 16, 2021 /

My wife says that I can never be in the moment. I think that is largely true although never is a strong statement. I would say that it is probably more like 90% of the time. Next week, I will take Thanksgiving Day and have zero expectations. The other days will be fair game to either doing something productive or most likely wishing I was.

Throughout my school years, I read a lot. I really do mean a lot. During that time, I probably averaged a book a week. There were some times where I would read two or three books a week and I have written about what the library means to me. But, over time something has changed in me.

It is the same reason that I barely watch TV, or even stream shows at my convenience. I won’t sit down and watch football unless I can fold laundry or shell walnuts or some other task. I definitely know it has driven my interest in podcasts and radio because I prefer to listen to a game rather than watch it.

I am pretty sure that my problem is that I don’t consider family time or relationship time as important as well as TV time. Before I am harshly judged, hear me out. I don’t think it has been a conscious decision but something that is uniquely me. To describe it, I would say that once I make a value judgement, I stop looking for supporting or contrary information i.e. my relationship.

This of course has consequences. Descriptors such as cold or aloof have sometimes been used. It also means that I have to try harder at not being some of those things which I largely fail, but I keep trying. For instance, I have a daily reminder to ‘say something nice’ or give a compliment. That causes me to stop and try to plan a moment to be complimentary.

Now that I have bared my soul a bit, the rest might make more sense. My long term goal is to reorganize the basement. I am probably over the half way point but I have hit a stall. While messing around with the turntable and stereo system, I set it up on a desk that I would like to get rid of. To get rid of it, I want to build a table for my office so the stereo system has a more permanent home.

Last week I was gone, next week I am going to be gone and now Christmas is coming and that is a manic time. I feel like I don’t have time to start a new project until the new year. This leaves me feeling restless and that kind of work is my therapy.

While travelling home last Friday, I finished my book with about half of the flight remaining. I watched most of Roadrunner: A film about Anthony Bourdain. One of his friends analysis was that when on the road, all he wanted to do was get home and when home, he wanted to get back on the road. He was restless because of the guilt of being gone and when home he had the wiring to do something else. Watching the documentary, I had no idea that we shared so many personality traits (besides those mentioned previously).

To make matters slightly worse, my idea of priority and my wife’s are different. She sees building a sofa table as something I want to do because I want it. Which I do not deny that I do, but I see it as a part of a much larger picture. She wants me to build a rack for the garage to more efficiently store kayaks. That I might point out is also another goal but in mind, that one will cost more money to do.

So, you can see my dilemma, between conflicting priorities and choppy schedules and my personality, I am pacing around with the free time I do have. I will do both and they will get done, I just need to get through this time. Part of what I have unsuccessfully tried to do while I am travelling is to plan for when I get back. I just haven’t been able to really effectively do that on business trips.

End Your Programming Routine: If it is not this project or this trip or this circumstance it is another. I need to continually balance my personality with the rest of life’s priorities and that is not easy. The best way that I have found to do it is to block small hours daily so I feel like I make progress on my projects while leaving time to cultivate relationships. I am going to try.

November 8, 2021 – Even Seasoned Travelers Make Mistakes

November 8, 2021 /

Here I am six hours early or is it two hours late? Well, to be honest it is the latter. I am dealing with old ideas and paradigms in a new world I guess. I used to be Delta Platinum when it was the highest tier and a Hilton Diamond member. That meant I spent a lot of time on the road.

I am travelling for the first time in three years for business or pleasure for that matter. My flight was at 6:15AM so I planned to be at the kiosk for check-in one hour early. It takes an hour and fifteen minutes to get from my house to the airport with no traffic. There is no traffic at the four AM hour.

What I didn’t count on was the check-in kiosk was broken. So, I tried four times before I switched to another kiosk. By that time ten more people got in line before me and I only packed to check my luggage. By the time I got to the counter, I was too late to check my bag on the flight because there is a forty-five minute cut-off (which is new) and they would not send my bag on another flight (which was also new).

Fortunately, I am flying to a hub airport and there are additional flights throughout the day. With my new job, I have to book through a travel portal and I didn’t see later flights as an option otherwise I would have forgone waking up at three in the morning. So that is something else new I learned on this trip.

Sometimes with flights this early, I would choose to stay at a hotel where the cost of and overnight stay was equal to the cost of parking for the week. That way I was only a fifteen minute ride to the airport. I completely forgot about that option and I am kind of weirded out by how constrictive the rules and travel policies are so I am trying to be conservative in my spending. Plus, I would have had to book it on the front end.

I have slept through a flight before but I have never been at the airport not quite on time. This formula for leaving and time is the same one that I have always used but I didn’t count on the environmental changes. Probably, I am out of practice as well and a few minutes here or there was just unforgiveable.

Today is a travel day anyway. It kind of screwed up my afternoon plans to meet my boss face to face for the first time but I have no other commitments. I will cross security at some point in the next hour to hopefully find some breakfast and then wait five more hours. I have always said that I am willing to be late leaving, coming home is another story.

I suppose I didn’t need to check my bag on this trip. It is only four days. My standing rule of thumb is I only carry on if I am travelling first class or with a group of people that are also only carrying on. Why? I think it is a huge hassle at security and I am not really time constrained waiting for baggage. I find trying to get overhead space a pain and my company is paying the baggage fee anyway. Plus, I can bring items on checked bags that I can’t carry on and that is the real reason.

End Your Programming Routine: What did I learn? I need to add another half an hour to check my bag. It probably wouldn’t hurt to check-in online ahead of time so I can skip that step and go directly to the drop-off. I also need to seriously consider going carry-on only. These are all reasons I dread air travel. It has no magic for me and I am proud to say that I have no status with any airline, hotel or rental company anymore. Those perks are nice when you live a miserable life on the road, I am happy here. I just need to realize that things change.

November 4, 2021 – What Has Changed Since the Ice Storm in February

November 4, 2021 /

Yesterday, I had a conflict that left me away from home a large part of the day. I am also going to be travelling for business next week and I am not sure that I want to take a second laptop or not. Since I cant get this to work on iOS, I may be AWOL next week.

February 16, 2021 I wrote about lessons from a winter storm. One of my biggest holes were things related to energy. I didn’t have a lot of supplemental heat for comfort or electricity to protect my freezers for an extended outage. March 31, 2021 I wrote about the shortage of everything which now seems to be common knowledge. The linkage between those two was that I was having a hard time finding fuel storage namely propane tanks and fuel cannisters.

It wasn’t until mid-summer that I saw both of them come back. When they did, they weren’t at the prices they were before they were gone for months. So, as a good prepper watch the availability and price and buy when both are optimal and not needed.

The propane is flexible. With my little heater, it can run on 40 hours per cylinder. I also have adapters that can run the stove and other things. Combine this with my kerosene restocked (around 200 hours) and the fireplace we have way more supplemental heat potential.

I have been buying gas cans when they go on sale. This is to power the new generator that we have which was unfortunately part of Olivia’s inheritance. I really don’t have a clue about runtime here, but the strategy is all about rotation. The idea is to store the gasoline up to one year and then pour it into the vehicle and replace it. I have enough gas to swap it out every two months throughout the year.

Looking a little more long term, I still have on my list a couple more items. One is another inverter for converting vehicle power into energy. The idea is to have one inverter per vehicle so that they can be used as makeshift generators. I would also like to add a suitcase type generator because they are light and portable.

Also, I would like to build up a better supply of firewood as well. But, since we mostly burn in our firepit, most of my supply is actually garbage. Meaning, I largely burn off cuts and smallish branches from pruning. I am on the look-out for some inexpensive wood supply That takes planning and effort, so that will largely be an opportunity where I have the time to do it.

When thinking about a longer term outage, there are other considerations. For instance maintenance. The generator that we have was supposed to have the oil changed after five hours and then every hundred hours afterward. I am pretty sure the first change never happened and supplies are needed to run as long as you have fuel. I drained the fuel and then changed the oil so it should be ready to go.

End Your Programming Routine: “Two is one and one is none” is the preparedness mantra. In many cases I had one or none when the ice storm hit when it came to energy. Now, I am in the space of one at least. Flexibility and options rule the day when the cards are down. Fortunately, we have largely been fortunate when it comes to power outages over the years, As the saying goes, Fortune Favors the Prepared.