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March 20, 2025 – Old Habits Die Harder

March 20, 2025 / / 0 Comments

I had to do it. When I first heard that the name of Die Hard 2 was Die Harder, I couldn’t believe it. That is the stupidest title I have ever heard. Now I guess that I will make fun of myself a little bit today.

When I think about who I thought I would be at say 15 and who I am now at 50, it seems light years away. The truth is, I found it difficult to really imagine what my life would be ‘when I grew up’. I know that I didn’t imagine that I would be publicly writing everyday and enjoying it. Likewise, I didn’t think that I would be the primary cook with frequent fancy embellishments.

As I have written about in the past, my life changed fairly drastically between 15 and 18. At 15, I had yet to get engaged in sports. I learned that I could push myself beyond my wildest capabilities and really impacted my psyche. Nevertheless, there are still some things that predate all of that.

One of my habits is reading. I used to see how many books I could read in a week. I was constantly at the library checking out books to read. It started off with series books like The Hardy Boys. Then, I moved on to specific authors like Dean Koontz, Steven King and Tom Clancy. There were a lot of others along the way as well.

Of course I still read but I don’t spend all day Saturday doing it anymore. In fact, I try to set a goal of a chapter a day. I probably only hit that twenty-five percent of the time. It would be a rare day that I read more than a chapter however. Probably as long as I can see, I will probably be reading. A book is typically the first thing that I pack when I am getting ready for a trip.

When I was a young teenager, I wanted my life to be hunting in the fall and camping and fishing in the summer. I did a lot of camping as a youth and even more as a Boy Scout. Honestly, what got me soured on camping was the amount of stuff we have to take to get the whole family out. Trust me, I want to be comfortable but I don’t want to take days of packing and putting away.

I’ve got one summer trip like that in me a year. But my recent effort into getting me geared up for backpacking has actually gotten me excited to go camping again. I used to feel guilty about the thought of going alone but my wife takes trips without me all the time. I would love it if she would want to go and I hope that she does but I am just going to start doing it myself.

The fishing has really suffered. I try to do it at least once a year but that is so sad. Can you imagine wanting to do it every weekend as a youth to trying to make time as an adult? Part of why I even do that is because I feel like I paid for the license I owe it to myself to not waste it. Maybe this camping renewal will get me more outings this year.

As to hunting, I thought that I would try for anything that I was allowed when I had the freedom to make my own decisions. I have never done that and probably won’t at this point. Just like fishing, I try to buy a tag and go out at least once. Man it is hard to schedule stuff like hunting in when there are family dinners and sports activities and trap and all that on the schedule.

Even though we spent a lot of time hunting, we didn’t recreationally shoot much. We didn’t have a good place to do it. So, we really didn’t. I guess that this is the one thing that I actually do more of as an adult than I did when I was younger. I pay for a range membership, I volunteer coach for the trap team so I have positioned myself to be around it as much as I can afford.

While I don’t get to the range enough either, I shoot air rifles almost daily. It is a small little thing that I can do that is inexpensive and accessible. In a way, I feel like it is my connection to my youth dreams.

End Your Programming Routine: My dad said that you have to make time if you want to do something. I don’t disagree with that, I am pretty guilty of thinking I want to do this or that and not sharing. Then all of a sudden, my calendar is filled with things that are not what I really want to do. Ultimately, I feel like my commitments as a father and a husband supersede my own desires. This likely stems from my youth when my dad prioritized his hunting and fishing. As I said, old habits die harder.

March 19, 2025 – Old Habits Die Hard

March 19, 2025 / / 0 Comments

There have been a project going on right in front of my house. Because Main Street is also a state highway, the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) has been involved. We have been aware of the project for about 18 months when they sent out a nice mailer explaining what was going to happen.

This town is sidewalk poor. I don’t believe that sidewalks were required until relatively recently. As a result walking through neighborhoods are a patchwork of sidewalk and no sidewalk which makes me mostly walk on the road out of convenience. What sidewalks we do have are the primary paths to school. My house is on that path.

For the twenty years living here, we have had a crossing guard morning and afternoon when school is in session. ODOT decided that they were going to add a flashing light signal. Probably a good idea considering we have had multiple pedestrians hit over the years.

Unbeknownst to me, the state decided to add the new crosswalk signal on the other corner of the intersection, not in front of my house. It is fine by me. I think that they decided to do that because they put the bus stop on my side yard. This keeps the congestion a little more segregated. I was surprised because there was no sidewalk on that side of the road all the way down. They had to create a whole new sidewalk on the other side of the street.

The project is almost done. They still have not powered up the signal yet, I am not sure why. But a couple of weeks ago, I watched a machine scrape off the existing striping (our crossing). Then they painted new striping at the new crosswalk. Despite that the new crossing looks pretty much ready to go, the school crossing guard is still is using the old, unmarked crossing.

Part of me wonders if there will continue to be a crossing guard once the signal is active. There is no crossing guard when Main Street crosses US 99 at the traffic light. I feel like it is just habit that the crossing guard is using the old crosswalk. This is one of three crossings that are almost complete.

I went to look up the definition of habit. The very first result was something called Habit Burger. I have never heard of them, but apparently it is a national chain. The Webster definition is “an acquired mode of behavior that has become nearly or completely involuntary”. We usually talk about habits in terms of good and bad ones but there could some that are neither.

I think that you know the difference between good and bad habits so I don’t need to get too involved in all of that. I remember that from the time I was in high school until about ten years ago, I used to eat cereal each weekday morning. When we decided to go gluten free for a little while, I stopped eating cereal. Now, my kids eat it incessantly but I might have a bowl once every couple of months. Hooray for me.

But the older I get, the harder habits are to break. As an example, my podcasting habit. I have been listening to some podcasts since 2008. I almost feel guilty if I am not prioritizing keeping up and I will even do things so that I can do something while listening. I am not an idiot nor do I think that is particularly harmful but it does drive my behaviors daily.

End Your Programming Routine: I didn’t know that the city had an eight foot easement on our lot. I lost four rose bushes while they tore up and installed the utility vault and transformer for the new lights (also on our land). I am going to be glad when this project is over, it has been a bit of an inconvenience with parking and other things while they have had the street blocked. Hopefully, it will make things safer, if people can break the habit of the old crosswalk.

March 18, 2025 – Resistance Is Futile

March 18, 2025 / / 0 Comments

I am working on a project that seems to be ever going. That is my network infrastructure. Probably for the past ten years, I have had plans to expand full network capability to the apartment. Various tenants have paid for their own service over the years but ultimately, I want to prepare it for an Air B&B or office or guest house. I don’t want to pay two bills for internet.

I have a box on the outside of the house that I planned to run conduit. I still might but we will get to that later. Back when I had a tenant that had a real phone, the phone company would only run service to my house. It was my responsibility to get the service over to the apartment. I quickly sprang into action and ran a Cat5e cable to the apartment on a cable that had had been run between the two buildings for that purpose.

After the tenant moved out and we started residing the house (2015), the phone line was no longer in use and the hardware was in the way. I cut the line telling myself that I would implement a better solution. I have done all of the easy work but the time never came where I wanted to rent a trencher and dig up the yard. I haven’t given up on the idea though.

The good news is that when I cut the line, I still had the whole cable length. I was going to use that cable to install the wireless bridge. Most of the work was fairly easy, terminating the ends and hanging the units. You never know what you are going to find in the wall though. I wrestled and wrestled with getting the fish tape through the wall to my new jack location.

Sunday evening, I was beat. I could not fish the wire through the wall. You might ask why I couldn’t just re-terminate the phone line? Good question, I cheated the first time and ran the wire on the outside of the house and drilled a hole in the siding. When I redid the house in 2020, I pulled all of that into the attic space because I resided that house as well.

My only option was to cut the wall to get access. I really did not want to do it because it adds a week to the project for additional repair work of the drywall. But, at some point there is a tipping point. After spending two hours trying to fish the wire and only getting halfway through, I had no idea how this was really built.

Once I resigned myself to the extra work, I was done in about two hours. By done I mean I cut the hole, fished the wire, terminated, tested and hole filled again. The work of patching the drywall is only fifteen minutes a day for a week. Initial mud and tape, second coat, texture, prime and paint. My real concern is that the work is disruptive having to move furniture everyday and clean up as I wasn’t there.

I will write one more time about the wireless bridge when I am actually done with the project. It definitely seems temperamental, but that is for a later date. There is still cleanup work to be done in terms of tidying up and optimization. I continue to work on that while I am doing the wall repairs.

End Your Programming Routine: The trick is knowing the right time to change strategies. I don’t regret attempting to fish the wall before cutting. Maybe I should have given up sooner, but then again maybe I was just another attempt from succeeding. All I can really say is that sunk cost fallacy can cause you to give up or double down on a failing path. Be flexible and be willing to change course if things are not going the right way.

March 17, 2025 – A Tale of Two Cities, Not Dickens

March 17, 2025 / / 0 Comments

Today is a tale about two cities that share a border. One went one way and the the other a different way. As with all of my work, many times looks are deceiving. I am relatively sure that we can take this little story and overlay it over other things that are going on to make a parable more relatable. Tune in today to find out what those cities did and what we can learn from it in other contexts.

March 14, 2025 – The Fourth Turning, Chapter 10

March 14, 2025 / / 0 Comments

Last week was all about the fourth turnings that have occurred in history. But as a reminder, this book was published in 1997 before the fourth turning has happened. So, this week is all about what the possible triggers that could occur. I have to say that while I believe we had had all of them since the book was published, I don’t see that they have actually caused the crisis.

One of the revelations in this chapter to me was, what if America did not come out better after the Crisis? There is no guarantee that just because that has been the case that it will continue in the same trajectory. What does that look like exactly? Gen-X will be in charge because they are middle age, The Millennials will be bear the brunt of the situation so that when they come to power in the High, they will create policies and mitigation strategies to move beyond the causes of the last saeculum.

As the GIs created government bureaucracy and the UN to address problems, the Millennials might create something like Artificial Intelligence. This would continue until the next crisis when something better is invented and supplants the status quo. Just because the High is not the best ever or the best in the world doesn’t mean that it still is not a High period. It simply means that it is the best era in the generation (80-100 years).

The reality of post World War II was that America was the best positioned and least damaged country coming out of the war. Sure countries like Spain and Switzerland were neutral and largely unscathed but the population and economy paled in comparison to the United States. The other potential big winner was the USSR but unfortunately, their own policies and beliefs left them short sided when it comes to world dominance.

There is also the concept that you have to play to win. Who do you know that does not gamble but yet hits the jackpot? Nobody because if you do not play you do not lose but you also do not win. Being neutral is a good strategy to not losing a war but it is also not a good strategy to participate in the spoils either. Winning very likely emboldens the winners to do things that they might not otherwise do as well.

The other thing that was interesting about this chapter were the suggested potential catalysts for crisis: financial crisis, terrorist attack, pandemic, Geopolitical war. Do any of these things sound familiar? I would say that since this book was published, every single one of them has occurred. We know about 9/11, the 2008 financial default and Afghanistan. But what about the Pandemic?

The Coronavirus Pandemic was certainly a watershed event. We talk about education and work environments in the Pre and Post pandemic constructs. I would argue that certainly was a crisis for many ‘non-essential’ workers spawning unprecedented policies like no eviction orders, massive economic stimulus and a simmering and seething division of the vaccinated versus the non-vaccinated. GI Generation tactics of getting stuff done at any costs were put into placed to force a subdued population into compliance. Propaganda in the style of censorship and a mass conformity campaign were instituted.

In my mind, 2024 was the first post pandemic election. The 2020 election was in the beginning of the event and the rejection of Trump’s initial handling as well as his propensity to bully and be vulgar. The 2022 mid-terms held a ton of uncertainty about it really being over. I see the 2024 election as a resounding rejection of the previous status quo. If the pandemic is the crisis, we are experiencing the regeneracy, we will see if that works for the economy, etc as we head to the climax and finally resolution.

End Your Programming Routine: I could easily persuaded that the 2020 pandemic is the crisis. I already believe that the saeculum has shifted due to the massively long reigns of the GI generation and the Baby Boomers. To me, the timing works even if Gen-X is not fully in charge, we are at least of age. By the time this is all over, I do believe that Trump and DOGE will fundamentally change how the government operates. The heroes are waiting in the wings to shift how we move into the next cycle.

March 13, 2025 – A New Year, New Gear Part 6

March 13, 2025 / / 0 Comments

What you see below is my new stove. Did I need a new stove? Technically no. I have an old 1980s era stove and my son also has a Jet-Boil (this stove is very similar). I thought about just borrowing my son’s stove and I also thought about taking my old stove as well.

First and foremost, the stove I already have. It works. My younger son uses it on camping trips. I have no qualms about the function. The main disadvantage is that it is heavy. I would guess that it weighs around five pounds. I like the fact that it uses liquid fuel as I am not a fan of disposable cylinders. I have an aluminum bottle that I use but again, that is more weight and bulk.

Using my son’s Jet-Boil was the backup plan. At one point, he said that he wanted to go. I am hoping that he is actually working by the time that I am hiking. I figure worse case scenario, I can trade out this new stove with the old one that my younger son is using. While I am enjoying this process, I will only be doing it so many times and I can put the old stove into backup duty rather than primary duty.

Why FireMaple and not Jet-Boil? The best reason is that it is cheaper by about 50%. I heard about this on the Explore Oregon podcast a few months ago. It was a show about getting into backpacking and this is the brand the expert recommended. I have to say, looking at the two side by side, they seem comparable quality and function.

In addition to the stove, This ‘kit’ comes with a 1L cup, a fuel can stabilizer and a pan adapter. Each of these pieces can be purchased individually because you can buy a stripped down option that is just the stove and pot. There are a few other things that you can add like a pressure pot (for high elevation cooking) and a French Press screen for coffee or tea. I am definitely not looking to add more weight to my trip but I am not opposed to using this stove on more trips.

The fuel cannisters come in three sizes 100g, 230g or 450g. The nice thing about the design is that both the 100g and 230g cannisters nest in the pot. Unfortunately, the 230g cannister is large enough that the lid will not lock on but it still fits. I don’t have a 450g can but that is what I am planning on taking with me. I need to do some duration testing but I am planning on only taking one cannister with me. The less the weight and bulk the better.

The stove does have a built-in igniter. I think that I will pack a secondary ignition source as well. I haven’t decided if it will be matches or a lighter. I like matches better but they limit your attempts. The old, strike anywhere matches I could light off of a zipper or rock but the the new matches are just not the same. If you wear out, lose or get your OEM striker, you matches are toast. So, it will probably be a lighter.

No doubt that this is a highly desired luxury. A water system failure can have deadly consequences. Dehydration and parasites are no joke. A stove is technically not required. In fact a friend suggested that I could eat cold freeze dried meal if I was looking to keep weight and cost down. No, not really but if I run out of fuel, it is not the end of the trip. From the other perspective, I suppose I could technically boil water so it is just another option in the toolbox.

End Your Programming Routine: Believe it or not, I am starting to get all of the necessities collected and moving onto the luxuries. The next purchase is going to be a water filter, definitely a necessity. I have plans of getting my tent at the beginning of next month. I am looking forward to that because then I can start doing some overnights. I will also switch over to my new pack on my weekend hikes carrying all the gear I will have with me.

March 12, 2025 – Finally, A Compromise

March 12, 2025 / / 0 Comments

I know, I know. Every time I talk about my gardening I talk about my failures. It makes me feel like I present myself as incompetent. While I am far the best gardener, much of my failures are the result of taking chances, big ones or neglect. The lack of content in recent years is the result of me eliminating my garden beds and waffling about new ones.

I have taken to getting free seeds from the library. I have messed around with using the landscaping irrigation, I have been doing mass seed starting rather than buying starts that I know will thrive. All of this leads to gathering information but not necessarily success. All the while I tell myself that it is OK because I do not have a place to plant anyway.

Since I completely ignored any type of planting last year, I have these planting boxes that we purchased for our anniversary party sitting empty. We actually loaned them to friends for their wedding last summer but truthfully, there is a lot better use for them than an occasional ice holder. I asked my wife what her plans were with these things and she said that she wanted to plant in them this year

Of course, her idea is ornamental. She wants to put flowers and things in them. But she also wants to add two more. One of which will be a salsa garden. Ah ha, this is where I am going to plant this year. My salsa garden just might include tobacco this year (he he).

As I have said in the past, our indecision about where we will finally plant our roots has prevented me from starting the front yard garden. We don’t want to do it if we are putting our house on the market. But again, that has been three years now. I am pretty sure that I am planting some fruit trees in the front regardless. They are a low investment cost and I am applying for a matching city grant.

I am giving the old apple tree one more year. If it doesn’t produce again, it is a goner. That would be three consecutive years of no production at all. I already know that it is in pretty bad shape but as long as it was making apples, it would earn it’s keep. I don’t know if my results are bad luck or the tree finally has outlived its life. This is the year I will make the decision.

As for my seeds, most of them have not done much. I have two out of five tomatoes sprouting. There are collards and wouldn’t you know tobacco. That means no peppers or thyme or basil or purple coneflower. I will definitely buy peppers and thyme as starts, I don’t know what is going on with everything but I am going to keep messing with things.

My idea is don’t do things too drastic (plant trees in the front yard) and concentrate my work by planting in planters. Using Permaculture design principles, zone 1 is something you go by everyday. zone 2 is frequent visiting, zone 3 is occasional and zone 4 is wild. My front yard is zone 3+ for me. The side yard where I plan to put the planters are zone 2+ if you say a couple times of week is frequent. The idea is that you want things that need intensive management in the lowest zone possible. This is why the pots by my back door get watered every day because they are in zone 1. It is also why my recent gardens have failed by neglect.

End Your Programming Routine: No promises I have the best of intentions but I think that if I start with a small footprint and a limited number of things in a frequently visited area, I increase my chances. I almost feel like all these years of substandard production makes any work a waste of time. This year I plan on keeping it simple to increase my odds and give me a boost to keep trying different things in the future.

March 11, 2025 – Here We Go Again

March 11, 2025 / / 0 Comments

I have put a lot of effort into my network. It is not because this is my desire, but more out of what others want out of it. I did a lot of work in the fall to try and include the apartment into the Wi-Fi mesh and to try and get all of the cameras and things connected so that the batteries were not constantly drained trying to connect. Both of those I feel like I have generally solved.

The one thing that I have generally ignored is in the attempt to connect all of these ‘things’ is the user factor in all of this. My wife complains about it, my son has complained about it, my exchange student has complained about it and even my tenant has said that there are times it does not work well. Time to do something about it.

Against my knowledge, my wife hired an internet consultant. I am not complaining, I was just surprised that there was anyone out there locally doing that kind of work. So, I listened to what he had to say. He was angling to do the work as well, but I just paid the consulting fee. I am pretty sure that I am more than capable of implementing everything since I made it this far.

One area that I am really risk adverse is gambling. To me, spending $200 on something the might work seems like gambling. When the consultant recommended adding three more units of our existing T-P Link Deco network, that certainly seemed easy. I had the same thought but I didn’t want to spend the money to see if it was an improvement. For this reason, I bought a $20 range extender when I was trying to solve my doorbell connection.

The range extender worked, I should have guessed that adding more wifi mesh capability was the solution. Let me just say that I am a wired guy. In my day to day work, all of the items in my office are wired. I never see any issues related to bandwidth that a network reset doesn’t resolve. I think more of that has to do with whatever the Internet Service Provider is doing rather than my network.

I suspect that my wife and my tenant are experiencing the same problem because they are both in the same geo proximity to the network. But regardless, I talked with the consultant about this as well. It was his recommendation to move from trying to get that unit within the mesh to adding a wireless bridge. A wireless bridge is a device that sends a signal point to point.

The plan is to swap out my outside mesh device with this wireless bridge. Part of the reason is that I already have Power over Ethernet run to it. But, now I will have a spare unit to put somewhere else. That location is TBD at the moment. I haven’t had it installed long enough to enjoy Wi-Fi in the yard yet anyway.

I will have to do some antenna work on the apartment. Another recommendation is to retire my ten year old, gateway router. This means I will have to do some cable rework. What all this means is that this is a process. But it has been one that I have been wanting to do every since I started this mesh experiment.

I am finally going to retire old passwords and general network access in favor of a more secure and segregated network. Guests will get access to the guest network. IOT devices will be on the IOT network and neither will have access to my main network. Careless security or old hardware vulnerability will not have a tunnel into the more sensitive parts of my home network.

End Your Programming Routine: This is all recent developments as I just started last weekend. This means that not all of the work is complete and the user feedback is incomplete. It is funny how something like internet grows from a novelty to a necessity. I am moving units at a time so as not to take everything down for an extended period of time. Despite the fact that I really didn’t want to pay $175 for a consultant, I would not have known about the wireless bridge and I am happy to have a reassuring opinion on what I have already done.

March 10, 2025 – Can You Be Sick and Productive?

March 10, 2025 / / 0 Comments

I am sure that everyone has their own personal answer to this. For me, it throws a wrench into things when I want to do something else and I am forced to take some downtime. Of course, I always want to make the best out of an imperfect situation which leads me thinking about what I can do with this time. I talk about those things today.

March 7, 2025 – The Fourth Turning, Chapter 9

March 7, 2025 / / 0 Comments

With last week covering the Unravelling and the book being written in 1997, we are moving into speculation territory for the Crisis. Since the book was written, the author Howe has chimed in on some of his observations including the foreword of this book. His speculation is that the crisis was the 2008 financial crisis. That would make the Gray Champion someone like Dr. Ron Paul.

I could probably buy that part of the theory but I don’t know anyone that was directly effected by that event. Because of that, I really do have a hard time completely adopting this event as the actual catalyst. Quite frankly, I feel like 9/11 was more of a galvanizing event that set off a lot of things in the name of fighting terrorism. With that, I am wondering who the Gray Champion is. You are also missing the Nomad generation in charge on both events.

In both 9/11 and the 2008 crisis, you really do not have the Hero generation at the age of majority. Just looking at the year 2008, the Millennials span the age ranges of 12-28. The full generation is hardly in their full summer. While a twelve year old might be effected by the mortgage crisis they were hardly in position to do anything about it. My speculation is that with the delaying of marriage and families have pushed the generational turnings out later.

We will stick to the facts here. For a crisis saeculum, you have the following steps catalyst, regeneracy, climax, resolution. With the sort of sizzle/dud, I don’t know that anyone would agree with the steps being met for 9/11. Lest we talk about the financial problems of 2008. Leaving the crisis is supposed t put us at a generational high. I sure don’t see that either.

Next week, I will write about some of the potential triggers for the crisis, so I will stick to what I have been working with here. It seems like this current cycle is something extraordinary. Because the GI generation left World War II on a rocket ship, the economy was dominant from 1946 to the late 1970’s. The Awakening economy was much better than it was supposed to be.

Minus the late seventies to mid-1980s stagflation, the economy took off again in the 1990s just as the Baby Boomers were coming into mid-life and assuming the power structure. While Strauss and Howe labelled the Unravelling (84-??) the ‘Culture Wars’, that had nothing to do with how the economy was behaving. As a result, there wasn’t much appetite to actually unravel.

Given the extraordinary size and prosperity of both the Hero and Prophet generations, I am not convinced that this is an ordinary cycle. It still seems like we are still in the Culture Wars with the Profits in charge. Just as there was an anomaly during the Civil War saeculum where an entire generation did not exist we may see either an extended cycle. I don’t see us skipping the crisis however because that is necessary for the high.

For the purpose of clarity, the following crisis have occurred during the American historical period. Those would be War of the Roses, Armada Crisis, Glorious Revolution, American Revolution, Civil War and World War II. Please look these up if you are curious for more information. The title of this chapter is actually the Fourth Turning in History making it difficult to really analyze much when it comes to facts.

End Your Programming Routine: Based on what I have outlined above, I am not convinced that we have actually ended the Unravelling. Clearly, that would make that phase over 40 years long. The other alternative would be that the Awakening shift was too short which also might be possible. From my experience, I don’t think the mood shifted until 1992 as the Reagan/Bush years were largely the same. It was the Clinton/Gore years of Christian evangelism, Global Warming, and media labelling.