Come Visit Us!

 

Our Guest Room

Come visit my wife and I this year!

That's what I want to say today. I haven't blogged in months for a variety of reasons. The world can seem big and heavy and hard at times. Have you seen the news from Minneapolis? The stock market hits record highs, and yet our grocery bill stresses our budget. I'm reading a book on how to beat cynicism with hope, and one of the things it suggests is work on building relationships with people. 

Last summer, I got stressed one day and I stopped reading all of my text messages. Yes, I'm more or less not engaging with people that I care about and that care about me. It's weird. And unfortunately even as of this writing I have nearly 100 unread text messages. That used to be the most reliable way to get in touch with me, but lately, unless you are on a very short list (some days just my wife), it might not work. 

My wife and I have slowly been working on making our house into our custom home. We have two green houses in the back yard, we put in a patio, we put the book shelves into the guest room, she has started zero scaping our front yard for pollinators and to save water. One of the clear things that emerges as we have put work into our house is how infrequently we have guests stay over and spend the night. All of our local friends just drive home of course, but both of us have friends and family across the country, and it would be our pleasure to host some guests and save people some money. 

I know I'm not alone. I've had friends for years that don't respond to many text messages, and when I hit that point last summer that I stopped even opening them all, I got it, there is a lot going on in the world, and it takes some energy to open the message and read it. It feels like there is an obligation, that I might let the person down, so if I just avoid it, I don't have to deal with that. Of course, that's not true, I need connection in my life. I need to go rock climbing after work with my friends, even if that stresses the budget too.

Last fall my wife and I did an East Coast road trip, from Maine to Georgia and every state in between, and we saw a total of 22 different friends or family members on the trip. It was excellent on the days that we spent in other's guest rooms! Colorado is a great place to visit, and we're only 20 minutes from Boulder. So let us know if you come out, we can save you some money and spend a few evenings chatting. Despite my lack of action building relationships over the past year, I do want to continue being friends with my friends.

I have started to cultivate Bonsai trees!

 

My first Bonsai: A Juniperus Horizontalis

For years I've wanted to get a bonsai tree, like over a decade. About a month ago I was shopping for plants to put on my balcony and I was telling my fiancé about my desire to have one, and she found this tree for me that was $12.95, and bought it for me!

Where does this hobby go, I do not know. Trees don't grow very fast. I've had it over a month and while it is definitely alive, it definitely hasn't gotten much taller. I'm going to aim to make it straight and tall even though this style of juniper grows horizontally. Next up I'd like to transplant an alpine tree like a blue spruce. Some of them are so cool looking!

A blue spruce (I think) on a recent backpacking trip. 

Failure is still underrated.

Failure is underrated. We learn a lot from failure. In many cases a lot of things went right, but it only took one thing to go wrong which then puts the whole mission in the category of failure. Of course, there are many days too when something has clearly gone wrong, but the end goal is still accomplished and so to the outside it looks like a complete success.

Mountaineering is a great teacher in this respect. People will often view success and failure as making the summit or not making the summit. But in reality it's far more nuanced, there is living and not living of course, which is far more important than any rocky summit. There are injuries, there are friendships, there are new personal altitude records, there are good weather days low on the mountain, there are good meals, there are card games, there are movies and reading books, there is sleeping in on rest days. Climbing mountains is about a lot more than just making the summit. 

So it is the same in business. Failing at a goal can teach a company a lot about what went right, even when something went wrong. In fact, sometimes succeeding can teach an organization the wrong lessons, such as, of the 100 steps in the process, actually only 17 contributed to their success. Since the thing had never been tested with less than 100 process steps, hours will be debated about taking away one or two steps, when 83 of them are not needed. Or perhaps everyone worked 60-80 hour weeks to make it a success, so that becomes normal at the company for the next 15 years.

I recently read the book Scrum by Jeff Sutherland, and one of the ideas is go to market when you have some feature that works, but it's only 20% of the complete product. That might be easier done in software than hardware, but the idea of making a product with the minimum features and getting to market, so that you can get actual customer feedback makes a lot of sense. What engineers like and think are important are not always the things that customers think are important. 

So when a company has a "failure" it's a huge learning opportunity. Most failures expose one or several weaknesses, and even if it is systemic, it's never the whole process or the whole system that was wrong. It's okay to fail. In fact, testing to failure is often a great way to test systems and components so that then you know, everything was okay, right up until the fraction of a second where it failed. Without breaking things it can be really hard to definitively say how long a product will last. 

So the next time you see failure, before excoriating the organization or the people for their incompetence, consider all the things that went right, and hope we can all learn from the failure so that it doesn't get repeated. 

It will be okay.

Well, if the last few years haven't been crazy enough, now we've got inflation. Being in California, I see any gas under $5.50 a gallon and think it's cheap. There is talk that we are in a recession. I know people with new and big health problems, including myself. It's easy to be pessimistic. And I think that's part of the fun to being optimistic, how challenging it can be sometimes. 

That being said, 2010 was a big year in my life. It was really hard financially, emotionally, and mentally. Since then I've come a long way and have a much broader view than I did back then. My broader view gives me more reasons to be optimistic. 

For starters, I know a couple people that retired this year. That's a good thing because for very working age people like myself that means that there are jobs out there that people have given away. Demographics in the United States, and many European and Asian countries are skewing older, meaning less working age people. Simple supply and demand suggests that wages will continue to go up for workers who are willing to work. I don't think people realize how dramatic this is. It's not so bad now, but in 10 or 15 years when baby boomers are moving into assisted living in record numbers there is going to be a huge shortage of health care workers to care for them. Health care is probably going to get more expensive, and unequal. Of course again there are solutions, for starters immigration of health care professionals is a great first step. And raising wages for the lower paying health care jobs would be good too. That's all a long way of saying, predictions from 100 years ago of a 15 hour work week will not happen, and on the contrary, there will be demand for many 40 hour a week people. Which is good news for people looking for jobs.

Another reason people might be stressed, inflation, is another area that is not as bad as many perceive. Interest rates are going up, and that means housing sales will go down, and then shortly car sales will go down, and a number of retailers are already seeing rising inventories, meaning their product isn't moving as fast as expected, and there will be sales. In short, this is the beginning of demand slowing, and supply increasing. 

Finally, it's been raining in Colorado, that's a dry state where extra rain is a good thing. 

Maybe not what people were expecting me to write, but I'm feeling good about the economy despite the two negative quarters we just had. Restaurants are still having help wanted signs in the windows, and back in 2010 that did not happen. While housing in California and Colorado is still wildly expensive and unaffordable for many people, there are jobs, and with jobs come income and with income bills are paid. 

I'm taking a job in the San Francisco Bay Area of California!

I took a job out in California and I'll be out there in just a few days! I'll write more about it in the future, and of course be as ambiguous and discrete as I can. A lot went into this decision, and I'm excited for this opportunity. I'm especially excited to explore California! While I have spent about three weeks there in my life, there is a lot I have not done. I hear the food is good too. :)

No Longer a One Issue Abortion Voter

Back in time, over a decade ago abortion was my big issue. I was a one issue voter, meaning I cared about that issue more than everything else and I voted for candidates based on their stance on abortion alone, either aligning with mine or not. As a Christian you can probably guess that I wasn't fond of it. I'm writing about this again today because of the leak that said the Supreme Court might over turn Roe v. Wade. Maybe Citizens United will be overturned?

In 2010 when I was unemployed I started to get into economics. Economics are not politics, but economic policy is driven by politicians and laws. When I was unemployed in 2010 I saw how little of a safety net the United States really has. For example, since I was graduating into unemployment, I did not receive any unemployment income, because I had not really worked in the past. Fortunately I stayed on my parents health insurance. And fortunately between a little bit of savings, money from my family, a job from my family, living with family, and then a summer camp job I made it through the year, but I maxed out three credit cards and deferred my student loans for most of a year. Point being, tax payers put a ton of money into my education, and then I put in a whole lot more, but without my family I don't know what would have happened to me by the fall of 2010. I probably would have ended up making snow at a ski resort with one of my good friends for a little more than minimum wage and living in the mountains, which would have probably been fun for a season, but there too, that connection was a friend, an advantage I have over others. In other words, there was a significant economic inefficiency.

We focus on abortion because it's black and white, good and evil. But I've come to realize that if we focus on the letter of the law like the Pharisees in the Bible, we miss the point of loving our neighbor. My voting philosophy for most of the last decade has been based on Jesus's second commandment from Matthew 22:39 "And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'" Every law I interpret through that lens, what would loving my neighbor more look like?

In the case of abortion it's about loving those little babies, which I think the vast majority of people can agree we want to. How can we do that better? It's easy to focus on the law of abortion itself, but holistically it's often the woman who will be making the decision, so how do we show her love?

First, let's start with child marriage, why is this still legal in the United States?! We should outlaw marriage under age 18 at the national level in the United States. Period. End of statement. For more information see this group.

Second, let's talk about the cost of just having a child. A lot of people don't like the idea of universal healthcare, they like adding to the profits of insurance companies and having the right to not have health insurance. However, if we as a country really cared about those little babies, we would fully fund maternity costs. It costs thousands of dollars simply have to have a kid according to WebMD. In we can't agree on universal healthcare, can we at least agree these direct costs of having a child should be paid for by us tax payers as a country? After all, that is a future little tax payer. 

Third, let's talk about paid maternity, paternity and family leave. Once again we have no laws to pay new parents in those first weeks and months as they figure out how to raise a little baby. Retirees live on social security for years, but at the start of every person's life we can't give their parents 12 weeks to get that new human off on the right foot? There are a lot of benefits to paying new parents for just a couple months. This one seems so simple, and in light of the current economy with jobs everywhere but no one to fill them, if the government won't implement paid family leave I expect many employers to implement it to keep employees, even low wage employees.

Fourth, let's talk about daycare and preschool. I've had quite a few friends go through this, and day care is not cheap. Assuming a two parent household, both working before they have kids, it probably makes sense for each one to keep working after the first child. In Denver full time daycare costs about $1575 per month. With two kids in daycare, now you're talking over $3,000 per month! Yes it probably makes sense for a parent to stay home. After tax, with two kids in day care you're talking about close to $40,000 in expenses. Pretax you're in the neighborhood of $60,000 for a parent's income, so if you make less than that and have two young kids, yeah you might as well not work. In Japan it's even worse. Of the four things on this list so far I realize this is the most expensive by far and I can imagine that a woman making $40,000 a year who is single and finds out she is pregnant might not be ready to have that baby because if her partner isn't going to provide, and the government isn't going to provide for that baby, who is?

Fifth, and this isn't economics, but social stigma. Because of the four above reasons, or at least a subset of them, prospective mothers and parents aren't feeling loved systemically. Mental health is an issue and I can imagine that both before women become pregnant and then after having an abortion there are significant mental traumas to work through. If we aren't addressing mental health for mothers and for children we aren't setting families up for success. In the US the CDC says that about 40% of births are to unmarried mothers. Additionally, a whopping 86% of abortions are to unmarried single and cohabitating mothers. Which I think is what you would expect, that's it's harder to have a kid when you don't have a ring (commitment) on that finger from a partner to help share the financial load let alone the daily chores. Quick tangent, when I was growing up I didn't know anyone that had a nanny. As I've gotten older I've met a few friends that had nannies growing up. Now, I have several peers who have nannies and my partner and I have made it to a financial place where we could probably afford a nanny if we ever get to that stage, which is bonkers to me. And it speaks to the whole ridiculousness of childbearing and rearing in this country. There are a lot of unloved mothers in this country, and yet because my partner and I have a certain skill set that financially pays well we can access this luxury. To phrase that another way, we're not better than anyone else, but we can have a service that is better than the alternatives, which feels like a failure of society to care for all little babies. 

To wrap up, yes I'm still against abortion, but does outlawing it show those babies and those mothers that we love them? No. Without addressing the five points above we as a society aren't actually serious about loving those babies and those mothers. In other words, right now for me it seems the most loving course of action is to say, 'do whatever you want'. Because for us to really say, 'do this because we believe it is best', requires us to back that up with economic muscle to cover the costs that new parents have. An analogy, we can drive 80 miles per hour on many highways because of the NHTSA requiring car makers to have seat belts, airbags, and crumple zones. We can drive on public roads without paying tolls because we pay taxes to fund those roads, earn drivers licenses to prove we are safe, and pay car insurance in case we damage another vehicle or injure a person. It's not just the seatbelt law that makes our value of easy transportation possible, it's because in that area we have a wide range of laws designed to love each other to continually make transportation safer for everyone. Similarly, I think we need a range of laws to show love to new humans and new parents.

I have Arthritis

I have arthritis in my left ankle, in the talus bone, and the tibia. It's been giving me pain for awhile, I had an MRI way back in April 2021 before I went to Denali, and due to it seeming to be recovered didn't have it reviewed with me until November 2021. I recently had a second opinion on it, and yeah, there is cartilage damage and bone bruising there.

Is this my retirement from competitive running? Is this my retirement from all running? I have not run in over three months and at times I have yearned for that 30-90 minutes of relaxation and meditation in my daily routine. It's so easy to take running for granted when you are 25 and can run for hours. I've run around 40,000 miles and they have been beautiful miles. I never had this kind of pain before I broke my ankle March 9th, 2019. 

It's really a struggle. I can't get back what I had, the past doesn't work that way. Some day I'd love to chase little kids around a yard, and hike more 13ers. I will definitely sacrifice the short term opportunity (another Team USA opportunity) in order to have a long term healthy active future. 

I'm pursuing a new option, an option to use concentrated bone marrow from my hip to regenerate the cartilage, bone, and ligaments in my ankle. Who knows if it will work. This isn't my retirement from running article. 

When I see a Rainbow

The other day, actually a few weeks ago now, I bicycled up Flagstaff Mountain on the edge of Boulder. At the top, waiting for my friend, I was sipping and gurgling water and coughing, making everyone else nervous in this pandemic I suppose. As I would take a sip of water and spit it out, a small rainbow would appear in the spray at 6:45 PM as the sun set through some light clouds. Long enough I could definitely see it, but not long enough to be a normal rainbow, let alone a double or triple rainbow.

In Genesis God says that a rainbow will be the sign that he will never again destroy the world like he did in the flood. (Yes, I realize for non Christians, talking about the flood is blasphemy because if the flood really happened, than a lot of other stuff in the Bible most likely happened too.) Personally I take it one step further when I see a rainbow, even, or maybe especially, when it's in the spit that comes from my coughing mouth in a pandemic as I go through a breakup. I see it as a sign that God loves me.

The last time I spent time with my most recent ex we saw a double rainbow. We were no longer dating at the time, it was the first time since we broke up that we physically spent any time together. For me it was a test to see if I could tolerate being around her, and fortunately I could. We still laughed. As I drove back down from the mountains after rock climbing in a snow storm (not exaggerating) without working windshield wipers in the rain (again not exaggerating) we saw a double rainbow, and I realized it would be okay. God loves me. I don't have much of a clue what that means or what he has in store for me, and after a pulmonary embolism and torn ankle ligaments to deal with the last 27 months, I'm very ready for a little pleasant resolution. But the point remains, God, the big man up there calling the shots when he wants to (and not calling the shots sometimes), is looking out for me. He's not going to spare me pain, just read about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, but the events in my life are ultimately all for His good plan, whatever that is.

Monday I Cried

I learned last weekend that a friend of mine for over eight years has never cried in front of his fiancé, or me. Might have to dive into that another time. I cried Monday on the drive to work listening to NPR about the protests the night before. Just a few tears. The average cry session is eight minutes and my commute during the pandemic is just over 20 minutes, but this session was only three minutes or so.

I only have a few African American friends. I actually have more friends that are born and raised Africans than African American. In other words, most of my friends are white, Hispanic, or Asian, so I have trouble relating to the experience of people of color in the USA. Yet I've heard the stories of different encounters some of them have had that simply blow my mind, because I don't have those kind of encounters. For example, I haven't been pulled over by the police while driving at all since I went through a yellow light back in 2011.

I haven't watched the 9:31 minute long video of George Floyd being suffocated... because we've seen this before, Philando Castile and Terence Crutcher were the two videos I watched in 2016 that changed me. I just cannot imagine myself ever being in those two situations and getting killed. One challenge is, I know police officers, they don't set out to get into those situations, at all. We live in a world where everything is video taped now, people are going to be held accountable for things that they would not have been even 10 years ago let alone 25. I kind of come at this from a quality control and Six Sigma perspective (hope that's not cold...) meaning as a society we keep trying to get better. However, as the overall quality improves, getting down into the nitty gritty corner cases actually poses harder deeper questions. It's like commercial airline safety, two pilots, basically all instrument flight rules, maintenance is meticulous, certification of the aircraft type is meticulous (737-Max excepted...), and so when there are incidents like the 737-Max crashes or George Floyd's death, it can be hard to overcome, because we've already tried the easy options.

Today I briefly attended the Boulder Black Lives Matter protest. It was mostly on accident, and the crowd was so big I didn't stay long because we are still in a pandemic and I don't want to get sick. I don't know what change looks like, because I already have equality with basically everyone else I want equality with, but obviously many people don't have the opportunities I have had. So I cried.

Point being, Jesus love you. He love me and everyone else too regardless of the sinful things we can change about ourselves but repeatedly fail to change or the things we can't change about ourselves.

Patience and the Blah

We're in a pandemic. We're also in minimum a recession, perhaps a depression. On top of all that I'm processing a breakup, a pay-cut and turning 34. Thankfully I started therapy back in February.

View from my balcony this morning.

I took vacation this past week, and I spent some of the time basically in a state of "blah" like my mind wasn't really actively working that hard. I just completed my portion of a big project at work that we've spent months working on, and I needed a break. But a break can be uncomfortable.

Meaning, when I go to sleep at night I am alone, and when I wake up I am alone. I spent four days this week in the mountains, attempted four mountains and summitted three, all alone. When I think about work, I know I'm at a startup, and I'm super happy we've made it as far as we have. The progress we have made in the last year is tremendous! Yet when we have a pay-cut because there is uncertainty about having enough money to support operations, I'm worried about the next hard conversation, will there be layoffs or even worse? Most likely not, we have such great talent that getting aquihired seems to me the worst case scenario. Of course, that doesn't include any effects from the pandemic. And on the dating side we've now been broken up longer than we actually dated. The whole relationship kind of blindsided me. Yes it was mostly what I was looking for but now that it ended, I again ask God, "What are you trying to teach me?! What is your plan for my life?! I'm 34!"

Point being, this is a time, in my life, and many other's I suppose, where I'm being required to have patience, more that I care to have. With all of the restrictions, I can't just go out to a bar with a friend and hang out and talk and empathize, so I'm spending time in a blah state of mind, not processing things as quickly as I used to pre-pandemic. But it's 57F and sunny with no wind right now and I'm very thankful to live in this expensive apartment with a great view and plenty of space as I spend so much time home alone. It will be very interesting to see how the world is in a few years, will we all be more patient and caring towards each other, or fearful and mistrusting? I suppose some will go one way and others the other way. Years ago my dad talking about people that lived through the Great Depression tended to fall into two groups financially speaking, those with lots of fear for the future who pinched pennies, and those that lived for today. I think we'll see the same, financial independence will probably become more popular, and so will partying like it's the last party you will ever get to go to. I don't know. But those that survive the pandemic will get to find out.

How Bad Will the Pandemic get in the USA?

Apparently you can publish papers based on statistical models of how bad you think a pandemic is going to be. That's just plain stupid. So I'm going to do a little of my own math and predictions for the Coronavirus Pandemic of 2020.

100,000 USA deaths by May 19th. 

I arrived at that on May 1st by estimating about 1900 Covid-19 deaths a day until we reach 100,000, and that's 19 more days from the 1st. I estimated 1900 deaths a day based on recent deaths of 2200-2400, and a general down trend in cases and deaths over the last two weeks, but a very minor one. I think deaths could be under 1000 per day by May 19th, but as long as we're seeing 25,000+ new cases per day, we're going to keep seeing a lot of deaths.

Second point, the University of Washington IHME predictions are terrible! Why? Because they've been screwing up Colorado Covid-19 deaths since March. We haven't had any zero death days since mid-March, but there are four days with zeros. This is simple data entry to feed the models. How are they getting this wrong? In short, their models are so broken they have basically no validity.

https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america/colorado

Example 2 for IHME: We're going to have over 120,000 Covid-19 deaths in the United States, but the upper bound of the model is 115,000 or so, with a median prediction that we are going to pass this week.

Final question, how many deaths will we see in the United States and world wide before this is over? I'm not sure, I think it will be on the scale of World War 2, but I'll leave that for another post.

Individually, how do we return to physical socializing?

I'm not talking states, nations, counties or cities and the laws and restrictions they are imposing to stop the spread of the coronavirus, I'm talking about each one of us as individual humans. There are weekend days where I eat out for all three meals. It's not common, but it happens. I think the most takeout meals I've had in a week recently is three times. Other previously normal things, going into an office with 40 people. Going to church with 100 people. Going to a ski resort with who knows how many people, 1000? Sometimes I go to densely packed concerts or bars. Or at least I used to.

So what do we do individually to open up and return to socializing?

This weekend, I had dinner with two friends, who are both younger and in good health. It's the first time in over a month any of us has had dinner with anyone. We explicitly said we weren't sick, or hadn't been sick, as far as we knew. It wasn't an implicit agreement that there was a risk to seeing each other, we said it out loud. So for me, I think that's how I'm personally going to open up. Part of opening up will be going back into work, like sheep to the slaughter. But the part where it's my choice, those will be hikes and climbs and dinner with friends. No, I doubt I will go to restaurants when they open. I doubt I will be the first to go sing at church. I'm afraid to be too close to people or around large groups of any size.

In addition to my little social outings, I plan to space them out. In other words, while I could possibly hang out with four different little groups of one or two people over a weekend, I'm not going to do that. I may be contagious as I write this. That's the challenge, we just don't know, and you can't really get a test until you are sick and it's too late you've already spread it. So basically it's like hang out with A1, then hang out with J and K, and then wait a week before any more socializing. It's going to be that way for awhile. Church in particular scares me. Why? Everyone is over 50! They're just more likely to get really sick and die. When I see that 31% of people over 80 in Colorado who test positive die, that's a huge number!

We have to strike a balance. The world is not risk free. I don't think we can ask everyone to stay home except for going to the grocery store once a week, for six months without causing a host of other mental health problems, or even delayed care for other physical health issues that scares people away from going to the doctor. And, frankly, with 3 million cases of Covid-19 worldwide, we're not going to stamp it out this year. It will continue circulating, somewhere in the world until we reach herd immunity either through lots of sickness and death or a vaccine or most likely both. We need to be safe and keep our distance, but also let our loved ones know we love them. Finally, we need to be responsible and not put anyone at undue risk, and when we inevitably do get sick, be as clear as possible about others that might be sick too.

We are Living at the Perfect Time

When I was younger, I often wondered why I was alive now? I mean, it feels like I have a diverse set of skills, and I could have thrived at many periods earlier in history. The whole lifetime scientific progress of Ben Franklin or Leonardo Di Vinci can be understood by most graduate students these days. Of course, to a physics graduate student the majority of what Einstein did is understandable too, and we still haven't proven or disproven a fair portion of his work. However, it's always hardest to be first, or to push the limit in some way.

In the book "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" Earth is destroyed to make way for a super highway on the day that someone woke up with the answer to the question "what is the meaning of life?". Up until that point Earth was basically just an experimental computer to answer that question. A human, living experiment. In a similar way, each one of us is pushing the collective world forward, in some tiny little way. We all have a purpose, even though it doesn't feel like it all the time.

In other words, for my peers, I know we suffered at the start of our careers in the Great Recession, and now as many of us were just getting established we're having the coronavirus pandemic of 2020 to deal with. Not to mention the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that many fought in. Then assuming we survive all of this, we still have climate change, automation, and inequality to deal with. Any one of those three could lead to wars and famines if we aren't a little more generous and equitable with the wealth of the world.

The point is, I believe we are all here at this point in time because it's when we were meant to be. You weren't born in 2090 or 1890, you were born in 1990. That doesn't mean it's easy. That doesn't even mean you will survive the pandemic. But to me, it's like a fun puzzle, like a very interesting game, where you want to keep playing to see what happens. Along those lines, people are freaking out over the cover-19 coronavirus and the resulting recession we have entered, justifiably so, both are pretty serious, but I'm hoping we're going to have some roaring 20s, so please try and be patient as we get through this.

I Went to Work Today

In my role at my company I'm kind of the liaison between design and manufacturing. We're nearing a big milestone and it was requested I go into the office while we sort out this product build. For the record I offered to go in. So for approximately a week I'll be in the office. I wore a buff over my face most of the day except to eat or drink. Wow, the world has changed.

We have free coffee at work, so I made the first pot this morning, and touched two buttons and three  handles to make it. In the last three weeks I touched approximately five communal handles total in like 22 days. Two at Starbucks, one at the grocery store, and two at FedEx. Going to the bathroom, turning on the sink, going outside to take a walk, handles here, handles there, handles everywhere. Filling up my water bottle, there's one button, I used my elbow.

I know so many people over 60, and people over 60 with health conditions, that I am terrified that I could essentially kill someone I love by inadvertently spreading the virus to them. I go for a run most days, and when I get back and the adrenaline wears off while I'm walking around in the minutes after I often cough a little. Coughing has become taboo. Wearing masks has become very acceptable. We've changed in a month.

The deadline for our little product build is the end of this week, and to be honest, I'm planning to work this week in the office, and then work from home another two or three weeks. I could use a vacation, but it's like, where would I go? I don't want to staycation, and I don't think I really can go anywhere. Assuming we settle down a little this year I'd like to go up to Canada and climb, and go to Hawaii, maybe get my SCUBA license. I won't lie, I feel like one of the old and fragile people amongst my coworkers in this pandemic. Again, I'm sure I would most likely come through fine, but it's those up to two weeks of being contagious and not knowing it where I am afraid to break bread with my older friends.

I've read more than one article that suggests for the next year or two, until we get a vaccine, we are going to self quarantine and isolate, return to a little bit of normal, then self quarantine and isolate again when cases get higher and hospitals get full. A recurring bounce between semi-normal and pandemic life and back and forth, that might last two years. So bizarre. I'm hopeful. I mean, even in the most pessimistic projections I doubt that 50 million world wide will die like did in the 1918 flu pandemic. We have medicine and technology that didn't exist back then. Still, my heart aches for those that die. If that caution means I work from home for two years and don't eat with my parents for two years, well, this is a sacrifice that must be made for the greater good, meaning saving the lives of those susceptible to the covid-19 coronavirus.

I'll Buy a new iPhone this Year

I'm a saver. As I continue to work in a lucrative engineering career I am in a far far different financial position than I was in 2010. In 2010, with deferred student loans, I maxed out three credit cards. It was the worst year of my life. I don't like to talk about it. I don't say I'm in a good financial position now to brag, I actually say it as a burden, as an obligation to help restart the economy when the pandemic subsides. The fortunate need to pay it forward. People like myself will most likely be able to jump start the economy better than those who have been laid off from median and lower wage jobs. And frankly, I feel it's our duty to do that, to help our neighbors recover and get back to work.

That being said, I write these things in the moment, based on where I am today. It is entirely possible that I am laid off in the near future and quickly begin looking for a job in a terrible job market.

In normal times, talking about financial independence (and retiring early) is this fun thing where we all have jobs, salaries are increasing, and there is a little thrill in saving money and seeing your 401(k) and saving account increase a little every month. However, in a recession it's entitled. Oh I know, I applied for over 400 jobs in 2010 and was pretty angry at anyone with money and a job at the time. I have not forgotten that experience or those feelings.

The point is, we with jobs and wealth can hole up, stop spending, and not come out of our caves until the vaccine arrives likely sometime in 2021, or we can get out there. I bought two 3D printed facemarks at Shapeways to donate to medical workers today. It keeps Shapeways in business, who I use from time to time, and gets some medical equipment to hospitals in New York City that need them.

I realize that my going out for take out food right now isn't going to keep a restaurant in business by itself. I realize that buying some piece of outdoor gear 40% off isn't going to keep that company in business either. But I also realize than an economy is the flow of money. If the money stops flowing between people, the economy stops. During the Great Depression the stock market dropped 86% from it's high to it's low. If we allow the economy to drop 86%, we're so screwed. (Of course the stock market does not equal the economy, but they are related.)

Point being, I basically unintentionally shut down the spending the last three weeks living and working from home, and seeing now that I am not sick, my company is stable, and even somewhat productive, it's time for me to not only think about my financial defensive strategy to worry about myself, but offense too, how I can help out those that are clearly in need.

Reason the World will Pull Through The Coronavirus Pandemic

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/31/health/coronavirus-asymptomatic-transmission.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage

That's a great little article, the best I've read yet about why this is spreading so rapidly, and why every single day that we all stay home reduces the spread of this coronavirus pandemic, by allowing those infected to get sick and those asymptomatic to pass through their contagiousness into being not contagious or less contagious.

Secondly, the Colorado Department of Public Health has a great website they update every afternoon with data on the Covid-19 cases. You should check it out here: https://covid19.colorado.gov/case-data This graph is the most hopeful to me, as a younger person.

Image from: https://covid19.colorado.gov/case-data on March 31st, 2020

No one under 40 has died in Colorado yet. Plus, as you go down the age spectrum younger people are being hospitalized at much lower rates. Granted, if you are 70+ it's about as terrifying as playing Russian Roulette. And again, since I know so many older people I am sure that I will know someone that passes away from this virus and I definitely don't want it to be because I passed it on.

Tears for my Friends

I write this as tears stream down my face. I went on Facebook for the first time in March (it's the 28th) and asked how my friends were affected by this pandemic. People are laid off, people have babies due, small businesses are shut down. I cried. I'm so fortunate. I've been working from home the last two weeks, and we're basically productive. We're an essential business due to some government contracts, and our IT department (two guys) saw this coming weeks ago and prepared us to work from home. It's been rather smooth for a transition. Of course I want to get back in the office, but we're managing.

For those that don't really know me, I've broken or fractured seven bones. I've had a pulmonary embolism. I'm currently in mental heath therapy, for the second time in my life. I've almost died on mountains three times. I'm thankful to be alive, every day. Today I ran 11 miles for the first time in over a year, since I broke my ankle, and my ankle is very sore, but bearable. Plus, I've had a pulse oxygen level of 59% and been coherent and felt fine (at 23,400 feet on Mt. Everest). I'm going to survive this pandemic because I'm kind of hard to kill... but I'm not sure everyone I know will.

Love is a strong word, and it might have burned me today (long story), so I'll say care. My friends, I care for you. Even if we haven't talked in years (HS friends especially) I still think about you. I have the best life in the world, seriously. I hope you think the same about your life, but honestly mine is better. God loves me so much. The stock market has been crashing and I bought both GM and FedEx on their lowest price days in over five years. I'm going to be fine. I don't know how I can help, but if I can, let me know.

Ahead of the Curve (Flattening it)

For the last 6 days Colorado steadily reported 23-38 new Covid-19 coronavirus cases per day. Today there were 61 new cases, a big jump.

This is my preferred webpage for tracking cases in Colorado: https://covid19.colorado.gov/state-recovery-assistance 

So far only about 10% of people tested for the virus in Colorado are showing up positive. This is a win, people are being cautious, getting tested, and we're getting lots of negative tests. The median time to onset of new symptoms is five days, with 97.5% of all cases showing symptoms in 11.5 days. The test takes three days to show positive or negative.

Colorado went into mild lockdown on Monday, so really, it will be Tuesday, March, 24th before we know if we've gotten a hold of this thing in Colorado, meaning slowed the exponential growth of infected people.

I'm optimistic. Colorado's first case was an out of state skier who had recently traveled to Italy. So we were close behind the big hubs like Seattle and San Francisco and New York to start the social distancing, but fortunately we have a more spaced out population, so it appears to have not infected thousands, like it has in New York. Because we are a tourist hub, it makes sense that we would be quickly infected.

As a quick anecdote, I went to Fedex today to pick up a package, and aside from the door handle, I only touched the box I was picking up. I didn't sign myself, or share the driver's license, and I stayed well away from most people. The woman who helped me was cautious as well as we talked about the pandemic.

Maybe it's just my little corner of Colorado, but people seem to be appropriately cautious. I stepped off the sidewalk to pass someone today and she said, "thank you". I think we're ahead of the curve. Yes our growth is exponential still, but barely. We need to lock down even tighter the next two weeks to really confirm that we're there, but I do think that is happening.

Worst Case Scenario (Covid-19)

I have Internet access at home on my computer, for the first time since April 2011. After experimenting with no Internet at home in April and May 2011 when I moved to Iowa, I realized that the lifestyle is for me. Using my cell phone is enough access. However, blogging is something I really prefer to do on a keyboard, not a cell phone. So, for the next few weeks, and let's be honest, months probably, I'm probably going to blog a lot more than I have the last few years. In large part because the world is not ending, but it feels a bit like it is ending.

Before we get into how bad it might get, let's talk about best case scenarios. Let's say that no one has any contact with anyone outside of their immediate family for the next two weeks. That means that asymptomatic infected people will become symptomatic and go to the hospital if needed, there will be very few new infections, and we will have peaked in maybe three weeks from now. Hospitals will probably manage with the staff and equipment they have, thousands will die, but mostly older patients with co-morbidity. Shortly after peaking testing will catch up and infected people will be quarantined more specifically, instead of 80+% of people as we are today. We'll get a good idea of really how widespread and contagious the disease is, and then we will have nice summer.

Ok, now let's walk through how bad it might get. If people don't quit interacting with others, more people are going to be affected. A contagious person can infect others for up to 14 days before showing symptoms. 14 days! That means everyone I've interacted with, even shared a door handle with in the last 14 days might have infected me. Fortunately, I'm not one for a lot of contact with others in general and as I retrace my steps the last few weeks I've only sat in a restaurant twice, a week ago and four days ago. Although I have been to Starbucks twice this week. To add more to the story, the median incubation period before showing symptoms is 5-5.2 days, and 97.5% of infected,  people show symptoms within 11-11.5 days, depending on the study you read. (Both published in the last four days.)

What that means... Colorado essentially went into mild lock down on Monday, it's going to be two weeks before we know if we made a dent in this pandemic or not. Moderate lock down is next, and I think severe lock down is a real possibility. Fortunately, Colorado cases have been increasing at a linear rate, not exponential, so there is hope we have already gotten ahead of the curve.  https://covid19.colorado.gov/state-recovery-assistance

Jumping two steps ahead, based on the 2011 movie Contagion, and what is happening in Italy now, I think it is entirely possible that the National Guard or Reserves (or plain regular Army) will be  stationed outside of grocery stores to take temperatures and limit the number of people inside. While restaurants are open now, I'm guessing they will be called on to close. I don't think there will be widespread looting, or riots, because it's not "that" deadly. Which brings my next point.

I know many people in their 60s, 70s, 80s, and a few in their 90s. This virus is killing something like 3% up to 10+% of people in those age ranges. I am 99% sure t hat before this thing is over, someone I know will die from it. The last three church congregations I have been a part of have all been older, with lots of people over 60. It's a statistics problem. If enough people get sick, and enough older people, someone I know will die.

So let's say that this virus kills 4% of everyone it affects. Let's also say that when the hospitals get overwhelmed, the death rate will double, like it has already in Italy, because of a lack of ventilators. So let's say that 8% of the USA dies, and everyone gets infected, that's about 26 million Americans that might die. That's how bad it could get. Let's say it takes a year for that to happen, that's huge absolutely huge, but not the end of the world. Sure, it's very possibly the end of the world if you are over 60.

Point being, Jesus loves you. Hang in there.

The Covid-19 Coronavirus is bad.

We need to practice extreme social distancing, now! Estimates keep saying the death tole is going to be around 1%, but we're still seeing 3-4% in most of the surveyed populations. I read today that it can stay in the air as an aerosol for up to half an hour, like seeing your breathe on a cold day. Another thing that concerns me is that you can have it and be contagious for up to 10-14 days without showing any symptoms, while spreading it to other people. All of those numbers, two weeks of asymptomatic contagiousness, a 3% death rate, possible airborne transmission... 3% of the world is approximately 220 million people.