The federal government will just become more and more ineffective with grid lock and states will start to do their own things. States will become more distinct in their policies, with blue states and red states relying more and more on Interstate compacts rather than the federal government. There actually is a lot of incentives for states to encourage people to freely relocate to states of their ideological persuasion, so the incumbent politicians can further cement their power and implement their desired policies.
Notes
Drinking olive oil before bed 🫒
Apparently it’s a thing. Like many things.
I guess some Italians and other health buffs like to end their evening with a shot of olive oil, because the fat helps smooth absorption of food in one’s stomach and keeps people full throughout the night. Seems kind of silly to me, but I’m getting fed a lot of targeted ads because I made the mistake of investigating fad-diet-marketers Mr. Gundry’s jacked up price olive oil, that is supposed to be low on lectins, which some people believe are super harmful. Because eating too many tomatoes is like eating too many twinkies.
I am not against olive oil, and indeed it’s my go-to fat for use in frying many things up. But I would hardly call it a health food, even if it’s one of the healthiest fats you can cook with and you need some fats in your diet. But drinking it raw, doesn’t seem all that appealing in the grand scheme of things.
West Virigina is Very Different from Virigina
One thing that always strikes me is how different West Virginia is from Virginia. You cross the Shenandoah Mountain and it’s like you are in a totally different world. Virginia is very southern, they act and talk very southern. West Virginia is Appalachian, they are much similar to what one would find in rural Upstate New York — especially the eastern half of the state where the mid-western accent isn’t that strong.
Virginia seems to bring a lot of tourists and has many tourist facilities. West Virginia in contrast is rustic and quiet. Harrisonburg and Stauton are fairly large cities, while across the Shenandoah Mountains you only have small rural hamlets and small cities like Moorefield. There is a lot of traffic in Virginia, not so much in small-town West Virginia.
Now I am sure that there are more rural and quiet sections of Virginia and more populated parts of West Virginia. Parts of West Virginia are certainly not as sleepy as the region when the National Forest predominates. And I’m sure some areas are more tourist draws.
Going to need those full fingered gloves for riding in this morning 🧤
What can I say except that winter’s coming? I enjoyed that heated blanket a bit too much this morning, it was difficult to get out of bed much before six o’clock, though the caffeine pills really gave me a real jolt.
The truth is I really like the experience of europhia whether it’s from smoking pot or excessive caffeine consumption. ☕️ And I am absolutely sure that I am trashing my heart, not that eat much in the way of processed foods or saturated fats 💗except maybe when I’m at my parents house for Sunday dinner or at the campaign committee, though even there I try to balance and buffer it out with eating as much healthy fiber from fruits and vegetables as possible. It’s kind of amazing how a little pill 💊that costs 3 1/3 cents including tax gives you as much energy as a big cup of coffee without having to visit the pisser all of the time. 
I did have a cup of coffee this morning though, but only one but probably have more when I get in the office.
Eggs, onions and frozen vegetables for breakfast this morning. 
Nice start to breakfast, though I fully admit those onions made my cry a bit when I sliced them up 🧅 and I’m starting to get bit tired of onions all of the time. I mean onions add a lot of flavor to many meals 🤤 but like anything you can get in a groove and sort of over-due them. Especially during the summer months with all that zucchuni and summer squash which is all but a memory now. 🍆
Still dark out for the start of the ride into the office 🚴♂️ though it is getting bright out quickly. Had to use the light so I could be seen well by drivers. Cold ride in for sure, I wore the fingered gloves, and almost wish I had also worn the inner liners with the gloves. Kind of a damp morning and some fog in the Normans Kill Valley. 🪴 Looks like a new cannabis dispersary is going to be opening next to the refrigerator building downtown, that I will be riding past going back and forth to work. I’ll have to check it out when it opens.
Seems like my laptop continues to charge properly now that I reset the power cable. 🔌 I was going to order a new battery, 🪫truth is if I see puffiness in the battery and a shorter times working on the charge, I know it’s not long in this world. But since doing the BIOS reset with the charger, at least things are charging when the laptop is booted. And that’s a good thing for work when I use it non-stop.
Madison County or bust on Friday morning! 
At least that’s the tentative plan, get up to camp early, get set up, remote work until darkness, have a good fire on Friday night — preferably in a one of the more remote campsites where I don’t have to worry about finding lots of firewood 
or making too much smoke or noise with the music. 
Then ride all day Saturday, or maybe paddle Nine Mile Swamp 
on Saturday and ride on Sunday. I’ll decide based on the weather and my mood when I get there. Once we get past today though it ooks like all sun ball 🌞 is the future with warming weather.
Feeling better but maybe my laptop isn’t on this Columbus Day 💻️
I think somehow the HP AC power test utility is setting the laptop to recognize the plugged-in status when it is booted, but at least one time that stopped working again when I unplugged the laptop when it was running. That said, I know a solution to the problem. Still it’s frustrating.
This all started to be a problem last week when the frayed power cord I had 🔌 wasn’t charging properly. I bought another charger on eBay but it only seemed to charge the laptop when it was off. The frayed cable became a broken one and new one seemed to be even more problematic — not charging at all when the laptop was running but only asleep. I was thinking maybe I had a bad connection the charger port, and once I was feeling somewhat better on Saturday, I took the laptop apart, got the fan working again by pushing and freeing it up from the dust and grime pack and now the laptop is running cool, and determined the power port on machine was fine, but maybe not battery. 🪫 Still getting about two hours on the battery, maybe closer to an hour and a half, but I noticed the battery is getting a bit puffy which means the electrolyte is breaking down in the lithium ion cell. They’re about $20 for a basic knock-off replacement, so I’ll get one, they last about 2 or 3 years, and last one I replaced in early 2022. 
At least it’s charging with new cord, once I discovered I could boot into diagnosis mode in BIOS, 
run the AC Power test, unplug it, allow the system to re-calibrate, 
and see the incoming power, and plug it in for proper operation. I ended up ordering a second power charger cord on Amazon before I discovered this solution! 
Two chargers aren’t bad to have — I’ll keep one in the office and one at home. I was worried it could be a fried a capacitor when it was running too hot, but I think it’s really the battery that is bad — running hot didn’t help it at all. I haven’t had issues with unexpected shutdowns, though the discharges are quicker and quicker on the current battery, and when you even see a bit of puffiness is the cell, you know it’s time for a replacement. It’s been taking an extraordinary amount of time to figure out what is wrong with my laptop, 🔍️ the logs have hardly been much of a help and the internet forms say it could be anything from the bad battery to bad charge port to fried capacitors to bad or undersized charger. I tried load testing, running a heavy load to both to make sure cooling was running good, and to run the battery down last night to see if that would reset detection of the charger while running — that didn’t work — until I figured out the BIOS hack.
The thing is I am using my laptop so much for work these days, 
and while my work laptop has RStudio and QGIS on it, my personal laptop has all my code, my music, and is my own to use it for whatever I want for work or play. A work laptop ultimately is owned by the campaign committee, so I have to be a bit careful what I use it for. No looking at hot girls climbing on tractors or burn barrels with my work laptop, got it, Andy. But mostly because I like listening to tunes as I work. 
That said, with the BIOS reset of the charger, things seem to be good now, though I am sure that could change — as I was able to cause it to stop seeing the charger once again by unplugging it while running, though the BIOS reset brought it back once again. So I have a solution, but I think it wouldn’t hurt to replace the battery either. 🔋 Still the whole situation is quite fustrating.
It’s something to add on top of all the other problems in my life, maybe a distraction or a three-ring clown show. 
I am sure Mom and Dad will be asking if I voted for Trump or Kamela when I go out there today for Sunday dinner. Elderly parents are most unpleasant people to be around, even though you know time is almost up for their generation. They ask the most obnoxious questions over and over again, and you never know if it’s a technique to cower and embarrass you, or if it’s because they’ve grown senile and just don’t remember what they’ve asked you. 
I don’t think I can admit to them that I voted for Trump on the Conservative line, even though I’m sure they know from reading my blog.
At least I don’t feel so sick at this point, 
though I totally abused those caffeine pills yesterday I got from the store yesterday. 💊 I drink too much coffee, and those 5-hour energy shots are getting expensive every time I want to do a road trip or camp and smoke pot but not be super sleepy, I got a 120-pill 100 mg pack of caffeine pills. They do work, and they last a while. And so cheap, I think the bottle was under $4 including tax. Pop three, and you have more pure caffeine in your system then one five hour energy shot or three cups of coffee. Without such an intense need to pee. But it also interfered a lot with my sleep last night. And it’s just recovering from the cough. 😵 Colds really ain’t fun.
Yesterday was just cold and wet 🌧️ and I didn’t get outside except to go to the library. 💻️ The malfunctioning laptop charger was annoying me all day, as was waiting for the replacement in the mail. I spent a lot of time reading books on the Hoopla app 📚️ and waiting for that second larger charger to arrive from Amazon that was going to solve all my problems until it didn’t lol. 🤣 Plus I’ve been just doing a lot of thinking about where I am at, 17 years in my career and still stuck in this apartment.
Bought weather stripping to stop leaks around the rotting door on my apartment 🚪 and put batteries in the clocks. 🕒️ It’s good to know what time it is when making breakfast and showering. Doing a bit of cleaning, 🧹 and just enjoying my time off when I’m not busy as tomorrow most certainly will be. Going to get out my heated blanket, as while I’m not willing to turn the heat on yet for the year, I sure would like to be able to snuggle under it at night and turn it back on during the cold starts to the morning. I’m not going to use the heat until it’s well below freezing. 
Forecast looks great for heading out of town next week, 🌞 of course a lot depends on the weather as the week evolves and how busy things become, though I feel pretty confident that I’m in good shape to work remote as need be. It does use a fair amount of data, but it’s already the second half of the month, and I still have close to 9 GB of data left to remote work 💻️ so I should be good assuming my laptop works fine, I get out of town early and set up where I have plenty of solar to use.
You’re only paranoid if they’re not actually out to get you 🚓 🦹 🚨 🔪
Lately, I’ve become really fascinated in paranoia. In part because they warn you that can be the result of a bad high from cannabis but also because I’ve started to wonder and think more about my own fears in my life – the catastrophic mind loop – I sometimes get myself into. If anything, smoking pot has made me less paranoid, but catastrophizing is nothing new in my life.
I listen to old Joan Baez records!
I sometimes hang out with old Weather Underground members (who had real reasons to fear the FBI at least decades ago before they turned gray and lost their teeth) !
The news media loves to warn you of all the dangers out there in the world. They show the worse of the worse, people who are hit by the city bus while crossing street to get a cup of coffee, or those murdered with a steak knife after they leave the bar after a few drinks. The media loves to make monsters out of mundane, find villains in every corner. Don’t forget the corporate executive who murdered their secretary with a steak knife. They don’t want to necessarily want to think your the monster or villain – that would be bad for advertising but they sure want you to be afraid of the other – usually colored or poor.
Truth is I don’t know if I am that different then other. I might not be colored or poor but I’m not that many steps away from either status. I don’t know I would decide if I was in Hitler’s shoes. Would I be the intensely moral person that Hitler was not? Could, despite my caution, be struck by extreme misfortune that can impact even the most successful and those who did everything right except for that one moment of indiscretion? What should I even be afraid of?
Maybe if you can mentally separate yourself from the other – the colored and poor – and go through life believing your not one step away form them, you could live a life of bliss until your crushed by that city bus. But I’m not so sure. While I doubt the police or other societal have time or desire to entrap and imprison me, that risk is not zero. After all, many institutions don’t like unconventional thinkers. But outside of my blog, I rarely talk or express my opinions that I do here. And it’s not like my attacks on institutions are specific or local, so it’s unlikely most will take them personally. I mean how much time do the Guilderland cops have to monitor me after attending a protest or two against a shopping center construction in the Albany Pine Bush four years ago now? Or recording audio of endangered bats in a darkened mall parking lot during a pandemic?
I could lose my job, my apartment, my truck, any of my material possessions and loved ones, and those would be set backs. The market could decline. But on the other hand, I’ve worked hard to build assets up in many different pots of money, and that’s a bit of freedom if other things in floor drop out. Most people fail when they have only one leg on stool, but if you have back ups, one failure isn’t as critical. Still I have my own fears, as I would hate to give up so much I’ve worked hard for over the years. And I am mostly well behaved so most people just ignore me and go on my way.
I can imagine that smoking pot would be a lot more paranoia inducing if you listened to Joan Baez’s Prison Trilogy. Or smoking pot while watching the news, rather then around the campfire or next to a babbling brook in the wilderness. But I enjoy the sparkles of the fire and fluttering of the leaves, a care-free few moments away from the Prison Trilogy. It’s a good record some 52 years later, but maybe not the sound track for a good life.
Ultimately, when the psychiatrists talk about paranoia, they aren’t talking about caring about social justice or even catastrophizing. There are people who believe absurd conspiracy theories and fears that don’t have any base in reality. The people who are on street corner shouting about Trilateral Commission or how the 2020 Election was stolen by 2,000 ballot mules. Things that are truly bizarre, rather then some ordinary screw up that can happen to the best of us, and can be very harmful one’s life if one doesn’t have a plan B.
Seventeen years
You know it’s hard to believe on this Columbus Day that I am writing these words about being 17 years into my career journey with the NYS Assembly. That it was me, a recently graduated intern soon to be employee, camping on the side of Terry Mountain in my truck camper shell, noting the deep blue autumn skies overlooking the orchards in Peru NY, taking in the views of Lake Champlain and poking around the city that had ultimately given me my college degree, before starting off on a journey that has lasted longer then my trip from cloth diapers from the Stork through my senior year in High School.
And that already I am writing these words once again, when I had penned a similar essay at year 16 last Columbus Day. Doesn’t really seem like a year has come and gone so quickly, or that previous 17 have gone by in such a flash. Indeed, if I look forward the same distance of time, I will be age 58 and it will be the year 2041. Seems like an impossibility as I write those words now. As do so many things in my life, which have gotten older and in many cases more threadbare, even as I’ve gotten more mature, more satisfied, the lines sunken deeper in my face, my hair more gray.
You know it’s sort of strange when you reach the top of your career, the directorship, where there is no clear path forward to a next step. It is a lot like climbing to the top of the mountain. You climb and climb, some sections quite hard others not so hard, but it always seems like there is more mountain ahead of you until you reach the top. Then the climb seems to fades away in your memory. And you look down at expansive landscape below you, at all that is below you, and you realize there is no more hill left. It’s not to say there aren’t every day struggles, but most of them can be laughed away with an eye roll and managed, as you’ve seen them again. At same time, a bit of emptiness has to come over you, realizing that it, the view is what you see. There is nothing more grandiose or more wonderful ahead.
It’s not to say there won’t be cost of living increases, salaries increases for hard work and results, new tasks and procedures, brought on by technology and changing institutional desires. But there isn’t a logical progression to a next step, like when I was a coordinator, or a deputy director. There just isn’t a lot to move up from being a director. I do still stare a lot at my business card though that says, “Director of Data Services”. It just doesn’t seem real to think I am in what is likely my final position of my career, that for many things I am the decider, I am where the buck stops. Others often seemed annoyed that I ask their opinion on matters where I’m the decider, as if I am asking them to decide for me. Maybe at times I am. Not that all decisions are made by me, some are dictated by law, custom or upper management, but certain things quite clearly fall in my realm, and nobody but myself is empowered to make the call. While I have decades of experience, sometimes what is the best choice isn’t all obvious.
I have lots of ideas on how to make things better at work, making data analysis more efficient and targets more relevant. But I also realize that institutions evolve slowly, and change can be hard to undertake. People fear change, as change involves risk and taking on new tasks even while needless work ceases. There is so much that can be done but resources, time and people are always constrained. Yet, I think the process and code changes I’ve implemented already are showing results, and things will only get better. Change takes time, and sometimes ideas that seem good on paper are hard to implement. In many cases, going slow, learning how the institution does things currently, and adopting changes over time is the best way forward. It is still a very paper and filing cabinet heavy office, though I agree with those who think we should get rid of more cabinets in favor of online spreadsheets that can computer read and processed, despite the desire of many to hold on to them.
I really like my career and the quality service I provide to our many clients. Being far removed from Albany and all of politics in the suburban office in Menands, you know it keeps me removed from the moral qualms of it all. It’s a gritty, dingy old suburban office building from 1980s overlooking the old city dump and smelling like the North Albany Sewage Treatment plant, but it’s good to be distant from the craziness of downtown. That said, I still have to be connected and receptive to client needs, even if many of staff are very non-political. But it’s an easier balance in my mind, as I’m not in the middle of world-whim of the issues and politics that can overtake you when your working directly on Capitol Hill. I don’t think much about the messaging, but I do think a lot about to connect the messaging to the appropriate people.
In many ways, I look back from the summit a lot different then when I was climbing it. But there is always more to do even from the top. Even if I retain my title for the remainder of my career, there are many new projects and ways I can get involved in new things. And there is a lot of chance to think about what I want my personal life to look like in the coming decades. How long do I stay? What comes next both professionally and personally? So much of my life so far has been about saving and investing, towards owning my own land, having that homestead and off-grid cabin. I’ve been drafting up ideas, looking at land, reconsidering whether or not I want to get out of New York. I’ve done okay in this state, but I do find its culture and way of living to be so constrained, contrary to who I want to be “when I grow up”. But I’m the only one putting those hobbles on myself. Nobody besides me is saying I can’t.
I worry time is running out. When you’re 41 years old, you can’t talk about what you want to be “when you grow up” without a fewer snickers in your mind like it’s some kind of cruel joke. You aren’t 18 years old at this point with many more options open as the flood of college mailers hitting your mailbox and soon the burn pit are to remind you. I look at those who want to sign me up for a 30-year mortgage, and I’m like if I sign up, I’m committing through 2054 and my 71st birthday. On the other hand, I am calmed by the fact that average farmer takes over the family farm at around age 56 and many off-griders don’t get started to a similar advanced era. Certainly though, many are younger. I made my path known by my current and past choices, actions speaker louder then words. I chose to forgo a family, to spend a lot of my days and weeks in wilderness, focus on my career, walk step by step to becoming the Director of Data Services. That doesn’t mean I’ll be there forever, but it’s where I am now and can be whatever I decide the next step to be.