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Red Bull Gives You Wings at One AM 🕊️

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Maybe it wasn’t the best idea in the world yesterday to take a handful of caffeine pills, have a cup of coffee and be pounding sugar-free Red Bulls at the campaign committee while stuffing my face full of candy. It just was one of those days.

Maybe it was the reaction, we must be ducked. 🤬 Things lately have gotten so insane, though I’m comforted in knowing things have always this dysfunctional, though this year seems particularly bad, with only trickle of early voters compared to 2020, and so many of them being enrolled Republican.

I had so much energy last night, 🦵 that not only did I had a few miles to my commute home by taking the bike path up to Slingerlands and then out past Preska’s farm and through the Adam Station Development and Westchester Woods in a big loop, I walked down to the library 📚 to do some work, then did the big loop around the Superblock around the High School, probably walking about 4 miles.

But I swear the Red Bull really hit around 1 AM ☕, some twelve hours since I stopped drinking. My heart was racing ♥️ beating like there was no tomorrow and all I could do is listen to more podcasts trying to tease out the election and what Trump’s inevitable presidency will be like. I know there isn’t much I can do either way about it all. 🐶 Not my dog fight. I voted months ago now for that buffoon. 🤡 But I sure hope we can say we have the first African American women president by this time next week. Though I doubt we’ll know until Veterans Day Weekend, when I’m hopefully up in the wilderness, smoking pot, drinking beer next to a roaring fire. 🔥

Got to meet my new neighbor last night. 🧑‍🔧 Seems like a pretty nice guy, maybe we can hang out some time, at least he shouldn’t be a problem. Just got to make it through another winter in my cold drafty apartment, and continue to look at land and houses and figur eout what’s next. Maybe work on developing a better financial plan and construction plan for that off grid cabin. And work hard at work. I’m still a bit freaked out about how things will go next Tuesday, it’s just such a tough political environment for Democfrats. But hell, even Trump says he’s okay with legalizing pot nationally, though we’ll see how that goes.

Ultimately you do the best you can do 🤷‍♂️

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I have to shrug about the upcoming election. You do the best you can do with the resources you have, but ultimately a lot of things are out of your hands. If things ultimately don’t work out maybe it’s my chance to move on and do something else.

I do wish I had more practical skills, though I do think I’m pretty damn good at working with and cleaning data at this point with the R Statistical language. I know it’s a domain specific language and not in high demand but it’s done a good job at processing several million dollars in  label jobs for mailing lists, allowed for processing absentee and early voting data for a quarter million voters and helped me run a pretty damn competent data operation. And I’m pretty good at setting up very complicated queries in the Democratic Party’s Vote Builder and SQL.

And it’s not like I’m stuck here. I’m leasing my rundown apartment month to month, I didn’t buy a house or land despite looking. I’ve been hoarding cash over the past year thinking I would need it to buy a house over the past year and I have quite a bit more in stocks and bonds I could tap. I have friends and colleagues I’ve known over years and an impressive sounding title I can put on my resume and decades now of experience. And I live simply, I’ve never needed a television or home internet and are content with using my mountain bike and the city bus to get around town. My living standards are pretty low, witness my grubby apartment and my desire to live eventually in off grid cabin in the wilderness.

I’m sure next Tuesday will go okay as I did my best, even though I have ideas for improving a lot of things next cycle if I get a chance. That said, I have a good reason to worry as it’s a tough political environment for democrats and expectations are high, though I’m at minimum hoping we can out preform the top of the ticket. That doesn’t say I’m not worried. And while I’m somewhat competent at more practical and in demand languages like Python and C, I’m no expert on them and have no formal certification. And unlike R I’m hardly as practiced on them though I can certainly read and code in the them.

I’m sure whatever ultimately happens on Tuesday, it will ultimately work out for the best. Life is full of ups and downs and one can tie oneself up in knots or anxiety but you just got to push forward and do the best you can based on the circumstances. Maybe I will or maybe I won’t get to implement my grandeous ideas for data targeting my state agency but I have a lot of hope and ideas on how things can be made better.

Making Progress But Not Enough.

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While I am doing fine and have stuck towards my savings goals for the year, a year in the future, I’m really noticing how difficult it can be to save for tomorrow. I do put a lot of money away each month, and certainly my retirement savings has grown significantly, it still often feels like I’m treading water, barely moving the needle. Goals take time, and as this past year has shown, time goes by much quickly, and there never really is enough time.

My new job was a bit of a leap, it’s a bit scary jumping into the unknown, and there are definite tax disadvantages to me. But I’m working hard, and trying to do what’s best for my organization, so I can make new connections and fine ways to better myself. It gets tough to squeeze more out of my budget, but I can still definitely find ways to earn more money, and save more for tomorrow.

Saving alone won’t get me there, but it will help open options for better tomorrow. I need to continue to read and learn, think and expand my knowledge. I need to keep an open mind, always be focused on my future, and think more about what my options are. I have a lot more opportunities then many, and ultimately a lot of my future will be defined by what I choose.

That rain sounded so good on the roof last night ☔

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I won’t say it was wonderful to be riding back in rain from Lionheart on the Green to downtown in the rain on my mountain bike to catch the bus home, but it’s good we got some much needed rain.

Up early as I have to head up to Menands first thing to do some state work and then head over to the dungeon supposedly by nine o’clock 🐲 to keep processing those early voters, absentees and other data to keep the whole system running along like a smoothly well oiled machine, that is until I run into a bad UTF-16 character that causes R Studio to bomb out.  💣

I got to say Lionheart on the Green is a nice place, 🦁 though like everything, the pints are kind of expensive. 🍻 But I only had one before hoping on my bike and heading downtown in the rain back home. I am just glad it rained to reduce the fire 🔥 danger so hopefully over Veterans Day Weekend 🇺🇸 I can have a big ol’ fire, drink some beer, smoke some grass and sing along with the Dire  Wolf. 🐺 Pumpkin 🎃 pancakes 🥞 fore breakfast, getting an early start with lots of coffee ☕ and caffine as I got to cover a lot of miles this morning on the bike before I get my sugar high at the campaign committee. 🍬 But first IOI Codes need to be tagged and reports run 📝 at the State Offices.

Riding back downtown wasn’t too bad in the near darkness, 🌃 I plan to keep extra bike lights in the office to be safe. Won’t do it all winter long, but when it’s reasonably nice, I do plan to continue riding in all winter assuming the bike trail is mostly free of snow. I don’t think this year I’ll do the Corning Hill to avoid the snow, ☃️ though my mind could certainly change, as I don’t love busing it to work 🚌 but I like driving even less. I’m just glad it’s going to be in the seventies today, and I won’t need to have my windows closed or even the heat on for what looks to be a few weeks, based on the 8-14 day outlook. ☀️ That said, probably over the weekend I will have to close the windows 🪟 but at least won’t need the heat. I think it’s funny how I got the heated blanket out earlier this morning but haven’t had to use it but one day. Good, it saves money 💰 having it off. Money is tight these days after the auto insurance payment, and I didn’t make enough ad revenue last month on the blog to get a check this month. Oh, well.

BFG to Berlin

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What it was like to drive from West Germany to Berlin via East German roads in the 1989 before the wall came down.