I might be feeling quite fairly sick again from COVID which isn’t exactly how I expected the year to end, but I did feel well enough to go for a walk and sit up for a few hours after sleeping much of the day, achy with a very dry and tight throat. At least I’m not as dizzy or quite as exhausted as I was on Christmas. Either I’ll finally overcome COVID or I’ll have to go to the doctor on Thursday. I’m not going to make it to midnight awake.
But beyond that and all the various bellyaching of the year it was actually a fun year, got to visit some great places. Not everything went to plan, including my final trip of the year being canceled but it was a great year in many ways – investments grew, I got closer to many different goals, learned a lot of new skills. Some things are left uncompleted but just because something is accomplished in one year that it’s not a goal or won’t happen in the future. Often things get scuttled but if you continue to make progress they are not forever lost. At the end of the day 25 out of town trips I can remember, doesn’t include things like riding out to Altamont or the Pine Bush or various other rail trails around locally or the nature bus.
January 13-15 – Rensselearville State Forest
February 2-3 – Rennselaerville State Forest
March 16 – Baatekill State Forest, Old Bennington Battlefield (Day Trip)
March 28-31 – East Branch Scanadaga River
April 20-21 – Rensselearville State Forset
May 17-19 – Burnt Rossman Hills and Catskill Scenic Trail
May 24-27 – Green Mountain National Forest
June 1-2 – Cole Hill State Forest – Cole Hill bike camping
June 15-16 – Cotton Hill Hammock Camping and Hike Down to Middelburgh Cliffs
June 18-23 – Old NY 8B (Scanadaga River), Speculator, Piseco-Powley
July 3-7 – Piseco-Powley, Celebrating Independence and riding the Canalway
July 12-14 – Burnt Rossman Hills
July 20-21 – Cole Hill State Forest
July 26-August 4 – Finger Lakes – Pennsylvania Pine Creek
August 10-11 – Cole Hill State Forest – Irish Hill Hammock Camping and Game Farm Preserve hike
August 23-25 – Piseco-Powley, Floating Down the River
August 30 – Sept 2 – Perkins Clearing and Speculator Tree Farm
September 13-15 – Rensselearville State Forest
September 20-23 – Green Mountain National Forest
September 26-30 – Perkins Clearing, Indian River Tract and Pillsbury Mountain
October 4-6 – Rensselearville State Forest
October 18-21 – Charles Baker, Nine Mile Swamp, Glimmerglass
November 7-11 – Stoney Pond, Erie Canalway (Dewitt), Charles Baker
I was going to load this into Apache Arrow and query but ended up just reading directly into memory using read.table. Continuing to explore Apache Arrow for dealing with large datasets.
Most of the watering holes in New York State are located in populated areas. I guess that is not real surprising, as that's where the people is and that's where you would build a business. Some of the rural towns in upstate are dry. This might be a more interesting map if I had done bars per capita -- maybe that's a project for a future date. Map shows density of licensed establishments selling liqour for on-site consumption.
Some days I feel so good and other days I come crashing back down. Truth is that the days when I feel good I’m just hiding how truly sick I am and I pretend I’m feeling better when I’m really not.
For a while yesterday, I felt so good. I think seeing the positive COVID test was a relief. But I also was ignoring how much my throat was burning at times, I really wanted it to be over so I could get on with life as normal. It was a nice day and I had so much energy. On this last day of the year, not so much.
It was a struggle to get out of bed and then I ended up sleeping a good portion of the day. I did some reading and now I’m off for my evening walk but I still don’t feel awesome. I ache and still feel like my throat is raw. COVID is no joke , even if you are fully vaccinated like I am. I wanted to get down to the library in my truck to work for a while, or maybe to Five Rivers to work on my laptop and maybe go for a walk on such a nice day, but I couldn’t make it happen.
It will get better at some point. If things don’t improve in the day or two, I’ll make an appointment with my doctor after the holiday. While I doubt I’ll be back to work come Thursday, hopefully by Monday this will be over. I am so sick and tired of being stuck at home, but I really lack the energy to get out and travel. Of course, I have been able to do a fair amount of reading, and I’ve really started to get a good understanding of x86 Assembler code and C/C++ and various GUI libraries like Qt and GTK+. I have been doing a lot of coding, and while I’ve been sick, I’ve tried to use my time as productively as possible.
Lately, there has been a growing interest in people investing in various Environmental, Social, and corporate Governance (ESG) funds. They are usually sector funds, that only invest in businesses that have been selected based on their environmental, social, and corporate governance performance or actions. The idea is you invest in things that make the world a better place, rather then a worse place.
ESG funds are heavily marketed. It’s hard to open Facebook without a targeted ad, trying to play on your emotions and feel good about investing in these kind of businesses. But often if you look more then skin deep, they are highly scammy with few environmental and social benefits, despite the marketing hype. Often the products sold by ESG companies are hardly better then sold by those businesses not chosen by the ESG fund marketers.
But a bigger problem is that ESG companies aren’t well diversified compared to most market indexes, and that investing doesn’t actually decide which businesses have good business models and make money. Ultimately, it consumers, not investors that decide if a business is profitable and make sense. By buying an index fund, you end up with both ESG and non-ESG, and will profit when either one makes money. Risk is lower, because you have a wider range of stocks then only the ESG funds.
I think seeing the positive COVID test was a relief. But I also was ignoring how much my throat was burning at times, I really wanted it to be over so I could get on with life as normal. It was a nice day and I had so much energy. On this last day of the year, not so much.
and then I ended up sleeping 
a good portion of the day. I did some reading 
and now I’m off for my evening walk 
but I still don’t feel awesome. I ache and still feel like my throat is raw. COVID is no joke 
, even if you are fully vaccinated like I am. I wanted to get down to the library in my truck to work for a while, or maybe to Five Rivers to work on my laptop and maybe go for a walk on such a nice day, but I couldn’t make it happen.
If things don’t improve in the day or two, I’ll make an appointment with my doctor after the holiday. 
While I doubt I’ll be back to work come Thursday, hopefully by Monday this will be over. I am so sick and tired of being stuck at home, but I really lack the energy to get out and travel. Of course, I have been able to do a fair amount of reading, 
and I’ve really started to get a good understanding of x86 Assembler code and C/C++ and various GUI libraries like Qt and GTK+. I have been doing a lot of coding, and while I’ve been sick, I’ve tried to use my time as productively as possible.
