Such a dirty hick

That’s what I thought when I walked in my kitchen this morning with the pile of dishes in the sink, the compost bucket overflowing, coffee grounds spilled over the counter. I’ve started to cleaning things up, but it needed work after all that cooking for work and a generally busy week. The good news is I don’t have many ambitious plans for the weekend and I can probably put on a podcast and spend an hour or two scrubbing down the kitchen, just like I did before the landlord came and replaced the broken fridge.

Fairly decent morning, but still winter and there is a fair amount of snow around from the last snow storm. Another half a foot coming tomorrow, so I not willing to dig out my truck to drive anywhere today, plus I don’t really have anywhere to motor to. In a few minutes though I’ll probably go for a ride, maybe out to Five Rivers to watch the birdies for a bit, while there is still some sun out before the clouds and later the snow push through. I wish there was less snow on the bike trail, but I can ride some of the rural roads, see the cows on Meads Road and I don’t know, work my way back home on the background. You know I like smell of the wood smoke and cow shit on the back roads. And those open landscapes. I think I spent too much time studying houses and rural properties this week as I was preforming address corrections and auditing the database for Allegany County this week. Will the data ever get used? I don’t know, but I think it’s good to be prepared for the future.

Been a busy week but a fun one. Thursday half of the day was the Diversity Training which was obnoxious mostly because I had to pee by the end of training and the trainer insisted on going beyond the alloted time, and I ended up running out the end of the training as I didn’t want to wet my pants. Too much coffee, but it’s good I only did one cup in the office and none on Friday as apparently somebody who didn’t know how to operate the coffee maker in office broke it. Not me, I don’t touch coffee makers as I’m not technologically savvy, and I still use a camp percolator pot at home to feed my addiction to the caffine. I know I wouldn’t touch that machine. I am really trying to cut back a bit on caffeine, as it’s impacting my sleep, though as much of that is being impacted. That said, I think what I really need a is a good night out in the wilderness with a big ol fire.

The state database administrator came by my office yesterday and said, “you’re generating a lot of data, please let me know if there are any old records you need deleted.” I knew that conversation was going to come sooner rather then later, as I’ve generated more then 30 million data points on New Yorkers in past few months based on wide variety of data sources, on my goal of creating half a billion data points. She didn’t think it was a problem with the current size of database, and she said it was up to me to decide how much data as Director of Data Services needed to be created. She’ll make necessary adjustments to quotas and add additional hard drives as needed to the server. I got to have a discussion with the chief programmer on Monday for my organization to figure out realistically how much what I can create, but my view is more data is better, and there is so many ways data can be used both for communication targeting and better understanding the constituency. It’s not like data storage and retrieval is expensive – those half a billion data points if they’re a byte each to store only would be about 5 gigabytes. And that’s still a lot of data to create and destroy after it becomes irrelevant in a year or so and needs to be replaced with updated data. How cheap is data these days? I keep the full database on my phone for every tax parcel in the State of New York along with the voter registration of every New Yorker on my phone and it takes up only a few gigabytes of space, and I query it faster and run summary statistics on any parameter with a quick line of SQL and get an answer back in most case faster then I can blink my eye. An inexpensive Smartphone. In an era of Artificial Intelligence being in news and so trendy, I am just amazed by what you can do with a DuckDB and Apache Arrow Parquets.

Maybe it’s delusions of grandeur, but I see the value and importance of collecting and linking data, especially in this era when disk space is cheap and computers, especially big servers like they have at work, are so powerful. Why just compute the bare minimum needed for program requirements, when you can have more data ready and useful? You got to keep things moving, the old ways of doing things, not constantly updating and improving systems doesn’t work. This week during the chili contest, my department got a shout out from the executive director, noting all the innovative work we are doing. Now to get people engaged and actually utilizing our work. I think the weekly emails I’m generating announcing new products gets people thinking — indeed we’ve had some uptake but it’s slow. Change takes time. Also, one of the staff people in my department won for the best chili. And I got accused for being a vegetarian again, probably because most days at work I eat vegetables with tofu or sweet potatoes because it’s healthy, inexpensive, and I’ve gotten to like it. I was looking at my body this morning in the mirror, and I like how I look as I’m starting my third year of my forties. Health is so important these days, especially when so much of the food that is popular is loaded with sugar and unhealthy fats that will lead you to the cardiac unit sooner then later. Been eating a lot of beans this week — they’re cheap but they can sure make you gassy at times. Especially when mixed with lentils. Actually, I think lentils are a bigger offender, but they are also so good and healthy. Eating loads of fiber is such a key to a good life even if it can be a bit tough on the stomach.

I so want to get to Madison County next weekend for the holiday, but I know that’s not a realistic option with so much snow coming in coming week. I miss traveling and those dirty little hick towns. The real run down farms and dairies on the back roads that are real compared to the land of plastics that makes up so much of the suburbs. I will be lucky if it’s decent enough to dig out that campsite up in Rensselearville for some winter camping and singing along with the Dire Wolf. You know what is on my mind and it’s full of fire and laughter, even if it will be cold. But it’s winter, and need to get out to burn shit before the snow melts all away and there is high fire risk. Spring is coming in 40 days, and easier is in 71 days. Easter is super late, still ten weeks out , thinking of taking that Thursday off before Good Friday for the East Branch Sacanadaga River. Have a good ol time up north, maybe clean out my desk at home with old paper junk and some other things for a good bonfire there, wander around the Siamese Pond Wilderness, maybe smoke some grass and drink some beer. It’s funny, I don’t smoke that much grass but it’s one of my favorite activities to think about doing, that combined with burning shit which also involves fire. It’s been three weeks now and probably a few more weeks, and actually don’t like getting stoned as much as I like thinking about it.

We don’t smoke marijuana in Muskogee
We don’t take our trips on LSD
We don’t burn our draft cards down on Main Street
‘Cause we like livin’ right, and bein’ free

We don’t make a party out of lovin’
But we like holdin’ hands and pitchin’ woo
We don’t let our hair grow long and shaggy
Like the hippies out in San Francisco do

– Okie From Muskogee Merle Haggard

Coda … I was listening to that song on the local bus ride home on Friday, after I missed the express bus once again on a Friday. I think it’s so funny nowadays, when so many of the straights now have long hair and at least occasionally smoke grass and many of them grow their own. I mean, it’s agriculture, it’s homesteading! Especially in Okalahoma where it is very easy to get a medical cannabis license.

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