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  • Arnold

  • COVID-19

    I am not expert on the coronavirus, but below is a list of articles and interviews I have found about this epidemic organized by category. I began this post on Sunday, 15 March and have continued to update as I find relevant news articles or blog posts, for the two people that read this.

    News

    Working/Staying at Home

    General Information

    Fitness

    Finances

  • Gear I use every day

    I know this type of post has been done ad infinitum, ad nauseum, and ad myriadium, but here goes nonetheless.

    Coffee: I’ve been using my Aeropress almost daily for just under two years. The labels have worn off and sometimes I wonder if pouring boiling hot water in a plastic tube is the best for my health, but my god, does it make a smoooooooth cup of coffee.

    Backpack: I’ve had the Condor something something backpack for two years, but relegated this to a gym or travel backpack as it is a bit large for daily use. The 5.11 Tactical small backpack works very well for carrying my notebooks and a lunch to work.

    1. Water: Yeti + seltzer
    2. Facial care: Hankies
    3. Time: Casio solar powered watch
    4. Notes: Leuchtturm
    5. Eyeballs: Shady Rays
    6. Undies: Ex Officio

  • Python

    My first exposure to programming was, of course, using BASIC on my DOS 6.22 machine in 1995. Then I played around with C from a book my friend bought me. My last two years of high school found me learning the fundamentals of C++, but I didn’t get much further than simple if-else functions. This helped in college as I was required to take one semester of C++ which I basically slept through. It was interesting coding a program to calculate the trajectory of a cannonball based on certain inputs, but I don’t remember much else. Ok, I did just find eight .cpp files from twenty years ago, so I could use the gcc compiler on my laptop to see what happens.

    Seven or eight years ago, I started using Codeacademy to learn something, maybe Perl, but that didn’t stick. I had also purchased a book on Java and a book by Larry Wall on Perl, but didn’t continue learning programming.

    A few months ago, Tim Ferriss had a link to an essay by Paul Graham about writing essays. I could relate to Mr. Graham as he tweeted about his 7 year old feigning death at the elder Graham’s exposition about what writing essays entails (I have a 7 year old at home as well).

    Reading this essay lead me to Graham’s book, Hackers and Painters. This short series of essays talks about programming, creating wealth, the commonalities between (surprise surprise) hackers and painters, and how to start a startup. In one of these essays, an endnote points the reader to Eric S. Raymond’s essay “How to be a Hacker.” Raymond explains in his essay that hackers create, tinker, and share ideas whereas crackers steal, obtain illegal access and break the law. For more details, see Steven Levy’s book Hackers.

    Raymond describes four steps (not a complete checklist, but a start) to become a hacker:

    Basic Hacking Skills

    1. Learn how to program.
    2. Get one of the open-source Unixes and learn to use and run it.
    3. Learn how to use the World Wide Web and write HTML.
    4. If you don’t have functional English, learn it.

    I already use Linux on my machine, so I figured might as well start learning programming. Thankfully ESR doesn’t recommend going back to C or C++, but rather Python. Apparently one doesn’t need to manage memory resources or other overhead processes as much as C++. So I installed the python IDE on my laptop and started the Python 2 course on Codeacademy.

  • Fear

    Yesterday at my second Toastmasters meeting we discussed (surprise, surprise) COVID-19. The first table topic was if we should be worried about it and the second was fear. Not surprisingly, Tim Ferriss’ 5-Bullet Friday talked about the corona virus and fear.

    To steal from Tim, here is the Bene Gesserit litany against fear

    “I must not fear.

    Fear is the mind-killer.

    Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.

    I will face my fear.

    I will permit it to pass over me and through me.

    And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path.

    Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.

    Only I will remain.”

    Frank Herbert, Dune

    Also, stop licking eyeballs.

  • Cybersecurity?

    J.D. Roth recently wrote about his journey to finally use a password manager for his old and weak passwords. I know what this is like as I used a (password protected!) spreadsheet to track my passwords for years, which kept track of passwords that I generated when I was a teenager. I use Lastpass which is essentially $1 per month per device. Makes it very easy to create passwords of the max length allowed by the site and that are not easy to guess.

    In addition to a password manager, enable two factor authentication (2FA) for your accounts. This forces you to be more deliberate with your login procedures, but should prevent someone from accessing your accounts through password attacks. You can also stay logged in to an account so you don’t need to use 2FA each time, but if you forget to fully log out then you could be saving your account data on certain machines or profiles.

    To enable 2FA, you will likely get a text message from your account, use a code given by the system when you enabled 2FA, or use a one-time code from an authenticator app, such as Google Authenticator or LastPass Authenticator.

    To get even more complex, you can use encrypted folders on your local machine. I use ecryptfs which is relatively easy to install on Ubuntu based systems. The folder is decrypted each time I logon and encrypted each time I logoff. Windows 10 encrypted folders can be a little more complex and the types of encryption available vary based on the version of Windows 10 you have installed.

    Lastly, encrypted email is a next level to employ if you are concerned about Google, Hotmail, Microsoft, or AOL accessing the contents of your messages.

    More resources

    • Security ebook from ProtonMail
    • Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) techniques
    • Tools from the USA show Mr. Robot

    Update: I grew weary of Google Assistant listening to my conversations and making unwanted suggestions. Finally found a way to turn it off here.

  • Failure: Get Some

    I am a goal oriented person. I set fitness goals, financial goals, nutrition goals, goals for sleep, and (near-term) goals for my kids. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to the realization that most goals move from the linear progression to step progression. So rather than every event or every day being a “step in the right direction”, eventually you accept that some days are maintenance or strategic resets.

    Sometimes advancement is a slow, meandering red line.

    So I am trying to get more comfortable failing, specifically with respect to jiu-jitsu. I traveled to GB Pelham and for 105 minutes of the two hours I spent there today, I felt like I should take a few stripes off my belt. [In case you are traveling to Alabama, the staff and students are very welcoming and helpful. And there is a lot of cool GB/BJJ info on their site.] But I finally made a modicum of progress in my last roll. So I’ll keep failing and coming back for more instruction by those better than me. We have to be comfortable failing in safe environments so we won’t fail when times are truly stressful.

    I’m normally the guy getting his face smushed. Photo from Pexels.

    For my own review (and maybe yours!), here’s what the professor covered today:

    • Closed guard to arm bar
    • Closed guard to teepee
    • Closed guard to scissors sweep to reverse sweep

    Here’s what I learned: when you are mounted, keep your arms tight to your chest and don’t reach around your partners head.

    Here’s what I need to practice more:

    • Single leg takedown
    • Escaping closed guard
    • Hip escape/shrimping from bottom

    I think if I stick with those three, everything else will be cream cheese.

  • Space Force != Star Trek

    The US Space Force has an emblem!

    As Task & Purpose reports, it is very similar to Starfleet’s emblem, which now sounds more like an interglactic delivery service for Amazon…

    Thankfully Netflix is still working on their documentary on how the staff are doing, but the true organization is still in work.

  • Squat elbow bicep pain

    I have been experiencing left elbow and bicep pain when I squat over 300 since last spring. I think I found the reason why:

    https://www.instagram.com/p/B3fGRpaAt_r/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

    Thank goodness I found Coach Niki Sims post!

  • Happy New year

    This is what you see after not shooting a pronghorn

    Happy new year…hope you have a great night and pleasant morning.

    This what you drink when you have kids and are almost 40.