Well the last day of 2020 is finally here. Donuts have been ordered. That was an exciting thing to type up on the screen. In fairness to the inadequate nature of those words in describing my emotion, donuts are generally exciting, but these donuts somehow were more. My two shots of espresso were made without hesitation this morning and are perhaps not providing me with enough clarity to really capture my thoughts at the moment. The Nespresso Expert machine located in the kitchen is still running well enough. It has been a solid purchase. You can now pick up Nespresso pods at Target if you forget to order enough of them so that has smoothed out any unnecessary supply disruptions. Watching the backward linkages of supply chains fill in over time might be exciting in terms of seeing economic theory come alive, but generally giving the speed of shipping Nespresso pods it is also very useful in a highly practical way.

One of the things I have been watching on YouTube has been Geoff Wilson’s “Sports Card Investor” podcast/show for the last few months. Today it featured an interview with Dr. James Beckett who has a podcast. It took me about 30 seconds after hearing about it to find the “Dr. James Beckett: Sports Card Insights” podcast and subscribe to it from the Google Podcasts application.  

Topic: Writing goal for 2021

My goal for 2021 is to actively work on some deeper writing projects. It might not end up being a big writing year, but it could and should be a very productive writing year. 

Topic: Articles I’m actively working on right now

1. Voting rate comparison between in person and mail ballot states
2. Polling accuracy across voting methods
3. Executive cross pollination from consulting groups
4. Polling methodology literature review
5. Political debt vs. technical debt
6. Machine learning model mesh confounding
7. A five week wine aroma training program
8. Synthetic data generation pitfalls

Topic: Thinking about getting a baritone guitar

My big guitar purchase plan for 2021 is to get a baritone guitar. The Chapman guitars team has created a few different models that look pretty good. One of them could very well end up being my new guitar purchase for 2021.

Something has to give with respect to my writing workload. Recently that workload has been so limited it is shockingly missing. Renewing my writing workload seems to be key to approaching 2021 in the right way. At the end of every day in 2021, I want to be able to look back and know that something meaningful was accomplished. That is what I’m thinking is the key element to be able to renew my workload and really have a big year writing high quality content and producing prose.

Moving forward in the face of apparent failure is always a hard choice to make. Sometimes you think success is approaching and maybe breaking down that one last wall will make it happen. 

My notes have been collected over the last few days, but they are really deep philosophically driven musings. For that reason, they are marinating until they can receive a tome of explanation. 

Topic: What is currently on my Temple Audio DUO 24 guitar pedalboard?

1. BOSS TU-3 Chromatic Tuner pedal
2. Walrus Audio Deep Six Compressor V3 pedal
3. EarthQuaker Devices Plumes Small Signal Shredder Overdrive pedal
4. Mr. Black ThunderClaw “Black Widow” Ltd. Ed. version Distortion pedal
5. EarthQuaker Devices Black Ash Endangered Fuzz Pedal
6. Buffalo FX Germanium Fuzz pedal
7. Walrus Audio Slö multi texture reverb pedal
8. Walrus Audio Fathom Multi-function Reverb Pedal 
9. Orange Terror Stamp 20 Watt Hybrid Guitar Amp Pedal
10. Walrus Audio Aetos (8-output) Power Supply

Figuring out what happened might be a task best reserved for the next day. Taking to the keyboard to work it out at the end of the day is the other way to go about that sort of endeavor. To that end it is very much the end of the night and I am deep in thought. Beyond those deep thoughts that just got mentioned, I’m sitting down to document what things were learned today. I spent some time learning about digital business models and I learned how to make two different cocktails: the layered holiday mule and the Manhattan. None of that was particularly new, but it was what received my attention today. Earlier this evening it had seemed like a good idea to register for and virtually attend via the power of Zoom the Stranahan’s Virtual Cocktail Class. That is where learning about the previously mentioned cocktails happened.

Squandered opportunities abounds. Really figuring out how to make every day a creative day takes a bit of magic or at least a magical amount of dedication. Counting on the spark of innovation to drive you forward is a strategy. It is not a very well engineered or consistent approach to moving forward. Innovation in the form of a spark of creativity does not show up on command. If that is your true superpower, then please don’t waste that highly uncommon and truly astounding gift.

One of the things that has caught my attention is finding a better method of sharing links and things in a curated fashion. Every day I read articles about machine learning and artificial intelligence. Most of the time I do not share that curated real time view of the world as I consume it and interact with the news stream. At one point, I made a sustained effort to post all of those links on Twitter, then that effort sort of slipped out of being important. Now I’m back to thinking about the process of ongoing link curation.

Throughout this weekend I’m going to be trying to avoid using my phone. I can remember back to a time before mobile phones. It was a simpler time. For context on that statement, 2020 has been a weird year. That time before mobile phones was about two decades ago. Phones even flipped open and using a cellular phone every day was not commonplace. So far today I have picked up my Google Pixel 5 smartphone three times. First, to silence an alarm that rudely woke me up so early on a Saturday morning. Second, to get the Google Authenticator code necessary to login to the website via 2FA. Third, to silence the backup alarm that went off while I was sitting at this desk. Beyond those three usages of my smartphone I’m trying to just leave it in the Pelican G40 case for the rest of the day. If for some reason that the phone actually rings today, then I’ll check it and manage my calls as necessary, but that is the only caveat to my set the phone down plan. Full disclosure: my text messages right now are shared to my browser so I can see if somebody sent me a text.

Topic: On sports trading cards

My purchases on eBay are sort of the bottom of the market for a few different things. Over the last few years I have bid on professionally autographed Kansas City Royals and Chiefs cards. Those are cards that were signed with a representative of a sports card corporation and officially part of the sports trading card. That is different from when somebody asks an athlete to sign something they just randomly had with them or something to that effect. These were signed in a controlled condition and are probably an authentic autograph. A few of my saved eBay searches show me about cards under $5 for those teams and I just scroll through them a couple of times a week. That is one of the ways I use my smartphone every week. Generally you see a lot of signed cards for players that are not the main stars. Those are the cards that fall into the category where I can make one low bid on them and see what happens. 

Topic: Thinking about television

Today I did watch the latest episode of The WAN Show from Linus Tech Tips.[1] During the course of starting my day it was a mildly pleasant technology show to have on in the background. Watching television in general was not a major part of American life until it was and then it represented a major time commitment for a lot of people. This month I paid for Google TV to be able to watch the myriad of Jayhawk basketball games. Outside of watching live sports we don’t really use the television for anything on a consistent basis. 

Topic: Buying some new t-shirts

Back in January of 2017 I replaced all of my t-shirts with Columbia performance cotton stretch V-Neck shirts via a series of online orders. Right now (still via online orders) I’m looking to replace those shifts with some new ones. This time around the search is going to be based on where the shirts are manufactured. My next set of primary daily wear shirts will be made in America. My first test run will be of one shirt each from Goodwear and from James Perse.[2][3] I still have one shirt from James Perse in the drawer that was purchased some time ago and is one size smaller than I can wear comfortably. I’m going to need to do a little bit of a trial before committing to buying 10 shirts from any one brand online. The shirts need to fit well, be comfortable, and be easy to maintain with regular washing. The last round of shirts have been worn about one time per week for three years or roughly 150 times per shirt. That is pretty heavy usage for any daily wear t-shirt. 

Topic: Uninterrupted time

It feels like in the past people got a lot more opportunity to work without interruption. Maybe I’m nostalgic about the prospect of uninterrupted time. Finding the time to really dig into problems and work in a deep way becomes harder and harder. Disruptions are everywhere. Distractions abound if you don’t try to keep them under control. The nature of this entire post is really about how smartphones and television have distracted people.

Footnotes:

[1] WAN Show December 4, 2020 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGY9hEVk_Bc 
[2] Goodwear adult short sleeve crew neck shirt https://www.goodwear.com/products/gt-2800?variant=23178447745 
[3] James Perse short sleeve v-neck shirt https://www.jamesperse.com/mens-short-sleeve-v-neck-mlj3352-100404?color=1931

My main computer at the moment runs inside a Corsair Air 740 case.[1] Today for some inexplicable reason on reboot from a Windows 10 update my Ubuntu drive booted. I’m not entirely sure how that happened. In the boot order for the drives set in the bios of the motherboard the Windows 10 drive is supposed to have priority. Today it appears on this black Friday day full of deals my Windows 10 drive did not have priority in the boot sequence. That was something that had to be fixed to get back to writing this post. 

Guitar related deals and computer hardware related deals are all over my advertisements and flooding my email inbox. A lot of merchants have wished me a Happy Thanksgiving via email and let me know that deals are happening right now. I have not purchased anything this week from any deals online. Nothing has really caught my fancy or compelled me to make a purchase this year. We pretty much finished up our shopping last month in preparation for a long winter of quarantine. 

Footnotes:
[1] My Corsair Air 740 was purchased back in January of 2018

Today started with snow in Denver. Yesterday I went ahead and put my rather custom Jackson Kelly guitar back in the basement. It had not been played in some time and needed to go back into storage. At the moment, I’m swapping mostly between the Chapman ML3 Bea and a custom Fender Deluxe stratocaster build. Both of those guitars sit here to my left ready to play at a moment’s notice. Actually turning on the amp and pedalboard is a lot more work. This morning I spent part (over an hour) of my day off watching a video about Klon overdrive pedals from JHS.[1] Right now at the moment my guitar pedal board consists of 8 pedals. None of those pedals is a Klon or a copy of that type of pedal. That works out just fine for me and my random ambient jamming at the moment. I did spend some type looking at Klon type pedals on the internet again. The one pedal that caught my attention some type ago was the Mjolnir from Mythos Pedals. It looked pretty good and people really seemed to like it. 

Footnotes:
[1] From JHS Pedals on YouTube, “LIVE: Everything You Need to Know About the Klon Centaur Overdrive,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ast9xQyTEU