2018: Day 71 the one with a 3rd graphics card
Word count 158,729 + 2,001 or 160,730 of 1,000,000
Dear Reader,
Well I’m not sure switching to Amazon Prime Music from the Amazon Unlimited Music services has affected me in any way. I guess it saved me a couple dollars per month. Yesterday I watched some videos from these folks that sail all over the world and post YouTube videos. They call their channel Sailing La Vagabonde. I’m pretty sure that they are not using any of the Amazon streaming music services. The thing that I wondered most about when watching a few of their videos was how they connected to the internet. I assume that it is possible to have a stable internet connection on the high seas. That probably involves a satellite connection and some type of interesting hardware. I spent about 30 minutes looking at different options for ocean going internet. Some of them seem to be both very slow and very expensive.
Earlier today I powered down my Storm Stryker custom computer build and installed a Radeon RX 560 graphics card. That means that the Radeon card can power my monitor and the two NVIDIA GTX 1060 cards can sell hashing power to NiceHash. I’m hoping that separating out my 4K graphics usage from my mining activities will help increase my selling power by just a little bit. Strangely enough it actually lowered the temperate on one of my GTX 1060 graphics cards. That car is sitting right under the Radeon card. Only running some basic 4K display content does not drive any real heat on that additional graphics card. That means that the fan for the card is pushing relatively cooler air at the bottom graphics card. That made me wonder when the NiceHash mining software was going to go back to supporting AMD cards without having to use the legacy version. It would probably be better to be mining using all 3 cards and maybe now would be a good time to install the legacy NiceHash mining software. I would imagine it would have to be faster than the current card configuration. Mining with 3 graphics cards would have to be better than mining with 2 graphics cards.
Having a sweet three graphics card setup in my main Storm Stryker computer build is exciting. My MSI Afterburner software is setup and I’m tweaking things to have the temperature set up correctly for the case. The one thing that I have learned about mining cryptocurrency is that heat is the byproduct. John Oliver made some interesting arguments this week about mining cryptocurrency and equated buying coins with gambling. I would argue that blockchain really is an interesting technology. Bitcoin and all of the alternative coins utilize the blockchain technology. At some point, people really will use blockchain to keep track of things in a decentralized way. Most of the cryptocurrency coins that exist today have no real reason to exist. To that end you can probably equate buying cryptocurrency on the markets with gambling. I have made similar arguments and so has Warren Buffett. My arguments have been based on bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies being a bubble.
My 100 day mining effort has basically paid for itself. Using the NiceHash mining software to sell hashing power has been really easy. They pay me in bitcoin and I have kept all of it. The reason I have kept all of it is pure speculation at this point. I keep thinking that bitcoin will have another spike and that maybe at that point I’ll sell. Now my collection of turtle coins is entirely different. I just like them. The value they hold is entirely based on my happiness related to having them. I’m not sure John Oliver accounted for the excitement that most hobbyist miners get from going after aleternive coins. My investment in mining involved a graphics card purchase and some electricity. I don’t really consider that to be gambling. Maybe the easiest thing to do would be to call it an entertainment expense. Outside of that I might make a few arguments about how it is for purely research purposes. I did it for science. Science can be fun and full of adventure I assume based on the right research design.
Topic 1: Thinking about word counts
All things being equal is looks like I produce about 2,000 words per day in a blog format. Trying to sustain 3,000 words per day has been problematic. Writing 2,000 words per day every day of the year would produce a weighty tome full of 730,000 words. That would be far short of 1,000,000 words, but it would still be a pretty big writing year. I’m guessing that on new years eve I will be somewhere between 730,000 and 1,000,000 words published on this blog. At this point, I think getting to the 800,000 word mark would be a pretty big accomplishment. Sure —- I’m rationalizing failure at this point. Missing the target would be missing the target. I will give it my absolute best effort and I think no matter what happens I will achieve my main goal from this writing journey. I want to get passed the first layer of thought and push way deeper into the very fabric of my thoughts via stream of consciousness writing. That is pretty much about getting to the next level as a writer, as a thinker, and ultimately as a creator.
Ultimately that is the point of this whole writing experiment. It is about moving passed all the basic mundane thoughts that march around taking up space and break through to something objectively more meaningful. That means you have to wade through a ton of nonsense to get to the true heart of this inquiry. Sure at the end of this writing experiment you could just pick up the coffee table book and open to a random page somewhere in the middle to figure out if things progressed. That would be one way to go about. Right now I’m about halfway to the minimum writing target of 2,000 words for the day. I thought things were a lot further along tonight. Maybe it just felt that way. I’m going to need to pick some better topics to write about or maybe I’ll just need to really dig in and write a higher volume of words about each moment happening during the journey.
Topic 2: Approaching Wind Tower: A short story
Pathways can lead in many directions. Every moment on that road was leading up to something magical. It was going to be one of those days. They knew that the moments in front of them would be meaningful. A measure of excitement grew well beyond words as the roadway turned from pavement to dirt. Things even smell a little different on a dirt road. The smoothness of the city gives way to dips and shaking ruts of the roadway. Every day the weather changes those roads. Even the dirt being kicked up was enough to shake the senses. Driving a truck has been the way to go for this trip, but maybe a motorcycle would have brought the world around them even closer. This was one of those trips where having the right equipment was going to make all the difference.
Picking the right harness is really a point of personal preference balanced with safety. Every carabiner clipped to that harness has a point. Climbing would be the best part of the adventure. Driving toward the mountains was exciting. Driving on old dirt roads was enough to spark the imagination, but it was nothing like being clipped to an unforgiving rock face that challenged everyone. It was like a vertical work of ant. Only a trained eye could see the path lurking just behind the majestic beauty of that rock face. The trunk was holding the keys to that pathway. All that equipment had been carefully packed and checked. It was the difference between a successful climb and a disappointing journey. That was how things were shaking up. The drive alone had taken the better part of the day. Every one of those miles would be less memorable compared to that last mile of dirt road that brought people into the park.
Parking opened the door to anticipation of an adventure that was about to happen. You can start to feel the wind after getting outside of the car. You forget sometimes when driving just how much a little bit of wind can change things. It can pull moisture right out of that rock. It can rob you of any warmth and remind you of just how cold and unforgiving a rock face can be. Every bit of the equipment was read and packed in the right way. A helmet was in order this time. The park was known for having some gravel runs during a climb. It could be the wind or somebody else that set that stone free, but a helmet would make all the difference. Shoes really do make a huge word of difference during a chilling climb. That feeling of learning into the rock as your shoe grips a rock face that has been around longer than anybody you know really does put things in perspective.
It was just a few thousand feet from the parking spot to the base. You may have figured out that Wind Tower only offered technical rock climbing access. This was not a trailhead or a place to approach without specific intentions. Those intentions had to be geared toward making a reasoned and prepared climb. That was the reason for getting in the car. It was the reason for packing up all the gear. Being prepared was every bit as necessary has having the will to start that first upward reach. Ropes and gear never feel heavy at the start of a climb. Somehow that sense of adventure makes them just a little easier to manage.
Topic 3: Rounding out the night
Sure my short story writing skills are not really improving. That is something that I need to spend some time working on improving. That is one of those things that you just have to jump into and make the most of the motivation and the passion that you have. I’ll have to work on focusing in on penning a few more short stories to really shake off the rust that appears to have manifested. If the name of the game was producing stilted and disjointed prose, then that would be my short story game at the moment. For some reason right now my thoughts just shifted to eating some really good french fries. That is really the only thought left linger in the forefront of my consideration tonight. I’m sure that means I’m hungry and french fries are my specific food hunger for the night. Normally that distinction falls to the humble onion ring. I totally get how and why Lorde was reviewing onion rings on Instagram. Sadly that account was shut down. My Instagram account still exists and is full of pictures of food. That is where I have elected to post food photography. That is not something that I need to do or have to do. It is something that I elect to do.
Maybe tomorrow will be a good day for writing. It could be a good day for writing. Inspiration might strike. Maybe I will be able to focus in and produce an epic short story or some type. Writing a short story a day might just be the way to improve my skills. It probably would not hurt things. Today was one of those days where the first part of this blog post was much easier to write than the last section. That is probably a reflection of my motivation and passion on the subjects being addressed. I pick the subjects so that is entirely my fault. I will work on doing better tomorrow. That should be easy enough to accomplish.
Dr. Nels Lindahl
Broomfield, Colorado
Written on my Storm Stryker PC and or my ASUS C101P using Google Docs
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