Update: This is the second time I’ve had to repost something lately. Either WordPress has a glitch or I’m consistently doing something wrong.

We’re taking another swing at the red-hot Louisville housing market. We made an offer on the nice little Crescent Hill place seen below. We’ll know tomorrow night if we swung and missed, or cleared the fence. Wish us luck.

It’s 6am on the Big Island, 9am in Socal and noon in Louisville. Each morning this trip I’ve enjoyed a cup of coffee (OK, several cups) and sitting with my laptop looking out over the ocean. There’s always a flock of small birds flitting about, hoping that a human will lead to seeds or bread crumbs. With the waves crashing against the lava only a few yards away, it’s incredibly peaceful. Here’s the view from my seat this morning. I could get used to this.

During a drive south we discovered a tiny public beach yesterday, not too far from our condo. It’s in an ultra-rich development called Hokulia. Million dollar lots and eight million dollar custom homes. Plus a Nicklaus-designed golf course. Turns out that to get the rights to develop 1300 acres of pristine Kona mountainside and coastline, they had to provide public shore access. So we took advantage of that, drove through all that luxury and walked about a quarter of a mile on a rough trail through lava to find a perfect little cove with bright turquoise water. Ppictures of that are on the Fuji, so will add them later.

We finished off the day with an absolutely perfect meal at Huggo’s. We got there at their 4pm opening, so we got our choice of seats. (They don’t take reservations; it’s first-come, first-served, which I find to be a very civilized way of doing business.) We chose a couch-style seat right on the railing, looking directly at what would be a beautiful sunset. The food and wine were excellent – Huggo’s is a new favorite. Here’s the sunset we were gifted at the end of our stay.

All in all, a great day.

USAToday has a great headline today, one that speaks for itself:

“Senators swore to support America, not the filibuster.  Kill it to save the January 6 commission.  —  If Republicans filibuster the January 6 commission, they’re joining Trump’s insurrection.  Will Democrats choose democracy or a rule that undermines it?”

They’ve got it right. Democrats need to push as hard as they can to get the work of governing done, within the rules, and ignore the foot-dragging, hypocritical moves of Republicans. On budgets (getting money to the parts of America that need it) and on investigating the insurrection, put the pedal to the metal. Leave the Republicans behind and let them whine. Until they remove the cancer that is/was Trump from their party, they don’t deserve a seat at the adult table.

I’ve had a lot of fun the last couple of days watching Phil Mickelson chasing the PGA Championship at Kiawah Island’s Ocean Course. Looks like he’s going to win and become the oldest golf major championship winner ever at age 50 (almost 51). Good for him!

I played that course a long time ago, maybe 1996, and I remember it being the hardest golf course ever. Still looks that way. Sand, tall thick seagrass, wind and alligators.

I updated my Bad News post about some very sick friends in MN. Had some inaccurate information and have corrected it. It’s still bad news, but at least one of the friends is making some progress fighting his cancer.

We had an all-time record low temperature for this date last night – 49 degrees. Those of you who live through frozen winters will sneer at that, but it was cold with the windows open.

That got me thinking about the weather, and it doesn’t look good for Socal. Here in Fallbrook we’ve received only 6.9 inches of rain so far, in the period from July 1 2020 to now. We’re unlikely to get any more through the end of June, and 6.9 inches would be the lowest annual rainfall since the 2006-2007 period. And the fall of 2007 is when San Diego County burned down, including areas right next to our house. So….not good.

And this brings me back to our damnable, cursed, almost-finished fire protection system. Right after Hawaii, it’ll be time (past time) to get that thing working.

Hmmm, had some trouble posting this. Trying again.

We saw some gorgeous spring flowers during our Louisville trip last week. Really all over, but especially at Yew Dell Gardens and Whitehall.

Here are a few of my favorites. First a peony close-up.

Next, some stunning purple irises.

Here’s a local artist at work in the Whitehall gardens.

And here’s a young climbing grandson.

And finally, some well-lit irises.

There are many, many more, but these are a good sample.

This is the first post written on my new Macbook Air. My 2016 Macbook Pro needs repair – the batteries and keyboard need to be replaced, and that takes ~10 days in the shop. So I bought a technological upgrade with a very different feel so that I can stay online while the Pro gets fixed.

The Air feels *very* different. It’s tiny. Feels like a toy computer compared to the beefier Pro. But it’s a tiny powerhouse – probably 2-3x the computing power of the Pro (Air uses the new Apple M1 silicon), and 4x solid state storage. I have 1 terabyte of SSD in the tiny Air, which is astounding to an old techie like me. All the computer storage in the world didn’t add up to 1 TB when I started in technology (not an exaggeration, all in the world), and now it’s cheap and common in a two pound laptop. Crazy.

The Air’s display is bright and sharp, with 2560×1600 pixels crammed into a 13 inch display. But not noticeably better than the 2016 Pro’s display.

The keyboard has a different feel, but the so-called “Magic Keyboard” gets great reviews, so I’ll get used to it. It has exactly the same width and spacing as on the larger Pro.

The Air should be a perfect traveling computer – small, light, but powerful. Its first trip will be to Hawaii, coming up Real Soon Now.

I’m tempted to buy some Bitcoin this week, after its “value” dropped 30%. It would be a highly speculative investment, as the future of Bitcoin and all cryptocurrency ranges from world-changing boom to spectacular bust. I tell anyone who asks me about investing in Bitcoin to be ready to lose it all, fast. Or you could make a million. It’s that volatile and uncertain.

I’ve been conflicted about the whole cryptocurrency phenomenon for a couple of years. I understand the basic technology underneath cryptocurrency – blockchain – and it’s a solid technical foundation. Blockchain is a useful, provable foundation for distributed data – it works.

Most cryptocurrencies, including the most famous, Bitcoin, are based on blockchain. So that’s not the part that conflicts me. Much more complex is how value is ascribed to a coin. This leads us into the very hard to grasp territory of nation states versus corporations, exchange rates, national economies and fiat currencies.

Bitcoin and the US dollar have one big thing in common – they are both fiat currencies. That is, their value is based on faith in their issuer – faith that the coin or dollar will always be honored as a way to buy things, and that the issuer will always be around to back the transaction. Fiat currencies have no hard basis behind them, such as a guaranteed amount of gold for all the currency in circulation – the “gold standard” which the US removed in 1971.

So why is a paper dollar worth anything? Only because the holders – buyers and sellers of physical goods – are sure that the US is going to be around a while and that the US economy is strong enough to keep the value of that dollar stable. And that enough people and companies share that belief to make the dollar very liquid – it has value in almost any financial transaction. That’s it – belief and faith give the dollar value, stability and liquidity.

With Bitcoin, the answer is the same – sort of. There is no government, no nation-state, that issues a Bitcoin. A mysterious group of technologists created Bitcoin in 2008 as an alternative currency based on blockchain. Over the past 13 years enough people have “invested” in Bitcoin to create a measure of liquidity – there are enough buyers and sellers to create a market. Also, in the last 3-4 years, issuers of traditional nation-state currencies (like the USD) have established exchange rates for Bitcoin, allowing BTC investors to exchange their coins for dollars.

This is when I began to take Bitcoin a lot more seriously. If I can exchange one fiat currency for another, that’s real liquidity. At this point, the only difference between the USD and BTC is volatility, or stability. The USD’s value is relatively stable, whereas BTC is wildly volatile.

Remember, for both currencies, value is based on faith. Faith that the issuer will continue to exist and continue to honor transactions involving the currency.

So how much faith do I have that the open-market, decentralized “issuer” of Bitcoins – the online distributed blockchain itself – will retain the characteristics of stability and liquidity? The answer is some faith in the short term and little to no faith in the long term. My best bet is that the technology behind BTC will be adopted and subsumed by nation states, and fiat currencies issued by nations will continue to have the most stability and liquidity. That some nation’s currency – ours, China’s, Europe’s, etc. – will continue to be the baseline currency for world markets and that cryptocurrencies will be adopted by marginal groups performing transactions they would like to keep secret (e.g. criminals, secret societies, gangs, some corporations) and then converting (laundering) their crypto holdings by exchanging it for traditional nation-state currency at convenient times.

Nation-states will carefully manage and regulate the exchange rates between their currency and cryptocurrencies. The hope (faith) of current BTC advocates is that Bitcoin can replace the USD as the international currency baseline, but my bet is on the nation-states. Crypto will remain a volatile, second-tier currency with a useful (though probably distasteful) role in economies.

In the meantime, I’m watching the value of BTC closely. If it takes another short term dip, I’ll buy a little. It’s a bit like making a bet on a decent poker hand. Your short term odds of making some money are good, but you have to know when to cash out your chips (BTCs) and walk away with some dollars.

(Updated with more accurate information, 5/23/21.)

Just heard that two old friends are fighting for their lives. One is a close friend’s father who has been diagnosed with nasopharyngeal cancer, and at age 82 his odds are not good. We’ve played hundreds of rounds of golf together over the years – he’s a great guy. He’s been on a ventilator, but just got that removed. I hope he’s strong enough to deal with the treatments he may be offered.

The other is a friend I met at SAIC years ago, a brilliant guy who has stayed in my professional orbit (or mine in his?) for over 25 years. We have a common close friend, the one whose father is also sick, so we’ve stayed in touch socially over the last decade – dinner parties, holidays and such. He moved to Minnesota about a year ago to be close to family, but as of today he’s on his second or third round of treatments for a cancer that has invaded his abdomen, after starting as a melanoma on his leg. He has some short term good news on an experimental treatment, but the long term prognosis is…iffy. Damn…life is fragile. And short.

I don’t believe in an interventionist god or God, so I won’t be a hypocrite and say anything about prayers. But times like this I understand the need to ask for help from a higher power, because for all our technological advancements, we’re still helpless toward the end. All I can do is hope for a good outcome for each of my friends and keep them “alive” in my memories. Hang in there, guys.

We’re staying at an AirBnB in Louisville. We’ve had mixed experiences with that housing mode over the years, but this one is bad. So far here’s the gripe list:

• Wifi signal too weak to reach the Roku attached to the TV.
• Bad bed.
• Tiny bathroom with toilet wedged against a radiator (?!). Awkward, to say the least.
• Lots of road noise.
• Radiator heat that won’t turn off. No thermostat, no access to heat controls. So the place stays insufferably hot.

We’ve contacted the owners multiple times about the heat, and it gets turned down for an afternoon, but then the next morning it’s back on.

So I’ve had it. Next visit we’ll be staying in our own place, even if it’s in sleeping bags.

The other lesson to be learned here is that there really are no bargains on something like AirBnB. If a place is cheaper than others, and/or if it has a great cancellation policy like this one, there’s a reason. I didn’t see any of my complaints in the reviews, but I’ll do my best to get them published after we’re gone.

A plumber came over this morning and gave me a quote for an outdoor valve job that I didn’t want to tackle. It was delicate and had a combo of brass and PVC parts, plus was something we just couldn’t screw up (pool fill valve). Not a big job, but I wanted it done right. I expected him to charge between $100-200, and his quote was $850! I was shocked and politely sent him away, after paying the mandatory $49 service fee.

Two hours later (and one of those hours was going to the hardware store), I have the damn thing fixed. Parts were $40. Their profit on my job, had I not been able to do it myself, would have been at least $750 – less than $40 for the parts and probably 30 minutes for a “professional” to do the work I took an hour to do.

750% profit on a 30-60 minute small job, all in. How do they stay in business with prices like that?

Mitch McConnell is on record recently saying something I’m having a hard time with. During an interview this week he said, “One hundred percent of my focus is on stopping this new administration.” Really? That’s your priority, your big idea? In that case I have a few questions for you.

Senator McConnell, the new administration has rolled out the COVID vaccine with remarkable efficiency. The United States is now #1 in getting its citizens immunized. Do you intend to try and stop that?

Senator, the US economy is now on a growth trend that would see 15-16% GDP growth in 2021, largely thanks to the Fed’s management of money supply and the injection of stimulus cash into the economy. Why would you want to stop that growth?

Er, Senator, approximately 2% of the Biden administration’s COVID relief package will go into KY citizen’s pockets, based on population. That’s $40 billion dollars benefiting KY. Are you intent on stopping that? And what will Kentuckians think when they don’t receive the relief they were counting on?

And finally Senator, the Biden administration is getting our soldiers out of Afghanistan after twenty years of heartbreaking, useless fighting. The last four Presidents have tried, but Biden is doing it. Would you like to keep our soldiers in Afghanistan? Why?

I could go on, but you get the idea. I surely hated Trump, but McConnell was and is a close second. We have a radical conservative Supreme Court because McConnell broke all norms and twisted the law to take power that wasn’t rightfully his. Reforming the Senate with term limits is my #1 wish for fixing the US government – McConnell’s power is an aberration that we should not let happen again.

Update: Just one day after I wrote this, Digby says pretty much the same thing about The Gravedigger.

I hit two or three milestones yesterday that are worth celebrating:

• I moved from “part time” (2-3 days/week) on my quantum computing project to “very part time” (2-3 hours per week). While I really like the project, I also like being mostly retired.
• I finished work on a big proposal for my other company. Even more time back in the retired column.
• I forced myself to get out of the house in order to start a series of Monday golf lessons. It felt great.

All along I planned that the unretirement, begun in January, would be temporary. And now it’s here. Time for a nap.