Tesla moment

So I was walking through the parking lot  after buying some stuff at Staples, and as I came round to the back of my car to open the hatch a guy in a black Tesla stopped and looked at me. We made eye contact and my mind was whirring trying to figure out if I knew him and that was why he had stopped. He looked kind of like my old colleague Steve (who lives in Providence) or this guy Jerry from out at Graham's martial arts studio, but of course it wasn't either of them.

It dawned on me that he had stopped because he had seen me and wasn't sure I had heard him. I may or may not have, but it didn't matter because I knew I was stopping to put things in the back of my car, but he had no clue.

I'm pretty sure that's what went down there. It was very considerate of him to stop. He pulled forward, and it was done.

Day in the yard

Despite a lingering cough which -- due to all the cancer circling around me (my cousin Martin, Kevin's mom, Neah Jo's boy...) -- I was momentarily inclined to put down to incipient lung cancer, I heeded the prediction of rain for tomorrow, manned up, and headed out into the yard. Where I did a lot of stuff.

Got the leaves off the roof, the season's second tranche, a big one. Looking up at the trees above I see I'll need to go back up there one more time, but there shouldn't be too much work next time. While I was up there a jackass a couple of houses up was making a bunch of noise with his gas-powered blower, which promised to mess with the equanimity of my day, but eventually did not, as he turned the thing off soon thereafter.

After that I took care of the patio and the deck, then ventured out into the back yard, where I did a lot. While there I generated and stacked a lot of kindling, and realized that I really needed to get Mary's gardening stuff out of the porch so I could put wood there, so I got onto that (after spending 15 minutes or so in the biggest of the leaf piles checking out the sky). But when I got the stuff to the basement I realized that the place was an unholy mess, so I straightened it up, and in the course of so doing took a bunch of stuff out of there to the trash and recycling. And I carried the fireplace stuff up and stuck it on the porch. Then I moved wood from the wood pile, and kindling from one of the two backyard kindling stashes.

Then I noticed Natalie had left in the Subaru, so I raked up the driveway. Naturally, spending that much time in the yard, I talked to a bunch of neighbors, and had a lovely visit from Scott and Olga's golden retriever Phoebe, one of my very best friends.

After about 5 hours in the yard, walking up and down the hill a bunch, my calves are tired as hell. It is about time to head to my mom's to eat leftovers. All told, not bad.

A proper Thanksgiving

After north of a week, I am still fighting off this cold: light symptoms, not overwhelming, but still there. A battle rages within me, whether to act like it isn't happening, in traditional guy way, or to embrace it and milk it for every moment of rest it opens the door to.

For the most part, I've been doing the former, but with Mary out in the yard raking and the leaves pouring down like snow and a large feast approaching this evening, the pressure is mounting. I think I need to cede to it and get out there and join the autumnal Sisyphean ritual, for whatever the reason is that we do it. Mostly, it makes her happy.

By now it is late enough in the morning that I think I've got to cave. I have, in any case, pushed past the halfway point in the Naipaul novel, which has been a little on the slow side but interesting in its own way. Enough procrastinating.

Relief

It appears that I have neglected to check in on something that has been weighing upon us a little, namely some struggles Graham has been having recently in a couple of classes. He's had some crappy test grades, which gave him Bs in the first quarter.

Now you could genuinely object: "big freaking deal, Bs aren't such bad grades", and I would hear you if you did. But Graham is an exceptionally smart boy, and one who has some specific challenges associated with his autism. The social challenges are the biggest ones. He's got a friend, a really good kid, but one who is so popular I think he gets distracted from his classes, who is having much more profound academic challenges, but he's a kid who will always do fine because he is exceptionally personable and has some bonus good features on top of that.

Graham is also a very nice boy, but he doesn't have the same effortless social grace and charisma that will lift his friend's boat in stormy seas. Graham needs to work with what he's got, which is raw brainpower. And he needs to learn to appreciate, cultivate and channel it.

I will spare you all the specific details around his math class, some of the questionable characteristics of his teacher, etc. It's a long story. We had been waiting for a grade on a math test to come back for a few weeks now, longer than was reasonable, let's leave it at that. His grade came back, and it was OK, better than we feared. We'll take it and keep plugging.

Paper Boy

One thing I keyed upon in T. Boone Pickens' autobiography was his description of his paper route, which hearkened back to the bios of Warren Buffett (The Snowball) and the autobio of Edward Thorp, the guy who while a math professor developed the system of card-counting that eventually made casinos change their models, before he want on to found Princeton-Newport Partners and become an early instance of the academic crossover to Wall Street and a quant who made a bunch of money.

The paper route, for all of these guys, was a place where they learned focus and work ethic as well as process optimization. That is, they all worked hard to figure out systems that let them do a little bit more with their time.

At the same time, a reader has to wonder about the extent to which this paper route story is really true, and the extent to which it becomes part of the mythology of the self-made man. I certainly don't doubt that all these guys delivered papers, that's no doubt true, and I'm also willing to believe that they worked really hard while doing so and learned valuable lessons. But the narrative that "I have worked hard from a very young age and have always striven to improve myself and that's why I'm super rich [and you're not]" can be a little bit self-serving.

But not all of them add in or accentuate the "and you're not" note. Buffett's dedication to the Giving Pledge is clear, Pickens gave hundreds of millions of dollars to Oklahoma St (overweighting athletics more than I'd like). I'm not sure about what Thorp has given money to, but he is just super cool. I just read this interview https://www.barrons.com/articles/why-edward-thorp-only-owns-berkshire-hathaway-1521547200 which makes me want to read more.

Golden Day

Last night's sore throat didn't disappear overnight, so I stayed in bed pretty much all day and read. First I polished off the T Boone Pickens auto-bio I had found somewhere in a thrift store or something. Or maybe it had belonged to Mary's dad. Not a great book, but I learned a bit about the oil business and something about the golden days of raiders and how the emergence of junk bonds helped them shake up staid and complacent board rooms. All told some complex stuff -- and Boone is a complex figure, particularly his role in the whole Swift Boat episode a couple of decades later -- but corporate activism of this sort has a role in the investment ecosystem.

Then, chicken tortilla soup from Monterrey Tacos and Burritos -- my sick day staple. Good stuff. After lunch, I lay in bed and looked out at the golden leaves in the backyard, and I actually fell asleep for an hour, something that doesn't always happen on days when I spend a lot of time in bed.

After napping, I got started on VS Naipaul's A House for Mr Biswas, which had been in the to be read stack for a long time. So far so good.

Meanwhile, in impeachment land, Mary swore it was a good day, and the liberal chatosphere seems to agree, but the numbers over at 538 seem to be moving towards impeachment fatigue in the genpop. And if the genpop doesn't swing, you damn sure know the Republican Senate ain't goin nowhere.

But it is inspiring in its way to watch the proceedings in snippets, to watch these non-descript, earnest career civil servants come forward and act professionally, as they have their whole careers. "The Swamp." The Trumposphere seems not to grasp that all these educated people could have gone out into the private sector and made a whole lot more money, but they chose to work in government and serve the common good, and now they get reamed for it by a bunch of fuckwits.

Intimations of mortality

Got the news yesterday that a cousin of mine has pancreatic cancer. This on top of news that one brother-in-law's mother no longer wants to live, while another's has gone into hospice after being told by doctors that she has a very short time period left, after battling cancer for a while.

Some months ago, I had gone to visit my dad's sister out in the country. She didn't know who I was, though looking at me she thought I was my dad for a second and then referenced her own dad, so she clearly at some level knew I was not just kin, but a Troy male.

In any case, all this mortality is kind of snowballing on me a little, making me focus on my priorities a little. Right now, that means shaving, showering, brushing teeth, and getting to the office.

Rent seeking as taxation without representation

Two stories on the front page of the Journal today point in the same direction:

• Google amasses millions of health records and 
• Amazon does a bad job policing fraudulent Chinese vendors

The common thread is of the tech giants basically needing to police themselves. The Google project as currently constituted apparently complies with HIPAA, that's all fine and well. But given lapses in recent years over the protection of consumer data by the giants, can we trust Google to keep the data secure? Because, in the absence of a physical presence by an actual US Federal regulator on the premises (which exist at the big banks) with robust access to more or less everything, that's what we have to do.

Similarly, Amazon has a gajillion Chinese sellers, some of whom are selling fake crap. Amazon has to police them itself, because as the swamp is being drained, the government is ever less able to. But the only reason Amazon should really police this stuff is to protect its brand. But really, it should.

So the tech giants' rent-seeking behavior, because they are essentially tasked with a regulatory function (policing their own and their partners' potential misbehavior), insofar as they take money out of consumer pockets without offering us a voice at the table (aside from Bezos' famous empty chair for the customer), begins to look and feel a lot like taxation without representation.

Said the guy typing onto a Google-owned blogging platform, before getting into his car to listen to a book on an Amazon one. Sigh.

An aside. Thank God for the papers of record and their own role in the regulatory/control equation. The Journal continues to do great investigative reporting, even though I don't agree with much of what its Op-Ed team puts out. The Times and the Post do too, though admittedly their own captivity to the political leanings of their core audiences led them into at times insufficiently circumspect coverage of various Trump scandals. The LA Times, the Boston Post, shit, Teen Vogue has had some important stories. And then there's The Economist. As the government abnegates its regulatory responsibility, we are increasingly dependent on the fifth estate.

It would be interesting to have a look at the Post's coverage of Amazon. How many critical stories has it broken? Certainly I can attest that the Journal has acquitted itself well in certain stories like Theranos: when Rupert Murdoch, having invested $100 million in the company, was lobbied by CEO Elizabeth Holmes to stop John Carreyrou, the Journal writer whose investigative reporting eventually brought the company down, to stop investigating. Murdoch demurred, saying that he didn't get involved in editorial decisions, and that they were doing their jobs. He eventually sold his stock back to Theranos for $1 and booked a loss. Then again, the Journal rarely writes coverage critical of Fox News (or the Times or the Post, for that matter)

So it is up to us to watch the Watchmen.

Phoneless

Graham and I hustled out to the high school at 6:30 this morning to put him on the bus for the big trip to DC that is something of a rite of passage for ECHHS sophomores. He'll be back late Tuesday night. I told him to text us as he got close, which he promised to do, and then hopped on the bus. I said: "You've got your phone, right?" "Of course," he responded.

Then, 30 seconds or so later, he appeared from the bus again. "Actually, I forgot my phone." Since everybody else on the bus had a phone, including our neighbor Tyler, with whom he is rooming, I just slapped him on the shoulder and said "it'll be good for you," and shooed him back up the staircase.

Whether it is also good for us, his parents, is another matter. Although we know that not being in touch with one's kids 24/7/365 was the case since the dawn of time until just a few years ago, we are still used to it. He will be fine, and we probably will be too. But still.

How I got bit by a dog

It occurred to me that I had not recorded this episode for posterity, so I had better do so. So two weeks ago I was out running, and there was this youngish lady hanging out at the bottom of a driveway with what turned out to be an old hippy in black leather pants. This being Chapel Hill. And she had a dog. On a leash. Now, many people walk their dogs on this stretch of road, and they are invariably friendly, so I don't always take evasive action, and I didn't this time. The dog, a hound, whose name turned out to be Hunter, starts jumping at me, and I figure he's being friendly and wants a pet. But no, he's a tad hungry, as is apparent when he bites me in my bicep. A little nip, but still, a bite.

The adrenalin started firing in me, and I yell out "he fucking bit me!" She pulls him back, but she's freaked out by my aggression, and starts crying. So I apologize for cursing, she says it's not her dog. I get the name of the owner and jog on home, pissed off that my evening was going to be blown.

You see, Mary was headed out to dinner with some friends, and I had plans to get Mexican take out and watch The Sopranos with Graham, but now I see my evening disappearing down the drain of the emergency room. I was pissed.

At any rate, turned out OK. I went to the FastMed place up on the corner, where we checked that I had had a recent tetanus shot, the RN or PA attending gave me a scrip for an antibiotic and told me to expect bruising, and our evening came out OK.

Somewhere in there I had tracked down the owner who was shocked that Hunter had bit me (as had been the neighbor from whom I had gotten his number), but he wasn't sure that all his shots were up to date because the vet was closed.

The next day I'm sitting out on the porch reading, when my phone rings, and it's the dog owner. "Hello," I said. And he says: "I just wanted to let you know that Hunter's OK." And I'm thinking: what a relief! I was so concerned that somehow nibbling on my arm had harmed his teeth. Turned out, he meant that Hunter didn't have rabies. "Awesome," I said, and we were more or less done.

Unless I get a bill for hundreds of dollars from the FastMed. Then he'll be hearing from me.

Advisor as doctor, but we are all our own physicians...

A few months back I alluded to the fact that I see the financial advisor/planner as being a lot like a general practitioner physician: we are generalists trying to give sensible guidance on a wide array of financial topics in people's lives, ultimately referring out a lot of things (taxes, legal, etc) to other professionals. Those who try to be all things not just to all people but to any one person quickly run up against the limits of their own capacities.

In the last week or so, after getting bit by a dog (it appears I forgot to write about that, not a big deal, but there were some humorous moments) and then going to meet my new main doc and getting some bloodwork done, it was really brought home to me how true it is in this day and age that we are all our own physicians. Doctors are there to watch for things getting out of whack, to interpret blood tests and other little vitals to let us know when aging and other processes are catching up to us, and to help us do the right things in times of crisis. But mostly they are coaches who steer us towards healthy practices to slow the advance of chronic conditions to which we are all subject by modern living. They counsel exercise, decent eating, stress management, sleep, community etc. They don't have time to do much else when the clock allocates 18 minutes per appointment.

And so it is with finance. Those of us who counsel others are very limited in our span of control or influence. We can try to model, illustrate, and instill practices that will benefit people in the long run, but we can't force anyone to do anything, except for the things we have in our direct control, typically investments. Which are important but only become a dominant part of most people's financial lives relatively late in the game, when they are in their mid-to-late 50s and later. Up until then it's so much more about forecasting future needs, saving, spending, being tax-conscious, and not making crazy mistakes in investing by stretching too far for big wins. And covering one's bases with insurance.

The problem is all of this stuff is boring, complex, not sexy, it all involves a high level of abstraction and deferral of gratification. Rare is the person who enjoys these things. So our job is to continually nudge others in a sensible direction, step by plodding step.

This is also ultimately the limiting factor in the business of robo-advisors and other platforms that deliver advice over screens. They are competing for peoples' attention with cat videos, sitcoms, social networks, and the whole panoply of distractions that draw people away from domains that alternately make their eyes glaze over and elicit fear. Robo-advisors can undoubtedly provide good services and help many, particularly younger folks, but as life gets more complicated and children, dollar figures, and risks get bigger, many people need more granular listening and nudging from actual human beings.

For us as providers, as for doctors, the constant struggle is scaling, division of labor, and time management to do this well. Speaking of, gotta hop.

Adventures in the state for lovers

Woke up this morning at 9, then discovered it was 8. Somehow I had not gotten the memo that it was time to shift out of daylight saving mode, which is not surprising since I have dramatically limited the amount of time on Facebook and listening to NPR, to keep the Trump infection down and to focus on the long view as much as possible.

Long weekend already, since we drove up to Newport News for a robotics competition Friday evening and then back again yesterday. On each night we failed to reach our destination before 10:30. I will spare you the details, except to caution against stopping at Big Pig BBQ in Stony Creek, VA if you are in any sort of a hurry. The Q was fine, but it took 35 minutes to make some fries, 5 Q sandwiches and 2 BLTs, which is just absurd. Particularly since the woman in front was just sitting around. You would have thought the cook might have called her in to help.

But I digress. On Friday we stopped at Five Guys, where we didn't know there were no chicken options. Mary, being a woman of firm beliefs and resolve, was not going to eat beef in a place like that, so she had a very disappointing veggie sandwich, and when we got to our hotel, an Embassy Suites near the Hampton Convention Center, she was starving. The hotel was, moreover, swamped by an anime convention and -- this being the day after Halloween -- there were lots of guy and gal geeks swarming around in silly costurmes a little bit tipsy. She went to the hotel bar to get some food, I went to bed.

She took a while to come up, and, while I knew that getting food would take a while, I also thought to myself: "I wonder if someone is hitting on her." Sure enough, she comes back up after 45 minutes or so with tales of scarcely edible dumplings and an African-American military guy in his 40s who had struck up a conversation with her. He was, he told her, something of a regular there, "because it's quiet." Hmmm. He also asked her questions like "What are your plans for the evening?" Mary did mention words like "son's robotics convention" and "husband" but he never 100% seems to have given up until she left.

She seems to have enjoyed it a little. Of course. It is always nice to have outside confirmation that you are attractive. She also learned a little about DOD procurement but couldn't get a firm statement from him about what he thinks about asswipe up in the White House.

Knocked off course

As so often, I launched my laptop with the intent of doing something, then saw something in an inbox (in this case Facebook's) that distracted me and I forgot what I was going to do. Which happens when walking around the house all the time too, of course, but the laptop and the web are particular dangers because there are so many potential distractors there. Particularly in the morning when I look at the S&P futures and there are all these stories there on Bloomberg begging to be read. Thank God I don't have a Bloomberg login and am limited in the number of stories I can read, or I could be there all day.

But the main thing that protects me from all of that is my task list and my routine, which in the morning is to read certain things in a certain order while sitting in certain places, consciously protecting myself from specific influences as I open to the world for the day. As I go, I shorten the horizon of what I am taking into consideration: moving from the very long view to the tasks of the day, always trying to integrate the latter into the former and keep the two (and the many time horizons between them) in alignment.