Ryan's Journal

After sitting out the real-estate boom of the 2000s Audrey and I started house hunting around March 2010. Twenty-two months and a ridiculous number of open houses later, we’re now seventeen days away from moving into our new place. Here are the gory details for those who are into such things:

• We’re still in Culver City, although we’ll be four miles from our current location in the weird sliver of Culver City that juts west towards Marina del Rey.
• 2 bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms, 2,100 square feet. The square footage includes a giant detached office that will be Audrey’s new shop and music space, but does not include a really cool screened-in back area.
• There is room for at least 3-5 bird feeders, and I’m also planning on reading up on how to make the backyard attractive to owls, hawks, and other badass flying things.
• The former owner took good care of the place, so aside from installation of a new furnace and air-conditioning unit we’re hoping not to be going too much deeper into debt after moving in.
• We’ll be moved in by the end of February.
• Our mortgage rate is awe-some. I don’t know from real estate, but buying when mortgage rates are at their lowest level since the 1950s seems like a winning bet.
• Date and time of the inevitable housewarming party is still TBD; first the bird feeders, then the parties.

View Larger Map

Continuing a tradition that is now in its fourth straight year (2009, 2010, 2011) here are my likely-to-be-laughably-incorrect predictions for 2012:

1. Since 2012 is a big election year, the obligatory election result predictions are:
   1. Obama will win re-election with a comparable number of electoral college votes to what he got in 2008. The 2008 election went 365-173 for Obama, so I’ll predict that he does no worse than 320 electoral college votes in 2012. I’m a bit biased on this – I think the guy has done a good job – but barring a huge scandal it seems to me that Mitt Romney (assuming he’s the nominee) is a weaker candidate than John McCain was.
   2. Democrats will lose 1-3 Senate seats. The Senate is currently 53-47 Democratic, but Democrats are defending 23 seats in 2012 while Republicans are defending just 10. Nate Silver at the New York Times is currently projecting Republicans will gain 4.7 seats, but I would expect that Massachusetts will go back to the “D” column and a few other races may be less close after the primaries when the choice of candidates is clearer. Additionally, I don’t think any of the current Republican presidential nominees will inspire high enough turnout to generate a huge number of “R” down-ballot votes.
   3. Democrats will gain 15 seats (+/-5) in the House. This is the first election since redistricting following the 2010 census and most politicians have been able to redraw their district borders in favorable ways. While some politicians will lose seats due to redistricting, overall I don’t think there will be as significant churn as what might otherwise have been expected given the historically low Congressional approval numbers.
2. Tesla Motors will begin deliveries of the Model-S during July/August and will receive excellent reviews and heavy sales. They will not meet their delivery target of 7,000 vehicles for the year, but things will look good for them going into 2013.
3. American men’s distance runners will win 2-3 medals (out of nine available) in the 1500, 5,000 and 10,000 meters at the London Olympics. After many years in which seeing an American even qualify for the finals of an Olympic distance race was a big deal, the current crop of athletes is an exciting bunch.
4. Following the Arab Spring of 2011, 2012 will see change spread to Iran. The Iranian protests of 2009 did not lead to significant regime change, but coupled with economic impacts of ongoing sanctions the underlying unrest will finally lead to change.
5. The long rumored Apple television will finally launch in 2012. The initial incarnation will offer simplicity and iTunes integration as its major selling points – it will wirelessly sync with other Apple devices, and will probably include some interesting new feature such as a built-in DVR, but will not be a replacement for cable. While it would be great to be able to watch network television on-demand, perhaps streamed from Apple servers, without Steve Jobs it’s tough to imagine Apple being able to negotiate the required deals to make that happen with anyone other than smaller networks and maybe a handful of premium services like HBO.
6. Despite a handful of analysts predicting doom, the Euro will easily survive 2012. Similarly, much like the US jettisoned the Articles of Confederation for a Constitution that granted stronger centralized powers, 2012 will see centralized European institutions strengthened to transfer some power from individual countries to EU institutions.
7. The Browns will not draft Andrew Luck or Robert Griffin III. Team president Mike Holmgren is a guy who thinks he can turn a lower-round choice into a successful QB, and the Browns need a lot of good players rather than just one, so I suspect they will try to shop their draft pick (perhaps to Washington) in the hopes of getting a few extra picks.
8. Virgin Galactic’s space plane will have several successful test flights by the end of 2012, and will be preparing for customer flights for 2013. SpaceX will successfully launch two missions to the ISS but will not launch the Falcon Heavy as currently scheduled on their launch manifest.
9. After hearing arguments in March related to the Affordable Care Act the Supreme Court decision will not meaningfully affect the law. Similarly, despite political blustering there will be no significant changes made to the law either through Congressional action or budgetary maneuvering. While this law isn’t perfect by any means, as a self-employed individual I’ll nevertheless admit that I’m looking forward to the benefits its implementation will provide.
10. The Dow Jones will finish the year near 13,000 (it’s at 12,360 as I write this), approximately where it was before the financial crisis began. The fact that companies are sitting on record amounts of cash and seem (finally) to be using some of it to hire again, and also that interest rates seem unlikely to rise any time soon, are both things that should help the stock market. If Obama wins the election then it seems likely that capital gains tax rates could rise, but that seems unlikely to significantly affect the market until 2013.
11. Tiger Woods will have an exciting 2012, winning 1-2 majors and 4-6 tournaments. He finished 2011 well, and after two years without winning he’s got to have the fire to win again that should power him to work as hard as he did early in his career.
12. Hollywood will announce that they are re-making at least one of the following five movies: Grease, It’s a Wonderful Life, Spartacus, Jason and the Argonauts, or Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The movie studios can’t stop recycling films, so even though this prediction is a complete shot in the dark it wouldn’t be surprising to see it happen.
13. Either Yahoo or AOL, or both, will not survive 2012. I’ve been predicting that Yahoo would be purchased for years and have been wrong for years; maybe 2012 is the year I finally get this right, but I’m throwing AOL in there as well to hedge my bet.

Check back in January 2013 to mock me for being wrong. For anyone who cares to start the mocking early, or who wants to include some of their own predictions, the comments link is below.

Before reviewing the debacle that was my 2011 predictions, here’s the scorecard for past years: 2009: 5 out of 16, 2010: 7.5 out of 17.

And now, 2011…

1. Gasoline will rise in price to over $4.00 per gallon by the end of 2011 as the economy improves.

   Today’s daily fuel price average according to the AAA fuel gauge report is $3.28. The “as the economy improves” assumption may have been where things went wrong there.

2. Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney and Ron Paul will all announce that they are running for President. Michael Bloomberg will toy with people and then announce that he isn’t running (this may last into 2012). Newt Gingrich will not run. No Democrat will mount a serious primary challenge against Obama.

   Sarah Palin disappeared at some point around noon on October 5, and Michelle Bachman, a pizza mogul, and men named “Newt” and “Mitt” all briefly led the Republican race. In my defense, I’m not sure anyone could have foreseen that.

3. Apple will offer minor updates to the iPad and iPhone but will not have any major new product offerings in 2011. They will, however, offer users the ability to store content such as movies and music on Apple servers and access that content on any Apple device.

   Both the iPad 2 and the iPhone 4s were minor updates, and iCloud allows storing content on Apple servers. I should probably stick to technology predictions for 2012.

4. The national unemployment rate will drop from its current rate of 9.7 percent to between 8.8 to 9.1 percent.

   The number hovered around nine percent all year then dropped to 8.6 percent for November. However, since I’m doing the scoring, and since the justification for that sudden drop was that fewer people were filing claims (rather than more people finding jobs) I’m scoring this is a correct prediction. Anyone who disagrees with that decision can go through proper channels to file an appeal.

5. US men’s distance runners will set national records in at least three of the following events: 800m, 1500m, 5000m, 10,000m, marathon.

   Bernard Lagat set a new 5000m record of 12:53.6 on July 22 in Monaco, and Galen Rupp broke the 10,000m record with a 26:48 in Brussels on September 16. Ryan Hall ran the fastest marathon ever by an American with a 2:04:58 in Boston, but it wasn’t counted as a record due to Boston’s course setup; however, it was a ridiculous run that was 40 seconds faster than the existing record, so I’m counting this prediction as another correct guess.

6. Neither court challenges nor budgetary maneuvering will affect the Affordable Care Act / Obamacare.

   The law is moving forward, and while the Supreme Court has agreed to hear challenges in March 2012, thus far it looks like it will be implemented as scheduled.

7. Yahoo and Adobe will both be purchased.

   I’ve been predicting this for a while now, and have been wrong for a while, too. Somehow Yahoo continues to chug along, and Adobe has failed to cash-in on their once-ubiquitous and soon-to-be-obsolete Flash technology.

8. SpaceX will launch only three of the five Falcon 9 missions on their current launch manifest, but all will be successful. They will also launch two of their Falcon 1e rockets successfully.

   After an amazingly successful 2010 SpaceX failed to launch a single rocket this year, so this prediction was a spectacular failure. Hopefully they will get back on track in 2012 beginning with their scheduled mission to the space station on February 7.

9. 3D televisions will still not be a big deal.

   3-D TV sales actually declined in Q3 2011. Manufacturers may eventually figure this technology out, but I suspect that something more akin to Ultra High Definition TVs will instead be the next big thing in television.

10. Splits in the Republican party between social conservatives and fiscal conservatives will increase significantly.

    House Republicans have been surprisingly united and have also managed to focus on fiscal issues rather than social issues. The debt ceiling debacle and the late fight over payroll taxes had the potential to split the party, but they surprisingly stayed united. Another wrong prediction, and another reason why I don’t write about politics very often.

11. Labor disputes in the NFL will not affect the regular season. A lockout will be imposed in the NBA and the regular season will be shortened as a result.

    Got this one right, although I’m actually surprised the NBA lockout didn’t last longer.

12. Cape Wind and Bluewater Wind will both start construction of their offshore wind farm projects in 2011 after years of legal wrangling and delays.

    Neither has begun construction as ongoing legal battles and other delays tie things up. I’m a fan of windmills, and am bummed out that the US thus far hasn’t figured out a way to make offshore wind work.

13. Total downloads of JAMWiki will exceed 15,000 for the year.

    Final download numbers for 2011 were 16,805, but somehow about 6,000 of those came from Khazakhstan in February, so in the interest of not supporting Soviet hackers this one unfortunately goes down as an incorrect prediction.

14. 2011 will see not just two, but three journal entries every month.

    As predicted, the ongoing tradition of questionable writing and end-of-the-month entries expanded in 2011, and with ongoing effort should continue into 2012.

Final score: 7 out of 14, which shockingly is the best success rate in the three years that I’ve been making predictions. It’s unlikely that I’m getting any better at this, but dumb luck says I’ve got to be right occasionally. The 2012 predictions will be up soon, and they will undoubtedly return things to the historical rates of inaccuracy.

While the bed was a good thing last night, air quality in Kern County is ridiculously poor – dust, smog and huge cattle feedlots make for a stinky, hazy landscape, and whether due to the air, a bad meal, or flu, I got up at 5AM this morning to refund my dinner – twice. Return to the wildlife refuge was delayed a bit as a result, but once there the cranes were found in abundance. Sadly the birds were ridiculously wary, so the sandhill crane remains a photograph on the “most wanted” list.

The trip came to an end by midday with a return to Culver City. A week of time off from work remains, with the plan being to spend time on side projects and visit some local attractions with Audrey. Additionally, I need to figure out the score card on my 2011 predictions (it doesn’t look good), and come up with some highly questionable picks for 2012.

Ryan is in a hotel tonight. For the first time in four nights a bed, a shower, and a change of clothes are coming, and happiness and joy shall follow.

Last night was again spent car camping, allowing the trip to resume from Yosemite Valley with an early morning view of the valley from Tunnel View as the payoff. A trip to the Mariposa giant sequoia grove followed – the trees are beyond impressive, and after finding a quiet trail to escape from the surprisingly large and loud crowds the trees worked their magic on this normally office-bound traveler, helping to restore some order to the universe.

After leaving the park I scanned the map for green dots along SR-99, and stumbled on the Pixley National Wildlife Refuge. A late day arrival at the refuge allowed for a short hike, but aside from a few hawks and waterbirds the animals seemed to be in hiding. That is, they were hiding until sunset, at which point all hell suddenly broke loose. Hundreds upon hundreds of sandhill cranes started calling out while flying overhead, a pack of coyotes began howling in an adjacent field, and I accidentally spooked an owl who flew out of a tree next to me and began hunting the fields nearby. What had been a moderately interesting stop suddenly morphed into a reason to spend the night in Kern County, and the plan is to return, camera in hand, to see if the wildlife chaos continues at dawn.

Last night’s bed time was 8:00 PM – writing this entry tonight at 7:35 is clearly pushing my current limits. The adventure for the day began just before six and led through Yosemite’s high country along Tioga Road, a path that closes with the first snow each winter but remains open this year due to one of the driest Decembers on record. God was obviously feeling manly when he created this part of the world, and it was a fun outing amongst the rocky crags, with plenty of quiet time available to ensure that things were right with the world.

Tioga road ends at Highway 395 and Mono Lake, and while the latest version of the plan called for spending the remainder of the trip going south along the Eastern Sierra, a sudden change of mind resulted in a brief visit to the lake and then a return through Yosemite. A hike up Pothole Dome near Tuolumne Meadows finished off the afternoon, and the evening will again be spent camping in Yosemite Valley with tomorrow’s plans somewhat uncertain.

I slept in a rest area next to I-5 last night because that’s obviously what well-adjusted, successful, 36 year old IT professionals do. Pulling into the parking spot two dozen pairs of eyes reflected back in the headlights – I’ve never seen so many rabbits in such a small area, although later in the evening a screaming kid and two dogs put an end to the Watership Down reunion. Wake up this morning at six-ish allowed plenty of time to amble along towards Yosemite, and the day was spent roaming some of the non-knee-breaking trails in Yosemite Valley. Past trips to the park have intentionally avoided the really touristy spots, but given the knee issues and the smaller crowds it seemed like a good time to finally visit places like Lower Yosemite Falls and the Ahwanhee Hotel. Tonight will be spent car camping in the park’s main campground, and tomorrow it’s off at sunrise for a day-trip through the high country.

Day one of what Audrey has dubbed the “man trip” – luckily the girl recognizes that sometimes the boy needs time alone to, as she calls it, “sleep in the dirt”.

After waking up at 6:30 in the Holliday family compound the Subaru and I set off in soup-like fog towards Bodega Bay. A detour at the San Pablo Bay National Wildlife Refuge resulted in some quality bird time, including an egret who was impressively unafraid. The fog finally broke around 10AM, and Bodega Bay yielded a massive number of seabirds, hawks, vultures, sea lions, and two grey whales, although (surprisingly) not a single photo. For future reference: December/January and March/April are whale migration times, and unless today was unusual they travel extremely close to shore. After some hiking and a ginormous seafood lunch the few remaining daylight hours were spent heading south through Point Reyes and along Highway One, aka the most scenic road in the USA.

The current plan is to go to Yosemite tomorrow, but given past precedent a betting man would not be unwise to take odds on that plan being derailed by an unforeseen side-trip. However, with Tioga Pass apparently still snow free the chance to see Yosemite’s high country in late December seems like an opportunity not to be missed.

Quick recap of Christmas 2011:

• Convinced that there was a chink in the many “no trespassing” signs that kept the white pelicans of the Kern Water Bank too far away to be photographed I stopped during the drive home and doggedly probed the area for weaknesses. After much searching a bike path along the Kern River seemed like the only legal entry option – sadly I didn’t have a bike, and a 2.5 mile hike yielded many birds but no pelicans. On a positive note, during the five mile round-trip I did discover that my knee is now recovered enough to hike up to four miles without generating stabbing pains.
• Christmas at the Holliday home tends to involve waffles, presents, and competition. While the first two went mostly according to tradition, this year’s competitions were a disaster for the eldest son, with losses across the board – it was a humiliating display, and Ma and Pa will now have to refer to Aaron as “the athletic, intelligent child”. Adding insult to injury, several games of Big Buck Hunter were “competitions” in the same way that Little Big Horn was a “battle”.
• During a break in competition Ma and Pa put together another tremendous Christmas dinner; the delicious food and my inability to run may have dire waistline consequences.

Tomorrow morning I’ll be doing my thirty second commute down the stairs to my desk, spend the day working from home, and then fly to Boise for three days onsite at Bodybuilding.com. Another thirty second commute workday on Friday finishes the week and begins two weeks of vacation time.

The vacation plans are unknown – I’m heading to the Bay Area for Christmas, then doing a road trip of some sort, destination unknown. With almost no snow in the mountains so far this winter the Sierras look like a tempting option, but who knows – the goal is mostly just to try and get out of the daily routine that work imposes and remember that life is about more than earning a paycheck; aimlessly roaming around California seems like a good way to accomplish that.

The other plan for the vacation is to invest some time in my various side projects. Self-employment has provided some great opportunities to work from home with flexible hours, but I still dream about someday being my own boss, making a living off of an idea of my own.

So that’s the plan for the end of 2011 and the start of 2012; hopefully it will be a good way to see the old year out and usher the new year in.

“I never imagined we’d be hanging out in the parlor, and that Aaron was gonna take his shirt off”. And that was just the beginning of our Thanksgiving weekend.

Audrey and I escaped LA before noon on Wednesday and missed the true joy of Thanksgiving traffic, but it was still a couple of hours to get out of the city limits, and an occasional stop-and-go drive for three hundred miles thereafter. After a steak dinner at Harris Ranch (we were inspired by the seven million cows) we picked up a salt and pumpkin pie (they failed to mention that they were using salt instead of sugar this year), and got home just in time to join the folks for beers and a lovely evening of my brother with his shirt off.

Thanksgiving day saw everyone take a try at balancing on the exercise ball before stuffing ourselves with non-salted pie and turkey. Friday saw the traditional post-Thanksgiving Cocos breakfast and delicious Chow’s wontons, followed by a drive to Moss Beach to see Audrey’s friend and some imbibing on the cliffs next to the ocean as the sun set. Four cats, much sneezing, and fifty miles later and we were in Cupertino for the night, and we woke up a block away from my old office at HP. Audrey couldn’t visit Cupertino without posing with her iPad at the Apple Headquarters (I still like her), and then it was south to Gilroy to buy garlic products. Much driving later we arrived in the middle of nowhere to search out giant white pelicans in the Central Valley (who knew?) before driving off into the sunset and heading home.

Now comes four weeks of work, including two trips to Boise, before Christmas and two weeks of vacation. This time last year I was off on the Banjo Tour, so the winter of 2011 may not be quite so exciting, but hopefully at least one of December’s entries will be from somewhere on the road.

I like the idea of building things – when I was a kid I spent hundreds of hours with Legos, in college I studied engineering, and today I waste inordinate amounts of time reading about ongoing engineering projects. Thus, because I think it’s interesting, and because I know that my mom will still love me even if everyone else is chased away by these geeky journal entries, here’s a rundown of some of the cooler projects going on today:

• Electric Cars. Partly because of my old roommate I’ve been a follower of Tesla Motors since the beginning, but even without a personal connection it’s hard not to be excited about electric vehicles. The internal combustion engine hasn’t really changed much in 100 years, but in the next ten years a system that is smaller, more efficient, and requires far less maintenance will be a viable option. As batteries continue to improve it’s not inconceivable that we could eventually see cars that get a thousand miles to a charge, making today’s concerns about charging times and running out of electricity a non-factor and causing future generations to wonder why we were willing to deal with tailpipe emissions, gas stations, oil changes, and noisy motors.
• The Bay Bridge East Span. Caveat: building a huge bridge with so many stakeholders is a recipe for massive cost overruns, as this project showed. Still, once a design was approved and lawsuits had run their course (the project was proposed twenty-two years ago in 1989) the new eastern span of the Bay Bridge ended up being an impressive feat of engineering. Opening in 2013 at a cost of $6.3 billion, this bridge will be two miles long, carry 270,000 cars a day, be capable of withstanding a magnitude 8.5 earthquake, last 150 years, and will be beautiful as well. Despite the crappy process that was required to actually get this bridge built, the end result is pretty spectacular.
• New airplanes. The Boeing 787 just entered service after four years of delays, and while it may not look much different from today’s planes it’s hugely interesting under-the-hood: instead of aluminum much of the structure is carbon composites, it’s twenty percent more fuel efficient than its predecessor, and a variety of technical tweaks have gone into making it quieter and better at dealing with turbulence. The just-announced 737-MAX is a less-ambitious replacement for Boeing’s most popular model, with a planned fifteen percent improvement in fuel efficiency (amongst other changes) and a scheduled entry into service in 2017.
• California High Speed Rail. While I’ll admit a fair amount of disappointment at how this project has been managed, the idea behind 220 mph trains linking California’s major cities is one that is about thirty years overdue. With new highways running between $2 and $16 million per lane-mile and road and airport congestion on the rise, high-speed passenger rail seems like an obvious solution, and one that the rest of the world is already implementing successfully. Hopefully California can get its act together and follow suit.
• The Transbay Center. The Bay Area does a fairly good job with mass transit, but unlike New York City’s Grand Central Station there isn’t really a central transit hub. That changes in 2017 when a new terminal will open linking BART, MUNI, Caltrain, buses and (hopefully) high-speed rail.
• Renewable Energy. While sadly the subject of renewable energy has become politicized of late, behind the scenes the technology has gotten really, really interesting. Solar is at the point where even without subsidies it is economically competitive in areas with a lot of sun, and with efficiency continuing to improve one can imagine a future where rooftop solar installations de-centralize the power grid, causing less need for huge central power plants. There are wind turbine models that generate as much as five megawatts, orders of magnitude more than those built in the 1980s, and that power is produced at about one-fourth of the cost of those older turbines. Similarly, energy efficiency is something to be impressed by: looking at just one example, flat screen TVs today use sixty percent less power than those manufactured in 2006.
• Space. NASA estimates that its next-generation rocket system will cost $97 billion. For about $800 million SpaceX has already built and launched two rocket models, with a third (the Falcon Heavy) planned for testing in 2013. SpaceX’s Falcon-9 rocket is already capable of delivering cargo to the space station, and if successful the Falcon Heavy would be the most powerful rocket since the Saturn V moon rocket. There’s no guarantee that SpaceX will be successful or that their costs won’t increase, but it’s nevertheless exciting to see the future of space returning to something more like what everyone imagined it would be back when America was putting men on the moon forty years ago.

The girl and I were in San Diego for a wedding and a birthday, and with my new Marriott Rewards Super-Awesome status we scored a free room in La Jolla. Despite a forecast for a rainy weekend we woke up to clear skies Sunday morning and ventured out to find hundreds of pelicans on the cliffs. Other highlights included calling my shot on the hotel’s wheel of fortune (free parking, thank you much), too much food, and an appearance by Dorf himself at Audrey’s grandmother’s 95th birthday bash.

For those who thought the last journal entry was too wordy, the following is presented without further comment:

Everyone agrees that the country is currently a mess, but there doesn’t seem to be a clear consensus about how to fix things. So here’s the first-draft of the Holliday Plan, which is an if-somehow-tomorrow-I-was-given-the-ability-to-do-whatever-I-wanted thought exercise. Most of the ideas below originated elsewhere, but this brain dump encapsulates those that seem to make sense and that I would want to see implemented. This write-up came about mainly because it’s a subject that interests me, and I’d be interested people’s criticisms, alternatives, and mockery – the comments link is there for exactly that purpose.

The Economy

Getting the economy going would do many things – tax receipts are down $400 billion since 2007 [1] while spending on assistance programs such as unemployment insurance have sky-rocketed. As a result, in addition to the obvious benefit of simply having a better economy, improvement in the outlook would also make a huge dent in the budget deficit.

1. Over 577,000 public sector jobs have been cut during the downturn [2]. While some trimming is a good thing, many of these jobs are teachers, police, and other important services. To combat this I’d send $500 billion to the states to use over the next three years however they saw fit, with a hope of reducing layoffs of essential personnel. While deficit spending isn’t a good thing, in a recession it seems like short-term debt is preferable to a longer term recession.
2. Borrowing rates are at 1.5%, and with massive unemployment labor is the cheapest it’s been in years. I’d make $1 trillion available for infrastructure over the next three years, with 80% of that sent to the states to use on whatever infrastructure projects they wanted – roads, bridges, public transit, airports, etc. Infrastructure needs to be addressed eventually, so it makes sense to do it now when labor and borrowing are cheap and the economy is in need of jobs.
3. Additional tax cuts, business incentives, mortgage restructuring, or other efforts would likely not be worth the costs. Individuals and businesses are saving money right now, so tax breaks will just go into savings rather than back into the economy. Similarly, mortgage restructuring and hiring incentives have thus far proven to have little actual effect.

The Debt

While in the short term the most important thing is improving the economy, over the long term, the US debt and budget deficits are the largest concern. Getting the annual budget into the black and reducing the national debt is an issue that needs to be urgently addressed.

1. Expire the Bush tax cuts for those making over $100,000 starting in 2012. For much of the 1980s the top tax rate was around 50% [3], but today it’s 35% – I’d change that back to 39.6%, matching the rate in 2000. Taxes obviously suck, but this would raise approximately $2.7 trillion over ten years [4], and given that income for high earners has vastly outpaced that of the middle class for the past decade, tax rates appear to be unbalanced in favor of the rich.
2. The defense department budget for 2010 is $663.8 billion – I would reduce that by 5% a year over the next ten years (adjusting for inflation), which would lead to a budget of $418 billion in 2022 (again, adjust for inflation). That’s still four times as much as the next biggest spender (China) budgets for its military [5], and at just five percent per year the reduction should be gradual enough to allow the military time to adapt. Assuming spending would otherwise have simply matched inflation, this saves $1.3 trillion over ten years ($6.6 trillion vs $5.3 trillion) and $250 billion every year thereafter. Defense is important, but the US doesn’t need to spend six times as much as its nearest competitor.
3. The US spends 16% of GDP on health care, while most advanced countries are closer to 10% – Canada and the UK, which have government provided healthcare, spend 10.1% and 8.4%, respectively [6]. There seem to be a few specific things that cause the problem:
   • Lack of competition. Insurance is managed at the state level, creating fifty different bureaucracies. At the national level, the federal government does not negotiate drug prices for Medicare and does not allow individuals to buy drugs from other countries such as Canada.
   • Lack of price transparency. Since people with insurance simply get their health care covered or get a bill after payment, there is no incentive for them to choose more cost-effective treatments.
   • Ineffective use of resources. Prevention is cheaper than treatment, end-of-life care often exceeds what the patient would want due to lack of pre-planning, and there is no incentive for healthy living.
   • Lack of experimentation. People like Dr. Atul Gawande have demonstrated interesting ways of reducing costs while improving care, but the system is not set up to encourage these types of programs.

   The problem is too complex for anyone to know how best to address these issues, so given the chance to actually make a change as much informed advice as possible would be needed, but some possibilities should include:

   • Allow anyone to buy into Medicare (aka the public option). Anyone wanting private insurance could get it, but leverage the federal government’s buying power to lower costs for everyone else. Studies, as well as current costs, show that the private health insurance market isn’t operating with the efficiency and downward pricing pressures of most other private markets, so admit that and let the non-retired crowd take advantage of the government’s buying power.
   • Allow purchase of drugs from other countries, subject to existing laws on prescription medication and illegal substances. Similarly, allow the federal government to negotiate drug prices for Medicare.
   • Establish national insurance standards and let any state choose to either use their own standard OR to adopt the national standard, with the goal of allowing insurance companies to compete across state borders and to reduce administrative costs.
   • Encourage prevention. Allow health insurers to provide discounts similar to what auto insurance companies provide, such as discounts for staying within a certain weight range, discounts for getting regular checkups, discounts for immunizations, etc.
   • Create a special court to handle malpractice. While high-end estimates of the cost of malpractice are that it accounts for only three percent of total healthcare costs [7] (and note that much of that may be justified), making it simpler to get rid of frivolous cases in order to reduce abuse of the system should be a goal. The system should protect patients against negligence, but must also recognize that doctors generally do their best under difficult circumstances.
   • Encourage experimentation. This goal would be the most difficult to implement, but if a health care system can find ways to reduce costs while improving service there should be fewer barriers that would prevent them from doing so.

   While it’s impossible to put an exact savings amount on the above proposals, since 2010 federal health care spending was $1.1 trillion, and GDP is $14.1 trillion, just a ten percent improvement would save $110 billion annually in the budget and free up over a trillion dollars each year in the broader economy for other uses.

4. All of the budget cutting deals over the past two years have focused on non-defense discretionary spending, which is nineteen percent of the total budget [8]. This portion of the budget includes everything from air traffic controllers to national parks to foreign aid to roads, and while there may be some room for more cuts, overall any additional savings would be insignificant when compared with the three items already mentioned.

Other Changes

Infrastructure needs repair, the government needs to work more efficiently, and other changes need to happen to make the US a better country.

1. Implement a commission to reduce the size and scope of the federal government. Model it on the Base Realignment and Closure process which recommended military bases for closing. The goal would be to trim waste, eliminate duplication, and identify functions that are candidates for moving to the private sector, with the process repeated every three years.
2. Implement a similar commission to recommend consolidation and simplification of existing federal laws. No one will deny that the system is too complex, but there doesn’t seem to be incentive for lawmakers to clean it up. If there are duplicative, outdated, or conflicting laws there should be a process to make things better. Hopefully as a side effect this process would also reduce the load on the judicial system while making things fairer for those without vast legal resources.
3. Begin the process of simplifying the tax code. Gradually (over many years) eliminate all deductions, including charitable and mortgage, with corresponding decreases to tax rates to keep revenue levels the same. Similarly, gradually increase the capital gains rate until they are taxed like regular income. Complexity encourages cheating and fraud while making the system unfair to those without teams of accountants, but changing things too quickly would also cause economic harm to those who bought a home or invested based on existing tax law.
4. Implement financial reforms with a goal of simplifying the current system. The financial industry should encourage investment rather than risk taking, so the Glass-Steagall Act should be reinstated so that banks are not also operating as investment brokerages (obviously, provide sufficient time to allow companies to divest). Commodity trading should be modified so that those actually taking ownership of goods are the focus of the market, rather than speculators who will never take physical possession of the commodity in question. Per-transaction fees should be implemented to increase the cost of high-volume, short-term trading while simultaneously funding regulators – day trading does no good for the country whereas long-term investment boosts economic growth.
5. Increase the federal gas tax from 18.4 cents per gallon by five cents per year over the next four years (to 38.4 cents per gallon), and then increase it by the inflation rate each year after that. The tax would still be far lower than most European countries, and would increase revenue from the current $25 billion per year to about $55 billion per year. That money would then be used for infrastructure and energy investments – everyone is aware that infrastructure is crumbling, so there needs to be money available to improve it.
6. Tie the minimum wage to inflation – if the minimum wage is supposed to provide a minimal standard of living then it should keep up with cost of living.
7. Make narcotics policy a state issue rather than a federal issue. If California wants to legalize pot while Alabama wants smoking a joint to be a jailable offense, so be it. If Las Vegas decides that legalizing cocaine is the best way to manage a drug that is already widely used in that city, let them. Just as prohibition enabled organized crime without reducing alcoholism, the war on drugs has done almost nothing to reduce drug usage but done much to enrich gangs and other criminal elements; end it, reduce the associated crime and law enforcement costs, and allow the drug trade to be moved from the shadows to a place where it can be regulated.

The Political System

Currently just nine percent of people think Congress is doing a good job [9]. No one trusts politicians, good people don’t want to be involved in politics, and citizens think their elected officials have been bought by lobbyists. Obviously, something needs to change.

1. Eliminate gerrymandering and have non-partisan commissions draw district borders. This isn’t something that can be done at the federal level, but if it was done it would be the single greatest step possible towards making the political system less polarized.
2. Pass laws requiring that any individual or corporation that engages in political activity disclose their financial involvement, similar to the warnings about side effects that are required for prescription drug advertisements. If the Supreme Court says that a union or Karl Rove’s friends can spend millions for political advertising, let them, but make it very clear who the messenger is.
3. Establish a precedent in Congress that changes to the House or Senate’s rules cannot go into effect for two years. This would reduce changes made for partisan gain, such as the “nuclear option“, but still encourage fixing particularly egregious abuses of rules, such as the current situation in the Senate where everything is filibustered.
4. Allow internet voting. While there would obviously need to be safeguards put in place to make sure hackers couldn’t significantly affect voting and that votes were auditable, there should be no reason in the 21st century that someone should have to travel to a polling place, stand in line, and then physically mark a ballot in order to cast a vote. This change would give those with busy lives, particularly the non-retired crowd, no excuse for failing to vote, and would hopefully make the electorate more representative of the actual population.

There’s been little from day-to-day life that has warranted a journal entry recently, but here’s a summary of what’s new and notable:

• In addition to being proud members of the Aquarium of the Pacific, Audrey and I joined the ranks of the respected and revered members of the LA Natural History Museum. For anyone out there questioning that decision, maybe you didn’t realize that museum membership is tax deductible AND they have a Tyrannosaurus named Thomas.
• After running daily for 241 straight days a mysterious knee injury has kept me sidelined for the past six weeks. The doctor says nothing is seriously damaged, but her prescription of rest and anti-inflammatories is tough medicine for someone who had gotten used to running six miles every day.
• Work at bodybuilding.com continues and will probably do so well into 2012.
• Since one side project wasn’t enough to completely devour whatever free time I had I’ve also been putting together a travel web site based on open-sourced content from Wikitravel. JAMGuides is very nearly at feature-parity with Wikitravel, after which I’ve got some ideas that will hopefully lead to a rather interesting travel tool.

Audrey continues to generate an ever-increasing list of journal entry suggestions on the fridge, so while there may not be much to report on in the life of Holliday, there should still be a few topics worth writing about to fill out October’s three planned entries.

Audrey has been doggedly helpfully posting potential journal entries on the fridge for the past month. While I’m reasonably certain that “The Dancing Lemurs of Madagascar” was suggested for her entertainment rather than as something to be taken seriously, she has also come up with some good ones, including this entry’s subject.

Growing up, there were four places that I most wanted to go to in the world, but the thought of actually seeing all of them in person seemed too surreal to ever be possible. However, at age thirty-five I’ve been lucky enough to not only have visited each of them, but to have done so multiple times:

• Yellowstone National Park. America’s first national park seemed like the epitomy of the rugged West from the bygone days of explorers – big animals, jagged mountains, and an unimaginable array of thermal features. Midway through my teenage years Ma & Pa planned the annual family vacation around their eldest son’s dream, and the Holliday family visited Wyoming. The park met every expectation, and return visits were made in 1998, 2000, 2002, and most recently in 2009 with Audrey.
• Alaska. While no one would know for sure, it wouldn’t be surprising if my dad had talked about taking his son to Alaska on the day I was born. From that point onwards he repeatedly announced that we were going to Alaska after I turned eighteen, and the intervening years saw him preparing for the trip. Then, in 1994, we stepped off of a plane in Anchorage and spent a month seeing the grizzlies and caribou of Denali, the tundra of Central Alaska, the eagles of southern Alaska, and other sights in one of the world’s wildest places. In 1999 the roles were reversed when I took him to Glacier Bay and we spent a week kayaking with whales, seals, wolves and glaciers. Finally, in 2002 the state was the scene of perhaps my most significant coming-of-age experience when I spent three months on the road, with two of those months spent in Alaska. There’s no doubt that this state will see future visits.
• The Galapagos. It’s tough to imagine now, but until 1994 our household never had more than five TV channels (and barely that many when the rabbit ears were on the fritz) so nature documentaries on PBS had at least a twenty percent chance of being the best thing on TV. I don’t know how many of those programs featured the Galapagos, but the weird landscapes and fearless animals made an impression, and a decision was made to someday, somehow pay a visit to the islands. This future trip seemed so exotic – the islands are a speck in the middle of the Pacific – that the reality of being able to go there wasn’t something that truly seemed plausible. It was an unexpected revelation in 1999 to know that, while expensive, these remote islands could be my first major vacation destination. That trip led directly to chartering a boat and visiting again in 2003 and 2006, and those two trips will likely be the most memorable vacations that I will ever be able to share with friends.
• Antarctica. Most of my childhood possessions are now gone, but the February 1984 Ranger Rick magazine is still on the bookshelf. The winter “Antarctica” special edition grabbed my imagination as perhaps nothing else has since, and Antarctica became the place that I wanted to visit more than anywhere else on Earth. Anyone who has ever contemplated a journey to the bottom of the world is aware of the costs involved, so this trip was a dream that I couldn’t quite imagine as a reality. Then, in 2003, while sharing a house with JB Straubel, I mentioned the trip to him and he nonchalantly replied "You should just go, you’ve probably got enough saved". For whatever reason, that comment cut through any hesitation I had about the costs, and six months later I was on the deck of the M/V Polar Star looking at the most amazing landscape on the planet. Two more trips in 2004 and 2006 did nothing to lessen my enthusiasm for the southern polar region, although it did lighten my bank account – I learned several years later from Ted Cheeseman that there was spirited debate amongst the staff about how much credit card debt the youngest person on the ship must be carrying.

There have of course been other incredible trips – Iceland, Southeast Asia, Egypt, Europe, all over America, the humpback whales of the Dominican, the whale sharks of the Yucatan – and one can only wonder at the reason for such good fortune in being able to experience so much. The future will hopefully hold more travels – as noted above, Audrey is hellbent on seeing lemurs do the sexy dance, Australia & New Zealand undoubtedly hold an amazing variety of adventures, and there are dozens of other places that would be great to experience. It’s a small world, but it holds an infinite number of destinations.

The next time I visit here, rather than spending a chilly evening sleeping in a car an advance reservation will definitely be made for a room in the extraordinarily cool Redfish Lake Lodge, which was built out of logs in 1929 and doesn’t appear to have changed much since then. Today’s adventures included hot coffee, hot bacon, and hot French toast at the lodge (did I mention they were all hot?) and some bald eagle watching at the lake. That was followed by a leisurely drive south through the Sawtooth National Recreation Area and then back towards Boise, much of it with the car’s heater running on high in an effort to de-thaw from last night’s refrigeration. Mountain lakes, jagged peaks, and the occasional pronghorn made for a nice journey that was only slightly spoiled by the not-unexpected result of the Browns’ season opener.

Whatever its faults may be, America is a pretty spectacular place to live, as today’s roadtrip through Central Idaho reminded. In addition to experiencing the scenery on the trip up here, poor planning on my part combined with a dearth of local lodging options to lead to a night of car camping in a Dodge Charger, so the view from my “bed” includes the Sawtooth Mountains and the Stanley Basin, while my neighbors for the evening will be falcons, deer, and sandhill cranes.

The leisurely drive up here was filled with mountains, streams, trees, and a smattering of wildlife, including the first sandhill cranes I’ve seen since 2002. Interestingly, the thing I always forget about the mountains until I’m back in them is the smell – there’s something about the air that makes you want to just close your eyes and breath deeply for a while. A bum knee has limited the hiking, but just being able to get outside and stand next to a mountain stream, or to watch a dozen cranes from the roadside, has been a good reminder of why it’s important to leave the city and refresh the soul from time-to-time.

Thomas Jefferson (born 1743) was 33 years old in 1776 during the drafting of the Declaration of Independence. James Madison (born 1751) was 36 when his ideas formed the core of the US Constitution. There are a fair number of other people who did some of their most impressive work in their thirties – it seems to be an age at which you’ve done enough to actually have a significant depth, although perhaps not a breadth, of experience in at least one or two areas.

While I harbor no illusions about being a Jefferson or Madison, it’s interesting to be at the same age as when they made arguably their biggest marks on history. Personally, the mid-thirties is the first time in life at which I’ve worked regularly on specific subjects for multiple decades – my first computer program was written more than 20 years ago; my first photograph was taken almost 25 years ago.

Everyone dreams that they will do important things in life, but for most people something gets in the way – a job, lack of motivation, or just a sense that things can always be done later; days go by slowly, but years somehow fly by. There was a line at the beginning of Dead Poet’s Society from a Walt Whitman poem: “that the powerful play goes on, and that you will contribute a verse”. To which Robin Williams’ character asks: “what will your verse be?” At this point in life there’s a mild fear of missing the chance to contribute that verse, although with several endeavors in various states of completion there is also optimism that some day an entry like this one won’t be about hopes, but will instead be about accomplishments. Granted, those accomplishments won’t end up as centerpieces of the National Archives, but not everyone is cut out to be a Founding Father.

Here are a handful of random current events that seem worth writing down. These types of posts are fun reading in retrospect, and are also good when it’s nearly the end of the month and I haven’t met the three entry goal:

• Steve Jobs has resigned as CEO of Apple. While his supposed tendency to yell and micromanage would normally be negatives for a CEO, the guy had an unbelievable ability to discern trends and focus on what was both important and within his company’s area of strength, and it is sad to see him go.
• Mono Lake has risen two and a half feet this year, putting it seven feet from the restoration goal level, twelve feet above its all-time low, but still about thirty-five feet below its historic average.
• Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman made news by stating that Republicans should embrace evolution and global warming. It’s more than a little scary that 150 years after Darwin a theory that underpins biology is still so controversial…
• Four years late, the Boeing 787 finally gained its FAA certification. While the technology behind the plane is clearly a huge step forward, the delays unfortunately appear to have caused significant harm to Boeing’s ability to compete with Airbus and will take some time to recover from.
• Following a political crisis in which the US nearly defaulted on its debts, the stock market has dropped about ten percent, but more notably has been regularly going up or down by three to five percent daily and giving those of us with a lot invested reason to sweat.
• SpaceX has been granted permission to combine its remaining two test flights, and thus could be cleared to service the space station by the end of the year.
• The next Olympic Games are almost exactly eleven months away.

The return to full-time work has made subjects for journal entries hard to come by. Audrey suggested that I devote one of August’s entries to the crowd-pleasing topic of city planning, but because it’s been over a month since any photos have been posted, and because I don’t want to bore my twos of readers, that topic will have to wait until at least the next entry. In the mean time here are a handful of photos from the 2008 trip to Iceland. Although the bird in the first photo was the subject of a previous journal entry, all three images are seeing their world debut tonight.

Back in the day I was bad at every sport that required coordination, but did have the dubious talent of being able to run at a fast pace without barfing for longer than most other people. Since those days I’ve run less-and-less, and thus eventually reached a state in which I was bad at every sport, including those involving running and vomit.

It’s easy enough to make excuses and much harder to find time and motivation, but at the end of 2010 being out of shape had become a big enough issue that something had to be done. As a result, including today I’ve now run a minimum of 1-2 miles every day for 213 consecutive days. After spending January just trying to do two miles a day, last week was the first time in years where I ran over forty miles in a week – not a particularly impressive total, but obviously far better than doing nothing.

Distance running isn’t glamorous, but it teaches a good life lesson: a difficult task begins with the first step, and is only successful when that first step is followed up consistently with many more. That lesson has been a valuable one to have learned early, as even the most daunting endeavors no longer seem overwhelming – just like training for a distance race, many tough challenges can be met by just going out there each day, putting in some work, and knowing that while it may not seem like anything is changing, every step is absolutely necessary in order to get to the end goal.

Of course, with all that said, it would be a lie to say that there isn’t a small part of me that wishes I’d been blessed with a bit more coordination and thus writing today about how my years of fame as the football team’s running back taught the valuable life lesson of teamwork…

Given my alleged programming skills and overwhelmingly massive, bulging muscles, it was inevitable that Bodybuilding.com would eventually call and ask me to do some work for them. As a result, after seven weeks of freedom I’m now in Idaho trying to figure out how to work the coffee maker and find the bathrooms at a new client. A fact that I was previously unaware of: Boise averages 90-100°F at this time of year, so while the city and its immediate environs seem like an inviting place to explore, the week has mostly been spent in the much-cooler confines of the office and the local Marriott; however, future explorations of the potato state are probably inevitable.

While “overjoyed” might not be the most accurate description of how it feels to again be spending the days in an office, the co-workers seem like good folks and the long off-time was a more-than-adequate break that turned out to be ridiculously productive:

• Audrey and I got two weeks to swim with whale sharks and other fishes.
• JAMWiki, my ongoing side-project, gained a number of new features, and JAMWiki 1.1 is almost ready for release to the masses.
• JAMGuides, my newest side-project, is making steady progress and slowly approaching a usable state.
• The rest of the Holliday clan endured having the oldest child visit them twice, including an unfortunate incident during which Ma Holliday sent her son to an ignominious defeat in a game of P.I.G.
• Last but not least, the always-intimidating TODO list on the fridge was reduced from horrifying proportions to a merely unmanageable size.

Stories may be limited in coming weeks due to work, but with any luck there will still be enough excitement to justify the three-journal-entries-a-month goal.

Audrey took charge of July Fourth plans this year because, had I been in charge, we likely would have just gotten take-out and then gone to bed early. Instead we spent the afternoon at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach where we got to use the special members-only entrance (membership has its privileges) and spend some time with a group of not-so-hungry lorikeets, one of whom rudely stole my cup of nectar after biting Audrey. After the fishes we enjoyed a massive buffet at Fuego that was far better than any take-out would have been, followed by a lengthy fireworks display next to the Queen Mary. Thereafter we were treated to a leisurely 15mph drive home with (apparently) every other resident of the greater Los Angeles metro area. While bedtime was far from a reasonable hour, Audrey’s version of July Fourth is clearly superior to my own.

Here’s a summary of last weekend’s trip to the Bay Area:

• Saturday night and Sunday morning turned into another Brother Day event, with appearances from mom and the Skipper. Arrival in Concord on Saturday afternoon involved an ever-so-delicious Zachary’s pizza. Following that, Aaron and I set off on a hike up Mt. Diablo that ended up being both scenic and tick-filled, with much sweating, many turkeys, a few lizards, and some dookie on the trail. After rootbeer floats at Mudville Grill we cajoled Ma & Pa into a little basketball, where Ma surprised us all with her underhand shooting prowess. The festivities came to an end after a night spent at Aaron’s new temporary home in North Beach and a massive breakfast burrito.
• At noon on Sunday the former roommates of Otterson Court got together again for the first time in nearly nine years. Unsurprisingly JB was initially a no-show, but he finally arrived after being bombarded by incessant text messages and threats to toilet paper his house, apologized for being late, and redeemed himself by offering a tour of the Tesla showroom and headquarters. From humble beginnings in the garage at Otterson and the living room in Glendale, JB’s cars have come a very, very long way – the Roadster is an awfully fun vehicle, and the Model-S is looking pretty badass.
• After the Tesla tour I got a late start back to LA, got stuck in traffic, and ended up getting home after 11PM. Since I hadn’t run yet, and since missing a single day is just the excuse I need to quit altogether, it was a very tired Ryan that slogged six laps around Raintree Circle late Sunday night.

After another quixotic four months the contract at Backcountry has ended for the second time. With the day job gone time is now available for side projects – the TODO list that is posted on the fridge is imposing, but I’m anticipating attacking it with furious gusto and incomparable determination over the coming days, while simultaneously engaging in frequent catnaps and large amounts of snacking.

Also, as a preemptive strike against the number one most likely question: yes, there is a trip planned. More accurately, Audrey planned a trip and we’ll be off in about a week. Pictures will be posted, and the three-entries-a-month goal should be easily reachable for June. Because it’s fun to pretend I’m mysterious the destination will remain a secret for now, but provided all goes as planned the question “How many whale sharks have you seen in your life” will soon have an answer that is much larger than “one“.

The second Brother Day took place over the weekend in San Diego. The quick and dirty summary:

• I headed down to San Diego on Saturday night and the Goob and I went for a run around the bay before sitting down to a meal of Thai food and a hatefully respectful showing of Get Him to the Greek.
• The thought-provoking question of the weekend was “What person, real or fictional, wanted something the most?” After extensive consideration of everything from Woody’s quest for a twinkie in Zombieland to the terminator’s relentless pursuit of Sarah Connor, Gollum’s never-ending mission to regain the Ring emerged as the victor.
• Sunday was spent at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. The park’s lorikeet exhibit was a highlight, and we arrived early enough that the lorikeet hunger meter was still on extreme. Also, due to the open air habitats the park turns out to be a great place for native California animals, so in addition to the giraffes, elephants, tigers, red river hogs and Eric the baby rhino, the park was the best viewing of egrets I’ve ever seen, and also home to somewhere around sixty-three billion baby toads.

In November 2004 I was staying in a converted farmhouse on tiny Pebble Island within the Falkland Islands. Including guests there were probably no more than a dozen people on this island, and the majority of the visitors were a quirky bunch of old British folks who explained to me that Venice Beach was the place to go for birdwatching in LA. At the time I looked at them as if they’d just told me about the great nightlife in North Dakota and went about ravenously consuming the steak pie that had been set in front of me.

Fast forward almost seven years, and the Venice Beach Pier is one of the places Audrey and I are most likely to head to for an evening walk. Last Saturday night our company on this walk included an egret who was fishing in the canal, a flock of pelicans that were plunge diving for mackerel, a heron that was intently observing the pier’s activities from atop a street lamp, and a few dolphins that were out enjoying the twilight. While it’s in no way comparable to areas along the Central Coast or even a place like La Jolla, I’ve got to admit that those crazy Brits might have known what they were talking about.

Audrey and I watched The Social Network a couple of weeks ago (good flick, by the way) and it was a reminder of what it was like to have the time and energy to focus on an idea and try to make it happen. Every software engineer that you’ve ever heard of became famous at a young age: Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Linus Torvalds and Steve Jobs were all famous by the time they were in their mid-twenties, and a major reason for it was because it was at that point in their lives that they had the focus and available time to take a chance on a big idea. They were probably also all single, but for software engineers that’s a separate, and likely unrelated, issue.

One major reason why older software engineers tend to make less of a splash is the same as it is for many jobs that require creative energy – once you’re spending 8-10 hours a day in a cubicle working for a company it’s terribly hard to find motivation to devote any significant amount of outside time to a similar endeavor. At the same time, quitting a good-paying job to pursue an idea that likely won’t pan out doesn’t make a lot of sense when weighed against the risk-reward formula that scientific types are ever-so-good at calculating. The end result is that by the mid-twenties a good software engineer is probably employed in a well-paying job that sucks up vast amounts of motivation that might otherwise have been spent founding Microsoft or Facebook.

It’s also for this reason that many older software engineers aren’t in as much demand as some younger ones – if you aren’t constantly learning new things and experimenting with new ideas, it’s tough for a company to justify paying 2-3 times more than what a young engineer might garner. While there are some very notable exceptions, software engineering seems primarily to be the province of the under-forty crowd.

The struggle between pursuing personal projects and working steadily is one that I’m given a chance to revisit whenever a job ends or a contract comes up for renewal. While it would be naive to believe that every idea will grow into something incredible if just given enough time and energy (the dotcom era drove that lesson home hard), there are always a million little projects waiting to be explored that, like any great unknown, are likely to generate at least a handful of interesting results. As a result, and understanding that in my field of work complacence often replaces excitement and innovation, I’m looking at my current work situation and doing some evaluation. While the ability to pay rent and buy groceries cannot be under-appreciated, the prospect of having some time to work on my own projects and potentially produce something new is an exciting one. The next few months may be interesting.

I was trying to think of where I’ve been on this date for the past several years, and was surprisingly able to nail it down fairly exactly from old journals and emails. This may not be interesting to anyone but me, but IMHO I’ve been lucky to have such a wide range of experiences during the past 14 years:

• 1998 On April 24 I was in my final year at Case Western, and on this particular weekend I was with the track team in Atlanta for the conference championships where I was running the 10,000 meters in insanely hot conditions. I’d broken up with a girlfriend two weeks prior, was finishing up classes, preparing for the final races of the track season, and planning a six-week trip to Europe for the summer. Life was moving fast.
• 1999 I was living in Oakland and working at Andersen Consulting’s research group in Palo Alto as the dotcom era was really picking up steam. My car had died a dramatic death during rush hour on the Dumbarton Bridge two days prior, and I was two days away from purchasing the best car ever. Other activities at the time included planning my first trip to the Galapagos Islands for the year’s end.
• 2000 After a long stint working a job in Phoenix I had been sent to Singapore and was just finishing my first week there. The project was only supposed to be for three weeks, but it ended up being more than a year before I was back in the US full-time.
• 2001 After two projects in Singapore and a short job in Korea I was assigned to a project in Kuala Lumpur, but due to delays I ended up taking some vacation and going to Cambodia and Indonesia. April 24 found me sunburned while exploring the temple complex of Angkor Wat. Two days later while flying to Indonesia (via Singapore) I got the worst case of food-poisoning in my life and ended up living in the airport for 24 hours, too sick to even move.
• 2002 After taking my dad to Egypt in March I was back at work in Los Angeles doing a job for Disney. A month later I would get dominated when a co-worker convinced me that I could do the San Diego marathon without training.
• 2003 After quitting my job at Accenture the previous August I had traveled to Alaska and then taken a contracting gig at Warner Brothers in Burbank where I was spending my lunch hours roaming the movie studio lot. I was running more regularly than at any time since college, and a second trip to the Galapagos was looming in May.
• 2004 I was back at Warner Brothers for another job after having fulfilled a lifelong dream the previous January by traveling to Antarctica.
• 2005 A month-long road trip through the Southwest had just concluded, and I returned to my rented room in Lafayette with no concrete plans for the future. April was the mid-point of an eleven month stretch without work that didn’t end until August, when I went back to LA and rented a room from a girl named Audrey.
• 2006 I moved to Culver City in December and visited the Antarctic again in January, and on this date was just a few weeks away from what would end up being my final trip to the Galapagos. Despite not having worked in a while I traded the car that had shepherded me through the Far North and on many, many road trips for a new model on April 25, a decision that actually led me to get a bit nervous about money and start looking for a job.
• 2007 April found me five months into a contract with DirecTV, a job I would continue for three years. The previous June saw the creation of JAMWiki, an open source project I’m continuing to work on today.
• 2008 My brother and I were spending more time together since he had moved to nearby Palmdale, and April saw us on a fishing trip in which he spent the entire voyage curled up in the fetal position barfing while I never ended up putting a hook in the water.
• 2009 After going to the Dominican Republic with Audrey to snorkel with whales in March, April 24, 2009 was spent flying to Florida for my grandmother’s 90th birthday. The following day was spent at Cape Canaveral looking at spaceships, something I’m known to do from time-to-time, followed by an evening at Disneyworld’s Animal Kingdom Lodge (yes, I am a dork).
• 2010 After leaving DirecTV in December I took a contracting job at Backcountry.com, but late April found me away from work and hiking through the Grand Canyon with my brother.

Since the only real excitement thus far this month has been a (*ahem*) roundabout flight to Salt Lake City nine days ago, it seems that another subject for a journal entry is needed. While spending a very, very long time at the airport I started going through photos from the Autumn 2009 road trip and found a few more that I kind of liked:

There is a line in the James Clavell book Shogun that I’ve always liked:

“Always remember, child,” her first teacher had impressed on her, “that to think bad thoughts is really the easiest thing in the world. If you leave your mind to itself it will spiral you down into ever-increasing unhappiness. To think good thoughts, however, requires effort.”

In a world where the country is fighting three wars, the economy is looking at its third straight bad year, and the environment is seemingly headed to ruin, it can be easy to overlook good news, but there are a lot of things going on that are worth feeling positive about:

• After disappearing for nearly one hundred years, 62 miles of the Owens River is now flowing again. In another victory for the Eastern Sierra, after losing forty-five feet of water depth and 99% of its ducks and geese, Mono Lake is slowly being restored, and with record snowfall this year it should gain a few more feet of water depth. In both cases the original devastation was due to diversion of water for LA, but for the most part the restoration has been done without diminishing LA’s water supply.
• Habitat loss has had a damaging effect on migratory birds, but the Nature Conservancy is working with farmers in Washington state to allow flooding of fallow fields during bird migrations, providing stopovers for wildlife without affecting the land’s usefulness for crops. Early results show improved bird habitat and increased soil fertility. Similarly, the conservancy also restored twenty-five square miles of floodplain in Louisiana by removing a levee, apparently helping to reduce the downriver severity of a major flood in 2009 as a result.
• After years of delay, the Boeing 787 will finally launch later this year. It offers 20% better fuel efficiency than comparable older planes, meaning that a flight that previously would have burned 10,000 gallons of jet fuel will now be using 2,000 gallons less. At the same time it’s a quieter plane, which is nice for those of us living in the flight path of a large airport.
• An eradication of brown rats on South Georgia Island is underway. While this is obviously bad news for the rats, since arriving with whaling ships in the early 1900s they have decimated many of the native nesting birds, and with the retreating of glaciers on the island it is inevitable that they will spread and destroy even more bird colonies. Thus, the prospect of their removal is a hopeful one for the future recovery of the island’s amazing native wildlife.
• In 2008 LA approved a sales tax increase to fund transportation projects over the next thirty years. The mayor then proposed accelerating those projects through the 30/10 plan, in which LA would borrow funds from the federal government against the future sales tax revenue in order to implement in ten years what would have taken thirty. Since building rail, highways, and subways in 2011 dollars is cheaper than doing it in the future, and since there are immense benefits to having better transit options now rather than later, AND since this is a loan that is backed by a revenue stream that has already been voter-approved, the plan is moving forward quickly and seems to be supported from both the left and the right, with those of us living in LA set to benefit from much-needed infrastructure improvements in the coming decade.

It’s nice to step back occasionally and get a reminder of why, despite constant predictions of doom and gloom, the future continues to be a hopeful one. The comments link is available for anyone wanting to spread some additional positivity, as good news should definitely be shared.