2022-23 In Retrospect | Buffers & Simplicity

This is a two year retrospect.

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.
“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

On Buffers (proactivity)

My father-in-law told me something that was so simple, yet profound that it changed my way of thinking. I was telling him a story about when we got stranded after the car battery failed. He told me of a simple solution I’d never have thought of; he proactively replaces his car batteries before they die. He’ll buy a new one at 4 or 5 years old. By contrast I didn’t replace my batteries until they died squeezing out 5-7 years of life. The thought never occurred to me that batteries have a shorter lifecycle than the car. With a mean-time-to-failure (MTTF) of 6-years, between two vehicles, this means Kris and I get stranded on average once every 3-years.

Then it occurred to me that the cost of replacing the battery early is less than the cost of dealing with a dead battery. 🪫

I probably spend $150 on a battery (I always get the one with the most cold cranking amps). If I can normally squeeze 6-years of life replacing it at the 5-year mark means I get ⅚ of the life, wasting about $25 worth of lifespan. Best case is it costs me and Kris (2 people) an hour to deal with a failed battery so even if you ignored the hassle, the labor savings alone is worth the cost of maintaining a car battery buffer.

Of course, I already do this with electronics–I proactively replace hard drives at 5-years old–I just hadn’t thought to extend the practice to other things in life. When you’re young the lifespan of things seems so long and you don’t have the resources to do maintenance so you tend to think of purchases as being one-offs. Now I consider the lifecycle of everything. Even a roof has a lifespan.

Essentially by proactively replacing an item before it fails, you’re paying extra for a buffer to the failure point. That is a cost, but the benefit is you have control over when it is replaced.

Proverbs 27:1 LSB - 

Do not boast about tomorrow, 
     For you do not know what a day may bring forth. 

The reality is life is full of unexpected events, but many are predictable except for the timing. You can decrease that timing entropy by buffering. I started thinking about all the things in life that would benefit from buffering, here’s a few of them:

• Building out systems with 50% more compute and storage capacity than needed.
• Filling up my gas tank when ⅓ full. This costs time, but saves time when something unplanned comes up.
• Time – instead of allowing people to fill my day with 9-hours of back-to-back meetings; I have started blocking off time to provide a couple hours of buffer to each day.
• Don’t commit to too many things–I’ve learned to say “no” quite a bit. I still feel bad, but at the same time saying, “yes” means I’m taking away time from my work, my friends, my family, or my time spent reading the Bible or in prayer.
• Planning 8-hours of sleep every night in case an event requires you to have to stay up–you’re not starting out in that situation already exhausted.
• Replacing a roof when it’s 30-years old
• Having an emergency fund
• Buying a slightly larger house /car than you anticipate needing
• Having a little more towing capacity than you think you’ll need
• Not trying to be 100% efficient; but allowing some slack (maybe 80% is more appropriate).
• Scheduling meetings to end 10 minutes before the next one.
• Leaving 10 minutes earlier than you need to for an appointment

The list goes on…

On Simplicity

Near the end of 2022 Jim was preaching through Hebrews 12:1-2 (NASB95):

Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

One area that was particularly convicting to me was laying aside encumbrances. Encumbrances aren’t necessarily sins of themselves, but they are things that slow you down. Like a runner carrying a backpack of things that he doesn’t need to run.

Discernment is not knowing the difference between right and wrong. It is knowing the difference between right and almost right. — Charles Spurgeon.

I’ve made things in life a great deal more complicated than they need to be. Upon retrospect, I noticed I’m still optimizing my family’s resources with the frugality of a college student. This is great at saving dollars, but what isn’t good is this comes at a considerable cost – time. But now we need to start making things simple to make life sustainable even if it means spending a couple of more dollars.

So, for 2023, I decided to focus on making things simpler to reduce encumbrances.

If I was using two providers that do the same thing, I’d consolidate to one even if it meant costing a bit more; if I had multiple ways to do something, I reduced it to one.

A list of just some of the things I made simpler:

• Switched from a coffee pot to an Insta Pot K-Cup Coffee Maker (costs a bit more, but saves the time of cleaning out a pot and I’m the only one who drinks coffee in the family)
• Moved our cash accounts to a brokerage that allows us to hold money market funds as our core position so I no longer have to manually maintain a buffer to meet cash demands.
• Consolidated cloud providers: Instead of maintaining Vultr, DigitalOcean, Cloudflare, AWS, Google Compute, Oracle Cloud, Namecheap, Dreamhost, Namesilo, etc. I consolidated almost everything to AWS for cloud and Cloudflare for caching.
• Put all my sites on one platform: OpenLitespeed, WordPress, LSCache, and Cloudflare.
• Standardized entirely on Ubuntu (with a few specialized exceptions like Raspberry Pi OS, Proxmox VE/PBS, and TrueNAS Scale–but all of them are Debian based so very similar to Ubuntu).
• We had 5 cell phone lines across three providers. I discovered US Mobile allows us to have phones on both Verizon and T-Mobile (also does AT&T but we don’t get AT&T coverage here) all under one pooled plan so I’ve consolidated all of those to US Mobile. This is a little more expensive, costing us $8/month/line and $2 for pooled data, but most other people I know pay more than $42/month for 5 cell lines–and the simplicity of not having 3 different phone bills is worth it.
• I had a hodge-podge of Dell Windows, Pixel Android, iPad/iOS, Kindle–that’s a lot of security updates to stay on top of. Since most of our hardware was at EOL for security updates, I consolidated all of it to Apple devices. Advanced Data Protection also improved our security posture over using Windows. An Apple first strategy also streamlines the decision process on tech purchases: before I’d research every option wasting hours going through features and specs, but now if Apple sells it and it meets our requirements, just get that.
• For communication, I’ve decided to focus on federated protocols. Email, Phone, and Texting. I make one exception to federated and that’s iMessage (which is arguably the most secure communication platform with post-quantum level 3 security) and FaceTime because they integrate seamlessly with SMS and phone calls, and they’re end-to-end encrypted (zero knowledge) with Advanced Data Protection. I know people who are on WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Signal, Telegram, Band, Discord, etc. It’s just too much time, overload, and security risk to stay on top of that many platforms; and if people really need to get a hold of someone they will eventually reach out by Email, Phone, or Texts.
• I had a number of To Do Apps, which I consolidated into just two: Apple Reminders and Jira. I actually don’t need Jira that much–but sometimes I’ll plan out a complex project in there.

World Events

Covid Aftermath

The main event the world is coming off of is covid; which has had a couple of lasting societal impacts. I have a good deal of friends who disagree with my positions, so if you don’t agree with mine know that I don’t think any less of you; and I hope you don’t think any less of me. This is an area I’m willing to agree to disagree on. This has all been difficult to navigate with a lot at stake. I know most of you (especially if you have made it this far down a retrospect post are smarter than average) are trying to do what you think is right. In retrospect I think we had a balanced and reasonable approach. When covid first started we didn’t panic. When the government issued stay at home orders we initially complied (especially when we didn’t know what we were dealing with); but after much prayer and consideration, disobeyed when the government had overstepped it’s authority over families and employers and over churches by not allowing them to meet (which is a biblical mandate) but allowing casinos, bars, and strip clubs to open. As a reminder the four authorities established by God are: The Family, the Church, the Employer, and the Government. Nowhere in scripture is the Government supposed to have more authority than the Church, the Family or the Employer; yet the Government tried to exercise authority beyond its realm over all three. The movie The Essential Church (trailer) is an excellent documentary of what occurred and explains my position well.

I think our reaction to covid had a few lasting impacts:

1. The revelation of how far the chasm is between the left and the right. I don’t think it widened the divide, but simply revealed the extent of the divide.
2. Increased the prevalence of Work From Home (WFH). While the internet enabled WFH, and Covid was the catalyst to implement WFH, neither of those are the real cause of WFH. I am quite convinced the real reason is cubicles. It was the cubicle that caused the hearts of men to desire working from home. Unless businesses are willing to change that, WFH is here to stay.

Artificial Intelligence

Generative AI is at the peak of its hype cycle. Every new technology goes through the hype cycle. Like self-driving cars, prepare now for GenAI to go through Gartner’s Trough of Disillusionment.

I’ve heard a lot of wrong assumptions about AI’s capabilities. There’s a fear that AI will replace people entirely. It may replace some jobs, but I also think from a biblical worldview there is nothing to fear. We are created in God’s image; AI is not. We were created to work, and that means Christ has provisioned enough work for us to do until His return. AI will give us considerable leverage. It will allow us to do more with fewer resources. AI will never become sentient. It will never have a conscience. AI is a mechanical brain that can process data and make logical decisions; but it will never have the capacity to replace humans made in God’s image. I believe the net benefit of AI is good–just like the spreadsheet and the internal combustion engine. It’s going to allow us to level up in our work.

Genesis 2:15 LSB - 

Then Yahweh God took the man and set him in the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it.