How’s your life going?\u00a0 Are you where you thought you’d be now if you look back to a couple of months before the 2020 elections?\u00a0 Or to the early days of 2020 when America First thought China had declared biological war?<\/p>\n
It’s made a mess of my sideline business, but I’m recovering and adapting and looking at some new ways to pay the bills.<\/p>\n
My life is changing quite a bit as of a few weeks ago.\u00a0 I’m writing about it today because the last few weeks have been an unpleasant surprise introduction to the pain of passing large gallstones, having one’s gall bladder removed, and the weeks of recovery.\u00a0 Thank you, Obamacare, I’m not going to lose my house or have to sell off all my possessions to pay for a 5-digit hospital tab.<\/p>\n
During my years in infosec our trade often looked at epidemiology.\u00a0 There are wonderful models on how malware spreads like disease, how we can control it, cultural reactions, administration headaches, financial woes, and even politics.\u00a0 There’s also a lot of experience with the people who have the money not wanting to “waste” it on security.\u00a0 I’m old enough to remember AIDS but also old enough to remember how it was blown off by most of America, including POTUS Reagan, and how much that held back diagnosis and treatment.\u00a0 Not to be all doom-and-gloom, but between POTUS Trump and the right-wing’s denial of science, things are not going as well as they could.<\/p>\n
Starting with the lockdowns, the wearing of masks, and finally getting to vaccinations; then breakthrough infections and masks being political agendas, I’ve been laying low.\u00a0 Selling stuff on my Etsy store, cleaning out a bunch of childhood\/teen SF\/fantasy stuff that is now worth folding money on eBay.\u00a0 When you pretend you’re moving you discover that the $50 skateboard you bought in Santa Cruz in the 90s that’s still in shrink wrap?\u00a0 It’s worth $1300 (a months’ mortgage!) to an eBay collector.<\/p>\n