Where I’ve been

It’s been over a year since we lost our dear April. I haven’t retreated from the world (any more than usual), but I’ve had little impetus to post here. I’ve been busy pursuing my various creative disciplines, including guitar, drums, bass, keys, and vocals. I’ve been increasing my focus on the various visual arts to include drawing, 3D environments & modeling, and dabbling in video editing and VFX. I’ve been busy, is what I’m saying.

I’ve been more active on social media with occasional creative posts, but nowhere near the level I need to build a community yet. I’ve mostly finished the Unreal Sensei course on UE5, although he has been updating content that I will revisit. I enrolled in Marc Brunet’s digital art course, a big commitment since I’m not bringing any additional money in now.

On that note, I’ll briefly explain. I’m no longer working with VES. They were bought out by a bigger defense contractor called Maximus last year. Word came down in March-ish that we would no longer be able to have schedule limitations and would need to let them schedule as they pleased.

The big issue with that (which I’m not sure I covered before) is that they have a policy where joint exams are all lumped together as a single worksheet for payment purposes. This means they get 6-7 worksheets for the price of one. As it happens, these are some of the most common claims we get. My experience in the past was that I would have my schedule filled with these types of exams, and the result was that I’d have 15-20 exams but end up getting paid like I did 3-5 exams. I had limited my schedule, so they couldn’t pile these exams on. Once, I decided to try opening my schedule up to get more exams, but I immediately got booked with those joint exams, so I reverted to my old policy. This was fine until Maximus required an open schedule.

At the time, I explained to them why I limited my schedule that way and that going forward, I would just be working less because this payment policy wasn’t sustainable. Why would I spend 8 hours in their clinic with only 1-2 hours’ worth of pay to show for it? I didn’t hear anything back and a month or so went by with no communication. Sometime in April or May, I find myself unable to log in to their system. I asked tech support, and their response was, “we’ll forward your request to the appropriate department.” Which is a very non-tech support kind of response.

I knew something was up. The answer I got (through an intermediary) was that “upper management” had decided for one of the following reasons: Veteran complaint, timeliness of reports, the accuracy of reports, employee/Veteran relations, and/or something else we’re not saying, blah, blah, blah, VES had decided to cut ties with you. I responded that this wasn’t satisfactory, and they could at least give me a specific reason (assuming it was possible it could be one of those reasons, although I didn’t believe so).

All I got back was that it was “schedule related,” but they might consider the matter again if I wanted to change my request. I said I never refused to work under the new policy, only that I would be working less because it wasn’t fair payment. I proposed that if they would alter my contract to pay fairly for the joint exams, I would be willing to work more often. My productivity was established over the past year (especially since I completed two of their travel weeks last year, and those are a slog). The intermediary said he’d forward it.

I had some residual emails from other departments about training and the like, and when I got those, I would cc this intermediary as a way to get updates on my proposal. After several weeks there was no answer, so I quit checking.

Since I have no specifics to go by, I think VES doesn’t tolerate any providers challenging their payment system, whether it’s done professionally or non-adversarial. I’ve never made any demands or ultimatums to them; I’ve only explained my reduced hours and why that policy is unfair, in my opinion. I’ve never been shown the courtesy of a response from management.

VES doesn’t hire providers, which prevents them from needing to provide any of the benefits or protections that a normal employer would be required by law to provide. They never hire you, so they don’t need to fire you; they can just say we’re no longer going to schedule appointments with you.

There was a precedent in my experience, my colleague from the VA fee basis days, Dr. Brooks, had experienced the same scenario, although his occurred within a few months while mine was over a year later. I think he may have been more direct in challenging them, going so far as to try and obtain a copy of their VA contract under the FOI act. I don’t think he ever got it, and not long afterward, he was “fired.”

He had been my collaborating physician, so maybe my dismissal was partly due to guilt by association in their minds, I don’t know. I never got a real answer, but I think I’m right in my thinking. Changing that policy to pay providers fairly would likely result in the loss of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, in revenue for them.

All that to say, I just decided to end it with them. I had never appreciated their culture. Despite all their flowery quotations about caring for Veterans, including those awful self-help and uplifting quote framed photos filling the walls in their clinic, their consistent behavior is that profits are the priority, not the Veteran. I often would have a Veteran who had an issue I could address in the clinic, but VES would never let me add or change the report even though it would likely save the Veteran months of waiting and potentially get them their benefits faster.

All this is anecdotal, but I felt that if there was ever a question of payment, their policy was to refuse the exam and make the VA request it formally to ensure they got their money. Whether it was the right thing to do for the Veteran didn’t matter. The other ongoing issue of frustration with them was their QA policy. They would go over each report and make these small corrections that were irrelevant, but I assume it was to ensure their reports were buffed to such a blinding shine that the VA would never question them and they could maintain their contract. Without their VA contract, they essentially have no business model.

I worked directly for the VA for nine years, and the issues that would be flagged by VES QA personnel never got questioned or challenged by VBA. Never. So, that was an ongoing frustration because they could commandeer your time and make you re-visit a report, and they weren’t going to pay you for it.

How’s that for a short explanation? Lol. Apparently, I still have some feelings about it. Mostly I find it frustrating that not only the VA (considering what happened to all of us fee basis providers) but VES and likely the other contractors truly don’t value hard work and competence and mostly want people who will swallow the corporate Kool-Aid and keep their heads down and their mouths shut.

The outcome is that this scenario has driven me into full-time creative pursuits and will eventually provide a means of income derived from the things I love, not the whims of some crass corporate entity.

In a forthcoming post, I’ll get back to the more important updates about my creative pursuits.

Spring Has Sprung

In Texas, at least. After a slow start, it appears all of our trees, most of our shrubs and the lawn are making a full recovery from Snowmageddon ‘21. Our biggest tree, the one out front which was planted when they built the house, was probably the slowest to sprout buds. For awhile, I had serious concerns that it didn’t make it through the four day hard freeze back in February. Thankfully, it finally began to display some buds and eventually a full complement of leaves to get that good ‘ole photosynthesis jam going. By current estimates, it’s mainly some potted plants that appear to have met their demise. We have a few shrubs that look dead to me, but Aeyong is optimistic that by cutting them down to their base we’ll encourage some new growth from the roots. We’ll see. If they don’t recover, shrubs are easy enough to replace.

In that horticultural vein, I’ve taken a bit more interest in getting the yard in good trim. I apologize, that wasn’t intended as a pun, but now it is, so there. You’re welcome. We haven’t really gone to any great lengths with our yard, other than regular mowing and seasonal fertilization and occasional seeding. The front has remained pretty thick and healthy, but the backyard has some bare patches, including one large swath of dirt in the back corner. I’m going to try de-thatching and scarifying with, you guessed it, our new de-thatcher/scarifier. Hopefully it will clear up a lot of dead grass and leaves and open up the soil to allow more root growth and nutrient/water transfer where it’s needed. Along with that, I’ve got a big bag of Humic DG which is supposed to enhance nutrient absorption and improve soil structure. It’s a bunch of small spherical granules that disperse into the soil, some of which immediately break down into humic and fulvic acid, combining with essential nutrients and persisting in the soil to allow plant absorption for extended periods of time. The humate portion remains even longer, thereby further extending that nutrient cycle.

I’ve seen a few customer testimonials and just Humic DG alone can make a big difference to yards, plants, and larger agricultural applications. My plan is to de-thatch, scarify, mow up the detritus (I have so few opportunities to use that word, so back off), and then lay down probably half the 40 pound bag of Humic. I’ll be seeding and fertilizing in the near future, but I do want to give the yard a little time to recover so I’ll probably wait a few days to a week to do that. Not everyone recommends seeding in the spring, but our bare patches definitely need it. I probably need to get some peat moss to mix with the seed. Although it probably sounds like I’ve gone all 4H (when I was in school it was all farm kids, I’m probably showing my age), but I really just want a nice green lawn that I can maintain. I don’t want to spend a great deal of additional time keeping it in shape. Hopefully some well timed interventions will get it ready for summer.

In other developments, I got my second COVID vaccination last Wednesday, and the side effects were slightly worse, I suppose. The arm soreness was about the same, but I think I felt some more systemic effects this time. It’s a bit hard to tell because the day of the vaccination I also ran (a modified attempt at resumption that was triggered by the broken elliptical) and scalped the lawn. Scalping the lawn (and bagging the clippings) is something that’s useful to do 1-2 times per year based on the advice I’ve seen. It’s somewhat like de-thatching, I suppose. In my yard’s case, it takes considerably more effort to push the mower across high spots in the ground. All that to say, the additional fatigue I felt the day after was probably a combination of the vaccination and the physical efforts of the day before. I also woke up around midnight feeling febrile, but didn’t bother checking my temperature. I just took a gram of Tylenol every six hours for the first day or so and things slowly got better. As I’ve said, eminently better than getting sick with COVID.

Things at work are going well. I’ve worked in the new location the last two weekends, and it’s a nice setting. Essentially the same drive as before with the last two miles being on surface streets. VES has been keeping me gainfully scheduled, one weekend at a time. My no-show rate has dropped a bit, down to only 15% of the last two weekends. I’ve been averaging about $2500 per weekend, which is okay. I’ve been hoping to maintain closer to $3K per weekend, for a monthly total of $12K. Based on how they’ve been filling my schedule (partially) and the no-show rate, I’m not sure that’s achievable with only a two day workweek. At least it’s adequate for our financial goals of paying the house off slightly faster and maintaining a discretionary income. I only want to work enough for those two criteria, as I really value my free time.

Back to homefront matters, Aeyong is recovering fairly well. She had her cast removed the week before last, and she’s jumped back in to her normal routine. Maybe a bit too hard because she’s got some wrist swelling today and will need to rest a bit. She’s been catching up on several things she wanted to accomplish including trimming and bathing all the girls. She also has been out in the yard working, and this weekend she decided to help me out by dusting and cleaning the bathrooms upstairs. That was a nice surprise because it had been nagging me for several weeks and I had been too busy with regular work and work around the house. Still, she’s probably paying for the uptick in activity right now.

I’ve been trying to improve the garage layout the last few weeks to coincide with efforts in the yard. I installed some overhead storage shelves and moved the treadmill and elliptical all the way back against the wall. Not a huge change, but the added floor space has been nice. We took the vertical shelves that were previously on the back wall and moved them into the laundry room, giving us some more storage space in there. We had a little half shelf in the laundry room before, and now that has moved to the garage as a rolling storage cart for our air compressor and shop vac. I’ll eventually install another identical set of overhead shelves in the other garage slot and hopefully free up another section of the floor. Eventually I want to have a rolling workbench with some good working tools - table saw, miter saw, router, and maybe a few other tools depending on how things develop. I’m going to try to ease into woodworking, but I already have all sorts of ideas for projects. I don’t know if it’s just a natural part of aging, or a genetic thing I get from my father. He was definitely a DIYer at his core. Nature, nurture, or perhaps a bit of both?

After all this fairly mundane material, I haven’t stopped pursuing my core disciplines, although there have been more days “off” when I was working at VES or had my time manhandled by DIY, medical, etc. issues. I finished a Premiere Pro course, and I’ve just started a Photoshop course. I also signed up for a basic piano course, mostly to cover some fundamentals that I know I’ve been lacking. I’ve really only slowly learned songs and then just spent my time practicing them, but I haven’t spent any considerable time at learning scales, improvisation and some of the basic skill set I need if I want to advance further. The same could be said for my other disciplines as well. I’m alternating my drumming practice between Mike Michalkow’s course and trying to learn Xanadu for the eventual Rush AFTK deep dive video. Check back next year, probably. Then there’s also bass, guitar, singing, drawing, writing, learning to speak/read/write Korean. Not to mention maintaining my CMEs for work. The days are just packed, and that’s how I like it.

It's been one of those months...

I feel like I was thinking that through most of 2020, and 2021 is not showing any signs of let up. In 2020 there were times where days and weeks would seem to run together, but then there were many times that every day was a new reason the world was about to end. 2021 hasn’t been quite that severe, and by most metrics things are looking up, but February would prove to be a tremendously tumultuous month. Yes, I alliterated tumultuous. Gird yourself for more.

The weekend of February 13-14th would see me braving the oncoming winter storm to work on Saturday, but even by then I knew Sunday was going to be sketchy. I was already calling VES support to cancel my clinic for Sunday as I drove in for the Saturday clinic. Ironically, there would be multiple reasons why that was unnecessary because VES would ultimately decide to close down themselves as the severity of the winter storm developed. Even more importantly, I would be taking Aeyong to the emergency room. In a fit of youthful energy for the novelty of snow, she ventured out front, slid down the driveway (about two feet by my recollection); her feet went up and her right wrist came down. Hard.

The result was a displaced, angulated, comminuted, intra-articular fracture of her right radius. Hurts just saying it. We managed to get her into a nearby ER (thanks to USMD for actually being open when most places were closed), got her fracture partially reduced and splinted, and got her enough pain killers to tide her over until she could get seen by orthopedics, which would end up being nine days later. I cancelled my upcoming VES schedule for several weeks so I could tend to her needs while she recovered.

Thank Snowmageddon ‘21 and Texas’ feeble ability to cope for shutting down almost everything for a week. Not that we should complain too vociferously. All of our essential utilities remained functioning and by current accounts the only significant damage we incurred was a sprinkler system pipe and several plants and shrubs. Thanks to a frozen spigot, a neighbor sustained enough water damage that there were still reclamation trucks out in front of her house as of yesterday. I guess she had to hit the reset button on her ground floor.

The rest of February and early March was a challenging period of time. Aeyong underwent surgery on February 24th, and Dr. Niacaris was all we could have hoped for in an orthopedic surgeon. She has some extra hardware in the form of a plate and six screws, and it’s possible she may eventually need to get the plate removed as it was designed for bones larger than her relatively diminutive frame. She had her first post-op last week and things went well. She was gifted a new cast in sexy purple, although she’s been finding it a bit less comfortable than the splint she had before.

She was judged as lacking in her rehab milestones and I got a stern glance from Dr. Niacaris. She only responds so much to encouragement, so I try my best but it’s leading a horse to water doncha know. I went back to work at VES last weekend and things are going alright. I have one more weekend starting tomorrow, and then I’ll get yet another weekend off as they relocate to the new facility a few miles down the road in the Las Colinas area. As the crow flies it should be closer to home, but there are additional surface streets in the route, so based on google map’s prediction, it’s basically a wash in travel time compared to the current location.

Still, TXDot is adding lanes on the G-Dub, so it’s possible I might decide to switch to a weekday schedule in the future. With a slightly shorter drive and more lanes for traffic, it might not make as big a difference working weekends versus weekdays. While things progress with VES, things are finally about to completely shut down with the North Texas VA. I got a few text messages from Dr Hasan asking about my last workday, but when I asked what it was about, all he would say was “we’re trying to determine when fee basis last worked here”. Yeah, I gathered as much. When I got his message notification, I briefly felt optimistic, but clearly there’s no plan on bringing fee basis back at this point. To sort of bookend that interaction, I got an email from the VA remote access manager stating my authorization was about to expire. I wasn’t thinking about it, but I guess my access was approved the same day fee basis was laid off, 3/24/20.

So, it’s essentially been a year since me and my fellow fee basis examiners were laid off. What followed was in some ways a challenging year although we fared so much better than many people. The biggest frustration for us was being out of work and losing about 3/4ths of our income. It would be nine months later before I would return to income producing work with VES in December. After a few months, things seem to have stabilized. The treasury has helped restore our pre-pandemic checking balance thanks to a big refund as well as stimulus payments. I finally had the confidence to shift some more money to our mortgage payment, so we’ve gone from the minimum payment to one that will see the house paid off in three years. I might increase it yet again depending on our ability to continue running budget surpluses each month. This is contingent on a steady supply of exams from VES.

For giggles I checked with my former colleague, Dr C, who is working for QTC, to find out their current payment rates. I’m not sure if he gave me his rates or the PA rates, but they’re even less than VES. If they’re his MD rates, I can only imagine what they’re paying PAs. As I’ve said here before, it’s my strong feeling that VES is lowballing their payments to providers, but this is anecdotal based on what I previously received as a fee basis. There may be truth to their statements that they are having exams combined into one rate as the number of DBQs increases. Dr Brooks is still waiting on his FOIA request. My feeling is that it will reveal nothing or it won’t reveal enough to really discern whether VES is inappropriately paying their examiners.

One other positive development is that I was able to get my first of two COVID-19 vaccinations on Wednesday. I had signed up with Dallas County and I got a text message on Monday offering the shot. I took the first available appointment time on Wednesday and it was held at a joint Grand Prairie/Irving mass vaccination site being run at the Theatre at Grand Prairie. I was impressed with the efficiency and relative painlessness of the operation. The main side effect of the vaccination was pain at the injection site which was worst yesterday, the day after the shot. Today that pain has reduced substantially and I’m not really feeling any additional side effects. We’ve been told the second shot is worse for side effects, so I’ll see. It’s still exponentially better than getting COVID and potentially dying or suffering long term health effects from it.

Nut Kickin'

In retrospect, I imagine this post will come across as first world bellyaching, but this is one of my preferred venting venues, so there.

I’ve been working for VES for over a month now, and as time passes I question how sustainable it will be. They show all the marks of a bureaucracy like the VA, but without most of the incentives. Working as fee basis for the VA, we had a very fair payment structure, a decent clinic and network infrastructure, and a mostly autonomous working environment including how we got paid. VES has built up an administrative behemoth for reasons not fully understood, and every exam is often beset by multiple follow up questions that can add as much time as it took to complete the exam in the first place. This might be tenable if the pay structure was adequate, but it’s averaging around half that of fee basis at best. The frustrating thing about the incessant follow ups (QA addendums) is that they’re mostly irrelevant questions that VBA has never cared about in my personal course of completing nearly 15,000 exams. Regardless, VES will insist that these are due to “VA policies” and “VA preferences”, when I’m pretty sure this is entirely made up or at least based on some subjective request from VBA that isn’t based in any sort of regulation or guidance.

An example from just yesterday - I had a case that involved a Veteran with a long history of knee surgeries that ultimately culminated in a knee replacement last year. When I entered in the diagnoses, I still included the past history, some of which he was already specifically connected for. I get a QA addendum because they wanted me to only put the knee replacement as his diagnosis, and remove all the other diagnoses. This isn’t how we document in medicine. A knee replacement doesn’t wipe the slate clean and eliminate the previous history. Not to mention that some of his issues were extra-articular and weren’t involved in the knee replacement. What this admin person didn’t understand is that “knee replacement” doesn’t mean you get a brand new knee and start over. It’s an artificial knee that will wear out and in some cases, the surgical outcome is no better and maybe even worse than before.

This is the typical run-around I get on probably at least half of my exams. Another point of frustration is that they hold us to a 48 hour window to complete exams, but I still have unprocessed work from two months ago, and they have failed to process several exams in time for our payday, so they get held over until the next pay period. Do as we say, not as we do.

Contiguous with this I have been having my recurring OS overhaul, triggered by random untraceable events. This seems to happen with me and OSX every year or two, where the only way I can get things functioning is to wipe the slate clean and start anew. Another major point of frustration is that Backblaze, who I’ve been using for several years, sent me a recovery drive for my OS disk, but the copy speeds are so slow, it’s going to take 3-4 weeks to copy around 1.5 terabytes. I’m at the point of just scrapping the restore process and falling back on time machine.

I’m also recently made a major switch in my studio setup, by swapping places between the video and craft rooms. The big drafting/craft desk moved into the closet and the bed from the craft room is now in what amounts to a basic guest room with TV. Ultimately, this will be a superior setup, but there are a lot of growing pains in the process. I’m trying to back into video recording with a plan to jump headfirst into a YouTube channel with the hope I can build enough quality content that I would earn a subscriber base leading to some passive income, even if a modest amount. We don’t need a great deal of additional money to keep us comfortable, and one major lesson of COVID is that I don’t want to depend on any corporate or bureaucratic structure for my livelihood.

All these events sort of running concurrently has felt like a kick in the nuts, figuratively speaking. I’m spending more time keeping things from burning down and it distracts me from working on my disciplines. I have renewed my efforts to study and improve my video editing and post processing, but right now I’m just trying to get things running normally, so it’s a bit frustrating. …and the microwave died. And a few other things that aren’t coming to mind right at the moment. Wahh Wahh.

Still, we have a home, the utilities are paid, we have food to eat, the dogs, Aeyoung and I are relatively healthy and not really wanting for anything critical. Like I said, first world problems…

2020 was a year

So much of the focus of this past year has been on the negative, overwhelmingly centered on the Coronavirus Pandemic and all of its effects. For me, the most unfortunate aspect was just how inadequate and irresponsible were the reactions of individuals, leaders, and governments. There was no escaping the impact that such a new and deadly virus was going to have on society, but the devastation could have been mitigated to a greater degree, and the loss of life, jobs, and social safety nets could have been greatly minimized.

An analysis of this fallout must include the myriad of consequences. I was, like many others, personally affected when I lost my primary means of income shortly after the pandemic made its full effect known in the US. Arguably the single most devastating acute change I’ve experienced in my adult life, at least from an economic standpoint. Thankfully, my choice to make the Army a career and the pension resulting from that became our primary safety net and kept us in good stead for the lean times to come. Even with this, it wasn’t permanently sustainable.

A result of the layoff (and ultimate termination) was a blank canvas upon which to fill each day. As I’ve discussed before, although I never succumbed to depression or an emotional breakdown, there was definitely a mild funk that persisted for several months. It ultimately was a lack of direction stemming from all the uncertainty. I long ago realized that I must have a target for which I’m aiming, whether it’s creative, financial, professional, etc. The loss of income put so many goals in doubt that it became difficult to focus my efforts.

I didn’t let it keep me from my core disciplines and I continued to practice guitar and drums. I can’t specifically recall what my typical days were like back then, although I started to spend more time playing video games and other sorts of passive activities as I’ve previously discussed. Prior to the pandemic I had renewed my efforts to learn writing, drawing, and studying the Korean language. These fell by the wayside for several months as I had problems finding the motivation to keep all these disciplines going.

Eventually, I think near late summer or early fall, the slow re-opening of medical care and society in general started to hint at better days to come. This slowly helped renew my desire to restart these pursuits and I’ve settled back into a routine encompassing all my disciplines - guitar, drums, keys, bass, vocals, writing, drawing, and studying Korean. I’m still trying to sort out the optimal battle rhythm since I only recently returned to work and that’s been a big shift from the previous eight months.

All this rambling to say that despite the negative consequences of last year, it hasn’t been all doom and gloom. The challenge of the virus was met with an unprecedented effort to develop a vaccine and in an achievement that I would compare to the Apollo Space Program for its audacity and technical wizardry, several companies developed not only viable, but highly effective versions of a vaccine, several of which were using mRna, a complete paradigm shift in vaccinations. Sadly, our current administration is screwing up the rollout, but I’m not sure anyone expected anything else.

The good news is that here in the US we elected a new president/vp and in a few weeks, we’ll usher in a new era and a return to normalcy, at least in the executive branch. Another positive change has been the demonstration that remote work and learning is not only viable, it’s likely a superior alternative to many traditional processes in business and education. Why should we make people drive day in and day out to an office or classroom when they could achieve the same goals and processes from their homes? There will always be industries and jobs that can’t be done remotely, but we’ve definitely shifted the focus more in the last year than we might have in ten years pre-pandemic.

The most important lesson I’ve learned is that we’re not really that far removed from being able to sustain our lifestyle without me working at all. I don’t plan on fully retiring anytime soon (if ever), but I know now that within a few years and having achieved a few economic milestones, we can sustain a fully retired lifestyle indefinitely. I’ll likely always want to work a little bit for discretionary income purposes, but now we have a better idea of how life would look with no additional income.

Reflecting on this, I’m grateful. I’m grateful for the life we’ve been able to carve out after many decades of hard work. We didn’t suffer or feel deprived in the least, and I know there are millions if not billions of people who had a much harder time of this last year, and in many cases have always had a harder time of it. The biggest burden on us was mild anxiety about our economic future and whether we’d be able to endure additional economic hardships beyond the loss of work. Thankfully, that was the worst of it as we managed to make it through without any big disasters.

I should also take the time to mention that we lost some of my all time most important musical influences this year, ironically not due to the pandemic but to other health issues, I think cancer in all three cases. Early this year in January we lost Neil Peart, arguably as big of an influence on me as any other musician, especially considering his lyrics and prose. Not long after, we lost the brilliant musician and composer, Lyle Mays, the longtime musical partner of Pat Metheny and an amazing artist in his own right. He brought so much joy and wonder to so many people over the years. Finally, in October the world of rock and guitar specifically lost a man who arguably had a bigger influence than any other in history, Eddie Van Halen. It’s impossible to calculate just how important and far reaching Eddie’s influence has been on rock guitar. Often cited for his revolutionary approach to tapping and soloing, it’s his rhythm, riffs, and songwriting that are probably the most important elements of his style. Losing these three greats was just another kick in the gut to add to the misery of this year.

Thankfully, the year ended on a high note as I finally was able to return to work, albeit for a different employer. The eventual dismissal from the VA, my employer for the last nine years, was handled pretty callously and lacking in respect from the leadership in my former clinic, but I suppose I was a bit naive in assuming the best about certain people. It’s in the past now. As part of that scenario, the work seems to have mostly shifted to the contractors, so that’s where I followed it and now find myself working for one of them. I never predicted anything as universally devastating as a pandemic, but my belief that there would always be work for disability examiners has been proven true thus far.

My goals for this year are largely consistent with what they’ve always been. I want to continue improving my craft at the various disciplines, ultimately in the service of storytelling in various mediums. I am hoping in the near term to finally record and submit that audition for the guitar program at Berklee and hopefully begin a dual major track starting with the spring semester in a few months. I’ll have to adapt my battle rhythm yet again, but I suppose that’s always going to be a more fluid aspect of my daily efforts.

I hope this year has helped distill what’s most important in everyone’s lives, I think it has in mine.

sappenin'?

I’m back to the daily dull drudgery of a working stiff. These two-day workweeks are so brutal, I decided to take two weeks off for the holidays. Good thing the clinic is closed for the same time period or they might have missed me. Yuks aside, the first two work weekends are down and things went pretty smoothly. I’m getting back into the swing of things and figuring out what VES expects out of these exams. The only thing remaining is to get them to start increasing my appointment slots so I can see these small cases every 30 minutes instead of the hour slots they have scheduled to this point.

At the current rate I’m making about $1K a weekend which is a big improvement over nothing at all, but I should be able to manage that in one day if they increase those slots. Four weekends a month should allow me to gross ~ $8K and net ~ $5-6K after I set the predicted tax deductions aside. It’s nice just to be getting back into a regular workflow and having the income that allows us not to sweat the small stuff like we’ve been doing during the layoff. No big expenditures thus far, but I’ve let myself buy some books and games without losing sleep over it.

In other events, the FDA has now approved two COVID vaccines, first from Pfizer and just recently from Moderna. This rollout is going to take months to get to everyone and I have no good prediction as to when Aeyoung and I will get our shots. I imagine I’ll have an earlier opportunity through the VA, but she’ll have to wait until our PCM offers the vaccination. I’m betting it’ll be several months at the earliest. There have been some shifty roll out orders from the white house, and no good explanation why they aren’t requesting the maximum amount. I know Pfizer has stated they have plenty of vaccine on hand waiting for requisition from the federal government but no explanation why they aren’t maxing out the orders. These jackholes are going to sow discord and chaos for every single minute they have remaining.

On that note, the Supreme Court has rejected the legal challenge from multiple states (including Texas, for which I take no blame) to overturn the election results. Cheeto Mussolini is still crying foul and will most likely do so for the rest of his days in office and on this planet. The electoral college did its job and elected based on the actual valid election results, so every step of the way has confirmed Biden and Harris as the President and Vice President elects. It’s just a waiting game at this point and the hope that any additional damage by the current administration can be minimized.

I’m starting to settle in to my new weekflow (that’s a word now, spellcheck), with focus on my disciplines during the regular weekdays and a relaxed schedule on the weekend/workdays. On those days I generally get in some exercise and Korean study, maybe some writing practice/study. So far I haven’t been very motivated to practice or do anything productive after my shifts, but I think I’ll eventually want to squeeze in some guitar or other discipline practice. I’ve managed that in the past.

one weekend down

I just finished my last note from today’s schedule and it was an overall smooth process. I’m not sure how many I might get back because I don’t know if the QA personnel look at documents on the weekend. I imagine I’ll have a few issues because I’m not familiar with any particular preferences that VES has different from the exams I performed for VHA/VBA. It seems they go out of their way to ensure that no questions can be left unanswered, even ones that shouldn’t need to be asked. There are questions on the VA forms that if answered negatively will grey out portions of the form below. However, it seems like VES is requiring examiners to answer hypotheticals on the remote chance that a question might be asked by VBA.

I’m not sure, but I’ll probably find out next week if I get some QA addendums returned. One thing I do like about their forms is that they won’t let you submit the form if you haven’t answered all the questions, regardless of applicability to the particular case. These were mostly times when I would fill out a diagnosis but miss a question before that just asking if they have any diagnoses in general. On the VA form, if you check the box for a diagnosis, that general question is automatically answered as yes. A little backwards and redundant, but at least they make sure you don’t miss any questions which can be easy to do on these long forms.

I had one no-show today and I have a feeling I’ll get stiffed on that one, because apparently they never confirmed this Veteran’s appointment and just let it get scheduled. If they confirmed and the Veteran no-showed it’s more on the Veteran, but I’m not a big fan of letting an appointment go forward if no one has been able to contact the Veteran. We’ll see what happens. I don’t have a specific idea of what the pay will be, because it’s not entirely clear from the agreement I signed, but I’ll find out next week or so. I’m under the impression that at least one exam/opinion won’t be paid for until an ancillary study is complete and I’ve commented on the results. Given the nature of scheduling under COVID, it could be several months.

All that said, it’s good to be back in the saddle and earning some sort of income. It’ll likely fall short of my averages as a fee basis provider, but after eight months without any work, I’m not complaining.

I'm back, batches...

I think I must have finally jumped through all the necessary hoops to return to gainful employment. I got a late afternoon email yesterday for some training videos on the the VES site. I watched those this morning (about 60 minutes worth) and notified the sender they were completed. A few hours later I got a response on an earlier schedule question and was given a training day of 12/10 with my first patients for that coming weekend.

After confirming I could work those days, I quickly received a follow up asking if I could work the following weekend as well. It might be partially due to the scarcity of weekend slots as well as the upcoming holiday, but they seemed motivated to schedule. I told them I was available for every weekend through the end of January, so we’ll see what happens.

If I’m able to maintain a full schedule, my previous prediction should hold true - clearing $5Kish a month. This should keep us in good financial stead, and hopefully we’ll have that cash reserve where we want it in 9-12 months. After that the accelerated mortgage payoff will ensue, and hopefully within 2-3 years we’ll finally be completely debt free (we’ve not carried any consumer debt besides the mortgage for years) and in a much better position to deal with any future layoffs.

It feels nice to finally have some work on the upcoming schedule. In a fit of high spirits, I paid off the remainder of the health insurance bill for next year and the current auto insurance premium. I normally pay these off in one lump sum as soon as I receive them, but due to the COVID layoff I was paying them out in installments. I prefer the fire and forget approach to bill payment.

I don’t have any large discretionary purchases on the immediate horizon, but it’s nice to know that any necessities will be easily dealt with and any reasonable discretionary expenses don’t need to go through a rigorous vetting process. I told Aeyong we could send some more money to her mother once we got our first check. We’ve been sending her the occasional chunk of money every six months or so and it’s been used to take care of her utilities and other essentials. We weren’t in a position to send any money while I was laid off, but this is something we can and should afford now that I’ll be working again.

Now, about that marzipan Yoda…

Happy Thanksgiving

I wouldn’t normally go to the trouble to post a holiday message. That said, I’m not completely cynical and you might as well take stock of what you’re thankful for on today of all days, but this Thanksgiving has a little extra significance.

Although not necessarily a surprise, Thanksgiving Eve was capped off with a nice email from VES, welcoming me (back) into their fold. After sending off my newly “wet” inked packet last week, I was hoping for an email on Monday. When nothing came all the way through Wednesday afternoon, I just assumed they had worked a short week if any at all, and I wouldn’t be hearing from them until next week at the earliest. So, it came as a slight surprise on late Wednesday afternoon to receive two welcome emails from VES staff.

After so many months without work and the drawn out process with VES, there have definitely been times when I wondered if I was ever going back to work or not. I’ve still been checking my TSP account daily to see if the VA ever completed their transaction to get my status changed. This was still the back up plan if I never got work again - withdraw enough funds to payoff the mortgage so we could free up some additional money into the monthly budget.

Now, with this news, it should be feasible for me to earn a decent income with just a part time schedule. I responded and let them know my schedule preferences. It will probably be next week before I hear back from them. I have to go through the initial training session/walkthrough before they will schedule me, and after that I think the first few shifts will be lighter. Hopefully I’ll be able to assume a regular part time schedule before year’s end.

It’s nice to head into the holiday with a light on the horizon.

Addendum - as a nice added bonus, I checked my TSP account yesterday and it appears the VA finally got them to update my status as a separated employee. Hopefully, I’ll have no reason to access these accounts other than checking the balance for six more years. After that time, and depending on how things are going in our world, we’ll probably start drawing a monthly check that should last us for around thirty years, which should be more than adequate for our future plans/expectations. Not a bad Thanksgiving if I do say so myself.

The longest job interview ever, Episode XXVII

The title is a loose version of the reality. I’m trying to remember when I started this process, and I think it was the first week of October, around the same time that the north texas va was supposed to resume 100% face to face operations. I’m not sure that’s ever come to pass as far as c&p is concerned, but we’re around six weeks past and I’m still going through the process with VES. Just yesterday I sent in a copy of my professional liability insurance to the recruiter, so presumably my paperwork is finally in the hands of their credentialing.

I can’t remember the precise details of the last time I did this, but I’m confident there are additional hoops to jump through at this point, there almost always are. I indicated a preference to start after December 1st, so there’s still some time to spare. To my recollection, there are usually a few light days that must precede a full schedule so they can ensure you’re know what you’re doing. I get the feeling, at least as far as their admin departments are concerned, that experience counts little. They have a checklist and there will be no wavering.

I haven’t raised my expectations all that high. As little as two or three four hour shifts will probably give us enough additional funds to keep us in the black every month going forward. My intent is to work weekends, presumably giving me eightish four hour shifts a month, and if my calculations are realistic, around 64 DBQs a month if I’m able to fill all those shifts as intended. That would put as around $5K after taxes which should keep us in good trim. Even if it’s only 20% of that estimate, it would be of benefit.

If I can work at the rate I’m hoping to achieve, we should have our cash reserves up where we want them in 6-8 months, and then we can resume the condensed house payoff. I imagine we would be able to get the house paid off in 2-3 years, and then the need to work would be almost nil. I’d likely continue working for discretionary funds, but that would be a nice burden to remove. All of this is based on assumptions, which haven’t served us particularly well in the last year, so I’m not quite ready to pop the champagne.

Lucky friday the 13th

As a nice bookend to today’s office departure, I received an email from VES with my credentialing packet this afternoon. Their payment rates seem improved from before, but they’re still lumping musculoskeletal and opinions together. I ran a few scenarios in my head and anytime you’re talking about bigger exams, fee basis is clearly the better option. At lower numbers they are more competitive, especially for a single DBQ exam. Once you hit their max count of 14 or higher, fee basis often pays double or more what VES would pay.

I’m going to request a schedule that hopefully will keep them from ever giving me those higher numbers, even though that’s my preference when getting paid per DBQ. Anywho, it’s a nice way to end the day/week. I expect I should be able to get some shifts before year’s end, although I haven’t spoken to any of their schedulers yet.

The Scab has been Ripped

I left early this morning in what may have been the last visit to my workplace for the last nine years. I needed to clean out the office of all my personal items and there were quite a few documents for the shred pile. Nothing sinister or incriminating, don’t get your hopes up. It was mostly exam notes and patient labs and the like that can’t just be thrown out in the trash. I tended to hold onto notes until the drawer could no longer manage, mainly in case there were ever follow up questions about exams.

Someone had already been occupying the office, not that I took that personally. I haven’t been in there since late March, so it’s good they’re getting some use out of it. I was also happy to find that all my personal items were still there and unmolested by all appearances. In a moment of pure snarky vengeance (isn’t snarky vengeance the guitarist in Avenged Sevenfold?), I almost took everything including my power strips, but that would have left the current occupant without a functioning second monitor. I should have done it, but I felt like it was a small gesture of professionalism that no one would notice or care about.

I didn’t really feel anything, other than relief that I was able to knock it out in two air huffing trips back and forth to the car. I’m not sure if it was the mask or my lack of more strenuous cardio with the knee issues, but it’s not a feeling I’m very familiar with. I really need to get back to running, but the right knee hasn’t been open to negotiation in several months. I’m sure it was partly the mask, but I’m not convinced my fat ass isn’t partially to blame as well. Aeyong jokingly asked if I cried, and I replied “no, not even close.” I guess the pervading feeling I have at the most recent development was one of mild betrayal.

That’s saying a lot, but I did live under the illusion that people actually cared and paid attention to our efforts. Maybe I’m wrong, but it certainly doesn’t feel that way now. I think the thing that ultimately did us in is the apathy of the career federal employee. Those who are content to make entire careers out of collecting full pay and benefits while doing the bare minimum exist at all levels. Just like there are providers that would do less in a month than I would do in a six hour shift (that’s not exaggeration, it actually happened several times over), there are supervisors with similar productivity ethos. Like I mentioned earlier, it’s probably easier on them to have fewer employees and I’m fairly certain they didn’t lobby for or champion our cause. Probably the opposite.

I tend to never say never, and it won’t surprise me if we’re eventually asked back, but much will depend on how things go with VES. Right now I’m still waiting to hear from their credentialing after sending my collaborative memo on Monday. If it’s like it was in 2016 then it’s not ideal, but I could still do fine with just a few shifts a month. If it’s like Gallegos indicated, they are paying differently now. She didn’t provide details and I’m not sure that her status with VES isn’t different since she’s been a regular with them all along. The best case scenario would be them paying for every DBQ performed, and if that was the case it’s highly unlikely I would ever see a justification to returning to VHA. Only time will tell.

Strange Vibes

I’m probably overthinking it, but it’s been a strange sequence of days since I got the news fee basis were being let go permanently. I’ve sent a few follow up emails, but so far it’s radio silence, except for Curray’s single word reaction to the news - “pathetic!”. It may be largely due to sending those emails between Friday and Monday, and some people may not be back at work or at least caught up on their emails. I’ve been trying to find out what the clinic operating hours are now, since I think they’re still changed from COVID. All that I really have left is to clear my office out, and at that point I’ll have effectively washed my hands of them. I’m going to hold onto my id and check email occasionally until they tell me I must surrender that as well. I still think there’s a good chance we’ll be back, it’s just going to be a chaotic couple of months with the lame duck session and COVID back on the rise.

The curt dismissal email did have me wondering about Hasan’s intentions. Last year I had to undergo a “random” drug test, and to my knowledge it was the first one in our entire clinic in the eight years I had worked there. It didn’t matter because of course I tested negative, and maybe it was truly random. It’s just that in light of the recent apparent ambivalence it had me wondering if he had taken some of those accusations seriously. I wouldn’t necessarily blame him since he didn’t know me or any of the other accused.

I think I’m mostly overreading people’s behavior as they must surely have plenty on their minds at work and home. I’m giving them a couple more days and if I still haven’t received any responses I’ll probably just go at close of business on a Friday and clear out all my personal belongings. It’s a decent amount of stuff considering I’d been there over nine years. It’s the longest I’ve ever worked in the same specific location, so it seems weird to be possibly saying goodbye. I won’t necessarily miss it or the people, but it’s still a big transition.

Three days later and still no answer on the election, but a bombshell at work...

The election still hasn’t been decided, with several states still counting ballots and the necessary 270 electoral votes not yet attained by either candidate. That said, former Vice President Joe Biden is sitting in a better position with 253 called electoral votes to 214 for President Trump, and by appearances, he’s doing well enough in a few of the remaining states to push him over the top. To no one’s surprise, the incumbent has been crying foul since election night and has been trying to claim victory multiple times. I won’t describe it any further, it’s being heavily covered by the media and will be well documented in the historical records I’m sure.

Just to add a bit of spice to our lives, I was following up on my credentials packet renewal at work when the clinic chief responded to an email saying that my credentials didn’t need renewal because fee-basis providers weren’t going to be used by C&P going forward. That was it. Abrupt, and with little explanation or attempt to soften the blow. The other people I’ve talked to share my opinion that this isn’t permanent, but it’s hard to predict at this point how long it will last. It was out of character for this person, although I’ve had little interaction with him so I don’t have a great deal of basis to judge how he handled it. I do consider it a failure of leadership to not have informed all the affected fee basis providers as a group.

I’ll probably pursue work with one of the contractors in the interim depending on how this plays out. I was already assuming it would be months or longer before there was any resumption of normal work, so this isn’t beyond the realm of what thought possible. That said, the manner in which the message was delivered strikes a hit against my long term loyalty to the C&P clinic and its leadership. It doesn’t seem that all the years of hard work and the thousands of exams really amounted to much, at least in the eyes of the current leadership.

The frustration is ever present...

After a few back and forths with VES, they requested a collaborative agreement memo signed by a physician, including their license number. This differs slightly from what I used in 2016, which was just a memo signed by a physician with their name/title printed on it. As that memo was signed by the as of then not psychotic former coworker, I knew I needed an updated memo. Thankfully, my present supervisor in my dormant fee-basis job was not only willing, but very prompt in filling out said document and returning it posthaste. Cry fury, and loose the snares of obtuse administrators improvising further obstacles over which to jump.

Now, they needed a physician licensed in Texas for the collaborative agreement. A fact they failed to mention when specifying the requirements of the memo. As luck would have it, many physicians in federal service take jobs in states different from where they are licensed. It was fairly typical in the military and I’ve noticed the same trend in federal service. To compound that problem, I’m not especially social at work, and there are only a few doctors I would even consider asking. Right now I’m still waiting on a response from the only other physician in that clinic I would feel comfortable asking. The lack of response is starting to feel like a refusal, but I’m going to give it a bit more time.

I think the requirement is nonsense because my colleague who is now working overseas, got a memo from the same doctor and apparently it was good enough for that scenario. What makes overseas and stateside different for an informal relationship where the physician just states they “are available to answer questions” is lost on me. I don’t think it matters, I think it’s just another clerk throwing up unnecessary requirements so they feel better and can shift blame if something comes back on them. This happens time and time again with credentials and other HR people. There are many benefits to being a part of a big organization like the federal government, but this is probably the biggest downside. You’re often at the mercy of an entry level admin type who is some combination of incompetent and ambivalent.

To add insult to injury (that’s overstating it a bit, but I’m going for dramatic effect), I’ve been trying for over three years to get my TSP account (401Kish) changed to reflect that I was separated from regular federal employment in 2017. Without this status change, I have no control over the account and can’t contribute funds, rollover the account, or make withdrawals. In effect, my account is frozen and out of my control. It’s not a huge acute issue at this precise moment, but if we had a financial emergency (especially considering our current situation), we’d be unable to use these funds. I’m hoping to leave it untouched until I’m 59 1/2 and can withdraw without penalty. But, if we really needed to, we could withdraw everything and payoff the house with some money left over. We’d take the tax hit and an additional 10% early withdrawal fee (which would suck), but we’d be able to shift our monthly budget by $1500 in the black since we wouldn’t be paying a mortgage any longer. I’m currently experiencing a similar scenario with the VA where my inquiries are either ignored or get to participate in the admin hot potato email game.

On hopefully more positive news, I’m strongly considering resuming my studies at Berklee. Depending on any developments with the job front, I can go back to full time studies and derive a $900 monthly housing allowance, not to mention the yearly stipend for books. I have 14 months of GI Bill remaining, so this should get us through another year of employment uncertainty. Hopefully by then, some trickle of work would have returned for fee basis examiners. It’s what I’ve been needing to do anyway, and the more I’ve thought about it, I really need to get my ass in gear and submit my application for the guitar dual major and get as much done while I have GI Bill benefits remaining. I may not be able to complete all requirements, but I should be able to close the gap significantly. I think the private lessons requirement of 9 semesters is the one I’ll most likely be lacking when my benefits are used up.

I’ll cross that bridge when I find it. I like this plan because it at least puts on more stable ground financially and I’ll be more or less in the driver’s seat again in regards to my work status.

A little bit of movement on the workfront...

I had reached out to a coworker from the VA who had switched to fee basis a few years back and had been languishing in the furlough twilight along with me. She had contacted me back in Juneish or so and asked if I had heard anything about return to work at the VA. She had originally put me in touch with VES back in 2016 and helped facilitate my working there at the time. Once I made the switch to fee basis, I didn’t see a good reason to keep a schedule at VES because I had all the work and income that I desired.

After we texted in June I asked her to let me know when she went back to work for VES since she had several exams already on deck. I hadn’t heard from her and I knew the VA was supposed to be back at 100% capacity as of October 6th, so I sent her a text saying “Que Paso?” I had also reached out to a recruiter that emailed me in April but never responded to my follow up. This time around, after three days, he replied, saying there was no work in my area. She had also responded and said they were hurting for examiners right now and were paying bonuses. I told her what the recruiter said and she didn’t think it sounded right.

She went through her recruiter (she’s working overseas) and he forwarded my info to the supervisor of domestic recruiting. Lo and behold, the recruiter who told me there was nothing now needed my information. It was a generic email that didn’t acknowledge our exchange from one week prior. I’ve found these recruiters (at least some of them) are similar to some of the folks in HR and credentials. They appear to perform the minimum requirements, but don’t expect much and you won’t be disappointed.

I decided not to mention the now ancient history email and just responded as if it was the first I had received. A few hours later I heard from someone in their admin section, requesting training certification before they could schedule me. That was Friday morning and I responded within two hours. I’m now waiting to hear back, but at least this is finally progress. I haven’t heard anything about details - where they need exams, how many, how often, etc. I’m hoping I can get something similar to what I did in 2016 - about four hours on Saturday and Sunday mornings. The weekend is irrelevant to us since we don’t work or do anything else specific on any given day, and traffic is generally much more bearable.

I’m not holding my breath, though. I won’t be shocked if it’s something like - we have Austin and Houston, but nothing in Dallas right now. Which doesn’t seem likely given that C&P face-to-face exams were shutdown nationally for several months, but I’m trying to keep my expectations low. If I can get that two days a week schedule, I think it’s reasonable to assume I could earn around $2K per weekend, which is about what I would expect on a single workday as fee basis. That would be roughly $8K a month, $5500 after taxes. Not as good as I made with fee basis, but more than enough to keep us comfortable. That said, just 20-30 DBQs a month ($2-3K) should be enough to keep us comfortably in the black for the monthly ledger. We’re trying to maintain that positive cashflow, but there are always unplanned expenditures that just marginally dip the budget into the red.

The hope is that I can get this part time work from VES to hold us over until operations resume for fee basis with the VA. I have to acknowledge that day may never come again, or at least not in the way it used to be. I’ve decided this time around to maintain at least a minimal working schedule with VES so that I always have options in case something like this happens again. Hopefully things are slowly looking up. The pandemic hasn’t gone anywhere and there are still significant numbers of uninfected. At least now procedures have been updated in most healthcare and other public facilities so we can return to some semblance of normal operation.

Progress at work?

In an unexpected development this morning, when I went to check my work email I had a request for a medical opinion with two, count ‘em, two DBQs. We’ve already begun the planning process for retiring to the French Riviera, hold my calls.

Ahem, I’ll dial back the enthusiasm a tad and just say that it’s nice to get any work at this point. It was also a decent function check to make sure all my work programs are still accessible and functional. A few of the steps were a bit of a pain and there have been some updates to the forms and programs since I last used them in April. All that said, it was still much quicker than driving across town for about five minutes of actual work. Ok, maybe ten.

I’ve been receiving regular VA emails (directed to Veterans) stating that all C&P locations are open for face-to-face exams nationwide, although it makes it sound like exams are predominately being performed by contractors. I haven’t received any sort of requests or notification from the FWOPC or any contractors (mainly VES if it were going to happen) at this point, but that may be a reflection of the slow gears of gummit work. Today’s medical opinion was from a January exam, so obviously, the pandemic hasn’t caused VBA to speed up by any means. Still, it’s nice to have anything happen. I had checked the clinic schedules earlier this week and it seems that at least for most of the FTEs, their schedules are filling up. Hopefully, this will gradually trickle down to the fee basis providers.

Another post in the recent "flurry"...

I’m not sure what’s motivating me to post more after months of silence, maybe it’s just taking time for things to sort of settle with the big shift in lifestyle. As mentioned before, there have been more cooking and DIY activities as of late. Although these aren’t completely new, I’ve definitely had more time to engage in these activities. Many things have been put off for years when I was working because I used my free time for music practice primarily, and never felt motivated to get the gears turning on larger tasks.

With this latest round of projects, I’ve been approaching them incrementally. With rare exception, I have certain daily activities I will always engage in - walking the dogs, exercise, basic maintenance like showering and washing clothes, and usually practicing a few instruments. My more recent DIY projects have included whole house ethernet including moving the modem and router to upstairs locations as well as upgrades to my switching system. I’ve also made some minor changes/upgrades to the home theater with the addition of a speaker wall plate and ensuring all the devices have wired ethernet courtesy of the new router location. In the process, there’s been a fair amount of running cables through the attic and down through walls, resulting in a fair amount of damage to the drywall in the garage and drum room especially.

This has necessitated the purchase of some new tools and supplies so I can hopefully by the time I’m finished have a decent result that at least looks passable if not like new. I know that’s achievable, but my recent experience hasn’t elevated my skills to the level of a professional. All this rehashing to say that it’s satisfying to pick a goal for any given day and accomplish it without any great snags. Yesterday was a decent day in that regard. One of the casualties of my recent cable relocations in the home theater was the original HDMI cable for the projector that had been there since we moved in seven years ago. Too many twists and kinks corrupted the signal, so it was time to replace it. Our attic compares favorably to a suburban squeeze sauna Mirkwood forest, and the area over the home theater is bramble central. Thankfully the total distance of the cable run from equipment rack to projector is relatively short (less than ten feet in the actual room), but getting there and getting the cable through the particular openings in the wall/ceiling is akin to being hogtied while trying to play twister on a tightrope over a bed of liquid hot magma.

I did discover an easier way to get the cables through the projector mast (read - I had routed the original cable through a narrow opening that wasn’t the intended and much easier route) and so after wrestling with the cables a bit I managed to get them where they needed to go with an adequate amount of slack. I also ran some CAT 6 cable along with the new 4K HDMI for a few reasons. One, the projector has an ethernet jack that I originally thought was for connectivity and firmware updates, but now I’m thinking it’s more for control devices. The other advantage to having ethernet there is that if I eventually get an HDMI balun, it will allow me to send the video signal as well as IR and a few other control schemes via just the ethernet cable which is easier to run and more resistant to damage than the HDMI cable.

All that rambling to say that I managed to pull it off and the home theater is back to full functioning. I still have some house cleaning to do on the wall (missing a plate for a new hole) and I’ve got future upgrade plans that I’ll address in the years to come. I had thought of hiring an audio/video installer to handle an upgrade to ATMOS ceiling speakers, but after all this crawling around I think I might be able to handle it myself. But that’s a project for a way down the road and not until I return to some sort of employment.

I’m going to piecemeal the remaining tasks which are initially finishing the drywall repair and then I start focusing on clean up/organization of the video room and server closet.

The Retirement Mindset

This will be a brief discussion as I’m not sure what that means, and I’m not currently planning on shifting to the retirement mindset anytime soon. My long term plan has always been to pay off the mortgage and remain debt-free before we think about a self-sustaining income/lifestyle. Due to the COVID-19 layoff, we’ve been granted the opportunity to explore those realities sooner than planned.

Thus far, it seems that if we decided to really buckle down and eliminate most if not all discretionary spending, then we’re already capable of living on my pensions alone. Notice the plural. The pension I draw due to my service-connected disabilities has been a key source of income now that I’m not earning any sort of a normal salary. We, fortunately, had a bit of an emergency fund, just because our checking balance had built up to a decent level by the time of the layoff. That balance has been slowly dropping, but there’s also been a great deal of arguably discretionary spending as mentioned in the last post.

We’re going to try and cut way down on that for the next few months and see if we can get that balance crawling back upwards. At our present payoff level (essentially the minimum), our mortgage should be paid off in about five and a half years. We had been paying it off at about three and a half times the required amount for the three years since I switched to fee basis, so we made quite a dent in the principal. We’ve been paying the mortgage off since late 2013, so we’ve managed about twenty-five year’s worth of payments in under seven years so far. Once the mortgage is paid off, that should free up about 1.5K in monthly expenses. We’ll still have the rather high property taxes and insurance that are just part of living where we do. I sometimes wish they had a state income tax and would pass on some relief to property tax rates, but I doubt that will happen anytime soon. Our property taxes and insurance are the equivalent of many people’s rent.

The biggest concern with the reduced income is if we get hit by a large financial requirement like home/car repairs, major dental/medical expenses, etc. If we had a few of those in succession, we could quickly drain the remaining cash balance we have at present. If I’m able to return to work in the next year or so (hope), then the goal is to build the cash reserves up a bit more and then work on paying off the mortgage. If I’m able to sustain the work level I had previously, this should be manageable in about two years. Having the mortgage paid off will give us quite a bit more breathing room. At that point, any work that I did would be mostly for discretionary income purposes. I can see working one day a week indefinitely at that point.

So, I don’t know if I’ve adopted the retirement mindset just yet because I’m hoping to be able to return to work and if I’m being honest, I don’t want to completely cut out the ability to earn discretionary funds by virtue of the odd shift here and there.

The COVID-19 Languish and Other Updates (including DIY tedium, consider yourself warned)

This may be the biggest gap between posts in several years. As of my last updates, I was laid off at the end of March, and here we are four months later with no end in sight. This pandemic has shifted mindsets and people’s general philosophies of life and work, and I’ve been no exception. I’ve not been depressed or succumbed to a long term funk, but there has been a shift in purpose and a slowing of pace. I was already ambivalent about many things that other people obsess over, but these tendencies have coalesced further.

To the surprise of no one, the current administration has not only grievously mishandled the pandemic, but they’ve also arguably taken actions to make it worse for most Americans. The US has suffered the worst outcomes from this plague, currently with over 140,000 deaths and nearing four million confirmed cases. Multiple republican lead states tried to rush back into normal operations way too soon and are now seeing spikes in their numbers, notably my home of residence, Texas. Thankfully, the rich have continued to get richer in no small part at the hands of the republican senate and white house. I very naively thought that even they would still possess a shred of ethics and human sympathy given the international disaster, but their greed knows no bounds.

At work, they have nationally adopted a three-phase return to normal operations plan that is mostly based on delaying routine and non-life saving care until the numbers plateau and begin to decrease. It appeared our first efforts to lock down and distance were having a beneficial effect on the trends, but the rush back to “normal” has dealt some severe setbacks so the VA needle has gone back to zero at present. In a recent presentation, the director in Dallas predicted that we were only 1/8th of the way through the pandemic, meaning it would take two years to run its course. There has been some promising news about successful vaccine trials in the UK and elsewhere, so it remains to be seen if we may see a viable and available vaccine by year’s end. That being said, I can only expect our current executive branch will find a way to screw that up as well.

Right now I’d be happy to return to work in 2020, but it’s feeling more and more like it will be 2021 or even later. We’ve been trying to keep our heads above water financially, and so far we’re still holding on. Our cash reserves have dipped from their pre-layoff levels, but we’ve also had several unplanned (and not necessarily essential) expenditures. Among these were a new lawnmower, several new tools (cordless drill, oscillator, etc.), new bulb for the projector, new battery for the Highlander, and the single biggest expenditure - the Gandalf/Frodo masters collection statue I had put a big down payment on last year. I would never have made this purchase in our current situation, but it’s a very limited edition and I would have forfeited the down payment if I canceled. It’s rare enough that I know I can sell it for a tidy sum in the future, although I have no plans to do so.

The tool (and supplies) purchases were part of a DIY project to finally run ethernet to all the rooms upstairs as well as make a modest upgrade to my switching setup. The layoff has shifted a lot of my priorities and I’ve been spending more time on cooking and DIY projects. I’m still practicing guitar, drums, keys, and vocals although bass has been neglected for several months. I also lost the spark for writing, drawing, and Korean language study but I have plans to resume. My typical day has been wake-up/coffee/casual internet, walk the dogs, exercise, and then some combination of practice with maybe some cooking depending on the amount of leftovers available. This is generally followed by maybe some reading, video games, and then television/movies/youtube.

With every day being a blank canvas, I don’t typically push things too hard to completion knowing I’ll have plenty of time to finish them in the future. This has resulted in the ethernet project being strung out over several weeks, although this has partly been predicated by incremental purchases as I’ve realized I need additional items. Ultimately, I’d like to have all my various rooms wired for ethernet and able to access the home network for file sharing at the best possible speeds and security. I’m essentially already there for the critical rooms and I only need to install one more drop in the “Forge” as I’m now calling it. This is the combination drawing/craft table and guest bedroom. The ethernet drop will go in the wall behind the tv and is not a high priority at present. It’s more likely to become useful if I ever place an actual PC or Mac in that room.

I’ve set up a “server” (sans server at present) closet in the video room, along with all the camera supplies. Eventual plans include custom-built shelving along the walls and probably a server rack (and server). These are long-range and likely more dependent on whether I return to work, especially the server. In the immediate future I need to organize the clutter and implement some cable management. I’ve got the ONT cable run from the garage up through the drum room closet and into the attic, then across the attic to my server closet.

A single ethernet cable runs from there to the wireless router in the home theater. This serves the entire house for wireless internet. It feeds a cable that runs back to the old location in the master bedroom closet where a switch feeds drops to several downstairs locations. These came with the house and are unused at present because Aeyong only uses wireless (phone, iPad, MacBook), but I’m leaving them connected in case. Two cables come out of the switcher back up into the attic and feed drops in my control room and drum room, respectively. These were run after we moved in by milestone electric and my recent DIY forays revealed the piecemeal nature of their work.

The installer essentially just found the path of least resistance so he ran the ethernet drop for the drum room down the same hole as the electric wiring and I haven’t looked up close, but I’m guessing it’s the same for the control room. Thankfully this doesn’t seem to have negatively affected the performance, although I may move those drops slightly in the future, time and motivation allowing. I’ve done enough rerouting of cables in the attic that I now have a good idea of where everything enters and exits, so it’s a bit more straightforward, but still a huge pain in the ass. The basic message from my attic is stay out and don’t waste your golden years.

In the process of rerouting cables, I needed to drill down from the attic into walls in several locations including the garage, drum room/closet, and video room. It took a bit of rooting around to find the desired locations, so there was a fair amount of drywall sawing and top plate drilling. I learned in the process that the upstairs wall of the drum room is offset from downstairs by about 6-12 inches. This was discovered by drilling up through the wall of the garage into the floor of the drum room, which, as you may have guessed, was unintentional and highly undesirable. After more measuring and brainstorming, I ultimately decided the best route would be through the drum room closet, as it appeared to be directly above the garage wall where I wanted to come in, largely because that’s where ATT has their breakout box to convert the fiber to ethernet.

Because of these multiple attempts, drywall repair was needed in several places in the garage, drum room, and one small spot in the video room. I also needed to put some spray foam installation to seal those unintended holes in the drum room floor. The initial repairs have now been completed, and just yesterday I sanded the first coat of drywall mud that had been applied. I also decided to try and fix up the rat’s nest of cabling behind my home theater rack. This consists of a new wall plate for the speaker wire, coaxial (direct), HDMI for the projector as well as a small control module for the universal remote/projector. I started that process yesterday and I’m thinking I’m about halfway done. In a recurring theme, the installers of the speaker and ethernet cables went with the easiest possible solution, so I’ve got a metric crap-ton of cabling that was just haphazardly passed through a big opening in the wall.

I was able to install a four-port ethernet jack for the feed from the ATT modem as well as the feedback from the router that runs back to the old master closet switch. The other two ports are active but aren’t needed at present. The router has eight ports, so these have been enough to accommodate all the needs in the home theater proper. I was able to separate the speaker cabling so I will now have the lines from the speakers terminate behind the wall into the plate and then have a separate cable that runs from the plate to the receiver. It’s all connected by banana plugs on both sides. I hope my audio signals (not to mention all the other connections) don’t suffer any degradation due to these attempted upgrades. Worst case scenario, I can always re-run the cabling if necessary, but I really hope I don’t need to do that.

I’ve still got several steps left in this current project including a (hopefully) finish coat on the drywall, texture, and paint. I’ve still got a few small holes in the garage to patch, although they should be a breeze compared to what’s preceded them. I’m also considering adding an electrical outlet to the server closet, but I’m going to save that until all the low-voltage stuff is done and dusted.