Dan from Madison

That Mask Thing

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I’m a simple guy. So why on earth is anyone wearing a mask anymore here in these fine United States?

I was at an outdoor activity with several hundred people in rural Wisconsin for most of the weekend and saw zero masks. On the way home from that today I stopped at a large, chain hardware store in the city of Madison. The majority of people in the store were wearing masks.

Employees were all wearing masks, although that is not mandatory. Indeed, I own a business in the city of Madison and do not require my employees to wear masks although they can if they want to (none do).

The majority of customers were wearing masks. There is no mask mandate locally anymore, although everyone always asks you to wear one if you aren’t vaccinated.

Which brings me to my question. I was told early on that the masks weren’t for the person wearing them, they were for others, because you care. So, if this is the case, my logic works thusly.

If you are vaccinated, there is no reason to wear a mask – because you can’t get covid. If you are not vaccinated, you do not need to wear a mask “because you care”, because those that are vaccinated cannot get covid.

So, logically, cut it out with the face diapers – right? Is the new theory that vaccinated people can give non vaccinated people covid? The evidence locally doesn’t support that as our covid cases are statistically insignificant.

So was mask wearing all virtue signaling all along? Good to know. Cuz science.

When this whole sad episode started I said to my wife “as soon as we start understanding that none of this makes any sense at all, it all makes sense”. When the books are written, I think this will be right.

Radio Garden

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As previously mentioned on these pages, I decided a while ago (when the Chinese commie crud started) to get really good at a few things, rather than being really average at a lot. After analyzing my total free time and assessing my preferences, I ended up on basically two things that I want to do with my free time. Maintain physical fitness and learn French.

Learning a language is a long haul and I expected that. What I didn’t expect is how rapidly I am learning things with the help of the many free or practically free aids you can find online. The space is cluttered and extremely competitive. After 15 months of throwing myself at this I have made some really nice progress. My original plan was to be fluent in 5 years, but if I can keep up this pace I believe I can do it in 3.

Through an acquaintance I discovered Radio Garden. I don’t have time for a lot of tech in my life so any new widget or gadget has to have a couple of qualifications.

1) extreme and 100% ease of use
2) add value to my life

Radio Garden meets my qualifications.

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Continuing Supply Chain Issues

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I have been sharing supply chain woe stories over the past year plus, ever since the Chinese commie crud took over the headlines. I work in the world of industrial distribution.

Many of those supply chain issues remain to this very day, and some are getting worse. I have been in the industry for 35 years (HVAC distribution specifically, a subset of industrial distribution) and with a mature industry such as the one I am in, supply chain always had ebbs and flows, however these were easily predictable and looked like a very shallow sine wave. Over the past year and continuing to today, the supply chain is very spiky and extremely difficult to navigate.

Disasters such as the Suez Canal closure and plants getting damaged in Texas over the Winter added to an already miserable time. Many businesses are opening back up and demand is surging as equipment that was previously mothballed or otherwise inoperative is coming online (and breaking). We continue to have transportation issues with LTL (for those who don’t know, LTL stands for Less Than Load, or semi trailers that are making deliveries of many skids of product to different locations rather than a straight shot to one location) being a disaster right now. Labor is a problem as many that were laid off have either moved to other jobs, or simply refuse to come back to work due to overly generous federal and state unemployment benefits.

The whole enchilada is quite the mess. Oddly, when I go to work in the morning I am resigned at this point to just saying to myself “I wonder what insane thing I will have to deal with today” and just put my head down and deal with it. When you get used to adversity things don’t bother you as much, I suppose.

I made the decision to never cancel any orders and simply take on more inventory. This hurts in the short term as cash flow and inventory turns are adversely impacted, but mission number one is to smooth out these spiky curves to our customers, so they can continue to make money – it needs to be my job to bear the brunt of this and to make it virtually unnoticed for our contractors. It remains quite the challenge. There will be major issues this Summer with imported equipment such as ductless mini splits, window airs and dehumidifiers imported from over there due to the persistent port delays on the West Coast. These issues are already happening. As hard as I am trying, I can’t get every product for every customer in these conditions. Most have been understanding. If they aren’t, well, I can’t unload the containers so….

Here is an interesting story about a different industry, flowers. I always take my wife out to a nice brunch for Mother’s Day. In addition, I always get her a corsage with three spray roses, the white ones with the red tips. I called the florist to order it up yesterday and the person on the other end laughed and said that they hadn’t seen spray roses in a year. In fact, when I go to pick up my corsage, they couldn’t even tell me what type of flower it would be. The shipment of flowers shows up and they have to make do with what shows up. She said that it was probable that I could get a single white rose but no guarantees. I told her that I could completely relate as I have been living this hell for a while too. She was pleased to speak with someone who was sort of in the same boat and went on to tell me that the last year was full of enormous challenges in the flower industry – that a lot of flowers simply didn’t exist to purchase.

While that is an anecdote, it is still telling of how we will likely see supply chain issues for some time to come.

One Thing Government Does Right

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Today was a long day. We finally had a couple of funerals that were delayed by the Chinese commie crud. One was for my wife’s grandfather who made it to the ripe old age of 95 and the second was for one of his sons, who lived to his early seventies.

The service for both of them was at Camp Butler National Cemetery. While there was a lot of paperwork involved, the services went off very well. Camp Butler is extremely well maintained.

Grandpa was in WW2 in India (I hope to someday offer his letters back home on this blog), and his son was in Korea. Both were cremated a few months ago. The government allows free plots for their ashes since they were vets, along with space for spouses later to join them. Also present today were two fine men from the DoD. From the uniforms they appeared to be active Army. They gave salutes to grandma (the son had no wife) and also presented the flags to her after folding them. After the services, one of them stood watch until the last of the guests drove away.

Some locals from the Sangamon County Veterans were there. These gentlemen were volunteers and show up at Camp Butler for military funerals. They gave the gun salute (three shots from three rifles, after which they presented the shells to grandma) and had a man play taps. They also did a very short ceremony before the preacher did his deal. After they were done, these gentlemen beat feet quickly, and I wasn’t able to give them the tip – I will make a charitable donation to them later this week. It was very nice.

As I mentioned previously, there was ample paperwork involved to get all of this arranged with the department of Veterans Affairs, but it did get done, and in a nice and proper way.

The Shockingly Low Cost of Learning a Language

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Right before the dawn of the Chinese commie covidian era I made a life decision. In late 2019 I decided to rid myself of any and all clutter, and get really good at a few things, rather than being super average at a lot. I just had too many hobbies and too many time sucks. I decided to jettison the banjo and gave that to my daughter. Also shot into space was my anti-library – I decided to either read it, or get rid of it. I had a few other small time hobbies that I got out of. So what was left was for me was to keep my regimen of physical fitness, work, and to learn French. When I say “learn French”, I want to be fluent.

I took some French in high school and college, and after many years found an interest in it again. I downloaded an app or two to my phone, but that quickly got boring. After picking around with different things online, I decided on a much more traditional way to learn the language – start from square one, and go back to school, specifically adult continuing education. I know how to work, and learning a language is work, no matter what the ads you hear that say “ten minutes a day” want you to believe.

After thinking about it, structured book learning and progression is the best way for me, and the schedule that I have. And adult continuing education isn’t graded or have a high pressure environment. All of the people in the class are taking it for enjoyment or professional reasons, and are, well, adults.

I am fortunate to live in a town where there is a big assed university, so I hit the UW Madison website and they did indeed offer French in their adult continuing education offering. So I signed up for French 1, wanting a full review of things I already knew. The course was under $200 for 12 weeks of assignments and 1.5 hours per week of in person class. That’s quite a value. The assignments are a mixture of cultural things, grammar, video, audio, etc. All of this is hosted on the UW website. Towards the end of French 1 we got booted from the buildings because of the commie crud, but we finished with Zoom. I have to admit that it was sort of fun going back to school, walking on campus, and getting back to an institution of higher learning even though it was just basically “night school”. I hadn’t been to a structured class since 1990 and my days at U of I in Champaign.

French 2 was done on all zoom, and I am now nearing the end of French 3, same thing. Each class was about the same price and the classes are very well run and extremely enriching. Already I am certain that if you dropped me in the middle of France and I had to get along, I could. I am well on my way to being fluent. My original plan was to be fluent in five years, but I think I can do it in three at my current pace.

I will have to re-take French 3 as that level is exponentially tougher – it takes a little longer to progress to French 4, which are basically fluent persons who are brushing up or moving into the finer points of the language.

In addition to this I hired a French teacher for some private lessons. We just log onto Zoom and talk for an hour at a time and she corrects my grammar and pronunciation. Invaluable. $50/hour. I bought ten lessons.

I have also supplemented with some online items from the Coffee Break series. Coffee Break offers full blown courses and short weekly passages that test listening and comprehension skills. Again, minimal cost.

I think that all of this would have been possible in the past, but harder to do. Zoom didn’t exist just a decade ago, so you would have to lose the time to travel for a face to face lesson if you were doing privates. While the in person classes would have been the same, the amount of video and audio resources available for free online are innumerable, and the ones in our class would have been much harder to distribute, versus just going to the UW website and downloading everything.

With the numerous choices online I had to pick a certain strategy and avoid the noise. The competition is intense for this market.

I got a mass market email today advertising an Air B and B like service in France (when it opens up). You can stay at someone’s house in France for a week who will speak French to you and take you around town and cook two meals a day for you. For $1500 a week. That is incredible and will be my next phase when I can do it.

I don’t really have a point to the post outside of showing that to further yourself, all you need is desire and a little money (and not even that much money). Which certainly brings into question how a college can charge what they do to teach what they teach.