August Review

This is the August review, live from lockdown v4.

Starting with the lockdown diary:

• Stage 4 restrictions
• Almost everything shut down
• Only one hour of exercise a day within 5 kilometres radius
• Could have done this earlier instead of spending so many weeks at stage 3
• Great commentary from the 'experts'
• 'We've seen stage 4 restrictions work across the world'
• It was supposed to take 4 weeks to see the impact of masks, but we went to stage 4 anyway
• 8 July - stage 3
• 22 July - stage 3 with masks
• 2 August - stage 4
• 8 August - still no improvement from any previous changes
• Any comment from the 'experts' becomes headline news
• This was my favourite
• We went from 20 to 200 cases in a random 16 day sample
• So we would definitely have gone to 2,000 and 20,000 every 16 days afterwards !
• The headlines to follow are like - 20,000 cases avoided !!
• This was another great example of pure guesswork with no explanation
• 700 could have been 8000 without stage 3
• The hotel quarantine inquiry has shown the absolute worst of politicians
• Avoid giving any direct answers
• Contradictions
• Each departments claims to have a limited role and responsibility, but no expertise
• After one week of stage 4 and everyone already wants to plan stage 3 and 2 for September
• After two weeks of stage 4 and still 300 per day
• Every commentator remains 'cautiously optimistic'
• Continued talk about various border lock downs
• No interest whatsoever since we can't travel more than 5 kilometres
• No states ever publish criteria of when a lock down would be added or removed
• A bonus - one hour of high winds caused:
• Power outage
• Water supply impacted - panic buying bottled water instead
• Nearly down to 100 at last
• Great new phrases
• 'COVID-normal' - whatever that means
• 'The strategy is working'

Back to the usual slightly more positive news.

An hour of running has been just enough to suit my usual schedule, although not being able to do a weekend long run. A couple of weeks without a session over 20 kilometres was a good break, but six weeks is probably too much. Running closer to 13 kilometres each day instead of 10 or 11.

Had a random sore hamstring and shin pain, but both resolved within about a week each. I reached my goal of retiring some more shoes:

• Nike Pegasus 34 - 800km very worn
• Nike Structure 21 - 800km but might keep for another 50-100 kilometres
• Nike Zoom Vomero 11 - 1000km still not too bad

I've ordered some Nike shorts and t-shirt but definitely no more shoes. At a maximum of 400 kilometres per month it takes a long time when rotating 3-4 pairs of shoes for different functions.

A good month overall for shares, even though I've recorded a loss of like $75,000 while doing my tax return - hopefully a lot of that was reinvested during the market recovery. I'm still carrying two years of losses into future years as I have not sold much for profit.

A bit more to look forward to in sports, the AFL is getting close to the finals although the quality of games is still below average. The NBA is quickly into the playoffs also, but the round one matches have been largely predictable, the Houston vs. Oklahoma City might be the best series, even though individual games have not always been close.

The to do list is quiet again:

• Tax Return
• Even that wasn't a highlight as I have to pay another $500
• The strange part was it showed an outstanding tax return from 2002-03 to complete
• It's the first time I've seen that, and I don't think I started work until after June 2003
• If I don't click on it, maybe it will go away next year

I think my time doing a bit more development work will be over for a while as I have to focus on some other design work. It might be a good thing as I've been doing a lot of extra work on 'weekends'.

That's it for this month:

• Books
• None
• Movies
• None
• Music
• None
• TV
• Manifest season 1
• The idea was alright, but feels like there won't be a plan for season 2
• 7 out of 10
• Middleditch + Schwartz
• A few live comedy improvisation shows
• 7 out of 10
• The Last Man On Earth season 1-2
• Sometimes I love it, other times not so much
• The lead character is great most of the time
• 6 out of 10
• Video Games
• Nintendo Switch
• Zelda - Breath Of The Wild
• Should have done more upgrading items earlier in the game
• So much wasted time just walking around finding shrines
• 5 out of 10
• Xbox One
• Fallout 4
• Haven't played much yet
• More walking around, but combat is much more fun