Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

JFK Terminal 4 - Monday, 14 Jun 2021, 11:15am.

It's Planes, Trains, and Automobiles again today. We've driven back down to New York City and taken the tram to JFK Airport to fly out to Bangor, Maine. So far, so good. Of course that's mainly because we've planned ample time in our schedule.

We allowed over an hour for the drive. We did hit a bit of traffic on the way despite it being after rush hour. We still arrived early. Though the slow tram partly made up for that we still reached the airport almost 2 hours before departure.

"Great," we thought, "We'll have time for brunch." Well, we did have time but what we did not have were choices. Half or more of the restaurants in the airport terminal are closed. Despite travel returning toward pre-pandemic levels (at least for leisure travel) restaurants are not opening back up yet. Maybe they're waiting for surer recovery, maybe they're having trouble hiring people back in this weird labor market.

We're at our gate now, cooling our heels while waiting for boarding to start in about 25 minutes. The flight to Bangor will take 1 hour 45 minutes. We've got first class seats again, another coup like our SFO-JFK flight where we scored premium tickets cheaply by booking a few months ago, ahead of the post-pandemic rush. Coach class tickets now cost more than what we paid for first/business several months ago, and first/business tickets sell for 2-4x their previous prices. Yay, getting back to normal. 🙄

Are we still in a recession? That question occurred to me recently. It's kind of surprising there hasn't been much about it either way in the news lately. On the one hand, parts of the economy have been doing quite well. Others... maybe not so much? It's unclear.

Clearly things were bad last year in the spring. The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) determined that the recession started in February 2020. They haven't said anything about when it has ended. I know; I checked.

While checking I found this Reuters article, "Is it over yet?" from a month ago (4 May 2021) stating, among other things, that yeah, the NBER is very cautious in declaring a beginning or end to things. Indeed, they only concluded in June that the recession had started in February. Even that four-month lag was quick compared to their past calls. It took them a year to determine that the Great Recession had started!

Okay, so if officials are only going to tell us officially when something is over when it's "No shit, Sherlock!" obvious, what can we figure for ourselves? Well, let's look at the stock market.



I obtained this chart from Yahoo! Finance showing the S&P 500 Index from November, 2019 to present. You can see the precipitous drop following a market high on Feb. 19. That's a key indicator, possibly the only key indicator, the NBER used to determine the beginning of the recession. Of course, by the time they figured that out in June, 2020, the market was already well on its way to a recovery. By August the market had already eclipsed its previous high (trace across the dotted line I provided) and has gone on to grow 20% beyond a full recovery.

So, by stock market indicators, the pandemic recession ended 10 months ago. For the rich the pain was short lived, and the rich are now richer than ever. As I've noted before, though, the market is not the economy. While the rich have done well, others may still suffer.

What's another indicator? How about unemployment. I looked up unemployment statistics and found this bare-bones but effective chart from the Bureau of Labor Statistics:



Unemployment hit a high of almost 15% in April, 2020. Since then it has recovered... but not to its pre-pandemic levels. In late 2019 unemployment stood at about 3.6%. Today it remains just above 6%. That's still a lot of people who aren't back to work yet. ...And coming out of recessions these figures are generally considered an under-count. That's because people who've been out of work long term and have given up looking for work are not counted in the statistic.

So, for the investor class, the recession ended months ago. For the working class, especially those working in sectors hard hit by shutdowns, we're not over it yet.


Take-home essay question: Why, when these charts took me less than a minute each to find, has there been so little coverage in the news?

It's been a few weeks since I charted Coronavirus statistics. Coincidentally it's also "Tier Tuesday", the day when California publishes a weekly update of county level statistics and color-coded risk categories. Here's I chart I adapted from https://covid19.ca.gov/state-dashboard/:



The big news in comparison to my last chart three weeks ago is that the population in the lowest risk tier (yellow) has increased to almost 44% of the state population. Three weeks ago it was 28%. The geography in the chart can be a bit deceptive.... If you just eyeball the area covered by each color it looks like most of the state is orange. But several of the biggest, densest population centers— specifically Los Angeles, Orange County, and half the Bay Area— are in the yellow tier.

Winning at Data Transparency

In chatting with colleagues today I was reminded how special this level of data access is. California has been publishing these charts weekly for several months now so I've grown accustomed to having them. I take them for granted. But other states have pretty much nothing... nothing publicly available and so easily accessible, anyway. When I shared a live view of https://covid19.ca.gov/state-dashboard/ on my screen in a meeting people living elsewhere in the country oohed and aahed.

"But wait," one of my Covid-skeptic colleagues said after a moment. "All those pretty colors mean nothing if they're just made up. What's the data behind them?"

"That's the great thing," I explained. I walked through how the site a) defines a set of several key metrics being measured, b) specifies the numerical thresholds of those metrics for each color category, and c) provides a clickable map county-by-county showing how each county scored on each metric.

No other state I'm aware of has anything like this. And it's not like it's even hard. Months ago in Florida a single state employee starting putting together statistics like these. The state fired her. Then she continued the effort as an unemployed volunteer. The state sued to make her stop. Florida is, of course, led by staunch denialist Governor Ron DeSantis. The denialists complain that policies without data are bunk, but they're the ones thwarting the collection and publication of data so they can make up rubbish and claim it's just as valid as science.

Lowest New Infection Rate

It's not just data transparency California's winning at. We've also got the lowest new case rate of any state— a lead we've maintained for several weeks now. Per The New York Times's Coronavirus in the U.S. California leads all 50 states and the District of Columbia with a daily average over the last 7 days of 3 new cases per 100,000 residents. California's 3 compares to a nationwide average of 7. The hardest hit states at the moment are Colorado, Wyoming, and West Virginia, with averages of 15, 14, and 14 respectively.

June 15 in Sight

California's governor, Gavin Newsome, said weeks ago that he wanted to lift Covid restrictions in the state by June 15. That wasn't a political promise; it was a statement of desired outcome. He cautioned that the numbers had to support it. Well, the way the numbers keep trending down while leading the country increases the likelihood that return to normalcy will come about on June 15.

Inland Empire Travelog #3
Colville, WA - Fri, 14 May 2021. 1pm.

Well, we're back to Colville. Yes, we were here this morning after arriving last night. Then we left. And now we're back. We're in the Inland Empire— eastern Washington and the Idaho panhandle— to visit waterfalls. We have a guidebook full of them. Sometimes they're even where the book says they are. 😅

We left the hotel this morning just before 9am and drove a bit west to the town of Kettle Falls. You might think with a name like Kettle Falls the town has a waterfall. Possible even a waterfall named Kettle Falls? Haha, no, you'd be wrong. The falls is called Meyers Falls.



It also wasn't where our guidebook said it would be. The Very Dull Book of Waterfalls by Dr. Smedley Q. Boredom contains numerous errors, little things like the wrong name of a street and confusing left vs. right turns. Y'know, the kinds of things that are standard for guidebooks.

But at least we found the falls. That wasn't quite the case with the next falls we looked for, near the town of Northport just south of the Canada border. We hunted around for almost an hour trying to find Sheep Creek Falls. We did glimpse a bit of it, I think. Part of the problem is that it's on private property, I think. ...Which is also another problem with the book. Terms like, "Note, you can't actually go here" are missing.

Anyway, here we are after our first leg of the day, back in Colville. We're passing back through as we heard further east— hopefully with better luck finding the next 3 waterfalls on our list. But first we stopped for lunch.

Lunch. Indoors. Without Masks!

When we planned this trip a few weeks ago we figured we'd eat by buying groceries and occasional take-out food. But then the CDC's guidance changed within the past few days. Now it's full vaxxed = no mask needed except in extreme circumstances. People have been talking about it everywhere we've gone today. Businesses are relaxing their policies. We relaxed ours enough to chose to eat lunch inside a Mexican restaurant today.

Eating lunch in a restaurant today was... good... and slightly weird. Good, because the food was good and getting back to normal was good. But also weird because everybody in the restaurant seemed to be staring. Like, were they staring at us for not wearing masks? I hope not because they weren't either!

Today I took another step along the path of getting back to normal. I reconnected with an old habit. Coincidentally it involved eating lunch at a restaurant named The Habit.

Indoors seating at this restaurant is tight— and I'm not ready yet to dine indoors at restaurants— but they have a well-ventilated outdoor dining area. The tables are spaced reasonably far apart, too, and when I arrived at around 11:15 the patio was empty. (I was prepared to go elsewhere if the patio dining area was packed.)



As I sat down with my food I reflected on how long it's been since I've done this. At work I've been using the phrase "In the long, long ago..." to preface remarks about how the nature of our work has changed since the start of the pandemic and when and how it might go back to being the old way again. Eating lunch at The Habit is not work but it's definitely something from The Long Long Ago. Today was my first visit to this restaurant in almost 15 months... and in The Long Long Ago I used to eat here at least once a week!

I don't think I'll go back to eating here once or twice a week. Some old habits, like eating that big basket of fries with a side of ranch sauce, are better left in the past. I'll try to make this an occasional treat.

Today one part of the walls of the Coronavirus lockdown came crumblin' down. We had friends over at our house— without masks! Yes, I tipped that off in a blog this morning... which was really about housecleaning. 🙄😳😅

So how was it? Well, first we ate lunch together. We went out to a local Mexican restaurant that used to be one of my favorites. I say "used to" because I used to eat there once or twice a week, a habit I've not been in for.... about 409 days at this point. In fact this was the restaurant I was sitting in about 409 days ago when I decided to cut back on dining inside restaurants a few days ahead of the lockdown.

Today we didn't eat indoors at the restaurant. We ate outdoors. But the four of us sat at a table, under a pavilion tent in the parking lot, without worrying about being 6' from each other.

As for the food? Frankly it was meh. Things change. I doubt this will be one of  my favorite lunch spots again.

After lunch we returned to our house. The four of us played a board game. Our friends brought over Wingspan. It's a game I've been wanting to try for thematic reasons (birds!), but I haven't been in the game-buying mood for, uh... about 407 days. 407 days ago was the last time I sat down f2f with anyone other than Hawk to play a game. Finally we had an opportunity to play it. It was, uh... thematic. I'll write more about Wingspan in a separate blog.

So, how does it feel that the wall are coming crumblin' down? Honestly it doesn't feel special. It just feels like getting back to normal again. Like maybe our long, worldwide nightmare is one step closer to over.

It's been in the news recently that big tech companies are talking about when they'll ask employees to come back to the office. In some cases it's not ask but tell: some companies will require employees who've been working remotely for the past year to work in offices at least a few days a week. What's my take on it?

My employer has yet to announce reopening offices, even with a tentative date months away. (Some big tech companies are giving timeframes like "September" right now.) Even if they do, it's unlikely I'm going to return to an office. I was working remotely before Coronavirus closures kicked in13 months ago. Officially I was a remote employee for over a year before that, and as a practical matter I've been able to work remotely most of the past 8 years.

I could see some people in my company being asked to return to offices. Before Coronavirus my company backtracked on its long-held distributed workforce policy and started hiring developer staff with a preference toward new hires who could work in one of a handful of offices worldwide.

There is some validity to having developers co-locate. Anytime you have a team doing creative work it is vital to give that team as close to zero barriers to collaboration as possible. Everyone sitting in the same room (or suite, pod, etc.) is close to zero barriers. (It's not actually zero as people still have reluctance to interrupt others.) Putting people in different locations hundreds of miles apart introduces communication barriers. Even the best current interactivity tools (chat, web conference, Google docs, etc.) leave lots of barriers. And having people distribution across timezones is a much higher barrier to collaboration.

I'm not a developer, though. My technical peers are already distributed around the US and the world as a function of how we do our jobs in technical sales. And while my sales counterparts live primarily in the same metro region as I do, they tend not to work in company offices, anyway, as their work is largely individual.

Still, there is some value to us sales types sharing time in the office. It enables collaboration on ideas and approaches. And the value is not just low barriers when you want to communicate but also the existence of valuable unplanned communication. Cross-pollination is a great byproduct of having people working on adjacent things physically adjacent in the office.

A compromise between remote work and office work my regional sales team tried before Coronavirus was "Take Ourselves To Work Day". (The name was a gag on "Take Our Sons/Daughters To Work Day" programs that have been around for many years.) With TOTWD we decided we'd all work in the office one day a week, on Thursdays. It was a decent idea but it fell apart even before Coronavirus came around for lack of critical mass. In sales too many of us see huge productivity gains from not trekking into an office each day to believe there's more value available in unmeasurable collaboration gains.