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Essential Advice for At-Risk Seniors

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This came from Quora. My answer follows.

Q. I feel isolated and alone. I’m 67 with no family and no job. What should I do?

A. First priority: make sure you have a roof over your head. Especially in winter. You can die very easily, if you are relying on sleeping in your car or staying in shopping malls. All of these places close. An ice storm, even in a Southern state, could be fatal. Especially because cars do run out of gas. The reason could be as simple as a traffic jam that is unexpected. Gas stations can close or there can be unexpected shortages of fuel. So, if you know of a 24-hour gas station or truck stop and that is your lifeline, it’s just not a good way to go.

Second priority: even though you may not feel like you have a rational reason at every moment of day, make a promise to yourself not to commit suicide. Do not break that promise. Be aware that in some states, including the one where I live, suicide can actually be prosecuted as a crime. This isn’t just an ironic joke! Believe me. It sounds funny, but something that is even perceived as a suicide attempt could make it difficult for you to pass a routine background check.

Third priority: look on the bright side. You have an enormous one. You are past retirement age. You qualify for Social Security and Medicare. I don’t want to say that I’m jealous, but with 17 years to go, I have to conclude that those benefits are worth something.

I can’t solve your dilemmas for you, but there should be resources available in your community. Visiting a public library or even (gasp) a senior center is a great place to start.

I am not going to say anything about that guy in this post.

You know, the one who’s been in the news. Who made all the headlines. I think he made a terrible mistake. He is young, and he is throwing his life away. Whatever the poll numbers say about the surprizing number of Americans who support his actions, he used lethal force. I do not approve.

It does seem tragic to me that we don’t have better support systems in place in the Open Source “Community” for those who are not finding fulfillment in the work world. I will say that depression and suicide are unacknowledged problems in our field. From what I could ascertain in the brief news article I saw, another talented and promising programmer took his own life earlier this fall. He was a former employee of leading San Francisco AI startup, one that you have no doubt heard of. I am glad that his passing was acknowledged, but I think it is really absolutely as dangerous to glamorize suicide as it is to glamorize murder.

One of my New Year’s resolutions is to form a community that can provide a support system for people between jobs. It actually may turn out to be a little bit bigger than that, but I don’t want to overpromise. I am lucky enough to be employed but who knows what the future holds. I just know I want and need a part in shaping it. Hey, it’s getting late, even out here on Pacific Time.

I am going to call it a night.

This article can also be found at pdxlocal.net and was originally published in 2022.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Surviving the Surveillance State

December 4, 2022
by Rose C.

Portland ranks among the Top 10 Most Surveilled U.S. Cities, according to Cybernews. Atlanta tops the list.

We live in a world where surveillance is a fact of life. Any encrypted software product may be backdoored, and even if it is not, you have no guarantee that the person on the other end does not have spyware such as keystroke monitoring or screen video capture running on their system. Encryption enthusiasts and amateur hackers, no matter how valiant, simply cannot compete with a nation-state in this game. Cf Pegasus.

Sneak and Peek, or “No Knock,” Warrants have been around since the Patriot Act was passed in 2001, but they receive scant attention from the media. What they mean is that you may have your home searched, and items removed from your home, without any official notice from law enforcement. Ditto for electronic files. If you file a FOIA request and the investigation in which you are named is still ongoing, you will not receive any confirmation that a warrant exists. (Pat Eddington, Cato Institute)

The most frightening aspect of these warrants is the potential for planting false evidence. The second most frightening aspect is the potential for planting surveillance devices for tracking and listening — as if cell phones were not effective enough.

“Nothing to Hide?”

Like roughly 2/3 of the U.S. population, I reside within the 100-mile “border zone” where Border Patrol agents are granted additional authorities and the Constitutional protections of the Fourth Amendment no longer apply. You may think all of this is irrelevant if you are a law-abiding citizen.

The problem is that who you know can get you put on a list. It can also make you a target. To put it another way, we all know somebody who has a cousin who is a drug dealer.

Laws in this country are changing, and not (in my opinion) for the better. Roe v. Wade is gone, and civil rights for gays and lesbians may soon disappear as this country takes a hard shift right. Remember ICE? Children in cages? Forced sterilizations?

Come 2024, they may all be back.

If you don’t feel like being a freedom fighter, if your first priority is keeping your family safe and saving for your children’s college tuition, I am not here to judge. Just remember that in a world where power rules in place of law, abuse of that power is an inevitable consequence.

Get in a traffic accident with somebody employed by the surveillance state? What if one of them rapes your daughter? Or your son? When a large class of individuals are above the law, nothing good will come of it. This is especially true when the same individuals fear consequences from their actions. They tend to lash out and do everything they can to harm and intimidate witnesses and injured parties.

I am not an America-hater. Far from it. The country I grew up in gave me 40+ years of freedom in its purest form: freedom to explore, to create, to love and befriend those I chose, to work as much or as little as I liked. Freedom to just be. I am a GenXer. I don’t mean to talk like a crusty old-timer, but I believe I’ve seen this nation at its absolute best.

Or maybe the best is yet to come.

Nothing is fixed. Nothing is certain.

The combined 2022 budget of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, and the 17 different United States spying agencies (of which CIA and NSA are only two) is over $150 billion. For comparison, that is roughly one fifth of the Department of Defense 2022 budget of $742B. But remember, the DOD budget covers submarines, fighter jets, aircraft carriers, helicopters, tanks, nuclear weapons, and anti-missile defense systems, not to mention an active network of bases around the world. That’s a lot of people and hardware.

What exactly are we paying for? This remains largely unclear. Marijuana is now legal in 19 out of 50 states, but the DEA’s funding continues to grow. If you were an officer monitoring wiretaps and running undercover operations in Colorado or Washington State, where and to what were you reassigned? And as far as truly terrifying threats to health and safety, the surveillance state could be doing a much better job. We read about mass shootings in the news practically every week. It failed to prevent the violent attempted coup at our nation’s capitol on January 6, 2021.

Your tax dollars at work, my friends.

Government salaries range from $20K (GS-1) to $147K(GS-15) — much less than the equivalent in the private sector. If we assume that wages (including benefits) average $100,000 per year, we would expect that the surveillance states employs as many as 1.5 million people in the United States. Keeping in mind, that is not accounting for slush funds to be distributed overseas, or James Bond style gadgetry, server space, or the cost of buildings and operations. But if we slash that number in half, that is still one federal domestic spy for every 440 U.S. citizens.

And that’s a lot.

Regarding terminology, “federal domestic spy” includes FBI informers, often recruited under duress or experiencing economic hardship. It does not include state or local police forces.

I am an extremely law-abiding citizen. That has protected me to some extent, but not completely. Somebody who has cheated on their taxes or who runs a warez server with their friends is at high risk of being “turned” and pressured by law enforcement to inform on others and further widen the surveillance network.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

No doubt you have heard the expression, “Running out of spoons.” It’s for days when your energy and innate natural life force are depleted, when you struggle to get through the motions of daily life. I remember days like that when I was living with chronic anemia and menorrhagia from fibroids. If I could manage to log six hours of work time, order Pho for a late lunch, and get the aforesaid spoon into the dishwasher, it was a good day!

I’d like to add a new term to the lexicon:

“Running out of forks.”

This is for times when you have tasks in front of you that are a bit more challenging. And yeah, there is a Git reference there as well. I would be so honored if anyone ever chose to fork my projects. It hasn’t happened yet. Ever try eating spaghetti with a spoon? Sometimes, you do need prongs.

The particular reason that I’m low on forks is RSI — also known as Repetitive Strain Injury. It’s a common injury for designers, and also afflicts programmers (or virtually anyone else who puts in long hours with a mouse and keyboard) from time to time. Pain is easy to ignore. Until the point when you just can’t ignore it. Imagine the sensation of a white-hot metal wire pressed into the palm of your hand. It only got that bad a few times, but that’s why I learned to eat and do simple tasks with my left hand as well as my right.

My employer in 2022 tried hard to accommodate my injury. In fact, it went away completely for several months! I was not prepared for the extent to which the hand and arm pain came back after surgery for the fibroids (a completely separate issue). My doctor at the time warned me that fully healing from the surgery would require at least a full year. I’ve not seen medical literature to support this, but it makes perfect sense that while my body was recovering from a major surgical procedure, I would be more susceptible to re-injury. Repairing tissue takes nutrients and energy.

I received a small cash settlement for the RSI injury (equivalent to about three months of pay), which helped. The majority of my time this year has gone into planning and research around a social venture to support adults living with chronic and serious illness. The way in which my life changed completely took me by surprise. We are a mostly invisible group, but there are a lot of us. If you live alone, you are even more vulnerable. Particularly in the post-COVID era.

Regardless, I’m not here to complain or feel sorry for myself. I know exactly why the injury got bad. I was working long hours and not taking breaks, trying to reach a milestone on an old Python project. Which I met.  Now it’s up to me to rest until the pain subsides, and keep fine-tuning my ergonomic setup and exercise routine until I am able to put in something close to a normal working day. I’ll be moving back to Oregon in May.  Until then, my expenses are pretty low.

Have the budget to walk into town about every other day and grab myself a slice of pizza, a cup of coffee, or a beer. Not more than that. Or I lose my runway.

I’m grateful to have this time. Just frustrated I don’t have more forks! So many interesting and challenging tasks await. Opportunities to learn… opportunities to build… dream jobs that I am missing out on applying for…

On the plus side, I can still take walks and read books to my heart’s content. I have my energy back, which is a welcome change from life with severe fibroids, two years ago.

Most tasks are fine in moderation. I just have to be extremely aware of when I’m getting to the “red zone” and force myself to stop. I’m learning to be more strategic about where I put my time and resources. I can still do management, customer support, and coaching work until the cows come home! Too bad those first two categories are shedding so many jobs. Keyboard is ok up to a point. Anything that involves a lot of repetitive mouse work (which can include IDE’s) is a a greater concern. If I never open up another Figma file in my life, I’d be ok with that. Design comes naturally and easily to me and I love the interdisciplinary nature of UX work. By contrast, AI very much requires the command line and it’s where the innovation is happening right now in our industry.

I think in the long run, it will work out. I just wish voice recognition software were a teensy bit better. What was missing (last time I checked) was something equivalent to a sudo or vi mode where it was possible to switch from dictation to navigating with the cursor to fix mistakes.  If all else fails, that may be an area where I could make some contributions.

Figured out some hypothetical voice dictation training exercises which would not bore me to tears. The last time I made a chess reference on this blog was almost seven years ago. I’m in a very different place today, but not necessarily a worse one. (Cannot overemphasize the importance of actually getting that busted uterus removed!) Maybe dictating chess moves would be a good place to start for teaching the computer some new conventions for voice recognition.

And other people would benefit too.

So yeah, the same basic principle espoused in that post continues to hold true. I’ll figure things out.