My Lung Transplant Journey: From IPF to Dealing with Two New Lungs (part 1/)

If we could go back 5-8 years ago, you would discover a very different Rob Hawkins than you find today. Join me on my journey from health to hell and back again. On that jounery what did I learn, unlearn what-have-you. Are there nuggets from my experience that you could uae. Follow this multli-blog post blog theme. More soon, Promise!

INDIA: The Land Of Ahimsa [Official Documentary]

My goal this year is to be more intentional, and specifically how I show up in terms of the environment, animal rights, as well as my own personal health outcomes. As I was writing a draft post on that intention, I also happened to see a couple of whole food plant based lifestyle films or videos on youtube. One ties in nicely to my yoga mindset around ahimsa, a documentary called INDIA: The Land of Ahimsa

I briefly touch on Ahimsa in my "yamas" blog post, but it basically means non-harming, non-violence. It is a fundamental aspect of not only yoga but all of the Indian philosophically based religions and philosophies. The fact that the tile has a question mark on suggests that India may not be the land of Ahimsa...check it out.

Why I Am Returning My Pixel Phone and Watch and Buying Apple

Apple products just work.

Google products do not.

Let me explain. I am a user of Google Workspace, or G Suite as it was known for while and a couple other names I think. I am also a Fitbit user and use it to track steps, heart rate, sleep score. In fact I'm a premium account on Fitbit. I log into Fitbit with my Google Workspace account and no problems.

As and aside, I also have a Macbook Pro and and I pad, and I still have my iPhone 13 from work.

How To Win The Civil War

While I am still reading People Centered Economy as I mentioned in this post, I have also started reading "How To Win The Civil War" by Steve Phillips. Steve was my best friend until the first couple of years of Elementary School and then a move to a different city began to separate us. We went to rival high schools and I'm pretty sure he went to a presitigous west coast school. Stanford I think it was called. Of course of our Dartmoor Road friendship, he got the brains (and the looks, and the atthleticism (marathoner), dammit). Anyway, I am headed to the west coast to visit my son in Seattle and I'm going to stop by and see my sister in Livermore CA. I'll be flying into to San Fransisco where Steve lives, or nearby anyway. So the plan is to see him while I'm there if just over a coffee.

I didn't want to show up not having read either of his books, the other one being "Brown is the New White" which I believes lays out the numbers for the democratic party leaning more into POC than centrist, white, part of the machine democrats. I have a signed copy, my Mom got it for me, but I haven't read it yet. So when I bought How to Win The Civil War I decided I had to have at least started prior to seeing Steve and asking him to sign it.

PCE - People Centered Economy

I have just started reading "The People Centered Economy" by David Nordfors & Vint Cerf, Vint being considered one of the founding fathers of the internet. It was recommended to me by a friend of mine at Hyland as we have continued conversations on mulitple topics.

I can already tell you that it both excites me and annoys me all at the same time.

In short what appeals to me is the idea of putting people first. What is going to bother me is this idea that we need AI to implement it and that it does not address the unbridled capitalism that currently reigns in the U.S. Over time I'll explain these concerns and othersbut first just suspend disbelief and learn is my goal. Here is what they say on page 26 of the book:

Reflections - Turning 59

I recently had a birthday. To celebrate I managed to get myself laid off a week ago so that I am currently on a "paid sabbatical". For the last 15 years, I have worked at Hyland Software which has been a fantastic experience. It was great working at a very succussful company with even better people. Hyland, like many other companies is struggling to find center after being very successful during the pandemic, has been struggling (relatively speaking, mind you) since then and the current economic downturn (inflation-driven really) is making it harder not for just Hyland but for a lot of tech companies. Layoffs are happening across the industry.

There are other theories as to the real purpose of the layoff. However, this post is not to talk about Hyland or its layoffs but rather what does mean for me as I enter the next year. What do I want to do next, do I really want go jump right back into the rat race or do I want to change my life completely by leaving the "tech" industry and doing something else. I know for a fact, that yoga teaching will not pay the bills for me. But what does "pay the bills" look like moving forward, do I really need to stay on the path I'm on, or do we make serious lifestyle changes so that our footprint and therefore cost of living are reduced? One post cannot address and I am certain that over time that whatever I think today will change, shift, morph to something different. That change is one of three things we are certain of - death, taxed, and change. Everything changes, every minute, every second.

Mastering Diabetes: What I have learned - Part 1

As I read Mastering Diabetes (MD) by Cyrus Khambatta and Robby Barbaro and watching their Mastering Diabetes channel on YouTube I've been learning more and more about diabetes. I think the first thing I learned is that there isn't just type 1 or type 2. There is Pre-Diabetes, Type 1, Type 1.5, Type 2 and Gestational diabetes. Each of these require different approaches to the treatment plan.

Mastering Diabetes

On November 1st I was diagnosed with Diabetes. Which is disappointing in general but particularly for me as back in 2014 I went full on whole food plant based largely because I was obese and pre-diabetic. I was able to drop my weight from 192 to 137 at my lightest but generally around 145 - 150. All my biometrics came back to what is considered normal parameters - Total Cholesterol under 0, LDL under 100, cholesterol ratio around 4.1. Glucose under 100 or a touch over upon occasion.

Well fast forward in time and injuries, changes at work(generally for the positive but disruptive to my schedule), and then the pandemic knocked me out of my patterns. Particularly with the pandemic I became more sedentary and I "pampered" myself with vegan food. I want to emphasize I did not go back to eating the Standard American Diet (SAD) but just loosed up to eat vegan. I also ate more and some of those bad lifestyle patterns came back to roost - sitting in front of the boob tube after work for a couple of hours.

Free Yoga as in Free Speech not as in Free Beer

My friend and fellow yogi, Evan, posted on the Cultivate Yoga Instagram account the following about the offerings we have at the Cultivate Yoga Space, our yoga studio:

At Cultivate, FREE YOGA does not only apply in the financial realm and how we have chosen to share our offerings to the community within a gift-based model. FREE YOGA also means that the yoga we offer is free from the constraints of western practices and eastern philosophies. FREE YOGA means we recognize that a true yoga practice is eternally evolving, perpetually in motion and is unique to each and every one of our students. FREE YOGA means that we recognize every student who chooses to practice with us is on their own journey and it is our most sacred duty to create space that will allow for that journey to flow freely with space for infinite exploration. FREE YOGA means that every one of our teachers holds the freedom to completely be themselves and show up how they need to on any given day for themselves and our students. FREE YOGA means that each class we offer is unique, each student we serve is unique and each teacher who serves with us is unique - and when all of these elements align in their authenticity, an infinite FREEDOM occurs. This is FREE YOGA. Click on the link in our bio to learn more about our gift-based model.

Japan Trip 2021 - Part III | 2021年日本旅 ー その3: Yasukuni Shrine Visit 靖国神社

While on our visit to Japan we visited the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo. In all the years I lived in Tokyo and Japan (18 all told) I never visted Yasukuni. Yasukuni is the controversial shrine dedicated to the soldiers of Japan and therefore associated with the fascist nationalists that want to restore the military imperial structure of Japan from WWII.

Every year there are protests surrounding the annual visit by the Prime Minister of Japan to the shrine which large parts of the nation and Japan's neighbors have problems with - particularly those that were treated atrociously by the Japanese in WWII. South Korea is a perfect example of one such country.

Seeding Change - Vote with your wallet to save the Amazon rain forest

Last night, Elly, Arisa and I wanted Seeding Change documentary about the depletion and destruction of the Amazon and how several corporations are trying to leverage their businesses to reverse that process.

Japan Trip 2021 - Part II | 2021年日本旅 ー その２

This is my series of blog posts on Arisa and my trip to Japan in spring of 2021. The first one is here. We are here for two reasons, 1) Arisa's father's funeral and 2) to start the discussions over the will and related inheritance that stem from his death. However, since that is personal I won't be discussing that I'll just be talking about the other aspects of the trip.

In the first post I talked about the experience of arriving at Narita Airport. Once you have cleared all of that, all inbound travelers need to quarantine for 14 days. In two days I'll be half way through. At that point I'll be able to go anywhere in Japan that our little hearts desire. Right now we're basically limiting ourselves to the local area and really only for exercise or grocery shopping.

Japan Trip 2021 - Part 1 | 2021年日本旅 − その１

So as I write this blog, I am in Tokyo, Japan. My daughter's place near the Yoyogi-Uehara station. Sadly we are here for my father-in-law's funeral. We are only in our third day and we'll be here for close to a total of 30 days. For me it has been 5 or 6 years since I've been here, less for Arisa as she and Ken went two years ago. The interesting thing about this trip is that it is in the middle of the covid pandemic. So it has been quite the experience.

This post will relate some of our experience for others that are perhaps coming to Japan.

Jessica Jones and the Great MCU Villain

So my son George recently (recently is a relative term, I started this blog post back at the beginning of March)published a blog post where he posits that the villain in Jessica Jones is the only really great villain in all of the Marvel universe. I actually don't have an opinion on it as while I have seen Jessica Jones and a couple of the other MCU shows not enough to form an opinion.

What I can say is that he is a good writer and has well thought-out his point. It has been quite a while since I've read what he has written, besides the first chapter of Challenger's Chase, so it is pretty cool to see. It's kind of like he's actually an adult! lol. Seriously though it is hard not to feel a little pride to see some good writing.

Just a quick blog post to express some pride in my youngest.

GOP is not a viable party in a healthy Democracy

The title of this blog post says it all, the GOP as it stands today is not a viable political party in a Democracy. This is not to suggest there isn't room for "conservatives" or "fiscal conservates". I will most likely disagree with them but those views are certainly welcome in a democracy. As are the views that are probably more progressive than my own. I didn't in fact register as a Democrat until last year when I felt the dissonace of the GOP with a Democracy, the importance of removing Trump from office. I will admit that over the last year I am leaning way more progressive than I was, way more certain of systemic racism and the influence of white supremacy in not only the GOP but in our military and law enforcement organizations.

George's Youtube Channel - First three posts up

I think I mentioned in an earlier post that my son is working on a YA novel called Challenger's Chase. Related to that he is creating a series of channels on Instagram, etc., but specifically a Youtube channel talking about writing drafts. He has posted his first three vlog entries:

1. Channel Intro
2. What is Writing Drafts?
3. Defining Your Reasons To Write; 11 Pros and Cons

Check it out!

Wiki is Up

So my wiki is up and running. I still have some operational tweaks to it I'd like to make but that's all they are is tweaks at this point.

https://wiki.neohawk.org

As a reminder, the wiki is the place where I am beginning to outline my political platform. What I mean by that is based on the events over the last year, the abomnination of the 45th President, the absolute traitorous and seditious policies pursued by the Republican Party, for the first time I registered as a Democrat. The GOP is not a political party, but can only be considered as such much in the way that Sinn Fein was the political arm of the IRA, Irish Republican Army.It is still part of a seditious domestic terrorist organization. The acquital of the 45th President where 43 Senators voted to acquit and immediately following the end of the Trial, Mitch McConnell condemns the former President as guilty to inciting and causing the Capitol Riot which just prior he voted to acquit him of those exact charges.

Wiki is Almost There

As you know, I have been trying to get my MoinMoin wiki back up an running. I have upgraded successfully to moin2 and even imported the pages from the previous moinmoin wiki successfully. Now I am tweaking things like security (it was wide open), need to add ssl instead of normal http and all the other normal things for "production" . Since this isn't my day job it is taking me a while to get it up and running but I am getting there. I have been taking copious notes (not really) about what I am doing to get it running correctly. I am awfully close to having it running nice an clean.

However, in the meantime it will spend more time down than up as I get it to where I want. I'm really close though and hopefully I can find time to nail it down. I'll be sure to post here when I do get it up and running. I will probably see if I can create a simple vm that takes up less resources on GCP so I can reduce costs. I can use that and the notes I take to create a tutorial that maybe people can use. We shall see.

Update

The wiki was succesfully upgraded to be accessed only by https and I believe I have the ACLs working correctly. Now I just have a few more production tweaks setting up the uwsgi emperor service.

George's First Chapter of Challenger's Chase is Released

My son George has been writing his first novel, Challenger's Chase(prologue), and instead of going the normal publishing or self-publishing route he has decided to release the book via blog posts. He just released the first chapter which can read here: https://ccghawkins.com/2021/01/02/book1chapter1/. I read a very early version of the first part of this chapter. Obviously the story is George's but you will also notice that it has a lot illustrations that go with it. Those are his as well.

Upgrading my Wiki

My last post mentioned that my wiki was down. Well in the process of troubleshooting the issue I discovered a bunch of things that I didn't know. It's good to learn right?

So there are a couple of things that I discovered during this process the first of which is that Python2 reached end of life support January 2020. I knew that MoinMoin used python 2 but I hadn't realized that python2 is no longer supported at all. In addition PIP, the python package installer announced what yesterday that it no longer supported python2, so you can install it via method. And so the more I thought about it the more I realized that I definitely didn't want to be running my wiki on outdated software particularly if a security vulnerability in python2 was discovered.