I’m still cat-sitting: Meet Gerty
Gerty has three distinct attributes:
Gerty is very, very soft. Her fur is the cashmere sweater of cats1.
Gerty is deaf. I try to not surprise her. But she has no idea how loud she is when she meows. Or I should say screams. Gerty screams like a child throwing a fit in the candy aisle of a supermarket2.
Gerty expects breakfast to be served PROMPTLY at 6am3. She will announce her feelings at about 5:30am by screaming because no one is awake and preparing her breakfast.
I call this a “Gert Alert” and I’ve learned it is easier to get up and feed the beast than to try to sleep through it. As I like to say about pets… who is training who?
📆 What is Anticapitalist Investing? Tomorrow!
I honestly have no idea, so I’m going to tune in on Sunday (July 24th) to catch shareholder Lillian’s livestream about Anticapitalist Investing:
🚙 KmikeyM Hits the Road!
In August Kathryn, Georgie (the dog), and I will be driving up to Portland, Oregon. Then in mid-August we’ll drive across the top part of the United States on our way to Canada. This trip is becoming something of an annual summer tradition!
After some unknown amount of time in Canada we will drive back to Los Angeles in September, cutting down through Denver most likely. If you are on or near any of these routes get in touch!
Always excited to meet a shareholder for coffee or a drink!
💼 Working / Not Working
It’s been quiet in KmikeyM-land because I’ve been heads down reading, writing, and plotting. I have this amazing giant pad of graph paper I like to use when I’m thinking: the Rhodia N° 38 Pad.
I learned about it from my friend and shareholder Erik when working on a game design project4. This what my workspace looks like now:
One thing I took from the Shareholder Summit is that I’m an opportunist. I’ll pursue ideas until it’s clear that no one else cares about them, and then I’ll abandon ship. If opportunity strikes and I get some attention I’ll double down on the idea. This only works when you have a lot of irons in the fire.
Most of my friends and collaborators would say I have too many irons in the fire5, so this month is all about finding what to focus on in the coming months. Here is a list of goals for the remainder of the third quarter (July, August, and September):
Q3 Goals
🎧 Return to Experimental Garden Group
🗳️ New Major and Minor Votes6
🦄 Launch NFT Projects (Fingerholers + Kokomo Bay)
📕 Finish Book Proposal w/ Kevin
📺 Finish TV Pitch w/ Kathryn
🔈 Maintain 3 Minute Review
💪 Remain Committed to Fitness
📚 Catch Up on 2022 Reading Goal (52 books)
🧙♂️ Bring Change Wizard back to the App Store7
With all the other aspects of life that crop up this feels like a solid list. Am I missing something? Probably… When I get back to LA in September I’ll also start therapy and continue my Health + Fitness journey.
Profitably Yours,
-K. Mike Merrill
PS: The link to the Insider Info offer in the last email was broken. So here is one with a discount that will give you 10% off forever:
What is Insider Info? Well, it’s a much more personal and frequent list that I send out to a handful of people. This is where you will find some KmikeyM alpha and I’ll tell you which movies made me cry. I’m going to write one this weekend in fact, so get in now.
PPS: On July 8th I celebrated my 5th year in Los Angeles with a cobb salad (invented in LA) and an overpriced cocktail (common in LA).
the softness of her fur is inversely proportionate to the sharpness of her claws: aka CAT MATHS
the neighbors must be used to it because no one has called the cops
i assume this is because her family wakes up early? do all cats want breakfast in the first morning light? is this a genetic remnant of when they were lions or tigers and had found it useful to stalk prey when the antelope were still waking up and and fuzzy from not having their coffee yet?
the idea for the game was taking the open source code of a first person shooter and making it so that every time you got it a random part of your hard drive would get deleted equal to the amount of damage, which would either immediately (if it was a critical part) or eventually “kill you” by crashing your machine. and you could “armor up” by adding more harddrive space… this was a good idea but was never completed. i still have a CD with an early copy of Erik’s code on it.
do i need less irons or more fire?
i’m thinking about re-visiting the vasectomy and also about taking some college courses
here is a review of the original change wizard from 2015