Filler and the Mower Man

I knew that it would happen sometime, I'd just been hoping I'd make it a month or more before the inevitable post about nothing. My plan was to spend the latter part of this evening repairing my lawn mower.

I use a Scott's Classic 20" reel lawnmower.  It is my second reel mower. The first I had two decades ago when I lived in a rental house and a reel lawnmower was the cheapest option. For about $70 I was able to cut the grass well enough to keep it within legal thresholds.

My current mower still works fine, but the handle has snapped in a position I couldn't fix with duct tape and bailing wire. Initially I tried to find some off-the-shelf tubular metal to hack together a replacement part. The pipes I found were either too bulky or too weak to have lasted given the stresses the handle has to operate under.

The new plan is to take the handle off one of my rechargeable electric mowers and modify it to work as a stand-in. The attachments are different enough that modifying one to accept the other is prohibitively complicated. I found that I could take the upper half of the reel mower's handle apart and remove it. When I did the same to one of the electrics, the proportions were within range.  The major difference being the electric mower relies on one bolt and supporting steel in a clamping formation to hold the upper handle tightly. The reel mower uses two bolts on each side.

The problem is fairly simple to fix. I just need to drill holes in the electric's handle to match the holes in the reel's handle and bolt the two together. I've been carrying a bolt in my pocket for two weeks waiting for an opportunity to get to a hardware store and find good replacements. When I did finally got tired of waiting for such and opportunity, I forced myself to take two kids to The Home Depot. Of course the bolt was missing and I ended up winging it.

Since the electric's top half is longer than the analogous part on the reel mower, the overall length of the handle is going to be longer. This is good in some ways. The old handle was a bit too short for me, and I should be able to stand more upright as I'm pushing the repaired mower. The downside may be that the additional leverage causes more stress at the bolted joints and the bolts or the joints break from the strain. I'll be considering methods of reinforcement once I get the handle bolted on.

The plan for tonight was to take a few pictures and write a post about the process and level of success. The plan didn't stick, though.  Instead I opened my new juicer and got involved in cleaning up after an incident involving movie popcorn. I guess the repair post will have to wait until tomorrow.

Into the Belly of the Beast

I own a small truck. An S-10 I bought for $500 from a coworker. I only used it a few times before I lent it to a friend that needed better transportation. When a beat up, rusted pickup with no tailgate is "better", you know the situation wasn't ideal.

Because I'm going to need as many ways to move stuff between storage units and from the garage and yard, I reclaimed my little truck yesterday. I checked to make sure that transportation wasn't going to be a problem. It wasn't, so the crap truck came home.

Once back in my possession I took care to fill the tank and check the lights. I'm still getting reacquainted with the clutch and the engine sounds that indicate when to shift gears. I never got a good chance to learn the ins and outs of this vehicle the first time I had it. That will change over the next couple of months.  I'll likely spend at least one round trip a day ferreting things from the house to storage, to the other storage and back again.

Tonight wasn't a ferreting trip, though. It was an exploration.  I hadn't seen the inside of the existing storage unit in two years. My memories of the contents were lovecraftian at best. Nightmare images of boxes and stacked fixtures haunted me as I drove over. I was glad the S-10 is a standard because it took my mind off what I was going to see.

In reality the space isn't that bad.  There's a walkway in the center. That immediately indicated to me that there was hope I could get to anything I decided to grab and move. I was also surprised how many of the fluff I'd ordered in was still there.  Maquettes, busts, sealed boxes of cards and figures, all of it just there and easy to find.  The first few sets of ads I put up will be much faster to create than I had feared.

Everything is dusty, of course, and plenty of webs and other indications of spider and insect activity are abundant, but not so much so that I fear an infestation. That part won't be too difficult to deal with, either. In all I'm pretty happy with the condition of things. I think I'll be able to deal with most of it on my own, as long as the truck holds up, that is.

Things Done and Calls Unreturned

The first thing I need to crow about is that everything I intended to do today got done.  That doesn't happen terribly often. It's one of the things I want to work on the most:  Getting things done.

The darker side of today's schedule is that I am still waiting for an answer from the storage company. I asked for a discount beyond the half-month they offered.  I'd rather not double pay for the two months I estimate it will take to transfer the contents. I was told that only the owner could make that decision. That's understandable, but considering he just sold a large swath of prime development land, I think he could let me keep $300 dollars.

An even darker realization came when the attendant admitted to me that the only options for new storage units aren't in the area, but are at the new facility north of town. There will be no quick trips back and forth across the yard.

Another task I set as a priority was to sort out what I needed to do for the IRS. I looked and I think that I can make a decent dent in my obligations without tasking my finances too harshly. In looking through the mail, I came up with the idea that instead of squeezing my finances any more than they already are, I'm going to try and use new money. I'm going to try and improve my income with the purpose of paying off these debts.

Some of that income will be from taking more reviews.  That's an easy one.  I'll try to get an extra review or two each week.  The next most available source of income is the storage unit.  I'm not sure how much I can make by selling off stuff, but it's worth a shot.

I'll need to come up with a few other income sources in the next couple weeks.  I'll have to see if I have any better ideas than the ones I am able to come up with right now.

One side task I hadn't intended on was to order a vegetable juicer. I'm not looking to do anything as radical as a juice cleanse, thought I'm not completely opposed to the thought. I'm more interested in using vegetable juice as a supplement.  I know that I could be healthier if I could eat healthier. For some reason, eating raw leafy greens irritates my stomach.  I'm hoping that juicing them will remove whatever property it is that makes my stomach upset.

It is an expensive experiment, but it's one I think I need to try. The box is supposed to be here Wednesday. If so, Thursday morning will be my first try at it.

A Loose End

Coming home after a trip to Nebraska, I found a stack of mail waiting for me. One conspicuous set of envelopes was addressed to my former business from the IRS.

One of the lessons I learned running a business is that you have to be very diligent with record keeping. This is not something at which I excel. In fact I've been terrible at it.  In many cases I could be considered one of the worst record keepers in recorded history. (The joke is a bad record keeper probably isn't IN recorded history.)

I've known for a couple years that I was going to have to deal with flawed tax returns for the store at some point. I'm making that point tomorrow, mostly because I have the day off and already have to do a few errands that will prevent me from spending the entire day on any one task. So, after I take the kids where they need to go and collect the dogs that need to return home after a stay with the vet, I'm going to get out and deal with the zombie corps of my store.

First on the list is to get a face-to-face meeting with the staff at the storage company and see what my options are. The unit housing the physical remains of my store has been sold and will be demolished on September 30th. Being one person, it's going to take a massive effort to move everything out, even with more than sixty days notice. There is an option to get a price break on a newer unit, but I need to know how much it will cost me, and whether I can get free rent during the overlap.

I'm also going to need to find the last set of keys to the unit, which I don't have.  Without those it's going to be hard to get in and survey the contents.

Finally, I have to try and sell anything and everything I can out of the storage unit so I don't have to move it.  The less I have to move, the more likely it is I'll get out of the unit before I end up in the hospital with a strained back.

Then, once I have a better grasp of what is happening at the storage unit, I'm going to call up the IRS and see what I can work out.  Altogether a great way to spend a day off.

This is what I mean by life debt. I've let this whole store closing be a burden on my psyche for too long.  Years now.  Before that the operating store was a source of anxiety and consternation. It was a release to close it down, but I never paid off the debt, so I had to deal with that.  The monetary debt is one thing, but the life debt is another.

Clearing out these debts is one of the life-changing shifts of focus I need to make.  I'm tired of carrying it all around on my neck. I doubt I can get rid of it all at once, but if I can eliminate a few of these debts I'll be happier and probably healthier, too.

Life Debt: Everyone's Personal Albatross

Debt is a familiar concept to most people.  The idea that something you have isn't really yours because you owe someone (friend, relative, neighbor) or something (bank, credit union, savings and loan) is pervasive in modern American society. Even massive, profitable companies find it useful to take on debt.

When most people think about debt, they think about money.  They have a mortgage or a car loan. They carry a credit card balance. Whatever their personal debt situation is, it's usually monetary in nature. Even if a person is debt free from a monetary perspective, that isn't the only kind of debt.

Think about debt you owe to friends that have helped you move.  You have a certain debt to be repaid the next time they call up and ask if you'd be willing to pitch in carrying a sofa and a few boxes. That's a favor debt.

In software development, or indeed in system administration, there is the notion of technical debt. Places where hacks, kludges, quick fixes or dirty processes are put into place to keep things moving, but that eventually are going to fail, be difficult to maintain or will hold back future projects because they can't be worked around and have to be fixed or replaced represent some examples of technical debt.

There is maintenance debt. Those times when we skip an oil change or a tire rotation for lack of time, money or attention and end up paying later in the form of major repairs, tires that have worn unevenly to the point they can't be used, or a catastrophic failure at an inopportune moment.

In fact there are may kinds of debt that we face on a regular basis.  A concept that I came up with on my own, but I imagine others have done the same before me is that of life debt.  This concept collects all of these non-monetary debts under a single umbrella. Life debt is something I have in abundance.

Over the next couple of months I have to deal with one of my outstanding life debts. It's a big one.

I had a business once.  I closed it a couple years ago, but I'm still dealing with the side effects of that closing. I learned a lot owning a retail business. Much of that from making mistakes. As time passes I can't say for sure that I remember everything correctly, but that really isn't important.  What is important is what my memories tell me about how to run a business in the future. In later posts I will explain that more completely.  For now suffice to say that I hope I can take the smoldering remains of that business and use my experience to turn them into something better. Maybe several better things.

Monetary debt usually comes with some sort of schedule. Life debt doesn't always, but when it does the consequences of failing to meet that schedule can be worse than a late fee. Since I am being forced to handle the life debt associated with my store on a really short timetable, it is in my best interest to use that timetable to my advantage.

I'm going to need every advantage I can get.

Digging Ditches and Raising Chickens

Earlier tonight the family and my in-laws took a trip to the Adams County (NE) "Fairfest". It's the first time I've been to any kind of fair outside of Kansas and Missouri.  The basics were the same, though our own county's fair is at least somewhere green. This one was in a gravel lot that made the toddler's stroller hard to maneuver.

Whenever I go to a fair I realize that any 4H kid probably knows more about raising livestock than I do. I want to learn, of course.  One of the things in the back of my mind is retiring to a subsistence farm. Raising a few chickens, ducks, goats, rabbits or whatever I can bring myself to slaughter occasionally, or that produce something we can use without killing the critters, and grow fruit and vegetables on a couple acres for canning and fresh food.

There are a lot of problems with that plan, of course.  First is getting started.  You have to have the land, the patience and the time. Since I haven't spent most of my life on a farm, there is a lot to learn as well.  That kind of operation doesn't just spring to life and run smoothly like a new car engine. You have to expect some failures and have contingencies in place to make up for them.

I have no illusions that it'd be an easy thing to do, either. It's not something I could start doing at 70 and expect to be able to handle it. I haven't had the benefit of a lifetime's worth of physical labor to build my body into something that can handle wrestling hay bales or feed bags.  I'd get worn out pretty quick on a farm.  I know that.

Still, having spent most of my life working at a desk, or at the very most on the floor behind a stack of servers, I have this itching at the back of my spine that comes up from time to time.  Those are the times I just want to go dig a ditch somewhere. I want to stand exhausted beside something I've accomplished, wipe the dirt from my brow and say, "well, time to fill that back in." I call those times my ditch digging days. Times when I'm frustrated with my lack of physical activity and sense of accomplishment.

Being sore after a day's work because you've moved a ton of bricks or dug a trench for a water line, or planted ten rows of vegetables fells more real that being sore because you have bad typing posture. The irony being that as I write this I'm sitting at a computer, and the kids in 4H are probably still taking care of their animals and will be back at it early in the morning.

Practical issues keep me from gaining much experience beyond simple academic knowledge. I hear we could raise a few chickens, but our dogs and neighbors make me think that wouldn't be a good idea. Maybe that's something I just need to get over. Another excuse that is preventing me from trying to do an unfamiliar task.

Beyond financial considerations that would come from a minor failure like being unable to keep a few chickens alive, what would I lose? Would the experience be worth the cost and the time lost? What are the benefits of being successful?

I think the equation comes out pretty positive.

Hotels and Efficient Living

Anytime I visit a hotel I have a little mental exercise that I can't help but run through. "Could I live here, long term?" I'm not talking about just big rooms or large, multi-room hotel suites, I wonder about the little slivers of hotel rooms you get when you're on the cheap.

A standard hotel room wouldn't be efficient living on it's own.  Part of the problem being the premium you'd be charged, even if the hotel has a weekly or monthly rate.  I've seen some single-room, kitchenless spaces that go for $1500 a week. Still, the space involved is good enough to live a simple life in.

The hotel I'm staying in as I write this is one room, but it's a fairly large one.  There's a small refrigerator and a microwave.  There's one closet, two queen beds, a desk, a chair and ottoman, and a dresser with a TV on it. A different configuration and a partition wall would make a fairly good space for two adults or even adults and kids.

I'm not sure when I started these exercises.  I remember my brother and I making a cabin from a cardboard box that came from our console TV. I'm pretty sure the idea pre-existed that.

I also remember sitting in a bathroom and trying do decide if it was enough room if it was a space capsule. I decided it was, since you could sleep on the walls. There'd be no gravity, of course.

There was a time my great grandmother lived in a hotel, and I remember that. I also remember when she was staying in a very small camper.  I think it was about ten feet long.  Maybe twelve.  Either way it wasn't a lot of space, and it was very hot, but I loved the idea then.  I was only four or five years old.  It seemed plenty big for me at the time.

The fascination with living in a small space was pushed aside when I started acquiring stuff.  I moved away to college with everything I cared about in a 1980 Chevette.  It all fit nicely in my dorm room, one that I shared with another guy I'd never met before.

At the end of the first term, I had to pack up.  It was something we all had to deal with.  Even when we were coming back for the next term, we had to clear our stuff out because intersession brought in other temporary tenants. But after four terms in the Dorm, I moved into a storage unit for a while as I was waiting for my new living arrangements to open up.

The house four of us occupied was tiny, but the space we each had was more than it had been.  Our stuff ballooned. After two years I couldn't move everything all at once. It took several trips to move up the street.

Now it's fifteen years and five or six moves later. I've lost track. Now I can't even house everything in one place.  The storage unit I use to hold the remains of my last retail business is due to be torn down in 60 days. I have to move it, at have to move the contents of the garage in that time.  I also need to plan on moving out of the house my family lives in now as well.

All of this stuff and the thought of moving it brings me full circle.  Could I live in this space?  I could. Could I bring all my stuff? No way.  And if I can exist here but my stuff can't, is that a bad thing?  I don't know.  Maybe it isn't.

We've joked about selling our house including all contents for a fixed price.  Most of what's in there is usable, if not the sort of thing someone would buy new. Would someone pay an extra $10K for it over and above the cost of the house?  Would we take it?  I think so.

Would you sell everything in your house? Maybe less a box of keepsakes and a laptop. Would $10K be enough for you? Let me know what you think.

Work and Things That Pay Me Sometimes

List making is not one of my strengths. My schedule today did not allow me to produce the list I'd hoped to work on. Instead I'll use today's post to describe what I do for a living.

In my day job, I work in IT. That's it really. Of course it's more complicated than that, but none of that is particularly interesting to me, so I can't imagine it will be interesting to anyone else.

I work for a non-profit.  That could be interesting, but in this case, no.  Unless you are in a very narrow niche of Higher Education, the non-profit that employs me will be about as interesting as the list of tasks I perform as Director of IT.

I write reviews for the local newspaper. Now there's something interesting. Unfortunately that is the kind of work I would love to do more of. Maybe get better and make a living at. As it is, it's a side gig. I earn some spending money, but not enough to do more than pay for gas most months. And it isn't terribly efficient from a time perspective.

I'm not a very fast typist.  I write at 750 words daily. When I'm rolling and the only limit of my speed is how fast my fingers can move over the keyboard, I can get to 750 words in about 14 minutes. That's about 53 wpm. A review is usually about that word count. I should be able to crank one out in about 20 minutes, given I need to look up actor's names or histories or whatever.  Add in that a movie or play may take about three hours out of my day and that's a lot of time to spend for a few bucks and a free movie ticket. More than that, it often takes me more than an hour to finish writing because I'm pretty hard on myself.

There are a couple other projects out there I'm working on, but have yet to bear any monetary fruit. One is a blog I run and host for a friend of mine.  I spend a few minutes on it a month right now, and haven't tried to monetize it yet, much to both of our disappointment. The other is a literary magazine. It's in such bad shape I'm embarrassed about it.  Of my four 'jobs' it's the bottom of the totem pole, and gets little time or respect from me.

That's something I hope to fix. I've made a couple of commitments to others. I want to resolve those commitments so that there isn't any guilt attached to working on my own projects. Part of that resolution comes from the accountability I'm hoping to gain from this blog. As I weave in words the mess of projects and responsibilities I have and work to prioritize them, I hope that making the process visible will make me more efficient.

A side effect will be improving my writing for comprehension.  My sentences are too long and complicated for modern audiences. I want to work on communicating more efficiently while I'm trying to make other aspects of my life more efficient and productive.

So I'm not seizing the time it takes to write these posts from my other projects.  This is a genuine attempt to get better at what everything I do. I hope the time I spend here gives a good return on the investment.

Not So Briefly, I Discuss Fun

As it's getting late and I have little time to get a post in today, I'm going to be brief.

A few hours ago I was thinking about topics. What am I going to be writing about? Should I try to keep this blog purely about the development of our family website and the goings on behind the scenes, or should I let it be whatever it wants to be and let topics sort themselves out.

I elected to do the latter. On making that decision it was clear that I should explain a bit about my free time. What things do I do for entertainment? That will give context to the list of projects, and eventually the "Project" that led me to start this blog. Hopefully by letting the readers know what it is I do for fun, you'll understand whether a given discussion is a "have to do" or a "want to do".

Since I just got back from one of my pastimes, I should start there. I play Ingress. Resistance. If you don't know what Ingress is I'll give a brief explanation: Ingress is an augmented reality game where you travel to physical locations registered as "portals". There are two teams that fight for control of these portals using an app downloaded to smart phones or tablets. You interact with the virtual world of Ingress through this app (or scanner as it's called in-game).

There are many complexities and specifics that are necessary to fully explain the game, but for the uninterested, that's about all you need to know. That and not everyone you see staring into their phone at some statue or memorial is reading a text. Some of them are trying to save humanity.

Beyond Ingress, I have a number of pursuits that I like to do.  I play disc golf. Usually Sunday afternoon on the Kansas State University campus course.  The course is unofficial, but it predates my college days and any attempts to run it off have failed for decades.

I have a collection of pics I've taken over the years of strange goings on at the course. There is also a written history by the guy that introduced me to the sport. I'll see if I can get permission to post that sometime. It's the key to many rituals and inside jokes told on the links.

The other thing I do is write. I do a bit of that professionally, but much of it is pre-professional. I have ideas for novels and short stories that just need the time and focus to really work them out and make them worthy of submission, and hopefully a small paycheck. In total I've made less than $5000 writing. I hope to be good enough to make double that in a month. I have a ways to go.

Everything else I do for fun I haven't been able to do lately. There are a lot of projects that sit in the garage waiting for my return, and even more wait inside my head, looking for a way out into the physical world.  It is these projects that I will attempt to outline later and fish for things that people find interesting, unique or otherwise blog worthy.

Part of my reevaluation of my life will be looking at these projects. Some are going to have to go.  I don't think I have enough hours left in my life to finish all of it.  I'm going to need to prioritize and cull the things that don't give me enough joy for the time involved.

There you have it. A brief introduction to the fun side of my life.  Of course this doesn't include activities with my family. These are my more personal and solo activities. I do occasionally take a kid to play disc golf with me. And the kids are often drug along as I take a few portals on Saturday mornings. One of the considerations I will make is whether a project I have can include kids.  Those that do will certainly end up higher on the list than those that don't.

The question of age and appropriateness of the activity will be there too. Some projects may have to wait a few years before the kids can participate. Depending on the costs of keeping the project around compared to the benefit of doing the project later with the kids, I may have to forego the project.

I hope to have time tomorrow to generate something of a list to post. Just to illustrate the depth of madness that is my garage and the projects within.

Until then. . .

Sometimes You See An Opening

I resolved to do something today during my daily writing exercises. I resolved to start changing everything. The first part of this process is to start a new blog.

I don't expect anyone to read it, but it will be out there, tracking the decisions I'm making the accomplishments I have and the lessons I learn.

So what am I talking about?

That will take a little history. More history that I've allotted the time or space to outline in this post. It will come, a little at a time as I think of what to include. For now I'll say that I'm somewhere near the midpoint of my life (if I'm lucky) and I'm coming to some realizations. Maybe these thoughts have always been there in the form of fears.  Fear that I may not get to do the things I wanted when I dreamed of my future. Fear that I might end up alone. Fear that I may not leave some kind of mark on the world around me.

I thought of such things early in life. I used to lie awake at night and think about my own death. What it is like to not exist. To be completely removed from the world that we live in. The first time I remember thinking these thoughts I was barely six.

I didn't dwell on them. I was an unhappy child for no external reason, but I wasn't morbid. Thoughts of death didn't occupy my every waking moment, just those times I was alone in a silent room, trying to drift off to sleep.

I learned that if I concentrated on a black box in a dark room, imagining it turning slowly so that each face passed in front of my straining eyes, eventually I would fall asleep. Asleep where the thoughts of my own mortality couldn't get me. Not often anyway.

(It is hard to write about myself without starting every paragraph with 'I'. Hopefully there is a skill I can pick up along the way.)

Now I have a wife, three kids, two dogs and three cats to keep me company.  I haven't had a night alone in a bed in my own house in years. I have had a few times in hotels on work trips that I've been alone in a dark room, but the weight I carry and the age and unhealthy lifestyle make sure I fall asleep fairly quickly. There's no need for black boxes and dark rooms anymore.

Sometimes I can't sleep, but usually that is after an hour or so of exhausted torpor. Then something will wake me. Sometimes it's because I can't breathe. Either my head is congested, or undiagnosed sleep apnea makes me sit up and gasp for air. On those nights I usually end up out of bed.

I wake up many times a night with arms numb or feet tingling. Regardless of my sleeping position, something is always not getting enough blood or nerves are getting pinched. I fear that one day I'll wake up and the feeling will never return or the tingling will never stop.

So I'm looking at an opening. With the exception of my wife, son and daughters (and okay, fine, pets as well) I'm not pleased with any aspect of my life. I would sell it all and move somewhere far away taking only a laptop to record my venture, and the family that means everything to me.

I've considered getting a truck, a camper and living on the road. If I thought I could provide for us I'd do it. I'm getting sick of the trappings of the life I'm leading. That's what the stuff is: a trap.

We have also considered selling the house and as many of our possessions as possible and moving to a small town. The equity in our current house could buy a similar number of rooms in an older, rural house. Expenses would be much lower, but opportunities for earning money would have to come from the skills we can sell at a distance.

It is this latter idea that we're currently working on.  Our house is posted on Zillow as a "Make Me Move". There are some things I'd like to fix before we take pictures and really go at the market. For now, we're just there in case luck has it that someone wants the place as is.

But that will be a slow process. It may be a year or more before we can really consider a move without some sort of lucky break. So I decided to start this record of everything I'm hoping to change. This is actually the first step in what I hope becomes a new life for me. A new life and a new attitude.

Today I saw an opening. It's a small one, but it is there. I hope to develop the tools I need to pry that opening wide enough to fit us through and move us on. Writing this page was the beginning.