No Apologies

One constant threat of the "Blog" as a platform is inconsistency. Millions of blogs out there get started every year, but most fail to make it a month, let alone a year.

Whether life gets in the way, or the spark of inspiration fades, keeping a journal, especially one that others read so that you may not be entirely truthful with your writing, there are breaks.

Going back over previous journals (some written before 'blog' entered common usage), I used to apologize when returning after a hiatus. That is not why I'm here, this time.

Unlike most of the pauses I've had on various blogs, this one was planned.  I didn't mention the plan because it struck me that I needed to sort things out without worrying about promises. The temptation to say "I'm taking a couple months off to sort out a few things, but I'll be back in October" or something similar would have been too great.

Whether I came back in a month or two or six wasn't important. What was important was getting some direction. I needed to figure out where all of this was going. There is a thick stack of projects surrounding me, and I needed to figure out what plan I was going to follow.

What I have come up with is summed up here:

Each day is priceless. How are you spending yours?


To be continued. . .

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.