The Adventure Continues
Tie Fighter at sail, flying Main and Genoa
Meet 'Tie Fighter', my new home.
"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did so. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." -- Mark Twain
So yeah - after hemming and hawing for a few months, I've finally decided to go for it. I've agreed to purchase the trimaran - I've even paid the down payment!
She's a 39-foot 'Searunner' trimaran, built in 1984. She's fast and stable, and with a lot of work could be brought up to the point where she could undergo serious ocean voyages - yes, she is enough boat to do the trip to Hawaii. The life changes needed to move onboard a sailboat will be harrowing, I'm sure.
My thinking is this: if I can rid myself of my piles of useless crap, perhaps turning much of it into cash in the process, I'll be better off in the long run. A friend once told me "You can never truly own anything that you can't carry on your back at a dead run." - we'll see, I guess.
Tacking Amidships
I've just returned from an epic ten-day road trip rock climbing in Nevada, and I leave again in three days for a trip to Seattle. My house is a shambles, and it's only going to get worse as I sort everything into four piles: going on the boat, going on Craigslist, going to friends to store, or going in the garbage.
I hope it's not asking too much, actually. I'd really, really like to get away without having to pay for self-storage somewhere, but I'm not entirely sure that'll be possible. The thinking goes like this: if a storage locker is $200/month, and my couch takes up 1/10th of the available space in that locker, then my couch costs me $240/year to keep. Everything I read on 'live-aboard' forums says that people returning to their storage lockers after two or three years away take a look at the stuff they've stored and are flabbergasted at the amount of junk they somehow thought they'd need! I don't want to be that person, but I also don't want to find out in six months that I no longer want to live on a boat, only to discover that I don't have any stuff anymore...
Fortunately, most of the really great stuff that I have accumulated over the years is very much useful to friends and family - speaker systems, stereos, synthesizers etc will all go to willing "storage" homes, for use by folks who'll appreciate them.
A Lovely Afternoon Cruise
It's amazing how much utter junk I have been finding though - going on a suggestion from another friend, I've made a change to my clothes sorting algorithm. Previously, I'd look into my closet and pick out a few items that I no longer wanted or needed; in the new method, I've removed everything from my closet, laid it all out on the bed, and picked out only things that I knew I wanted to keep. Applying this technique to my closet and dresser, I've taken four garbage bags full of clothes to the Salvation Army so far!
Another big one, from a suggestion on the Cruiser's Forum, was books. I know, it almost sounds like sacrilege, but the theory is sound: pick any book from your bookshelf and consider it. Will you read it again in the next year? Is it a valuable reference? Does the book itself have inherent physical value (antique, sentimental, etc)? If the answer to all three questions is no, then the book is a trophy, a decoration, nothing more. There is no room on a boat for trophies! That being said, when cruising the coastal waters, there's an entire economy of traded paperbacks...
A really tough one for me, however, is art. I have a decent collection of paintings and sculpture that I've collected over the years - none of it has any inherent value, but dammit, I like it. This is tough. Where do I store it?
Lastly, my computers - there is no faster-depreciating asset than a desktop PC. My machines are stable and fast, but they're powerful machines and they operate on AC electricity, which can be pretty scarce on a boat. What to do? Sell them for a tiny fraction of what I paid? Store them?
Anyhow. No great adventure can come without a lot of discomfort, so that's apparently what I must do. Expect to see a lot more posts on this forum as I make the transition between basement-dweller to coastal skipper!
Argh!
I need to escape the house more often.
Seriously, it's turning out that my "22h/week" job actually means sitting in front of my computer 40-50 hours a week, but only actually working on "work" for twenty or so hours. It certainly doesn't help that the crazy winter weather has started - well, winter in Vancouver, that is, which means it has begun to rain and won't let up until - oh, May or so.
Well - let's just do an update, then. Still working for the media company, still mostly doing crazy celebrity gossip server admin stuff. Still living in the basement. Currently in negotiations to purchase a large sailboat...
Yeah, that's right. I won't give *too* many details, just in case I might jinx the whole thing, but here's what I will tell you:
- She's big. Really big. Like, sleeps six people comfortably, but could potentially carry a lot more.
- She's in pretty rough shape. She'll need a looooot of work before she looks as pretty as she can, but 90% of the work is scraping, sanding and painting.
My intention is to continue to negotiate the sale, to see if I can get the price down to something semi-reasonable. If everything works out, hopefully by the end of the year I'll be moving out of my basement and onto a sailboat!
The downside is that there are a lot of hurdles - for instance, while she's got a stove and a toilet, she doesn't have a shower or a refrigerator. The shower can be retrofitted without too much work - there's space for one - but the fridge is a bigger problem. Fridges consume a *lot* of electricity, which, on a boat, is a big deal. She does have an icebox though, and really, refrigerators on sailboats are kind of a new invention anyway, they've only really been possible for the past ten years or so. Using an icebox will be a shift in thinking, but one that I won't really have to worry about for at least the next few months - I can keep things nice and cool just by putting them in a cooler outdoors.
Speaking of which, one might question the wisdom of moving onto a sailboat right at the start of winter. Well, rightly so - boats aren't exactly known for their insular capacity. One might even consider them downright cold - but wait! This *particular* vessel was used as a live-aboard in Alaska for the past few years! She's got dual diesel furnaces, fore and aft, and she's been insulated against the bitter cold of the Alaskan winter. Actually though, I think I'll probably have to rip out all the insulation and repaint her, but I'm quite looking forward to the work.
I've been taking a CYA (Canadian Yachting Association) Coastal Navigation class from the same guys that held the CYA Basic Cruising course I took over the summer. It's been excellent, I highly recommend it - if you want details, feel free to email me and I'll fill you in. The course is teaching me all about using charts and compasses and navigating the waters of the Georgia Straight - one thing the teacher said that I found particularly interesting was that the Straight (and surrounding waters) contain practically every kind of cruising waters that you're likely to encounter anywhere in the world - if you learn to cruise here in British Columbia, you can pretty much cruise anywhere.
Anyhow - batteries are running low, and I suspect so is my welcome. I'm typing this in 'Re-Entry', a wicked little espresso place on Main Street. Time to pack up and go back out into the pouring rain...
hmm.
Well, judging by the fact that it's been a month since my last post, combined with the fact that I'm only blogging when I'm working outside the home, it would seem that my quest is not going quite as well as I'd have liked. Turns out it's actually very difficult to get motivated to leave the house in the morning when you don't technically have to...
Well - I guess I can't really count it as a full month, seeing as eight (of a possible 20) working days were spent travelling to, partying in and returning from the Black Rock Desert in Nevada. Burning Man was amazing, as expected - really it was far, far more than that, but as our travelling crew decided on the way home, trying to describe the experience to someone who hasn't been there is pretty much futile - you come off sounding like a cross between a religious zealot and a Pigeon Park loony. The closest I could come up with was "the universe constantly astounding me with how spectacularly beautiful it can be". See? Loony.
Returning from my epic adventures, I seem to have slipped into a routine that isn't at all what I was trying to achieve - in fact, I'm a lot less productive than I was in New Brunswick. This is serving to reinforce my belief that working in an office is better than working at home simply because it's a different environment. Lately I've been getting up in the morning, making breakfast and coffee, and sitting at my desk for the next eight to ten hours, getting perhaps four to six hours of work done. This is wasting both my time and what remains of the beautiful Vancouver summer weather we've been having. There'll be plenty of time to slack at home once the rains set in. So why can't I seem to get motivated to get out and ride my bike to a coffee shop somewhere?
I guess the question becomes - is an office more productive because it's an environment tailored to (or mentally associated with) working, or is it more productive simply because it's not home? I find myself constantly distracted in my home "office", due in no small part to my being surrounded by my favourite things.
The most productive working environment so far was working in an unused meeting room in my father's law office in New Brunswick - basically a featureless white room. I mean, there were a few unremarkable paintings on the wall, but apart from that it was a table, a few chairs, and that's it.
Anyhow - today I'm splitting tasks - I spent a few hours this morning working from my desk in my apartment, then showered, shaved, and responded to an emergency tech support housecall from a girl I've been seeing. Sweet! An actual excuse to get off my ass and get out of the house - and you know what? It's not so bad. I'm writing this from a Blendz coffee shop (note to self: Blendz has free wireless) on Robson Street. Robson isn't exactly the most calm, quiet street in the city, so it's been somewhat difficult to maintain focus - but at least I'm out of the house. 
East Coast
Well, now that I've been in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia for a week, I figure I should update the blog with my experiences so far.
Strangely, the most productive I've been to date was a set of two eight-hour stints in a quiet side room at my father's office in Sussex. Today, however, I am in a bustling food court in the Halifax Shopping Center. Oh my...
So the big question with this whole 'work from anywhere' project is whether or not I can be productive even when the office is a massive set of distractions. Admittedly, today is a strong test.
It's interesting, really - as someone who has spent their entire life struggling to overcome attention deficit disorder, the idea of trying to get work done in an environment full of shiny distractions seems like a plan destined to fail. Still, I'm pretty sure that with a bit of self-discipline, combined with careful self-medication with coffee and prescription ADD drugs, that I might just be able to pull this off.
On the prescription drugs tip - just as a back story, as a young child I was lucky enough to have a mother who was an elementary school vice principal, studying for her masters in education. She attended a lot of educator conferences, and at one in particular the speaker spent a half-hour describing an interaction between a mother and her son - it went a bit like this:
"...so the mother and son went to visit the grandparents. Now, the son is hyperactive and can't seem to sit still for more than a few seconds, and is constantly distracted by new 'projects', which drives his grandfather absolutely nuts. The kid knows this, and knows that every time they interact he makes the grandfather angry, so he's trying to be on his best behavior.
"So they're at the grandparents place for a few hours, and there hasn't been a peep from the kid. It's been snowing, and when the mother goes to leave, there's the kid, and he's shoveled pretty much the entire front walk. He's beaming, he's done a good job, and even the grandfather gruffly says he's done well. The mother and son pack up and go home.
"About an hour after they get home, there's a phonecall - it's the grandmother. She says that the grandfather isn't angry, but that he'd just like to know where the son left the screwdriver.
"The story expands a little bit from there. Apparently the son wanted to surprise the grandfather with something nice, so he went to shovel the walk. The door to the shed with the shovel was padlocked however, and if he'd asked for the key he'd spoil the surprise, so he tracked down a screwdriver, taken the hinges off the shed door, put them aside, gotten the shovel, and done the walk. In the process, the screwdriver was set down somewhere. They never did find the screwdriver."
Well, after this story, apparently my mother stood up in the seminar and shouted THATS! MY! SON!
Anyway, I was about eight or nine at the time, and they shunted me around to various child psychologists and ADHD specialists (which were very rare, they had only just 'discovered' it), and finally I was diagnosed and prescribed Ritalin. Suddenly I was able to focus and my grades went from mid-60's to mid-90's!
Say what you will, but I know for a fact that I would not be where I am today if it weren't for my mother being conscientious and willing to try an experiment. I count Ritalin/Dexedrine as being critical in my education, and I would likely be either in a trailer park or in jail if I hadn't had that extra benefit.
The downside of ritalin/dexedrine is that they're amphetamines, and for every up there is an equal and opposite down. The "crash" makes it difficult to focus, makes me crabby, and takes away most of my will to do anything but sit on the couch. Worse, if I take it too many days in a row, I start to lose the ability to feel emotions - I turn slowly but surely into a robot. This is the really insidious part - I see so many kids being prescribed dosages of Ritalin that must be just slamming their brains. I knew an eleven-year-old who was prescribed fully four times my dosage! Admittedly he was really, really, really hyperactive, but still...
Man. Did you know that Halifax mall cops wear bulletproof vests? Honestly, who thinks that's a good idea? When was the last time there was a shooting at the Halifax Shopping Center? Google says never.
Anyway - it would seem that instead of actual "work", I'm doing blog posts. Today I have to research alternative DNS hosting - I'm partial to EasyDNS, but the Evil Masters seem to want to go with UltraDNS. I don't think they realize that UltraDNS has per-query billing, which will mean huge bills with our round-robin "load balancing" system.
The Quest Begins!
Today is my last day of work. I have Wednesday and Thursday to get my affairs in order, and I begin my new job - and officially begin my technomadic experiment - this Friday.
So the laptop buyout went... poorly. I was really hoping that they'd bite - my original negotiated deal was to work for the ISP for one year, and at that point I'd be entitled to buy out my laptop for $1000. Well, technically, the deal I tried to negotiate was that after six months the ownership of the laptop would just transfer to me, but they played hardball and would only go for the full transfer after eighteen months. I was kind of stretched financially at the time, so I accepted.
The problem is that I'm leaving the company after only just shy of nine months. I made them an offer of $1000 plus an extra $100 for each of the three months shy of a year, so $1300. The big boss agreed, but with the caveat "...as long as Joe doesn't need the machine for his tech guys", putting the decision in the hands of the manager of the technical support team. He was supposed to let me know Friday, but Friday afternoon told me he'd need the weekend to think it over.
That left me at a bit of a disadvantage, as my last day is today, Tuesday, and I would have to leave my machine there - but I was pretty confident that he'd make the right choice and let me buy the machine out. Unfortunately, early Monday morning he emailed me saying "Sorry dude, we're getting more mac clients lately and so it'd be better to have it in the tech office for testing and client solutions stuff".
Now, that's a pretty flimsy premise. You've gotta understand, there's a lot of office politics at play here - for one, I had the only Macbook Pro in the office, and frankly that chapped a lot of cabooses, and for two the Macbook Pro is a phenomenally well-designed machine and I'm in an office full of geeks. There were at least four people in the office with designs on my laptop, and from my vantage point (aka "shitty cubicle") I got to watch them circle like vultures as the word spread. Deals were quietly made - my coworker made his case "I should get the laptop because I'm second to Drew in the admin team and I only have a regular Macbook, which could go to the tech team...", and went from office to office gathering support for his cause. Another coworker, of much higher ranking, thought he should get it on rank alone. And even the big boss said something like "Just leave it on my desk when you go - oh, and make sure the applications and such are still installed, I've been meaning to pick up a mac for my own use...".
Regardless, I'm getting a signing bonus with the new company, with which to purchase a new laptop. I was really hoping that purchase could be my macbook pro, with money left over for a fancy new iPhone too - but with that hope dashed, I was left with one day to evaluate my options and purchase a new machine.
Fortunately, I'm a geek, so I'd kept up with the tech pretty well - I'd already narrowed the field down to two options. In the left corner the slightly more pedestrian Macbook, and in the right corner the sleek, sexy Macbook Air.
I'll save you the suspense: I bought the Air.
It was pricy, that's for sure, it used up my entire budget and then an extra $100 on top of that - but I think I've made the right decision. This is a machine that I'll be carrying with me everywhere for the next - oh, let's call it two years. I'll be spending anywhere from one to fourteen hours per day on the thing, which means it has to be both functional and comfortable. I look at a laptop as being like a good pair of workboots - if you're just doing some gardening every few weeks, the $90 pair of workboots will suit you just fine. If you're out on a construction site every day though, rain or shine, for eight hour stretches, the $340 pair start to make a lot more sense.
There were a few other factors that influenced the decision; for instance, the Air doesn't have firewire, which is a strike against... but I had firewire on my MBP and never used it once in the nine months I had the machine. Also the Air only has a 1.6Ghz processor. Which is, um, the same one I've been using for nine months on my MBP with no complaints.
Functionally speaking, I've traded my Macbook Pro for the equivalent machine, only pared down with less extraneous crap, lighter and more mobile. This is exactly what I'm trying to do with the rest of my life, so it makes me think that I've made the right choice.
Friday, I get to spend most of the day on Skype with my new coworkers, mapping out the networks that I'll be taking care of. Of course, since the new company has grown very rapidly and with a small core of employees, there isn't really any documentation for any of the systems, so that'll be my first big task. The following Thursday, I fly to New Brunswick for a two-week "vacation", which will be the first big test of being a fully mobile sysadmin... and after that, it's off to Burning Man to either celebrate the burgeoning success of my venture, or to do some deep desert soul-searching as to what I'm actually trying to do here.
Is this all a great idea leading to a wonderfully adventurous alternative lifestyle, or a huge mistake stemming from a drive to escape from a life that seems to be leading to stagnancy?
Recent Posts
- Delicious Ham
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- San Diego, Round Two
- San Diego
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Twitter Feed
- mux: I think Pelican™ cases can be used as a pretty accurate metric of how awesome your life is. currently we have four large cases on the boat. May 18, 2012
- mux: tomorrow marks one month in the boatyard, with a few days left to go. today marks the second day in a row that has ended with a sunburn. May 18, 2012
- mux: multiple blisters... from power tools. not sure if this is a new personal best or new personal low. the new swing-keel is taking shape. May 13, 2012
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Other Cruisers' Blogs
- Miya's blog
- s/v Celestial
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