Location, location, location

What if you forget to put your phone on airplane mode before you take off and leave the location settings on?  Will Google ask you to rate the fluffiness of the cirronimbostratus clouds you flew through?  Is there a Elon Musk owned 4G LTE cell tower 130km above the surface of the earth that would offer free WiFi? 

Squatting, Jumping and Standing

Back in my Starting Strength routine after a bearded three week hiatus.  Standing at both my work desk and home office desk.  Can't get more than three double unders in a row.  Lots of crunching happening in right knee.

In my head, Oh Cecilia by Simon and Garfunkel.

Ways to Save Money around the House

It's become a chore rather than fun to post here everyday and this isn't a newsletter, so I'm changing the titles of posts to topical ones rather than calendar titles.

SWMBO mentioned a few weeks ago about someone who knows somebody else who retired early and it made me think about ERE and MMM.  So I bought Fisker's book on Amazon Kindle and have been reading more posts of (finally found out his name!) Mr. Peter Adeney.

Here are some ways that can save money around anyone's home:

1. Shower: don't use much if any soap.
2. Shave: Switch to a safety razor and save hundreds a year on blades.
3. Deodorant: Most deodorants list ingredients like a Chemistry 101 course.  Make your own out of coconut oil, baking soda and lavender oil.
4. Coffee: Don't go to Starbucks.  Buy a French Press, stove-top espresso pot or drip pot and a big Thermos to cart around your own.  Use the psychology of "I already have one of those at home." to not buy one in the drive thru.
5. Not Eating: Try intermittent fasting.  It's surprisingly simple to skip breakfast.
6. Eating: Make casseroles (yes, even men can bake casseroles) to have a huge batch of meals for a week at a time.  Make a meal plan.
7. Computers: Switch to Linux instead of Windows.  Applications are free and so is the OS.
8. Movies: Back up your DVDs with Handbrake.
9. Cars: Buy used and drive to they have undercarriage rust, no A/C and felt hanging down from the ceiling.  My last vehicle was a Dodge Dakota with around 117,000 miles on it that we sold for cash to buy a Toyota Prius.  Quadrupled my gas mileage.
10. Auto service: Find a local mechanic who charges less than the dealership or do the repairs yourself.  There is a hobby shop I go to and only have to pay for shop hours.

Basically the philosophy of the two life-style frugal expert bloggers above is that you don't have to accept what society thinks is the only approach to life's system processes but can find ways that are better for your wallet, the environment and your stress level.

IKEA standing desk

Standing desk from IKEA hack.

Boom.  No Ekby brackets or extra shelf used, but I do have some 50 cent brackets and an unused shelf from Home Depot if I decide to add some space.  Perhaps a hanging shelf underneath for pens.

Update: To get my elbows typing at closer to ninety degrees, added some Ekby brackets (fifty cents a piece) with a shelf cut from a board I bought from Home Depot almost a year ago that had been leaning against the wall in the garage.  Screws were random ones in a drawer in the garage and keyboard/mouse were given to me eleven years ago for free.

I roughly sanded the board with 60 grit and then 280 grit and rubbed some coconut oil on it.  I basically put coconut oil on any wood product or human skin I find lying around.

08 August 2016

IKEA hacking is great, except when you don't measure your existing table or don't have the style of computer in the standing desk example you find online.  Taking kids into IKEA without a strictly defined plan is tantamount to disaster.

To find the balance between (among?) Home Depot HDX shelves, Harbor Freight tool chests and IKEA DIY garage remodeling, I plan to next fins some pallets to make another workbench.

07 August 2016

Circadian rhythms are all messed up, with magnesium, zinc and melatonin battling for primacy.  I have a collection of cheap hotel soaps and shampoos that I plan to donate to the clean the world project.  I couldn't find a new Mach 3 handle so acquired three disposal Mach 3 systems, meaning they don't have the blade release button, forcing me to give more money to Gillette.  Steaming robust coffee sits with a blue mustache.

05 August 2016

The Frey family started the Turkey Hill mega-corporation that has been producing ice cream, milk, iced tea and other treats for eighty five years.  They also had a cider mill, but I believe their inherent Mennonite Christianity wouldn't let them start a brewery conglomerate.  

https://www.turkeyhill.com/about/history

04 August 2016

Children of the corn.

03 August 2016

Happy to see such a wide selection of hard ciders at my hometown beer store, some cases of which were over seventy dollars.

1 August 2016

Wet, rainy day, 50% chance of rain, 100% chance of fire.

31 July 2016

Elementary had two interesting references in episodes one and two.  One showed a hardcover of On Security by Bruce Schneier, which is his blog not a book.  On episode two, Holmes referenced this study from Belgium.

30 July 2015

Watched the first episode of AMC's "Preacher" tonight and spent several minutes pausing the show to explain just what was happening, which went like this (spoiler alert):

"Jesse Custer was a hitman-ish, now a preacher and is supposed to get the half-angel/half-demon spawn named Genesis inside him, so he, his gun-toting girlfriend Tulip O'Hare and his new friend Cassidy, an Irish vampire, can take on the international fundamental organization that is bent on harnessing the power of God to be used by the biological descendant of Jesus Christ, for their nefarious purposes."

You don't really get that from the first episode, so I may be buying some back issues of Ennis and Dillon from circa 1992.

29 July 2016

Cleaning up the woods.

28 July 2016

In lieu of barbells, goblet squat rocks.

27 July 2016

I succeeded in packing a carry-on backpack with a leather black briefcase I bought twelve years ago as my personal item.  I packed no knives, hatchets, chainsaws or liquids, excluding a small container of homemade deodorant. 

Finished reading Little Brother and started on Mr. Doctorow's Information Doesn't Want to Be Free (certainly a riff on that Queen song popularized by Coke Zero advertisements).  Next up is Jim Butcher's Summer Knight as I'm entrenched in the Dresdenverse now.

25 July 2016

Everyday carry forums are full of men espousing the virtues of one tactical backpack over another.  Many of these gentlemen (and I use that term loosely...) allegedly use their packs for carrying tools, photography equipment or medical supplies to support their job or very serious hobby.  Today was one of the days in which I got sucked into "must search edcforums.com to determine if the particular black backpack I currently own is good enough" mode.  Day to day, I carry gym shorts, a gym shirt, a pair of VFFs (the pair I actually have is discontinued and was on sale last year for $35), a change of underwear, a notebook, a speedrope, earbuds and too many cheap pens.

Do I need a 5.11 Tactical Hazardous Materials Manly Masculine Musculature (Hmmmm?) bag?  No, but reading blogs about what tools I carry in my bugout, EDC or 72 hour bag makes me feel masculine and organized.  Buying these expensive bags would be purchasing feelings.  So instead I bought a small black flashlight at Wal-Mart for $3.97.

24 July 2016

Sunday I tend to make platters of food.  So today I used up twenty one eggs, three packages of cow muscle, ten peaches, one and a half pounds of pulled pork, about half a container of greek yogurt, and some other ingredients to make a casserole of breakfast-deliciousness, two large containers of peach clafouti and a delicious steak with sauteed mushrooms.  The glove to the left of the steak is what Jaime Lannister would wear if he was a sous chef. 

Was able to fast today for roughly twenty hours as I didn't eat any meal until about five post meridiem.  Thank goodness for my daily forty ounces of coffee.  

23 July 2016

I checked out of one hotel due to air conditioning problems, checked into another hotel and then found out that my stained and bacteria encrusted Mach 3 razor handle from a previous millennium had been left behind.  The hotel was kind enough to let me inspect the room, but the maids already threw out the razor, my blood stained towels and my fishing pole.  Oh well.  I was able to butcher my face with a disposable one-bladed Bic yesterday and tomorrow night I'll use my safety razor for a smooth shave.

On my drive from Florida to Alabama last week, I listened to four of the Longform podcasts: episodes 141 (Stephen J. Dubner aka half of Freakanomics), 153 (Tim Ferriss aka the Four Hour everything), 159 (Ira Glass aka Mr. This American Life) and 164 (Lena Dunham of HBO's Girls fame).  I found the first three fascinating and Lena Dunham boring.  Stephen Dubner talked about writing and working with the other Steven on their books.  Tim Ferriss is a very interesting person, but I keep reverting to "Yeah, we'll he's single, no kids, worked his ass off and then sold his business!  Of course he travels the world and does all kinds of cool stuff!"  Ira Glass talked about the beginning of working for NPR and what he almost called his show instead of TAL.  Lena Dunham just seems too young for me and haughty.  I've only seen the first episode of Girls so I'll have to give it another shot.

I used the Stitcher app on my phone to listen to more recent episodes on my phone and enjoyed the Jack Hitt, Kathryn Schulz and Frank Rich episodes.  Many of the Longform interviewees are writers, so now I need to go read Mr. Hitt's "Fiasco", finally read "The Really Big One" on the New Yorker (about the impending earthquake that will impact Washington, Oregon and California) and go watch Veep on HBO.  Since I have to watch, read or listen to media in numerical order, I started over today with episode 1 and got through episode 4.  If you really want to listen to them I figure by now you can navigate to the moving picture experts group layer three file or use an app.  If you have an iPhone, there is a Longform app for it, but apparently none for Android.

22 July 2016

This is Canada's flag, not to be confused with:

...Colorado's state flag.

This is Captain Marvel (used to be Shazam...)...or it is Shazam again...

...and this is the Flash.  Note the slight difference in the lightning bolts: Billy's is wider and flat on top, whereas Barry's is long, thin and, well, not flat on top.

I used to just wear T-shirts like this one:

21 July 2016

 

"I've begun to realize that you can listen to silence and learn from it. It has a quality and a dimension all its own.”

― Chaim Potok, The Chosen

Last night I went out to a local Irish Pub for trivia night.  I didn't know if anyone else I knew would be there, but figured I would just sidle up to an established team and join theirs.  Much to my surprise, there was a table of fourteen people who I knew, so I joined their table.

Earlier in the evening, I made a half-hearted attempt to notify my coworkers of the event, but it was while everyone was leaving to go home and no one paid me any mind.  

Here's what I learned:

1. I was the only one at the bar who knew that the Marshall Tucker Band sang "Heard it in a Love Song"
2. The Kings sang "You Really Got Me" in 1964
3. Dollar Tree recently bought Family Dollar
4. Oxygen (atomic number 8) is the first single vowel element in the periodic table
5. Michael Faraday's electromagnetic research led to the principle of induction and cages to contain radio frequency wave propagation

Tonight I gave in and ate almost a whole meat lovers pizza myself.