Inventory for Living on the Road 10/31/2017

draft

The plan is to live on the road for the next year, either out of my car in the case of the CONUS and out of suitcases when overseas or away from the car. Planning and organization are the keys to doing this successfully as we all know who have done this before. Whether one uses shopping and garbage bags with everything jumbled together or assemble things in kits is personal preference. I prefer the latter.

As mentioned above, we have two use cases. The first is living out of my car (essentially car camping even if I rent an Airbnb to have a bed and a shower). The second case is much more difficult and presumes that there is air travel and other transit in a foreign country and must be greatly reduced.

Out of Car Inventory

1 carry-on bag of clothes, medical and toiletry

1 check-in bag of clothes and misc

1 std. bin of cooking and kitchen related gear including propane, water containers, etc

1 ice chest of food (possibly without ice)

1 tent with ground cloth

1 sleeping bag with pad (*)

1 camping stove with propane

1 std bin of camping accessories (LED lights, extra stakes, radio (*), portable shower)

1 Mac Airbook with travel bag

1 Linux development laptop with travel bag (*)

1 bag misc computer accessories including disk backup, extra batteries for smartphone, etc

1 std. bin of books

1 travel kit of essential papers

1 toolkit
1 box garbage bags for dirty clothes and etc
1 road bike and car rack (*) with bag of accessories (helmet, gloves, etc)

Out of Plane Inventory

1 carry-on bag as above

1 check-in bag as above (but maybe acquire a larger one) (*)

2 laptops as above in their bags (possibly combined into a single larger carry on bag)

1 travel kit of essential papers stuffed into check in bag

1 secure holder for passport, etc (*)
1 kit relevant power adapters (*)
1 box garbage bags for dirty clothes and etc

* Needs to be acquired

Personal Power Conservation Notes

I dont write about shit like this so that people who hate me can use it to make fun of me. I already know what you think. I write it so that others who are in distress may, occassionally, read about my experience and get some useful information from it. Who knows what the odds are of this. I think that they are small, but w.t.f. why not try a little idealism now and then?

I have been able to get my gas and power bill down from roughly $150 / month to less than $50/month. I am told that these are very good figures, but its all still baffling to me. Someone who is not working can afford none of this and yet they have to live even if the rich fly their widebody jets around. Supposedly there is a utilities program under the name of 211 that I have yet to try.

But for those of you who are interested in lowering your power bill and / or have no income, here are some notes on what is necessary to get the numbers down by 2/3rds.

1. Enroll in your power company's “CARE” program. This gets you somewhere between a 20 to 30 percent discount on your bill. You need to watch this one, as it tends to reset to off.

2. Unplug your washer and dryer and use the laundromat. Yes that will cost you between $10 to $20 per visit (including detergent), but at least it wont be a surprise at the end of the month.

3. Turn off your heat and air conditioning. I live in Southern California. The heat is oppressive and it gets cold at night. But the pipes wont freeze and its time to realize that you are worthless garbage because you are poor, and you can wear a fucking sweater to keep warm.

4. Replace all the curly lights with LEDs, available at Walmart for roughly $3.00 per light.

5. Unplug all unknown electronics devices, period. Trace all power lines and if you do not need it, dont use it. Remember, if it is plugged in it is probably using power whether there is a light glowing or not.

6. Turn all computers onto maximum power savings. Wait for the fucking disk to spin up.

7. Only run your workstation when you need it, and then turn it off. Never run it overnight.

8. Turn down the temperature on your water heater, assuming you still have gas.

9. Dont use the electric oven and rarely use the electric stove. Use your outdoors propane stove where you can. It may or may not save money in the long run, but in the short run it will save on your electricity bill and let you keep the lights on.

Remember what we are trying to achieve here. We are trying to keep lights on and the ability to charge our smartphones and run some of our computers. Everything else is and should be optional.

Working From My Smartphone Part 5

This is a continuation of a series of posts on the latest economic disaster. You can read part 4 of this series here.

The good news is that the power is on, the water stayed on, the Internet is on.

However, this situation is not sustainable. The problem is, this situation was never sustainable. In fact, the biggest mistake was, in hindsight, to believe that learning new skills, talking to people, doing little projects, and so forth would result in a solution. It hasnt, and it wont.

People's advice is interesting, although not very helpful. Their advice reveals that either they do not know much about my background or, even worse, that they hold me in contempt. I also find it fascinating that people must think that I am stupid, that somehow they can think about this situation for 5 minutes and recommend fabulous financial or career ideas that somehow I have not already thought of.  I have been in this hell for 10 years, friends, whether you noticed or not.

How you can help is not to advise me on things I already know, but on things you know better than anyone. People or startups you think I should work with (and who you introduce me to).  How to get into the right graduate program.  The best way, based on your own personal experience, to start a business in money laundering, international arms sales, or other criminal activity supported by our government policies.  Always based on your own experience, your knowledge, your wisdom, who you know.

I am cleaning the place up, and trying to find a way out. As part of that I am talking to more friends, even though it clearly just exposes me to more criticism, more contempt, and more derision. Probably a few people do actually care, but there is not much that they can do.  Trust me when I say that mere money is not what I am looking for (unless of course you want to give me a lot of money, that might be ok.)

Special thanks to a few friends for their generosity. Extra special thanks to one former employer, who will not be named here, who happens to have had some experience with the system of public assistance in California. He is a wealth of information, none of which you can learn from the Internet.

One advantage of not having power or the internet at home was that it got me out of the house and out into the city, such as it is. I can not tell you how much I hate being isolated here.

Working From My Smartphone Part 4 (Infrastructure without Power)

This is a continuation of Working From my Smartphone Part 3.

3:36 pm Monday 9/19/2016

One additional note, there should probably be a second cooler/ice chest so that the food can be better organized. Also, one should have a half dozen or so plastic/whatever containers with watertight lid for such things as potato salad, soups, etc that need to be cooled and should not be allowed to tip over and spill over everything.  There are in general not many shelves in most ice chests.

10:00 PM Sunday 9/18/2016

This post reviews some issues in the general area of "strategies for sustainability".  Obviously no one wants to "fall of the edge" and be a burden to one's friends.  So there are various approaches to avoid this, but it is difficult to discuss for a variety of reasons, not least of which is that each subtopic is itself complicated. All I can do is to bring up a few issues that are simple enough to post here and discuss some progress and potential partial solutions.

An example of a "small problem" is preparing for and managing being off the power grid. Two examples of larger problems that are not so tractable are (a) making enough income to be self supporting and (b) understanding exactly where the power is going and what it costs given that the price fluctuates wildly day to day and possibly hour to hour.

On the topic of managing being without power, this recent situation demonstrated that we had actually prepared to some extent.  I want to review here what worked and what could be better.

The following worked fairly well.  Battery powered lighting was adequate. Smartphone provided excellent communications and at a reasonable price ($40/month) given that I get email, voice telephony, texting, Facebook and mobile web browsing.  I was able to recharge the phone locally by using the car battery accessory port. The local library provides excellent access to the internet with real keyboards and screens a few minute drive from here for zero cost and in a pleasant environment. It is available basically during business hours 7 days a week.  For two dollars worth of ice (two 10 lb ice bricks), I have been able to keep cool that subset of food that requires a cool temperature, and one can easily eat without cooking if one wants to (at least for a while).

We also got lucky in that when the power is turned off, the gas is not, although I doubt this happens because the energy company is being generous. But the end result is that as long as your water is on, one can have hot water for showers.

Things that can be improved for modest cost include (a) more portable lighting, possibly with solar recharge, (b) longer smartphone life with an external battery which itself may be charged with a portable solar device, (c) an emergency radio of some sort for additional communications and entertainment, (d) possibly a camp stove to heat food and boil water, and (e) possibly a bicycle to be able to get to the local library without having a car.

I have reviewed the camp stoves, and the low cost option is the Coleman 2 burner Triton for $40.00 and the much better Camp Chef 2 burner Everest for approximately $100.00.

In compliance with our government's efforts to destroy employment in this country and impoverish Americans, both stoves are made in China, and may even, according to one source, actually be made in one factory over there.  Apparently this is one of the reasons that the Camp Chef stove is available for $30 less from a Chinese company, they just stole the design and made additional copies at that same Chinese factory.  Now that is the kind of ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit that our Government can support!

But the unexpected benefit of not having power was the increased necessity to get out of the house and out into the community.  I miss that already.

Working From My Smartphone Part 3

This is a continuation of "Working from my Smartphone Part 2" which you can find here.

2:36 pm Saturday

With the help of friends, I have been able to get the utilities restarted.  I have mixed feelings about this, and believe that extreme measures are necessary to prepare or to prevent this from happening again.  Or to create a lifestyle that more accurately reflects my means.

At the very least I am researching public assistance, and it is definitely a mixed bag. Do not assume you know *anything* about it unless you have gone through it yourself.

I do have a backup plan for about one year from now, and it requires considerable effort and expense now if I want to be living in that plan a year from now.  More about this later.

The following is on my list for improving my preparedness for being treated like garbage by the power and water utilities (in America, you either have money or you can go fuck yourself).  Most of this is also useful for car camping / burning man like activities, and has been on the list for a while.

A. Improved or enhanced battery powered lighting
B. Extended battery pack for smartphone
C. Camping stove with propane canisters
D. Battery powered radio / short wave / emergency bands
E. Possibly a keyboard / dock for the smartphone or maybe a tablet/laptop with better battery life
F. Possibly some sort of solar power to recharge battery for smartphone
G. Some sort of online, measureable power distribution control to keep a tight handle on power
usage when the power is on.

5:47 pm Saturday

I am now leaving the house for the first time since I returned last night and repowered the estate.  I do not understand why I can not find  a powerstrip that measures current on each plug, aggregates results, and makes it available on my local internet or wifi.

I have unplugged the refridgerator, washing machine and dryer.

I am determinedly working my way through the detritus here to make it easier to move.

Working From My Smartphone Part 2

This is a continuation of my post located Working From My Smartphone Part 1. This post will be updated many times in the next few days.

Friday 3:44 PM

At least one friend has misunderstood something I said.  Although I am interested in living off the main power, because it is too expensive, that does not mean that I want to live off the grid. I want internet access.  I want to interact with more people, not less.  I hate being a hermit, I have hated it for years. Internet access is not the same as visiting friends down at the neighborhood café.

Friday 4:20 PM

My little experiment on using minimal medication is working well.  The idea is that if I can get the medication use down even more, then not only do I save money but it makes things like trips to China much more possible.  It requires my maintaining a Zen like attitude of acceptance which is not all that easy for me, to say the least.  I have noticed that a minimum dose of medication helps a lot to avoid the normal panic attacks (that come from such things as anxiety about money).  In other words, a minimum dose is clearly much better than none at all, even if the small dose means that I am still exhibiting rampant ADD/ADHD symptoms.  What was I talking about again?

OK, I am going home to look for my missing power supply for the external disk enclosure so I can get my resume off the main disk of my computer. No one in their right mind would ever want to type that resume in from scratch.

By the way, Mercury is very retrograde.

That could explain everything.

More later.

Working From My Smartphone Part 1

This post will be updated many times in the next few days.  It records my progress and thoughts as I go through this little experiment in semi-homelessness.

To make a virtue of necessity, we are trying to see what it would be like to essentially live out of one's car (even though I do sleep in my normal house and bed).  That means using a smartphone, no local AC sockets, and going elsewhere for WIFI and electricity (except for what I can charge from my car such as my smartphone).

5:24 pm Thursday

I am able to charge my smartphone from my car battery without running the car. Have ice box / cooler operational with food. Want to see how long two 10 lb blocks if ice keeps things cool.  jzp recommends 60.00 $US Coleman stove with wind protection.

1:21 PM Friday

An oddly productive day.  Since I never get out of the house normally, because I do not want to
spend any money, I have no idea of local resources.  But in fact our local library has excellent computer and internet access, as well as places to plug in the phone.  So the question becomes, since I am almost nearly independent of power anyway, do I really want it back on?

I also found a wonderful little café filled with nice people (I can afford maybe a glass of tea) and a barber who charges only $5.00 more for a haircut than Smartcuts.  All very pleasant and suggestive that I do myself a disservice by staying in the house all the time.

The money should arrive today for gasoline and medication. I am afraid I have particularly inconvenienced a friend by requesting a modest loan.  Apparently he was saying "no" all the time he was saying "yes".  Then as I pressed him more and more (power out and all) he got weirder and weirder.  Finally, I figured out he just did not know how to say "no" to me.  In fact, everyone has different limits on how much they can or will help friends, and I am just embarrassed that I did not 'pick up' on what he was really saying sooner.  I am usually more perceptive than that. 

One thought is that the situation is so appalling and ridiculous and I am so embarrassed bothering people for money, that it turns off lots of other circuitry.

3:28 PM Friday

The local library has excellent WIFI and readily available computers with real keyboards.  It is so much easier to work on my blog from here than to try and do it from my smartphone. 

The big issue is "now that I have the money to restore power, do I really want to?"  After all, this issue was caused by a combination of events including the mistake of attending SIGGRAPH and three different projects going away or being delayed.  Well, although I have avoided this sort of meltdown for years, the fact is that it was always very close.  So maybe it would be better to keep the power off, buy an occasional block of ice, and a pack of batteries, and just go visit my local library and save all that money on the corrupt local monopoly which is SDGE.

More later.

This post is continued in Part 2 here.