RV Living

RV Living

Life throws us a lot of curveballs. I’m in the middle of moving from Dallas to Florida, my third move to Florida in my life.  My first move to Florida was in 1985 for college, the second 1998 to live at the beach and again now in 2013 to restart a life with my children. It is crazy to consider in 1985 I had all my possessions in the back of my Volkswagen.  In 1998 I had a full-size U-Haul moving van pulling a car and my wife driving another car.

I wanted to start documenting our next live adventure – living in a motorhome.  For this move there are too many unknowns in our life.  However, we needed to re-unite our family: a promise I made to Haley, Marcella, and Jack four years ago when I was relentlessly pursued and force to leave Florida due to craziness. Finally, nearly four years later we are able to come back to our children.  The most difficult part of this move is we have nowhere to live.  I didn’t want to rent an apartment and have to move again in a few months.  My wife is seeking work and James will start kindergarten in the fall.  Thus, we want to be selective as to where we finally plant roots.  In addition, Florida has what is probably the worst economy in the entire country driving a healthy foreclosure market.  Thus, if we decide to buy a home I believe we can be very biased in our selection.

To make this work we have made a decision to live in our motorhome the next three to six months! This will allow LeeAnn to find a job, us to find a house, and we can focus on a good school for James. The challenge will be sharing a small space.  Our motorhome is a 32 foot class 1996 Gulfstream ConquestC with a slide.  This means we will live in about 180 ft².  This is an experiment in lifestyle challenge showing less is more.  As Americans we live excessively.  In America we see our homes as an extension of our personality, like a badge of honor upon our sleeve allowing us to brag to our friends about our success. The irony: we go to work, come home, close the garage door and never walk out on the street.  Typically we don’t know our next-door neighbor.

The RV lifestyle on the other hand is quite different as we all typically share common areas, community bathrooms, and the community laundry room.  Is it glamorous?  No, but it will be an adventure.

I may be writing in a few weeks about how difficult this journey.  Full-time living is far different than the adventures we have taken in the past.  Our RV has traveled to Colorado, Wyoming, Minnesota, and New York.  We have taken the kids to Washington DC in it.  Two summers ago I took them to Alabama for a week.  I have used it with friends to attend the Petit LeMans.  I have previously brought it to Florida and to be with Haley, Marcella, and Jack.   This past summer we drove to Texas expecting to vacation in it.  Since buying it four years ago we have had many vacations.  Now it’s not just a tool for vacation, but it’s a place to call home.

February 11, 2013 by RV

E-Book On the Android

E-book reading Experience

I have a Samsung Galaxy 3S in the Android world.  My three most important programs are Google Reader (for my RRSS feeds), Podcaster to listen to podcasts offline and MoonReader+ as my e-reader.

Podcaster and MoonReader allow me to listen to many things while at the gym or in the car – time otherwise wasted for most people.  This article is meant to explain how to effectively use an e-reader.

First, download MoonReader+ from the Play Store. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.flyersoft.moonreader

Second, download and install a better text to speech program like Ivona. You can set this as the default text to speech on your android device and use it with maps and other applicatons. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ivona.tts&referrer=utm_source%3Daffilate%26utm_medium%3Dcpa%26utm_campaign%3Divona

Install both programs from Google Play and check them for operation on your Android Device.

 

Next, download your epub books.  Quite frankly the public domain libraries suck and I suggest buying good books from Amazon or Barnes and Noble.  However, that presents a problem because they are protected with “DRM” – digital rights management.  I do not condone in any way violations of copyrights.  However, I am a believer that once I have bought the book it is mine to use as I please.  Thus, I need to use MoonReader for highlights and text to speech.

Download and install on your computer the program called Calibre. http://calibre-ebook.com/

This is a great tool for epub book files on your computer and is available for any architecture.  You can search your computer install books you already have. More importantly, you can find and add your Kindle and Nook books.  If you have only used your Nook (Android) then download the files to your computer by logging into your Barnes and Noble account.

At this point you should have MoonReader and Ivona on your Android.  You should have Calibre on your PC.  Lastly, we need to break the DRM.  To do so, download the python DRM application here: http://epubee.com/drm-removal-tool-tutorial.html

Follow the instructions.  It is not for the faint of heart, but can be done.  Just take your time.  You can now convert all of your books and test them with Calibre.  Note, you will see two copies of the books (epub and epub.original).  Calibre archives the original and it is still accessible.  You can test the true epub version within Calibre.

The last step is to copy the books over to your Android. My Galaxy has an application called “KiesAir” which allows me to copy wirelessly.  Worst case, you can use a wire….

 

A few other side notes:

–          In MoonReader make sure you setup a dropbox account. This will allow you to synchronize your position among different devices (i.e. android tablet and android phone)

–          In MoonReader change your background for easier reading

–          Setup an Evernote account and use MoonReader+ t o export highlights to share with others.

February 10, 2013 by Android gTablet Viewsonic

Numbers (12/01/2012)

Numbers

(12/01/2012)

I am a numbers guy. I feel numbers, and only numbers, give the facts behind any story. “Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital.” – Aaron Levenstein.

I watch the news regarding the stock market, polling of the electorate, budget numbers, and the health of the economy. The media reports numbers with fanfare, but when digging deeper most are just adjustments to prior months. As an example, in the last four years there has not been a month when the unemployment numbers have not been adjusted upward, worsened, than first released. However, the media does not celebrate the worsening numbers.

As I move through this column, let’s start with this. There are 314,000,000 people in the U.S. and just over 7,000,000,000 in the entire world.

The numbers:

 

  • · 314,000,000 people live in the United States
  • · 234,564,00 Americans eligible to vote
  • · Number who voted for Barak Obama: 62,615,406
  • · Number who voted for Mitt Romey: 59,142,004
  • · Americans that did not vote for either candidate: 113,806,590!

 

  • · In 1969 2,900,000 Americans received food stamps
  • · In November 2012 47,102,780 received food stamps
  • · Cost to taxpayers: $72,000,000,000

 

And my favorite, giving credit where credit is due… I saw this in a Facebook posting yesterday.

  • · Amount of this week’s Powerball lottery: $500,000,000
  • · Why not “share the wealth” as Barak Obama has proposed. That is $1.6 million for every man woman and child in the United States! There’s your economic recovery.

 

December 1, 2012 by Big Government sheep

Time

Does life just happen?

 

I am convinced most people allow life to happen and never examine “time”.  We all awake everyday with the same amount of time, how we choose to use it is what matters.

 

As I contemplated this topic I started to go a direction that all of us are equal because we all have the same amount of time.  Pissing away time then becomes our own fault, for instance watching “Honey Boo Boo” instead of developing ourselves.  Even cleaning the house could be a more productive use of time.  Questionable uses of time:

–          A teenager sleeping until after lunch, thus losing a significant amount of a day in her life whereas another teenager may attend an SAT preparation class during the same Saturday morning hours.

–          Drunken recovery from a hangover.  This one is tough because most of us have been there.  Hungover we are nowhere near productive and may miss work just to sleep off bad decisions.

–          Television.  I assert no other invention in the history of the world has sucked away so many possible meaningful hours.  Do we need to watch reality shows?  Remember Jerry Springer?  Enough said.

 

I realized I might be wrong about time.  Even though we all start the day with the same number of hours our economic circumstances impact the value we can extract from the hours in the day.  If one’s survival depends on working there may be no free time for any other endeavor.  Similarly, wealth, or more income, can free time by allowing payment to others whose time is worth less.  An example would be an attorney paying someone to keep his lawn mowed.  The $50 per week paid to the landscape company is roughly equal to 15-20 minutes of revenue generating time working as an attorney.  Thus, the three hours that attorney would spend mowing his grass on a Saturday is now time away from his family or other interests.

 

Time. We all do start the day with the same 24 hours.  I believe the key is to prioritize and find the important tasks in our life.  If higher education is desired then turn off the television and go to school at night.  Time with family on weekends can be gained by skipping a ballgame on television or awaking earlier.

 

I just found time to write this column, 20 minutes by skipping a nap on an airplane flight.

November 2, 2012 by sheep Stupid People

College Alternatives (10/27/2012)

One of my favorite bloggers is James Altucher.  He constantly harps on the lack of value currently presented by higher education.  Sadly, many people miss what I believe is his key point: education debt is stupid unless you can pay it back.  In our current society there is a mentality that you must have a degree to succeed in life and there are no other alternatives.  I do not think this is true.  More important, if a degree is sought and debt is incurred there should be a return on investment.

An example of a bad decision is a liberal arts major taking on $100k in debt a private school when the same education could be had at a public institution, in-state, for a fraction of the cost.  Similarly, anyone attending a for-profit corporate university should seriously question the process.  These schools exist only because the federal government has insured the repayment of their tuition fees and they feed on chuckleheads willing to get a shoddy degree with no understanding of the repayment process.  If the schools themselves had to collect debt they would readily go out of business.  If the students understood how bad these institutions are they would go out of business.

Considering the above I recently shared a conversation with my friend Hal Rice about college alternatives.  We both have a plethora of children who will seek education.  I have no plans, and believe no parent should have plans, to fund the education of my children.  I am a believer in self-sufficiency and struggle to drive desire and appreciation.  In our conversation I said the career advice I would give to my children is as follows (counting down) for the top 10 best jobs.

Before reading there are a few key points worth mentioning:

– Unless you are a Kennedy, no one gives a shit where you went to college when getting a job.  They just want to see a degree

– Unless you went to an Ivy League school, again, no one gives a shit where you went to college

– If you are a professional (lawyer, doctor, engineer, etc) and have a license to practice then no one gives a shit where you went to college

– You should never take on any more debt than the one-half average starting salary of one year’s wages.  You are a dumbass if you do

– Liberal Arts degrees are useless unless you want to be a teacher.  Thus, if you spend more than $15k to get a liberal arts degree you are a chucklehead

– There is nothing wrong with a trade profession: carpentry, auto repair, air conditioning, etc.  The key is to learn a skill the COULD be translated to other industries

– Most important, live life and focus on happiness

 

(10) Military career.  As an NCO it is possible to find a job function to ultimately translate to private industry.  Electronics training, aircraft repair, or aircraft approach systems come to my mind.  After 25 years retirement will supplement a civilian career with benefits for life.

(9) Lawyer.  Pick a fourth tier law school and pass the bar.  Focus on a district attorney job first to get some experience and then go to work in a small town in a small practice.  Connect with local CPAs and financial planners to do Wills and Trusts. Get to know the real estate people and manage property transactions.  With some divorce and drunk driving clients and charging a reasonable rate this is a well-respected and affordable career.

(8) Computer Programmer.  Tough competition from abroad for this career but high incomes provide an excellent return.  Still in demand though but the challenge is to keep up with changing technology.  Expertise in a particular industry can provide a career for life.

(7) Aircraft Repair. Tough but doable and not a bad life.  Setup shop at the right airport and keep your license current you can have a career.  This can be in general aviation or take someone to the airlines.  Remember, the airplane does not fly if maintenance is not completed.

(6) Air Conditioning Repair. In the south (Florida, Texas, Arizona) this one is hard to beat.  If it’s 100F outside people want their A/C fixed and you have them.  A skilled person with some business savvy and customer service attention can build a nice local business.

(5) Pastor.  OK, here is a special job and one that won’t make you rich, unless you are a televangelist.  Everyone loves you.  Generally you have benefits and a decent salary.  You won’t be rich and have to work weekends.  But, if you can write and like people this is a great career.

(4) Local Insurance Agent.  Specifically, State Farm or Farm Bureau.  Everyone in town loves this guy and he knows everyone. Join Kiwanis, Rotary, church, and knock on doors.  Insurance is the gift that keeps giving and giving.  If you sell a life policy there are residuals.  Sell property and you get a small piece annually. It is hard to beat this job.  No degree needed….

(3) Optometrist.  Again, does insurance matter with these guys – no.  Have you spent $500 on eye glass frames? If your glasses break are you going to wait until you have money to replace them?  No, you have to see.  Follow the orthodontist education route below.

(2)Veterinarian.  My vet doesn’t take insurance, does yours?  I dropped $200 on my “free cat” last week because he is the family pet.  Follow the same path to education success for an Orthodontist.

(1) Orthodontist.  I am now paying for braces and these guys are brutal.  $5000 per mouth, no matter what.  There is no negotiation, they are immune from insurance, they setup in any town in America, and appear to be recession proof.  A public school will provide the basis to get into dental school and then go off-shore. Get a cheap education, come back for residency and get your license.

 

 

October 27, 2012 by Depression Economic Development preparedness sheep

A Birthday Reflection

A Birthday Reflection (08/12/2012)

Today is my birthday, August 12th. Annually I take time to reflect on the prior year, and more importantly, look forward to the upcoming year. Many people make New Year’s resolutions, resolving to change behaviors, break habits or accomplish something new. About seven years ago I took the same premise and started to reflect on my birthday instead. First, it is a special day to me, not everyone is doing it. Second, if I decide to work out or lose weight, the gym is not crowded with others doing the same. During this annual journey I have made some important discoveries.

I have previously written of goals and planning. One of the key requirements to achieve goals is passion. Throughout the last seven years several items have appeared on my list repeatedly: learning to scuba dive, and learning spanish. Although I want to learn those skills, it appears I am not passionate about them. At the same time, I have listed several items that happened, but almost accidentally; flying for instance. In 2008 I was jobless and had sold my airplane. At the time I thought I would never have the opportunity to fly again as it is very expensive. However, I got a job in 2009 where flying was an integral part and the last three years have been hugely satisfying because I could fly. Similarly, I last year I was determined to add a new rating for flying and was able to accomplish it. I have passion about flying.

My annual list demonstrates some commonality, probably exemplifying who I am or want to be: be a good father, be a good husband, and be fit and healthy. To ensure I accomplish those behavioural goals I tie action items to them like “date night” or taking my kids out without their siblings; the alone times gives us a chance to talk. Other goals, like learning spanish and how to play the guitar look like television re-runs as they make the list annually, but never seem to progress.

This year I opened an old photo album, a gift given to me when I graduated college. I was struck by a how young, and in shape I was, ironically I had no idea at the time. Now, looking at pictures I see a young man with abs and pecs, a head of hair, and no wrinkles. More importantly, a young man who had not experienced the defeats nor the triumphs life throws. It is those ups and downs that put the look of time upon us and give oopportunity to reflect like this. As I reflect this year it is the young man I was who I consider, and wish I could warn of hazards and advise what to savor.

When I look back on August 12, 2013 I want to be proud of my actions as father and husband. I know each of my five children will change much in the next year and I cannot wait to watch them grow more. I can’t wait to see how my wife is a year from now; with the CPA and starting an unknown job behind her; I want to be her biggest cheerleader. My proudest accomplishment will be completing my book, “Born in ’67,” of which I have barely scratched the surface writing. If I can remain fit and healthy, learn a few spanish phrases and how to play “Happy Birthday” on my guitar I will have crossed the finish line. Several other goals remain, but they are icing on the cake; getting my CFI, retaking the LSAT (and scoring higher), and playing a few rounds of golf. Regardless of how I do, I want my reflection to drive one feeling: contentment.

August 12, 2012 by Self Improvemet