Multi-Level Marketing companies. We’ve all known somebody who has been involved in one. Sometimes they are advertising these products on Facebook, sometimes they are giving you awkward presentations in your living room. These people are not bad people. They are usually just trying to increase their income. But the MLM companies themselves are scams, and […]
Base Pack Weight: 13 lbs
So it finally happened: the ultralight tent I have been wanting went on sale, 25% off to be exact, so I bought it. Whereas my old tent (which I plan to keep) was about 6.5 lbs, this new tent is about 3 lbs. My pack is otherwise empty, so I put my sleeping bag, sleeping […]
Clueless eBay Sellers
I’m not a fan of collecting things for their own sake, but I have to admit that I have started to become a collector of old mining supply books. I have two books, one from the late 1800s which was an absolutely amazing, lucky find, being the first in a popular series, and another from […]
Crumbled Stone
We had reached the lake and were heading back down when one of my friends decided we should follow a different return path, or more precisely, that we should make our own, at least for a distance. We followed the water course for a ways as it led east and we took the time to […]
Life Engineering: Complexity and Stress
Software engineering involves the writing of code, but more than anything, it involves the management of complexity. Almost anybody can learn to write code – if you’ve had any interest in learning, you should try it out. But not as many people enjoy managing complexity, and that’s where the real challenge lies. Life is the […]
Treat Yo Self!
My hope is that everyone would have enough income to allow them to sufficiently treat themselves from time to time. I think there’s a lot of value sticking to the basics and not buying a bunch of stuff that doesn’t contribute to your life, but everybody is different and we all have non-essentials that really […]
Skills ROI
I’ve been spending a lot of time in the garage lately, and it has me thinking about the ROI of various automotive skills, which can be applied to other skills in life, too. I have this desire to be able to replace or fix anything and everything on my car. However, I am constrained by […]
Foot Power (and Taking Cars for Granted)
My car is out of commission right now, so my mobility is exclusively foot-powered. I think I baby my car a little too much. Much of that is enjoying the results of taking old and worn out parts and giving them fresh, new life, really restoring something to quality. But after starting a big project […]
No Perfect Setup
My desk is kind of small, but it fits a 24″ monitor and a laptop docking station perfectly. I keep thinking it would be nice to have a second 24″ monitor, but this would require me to either have a longer desk and move my printer stand, or simply have the laptop docking station on […]
Stuff Begets Stuff: The Tyranny of Everything!
The past few months have been a nightmare for my budget: not only had I been preparing for a challenging backpacking trip for which I basically wrote myself a blank check, but I have also been preparing to change some critical parts on my car, and have been buying those parts and tools for them […]