Holes In Thoughts: December 2007

Monday, December 31, 2007

Vacation days!

Today and tomorrow, I have off. I'll be playing music with John (and looking into exactly how to record an album), and possibly going to a party.

Tomorrow I'll get some random chores done. I'm so excited to have a whole two weeks of paid vacation this year, plus sick time.

Of course, if two weeks is luxurious, imagine what it would be like to have a job where you can take two months of paid vacation time every year. You know - like the President (so far he's spent about 435 days on vacation).

More info is here, but they don't do the math:

2922 presidency total days
-527 from 12 Aug 07 to 20 Jan 08
----
2395 days as president as of 12 Aug 07

418 vacation days as of August / 2395 = 17.453% of total

17.453% of 1 year is 64 days or ~2 months per year.

He's definitely going to beat Reagan's record of

Labels: Bush, vacation

posted by Steve @ 11:15 AM 0 comments

Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Purple

The Cake, Christmas,* and Purple are all a lie.

* The date. Should be in the spring or summer, but it 'fit' with the pagan winter equinox festivals.

Labels: games, random, religion

posted by Steve @ 8:39 PM 0 comments

Sunday, December 23, 2007

2007 Recap

I don't read many horoscopes. Actually, I don't read any, except for Free Will Astrology, mostly because it's next to the funnies in the Tucson Weekly. I like it because it's often irreverent, and doesn't 'rate' my days. One day, I'd love to see one of those astrology columns give 8% of the planet - those with a particular sign - a one-star day: "Your life is abysmal right now and you should probably look into buying some Cure records. There is no fix for this. You are screwed."

Anyway, despite all that, my reading was fairly prescient, or at least relevant, this week:

You worked your ass off in 2007. Am I right, my fellow Cancerian? In fact, you threw yourself into your hard labors with so much dutiful fervor that you sometimes lost sight of the fact that they were mostly just preparation for bigger and better assignments. Luckily for you, I'm here to snap you out of your amnesia. Please begin immediately to formulate a vision of how you will make the transition to those bigger and better assignments.

Now, I did work my ass off this year. For about half of it I was averaging 60 hours of work per week, and peaked at points at 90. In the first half I was a teacher, which qualifies for overwork bitching by itself.

Despite the work I put in, I have to say: 2007 kicked ass. 2007 was the best year of my life. Let's view the highlight reel, shall we?

January: Still working as a part-time teacher and part-time designer.
January: Tucson had a snow day, so I didn't have to go to school.
February: Rekindled my interest in new music via blogs.
February: Found out how awesome burlesque shows are.
April: Saw two Phoenix Suns games (versus L.A. and Dallas), and they won both, plus a scrimmage in October.
May: Registered ImpulseMedia.com and registered the name with the State.
Got out of debt.
June: Decided on four names for our kids (Méria Jael and Artemis Ella; Aaron Isaac and Michael David).
June: Went hiking for the first time in almost a decade.
June: Bought my first good camera.
June: Got a $1,925.24 bonus.
June: Had full medical benefits for the first time since being a dependent.
July: Began keeping a proper inventory of our things.
July: Bought my first really nice phone/mp3 player.
August: Celebrated 5th anniversary of my first date with Rachel.
August: Began really coming to terms with being Catholic.
August: Moved into a place that is actually pretty nice.
September: Threw my first great party.
September: Made more freelance design money in 6 months than I'd made in 6 years.
September: Bought my first new car.
October: Had my taxes done by a professional for the first time.
October: Began real work on Leelu.
October: Began finding that I really like non-fiction, after not reading for a long time, and completed my three-month examination of my own political beliefs.
October: Bought my first real gigging-quality music gear.
November: Began working full-time from home in my dream job.
November: Bought my first new computer.
November: Began climbing to get into shape.
December: Published my 200th blog post (104 in this year alone).

Of course, there were some things I had wanted to do, but didn't:

Didn't get into proper shape, really.
Haven't been eating very well.
Developed insomnia.
Didn't finish Ignition.
Didn't finish home inventory.
Didn't get all my auto records into the computer.
Gave up on the truck and gave it to Jordan.

But despite all the cool stuff I finally got to buy, the job, the fact that I'm now more or less middle class - all of that needs to be put into perspective in just the way that horoscope did. I need to keep everything working well - in particular, keep doing a good job at work. Now that I no longer have to worry about how I'll be paying for groceries, I need to start learning how to eat and live well, how to keep my friends, make myself better, etc., etc.

Labels: 2007, memory

posted by Steve @ 12:39 AM 0 comments

Saturday, December 22, 2007

End-of-the-year To-Do List

So, 2007 has about 10 days remaining. I've drawn up my list of things to do during the winter break. This is becoming a tradition. This year I don't have quite as many days of as I'd like, because the time between the 24th and 1st fit pretty nicely into a work week, and I think of winter vacation being two weeks, not one.

Anyway, the list:

~~Ship out RMA's of processor fans that didn't work~~
~~Buy Caliente a new collar (he's getting pretty good at ditching them).~~
~~Clean the patio~~
~~Affix the basketball hoop net more effectively.~~
~~Replace Leelu's battery (under warranty, thankfully)~~
~~Replace stove catch pans.~~
~~Check Yoshimi's tire pressure.~~
~~Move printer to Rachel's computer (it's so old that Vista won't work with it).~~
~~Clean trash around our place.~~
~~Put incense in the bathroom.~~
~~Get the new Water Pik working.~~
Clean off Rachel's rolling cart, which is covered in computer parts.
Simultaneously have all of our laundry clean and put a way, and have all of the dishes clean and put away.
Trim bushes
Sell old dryer
Make at least 6 driving mix CDs
Figure out how to make MP3 CDs that will work in the car
Replace kitchen countertop
~~Install bathroom shelf~~
Do 2005 tax return (apparently it was misfiled somehow)
Affix lattice
Give the bathroom its hardcore biannual cleaning.
Make mix CDs for John illustrating influences for Ignition
Jam with John
Cook something awesome with Rachel
Tag, rate, date and organize a good amount of my photo archive
Copy a fair amount of old archive CDs
Visit relatives for Christmas
Clean up Rachel's new/my old computer for her use
Finish (could it be?!) organizing the MP3 collection
Clean house thoroughly
Get totally caught up on mail filing
Possibly throw a New Years party

Labels: 2007, To-Do

posted by Steve @ 2:18 AM 0 comments

Friday, December 21, 2007

Ooh, Baby It's A Wired World

In the last few years, the file 'tag' has become very important - what's now called metadata. I don't know what the original file tag was; you could say that libraries were the first to extensively catalogue metadata, in that metadata is information about information. But certainly the most important one was the ID3, which was originally created for the MP3 sound file.

Way back when I downloaded my first MP3 file, in 1995, I had to create elaborate folder structures to sort out the organization. ID3 was a godsend. But then again, it was also a godsend when I got a 28.8 modem for my 486 66MHz, though I had to close all my windows in Windows 95 since the computer literally couldn't handle playing an Mp3. Simpler times, I guess. This was when Wing Commander II was very hot stuff.

Now that metadata has matured to the point where it is included in practically all file types, that information is being used to properly catalog, organize, and make sense of literally trillions of files. Some really cool stuff is being done with it.

Flickr organizes more than two billion images, and Facebook organizes four billion. Who knows what MySpace has. To put that into context, if you put those two billion Flickr photos into 200-photo, 1' wide folios, they'd stretch the same distance as a road trip from my home in Tucson to Milwaukee, or perhaps to Edmonton, Canada. For all of those sites put together, you're talking a third of the circumference of the planet.

Another site that's doing exciting with mass data collection is Last.fm, which collects data about the listening habits of many millions of people, though in my opinion they've not done as much as they could with the vast amount of data they've collected.

I mention all this because I've just posted the pictures I took at onto Flickr. I still have to tag and rate about 5,000 pictures in my archive, though of course I have no intention of posting all of them to Flickr.

I have already organized about 99% of my music collection, which primarily came from Maloney's when I was paid $2 an hour to organize their collection (of course, I also got to keep the collection, so it more than worked out for me). Unfortunately, Winamp really screwed me over in the data cataloging department: I'd been rating songs as I played them for about two years when it crashed (not being able to handle the 50,000 songs), and I lost the data. Rating music and pictures is tremendously handy when you have a lot of songs rated, because you can just pick a genre and minimum rating and hit "random." It's so wonderful because not only do you not have to DJ for yourself, but if you've been rating songs for a few years, you will hear songs you haven't heard in a long while.

I also still have many of my archived CDs to go through - and I guess if using Adobe Bridge is something I should do, I'll have to tag all those as well. I'm not convinced of its usefulness, though: I've had a system of directories going for quite a while now and even though I have about 90,000 (!) files in my photography, design, and music folders, I can find whatever I need in short order. So why bother tagging them all? Perhaps the best thing is to tag as I go, and figure that I'll have tagged anything I actually use over the course of, what, five years?

I keep telling myself that having all of this information organized will make me a bit more sane, and will make my general workflow faster. I suspect that the incredible amount of time it takes to organize all of it will take years to earn back in saved time later, but there's also an additional benefit of knowing it's all there. I've lost some good photos to trashed archive CDs, and hard drive failures. Ultimately, I justify all this work because of the peace of mind it brings me.

In any case, I'm very glad that I have a RAID configuration for my system with my new computer. I would just cry if I lost all this work I've done.

Labels: computers, games, information, mp3, music

posted by Steve @ 2:14 AM 0 comments

Monday, December 17, 2007

Climbing Up The Walls

I took today off. I needed a mental health day. I went to Sweet Tomato's with a lot of people from Bookman's (Dani, Nyssa, Nature, his daughter Michaela, Rhys, and Danielle) and Sami. I filled two plates with the cafeteria-style salad stuff, a cup of soup, a bit of pizza, and a brownie. I ate the whole thing. Given a litle more time I probably could've kept eating, actually.

Afterwards, everyone but Danielle and Sami went to Rocks & Ropes with me and Nyssa. We've been going there for about a month now. I'm now regularly climbing "8's," which is fairly challenging. I am definitely still relying on my arms too much, and my hands can't quite keep up - but I'm getting there.

Anyway, Michaela is 11 and adorable; Nature is about seven feet tall and so was able to do some pretty ridiculous climbing. I took pictures on Nyssa's camera and am still pretty pissed at myself for not bringing my own camera.

Dani also wants me to take Yoga classes from her. We'll see how good my sense of balance really is, I guess.

I needed a day like today.

Edit: Big kudos to my boss, who called me up and, basically, that he was glad I took the day off because it meant I was trying to take care of myself. Seems like there weren't many bosses I've had that had that kind of grasp on reality.

Labels: Bookman's, climbing, friends, ITP, Nyssa, Sami, work, yoga

posted by Steve @ 11:35 PM 0 comments

Sunday, December 16, 2007

Daft Dishwasher

Because he was so right with his recommendation of Battles Mirrored, I've taken Jeph's advice about immersing my brain in Daft Punk for a few weeks straight, before I listen to their live mix album Alive 2007. When you really want to appreciate a well-mixed DJ album, it helps to know the songs that were remixed in its making.

While listening to my favorite Daft Punk album, Discovery, I discovered that the track Too Long (probably so named because it's exactly 10 minutes long) has the exact same beat as my dishwasher. I sat listening to them for about 4 minutes (before the washer changed cycles and so screwed up the rhythm), and the beats didn't phase at all.

For anybody who's not worked with music mixing or doesn't understand wave phasing, the very slightest difference in cycle length will show up in less than a minute, because that difference is multiplied by however many times the cycle repeats - if one wave is 1 second long, and the other one is 1.008 seconds long (which is an absolutely imperceptible difference), after a minute, the difference will be a very obvious half-second. It's like when you're in the left turn lane and the car in front of you has their left blinkers on and they sync up. It never lasts more than a few blinks.

This is why I am amazed that my dishwasher is attuned exactly to Daft Punk.

Labels: chores, lip synch, music, random

posted by Steve @ 1:40 PM 0 comments

Saturday, December 15, 2007

Walmart during the holidays

Today, I was forced to go to Walmart because we needed a space heater for our place. It was about fifty degrees inside the house this morning; that's not OK.

So I took a candy cane from the Renaissance Festival people at Bookman's, and sucked on it until it formed into an impromptu shiv.

People are very gullible. Seriously: strawberry jam-coated candy canes? Silly officer.

Labels: holidays, shopping

posted by Steve @ 7:57 PM 0 comments

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Man Code

Although beer commercials sort-of have a jump on this (Man Law), I'd like to see an elaboration of various hetero male-male touching (types of handshakes, chest bumping, headbutting, butt-slapping) that is touched on in today's Questionable Content.

Labels: heterosexuals, webcomics

posted by Steve @ 11:02 AM 0 comments

Monday, December 10, 2007

No Red America, No Blue America

posted by Steve @ 3:51 PM 0 comments

Friday, December 07, 2007

Torture, Cont.

"There are been several Gitmo detainees who've confessed under those circumstances. The issue is morality, though, and is water boarding unethical." - Ms. Proctor

Confessions under torture - and waterboarding has been recognized as torture since the Inquisition - aren't reliable, since people in that situation will say anything to appease the interrogator. That's why the Inquisition liked it so much: get the confession and execute.

Confessions under torture are the source for so much wasted paranoia and, I would think, wasted work for our Intelligence workers about plans that never existed. Some of that has leaked to the public, and so it is also the source of a great deal of, well, terror.

So by dropping all of its previously-untouchable moral standards about torture, the U.S. has helped terrorists succeed in their main goal: terror.

This exact issue about whether nor not the only problem with torture/waterboarding is the morality or legality has been addressed already by professional interrogators before the Senate:

"I find it curious that in the debate involving the so-called “ticking bomb” scenario, there has been a pre-supposition that physical, psychological, and/or emotional coercion will compel a source to provide actionable intelligence, the only issues in contention being those legal and moral arguments in favor or in opposition. To the best of my knowledge, there is no definitive data to support that supposition and considerable historical evidence to suggest the contrary."

- Former USAF interrogator Steven M. Kleinman's Statement before the Senate 9/25/07

So, despite from the fact that up until now, the U.S. was a bulwark against torture (Reagan, Eisenhower, Washington) and causeless imprisonment and nobody would've even thought that in America we would even have to debate it, torture doesn't work anyway.

So despite some people's problems with finding moral problem with causing excruciating mental and physical pain, hopefully I've at least appealed to their sense of practicality. Lord knows that's the only way to get any corporation to stop amoral behavior.

Labels: conspiracy, idiots, politics, torture

posted by Steve @ 11:15 AM 0 comments

Thursday, December 06, 2007

Torture: Amoral and Ineffective

A follow-up to the "Compassionate Conservatives" who have a hard time wrapping their minds around the idea that it's BAD to hurt people, even if they're bad people.

Seriously, what did these people's mothers teach them in grade school?

"There are been several Gitmo detainees who've confessed under those circumstances. The issue is morality, though, and is water boarding unethical." - Ms. Proctor

"I find it curious that in the debate involving the so-called “ticking bomb” scenario, there has been a pre-supposition that physical, psychological, and/or emotional coercion will compel a source to provide actionable intelligence, the only issues in contention being those legal and moral arguments in favor or in opposition. To the best of my knowledge, there is no definitive data to support that supposition and considerable historical evidence to suggest the contrary."

- Former USAF interrogator Steven M. Kleinman's Statement before the Senate 9/25/07

So, despite from the fact that up until now, the U.S. was a bulwark against torture (Reagan, Eisenhower, Washington) and causeless imprisonment and nobody would've even thought that in America we would even have to debate it, torture doesn't work anyway.

So despite your own problem with finding moral problem with causing excruciating mental and phyisical pain, hopefully I've at least appealed to your sense of practicality.

Labels: idiots, military, politics, torture

posted by Steve @ 9:20 PM 0 comments

Throw all the Women into Guantanamo

I really try not to get riled up by things that are clearly meant to rile me.

I'm not very good at this, apparently, because when I read this, well, I felt compelled to respond:

"You know, liberalism is a greater threat to freedom, democracy and human rights than these detainees. Maybe we should consider a swap."

- Amy Proctor

This is in response to a report on CNN, in which the reporter notes that in addition to the restrictions that the detainees had "no contact with the Red Cross or a chaplain, no books or mail, a Koran, but no prayer beads or cap," they also were occasionally rewarded with TP but prevented from handing it out to others.

"I think what's really notable about this is just the incredible petty cruelty and dehumanizing aspect of all of this. Detainees are punished for tearing a sheet or for very, very minor infractions."

-Jennifer Daskal, Human Rights Watch

Amy's response to the was, "Oh, ye gads, the inhumanity."OK, that's the setup. Make up your own mind for a minute.

~~

Now here's what I have to say to Ms. Proctor:

1. Can you explain how people who are trying to be sure that the U.S. protects human rights are a threat to human rights?

2. As for swapping terrorists and liberals, Conservatism and Liberalism is a balance. Without the former, you have bloated government that can't balance a budget*; without the latter, we'd still have segregation and no women's suffrage - your opinion, as a woman's, wouldn't be valued if not for Loony Liberals. I couldn't even refer to you as "Ms." Proctor. So if throwing all the liberals into Guantanamo Bay Detention facility is feasible, well, why not throw in all the women, too, since they benefited so much from liberalism? We'd jail half the country either way.

In other words, your smearing brush is too wide; your rhetoric is absurdist.

3. I agree that, when caught, tried, and proven guilty, terrorists need to be tossed into a cell. But since those detainees in Guantanamo are rarely actually tried in a court, it's hard to say whether or not they're actually guilty. I personally think it would be AWESOME to see these people tried on public TV. I would watch with rapt attention. I would cheer when we proved, conclusively and transparently before the world, the guilt of those who are guilty and I would cheer just as much when someone who is innocent is proved innocent.

4. It's been known since the 1500's the torture isn't an effective means of interrogation. It's great for false confessions, because tortured people will tell you anything you want, especially if you threaten family. But when you're getting false confessions, and basing your entire nation's intelligence activities on false information, you are in much worse shape than if you hadn't tortured. I didn't come to this conclusion - people who interrogated for a living came to that conclusion:

That said, the sum total of my experience suggests the most effective means of conducting interrogations—and by effective, I mean achieving consistent success in obtaining accurate, comprehensive, and timely information—is through what has been frequently described as a “relationship-based” model. Let me emphasize that this is far more than just establishing rapport; it involves the pursuit of operational accord. Employing non-threatening principles of persuasion and enlightened cultural finesse, the interrogator seeks to establish a productive, nonadversarial relationship wherein the source perceives his interests to be best served by engaging cooperatively with the interrogator.

Since issues relating to coercion and torture continue to occupy centerstage in the public debate over this country’s interrogation policy, I feel compelled to briefly address this issue, especially as it relates to the question of effectiveness. I find it curious that in the debate involving the so-called “ticking bomb” scenario, there has been a pre-supposition that physical, psychological, and/or emotional coercion will compel a source to provide actionable intelligence, the only issues in contention being those legal and moral arguments in favor or in opposition. To the best of my knowledge, there is no definitive data to support that supposition and considerable historical evidence to suggest the contrary."

- Former USAF interrogator Steven M. Kleinman's Statement before the Senate 9/25/07; Emphasis mine

Feel free to discuss in a way that doesn't insult either one of our intellects.

*Of course, the only presidents in the last 50(!) years to balance the budget were Democrats: Johnson and Clinton.

Labels: evil, idiots, politics, torture, war, women

posted by Steve @ 1:47 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Paradise, Inc.

I just got a lot more serious about that whole Island Thing.

Labels: ambition, paradise, To-Do

posted by Steve @ 1:24 AM 0 comments

Monday, December 03, 2007

Things that really are awesome

Most third graders are familiar with what I'll call shopper's ennui: the sense that what you bought can't possibly live up to the fantastic ideal that it's been built up to.

I realized this when as a twelve-year-old boy, I convinced my Dad to buy a $60 (that's six-zero point zero zero dollars, people) remote control car. It was fast, had a pair of tracks instead of wheels, and lasted for exactly fifteen minutes per five-hour charge.

Trouble with that being, of course, that I could use it at most twice a day, since I couldn't see it at night.

I did enjoy that little remote control car enough to remember it a decade and a half later. I also remember that it took me about three weeks to get sick of waiting for the damn thing to charge. It was effectively destroyed within a few months from pretty reckless (though awesome) driving, most of which involved making ramps and launching it in ways that one day, God willing, I'll do with my Volkswagen.

---

Anyway, the reason I bring up the remote control car is that it was, for about a year, the Thing I Coveted Most. A few years later, it relinquished that title to kissing and/or sex with girls, but at the time I recognized the feeling and the risk: few things are as good as you think they'll be. I figured kissing and sex would be an exception, but even then I correctly came to the conclusion that buyer's ennui was a real thing.

So in light of the holiday season ramping up its machine, here's a list of things that I bought that were every last bit as awesome as I had hoped they might be:

1. Dating and marrying Rachel. We have our dumb moments, usually caused by myopia or general illness, but I really can't imagine being really happy with anyone else because there is literally nothing I would really want to change. Not even the things that irritate me; those are usually the only things that keep me improving as a person.

2. My VW Beetle. Sure, it has had more repair problems than Chernobyl, but it's every last bit as rewarding as I think having a car can be. I suppose you can say that how awesome something is has little to do with how perfect, practical, or popular it is.

3. The Ampeg 8x10" bass amp I bought. I can feel my brain vibrating uncomfortably when I turn the Gallien-Krueger head past the "5" on the volume dial. It is wonderful being able to play a note that is remorsefully gentle and understated ...and still be 110 dB.

4. My Black & Decker power drill. An odd thing for this list, but it was so amazingly useful when we were pretty much building everything in our apartment, had ridiculously-long battery life and just did things it shouldn't have been able to for longer than I had a right to ask of it.

5. Radiohead's OK Computer, which I bought when it came out without knowing anything about the band, at all. I just liked the cover art a lot. Few things in the history of mankind have exceeded expectations like that purchase. U2's Achtung Baby also ended up being my favorite album, but the magnitude of the difference between expectation and reality were what set OK Computer apart.

6. My trip to Tokyo in 2001 with my family. It went about as well as any family trip can possibly go. We had fun, I slept very little, had about fifteen million great memories, and took some amazing pictures to help reminisce, which in turn really got me into becoming a photographer.

7. The book U2 at the End of the World, which I read at the height of my U2philism, was about as good a rock bio as has ever been written. I remember finding it in the Phoenix Main Library, and thinking, "there's no way this is going to be better than I hope it's going to be" -- but it was. You should read it. There's a part about a giant snake and hookers in Tokyo.

Labels: holidays, life, money, photography, sex, shopping, Tokyo

posted by Steve @ 9:56 PM 0 comments

Catholic guilt

I'm coming to terms, more and more, with being Catholic. Catholic and Loving It has helped some, but mostly because I've had enough time to think about it. Catholicism has a lot of pretty good stuff going for it, not least when practiced by a truly religious Catholic, not some Bible-thumping myopic Christianist idiot. Most of the really good stuff comes from the self-deprecation, and the absolutely endless self-scrutiny.

Fr. Sharpe, my old Catholic pasto, once said this:
"The Jews, you see, invented guilt. But us Catholics? We perfected it."

Labels: Catholics, religion

posted by Steve @ 1:03 PM 0 comments

Sunday, December 02, 2007

Island living

Apparently, buying your own private island is cheaper than I thought. According to Private Islands Online, you can have one for as little as $200k (less, actually, but not for decent-sized ones not in Northern Canada). OK, $200,000 is a lot of money, and the ones I really liked were more in the $600k range. But it's a lot cheaper than I had pictured in my head.

So Rachel and I, if Rudy Giuliani gets elected, are going to leave the country to live on an island. Right on. And actually, we will probably be able to save up for it by the time his first term is up!

Note: This is probably all a pipe dream.

Check this out. Rachel and I want to build a sustainable island community. Each person (assuming 15-20 wage-earners) would need to contribute somewhere between $75k and $200k. That's a lot of money, sure, but it's about as much as mediocre-to-crap house in Tucson. If, as a community, we make money, then we can pay it off like any other loan (I'll get to how we'd make money in a bit).

The goal is a happy life, I guess. Eat well, raise awesome children, enjoy friends and family, improve yourself, waste nothing, and be happy. What else could anyone want?

We'll get 20 adults together. Mostly they'll be people like this guy and others that are interested in the no-impact good life ideal, except without insufferably pretentious people. We'd take certain roles. I would help teach the kids, and keep all the electronics going, and probably do some of the maintenance of machinery. My load would be relatively light because I'd also keep my day job - web design - because I can do that from anywhere on the planet.

Others without the traditional white-collar do-anywhere jobs would be helping grow food, build and maintain stuff, cook, and so on.

We'd need some things:

A good island. At least of the ones I've seen, most of the affordable ones are in the Philippines. A good island will be well above the sea (typhoons aren't fun to watch from underwater), ideally with some cliffs for climbing, diving, and windmills. It should have a decently protected moor for a boat, a place for a small ambphibious plane to be stored in case of a storm. A beach would be nice. Vegetation is also a must. Must also be at least 20 acres.
Transportation. Gotta have at a good-sized boat, probably one capable of Atlantic travel. Also, a small amphibious plane. It wouldn't be hard to make the boat self-sufficient with today's power generation (solar, wind generators), and desalinization processes. A 60' ketch should be capable of sailing most anywhere, including crossing the Pacific, but I am waiting on an expert to be sure of that. Making a 'green' aircraft presents a more formidable challenge: you can mix the fuel (20 bio/80 regular), and lower emissions by 50%, in order to use a typical amphibious like a Cessna 208, or hope that the DA42 Twin Star gets a water-landing version with more cargo room. You'd have to get the plane from Japan or the Philippines if you wanted to have an island in the Pacific, though. It's a ridiculous notion, but I'd also want to turn my Baja bug into a biodiesel schwimwagen for diving trips and cruising around the island.
Food. If you've got a couple of garden-loving hippies on your crew who want nothing to do with a 'real' job and want to grow stuff for the rest of their lives (and we do), this is mostly taken care of, and they don't mind farming a little extra in exchange for living in paradise. Apparently, most of the vegans we know would be fine owning (and eating) various animals if they did the job themselves. Currently it looks like we'll have a cats (as pets) and chickens and a few cows (as food).
Water. Desalinization has come a long, long way. For about $10-20k you can get a salt-water purifier that's about the size of a dorm refrigerator, and it will give you 1,000 gallons of potable water per day. All you'd need is a clean reservoir, a means of getting the ocean to the filter, and a pump. Rainwater collecting has also worked well for humanity for... ever.
Fellow colonists. While you don't want to pigeonhole people into jobs that can't be replaced (in case they want to leave), you'd want to be sure to bring people you want to live with. Of course, people will have their own homes and all, but community meals are going to be a big thing here (since it's shared food), so picking your friends will be important. Also, divvying up expenses will be a good thing since maintaining the boat and plane won't be free.
Utilities. Power's the easiest thing on the list: solar and wind power is quite effective nowdays, and you'll have lots of both on an island. Use LED lighting, and highly efficient insulation (etc.), and you've got low-enough power usage (even with computers), for solar and wind. You can compost most any waste, and we'd avoid plastics like they were diseased. The only thing that won't be obviously not biodegradable is most of our...
Other niceties, like Internet access (now available via satellite), plumbing, stereo systems, computers, swings, scuba gear, a library, a medical room, a distillery (booze!),

It's all doable, though, and there's already a market for pre-made hippies-in-trees commune housing. That helps construction quite a bit (and makes it a lot cheaper as well).

We'd have to get homeowner-type loans to pay for it all, most likely. So how would we pay that off? And what about the cost of upkeep for the vehicles, and occasional supplies?

Well, I work at home anyway. So I can make some money that way. We can also rent out a little vacation spot for rich tourists. $5,000 a week is the usual run, but with a nice place with maids, you can charge $10,000. So I figure we can hire a few local people for $200 a week to live there and keep up the guest place. Usual pay in the Philippines is $200 a month for that work, so we can get some good work for that. Figuring maintenance costs, that leaves about $8,000 a week in profit, and if we keep it occupied half the time, our island makes us $200k per year. That will pay off a $1.5M loan in 10 years, just by itself, and theoretically people should be going into this with cash deposits anyway.

Add in regular income from people like me. Rachel also suggested having a little cottage industry, perhaps selling fruit to nearby islands. Plus, if 20 people are determined, a lot can be done.

Figuring a 10-year, $2M loan and 6.5% interest, monthly payments would be $17,032.20. That's a lot of money - but divide it between ten families, who don't have to pay for electricity, a car payment, food, or a load of other usual expenses. Then you're talking $1,703.22. That's about normal for a mortgage. Just maintain the stuff, and occasionally fly to visit family. So in order to make all this work, each family has to average an annual income of about ... $25k, about $5k above the U.S. poverty line.

Of course, not everyone is going to have a prototypical 'job,' so some of the money has to come from the island or islanders. But between a rental villa and some work-at-home types (web design, graphic design, writers, perhaps musicians, online librarians, etc.), it can be done.

Now the biggest three questions:
1. Can we find fifteen to twenty other people (or ten couples) to go into this?
2. Can we work up the nerve to do it?
3. Can we put together enough cash to get to critical mass?

We'll see, I guess.

Labels: ambition, life, pipe dreams, Rachel, To-Do, travel, vacation, work

posted by Steve @ 10:38 PM 0 comments

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