Thoughts and reflections form the past week or so from my own financial independence campaign.
Progress on my goals
Boat plan
Super productive!
Lady SierraWhiskyMike is away for the next two weekends sailing on other people’s boats instead of helping to get ours moving. It’s a classic play.
Fortunately, it turns out I’m like 50% more productive on my own.
Which is both a good and a bad thing, but it’s definitely a thing!
The new Chartplotter is in and I’ve managed to sort the data network out so that everything is talking to everything else. Hooray! Three different generations of equipment, working as a team!
I managed to use some whipping twine to mouse through a new coaxial cable and connect the radio to the AIS boxes and therefore signal. What this means is that the new Chartplotter also displays other boats that use AIS, which is now most of them because it’s easy to buy a radio with AIS built in. The reason I didn’t do that is because our boat already had the stand-alone kit, so I went with the cheaper option.
I fitted those USB sockets and this has cleared up the nav desk, which is now a primo working area for computer stuff. More on that later.
I’m still waiting on an auxiliary power switch that has been delayed by the supplier, but I’ve put a blade fuse to work so it’s not a showstopper – more like a faff – for sailing.
This means that the only things I need to fix are securing some reinforcements to hold the water tank in case we get knocked down by a wave and a re-bedding of a leaky hatch. That’s it. We can technically sail without these, but it’s limiting us to a particularly calm day at sea.
Label makers are as fun as they sound
I’ve also acquired a Bluetooth DYMO label maker and the temptation to label everything is strong. First work below.
I wonder how many things I can label before Lady SierraWhiskyMike gets back?
Linux on the old laptop
Last night I installed Linux Mint onto my old laptop that had become an overheating monster.
For those of you who are, like I was but a few years ago, total computer plebs who think Windows is for PCs and MacBooks have their own thing and that’s it: Linux is an operating system alternative that’s open source and highly customisable.
Linux Mint is a software interface that runs on top of Linux so humans like me and you can use it.
First impressions?
Well, the laptop fan has calmed down and there’s no heat coming from the case, so I’d say it seems to have solved the problem I needed fixing.
LibreOffice, the free open sourced MS Office, seems to work like an earlier and cleaner version of MS Office. If you, like me, don’t want an AI chatbot packed into everything you do, this is a much happier user experience.
I can’t honestly believe that this was basically free.
My only costs have been some £8.99 SanDisk USB disks.
The process of installing Linux is fiddly for intimidated beginners and I’m probably going to have to play around with more of the installation options to get it set up the way I really want, but it’s impressive for something I basically got for free and which seems to have revived a laptop I’d thought was destined for the bin.
Why though?
Primarily to do the Odin Project again and learn to make a few things, as I covered in last week’s update.
Secondly: I philosophically believe that if you can fix something, you should. I’ve written about this before.
It’s irritating to me that we just accept that something expensive like a laptop, which costs anywhere between two weeks’ and two months’ pay for most people, should only have a service life of up to seven years.
That’s nonsense. If we accept that, we’re accepting that our work in the world has a lifespan of only 7 years tops, since every seven years we’d be back to where we started: without a working laptop.
So? Sure, I’m now having to get comfortable with command line input. Sure, most software is marketed at Windows or Mac users and I need to find a work-around.
But if my laptop lasts another couple of years, which all initial signs suggest it could, then I’ll have at least pushed that seven-year timer another 30-50%.
Gym alternatives
I’ve mentioned previously that my Channel Islands gym rates are batshit mental. With my calisthenics switch, I’m paying about £90 a month to basically do pull-ups and push-ups with a nice shower area, once or twice a week.
That’s been grating at me for a while so I’ve decided to do something about it.
The cheaper gyms aren’t convenient and I don’t honestly believe I will use them much if I switched. This is purely because of the hours of working in law and the fact that corporate law drains your mental capacity. I’ve never worked a job where I’ve gotten headaches from overthinking before, but it’s a real problem. So it hasn’t been as easy as JuSt cHaNGe gYmz!!11 because saving £20 a month isn’t enough of a return for then not training.
However… saving £90 a month really is.
How would I do that? Well, by training with kit I own.
So this week I did a scout around and basically found some railings that overhang the bridge into an old fort that the German Army concreted out in the Second World War. The kind of railings that one could perhaps suspend some gymnastics rings from…
I’ve ordered a £30 set of gym rings and I’m hoping that by using these railings and the steps of a Napoleonic and later WW2 fort I will have an outdoor gym that’s slightly protected from the wind and rain and is within a 3 minute walk of our marina.
I’ve also ordered some open water swimming goggles for myself and Lady SierraWhiskyMike. Obviously I still do running on the roads, but we go to the beach fairly regularly (because, you know, we live on an island…) and already play in the sea, but there’s no reason that with some eye protection we couldn’t do actual exercise in the sea, too. The beaches on this island are never that crowded and there’s quite a big sea swimming community here.
On top of these, we already have exercise bands that we use for tension work.
My plan then is to basically trial training outdoors in the mornings and/or evenings once or twice a week. With my new workout schedule, that’s only like 20-30mins required exercise, so I reckon that even in winter there should be at least one day a week where outdoor training works. Right..?
I’ve also found that the leisure centre gym lets you buy session passes of 5 entries. This means that if winter really sucks, I can just use those facilities for a month or two until things get clearer.
Distractions and detours
Submarine on the beach
We got to see this legend and his home-made submarine at the beach yesterday:
So that’s pretty cool.
Non-FIRE goals
My guitar rock god quest (AKA learning to play)
I had a mini-solo for Wake Up that my guitar teacher thought was a massive improvement on my previous playing. It’s all coming together, slowly.
This week I’m working on the first part of New Born by Muse. It’s a piano introduction but someone transcribed it for guitar and now it’s on my learning list.
Ugh. It would be easier to play on a keyboard!
So I reckon I can get the intro and the opening riff down this week but that’s probably about it. Which is fine, y’know, because I also have work.
There’s a sad irony that you have the most free time to learn when you’re a kid and the least amount of time to learn when you’re an adult and most capable of learning. Oh well. Can’t let a thought like that eat at you, you’ll go mad.
Fitness
This week has been a bare-arsed thrashing at work because every capitalist and business leader wants to take an extended summer break. This means that I’ve had so many “last minute” requests for “urgent” projects.
It doesn’t help that I have 12 bosses in a law firm and all think they’re helping when they tell me their work is a priority without discussing it with the others.
This means that I’ve only gotten one serious training session in this week.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing. The Jack H Woods programme I’ve been using recommends only training 40minutes per week. I’ve kept that up, so it’s not like I’m going backwards or anything, but it’s sucky because I quite like training. Sorts my head out.
Eh, no biggie. It’s part of the reason I’m intrigued by the idea of training closer to the boat. Back when we lived in a house, I could squeeze in a kettlebell session when I was working from home because of the garden space. My kettlebells aren’t currently on the boat – because they’re basically cannonballs – but maybe with rings I can do as good a workout as I would have done in the gym anyway, so I could find the time a little easier. Maybe.
Next week is going to be harder. With Lady SierraWhiskyMike away for the week, I’m doing all of the running around for my dog on top of my job. Which is fine, I love my dog, but that gives me a timing issue for getting to the gym. On the other hand, I’ll definitely be getting my steps in!
Final thoughts
I had a hell of a week at work, but I’ve felt pretty good this weekend after doing these repairs and taking action on things.
That’s what I need to be doing more of: taking action and making things. It’s what I enjoy doing. I get my energy from making stuff work, learning things, then applying them to do stuff. Oh, and communicating what I’ve learned – I like that, too.
As I type this, the rain is falling down after a blistering weekend and my dog has just been given a yak milk chew that he’s noisily obsessing over. Shopping is in. Did my first steps in the Odin Project this morning. Well, time for a beer and some guitar playing. Life is good.
My financial independence campaign continues!
