guitar player's journal

[Seppia]

Wohooo for the flat!

[DutchGirl]

Congrats, indeed!

For the kettle, I like how it has one function (boil water) and how it does that unsupervised (I assume electric kettle with automatic switch that turns it off once the water is boiling?). I guess the microwave is the same (you can also walk away after you've told it to microwave the water for xx seconds). A third option could be to just boil water on the stove. But then you do have to remember to check back in in < 30 minutes, or else you run the risk of having an extremely hot empty pan on the stove.

[guitarplayer]

Thanks @ertyu, @Seppia and @DutchGirl! It's nice to see things unfolding and unlocking. Next in line, we will get British passports.

@DutchGirl, yes, electric kettle, yes microwave is the same but there is no feedback in the microwave so it does not turn off at the point of boiling - you have to have an idea how long to set it for otherwise you will waste some electricity. Water alone will not spill over, other liquidish things would.

Best to have stove, microwave, kettle following the principle of three things having the same function and each thing having at least three functions. Then when kettle breaks, like ours did, things continue to go smoothly. Something something system design.

Though we will have guests over the weekend so I rushed our landlord to get us a kettle, otherwise the guests could be in shock.

[ETA1] the landlord eventually decided to just buy a kettle, it will arrive tomorrow. DW wanted to save the kettle that is broken so disassembled it and looked to fix but after watching youtube tutorials found out that this particular model is beyond repair.

[ETA2] I am spelling it out here to remind myself later: now that my degree is finished, I have to watch out not to spread myself to thinly. I have a tendency to do this in the face of lots of freedom-to. In terms of learning cognitive stuff, off the top of my head I have
- financial curriculum
- research in mathematics
- programming, in particular
-- R
-- SAS
-- Python
-- VBA
-- DAX (PowerBI)
-- linking
- learning about stretching (know-how before practice)
- participating in the forum
- other interests (such as the renewed New Escapologist, but also Low-Tech Magazine and such; the more I think about it the more there are).

I should think how to plan my time. Probably follow the 'weakest link' principle. I forgot what's the equivalent in the forum's parlance, I think something to do with a barrel and how quickly what's inside can start spilling, remind me if you know what I am talking about.

[guitarplayer]

2023 update 30/52

Job

043/156 weeks in (ca. 27.2%).

I am overtaking one messy bit of analysis to try to standardize it for all the publications we write in the team since it is an overarching topic. Looking forward to this.

There is another completely new piece we will be publishing on. The new colleague I mentioned earlier has experience of using R; when I heard 'well this can be done in Rmarkdown' I immediately thought 'I need to ride this wave'. So we settled on doing all the analysis in R, from data curation to the end documents. It is an aspiration and I am not certain how innovative the colleague is and to what extent just a skilled technician. But hey, I am innovative and between us I think we can pull it off anyway. In the process I will acquire the skills. Since it is a project with a deadline and will be eventually published, feels different to doing exercises or a 'bootcamp' or MOOC sort of thing. I am keen to get into it as soon as possible. This also links to the website ERE style thread and @mF's comments in it. Having had a brief look, my experience with LaTeX and Jupyter Notebook will feed into the RMarkdown project. The RMarkdown project should then feed into the Quarto (theoretical) project.

Exercise

I started doing dynamic stretching before my 200 daily burpees and sometimes isometric stretching afterwards. For the latter, I now focus on back and legs. I do burpees with a jump and a push up, rotate arms 90 degrees every three

Studies recap / Maths / Investment Curriculum

Studies recap: I am re-reading about trees at the moment. A couple days back I was contemplating incidence relationships in design. For example, Fano plane is a plane where every point is incident with three lines and every line is incident with three points. There are other projective planes, too. That module 'Graphs, Networks and Design' was outstanding.

Investment Curriculum: I read the foreword of 'Economics' and briefly skimmed through the book.

The new OU module: 'algorithms, data structures and computability'. Still waiting to hear if I am okay to take this module. If not, I need to think about an alternative because I would still like to be formally attached to the OU plus my employer would pay for it. I am considering 'Pure Mathematics' but it would be a tad harder to argue how this module would be useful for my work I can imagine arguing it successfully though.

Flat

The funds with all the bonus are now in our accounts, solicitor will be requesting these next week with the view of finalizing all in the first half of August. I am now a member of a car share cooperative and will source a van for moving and getting a futon style bed someone is giving away.

No guests

Turns out that our friends from Berlin couldn't make it to Scotland so we are all ready for the weekend having done the cleaning yesterday, ha! We went for a date to a cafe nearby the Gallery of Modern Art as we had a couple of vouchers to use laying around.

[guitarplayer]

2023 update 31/52

Water

This is ridiculous that I forget to drink enough water, sometime for days on end. Then I am like 'why am I so low on energy, this makes no sense' and trying to come up with all sorts of fantastic reasons.

Anyway, refilling water reserves now and can just see the focus, more and more of it.

Job

044/156 weeks in (ca. 27.8%).

Nothing interesting this time.

Exercise

I am reducing HIIT to every other day in favour of other forms of exercise. My flagship goal is to do a split.

Investment Curriculum and Maths

I am reading 'Economics' now, am at Chapter 7. I write in the threads on the forum but I am not sure if this is useful, either for me or for the others.

I recon I just went through a BSc in Maths and Stats via distance learning with minimal interaction with tutors and some interaction with other students via forum when I was not sure of something, had something interesting to say or was clarifying something. I might perhaps just come to the chapter threads with questions and things to discuss rather than summing up chapters. I mean, when I formulate my thoughts it doesn't necessarily look or read well (for anybody!).

tl;dr still looking for a good way to get through the material.

Due to logistics, I am eventually taking successor of a module that I was strongly contemplating taking one year ago. It used to be called Optimization but now it is called 'Computational Applied Mathematics'. I will do some proper work in Python in that course.

Flat

There's hoping we will move to the new place this month.

[guitarplayer]

Just thinking.

Ten years ago I was in the Alps on the Italian-Austrian border, helping build an outdoors museum about the 1st World War. We were in a good company, I remember (still have a photo of) myself smoothing (with a plane) a wooden candle holder for our cook. In the evenings we would have good prosecco brought by a cable car for the Italian companions. We would communicate with people at the other end of the cable car by a horn, I'd been shown how to work it and managed decently well. The views were great, the hut completely secluded, in fact on top of a mountain. I remember going mountain running and fracturing some small bone in my left foot. Had to tie the boot a bit harder for a few days to stabilize it so that it heals. First time in my life paracetamol actually helped (to sleep through the first few nights). Many more memories.

I was completely skint, had a few hundred euros I had been gifted in Austria previously. I spent a year in Austria hanging out in an occupational school in Salzkammergut. At the school there would be mostly children of refugees, perhaps people with mild mental problems or learning disability. That year in Austria was quite something. I'd never skied before, but had a friend at the school. I gave him two nights in a nice hotel for four (+ wife + 2 children), so happened it was his son's birthday that date. I'd won those two nights by singing at one fair where we went together, but had no interest in using them. In return the friend (who was a skiing instructor in youth) taught me skiing and gave me skiing pants (I now use them in winters as an indoors wear - they are from the 90s). From the first snow until April I went skiing four times a week. After that I went cycling the Alps about four times a week. The bike, I got from another friend at the school, he found it at a landfill. I used the bike to cycle from Austria to Bosnia and back. In Croatia and Bosnia I'd been helping with an eco-film festival, we would stream movies in schools, libraries etc.

I volunteered at that occupational school in Austria, for almost a year. Generally, I did a lot of volunteering in life I must say. I wouldn't mind some more - I do think matters change significantly when money is taken out of the equation (which some here know, for better or worse).

[zkseven]

I volunteered at that occupational school in Austria, for almost a year. Generally, I did a lot of volunteering in life I must say. I wouldn't mind some more - I do think matters change significantly when money is taken out of the equation (which some here know, for better or worse).

I agree completely. Living in even a temporary stint of part-time, non-conventional employment, the values that I have are COMPLETELY different than when I was fully conventionally employed. I can't imagine the difference being fully untethered makes (I know there's also bad aspects of it, but any bad I've seen (with a sufficient nest egg/healthcare) can be entirely mitigated/circumvented by the positives, in my opinion).

[guitarplayer]

I wonder what is the best unit of energy to convert to for comparisons.

3 kWh ~= 10.8 * 10^6 J
2000 kcal ~= 8.4 * 10^6 J

In other words DW and I are employing a hard working helper in the flat for less than £1.5 daily wage. Extraordinary.

https://www.stuartmcmillen.com/comic/en ... es/#page-1

Nothing new under the sun.

@zkseven, come to think of it, stay at home parents do the job.

[ertyu]

I have an electric water boiler so the topic of its energy draw has suddenly turned interesting to me. So far, I've had it off because it's August/peak summer and it's simply not needed, but I have been thinking about optimal use once winter comes. In the discussion last year, gp mentioned that dishes wash well with cold water if done right away; i'd add that this is augmented by not cooking meat - animal fat is in general harder to clean off.

When the water gets too cold, sometimes my hands hurt as I wash the dishes, so I'm thinking what I'll do in the winter is time the dishes and a shower to be done with one heating and keep the boiler off at other times. Is there a meaningful difference in switching it off from the button and unplugging it? Would the passive draw be significant?

[guitarplayer]

Cannot advise @ertyu as the induction boiler that is here in the flat was off for the whole year.

====================================================================

2023 update 32/52

Job

045/156 weeks in (ca. 28.4%).

Wrapping up a piece to be published next week.

Investment Curriculum and Maths

Reading the chapter on Behavioural Economics in 'Economics' now.

Flat

We got the keys today. I don't know, maybe it is the mentality here in the UK, places 'ready to move in' actually need a good clean. Had this experience a few times already. Going to hoover etc. over the weekend and hopefully move our stuff by the end of weekend.

[avalok]

Congratulations on the flat and getting the keys; extremely happy for you both. We've had a mixed bag with cleanliness when moving into places, some great, others not so.

[guitarplayer]

Thanks @avalok! It was pretty stressful for us (probably partly due to the fact of buying a property for the first time). I can only imagine how it is for an average Joe who has truckloads of furniture!

=========================================================================

2023 update 33/52

Job

046/156 weeks in (ca. 29.5%).

The last piece is published, I took Thursday and Friday off.

Investment Curriculum and Maths

This has not moved forward as I have been dealing with moving.

Flat

So far so good. The neighbours seem nice, we got a card and a bottle of Prosecco from the ones downstairs. In return, trying to be nice and wearing the lamb-coat-made slippers we've made two years back not to make too much noise above their heads.

There are 8 flats in the close, we are yet to meet three families that live here. Will make our way to say hi. I think the neighbours are all / mostly owner occupiers, other than a council tenant across the landing (elderly lady with some disability, she's alright). One neighbour has been here 54 years - that's a good sign.

The only minor issue I notice about the flat is some noise from the water tank in the loft. Went there the other day and identified that it's a worn off Ball Float Valve / Ball Cock. Looked up on youtube, it's easy enough to replace it without needing to call anyone. And I will definitely monitor the humidity levels and consider getting a dehumidifier over winter!

Any ideas on how to set up a nice neighbourly relationships, let me know! I think we might organise an open door tea break sort of thing one Sunday for an hour or two.

We have been unpacking the past few weeks and it's nice to start seeing it all taking shape. Below are photos of my workspace, DW's workspace and our meeting space. It is all in the living room, great not to have a TV taking space and it was joy to dismantle the electric fireplace that was sitting on one of the walls.







Generally, twice as much space as we had previously makes a difference. No more bikes in the bedroom, there is a separate storage room for them. There is also a separate room for things like exercise, stretching and some other stuff that we are yet to think of. And generally more room to re-organise stuff and rid of some of it. Paradoxically, more space will lend itself to reduction of possessions.

The previous owner was a DIY person but did a bit of a sloppy job at times, so there are things to improve. Yesterday I got some free tools from one guy I'd met through the free food app, but I am also aware of a 'tool library' nearby where for about $40 / year one has access to lots and lots of tools, three weeks at a time.

Plants like more light, and there is a balcony as well.

Those buildings are part of Glasgow's revitalization strategy from the 60s. Before that, there were old tenements here that were deemed overcrowded and with sanitation issues (e.g. no bathrooms). The strategy was to knock them down and build anew. Many of the high rises built were subsequently knocked down across the second part of the 20th century and in the 21st century due to various problems, social and structural.

But the buildings one of which we are in, they are 3 story buildings and stayed. There is a green space in front that we own together (as in, each household owns a fraction of it). Some of the sycamores and lindens planted here in the 60s are now very pretty to look at, I have the canopy in sight from the 3rd floor.

Foraging

Necropolis is a cemetery next to the Glasgow Cathedral where many tobacco lords' remains are. It is on a hill away from traffic. I went to get some blackberries from there a couple of days back.

2025

2025 will be a remarkable year for us, for a few reasons:
- we will own this flat outright and our spending will drop to something between $10,000 and $12,000 a year for a comfortable and interesting living without fireworks.
- we will have British passports
- DW's IT graduate scheme will come to an end
- my 3 years at my current workplace will materialise
- I will wrap up a Data Science Graduate Programme at work
- we will have accrued enough national insurance contributions to be eligible for the annually inflation adjusted state pension from 70 onward ($7,750 in today's money between the two of us)
- I will have accrued about (today's) $3,250 of annually inflation adjusted defined benefit pension from about 70. This will bring guaranteed (yes of course guarantee can lapse, still though with this in mind) old age income to be $11,000 a year which ties to the first point up above.
- I will have gone through the ERE investment curriculum.
- there will be plenty of money (there already is).

Inasmuch some folk on the forum talk about SWR and crossing the magical 4%, from the point of view of DW and I's system, 2025 will be a year of a categorical change in the system. We will be in our mid / late thirties, with a robust framework and a lot of different sorts of capital.

[mathiverse]

Congrats on the new flat, gp! I also think your WOG exemplifies having FI as a byproduct of living well. I'm sure you'll enjoy the next few years and I look forward to seeing how things change post-2025 when you'll be firmly at the point money is on tap.

[shaz]

Your flat looks good. Those tile floors should be easy to clean and maintain, too. Congratulations!

[guitarplayer]

Thanks @mathiverse ! Feels good to have the plain old justification for getting small jobs done to the place, 'well, because it's mine'. For example, an hour ago in a flash of insight I put away the Economics textbook to go and fix the sliding door wardrobe. With a piece old carpet left by previous owner, scissors, a screwdriver and a hammer I got yesterday from one of my free food / stuff contacts. Nice to see how things click. Yep I've never been on a mainstream FI path, now is probably the closest I have ever been with mortgage, thinking about retirement accounts and the highest household income to date (though still a far cry from folk even on this forum).

Re 2025: It might be that apparently nothing will change. The context most certainly will though, I struggle to find words to explain what I mean but maybe I will hold the 2025 subsection for a while, or it will resurface later.

Thanks @shaz, I am so happy about the tile floors. There is a carpet in the bedroom and it causes all sorts of troubles. Maybe we will be happy with it when winter comes, let's see.

[guitarplayer]

This will never cease to blow my mind. Today I got



- about 10 bags / boxes of microgreens / salads
- about 12 pieces of veggie sushi
- 12 pieces of Indian veggie snack
- 3 avocados
- sliced watermelon
- big box of strawberries
- two small boxes of raspberries,
- falafels
- roasted veggie hummous sandwich
- carrot sticks with hummous
- 4 heads of lettuce (two kinds)
- pink lady apples
- fresh dill
- fresh mint
- some dices potatoes in herbs
- probably forgot something

Those carnations and roses in the background, got them at expiry date... like two or three weeks ago.

So the food was otherwise going to the bin tonight, and it is not out of ordinary, this is business as usual. This just brings out a whole palette of emotions in me, truly.

[shaz]

That's an amazing quantity of food. Have you ever tried offering some to your neighbors? One way I make friends with neighbors is by offering them some when my CSA provides more of a particular food than I want to use.

Also your kitchen is nice.

[guitarplayer]

Thanks @shaz, it's no paradise for a perfectionist but overall it is a nice space.

Yes I thought about it for sure. But first I need to find out if they are the sort of people that would be happy with it. Technically the food is at use by / best before date and some folk are not keen on the idea of eating such food (they would certainly be keen on the food itself if I cooked it to them and never said anything!). If they are keen, there is so much other stuff for grabs. We are vegan so forgo heaps of steaks, mince beef, fish pies, chicken whatevers, cheese, you get the idea.

[guitarplayer]

2023 update 34/52

Job

047/156 weeks in (ca. 30.1%).

There is a bit of downtime now. I need to publish corrections to one piece that unfortunately had a few errors. I am going to use this as an example of 'continuous improvement' for my promotion interview next month. At my workplace, it's about the 'process' (green workplace) so this is arguably a good thing that it happened and I have such example at hand.

I continue expanding my R and DAX knowledge. Maybe this is a good position to be in to be a translator of languages - I have a pretty good working knowledge of SAS, and actually signed up for a 2 day VBA training in October.

I will also start a module with my Uni that does computational mathematics in Python, this will start in October, too. My employer pays for it, I pay with time - 6-8h / week.

On Monday DW is wrapping up her one-year placement at her firm and moving on to a 2-year graduate programme in IT. This pays a healthy ~$38,000 gross a year - an entry level professional sort of salary here in the UK, maybe equivalent to twice that in the US.

Investment Curriculum and Maths

I have recently dropped my engagement with the professor who deals with the graph theory problem. It is all to easy to drop it as he is very laid back and besides we have no formal relationship. At the same time, I am mindful perhaps it is not in my best interest to engage with this now, along mF's lines of 'interesting problems that are not as homeotelic as others in the web of goals'.

Opportunity cost concept there above, applied to homeotelicity.

So I have restarted the Investment Curriculum. In Economics, went through
'Part 1 - Introduction to Economics and the Economy'
'Part 2 - Price, Quantity and Efficiency'
'Part 3 - Consumer Behaviour'

Started Part 4 - microeconomics of product market, but feeling too much had happened recently with the move and so on, I reverted and refreshing the first three parts now.

Flat

I showed the flat to my parents on a video call yesterday. They are happy for us.

We are still to have a round around the neighbours. DW had a goodbye party after her one year placement and got some gifts, amongst them vegetarian (i.e. stuffed with butter and eggs) sweets that she had left in the office. Upon reflecting, we might make a trip to the city centre for DW to pick up these sweets and use them as a 'hello' token for the neighbours when we do the round. Might pop in to my local bookstore to get the New Escapologist.

We bought a kettle for £5 in a charity shop. Subsequently, we saw a couple kettles for free in the waste stream. We will wait with the microwave and other things that would be handy to appear for free in the waste stream. In fact, DW might be getting a microwave for free sometime soon. Not sure about the power consumption though if it'd be an older model, we will see. Is there a lot of energy loss in older models of microwaves?

I am giving away a wall mounted electric fireplace, a person is coming today to collect it. It is very tacky and we definitely do not want it. I saw the exact same model second hand for sale for £30 on ebay. As I see it though, it presents negative value in the amount of space it takes and that it has the glass panel one needs to be careful around. So giving it away for free for a quick good riddance. Maybe I should take more of an example from Ego and become more market focused about these things.

There are a few more things we might get rid of one way or another, notably the old super heavy entrance door (the previous owner installed a new door). I hear there are people around Glasgow who upcycle such doors so it should be hopefully a quick deal.


2025

I will try to build some identity based goals based around (this could be revised)

- Becoming a master statistician / data scientist - this would be my 'specialization' in this 'life' iteration i.e. the next few years
- Reduce (further) stuff and stick to the simple, relatively meaningful and mostly happy life we lead
- Mastering waste streams, close the loops, de-prioritize the use of money further.

Other

Reading the article on Norway spending $6 million a year stock-piling grain, citing pandemic, war and climate change I am contemplating this chart.

Fun (?) example of various ways of problem solving: in the flat, there is no toilet brush. I don't think this is something people are giving away, so we will eventually buy one, they should be a few $ probably. Meanwhile, we modified our behaviour to 'get it right the first time'

[DutchGirl]

We bought a kettle for £5 in a charity shop. Subsequently, we saw a couple kettles for free in the waste stream. We will wait with the microwave and other things that would be handy to appear for free in the waste stream. In fact, DW might be getting a microwave for free sometime soon. Not sure about the power consumption though if it'd be an older model, we will see. Is there a lot of energy loss in older models of microwaves?

According to the Dutch consumer's organisation:

The maximum power of the microwave has little influence on energy usage. Older microwaves and ovens might have a clock that uses a lot of energy. The clock could use 25 up to 40 percent of the total energy usage per year. In newer microwaves the clock should not use a lot of energy.

... I'm not sure how you can see whether you have a microwave with an old or with a new clock. The advice is that if you have an old microwave, to disconnect the microwave from the electricity after using it so that the standby consumption is zero.