Basuragomi's journal

Where are you and where are you going?
2Birds1Stone
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Re: Basuragomi's journal

Post by 2Birds1Stone »

Congrats on pulling the plug!

basuragomi
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Re: Basuragomi's journal

Post by basuragomi »

Thanks @Candide, and @2B1S, hope your plan to rejoin our ranks works out soon!

basuragomi
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Re: Basuragomi's journal

Post by basuragomi »

July 2022 update

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Busy month! I went on a road trip to the northeastern USA right after my last day. Saw the White Mountains and some neat estuaries. I just wish we had traveled a bit more slowly. The highlight of the trip for me was seeing 50 million year old wood (not fossil wood, original material!) from the ancient polar forests on Axel Heiberg island at a geology museum.

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Then I went to the gun range for the first time since the pandemic started. I made a field-expedient spotting scope from a monocular, scavenged tripod and pipe clamp (ground out a hole with a diamond dremel bit as drilling spring steel never ends well) - not as good as the $300 ones but plenty good enough for 100 yard shots. Thanks to this, I was able to discover that my Mosin-Nagant isn't a total piece of junk, it's just only accurate with the bayonet on, which changes the point of aim by 2 metres!

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I finished setting up my corporation, now I am officially a small business owner!

I sold some junk on ebay for the first time and feed up some space.

My mouse wasn't tracking well, even on commercial mousepads. I found that it worked really well on leftover foam from the weight bag project, so made a mousepad from that, by sewing strips of foam together. That free foam just keeps on giving.

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We replaced our dead air conditioner with a dehumidifier. Would've liked to refill the refrigerant but it was above and beyond my toolset. The dehumidifier puts out hot dry air, which normally isn't a big issue but we had a heat wave recently. Solution: fill a canning pot with cold tap water, put it in front of the dehumidifier. Cooled the output stream by 3-4 degrees, and I used the warmed water to wash and flush which also stopped toilet tank condensation issues.

I went on a bike trip to the Scarborough Bluffs and eastern waterfront up to the local nuke plant. I've never been to this (very hilly) part of the city before, saw a lot of cool birds and scenery and got ideas for more trips!

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I usually "organize" my projects by flopping them on the nearest horizontal surface until it gets fixed or trashed. Usually it leans towards trashed, but now I can just pick up and work on things as I please with no regard as to time constraints. I've cleared a chunk of the to-do list (and have a much tidier living space) this way. I've been spending far less time on the internet (including this forum) since my search for novelty no longer includes "must be doable within 15 minutes" as a constraint.

I've also been reviewing some texts for the upcoming semester and preparing for that. Apparently the "rocks for jocks" field trip still needs a TA and nobody has applied, so they reached out to me since I'm the only current grad student who's actually done the trip before. I might get paid to spend a week swimming and birdwatching!

Meanwhile, I paid tuition but should get funding far in excess of that soon. I got my final paycheque as well, and the market ticked up a bit. Not a bad way to start the unsalaried life!

MBBboy
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Re: Basuragomi's journal

Post by MBBboy »

basuragomi wrote:
Sat Jul 30, 2022 11:18 am
Thanks to this, I was able to discover that my Mosin-Nagant isn't a total piece of junk, it's just only accurate with the bayonet on, which changes the point of aim by 2 metres!
This made me spit out my tea. I haven't thought about bayonets since my initial military training

basuragomi
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Joined: Tue Oct 15, 2019 3:13 pm

Re: Basuragomi's journal

Post by basuragomi »

August 2022 update

No graphs this month because bathroom renovations have left me away from my normal computer system. Net worth ticked down a bit and I got my first funding payment from grad school, leaving this month with a net surplus.

ETA: Now with graphs!
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I got paid to spend a little over a week as an assistant backcountry hiking, swimming and eating, all expenses covered:

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I worked some more on lentofu. I refined the alginate method, but although it worked and held together under frying conditions the gel didn't have enough strength and the result was still tofu-like. The soylent steaks work but cleaning up soymilk is too much of a pain for home manufacture, plus it has to be frozen. I think if this can ever get popular, it would be as a powdered high-protein vegan hiking/survival food, so a refrigeration requirement isn't ideal.

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I went back to the drawing board and I'm going to try meat glue and rennet next, as well as freezing the alginate lentofu. I also want to work on turning my food processor into a centrifuge so I can extract the protein concentrate faster, I've settled on a chilled 72-hour settling time plus boiling which isn't ideal for a number of reasons.

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I also tried and failed to convert my bubble wand system to a direct-feed one that would omit the bucket. You can see how it works: A hand-pump fed from a bottle to tubing running down the wand, and had an adapter that actuated the pump via a brake cable (scavenged from our local bike repair co-op trash bin). Another adapter let me actuate the pump with a pull-ring while holding the wands. The 3d-printing was paid for by spare change I found on the road. Elegant in theory, with minimal weight on the wands. Unfortunately the force required to actuate the pump went up significantly the instant it went a bit off-axis, giving me a situation where either the pictured setup would get pulled apart, I didn't have enough strength to pull it, or an appropriate design would be heavier than the alternative. I'm going to try the alternative of directly mounting the pump on the wands instead.

I've sent my first invoice for consulting work which should cover about three years' corporate expenses. Between lower expenses and grad school payments I'm already at an absurd 70% savings rate.

When I was working days and weeks just flew by. By contrast, these past two months felt so packed full and long. Just having the ability to walk away or devote attention as you wish to things is very powerful.

basuragomi
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Re: Basuragomi's journal

Post by basuragomi »

September 2022 update

Sorry for the boring month, I looked through my photos and it's all renovations, fat squirrels and textbook pages.

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The renovation continues. The guy who built the bathroom originally used metal studs, but instead of putting pipe through the pre-stamped holes in the stud, put pipe on the stud face and hammered it down until the stud and pipe dented enough for drywall to not instantly crack. And then put tile directly on the drywall without any water resistant layer. So it's been taking a while. And the toilet showed up smashed.

I've started grad school and it's been an interesting experience. Having to commute by public transit sucks and is quite expensive, I miss my apartment. I'm the second-oldest student there (there's one cool lady in her 60s). My first day there, a post-doc had an existential crisis. I've been super busy with coursework and reading, my supervisor is largely absent (to be fair, so am I due to the arduous commute) and I am enjoying it. I set my own goals and schedule, get expert feedback, and I'm old/career-indifferent enough to not worry about people thinking I'm stupid - I know I'm stupid, and I'm here to get better! Between work and freedom, grad school seems like a decent compromise.

The younger grad students honestly are not much different from teens/undergrads in temperament. They generally seem to regard the experience as something to be survived. I guess it's a maturity/perspective thing after all.

The big topic right now is a bunch of major journals going "open-access" which seems like a very productive scam. The authors have to pay $5,000 an article, consideration for the journal to graciously accept copyright over the paper and subscription fees. Nobody is getting paid, neither the editors nor the reviewers, and the number of downloads are in the single digits. So where does the money go? (Elsevier apparently has a 37% operating margin, RELX has a 6% 10-year CAGR and 2.5% dividend yield)

On the ERE front, the pear harvest was quite large this year. I made a lot of spiced pear jam. I restarted charity donations to meet my goal since the cash situation stabilized. Between my cottage/hiking TA-ship, funding package, consulting and dividends this is my highest-cashflow month in five years! Never would have imagined I'd make more money by quitting my job.

I socialized a lot this month. Went to a baby shower and it gave me a nightmare where I had a baby, we had bought a house in the suburbs and I had to get a full-time job to pay for it all. What's the Wheaton Level table for dreams?

ffj
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Re: Basuragomi's journal

Post by ffj »

Went to a baby shower and it gave me a nightmare


Thanks for the chuckle. That just reads so funny.

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mountainFrugal
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Re: Basuragomi's journal

Post by mountainFrugal »

basuragomi wrote:
Tue Oct 04, 2022 9:09 am
My first day there, a post-doc had an existential crisis.

I socialized a lot this month. Went to a baby shower and it gave me a nightmare where I had a baby, we had bought a house in the suburbs and I had to get a full-time job to pay for it all. What's the Wheaton Level table for dreams?
This will not be the last existential crisis. Fall is the season as everyone scrambles to apply to the handful of open positions.

I think you should add your description to the "Do you dream about money" thread. Lol. viewtopic.php?p=263165#p263165

basuragomi
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Re: Basuragomi's journal

Post by basuragomi »

Hah, glad people got a kick out of that. Definitely a story that needs the right audience.

basuragomi
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Re: Basuragomi's journal

Post by basuragomi »

October 2022 update

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Third anniversary of this journal.

Renovations are done! There were contractors that were supposed to come and install the toilet, but they were doing it wrong and then gave up because they didn't bring the right parts. I ended up installing it myself after that shameful display. The work was very sloppy. They left enough tools and parts behind that I ended up coming out ahead on costs.

Other than that it's been a lot of coursework and resettling into our place. Graduate courses take way more time than I remember undergrad courses requiring. Knowing how to look stuff up and ask for help feels like cheating compared to how I remember undergrad, it removes all the difficulty and just leaves the work.

There was a guy wandering around downtown with a leash calling for his lost dog. Problem was he apparently named the dog "Marco." I'm half-convinced this was some kind of performance art.

Funniest thing I've seen all month: American rocketry pioneer dies in a lab explosion. They named a crater after him.

basuragomi
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Re: Basuragomi's journal

Post by basuragomi »

November 2022 update
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Okay, very late update, but it's been very busy and this journal unfortunately is low priority. Unlike the last updates, though, I have something to show for it!

I fixed my rice cooker.

I designed and built a Peltier-based freezer to run an experiment in one of my courses.

I finished most of my courses. One involved looking at restaurant health inspection data - I used a 20-year history to generate a restaurant survival curve:
(17% of restaurants fail every year regardless of age)
(although we confirmed the same first-year survival rate as a 2014 US study, the median lifetime was 1 year shorter)

And a map of how far any point in Toronto is from a Tim Horton's:
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There's a golf course at the western pole of timbit inaccessibility. They have a Starbucks.

Another one was seismology, where I learned that the Earth is flat (as long as you don't look straight down).

I've greatly reduced my donations but haven't stopped entirely. I've reached my goal from December 2020, but still ended up with more money left over than I expected. The line-up for the food bank wraps around the corner most mornings.

I invested some of the cash from my consulting corporation. I can't efficiently pull it out until my income drops low enough, so no point in paying myself yet.
Last edited by basuragomi on Mon Jan 02, 2023 10:23 am, edited 1 time in total.

Crusader
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Re: Basuragomi's journal

Post by Crusader »

Sorry if you mentioned it somewhere, but what are you doing grad school in?

basuragomi
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Re: Basuragomi's journal

Post by basuragomi »

Civil engineering, I'm following up on an idea I had while working. Potentially less disruptive/cheaper mineral extraction.

basuragomi
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Re: Basuragomi's journal

Post by basuragomi »

December 2022 update and year in review

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My finances have become more complex compared to last year. With shades of the ERE accounting thread, I've found that savings rate is the most useful metric now. Ironic that the thing you don't do (saving vs. withdrawing) is the more useful metric both before and after quitting gainful employment.

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Excluding charity and tuition, I spent $17,952 this year which is a 2.4% increase over last year. I donated 96% of my salary and achieved a 2% savings rate. My effective withdrawal rate was -0.2%.

Unfortunately, I spent more than last year despite what should have been a cheaper year. A large factor was relocating temporarily due to renovations, which involved lots of car usage and a lot of gifting. I drove over 15 times this year compared to 6 times in 2021!

Net worth ticked down to about $0.80M (vs. $0.84M last year), so a nominal 2.2% WR. Investment income increased, though, which is actually kind of annoying from a tax perspective.

I've posted about my web of goals before, but there's a difference between a web of goals and web of flows/yields: everyone's flows and yields probably look much more similar than their respective goals. The flows/yields version is probably much closer to the ERE book exercise too. I made two webs of flows/yields early 2022: one that described my life at the time and my future "ideal." I never shared it before now because it didn't seem useful, but the tensegrity of the future version ended up being tested and validated in ways I didn't anticipate.

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Things that were really nice in 2022
- Quitting my job. As much as I enjoyed it at times, and the cash firehose, I haven't once missed it.
- Getting paid to hike around, swim at the cottage and learn things!

Things started in 2022 that I have turned into a habit
- Dehumidifier AC: blow hot dry air from the dehumidifier over a canning pot full of cold tap water, then use the warmed water. Low-waste air conditioning!
- Portraits. I draw portraits in pen on the back of old business cards. I started doing this years ago as a party trick but I really made it a habit this year. I want to hit #1,000 in 2023.

Things I want to do in 2023
- Train myself to take naps.
- Make my own pair of shoes.
- Use all of the tools at school.

guitarplayer
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Re: Basuragomi's journal

Post by guitarplayer »

'Extreme lentil science' - :D

What would be the reason for training yourself to take naps if you don't mind sharing?

basuragomi
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Re: Basuragomi's journal

Post by basuragomi »

Well, the most obvious one is that it lets me catch up on sleep! My wake-up time isn't set by myself so I can't sleep in according to my body's demands.

I also want to be able to sleep in any position, any time. I can't sleep in a sitting position (i.e. on planes/trains) and have a hard time sleeping on my back, this seems like a good way to train myself back into it. Maybe even try out the Tibetan pilgrim pose which is like sleeping while kneeling.

Sleep pressure is very high in the afternoon too, so this will also let me work better within my body's hormonal cycles rather than mostly wasting that time trying to stay upright.

Finally, taking a nap every day feels like a FIRE status symbol. I can afford to be tired.
Last edited by basuragomi on Tue Jan 03, 2023 3:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Basuragomi's journal

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

I like your web of yields/flows. The thought I had was that it is a very good (because "likeable') example of NOT a "hot mess" lifestyle. But, I can't come up with the word or phrase that exactly conveys the opposite of being or defaulting to "hot mess."

guitarplayer
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Re: Basuragomi's journal

Post by guitarplayer »

Hey, I had a semi-thorough read through your journal and wondered why you prefer a basement flat versus something higher up? Asking because not long ago DW and I were viewing a flat which in my view was excellent but DW objected on the basis of it being dark (it was in fact pretty dark, I know that some other basement flats can be pretty bright).

basuragomi
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Re: Basuragomi's journal

Post by basuragomi »

The big thing is first-order access. No convoluted stairwells to lug stuff up, no elevator queues, no common space to negotiate over. This can save half an hour a day over high-rises and is just so convenient. Ever been on the 33rd floor when the elevator stops working and will never be fixed because the average mortgage payment in Toronto is 102% of household income? You witness some true despair.

Otherwise:
- More windows can be opened compared to curtain-wall highrises.
- More access/control over outdoor amenities like gardens.
- Lower heating/cooling costs.
- Light quality definitely varies, my place has a big bay window and a bunch of other windows that I leave covered most of the time. When I lived in upper levels I had my curtains closed all the time to control the heat and avoid sunburn while I slept. Not much of a difference in practice, and we worked from home for two years.
- Better sound insulation, can stomp around all you like.
- It's cheap!

@7W5: I think "orthodox" would apply here. I think pretty much everyone's web would look like this, even if most interconnections aren't really in use.

basuragomi
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Re: Basuragomi's journal

Post by basuragomi »

January 2023 update

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Naps taken: 17

Portraits drawn: 12

I experimented and made beansprout kimchi. I wanted a low-hassle seasoning to mix into my beansprout salad. It tastes super lemony! Probably a mix of lactic acid and all the ginger. I recommend it. It was way less hassle to do a small amount rather than the serious work a head of napa entails.

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I did some science and made some big advances on the lentofu front. Still don't have a good name for it though. Leat? There's enough news to warrant separate posts.

I've been refining and streamlining my process. Now I have a mortar & pestle which allows more effective regrinding. I've made two more attempts at lentofu v1.1a in the last few months, but both were disappointing. It seems that no matter how hard I try, alginate gels can't be modified hard enough to go beyond scrambled egg/tofu consistency. Alginate also gives a kind of grainy taste to the lentofu. It's actually a really amazing additive for making dumplings/meatballs because it stops the mixture from weeping, so it's not going to waste, but I'm calling v1.1a a failure.

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