mini-ERE

Where are you and where are you going?
candide
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Re: mini-ERE

Post by candide »

Habit points hit 100, so we have a roll over:

Habit Fund: $125.50
Level 2. No new rules for this level.

I think it would be tedious both for myself and ya'll (hell yes on the diction choice) if I document every change in the habit fund, so after this, I will probably just include a snap-shot of where it is at when I post, which I am working to do a bit less. Let's say max out journal post once a week, as I move my making, repairing, and gardening activities to their appropriate log threads, unless there is some reason the post will drag too much.

I have been trying to use the forum like it was social media. That's not the role it can or should play in my life. Instead, I see this place as a great clearing house of collective wisdom. It reminds me of ways I can be better, which does not need to be reported on a granular, daily level. Instead, wider shots than that allow for better perspective.

Live and learn, then do better, eh?

Information Diet
============

On the plus side, using and abusing this forum allowed me to get completely off Reddit. So, no Facebook (off since 2008), no Twitter (let us not speak of that time), now no Reddit.

I'm going to make an argument for YouTube, but I find it is only a great thing when I am making searches rather than allowing to just be a feed.
As examples, recent searches for me include different birds, Dick Proenneke, Sumerian history -- and I'm happy with the quality of what I have gotten.

Even an upload of someone else's work is going to take more time than a tweet and 90%+ of Reddit comments. This is thus some kind of quality filter. Next, a video with edits takes even more time, which creates even more of a filter, not completely unlike the advantage books have over the hot take. Time leads to more skin in the game. Time leads to perspective (see above). Time leads to an attempt to build ever-green content, at least until the niche is over-run.

I'm not here to say that using search will forever more be a good strategy with YouTube. It seems like Google is doing all it can to promote engagement. It's always going to try to dangle culture war politics. It's pushing "shorts" as the future of platform. While any time I do some searches the feed then improves for a while, once I stop with searches, the feed starts to drift to lower quality. I could imagine a day when YouTube is completely terrible from my vantage point, if that is what Google believes is in its best interest.

I'm not sure what kind of hobbies I'll have time for, if any, after my daughter is born. To prepare for the possibility of only having time and energy to sneak a few videos here and there, I have been compiling a list of search terms. Most of the terms are coming from the books I'm reading. I find it delightful in a naughty way that I am mining books to find search terms for videos to watch when my brain will be fried.

For fun, I tried some quick experiments in search terms. I thought "cheese" might be random enough to give me crap. Nope, a few of those videos seemed interesting enough. But "funny" and "fail" . . . yup, that'll give you the internet for morons, or to be more charitable, those enjoying such guilty pleasures.
Last edited by candide on Wed Jun 22, 2022 9:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.

chenda
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Re: mini-ERE

Post by chenda »

I found deleting the YouTube app and only viewing it on my laptop to be useful. As you say it has some great content on it but it is horribly addictive. I believe they use casino designers to keep people literally addicted. I suspect we may see some attempts to regulate social media engagement methods soon on public health grounds.

candide
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Re: mini-ERE

Post by candide »

I too only watch YT on my laptop, though that is because I don't currently have a smart phone.

However, I'll be getting one in next week or so to be able snap baby pictures -- also 3G will be stopped in July. I'll have to deliberate about what kinds of apps I have/open.

candide
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Re: mini-ERE

Post by candide »

DW and I were sitting on the second floor of the library, looking out the giant windows to the park underneath. I had just learned that the second floor was the place to be. The ground floor is where the homeless who are just hanging are. It’s resources include the periodicals, the children’s section (wisely set off to the side to provide parents with a sense of separateness for their children), and of course the now ubitiqutious banks of computers for patrons to use, which have become the de facto most common use of public libraries in the United States [1].

The third floor is where the homeless go who are trying to make themselves at home – sleeping, watching their shows with the sound on and the like. Third floor is where non-fiction books are, so it should be my favorite. And so it is, for browsing and the like, but it is not a good place to get writing done. . . To be more precise, I cannot get work done where I want to sit, which using those giant windows to look down at the park. There are areas even on the third floor where the homeless don’t tend to go – in a way I am running into them because I am pursing a similar strategy of trying to find the margins, albeit for somewhat different reasons, I’d imagine.

The second floor is where fiction, including graphic novels, and teen books are. I had thought there was nothing for me there, but it turns out the second floor not a homeless zone at all. To make a little more explicit my theory as to why, the bottom floor is the easiest, but you have to be quiet and not sleep, and the non-fiction section is used by the fewest patrons so there is less chance of being awoken or asked to not watch something with the volume up.

So my wife gave me the gift of a perspective than mine, and we hung out on the second floor rather than buying some overpriced drinks we didn’t need in order to “rent” a space – we used to love coffee houses.

DW caught up journal entries she is writing, with the intended audience being our daughter years in the future. I read a bit, watched birds a bit, and then we were able to talk, one of those good talks her and I have in the summer when we are time rich.

We got to the topic of cooking and how we kind of had to learn it on our own. In my case, my mom cooked and for wasn’t going to teach a boy, and is a terrible teacher – discouraging, unable to break things down into steps, yet also unable to field questions – just bad. My wife, on the other hand, had her learning process disturbed by her mother getting cancer around the time she would have moved up from chopping things to real cooking. Then, a little later, her parents got a small inheritance, so that was the end such home economy for a while.

So what little we know is self-taught – though there is nothing to complain about that since this is the golden age of available information, including the video tutorial. Still, we’ve made a food culture for ourselves and we can pass it on to our daughter.

Also, I can give her the loop of home-cooked meal that grabs something fresh from the grounds, and then gives the waste back, and for her it will be the way things have always been.

And I mentioned tools. It might\ come a bit later than cooking basics, but my girl is going to know how to saw.

Jacob writes:
jacob wrote:
Fri Jun 11, 2021 7:29 am

However, if people grew up in a way where solutions weren't always in the form of "going to the store", personal values wasn't seen in degrees and titles, capability wasn't measured in dollars, and seeing the world wasn't sorted into specialized isms. Then I think ERE would be quite easy to grok. I notice that people mostly level up only when they're forced to gore some sacred cow---a dearly held perspective. But then afterwards, it's usually a situation "why didn't I do/see this years ago."

TL;DR - ERE is complex but it's not super complicated. Humans are good at complex UNLESS they're trying to make it complicated. As such what people really "need" is more a kind of therapy than an education. The bigger challenge for adults is unlearning, not learning.
That’s a wonderful set of guiding principles for what I can give and what needs to be steered clear of.

I’d put myself at WL 5 [2] and my wife at WL 2 -- 2.5, if allowed. Question, is this version of the chart an up-to-date one?

viewtopic.php?p=126053#p126053

But for DD – by the way her name will start with a D, so I will always think dear <child's name> will have experiences at level 5 and then even higher levels can make sense to her.


[1] I have been led to believe that the public libraries are the excellent in the U.S. compared to many countries. If that is so, it is a hold over from a time when we had community and realized that the way to hate big Outsider (both government and businesses, mind) was to have nice things for the community.

[2] On my sabbaticals, I went without a car and was able to drop below 1 JAFI. That's when the WL gap between my wife and I really hit the fan.

jacob
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Re: mini-ERE

Post by jacob »

candide wrote:
Tue Jun 28, 2022 10:44 am
Question, is this version of the chart an up-to-date one?
viewtopic.php?p=126053#p126053
It is not. See https://wiki.earlyretirementextreme.com ... ton_Levels for details.

Image

candide
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Re: mini-ERE

Post by candide »

Appreciate it.

Also, under either version I am seeing DW would be minimum WL 2.5, to hitting WL 3 usually on saving, but certainly not on mindset.

Which holds to the principle of anything over 2 levels seeming crazy. What I do flits in and out of seeming crazy to her.
Last edited by candide on Tue Jun 28, 2022 5:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.

jacob
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Re: mini-ERE

Post by jacob »

v2 was mostly an expansion and differentiation of the top level of v1 + a clean-up/clarification of the wording of all levels.

ertyu
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Re: mini-ERE

Post by ertyu »

Parents who would only teach a skill to their child if the child is of a certain gender fail their children, in my opinion.

candide
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Re: mini-ERE

Post by candide »

@ertyu

Good call. But we are only at the dawn of people realizing that. Even in my parent's generation it would have taken some great acts of questioning premises for them to do so -- and my working class parents were not questioners.

The urbane solution under consumerism has been to be so completely specialized and otherwise deskilled, that it is incredibly easy to teach both genders 100% of the life-skills one knows.

===

I'll use this as a transition to a purchase I made. It's an itty-bitty hand drill . . .

https://www.amazon.com/Fiskars-Crafts-1 ... 0794&psc=1

I'm putting it in the semi-investment category as it can fulfill a role in my resilient tool collection. In the past I've worked on pump drills, after the fashion this of video:

https://youtu.be/veGukUgUTtc

I love these kinds of drills (note to self: I should start working on them again) but in order for them to work, the work piece has to be placed just so in order for gravity to work.

Well, now I have a tool to drill at some odd angles at times I cannot use my electric drill -- such as the morning hours, but yes, power can go out.

If I can keep this specific one going for long enough, it will one day be a training toy for DD. I bought it because it was recommended as something that fit really little hands. At a relatively young age I can put in a dowel and she can just turn the handle. And with a ton of supervision, I will have her do operations on real things I'll make for her.

Making time for daddy/daughter making time.

Habit fund: $68

candide
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Re: mini-ERE

Post by candide »

The baby could come any day now, so I imagine this will be the last post in this journal thread. Next one should see me entering Zombieland along with my bride.


Home economics
=============

The last bit of pregnancy is tough. I’m basically taking over all of the cooking, and plan to do so through post-partum, which is like a

Take over basically all of the cooking. Here, and through postpartum, which is like a fourth trimester.

Before, we had been taking care of lunch separately with me doing most of dinners, but wife trying new recipes, so taking over is greatly increasing the number of meals I have to plan out.

I like to plan ahead and that particularly includes the planning of how I am going to plan, so I checked out a few books. I found a book entitled Good and Cheap to be the most helpful. Here is the author’s site

https://www.leannebrown.com/

Which includes a pdf that has over 80% of the recipes from the book:

https://books.leannebrown.com/good-and-cheap.pdf

I wrote out notes for the dishes that weren’t in pdf (text files – terminal cookbook) but then saved the document locally so I could just consult it.


Fun and games
===========

In planning for those sleepless nights, and with the encouragement of several threads I saw last month, I installed some free games onto my Linux box. I just know there will be times that I can’t get back to sleep and so I’ll be up, but without energy or wherewithal to do much of anything productive or creative.

I must admit that I had never played minesweeper before. And technically I still haven’t, as I put “freesweeper” on my computer, which plays completely in the terminal as text characters. Wow, it’s fun – another one of those times when I am in my late thirties discovering something basically every else knows, but I don’t because I have lived as such a contrarian and weirdo.

For chess (pychess) and backgammon (gnu backammon), I came to the conclusion that it would be nice to have a mouse. For one, it will prevent me from damaging the track pad, particularly the buttons, from overuse – there’s no way I’m counting this as “semi-investment,” however. I wanted the system now, so I just bought a mouse, figuring $7.50 wasn’t too bad for a sweet gaming rig.

Still, fun and games – that’s gonna cost you double.

Habit fund: $53.

candide
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Re: mini-ERE

Post by candide »

Okay, full disclosure: I'm writing this post to kill time. Wife and I have been in a holding pattern waiting for baby. We are scheduled to have labor induced tomorrow, which means baby is most likely to be here on Wednesday.

===

So, this is the end of the 2022 mini-early retirement extreme. I'm weeks away from being a teacher again, so I might as well hand out some grades.

Sleep (B).

Sleep patterns are a big failure mode for when I am off work for extended periods of time. I have kept an alarm going almost every day, though there have been times I have hit it and then just slept in -- that becoming more and more frequent as the summer has dragged on. A few days ago, I had a total blow up and was only able to fall asleep at 4:00 am. No idea of the cause.

Home Ec [1] (cooking) (A+)

It's always nice to see a student put in the extra effort and get outside resources.

[1] BTW in the school system Home Ec is now called F.A.C.S. (family and consumer science). When parents or new students are like "what's that?" I just say "Home Ec."

Wood-working (A)

I made a lot of stuff this summer. After the last thing I posted, I have made a half dozen boxes of quality depending on what pieces of scrap I ended up piecing together. I used these boxes to give more order to everything from kitchen utensils to tools in the garage to my night stand.

Extra credit: plumbing. I did work on a sink as we are going to have family members in our house.

Vegetable Gardening (A)

I kept the plants watered. Did some weeding. I think I can make the whole system a little more compact next, and give myself more foot space/ room for cherry tomatoes to sprawl around. I'll leave ideas of expansion to yet another year after that.

Landscaping (C)

I don't enjoy doing it, so I am most inclined to neglect it. Worst house in the block, with visible scruffiness much of the year, but at least this year not an out-and-out overgrown disaster.

I'm glad the heat has now driven the grass brown and dormant for the year.

P.E. (B)

Oh, this is pure grade inflation and based on the other public school norm of allowing a student to raise the grade rapidly at the end.

My habit system wasn't doing the trick, as I had plenty of other ways to earn points. But as of recent I have found something that works -- I can only drink a second cup of coffee after I have done my exercises.

So day after day I found myself drinking my first cup, which I give myself for free to avoid a headache, and I keep thinking "eh, day's the day I'll just drink the one cup and not exercise" but then low and behold, about a half hour later, I am exercising to get that second cup.

==

Habit fund: still $53.
With all this exercising I am earning points at quicker clip than earlier in the summer, so I'm about to get to another level.

I'm going to start spending a decent amount on the shop. Which brings me to. . .

==

The workshop.

I'm a few days into a new procedure with making, which is a 10 minute workshop. I get in the shop, open a door to ventilate, set a timer on my phone, and work for 10 minutes, and that's it for the day.

This will allow me to keep making things even as I get extremely time poor. This will also force me to be efficient during the limited time I have. To do that, I'm going to start using more electric tools. But to do that, I first need to make purchases to improve air quality and dust extraction.

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