Category Archives: General

Day 5-7: Boondocking with Jira and Confluence

Posted on by Gram Weenie
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Menu:  Intro | Day 1-2 | Day 3-4 | Day 5-7 | Retrospective

We’re “Boondocking with Jira and Confluence“!
Enjoy $10 off your order at the Strategy for Jira Store
Code: BOONDOCKING Shop Now
Valid: July 8-15, 2018

Day 5

When boondocking it’s easy to run out of water.  How many times you wash your hands in a day?  Simple things like this deplete the supply quickly.  Our 46 gallon fresh water tank won’t last forever, no matter how much we conserve.  We got lucky though;  there was an on site water hose we could use sparingly.  We filled our 5 gallon portable container, used a pump that attaches to a drill, and slowly pumped the water through a hose and into the travel trailer.  A few rounds of filling the tank really made a difference. Continue reading →

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Day 3-4: Boondocking with Jira and Confluence

Posted on by Gram Weenie
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Menu:  Intro | Day 1-2 | Day 3-4 | Day 5-7 | Retrospective

We’re “Boondocking with Jira and Confluence“!
Enjoy $10 off your order at the Strategy for Jira Store
Code: BOONDOCKING Shop Now
Valid: July 8-15, 2018

Day 3

Lightning Strike Damage

In 2006, my stationary house was hit by lightning.  One strike sent electrical outlet face plates flying across the room and broke mirrored walls.  The fire department opened walls with their axes, checking for internal fire.  All the house’s appliances were fried.  No more fridge, no more hot water heater, etc.  The only electronics that survived were my computers, because they were connected to an APC battery backup and surge suppression system.  The APC took the lightning strike – not my devices. Continue reading →

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Day 1-2: Boondocking with Jira and Confluence

Posted on by Gram Weenie
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Menu:  Intro | Day 1-2 | Day 3-4 | Day 5-7 | Retrospective

We’re “Boondocking with Jira and Confluence“!
Enjoy $10 off your order at the Strategy for Jira Store
Code: BOONDOCKING Shop Now
Valid: July 8-15, 2018

As previously announced in Boondocking with Jira and Confluence, this week, we’re “off the grid” in our travel trailer.  We’re boondocking which means camping without hookups to city power, water, and sewer systems.  We’ll provide our own resources which includes enough power and internet to connect to Jira and Confluence – vital resources for our long-term RV trip.

We’re also attending a “convergence” which is like a conference with fellow digital nomads.  We’ve all parked together in the same place.  If we fail at boondocking, we’ll do it surrounded by experienced campers. Continue reading →

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So are you a tobacco farmer?

Posted on by Gram Weenie
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Last year I took one of my “detour” trips.  We’re still on our RV trip, but I needed to go to California for business.  I guess you could call that, a “trip within a trip.”  And since I was already off to CA, why not add in some sightseeing too?  So it turned into a “trip within a trip within a trip.”

I flew from New Orleans to Los Angeles, spent a couple days there, and drove the Pacific Coast Highway North to San Jose.

While I was in LA, I took a city tour with some Australian tourists.  When hearing I was from Northern Virginia, one asked “So, are you a tobacco farmer?”   He asked with a totally straight face, which was answered by a totally confused look on my face.  It got me thinking:  What do others picture when you tell them where you’re from? Continue reading →

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Trailer Evacuation and Retrospective

Posted on by Gram Weenie
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Crystal River Spills into Campground Lake

Crystal River Spills into Campground Lake

It was a normal Monday afternoon.  We were both working on our computers when I glanced out the trailer window and suddenly saw water had covered the ground.  Water from the nearby Crystal River was rapidly spilling into our campground and overtaking the small lake on the property.  We previously walked the campground at lunch and determined there was no way the rising river water could ever reach the area where we were parked.  Wrong! Continue reading →

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Outdoor Survival Training

Posted on by Survival Cat
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First Venture into the Outside World (AKA: The Condo Balcony)

First Venture into the Outside World
(AKA: The Condo Balcony)

Let’s get one thing straight:  I’m a kept cat.  I’m accustomed to a certain level of luxury and status in my life.  I have two human servants that exist to pamper me.  I get treats feed to me by hand any time I request.  I have total command of the couch at all times, and most days, get the best spot on the Tempur-Pedic bed.

I’d finally gotten my humans properly trained and they decide to make me learn new skills.  Here’s what they’ve been putting me through:

Survival Training Level 1: Harness and Leash
One day I was minding my own business when my humans put this strange contraption on me.  It must have weighed 150 pounds.  I had to hunch down, get close to the ground, and walk very slowly while I built up the strength to support it on my body.  Once I was moving easier, they attached this long strap to it.  I don’t think they know what they are doing.  Don’t they know I’m a cat?  At least it’s better than the sweater they made me wear once.

Continue reading →

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The Sounds of Sterling

Posted on by Gram Weenie
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While I’ll certainly miss family, friends, and food, there are a number of things I won’t miss about suburban condo living.  Most of them can be classified under what I call “The Sounds of Sterling.”

Even with the windows completely closed, each day brought the following menagerie of predictable sounds. Continue reading →

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Our Ultralight.Life

Posted on by Gram Weenie
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Welcome to our Ultralight Life! We are two mid-30s professionals on a life adventure. We’re too young to retire but refuse to wait until retirement to start living the lives we really want.

We’ve thrown ourselves off the “meeting the expectations of others” train and are instead forming a new and experimental path of our own choosing.

We dislike tradition, restriction, regulation, and HOAs. We avoid physical and virtual things that are heavy and tie us down.  We’re not interested in acquiring “things” for the sake of having more.

This quote from Ellen Goodman says it best:

“Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for – in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it.”

We don’t want to be normal.  Instead, we want: Continue reading →

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