Sprinterventurer

Adventuring in a Sprinter Van!

Using the 5 Second Rule to go for a run on a miserably cold wet and dark Christmas Eve

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It may not sound like much, but I just overcame an extreme obstacle this evening.

Let me set the stage.  Christmas Eve 2017.  I spent most of the day writing and working on my websites.  My stomach was feeling a bit uneasy from too much coffee.  Being late December, the days are very short.  It was dark and cold, and it had just started to rain.  I was warm and snug on the boat.  I even reclined wrapped up in a blanket and was idly reading the news.  Here’s the kicker:  I had a fresh Sixer of DC Brau The Corruption IPA in my cooler.  It’s an excellent beer, and it fit my mood!

But then I thought “Hey, I haven’t run yet today!”  Ugh.  I really didn’t want to.  “I’ve been good all week, running every day!  I can skip today,”  a voice whispered.

I sat there for a few minutes.  Dreading the run.  It would be so easy to skip a day.  But skipping one day makes it easier to skip the next.  Tomorrow is Christmas.  Who runs on Christmas?  (Sorry for the rhetorical question, “I” run on Christmas.)

Then I used a trick I’ve learned recently.  It’s called the 5 Second Rule.  Not the one that allows you to snarf food that hit the ground if you pick it up within 5 seconds.  This was from a book called The Five Second Rule by Mel Robbins. I’ve been listening to the audiobook version for the last few weeks.

Basically, whenever you find yourself lacking the willpower to do something, you count backward from 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, GO!  There’s a bunch of science to back it up.  I’ve already used it to wake up without a billion presses of the Snooze button, and today, to force me to go for a run. Some shy people use it to talk to people they are attracted to, some people use it to speak up at work meetings.  The applications are endless.

Today, I used it to get up from my snug and warm seat. I thought “But I really don’t want to run today.  It’s dark and cold and it’s Christmas Eve, and I have a sixer of delicious beer here.”  The 5 Second Rule works great for getting yourself off your butt.  But if you are not vigilant, you can convince yourself to sit back down.  Which I did.  I then broke up the problem into smaller parts.  “What if I, no commitment here, Steve, just collected the clothes I would theoretically wear for a cold run in the rain?  I’m not actually going to run because that would be silly!  It’s warm here!  But I’ll just get the clothes out.”

So I got out the clothes.

Then I said “I’ll just put the clothes on.  I don’t actually have to run.”

A couple minutes later, I was wearing my cold weather clothes, winter hat, gloves, and Brooks Cascadia Shell.

“Well it would be really stupid if I don’t run now, I have all my clothes on and I’m ready to go!”

I told myself I would just run 3 miles, but I hit the 3-mile turnaround and didn’t even notice, I didn’t start to think about turning around until I hit the 4 mile.  The next part of my route leads through a normally desolate part of Baltimore, and it was especially devoid of humans on Christmas Eve.  I listened to the voice in my head that said turn back, because I generally trust my gut instincts.

So I ended up with a 4 mile run when I could have easily run none.

You can use this strategy to give your willpower a boost and accomplish a great many things beyond getting in a run when you don’t want to.  Try it!

Second article sold on Textbroker

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Sold another article!
Don’t worry, I won’t be boring you with an announcement when I sell each article on the freelance writing site Textbroker!

I just wanted to update you with additional things I have learned.

By the way, this is the second article in a short series on my adventures in Freelancing.  You can read the first one here.

Rather than choosing a highly technical computer HOWTO article like the first time, I wrote a personal finance piece. It required very little research, and I invested 2-3 hours into it. Yes, 3 hours for a $9 payout is below minimum wage. It is easy to be discouraged. In fact, I was discouraged after the first one, and that is why I didn’t write any articles for quite a while. But my friend Chip says I should think of it as a paid internship. People are paying me to learn how to write professionally. Sure, you might think anyone with the help of Grammarly can write well. It takes more than that.

The customer will usually have requirements about what voice to use.

They often have keywords they want you to use, and at what density. Often they want you to write in a certain voice. Ideally, they will put all this information in the job description.

In this article, they wanted me to write an article that closely mimicked the style of another article by a competitor. It felt slightly shady, but I did it anyway. I mimicked the style of the article. I used the first person, as that is what the source article was written in. I rewrote the headings but the content under the headings was totally my own.

I submitted it, and the customer came back with a request that it needed to be in the third person as it is going on a business website for a mortgage company. WTF? If you have a requirement that important, it needs to be in the initial instructions! I was turned off at first and was going to walk away, but I thought about it and decided to rewrite it. It only took another 20 minutes to change from first to third person. I have heard that some customers demand endless rewrites to get several free versions of the articles they can use on different websites. Since they are rewritten, they are unique enough to pass a plagiarism check. Thankfully, this customer accepted my rewrite. I assume that they may be new to hiring freelance writers and it was an honest mistake.

What am I going to do going forward? I actually wrote this article weeks ago, but I didn’t publish it. I have written a grand total of 2 articles as a freelance writer. It is hard to find the motivation to write for less than minimum wage. I could go flip burgers for more money. I have decided I should just write for my own sites. There are fewer rules to follow, and I am building a business. The difference between $3 an hour and $0 an hour is negligible. But in the long term, writing keyword-focused content for my own sites should pay off more.

I may continue to write for Textbroker or another marketplace, but not enthusiastically.

My next article in this series will be with another freelancer site.  Stay tuned!  I’ll link it here.

I made my first money online! (via Textbroker)

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I have written articles for this blog, but most of them are not really oriented towards making money.  My main focus on this blog is to write about my travels and review gear and services I use for living and working a mobile lifestyle.

I decided that I needed to switch things up a bit, so I applied to a Textbroker, a freelance writer exchange.  I love writing, and I can write thousands of words in my daily journal!, but I sometimes don’t know what to write about on this blog.  I thought that doing some freelance writing might a) give me some inspiration, b) see how other people are being successful, and c) earn some cash.  Slowly watching your bank accounts get lower and lower until they are finally swirling the drain is not something I advise!

I looked at some websites to do freelance writing.  I am going to try each one, and write a separate article about my experiences with each one.  I will link each article here.

There are a lot of things one has to consider when freelance writing.  Most of it revolves around money.  Some sites/jobs pay by the word, some pay by the hour, and some are fixed prices that you set.  There are pros and cons of each type.

I will get into all of that, but for now, I want to talk about my first freelance writing assignment.

I submitted a writing sample, which was evaluated by an algorithm, and I was given a rating.  I got 4 out of 5 possible stars.  It is right where I hoped to be.  5 is pro quality and gets paid 4-5 times what 4’s get, but there isn’t as much work.   4’s get double what 2’s make, and a good deal more than 3’s.  500 words could theoretically be written in about 30 minutes to an hour so that one could make $100 in 5-10 hours.  Unfortunately, that is less than a third of what I used to make per day, but you can work anywhere.  For example, I’m writing this right now from a Starbucks in downtown Baltimore.  Living costs can be really low if you do the van or RV life camping on free land, live on a boat, or live communally with others.  When you don’t have to spend $2,000 to $3,000 per month on rent or a mortgage payment, you don’t need to make as much money just to survive. I think $100 a day can be totally doable if your expenses are really low.

The key to keeping to that kind of production schedule is wisely choosing your assignments.  I was hunting through the board looking for subjects that looked interesting, and I found a technical subject that I could do.  It was 500-600 words.  It had a four-day due date, which I saw as a positive. I took the assignment, did a bit of research, and started writing.

Then I started to bog down. I had to describe how to perform a technical procedure on three different operating systems, Linux, Windows, and Mac, and then further break it down on Windows 10, 8, and 7.  (If you are still using XP now, I pity you and your virus-filled, out of support, ancient computer 🙂  I had to provision and spin up some virtual machines with the various OS’s, and my clunky MacBook Pro from circa 2009 that I retained for just this kind of thing.  This takes time.  There is no way this is getting written in 30 minutes.  I decide to put it on hold, and I grab a beer.

Over the next couple days, I looked at it a few more times, did a bit of work on it here and there, but mostly just wasted time finding other stuff to do.  I quickly found out that once you have one assignment, you cannot grab another one (edit: this is only true for new authors with Textbrokers. Once you successfully complete a few assignments, they let you work on a few at a time.)  This is a problem if you want to take a break from writing an article.  Maybe you are waiting for some inspiration, or you messaged the customer asking for clarification, and are waiting for a reply.

I think this is a good reason to sign up for multiple freelance marketplaces, so you always have something to work on.  This is definitely something I am going to do.

So, short story long, I was bogged down for four days on this.  I spent a few hours today on it, and finally got it done with about 38 minutes to spare!

Since it is a step by step technical tutorial, formatting and code and example outputs made the article submission complicated.  I had written it up in Microsoft Word, I copied it to the clipboard, and then pasted it into the submission box.  It looked like total crap!  I noticed that there was a “Paste from Word” button.  I tried that.  It didn’t look much better.  I ended up pasting into an HTML editor, and hand coding the post in HTML because the web-based WYSIWYG editors were mangling it horribly.

After feverishly marking up the text with HTML, I viewed it in a browser, and it looked good.  I carefully pasted my code into the window, and it finally didn’t look terrible.  16 minutes to spare!

Lessons learned:  technical HOWTOs take a lot longer than just vomiting words onto the page in an article that needs minimal research and formatting.  If you are doing this to make money, you have to demand more money for these kinds of articles.  I would do more like this, but I would need to make five times what I made.

Update: Just submitting the article to the customer does not automatically mean you will get paid.  The customer has to “accept” the work.  A couple days later, I got a message saying that my article was approved!  Hopefully, I will write some more articles this week, and on Thursday, I can indicate that I want a payout.  Then I would get PayPaled on Friday.  This is exciting!

Update:  This is the first in a short series of articles about my adventures in Freelancing.  Go here for the second article.

I started a new adventure, but probably not what you were expecting

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I will come right out and say, the main premise for this blog, adventuring in a Sprinter van, was a bust.  I purchased an extremely unreliable vehicle at auction.  I threw thousands upon thousands of dollars into it, trying to get it fixed and reliable.  It keeps breaking down.  I don’t even want to look at it.  It fills me with thoughts of failure whenever I even think about it.  I should just sell it before my insurance comes due again.  Or just take the plates off and drive it into the Harbor.  Haha.  While that seems to be a popular method of vehicle disposal in Baltimore, I would not do that.  I’m sure someone would buy it as a parts van.  Or if they know what they are doing, it might be a simple fix away from reliable.

This is the main reason I have not wanted to write much here.  I put $9K into the purchase and perhaps $10-11K into repairs so far.  That’s a huge $20K cash into something with absolutely no return.  I could have dumped that into a stock or cryptocurrency.  Or purchased a cool reliable Toyota Tacoma or Toyota 4-Runner.

When I spent that money, I was making a good salary and had lots of money in the bank from selling my house.  Now, my situation is much different.

I shouldn’t regret the decision to blow $20,000 because I have learned a lot by living on much more limited funds.  I think I am a better person for it.  And hungrier to make changes in my life.

Now to the big reveal:  I’m living on a boat!

Haha.  I love that video.  But the boat I’m living on is very much not like that boat.

Ah, this is more like it:

Living aboard a sailboat
This is my new home for the next couple months.

I had been idly considering boat life for a while.  Normally, I jump into a new idea with a bunch of cash and then figure things out later.  Not a great strategy with the van!  My buddy has a boat, and it needed some upgrades that he didn’t have time for.  I’m staying on his boat for a few months while I attack those upgrades and figure out what I’m doing with the rest of my life.

It’s a 30 ft Catalina sailboat.  I don’t know much about sailboats.  I am slowly learning the lingo.  Most of the things I’m doing are fixing leaks.  Removing hatches and ports, reapplying adhesive, and screwing them back down.  I replaced the cooler foot pump.  I fixed the hinges on the rope locker which had snapped off.

I’m in an unprotected marina in Baltimore.  It’s in the same neighborhood as the house I sold, so I get to hang out at my old neighborhood haunts.  It is an extremely walkable neighborhood.  Some of the bars and restaurants are quite expensive for my reduced budget, but if you shop around the specials and know where to go, it’s not that bad.

Some of you might be asking yourselves “What is an unprotected marina?”

I should post some pics of the difference here.  In an unprotected marina, your boat moves around a lot more.  Wakes from gigantic container ships, Coast Guard cutters, Navy ships, pleasure boats not observing the no-wake zone, and wind coming across the harbor can make the water choppy and create a lot of up and down, and side to side motion.  Wind from land can make the boat rock, but it isn’t as bad.  I think there may be a cost saving for being in an unprotected marina.  The position of your boat in relation to the waves makes a difference too.  You normally want your bow, or front, facing the waves.  Waves hitting you from the side is not fun, and since the stern, or rear, is wider than the bow, the rocking can be a bit harsh.

There’s a lot I could write on this.  I’ve spent quite a bit of money on trial and error purchases on heaters and mobile internet solutions.  I will review a few things in other articles.  In talking to other liveaboards, they report similar experiences.  Every situation is different, preferences are different, so what works for one person may not work for another.

I should tie this up with a logical conclusion.  My new adventure is living on a boat, adventuring in place.  Doing this in winter in Baltimore is a challenge.  I know others do it in colder climes, like Boston, so this is totally doable.  I have heard of two people (who aren’t a couple) living on a 30-foot sailboat, and I’m by myself, so I have lots of room in comparison.  I can even choose from two different places to sleep.  The V-berth or Quarter berth.

Zagg Rugged Book iPad case review – Or turning your cheap used iPad into a premium compact laptop!

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I recently purchased a Zagg Rugged Book case for my iPad Air 2.  In this post, I will review it and explain why I think it, combined with an iPad, is an excellent choice as a small laptop.  It is much more economical than an Apple MacBook or a Microsoft Surface.  I will also give some tips on getting a great price on this setup.

On Black Friday of last year, I was looking for a laptop upgrade.  My old gaming laptop from 2011 still runs extremely well, probably because I spec’d it out like a beast and ordered it custom, and then, later on, I upgraded the hard drive to an SSD and upgraded the RAM.  The problem is that since it is a “gaming” laptop, it gulps power which is a big problem for mobile people. When the fan spins up, it often sounds like a jet plane about to take off! Plus, the fan spins up at weird random times.  I could understand if I’m playing a game or editing a movie or mining a crypto-currency, but its just sitting by itself, idling, and it mysteriously starts screaming (in rage, or pain, or perhaps both!).  The point of this post is to not gripe about my old laptop.  I’m setting up this story. I’ll get there, I promise!

I travel a lot, usually in a van or car, and sometimes by bicycle!  A big, bulky laptop that does a great job running games or editing video has a lot of power requirements that are not compatible with the kind of traveling I do.  There is not always a motel room with power to plug into.  Most coffee shops do not have a place to plug in.  If they do, most likely there are already several people camped out around it with a twisted, demonic-looking (and very unsafe!) growth of power adapters and splitters hanging off of it!

Power Adapter Hell
Power Adapter Hell – Credit: Gordon Wrigley/Flickr/Creative Commons License

So I made do with what I had, and one day I found myself killing time at a Best Buy, and I saw a rugged iPad case.  Light bulbs went off!  Rugged!  Small!  Nice Bluetooth keyboard!  Backlit even!  It was even on sale, but for some reason that I regret, I didn’t buy it.  I did some research online when I got home, and they were much more expensive than the clearance model I saw at the store.  So I added it to my watchlist and kept an eye on the prices.

Months went by, but I never pulled the trigger.  It is a fairly pricey item, so it isn’t just an impulse buy for me.

Recently, I found myself looking longingly at really nice 13″ laptops, and then I had to virtually slap myself, and I decided that the Zagg Ruggedbook case was my best option.  Zagg makes them for multiple versions of the iPad.  I have an iPad Air 2, which isn’t current, so the availability of cases can vary.  My model was sold out of Amazon when I looked, so I got mine off eBay.

I’m so glad I got it!

Me writing this post in the passenger seat of my buddy’s Subaru while hurtling down the highway on way to a trail run adventure. Note:  I normally use both hands when typing, but I needed one to hold the camera.

I’m actually typing this review with it now.  I’m in the passenger seat of my buddy’s car as we drive to a trail run on the Virgina Creeper Trail.  The setup works pretty well, but I noticed a couple issues.  The case is kind of small to put on your lap.  And with the iPad on the hinge above the keyboard in a moving car, the screen shakes a bit due to the weight of the iPad.  I moved it around a bit and have resolved both issues.  I moved it back and have the screen resting on the dashboard, and have the keyboard wedged in the manspread between my legs to keep it from moving around.

When on a stable surface, there is no wiggling, even when aggressively typing

-First impressions:
Frankly, I was not very impressed at first when I unboxed it.  It seemed very flimsy when opening and closing.  I had to hold the hinge when opening and closing because I feared it would break.  Luckily, I didn’t obey my first impulse to immediately send it back. I put the iPad in the case, and then everything worked much better.  The hinge works great with the iPad installed in the case.  If you read some of the comments at Amazon, other people noticed the same problem, and evidently didn’t bother to actually try it out with the iPad in the case.

It comes in two parts.  One is the case for the iPad, and the other is the keyboard.  The keyboard is detachable.  When detached, the iPad functions just like a normal tablet with a protective case.  It also saves some weight.
It is very easy to detach.
You can reverse it, and that is supposedly “viewing mode”. If you don’t want to have the keyboard in the way while you are hands-off watching a movie or tv show, this is the mode you want.
While reversed, if you close it all the way, this is tablet mode.  It’s kind of heavy like this, but it is pretty good for when you don’t have a lot of space to store the keyboard and/or don’t want to lose it.

-Advantages of using an iPad with the Zagg Ruggedbook case

Long battery life.  To get a small laptop with this kind of battery life might involve a very expensive investment in a premium laptop.

Easy charging from USB.  This is a HUGE benefit.  You don’t have to drag around a huge AC brick that most laptops have.  You can charge it from the DC cigarette lighter in your vehicle or a battery pack.  Keeping a laptop charged while on the road or camping is a huge problem.  Keeping an iPad charged uses the same equipment you probably already have to keep your phone charged.

-Built-in Data connection.  Well that’s if you get one with cellular data.  I’ve had a couple wifi-only iPads before, and you can tether it to your phone if your carrier allows it on your data plan.  IPads with cellular data capability are typically $130 more than wifi-only ones, at least when new.  If you are shopping for used ones, the spread is much less.  When you add in that Verizon was offering unlimited data plans for multiple devices, it only cost me an extra $10 per month to add my iPad to my Unlimited Verizon plan.  I don’t want to go into too much detail about the plan, because cell carrier’s offerings change so often due to competitive pressures.  But the cellular data plan was a huge part of the value proposition for me.  Tethering a cellphone to a laptop sucks a lot of power.  This is way more efficient.

-Games!  Admittedly, the selection and experience is not up to what you might have at home with a gaming PC, gaming laptop or premium console.  But it will last more than the 45 min you might get out of a gaming laptop on battery.

I will do some research in the future and see how well the consoles can do in a mobile environment. I know I’ve seen van-dwellers on YouTube with an Xbox busily fragging aliens in their mobile man-cave.  You would need a high-efficiency TV or monitor to hook up to it.  But I like the minimalism of the iPad paired with the Zagg Ruggedbook.

Most games on the iPad are touch based, but some offer controller support and the Zagg Roughbook can act as a stand, so you can keep your hands free to use the controller to zap aliens or whatever.

Before you get scared away by the prices of Apple gear, know that iPads are easy to find second hand.  I usually purchase a slightly older one on Gazelle or eBay.  If you want to save even more money and are technically able and have the right tools, you can purchase one with a cracked screen on craigslist VERY cheap, and fix it.  Make sure it will boot up and it’s not activation locked because then it’s only good for parts.  Be suspicious if it is offered way below market rate.

-Apps
When iOS devices first came out, they were very disappointing user experiences.  I had much frustration and gnashing of teeth (perhaps some wailing was involved also;-).  As the years went by, Apple kept adding additional functionality which turned their devices from expensive toys that didn’t do much, to capable business devices.  I won’t launch into a several thousand word rant of all the frustrations I had with early iOS devices.  (although I really want to!)
With the upcoming release of iOS 11, it will only get even better.

Microsoft has made a big investment in the platform.  MS Office with Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and OneNote are really slick.  They’re fully compatible with the desktop versions, and with a recent update, they even seamlessly work with alternate cloud drives like Dropbox and Google Drive.  For a long time, they made it difficult and annoying to use anything other than their own OneDrive.

Google has also made a big investment in their iOS offerings.  Docs, Sheets, and Slides are really nice and have the advantage of being free!  Google Keep, which is their Notes app, still needs a LOT of work before I even deem it usable.

Even Apple has upgraded their own office suite called iWork.  It consists of Pages, Numbers, and Keynote.  When they first came out, they were absolutely frustrating in the extreme to the point of not being usable.  I reduced my blood pressure by 10 points by just deleting these apps! I recently tried them out again, and they aren’t as terrible.
Perhaps I will review them in another article.  I want to keep this article focused (or at least make my best effort) so I will cover the best office suite in another post.

One of the things that made work on an iPad so frustrating was that each app had its own file system, and they were protected from each other.  So if you have a file that you want to edit in two different apps, you had to hope there was some way to transfer the file back and forth.  More recently, they allowed better access to cloud providers from the apps.  So we used Dropbox, for instance, as a filesystem for the iPad.  But that was slightly silly, having to copy a file up to the cloud just to share it amongst different apps.  And the silliness went beyond silly if you are trying to edit large files like movies.  Try copying a multi-gig file up and down from the cloud just to do your workflow.  And what if you are in an area of poor or no data connection?  iOS 11 finally exposes a unified file system to the apps on the iPad.  This is a huge step to making it something you can do work on.

I will quickly run through some business apps I use.
Canva is offered as an iOS app for both iPad and iPhone, and as a web app on Canva.com, so you can create web graphics and logos from any device.

I have not edited movies on the iPad yet.  In my research, iMovie and Splice seem to be the best.  I’ll try them out and post a review later.

With mobile devices, it is often difficult to get one app that will do everything you need it to do, so you often use a series of apps on one file.  I am not heavily into photo and graphics editing, but the aforementioned Canva is awesome, and I also use Aviary for some tasks.

For writing, I like iA Writer.  It works well with my cloud providers, and it has a nice interface.


Here is a link to the Zagg Rugged Book for the iPad Air 2. If you have a different iPad, you can easily find one that fits different models.

Update:  I have been using this for a while now, and it usually works pretty well.  But when I go to busy coffee shops like Starbucks or Panera Bread, it sometimes doesn’t work.  It pairs, but my typing doesn’t register on the screen.  I have tried all the advice on their support site.  Turn off Bluetooth, and back on.  “Forget this device” and repair.  Charge the keyboard, even though the power indicator says it has plenty of juice left.  I’m not sure if it is just too many Bluetooth devices, or someone else has a Zagg Rugged Book.  I would imagine this problem would happen with any popular Bluetooth device in a busy area.  It would be nice if you could customize the name so it would be unique.

I also updated to iOS 11.x.  The multi-tasking is better, being able to cast the screen is great if you have an Apple TV.  It’s not as great as I was expecting.  If you only have room (or budget) for one device, I am really liking the small Dell laptops.  You can run Windows 10 or Linux on them.  I’m not linking to a specific laptop because most of them have limited inventories, and they will probably run out of stock and the link will be useless.

Drop me a comment below if you need some help deciding what kind of laptop or computing device you need.  Seriously!