We live here now.

From Toronto to the corner of Nothing and Nowhere: it's an adventure!

Browsing Posts published by J. B. Rainsberger

It’s funny because it’s true

Sarah forwarded me an instant classic diagram, which I tried to reproduce here, but couldn’t, for WordPress-related reasons I don’t understand. Look at the diagram if you want to understand any of the foregoing. I have experienced both in horrid detail and all its glory, respectively.

Our last dwelling in Toronto was, we believe, the last house in Toronto proper to have a septic tank. Being a nearly 100-year-old farmhouse, that might not come as a surprise, but being in Toronto, it shocked us. Sadly, we discovered a, let’s say, flow problem with the tank the hard way. It took too much time and too many of someone else’s dollars (another reason to rent in an expensive city) to fix that problem, but it was fixed long enough for us to push the image out of our minds of a sewage marsh at our front door. Of course, the septic tank connection was replaced with what we understand is an entirely illegal hookup to the city’s storm drain, but frankly, that was never our problem.

Backing up computer systems, though, is a pleasure. It is the primary reason I recommend Mac computers to my friends and family. (Really!) Mac OS X makes disaster recovery routine by minimizing down time when disaster strikes. I have yet to see a backup/restore utility on the Windows platform that allows me to resume working within 5 minutes after a serious hard disk failure. Yes: 5 minutes. At the risk of boring you with geeky details, the key point is that when I back up my computer to an external hard disk (USB or Firewire, it works the same), I make the backup “bootable”. This means that my computer can’t tell the difference between booting from its internal hard disk and an external one. What this really means is that since I have nightly backups, when my internal hard disk fails, I simply boot to the external disk, losing on average half a day’s work, then continue what I was doing. When I can take a suitable break, I survey the damage, either reformat or replace my internal hard disk, then (and this is my favourite part) back up the external hard disk to my shiny new internal hard disk. There is no “restore” in this scenario, only backup, and it’s just a question of which direction. I can even add a second external hard disk while my internal one is out of service and backup external disk 1 to external disk 2 so that I always have a backup to work from. It works beautifully for a few reasons: even a disaster means I can resume working in 5 minutes, I can keep working while I’m waiting to replace my failed disk, and it’s easy to move data onto the new disk when it’s ready. I can even just wait until the next nightly backup at around 1.00 AM. Let me emphasize that I have never seen a Windows backup/restore platform allow me such peace of mind. I used to lose on average two full days restoring from a backup on Windows, including buying the replacement hard disk, reinstalling the operating system and figuring out which files to restore and not to restore. Disaster recovery is routine with a Mac as long as you’re willing to pay about $250+ extra for an external hard disk and a copy of SuperDuper!

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The First Visit Back

December 27, 2007 No comments

We went back to Toronto in December for the first time since our move. Strangely, our first visit wasn’t for family, but for business: we spent two days in Toronto almost as tourists, staying at the Sheraton Centre where I was attending a meeting of the board of the Agile Alliance. Now we’ve stayed in Toronto hotels before, and even quite nice ones, like the Westin Prince, but this was the first time I felt like a visitor to Toronto since I grew up in Brampton. It was a little odd. The following week we came back “for real”, and it felt more like home, even though we mostly stayed outside the city in, of all places, Oshawa. (Ew.)

We visited friends and family for pre-Christmas, a happy accident, since it gave us time to meet up with friends before they got sucked in to visiting only family. I got to see friends from high school, university, and even rode the TTC, even though I had to buy a Day Pass for the first time in over a decade. If it weren’t a business expense, I’d frame it. In the large, of course, Toronto hadn’t changed much in six months, so I don’t quite know what I was expecting. It felt quite familiar, although I truly did sense myself a visitor. Most notably, none of the keys in my pocket opened a lock anywhere in the city. I had nowhere to stay in the city that I could call my own. I wouldn’t be returning up the Yonge line to Sheppard, then getting on the Sheppard line to Bayview, then walking a few hundred meters to the door. I didn’t see Bayview Village on the way out nor on the way home. I did, however, go back to Spadina/Bloor, a neighborhood I hadn’t frequented since my aborted graduate studies at University of Toronto. It was an odd mix.

So what did I get from the First Visit Back? People miss us. It’s a little ironic that we’ll probably see them more now than we did when we lived up to an hour away. Also, we’ve bought a bunch of tickets to Blue Jays games. We’ll probably see 11 or more in 2008, compared to the two or three we got to when we lived there. I suppose I have to admit it: Toronto is now a tourist destination for me, just like New York or Stockholm. Winnipeg is now “the city” for me. I really do live here now.

Travel

Google bait: getting your remote and set-top box to play nicely

August 19, 2007 No comments

If you’re in Dauphin, Manitoba, and you ordered an HDTV set-top box from Westman Cable TV, you might have received an Atlas M1055 remote and a Motorola DCT3416-I set top box. If you did, and if your remote isn’t working entirely as expected, try entering the remote code 1376 for remote button CBL. Here are the complete instructions, so you don’t have to trundle through the manual.

  1. Press CBL, then release.
  2. Hold SETUP until CBL flashes twice (about 3 seconds).
  3. Enter 1 3 7 6 and see CBL flash twice. (If it doesn’t, try resetting your remote with the instructions below.)
  4. Press PWR and see the set-top box turn off. (If it doesn’t, reset the remote.)
  5. Power on your set-top box and check that the LIST, LIVE and “BACK UP” buttons work. (They didn’t at first, which is why we went through all this.)

Sarah and I spent about 3 hours trying to figure this out. As of the date of this posting, the Motorola DCT3416-I was relatively new, so none of the printed booklets had the right code. The codes 0276, 0476 and 0810 worked to varying degrees, but not as well as 1376 does.

Resetting your remote

To reset your reset, enter 9 8 2 at step 3 above. If CBL flashes 4 times, you’ve reset correctly. Stop after step 3. Now try the above instructions from step 1.

I hope this helps someone out there. I wish someone had written this on a weblog before today.

Tech none

We live here now, the next step

August 18, 2007 No comments

We are in the house. It’s still unfinished, but the work is coming along, and we’re trying to live here for one night. We can’t shower and we can’t cook, but we can sleep, watch TV and be online. In fact, this is the first communication from the new house, and at pretty high speeds, thanks to Westman Cable Internet.

After this, the next step is to be able to cook or shower, I don’t really care which. Our friend John will be working non-stop for about the next 3 days, and he’ll make great progress in that time. Our saga with Wasauna’s shipping department continues, but that’s for another entry.

For the first time in 65 nights, we’re sleeping in our home. That’s important.

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Not your father’s 1986 World Series

For about 20 years I played Pursue the Pennant, then Dynasty League Baseball, because of their realism. While I liked some of the arcade-style baseball games, I was always more interested in games that chose realism over flashing lights. Now, in the age of YouTube, I’ve found the greatest mix of realism and arcade in baseball history. Enjoy.

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Robert Saywer’s novel, “Rollback”

I have recently read Robert Sawyer’s latest release, Rollback. Overall I enjoyed the book, but after I finished it, I realized how much different it was from most of his other work. Books like The Terminal Experiment or Factoring Humanity are true mysteries: high-tension, usually involving crime with a scientific background. I didn’t feel the same tension in Rollback as I did reading most of his other work. I want to be clear: I enjoyed Rollback, but simply differently than I’ve enjoyed Mindscan or even the Quintaglio Ascension series. While the effect Rollback had on me was different, two key elements of Sawyer’s work were familiar, and I enjoyed them.

First, the philosophical question raised by his scientific theme: rejuvenation in the strictest sense of the term. In Rollback, the ultra-wealthy (wealthier than “mere celebrities”) have access to gene therapy techniques that return the cells to a younger state. Over a period of a few months, these younger cells return the body to a younger state, that of the time soon after the body has matured. This allows those near death to extend their lifetime by 60 years or more, but also to regain their youthful quality of life. Rather than have his characters gaze at their own navels over this question, Sawyer invites the reader to consider the possibilities, while allowing his characters to make decisions and get on with the business of living. I prefer this to the typical morality play in which two characters represent each side of the argument and spell out what the author believes through their dialogue and actions. I don’t have much need for a preacher these days, so I’m quite happy that Sawyer chose not to preach.

More personally, much of this novel takes place in Toronto, with a little in Winnipeg. I freely admit that one thing that attracts me to Sawyer’s work is that so many of his stories take place in Toronto. For me, the story comes more alive when I can actually visualize the setting, rather than having to imagine it. This is the first time reading such a story since the move to Dauphin, so thinking about places like Senlac Av. and Park Home Av. brought on even a feeling of nostalgia. This certainly intensified my feelings and helped me enjoy the book even more. Now that we live in Dauphin, the mention of Winnipeg towards the end felt almost like a nod in my direction, as strange as that sounds. I wonder how long it will be until those Toronto streets and landmarks become unfamiliar to me. It’s already been a month since we’ve ordered from a Pizza Pizza.

I enjoyed Rollback, even though it wasn’t quite was I have grown accustomed to reading from Robert Sawyer. I recommend it, unless you would be dissatisfied with the absence of a murder mystery.

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30 Days

We have lived in Dauphin for 30 days now, and I have to say that the experience has been positive, on the whole. Aside from a few minor annoyances, some of which have to do with our temporary living situation, rather than our new town, I’m happy with the result. Here is a quick rundown of the good and bad of living in Dauphin, Manitoba.

What I’ve liked

I’m walking more, so I at least have the illusion of getting in better shape. I have no idea whether I’ve lost weight, and if so, how much, but I average 45-75 minutes walking 3-4 times per week. I don’t feel rejuvenated or anything startling such as that, but I’m sure it’s had some positive impact on my health.

Most of what I need is within less than 10 minutes’ walk. This includes Wal∗Mart, groceries, clothing, a hardware store and my new hair stylist. I have got into the habit of shopping for groceries almost every day, so very little goes to waste in the refrigerator.

For some reason I can’t put my finger on, we haven’t purchased much pop (soda for those of you who prefer that term), instead drinking mostly water and coffee. Mostly cutting pop out of my diet, I’m sure, has been a good thing.

The people we’ve met here have been quite friendly and very helpful. When we bought supplies for our cats uptown, we mentioned we couldn’t buy the 20 kg bag of cat litter because we were walking back downtown. The salesman offered to deliver our items to us later that day. Granted, some businesses deliver as a matter of course, but it seems delivery is easier to arrange here than it was back in Toronto. At a minimum, people here offer to deliver, whereas in Toronto I imagine you’d have to ask. (I never did, so I can’t be sure.)

What I haven’t liked so much

The house isn’t done yet, in spite of everyone’s best efforts. That has put a damper on the move, and made it feel a little more like a vacation and a little less like a move. Still, it is progressing, and we believe we’ll be able to move into it in about 3 weeks, so that gives us something to look forward to.

We’ve missed some TV we’d otherwise like to see, and I’ve been watching far more late-night mind-numbing TV than I’d like to admit. This has more to do with living in the hotel without our digital cable box and digital video recorder than anything else. That, and the late-night TV is more the fault of my poor sleeping patterns. I can’t blame that on Dauphin, since I’ve been battling that for the better part of two decades now.

It’s been hot here. Hotter than Toronto was. I didn’t expect this. I have been telling people the winter is dry here, and it is, but summer is humid as all hell. The humidex has been between 40 and 45 degrees (that’s 104-110 for you Fahrenheit junkies) most of the past two weeks, and when I asked a friend about it, she told me that this is pretty normal for the summer in Dauphin. It certainly makes the walk uptown to the bank a challenge. The most positive spin I can put on this is that the best motivation not to stop exercising is to be 15 minutes’ walk from the hotel and realize that if I don’t keep going, I don’t get out of the punishing heat.

In all, I have no regrets. Check back in the winter to be sure. :)

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The SLURPuccino

So we’ve been living in Dauphin for nearly a week now, and while I noticed this in Dauphin, this is not a statement about Dauphin. It is a statement about the North American obsession with mediocrity.

Sarah and I spent a week in Como, Italy where I attended XP 2007, a software conference. Part of the Italy experience was the beautiful coffee, notably espresso and cappuccino. If you’ve never had the European coffee experience, I will say that it is marked by one major philosophical difference from my everyday experience at home: quality over quantity. Specifically, an Italian cappuccino is perhaps 20% the size of what Starbucks sells, and there is almost literally no way to compare the flavor. The closest I can get is the difference between coffee from a standard drip coffeemaker and coffee from the Aeropress. You simply have to experience it to relate.

So I was walking past 7/11 here in Dauphin and saw a sign for the “SLURPuccino… where the SLURPEE meets cappuccino.” I nearly fell over. This is what’s wrong with my fellow North Americans: they’d rather have a lot of a mediocre experience than a small amount of a superior one. That’s not original; I read it somewhere on the web, but can’t remember where and am too lazy to find it. Some blog somewhere. It’s true.

I’d rather have a small amount of a superior experience, thanks. No SLURPuccino for me.

Changing your life

We live here now

…well, almost. At 7.29 PM CDT, at least according to my watch, our plane landed at Dauphin airport, officially beginning our simpler living adventure. The 40-minute flight from Winnipeg to Dauphin was easily the smoothest of the past few days, convincing me that it’s well worth the $125 one-way ticket. Sure, the 12-seater was intimidating, including having to flip up the seat to sit in it, but once we were in the air, it was quick and painless, a phrase that applies equally well to flights and death.

So our house is not yet ready, as a combination of our lead contractor’s wedding and some bad weather got in the way of completing the work. No matter: we are put up in our friend’s house, so while it’s not exactly what we’d hoped for, it’s more than good enough. I suppose it will ease me during the transition, as I can fool myself into thinking we’re visiting, rather than having moved.

But moved, we have. We no longer have keys to our old Toronto home. Technically, we’re homeless, in spite of all the property taxes we have to pay this week. (Only $2200 for two houses. How much are your property taxes?) But before long, we’ll be in our new home.

We live here now.

Dauphin MB, The Life Experiment none

Why Dauphin?

Four more nights on this rotten sofabed. Four more nights in Toronto before we begin our adventure in Dauphin, Manitoba. We won’t be there until June 25, but there’s the small matter of a trip to Como, Italy in the interim, so that means only four more nights in Toronto. But why move?

It’s step one in a straightforward, four-step plan to retire early. Forget about Freedom 55, we’re looking at Freedom 40! We used to try for Freedom 35, but it looks like I’ll miss that by a few years. Here is the ionospheric view of our plan:

  1. Lower expenses to a minimum.
  2. Build enough passive income to cover expenses.
  3. Learn how to develop enough passive income to cover ten times our expenses.
  4. Move to wherever we might want to live, if not Dauphin, Manitoba.

Since it’s generally easier to spend less than make more, I imagined it we would reach a 1.0 wealth ratio quicker if we spent less.

Your wealth ratio is your net passive income divided by your expenses. A wealth ratio of 1.0 indicates that you no longer need to work at a conventional job to pay the bills. Be sure to include all your expenses, and not just the ones you might put into the typical optimistic budget.

We reasoned that our biggest expense would be a house, and we didn’t want to take on the liability of a house in Toronto, so we looked elsewhere. Sarah found houses under $50k (Canadian, of course) throughout the country, but Dauphin seemed to have a decent mix of what we wanted from semi-retirement, so we went there, and three years later we’re ready to move there. I digress. The point is that we could eliminate our single largest expense (rent or mortgage payments) by buying a house we could afford with cash, and that’s what we did: the house into which we are about to move cost us $38k including closing costs, compared to the $20k+/year we would pay in rent for a comparable space. Instead, we spend about $1500 on insurance and property taxes per year. In total, we estimate our annual expenses at about $20k, including lodging, communications, basic transportation, insurance and food. It’s like having everything but the lodging expense free of charge. Who wouldn’t love
that?

After we have lowered our expenses, the next step is to generate sustainable passive income streams worth more than our expenses on a month-to-month basis. Our current income streams include rental properties, interest on personal loans and interest on cash in the bank. Normally I wouldn’t include bank interest, but the amounts right now are not trivial, so they’re worth including. At the present moment, our passive income streams are worth in the neighborhood of $8k/year before taxes, which is at least $5k/year after taxes, representing a wealth ratio of approximately 0.25. This is a pretty good start, and includes only the most reliable, sustainable streams of income we currently have. Our passive income is at least $5k/year, but at most already well over $25k/year. This reflects the amount of uncertainty in some of our streams of income, either because the income is not reasonably guaranteed, the principal is at risk or the income stream is likely to disappear with a month’s notice or less. It would be possible to boast that we’re already out of the rat race, but it’s more reasonable to say that we are on our way. Once we reach a wealth ratio above 1.0, we can move on to step 3.

This is clearly the part where I start hand-waving, but the reasoning seems sound enough to move forward.

Once we have enough reliable passive income to cover our living expenses, we no longer need to work in the conventional sense. This means that we can do anything we choose with our time. While I’m sure I’ll spend some amount of time relaxing, the next step is to figure out how to “add a zero” to our passive income streams. The theory is that the time we used to dedicate to working to pay the bills can now be spent learning about more profitable forms of investing. This will include bigger deals of the types we now do (loans, real estate) and other, more sophisticated kinds of investing. Not only will we have more time to learn these things, but we can choose
to work to earn money to participate in these deals, rather than having to work to pay for living expenses. This is the phase during which we could choose to spend more, but if we instead re-invest in ourselves, we should be able to turn $20k/year in passive income into $200k/year in passive income. This would let us move on to the
final step of our plan.

Once we have, say, $200k/year in passive income, we should be able to live just about anywhere in the world we could reasonably want to live. Granted, that’s not enough to retire in places like Tokyo, the San Francisco Bay Area or London, England, but we probably don’t want to live there, anyhow. I would be surprised if we had difficulty finding a place we’d enjoy living that costs more than $200k/year. At this point, we’d be able to finance virtually anything we’d reasonably want to do. Would we live like royalty? Likely not. Still, we would never have to worry about paying our living expenses again. If $200k/year of passive income weren’t enough to retire, we would be doing something very wrong.

So that’s why we’re moving to Dauphin, Manitoba: it looks to us to be a good mix of cheap enough to fit into our plan, but not so remote or desolate as to be devoid of quality of life. It’s small, inexpensive and friendly, just like it says right on the licence plates. A good place to start our retirement and a safe place to learn how to go from semi-retired to indefinitely wealthy. With any luck, that’s only about seven years away.

Stay tuned to see how we’re doing.

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