Off the Grid, but Still Online

While not a developer, I do spend more or less my entire day staring at one or more screens.

My home has a yard that needs to be completely re-landscaped, and the manual labor for that has been such a rewarding and peaceful activity for me which speaks a lot to your point.

That said, I realized while buying supplies to build a wooden raised bed this past weekend that basic things like "screwing some boards together to build a raised bed" almost seems like an overwhelming task when I first approach it. I was stunned by this because when I was a teenager I was very crafty and always tinkered with things and would have thought nothing of this.

The only thing I can think of is that in this day and age of everything being simplified to a few mouse clicks or screen taps, everything else becomes a monumental chore by comparison.

In any event, I have my parts, and now I'm excited to put them together. And I even get to indulge the digital side of me as well by modeling out my yard in SketchUp so I can make sure I like the layout before I build things.

I'd also note that something as stupid simple as "putting in a path," once you learn how to do it, is incredibly rewarding to see with the finished product. I never felt that digging dirt was stressful--just a good workout. And the end result is something that gives me a nice sense of satisfaction every time I look at it.

I was surprised that UPS will now do overnight delivery of Amazon orders to my mom's house in rural Oklahoma (she's at least a mile from her nearest neighbor), even though the truck originates from Lawton, OK - 50 miles away according to Google Maps.

Her "broadband" connection is a 2-6/2Mbps Wimax connection via an antenna on the roof to the nearest town a few miles away. It's still weird being able to sit out "in the middle of nowhere", talking to friends online, and order stuff I need and still have it show up the next day. Was a lifesaver when I stayed there for two weeks back in March after she had a hospital stay, and I needed a proper office chair and a folding table to act as a desk rather than using her kitchen table.

Was still able to work remotely just fine (most of my stuff was SSH to remote servers, and a web browser).

More surprising is that when I did the same thing earlier this month to help her after knee replacement surgery, that I could get T-Mobile LTE inside her house - back in March, I'd only been able to get it while sitting on the front porch.

Quite a change from a few years ago when all she could get was 21.6Kbps dialup, and I had to send her a literal pile of USR Courier modems with instructions "if you have a lightning storm and the modem won't work the next day, throw that one in the trash and plug in another from the stack."

My wife and I quit our SF Bay Area jobs and traveled for a little over 2 years. We backpacked abroad, restored a VW Bus and drove it around the US, and explored the Bahamas on our sailboat.

One of my biggest takeaways from our trip - which I think is extremely relevant to the message here - is that my goal will never be to NOT work. Not ever - even in retirement. The consensus strategy of spending 40+ hours of every week of your life saving up so you can enjoy retirement is, to me, a broken model. We met so many people who followed that model only to realize they didn't have the health or energy to enjoy all that they had worked a lifetime for. It's heartbreaking.

Work is a GOOD thing. The preferred solution - and I realize this is a high bar that we're beyond fortunate to even consider(more on that at the end) - is to find something you're passionate about and you wake up every day wanting to do. Obviously that's the old cliche of just doing what you love, but it turns out I'm one of those dullards who has to learn some of the cliche life-pro-tips through experience to truly understand them.

I'm a solo founder on a business that's just entering private beta, so I know first-hand that there's an entirely different discussion about delayed gratification and working at an unsustainable pace in the short term to build something meaningful in the long term... and that gets complicated. There's no rule of thumb that I know of.

I could write a book about this discussion, but in sum: I LOVE codingdave's comment, because he used two words that my wife and I ALWAYS use when discussing this: "conscious" and "choices". These words came up in every discussion we had on our travels when the topic came up. The people we met out there didn't get there by accident. They get there because they made choices. They lived below their means. They saved. They learned new skills. They took leaps of faith. VERY few of them were wealthy.

When we talk about this, I usually start to say that everything in life is a choice; that we ALWAYS have choices, but the sad reality is that isn't true for most people. I won't turn this into a political discussion, but will simply say that it would be amazing to live in a world where even the poorest of the poor have palatable choices that they can realistically make. In our current world, those of us who ARE fortunate enough to have some palatable choices can work towards making that a reality. For those that would call that a pipe-dream, there are easily identifiable challenges like affordable childcare that are super-realistic and would go a long way in the right direction. There are amazing organizations already doing great work in that sphere.

My business is somewhat tied to this topic. It's mentioned in my comment history.

PS: A grandfathered unlimited 4g plan and a cradlepoint is GOLD on the road. :)

There seem to be a handful of rural pockets in the US that have or are scheduled to install fiber.

Our network (Co-Mo Connect) publishes network rollout status and maps at http://usage.co-mo.coop:8080/signupstatus.php

Before here, we looked at WK&T (Kentucky/Tennessee) http://wktelecom.coop/ That looked promising as well.

It was some work to even find these two networks, then finding homes within the service area and trying to find out if they were eligible was the next challenge. Lots of Zillow searches. If the home is pre-wired, they'll probably advertise it as such in the listing. I think the sweet spot (in terms of value) is finding a property that is eligible but hasn't had an install yet. In our case that meant eye-balling the neighborhood maps at a house-by-house level.

To find similar networks in other parts of the US I would start with Zillow searches (for "fiber") or Google searches for state + fiber + rollout, state + co-op + fiber, or state + co-op + Calix. Calix is a popular FTTH equipment vendor. You could also check their (or other vendors) press releases, which they usually issue when they partner with a new co-op. See http://www.ftthcouncil.org/OurMembers

I wish there were a friendlier UX for this. Our search lasted about 2 months. If anyone is interested in my area, email me and I should be able to help by finding properties before they hit MLS, qualifying addresses with the contacts I've made at the service provider/installers, and of course just driving around. It would be fantastic to build a hacker community here.

See also: RMS and his willingness to avail himself of other people's cell phones and grocery store club cards even though such things are verboten surveillance instruments.