I like to write. In fact I like it a lot. I think I have 7 “drafts” that I’ve started for this blog that may or may not ever get published. My PTSD largely manifests by my social isolation ( I just don’t like being in public like I used to). So I don’t get to talk to people anymore like I used to do. But now I have a format to write about my thoughts/ideas/dreams and it doesn’t matter really that I know that they will be largely ignored and go unnoticed.
But as much as I like to write, it turns out I find TEXT boring. I’d much rather be able to add video, pictures, graphics to help amplify what I’m trying to say. There is a good reason that “a picture is worth a thousand words.” There is much more that can be expressed through pictures. For example, there is no sarcasm font. Other than perhaps using bold or by CAPITALIZING, it is hard to add emphasis to expressions. It is easier to use inflections of voice, right?
So I’m thinking of entering the marketplace for a good camera. Because of our potential adventure at sea it would need to be waterproof/resistant. Other than that, I don’t even know what my needs are. I don’t know photography at all and have no idea what types of functions are even available.
So for now I guess my phone will do, but I’m looking for advice. So help me out people. Not just with cameras, but how to learn about photography (without a college course – remember I don’t like people). What do I need to know before buying something? What functions are must have’s? What isn’t worth the extra price? Do I need separate video camera or are they all integrated now? What questions do I not even know enough to ask?
So Julie and I started this blog to document the what we are up to, whether that is a journey onto a boat, or a journey back to the farm. One of the necessities for keeping up a blog though is good internet connection. We realize that might be spotty on the ocean, but surely not here in Pleasant Grove, Utah, right?
Wrong!
You remember this, right?
The last few days almost made think that dial up sound would be an improvement! On Monday morning I tried to login to write something about our running events. But to my chagrin I got a page telling me “Hmmm, we can’t reach this page” when I tried the link in my Favorites for logging in.
“I must have linked the wrong page,” I thought to myself. So I manually typed into the address bar the URL for the admin login. Same result… ‘Hmmm, we can’t reach this page.”
Well now I think it must be a problem with the host servers. So I get onto their page and start a chat with their Tech Support. This isn’t fantastic, because they are obviously from India and had only a tentative grasp of English (not racist I swear, the stats page for the blog showed views from India as they were trying to work it out). The Techie tells me that the server is working fine and that she can access the site just fine. She tells me to try another browser. Same result… except when I hit refresh it magically works.
I’m happy again and things work just fine.
Until Tuesday. Tuesday morning brings the same problem. But I come across it only about 10 minutes before I need to leave for an appointment at the VA, so I just ignore it and leave, expecting that I’ll have to work it out when I get home. Fast forward a few hours. I get home and try to login and … voila’ … it works just fine.
Wednesday does basically the same thing. Page works just fine in the morning, doesn’t work at lunchtime, I wait about 30 minutes and try again and it works. Frustrating, right? I have an on-again, off-again server issue?!?
Yesterday (Thursday), same story only this time there is no on-again. Worked just fine when I posted in the morning, but sometime between then and 3pm it stopped entirely. When it didn’t just magically start working again after about 2 hours I got on with Tech Support, again, to find out what in the world the problem could be.
Well, Techie from India has no clue. She sends me different links to try, has me use different browsers, has me try a different device (cell phone), all to no avail. She then says I must have a faulty Plugin and that I’ll need to deactivate it to get things to work. I ask her how I’m supposed to do that if I can’t login? She’s lost and transfers me to someone different. This person tries all the same things, but insists that things appear to be working just fine on their end and can’t account for why multiple devices and browsers all fail to find the server. She suggests I try clearing the cached data in the browser (which I didn’t know how to do) but the moment I hit the button to clear it screen we are chatting in freezes up. I had to close it, log back into their site, and start all over.
Well, this third person (gender neutral name) asks, “can you try to login with a different internet connection?” To which I reply, “would you like me to leave you now, drive to the library and check, and then come back?” She says not to do that, but comes to the conclusion that it must be a problem with the ISP (Internet Service Provider). The problem isn’t my computer, because other devices here don’t work either (and I can obviously get online), nor is it the server because all three of the techies can access it just fine on their separate devices (and show no server issues). The conclusion being that the internet being provided to this house must be the issue, and I need to contact them.
Well before I do that I DO run down to the library and… I can login just fine. No issues finding or loading the blog pages. Which means that for some reason unknown to me, the ISP is occasionally allowing access to my blog, and occasionally they aren’t. If any of you computer gurus have a better explanation (and preferably something I can do about it) then I would love to hear it.
Unfortunately I have no faith that the ISP here at my in-laws (Veracity) will be able to do anything. They provide the worst internet service I’ve ever had. Blake (Julie’s Dad) uses them not only for internet but to host his website (Radical Glow fishing tackle), and is on the phone with them almost every week to get some issue resolved.
What I’ve realized is that if I am just patient enough that eventually the ISP will be able to find the server. What I’m not clear on is why in the world it would occasionally not be able to find it anyway.
If you have an idea, feel free to share it with me in the comments.
Wow. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at the variation in boats, but boy are there a lot of different options out there. And I don’t know anything about any of them. And because I don’t know anything about any of them, how am I supposed to know what I should be looking for? I don’t even know the difference between a boat and a ship… but there seems to be some disagreement there. There is no right answer to what I should be looking for, but I turned to an expert for some advice.
Christa Prows and her husband sold their farm in Utah back in 1997 and moved their family of 7 onto a Catamaran and have spent lived on it in the Caribbean ever since. The Deseret News had an article about them last summer that I came across on day 1 of my research. I reached out to the author of the article and he put me in touch with Christa herself.
Now I’ve never met her, but she seems like a wonderful person. Very gracious and encouraging. We’ve exchanged a few emails where she gave me some advice, waylaid some fears/concerns, and has answer many questions. She game me her number and said to call any time, but I told her until I know enough to know what questions I SHOULD be asking, I’d stick to email and hopefully avoid coming across as a fool.
Christa’s recommendation regarding a boat for a family our size was a Catamaran between 40-55 feet long. That seemed as good a place to start as any… so I went out looking. Now if you followed that link, you’ll probably notice the first thing that I noticed… Boats are expensive! Now I didn’t expect to pick one up for my pocket change, but I didn’t know for sure what to expect. What I found is pretty close to what I expected. If you are going to buy a boat large enough to use as a house, then expect to pay about what you would for a house.
But I also wanted to look at other options. Turns out the prices for traditional mono-hull sailboats are about as expensive as Catamarans/Mulit-hull boats, or possibly a little less. But who said we have to have sails? Something like this would seem nice and I wouldn’t need to learn to sail. However, further research tells me that I NEED to learn to sail… the power yachts are about the same price as those with sails, but they only travel about one nautical mile per gallon of fuel. Which means that I’d be able to live on it, but almost certainly wouldn’t be able to afford to move it. And since we’d like to move around… sails it is.
But what type? The answer to that depends largely on what we want to do with it, and we don’t really have an answer to that yet. I’d love to sail the world, Julie would love me to forget it all together, and the kids just don’t want to be eaten by sharks (Kristie). I think for at least a few years we’d be content to just putter around the gulf coast and Caribbean/Bahamas with possibly an excursion or two up the East Coast. The biggest concern we have is safety, and so we’d hold to sheltered waters until we felt real comfortable, and the Atlantic (and Pacific) don’t really fit that description just yet.
So what will we do? Not a clue. I guess you’ll have to just keep checking back to find out.
As with all adventures, I find myself facing a whole lot of things that I know nothing about. I’m sure that doesn’t surprise most of you.
As fantastic as I think it might be to document all the goings-on we have, such as the research I’m doing or the plans we make, I’m not sure I’m necessarily eager to share to much personal info. While I doubt many strangers will follow along, there are a great many things that I am just not comfortable sharing about myself (especially regarding my health). So we’ll play this by ear and see how it goes.
Today’s step toward boating was learning how to set up this blog site. I have never done a blog before, nor has Julie, and so this has been quite educational. I don’t know where to put the credit for the inspiration for starting this. Perhaps it was divinely inspired (though I doubt HE cares), perhaps a memory prompted it, or maybe some subconscious vanity required me to seek the attention (let’s just agree to not acknowledge this one though, okay?).
I have no aspirations for this blog other than to keep people informed of where we are and what we are doing. Even if we just end up back on the farm in MO, life there was filled with adventure and learning. And while Facebook is a fine format, I thought something a little nicer (more formal ?) for sharing those adventures might be nice.
Julie and I talked over the idea and last night concluded (after not much consideration to be honest) that we liked the idea. So today I jumped right in. Just about all the credit goes for helping me get this up and running belongs to Amy Lynn Andrews from AmyLynnAndrews.com. She gave very easy to follow steps, including screen grabs, of how to make this happen.
On the off chance that we find a fantastic life full of adventure on the high-seas AND that we can capture that excitement on our blog, it is possible to make a little money by blogging. And not wanting to waste the (very slight) chance we decided against a free blog that offers hosting but they keep all the profits from ads and such. So we had to find a good hosting site.
It didn’t take too many web article to find out that BlueHost is the place to go for that. If you are willing to make a 3 year commitment BlueHost will host your blog for $70 per year. That is not pocket change for me, but seemed to be just about right to 1) not have me abandon the project, and 2) not bankrupt me either. It felt like it was a happy medium between the two. If it was free (or near to it) it would be easy to just stop. Much more though and it would have felt prohibitive.
So after establishing an account at BlueHost (about a 10 minute process) we were next establishing one with WordPress.org. By all accounts WordPress is the premier blog creation software/site. It was very easy to set up and finding advice for how to manage the blog is easy to find (I’m yet to determine if that advice is good). I took much of my advice from the aforementioned Amy Lynn Andrews.
I’m know that there are things I don’t know. I’m sure there are many things that I don’t know that I don’t know. Hopefully that will come with time.
I’d say the process to get to this point (a blogsite that I can make posts on) was fairly easy. If you’ve got a passion that you want to talk to the world about, but are hesitant about your computer skills, I say GO FOR IT! It is simple to learn, and surprisingly exciting.
