DaedTech

DaedTech Digest: Exploring the Northeast

As with last week’s slow travel chronicle, I’m going to continue with a temporary break from answering reader questions.  (Though by all means, keep firing away with them.  I’ll get back to answering in due time — I just think it’s probably interesting to chronicle as I go, for those interested in this lifestyle).

The Vermont Countryside

Last Sunday, we found ourselves picking our way through underbrush, scrambling up a mountainside on rocks here and there and stepping over roots.  It was muddy, dreary, and generally damp, but the rain held off.

If you want a feel for it, look at the picture below.  We made an afternoon of hiking along Lake Willoughby, with a view of Mt. Pisgah, in Northern Vermont.  In this picture, we were looking out at the lake.  Our hike would take us through those trees and the bottom of the cliff faces on the left hand side.

This has been somewhat emblematic of our time here so far.  Dreary, chilly, incredibly scenic, and lots of natural sightseeing.

The day before, we hiked a bit by Jay Peak, and then just drove around the area, looking at the leaves changing over the scenic, rolling hills and small mountains.  But even on non-weekends, we’ve been making a point to take walks along nearby Lake Memphremagog or else to do short drives.

We’re getting our money’s worth with this excursion, peepling all the leaves there are to peep.

It’s Sightseeing… And Lots of Work

But apart from occasional snatches of tourism, we’ve been working a lot as our business grows in size and scope.  We’ve got a nice, spacious house that’s well appointed, and we’re set up to run the business.  So we do.

We’ve eaten a lot of utilitarian meals and spent a lot of weekdays working from the time we wake up until we go to sleep.  Logistics and errands bring us into town, and we’ve dined out a couple of times.  But mostly, we’re having the sort of weeks you’d have while busy at the office.

No television, no social life or plans, no movie nights, and no casual hobbies.  Such is this stint of slow travel.  We’re either working, or we’re exploring Vermont.

I won’t complain…

Picks

• I’m using Hubspot for a CRM, and it’s been pretty great for a free service.  Oh, yeah, it’s completely free.  So if you have a CRM that needs to grow beyond a spreadsheet, I’d give it a look.
• I have an Amazon prime membership, and I’ve been listening to Amazon music or Prime music or whatever it’s called this week.  I’ve been pleased with the selection.

The Digest

Hey, whaddya know — I actually did some stuff this week.  For the second straight week!

• Here’s a Hit Subscribe video from over the summer where Amanda and I (in a hammock) talk about how and why we founded the business.
• For any of you who are fans of my codebase research series, here’s another one.  I looked at what codebase properties extension methods correlate with.  Do they make your code cleaner?  Not really…
• Finally, on the Hit Subscribe experiment site, make me a programmer, I wrote a post answering some common questions about how non-programmers interact with a dev team.  This site’s target audience is non-programmers thinking of transitioning into the field, but I don’t imagine that precludes any of you savvy veterans from taking a look.

And with that, as always, have yourselves a good Friday and a good weekend.  And stay tuned next week for an account of our experience driving to Montreal.  (Probably.)

DaedTech Digest: Notes from the Road in Vermont

It’s Friday, which means it’s time for yet another slow travel blog/digest post.  If you’d like to catch up on the category, you can read previous editions here.  I’ve mainly been answering questions people ask me about the slow travel lifestyle.  But, since we just packed up did a mini-move to Vermont, I figured I’d chronicle the experience in more live fashion.

On the Road: Heading to Vermont

As I’ve described in the past, we have a house on a lake in Michigan.  That feels to us like an idyllic spot, so we tend to stay there in the summer, almost slow-traveling at a property that we own.

So for us, there’s summer and then there’s 9 months of slow travel season.  And now, it’s slow travel season.

So last Saturday, we packed up for a month of travel, pulled all of the boats out of the lake, and got ready to go.  Sunday morning, we packed up the car, wrangled our cats. and hit the road.  Since the drive to Newport, Vermont takes around 15 hours, we split it into two days, stopping at a cat-friendly hotel in Rochester, New York.

Once you’re past Eastern Ohio, the whole drive along the southern coast of the Great Lakes becomes a pretty one.  The trip treated us to rocky countryside, leaves starting to change, rolling hills, and lots of woods and small towns.

Settling in for a Month of Slow Travel

And now, here we are, settled and resuming normal life.  Unpacking typically takes an evening, with complete settling in happening after a day.  With slow travel, there’s always the initial supply run as well.  This consists of groceries, whatever you’ve forgotten to pack (there’s always something), and stuff you discover you need.  For instance, I forgot to pack a keyboard and mouse, so I bought those at a local Walmart, along with a wifi range extneder because the router here is kind of iffy on one side of the house.

Once settled, we really try to absorb the local everything.  Amanda went out to a local grocer last night and got gourmet Vermont maple syrup, some kind of locally made steak/chicken rub, and even this maple-flavored sparkling water, which I admittedly view with some skepticism.

We’re on a lake, so, in spite of some rainy weather since arrival, I’ve made a point to jog along its shore and into the town.  We’ve gone for day and night walks, discovering a worryingly friendly skunk that lives underneath a neighbor’s house, and getting to know what shops and restaurants are nearby.  And, I took immediate and full advantage of the view I have for the next month while enjoying my morning coffee.

Picks

And with that, let’s do some picks.

• Last week, Amanda found this app, GoodRX, which let her get a prescription for like half the price.  I can’t speak directly to it myself, but that sort of savings means it’s probably worth a look.
• I’ve signed up for a trial of ahrefs, a keyword research and SEO tool, and I’ve found it to be extremely helpful in finding good post topics.

The Digest

And, hey, look at that, the internet has published some actual blog posts that I’ve written this week.

• For NDepend, I wrote a post about the code smell of shotgun surgery — what it is, what causes it, and how to fix it.
• On the Gurock blog, I wrote about holes that your group might have in its overall testing strategy.
• And finally, here’s a video Amanda and I did about running a remote business.

Happy Friday and, as always, have yourselves a good weekend.

DaedTech Digest: Packing Edition and What We Take

As I mentioned in a recent digest post, we’re heading to Vermont in a few days, where we’ll stay for a month.  Since mentioning that, we’ve gotten questions about leaving our house unoccupied and about what packing is like.  Since I answered the former last week, I’ll answer the latter this week.

What Does One Pack for a Month?  Necessities

I’m going to try to resist the impulse to turn this post into my packing list.  Instead, I will simply mention that I make a packing list.  I use Trello for the packing list, and tend to reuse the same one each time we vagabond.  So, protip, I guess.

But, in terms of what we take, let me lay it out in broad strokes.  Amanda and I each pack a large duffel’s worth of clothing, representing about 10 days to 2 weeks’ worth of clothes.

This can be surprisingly lightweight or a little bulky, depending on the weather.  Not so much cold vs. warm, but how variable.  For instance, we’re going to Vermont for October, which means that we might encounter anything from t-shirt weather to frost and snow.  This means we need to pack more stuff.  If we were just going to, say, the Equator or to Alaska, we could bank on one kind of weather and pack more lightly.

From there, we pack certain necessities.  This includes our cats and their stuff.  It also includes my fairly meaty computer setup.  That actually speaks for most of the cargo space in our Jeep, with the rest going on top.

And Then, the Other Stuff

Work, animals and clothing is the core of our packing efforts.  But we also bring some things we could live without.  I always haul around a bag of electronics, which includes a few Alexa devices, a cordless phone, power strips, and other stuff I tend to like having.  Amanda brings a small suitcase thing full of makeups and nail polishes and such.

After that, the other main thing that we bring is some foldable, economical furniture.  This includes a folding chair and a folding table, in case the place we’re going doesn’t have a serious desktop setup. (We’ve learned from experience after buying these things upon arrival, when the AirBNB doesn’t have a desk.)  We also, space-permitting, will bring things like little bedside fans or humidifiers/dehumidifiers.  Again, things we’ve purchased after arrival and learned to take with.

And, speaking of buying things after arrival, I’ll close with this note.  You’ll always buy some stuff after arrival.  Assume that you’ll spend a couple hundred dollars when you get onsite, buying fans, cheap tables, coffee makers, or other things that aren’t there and that you realize that you need only after seeing they aren’t there.

And that’s packing.

Picks

• This is kind of a weird one, but I want to throw a nod to Quest Diagnostics.  Following a routine physical, I had to go for routine blood tests, and that experience can be anything but routine.  But with Quest, I made an appointment online, showed up a little early, and they had me in and out in 5 minutes or so.  Remarkably efficient.
• This past weekend, my old Fitbit dipped to an unacceptable battery life after a respectable 2.5 years.  So we went out looking for one during the middle of our Hit Subscribe outing in Chicago.  At a Target, at like 9 PM on a Saturday, we found a Fitbit Flex 2 on clearance for $29.99.  It’s lightweight, holds a good charge, and has been making me pretty happy so far.
• Speaking of Hit Subscribe, I can’t help but do a slight bit of homer bragging.  We’ve been growing and bringing on more people and we now have our first employee that isn’t me or Amanda.

The Digest

I’m kind of light on written things of late.  I’ve done a few, but clients have yet to publish them, and I’ve been doing more video and audio content, lately.  So, in that vein, I’ll offer some new media for the digest, all of which are videos.

• First, here’s a Youtube video on the Hit Subscribe channel where I describe topic planning for clients.
• Amanda and I have also been doing Facebook Live videos about running a remote business.  Here’s the first one we ever did, a couple of months ago in Durango, CO.
• And here’s the second Facebook Live (pardon the wind).

And, as always, have a great weekend, folks!