“Reminds me of the carpenter who got into gardening.
Figured he’d raise lattice & tomatoes…”
Perhaps it’s because of being cooped-up in the house because outside temps will be pushing 100F for the next couple of weeks… Or, because other than attending to a couple of subscriber issues this morning… Or, because I’ve about had my fill of flying for a while…Or, because there’s not ham radio antenna work that can be done when it’s so damn hot out…Or…
Whatever the reason, I’m pondering how to better monetize my life. And I’d bet you do the same thing.
Everyone has a list like this: A time of the year when – for whatever external reasons – your ability to innovate, create, replicate, and denominate new ideas comes to a screeching halt. Productivity collapse sets in. Seasonal burn-out? Maybe.
In the Pacific Northwest, for example, too much rain and cold weather kills just about all outside work. Like roofing, housing painting, and if the rain is heavy enough, landscaping and yard work along with gardening.
Along the northern tier states,, Wisconsin, northern Ohio, and such, it’s just weather that’s too damn cold. Same in the hinterlands of Colorado. I have now idea how our friends who built the big castle up at the 7,700 foot level of the mountains west of Trinidad, Colorado did it. When I get up to those kinds of altitudes, my get up and go turns into long periods of sleep. I’m a sea-level, or neat it, kind of guy.
All of which gets me to the first major truth in my new quest to monetize something: Where you are matters little. But mental attitude matters greatly, and to a lesser extent, so does physical conditioning.
I have to admit to some envy of my son’s ability to monetize his life: He works for his local health department for maybe 20-hours a week, then as a researcher at the university 40-hours a week. As if that’s not enough, he’s an assistant apartment house manager, and when that is slow, he’s consulting and working events as an on-call EMT at things like festivals and music venues and what-not.
He’s smart: With risk widely spread, he’s about to work 70-80 hours a week, save money, and make plans for the future. Something of a workaholic like dad, but he’s been thinking about this “How to properly monetize my life?” question, as well.
Been making a list (and checking it twice) to keep track of ideas. Things I can monetize. Any comments of suggestions on how to better monetize retirement are welcome.
a. Finish my novel DreamOver. Estimated time to complete and really proof-read? About 200 hours. And I hate proof-reading and correcting. (I is a writer, and I ain’t much on editing.)
b. Skip the first novel (hard to give up on 75,000 words and a bit stupid) but Grav is really pulling at me.
Demons on the To-Do list. My old friend Larry Coffman used to tell me “Ure biggest problem, Guru, is focus and that includes completion…” No doubt about it. I’ve only got a 5,000 word attention span – I’ve measured it.
Try measuring yours sometime, and let us know.
c. Up visiting with the doc who has developed the breakthrough treatment of macular degeneration has gotten me to thinking about photobiomodulation. And I’ve got a number of light mixes I’d like to try and grow tomatoes with.
Reason? Tomatoes require lots of light – and if you can invent the right light mix to outperform sun (or halogen grow lights) using LEDs, then the pot growers will beat a path to your door. Yeah, sure, tomatoes for us. What people would do with Ure Boxes would be up to them. We have no control over what seeds go in. We just know there is a (resinous) market for high light densities at lower energy input levels. The kind that won’t self-reporting via Smart meters to DEA.
d. With the big shop, and the grandchild, I’ve been thinking about kid’s toys…like that drawing compass for chalk and concrete. Problem with this one is no barriers to entry and OMG product liability for a kid’s toy…are you kidding me?
Woodworking is a simple hands-on joy, though.
e. Easiest of all would be to increase readership over at the Peoplenomics.com site by doing some actual promotion of the site. But again, that eats time, a little money, and might result in a pop-up ad on the UrbanSurvival site if I got serious about it.
You will notice that my Amazon box ads have disappeared. Laziness on my part, I suppose. But it makes the morning page speed load times faster for you. (You’re welcome…) the odd in-line references will remain and they are fast-loading being embedded HTML.
f. Work on various subtle energy fronts is on the list, too. I’ve been collecting the parts to build a Schumann Resonance machine that will POSSIBLY help people’s health. Need to wind a couple of Hula-Hoops with magnet wire – and again, it’s all about time.
Winding a few miles of 28-gauge magnet wire is even less fun than watching paint dry, though.
Don’t know how much reading you have done on subtle energy medicine, but there’s something to it. Our grounded half-sheet seems to have made a difference in sleeping and to be able to improve on that kind of thing is something I look forward to.
Even more “out there” is work on Weather Modification – which seems closely related to Orgone energy. I still haven’t found the right mirror for the airborne “cloud buster” I was given by a friend to test. But still have it and am still working on the theory behind it.
g. Equally intriguing is some work colleague Vince and I have been working on that relates to anti-gravity. And this, in turn, gets back to the B field of magnets.
Everyone has seen those dog-bone type lines when you hold a bar magnet under a piece of paper with iron filings on it.
But little work has been done on concentration of the B field.
You see, James Clerk Maxwell wrote about this stuff in the 1700’s – when group-think wasn’t so prevalent. He dated to ask “What is the force that pushed the field away from the bar magnet in the middle? That, force, my friend, is the B field.
As you know, the Boyd Bushman patent for creating magnetic beams is out there and we have been working speculations as to how to build a B field analog and then – the most intriguing part is whether this would unlock the doors to antigravity… On YouTube you can find Bushman describing how magnets in opposition react to gravity differently.
Meantime, pulsed magnets in opposition at [pulsed] high power levels gets us off into the same kind of territory rumored in the Philadelphia Experiment but doing the work in this would maybe find the effect and that’s what’s at the core of my second novel, Grav listed as b) in this list.
This one has been the most recent time sink. Reading up on how to wind the proper coils to concentrate as much magnetic energy in opposition as possible…that kind of thing. Even then, once the design is done, then we’re back to winding coils and driving them in synchronized fashion and then test flying them.
The Bushman video claims that magnets in opposition fall to earth slower than unopposed magnets which fall at 32 fps/s2 “regular” speeds. Opposed magnets (really strong ones) fall slower.
The concept, then, is to build a high-power pulsed magnetics in opposition rig, perhaps at the 500 watt level, and then fly it in the Beechcraft to see what happens to aircraft performance. Would there be an improvement?
We already know that the military is using plasma airfoil modifiers on advanced aircraft….and what would be interesting would be to work on the power-density (energy weight) problem to see if magnets in opposition could result in dramatic aircraft performance improvement. The dot-mil people aren’t really keen on sharing their breakthroughs with the Beechcraft club that I’ve seen.
The plot for novel #2 (Grav) should be smacking you in the face about now. Be a hell of a movie too, with the right “secret sauce” in the story line which, no, that’s not being disclosed until the book is done.
h. Totally practical is my big deck railing project, because that will be the basic outline of my waist-high hydroponics system that I want in operation for this fall.
Again,. even this project has potential: To save a lot of money on fresh veggies and take that expense down to nearly zero.
— – – –
The point of this morning’s ramble is that everyone one of us has ideas from time to time and we only have so many hours per day to get them all actualized.
The problem – and we all suffer it – is finding the right balance between dreams and possibilities, then narrowing it down to only those possibilities with the highest personal pay-off matrix.
Money is but one measure, of course. The others are personal satisfactions; things like the joy of sharing, the pride of craftsmanship, the solace in art.
I think that’s why I have always been drawn to reading great minds in business. A fine starter course is The Drucker Lectures: Essential Lessons on Management, Society and Economy. Drucker was among the first, back in 1957 to articulate the idea of “people who work with knowledge.”
What to monetize – or reward – then? The wallet, the heart, the health, the spirit?
Somewhere in the management books, I keep seeking out suggestions and counseling on managing the most difficult business of all.
Life.
Around the Ranch: Yes, Another Hitachi, Please
A bit of intellectual gear-shifting here.
I can’t think of a tougher place to test out a power tool than here at Uretopia…our 29-acres in the East Texas outback. It’s 15-minutes (*if you’re heavy on the foot) just to get to a gas station.
So when I bought a Hitachi lithium battery drill set about five years back, I was hoping that it would last longer than some American brands were doing. We were rebuilding our home in a serious way and there are maybe 10,000 screws holding the place together: Holding down flooring Luan at one screw each 8”, or the long drywall screws which have made the home almost soundproof…or the thousand and one other things that we drill, screw, mix, stir and so one with the drill.
Well, it’s finally about to give up the ghost.
No fault of its own. Perhaps it’s been knocked off the roof one too many times. I can’t say.
But, what I can report is that shortly we’ll be getting another Hitachi KC18DGL 18V Lithium Ion Driver Drill and Impact Driver Combo Kit. Actually, our first kit was with the flashlight, but that was deemed useless because we already have a fine assortment of LED flashlights and I don’t have an impact driver.
A good intro to the difference between impact drivers and conventional drills is on YouTube here.
When we ordered our first set, that wasn’t an option. But now they have it right and I’m looking forward to the tool.
An alternative, because Milwaukee makes fine tools is their Milwaukee 2691-22 18-Volt Compact Drill and Impact Driver Combo Kit but it’s $50 bucks more.
On Amazon reviews, the Milwaukee duo scored 77% as 5-stars, whereas the Hitachi scored as whopping 93% at 5-stars. And, like I said, after dropping mine onto the grass, gravel, concrete, and asphalt around here, I’m back for another one.
Point about Milwaukee’s, though: Lots of tradesmen swear by Milwaukee tools and so the reviewers of their product may be more harsh in their reviews since their expectations might be higher, making a living with tools as they do.
Not to drag this out indefinitely, but to my way of thinking,, anyone who owns their own living space and doesn’t have the luxury of having the apartment manager calling the handyman, ought to have an electric drill/driver. I can’t even begin to imagine life without power tools, at least as long as we have them.
Write when you break-even,
George george@ure.net
George- you need to look at a Youtube Video called “Project Camelot looks at George Green’s magnetic motor.” It doesnt say this in the video, but he had people building a larger one, and they were shot at twice, so they decided to market it as a toy instead.
George,I’ve been telling you for years about the price of gold and the long term fortunes of the Phillies.Right now,they’re safely in last place,with no team having a chance to catch them.When gold was at its zenith,the Phillies had just completed 2 straight seasons of the game’s best record.You could almost superimpose a chart of the gold price and the Phillies’ record since gold’s re-legalization in 1975.
George, sorry to burst your bubble, but LED lighting units are already widely used by professional Pot growers. Special LEDs that emit light in the blue and red spectrums: blue for vegetative growth and red for flowering/budding/fruiting. They’re pricey, but supposed to be incredibly efficient and economical to operate. Just do a web search for hydroponic growing kits and you’ll be amazed at the industry that is solidly in place and earning billions of dollars a year. Reportedly, small-scale Mom & Pot growing operations[sorry! couldn’t resist!] are springing up all over legal states as the ideal, small startup companies with a high investment return in a very long time. BTW: these same growing systems WERE originally used to grow… tomatoes! And still work just fine for that lesser-rewarding purpose.
Sell your Beachcraft and ranch now and
move on to bigger and better things.
Or you’re going to be stuck
in mud.
Yea G, tomatoes due require light. here is So, Cal. all the tomatoes that have full days sun have died. the ones in my yard that have partial days shade are growing fine. HMMmmm. Not quite sure what to think of that.
If you want a positive output from your work – you gotta work at it – promote it – figure out HOW can I get more folks that are into investing to pay for my “words of insight and wisdom”. The biggest expense is time – but time is money – If you lay out more time for ‘advertising’ – will the reward generate more $$ for the amount of time spent? At minimum wage output will you get $15/hour input?
Hey George, about that hydroponics providing vegetables for next to nothing: Aside from the obvious start-up costs have you priced the nutrient solutions? If you have and have found it cheaper than having to buy the whole supermarket produce section as well as the farm that fills it, please let me know. I thought about hydroponics myself until I went to price things out. As for me and my house, I’m sticking with aquaponics. Haven’t totally worked out my PH problem yet (lots of limestone filtering my well water here in Florida). But believe you me, fish poop with occasional foliar spray of liquid Miracle Grow, is whole lot cheaper that nutrient solutions.
George- I’d be careful about flying with a high power pulsed magnetic field in close proximity to your avionics and ignition system… Don’t want to create your own personal EMP pulse while at altitude. You may fry both magnetos, your instruments, and/or both. Test it on the ground first!