Gratefullness

I'm in a kind of strange place right now. I'm constantly thinking how easy life is down here while at the same time so ready to get back to the US. I'm planning my next vacation for February. That ties in with the fact that right now, as I type, all credit cards are paid off. All balances at zero. I also made a large payment to the Jeep, hopefully the next one will pay it off. I will put the plane tickets on a credit card, but that will be paid off next paycheck as well. So, things are coming together. Finally. I'm giving myself December off in a way, no expectations, just enjoy the here and now. In January I start seriously looking for work back in the States.

I turned electricity on at the house in Nashville, talked to the codes folks who had been pretty much forced to condemn the front deck, and am moving along on the process of getting the house sold. That will impact the total debt free part. If I have to put mega bucks into the house to sell it (an oxymoron) I may not pay off the Jeep next month. Whatever, it is almost a done deal which ever way it goes.

No big decisions. I am trying to pace myself. I don't want to get too excited about being 'debt free' till I actually get there. For now, life down here is pretty easy.

Oops

In my previous post I mentioned 3 years in Honduras. What I meant is that I am in my 3rd year, 2 years and 2 months at this point. It is my 3rd Holidays here, 3rd time I've celebrated Thanksgiving, my birthday and Christmas in Honduras. So, it doesn't seem like it's been 3 years that I've been here because it hasn't... yet...

And, I have a report that the tenant is gone from my house and it doesn't look from the outside as if they did any damage. Woo Hoo!!!

Happy Turkey Day

I don't mean to be MIA. Just not a lot going on. I'm getting the apartment cleaned and sorted. I'm paying off debts. I'm just passing time until I am ready to start the process of heading back to the States. I'm ready. I can't believe I'm in my 3rd year here. The 3rd Thanksgiving down here. Soon, the 3rd birthday, the 3rd Christmas. This is a nice enough place to spend the Holidays, so I'm not complaining. I don't know any other way I would be this far along on paying off my debts. The tenant in my house in Nashville was court ordered to be out by midnight last night. No report yet if he actually left. I'll find out probably tomorrow. So, peanut butter sandwiches, Healthy Choice microwaved vegetable soup, and coffee is the food of the day so far. Works for me.

Back in school

I am actually enjoying my crypto class at coursea.org. I just watched two lectures on discrete probability. I probably haven't looked at anything close to that in over 25 years. And, I really did enjoy it. I'm not sure I learned anything I didn't already know other than the notation symbols.

http://openclassroom.stanford.edu/MainFolder/HomePage.php

This is a new-to-me listing of free offerings. I haven't explored them yet. The class on discrete probability was recommended in the forums of my current class. I'm bookmarking this. The Web Applications section looks like something I need to go through to do if I want to really do my own web-based blog.

The rest of my life is going ok. Got the apartment cleaned up. I have a 3 day weekend coming up for Veterans Day. I'm not traveling any until after the end of the year. Instead I'm doing on-line classes. :) What the heck, they are free and it keeps me out of trouble and away from the on-line shopping.

Changing my mind

My Computational Investing course sent me the intro saying that it would be starting soon. By the time I got around to deciding to not do it, I was already 2 weeks behind not knowing it had actually started. "You missed the starting gun..." Points for knowing where that line came from. Anyway, the intro mentioned that I needed Linux, or I could, if I insisted on using Windows, set up Linux in a virtual box. Then it listed the Python modules I needed. This was in passing, as an oh by the way in the letter. I do know how to install Linux, and have a Ubuntu CD I'm going to install on one of my laptops. I know how to do a virtual session. I know what Python is and could probably find what I need. However, I know enough about all that to know that I don't want to be dealing with doing all that to learn about investing. So, I unenrolled.

So, to make up for that I enrolled in a course on How to Reason and Argue. It says that I don't need anything except an internet connection and what they provide in the course. Works for me. It starts at the end of November. I'm still enrolled in the Cryptography course, which starts next week, I think. Guess I should check on that. Don't want "10 years have come and gone..." part of the quote to apply as well. This school stuff is reminding me why I didn't really enjoy college that much.

Not a lot else going on.

More details

My upstairs neighbor came home (thank you God) and told me what happened. It was in a fireworks factory in the middle of town... and they were working to make fireworks for the next couple of months when people will be setting them off almost constantly. Someone made a spark, and the whole place went up. It also flattened 3 houses next to it and blew the roofs off others. 3 young men were badly burned, 2 may be dead (unsure if that is 2 of the injured or 2 others as well) including the owner.

My upstairs neighbor is a retired RN from the US who came down here 4 years ago with the Peace Corp. Since they pulled out last January he lives here and volunteers at an orphanage here in town. I didn't know where the orphanage was in relationship to the smoke and explosion, and in fact they were fairly close to it. Luckily no one there was hurt nor was there any damage.

Honduras, where they put fireworks factories in the middle of town...

Explosion

I was finishing hanging up my laundry when the entire building was rocked by an explosion. I could tell it wasn't in this building, but it wasn't far away. I went up to the roof (listening for any signs of political unrest close like small arms fire) and saw a large volume of smoke about 4 blocks away. Sirens and people looking up the street. I live on the street that is the nearest way to the hospital. I didn't actually see the people in the backs of the pickups as they sped by, probably just as well. From what I can sort of decipher, a store that sells fireworks blew up. In this day of instant news, here in a small town in Honduras, just a few blocks from whatever it is that happened, I wait to have someone who speaks English tell me any details. Of course, Murphy being what he is, my cell phone is back at work. If they do a call down of those of us who live in this town from post, I will most likely be in trouble for not having it on me. More sirens going by... Life in Honduras...

More free courses

Awhile ago I talked about how I like the fact that I can find free courses on pretty much anything I want to learn on the internet. Thanks to the blog zenhabits written by Leo Babatua, I have some more sites to share with you. His blog post is about Unschooling for kids, but I figure that can apply to adults like me as well.

Since I am ripping off his resources, I'll give the link to his blog first:

http://zenhabits.net/

The first place I checked out was https://www.coursera.org/courses I have already signed up for 2 courses there, one on Computational Investing and one on Cryptography. I'll be in waaaay deep, but maybe it will fire off some of the lazy brain cells that haven't worked much for a long time.

The next site I checked out was http://selfmadescholar.com/b/ which seems to be a listing of available courses online listed by subject.

I just spent 10 minutes doing a vocabulary game. I got to level 45 out of 60 before I really didn't know the words. I consider my vocabulary to be above average. Test yourself at http://freerice.com and let me know if I really do have as large a vocabulary as I think. : )

For more fun go to Leo's post and click away. The list of learning resources is at the bottom of the post.

Hammock is Finished

No pictures of the hammock actually finished and hanging. It really never was fully stretched out once it was finished. It is in the back seat of my car rolled up. I had a going away party for one of the good soldiers, one I'll really miss, and I needed to get going as soon as I got the hammock finished. Earlier in the day I had said good by to one of the soldiers that had been down here for a year that I had worked with back at Ft. Lewis. Yesterday was a day of turning the page...

Hate the new Blogger

And by Blogger I mean the new interface, not a person. I just now am seeing it for the first time. This may be the brick that breaks the proverbial camel's back for me to switch to my own domain and software. I have started doing some of the detail work behind the scenes. However, my backup by just cutting and pasting ended up corrupted. In my sleep-walking state before vacation I just let it go. Back to work...

Lots of stuff pushing me to get back to my techie roots. Guess I should listen.

As for the hammock, tomorrow I'll tie the ends on. This past week at work was interesting, and a change in duties that is a good thing. I'm working to do a good job so it lasts as long as possible. However, at the end of the day I had no brain cells left to even do the half hour of work to finish the hammock. I will also retrieve my camera from wherever it is and take a picture. :)

I bought the book Getting Things Done. I read it years ago from the library, and finally decided to buy the book and put it into action. So far I'm making list after list, and cleaning off my computer station at home. I'm also getting my inboxes to zero. Down to 1100 from 1400 on my main one. Making a Someday/Maybe folder and a Reference folder sped the sorting. Part of this will also be making a POP account on my home computer to download all my accounts to. This is all also part of the move away from Google - making room on my domain for the blog. It's slow as I'm learning as I go.

This stuff keeps me off the streets and out of trouble, more or less.