Hitek Homeless July 23rd, 2008
Hi.
We’re Johnny and Jenn, a couple of hardcore IT geeks; the hairy, furry toothed sort that speak in TLA’s (three letter acronyms), can’t explain anything without drawing a diagram and walk around the office barefoot. After a combined 24 years in the field, we got fed up with cubical life and started plotting our escape.
For more than nine months, we applied the sort of intense research and out of the box thinking that is only normally seen at 3AM when the coffee and Mountain Dew are flowing and the project is due tomorrow, but seriously in need of a complete rewrite. All of that research and preparation paid off with… well… you see, we live in the back of a pickup truck. It is a large truck. For a pickup truck, I mean.
Anyhow, that’s neither here nor there. What’s important is that we got out. Now, we’re roaming around outdoors (that’s the big blue room for those of you still inside) and seeing what else life has to offer. We’re going to places where they’ve never heard of the Internet along with places that have heard of it, but think it’s something you fish with.
So, if you want to see what it’s like in the big blue room, come right on in. The beer is cold, the campfire smoke will get in your eyes and the pay is lousy.
Tags:
pirate,
truck camper,
unix geek
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johnny July 4th, 2008
Don’t let me take you away from your 4th of July celebrations, but when you have some spare time, sit back and read the Declaration of Independence again. In fact, read as much American Revolutionary history as you like. Its fascinating stuff; full of smugglers and privateers (pirates!).
It’s not something you hear about terribly much, but for nearly half of our country’s existence, we employed privateer ships as part of our naval force. In fact, both sides of the conflict used privateers during the Civil War. Countries with a large naval power refused to recognize privateers as prisoners of war when captured and treated them as common pirates.
What’s my point in all of this? I don’t really have one except to remind you that the price for independence was paid in a large part by privateers, smugglers and first and second generation transportees. We’ve put on a lot of airs in the past two centuries, but when you get down to it, most of us are just plain folks.
Like my flag? Chris Whitten has an excellent article on the history of the Gadsden flag.
Now get outside and blow something up! If the neighbors come out to yell at you, I’m not saying you should hit em with a bottle rocket, but a warning shot across their bow might be in order.
Tags:
history,
holiday,
pirate
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johnny June 20th, 2008
Yup. That’s how the locals know us. ‘Those nutty pirates up on the ridge.’ The day after a camera shy black bear strolled through our campsite, we decided to pull out and refill on water, dump our tanks and go grocery shopping.
We stopped to orient ourselves and ran into a fella that’s full-timing in an even smaller rig than ours. He’s riding a mountain bike and pulling a small trailer behind him. After chatting with him for an hour or so and giving iffy directions to two other people that stopped by, we hit the road.
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Tags:
campground,
campsite,
hummer,
national forest,
pirate,
Pisgah
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johnny May 1st, 2008
After far too much time spent planning, preparing and waiting, we are finally on the road!
We spent a few hectic days cleaning out the remains of our storage unit and some work on the truck. Friday afternoon, our Bodiak front end receiver came in along with a receiver mounted cargo carrier. Unfortunately, the cargo carrier stuck out an absurd amount from the front of the truck… roughly 14 inches past the receiver before the basket portion even began! With some fiddling, I found that we could use the holes drilled for people that wanted it to stick out even further (I have no idea why) to reverse the basket so that it would mount over the raised portion of the carrier support. This still left about a foot of useless steel sticking forth, which I was tempted to use as a battering ram. Instead, I waited until the welding supply shops opened on Monday (I blame Murphy for using all my gas on Thursday) and cut it down to a manageable size. See? Everyone really needs an oxy-acetylene torch in their rig!
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Tags:
campsite,
civil war,
columbia sc,
fuel,
oxy acetylene torch,
pirate,
storage,
winchester va
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johnny April 20th, 2008
It’s been quite a week. Tuesday night, we got a friend to watch the cats (thanks Eduardo!) so we could take the camper over to Lakeland for repairs. Pretty minor stuff, but we wanted to get it fixed before we hit the road at the end of the month.
Tuesday night was spent in another beautiful Wal-Mart parking lot. The ‘master list’ of Wal-Marts that do not allow overnight parking shows both Wal-Marts in Lakeland as off-limits, but there were several RV’s and trucks already parked and no signs posted, so we went inside to check and were told to go ahead. The following morning, the guy in the class A next door came out to see us off, quiz us about the large pirate flag flying from the ladder and show off his pirate tattoo. People in RVs are weird. And they’re following us.
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Tags:
cat,
conibear,
damage,
lakeland,
pirate,
rvs,
truck camper
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