The Best and Worst of Wellington

My time here in Wellington is nearly up. In a few days, I pack up all my stuff and shuffle off to the South Island for a little New Year's revelry, and then on to Melbourne. So, what to say about Wellington?

The Bad

There's no doubt that my time here has been, uh, challenging. Both of my personal computers, the one that sits on my lap and the one that rests between my ears, have experienced spectacular hardware failures. If only my bio-ware were as easily replaced as my laptop.

The weather has been disappointing too; even the local are complaining about the lack of a summer. But there's something to be said for high winds in a city full of women wearing skirts. Never let it be said that I fail to see the glass as half-full. Seriously, watching women gamely trying to hold their skirts from blowing over their heads is funny, funny stuff.

And as a base for digital nomadism, I can sum up Wellington in two words: "Don't bother." There are no coffee shops with free WiFi, period. What Internet there is, is sloooow and expensive. Want coffee with free refills? Ha! You can't even buy filtered coffee here -- espresso only, and it's pricey.

The Good

I feel guilty complaining at all about beautiful Wellington. Like when I went for a short jog up Mount Victora the other day...

 

It took only 10 minutes to reach this breathtaking view:

 

And it's only 10 minutes in the other direction to walk into town, where I've made myself a fixture at several local establishments. I can enthusiastically recommend The Malthouse, a beer-lovers oasis. And! And! They have free WiFi. I know! The staff are beer geeks (and computer geeks) of the first order. Ask for a bottle of Coopers Extra Strong Vintage Ale. Good stuff.

I've also become close with the whole staff of The Jimmy Cafe and Bar, the site of my little medical mishap. They made me promise to keep in touch after I leave, and I will.

For a cafe with serious hipster credentials, I like Midnight Espresso on Cuba Street, and Fidel's. In fact, all of Cuba Street is pretty darn cool.

And obviously, I don't hold Wellington responsible for my health and hardware issues. On the contrary, I couldn't have hoped for a more forgiving place to encounter challenges like those. I've learned a lot about how to cope without really ending up worse off in any way. So bonus.

I leave in a few days for the South Island, where I'll experience complete radio silence. My next post will probably be from Melbourne, in a new country, in a new decade. So until then...

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. And what a year it's been!

The Nu Nomad, Now In Book Form

I've linked before to nunomad.com, a site devoted to location-independent living. Well, now you can learn the ins and outs of working and traveling from a easy-to-carry paperback. The Nu Nomad: Location Independent Living is available now from Amazon.com, just in time for the holiday!

 From the description:

Would you like to travel for months at a time and maintain or even increase your spending power while you have the time of your life? The Nu Nomad is a "how-to" manual for those who are serious about breaking out of the office and into the world. This resource includes information on all vital aspects of designing a location-independent lifestyle.

(Disclaimer: I haven't read it. This ain't a review or a recommendation.)

Making Lemonade from Laptops

The laptop I bought last week turned out to be a lemon. That's the bad news. The good news is that I can continue to use it until the new model comes in in a few days. Then, I get essentially a free upgrade. W00t!

Here's what I've learned from this experience:

1. Buy from reputable firms that will stand behind their product. For me, that was Harvey Norman, a big electronics chain in New Zealand.
2. Understand your power as a consumer. The technician first tried to tell me nothing was wrong. Then he tried to tell me that it's normal for trackpads to be jumpy when the laptop isn't on a perfectly flat surface. First, that's bull. Second, it doesn't matter. As a consumer, three words suffice: "I'm not satisfied." There's no arguing with that. Once I made that clear, we got straight down to business.
3. Be firm about your requirements. I can't afford any more downtime, so sending it away for repairs was not an option. The store manager understood completely and worked with me to come up with a solution.
4. Never let anyone talk you into buying the display model, regardless of how much of a discount they give you. That machine has been on and running for probably 8 months, and people have been pounding on it non-stop. Is it any wonder that the trackpad would be possessed be demons? The keyboard will probably give out too, and the battery is already weak. Just say no to the display model.
5. When hardware isn't behaving 100% to spec, don't hesitate; get it looked at or replaced immediately. Hardware problems never get better on their own, and they usually get worse -- much worse -- very quickly. Heard any strange noises coming from your hard disk lately? Run, don't walk, to the nearest PC repair shop. Really.
6. Don't scrimp when it comes to your professional tools. I tend to be frugal and make do with what I have. But when it comes to the tools of my profession, I'm not scrimping any more. The productivity gains more than make up for it. I'm putting myself on an aggressive upgrade cycle. Laptops, phones, accessories, services -- I deserve the best! So do you.

One other good thing has already come of this: I splurged for a bluetooth mini-mouse. How did I ever get anything done without it? It's a fabulous investment for any traveling computer professional.

Rotorua and Orakei Korako

Just got back from a weekend with C at Rotorua, New Zealand's geothermal stink-pot. Smells like rotten eggs, looks like nothing you've ever seen. These next photos were taken about 45 minutes South of Rotorua at Orakei Korako Thermal Park, where the ground steams, geysers erupt and mud boils. It's nuts.

 
 
 

Here is lovely Lake Rotorua, actually the caldera of an active volcano. That doesn't seem to trouble the hoards of tourists playing in its waters and enjoying the local hot springs and mud baths.

 
 

All the swans on Lake Rotorua are black. Isn't "black swan" supposed to be idiomatic for a statistical outlier? Nobody tell Nassim Nicholas Taleb, ok?

Backup, backup, backup

Everyone is always jammering about backups. "Backups are important. You backup your data, right?" Times were when my backup solution was a hastily burned, unlabeled DVD, lost in my office under dusty piles of O'Reilly books. Real men don't backup! (But they do cry often.)

When I decided to travel, I decided my old system (a-hem) wasn't good enough. Yesterday, I put my backup system to the ultimate challenge: total system failure. How did it fair? Let's see!

But first, let's recap. For my backup solution, I went with Jungle Disk, a so-called cloud storage provider and backup service. You install Jungle Disk on your computer, and it copies your data to a server in the sky, safe from harm. Every so often, it scans your disk for changes and updates its remote copy.

So when my laptop overheated yesterday I was merely livid as opposed to homicidal. My data was safe. (There was also a fair amount of ridiculous running around in the rain looking for a PC repair shop, but let's stay on topic.) I walked into an electronics shop, plonked down my Visa and walked away with a new machine.

I installed Jungle Disk on my new laptop and pointed it at my remote data. "Fetch!" I commanded. And fetch it did ... veeeeery slowly. Turns out, in New Zealand "broadband" doesn't have quite the same meaning it does in the States. I eventually recovered my data by a combination of (a) being patient, and (b) quickly copying data off my old laptop before it would overheat again and die.

Lessons learned?

1. Remote and secure redundant backups are a Good Thing, but ...
2. Having your backup on the other end of a slow pipe is almost like not having a backup at all.

I was lucky this time because I was able to pull some bits of data off my old machine. Next time I might not be so lucky. It probably wouldn't hurt to augment my cloud storage backup with my old friend, the hastily burned DVD.

On the bright side, this new machine smokes.

Work, work, work

"Wow, you get to travel AND work? That's so cool"

"You hang out in coffee shops all day? Must be nice."

"You should take the day off and go to [some local destination]!"

"What do you mean you haven't been to [some famous landmark] yet?! It's RIGHT THERE!"

"Hey, why don't you post more pictures?"

There seems to be some confusion about my travels. I get these questions a lot. It's understandable. For most people, travel == vacation. But not for me. This is my life, and I need to work for it.

Yes, I can work from anywhere, but I still need to work. And at times like now, when my client needs me badly, I work quite hard. Just because I'm sitting in a coffee shop doesn't mean I'm sipping lattes all day with my pinky extended and my feet up. I wouldn't be able to keep that up very long before my clients got wise.

Balancing work and life is always a challenge, and it's no less so now that I'm on the road. But once the critical issue is resolved and the next release is in the bag, I can step away from my computer and go explore someplace new -- like Rotorua (http://www.rotoruanz.com), where C and I will be this weekend, soaking in volcanic hot springs. Ahhh...

And yes, I'll post pictures.