Bidding the Road Farewell

I'm sitting in Para Coffee in Charlottesville, VA, a stone's throw from the University of Virginia. My alma mater. The kids studying here are so young. I can't help thinking about the way my life has changed since I was one of them. And how it's about to change again.

Fifteen years ago, I left Charlottesville and moved across the country to start a new job and a new life in Seattle, WA. I'm about to do the same thing again. Back then, I was following the path laid out for me by my parents. I didn't know enough about the Path to be unhappy. It would be only a few months before the questions would come: What now? Climb the ladder? Work and save? Is there nothing else?

The unanswered questions eventually drove me to trade the Path for the Road, and it's taken me to some pretty great places like Koh Tao, Thailand. While there, it occurred to me to ask: Why am I doing this? And I had an epiphany of sorts. The Really Big Question is just this: Am I stuck in the life I was born to, or am I free to change it? If I'm not free to change my life -- or if I'm too scared to -- I'm no better than a man living under house arrest. But if I'm truly free, I should be able to give up everything and go out there and make it on my own. You know, prove it, like Thoreau. And just like that, a big piece clicked into place. After two and a half years on the road, I have my proof. That road is mine. I own it.

One question down, many to go. The other answers probably aren't on the Road. I don't know where they are, but I suspect that my best chance at finding them involve being still, building meaningful relationships, and participating in a community.

So once again, I am preparing for a move to Seattle. But this time is different. I'm stepping off the Road onto a Path of my own choosing, and I'm choosing it freely. It feels good. It feels right. Even Thoreau left his shack in the woods eventually. My own experiment at simple living is over for now. A success, I think.

I don't expect to be updating this blog much anymore. Not for a long while, at least. Thanks for reading along. Come visit me in Seattle. There's always room on my couch for you. In my home.

VoIP Confusion

It seems I still don't have this whole phone thing sorted yet. If someone can help me make sense of the following incident, I'd really appreciate it.

Cellphone Support Rep: Hello, you've reached <provider> support. How can I help you?
Me: Hi. There are some charges on my most recent bill I don't understand. The international roaming charges accrued on <day> -- amounting to nearly $100 -- are for calls I didn't make.
Rep: Oh, I'm sorry.
Me: I called previously about this and just got a follow-up email from support. They say the numbers are owned by Bandwidth.com and represent VoIP calls. I've never heard of Bandwidth.com and don't have an account with them. I use Skype from my computer when I want to make VoIP calls. I don't even have a VoIP app on my phone.
Rep: I see. I'll remove the charges immediately. We're very sorry.
Me: Thank you.
Rep: Is there anything else I can help you with?
Me: That's it. Thanks. <hangs up>

As soon as I hung up, I realized that I do have a VoIP application on my phone: Google Voice. After a little digging, I learned that Google Voice uses Bandwidth.com. And from my Google Voice history, I saw that <gasp> I did in fact make those calls. Whoops.

The calls, as they appeared on my cellphone statement, had different numbers than the ones I dialed, and they appeared to be to random locations like Florida and DC. So my confusion is understandable. Besides, isn't the whole point of VoIP to avoid being charged extortionate international voice roaming rates?

So, what went wrong here? I'm certain I had a wifi connection when I made these calls. And even if the calls had switched to the cell network, I have a data plan and this is IP traffic. It's not called Voice Over IP for nothing. This should be covered by my data plan, not my voice plan, right?

Right?

1 Reason to Stop Dreaming and Start Planning Your Round the World Trip

Back when I was still living in Seattle dreaming about travel, I signed up for a bunch of travel-related newsletters, so messages like this one from Bootsnall.com would regularly land in my Inbox:

11 Reasons to Stop Dreaming and Start Planning Your Round the World Trip

Every time I got one, a voice in my head would say, "Dammit, why am I still just dreaming? <sigh>"

And going further back, about 10 years ago in a fit of premature travel-lust I went to REI and bought a serious backpack. You know, the kind for world-travelers and backpackers. It sat in the bottom of my closet for years unused and unsullied, silently taunting me every time I opened the closet: "Let's go already!"

Now, my backpack is showing serious signs of wear (yay!) and I'm in Thailand enjoying views like this:

The best part of traveling for me? The one reason that matters above all others?

I've finally silenced that little voice in my head.

Now when I see posts like, "The 11 Reasons to Blah, Blah, Blah," I can just smile. Maybe some people need 11 reasons. I needed just that one.

All Work And No Play ...

My friend J said she wanted my life. I mean, who wouldn't, right? World travel, adventure, new people, exotic food, and all those life-enriching experiences. It's like one big party all the time.

Except it's not. Here's a dirty secret: my life is pretty boring. I have a job. I work. I don't talk about it much because blog posts about a boring life are ... boring! But it's the truth. Like anybody in the working world, I have ... oh hell, it's all too boring to type. Here's how I spend my days: working! Exciting, huh?

"But you get to work in exciting places." True, and it's great. I can look out the window at people -- Vietnamese people! -- having fun. Woo.

It's not always like this. A consultant's life is feast or famine. When the workload is light, I can spend more time enjoying my surroundings. I can even choose not to take a client at all, but if I did that all the time I'd just be a bum. When I have a client, it doesn't matter that I'm in Vietnam. It doesn't matter that I'd like to spend a couple of weeks touring the countryside. I can't. I'm too busy. It's INFURIATING.

In fact, I'm too busy to be blogging. But really quick, here's purty a pic I snapped while walking to the coffee shop this morning:

OK, back to work.

Hanoi Miscellany

I'm in the cafe above the Hanoi Cooking Center drinking espresso. I'm the only one here. Behind the Cooking Center is Bookworm, and while I tap at the keyboard I can peer into their second-floor window and watch people browse the used books. Hello, book-lovers.

I took my camera out for another walk today. Even on a misty, overcast day like today, it's amazing how much beauty this city holds.



I pass scenes that fascinate me: an old man holding an extravagantly plumaged fighting cock, smoothing its feathers with obvious pride and affection. A religious(?) ceremony in a pagoda: two young men sitting on their knees facing each other, an older woman in brightly colored silk robes dancing to traditional music waving sparklers over them. I want to photograph everything, but I don't know the etiquette here and I'm too shy to stick my big Western nose where it doesn't belong. I content myself with taking pictures of inanimate things.



Scooters shoot past me wherever I go. Young women on the back look over their shoulders and giggle at me. I'm reminded of how different I am.

Different or not, I'm slowly making local friends. Kiên, a young Vietnamese man, works at the House of Son Tinh. In Kiên I've finally found a local who is happy to share his love for his home country and his hopes for the future. His girlfriend is leaving Vietnam for Singapore, but he will never leave.

Kiên describes what Vietnam was like before it embraced capitalism. "To buy anything, you needed stamps," he told me over rice wine one night. "There were no big houses in Hanoi because you needed stamps to buy bricks, and the government only gave you enough stamps for 15 bricks a week. You couldn't even build a house for your dog. It didn't matter how much money you had, not that we had any."

Change started in 1989, he said. No more stamps. A free market. The effects are plain to see: growth here is explosive, and Kiên takes obvious pride in it. "But what would Hồ Chí Minh say about the new capitalistic Vietnam?" I ask. Kiên gives his head a quick shake. "These are different times."

And then he tells me about the American war, a topic I've been careful not to broach with anyone. Yes, people were angry -- very angry -- for a time, he says. But not now. Time has passed. "If your father killed my father, it doesn't matter. You and I are friends now." I'm humbled by this man's heart.

---

On my walk today I passed a furniture store. In the window was a sofa that, in shape and color, reminded me of the sofa I owned in Seattle -- a sofa that still waits for me there. I felt a sharp pang of homesickness, but it passed as I walked. My old life will always be there, I remind myself. My new life is here, now.

Why I Like CouchSurfing.org

You probably could have guessed that I wouldn't be a homeless homebody for too long. The good folks at CouchSurfing wouldn't let me.

Yesterday, I got a random CS message from a Kiwi girl trying to get folks together for drinks in Hanoi. Still in hermit mode, my lame response was that I was going to check out a bar in Ho Tay called Le Pub and that she was free to meet me there. That, I felt, pretty much guaranteed that I would be left alone to read. Not so. Her response was immediate: "I'm in Le Pub right now!" Really?!

Sure enough, there she was surrounded by a klatsch of couchsurfers drinking and trading travel stories and tips. I couldn't get away from these people if I wanted to! And I don't. They dragged me out of my funk and made me excited about traveling again. Oh yeah, I love this.

Note to self: travel is a passion, and passion is meant for sharing.

Homeless Homebody

I'm alone in my room in Hanoi. Out there is new stuff, real stuff, exciting stuff to explore and experience. But sometimes I get a bit overwhelmed by all the newness and realness. It can be exhausting.

When I lived in Seattle, there were so few sunny days that there was pressure to make the most of the few that you got. "What did you do with the sunny day?" we'd all ask each other, as if reading a book or watching a movie on a sunny day were some sort of misdemeanor.

As a nomad, I sometimes feel pressure to make the most of my time in a new place. Bars! Restaurants! Parties! Museums! Culture! And always an endless stream of new faces. Um, 'scuse me while I crawl into my hole and read my book.

Don't get me wrong. I consider myself very, very fortunate to be able to have new and exciting experiences. But they can't be as comforting as the old, familiar ones. And there's nothing wrong with that, but it's easy to forget.

Some people tell me they're jealous of my trip. I definitely want it to live up to everybody's expectations, my own included. But "to thine own self be true." And the truth is, as a nomad, sometimes I crave a little piece of home.

Now if only I knew where home was...

"Papers, Please"

It's not enough to just show up in a country and expect to be let in. As an American who has traveled throughout Europe and the English-speaking world, it's easy to forget that fact. Vietnam is the first country I'm traveling to that actually requires a paper tourist visa. And let's not forget, they're still a Communist state. They like to keep a tab on their peeps.

I read the website of the Vietnamese Embassy to see what was available. It was a mess ... out of date and often contradictory information. The information I got on various traveler websites and message boards was equally confused. So I called the Vietnamese Embassy in the UN (open between 1200 and 1205 every third Thursday, or something) and and got the answer I was looking for: yes, a 3-month multi-entry tourist visa was available.

Paperwork completed, I mailed it off with my passport, a cashiers check and a return envelope to the Embassy in NYC and held my breath. And voila!



I am now authorized to enter Vietnam! Purty, ain't it? I couldn't be more pleased with myself.

Travel Immunizations

It's been a long time since my last update. Mostly that's because I haven't had anything exciting to report. Just bouncing around the US: New York, Fire Island, Seattle, New York, Baltimore, Charlotte, Charlottesville, New York, Syracuse, New York ... boring domestic travel. <yawn>

That's all about to change. In 3 days I board a plane bound for Hanoi, Vietnam! This will, without a doubt, be the most adventurous of my travels to date. It's taken a bit more research, and I'm that much closer to being the savvy global traveler of my dreams.

Stay Healthy!

I've often read on travel websites about the infamous "yellow card" that travelers pack along with their passport. It lists which immunizations you've received and when. You get stamps, just like with a passport. Some countries won't let you in without the right stamps in your yellow card. But I didn't have one.




So I got myself to the Seattle Public Health Travel Clinic. I told them my itinerary, and they told me everything that could kill or maim me in each of those places. A lot, it turns out. They printed it all out for me. They also shot me full serum. Both arms. Hurt like heck. But now I'm just that much fitter to travel.

I'm not quite ready yet, but I can at least cross that one off my list.

Staying Connected Abroad

You might think that as the world continues to shrink that staying connected while abroad would be getting easier. Not so. We are currently witnessing a sea change in world-wide wireless: Carriers everywhere are canceling their unlimited data plans. Android handsets are taking over and rightly inspire techno-lust, but the best plans are still for BlackBerrys. Sadly, BlackBerry OS is a terrible development platform--there are tumbleweeds in their app store--and their hardware inspires about as much enthusiasm as plain white toast.

Take, for example, the newly released and much hyped BlackBerry Torch.  Read the specs. Now read the review. Choice quotes:

If you don't already own a BlackBerry, you will not want this phone. And if you do, you still might not want it, even if it may very well be the "best BlackBerry ever."

 ... and ...

BlackBerry isn't good enough anymore if you're comparing it to other smartphones. What does it do better than the rest? That's the fundamental question. And the answer is that for most people, in most situations, compared to Android and iPhone, not a whole lot.

Ouch! I've been using a BlackBerry Bold 9000 for a while now, and while it gets the job done, I can't help noticing that the real party is happening in the Android and iPhone camps. Is it time to switch?

I called up AT&T (my carrier) and got the details of my plan and extras. The kicker is my unlimited international data plan, which is BlackBerry specific--and no longer offered. The rep told me if I ever canceled it, I'd never get it back. Yikes.

So I spent some of yesterday going from provider to provider and seeing if they can offer me something competitive. Here's what I want: an Android GSM phone with an unlimited international data plan. One by one, every provider turned me away: Sprint, Verizon and T-Mobile. The closest I came was Sprint, which just canceled its unlimited international data plan about a month ago--and it was only for BlackBerrys. Bah.

Incidentally, AT&T doesn't even have any Android phones yet. When they get them later this year(?) I'd have to give up my magical BlackBerry-specific data plan to get one. No deal.

So BlackBerry, it looks like I'm stuck with you.

Confessions of a Friend Binner

I recently received a very interesting email from an old co-worker. He wanted to know what he had done to offend me. Wha?! He said that on Facebook, he didn't have access to my wall or pictures or notes or anything. The poor guy was genuinely distressed! Oh, my.

Until I decided to leave Seattle and drift, I avoided social networking like the plague. I'd rather hear from you in person. Preferably over a beer. That you bought. Ahem. But from the road, social networking is simply the best option for staying in touch with folks. So I caved and joined. And it was fun.

But then co-workers started friending me. Aunts and cousins, too. You know the drill. I started worrying about offending someone with an offhand remark, or getting in a tussle with some loved one about politics or religion. It's easy to offend, out there on the intar-webs. So I dialed my privacy settings up to 11 and (oh, the shame!) put my friends in bins: friend, friend, family, friend, co-worker, etc.

But some co-workers are friends. Family, too. Why do social networking sites encourage us to bin our friends like that? And in case you missed the irony: by trying to avoid offending people, some people got offended!

So, f*%$!k all that. (Apologies if that offended you.) I'm done with putting my friends in bins. Friends are friends, and that's that.

"Another roof, another proof"

I'm not dead. I'm not done traveling, either. If anything, I've been too busy traveling. After Melbourne, I spent 2 weeks in San Francisco; 3 weeks in Seattle; a long weekend in Spokane, WA; a week at a programmers conference in Aspen, CO; and a week in Phoenix, AZ. I'm now burning the midnight oil at a friend's place outside Charlotte, NC. Next week, I'll be cooling my heels at my parents' place out on Long Island. Whew!

Why all the moving about? Necessity, in part. Being a traveling professional means keeping up professional contacts; hence, the conference in Aspen. Besides, Aspen is purty:

May snow in Aspen, Colorado

But in larger part, my moving about was to see friends and family, who are inconveniently located all over creation. (Why can't you all just move to the Bay Area?)

After Long Island, my next move will again be of a professional nature. I'll relocate to Boston to collaborate with another freelance programmer on a project that interests me. I was inspired by a stray comment made by a fellow conference attendee after he heard about my nomadic lifestyle. He said, "You don't look like you sleep on the street... much." Hah. That wasn't the inspiring bit. He then compared me to a mathematician named Paul Erdős. I'd never heard of the guy, but apparently he was a bit of a nomad himself, showing up on the doorsteps of other mathematicians and sleeping on their sofas while working together on papers. In fact, he's published so many papers -- more than any other mathematician in history, in fact -- that other mathematicians calculate their Erdős number as a sort of geeky six degrees of Kevin Bacon. (The title of this post is a nod to Erdős.)

Anyway, this whole Paul Erdős thing is just a round-about way of saying that I've found a solution to a central problem of my wanderings: no interaction with professional peers. I often prefer working alone, but sometimes it's nice to have a hacking buddy. Since I'm free to drift, I can just drift in the direction of the people and problems that interest me.

I'm really looking forward to the upcoming Boston hack sessions. I won't be crashing on my Boston buddy's sofa, but I still think Paul Erdős would approve.

One Year and Counting

April 1, 2010: April Fool's Day, the day marks the one year anniversary of my wanderings. Man vs. the world, finding his limitations, and all that other romantic nonsense. A fool's errand? Perhaps, but it's taken me some wonderful places. April 1, 2010 was also the day that I finally boarded a plane, left Melbourne and returned to the United States. Here are some pics I took in those last few days of my Melbourne life, days that went by so fast.


The apartment in St. Kilda where I lived for 3 months. On the sofas are Plato and Tess, the two dogs I shared the place with.


Inside The Pelican, a cafe/bar with wifi where I quickly established myself as a regular.


In a hammock-ish chair by a beach drinking coffee. 'Cause that's how I roll.


Sunset over St. Kilda. Until next time, Melbourne.

There...

A year ago, I told people I'd drift until I felt like stopping, but I told myself something different: a year on the road or bust. A year later and I'm still loving the freedom, but I've come to see the downsides, too. Christmas away from family was really hard. Saying goodbye to good people all the time is also really hard. Knowing I'll meet new good people in new places is cold comfort. I find myself wanting to pack my friends into my backpack and take them with me. When I planned this journey, I was obsessed with lifestyle, freedom, places, and technology. I never guessed that I would spend more time thinking about people than That Other Stuff. Look at that! I have heart.

That Other Stuff is important, too. It just turned out to be a lot simpler to be a nomad than I was expecting. In fact, it's been (almost) totally trouble free. Sure, I've had health issues and my laptop died, but those are small things. Take a bit of planning, add helpful and friendly locals, mix with a dash of winging it, shake and enjoy. Why don't more people do this?

... and Back Again

Now I'm back in the States, in the city I love, staying with the couch-surfers I made friends with over the summer. I've been gone long enough for American money to look funny. I forget to walk on the right side of sidewalks and run into people. Beer is suddenly twice as cheap. The coffee comes in enormous mugs. The Internet is free, pervasive, and very fast. People everywhere are obsessed with technology. (Blah, blah, blah, iPad, blah, blah.) But still, these are my people. I've never felt that before.

Funny the things you learn on the road.

Phone Phreak

A friend of mine who was about to set out on her own travels asked me the following question:

Hey, what are you doing for a phone while you travel? Did you buy a prepaid sim card for the phone you had? Or do an int'l phone plan? I'm trying to figure that out.

I remember having lots of similar questions myself before I left on my trip and wrote a few posts about it. Here is the answer I gave my friend:

I have 2 phones: a Blackberry with an international calling plan, unlimited data and worldwide email. And I have a second handset for local SIMs. The second handset is a piece of junk that I got for free from a friend in NZ, but it's quad-band, unlocked, and GSM. That's important. I had thought that I would just use my US number and not worry about the expense of international calls, but it turns out it's really important for a lot of reasons to have a local phone number.

I thought the Blackberry would be all I would need since (unlike an iPhone) Blackberrys can be unlocked and used with local SIMs, but I found that swapping SIMs was a real PITA -- I couldn't reliably receive calls at either number because I might have the other SIM in at the time. Two phones is a crappy solution, but it's the best I've found so far.

You know what's better than carrying around two phones? Tell me. Please.

The other day, a friend showed me his Skype phone, a phone that uses a local Wi-Fi Internet connection to let you call other Skype users for free, and all other phones (even international ones) for a ridiculously low rate. But I refuse to carry a third phone.

(Remarkably, there isn't a Skype application for BlackBerrys, though they keep promising one. There are other VoIP BlackBerry applications (e.g. Truphone), but I haven't been satisfied with them.)

Melbourne and the Housing Search

January 2nd, I step off the plane in Melbourne International Airport into a new city, a new country, a new decade. I don't know a soul here. I buy a local SIM for my mobile, a bus ticket downtown, and I'm on my way. Whee!

 
Downtown Melbourne, the Yarra River.

It's late and shuttles aren't running anymore, so I walk to North Melbourne where I have lined up a hostel for my first few nights in town.

Housing

Finding housing is the most time-consuming part of nomading, and after traveling for 9 months, this is the best strategy I've found so far: find a place to crash for a few nights (hostel, home-stay, whatever) and use the time to find something better. Lining an apartment up in advance is pointless; until you see it in person, you don't know what you're getting. And couch-surfing is great, but more than a few weeks of that is exhausting. So I checked Gumtree and after a few false starts, I hit on a wonderful flat in St Kilda with roof access, a beach view (if you squint), and a 2 minute walk to this:

 
Beach in St. Kilda, and a hundred or so insane kite-surfers.

I'm happy with the flat, but it took a lot of hot-dogging around town to find it. I'm still looking for a better way. I tried to go to a local real estate agent to help me find a short-term rental. Alas, when I arrived, everybody was still on their New Year's holiday, so that experiment will have to wait. I've also considering hiring a personal assistant in India to help me line up places -- don't laugh, that 4-hour workweek guy suggests doing just that -- but then I'm back to lining up places sight unseen, not a recipe for housing bliss. So what's the answer? As in the words of Tevye from Fiddler On The Roof, "I'll tell you! [pause] I don't know."

Melbourne

But Melbourne! I love it here. There are dozens of different neighborhoods and hundreds of coffee shops and bars and live music venues and quirky alternative book stores, and beautiful, friendly people, and lots of sun. I spend much of my work days in the State Library of Victoria, where it's quiet and cool and the Internet is slow but free.

 
Chess Room in the State Library of Victoria.

My evenings are spent either exploring Melbourne's nightlife solo or meeting up with couch-surfers for drinks and live music. My weekend? A free concert in a park and then a Belgian beer garden with some new friends, and some coffee, a book, and a patch of shade at a street cafe in Carlton. Not too bad, eh?

 
"Coffee is my life.""

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.

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.