Tim Oren's Due Diligence

Retirement and Relocation Data Sources

Now for something a bit off the beaten path for this blog. A couple of years ago, during my enforced period of inactivity, I began a personal due diligence project that I mentioned in passing: Building a database of information on potential retirement spots. With California continuing its descent into a nanny state tax hell for both business and individuals, that information may get used sooner than later, so I've taken advantage of the current recuperation (which is going well) to revisit and update that database. I'm sure I'm not the only one engaged in such a thought process, so for those who are starting or in the middle of the job and find they way here through Google, here is an annotated list of some of the more generally applicable data sources that I've used, roughly sorted by category. General caveat: I am a spreadsheet-wielding, database wonk, computer scientist and systems analyst trained, libertarian venture capitalist and manager. The types of data and their application are biased accordingly. Season to taste.

Meiji Japan in 3D

Fun Japanophile blog Pink Tentacle has a series of 19th century stereoscope views with the dual views scanned and overlaid in a animated GIF. This yields a very reasonable color (probably hand tinted) 3D facsimile of life in pre-industrial Japan. Fascinating! (I would not suggest viewing this if you have any epileptic tendencies...)

The Roving Eye: Missing Billy Mays, When Customers Attack, 802.11RV meltdown

A surprise to my younger self. I'd never have guessed I'd be so saddened by the death of an aging TV huckster. But a couple months ago I caught an episode of the Discovery Channel's 'Pitchmen' show - simply because it followed our household favorite, MythBusters. Since my measure of television 'reality' portrayals of entrepreneurship had been set by the execrable, mean-spirited Donald Trump offerings, my expectations were pretty low. I was therefore pleasantly surprised to find Billy Mays and his co-star/partner Anthony 'Sully' Sullivan obviously respecting and honoring the would-be inventors and entrepreneurs who came their way, even when their proposals didn't come close to matching their criteria. I never became a regular viewer, but I did take in several more Pitchmen shows thereafter. For clarity about their needs, criteria and process, direct and honest feedback to proposers, and real respect for the entrepreneur, the venture capital world could do far worse than emulate Billy and Sully. I'll miss ya.

Sony brand down. Jeff "Buzzmachine" Jarvis has long talked about harnessing the creativity of customers and fans to help design ads and marketing campaigns. But what happens when they turn on you? Something like this:

Ouch, that's gonna leave a mark! (Hat tip to Cobb.)

Those backhaul blues. Four years ago, I was writing up observations from another camping vacation, regarding the spread of 802.11 'WiFi' to the RVing market and those who serve it. Perhaps unsurprisingly, that trend has pretty much reached completion, with now only the lowest tier or most distant destination campgrounds not having WiFi on offer, usually free. What's gotten worse in the last year, and rapidly so, is the actual usefulness of these systems. Most offer decent throughput only during very late or early hours, or sometimes in the mid-afternoon when most campers are out on excursions. It's the old backhaul provisioning problem, come back to bite campground proprietors who didn't know they were in the ISP business. It bears a lot of resemblance to the trend I saw overtake network planning at CompuServe and other old online services back in the mid-90s. Not only are many if not most RVers showing up with laptops - even the retiree crowd has it figured out - but expectations of continuous bandwidth and duty cycle have once again shifted with the explosion of YouTube and other online video sources as a means of news gathering and entertainment. A campground that's provisioned with a single T-1, or a business DSL or cable modem, is finding its router and resources overwhelmed.

(I also note that many RVing WiFi users haven't thought things through. At a large campground in Salt Lake City, I fired up my laptop and was soon able to see the shared, toplevel directories of an even dozen users who probably didn't realize they were bridged to every other user on the WLAN. No I didn't peek, I'm not that kind of guy, but it's close to an attractive nuisance for wannabe crackers.)

On The Road: A Walk in Wyoming

(We've been back from vacation for a week, and are pretty much recovered. Blogging got left along the road, in part due to intermittent connectivity, in part to the - desirable - distractions of the trip. I'll intercut a few saved posts with new material for a couple of days.)

Along the way, we stopped off in Laramie, Wyoming to visit with old friends Isobel Nichols and Brett Glass, proprietor of the local Lariat.Net WISP. Along with a walking tour of the old town, knowing that we were wildflower fans they treated us to a hike at the nearby Vedauwoo Turtle Rock recreation area. The unseasonably rainy weather obliged with a few perfect hours for the walk. Some more eye candy for those of like mind:

Western clematis

Gumbo evening primrose

Unknown (to me) variety of skullcap

Thanks for Isobel and Brett for an enjoyable excursion!

On The Road: No TARP Wanted Here

The rest of the country seems to be taking a different attitude towards bailouts than the coastal political class. Unfortunately for Obama and Tim Geithner, TARP is something to market... against. The following was spotted in Pocatello, ID:

(Right down the street from Portneuf Valley Brewing's brewpub, which I can recommend.)

I also spotted a large billboard ad for a Toyota dealer near Ogden, Utah - proclaiming "No Taxpayer Subsidies Here" as a come-on. (I didn't get a photo of that one, as a nasty cross-wind meant two hands on the wheel or else.)

On The Road: A Wet Year

We're out of town for our annual summer camping trip, this time to Rocky Mountain National Park and return, taking our time both ways. We've been in Salt Lake and the Pocatello area, and now headed east in Wyoming on I-80, after cutting through the corner of Utah to see Bear Lake.

The whole area has been getting a wet start to summer. The northeast corner of the Great Basin and the central Rocky Mountains have gotten 150 - 300% of normal rainfall for June so far, and it's only half done. Two days ago we watched the bank-full Snake River in Idaho Falls. We've had to dodge sporadic thunderstorms and rain showers the whole time, and the mosquito population is making the most of it in this normally arid locale.

Other than needed refilling of reservoirs, one positive result of the precipitation is an outrageous display of wildflowers. Since photographing them is one of my hobbies, I've been having a good time. So here's some gratuitous eye candy, courtesy of Mother Nature:

Sego Lily

Blue Flax

Penstemon

All shot with a Sony alpha DSLR.

Back From Vacation

We took advantage of the Easter break at my wife's school for a short trip to the Carson Valley area in Nevada, for some backroading, geocaching, and looking at potential retirement locations. It was still too early for wildflower hikes there; there were even a few snow flurries.

For the Easter weekend we came back over the Sierra to the Shenandoah Valley wine region near Plymouth, which we've visited a number of times since the early 90s. Big reds, no tasting fees, and no tour buses. We did well on the wine front (Story, Bray), and the wildflowers were out in profusion in the west Sierra foothills.

We drove back on Monday, our usual move to miss the Sunday ski slope traffic, and spent yesterday shoving the travel mess back into its usual spots. This afternoon we'll be attending a Tax Day Tea Party in San Mateo. Field report to follow.

Hitting the Highway - With A Bad Taste In The Mouth

It's time for a road trip that was postponed due to my little incident in January.  We're off on a camping vacation that will take us north to the Portland area, up the Columbia, along the old Oregon Trail route to the Snake and Boise, and finally back south through the Oregon high desert (which we've never seen) and along the eastern edge of the Sierra.  Sightseeing, foodie delights, and geocaching are on the menu for nearly three weeks.  With a little luck and time, there may be some travel blogging.

Unfortunately, this comes after a most disappointing week on the Internet.  That period has witnessed some of the most foul behavior that I have seen in the blogosphere since I joined five years ago.  I'm referred to the vile smears about Sarah Palin that arose after her surprise pick as McCain's VP.  Not only were these rumors putrid, but it was obvious from the liberal dose of cross posts, drive-by trolls and Mobies that the foulness was coordinated and organized.  It would be interesting to know by whom.

What's worse is the way in which the anonymous foulness was picked up first by the electronic presences of big name media, and then by the MSM itself.  It will be a cold day in Hades before the Atlantic gets another link from here.  It's to my own discredit that I once sent a contribution to excitable Andy before it became clear what he has become, and there will be no more attention given to that piece of human filth.

I'm also disappointed that I didn't pay more attention to the Hillary supporters who decried the misogyny of the MSM.  As a long term critic of the legacy press, this is a story I should have been following.  But I didn't have a dog in that fight, and too many cries of 'victim!' over the years led to a calloused indifference.  Well, they were right.  The Hillary folks have been the frog slow-cooked over the years, while with Palin we got to see the whole act compressed into one week.  They were right, and I was wrong to be indifferent.  Apologies for sins of omission are hereby tendered (not that you'll catch me voting for Hillary).

Having worked hard to drive off any audience that is not left of center, now the MSM seem to be going into overtime to annoy a large fraction of those of the XX persuasion.  The sensation-seeking inherent in the mass media is finally coming home to roost.  The MSM (and a large chunk of the left) have become a predictable foil to McCain or anyone else able to work out their likely knee-jerk responses.  They seem utterly unable to consider the long term effects of abandoning actual reporting to spread bigotry picked up from the more putrid end of the blogosphere.

The Roving Eye: Tiny UAVs, So Long Brett, The Pachinko Effect

Itty-Bitty UAVs. Check out these pix from a recent unmanned vehicle conference in DC. The first one looks like one of those scale models you see displayed as a trophy in an aerospace exec or pilot's office. But no, it's a fully functioning drone - get it airborne with a bungee cord or using a grenade launcher attachment for a rifle. Have a fat wallet and an urge to build your own, or start a UAV venture for that matter? Check the next image for an assortment of controller components from tiny to chunky. If you're into things robotic, check out the main DIYDrones home page and feeds for everything from hobbyist to milbot news. Organized by Chris Anderson (yes, that one) - which is a good recommend given his record as a trend spotter.

Vacationing in Earthsea

Nearly 20 years ago, I was a 'guest artist' at a summer arts program at Humboldt State University on California's North Coast. The first and last time I've held the title, which amounted to coder-at-large for one of the first experiments in what was then called hypermedia fiction. One of the other artists, more in the traditional definition, was writer Vonda McIntyre. In an evening bull session she mentioned that fellow fantasy author Ursula LeGuin loved the North Coast area around Trinidad and had used it as the model for the seascape of her Earthsea series of books.

So, by that definition, we've spent the last week vacationing in a little bit of Earthsea. The wild blackberries are ripe, the salmon are running up on the Klamath, and a little front blew out the fog for the last two days. Life is good! Now on to Mendo for a few days before returning home.