11/14/19
(Above: A picture of Jacobhouse’s garden after a bit of morning maintenance.)
Active Summary: This morning began with a pleasant ride around the beef pasture which was then followed by some time in the garden (weeding, pulling dead oak leaves off of the sprouts, plucking grass, and raking all refuse into a pile). I next ventured indoors where I wrote for about an hour before heading in to Ocala with Madre.
In town, I helped procure materials for both the Madre-workshop and Padre-studio projects at Home Depot. This was followed by a trip to the Sprint store where I proceeded to stand in line behind two women for about twenty minutes as the two clerks tended to their various needs. Once the time reached twenty-five minutes with no service, I left without a word and did some testing of my own*. I soon discovered that the service range (tower location) was cause for my slow speeds**, not the SIMcard in my phone.
Even though the discovery was not of a pleasant nature, and despite the Sprint Store being a waste of time, I learned what I needed to learn from our trip to town, and we ended the morning with a trip to Sushi Bistro for take-out lunch (also procured some sweets from a nearby confection store while waiting for the sushi order). A delectable lunch ensued.
(6:20 PM Update:) Afternoon activities consisted of vaccinating cattle, finding/treating a sick calf, and repairing a couple fences. Other than that, I collected some funds from the Moo-Magic stand and checked the beef pasture with Padre on an evening ride-around.
TIL: Today I learned how to add official footnotes in Microsoft Word. They do not translate to WordPress, and therefore, it may not seem very exciting to those who read this blog. However, it has helped me greatly in my creative writing. Instead of placing extraneous thoughts in brackets as I was, I now know to go to [Insert] > [Reference] > [Footnote]. From there, Word automatically takes care of formatting and associating the number-to-note relationship. In other words, when I add the first footnote, it places a 1 at the location the note is intended for while simultaneously placing a 1 at the base of the page where I can write whatever I wish. For the next note, it adds a 2 and so on and so forth.
Commentary: With the deck complete, the only project remaining to Jacobhouse is the optimization of my telephone and internet combination. This, however, can only take so much time each day***, so one must wonder… what is next? I’ve made a list in regard to this question – a list that bears a grand variety of tasks. Some of these aspirations are quite extensive, but now that I’ve gone and built my own house, they all seem achievable. Here are some of the more interesting possibilities that have cropped up over the past three months;
Tier One:
- Helping Padre / Madre complete their abodes.
- Making the Master Blend Freezer Room into a better place of business.
- Fixing up my Grandma Cook’s old house before it becomes too decrepit to fix
- Initiating a new container project for Airbnb/rental purposes.
Tier Two:
- Finish revising my book. This is a tier two simply because it is going to happen anyway albeit at a slower rate.
- Increase college/university class number. This is tier two because I won’t be able to increase class number until September 2020. To add to this, I already plan to complete my Bachelor’s degree albeit at a slower rate.
Tier Three:
- Set up the electric smoker that has been collecting dust in the MB freezer room. This is tier three because it would likely occur when/if I make the freezer room into a better place of business. Also, it is minor project that will take less than a couple days.
Like I stated above, this list has been evolving – both growing and shrinking (garden and deck railing was a part of it) – so there is complete flexibility until a decision has been reached. I will also say that one item on this list is far more intimidating than the others… I’ll let the readers guess which one.
Final Note: I’m not entirely certain what I’m going to do tomorrow aside from clean Jacobhouse, participate in some morningly writing, and yes… get back to researching an internet solution. I sense a new project just over the horizon, though, and I am looking forward to it.
*While waiting for the clerks at the Sprint store, I did a speed test on my phone. In that location (as well as at Sushi Bistro of Ocala), I was receiving upwards of 25-60 mbps download and 35 mbps upload. It was as thus that I discovered the SIMcard within my phone was not at fault for my low speeds at home. That would likely be a lack of proper signal.
** Is it ironic that a carrier named Sprint would have extremely slow internet speeds? Yes, I believe so.
***Both from a logistics and a sanity standpoint.