I don’t have anything sharp and pointy at my place( except rocks) so I should be able to run barefoot and as the ice recedes it’s getting muddy—that feels nice.

I’m so excited to be giving up on the shoes, insoles, doctors, and gadgets to make my feet feel better. My motto for this year is: whatever the problem, money is not the solution.

The key, I think, is that it forces me to be extremely aware of my body. As a result I take it slow, relax, don’t get injured, and feel fantastic. At one point I thought, “Wow, I’ve been walking on prosthetic feet all my life…”

I thought often whether I could hike the trail in sandals, but I kept jamming sticks into the tops of my feet and every time I did, I was glad I had shoes on. Also, after 25 miles, the ground really started to feel hard and I was glad to have something soft and squishy to cushion the blows. I would even carry extra padded insoles to stuff in for road walks.

Nevertheless, I found a couple sources for tire sandals.
http://www.grannysstore.com/Green_Goods/Tire_Sandals.htm
http://www.reedaccess.com/vietyankee/prodsandals.htm

I would like to make tire-soled moccasins. I think those would be good for hiking.

Long ago I read Ray Jardine’s book and he went on about building up strength in your ankles and feet rather than relying on boots, so I tried it way back then and was hooked. When I hiked the trail, I had no worries about my ankles. They are like tree trunks.

I think that if more backpackers bought into this philosophy that they would experience far less problems with knees not to mention blisters and twisted ankles.

When I would go visit someone and they turned on some music, I found it annoying.

I remember when some neighbors moved in and started playing their music loud. I thought they were the crassest people for not be able to enjoy silence.

After a few years a bought a laptop and stored some music on it. Then I could listen to music on my laptop. Recently I reloaded the operating system so now I have no music again.

Often when I’m in my cabin without contact with other people, I find even books to be an intrusion.

I bring some music on a mp3 player when I hike but I only listen to it when I start dragging and don’t want to hike..Sometimes it can help motivate me to keep hiking.

I’ve found everything I give up, makes life better.

I was just wondering how you survive without music, if you do, that is. I’m stuck in the city and dream of the cabin life, the simplicity it brings. But I can’t live without my music.

I run Ubuntu 9.10 on my Dell Mini10V netbook and it works great, but Dell computers still need a Windows partition in case you ever have to flash the BIOS with updates. Also, there are still some programs out there that only run on Windows. So Ubuntu or other Linux mixes won’t save you. You still need to figure out what you are doing wrong with Windows.

Get an expert to help you.

But before you buy a mac…it is very difficult to find 12v power adapters for macs, Apple doesn’t sell anything but an airplane adapter which won’t work with a standard 12v outlet, so basically you only have a couple options, they are slightly hacked together. There is a guy who calls himself MacGyver who converts and sells 12v car adapters for macbooks, and they are costly. Your other option would be to use an inverter of course. Given the in-efficencies of converting 12v to 110v you might be better off staying in PC land versus relying on an inverter to power a mac laptop.

There is also a “mac-tax”, ie, you pay more for a similarly equipped mac than a PC. Macs also retain their value, so a macbook you buy for 999 today will be still worth 600 bucks in three years, whereas a 400 dollar Dell will be worth…basically nothing in three years. I avoid the mac tax by buying used macs and accepting that I don’t have the latest greatest fastest mostest, just what I need.

Maybe a gently used Dell laptop would serve your needs.

I paid $259 for a refurbished Dell Mini10v netbook recently, plus shipping, plus another $80 for a separate external DVD. Everything works fine, as with the other five Dell refurbished computers I’ve bought for myself or other people other the past decade. But I fully expect something to break within a year or two. Like the keyboard, or the power supply, or maybe one of the USB ports will bust loose from the soldering, or the external DVD drive will crap out, etc. When that happens, I’ll buy a new computer. The computer before this (another refurbishged Dell) cost about $400 and lasted 2 years before the internal CD driver broke and then another 2 years before the power supply broken when I dropped it. $200/year on computer hardware is not a lot. And owning a computer is absolutely essential nowadays for most people, so going without is not realistic.

A friend of mine is a video specialist and works with Macs. Once he spent over $5000 on a high-end Mac that had a problem whereby it started failing intermittently once it got heated up inside, which took several hours. Read that previous sentence again. Several hours of run-time before the problem shows itself, and then it only shows up intermittently. Naturally, when he sent the unit back to Apple, they could find nothing wrong. I forget what the resolution to this problem was, but it didn’t come easy. He wasn’t in a financial position to eat a $5000 loss, nor are most people. Which is why I recommend cheap computers for most people. Then if something goes wrong, you just toss the thing and try again. It was be very bad luck to have multiple flaky computers from a reputable company, and both Dell and Apple are just that. But a flaky computer now and then is quite realistic, at least if you have any experience with how computers are put together inside.

Never buy warranties on cheap equipment.

I know it sounds like I’m just shilling for Dell, but I just think you are going about this all wrong, especially given your remote situation. Given how much you’ve already sunk into this current computer, I suppose you’ll have to continue down the road you are on. But don’t make the same mistake in the future. If you can’t fix things yourself, then keep them cheap and disposable.

However I have to call Dells tech service in the Philippines and get them to agree that it is a hardware problem before a tech person will come and fix it.

I call with the problems of : a non-working keyboard, laptop does not hibernate, and to turn on the computer I need to unplug the machine and take out the battery and reinstall it.

Their solution? Purge the hard drive and reinstall windows. However I couldn’t do that because the keyboard didn’t work in DOS.

After hours on the phone and much instance that the non working keyboard was a hardware issue they sent me another keyboard. I then had to call the Philippines and get a non-native speaker to walk me through how to replace the keyboard on my laptop.

Since the computer still has the power issues that Dell-Philippines insists are software problems they said I needed to purge my hard drive and reinstall windows. I stayed on the phone with them and did all that and still the computer didn’t work properly.

The problems have been compounded by Dell not sending the right utilities disk when I originally bought the computer. The tech people say that they now no longer have the right disk to send. So I have to down load them from the internet. Only problem is they are big big files and I didn’t have the right driver to get wireless to work.

Now they say it is a bios problem and that I need to update the bios, only when I go to the Dell site it doesn’t download the bios properly because of some Dell driver apps bug.

I hate my computer.

Dells tech support warranty is a big scam. You can’t talk to an American. All you get is an SE Asian with a script in front of them. They don’t have any independent knowledge of the computer at all.

They are totally incapable of independent thought. They just work from a script. A computer could provide the service they provide. They didn’t even understand what hibernation was.

So what happen is, I got caught in a loop and there is no way they will agree that it is a hardware issue.

Sorry for the rant but, man, I hate my Dell computer and Dell’s tech support.

Maybe some day I’ll figure out a way to get Dell to honor the warranty they sold me, or maybe some day I’ll buy a Mac, or maybe I will do the smart thing and opt out of having a computer.