Hello Everyone!

A brief introduction: I have been doing property caretaking (land stewardship) for many years (decades) and live a rather simple life with my dogs doing what most folks would consider to be an 'alternative minimalist lifestyle' but what I often just think of as a low-impact lifestyle where I get to homestead and spend the majority of my time alone with my dogs in the woods doing projects in the warmer months and taking some downtime during the colder months.

A little over three years ago I began sharing the adventures (misadventures) of my life via writing, videos, pictures and the occasional podcasts and although my intention was to simply share my life with some friends it undoubtedly grew into much more than that over the years and now I find myself doing what equates to a full-time job just 'sharing my life' which is not even all that glamorous or anything but hey folks seem to enjoy it so I just keep doing it!

The way that the Fantastica Chronicles came about is that I was living at another place when I started chronicling and sharing my days but eventually I wound up moving to a new place. The new place is a homestead named 'Fantastica' so I started with 'Day 1' upon my arrival here and just kept documenting my days much like I had done for the previous nine hundred and fifty-seven days at the last place that I lived.

I have mostly done that 'documenting' at Fantastica exclusively with words (and pictures) opting not to do the videos because as I learned at the last place, sharing videos over an intermittent and slow internet connection is horribly time consuming and what I often think of as an 'ulcer inducing' experience. All that said, I opted for simplicity with the documentation and have no real regrets for doing so.

The way that I look at it is that I give it all my best each day and while some stuff I write is better than others I think that for the most part I do a pretty good job at doing what I am doing which is simply 'sharing my life' as candidly as I possibly can and whatever folks get (or do not get) from it there is always the satisfaction of me doing what I set out to do... which is to simply share my life.

TL;DR: There is no tl;dr because you should have more patience and attention span than a gnat on a high wind.

The Fantastica Chronicles Day 248-254!

Day 248. (TFC Trying To Capture The Elusive Cellular Signal, Sorting Out More Financial Stuff & Having To Take A Nap Because My Brain Hurt After Doing The First Two Things In This Title)

It was another really beautiful day here and apparently other than a cold snap late this week it is going to stay quite warm the next several days. There is a good bit of rain and thunderstorms on the way but that does not concern me all that much because things around here have gotten a chance to dry up the last few days and are not nearly as mucky as they previously were and also the plants love the rain!

I spent a big chunk of my morning doing my usual Sunday routine of writing, editing and posting which (like I have stated before) is something that I always look forward to even though it is incredibly time consuming getting the entire week's worth of daily posts all consolidated into a single article. With this past week's Fantastica Chronicles I noticed that I mostly wrote about blockchain stuff and had not realized just how much I had written about it until I was compiling all the days into said single article. This time of year I should probably be focusing more on outdoor projects but being cooped up inside during all the rainy days it sure is nice to have something meaningful (and albeit productive) to spend my time on instead of just lounging around and consuming media!

During the afternoon I took down the antenna pole at the coffee bar, removed the 3G cellular repeater antenna from it, installed the 4G repeater antenna on it and erected the pole again. I then ran an extension cord to the coffee bar (because there is no power at it) and setup the 4G cellular repeater hardware there to test whether I could perhaps get a usable data connection. I probably spent too much time on the testing but after rotating the antenna in every direction and even taking it down again and adjusting its tilt I was unable to do more than establish a 4G LTE connection that although 'connected' would not actually transfer any data.

Being a rather patient person sometimes I have to just realize that I am not being patient but in fact am just beating my head against the proverbial wall which is pretty much what I realized I was doing with that particular installation of the 4G repeater. So I decided to just setup the 4G repeater back at the shelter itself (so that I can use it indoors) because at least I could get text messages with it and perhaps eventually when another cellular tower goes in I might actually be able to use the data portion of it as well.

Since the antenna pole that I had the antenna on is so tall that I have to use two sections of coaxial wire with it to get it indoors (which lowers the signal capacity of the unit) I decided to just go back to using the fiberglass pole section and shorten the pole and thus reduce the length of wire because after all at that point I just wanted to move forward with why I needed the damn phone to work in the first place... to get text messages so that I can complete all the fucking two-step authentication (verifications) that I have to do for pretty much everything involved with financial stuff.

Do not get me wrong because having my own data connection for internet would be super awesome but hey I have made it this far on the homestead's dodgy satellite internet so it is not all that vital. What is vital is the damn text messages and given that most of those verification codes (received via text message) expire after a few minutes things need to work well enough to get the text within a few minutes instead of hours (or days) which is what happens without the repeater.

I got everything setup on the fiberglass antenna pole and when I tested it indoors the unit's lights showed that it was utilizing (and found) signals for all its various radio bands and the phone itself got almost full 'bars' for its signal but still no joy on a usable data connection or sending and receiving text messages. It is worth noting that I again rotated the antenna in every direction to find where it gave me the best signal. At this point I got pretty frustrated and took a step back from things and took a frigging nap because I was admittedly getting both cranky and annoyed with the entire affair.

The nap was good and upon waking I decided to tackle the problem of cellular connectivity yet again and raise the antenna up further (like I had originally had it) and see if by doing that I could get a good connection with the 4G repeater. Once again all the lights on the unit indicated it was working and once again I had full 'bars' on the phone but still no usable data connection or text messaging capabilities.

I kind of wanted to scream at that point but instead I took the antenna pole down, re-installed my 3G antenna on it, put the pole back up, rewired the 3G unit indoors and of course it worked for text messages! Basically all the stuff that I have done over the last few days with the repeaters just proved that my original setup was as good as it was going to get. At least now I know that though and I even get text messages with only a one or two minute delay so meh.

Once I got the text messaging working I was able to start doing some of the verification stuff and ugh I just have to say that between the identification verifications and the 'live' selfie taking and all the permissions that I had to give to multiple websites it left me wondering just how much consideration is given by those 'verification processors' to those of us in places with poor internet connections and little to no cellular service. Honestly it was a fucking hassle and to make things worse the poor lighting I have in the shelter made most of the pictures that I took get repeatedly rejected by the verification services. Also granting all those permissions to websites to use my phone's camera and microphone left me thinking that once I finish all this crap I am going to factory reset my phone just to ensure the permissions will not be exploited.

Alright now that I got all that out of my system I am going to wrap this up, do the editing/posting and get on with my day. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a wonderful day/night.

Day 249. (TFC Another Nice Weather Day, Setting Up Linux On A Fellow Homesteader's Desktop & Spending Much Of My Day Writing)

It was once again a really nice day as far as the weather goes and although I probably should have been working on stuff outdoors... once again I found myself spending much of my day indoors.

After doing my usual morning writing I had some breakfast and during that time I chatted some with one of my fellow homesteaders about the current situation where folks are being told that they have to go back to work (risking their own and other folks lives in the process) or lose their job altogether. To say that the topic got me 'fired up' would be an understatement and after breakfast I found myself back at my keyboard hammering out even more words to sort of get it all out of my system. I am not going to start writing about it all again in this post but suffice it to say that I think that what is going on in this country is alarming, indifferent to human life and downright appalling in every way imaginable. If you want to read my thoughts for yourself you can do so here: https://peakd.com/hive/@jacobpeacock/some-more-covid-19-thoughts

Shortly after writing the aforementioned article I went back to the homestead proper so that I could work on a new desktop computer there that one of my fellow homesteaders recently purchased and wanted me to put Linux on for them. Months ago I had wrote about their old desktop and how every hard drive that we put in it died and by the third one I was like 'we can keep feeding it hard drives and it will keep killing them because something is wrong with this motherboard' which was a bit more than a hypothesis because the computer was behaving in such a way that sometimes the hard drive would work and sometimes it would not find the drive at all regardless of which SATA port I connected it to or what settings in the BIOS that I tweaked. Basically through the process of elimination I came to the realization that the motherboard was bad.

During the winter I had bought two one terabyte hard drives and put one in my new desktop and one in the 'faulty' desktop at the homestead proper and although the one in my computer worked/works flawlessly... the one in the other desktop started crashing repeatedly which ultimately lead to my aforementioned diagnosis and the person eventually ordering a new computer which arrived a few days ago.

I was prepared to put Linux on the hard drive that came with the new computer but I had the idea to just pull the one terabyte drive from the old desktop and put it in the new one and see if it would boot to it which would save me several hours of work installing and configuring a new Linux installation. Long story short here, after putting the old drive in the new computer and re-configuring the BIOS for it to boot to the drive... it booted right up and everything just worked so there was no need to install anything, no need to configure anything because the Linux just modified itself to utilize the different hardware of the new desktop without any driver installation, crashes or anything. All I can really say is something that I often find myself saying which is: Linux rules!

Anyway, I spent a bit more time helping that fellow homesteader get things setup for them to start using Hive. They had previously been using Steem but they were without a computer during the transition from one blockchain to another and had not been able to participate until they got a computer up and running so it was pretty damn cool seeing them 'light up' at being able to finally use the new Hive blockchain and its various tools.

It is hard to truly convey to folks what all is different between that sort of social media and other forms that exists but it is the epitome of decentralization, censorship resistance and to be blunt the exercising of truly free speech where folks posts/comments are impossible to be truly suppressed or even deleted because what is written to the blockchain stays on the blockchain forever!

Well, I am going to just keep this short and sweet so that I can get on with my day. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a wonderful day/night.

Day 250. (TFC Just Another Day & Seeing Lots Of Swallow Tail Butterflies)

The weather was once again rather fair for most of the day although it did get stormy and rained a bit just before dark. Thankfully it only thundered for a little while and the dogs did not get too freaked out by it which is always good because I dislike seeing them in any kind of distress.

For the most part the dogs are rather content to just hang out in the dog yard (or in/under the shelter) but lately those 'free range' dogs of the neighbors have been coming near the shelter site and twice in the last three days two of my dogs bolted through the gate (because I failed to latch the bottom of the gate) and chased the other dogs away which honestly I am okay with except that they chase the dogs all the way back to their home (where they fucking belong) but I am unsure that if the neighbors see them they are going to equate the fact that my dogs are chasing their dogs home and not just roaming over there for no reason.

To say that it is a bit aggravating is an understatement but saying anything to the neighbors about it would just create tensions and probably hostilities that I can live without right up to the moment that one of my dogs gets hurt because of it. Fortunately there was only that one dog fight (in the creek between my boy dog and one of their dogs) and since then those other dogs haul ass away when they see my dogs heading towards them.

I once again did not get much accomplished besides my daily writing and engaging with folks online to one degree or another and am beginning to realize that I might be in a bit of a funk over my financial scenario which is stupid of me to do because it is perpetuating a mindset that has too much damn anxiety involved in it and is nudging me closer towards being depressed.

Having overcome the horribly mind crippling depression that stuck with me for decades I know the damn signs of it and am not inclined to slip back into it like some old comfortable sweater that is cozy but does not do a damn thing to thwart the cold. In other words I am just going to have to 'nip it in the bud' and stop it before it can take root in my life again. Of course that is easier said than done and I just cannot let the financial insecurity I am feeling morph into something that stops me from making progress.

It is not like I have not been doing everything that I can do online to generate income over the last few months since losing two-thirds of my monthly income and I was finally able to get my accounts all sorted out so that I can start turning cryptocurrency into USD so I am sure that will help. The only real problem with that is that I just invested most of my own (and some other folks) cryptocurrency into those collectible cards which will take some time to see a real return on.

I still think that the investment was a good move but like all investments they take time and the right combination of factors to be successful. Honestly I do not have much anxiety in that regard because even if I do not make much money from the endeavor I at least will not be losing anything unless for some unforeseen reason the entire project goes 'belly up' and the developers quit working on it but given the community support for it and the desire for more games on the Hive blockchain I sincerely doubt that will be the case. Waiting does not cost me anything after all and if there is one thing that I do not have in short supply it is patience.

Well, I do not have much else to write about at the moment and do not really want to dive into a big tangent about the current state of affairs so I am just going to wrap this up, break my recent cycle and get to doing stuff that might improve my quality of life or at the very least my perspective. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a wonderful day/night and I am going to do the same.

Day 251. (TFC A Cold And Rainy Day, Getting A Few Chores Done Before The Rain Started & Embracing The Perfect Napping Weather)

We got a late spring cold snap here and although it did not get below freezing it did get down into the upper thirties Fahrenheit during the evening. The day started off pretty overcast and by late in the morning it started raining and the temperature started dropping and continued to do so the remainder of the day. It also rained on and off throughout the day so aside from getting a few chores around the shelter site done (like shoveling up the dog poop and adding it to the compost) I was not able to do anything else outdoors.

The weather was reminiscent of the wintertime and although I am not all that fond of the cold I did enjoy staying all toasty warm in te shelter with the propane heater on and the dogs all snuggled up around me. Although I tried to find some inspiration for writing I never quite did and instead found myself mostly just commenting back and forth with some folks in the comments section of a few Hive posts.

Admittedly I have been pretty moody of late and found myself not being quite as 'diplomatic' as I usually am with my commentary especially when I encounter folks just parroting narratives or rhetoric that I have seen expressed ad infinitum elsewhere. Perhaps it is just me but it sure would be nice to encounter more folks expressing unique opinions and views that they come up with themselves instead of just repeating the same nauseating crap over and over again. It is definitely something that I encounter more on other social media sites and given my long years of practice at ignoring them perhaps I should just do the same on Hive but damn it I just have higher standards/expectations from my Hive experiences than I do for my experiences on other platforms.

In other news. The corn that I have planted in the various gardens around the shelter site is slowly getting larger. I am still unsure just how well it will do in the woods throughout the course of the year as the sun's position in the sky keeps shifting but for now it being directly overhead seems to be giving the plants sufficient light throughout the day. I did go and check on the corn across the creek and it sees to be growing much slower now that more of the foliage on the trees has grown back which has me thinking that I need to research what vegetables I can plant in those gardens that are more shade tolerant so that all the effort that went into creating those gardens is not wasted.

The potatoes that I have growing in the greenhouse are perhaps the healthiest looking potato plants that I have ever grown and I think that after this week (when the freezing temperatures we are about to get pass) I am going to construct a large potato box outside the greenhouse to transplant some of them into. I might just use some old roofing metal to create the box and gather a bunch of topsoil from near the creek to fill the box with and create a 'reserve' pile of soil so that I can keep adding it atop the plants as they grow. The potato plants should have already had soil added atop them several times by now but lacking the soil and the space to do it I have not added anymore soil to them that what I original planted them in. Mostly I want a big potato box because I like the peace of mind that having a large food supply 'in the ground' (so to speak) that does not truly require any additional storage once the potatoes themselves have matured and ripened. Like I have said before it is nice that even during the winter months I can dig around in a big potato box and have something to eat!

Anyway, most of the afternoon while it was rainy and cold I napped the hours away and although I like napping in general it seems that of late I need (or want) to do it more just to sort of reset my mind after a day of digesting too many damn world events and the stories of what has been going on for folks that I know as well as those I do not know. It is assuredly some strange times to be alive during and if my brain is feeling a bit 'overloaded' I can only imagine what other folks are going through. The only thing that I find sort of comforting is that humans (in one shape or another) have survived ice ages, plagues, pandemics and all sorts of upheaval over the centuries and there is no damn reason why we cannot make it through the current situation as well.

Well, that is about it for now. Sorry if these posts have not been all that awesome of late but I just have not been doing enough stuff outdoors to give me much to actually write about so I guess it is what it is for now. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a wonderful day/night.

Day 252-253-254. (TFC A Few Days Of Much Chillier Weather, Getting In A Supply Run & Being Productive Indoors)

The weather has been crap the last three days with a bunch of rain and cold temperatures the first two days and just today it finally started to get a bit warmer and was actually sunny outside even though there was a bit of a chill in the air that never quite went away. Hopefully there will not be anymore of these cold snaps but I do my best not get my hopes up too high until halfway through May each year because late frosts are rather common in the mountains here. Although it has been chilly outside I stayed nice and cozy warm in the shelter and enjoyed a little hiatus from writing the last few days.

Honestly the days have passed in a bit of a blur and at this point the image of the computer screen is probably burned into my retinas because I have pretty much spent every waking moment in front of it. For the most part I helped that Exode game developer by testing (and bug reporting) things for them and also doing some light moderation/helping in the game's official chat room even though I am not officially a part of the developer team or anything like that.

Yesterday was the big card pack opening day for some of the game cards that I have been collecting the last few weeks. I think that the high latency (slow) internet here actually helped a bit for once because it seemed like I found several bugs on the game website because of it. It also may have just been dumb luck that I got the bugs because most people did not encounter any bugs at all so go figure.

I actually find the entire game development thing rather exhilarating not just because I find this particular game interesting but because I enjoy communicating with the developer and the other community members that I have met testing the game and/or just being supportive of it. The really thrilling part for me though is helping to improve the game experience and that the developer has been very responsive to my own (and other folks) suggestions and being able to see those changes being made and/or or the suggestions leading to even better ideas being implemented by the developer. I guess that it just comes down to feeling like I am a part of something neat and that my time indoors is not being wasted.

Another thing that makes me excited about that whole game project is that it is the first major game being developed on the Hive blockchain so there is the inherent excitement of being involved in something entirely new. The game style itself is also unique because is a “collectible strategy game” which is a whole new genre of game in and of itself. There is also a large futuristic fictional universe that the game is based on so I find that aspect rather appealing and am looking forward to reading the actual fictional material (and maybe writing some fan art for it) at some point in the future.

I could probably write several pages about my manic feelings and thoughts about the game and all its various aspects but I should probably change gears here and get onto another topic because as nice as it has been to have something to distract myself with (and invest my time in) I feel like at some point I will just keep 'chasing my own tail' and start repeating myself about just how excited that I am about the entire project.

Two days ago I went out on a supply run and finally got all stocked up on everything again. I had skipped a supply run last month because I had just enough stuff to make it through the month and I spent most of my money getting that new cellphone and paying for a month of service on it so that I could receive text messages and get all my financial stuff sorted out.

It was definitely worth getting the phone because the Bitcoin halving event happens in a few more days and I was able to get everything situated so that I could buy and sell Bitcoin and easily turn it into USD if/when the price climbs. Given that the price tends to go up each time that a halving event happens I think that it is a pretty easy way to turn my small amount of Bitcoin into a slightly larger amount of USD than what I bought it at. We will see how all that turns out but either way I am now ready for it!

While I was out shopping I picked up a bunch of vegetable seeds and once this cold snap passes I am going to get the inside of my greenhouse setup better with some tables/shelving and get everything planted. One of the things that I got seeds for was beets because they tend to do well in the shade and I am thinking to plant them in among the corn plants that I have growing in those gardens across the creek. I also got some spinach that may do well in the shade but I am thinking to just grow that in the greenhouse because that way I can conveniently harvest some of it each day to have as a snack or to eat it with my meals. Spinach is such a simple thing to grow and I like the taste of it so I am thinking to maybe even try to grow it year-round in the greenhouse.

I also got to look at some baby chickens while I was shopping and after talking to a fellow homesteader about it later they wound up buying some and even got four of them for me to have. They built a little cage for them today that has a light and drip water system. In about a month the little chicks will be large enough that I can get them and have them. I will of course have to build them a little chicken coop and I am thinking to just build it inside the dog yard to help keep them safe from predators. I have no idea how my little chicken coop will turn out (or what I am going to build it with) but given that I have a month to figure something out I am sure that I will manage making them a nice home one way or another.

I would really rather have ducks but apparently both them and chickens are in high demand right now and although there are some chickens to be bought the ducks are on back order. For keeping the tick population around the shelter site in control pretty much any fowl would work and although I prefer duck eggs... the chicken eggs will assuredly be yummy.

The dogs have been around chickens before and have always done well with them but I have never had chickens of my own so it will be interesting to see how it all works out. The dogs are pretty keen on eggs and know that the chickens make them so they will probably just be protective of them like they have been in the past. Otherwise I might have a bit of dog training ahead of me but I feel confident that the dogs will rise to the occasion.

Somehow I will have to work out how I am going to feed the chickens and will have to budget in affording feed for them each month. If I can figure out a way to grind all the corn that I am growing I might be able to feed them some of that for part of the year once the corn finishes maturing and I get it dried out.
I will probably do some research and see what kinds of grasses and grains that I can grow as feed as well. One thing about chickens though is that they will pretty much eat anything!

Anyway, all that jazz aside things are moving along pretty well here at the homestead and between the gardens and the chickens I am sure to be busy over the coming weeks as long as the weather cooperates and the sun starts shining more and it quits raining every other day. Sorry for the triple day post but it will save me from having to do any writing in the morning and I can just focus on getting this week's Fantastica Chronicles all compiled and posted without the added time it takes to write as well. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a wonderful day/night.

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That Is All For Now!

Cheers! & Hive On!