We figured instead of spending another $100+ on a new rug .. lets embrace the beauty of the natural hardwood floors !! We did spend about $15 on cleaner and polish. Fast forward about three hours later and the floor came out spectacular !! .. so good in fact the next day we tossed an identical blue rug from an adjacent room and re-did that floor as well !!

Our home/apartment was built around 1910, so we now have beautiful hardwood floors to match our pressed tin ceilings and sliding pocket doors.  Aside from more elegant aesthetics.. hopefully there will be less vacuuming and less dust and cruft embedded in the non-existent carpets.  ;)

Bonus: If we ever move we don’t have to worry about two big ass rugs to lug with us .. woot !!

Since becoming a self-proclaimed minimalist I have a hard time “settling” when it comes to buying stuff. Even as a minimalist I still need to replace things when the wear out .. like shoes. I this case they were work shoes. I work in a “business casual” environment so sneakers everyday isn’t an option.

In the past I would just head down to payless and pick up a new pair of $19.95 shiny-cookie-cutter-plastic-hard-uncomfotable-ass shoes and suffer. About a year ago when my soles started getting uneven, I decided I wasn’t going to settle.

Here we are.. a year later, countless shoe stores and online perusing, (not to mention I could touch my heel through the bottom of my shoes).. I decided on a pair of Sanuks !!

It was TOTALLY worth not settling for “cheap” footwear. I can say with 100% certainty that Sanuks are the most comfortable shoes I’ve ever put my feet in !! (and they’re NOT sneakers.. loophole found = check)

So the point is.. once you develop a minimalist mindset you’ll be less likely to run out and buy something on impulse because you think you need it. When you actually DO need something you’ll more than likely buy a quality replacement.

Your feet will thank you

I work in tech support for a large ISP. I get to listen to people scream and complain 40+ times a day about how their phone, internet or TV isn’t working and I need to fix it for them RIGHT NOW !!

It’s also expected by my employer that I get this done in under 10 minutes. Oh yeah … and try to up-sell them more crap they don’t need !! I feel like telling these poor souls that the TV is brainwashing them !! .. but alas, for now I need my job.

Other than the technical part, everything about my job goes against the minimalist ideals I’ve established for myself and family. This makes it very difficult to come to work everyday.

My goal at this point is to become a freelance technologist, able to help with a multitude of PC related and network issues, that is my  passion !! I’ve tried this in the past but didn’t use the internet to it’s full potential. Unfortunately the internet is chock full of FREE information when it comes to computers and technology.  I do have a few ideas brewing though … Hopefully this site will soon evolve to reflect my motives.

I’ve also developed an appreciation for what I see as simple pleasures in life .. here’s a short list off the top of my head..

• Spending time with my wife
• Watching my kids play
• Sipping a good cup of coffee
• Reading
• Falling asleep listening to the rain
• The smell of the spring air
• Hiking in the woods
• My wifes cooking
• Warwalking

Well that’s some of what’s been happening with me .. more to come soon.

#!Crunchbang is by far my favorite Linux distro, simple, lightweight, minimal, elegant and highly customizable.

In order to get it up and running on my netbook I had to install it to a USB flash drive. Normally I would use Unetbootin and just point it to the .iso, in this case that didn’t work .. here’s what worked for me on my Asus eee 900 (4gig, 900Mhz celeron, 512MB)

The  steps can be found on the #! wiki here: http://crunchbanglinux.org/wiki/statler_usb_installation

Basically just connect your USB drive to the PC where you’ve downloaded the Crunchbang .iso

run the following command from a terminal

sudo ls -l /dev/disk/by-id/*usb*

that should show how your system recognizes the flash drive (sdb, sdc, etc).. in my case it was sdb and sdb1 (sdb being the main block device)

unmount the flash drive

sudo umount /dev/sbd

then copy the Crunchbang iso to the drive (THIS WILL ERASE THE FLASH DRIVE !!)

in my case I saved the image in my home folder under downloads so I ran:

sudo dd if=/home/lnxr0x/downloads/crunchbang-10-alpha-01-openbox-i686.iso of=/dev/sdb bs=4M;sync

You now have a bootable flash drive with the newest version of #!Crunchbang, The Linux for Minimalists

Since I’m now using Gnome as my default desktop environment I can easily intergrate Dropbox into my setup. The great thing about Dropbox is that it allows you to sync folders on multiple devices.

So lets say I’m working on my netbook and want to access my work from my desktop when I get home. I save my files to the Dropbox folder on my netbook. Later when I get home I go to my desktop, open up the Dropbox folder .. and BAM there’s my work !!

Simple+Effective+Minimal = Awesome !!!

You get 2gigs FREE space with Dropbox, if you follow the link below you can get an extra 250MB of storage for using my invite

https://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTM1MTM0Nzk

I’ve listed some features of Dropbox below

• 2GB of online storage for free, with up to 100GB available.
• Sync files of any size or type.
• Sync Windows, Mac and Linux computers.
• Automatically syncs when new files or changes are detected.
• Work on files in your Dropbox even if you’re offline.
• Efficient sync – only the pieces of a file that changed (not the whole file) are synced. This saves you time.
• Doesn’t hog your Internet connection. You can manually set bandwidth limits.
• View your files on your iPhone or iPod Touch

I found a great series of books about a guy called “Jack Reacher”. (found out about it from a fellow minimalist) He basically moves from place to place getting into conspiracies and being bad ass !!    Just search Amazon or Google, I’m too lazy to post a link.

Now you might be asking what the f*#! does a book have to do with buying a house !?!  I’ll tell you what .. in the book “Trip Wire” he talks about why owning a house doesn’t appeal to him, I was like WOW !!! EXACTLY !!

Below is part of his inner dialogue about owning a home…

He was pretty sure he didn’t want to live in a house. The desire just passed him by. The necessary involvement intimidated
him.

It was a physical weight, exactly like the suitcase in his hand. The bills, the property taxes, the insurance, the warranties, the repairs, the maintenance, the decisions, new roof or new stove, carpeting or rugs, the budgets. The yard work.

He stepped over and looked out of the window at the lawn. Yard work summed up the whole futile procedure. First you spend a lot of time and money making the grass grow, just so you can spend a lot of time and money cutting it down again a little while later.

You curse about it getting too long, and then you worry about it staying too short and you sprinkle expensive water on it all summer, and expensive chemicals all fall.

Crazy !

-Jack Reacher

… couldn’t have said it better myself !!

I found a lot of great “cloud” storage solutions, but most either cost too much for the amount of data I need to store, and or are not cross-platform. I need Windows and Linux support. Then I found Adrive.com .. They offer 50 Gigs of backup FREE !! Everything is Java based so it’s totally cross-platform .. Now it’s just gonna take a while to upload ALL that data !!

I also setup FreeNAS on my spare PC (old PIII saved from dumpster death) that sits in the closet.. It only has a 20 gig drive in it so I need to do an upgrade to get more space. If you’re looking for an on site backup/redundancy solution look no further than FreeNAS. FreeNAS has  features comparable to data systems costing thousands. It’s a snap to setup and gives you the ability to setup up a mirrored RAID so if one disk fails it will rebuild it from the data on the second drive. The web interface is great and makes it easy to enable services to interact with all machines on your local network (or remote network). You can enable SSH so you can mount a file share remotely using SSHFS.

Just remember backup does NOT mean redundancy !! If your house burns down and all your data is there you’re screwed. Sure it was backed up but there was no redundancy in the event of a disaster.

If anyone has any questions on setting up FreeNAS (or any other technical questions)  I’d be glad to help

Over the past year after telling people how I’m minimalist, the reactions have gone from “what ?, that sounds dumb.” to “WOW, look at all the people who are as passionate about minimalism as you are ! .. maybe I’ll try it !” Amazing !! .. that’s a movement.  Not controlled, not sponsored, it just happens because enough people care to tell others about what made a difference in their lives !!

So how do you weed out all the crap ? Chances are if  your reading this, you’re not someone who just randomly clicks links on the web and gets lost for an endless amount of hours taking pointless online surveys.. right ?? OK so maybe you are .. .. I’m not here to tell you how to use your time.

Here’s my tips to remain productive online and not waste the day in cyberspace.

1. Decide what topics are important to you – I have about three topics I check daily. Linux and open source news, information security happenings and my favorite minimalist blogs. You might have twenty interests you like to check everyday .. that’s cool.

2. Use RSS feeds – I have 26 web sites I check maybe twice a day. (I admit more if I’m bored at work, I’m chained to cubicle with a headset for eight hours.. but that’s another story) I use Google reader to scan through these sites in a matter of minutes. You don’t have to use Google reader, there’s plenty of RSS feed readers out there. I like Google because I can check it from any PC. The other great thing about using an RSS reader is it cuts out most ads so you don’t get sucked into the black hole of the net.

3. Click what matters – If I see a story, post or tip I know will make a positive impact in my daily life or help out with a current project or goal is then .. I click it, read it or “star” it to read when I have down time.

4. Stay away from cluttered sites - Most local news sites and ISP homepages are littered with garbage advertisements to get you to spend more time .. and hopefully more money on their sites. You could just stay away from the news all together Most of it is just FUD and media hype, I loath the news .. if it’s anything worth knowing about you’ll hear about it eventually.

Here’s to simple browsing !!

My wife and I decided early on that we were going to go the “minimalist” direction with all the baby “stuff”. We realized from having our previous two that you don’t need 90% of what TV, magazines and baby books try to sell you .. it’s all to get new parents to spend money on well marketed crap that isn’t necessary !!

Now I’m sure there’s an exceptions, but here’s a few things we’ve had that really aren’t needed with a newborn.

1. Diaper Genie and other Diaper disposal systems – you don’t have to have a degree in Diaper Geniology to realize you can use the regular garbage to dispose of diapers !! … genius invention the waste bin !!

2. Changing Table – Really !? .. you’re going to get up, get the baby and carry him/her over to a different room or location.. strap him in and the proceed to do the changing.  I prefer to use the nice warm queen size bed we already own or possibly a blanket on the floor.. I don’t think he’s gonna fall off the floor !!

3. Front pack baby carrier – By the time you get the baby all strapped in to do chores or other household duties it’s already time to feed him again. If you need a way to be “hands free” with baby go with one of the cloth slings .. they’re more natural, more comfortable and you just slip baby in .. DONE !!

These things are overpriced, overcomplicated, well marketed “NEED to have” baby accessories .. but if you look around you probably have a solution already in place thats simpler and more effective for your newborn.

Again this comes from deciding to be minimalist in our approach with our newborn .. If you NEED a $400 changing table .. then  it’s what works for you and you’re family.

Anything I’ve missed ?? Agree… disagree ?? Post below

Time to do some baby laundry ..