I've decided that, based on location and other factors, I'd like to find another spot to park my tiny RV in Portland. Preferably, I'd like to be somewhere within the following boundaries:

• N: South of Killingsworth St, east of Interstate Ave, north of Tillamook St.
• NE: South of Killingsworth St, north of Tillamook St.
• SE: North of Powell Blvd, west of 12th Ave, east of Cesar Chavez Blvd

All I would ask is to use your electricity (via extension cord), to shower in your bathroom, and to use your laundry machines (if present). My RV is only 20'8", so it only takes up slightly more room than a standard parking spot. It's also downright adorable (pictured above).

Though what I'm envisioning is an arrangement as an auxiliary dwelling alongside an existing residence, I'd also be open to a spot in a parking lot, etc if I were close enough to a facility for bathing.

Please spread the word! I'm willing to pay whatever the landowner or tenants think is fair. I'm quiet, considerate, and clean. Thank you for your support!

It's been about three months since my girlfriend and I trekked to Beaverton by bus to pick up the RV that I now call home. Since then, I've gone on a wild two-week roadtrip in my own house, transformed a modest RV interior into a luxurious palace on wheels, and learned so much about how to make the most of 100 square feet.

1. When you live in a tiny space, clutter's effects are amplified. When I lived in my loft apartment, weeks would go by without giving the place a good decluttering. Bottles and cans from parties weeks ago would remain on my giant countertop. If I ate popcorn the night before, you'd likely find the remnants in my giant bowl sitting on my coffee table. In the RV, most surfaces serve many purposes, so there simply isn't room for clutter. I do my dishes within a day because I only have one plate. Everything has its right place, and if it doesn't, its misplacement will reveal itself as soon as I try to drive my house away and need to find a place to stow it.
2. When resources are limited, you curb your usage subconsciously. My RV holds 20 gallons of fresh water and 19 gallons of waste, which is just enough to live one week comfortably before going to the dump station. Because of this inconvenience, I find myself turning off the faucet to conserve water more than I did in a brick-and-mortar home. It's amusing how barbaric and selfish we actually are when it comes to conservation, but I'll admit it took knowing my own supply is limited before I'd make a concerted effort in curbing my usage.
3. My life is generally richer and more experience-driven. When you live in 100 square feet, you're not occupied with the temptation to buy a new, swanky piece of furniture. Since I moved into the RV, I've found myself more eager to leave the house to explore, since I've stripped my house of frivolty and responsibility. No space for a couch means I'm less likely to vegetate during the daytime.
4. A small space is dirt cheap to maintain! When I lived in my loft apartment, I was paying $1239/mo in rent, between $20-$100 in electricity per month (it had electric forced air heat), and varying amounts in water and sewer usage. In the RV, my monthly expenses are $100/mo for my parking spot, about $25/mo for electricity, about $10/mo for propane, and $40/mo for waste disposal. That puts my monthly base living expenses at $175!
5. A small space is cozy. My RV is just a downright pleasant place to be. Most people assume because I have such a small space that I'm not comfortable. I think the opposite is true. My walls are closer together. Rather than the cold, vast cavern my loft often felt like, my RV feels like a small, warm cocoon.

Okay, so you're probably thinking there must be some serious drawbacks to tiny living. "Don't you wish you had more room once in awhile?" "Doesn't living in your car get old?" "Don't you wish you had a shower in your house?" Sometimes these thoughts enter my mind. But in all honesty, the feeling of self-sufficiency, resourcefulness, and ingenuity I derive from this lifestyle far outweigh the drawbacks. Quite frankly, I'm happier than I've ever been.

If you're interested in tiny living in an RV but don't know how to get started, drop me a line! teejay.vanslyke+rv@gmail.com

Last night saw yet another bicyclist death in Portland. And, as with most cyclist fatalities, Kathryn Rickson fell victim to a negligent motorist. Yet, somehow, the automobile remains the fabric of modern society. Despite its reputation as the leading cause of accidental death in the world, Americans are addicted to their cars. And it should be treated as much as an epidemic as smoking or obesity.

I write all of this sitting in my three-ton RV, so you might call me a hypocrite. I love automobiles. They're great tools for traveling medium distances. But across America, automobiles are being misused as a means of transit for very short distances in densely-populated areas. Here in Portland, we advocate the bicycle as a healthy alternative to automobile transit. Yet our streets are still flooded with big, loud, noisy cars. Taking a walk usually involves having to be vigilant of two-ton aluminum boxes on wheels barreling down the street at 30 miles per hour. And this is normal?

Historically, city streets served as much as community meeting places as they did for transport. Streets are unique in that they are publicly owned like parks, but adjacent to private residences and businesses. Before the automobile (and on the very few designated car-free streets in America), streets were vibrant centers of collaboration and community. Why have we voluntarily surrendered our centers of community to the automobile?

We're so entrenched in car culture that the proposals I'm about to make will sound absurd. But, if enacted, I think we'd free our cities from the strangleholds of car traffic, noise and pollution in a profound way.

1. Make parking unaffordable to non-residents. In Portland, parking is generally abundant. With several downtown parking garages, generally free street parking, and friendly residential areas with tons of overflow spots, it's rare to think twice about driving because you won't have a place to park. If we enact a city tax on parking to the tune of $5/hour, you'll use public transit or a bicycle faster than you can say Hummer. Of course, residents should have parking permits for their neighborhoods excluding them from this tax. The point isn't to discourage car ownership--only to discourage traffic.
2. Reduce the maximum speed to 15 MPH. Cars don't kill people. People with poor reaction time kill people. Currently, the City of Portland's default maximum speed limit is 25 MPH. While reasonable for car-only travel, cars traveling at this speed are still a nuissance to pedestrians crossing streets and bicyles attempting to maintain the flow of traffic among automobiles. Reducing the maximum speed would also discourage car use since bicycling would yield approximately the same trip duration.
3. Remove parking lanes from business districts and replace with combination of bicycle corrals and sidewalks. All business districts in Portland, from Alberta St to Hawthorne Blvd to NW 23rd Ave, permit short-term street parking. Not only do cars parking on these streets cause a nuissance to other motorists and bicyclists passing through, but the line of cars littering curbs in these districts reduce the amount of livable community space open to businesses and citizens. By forcing patrons to park elsewhere, we would create peaceful, open-air pedestrian malls.
4. Require urban drivers to have a permit which must be renewed monthly. This is a bit of a stretch, but I think if enacted properly, could be the best measure against unnnecessary automobile traffic. Want to drive in Portland? You'll need to have a sticker on your car saying you've paid your fee this month. Commercial vehicles might have an exemption from this policy since freight traffic is a necessary evil on our streets. But if you own a passenger vehicle and want to use it to go to work, the grocery store, or wherever else, you'll pay the price.

Now, I'm not an urban planner. I'm not sure of the unforeseen consequences of my recommendations. I'm merely starting the conversation about a post-automobile Portland. And, with enough support, I think we can make a dent in a problem more serious than any of us like to admit.

I've been using Mixpanel to track user behavior on one of my projects, and sought a more elegant way to track link clicks than the track_links method the standard API provides. Instead, I'd like to be able to specify the tracker's name and properties as HTML attributes.

Simply paste this snippet into your document ready block to get started:

Then, on any links you'd like to track, simply provide the data-mixpanel-tracker attribute:

<a href="/moon" data-mixpanel-tracker="he chose to go to the moon">Go to the Moon!</a>

Specify custom properties in JSON using the data-mixpanel-properties attribute:

<a href="/moon" data-mixpanel-tracker="he chose to go to the moon" data-mixpanel-properties="{agency: 'nasa', mission: 'apollo 13'}">Go to the Moon!</a>

This snippet will automatically redirect the user to the link's href after 300ms, so no need to worry if the Mixpanel request failed. Happy tracking!

March was a turbulent month for my body and mind. I had just terminated the lease on my apartment in Portland and was in the process of moving into a tiny RV. Every day was rendered more burdensome by persistent rain, gloomy skies, and an unnerving sense that the rabbit hole of my anguish would burrow ever-deeper.

And so, I set out on the open road in a blaze of escapist glory, thinking I was destined to find happiness outside myself. At first, the distraction of the road combined with the glimmer of sunshine provided me with the fulfillment I so craved. But, as with all stints of pleasure, it was short-lived and transient.

When I returned to Portland, I sought to properly investigate the source of my anguish. Why did I find myself in a constant state of yearning and escapism? It wasn't my friends, nor my surroundings, nor the weather, nor my work. I had tailored each of those to my liking--moreso than for most people have the opportunity or will. If none of those things, then what?

Fast-forward to this weekend. Within a 24-hour span, I discovered a film and a book, the likes of which would change my life. The film is the recently released, critically-acclaimed Forks Over Knives. In it, the documentarian examines The China Study, the famed 2004 book examining the relationship between the consumption of animal products and illness, in the context of the Western diet.

I was well-aware my diet wasn't optimal, but I knew my attentiveness toward what I put in my gullet was more than most Americans, so I thought little of it. But when I realized that certain foods, in adequate daily quantities, could reverse diseases like cancer, multiple sclerosis, and coronary artery disease, I was astonished and sought to completely revamp my diet to meet and exceed those criteria.

Forks Over Knives evangelizes a strict vegan diet and claims meat, dairy, and even fish are not necessary for, and often detrimental to, a healthy, disease-preventitive diet. Being a curious little bugger, I never let one driver steer me down the street. After all, veganism is generally regarded as a veritable tightrope walk to get adequate levels of B vitamins, and essential amino acids. Dr. Terry Wahls, a now-recovering multiple sclerosis patient, gave a TED talk detailing the diet she used to kickstart her brain and find her way out of a wheelchair and walking again.

Now, rather than eating out for two or more meals per day, I go to the grocery store shortly after waking up each morning, buy a bunch of dark leafy greens, one colored vegetable, one bunch of herbs, two pieces of fruit, and a bag of seeds or nuts of my choosing. All of this becomes the basis for two heaping servings of raw salad. You probably think I'm malnourished, but I've never felt so alert and alive. My craving for "mood enhancers" like caffeine, alcohol and cannabis have diminished substantially, almost to the point where I find their use to yield a net negative effect.

Okay, so I've got my body on the path to proper nourishment. On to my spirit...

Enter The Power of Now by Eckart Tolle. Typically I don't gravitate toward mainstream bestsellers as the source for great inspiration, but there are always exceptions. This is a big one. Tolle has re-taught me the duality of being and self, a distinction I hadn't forgotten but one I had certainly neglected in my daily life. Whenever I find myself becoming anxious, fearful, or stressed, I focus my attention to the beauty of the moment I'm living. After all, the past and future only exist as recollections and projections in our minds.

This led to another realization, the likes of which Tolle couldn't have discussed in his 1999 book but stares me straight in the face in our twenty-first century age. If past and future are mere products of ego, if self and identity are ailments of our own making, then what does social media represent in that context? The ultimate manifestation of our egos in digital form? Are all the texts, tweets, status updates, and constant social noise causing us anxiety of which we're hardly aware? Does the comment I receive on my Facebook post, pushed straight to my phone and ready for my consumption the instant it is published, the most iconic example of non-presence, non-attentiveness, and unconscious living imaginable?

tl;dr Eat your fucking vegetables and be here now.

I've been living out of my tiny RV for two months. My comfort level with the arrangement is growing steadily, to the point where I almost always get a good night's sleep in my vehicle. But there's still a nagging uncertainty amidst my gratification that I'll be caught and prosecuted for my behavior, the likes of which bears no harm upon others and has less of an environmental impact than a normal, modern living arrangement.

When I was in San Luis Obispo, I decided that its downtown core was much too alluring to spend my time driving between it and a campground on the outskirts of town. And so, despite its illegality, I spent the night in my RV parked on the street beside a law firm. I made sure my presence wouldn't upset anyone and kept my profile low. I awoke peacefully and didn't have any issues.

The next morning over coffee, I executed a quick web search for "RV parking in San Luis Obispo" and came across this article. Turns out, SLO has enacted an ordinance banning RV camping from their streets in an effort to combat vagrantism and the drugs and violence that come with it. Yet another instance of combating a problem by enacting more laws, rather than approaching it with discretion and common sense.

And so, I had three options. I could continue to spend my nights on city streets and risk being harassed by the police, I could find a campground on the outskirts of SLO and pay $45/night for 100 square feet of cement in an area with no amenities or attractions, or I could realize how unwelcome I felt and head home. I headed home.

Here in Portland, we're constantly at odds with how to deal with homelessness and vagrantism. Our downtown core is littered with their trash and our shelters have lines longer than swanky brunch cafes on a late Sunday morning. And yet, we continue to uphold laws prohibiting camping on public grounds and ordinances prohibiting long-term camping on private lots. In my short experience as a vagabond, my most striking observation was that my ability to be productive was drastically reduced when faced with the question of where I would sleep that night.

Now that I'm back in Portland and sitting pretty in my girlfriend's driveway while contributing my share of rent each month, I'm reminded that I'm still living an illegal lifestyle. Because of zoning ordinances in our city and most others, I've effectively erected a second domicile in a lot zoned for single-family occupancy, which if used regularly, constitutes a zoning violation. Luckily, I've got a laundry list of alibis if the city asks any questions. "This is my mobile office and I live in the house with my girlfriend" is what I'm sticking with for now. But the fact that I even have to consider having an alibi for completely harmless behavior (and in a time of increasing rent fees, one solution to the affordable housing problem) makes me cringe. Why should it be illegal for me to occupy a perfectly suitable dwelling on private property?

My RV lifestyle has granted me new perspective on homelessness and vagrantism. Despite my affluence and ability to get a hotel room or rent a house at a moment's notice, my reluctance to do those things means I face many of the same problems and vulnerabilities. I seek to live a happy, peaceful existence and have chosen minimalism as my path. It's too bad it's illegal for me to do so.

It's amusing to observe the patterns of my anxiety, as correlated with the weather and scenery. Portland's climate generally leaves me feeling depressed and wanting more. Its urban landscape is as near to perfect as an American city can be, but it might edge too far into the category of "major metropolitan area" for me to maintain a consistent semblance of sanity.

Monterey's cool, sunny climate combined with its seemingly lacksidasical seafaring populous made it a damn near perfect place to reset my head. And now, being thrusted back into another major metropolitan area, I'm reminded why I left in the first place.

Every California city is comprised of equal parts slums, picket fences, and ugly car-oriented commercialism. Even Berkeley, a haven for progressivism, is a congested beheamoth of a place. Don't get me wrong: Californian urbanites are generally lovely people. It's just that the car-oriented, sprawling nature of their urban areas propagates a unique brand of California aggression. Everyone here is in a hurry to get somewhere, and when they're done being somewhere, they're in a hurry to get somewhere else. It's as if someone put blinders on their car windshields and they're living oblivious to the fact they live in the most beautiful place on earth. Or it's because one look out their car windshields means another In-N-Out Burger, strip mall, or traffic interchange.

If there were a brand name for this perpetual state of rushedness and instant gratification, it would be dubbed San Jose™. In less than 24 hours, I've witnessed a man in a Lexus blast his horn at a woman walking in a parking lot as if his weekend might be ruined if not for his on-time arrival at the local BevMo!. I've counted the BMW's, the Lexuses (Lexi?), the Mercedes-Benz's, and the sad, balding men who drive them.

If there's one thing I've re-learned in my travels, it's that the most vital ingredient to happiness is what I like to call experiential diversity. Nostalgic thoughts act as natural antidepressants. Marketers convince you that their product or service will make you feel at home or bear resemblance to "the good old days." They're just targeting the same part of the brain stimulated the first night home after a peaceful vacation or the moment two loved ones are reconnected at the airport. What advertising and commercialism does not grant us is sustained diversity in experiences, thoughts, and ideas. If our hunter-gatherer roots aren't indicative enough of humankind's tendency toward exploration and conquest, then the blood-soaked founding of the United States should be. Denying our primal need to explore is to deny our humanity.

Never let the people on television, in your computer, on billboards, or on the radio persuade you their way is the right way. It's a certainty they're trying to take your money, and it's a near certainty that they feel the same longing and entrapment as you do when you listen to them. I've found a new kind of fulfillment, and it comes from within.

Winds battered the side of my van through the night, perched atop a hill in Monterey County. I awoke to a rainy windshield, a crisp, dewey morning with a glowing potential to blossom into a beautiful sunny afternoon.

I spent Thursday and Friday working and cycling. The Laguna Seca Recreation Area is home to the Mazda Laguna Seca raceway, which served as a veritable road cyclist's utopia with its maze of paved and barely-traveled access roads around the campus. For two days, I cheerfully alternated between cycling and working every few hours. I hardly spoke to a soul, but this solidarity gave me new perspective.

I awoke bright and early this morning—5:30 is the earliest I've woken up voluntarily in years. After committing a couple hours of work, I packed up the RV and headed out. My first stop was one of two gas stations in Big Sur. And at only $5.25 per gallon, it was quite the bargain. The shopkeepers had a certain rural charm and genuine friendly demeanor that I'm not sure I've experienced elsewhere.

My trip was to be simple in form, but burdensome in execution. Two hours driving, according to Google Maps, will carry an automobile from Big Sur to San Luis Obispo. What Google didn't know about was the rockslide and road closure I'd encounter a quarter of the way there.

US-1 runs along the perimeter of the Pacific coast. Outlets are sparse: There are stretches where one can drive forty miles without encountering a road leading inland. I was on one of those very stretches when I reached a "Road Closed" sign and a portly woman informing me (in that very same rural charm and friendly demeanor) that a rock the size of a large vehicle had fallen square into the highway, and that it was to be dynamited later that day.

And so, I set off in the northward direction, anxiously steering the windy, hilly intestine of the California coast. Since I enjoyed my grocery shopping experience in Monterey, I figured I'd set up shop in the area for the week. Monterey itself is quite a lot like all the California cities I've visited: Bright, car-crowded, noisy, yet still charming. I was tempted to try spending the night in my RV on a city street, but my waste tanks needed emptying and I wanted to retire to a peaceful place after the day's driving and working. I worked at a local coffee shop, bought enough groceries to last the rest of the week, and headed to Laguna Seca Recreation Area.

Despite sharing land with a race track, Laguna Seca is a gorgeous hilltop campground with full hookups and just about the best view out your window you've ever seen. I'm very much looking forward to spending my workday atop a hill in the peaceful sunshine.

I awoke Sunday morning to near-freezing temperatures in the parking lot of the Walmart in Yreka, California. Much to my surprise, I was the first RV to leave the lot in the morning. Armed with a fresh box of granola and unfettered by the bag of garbage and rotting produce left in the parking lot trash bin, I once again headed south on I-5.

Snow turned to rain turned to green forests turned to barren desert, and before I knew it, I was at a truck stop in the Central Valley. It amuses me that entire towns form in California with the sole purpose of providing Interstate travelers with amenities. Also amusing is how unfazed these desert dwellers are by living an existence which would have proven impossible only a hundred years ago.

And then I crossed the California Aqueduct. This is one of those fables I was told was true, but conveniently ignored. But there it was, a flowing network of oasises (oases?) feeding the fairytale city of Los Angeles, transforming temperate into desert and desert into temperate. According to Wikipedia, the California Water Project is the single biggest net consumer of energy in the state, despite it also being one of the largest producers. I'll put this in the categories of very cool and totally not going to last another century.

I arrived in Monterey at around 5:00 pm and stopped off for some groceries; Big Sur is located on a stretch of US-1 with no outlets for miles, so if I wanted to eat more than pub food I had to ensure I was well-stocked. Monterey immediately struck me as a place I could stand to spend some time. Small-town, coastal mentality paired with a seemingly classic Californian aesthetic made it a place to which I'd like to return.

The drive along US-1 was both arduous and one of the most beautiful experiences of my life, probably second only to the last time I drove it. Last time, my vessel was a rented Mustang, and could maneuver the windy, tight turns with ease. This time, it was a bit of a different story. I don't know why motorists on US-1 would want to go faster than 25 MPH. Speeds any greater don't provide the driver with an opportunity to dart their eyes westward at the coast's majesty. I must have pulled into four or five lookout points along the way to let Joe American and his American Family speed by to their next destination, racing as if he had to see the entirety of the California coast in only a day.

I arrived at my campsite and plugged in my land yacht as if it were a household appliance. I'm very eager to have her outfitted with solar panels so I'm not reliant on 110V power. I'm convinced that 12V is the way of the future, and that portably powered microhomes are a means toward sustained energy independence. Anyway, my stay here has cleared my head, provided me with a fresh supply of oxygen, and allowed me to recharge before I plunge into the bowels of Southern California.

Today I embarked on the first leg of my journey to find America or some nice weather or whatever the hell I'm looking for barrelling down Interstate 5 at a whopping 45-65 MPH (my VW is a 4-cylinder; give me a break). I set my sights on the Mt. Shasta area of Northern California as a reasonable stopping point, and I sought to cross one particular nagging American dream off my very long bucket list. Tonight, I'm sleeping at Walmart.

So far, my experience has been nothing but…what I thought it would be. There's the overweight employees and patrons, not entirely unkempt but as 'kempt' as required by Sir Sam Walton. And then there's the haggard old woman waving hello to the greeter at the front door. Yreka is a town of fewer than eight thousand; I suppose everyone knows your name in a place like this.

It's a bizarre feeling to drive into a Walmart parking lot and then realize you've got your entire house with you. As soon as I pulled in, I cranked on the propane and put on a pot of tea. Chamomile, to put me fast asleep to catch the first crack of sunlight pouring over the mountain. A Walmart patron might have suggested I take some 5-Hour Energy and push through till dawn, but I think I'll take their pimply-nosed complexion as a clear sign that sleep is a better option.

Here's to a good night's rest.

I wanted to be able to eloquently test Backbone.js event chains, so I wrote a custom matcher:

It's been raining and hovering around 40°F for the past two weeks straight here in Portland. As a result, my trusted land yacht (RV) has faced the plight of condensation in all its orifices. And so, I figured, my wet carpet must surely be a result of it raining inside, right?

Wrong.

The plastic tubing connecting my water pump to the faucet had sprung a slow leak, and was dripping water all over the inside of my kitchenette unit, down onto the carpet in front of my bed. I'd impressed myself countless times with my seeming natural handyman talent (this kid deals in bits and bytes typically), but this one was too much stress for me to handle.

My trusty Craigslist contractor came to the rescue, but had a caveat: The carpets needed to be ripped out. With that much water seeping through to the subfloor, chances of salvaging the wood below with the carpets in place were slim. And so, reluctantly, I started the process I had hoped to put off until I reached sunnier pastures. It was time to go bamboo.

Wood Jerry! Wood!

At the inception of my grand lifestyle experiment, I decided I wanted to remodel most of my RV with gorgeous hardwoods from Bamboo Revolution. Their work is most prominent in the interior of Coava Roasters, with which they happen to share a space. When I saw it, I fell in love.

The installation is still a work in progress, but I have a hunch the improvement will be night and day. I don't know what kind of masochist wants carpet installed in their home, but I'm glad to make a swift exit from that club.

Friends, family, friends of family, family of friends: I want your driveway!

This spring and summer, I'll be trekking across our great nation in search of the American Dream, or something. As much as I'll enjoy campgrounds some of the time, I'd love it if I could park my gorgeous land yacht in your driveway, wherever you may be. Please comment if you'd like to host me, if only for a night! We'll figure something out I'm sure.

My friends are doing their best to support me. My girlfriend has been a guiding light through the process. My parents think I'm insane. Regardless of opinion, I'm now living in a 1995 Winnebago Rialta.

Fat and unable to move

I was getting fat. Not around the waistline -- around my apartment. With two bicycles (down from four), three 24"+ computer monitors, two computer workstations, numerous gadgets, a small studio's worth of music production gear, and a closet full of clothes I never wore, I was destined to live life reluctantly renewing leases for fear of moving on. What would I do with all this stuff? The idea terrified me. It terrified me so much that I'd have nightmares about never being able to leave Portland. You know, the ones where Sam Adams erects a wall around the city and David Hasselhof tries to save us. Or something.

Down by the river

Rewind back to 2002. A simpler time. A time where a 17-year-old high school senior could make his daily allowance working for the local supermarket and dream about one day living in a van. "I could go anywhere, anytime!", I'd think to myself. "I could even install a computer inside, and wardrive for fresh wi-fi hotspots around town!".

But alas, vans cost thousands of dollars, and I didn't have any credit... or thousands of dollars. Dreams crushed.

A fear of flight

When I was in my early twenties, I'd fly everywhere without a thought. In 2008 I flew to and from Europe three times in the course of only a few weeks. I loved to fly. But then...

Then this pesky part of my brain called my frontal lobe developed. All of the sudden flying was for the birds, stepping too close to the edge of cliffs was a death wish, and earthquakes were common in Portland, Oregon. And so ended my era of easy, fast transcontinental travel.

Forever stranded 3,000 miles away from home, with an unnerving desire to see something different when I awaken in the morning, I decided it was time to fulfill my teenage pipe dream. And so far, I've never been more fulfilled by a decision in my life.

Criminally small

Perusing the zoning ordinances for most urban areas, you'll find that the minimum square footage for a residence is somewhere in the vicinity of 400 square feet. You'll also find that (in Portland, at least) parking your motorhome on the street overnight is illegal. And then there's the city's camping laws, which prohibit camping in a private yard for longer than 14 consecutive days. In my opinion, these laws do more to disturb the peace than protect it.

So, we'll see what happens. The worst that can come of this is I have to move my house, which, at this point, involves putting it in drive. I'm making it a point to be very respectful to my neighbors and yard-mates, so hopefully it won't be a problem for the short duration I plan to remain in Portland.

You say RV. I say land yacht.

If you think I'm sacrificing comfort or style living in less than 100 square feet, think again. I've only had my RV for a week, and already I've installed a Bluetooth-ready car stereo, assembled a custom computer workstation made out of an IKEA kitchen table, a memory foam mattress, a magnetic spice rack with magnetic on-wall storage for metallic tools, an area rug, 4G wireless Internet access, and LED lighting. This makes my RV less a trashy mobile home and more a classy land yacht, ready for adventure and equipped for my live/work lifestyle.

I cannot take credit for my inspiration in this endeavor, though. Most of the reassurance that "everything is going to be okay" comes from Tynan, who wrote an excellent book about living in a small RV. And then there's Mikko Kemppe, who coined the phrase Urban Mobile Lifestyle and lives in a Winnebago Era. He hasn't updated his site in awhile, so I'm curious what he's up to now.

So there you have it. I'm not sure what's to come of my grand experiment, but I can tell you it'll be more exciting than sitting at home watching reruns of It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia. Not that I won't miss The Gang...

I have fond memories of dreaming away during my teenage youth at the prospect of one day finding a way to make a living on the road. Of one day building my ideal vessel: A veritable hacker's paradise on wheels. And yet, somehow I've always found a way to excuse myself from the dream's pursuit and realization.

Well not this year, damnit. That's right. In Summer 2012, I set sail on the open road in a yet-to-be-converted Sprinter van, equipped with most of the amenities of home and bearing one overwhelmingly novel feature no condo or apartment ever could: A V6 engine and a set of wheels.

After much frustration with absymal load times on my Rails 3.1 application when running on Ruby 1.9.2, I decided it was high time to upgrade to 1.9.3 to take advantage of its new hash-based require scheme. Turns out it was going to take an entire afternoon because of an issue with the pg gem's configuration.

If you're having the same problem, try the following:

$ rvm use 1.9.3-p0
          $ gem uninstall pg # uninstall all versions
          $ gem install pg  --with-pg-config=/usr/local/Cellar/postgresql/9.0.4/bin/pg_config

Essentially, you need to be explicit about Homebrew's Postgres installation so you don't end up using the default Mac installation.

I hope this helps. Happy holidays!

So I've noticed some things about my inner monologue when reading poorly-written prose:

• If someone misuses the word 'to' in place of 'too', my internal meter speeds up to accommodate the missing 'o'.

  What's up? Oh not to much.

• Whenever someone writes in all capital letters, I shout the entire sentence to myself

  HEY TEEJAY HOW'S IT GOING? I'M GOOD LOVE AUNT SHERRY

• When someone uses the possessive pronoun "your" in place of the contraction "you're," I want to give my eyeballs paper cuts with acid blotter paper.

  Boy I bet your glad I took that English class!

• And finally, when someone does all three at once, I write blog posts like this one!

  YOUR REALLY GREAT AND WE SHOULD HANG OUT TO!

Robert H. Lustig, MD gives a lecture exploring the damage caused by sugary foods:

My brother stumbled upon my last post, We have the capacity for renaissance, and suggested I read Seth Godin's book Linchpin. Only thirty-some-odd pages into it and I'm realizing he's preaching what I so-humbly prophetized five years ago: My generation's affluence depends not upon employment, following, or obedience, but upon self-reliance, leadership, and challenging the status quo. For the first time in our industrial society, Godin proclaims, the proletariat owns the means of production.

In my last days of my undergraduate study, I held an internship at a small software company in Ithaca, New York. When I decided to up and move across the country to Portland, I was bold enough to inquire about telecommuting. They said yes.

What an exciting, new prospect! I had heard of transcriptionists and architects taking their work home with them, but the idea that I could work among a team of four engineers sitting in a seat 3,000 miles and three timezones away seemed like a fantasy. This was in 2007 a time when VoIP was in its barely-useful infancy. Source control systems were hosted on dedicated servers and lacked the social facilities which make GitHub such a joy to use.

Moving to Portland, in retrospect, was like sailing the maiden voyage of a vessel to a new world. One free from the shackles of 9-5 work schedules, daily commutes, lacking office kitchen facilities, distracting water cooler jabber, and most importantly, showing up for work.

My parents' generation was the Worker Bee Generation. Throughout my childhood, my parents preached higher education not as a means for academic enrichment, but as a means toward gainful employment. It's not their fault they were wrong to assume polite obedience and good grades would bear our generation's livings. It is our responsibility to adjust our attitudes and act in accordance with our brave new economy.

We are thoughtworkers. Whereas a steel worker's hands are easily replaced by another's hands, the thoughtworker's mind is irreplaceable and irreplicable. Manual and clerical labor are mere facilities to assist creative people to realize their visions.

We are the new elite. We have the power to shift opinion, to automate businesses, to create and topple entire industries with our minds and some circuitry. And we're doing it from your neighborhood coffee shop, your cocktail bar, your park's picnic table, and the beach.

That's so fucking cool.

So frequently I find myself in awe over the tools available for content creation and distribution‐tools which might have cost the average worker's annual salary only a decade ago. The Internet has granted nearly everyone the capacity to realize and disseminate the ideas in their hearts and minds in a way we've never known in any culture, ever.

Why then, do we trend toward consumption-centric use patterns with our new technology? I consider myself prolific, but I still find myself checking my Facebook and Twitter feeds constantly, as if this moment of my life is incomplete. We flock toward the mundane minutae of image macros and top ten lists despite their obvious irrelevance to profound betterment of our lives.

Each and every one of us has the capacity to create. What will you make today?

Address Is Approximate from The Theory on Vimeo.