….

….

…no, wait. I forgot. My plan is viable. My plan is WORKING. And being honest with you? It wasn’t horribly impossible. Anyone could… can… do what I am doing. No, I don’t mean going to Iraq, though that is part of my plan. I mean, anyone can break free of the mundane, and it ain’t even that hard to do. You simply have to understand that YOU WILL NEVER GET RICH / FREE / SUCCESSFUL IF YOU DO THE SAME OLD SAFE SHIT EVERYONE ELSE DOES. I’m sorry for the caps, but that shit NEEDS to be in caps. Again. YOU WILL NEVER GET RICH / FREE / SUCCESSFUL IF YOU DO THE SAME OLD SAFE SHIT EVERYONE ELSE DOES. Are you hearing me? Dropping 5% (matched by your employer) into your mutual funds isn’t going to make you rich. It might let you retire reasonable well when you’re old, but you’ll be working your ass off until then. Moving up the ladder at Mediocri-Co is not going to make you your fortune or grant you your freedom.

You. Need. To. Take. Risks.

You. Will. Have. To. Endure. Hardship.

Those risks can be physical, financial, mental, whatever. What is important… and what is going to buy you your freedom… is the fact that your average human is not going to ever, ever take those risks. It isn’t that they don’t want to be free, understand… it is that the safety net they’ve become accustomed to is too comfortable to surrender. They’ll not (for lack of a better analogy play on the trapeze of life without the net because it is SCARY.

And yeah. It is. But that’s why i call myself a Feral Human. I reject domestication. I thrive in risk and adventure.

I’m gonna be free.

I hope you’re there too. If not, though, I understand. If everyone were Feral, we’d have to take it to a whole new level.

So here’s my plan, subject to change, all rights reserved, free to use and abuse:

1. Gain a sizable base capital.
2. Grow said capital until the residual money is capable of supporting my lifestyle.
3. Attain financial and thus social freedom.
4. Continue to grow capital and help others break free.

Feel free to adapt to you own ends… and heck, if I can help you break free… let me know!

Or hell, age 36 if things go really well.

Yes, yes. I will be careful. Yes, I will write to people who bother to write to me. And yes, should I have the ability to do so, I’ll update my blog, post to Facebook, and hang out on Twitter. At the very least, I’ll send my posts back via mail to be entered by a trusted third party.

That’s why I’m cruising at whateverthefuck thousand feet on the way to SFO by way of IAD instead of chilling in glass, acting all antsy while I think about Lost.

Right now, I have absolutely no idea how long I am going to be gone. I expect that I’ll be gone until around the 30th, but i don’t know much more at this point. I know for a fact that I’ll be riding a ship to San Diego, which will be my departure point when I return home. Beyond that? I have not a clue as to when I will return.

So… good points:

- I know from experience that ships serve food that I am not likely to eat, so I will lose weight.
- I’ve been morbidly curious as to what it would be like to ride a ship as a civilian; hey, I get the chance now.
- They probably have a gym, which I will use and abuse
- I will be billing every single solitary hour I can eke out of the time I am gone… the hours that I don’t cash in for time.
- My social mask may slip again. I like the feeling that brings.

I suppose that I will also get to make a bit of extra cash, but not a whole whole lot. On the other hand, I am not coming out of pocket a whole whole lot either.
As far as it goes, i will also be billing San Francisco rates today and tomorrow (whee) and San Diego rates on the day I pull into San Diego and the subsequent days to make the money less not worth it.

Another bonus? I am apparently due a raise, and I can’t imagine that “rushed out at 4:10pm EST to catch a flight at 6:27pm for an indefinite period of time with no warning” is going to reflect poorly on me.

…which I have now voluntarily missed in exchange for a free round trip ticket to anywhere in the United States (continental, that is.) My profit margin on this trip was relatively weak, so I welcome the opportunity to exchange a couple of my hours for what is quite the value.

Of course, that leaves me running later in the day after I crash for a few (yes, I still plan on running) and it cuts into my Saturday, but what the hell. Free round trip ticket. I mean, c’mon.

No, wait! I’m flying out now. No free ticket, but I’ll be home on time. Win either way.

Look, I’ll post some pictures soonish. I’ll make a “San Francisco Album” on Flickr. Right now, I am not in the mood to edit those photos so you’ll just have to wait! I will say, though, that I mailed out the postcards and I picked up a few trinkets. I also checked off two items on my “travel to do” list so there’s a win too.

No earthquakes though! Alas, alas. I have not yet added “natural disasters” to my list of travel accomplishments, but I do intend on doing so. It’ll be added by the time I post this. Or later. Later is good.

Considering my current motivation as far as distance running is concerned, this is probably a good thing. I am always, ALWAYS off peak in the winter. I can push through, but the combination of short-ass days and the cold (and delicious holiday food) make keeping in peak-for-me shape difficult as hell.  It’s a personal issue, and I’m getting better at managing it… but I still have not figured out that magical formula that will push me through the shit winter months without lagging.

So, to summarize: Shamrock Half Marathon <– Cancelled. 12 mile run <– Not cancelled, but delayed. I may shoot for the Rock and Roll Half. We shall see.

So… plan scrapped, moving on, working on training program to fit my current needs.

FIP Exam Tip: Applied FIP Principle in this case is honesty to one’s self and acceptance of personal responsibility. It is a minor personal failure to have to scrap the plan, but a bigger failure would be to continue on and give it a half-assed effort.

FIP Exam Tip 2: Recognizing one’s undesirable traits as undesirable is the first step to fixing them.  The second step is proactive action.

On the bright side, this means I can ditch the current training model and go with what I’ve been planning on doing after March 21st anyway! I’m going to go back to interval / speed training. I’m kinda… really… slow at the moment. I’d like to get back to running sub 8 minute miles, at the very least. I’m no speed demon, but I can be better than I am now.

Enough.

Let’s talk about school and certifications. I am (to reject humility and wallow in pride) fucking AWESOME when it comes to studying. I am about a week and some change ahead of schedule with my “12 in 12″ plan, with two of the planned 12 tests already passed and out of the way. I suspect I might actually be ready for the next one in three weeks, putting me WELL ahead of schedule.  This, of course, leads into my goal of being rich. While tech certs alone will not make me independently wealthy, they work to get me into a place where I have money to risk on further acceleration.

So far, I’ve done the 70-646 course (a harder course in the AD* of life) and Security+ (a test that proved that since I rejected the idea of taking it 3 years ago, I have become many times more awesome) with 70-640, 70-642, and 70-647 in my definite future.

Enough.

Work? Work is work. If you’ve talked to me before, you know you will get fuck-all in the way of complaints or compliments out of me about work… at least online.

More? More later. I have a lot to say, but it has to wait until I have less projects in the works.

But more importantly, my new file server is arriving in bits and pieces. Now that I have a positive source of income, I’ve decided to suck up the cost of it and ditch the patchwork faux server I am currently using. It isn’t exactly a powerhouse, but it isn’t too shabby either. I’m running a newish motherboard and a 2.5ghz dual core, DDR3 RAM, and a whopping 3TB of hard drive space. My intent is to install Server 2008 with Tversity for media sharing, a local domain, and a centralized antivirus solution. I’ll also likely install Hamachi for my own remote access purposes.

Fun stuff!

On the education side, I’ll be pursuing MCITP as planned, but I’ll also be knocking out Security+ before summer.