Stampie's Grosh Mahal

Tom Suddard said:

Stampie said:

In reply to matthewmcl :

Hell next you'll be wanting me to eat at Applebee's. 

I wouldn't eat at Applebee's until you get a MUCH better toilet. 

Valid point. Just one update this evening. Hotspot V1.2 is much better. Webpages actually open although not many pictures load. 

Even uploaded a picture. Ok so it took 10 minutes to do so. 

I'll be honest, I got kinda discouraged today. It's all about the heat and the hydration. One of the updates I did today was sitting on the bench at the Publix customer service. I was hot and tired and damn if their AC isn't good. Little things like not having cold drinks until I got back with the cooler. Tomorrow is another day and hopefully the morning will be productive. 

Stampie said:

In reply to matthewmcl :

Hell next you'll be wanting me to eat at Applebee's. 

$100 Thetford might be better than the toilets at Applebee's, but no, I wouldn't even recommend Applebee's to people I don't like.

Stampie... dude you need to be careful in this N. FL. heat.   Even though the calendar says September it is still bad.   The bear got me today also.   Your Publix stop was a clue to how deep in you got.  Be careful.

In reply to Purple Frog (Forum Supporter) :

Yeah I'm usually very aware of that from my previous life. Honestly I didn't get in danger yesterday because I started seeing the signs early. 

I slept better last night. First I ran the Suburban 30 minutes before going to bed to cool it off. Also the night before I had a Lowe's bucket of ice on the Suburban. I kept waking up every time the ice melted and moved. Didn't do that last night. I was depending on the neighbor's roosters to wake me up around 6am but guess they wanted to sleep in so I woke up at 7am. Decided to unload the trailer (much easier in 70 degrees) and start stripping the trailer. Didn't take much. About 8 self tapers held everything on. 

I was hoping for bolt holes to bolt down the new deck but no such luck. It'll be self tapers again but a lot more and with fender washers. 

I really needed a bath so I used some of the old deck as a shower area. 

Only used a little over a gallon. Most of that on my hair. Afterwards I realized I didn't have a towel to dry off. Wasn't that wet so I just stood there in the sun and dried. I feel so much better. 

Came downtown to grab some stuff. Will probably grab lunch at the Cuban place we found before. 

This is awesome.

In reply to wvumtnbkr :

You just like the thought of me naked in the middle of the woods. 

For rob and stampie

Lolz.

I like to play that song on the internet enabled jukeboxes at some of the local bars.  You just pull up outside when your friends are there, drop 5 dollars in the app and play the crap out of that song on repeat.  Then leave without going in.

They haven't figured it out yet.

Scrolling through and my wife looks up as I get to your picture....."Who is THAT?"

In reply to DeadSkunk (Warren) :

I could understand her reaction. I get that often from women. Even AC. 

Not much happened after this morning. Hit Rural King to see if they had a smaller stock tank. They had a sign for one but it took us a while to get the specs off it. Not sure it'll work. Then Lowe's, then lunch at La Cocina de Abuela. Can confirm it's great Cuban still. Can also confirm they sell alcohol for the BDT folks. 

There's a home brewer shop in the same shopping center. Went in to see how stocked they were. Looked at the yeast and the owner started talking about their hops. Told him I don't home brew. He looked at me and asked what did I use the yeast for?  "Other things." Then he was like oh we do bulk grains if you want to take advantage of that. He did recommend a good microbrewery.

Came back to camp and decided to clean up. Those 15 minutes and two bags of trash got me sweating again. Loaded up only to find out the rural collection places are closed Wednesday and Thursday. Decided to just pay at the commercial drop off. $2 later I decided to get a beer or two at the microbrewery then back home. It's slightly cooler but still in the 90s. I got the first sheet ready to cut but I have a no power tools after drinking rule. It helps keep my fingers attached. So here's the first sheet ready to cut. 

Finally something happened. 

I got up at 6am this morning and had to use my harbor freight light to make my way to the bathroom aka bucket on a tarp. I took my tablet for reading material but for some reason the hotspot wasn't broadcasting. Oh well I had enough signal to get by. After that I needed to take a shower but couldn't see well enough so I waited until 6:40 when I had enough light. I know what you're thinking. Two showers in back to back days?  Yep because this morning I was meeting dyintorace for breakfast. I gather he's a local in good social standing so I needed to step up my game. 

Breakfast was good. Nice hole wall local American places called 16th Ave Dinner. I'll be going back. After breakfast I hit Lowe's yet again to grab some just in case stuff. Then back to the property. 

This is where things get fun. One of the items I got last week was a 3000 watt inverter. For you electronics math people yes I know but bear with me. First test was jumper cables to the Suburban and running a circular saw. 

It tripped a fault mode pretty quick. Figuring I wasn't getting enough amperage to the inverter I threw in one of the lithium batteries as a buffer. 

Success!  I had to go slow or it would cut out but it didn't go into fault mode. At this point I made note that I was supposed to get a new blade for the saw as it's probably 20 years old. 

After that it didn't take long to put the first piece in. I may have then E36 M3 talked my trailer just to show it who's boss. Second piece had the cut outs for the tires so that took longer and finally the last piece. By this point the inverter was cutting out a lot. I was thinking my blade was about done but while putting up stuff I noticed that the inverter was in the sun with a black case so I'm sure that didn't help. 

Right now I just finished lunch at El Indio Mexican Restaurant 34th St.  Best Mexican I've had in Gainesville but unfortunately for the BDT folks no alcohol. I'll have to try it again but it was right up there with my favorite place in Jacksonville. 

I hadn't caught up with this thread in a while.  This situation seems like a real challenge.  Can you make hot food / water happen at your campsite, like with a camp stove or similar?  I wish I could come help for a few days.

 Since you're 20V get one of these. It really works.

In reply to pres589 (djronnebaum) :

Hot food but hot water is coming.  Here's me cooking dinner last night.

 I could make it easier. Well power wise. I could do a generator. I'd rather the challenge of not and figuring it out. 

In reply to Shadeu :

Yeah that was the back up to the back up plan. I didn't want to spend the $200 plus. 

Can you take some time to describe what your immediate plan is?

Whatchu doin with the trailer?

Are you just hanging out there this weekend?

This is epic for some unknown reason.

Well, they are $99 at Lowe's. You already have the battery. Just sayin'.

In reply to wvumtnbkr :

Ok the current process is temp living quarters. The trailer will house a 6.5x8 room, a 3x3 toilet, solar/electronics providing 12v DC and 120v AC 15 amp. That last part with the toilet is important because I'm required to have both to get a building permit. 

In addition to the trailer I'm planning on a 8x8 deck to house rain water collection, outdoorish shower, and a "kitchen". Those are just things to make my life easier. For example twice this week I've skipped dinner because it was raining outside.

In reply to Shadeux :

If I got one I'd get the 7 1/4.  I thought those cost more. This is working and can be made better. Honestly higher success rate than my normal experiments. 

So, you need to have a toilet so you can build something?  Like, does a Porta potty count?

I guess what I'm trying to figure out is this:  do you need "facilities" for the workers in order to get a building permit?  If that's the case, I think you got it nailed!

I wanna come down, help, and hangout.  Just not sure when I can make it happen.

It was great to see you this morning! 

Stampie, you might check out some of the videos from Narroway Homestead. 

https://www.youtube.com/@Narrowayhomestead

He has some decent videos about water collection, solar, and being off-grid. He also has some videos on pulling in distant cellular signals and making them usable. 

Stampie said:

In reply to wvumtnbkr :

You just like the thought of me naked in the middle of the woods. 

In Florida, that just gives me visions of mosquito bites in places where I really don't want mosquito bites... 

As cool as the DIY trailer-build thing is, why not just buy a used RV? 

In reply to Ian F (Forum Supporter) :

A few things:

Cost

Possible but getting it in here currently is hard. 

I really wouldn't want to send some stranger into my living area to go poop.

I'd rather poop in a bucket than deal with black water. 

Rainwater collection should be done off a metal roof. I wouldn't have that with an RV.

I'm building the trailer in ways that I'm experimenting with to apply to the house. 

​

Ian F (Forum Supporter) said:

Stampie said:

In reply to wvumtnbkr :

You just like the thought of me naked in the middle of the woods. 

In Florida, that just gives me visions of mosquito bites in places where I really don't want mosquito bites... 

As cool as the DIY trailer-build thing is, why not just buy a used RV? 

I'm kind of interested in what he is going to do with the trailer. I have thought of building something like that.

We have great news. We are now on hotspot V2.0 

I checked the phone this afternoon and the battery was dead as I suspected. Charged it up and wasn't sure I was going to put it back up since I wasn't too happy with it. I noticed another tree about 100 feet away that looked like it would be easier to put up. It's only 20 feet up because I couldn't find my screwdriver to reconnect the last 10 feet. 

Versions 1.x allowed surf but I was limited to text only news sites and GRM. I thank Tom and the GRM crew for making it so low bandwidth. That said a single page on the meme thread would take 20 minutes and several refreshes to load. I tried running speed test but they wouldn't even load. Here's V2.0:

Edit I just watched a YouTube video. Now it was at 360p but that's fine with my tablet. That's amazing to me. Guess I don't need to give Elon $140 a month quite yet.

Stampie said:

In reply to wvumtnbkr :

Ok the current process is temp living quarters. The trailer will house a 6.5x8 room, a 3x3 toilet, solar/electronics providing 12v DC and 120v AC 15 amp. That last part with the toilet is important because I'm required to have both to get a building permit. 

so, that's kinda like a "Super Tiny House". 

cool; good luck!  I'm curious to see how that works/works-out as that concept might be helpful in my sojourns at the in-laws.