An encounter in philosophy

Planning for 2025

So back in January my wife and I began talking about our plans for 2025. We knew that 2024 was going be a year of getting a handle on finances, tending to some changes we wanted to make to our home, and really just getting a good feel for what our life in retirement was going to be like.

With 2025 on the horizon and a much better sense of how things were going to be, we began making plans for the coming year. We knew that we wanted to take a few trips around the US. For example, we have grandkids in Arizona so a trip out there seemed reasonable. I’d love to explore the Southwest more, so that was definitely on the list. My wife visited Vermont a number of years ago and has wanted to return for many years. We thought this might be the year. And I’d like to do a number of additional short trips just to explore our state and those surrounding us a bit more.

Hello and welcome!

If you are retired and are even minimally technically inclined or would like to be, enjoy using a computer, and find yourself using a number of services such as Google docs, RSS readers, photo editors and organizers and so on, may I suggest that you explore self-hosting or homelabbing as a great retirement hobby.

Today I want to introduce you to the two hobbies, how they are different and how they are related. This is intended to be a fairly short video as I only want to introduce you to the concepts, give you some ideas of what you can do in this space, briefly discuss why you should self-host (or build a homelab) and give you some ideas about how to get started.

Revisiting WordStar

A day or so ago I ran across an article where science fiction writer Robert J. Sawyer had released his version of WordStar 7.0 for DOS, noting that it is now abandonware and, thus, he felt comfortable releasing it into the wild. What was interesting was that, as he noted, not only he, but several other quite successful writers had developed quite an affinity for the ancient software that ran on a long outdated operating system.

For the past ten years I have worked from home. Although I interacted regularly with students and other faculty, those interactions generally took place by email (my preferred method) or, when interactivity was required, by phone, Teams, or Zoom. Actual face-to-face interaction was very limited. I liked it that way for, as odd as it may seem, I don’t actually like dealing with people directly. I say that’s odd because I have spent my entire career in a field that required not only face-to-face interaction but, as a nurse, often that interaction required intimate contact with others. And, while I did need to interact on a one-to-one level in the hospital, teaching allowed me to interact with students on a more generic level. Speaking to a class or conducting on on-line lesson is easier and less stressful for me than meeting one on one with an individual.