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Note: This is a personal blog, and the only use of any of this is for me to go, "huh, Cool." on the rare occasion I think to go look at any of this stuff and realize that (based on the analytics) about 3 people per month still care what the internal dimensions of a 10 year old MINI Cooper S Clubman are...
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Crooozin'
Cool! How are you going to deal with the cats? Are they comfy staying in a space that small all the time?
Also, what about computers? O.o
The cats came with us, and while they sang a Chorus of Sadness at first (and were pretty nervous any time we were underway), by the end of Saturday, they were totally chill, and really liked it.
Figaro is going to be the problem child, long term – he was an indoor/outdoor cat for about a year, he goes out on our balcony all the time, and sometimes makes pitiful noises at the front door, wanting to go out – he knows the wide world is out there, too, and he WANTS IT ALL.
We'll be fine letting him out of the coach – on a harness and leash.
Therein lies the problem. I've got a harness for him, and he's worn it for long periods in the past, but he doesn't know how to deal with it. Take him outside and set him down with a leash on, and he sort of flops over and doesn't move. Same thing inside, but inside you can sort of take him for a walk. It strongly resembles taking him for a drag. =)
I imagine he'll get used to it if we do something next spring like get him one of those screw-in dog stakes (http://goo.gl/z0TGeB) and just stake him out in 'the yard' for a few hours next spring.
The other cat? No idea how she'll deal with outside. She's a scaredy cat at heart, and runs under the bed at the drop of a hat. In the old apartment, she could go through the bars of the balcony and onto the roof of a pipe chase between our balcony and our neighbor's. Then she'd go chill on the neighbor's balcony for hours. We had to repurpose a shelf and tie it to the bars to keep her on our balcony. In this apartment, we have a hinged door and not a sliding door, and she won't go on the balcony AT. ALL. She'll peer out the window, she'll sit at the threshold of the open door. She won't go out. SO weird. Again, I think if we harness her up and stake her out under the awning while we grill some dinner or something, it'll be fine.
Computers?
We're probably going to spend the first year in the coach in an RV park here in town, where we'll have water/sewer/electric/Comcast cable internet hookups, so the big issue will be finding a good place for us to set up monitors and desk space, since we currently have two 20+ monitors each. That probably won't last. =)
My PC is built on a mini-ITX board with water cooling, so the whole PC is TINY. It's only 8x9x13" (20 x 23 x 30cm) in size. We may rebuild Audrey's computer into this form factor, too.
Once we're in a position to give up the day jobs, our computing needs will probably change quite a bit. The biggest challenge at that point will be having a reliable network connection, and having high speed internet with TONS of data available will be a problem.
We'll fit the coach with a 6 or 8db amplified wifi antenna on the outside connected to our router on the inside (we'll be living inside a giant metal faraday cage…wifi signals do poorly against them).
We'll do the same with a Wilson Electronics DT 4G LTE/Cellular signal booster for cellular data.
That should help with access, but if we're really truly deep in the middle of the forest (like this: Top 5 Best, Worst and In-Between of our Fleetwood Excursion RV ) it won't do us a ton of good – but the cellular booster is good out to about 3 miles / 5 km, so we'll have to be pretty far off the beaten path to not be able to get something in the way of cell service.
The problem will be that once we're that disconnected, powering a full blown gaming PC is a big power draw when you're not connected to power! We'll probably make the switch to lightweight PCs at some point – a light laptop like an ASUS X200 ( http://www.asus.com/us/Notebooks_Ultrabooks/X200MA/specifications/ ) or a Microsoft Surface 3 ( a TABLET with an i7 processor? HELL YEAH!).