2024-08-24 (Saturday) — Starlinked

Uh… today…

I listed my New Holland mini excavator for sale. I just made up a price because I have no idea what it’s worth. I guess we’ll see what kind of interest I garner.

Went over to my mom’s place again to sort of work through this whole reasonable compensation thing.

So much effort. At this point, I’m thinking this S-Corp wasn’t worth it. It’s been an absolute nightmare for years now. I would have paid more in taxes just being an LLC, but good gravy, so. much. less. stress.

Who knows, really? A lot of the work I have had to do would have had to have been done with an LLC as well.

Simplify. That’s all I know at this point. Simplify. Reduce the external stressors. I took on way way way too much. I need to delete and delete and delete some more.

So I stayed at my mom’s place working through everything. It’s looking more and more like the reasonable compensation is actually going to be even more than what I had come up with before. I came up with a number that was pretty discouraging, and then I had that aha that I’m not all that skilled in this particular trade, so I don’t command that much of a salary, but even with that, realistically, there’s still a lot more work and time and effort.

So even though the mechanic part of the salary might not be so much, there’s a lot more that I do to run the business than just mechanicking.

So, when all is said and done, it’s going to be a lot more than what was originally on the 2023 W2, and it’s going to be even more what I was concerned it was going to be just a few days ago.

Of course, you can mess with the numbers all sorts of ways and come up with all sorts of different things. In fact, I’ve been creating three completely separate scenarios and running the numbers through each scenario, and each one comes up with a different number, but At least two out of those three scenarios are more than what I was thinking I might end up reporting just a few days ago.

It seems like each day I have a new recollection of something important that shapes how everything is calculated and what all goes into it.

At this point, I just want it done.

Big pain in the butt.

Anyway, while I was at my mom’s, I had somebody say they wanted to come look at the excavator, so after being there for a little while, I headed back home to show the excavator, my mom sending me with a couple of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches as I headed out the door.

Thanks, Mama. 😊

The people who came to look at the excavator are really interested in it, but with one very large concern. It needs to be able to use a 36-in digging bucket.

I don’t know if this mini excavator can handle that big of a bucket. I would think it can, but… that’s a really really big bucket for a midsize mini excavator.

I have two buckets that it comes with, a 12-in and a 16-in. Add another 20 in to my largest bucket, and that’s what they want to put on it. 😅

If they conclude it can handle a 36-in digging bucket, then they’re probably going to buy it. If not, then I’ll have to wait for the next person.

Would be really really really nice if I could sell The two mini excavators in my skid steer before we left on our trip.

That’s probably pie in the sky hopes, but, I’ll put it out there. 🤞

While I was back home, the toilet seat lid came in for our mobile toilet that we’ll be using for our road trip. Last time, we did fine, but if we needed to get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, then it’s going into the truck stop bathroom or the campground bathroom, and… I’m not really comfortable with either with my little mother. Truck stop with people, campgrounds with bears and other critters.

So we’ll be bringing a toilet with us. It’ll just be a basic 5 gallon bucket with an insert and then a trash bag with pine chips in it. What I bought that arrived today is a cushioned toilet seat lid that fits over the top of a 5 gallon bucket and seals pretty decently.

Will put some kind of a little weight in the bottom so that it has some bottom heaviness to it, so it doesn’t tip over while we drive around on our trip

I brought The lid over to my mom’s house again for a little dry test run, just to see how it fits on the bucket with the trash bags inside and to see how tall it is… To see if it’ll work as a toilet for my mother.

Preliminarily, it looks like it’s going to be a success, so that’s good. 😊

After that, she headed to either Ward or stake conference, I forget which, and I headed home.

One’s home, I put the new wheel and tire on the lawn mower. It’s a sweet, uber beefy tire, so I’m pretty stoked about that. My last tire was a two-ply, and this one is a four ply. Super thick tread as well. 🎉

I’ll be doing some mowing tomorrow, chiggers are ridiculous. I’m a walking bite factory right now. Tick and chigger bites all over, quite possibly more than I’ve ever had at once, and I’ve got poison ivy on at least my right foot, right where my water shoe top seam is.

Speaking of water shoes, I gathered up nearly all of the last of the leftovers of the top of the walnut tree that fell down, and I got the fire going in the burn barrel again by the creek. First I moved to the burn barrel from where it was by the dam, over to where I bathe, a much more central location for bringing wood that needs to be burned.

Got the fire going, got the rest of the Walnut tree scraps brought down and burning, I cut up the tree that I had very carefully cut down, the one that was across the creek.

A decided to give my chainsaw a try working underwater. 🙃

My battery-operated chainsaw. 😅

It nailed it. Cut the tree limb that was underwater without any issues. Of course, I didn’t put the body of the chainsaw underwater, just the bar. 🙂

But it worked, and I got all the branches cut off the main trunk and got them all broken up and put into the burn barrel. And I cut the main trunk from its stump, but it’s far too heavy for me to safely move from where it is.

Well, I’m assuming so, anyway. I would guess the diameter of the tree was probably somewhere around 16 in ish, and the chunk that’s there is probably 10 to 12 ft long?

So yeah, it’s going to be beastly heavy.

After getting The majority of everything broken up and put in the burn barrel, A took a bath and headed up to my van.

Having not eaten much today, I needed to eat, and even more, I needed to hydrate, but I realized that I think my salsa is on maybe day four of having been opened and unrefrigerated? And I didn’t have any more chips.

Certainly, I can put the salsa on my little bean burritos, but I need to use it up quicker than that.

Anyway, so I headed over to the neighborhood market, bought some more rabbit food and some corn chips, and headed home.

(sigh)

There’s so. much. left. to. do. before. we. go.

😶

Oh, I forgot to mention that I also spent a good chunk of time setting up my starlink mini and doing some dry runs. In the testing that I did after getting it going, I had results everywhere from zero internet at all, to over 100 mbps. It can be really weird. Like there was one time where the test was something like 5 Mbps download speed and oddly, more than twice that on the upload speed, but then the very next test had it at like $60 for download speed.

The dish hadn’t moved a millimeter.

🤷

The good news is that it at least worked with cigarette lighter inverter in Rover. Now I need to test it in ET.

Rover would be a much nicer road trip vehicle, hands down, But I think the gas mileage would be absolutely atrocious.

One of these days I really should do a test to see. I’d probably want to take the AC unit off the roof first, though.

I ate some dinner, chips and salsa, bean burritos, banana, some soy milk, and an apple.

It’s after midnight now, so I had probably better get my hiney to sleep mode.

So much left to do. But I’m grateful that I finally made the decision to sell my equipment. That’s going to be a load off when it’s gone. There was so much good I wanted to do with it. And I did do a lot of good with it here on the hill, but that’s tens of thousands of dollars worth of equipment that… is more of a convenience than anything else.

That’s a very expensive convenience. 😅

For those of you who read regularly, I appreciate you sticking with me. I know I’m a mess, and I imagine that at times, if not most of the time, it’s probably frustrating to read me struggle pretty much constantly. Please don’t feel like you need to read. It’s mostly just a journal. I only really keep it online in order to be a help to others if somehow it might be.

Love and hugs.

Lift the world.

~ stephen