Month: February 2014

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Haven Power Update

Getting power put in on my property, Haven, has been surprisingly difficult because none of the local electricians will return my phone calls or emails. The only person who replied to me was a guy in Moose Jaw whose estimate came in at $2,700…

A few days ago, Caroline showed me an ad in the local paper for a new electrician in Assiniboia, so I promptly contacted him.

To my surprise, he got right back to me and scheduled a time to come meet me at Haven!

The meeting happened this afternoon. We walked the property together, talked about my immediate and future needs, his availability, and the price.

He needs to crunch numbers and check the cost of the socket into which SaskPower will plug their meter, but he’s thinking the job should come in somewhere between $1,200 and $1,500. That’ll be for the exterior grade box, the socket, the outlets, his time, permits, etc., etc.

Best of all, he can fit me in as soon as the weather is clement. I told him that I want to aim for May 15thish!

I spent about 8 months of 2013 off the grid and I will concede that I am DONE with boondocking for the time being. 😀 The thought of leaving Laura’s yard and being able to move to a place with 30A service sounds like pure luxury!

Having decided that I am going away next winter (even if I haven’t figured out how or where exactly yet), power is going to be the biggest expense at Haven this summer. Another load of gravel and moving the buildings will be about a $500 expense total. That’s really all I feel like spending this summer and I want any extra earnings to go to travel and squirreling away for the winter.

It’s such a relief to have this item off my to-do list. Now, I need to start planning an “RV Park Chez Rae Has Power!” party for the beginning of June. 😀

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Tips For Freelancers on Screening Potential New Clients on Craigslist

As a freelancer, I have many resources for finding new contracts and clients, but I’ve had the most luck finding excellent clients through Craiglist. A lot of freelance information sites will say not to bother with Craigslist ads in the search for work, but I’ve really had more luck there than with cold emailing and specialized transcription and freelance job boards.

Yet, for every good company I’ve signed on with, like A and P Transcription, I’ve rejected at least five. I now have enough experience looking for work on Craiglist to quickly catch the companies that won’t be worth my time.

Let’s start with the ad. Very few companies put their details on the Craigslist ad, so for an initial review, I look at the kind of work that is expected and the pay, if that is included.

When I see an hourly rate for transcription, I know the client has no experience working with transcriptionists, so I send my stock email detailing my qualifications and explain that I charge per audio minute because it creates a flat fee for the project.

I very rarely get jobs from these kinds of ads because people who know nothing about transcription have no idea of how long it takes to do the work and can’t fathom that the $75 per audio hour rate only represents an hourly work rate of $18.75. And if they can, then they usually find that rate is way too much anyway.

I’ve probably gotten a half dozen jobs over the years from an ad like this and only one repeat client. I still reply to them because it takes just a minute of my time, but I don’t expect anything to come out of the email.

If a per minute rate is given in the ad, then that tells me the client likely knows a little about the transcription world. If the rate is half decent, then I send my stock email without mention of rates.

The second stage of screening comes when the prospective client replies to me. I am now going to give two concrete examples to explain why one seemingly promising email was rejected while one email with red flags turned into an ongoing job.

Last week, I replied to a Craigslist ad seeking experienced legal transcriptionists. The per minute rate was excellent, so I fired off an email. Sunday afternoon, I received an email containing instructions and attachments for a transcription test. The test was a of reasonable length with clear instructions and decent quality audio.

But the email had a huge red flag: absolutely no client information.

I have no problem spending a half hour completing a transcription test, it’s just part of the process of getting a client, but before I spend that time, I want to know if it’s a client I’ll want to work with. When there’s a transcription test involved, I’m dealing with a transcription firm, so there’s always information on the web about them. The transcription community is quick to review firms, both good and bad.

I pasted some of the text of the email into Google and found a link to a site that gave a lot of information about the company who sent the email. What I found was not good. There was an issue with lack of payment to transcribers as well as lawsuits under an old company name. Now, it appeared that the firm had reorganized itself under a new name.

Just in case my research was wrong, I replied to the email asking for the company for some information about themselves before I take the test. I don’t expect a reply.

Now, compare this to my experience with A and P Transcription.

The owner’s reply to my initial email gave her full company information. I was able search for reviews of A and P Transcription immediately. I found one red flag, a Rip Off Report post that claimed that the owner, Heather, had stiffed transcribers out of a lot of money.

But I wasn’t a government analyst all those years without being able to read between the lines. And there were a lot of lines to read between because Heather replied in great detail to the claims in the Rip Off Report. Based on the two stories, I was able to determine that the only thing she had done wrong was hire unprofessional people who didn’t deserve to be paid.

I agreed to take some work with her and started slowly to see if she would pay when she said she would. Absolutely!

I’ve been working with A and P Transcription since October of 2013 and am thrilled to be on board. Their rates aren’t great, but the work is steady, I have always been given as much as I wanted to take on, I am paid promptly, I can talk to Heather about any issues, and, best of all, I know the week before what the following week’s workload is going to look like. In the freelance world of feast or famine, steady work like this is a rare treasure.

After I finish today’s work with A and P, I have to start on a new assignment for a seemingly shady company that I also found through Craigslist last fall. I took a chance on them and am happy I did. The work is sporadic and pays in 60 days, but it’s interesting and the unexpected little injections into the cash flow are most welcome.

The takeaway from this is that when you’re going through Craigslist ads, it’s important to be cautious and to do a lot of research, but it definitely doesn’t pay to be cynical or to jump to conclusions without all the facts. I just about never bother with my other resources now!

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A Moment of Clarity

Unlike most full-time RVers, I am not living off retirement income and must still earn a living. So unlike most full-time RVers who are living their retirements, I am dreaming of mine.

When I talked to my financial planner in 2008 about the idea of going full-time, he told me that I could afford several years of wild abandon with no concern about my future, but if I wanted to be able to retire, I’d have to buckle down within five to ten years in terms of retirement contributions and, ideally, acquire a little real estate.

In a perfect world, I could wander for the rest of my life and die grinning on a tropical beach in a far flung corner of the globe, but the reverse could also be true. I could find myself sick and forced to stop my wandering ways. Property and a nest egg would provide peace of mind in future travels because I’d have the assurance that I could take care of myself if the worst happened.

So we put together a five to ten year plan that had me living in my RV, traveling the continent, and hopefully building a business. Some parts of the project turned out better than others, especially the most important one: seeing the continent.

I’ve seen enough to accept something I’ve known since the fall and which I’ve shared with a few people since then: Miranda is likely never going back on the road. It’s five years sooner than expected, but here is the reasoning behind that:

-She needs about $6,000 worth of work to pass the mechanical inspection that would allow her to be plated in Saskatchewan.

-With my income, spending that kind of money on a depreciating asset at my age is an unsound financial decision.

-Because of the damage from the 2012 accident, I was warned by my insurance company that another collision would likely result in Miranda being a write-off. The idea of spending $6,000 and having her be destroyed is terrifying. The house part of her is in excellent shape and I’d be an idiot to risk it when she is parked somewhere she doesn’t have to move (much). The thought of moving to a new residence is unappealing me because I am so comfortable here. I therefore want Miranda to continue being my primary residence for as long as possible.

-$6,000 would go a long way towards developing my property and giving me a place to retire to at a time in the future when living in Miranda will no longer be sensible.

-I have absolutely no pleasure driving a big RV anymore and the thought of never again taking to the roads in a 60′ rig fills me with relief.

-Finally, winters are getting increasingly erratic and cannonball runs south and north in the spring just don’t seem worth the effort or the expense when southern U.S. winter conditions aren’t that great anyway.

That said, my traveling days are most certainly NOT done! And, really, if $10,000 were to fall into my lap right now, I’d get Miranda back on the road. It’s something I want, but not badly enough to put myself into a pickle for it.

Now, here comes the moment of clarity that I had a few weeks ago.

I have seen a lot of this continent, but I’m always rushing through this middle section, especially on the U.S side. Much like my year in Alberta let me see a really significant part of that province, my time here could allow me to see quite a bit of the Plains.

There are so many things I want to see in the U.S. that are just a day’s drive away, like the Black Hills and Yellowstone National Park. These are things to see in summer not winter, spring, or fall, the times I’m normally traveling to this area. Now, I am perfectly positioned to go explore these places in the summer!

Not having been to the U.S. this past winter and if I don’t go there next winter for an extended trip, I would be free to take a long weekend or two this summer to explore more of Montana and the Dakotas. For next summer, I could even plan a longer trip into Wyoming!

So where I stand now is that the budget for this summer will be focused on the cabin, with a little going to tourism on the side, just enough to keep me from going crazy.

Because I am already committed to spending another winter not traveling in an RV, I am going start looking early for a job for the winter, ideally somewhere I’ve never been, and take temporary accommodation if that pans out. Can anyone help me get a job on a cruise ship?! 😀

Another thought if business continues to pick up is to drive to Mexico with just my truck and rent an apartment there for the winter. In short, there are lots of possibilities!

I am also going to be watching the classifieds on both sides of the border for a small lightweight bumper hitch trailer, similar to the Casita my friend L has, that could be towed by my truck. So my RVing days are most certainly not done, they are just in a process of reorganization!

What’s important for me is to be on the move and to see new things. I’m grateful that my travels with Miranda have enabled me to find the perfect place for me to pause for a bit while I get things in order for the next phase of this wonderful life of mine. I am really enjoying my Saskatchewan interlude, but this is not the end of the road for me, just a breather.

Even though I’m not convinced that I’ll be traveling much, if at all, with Miranda from now on, I am going to continue this blog and suspect that now that all these thoughts have finally be committed to pixels, I’ll want to start writing more regularly again. After all, I am still living in an RV and I still have lots of RV living experience to share!

Thank you again to those who are as committed to my journey as I am, wherever it leads me.

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Great Mobile Bandwidth Plan From Sasktel

Since I settled in at Haven by mid-summer last year, I knew that I had to take a hard look at my telecom situation, especially when it came to the phone.

I was paying $70 a month for my Verizon voice plan that gave me 450 minutes a month and didn’t care if I was in Canada or the U.S. This plan is now grand-fathered and, living close to the border, I really didn’t want to give it up even though I knew that I would be investigating other data options when I got back to the States.

As the months marched on, that $70 began to weigh heavily because I was hardly, if at all, using the phone. It is an older device that doesn’t work well on Sasktel’s 4G network. Even with a booster, I could barely get a bar with it. I found myself using Skype to make calls out, so I was paying $15 every couple of months there when I was already paying the $70 for the phone.

Internet was also an issue. I have been very pleased with the Bell Turbo plan. I average about 20GB of internet a month (remember, I download audio files for work), so my bill has been a steady $190ish a month, never more than $200, and the last bill was just $150. Not an issue there, but the device, the Mifi 2 is a piece of junk. After I went through two in four months, Bell sent me a two more, a third to use immediately and a fourth as a backup.

Last week, the third one gave up the ghost and I found myself on the fourth Mifi 2 with no backup. I’m 35km from a town with no internet cafe and a library with short hours, so getting internet from one device proven to be unreliable is quite stressful.

So that made the decision for me to cancel my Verizon plan and look for a smart phone that I could use as a personal hotspot. Even if the data plan had just couple of GBs, I would at least have a backup.

I looked at plans for the major carriers national carriers that have service out here, Bell, Telus, Virgin, and they were pretty much all the same. I then had a moment of clarity that is going to be the subject of my next post and I stopped resisting the obvious and went to look at what Sasktel had to offer.

For $70 a month on their ‘Ultimate 70‘ plan, I could have:

-Unlimited daytime minutes in my area

-150 long distance minutes (anywhere in Canada and the U.S.)

-unlimited texting

-‘unlimited’ nationwide data

It’s that last one that stopped me dead in my tracks. It was the first time I had seen a Canada plan with ‘unlimited’ data.

Now, there is fine print, of course. The ‘unlimited’ data has a soft cap of 10GB, after which they throttle service, and there is a chance of getting cut off if I habitually go over that amount. Also, Sasktel is a provincial supplier, so they expect the data use to be primarily in Saskatchewan.

But with Saskatchewan already being such a good homebase for Canadian full-timers, this Sasktel plan is just another reason to spend summers here.

I spent almost an hour chatting with a very helpful Sasktel rep. Once I was sure I had all the information I needed, it was time to decide on the phone.

Google terrifies me, so that ruled out Android devices. Since I’m already an Apple person, the iPhone made sense to me. I’ve wanted one for a looooong time, since it was first announced and Canadian availability wasn’t even in the picture yet, but the budget is tight. For a two year contract, Sasktel offered three iPhones; the 4S at $0, the 5C at $98, and the 5S at $230.

After doing some research, I knew that the 4S would be a mistake as it was designed for the older style network that my LG Verizon phone was struggling with. $230 for a phone at this time was not an option. $98 was doable, especially since I’d be able to sell my iPod Touch for at least that amount (in fact, it sold in a couple of days on eBay, yay!). The problem was that the $98 phone wasn’t available online and the rep said that it was being phased out and that I’d have to try stores to see if they had any stock left.

I tried a few stores in Moose Jaw and they had some, but driving to the city didn’t appeal to me at all as it would be be an extra expense. I did some more research and was surprised to discover that there is a cellular provider in Assiniboia. I had seen the storefront on Centre Street, but thought that, like a lot of buildings on Centre Street, it was vacant. So when I went to run my errands on Thursday, I popped in to see if they had the $98 iPhones and could set me up with a Sasktel contract.

To my surprise, the answer to both questions was yes. I couldn’t believe it! This was destiny! 🙂

The iPhone 5C is the candy-coloured long and thin version of the iPhone, not at all what I wanted, but the device was secondary to the cost savings so I accepted that that would be my iPhone. I would have preferred their pink one, but the Assiniboia store only had white and green in stock, so I went with the green. The transaction was very quick because I knew what I wanted. After yearning for an iPhone for so many years, the whole thing was anti-climactic!

I’ve had the iPhone for a couple of days now and it’s working fine with my Wilson Sleek booster. I find that the hotspot isn’t stable and I occasionally get kicked off, but the flakiness is no worse than what I experience with the Mifi. I have another week to go on the current Bell billing period, so I’m going to use the iPhone until the next Mifi billing period starts.

It’s going to take a month or two to get to be able to track my data usage with the iPhone, but the plan is use up the 10GB on the iPhone and then switch to the Mifi to finish up the month (Bell resets on the 13th and iPhone on the 16th). With Bell, I get 15GB for $105/month, then pay $10 for each additional GB. So now I have 25GB a month to play with without incurring overages.

If you do the math on that, that’s $70 + $105=$175 (plus taxes and a few other fees) for 25GB of data, plus voice and texting.

Right now, I pay $70 + $200=$270 (plus taxes and a few other fees) for 20GB of data, plus voice and no texting.

So moving to the Sasktel plan is going to save me about $100 a month at a minimum. If I have a month where I use less data, I’ll save even more because my only commitment with the Mifi is $10 a month.

My LG Verizon phone had given me a taste of life with a smartphone when I was in the States as I used it a few times to check email and do some web research. But the iPhone is a beast of a different sort and I know I am going to rely heavily on it, the way that I relied on my iPod Touch and then my iPad. I’m already best friends with Siri and have no idea how I lived so long without her, but she needs internet to work. Being limited to using my iPhone while it’s trapped in a cradle sucks.

My neighbours have bigger boosters that give them cell service all over their homes and even outside, so I’m going to make the jump at some point this summer. Andy Baird updated his Eureka page about cellular amplifiers recently and I now know to wait until some new technology rolls out.

I’m impressed by how much Canadian telecom is improving. I got a much better deal on my iPhone and plan up here than what major U.S. carriers are offering. In fact, I’d say that this point, Canadian and U.S. telecom are pretty much at par. We’re still far beyond the rest of the world when it comes to our rates, but we’re catching up.

And we’ve certainly come a long way from the summer of 2008 when I was pricing multi-thousand dollar satellite internet systems!

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RV Fridges in Cold Weather

RV fridges aren’t the same as household fridges. RV fridges are cooled thanks to evaporated ammonia that mixes with hydrogen to absorb the surrounding warm air, hence why they are called absorption refrigerators.

I really like my RV fridge because it runs on propane and very little electricity. It is very economical to run and its size is perfect for me.

The problem with absorption fridges, though, is that they don’t like extreme temperatures. That means that when it’s super hot out, the beer in the fridge is tepid and the freezer can’t make ice cubes.

In winter, in temperatures below about -10C/14F, it gets too cold for absorption fridges to work efficiently. In my case, no matter what temperature setting I use, as deep colds set in, my freezer edges closer and closer to the freezing point and the fridge stays a few degrees below the freezing mark.

This means that I have to manage my food stocks carefully. I had a bit of loss after the first big cold snap caught me by surprise, I can’t stock up on the rare good meat or frozen food deals I find, and anything that goes into the fridge is very likely going to freeze. It’s not a huge deal as I have to go to down at least once a week for propane anyway, but it’s something to keep in mind.

I’ve heard horror stories of fridges being killed by a brutal cold spell, but I like to think these fridges are hardier than that as long as you don’t continually abuse them. My fridge panel is sheltered from direct wind and snow, which does help in making me less twitchy about this. I’d recommend finding a way to shelter your vent if it’s exposed to the elements (do not block it off, though, as that would be a fire hazard!).

As soon as we get a warm up, the fridge and freezer work normally again, so that’s another reason I’m not too concerned. This is just another one of those cold weather RVing challenges and it’s definitely not the worst one I’ve encountered!