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Magic Underwear
May 14, 2003


Young Orc

tuyop posted:

Any moneysaving tips for my anticipated 50+ days off in December-January? I guess a ski trip to Maine is out of the question. :(

If you have that many consecutive days off the obvious choice is to get a part-time/seasonal job and put that money toward debt. Put vacations out of your mind right now, it will only make the process harder.

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Magic Underwear
May 14, 2003


Young Orc

tuyop posted:

I think that you're correct. And I'm sorry. I didn't expect the transition to be this emotionally charged for me.

I don't know how to describe the poo poo that was university for me, or the poo poo that was high school. From 2007-2010 I slept literally two hours a night and worked 50-70 hours a week at school and maintained three jobs working another 40 hours a week. I got five hours of sleep on Sundays most of the time and came out with a 3.8 gpa and a 73 page thesis in the same semester that I took eight masters courses and one extra seminar for no credit. This was to make myself the best possible infantry officer that I could be. I worked out at least an hour a day and two if I could. I took those vacations because I was burnt out.

In high school I couldn't stand the teachers or the control. I wanted to be a doctor so I took advanced physics, bio, chem, calculus, English. I came out with a 90 average and skipped more than 30 classes a semester. I worked 30-40 hours a week at gas stations and restaurants the entire time. I wanted to do the Right Thing here.

I have been exhausted, frozen, injured, in intense pain, and asked to produce massive handwritten documents in outrageously short timeframes and horrible conditions, only to fail for no legitimate reason. I am incredibly proud of these things. Being offered these jobs was not "an employer keeping me on after an injury", it was spitting in the face of what I've done and accomplished. Being offered jobs available to grade ten high school students after this, after traveling to seven different countries and adapting in environments with four different languages that I don't speak, after managing and improving the lives of 80 subordinates while being constantly berated for placing staples in the wrong place on memos by a man who dropped out of university. I just can't swallow it.

I haven't talked to toeshoes yet. She just got out of the field. I just need to explain that there is more than finances at work here in this decision so that you can understand that I am not absolutely determined to bankrupt myself because I want to be called sir or something. I don't think I did it properly when I laid out the options.

And I think that you're right, I just need some kind of validation in a direction that placates the sense of outrage and... Injustice that I feel about this whole process. I don't even know how to identify with it on a strangely fundamental level.

Fate has hosed you over and there's nothing you can do about it. Feeling anger, pain, injustice makes perfect sense. I understand.

However, there are two points I want to make.

One is that you shouldn't let your feelings turn into bitterness and bile. Your feeling of superiority over the "lesser people" (including your own girlfriend!) is repulsive. Hey buddy: you aren't going to become what you've been training to be. Get it through your head. You are one of the lesser people now [even though you are still insanely privileged to even have the choices that you do have]. You had your chance, you failed through no fault of your own, now suck it up and make the best of it. Being stubborn and bitter will get you nowhere.

Secondly, look at this pragmatically: I promise that swallowing your pride and doing your stint as a computer janitor (for a sweet wage, no less) will be much more comfortable than having no job, no prospects, and an additional 50k in debt. For god's sake man, option 1 is a raise! How can you turn that down when the alternatives are so positively apocalyptic? Do you know how many people would tear out your entrails for a guaranteed job that pays $5,000/month? A lot.

I think the other two people who responded have been too harsh. You need some time to assimilate how your life has changed, get out your anger. But then you're going to realize that life doesn't always break the way you planned, and that you're lucky that you even have such a generous contingency plan to fall back on. A lot of people get sick, get fired, and loving die because they can't pay for health care (in the US). You got injured and are getting a 25% raise. It could have been a lot worse.

Magic Underwear
May 14, 2003


Young Orc

Fraternite posted:

Yeah, because God knows you can "afford" to pay more over a longer time instead of paying less by paying it off faster.

You think like a poor person and it's part of the reason you are a poor person, Tuyop. If it's not already clear, this is yet another retarded choice you're making.

But listen, don't you see how much cheaper it is to pay $100 a month for 10 years than to pay $300 a month for two years? Basic finance man, look it up sometime.

Magic Underwear
May 14, 2003


Young Orc

Devian666 posted:

You seem to be missing some critical information. It he ends up owning the car outright he will probably end up driving it into a lake, or it will otherwise explode or cost him an unreasonable amount of money. If he gets rids of the car his gf will still have a car so they still have a car where needed.

As we have seen over the last year he will probably end up on a diet of beans and rice again which is really not going to help his mental health.

In terms of refinancing he has tried several times but no one wants to refinance his debts. Until he can get refinancing he is stuck digging his way out of these debts.

Instead of waiting 18 months he could get rid of the car now, and the associated minimum repayments, then start paying off the visa debt of about $11,000 which has the highest interest rate. His finances are locked into a rather serious cash flow problem, a problem that he's had for more than a year when he started this thread.

They only have one car between them. They can't and shouldn't sell it. Can't because if you sell an upside-down car the remainder of the loan becomes payable immediately. Shouldn't because you can live without a car in Brooklyn but not in the arctic deathscape of darkest Canada.

Magic Underwear
May 14, 2003


Young Orc

tuyop posted:

These are valid concerns.

However, there are three powered parts to the aquaponic system that I'm planning: Air pump, water pump, lights.

The pumps that I'm looking at use 30W combined, or half a 60W incandescent lightbulb. I want to try a smaller system first, which uses even less power. (This is about 2 dollars a month unless my math is totally hosed)

The actual lights are another problem though. If I use 600W of grow lights for this basil (I'm serious guys, actual basil. The aromatic herb!!!) for 16 hours a day it'll be about 29 dollars a month at high tier (peak) costs. So we're looking at

Maths:

Electricity cost: 11.8 cents/kwh (for argument's sake, the lights would be run in off-peak hours only)
Lights: 600W (who knows, just guessing, for argument's sake) Used for 18 hours/day 31 days/month

600W*18h=10800w/h
10800/1000=10.8kwh per day
10.8kwh * 31 days/month = 334.8kwh/month
334.8 * 10.8c = 3615.84c/month = $36.18 for lights. Add 10% of that for powering the pumps, so I can expect to pay about $40/month in power for this aquaponic operation FOR GROWING THE BASIL.

It seems like I can't populate that room for more than 400/month. The room is 131.25 square feet. I can probably only reasonably use 100 square feet of that for growing BASIL. So that's like 9.3 square meters.

BASIL can be sold for $22/kg in the virgin islands, for instance.

We can expect to produce 25kg/m2 per year, then we're talking 2.08kg/m2 per month or 19.375kg/month of basil.

19.375kg/month * $22/kg = $426.25/month of BASIL sales. Or $386.25 net (426.25-40 in energy costs not including fish food, seeds, fish, or materials).

So in order to break even by replacing a roommate with an aquaponic farm in my spare bedroom, I basically have to sell some crop for >$24/kg/month and produce about 19kg of that crop. Think like strawberries as well or something.

This is assuming that I pay for all power that goes into the farm, currently I pay a flat $60 for heat and electricity. The neighbours grow marijuana (medicinal!) so they may not notice an additional $40 bucks from my BASIL operation.

This is also assuming only one layer of horizontal growing. I can easily double up the grow surface by stacking the growing troughs and produce twice as much BASIL for only $40 more electricity in lighting and pumps/month.

I really don't know how saturated the fresh BASIL market is in this area. I don't know how much the fish will eat or what that food costs. I don't know how much fuel will cost to ship my BASIL to customers. I do know that I can market this as 100% organic, locally grown basil in the dead of winter.

Flooding is mitigated by either doubling the capacity of the fish tank (water drains from the troughs to the fish tank by gravity, so if you lose pump power flooding is a real concern) or having an emergency spill pan in critical areas.

I don't know how bad the humidity would be or how to manage that, so that's also a valid concern.
Wow, $22/kg in the Virgin Islands? Are you going to teleport your produce to the Virgin Islands Basil Processing Facility? No? Then who gives a loving gently caress what anything sells for in the virgin islands.

If you don't know anything about your market then it doesn't matter how economical the production of basil is. You've been talking about profit without even knowing anything about basil except your costs. What is the existing supply? Is there demand? What kind of business model would you sell your basil under? What are the costs of that model? This idea can't even be called half-assed. Quarter-assed as best.

Magic Underwear
May 14, 2003


Young Orc

tuyop posted:

Aquaponics isn't hydroponics. It's like, aquaculture as well. So we'd have a tank of minnows with tubes taking the fish-fertilized water (bacteria turn the ammonia into nitatratss) into the grow trough, with plants floating on foam rafts. The plants clean the nitrates from the water and the water is returned to the fish by gravity.

There's a lot fewer inputs than straight up hydroponics. It sounds so elegant and simple!

It sounds like a neat hobby. It sounds like a terrible business proposition. Like something out of a cartoon. Tuyop and Toeshoes' Basil and Tilapia Emporium. You haven't said what you'll do with the fish. Or how much it costs to feed them.

Magic Underwear
May 14, 2003


Young Orc
It's unclear with the bolding and capitalization of BASIL whether we're talking about weed at this point but if we are really talking about basil there has been no discussion of demand. Who is going to buy this poo poo? If you had a kilo of fresh basil right now would you be able to sell it before it went bad? All the basil in the world will be useless if you have no way of getting it into the hands of basil-wanters.

If BASIL is your super-clever code for weed then good luck with your idiotic criminal enterprise.

Magic Underwear
May 14, 2003


Young Orc

tuyop posted:

Closets are used to store things that you aren't using. This seems kind of silly, really. If you're not using some things, why do you own so many of them that you need a whole other room dedicated to storing them?

Absolutely, this is why I only own one shirt, one pair of pants and one pair of underwear. Don't let these closet-normative clowns lead you down a path of materialism.

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Magic Underwear
May 14, 2003


Young Orc
I dunno, ingesting untested, unapproved powders straight from china seems like a really, really good idea to me.

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