Greetings
Thanks for taking a moment to read this month’s update. I hope you’re doing well. The photo above is from 3 July 2025 taken during a nature walk. In moving soon to an expanded home and work space, I’m looking forward to an opportunity to create a habitat for pollinators and other wildlife. At the bottom of this page is a photo taken on 2 July 2025 of a lake that was along the road while I was out on a service call.
Expanded Home and Work Space
In September we’ll be moving to a new home and work space. My tech support business has been growing over the years, and since the pandemic it has really expanded as people continue working remotely. I’m actively supporting over 300 people in our city, and their needs are increasing.
Since 2001, I’ve been living in spaces of about 150 to 300 square feet per person. The smaller living has been inspired, in part, by some nuns in Canada who had me visit as a guest to teach them about technology. My lodging was a typical Monastic cell. I was inspired by that minimalism and their entire lifestyle.
Tiny living is a challenge when running a growing business. I’ve used storage facilities and commercial office space rentals over the years, but that results in some inefficiencies and costs. So, having just about everything under one roof will help.
With two of us working from home and all four of us needing living space, it was difficult to find a place that would accommodate our living and working space needs, while being close to Iowa City, and within a reasonable budget. Homes and multi-room apartments are very expensive. Some rentals in Iowa City are as much as $1,200 per person as they are geared toward student living. Downtown, a one-bedroom condo of about 1,000 square feet is selling for $572,000 which would have $341 per month HOA fees plus $8,658 annual taxes. That’s over $1,000 per month in taxes and fees on top of a mortgage payment of over $3,000. These are just two examples of the current housing landscape in Iowa City. Much of what is available is impractical and certainly out of our reach. Lower prices result in trade-offs such as older high-maintenance homes with long commute times. There are certainly other examples of lower-cost housing in Iowa City, but the examples I’ve given are illustrative of what is not uncommon on the market.
After many months of searching, we found something modest that meets our needs and is centrally located for serving the Iowa City, Coralville, and North Liberty communities.
I was writing more about housing and my home life when I lived in a 10′ x 7′ tiny house from 2003 to 2009. Since that time my home and dwelling situation is fairly typical and there’s not much of interest to share. Even so, I’ll plan to share more about my new space in the months ahead.
The bottom line is that it should allow me to be more efficient, to do more, and to give more of myself to others. It also facilitates some of my off-grid and sustainability goals.
Supporting Those Aging in Place
There is a growing “aging in place” movement that seems to be increasing due to the economy and the rising cost of independent living centers. So, those who are recently retired, and not so recently retired, are doing more from home. That’s where I’ve seen an increase in the need to provide tech help to people who are using their computers and tech devices more to stay connected to friends, family, and groups. I’m adjusting for this new demand and offering creative low-cost tech solutions for people aging in place. We also have a wonderful local group called TRAIL of Johnson County that supports those seeking self sufficiency in retirement.
Visual Time Stamp Notepad
I continue to use the 1440 time tracking system that I developed for time accounting. I described it in my February 2025 update. It is a grid/table layout on four pages — two sheets of paper printed back to back. Each box in the grid represents a minute with two long columns for each hour. This system allows me to track and account for each of the 1,440 minutes in a day, from 5AM to 10PM, with two additional columns for late night or early morning hours outside of the normal 9PM to 5AM sleeping time.
Below is a template showing page 1 of 4 for a day. I update the page heading for each new month. I maintain the file as a word processing document with a table. Above each column, I can write in “B” to indicate some entries in that column are billable. At the bottom of each column I can notate billing totals or other project/task totals in hours and minutes. The template has remained mostly the same over the years, although my notation system and ways of using the system are improving. Using the time grid as a notepad allows me to write a short note with visual illustrations and a built-in time-stamp of every entry.
Nutrition and Health Practices
This year I’ve had some success with wellness goals that I’m pleased about. Here’s a summary.
- Electrolytes — This year, I increased my water intake and began using a slightly better water pitcher filter. Using wide mouth insulated stainless steel drink bottles, I’m able to have water that is fresh and cold. This promotes a desire to drink more water. In July, I started adding some powdered natural electrolytes to my water for one serving a day. That seems to have helped boost energy and an overall sense of wellbeing. I think my enthusiastic water consumption without any electrolyte replenishment had been zapping my energy level a bit.
- Glucose — For about 20 years I’ve been exploring ways to regulate glucose. I first shared about this in November of 2014. In March of 2015, I arrived at a system that could bring glucose down from averages in the 300 range back to normal levels from 80-100. However, that system was not sustainable due to many factors. This year, after many revisions, and personalizing a system for my own needs, am I starting to achieve stable close-to-optimal levels. That’s resulted in better energy levels and overall improved health.
- Magnesium — I take a few inexpensive supplements based on actual personal deficiencies. For example, if my Vitamin D levels are low according to lab results, I’ll take the correct daily dose of Vitamin D to achieve ideal levels. In recent months I started taking a magnesium supplement. Initially the common recommended dose was too high, I determined based on some of the side effects. I reduced that to about 25% of what is common and find that dose works well for my needs. This seems to have helped with energy, sleep, and muscle development.
- Nutritional Drink — I spent many months this year testing all of the nutritional drinks being advertised. I made an effort to evaluate them based on the impact, if any, on my health. When I didn’t find any that worked well for me, I decided to try one that I’d started using about 20 years ago. A half-dose seems to work well for me.
- Vitamins — For a long time, I hadn’t been consistent with my vitamin routine. In recent months I’ve made an extra effort to take my nutritional supplements. This requires coordination with meals for optimal absorption and digestion.
Wellness Outcomes
The above list of nutrition and health practices have resulted in some hopeful wellness outcomes which have helped guide some decisions. For my daily work, I rely on clarity of mind, creative thinking, and the ability to multitask. I need acute vision, hearing, and even smell for my work. For example, the noise from a failing hard drive provides an insight into the type of failure, and thus a proper diagnosis for data recovery. A computer power supply that stops working may have a specific smell if a component has burned out. The tech work I do is a multi-sensory type of work. I recently needed to rely on some typed commands that I’ve not used since the 1980s. That requires a clarity of memory for details.
So, with this in mind, I think about how well my overall health will hold up over the next 20 to 30 years. This impacts my career and retirement planning, which in turn impacts my long-term and short-term financial planning.
Knowing that much of one’s health is genetic, and having multiple family members passing away of natural causes by age 59 has been something I think about. That’s motivated me to preemptively address health issues before they happen, finding cures before they are needed. The success I’ve had in that regard has shaped my long-term planning, including how I anticipate my future home and work space needs. Given current circumstances I’m leaning toward an expectation for a longer life-span than I might have anticipated ten years ago. I have a page on this topic of planning — “Long-term Planning. Short-term Preparing.”
Support Requests — Radio Shack
I recently responded to someone writing me from Taipei, Taiwan regarding my Radio Shack experience in California about 40 years ago. I was able to respond to their request, offering a link to a newsletter from the 1990s that might guide them to the information they were looking for. That newsletter was the type of document I hope to have in my digital library once I’ve completed assembling it.
I regularly receive requests for help and information which require a search of my library of computer files and scanned documents spanning about 40 years. In the months ahead, I hope to create a larger library of reference materials to draw from on a variety of topics.
This will require digitizing over 100 boxes of materials including documents, audio tapes, photos, and video tapes.
WRITING TOPICS
I continue to expand on the topic reports found on the Resources For Life dot com website. The list can be found on the What’s New Page. Adding incrementally takes very little time since the post and related context are already present.
TECH WRITING
If you’re interested in the latest tech-related guides and articles I’ve posted, you can visit the Posts Page on the Iowa City Tech website.
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THANKS
Many thanks to all of you who keep in touch and provide support for the work I do.
Origins. For those of you who are new to these monthly personal updates, they began about 24 years ago out of a desire to share from my personal life about topics of lifeways (faith/philosophy), health, career, finances, relationships, effective living, and public interest efforts. This is based on the Life Map presented on the Resources For Life website. [View]
The photo below is of a lake on 2 July 2025, when I was on the road doing my computer work and stopped to take the picture.
