I still live in the RV. People ask how long I’m going to stay here and honestly I don’t know. I love it so much that I don’t even want to leave. I DO want a solar panel, though, which gets installed thursday. That’s exciting. Did I already mention that I had 5 people over to play cards? That’s six people in the tiny RV including me, which is my personal record. Soon I will have a house party.

I learned (the basics of) PHP, MYSQL, and AJAX in the past week. They have such scary names I assumed that it would be really difficult to learn, but in fact it’s super easy. I’m making a quiz site (like those myspace quizzes), and I already have most of it done. It’s even fancy and ajaxy. If you’re a lady, pretend that this last paragraph was about me saving kids from a fire, and not about nerdy stuff. Thanks.

My eyes are getting better and better from PRK. Still not totally recovered, but almost certainly 20/20. We go in for a checkup in a few days, so we’ll see what the doctor says.

I weigh 128 pounds. That’s nuts. A year ago I weighed 145 and a year before that I weighed 155! I am way too skinny, so my new goal is to eat at all times. Right now I’m eating two hummus sandwiches. When I eat I eat a lot, but sometimes I don’t eat enough meals in the day. Parking / living across from my favorite restaurant helps with that.

I got a kick ass flashlight called the Surefire Lumamax L7. It’s seven times brighter than a 2D mag lite, much smaller, and rechargable. I should write at bestintheland.com again so that I can explain in detail how kick ass this light is.

I wrote a new mini ebook about wingmen which you can get for free at www.makeherchaseyou.com/wing if you refer a few people to my free 10 day e-mail course.

My little sister graduated from high school. She’s the best and I am super proud of her (just for who she is… graduating high school isn’t that big of a deal). On a similar note, graduations are the worst thing ever. All of the speeches are the same “You’re expecting for me to talk to you about X, but I’m not going to. Former President XXXX X. XXXX once said ‘inspirational quote here’. blah blah blah… this is the beginning of a new chapter in your life and it’s time to let go of the old surroundings you’re used to”. Seriously every speech is like that. I actually started laughing when the third speaker (do we need three speakers) included a presidential quote.

I think it’s awesome that Ron Paul is getting so popular. If he wins I might actually stay in America. I go to this super hippie smoothie place called Daily Juice and even THEY have signs for him. Hippies endorsing a republican. Wild.

I shaved my head. It was really hot and I’ve always wondered what I’d look like. Now I know - I look kinda funny.

The other day there was a huge storm here. My friends and I all have high end rain gear so we put it on and took a walk through the woods. I felt like half commando half homeless person. It was really fun. Actually, I’ve been doing more things outside recently and they’ve all been fun.

Ok, that’s all for now.

Oooh how the ladies love alliteration! Really all I want to do is write about living in the RV, but every day I would just write “man! this is great!”, so I’ll write about something else. Anyway, I have very little power in the RV at the moment… I have to run the generator which uses a lot of gas. I bought an awesome solar panel that will provide me with non stop electron flow, but it doesn’t get installed for another week. Anyway - on with the story.

This happened a while back, but I never got around to posting it because I’m a jerk.

Todd, Jonah, and I were hanging out on the roof of the condo, admiring the skyline. The skyline these days is packed with construction cranes just begging to be climbed. That night we obliged.

Jonah didn’t want to do it, which worked out very well in the end. He got a bluetooth headset and watched for police and traffic while we walked towards the crane.

“Ok, the coast is clear,” todd heard through his earpiece.

Our casual meandering walk transformed into a sprint. We ran at the fence, climbed over it and ran through the shadows as we ducked. Lots of windows in Austin could see the construction site, so we figured it was best to spend as little time in the open as possible.

We took our time climbing up the ladder, confident that no one would spot us. Whenever cops drove by, Jonah would alert us and we’d stay still. We made it to the top, took some pictures, and headed back down undetected.

I’m writing about this because we sidetracked a post in the forums and I thought it was interesting to warrant a full article. It’s not so much that I want to ram my opinion down the throats of those who disagree with me (I do), but that I feel like my position is misunderstood and I probably didn’t do a great job of explaining it.

I don’t ever get angry. That doesn’t mean that bad things don’t happen to me (they do), but most people I know will tell you that they’ve never seen me angry.

The common misperception is that I don’t deal with anger and I stuff it down somewhere. The theory continues that eventually I won’t be able to contain it and I will unleash my rage. Or that I’ll suddenly become depressed.

People suggest that I “deal with my anger”, which is the common “healthy” way to do things.

So first - my position on it. There is NEVER any reason to be angry. You can’t feel anger unless you also feel helpless. If someone wrongs you, but you have a solution to the situation, you wouldn’t feel angry, right? You’d feel motivated, if anything. Possibly a bit frustrated because you now have more work to do. Anger is a weak emotion.

Someone please try to give me an example that doesn’t fit that description. I tried really hard to think of one, but couldn’t.

When someone wrongs you, which is the classic instigator of anger, you have two choices : accept it or react to it.

Someone knocked over your sand castle? Either accept it and do something else, or build a better sand castle.

What about something where you have no recourse? You did a good job on a paper in class but your teacher is an asshole and he gave you a bad grade anyway. I’d argue that you DO have a reaction here (drop out of school, take it up with the teacher or his superior, etc.), but most people wouldn’t do those things.

In this case, just accept it. Getting angry NEVER ever fixes anything. . Think about that - why would you want an emotion that NEVER helps? It’s like jealousy. Being jealous never helps. People have no problem saying “don’t be jealous”, but they get angry (haha….) when I say not to get angry.

Accept that some things that happen to you will not be optimal. That’s how it is for everyone, so just accept yours. Anything else is just petty and selfish.

To wrap this up - the point isn’t to suppress your anger, it’s to deal with things in a LOGICAL way and realize that anger isn’t a valid or helpful emotion. I’m not saying that this is always easy, but it can be accomplished. Instead of thinking of it as “not dealing” with anger, think of it as “dealing extremely quickly” with anger.

So this all sounds great, you might think, but how do you do it? If someone trips you today you’re going to be angry, right? You do it the same way you do anything - PRACTICE.

When you get angry, think “Am I going to do something about this?”. If you are, think of what you’re going to do and do it (or schedule it if you can’t do it immediately). How can you feel angry after that? You’ve found the solution to your problem!

If you’re not going to do something about it, then say outloud or in your head, “Bad things happen to people. This is one of those things and the best thing I can do is move on.” Maybe that sounds stupid, but when you logically agree that there’s no reason to be angry, you’ll find that you get over things extremely quickly. Think about why you’re being angry and you’ll usually be able to trace it back to a fault of your own, most likely something like, “I know the solution to this problem but I don’t want to do it.”

Enjoy. Magnus, back me up!

Ahoy! Six days ago I finally put my eyeballs in front of a laser and got my vision corrected. It’s something that I’ve wanted to do for years, but never got around to doing because of the cost, the worry that I’d miss out on a new technology, and the uncertainty of which procedure to get. As I’m known to do, I researched everything on the subject (… and was then corrected by my friend Hayden who had read even more…) and I’m confident that I got the absolute best procedure.

How does Laser Surgery work?

Your eyball is a disaster. It’s not perfectly round. It’s probably too squished or too oblong, and the surface has little imperfect bumps on it. The part that laser surgeries deal with is the cornea - the layer of your eye that covers your iris and pupils. The cornea is responsible for focusing light onto the retina in the back of the eyeball, so it makes sense that this is where we focus.

Both PRK and Lasik (the two most popular surgeries) zap off chunks of your cornea to make a nice smooth cornea that perfectly focuses text from betterthanyourboyfriend.com onto your retina.

The problem is that the outer layer of the cornea, the epithelium, is extremely resilient and grows back quickly (as I’ll discuss later). To have a surgery that lasts longer than a few days we need to zap away somewhere in the middle of the cornea.

PRK vs. Lasik

PRK and Lasik are not as different as people think. They cost the same amount usually and are done with the exact same layer. The only difference is how deep into the cornea the surgery is performed, and how the surgeon gets to the treated area. Everything else is exactly the same.

Lasik is by far the most popular choice in the US for one reason - it’s a quick and painless recovery. Maybe that’s two reasons. It’s also highly effective and the chances of something going wrong are not worth considering in my opinion. With Lasik the surgeon uses something called a micro-keratome (think of it as an eyeball razor) to cut a little flap in your cornea. The flap is lifted, the laser does its business underneath it, and then the flap gets put back down on your eyeball.

Here’s what people don’t understand about Lasik - the flap NEVER heals! For the rest of your life you will have a flap cut in your eye. This is almost never a big deal - the suction power keeps it attached properly and you don’t notice that you have it there. However, when complications do occur with Lasik, they’re usually due to a miscut flap, or one that’s cut entirely off! If that happens, you need a corneal transplant. Risks of this happening are very low, negligible if you have a good doctor. The nice thing about Lasik is that you have no pain and your vision is restored 100% the day of the surgery.

PRK, which has been around for longer than Lasik, doesn’t create a flap. Instead some crazy solution is applied to your eyes and then the epithelium (outer layer of the cornea) is scrubbed off with something that looks like an electric toothbrush. Lasers then do their magic on the exposed deeper layer of the cornea and you go home to heal. Over the next two days your epithelium heals over the new and improved cornea, but it takes up to two months for it to return to its normal thickness and focus light correctly.

PRK is generally accepted to have less chance of complications, and probably has slightly better results. However, the healing process is very long (it’s now a week after I had mine and using the computer is not totally comfortable. The period in which the epithelium heals is also very painful. Pain medication is given for it which may help.

Another problem with Lasik is that the flap is usually cut through the nerve that tells your eyes when to water. That’s why people with Lasik often have dry eyes. PRK can cause dry eyes as well, but it usually goes away within months rather than years (or never).

What I think is particularly cool about PRK is that the end result is a perfect eyeball with no damage to it. If a new surgery comes out in twenty years when I need reading glasses, chances are that I will be able to get it. If I had a flap on my eye, that may interfere with the procedure.

Wavefront vs. Normal
Wavefront is a newer technology that can be used with PRK or Lasik since both use the same lasers. With a traditional laser, a single prescription is applied uniformly to your eye, meaning the same amount is lasered off of the entire treatment area. This yields the same results as getting a contact (since a contact is uniform as well), which is pretty good.

Wavefront is better. It makes a 3D map of your eye and feeds the map into the laser, which automatically zaps out any imperfections to make a perfectly smooth cornea. That means that your vision is very likely going to be better than people who have had no surgery at all. The wavefront machines use a variable size laser that jumps around your eye zapping each imperfection, rather than a wide laser that zaps a certain amount of times to remove the correct thickness.

Wavefront always gives better results, but is much more expensive. Regular Lasik can be had for $299 an eye, but Wavefront typically costs at least $2500 per eye. That’s a pretty huge difference in price, but my rationale is that this is something that will help you for the rest of your life - you may as well buy the best service available.

It is extremely common to have better than 20/20 with wavefront. In fact, more than half of the poeple who have had it get 20/15 or better. This may not seem like a big difference, but it means that you can see things at 20 feet that normal people can see at 15. Considering how many things we look at in that range, this is very practical.

The wavefront machines also track your eyeball 400 times a second, so if you move slightly it will compensate. Since the regular laser is lasering the whole surface evenly, it’s not as critical for it to do that.

Halos and Night Vision

The two most common side effects associated with Lasik and PRK are halos and poor night vision. With wavefront, these are non-issues now. The problem was that a large enough area on the eye wasn’t being treated. When it was really dark the pupil would grow larger than the treated area, letting some light come in through the untreated cornea. The light coming through the outside area would cause a second image to be projected onto your retina, which would come in the form of a halo.

Night vision issues were also due to the small treatment area. You need all available light to see at night, but if it’s coming in outside of the treated area then it’s not being added to the picture that you’re trying to make out.

My Experience

If you haven’t gotten the point yet, the best option in the land is to get PRK with wavefront. It’s also important to go to a good doctor, since parts of the procedure are still done by hand.

I went to a doctor named Dr. Singla in Port Arthur, TX, because he was a friend of my friend Todd’s father and he had the latest wavefront machinery. Todd went to get it done as well. He had one very bad eye and a very good eye which didn’t need treatment. I had two mildly bad eyes.

We went in on a Friday afternoon to have the procedure done. They mapped our eyes again to make sure they hadn’t changed since the initial consultation. That made me happy. Todd and I were both extremely concerned with everything his staff were doing. We’d say things like, “are you sure I didn’t move my eyes? Do you want to measure again?”

I went first and was brought into the operating room. They tried to get me to take valium to calm my anxiety, but I had no apprehension at all so I insisted on not taking it.

They laid me down on a flat chair and went to work. Numbing drops were put into my right eye and a device was slipped under my eyelids to keep them open. The worst part was that there was a super bright light focused on my eyes, so I couldn’t really see. They used some fancy instruments to draw a circle on my eye.

Then they busted out the epithelium scraper. It looks identical to a battery powered spinning electric toothbrush. They pressed it on my eye to grind off the epithelium. This sounds painful, but it’s only mildly uncomfortable. The hard part is trying to keep your eye steady while a spinning brush presses against it.

After the epithelium was gone my vision got slightly blurry and it was time for zapping. I had to focus on an orange LED, which was slightly difficult only because I was concentrating so hard on not moving my eyes at all.

The laser began to make really loud zapping noises not unlike storm trooper guns as it danced across my cornea. Fifteen seconds later I was done and the procedure was repeated on my other eye. Contacts were put over the treated area to act as bandages and I was sent on my way. I had no pain at all for about fifteen minutes. Then the numbing drops wore off and I found it uncomfortable to keep my eyes open.

Todd only had one eye treated, but the laser worked on him for a minute and a half! He even asked questions while being zapped, which seems crazy to me.

We went home to Todd’s parents’ house and rested. Todd felt no pain at all and started using his computer again with the good eye. His other eye was blurry. My eyes seemed amazingly perfect, but were starting to sting. I could keep them open only for a few seconds at a time and they watered constantly. I went to sleep to let them heal.

The next morning Todd still had no pain, but my pain was escalating. By that night it felt like rusty thumbtacks were stuck in both of my eyes and I was having trouble staying asleep. They prescribed us Tylenol with Codeine, which I briefly considered taking (a HUGE step for someone who’s never tried any drug or swallowed any pill), but I decided not to when I found out that codeine is an opiate that people really liked.

The pain got so bad that I finally took some pain relieving eye drops that did absolutely nothing. The next day the pain was slightly lessened, but still pretty bad. It was painful to be awake and my eyes were bloodshot. Todd still had no pain (and no, he wasn’t taking the medicine either.)

Monday morning we had a checkup at the doctor’s office. I was so light sensitive that I could only open my eyes for a second at a time. The pain wasn’t as bad as the second night, but it was still pretty bad. He looked at our eyes and decided we could take the contacts off. Immediately my pain was gone. Stupid contacts.

That night I felt ok enough to keep my eyes open and use my computer, but my vision was blurry enough that I couldn’t really see the screen (even now I can’t see it very well, but it’s not that hard to just type without looking.). Every day I can notice my vision getting better. My distance vision is better than before, but my closeup vision (which used to be perfect) is now pretty bad. It may take up to 2 months to have 20/15 (which is what I tested at the day after the surgery).

More updates to come, along with a video of the entire procedure INCLUDING seeing the laser zap my eyes!

I’ve lived in my RV for 10 days now. I have only gone back to the condo to get clothes, and to sleep one night (basically I picked a loud parking spot that was 10 feet from the condo and it was 5am so I just went inside instead of driving to a quiet spot). A lot of things have panned out as expected, but there have also been some big surprises.

• Overnight parking is SIMPLE to find if you know the city. I expected this to be WAY harder than it is. I can park in any one place for 72 hours without problems. I’ve parked in front of my favorite restaurant (the only place I used to drive to), and I’m almost always there. It’s fantastic to just be able to walk out my front (actually it’s on the back of the RV) door and eat my lunch and dinner every day. On weekends I’m thinking about parking right on 5th street (which is the center of downtown, right where the condo is) for the weekend. Metered spots are free on the weekend.
• Regular parking is also simple! With the bus we had to really consider where we parked (although it was actually easier than expected). With my little guy I park anywhere. I even parked in a compact spot a couple times. One of those times I had to argue with a security guard, assistant manager, and manager. None of them could point out a good reason why I couldn’t park there, so they let me.
• Gas mileage is awful. I get 11mpg if I’m lucky. There are some really cool RVs that are slightly thinner but get 22mpg, so I may upgrade if I keep living in an RV.
• You don’t really need more space than this. Everything in the RV is laid out so cleverly that I never wish I had more room. I’ve had friends come over and hang out for hours - it’s totally comfortable. I was even thinking I could make due without the couch. I was idly considering getting a bigger one with a bedroom in back, and then I realized that I actually prefer not having a bedroom. This way my bed gets made (put away) every morning, so I start off with a nice clean RV. Speaking of which…
• This thing is REALLY easy to clean. It might take 10 minutes at most. I used to agonize about cleaning - now it’s a reflex to tidy everything up because it takes so little time.
• Power is an issue. Air conditioning will be. Right now I don’t have a good way to power my laptop all day. This is a problem (and part of the reason I haven’t posted this past week). I’m probably going to get a solar solution, but these are pretty expensive. So far I’ve been sleeping without air conditioning, but in the summer I won’t be able to do this anymore. Doug has volunteered to let me buy some power from him to run the AC at night, and he lives close to downtown, so that will be pretty cool.
• I don’t use a lot of resources. When you’re filling and dumping your own tanks, you get to find out how much you use. In a week I go through about 42 gallons of water (I think I can cut that down now that I understand how my hot water heater works), and I fill up about 60 gallons of waste (most of that is shower water - I’m not that… prolific). I actually like my short efficient showers now. I washed my hands at the condo when I was over there getting some stuff and it seemed crazy to have the faucet on full blast. Disclaimer : I don’t really care about the environment. I just like being efficient.
• This is a REALLY cheap way to live WELL Austin has some crazy price fixing scheme or something because dumping waste here runs $15. Usually it’s $0-5, so I don’t know what’s going on. I have to do that 4 times a month. Wireless internet is running me about $40. Gas to run the generator once in a while might be $50-100 a month. Propane seriously NEVER runs out so I have no idea how much I’m using. I’ve been using it full tilt for a week and it still says full. Let’s say $20/mo just to have a number. Insurance is $95 a month (but that’s also my auto insurance, so it’s not really fair to count it). That’s under $300 a month for ALL living expenses besides food. In my opinion, the RV is WAY cooler than any crappy apartment. I really can’t understand why more people don’t do this. Students especially.
• When I buy something for my car, I have it in my house too. Want satellite radio? Get one and have it in your house and car. I can use one charger for my phone. Insurance covers my house and my car since they’re the same thing. Cleaning my car cleans my house.

I could go on and on, but you probably get the idea. I totally love living in this RV. It’s a great feeling to drive over to my mom’s house and have her say “Oh, you didn’t happen to bring those tickets, did you?” and to just be able to walk into my house and get them.

My parents are really into the RV thing, which is funny. They’re always a bit skeptical about my schemes. My dad helped me take out the CRT TV and the Microwave which I replaced with a flat panel and a flash bake oven. My mom made me nice curtains. I’m trying hard to resist the urge to totally trick out the RV. The carpet smells a bit musty so I might put in granite tile or bamboo floors. I think that would be neat.