Posts in category "post-retirement"
-
Eco Friendly Pump House
After having decided to build a not so small pump house, we wondered if we should stretch our budget a little bit and go for eco friendly construction material. We have always wondered how it would be to live in a house constructed with mud bricks. Many say that it not only is eco friendly for several reasons, but also helps moderate temperature inside the house, keeping it cool during summers and warm during winters. We have only heard of the advantages but never experienced. We visited a couple of farmers who built their houses with mud bricks, but a one or two day experience does not tell you much. So we decided to build an eco friendly pump house and experience it ourselves.
...continue reading -
Mechanical Keyboard Repair
A few days ago, my mechanical keyboard started to develop some weird issues. If you remember, this is my first mechanical keyboard which I bought in November, 2021. The purchase date has a significance because in almost exactly 3 years, in November 2024, the keyboard started to misbehave. I know it is a coincidence, but sometimes I wonder if it is part of the planned obsolescence theory. Manufacturers design the hardware in such a way that the products automatically fail after a certain period.
...continue reading -
Pump House
Since we finished the bore, the next order of business is to build a small pump house. Small enough to house the starter for the submersible pump that we will install once we get the electric connection. We wanted to be prepared with everything for the electric connection. Again we had to go through a lot of thought and planning. Should we build something really small like a 5 feet by 5 feet room, just enough to house the starter for the pump and some tools. Or should we build something bigger for future needs. After much discussions and thought, we decided to go with a slightly big room with bathroom so we can use it when we visit the farm instead of worrying about where to relieve ourselves.
...continue reading -
Music System Frequency Response
Although I am not an audiophile, I am a critical listener and I can tell when the sound quality is not up to the mark. While I like my current 5.1 music system setup, I still feel like it could do better. I spend about 70% of the time listening to music and about 30% of the time watching movies, or TV shows or live TV. So a major part of my listening is music. Generally I like a very flat response from my speakers. I don’t like overly bright sound in general. A slightly warm sound is acceptable, but prefer the frequency response to be flat so I can listen to music as the original author intended it. So I decided to check the frequency response of my speakers.
...continue reading -
Solar CCTV Installation
Our real estate agent and friend Mr. J suggested that we install a CCTV before doing anything else in the farm. Neither he nor we were know about possibility of theft in the area. But while talking to a few of our other farmer friends, some of them have had a bad experience with theft. So having a CCTV there seemed like a good idea if for nothing but to act as a deterrent. Since we are not going to live in the farm yet, anything we buy for the farm like pipes or pump etc, can be easy targets for theft. As I mentioned in one of my previous posts, the farmers these days are neither innocent nor god fearing nor humble nor moral nor ethical or any of the other positive adjectives you normally associate with farmers.
...continue reading -
Electricity Connection Application
After getting our bore drilled, we proceeded to get electricity connection. This was another messy process. To get a 3-phase connection so we can run our pump, we need to apply for electricity connection. Since there is no transformer near by, they cannot give us the connection directly. It seems unless there are at least 2 connection requests from a location, the electricity department will not setup a new transformer. The alternative is for us to bear all the costs of setting a new transformer and the cost of all the poles and wiring up to the transformer. The cost comes to around Rs. 2-3 lakhs.
...continue reading -
Drilling A Bore In the Farm
Soon after registering our farm land, the first thing we wanted to do was to get a bore drilled. Remember that our land did not have anything. No bore, no electricity, no fence, nothing. It is just barren land. Supposedly, the previous owner used to grow corn using the rain fed method a few years ago. Basically they would sow corn just before rains and the only way the crop would be watered is from rains. Since we wanted to grow a vegetable and fruit forest which needs water year round, we decided to get a bore drilled and setup a sprinkler or drip irrigation system to water our plants and trees. So the first step was to dig a bore.
...continue reading -
Loan On Farm
If you remember, the previous owner of our farm had a loan on the farm. They obtained the loan from a cooperative bank. At the time of registration, the agreement between us was that they will clear the loan once they receive money from us on the registration date. Once they repay the bank loan, the bank is supposed to report it to the Tahsildar office and the loan record is supposed to be cleared from our land documents. But it was easier said than done. Before receiving money, everyone agrees to all kinds of conditions. Once the money changes hands, we have to run behind them to get the things to which they agreed to do so willingly and cheerfully.
...continue reading -
When Warranty Works
We have a warranty on a product for various reasons. But I rarely found any warranty useful because either the product never has any problems, or it develops problems soon after the warranty expires. The later happens quite a bit with phones and laptops for me. Not sure how. So I find it very amusing when a product actually fails before warranty and gets replaced with a new one because it was under warranty. That happened a few days ago and it was like that once in a lifetime feeling. Of course the cost of the product is so low that there is nothing really to celebrate, but it is still something.
...continue reading -
Purchased A New TV To Help Reduce Electricity Bills
For all the claims I make about us being minimalists, we actually spend a lot. A few months back I decided to buy (yet) another TV. As if we already did not have enough in the house. We already have one large TV in the living room and one more old TV in my parents bedroom because my dad likes to watch TV quite a bit. He gets very bored when our parents visit us here in Bangalore. He doesn’t have much social activity like how he has back in my hometown where I grew up. He has a lot of social connections there. After setting up an old 32” TV connected to a Android TV box, he would happily browse youtube videos when he got bored. This was working fine until the ruling party changed in Karnataka and the new party came with Gruha Jyoti scheme. So I thought I should buy one more TV to reduce electricity bill and take advantage of the scheme. Yeah, that statement sounds contradictory, so let me explain.
...continue reading