Travel or live in the wild?

[pezar]

I've been going back and forth on this for a while. I can't decide whether I should attempt to buy a piece of land and live on it as a homesteader, or travel around looking for work. I hate to be tied to one place, and there's a good possibility that if I buy a cheap piece of land that I wouldn't be able to re-sell it again if I needed to. I am a computer repairman, yet I can't find work here in Sacramento, California, which is the second worst job market in the US. You can look under computer services on Sacramento Craigslist and see how much competition I've got for being a self-employed PC repairman. People routinely break CL rules to repost the same ad 20 times a day. People are offering flat rate repairs for $30! I can't seem to post more than once every few days, but people are registering multiple accounts under 20 different phone numbers. At this rate I'll NEVER be able to buy ANY land. I'd love to travel around to these little towns that just aren't profitable enough for a full time repairman to serve. The problem is, people would have to leave their PCs with me, and I just don't see them doing that. So, I don't know what to do.

[goombla]

the way your describing it, it seems buying land and staying at it would be a bad decision.
if the only other choice you desire is to travel for WORK, then go for that. with risk comes reward- and adventure!

[pezar]

the way your describing it, it seems buying land and staying at it would be a bad decision.
if the only other choice you desire is to travel for WORK, then go for that. with risk comes reward- and adventure!

Yeah, I can't find land that does NOT have all sorts of silly building codes required. I was looking at Klamath County, Oregon, because people online told me that they don't require all that silly crap. Well, now they do. I talked to real estate agents up there, and now they're requiring wells and septic tanks and fixed homes (no rubber tire homes) and yada yada yada. So yeah, I say what Chris told Jim Gallien, it's none of their business, fuck their stupid rules. I am thinking of heading to some of these boomtowns in North Dakota, Wyoming, and Oklahoma to do computer repair, and spending the coldest parts of winter at Slab City. I am worried about being arrested because I didn't pay for a business license even though I'll only be in one place for no more than a month. I certainly don't want to fight 100 other computer repairmen in Sacramento for $30 flat fee repair jobs.

[solovoyager]

Pezar - stupid question - but what exactly is computer repair?

Hey - also I happened upon a book on Amazon called "Dirt-Cheap Survival Retreat: One Man's Solution" by M.D. Creekmore. Haven't read it but it appears to be one man's account of putting a trailer on his own land. Might be worth checking out?

[pezar]

Pezar - stupid question - but what exactly is computer repair?

Hey - also I happened upon a book on Amazon called "Dirt-Cheap Survival Retreat: One Man's Solution" by M.D. Creekmore. Haven't read it but it appears to be one man's account of putting a trailer on his own land. Might be worth checking out?

Computer repair entails removing viruses ("malware"), transferring data between computers, sometimes recovering data from broken hard drives, also doing laptop computer repairs like replacing parts such as screens, keyboards, and power jacks. That sort of thing. Some computer guys also do networking (hooking up different computers into a "local area network"), and doing web site design (I don't design web sites). Some also run web site servers where web sites are hosted.

Yeah, I checked into putting a trailer on land, and more and more places are making it illegal to do so.

[solovoyager]

Pezar - stupid question - but what exactly is computer repair?

Computer repair entails removing viruses ("malware"), transferring data between computers, sometimes recovering data from broken hard drives, also doing laptop computer repairs like replacing parts such as screens, keyboards, and power jacks. That sort of thing. Some computer guys also do networking (hooking up different computers into a "local area network"), and doing web site design (I don't design web sites). Some also run web site servers where web sites are hosted./quote]

Thanks Pezar. By the way, last year I had Comcast do an install on phone, cable and Internet - and I couldn't help noticing one almost had to be a computer tech to do that stuff. You need not reply to this but did you ever consider doing installations for a cable TV/Internet company? Might be decent money and security working for such an outfit.

[pezar]

Well, money and security really aren't that important to me, that's why I'm on this forum in the first place. I do want to wander for a while. I've never really been more than ~600-700 miles from Sacramento in my entire life. I'm almost 37. I know that there's no future here in California, and a lot of people are going to the oil fields to find work. I interviewed for a few computer tech positions after I graduated from vocational school, and found that you pretty much have to know somebody at a big corporation to get hired there. Usually they already have somebody in mind and are just going through the interview process to ward off the government bureaucrats asking questions.