possible/probable

We got our Land Disturbance Permit. Our application was especially complex because we have a well, geothermal HVAC, and a fancy-schmancy sand-filter septic field. It took a surprisingly long time, and everyone on the project is heaving a great sigh of relief.

Here is the photo that Russ, the civil engineer sent me from the Fulton County offices today.

The last step was to bet on a tree. There is a large and beautiful white oak that is very close to where we will be building the classroom and dining hall. We promised to save it, so Fulton County demanded a bond. If the tree dies in the next three years, I’ll lose $10,000.

Yesterday was my first training ride of the 2010 triathlon season. As I started grinding up the first hill, I noticed that I wasn’t going very fast. Even for me, I was going pretty slow. I started pondering the depressing possibility that I had peaked as a triathlete at John Tanner State Park on April 25, 2009. I had finished 326th in a field of 472. I am a lousy triathlete.

On April 26, 2009, I crashed my scooter in a grocery store parking lot and broke my foot and ankle. It still aches some days.

My friend Kelly and I do triathlons together, and she beat me soundly in the olympic-distance race we did in September. I like to blame my poor time on the ankle, but as I started up the second hill of yesterday’s ride, I thought about second, more scary, possibility: Perhaps Kelly was still getting faster, and I was already beginning the long cool-down toward the grave.

But then the sun came out. The dappled sunlight that had made it through the trees shined on the pavement, and I flew around Stone Mountain. (Yes, 30 Rock fans, there is a Stone Mountain, Georgia, and it is a few miles from my house. Stone Mountain State Park is a great place to ride.) My heart was pumping hard, and the sweat and the wind made me feel truly alive.

And I remembered why I do triathlons: I like training. Once in motion, I genuinely enjoy swimming and running and biking and lifting weights. And I like the resulting strength and stamina. Sometimes, however, it takes a little extra motivation to get up off the couch. My motivation is that I have a race coming up and I’m not going to embarrass myself in front of Kelly. It is a petty reason, but many days it is enough to get me going.

On April 25th, one of the people I did beat was Dr. John Taylor. Dr. Taylor is 88. One of the great things about triathlons is that there are a lot of older racers. Maybe if I keep training hard, I’ll still be a lousy triathlete 48 years from now.

It has been a while since I posted anything, so I wanted to send a quick update: We’ve applied for our land disturbance permit so we can begin construction of the Big Nerd Ranch facility. Fulton County is supposed to send us approval (or, more likely, comments) any day now.

Walden, Otto, and I went out to the land today to kill some invasive non-native plant life. The daffodils are blossoming. Otto, who is five, took this photo.

Everything in this project has taken longer and cost more than expected, but I am enjoying the process and learning a lot. The people who are helping me (the builder, the architects, the engineers, the landscape architects, etc.) have shown great skill in their work and great patience with me.

The builder gave me the project schedule which indicated that we could be holding classes there a year from now, but I have enough experience now to be skeptical.

On an unrelated note: A lot of my liberal friends are surprised that I am an advocate for free trade and globalization. I finally found a really good explanation of why free trade makes the world a better place: Russ Roberts on Trade

Walden, who is eight, took this photo of me and a daffodil.

In September, I received a cryptic email: “We are interested in hiring Mr. Aaron Hillegass for a 1 week event in Italy from December 6 to 13 2009 related to iPhone development. The goal of this event is to document how to develop an iPhone App in detail. Signed, Alessio Zito Rossi.” My response was essentially “What … uh … what?”

Mr. Rossi, I would gradually figure out, had decided to put together a team of iPhone programmers and designers to develop an iPhone app in one week. And his team would film the whole process. And he wanted me to lead the team.

I had lots of questions: What did the app do? Who was coming? Who was going to watch the film? The answer was always, “We will see.”

The whole enterprise seemed rather weird, but I signed up. If this was going to happen, I figured that I would rather be at the helm than watching from the sidelines.

Having now spent a week with Alessio, I now know why it seemed so weird: Alessio had no idea what was going to happen, and he was completely OK with that. Usually, when I do a gig, the client wants to know exactly what is going to unfold. Alessio was willing to write the checks, stir the pot, and hope for something great. I think he pulled it off. (Alessio Zito Rossi, it should be mentioned, is not a crackpot — he is, in fact, the CEO of a telecom company.)

He sent me an airplane ticket, and I flew to Venice. The rest of the team trickled in from every corner of the world. Each had written a successful iPhone application, and each had signed up for this crazy thing.

Us, left to right:

• Jim Matthews (New Hampshire) - Fetch (ok, not an iphone app)
• David Hodge (Los Angeles) - iBart
• Matej Bukovinski (Slovenia) - LPPbus
• Eddie Wilson (Richmond, Virginia) - SnowReport
• Jonathan Badeen (Los Anglese) - FastCapture
• Peter Watling (New Zealand) - BubbleWrap
• Me
• Emanuele Vulcano (Milan) - Mover
• Max Schönig (Berlin) - CloudApp
• Steve Shi (Bejing) - Louis Vuitton Soundwalk
• Matteo Caldari (Italy) - TimeTheDistance

We were all a bit disoriented. I think each of us thought the others must know more about what we came to do. This much we knew:

1. We were to write a social media application called wikimeety — the T-shirts had already been made. (What is it supposed to do? Anything we wanted.)
2. There would be cameras on us the entire time, and the video would be streamed live onto the viewers on the internet. (Who was going to watch it? Anyone could. Perhaps no one would.)

What happened? You can watch the highlights.

It was a pleasure to work for a week with this team. Each was a good engineer and a good man. We worked together at least 12 hours per day and ate all our meals together. I didn’t hear an unkind word the entire week.

In the end, our plan relied too much upon a PHP developer who abandoned the project 4 hours in. We did the submission process, but after some testing and debate decided to pull the flawed binary. I hope we can put the last few finishing touches on it over the next month or so.

The source code for the entire app is available at http://commandguru.svn.beanstalkapp.com/wikimeety/ (You can check it out using Subversion.)

Did anyone watch? I don’t have exact numbers, but the story was picked up on The Unofficial Apple Weblog, Gizmodo, and TechCrunch.

I would like to send a big shout out to everyone involved in this project; it was an absolute delight to work with all of you. In particular, I want to thank Alessio for picking me to lead the team. It was a great honor, and I hope I did my role justice.

A couple of younger guys call me “Boss.” One of them emailed me the other day with a couple of basic questions along the lines of: “I’m thinking about buying a house. Should I? What are these tax breaks people keep talking about?”

I responded with a long, rambling email, which I present here. The information is pretty basic, so if you are already a homeowner you should skip this posting.

Here’s how it works: You find a house that you would like to live in. You buy it. Someone gives you a loan.

Assuming you get a fixed-rate 30-year mortgage, the payment is the same every month for the entire 30 years. Every payment you make goes toward two things: principal (paying off the loan) and interest (5% or so of the amount that you not payed off). At the start of a 30-year loan, almost your entire payment goes to interest. Near the end, almost all of your payment goes toward principal.

In general, a house is a bad investment. Buying a chicken is a good investment, because it produces eggs — it is a productive asset. Gold, for example, is not a productive asset. When you buy gold you are speculating. When someone says that “Real estate is a good investment,” what they mean is “I like to gamble on real estate.”

That said, the federal government wants you to own a house. So they do two things: tax breaks and they help keep the interest rates on fixed-rate mortgages low.

Tax breaks: You get to write off the interest on your mortgage. How does this work? At the end of the year, your mortgage holder will send you a statement that says “Of your payments, $30,000 went to interest and $5,000 went to principal.” When you do your taxes, you subtract the $30,000 from your income.

Let’s say that you are in the 28% tax bracket and you make $100,000/year. By taking your income down to $70,000, the interest has saved you $8400 on your taxes. As you can imagine, this deduction goes down as the years pass and less of your payments goes toward interest.

A fixed-rate mortgage is a great hedge against inflation. Here’s how it would work: You buy a house for $300,000. You make payments of $1700. Then inflation hits. Now, a loaf of bread costs $1700. Your house is worth billions, but you are still paying only $1700. (Your friends who are renting? Their rent goes to a million per month.)

Generally, the bigger your downpayment is, the lower your interest rate is. (The more skin you have in the game, the less nervous the bank is.) There is also points. Points are a fee you pay up front. More points, lower rate, but you need to bring more money to closing. Also, a 15-year mortgage has a lower interest rate than a 30-year mortgage. (We have a 15-year mortgage on our house.)

How much should you spend? Well, the money you put into principal is the stuff that is actually paying for the house; that is investment. The other money, that goes toward interest, is essentially your rent — what you pay to the bank to live in a house that you don’t really own yet. So, multiply the cost of the house by the 5%, subtract out the tax break you are going to get, add back in the property taxes, and that is your annual rent. If you would rent the house for that much, it is a bargain. If you wouldn’t, it is too expensive.

I should mention leverage. If the value of your home fluctuates, you can make or lose a lot more than you have in it. For example, let’s say you buy a $500,000 house. You put $50,000 down (10% down is possible). And the next year the values of the houses in your neighborhood go up 20%. Suddenly, you own a $600,000 house — you essentially made $100,000. Of course, leverage cuts both ways. The value of the neighborhood goes down 20%, you lose $100,000.

You seldom live in a house for 30 years, so when someone buys your house you pay off the remaining principal. If, at that time, your house is worth less than the remaining principal, you are said to be “underwater”. Being underwater sucks because to sell or refinance the house you would have to come up with a check for the difference.

Should you buy a house? Interest rates are low. House prices are significantly lower than they were two years ago. There is a first-time home buyer tax credit of $8000. If you want to own a house, this seems like a pretty good time to do it.

My father, Tom Hillegass, is famous for his swimming holes web site. In recent years, however, he has also been gathering data on every public campground in America: National Forests, State Parks, Army Corps of Engineers, etc. The crucial information (latitude, longitude, number of sites, availability of toilets) on over 7,000 campgrounds altogether. In Excel spreadsheets.

So, a few months ago, I started playing with the MapKit that shipped with iPhone OS 3.0. And I thought to myself, “Myself, this would be a great way for people to look at Dad’s campground data.” Using his data, I created Campwhere (and On iTunes), which appeared on the iPhone App Store last night. It is only $3.99; if you own an iPhone and you ever go camping, you would be a fool not to buy it.

This app lets you ask questions like, “What is the closest public campground to me? What is the weather there going to be like for the next five days? What is the phone number? Does it have a website?”

Dad and Big Nerd Ranch are splitting the revenues from this, and my mother tells me that she has already started spending their cut. Buy a copy today. (Oh, and a good review on the store would certainly help the cause.)

Otto and Walden camping with their grandmother. Just one part of our R+D team.

At back-to-school night, I found out something terrible: Walden wants to be rich. (He mentioned it in one of his essays.)

And it is my fault. I have recently made a friend who is very wealthy, and I have been gushing about private jets and yachts. So, it was my responsibility to explain to Walden the pros and cons of being really rich.

The big pro: You can do anything you want, anywhere you want, anytime you want.

The big con: Humans weren’t meant to have their every wish fulfilled.

Humans are designed to work. Work is what brings people together with a common purpose. It gives us a reason to get out of bed in the morning. The goals that we reach through our work demarcate the seasons of our life. (Research indicates that people who work are happier and healthier than people who don’t.)

Being useful in this world is one of our most important blessings.

Beyond the damage to the individual, it seems like a terrible waste to have talented people spending their lives perfecting their golf game and watching baseball.

(Side note: I was in Silicon Valley in the mid-1990’s. Every 25 year-old engineer who arrived thought the same thing: “I’m going to work really hard until I’m 30, and then I’m going to retire and play golf.” Because of the dot-com collapse, they are still working. I suspect that the iPhone would not exist today if the dot-com bubble had lasted two more years.)

In most religions, great wealth is not considered neutral, as we tend to spin it today. Wealth is an indication that you have not given enough to those in need. I am not a christian, but Jesus was quite specific on this: “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” (Thus, praying to Jesus for wealth seems especially silly me; Jesus likes you poor.)

I make a good living, and I suspect that I will end up paying more taxes under Barack Obama than I would have under John McCain. I am delighted to pay those taxes. My father worked his entire life for the federal government. My brother, who has cerebral palsy, lives on Social Security. Much of what I know about the world I learned in public schools and libraries. I cannot possibly repay the government for all they have done for me, but I am happy to do my share.

And when I’m dead, I hope the government takes a big chunk of my estate. And, as Walden writes the check, I hope he thinks, “Well, I guess I still need to make myself useful in this world.” If he thinks, “Well, I guess I need to go mail some teabags,” I’m coming back to spank him.

Today is my 40th birthday, and I have an announcement: I’m not teaching any more.

I love teaching, and my students have been truly excellent — motivated, creative, fun. However, as the company has grown, the weeks that I spend teaching have become more and more problematic. When I return from a week of teaching, I rush around trying to write new materials, mentor the other instructors, and find new classes. Well, it turns out that these tasks that I have been shirking are actually the most important responsibilities that I have.

I must stop teaching to create time to write new materials, mentor my instructors, and find new classes/instructors. Also, there are two small boys who need me to spend more time around the house.

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I have a few little bits of news that I wanted to share:

On Sunday, I completed the ING Half Marathon through downtown Atlanta. It was cold and dark when we started, but as we ran the sun rose and the streets were lined with blossoming trees. It was quite lovely. I did manage to run the entire 13.1 miles.

I’m turning 40 on April 30.

We are going to delay construction on the ranch for about a year. Water for the ranch was to be supplied by a well, but the requirements for fire suppression were enormous. Building the necessary storage and buying the necessary pump was going to be a huge expense. The developer of the adjacent 2000 acres assures me that there will be city water and sewer lines there in two years. (The extra year will also make the down-payment on the construction easier to handle.)

However, design of the ranch continues: I am meeting with the kitchen designer this week.

Last week, Juan Pablo Claude and I taught a draft of our Cocoa 2 Bootcamp for AOL. It is coming along nicely, and I’m looking forward to when it is ready for the general public.

Every other conference in the world announces its date and location at least a year in advance, but year after year, Mac developers wait around to hear when Apple’s World-Wide Developer Conference will be held. WWDC is usually held in the summer, and the date for this year has still not been announced. So I have an announcement:

I will be at the beach Jun 6 - 13. If Apple decides to hold WWDC that week, I will not be there.

We reserved a big beach house for that week with another family six months ago. I would have worked around WWDC if I known when it was to be held, but it is too late to change my plans now.

My advice: If you ever plan a conference for thousands of people, I suggest you announce the date and location a year or more in advance.

Google has a great free 3D modeling tool called SketchUp. You can download it here.

Last week, my architects dumped the AutoCADD files for two of the buildings into SketchUp. And I am sharing them with you. These plans and this model are still very much a “Work in Progress,” but I thought you might enjoy playing with them.

SketchUp file for the main building. It is a brick building, and the interiors are quite incomplete.

SketchUp file for the smaller dorm building. It will have white clapboard siding on the outside. The private porches on the back will be screened in and each will have a hammock.

The U.S Government is about to do some fiscally irresponsible stuff to end the recession. I think this is a really bad idea. The American economy does have serious problems, but the recession is the fix for those problems, not the cause.

The real problems:

• We have been borrowing too much and saving too little
• We have been running a terrible trade deficit
• The ratio between those taking retirement benefits and those paying into them is rising quickly as boomers retire and life expectancies increase
• Our brightest have been going to work in banks instead of going to graduate school to study science and engineering

What if I told you that these things could be fixed? What if I told you that they are being fixed?

The savings rate had dropped to 0.4% in 2005. It is currently 1.7% and rising. Should we panic when the headlines read “Americans are Spending Less”, or should we celebrate?

The numbers for exports and imports for November came out a couple of weeks ago. There was much handwringing that exports were down. But imports were down even more. The trade deficit was the lowest it has been in five years.

As their homes and 401K plans have lost value, many older workers are considering delaying retirement.

Last year 515 people applied for admission to graduate programs at Tufts’ School of Engineering. This year? 616 people.

I know the recession is painful — lots of people are losing their jobs, companies are failing — but there is an important adjustment that we as a nation are undergoing. When the adjustment is complete, our economy will bounce back. The pain can be delayed by fiscal stimulus, but it can not be avoided.

But what about the unemployed people? Yes, I think we should do what we can to keep the unemployed sheltered and fed. Let’s say that by the end of this adjustment, we will have needed to feed and shelter ten million households for an average of six months. That would cost something on the order of a hundred billion dollars. That sounds like a lot of money until you realize that we’ve already spent a trillion trying to prevent a recession, and we are about to spend another trillion trying to end it prematurely.

Let’s do what we can to comfort the unemployed, but badly run companies must be allowed to collapse, and this recession needs to run its course.

For hundreds of years, the human race has been grappling with the question “What do we do with the stuff that comes out of the bottom of the toilet?” but I, personally, never really worried too much about it. Until now.

(While writing this, I looked up the synonyms for feces in the thesaurus: excrement, bodily waste, waste matter, ordure, dung, manure, excreta, stools, droppings, dirt, filth, muck, mess, night soil, poop, pooh, doo-doo, turds, poo, caca, crap, shit. I will use as many as I can.)

The public sanitary sewer will not arrive at the doorstep of the Big Nerd Ranch for five to ten years. So, we must figure out what to do with the excrement-bearing water in the meantime. There are options:

• A septic field: you run the doo-doo water into an underground, perforated pipe. If the bacteria and the soil do their job well, there is no smell and the pipe doesn’t back up.
• A package plant: this is essentially a water-treatment plant in a box: Fecal water goes in, clean water comes out. Occasionally, you haul away the solids.
• Composting toilets: No water — turds go in, soil comes out.
• Dig a connection all the way to the nearest public sewer.

I have decided that we will go with a septic field.
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When I met Michele, I was young — long hair, late nights, a saxophone in the living room. On our third date, I really wanted to impress this beautiful woman, so I took her to a little bar where I knew the band would let me sit in. It was a nice place with white table clothes and little candles on each table. And it was packed.

As soon as we walked in, the band leader introduced me: “Ladies and Gentlemen, Aaron Hillegass and his horn are in the house. Let’s see if we can get them on the stage for a song.” There was much applause, and I modestly made my way to the stage. I gave her a smile as the band started to play “Into the Mystic” by Van Morrison. It is a beautiful, romantic tune with a big sax solo right in the middle. And I rocked the house. People were hooting and holding their lighters over their heads.

After the song, I put my horn down and left the stage. As I walked over to the table where Michele was seated, I realized that I had just scored an incredible number of Cool Points — no small feat for someone as awkward and cerebral as myself.

Flush with success, I leaned confidently across the table with a smile and kiss for my date. And, as our lips touched, my hair caught on fire. (Remember the candles on the table?) As I patted the flames from my mane, a terrible stench filled the room and I felt all the Cool Points evaporate.

Smelling the smoke and assuming the place was on fire, patrons started for the exits. Our waitress shouted everyone back to their seats with “The Sax Guy set his hair on fire! It is out. Everything is OK.” I tossed a handful of hair and ash into the ashtray.

My hair reeked, so Michele and I left. We stood outside the bar and laughed and laughed and laughed.

That night, Michele figured out I wasn’t actually cool, but she married me anyway. Eight years later, we are still laughing together.

The government is spending $700 billion to increase liquidity so that a business like mine can get a loan to do a project like mine. You, the taxpayer, might wonder how it is working for me so far. In order to explain that, I need to tell you how I get money.

I have a bank. The bank takes deposits and lends that money to businesses like mine. But my bank is worried that I might default and they would end up owning a training facility. That is OK, as long as they didn’t pay too much for it. So they will only finance, let’s say, 50% of the cost of my project.

Now, as a small business, I need to come up with a huge down payment. This is extra tricky because when you buy a fixed asset, you don’t get to write it off that year: Land never gets written off, and you depreciate the construction over 39 years. Thus, not only do I need to retain earnings equal to the downpayment, I need to save an extra 50% for the taxes. This would delay my construction by a decade.

Seeing this problem, the Small Business Administration came up with the SBA 504 loan. They lend me 35%, my bank lends me 50%, and I come up with the remaining 15% of the cost of the project. It is difficult to express how effective this program has been at creating prosperity in America.

In fact, the obvious way to use taxpayer money to end a recession would have been to pump taxpayer money into the SBA loan programs: just lend money to me at a low interest rate, and I’ll invest it (and a big chunk of money from my bank) in a project that creates jobs and growth. (This would have been the surgical approach — the carpet-bomb approach is to buy up bad assets and faltering banks.)

Where does the money for an SBA 504 loan come from? Bonds are sold on the market. For the investor, the nice part about this bond is that it is federally backed: bondholders get paid, even if I default on the loan. Thus, to an investor, there is no real difference between a Treasury Bond and an SBA 504 Bond.

At the beginning of each month, someone at the SBA goes to Wall Street and yells, “Get your SBA 504 Bonds here!” And people rush to buy them. The more people who rush to buy them, the lower the interest rate. Last month, these investors got bonds at 5.5%. After fees and other expenses, small business people got the money for 20 years at 6.6%.

So, the market crashes and there is a “Rush to Quality” and I think to myself, “Aaron, there are going to be a lot of people rushing to buy those SBA 504 bonds. I don’t know what rate I’m going to get from the bank, but I’m sure the 504 loan rate is going to be sweet!”

However, this month when the SBA guy was on the floor yelling, “Get your SBA 504 bonds here!” Treasury Secretary Paulson was also the floor raising money for his bailout. He was yelling, “Get your Treasury Bonds here. I’m giving crazy interest rates! They’ve all got to go!”

The SBA guy had to raise his interest rates to compete with Mr. Paulson. This month, he got the money at 6.77%. This money will go to small business people at a rate of 7.72%.

Thus, the bailout increased the interest rate on SBA 504 loans by 1.1% in a single month. (On a large, 20-year loan, 1.1 percent is a very big deal.) So far, I’m giving this bailout a C-.

A big shout out to Miguel Alandete at REsource Capital Georgia who explained all this stuff to me. This project has given me a chance to learn more about how the world works, and Miguel has been very generous with his time and expertise.

Your refrigerator works on an interesting principle: When you put a gas under pressure, its temperature goes up. When you release the pressure the temperature goes down. In your fridge, there is a compressor that pushes the gas into a tube under great pressure. That is the coil behind your fridge that is warm. As the gas moves through this tube, it gives of its heat to the room. Then, it goes through a little nozzle into a tube that has very little pressure. The gas becomes cold. That is the coil inside your fridge. As the gas moves through the cold tube, it becomes warmer. And then it reenters the compressor. (Confused? Here’s a better description)

This also how air conditioners work: The warm coils are outside inside that noisy blower thing, the cold coil is in your basement cooling the air in your ducts.

If you have an air conditioner that also works in reverse to heat your house, this is called a heat pump. A heat pump can be made much more efficient (think twice as efficient) if you use the ground (instead of outside air) as a source or dump for the heat. This is known as a ground-source heat pump.

In the building industry, heating and cooling capacity is discussed in tons. A ton is about 12,000 BTU per hour. My facility needs about 30 tons. For each ton, a ground-source heat pump needs a 200′ deep hole. Drilling 30 of these holes (called “loops”) can be rather expensive — each hole costs about $2200 assuming you are buying in bulk like me.

As a result, a ground-source heat pump system will cost about twice as much as a normal heating and cooling system to install. I have decided to spend the extra money for a ground-source heat pump. Here are my reasons:

• It is efficient. The electricity for the ranch will come from burning coal. It seems like anything I can do to keep a little more coal in the ground is a good thing for us all. Over the long run (think 10 years) this efficiency will also save me money.
• It is quiet. Having several noisy blower things outside would totally harsh my mellow.
• It lasts longer. By keeping all the equipment inside, it should run for centuries.
• It makes hot water. When the heat is sucked out of the room, it can be pumped into cold water (instead of the ground) making hot water for showers.
• Tax credits. Remember the 700-billion bailout? It had a clause that gives a 10% investment tax credit for businesses that buy ground source heat pumps. And Georgia gives a 35% property tax credit for businesses that buy ground source heat pumps. Ah, beautiful socialism!

The tricky part is who should design and install the system for me? The technique is new and there is a lot of money involved. Thus, this is an important and difficult decision. I’ve got it down to two companies: GeoThermal Energy Solutions or Coolray. Anyone have an opinion?

For any heavy topic, there is one person who is “The Best”. For example, if you want to learn to write apps for Windows, Jeffrey Richter is the best person in the world to teach you.

Big Nerd Ranch is trying to attract the best. We don’t really care what the topic is — Cobol, hazardous materials handling, worm farming — if the best will come teach and a dozen people are willing to pay to take the class, we will put it on the schedule.

One of the reasons that I am building the facility is to create an environment where the best will want to teach.

To help me create that environment, I have hired Gamble+Gamble as my new architects. I’ve been working primarily with Mike Gamble who is also a professor at Georgia Tech.

Here is what the firm looks like:

We are facing a few engineering challenges: city water, sewer, and gas will not reach the site for several years. So, we must deal with a well, a septic tank, and a buried propane tank. (Not to mention the normal engineering challenges of HVAC, hot water, electricity, water retention, and keeping the classroom ceiling from falling down.) So, the architects are “pencils up” for now while the civil and mechanical engineers work their magic.

Georgia has been in a drought, and some tired, ugly pines are battling with my lovely hardwoods for water. Next Wednesday, I am going to reduce a couple of those old pines to firewood. Mikey Ward and his chainsaw have graciously volunteered to help. Thanks, Mikey!

If you want to help or you want some free firewood, we will be at 9055 Terry Road, Fairburn GA, 30214 starting at around 10:30 AM. Follow the sound of the chainsaw.

When I watch TV, I am surprised at how many car commercials there are. I am also surprised how little the ad says about the car. The voice-over usually says something like, “Awaken the beast within.”

I suspect those companies are trying to sell the viewer an identity. It is the saddest sort of scam, because you can’t buy your identity and a new car is a really expensive way to say, “Beast Inside!”

If I made a car commercial, it would say something like “It is a four-door car with decent gas mileage. It is really reliable and did quite well in the crash tests. It is less expensive than similar cars made by other companies. And it comes in yellow!”

Some people think that because my name is on a book they bought, that I drive a Maserati. Actually, I drive an eleven-year old Toyota Camry. (We also have an aging minivan, but Michele drives that most days.) Here is a photo I took of my ride today:

Some of you probably have expensive cars that you love. I could not be more happy for you.

But times are tight. Maybe some of the young people out there are thinking about buying a car they can’t really afford. Maybe the car payments will keep them from doing something they really want to do. To those people, I’d like to point out that many cool people are quite happy driving crappy cars.

I started Big Nerd Ranch with a car-sized check, and I’ve noticed something: A nice car and a decent adventure often cost about the same amount. Few people can afford both.

Walden and Otto went out to the site with me today. Here they are helping saw up a fallen tree.

It reminded me of an exchange that has not yet happened:

Walden: OK.

Aaron: Did they teach you how to make breakfast for 18 people, yet?

Walden: No, Dad. Still no lessons on breakfast prep.

Aaron: Have you told them that you are going to be innkeeper? What are they teaching you in this school?

Walden: I did well in spelling today.

Aaron: SPELLING?! Listen to me now, son: spelling is for kids who don’t know what they are going to be when they grow up.

The investment bankers in my life are aghast that I am building an inn. They see my nice, tidy, debt-free balance sheet and say, “Why would you want to take on debt to build an inn?”

To make a move like this, one must take the long view. When Warren Buffet buys a company, he tells the manager: “Run this company as if you own it and you are not allowed to sell it for 100 years.”

By this criterion, the inn is a no-brainer:

• The student’s experience is improved
• We get complete control over our schedule
• The value of the brand gets a boost from having a “Mecca”
• Assuming we teach many classes each year, we will lower our costs
• The raw book value of the company increases as we pay off our loan
• We get a recurring tax break as the buildings and furnishing depreciate over 39 years
• And, assuming it is successful, we should learn enough to replicate this success a dozen more times

However, I sometimes wonder if it is fair to put the whole family on the 100-year plan. Maybe Walden doesn’t want to be an innkeeper. I love him, and I want him to be able chose his own career.

So, I won’t stand in his way if he would rather be an instructor.

When I started Big Nerd Ranch, I recognized my strengths and my weaknesses. I am a good teacher and a good programmer, but I’m not much of a sales/accounting/strategy kind of person. I really needed a boss.

I met Emily Herman when I was six. We grew up in the same neighborhood near Washington, DC. Because she is the most cunning person I know who still has a very strong sense of integrity, I asked Emily to be my boss. And, because I had no actual money to pay her, I gave her stock: 40% of the company. Over the last seven years, Emily has carefully grown the company and created space for me to do writing, teaching, and programming.

Emily did not want to build the ranch.
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