Two Hundred And Counting

Well, this is my 200th post! This is certainly the longest I've ever stuck with anything like this. I'm slowly getting into the habit of blogging. It's taken me a lot longer than some people, but it's not the kind of thing I naturally get into. Either way, I plan to keep it up. And I hope that soon it's going to be a lot more interesting.

You see, as soon as we've got the money to travel a bit we're going to go see some things. (So, yea, I talk about this a lot. I think about it a lot!) First on the list is Dominica! Yes, yes, we've already been there, but we've got family and friends we want to see. It's been around eight months since we left and we're hoping to be able to head back that way in about eight more months. So, we've reach the halfway mark already. It's funny because the kids have started talking about it more and more. In fact, Felicity walked in the living room earlier this week and said “I'm ready to go back to Dominica.” (She actually said “Domimica”, but I knew what she meant, lol.) I relied, “You do?”, to which she replied “Yea. I'm going to go pack my suitcase. And I can pack Isaac's too.”

When we finally get back I plan to take a least a month off. I mean, Dominica is awesome even if you have to work, but I imagine it's even better if you can actually vacation. (I have to imagine because last time I didn't get a chance to find out, lol.) I want to go back to Emerald Pool. I want to go to a beach on the Atlantic side. I want to finish my trip over the mountain next to Soufriere and head down into Grand Bay. (Then I'll catch the bus to Roseau. I don't plan to walk back, lol.) The point is that I want to take a month and see everything on the island and have a real goof off. I've been working on Worlds of Magic for over two years now. By the time the game is released that's going to have been close to three years. I want a vacation...

I'm also looking forward to having a little more money when we go back. Not for souvenirs or anything like that. We got the best kind of souvenirs you can have. We have great memories of a wonderful adventure we got to share with new family members. Plus we have loads of pictures that look like they belong in a vacation magazine. And that's in spite of the fact that I took most of them with a crappy camera. Speaking of which, here are some pictures:


Anyways, the reason I want to have a little more money is for beef! And ham! And bacon! And whatever other grocery items we want. A lot of food is cheaper in Dominica than here in the US. You can get as much sugar and flour as you want for practically nothing. Fresh fruit is literally growing on the trees year round. However, meat is where they get you. It's not that it's super high priced, it's just that it costs more than the other staples. Last time we were basically broke the whole time we were there. It was great and made things even more full of adventure. Next time, however, I want them more full of meat, lol.

This post started off with what I've been thinking about and is probably going to continue in that vein, so let me give you a quick update before I go on: Rachel's great, the kids are great, work goes great, the weather is great. In short, life is great. One thing I would appreciate prayers about is getting a publisher locked into a signed agreement. A prospective publisher is coming to visit the Wastelands Interactive office the middle of next month. Depending on how that visit goes we may very well walk away with a deal. So, keep us in your prayers.

Back to our travel plans: We plan to be in Dominica from around January 7th to April 7th (or so.) From April to June we'll be in the US. Then we plan to head out again in July (if we have the money, obviously). Where do we want to go? Scotland, Ireland and Isle of Man most likely. They have a lot to offer in the way of Summer vacation. They're not as hot as the US and have even more hours of sunlight than South Carolina. They're also very beautiful. And needless to say they'll make for great photos and interesting blogging. Anyways, in October it'll be time head back to the US until January 7th 2016. Then we'll be off again. Almost certainly back to Dominica.

So, how are we going to afford all this? Well, it's a combination of things all founded on the fact that we have been very, very blessed by the Lord. First off, I work from home and my work is completely portable. So, when we go hither and yon it's not like I have to go on vacation and stop working. I'll have my work with me in a laptop bag. Second, I make a good living. I'm not a millionaire (not yet), but I do alright. (Or I did up until around seven years ago, lol.) Third, Lord willing I'm about to get a big chunk of money. That will actually make the entire process a lot less expensive.

You see, once I finally get paid for this game I should get, well, we'll just say “A generous sum”. It should be enough to get us a bit of land, a double-wide, and a solar power setup for the whole place. (In fact, it should be a lot more than that, lol.) I plan to pay cash for all of it. So, we won't have a house payment, an electric bill, or a water bill. For six months out the year we'll be living rent free. We may also be able to afford a house in Dominica. That means once we get there we won't have rent either. Just what we save on that will pay for plane tickets. However, I've got even bigger plans.

Rachel and I have talked about it and we may really look into buying a yacht. Now, that may seem like me getting dreams of grandeur, but it's not that at all. As it turns out you can get a good sized yacht (and I mean like close to 100 feet) for a good deal less than our last house (which we lost, if you remember). Now, if we could buy one outright it would pay for itself in just a few years. When we go to Dominica we can stay in it rent free. We will have to pay for diesel fuel to generate electricity, but we could get some solar panels to help out with that. It will also already have AC, a stove, a refrigerator, a freezer, a TV, etc, etc, etc. We can arrive in Dominica with a freezer full of venison and have cheap red meat for a month or two. Plus we're talking about a used yacht that's years old. If we decided to sell in in a few years it should have retained it's value. So, we'll have saved months and months of rent, as well as other expenses, and we can get our money back out of it if we decide to sell. Now, I'm not sure about taking it across the Atlantic ocean, but it's something to think about.

My real point in all this is that once this game comes out my blog should get a lot more interesting, lol. For now I've written enough. This post is a little shorter than my last few have been, but that may come as a relief to some of you, lol.

For now, goodnight from South Carolina!

It's Cold Out There

Once again I'm blogging on a Saturday. Both Sunday and Monday are likely to be busy and I like to get ahead on my work rather than letting myself fall behind. This week has been cold, dark, and wet. It's a weather situation neither Rachel or I enjoy and on top of that she's been sick. A couple of days this last week she's hardly felt up to getting out of bed. We ran out of clean towels in the bathroom and that's something that almost never happens unless Rachel's just had a baby.

It's easy to overlook how much work it is to clean and wash for eight children, but there's a lot to it. For instance we ran out of towels because Rachel wasn't able to restock it for about two days. So, in just two days we go through an entire bathroom closet worth of towels. (We're also out of washcloths and hand-towels this morning, lol.) It just takes a fair amount of work to cook for and clean up after so many people. When Rachel gets sick for any reason things get wonky around here.

Now, some people might ask: “Why don't the kids help?” Well, they do. Libby sweeps up and keeps things tidy, the older boys wash and put away the dishes as well as helping with the dog, Abby gets the smaller children food and drinks. There's just a lot to do. A big family comes with big work and big bills, lol. Many people get upset if their electric bill is over US$200 (and I can understand that). Rachel and I were very pleased that ours dropped to US$350 last month. During the winter it was right around US$450 a month due to heating costs.

Obviously we chose to have a big family and we love it. We don't mind paying what it costs because it's worth far more than that to us. Still, the fact remains that when Rachel doesn't feel good the work piles up. And when it's cold, dark, and wet in April she's a lot more likely not to be feeling well.

We're supposed to go to Williston for Church and Easter dinner tomorrow. If all goes well I'll take a bunch of pictures and put them in here:


As you can see things did go well. We had dinner at the Church building after Church and then came home to play a little D&D. All in all we had a great time.

Work continues to go well on the game. The Lord blessed us and Les managed to wangle an interview for me with Polygon. They're a big video game news site. They'll doing a feature article on game development in Poland. The article is going to talk about Wastelands Interactive (the production company), Worlds of Magic, and even me. (Part of the story is about how a guy from the US ended up working with a production company in Poland.) It's pretty big news because Polygon is fairly mainstream. When they publish their article it should stir up some noise and may even net us some more interviews.

The word is that Les (the producer) is still looking at different publishers. He wants to make sure he gets us as good a deal as he can. Needless to say, that's something I really appreciate. I've been working on this for more than two years now and I really want to get as much out of it as I can. Keep us in your prayers. It's been a long road and we want to find a pot of gold waiting for us at the end of it, lol.

In other news, I've begun (or re-begun) transferring our DVD collection to computer. Now that we've got a Roku we can even watch the video files on our TV. This is going to make managing and watching our collection a lot easier. It's also going to make taking it with us on our travels a lot simpler. Some of you might be wondering why we would want a DVD collection in Dominica or Scotland or wherever else we end up going. Well, when Rachel and I get comfortable in a place we settle into a nice routine. Part of the routine is our television. Once I'm done we'll be able to carry it with us with almost no trouble at all. That will help make travel feel “homey” as well as exciting :)

Now it's time to change gears and talk a little business. Really this is the “What's been on my mind” section. However, what's been on my mind lately has been business. Lord willing, Worlds of Magic is going to be a big hit and I'm going to have a little money to invest. I want to invest it wisely and in such a way as to help people. Needless to say, that requires some thought.

So, up to this point we've talked about farming, exports, and a little higher tier production. Now I want to discuss another area of production. This will also involve farming and takes advantage of the fact that Dominica is in a tropical zone. However, this farming is going to be for industrial purposes rather than for food. The products that we eventually want to produce are diesel fuel and plastic. Both of those require oil. And oil is something that can be farmed.

You may or may not have heard of Bio-diesel, but it's simply diesel fuel made from vegetable oil or animal fat. It's exactly like regular diesel fuel and can be used in any diesel engine without modification. It's an excellent product and it's renewable. To make it, however, you need a ready supply of oil. In our case we're going to use vegetable oil.

The Oil Palm is the number one source of vegetable oil per ace. Coconut Palms are the second. Both can be grown in Dominica. (Obviously coconuts are all over the place down there.) What we want to do is either buy or lease a few hundred acres of land to farm Oil Palms on. While our first crop is growing we'll build a small facility to process the fruit and extract the oil. Oil Palms produce over 200 gallons of oil per acre. We're going to take that oil and make it into diesel fuel.

At the moment diesel fuel is selling for more than three dollars a gallon. For convenience we'll just run with the idea that we'll be making about US$600 per acre per crop. If we were to buy the land it would take a long time to recoup the cost. So, to start with we'll lease it. There is a lot of completely undeveloped land in Dominica. If we were to offer US$100 per year per acre we would be able to find some takers. In fact, as we'll be producing diesel fuel locally, and as a result will be able to lower the price of fuel to a certain extent, we might even be able to get a little help from the government.

Diesel fuel is a product we can make quickly and easily and it's something we'll be able to sell anywhere. It's also going to lay the ground work for producing thousands of thousands of gallons of oil. We can turn that oil into plastic as well as fuel. More and more plastic products are being manufactured out of vegetable products. What we want to attempt to do it use vegetable oil from Oil Palms to make biodegradable packaging material for our food products. We could make everything from plastic wrap to milk jugs that would break down naturally in land fills. This would take a little more effort, equipment, and know how, but it can be done. And if we succeeded it would make our “Nature Island” food products even more appealing. We would also be able to make things like bottles locally and start making our own Dominican soda to put in them.

There's more to tell, but I've said enough. The plain fact is that Dominica has a lot of resources and a lot of man power. They just need to make better use of them in my opinion. Once I have a little money I plan to start things out with our little chicken processing facility. If that works out who knows where it may lead. I hope and pray we'll be able to go from success to success and have a positive effect on Dominica's economy and people.

That's enough for now. This is over two pages long, lol. So, from me to you, goodnight from South Carolina!

Joy Ride

So, one of the things that's been in my mind lately is that our lives, that is to say me, Rachel, and the kids lives, go through bursts of excitement and then settle down into normal, and rather hum drum, circles. (← How's that for an opening sentence? Lol.) For months, sometime years, at a time we're doing the same old, same old without anything happening that's really newsworthy. My job continues along, Rachel's work is what it always is (although she may or may not be about to have a baby at the time), the kids' home school goes through it's phases and everything is very same-ish and not particularity “blog worthy”.

Of course, the fact is that I like it that way. Living a life that runs from one excitement to another would be like eating chocolate cake for every meal. I love chocolate cake, but it's not a meal. There are people that seem to run after excitement, always looking for some new adventure. I can't really say there's anything wrong with that, but it's not the life for me. I freely admit that I found moving our entire family to Dominica for fours months on a shoestring budget very exciting. However, keeping track of seven kids (and then nine) through airports and hotels, up mountains and in oceans, is the kind of excitement I can take a dose at a time. The truth is that I was slap worn out when we came back to the US. I am really looking forward to heading back to Dominica this Winter. However, I already know that when the time comes I'll be looking forward to coming back to the US.

It's not that I miss the US so much as I miss the people here and that we're more established here. That's one of the things I'm going to look into changing once I have more money. That is to say: I want us to get more established in Dominica. By 2016 I want to have a more permanent residence there (or one that we can take with us there, lol). Rachel and I are actually considering getting a boat that we could take down there and live on. Going through the airport with all the children in tow is VERY exciting. But it's not the kind of excitement I look forward to, lol.

Either way, all this has nothing to do with anything. Well, except for the fact that there's not a great deal of local news. Between Rachel and my mother-in-law most of us have bikes now. They've come from yard sales, online posts, and I don't know where all, but we have them now. We ride around the neighborhood a couple of times a day. It's nice and it's good exercise. They also found Libby a Google Chromebook (a laptop) on one of the online sale pages for cheap. So she got it and Abby got her old laptop. That made for some happy girls. In addition to these blessings we got a trampoline. Someone was giving it away in Jackson (where we live). All we had to do was go pick it up. All in all we've gotten a lot of physical blessings here recently.

Here are some pictures:


Worlds of Magic continues to go well. We have a publisher lined up that is willing to give us a substantial advance once we hit Beta. We're supposed to hit that in early July, so it looks like we're on our way. We have had to push things back again, just because there's so much to the game. We're hoping to have it up on Steam's “Early Access” by October. That probably means it's going to end up being a Christmas release. Still, I should have the money I need to get us back down to Dominica by next January, which is my goal. I should even be able to take the first month basically off and try to enjoy it as a vactaion, lol.

That really wraps up the news and pictures part of my post. Now I'll move on to business. Before I go any further I want to say that it was pointed out to me that I seem to have too many plans. Well, what I'm talking about here may take years to actually execute. It's also likely that other people will get involved and spread out the work load. For instance, as we work on setting up our farms other industrious individuals may work on starting a local feed company. If we can already buy local feed we certainly won't bother starting our own company over it. Either way, first comes theory, then plan, then business. This is the theory part of the process. All we're doing here is considering what could be. So, now that we have all this food production in place the question is: What's next?

Well, you may remember from my Wealth Creation posts that wealth starts out with necessities. At this point we've helped Dominica provide some of it's own necessities and created a small exports business. The result of all this is that our employees have more money than they used to and the entire population can get slightly cheaper food (which means they have a bit more money as well). As their necessities are met they're going to want other things. What we want to do is provide them.

Here I have to step out on a limb. I can say with confidence that many, if not most, Dominicans would like cheaper chicken. However, I didn't live with them long enough to know what tier 2 luxury items they would want that we could make locally. Still, I have a few ideas I can throw out here as we're just talking theory. In real life we'll want to be finding the answers to those questions as we're building up our tier 1 businesses. Either way, I'll give you a few examples whether or not they're true to life.

Fiberglass boats: Fiberglass is a material that people still often work by hand. There are a lot of small time operators that make everything from surf boards to sail boats to storage tanks. We could very easily put together a small crew, order a few molds to get the ball rolling, and start cranking out little fiberglass boats. We could make fishing boats, sail boats, pontoon boats, etc, etc, etc. These could be for local sale as well as export. A little marina in Roseau full of low-cost sail boats could probably clean up during the tourist season. (Especially if we could find a way to deliver them to the US and/or Europe.) We could also tie this directly into the island's tourist business. We could provide boats for fishing charters, scuba diving, day sailing, etc. Now, there may already be a number of people doing this, but even so, we could provide them with boats. We could also easily expand this into other areas of fiberglass work.

Gas powered golf carts: OK, so this may seem out of Dominica's reach, but what we're really talking about is assembly and maintenance. We can buy engines, transmissions, tires, brakes, lights, etc, from outside the island. Then make the frames in our own welding shop and have the bodies made over at our fiberglass facility. They would just be low horsepower personal vehicles, but we could make them affordable enough that the locals could get them. They wouldn't be something the local bus drivers would need to worry about, but they would be the kind of thing you could run up town in to pick up a few groceries, or go for a nice Sunday drive with. Really we could also make nice little scooters for people who wanted to get from point A to point B without riding the bus. This is something I would have certainly been interested in. Of course, I'm not really sure the locals would be, lol.

The real point is that we would need to look at what the people of Dominica want and couple that with what they can make. The idea is to produce as much wealth as possible locally. That's the long and short of it. I've talked a good deal about this subject over the last few weeks and I may touch on it once more before I change the subject. However, it's getting close to time to wrap it up. I have a lot of theory. I plan to start making some of it “plan” next year.

This post has run on more than long enough. So, once again, good night from South Carolina.