Moving to Idaho

How about that last trance track? Just so bouncy happy, it almost makes it all worth while.
Shut up Gary. You don't have to hit play you know <grin>

Well, as of this weekend its finally official. I finally feel like I can talk about what we have been slowly losing our minds over..... We've sold the house in Temecula and are headed north.
Lots of reasons and one big main one that I will not talk about.
Bottom line. Change of state, change of house, change of jobs (sorta). Opto came up with the idea of me starting an LLC (Limited Liability Corporation) and contracting a few hours to them and - hopefully - quite a few other customers.
Super nervicited. (Terry's word, nervous and excited mushed together). Nervous about finding enough customers to pay the bills (and save a little for the cabin on the island) and excited about having a new angle on all things Opto22.

TechAssist22 is the LLC name and, yes, it sounds odd, but the one MAIN goal is to make myself redundant with every customer I contract to.
I want to train and 'application engineer / technically assist' each customer to the point where they can take 100% ownership of the Opto in their facility and they get to the point where they no longer need me.
The example I have top of mind is Deepsea Challenge. I went in and helped the Opto programmer by interfacing between all the different systems on the submersible and converted all their requirements to 'opto speak' for him. His productivity went through the roof, his stress went down and he's gone on to do many other jobs using Opto22 hardware. Including automating a solar furnace - very different from a deep diving sub!
I am not going to resell Opto hardware. I also want to ovoid as much as possible for as long as possible doing integration, that is write actual code for any customer.
Ok enough about that. What about Idaho.

Well, for starters, its got a really nice summer workshop.
Yes, summer (Ok and a few months either side)... From.. I dunno, about like November to March they have this weird white stuff that falls out of the sky and makes everything cold, wet and miserable.
Very unfun to be in a shed trying to work on training material.
So, yeah, I also have - as you all know as I have blogged about it a few trance tracks back - a basement. My soon-to-be-not-so-much radioactive basement will be the winter office.
The house is a bit smaller than the one we have and it needs a little lot of love.
They say real estate is all about location location location and this is no different.

Yeah, we bought the house next door to Amy (our daughter), Cole, son-in-law and of course Lee, the little dude in the pool. (And no, he is NOT 'the' unspoken reason for the move).

In the next week or so we finish up at Opto, pack a 26 foot U-Haul truck, put the Bolt on a flat bed trailer behind the it and with Freddy in the Ridgeline following behind, we drive north. Probably our longest drive up. I'm thinking 3 days and 2 overnight motel stops. Freddy's knees cant take 12 hour days behind the wheel and I know from the last drive up that Salt Lake City is a kidney bruiser.
Then the new chapter starts. First up, reno the place (we are currently renting, but will buy as soon as the money for our place comes through) as right now, just for starters, the upstairs crapper does not really flush. Of course we need to suck the radon out and, well, yeah, just get the place safe and livable. (The electrics are also a mess, but I figure with a few hours, I can beat those electrons into better shape).
Once the house is 'tweaked' (I'm putting it kindly), we can move the stuff out of the shed into the house and then I can setup a work bench in the summer shop and get to TechAssist22 work. (First thing is to fix that yucky AI website place-holder replaced).

And yes, top of mind in the middle of all this is my ACARS (aircraft 'tracking') website.
It will go down - well, to be more accurate, the site its self will be fine, the MQTT broker will go down, so yeah, the website will be up, but the feeds to the site will go down. That will be super confusing to folks.
I'm quite sure that will annoy a TON of avgeeks that pay exactly nothing to use the site. It really is 'best effort' and I cant beat myself up that they are unhappy with me doing my best.
I am really nervous about the Internet up there, the ISP (TDS) customer service is some of THE worse of ANY company I have EVER dealt with. I have about 1% confidence of getting the service I am going to pay for (1g/1g with an IPv4 address), so we will just have to see how that goes at the start of the move-in. (Limited fiber ISPs up north).

That's the guts of it. There is a lot more to tell around a campfire, but the most significant thing in it all is the change of heart I have undergone with a lot of key aspects to the move.
I never expected to be so humbled and come to see the healing that is required, so I am focused on trying to repair my mind and soul as much as I can. It's been a profound few months going through the physical and mental work of moving on.

Its a bit like the cables in my roof. I have all these up there, I've used them, I've gathered data via them, but how many are needed for life-support? Three.
I am going through the mental process of ripping out all the stuff that I have been using for data that is not really core to who I am... Anyway, as I hinted, there is more to this move than photos or words can show and say.