paul wheaton

Did this get sorted?

Kyle Noe wrote:Oh I left out info, I'm on the list and ready to come.

Just wondering about how to claim a work trade spot. I just need to be there and provide a strong back?

Checking ... and ...   okay, you are #1 on this list!  

So in a couple of weeks i will send out an email saying "who wants to be here on march 7"  and if you say "me!" - then you get the first spot.  

Does this help paint a picture for you?

Kyle Noe wrote:So all we need to do is be there in the flesh on the right date and do good work. Do we have to claim a spot or worry the event may fill up with paying attendees?

At this point, you would need to get on the bootcamp waiting list.  And when we send out an invite to, say, four people, then of all the people that reply, the four people that have been on the waiting list will be selected.  At this point, I cannot predict if you would get in in time.

Austin Durant wrote: It seems like PDC is more "book learning" whereas SKIP is hands-on.

This is the exact answer to your question.

A PDC is going to cover the stuff in the permaculture designer's manual.   Our PDC is gonna shove three times more information into your head - all in two weeks.   And when you are done, you will be a certified permaculture designer.

If you show up to the SKIP event with BB40, you will probably finish the SKIP event with PEP1 certification.  But if you don't care about the certification, you will have a LOT of hands on experience.  And it isn't the sort of hands on experience where you did something with somebody - it will be 100% you doing the thing.  

Our PDC is for scientists, engineers, architects and teachers.  I think it would also be a fit for somebody that has listened to most of my podcasts.   The information is going to be presented at an intense rate.   Most people will not like it and will prefer a "normal" PDC.   This PDC is designed for people that would probably find a "normal" PDC to be boring.

I have now gone three years and three months since my last gallstone attack.  

I had a sonogram a year ago and it showed that I still had stones ready to to make me sad (or dead).  

I was fortunate to have Jocelyn here to spoil me with creative cooking for the first two years, but since I've been on my own for the last year or so, I thought it would be helpful to share what sort of things I eat and keep the stones away.  Keeping in mind that I am not a cook - so these might be helpful to people that are as lazy as me.


Quick summary:  no beef, pork, wheat, corn or any grain (except small amounts of rice and oats), potatoes (except sweet potatoes), sugar, legumes (except black beans), dairy (except yogurt, mozzarella cheese and ghee - and I'm now sick of ghee) or bananas.  So about 90% of all food is out.


What I do manage to eat:


When I get up I have a bit of coffee with the stuff called "nutpods" that is coconut milk and almond milk and a few squirts of this stevia stuff.

Every tuesday evening, we all have "taco tuesday".  I grab some salsa with veggies, rice and maybe black beans and add some guac or yogurt and then dig it out with something like a tortilla chip, but it is made with greens and rice:  https://amzn.to/3nQ5Djb

Once in a while, the boots happen to make a veggie stir fry with rice and I get some.  Or bake some sweet potatoes and I get one or two.

When I go into missoula, I go to "The Good Food Store" and pick up:

   pre-cooked chicken sausage
   kite hill chive pseudo cream cheese food-like-stuff (eat w chips)
   pickled herring
   from their cold case
         yam wedges (i put this on it - can't get enough of it)
         cold salmon w lemon slices

It's hard to order organic peanuts.  I've been getting mine from thrive market.  And then I put some in a pint size mason jar, pour in a tablespoon of olive oil, mix it up, then add a different flavor of this sort of thing.

Kale snacks.  

I've recently tried these crunchy dried carrot snacks - really good!

I get some of these oysters from time to time.

The boots get cases of canned salmon from thrive market.  I grab one and mix in some mayo (organic - also from thrive market), mustard and raisins.  The kittens love the salmon juice from the can, and they love to help me clean the bowl when I'm done.

Doodles made from casava flour - I probably eat too much of this.

And apples.  Apples are supposed to be really good for fighting gallstones.  And I do really enjoy apples.   And as an experiment, I recently bought apple powder and apple syrup.



Since the covids, I try to avoid going into town.  But once in a while i get powerful cravings to eat restaurant food.

Restaurants are really hard.  Most of them have nothing I can eat.  I usually look at their online menus and eliminated about 90% of all restaurants.  

Yesterday we went to a place in Missoula that was excellent!  It was my first time there - I didn't even know this place existed!  Amey shared a couple of appetizers:  a pile of roasted chiles (they were quite mild and delicious) and oyster mushrooms (what on earth is that sauce?!).  I had a cucumber salad and chicken pho with rice noodles and chicken broth.

I can have pizza with a gluten free crust, no meat other than chicken, no cheese other than mozzarella.   And there are at least three places in missoula that can do that!  Pizza!

Chipotle bowl with chicken, veggies and guac.

We have a brazillian restaurant in missoula where you can get a bowl of rice and greens with chicken and heaps of flavorful stuff.  

Sushi restaurants have heaps of things I can eat.  

At a thai restaurant I can get fried rice with shrimp or chicken.

At one restaurant I can get a chicken dinner with a side of sweet potato fries.  

At another restaurant I can get salmon and rice.


So it is pretty limiting, but I feel like I am doing really good.  Only about once every couple weeks do i get a strong urge for something i can't eat - or maybe the boots are cooking something that smells great and I can't eat it.   I just have to remember the pain of the gallstone and the urge goes away quickly.

This thread has become a source of frustration for the staff.  

In 12 hours, everything in this thread that has one spec of politics or religion will be deleted.   So this is your chance to copy what you wrote and paste it to the cider press.

And, for the next 12 hours, this thread is locked.

Click on the thumbs up for this post if you think we should not start a new kickstarter until the previous kickstarter has been fulfilled.

Click on the thumbs up for this post if you think it is fine to start a new kickstarter even though the last kickstarter has not yet been fulfilled.

The greenhouse build is still going.  

We thought the movie would be done in early march, so we could start the SKIP kickstarter in early march.  Kinda start the new thing only after the old thing is all done.

We're a little light on boots in the bootcamp right now.   And we have about a dozen people working on SKIP.  

The greenhouse kickstarter was an experiment.  I'm not sure I wanna do this style of experimental kickstarter again.  Previous kickstarters had a LOT of the work already done before we did the kickstarter for it.   The better world book kickstarter had the book about 95% done before we started the kickstarter - and we got the book to people just a few months later.  But when you do a bunch of experiments, things can run longer than expected.  

So that's the question on the table at the moment:  should we consider starting a new kickstarter when we have not completed the last kickstarter?  

Maybe we need a tie dye holiday.  Something where we can pick a single color and lots of stuff can get that color - thus some dingy white stuff can get a whole new life!  And if people wanna do rubber bands to get the tie dye effect, that's cool too!