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I stayed in a downtown Chicago youth hostel

This weekend I stayed two nights in a downtown Chicago hostel, the Parthenon. My partner said it was too dangerous and that I would get bedbugs and diseases. My partner was way, way wrong. I had a great experience.

The hostel was in Greek town. It was operated by a welcoming and fastidious Greek family. The entire place was tidy, uncluttered, and extremely clean.

My room was on the third floor. A spiral stair led upwards past unique art. I humped my backpack up the stairs to the room.

My room was about 250 square feet in size and it had three sets of bunks (6 racks). My rack was on the top. I'm 6 foot and I took up the entire length with only about 6 inches to spare on each end. Just the right size.

I never talked to my five roommates except brief whispered hellos as we grabbed showers and wash-ups. My roommates were all quiet, polite, and considerate people. The only minor incident occurred yesterday morning. As I stuffed my pack, my roommate awoke with a shout. Thinking I disturbed him, I apologized. He said something in German, and then said, "nightmare."

The hostel had communal bathrooms and showers. If you don't like meeting people while you're naked in the shower, you should not attempt this hostel thing. But if you don't care or like a little adventure, it is no biggie and actually makes for a good story.

In the mornings, the Parthenon serves free breakfast.

If you're up for adventure in Chicago, this is the place to stay. Here are some pictures.

My Visit to the Windy City Weasels

Next week, I am making a trip to Chicago to see some of my Dip friends and play in Weasel Moot VIII. I expect to get stabbed and totally slaughtered in Chicago as far as the Dip goes, but nevertheless, am anticipating the fun will be huge. I am using this blog post as a means to keep a running log of my trip and to store information I might need to access.

I am trying out taking a backpack to a Chicago youth hostel as an adventure and because the cost of hotels in downtown Chicago is really high. Two nights at a hotel are approximately $400 and that is for a two star.

Today I booked a room through HostelBookers.Com to stay at the Chicago Parthenon Hostel. It is a 8-bed dorm style room at a cost of $34 per night. The Hostel is in a Greek neighborhood. A picture from Google Street view is embedded below.

My friend Jim O'Kelley bought Cubs tickets for Friday afternoon and I am looking forward to going to Wrigley Field again and enjoying a nice afternoon of baseball (Cubs v. Cards). (I am a Braves fan. Baseball is my favorite sport in the summer.)

Afterwards or maybe during the game, I may test out a couple Chicago pale ales. They have some good micro-breweries in the Chicago area.

If the Friday-night, Big-city festivities are not too much for my old bones, I am hoping to wake up and go to the Dip tournament. It starts early on Saturday morning and runs through Sunday.

From the Hostel, it looks like I can catch an El train at the UIC Halstead Station and ride it to the Clark Lake Station. There, I disembark and walk north across the Chicago River and about another two blocks to the fancy Hampton Inn and Suites. There, Weasel Moot happens.

Please comment for any inside Chicago tips about my planned itinerary.  For example, I suspect the Greek restaurants around this hostel are pretty decent and might be worth exploring.

Here is a map to the Dip tourney.
Here is a map to Wrigley from the Hostel. Take blue line to Jackson Blue. Switch to the red line. Ride to Addison.
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Here's a map from the airport to the hostel. Blue line all the way.

In 2013 I named my goat after Stephen Garcia

On April 9, 2013, two baby goats were born on our homestead. As soon as I saw his face, I named one goat after Stephen Garcia.

Garcia is an enigmatic figure. Steve Spurrier's first big-time quarterback recruit, Garcia came to South Carolina from Tampa, Florida, as a brash, long-haired, five-star player. During his career he played extremely well at times. In 2009, he was the starting quarterback when the Gamecocks began their current five game winning streak over Clemson. In 2010, he led the Gamecocks to their first and only SEC East football championship.

However, on October 11, 2011, then Athletic Director Eric Hyman, who had no patience for Garcia's antics, kicked Garcia off the Gamecock football team for a failure to follow, "established guidelines." Garcia Dismissed from Football Team. The sudden and shocking dismissal followed a tumultuous career of highs and lows. The lows in many cases involved bad luck and poor choices associated with Garcia's love of partying. His love of fun did not correlate well with also existing under the media microscope trained on starting SEC quarterbacks.

The Gamecock fanbase was divided over Garcia. Some fans were critical or upset because Garcia's partying allegedly meant that he was unable to meet high expectations associated with his five-star talent. Others were more understanding and sympathetic, recollecting back to their own lives as students at the University of South Carolina. I am one of the latter. I have a soft spot in my heart for the Stephen Garcia's of this world. 

This past week, I was thrilled when Garcia emerged as a celebrity at the unofficial beginning of college football -- SEC Media Days. (SEC Media Days is a huge event for college football fans in the deep south.) A  few weeks before SEC Media Days started, a self-described "non-corporate" sports media site, Saturday Down South, hired Garcia as a reporter/blogger. This was a brilliant PR move by SDS! Garcia made a huge splash at SEC Media Days and the SDS brand is exploding.  

@thejournalist44 We're just getting started... #VivaGarcía #CousinTy @itISwhatITisSG5 @thardin52
— Drew Roberts (@DrewSDS) July 17, 2014

SDS took full advantage of Garcia's celebrity status, and plans a Garcia clothing line to go with his video blogging. As a celebrity-reporter, Garcia already has an avid following. Garcia was interviewed over 150 times by reporters, bloggers, and broadcasters covering SEC Media Days. Seemingly everyone wants a piece of Stephen Garcia.

I need one of these #vivagarcia shirts @JOXRoundtable pic.twitter.com/7IBbZRuJIB
— Keith Wallace (@RKeithWallace) July 15, 2014

@SDS @JOXRoundtable I MUST have one of those! #VivaGarcia
— ✋Anti-Clemson ✋ (@TaterSpeak) July 15, 2014

Second. RT @mtRoth29: @itISwhatITisSG5 how do I get a Viva Garcia shirt?!?
— Dustin Tucker (@dustintucker) July 15, 2014

@itISwhatITisSG5 how long do I have to wait to get one of the #VivaGarcia shirts? Should I just have @BrandiCMills bring me one?
— kbruce (@kbruce) July 16, 2014

I will marry anyone who gets me a viva Garcia tshirt @itISwhatITisSG5 #vivagarcia #hebeatbama
— Caroline Garris (@carolinegarris) July 16, 2014

I am so happy to see Garcia succeed! I named my goat after Garcia more than a year before he burst on the scene again this July.  Thus, with this post, I am claiming my status as the first generation of true Stephen Garcia fans. I am publishing this and tweeting to SDS hoping to snag one of the Viva Garcia T-shirts! 

Besides the fact I am a huge Stephen Garcia fan, here's a clue about why I named my goat Garcia after Stephen Garcia. 

Viva Garcia. Viva Saturday Down South.

How to Make a Skills Objective Gauge Gadget

In this post I show you how to make a simple gauge like the one here using Google Docs. I use these gauges for tracking my progress toward the skills objectives associated with the 13Skills site.

This is really a simple gadget to make if you have a Google account. If you don't have a Google account, you can set one up for free here.

A Google Account lets you access a variety of Google products such as Gmail, Google+, YouTube, and Google Docs. You need a Google account to use the free Google Docs. You need Google Docs to make this simple gadget.

If you already have a Google account then here is what you do.

1. Sign in and open your Google docs page by left clicking on "Drive" on the upper menu.
2. Click on the button "create" and a drop down menu will appear. Left click to select spreadsheet. A blank spreadsheet will open. Left click in the upper left side where it says "Untitled spreadsheet" and give it a name, like Writing Progress.
3. Add a short name in cell A1. (Spreadsheet cells are labeled across the top by letters, and down the side by numbers. The intersection of cell column A, and row 1 is cell A1.) The cell A1 name will appear on your gadget later.
4. Write a number in cell B1 indicating the progress toward your objective to date. For example, this is my sixth blog post so I wrote in number 6. Now left click your mouse in cell A1 and drag your mouse across to B1 so that both cells are highlighted. Now you are ready for the fun part.
5. Click on the chart icon. (You should see it across the top of the first row, probably around the letter E. It looks like a little bar graph chart.) A chart editor menu will pop up.
6. You should see a three word menu. Pick the middle one, "Charts" and click on it. Go down to the "more" tab and click on it. You will see four charts, including the gauge chart at the top. Click on the gauge chart. You should see an uncustomized gauge displayed in the editor.
7. Select "customize" in the chart editor top menu. Now set the gauge range. What is your numeric objective? I want to write 130 posts so I set my range 0 to 130. Next, divide the top number by three and round off. For me that is about 43. The bottom range (red) is 0 to 43. The middle range (yellow) is 43 to 86. The top range (green) is 86 to 130. Hit return and your gauge is displayed in the spreadsheet. 

The gauge is interactive.  Whenever you finish an objective, enter the spreadsheet and add to the B1 cell. The gauge will move upwards as you move toward your objective.   If you want to publish the interactive gauge on a blog, website, or forum message, you need to make the spreadsheet public and then copy some code into the page. Here's how.

1. Look for the blue "Share" button at the top right above the spreadsheet.   Left click.  A "sharing settings" menu will pop up. 
2. Under the "who has access" section, left click on change.  Select the button, "Public on the web" and then left click "save."
3. Now go back into the spreadsheet and left click on the chart.  You will see a little arrow at the top right corner of the chart box. 
4. Left click on that arrow and select "publish chart." 
5. Copy the html code shown (I use Ctrl-c) and paste it to your post, page, or message (Ctrl-v). 
6. Make sure you set the Compose/HTML button on your blogger post screen to HTML before you paste the code. (If you don't like the HTML screen, you can switch it back to Compose as soon as you save the post.)

NOTE: You need to be in the HTML editor mode on your email, blog, or forum message when you paste the code.

The interactive chart will now automatically change the gauge on the post, page, or message every time you update your progress cell B of the Google Docs spreadsheet.  Just select publish when you update the spreadsheet, and press the "done" button.  (This interaction is not instantaneous. It may take a moment for the Internet to update).  To access the spreadsheet, just go to your Google Docs Drive, and open the sheet you need to update.
To change the size of the Gauge, you have to edit the code.  Toward the end of all the code gobbleteegook, do you see "width": 600, "height":375}?  Change those numbers to "width":300,"height":187}.  That makes your gauge half the size Google Docs automatically creates it.
You could create an image from your Google Doc gauge.  It would not be interactive, but you could embed it into a forum message using the insert image button on the far left of the bottom row above.  Here's how to do this on the Survival Podcast forums: 
1) Go into the Gauge and click on the little arrow at the top right.  You should see an option "save image" just above "publish chart".  Save the image to your desktop or somewhere you can find it later.   2) Upload it to the Internet on a photograph hosting site or blog.   3) Make the picture public. 4) If you use Chrome, you can copy the url for the photograph by right-clicking it and selecting "copy image url."   5) Come back here and select the picture icon on the botton left row of buttons for a message.   6) Past the image url between the  code marks (Ctrl-V) so it will appear on a posts to the forum:
The message code looks like this:

[img]https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJBS2JqINm532TA-UuGz2x_aaptf50HMs_MzRz8eA2T6ACwhCjzgv9tomKjPMZU4l02ppiL6xsbAiL0dobCum9ftcgXzwmnJf08Xj9fI7sT_4ltQiFh7GR5XVggDAiAKy8kF0BzmcHEI4/h120/chart_2.png[/img]

13 Skills for 2013

The 13Skills website is a new Survival Podcast network site designed to help people help themselves by becoming more independent and self sufficient. Please go check my profile to see to see what 13 skills I am working on for 2013.  

You should join too!

13Skills has a list of 154 skills from which to pick.   Listed skills range from alternative transportation to winemaking.  The five most popular now are fitness, computer, canning, gardening, and cooking.

It's a challenge.

"The 13 in 13 Challenge is a call to develop or drastically improve your personal skills in the coming year. These skills can be any hands on practical skill from ancient skills like flint napping to traditional skills like trapping and hunting or even technical skills like graphic arts or computer programming.

Our modern society has become a world of specialists who can do one thing very well but can no longer accomplish simple tasks like growing a garden, changing a tire or fixing a hole in wall."

I hope the United States economy comes roaring back and everyone gets a good job.  But I'm worried about the nation's path, especially as it pertains to our monetary policy.  Common sense says that the Federal Reserve will keep printing trillions of Dollars until we face a dire monetary problem . . . and then who knows what might happen. I want to be as personally prepared as possible to take care of my family in difficult times. I'm not sure we have a whole lot of preparation time left.

With this in mind, one of the skills I picked was the homesteading skill carpentry.  I am a poor carpenter, but need to learn to be a passable one by the end of 2013.  Our fifteen acre homestead in western North Carolina has plenty of forestry material for carpentry work.  My family also has chickens, horses, a cat, and a pregnant goat. All our critters need good shelters and living systems in which to thrive.  One of my 2013 carpentry objectives is to build twelve projects on my homestead.  If I become as proficient at building as my ancestors before me, I will improve our place, save money, and be more independent and better able to help others.

I've just started working on my carpentry skill. Watch me try to move my carpentry project gauge to twelve by the end of 2013. Here, I will publishing widgets like the one below showing progress toward my skill objectives. I also intend to post technical information about the skills I am learning.


Maybe I can help some friends by improving my writing skill. Maybe I am just selfish?

However you slice it, the more people out there who are independent and self sufficient, the smaller the scope of pain associated with the coming difficult time. The more people who are skilled, free, and creative, the stronger will be our local communities when the storm comes.

Although there is a blogging contest going on at 13Skills, that is not really why I am writing this blog post. I wrote it to persuade you to join me on 13Skills. I wrote it to ask you to forward this post to your friends and family so you can get them to join it too. By helping yourself and your friends develop practical skills in 2013, you help the community become stronger, more resilient, and better prepared for a difficult time.

Goal Setting

For 2013, my intention is to develop homesteading skills in a measurable way.  One mechanism for accomplishing that goal is the website tool, 13Skills.  This website, which is assocciated with the Survival Podcast site, is a tool or challenge to improve or build 13 homesteading skills during 2013.

That site has a handy listing of skills to peruse.  However, many skills overlap with one another so when I picked out my 13, I tried to pick out some general skills aimed at what I hope to accomplish.  The skills selected may or may not include several of the other skills listed on the 13Skills site.  For example, I chose gardening and personally consider orchard planting part of the gardening skill.  However, the site lists both gardening and orchard planting as separate skills. For me, the orchard skill falls within the skill concept of garden.  The same issue is true for wood working, carpentry, shed building, and timber framing.  I pick carpentry as my "skill."

The site encourages use of goals related to the skills chosen.  A lot of folks follow that guidance, but they list more general goals.  Only a few have a set out measurable objectives related to those goals. For my purposes, I will try to establish some general overall goals.  And then, create specific numbered objectives aimed at moving toward accomplishment of the overall skill goal.  With that in mind, I am clarifying and refining my listed 13Skills "goals" to include specific and measurable objectives.

An example of this is shown under the "writing" skill. For that, an objective is to make posts about the 13 skills progress and create a link to the posts on this blog.  There is a lot more writing to do on this project before my objectives are met.  The gauges below indicates my progress toward meeting two writing objectives, linking all 13 skills from my blog, and writing 10 posts per skill.