I registered one-shore.com (according to whois) on March 10, 2005. It was after a discussion with Daryl Butcher about starting a consulting business together. We talked a bit, but not much came of it since I went to Fiji and he was fully dedicated to his business, Thriftbooks, which is going well for him. I’ve been toying with the idea for years of a cooperative of freelance IT professionals, and Klamath Systems took on that idea for a while, but I keep getting drawn back into full time positions.
I’ve used klamathsystems.com for my business, and particularly for email since I sold computers and did networking and web development in Klamath Falls, Oregon before moving to Seattle in 2000. I happen to like the name, but I’ve found through usage that it tends to be difficult to spell and pronounce outside of southern Oregon. I hope I don’t have similar problems with one-shore.com, though there is potential with the hyphen, ‘one’ being spelled out instead of numeric, and having a homonym ‘won.’
My original domain, linux-pc.net never took off, partially because Linux PCs never took off, but also because I never pursued it. Who knows, if I’d been more diligent in 1999, Linux might be on more people’s desktops today.
I’d initially done some work on a logo, but at the time was thinking of “on-shore” but that domain was already taken. I believe it showed a wave inside the “O” or alternately a stylized wave through the letters or as the hyphen. No longer having my graphic design work is no big loss.
The purpose of this post (other than the necessity of having a first post) is really to try out Word Press and Blogger. I haven’t really found a blog tool I’m happy with, but maybe that’s because I haven’t paid for one. I’ll probably alternate entries using each tool, and look for suggestions for others, and try not to spend a month implementing my own, or one to keep them both in sync.
I figure using a major site will help me at least be easy to find, though I won’t bother with things like trying to get on search engines, I’m just narcissitic enough to think someone might find something useful in something I’ve written. At least I won’t have to maintain it. And I’ll try to keep out the nonsense that get’s put on my personal blog, which doesn’t get much use anyway, but can then be better used for letter writing while I travel.
Having decided to move to Ecuador with my new wife, Kelsey, in support of her dream of creating a foundation to work with orphans and disadvantaged teens in that country (she did volunteer work as site coordinator for OSSO for 9 months in 2004) I decided to take the plunge and try to turn my dream of creating my own business into a reality. And more particularly, to find a source of income to help support her, as well as a way to keep me occupied and hopefully it can, through enterprise, help other people as well.
We’ll be moving to Ecuador in October with an initial plan of living there for 6 months and evaluating it’s feasibility. One Shore will germinate while I’m there and I’ll know more about what I can do and whether we’ll make it a more permanent residence, and whether I can build a business that will support us.
I’ll be working on ideas, experimenting with technologies, and looking for clients and partners, and especially seeing if I can make a distributed small technology company work.
My original dream of telecommute consulting from my sailboat
will be put on hold, but also put on trial. If I can do it from Ecuador, it’s not that much more of a step to do it from at sea. That was the real inspiration behind “one shore” — from the ocean, all land is “one shore” separated by water.
Perhaps we will live in Ecuador (or sail) part time and return to the states part time where I can grow my business or sell my services to support our travel and her foundation. I can probably live with that. A hacienda in the Andes and a boat in the water that, regrettably, I may have to fly to which I can work from won’t be that bad, though I’d really rather be at sea, coming ashore only when necessary, and working only as much as I want.
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