I have a dream.
I have tons of business-worthy, web-related programming ideas... but I never have any time implement them because I'm stuck here at my day job just getting the next thing done. My dream is to put my house on the market, and as soon as it sells, put in my notice at work, gather my savings, and leave to travel the world and program.
And I have some goals.
- I want to be able to live almost as cheaply as possible while seeing lots of the world that I have not yet seen. (Note: I am married... and I bet she would want to tag along too.)
- I want to have 4-5 hours a day that I can dedicate to programming and/or business development. I need a quiet place, and I need resources.
- I want to stay relatively safe.
- When I finally come back, I want to be able to clean up, rest for a week, and then start to work at the Fortune 500 company that I built while away.
...And I need plenty of advice.
A lot of planning needs to take place before I go and buy my plane tickets. I need you guys to give me advice. Help me answer the following questions:
- Where in the world should I go? I've got a friend that's living off of $13 a day in India and China. Europe seems expensive. South America seems cool if you can avoid decapitation by a drug lord.
- What equipment should I bring? The computer will definitely be a laptop, but what kind is best? I'm using a Mac now, but I'm afraid that it screams "steal me". I would consider using one of the netbooks except that I don't know how dependable they are, how well they can handle the computational hurdles I would shove them through, and man that tiny little screen!
- What material should I bring. Probably like most folks, my programming style involves plenty of documentation reading. Since I will not have ever present connection to the internet, what resources should I bring along on my computer? (I would be programming in Java C# and in everything on the W3Schools website.)
- How can I get connectivity? Presumably I'm going to have a server set up from which I will launch my ideas. How can I be assured that I have connection when I need it (on par with once a week in the beginning - but gradually becoming more often). What do I have to look out for with being firewalled away from Google, my server, etc.?
- How do I find my "quiet place" no matter where I am on earth so that I can program.
- How do I keep my wife safe yet entertained?
And most importantly:
- What are the questions I'm not even considering? (And what are their answers?)