The Geek Crusher

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Our new home
2007-10-10 18:31:00
The Geek Crusher blog has moved to our new permanent home:http://geekcrusher.com/blog/Be sure to visit us at our new location. Don't forget to update your bookmarks!!Thanks everyone for all the support!!!
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Floors and walls
2007-10-09 01:50:00
Now that we've gotten back into working on the Crusher regularly we're making great progress. Well, Dave is making most of the progress while I'm working on keeping the websites going that are paying for the project.Dave got most of the wiring all figured out. We're going to have 3 outlets on each side of the truck, which should be sufficient. Now we will put the roof back in place and install sheet metal on the walls - thanks to Thornton Plumbing and Heating. We're thinking laminate flooring for the floors. I tried to buy it online thinking I good get hooked up with a good deal, but turns out that shipping 80 square feet of flooring will cost $150 so we decided to look into other options. Looking on craigslist.org i noticed a lot of people tend to over-buy when doing flooring projects and we found some people selling their extras for pretty cheap. We haven't bought anything yet, but i think that's a purchase we will be making soon.Now we're starting to plan out the layout ...
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The Crusher goes to Brighton
2007-10-05 17:13:00
Our first journey:So, the mobile office isn't done yet, but since we have all the major components for powering everything, we figured we'd take it out for a little mini-trip. Destination: Brighton , Utah We loaded up some make-shift desks, power strips, laptops, lawn chairs, snacks and of course, a bottle of wine to celebrate our first trip. We headed up the canyon where we picked up a hitchhiker. He was a schizophrenic guy named Tom. We gave him a lift up to his cabin. We got up to Brighton. Luckily, the resort has wireless internet so we parked right up by the lodge. At this point we realized that the metal cage we were in very effectively blocked out all wireless internet access. We rearranged the desk situation so we were closer to the window. Success. We set up shop and went to work. I've found I'm much more productive when I'm working from exciting places. We opened the back doors so we had a perfect view of the mountains. It was a little chilly, but we brought hoo...
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Back in action
2007-10-04 09:11:00
And we're back!So now we've got all the necessary equipment for powering the mobile office. I'll have Dave go more into that later. Basically, we have 2 generators, a power inverter, 2 additional batteries and a battery charger.Dave is working on setting up the door that separates the cab from the rest of the truck. It's a wooden wall with a sliding door. It will be well insulated to block out much of the truck's running noises.Next on the to-do list: wiring.
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Not a lot to report. . .
2007-09-24 01:40:00
We took a break from working on the truck to work on building up our company, getting a few projects up and running and taking on a few clients. We hope to get back on this project soon. We are ready and anxious to get on the road.
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Took a couple days off
2007-06-19 21:56:00
We took some time off from working on the truck. I moved out of my old house and into a new place, so I took a week off to move and get settled. I used the truck to haul all of my crap. It's coming in handy aready.We got quite a bit done before the break, just just never got around to posting anything about it. We got the floor installed as well as the walls. Gary (who is now my new roommate) isntalled support beams in the cieling. These will support the sort of "upper level" pop-out sleeping area we will be isntalling later on. Dave is working on assembling the door that will divide the cab from the back of the truck as well as getting all the wiring figured out. Here are some pictures of the progress up to this point.
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Update
2007-06-07 19:05:00
Ok, so I have not been the best poster here... I just work on it. So I'm going to fill you in now on what I've been working on.As you know we started out ripping it apart. We bought it under the assumption that we were going to be able to use some of what was already there and build off from it. The more research I did, and the more I understood what I wanted the more of it we ripped out. As you can see we finally took it all out and started from ground zero.THE RECONSTRUCTIONOk, so the goal here is to be as light weight and as efficient as possible while saving as much space as we can. Starting with the walls, I did a ton of research and found this paint additive that is based off the technology the space shuttle uses to insulate itself so it doesn't burn up when coming back into the atmosphere. Its pretty cool, roll on insulation! After getting all that on the inside I decided that was just not going to do, mainly because of noise factor. It does well against temperatur...
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We got a lot done this week
2007-05-26 19:30:00
It's been a couple days since I've written, so there is a lot to catch up on. First, Dave and Gary took off the back bumper and welded on a new extended bumper which will hold the generator:We finished painting the walls and the floor with the insulating paint:We got the wood and insulation to line the floor and ceiling:We got the whole floor installed:It's hard to see in the picture, but i painted a smily face on Dave's back. Now he has a tan line from it. :)Oh, and we couldn't have made it through the day with out a couple injuries:
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Friends of the Crusher
2007-05-24 19:45:00
Hey, we've set up a myspace so everyone add us :)http://www.myspace.com/geekcrusher
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Paint
2007-05-24 02:02:00
We've spent the last 2 days painting the interior walls. It's sort of a grayish/whitish/yellowish color. It looks like a space ship. OK, not really, but we did mixed in this fancy insulating powder that NASA developed. We still have a coat or two to go on the walls and we're going to paint the floor as well. Since it's for insulating purposes, rather than aesthetic, the color doesn't matter at this point and most of this won't be showing anyway. After we are done painting we'll be covering the walls with plywood and thin insulation then covering the whole thing with sheet metal to give it a high-tech feel.
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Week 3
2007-05-23 07:44:00
Dave's been getting a lot of the technical aspects figured out for the truck/mobile office. I'll have to have him explain those in a little better detail since most of it is still a little over my head. We've got most everything we need as far as power is concerned: 7000 watt generator, batteries, inverter, etc, etc. Over the past few days Dave got the rest of the framing and the floor out of the truck and we started painting the walls with the insulating paint. To provide further insulation, as well as sound protection, we've also got plywood and some thin insulation. We will only lose about an inch on either side with this method, as opposed to the original framing and insulation which took almost a full 4 inches off either side.
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Countdown to success
2007-05-19 22:17:00
According to the fortune cookie I got with my dinner last night, success is only a month away.
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Happy Friday
2007-05-18 16:41:00
It is Frida y , isn't it? I don't really keep track of the days anymore. We work everyday, so there isn't really much need to keep track. Dave's made some progress tearing out the walls. We dropped the truck off to have it serviced so we haven't been able to get much done the last couple of days. We're also waiting for the insulating paint to come. It's supposed to be here today. Once we get the whole thing painted then we can really start to get the whole thing put back together again.
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Making progress
2007-05-12 01:17:00
Dave's been making a lot of progress getting everything taken out of the (still nameless) truck. Now that most everything is out we have a lot more space to work with. We're in the process of rounding up supplies and trying to figure out the most efficient way to set everything up. We found this insulating paint we are going to use to save space rather than using regular insulation.I guess I'll just keep this short and just post the pictures.
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Naming the beast
2007-05-10 23:12:00
It needs a name. It's way too cool to just refer to it as "the truck" or the "mobile office."Nothing brilliant has come to mind yet.A few suggestions that have been motioned so far:Mo: Sort of an acronym for 'mobile office'. I'm usually anti-acronym, but since it is pronounced "Moe" rather than spelled out M-O, I think I could handle it.Geek Crusher: Dave's brother suggested this one. I liked it enough to use it as the blog title. Maybe we could just call it "The Crusher" for short or something.Archie: Short for our original business name,Archetype Development - we are merging with another company and creating a new company with a new name, so it would sort of be a reminder of where we started.Nothing is really sticking yet. We are looking for suggestions. What have you got, huh? Name the beast.
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Demolition part one
2007-05-10 02:42:00
I'll let the pictures tell most of the story on this one, but basically Dave is tearing apart the beast. We (when i say "we" I really mean "Dave") are pretty much gutting it (which is sad, because it was pretty damn cool to begin with, just not exactly fitting to our needs) so we can completely remodel it. Here is how day 1 of the demolition has been going:
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A little background
2007-05-09 18:16:00
So who are we anyway? I'm Andrea Thornton (age 25), and Dave Wall (age 22) is my business partner. We currently live in Salt Lake City, Utah. We are both young, adventurous and spontaneous. We knew early on the office life wasn't for us. We're both crazy enough to decide to create a mobile office that will allow us to travel the country on a perma-road trip. Our friends think we are weird. My roommate even refers to it as the "giant ice cream truck." So maybe we are a little weird. At least we aren't boring. And at least we aren't wasting away the best years of our lives in a cubicle answering to a boss.So what do we do?It was a family vacation in Belize that first made me realize that the internet was the way to go. We were on a tour bus driving through a little village. Amongst the tin shacks and run down houses was an internet cafe. It was that moment that I realized I didn't need to sit in a stuffy cubicle to be productive. I could be at an internet cafe in a tropical vil...
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First things first
2007-05-09 08:50:00
I'm not much for writing. I never know quite how to start. I'd start at the beginning, but that was almost a year ago and I tend to get myself too concerned with the tiny details, so if I just started at the beginning this would go on way too long. I guess I'll just sum up the basic concept of who we are and what we are doing.First of all, my name is Andrea. Dave is my business partner. We shared one common dream: freedom. Our goal was to create a situation where we could be free from the confines of a regular 9-5 office job. We wanted to be able to enjoy our young years traveling the country, snowboarding, sightseeing and adventuring without having to pinch pennies, save up vacation time, catch up on missed work or wait until retirement to enjoy our freedom. Our solution? Take work with us on our journey. We started our own company a little over a year ago - I'll get into the details of that later. Being young and unfunded (I'm 25 and Dave is 22) we didn't have a lot of money...
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