Tuesday, April 26, 2022
6:10 a.m. Room 1102, Phannu House
Mae Sot, Thailand
I did a little test the other day to find out how much it cost to run the air conditioner. I checked the reading on the electricity meter, and then I ran the air conditioner for exactly one hour. Then I checked the meter reading again to see how many units I’d used up and multiplied that by 7 baht. And the result was it cost 10 baht per hour. Therefore, it would cost 120 baht or $3.50 per day if I ran it for twelve hours. That doesn’t seem like much, but it does add up. That would come to 3,600 baht for the month when my actual rent for the whole room is 3,500 baht. The air conditioner would cost more than my rent.
My main goal yesterday was to finish the 5-Snack Challenge YouTube video and then post it at my usual time of 5 p.m. However, it took far longer than I’d anticipated to complete the video. And then it took over three hours to simply upload it to YouTube. By then it was past seven in the evening. I briefly considered setting the video as an Instant Premiere. I thought that would be fun, but I didn’t want to annoy people. Therefore, I just posted it as a regular video. And at the last minute, I decided to add chapter headings. I had to do that very quickly in order to get it done before the video was scheduled to go live.
As with all my videos, it isn’t exactly burning up the YouTube charts. After 10 hours, it has been viewed 456 times, and there are twelve comments. I’ll check out the comments after I finish writing about my day. This week, I plan to post what could be the final Sukhothai video Premiere. This is the video in which I visit Wat Si Chum, the Thuriang Kilns, the Visitor Center, and Wat Phrapai Luang. It’s another long video. And that leaves only the Sukhothai Noodles video, which I may or may not post as a Premiere. I probably won’t. I’ll switch to posting the remaining Mae Hong Son Loop videos as Premieres at that point. I think I have eight of those to work through. And I’ll continue to post videos in real time here in Mae Sot while working on things like Patreon. I also want to make name cards. I think I have all the information I need for a name card except for Patreon. I plan to open a Patreon account today. And once I have that, I can make a Planet Doug name card. Perhaps I can also establish a Planet Doug social email address. I can have the business enquiries email address of Info at Planet Doug. But maybe I can make a separate one for social emails. Or maybe I don’t need that? People can contact me through the Facebook Page or a Contact form on the website. And of course there is the question of how much time I’d have to read and answer emails anyway. Time is the biggest concern for me these days.
I have to say that I continue to be astonished at just how bad everything is in the world of technology. Why is it that I can’t take even one step in any direction without running into a question that I have to waste time answering? I just went to the Patreon website, and I started to open a Patreon account. And to do that, the first thing they ask for is this: Name.
And that’s great. But what name do you enter? They don’t explain it. Is this supposed to be your full legal name? Or is this the name of your Patreon? Is this the name that people will see when they go to your Patreon page? Or is this just an internal nickname that Patreon uses? Essentially, should I enter my full legal name here, a shorter name, a nickname, or the name of my Patreon page as I want it to appear? And now I have to spend an hour researching this before I can even sign up. I went to a couple of dozen on the Internet and on YouTube, and no one addressed this question. They all just said, “First, open an account on Patreon.” That’s all anyone said. There was no help or guidance or troubleshooting.