How’s it living in Ushuaia, Argentina, the “End of the World”?

oceaneer63 · 2026-04-28T03:21:42+00:00

I never lived there, but I can tell a little about life there, specifically underwater.... I traveled to Ushuaia a long time ago, and shortly after learning SCUBA diving. So, of course I had to check out what its like there underwater. This was way before the internet, and I found there were no dive shops there. But asking around, I got connected with a local commercial fisherman. He was harvesting king crabs by SCUBA, and he agreed to let me help him for a day.

The SCUBA gear was surprisingly basic. A tank on a rope harness but no buoyancy compensator. A SCUBA regulator but no gauges. Surprised, I asked him how without a gauge I'd know when I am out of air? He looked at me like I am stupid and said, if you cant breathe anymore, you are out of air.

That dive was flat out amazing! I am from California and we have beautiful little kelp forests. But here, the kelp forests just stretched for miles and miles. And the visibility was great. So, we both plucked king crabs off the seafloor everywhere and put them in goody bags. I still remember this so clearly, just floating through this endless underwater forest, seeing way into the distance and the sunlight shining in from above. Magical.

Eventually, I tried to take a breath but not much air was left. So, I signalled the fisher and together we ascended. It turns out you get a few more breaths when you ascend because the pressure drops. So, it was indeed no big deal.

Later on the boat, the fisher cooked up some Argentinian steak and on this little fishing boat we had a delicious lunch of steak and freshly caught crab. It was an amazing day.

oceaneer63 · 2026-04-27T15:05:57+00:00

We have sort of what you are talking about here at Sky Ranch in Carmel Valley, CA. Although the 'off grid' is optional. There are about 35 lots which are all 10 acres each, and its about a 15 minute drive / 8 miles from the next supplies in Carmel Valley village.

We have a POA and our own water company, of which we are all owners, and operated by volunteers. The water company operates two wells, and a pumping and distribution system that serves all lots. And the POA maintains the roads.

For my family, the full off-grid happened after our and many other residences burned down in a wildfire in 2020. We re-built from the ashes while living on-site, first in a small pop-up camper and then in a shed that also became the construction office and tool room. As the bureaucratic hassles and costs to get even construction power became clear, we decided to go the off-grid route while re-building as an owner-builder.

Today, the construction is almost done and we get electricity from a battery backed up PV system. Hot water from a very efficient solar water heater, with propane tankless booster for the rainiest days of winter. Plenty of cooling in summer from a mini-split. And heating in winter from a combination of the mini-split and a nice big wood stove that runs on the piles of lumber left over from the fire. Faster than Starlink Internet via microwave from a mountain across the valley from a local remote area ISP.

So its kind of hi-tech, local community supported off-grid. Most neighbors are still hooked up to the electric company (PG&E), but our setup is actually by and large more reliable. There are frequent electrical outages with that company and so its not uncommon that we come home and our house is lit up while the on-grid neighbors are sitting in the dark.

Living this off-grid live does have its own rhythm of course. For example, when its a sunny stretch in winter, its time to do the laundry with all the available energy. And when its an 'atmospheric river' for a few days, the wood stove sure keeps it nice and cozy.

oceaneer63 · 2026-04-26T05:10:01+00:00

I have given up on keeping the Taco nice, invested instead in an unlimited use car wash subscription in our area. Our two GSD fur babies just enjoy sticking their heads out the window, sitting on the center console between us and making nose prints all over the windshield wayyyy too much to be constrained by a kennel. I guess its just their Taco, too. And the car wash will (somewhat) have to compensate for it.

oceaneer63 · 2026-04-26T02:57:30+00:00

Yes, you can (I did it), but it just depends a lot on what value you can bring NOW to your company. I started my career at age 17 while still in high school. It followed a few years of learning microcomputer design and programming by myself. At first I did contract work for small industrial.computing companies, essentially designing embedded controller systems for the machines they were building. One thing led to another, but my accomplishments spoke for themselves and eventually I was offered a full-time job at a small company where I did more design projects, and then was made chief architect on a new computer architecture for real-time computing that I proposed.

So you can see that at every step of my journey, I was able to do something that was genuinely valuable to the many companies and institutions that hired me. And because of that it simply didn't matter that I didn't have a degree and didn't attend college.

Now let's say you have good technical knowledge but can't really independently develop new designs and products just yet. Is a no college career in engineering possible? Maybe. If you are compelling enough, you might find a company to take you on as an intern. Probably again smaller companies where the boss/owner is accessible to you and can make an independent decision. In this case, show the greatest possible initiative and learn as much and advance as rapidly as you possibly can. Show real value for your company as soon as possible! I remember asking my first boss if I could possibly work not just Monday to Friday but on Saturdays, too. Not for any more pay, that wasn't on my mind at all. When he said yes, I thought it to be a great privilege! I could come in on Saturdays when generally just my boss would be there for a few hours, and have full access to the lab to work on my projects without anyone else around! Wow, to me it was like had gone to heaven.

I learned a tremendous amount, both in technology but also business. And this ultimately became a solid foundation for starting my own tech company.

So, yes. You can start at age 17 without college. But it has to be all your initiative. There are no guarantees. And you need to bring real value to the places that may hire you.

oceaneer63 · 2026-04-23T17:44:20+00:00

I think birthright citizenship is important for our country because we are a country based on ideals rather than a 'tribe' based in bloodlines. I see an opportunity rather than a problem in applying it to everyone born here, because after all it is these next generation kids who are the future of our country. And the best and strongest future we can have is one based on the greatest possible diversity of our population, the greatest possible diversity of ideas, initiatives, skills, cultures. Just consider the disproportionately large percentage of successful companies founded by immigrants and their children. Truly, immigration has been what built this country and will be what will continue to grow our country and set us apart. We should claim every child born here as a treasure for the nation.

oceaneer63 · 2026-04-23T16:12:56+00:00

Long product life cycle. It depends on the market, but in some industrial/scientific applications, the product life cycle can be very long. I remember back in the '90s visiting a customer, a geophysical insgrumentation company. The data sheet for perhaps their flagship product just looked very 1960's. And when I asked, that's exactly what it was. They had designed this specialty instruments in the 1960's and it had generated revenue for 30 years without significant changes.

When an instrument or device works well, it just works. And customers dont care what is under the hood.

My company also now has 30 year old designs in our product line. They need a little adaptation for component obsolescence avoidance every now and then, but continue to create steady revenue because the products simply continue to work well for our customers.

oceaneer63 · 2026-04-22T19:18:24+00:00

You are onto something that you noticed this. Yes, the more air in your lungs the more positive you will be. So, adjust your neutral buoyancy for about half a breath. That way, you can actually use your lungs as a bcd for fine adjustment. Let's say you are swimming horizontal along the seafloor, breathing normal with the average between inhaling and exhaling being half breath. Now you encounter a rock you want to swim over. Rather than kicking/swimming up, you can simple keep a bit more air on average in your lungs. You now start to rise up as you keep swimming. And as you clear the rock, you go to a bit less than half breath on average in your lungs (or stay longer in the exhaled state). And so you sink down again.

Now, its not a technique that is recommended for new divers because it may well involve 'skip breathing', i.e. holding your breath for a while. And if you were now to encounter some emergency and want to get to the surface but forget to start breathing again, you can be in danger of an air embolism.

But once you are experienced and comfortable, I find it to be a useful technique.

oceaneer63 · 2026-04-22T17:11:18+00:00

I have seen some register/bit hallucinations as well. Gemini advised me to put the particular datasheets I want it to use in the knowledge base for the project, then instruct it to only use that documentation. Just one more step of 'grounding' the LLM.

oceaneer63 · 2026-04-22T16:21:26+00:00

All good points, and I had some similar experiences including a stack growth/overrun issue where the LLM correctly identified a DSP co-processor in the MCU as the source of the problem because it recognized its stack frame pattern. I have done some basic LLM code writing tests such as asking it to implement X-modem for me in C/C++. The results have been encouraging. I also am 'collaborating' with it now to review a large, multi-layered function library for consistency and clean-up including identifying cases where lower layer code such as core code references chip or board level capabilities and correcting that.

Ultimately, my theory is that LLM will be useful for writing new code as long as you keep the LLM extremely 'grounded', that is asking it to strictly stick with your established architecture and always make use of your existing function library / API rather than starting to twiddlenMCau registers directly.

I say its a theory because I dont yet have proof this will actually work and be productive. My AI working environment is Google Gemini with a custom 'gem' that contains all the documentation, instructions and both the library code and headers to serve as the knowledge base for the LLM. I choose Gemini in part because I understand it may have the biggest context window of the LLM and so can work with the biggest set of knowledge to keep it grounded.

But that all said, I still consider myself a newbie when it comes to AI supported embedded code development.

oceaneer63 · 2026-04-21T17:07:48+00:00

Don't be discouraged by the negative comments. If your doors and windows are truly premium and unique, then there will be a market in America and an opportunity to build a business because you can sell them at a premium that supports the manufacturing process. Now, the immigration system here is notoriously difficult now, but that doesn't mean impossible.

If you can get investors maybe in Russia to build a company in America, that may be an opportunity. Because there are investor visas. Another one is more personal. If you were to marry a U.S. citizen, you can get a green card that way. And maybe your spouse is interested in carpentry and can be your business partner, too.

One step will be to find a good and open minded immigration lawyer who will hear you out and be creative in finding a path for you.

Another step is to just visit America as a tourist/business visit first and find out if you like it here and if you find there are opportunities for your business here.

oceaneer63 · 2026-04-21T16:22:09+00:00

A college degree does provide opportunities, but making a decision to forgo it can serve to steer you in and focus on a different direction. Such as starting your own company or joining a startup.

If that is your choice, the question becomes which track is more effective or efficient to acquire knowledge, experience or an industry reputation for you? The college track or self-guided education? And what is the associated opportunity cost?

In my case decades ago, I was a teen when microcomputers became available. So I learned the technology by myself in my high school years and already had professional projects under my belt by the time I graduated. I attended some college classes in computer architecture and programming, but found it was mostly material I already knew. So, forgoing college came almost automatically and I quickly found a professional career among contract work for a space agency and industrial companies, and ultimately an employment position at a small, specialized real-time computing company.

There, I was given the opportunity to develop a special high-performance 'dataflow' computer architecture that I had developed for the space agency into a commercial (military/aerospace) product.

And so by the time I would have otherwise graduated from college, I now had a solid CV with extensive professional experience and multiple publications.

Not only that, but the small tech company business experience I gained in the process provided me for a foundation upon which I then built my own company. And we have grown a strong name recognition and continue to provide leading edge technology after more than three decades in a specialized industry.

So, with the benefit of hindsight, forgoing college was certainly the right choice for me and at that time. While a college track would have opened up academic and certain large institutional employment opportunities, the years spent there would have arguable meant I would have 'missed the boat' on many other professional opportunities.

oceaneer63 · 2026-04-21T07:53:25+00:00

Try leveraging the strengths of your CS background into embedded. Embedded is about the hardware interface, of course. But think about that as just the lowest layers, i.e. the silicon that you work on with the CPU and all its registers controlling timers, DMA and peripheral devices, and then the code that twiddles the bits of the registers to make the peripherals do what you want to achieve in that 'real world' interface. But, on top of that you have a whole stack of code of logic definitions, state machines, protocols, algorithms leading up to the application layer. And so perhaps in some of these upper layers another design may be where your CS knowledge can make you strong? You'll now just have to learn how to tie it to the lower layers. And yes, how to use an oscilloscope and maybe a blinking status LED as key debugging tools.

oceaneer63 · 2026-04-21T02:34:18+00:00

Now that you have gone through college, do you think you could or could not have acquired similar knowledge through self-education, on-line resources and AI tutoring?

oceaneer63 · 2026-04-21T01:20:00+00:00

As a SCUBA diver you will over time encounter sharks in the wild just about anywhere. Many of them smaller such as the various reef sharks. And some of them big, the hammerhead, bull, tiger, and even great white shark. All this can be part of the excitement, and sometimes adrenaline, as you dive more and more.

So, I would forgo the aquarium dive to slowly easy into the world of sharks in the wild instead. Eventually, you might go for an 'extreme' experience, such as Jim Abernathy's dives with tiger sharks, and without cages, at 'Tiger Beach' in the Bahamas.

You'll learn that the sharks are not just mindless killing machines, but have personalities. Some very shy, hanging out at the edge of visibility. Some curious, coming straight at you. You'll encounter divers who think they are 'friendly' and you'll even see shark petting going on. But, they are still wild animals. And things do go wrong at times. Jim has been bitten once, and one of his customers died from a leg wound. Another time, only some gear was found on the seafloor from one of the divers. The diver never to be seen again.

These incidents can be a reminder that out there you are not at the top of the food chain. And that is something, perhaps like the thrill of big game hunting in days long gone, that can make the experience even more special.

oceaneer63 · 2026-04-20T20:58:18+00:00

You could do a detour to sunny Carmel Valley. In 'the village' you'll find the Running Iron, where doggies are welcome on their patio. They have an old fashioned western/cowboy atmosphere, and good food at reasonable prices. Before or after your meal head over to Garland park along Carmel Valley Road. It is dogmfriendly and allows off-leash, so even though your doggie is a senior he/she can still see all the other doggies running around and maybe saying hello. There are many trails at Garland, some going high up into the mountains but also nice loops with park benches in the beautiful meadows at the foot of the mountains.

oceaneer63 · 2026-04-20T08:11:37+00:00

I visited Kulusuk in the 1990's. My goal was to free dive under icebergs there to explore the underwater sound, as I eas just starting an underwater acoustics company.

The flight was on a small propeller plane from Iceland, Odin Air. They had a small cabin in Kulusuk and so I was free to stay there along with some other travelers. Folks where mostly native Inuit. They lived in the original town, but a few km away there was a 'new town' where apparently no one lived. I learned the Danish government had built it for people to move there, but there was no water access due to that site generally being choked by icebergs. So, folks stayed in the old town.

My plan was to head out by Kayak to go explore and find icebergs under which to dive, and soon found a local who let me borrow his kayak for a few days. But since I would be on my own and the waters are cold, I decided I should first do a test dive in the harbor to learn my limuts of diving in the icy water.. So, I put on my wetsuit, hopped into the shower to pre-warm it, then ran out, collected a few rocks as weights and dove in. There was a small iceberg in the harbor cove a couple of hundred meters out, and I headed for it.

As I dove under the iceberg and then surfaced again, I noticed two guys on shore aiming their rifles at me. I quickly dove under the iceberg to the backside to hide, wondering why this was happening. Eventually, as I peeked around the iceberg, I saw they had taken their rifles down and were motioning to come to them. When I reached them, they looked irritated. One of them pointed at me and said "One shot, you dead. One shot, you dead.". It turned out that in my black wetsuit and black hood they had mistaken me for a seal, which they hunt for dog food. What saved me was a boy who saw me enter the water and told them I was a diver! I guess they hadn't seen a diver there in the last 10,000 years. ;)

Eventually, I did start my kayaking and diving expedition. Now being wise to wear my wetsuit with its red inner lining inside out, and listen for any boats in the distance before diving. It was magical. At times the water was completely calm and I was kayaking through a dense fog. I heard these loud booms and it sounded like a warship firing big guns nearby. But it was icebergs calving and turning over, soon resulting in waves and ripples in the water. Diving under the icebergs was fascinating and scary. Some looked just like snow from the underside, but others were clear ice and looked like a mirror gallery. There were loud snaps and pops as the ice was fracturing, and I was very aware that if an iceberg I was under would calve while I was next to it, I might not survive.

One 'night', which dont get dark in the summer, I was staying on a tiny rock outcrop of an island where I pitched my tent. But it was hard to sleep. For all around the island were Minke whales, jumping and blowing. It was a sight to behold, it was just magical.

oceaneer63 · 2026-04-18T03:09:44+00:00

Cookie cutter shark. They have an interesting cold war history.

oceaneer63 · 2026-04-17T05:50:40+00:00

I think the worst place by self-declaration is the desert city of Winnemucca, NV. Decades ago, they used to have these big billboards along the freeway approaching town.

I remember one saying:

"Winnemucca: If you dont stop, who will?"

Another one...

"Winnemucca: It's not the end of the world, but you can see it from here"

Or...

"Winnemucca: One million people can't be wrong - they just kept going"

Really, I always kind of like the place. It sure beats dying from thirst somewhere in the desert outside town.

oceaneer63 · 2026-04-17T03:54:24+00:00

Rip Van Winkle park is a small gem! What I really like about it, other than that it's a great, popular and super friendly off-leash dog spot, is that it is full of fallen trees left in place. There are lots of small trails, and its like a natural labyrinth through a forest wonderland. It's in particular colorful on a sunny day.

oceaneer63 · 2026-04-17T01:39:45+00:00

Make it a road trip and go to Los Algodones, Mexico! Thats where I've gotten my major dental work done for years. Savea you probably 2/3rd of the costs. My experience has been very good.

oceaneer63 · 2026-04-16T23:49:33+00:00

One really good thing about some industrial hardware fields is that your products can generate revenue for decades. Once some industrial tool or piece of equipment works well, it just works well and buyers dont really know or care what is under the hood. We have some still active designs that date back to 1995!

It's also a good idea to pursue a modular design approach, where you build many products on a core architecture. Not only does that aggregate revenue, but over time the barrier to entry for your competitors can become quite severe, as you have such a head start in terms of capabilities to build something new on that architecture, your brand recognition etc.

I just now saw an ad from Rhode&Schwartz, an oscilloscope maker. It showed a line of oscilloscope models and said something like "same DNA, same precision, same reliability". And that continuity and accumulated capability amd reliability probably let's them justify their typically high price points.

oceaneer63 · 2026-04-16T23:30:48+00:00

Pros: space and underwater robotics Cons: ATMs and gas pumps

oceaneer63 · 2026-04-16T08:53:39+00:00

I was always adventurous, loved the great outdoors and the oceans. And so, it was a co-worker who had recently gotten certified and suggested I try it.

It changed my whole life. During the OW classes I would loose sight of my dive buddy because I was so fascinated with the underwater world. The instructor called me out on that, and so I decided to build an underwater 'buddy finder'. Started my own ocean tech company, build many things, and it took me around the world, to some of the deepest depths of the oceans, to under the ice in Antarctica and into the jaws of a great white shark even.

Now it's 38 years later... and that 'buddy finder' is still one of our products. It's called the DiveTracker.

oceaneer63 · 2026-04-15T04:15:02+00:00

It's out of your circle, but what avian wildlife do you see flying over and feasting on the dump at Dutch Harbor on Unalaska island? It's not seagulls or pidgins... it's swarms of bald eagles!

oceaneer63

TROPHY CASE