Travels and Thoughts

Travels and Images

WEEK 28 2006

Last Week- Sun- Mon- Tue- Wed- Thur- Fri- Sat- Next Week

Picture of the Week

MAIN PAGE

Lancaster Weather NOAA

Lancaster WeatherUnderground

First Post, 17 March 2002

Four Years Ago, This Week, 2002

Three Years Ago, this week, 2003

Two Years Ago, This Week, 2004

A Year Ago, This Week, 2005

Weekly Picture Archive

Saturday 15 July 2006

Saturday - down to Oxnard to check on the boat. It's hard to get a report out of the yard folk, so I went down to inspect the pintles and gudgeons on the rudder. These had some corrosion, so I had them "ground" down to bare metal. There is some material loss, but they looked reasonably intact.

It was a family members' birthday, so I called and wished them a Happy Birthday. I wish I could have been there, but I've been out of town for the last month of weekends, and chores have been building up while leave time has dropped to zero. After working late Friday I stayed up late, taking care of things, and then started up early in the morning. Bills, yard plumbing, dishes, oil changes - you name it. Despite my frantic efforts I didn't even leave the house for Oxnard until 2:00, and didn't arrive (massive traffic) until 4:30.

So my only boat accomplishments were to look at the rudder hinges (they seem OK, but I'll try to talk to the yard again Monday) and to replace the padlocks on the companionway hatches with new, keyed alike, padlocks. Now I've a key, the yard dogs have a key, and my friend in Oxnard has a key. He's local, and it's nice to have someone trustworthy nearby in case of an emergency...

Friday 14 July 2006

Friday - a weird thing. Somehow the battery went dead in my PDA/phone the other day. After charging it was re-initialized to factory settings, all the stuff saved on it was gone. I had used the Xbackup program in March, and ran that, hoping to get some addresses and stuff back. To my surprise I had reinstated all the phone stuff, including much newer stuff. Pictures and such, memo's, they're gone - but numbers and such from last week are still there. So, that's something.

It was hot today, 106F. I drove the Probe into work just after noon, because of some meetings in town. It started to overheat a bit - maybe 15-20F over normal temps. So I turned off the air conditioning and drove slower, and that got me to work. It was OK traveling west on the way home, into the 10mph prevailing wind, but then started to overheat on the freeway heading south. The temperature really hadn't dropped much by 6:00pm.

I stopped at Carl's Jr. for dinner last night, and saw this sign: "Are ATM machine he's all not working. Sorry for the inconvenience manager". 'Inconvenience' is spelled correctly.

Thursday 13 July 2006

Thursday - went to a couple of meetings. One on the CEV, that was sort of interesting, and another on my current project, not quite so interesting. Future work always seems more interesting that the drudgery one is engaged up at the minute.

The spreadsheet is looking better. The numbers are now at least "ballpark", but I hope to get them better than that.

Wednesday 12 July 2006

Wednesday - progress, of a sort...

Book #29 is The Radioactive Redhead, a detective story set in the future. OK, for it's genre.

Tuesday 11 July 2006

Tuesday - back at work. Tired. Trying to get the inertial loads calculated. The spreadsheet given me isn't quite right, and my spreadsheet skills are somewhat atrophied. Improving rapidly however: I can now change background colors and do "conditional formatting".

"What's that? No-one cares how it looks? They just want answers? Durn."

Monday 10 July 2006

Monday - back at work.

Sunday 9 July 2006

Sunday - on the road at 2 pm, back to Lancaster. Lot's of cars, not too many trucks. A high of 108F going down the valley, never dropping below 102F. As I neared the Grapevine on the I-5 there were stop lights and stopped cars on the freeway ahead. I could also see clouds of smoke in the distance, rising from the pass that the road takes - apparently a grass fire (white colored smoke) that was closing the road.

Fortunately I was able to exit easily, turn around, and head north on the 99, to the 223 through Arvin, to the 58, thence to the 14 and home. But it took time. There were lots of trucks on the 58 - I guess they heard the news on CB and had diverted long before I did.

Picture of the Week

Photo Notes: How much wood would a wood turner turn, if a wood turner were to turn wood?

Last Week- Sun- Mon- Tue- Wed- Thur- Fri- Sat- Next Week