WEEK 30 2010
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First Post,
17 March 2002
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Eight Years
Ago, This Week, 2002 |
Seven Years
Ago, This Week, 2003 |
Six Years
Ago, this
week, 2004 |
Five
Years Ago, this week, 2005 |
Four Years
Ago, This Week, 2006
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Three Years
Ago, This Week, 2007
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Two Years
Ago, This Week, 2008
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One Year
Ago,
This Week, 2009
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Saturday - I told the restaurant
management that I'd be moving to the new slip, and moved all the gear
from my dock box over. There wasn't too much - I cleared a lot of it
out in the last few weeks.
Then it was back to Lancaster. Despite fires to the north and south in
the last couple of weeks the town, and my home, was intact. And warm.
It's been overcast and damp in Ventura, but it was sunny and in the
90's in Lancaster.
Friday
- No work at the client's office - their server is offline. So it goes,
midday on a workday. Their IT department is not very impressive, but it
is a small organization, perhaps they don't pay for the overtime to do
it outside of normal office hours.
I have complained, at length, about the noise from the apartments near
my boat slip. Because of the recession some slips opened up well away
from the apartments, but nearer to the restaurant. The restaurant, it
turns out, is CLOSED, so I made a trial at getting in/out of the slips
there.
They gap between the separate docks is perhaps sixty feet. I wasn't
sure I could turn the full keel NorSea sharply enough, at a very low
speed, to get in, but it turned out to be fairly straight forward. I
practiced on my original slip, with lots of room, until I though I
could do it for real. Use about 750 RPM, start the turn with a helm
hard over about three slips early - 50' perhaps - go to neutral just
after starting the turn, a bit of reverse when lined up, and you are in.
After a few trials, in and out, I sailed out to Gloria, an oil well
platform, and back. It was nice to get outside the breakwater again,
though it's been long enough that I fouled up several basic maneuvers
(right in front of a Coast Guard Cutter, too). But, like riding a bike,
it comes back to you, and it was a lot of fun crashing about in the
afternoon breeze. A small pod of dolphins dived under the boat at one
point, which was neat.
I tied up at the new slip, rinsed the deck and sails, and the evening
was relatively quiet - a bit of noise from a restaurant across the
water, but not bad. Far better than the barking dogs and drunks in the
slip back near the apartments!
Thursday 29 July 2010
Thursday
- working on this and that, not a lot to say.
My apple tree in Lancaster has its fruit is infected with, apparently,
Codling Moths. The apples have bugs in them, and are rotting and
falling off the tree before it even ripens. These are the classic "worm
in the apple" pests. Bah. I'll have to figure out how to protect the
tree for next year.
Book #52 was The Fuller Memeorandom,
by Charles Stross. This is another in his "Laundry" series, and
written/plotted much the same as the others. We learn more about Bob
(the protagonist) and his boos, Angleton (too much, IMHO, a mystery is
more fun left mysterious), and the impending invasion of horrors from
beyond time-and-space is (temporarily) thwarted.
Fun, though as with most British authors, he can't help taking
swipes at the United States and its non-lefty attributes. It is
odd, given the Orwellian & fascist police state that Britain is
becoming, but that is a lefty for you. Sauce for the goose is not the
same as sauce for the gander.
This book was a Kindle download, to the app on my Motorola Droid. You
can, it turns out, use a Droid to read a book. It's slow, but once you
get used to the paragraph-at-a-time view and the tap to page it's
almost like reading a paperback.
Wednesday 28 July
2010
Wednesday
- down to work. I left late, and ran into several slowdowns and traffic
stops on the freeways. The last was a half hour stop, engine off, while
firefighters cleared a car fire on the freeway ahead.
It was only a short ways ahead, and of course the thought that passes
through one's mind is "Why didn't I leave home two minutes earlier? I'd
have been past before the freeway was shut down."
But that's sort of an Appointment in Samarra
type of thought. Perhaps when the fire started the minivan swerved -
and I'd have been in that lane. Or perhaps I would have stopped to help
and been severely burned. Likely I would have been fine, but one never
knows...
Tuesday 27
July
2010
Tuesday
- did a bit of work at home, and smogged the Explorer. Still not
feeling 100%. I probably shouldn't have done all that work on Sun and
Mon. Oh well.
I had intended to change out the spark plugs, but after looking at the
stuff in the way on the right side of the engine, didn't. It's probably
not as bad as the old Pontiac's which called for removing the engine to
change the plug, but there is certainly a lot of stuff there. I am
going to take it in to the mechanic to get the cooling system flushed
anyway, and a new serpentine belt put on it, so I'll ask him to change
out the plugs at the same time. It's just about 200,000 miles, and time
for a little TLC.
Even without the new plugs it passed, though I should look at the
report to see by how much.
Later:
It passed with flying colors, actually. The worst reading was the NO, where it
measured 239 out of an allowable 761 at 25mph. Not too bad. At 15mph it
was only 93 out of an allowable 508.
Monday
26
July
2010
Monday
- finished moving the forty bags of sand and gravel out of the
explorer. My back hurts.
Sunday 25
July_2010
Sunday
- Feeling a bit better, did a selection of yard chores, including
buying a lot of base and sand for placing those pavers I bought a
couple of years ago.
Book #51 was
Blown
Away, by Herb Payson. This was an interesting and well written
story about a family sailing to the South Pacific in the late 1970's
and early 1980's. It's episodic - most of the book was originally
articles Herb sold to sailing magazines I suspect, but that adds a bit
to the charm. One can dip into the book at any point and laugh at
Herb's hapless antics. Herbs written several other books, I've read them (or parts of them) before.
