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WEEK 30 2011

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First Post, 17 March 2002

Nine Years Ago, This Week, 2002

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Two Years Ago, This Week, 2009

One Year Ago, This Week, 2010

Saturday 30 July 2011

Saturday - scrambled around for several hours in the morning, getting organinzed, before heading north tomorrow. Went over my friends place for a nice dip in their solar heated pool in the eveining. Very nice.

Miserable hot and humid weather. It was in the 80's and about 100% humidity inside my house. The cats didn't seem to particularly mind, so that's good to know.

Ok, while searching for used kitchen cabinets I took a quick peek in the 'boats' section of Craigslist, and saw a Drascombe Lugger for $5800. This is the boat that Webb Chiles sailed singlehandedly 3/4 of the way around the world (and the hard parts too, the Atlantic would have been a cinch for him).

A Drascombe Lugger. Would any sane person sail across the Pacific, Indian, Tasmainian,
and Mediterrean seas in one of these? Alone, without GPS, without a radio?

Friday 29 July 2011

Friday - Thinking of heading up to Martinez for some work on the old house. I had an email from a brother saying that they'd done some stuff. I'm feeling a little better, but not great.

And, to be honest, I don't really want to go. It's a long tiring drive, and it'll be a hot week of work. On the other hand, I'd like the place to be done, except for the rear retaining walls, by the time of the big work party at the end of the month. I've free time right now, so it's that or go sailing. I have a yen to visit Santa Catalina, but I suppose I can sail anytime, entire weeks free are going to be (hopefully) rare.

I guess I'll see how I feel in the morning.

Webb Chiles did his two open boat journeys back in the late 1970's and 1980's; 2006's #44 Open Boat: Alone Across the Pacific and this years #85 The Ocean Waits. In an 18' open boat (the yawl Chidioch Tichborne) he sailed most of the way around the world, lost his first boat during a bizarre imprisonment in Saudi Arabia, got another of the same type and continued on to the Azores. There, while he was away on some business, the second boat was damaged in a storm and most of his gear stolen, and he ended the voyage. But it was, despite not finishing a circumnavigation, probably the greatest open boat journey of all time. He talks about Bligh, and refers to him as the "second greatest small boat sailor". Heh. A bit obnoxious, but probably close to the truth.

I see that I missed noting another book, again read over the 4th of July vacation and work up north; #86 being Fifth Circle, The Passage Log, by Webb Chiles. It's a story of his around the world trip in a sailboat, when he was in his late 60's. It's not much of a book as such, but consists mainly of entries from his logbook and some expansion in certain places of what was going on. Sometimes you are just left wondering what happened to his leg, to his back at the airport, to his old boat. I found it oddly soothing reading for some reason.

This isn't in a small open boat, but a larger more commodious craft, but it's still quite a journey, if not quite up to his single-handed non-stop circumnavigation recounted in this years 2011 #54 Storm Passage: Alone Around Cape Horn. That takes place in the mid-late 1970's I think, in a yacht called Resurgam.

He's written a couple of other books that I haven't read. Resurgam apparently sank under him at some point, and his boat in the last book is the Hawke of Tuonela.

It's a bit confusing above, but in chronological order, I'd guess the books would be:

Open Boat: Alone Across the Pacific
The Ocean Waits
Storm Passage: Alone Around Cape Horn
A Single Wave: Stories of Storms and Survival
Return to the Sea.
Fifth Circle, The Passage Log

Phoebe lucking under a chair in the yard

Phoebe, hanging out, under a chair in the yard.

Thursday 28 July 2011

Thursday - Sick indeed. Bah.

Miserably hot, and a bit humid, which meant that the swamp cooler was only able to keep the indoor temperature at about 75-80F. Mostly just laid about, napped and read.

Caught up on the TIVO a bit more, and watched a couple of NetFlix DVD's that turned up in the mail. The Mentalist, Season I. I'm temped to renew the disk stuff, but really I don't use it enough to make it worth my while. Disks generally just sit for weeks or months, until I watch them or send them back out of a desire to neaten the stereo center shelf.

The DVD started up in black and white. It took me a few minutes to realize there was a problem, I just assumed it to be a flashback scene, which are often presented that way. Then, when it was clear that there was a problem, I looked for similar problems on the internet. Easy fix, it just meant the sVideo cable wasn't plugged in all that way. I pushed it in all the way, and the problem went away. The only other issue is that the sound is different. When someone is used to the rather tinny built-in speakers on the old 27" TV the sound through the stereo system is almost distractingly better.

While cleaning up a bit in the garage I ran across my backup swamp cooler pump, it's 1/140th of a horsepower. Not much electrical draw there.

I did drive some friends to the train station. They're heading north for a couple of days and their boy, a first grader, is crazy about trains...

Duckie! Duckie! Let's be friends!

Wednesday 27 July 2011

Wednesday - Coming down with something. Not fair - I already had some sort of stomach flu thing earlier this month. But that little tickle in the throat is getting worse...

Mostly just read, and easy stuff at that. From Project Gutenberg, Book #82 was Gods of Mars, and #83 was Warlord of Mars, and #84 was Thuvia, Maid of Mars.

There are actually ten books in the Mars (Barsoom) series, all probably read when I was in my teens, but not really interesting enough to read again. If I stay sick and bored, maybe.

Tuesday 26 July 2011

Tuesday - Preliminary results for the Lancaster house power usage:

Item	Watts	kWhr/Month
House Base (clocks, A/V system on standby, no Fridge)	83	60
U/S UPS	6	4
D/S UPS	81	58
Office Laptop, Radio, Ext Monitor (stndby)	9	7
Removed Stereo Components	10	7
Swamp Cooler (low)	320	231 (140@60% duty)
		Total=367 kWhr

What stands out first is that the downstairs UPS, which only runs a small desk light and the rarely used old Win2k desktop & monitor is a thief. The number shown is for the no-load condition, and is equal to base number the entire house. Thief, thief, thief! APC! We hates it forever! The UPS upstairs, again with no-load, only uses 4 Watts.

The swamp cooler pulls a fair amount. I think it's a half horse motor for the fan, running at half power, and then a little 1/3hp water pump. The kWhr are for a 100% monthly duty cycle, it's probably really somewhere in excess of 50%, so maybe it's more like 140-150kWhr.

SCE's bill for June was 425kWh, or 13.71kWhr/day. Last year was 15.27 and the year before that 12.45.

Obviously things like the computers (on), lights (on), A/V system (on), coffee pot and toaster make up the difference.

I have already saved 65kWhr, just by unplugging a couple of things. Had I done this at the beginning of June, for which my total bill for last month was $54, I would have saved about $9. Not much, but it's free money...

You know, I've never really looked at the electric bill before. It's a bit confusing. I suspect that the way things are tiered that I'm really screwed in the wintertime, with a much smaller power allowance.

All this started with me looking for the little 5W trickle charger. The cigarette lighter plugin for the panel turned up (in the miscellaneous electronics box) so now the Probe is parked in front of the house, and will hopefully keep reasonably charged. Particularly if I use it, rather than the Explorer, for day to day errands.

Went by the doctor and had a thing cut off my right arm today. Not cancer, thankfully, just a ... thing. I admit to being a bit worried beforehand.

Monday 25 July 2011

Monday - So, fiddling around with trying to save electricity. One of the first things was to turn off an UPS that isn't actually running things. Kind of scary numbers: I estimate it was pulling 13.5kwhr a month. Wow. Then I removed the old VHS, cassette player and CD player from the stereo cabinet - but forgot to do a before/after check. Well, I can plug them in on standby later and get a number. Cable, Roku and DVD still work, but as I thought, I had to keep the stereo amplifier to get sound out of the DVD player.

Since I don't have a Kill A-Watt meter I have to test power usage by going outside and timing the 7.2 Watt dial's rotation. In 100F temperatures. The less power I use the longer this takes.

On the other hand, all these watts are no longer counter acting the air conditioner, which is a nice bonus.

The cable modem has always tended to overheat, so I took the opportunity to place it outside the stereo cabinet on a shelf. In the cooler air it may be more reliable. And I can fit all my CD's inside the cabinet now, which allows a bit more order to the room. I'll have to pry the door open on the CD changer, to see if there is anything in it, before tossing.

Last night, about 3am, there was a visitor. I'm awoke by a dreadful caterwauling. Phoebe, sleeping next to me, jumps up and heads downstairs. Then I hear the two cats fighting down there. So, I get up in my underwear, head downstairs, and check: yep, another cat outside at the patio doors, freaking my cats out. So I turn on the sprinklers outside, check Phoebe for blood (fortunately none: his claws are trimmed but Riley's aren't), and go back to bed.

In the morning there were little tufts of poor Phoebe's fur all over the family room. Fortunately he's a true beta cat and doesn't seem to hold any grudge against alpha cat, Riley.

Riley and Phoebe (the spastic kitten), 4 July 2001.

Book #81 was Drood, by Dan Simmons. It was long, and was an interesting view into the life of Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens. I didn't know they were friends. As a novel it was just OK and very long at 771 pages. Can you say "unreliable narrator"? Which, of course, ties in with Wilkie Collins' The Moonstone (#33, 2009). But kind of a letdown. I suspect that if I were more familiar with Dickens and Collins I'd get more out of it. I suppose I'd better read Dicken's unfinished last novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, anyway.

Sunday 24 July 2011

Sunday - The weather has turned HOT. It was probably in the high 90's, and the humidity is starting to creep up, which affects the performance of the swamp cooler. So it goes.

I did a bit of cleaning in the garage, charged the battery in the Probe, and did a bit of driving and shopping around town. I was actually looking for a solar charger for the Probe, one that plugs into the cigarette lighter, but couldn't find it. If I could find the attachment for the charger sitting on the lawn tractor I could use that, but despite cleaning, I haven't found it. Oddly it seems that Harbor Freight, Target and Walmart don't carry the item.

I was pretty tired after moving all the bricks, hands aching quite a bit, and didn't do much on Sunday. I really hadn't recovered from the work up at my parent's place, the old tendinitis/carpal tunnel kicking in. I did put rose food/poison around the Vinca's in the front, where the pill bugs have eaten six plants in the last couple of weeks. Apparently they are resistant to most everything, those little roly poly devils.

I made my hands ache more by computer work: backing up the pictures to an external drive, updating the blog, writing the 4th of July pics to a couple of DVDs, and a couple of other computer things. I really need to declare Sundays an internet free day. Then again, it was so hot that there wasn't much else to do.

I did finish #79 The Hot Gate, by John Ringo. This was the sequel to Live Free or Die and Citadel, but didn't break much in the way of new ground. But it's actual Space Opera, unlike Leviathan Wakes.

Book #80 was A Princess of Mars, by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Not as bad as I expected, it'd make a pretty good movie. I was impelled to read it for the first time in decades after seeing the trailer for Disney's John Carter, and learning that it (and it's sequels) were available for free at Project Gutenberg. I hadn't actually downloaded non-Kindle-site content before, but it was an easy download and transfer via the USB cable. I was prepared to change the book name, from the Gutenberg alphanumeric gobbledygook to the correct name, but the Kindle automatically shows the corrrect title.

Picture of the Week

Photo Notes: Car and Convex Mirror, Cayucos Ca., 2011.

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