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WEEK 4 2007

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Saturday 27 January 2007

Saturday - after fooling about at the house I went down to the boat. I was hoping for good sailing, but it was pouring rain. I need to get some decent foul weather gear I guess. So I fooled around on the boat for a bit, but wasn't very productive.

I had planned to go down on Friday, but put it off and hoped for a change in the weather, with no luck. Oh well. 


Book #5 was Sea Change, by Peter Nichols. It was OK - I enjoyed reading the sea parts, and the rebuilding of the old 'Toad'. And of course the story of the Toad's loss was interesting. The problems with Nichol's marriage somewhat less so...

Friday 26 January 2007

Friday - I'm trying to think of what I actually did today, and coming up short. Talked to people I guess. Started a Pro/E tutorial, again. Thought about a GVT and flutter issue. Tried to help with the Algebra, but it turns out to be an online course that required Windows, Windows Explorer, and an administratively installed plug-in, and finding a 'proctor' for her tests, none of which the student had. She's thinking of dropping already, and honestly, I don't blame her. Too many hoops to jump through.


I'm not feeling creative tonight, but here are some Nor'Sea 27 blogs:



x
Wanted: two walks.

Thursday 25 January  2007

Thursday - not too much going on. Just a lot of meetings and such, instead of real work.


In a book I'm reading, a sailing story, the author mentions missing a tack at the narrow entrance to a West Indies lagoon. His old cutter runs into the side of the island, which is covered in mangroves. An old islander, walking along the shore path, is startled by the sudden appearance of the bowsprit a foot from his head and says, in a thick island accent:.

"Mon,you want to be turning de boat before you get dis far."

Wednesday 24 January 2007

Wednesday - well, I did pass the security test. I called someone who had taken it, who called someone else, who called a third person, who knew how to access your online profile. Yeah, it's that easy. While I was doing it someone came up to me and said "how do you figure out if you've passed the test?". Not a great interface. I should mention that it required a user name and a password to take, because I suppose, people were beating down the doors trying to take it.

Tutored someone in Algebra for an hour or so, after work.

Tuesday 23 January 2007

Tuesday - woke up early, so I got into work early. Spent a bunch of time filling out a security questionnaire. I've already answered the questions, numerous times, over many years, but there is apparently a regulation stating that an update is due. So now it's on a bad web page, clumsily and stupidly written. Great. Then I took an online IT security course - and it lost my grade, apparently (95%). Bah. Another poorly designed interface - a funky Java program - maybe NASA only pays enough to get the programmers' that can't get a job in Silicon Valley?

Then there was a lot of Safety Day stuff going on. Actually the presentation on train/traffic crossing accidents was pretty interesting. A train has an 'accident' every two hours in this country. The presenter was a former engineer who has hit his fair share of cars, trucks and pedestrians, so it had a ring of truth to it. Someone asked him what the most dangerous crossing in the valley was - his reply was that the crossings were fine, it was the drivers that had issues. They had several videos of cars, buses, bicyclists and pedestrians getting whacked. Well, almost, they always cut away just before the actual impact. The presenter mentioned that it was a lot 'cleaner' that way. I would suppose so.


It looks like some of the help I was hoping for won't materialize. Bah. But Quiet Spike is winding down - I can handle two projects, but three had me really maxed out.

I was looking around for the AISC Manual of Steel Construction: Allowable Stress Design, and it turns out we have one in the branch. Hurray! It's much too expensive to buy myself. It should help a lot with some design issues that I want to clear up. My texts have bits of it, but you really need the real McCoy to do the more complicated design stuff.


The Instapundit on live blogging the SOTU address in HD:

And actually, HD is pretty kind to Bush, but not so kind to Nancy Pelosi, John McCain, or John Kerry. Cheney, strangely, looks exactly the same. Mike Chertoff looks sickly.

 Monday 22 January 2007

Monday - I installed Flash on the new system, since so many pages now want it. I was reluctant, but it's been OK. I can, for instance, watch YouTube now.

Dad says that my brother M has set up the new TV stand. Yay! Hopefully my other brother will install all the A/V components so that it's all done next time I visit :-)

Some b**tard out there is spoofing my domain name in spamming. Not my actual account, but rather spoofing the domain mail so that other peoples mail filters send their reject notices to non-existent accounts at my actual domain. It's called backscatter, and there isn't much I can do about it, according to the hosting company. I've fixed it so that I don't see it and it doesn't affect me, but the jerk is still out there, pretending to be me while annoying people.

Sunday 21 January 2006

Sunday - Early in the morning I heard dogs barking, then the distinctive sound of hot air balloons - that is, the sound of their burners. The balloon proper doesn't make much noise.

Lunch at Famous Dave's. I had the brisket, and it was pretty good - I didn't bother with dinner.

Wow. A couple of really good playoff games.


Picture of the Week
hot air balloon

Photo Notes: A hot air balloon, in the process of becoming.

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