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WEEK 51 2004
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Saturday 18
December
2004
Saturday - well, the boat I didn't take is
going to the wreckers. Here is the email I received. Never to sail for
even a day.
Thanks for your concern. The boat is scheduled to be
picked up on 12/20 and hauled to the coast for scrap.
The trucker became available sooner than we thought,
so we decided to go for it.
Happy Holidays,
XXXXXXX
In other news, I saw this and I had to laugh:
Politics: It
all really just boils down to this:
Criminals:
Democrats: Give them a second chance.
Republicans: Give them the swift sword of death.
The poor:
Democrats: Give them some food.
Republicans: Give them the swift sword of death.
Endangered species:
Democrats: Give them protection.
Republicans: Give them the swift sword of death.
Dictators:
Democrats: Give them a way out.
Republicans: Give them the swift sword of death.
The uninsured:
Democrats: Give them health care.
Republicans: Give them the swift sword of death.
THE COST:
Democrats: $9,000,000,000,000,000,000
Republicans: $29.95 (cost of one sword)
[via tryingtogrok]
( The poster's
husband wrote about armor on vehicles in Iraq, and it is worth
reading as
well. The psychology of a soldier is something else...)
Friday 17 December
2004
Friday - it seems that
Microsoft might start to charge some some security tools. Slashdot has
a thread, starting with
from the rated-r-for-racket
dept.
rscrawford writes "CNN
reports that Microsoft
may charge extra for security software.
So first they edge their competition out of the browser market, then
they tie IE into the OS so tightly that a crash in IE can crash the
computer, and then they make IE so vulnerable that just using it is
hazardous to the typical computer's health, and now they want to CHARGE
users to fix it?"
but then refuting and confusing their own point with
MS includes a necessary tool for
free: "Unfair bundling! They're just trying to muscle everyone else out
of the market"
MS
charges a fee for a necessary tool: "Charging for this? What a ripoff!"
(even though their major competitors charge a fee for similar tools)
Yes, that money may have been
better spent in actually fixing the items that need these security tools,
but it seems like they can't win either way.
Basically your best bet might Apple or Linux at this point. Windows is
just a zombie, now, wandering about, looking for brains to eat.
Friday cat blogging - Phoebe at ease on the arm chair.
It's like living "Trouble with Tribbles" sometimes
What else? Not much. A quiet day. I've been taking my walk in the
morning, rather than the coolish evenings, and usually bring a camera.
I've been trying to get some shots of the ravens/crows/whatever in
flight. With the 3 megapixel Olympus and a 3x zoom I can handily do it
- but the bird portions of the shot are too small to be useful. The
Canon digicam has the 18x zoom, and even with the 1.2 megapixel imager
would work fine - except it uses LCD viewscreens, and the
contrast/resolution isn't good enough to distinguish a small object in
flight at low magnification, which is what you need to do before
zooming in. What I need is an non-magnifying optical sight, similar to
the Telrad finder used for telescopes. They have something similar for
handguns as well - where you can easily see the finders crosshairs
without putting your eye to the finder. I could put it in the hotshoe
on top.
Heck, the stealth fighter kept flying over and I couldn't focus on that when zoomed in.
Thursday 16
December 2004
Thursday
- Earthsea came to the SciFi
channel the other day. It was terrible. Terrible. Poor Kristin Kreuk,
to get suckered into it. Wooden dialog (old, petrified wood!).
Caricatures of soldiers, with chrome helmets. Mediocre FX. I actually
picked up something to read while it was on, so that I could see it but
still have a refuge from it's badness. Le Guin's own politics and
beliefs often messed up her later novels, but this was sheer butchery
of some of her earliest and best fantasy.
Check out the IMDB
forum. The first post was 'I feel
like crying', followed by pages of commentary. Well, sure, but anger and loathing
feel much better. Do these people have no life?
Hmmm. Clearly I need a rating system for this stuff. Archeoblog has cool
egyptian skulls. Tucows
has...well...cows. I need something to use for my truly insightful
criticism of books and movies. Not just thumbs up, or thumbs down, or
number of skulls. It should be cool, and attractive to those of a
scientific bent. Not just 'on a scale from zero to ten', but perhaps
also a negative axis. Hell, maybe even an imaginary axis. Quarternions
would probably be too much.
In other news, the Pearl Harbor memorial to the USS Arizona is sinking.
The Arizona itself is still leaking oil, sixty years after being sunk.
I believe there was some concern about a structural collapse or failure
possible allowing thousands of gallons of fuel out of her bunkers. I'm
not sure what they eventually decided to do.
A friend called, saying that he might be able to find space on a
friends vacant lot in Pasadena. But I think not.
Here is a Bruce Roberts 43A, for which someone is asking $18,000. Steel
boats tend to rot from the inside out so the lack of a cover on this
boat, in Florida no less, is probably not a good sign. Though it might
have been removed for the photo.
Click for
details
Here's an unfinished boat, but with Perkins diesel engine, on the hard
in Minnesota, for $15,000. Looks a lot like the boat I was offered. And
it has a trailer of some sort.
Click for
details
And a finished boat, in the water, in Texas for $29,000. Which puts to
rest my idea of finishing/refinishing/refurbishing old Robert's designs
for a profit.
Click for
details
Looking around on the internet, Robert's designs have a bit of a
reputation as slow boats, and the early 43's had serious helm balancing
issues (though correctable). Boat enthusiasts, like car nuts, tend to
be overly concerned
with speed however. Cruisers will spend 90% of their time at anchor.
Clawing
off a lee shore is probably the one time a knot or two extra speed
actually important. At which point you should probably be running the
auxiliary. Arguably you could hit a coral head or an awash steel cargo
container and survive the experience in one of these. And there is
always the issue of rogue waves breaking aboard - it has been suggested
that many otherwise seaworthy fiberglass boats will flex enough, when
impulsively burdened with tons of water, to separate the hull/deck seam.
Wednesday
15 December 2004
Wednesday - somebody from the city came by
this morning, to 'check off' the patio roof construction permit. I had
it
built quite a while ago, but this officious city has to have it's nose
in everything - and to get paid for the privilege of intruding into
my private life and personal property. The roof was fine - built by a
licensed contractor and all
designed and permitted out properly, but sheesh, I thought the
paperwork was
finished a year ago.
"You
don't race across the parking lot like that unless you want to kill
yourself. That, or he is the worst parallel parker in the world."
He should have read Dorothy Parker all the way through:
Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.
Tuesday 14
December
2004
Tuesday - I've an idea. I have spent a lot
of time on 'hold' lately, waiting to get through to a big bureaucracy's
representative, which task I normally handle by putting the phone onto
'speaker' and listening to Muzak. What we need is a voice mail option,
that allows the caller to listen to the music they prefer - be it
classical, rock, country, jazz or whatever, rather than the usual
horrendous drivel. I heard the Who's song 'Who
are You?' the other day, done with
violins. Good god.
I think I forgot to link to the main I'M
SORRY web page last week. There are a lot of very sorry people
there. Which means, I guess, that it's a sorry excuse of a place. Heh.
You know, it's funny, I was clicking on the "random" button, and I
suddenly had the urge to apologize myself, in
person, over dinner and some drinks. Or ride to
the rescue (it's the knight errant in me I guess). And be assured,
politeness means that I wouldn't ignore our northern
or southern
neighbors
gestures of friendship.
I had a dog just like this,
when I was a kid. But no dogs like this.
Or this.
Or this.
We did have a
poodle. I do have a black
cat. It's not a tabby.
Kittens are so
cute.
But not litter
boxes. Someone stirring up trouble
between the animal allies? Shouldn't the mice
lovers
be red staters? Horses
now? I do think that we need to draw the line, and stick to live
animals for these essays - no stuffed animals
or rubber
duckies.
I had an
etch-a-sketch too. As a small child though. Perhaps it belongs to
his kid?
But seriously, it's amazing
that it was even close...the
brutal disenfranchisement
helped, of course.
I shouldn't mock, I guess.
I'm sorry.
Monday
13 December 2004
Monday -Just working away on things.
Someone offered me a free
steel sailboat hull the other day, 38 feet long, welded and primed, but
a
hull only. No mast, no engine, no prop, winches, or interior of any
kind. Just primed hull. Intriguing, but looking and calling about I
found that 'active storage' can run upwards of $12/ft-month. So, $450 a
month, just to have it sit somewhere. And it would take, realistically,
years to fit out. Then you
have to transport it to that somewhere (it
was built in someone's back yard and they are moving) which means a
crane rental at both ends, and a special 'lowboy' transporter
rental to move it. So, I think, no.
It's too bad.
You can buy a fully fitted out boat and refurbish for a lot less than
building a new boat. And be sailing a lot
sooner. I think even the guys at the EAA - those crazy people who build
planes in their garage - usually say: "If you like to build
planes, build them. If you
like to fly them, buy one."
Plus, although I hate to admit it, the allure of long distance sailing
is diminishing for me. Being cold and wet for long periods of time
isn't much fun, and many of the former romantic destinations have
now become tourist traps.
Defensetech is an interesting
site.
Sunday 12 December
2004
Sunday - Since I'm out of town at a
friends, and he has only dial-up (if that), this is a non-real-time
post. So, it's short.
For Christmas: It's a
Wonderful Life, done in 30 seconds, by bunnies. So you
don't have to sit through the black and white, or TNT colorized
film versions.
