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Our new toy

Monday, July 16th, 2007

I’ve wanted a sailboat for as long as I can remember. We finally made that happen. Yet to be officially named, is our 2007 MacGregor 26M. It’s a trailerable 26 foot powersailer half way between a day sailer and a cruiser. It has a head, a galley, and berths, so it also counts as a second home. ( read: interest is deductable).

Here it is on the trailer in our custom storage area. (back yard)

Boat on trailer

Setup took us 30 min, not too bad for the first time. Packing up took me an hour in the dark. I think I can get that down to 30 min with both of us while it’s light.

A note: There are a lot of opponents of the Mac out there who will admit that they have neither sailed nor even been on one. They talk about how the boats are slow and difficult to sail and how you can get a comparable Hunter or Catalina for the same price. Well, let me tell you that those comparable boats are at least 5 years older and are much more difficult to trailer. The mac sails great, even in VERY light winds. We were out Saturday in < 5mph winds and were moving along just fine. So there…

Oh, and the saying “A boat is a hole in the water that you pour money into” need not apply. Mind you, there are an infinite number of mods you can make, but maintenance on this type of boat should be very low.

Tired of 2D

Tuesday, June 5th, 2007

Envious of birds and tired of life in 2D, I decided to learn to fly. Helicopters that is. So I bought one: an RC one. Interesting how the hobby has evolved. Years ago even an inexpensive model ran more than a grand. The idea of crashing something that expensive was not something that interested me. Now they’re under $500. Second problem, nitro powered engines are loud. Thanks to new battery technology (thanks laptops) electric helis are possible. I found a great deal in the Falcon 3D from hobby-lobby.com.

Yes, I’ve had it in the air, yes, I’ve crashed once. It’s a little nerve racking to have a 24″ blade spinning at 3000RPM. Quite a rush actually.

Just waiting for a couple of new batteries and an nifty flight stabilizer. Original battery only give about 5 minutes of flight time, and I’m way too much of a chicken to let it more than an inch off the ground. The new batteries should give 10 minutes and the stabilizer is supposed to allow hover just by releasing the sticks. We’ll see.

Oh, one last thing. RTF (ready to fly) really just means complete, assembled kit. I’ve had to make several adjustments. Not too bad though. There are however 5 servos to adjust, 2 sets of blades to balance, CG in 2 directions.

Flying, though, is sweet.

Long Night

Thursday, March 1st, 2007

So Jenna’s Needlework shop when live last night. Not to pat myself on the back, but I am the data translation master. We loaded almost 800 products across 4 tables AND got almost all the images and thumbnails loaded programatically. Only took 8 hours. Not too bad except that we started at 8:00.

There have aready been 8 orders. Even my backorder modifications seem to be working. Shipping is messed up though. Especially international. I suspect USPS’s API is messing up. I’ll need to build a trace.

For referrence, a good thumbnail creator -

Express Thumbnail Creator

Addicted much

Saturday, February 24th, 2007

As if having a blackberry wasn’t enough, my latest toy is a Palm 750. I’m not normally a a Windows proponent, but Mobile has come a long way. I’ve set up the IMAP client to get my home mail and nToken ssh for remote access. I had to try several ssh clients to find one that worked. The mobile version of putty doesn’t recognise the caps key and several others just wouldn’t connect. That said the mToken client is great. Unlike the Idokoro client on the BB it allows fully interactive ssh sessions. The mouse even works in programs like mc.

Ok, Fine

Friday, February 23rd, 2007

So everyone else is doing this blog thing. I’m not planning on jumping off a cliff (like the lemmings most people are)…but I figured it might be a good way for me to organize my thoughts. Maybe, just maybe, this will let me go back later and figure out what I was thinking.