Last weekend I took the Intermediate Coastal Cruising course on a 32' Catalina. This included the on-the-water test, but I still have to pass the written exam. This shouldn't be too difficult though, so soon I will be qualified to charter boats up to 35'. These are much larger than the 26' Santa Cruz sailboats I've been doing day trips on for the past two years. They have a living room area, a galley, a head and can sleep six people! You can go to someplace like the Caribbean or Mexico and charter a boat for about the same amount you would pay for a hotel room, which I plan on doing ASAP.
The course was much fun. Saturday started with heavy rains, but things cleared and we enjoyed 25-30 knot winds until after sundown. Finding a place to anchor for the night was difficult since the heavy Northernly winds made the instructor's preferred location less than ideal. Finally we dropped anchor near the coast of Belvedere right under the 10+ million dollar homes, with our stern facing straight towards the skyline of San Francisco. On Sunday as we sailed near the Golden Gate bridge a family of porpoises followed us for 30 minutes as we surfed six foot swells. I love sailing.
One funny thing that happened was when I was in the school office and I noticed a new Learn to Sail poster they had put up. It had a photo of mine from Flickr on it! I had put it up with a Creative Commons license, so I was mostly pleased to see it used, but when I looked it up later online I noticed that the license I had chosen for it was non-commercial and attribution-required so they totally stole it. Maybe I should have my lawyer offer a discounted charter settlement.
Another thing that happened was that on Saturday morning as I jumped off the boat onto the dock, I dropped my keys into the water. This was a big set, with keys to my house and mailbox, car, motorcycle, safe, six keys for the RV, two client office keys and a couple of keyless entry electronic gizmos. On Monday night I was able to get a big magnet on a rope from the harbor master and I spent some time dropping this magnet into 22' of murky water. I figured my chances were low since there had been strong currents and 50+ hours since I had lost them, but amazingly after twenty minutes I pulled them up! And the electronic transmitter still works even!
I thought twitter was semi sort of neat for a bit, until it exploded during a SXSW marketing blitz and I started getting overwhelmed by twaffic. Even before the deluge, the non sequitur nature of the twaffic was often puzzling. The last straw was when I mentioned to Mie that I don't even bother checking my phone when I get SMS messages anymore, so she told me in no uncertain terms to turn twitter off.
My other phone complaint is regarding my Treo 700p and my 4G SD card. Or perhaps I should say my erstwhile SD card, since the thing has a habit of falling out of the phone and I haven't been able to locate it since it's last escape. I hope Tesla didn't swallow it. It had photos and videos of her I'd like to keep. If I ever find it or get a replacement I think I'm going cover the slot with duct tape.
Paul Graham with another entertaining (if not inarguable) essay: Microsoft is Dead, wherein he outlines the evidence of Microsoft's irrelevance and the industry changes that led them there. I like the closing paragraph:
I already know what the reaction to this essay will be. Half the readers will say that Microsoft is still an enormously profitable company, and that I should be more careful about drawing conclusions based on what a few people think in our insular little "Web 2.0" bubble. The other half, the younger half, will complain that this is old news.
Although I'm certainly not in the younger half age-wise, my feelings are more in line with the latter. The dichotomy reminds me of the first of Arthur C. Clarke's Laws: When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
Call your congress critters and support HR 811!
HR 811 features several requirements that will warm the hearts of geek activists. It bans the use of computerized voting machines that lack a voter-verified paper trail. It mandates that the paper records be the authoritative source in any recounts, and requires prominent notices reminding voters to double-check the paper record before leaving the polling place. It mandates automatic audits of at least three percent of all votes cast to detect discrepancies between the paper and electronic records. It bans voting machines that contain wireless networking hardware and prohibits connecting voting machines to the Internet. Finally, it requires that the source code for e-voting machines be made publicly available.