Toby's Log page 106

my first sailing race

in

I went on my first sailing race today. It was with Jim, two of his friends, Paul, and his friend Jen. I had met Jim and his two friends on the 4th of July while I was up there for a family gathering and fireworks. Jim owns a boat down towards the end of the dock and races every Wednesday. Paul has raced with him numerous times now and even joined him on a multi-day cruise out to the islands.

I was worried that we’d be late, but arrived well before Jim’s two friends. We were in fact heading to the race without them, when we saw them walking down the dock. We turned around and went up to an empty dock to pick them up, then headed out late for the race.

The winds near the start of the race were very low and we were moving quite slowly while also drifting to the side quite a bit. Though we didn’t look that far behind the other boats and even came pretty close to some, we didn’t cross the start line till 22 minutes after the start of the race. We continued moving very slowly for quite some time, and eventually found ourselves way behind.

I really had little idea of what was going on. I kinda figured out by observation. There was a motorboat at the starting point. We had to go on one side of a marker near the start, then head to a marker which we couldn’t see but had the lat long coordinates of. The GPS guided us there. We had to go around the marker on one side, then head back in to port around one side of the break wall and finish by passing a buoy.

Though close to some boats near the beginning, a few tacks put us well behind. Boats started heading back towards us, downwind, some with spinnakers, well before we were near the turnaround marker. We got pretty close to a couple of those boats as we passed and were unsure whether we’d have to turn. I’m amazed how close those boats can get and how easily they maneuver to avoid each other.

We started on the low side to force some heel to speed us up, but the winds eventually picked up and we were able to go much faster and heel a good bit with us on the high side. Still, the other boats were quite far away when we finally made it around the marker. It was getting dark quick. The last other boat rounded the break wall while we were still quite a ways away. We called in by radio, but the motor boat had gone in, told us just to call in our time when we finally passed the finish line.

The whole time I did very little to help. I sat more toward the front, as there was little room in the back. When tacking and jibing, I mostly just slid underneath the boom and later the jib, letting others do the work. I was unsure of how to help, but hopefully my observations of how things are done will help in the future.

It was quite dark well before we passed the finish line. We decided to forego the call in. We were at least 40 minutes after everybody else, probably a good bit more.

We enjoyed some appetizers in the marina restaurant afterward.

Another mouse

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There was another mouse in my house, removed yesterday.

Over the summer I had occasionally heard some mouse-like noises, especially more recently. But I didn’t see any signs, such as mouse poop and chewed up food. On Monday I saw very sure signs, starting with the same scurrying past my bedroom door tiny brown furry thing that had alerted me to the presence of a mouse in the past. I didn’t want to alert Dwight, as I wasn’t sure how he’d take it or what he’d want to do about it. But as I was trying to sleep that night, the mouse kept chewing on something. I couldn’t sleep, so I repeatedly went into the kitchen searching for him. I pulled off some wall/cupboard material in my search. He finally stopped chewing after awhile, at least long enough for me to fall asleep, but I did set up one of my live traps from before.

He wasn’t there in the morning when I awoke. There were no signs of him. When I came home from work though, i heard a scratching/gnawing similar to the sound from the previous night. He was not chewing on my house though, but on the trap. I had him captured. When Dwight came home I showed him. He was not especially, though slightly, scared of the dirty little thing.

I drove him to the park. I tried to take some photos with my new macro lens, but was unable to get anything good. He disappeared quickly.

Internship

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It looks like I’ve got an internship for the eBusiness Managment program I’ve recently begun at Tri-C. It will be involving web development, which was my primary interest in going to Tri-C. RPM International is the company, a multi-national conglomerate mainly focused on coatings and sealants, including Rustoleum. The main company sort of owns many smaller companies, and it has web people to build web sites for these smaller companies. The company also does a lot of charity work, including helping non-profit group make web sites. I will be learning while helping RPM’s web people.

The company uses some Visual Basic and ASP stuff along with Microsoft’s SQL Server, so I will be learning those. I’ve never used them before, coming from a PHP MySQL background. But the concepts are all the same, and the syntax and what not involved will be very good to learn. I will also learn much more complex and sophisticated things than I’ve been able to do thus far. It’s been slow going learning on my own.

This will be my second actual job ever. I’m going to continue at the Winking Lizard for a while, but reduce my hours. The internship is 3 days a week, and I’ll probably end up with that at the Lizard as well. It will be six days with no chance of overtime, but I’m fine with that given the circumstances. Once school starts, I’ll probably leave the Lizard completely so I can focus fully on the eBusiness program. It’ll be nice to finally be free of that place. It’s been rough going there every day for so long.

wonderwash

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I recently purchased a clothes washing “machine” for my home. It is the Wonderwash, a hand powered small washing machine. I was a little leery of the product, as it didn’t seem to have much more to it than would a plastic bucket with tight lid. However, it’s very small and costs only $50, and is supposed to use less water and much less energy than a conventional washer, so I sprung for it.

It is indeed similar to a bucket. It does come with a stand and crank, which seem to make it take up more room than a 5 gallon pickle bucket would while having a bit less capacity. But the cranking is fairly easy. I could simply roll a pickle bucket, but I’m not sure if that’d be as effective as rotating it on the other axis, with the sudden thwumping fall from one side to the other. The lid is screwed down, which is supposed to pressurize the contents (it definitely does). The pressure is supposed to do much of the cleaning, pushing the water and detergent through the clothing. This is the area I’m most worried about the pickle buckets capability. I will have to try the pickle bucket though to see how the results compare. It would be much cheaper, easier to obtain, more versatile, and smaller. The only other thing I’d be missing would be the spigot on the bottom of the wonderwash, which is nice save for the leaking it sometimes does.

So anyway, the Wonderwash thus far has done fairly well at cleaning my clothes, even in the two minute wash cycle recommended. Crank for two minutes. Drain and fill with rinse water. The rinsing takes 30 seconds, but I usually do two rinses. The whole process is fairly fast, most of the time going to filling and draining. Compared to hand washing, it seems to get the clothes somewhat cleaner, though probably not as well as normal washers. It is of course much easier, with no hands in the water, and is much faster. The rinse is also much easier and faster and seems to get better results with less water (the wash also uses less water than what I was using).

The biggest problem right now is with drying. I can easily handle hang drying from a regular washer, as the clothes are spun in them. There is no spinning in this or any ability to squeeze out the water as a group. This problem was the same as with hand washing, and is one reason I rarely did it. Since this is so much easier than hand washing, I’m more liable to do it. But I have almost no space for drip drying. Those clothes can really hold a lot of water. I can spend quite a bit of time squeezing them by hand and they still drip. I think the presses would probably be too bulky and take too much time. I’m considering a spinner. The wonderwash people also make two electric spin dryers. Uses energy, but it’d be fast and take me nearly to the dry point. I considered getting a commercial salad spinner instead, but they cost as much as the electric ones and would be more bulky and not get the clothes as dry. So I may just order an electric spinner soon.

Unfortunately, the spinner hurts the size advantages of the whole operation. I now need the washer, the spinner, and still need some hang drying space and apparatus. Luckily, the energy needs and water usage should be much lower. I’m hoping that once I get everything set up and get a good system going, the time required will not be much more than with the regular machines, especially since I have to drive to my parents to use them.

Second motorbike ride

in

Thursday, I went over cousin Paul’s house, as I had a day off. The intention was to go sailing if the weather was nice, or perhaps go motorcycling if it was too bad for sailing, but not awful, or we’d find something else otherwise. Though there was a 30% chance of rain, the sky was sunny and the forecast looked good, even for sailing. So Paul suggested we ride the motorcycles down to the dock so we could get both desired activities in.

I was quite leary, as I had only been on one rather short ride thus far, with no traffic, a few weeks before. It seemed dangerous going the 20 mile journey to the dock, especially with the probability that, after sailing, I’d have to ride home in the dark. Now that I’ve got my temps, it isn’t illegal to ride, but I’m not supposed to ride in the dark. But he convinced me I’d be fine, so I went.

I’m surprised he didn’t want to turn around and take a car in the initial bit of the ride. I stalled clutching from a stop several times early on. I moved slowly for sure. I was revving the engine very high at times, and something started smoking from the engine (he said probably just oil). When I had to ask how to change out of first gear, I thought for sure he’d see I wasn’t ready for such a trip. But he simply reminded me one down, two up, and we continued on.

I had trouble with the speed, and many car drivers were undoubtedly angry being stuck behind me. I was also slow at starting, stalling out plenty of times. I was slow at stopping, as I hadn’t really made much use of the brakes before, using mostly engine braking, and made sure to keep a wide distance open ahead of me.

I made it there and back again in one piece, no real problems. The ride was definitely a learning experience and I became much more comfortable with controlling the bike and using its various controls while paying attention to the road ahead.

Selected notes:

  • Braking: I hadn’t used the rear brakes at all, nor the front very much, before this ride. I did not feel comfortable using the brakes and wasn’t sure how quickly I could stop. I used a lot of engine braking, especially early in the ride. I kept my fingers on the brake lever most of the time, but this caused hand fatigue. I eventually left them off unless I felt I might need to stop soon, but my fear made this still be a lot of the time. After trying the rear brake in a safe place, I started using them more. I found them to be quite powerful, yet they didn’t try to lock on me at all. I am much more comfortable with them now. I’ll have to do some practice quick stops to be fully comfortable.
  • Turn signals: Paul told me early on to not worry about the signals; he’d be signaling anyway, and I was having trouble paying attention to the little slider while also coming to a stop. I didn’t use them at all for a while, but eventually became comfortable with them, especially after I stopped leaving my hand on the clutch lever the whole time. I started using them for every turn, and eventually was able to turn them off soon after the turn as well.
  • Speed: Had lots of trouble with this. It took me a while to get up to 40 mph. Around 40, the wind seemed fairly strong, and worried me. I did go up to 50 some, but not much more, and not that often. The speed limit was 50 or higher in some parts, making this tough for me, especially since cars always want to go faster than the limit by 5 to 10 mph. It seemed they had it so much easier, with their large steel enclosures. My legs felt very bare when going above 40 with just khaki pants on. I can easily see why riding pants’d be nice. The helmet and jacket and gloves I was borrowing from Paul felt quite safe though. Once I got used to braking and shifting, the higher speeds seemed less scary.
  • Shifting: I had lots of trouble starting from a stop early on. Getting the throttle to the right position while releasing the clutch was tough for me. I’d often give it too much or too little power, leading to a jerk forward or stall. I had to go through this somewhat when learning stickshift car, and the change in controls seemed to negate most of my skill from that. Shifting up to second and beyond was no problem. Shifting down was somewhat though. Once I got used to using the brakes, I often’d just hold the clutch in and kick down through the gears while braking only with the brakes. I was worried I’d have to start going at some point from something other than a dead stop and kick into the wrong gear, but I never had a problem with this, helped by the extremely high rpm range of motorcycles. Being used to shifting on my car, I didn’t go nearly as high in RPM as I should’ve. I cruised at around 7k and shifted around 10k, though the redline was way up somewhere above 14k.
  • Throttle: The hand throttle is tough to get used to. The throttle and the brake being on one hand was a little difficult to control at first, and was also fatiguing of that hand. Just holding the throttle to the same position constantly was tiring, and I’d often let go to adjust my hand, leading to a quick slowdown via engine braking followed by a sudden jerk forward again. I’m becoming more comfortable with this, but it’s still fatiguing.
  • Helmet: Paul’s helmet is quite difficult for me to get on. I have to take my hair down and then push hard to get it on, while holding the straps so they don’t slide up in with my head. I feel somewhat separate from the outside world with this thing on (moreso than usual): my vision is limited, I can’t hear much, I feel like I’m in an orb. While riding, the vision problem was a definite problem. I lost most of my peripheral vision. Turning my head as far as was comfortable gave me no vision of the vehicles behind me, and probably not enough to even see the blind spot normally hidden from the mirrors. Hopefully a better fitting helmet will have better vision as well. I also had problems with a fogging up visor. At one stoplight, it really fogged up, and I was worried it’d stay that way. I could hardly see. Luckily, when we started going, the air moving through cleared it up. I only came back a little bit occasionally while riding. I ride with the visor up for a little while. I felt much more a part of the world and could easily hear what was going on, especially what Paul was doing. I could also see somewhat clearer. For the most part little flew in at my eyes, but I did get a little bit of dirt.
  • Mirrors: I adjust the mirrors when I first got on to what I thought would be good. I was way wrong, and really had to tilt my head and move my shoulders to see behind me. It was quite impossible for me to adjust them while riding (couldn’t remove the right hand at all and had trouble using the left) so they stayed that way for quite some time. At a stop light, I adjusted them, but they got even worse, and I couldn’t see a thing behind me at all, couldn’t even turn and look because of the helmet. At another light, I finally got them to decent positioning. I still found I had to move my shoulder to see directly behind though.

thief in my car

in

Since I got my current car from my brother, I’ve left it unlocked almost all the time. Only when I’ve had band equipment or the like in there have I considered locking it. The locks, except the one on the back hatch, froze up and stopped working a while back (one was frozen when I got the car), so it’s hard to lock it anyway: I’d have to climb in from the rear hatch. At the beginning, I even left the key in the car, as that is what my brother had been doing for a while, but I gave up on that out of fear.

As far as I know and can recall, nothing was stolen, even the change left clearly visible.

So today, I went to the library for several hours. There’s a parking garage there. Normally, employees are there and it has gates, costs a ridiculous amount of money. But on the weekends it is free and the gates are left open. When I left my car, I actually glanced in and thought about someone stealing something, as I frequently do. I took my cell phone along, but everything else seemed like it would be fine. Why would someone choose an old rusted car like mine anyway?

When I came back to the car, I quickly noticed the door wasn’t fully closed (driver’s). The thought of a someone being in my car flashed into my head. It become more realistic as I noticed the rearview mirror had been knocked out of place. Then I saw some change from the center console missing. I was still not totally sure at that point, thinking perhaps that I had removed the change there and some other missing stuff at some point. But I was sure when I noticed the case for my jumper cables was missing. I never remove that from my car, save for in use.

So, stolen were:

  • Jumper cables, with a case, a screwdriver, some fuses and other assorted car stuff packed in
  • change from my console and floor, but not from the thing on my dash or the ashtray
  • my photochromatic cycling sunglasses. luckily they were all smeared with some gunk, so the thief will have some cleaning to do. cost me $40
  • my socket set. Craftsmen laser engraved kind, maybe a 96 piece one that I got on sale for like $60. Had some cheap taiwan wrenches and a few other tools in there as well

This is all I know about, as my car is somewhat of a mess, and I’m not exactly sure what all was in there.

I guess I should’ve expected it to happen one day. I imagine the tools or the change to be the biggest drawer. The change would have been by far the most visible, as the tools were tucked underneath the pink panther’s feet in the back seat foot area. I have no intention of locking in the future, mainly because of the extreme difficulty of doing so with this car, but also because of the crappiness deterrent of the car and lack of valuable things.

I may be slow to replace the missing items. I can make up for the sunglasses with cheap spare pares I have for now. They were nice for cycling, but I didn’t use them a whole ton. The tools, I’ll have to borrow for now. I don’t use them that often currently anyway. I’ll wait till I see another good deal on them and need seems high. The jumper cables I’ll probably get soon just to be safe, though I rarely need them and others often have them if I do.

[Update] The sunglasses weren’t stolen: I had just left them in the sailboat. So I’ve got my good sunglasses still. Just no sockets or wrenches or jumper cables.

palm conduit erased important messages

in

I’ve used palm’s hotsync/desktop conduit to backup the data from my palm to my computer. Unfortunately, the software hasn’t been touched by Palm for 3 years. It’s bulky and annoyingly setup, with a required background process if you want to sync at will (I keep it off until necessary), multiple applications, and annoying forced locations of the backup files.

Anyway, due to recent problems with the phone, I had to perform a full reset to delete all applications and whatnot. I used the phone for a while without syncing to restore the old stuff, because I was still having problems with it and also wasn’t sure how to sync without restoring any bad stuff. I recently went through all the backup files and deleted the applications and what looked like related files, allowing me to do the backup.

I was not totally sure what would happen to the stuff that I had done since the phone was backed up, but the word synchronize soothed my fears. I had had pictures, notes, and some important conversations via text messaging that I wanted to save. If I had been smart, I would have created a new profile, backed them up, then tried the old profile, but again, the word synchronize made me feel like it’d be a waste of time. I went ahead and synchronized. It took quite some time.

To see if it actually synchronized, I first checked contacts. The few contacts I had added were indeed safely among the backup contacts. I then looked at the pictures and saw the old photos and the new photos. My hopes were high; it seemed to have synchronized just fine. But then I went to the most important item, the messages. Backed up I had one brief conversation with my brother about zapping PRAM, a message to Paul about not going to an auction plus three spam messages; all things rather unimportant to me. On the phone I had had conversations with two girls from work. One was with a girl who I’ve been strongly attracted to for a while about us talking, with messages spanning over weeks. This one was fairly important to me. The other was with another girl from work whom I had asked to be an anchor for a mock newscast. Most of the messages were about where the shoot was and where she was, but the conversation would still have been nice to have saved. These were gone, not synchronized at all, but replaced with the backup messages. This seems very illogical to me, as there would be no new messages ever generated on the computer, only on the phone. I’m somewhat mad about that. My only consolation is that I had written part of the first conversation in journals on my computer. Not as bad, but still annoying, the call log was also deleted and reverted to backup. This too makes no sense to me. What’s up with that, Palm? Your conduit is in desperate need of an update.

palm problems

in

I’ve had quite a bit of problems with my Palm Treo 650.

Some of the third party software seemed to have caused some major problems with the phone. I know for sure that some problems were caused by a third party application required to make the stylus work for the Treo (Treo’s seem to come with Graffiti hand writing recognition disabled). The phone kept having weird problems like freezing, going slowly, and the like, even while making calls.

The other problem seems to have been related to the battery. The battery seemed to have problems with holding a charge, so I figured it must have been old when I bought it, though I thought the seller said it was new. I took the power adapter with me in the car and used an inverter with that to power the phone so I could make calls while out. After doing that, my phone would go into a crazy epileptic mode where it would flash on and off the startup screen rapidly. Every once in a while I could get it to start up by plugging it in for a while, then unplugging it. It would start up and last for a little while, but eventually go back to epileptic mode. Eventually this became quite permanent.

After finally figuring out how, I did a full reset of the device, getting rid of the applications and what not. This did not help. I got a new battery, figuring the old one was shot and for some reason it needed a good battery to work at all. This worked slightly at first, but it started going back to epileptic mode again. So I figured, as a last try, that it might be a problem with the charger, that perhaps my inverter or something else ruined the charger. I bought a dock thing with a seperate battery charger. After much waiting with no phone through all these problems, the charger worked and the phone works just fine again, like it had when I first got it. The separate charger bay wasn’t necessary, as just the dock charging through the phone works, but it is nice with my additional purchased battery to have a backup in case I forget to charge up. Another $40 about for the two items, but I have a working phone again.

I’m very happy, as the cell phone is quite useful, especially since I have no long distance for my home phone; I was unable to make some calls for a while. It has been very useful for contacting cousin Paul and uncle Al while out of the house. It was also quite useful in contacting a friend Corinne about a mock news program my droogie Dwight is making for a video portfolio, as we needed to meet her at Kent State’s news room and needed a way to contact her to make sure she was able to make it (she was running late).

Objective File System

in

This is a modification of part of a previous post.

each file is stored in two databases: the normal hierchical db and an objective db. The hierarchical db is used for speed and for compatibility with current file systems. The objective db is used for metadata and other information less critical to basic file operations.

The objective db contains much of the metadata (non file operation related stuff). Each file type is an object type in the database, inheriting from the basic file object or one of its children. Each file type will have its own attributes as well as actions related to it. The actions may consist only of OS functions related to it, may also include application calls, and could even include user/other created scripts and functions related to the file type. The actions would provide the data from the file to the system or other function that is necessary for it to operate (functions and applications would all have a defined standard interface to them).

First Motorcycle run

in

Today I piloted a motorcycle for the first time. It was my cousin Paul’s. He started with a 250cc, then last year upgraded to a 600cc, both japanese sport bike types. He’s quite into it, with a lot of money invested, and plans to take the 600 to a track soon.

He’s been trying to get me to try it out for a while now, but I’ve had little confidence in my ability. Even the 250 seems too big and heavy for me to handle from looking at it and feeling it. But today, him and my Uncle Al set up everything for me to ride, so I figured I’d go ahead and give it a try. Paul explained the operation to me in just enough detail. I sat on it and tried the controls and shifting from neutral to first and back.

Then I went right in to trying to drive it. Kicked it into first, released the clutch, it stalled. Not enough gas. So I started up again and tried the same time. This time I gave it way too much gas. I shot forward with my feet still on the ground, kicking off the gravel to ensure balance (though I’m not sure it was necessary). I very quickly was at the end of the driveway, which was to be my first run. With engine braking and the front brakes I was able to easily come to a stop though. The brakes on that bike are very grabby, which I had trouble with many times, one somewhat painful to the groin region.

Next they moved the bike out onto the street. There were occasional cars going by, which they waved by. I then started off, this time much easier on the clutch. I still jerked forward a bit and had a bit of trouble getting my feet up properly, but much better. Once I was going, I was going. At that point it was a little scary just at the 15mph I was going. I just slowly went along for a bit, with cars passing by and Paul following. I eventually sped up somewhat, but stayed in first gear. We went down to the end of the road (the neck of a T) and turned around. My first turn. The turn itself wasn’t bad at all. I had trouble getting back out of neutral though for some reason. I kept kicking but couldn’t get it to shift. After seeing this a couple of times, I think I have to move the bike with my feet to move the gears in the transmission or something like that.

We went back up the road again. This time I went faster and shifted into second. The shift wasn’t smooth: I jerked forward for sure, and may not have depressed the clutch. But I was able to easily go faster. Those high RPMs on those bikes worry me somewhat. I was able to easily engine brake to slow down, shift down and make the turn back into their driveway.

Paul called a friend of his and was about to leave to see her, but then his Dad and himself convinced him to take me out for a longer run. We went back down the same road as before, me going in second gear and probably 30mph or so, then turned at the end. At that point I didn’t know how to do turn signals, but a look at the next turn showed me. I got up to maybe 40mph there. I was starting to feel more comfortable at the faster speeds.

We went to a new housing development with a road like a b that had no traffic and only a few houses. We went around the loop a number of times. I went slowly around the turns. At first I took them at like 15, then would speed up to maybe 30 on the straights. There were some rocks and some of those raised sewer things, like they hadn’t put in the final layer of asphalt for the road yet, that made for obstacles around the turns and lowered my comfort level. But I eventually made it up to 25 or 30 around the cleaner turns. Paul was of course able to take them much faster and was able to breeze right by me.

I had already gotten up into 3rd and 4th gear by the time we were heading home. I followed him and got up to maybe 50. I was worried about the turns (at intersections, the roads were straight), but it was fairly easy to slow down, much more so than on a bicycle. He left when we got to his house.

I had worn Paul’s older helmet, jacket, and gloves. Those definitely made me more comfortable with the speed and prospect of falling. The helmet was quite tough to get on and off though: he must have a smaller head. I wore the visor open the whole time, for talking purposes. I think I got a little bit of dirt on my face, but nothing that I noticed while riding.

The whole thing was really not as hard as I thought it would be. The controls are not too bad once I got used to them, though I still am quite jerky with both the clutch and the brake. Balance is not hard at all. Turns aren’t very hard either. I never really felt like I was going to fall over. I didn’t have to think about lean at all. I didn’t notice the counter-steer, which is apparently noticeable on these bikes, probably because I wasn’t going fast enough. It was somewhat unwieldy at stops, but nothing awful. It was a little scary going by some cars that seemed like they either didn’t really noticed me or were upset I was on their road.

I think with a few more days of that I’d be comfortable enough to ride it around on easy roads with light traffic no problem. It was fun. Maybe I’ll eventually get a motorbike, have some fun and save some gas.

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