http://blog.xcski.com Everything I used to bore people on newsgroups and mailing lists with, now in one inconvenient place. Tue, 13 May 2008 01:32:01 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I had a phone call from a very nice person at PygmyBoats. She was calling me because I'd ordered the wrong size spray skirt for the kayak kit I'd ordered, and she wanted to know if I was ordering them for the kit, or for another boat. It ... http://blog.xcski.com/2008/05/13/construction-project-day-35 Has anybody managed to do the pre-order thing for their up-coming album? Pre-sales were supposed to start yesterday, but when I tried it just now, I got a notice saying that the album was out of stock, and therefore my cart was empty. Well, of course it's out ... http://blog.xcski.com/2008/05/11/question-for-great-big-sea-fans I'm reading the latest Analog (or at least the one on top of my to-be-read pile, which grows faster than I can read it down, but which usually acts as a stack rather than a queue), and came across a story "Sand and Iron" by Michael Flynn. I noticed ... http://blog.xcski.com/2008/05/11/that-cant-be-a-coincidence-can-it Come to the table, for all is ready. Today was a short day, but an expensive one. It started with a trip to Home Depot to pick up some strapping to make cross braces. Somehow I ended up buying a DeWalt 12V cordless drill. Then I came home ... http://blog.xcski.com/2008/05/10/construction-project-day-3 Another day of interesting discoveries: Our drill SUCKs. It's a not incredibly old Skil 4.1 Amp corded drill, and it doesn't have enough power consistently to drill 3 inches into the end of a 2x4. It also has a standard old chuck instead of one of those new quick ... http://blog.xcski.com/2008/05/10/construction-project-day-2 In spite of the existence of my cedar strip canoe, which still looks pretty good 25 years after I built it, I'm not good with my hands. But for some reason, I got it into my head that I really want to build a Pygmy Boats kayak kit. I figured ... http://blog.xcski.com/2008/05/08/construction-project-day-1 The Democratic Party has had a rarity, two highly qualified and good candidates this time, and consequently it's taking a bit of time to decide which of them should be our candidate. People have invested time and money and their personal feelings on one or the other of the ... http://blog.xcski.com/2008/05/07/attention-democrats-and-swing-voters I've seen dozens if not hundreds of articles stating the completely obvious: If you make people change their passwords every 90 days, put in place complexity rules and checks to stop them reusing passwords, and make them change the password on 4 different systems, the end result will be that ... http://blog.xcski.com/2008/05/05/why-dont-companies-get-the-message-about-password-changing I went out to the dealer today to put a deposit on a Prius. Since nobody is negotiating prices, I figured there was no reason not to just go to the closest dealership. Interestingly, the local dealer does offer a couple of interesting features - a free extended ... http://blog.xcski.com/2008/05/04/taking-the-prius-plunge I let both my instrument currency and my club annual ride expire in the last little while, so I had to do that. I contacted my favourite CFI, Jim Hood, and he agreed that we could get both requirements satisfied with one IPC. I'd flown twice this spring to try ... http://blog.xcski.com/2008/05/03/current-and-legal-again