Saturday, November 3, 2007
Important - Termination of this particular Blog
I have terminatedd any further bloglines on this particular blog. My new personal blog is at www.charleswmoore.org and my sailing blog is at www.youngsunowners.org (in right column under Inspiration). Thanks so much for stopping by over the years. My server is old and tired and I am being plagued by breakins , spam and other nefarious nabobs. The new one is a professional placed machine with greater up time and security.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
A day at home.
Webmaster @ 12:53 GMT-5 [Link]
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Pitter Patter this morning
There were still rain drops falling this AM and I was up an hour earlier than ususal so I could make the ITS Michigan meeting in Ann Arbor at UMTRI on U of M campus. After the meeting I drove back to the Indiana Home Office because of a possible field trip to the Gary area. Well, at least I think it is in that area. I will know tomorrow. I have some site surveys to do.
I have to get off my behind and wire up the new voltmeter I installed in the panel a couple of weeks ago. I would like to see it working before I close down the boat for the winter. I officially move off October 21st and they will put in heated storage when they get around to it a week or two later.
About this time I will start living in the motel again for two nights a week. I will spend Friday and Monday in the Indiana Home Office & more if possible. I am just tired of routine. More to follow on this!
Monday, September 24, 2007
Boring stuff for today.
Thunderstorms passed throught about 1800 hrsw local. They were pretty heavy and some branches are down. It started to brighten up but the sun went down so it is hard to telll, but I cannot see the full moon.
Beer Brats tonight with some greens, nuts and a tin of applesauce. Showered too. These are nice showers because there are no water savers on them and it rushes out. I have the marina pretty much to myself and it is a bit lonely. I will be up early and on my way to Detroit for the ITS Michigan meeting and then on to PL. Thursday I might have some field work so I will stage from there. If i does not materialize then it will be Monday somewhere in the Gary area I think.
I ordered a Badger hair brush and a brush spinner last night. I am going to try it with the Cetol Gloss coat and see if the bubbles are reduced. Hope it comes soon. I am excited since it will reduce brush cleaning time. I bought a 2 and a 1.5 Thin brush. I have been using China bristle ones but they do no hold a lot of paint since they are to thin. Ifll let you know.
I have not seen the YS35 Omega again. Where did they go I wonder? I saw then on anchor for a day or so but then Poof - gone.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Beautiful Sunset on Lake Michigan tonight.
Arriving at the boat early I ate dinner earlier than ususal. After doing this and with some relaxed time on my hands I went down to the Saugatuck public Beach called Oval Beach. There I listened to a book on tape - Horse Whisperers- and watched the sun go down. From the time of touching the horizon to the full departure took only 5 minutes but I was there for 45 minutes listening to the tape. This is a good book and the characters are still developing. It would be a very good read - probably better than the tape.
New Voltmeter for the boat: I Installed the new Hoyt Model 560 voltmeter in the boat tonight. The P/N on the box is N9263-D2391-00. It is just like the original. Price was about $70 but it exactly fits the old holes and bolt patterns so it was worth it. Now I can tell if shore power is connected and the voltage before I flip the switch to the charger/inverter and if the circuits are really dead before I work on things electrical. However, I am not entirely convinced that I should put it on the hot side of the circuit breaker. I will have to think about it for a while.
The new medicine seems to be working and this is a relief.
There were not very many people on the beach compared to the summer. Sailboats are being hauled every day and I feel a bit forelorn. Retirement is not too far away in months and I can expect to spend a lot of winter hours varnishing things if all goes as planned. I have plenty of seams to caulk too - that will take a full months of 8 hour days. I want to insulate the pole barn down at the lake too.
Monday, September 17, 2007
Websites are up again
If you are reading this then the site is back up again. It is in Runlevel 3 and not the usual 5 because the root directory is full. I tried removing some things but I am afraod of breaking something an then it won't work at all. The problem started when I tried to cut a really big file. I guess there was not sufficient tmp storage and it filled up an quit.
When I set this server up many moons ago I made several partitions so if one got filled with junk the boot and a few others would still boot the drive. I guess this was a good idea as the machine is still running the http server.
I am trying to move the important sites off this machine as its useful life is coming to an end and I want to set up a much newer linux machine but not as a http machine.
I have been going to bed earlier so I have to go now. Bye.
Monday, September 10, 2007
What Happened to My Website?
Boy, I am not sure what happened to my webserver but it was an alarm bell. I have been down for several days and a reboot did not take care of the problem. Last time I checked inot to site I deleted the Galaptic Logs. Last night I edited the server config file to delete the virtual server Galaptic and things started to work. Time to get a backup somewhere. My son said he has a spot but I think it is an all MS based server so many of my perl and this blog will no longer work. I would have to replace the blog with Wordpress and this might be a good thing.
I have been on the boat a lot and the season is ending now. In a way I am ready for it to end. I moved aboard on May 8th and have intended to go through October 23th. Fighting the fall winds and coolness to run up and take a shower, heating with a portable 1500W heater and the general messing that it takes robs energy and I seem to not have a lot of that since the cataract surgery. Maybe next season will bring a new direction and determination.
Today I am in Indiana and working from the home office this morning. This afternoon will be a trip to Fort Wayne to talk to a man and then back to the boat in Saugatuck. This will be a lot of driving for me today but I do not want to have to get up early tomorrow to drive to work in Grand Rapids. It is probably better to stay on the boat tonight. Maybe the weather will end up deciding the equation.
The forcast today is mostly cloudy but I see a hint of sun poking through down by the lake. I cannot go down there because the mosquitoes are so bad. The past two years have seen few of the pesky critters but after the two weeks of late August rain it is like the Alaska tundra down there. Just to mow the lawn takes a lot of "OFF" insect repellent.
Saturday, August 18, 2007
Rain today
I am alone on the boat this weekend and only working half time at URS because it is a slow period. I intended to work on the electrica short problem today, Saturday, but instead I stripped some more on the cockpit coaming. This is the last reamaining gauldy looking wood on the boat. I had just finished and it started raining. We shall see what a weeks worth of rain will do to teak.
My web server crashed last week and the VAR was corrupt. The Linux machine had a ungraceful shutdown due to an immediate power outage that I myself generated. I had to do a lot "sqrt'ing" to get it back running. I dread the day the machine goes down for good as it means no more for most of my websites that I have had running for more than 5 years. I guess everything must sooner or later die.
Prairie Home Companion is a great joy of mine. For some reason it reminds me of my roots and gives me a nostalgic feeling. When I was a kid my cousins and I used to dtay up late reading out loud to each other stories from "Pecks Bad Boy" and we would laugh and laugh. I wish I was a kid again and with my cousins. What a great life and joyful growing up time we had as a close family unit in our 500 person village.
I made spagetti with a chile sauce for lunch and at the same time made
Thistle & Shamrock is now playing on PBS. That also makes me nostalgic for Scotland and it is a place I love. That is all for tonight.
Taboule for dinner. Tomorrow is the last day for Blueberries so I went over and bought 2# for dinner. My cream was sour so I used milk and brown sugar instead as my dinner desert.
Monday, August 13, 2007
The day of LWOP!
Over the weekend SAM mentioned in passing that I might think about going half time at work. This worked on me Sa & Su and by Monday I was ready. I got up at 0800 and drove from the boat to GR. There I told my boss that I wanted to go 50% LWOP (Leave Without Pay). It was approved later in the day> I guess the plan is to work Mo & Tu one week and 3 days the next week.
What prompted all this is my seeming inability to adapt to the aysymetrical vision caused by the cataract surgery. Add into that a major floater and I have a vertigo attack. Throw in lack of sleep and you have a recipe for something that is not very good. Today was a little bit better with the news that I have a hiatus from the saltmine.
Actually, I like my work when I am working. It has been quite slow for the last month and it is driving me crazy - another reason for LWOP.
The third reason is to see if I can ween myself from CASH. I see, I want, I buy - no more - gone - kaput. Small amounts of cash expenditures rule.
Friday, August 3, 2007
Internet down for a while
I guess I am too old for riches anyway so I would just set up a few trusts for my family and buy a 43' sailboat and refit it for passages and living on the intercostals of Chile. I always wanted to sail to the Galapagos & Easter Islands. While in high school I dreamed of this adventure. Of course, in those days these we much more mysterious than today of Goggle Earth and satellites.
The Internet was down for a time this evening. This was OK because it kept Purdue from doing anything that would reduce bandwidth. The Hoosier Lotto is up to $41 Million. I bought two tickets; one for Sam and one for me. If I win my small town benefits. If I lose then I say just look at the odds and become philosophical.
Monday, July 30, 2007
First Night in a Week
This is the first night back on the boat in a week. I had cataract surgery in my right eye. I took 5 days to get back to a semblance of normal and two pairs of glasses. Lenscrafters=$255 with discount and Holicki Eye Center=$35. The glasses still do not feel comfortable but at least they were wearable.
Monday the truck rear brakes went out so I immediate took it to the dealership and they fixed it pretty quick for $225 with turned rotors. They lasted a very long time so I am happy with the fix.
My flying multiengine instructor helped me lubricate the door on the hangar today. He did all the work because I had eye appointments all day. Thanks Bill! The check will be in the mail.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
After the surgery
Here I write after the cataract surgery with a big, thick patch on my right eye and reading glasses perched on the very tip of my nose. Sort of a cumbersome way to write this blog but necessary given the circumstances.
I went in as an out patient and was on the street by 11:30. By request they put me out like a light so I can relate nothing until I awoke about 10:55. At first I felt just fine but then a creeping headache made itself known. Not real bad but sufficiently strong to make itself known and unwelcome. It reminded me of hypoxia headaches and maybe it was because they told SAM I had breathing difficulties. The patch was not as bad as I had imagined it to be but still it is hard to put up with until it is removed tomorrow PM. The told me I could prerform any duties I felt like and there were no special precautions except to leave the patch on and do not rub the area.
Tomorrow we get to see the results and I hope they are good. I have been used to perfect pilot vision all my adult life so anything less will be a disappointment. Right now I am reading a good sailing book by Tristan Jones - Saga of a Wayward Sailor. The things that man survived are amazing. I'll write more later as it is taxing to concentrate and focus the sight.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Cataracts
Tomorrow AM is my cataract surgery. I am not sure why I have this problem at such a young age but it must have something to do with staring at a monitor for all those years. My programming buddy has the same problem. Strange is it not?
Working on the boat
Having no electronics to fix, we are back to the brightwork that was started last season. Underneath the cracked gvarnish?h lies a beautiful piece of wood. I refer to the teak on the cockpit coaming. We did about a third of it - stripped and 1st coat Cetol Lite on Saturday. It was not quite dry by the time the sun went down and the overnight dew dulled the finish. On Sunday we let it dry until about 1400hrs in the direct sun and applied the second coat. That coat was almost dry by 1700 hrs and looks the best of all the wood on the boat. Nice.
Monday night I removed the shipfs power panel voltmeter that has been non functional. After taking it apart, I discovered that a 13.5K wirewound resistor was open and one end of the coil was not attached to the terminal or the resistor. I emailed a buddy and asked him if he wanted to rewind the coil and fix the instrument but he emailed back and said that he had cataracts and could no longer see the fine wires. Maybe SAM can do the job.
Today I looked up the SO.65 form factor voltmeter and discovered that an outfit in Taiwan makes them and so I emailed for a price and delivery method - hopefully they have Paypal. Ifll tell you when I find out.
In the mean time I will describe the SO.65 form factor. They have a visible panel side diameter of approximately 3.375 (85mm) diameter. The through hole to mount them in the panel is 2.57 (65mm). The mounting is via three holes equally spaced around the 3 diameter point. Any SO.65 form factor instrument should work as it is a more or less standard. I want one that is 0-300 VAC 50/60 Hz.
I intend to install a SPDT switch and this way I can monitor input power from the dock and breaker side power with the one instrument. In series with the switch and the meter I will solder a 1/4 Amp pico fuse in case the meter shorts. I want to be able to see if dock side power is applied and what the voltage is before turning on the Main AC breaker.
I should be finished with improvements in about 10 years or so. How about you?
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Can you believe this?
Today SAM and I were out on the lake sailing. It was pretty rough and the seas were taking a toll on both of us. I was tired of the battle and so I hauled in the bit headsail and pulled around into the wind to lower the main and staysail. After some effort we did a 190 and headed for the harbor beacons. On the way in a spider came into view of my left eye. I swatted at it and flipped my glasses and wouldn't you know they went overboard. I am now using a poor substitute. Somewhere I have an almost exact duplicate of the lost pair and we will have to go home to find it.
The portable A/C unit is not really working too well. It has not quit running since we arrived back from our misadventure on the water today. The air is cool but it is not cooling very well. It is supposed to be a 12K BTU unit. It was only 85 today and it was barely keeping up.
On the good news side, the wind system indicator works and calibrated ok. The old depth indicator was connected to the seatalk buss too and all are talking with the Raymarine 6002 a/p control head. I am pretty much finished with the new equipment and wiring it up for this year. Oh yes, I have one intermittant short to troubleshoot and fix this summer, then I am finished.
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Sick grandchild & boat
We are on vacation for the week. Many things have happened p some big and some small. DJ our oldest grandson is visiting us from Germany. He has been here a few weeks and living long hours. He came to us with Strep Throat and a severe ear ache. We took him to the clinic as he had not seen a doctor. Ok, we got a lot of pills and mouth wash and he took them and slept for 24 hours - minus 4 hours for necessary living items like food and other things.
A day late we are now at the boat and I am writing this before bed. DJ felt so good he has stayed in the club house watching TV. Two bits says that he is sick again within two weeks. Oh well, what can you tell a mid age teenager? Not too much if I remember correctly.
Today on the way up here I heard a strange noise in the truck and then the fan motor sounded funny. I think I blew a blade off of the blower fan for the warm/cool air. It sounds bad. One more thing to fix.
I fired up the portable A/C unit on the boat and it works sort of. The big test will come when it is hot outside. For a 12,000 BTU unit it seems sort of anemic. It was expensive too. Like $400 off the net. I can buy several good 6600 BTU window units for that money. What gives?
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
No internet today!
The Mediacom HS Internet went out two nights ago and was out for a day and a half. SAM called in desparation saying the internet was out and what was I going to do about it. I suggested calling Mediacom and this was done. They said it was a known issue. Somehow it got fixed and most of the servers came back OK. However the virtual host machine did not and it needed rebooting today. Therefore, faithful readers it was not my fault the sites were not up. I guess I am down to two 9's reliability.
I have been working diligently on the boat and record these feats in the youngsunowners.org blog. I should take this one more seriously but it is hard to get to all the writing that needs to be done.
Last night on the boat it was pretty windy and wet. By morning it was cool too. I slept reasonably well and only woke up once - the head and a glass of water. SAM says the boat A/C came in and so did the two books I ordered from Amazon, The Ultimate Passage cable for the wind indicator came in too, I installed the wind indicator display tonight and also the cable for the mast head equipment.
maybe I should record the work in both blogs.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
hot weather
I have been working on putting a new vhf radio on the boat. A pretty simple task really but I always manage to make it more difficult than it really is. I like to solder wires together and really dislike butt splices. I have a butane powered soldering iron and it fails to light well during hot weather. It may have something to do with its age - about 10 years. Anyway, I got it on the air tonight. I bought it for the feature of a wireless microphone. Almost all the functions can be performed via this wireless mic. Pretty cool for a boat. However, it is a 2.4 GHz freq and it might cause a problem with other wireless gear.
One last thing remains - to install the NMEA in & out from the gps. This gives the lat/lon to the radio and transmits position if a emergency is declared. It is called a DSC radio. I have a licensed HF radio on board and it has an MMSI code so I entered it into the radio. Now the world will know if I have any issues. The output goes to the gps and will show position of others in distress.
Time for bed. Night.
Thursday, June 14, 2007
GR to PL
I was up a little early this AM & ate breakfast as usual on the boat. Still asleep, I took the wrong pills but did not feel any ill effects. The aircon was off at work today and it got pretty stuffy and just a little stinky on my floor. It did not take much encouragement to hit the road at 1600 for the trip back to PL. When I arrived home Jess was there and we had a nice chat. On the way thru town I picked up KFC value meal and ate it at home. After dinner, I attacked the dishes that SAM has learned to leave for me on Th night. After that I started the clothes and filled the boat water bottles.
I came home to a little message that something was wrong with the self-propelled push mower. I could not believe my eyes. The top plastic cover was laying there but captivated by the recoil starter and I pulled the cord and nothing - no compression. From the description that it was running faster than normal and then it just quit running, I expected to find a blown engine. This was not the case. A little further investigation came up with the observation that there was no spark plug in the normal spot. Just a gapping hole was there and the plug was very tightly wedged under the cylinder head and the mower deck cover. The cover was there with a perfect hole shaped just like a spark plug that had been melted in the plastic.
I fixed all that and started the mower. It was vibrating very badly. I found the blade was bent pretty bad - I'll have to get a new blade tomorrow. After all this I am beginning to think I was not told the whole story. What do you think?
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Sailing Season
I am again living on the boat and witing the Inspiration Blog Line. Since I am a lousy typer everything goes slow and I just run out of time to write. You can pick up that blog at youngsunowners.org. Look for Inspirations's blog on the home page.
I go back to Indiana each week for varing times but the boat is occupying most of my time. I am loving it too. Maybe by the end of the season I will be glad to exit but for now life is good.
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
Dinner on the boat
I had a wonderful dinner on the boat - Hormel chili and spinach with desert of peanut and jelly. I have spent $80 for groceries in the past 4 days but I have sufficient stores to eat on-board for the next several days. The fancy cooking will have to wait for a week or so since I need a few new pans to cook the gormet meals of the future. The plasticware does not stand up too well under the heat so that has to change a bit too. I guess SAM will have to fix things up for real cooking.
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
In the water!
After many weekends of work and being burnt out we launched the boat & I have been living on it for this past weekend and week. I wired the mast lights to power last night and they actually worked. Every once in a while the lucky lady smiles upon you. If they were not right it might be several years before the mistake could be fixed.
I have been using the heater most every night but it has not been so cold that it is uncomfortable. Tonight I fixed spaghetti tonight after I installed the refilled bottle of CNG ($22). I had the bulkhead door removed so the service man could look in to see the still leaking waterheater. I had to re-install the bulkhead because it holds the bottle (about the size & weight of a scuba tank). If it was not so late I would write a lot more.
The next few weekends will be occupied away from the boat. My niece is getting married and then the next weekend Jess graduates with a BSChE & we are very proud of the dedicated 5 years psent in acheiving this lofty goal. The next week my sister has a get together too. That pretty much kills the Month of May.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Reminded of my duty
I had a surprise call from Scott today chiding me for not blogging for some time. I suppose it has been almost 4 years since I last talked with him. We worked last together at MMSC during the summer of 2002 and on up to October of 2002 doing microwave last mile installs and other fun top of building things. Later in 2003 we were in Florida - I for a Florida company and he for the successor to MMSC - doing "can you hear me now" sort of thing called coverage testing.
In actual fact, I am blogging on at least three other sites and webmaster on 4 or 5 or 6 other sites. Mind you I am not making any money from this just "honing skills". I guess I just get burnt some times. I am also a bit behind on the energy curve since I bought "that damn boat". Couple that with the company I am working for "kicking it up a notch" I just run out of time before I get to some things.
For example, I have been an advocate of Geocaching since 2002. I have found caches all over the USA. Usually, I do most of it on trips or in the winter when all the poison ivy and mosquitoes are held in check. I really like tromping in the northern woods in the winter - it keeps you healthy. I did one this weekend that took me to a wildlife area in our county. What a treat it was to hear the Swans trumpet and the Loon screaming, what a place it was, and hardly anyone knows about this secret but Purdue wildlife experts. I found the cache around 1745 hrs and by the time I walked out the sun was behind the trees. A fitting end to a warm, clear winter day!
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Why Me!
I guess it does not matter too much now. My blog archives have been destroyed. I just went to the archives for VM blog and found that they have been partially destroyed. A lot of old bloglines have disappeared.
I think it happened when one of Linux's partitions filled up and there was no place to put the data when it tried to archive. {{Lots of crying and moaning going on here right now.}}
VM has experienced a lot of spammy emails. So much so that I shut Sendmail down. Also, VM is experiencing way to much FTP activity with illegal log in's being tried. Well, each each illegal try generates an error report with the offending IP and a lot of other data. All this data makes the log real big. Several weeks worth of logs means some huge files. Eventually, all a partitions space goes away and something sort of crashes. It does not really crash but some services get really confused and some terminate and some get interrupted at inconvienent times. Anyway you get the drift.
This resulted in no archives no Moore.
Greymatter porting?
I have been contemplating retiring my trusty server and using my son's hosting company. He says that he has 50 available virtual servers available so all I would have to do is point to the virtual server. This will be much more reliable than my own machine and cable company broadband.
The only problem is that I do not want to give up my blog data. I have several years worth of events highlighted and it is tough to just scrap it. So how do I scrape the data from Greymatter under Perl? Man, I should be so lucky to have it comma delimited somewhere.
all the other Perl stuff I have running can be scrapped but not my blog!
