Saturday, December 24, 2005

Christmas Update

A quick Christmas update.

Hey you actually followed the link on the Christmas card. Congrats! Here is the boring text update that I didn't actually send out. Here is what I did last year: Work ... and quite a bit of it too. Somehow I got tied up with Boulder Ventures and started working on yet another start up company. This happened almost a year ago and pretty much consumed all of my time from last December until this past summer. I managed to hit the old airplane a couple of times. Mostly to exciting places like Boston, Austin, and the Bay area. The startup was based around RFID and was frustrating as hell. You can see the results of a half a year's endeavor at Radfly. Did you notice there really isn't anything there. Well that's about the size of it. My partner and I pretty much closed it down last summer.

We also had a quick trip out to Seattle over Memorial Day weekend. We ended up hooking up with the Family Yacht Club and had a grand time rafted up in Poulsbo. After that, we managed to move our boat from Bainbridge up to Poulsbo. That was a pretty short trip.

But we were back pretty quickly over the 4th of July weekend. Mostly we just took short trips. We visited the Lavender festival and had brief trips to Mt Olympia National Park. More details will eventually be found in the Nav Station.

In late July we had a visit from my sister and her clan. We visited the Denver Zoo, Rocky Mountain National Park, The Denver Museum of Natural History, Vail and who knows what else.

After they headed back we took a trip out to Seattle to visit our boat and hang out at the Perry Rendezvous. We then headed up to Canada for a couple of weeks and then swung back south for Port Townsend's wooden boat fest. I got to do some racing on my friend Eric's boat and we even managed to win in the lightest wind you can imagine. So we did manage about a month on the water after all.

Next it was back to Fort Collins and a quick trip out to California to visit some friends. I even managed to almost get a job with a very LARGE company. Luckily, cooler heads prevailed and I ended up starting a small consulting company, Atengo, with a friend of mine. That web site actually has some more information. We have officially dubbed it the world's worst web site. Hopefully it will get better soon. We even have a customer, so I have been busting my arse until just minutes ago.

So that's the quick update. Maybe someday I will do more with this stuff.

Monday, July 11, 2005

July Showers Too

They plan was supposed to be another raft up with the Family Yacht Club at Roche Habor. But, we had some issues that didn't allow us to leave Fort Collins until Friday. So we loaded up the Cruiser with cats, clothes and all of the things you might need for a week of cruising and headed off to west coast. Now for some reason, it was extra windy driving across Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, Oregon, and Seattle. For two days we battled unseasonably strong winds driving across the plains. Man, I was just plain beat up.

Finally we managed to hit the Bainbridge ferry at 7:30 ish. We decided to go ahead and eat in Bainbridge since everything around Port Ludlow would be closed (Everything being the one place to eat in Port Ludlow). So we headed down to docks and had a nice little dinner. We even saw Lizbeth and Dave. After finishing up, we had the big drive to Port Ludlow. Somehow we managed to make it there by about midnight. By this time we where pretty much tired.

On Sunday, we headed back to Bainbridge and met Dave and Lizbeth on Bainbridge for their 3rd of July celebration. We were going to wait and watch fireworks at Port Ludlow, but we were just too tired. So we scooted back, exhausted again!

The Monday plan was supposed to be a trip to Lake Union to see Eric's new boat, but gravity really set in. I ended up finishing the splice on some double-braid dock lines that I had started working on at home and just hanging out in the sunshine. Meanwhile, we ended up meeting another couple that had a big ole boat moored near ours. The lake Union trip was really starting to look like a drag, so we ended up bailing on that gig and headed up to Port Townsend to watch Fireworks at Fort Worden. We ended up getting a nice spot on the beach near Point Hudson. It was a good show and not crowded. I think we had something like 30 people on the beach. A real nice gig!

Now I was feeling good and rested, so the next day I decided to replace my starter with my spare. The old starter had been really bothering me, since the solenoid kept on getting jammed, causing the motor to not start at the worst possible times. So I pull out all of the crap in the aft berth and notice a little bit of water below the water heater. Uh oh. It turns out the heater was leaking. Crap. I decided to ignore that for a bit and replaced the old starter. This wasn't too bad and the new one cranked right up. Meanwhile, I also ended up changing the oil and replacing all of the fuel filters. At least the motor was good and happy. The water heater, I just ignored for another day and eventually pulled it out. That was a really big friggin. mess. So for now, we have no hot water and probably won't until I decide what to replace it with.

5/13/2010 Note -
I eventually replaced the water heater with an Isotherm model. It looks like it is built quite well. The only issue is that it has an anti-scald device that makes the water colder than I would like. I think this has to do more with my lack of water pressure than anything else.

Friday, May 27, 2005

May Flowers

So for grins we decide to head out to California first. I have a meeting on Monday with a VC in Colorado and then another one on Wednesday with a VC in San Hoser. Kathy decides to drive out early to California with the cats while I do my Colorado meeting. After the meeting on Monday, I head to the airport only to be greeted by several thunderstorms. Seems like the airplanes all got diverted to Colorado Springs and my flight was effectively canceled. But wait, somehow I managed to get rerouted and I have a new direct flight to Reno (where Kathy is waiting for me). So I manage to make it into Reno kind of late, but at least I made it. The next day, we scoot on down to San Francisco to stay at a friends house. I have my meeting on Wednesday and then head up to San Francisco to meet my bud Tracy for some general touring and dinner. The next day, Kathy and I head north and stop in Oregon for the night. The next day we head out and battle through some of the Memorial Day traffic.

Okay, so we arrive late on Friday afternoon with all intentions of just hanging at Bainbridge for the next couple of days. The first thing I got to do was replace the gaskets in the head, since the head was completely dysfunctional. This mostly worked, but the whole thing leaked a bit. But, Saturday morning was so nice that we decided to join up with the Family Yacht club's memorial day raft-up. David and Lizbeth from the Platypus joined us for a leisurely sail to Agate passage. Afterward we started the old motor and headed into Eagle Harbor. The trip was mostly uneventful except for a near miss with a pylon in the middle of Agate passage ... oops.

The next two nights we rafted up with five other boats and had a tasty potluck. A couple of us ended up shooting the crap and possibly drinking too much until about 4 in the morning. Needless to say, the next day we spent seriously lazing about the cockpit. That evening we headed to shore for a big Italian feast with the whole crew.

Now, we had been talking with the folks up at the Port Ludlow marina about moving our boat there. Finally, after much chatting, Kathy convinced them that we should be there, so on Monday we motored and sailed up to Port Ludlow and put Kalliope in her new home.

Now that was a pretty damn nice weekend.

Port Ludlow is a very pretty place, but duller than warm toast with no jam.

Okay, damn it. The head is still screwed up. And look a new head is only $120. So I decided to go and just replace the damn thing. This should be easy, but of course it isn't. After taking the head out, I noticed that the plywood that the head was attached too was a bit rotten. So I pulled the whole thing out dried it out and repainted it. But since I was painting that, I decided to update the paint on the boat hook. And why not repaint my spare starter since it had some rust on it. So this project knocked out a whole day or so. I'm thinking that maintaining a boat part time from Colorado is going to be a real pain.

After that it just started to rain. I'm just not sure I'm a very good NW person

Nothing like a good working vacation.

Saturday, April 16, 2005

April Showers

The boat is still in Bainbridge and I have been working way too much lately; however, we finally did manage to get out to Seattle for a couple of days. We found a couple of cheapo flights on Alaska air and hit the sky.

The weather on Saturday was blowing pretty hard from the south and we ended up taking Nelly Bly out in some 20+ kt winds from Port Ludlow down south to Point No Point. It was an all guys trip (except for the couple that we picked up on the dock). It was pretty much bash and go the whole way. A pretty good sail.

The next day, things mellowed out and we took Kalliope out from Port Townsend towards Seattle and finally over to Blake Island. BJ and Tricia crewed with us and we had a nice leisurely sail. The sun even managed to poke out on the way back.

The next couple of days we ended up checking out a bunch of Seattle finest dining establishments. Yum, Yum.

Why is it that I want to work my ass off at a startup? Explain that to me again.