Boys on the Boat

Nadeem, Vic, and I met at LBI on 8/15 and then took off for Tice's Shoal Sat morning. Great to be on the water with friends but as I pushed the throttles up the boat wouldn't get on plane. We took it over to the shallows at the local swimming hole and I got in the water and ran my hand over the starboard prop. Crusty with barnacles.

I decided to put it on the travel lift and as it came out we saw the real source of the problem. There was about 15' of 1/4" mono-filament line wrapped around the port prop. Jacob pulled and clipped for about 20 mins and eventually got it all out. He showed me that the prop was bent and he was able to bend it back with a wrench so that it looked pretty good to my untrained eye. He brushed the props with muratic acid to kill the things growing there and splashed it in.

Boat ran like a charm and we made it to the shoal in less than hour. From beginning to end the repair took about 1.5 hours and Rich cut me a deal ($315) on the maintenance. Happy ending.

Small Monthly Charges

I've seen articles in the consumerist press about Grandma who paid $4.89/month to rent her phone from the phone company and that over 30 years that came to more than $1,700.00. Think of the diamond studded bling phone she could have had for that amount.

Most of us don't rent phones anymore but there's a new game in town. Several years ago I bought high speed internet service from a major cable company. The deal included the cable modem at no charge and a set monthly fee for the service. I was glad to have it and still am but recently the company started to charge $4.00/month to rent their cable modem.

A quick check of staples.com showed a Zoom Cable Modem for $59.98. At $4/mo. this purchase pays for itself in a little more than a year. Some might continue to rent because they're a little intimidated by electronics but all that's involved is:

1. Unplug the cable modem electricity
2. Take off the TV (coax) cable
3. Take off the network cable
4. Drop off the cable modem w/ the electric cord at the cable company local office
5. Stop at some consumer electronics store (Best Buy, Circuit City, Staples) on the way home and procure a new cable modem
6. Reverse steps 1, 2, and 3
7. Call the cable company and tell them what you did so they can set things up on their end

Step 7 took the longest because it involves reading a string of tiny numbers off the label on the new cable modem and waiting for the technician to perform their magic.

Stop renting cable modems or your grandchildren will write ugly articles about how much you wasted on small monthly charges.

Green Bags

Are you bugged by the short length of time it takes for fresh produce to go bad? I try to keep fruit and vegetables available for salads and snacks but after 2 days in the fridge most things lose taste and texture. Lettuce gets limp and apples become tasteless.

My solution is to buy no more than I'll eat in 2 days which leads to extended periods where the fruit drawer is empty because grocery shopping happens about once every 3 weeks. I should go shopping more often but with all the other things competing for time the 3 week interval is just about right.

I can count the things I've bought based on infomercials on one finger but the ad for green bags offered a solution to a long standing problem and I decided, "What the hell, I'll roll the dice for $10." My opinion - these things work. Baby carrots keep for a week and they're neither dry or slimy. Lettuce isn't limp and bananas take longer to get black spots. Try them for yourselves. Let me know what you think.

Random Music

I admit it. Ever since I got that first 5 disc CD player back in the early 80's I've been hooked on the 'random play' feature but the down side has been that random isn't really random. The player has favorites and this problem persists right up to today with the MP3 player on my computer.

Through an evolutionary process that began in earnest some 4 years ago I've created a library of more that 3000 songs. If I turn shuffle on in iTunes there is a core of some 200-300 songs that get played repeatedly. It occasionally throws in an outlier or adopts a newly added track into the core but it still has favorites.

I've tried different strategies to get fewer repeats including playing songs in ascending Play Count order - the ones that have been played the least get selected first. The net effect is that I hear those songs that have most recently been added to the library. NOT what I'm looking for.

The most recent attempt has been to play the songs in Last Played ascending order - songs that were played the longest time ago are played first. Voila, This works! Obvious, I know but not immediately apparent (to me).

Electronic Compass

In Spring of 2007 we had radar installed on the boat. In reading the sales literature I noted the recommendation that a Solid State Heading Sensor (SSHS) be used with the radar to get full functionality so I got one of those too. We went for Nobeltec because we already use the software for navigation.

As our launch date approached the installer was having some difficulty obtaining info from the vendor about terminating the cable that runs to the heading sensor. I got involved and the vendor told me that a SeaLevel 2106 serial to USB adapter was needed to get the instrument to talk to the PC. It sounded like an easy thing to install so we took the boat with intentions of completing the heading sensor install later.

Because of a series of missteps and accidents including a water logged laptop that turned into a brick, I wasn't ready to set up the heading sensor until now. Reading the manuals for both the heading sensor and the USB adapter it was clear that both expected 2 pairs of conductors, 1 for transmitting data and another for receiving it. So that was great, no mismatches there but, the heading sensor needs +12v on pin 2 (the read wire). Yuck, it came with a DB9 serial connector but the USB adapter wasn't going to supply +12v. This must have been the original problem that the installer had trying to connect the SSHS. Wish he had been clearer about this obstacle.

My solution is ugly but it works. I ran a pair of wires back to the boat's power panel and attached 1 to ground, the other to +12v. Then scored the insulation on the SSHS's cable and pulled out the red and black wires, connected the +12v to the red conductor and ground to the black along with a jumper from the black to pin 5 of the DB9.

I run the navigation program now and see data from the SSHS. Yeah!

Of course the only way I have to turn it off is take out the fuse. Details, details .