Two Years Before the Mast

I just finished Richard Henry Dana's autobiographical novel "Two Years Behind the Mast." It's basically him recounting his life aboard the merchant vessels Pilgrim and then the Alert. He shipped out with the Pilgrim from Boston, traveled South to and around Cape Horn, and then up the Eastern coast of South then North America, and along the California coast collecting cow hides for return to Boston. He returned to Boston on the Alert, transferring ships and getting to return a year or two earlier than he would have had he remained on the Pilgrim.

It's an amazing book. The subject matter and the way he wrote about the voyage, describing the things he saw and experienced, reminded me of Hemingway's writing. His descriptions of sailing, the sailor's lot in life, the people he met and got to know, and the ins and outs of working a merchant ship were surprisingly interesting, and contributed to my understanding of the history of that time.

A great book, I highly recommend it.

Sailing Adventure 2: Getting out on theKeeni water!

Well, Sunday was supposed to be my "Sailing 101" class, but when everybody showed up on the beach to take the course, we found that they were having canoe races, some sort of annual outrigger canoe competition.

So, John taught us the 20 minute intro to the course, the part that happens before we'd normally get in the water with the Sunfish (small sailboats they have for training on), and then they ferried us out to the bigger boats to sail around the rest of the day.

IT WAS AWESOME. I ended up on a sailboat cruising around the bay all day. Can't really beat that. Other folks on the boat were Robert (who owned the boat), John Luchau, Keanie (Jeanie), and some college girls (names I just don't recall, obviously I'm getting old). For a while there was also a young man named Sebastian, and a young woman who I think was named Joanne, or something like that.

John and Robert are experienced sailors (John is one of the instructors), and very interesting people. Keanie is new to sailing (not as new as me though), and is also a very interesting person. It was great hanging out with them. The whole experience was great, though a little interesting at a couple points. Particularly when John was rowing us (he and me) to shore to take me back to my car. John's older (which in Charles-speak means older than me), and he did all the rowing, while I basically contributed extra drag to the dinghie.

It was a great time, and I'm looking forward to the next session on the 19th, where John (not John Luchau, but a different John) is going to complete the parts of the Sailing 101 course that we couldn't do the other day.

Sailing Adventure 1: meeting the folks!

This is actually a blog entry I meant to post a couple weeks ago.

The other day I joined the Na Hoa Holomoku Hawai'i Yacht Club. It seems like a great club. I have no real sailing experience ( I went along on a couple of short sails on a friends boat back when I was a kid ), but the club has classes that go all the way from beginner (sailing dinghies) to advanced (crewing the open water ships).

Today wasn't a very auspicious day though. It was a club sail day, for which you have to be qualified through the Sailing 101 course in order to take a boat out. Plus, well, there was no wind. So basically I hung out, met folks, and got some sun. No biggie, and it was still pretty fun.

The Eee Box: a pc from Asus

As part of my job, I use a logic analyzer pretty extensively. This lets me track and view digital signals coming out of a variety of hardware, primarily the custom hardware we design and build at the NASA IRTF.

Well, I hate traditional logic analyzers. They're big, bulky boxes, with usually difficult interfaces, and it's always jumping through a bunch of hoops when trying to get what you want from them. And did I mention that they're incredibly expensive? Like, woah!

So I got my wise and benevolent employers to buy me a USB based logic analyzer from a company called NCI. These geniuses build the GoLogic logic analyzer, a little box that is pretty much all singing, all dancing, as logic analyzers go (and will get it's own full review later). You can take up to two million samples using all 72 channels, or up to four million samples using 32 channels. You can sample all 72 channels up to 250 Mhz, and 36 channels up to 500 Mhz. All the hard stuff goes on in the little black box, and all the control and display stuff happens on your computer. In fact, my only gripe is that it only runs on Windows, and as a Linux/Mac guy, that means I have to have a pc just for running it (which, to be honest, is quite worth it).

Enter the Eee Box.

This sweet little machine comes with Windows XP Home running on an Atom N270 uP, has 1GB of memory, 160GB drive, supports 802.11n wireless, gigabit ether, and burns at 36 watts. From newegg it was $310, plus $38 in shipping (to Hawai'i). It's pretty sweet.

The thing is small. I can spread my hand out and touch all four corners. It comes with a stand so it can "sit up", making it very low profile. It also comes with a mounting bracket so you can mount it on the back of an LCD screen (assuming the stand for your lcd isn't using that bracket already. If the LCD mounts from the bottom, you're good to go.), which is how I set mine up.

There isn't any CD/DVD player/burner. That isn't a problem for me, I've got plenty of resources for getting stuff moved across the network, but it may be a problem for some, though this is easily solved with an external CD/DVD player/burner. These days the only real use I see for those is for installing software, and generally you can install most things off the net.

Performance-wise, I think it's pretty reasonable. Web browsing is quick (I'm told that the the Eee laptops are a bit slow, but a couple Eee laptop users checked out the Eee Box and thought it was much faster), web video comes up well. File transfers were speedy. I use the thing mostly through VNC, which was as good or better than the old Pentium 4 system I'd borrowed (cockroached) for the short term. The GoLogic software installed fine and works great on it, no problems.

It's a sweet little machine. I bought the pink one, which is actually red, because it has snow flakes, and looks festive (Christmas is my third favorite holiday, after Halloween and Saint Patrick's Day). Here are some more pics:

Cork Boat

I was down at the Port Book & News in Port Angeles, looking for books about people who build and sail their own boats, and this book with the odd title of "Cork Boat: A True Story of the Unlikeliest Boat Ever Built" caught my eye. I finally finished it today, after almost four weeks of reading it in bits and pieces.

The book can be broken into two halves, the first half being the building phase, the second being the voyage phase. Because they're very different, it's best to discuss them separately.

The building phase is about 85% crap. It's well written crap, and very easy to read (the author is a professional political speech writer, I'm sure he's quite good at writing, and it shows), but it focuses too much on his politics, his career, trips he takes, people he works for, &c. I'm trying to read a book about a cork boat, but he's giving me highlights of his work at the Clinton administration, or his trip to Antarctica, or his thoughts on 9/11.

While the cork boat is a great concept, I'm not particularly interested in other aspects of Mr. Pollack's life, or his world view, and that takes up most of the first half of the book.

Well, that and repeated back pats he gives himself for being so talented and interesting. Those show up through out the book. And get amazingly tiresome after a while for the reader whose mostly interested in the cork boat, and not in the author.

The real meat of the story is in the second half of the book, which is only about 15% crap. Mr. Pollack gets his boat built, then gets the opportunity to take it to Portugal and sail it down the Douro River. That's a story worth telling.

It's interesting reading about his voyage, the hurdles he has to clear in order to get the boat into Portugal and past the customs authorities, getting the boat shipped to the starting point. Getting the boat into the water, getting it moving down river, failing to keep up with his itinerary. Reading about how his essential vision rams head on with the realities of the trip, and how he rationalizes letting that vision get bent a little (at one point he gets a tow from a motor boat, and you can tell that it doesn't sit well with him, but he manages to massage his priorities to get the job done).

Throughout the entire voyage his description of the people and places along the Douro River is really well done, and in my opinion made the book worth reading. I was a bit disappointed that rather than make it a hardcore voyage, he instead would just sail the boat along the river for the day, then moor it and stay in various inns along the way. It came across more like a multi-day bike tour of wine country than a "real voyage." However this was more than made up for by his excellent descriptions of the people he met and places he was staying at.

If you start in the chapter titled "Weighing Anchor" (page 147 in my copy), you'll find it to be a pretty good read, and you won't miss anything important (you may find there are people in the book that were mentioned and described earlier, but really Mr. Pollack includes so many people in the book that it's hard to keep track of them anyway).

The Price of Happiness?

Probably a poor title.

Yesterday my four year old became a five year old. For his birthday, he received two presents, a "special edition" Nintendo DS Lite, and a game for it called "Spore." Total: $180, $150 for the game player, $30 for the game.

While driving back to my office, I pondered this. I'm reasonably sure that I never received presents totaling to $180 for any one occasion, even taking into account inflation (uh, 1975 dollars?) when I was in that age range, though when I got older I did (in the form of my first rifles). So it seems to be an enormous sum to spend on a five year old, even considering that the money came from a variety of sources (my wife and I, grandparents), no matter how much he likes it, no matter if so many other kids have them now days.

So I had to ask myself what it meant. Is my son spoiled? No, not really. I know some people would say so, based solely on him receiving the gift, but they'd be wrong. "Spoiled," with regards to a child, is based on behavior, and overall he's a pretty well-behaved boy, amazingly responsible and helpful for a five year old. He helps take care of both his older and younger brother. And aside from the occasional four year old melt down, he's a really good kid.

How about privileged? Well, maybe, but to be honest, I see a lot of kids these days with these devices, some younger than him, many coming from families with a lot less money than mine, some of those families are on state assistance (aka welfare). Most of those families have more electronics gadgets for the kids than mine does (these Nintendo DS Lite thingy-majigs are our first foray into the world of electronic games, we remain PS3/XBox/Wii free). It doesn't strike me that it qualifies as privileged by the current standard, though certainly by the standard I grew up with it does.

Did the kid somehow deserve the present? No, that's stupid. A five year old can't deserve something that costs that much, or earn it. Deserve and earn are ridiculous concepts in the modern age in the U.S. Terms that we throw around as if they're significant, but have little or no meaning or bearing on real life.

So, what significance is there in giving a 5 year old a present like that? I don't have an answer. Just a sense of bewilderment.

I will say this, I do have a nefarious plan. That little machine is my new spanking stick. Both my kids now have a DS. For doing their school homework during their after school program they get 10 minutes of play time, minus 4 minutes for bad handwriting, and minus 1 minute per mistake in the homework. For their Kumon homework (an afterschool study program), they get 5 minutes for their math, minus 2 minutes per mistake, and 5 minutes for their reading, minus 1 minute per mistake.

You should see them do their math, and lawyer-up to justify their mistakes. It's impressive, and actually seems to be working.

Stinky Rope

At Sunday service last month, the reverend told us this story (apologies if I don't get it quite right).

The Buddha was traveling around with two disciples. Along the side of the road they spied a piece of rope, that looked very new, and useful. Buddha told the first disciple, "hey, you should go get that rope and put it in your bowl (begging bowl), it looks good."

So the disciple went over to the rope, and as he approached, he saw that it was a very good piece of rope, strong, well made, a real find. However, as he picked it up, he realized that it stank terribly, so strongly that he threw it back to the ground, and continued on his way. The Buddha saw this, and wondered why.

The continued walking down the road, and they spied a piece of folded up paper. Though it looked somewhat like rubbish, the Buddha told his second disciple to check it out, and to pick it up and put it in his bowl. So the disciple walked over, and picked up the piece of paper. Looking at the paper, it was obvious to the disciple that the paper was used, old, worn out, and not good for much. However, despite that, it had a very good smell, and he could tell that it had been used as a wrapper to hold incense. So he kept it, putting it into his bowl. The Buddha saw this, and wondered why.

Eventually they came to a place where they rested, and the Buddha asked his disciples about the items.

The first disciple said that, while the rope looked good, and seemed valuable, it had a very bad smell, so he had tossed it away.

The second disciple said that, while the paper looked like rubbish, and wasn't good for much, it had a very good smell, that made him feel happy, so he kept it.

Reverend Yachi explained the significance of the rope and the paper like this: some people look wealthy, strong, popular, or in some way appealing. But some of these people have bad insides, kind of like the smelly rope, and even though they look good, they aren't. And we should avoid these people.

At the same time, some people don't look like much, look bad in fact, but on the inside, they are good people, and we should try to have them around. Kind of like the good smelling paper.

Maybe not the greatest set of metaphors, but I understood it, and the kids understood it.

But ever since then, I've been afraid that I'm a piece of stinky rope.