Saturday & a road trip to Phoenix

I was up at 0700 this AM, took a shower, went down for a breakfast of eggs and pancakes and then checked out of my little home away from home. I remembered a cache I have been wanting to get back to so I went over there and snagged it. On the way back and going down Trask I went past the Orange County Motorcycle Clubhouse again. From there I went to the office to log the geocache find and write this blog.

I am supposed to pick up Doug around 1400 hrs and then we go to the ITS America Annual Meeting in Phoenix. Man, I hope the hotel has High Speed Internet! We should get there about 2000 hrs tonight (350 miles mor or less). We plan on leaving the show Tuesday evening and it will be a real long day for us.

If all goes well then I should be back in Michigan on Friday evening. I can then drive down to the Indiana place in another 2 1/2 hrs to spend the weekend. I would like to get out earlier but we shall see. I am tired of the road for a while.

BFN….

Firefox vs IE6

I liked Firefox almost from the first moment I layed hands on it. The quick search bar in the upper right that allows quick searches on google, dictionaries and other useful web engines is great – when you go back to IE you feel as if part of you life is missing. At this point I don’t use tabs too much but I could see where it would be useful. The colors just seem more appealing to me too. The add-ins are great and Firefox calls them “extensions”. I like the the Web Developer most of all and use it all the time.

On the down side Foxfire seems slow to load and the handling of Favorites is not too appealing to me. I guess you cannot have everything and I am writing this blog via IE6 since it supports Ctrl & Alt whereas I cannot use these in Firefox.

The week in review

Today it is sunny and cool in Southern California. I cannot believe that a week has gone by since I returned from the land of my forefathers. Little by little things grow on you and the elements you like about a place make it passable – more and moore.

The big city idea is foriegn to me but out here there are reasonably remote areas surrounded by man made whatever’s. In a community sort of way, one can get solitude and distance from the concrete. At least in the Anaheim area you can! A bit longer drive and the ocean appears or the mountains – there you can get real solitude plus rattlesnakes and cougars.

Last weekend I went geocaching – 17 of 20 finds – both days. On Sunday there was a car show in Orange. You can see some of the photos I took on the Audio/Visual page under Winter 2005 hyperlink. It was a great weekend and I saw a lot of territory. This includes the club house of the Orange County Motorcycle Club: It was very well kept and has a beautiful backyard.

Sunday morning I attended Crystal Cathedral services at 0925 hrs. The speaker was pretty good and the service lasted about 1.5 hrs more or less. It is called the church of the stars but I have not seen any I recognized. I guess I need to read the Inquirer more often.

Rant for today!

Ok, ok

How the week has gone – FAST!

I brought the book I have been reading back from SoCal and hope to finish it before I return. Somehow the second book I bought off of Amazon never arrived, even though I received the confirmation of purchase.

The book I am reading is the “Capable Cruiser” by Lin and Larry Pardey. The book is about preparation and sustaining a sailing vessel that is capable of transocean cruising. This book has several tips that are worth the price of the book; however, most of the ideas presented are common sense. Previously I read their book called “Self-sufficient Sailor” and this was pretty good too. It is still a good read but I will sell all on Amazon when I finish.

SAM & I went to Detroit to look at a Tayana 37. It has been setting around for a while and is below market price. It really looked pretty good but we had some substantial reservations about the bottom, engine and interior of the vessel. The interior was in good shape but the wrong style for us. For the future I think we want the “pullman” style front and rear so there are no “hot” bunking that needs to take place either for us or another cruising couple that might accompany us on the long hauls. I sent the sales rep a no-go email yesterday. Tayana 37′s after late 1985 is what I am looking for but a good Cape Dory 36 or (believe it or not) a Cape Dory 25D for an interim solution.

I need to revamp the website one of these days to reflect our new directions and to just update the looks and feel of the site. All the airplane junk will be demoted and the trading post eliminated along with the guest log and chat area. In addition, we will probably hire a real web hosting service instead of using our own server but we need a cheap solution here. Maybe GoDaddy but they have been less than optimal lately.