Life's a Big Party

One of the few blogs I keep up with, Coding Horror, recently had an entry referring to an IEEE article by Tom DeMarco, who just so happens to have literally 'written the book' on software project management metrics and estimation. He was the one who famously said, "You can't control what you can't measure." That article contained the following paragraph that, at the risk of hyperbole, changed my life:

To understand control’s real role, you need to distinguish between two drastically different kinds of projects:

• Project A will eventually cost about a million dollars and produce value of around $1.1 million.
• Project B will eventually cost about a million dollars and produce value of more than $50 million.

What’s immediately apparent is that control is really important for Project A but almost not at all important for Project B. This leads us to the odd conclusion that strict control is something that matters a lot on relatively useless projects and much less on useful projects. It suggests that the more you focus on control, the more likely you’re working on a project that’s striving to deliver something of relatively minor value.

Jeff Atwood, the author of Coding Horror, chose to focus on some of the more shocking proclamations DeMarco makes, but for me the real winning moment was the paragraph I've excerpted above. The moment I read that paragraph, I immediately realized most of the jobs I've held (for any length of time) in this industry prior to working for my current employer were Project A, and that the situation at my current employer is very much Project B.  DeMarco goes on to draw parallels between the futility of trying to control an adolescent and the futility in trying to control a software project. In case his blanket statements about working on something of minor value didn't hit home, maybe thinking of your job as raising a rebellious teenager will do the trick.

Normally, I would go trundling along; I'm quite happy where I am, and in case it wasn't obvious, after reading this entry so far, I believe this is owing in large part to working on a "Project B." Recently, however, circumstances beyond my control have pressured me to think about the prospect of moving away from Pittsburgh and, collaterally, my wonderful job. It's not for certain, but it's one of the possible outcomes of a current conundrum we're facing. I never thought about it before today, but the implication starting to pop out for me is that the single most important question you could ask at a job interview in this industry might be, "What can you tell me about the gross margin of the project I'd be working on?"  As unlikely as you are to get a straight answer, you'll probably get some indication, and that will hopefully be enough to know whether you're walking into a "Project A" situation or a "Project B" situation.

The very next disturbing conclusion I came to was that a huge proportion of professional software development efforts are inherently "Project As," or worse.  Any consulting houses, and almost any in-house development (think about most bank software, for instance) is bound to suffer this fate, no matter what level of cost-savings it confers to the organization.  When I said, "or worse," I meant it too.  Since very few internal projects are "revenue generating" (as opposed to "cost saving") one might reason that such companies would seem almost preordained to meta-cost-save by being overly controlling of their software processes.

This is an especially dark thought during this time when virtually employed soul in the country is busy being grateful to have a job at all.  I know I'm grateful for mine!

A friend of mine is getting married soon, and for his bachelor party, he rented an RV, got a group of about a dozen guys, myself included, and went to Dover, DE for a weekend of party-camping and the Autism Speaks 400. While I've seen NASCAR races on television before, and been to other sorts of auto races, this was a first for me. To be honest, heading into the weekend, I was really more looking forward to hanging out with friends and drinking some beers than I was to the race itself.

Most of the people drove down in the RV from New York City and one carload of us drove in from Pittsburgh. We arrived Friday evening, made camp and went over to the casino adjacent to the speedway and played some games, etc. Saturday we played beer pong and grilled out, and then in the evening we went to a local bar called Bubba's which is apparently pretty much "the place to go" when you're in town for a NASCAR event. It was pretty wild. Sunday, we woke up, had some breakfast, and got ready for the race.

I didn't really notice it until we got over there, but Dover International Speedway is HUGE. Wikipedia tells me that it seats 140,000 people. That's more than twice the capacity of Heinz Field where the Steelers play, and the biggest arena in Pittsburgh, as far as I know. It's BIG. (Talladega and Daytona are apparently even bigger.) The next thing to mention is that logistically the experience was unlike any other sporting event I've ever been to. First off, you bring your own beer. That's right. No waiting in line to pay $8 for a beer in some souvenir cup that you probably didn't want. You bring a cooler with you. The next thing I noticed is that the whole environment is really relaxed and friendly. There's a guy who checks the coolers as you go in, but overall the staff and security was very laid back. Also allowed? Smoking. In your seat. At first I was worried, but it was breezy, and to be honest within a few laps the sweet, sweet odor of burning rubber and gasoline is pretty much all you can smell.

We get into the grandstand, and we're about 12 (correction upon checking the ticket stub: 6) rows back from the edge of the track, across from the pits. First there's the the pre-race prayer, and God Bless America and then the National Anthem. Just as she gets to "...land of the free" a wing of F-16s does a fly-over low enough that you could feel the grandstand shake. Now the crowd is going nuts. "Gentlemen, Start Your Engines." It's loud. We put in our earplugs. They take the parade lap, the checkered flag comes out and they're coming around turn 4. I was totally not expecting this, but when you have the whole field together, like at the start or coming off a caution, there's this pressure wave that hits you. It's totally visceral. I've never experienced anything like it. It rocks you. I won't say that I'm some fanatical NASCAR devotee after going to one race, but I now "get it." It's VERY exciting.

My next observation is that even when the pack is spread out, it's loud. Overall I'd speculate that this race is the loudest thing I've ever experienced. I have a nice pair of earplugs that I wear for concerts. I generally prefer them to the foam ones. (18 dB reduction) Even with them, it was painfully loud. After 25 or 30 laps I traded up to the uber-dense foam ones that block out everything... (the package claims 37 dB reduction) and it was still loud. By comparison, the low-altitude F-16 fly-over was like having sweet nothings whispered in my ear. I suspect this is why you're allowed to bring your own beer. You would have no hope of conducting a business transaction anywhere near the track while the race is going on.

As I've mentioned, we were seated very close to the track. This had it's ups and downs. I have to assume that the physicality of the experience came, at least in part, from being so close. But being that close also made it hard to keep track of the big picture of the race. When the cars pass you, they're going 175+mph. You have to watch the previous turn and the following turn. In terms of what's going on directly in front of you, it's just a total blur. We also had the pits to watch which was a lot of fun. Since I don't know Jimmie Johnson from Dale Earnhardt from anyone else, I wasn't that bothered by not being able to really keep track of standings by watching the race. I suspect that an upper-deck seat would have made it easier to track who was where in the race, but probably wouldn't have been as intense.

NASCAR fans seem to have a less than sterling reputation, or at least that's what I thought before I went. Having been to other party-camping events, like Bonnaroo, I can say that based on my experience NASCAR fans are more considerate of their fellow campers, definitely better behaved in general, and noticeably cleaner than the clientele of any music festival I've ever been to.

Overall, for all my misgivings going into it, I'm a bit of a convert now. I will definitely try to attend another race in the future. I'll make Heather go too. I think she'll dig it. The key is being there - I still don't think I'd be into watching these races on TV. But if you're into cars, and you like going to concerts (i.e. you're not allergic to very loud things) and you have the chance, I would highly recommend it. It was totally awesome.

So LiveJournal tells me that it's been about 14 weeks since my last post, and some stuff has been going on. Most relevant for this posting is my getting a Mac Mini. You see, I started working at my current job (where we use exclusively Macs) almost 14 months ago at this point and still didn't have a Mac at home.

This state of affairs was mostly the result of prior gear purchases, need, and attempts to time the market for Apple releases. Although one might suspect that I would have special knowledge based on my job, I really don't. In terms of timing Apple releases, I use the same wonderful, publicly-available market timing machines that are fapper rumor sites.

Allow me to digress for a moment: A Mac Pro, while a fantastic machine in every regard, is far more than I need. Let me point out that until mid-2007 I used an AMD Athlon 1.4 system that I built myself in 2001, when it was the cat's meow. I really never had any complaints about it, up until all the capacitors on the motherboard failed and I was unable to repair or replace them or the whole motherboard in a reasonable time/money frame. iMacs are wonderful machines, except that in mid-2007 I shelled out lots of money for an LCD panel. I like it a lot. It's very easy on my eyes, it's big, it's got good color; I like it. I was not, and still aren't, interested in paying for a 24" LCD again. Everyone at work told me I was nuts -- what I really wanted was a Mac Mini.

Since I started wanting a Mini, virtually every rumor site has stated adamantly that a new Mac Mini was going to come out "ANY DAY NOW." And like a sucker, I believed them. So I waited. And waited. And waited. Thirteen months and change, to be precise.

Well finally, last week, Apple released a new Mac Mini, and I bought one pretty much instantly. I even splurged for the 2 day shipping to make sure I would have it in time for a weekend of intense tooling. In short, it is love. It is very quiet. It is noticeably faster than the Dell XPS 410 that it replaced. Obviously it runs MacOS too.

I put the noisy Dell in the basement, where it will live forever, or until it dies. The only thing I miss about it is that I used to put my leg up on it. I keep going to rest my leg on the tower and my leg just falls back to the ground. Oh well. I'll find a way to cope I'm sure.

In sum: new Mac Mini == awesome.

This morning, I woke to the headline on cnn.com, "Help homeowners, FDIC chief says." Here's a novel thought: No. Don't help homeowners.

I'm not an economist; helping homeowners may in fact help the economy, but in a moral sense, and from a classical conditioning standpoint, I think helping the majority of homeowners in foreclosure is not the right thing to do. We shouldn't bail out homeowners who took out bad mortgages because it reinforces bad behavior.

Let's think for a second about an alternate scenario: Let's say this crisis centered around automobiles. For years banks had seen fit to write car loans to people who can't afford them, allowing Heywood Jablome making $25,000 a year to buy a Ferrari with some sort of adjustable rate, or interest only payments auto loan. When the rate adjusts and Heywood can't make the payments, it would be ludicrous to suggest that the government should bail him out to keep his Ferrari from being repossessed. Everyone would readily say, "Heywood doesn't need a Ferrari. Heywood outspent his means and needs to learn his lesson by getting his Ferrari repo'ed, taking the bus for a while, and eventually getting himself a Chevy Cavalier, and getting on with his life."

The comeback seems to be of the form, 'But these aren't people's cars, these are their HOMES, where they LIVE, their biggest INVESTMENT.' A few observations: Many people rent. There's no shame in it. If you could afford to buy a home way out of your league with a bullshit loan, you should be able to find a modest apartment to rent for slightly less money somewhere. This is basically how the housing market works -- you strive for ownership, but you rent until you get there. Secondly, as a society, we don't hold out much sympathy for people who make bad investments. Sure, we try to clamp down on investment scams that prey upon the elderly, and we try to arrest forthright criminals and con men, but people make losing investments every day. My investment portfolio is my biggest asset, and it's in the TOILET this year; can I have a government bailout too?

Why do we reward bad behavior? Worse yet, why take on policies that effectively punish good behavior? Where is the assistance or tax break or whatever for people who DIDN'T overspend their means? Do we expect their feeling of superiority derived from merely avoiding financial ruin to keep them warm at night? Instead, we approve a series of giant federally funded bailouts that, according to some pundits, would equate to a half year tax holiday for every citizen in the country if applied as a tax credit. Think about that for a second: Next year, all the taxes you pay from January through June are being used to reward bad behavior.

If you're not outraged, you're clearly not paying attention.

So after being shut out of the ticket lottery and shut out of the TicketMaster public on-sale, I resorted to StubHub in an effort to purchase seats for the first Phish reunion concert. I'm a grown-up now, and I understand how free markets work, and at the price listed on StubHub when I bought, I was willing to pay the premium to see the show. Imagine my surprise when I got a call from a StubHub representative named Raquel in their New York location, informing me that the seller had reneged and I had no tickets. For all my trouble, I was to be granted free shipping on my next order. As I said to Raquel on the phone, "After this experience, why would I ever order from you guys again?" She admitted, "I don't know."

Raquel informs me, as do various pages on their website, that a sale is not final until the seller confirms it. Indeed, my card has not been charged. However in the intervening time, the market price on their website (and many others) for these tickets has increased substantially beyond what I'm willing to pay. I tried to ascertain whether there was any disincentive for sellers with regard to this practice. I mean, if you can post your tickets to stub hub at 5 different prices and cancel the four lowest orders, then why wouldn't you? List the tickets on eBay, craigslist, ticketsnow, wherever! Just take the highest offer you get! Why hold back? She tells me that there is some sort of fine to the seller for doing this, but could not elaborate, and could not confirm for me that this particular seller had been marked for punishment. When I finally got frustrated and ask to speak to her manager, I got the ever-so-classic "I am the manager" line, straight out of the Dave Chapelle PopCopy Customer Service training video. If getting screwed by StubHub were at least consistent, I might have been willing to concede and move on, but...

StubHub also has a policy that if you buy tickets from them that turn out to be invalid (fake or voided, basically), that you are protected (full buyers guarantee can be read here) and that they will make some sort of "best effort" to rectify the situation. So apparently, your right to protection from fraud is dependent on when the fraud is discovered; if it's discovered the night of the event, they help you out and find seats for you. If it's before they've charged your credit card, well, you're screwed. I would argue that the fraud I've experienced is in fact GREATER in nature than if I had received tickets and they had been fake. Had I received fake tickets, StubHub would presumably have made some effort to rectify the situation, but for me the best they can do is give me free shipping on my next order.

Of course, there won't be a next order, so that's cold comfort.

And if anyone's got two for Friday 3/6, let me know.

So redherring and I went sailing today. This was significant because it was the SPEED3's first towing endeavor. I got the hitch onto it last Friday evening. (quite easy compared to the Civic trailer hitch ordeal.) I had been nervous to tow with it, but it was all for naught. The SPEED3 towed the boat as if it weren't even there. The wide low-profile tires seem to have better grip (no spinning tires) and the engine certainly has about 3x the low-end torque that the Civic did (no fancy clutch work necessary.) In short, it was a breeze.

Also, with my unscientific reading of the gas gauge, I'd estimate it took about 2.5 gal of gas to make a round trip to the lake. Not quite as good as the Civic, but not nearly as gas guzzling as my in town driving was on the first tank. I'm also starting to get used to the very springy clutch.

All in all 'twas a feel-good day of eating, driving and sailing.

For your viewing pleasure.

Well, as unlikely as it might seem after yesterday's entry, Monroeville Mazda finally saw the wisdom of my numbers and came all the way up to meet me. I couldn't bring myself to be the TOTAL asshole and point out to them that I ended up buying the car from them for exactly, to the dollar, what I said I would within the first five minutes of sitting down with them. I guess the better way to say it is that I think my desire to buy the car at a certain price intersected somehow with their desire to be rid of the car.

I have to admit, going back there, I was a bit nervous. I double, triple and quadruple checked every number on every piece of paper to make sure they weren't secretly fucking me. Everything looked kosher.

I'd say the greatest benefit of all here is that I'm rid of my Civic, which seemed to be well on it's way to making me sad. It can make someone else sad now.

Another observation is that if I had had this car 5 years ago, I would have gotten into real trouble. This car has a LOT of power. I'm going to have to polish up my skills of voluntary restraint. While I could drive the Civic wide open pretty much 85% of the time, if I drive this car wide open even 10% of the time, I'm going to get tickets, or other bad things will happen.

I'll post a picture sooner or later.

So I test-drove the MazdaSPEED3 today. And mutually harangued the dealer for two and a half hours for the privilege. It was exhausting.

When I walked in, I was open to buying the car, but not convinced. I had driven a Civic Si on Thursday and liked it, although I felt like it could have had more power. Various articles strongly suggested I try the SPEED3 if I was considering the Si. I kid you not, I really wanted to love this car. The two problems were, 1) we could not put together a deal that didn't smell bad, and 2) the car was less impressive than I was expecting.

So I went into the dealership and they were very willing to "show" me the car. I was more impressed than I thought I'd be with the form-factor. I was not expecting to like a 5-door, but I saw the potential... All the golf bags and sailing gear it could hold. The console was a bit grating, not to mention the Bose stereo. (Bose standing for 'Buy Other Stereo Equipment') But overall, I was ready to like this car. When it came to letting me "drive" the car, they wanted more. Specifically, I was told, 'the kind of person that buys this car has done all their research, wants a car with as few miles on it as possible, and is ready to make a deal; we get lots of people coming through who just want to drive it. What do you say we work out the numbers first and then test drive it?' I was mostly expecting this, since it was the same runaround that my friend Ryan got when he tried to test drive an RX-8. Ryan walked out of the dealership without test driving and ended up buying a BMW, but I was slightly more tolerant. I told the manager, "I'm a little annoyed, and a little insulted, but I'm planning to buy a car, and I want to test drive this, so whatever." Things did not go well. I could play-by-play it for you all, but I won't. The bottom line is that we haggled for some time, and they finally let me drive the car between haggling rounds.

Driving the car was nice, and fun, and all that, but decidedly not MINDBLOWING. First, and most significantly, the SPEED3 is nothing special under 3000RPM before the turbo spools up, and more surprisingly, it dumps power over 6000RPM. I had read about this in articles, but nothing quite prepares you, especially when you've been driving a Honda for 5 years and recently test drove an Si, with a high redline, where most of the power is. When I first got up over 6K, I thought I had hit the rev limiter, the effect was so dramatic. But then I watched the tach as I spooled up in 2nd and it happened again (albeit at 60+ mph.) Also the elbow rest next to the driver's seat was too short and I couldn't have my elbow on the rest and my hand on the shifter at the same time -- this is basically my standard, daily driving, pose. When we got back to the dealer, I played with all the adjustments quite a bit looking for a setting that would fit, but there wasn't one. I figured if I loved everything else about the car, and got a good deal, I could pay a fabricator/upholsterer to make me a custom armrest and I'd be OK. They had clearly let me drive it in hopes that I would fall in love and be more willing to get screwed by them. I told the salesman, "Your job just got quite a bit harder. I didn't FALL IN LOVE with this car when I drove it. It's a nice car, but I'm going to need to get a good deal on it if I'm going to buy it. It did not BLOW MY MIND. I'm not convinced that, all things considered, this car is worth $3,000 more than the Si."

As the negotiation wrapped to a close I confirmed a few things I had been thinking to myself throughout the negotiation. 1) They have not been selling a lot of cars. I pretty much tricked him into admitting this, and I could see his eyes sink when he realized I had cornered him with it. 2) This specific car has been sitting on their lot for at least 3 months. They denied it until I pointed out that it had a June inspection sticker, meaning it had likely been inspected in May. The conceded the point. 3) They openly admitted that they were trying to get rid of 08s since the 09s were arriving next week or something. The final conclusion was that, despite the fact that Mazda only made 5000 SPEED3s in model year 2008, there are still a dozen sitting on lots in PITTSBURGH of all places. You do the math.

In the end, we were $1,000 apart. I told them that if they found the $1,000, and could arrange it so I could drive it off the lot tonight, I'd have bought the car on the spot. They couldn't find the $1,000. Which is total bullshit. They think they'll find someone who will pay MSRP for this car, with the 2009s arriving soon. Good luck. I'm not counting on it, but it wouldn't surprise the crap out of me if they call me back later this week (presumably a day after I've ordered the Si.) It wouldn't be the first time that happened.

Sigh. Car salesmen. What did I expect?

I guess the next step is either to try and go "no-nonsense" another dealership by talking to the fleet manager, try this whole bullshit over again with another floor guy, or order the Si. Maybe the dealer with 4 of these on the lot will be more willing to make a deal than the guy with one. Time will tell.

Here's a picture of me trapping out today with the ladies. I think I figured out that it's been 16 years since I've been out on trap. Luckily it's a bit like riding a bike.

So today we finally got redherring out on the trapeze. At first she was nervous, but grew more comfortable as the day wore on and by the time we were getting ready to head home, she was scampering up and down the rail to level out the boat like a pro, which is a big help. It was a good day to learn too; just windy enough to get out, with gusts, but not so windy that she didn't feel comfortable out there.

Several issues are on the plate to deal with. The first one is the rudders. The lateral adjustment came loose making changing, unpredictable toe on the rudders. I think that slowed us down to a certain extent. Thats reasonably simple to fix. I just need a tape measure and a screwdriver. Also, the jib sheet jam cleats are nearing the end of their service life, so it's time to buy a retrofit kit and go forth with that. Now the question is whether or not to bother with line-controls for the jib sheet cars. On the one hand I don't race, so I don't really need the adjustment, nor am I particularly likely to use it, but it might be only a marginal increase in cost over just replacing the jams with spinlocks, so I'm sorta considering it. Replacing the cars with Trentec cars is far cheaper but requires line-controls since they lack the locking mechanism. Regardless nothing will arrive before tomorrow, so it's not a big urgent hurry.

Off to dinner!

So redherring and I went back to the lake today for another fun day of sailing. Here, finally, is a picture of the boat with the sails up. Heather is assing out on the trampoline. We had, I'd estimate, about 15kts of steady wind with gusts to 25-30kts. This meant LOTS of paying attention.

With the wind we had, it was an interesting day. We legitimately flew a hull for the first time, but we also had another pitchpole (and a half -- we almost went over a second time, Heather went flying but I managed to keep the boat from going over.) In the coming days I will be polling the Hobie boards to see what I can do to reduce the boat's seemingly irresistible tendency to bury the lee hull. The good news, I suppose, is that Heather and I can right the boat when its just the two of us. That's reassuring. The two of us are pretty beat up; a whole palate of bruises, sunburns, etc, not to mention the fatigue of two consecutive days of athletic sailing.

As for today's "damage," I managed to rip the hiking strap off the trampoline while getting back on. This is not a HUGE deal, but it somewhat inconvenient, and will mean that while I had hoped to put off the purchase of a new tramp for next season, well, it's probably going to happen this season. We also snapped one of the jib battens in the pitchpole, which, again, isn't crucial, but is annoying. Everything else continued to function beautifully.

Other lessons from this weekend include learning the effective weight limit of the boat is about 500-600lbs. With myself, Heather, Dirk and Cammie on the boat, it was sailable, but riding quite low in the water. I think in the future we'll bring roller blades or a bike or a book or something and limit it to three people on board at once.

Also, I've been admiring them all along but now that we have a picture with the sails up, everyone else can behold the magic that is the very 1970s looking font my sail numbers are in. My sail color pattern is called "Tequila Sunrise." How fitting all around.

As for right now, I'm mostly ready for Advil and bed.

So Dirk and Cammie came up to help me work some kinks out of the rig (with extra hands) and to sail for the day. We got rid of the bogus extra trap rig, and rigged the remaining single trap rig in such a way as to be usable. Cammie got out on the wire a couple of times. We lubed up the rudder cams and installed the new fancy tiller that redherring got for me. It was totally sweet.

We spent about three and half or four hours on the water. Overall, it was kind of boring for the first part of the day, which is to say light winds. Things were picking up as the day wore on though. Much like in skiing, I suggested around 3:30pm, "hey, if you guys wanna head in, don't feel obliged to stay out here for me. I'm good to go whenever." Cammie suggested that we make "one more reach out and back." The wind was picking up, but we seemed to be riding lower in the water as the day wore on, so I thought we might be taking on some water. Nothing too bad, but something I noticed.

On our reach "out" from the beach we started really humming along (an apt description since the rudders actually "sing" at high speeds) and all of a sudden everyone is scrambling to windward. I go to depower the main, but I look down and the front lee side of the tramp is already underwater; it's too late. I think to myself, "we're going over." Then I quickly realize, we're not merely going over, we've buried the lee bow and we're in the process of diagonally pitchpoling. I feel the forestay/jib-stay hit my life jacket and face as the boat stops and I keep going. I come up to see the boat about a third of the way into a turtle.

I urge everyone to "GET OFF THE SAILS" and we quickly get around to the bottom and start the righting process. It is at this very moment that I become super-duper-ultra-mega-glad that I spent the money for the righting system. Undoing the mainsheet to use as a righting line would likely have given the boat enough time to end up turtling. I got up on the hull, yanked on the righting line. I didn't seem to weigh quite enough to get the boat to come up quickly, but Cammie came around back and hauled herself up on my back and the boat came right up. No one was significantly injured. I had lost my hat, but that was about it. Thankfully, no one was out on the wire when we went over. That usually hurts.

I then dove in to get my hat floating about 15 yards away. Upon hauling myself back on to the boat the lanyard I had the Hobie tool on (around my neck) caught on the hull and broke, losing the tool to the deep. Lost a tool to save a hat. Luckily, the tool appears to be a paltry $7, and the hat was a fitted baseball hat which, for a pumpkin head like myself, is worth its weight in gold.

Other good news of the day includes the "discovery" of lube. The rudder cams are like freakin' butter now. It's truly a thing a beauty. Things I need to buy now: new rudder cam tool, the mast step link became seriously deformed in the pitchpole incident. I managed to bend it back into some semblance of usability, but it bears replacing. Lastly, one of the tires on the trailer is getting low, and I'd be well advised to get a compressor or a bike pump.

Sadly, we didn't take any pictures, but we finally got the boat out on the water today. Older fellow was right; the Civic was more than able to get the boat from the stall down to the water and back, and it beat the pants off using the cat walker.

The rudders were a source of grief. As I've mentioned before, the Hobie tool no longer seems to fit the replacement cams. I'm going to have to consult various forums and see what the general consensus is. I, personally, can't get the rudders to clip down, and once they did finally clip down (after doing what, I'm not sure) I couldn't get them back up. If I hadn't read so many stories about people having their rudders pop up spontaneously, I'd simply loosen the tension on the brindle screw, but I don't want to trade one problem for another. If I can drill a hole in the cams that makes the Hobie tool work, that will be enough for me. As it is now, I have to manually push the bulb down and then move the cam with my hand. The problem there is that manually pushing the bulb down is not easy. Also, while I understand why they can't be fixed, I'm not going to be running this boat up onto the beach at high speed; there's just nowhere to do that here. So having the cams at all is just freakin' annoying. I'm left sorta wishing for the Sunfish's spring-loaded rudder.

We were out for about and hour and a half today. People weren't kidding when they said that Lake Arthur had shifty winds. We would go from a beam reach to being in irons in a flash and without changing headings. I also want to ask on the forums about the main traveler, and the tiller. I hate to sound whiny, but tacking this boat was a pain in the ass. When I was younger, I always sat crew on Hobies, so I didn't really have a ton of experience in the skipper's seat when I got there today. The main traveler looks like there are places to thread ropes to support "locating" it on the track, but there aren't any ropes there. I'm not sure what is supposed to go on. Also I'm curious about the main fairlead block that's hardwired to the center. Other people on the lake were using it, but I can't imagine using it, mainly because I don't want to not be able to get out of the traveler jam cleat from afar.

Lastly, the jib halyard is annoying as sin. I don't know if what I want is one of the "aussie" jib halyard systems, but whatever we had today was annoying as sin. All questions and tribulations aside, it was great to finally get my boat in the water, get some speed up and hear the rudders singing. It was a good day.

We capped it all off by visiting Quimby and Seabass for their barbecue that I was afraid I was going to miss.

I woke up today and redherring was not feeling well. This unfortunately put a damper on the plans for the day. That said, I still needed to go up and lock down everything, so I left her here, watching TV, and drove up to the lake.

I got up to the lake and replaced the rudder cams. It was easy. I didn't need to do the springs. It appears that the replacement cams have been redesigned since the Hobie tool associated with flipping the cams was designed cause, well, it no longer fits. I also rigged the righting system I bought. We'll see if I change my mind once I'm on the water and have to use it, but I was sort of wishing that I had bought the webbing/hollow core righting line system, on account of it being notably simpler. We'll see. Hopefully I'll thank me later.

It was a beautiful day at the lake. Warm, sunny, light wind. It would have been the perfect day to get my boat out on the water, except for the fact that I was alone. I met an older gentleman there who was rigging up his Prindle 16. We chatted a bunch... I loaned him some tools, he loaned me some experience. The first thing he commented on was that my trailer was in backwards. I told him about the trouble I had had with the Civic towing the boat. He was shocked. He said, "I towed this to Florida and back with a Pontiac Sunbird and it was fine. Your engine has to be beefier than that." Wikipedia reveals that, in all likelihood, he was right on that point. I said "Well, when I tried to start from a standstill I either stalled, spun the tires or melted the clutch." He said, "well, that's easy! What would you rather replace? a clutch of a couple tires?" I said, "Tires, of course." He said, "Yeah, spinning tires is pretty much how towing in a stick-shift car goes. Be easy on your clutch, burn some rubber, you'll be fine. Seriously."

He also said that security isn't really an issue up there. He said he leaves everything from sails right down to his life jacket strapped to the boat all summer and nothing has ever disappeared. It made me feel a bit paranoid putting my gigantic chain on, but hey, I already paid for it, I might as well use it.

So then I told him that I was just planning to use the "cat walker" to get my boat down to the water. He scoffed and said "that won't last. Just tow it down there. Seriously. Even if you can get it down there, imagine trying to get it back." I sorta shrugged at the time.

As I finished up the tasks I had planned, I was faced with a choice, to try and take the boat out solo or go back home. I decided to give it a shot. So I got the boat off the trailer and on to the cat walker. First realization: Old guy was right. The cat walker SUCKS. I mean I suppose it beats trying to lift and carry a 320lb boat by your self, but it still sucks. I wouldn't recommend going more than ten or fifteen feet on a cat walker if you can avoid it. Also I don't see any way in the world that I could have gotten the boat back UP the hill on the cat walker, by myself. So I guess the older guy was right. I'll be trying to tow again soon, if only for short distances, and if indeed at the expense of some tire rubber.

It really hurts that I didn't get to go out today. I was so close, but I had a convalescing girlfriend, and was single handed. It was a bad scene. And a good thing I decided to take it easy.

Oh yeah -- I totally forgot to put the hasp on the sail locker. Guess I'll have to go back again tomorrow, no matter what. Maybe tomorrow will be the day.

So... I guess trying to tow the boat behind the Civic wasn't such a hot idea. Well that sounds worse than it actually is. We were at je2i's and he offered to use his truck to pull the boat out of the driveway and then hook it up to my car. My attitude was that if my car couldn't get the boat up the slight pitch of his driveway then it had no business towing the boat to the lake.

We hooked the boat up to the car and I made a few tries to get it out of the driveway. Now let me be the first to admit that I don't really know how to tow something behind a stick shift car. I know how to drive stick -- I think rather well -- but towing is not my specialty. I tried a few times to start moving in first gear, but the driveway was gravel, so I would just spin the tires or stall out. I was actively trying to avoid melting the clutch by trying NOT to feather it in first. So I decided to try starting in second and feathering it a bit. Well, that got the boat moving, without spinning the tires, but soon the cabin filled with the ominous smell of melting clutch a mere 6 or 8 feet into the journey, and I could tell that there was significant slippage occurring.

At this point, je2i was like "you could probably make it, but why don't you just borrow my truck, and it'll go much smoother." After some convincing, I gave up and conceded that there were hills on 79 that were steeper than his driveway, and while I would have better traction, if traffic stopped and I couldn't start up again with the weight of the boat, I'd have been basically fucked. Could I have made it? Probably. Was it a good idea? Probably not.

On the road in the truck was a little harrowing for me. I'm not experienced towing stuff, and well, between friends, I might not have had exactly ALL of the paperwork sorted out yet. I was a bit nervous and tightly wound on the trip up. We had one sorta close call on the highway with a disabled semi on the side of the road and a bunch of Memorial Day Weekend donkey-drivers, but we made it. We pulled the trailer into my dry-berth at the marina, and continued on to the marina office to pay for the spot and everything else. It went smoothly.

We returned to rig the boat. One of the nicest things about this dry mooring spot is that you can leave your boat rigged. Now I'm sure given a bunch of practice I could rig this boat in under 15 minutes, but it took us about a half hour, and the help of some other people across the lot who were also rigging a Hobie 16. There were a few things that we needed to pick up at the Hobie dealer afterward, but the worst of it would be the rudder cams. When I bought the boat, the guy said "you might wanna replace the rudder cams, they've been popping up in heavy wind." Once we had everything rigged, I went to look at the rudders and a better way to describe it might be "the rudder cams are completely and utterly deformed and mutilated and will need to be replaced immediately, before sailing the boat." The other guys there concurred that my cams are totally fucked. Luckily we have a Hobie dealer 25 miles from the lake. While there we ran into a guy who had driven at least 2.5 hrs each way to get to the dealer. I was beginning to feel lucky.

Another thing we found when we got everything unpacked was that the tiller was decidedly ghetto. It was a stock tiller that had been cut off short and then extended with a wooden broom handle. No, thank you. I don't think I'll be single handing this boat any time soon, so I may not need a super 16 foot tiller, but I needed something more tractable than what this had. At the dealer there were a variety of tillers. I was looking at a modestly priced double extension tiller. They also had the Arriba composite tillers. I wasn't going to splurge for one, but Heather insisted and gave it to me as a birthday present, commenting that she didn't want to be back at the dealer in two weeks buying the better tiller in addition to the one I wanted to buy. I'd say the only hardship there is that I won't be leaving this tiller up there.

Coming back to Pittsburgh, we stopped at West Marine and got life jackets and a wetsuit for redherring and some other sundry items like bungee cord and seasickness meds. We're about to head off to Home Depot to get some chain to lock the boat up when we're not there. I guess for tonight we'll have to just hope for the best. I was talking with the folks we met up there and commented "all any of this does is keep honest people honest." They said "yeah, that's kind of how it works around here. Oh and by the way, if you ever need any parts, feel free to take them off our boat. Just put them back when you're done." That was nice to hear. On the other hand, I expect that we'll get up there and find our drain plugs gone, so I picked up some spares at the dealer.

Anyhow. That's pretty much it for today. I have some pics from the rigging and of the sails. I'll post them when I have time. We're on the clock right now. We're also heading back tomorrow to actually try to get her in the water.

We also still need a name for her. Any suggestions?

The wonderful and charming government employees at the Davis Hollow Marina called this morning. I have been assigned a berth at the Watts Bay Marina! I now just need to show up and pay for it. Sweet! I have something to do this weekend!

I inventoried the box of boat goodies tonight. I'm too lazy to post photos tonight, but I was somewhat pleased to find a (albeit crappy) wetsuit, a few extra mast bearings, trap harnesses, and a bunch of other weird shit. I'll update this later.