Month: June 2013

Summer weather has arrived and we'll have it around for a bit. It will be quite warm out here on the Peninsula, maybe 80 or so.

The number of vessels in the boat yard have been dwindling, as the summer season starts. Here in the Escapee park, boats are coming out of storage and getting cleaned up, likely for the crabbing season which starts July 1. I watched something interesting the other day in the boatyard: a large sailing yacht was brought on a truck and lifted off for re-assembly. The boat was about 50 feet long, full keel, and wide enough that it was a wide-load on...

I made some progress this evening on a computer/internet problem that's been bugging me for quite a while. Here's the story: Many of my friends write blogs which I follow with great interest. They include a function on their blog which "shares" information to "social" websites. Click on a button on their blog page and some information is recorded, presumably to their benefit. To put it in (spine-tingling, intestinal-twisting) terms, if I click...

"Says You" is word-game show on the public radio syndicate, I've listened to it for years but have only heard it in the Seattle area. Never having seen a radio show before, I grabbed a reasonably-priced ticket to see 2 shows produced in Port Townsend. It was quite interesting to see how these shows are done. The format is two panels of clever, witty people guess the meanings or derivations of odd words. It's strange to see a stage with Spartan...

This has been a most pleasant spring in terms of weather, better than I can remember. So almost every day is a good one for going into the mountains or to the beach or check out a little town. My favorite activity is hanging in Port Townsend and driving through the ship yard to watch boats of all sizes and shapes get fixed up. Here in the RV park, things are pretty quiet. There's been a rash of leaseholders giving up their lots lately. My...

Today I had my annual checkup and a problem was found. I'm 63 and have never had any medical issues whatsoever, and have been waiting to see what would turn up. Things wear out with age, in my case it looks like it's in the cardio/vascular system, but future tests will tell. So here I go, another variable in life.

Maybe it's just the way he looks:

The last piece of converting my website from one hosting service to another was to cancel the old account with the incompetent service. Unfortunately they canceled my domain registration as well. To me, registration and hosting are two different things, but to the new company they are the same. I got it "fixed" by contacting sales, not technical support. Sales people answer the phone on the first ring, tech support leaves you on hold for an...

The shocks were replaced today, making a world of difference. Several problems were solved in how the driving felt, it's nice again. Thinking back, the problems showed up quite a while ago, maybe when I was in Florida. If so, then the shocks I had put on a year earlier weren't worth anything, junk. I'll see how these do. Replaced a pair of tires, this time I didn't give up much useful tread. I went into town (PT) for lunch and sat on the beach...

Rather than go up into the mountains, I checked out the Elwha River today. They've removed two hydro dams and the river is now running free, allowing fish to spawn for the first time in 100 years. The river is finding it's course in what used to be reservoir, depositing silt and moving it around. The silt in the river is still that grayish color which indicates glacial debris; it looks very much like the ash in the rivers after Mt St Helens...

I seem to be rebuilding my truck. Today it was determined that my shocks needed replacing. Now, I just replaced those suckers about 18 months ago so that news didn't compute. But then I saw it was 35,000 miles ago, so I guess that's within reason. The factories lasted 100K. I'm learning now that I push my truck hard. When I look things up on the internet about my truck I find I'm taking advice from off-roaders and extreme vehicle owners, not...

I went through the truck today, and removed my passport and birth certificate from the console box and stashed it in my rig. I carried those along with vehicle registration and insurance card in the event I get stopped in Arizona, Alabama, or a few other states with ferocious undocumented immigrant laws. No problem here in Washington, or the several states I will be visiting in the next several months. I got the impression from Joe Arpaio in...