So here it is, the first salvo in my war on winter.

If this gambit pays off, I will be able to spend from December 15ish to March 15ish.
In the Caribbean.
On a yacht.
If it works out especially well, I will be able to keep working from time to time remote over the internet.
In the warm. On a boat. In the Caribbean.

If I could put internet service on Mt. Everest, I can damn well get it in St. Martin. And where there is internet, there is a living can be made.

REQUEST ID : 3313

STATUS : PENDING

REQUEST DETAILS : DEVON AYRES has requested Without Pay from 1/1/2010 8:00:00 AM to 2/28/2010 5:00:00 PM This request has been sent to : Big Boss Total days away : 59 Total weekdays away : 41

REASON : This is tenative. Would likely also book vacation days final 2 weeks of december, and first 2 weeks march using combination vacation days and lieu. Would likely be available during this time to work via Webex and continue business remote. Also able to fly back to do short meetings and projects for webex based projects. Actual details negotiable and tenative at this time. Just giving advanced warning so as not to fall afoul any management or legal boundaries.

The downside is, frozen people are going to hate me.
But they can come visit and sip drinks by the beach.

Wish me luck in the negotiations that will likely come of this first foray.

In preparation for the eventual travel intensive nature of my life, I have changed by home phone number.

And the bonus is - I have made it easier for all of you to call it, and cheaper too! Toll free!

So until I get Skype, or some such thing - my new home/roving toll free number (Free to call within North America)

1-866-519-4289

( The beauty of it is ... )

I am on volunteer member security watch detail tonight at the boat club. Mosty this means walking around and socializing with people, and reading my textbooks by the front gate to the club. It also means I am a white blood cell - supposed to somehow identify entities without BYC member DNA, or other harmful such folks. I always resent seeing people in uniform doing this kind of thing. Mostly I think of them as white blood cells in an organism that I am not entirely a part of. An organism that might at any time decide to digest me for its own purposes, or reject me in some kind of bizarre autoimmune reaction. Hey, even red blood cells among other things eventually get eaten up this way.

Paranoia about uniformed people is a common theme for me. Not that I do a lot to warrant being eaten by white blood cells of society. Its jus tthe knowledge that they are there. And that sometimes things go horribly wrong for some people who dont have power.

So it is strange to be acting as one for a day. Not that I have any real clue what I should do should I see someone doing something horrible. Probably just do what other immune cells do - tag it and call a bunch of Killer T cells to eat the bugger.

So in that vein - is a military coup a kind of HIV AIDS thing in my analogy system?  When a bunch of rouge ideas take over the white blood cells, creating more rogues and eventually taking over the body? Interesting thought.

At least my wireless works - nice to see something of my own invention working as it should.

Back from toronto sooner than I thought I would be. My follow-on customer failed to tell me the proper lies, indicating they were ready for me to return to their lair to complete the installation of their shit.

My meetings with another customer were fun. Pleasant people. They also have a habit of asking advice, but then going and learning to do things themselves. I have total respect for this approach. Is it any surprise it is an IT department run by women?  I look forward to the rest of the pale-male IT world catching on to what these folks already know.

In other news, I and the rest of the nation are sick of snow. Moving right along.

mon_chou and I have drifted back towards a Ottawa wedding. It looks like July the 26th (Sat) - with the ceremony in the vicinity of Maple Island, and the party at the backyard lair of Chou. Food is being contemplated as a pot-luck ish mix. I will likely make butter chicken, and another couple batches of red and white wine, which worked out so fabulously last summer. We may still employ some form of catering to backfill for the folks coming from afar who cant bring hot dishes with them. Its still open that way. Kind of exciting.

Chou is starting the search for a dress. Anybody who cares to go dress shopping with her, and provide feminine advice, drop her a line.

In other news, School proceeds, although I am still procrastinating on completing a planetary tracking lab. Damn you Kepler and your squirrelly ellipses.  And who names his kid Tycho. It must have been a lark when his mom called him in from the back door.

I am contemplating interesting things one could do with a low-powered computer on board the boat. On one hand, it is a gratuitous bit of tech. On the other hand, it makes for some possibilities like simulating the ship computer from Star trek, or ringing alarms when the AIS data and the GPS data indicate certain doom. My frustration at present is with electronic chart data. The united Snakes are giving the data away online. They see it as a public safety issue and want the most current data available to people who might be driving boats hither and thither around the the Snake infested waters. Snowviet Canuckistan however charges for the data. Once you pay for it, it is locked to one computer node with an onerous encryption model. Pain in the ass. This DRM crap alone is making me want to go back to paper charts. I may try installing the charts into a VMware virtual machine, which I can install anywhere. It seems excessive as a precaution to ensure digital chart access. I can just imagine the customer service calls someday.

"Hello, Government charts people?"
"Yes"
"My navigation laptop got fried and wet, and all my charts were on it. I want to reinstall them on the backup laptop, quickly, as I am limping back to shore and there are rocks, and the submerged hulks of tax auditors wearing concrete shoes in my path"
"You will have to transfer your license. Can you provide us with a host of complex and inane proof that you bought this data"
"Im freaking bashing my keel against sunken civil savants here!  I need this installed right away!"
"Perhaps you should have bought two licenses, one for each laptop"
"Fuck you, those cost me 500$ as it was. Why would I pay twice?"

Of course at this point the boat speed would have reduced to nil, what with all the tax men clinging lamprey-like to the hull as I try to find safety.

You would think that this kind of thing would be available from our esteemed pirate community. Finally a chance for them to establish cracker cred and traditional pirate cred at the same time. But I have seen little evidence of this.

So for charts, it will likely be back to paper. At least paper charts can get a bit wet, can be sold and loaned, and fit on any laptop, table, or flat surface, regardless of license terms.

In a bit of far-reaching planning, I have begin booking off my summer vacation.

June - Planning on booking off last week of June. As vacation system allows.
July 2008 - entire month will be booked off. As without pay. But it will likely wind up being registered as using up overtime in Lieu, of which I have over 18 days worth.
August - Have requested first week as vacation, Will probably book another 1-2 weeks in Aug as vacation system allows.

Next summer will be the year I get all the bugs worked out of the boat, and get her ready to go, aside from the last minute provisioning etc.
This year has been pathetic in terms of progress, but life has been busy.  At least the brightwork is georgeous - mostly on account of the efforts of mon_chou

Wow, back from a week of vacation.

First few days - I dont actually remember, but there was much preparation, and a HASH run.
Then we went on a cruise up the river. We puttered up river to Pinheys point, anchored overnight, then sailed to Mohr island, anchored and then puttered back to Pinheys for another night. We wound up puttering back to Ottawa Friday morning. Then we drove to Kingston and attended a wedding. Then we packed the car again and headed to KG fest. Which was fun too. Then home.

Now Chou is off to Windsor on another sampling mission for her PhD and I am being ping-ponged between three ongoing work related crises which involve being in Toronto and Ottawa at the same time, and writing a document with data that is based on the scribblings of a coworker in his notebook. 

In other news, I need to install a better vent for my holding tank, finish installing my anchor windlass motor, and get my rigging in order (the spreaders are off-kilter).

But life is good.