Toby's Log page 112

Two more trips

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Went on two more trips after over a month of no boating. This was a while back, in August probably, so I don’t remember it perfectly now.

One trip contained me, Paul, and Jamie. There were a ton of sailboats out there, so much that it seemed to me, who was steering, to be like an obstacle course. Most were out a ways from shore. We headed out to them, and when we got near the big array of them, the wind died down a lot, so much that we could hardly move until occasional gusts came along. We saw boats back near shore moving along just fine, so we headed back there. Indeed, there was a much stronger wind. It got rather strong at some points, and we were really able to move along. We saw a windsurfer well out from shore. I’ve never seen one near that far out before. At one point he fell over. He was very hard to see from afar, so we went over by him. He was struggling to get back up, but after several attempts, finally made it. We soon went back in, as Jamie needed to go I believe.

That was Sunday. The Thursday following that, me, Paul, Beth (Paul’s girlfriend), and Ally all went out. It was mighty chilly and windy. I was very glad I brought my windbreaker, but everyone else hadn’t, I believe. They were quite layered though. Beth and Ally both went inside the cabin for a while as we were heading back in. It was a short trip, as we went out late and it got dark quick. We did get to watch the sun set. A racing group went out just ahead of us as we went out. There was a lot of them, and they all went around doing various things. Most of them had spinnakers up at one point. We ran pretty close accross ones path when it was heading back in. As I sayed, it was rather windy, and we were really cruising and healing with both sails up. At one point while I was at the helm, a gust combined with a slight turn sent us tilting quite far over. Beth said the rail was in the water. I quickly let out my sail and Paul scrambled to release the jib. We then lowered it down. This reduced our speed a ton and removed almost all the heel. The way back in was rather dark, which always makes it hard.

Capitalocracy

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A list of all potential budget items is made. Individuals then choose what percantage of their income taxes goes into each listed program. Referendums and elected officials choose what programs are on the list. Low funding marks programs for removal, either by elected officials or a vote. The list is filed annually with the tax return. A change form could be used midyear.

Several different versions of each program could possibly be used, allowing voters to choose the one more accurately affecting their desires for the program. This would also allow programs that do not meet their goals to be repremanded by voters by having their budget reduced, but would split the divide money and effort towards a common or similar goal.

Advantages
This would link the resources held by each program to the voters desires for them to succeed.

Voters put their money where they want it. They see and have a better understanding of where this money is going. Confidence in the budget should increase, hopefully with less feelings of government waste.

Programs known to be wasting money will be repremanded by the public through reducal of budgets.

Disadvantages
Voters may not be good with budgeting, and will likely do a poor job of reasonably spreading funds through all programs. They will likely give certain favored programs all the money while giving others none. This may even out somewhat throughout the entire voting populace, but likely not enough, especially when certain programs are hot for debate while others are not. Alternatively, voters may vote to increase or decrease funding for different programs by varying amounts. This could become rather complex, especially if the voters must adhere to a given funding level. If they don’t, then their changes could increase or decrease taxes, giving voters direct control over this. To simplify things, ratings for each program might be done like the NPAT system, going from greatly increase to greatly decrease, perhaps numbered in counting +3 to -3. A composite of all these would then be taken and the average vote would be taken. Guidelines would need to be established for what each choice means in execution.

Some programs would likely be subject to a lot of negative feedback in the media, which wouldn’t neccisarily be well deserved. Programs doing well to achieve their goals may lose major budgeting or even be killed because of a bad incident or string of incidents that gets the public angry with them. Without the system like above with multiple options available, an entire area of government may be killed, with nothing to replace it. If, for instance, the military was seen poorly in the public eye because of a war or series of other incidents, the country may end up with no military all of a sudden. This would be alleviated somewhat by the funding modification system of above.

Programs would want to spend a lot of money on advertising, to raise public awareness in their favor, especially when a negative story is run on them in the media. If there are competing programs, a lot of mudslinging might occur. This may have to be strictly limited, or perhaps even all adverstising funding eliminated, by legislation. There could be a governemnt program, even a seperate branch of government, created to independantly inform voter about all programs.

multiple votes

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allow voters to vote for multiple candidates in each race. Each vote would be counted and added to the tally of each candidate as it is now. Percentages would likely be drawn from the total number of tallies, but could potentially still be considered by percentage of population.

One could then vote for an independant party that closely matches their interests while still being able to put a vote in for the candidate of the major party they would prefer to win, allowing them to not “throw their vote away”. This would give the other parties much greater success, and perhaps eventually give them some power.

seperate issues from candidates

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voters take something like the NPAT test, a test covering all the major issues up for current debate. The results will all be added together to get an NPAT for the entire nation, and seperately for each subdivision of the nation that is having an election. Each item would be shown as a percentage of the population in agreement with that item. These results would be compared to each the NPAT of each candidate from each division, and the candidate statistically closer to the division NPAT would be elected.

Some Advantages:
This would allow (theoretically) the most appropriate candidate to be chosen by each citizen without each citizen having to wade through the mud slung by each candidate at the other.

One would simultaneously be voting for every candidate close to their personal opinion set, while voting against every candidate opposing their opinion set. In such a way, the problem of limited selection from a two party system would be eliminated, as one could vote third party as well as for their major party at the same time, and even for multiple candidates from their party at the same time.

Some problems:
As politicians already can and do lie about their positions on given issues, it would be unreasonable to expect them to stop now. Especially when their vote is much more directly tied to those positions.

There will be no mechanism to punish candidates for failing to follow through on their declarations made in the NPAT, making the above problem very bad. Some system for this would be needed. Perhaps they could be challenged by a large group of citizens if they fail to meet these positions, and have an independant panel of judges decide if they indeed failed. The group size would have to be set large enough that this wouldn’t be happening constantly, particularly by those who voted opposite the officer. Or perhaps an independant body would repeatedly, perhaps monthly, rate the officer based on their performance on each issue, and the officer would be removed from office or a new race would be ran if a certain threshold is passed in difference between performance and original declaration. This body could potentially be a randomly chosen selection of citizenry, or even the entire nation. This would perhaps create problems if major events change the environment the officer is acting in.

new server

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I’ve been wanting to get myself a new server for a while now. I’ve been wanting to get some sort of mini-itx size, low power consuming computer. My cousin Paul had gotten a Via board, and I’ve been thinking of that. Since Apple released the Mac Mini, I’ve also been considering that. Both options look pretty good.

However, my mom stopped me from needing to get one of those. She bought me an eMac that she got some good deal on. It’s 700mhz g4 with 1gb of RAM and a 40 GB hard drive. That’s more RAM than my old server had, and the hard drive will be way more than large enough for only storing server files. It’ll have plenty of room to store backup files as well. It seems plenty speedy. I imagine, though, that it uses a lot more power than the ibook. Definately when the CRT is running. I think it uses as much as 90 watts with that. It also has a fan constantly running (which will seem somewhat silly when my house gets down to 45°F this winter), a larger hard drive, and other such desktop power consuming items. And it doesn’t have the built in battery backup of the ibook, which could be an issue with the occasional power losses I get. Thus, I plan to eventually replace it with either a mini-itx type computer or some cheap laptop.

Still, it is rather nice to have. I now no longer have to worry a lick about taking my computer elsewhere or shutting it down or the like for fear of taking the server off the air. It will be very nice to be able to take it with me when visiting friends or what not, as it is a portable computer. It frees up plenty of memory and a little cpu time. And it just seems much nicer and more organized on both my server and my non-server. It gives me a little more training for setting up servers in more normal situation.

Because of this, I also have much reduced memory consumption on my ibook. Normally, my memory swells quickly and then pushes into swap files until I have four or five. They stay even with only the Finder open. Now though, I have free memory and fewer swap files, while the server is approaching it’s 1 GB limit with just the finder and Terminal running.

Socialisms: Balance Want with Need

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people want/have preferences for certain things
government could be used to attempt to provide these wants
as in communism goods, jobs, and property are owned by all and managed by government, and these are important areas where people have personal preferences, they could be doled out to those who want them
jobs: person educated generally at first, makes choices as education progresses that narrows them closer and closer to a field they are interested in. they may change directions if they don’t like where they are going, and work towards multiple areas of interest. government, through good planning, knows what jobs are generally needed, and decides how many openings there are in a given field. after education, person either takes opening in chosen field, or is put on wait for opening and works in another area of interest until an opening occurs to their liking. supply affected by demand to some degree: government changes number of positions toward fields people want, or provide other incentives in unwanted fields. person tires of job, can take opening or wait for another field.
homes: people have many ideas of ideal home and location to live. government creates homes where people want to live. can only create so many homes in given place. if can’t get desired location, can be put in closest (based on desirable criteria rather than geographical proximity) available accomodations, put on waiting list till home becomes available. various styles of living accomodations will be made in each area based on demand for each type. all homes will still be designed pragmatically, with items such as energy efficiency and usage efficiency being important considerations. all houses upgraded as technology becomes available, considering benifits for the costs involved.
solitary versus group, quiet versus noise filled, rural vs urban

Vacation 06: Maine

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Last week I went to Maine. I went with Jamie and his girlfriend Chelsie. This was supposed to be our annual cousin kids trip. Unfortunately, Ally had taken off too much time from work for other engagements. Paul has no control over his work schedule. Neither were able to go. So it really wasn’t a cousin kids trip.

We went to the cabin of my cousin Kristen. We don’t see her much, since she lives in Maine. Last year, at Mimi’s funeral, she invited us up.

I packed Saturday and finished Sunday morning. I took all my stuff with me and left some at the parents house while I went to work. I worked pizzas from noon to 9 or 9:30. When I got off, I picked up my stuff from the parents, then went over Jamies. I sewed some pants and ate a bit of food while Jamie and Chelsie got ready. We stuffed all the stuff in Jamie’s little Civic hatchback. We put most of the stuff in the feet area of the back seat and then folded the seat-back down to make a large bed area. Jamie drove first. I was in the back. It was quite uncomfortable to sit up back there. We went to Macedonia to get gas. We then headed to 271. Unfortunately Jamie got on 271 South. We had to go all the way to the next exit to turn around. Then we were off.

I couldn’t get to sleep too well. Chelsie had some Dramamine, so she fell asleep easily. I talked to Jamie or tried to sleep while we drove up 271, then got on 90. We saw a vehicle with a brightly lit license plate; Jamie thought it might be a police car, so he slowed down. We were behind it for quite some time. We slowly gained on it. As we got closer and closer, it became more and more apparent that it wasn’t a police car. It was in fact a mini-van with a wheel-barrow strapped to the top, and a bunch of junk in the back to boot. We then sped up and passed him. Somewhere in Pennsylvania, I fell asleep. I woke up in New York. I probably was asleep for a half hour.

Jamie drove until we needed gas. Mine was the next shift driving. I found it rather difficult to drive for a while. I was a bit tired and every mile seemed to take a while. Jamie and Chelsie were both asleep. Dawn came though, and at about 100 miles into my drive, the sun was up and I could see my surroundings. This helped the drive immensely, and the miles seemed to go by with ease. I got to see the sunrise, then trees and farms and plenty of other good stuff.

To be appended

Gray Area July 16th

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I took Mr Dwight out on the boat today. It took him a while to get over my house. We then took my car up to the dock. He didn’t like having to sit in the back, as I didn’t want him to have to crawl through, or to displace Mr Pink. Paul took out Linda, one of our neighbors, as she had never been on a sailboat either. When Dwight and I arrived, they were still out. I showed him our dock, but there was no boat. We walked to the end of the dock to see if we could see the boat. There were several sailboats coming in and out, as well as out on the lake. None of the nearby ones were it, and we couldn’t see the disntant ones well. We sat out on the dock for a bit. We discussed calling Paul on his cell phone, but neither of us had such devices (with service anyway), nor did I know Paul’s number. I had planned to write the number down before I left, but forgot. Two dudes came up and talked to us briefly. We contemplated asking them to use their cell phone. We finally decided to. The guy seemed a little reluctant, and made the call himself. We called Uncle Al. Unfortunately, no one was there. We let the guy go. After a bit longer, we decided to try to call Ally using a payphone to get Paul’s number, or to have her call Paul. We went to the car, but I had only one quarter. We then went to the marina, and got the last four quarters from the shop there. There was no visible payphone at the marina, so we went to one that was out at D dock. I checked our dock first, but still no Paul. Dwight handled the calling. After much trouble with trying quarters, he discovered that one could not call long distance with quarters at that payphone. He considered using a credit card, but it would have been quite expensive. At this point, he just wanted to leave. He was somewhat mad, and it was rather hot out. We went back to the car, but I had to leave Paul a note at least. I wrote a simple note that we had left, and we headed back to the dock.

To our luck, Paul had finally made it back in. The boat was all set up and all, but he wasn’t ready to go back out just yet. He suggested we go get some ice and snacks and by then he’d be ready. We went out and bought some rather sweet iced tea, some ice, and Dwight also got some swimming trunks, as by this point he really just wanted to swim rather than boat. We came back, and Paul drove by on his motorcycle. When we got to the dock, Linda told us Paul had gone to McDonald’s for a bite. She invited us to sit next to her under her umbrella. We talked for a bit, and finally Paul arrived. He had bags of food from McDonalds. He started eating and talking to Linda and me. He offered me and Dwight a double cheeseburger. I told Dwight he could have it, but he declined because of his lactose intolerance. I ate it instead. I don’t like ketchup, but it was barely tasteable. Dwight, who had wanted to be home early, really wanted to get going. We went over to the boat and set it up. Finally, Paul made it along to the boat and we headed off.

The winds had been low for Paul earlier, but they weren’t too bad at that point. The sails were both ready to fly up, so we took them up. We sailed out for a bit. As Dwight wanted to get home, we planned a rather short trip. He had originally wanted to get back by 7, but that was pushed back to 8, then 9. Paul told him he really needed a whole day devoted to sailing. We sailed out a bit, then the wind started dying down. At this point, Dwight started feeling a bit sick.

We turned around, and planned to go by the beach area near the docks. Dwight steered for a little bit as Paul told him a bit about sailing. By the time we got near the breaker wall, Dwight just wanted to go in. So we did. We sailed with both sails into the breaker wall area, then ran just the jib into the dock area. This was our first sailing into the dock area. We dropped the jib as we got close and ran just by motor. Paul was at the tiller. As we came in, we seemed to be coming at a rather sharp angle to the dock. The wind was giving Paul a hard time it seemed. As we approached the wooden dock to the side at a 45 or so degree angle, Paul steered to straighten out. This pointed us right at the cement peir part of the dock our dock was attached to. I quickly moved to the very front of the boat to kick off as we approached. I kicked off and one of our neighbors grabbed on from the dock and pushed, but we had enough force that we still ran into the peir and the electrical box just on it. The side of the peir was wood, and when surveying the damage, we had made a small indentation. The electrical box had flexed back a bit, but was quite fine. A small bit of paint was chipped off the bow.

As Dwight had to go and I drove him, Paul took care of closing down the boat. We went off with Dwight still feeling fairly sick. He really wanted to sit in shot gun, as he felt the back seat would make him feel more sick. We moved pinky and he climbed on in. As we took the hour and 15 minute drive home, he urged me to go faster. I tried to draft semis and other vehicles, as I usually do, but they never seem to like it. We made it back to my house at around 8:45, giving him 15 minutes to make the 30 minute drive back to his house. He said he never wanted to go sailing again.

quicken files and rsync

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Backing up quicken files via rsync evidently doesn’t work: the resource forks are destroyed, which the files “need”. Files saved in this way will just give an error message when opened in Quicken, “Unable to open file.” However, the data is not lost at all. The data file is actually a package. If you show package contents, you will get to the actual data file (/Data\ File/Contents/Data\ File). To recover this data, use vim or some other text editor that can handle the data properly. TextEdit or many other similar programs won’t work. You need to get the Contents/Data File from a working data file, perhaps a newly created one. Yank all the data from the file with your data in it: there are a lot of lines, so ‘500dd’ or something like that will get them all, or simply using the graphical version to select all. Then open the working file and replace all with the yanked lines. This worked great for me.

After my recent hard drive crash, I had to use whatever I had backed up. Quicken wise, I had backed up about 15 days before the crash using rsync. I also had an old file from nearly a year ago. Unfortunately, because of my saving methods, the data in both seemed to be from more than a year and a half ago. I soon discovered that the recent data file had been rsynced to the inside of the contents of the data file I had intented it to replace. This was the actual recent data file. Unfortunately it would not work. I searched the web for solutions, but no one seemed to have one. I did get information that the resources were removed by rsync, however. I decided to figure out how to put the new data into a data file that worked. Simply copying via the finder the Contents/Data\ File didn’t work. I tried replacing the contents via TextEdit, but that didn’t work either. I tried modifying a single line in the working data file with vim, and that worked. I then tried replacing the whole file contents, and that worked well.

Gray Area July 8th

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This was the day of the dock owner appreciation day at the marina there. They had free food, drinks, and music. I had planned to go to that. Paul wanted to go sailing beforehand, so I went up early. I stopped to check out a recumbent bike and a camping/canoeing store on the way. I arrived shortly before Paul.

Paul brought two girls along, one a friend of his and the other a friend of that friend. They were new to sailing. We went out and put up the main, then the jib, with no problems. There was some wind, and we got moving along at 4-5 mph (our GPS reads in mph). Not real fast, but fast enough. There was some strange object off in the distance, so we decided to head for that. We went for quite a ways, but seemed to be getting no closer. The party that we had wanted to go to had already started by this point (5), so we decided to turn back towards port.

Paul and the girls wanted to swim. Paul went off with a life jacket tied to him. He said he was getting a good pull from the boat, but he certainly slowed us down a good bit. He stayed out for a bit, then climbed back aboard. We had no ladder or anything of the sort, making this somewhat difficult. We noticeably sped up soon after he was back aboard. They had some easy cheese and some crackers, then the girls went in. The one went in first, and seemed to be quite fine. After a while, the other decided to go in. They were each tethered to seperate lines. They slowed the boat down quite a bit, and made it difficult to steer. We were having trouble moving or keeping a course. For some reason the boat only wanted to run with the wind, and when the wind got low, I couldn’t steer her at all. The girls were enjoying themselves though. They stayed out for quite a while. Paul tossed them a couple of crackers for their eating pleasure.

Finally, they decided to come back in. The one girl had some trouble getting up. After two attempts, though, she made it. The other girls turn came up. She could not seem to get onto the boat. She tried numerous times, but couldn’t seem to pull herself up. We tugged her along, trying to figure out how to get her in. We suggested we all just grab her and pull her in, but she declined. Paul made her a rope loop ladder, but this didn’t work well either. Finally, she made a strong effort and swung her leg over the back. She was up.

We then set our sails better and were able to speed toward port more quickly. The wind started picking up again finally. It was coming straight from port, so we had to tack to get back in. I went too far before the first tack, so we had to go back a ways. We had to tack quite a few times, especially as we were going into the break wall. By then, the girls had gone below to lie down. This helped us out, as the deck was less crowded and we didn’t need to have them move back and forth so much. Paul manned the tiller and main while I manned the jib. I sat in the center so I didn’t have to move constantly. There wasn’t so much heel, so this worked well. We sailed on into the breakwall area, then dropped the sails and motored the rest of the way in. We had the one girl steer as we worked to put things away. Then Paul motored us to the dock.

Uncle Al and Aunt Jan were both on the dock waiting and talking to some neighbors. We pulled in no problem. Uncle Al and Paul fought a little bit about how to wrap dock lines and stuff, as they seem to a lot these days. It was 8:30, and we had definately missed the food, though music and dancing was still going on. We finished closing up the boat, then headed down toward the cars. Me and Paul went to the bathroom, going through the parrothead party with some live musicians. We then parted.