Holiday

Almost the big 4th of July Holiday, weather will be great and I will do some sailing. More to post once the holiday has past.

Weekend Sailing in San Franscico

I was able to head to San Francisco for a long weekend of sailing. The weather was great and a good wind helped provide the means to sail all day. Stocking the boat with supplies and heading out, a rounding of Angle Island and a shot across the bay and pasted 'the rock'. Wonderful views of the city front and bridges, boats and even a few dolphins.

Spent the night on 'the hook' at the island, nice spot in towards the beach and once everyone left it was very quiet. The BBQ on the boat fired up and a good supply of rum helped ward off the slight chill of the evening. Once dinner was eaten, not much else to do but head below and get ready for sleep. Early morning brought a little fog and a gentle roll of the waves. Only a few boats stayed the night and we decided to head to Sam's for some food.

A nice sail back to the dock and put the boat to bed. a great weekend.

My Greek Olympics: Working towards the first test...

Apartment:

At this time, I also got my apartment, but it had no furniture so I would have to buy some. I didn't like the furnished places, so I was told I could get the company to provide money to buy the furniture. George had a friend who knew people and we went one Saturday to look and buy. I got a coach, table and chairs, an arm chair, a small desk and a futon. Then I would buy my stove, washer and refrigerator at another place. I was still in the hotel till the end of June, since the furniture wasn't going to be delivered till then. I had found the place originally through Ari, he knew a woman who had a place and he gave me the number. I liked it more because there was no furniture and I could get what I wanted, I should have gotten a furnished place, but....

Apartment

When I finally moved into my place at the begining of July, I didn't have much to fill it. The apartment was on Omirou Street, on the slope of Mt. Lykabettus in the Kolonaki area, but was closer to the University. I was only a block from Trep's office and about a mile or so from the MOC. Around the corner was a small market and on the next block was a small, very small bar called "Low Profile". Up the street and down a bit, there were lots of bars and restaurants, though I didn't go to them much, just walked by. My apartment was 92 square meters, which is about 900 square feet. I had three AC units, which was a lot for Athens since it cost so much to run them. I had to buy the refrigerator and stove plus a washing machine, but I didn't get them untill August. The store I went to never got the items in stock so I cancelled that order and went to the store next door. I got the stuff with in a week.

Altec:

At this time David was man-handling Altec, one of the subs, and they were complaining to their "friends" with in the company, who we are sure they bribed. Altec was to put in the network at the MOC, but they never showed up and always made an excuse as to why they couldn't come. Finally they showed up to do the phones and network setup, but after 3 hours nothing worked. David was pissed and threw them out, we were going to put the network together our selves, namely me. I found an electronics store and David and I purchased the tools and equipment. I crimped the cables and connected the ports, plus set up the phone lines. We got an electrician in to make sure the wiring was right and with in a few days we had power, phone and a network.

Watching the Fire Brigade:

In June we went to the Fire Brigade to observe how they operate and get a scene of what is done on a standard call. The staff were all in a big room with a large table in the middle, a set of "windows" were on one side of the room. The people at the table would answer the phone and write down the information, they would yell to another guy who would come and get the paper. The paper would be handed to a guy in one of the windows who would call on the radio to send a vehicle. This involved a lot of yelling and handing paper back and forth. No one seemed to keep the paper as a record or do any reporting on what was happening.

Part of the contract was to build an addition on the existing building and move all these operations over to those new offices. Each group and function would have a dedicated area to work in. We were giving them a system that would do all of the call taking on a computer screen and take a way the yelling, plus have a record of the calls. In the new offices, we were going to have the phones in a different room, the radio in a different room and a wall in between. When they finally moved up to the new office, they had the partitions removed so they could yell between the rooms. Kind of defeated the whole purpose of the system, and just interfered with how they new system was supposed to help.

Putting in the rack at MOC:

Fire Brigade Office

As we started to install the computers and get the system working at the MOC, we were faced with a decision to have a rack installed for the computers for the IET1 demo. We were going to show the system as it would be installed and having the computers in a rack would be best, but how do we get the rack in the MOC?  A rack is a large steal frame and it has the power connections and back-up power units all installed. It is heavy and it can't be disassembled for the install. I looked at removing a window on the first floor and having it brought up on a crane, but the window was to small for it to fit and it would be expensive. David decided that the computers would just sit on tables in the server room. The room was all the way in the back of the first floor (second floor) and air-conditioned. The computers were expensive, something like 300 thousand dollars. It was important that the computers were well taken care of since they would end up in a command center eventually they needed to be kept in very good condition.

Dealing with wiring:

The wiring at the MOC needed to be worked on so I was able to get a couple of electricians in to fix it. The power lines were not very safe and the wiring was a mess from when the last tenants left. They just cut the wires instead of disconnecting things. Along with the power, the computer network wires had been cut so I had to deal with wires that were not labeled or had end plug. I had to crimp new connections on the wires then test them to find out which port they went to. Once I had that done I had to workout how they would connect to the server. Plus the phone lines were also not connected and I had to find the phone line and which number went to which line. It took days to get this all worked out and we had the IET coming fast.



Old Fire Brigade office



Alarm at MOC:

The MOC had an alarm system installed since we had hundreds of thousands of Euros worth of equipment there. I was in charge of the system and I was the keeper of the codes. Once security officer Bob showed up, he wanted control of the system. I was like "bull-shit to that!" He wanted to have access to everything and total control. The system had an administrator code and 10 user codes. I had the admin code and I gave out the other codes to George, David, and the others. I gave the corporate shits a code, but I kept the master. One problem was that the system had a motion detector and the window blinds would move at night when there was a strong wind. Air would go under the door jam and make the blinds move, which set off the alarm. I would get a call from the alarm company and I would have to go shut the alarm off. Since I lived the closest (actually George was closer but since he broke his leg he wasn't around) I would have to go shut it off. I should have given the responsibility to dweeb and let him deal with the alarm going off. Once we had the entrance to the MOC re-done, no more wind could cause the alarm to go off and it solved the problem.

Weekend Boat work, Part 2...

At the last minute I decided to drive up to the Seattle area and spend the weekend, since I was up the previous week working on the boats I decided to go up again and help get them in sailing condition. I drove up on Friday night and the weather was going to be perfect, lots of sun and warm. The drive up was easy and the mountains and volcanoes looked cool still covered with snow. Since we had fixed most of the damage to the hulls, we focused on the trailers and painting the water line on the black hulled boat. We had sanded the old blue line and we thought we would paint it a dark blue, but when at the store looking at paint, we found a color shifting blue paint so we said lets see what that looks like.

Back at the boat, we sprayed the paint and it looked like crap. A very translucent sparkle blue was all we got, plus it ran badly. We thought it would take many layers to build-up the color, then Ray read the label. Spray over a black undercoat.... Well since we were spraying over a primer coat it looked bad, so off to the store again for a can of black paint. A quick sand and Ray sprayed to black then sprayed the blue, it looked really cool this time. Looking straight at it it has a blue color, but at an angle the colors are everything from green to purple and even copper. Ray liked it so much he wants to paint the whole hull in that type of paint. The idea was to have one boat red and the other blue. Also we talked of graphics on the side or transom, a dragon and sea horse.

Once we did the paint, we turn our attention to the trailer. When we took the one boat off the trailer to work on it, the supports were so rusted that  two broke off. We had to build a new cradle to support the boat so Ray got some wood and we fashioned a new set of supports. Then we flipped the white boat over and onto the trailer. The supports worked perfect and we decided to get the rig out and see if there was any issues with that. A quick check and once the lines were in order, I put the mast on and held it while Ray fastened the bolts and attached the stays. We put the jib on and looked at the main, but we couldn't find the spinnakers. But the rig was fine and the boats was ta that point ready to sail if we wanted.

There is some more work to do, but the boat at least could be sailed now. The second boat still needs a little work and the sails for that boat are not in good shape. Plus we have to build a second cradle for it so we can transport both boats. But we have a plan and we are confident we will have them in the water soon. I may go back in July to sail them and help with the other work, but it is good to have them both in a condition so they can be sailed.

Weekend boat repair...

This last weekend I drove up to see cousin Paola and had the chance to start doing some work on a pair of Mini_Millimeter class boats. They have been sitting for at least a year and needed a good cleaning and some general repair. Minor glass work and paint mostly. Though it was to be a 'good weekend', it was drizzly on Saturday and some sun finally on Sunday. 


The boats had to be flipped and placed on saw horses so we could clean them and fix the hulls. The first one was very heavy, I didn't think it would be so much but it was a struggle. The second was easy, a lot lighter for sure. After checking both, one definitely had a lot of weight in the bow and it sounded solid verses the other that sounded hallow and empty. Either one has foam and water in the bow or there is something else to make it heavy.

We washed both down and scrubbed them clean, one was in very good shape while the other had more damage. Mostly it was confined to the rudders but there were a few cracks and chips that needed filling. The rudders needed to have cracks filled and one had to be re-bolted before glassing. But it was easy to fix and we managed to get all the chips and cracks filled. A little sanding and they will be perfect and ready for paint.

We have talked about painting graphics on them, maybe a dragon on one and a horse on the other or just cool colors. Not sure yet but they are small and it will be easy to paint them in a short time.