windsend

The ash trays are full

A customer is selling his million dollar boat. He's replacing it with a new one that is essentially identical. Go figure.

Out of Syberia

I finally manged to finish Syberia. It took me a total of about fifteen hours to get through the whole thing. I was stumped a couple of times, but taking a few days off always seemed to give me a new perspective. After a while the puzzles took on something of a pattern.

My review: the art work and music are gorgeous and fully worth the effort expended just to experience - A+. The animation was pretty amazing, but we've been spoiled by Pixar and Dreamworks - B+. The story is original in details, if not in form - sort of a mystery quest, with some hints of self discovery - B-. The actors doing the voices of the characters were pretty bad, with a few notable exceptions, and so was the dialog - C-. The game play itself involved entirely too much time guiding the heroine (appropriately named Kate Walker) back and forth on errands. Granted it was back and forth through beautiful scenery, but still tedious - C-

Will I try the sequel? You bet!

eJob

Last week, after exhausting the word of mouth efforts we have found most effective in the past, we decided to advertise for help in the loft. We took out a newspaper 'help wanted' classified. Cost: $219 for one week, including Sunday. We also decided to try an online help wanted posting. Cost: $99 for three months.

During the week we got about 10 calls in response to the newspaper ad, three of which actually ended up sending resumes or letters. During the first afternoon we received 10 electronic responses to the online posting, most with attached resumes and cover letters. That was a week ago, and they're still coming.

I always heard that classified ads were a newspaper's bread and butter. How's the business plan looking these days, Mr. Blethen?

October Sunrise, or maybe Grace

I've commented here before about how the choices an owner makes about the boat he owns reflects aspects of that owner's personality. That's particularly true when the boat in question is being designed and built with the owner's intimate participation.

I occasionally get the chance to see this process in action, and today was such a day. The boat in question will be gorgeous. Long, narrow, low and graceful. All other considerations are secondary. This boat will look spectacular, and will, I'm sure, be a credit to Maine craftsmanship. But more than that, it will be a credit to one man's vision of beauty. We should all be thankful that there are still those with the vision, and the means, to create such magnificent things.

The Whole Famn Damily

Just spent the afternoon getting my mate blogging. Now we're all up.

Homeland Security

I had occasion to visit the Boston office of the US Customs service yesterday. If this office is the result of our giant government reorganization for a heightened level of alertness, I hate to think of what it must have been like two and a half years ago. There were about 30 "Reserved for US Customs Visitors" parking spaces, all full. All empty spaces were marked "reserved" with signs threatening to tow violators immediately. I risked all and became a violator. Entering the customs office lobby, there were no visitors - no visitors' chairs, even.

There was a visitors' window half covered by a screen, with a moveable office partition right behind it screening the view into the office. There was a little bell at the window. After ringing the bell a couple of times, I stuck my head through the window and craned my neck far enough to see around the partition into a vast office, with many empty desks and a few uniformed customs 'officers', some shuffling papers, some with their feet up drinking coffee or standing around shooting the breeze. No visitors in sight. Finally go someone's attention.

I won't go on with the story, because it depresses me. Suffice it to say I wasn't impressed by the alertness of the program. After I got out, on the way back to Maine, I stopped and bought a case of wine on sale. I feel safer already.

Wanna be a sailmaker?

My company is hiring. Send us a resume.

Teething Problems

In the loft, we are in the throes of installing a new plotter cutter to replace our old standby. That machine cut thousands of great sails (and a few turkeys) over the past eight years, but was beginning to age less than gracefully. We can already tell that the new machine is going to be faster, smoother and more accurate than the old one ever was. But, oh, the little headaches in getting the new one up and running.

We had to install new track and new retaining wheel guides - kind of like putting together a model railroad. Since we have a homemade vacuum table, the machine, although custom built for us, didn't fit perfectly - we had to shim the retaining wheel mounts and we're still waiting for a slightly longer idler wheel axle.

Next we carefully calibrated both the x and y axis scaling factors (so that when we tell it to move 1.000 meters it doesn't move 1.001 or 0.999 meters) and offset between the pen and the knives so they both move on the same axes. The supplier had precalibrated the machine, but we are more particular than he is. We found a problem with knife alignment, and had to adjust the alignment pin. We experimented extensively to find the proper air pressure for both the pen and knife to work on our vacuum cutting surface. We still have yet to solve problems with the joystick controller and the pause switch. Hardware, software? We don't know, but hopefully we'll figure it out. Technology is never as smooth to get up and running as you expect and hope.

But we did cut our first sail yesterday. What a relief - it came out beautifully!

A Nice Phone Call

Recently, I got a phone call from a potential client asking for a proposal for a suit of sails for his J/46 to replace his six year old originals.  It turned out that this gentleman was the father of the New England salesman for one of our cloth suppliers, who had recommended us.  This seems to me to be a very nice compliment.  Hmmm, I think I'll specify his son's products...

Conservation?

I'm on our town conservation commission. We are slowly getting back to business after several years of somnolence. We are discussing what should be the goals for the management of town lands - balancing uses like recreation, wildlife habitat and plant species preservation, income from timber harvesting, what?

Mostly the land parcels had been acquired by tax lien years ago when they weren't considered to be worth much. A few of the large parcels have been harvested of timber, but mostly they have sat there, undeveloped, available for public access, hunting, etc., but never promoted for any use.

One of us suggested that we make it a goal in these tough economic times to try to produce income from timber harvesting equal to the revenue the land would bring from property tax if it were on the tax rolls. Another suggested that if we were including economic issues in our plan, we should have the lands appraised for possible sale. After all, we could sell one (or more) of the large pieces to a well healed buyer, with a conservation easement limiting development to one house, requiring most of the land to be left 'forever wild', perhaps even requiring some public access. We could get a large sum for the town coffers and add a big sum to the annual property tax rolls.

What is conservation? Probably not selling our land, we agree. We're making progress...