BOAT = Break Out Another Thou

OnSite Marine replaced the exhaust manifold gasket on the starboard engine, outboard side, on Saturday. I had brought it to their attention because of a big increase in the volume of the engine's exhaust noise. Ken thought "it wasn't that big of a job" but after taking off the manifold and trying to grind both surfaces flat then re-assembling, it was still not a good seal.

Now the head comes off and goes to the machine shop to be milled. Estimated cost $2K.

In 100 Years

On an instinctual level I know this is true.

Trees

The builder planted 2 trees in the back yard yesterday and I agreed to faithfully water them. The forecast for today was originally wet so was thinking that mother nature would stand in for me. But nooooeeee! Now only puny rain in the early afternoon.

This fulfills the builder's landscaping obligation but now we have a yard of mulch with some interspersed weeds. When we bought the place we saw that landscaping was part of what we were paying for in the association dues. The owners will soon form a board and wrest control of the association from the builder. No grass 'til then.

Summer Music

Tonight we'll ride bikes to Hoboken for either the Elvis tribute at St. Ann's Festival or Gene Plumber in Sinatra Park.

Attended the Weehawken Summer Concert Series last night and heard "The Revelations." They were great! Incredible energy. And the Lincoln Harbor venue is only 10 minutes away on foot.

Last Thu we saw "The Fave" in Hoboken. Great fun.

And most of this is completely free of charge.

Can you tell we're loving the easy access we have at the new house?

Digital Cables

After receiving yet another game console I ventured into Radio Shack looking for HDMI cables. These cables have quickly become the standard to connect game consoles and computers to a/v devices like TVs and stereos. Have you noticed what the retail stores want for these things? It's a significant fraction of what you paid for the device itself. Radio Shack wanted $35 for a 3ft cable and $75 was the cheapest 6ft cable in the store. I've noticed similar pricing in the big box electronics stores.

Ended up buying a package of four 2 meter cables on the web for $49 including tax & shipping. I know there are purists that will lecture on comparative bandwidth ratings. Come on, the cheaper cables support 1080p. Good enough for me.

Fun

NYC Restaurant Week

Didn't Know (or forgot)

Interesting - 25 Things You Might Not Know About IBM

Paralells and Function Keys

Tech support at Quicken & Quicken Bill Pay had asked me to use control and function keys to invoke special functions in the program. Within the on-line pop up, holding down ctrl-F3 and clicking 'Contact Info' allows refresh of the contacts with the QBP server. Holding ctrl-Shift while clicking File->File Operations->Validate does a "Super Validate."

Neither of these worked so, after some investigation, this is the resolution. Hold the fn key and then strike the function key to get the effect of just the function key in Windows. That is, to get F3, hold down the fn key and press F3. To get ctrl-F3 hold down ctrl, fn, and press F3.

The solution for ctrl-Shift is different. By default it is mapped by Paralellels as the key combination that simulates the right mouse click. You can change that mapping by navigating the Parallels menu thus: Desktop -> Preferences -> Keyboard -> Mouse Right Click. From that screen you can either turn off the emulation or remap to another key combination. Once that's done Windows will recognize the ctr-shift combination.