Winter blows

And it blows in hard, whenever it wants to. Here's today's Weather Out the Window(tm) Report:



It's a thin layer of snow, to be sure, but it is just the beginning stages of a storm that will eventually include what the forecasters have taken to calling a "winter mix," which is, I think, proof positive that Crappy Winter Precipitation, Inc. has hired a media relations/PR agency. The snow will be followed by what I, unbeholden to any stakeholders serving on the board at Crappy Winter Precipitation, Inc. and therefore able to call it as a see it, have taken to calling "Pink Rain." We get the weather radar on our local cable service, and on that feed good old normal rain ranges in hue from green to red, with yellow in betwixt. Snow is white. The nasty crap that isn't quite rain and isn't quite snow, and exhibits the defining trait of being the worst-of-both-and-best-of-neither is displayed in pink. It falls as rain, the freezes when it hits the ground. I hates it, I do, I hates it with a passion.

So, nothing doing on the outdoor activity front, unless you count the time spent plowing the snow off of the driveway before the pink rain can get on it and convert it into that messy, slushy, icy mess that I call Hell Snow. I had some work to do on the kayak though, having not quite gotten around to it last week. Today's job was to mount the foot braces. This requires the drilling of holes through the side of the hull, which is why I've been putting it off. Nervous work, that is. The directions call for the drilling of a pair of holes on each side, with the distance between the holes specified at a very precise 11 7/8". Me, I don't have the confidence in my measuring to do it that way. Instead, I measured the location of the first hole, drilled it, then ran the bolt out from the inside to the outside, and temporarily mounted the foot brace on the outer side of the hull. I was then able to very precisely drill the second hole simply by drilling through the bolt hole of the foot brace. All I had to do then was coat the bare wood inside circumference of the holes with epoxy, position the foot braces inside the hull, start the bolts in a few threads, coat the exposed threads of the bolts with silicone sealant, and drive the bolts on in. Nothing to it:





It leaves exposed bolt heads on the side of the hull, of course, which I'm not overly thrilled about, but I imagine I'll eventually get used to them being there:



As long as I had epoxy mixed up, I went ahead and coated the toggles that will hold the hatch covers in place. I didn't want to do them one side at a time because I didn't want to have to mix up an entire new batch of epoxy tomorrow for such a small job, so I hung them from some twine strung between two clamps and got both sides covered at once:





They're probably stuck to the twine now, but that's a bridge to be crossed tomorrow.

The picture above of the foot braces mounted inside the boat has an interesting story behind it. I've been looking for a small, light camera tripod for awhile now. Specifically, I decided I needed one the day we visited the Grand Canyon, and I had to pile up rocks and pebbles to prop the camera up to get a picture of me and the Missus. I had to scrunch down on the ground to make sure it was properly aligned, and after I set the self-timer and ran back to be in the picture, I noticed that I was being laughed at. Why? Because I had sand all over my face from crawling around trying to get a look through the viewfinder. Last week, I found what I was looking for: I ordered a Gorillapod. The Gorillapod worked perfectly for holding the camera up in the bottom of the kayak so I could get the picture of the foot braces. This thing is so cool that I decided I'd use it to take a picture of itself:



Ain't that slick!! That's a nifty little gadget, there.

Oh, and this was pretty neat. I just finished a game review for an Xbox 360 motorcycle/ATV racing game that you can read here:

http://www.gamingnexus.com/Default.aspx?Section=Article&I=1693

What's cool is that I got an email today about it. This is the entirety of the email:

"best review i have ever read"

I thought that was pretty cool. I've gotten emails about reviews before, usually asking for clarification or more details, and once with a correction, but never one like that.