Wow, that left a mark.

Ouch:



But if I point it here, I get this:

November Weather

It's all over the place. Snow flurries as I look out the window right now, but a thunderstorm earlier this week. The thunderstorm had its normal effect on Brave Sir Hogarth, who predictably went into freak-out mode as soon as he heard the approaching boomers.

We were ready this time, though. Having found that the earlier attempt at giving him a bowl of a fermented beverage made of hops and barley caused more problems than it solved, an over-the-counter medication was purchased in the pet aisle at Wal-Mart. The active ingredient of said product is L-Tryptophan, the very same stuff that turkey is chock full of.

Now, the idea that eating turkey makes you drowsy is widely considered to be an urban myth, but I'm not so sure. Not only did the product get Brave Sir Hogarth through the intestine-twisting stress of a thunderously loud weather event by calming him down, further evidence of the efficacy of the tryptophan amino acid is demonstrated by the great difficulty we are now having in getting him off the sofa, where he is lolling around insisting that we "get some damned football on the TV!"

Testing.... more Gimp stuff

I created an animated GIF image to demonstrate the removal (albeit a bit sloppy) of extraneous background objects:



Unfortunately, it only 'animates' if you click on it. Hmm.

Awww, crap!

Or, "Why Not to Rush Your End Pours."

The front, most definitely not the way you want it to look:



The back, which is still (although I guess there's no guarantee that it won't sag too, but I had to being the boat back in for the night) looking ok:



Where do I go from here? Well, the plan for now is to wait until spring and re-do the front pour. There's no way of getting the droopy stuff out of there, so my boat is going to be a pound or so heavier than it should have been. I'm also very nearly out of the epoxy that came with the kit, so I'm going to use the West Systems stuff I used on the airplane.

Saturday with Co-pilot Egg

We might fly somewhere today, we might not. But if we don't, it won't be because of the weather! Here's the weather-out-the-back-window report:



Looks like Fall is giving way to Winter. See the frost line along the edge of the shadow thrown by the house? Brave Sir Hogarth didn't spend much time on his morning survey of his domain today; he knew he had a warm spot in front of the fireplace waiting for him and he was in a big hurry to get to it.

Temperature-wise, it probably isn't the best day to do the end-pours on the Kayak (which is, quite simply, a matter of pouring a cup of epoxy down into the ends to add a little strength to the pointy parts) since the epoxy likes a little heat to cure, but it's something that has to be done outside, and the temps are only going to get lower. Hey, it doesn't really have harden until March, right? All I need for it to do today is harden enough so that it won't run back out when I take the boat back down to the shop later today.

It's big, ain't it:



While we waited for the epoxy to set up, Co-pilot Egg and I flew up to Lima/Allen Co. to have lunch with Brandon, the world record holder for "Shortest Time Between Buying and Losing an RV-4 to a Thunderstorm." Not a record he's particularly fond of, as you can imagine. Egg flew most of the way up. She still flies mostly on instruments, even though she can see out the front now:



A light touch on the controls is the secret to RV flying:



On course, and on altitude:



I took over just in time to make a horrendous bounce on landing. I blame performance anxiety: I knew Brandon would have his camera. Sigh.

At least it was a still camera, and not the "preserve a bad landing forever" video camera:

Books - they know things

I had ordered a GIMP book from Amazon a few months ago, but it never showed up. Amazon finally just canceled the order. I looked elsewhere for it, but it was only available used at prices well north of $100. Odd, that. Using man-budgeting, this meant that I now had $100 to spend on GIMP books, so I bought two.

I'm learning a lot from them. Consider this:

















Pretty slick, eh?

Finally....

Way up there on the "List of Things No One Cares About" is the news that I finally taught myself how to remove that damned inconsiderate fellow's foot from my favorite Oshkosh picture.

Before:



After:



It's pretty fast and easy once you figure out how to do it. It's just the figuring out how to do it that apparently takes more than a year.