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Jan. 5th, 2022 01:29 pmLast day of regular U*P classes. Woke up with the power out so pulled out the alcohol stove for coffee and the 12 volt power adapter and feeling glad for both of those. Power just came back on though. Brain still doesn't believe me when I tell it that if it can finish one task, it can then do other things. Shirking work to catch up on coursework but still getting (so far) thankfully small "**URGENT!!!**" tickets. Pasting that one in to the billing system, I discovered the billing system uses '**' markup for bolding things so amusingly to me, the text got bolded in the billing system.
Cerro Coso starts again around the 15th.
Hit Rio Vista yesterday for hardware and groceries. Both weren't crowded as more sensible people are staying home right now and except for a vanishingly few hicks, everyone is in masks again and doing a fairly good job of giving space. More anchor chain for the new anchor. At the very least, if I throw one anchor out and it's dragging, I can throw a second one out and maybe have both drag. Throwing out an anchor and dealing with it dragging singled handed is a serious bastard. If I start the motor, the anchor line will likely get caught in the prop. If I try to pull the anchor in first, that takes a long time, then I'm probably run around. I know Danforth can set well in muddy/sandy bottoms, but one single weed on one fluke keeping either fluke from digging in and not having much shank weight levering on the fluke means they often just do not bite. Plow style anchors out here are used almost universally and I see no Danforths anywhere even though they're obstinately the most popular design. Two years ago, I got an oversized box anchor for a larger boat than this, which is hyped as setting instantly in any conditions. Tested it once in moderate wind on clean bottom, lowering it from a complete stop with crew and behold, we're going backward at 3mph. Drug anchor for about a mile, pulled it up, and there was no sign of weed on the line or anchor. The fisherman anchor is in response to that. Couldn't move the box anchor almost new for half of purchase price on Craigslist so it went by the dumpster.
Boat came with another tiny Danforth anchor but I'm not sure when/why I would use it when the much larger danforth is easily foiled other than as an emergency spare if both other anchors are lost or I just want to see how many anchors I can drag at once. It did not come with chain and only light anchor line.
Last few U*P quizzes were 50% and 60%. Questions are lifted from random parts of the book that don't describe any actual concepts, then the wording changed by someone who doesn't understand the content, and you're left with this jumbled mess that's unrelateable to anything. One of the questions was about which pass a function in Nisan's toy assembler runs in, but the function name doesn't appear in the book so they either changed the function name to anonymize it or something similarly bizarre. Even if it were in the book, we skipped the chapter on his assembler's implementation. Then discussion was comparing macros to functions, but course material skipped functions. A few enterprising students pulled up other material or found it in the text but most did not. Students at this level don't know what terms to search for, so people were discussing macros in Excel, C, World of Warcraft, and occasionally managing to track down assembler macros (secret is to search for the name of a specific assembler program but not the text book one which has nothing else written about it).
Cerro Coso starts again around the 15th.
Hit Rio Vista yesterday for hardware and groceries. Both weren't crowded as more sensible people are staying home right now and except for a vanishingly few hicks, everyone is in masks again and doing a fairly good job of giving space. More anchor chain for the new anchor. At the very least, if I throw one anchor out and it's dragging, I can throw a second one out and maybe have both drag. Throwing out an anchor and dealing with it dragging singled handed is a serious bastard. If I start the motor, the anchor line will likely get caught in the prop. If I try to pull the anchor in first, that takes a long time, then I'm probably run around. I know Danforth can set well in muddy/sandy bottoms, but one single weed on one fluke keeping either fluke from digging in and not having much shank weight levering on the fluke means they often just do not bite. Plow style anchors out here are used almost universally and I see no Danforths anywhere even though they're obstinately the most popular design. Two years ago, I got an oversized box anchor for a larger boat than this, which is hyped as setting instantly in any conditions. Tested it once in moderate wind on clean bottom, lowering it from a complete stop with crew and behold, we're going backward at 3mph. Drug anchor for about a mile, pulled it up, and there was no sign of weed on the line or anchor. The fisherman anchor is in response to that. Couldn't move the box anchor almost new for half of purchase price on Craigslist so it went by the dumpster.
Boat came with another tiny Danforth anchor but I'm not sure when/why I would use it when the much larger danforth is easily foiled other than as an emergency spare if both other anchors are lost or I just want to see how many anchors I can drag at once. It did not come with chain and only light anchor line.
Last few U*P quizzes were 50% and 60%. Questions are lifted from random parts of the book that don't describe any actual concepts, then the wording changed by someone who doesn't understand the content, and you're left with this jumbled mess that's unrelateable to anything. One of the questions was about which pass a function in Nisan's toy assembler runs in, but the function name doesn't appear in the book so they either changed the function name to anonymize it or something similarly bizarre. Even if it were in the book, we skipped the chapter on his assembler's implementation. Then discussion was comparing macros to functions, but course material skipped functions. A few enterprising students pulled up other material or found it in the text but most did not. Students at this level don't know what terms to search for, so people were discussing macros in Excel, C, World of Warcraft, and occasionally managing to track down assembler macros (secret is to search for the name of a specific assembler program but not the text book one which has nothing else written about it).
