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An ancient axiom in life is: If it moves and it shouldn't, use duct tape; if it doesn't move and it should, use WD-40. In getting our Columbia 36 boat "Tempo" ready for the move to Ala Wai, I used an ample amount of each. Our boat wasn't really ready to move, but our window of opportunity was quickly decreasing. We'd been given a 7 day window from the Ala Wai harbor to move into a temporary slip. Failing that, we had less than a week to move from Keehi Marine Center which had ordered us to vacate for the dubious "no reason." And so, I set out to ready Tempo for the move incurring great expense, moving safety supplies from Tropic Moon, and borrowing a 5hp outboard motor from a friend. I made sure we had plenty of duct tape and WD-40 on board.

Why do we have dreams? What are these flashes of ideas, seemingly disconnected visions of the past, present, and future. Some people believe that dreams are merely random bits from memory, flashed in our mind's eye during sleep. Other people ascribe great meaning and predictions based upon our dreams. Being a computer scientist, I ascribe to another idea.

I may not be the greatest philosopher to ever have lived, but I've recognized a few things in my short stay thus far here on earth. People are wholly unable to be content in their lives. There is an internal desire to strive for something, anything really. During ones formative years one will latch onto some goal, and make it their own. Sometimes it is as simple as striving to make one person happy on this planet. For others it may be a grand vision of change that will not be attained in that one person's lifetime. And so, here is my list of 10 uncomfortable truths one might recognize in life.

At first glance, I figured the heavyset woman wearing the faded, dirty, and yet flowery XXXL dress (possibly a muumu) to be homeless. She was sitting askew on the bus bench with kind of a dazed expression on her face. When a couple passing tourist guys happened by, the woman sprang to life and said to them, "I'll buy your water for a dollar!" and waved some money at them. The guy with the bottle replied after looking at his half-filled water bottle, "You can buy a new bottle for a dollar." The woman then told them she didn't want to leave the bus stop. Being kind, the guy just gave her the water bottle without payment and went on his merry way. Freshly watered, the lady then began her tirade.

They gather in darkened hallways, cloaked in hoods. A secret handshake, a flick of the wrist, and the message is transferred with no one the wiser. However, they must be careful as the everwatching nemesis is lurking, ready to pounce. Okay, perhaps study groups don't have the cloak and dagger glamour we've come to expect from a 007 movie. If you're asked to picture a study group you might imagine a bunch of honor band geeks sitting around some wooden table in a suburban home, or perhaps a bunch of passed out frats who really intended to get to that studying but didn't quite make it. And yet, despite these unassuming guises, study groups have been a point of student rebellion against the system. That is, if they're done right.

January 21, 2008. Another orbit round the sun, and I find myself turning 27 years old. Somehow I'd survived another year on this turbulent planet despite near misses by cars, buying and sailing a boat, and walking two miles home through questionable neighborhoods at midnight. Usually I did a decent job of mitigating risk, and I guess that paid off. To celebrate, I planned to treat Eric and myself to a nice relaxing evening at my favorite Thai restaurant, Keo's. However, the evening held a few surprises lurking around the corner.

Bulkheads--they're big, they're brown, and in my case they're rotten. Water had long since wormed its way through the sealant at the chain plates and one window and down into the interior of the bulkhead. A bulkhead is what they call the interior walls in a boat. These babies don't experience stresses like walls do in buildings. A load bearing wall in your hom must endure compressive loads without buckling. On a sailboat you don't have a roof above you, you have a mast and the standing rigging that supports it. The basic process is that the wind pushes the sails, the sails stress the mast, and the mast transfers the stress to the bulkheads which transfer the force to the rest of the boat. Under normal sailing conditions there might be 5000 lbs of force on the chainplates. However, if you accidentally gybe you could put 20,000 lbs of force on them. If the rigging, mast, chainplates, or bulkheads fail the ship can violently dismast whipping metal wires around like band saws. On this episode of 'This Old Boat', Robert replaces the main bulkheads.

Have I gone off my rocker? No! This doesn't contain fish, but garbanzo beans as the base. Its reminiscent of a tuna-fish salad spread I remember growing up but without killing fish. My dad always hated the smell of tuna fish anyway. I have a heaping bowl of this recipe in front of me and a stack of a nice toasted multi-grain bread next to it.