In case anybody noticed my extended absense, I was racing in Whidbey Island Race Week, an annual regatta on an island (Whidbey Island, in fact) in northwest Washington. I was racing on a Choate 27 I often crew for named Allegro Con Brio. By the skin of our mathematical teeth we managed to earn ourselves a third in our class.

I’m slowly adding photos to a photoset in my Flickr account

Have you ever had one of those days when you realize that there are forces in the world that refuse to make things easy for you?

… Well I just had one.

I was called in earlier tonight to help get some work I did for Red Team earlier this term as we get ready to deploy and test our part of the system. I had my laptop sitting on the hood of the vehicle (a robotic Humvee) while I worked and I stepped away for a moment.

Just about then one of my teammates ran by to hop up on the robot to fix something and inadvertently knocked my laptop from off the hood about 5 feet to the hard concrete floor.

I have less than a week before my practicum project (effectively my masters thesis) must be completed.

The screen, as you can see, is absolutely destroyed. The lid is actually bent enough that it does not close without being forced.

But the machine boots and the disk checks cleanly. If that’s not a testament to the quality of IBM Thinkpads, I don’t know what is.

I’m not angry at the teammate who knocked it off. We all make mistakes. Insurance should cover its replacement (hopefully I’ll get a Powerbook out of the deal). Its just an extremely inopportune time to lose full use of my laptop.

This past weekend I got the chance to go back to Michigan and race with some old (and new) friends on the Mumm 36 “Vanguard.”

Great race. Extremely fast and relatively uneventful besides a few dozen sail changes. Many a record was shattered this year. I beat my personal best by about 10 hours by finishing at 3AM on Monday morning.

I’ve set up a Flickr photoset with my photos from Boat Night and the island.

Today I went over to the Pittsburgh Vintage Grand Prix. I was volunteering at the Red Team booth but I also managed to take some snapshots of one of the races before the thunderstorm hit.

I found an old concrete racing canoe in the bushes near campus.

Testing the Flickr photo blog feature.

Its a small album, but at least one photo is cool.

Just some photos I took over winter break that I finally got around to putting up.