Articles
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Thoughts on a Marin County bike ride
February 22, 2025
Read moreI did a longish exploratory/adventury/scenic ride, from my friend John’s boat in Sausalito, up into Mill Valley, across a fire road, out to Tiburon, and back to the boat. Maybe 35 miles? Hard to estimate; there was a bit of steep climbing to get to the fire road, and the route on Paradise to Tiburon is pretty rolly… plus, it was on the small-wheel “clown bike” All-Packa, which definitly entitles one to bonus points for effort!
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Faith's Memorial in Maine
June 21, 2023
Read moreWe flew out to Maine to spend some time with the Towle side of the family. It’s mosquito season in Maine, but this is when everyone could come, so here we are. I packed my “bug shirt”, which was a good choice as Anna and I were assigned trail-clearing duty and spent the afternoon in the woods.
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Catching up
June 20, 2023
Read moreOnce again, I fell off the blog wagon. Early in the pandemic, I found I had extra time on my hands, with which I might keep up with writing on the blog. I did OK for a while, but it didn’t take long for the work environment to catch up to the new work-from-your-livingroom situation, and expand to fill all the hours formerly spent in the office, and then some. Thus, I have been woefully neglectful in posting things to this blog; I’ve tried to at least occasionally put something on the chad-o-matic blogger site, but we use that site more to give the extended family a sense of what we’re up to, than for any longer-form writings. So, this post will be a bit of a catch-you-up on what’s transpired in the last year or so.
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Camry no Start
February 14, 2021
Read moreFor Valentine’s day , we got a car problem.
The kid went on an expedition to the grocery store, taking our 2006 Toyota Camry. We shortly got a call that the car wouldn’t start; my wife asked if she should “deploy the Dad” to assess (and hopefully remedy) the situation.
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Chinese Death Ray
December 28, 2020
Read moreI got my wife a cool tool for Christmas. Hopefully it doesn’t burn the house down. The “K40” laser cutter/engraver has been ubiquitous for several years; it’s a fairly powerful (nominally 40W) CO2 laser, with power supply, X-Y motor drive, and controller board in a metal chassis, all for under $500 – which sounds like a real bargain, considering the several-thousand-dollar price of commercial-grade systems. However, it’s best thought of as a starter kit for the technically competent, rather than a ready-to-use consumer product…