July 20

On July 20, 1969, the human race accomplished its single greatest technological achievement of all time when a human first set foot on another celestial body. Anybody alive at the time will likely be able to tell you exactly where they were when that first step was taken. I was in our apartment in Melbourne with my 3 roommates. We watched it on CBS with Walter Cronkite. Not everybody remembers that Neil Armstrong claims he said "That's one small step for a man" instead of "One small step for man". NASA even tried to make that the official version of what was said. A later analysis of the tapes by the British concluded that Armstrong did say the article "a". I didn't see any notice of this anniversary in the news today.

I’ve spent my time over the past few days redoing a little storage shelter I threw together a couple of months ago. It has things in it that can take a little weather and need minimal cover. The shelter I had them in would not withstand any sort of strong wind. So I rebuilt it so it won’t blow apart in a big wind. I finished most of that today but I ended up straining my back a little. It’s not the chronic back issue that I used to have. It’s just your normal run-of-the-mill back strain.

Another project I have going is to make it so I can carry 3 kayaks on the roof rack on the CRV. My first attempt failed because the rack wasn’t wide enough to take the kayaks in the configuration that we needed. I’m going to have the big tandem go in the center and the other two go up sideways on the hullraiser supports. That’s the way we have to do it because I can’ lift the tandem to mount it sideways. I can roll it onto the top using the hulley rollers we have. We bought longer cross pieces for the rack. Actually we bought some ¾ inch galvanized pipe that appears to be the right size to fit the holding mechanism. I haven’t had a chance to try the pipe out yet. Maybe tomorrow.

The third project I spent time on was making a 1-year morph of Sophia. I finished that today during rest periods I took. It was so hot outside I found I could only work in 30-45 minute stretches. So I’d come inside, drink a big glass of iced water and work on the morph. I learned how to use the program pretty well. I’m burning the lightscribe label on the CD now. I’m going to speed up the morph and see if I can add appropriate music for the final version.

Tomorrow’s big event—our annual termite inspection.