Bits and Pieces

We've made good progress in setting up the mini laptop. Stephen took control of the machine from Australia and purged the junk software - much of it dangerous - that is part of the supplied system. At this point most of the major items have been installed including the Firefox browser, Skype, and C-Map. Yesterday morning I met Ron here at The Fuel Dock and we installed the Airmail software and tested it out with no problem. I have downloaded Open Office 3.0.1 and will install it tonight.

Today I realized an unexpected benefit from the new machine. The larger Toshiba laptop could not see my Samsung MP3 player, a known problem that could not be overcome. Arnold had used his Vista machine to load the MP3 player. Last night I installed the Samsung MP3 software on the Acer and today had a go with the MP3 player. To my delight the Acer could see the MP3 player and I was able to purge the files from it and load a new set of music from the big external hard drive. I could not resist taking some time to listen to some tracks from the Beatles' White Album. (The Walrus was Paul!)

While I was waiting on a big file transfer I unpacked the new personal EPIRB and read the instructions. It is a 406 MHz beacon with a built-in GPS so that it can broadcast its location. The lithium batteries are good until 2015 and will give 12 hours of broadcast. I have put it inside the fold of my life vest.

Tomorrow I will unpack the new hand-held VHF transceiver which will go into my emergency grab bag. It comes with a AA battery case so that AA batteries can be used if the rechargeable batteries fail. This means a set of AA batteries in the grab bag.