A pirate's miscellany

The days out here are beginning to drag.  Feeling a little like I have the flu, as well.

High point of the day was a long conversation about coconut plantations, their products and how they are sold in the Philippines.

Asked for some VCO (Virgin Coconut Oil) for my scalp-it gets VERY dry onboard.

Watched part 2 of the old Lonesome Dove mini-series, last night.

Rumours of Alaska in my immediate future are once again surfacing.  Back to where the old, original blog was born........hmmmm.

Had nothing but veggies and water for lunch.  PW would be shocked.  Ate too many olives, though.

Does anyone out there intentionally mis-spell words just to spite spell-checker?  No?  I'm probably just too close to my computers and a little touched in the head.

Conference call coming up so I gotta split.

Later folks

GREEN

We're getting supplied today.  The old supply boat drops back and we rope it in as we keep sailing.  Then, we crane over all the goodies.  Equipment, food, you name it.

At lunch, a fresh salad suddenly popped up on the cold table.  BAM!  We nailed that bastard.   The onions were so bitter that they had to picked out of the salad-totally not edible, bit otherwise, it was freaking awesome to eat real, live green leaves.  It's really hard to get decent food out here off the coast of Angola, let me tell you.

I received some much supplies for my end of this operation and that was nice, too.  Other than that, it has been pretty much business as usual.  12 days to go....

Peace

Fix yer shit

Swine Flu?   Fix that shit before I get home, people!

 I've got massive amounts of AIDS, malaria, cholera and all that shit do deal with here and I really don't need to come home to the freaking swine flu.  And the dang Malarone I already have to take for malaria makes me sleepy and fucks with my appetite.  And the dreams?  Forget it.  Like acid...

So, get on the stick and I mean now!  I want to come home in 2 weeks.

the best it gets

Spent over an an hour online with my oldest daughter.  Trying to install a music widget on her facebook page, chatting back and forth on Google chat.  It wasn't what most would consider quality time, but I'll take what I can get as I float around a few hundred miles off the coast of Africa.

two weeks to go...

Today was supposed to be crew-x for me.  Some of the others left.  I consoled myself with some sashimi for lunch.  It was heavenly.  I used a little more wasabi than usual, as sort of a pick-me-up.  We were supposed to have a stow-away drill today.  A chance at redemption in the form of a second shot at finding the bastard that managed to stay hidden for over an hour until we begged him to come out over the ship's intercom.  However, the drill was cancelled due to work on the in-sea gear.

Boredom has been staved off with small system issues and a bunch of smiling new faces as this mid-trip crew-x completes.  I am, however, slightly homesick and tired of dealing with other things onboard, this trip.

I have no good books to read.

Shipboard daydreams

Friend from the Philippines: "I bought a coconut tree plantation.  I can plant other kinds of trees and harvest their wood."
Me: "Plant pineapple trees.  You can harvest Pina Coladas."


We both daydream for a while....

Celebration time, come on!

No, it's not time for the Commodores.  I celebrated the official word that I have to stay onboard for another two weeks by working nineteen hours straight.  Then, sometime after I finally crawled off to my rack and passed out, my cabin phone rang.  It was one of my people waking me up to solve a problem.  It seems I told them I had a solution but didn't feel like doing it and hung up.  Guess I don't do the middle of the night very well.

Today, we ran into a mess of fishing gear which tangled our shit and ripped some of it off, possibly.  Not a good day, by any measure.

Going nowhere

I'm officially going nowhere.  My relief didn't get his Angolan visa, dammit.  Stuck till next month and it sucks to be me.

I'm not angry, but I sort of wish a few Somali pirates would board, just so I could work the kinks out...

trapped!

Looking grim.  Seems I may be trapped here for another 2 weeks plus.  The final verdict comes within hours and I am not hopeful.  Damn.  Damn.  Damn.

Blizzard?

According to the NWS in Flagstaff, AZ (where else?) the origin of the the word "blizzard" stems from it's use to describe a cannon shot, or volley.  It was first used to describe a snowstorm in the 1870's by an Iowa newspaper.

And there you go.

No blizzards in Africa

I'm missing the great April blizzard of 2009 back home:( 

It's 105 degrees here, still.

At least the sashimi is good.

Chow

Had sashimi tonight.  Yellowfin tuna, pulled out of the sea only 20 minutes prior. Fa-huck me.  Pounds of it.

Also found out that my opposite has not gotten his visa and I may be stuck on here another 2.5 weeks. I'm off to burn off the fish and bad mood with bastard of a workout.  Later.

Can't resist..

Somebody just ended up here by Googling "I just woke up and my balls hurt".  Poor fucker.

NOT before coffee

Chaos has ruled the ship, today.  I got whacked with problems, pre-coffee.  Again.  That pretty much set the tone for the day and put me off my game.

I managed one, or two minor miracles, but not enough to make the day a success.  After about 6 hours, I needed to break the cycle and decided to bring my computer system down.  First, I killed my PC and hauled it off to the tech shack, where I gutted it, cleaned it and reseated the cards and boards.  Then I shut down all my work stations, cleaned the cable runs, desks, floor and re-cabled everything much neater.  Moved my PC from on the floor under my desk, to up on the desk behind the monitor.

That and a shift change broke the spell.  Things are a bit more orderly and back on track.  I've got the speakers wired to my laptop and the tunes rocking, again.

No word on the upcoming crew-x, but I'm hopeful visas, flights, helicopters, ships and whatnot, will all fall into place by the end of the week.   *Fingers crossed*

Oh yeah, I just got an instant message from a guy in South Africa who said he just sent me another 10 terabytes of disk space...Wooo Hooo!

THAT makes my day.

 I wish you all peace, love and harmony.  You know, like a song from the 60's.

Fire drill, cheese sandwich and bad gas

The trip is dragging on, painfully.  It's a blessing that I will (hopefully) be getting off next week. 

Today we had a fire drill.   The fire was forward, over the fuel tanks.  I had to lay out hose across the heli-deck, for one of the fire teams.  It was kind of a yawner, other than a bent flange on the nozzle, making it difficult to connect.  Gave it to the engineer at the debrief.  Then, we watched a couple of videos.  One was a short clip of a huge fucking sperm whale checking out a wellhead, caught on film by an ROV.  Pretty awesome.  The other had something to do with a monkey fucking a basketball.  I love QHSE videos.

This afternoon, I began my handover notes:)

Also this afternoon, I ate a camembert cheese sandwich, in keeping with Obama's call for Americans to embrace their mediocrity and acknowledge the dominance of Europe and the rest of the world.  Tomorrow, I will eat chilis for breakfast, rejoicing in the fact that we bend over backwards for illegal immigrants and inept goverments cowering in fear of drug lords.  Lunch?  Plain rice sprinkled with melamine and lead, celebrating years of impotent trade agreements with China and their 25-year domination of the American market for tainted food, drywall and baby products.  I call it the "Not only the French are Yellow" Diet and it already gives me bad gas, just like that South Beach bullshit.  Ya'll have a nice day, eh?

Porn For Women

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Sarabande

Had one of those days where I just wanted to pack it in and quit this job and this god-awful shitty existence, trapped in a floating prison off the coast of West Africa.  I wanted to run screaming from work and not look back, but I can't run away.  I'm fucking stuck here, even if I quit.  Even if I launched the jet boat and hauled-ass for shore, I would run out of gas long before I reached the coast.  No, I could quit and then spend another week living at work.  Fuck.

I'll sit in the sauna reading a book for an hour and feel somewhat better in the morning, but GODDAMMIT, I just can't get away from it when things get ugly.

In other news I ate some eggplant tonight at dinner.

Bad day

Holy shit what a bad day.  Cannot wait to get off this tub.

crap

Absolute crap day.  Nothing worse than dealing with personnel issues:(

Dang

This morning's email from LL has a link to Bonnaroo and I go check out the artists.  Bad move.  I wanna GO!  A show featuring The Mars Volta, Elvis Costello, Bela Fleck, Lucinda Williams, Robert Earl Keen Jr., Phish, NIN, David Byrne, Al Green, Paul Okenfeld and the great Merle Haggard, and a host of others.  Dang.

Not to be totally disappointed, I realized that I can simply have my own Bonnaroo, here.  It aint live, but it beats a two by four upside the head.

Lucinda Williams is headlining.  She'll be followed by David Byrne and The Mars Volta for the morning show.

/Offforcoffeeb4davidstartsup