continued struggle with Spot-X, i feel sorry for Cathy, it's very important we have reliable communications. So i summoned tech support daemons, i was next in line for 'chat' for a long time, then suddenly chat was unavailable, maybe they went to lunch? But i got thru by phone, the man spent a very long time with me as we tried various tests, indeed his depth of understanding of the underlying system behavior details made me wonder if he programmed he thing. Bottom lines are 1)it seems to work... 2)except very sensitive to trees (even thin trees, by Trinity standards); 3)it's kinda dumb, the programming's linear, not a lot of concurrency; 4)i think out on the open water it'll be fine.

i am so disgusted with tech. It made my ~fortune (ha), but it promises your imagination, then disappoints.

on my cruise in WA some weeks back, i found my batts were being charged at 16.5 volts, which caused my inverter to shut off. I figured the volts were too high. Now researching, i was right. It shouldnt be more than ~14! So i called the previous owner and his mechanic. Both these guys are great! so helpful! Sounds like it's complicated thing (ha), a belt-driven salt-water-cooled volt-regulator [the mechanic called it STUPID], but the good news is the good previous owner Bill replaced it even tho it was working at the time, so maybe all i need to do is put the old 1 back on?

I am lucky to have such good friends! All so encouraging. I'll leave for WA sunday. As beauty as it is here now, i wish i'd instead stay.