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November 2012

Holiday Party 2012

Submitted by webguy on Thu, 11/29/2012 - 12:16
Maya Claus

Maya Claus: He brings mangos and pet monkeys to Mayan children

Chipomatic

The White Elephant Gift Exchange: Now you can get that Chip-O-Matic you always wanted.

Once again we tempt fate by holding our annual holiday party on December 21, 2012, just in time to turn the last page on the Mayan calendar. While many organizations hold secular holiday, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Saturnalia and other celebrations at year's end, we will be celebrating Baktun, the end of the twenty katun cycles.

The proper way to celebrate Baktun is with colored lights, pine and fir trees (the Maya loved spruce and balsam), exchanging unwanted gifts and visits from Maya Claus, a dwarfish man dressed in red with white trim.

This year, we'll be holding our celebration at a long time favorite location, the retired, old traffic control tower at Peachtree DeKalb Airport, through the kindness of Chris Voith.

Details will be coming soon but count on a potluck dinner followed by the ever popular White Elephant Gift exchange.

Official "What I'm Bringing" Thread on our Forums: Covered Dish Announcements (Not required but if you are worried that someone is going to bring a better version of Aunt Jeanette's macaroni salad recipe)

Win Win

Submitted by webguy on Mon, 11/12/2012 - 10:05
RS:X Restored Olympic Class

Olympic Kiting Windsurfing
Kiter over windsurfer

Before ISAF Reversal: Kiter discusses Rio Olympics with Gene. Photo: Alan Sloman

Recently, winners and losers have been in the news. Since most of us are at work trying to make amends for skipping out the week of Sandy, this may be a good time to recap. I'm not going to assume that you are actually working while at work but doing the usual, usual - managing your fantasy league team (speaking of losing... ahem).

Olympics: Fat Guys Keep Kites Out

As reported elsewhere, the ISAF reversed its decision to exclude windsurfing from the Rio 2016 Olympics. The Spanish representative, tired of having to explain his previous vote to the Spanish gal who won gold in London, was among those who voted to keep windsurfing in.

The Olympic sailing classes represent some of the most athletic and modern sailing classes - as they should. Think if the cycling competition was still done on the bicycles circa 1920. Think if track was done like it was in 350 BC - wait, other than being clothed, that hasn't changed that much. Um... sailing, where were we? Oh, the classes include the athletic and ubiquitous Laser, the high performance carnage of the 49er and outright speed of the NACRA 17 cat, catamarans having been restored as well. As well, the classes are evenly split between men and women.

Almost.

Barbarians at the Gate

Submitted by webguy on Tue, 11/06/2012 - 16:02
Orson Welles: War of the Worlds
Orson Welles scaring the crap out of us. He didn't applaud until his movie Citizen Kane.

Comment Spam

A guy who's just bought a new mast because of a comment a stranger made on our web site. Neil Pryde 550cm Mast: MSRP $746 18 ft of carbon fiber love.

In Woodstock, Ga., about 30 miles north of Atlanta, the president of a homeowners’ association sent an e-mail on Sunday informing residents that the entrance gates would be closed 24 hours a day beginning at 6 p.m. Tuesday, out of concern over possible civil unrest after the election.

“I feel it is better to take a position of caution to enhance controlled access to the community until we see what (if any) negative repercussions may occur because of the results of the election,” wrote Bill Stanley, the president of the homeowners’ association at the Cottages of Woodstock, a residential community for people 55 and over.
Source: ajc.com

When you connect any device to the internet, you can expect visitors. If you have a web site, especially one that's been up for years like we have been, lots of visitors stop by. Some visitors, like the folks that log in, we welcome and enjoy having. Guests like Google and Bing have open invitations as well. Not only do they help people find us but offer us a way to search our own site and produce some analytics that we use to find broken pages and what people like to view on the site.

Then, there are the other visitors. They range from the annoying, to the rude to the outright criminal. Unfortunately, in terms of knocks on the door, they are also our most numerous. If you've ever noticed the stats in our "Who's online" box on the right side of this page, you'll see maybe a couple or handful of registered users and from 20 to 60 or more guests. Of course, some of those guests are members who are dropping by without logging in. We have some pleasant foreign visitors and appreciate that they are part of our community.The rest hail from all parts of the world - Russia, the Ukraine, China, the Phillipines, Romania - places where a lot of people really give a crap about what the wind is like in Atlanta.

Guilt

Submitted by webguy on Thu, 11/01/2012 - 10:07

It's not nice to #$@% with Mother Nature

As windsurfers living in Atlanta, we have an odd relationship with nature. Atlanta ( cue drumroll Where Wind Goes to Die™) is not an inherently windy place. Aruba is windy. Hawaii is windy. Dahab and Pozo are windy. If you stuck a wind turbine on top of your house, the only thing it would do is mess with your neighbor's satellite dish.

On occasion we'll have a decent breeze. But for real wind, we need Mother Nature to do something quite different. And, when Mother Nature does something different, that is very often a bad thing for someone else. A cold front brings misery to the homeless and poor who can ill afford a high heating bill. A blustery day means a tree is wiping out someone's house or leaving a neighborhood in the dark.

A really windy can mean anything from wide-spread inconvenience - unless you are selling plywood or bottled water - to catastrophic and tragic destruction. This week was uncommonly windy here. This made us happy. This week was uncommonly floody in New York and New Jersey among other places. This made us very, very sad.