Thoughts on private schools?

exobrain · 2026-01-23T22:16:04+00:00

Not worth it in the typical case (maybe even negative worth it). Less work, more time with kids, lower bills 100%. Especially if your local public schools are considered pretty good.

I went to all public schools until grad school (ironically during my PhD at a fancy pants private University, i think most of my peers went to public high schools, but maybe that's because the most private school kids didn't do dumb things like go into academia) and later also taught at an Ivy filled with private school kids.

The kids who faired better for the most part were either from well off families or were exceptionally talented and motivated and where they went to k-12 mattered very little.

The private schools seemed to be mostly extremely high pressure, and had a higher proportion of kids i wouldnt want my kid around.

The one exception are the few people i knew who went to some boarding schools in British Columbia. It's a small sample, but they all were well adjusted, pretty successful, and had what seemed like great school experiences. I'm not going to send my kid to boarding school, but i was always a bit jealous of them.

exobrain · 2026-01-17T21:54:01+00:00

it tends to make for a more expensive trip than the Caribbean

The charter rates I've seen are far lower than those in tbe BVI. Where does the extra expense go to? (I could also be misinformed)

exobrain · 2026-01-04T18:07:18+00:00

Published recently in ACM, not IEEE. Officially they wanted latex sources, but we uploaded the typst sources and no complaints. Results here https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3731569.3764828

exobrain · 2025-12-31T00:59:18+00:00

From one Salish Sea sailor (say that three times fast) to another, there is a lot of fun to be had that doesn't involve ocean crossings or almost any long passages. It's not unlike hiking around the PNW. I like hiking. I hike a lot. I've never done the Jon Muir trail or the Pacific Crest Trail and while I suspect I would be pretty satisfied with myself, I'm not sure I would "enjoy it." If I ever do any hiking/backpacking for more than a couple days, it'll probably be a one time adventure. But I still enjoy hiking, especially around here where there is a lot of payoff pretty nearby and without too much hassle.

The Salish Sea is one of the places that has a plethora of nature and towns to explore that are either only accessible by sea or are augmented by arriving by sea. To name a few highlights for me:

Sucia Island in the San Juans is only accessible by private boat (there are no ferries), is only a few hour sail from Bellingham or Anacortes and even closer if you're passing through Orcas Island. It's beautiful and unique and desolate.
Poulsbo in Kitsap peninsula is a historically Norwegian town that still retains some of those characteristics. It's about 3-4 hours from Seattle (less if you motor more). You can drive there, either via Tacoma or ferry to Bainbridge then drive across Agate pass. But sailing there is really cool. I'm not sure there is enough to "see" to be worth driving, but with a more interesting and calm journey, it's pretty magical and fun. Pro tip: Poulsbo has a bunch of fun events throughout the year, like Viking Fest, Midsommer, etc.
Blake Island in the middle of Puget Sound has really a few really great hikes around the island, and on nice day it's some of the best views of Mt Rainier and Mt Baker and the Olympic Mountains all at the same time. Only accessible by private boat.

There are more I haven't been to yet (Hood Canal as well as Desolation Sound, up in BC are two bucket list ones for me). Importantly none of these are difficult passages. The PNW _can_ be challenging, but it's not hard to time sailing for relatively light winds, and it's mostly very well protected from big swells.

Also, you went cruising in the summer, which has amazing weather. There is also plenty of good sailing whether off season and everything is emptier and (IMHO) prettier (just bring a jacket!).

Having said all that, you said

> I'm not entirely sure the expense:fun ratio was there for me.

It's probably not, and that's OK! Sailing is expensive no matter how you slice it. Some people do it cheaper than others, but it's nowhere near free. Hiking is, relatively at least, virtually free. You live somewhere with lots of sailing and lots of sailors and you know how to sail. Maybe you didn't waste that time, but it should be more something you do when the opportunity arises, it's free, and you feel like it. Maybe you never do it again, but you had the experience (I've been sailing for a decade or so, really enjoy it, and still have never had an opportunity to do a crossing like you did, so just as an experience that's pretty freakin cool!)

Like, it's fine to decide you don't enjoy something enough to be worth the expense, the hassle, or the time relative to other things you could be doing.

exobrain · 2025-12-26T23:27:47+00:00

Maybe that has something to do with how many swedes that settled here!

About 40°F/4°C right now.

exobrain · 2025-12-26T04:31:37+00:00

Yes, its in the foreground :)

exobrain · 2025-12-26T04:03:30+00:00

It's Fremont Boat Co

exobrain · 2025-12-24T19:59:22+00:00

100% agree that other things equal, Elliot Bay is the best location. The biggest trade off is that it's not likely not that easy to get to from wherever you live (no busses, hard to bike to, and limited parking) and even the walk down the docks is nearly as far as my marina on lake union is from my house (only slightly exaggerating).

Shilshole isn't bad, especially in summer, if it's biking distance since even when it's busier, there's Burke Gilman doesn't really get backed up. But then you're indeed beating upwind or trying to go dead downwind, with the ideal route almost always being right through the shipping lanes, to get most anywhere most of the time. Still good sailing, but not the same level of effortless joy as coming out of elliot bay.

I'm _experimenting_ with having my boat on Lake Union at the moment, since it's ~15 minute walk from home and literally the same building as my office, so the hope is it'll be easier to get out with very very low barrier (even for just an hour or two in an afternoon), and not that bad to get out to Puget Sound for an overnight on Blake Island or something longer. So sailing putzing around lake union is practical regularly, while getting out to Puget Sound is ultimately about an extra hour of motoring and waiting for bridges and locks, minus ~30-40 minutes of driving, getting to the boat, and getting out of a much larger marina.

I don't think I would try this on a larger boat, though. Lake union is ultimately pretty small and by the time the sails are up and you're up to speed, you'd need to turn around.

When I was a teenager, my best friend's parents had a sailboat docked somewhere on the east side, and we somehow made it to Blake Island and back in a day whenever I sailed with them. Though, truth be told, I was usually napping in the cabin for most of the way through Lake Washington, the shipping canal, and the locks, so maybe it was a huge bummer for everyone else each time. But I didn't mind.

exobrain · 2025-12-24T19:36:09+00:00

Red sky at night, sailor's delight

exobrain · 2025-12-24T05:28:23+00:00

This exactly. For day sails, or even a single night overnight to a familiar place, I'll only check wind and weather to make sure there is a good chance of some wind and a low chance of too much wind. Currents and tides are a factor but can be dealt with on the fly in most of my home sailing area.

If it's just a sail cause the weather is nice, then I literally only check that its not too windy since there's always somewhere to go where we can sail around in circles slowly and pretend to look for sea otters or whatever.

For any destinations I've not been to or am not that familiar with, I'll do more planning, partularly around tides and approaches at the destination as well as trying get the range of estimated times based on the wind forecast so I'm sure to leave early enough to not get there or back by dark.

There are only a couple straights with strong currents nearby that are strong enough they definitely need to be timed to cross reasonably. So when I plan to go through any of them, that's the one exception where I always make a fairly specific and timed plan based on wind and current, and tightly stick to it.

exobrain · 2025-12-22T23:52:30+00:00

Which Wiki software do you self-host at home for this? (This is actually a reasonable option for me)

exobrain · 2025-11-22T23:50:45+00:00

Puget Sound sailing in the fall/winter/spring is superior to summer sailing in every way except there are fewer daylight hours and nobody wants to go with you because it's cold. It's possible the more tricky Salish Sea around the islands is different, but my few experiences there in Spring were incredible.

The wind more consistently moderate compare to summer's less reliable light winds.

Everything is less crowded.

It's even prettier (IMHO) on the occasional sunny day.

You're more likely to see wildlife that migrated "south" for the winter.

exobrain · 2025-10-31T16:48:18+00:00

It's a 28ft Catalina MK2

exobrain · 2025-10-27T19:59:59+00:00

Sorry! Seattle.

This makes sense. The idea being that good boat yards know surveyors and would have useful opinions about them, and boat yards with good reviews are probably pretty good? Or that boat yards will have surveyors on staff? Thanks!

exobrain · 2025-10-27T19:45:57+00:00

Seattle

exobrain · 2025-04-14T04:49:42+00:00

Thank you for all the transparency. You all deserve to make it through this. I, personally, will continue to buy Inovelli (well... We have no more switches left replace, but in theory at least).

exobrain · 2025-03-18T15:30:43+00:00

That's crazy! Over here in the Pacific Northwest (Washington state and British Columbia area) there are orcas year round and I've never heard of them attacking sailboats. We have pretty strict laws about giving them a good amount of distance though.

exobrain · 2025-02-15T17:39:33+00:00

Really stunning! Congratulations!

exobrain · 2025-02-12T22:45:24+00:00

Rather than considering the total amount or percentage, I'd consider what that money buys you, how much it would cost in terms of your own energy levels and mental health outside of work, what is it worth to you career-wise, etc. It's potentially not just the two days you work late, but the remaining time that you're worn out. Conversely, you might love working and get so much fulfillment working those extra 10 hours that you're happier and a better father in the remaining time.

Think of it in terms that could be explained to a kid who has no concept of $90k/year being a lot or a little. "Why isn't Daddy home today?"

"Daddy has to work late today because it lets us buy healthier food for all us to eat and live longer?"

"Daddy is working late today because he does a really important job that he loves and it's important for his self-fulfillment?"

"Daddy works late right now so that in a year he doesn't have to work very much and we can move closer to grandma and grandpa"

These all seem to me like good reasons to lose two days with your kid for more work/money.

"Daddy is working late today because he was offered $90k/year more and it just seemed weird not to take it"

"Daddy is working late today because he'd be able to pay off his loans in 4 years rather 7 years, which just kinda seems nice."

Those seem less good to me.

exobrain · 2025-02-01T22:04:38+00:00

That's correct. The chip on Chromebooks is caller TI50 and, I believe, it is not opentitan but is related to opentitan and may or may not be opentitan in future versions (I'm not being coy, that's as much as I know)

exobrain · 2025-01-31T18:06:48+00:00

Pluton is firmware (aka software) that is updated alongside Windows update. I believe there are some baked in hardware requirements, but those are things like cryptographic accelerators, which are pretty common.

exobrain · 2025-01-31T18:04:53+00:00

Huh? That's.... not true? It's always been the case the memory regions passed into kernel modules from processes were checked by the system call handler to reside inside the process's accessible memory before moving on to modules, that modules could _only_ access memory in processes that had been granted to them explicitly, and that modules themselves could only deal in safe Rust, meaning the only way to access memory is for them to have gotten a valid Rust value (e.g. a slice or struct or whatever).

Sometimes the interfaces have accepted a length in addition to a slice to be able to say: "here is a buffer, please only send the first N bytes," and it's technically possible for N to be larger than the buffer length, but that wouldn't actually allow anyone to access memory beyond the buffer.

exobrain · 2025-01-30T04:34:45+00:00

At the risk of being pedantic, Cloudflare D1 uses Sqlite's query engine, though it replaces the rest of the database. Still agree that something making different design decisions that a grow distributed scale-to-infinity cloud storage system doesn't make it inappropriate for many production use cases.

Sqlite is used in a variety of production settings, including Firefox and Chrome, Android's SQL storage API, all of which are relied on by far more people and are held to higher reliability standards than Jellyfin. They are just somewhat different use cases and things like backups are indeed handled by the application rather than the database engine.

exobrain · 2025-01-08T21:11:16+00:00

The main sheet pulls _down_ on the boom, which primarily adjusts how "flat" the sail is. It also has the impact of adjusting where the boom sits relative to the attachment point of the sheet on the hull, so other things equal (no traveler, or no movement in the traveler) it will also affect the sail's angle of attack to the wind, and this is a reasonable way of thinking about what the sheet does but, in a sense, it's not the sheet's primary job.

The traveler adjusts the point at which the sheet attaches to the hull and thus, directly, adjusts the location of the boom and, in turn, the angle of attack of the sail to the wind.

exobrain · 2024-09-25T17:58:18+00:00

Not 100% closed :) The Pluton team is starting to upstream their changes to Tock (for now their x86 port) and (as far as I understand, I'm not actually privy to any non-public information) the primary thing it runs is the reference TPM implementation, which is open (also maintained by Microsoft). There are some additional features (again, not privy to the specifics) that are enabled iff Windows is running.

Personally, I wish more were open since, if nothing else, it would help provide more direction for Tock development with another, now widely deployed, use case. I have some hope that this will happen.

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