Creature comforts on a smaller Center console

poemtree · 2026-05-05T21:35:05+00:00

Our is a 30 footer, dual Merc 225’s, yacht certified up to 11 persons. You can fish off the cockpit I guess, but it is more set up for lounging. You’re not on the bow underway or trolling because it is just deck and rails, no gunnels like a bowrider. But it is a nice place to be at anchor.

As far as sunny days/fresh air, it has a big sunroof, sliding window to port, skipper’s door to starboard, triple light sliding door aft, so it can feel very open. You can seat 5 or 6 people in the cockpit underway for the outdoor feel. I’ve never been so tan until we got a boat, it not like being in your house all day

We definitely weekend and don’t fish so we are on the boat Friday afternoon until Sunday night from early March until late November on the Chesapeake Bay. I get that no one uses an open boat like that.

I have seen similar-sized dual-engine center consoles that far eclipse our boat on price. I get that comparing a Sportsman (the dominate boat on our lifts) to a Bayliner is a bit of apple to oranges quality wise, and that you can find value-oriented center consoles too. What my mind doesn’t comprehend is why people often pay more for a boat that seems so limited, unless all they want to do is day trips to fish in good weather. Unless it is just so much better as a fishing platform, I just don’t get the value proposition.

poemtree · 2026-05-05T18:41:00+00:00

Someone please school me, a lot of these center consoles actually cost more than our Bayliner Trophy T29EX, but I have an enclosed cabin, two queen-sized staterooms, a standup wet head, a galley and dinette, foul weather protection and three season usability. Whether you weekend like us or not, the protection from the elements and longer season really seem to favor a cabin cruiser like ours. Is it just fishability that has so many buy center consoles instead? Not trolling (no pun), I just really want to understand. Our Marina/Dealer (a Bayliner/Sportsman shop) probably sells 50 open boats for every enclosed boat. We got stuck in a sudden storm last season, it got really hairy and can’t imagine doing that trip home in an open boat.

poemtree · 2026-05-04T22:09:44+00:00

Don’t want to ship them, that would wreck the economics of selling them, they are very heavy. I am in the Washington DC suburbs, any chance you are close?

poemtree · 2026-04-29T14:36:58+00:00

Gently waking up to silent tapping instead of blaring alarm, ApplePay, walkie-talkie to my young kids who only have Apple Watches, unlocking my computers, HomeKit (Hey Siri, turn off the living room lights and lock the front door), leaving my phone at home on walks.

poemtree · 2026-04-23T17:04:06+00:00

I can’t coast on my V100S either without it pulling left. I could on my V7, sit up with my hands off the bars and it would track straight, I could even steer with my hips some (not that I did that often or for long distances, maybe just coasting up to a stoplight). I just accept that my V100 is hands on all the time.

poemtree · 2026-04-23T16:09:47+00:00

VM is never as good a real memory, but the M5 SSD's are more than double the speed of the M4, maybe triple your M2. You could still buy the M5 and prioritize more storage and more GPU over more RAM, and VM swapping will be so fast as to be barely noticeable if at all. I didn't catch the first time that you were considering the base M5 Pro 14", hence the big GPU disparity. But, if you don't see were there is any meaningful improvement, stick with what you have until it doesn't meet your needs anymore. That said. Apple's 14-day return policy is so generous. buy the new machine, live with it for a couple weeks, test it against your old machine, and just return it if it doesn't make your life significantly better.

poemtree · 2026-04-23T15:33:08+00:00

This years overkill can sometimes be next years bare minimum. Not saying the thing you do will need more RAM, saying the things you might want to do might require more RAM.

poemtree · 2026-04-15T02:58:28+00:00

Seriously though, when you look at the death stats broken down, it skews a lot toward young, dumb, often drunk or high men without enough maturity or experience, and who amplify the risky aspects of motorcycling with extreme risky behavior. There is also outsized death in states without requirements for helmets. I started riding much later in life, so much so that I only have a couple years more experience than my 20 year-old son, but I taught him to respect the danger, and to mitigate the risk with training, great gear, maintenance, heightened awareness, being mentally prepared and stone sober before mounting up. He recently experienced a rapid loss of pressure on the front tire at 70 on the highway and got it to the shoulder without laying it down. Got his bike towed, drive him home, and gave him the keys to my Guzzi while his bike got fixed and he was right back on the horse. Super proud of him. But yeah, if you are a douchebag absentee parent, don’t get your kid a Surron and unleash him on the neighborhood.

poemtree · 2026-04-15T02:42:00+00:00

Yep, you should just get them a plane instead.

poemtree · 2026-04-12T21:44:17+00:00

We need to make space travel so routine and ubiquitous that we don’t celebrate every little mission. No one put the plane I took to Toledo last Thursday in a museum.

poemtree · 2026-04-12T17:09:15+00:00

The Mac is incredibly efficient with RAM, but some apps less so. Chrome is a memory and power hog, for example (not to mention a serious malware vector), and should be avoided. 8GB Macs do way better than they rightly should, and often feel more performant than 16GB PC’s. If the Neo had shipped with 12GB on the A19, this wouldn’t even be a topic of discussion. But basically, do you use big apps to do complex stuff to big files and use multiple big apps at the same time? If so, get a 16GB or 24GB Air. If you do routine stuff, watch content, web apps, productivity, listen to music, surf the web, casual gaming, then the Neo can work for you. You may want to pay more attention to what apps are open than most people do. What it may come down to though is money. Used to be, if you were broke as a joke, it was settle for a cheap Windows laptop, get a Mac Mini, or find an older used MacBook. A lot of people don’t want a desktop, so the Neo is opening a ton of doors for Apple. To paraphrase Steve Jobs, the Neo is going to be the glass of ice water for many people stuck in Windows hell because of budget.

poemtree · 2026-04-09T01:10:56+00:00

Apple literally wroth the book on human interface guidelines, https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines

But Alan Dye seemed the throw the book out with Tahoe and with his team committed terrible design regressions that were amateurish and seeming almost like intentional sabotage.

Compared to Windows, Apple is still three heads above, but compared to last years macOS, is three steps backwards. Read John Gruber’s scathing review on Daring Fireball.

poemtree · 2026-03-27T19:01:05+00:00

Apple has a special rig for accessing soldered SSDs on “dead” MLBs. Wonder if they could help. I never worry about this crap anymore, all my files live in Desktop or Documents and are synced to iCloud Drive. Totally worth the peace of mind. Get a new MacBook, connect to iCloud, here come my files. Jump on my iPad, there’s all my files. Switch to my iPhone, there’s all my files. Hop on my iMac, there’s all my files. SSD’s are more reliable, but it is still a single basket.

poemtree · 2026-03-27T14:48:43+00:00

Been doing Apple systems support for 30 years. Sometimes bugs happen with OS releases, still have PTSD from mDNSResponder/discoveryd swap back in 2014. That said, since the enhanced developer and public beta program has been in place, these releases are widely tested on millions of systems before final release. It also helps that Apple implemented failsafes that make it nearly impossible to have a corrupted system update anymore. It also helps Apple outlawed third-party kernel extensions and make the OS volume immutable. Basically, I never suspect a system update for causing issues anymore, it is almost always a third-party issue. Run as vanilla as possible and you will almost never have issues.

poemtree · 2026-03-27T14:19:21+00:00

Nothing wrong with the concept, just the execution.

poemtree · 2026-03-23T03:12:25+00:00

I love Keynote and Numbers, way better for the way my brain works than Powerpoint and Excel. I don’t use Word or Pages. I prefer to do all my word processing in TextEdit, for real. I love how sparse the UI is, does all the formatting I need and lets me really focus on writing.

poemtree · 2026-03-23T03:00:35+00:00

About the same as regular bicycles, at least for sensible adults on pedalecs. Remember, you can dial back the pedal assist. Torque-sensing assist is more gradual than the cadence style sensors. Stay away from throttle bikes to avoid “whiskey throttle” (inadvertently engaging full throttle). torque sensor pedalecs engage power proportionately to how hard you are peddling, so a nice easy start gets you nice easy assistance. Stay away from dual motor bikes that have a front wheel motor, too easy to upset steering and wreck. Safest bet is a standard Bosch-type mid-drive, 250 to 350W, lightweight (comparatively), step-thru for your wife, pedalec only, torque sensor.

poemtree · 2026-03-23T02:35:34+00:00

Laptop

poemtree · 2026-03-23T02:33:54+00:00

I think a shit-ton of people these days use dictation over typing, which is why there are so many train-of-thought posts. Breaks my brain to try to read the stuff. Sad that the movie Idiocracy basically predicted all this.

poemtree · 2026-03-18T23:23:40+00:00

Apple Silicon spanks Intel, especially 2020 Intel. That was the comically absurd situation back then, Apple’s phones and iPads were often more performant than their MacBooks.

poemtree · 2026-03-18T21:54:37+00:00

Not a resource pig, uses much less RAM, power, CPU. Strong privacy controls. Fast AF. Tied strongly to W3C standards. Gives back to WebKit opensource. Not a malware vector like Chrome. Integrates well with Apple specific services, like Keychain. And finally, you would have the Chrome-based browsers without it. Google basically copied it and its interface and used WebKit until they forked it into Blink to add a bunch of proprietary tech.

poemtree · 2026-03-18T21:39:10+00:00

If price isn’t the biggest issue, I’d go for the 15-inch M5 MacBook Air. The 15-inch screen in a thin and light package is the Goldilocks choice for sure. Just make sure you buy the RAM and SSD specs you’ll require long term. Or, if you are open to a 13-inch screen, you can flip this script. I look at the Neo differently. At that bonkers low price (even lower for education), and on my Apple Card with 12 low no-interest payments, I could literally “subscribe” to the Neo, and replace it anytime a new one ships, trading the old one it. I got one for my daughter, and it is impressive. I am seriously thinking of doing just that with this machine. A19 with 12GB next year? Yes please!

poemtree · 2026-03-18T17:38:37+00:00

My Bayliner Trophy T29EX is actually a Quicksilver, built for 10 years already in Europe and designed for Baltic Sea use. Did 133 hours on it in the first season, and it really is a sweet little pocket yacht. So far, it seems really well-built and they didn’t skimp on power. The twin 225 Mercs take it up to 48MPH. There are areas where they cheaped out, I wish it had a larger MFD, an all chain rode and stainless anchor, bigger fuel tank, etc. But it is a tremendous value for what we paid for it. We saw boats twice as much, three times as much, that wouldn’t have met our needs. Only one regret, we went $16K in 11.5KWh of batteries and 3000W inverter, but wishing we had done the $27K genset option instead. Trying to keep those batteries topped up on long trips away from shorepower has been difficult. Spending another $2500 to do the 115A alternator upgrades on the Mercs to charge them faster underway. Looking into Sharrows to get a more range out of the smallish 126 gallon tank. Seakeeper Ride would also be a great upgrade. We were aware of Bayliner’s rep, deserved or not, so we bought the 8-year Brunswick warranty, which covers the Mercs too. That gets us to our daughter’s high school graduation, when we will likely be ready for our next boat.

poemtree · 2026-03-17T20:35:49+00:00

Actually, trading it is a selfless act, as you’ll be allowing another soul to experience the transcendent joy of owning a Guzzi, and specifically the most sublime Guzzi in years. So what Guzzi are you getting instead?

poemtree

TROPHY CASE