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Frank Hagan

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Posts posted by Frank Hagan

  1. I am executor for an estate, and two of my cousins are probably heirs (the lawyer will have to confirm this, but they are the heirs to their mother's estate, and she is named in the will). I am looking for:

    Louise Decker Mullis

    in Concord, Kannapolis, Mooresville or Salisbury NC

    Richard Decker

    Born and raised in the area, but may be in Florida now.

    Finding directory information is nearly impossible now; every place you look they want you to sign up for a auto-renewal subscription.

    They can confirm I'm not some sort of Nigerian Prince scam by checking with their Aunt Mary (sister of their late mother Jackie). Or remembering that I am the son of the woman Louise is named after.

    Have them contact me at my fshagan@gmail.com email address, or PM me and I'll give my cell number out to them.

    Thanks for any help you can give!

    (BTW - Got an enemy? Make him executor of your will. That will teach him!)

  2. The Links Directory is back! It has been upgraded to work with this version of the software. Please add your favorite links!

    The categories are:

    • Personal Sites (for any member's personal site)
    • Members Commercial Sites (boating related commercial sites; let's patronize our member's businesses!)
    • Members Non-Boating Sites (non-boating commercial sites our members run. Who knew insurance agents could build a boat?)
    • CATEGORY: OTHER BOATING SITES
    • Associations (any class, club, or other boating association)
    • Boat Building Plans (Duplicate links allowed from Members Commercial Sites)
    • Charters (Your favorite charter companies)
    • Cruising (Your favorite cruise line, cruise travel agency, etc.)
    • Forums (Other forums you like)
    • Vendors (Great vendors for fellow members)
    • Resources (sites with tons of information for boaters)

    Because I'm going "non-commercial" with all of my sites, I will be removing all advertising. The Links Directory will not have sponsored links or affiliate site links; I'm simply interested in adding content that is worthwhile to our members.

    But I need your help! Add your links today!

  3. Mike Stevenson might chime in; he pops in from time to time. The BYYB.ORG site is a good one as more of the Stevenson Projects folks gather over there.

    I don't think the plans have been updated since 2006, but I remember that either the Weekender or Vacationer plans had the folding mast and cockpit drain plug incorporated into the plans not too long ago. Something like that.

    I built a Weekender, the little sister to the Vacationer, and I think its the perfect size for a little day sailer with style. Very fast to set up and launch; I was often in the water in 15 minutes (rig, launch, tie up and park the truck). The Vacationer may take a bit longer. I'm not sure the extra size of the Vacationer is worth the material cost and extra time to build, as it still doesn't provide headroom in the cabin, etc.

  4. Ray if I had invested in a good balanced and bond fund like I had a family member advise me to, we would have been about $200,000 better off. But I went for the big money in individual stocks and that didn't work out to good.

    For the first two years we will live aboard for 4 to 6 months and after that hopefully full time.

    Scott

    If you can keep invested a bit longer, you may regain some of the losses. I'm back to just above the 2008 pre-crash levels (4% up). I recently switched from 95% stocks to using low cost ETFs for 70% stocks, and have 30% in bond funds (originally at equal amounts for 10-year Treasuriers, short term Treasuries and Corporate Bonds). I'm at least ten years from retirement, so that percentage of fixed income will increase as the years go by.

    The ten year Treasury fund has been growing like gangbusters, but I suspect that's about to end, so I took the gains and reduced 10-year from 10% to about 2%. When interest rates rise, the bond funds tend to fall.

    BTW - a lot of people holding bonds lost money in 2008 - 2009 too. It hasn't been a good ride for people handling their own portfolios in the last few years!

  5. One of the guys even asked if I'd like vertical or otherwise for the grain orientation once I get to the gunnels/keel/stringers. Frankly, I'm not sure, so I thought I'd ask.

    Vertical grain is also called straight grain, and it is preferable for bending and strength. You'll have to look at the cost differential when you get to that point to see if it's worth it.

    Finding a good local source of lumber is great. Shipping costs can easily make up the difference, and more, for on-line sources. Plus, you get to pick through the pile to find out which piece is meant for you.

  6. It's been interesting getting to know this boat a bit more. It has far more cockpit room than the Weekender (as it's ALL cockpit), and is twitchier and brighter feeling (with the same rig on a boat which weighs less than half the weight), but the stately feel of the Weekender is also nice for more relaxed sailing. The mellow afternoon feel of the Weekender is really nice too (or even more so in the Pocket Cruiser!) Both have their plusses.

    I'll let you know when I take it down to San Diego again—I go right past Oxnard and we could sail for a couple of hours on my way past!

    Mike

    That would be great! I'm hoping to stay in this area, but make sure you check with me first. The job situation may take me back inland (at least that was the most promising job interview, but they haven't called back after the second interview!)

  7. Hmmm ... I can't seem to find a limit for the total size of attachments in a post. I upped it to 50 images maximum per post a while ago, and the text can be up to 1024k. I'll have to ask and see where they hide the option for limiting the cumulative size of the images.

    Maximum image size is 1600 x 1200, and the software then resizes it to 300 x 300 maximum for the thumbnails. Larger images will be reduced to the 1600 x 1200 size.

  8. Hah! It isn't lack of quality controls I fear so much from Chinese Goods nearly so much as rank fraud and dishonesty and complete disregard for life safety!

    Lets see, Melamine in pet food in milk.. Why? So it can fool quality control tests and make more money and who cares that it kills the customers and their pets!

    Well, the Chinese are pretty strict about this ... they executed two of the people involved in the scandal. There were six deaths according to that Wikipedia article.

    We avoid as much food as we can from foreign countries (it is common here to get produce from Mexico and South America). We buy most of our produce now at the Farmer's Market (my wife works for the State Ag Department, and she actually knows which of the vendors are farmers and which ones have bought their produce at the supermarket!)

    I guess noticing the quality creep is a sign of getting old; I remember my Dad complaining about the same thing. Its one thing when you are talking about a tee shirt, but quite another when its something that is a safety issue like boat building plywood.

  9. The short time I ran my own I was absolutely amazed at the time I spent dealing with spammers trying to register. I know what a hassle it can be. And with just 2 days of creating my blog they had found it. Amazes me.

    On your Wordpress blog, look into using something like Disqus as your commenting system. It solved my comment spam issues on my blogs.

  10. I should not have told you it was the software doing it! You would have thought I was some kind of Anti-Spam King!

    Every now and then one gets through, but the software does a good job of making it easier for people to register (they just respond to an email and they are in) and keeping out spammers. We do get dozens of spammers, but they are caught during the registration process automatically.

  11. The software does it's best to try and hide things from you.

    I can't figure out why the images don't show up when you first upload them; you need to click "Preview" before they show up so you can insert them into the body of the post. There are like a gazillion settings with this software, but it does do a good job of keeping the spammers away, so I'm keeping it!

  12. messing-about is one of the web's friendliest amateur boat building forums. We have over 66,000 forum posts, and 1,975 members (last purged in March of this year to remove members who have only logged in once). We have plenty of room for growth, and even though I may need to eliminate other Internet pursuits to cut costs, messing-about will be "one of the keepers". I would like to see 2,000 members by year end.

    You can promote the forums by clicking on any of the "social media" icons when you run across a great discussion:

    post-2-0-89958000-1321206404_thumb.jpg

    You can tweet, Facebook like, Google Plus-One, Digg, add to Delicious, share via Reddit, add the link to StumbleUpon and email the link to someone specific. You have to be a member of these social media communities to generate the link for their members, of course.

  13. I'm definitely in the "small boats are best for day sailing" camp. I had more fun in my Weekender than in my Potter 19, and I suspect I'd have more fun in a Super Skipjack than I did in my Weekender.

    Part of it is the time and money involved in maintenance, but also expectations. You expect more from a big boat, and it often disappoints. A small boat surprises you every day.

  14. Just recently finished and launched this new Vardo. I'm pleased with the project . Learned alot. Will begin building a Chuckanut 15 footer soon.

    Tried to attach pics. No luck please advise.

    You should see a "Attach Files" dialog below the editing box, with a "Browse..." button to select the file on your computer to upload.

    "New Members" don't have permission to post photos or other attachments until they graduate to regular "Member" status (it prevents porn from being uploaded into the forums by spammers). "New Members" have to have from 1 to 3 posts before they automatically graduate to full "Members" status. You are upgraded now, so you should see the "Attach Files" section.

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