In the bookstore at 2300 hrs.

Back home at 0130 hrs.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows finished at 0737 hrs.

No spoilers, but this is the best book since Goblet of Fire, and perhaps the best of the series.

Oh, and she's as ruthless with her characters as David Weber.

DG

Well, I guess my fine day job employers got wind of the fact that I've been activated to go on tour in Afghanistan, and rather than get served with the paperwork that activates job protection legislation for service members activated, they fired me.

I can't say I'm particularly surprised. There not much - hell, there is NO - loyalty in that company. Yet another company that could play the starring role in Office Space.

I suppose I should look up how to apply for the American version of Unemployment Insurance, given that I have been paying into it for 10 years now....

At least now I can start my work-up training with no distractions on that front.

So long Accurate Technologies, the worst decision I ever made.

DG

Thank you for calling the Canadian Forces All Arms Fire Support Call Center. For service in English, please press one now. Pour service en francais, apressez sur le deux maintainent.

*beep*

Please be advised that for quality purposes your call may be monitored.

Please enter the eight figure grid of the target using the touchpad of your phone. Press the pound key once you have finished.

*beep* *beep* *beep* *beep* *beep* *beep* *beep* *beep* *beeeeeep*

You have entered grid 1723 2922. If this is correct, press one. To enter a new grid, press two.

*beep*

Please enter the direction to your target, in mils, then the pound key.

*beep* *beep* *beep* *beep* *beeeeeeep*

You have entered 3200 mils. If this is correct, press one. To enter a new direction, press two.

*beep*

For 80mm mortar, press one. For 105mm howitzer, press two. For M triple seven, press three. For air support, please call the American Air Force customer support center at 1-888-DONT-BOMB-ME.

*beep*

You have selected M triple seven. That weapons system is not available in your calling area. For 80mm mortar, press one. For 105mm howitzer, press two.

*beep*

You have selected 105mm howitzer. For HE, press one. For smoke, press two. For illumination, press three. For DPICM, press four. For Excaliber, please call during normal business hours, 9 AM to 5 PM Monday-Saturday.

*beep*

You have selected HE. Please hold.

*music - "It's raining men"*

Your fire mission is very important to us. Please stay on the line, the next available battery will be with you as soon as soon as possible.

*music - "Everybody wants to rule the world"*

Your fire mission has fired. To drop 200, press one. To add 200, press two. To fire for effect, press 3.

*beep*

Firing for effect. Thank you for using the Canadian Forces All Arms Call for Fire Call Center.

DG

April 9, 1917 was the start of the battle of Vimy Ridge.

Vimy Ridge was a heavily fortified German position on the Western Front that overlooked the Allied position. Literally hundreds of thousands of French and British soldiers had died trying to take it, and it was widely considered to be impregnable.

So the newly formed Canadian Corps - operating together as a national army for the first time, under Canadian command - developed an innovative new battle plan, and in four days and at the cost of just short of 6000 casualties, took the ridge.

One of - if not "the" - most stunning victories of WW1, and the defining Canadian moment in history. We went in a colony, and came out a nation.

Today, ninety years later, the Queen rededicated the newly refurbished monument on the battlefield; a ceremony made all the more solemn by the news that 6 of my comrades were killed yesterday in Afghanistan when an IED was detonated under their LAV-III.

Today is a day for considering one's mortality - a point driven all the more harder home for me by the fact that I turn 37 tomorrow.

DG

So I bought the Alienware m9700. Turion64 2.2Ghz, 120 Gb RAID1, 1920x1200 screen, 2XGeForce7800GS SLI, 1Gb RAM

3DMark05: ~9700. W00t!

To celebrate, I bought Oblivion... and huge chunks of my life are now missing. The game is flat-out gorgeous at full LCD resolution, and playable with most settings near maximum. Niner and I will play together; I play, she watches. It's like watching a movie for her - and the writing is good enough to keep her involved.

My only quibble with the machine is that it is Turion based instead of Core2 Duo based... so of course, three days ago Alienware announced the m9750, which is the same machine I have, but Core 2 Duo and 9750GTX SLI - for the same price as my rig - shipping end of May.

Dammit!

Ah well; that doesn't change the fact that this rig is an absolute screamer.

On the HP front, I got an HP tech to admit (on online chat) that I was dealing with a known flaw in the ZD7000 series and to agree that HP would repair the machine buck shee, even though it is 2-3 years out of warranty. It then took a MONTH for them to send out the mailer box.

But once I finally got the stupid mailer, turnaround time at HP was a couple of HOURS. Two days FedEx to HP, repaired the SAME DAY, and two days back to me. Machine is back in my hands.

It's now a "ZD7000A". It appears the motherboard/video card were swapped out - the nVidia GeForce 5700 Go is gone, and now it has an ATI Radeon Mobility X600 instead. Online benchmarks place these two cards at about the same speed, with perhaps a slight nod to the ATI card.

More interestingly, they wiped the hard drive. Luckily, I had upgraded the HD about a year ago and so had the original drive lying around, so I put that back in the machine before it went back to HP. Good thing I had anticipated something like this; all my precious, precious data isn't lost.

Now I get to put the upgraded drive back in, and see if it boots. I expect it'll boot to Safe Mode so I can install the ATI drivers... but I'm not sure if it was just the video that changed or more besides.

Right now, I have mixed feelings about HP. I'm mad that the machine died. I'm mad that I had to drop so much coin, unexpectedly, to get a replacement. I'm mad that it took so bloody long (and took a lot of bitching) to get the mailer box after the tech signed off on the repair. I'm also annoyed that they wiped the hard drive.

But I'm VERY impressed on the turnaround time for the repair once the box got here, and the fact that the repair itself cost me not a single dime, despite being out of warranty.

So now Niner gets her own laptop, and all is right in the world again.

DG

Back home from Exercise IRONSIDES.

Upon arrival, a surprise - the laptop, the only Windows machine I have, is as dead as a doornail. It'll boot, but the screen stays black. And yes, I tried toggling the LCD/projector key.

A quick Google on "zd7280 hp pavilion black screen" shows that this is a known issue with this model; to the point where HP has an SOP with dealing with it. A chat with a tech support rep indicated that they'd mail me a FedEx mailer and they'll repair it free, despite being 2 years out of warranty.

But that means no access to Windows for however long that takes, and while my primary home machine is a Linux box, there's stuff I need to do on Windows that cannot be duplicated in Linux.

No iTunes for Niner's iPod;
No MapView for my Garmin GPS;
No Steel Beasts Pro for training;
No Solidworks;
No tax software;

Hrm. I really can't afford to be sans Windows for very long - more's the pity.

I trotted over to Best Buy to check out the options there, but they all have Vista on them, and I'm not dealing with that; especially not the software incompatibilities and and the constant nagging popups.

So I reviewed what I want in a laptop:

* High resolution 17" screen
* Full size 103 key keyboard
* A good enough video card to play Steel Beasts and CoH at full detail
* DVD burner
* Integral Wireless G and Bluetooth
* XP Media Center, not bloody Vista.

Well, guess what? Anything that meets these requirements is going to run $3500. Ouch ouch ouch.

But the truck is paid for as of today..... and having just sold the race car, I can afford one last splurge.

So I configured an Alienware M9700. 2.2Mhz Turion, DUAL 7900 GS Sli video. 2 x 160 Gb HDs in Raid 1. Dual-layer DVD burner. Just 1Gb of RAM, but AW wanted $220 for the extra Gb, and that seems excessive.

Oh, and Green.

$3488.00

So now I'm trying to talk myself into it. It's SO tempting.....

It's only money, right?

DG

So Niner picked up the BodySolid G5S home gym from the warehouse, and when I got home, I assembled it.

That killed 5 hours.

Notes on install:

1) Cut a hole in the ceiling drywall about a foot long by 8' wide or so, and took the time to make sure it was square to the wall and to itself. Used the studfinder to centre the hole between floor joists, a 5/8" spade bit to open up the corners, and a jigsaw to do the actual cut. Worked flawlessly - take that Mike Holmes!

Discovered that there is fiberglass pink in the ceiling , but it looks like they used R12 (for 2X4 stud walls) instead of R24 (for 2X8 joists)

2) That turned out to be not quite enough clearance for the rear pulley, so I cut out the carpet underneath the machine to drop it down another 1/2". That worked. That carpet is seriously nasty and has to be replaced anyway, so no big loss.

I'm curious about how deep the concrete floor pad is. It's temping to inset the concrete and drop the machine right into the floor - that would also probably drop it down far enough to eliminate the need for the ceiling notch... but anyway.

3) Body Solid, if you change the design of your machine during its product lifetime, that's OK - but for the love of God, update the assembly instructions to match! It's a good thing I have designed similar structures and know how this stuff goes together (and I expect projects like this to go not quite as planned - nothing for a race car ever just "bolts right up") or I'd still be scratching my head.

4) My Dewalt 18V 1/2" cordless impact wrench rocks. Most of the hardware is 3/4" hex drive (not metric? In this day and age?) and that's a perfect size for the impact gun. Zap-zap-zap and it's together. I figure that saved a couple of hours of assembly time, easy.

5) Overall, I really approve of the design of this machine. Good materials, solid concepts... one or two minor nits I could pick, but overall, I really approve of the engineering done here - picked up a couple of clever tricks for mounting bearings and bushings too. This is one solid machine. And working out the free body diagram for the pulley system was fun. :)

So this morning, time to put the plan in place - get up a touch earlier, and do a quick workout. As it turns out, I can do most of the exercises without even having to get off the machine and change positions, which is a real timesaver.

Also interesting is that different exercises have different mechanical advantages, so it's possible to get different weights without moving the weight pin.

3 sets of 15 reps of the chest press @ 50 lbs
2 sets of 10 reps of the leg extension @ 75 lbs (too much weight; will have to back that down some)
3 sets of 15 reps of the pec fly @ 22.5 lbs (moved the weight pin for this)
3 sets of 15 reps of forward crunches @ 30 lbs
2 sets of 15 reps of bicep curl @ 30 lbs

That took 15 minutes, and it kicked my ass too. The last couple of reps on each exercise was a struggle, and I was definitely feeling the burn afterwards... But 15 minutes... damn, that's *NOTHING*. I can do that!

I think I'll reorder so I do chest press at 50 lbs, then crunches @ 50 lbs, then change weight down to 30lbs, and do leg extensions, pec fly, and pulldowns, and finish up with the bicep curl.

The machine is rock solid and totally smooth too. It feels like gym equipment. Yeah, it set me back 2 bills, but it seems to be quality stuff.

After that was done and I wobbled into the shower, I realized we got the biggest snowstorm Windsor has seen in a decade, and I have 50m x 1/2m of snow to shovel. Just light powder, but after that workout.... damn, that hurts.

Not *hurt* hurt, but sore as hell. Ouch ouch ouch.

DG

A couple of things have made themselves apparent:

1) I can no longer afford to remain in the shape I am in - that is to say: "pear". I'm probably 50 lbs and 6 inches over my proper fighting weight, and I need to get this under control, and very VERY soon.

2) My current routine, such as it is, is not working.

The big issue is that I am utterly incapable of hamster-wheeling. I just cannot motivate myself to hop on a treadmill, or a stationary bike, and I despise jogging/running with a passion that burns hotter than a thousand stars.

Adding to that problem is that the gym is half an hour away, but when you add up travel time, change time, the actual time of the workout, etc etc you're looking at 2-3 hours burned, and I cannot motivate myself to do that AT ALL. After 2 hours lost to commuting and the 8 hour work day, I'm exhausted.

The sad part is that I only need maybe 30 real minutes doing the workout. A basic strength training regimen with a few sets of a few basic exercises, done daily or bidaily, would build up muscle mass, burn fat, increase my metabolism, and otherwise make big improvements. Then, when the weather gets better and I can open the pool (which is a lengths pool, only 5' deep but 40' long) I can do an ever-increasing series of lengths (as I started doing shortly after we moved in, until it got too cold) to work the cardio side. I *will* swim; I've proven that to my satisfaction.

The core issue here really is accessibility. If I had immediate access to the gym, I'd use it.

Well, I have a house now, and I have room in the basement for some fitness equipment. Me and Niner visited a local fitness supply store, and I think we've settled on a Body Solid G5S. It's built like gym equipment (so it's solid, with proper bearings in pivot points) and it is stupid easy to reconfigure for separate muscle groups; most exercises just involve a change of position on the machine, not a disassembly/reassembly operation.

And ease of use is the core issue here - if it is tough to use, I won't use it.

There's only two downsides: first, my basement ceiling is a little too low; I'm going to have to notch the drywall to fit the machine. The other is price - about $2k CAN after taxes. I just paid off $15k in debt when I sold the race car, so I'm not super-keen on adding it back... but this really is an investment, and what I'm doing now just isn't working.

So I guess I'm going to buy it.

DG

When Canada went to war in 1914, it did so enthusiastically. Young men enlisted by the score. And even when the true horrors of the modern 20th century battlefield became public knowledge, they *still* enlisted, and they *still* fought.

There were unbelievable levels of public pressure directed at men of fighting age to enlist. As an example, consider the "Order of the White Feather" where young women would pin white feathers (representing cowardice) to the clothing of men of serving age who were not in uniform.

"One young woman remembers her father, Robert Smith, being given a feather on his way home from work: "That night he came home and cried his heart out. My father was no coward, but had been reluctant to leave his family. He was thirty-four and my mother, who had two young children, had been suffering from a serious illness. Soon after this incident my father joined the army.""

Can you imagine?

I sing no lament that those days are past; it seems profoundly unfair to bring that level of coercion onto anybody, for any reason, never mind one that has a measurable probability of killing or maiming the coerced. I don't want soldiers that have been bullied or shamed into the job.

But by the same token, our nation is currently at war, and we are asking that it be fought by far too few of our citizens. The Army, which is bearing the lion's share of the burden, is far too small, and we are stretching it to the very limits of its capacity to operate. We keep sending the same people back over and over and over again, and that doesn't seem fair either.

The war in Afghanistan is many times less lethal than any other war we have ever fought; the prospects of returning intact from a rotation are the highest they have ever been (and the numbers are on the side of the soldiers, for once - the days of 90% casualty rates amongst troop leaders appear to be over, for the present) And we don't play the "for the duration" game anymore either - a rotation has a well-defined start and end. We demand unlimited, eternal liability from our troops no longer.

And unlike other adventures undergone by some of our erstwhile allies, Afghanistan is a just and good operation - well justified, effective, and morally right. You can tell your future grandchildren that you served in Afghanistan with your head held high.

But yet, we don't see the recruiting numbers that you'd think we would. There just doesn't seem to be the same sense of societal obligation to serve that existed in the past. And while I'd never want to see the pendulum swing so far back that the white feathers were revived, certainly it has swung too far in the contrary direction. We, as a prosperous and safe nation, owe a duty to the people of Afghanistan. We need to set the conditions such that they too can enjoy the same levels of health, prosperity, and safety that we all enjoy as Canadians. Not just for the cynical (but true none the less) reason that doing so improves our safety (one less place for the snakes to hide) but as much out of simple shared humanity. NOBODY deserves such a desolate and bleak existence as is everyday life in Afghanistan. They need our help. We owe them our help.

So where are you? What does it take to get today's young men and women to help shoulder some of the load?

DG

There is a Canadian - although it's probably British in origin - tradition of the "New Years Day Levee", in which dignitaries, politicians, public servants, and soldiers open their doors and provide refreshments on New Year's Day. The idea is to travel from levee to levee, partaking in holiday greetings and toasts to the New Year.

Our Regiment opens the three messes, and each mess has a time window in which to hold its toasts. The Officer's Mess goes last, and it lays on roast beef sandwiches as well as a huge urn of eggnog (more nog than egg, as it happens)

As a subaltern, my role is usually to fall in as part of the entourage.

But as it happens, this year the CO was called away on a sudden medical emergency, as was the DCO. The Adjutant was away in Kingston, and OC HQ Sqn was nowhere to be found.

That made me acting CO. I wound up doing the Regimental toasts, serving our roast beef (the unit COs carve and serve) and generally acting as if I ran the place - because at the time, I *DID*.

Happily, I made it through the day without overly embarrassing myself or the Regiment, and a good time was had by all.

Not quite as dramatic as the story of the teenaged midshipman who wound up captain of the ship (during a battle in the War of 1812) when the bridge officers were all killed/wounded... but the principle is the same.

Eat your heart out, Ethelred. :) Who puts the "Lt" in "LCol"?

DG

No, not this one; this would be NYE 1987/1988.

This being my first New Year's after going off to MilCol, so I had been away from home for 5 months, confined in an utterly alien environment. Going from a redneck northern British Columbian logging/mining town to a French Canadian military college is a bit of a culture shock, and I was more than a little weirded out about being back home amongst my old friends during the XMas leave period.

My best friend, picking up on this, decided that what we needed to do to loosen me up was to crash the triple-A hockey team's New Year's party. So he, me, and his girlfriend piled into his truck and showed up unannounced.

A word about hockey and northern BC: hockey was to my hometown what high school football is to rural Missouri. These guys were the closest thing we had to home-town rock stars. And they weren't known for their finesse and fair play either; if they couldn't win on the ice, they'd win in the parking lot after the game. More than a few teams flat out refused to play their (our) home games, because one way or another, they'd end up beaten bloody.

So this party was stuffed wall to wall with a couple of dozen professional thugs and their posses and assorted hangers-on. I knew none of these guys. I had a passing familiarity with a few of the wannabes that hung out with them, but this was not friendly territory. About the only thing I had going for me was my minor celebrity about "going off to fighter pilot school in Quebec", as reported in the local paper shortly before my departure 5 months earlier. No, I didn't tell them that; a cub reporter got my story mixed up and that was what was published.

My best friend, I should mention, was an animal. His favourite form or recreation was to get liquored up at one of the endless firepit parties, go find the biggest, nastiest guy on site, and pick a fight with him - and being the psycho he was, he'd win more often than not. I got into a ton of fights acting as his second, when I'd wind up squared off with his target's second.

I hadn't realized we were crashing the hockey team party; he told me we were crashing a party, but had been circumspect with the details. So when I realized where we were, I put my back to a wall, kept the entrance in sight, and nursed the hell out of the beer I was holding, 'cause I knew this would not end well.

I had *no* idea.

Sure enough, within the hour my friend took a swing at someone, but there he left the script: he missed, putting his fist through a plate glass window, and slicing all hell out of his arm in the process. I just happened to be standing near him when he did it, so I managed to clamp down on his wound with one hand, grab the scruff of his neck with the other, and propel him out the front door.

We passed his girlfriend as we were leaving, and that's when all hell broke loose. She saw the blood, and she started SCREAMING; a high, piercing, keening wail that never seemed to stop. She got the attention of the whole house, and word was passing quickly that my friend had swung on so-and-so. The hornets had been kicked, and time was short.

We were parked at the end of the walkway, a path plowed through the 5 foot snow drifts over the front lawn. I bulldozed my bleeding friend down the path, bodily threw him into the bed of his pickup, and clamped his free hand down on his wound.

"Hold this"

Back to the house to grab the still screaming (!) girlfriend. I carry her down the path and put her in the front seat. We are parked passenger-side towards the house, with the tailgate nearest the path, so I have to go by the path exit as I make my way to the driver's side of the truck. Drunken and angry hockey players are spilling out of the house and I am not going to make it around the truck before they reach the end of the path.

Luckily, the depth of the snow is keeping them single-file, and the guy leading the charge is a little guy, maybe five foot four. So I block the exit of the path, raise my hands in a nonthreatening display, and yell about how we're leaving and it's all good.

And the little guy punches me in the chest.

I'm so full of adrenaline that I don't even feel it. Instead, I look down on him (I'm 6'1") and say "You have GOT to be kidding me."

He hits me again.

OK, I can play rough too - and I'm not hammered. I crack him hard on the nose, a straight jab, and he drops like a sack of potatoes, right over backwards. The guy behind him tries to catch him, loses his footing, and he goes over too. It's like a bad movie; the first few guys in line go over like dominoes, and Mrs DG not having raised any idiots, I scurry around the truck and get the hell out of there.

The girlfriend is STILL screaming, and doesn't stop until we reach the hospital.

We slide into the emergency room parking lot, and I roll my best friend out of the bed of the truck. He is oddly lethargic and pliant, but I really don't mind. I grab his wound again (the back of the truck is covered in blood) and I start steering him towards the door.

And then he hits me. Hard.

For whatever reason, he has decided that the fight isn't over, and he wants to go back to the party and finish the job - oblivious to the fact that he is bleeding to death. I am preventing that, so obviously, I am the enemy. The lethargy is gone, he is back in full-bore psycho mode, and he is of no mind to see any doctors.

I don't have *TIME* for this shit - so I tackle him, and wind up sitting on his chest with one hand clamped down on his wound and the other hand trying to fend off the blows from his free hand.

Sometime around this point, 1988 arrives.

I finally manage to convince him that I *am* still his friend and he *is* bleeding out and he *does* need to see a doctor *right now* - and then he goes all pliable again, so I am finally able to get him into the hospital.

I tell the doc what has happened, warn him that he might go nuts again so feel free to restrain the stupid sonofabitch, and then introduce the doc to the girlfriend as the nearest thing to next of kin.

And then I drive his truck home. I'm tired, battered, and pissed off, and I am SOAKED in my best friend's blood. I need a shower; those two can spend the night in hospital.

I underestimate the effect my arrival home will have; my mother freaks out when she sees me.

"You're drenched in blood! What happened to you?!"

"S'OK Ma. It's not mine. I'm grabbing a shower."

So that's the standard. Some New Year's Eves are better than others, but any one that doesn't end with me washing a friend's blood off myself ranks as a good one.

That makes New Year's 2007 a good one, I guess.

DG
     

Integrity.

Competence.

Confidence.

Compassion.

Humility.

Discuss.

DG

1. What is your occupation?

Battle Captain for D Sqn, Windsor Regiment.

Also: I shovel coal into computers.

2. What color are you socks right now?

White with (dyed) grey soles.

3. What are you listening to right now?

A case fan, and my clicking keyboard.

4. What was the last thing that you ate?

Teriaki chicken.

5. Can you drive a stick shift?

Heel-and-toe, biatches. http://farnorthracing.com

6. If you were a crayon, what color would you be?

Olive drab.

7. Last person you spoke to on the phone?

Niner Domestic; She Who Must Be Obeyed.

9. How old are you today?

36.

10. Favorite drinks?

Ameretto and Ginger, or a good single malt.

11. What is your favorite sport to watch?

Formula 1 with Villeneuve in the field, or hockey with the Canucks, or (God help me) curling.

12. Have you ever dyed your hair?

Yup. I was blonde for a while. It passed.

13. Pets?

A cat.

14. Favorite food?

Vito's Grosse Poutine avec Viande, in St-Jean, PQ, or a 1/2lb Greco donair with the works, Charlottetown, PEI

15. What was the last movie you watched?

Some weird CGI-SF thing on TV, Snakes on a Plane in the theatre.

16. Favorite holiday?

Festivus. St Paddie's Day is good too.

17. What do you do to vent anger?

Abuse the troop leaders.

18. What were your favorite toys as a kid?

Army men.

19. What is your favorite: fall or spring?

Spring.

20. Hugs or kisses?

Nekkid.

21. Cherry or blueberry?

There's this great blueberry patch in the eastern part of the Gagetown training area....

25. Living arrangements?

Recently bought a house.

26. When was the last time you cried?

I honestly can't remember. Not in the job description.

27. What is on the floor of your closet?

Niner's shoes.

29. What did you do last night?

Attended a dinner for the executive members of the Windsor Regiment Regimental Association.

DG

I've pretty much decided that I'm never going to go racing again; too expensive, too much work for too little payoff, too many haters and their negative waves.

But in my eight years of top-level autocrossing, I learned a whole lot about the sport; knowledge that is safely locked up inside my brain.

Information wants to be free, right? Time to unlock it.

Over the next few months, I'm going to reveal every single secret I ever had; every last one. Enjoy!

DG

As detailed earlier, we bought our first house, and I am dealing with all the trials and tribulations of being a new homeowner.

Firstly, I'm astounded how we can move out of a 2-bedroom apartment into a full-on house, with 2-car garage, and yet somehow we don't seem to have enough room to put everything. I mean, what the hell - was the apartment some sort of space warp?

Unpacking and putting things away threatens to last well into 2008 at the current rate.

Secondly, we got the race car moved to the new place, but it had to be winched out of the underground parking and flatbedded over because the motor seized up and it wouldn't start. That's what I get for not starting it periodically I guess - although how leaving a car alone for a year results in it locking up is beyong me to understand. At least now I have room to pull the motor out and rebuild it.

My pro racing days may be gone, but I'm thinking it might make a good occasional drag racer....

Thirdly, the house has a nice in-ground pool, roughly 35" x 20" and 5" deep, that is great for lapping. I've been getting in roughly 5 swims a week, and I ramp up the distance I cover each session. I'm up to 18 there-and-backs, and it meakes for great exercise - I get a workout without getting all nasty, and it's low-impact so I don't get hurt. I've also discovered that I have a suprising tolerance for cold water, as long as I keep moving; I've swam in the pool with it as cold as 64F and I'm OK.

It has a natural gas heater, 250,000 BTU, but that much volume of water heats slowly, and much depends on the environmental conditions as fars as rate of temperature increase goes. I'm working on setting up a weather station (with a floating temp sensor) to log the pool environment, and see if I can't come up with some way to predict rate of temperature increase programmatically. Automate that into the pool heater control with Mr House, and I should be able to arrange to have the pool temp at any desired time automated.

The pool takes a suprising amount of maintainence. It's just a big tank of water, with a circulating pump consisting of the inlet, pump, filter, chlorinator, heater, and outlets, so you'd think it'd be maintainance-light, but it has to be swept every day, vaccumed every couple of days, the skimmer strainer has to be emptied twice daily (it gets full of leaves, snails, worms, milipedes, spiders, crickets, slugs, and the occasional mouse)... it's not a huge volume of work, but it needs daily attention.

Water chemistry also proves to be a constant challenge. According to the test strips, I'm high on chlorine, total alkilinity, and PH, but nothing I do can change it. I've dropped in close to 15kg of PH- and, although the water got noticeably clearer, PH and alkalinity never budged. I started doubting the test strips (especially when normal tap water tested as no chlorine, high alkilinity, high PH) but a test with vinegar reacted as expected.. so I dunno.

But late-night swims in your own pool sure 'nuff makes up for it....

DG