Not all who wander are lost

Category: Uncategorized

  • South Maui Beaches

    South Maui Beaches

    Life is at the beach and Kihei has almost 2 dozen of them with soft golden sand and one with black sand. All of them are a great place to spend some time whether you want to sit on the sand or frolic in the water & waves.

    Kihei Beaches (North to South)

    Wailea & Makena Beaches (North to South)

    • Keawakapu Beach I, II,: A long, sandy beach stretching from South Kihei into Wailea.
    • Ulua Beach: Highly popular for snorkeling and scuba diving.
    • Mokapu Beach: Excellent snorkeling; adjacent to the Wailea Renaissance.
    • Wailea Beach: Classic resort beach with luxury views.
    • Polo Beach: Good snorkeling and swimming in front of the Polo Beach Club.
    • Palauea Beach (White Rock): A long, less crowded white sand beach. A locals beach
    • Po’olenalena Beach: A picturesque spot great for relaxing.
    • Chang’s Beach: Small, quiet cove popular with locals.
    • Maluaka Beach (Turtle Town): Famous for snorkeling with sea turtles.
    • Oneuli Black Sand Beach: Unique, dark sand beach with good snorkeling.
    • Makena State Park (Big Beach/Oneloa): One of Maui’s largest beaches, known for its powerful shorebreak.
    • Little Beach (Pu’u Ola’i): A hidden, scenic cove next to Big Beach.
    • Pa’ako Cove (Secret Cove): A popular, picturesque spot for weddings.
    • La Perouse Bay: Located in the Ahihi-Kinau Natural Area Reserve; excellent for snorkeling.
  • On theRroad

    On theRroad

    Trading my SSH terminal for the newly remodeled PDX terminal.

    This is our first time through. It is simply beautiful.

    Key Facts and Features
    Mass Timber Roof: The centerpiece is a 400,000-square-foot roof made of 18 million pounds of locally sourced timber, built off-site and lifted into place.
    Design & Sustainability: Designed to evoke a “walk in the forest,” the terminal features 49 skylights to maximize natural light and incorporates over 30 trees and 5,000 plants, targeting LEED Gold certification.
    Improved Flow: The project doubled the size of the ticketing and lobby area, with four new, open-concept “island” check-in counters and a faster, more efficient TSA security checkpoint.
    Local Focus: The redesign emphasizes Portland’s culture with local restaurants, shops, and the return of the iconic PDX carpet in select areas.
    Construction Method: To avoid shutting down the airport, the new roof was built over the old terminal, which was then dismantled beneath it.
    Timeline: The first major phase opened in August 2024, with final completion scheduled for late 2025.
    Project Goals
    Seismic Upgrades: The new structure is designed for resilience, featuring advanced, flexible engineering to withstand major earthquakes.
    Capacity Expansion: The remodel ensures the airport can handle up to 35 million passengers annually by 2045.
    Regional Collaboration: 30,000+ workers and roughly 150 small businesses contributed to the construction.
    Project Funding: The project is primarily funded by airlines and airport tenants, not local taxes.

  • Pi Shop Home

    Pi Shop Home

    This is the central dashboard for my home network. It is based on the HomePage software and as you can see uses widgets that report basic metrics for the machine or service. They are also links to the services they monitor for quick navigation.

    The left column is for the core services in the Pi shop; most are available over the internet as well as on the home network. The center column are services needed for monitoring the system metrics & logs. They of course have their own dashboards.

    The right column is for admin & maintenance. I started just wanting digital photo album, now I’m a system administrator, network engineer, website administrator, content creator (articles, photos & videos). And playing catchup in firefighting mode at every turn. Thankfully things are settling down to where I can use the system not fix it.

    When a closer look is needed the monitoring stack comes into play.

  • Drip, drip, drip

    Drip, drip, drip

    Before the year ends I need to make at least one post for 2025. I may as well make it about the unexpected, unwanted and forced remodel we had to do.

    In late July we found we had a water leak. At first we thought it was a pressurized line; it wasn’t it was the main kitchen sink drain above a corner of my office on the outside wall, where we noticed the moisture. Bottom line, the 55 year old drainpipe rusted through. Insurance pays for the damage and repairs, but not for the plumbing.

    Plumbers will rip a hole to do the repair. From there the insurance company want bids. Once a bid is accepted and contract signed work can begin; demolition starts and samples for asbestos are sent to the lab. In our case small amounts of asbestos was found in the joint compound used with the drywall. All work (about 80% demo done) came to a halt.

    Finding asbestos changed the rules, timeline and costs. 2.5 weeks were added to get the crew in for the demolition & abatement team to ready the site to go back together.

    The new office setup is nice, but we are still dealing with ramifications from the leak, some I’ll talk about in another post. The main visual one is no art work on the walls yet; a project for the new year.