How to twist my arm...

Step 1) Call me when I'm neck deep in snow and my back is breaking from shoveling, and tell me that its nice and warm and sunny where you are...

Step 2) Tell me you have a huge problem...

Step 3) The problem involves getting your super fancy 52-foot sportsfishing boat the 650 miles from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina to Miama, Florida just as fast as you can get it there - and then take another boat 200 more miles on to Key West and then a few days later, bring them both back again!

Step 4) Tell me you need someone to basically navigate using a state of the art moving map GPS system, stow gear, tie lines, check life jackets, put stuff in the microwave now and then, and set up some 300+ sailfishing rigs...

Step 5) Tell me you won't pay anything but airfare both ways, but I get room and "board" on-board a boat that makes my house look like a mongolian yurt...

----------------------A friend of my Dad's best fishing buddy has a boat that the owner uses for billfishing (marlin, sailfish, swordfish) tournaments and unexpectantly lost the services of his deckhand and a whole bunch of phone calls later...

...I found myself hurrying to the airport my aching back "sort of" forgotten - I had a boat to catch. In my rush, I forgot to bring a whole bunch of stuff including my camera - but my cellphone camera worked pretty good, except in the dark.


It was dark when I got there and it was quite dark when we left the dock not long afterwards.


Not that I cared since I was tending things below decks - I wish my house was as nice!


I only got to look at this bed, I slept on the convertible sofa in the "living room".

A very long night and half a day later, I helped navigate the boat through the inlet into Pompano Beach, Florida where I was kicked off the "tournament" boat and onto another boat to wash it down, stow in food, and prepare it for a trip to the Bahamas. This boat was the owner's "little boat" (it was "only" 47 feet long), and no, I wasn't invited to go on that ride - the boat owner and the boat captain were going there after the billfishing tournament was over.

The Pompano Beach, Florida Billfishing tournament lasted 4 days, of which I saw absolutely nothing except the boat I helped bring down from Myrtle Beach come back into the dock last day (February 21, 2010).


While the tournament got organized to start, and after getting the second boat set for a relatively short 90-mile voyage to Freeport, Bahamas, I went with the Owner's son in his boat down toward Key West, Florida. The son wanted to scout out the annual World Sailfish Championship "grounds" (waters?) being held on April 13-17, 2010. Last year, there were $1,013,000 in prizes.


I got to go ashore and sit on the beach for a few days while the son drove the boat all over the deep blue sea. I enjoyed the quiet, the warmth, and the fact that the ground wasn't heaving underfoot at all hours of the day.

...but then... I got a hankering to go fishing... so I caught up with another friend of my dad's, Captain Jeff of the Tarpon Time.


It's really uncanny how Captain Jeff manages to "park" the boat over the fish. I had a fish on within 3 seconds of putting the bait into the water. I think we caught about 50 fish this day (we released all but 4 of them) including Cerro Mackerel, Yellowtails (Jacks), Mangrove and Orange Snapper, a 'Cuda, Amberjack, and black, red and nassau Groupers. The largest one I caught, a red Grouper is pictured - I think it was about half mouth!


I kept only what I was going to eat. Ah, fresh fish, there isn't anything like it. If you think you don't like fish, you have never had it fresh enough - as in caught an hour ago!

The boat that won the Pompano Beach tournament, the Owl's Nest, got a check for $122,625.00! The boat I helped bring to the tournament won enough to pay it's (and my) way even though it got about one (1!) mile to the gallon of diesel fuel.

I'm so far behind with things - I might never catch up - and its snowing here once more with another foot snow forecast tonight and into tomorrow.

Why did I come back?

:)

Out of Order

I'm going to be "out of order" for awhile. I'll be back after a break.

My Sexual Fantasy

Recently, Dorkys Ramos, over at Dry As Toast had an intriguing post on "Tips for Sharing Your Sexual Fantasies."


That's my car under that lump of snow. I think we got about 16-18 inches of new snow. Now, being snowed in gives me time to fantasize. Of course, as some of you know, I struggle mightily to keep this blog rated PG, so this will be a little ... different.

Without further ado, here you go, Dorkys! :)

A big glamorous motor coach pulls down the street and silently glides to a stop by the curb near my mailbox. The door opens and a beautiful blonde woman steps out followed by about fifteen strapping, muscular guys with snow shovels. The guys quickly get to work and soon clear a narrow path through the deep snow to my front door – where the blonde rings my door bell. I open the door to see Heather Locklear smiling at me and asking if she might come in.

I stammer and gulp, and nod my head affirmative, and she strides in closing the door behind her while sensuously unzipping her arctic parka to reveal a lacy white nightie. She softly whispers into my ear, “I’m yours, do what you want with me.” I stare at her, absorbing her loveliness, inhaling her sweet scent, and run my fingers through her silky hair. I suggest a small glass of wine and she agrees, so I go to the kitchen and fumble about with the bottle and corkscrew.

It takes my trembling fingers five minutes to get the cork out of the wine bottle, and then I need to wash, rinse and dry the glasses as they haven’t used in to long as to be covered in a thick coat of dust. Finally, the bottle and glasses are ready and I take them to bedroom where Heather waits impatiently. She smiles up at me from the bed as I pour the wine. I nervously hand her a glass and make a quick toast, “Salute!” and we sip the bargain basement special that cost less than seven dollars a bottle. I think I see her wince but she quickly covers it with a brilliant smile that melts everything inside me.

Just then, there is a loud knock on the door, the fifteen strapping muscular guys have finished shoveling my driveway and its time for Heather to leave – so she quickly dons her arctic parka, the fur-lined hood framing her beautiful face, and she says, “Good bye, Iggy,” as she enters the motor coach and it speeds away trailing a small cloud of diesel smoke.

I sigh in satiated pleasure, my driveway is clear of snow.

I'm not going to talk about snow...

...hoping it will just go away.



Today, I was reading an article in the January/February 2010 issue of Speech Technology, titled ‘Text-To-Speech’ by Caroline Henton.

The article was about a test used for evaluating the latest text-to-speech (known as TTS) products.

I’m interested in the technology for several reasons; one being my friend Tori_Z uses it to “read” blogs and other web pages. Another reason is my younger brother’s PhD (in Computer Science) thesis was about using computers to parse human language – or machine language recognition – his work dealt with making a computer understand someone, anyone, that spoke to it with an emphasis on the ums, likes, you knows, ahs, and errs and backtracking that people do when they speak naturally.

As I read the article I was struck by how difficult the test was – it consisted of 10 utterances to test TTS performance in pronunciation accuracy, text normalization, pausing, and other aspects of prosody.

Here are the ten utterances – how well can you read and pronounce these phrases? And Tori? I hope your blog reading program doesn’t choke to badly here!

1) McCain called Obama a liberal, and then he insulted him.
2) Jenny gave Peter instructions to follow.
3) I want doors I can shut!
4) Was the red book read or do we have to read it?
5) Bring me a blue towel, and a red one.
6) Cumin, fenugreek, bouillabaisse, rouille, riesling.
7) 124th Avenue, 120 4th Avenue, 100 24th Avenue.
8) Suisun City, Poughkeepsie, Coeur d’Alene, Streatham, Guildford.
9) Barrasso, Boustany, Faleomavaega, Grijalva, Kratovil, Radanovich, Sebelius.
10) Ralph Vaughn Williams, Ralph Fiennes, Nicolas Sarkozy, Nicholas Nickleby, Maria Callas, Black Maria.

I found numbers 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 to be near tongue twisters. Apparently, number 9 is a partial list of current members of Congress. Four vendors submitted their products for evaluation and they actually preformed rather well. I’m amazed by how fast the technology is improving.

The article closed with:

“For future progress in speech synthesis, more attention to general purpose TTS (and less to, say, in-vehicle navigation) and the semantic disambiguation of homographs (read/read; Maria/Maria) would be universally beneficial.”

Uh huh, I umm... yeah... like, I agree with that, for sure.

:)