JdFinley.com

Fulltime RV Living Adventures

Shoal Fin Keel

There are a bunch of strange terms in the boating world. One used in regards to sailboats is a shoal fin keel.  There are lots of different types of keels and I thought some photos of the last haul out of my sailboat might help in understand what a shoal fin keel is. This is… [Read More]

Dinghy Concert

Beautiful video! You just have to love the song, the singer, and how relaxing it is! Fabulous! 4th Annual Clarkes Court Bay dinghy concert in Grenada. Grenada is part of the Windward islands in the Caribbean sea. North of Venezuela, Trinidad and Tobago; south of St. Lucia .

Is Mobility Good?

Do you ever wonder if the mobility that our society enjoys is a good our bad thing? I was sitting in the Atlanta airport watching the mass of people rushing about and thinking about this. Transportation hubs are an interesting orchestra of motion. Some people are in such a rush, others do not seem to… [Read More]

SQL Common Table Expressions

I’ve been working with Microsoft SQL Server Common Table Expressions (CTE) lately and am totally impressed every time. My most recent experience was needing a temporary table with the fixed number of rows into which I would load some data based on the row number (basically).  There are several ways to accomplish this with T-SQL. … [Read More]

New Face

It seems that many people are talking about face transplants.  My current one (the original) has been heavily mauled by life so I started looking around for a new one.  The following is the best that I could come up with….

Much Fruit

It is the branch that bears the fruit That feels the knife, To prune it for a larger growth And fuller life, Though every budding twig be lopped And every grace Of swaying tendril, springing leaf Be lost a space. Oh, thou whose life of joy seems reft, Of beauty shorn, Whose aspirations lie in… [Read More]

Garmin 441 GPS Chartplotter

I purchased the excellent Garmin 441s chartplotter in the spring of 2011.  So far, I really like it.  I would not claim to have fully utilized it or played with every feature – there are many! I agonized over where to mount it.  I have seen a lot of installations with the unit inside the cabin… [Read More]

What is SQL?

There are probably a hundred valid answers to this question.  Nonetheless; I run into the question fairly regularly and also see some rather inaccurate beliefs about it.  Let’s define some terms, I’ve attempted to order them in an order that helps with understanding. “RDBMS” is an acronym for Relational Database Management System. “SQL Server” is… [Read More]

IF or IIF

The IIF function in Microsoft VB is a statement that allows you to evaluate an expression and return one of two objects depending on the result of the evaluation.  Neat. The problem that I had with IIF is that it  always evaluates the true and false parts of the statement no matter the result of… [Read More]

Port Light Seals

The port light seals (gasket) on my sailboat were becoming dried out and would stick when I opened the window.  I do not have any leaks (that I know of) though.  I had read that the best way to freshen/recondition these seals is to work some white Vaseline into them.  This past week, I took… [Read More]