UPDATED 3/26/2012 

SOLD

1.5 year old custom-made kayak for $1500 OBO – originally paid $2500+ for entire set of gear.
It’s only been used 5 times, and very short trips at that (less than a half hour each). It was custom-built by NC Kayaks, and has lots of stuff along with it.
You will have to pick up from my place on Vashon/Maury Island.  The one benefit is that we’re right on the beach, so if you want to take it for a test paddle, it’s a quick walk down the boat ramp.
It’s got a lime colored deck, white hull, and white seat and coaming.
More pictures are available on my Flickr gallery here.
Includes:

• Paddle – Carlyle – 230CM
• Skirt – Brooks
• Cockpit cover – Brooks

Specifications from the manufacturer are here.  Please note that they may have updated their specs but most of it should be current.  I did a lot of research on companies who have built good kayaks for the Puget Sound waters, and these folks had a lot of positive reviews and information.  One of the best features of their design is how straight the kayak tracks regardless of the water conditions.

There is plenty of storage room in the rear compartment, and everything has been built with a lot of quality in mind.  The manufacturer is in the Tacoma area, so if you want additional add-ons, or other work done, it’s very close by.
Please contact me at store@stevem.net with any questions.

I moved yesterday to a new, larger apartment, and I used an actual moving company this time around.  All of my moves before had been done by me, and friends helping.  It always seemed like the right thing to do at the time, and the stack of boxes and furniture really didn't look that big anyhow.  But it always ended badly – something being broken, taking way longer than the day you had the truck rented, and every time being sore and completely worn out.
This time around I asked at work for folks recommendations, and ended up settling on Gentle Giant Moving Company.  They are based out of Boston, but have a local office here in Seattle.  Every aspect of the move was handled exactly as I would have wanted it – very quick, concise communication via email and phone for the estimate, 100% courteous and professional folks on the moving day, and everything was packed and moved perfectly.  I was especially surprised at how helpful the guys were that moved things, and how fast they were.  Done in 4 hours!
I would highly recommend them for anyone in the Seattle area wanting to move.  I found many, many scary companies out there that quoted me various open-ended amounts of time, and tried to push me to buy their own packing supplies (which I didn't need) and other things.
Still getting used to the new place – still lots of boxes to unpack and things to re-find again.

I've been thinking off and on for a while about moving from my current 1 bedroom, 900sf apartment into something a little more unique, and a little larger.  Friday, a new rental came up on an RSS feed I have for SeattleRentals.com – a house boat on Lake Union in the Eastlake neighborhood.  In fact, there are at least three for rent in the same general area.
I love the water – sailing on it, being near it.  I own a place with two other friends out on Vashon Island right on the sound, and I love getting out in my sailboat as often as possible.  I think it would be amazing to live on the water.  I've considered living on my sailboat, but that requires a significant lifestyle change, plus it's hard to find liveaboard slips around the area.
So the big question is – what should I be thinking about in living on a houseboat?  I've read a bunch of stuff about the communities and fun things, but I want to know what to watch out for.  The things that aren't so fun or nice or interesting.
My biggest concern is the neighborhood location – I'm used to living on Queen Anne, which is literally 5 minutes from work, all on pretty un-busy city streets.  And it's only a couple of blocks away from restaurants and grocery stores.  The Eastlake area isn't as close to those things.  And it's pretty difficult traffic to get from Eastlake over to work, or to my friends house that I spend lots of time at.
If you have thoughts, let me know… still thinking about the options…

Note: As of 4/19/2009, my dedicated AIS station is offline while I move.
I have a dedicated AIS reciever and antenna that are on 24×7 and connected to a dedicated machine that catalogs and logs the data to various places.  I submit my data to mulitple online locations that provide user interfaces into the data for folks to browse.
I also upload my data every 60 seconds to a dedicated webserver I own where you can see near-realtime AIS data -  Live AIS Ship Movements in Puget Sound.  You can also read more about how this is setup here.
My setup is as follows:

• Location – near the top of Queen Anne hill in Seattle, WA, USA with direct views of Elliott Bay and surrounding waters
• Shakespeare AIS antenna (model number forthcoming) mounted outside on the 2nd floor of building
• SR 162 AIS Receiver
• Serial connection to a Windows XP system running a low-noise, low heat CPU, and an SSD hard drive for long life and reliability
• All above systems on UPS and behind firewall, with dual Internet connections, nightly backups to offsite storage

I have a number of AIS related pages and data:

• Live AIS Ship Movements in Puget Sound
• My station on marinetraffic.com

The real-time AIS page is created with a number of tools:
The data is gathered using ShipPlotter, a popular piece of software that allows you to snag AIS data off of the airwaves and do various things with it.
Once ShipPlotter has captured the data, I use a VB script provided by W. Curt Deegan which looks at ShipPlotters logfiles, and generates a Google Maps compatible XML file.
I use VisualCron to take this data and upload it via SCP to my public webserver, because Windows has no decent automation tools that allow you to run batches of commands serially in the background.
I use an HTML page that is heavily customized.  Thanks to folks like John Ambler for their work on these pages originally.

A friend forwarded me a great bread recipie that is awesome and has produced a couple of great loaves so far.  The second batch of dough is already rising and ready for a few more later this week!

The final piece of my navigation and safety additions to my sailboat finally came in – an AIS Class B transponder.  I chose the ACR Nauticast-B kit which includes a bunch of different things.  This post contains a lot of information on unboxing and initial playing of the unit.
I sail primarily near Elliott Bay in Puget Sound, Seattle, WA.  My sailboat currently has an AIS receiver that I have had for over a year, and it has proven well worth the investment.  I have it connected to my Garmin GPSMAP 5208 chartplotter, and shows a lot of details on ships moving around me.  Elliott Bay is very busy – two major ferry routes terminate here, and there are countless cargo ships and cruise liners moving around.  Case in point is a screen shot from last year where everyone was after me…
I wanted to go to the next level and have the ability to broadcast my location out via AIS-B so that those folks who choose to listen will see me.  I like sailing in Puget Sound, and I think that this will be a key safety system in making sure others see me ahead of time as well.
I purchased the unit through Milltech Marine – great folks with a lot of expertise in this area, and right in my backyard on Bainbridge Island.  They processed the necessary paperwork, which included getting details on my boat, measurements where the GPS antenna will be installed, and of course my existing MMSI number.
The Box
The unit came in a long box with the following items:

• VHF antenna, mounting, cables
• GPS antenna, mounting, cables
• CDs of software
• Manuals
• Nauticast unit
• Cable from Nauticast to GPS, VHF, etc.

One thing of note – I explored whether I could use my existing VHF splitter and antenna for this, but Doug at Milltech recommended that I not do that.  There was a different setup I could put together, which I still may end up needing to do, but the preferred way is for the unit to have it's own dedicated VHF antenna.  Keep in mind that the system will be broadcasting your location and vessel details constantly, and sometimes frequently depending on your speed, etc.  Sharing your existing VHF antenna could be problematic if you need to, say, make a VHF call for some reason.
The Antennas
The VHF antenna looks to be decent quality.  It's an AIS branded antenna, whatever that means.  You can see a picture of the label here.  It comes with a decent length of cable, and molded ends on both ends.  That's going to be a bit of an issue when snaking it through the various places and out aboveboards.  It'll likely get cut and have to be re-ended.  It would have been nice had it come with a spare end, uncrimped and unconnected.   I'd guess the antenna is about 3' tall.  It doesn't come with a wealth of mounting options, but the base has the necessary holes and bracket to be mounted just about any way you'd like.
The GPS antenna is an ACR branded model and comes with a Glomex mount base.  The same goes here for both the cable and the base – the cable has the end on it, and the base has little mounting options included other than a flat surface.

The Transponder
The transponder itself looks very well made – rugged and water proof with easy to see indicator lights, and cable connections.  It has good lockdown screw holes around the unit, and is nicely compact so it can fit in some out of the way location.

There are three connectors – one for VHF, one for GPS, and one large one for the interface cable.   The interface cable fits very snugly, and has very long screw-downs, along with a very tight waterproof seal.  The cable itself has connections to power, RS432, RS232, and for a switch.  You can see a picture of the cable here.

Testing a little
After unboxing, I wanted to give it a test at home.  I connected everything together, put the GPS and VHF outside, and powered up the unit.  I had loaded the Link2AIS software provided by ACR, and connected things via the RS232 serial interface, and waited for a bit while the unit acquired GPS satellites.
I was using my new Dell Mini 9 that I plan on having on the sailboat as my primary computer given it's low power consumption and lack of moving parts.  The Dell doesn't have a serial port, but I had a Keyspan USB-serial adapter.  Milltech sells these as well.
The system came up pretty quickly, and using the Link2AIS software I was able to see vessels near me pretty quickly.

There are a lot of really nicely thought out options in Link2AIS for configuring the unit, but the majority of it is not useful for actual route planning or looking at AIS targets.  It's a pretty basic application from that perspective.  You can see some additional screen shots of the setup screens and positioning information in my set on Flickr.
What I really wanted to play around with was Coastal Explorer, the navigation software I use.  I fired it up, told it to discover my GPS, and it found the unit immediately.  A few minutes later, I had a whole host of targets on the screen just as you would expect:

I waited about 15 minutes, but I was never able to find my vessel on any of the online, web-based AIS tracking sites.  I'm not sure if that's because I was not waiting long enough, on land (!), or because those sites only show AIS class A transponders.  I think I can assume that I'm showing up on everyone else's receivers based on the fact that the transmit light on the unit was going quite frequently, and the software indicated that it was working OK, and had my MMSI and all the appropriate details.
I suppose one way to test would be to use my existing AIS receiver and see if I appear on my chartplotter!  I guess I will have to wait until I install it to find out for sure…
Overall Impressions
The unit is very well built, and included are the basic pieces to get you up and running.  The software is solid, and has all of the features, and then some, to configure, maintain, and troubleshoot any problems you might have.  The documentation is complete, thorough and very well written.
References:

• Entire set of unboxing photos on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/spmitchell/sets/72157611876841582/
• Milltech Marine: http://www.milltechmarine.com/AIS-300.htm
• ACR Nauticast: http://www.nauticast.com/index.php?id=333

After threats of it over the last 2 days, and having gotten a light sprinkling earlier in the week, we're finally getting a decent amount of snow here today.  Temperatures in Seattle have been really cold this last week – the coldest in 20 years – and they're supposed to be even colder over the next few days.
It was fun watching folks try to drive on it today – there were the really timid folks who braked constantly and ended up sliding, and then the folks who chained up but their chains weren't quite right, banging their car loudly.
I walked into work and took a few pictures over on my Flickr site.  I hope the snow stays around a while!