Out Of Office Living

 We regularly cross the U.S./Canadian border on the boat. The rules for what foods you can bring with you differ depending on the direction you are traveling in, and food items you purchased in the U.S. often cannot be brought back into the U.S. if you don’t finish it in Canada. Figuring out the Canadian rules involves searching for each type of item, very specifically, on the Automated Import Reference System (AIRS) . Figuring out the U.S. rules involve visiting both Customs and Border Protection and, the USDA Aphis site.  Since both of these systems are rather complicated, I decided it was worth a try building an AI prompt to figure out the rules. This prompt configures an AI tool so you can simply type the name of a food item, say “eggs”, and it will respond with the rules for both the U.S. and Canada. It will also put a table on the canvas that contains the list so you can reference back to it.  To use this prompt, copy this text into your favorite AI tool (ChatGPT,...

We recently took delivery of our Ranger Tug R-43, Out Of Office, powered by two Volvo Inboard Performance System (IPS) Pod drives. The IPS Pod drive has been around for over 20 years and while many boaters have heard about it, many have not had a chance to experience it. In this article we cover our initial experiences with the various aspects of driving a boat with the Pod drives and the different drive modes available, including one that normally is not available on the Ranger Tug R-43. If you are more of a visual learner, we have a companion video showing how these drive modes work. If you just want to know what we like about them, here is our tl;dr: Joystick Driving is awesome. It is unlike any other boat control system. You have total control over the boat with one control. It is extremely intuitive and especially new boaters will likely take to it faster than they do a traditional throttle-and-wheel system. We will drive the boat 95% or more of the time in Joystick Driving or J...