Frank and Karen Taylor spent about a year sailing around the  Caribbean a few years back and enjoyed it so much they decided that once their children had left the nest, they were going to do it more.

Enter the Tahina Expedition.  After selling their home, cars and other belongings “pretty much everything”, they’ve purchased a 50’ catamaran to sail the world for 5 years.

Both of the Taylors have worked at NASA and the computer industry, and Frank is an instrument rated pilot. 

They have partnered with Google, National Geographic, VideoRay (for underwater video equipment), EarthNC (charting with Google Earth), SatWest and Vizada (for video services), ClearPoint (global weather software and data) and Nodal Ninja, 360Cities.net, and PTGui for immersive 3D and panoramic photography.

The Tahina Expedition is making use of a wide range of Google products including: Gmail, Picasa, Picasa Web Albums, Google Reader, and several others.They have partnered with Google to track their expedition with Google Earth, and they are shooting pictures, video and making posts about the journey on their blog.

The expedition is just getting underway.  Subscribe to their blog using your favorite RSS reader.

Here are some sites to assist in your shopping in brick and mortar stores on the Friday after Thanksgiving, and the following Monday when you are in the office supposedly working but instead shopping online.

Blackfriday.info

Black Friday 2009 

Black-Friday.net

Cybermonday.net

Bestcybermondaysales.com

I’ve installed Windows 7 on 2 laptops today.  One was an old Averatec, which Ashley is using these days.  It has been cantankerous when installing OSs before, so I expected the worst.  It worked flawlessly.  Even used the Windows XP drivers for the wireless card that I could not get to work with anything other than XP.

After this success, I decided to go for it on the Dell Inspiron 640m that I use daily.  This is a production laptop – my only computer on weekends – and I was apprehensive.  Every single thing has been painless.  It even recognized the wireless card, and after a connection to Windows Update, all device drivers were loaded.

So, how does it perform, Tom?  Well, I’ve spent a few hours with it downloading software for my laptop, surfing the web, etc. and it has not missed a beat.  Even the UAC is not as annoying as it was with Vista.  In fact, I think it may actually run faster on 7 than XP.  I’m even using Aero.

Your mileage may vary of course, but when time allows I intend to shift the desktop over as well.

While writing this, I was listening to "Looney Tunes" by Grooveyard

Over at makeuseof.com (one of my favorite tips sites) are 14 cheat sheets that you can download.  Office 2007, Linux, SEO, Photoshop and even Twitter are there.  Enjoy!

In my previous post, a squirrel popped up in front of vacationing couple and became a surprise photo guest, and then via National Geographic and the Intertubes, an Internet celebrity and meme.  Don’t be left out of the fun, do your own squirrelizing at The Squirrelizer.

So, if you haven’t seen the Crasher Squirrel photo, or know the history about it, head on over to Mashable and learn all about it.

Head on over and check out these rare Stars Wars photographs.

From TechCrunch:

“Son, we operate on network that has walls. And those walls have to be guarded by carriers with restrictions. Who’s gonna do it? You? You, Verizon Wireless? We have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for Google Voice and you curse AT&T. You have that luxury.”

Read the entire thing imagining Jack Nicholson.