Doom Doom Doooooooom

I just like that title.

So yeh, my little holiday vacation ended in a horrid plane trip home full of headache and uber uncomfortable seats. Teresa got to watch Hairspray on the trip from Seattle to Anchorage. I tried but the pluggies on my seat sucked, and the volume on Skyefoils was way too high for somebody who has an entire construction team of headache gnomes building a skyscraper behind his left eyeball.

I'd like to say the following things Continental Airlines

1. You're flight safety video is still VHS? Its worn out and whenever the CEO of Continental Airlines says "Highest Quality" the video starts to wiggle and freak out.
2. You're pilots forgot to turn off the trim assessment instruments, or maybe it was just some very powerful transponder interference. It was making a wonderful "beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep bip bip bip bip beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep" noise in the onboard audio provided to passengers. Congrats again on super high quality customer services.
3. On the first flight the pilots decided to wig out the passengers a bit by failing to regulate the pressure properly during decent. My tooth almost exploded out of my jaw, or at least it felt like it wanted to. On the second flight the pressure was regulated just enough to sustain my wonderful headache.
4. When you say "Is an exit row ok?" what you should really ask is "The exit row is next to our three most accessed toilets, and everybody ate beans for lunch... oh and the light in the ceiling of each toilet is about as bright as the Sun, especially when you just want to sleep. Is that OK?"

I could probably go on and on.. I payed a lot for these fucking tickets and I totally expected more for my money.

MySpace is here

I love the fact that since I put "MySpace" in my title that googlers worldwide will accidentally stumble upon this posting. For good measure I'm including "Facebook" as well. MySpace is right here at hardwire.bogomip.com.

I got rid of both my MySpace and Facebook accounts. I'm writing this post to inform my awesome friends that pay attention to my blog that their silly little broadcasts to MySpace, the awesome quizzes that help me understand who I really am, and the amazing quality of their MySpace theme which consequently pegs my CPU and wastes a ton of energy will no longer be seen by yours truly.

Same with you facebook, who I failed to even use properly.

Catch me on IRC if you dare:

slashnet/#lcdproc
freenode/#tacobeam

Xmas 2007 xTreme!!!

Alright, commence vacation update!

We went aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaalllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll over Northern Colorado and saw a ton of people this trip, I'm really happy I got to see a lot of friends that never followed me to Alaska when I wanted them to. I saw my friend Eddie get married (up close, I was best man) then played Nintendo with him before he left for his Honeymoon.

Andrew and Jaime were totally awesome hosts.. We had sushi and I'm just happy we got to see them during our vacation. They have the coolest cats. One is a puma and the other is a snuggly little mouse with a nice large roar whenever she wants attention.

Saw my friend Jim and his family, His mom almost wouldn't let me go - she was one of several moms I had growing up, but I saw her the most since she was the mom around the corner :) Jim's kid went from devil to saint through a strict "we will feed you to lions - OR - you will do 10 push-ups right now" policy. I totally dug it and Skyefoil wanted to take it back to the Anchorage School District. Can you imagine push-ups in detention?

We saw some of Skyefoils friends for brunch then got a chance to visit with darth_mall.. I looooooved it! What a fun guy and he has such a huge amount of stuff to talk about. Anybody not constantly conversing with darth_mall is missing out!!

Friendly Types

I have lots of xmas eve photos w/ the fam. Lots of wedding photos too which are way cool but I still have to sort through.

All and all, its been fun so far - we are taking off to go visit Ape, my sister, for Xmas 2007 xTreme!!! with the little nephews and the newbie niece with the hugenormous anime eyeballs.

My love affair with Ubuntu

I don't know why, I always go back to Debian after a few months with Ubuntu - But Debian Testing was getting on my nerves and I don't have time to help make it better.

I installed Ubuntu - Gutsy Gibbon finally. It works fine on my laptop. I really appreciate the new network manager, new easy breezy graphics composite support and the just plain works attitude.

Why do I even bother going back and forth?

Also.. kazehakase is the bomb.

Pound Puppy Profile: Momma Shila

It's that time of the year, time to get a new dog. Sam the dog needs a buddy and Skyefoil started looking at the online pet finder classifieds to find a nice dog in need of a quick rescue.

We had a few dogs lined up in our minds and waited a few days to call about them. Once we called about them we found out they were already gobbled up by other eager doggie do-gooders. Back online we went and Skyefoil ended up finding Shila in a home out in Wasilla, AK. We drove out the next day to see what Shila was all about.

She was shy, both of us had to get on the floor once we got into the house before Shila was all that comfortable around us. She eventually warmed up to us a little bit and we decided Sam better give her the ol' white glove routine and see if she is up to snuff. We brought Sam up to the house where Shila was waiting behind the chain link fence. She noticed Sam and started barking and wagging and growling and jumping and sniffing all at the same time. Sam was calm and just wanted to sniff everything and pee here and there. Thankfully the owners have very large english mastiff dog who probably pees a gallon at a time, so having Sam pee all over the place was no big deal.

Shila followed Sam around for a bit and eventually figured she liked him enough to wanna play a little. Sam didn't mind but he was more focused on sniffing the yard out. We went inside and sat down with both dogs and the foster family for a while. It was time they decided if we were good enough for this poor abused dog. Skyefoil and I joked around with their kids and they played with the dogs a bit, eventually they decided we should take Shila for a sleepover and see how that turns out.

Shila shook the entire ride home. She wasn't calm when we got her into the car - and she definitely wasn't calm until she was home with us and allowed to run all her shivers off in the front yard. Her and Sam ran a bit together. It was very sweet.

Inside, she met the cats. Mia's initial reaction was "For now I want to sniff you, and that is all". Everybody else hissed. Shila didn't care about the hissing and was more concerned with her new people. We all settled down, then Mia cat decided to poof up into a little furball and hiss at Shila as she was meandering by. OH NO, A MONSTER! *trumpets sounding* Sam leaps off the couch and chases away the vile beast. Shila must have appreciated it because she was quite effectionate to Sam afterwards. She didn't seem to mind having a dog growl and lunge at her nearly as much as when a human tiptoes toward her.

She paced a lot when we were trying to sleep. Skyefoil discovered she was a little afraid of the dark, and turned on a night light. She calmed down and snuggled in the bed for a bit before boarding the Snoozeville Express.

The next day was fun, she was very chipper and vocal with us about how much she wanted to play, and go on a walk. The walk was fun, except she isn't to be trusted off-leash for a while. Sam and her instantly darted into the forested area surrounding the park we were at and it took a while to recover her.

She is a lovely dog, I will blog more about her very soon

For now - It's movie time.

Moosing About

You see these guys everywhere in Alaska, except of course isolated islands and where only the mountain sheep go. But this Moose was too curious around too many curious people with too many cameras. Hence, we has moose pics. I figured he was going to hop a train to Fairbanks. More photographic evidence from Coworker Jens Blog suggests otherwise.

ICRC Moose

'Susceptible Me' or 'To be a Veggie Man'

I have to admit, the recent venture between Sophie Monk and PETA made me think about going vegetarian for more than a minute. In fact its been a few days now and I'm still kinda thinking about it - that must mean something. I love veggies and fruits and grains and all things non-meat. I also really love the taste of meat, but I have never had anything good to say about where the meat was supplied from.

By going this way I don't wanna get wrapped up into meat logistics, the global empire of the Meaty McMeaterson Inc or the cruelty to animals issue. They are all important and shouldn't be ignored. I just don't think I'm going to speak out on there behalf for fear of finding a new project to be mad about.

All I want is to be a bit trimmer, eat good food, and live longer. Maybe I could try vegetarianism out (after Thanksgiving, I'm no tofu turkey fan). Hmm, maybe I could just limit my meat exposure or I could start raising my own game hens then offing them as a sacrifice to my belly. I dunno...

Why do we eat meat?

Why don't people harvest their own meat?

Is it wrong to eat animals, no matter if they show signs of sentient logic or not?

I know lots of veggie heads that have turned back to meat, is it just a change in politics?

Guh...

It's hard to not have a stance on any of the other commonly debated issues surrounding this topic. My views start with this: I don't like the way animals are processed, I don't like thinking about where meat comes from, I don't like wasting meat. Unfortunately I love steak, I like tacos, and I love cooking and that includes just about any ingredient I can get my hands on.

Dear Blog,

It's been a while. I know.. I KNOW!.. I've just been busy and off in la la land thinking about things only crazy people and geniuses want to think about. So far its more crazy then genius.

I'm sorting out my life day by day, joined the Gym (Pete's City Gym) and am still carpooling with the lil' lady. She's hip to Yoga, I'm hip to having somewhere nice and happy at home to stretch in.. Neither of us are hip to creating that area out of the mess we have at home. I had a dream we cleaned, it was awesome. Then I woke up, put my thoughts back where they were the night before and continued on being crazy.

I love thinking about things, coming up with ideas and implementing them. I do it all the time - little projects here and there that never go anywhere. The unseen advantage to this haphazard get-r-done lifestyle is I walk away from every half complete project with a bundle of new knowledge. Its been easier to theorize on things lately. Probably because the missus is kinda letting me zone out every so often and do whatever I need to get done in my head.

Sigh, I'm not quite sure why I'm still at the job I'm at now.. I have other options.. I'm just a pussy now that I have health insurance and a 401k. I should just do what I need and move to a position that really puts me to the test in a realm I'm very comfortable in.

That said, I'm finally learning Vim.. I dunno why.. I've always wanted to but never had the inspiration to do so until recently. It's kinda silly that I don't actually know what the inspiration is other than I just wanna know it now. We'll see how long this lasts.

Take care, Blog. Who knows when I'll be back to scribble on you.

xoxo

Things I never thought about doing until today.

Today I had the challenge of pushing 150 feet of polypro (plastic like lightweight high-tensile pulling line) through 150 feet of 1 1/2" diameter electrical conduit. 200 foot fish tape would easily do the job, but lets take a crack at SCIENCE. I procured the following:

• Polyline
• Shopvac
• Pingpong Ball
• Foam Ball that looked cool at the store

I hooked up the shopvac to the far side of the electrical conduit and it was a perfect fit. I was so happy. So I skipped off to the other side (skipping for 150 feet is pretty fruity) and attempted to check the vacuum force on the other side. Holy crap this thing still has a lot of suck! I attempted to put a ping pong ball in the hole to find out it was just too wide. However it stuck to the end of the hose with a pretty nicely as the shopvac complained about it being all clogged up on the other end. I removed the ping pong ball and went inside to warm my hands and cut the ping pong ball down a bit. So I chopped off just over half of the ping pong ball (or just under half, depending) and realized if I tried to send this through the conduit it would more than likely rotate and lose its suckable surface area (SSA). I took the foam ball and put the little ping pong on it like a hat, and whiddled it down so I had a perfect little ping pong foam bullet. I drilled a hole through it and ran the polyline through the hole and tied it off to the top.

Now that everything was tied and ready for suck, I placed the bullet into the conduit and almost got rope burn with how fast my little shopvac was pulling the line through. It stopped, I rejoiced and ran back to save my shopvac from over-suckage. Behold.. The results.





I'm so tired, sorry for incoherency.

Fence: Complete

Phew.. Thanks to some temporary gate latches and a nice day (34 degrees, overcast) I finished the fence and tore down a segment that seperated the back yard from the front yard.. Check out my updated Fence 2007 gallery for great pics. The pictures demonstrate the how dog is now unable to leave our yard, his new reign of the entire yard area of our house and of course how cool our gate is.

I'm so tired.. But its done..

"I am the Shit" or "Knowledge is Power"

To whom it may concern,

Look out.. Move aside when I walk by cause I'm the shit, and you aren't.

You couldn't possibly understand the complexity of my being, which I can safely assume due to your inability to use a mouse correctly when operating a computer or notice that the numlock is keeping you from getting work done.

People, please start bowing for in your eyes I appear to be everywhere at once. I can fix things you can't see, simply because you don't know where to look, or how.

Have a question? Make sure its something useful and not just stupid person gibberish that mentions nothing specific what so ever. Tell me what you are experiencing and don't leave out things that happen that are contrary to what you want to happen. Those are called 'errors' and they must be noted.

And yes! I know exactly whats going on behind the scenes as it happens, I have a telepathic link that joins me to the servers we use. It doesn't stop there because I'm linked to each and every person in this city, NAY, this country! When somebody anywhere accesses our files I know not only what files, but why they are accessing them and how they knew they were there.

So fear me, love me, and show your appreciation to me by assuming I am at all times deeply invested in some sort of query or 'code' that is beyond your simple comprehension. Be afraid to knock at my door and please forget everything I ever said about emailing me when you have an issue. I must have been lying about not being able to keep track of all the problems, look at me! I'm obviously on top of it if it appears I am working tirelessly on resolving... something.

BTW.. Thanks for the cookies you baked me after I helped you at your desk a few days ago.

Arms like noodles

I'm so tired..

I got half of the fence gate done last night, I just have to figure out a cosmetically acceptable latch system for the other section that has yet to be built. Time is skewed today, I should be leaving work right now according to the way I feel. The harsh reality is I just got to work an just over an hour ago.

The arms are noodles because of my decision to use the Fat Max hand saw last night instead of break into a neighbors house for his circular saw. I think that was a good decision considering how inaccurate the circular saw can be on a 2x4. It has a hard time retracting the safety shield and I can't focus on where to cut while manually retracting the shield. I really need a miter saw.

Skyefoil mentioned the need to clean the garage. I knew that task was going to be a sooner than later task and I'm not all that excited about it. There are a lot of tools that need to be properly organized at some point, maybe I should borrow a reflective heater and just get it done one night.

I'm really thinking of pulling a Hiro... I'm just gonna squish up my face and watch the seconds go by.

Energy.. Gone..

I have to build a gate for our new fence today.. I'm not all that happy about it and I'm just waiting to find out our next door neighbor with the tool I need isn't home. I think he might have said something about just walking into his garage if I need it. I hope..

Been working on this damned fence for a few days now and I found a way of stretching chain link using ratchet tie downs. Its been a hoot getting this fence all tight and happy. I can't wait to do the finishing work and put some extra support on the top railings, I'm not too happy that each railing is basically held up on one end by two nails going into the butt end of one of the railings. It doesn't make for a very secure, well thought out solution. :(

A kid already climbed the chain link because he really wanted to. I didn't mind initially until I thought about the amount of kids in the area who love to climb things, we are pretty cool with the local kids and most of them seem to respect us and wanna work outside on our yard with us.

I stripped some rosehip buds from our one bush out front and burried a dozen buds every couple feet up and down the fence, I hope I did a good job and that next spring we may see some little sprigs of the bush poking through the ground. I may need to mark each area, I'll probably get some cheap tent stakes with those plastic circle tops and sink those next to the plant. Maybe I can find all plastic ones.

Ok, so.. obviously I have fence work to do right now. I'm not awake to do any of it however. I need to ride my bike over to the hardware store. Hopefully they will be open when I get there. I need to buy some gate hinges, latches, etc.. so I can make a folding gate.

What else is new with me? Why have I not been blogging? I think it has a lot to do with perfection. I themed my site and didn't finish it, and didn't have the motivation once I moved onto another little project. I have lots of little projects that steal my attention away. Either way I was unhappy with my blogs theme, therefore I didn't add much content.

I just today selected a stock theme from blogger.com to give me an excuse to add content, instead of worry about porting a theme to blogger.com. So I wouldn't be surprised to see more from me in the next few weeks.

Starting, with my next post..

Smack Me On The Head With A Shovel!

Friend back home linked me to this.. We both totally want some of this crazy whackadoo material. So is this stuff for real, or is it the moon landing all over again.. except this time with flubber.

Fence Update

I worked my tookie off this weekend. So did Michael, Adam, Jill, Janet, Teresa and Sam the dog who was protecting the lawn. All the holes were dug and posts were sunk in quikrete by the end of Saturday. Today I remeasured the slope of the fence and created a few formulas to cut the railing quickly. Teresa marked the level lines for the railing and Michael assisted with the railing for most of the afternoon. I really appreciate having neighbours that want to socialize and just plain be good neighbours.

Click on the photo album below:

Fence 2007

Hypnotic Video of Cat Eating Corn

Mothoc linked this to me, he is paralyzed while watching this video.

The Fence

I'm a whiny little guy because of this fence. Not that Its super technical or been a huge pain in my side all summer long. I really haven't worked on it until recently, however our ground is amazingly rocky. Rocks half the size of your head that have to be shattered or dug out before digging to the 2 foot depth I want for each post. I'm thinking 1.5 feet with a wide cavity near the bottom of the hole should be just dandy.

I just drew up the fence specifications in sketchup. Pretty simple design with some extra make it pretty design thrown in. Yes, thats chain link.



Anyways. I'm at two posts in the ground right now. As for the planning, it took me a day or so to come up with the right dimensions for everything after measuring the slope (thanks Adam for helping me measure depth), squaring the fence to the property, using a plumbob to place markers for the posts (accurate to a quarter inch, heck yes I'm anal) and figure out which building materials we had at the local hardware stores. I was specifically interested in finding posts and planks that were pressure treated by the same company. Not only is it a costmetic thing, as in they all start out the same color and fade at the same rate, but its also an expansion thing. If I have wood that expands and contracts at different rates them my screws will slowly unscrew themselves and the fence will just fall apart. I do like that I don't have to paint the fence as well by buying matching wood.

BTW: I need you locals to come buy and contribute one dug hole to our friendship, otherwise I may never let you use my fence, ever.

Hmm.. Which designs should I rewrite for Blogger XML?

Hmm....

Which of the following designs should I rewrite for Blogger XML for my foodstuffs, techbits, and personal blog?

1. woody01
2. woody02
3. woody03
4. woody04
5. Stylevantage
6. Refresh
7. solemnity
8. CitrusIsland
9. Underground1-1
10. dkblog
11. Ablaze21
12. PixelGreen12
13. deep-blue-website-template
14. acidlemon
15. Enlighten11
16. EliteCircle11

Hey, don't blow up my house!

I just got an update from a friend back home, he mentioned a SWAT standoff at my old house in Loveland, Colorado. Apparently some nuts woman is threatening to blow up the house using a propane bottle.

Initial Story (Updated): http://www.reporterherald.com/Top-Story.asp?ID=11723

Final Story (Updated): http://www.reporterherald.com/Top-Story.asp?ID=11739

Ok, WTF, I don't really want my childhood blown to smithereens.

Monopodiness

Sorry, I like making up words - it's a lolcat thing.

For a few months I have been searching out different monopod/hiking staffs to help me get up nice screed hills and give me a hand while photographing panoramics and other still shots. I found a lot of different ones, all very expensive. Camera shops carried the top of the line ones that cost anywhere from $160 to $400. The most expensive you could easily use as a club to fend off angry bears and moose and what not. I just happened to run into the following line of products which offer similar features to the super expensive ones.

Trek-Teck: Trekpods

• Retractable small tripod legs in the base
• Light weight and suitable for hiking
• Comfort grip
• Protective cap for the threading
• Adjustable head on the camera
  

One of the cool unique features include a magnetic shoe for lighter cameras and spotting scopes to quickly connect to the monopod. I think I'm gonna start saving up now.

Also, if anybody out there has a Nikon D70 or greater and they are feeling really generous - please send it to me - Email me for shipping information, I'll handle the transportation costs :)

Slingshot Paintball

Thanks to what was most likely a whack to the head while I was sleeping, thanks babe, I believe I remember playing a fun round of Slingshot Paintball.

Now, what makes slingshot paintball desirable? Slingshots shoot further, straighter, faster than run of the mill paintball guns. Everybody has the same reload time, its hard to claim you blocked with your weapon, balls travel fast enough to assure they break on impact. You have fine control of how the bullet flies if you practice enough. Its definitely more challenging and the simplicity of it keeps your head in the game instead of worrying about "what the other team has". Tag, not Tac.

Last time I played was with ToyKeeper, Traevoli, Galen and I had some fun in a municipal park back home in Colorado. Slingshots are probably not permitted in public park land by municipal code, however it was so low profile we got away with it pretty easily. I'm excited to start playing again, infact I found a Laser Assisted Slingshot which seems pretty well built, I think that violates my own rule of simplicity - but it seems pretty neat. Check out the videos on the product page.

So, when and where? I'm ready to go snag a slingshot and a bucket o paintballs and have some fun.

Problem Bears are for the State to take care of, not you!!

This really chaps my hide. Yet another dumbshit thought he should destroy a brown bear for the sake of his family.

This story takes place in Wasilla, Alaska. Wasilla is a nice large area with tons of houses on huge multi-acre lots scattered throughout the roadways leading to other, more interesting places. Many of these lots are homesteads or parts of original homesteads where squatter rights applied for thousands of Americans in the area. Most homesteaders have what I like to call PHSS or Post-Homesteader Stress Syndrome. PHSS symptoms include, for the most part, forgetting that your property does not need to be violently defended and you are no longer living in a cabin built from your own crap, piss and assorted little sticks. Most people with PHSS deny that governments exist or can effect them, or that laws apply, and - darn tootin - their property is theirs to do with what they want. If it so happens the neighbors are doing something to encroach on your property, block your view, or cause some sort of damage to their own property which in turn negatively effects your quality of life then you have more than enough rights to handle it house to house with insults, weapons, fire, or large ugly posters instead of bringing it up to the city, state, or somebody else who is quite possibly smarter than yourself.

Today the news posted yet another story of a Wasillian who felt it was in his family's best interest to shoot a bear that liked their neck of the woods - no matter what the cost. Hunting seasons are defined for a reason by "Scientists" who study the mating and travel habits of bears and other live game in order to determine appropriate time and quantity of kills to thin out herds and packs and to control over-hunting. This person failed to really involve the government agencies responsible for this bears well being when it first started hanging around his property - instead he shooed it away himself and assumed that would be good enough. Well the bear came back, that's grounds for shooting it.. right? Below is the original story as fed down the wire to us Alaskan folk. ADN is about the only publication that's worth a dime in this state - even if they have a crappy website. I also included a related article printed last month about the same dang problem.

The Story: http://tinyurl.com/2taokh

Other Related Story: http://tinyurl.com/27wr4u

When is it O.K. to shoot a bear? I would like to think when it starts being violent or has kept you trapped in a cabin with no comms for a few days. Only then would I destroy a bear.

BOSE Vehicle Suspension Video

Taking the suspense out of vehicle suspension.

Shared Items via Google Reader

Ok, so my girlfriend is probably very sick of me instant messaging her URL's to articles I find interesting. In an effort to reduce her frustration I have opted to make all RSS related links available via my Google Reader shared items RSS feed or the handly web page Google Reader servers offer to make sharing interesting web tidbits a little less pushy. So, here you go.

URL: http://tinyurl.com/2oc4bh
RSS Feed: http://tinyurl.com/2yr2u8

Your welcome

Adsense Goal Reached!

I just checked my Google Adsense account and I have reached my yearly goal which is!

Drum roll please....

$1.69

You people rule, keep clicking my ads :)

My New Food Blog!

Skyefoil had a great idea about blogging our food experiences as we live and travel around Alaska. I just posted a recipe and a note about the blog, to the blog. Hopefully Skyefoil and I can live in peace about this blog being authored by both of us :)

Check it: http://foodstuffs.bogomip.com/

I will be severely offended if you people out there in eLand don't add the RSS for this to your readers.

Operation Bum Bug Brigade (BBB)

Earlier today from my office window I spied somebody parking illegaly. I don't mind, however I am starting to enjoy watching this fat old cop waddle out there and give people a ticket. He does this 2 or 3 times a day depending on his glucose level. I also monitor this area for geocachers going after one of my caches - I typically snap a pic and put it online.

Today I noticed two strapping young lads with papers and gear of some sort and was pretty sure they were going after my cache. I got the camera ready and watched them walk to the wrong side of the street and squat down near a park sign with their paper. Hmm.. ok these guys aren't cachers... who are they? One of them walked briskly up the road a bit and ducked into the wooded area, this peeked my curiosity and I started snapping pictures wildly so I could find my way to that area later on to see what they were up to. He popped back out of the woods and went to his buddy, they checked something off of their notepad, ran back up the road and jumped back in the woods, back out, then they left.

What the heck...

I donned my camera and headed down to the area a bit after they left to see if I could uncover what they were doing. I found it too. They were maintaining a bug trap that said "Government Property Do Not Disturb" on it. It was also right next to a homeless persons bedding area. Ok, so they are either peons or biologists.. I'm guessing biologists since they drive a Subaru Outback. Subaru Outbacks are a clear signifier that a hippie is in the area.

Ok, this got me thinking. I the local government collecting bugs? Protecting the homeless from bneing carried away by mosquitoes? Maybe they are counting bug populations and types. Either way it was very odd. I took a photo of the trap and placed it in my caches image gallery to inform people of the nature of the device. Bug Trap Picture.

My first two cache hides are getting a lot of praise

Ever since these two cache hides hit the geocaching market they have gotten quite a bit of praise from bored Alaskan geocachers. I'm pretty happy about this and today I am giving them a "Gold Star" for being so dang cool. I posted links to the logbook and pasted in some of my favorite comments to this posting, to feed the google monster. Once you click on the links you won't be able to see their coordinates unless you have a valid account with the site - however the logs are available if you scroll down a bit. Thanks to all out there who left such fun comments for my uber sneakers caches!

Don't Jumps Full Logsheet

Favorite comments for this cache:

July 3 by WarrenPeace (280 found)
12 of 19 today with Quesogohome - This will rank as one of the most clever and memorable caches. Container was quite cold! TNLNSL

June 17 by scooter88 (61 found)
Found 1st. Thought it fell off. Very Funny. Went on bridge to not find it. Went under bridge to find it. Laughed all the way up. This is a great one. Scooter88

June 3 by snidly53 (105 found)
___well, the parking was quite limited, didn't realize it was a multi and thought 'oh it came loose and is gone', but saw the secret and went 'oh man!'... so went thru the tunnel and had a nice hike down to the creek...ahem!! glad i didn't get 'conked' by anything but the back of my own hand! but, mission finally accomplished without even getting muggled...yea!
___hard to be too snide about such a funny, funny hide!

Sneaky Beavers Full Logsheet

Favorite comments for this cache:

May 30 by K5 Flyers (48 found)
Thanks for this cache, was one of my favorites to date. We were a little confused until we figured it out. It was just the puppy (who had a great time swimming), my daughter and I. Never realized how many tree's a beaver can fall, there sure were a lot of them in the area. Never did see the beavers, but we'll be back. TNLN T

May 26 by oddone23 & oddens79 (294 found)
Wow! Definitely an interesting hide. We did see 2 beavers swimming, 2 geese and 2 ducks. Special care was taken in placing this cache back where it was so the next person should be able to get to it pretty easily. We went on th walk the plank after this one and on the way back to the truck, we did manage to get within 15 feet of a beaver before he spotted us and swam off. Thanks for the very unique hide!

May 15 by cachecreepers (832 found)
Don't miss your chance to do this one Cannot say enough about how very clever it is!!! Even after finding it, while driving away some of what was on the webpage clicked into place. Had us laughing and amazed. We want to take this idea back to our area and use it there!
Took--"Feep" and promise not to take it back with us to the lower 48
Left--"a sneaky Washington"
Thanks for an excellent adventure!
CacheCreepers from Washington

May 14 by Trove Rover (840 found)
A VERY sneaky beaver indeed!!! Not to mention a most fabulous hide! Took me a bit of looking to find it. Very original! Loved it!! Thanx 4 the cache!

You people rock!

Thanks to all of you and the ease of Paypal donate we hit the 50% mark today on the recent vet bill. It truly means a ton to Skyefoil and I that we have friends that support us like this.

I called the vets office to try to negotiate for payment terms, they do not offer payment arrangements however they accept the CareCredit card available at http://www.carecredit.com. All I wanted to do was split the bill in half somehow so I could pay the rest later. Thankfully CareCredit approved me immediately, via online forms, for $500. I was able to rush into the vets office and have them reverse charges on our debit card for almost half the amount owed - then bill it directly to this new CareCredit card. There are only a few care providers that actually accept CareCredit and now we have a spare $500 that can work at the 24 hour emergency clinic closest to our home. I'm pretty relieved.

Thanks again to all of you who helped us with kind words and phone calls to check up on us. We also had a few visitors drop by and offer some hugs :)

In Memory of Emma 'The Cuteness'

This morning Emma my cat passed away from what appeared to be blunt trauma to the left side - The emergency care clinic did the best they could and kept her overnight, performed x-rays and put her on medicine to help reduce the amount of liquid in her lungs. She might have survived however she may have had other health issues with her lungs that were undiagnosed and had no external symptoms.

The bill was $1065.00 to take care of this emergency. The clinic did not offer any payment assistance like maybe splitting up the bill, my employment is reviewing the situation however it may be difficult to get any sort of advance or cash forward to help augment the payment. I'm starting to see the benefit toward pet health insurance and will be evaluating that for our dog and 4 cats.

If you can, please donate to Emmas bill to help out Skyefoil and I who already live a bit more paycheck to paycheck than we like. I'm planning on being quite frugal for a few more months to play catchup. Please click on the button below to offer us a donation using paypal's secure donation service.

Thank you for any amount you can help with - Hopefully good Karma will return what you have donated

This is not a non-profit organization and as such, your donation is not tax-deductible.

Poor Emma

Emma our cat isn't doing well. She was tired, mopey, woozy and wheezy when I noticed her downstairs laying flat on the cement floor down there. She is a curious kitty so I thought she may have found some bad mice, mold, bugs or other things that may be effecting her somehow. I rushed her to our local vet who then informed me to rush Emma to an emergency clinic in Anchorage since she had a hard time hearing the heart and she was much cooler than she is supposed to be - poor blood circulation. I'm hoping she wasn't in this state all day long before I found her.

The vet I talked with put Emma on O2 and steroids after a quick pre-diagnostic of Asthma. The steroids weren't helping Emma so they did a differential diagnosis and came up with heart issues leading to pulmonary edema. She was very uncooperative while doing x-rays and it stressed her out quite a bit, because of that they placed her on a IV with drugs that will help pull fluid from her lungs. After a nap they will try to x-ray her again and if she is cooperative.

I'm glad I stayed home from Camping this 4th of July down in Seward, AK. We planned on staying until tomorrow down there - instead I opted to stay at home and get some personal time in while Skyefoil has fun away from home with RoRo the party girl. Keep her in your thoughts, if you need to picture a kitty imagine a brown tiger with gigantic cutsey eyes and a constant mew.

I'm pooped

It's been a while since I wrote in my blog.. Probably a good thing.

Today was fishing and geocaching day. Skyefoil is in Seward, AK with a friend and I have a few days to myself during the 4th of July holidays. Adam and I decided to start off the our day with fishing at the Euklutna Tailrace (whats a tailrace?) and it was dead as a doornail. Our friend Cinaminx joined up for the fishing however our awesome combined presence must have scared all the fishes away. Right next to our fishing area there is a geocache full of unique keychains - I stole a Jagermeister one.

After fishing Adam and I ran up and down a hill in a very forested area trying to get a good GPS signal so we could find 4 caches near the Glenn/Old Glenn Highway intersection. The mosquitoes were out in full force putting us into a foul mood. My GPS also showed bad positions for a certain geocache which sent us on a wild goose chase. Cache hunters go where the caches are of course and there were a few we had not logged on our way back to Eagle River, AK from the Euklutna area - one of them was at a scenic hike to a waterfall I had done before. The bummer about this hike is at the end there is a "lookout" to see the falls which you can't actually see the falls from. There was a hollowed out standing tree that I thought would fit a small child, so I of course attempted to wedge myself into it. I fit and it was very snug :). There was also a tree knurl I was looking for on this hike, I had seen it in the past and it looked very much like a hawk or eagle using its wings as shelter. I found the tree the knurl was on, however some prick removed it and probably took it home to add a few chisel marks and sell for $500.

We continued the hike down to the falls on the trail then went Rambo after the trail ended and traversed a rock face to get up and over to the falls. Wonderfull sight! I of course fell off the rock face on the way back to the trail. It was a steep rock face maybe 70 degrees up and I think I fell around 20 feet while grabbing for several very handsome hand holds which would have been very useful had they not been covered in mud. Adam was impressed and I was in awe that there was no sort brokenness to my body, I was quite covered in mud however.

Like I said - I'm pooped after walking lord knows how much

Yay for hiking!

Yay for me, another hike so far thats a hike a week!!! This being my second consecutive hike week out of two total hikes in the last six months.. well.. thats not really that impressive to all you fit people. I'm totally pooped and glad I had Adam around to talk with, the dog is really warming up to him which is quite different from when they first met up, I believe Adam and Sam the dog had to be on other sides of large rooms initially - Sams a little shy.

Today was Mt. Baldy, which isn't really a Mt. at all and more of a big foothill leading to a few peaks overlooking Eagle River, Anchorage, and the Matanuska Susitna valley. The cache I went after was called Baldy Eagle and the trek to it wore Adam, Sam, and I out. My legs aren't going to feel very good tomorrow and I plan on stretching tonight, right after I drink the rest of my beer and pass out crying on the couch.

Go hiking people!

"Poor": The phrase of a small nation

One of the oddest quirks I picked up from working with Native Alaskans were their silly phrases that all make sense, they make a lot of sense, but are still kinda silly. As silly as saying "L O L", probably. One of the more notable phrases is simply "poor" which can be used thusly:

• "Fishing sucked today"... "poor"
• "Your mom is a hooker"... "poor!"
• "My cat died"... "aww, poor".. "Yeh, my dog ate it"... "POOR!"

It's pretty catchy! You can even use it when as a reference to a visualization like a baby fur seal rolling off a cliff, or when somebody gets creamed by a bus in front of you.

Skyefoil hates the word, I don' t blame her and I typically only say it to get at her a bit during times I think I'm funny. I have whipped this bad boy out a few times on IRC which caused quite a bit of confusion as well.. so now I am blogging about it.

Any real online dictionary references that relate to this use?

Check it out.

Just pretend you are reading something cool, tell the people in the immediate are how awesome this blog is, post a comment while you are at it, then close the window so they can't see. You've guessed right if you assumed I have nothing to blog about today other than the obvious daily activities of yours truly.

• Spy on people
• Argue with people
• Point at people
• Point at dogs
• Take pictures of people pointing at dogs
• Take pictures of random objects
• Whine online

See you guys online tomorrow

The Sticky Humpy

I'm talking about humpback salmon of course a.k.a humpies. I am creating a new cache as a replica to some metal fish artwork lining several walkway railings in downtown Anchorage, AK. My plan is to hide a sharpie marker near this cache and have people sign the back of the fish. I tried thinking of neat ways to add a compartment to the fish for things like travel bugs and geocoins - I may make take it offline temporarily to do that once I figure out how, or if it gets enough traffic to merit that sort of modification.

When I am finally finished the cut out fish should be painted similar to the above outline. Take a peek at the gallery detailing the creation of and placement of the Sneaky Humpy cache, as of this post there are only a few images detailing the magnet placement and glueing.

Deconstruction Day

Todays agenda was set aside for one simple task, paint one room downstairs. This is a smaller room with nothing in it, even the carpet which was removed a few weeks ago, that only had some trim wallpaper to remove and a tiny bit of spackeling. I ended up removing two sheetrocked walls, left the studs, when I attempted to remove some nails and my hammer went through the sheetrock. Uh oh, its moist here.. hmmm..

Further investigation showed that an animal, or bored child, had been urinating in the corner of the closet, making the sheetrock mushy and smelly. ew...

Now its time to soak the wood in simple green and a few other flashy chemicals to make sure no animal is ever going to be tempted to pee in the corner here. Sigh...

At some point today, we will actually get to a point where we can paint this room, a very quick process with my new sprayer... sigh..

MOOD.. broken..

Segway to a Segway..

Last summer I wanted to try to get more Segway based tours started up in and around some of Alaskas less toured areas, like Euklutna lake. This would require the new Segway X2 (Extended Terrain) as well as a hearty agreement with the state to allow me to place recharge stations half way down the lake trail. No big deal right? I know how to use solar and wind power effectively, I know how to make it uber efficient and already did a lot of calculations on the charge rate, etc. I planned on drawing up an outhouse sized (maybe thats a bad way to mention the size) recharge booth, having some quick power tools available for the swap out of the battery packs, then hit the road to Euklutna glacier. There are a billion types of flowers, birds and activities surrounding Euklutna, however there doesn't seem to be a lot of direct tourism. This lake seems to be more of a word of mouth vacation spot.

I talked with a few peeps on getting the funding together, and found a local Segway sales rep who I could never find the time to meet up with. Or if I could, potential investors and business partners could not. I hope that some day this dream of a tootling around the Alaska mountains on personal transportation devices will happen for me, and for Skyefoil who I think would love spending all her time outdoors, away from computers, rolling in the daisies all day long and taking pictures of cute little clouds.

I have the technology, wireless displays on the instrument panel of the Segways showing streamed video from binocular cameras in the hands of the tour guide, trail maps on the display using GIS to coordinate our path with scenic and eventful views. laser rangefinders to help tourists understand the geospatial reference of what we are looking at, helping to visualize the magnitude of the mountain view and the span of the glacier face. Wouldn't this be a wonderful job? Technology + Nature + Ecofriendly Transportation.

Segway is also working on their Centaur product. This is a direct fit for tourists and locals who want to get out into the wilderness using a vehicle, but quietly and eco-friendly. Once this product is released I feel it will be a huge hit for tour agencies all over America. I expect a lot of these devices to hit Japan immediately forming of course some sort of odd sub-culture street punk gang wearing pills jackets and dressing up their hair like James Dean, PS2 Guitar Hero device strung over their shoulders for instant dueling action. You think I'm kidding?

Anybody in Alaska willing to help bring this concept to fruition, contact me!

50th Cache Woot!!

View my first 50 caches in Google Maps - My 50th Find Map. I hope you enjoy seeing this as much as I do, I've been all over Anchorage, Eagle River, and tons of great little towns on the way to Homer Alaska.

My 50th find is waypoint GC13CYE - Chief Alex 3 named after the park it is placed in, it was my first rock cache that I officially found. The placing was obvious and I am thankful it was nowhere near the sap dripping bark of the evergreens surrounding it.

On another note, my previous post about the cache 'Big Boy' just happens to be in the area Adam is visiting right now, everybody pester him to go take a picture and log one of the biggest caches in the US.

You have got to be kidding me...

IRC channel #geocache on SlashNet is a great place to be if you want fun cache information, or to boast. I recently found some tall ammo cans (image to the right) at "Second Chance", a store specializing in military surplus in Anchorage Alaska, that I plan on sinking into water after filling most of the bottom with concrete or sand, then pour clean water in over a motion activated light. The holy grail of caches right? Its an ammo can, its apparently bottomless, it shines holy light out from the eternal infinity. It sounded like a fun idea and a few cachers agreed they would check it out if in the area. One cacher had a bookmark he shared with the channel of another, similar, cache.


Big Boy appears to be a gigantic cache container made out of wood with a very decent resemblance to a real ammo container. Color me impressed. The owner of this cache parked it on his own property and most likely gets a huge giggle when preload cachers (like myself, cachers who preload cache data into GPS recievers and just head out for the day in the dark about the cache size, color, or other such obvious attributes) approach the area with a GPS in hand, heads bowed to the screen, and then a huge smack to the forehead when they finally look up. I'm also guessing he keeps a constant supply of cookies around for the guests his house must get due to this insanely large and unique cache. Bravo on this one.

Hardwire haz sum shoes!

Yay for me, my ratty old (6 month old) salomon trail runners have been replaced by a new almost identical pair which fixes some of the old shoes design issues. I also went down one full shoe size and they are much more comfortable, I may have been purchasing shoes too large for a few years.

So congratulate me when you get a chance on the purchase of a fine new pair of size 12US Salomon XA Comp 3 Trail-Running Shoes. These comfy little shoes come with the same pull-tight lacing as my last Salomon's, which is by far the best method of lacing shoes known to mankind. With one pull I can squeeze all the blood out of my foot and back up my leg - its awesome. They changed the tie-down points for the lacing so that it doesn't bend the side of the shoe in and into my toe, and the tounge seems poofier. I like a poofy tounge, not to big on poofy sides or bottoms however.

The shoes I just replaced that are very similar to these new shoes have some pretty major holes in them in the mesh area around the toes, I'm hoping that won't be a problem for me with these new shoes.

Yay shoes!

Ouch.. Why.. ?

Last night was fun, Skyefoil and I did some us stuff and headed out for ice cream. It should have stayed that innocent, but we rarely let a good thing last for too long. We needed to take the dog for a walk and I knew the perfect place! I had recently tried to find a geocache in the parking lot of a trail head called South Fork in Eagle River, AK. I only had a minimal amount of information about this cache, ended up not finding it, and later found out that it was a puzzle/multi cache listed improperly. Boo..

I knew there were to very real caches in that area however, just up the trail a bit and it seemed like a good place to take the dog off leash and let him find some fuzzies to chase and get some exercise with his people. So I drove us to the trail head and we embarked on a quick walk that ended up taking several hours. The initial cache out of two was 0.7 miles away as the bird flies, straight without taking elevation into effect, so the real linear distance is 4100 feet instead of 3800 once you add elevation in. The next cache along the route was an extra 450 feet away, no big deal, right? It was slow going, we cursed a lot, the ground gave way a lot and made it hard to hike up leisurely, thankfully I had just loaded topographic information into my GPS and knew when the ground would level out, which personally kept me going. We met up with a group of 16 or so teenagers who found a quick route down, snow veins in the hillside had not melted away yet so the teens rolled down head over heel until they were nearly at the bottom of the trail, mad props for being efficient.

0.7 miles turned into 0.5 miles very slowly, we rejoiced when 0.2 miles were left and the ground levelled out dramatically, and we eventually found ourselves between two small peaks (link to topographic map). The hike from this point on was simple and straightforward. We reached a high enough elevation to get some sunshine for a little while, until the sun moved behind one of the peaks, and the dog ran all over the place chasing ground squirrels in the area. We found a lot of new and very intense ground dwelling animal holes. The wind almost blew Skyefoil away and was getting pretty chilly to me, wearing just a button up shirt instead of a coat, so we had to bunker down every so often and let the wind die down a bit. This simple walk was turning into enough mini-adventures to keep me pretty damned happy. I love the elements!

We found the caches (Momma Bear, Cache In The Notch) took some photos and headed home, totally exhausted. The dog curled up in his chair and snored away while we ate our simple dinner. Today I am totally wiped out, and am very thankful for caffeine.

To all you locals, Lets go Geocaching!

My new techie blog!

Please add my new techie blog to your feed readers: TechBits @ Bogomip

I know, its lame right now. But I will unlame it soon as I go through life and document silly procedures for gettin' things done the hardwire way. If you have anything to contribute or want me to document anything I have done in the past please post a comment somewhere on the site or send me an email techbits at bogomip.com.

What to do with myself..

OK, I admit I am bored with my current position in life, which is as follows: not challenged, very broke, unmotivated, hard time defining free time from relaxation time.

I recently registered a few websites that I want to start working on, one of which being Alaska Dog Parks which I will soon be adding information on. I plan on including trail maps and trail descriptions, photo gallery, events, lighting conditions, not-so-very-known nearby construction permits, nearby hidden objects, and a blawg of course. I'm looking for some good artwork for the header, done in one of the many variants of native art found in Alaska. I will try coming up with something myself based around dogs found in alaska native artwork.

Plotting out my online presence is going to be a huge pain, I used to do everything myself - now there are free tools like flickr, blogger, google domain hosting, and other services that are easy to take advantage of, however hard to bring together into a fluid design. I'm slowly working on getting this figured out for my own design ideas.

Photos, music, etc.. I am having such a hard time keeping databases of personal photos organized, the same with music. I am a bit err.. strict.. which is stopping me in my tracks. I almost want to go back, to say Canada, and take new pictures and get updated geographic information for when the picture was taken. I know, you have to look forward when working with new data and document storage methods.

So thats me in a nutshell today, all perked up on caffeine, so much to do, so little of a weekend. Can I just work hourly from home for $70/hour again? I would love to do that so I can get the personal side of my life under reigns again. Atleast get it calmed down so I can relax, you shouldn't have to worry about your free time.

"When in doubt, poke it with a stick" and other fun stuff

This is one of many small useful idioms (is this an idiom?) that relate to Geocaching and other hide-n-seek style games and scenarios. Skyefoil started the poke-a-stick-into-random-hole-until-you-find-treasure technique for me and it has helped numerous times while cache hunting. Adam and I also tried the magnet-on-a-string technique against a notoriously difficult cache. We found nothing but iron rich rocks doing that.

I miss 'Force Field' a magnet and other fun science store in Fort Collins, CO. I don't know if they are still around, however if they are I would love to go back and purchase massive quantities of the large magnets they carried. I purchased and destroyed many of them a couple years ago before I moved to Alaska, don't ask how, and I am wishing I had kept them around. The uber large ceramic composite aluminium backed plate magnets were the best, and would have found quite a few caches very quickly for me. Which brings me to the following....

Magnetic Fingertips, how cool would that be? Nerves growing around a surgically embedded magnet.. very cool stuff. I read about this a long time ago on Slashnet and it often comes to mind when I need to find my keys, check out Slashdot - Implants for Sensing Magnetic Fields. I could start an electrical consulting firm with that kind of sense, some sort of hokey behind the walls Feng Shui electrical discovery and adjustment. Can you say Millionaire?

Other things I need to do: Gas balloon aerial photography and recreational vehicles; lots and lots of programming; buy a Clue x 4 to put the smack down with; and a hundred or so other things...

Hire me!

After a long, slow, rewriting process I finally have something of a resume online. As my memory coughs up more information on past jobs I will publish newer revisions. Heres a link to my resume in all its glory. I will be adding more and more to the skills section I hope.. I would love some feedback :)

It is loosely modeled after my buddy Toykeeper's resume, he knows how to put just about everything possible into a resume to keep google and other search engines interested in him :)


That said, hire me for something fun.

The kick butt weekend that kicked my butt

Well, Skyefoil and I went down to Homer Alaska this weekend to check out the sights during Memorial Day. We were fortunate that Sunday was very sunny indeed and totally showed off how pretty the view is.

We figured we would see more than a typical tourist in Homer if we did some geocaching, which took us all over the place and we found some fun hides, and we met other geocachers as well. A total of 14 caches found, 2 not found. One of the 2 we couldn't find appeared to be in around 15 or so feet of water, 45 feet from shore :(

I will post pictures and links to good food and such in "The kick butt weekend that kicked my butt, part II"

Well, Hi there little cache!!

Today at lunch I found an archived or abandoned cache, often referred to as geotrash. The log hasn't been signed inside the cache since 2006. With some help I navigated to an area on geocaching.com that allows me to see archived caches and eventually found this caches waypoint number. Thankfully it wasn't listed on a private site somewhere, that would suck.

The cache link: GCGNKK "Snag This"

The only reason I stumbled into this cache is because I was trying to find an area to hide my own cache, which I will be calling "Sticky Humpy" if I can complete it. The area around the cache is nice and public, and the plan is simple - create a replica of some railing artwork that is a cache. Shouldn't be that hard and I have been dying to do something similar to this for a while now. I love hiding things in plain sight.

Puppy Profile - Sam

Sam the red dog, Sam a lam, Sammy wammy ding dong, Sam get over here now. These are but a few names for Skyefoil's wonderful dog, Sam. He is a red mutt found and rescued from an Oklahoma highway. I had the pleasure of meeting Sam after a night of pool and drinking back home in Colorado, typically he doesn't like men. I followed Skyefoil home that night because I thought I was pretty smooth, then she released the dogs on me. I fell and apparently Sam likes men he can push over and sit on, ever since then we have been pretty good friends.

Sams our go everywhere dog, any time we can shove him somewhere in the truck for an adventure he comes with and enjoys the breeze of an open car window and the sniffing the trunks of trees all over Alaska. Recently he has been getting more walks, in stranger places, thanks to my new geeky hobby of geocaching.

He chases off the neighbor cats, yet respects the house cats as well. He is a very odd dog who sometimes gets so bored he wants to play with the cats, to which they reply "DENIED, HISS!". You wouldn't know how hyper he is when you are at the house, also designated the pet lounge area. He doesn't like to play in the lounge, however if you take him on a walk and let him free of the leash he will start bouncing all over the place and going kookoo bananas.

We love Sam the dog!

Spamusement - Favorite new LOL feed

Adam linked me to Spamusement! which I immediately added to my RSS reader. I decided to list my top picks just so you know how twisted I am.

• It`s time to Refill armadillo
• Your Dog Will Love It!
• HELLO ME NOT DEAD
• Shake The Extra Fat, You Will Be Surprised
• Amazing, Margaret

Well, thats all folks. I would make a flashy comment about the type of spam I get, but its all from Asia for some reason and I can't make sense of it. However since somebody out there will, here is some random spam subjects I get sent to my gmail account (filtered into spam automagically).

• 過年前本錢回饋客戶，買到賺到 內行人一 眼便能識出
• 共收錄近 1 5 0 0 個全方位實用表格，十餘大類分類，輕鬆套用或自改套用
• Windows VISTA Ultimate 繁體中文光碟DVD旗艦版套餐

Wild, eh?

Today is the greatest day I've ever known.

Can't live for tomorrow, tomorrow's much to long. I'll burn my eyes out before I get out. (Smashing Pumpkins).

Actually, today is not the greatest day and more like the most sucky/mediocre day. I have a long list of bitching to do:

1. Office is too hot
2. Keeping the window open does nothing until noon
3. After noon, keeping the window open chills me to the bone
4. Office is still too hot
5. People think I read minds
6. Borrowed GPS is incredibly inaccurate
7. Headache from heat in office
8. Hot dog man was listening to a terrible song
9. Tech supervisor assumes I have no idea what I am doing
10. Website updates to a website I can't fix make me angry
11. People keep interrupting me to tell me life sucks
12. My blog is all bitchy, and that makes me sad
13. My cats are being mean to the house
14. We have no money
15. I can't keep track of everything I want to do
16. My work office is a mess and requires a lot of personal time to fix
17. My home office is a mess and requires a lot of personal time to fix
18. I keep forgetting to do things at home and at work
19. I needed booze at noon with my hot dog
20. I can't make a good Haiku to save my life today
21. I'm going to get flamed for posting something like this to a blog which is aggregated through other sites
22. Nobody is going to flame me, because only my girlfriend comments on my blog
23. My cats know I watch them remotely and refuse to be bad on camera
24. Putz cat needs to go to the vet which worries us
25. Theres a road to nowhere near my office and I always forget to drive down it
26. My standards are too high even in a world of high standards
27. My standards stop me from doing things, which could be good however sucks still
28. I can't use commas right
29. I can't use semicolons right
30. I have lots of ideas that never get implemented
31. The kids park near our house sucks
32. Train fumes near my office give me even greater headaches, but with the window closed the heat gives me one as well
33. My chair sucks

I'm done.. Can I go home?

X-13D Doritos Taste Like Old Ketchup

After buying a bag of the new X-13D Doritos and doing the taste test, Skyefoil (Girlfriend) and I decided they taste like ketchup, she says spicy ketchup. I'm thinking old ketchup. There was recently a post to Slashfood about the taste test and naming contest which had quite a few comments. Most of the comments lead me to believe my first hunch was right and this potato chip is supposed to taste like a cheeseburger somehow. So I decided to name it "Fatty American" and post to the competition.

IMHO - These chips aren't worth the bag they are shipped in

My Song!

I have a song! The Shane Song written and performed by Joe Lavelle to be specific. Recently I logged into my myspace account to see if anybody loves me, which was a big fat no. However Joe Lavelle's myspace page for this crazy song wanted to be my friend. The songs page instructed all Shane named people who fit the song to submit photos via email so they can make a video. Hahaha I'm totally gonna be in a music video about myself! I rule!

Thanks for everybody who supported me up until this point, but now that I'm a big rock star you can all FOAD for all I care.

Mwa ha ha

Valen's Story

This is a story created by a co-workers son, Valen, from Wasilla Alaska. I believe it to be a great work of imaginative literature.

If my mother asked me, I would tell her I had gotten a hat to put on a tv. When the hat went onto the tv, I said “Buzz” and it shook and danced so much, rats from under the house started to come a dance. When the tv was done the dog came and ate the tv. The dog was as fat as a table after he ate the tv. Then the dog ate all the food. When he was as fat as an elephant, he starting jumping and a magical fairy came. He turned everything back to normal. But the dog was still dancing. The fairy said “Good by” and a cat came with a huge block of peanutbutter. The dog ate all the peanutbutter and then the cat with one gulp. Five dog catchers came and the dog came and ate all five dog catchers in one gulp. He was as fat as a whole and the dog sat there until…. the army came! Fifty-two tanks and One Billion men and two mail men came. The dog ate 500 thousand people in one gulp. Next the fairy came and fifty other fairies came. I sighed and said for the dog to go make friends with Clifford the big red dog. After that I told the army to go home with the fairies. The dog sat there and this one guy who was in charge of the army and said “SHOOT THE BOMB NOW!!!” The fairy and the other fairies made the bomb a chicken and made the whole thing back to normal. This time the fairy magic worked.

Terra Weekendo!!

This weekend was pretty cool for not doing anything too exciting. Most of my time was spent outdoors which was great, I'm really beginning to get into the Summer mode with a lot more momentum than last Summer. Girlfriend is finally feeling better after a month of being sick and this weekend had the gumption to go walk the dog with me on Saturday... which I flipped into an excuse to maintain one of my geocaches... of course. Girlfriend got to view the beaver pond near our house and went with me to my cache and helped go through the contents and reposition the cache into a bit easier location. The dog on the other hand was on a mission to figure out whats making that wonderful smell and ended up finding and standing on one of the beaver huts.

We found some porcelain electrical line insulators all over the place, including a chain of them still stuck together and unbroken just scattered about the wooded area. Part of geocaching is to clean up the world a bit as you run into discarded material, so we slowly dragged the heavy insulators out of the woods and back to the car for disposaling/ebaying/antiques roadshowing. See the gallery here.

I noticed there was a lot of trees flagged for in the surrounding area. Typically new construction projects use EA's (Environmental Analysys) or EIR's (Environmental Impact Reports) to show they studied the surrounding area. Tree flagging is typically a sign that an EA or EIR is being done or has been done on the surrounding area. Trees are flagged for some of the following reasons:

• Boundary of an area to be demolished
• Tree of interest (Archaeological and historic value)
• Waymarks to other areas and trees

Since these markings are purely commercial in nature and typically on public land, feel free to take and dispose of these flags as you run into them. Typically it will slow down environmental reports needed to demolish the area which may be a cause for concern when the developer attempts to obtain a permit to do construction in the area.

Sunday Girlfriend and I took her little sister from Big Brothers Big Sisters to go on what we called a treasure hunt. She helped us find two caches, one girlfriend found by poking at with a stick and the other little sister found all by herself. We signed the logs with her name and she was happy she got to keep some loose change somebody put in on of the caches.

The Odd Lunch

Odd things I have witnessed today:

• A chunky cat in a high chair riding passenger in a sports car waiting in line for the Taco Bell drive through
• A Stellar Jay protecting a geocache
• Bum beddings scattered around a forested area
• A cop doing something useful

Pretty things I have witnessed today:

• Bums smooching on a bridge
• Three of the above mentioned Jays singing away as I travelled on
  

Disgusting things I found today:

• Used Condoms
• Discarded shorts near the above
• Some sort of funny sticky poo like substance on my hand

Things I did:

• Discovered two more caches
• Discovered two more travel bugs
• Walked almost a mile during a lunch break
  

Haiku -The Forbidden Utensil

Do you have five teeth?
Jagged and smooth at the same time.
I yearn to fondle.

Inspired by:
GSI Piranha Foon
Snow Peak Titanium Spork

I'm Blawgin Ur Fewd

It has recently come to my attention that I need to spread the word on some annoyingly pointless food laws our great country is currently working on.

For instance the USDA wants to broaden the horizons of what food can still be concidered "raw" even though it is pasteurized which will allow many non-organic products to be eligible for organic certification. Pasteurized food is often chemically altered to help with preservation and sterilization of known and unknown threats that may be in our food. Most of these the known threats come from lack of attention and poor engineering of large scale food processing and the quality assurance is all about what chemicals you used to keep people from suing you this week. A small farm with enough employees to pay attention to the product can get away with purely organic products that don't require pasteurization or harmful chemical cleaning.

This as well as cutbacks on sustainable agriculture support and allowing flavoring and cosmetic additives into organic foods. Organic certification for these products is pending, so why a new law allowing use in organic certified foods? Can't they be patient and wait for certification, is it an attempt to loosen the methods of certifying organic food? Why would anybody want to do this other than big money? And are these new additives good for us, will they give us super monkey strength? Is it just more fodder for lawsuits and investigations and complications against what should be a very simple matter? I can only see taxpayers money (I'm one now so I can say this) just going down the drain as the feds defend themselves against organic companies unjustly marketed against as one "organic" company sells food a little redder and more attractive to the consumer by means of non-organic additives. Quite unfair to organic food companies who wish to maintain a profit as well as wholesome food.

Read and sign the following to petition these crap initiatives:

• ALERT: USDA SAYS FOODS LABELED AS 'RAW' CAN BE PASTUERIZED
• ALERT: STOP CONGRESS FROM CUTTING SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE PROGRAMS
• ALERT: USDA TO ALLOW MORE CONVENTIONAL INGREDIENTS IN ORGANICS

Honey, I Sunk The Beaver

What? Sorry I suck at titles. One of my geocaches (Sneaky Beaver) is still firmly in place, however the beavers keep adding more to their dam and slowly raised the water level of the pond I placed it near. Interesting, my phone just beeped to alert me somebody logged finding Sneaky Beaver, I was just about to say I would be totally impressed if anybody found this cache before I adjust its location. Click for the log I just recieved.

How strange.

Treasure Hunters Unite!

Today I ran into another newbie Geocacher. I was below a bridge and thought I heard muggles walking over me so I went ninja and stealthed myself. The footsteps stopped directly above my head and I felt as though my stealthy hideout had been comprimised. I looked up at the bridge, they looked down at the water, we said hi. I was happy to find out she was another geocacher off playing with her new GPS and also a resident of Eagle River, AK. I have run into only one other cacher before (earlier post) who also lived in Eagle River. I'm not sure if she is aware but from what I hear running into fellow Geocachers is rare however inevitable if the loot is worth it.

Welcome to the club akglacierdog some day you will run into my dog Sam and I again.

As pwned is to defeat, fwned is to geocaching

I am gonna give this a go and coin a new term, fwned. Whenever somebody finds some of my hidden caches or somebody notices my cache has been discovered yet again its nice to get IM'ed with 'whardier: fwned!!!!' instead of 'I just looked at your stats page and it appears anything with opposable thumbs should be able to find your terribly hidden caches'.

Pronunciation: foo-nnn-de

Examples:

• My buddy Adam gets fwned a lot. :P
• Those cheeky geocachers just fwned my 6 hour old cache!

Have fun with this word, as I know I will.

Resume Resume Editing!!

So I am pimping my resume, a little title inflation here, a sprinkle of self praise there. Actually I am trying to trim it down quite a bit because it confuses most people who pick it up. Most people don't know what a VoIP IAX2 trunk is. I still can't quite come up with a unified writing method for all descriptions of previous jobs. I want to be informative but not over detailed. Open to any pointers.

Oh yeh! The best part is I am being payed to update my resume to comply with federal guidelines on a project I am on. Yay!!

The Pirate and his Sneaky Beaver

Hid more caches today, woot dee doot! (best if said as if singing). Adam came with to find a good place to hide an ammo box and some micro caches. We came upon a beaver lake near the highway and a popular exit for sledders and apparently fishermen. I had only been to this area during winter and saw all the sledders having fun down a man-made hill for the highway exit (its not as bad as you think). Today we met a young whipper snapper fishing in what appeared to be a beaver made pond thats been there for who knows how long. He approached us and immediately spotted us as Geocachers, he took a class in high school on Geocaching, then asked if we had anything to take a hook out deeply embedded in one of his finger. Later I agreed with Adam that the normal state of mind for that sort of thing is to run around screaming and get to a hospital as soon as you can.

The beaver pond was a great place to hide one of my new purchases, a fully waterproofed ammunition container, which we filled up with rocks and left under water near the shore of the beaverpond in a sneaky little location. My only fear is one day having to maintain this cache by throwing a magnet on a string out into the water to retrieve it. This cache was called "Sneaky Beaver" which was the iterated result of a long list of crass beaver jokes.

A little hike later and we were in an area ideal for hiding a micro cache, the location is surrounded by Cow Parsnip (a.k.a. Pushki) which should make it a little more aggravating for cache hunters to find. I didn't know much about Cow Parsnip until I checked it out on Wikipedia and saw what other names it goes under, I remember now some Alaska Native folk talking about some foods they eat including Pushki stems. This cache was named "Walk the Plank" due to the tree positioning and balancing act required to reach the cache.

My first TravelBug and Micro Multi Cache

Yay, I recieved my TravelBugs in the mail and moved one of girlfriends mini statues "Bad Mojo" into a local cache. Yay! Also I plotted out and placed a devious Micro Multi Cache named "Don't Jump" which is pending review as of this post. Its super sneaky, and I can't say much. However I got to use my fishing line I somehow didn't use last fishing season.

I searched all night for a bridge to place a geocache. Bridges are like magnets for geocaches since they typically have parking areas near them and lots of places to hide magnetic geocaches. I need to find a more interesting place to hide geocaches than the finds I have had so far which include holes in trees, under sticks, shoved behind a rock somewhere. Please help me think of fun things to do.

I have a few neat ideas so far:

• Tied to a balloon as an Event Cache
• Tied to a strong line and tied to a rock placed on the shore of a river with the micro cache floating down steam
• On a clotheline pulley spanning some remote gap

Terror Spam

A few days ago I mentioned, sternly, that when computing issues arise at work I, the administrator, should be the first to know. Not to say I am without my wonder widgetry that feed me information. Last night after work I recieve a call from a coworker who is a little worried that terrorist are trying to take over his computer. Since he is used to a certain web site and had never received terrorist pop-ups before he thought to call me. All I could tell him was the web site he was accessing either has a poor advertisement service, or was hacked. Either way I kept feeling like he wanted me to fix it. Ugh..

Non-informative Information

I was recently asked to help with a Microsoft Excel document and help fix a few graphs. I was presented two graphs, one somebody else in the company did recently that wasn't up to snuff and one the client is used to seeing and was the preferred styling.

First off, I want to make a few things clear before I go on

1. If the end result is supposed to look broken, I'm not going to be that helpful
2. Document education for employees that primarily produces documents should be mandatory. Taking their word on it isn't enough if you value the quality of the documents. Keep up with the latest styles and offer challenges to your employees so they stay sharp on the job.

The preferred chart was imported via black magic and was immutable. It was also useless to anybody that wants any real information. For instance the values for each point on the line graph were overlapping each other in the same face and color, completely obfuscating the information. There were dark text colors over dark and dense grid lines and the font size was too small, obviously a meager attempt to correct the overlapping text. I proposed a different styling and again ran into an old time favorite bottleneck - people fear change. The task was to make an identical looking graph with updated data so I spent some time attempting to explain how this chart offers no real usable information. Things desolved quickly once I found out the person overseeing this graphs creation didn't even know what title to give each set of values. A little meeting was held to discuss what exactly the purpose of the graph is and I finally got the information I needed and titled the value sets accordingly. However the overall style preference was still set to overlap the text no matter what I say. I did my best to clear it up, however it looks like crap and was very hard to understand. Eventually the graph was formed with a little compromise and now the crappy graph is polished a bit more and kind of shiney.

I feel bad for thinking this was just a me thing, and I was being overbearing and getting upset unjustly. Dangit people! You should be careful with information and how you present and distribute it. For instance, how many business suits are going to print this graph out and be totally confused, then chuck it in a non-recycling trash bin to be discarded and never reclaimed. How many recalls of this document will be done because of other such mistakes? What client wants to constantly distribute the latest *known good* copy of a document after reporting error after error to the writer?

Grr.. IMHO if its illegable then its crap..

Peace, Love, and for f*cks sake a little Understanding

The secret to my non-success.

Don't work with feds or fed contractors. You should probably stay away from state contractors while you are at it. As a reminder, avoid any work environment where people don't actually understand the words you say then nod their noggins reguardless and hold you responsible for the outcome. I should start quizzing people after I brief them.

Yours truly,
Angry Whardier

1 out of 3 ain't bad for a muggle

I set off with buddy Adam to find some geocaches. one of which already tormented me and I was determined to figure it out. We started on one that I thought would be easy and as it turns out I forgot to look at the online journal for Spud Cache (GCJMAR) which later showed I wasn't alone in my frustration. While sitting back in the car trying to get online to check for hints by way of my phone and Adams laptop we spotted some person poking his nose around the area we were investigating. Adam went to go great the person who just assumed we were 'muggles' as he put it. I had no idea that was the term for non-geocaching persons. :) After a half hour of looking for a potato shaped *something* we gave up and went on to the next, which we didn't find.

Adam convinced me to take a crack at the Meadow Creek Cache (GCH6W2) and we ended up finding the magnetic mini capsule holding the finders journal. Wahooo!!

I also need a better GPS.. or the ability to be online all the time. If I were online and had a tiny linux powered system I would be able to immediately correct my position via DGPS Over the Internet (DGPSIP).

I made Adam find some caches I had found earlier to test his geo abilities. He did just dandy and was impressed at the tiny little containers some of these caches have. He now has a new item for his birthday wish list - a GPS.