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.