It's a Beautiful Day! (tm)

It really is a pretty day. In fact its been a pretty weekend all together.

Yesterday Skyefoil and I went to Beach Lake to walk the dogs. We found the Beach Lake geocache which was 30 or so percent around the lake than where we parked, we walked over the lake for most of it. Sam was of course a good doggie the entire time. Shila, sigh, read all about that here.

The clouds of Saturday were erased from the sky to let the sun shine through on my Sunday. I really should be working today. I have several jobs :(. Instead I decided to get out of the house and take shila on a geocache hunt. We took off, I bought some new sunglasses cause somewhere in Anchorage I lost mine, then I totally missed the turnoff to go to the cache trailhead. I knew I had to go down to the Eagle River VFW and turn around, I pulled into their parking lot and realized suddenly that there were dozens of people with huge cameras pointed up at some trees. I pulled off to the side before I interrupted anything and took a look. There was a similar amount of eagles up in some trees. I immediately thought about the irony of a bunch of eagles having an air show above the VFW post. I also thought maybe they had been baited to be there by old geezers with nothing better to do. The eagles swooped all over the place and chased a few ravens around, huge cameras with huge lenses were snapping away. Shila could't care less concidering how much she hates ravens. Eagles must be out of her scope of things to pay attention to, maybe the rewards are outweighed by the risks :)

We jetted off to the geocache site which also turned out to be an awesome dog walking trail very close to my house. One day I will detail it on http://www.alaskadogparks.com/ in the near future. I own that domain and plan on doing something with it sooooon.. very sooooon.. I hope everybody will be happy with the results.

The cache was Texas Goodies and was located near a trail following Eagle River (the actual river, not the whole town). Shila and I got to sit on a hot rock on the edge of the river and enjoy the pretty scenery with me, she got a yummy chummie for being such an obedient little girl and sitting there with me when I needed somebody to share the moment with. I can't wait to show Skyefoil before it all thaws.

Thats a wrap!

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.

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 :)

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

"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?

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!

"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...

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"

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?

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.

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

Well Herro There!

Time to pop the cherry on this blog. Hi, I'm whardier.. or hardwire.. or Shane.. depending on how you know me. I only have one social security number for all three identities, let me know if you are interested in it, selling yours, or possibly willing to trade. I am joking of course..

Since I am 10G/Mo restricted on my DSL I can no longer easily host my shizzy on a home server, and since I had a gmail account I instantly obtained a blogger account I can abuse. Yay for me!

I in Alaska now, originally from northern Colorado. My little house in a little commuter town stands tall in its neighborhood allowing me to actively spy.. err be a good protective neighbor.. for many of the houses in the surrounding area. I have a girlfriend who goes by Skyefoil, a dog who is simply named sam, and our 5 cats (in no particular order) - Mia, Emma, Mushroom, Merle, and Putz.

Feel free to come up and visit. We have a spare bedroom that we loan out to strangers occasionally.