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Here are some photos from our recent geocaching adventure. They didn't fit in with any of the other postings, but I liked them too much not to share.
The first is shortly after the Blue Bonneville site, and hints at a slightly easier approach to that cache.
I don't remember exactly where the 2nd one is from, and the 3rd was a simple matter of timing.
Click the images to see a larger version.
As previously reported, we went out geocaching last weekend in the area north east of Kanopolis Lake. The images shown below are from the last 3 caches we visited: Aunt Leland, Humbarger Bend, and Rose Hill. Though none of the roads around these caches were as extreme as those we drove on earlier in the day, they were still a lot of fun!
Images hosted at flickr; click any image to see larger versions, and occasionally, related images.
Last Saturday, while we were out geocaching, Sheryl took a set of great photos. Featuring a beautiful, peach colored Scissortailed Flycatcher, the set culminates with a stunning shot of the bird in flight.
Click on the image above to see more images of the Scissortailed Flycatcher, hosted on Flickr.
(Thanks to my daughter Lisa for this one.)
Your combined household income is $140,000 and you can't afford shoes for the kids.
You think anything slower than DSL is barbaric, but can't get it in your neighborhood.
You know what DSL stands for.
You and your spouse almost come to blows deciding to hit Peet's or Starbucks.
You think that American food includes sushi, naan, pho, pesto and pad thai.
You met your neighbors once.
When asked about your commute you answer in time, not distance.
Even though you work 80 hours per week on a computer, for relaxation you read your email and peruse eBay.
You have worked at the same job for a year and people call you an 'old-timer'.
The T-shirts you value most were for products that never made it to market.
You can name four different programming languages and you are not a programmer.
You remember the names of the three closest cheap sushi joints, the location of all the Fry's in the area and which companies your friends work for that are going public in the next year, but don't know the name of the mayor.
Standing in line at Starbucks you wonder why the employees don't call a head hunter.
You work 6 miles from your home and spend two hours a day commuting and $40 a week on gas
Winter is when your lawn grows too fast and summer is when it dies
The median price of a house is $500,000...for 1200 sq. ft. with no yard because it's a town house.
You live on some of the richest farm land in the world but most of what you eat comes from South America on a boat.
Your best friend lives across town but you hardly ever see each other because after your commute you're too pooped to spend another hour driving to their home.
You have a master's degree in engineering but half the people in your department either didn't go to college or have history degrees, except if you have a master's from Stanford, in which case everyone in your department has a master's degree from Stanford.
You cringe when you see people in suits at your office, wondering if someone in management will make you stop wearing bunny slippers.
You plan your vacation so that you don't have to drive back from the airport in commute hours.
You don't go to sporting events unless you are given tickets by your employer.
You could sell your home and live like a king in 99% of the rest of the world, but don't because it would be difficult to move back.
You have at least three computers at home.
You own at least one domain on the Internet, probably several.
You think it's normal to see chip-design software or relational databases advertised on freeway billboards.
You know that California isn't just one big beach.
You know that not everyone in California surfs.
You know there's lots of skiing in California.
You know your rotating outage block number at home and at work, and listen for them whenever there are rolling blackouts.
If someone refers to "SunnytogaDeAnzavale Road", you laugh and know what they're talking about.
You take your out-of-town friends to see the techie gadgets at Fry's.
But you don't let them buy anything.
You know how to recognize re-sealed returned electronics at Fry's.
You don't ask the staff any questions at Fry's. You know they hire idiots and pass the savings on to you.
You watch dot-com boomers go back to the states they came from, and the traffic gets better by the month. But you are home so you're not moving.
You own a Sport Utility Vehicle and have never taken it off-road. You wouldn't know what to do if you tried. Same with all your friends.
You don't know how to drive in snow. You're a road hazard when you visit the mountains.
You think the horn and middle finger are essential driving tools.
You think bicycles don't belong on the road.
You think any car ahead of you doesn't belong on the road.
Your out-of-state friends are impressed at how much money you make... until you tell them how much you pay for housing.
You know that a "fixer-upper" home could cost a half-million dollars.
You do a "California stop" at stop signs. And you think it's only Californians who call them that.
You aren't bothered much by earthquakes because you're ready for them.
But the thought of tornadoes and hurricanes terrifies you.
You clearly remember where you were when the Loma Prieta quake hit.
You know several funny stories about swimming pools in the quake.
You can't recognize a thunderstorm without seeing lightning first.
You cringe when a Southern Californian refers to highways like "the 101". It's just "101". No "the".
You call low clouds "fog" even if they're hundreds of feet off the ground.
At least once you have gone to San Francisco for the day wearing shorts and a t-shirt because it was a warm clear day in San Jose. And you froze your little *@#!% off in the fog, drizzle and wind.
You say you're from Silicon Valley because no one knows where San Jose is.
Continuing the saga of our geocaching weekend, we next turn our attention to a cache known as the Blue Bonneville. It's located northeast of Kanopolis on some truly wild roads.
The roads to get to this cache were amazing. The beauty of this cache was certainly the drive and the exploring required to find the right spot. We love driving on the back roads of Kansas, but probably would have passed on a couple of these; yeah! for geocaching for giving us the confidence to go where *few* people have gone before.
The first picture shows the desolation of the area, and the 2nd is of a bright yellow flower. The flowers grew on a chest-high shrub, and they each had a beautiful bright red center.
We had a fine weekend, first working a bit on the yard and garden and then going out geocaching on both Saturday and Sunday afternoons. I like gardening, but it's probably more interesting to share our geocaching experiences; plus, we have photos!
We had a very successful outing, finding 5 of 5 caches as we meandered in a kind of figure-8 loop north and north-east of Kanopolis Lake! I'd like to post a bit about each of the sites, but rather than wait till I have time to write up a full report, I'll start off by mentioning the first site we found.
Known as Horsethief's Head, (due to it being near the head of Horsethief Canyon at Kanopolis), our first stop was a non-descript sandstone rock outcropping that we had never noticed despite passing by the location many times over the years. A short hike revealed a place of quiet beauty, and a unique perspective on the very upper end of Horse Thief Canyon.
As is becoming the drill around here, there's a couple of small pictures posted in the entry, and the images are linked back to more geocaching pictures at Flickr. Flickr also allows viewing of the images at a size that best suits your needs.
(This is posted in the Lindsborg section as it relates to our lives in Lindsborg. Though Little Sweden USA is focused on Lindsborg, I'll probably post most personal experiences here.)
I was looking through the pictures of our recent trip, trying to select the best ones for posting and came across a beautiful sunset picture overlooking the cloud-covered Pacific Ocean near the San Mateo coast.
Though I was pretty much done with images from the northern leg of the trip, the soft golden hues, and interesting patterns of light and shadow caused me to post one more image before moving south, down to San Diego.
You may click on the image to see a larger version at flickr.
In addition, it gives me a place to post another photo that didn't fit in with any of the larger sets I normally post. Below is a picture of a flock of egrets, close to highway 101 somewhere near San Luis Obispo. They bright white feathers contrast nicely with the rich green hills seen in the background.
Note that per a previous posting, these images are hosted on flickr. In addition, I'm trying something new with the 2nd image. It doesn't just link to the flickr page for the image; it links to a page showing a set of images that include a few more photos of the egrets. The set may then be viewed as a slide show, or any particular image may be viewed at a larger size.
In order to have a place dedicated to entries about Lindsborg, I've setup Little Sweden USA.
The new site will allow me to post as much as I want about Lindsborg, without turning this site into all Lindsborg, all the time.
More details about the site and the type of postings I plan to make are available on the new site, but in general there will be postings about events in town, photos of Lindsborg and the surrounding area, and quotes from other sites that talk about our fair town, and so on.
I just got this urgent message from a friend, and couldn't resist passing it along.
My neighbor has a puppy he's giving away (FREE!).
It's a Dachshund, it's house broken, and it's great with kids.
He's giving it away because his wife says the dog 'stares' at her, and that gives her the 'Heebie Jeebies'.
If you're interested, or know someone who is, let me know.
Here's a picture of the dog.
Seriously, I remember seeing this as part of a large set of photoshop animal creations a year or so back. I thought I had blogged about it, but I didn't, nor could I find the series online anywhere. If you know what I'm talking about, leave a link in the comment section; thanks!
As recent postings indicate, I am quite enamored with Flickr. I'm trying something new on this site, and yes, it does involve Flickr.
To date, all the images associated with this blog have been stored on my own web site. To share an image involved resizing the image and uploading it (and optionally cropping, sharpening, and so on).
Now, I'm simply uploading my images to Flickr, which I've wanted to do for a couple of months, and linking to them at the Flickr site. When an image is uploaded to Flickr, it is automatically resized and made available in multiple sizes. They also encourage linking to images on their site, so using their bandwidth isn't a problem.
Besides the simplicity of processing photos when using Flickr, there are some other benefits. As mentioned, the images are available in multiple sizes, so folks can choose to view an image at a size that works for them.
Also, anyone may tag and comment on images, which is part of why I wanted to start using Flickr. I get around one hundred visitors a day to this site, and I wanted to be able to share my photos with a potentially much larger audience. By tagging photos and placing some of them in pools, such as the California Desert pool, there's a much greater chance for my images to be seen on Flickr than on this site.
All is not perfect, of course. Flickr doesn't offer the size that I used to use for posting here. As I was already stretching the limits for size here, I didn't go with the next higher size offered by Flickr; rather I went for the next smallest size. I'm making each image a link to it's Flickr page, which makes it's easy for folks to view at a different size, so I think this trade-off is worth it.
Also, if flickr is ever down or worse, the service goes away, then I'll have lots of broken images on my site. Not too big a risk, as I have all the original images.
Finally, a call to all my friends and family who are reading this: please go signup for a Flickr account. With family, friends, and private groups supported by Flickr, it's extremely easy to share your images, and, you can keep family photos within the family!
The former owners of our house were avid gardeners and as a result we've been blessed with a wide variety of colors this spring as various trees, shrubs and flowers bloom. There are a fair number of tulips planted around the back deck and I can't resist sharing them; the colors are so brilliant!
Note: you can click on any of the images above to see more info about the photo and also to view it in different sizes.
I removed the moblog link from the right side of the front page as I didn't really take many pictures using my cameraphone and as a result that part of the site was getting a bit stale. In it's place I've installed the Flickr Zeitgeist, which is a randomly changing display of images being shared on Flickr.
In other site news, commenting is enabled once again. I uninstalled and reinstalled MT-Blacklist, and in the 10 days since, over 3500 comment spams have been blocked.
Last week, Google announced the addition of satellite image data to their online map service. This is the first free access to the satellite image data Google acquired when they bought Keyhole Corp in late 2004.
In the spirit of remixing highlighted at this year's eTech conference, within days a new type of map started showing up on Flickr. These memory maps, as they are known, are based on a combination of google satellite maps and Flickr's ability to annotate images. They are created by first making making screen captures of an area of interest from a google satellite image, and then importing the image into Flicker and making notes about various locations visible in the image.
Many of the memory maps are of somewhat small areas, such as a college campus, etc. Given the lower resolution available for our part of the country, this approach doesn't work well for me (else I would have marked up a detailed photo of Lindsborg, similar to this one). So I tried something different, on a larger scale, and made a capture showing a satellite view from Kanopolis to Lindsborg to Salina, and annotated that.
Below is a a screenshot of how the image looks on Flickr. Click on the image to see the active image at Flickr, where you can move your mouse over the different boxes to see the annotations. In addition, there are links to the over 200 other memory maps that have been created to date.
Here's a direct link to the google map I used; it's fun to explore by zooming in and out, and if you haven't used google maps yet you'll be amazed by how seamlessly you can navigate simply by clicking and dragging on the map.
Here are a few pictures from our backyard from about a week ago. Spring in the midwest is very nice; it comes on slowly, over a period of weeks. Every few days there is something new to see, a different tree or flower in bloom, leaves where just yesterday there had been buds, and so on. It's really quite beautiful and filled with such promise!
I'm reminded that the old saying, April showers bring May flowers, isn't just something people say, but in fact describes what will happen over the next couple of months.
Here's some eye candy I came across at the recent Etech conference. (Visit my eTech archive for more about the conference.) Using the flickr API, jbum has created some interesting mosaic images. Shown below is a Fibonacci spiral and a detail from the spiral; these were created using images from the squared circle group photo pool.
Click the image for more information and to view at different sizes.
::
Click this image for a special version (of a slightly different image), where each of the squaredcircles is "clickable".
::
And if that's not enough, jbum has created a new mosaic, based on the concept of a day in the life.
DAMNITOL
Take 2 and the rest of the world can go to hell for up to 8 full hours.
ST. MOMMA'S WORT
Plant extract that treats mom's depression by rendering preschoolers unconscious for up to two days.
EMPTYNESTROGEN
Suppository that eliminates melancholy and loneliness by reminding you of how awful they were as teenagers and how you couldn't wait till they moved out.
PEPTOBIMBO
Liquid silicone drink for single women. Two full cups swallowed before an evening out increases breast size, decreases intelligence, and prevents conception.
DUMBEROL
When taken with Peptobimbo, can cause dangerously low IQ, resulting in enjoyment of country music and pickup trucks.
FLIPITOR
Increases life expectancy of commuters by controlling road rage and the urge to flip off other drivers.
MENICILLIN
Potent anti-boy-otic for older women. Increases resistance to such lethal lines as, "You make me want to be a better person... Can we get naked now?"
BUYAGRA
Injectable stimulant taken prior to shopping Increases potency, duration, and credit limit of spending spree.
JACKASSPIRIN
Relieves headache caused by a man who can't remember your birthday,
anniversary, phone number, or to lift the toilet seat.
ANTI-TALKSIDENT
A spray carried in a purse or wallet to be used on anyone too eager to share their life stories with total strangers in elevators.
NAGAMENT
When administered to a boyfriend or husband, provides the same irritation level as nagging him.
This is making the rounds; I found it at Glimpse of a Grrl.
Sheryl and I were married 31 years ago today; I wonder how we did it given that the "Defense of Marriage" act just passed? I wonder if love and friendship and all that had anything to do with it? Actually, the state has already penalized us for all these years of marriage; all of you married folks are very aware of the so-called marriage penalty that's reflected in the US tax codes.
The only thing that keeps me from being completely disgusted by this show of ignorance is that something like 13 other states have passed similar measures.
My belief is that a constitution defines the nature of the relationship between a people and their government. Further, the constitution has traditionally been a means of enumerating rights, not restricting them.
By both those measures, the Kansas constitutional amendment that passed in today's election fails to pass muster. Civil arrangements ought to be handled by the law, not via the constitution. Laws help define our relations with each other; the constitution should be reserved for defining our relationship with our government. In addition, the precedent of using the constitution to restrict rights can only come to no good.
I wonder what people are really worried about? If it's the moral angle, I think that's well covered. If "gay marriage" is truly wrong, then the price will ultimately be paid, and as I was raised, it's not our place to be in judgement of others. I'm pretty certain I learned that part of the scripture with no misunderstandings.
Further on the moral issue: gay marriage isn't even in violation of any of the 10 commandments; I don't think the constitution has addressed, say, the issue of murder, as that's rightfully dealt with via law, not via the constitution. So why the big todo over civil arrangements that, especially in a so called conservative nation, ought to be strictly private matters?
