Yesterday!

Yesterday was a fun filled day filled with adventure and extensive exersize. THE RULER allowed me to go geocaching. THE CARROT-So, after a morning filled with getting the garage door to mate with the uneven floor so that light would not escape it was time to go.

SHORT STICK – On the way to Dekalb County Bridges caches we had to stop at Home Depot to check out the prices on Rigid drills and kits. All the guys I talk with are sold on the Rigid Warranty that is available until today – A FULL LIFETIME WARRANTY. It seems pretty good and the drills are nice and the price competitive but how long do I have to get my full measure of LIFETIME WARRANTY? If you are 20 then it might be an excellent deal but if you are 80 it becomes less of an incentive and price becomes more of a motivator. Well, that is where I am coming from. Even though I am not 80, price is the motivator so it was a “no buy” day.

CARROT ACHEIVED – On the geocache scale these two bridges were microcaches and of 3 stars difficulty (out of 5) so they were supposed to be difficult: I found both in approximately 15 minutes. The most difficult was the Spencerville Covered Bridge because of the way that it was hidden (you could not see it if you looked exactly at the spot where it was hidden). On the way back we picked up a bonus cemetary cache right on the western Ohio border NE of St. Joe, IN. So that was three for the day and we had had enough.

Heading up route 101 we stopped at Fish Creek Trail near Hamilton, IN to do our every other day 1 hour walk. The trail was soft and wet and this made walking a bit more difficult. We did not take the extended Lake walk but retraced our steps back to Robb Hidden Canyon parking lot. Feeling quite full of energy we then walked to RHC proper and enjoyed the scenery: if you go to the following coordinates you can see for yourself – N 41

After Christmas & Before the New Year!

Our senior technical nomad arrived back in Indiana on the 20th all safe and sound. What seemed like a wonderful connection became a late night “red eye”. And to add insult to injury, the chauffeur had to wait an extra 2+ hours – however, she was kind and charged no more. Anyway he arrived home at 0300 Saturday morning very tired. The first week back in Indiana went very fast and Christmas was anti-climatic due to the fact that the whole Lyons clan agreed upon the 21st as “Christmas”. Therefore, on the original, actual Christmas day it was anti-climatic when we opened the remaining presents.

Not much geocaching has taken place but a couple of sites we have were visited and spruced up a bit. We also hit three new sites that have been placed this fall – success on all three. Somewhat coincidentally, while on the way home via Orland, IN we were traveling CR1100 and passed the house of an old high school friend and pal. We stopped and chatted for nearly two hours about things past, present and future.

This gentleman is a world class wind surfer and kayacker and understates his accomplishments. He has built a nice rural retreat based on post and beam construction and we would like to do the same to coincide with retirement; therefore, we had a lot to discuss on this subject. SAM really liked his setup and so do I. Now all we have to do is find some rural property on “running water” (like a stream or river or lake spillway).

Nearly Christmas

Hey everyone, do you like plants and other green stuff; Well, if you do try this Plants Site that is given to us by the US Government. Ok, ok “given” is not the correct work “paid for by us” is more appropriate.

I washed two cars today – aren’t you proud of me? One had eggs all over it and was compliments of Purdue University end of semester testing frenzy. The other was just plain dirty from the winter weather of NE Indiana. I went down to the building (see the web cam if it is daylight) to get the heater so I was toasty in the garage while washing the car.

I miss my truck which is stuck in Florida for the winter. I cannot get up and down the driveway after a snow without it. I tried with the car and almost hit the tree on the way up. It is a long story but suffice it to say traction controls did not help at all.

Pollution & the trees

I love the new RSSReader I have. It is a simple thing, I guess, but none the less it functions and I get to quickly read things I would never have passed over in the past – I would not have passed them because I would not have known they existed. Like the article on Forests Under Kyoto. The reader is free and the web site gives many existing RSS feeds to salt your reader after you install it. Please do – you will thank this blog for it.

Zone Alarm

I just installed Zone Alarm on the third computer – MP’s. I received a fright this AM as I went out to get email & weather. I tried to get to the local router to check out something or other. I could not get to it no matter how hard I tried, so, in desperation I hit the ultimate reset facility and all the default setup schemes appeared to rescue me. Well, to make a long story reasonable I did this a couple of times and I still could not get the router to even recognize me: I decided to take a short break and think about it when the sledge hammer hit. Oh how very stupid me could do such a novice thing. You see I had set up two subnets and changed one router to one subnet and the other to another. OK, you get the picture! I finally got in with the correct IP and all is well with my soul.

Suffice it to say that the start of the day was not the best but has started to end with the Zone Alarm install. My NT machine ZA shows I have had 6 unauthorized intrusions since I fired it up about 30 days ago & my firewall is getting hit about 6-10 times per hour. That means something or someone got through to me. The continually running virus scanner has detected no issues but who knows?

I got real cautious and installed ZA on everything and upped the security level quite a bit. We will see if any of the other machines get some hits.

Third try is a charm!

Ok, here we go for a third time: this blog stuff is more than a no brainer. I cannot seem to get past the store phase of the blog lately. Concentrate Charlie, concentrate.

Last night I wrote a very good piece. It was witty, intelligent and well executed – then I promptly lost it to the dreaded “no store” factor upon closing IE. Anyway, it was about Thanksgiving and the first big snow on Friday that was about 3″ deep Saturday morning. SAM & I walked the Robb Hidden Canyon trail Saturday afternoon and were cutting a virgin trail in some spots. I took some pictures and will get around to posting them someday. I love the blog but to let you view them here takes a bit of effort so I will drop them somewhare and you can go to them directly.

I am back in St. Petersburg and the cold northern temperatures gave way to sunny skies and daytime temps of 70′s. Today the office telephone line seemed to work better and all the noise and crosstalk were not there. Crossing the Skyway this morning it was crisp and clear. This afternoon the winds were up and the kite surfers were out near the bridge – this seems like a pretty cool thing to do and it would be nice to try it someday.