Friday, October 22, 2004
Pacific Northwest Weather
Were I live, we get plenty of rain and even more cloudy days. I have heard that on this side of the mountains, we get around 300 cloudy days and 60 sunny days, while on the other side, they get the inverse. I am surely not in a position to argue this at this seems to be the case, I just never counted them myself. As a kid, I would love the chilly foggy days, it lended a sense of privacy I then enjoyed. As I get more mature, I find I am getting suseptable to the depression that people get when the sun stays hidden for weeks on end. As I look out the window now, it is one of those days, a dark gloomy day, the clouds seems to hang low like a blanket. Some years ago many of the fellows I hung out with that were into muzzleloading, made an exodus out of the area, either to the other side of the mountains or down south were the conditions were dryer. This damp cold WX can make things seem colder than if it were sub freezing.
I wonder how this winter will play out, long range projections call for a stormy winter and alot of winds, not looking forward to that.
I wonder how this winter will play out, long range projections call for a stormy winter and alot of winds, not looking forward to that.
Monday, October 18, 2004
Read this
I cdnuolt blveiee that I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd what I was rdanieg.
The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer inwaht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is that the first and last ltteer be in the rghit pclae.
The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. This is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
Amzanig huh? yaeh and I awlyas thought slpeling was ipmorantt!
Sunday, October 17, 2004
PSK31 and Net control
My oldest daughter has her ham radio license, general class. She got her technician license at the age of 9. By studying morse code and more radio/electrical theory, with in a year she advance to general class. Two of the most notable things she has done and is doing is Net control for ARES(amatuer radio emergency service) nets and working contests using a digital mode known as PSK31 (phase shift keying).
She started out as a district net controller encompassing 6 counties, this is a nightly net were she was responsible for one night a week. She did this for 2 years, before her busy school schedule demands caused her to cut back. Ever since the district net she has done the County ARES net, this net is once a week and on Monday, she has the fourth Monday of each month. The way this works is at the appointed time, she opens the net by introducing the net and its mission, the first order of business is to open the net to any emergency traffic. After that she does a roll call for all the communities in the county, then opens up the net for any late check ins or any one else who wishes to check in. This is also a time were one person may want to find another and requests a contact, this is done through the net controller, any announcements are also allowed during net.
To make this as personal as she and I can, we keep a log with regular check ins, so when that person shows up, she can greet them by there first name. She demands I help her with this part, so I am alway there to assist. Local nets like these are usually done through a repeater. A repeater is a device that is usually placed in an area that can get good coverage and recieves a signal on one frequency and retransmits it on another. When my daughter unkeys the radio, the radio automatically reverts to the repeaters output frequency, so she can hear any one checking in.
PSK31 is a digital mode using a radio and computer, it is a keyboard to keyboard type of communication. The signals are only 31 hertz wide, so the signal to noise levels are really good. I have even worked my friend in AZ with a half watt of power using this mode. In one of the recent contests my daughter work, she managed 3rd place in the low power catagory. She likes the fact that she can type into the computer macros for most common parts of an exchange. In a contest they usuall have to get the other persons call sign, name and some other info like location, grid square, zone, all depending on the contest involved. In her case she would pretype something like this in the one of the macros to call for a station.
'start' cq cq cq contest
cq cq cq contest de KF6ULI K 'stop'
Then when she is on the air she hits the predefined F-key which keys up the radio, sends the CQ (think icq) de (this is) and KF6ULI (station call sign, in this case art bell's fan club, hmmm do you believe in UFO's? i wouldn't hold my breath). You never know were a station might be calling back from, could be anywhere in the world.
She started out as a district net controller encompassing 6 counties, this is a nightly net were she was responsible for one night a week. She did this for 2 years, before her busy school schedule demands caused her to cut back. Ever since the district net she has done the County ARES net, this net is once a week and on Monday, she has the fourth Monday of each month. The way this works is at the appointed time, she opens the net by introducing the net and its mission, the first order of business is to open the net to any emergency traffic. After that she does a roll call for all the communities in the county, then opens up the net for any late check ins or any one else who wishes to check in. This is also a time were one person may want to find another and requests a contact, this is done through the net controller, any announcements are also allowed during net.
To make this as personal as she and I can, we keep a log with regular check ins, so when that person shows up, she can greet them by there first name. She demands I help her with this part, so I am alway there to assist. Local nets like these are usually done through a repeater. A repeater is a device that is usually placed in an area that can get good coverage and recieves a signal on one frequency and retransmits it on another. When my daughter unkeys the radio, the radio automatically reverts to the repeaters output frequency, so she can hear any one checking in.
PSK31 is a digital mode using a radio and computer, it is a keyboard to keyboard type of communication. The signals are only 31 hertz wide, so the signal to noise levels are really good. I have even worked my friend in AZ with a half watt of power using this mode. In one of the recent contests my daughter work, she managed 3rd place in the low power catagory. She likes the fact that she can type into the computer macros for most common parts of an exchange. In a contest they usuall have to get the other persons call sign, name and some other info like location, grid square, zone, all depending on the contest involved. In her case she would pretype something like this in the one of the macros to call for a station.
'start' cq cq cq contest
cq cq cq contest de KF6ULI K 'stop'
Then when she is on the air she hits the predefined F-key which keys up the radio, sends the CQ (think icq) de (this is) and KF6ULI (station call sign, in this case art bell's fan club, hmmm do you believe in UFO's? i wouldn't hold my breath). You never know were a station might be calling back from, could be anywhere in the world.
Saturday, October 16, 2004
Voting
I am voting tonight, I have the voter's pamphlets and since our state went to vote by mail, I have my ballot in hand. I am going to get this over with so I won't have to bother thinking about it till after the vote counting begins. I kind of miss running down the road and greeting the older ladies and walking into a booth and voting, there seemed to be a sense of community to it. On the other side, I don't have to worry about trying to get down there on voting day before they close although rare for me, I know it is a real issue for others.
We have several ballot measures, one of which may get national attention if it passes. The others include land use laws, whether we want to get rid of the State run accident insurance fund and expanding the medical pot act. There are 8 issues on the ballot, looks like homework trying to see what motivated people to get these on the ballot for vote.
I am off to vote...
Okay I am done voting, The one thing I have to say is that I had trouble knowing who to believe in the voter's pamphlet. Sometimes seeing who sponsored the measure helped to see where the motive lays. I hope you vote and if you do, please try to understand what your voting for or against.
We have several ballot measures, one of which may get national attention if it passes. The others include land use laws, whether we want to get rid of the State run accident insurance fund and expanding the medical pot act. There are 8 issues on the ballot, looks like homework trying to see what motivated people to get these on the ballot for vote.
I am off to vote...
Okay I am done voting, The one thing I have to say is that I had trouble knowing who to believe in the voter's pamphlet. Sometimes seeing who sponsored the measure helped to see where the motive lays. I hope you vote and if you do, please try to understand what your voting for or against.
Friday, October 15, 2004
Soap and bread
It is that time of the year, time to make some soap. The first soap I made was laundry soap using tallow and lye, it was a hard soap that I would shred and use with hot water in the wash machine. This soap was really nice stuff too. We raised our kids on cloth diapers, it seemed the right thing to do and maybe less expensive too. The nice thing about this soap was that it left the diapers very soft. I know because I changed more diaper on my little girls bottoms than my wife ever did.
I have not made that soap in a long time, now I make bar soap, I still use tallow, but much less. I also use olive oil and coconut oil. One batch makes quite a bit of soap, sometimes the wife will wrap some up some special and sell some at craft bazaars. This year I am not sure we will have enough time for the soap to cure for the Christmas bazaar. I am still refining the soap making process, but it is satisfying to make and use your own things.
I am the one that makes the bread too, I make a whole wheat bread because I have all this wheat. The idea of storing wheat became ridicolous to me when I wasn't using it, so I set out to use it. If the day came I needed it, I wanted to know how to make use of it. Here is the recipie I use:
1.5 cups plus 2T of warm water
2T butter
1T molasses
2T honey
3.25 C whole Wheat flour
.5 cups White flour
2T Dry milk
1.5 T gluten
1.5 tsp salt
1T active yeast
This recipe was given to me, I was told it originally called for 100% wheat, but that a little white flour made it better. You can make this in a standard bread machine by the way, I do as it saves alot of labor. Some times I like to put this on a tray or bread pan and bake it that way. The girls like it and after a while they thought white bread was bland! Another recipie I use is a modified french bread were I substitute half the white flour with wheat, it turns out much lighter than the recipie above. I use an older electric stone mill that was handed down to me to grind the wheat berries, but I have a hand grinder, I just hope the day never comes where I "have" to use the hand grinder.
I have not made that soap in a long time, now I make bar soap, I still use tallow, but much less. I also use olive oil and coconut oil. One batch makes quite a bit of soap, sometimes the wife will wrap some up some special and sell some at craft bazaars. This year I am not sure we will have enough time for the soap to cure for the Christmas bazaar. I am still refining the soap making process, but it is satisfying to make and use your own things.
I am the one that makes the bread too, I make a whole wheat bread because I have all this wheat. The idea of storing wheat became ridicolous to me when I wasn't using it, so I set out to use it. If the day came I needed it, I wanted to know how to make use of it. Here is the recipie I use:
1.5 cups plus 2T of warm water
2T butter
1T molasses
2T honey
3.25 C whole Wheat flour
.5 cups White flour
2T Dry milk
1.5 T gluten
1.5 tsp salt
1T active yeast
This recipe was given to me, I was told it originally called for 100% wheat, but that a little white flour made it better. You can make this in a standard bread machine by the way, I do as it saves alot of labor. Some times I like to put this on a tray or bread pan and bake it that way. The girls like it and after a while they thought white bread was bland! Another recipie I use is a modified french bread were I substitute half the white flour with wheat, it turns out much lighter than the recipie above. I use an older electric stone mill that was handed down to me to grind the wheat berries, but I have a hand grinder, I just hope the day never comes where I "have" to use the hand grinder.
Geocaching
In an effort to learn how to use my GPS, one place I turned to was geocaching. GPS's today are quite powerful little computers, in the early 80's I remember reading an article in backpacker that suggested such a device, back then it seemed like science fiction, but todays units can contain maps and in color, in fact the ones I have also have alarms clocks, calenders, stopwatch's, tide tables, area calculators, just to name a few.
Geocaching is a hobby were folks hide treasure boxes and then post the coordinates at www.geocaching.com. The coordinates or waypoints can be downloaded and put directy into the GPS or manually entered. The person hiding the cache will give some description and sometimes a clue so when your out in the woods or city and you are stumped you can get a little extra idea were to look, these clues are usually encrypted so you don't inadvertantly read them. Then off you go to find it. Most caches contain a log sheet and some trade items, so if there is something you want, take it and leave something behind. other caches may be based on some theme. When you find them, you can then post that find on the websight. My youngest wanted to put one out so we did, it is fun to get an email telling us when someone has found it and there reactions.
On one family backpacking trip this past summer I kept one on my shoulder strap the whole time we were on the move. When we got to camp, I mark the location on my GPS, the next day we made a summit attempt to a 10,000 foot volcano, but we decided to take a different route back to camp. Here is were geocaching came in handy, Once we were off the glacier, i turned on the navigation feature to our camp waypoint and it pointed us the way back, we had to go around a cliff or two and through some trees, but it did a fine job and took us directly back.
Another feature of GPS's is that it can keep a track of were you have been. In my case, when I got home, i was able to download the track onto a USGS topo map program and show the family everywhere we went on the map. This was printed out and put with our family backpacking journal.
If you get interested in geocaching, much of what you would need to know is on www.geocaching.com
Geocaching is a hobby were folks hide treasure boxes and then post the coordinates at www.geocaching.com. The coordinates or waypoints can be downloaded and put directy into the GPS or manually entered. The person hiding the cache will give some description and sometimes a clue so when your out in the woods or city and you are stumped you can get a little extra idea were to look, these clues are usually encrypted so you don't inadvertantly read them. Then off you go to find it. Most caches contain a log sheet and some trade items, so if there is something you want, take it and leave something behind. other caches may be based on some theme. When you find them, you can then post that find on the websight. My youngest wanted to put one out so we did, it is fun to get an email telling us when someone has found it and there reactions.
On one family backpacking trip this past summer I kept one on my shoulder strap the whole time we were on the move. When we got to camp, I mark the location on my GPS, the next day we made a summit attempt to a 10,000 foot volcano, but we decided to take a different route back to camp. Here is were geocaching came in handy, Once we were off the glacier, i turned on the navigation feature to our camp waypoint and it pointed us the way back, we had to go around a cliff or two and through some trees, but it did a fine job and took us directly back.
Another feature of GPS's is that it can keep a track of were you have been. In my case, when I got home, i was able to download the track onto a USGS topo map program and show the family everywhere we went on the map. This was printed out and put with our family backpacking journal.
If you get interested in geocaching, much of what you would need to know is on www.geocaching.com
Thursday, October 14, 2004
Mics. thoughts
It is my idea to use this blog space to throw out ideas I have had, usually my thoughts are somewhat abstract and unorganized, so if you don't understand what I am saying, rest assured I probably don't either.
Politics: This is an area I may dodge around, not that I don't have political ideas, but rather I am re-evaluting them. I am pretty conservitive both fiscally and socially although I recognize many of the social injustaces that are in need of help. I am tending to lean towards the Libertarian party now. I am faced with an election this year and I don't know who to vote for, I neither want Bush or Kerry in the oval office. We have state measures to vote on, so I will have to weigh the issues.
Recreation: Since I don't get into pro sports, I find myself a little handicapped in a social situation, there are other things I don't find worth my attention that furthers my handicaps. I do like colonial and fur trade era, and have built my own muzzle loading firearms, fashioned period attire and participated in reinactments, most in relation to the fur trade period. We had some family camp outs using period equipment, cooking over the campfire, shooting in friendly competitions, trying out new home made reproductions.
Goals: I live in the country and on some acrage, but my goal is to move out further, live a more independant lifestyle. Solar power sounds so enticing, but I live in area were cloudy days out number sunny. Land being expensive and hard to come by, find the right place for some hydro power would be a daunting task. For now I play with Solar power on a small level, I set up a portable radio station at a State Park and ran my radio all day and half the night on batteries and solar panels during a amatuer radio field day competition where we try to make a many contacts with other stations as possible.
My Amatuer radio goal is to take a portable station that can fit into a back pack, including radio, batteries, flexible solar panel and antenna system to Wizard Island at Crater lake and see how many stations I can work. Right now I have a few things working against me, I don't have the solar panel, they run several hundred dollars and I would be working with a modest antenna system during a time where radio band conditions are moving into the mud. Conditions will be going back up in 4-5 years though and maybe by then I will have the lightweight flexible solar panel. For now, I have wrapped my theme around Crater lake, my QSL cards have Crater lake on them, my personnal web page feature the lake and my Ham radio license plates with Crater lake's image is on order.
Tuesday, October 12, 2004
Entrophy
Don't you just love entrophy? Could you imagine a world with out it? Instead of your car getting dirtier or more worn out, it would get cleaner and be in better shape the longer you had it. Truth is I dislike entrophy, life is a battle against it. Good thing for us the Sun is so huge that by the time entropy turns it into a useless ball of mass, we will long gone. With out the Sun's continual energy, life would fizzle out.
Entropy is good for business though, could imagine if nothing wore out, the can opener would last forever, and maybe we would too. Which leads to the thought that maybe Heaven is a life with out entropy, how else could we live forever. What would happen if we accelerated ourselves to some supersonic speed and crashed into a more solid object than ourselves while in heaven? There is so many questions one would ask about heaven, but if heaven is like I read, I think I may be in for a state of hell as I can't imagine playing a harp for an eternity.
Of course, heaven is just a mental abstract of the mind as no one has come back from there to tell us about it, so I suggest you make it the best your imagination can, it has to be better than what alot of religions say and for me, if I still believed as a Mormon, I would have untold numbers of wives and be populating planets, getting angry with untold number of disobedient children and punishing them by drowning them, burning them, giving them diseases and the list goes on if we follow the example we have from the Bible. I think the kids that like to set cats on fire and watch them run would make good candidates for God, they would get enough pleasure in punishing disobedient people they created that they could do it. I tend to think that bad things just happen and I don't know if it is right to give a God or a Devil the credit for any of trouble we have to deal with in this life.
Entropy is good for business though, could imagine if nothing wore out, the can opener would last forever, and maybe we would too. Which leads to the thought that maybe Heaven is a life with out entropy, how else could we live forever. What would happen if we accelerated ourselves to some supersonic speed and crashed into a more solid object than ourselves while in heaven? There is so many questions one would ask about heaven, but if heaven is like I read, I think I may be in for a state of hell as I can't imagine playing a harp for an eternity.
Of course, heaven is just a mental abstract of the mind as no one has come back from there to tell us about it, so I suggest you make it the best your imagination can, it has to be better than what alot of religions say and for me, if I still believed as a Mormon, I would have untold numbers of wives and be populating planets, getting angry with untold number of disobedient children and punishing them by drowning them, burning them, giving them diseases and the list goes on if we follow the example we have from the Bible. I think the kids that like to set cats on fire and watch them run would make good candidates for God, they would get enough pleasure in punishing disobedient people they created that they could do it. I tend to think that bad things just happen and I don't know if it is right to give a God or a Devil the credit for any of trouble we have to deal with in this life.
Friday, October 08, 2004
New blogger on the block
My first post as a blogger. I am trying to type with a kitten in my lap attacking my arms and chewing on my shirt. The reason for the name of my blog is that I like to walk the backcountry and it was a childhood thing with me. After starting a family, I found it hard to do and let it go, but when my kids reached thier teenage years, one of them asked me to take them out backpacking and off we went. It was a slow start, but this past summer my boots and I put in well over a hundred miles of trail. I feel like I did when I was a kid again. My backpaking dreams of my youth have been ressurected and the joy I got from it this past year was immense. It is like a religion, in some ways better.
