Instead of having to hunt for items behind the pantry doors, we’re using open shelving.  It’s all about accessibility.  (The poster is an added convenience in case we forget how to cook before this is all finished.)  Pasta: check.  Costco-sized bags of raisins: check.  Jars of salsa: check.  Tub of Gatorade mix: you know it.

Nothing says classy like sagging plastic bins holding random kitchen utensils and plastic cutlery.

Beneath the table is convenient storage.  Boxes are from free-range cardboard farms.  (The box on the top, right contains no fewer than four sizes of batteries.)

My word, this looks just like my first undergraduate apartment, only with twice as much space.

The Bellevue Blackout challenge is to find all of the geocaches within the city limits. Unlike the Delorme or Thomas Guide challenges, where one finds a cache in a region defined by each page of the respective road atlas (and does a lot of driving in the process), this one kept me relatively local. Since I traverse that corridor five times a week, I reasoned I could pick up stuff here and there. How hard could it be? :-)

When this was published in January of 2009, I had 151 caches left to find … out of 175 active. I didn’t seriously consider doing the challenge until March of this year, when I found a very difficult multi-cache titled, amusingly, “Are you nuts?” I realized how far gone I’ve come as a geocacher.

By April, I had whittled the list down to eighty. I worked on finding the remaining “traditional” caches. Many of these were in locations I’d been purposely avoiding: Redmond (bad traffic), highly-public areas like park+rides, malls or public boat launches, or… playgrounds. Rainy sundays were a good time to do these.

In May, I started working with Phil, another geocacher who was also proficient at puzzles and was much better connected with others who could at least tell us where to start. Working with him was a lot of fun, especially on the longer multi-caches, and made it less likely I’d give up. Phil had no qualms about calling someone to ask for a nudge when we were really stuck. We needed help on some caches.

Although there was no explicit deadline, the challenge was to clear out all caches “at a point in time.” With GeoWoodstock 8 approaching, there was a run of new ones being posted. With each notification, I had the pang of dread until I confirmed whether or not the cache was in the city limits. This got old pretty quickly, and was starting to burn me out. I had some personal and business obligations, so we set a goal to finish this by Father’s Day weekend. Caches remaining: four — three requiring a boat and a very long multi-cache that appeared to be missing two waypoints. (Its owner was unavailable.) A third geocacher, Kurt, was also pretty close to finishing. I invited him to join us.

While I was out on my trip, two new caches popped up. Dang. Fortunately, neither was an insanely difficult puzzle. Phil found someone who provided the missing information on the multi-caches and verify my previous work: we knew where its final was. Kurt, who had done all of the paddle caches, was blasting through his remaining caches. It was nice being able to help someone else with the puzzles.

Phil and I did one of the paddle caches midweek, using a cheap inflatable boat I found online. Fortunately, Phantom Lake was very calm, because the “two person boat” claimed on the box really meant “two kids” or “one adult,” not “two adults.” It was very comical, but we pulled it off.

On Father’s day Sunday, one of the rainiest days this month, Phil and I rented a canoe at Enatai Beach to get the two remaining paddle caches. Both of us were soaked and needed to find a change of clothes. Phil called his wife while I dropped by the office. We met Kurt at a Park and Ride, then drove to the last stop of the Micro Multi cache. Its final was in the owner’s front yard, but it was pretty easy to retrieve.

Driving back, Kurt noticed we were close to a puzzle cache he’d been working on. We stopped for that one. Then shortly thereafter, there was another one whose first waypoint I had worked out last year, but hadn’t been by to pick up. (I have ~116 puzzle caches solved but not found yet. Sigh.) We eventually got back to Bellevue, parked, and made the short hike for the actual “Bellevue Blackout” cache. It was fun reminiscing how we all remembered this area from a previous cache we’d done.

Final stats: 218 caches found (45 puzzles, 32 multis), 1 owned, and 21 archived since I started. (Many of these occurred when the Bellevue Parks Department raised concerns about caches in the Mercer Slough.)

This mural (a block over), is typical of the cowboy/cattle theme:

Near the Tarrant County Courthouse is a fountain dedicated to Judge Jonathan Young Hogsett (1843-1901) who “watered his horse here.”

One of the more interesting virtual cache concepts had me looking up at the many cool things well-above street level, trying to find the buildings with a particular feature. This is the Knights of Pythias Castle Hall. It’s very out-of-place so close to the Stockyards:

While walking around, I noticed other examples, like the cowboy riding a giant, bucking Chia pet:

(This is near the Sundance Square area of downtown where there’s a lot of restaurants and clubs and stuff.)

Check out the detail on the pillars of the US Post Office (photo from: John Roberts):

My favorite works were these ladies:

The panther heads the second floor of this building near Panther City Park are kind of interesting:

Before leaving, I visited the “Save the Future” memorial to Fort Worth’s Fire Fighters:

I had a lot of fun taking in the history and art.  If I go back, I’ll make use of John Roberts’ walking tours as there is a lot more.

*Puzzle caches aren’t at their listed locations (hence the puzzle), so no scuba diving of Lake Washington was necessary.  The actual distribution of caches looked more like this:

Since we’re east-siders, we started in Kirkland, working on the 21 caches on our side of Lake Washington.  These were pretty spread out and, surprisingly, in mostly unpleasant locations.   I was glad I was doing this with others.

After lunch, we headed over to the Seattle side.  We’d run into other cachers (aviatrix22 and grossi) who said some of the Seattle caches were in high-end neighborhoods where they felt a little out of exposed.  We did these first, then concentrated on the cluster of caches along a well-known public access trail.  These were nice because we could park and pick up a few before moving along.   (To be honest, I was really wishing I had my bike.)

These went much faster.  Group adrenaline started kicking in as the list got down below five caches.  Then, soon thereafter, we had the secret code for the final, in a truly wonderful location that eased some of the earlier ivy wall grabs.

Overall, a lot of fun.  This was the most caches I’ve done in a day.  It was also the first time I’d done any substantial caching with others – it was a lot more fun that way. As for the series, I liked the puzzle aspect.  I was hoping the placements would have formed some other interesting shape (perhaps a local version of LA’s smile series I tried last September?).

Official

Battle-ready!

Appropriate text was substituted, changing our tagline from “Enjoy the view” to “Today is a good day to PLOT!”  Laughs were had, and it was removed before alpha testing several months later.

Fast forward to this January, when we are adding support for arbitrary system fonts.  Our sales person was headed to Japan and was hopeful he could demonstrate the UNICODE aspect.  Could I mock up something for him?

There was no graphic user interface to this, so I would need to create some scripts that selected the appropriate font and inserted a message.  Not having had any reason to do this sort of thing before, I just assumed I could scroll down the font list, look for one named Hiragana or Katakana, and paste in whatever result Google Translate offered for  “[My Company Name] 黄色の鉛筆しています！”

While looking for the nonexistent “Hiragana” and “Katakana” fonts, I came across “Klingon” that I had installed from ~3 years ago.

!

One thing led to another, and soon I had mocked up this image:

accompanied by a press release with fake quotes from our CEO and the Chancellor of the Klingon Mining Operations complimenting each other’s honor and battle prowess and declaring “Today is a good day to PLOT!” before eating Gagh and swilling blood wine.  It’s probably a good thing if our CEO doesn’t know about this.  Capito?

First, the technical specs:

• Dell Inspiron 9300 (purchased in late 2005): WXGA screen (1920×1200), 1.8GHz Pentium Celery processor, 2Gb memory, 40Gb disk (later upgraded to 160Gb), NVIDIA graphics, Wireless b/g, and a 1200 baud modem.

• MacBook Pro: WXGA screen, 2.8GHz Core 2 Duo, 4Gb memory (expandable to 8Gb), 500Gb disk, dual graphics cards, wireless b/g/n.

The Dell was a nice machine for 2005.  Although still functional, there were no further options for expanding the Dell and… I need more computational power.

The Mac is half as thick as the Inspiron.

Likes:

• System updates don’t inhibit system use.   Here’s a comparison of experiences on three operating systems:
  
  Exhibit 1:: [after reinstalling the operating system in preparation for donating it] power on, apply 77 updates (ignoring 64 optional – e.g. Minoan language support), reboot.  Apply 6 more updates, reboot.  Apply another update, no reboot.  Another update, curse, reboot.  Lather, rinse, reboot.  Another effing update, reboot.  Yay, now we’re up to Service Pack 3… and lo, there are more updates.  Elapsed time, 2 hours 35 minutes.  Profanity uttered: do you need to ask? (Were the update mechanism smart, it would see Service Pack 3 exists and apply that in one fell swoop.  Instead, it tortures the user.)

  Exhibit 2: [my laptop at work] A batch of 5-6 updates land each week, usually Tuesday night.  There’s an 80% chance a reboot will be required.  At least Vista gives me the option of not being bugged for four hours.  Security policy is such that the machine needs a human to type in a password on the console; otherwise, the machine powers off.  If I do this before I leave, my computer is inaccessible until I come in and boot it.  It takes about eight minutes to fully boot (1 1/2 at BIOS, 6-7 to apply updates, start everything, and finally get a prompt.

  
  Exhibit 3: power on, apply 6 updates, reboot, done. Elapsed time: 5 minutes. There have been a seven application updates in the last three months. None have required me to reboot.  N-O-N-E. Okay, just had my first reboot in 3 months.

  Did you guess the first was Windows XP, the second Windows Vista Ultimate, and the third was Mac OSX 10.6?

  Conclusion: I can’t believe the level of maintenance bullshit I’ve put up with when using Windows XP and Vista. Then I saw this story by Secunia quantifying it. While I can understand software is not perfect, it seems especially (bad word) that there are still critical security updates each week and these always force me to stop what I’m doing.  The security model is a bit wacky.

• I don’t need a virus checker, (additional) firewall, disk defragmenter, malware filter, registry checker or any other fine system maintenance utility.
• Power management works! It wakes up from sleep mode (and is able to get online) in less than five seconds.  XP’s hibernate mode never worked.  Sleep did, but it was a 50% chance that I’d need to reset the wireless card.
• No balloons! Windows XP and Vista both had annoying balloons notify/nag me every freaking time it connected/disconnected to a wireless access point whose signal wasn’t set to eleven.  Or Microsoft CRM/Exchange is having issues, as it is wont to do at 9:30 each morning.
• Virtualization works well.  There are two applications I still need Windows for: GSAK (a geocaching application) and the Windows VPN client (because our office doesn’t support Mac and Outlook Web Access is broken).
• It’s *nix underneath. On the Windows systems, I always had cygwin utilities.

Dislikes:

• Keyboard accelerators.  On Windows, nearly every application will reveal its keyboard accelerators when you hold the ALT key down.  For example, accessing the file menu is nearly always Alt-F.  I use this all the time to zip through tasks without having to pick up the mouse.  On Mac, this feature is missing.  Keyboard shortcuts are also different.  When opening an URL, you can use alt-D on Windows.  On Mac, it’s Command-L.
• The fn, control, option and command keys are too close together. Considering how often I need to use right-click, I wish they’d swapped Control with Fn to make it easier to press.
• Office 2008. I’m glad this was only $10 through the “Home Use Program,” because Office 2008 is a steaming pile of disappointment. Among the biggest surprises is a lack of VB macro support.  Well, technically that’s incorrect: you can run Excel macros if you’re willing to completely rewrite them from scratch in Apple Script.  Oh, and there’s also no way to record macros. There are no dockable toolbars or a ribbon.  Instead, one has floating windows with tools.  It’s annoying.
• Battery charge indicator shows <100% when plugged in.  I get that Li-ion batteries lose capacity over time, but if the electronics think it doesn’t need charging, the software should just round up.
• Application bar at the top of the screen.  While I “get” that there’s nice consistency among applications, the lack of accelerators and having to move across a hefty screen size to access menu options is a pain in the ass.  I finally capitulated and connected a separate mouse.
• Only 3 USB ports.  I must choose three devices among my camera, external hard disks, wireless mouse, GPS, other GPS, and iPod Touch.  The Inspiron had *six* of these, and that seemed barely adequate.
• X windows sucks. Certain really important third-party software (*cough cough*) relies on X windows running, and Apple’s implementation is lacking.  The 3ps GUI (*cough*) needs to be rewritten (*cough*).  Soon.  (*cough cough cough*)

1. Screen sizes suck, especially the vertical. The most common (at the time) were 1024×576, which was a huge step down from my Inspiron’s massive 1920×1200 display, but it’s all in the name of portability, right?  Actually seeing how bad 576 vertical pixels is requires you to run any Office 2007 application.  For example, Outlook 2007, with its “ribbon” and address fields, takes up nearly half of the 576 pixels:

Windows Ready … for all those utilities you’ll need to keep the system secure.

2. They run Windows XP - When I start my computer, I want to use my computer.  I don’t want to wait five minutes while the operating system boots, self-flagellates and every application phones home to download updates.  (I’m talking about *you* Java and Adobe Flash.)   In the back of my mind, I kept thinking about what I wrote in my rant from last year and the excessive amounts of required maintenance… just to use practice safe hex.

In theory, you would avoid rebooting by using “hibernate mode.”  (This is where the machine writes out its memory image to disk so the computer can be completely powered down.  When you restart, the image is loaded, and you’re right where you were before.)  This never worked on the Inspiron.  Come to think of it, it doesn’t work on my work machines, either.

“Sleep mode,” where the computer enters a catatonic state, functions marginally better… except the NetGear and Intel wireless drivers would sometimes and always, respectively, crap themselves on restart.  The drawback of sleep mode is it still consumes battery.  Every once in a while, the orbital mind control lasers command the machine to wake up in the carry-on bag.

3. Netbooks come with 1Gb -  One gig was fine for Windows 2000 (the most stable of the Windows brethren) in 2000.  It’s insufficient for XP and unbearable on Vista.

Conclusion:  A netbook wouldn’t do.

Speaking of which, here’s an invitation I received on Friday for a webinar this morning:

We invite you to reserve time to listen in on how [we] are transforming mission critical computing based on industry standard technologies and modular/converged infrastructure.

Hear directly from [six-figured vice presidents representing each company] on how businesses can leverage next generation [...] technology into business performance that can improve your bottom line.  [Our products] meet the needs of mission critical workloads for the next decade into the most resilient, easily scalable, and completely integrated virtualization platform that delivers mission critical business outcomes every time. Learn more about the new processor platform that delivers a big leap in mission critical technologies, standardization and longevity.

When I read this the first time, I immediately had sympathy for the poor marketing communications person who was forced to send this.  They probably started off with something simple like:

Our new [product] will run Microsoft Word 7% faster than the previous version.

With each review, the sentence was tossed in a blender with a random New York Times Business Book Bestseller and set to Frappé until it had enough “pop” (or, perhaps, one “mission critical” for each six-figured vice president involved).  I imagine the ideal recipients of these marketing messages also speak in tongues.  If the email address was from a human, I would send in the Mystery Matador.

The operative word is/was “expected.” Few people expected a financial catastrophe of the magnitude of what we had in 2008. (But, by definition, more than expected the Spanish Inquisition.) In the four years since I posted, the S&P 500 has decreased 18% while tuition increased 15%, far outpacing inflation:

“[T]he college cost inflation rate has run from a high of 6.5 times the general inflation rate to a low of half the general inflation rate, with an recent average of about twice the general inflation rate.” [Source]

Sheesh.  I would have been better off investing in Elvis stamps.

Better returns than Enron, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers combined

What brings this up is someone saw my spreadsheet and wrote me:

We have 529′s that have not made one red cent for either kid and friends who bought 4 years of GET for 28k. Now those same 4 years are 40k. I saw CA State raised tuition 35% for next year, and that WA was 17% this year and given the budget cuts yesterday it will obviously have to keep going up.I am starting to think 40k for a college education and a sure thing, makes sense? But then I think I am missing something?

The short answer is: [crickets chirping]

This is like the “Choose Your Own Adventure” books I read when I was a kid:

1) Do you think tuition will increase 32% between now and [The Year of Reckoning]?

• If you think the answer is yes, then you need to invest in something that’s going to earn a positive rate of return. (I don’t know what that is.)  Proceed to question 2.
• If you think the answer is no, then (sell your earthly possessions and) write a check when tuition is due.  Live happily ever after with the magical Internet Unicorns.

Consider that in April 2006, GET charged $66 for a tuition credit that was worth $55, a 20% front-end load. Today, you’ll pay $101 for a credit that’s worth $75, a 32% front-end load. Since GET is a self-funded program, you can infer the plan’s administrators anticipating tuition is going to be waaaaaaaaaay more expensive in the future.  Perhaps they are also making up for a shortfall in planning.

2) Will the price of tuition increase more than 32% PLUS the anticipated return on any alternative investment you have available? (Do not include investments in Nigerian 419 Retirement Plans, Tulips, or Garlic Futures.)

• If you think the answer is yes, then you should invest in the GET program… unless you think your state is going to abandon it and refund your money.  Regardless, put your pencil down and remain quiet until the end of the exam, several years from now.
• If you think the answer is no, invest elsewhere.  Proceed to question 3.

3) Will the anticipated future cost of tuition (calculated above) exceed the value of the education? For this discussion, consider only the quantifiable change in income opportunities from having a degree (e.g., not the intangibles).

The College Board’s calculator estimates today’s costs ($80k for a public school and $160k for a private school).  University of Phoenix charges $67k for an online bachelor’s degree.  Community colleges are a lot cheaper.

A 2002 Census study concluded an associate degree was almost always and a bachelor’s was often beneficial in lifetime earnings.   (A more technical analysis, factoring in NPV, can be found here.)  All of these assume you choose a field where advanced credentials are paid for.  Petroleum engineering: yeah.  An Early 21st Century History of My Daughters’ Art: unlikely.

• If you think the answer is yes, then you should invest the money elsewhere.  Do stand-up comedy.  Start a business.  Write a Great Novel.  Knit.  Just be happy.
• If you think the answer is no, start working on those admission essays!

It will be interesting when the Census study is updated because tuition has risen a lot more than wages and alternatives, such as accredited online education, are now available.  It’s not unreasonable to assume the tuition superinflation will continue: universities aren’t perceived as paragons of fiscal efficiency.  The Center for College Affordability produced a report (PDF), concluding:

[Colleges have hired] “a large number of part-time instructional staff, which provides the fundamental educational services, while at the same time adding a disproportionate number of full-time management and support staff. [...] This expansion of the labor force relative to enrollment has increasingly resulted in unproductive use of labor resources in higher education. [...]“

Highlights:

• The route. This is why you take the roundabout way! By mid-morning, we were following the Rogue River near Galice-Hellgate.
  During my layover day in Grants Pass, I kayaked just west of here.

  

• Seeing these ladies “moo” at the cows and giggling.

  

  They had pulled over to talk when they noticed the cows moving away from them en masse.  So they started mooing. Something was lost in translation, as the cows looked to be accelerating away. As far as we could tell, they were just trying to make it back to the barn to catch the latest House episode.

  

• Listening to EMTs and physicians exchange job stories at the camp.  Having to sit through a three-hour process meeting is nothing compared to what they’ve seen.

Lowlight:

• Another stint along I-5. Because Oregon DOT was involved, this one wasn’t too bad. I’ve done worse on I-90 eastbound.
  

Day 5: Glendale, OR to Grants Pass, OR – Looking at the map, this would be a 25-mile ride, but we would have missed out on scenery. Besides, we’re here to ride.

Highights:

• Best. Rest. Stop. Ever.
  

  Heaven On Earth bakery, located along exit 86 on I-5 in Oregon, welcomed us with their amazing arsenal of fresh-baked goodies. Although their cinnamon rolls receive the top billing, their Apple and Marionberry crisps were even better. On the way back to Seattle, several of us returned the love by stopping in for goodies to take home. My take-out meat loaf with garlic mashed potatoes was excellent. The goodies — pumpkin bread pudding, marionberry pie, apple crisp — did make it all the way back to my family, but would have been best enjoyed fresh.

  Like so:
  
  

• Galesville Dam, shrouded in morning fog, was eerie.
• Karaoke from Hell.  They saved the great Led Zeppelin tunes for the encore, when I was already back in the tent.  As the riff for Whole Lotta Love started, a collective “dang” came from the tents nearby.

Lowlights:

• None, really. Had I known Heaven on Earth Bakery was there, I would have skipped breakfast and eaten a real one there, instead. The CO food gets a little monotonous because I can’t eat the heavier stuff (eggs, bacon) before riding. Mixing Froot Loops into my oatmeal helped a little bit.

Day 6: Lounging around Grants Pass – This was our rest day. I spent the morning picking up geocaches along the way … until I got careless and tripped into some poison oak, imagining Poison Oak Cooties everywhere. I washed my calves and ankles at the rest stop. Later, when I was wandering around downtown Grants Pass, I found a pharmacy selling the magic poison oak removal cream.

Grants Pass had pulled out the stops for our visit, including passing a waiver for tent camping in Riverside Park, offering shuttles into town, and arranging for a bike corral.   The Evergreen Bank Bear Hotel had ornate displays lining the sidewall to the park:

Grants Pass is the sister city of Rubtsovsk, Russia:

Downtown featured a lot of local art.  Bottles, Beaches and Banana Slugs epitomizes the spirit of the people here.  (Note: she’s still not happy.)

In the late afternoon, I took a rafting trip with Rogue Wilderness Adventures. It was originally a shared-raft trip, but since I was traveling solo, I had the opportunity to take a kayak instead. One problem with being the last group of the day is we inherited everyone else’s lateness and disorganization.

Highlights:

Day 7: Grants Pass, OR to Medford, OR – I chose to do the shorter, 42-mile loop in hopes of getting back on the road and home that same day. I was on the road very early, happy to catch this great sunrise in Murphy, OR. The sky is on fire:

Further along, there was … um… nevermind.

And finally, the finish line:

Route support was excellent.  I especially appreciated Chuck playing classic rock tunes on the long climbs.  Jeff and Vitaliy were awesome in looking after us!