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 before declaring “Today is a good day to PLOT!”  I thought it was pretty damn funny, and it was a nice way to blow of steam after sitting through a string of painful project meetings.  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.

  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 Linux 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!

Day 1 – Medford, OR to Yreka, CA:

Highlights:

• The ascent up the Siskiyous.  I have come to enjoy these slow, steady grinds uphill:

Lowlights:

• Taking the shoulder of I-5 to the Agricultural Inspection Station.  Gusty winds, cars whizzing by, lane divots, and differently-skilled cyclists made it very unpleasant.

One of the rare places where I could slow down, pull over and look sideways.

• Stimulus Package Road.  It was bad enough with 28C tires, I can’t imagine how people with 10-spoke wheels wrapped around skinny, 700×19C tires didn’t incur damage to male parts.

• Omnidirectional headwinds the remainder of the day.   At least it seemed  that way.  It was a pretty route, though.  Hasta be Shasta:



• Being unable to hydrate.
  
  <tmi>
  Usually the first sign of dehydration is yellowish pee.  “No problem,” I thought, “Cycle Oregon has plenty of Gleukos and water.”  At each stop, I topped  off the 100-ounce  bladder of my Camelbak.   I figure I consumed about half the container.  However, symptoms of further dehydration continued – darker pee, not being able to go at all, and headaches.  My body wasn’t processing anything!I should have sagged it when the leg cramps started, first in my right calf, then in the big kahuna of muscles on my left side.   Perhaps not thinking clearly, I’d stop, massage the cramp out, drink some more, and continue on.  Stubborn, I am.
  </tmi>

  Yreka looked like a nice place, but I was so wiped, I just wanted to get to bed.  After putting my bike away, my body went “neener neener” and all that liquid I’d consumed during the afternoon was being processed.  All.

Day 2 – Yreka, CA to Happy Camp, CA – A much better day!

Highlights:

• Non-daylight riding can be very peaceful! I started just before sunrise, taking it slow and easy.

• I was feeling good enough to stop and pick up the geocaches along the way.  At the big rest stop, I took a side trip up a big hill to take a photo of the activity.   This gives you a sense of the scale of the “moving city” that’s Cycle  Oregon.
• Finding an alternate route.
  
  The size and logistics today left only one practical road to take.  Getting passed by hundreds of cyclists and support vehicles was distracting from my enjoyment of the scenery.  With some fiddling around with my GPS maps, I discovered the road on the other side of the river would, eventually, get me to the same place.   I crossed the Klamath river…
  
  
  
  Enjoyed exploring rickety bridges:
  
  
  
  And appreciated being in the shade once  the sun came out in full force:
  
  

• Bigfoot.  The main attraction in downtown Happy Camp is the ginormous, camera-loving man-beast.
• 
  Starry Nights.  Oh.  My.  God.   With no light pollution for miles, and lacking tree cover, we were treated to an outstanding view of the  night sky.

Lowlights:

• Disappointment that Happy Camp didn’t offer post cards – give me Bigfoot or Steelhead or Bigfoot feasting on Steelhead or, more interesting, Steelhead feasting on Bigfoot.

Day 3: Happy Camp, CA to Lake Selmac, OR – Though Day 2 went well, I was  still a little leery of The Hill ahead.

Highlights:

• Getting a photo of His Bigfootedness trying to find a good cup of coffee so early in the morning.



• Awesome climb - we took a narrow, unplowed-in-the-winter forest road.  I feel a little sorry for the logistics folks, as they had to drive the big rigs around back to Yreka then Medford then over to Lake Selmac.  While climbing, I was totally in the zone, actually passing other cyclists on the uphill.  Oh, my!
• Drums at the top of the climb.  Don’t know whose idea this was, but it was awesome.  You can hear a small snippet of them at the end of this video clip.   Having my legs following the tempo helped on that last part.
• Lunch stop at the Bridgeview Winery – I’m not a wine person, but I enjoyed the location.



• Walking up that 22% grade. I admit it, I saw this labeled as “@#!” on the map and just hiked up the short segment… as did a lot of other people who “rode up it.”  I felt fine on the subsequent 8-12% grades.

  

• Lake Selmac – this was my favorite overnight of the whole trip because the community seemed to work so well.  They had delicious fund-raiser consumables like a Polish sausage with sauerkraut and gourmet pastries.  (In case I needed an excuse to undo the inadvertent health benefits of cycling!) Additionally, there were a lot of artists and displays.

  

  As with other places, the local sports team teen male daredevils shuttled luggage for tips.  When luggage was shuttled, they impressed  female daredevils with buggy-handling skills.  Ah, youth.  Shotgun!
  

Lowlights:

• I was  a little bummed, though not surprised, the summit and CA/OR border were unmarked.  Someone painted  a neon line, though you can certainly tell by the change in pavement.  On the far right, there’s the “End of Josephine County maintenance [Suck it, California!]” sign.

• Racer X. Downhills were marred by a mix of over-confident riders going balls-out down serpentine, forest-lined roads  screaming “on your left,” as if everyone else was In Their Way.  I felt schadenfreude when one guy received a ticket for crossing over the double-yellow line.  (As Officer Bishop says, We’re not in a bubble.)
  

  Image by: Scott Bernard Nelson/The Oregonian

The first was at the Wild Horse Wind Farm Renewable Energy Center, the site of WSGA’s August 2009 cache-of-the-month:

This was of special interest to me because I’d recently been reading about wind power generation (for example, Why three blades?) and local weather patterns. The blade design is also relevant to my day job. These things are huge.

The second cache of noteworthiness was the “Shaniko Shoe Tree.”

It’s fascinating that it exists so far away from civilization, but perhaps that’s because it smells like a lot of old shoes?

As the day was winding down, I discovered my primary, secondary and tertiary choices for camping sites were all full. (So much for post-Labor Day spur-of-the-moment camping.) A couple of motels were full, too. I kept driving, getting tireder as it got darker. I stopped at the first motel vacancy sign, the Woodsman Country Lodge in Crescent, OR.

It was a cute place, thematically decorated as the name suggests:

Perhaps because of my tired state, I was a little freaked out by the toilet seat because, um… holy crap, there are fish hooks so close to my man parts.

Thankfully, there were no “bear trap” pillows or “chainsaw-blade” lamps. The room was nicely apportioned and very comfortable. After guzzling a couple of water bottles, I slept soundly.

With several hours until the registration was going to open, I continued down US 97 to visit Crater Lake national park, hoping to pick up the handful of virtual and earth caches nearby. I entered from the north side,the Pumice Desert:

and started my clockwise-circuit around the rim. The blue in the water is awesome – wow!:

and again, wow^2:

On the far, southeast corner of the park was an interesting earth cache covering the Pinnacles. These are essentially fossilized fumaroles, exposed after streams have eroded the deposits around them.

Geology is so cool.

Jack Swigert, Apollo 13 astronaut and within six degrees of Kevin Bacon

Prior to leaving, I’d printed out three extensive earthcaches that looked especially interesting – these were guided, geological walking tours created by Retired Geology Professor Sue Hirschfield:

GCZDCT – Along the Trails West of NCAR – The 2.4 mile round-trip was a nice warm-up. I was surprised how quickly I got dehydrated at altitude (6,200′). But, wow, was it a nice trek!

I need to scam arrange a customer visit at NCAR!

I am pretty bad at “seeing” geological things, but the printed guide was exceptional at explaining what I was looking at. The pictures also matched!

With even enough detail that I could walk up to a specific rock of interest:

There was enough detail that I could walk up to a very specific rock of interest, like this Forelle dolostone block at Stop #13!

Near the end of the route (this was an out-and-back) were two impressive blocks of the Fountain Arkose that tumbled down the side of the mountain. This one is resting on its side, which is why the bedding is vertical.

Geology is awesome!

GC156EH – Old Kiln Trail was my favorite. After visiting NCAR, I had lunch and over-rehydrated. I had four hours to visit this, clean up, pick up a dessert, and drive to Ft. Collins to meet my friend. Officially, the requirements were to only visit two stops, but the further I went along, the more interesting the route became. As with the NCAR earthcache, I visited the entire route.

Between stops #2 and #3, I saw a large set of prairie dog mounds:

The critters were all over the place. Whenever the trail would lead me to a spot relatively close to the mound, one would lay across the top of the hole, keeping an eye on me. Occasionally, it’d chatter to other prairie dogs around the area, probably making editorial comments on my being a tourist. Occasionally, I’d come across a sign telling dog owners to not let their pets chase prairie dogs. (Curiously, I later saw a mini-dog try to take on a small herd of disinterested cows.)



The trail is called “Old Kiln” because there is… an old kiln:

Old Kiln near Four Mile Creek

This was believed to have been constructed in the 1880s and not a very efficient design. (There’s much more richer text by Dr. Hirschfield.)

Organic-rich mudstones are made from swamp deposits and fossil plant roots. Imagine Colorado being on a flood plain!

Stop #10 had this interesting cross-bedded sandstone in the Morrison Formation.

The culmination of the out-and-back tour was being able to see this exposed fault. From here, the return trek is forward through time, with improved perspective.

Finger-pointing!

I had some customer visits scheduled in Wichita last week. On the first appointment, I’d budgeted a lot more time than I actually used. Since I’ve never been to Kansas before, I set out to do some late-afternoon exploring. The most intriguing thing I could come up with was to visit the Underground Salt Museum.

For some background, set the Wayback Machine to 2002, when I was at The World’s Largest Online Retailer, trying to come up with product-related trivia questions. In the process of researching questions to refer to Mark Kurlansky’s book, “Salt: A World History”, I learned about the size of salt reserves in Kansas. Now, I had an opportunity to see first-hand the only one of its type in the western hemisphere.

Dude, I’m so there!

The museum web site recommends reservations, but I just showed up and bet that traveling alone, late afternoon, they’d be able to squeeze me in. If not, the Kansas Cosmosphere was only a few miles away.

Cha-ching, a tour was starting in 10 minutes! While waiting, I picked up a geocache under the base of a lamp post in the parking lot. It would have been much cooler if they arranged to put an ammo box down in the mine. Try using your GPS on that one, buddy!

There were only three of us on the tour, but that didn’t stop the volunteer from going through the rigmarole of mine safety. Not only would we be wearing hard hats, we’d also don a device that — don’t pull the tab off unless it’s an emergency, Jim — converted carbon monoxide to bacon-scented carbon dioxide. Okay, I made up the bacon-scented part.

She helpfully added that the devices had never been needed in the history of the mine, but Just In Case Something Happens, here’s a video demo. It was a lot like the whole oxygen bag deploying from overhead schtick, until the warning that the heat from the chemical scrubbing process would could burn your lips. Huh. At least the seat cushion floatation devices have only smelly passenger butt odor.

Shaft – can you dig it?

In a minute and a half, the elevator took us 650 feet down. The abject darkness was disorienting. When the door opened, we were in an antechamber with electric carts. Its ambiance was like my study, only without the risk of stepping on bicycling, geocaching, camping and photography crap strewn on the floor.

Where are the Star Trek posters?

A lot of space has been mined out, leading to some enterprising opportunities. The most obvious is secure storage for valuable records and artifacts – the temperature and humidity are constant, and there are only three ways in.

Movie prop from Twister

A less obvious use is as a meeting facility. (Bear with me here…) Participants won’t have the temptation of constantly checking email or web surfing on their Crackberries and iPhones because those devices don’t work through 605′ of earth. The marketers realized that execs aren’t going to want to wear hardhats for eight-hour strategy planning sessions, so extra effort has been made in providing a protective, higher ceiling, making grooves in the shale/salt mixture for integrity (according to our guide).

A special tool is needed to do this grooved ceiling. Speaking of tools, our guide also mentioned that getting equipment down here is tricky – it all has to be disassembled into elevator-sized chunks, hauled down, then reassembled. When equipment breaks, they just scoot it to an unused area of the cave.

I mused this would be a great way to mess with future archaeologists who might find something like this:

and formulate a story of how the subterranean farmers grew hops for use in their magma celebration rituals. Or see this:

and conjecture it’s some kind of, um, medical device. Or for harvesting flying uni-clams guarding the Burns Mansion.

And, finally, the alter where the underground dwellers sacrificed hops and expired uni-clams to the Great Mole Hunt deity:

In one of the chambers, we were given an opportunity to take home a souvenir piece of rock salt. I picked up this palm-sized hunk because it shows the salt-pepper layering well. The dark layers are really shale, not pepper. It didn’t survive the trip back.

The end of the guided tour let us off at … the gift shop and interpretive exhibits. It amused me to no end that the person working the register, some 650′ underground, was checking his Facebook page. So much for the underground meeting idea.

On the way out of town, I dropped by the Cosmosphere. Although it was closed, the outer area was fun to walk around, especially getting up close to the F-1 rocket engine:

Five of these powered the first stage of the Saturn V launching Apollo to the moon. One engine burned three tons of fuel and oxidizer each second for 167 seconds!

After my Friday afternoon appointment, I walked around Wichita. One of the more interesting areas was the Chester I. Lewis Reflection Square, a very tiny pocket park near a former Woolworth building.
This sculpture, The Lunch Counter was the most interesting, especially with the suggested tie-in to the Dockum Sit-Ins some 50 years prior. (Click on the photo for the backstory).

The Lunch Counter, by Georgia Gerber, downtown Wichita ]]> http://www.jimcarson.com/2009/clickety-click/feed/ 3