Work, Heat, Biking, Caching

We had a busy day at work on Friday My boss was intent on giving us the least amount of info and expecting us to provide the maximum amount of results...you know just a normal day! We managed to end with our heads above water. That meant that my colleague, who was on call, did not have to manage any issues left over from the day. He simply was to be in "reaction mode" until he went off call on Monday morning.

Earlier in the week I was given the movie "Equilibrium" to watch. While I liked the concept, the movie as a whole was terrible. I returned it promptly on Thursday evening. By Saturday, the man who let me borrow that gave me another one, "Gattaca". This one was much better although I am not much of an Ethan Hawke fan. Oddly enough, Equilibrium was rated "R" but there was no nudity (well none to speak of...there were side shots but no naughty bits were shown) and no language. It was rated "R" for violence. Gattaca was rated "PG-13" for language...the "F word" was uttered twice in typical European fashion.

Saturday I had to get up early since my wife was getting up early so I decided to go geocaching early...at 7:00 AM. I stayed out for about five hours and had a great time. I was even able to run a couple of errands while I was out. I grabbed a few harder ones but most of them were simple PnG's scattered in North Allen and South McKinney...areas I have cached very little or not at all in the past.

After I got back, entered in my finds, and cleaned up, I went over to a BiC's house to work on his wife's PC. It was the typical virus infection house call that I normally handle for them. Once I took care of that the PC was pretty much back to normal. The PC really could use a nuke and pave since their boys (who have since moved out) download and install a lot of garbage. I almost did it once before but I was able to salvage the machine without doing so. I am a little antsy about doing a nuke and pave because they have a lot of data on the machine that they do not back up and it is scattered everywhere on the HD. Finding it will be a challenge and I am sure I would be getting a ton of calls if anything went missing.

The virus/spyware scan took about 2 hours but it was thorough. I collected my modest fee (less than half of what The Geek Squad charged for a house call) and was given "Gattaca" to watch, providing I return it to the Blockbuster by the due date.

I went home and did some house work while my wife ran an errand or two and grabbed me some Taco Bell for dinner. I had just finished when she got back, so I put the things away and ate. After eating I watched Gattaca and went for a long walk with the dogs. I was not very tired so I went to read for a while until the last load of clothes that were in the dryer finished. Oh I also helped fold clothes and washed dishes before I went to bed.

Sunday was very typical early on (Sunday School and church). We started a new study on the book of Mark in our SS class and it looks like it will be pretty good. We were told that we would have a guest teacher once a month. I think ours is getting burned out.

After SS, we had our normal service sans the Praise and Worship band. Most of them were out of town so we had a guest band come in and lead. They were pretty good...young but good. They were all in college except for the lead singer and she is only a Junior in high school. Good set of pipes on her...she had great range.

After church my wife and I grabbed some Chinese food and then went home. She took a nap while I worked on my bike (I had two flats to change), then I went out on a 17 mile ride. I grabbed a cache while I was out but I had not originally intended to do that. I just happened to be checking the GPSr (I use it as a bike computer when I ride...very helpful!) and noticed a new one was only three miles away so I went for it. I am over 500 finds now and if this weekend is any indication I am really into a grove right now.

I got back (wishing I had taken some water with me) and downed a quart of water pretty quickly, but not so quick that it made me puke...that is a horrible feeling to be very thirsty, drink a lot of water and vomit. I have had it happen only once and that was enough.

I made a pizza for dinner and then after we ate I made a Braum's run to get some mile and ice cream. When I came back I started watching "Red Dragon", which is the prequel to "Silence of the Lambs". I did not realize I had seen it before until I got near the end. It was another Hulu.com special.

After the movie I grabbed a shower then hit the hay. Monday was going to arrive soon enough and I was going to need my sleep.

Mmmmmm...Ribs

My wife and I were invited over to our Care Group leader's house last night for a BBQ/Pool party. We asked if we could bring anything and we were told that at least one of the guest had a dietary restriction and asked if we would bring some grilled chicken. We were happy to oblige so we defrosted eight chicken breasts, marinated them in olive oil and vinegar/lemon juice, and put them on the grill. That is, after I went to get a replacement tank for the grill...we were out of propane!

We arrived on time (one of the last guests to arrive and we began to mingle. Most of the women stayed inside and the men congregated out by the grill. It is a man-fire thing you see. We chatted about work, weather, and BBQ when someone noticed all the scratches on my legs so I told them about geocaching. None of them seemed interested so I dropped the subject and moved on.

When the last guest had arrived and the ribs were finished, we gathered for the blessing of the food and started piling our plates full. I tend to eat smalled plates but refill them frequently rather than getting one big plate. I guess I want to pace myself and I also want to make sure that everyone gets something they want to eat. BTW, the food was pretty good. There was ribs, our chicken, some salads, and home made peach ice cream for dessert.

I chatted with a newer member of our church mostly and when he left I spoke with our new(ish) pastor. He is a likable guy...he is younger than me and he shows respect in that manner...even if I am spiritually his junior. I have to admire that. We talked about the Men's ministry some and about missions work before my wife and I left. I forgot my bible but I was too tired to go back and get it and so I had to read my PDA bible this morning. It was not the same translation but it worked out well enough.

All day long my sciatica did not give me any trouble. Then, later that evening it began to act up again. It was really bothing me this morning so I began to stretch and it started to feel better.

Well, I am working from home today (normal for me on Wed and Thur). It appears my colleague had only one major issue to contend with. That being the case the end of the week will be more challenging than the beginning was.

Joy.

Mixed Day

I played hooky from work yesterday (I have more vacation time than I know what to do with) and decided to, guess what, go GEOCACHING. Since the price of gasoline is over $4 a gallon (I have found it near $3.90 in a few places) my caching is very close and I tend to bike when I can. With that in mind I decided to attempt to finish up the Chisholm and Bluebonnet Trails in Plano, about 10 miles away. The day ended with mixed results.

I got up and prepped to get ready to go. My wife had an event with the women from church so me not being home all morning/early afternoon was not a big thing. I packed my geobag (backpack), got my bike ready, grabbed some bottled water, and headed out. First stop, to repair a cache that has been reported missing.

I arrive at the park to replace the cache but I notice that the cache is in place, albeit damaged. I replace the container, tether it, and head out to the bike paths. I stop along the way to grab a cache or two that I have been meaning to get but just never seem to have time to stop. Well, today I had that time.

I arrived at the bike park around 8:00 AM and started out. I grabbed several and whiffed on a few. I ended up on the wrong side of the creek several times (Garmin was not overly for me) but overall enjoyed my trip...that is until I got not one but TWO flat tires. Trail riding has its hazards. Luckily I was on my way back and had only about .5 miles to go. I got back to my truck and put the bike in the back and headed home.

I checked my logs and realized that I was just 2 caches away from a milestone...500 finds. There was no way I was going home short of that goal so I headed towards the Plano Dog Park and headed out to find at least 2 more caches. I had to dissassemble my bike and put it inside the truck (popping a small hole in my otherwise immaculate headliner in the process) to keep it from getting stolen...come on this IS the Dallas Metro here! Flat tires or not, someone is going to steal it.

I started off and manged to grab to more caches, striking out on the others. I realize it is after 1:00 PM so I decided not to head to North Allen/South McKinney (where 5 new hides have been placed) and just head home.

I get home and log all my finds and post a note that "Shell Shock", my latest hide, has been repaired.

So my geocaching day was mixed. I set out after 21 hides and DNF'd on 9 of them. I missed another one but that was not my fault so I did not log it as a Did Not Find (it was a puzzle caches and after I solved it, I e-mailed the owner to verify the coords. He told me the coords I mailed hime were correct. He was wrong. I was off by one digit making the find impossible at that time).

So I found 12, DNF'd on 9 (the largest number of same day DNF's in my caching career). However, I did reach my 500th find milestone and managed to get a few harder (3's and 4's) caches along the way. I also managed to ge two fla tires and slightly damage the headliner of my truck, but I did get a lot of great exercise and had a very good time while I was out.

Oh, here is a breakdown (as of yesterday) of my caching stats:

Total: 501 finds

* Total days since first find: 289
* Overall find Rate: 1.74/day, 12.16/week
* Total days with a find: 130 (Every 2.2 days or 45.1% of your total days)
* Average finds per caching day: 3.85
* Best day: 5/10/08 - 20 finds (High for me, low for some people)
* Most consecutive days with a find: 10 from 9/27/07 to 10/06/07 (Right when I first started caching without a GPSr I was HUNGRY for caches!)
* Longest caching drought: 14 days from 9/13/07 to 9/26/07 (this was the two weeks after my first cache find in WV with friends and when I decided to give geocaching a try on my own...without a GPSr -- urban caching)
* Average total cache difficulty: 1.8 (most urban caches are usually 1 to 2 in difficulty)
* Average total terrain rating: 1.68 (most urban caches are usually 1 to 2 in terrain)
* Average physical cache difficulty: 1.81 (virtual caches are not included in this)
* Average physical terrain rating: 1.69 (Traditional, Multi, Unknown, Project APE, Letterbox)
* Approximate cache-to-cache distance: 3739.52 miles (how many miles I have walked, driven, and biked to get caches (not counting locationless caches)
* Active Caches: 473 of the caches you've found are still active (94.4%)
* Average log size: 43.8 words
* Biggest log: 256 words
* Shortest log: 3 words
* Number of one-word logs: 0

Okay, if geocaching and statistics bore you...you are prolly asleep by now!

Old School Geocaching

I spent some time on the Groundspeak forums today reading some interesting comments about what geocaching used to be like. I can't say that I relate to what the OP (original poster) feels now since I have been caching for just a little under a year but I can relate to some of the things that were written.

Geocaching has been around for about eight years or so. During that time a lot of people have come to enjoy the sport/hobby for many reasons. In the early years, it would appear that there were two types of cachers, those who loved the outdoors and wanted a diversion while they were out and geeks who wanted to get out from in front of the computer. Back then there were few geocaches and they were pretty far apart. There were few small containers and even less micros. A geocache hider placed a hide out in the woods, hidden and loaded with goodies.

As time marched on, the types of cachers and caches has changed. As more homes are built, the amount of wooded areas to hide caches diminishes. A lot of old school cachers have trouble adjusting to the change.

Another thing to understand is that the number of geocachers has increased drastically now that GPSr's are so readily available at a reasonable price. At one time the only people who had them were outdoorsmen: hikers, boaters, hunters, and campers. Now most new cars have a GPSr option and the handheld units are more and more affordable. The bigger anything gets the more it evolves. Since a large number of people who geocache would rather not go venturing off into the woods, a large influx of smaller urban caches has materialized. This has changed the way some people look at the sport/hobby.

With the large number of urban caches available, a new breed of cachers has emerged. Many of those are "numbers" cachers...they seek as many caches as they can as often as they can. The numbers are what is important...so important that a web site has been created to help these people pull all kinds of stats from the caches they find.

Don't misunderstand me...I am a little tempted by the draw of seeing 1000 finds by my name (at the rate I seek caches that could be next summer) but I recently had an experience geocaching where the numbers did not mean nearly as much as the thrill of the hunt. I logged about that a few weeks ago and I can still vividly recall most of the caches that me and my geocaching partners found. It is hard to do that with a ton of micro caches hidden under lamp post skirts.

But I cannot judge everyone by what I like. The sport/hobby of geocaching is pretty diverse. If you want to hunt ammo cans in the woods, they are there. If you want to crawl parking lots looking for LPC's, those are available as well. Like solving puzzles? There a puzzle caches all over the world. If you are a numbers person, you are going to have to go after the easier ones first and go after the harder ones when you have found all the caches close to you. I have to admit that is normally the way I cache, but I think I have seen the light. Even though I would love to have 1000 finds as soon as possible (I am not sure why this is such a magical number for me) I have found I get more out of the memorable caches than most of the micros.

For me personally the hunt is a lot of fun but it can be aggravating. I went out last night after I had finished working on a SiC's PC to look for a new (multi) cache that has been out for over a week and still remains unfound. When I got to ground zero I noticed a plethora of places to find stage one (which held the coords for stage two) but after 20 minutes of searching I came up empty. I have not been caching in over a week and I was itchin' to find one but I should have known that a cache that had been published for over a week and had not been found yet was not going to be a "walk in the park".

Right Now It Is 80 Degrees Outside (With A High of 97) ...

And the men's room at work (well, one of them) is so cold I cannot it. I bet it is 50 degrees in there. It is really sad to have to go outside in the summer time to warm up. My colleague is sitting with a jacket on our office...which is pretty cool but it is not as cold as the men's room is. I cannot wait until lunch time so I can go outside to get warm!

Not Exactly What I Expected

I survived my week of solo work. It was an interesting week as it was busy, but not many issues were high enough severity for me to manage them. I did a lot of fire fighting and that took up most of my time. I did have a couple of big issues (virus outbreak and a campus LAN outage) and they took a big chunk of my available time as well.

The reason that it did not go like I had expected was that I did not get any after hours calls at all last week. Everything was handled during business hours. I believe that has only happened once before to me. It is a trend I would love to see continue!

I ended my week much like I wanted to...resting. I was exhausted from a long solo week and then a physically demanding Saturday at church. I still do not feel 100% but I am recovering. I am pretty sure I have recovered enough to mow grass this evening. If not, I will get it tomorrow, but I am shooting for tonight. I still need to replace a defecting DVD/CD-ROM unit in friends computer and I may do that tonight instead...I guess I can call her and see which works better.

My sciatica has been acting up again so I have started my "Aleve therapy" again. So far, no improvement, but if I remember correctly it took a couple of days the last time this happened.

My wife and I went to a new BBQ joint on Sunday after church. While I will not go as far as they do, "the best BBQ in the world..." I will admit it was tasty. I need to go back when I am not quite so hungry to see what it tastes like then. The pulled pork was lean and mildly smoky. It came dry and I could add as much of any of the three sauces (mild, hot, or sweet...I mixed mild and sweet) as I wanted and that was nice. The sides were not really big but the price was fair. We will be back again...at least once.

Amazing Fire

Today was the men's breakfast and demolition day. The plan was to eat breakfast, have some fellowship, then go outside and demolish the old food pantry and burn it along with a lot of debris the church had collected over the past 12 months. After we got permission from the city we tossed a couple of matches on the pile and in about 30 seconds the pile was completely in flames.

I have never been next to a large fire before and I can say without reservations that the heat I felt was the most I had ever experienced. At one point my shirt (according to a laser thermometer) was 145 degrees and the shirt of one of the other trustees was 175. We were 30 feet away from the flames.

A couple of times small fires broke out away from the main blaze and the head trustee went over to put them. I went over to help him manhandle the hose but I just could not get as close as he did.

I have no idea how hot the fire was (the unit we used to test the temp topped out at 500 degrees) but at one point we pointed it at the ground a couple of feet from the blaze and it registered 475 degrees. Ouch.

We decided that next time we would not make pile quite so large. Had the wind picked up we would have lost control of that fire very quickly.

My nc6000 and Ubuntu 8.04

So far this has been a pretty painless conversion. The laptop functions well and I have been able to connect wireless to my home network. One thing I have not been able to figure out yet (maybe roaming mode is to blame) is why when I boot by laptop off the dock, it tries to connect to my neighbors wireless access point instead of mine. I had to turn off roaming to get my network connection (secure) working but once I did, I turned it back on and it works pretty well...all except trying to connect to the wrong access point. Easy enough to change but annoying nonetheless.

The other thing that I was used to doing on the laptop when it ran XP was pulling straight off the dock and letting it go to wireless mode..maybe having to force an IP change. With Linux (at least Ubuntu 8.04) I get a blank screen when I pull the laptop off the docking station, forcing me to reboot. Not a show stopper and I am sure there is a fix for it, but again...annoying.

The battery life has been good. I have two batteries and one was only giving me an hour or so so I swapped it back to the older one and it seems to last a lot longer. I have used it for over an hour and the battery meter still shows at least an hour left. Two hours for me is a gift!

I really have not put the laptop through too much of a test since it I do not want to store data on it but all the apps I need daily are working. I still wished it was easy to connect my Garmin to Linux but it is not as user friendly as Windows so I will continue using that until a Linus program that "just works" is made available. Having my laptop to take caching would be an added treat. If something happens to it, no worries because it has already been written off!

Quality, Not Quantity

On day three of my work at home week I got pummeled. It was not the number of calls...it was the subject of them.

The first one had to do with the complex way our company images new client PC's. While I cannot go into detail for legal reasons, let us just say that it involves lots of people when something goes wrong: LAN, WAN, Server, PC techs, and DBA's. Well, yesterday this broke and it was a mess to sort through. Actually it is still a mess. Right now the case is with the LAN provider of our customer to check the firewall logs. I have given them 3 megs of local logs to sort through.

The next issue is also still ongoing. For what ever reason, a seven year old virus reared its ugly head and kept me stepping and fetching for hours. The worst part was that there were two separate issues that were lumped together. While this does not happen often, when it does it causes chaos.

Now most of the time the end user is the one who makes the faulty assumption. We get a call for a problem after a similar problem has been opened. Our help desk gets the call and asks for info and then the customer describes the current issue perfectly...so the HD adds this person to the master ticket. When the initial issue is resolved, the master is closed and all the child tickets get closed along with it. Then the end user calls back and tells us the issue is not resolved. When we look into the issue more closely, we see the end user had a completely different issue and we need to start from scratch...lots of time wasted.

This time the customer did their best to explain the difference but the HD was so slammed with calls that they were deaf to what the customer was saying. It was not until about halfway through the day and after a couple of hot calls to me did the difference become clear. Once I realized the error, we got teams working on the second issue, which was the AV software in one of our Latin American countries was corrupted on several machines, causing the rash of calls.

I dealt with these two issues until about 10 PM, then I went to bed. I got up at 5:00 AM and started working at 6:00 AM getting caught up on e-mail. It looks like it could be a slower day if all we have is fallout from this latest rash of issues. If we get many new issues, I am toast.

I tend to gauge my workload by the numbe of cases Europe gets. They have had it light so far...maybe that will bode well for me and my day.

I am praying that things will go well up to and including the weekend. I have a lot to do if work allows it: Meat and Movie night at Paul's place (BBQ and a war movie night for the boyz) on Friday night, Men's breakfast and demolition of the food pantry at church on Saturday, and Sunday school and church service on Sunday...you know, a typical weekend sans the geocaching!

Blog Updates

I have added a few photos to some recent posts (Dogman and New Friends on the Trail) for your viewing pleasure. Here are a few to make you smile:

Iraq Fotomart

Texas Horseshoes

Dogman

That should be my new nickname. We have been getting a lot of requests to pet sit the past 6 months or so.

The first was Jazzy, a very exuberant Yellow Lab (3 years old) that was pure torture to watch because she is so hyper. If we do not sit for her again I won't complain.

Mickey and Mary asked me to stay at their house and sit their three mini poodles about a year ago. That was easy. Those were the best dogs to watch since I was not in my house but their's.


The next was Kelsey (above), a mix that I cannot quite determine just by looking at her. She has a Pit Bull look to her only she is trimmer, not as wide or bulky. At eight years old she is highly energetic and loves to play. She sat in my office a bigger share of the week on the days I was working from home.

Monday my wife went out with Mickey's wife Mary and instead of leaving the newest member of her dog family at home, she brought Twinkie her and I got to watch her. Twinkie is a good dog bug has never been kept outside of M&M's house so she just sat by the door and waited for Mary to come back. My wife and Mary were gone for about three hours so it was not too bad.

Yesterday Kelsey's owner asked if we could watch her while she went to Las Vegas. We did not mind but it always seems we get these dog sitting gigs when I am on call.

Oh, I did forget one other time we pet sat. The property manager at church got his little girl a dog from the animal shelter for Christmas but did not have anyplace to keep it until he was ready to give it to her. He asked my wife and my wife asked me. I was okay with that but little did I know we were in for hell week. That dog (part Border Collie and part Energizer Bunny) had not stop energy, hated to be in the crate (whining all night long) and could jump over the dog fence we had that pinned her up in the kitchen. That was a very long three days.

People trust me and my wife to pet sit. We treat dogs better than a lot of people treat their kids and our church family knows this. Too bad we don't make any money off of it. If we charged HALF what kennels charged we could make a good second income.

Of Wind and Uninterrupted Meetings

It was an interesting day Tuesday. It was my second day of working at home while my colleague is on vacation and it was also a very gloomy day in regards to weather.

My wife got up and prepared to get some of the shrubs trimmed back (she does a much better job of making them look neat than I do). She had not been out too long when I noticed the sky was beginning to turn dark in the northwest. She worked a little while longer then the rain hit and she was just able to get the supplies and herself inside before the sky broke open.

The rain and wind did not last long but the power flickered a few times. Working from home connected to the corporate network when the power fails is scary since I work on a hotline and can be called at any minute. Fortunately no calls came in during the power outages, brief as they were.

The sky cleared up and my wife was preparing to go out again when it started raining for the second time. She just sighed and decided that trimming the already overgrown shrubs would just have to wait.

The rest of the day was quiet for me, work-wise. I got one call that was not an emergency and my buddy Blockhead called about 6:00 PM to chat. After chatting with him for a while I told him good bye. I had a church meeting to go to and needed to get ready.

The meeting went well. I did get a call during that time but it was from a member of our church and not work. After the meeting I called Carol back and found out she was having PC issues...more specifically her CD/DVD-ROM stopped working. I stopped by on my way home from the meeting to make sure it was not a loose connection but it was not. The PC recognizes the unit but the unit will not open nor will it read a CD once you open the door with the old tech trick using a paperclip. "I think she is dead, Kyeptin". She asked me if I would replace it for her and I told her I would but I would have to wait until I was off call. No money to be made on that one since the woman just recently retired and is having trouble paying for insurance since she cannot get Medicare yet. Oh well, I don't mind.

Well, That Was Easy Enough

I decided to go ahead and wipe my old work laptop (HP nc6000) and load Ubuntu Linux 8.04 on it. I expected problems but oddly enough it went pretty smoothly. I had read articles about how people had trouble with the wireless lan settings and drivers but as soon as I turned off the auto mode, it worked like a charm. But I am getting ahead of myself.

I copied over the "My Documents" folder to my external hard drive and then rebooted the laptop with the Ubuntu CD in the drive. It took about 5-6 minutes to boot, giving me an odd error (Buffer I/O error on fd0) along the way, but it still booted up into the desktop and within 40 minutes I had a fully updated laptop. 10 minutes later I had wifi working. I had the same issues with another HP laptop a couple of years ago. It seems that network manager conflicts and if you turn it off, wireless works very well.

Looks like I have a new toy for a while.

Los'fer Words

I have been sitting on this one and I am sure it will stir up a hornet's nest of mail and comments but it is on my mind and my heart.

Last Friday my boss and I (a former divinity student and active member of the Episcopal Church of the United States dropped a bombshell on me. He does not believe that Jesus Christ was resurrected. He said something about that Jesus was the pinnacle of man and he died a horrible death, but he was not raised from the dead. We were just getting into this when he had to leave for a meeting. I wish he would have given me more time but maybe God has other plans for this.

All I can say is, "wow". I cannot wrap my head around the concept of a Christian not believing in the Deity of Christ. Why attend a Christian church if you do not believe in one of tenets of the faith?

In my days before I accepted Jesus and my personal savior, I struggled with the Trinity. I had no problem believing in God, but I had problems with personifying him. I cannot imaging a person going to Divinity school and graduating a non-believer. That just boggles my mind. So much so that I have no words for it.

I guess I need to pray for my boss.

Last Ride

I start house arrest (on call) tonight but before I am officially on call, I have to work all day solo. Actually I will be working all week solo since my colleague/TL is enjoying a week of camping with his family. I hope he has a good time. For me, I hope that I do not have a repeat of the last time I worked solo and was on call at the same time...it was rather brutal. I also hope that last weeks burst of work was just a one time event. We were busier last week than we had been the previous three weeks combined.

To drown my upcoming misery (I am so not looking forward to be tethered to my mobile for the next 168 hours) I went on a 16.6 mile round trip bike ride to grab a geocache from the other side of town. The things I do for my addiction. I even have a couple battle scars to remind me of this last ride for a while.

Well, there is one good thing about working solo and being on call together. My boss said it was okay to work from home this week. Not only do I save a lot of gas this week but I can wear shorts everyday to "work".

I am exaggerating a bit on how bad this will be. I am not saying that it will be a walk in the park, but the perks of this week almost outweigh the negatives. Now I have a couple of places I need to go this week. I have an important church meeting on Tuesday and "the boyz" are having a little get together at PapKilo's place for a little "Meat and Movie" night. All the guys are ex-military except me and they love a good war film. We usually grill out a huge mess of brats, ribs, and or steaks, kick the women folk out, and watch war movies. It has been a year since out last one and we are long over due for another. Being on call could impact them both but I think I can get Jose to cover for me on call Tuesday. He does the job I do only he is based in Mexico. He just got off the on call rotation but he may take the on call for a couple of hours while I am at the meeting.

New Friends On The Trail

I had a very good Saturday. I went geocaching (big surprise) with one of the more respected cachers in the area, AllenMabry. Allen liked going after more difficult hides and had about 15 or so he wanted to grab in Garland. So out plan was to meet up at Lottie Watson Park and grab the two caches there, then move on to others in the area. I had not cached Garland before so I was a little unsure of the styles of the hiders but it was all good. As matter of fact I managed to spot over 50% of the caches before my partner did. But to tell the whole story, I would not have attempted many of these solo. They were hard, in difficult locations and out of my normal caching zone.

We started off by meeting a father and son team saintmain and Travasours to knock out three hides early then Allen and I moved on and grabbed 11 more. I started the day off early and grabbed one along the way (Talley Ho!) to the park. It was one that has been a thorn in my side for quite some time and I was glad to finally knock it out.

"Did Bonnie and Clyde Drive a Bel Air?"

Baby Copperhead (caching has its dangers)

Good craftsmanship on this one

All in all I grabbed 15 caches...one was a 3/3 (out of a 5/5) and I managed to spot both parts of that multi-stage before Allen did. That really boosted my confidence quite a bit. We were out for about eight hours before my wife called and reminded me that I needed to ge back home. She was laughing and said that I was regressing back to my childhood years when I used to run the woods all day and come home sweaty and tired at supper time. I think she was right!

I got home and cleaned up, eating a burger and fries from one of the best places around here to get a burger, Scotty P's. After that I entered all my finds (pics and logs/notes) on to the geocaching web site. With 15 finds it took a while but it was worth it. I am just 12 hides away from 500 finds but I will not be getting any next week since I am on house arrest and my office mate is on vacation. so 24 hours a day for seven days I am it. I hope to plan a nice outing to get my 500th hide in a couple of weeks. Until then I hope to grab a few on the way home from work to pad my numbers. I just need to find a hide worth of number 500. None of my other milestones have been very memorable except one and that was hide number 200. It has taken me 3/4 of a year to get 500...I was hoping for 1000 but when you have a life it is hard to take time out to grab that many caches in 12 months. Getting 1000 finds in 365 days is 2.7 per day and I am averaging 1.7 per day. Not bad and to be honest it is not about how many but how memorable they are and how much you enjoy them.

What Are We Going To Do?

I am caught in a bit of a dilemma. The price of gasoline is $4/gallon and I drive a truck with a v8 that gets 15 mpg in the city (which is the only kind of driving I do). A hybrid would save me money in gas by doubling or even tripling my mpg, but my truck is paid for.

Mathematically, it makes no sense to buy a more efficient car. I work from home 2 days a week and only put about 150 miles per week on my truck...using 10 gallons of gas per week, 40 gallons per month. That equates to $160 a month in gas with no vehicle payment. If I purchased a new fuel efficient vehicle, I would have a payment of at least $300 and use about $55 a month in gas, if I continued to drive the exact same way. That would be $355 a month until the car was paid off (lets just say 5 years).

If I keep my truck, I am using $160 a month in gas. Now my new car, if I bought it, would not begin to pay for itself until after the vehicle was paid off. After that, assuming the price of gas stays static, I save $105 a month. That is $1260 a year in gas savings, AFTER the vehicle is paid off. Considering that I would be spending more than twice in car payment and gasoline the first 5 years of car ownership, I would have to have the car more than 10 years to start breaking even. The real savings would be if I drove a lot more but my wife and I have adjusted to driving less each week and it has not been a real hassle. I bike more and walk more than I did and I actually feel better, although I am a lot sweatier in the summertime.

I would like to hear your opinions on the subject. Are you in a similar situation?

The Truth Project

Out church has been offering the small group series "The Truth Project". It was created by Focus on the Family and even though I am not a huge fan of that group, this is a very good series.

During the summer, our small groups officially take the summer off. Many of us are saddened by this so we were thrilled when the church decided to have this in our sanctuary every Thursday night.

Del Tackett is an excellent presenter and speaker. His comments are thought provoking and insightful. This is not a fluff series...you have to think. Maybe that is why I have enjoyed the first two parts so far.

Back On The Bike

I have been trying to get in a few miles each night (that I am not obligated to something else) on my 10 year old Trek 930 hybrid mountain bike. Saturday was 15 miles, Sunday 11, Tuesday 6, and Wednesday 10. Monday I had a Trustee meeting at church, and today I have The Truth Project to attend. Friday I will most likely be mowing grass so I can cache on Saturday and Sunday will be the next day that I could possibly put any miles on my bike. And of course I am on call (and working by myself) next week so no chance at all I will be biking then. However, at least I am on the thing.

Yes, I have an ulterior motive. While getting exercise and losing weight are good, I really have been using my biking to grab or place caches that are close by when I can. The price of gas has really put a crimp on my caching plans!

Speaking of biking and caching, I grabbed one last night near the CommColl that is abut 5 miles away. It was a puzzle cache that was straight forward, but due to a small detail, I was incorrect on solving it. I did manage to solve it and get confirmation that the coords were correct. Armed with that info, I rode to CCCC - Spring Creek Campus to grab "Presidents Day".

When I got there the grounds had been mowed (this is a wooded area with weeds) and this made getting closer to GZ (Ground Zero) much easier. When I got to GZ, I scoured the area for the prize but could not find it. I then saw something unusual on the ground that turned out to be part of the camo used on the hide. Realizing that the cache had fallen from its hiding place onto the ground, the mower must have run it over and torn it up. I evetually (20 minutes later) found the container mostly intact and returned it to a likely hiding spot. A hard find even with the lack of camo since I expected it to be one area and it was 20+ feet away in another.

Feast Week

It is still early Wednesday and so far at work we have been busier this week than we have the previous two weeks combined. Looks like a long week. Part of the reason is a new guy in Latin America who is our contact. He calls us for lots of issues (many of which we do not handle) and he wants to be safe rather than sorry. I do not blame him. He has called me twice for the same issue but that is not a major issue. He is learning!

I hope that this week ends the feasting. My office mate/colleague is on vacation next week and I am flying solo as well as on call. The few times this has happened in the past have been really hard. The last time I did that to him he had it mostly easy.

REQ: Help From A Palm PDA Guru

*** Update***

Not that I did anything differently (other than installing apps one at at time) but I was able to get my wife's PDA working again although the file transfers are horribly slow, even when adjusting the ports to the maximum speed allowed. Go figure.

I have researched and found a few answers but nothing is working 100%.

My wife and I have Palm based PDA's. I have a Tungsten E and she has my old Palm Vx. Don't laugh...it fits her needs quite well. We have one PC that we Hotsync to, using Palm Desktop 4.1.4 (with two separate profiles). Both have been sync'd recently. My PDA syncs fine, no problems what so ever. My wife's PDA however is having issues.

I first noticed that the digitizer was off so I tried to manually correct it but I cannot get the pen to line up well enough. I installed an app that was supposed to help, but it did not. A soft reset also failed to correct the digitizer issue, so I did a hard reset and then sync'd the PC and the PDA. The exact same thing happened. I found another article that stated that Palm Desktop 4.1.X + has been known to cause issues with older Palm units even though Palm recommends that version. I tried the workaround and everything seemed to work...until I tried to install applications. Then the digitizer was off again and I cannot correct it. Every time I try to install software, the digitizer screws up beyond calibration.

My current workaround was to hard reset and sync the PDA with the PC. Now my wife has her data, but her PDA is nothing more than an address book and to do list...I cannot install any programs for her or the digitizer goes crazy.

I could try to install the original Palm Dekstop that came with her PDA but I am not sure how that will affect my PDA synching with the PC since mine is so much newer. I could synch mine with my work PC but then I would have to install some non-work software on that PC to use some apps (geocaching software) that I need.

I would like to get this fixed so if anyone who has had a Palm V or Vx has had this problem and knows how to fix it, please let me know.

Interesting E-mail

I received an e-mail from my sister whom I have not spoken with in some time. Not being one to air dirty laundry, let me just say that we do not see eye to eye on some issues and our lack of communication is mostly my fault. I hope this can be corrected.

Now on to the email. My sis informs me that her husband's mom died Saturday night. In her words, the eldest son is taking it hard (he is an early teen), the youngest son (nine years old or so) doesn't understand, and her husband is numb. While my sister has been baptized she has not been very firm in her faith and her husband, well...let's just say he has no use for my religious views and he and I tend to differ on a lot of things. Nonetheless, I am praying for peace for him and his family.

In the email my sister informs me that she will be in touch soon...a promising sign. I look forward to hearing from her.

After reading the e-mail, I called my mom to talk with her and we chatted about the lost. The woman and mom live just a few houses from each other and they knew each other. Mom is not sure about the woman's faith but she is going to talk to family about it. It would be a pity if she died an unbeliever.

After we talked about that, mom informs me that there was some flooding in several counties where she lives. She ended up with 3.5 feet of water in her basement and a lot of items were ruined. Now one big blessing is that none of the "expensive" items like her washer, dryer, furnace or hot water heater were damaged as far as she and the handyman she uses can tell. She did have a lot of water damage to some items (including her chest freezer and all the food that was in it), but most of it was non-essentials junk she refuses to throw away. This may be a blessing in disguise.

By the way, she did not have flood insurance. Her choice. Now she will just have to live with that. Add another person to my prayer list.

Back Into BIking

I made the conscious decision to get back into biking since the price of gasoline is now $4.00 a gallon. Biking to work is out of the question but I am going to try to bike as much as possible when the weather permits. Needless to say I am going to be a sweaty man this summer.

Saturday I did my chores around the house and decided to bike parts of the Chisholm and Blue Bonnnet Trail while geocaching. I have the bike mount for my GPSr and this would be my first test with it. Not only was it successful, I also was able to gain info from my trip that I normally would not have gotten.

For example, I biked 15.5 miles on Saturday, averaging about 9 miles an hour. On Sunday I biked (but not geocached) 11 miles averaging 10.2 miles an hour. The GPSr and the bike mount have been helpful while biking. Not only do I have maps but I can get trip info as well.

Saturday's geocaching expedition was a partial bust, due to a miscommunication with my wife (who is stressed because of the physical issues she has been having) so I only nabbed eight on my trip out. I had 2o on the radar and I knew that 4-5 of them would be a waste of time, so I could have gotten 16 and actually nabbed half that number. The good news is that I got over 15 miles in on my bike.

Sunday I biked "The Green Belt" in Allen. The Green Belt is the wooded area that follows the creeks and stream in the area I live in. I am not sure how many miles that I was unable to bike...it is not contiguous and you have to ride on the road to get to parts of it so I just focused on what I could get to easily which was about 11 miles or so.

When I got back from both trips I was a sweaty mess. I am hoping that my biking will help me burn off some of the extra weight I have been gaining. It helps that I love to bike.

OUCH!

Results from UFC 85, "Bedlam"

Main Card Results:

• Fabricio Werdum def. Brandon Vera via TKO at 4:40 of round one
• Thales Leites def. Nate Marquardt via split decision
• Mike Swick def. Marcus Davis via unanimous decision
• Michael Bisping def. Jason Day via TKO at 3:42 of round one
• Thiago Alves def. Matt Hughes via TKO at 1:02 of round two

Undercard Results:

• Antoni Hardonk def. Eddie Sanchez via TKO at 4:15 of round two
• Paul Taylor def. Jess Liaudin via split decision
• Luiz Cane def. Jason Lambert via TKO at 2:07 of round one
• Kevin Burns def. Roan Carneiro via submission (triangle choke) at 2:53 of round two
• Matt Wiman def. Thiago Tavares via TKO at 1:57 of round two
• Martin Kampmann def. Jorge Rivera via submission (guillotine choke) at 2:44 of round one

None of my favorites won. Glad I am not a betting man. I take that back, I do like Hardonk better than Sanchez.

Geocaching Software / Recycling PC's

Since there is little Geocaching software available for Linux (such a shame!) I have been spending a lot more time on my Windows partition of my PC. Of course now that it is reloaded and I have NOT taken SP3, it runs great.

I have installed "Cachemate" on my PDA and I have to say that as a Geocaching DB program, it works well. I have pretty much figured it out and have about 50 or so caches in various catagories (by city) in it already. I spent the better part of the afternoon doing that while working from home.

The other part of that time was spent downloading and installing PC based Geocaching software. I am still not sure I really need it but one piece has been helpful. "Cachemagnet" takes gpx files downloaded from geocaching.com and allows you to manipulate them and also pull sat maps from the coords, all while having the cache notes in the same program. My geocaching buddies in WV (Knightmare_Duck and Rycherox) swear by GSAK, but I have not played with that one yet. it is an all in one wonder tool that many geocachers like to use. It is shareware but it only costs $25.00 so for them it may be worth it. Right now the only thing I need is something to transfer the .gpx files to my PDA and EasyGPS does that well enough and is free. I think CacheMagnet will do that as well and it also has maps with the option to print them. That kinda defeats the purpose of using a PDA but some people just have to have paper. I am trying to break that habit.

I am anxious to try this style of caching and if all goes well I will nab one or two on the way home from work tomorrow.

I did a little spring cleaning in the closet in my home office today. I got rid of a box full of 1.44 floppies as well as the really old PC work let me borrow. I had forgotten that I had two if them and only returned on. Both were in the 650 mhz range and not worth much but they both ran Linux well enough. I have been carrying around 2 laptops for more than a week now since we have been given new Vista laptops. I am still not comfortable with Vista as an OS since a lot of things do not work as expected (Citrix will not work with IE7...it wants to keep launching Java...does anyone know how to fix this? It works in Firefox perfectly but IE is the "browser of choice" at work). I like the idea of having a back up. I have not had to use it yet and as the days and weeks go by, the chances of me having to have to use it grow slimmer and that is a good thing. One, I will not have to carry two laptops and accessories around and two, I can re-roll the old laptop and use it as a sandbox at home.

I still have a lot more to clean out from the closet but I will get there. Most if not all of my PC junk is in two large totes with one 1GHZ machine on the floor collecting dust. I would use it as a server but it is incredibly noisy. I think it has either Debian or Ubuntu loaded on it.

It Feels Like The Story Of The Three Little Pigs

The wind has been blowing very hard for three days. It has blown down fences and made cycling almost impossible. The windows constantly rattle and it is beginning to get annoying. I hope the meteorologists are correct and it will cease tomorrow. I am tired of picking up blowing litter.

Placing Caches

Being a relatively new geocacher (less than a year / 500 finds) I am not expected to be a proliferate cache hider. I am expected to find as many as I can and learn from what I have found so I can make the caching community a better place. I am doing that.

There are so many different types of caches and one of the overwhelming things about placing you first cache is, "Which type and where?". Location should dictate what kind of hide you use, simply because you should try to use the largest container an area will accommodate without being easily found. Since the DFW area is not heavily wooded, small, micro, and even nano hides are popular.

My first hide was considered a "small" and is still in action. I took a heavy plastic bowl with a snap on lid (similar to a cool whip bowl only thicker) and camo'd it with black tape (it was brightly colored so tape was needed to help it blend in). I used black tape because I did not know where to get camo or olive drab tape until much later. I found a grea location and hid it, carefully recording the coordinates my borrowed GPSr was reporting. They were off a bit, but in the end that did not matter. You are allowed a margin of error of 15 feet or so.

Placing caches can be expensive if you feel the need to buy containers instead of recycling them. Now to be honest, the container of choice, a 30 or 50 cal ammo can, is hard to beat. It can take a pounding and remain watertight for years. Ammo cans are sort of the "holy grail" for geocachers. Obiously you cannot hide an ammo can everywhere, so that is where the other sized caches come in. However you can use household items in lieu of an ammo can. Any watertight plastic container will work for a couple of years. I have a 5 gallon water resistent plastic bucket and lid that I hope to hide sometime...I just have to paint it to match the wooded area where I hide it.

Hiding caches can also be expensive if you are trying to make them elaborate. My friend Will has a couple that he spent a lot of time and money on in an effort to make them memorable. Fancy connectors, magnets, fishing leaders (to anchor small caches to keep them from moving), reflectors (for night caches...a challenge!), camo tape (just buy it in the painting department at Wal-Mart) glue, and artificial greenery all can drive up the cost of your cache. Add to that prizes to stock your cache with and you can have a rather pricey hobby. I have found new caches with DVD's, CD's software, camera's, and MP3 players in them, however this is not the norm. Most people will only put those things in caches if they have them lying around and they are not using them.

Now think about the cost of one cache and multiply that by the tens or hundreds that some people place. Personally, I have a goal of placing 5% of the total of finds I have. Right now I have 25 hides of which 23 are current. The other two had to be archived due to some conflicts over placement. I try to play fair.

As I have said before, I cache on the cheap. Most of my hides are "micros" (35 mm film canister sized) but I have a few small and medium sized ones as well. Most of my micros are pill bottles that have been camo'd to match their surroundings (that reminds me, I need to get some more camo tape). I have also used Altoid tins (in areas where water is not a big factor), large vitamin bottles, plastic coffee cans, plastic peanut butter jars, "beach tubes", and of course, 35 mm film canisters.

I have hidden them under bleachers, in lamp post skirts, tree boles, fences, guard rails, thick thorny bushes, under rocks, on electrical boxes, in picnic tables, under trash cans, under logs, and picnic shelters. I really like magnetic hides and have placed a few of them in the area.

Most of the "swag" (trade items) I have used is stuff I had lying around the house. Stickers, foreign money, magnets, fast food toys, and of course my signature item, 1980's cassette tapes. Those have been very popular with some of the cachers my age...sort of a blast from the past. I had at one time 200-300 or so but I have put them in almost every cache that will hold one IF I remember to bring them with me!

I love geocaching. I like to find them and I like to hide them. I enjoy the hunt, the sneaking around to grab one without a muggle seeing me, and I like the long hikes in the woods. It is an activity you can do solo (what I do most of the time) or with a group. You can do it in the daytime or at night, all year long. As a matter of fact, caching in the winter has some benefits...no Poison Ivy (or PI as it is known to cachers) or high weeds!

The World Is Ending

It must be...I am actually spending money. Not a lot mind you, but I am spending.

Mainly my spending has been centered around my geocaching hobby. Geocaching is a relatively cheap hobby, once you get a GPSr. However, like anything you can put some money into it and get more out of it or make it a tad easier. For example, my purchases:

Garmin GPSMAP 60Cx ($260) - While you can geocache without a GPSr unit (using Google Maps) it is a lot easier with a GPSr unit. BTW, I found my first 40 caches using Google Maps only. I still use Google Maps when I want to ge an overview of an area before I get there.

Bike mount for my GPSr ($20)- With the price of gasoline going up, I have been getting on my 10+ year old Trek 930 a lot more. Having the bike mount, while not necessary, help keeping butterfingers me from dropping my expensive unit on the pavement. Call it "insurance"

Premium Geocaching Membership ($30/year) - While this is not needed, you do get some features that the free membership does not offer, like custom cache queries e-mailed to you, access to members only caches (usually really nice ones!), online bookmarks, national tracking of stats, real time notification of newly published caches, and one I am dying to try out, "Caches along a route". This feature will allow you to put in two areas (lets say Dallas and Waco) and get a listing of all the caches along that route. Nice when you are day tripping or vacationing and want to incorporate some geocaching into the trip.

PDA (previously purchased) - Again, not needed because you can always print up the cache sheets and take them with you. The upside to using a PDA (if you have one) is that you are not wasting paper or ink. The downside is that you can damage your PDA on the trail if you drop it. The other plus to using paper is that if you have your notes on a clipboard, you look official and people (muggles) tend to leave you alone :) .

Software (varies) - What good is a computer or PDA without software? While there are free ways to get your cache sheets to your PDA (Windows or Palm), they are not as user friendly as the paid stuff. You know me...I am a freeware junkie. I won't pay for something unless I think it serves my purposes better than the free stuff. I am testing "Cachemate" for my Palm T|E and so far it looks like a winner. It is shareware but it only costs $8. It allows me to convert and export the geocaching gpx (and loc) files to my Palm and allows me to go paperless.

I do use a free app to send the gpx and loc files to my GPSr but it is limited on what it can do. I don't mind all that much since I only really need it to transfer the wapoints to my Garmin.

So it looks like my initial investment is about $318. Not bad, really. Now that does not count gasoline or any supplies that I may purchase when I make caches to hide (more on that in another post) but that is about all I have to spend. Most of the other stuff people have if they hike (pack, first aid kit, flashlight, etc) or if you only want to do urban caching, you don't need it.

Compare the cost of geocaching to any other hobby. If you golf, you know you spent more than $300 and you still have to pay green fees and buy new balls all the time. And if you scrapbook...well we all know that will get expensive very quickly! Looking back at my choices, I could have saved a few bucks and got a less expensive (they start at $100) unit, but I wanted two things...ruggedness and sensitivity...and this was the cheapest unit to offer both.

Saturday Fights

So far the week has been pretty good work wise. I realize it is only hump day but I am not complaining. Nothing major has come in although there have been issues that are frustrating...only because the powers that be do not seem to understand that if they want us to do our jobs properly we need INFORMATION. Sorry, Pointy Headed Boss, my crystal ball is in the shop.

The UFC is having a big event at the O2 arena in England this weekend. While a lot of "fans" are not excited about it, I am:

Thiago Alves vs. Matt Hughes - Old school versus new. Matt Hughes is on the decline but it would really be something to see him pound out (or submit) the Muoy Thai killer that Alves is. Alves is hungry so this ought to be good.


Michael Bisping vs. Jason Day - I know nothing about Jason Day, but I am hoping for an upset. I cannot stand Bisping.


Marcus Davis vs. Mike Swick - Two of my favorite fighters are finally going at it. Davis not only hits like a Mack truck, but he can submit as well. He can take a beating and is on a mega win streak. Swick is lightning fast and hits hard as well. However, he will be more dangerous on the ground as his "Swick-o-tine" choke is nearly legendary.


Thales Leites vs. Nate Marquardt - Not a lot to comment on...this should be a good old fashioned brawl.

Brandon Vera vs. Fabricio Werdum - I have seen Vera fight and he does it well. Muoy Thai...it's what's for dinner! That man has lethal knees. Werdum (pronounced similer to Ver-DOOM) better not stand with him. If he does, he is toast. If it goes to the ground, I expect Vera to start pounding and Verdum doing his best to submit him.

Martin Kampmann vs. Jorge Rivera - This one is tough. Both men have beaten quality fighters and both can hit hard. While I like Rivera better, I think Kampmann will take this one. His striking is a bit more crisp and even though Rivera beat Kendall Groves in January, I think will drop this one.

Thiago Tavares vs. Matt Wiman - I don't follow either fighter...and this is on the undercard so I will not see it anyway.

Luiz Cane vs. Jason Lambert - Undercard fight (I hope it makes it on TV). I don't follow Cane, but I have always enjoyed watching Lamber fight. He has fought some good fighters (and won) in the past, but lost his last match in January against Wilson Gouveia. He will be hungry because he does not want two losses in a row. I think he needs to work on his gut some (he looked very out of shape in January) and then the cardio will follow. He hits HARD so I hope Cane brings his iron jaw with him.


Kevin Burns vs. Roan Carneiro - Undercard and I don't follow these fighters.


Jess Liaudin vs. Paul Taylor - A couple of Londoners if I remember correctly. Those Brits can hit hard and are very scrappy. While I do not follow these fighters, I am guessing this will be a brawl.

Eddie Sanchez vs. Antoni Hardonk - I have not seen the "Manic Hispanic" (Sanchez) fight since his incredible loss to CroCop, but he has won his last two fights by TKO. Hardonk is a kickboxer and that style tends to frustrate Sanchez. I am going to say that Sanchez's chin and hard head keep him alive while he pounds on Hardonk.

I will most likely catch the videos the next day on mmalinker and youtube. I hope to catch the play by play on mmajunkie.

Weekend MMA

I did not get so see all of what I wanted to this weekend in regards to MMA (I had to resort to youtube.com, mmlinker.com, and rutube.ru) but I did see every match I wanted to see.

There were two big events over the weekend. EliteXC (which was aired on CBS) and the WEC (on Versus). There was only one fight I wanted to see on Versus but I am going to save that one for last.

Kimbo Slice def. James Thompson - EVERYONE had Kimbo taking out "The Collossus" early in round one... and I wa very glad to see it go beyond that. It showed the world that the Kimbo Hype Machine is just that...HYPE. Kimbo Slice is a product of marketing and the people pulling the strings are going to make as much money off of him as they can. He is in his mid-30's and a thug. He will never fight anyone who can beat him. While Thompson is not top 10 material, he showed the holes in Kimbo's game and anyone with half a brain could see it. Neither man had great cardio, but Kimbo SHOULD have been able to put Thompson and he didn't. Where was that glass chin James is known for? He took some real shots and came back for more. Had he been in better shape he would have beaten KS in the first round.

The fight was stopped after Kimbo threw a flurry of unanswered punches. Now what gets me is that Thompson never fell...the ref just stopped the fight.


Robbie Lawler vs. Scott Smith - I was looking forward to this fight more than any other on the card. Lawler hits like a Mack truck and Scott Smith ain't no slouch either. Now to be honest I was hoping Scott Smith would Superman punch Lawler into next week (I love watching old UFC vids of Lawler getting his butt kicked) but I knew that was not going to happen. Instead the fight was stopped when Lawler accidently poked Smith in the eye. Smith was not given his five minute recovery time and this fight, like the Kimbo-Thompson fight, was stopped early. What a shame.

Gina Carano def. Kaitlin Young - I have not seen this one yet. The only female MMA I have ever seen was on Bodog Fight and watching that made me feel a little...dirty. A lot of guys like watching chicks go at it, but I don't. I will watch it but I just have not had the time maybe later tonight.

Joey Villasenor def. Phil Baroni - I have disliked Phil "The New York Meatball" Baroni the minute I saw him in the UFC. He got beat then and he got beat the next time I saw him fight Shamrock. Guess what folds, "The New York Meatball" got his butt whooped again! He may hit hard but he has no style. I think people like to watch him lose.

Brett Rogers def. Jon Murphy - I knew nothing of eithe man but I was told Rogers was a beast. After this fight, I agree. Why don't we let Kimbo fight Rogers next?


Matt Makowski def. Nick Serra - I can't find this on online. I am interested in watching this because Nick Serra is Matt Serra's brother. If he acts like his brother it will be a pleasure to see him get whooped as well.

The WEC was on last night and the main event was a classic duel between old school and new. Urijah "The California Kid" Faber stood toe to toe with the one and only Jens "Little Evil" Pulver in a monumental five round slug fest. I am a Urijah Faber fan and was pleased to see him bash Pulver up a bit. My only surprise was that Jens hung in as long as he did. He took an incredible amount of punishment but he never backed down. The man has a warriors heart and I have to admire that even if I do not like him. It made for a very entertaining fight.

I thought Urijah looked a little funny with his hair in corn rows (like female MMA practioners do) but I guess when your hair is as long and full as his is, then you gotta do something. He is the WEC champ and has an incredible record in the WEC. IIRC, he has only been beaten once professionally and that was by a lightweight who currently fights in the UFC, Tyson Griffin. His record is 21 and 1.

Work Week Or Week End?

Well my work week was pretty non-eventful other than getting my two work laptops up and running but my weekend was pretty busy and fun.

Friday night my wife called while I was grabbing a cache on the way home and asked me if I wanted to go see the new Indiana Jones movie and I jumped at the chance, even thought tickets at night are $9 each. It was good to get out with my wife and hear her laugh...it is so infectious. We got home and ate some ice cream chatted and hit the sack.

Saturday morning after walking the dogs and having my coffee I headed over to Home Depot to get some supplies that I would be needing to clean and repair the gas grill and to change the oil in the lawn mower. After chatting with a couple of people in Home Deport about string trimmers and grill parts (they were going to buy the bad stuff, I steered them in the right direction), I cam home and tore the grill apart and soaked the inside and the racks with oven cleaner while I brushed the other parts. While the grill sat and the cleaner did its thing, I pulled out the mower and changed the oil, spilling a large part of it in the process. My driveway now has a large oil stain in it thanks to me knocking the oil reclamation container over....ARGH! Even with some of my wifes "secret" cleaner, it still did not come up so I (okay, we)have to live with it.

After the over cleaner had sat for a while I began to wipe it down and hose it off. While it is far from spotless, it is much better than it was. After replacing the old lava rock with ceramic briquets, I fired up the grill on high for 15-20 to season the briquets and make sure the burners lit. That is when I found out the igniter was not working (corrosion) so we just will use a grill lighter...a 10 year old grill is not worth buying one very year or two.

I was a mess (as you can imagine) so I got cleaned up and ate a quick lunch. One of the local geocaching gurus called me the day before and asked me if I wanted to go into Plano and grab some caches at nature preserve there on Saturday and since that worked into my plans I agreed.

At 1:15 PM IXkey shows up and we load my bike on the back of his Xterra and head into Plano. We had a really good time hiking and biking the trails (about 6 miles worth), grabbing 16 caches. Fun!

I got home and got cleaned up again, ate dinner and worked on my Sunday School lesson that I had to teach (James 5) and then watched a little TV that had been recorded (Battlestar Galactica and the season finale of Lost) before going to bed. I was very tired.

Sunday we had church as normal then we went to grab some lunch at a Chinese joint nearby. While the food was good, it was not as appealing as it usually is. The important thing is I got filled up...actually we both did. I had a couple of hours until our next activity so I figured I would vacuum the house. Since my wife is working on some of it (painting) I figured I would have trouble vacuuming around her work but I had no problems and was finished with a thorough job in 1.5 hours. Now it was time to go to a graduation party.

I felt kind bad about not spending more time talking to the grads but both of them (we attend a small church) were doing okay without me so I spent that time catching up with Jimmy and a few other people. After we caught up, the party was winding down so my wife and I stayed to clean up. That did not take long at all (we had a lot of help) and we were soon on our way home.

I fed the dogs while my wife prepped the tuna steaks for me to put on our freshly cleaned grill. I was not very hungry but I knew once the tuna starting sizzling that I would be. I chatted with my mom while I grilled (killing two birds with one stone) the fish and when the fish was a done I went into the office to finish my call.

After chatting with my mom for about an hour, I watched a few of Saturday's MMA matches and was kind of surprised at the outcome. I will be making a separate blog entry on that. I want to watch the matches again and then comment with a clear head.

As darkness began to fall, my wife said she wanted to walk "The Golden". I asked her if we could go to a park just north of us that had a night cache in it that I had not done yet and she agreed. about an hour later we can the cache in hand and a mile or more under our belts. It was a good hunt and a great walk. I have now completed my first night cache. Go me!

After we got home I logged my find and went to bed. It has been a long weekend and I am sure my week will be almost as long!