A tale of two computers

It was the best of days, it was the worst of days.

September 30, 2013, the day before a law goes into effect that would offer health care to many who do not have it now, a chance for hope and optimism.

Then too it was the day before, the rich and privileged who have all the health care they could want at very little cost tried to shut down the government rather than allow those poor folk access to the same care.

Walter's here

The finder

I am going to make a serious effort not to post too many pictures or incidents in our life together, but the first day gets a little attention.  We are training each other, or at least I am learning to read him and we have either had a happy coincidence or he has already picked up on one of the things I thought it would be most difficult to teach him.

I bought a string of bells that you hang from the doorknob where the dog goes out.  Then you train him to ring those bells with his nose when he wants to go.  A few times when we went out, I held his muzzle and moved it just enough the ring the bells, then opened the door immediately to let him out.  At 2 p.m. today, just about seven awake hours into our first day, he went over to the door, yelped once and then rang the bell.  I jumped to open the door quickly so he would get a response and out he went, and took care of some serious bathroom issues.  We'll see if it happens again.

DAY TWO, bit of an update:  I shouldn't have worried, this dog is smart.  Twice today I saw him sitting patiently by the rope of bells on the door waiting to go out.  While I was eating dinner, I heard the bells ring and sure enough there he was, waiting to go out, and when he did is was serious and fast.  Sort of a reverse Pavlov around here.  You have to wonder who's training whom.

Photo gallery

Fair winds, my friend

Last Saturday, a man who loomed large in my life died.  Since that time I have been struggling for the right words and they haven't come easily.  Today a friend asked me to read an editorial he wrote for the Anchorage Daily News and that opened the gate, I guess.  I wrote a message for the memorial page for Stan Stephens and am repeating it here.  There isn't enough room to go through 25 years of memories.  When I write on here about my time on the boats, most of that time was spent on Stan Stephens boats.  Here is what I wrote to his family:

It has taken me a while to absorb this news and I have been struggling for the right words to say.  Today a friend asked me to read an editorial about Stan planned for publication in the Anchorage Daily News and it gave me the push I needed, I guess.

Would you say the blush is off the rose?

So ....

Snowfall in late May.

June and July, close to warmest on record, several daily records broken

August, sun then rain, but no termination dust.

September: 

Wednesday 9/18, the lightest dusting of snow high on Pioneer Peak.

Friday 9/20  Snow down to the 4,000-foot level           

Monday 9/23  Snowing at ground level. (97 feet elevation)

Interpretation:  First, termination dust about a month later than usual.

Only three months all year with no snow, giving credibility to the old phrase "we have nine months of winter and three months of damn late in the fall."

I'm just sayin'

I don't need my iPad THAT much

This week the Federal Aviation Administration is considering relaxing rules for personal electronics aboard airplanes, principally to allow use of tablets and media players throughout flights. While I've found those rules to be inconvenient at times like the discovery that I can't continue reading my electronic book during takeoff like I could with good old paper ones. Still, I would favor keeping the restrictions in place, even only against the off chance that some machine some time could affect the airplane.

The reasoning is that I have experienced personal electronics affecting a navigational instrument. Fortunately it was on a boat and not in the air where it could have been more serious.

Arrgh, my ass; and then again in frustration

Here's a clip from the movie. He doesn't say it here, but you can hear it in his voice.

This past week America celebrated something called "Talk Like  a Pirate Day."  Apparently if you say "arrgh" enough times you sound like a pirate and you are supposed to say it a lot on talk-like-a-pirate day. In addition, you are supposed to be amused with how often you can work the sound into other words in puns and such. It really isn't that important but for some reason I find it incredibly irritating.

Bobby Driscoll as Jim Hawkins and Robert Newton
 as Long John Silver.  He also played the lead in
 "Blackbeard the Pirate" in 1948.

To begin with, who decided all pirates say "arrrgh?"  I doubt one of the most famous of them, Jean Laffite, ever said it.  A cultured Frenchman and a pirate, he circulated at the highest levels of New Orleans society and would surely have lost his welcome should a matriarch of that realm have offered him her arm and he responded with "arrgh."  I doubt the Barbary Pirates of Tripoli said it either, or the Somali pirates of today.  Heck, Jimmy Buffett didn't even say it in his lament "A Pirate Looks at 40."

Now, someone else my age might know where that exclamation came from, all of us who were scared to death by the pirates in the 1936 movie "Treasure Island" when we were kids in the 50s.

That movie starred Wallace Beery as Long John Silver who was prone to saying it as a corruption of the word "aye" meaning agreement and evolving into other meanings as the actor and director saw fit. All modern guesswork at how pirates spoke is based on an actor's interpretation of a fictional character.

A BIT OF A CORRECTION: Something about this reference nagged at me and I took another look at the movie.  What bothered me is the one that scared us in the 50s was in color and this one obviously is not.  I went back to Internet Movie Database and discovered a Disney version released in 1950 and that one was in color. I suspect that's the one that lingers in my memory.  In it Bobby Driscoll played Jim Hawkins and Robert Newton played Long John Silver. I guess now, he is the one I recall as the originator of the phrase.  Assuming this is the one, what can you expect from the memory of a kid who was all of eight years old when he saw it?  And, what can you say about making a mistake in a blog post but, "arrrrrgh?"

OK, with all that said, I guess it's tolerable for one day a year to let folks talk like what they think a pirate talked like.  The only thing to fix it would be to celebrate it as Wallace Beery or Robert Newton Day, or at worst Long John Silver Day, something that's not likely to happen.

So, time to let it go. That's all the arrrghument I want to put up anyway. It's just not that important.

Treasure Island

A very satisfying day, indeed

The mountain in the front yard: Pioneer Peak.

And, a beautiful fall day, too, the first clear sunshiny day in quite some time, perfect for one of those Alaska adventures. Snow on the mountain has been late this year.  Only Wednesday, when the sky cleared enough to see, there was just a sprinkle of white at the very peak. That's about a month late for termination dust.

Today when I looked up heading out the driveway, a good cover of snow looked like it came down to about the 4,000 foot level.  That mountain is 6,300 feet tall and it looks like the snow came down about one-third of the height.

In addition to the mountain here, for most of the trip I could see Mount McKinley resplendent in the sunshine as well; it is part of the scenery that makes life a little calmer the farther north I go.

I made a quick trip to the East Pole today to retrieve some items needed here, principal among them, the 16-pound maul I need to split the remaining huge rounds of birch.  With all the rain lately the trip got put off again and again while I tackled those rounds with a wedge and sledge hammer.  That takes about 20 or so licks just to make the first split, hardly an efficient way to do this, not to mention the wear and tear on arms and shoulders.

With the sun high in the sky I ventured onto the trail, which it turned out was not nearly as nice as the day. but the sun has a way of smoothing out the bumps. All told, 14 miles of mud,  standing water and deeply rutted, hard-packed mud. I have never bottomed out the four-wheeler more in one trip as I hit moguls, some I couldn't even see because they were covered by muddy water. The trail is taking a beating these days, what with someone running four-wheeler tours on it, and today I learned several people with cabins in the area are now using those raised, mud-bogger pickup trucks to go in and out.  They are much higher off the ground so when they spin their tires in the mud they dig deep enough to raise the center above four-wheeler level. At one point I came as close as I ever have to tipping over in one of those lakes. Thanks, neighbors.

I even stopped for a while to catch up with an old friend whom I hadn't seen in many years. He built his cabin a year before I built mine, 28 years ago. It seems like a much shorter time than that. We caught up for a few minutes and then went off in opposite directions to find more muddy lakes.

Despite the trail, I made it to the pole without too much trouble, though the machine and my Helly Hanson rain gear pants picked up a good coating of mud, not to mention the splashes on my face and glasses and just about everything else.

An hour on the trail and I was there, my one secure home in the world. I found everything I was looking for, including a blanket for Walter and even cut some firewood with the chainsaw. I had started cutting up a blowdown last time I was there and today finished the job. There's a nice pile of it now up the hill from the cabin where I can go get it with a sled once the snow flies.

Then, with all the needs satisfied in about an hour and a half, and the cabin checked out for any damage, there was none, back to the trail and the mud the blood and the beer, so to speak.  Funny how you get much more confident with the mud going out than you were coming in.

Then an easy drive home listening to softer music than usual, just feeling a sort of satisfaction with life after quite an upsetting week.

Here is a link to the Spot track for the trip.  The actual trail to the cabin is the short track off to the right at the north end.  It can be enlarged quite a bit. The longer curved track is the road trip involved. A click on any of the little flags will give a position for the signal at that moment. The black bubbles with a footprint are trail position signals sent at intervals automatically, the ones with the three curved lines are check-in points and the one toward the bottom with a text bubble in it is the message I send when I am leaving to say when I'm going and when I expect to be back. A click on any of the items in the list on the left makes the specific spot flash for a second.  The ones that say check, are times when I sent a message to my daughter that all was all right.  The ones that say track are signals sent at intervals while I am moving. That long straight line happened because I didn't start tracking until I got to the trail, so it gave a track straight from the house to the trail head as those were the only two signals sent during that part of the trip.  Some day this could all  become very important, but for now it is just fun to watch.  

Unfortunately I set it to post my check-ins on Twitter, so about every 10 items on my feed there is one that says:

"Tim Jones ‏‪@tjonesak

7h(ours ago)

‪http://fms.ws/DwmVd  Everything OK"

I need to do something about that. Giving that feed a look a little later, I discovered the link that is attached to the feed actually opens a map with that specific spot identified.  This particular one marks the trailhead. Maybe I can think of something a little more interesting to put into the message that shows up on Twitter.  I can't change it on the go; it has to be done on the computer ahead of time.

And a result:  With all that wrenching the four-wheeler around in the ruts and moguls of 14 miles of trail I am so stiff and sore, I doubt I'll be swinging that 16-pound maul any time soon.  Still a bit of physical soreness adds to the feeling of satisfaction after a good day in the woods.

Are you kidding me?

After the Newton shootings last December, the uproar over gun control led to the National Rifle Association spokesman calling for more guns.  Wayne LaPierre said we should arm teachers and have armed security guards in schools, essentially saying more guns would prevent more gun violence.  Yesterday we saw an example of how well that will work out.

Yesterday this guy at the Navy yard in Washington, D.C. began his rampage with a five-shot Remington shotgun. His first two victims were a police officer and a security guard; not sure if both were armed or not, but this guy took a pistol carried by one of them and continued shooting his way through Building 197 at the Washington Navy Yard.

What exactly does that say about more guns in places like schools. If a wacko like this can take down two professionals and then use their guns to continue shooting, what exactly is a teacher even with some training going to do against somebody like that?

Pounding your head against the whiskey bar

A facebook page I have followed for a while called "Whiskey and the morning after blog" is written by a fellow in Louisiana, not the bastion of liberal thinking in America.  Daily he takes on all of the foolishness of the extreme conservatives in this country and their outrageous rantings that are slowing this country almost to a standstill.  It is a thankless chore.

Today he published the following:

"I've been doing this for almost 3 years now and I've come to the sad conclusion that most people want to hear about how they're right and the other side is a bunch of evil villains who kill cute puppies as a sacrifice to the Koch Brothers.

"And then there's the idiots who believe in chemtrails or the Illuminati who inbox me constantly. Sweet Jesus, I just want to bang my head on my desk until unconsciousness sets me free."

All some of us who have delved into that morass can say is welcome to the club.

At first I recalled a time last fall waking up every morning to all the liberal pages I was following along with the news, and thus beginning my days utterly depressed with the state of the world. I finally unliked most of them, just for some peace of mind. It was just too much to be reminded of all that was wrong with the world, and at that time, the politics of this nation, as it was just before the presidential election.  I shut them all off and only scanned headlines for a while rather than start every day outraged and discouraged.

And today as I thought about this writer's angst, I also recalled my own experience with the same sort of thing.

My senior year in college, I was editorial editor of the newspaper for the first semester and managing editor for the second.  By the time the first semester ended, in my daily masterpieces of opinion I had solved just about all the world's problems to my satisfaction.  This wasn't easy. After all the Vietnam war was still raging.

During the second semester it was the managing editor's privilege to plan and produce one special edition of the paper focused on a single subject.  A movement dear to my heart was just gaining some steam and I chose ecology as the subject.  With that mission, reporters and editors began scouring Kansas for just what the issue was in that state and how it related to the world order. Climate change hadn't even come up as a concern at the time.

We put out a pretty good special section and with that, I felt I had solved the last remaining issue that would make the world an ideal place to live.

Then, within a couple of days, we were celebrating our last days in school at our favorite pub, joined occasionally by well-wishers and others all in generally good spirits, all of us with our journalistic chests puffed out from our accomplishment.

Then a young fellow sat down and started a conversation, at first about the paper and then after learning that I was the managing editor wanting to know how that all worked.

It took him a little time to reach his point.  His point was a question:  "What's all this bullshit about ecology?"

Apparently the liberal education he was supposed to be receiving hadn't quite taken hold yet.

For my part, like my friend at Whiskey and the morning after, I pounded my head into the beer-soaked table.  For a moment it felt like nothing I had done in the previous four years was worth a damn thing.  Nothing was solved.  Nothing was settled. Every single issue I had explained was still an issue.

Looking back now, I think that was the beginning of my disenchantment with journalism. Since that time I have taken a much more practical approach to opinion.  It's like the equal and opposite reaction law of physics and no one has ever changed anyone's mind. Let it out all you want as cleverly as you can but the people who disagree with you will always disagree with you and not always politely.  It's part of the game.  Grow a thick skin, take another slug of that whiskey and keep going.  The alternative is nonexistent.

On another occasion a friend in the conservation movement said to me: "Why do we keep trying, we’re never going to win."

It was one of those times when I actually came up with an answer which was, "No, we won't win, but we couldn't live with ourselves if we didn’t try."

My activism days are pretty much behind me, not for lack of issues and causes or necessities, but because I am just tired.

Near the end of Federico Fellini's movie "The Clowns" there is a circus parade inside the big top. In the scene three clowns are sitting on the actual ring perimeter and not participating in that parade. Someone offscreen asks and one of the clowns says, "I can't do it any more Mr. Fellini, I am just too tired."  Well, Mr. Fellini, me too.  This circus is going to have to go on without me.

So my friend at the Whiskey blog, pounding your head on the desk or not, could you live with yourself if you didn't try?  You are too young to be tired yet.

Whiskey and the morning after blog

Random thoughts on the advent of autumn

All the weak stuff is done, time for heavy equipment.

It's been overcast and raining for most of the past two weeks.  Some folks near Anchorage reported a moment of clearing one day and saw snow on a couple of higher peaks.  It's way late.  Usually we see some of that termination dust by mid August and at least once on this blog there is an image showing new snow on the mountain in the front yard in July.  So I have been watching it since that first report.  However, a cloud lingered at the peak through most of the rainy period and never cleared at least when I was around.  The Weather Service reported snow down to the 6,000 foot level so with  the mountain here standing at 6,398 feet tall, the reasonable expectation was there would be snow up there when the clouds cleared.  Well, today the clouds cleared.  Guess what. No snow!  That's right: Sept. 3 and a 6,400-foot peak has no new snow on it.  What that holds for the coming winter is uncertain.  Probably going to be late though.

But high snow or not, the firewood splitting continues.  Today all the easily split stuff was finished and stacked.  All that remains are the huge rounds that are going to take more than the little maul I have been using.  I have been able to split a couple of the smaller ones with a wedge and a sledgehammer but that is slow work, especially when I know that 16-pound monster maul is available at the East Pole.  Give me a couple of nice days and I will go get it.

The Finder.

And now making a new addition to the family.  A couple of weeks ago I put down some money on a puppy of a type I have been looking for casually for a couple of years.  He's 3/4 bloodhound and 1/4 black and tan coonhound.  Perfect.  He was only four days old then, and now only about two weeks when I visited today.  I can bring him home in early October, but in the meantime the woman who owns the litter said I could come by any time she is home to play with him a little. I figure that is a good idea and will make visits closer together when the time gets near.  That way he will be used to me when he has to leave his birth home.  Today his eyes were open and he mostly slept in my lap except when his mom, a full-blooded bloodhound, came up to lick him all over.  Nice that the mom thinks it is ok for me to handle him. This should make the winter a little more interesting.  

Walter's mother Gus.

Oh, I have named him Walter. The history of the name is this: There was a great TV show called The Finder, which of course, Fox cancelled after one season. It was a sort of a mystery show but with fine twists. The main character was Walter, a veteran damaged by war who made his living finding things that were difficult to find.  He lived at a rundown gin mill in the Florida Keys with the bar's owner and lawyer played by Michael Clarke Duncan, and a gypsy teenager on probation for all the kinds of crimes people expect gypsies to be guilty of.  I thought, considering I want to train this dog to search, something bloodhounds are famous for, he is something of a finder himself, so the name.  In addition there is something about calling a dog named Walter that brings a smile.  I am sure there will be more posts about adventures with Walter as time passes.  As the saying goes, watch this space.

The Finder