Recycled Electrons - Blog of Keith Horowitz

So Christmas day Sunday, but we don't do Christmas. And a day off Monday. No real plans until Sunday evening for Channukah. My toe finally feels well enough for a hike. Blodgett Peak has been calling to me for months - especially since I learned there was a geocache on top. So I get up a bit early - early for a day off from work - and head out for a hike. I don't know how far I'll get - but I want to at least get to the top of Blodgett Peak. I've got about 8 geocaches I can try for, depending on how I do. A couple are up in Pike National Forrest, past Blodgett Peak. It is slower going than I expected. I spend more time than I wanted looking for the first 4 geocaches - I only found 2 of them. The trail is Icy and muddy. It is not a great trail - it is not well prepared like the trail going up Pikes Peak. It is very easy to lose the trail - subtle paths seem to go off in many directions. In many places, the trail seems to go up very steep, loose gravel. Step...

This weekend we went to the Light Zoo in town. It was snowing, as it had for over a day, lightly, and one of the sets of friends who was supposed to go with us wimped out. It was cold - but we were smart enough to bring along hot chocolate, so that helped. It was fun to go to again. It seemed like there were a few more lights, but a few less electric animals.

I just finished reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I've been reading it to my eldest son for the last month or so. A half-chapter or a whole chapter a night, a couple of times a week. We got near the end last night. So tonight I started reading a little early. Luckily, they are off school, so he was able to stay up a little later so we could finish the book. I won't say much about it, to avoid spoiling it for anyone. I enjoyed reading/listening to the earlier books. This is the first one I've read. I must say, I do not like the writing style for reading out loud. Almost all the cues for character and intonation come halfway through a quote, or at the end. Very hard to know how to read a line. I must imagine that the people who make the professional recordings must have to pre-read and re-read a lot to get it right.

I like popcorn. Microwave popcorn is fine by me, but I prefer the light popcorn. The regular is too greasy. But when I'm at work, I like a mini-packs - I don't need a full regular-sized bag. But they don't sell light-minis. I wish they did. So I have to eitehr get the minis or the light. Greasy, but the right amount, or the right flavor/texture, but too much for an afternoon snack. I supposed I could just eat some of the regular-sized, light bag. But when the popcorn is there, it is hard to resist finishing it. Dangerous food! Popcorn manufacturers: I want light, mini microwave packs!

Yesterday I dropped my Palm PDA into water. It flickered on and off. The screen got this glitch that spread out from the middle. Eventually it turned off and would not turn back on. I dried it as quickly as I could. I spent a bunch of time opening it up so I could dry out the insides. It was really hard to open, as the screws were this special hex screws. I managed to work them out with my Swiss army knife. But it seems it was too late. I could not get it to work. I am not sure it is worth having it repaired. I looked online for a new cheap palm. But the one that was on sale a year ago, with MP3 playback ability, was sold out everywhere. It looks like I'd have to pay at least twice as much for a Palm with MP3. The one I killed didn't have MP3, but I'm determined to have MP3 in my next one. And I use my palm a lot - for tracking my hours at work at a minimum. So I'm feeling kind of lost without it. But E-Bay to the rescue! Same model as the one from last y...

Well, I've spent quite a few weeks with this idea about doing a puzzle cache. Where seekers have to solve a puzzle to find the final cache. But it was more than just a puzzle - it also teaches how some computers can store data in a safer, faster way, called RAID-5. So I made a RAID-5 cache . I spent a bunch of time trying to figure out the best way to do it - and making charts and tables to go with it. And today, I was rewarded by the first person to find it. He said he even learned from it! Yay! The only problem is that the coordinates were a little off - and now I either have to put a note to that on the website, or recalculate all the clues and replaces the 4 clues! Yikes!

I just wrote up a bit about archiving emails: Techchatter Entry I also talk about Outlook seeming to have a memory leak when doing a bunch of Drag-and-drops.

Dear Circuit City, I wanted you to understand why you lost my business the other day. We came in for a new set of cell phones. It was our second time in. The first time we had met a woman who answered all of our questions politely. When we came back in, the man at the cell phone area seemed to dismiss whatever we had talked about before with the woman who worked there. We still had a number of questions. Most of them had to do with cost. We wanted to make sure that the phone and services of the plan covered our needs without costing a bunch more. We were interested in the phones that cost a little more that to lowest-end, free [after rebate] model. I looked closely at the features and costs, and tried to understand the deals. It seemed that the listed prices of the phones were not the cost, but how much the end price of the phones, if you took a 2-year plan, and after you got the rebate. The actual cost of the phone, if you did not take the 2-year plan was in much smaller print...

We went to Salt Lake City for thanksgiving. My step-mom moved there this year. We drove up I25 and over on I80. We had 2 laptops, a DVD player and a game console. The DVD has the ability to be a TV for the game console - but the wires did not connect. So when we stopped at the halfway in Rawlins, WY - we hit a Radio Shack for an adapter. The trip over went pretty smoothly. The kids took turns watching movies - sometimes 2 movies at the same time. You would think that would be a problem - but we kept the volume down. We stayed at my step-mother's. The only problem was my allergies to fur. You see, she has 2 dogs. But I've learned I can kept it under control with anti-histamine. The problem is that anti-histamines make me sleepy. But I've learn by taking smaller doses of liquid, I can try to balance sleepiness and beating getting sick. I managed not to get sick from allergies this visit - but I did take a few naps. Thanksgiving was nice, but not too busy. We wer...

Users are told they have visited illegal Web sites and are instructed to open an attachment to answer questions. Don't do it! The FBI is investigating the scam. Recipients of these e-mails are asked to report them by visiting the Internet Crime Complaint Center at http://www.ic3.gov .

"Police in the Washington, D.C., suburbs are looking for a woman who chats on her phone while robbing banks." Four robberies. The first thing I thought of was the movie Phone Booth (2002) Perhpas this woman is being made to rob these banks. Maybe not - but it was the first thing I thought of when I heard that she is on her cell phone the whole time. Sounds like an idea for 'Phone Booth 2 - going mobile' ;)

I had another one of my 'ideas' :) I was thinking about the shows on Discovery/TLC, and basically missing Junkyard wars, when I thought about the formula of their shows. There is Mythbusters (my favorite) which is basically taking ideas from common culture, and usually figuring out how to make thing blow up. So I started thinking about what else would be entertaining enough to watch for 50 minutes to see them get around to blowing something up? I like watching the ones where they have to build something in a limited amount of time - well I like the building thing - the time limits can sometimes get a little annoying. Then I thought about some of the other shows - like the home improvement shows and the auto improvement and customization shows. Including the ones where they would steel somebody's ride, then trick it out. So I thought of a merger of all the ideas. Why not have a show, where you get someone out of their house, or get their car away from them. Then the build...

I was reflecting a couple of days ago, on a change of view. In my case, it has to do with humor. Jokes. Specifically, internet jokes. For a while, maybe 6 months or a year, I ran a humor mailing list. It did not have a very big distribution, but it had a high rate of publication. I had one going out 5 days a week, and another once a week. So that meant at least 6 humor-oriented pieces a week. I subscribed to a number of humor-based lists, and scoured additional source for humor, to make sure I was always sending something new. My father was big into telling jokes, and I always seemed to have trouble remembering whole jokes to tell like he did. But I supposed that was a basis for my like of humor, and wanting to do more with it. I also enjoyed sending along jokes and getting jokes. Of course, this was before people got harassment-crazy. But I noticed after a while, it got harder and harder to find new material for my list. There was always some topical humor, like Letterman's...

Seems I'm building up to stage 1 :) --- A NEW DISEASE We have identified a new disease, probably caused by a virus among geocaching people. It apparently has been in existence for a considerable time, but only recently has anyone identified this disease, and begun to study it. We call it the Acquired Cache Obsessive Syndrome (ACOS). At first, ACOS was originally considered to be psychological in nature, but after two young researchers here suddenly decided to become geocachers, we realized that we were dealing with an infectious agent. Epidemiologists here have identified three stages of this disease and typical symptoms, and they are: A. You have early symptoms (Stage I) if: 1. You think that any cache within 300 miles is near by. 2. You begin to enjoy getting up at 5 a.m. in the morning to drive 300 miles to go look in tick and mosquito infested woods to be a "FTF" for other people's caches. 3. It is fun to spend several hours a day on Saturdays and throughout the ...

A bar made entirely of ice? Talk about a cold drink! The oddest thing I read was the 'partial human figures along the walls'

Yeast found in toothpaste tube in items shipped from a jail supplier to a jain in Colorado. The concern is that the yeast could be used to make 'hooch'.

In the morning we went about an hour drive South along the front range to go apple picking. We picked a basket and a small bag's worth - and added another bag's worth of a pre-picked variety. Then we tried to find some honey in town, and ran into an 'Apple Day Parade'. Then I went up to Highlands Ranch (Southern Denver) for the monthly robot club meeting. I managed to finish putting on all the sensors for the common club robot that will do a ping-pong ball competition. On the way home, I decided to try for a couple of geocaches in the Highlands Ranch area. View from first cache This rabbit was in the street right near where I parked. It did not move when a car came by. It did not move until I got pretty close. Then it went to the other side of the street. So moved towards it again to get it out of the street. View at the second cache

Hey - blogger has added a way to upload a picture - without using Picasa/Hello/Bloggerbot! Cool! A picture I took while geocaching last weekend:

Due to a sanction the US government has against our space partner Russia, over concerns that Russia was providing space and missle technology to enemies, NASA is forbidden to buy lauches from Russia. Russia's contract to fly missions to the Space Station is completed with the next launch. Because of the grounding of the Space Shuttle, and the delay of repairs due to the hurricanes, that will mean the astronaut going up, will not have a defined ride home for the end of his 6 month scheduled stay. He has stated that he is willing to stay up as long as he has to. The US is hoping Russia will continue to fly mission out of good will. While Russia has been a very good partner in the space program, it is well known that they are financially strapped. While I would hope that they would help out if there was an emergency, I don't think we can really count on them to do much out of good will. So, that means our government needs to make an emergency exception. Add it to some of the K...

Thursday evening, my eldest son decided he wanted to make a Geocache of our own. We had been working up to it for a little while now. We had small notebooks for logbooks. I had saved a couple of 3 pound plastic picnic salad containers. We had some pirate themed accessories to go with our geocache nickname of 'WitzAbout Pirates'. My eldest son was really enthused about making the geocache that evening. He collected up a whole bunch of toys - older, but in good condition. So I printed out the geocache introduction sheet and gathered up the pieces needed. We headed down to a park about a mile away from our house. We parked in the lot, near the playground, and looked around for places to hide the cache. From my point of view, there were not a lot of choices. It was a pretty busy area, with a playground, 2 different ball fields - softball and soccer - and at the intersection of two pretty busy streets. I did not see any place near the playground that seemed good for the ...

Reading a new article on CNN, about the new Xbox 360, I learned something interesting about IBM. It seems they are not limiting themselves to Business machines these days. While Apple is jumping ship to Intel from the Power-PC chip, not one, but 2 new games systems are jumping over to IBM. Microsoft and IBM co-designed the chip for Xbox 360, based on the Power PC chip. But IBM also co-designed the chip for the next Playstation, PS3, with Sony and Toshiba, also includes a Power PC processor. Not a bad deal position for IBM - involved in the chips for the two big game consoles. I wonder if they can get an inside to the next Nintendo game console too? :) The original Xbox was built with PC-based components, including Intel processors. By going to Power-PC based chips, that means that supporting the older games will have to be done in an emulation mode or they will have to include an intel-based instruction set in the new console. The good news is that they have said the new system wil...

I went geocaching over the weekend. I was spurred by the fact that I had a travelbug* from the previous weekend to put back in circulation. So I headed out to an area in town I hadn't geocached in before - leading to the Pulpit Rock area. I'd hiked it once from the West 5 years ago, during the first few weeks I had moved to Colorado. I could not get anyone else interested in going, so I was heading out on my own. Having looked at the area with Google Earth, I decided to try using my bike. Coming from Academy, it made for a pretty easy trip. I wound up having to abandon my bike a few hundred feet from the caches. Well, it was easier on the bike at first. But I didn't realize that the last cache I wanted to hit was up from the first 2. Quite a bit up. Very far up the back of Pulpit Rock. I wound up pushing my bike slowly up, taking probably close to an hour. But I knew there was a dirt trail that lead to streets from having hiked it 5 years ago. It turns out the...