Recycled Electrons - Blog of Keith Horowitz

Wednesday was sunny and in the 50s. But there was talk of a blizzard. It seems it was a rare case of a large amount of moisture coming up from the south at the same time as a cold from coming down from the North. Around 12" were expected in my area. But it was also supposed to be very windy - making that unusual amount of snow even more troublesome. Work sent out a note during the day that we should check the weather line before attempting to go into work. Well, about 11pm, the wind started picking up, but no snow. In the morning, I got up before 7. There was a lot of snow on the ground. The wind was blowing. It was still snowing. I called work's weather line. It said, work at 10, call again to be sure. Called later, the message said work at 12, call again to be sure. I called again - work was closed for the day. I had slept a lot of the morning. Boy did I need it. I went out for a short walk during lunchtime, to take some pictures (see below). I was well chilled...

So about 3 or 4 weeks ago, I got a call on my cell phone. It was about a timeshare place up near Vail. It turns out some geocache friends had given them my name and number. As first I was going to be upset at the friends for giving out my cell phone number and just tell the timeshare people not to bother me. But I decided to listen to the pitch. They were willing to let me bring the boys. So I thought, what the heck? It would be a change of pace for a weekend. So I let them come tell me about the setup and the deal. I talked about going through a divorce. It did not seem to phase the person giving me the details. So the plan was for this past weekend. An overnight Oct 21-22. I figured we might get to see some bright fall colors up in the mounts and maybe even get a bunch of geocaches. Friday - the highway to Vail got a lot of snow. That didn't bode too well - but I didn't fret it too much. Saturday morning, I checked the web-cams. Snow along the road - but the roa...

I went to the balloon festival again this year. I got up early Saturday - it was too wet to even set up the balloons - much less launch them. I got up early Sunday - it wasn't as wet - but the cloud cover was too low to launch. I did get a bunch of pictures of the balloons set up on the ground. Then I had to run off to meet up with another geocacher to do an group hunt. It was nice, as he had a 4x4, so we got to do some mountain ones that I wouldn't normally try. Monday I wasn't sure if I would get up early. I was tired. Yet, I managed to get up pretty early anyhow - but not quite as early as the 2 previous days. I headed down to the balloon festival. I was still a couple of miles away when I could see about a dozen balloons already in the sky! They were launching! I got down there and managed to take a whole lot of pictures. A whole lot! I'm going to post one now. I'll see about posting more later.

Well, I'm all moved in. a little more than 2 weeks ago, I got the keys. The first weekend I started moving in. It was also my first official weekend with the boys. And it was my birthday weekend. And it was hot - Sunday broke a record. Well I decided to not work the whole weekend. I did work most of the weekend. But I took the boys out to eat most of the meals - as a birthday/moving treat. We also went to the movies. And there were a couple of shopping trips - I got a futon (bed/couch) at WalMart. And we went in the pool at my new apartment complex. The good news is that the pool is really close to my apartment. The bad news is that the people on the first floor like to smoke outside :( The boys slept over Saturday night, and pretty much seemed to enjoy it. I have a 2 bedroom, 2 bath apartment. I got the 3rd floor so I have a vaulted ceiling from the dining room, going up in the living room. It even had a wood-burning fireplace! It is at the bottom of a hill, along a st...

I have not done much blogging lately - and I've really let this one go for a long time. Part of that is that I've been spending a lot of free time and energy on geocaching. And to that end, I've done some blogging on a sub-blog about geocaching. But the other issue that was most worth talking about, I did not feel it was appropriate to air on this forum. That issue was that my marriage was going through some difficult times. The conclusion was finally reached a number of weeks back, but the official things are starting to happen now. I have filed for divorce. I am going to be moving into my own apartment about 2 miles away, probably this week. It is in the same zip-code and school district. Being a child of divorce, the decision was extremely difficult for me to make. But my wife and I have grown apart, and just can't seem to find enough common ground on some important issues. Yes, there are a lot of issues. I am sure we both could point out how everything is the...

I ran my second geocaching event yesterday. The last one was just a general get-together. This one was a special clean-up event. The main geocache site, geocaching.com, promotes both regular clean-up whenever caching and a special day once a year for a major international clean-up on Earth day. They call the clean-up a CITO, for Cache-In, Trash-Out. During my first event, a number of people in the area indicated they would prefer a clean-up event that did not occur on the Earth-day on Saturday. Many people can't make Saturday events. Also by having it on a different day, it would allow Geocachers to do the Earth-day/Saturday event up in Denver on Saturday and then do another one on Sunday. It took me a few tries - but I got in touch with the parks department. They asked where I would like to clean up. I figured with all the different places that I knew people would be coming from, that somewhere around downtown Colorado Springs heading West towards Manatou Springs would be p...

I've been living without sound on my Toshiba laptop since last summer. When I opened it up, I found the sound card was this tiny board, maybe 2 inches by a half inch. And it has this plug-in to the motherboard. The connector on the motherboard had come loose. Considering that plugging in earphones would cause mechanical stress on this top board, it almost seems inevitable that this connector would break on the motherboard or sound card. This should have been right on the motherboard or connected with a ribbon connector. There are a number of other ribbon connectors in the laptop, so it is already a workable solution. At first it just worked oddly - sometimes the sound would work, sometimes it would make odd noises - sometimes it didn't work. And of course this happened after the unit was out of warranty. I can only imagine that if I took it in to be fixed, the answer would be to replace the motherboard. A motherboard and labor - I can only imagine this would cost nearly...

For a change we got our taxes done early. Early being 2 weeks before the deadline. The last 2 years, things were crazy enough that we wound up filing extensions. But this year we did our taxes on the most appropriate day of the year: April Fools Day - April 1st. Somehow it seems appropriate to me. I'm just not sure who is being made a bigger fool. Trying to read tax code, I think it is me! I'm not big on April Fools. It seems way too easy for people to be unnecessarily mean - and it seems like meanness can only escalate until someone gets upset. The one little joke I played was I told my son he didn't have to clear the table. When he asked 'really', I replied 'April Fools'. That is about as far as I like to go. No long suspense. No elaborate lies. No major emotional plays. Just a tiny bit of quick teasing once.

I was musing about 'The Who' Music used on CSI and on the reference to the guy on the show who was collection famous dead people's picture, saying that he was going to put it next to his Entwistle. I laughed at the connection between the musician from the group that does their theme music. And it reminded me of the morbid joke about getting the Beatles back together, when there were still 3 of them. The joke went it would take 3 more bullets. Ouch :) Then I realize both The Beatles and The Who are down 2 members. So between the 2 groups they have just the right number to make a new fab-four group. :) Then the topic became what would the new group be called? I think the best that came up was The Weavels. A little hard - a little soft - introducing those new old guys from the UK: The Weavels! :)

I started a new blog for my geocaching adventures. My first real entry on this blog was describing geocacing in some detail for those who want to understand it a bit better. Today I wrote up about a geocaching adventure that started with trying to figure out a puzzle a few weeks ago - comparing notes with other geocachers last week - then trying to find it Sunday - and going back again Thursday afternoon to try again: GCC276 Away Team Mission

Had to take my big guy to a Jewish-youth group activity this afternoon. Went down to the skating place. They said - we don't know about that activity. Could it be at our other location [5 minutes back they way we came]? They called - it was. I didn't even know they had a second location. It is laid out almost identically. They play the music very loud at both places. Too loud for my little guys. My big guy asked what they called it - I said slow-ear-drum-damaging level. I took the little guys out for some geocaching. I didn't have all my notes with me - but I did have a lot loaded into my GPS. The first one I couldn't find - but as it was just a fake coordinate for a puzzle cache, it is not suprising we couldn't find it. I had my laptop along with a number of the geocache sites pre-loaded on my drive. So I was able to find another couple to try right nearby. We parked near a dog-run, and headed for a micro first. I don't like this smallest size geo...

So this past week's episode of Numb3rs seemed to be designed specifically to refute my previous log entry where I said GPS is not part of cell phones. It seems I was wrong. I am sorry Numb3rs for my misunderstanding. According to the show, it seems that when the decided that for emergency purposes, that cell phones should be trackable, the didn't use triangulation from cell towers. The actually put a tiny GPS chip inside all modern cell phones. Wow. So I guess they were right when they said they used GPS with the phone. Of course, in the episode, the person was in a library. Inside buildings is a very poor place for GPS reception, so I still have some doubts. Then a very short while later it hit me. There is a GPS inside most everyone cell phone. And they don't let you use it! It would be so simple to show locations and do some simple coordinates on a cell phone. The data is already there. It would only take a simple program! Man - think of all the people who coul...

I opened my Dish (satellite TV) bill last night. In the last year it has jumped $10.00. First it went from $21.99 for the low-end channel package to $23.99. Suddenly the package has a new name, and costs $31.99. This is the same crap the cable companies pulled, and why we wound up going with Dish. One of Dish's major selling strategies was to point out how the cable companies were treating people badly. Now they are doing the exact same thing. We will have to talk to them and let them know that we are not pleased. If they cannot drop the cost way back down, I think it is time to get rid of dish. I don't watch much broadcast TV. I am pretty sure I can get most of what I watch with an antenna. I'll miss MythBusters. But I could buy the season DVD for MythBusters and have a whole lot of money left over after canceling Dish. And MythBusters is neat to watch. But they have so many repeats. And spend a bunch of new episodes filled with old material. It is like they onl...

I've been watching the last few episodes of the TV show Numb3rs. It is pretty good. It is nice to see a positive view of techy stuff on TV. We need to promote the sciences. And they do a very good job of not getting way too techy. If anything, they are pretty good at explaining some advanced math concepts so that an average person can get a feel for the concepts. I think I get to thank my sister for recommending the show :) Watching the last episode, from this past Friday, I was taken a bit back. Here is a show that is trying to tech about the science of math, and they made a really careless error. They were talking about tracking a cell-phone. The cell-phone in question was used right near the investigators - and they say the GPS showed it was on campus. The GPS? Cell phones don't have GPS! GPS isn't how they track where cell phones are! They both use a similar methodology - triangulation. But a GPS receiver listens to 3 or more satellites in orbit to calculate...

I found something different today moon.google.com Like Google maps , but showing the moon landings. I was curious if I could see any signs of human activity at the closest zoom - don't miss it!

I am in the process of making a group for geocaching in the Colorado Springs area: Pikes Peak Geocaching I know, not very original, but it describes things decently. I like it better than Southern Colorado Geocaching. Right now, I'm just trying to get a group get-together going for next month. So far, the response has been very positive from other local geocachers I've emailed with in the last few days. The first challenge is finding a place to meet. If nothing else, we can always descend on the food court of the Northern Mall. I was hoping for something a little more conducive to pleasant conversation. So that may mean finding a restaurant. But that then puts an obligation to pay for food to the attendees. I would prefer not to do that for the first meeting. If all goes well, I may try to turn it into a more formal group - like they have up in Denver. We will have to see. If nothing else, it is something more to do with my Geocaching obsession. To the end of the meet ...