Zaphod's Deepest Thoughts

Catch a Stratovolcano on Doppler Radar, The 3rd Mount Redoubt Explosion.

Well, as soon as I heard Redoubt exploded on the radio, I headed over to NWS Anchorage to see what I could see from their WSR-88D!

I was well rewarded!

That's it, just west of the word Kenai, way too cold for a thunderstorm, just right for a boom. Hope someone caught it earlier than this. You can see the new plume, and the old one streaming off to the NNE. The explosion, is of course, stationary. Enjoy!

Videos added to youtube from trip to Denver.

Just added a couple videos to YouTube from my trip to the Cherry Creek Time Trials with my Pa. I made this trip May 21st 2008, the day before the tornadoes hit Windsor Colorado, and Cheyenne Wyoming. We went through some of the storminess, horizontal rain and hail, standing water on the roads, that kinda crap coming home, but it was dark, and I didn't have the presence of mind to turn on the camera... I was too wigged out. On the trip, we were places that just the next day would have spelled doom for us. Kind of a creepy feeling! God must have been binding the restless wave... or in this case pressure trough.

Both of the videos are taken from southbound on I-25, one of the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways. I have always wanted to comment on that, so here goes. In my opinion, while they were conceived by Nazi Germany, copied by the USA, and intended for defense... they are probably the single biggest reason this country became the economic, and production powerhouse it is... which in a way, provides for the national defense. Seriously, I could go into hours of long discussions as to why they are so important to commerce... but I won't. I will tell you, however, if you want YOUR country to be strong, and independent, don't let your leaders plow all their money into weapons and other flashy crap... make them build decent high speed roads, they are really the key. A good superhighway system, is as important as any other single sector you can think of.

One video is of the Glendo Rise, where you leave the North Platte River basin and head up towards the Laramie River in Wheatland. It is one of the prettier examples of a rural superhighway in the world. The other is of driving through Denver during lunch hour on a Wednesday, and as you see, Denver has good traffic flow patterns... we blast right through town with nary a problem. Which, when you think about it, is saying allot for a metropolis of 2.8 million people. Here are the links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZxmbsoRNX0 <=- The Glendo Rise

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDI9bg20m64 <=- Through downtown Denver

Hope you enjoyed the videos. I have more raw footage from other spots on the trip, hope I can get them up soon!

Zap!

GPS Navigation, and How It's Making You Vulnerable.

Used to be a time when if you were lost, it was commonplace to ask for directions. But this was an inconvenience to you, and the person that had to help. And it might put you in danger (heavens no!) of being in contact with the criminal element. Or even worse, as a man, you had to admit to your wife you were yourself lost, and needed to ask directions. Of course, it also meant you might miss out on hearing about the best place in town to get eats (not the place that paid your GPS navigation data provider the most for top placement in their restaurant list.), or maybe even make a new lifelong friend.

There is the oldskool way, the trusty old map and compass. Sure, not many city folks know how to use them, but living in Wyoming, it's a matter of survival. "Huh?" you say. Yes, survival. If you don't stick to the main roads, and are looking for a place to fish, or hunt (as many people do when they come to Wyoming), you better know how to read a map, and to tell if you are on public land, and if not, where is the ranch house on that topo. Not doing so, can get you shot at, and perhaps killed. The last thing a rancher wants to see, is some out-of-stater with a gun, walking through his pasture where he keeps his $150,000.00 prize breeding bull with a bad attitude. That bull doesn't know what a gun is, and will charge you like any other invader, and you will probably shoot rather than run. So guess who might shoot first?

Of course, using said tools, requires you know how to use them. It's called Orienteering. Pick up a book on it at your library, ask a veteran (they love to feel useful), or steal your son's Boy Scout handbook for a bit. What? Your son isn't in scouting? For shame! What? You don't have a son? Then put your daughter into the Girl Scouts, they do it too! .......... Oh, you are too young for kids, then get into scouting! Why? Keep reading.

 In our current state of paranoia there comes a time when one must wonder, in the panic following a good kicking, if our government may turn on its own civilians. Perhaps it won't even be intentional, but in a panic knee jerk reaction, it may do things it thinks will protect everyone, but instead cause mass detriment to the populace.

For instance, the chances of some foreign creep looking to blow stuff up running around Wyoming is pretty slim to none. The US Bureau of Reclamation had decided, along with the Department of Fathe... errm... Homeland Security, that one of my favorite fishing holes by Alcova Dam in Alcova, WY, needed to be fenced off to protect us. I can't drive, or even walk up there to the spill gates to toss a line in the water anymore. You hear this Dick Cheney? This is a place we both have fished at (Not together, but I gladly would), now closed forever due to some idiotic out of state numbnuts deciding it was a target of THE TERRORIST. Horsepuckey! We all know terrorists don't strike infrastructure. They are into flashy areas with lots of civilians, and big bangs.

I have digressed...

The whole point of the preceding being, that Imagine some day, some bureaucrat flying a desk in Washington D.C. gets some bad information about an impending missile attack. Imagine that, the government getting bad information! But they do. (We stayed in Iraq for the right reasons, and we should never have left in the first place!)

So, in a panic, Mr. Faceless and Blameless public servant decides the GPS system should be shut off to civilian receivers (or maybe even accidentally crashes the whole shebang) to avoid providing the missile guidance. You suddenly have no way to figure out where you are... that is, unless you have bought a map (or picked one up at the tourism information center when you crossed the border for free). What I am saying is, GPS is nice and accurate, but it has a fatal flaw, it is electronic, and foulable in so many ways!

Actually, as another sidenote, in a couple years, it won't matter, the terrorists will be using the Russian GLONASS which we have no control over.

This still doesn't mean GPS won't be tampered with, even by nature. It's a microwave radio based system, and that means line of site. I have been down in several deep dark canyons where you might be lucky to see 2 birds at any one time... and this is the last place you want to be lost, is in the middle of nowhere, at the bottom of some pit.

Also, if your system isn't large (as in has a big antenna) or sensitive, severe weather may block too many of the satellites from it. Imagine being lost in the dark, knowing there is an F5 Tornado sneaking up on you. Your GPS has quit because there is too many tons of dust and water held aloft in the supercell above you blocking the signal. You were madly looking for the interstate to escape, but now find yourself in the middle of a corn field at the end of "Bob's Road." Wouldn't it be nice to have a map, and the skills to read it with you to know that the on-ramp is only 2 miles away, but only if you make 3 left turns from where you are, instead of the 3 rights you are going to take that will take you over the interstate with no on-ramp, and right into the path of destruction?

Trust me on this one folks, this planet is pretty oldskool. And it plays by the old school rules. Learn how to use a map, and maybe a compass, and save yourself a bunch of grief. Don't rely on technology, it can betray you at the worst times, and according to Murphy, it will!

Or, you can always lower yourself to asking a local where to go... (I got yer answer right here!).

Zap!

Critters in my yard.

Just thought I would share with you some pictures of some of the fauna in my yard.

Avian messaging via my owl.
(Yes, real, not a cleverly placed porcelain doo-hickey... I am mortified of heights!)

Always has to be a beatnik in the crowd.
Our local celebrity, the albino doe deer visited us recently. Yes, she is very wild, and no, we absolutely do not feed the deer. They come around because the property makes an excellent nursery, fenced in, with a cattle guard to keep the young-uns here, while the moms go off and eat and drink in peace. I believe the others to be her descendants, and with the amount of inbreeding around here (sad) I expect there to be more. Interestingly enough, I believe the white color has been a survival boon to this doe, as she is very easy to see at night on the road.

Red Squirrels, or as known around here, Tree Rats (with fluffy tails). I could say allot bad about these %@©*#&! critters, but for now, here is just a picture of them. (They are cute after all)

My cat Tasha. A great hunter, most of the time he catches little things like he has here, a short tailed mouse, or vole... but occasionally he snags one of those %@©*#&! tree rats (Good kitty!), or maybe a full grown rabbit (Bad kitty!). Whatever the case is, if we don't take it away from him, he eats it all, except for fluffy bits, and feet. He also makes quick kills and doesn't play with his food.

He was abused before we adopted him, and for the first 2 years we had him around, he wouldn't come near anyone, and lived in the barn on what he could catch and eat himself, so this is where he learned that game is not toys, but food. He is now a well adjusted housecat, lazy, fat, friendly, but he still runs from anyone but his family,

Now, what is sick is, I promised myself years ago I would never make a website with a picture of my cat, and rambling on about him. Sorry, I broke form, but it was in the interest of another article. I just got caught up in it. Please please don't think I've lost it. I'll be back at you again with all the innuendo, and entendre you have come to expect from me shortly. This was just a detour for fun.

Zap!

The power of webcams.

Okay, I used to think that webcams were just cute little technological thingamabobs that were an addition to a website. It's turning out they are much much more. I put up my webcam of Casper Mountain, and then submitted to 4 camera indexing sites. Wasn't expecting much, but...

The response was amazing. Almost as many visitors as sites I had submitted to! So, I have gone whole hog and submitted to every APPROPRIATE site that came up in the first 10 pages of the Google search results. Let's see what happens.

So here is my advice, if you have the savvy to set up a webcam like at http://zaphodb777.dyndns.org/webcam.php and hope to make money off something like http://adsense.google.com/  by all means get with it. It can drive gobs of visitors to your site.

What should you point your webcam at? How about the yard where the dog plays, or the bird feeder, or even the street outside? I am lucky enough to have a glorious 1KM tall mountain to point mine at, but even a marina, or a pretty red cliff that changed with the light would be nice. You could, on the edge of etiquette post a picture you took with your digital cam, and update it daily. ( Just please warn visitors not to wait all day for the next image.)

Oh, and forget porn... that is so NOT what people surfing the web who buy actual products are looking for. I would almost bet, that there would be punitive actions by adsense if you had filth on your pages. As a matter of fact, it is against their policy.

So let's get clickin' like Chickety China the Chinese Chicken, and show the world our corners of it!