Least Significant Bits

Yesterday was gorge hike day. Friends Nathan, John, and I tried to tackle the Angel's Rest trail. This trail isn't all that long, about 2.6 miles to the summit, but relatively steep, with about a 1500' ascent. We started at the trailhead around 3:30pm. We took the trail slowly, due to mud and slippery patches. At about 4:30, we were almost to the summit, but turned around due to diminishing daylight. By 5:00, night had fallen, and it had begun to rain lightly, making the already muddy and slippery trail even more difficult to tread. None of us, not even John the hiking master thought ahead enough to bring a flashlight, and through dumb luck we were rescued by a passing pair of hikers who gave us their spare. I didn't even think ahead enough to wear hiking boots, and went in Birkenstocks, but that really wouldn't have made any difference for this trail.

Earlier in the day, it was sunny and nice. Later some clouds moved in. When we started hiking, the weather radar showed only one or two precipitation blips over the whole northwest quarter of the state (and the western half of Washington). By the end of our hike, one of those blips nearly tripled in size and moved directly over our spot. How's that for luck?

John managed to jump out of the side of the trail near the end in the dark, briefly scaring the crap out of Nathan and I. We decided to rank this outing among the top ten stupid things attempted as a group.

Despite the low light levels, and cold, arm-shake-inducing temperatures, I managed to get one or two good photos. Also, cell phone reception was nearly perfect for most of the trail. There may be all sorts of pretty views, and the trail may not be paved, but this area isn't exactly wilderness.

Later, John showed off his new car. A few weeks ago his Escort was wrecked spinning around on the sharp 26W-217S ramp. He got a shiny new 2005 Corolla. He was also very quiet about this and managed to mislead Nathan and I until finally pointing out how someone had parked a new car in his spot. Go John!

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My apologies for having let things rot for two months. Since the last post, I have become a rabid cell phone and embedded device hacker. It's refreshing to see software run in your hand, rather than in a big noisy rack somewhere.

This isn't renouncing my complaints about cell phones -- I still stand behind every one.

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Lately I'm in the middle of a project at work that's extremely uninteresting. As sort of a defense mechanism, I try to find the most interesting and elaborate way to carry out the task. This defense mechanism is only partially effective, and I wind up staring off into space, or typing up blog articles for a good chunk of the time I try to spend on the project. This sort of behavior has always come across as a lapse of self-discipline, but sometimes I wonder if it's no ADHD.

Staying up late at night to ensure that some specified amount of time actually winds up being spent on the project requires caffeine. Lately I ran across an interesting article over at Lindsay Brown's site L-Factor about the mechanics of caffeine. Lindsay is a microbiologist and revels in this stuff. Apparently the blood concentration of caffeine follows an exponential function with a half-life of about 3.5 hours for an adult, and works by altering the concentrations of cyclic AMP within cells. Whoa! Thanks Lindsay...

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Matthew Bradburn threw a house party last night. I was fortunate enough to have been on the guest list. For those who don't know Matthew, he is a co-worker, and a hard core Windows kernel hacker.

Everything about this party was well arranged. Matthew's swank house in SE made an excellent venue. The guest list seemed well-balanced in terms of those known and unknown to each other. There was a diverse selection of food and beverage, including an OLCC-licensed beer keg. The live music, although slightly loud for the acoustics of the venue, was excellent. Matthew's later accordion show was also quite good.

A number of neighborhood cats must have also been on the guest list, as they came and went, and seemed some of the more social at the party.

Afterwards, a smaller group, including Greg Fuller and myself, hung out at the Night Light pub three blocks away.

I took a few photos, but beware that all are products of flash photography.

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That's right, WordPress is out of my life now. It did the job while it had the job, but now it just looks like a shoddy implementation of a category of fad software. It has been replaced with Drupal. Notice the seamlessly integrated image galleries, and the newer, slicker captcha. Someday if I ever do movie or book reviews, Drupal will have a special node type for them.

Sure, it's all written in PHP, the simple, short-learning-curve programming language that reigns supreme and has become "the VB of the Internet" as Nathan calls it. I still haven't bothered even trying any Web gizmos built on other platforms. PHP does the job, and I probably won't feel any more macho, righteous, or warm and fuzzy inside using another tool. :-)

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This morning my computer monitor seems to have died. It's a Nokia 445pro, a monster 70lb, 21" CRT that's about 3.5 years old, and conveniently covered by a three-year warranty. :-(

It went down very sliently: it just started failing to power up. No fireworks. The green LED comes on, but without the loud demagnetizer sound. About three seconds later, the green light starts blinking rapidly, as if to confirm the malfunction.

I found interesting links about this monitor, and a nine-page service manual of some sort with circuit schematics. Maybe Mike Badger can fix it. Otherwise it'll be time to start hunting on ebay. I seem to have extremely bad luck with monitors. My last monitor, a Fry's special of some sort, died within its warranty period, and the replacement died about six months after the warranty expired.

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This documents the majority of my vacation to parts of Florida this spring. It represents a week's worth of entries, condensed into one.

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Today was Paul and Andi's wedding. It was held at the lodge of the Rainbow Rivers club in Dunnellon, FL.. The event was relatively small with about 30 guests, as they had intended for it to be. The ceremony started at 1pm, and lasted about 1/2 hour. It was well orchestrated, with a scipture reading, an account of their relationship, the standard vows, and the kiss.

The dinner party following the ceremony carried on until around 7pm. Mike gave his toast, emphasizing how long he's known Paul and Andi, and how well-suited they are for each other. Tina and her group arranged for excellent food in lavish quantities. There were fine wines, crackers, and bree for hors d'ouvres. The meal included 15 pounds of fresh shrimp prepared in fried and skewered fashions, roast beef, asparagus, and a delicious bean and rice dish. Afterwards, there was another toast with Champagne, and the bride and groom did the cake-cutting ceremony with a two-layer chocolate and vanilla cake. Still later they served a delicious key lime pie.

Paul and Andi spent a week selecting music, and it turned out well. After dinner and cake, some of us, including myself, uncharacteristically, hit the dance floor, and the music supported this well. I had a very good time.

So how did this make it on to the 'net from Florida? Apparently the Rainbow Rivers club has wifi in the lodge! I haven't been using it very much however, because doing so during social hours is unacceptable. However, tonight is another story, because of the application and timing of alcohol during the event. There was a drunken party last night, which I'll document later, and despite having only three servings of alcohol, I felt terrible this morning, and went very light on drinks at dinner. Most everyone else either had a bit more, or at least acted like they had a bit more, or perhaps it had something to do with the general eating schedule. Regardless, after drinking at 2pm, the social lubrication effect started to wear thin around 7pm. The unfortunate part is that the copious amounts of left-over alcohol from the event wound up in one of our cabins, everyone else is likely to plaster themselves, and I'd personally rather avoid the whole mess.

Pictures will be posted within the next few days.

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At a horribly early hour this morning, I'm preparing to leave for central Florida, for Paul's wedding. I return to Portland on Thursday evening. Finding a free WiFi hotspot in Florida was a major problem last year, and searching a couple of WiFi index sites has turned up very little. Clues?

Updates may be sporadic or nonexistant until late next week, but expect a lot of pictures.

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On Sunday, Nathan, John, both of my parents and I went out to dinner. Why? Because it was my birthday, damnit! My parents hadn't been out of the house together since summer of 2002, and seemed to appreciate the time away. Afterwards, they left, and the rest of us hung out at John's apartment for an episode of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.

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The next day, Ursa was particularly thoughtful and nice, and threw a party at work. Her, Daniel, Mike, and I went out to lunch to Pepper's. One reason we chose Pepper's was to try to convince Rick to join us, but alas, he was expecting a phone call. Pepper's is renowned as a relatively small, fun place, where they apparently sing to people on their birthday. Quite embarassing, something to be wary of when choosing a place to eat. :-) Ursa baked a particularly delicious chocolate/coconut pecan cake too! Thanks Ursa!!

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Check out the entire Gallery of Photos.

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