Hiatus

Hiatus for at least the next year. Maybe in that time, I'll figure out what I really want to blog about anyway.

More Mac and Youtube Disabled

The Mac switch is going fine. It does not always "just work" as they say. I was just learning to use garageband to make a podcast, went to the help file and it froze up. Then the "force quit" feature wouldn't force the application to quit. I had to restart.

That was a minor annoyance compared to my primary Youtube account being disabled. One too many copyright violations, I guess. No notice, even after the fact. And now all the videos are gone. So just as with Napster (years ago), it is off to find an alternative. Leading contender is dailymotion, although I'd love to hear other suggestions.

Mac Switch

Well, the old PC went kaput one more time. So becasue I won't be able to fix it myself during the next several months, I decided we should become a Mac family. Got a low end Mac Mini really just for web surfing, email, music, etc. That's all everybody needs (other than me), and this should appease them and hopefully "just work" for the next several months.

Having some probably normal adjustment issues, but everything is working very well. One highlight was plugging in my printer and then printing 20 seconds later without having done anything to set it up. On the old system, I kept getting printer driver errors every time I restarted (even though I had the driver disks and had reinstalled everything). Another highlight was uninstalling a program that I had downloaded but decided not to use. All I had to do was delete it. No restarting, no registry changes. And I didn't feel like I had gunked up my system (on the old system, I was very reluctant to install anything because it would just mean that I'd have to reformat sooner).

I was not able to function without a right clck on the mouse, but was able to configure the mac mighty mouse to have a right click anyway. The process for installing programs was a little bit different as well, but is not a big deal once you know what you are doing. Just a different way.

Liquor and Guns

I really can't stand Conan O'Brien, but this segment with Hunter S. Thompson is cool despite him.

Lifestyle Choices

Seeing a family with about five children today, I finally understood how Christian conservatives feel when they witness the homosexual lifestyle choice. I disapproved and was offended.

Cultural Adventist

I've been meaning to write about being a "cultural adventist" and thought the concept was pretty unique. Turns out there is a damn blog with the same name. And a timeline of the term. I want to say that I was using the term before 2001, when the timeline starts. But I can't be sure, and couldn't prove it either way. Unless Eric remembers me saying something along those lines. I remember first thinking about cultural adventism (although I don't know for sure if I used that term at the time) in Boston in 1998 when we met this gay uncle who still had vegetarian food in his pantry. He had learned a new use for Big Franks, perhaps, but the food item still united us.

Unlike some of the so-called cultural adventists I've found online, I don't consider church attendance a part of cultural adventism (although it can be). There have been times in my life when I returned to the bosom of the church not because I believe it to be true, but because it felt comfortable during uncomfortable times. When living in Washington DC, I recall going to an adventist church to get a good vegetarian meal at the potluck dinner afterwards. Living in Ireland, I went to the church to meet people and managed to get a job from one of them. Even now, if I became ill, I'd want to go to an Adventist hospital. Not just because of the food, but because it would feel like home.

Cultural adventism goes beyond food and comfort, of course. It is an essential part of the nurture side of your personality. The inability to dance or play card games. A love for nature and the outdoors that comes from going to places like Jump Creek every Sabbath afternoon. These things linger -- even if you slowly become a lesbian neo-feminist poet living in a commune. Even that person, deep down inside, will pause and take notice if a news story makes it sound like a Sunday Law could be coming. And yes, even she knows where the local ABC is and goes there -- piercings and all -- every few months to stock up on Fri Chick.

Change?

Should I convert this to a porn blog in order to boost traffic and/or interest?

Reformat

A geek post . . .

I have been intending to reformat my desktop for about a year. It just gets harder and harder, though, because I bought the system in 2004. So the system restore brings me back to 2004 and I spend a weekend updating it. But it became necessary.

I had restarted the computer and was informed that some system file was missing or corrupt. It was quite a dark feeling for about two hours because I had not backed up my pictures, music, and such for a few months. With my (scratched) system restore DVD, though, I managed to get in and get a prompt. The fixboot command looked good and that must have worked, because I was able to get in upon restart to backup all my crap.

Did I mention that my DVD was not only scratched, but the DVD drive is about to die? It makes really loud noises and seems to go slower than it should (can't watch movies on it anymore). Despite this obvious difficulty, I popped in the system restore DVD and reformatted the muther. Slow and noisy, it managed to reinstall everything. Literally about 100 Windows Updates later, I'm up and running better than ever. Or at least as good as in 2004.

While doing all this, I kept thinking about a long term solution. There has to be something better than my 2004 PC, right? After all, I'm on video card 2.5 (replaced the fan on the first one, then the first one went out . . .and now this one's fan is about to need replacement). The only CD/DVD drive is shot. The hard drive is hanging in there, but does a lot of work and could go out any day (I use the computer as a DVR to record tv shows and watch them later). Time for a new computer! Except I couldn't find anything better. But that will be the subject of a future post.

Avawatz Climb

I've decided that desert peaks are more interesting than your standard mountain peak with trees. The views are just better and they tend to be less crowded (or downright abandoned). Of course, you have to get these during the winter months when the temperatures are down -- although winter mornings can be downright cold. Another downside of climbing in the winter is that the days get short -- you need an early start unless you want to be on the mountain when it is dark (which I would actually like to do someday -- the view at night must be even more spectacular).

Most recently, I climbed the high point in the Avawatz Mountains in Southern California's high desert. The range is just to the south and east of Death Valley and to the north and west of the Fort Irwin military base. I followed the climb as outlined here. It took about four hours up. I parked sooner than I should have. But the advice about parking before you get to the communications tower is good. You'll end up in the canyon below because the road is washed out if you go too far. Or you'll have to go back down the hill along the ridge in reverse -- a tough task in itself.

I did almost burn down the whole damn range when I started a little fire that morning before the hike up. A spark or something got some dry grass and it was out of control. Burned about a 10-foot area when it was all done, and I sacrificed nearly all of my water.


I also found a cool abandoned mine site on the way back down. It was better preserved than most, and had a pit mine into the ground that was covered by a few boards. I had this fantasy of coming back with a five gallon can of gasoline, dropping it down there, and then throwing a Molotov cocktail down there. Whoosh! Then throwing a bunch of other crap down there to burn. But after having already nearly burned the whole range down, that is probably not a good idea.

The first picture is from the summit looking toward Fort Irwin. The second picture is looking toward Death Valley. Neither do the view justice, particularly because I had a crappy camera and not my good one. But the day was clear with very little wind or haze and a high temperature of about 60 degrees. Perfect.

The third picture is of the mine site (see the little pan still there and the boards covering the pit). The fourth picture is down the pit.

Barker Ranch

I spent yesterday up at Barker Ranch in the very southwest of Death Valley. Barker Ranch is where old Charles Manson and his "family" hid out and were eventually found. It is pretty damn remote in that you have to drive forever to get there. However, due to the sheer mass of humanity in southern California, there were still plenty of people around. We shared our visit with some ATV riders who went inside the cabin to smoke some pot in homage to Mr. Manson. The first photo is of a side building ("the guest house") and the view down Goler Wash (I suppose the family used to sit up here to see if anybody was coming), the second photo is of the main cabin itself.

The remainder of the pictures are not of Barker Ranch but of other interesting finds up Goler Wash. It is normally a pretty tough 4x4 road from what I understand, but it has recently been graded. So we had an easy time. The water was running up the wash, though, and I bet by this summer it will be a pretty tough go again. Anyhow, plenty of mines, abandoned cabins, and assorted debris.

I managed to make an adventure out of the day by insisting on taking a detour to the north border of the east section of China Lake Naval Air Weapons Station. The map insisted there was a road, but it was just a river bed that got worse and worse. Then it started to get dark. Then one of my passengers threw up (the second time that day). Gave up and turned around just shy of the border. Just as well -- I didn't really need to be the accidental target of a sidewinder missile after all.

Earlier in the day, I stopped by a local brewery and picked up a case of my current favorite beer and a case of another selection for the spring.

More Big Empty

Desert Finds

Now that it is winter in the desert, it is finally time to be outdoors and explore. The snakes are in hibernation, and the air is cool. Only bad thing is that the days are short and there seems to be more wind during the winter and spring months.

In our wanderings recently, we've found some strange things in the middle of nowhere. First, you see the flag on the top of a hill. You can see the flag from a road nearby, but there is not a building within 10 miles of this hill and I cannot figure out what it is doing there. Second, is a nice little man. He was truly in the middle of nowhere. Not even a paved road within 20 miles, and we had hiked about a mile from a fairly tough 4x4 road to get there (the woman had to get out and push once when we were on the road). You may not be able to tell in the attached picture, but there was a dried up snake skin wrapped around his neck. That was a little gross.

Things seem to be well preserved out in the desert. You'll often see old cars, appliances, mattresses and tires -- stuff that people can't just give to the trash guy. So they dump it out in the desert. Although I generally prefer my spaces empty, with as little sign of humanity as possible, it is nice to have the occasional surprise such as the flag and man.