Month: July 2009

Untitled

Stage 8 of the TDF resulted in zero change at the top of the leader board. Old Man Lance is still in third place 8 seconds out. We are in the Pyrenees Mountains, but today and tomorrow’s stages are the kind that probably won’t determine who will win the Tour, but can decide who will lose it. While there are two or more big ass climbs on the stage, they don’t end at the tops, there are 30 to 40 miles of downhill & flats before the finish line allowing any of the contenders who is dropped on the climb to catch back up.

Appears that some of the blog’s theme CSS conflicts with the theme stuff that is produced by the stats generator and I’m not smart enough to know if there is an easy fix and don’t want to spend the time, so I took the easy way out. Just click on this link – Geocaching Statistics

I guess it is OK to blog about this because the FRS apparently don’t need me to jinx tonight’s victory over the supposedly lousy Kansas City Royals because right now their relief pitching is busily snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. When John Smoltz left the game after pitching 5 solid innings they had a 9 to 1 lead. KC scored 5 runs in the sixth. Now after a solo homer in the 7th they have a men on first and second with nobody out, so now the current batter represents the go ahead run!

At the pool party with the MMC this morning it was pointed out to me that I had misspelled retirement in my countdown widget in the right sidebar. What happened here, either all of my readers are as bad as I am when it comes to spelling or you all enjoyed watching me humiliate myself with the Internet equivalent of toilet paper stuck on the bottom of my shoe.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 292

Geo Stats

After last night’s 3 for 3 DNFs I’ve found out how to generate some ‘negative’ stats. I use a program called GSAK (Geocaching Swiss Army Knife) to do my off line organizing of caches to hunt and transfering data to the PDA for paperless caching. There is a nifty macro for creating a mind boggling array of statistics, but only of your finds. I guess not too many people really want to put a face on their misses. Me I don’t mind, it is all part of the game and fortunately someone else felt the same way. He has written a couple macros to use the GSAK stats engine to create a nice look of our Did Not Finds.

If you are a member over at geocaching dot com you can see my stats on my public profile page, but if you are not you can’t. I tried dumping them into a blog post, but the formatting got all weird. Oh, well, give me something to mess with in all my spare time.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 290

Oh Fer

Posterized EmperorWe had to make a run to get gas this evening, so while we were out we decided to attempt a cache that was just published yesterday. We would be like the third to find if we did find it. While we didn’t expect to find it, it was one of those that purposely left off the size and gave no hint to make it more difficult, but we were still slightly disappointed when we didn’t. 0 for 1.

There was another cache just up the street that we had logged a DNF on the first attempt, so we headed to it hoping for a second chance find. We didn’t. 0 for 2.

Dang. How about that cache over by the lawyer’s office that we missed the first time? OK, let’s go, it’s just one block over from our intended route home. On our first visit the GPSr was leading us to a bush that looked like it had recently been chopped in half. When we didn’t find it we just assumed that it must have gone missing during the pruning. Not long after we didn’t find it, another cacher tried and they failed too. The cache owner went and checked on it and reported it was still there. Some one else has found it since, so we figured we should find it this time. We didn’t. 0 for 3

Gonna have to go back to ammo cans…

Started up, went down, back up, down again, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 290

No Real Excuse

Normally because this is Wednesday I could use the upcoming broadcast of TDTVS as an excuse for not writing anything here, but we have at minimum 197 days before that happens again, so I have no real excuse.

Lets Go Krogering

Started up, went down, back up, down again, up again, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 287

Insect Food

About two weeks ago I got two insect bites on both sides of my right leg just above the knee. They itched, swelled and oozed clear stuff, staying that way for about three days until a scab formed. I’ve never reacted to mosquito bites that way, so I guessed they were from a spider, but whatever they were from they were unpleasant.

Then a week ago I got bit 4 times. Back of the right side of my neck, about four inches further down on my back, near the waist on the left side and on my left ankle. I don’t feel the initial bite, but then I’ll notice something itching and scratch a bump.

Those four had just about cleared up when on Monday morning I had an itchy bump on my left forearm. Then later that morning I noticed an itch under my left arm and then one further down the back on the same side.

It is just me, Donna hasn’t been bothered a bit. They could only be coming from a couple places, my dresser or I’m getting bit each time we venture into Hitchcock Woods. My plan of attack to combat this issue was to wait until I had had been bitten enough that my body developed an immunity to what ever was feeding on my, but it didn’t seem to be working. So last night my wife saiid let’s take everything out of my dresser and wash it. Then in the morning you can spray the drawers and everything down with some bug spray.

Washed, sprayed, replaced, we’ll see how it works out.

Started up, went down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 283

Black Gum Pond

Black Gum PondWalked by this pond on our way into Hitchcock Woods yesterday.

The two caches we hid yesterday were published (listed on geocaching.com and announcing emails sent out) a little before 9:00 PM last night and in less than 12 hours both were found.

I checked the site at mid day and “Out West” was logged with a FTF at 7:50 this morning. The same cacher logged “Jump At Your Own Risk” as a second to find, some one had beat them to it, and they wondered aloud in their log how they could have possibly missed each other.

The answer came this evening when the FTF of “Jump” logged in. They went out hunting as soon as they got the email last night. Now technically you are not supposed to be in the woods after dark, but that is not what was so wrong about this person caching at 10 o’clock at night, it was the fact that at that time Aiken was in the middle of a big ol’ thunderstorm. To quote from his log: “with the lightning flashing so much it was like hiking with a strobelight on!”

Such is the lure of being the First To Find a cache for some people.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 281

Tim’s Crossing

Tim's CrossingWe went for a hike in the woods this morning real early to beat the heat and to be home before Stage 1 of Le Tour started at 8:30AM.

This objective was to retrieve the small cache, “Jump At Your Own Risk,” we placed last week and move it to a different spot in the woods. We also wanted to place cache #2. The second one is titled “Out West” because we placed them in the western part of the woods and it is filled with some of the inexpensive souvenirs we brought back from our trip out west last April.

Yesterday evening we needed something to watch on TV so I poked around on Encore & Starz that came with our Tour de France digital package and found the third Pirate movie on one of the channels. When I first attempted to watch this movie back at the end 2007 I could only stomach 19 minutes of it. In the back of my mind I have always wondered had I bailed too early on it because people said it didn’t get good until Captain Jack Sparrow made his entrance. Wonder no more. We came in somewhere near the middle of the movie and lasted about 5 minutes. What a waste.

To make up for it this afternoon we watched the one and only TDPM on our copy of the DVD.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 280