The GPS Maze Event. - Putman Museum

Wow what a day. I don't even know where to begin. PJ was up at the crack of dawn, maybe even before then all excited to head to the museum. Once they got me up and moving we headed out for the drive down. Not quite knowing what to expect, just walking into the place it looked like it had been taken over by geo-cacher's. We some some familiar faces right away and I said hi to a few people, but then didn't get a chance to talk to them. :( It was crazy. I got to chat with a few folk's I haven't seen in forever "the family" as I call them guy's. Well I guess there a couple of women in that group but there just another one of the fellow's to me. :)

The whole family went with me today and we had lot's of fun. We got to get a family picture with Shauna (The Lackey). And I even got to see Bookhunter. Man, it's been a long time. I got to pick on The Wumpas some, and madkaw and of course drtmn. Plus the CR folk's that came down, welch, Supergoober, Doc 29 and his little Angel, Digger9.

I know there's lot's of people I'm missing here but it was packed. I wish we would have gotten there sooner to mingle more. PJ even got to pick a ticket out to give away a prize. He really thought that was cool. Thanks honeyfield.

I saw all sort's of geocoins and travel bug's. Just a crazy day. Even found a cache by just chance outside the place. It's not listed and I think is part of a program that goes with the Maze.

Like I said I got to chat with a few people, say hi to some, but would have loved to chat with longer. Time sometimes is just too short at some of these. But all in all it was a great way for them to welcome the Maze coming to Iowa. I'll do another blog post on the Maze in a couple of day's. So much is running threw my head at the moment. I missed my chance at getting a 2007 Lackey Coin. Shauna ran out of them as she said she had no idea this many people would be at the event. I won't hold it agaist her, but I can tease her about it. lol I hope you had a great flight back and made it back to HQ ok.

If any geocacher's that have kid's try and make the Maze, it's neat. Plus the rest of the museum was fun to check out. Lot's of cool thing's there. I've got about 80 or 90 picture's to go threw here still but just posted a few of the event.

I got to meet a Lackey

I met my first Lackey tonight. I didn't know what to expect, as I first thought it maybe a very serious type of person, but after we all got some time to chat with Shauna Muggs, she's just as much of a cacher as the rest of us. Just all kid's at heart.

In the picture from left to right is: c_dog, Shauna, not sure who's in the back in the middle, Parabola, shabs.

I was pretty excited I got to meet a Lackey. But we had all gotten together for a little pre-party before the Maze Exhibit in the morning. They had some good food, some great company, and got to chat about some of the great adventure's while out caching.

I wanted to get a picture of her and I posing like Jeremy's picture, but she didn't want to do that for a reason. But I did get to tease her about it. :) It was neat to hear some of her story's and I so wish I would have gotten to hear more of them.

Anyways it was great to meet you Shauna!!!! Thanks again for taking the time to do the photo opp. It's the first part of a goal of a geocoin of mine. Now how many more Lackey's can I hunt down? Here's the TB reference number for my geocoin if anyone want's to look it up. I'm still working on the write up and the perfect picture for it for the coin page.

Also it was great to hear about what kind of fun to expect at the Maze.

A new pooch on the way

I'm really getting excited. We currently have my fat pig, ok he's a pug, but he snore's louder than I do. But to give some hindsight to this. About 6 or so year's ago we had got our first dog. Bear. He was a good pup, but not thinking it all threw, at the time we had PJ on the way. Everything was fine till PJ came along. The dog was protective of PJ, but also didn't know what to think about him.

The wife being a protective mother, would yell at Bear to stay away from PJ. He wasn't doing anything wrong. He just got to close for her. Well, he was still a pup and I look back now and realize he just wasn't getting the attention he did before PJ came along. SO he was acting out. It got to the point I took him down to the farm (the wife's folks) where he could run wild. At the time we still didn't have the yard fenced in, which is all done now, so we just couldn't let him out to run. Plus him and grandpa were pretty good buddies. I think it was cause he feed him cheeto's.

Well, being on a farm can be dangerous, and there was an accident. They where working on some farm equipment and had it propped up. The prop's collapsed and grandpa did the only thing he could to keep it from land on him. He pushed the equipment away from him. Well, Bear was snooping around and it hit him in the side, and in a few minutes he was gone.

At the time this was the only Shiba Inu we had ever seen, as it's still a newer breed to the U.S. They have become very popular, and are hard to find. Well for my b-day, we made a family decision on looking into getting another one. After some time on the web, I located a few breeder's in Iowa. But some of them looking a bit shady or there website's where way out of date.

I did finally find one and we called to see when they might have another litter. Well, they had two litter's on the way. And today was the day they gave us they though the litter would be born.

Nothing so far, but we are waiting to see the pic's they are going to send us of the new pup's. I'm hoping since this is a pretty active breed of dog, he/she is going to go caching with me. Our pug, just can't handle the heat in the summer. Pug's get dehydrated very easily. So I've been very leary of taking him out for a cache hunt.

I know we have some old picture's of Bear and will put them up as soon as I can find them. And I'll put up the pic's of the new pup's as soon as they are born and we get photo's. It will be 8 week's before we can bring him/her home. But we are all excited about it.

I've got a travel bug here all ready for his/her coller. :)

A hunt in Wisconsin

Last year I went after a Terracache and a Geocaching that where both relatively close by each other. I hate to admit it but I wasn't able to find ether cache. But I did find some really cool bluff's in a really neat area that isn't far in to the wood's, but you wouldn't notice it just by driving by.

The caches were NOW THAT'S ITALIAN (TC2XM) and Room with a View (of Mississippi) (GC9151). I don't get to Wisconsin very often but the place these took me too was really cool. I don't know how to explain the rock's and the formations but it was really neat to check out and climb around on.



I wasn't too upset about not finding the terracache cause by reading the cache page, I wasn't the only one that have had problem's find it due to the cord's may be off. Also the area, my GPSr was bouncing all over the place. All I knew is there was a heck of a hill to climb. It had rained earlier in the day, which made for some slick climbing. I'm glad nobody was following me, or they would of had a rock in the forehead.

The geocaching I think I was in the right spot due to the hint's on the cache page, and someone had found it a few day's before me. But after thinking about it after I left I don't think I looked hard enough in a certain spot. It was found a few day's after I was there too. But the area right there was very cool, and I wouldn't suggest it for a small child. Climbing the rock's probably wasn't the best way but I found it alot of fun.



I'm still hoping to make it back. Since then I've drove right past the place but didn't have time to stop and try again. I'm putting up some photo's of the area to give people an idea of what it look's like. Again this was a neat place to check out.

It's kind of scary when you find some bones in the general area you are looking for a cache. At first glance I thought I found someone's leg bone and thought maybe it was a cacher that didn't make it out alive.



Again, I'm really hoping to make it back soon, there's a few other caches in the area I would like to look for as well. Just it's right next to the Mississippi and I'm sure the snakes are out and I really don't want to run into one. Parabola doesn't like snakes!!!! But I really want to get some more photo's of the rock's and the bluff's there. I know I had more but can't find them in my very messy photo files. One of these day's I'll have to take some time to clean and organize all my pic files. That's going to be a chore though.

But if your in the area and like this kind of terrain make sure you check it out, even if you don't find the caches, you'll enjoy the area.

The "Wave Goodbye"

This is very sad and the end of a great well, 20 year's. I'm seriously hoping he will still record under just Trent at the least and release new tune's on his website. He's a workaholic but the fan's who ripped into him after he sobered up and flat out said he didn't know if he could still make music sober or not. That took a big toll on him, and even though he's put out some great music since then, he keep's referring back to how he was torn apart for The Fragile, and With Teeth. It kept getting compared to The Downward Spiral. So this is the final tour, the "wave goodbye". I seriously hope to catch a show.

All I have to say is you don't know till you've seen them live.

Streaming Video

I've been playing around with different toy's for quite sometime now. I've made a "poor man's" movie server. A true movie server will set you back alot of cash. I thought this was really cool. I've got an Xbox 360 and since it's wired into my home network and via Window's Media Center, I'm able to pull up all my media files on to my Xbox 360. Plus using a component D.A. I'm able to use the Xbox 360 in our living room and can ship it to the bedroom TV since the controller's are wireless. I use a couple of program's to take a movie off DVD and put it on my desktop. Then from there it's a piece of cake to pull up the file's on the TV.

We've been netflick's subscriber's for quite some time. Well really we can't ever seem to get a movie back to the rental place on time and those late fee's rack up. But I had heard they where trying to stream via right to thing's like blu-ray player's via the Ethernet jack. I really hadn't thought about this much till the other day I was work in a customer's house and he told me he ordered up a movie on his blu-ray player from netflick's. The price of this is already included in the "unlimited" package.

So tonight I was toying around and saw they got set up with Xbox Live. So i set it up and cued up about ten movies to the Xbox console. So far it's working great. It's hitting me at about 480P. Which is the same as DVD quality. I haven't got to check out the sound yet, to see how much they had to compress that. But this is really cool. I log on to the netflick's site and just put in what I want and about a minitue later, bam the selection is available on my 360. So now I can pull the movies off my computer and just pull up what ever we want to watch very fast.

But I have to admit after seeing a few titles on our blu-ray player, going back to a regular DVD (that's not upconverted) just isn't the same. The video on the blu-ray is amazing. I don't have the storage space to hold blu-ray's on my desktop with out compressing them.

I just thought this was pretty cool so I thought I would share it with other's. It's a cheap way to rent movies, and not even have to leave the house. Also I noticed that you can stream the movies to your computer as well. I was thinking this might be kind of nice when I'm working out of town, and the weather is bad and I can't go caching in the evening. Of course that would all depend on just how "high speed" the hotel's high speed wireless is.

Beaver's Playground

Here the other day it wasn't raining out for a change when I got off work. I really need to mow the yard something bad, but really wanted to go for a little hike. I have a couple of caches I hadn't done yet in an area in Central City. There's a park to the south east side of there that is really a neat tucked away place. I saw a couple of car's in the parking area's, but never ran into anyone. I was thinking they where mushroom hunter's.

I went and did this two stage cache. A really neat one. Stage one was a mask hanging up on a tree. On the back of the mask was the cord's for the final location, which turned out to be a well hidden ammo can. The sketter's where pretty bad and I haven't fully loaded my cache bag for summer yet, so I didn't have any bug-spray or anything with deet in it. So I had to fight my way threw them. The weed's in the wood's where up to my knee's and I saw a lot of mustard seed plant's and a lot of neddle's. Lucky I had one jean's.

I found a nice animal trail to follow on my way back form the final and if I would have spotted that I could have avoided walking threw the weed's. Oh well, what fun is in that.

Then I was off to this one called LCC 50th Beaver's Playground. I headed off on the main trail and found a spot on the trail that looked like it went back toward's the cache. Some of the brush there was up to my armpit's all ready. But shortly after I made it threw the thick stuff and it was easy walking under the tree's. I got closer and closer, and then I saw swamp water. I looked down at my GPSr and saw only 400 feet or so away. I seemed to have walked out to a "peninsula" (for lack of anything better to call it) as I had to follow the water almost all the way back to where I left the trail. But I kept on following the side of the water hoping to find a low spot to cross. I think in a few week's the water level will go down and the route I tried to take will be passable.





As I was walking along the edge of the swamp, I looked over and saw kind of a clearing threw the tree's. Sure enough there was the trail it had twisted and turned and was going in the direction I wanted. So I hopped back on the trail and follow that till I came to a stream. Now it was a big decision time. Don't cross on the trail and hope the cache was on this side of the stream and swamp, or cross and hope I can find a way to wrap around.

I finally decided to cross the stream and found an animal trail that went the way I wanted to go. I followed that all the way to the edge of the park and the edge of the swampy water. Then wouldn't you know I found another clearing. Only this time it opened up to some farmer's field. I keep to the edge of the wood's and closed in on the cache.



When I was about 50 feet away I found a neat stream I had to cross. Luckily there was some stick's, mud, and clay, that it kind of formed a natural bridge. But I didn't see that till I took the old "leap of faith" across. I was able to hone in on the cache itself easily enough. But I did spot a much easier way to get to this cache. It wouldn't have been as much fun though, but it would have been an easy walk.







I traded some travel bug's, signed the logbook, and returned the cache how I found it. I ended up take the same way I came in all the way back. I'd have to say it was a fun day in the park, and the weather was perfect. Just if I would of had the bug-spray with me. The funny thing though, is I didn't pick up any tick's. I thought for sure I would have picked up a few going threw some tall grass. I'm not complaining at all, just thought I would have a couple to toss out the window as I drove home.

Just another one of those day's

Have you ever had just one of those day's where nothing seems to go right and every wrong that can happen does? I sure did have one this weekend.

First off, I usually run the sound for the UNI graduation every spring and fall. When I got there and started doing sound check's I could tell something wasn't quite right. But there's not a whole lot you can do a hour and a half before it start's considering you have to wait till the last minute to make all the final adjustment's. The speaking mic's you can get all preset cause there's not much adjustment you have to do to those, but when you add a the band into it, and they wait till about a half an hour before hand to warm-up. You've only got a short amount of time to tweak everything in and from there make minor adjustment's on the fly.

Well when you're in control of a sound system that will play very loud, and you have to adjust it just right so everyone can hear but not get blown out of their seat's, it help's to have a second person out and around just to radio you in and recommend some level adjustment's.





Anyways I had heard a little "crackling" noise during the first ceremony but it wasn't too noticeable and seemed to go away. I thought at first maybe the wireless mic may have been picking up some interference, and shut that down as soon as I could. I was more worried about setting the system into feedback cause the last time, I wasn't able to work it, and someone had taken my place and I guess shot it into feedback alot.

With the first ceremony out of the way and it went ok, I did some checking during the two ceremony's, and everything was working ok. We did a few sound check's with the different speaker's that would be at the second ceremony. Worked well.

So the second ceremony started and about 5 minute's in, I heard the cracking noise again. I was beginning to wonder if one of the horn's diaphragm's had blown. But that just didn't seem right. As if went on, that noise seemed to get worse and was noticeable to others. I was trying to find if it was coming in on one of the input's to the mix console, so I could isolate it and shut that input down, but it wasn't coming in on one input. So the worst came to my mind. The mixer. I had one of the employee's of the dome there with me and we started talking about what was going on and if we could figure out a way to fix it on the fly without interrupting anything. Just then, the output of the mixer went out. It was working but all the low end, and the high end and most of the lower mid end was gone. It almost sounded very "electronic". So the worst has happened and we still had about 45 minute's to go. Well, we had kind of come up with a worst case back up plan, and no this was the only choice. One of the guy's took off running to grab one of the little mixer's they had.

We worked out a 20 second stop thanks to the Marshall of the ceremony. He's good. But I hot swapped mixer's and got the speaking mic's functioning again, but didn't have enough input's to mic the band again. Plus nothing was set again. The guy's where giving me S*&^ afterward about the whole thing. But the dean did come up to me and thanked me. All you can do is apologize. Which he was so nice about it. He said hey I'm glad you where here, if not we would have lost everything and my guy's wouldn't have been able to getting anything else running so fast. Even with his word's of praise you still feel bad. But what do ya do? A crowd of 3000+ and all eyes where on me.




A couple of the guy's afterward offered to take me out for a beer afterward just because it turned into such a bad day and I really had to think on my feet and do some fast tweaking and all, but I don't drink. Oh well, I guess. I've put in some picture's of the two mixer's and the sound cluster and everyone that was "looking" at me in the time of crisis.

I kind of thought this was funny

Have you ever came across that sign saying you shouldn't been there? I know I've seen quite a few. Some by accident. I took this picture cause I thought this was the "cheapest" No trespassing sign I had ever seen. I found it kind of funny. Yes there was a cache within 20 feet of it, and the parking part was the kicker. But I just thought I share this picture, I took it about a year ago, and just came across it while trying to organize my picture's a little better. And it still crack's me up. Also if you would happen to find this same sign, don't park by it. There's enough nail's and screw's and broken glass around to take out a tire.



I know of another sign that cracked me up but I can't find the picture of it. It said taking picture's from that side of the sign is free, cost of trespassing and they had listed the cost of the fine. And then to top it off, it said "us watching you get a ticket for trespassing is priceless. It made more sense if you read it in person. I just thought these where kind of a nice break from seeing the normal old No trespassing sign's by seeing a funny one.

I do wonder if that one made out of the two pallet's is still standing or is even there anymore.

My collection is almost complete.

Recently I gained another object to my collection. I had seen that Maynard James Keenen had opened a vineyard and cellar in Arizona. I'm not a wine drinker at all, but I watched a waited to see what would become of this venture of his. After all, growing grapes in Arizona?!? Who would have ever thunk it? Well he had a little something special stuffed up his sleeve and about three week's ago, I got my first notification of it.

All the email said was "Judith is ready". Which in turn led me here.

Soak up that site a bit.


Anyway's, what I've got now is a fully autographed picture of TOOL, that my parent's got me from Scotland. Also inside the picture is a TOOL guitar pik. Also in there is a ticket stub that I took my wife (well she wasn't at the time) too. As well as a bottle of Nagual del Judith and a bottle of Dos Ladrones. Hey for the price I had to pay I had to get the wife something, so the Cabernet is for her. Plus I want to see the cork from the bottle but have no intention's of ever opening the bottle of Nagual del Judith.

I still need to get my ticket from a Cedar Rapid's show (my first TOOL show), another Cedar Rapid's show, and the show in Council Bluff's that my wife took me too for my birthday a few year's ago. Which we meet the opening band after the show "somewhere". It was just dumb luck we ended up at the same place, but I got to meet/party and get a picture of me with Kinski. (a small band out of Seattle)




The ticket stub in the picture though is from a crazy night we had in Moline. I think that was the place my wife saw what she would call "freak's" for the first time. I was right at home, and she was kind of nervous. (I think she remembers the night for something else kind of major though) I couldn't get floor ticket's but if you've been to the mark (oh what it's called something else now) and been to a rock concert, you know when the light's go down, hop that little ledge and head to the crowd. Security will give up trying to keep you in the balcony once your a couple of people in. I think though this was the first time she realized what I was talking about on the kind of performance they put on. It's pretty much unmatched by any performer out there. All I will say it was a very crazy night and I'm so happy the bar was right at the hotel. We both are much "older" now, so I guess "those where the day's".


Who would of every thought this thrown together band would have ever created what they are today. You've got lot's of talent in all sort's of area's. Like if you've seen the movie, Jurassic Park, you've seen some of the creation's of one of the guitarist's, Adam. Danny is one of the best drummer's in the world to date, Justin is one of the best bassist I've ever heard and Maynard, there's no comparison there at all. Heck, I even named my kid after him.

I think about the only thing I really need for this collection other than really wanting to meet the member's is a backstage pass. Maybe, someday... there is a tour going on this summer... HINT, HINT !!!

But really with the release of this website and reading it, it answer's alot of unanswered question's in a round about way and put's some thing's into a new perspective.

Now if I could get my cousin to finish getting a picture over to paper that Alex Gray made for the band, I can get that other tattoo I want. (mom quit rolling your eye's ;) It's going on the back of my leg. ) Or maybe I'm the one holding that up...... I think it's about time to make a road trip.

Just wanted to show my "prized" little collection that really doesn't mean a whole lot to anyone but me, I guess.

Peace out,

Parabola

Crazy day of Geo-caching Event's

Well for it being Earth-day weekend, the weather couldn't have been nicer. It was so nice I even got a sunburn on the head. Ouch!! Today or I guess yesterday now where a couple of event's I had been waiting for. The first one was a flash mob event. Which are only 15 min's long. Now I remember why I don't care for them too much. When it comes to caching I'm never on-time. I rolled in about 5 min's late, but it was just enough time to participate. I spotted BB and asked where's a log sheet, and BBjr hooked me up and got me signed in. They did a great job with this flashmob event and I was even shocked to see Bumanfam was here all the way from across the state. I didn't get a chance to say hi though. :(



I don't know about anyone else, but I sure do lose track of time, when out and about, which is why I think I'm late to them.

After that I refueled at the gas station with some caffeine and got ready for the CITO event. This was the third year that AB-N-AP put this event on. They do a pretty bang up job with it. This year the area was a lot smaller, and wasn't in too bad of shape. But I think by the time we left the trail looked really good. There was a good sized pile of garbage bag's that was left behind for the city to pick up. But this year it seemed to go pretty quickly. I did try and get down by the creek to pick that area up, and landed in a nice area of neddle's. I though it was a bit early for them, but I'm feeling the sting.



After ward's I got together with TrapperDan and we walked the trail back to find the cache that AB-N-AP put out for the event. We had a good walk along the trail, and when we got to the cache there was quite a few people there. We tried to mess with Durango Dale and told him he must have put in the wrong cord's cause he was a couple hundred feet away yet, but he didn't buy it. lol Then join by xshooter we made the walk back to the car's, and talked about caching.

It was a great day to be outside other than the sunburn. I didn't even think about it, till tonight when I was sitting here and felt my head. Ouch. I won't be cutting my hair for a few day's. I'll have to see if I can get my hand's on the group photo's and upload them as well.