Around Town

Sometimes it's easy to get caught up in traveling to various places around the country and around the globe and forget about nice locations just around the corner. I'm not planning to go anywhere in March...March 2005 was the last month I spent entirely at home, so this is somewhat of a change of pace for me.

Thus it's a good time as any to enjoy what Maryland has to offer. Today Christina and I walked around University Park; we explored various parts of the town park, as well as the town creek.

Things I don't expect to see on my drive to work...

I was wondering what all the police vehicles were (I apparently drove by about an hour after the accident). Fortunately, nobody had life-threatening injuries.

The Android's Dungeon Endorses...

Well, tomorrow is the Maryland primary, and I'm keeping up a certain symmetry by being out in California for the Maryland primary, just like I was in Maryland for the California primary. My next stop apparently should be California, Maryland.

I did, however, get my absentee ballot in well ahead of time. For the Democratic presidential nomination, the Android's Dungeon endorses Barack Obama. I really like Obama, so I have a number of reasons, but I should go eat breakfast and get to work, so I'll just highlight two of them.

*Dynastic politics. As much as I liked Al Gore in 2000, he was a Senator's son. As much as I was unenthusiastic about John Kerry in 2004, he was the son of a federal government employee. I believe it is important for the health of our democracy to elect people from different families...fresh blood, if you will. As qualified as 'legacy' candidates sometimes are (and sometimes aren't), I think we need to reinforce the idea that you don't have to be related to someone famous to become president. I don't relish the idea of a race between a president's wife and an admiral's son.

*Integrity. God bless Bill Clinton, but the Clintons have come to stand for the idea that, "Hey, if the Republicans will do anything to win an election, we have to be prepared to as well." Think I'm exaggerating? The New Republic, in an editorial that reminds us they're still not sure whom to endorse says,

Looking at their plight with any detachment, it is even possible to develop a measure of sympathy for the Clintons. Or it was, anyway, right up until the point at which Hillary threatened to steal the nomination.

They're referring to Hillary's, "I agree with the decision not to count Michigan and Florida...oh, wait, I won? That changes things," plan.

So I've cast my absentee ballot for Obama, and I encourage readers who are eligible to cast future votes for him to do so. It's an interesting election year; maybe we can avoid making it too interesting (although a deadlocked convention would be fascinating...).

Subscription Services

As a reminder, if you go to my home page, there's a link to subscribe to the Android's Dungeon via e-mail. Now, if you go to Christina's site, you can subscribe to her weblog by e-mail, as well.

For those of you using an RSS aggregator like Google Reader or similar, there's a feed of my site here and hers here.

Countries Visited

I was updating my Wikitravel home page, and I decided to check that the links to other pages were working. This, in turn, reminded me that it was time to update my countries visited map.



Map generated by World66.

Since my last update, I've visited Malaysia and Singapore. The mostly likely country to be added in 2008 is Turkey; we'll see.

Headed home

Had a fun night last nite @ Spamalot.

Tkts

I'm in the 1/2 price broadway tix line. There are lots of people. Many TKTS employees seem only to exist to yell at people to keep the line moving.

All Arted Out

Christina and Mondrians at MoMA
Originally uploaded by jongrantham

Yesterday I headed up to the Guggenheim. I had planned to go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but in the end I felt like something more modern. As it turned out, most of the museum was closed for installing a new exhibit...that was fine with me. Admission was reduced to $8, and I still got to see a wide variety of "name" paintings from the late 19th and early 20th century. On the other hand, the paintings seemed to be the "other" paintings by great artists...nothing too inspiring. I did like one Picasso, though. The most impressive thing about the museum was probably the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed building.

Afterwards, I turned on my GPS and discovered I was about a third of a mile from a geocache, which looked to be right on Fifth Avenue. As it turned out, it was a "virtual" cache right in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. There was another cache another third of a mile away, so I headed into the park to catch it. If the park was semi-deserted the previous day in the cold, it was almost empty in the cold and rain.

Then I took the subway back to Midtown to meet up with Christina after her conference. The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) has free admission after 4pm on Fridays, so we took advantage. I thought the collection of paintings was the most inspiring I've seen on this visit, with fabulous works by Picasso, Van Gogh, Johns and Lichtenstein.

I was, however, by the end of the day, essentially done with art museums, at least for this trip. I saw a lot of great paintings, but I'm going to turn my attentions elsewhere this afternoon.

Everybody's a Critic

Christina in front of BXL cafe
Originally uploaded by jongrantham

I have been my photos to the blog via Flickr, since that seems to be the easiest way when I don't have access to my own laptop. After I posted yesterday's Central Park picture, I got this comment:
"Nice composition--love the steps; otherwise rather mundane and not too exciting colors. Keep at it, friend! :-)"

Of course, it was from someone I don't know. From my perspective, it seems odd to criticize the colors -- that's not my department, that's Mother Nature's.

After trying a variety of dining options from guidebooks that ended up disappointing, we decided last night to try a place that I had not seen in a guidebook -- rather, it had caught my eye while walking back to the hotel yesterday. It was a Belgian restaurant called "BXL cafe". It was probably the best food we've had yet this trip. Christina's spaghetti bolognese was tasty, and my mussels were excellent. There's a Belgian restaurant kind of near home (in Olney), but we don't get out there often enough.

We had to wait half an hour for the table, so we walked around, and Christina bought a hat.

Dead Laptop in NYC

Central Park
Originally uploaded by jongrantham

So, here we are in New York City. Last night I opened up my laptop to find that it wouldn't boot up. Grr. I can probably fix this with a Windows disk, which is at home. So I'm posting this from Christina's work laptop.

Today while she was at her conference, I first went to Central Park to attempt some geocaching. I did not find the cache, but I took the accompanying picture.

Then I went to the Frick Collection to look at some art. They had some nice pieces by Degas, Vermeer, Rembrandt and Whistler. I bought postcards to show Christina what I had seen. Some of you will be receiving those postcards, since at $1/each, I have to get another use out of them! :-)

License

 

A couple of months ago, I got a letter from the Maryland MVA (other states have DMVs -- we here in Maryland like to be just a little bit different) letting me know that my driver's license would be expiring in a couple of months, and -- good news, everyone -- I'd be able to renew it by mail. So I sent in my renewal, and soon got back a letter informing me that their recent database conversion went really well for most people, but oops, my picture was lost in the move. So I'd have to come in and get the license renewed in person.

I was annoyed enough by this to wait until the day my old license expired to do the renewal. I went in and was told I'd have over an hour wait. So I went out, found a geocache, exchanged some geocoins, came back, and found that I was nowhere near being called. In fact, it took another hour and half, not counting geocaching time.

My new picture's OK -- compare and contrast pictures above. I'm glad I have another 5 years to wait to do this again. As an added bonus, I have another 5 years of being able to drive without glasses, since I barely scraped by the eye exam. (Don't worry, I have driven without glasses only once in the last 12 years.)

In geocaching news, I dropped off a new geocoin (see picture). The cache I found had a bunch of coins in it. I feel bad picking up a coin without dropping one, so I prepared some coins to swap in just such a situation. I don't, however, feel bad taking two when I drop off one, so I have a couple more to move around. I gave no particular mission to the coin I dropped off, so it'll be interesting to see where it ends up. (The two that I asked to return to Maryland are currently wandering around Wales and the Czech Republic, so missions may be overrated.)

Tecate

Tecate

Thursday night, I was walking around the house and noticed a disposable camera on a shelf. Rather than walking past it as I had a number of times, I picked it up. It had expired in October 2006, but I wondered if it could still be developed. The answer...sort of. Many of the pictures were ruined due to brown splotches on them. Some of them were OK, to one extent or another. A few were from a trip we took two-and-a-half years ago to Tecate, Mexico. When we were in San Diego for the summer, we drove down to the border one day and walked across.

Tecate had the advantage that it wasn't really very touristy. We had a nice lunch, then looked around for other things to do. Then, not being touristy became a disadvantage. The brewery was closed (we may have gotten there too late), and there weren't any souvenir shops. We went into a couple of stores and bought some random stuff (I got some plastic playing cards) and then went home.

Geocaching Update: FTF

Here's a geocaching update for you. The latest map I have to show you is my US state map. I added Nevada on my mileage run and Arizona while we were visiting my parents over Christmas. Christina and I had a nice walk through the desert to find that one, although we saw a coyote on our way back!

The morning after we got back, I was enjoying my morning tea before heading out to pick up Teddy & Cheetah from the kennel when I got an e-mail alert for a new cache. It was just a quarter mile from our house. Some geocachers delight in being the "First to Find" (FTF) a cache. It doesn't seem like the most interesting part of the hobby to me, but I thought I'd try to have at least one to my name. Given the time and distance, I had no trouble. I see from the logs that someone else drove in from Virginia to try to get an FTF here. No luck for them.

You know, from that map up there, I'd assume the cacher was from California and had visited a few other Western states, along with a trip to Maryland.

Randomness

I am in line to register for the Joint Math Meetings. The A-F line is out the door, the G-L line is kind of long, and there's nobody in the M-R line. It is tempting to make fun of mathematiciams for not modeling this correctly, but maybe the woman running the M-R line is just really efficient.

Straight Cash, Homey

I found this little widget, which amused me.

My blog is worth $564.54.
How much is your blog worth?

The title of this blog post, by the way, is courtesy of Randy Moss.

Frequent Flying 2007: Still at 1K

Well, I ended 2007 with 101,104 "miles", maintaining my United 1K status. I put the word "miles" in quotation marks, because I actually flew 76,993 "BIS" miles. BIS? "Butt in seat". I got bonus miles (not actually flown) from my Visa card, one trip in business class, carryover from 2006 and United's policy of awarding a minimum of 500 miles for each flight. (I lost miles from one flight where there was a stop that was ignored by United's computations, because there was one flight number.)

I actually flew slightly more than that for two reasons. One, which is kind of pedantic, is that these numbers are based on the minimum distance between airports, and actual flight plans are longer. The second point is that I flew on two trips (Dulles-San Juan and Singapore-Kuching) where I didn't earn miles -- the first because it was a free ticket, the second because there was no way to earn United miles on the trip.

In 2006, it took me 95,642 BIS miles to get to 1K. Maybe in 2008, I can do it with 70,000...

O'Hare

Greetings from Chicago, where weLve avoided for the last year and a half...ever since Christina got stuck here overnight. We made it more or less on time, and our flight to Dulles is 40 min. delayed. I feel like we're in good shape. Also, I made it to 100,000 miles...which is a lot on United before touching down in Chicago.

Ponce

Puerto Rico 2007

We're taking it easy here in Arizona, so I have time to get together some pictures from previous trips. Here are some from our Thanksgiving in Puerto Rico. This time we got out of San Juan; we stayed in Ponce. Since we had a car, we were able to get out to more of the island.

World Heritage: 2007 in Review

Well, another year is drawing to a close, and time for me to take stock of my visits to World Heritage sites. (See 2006 or 2005.)

Five appears to be my lucky number. For the third year in a row, I visited five sites.

1. In early May, I visited Tallinn, Estonia.
   
2. In late May, I visited Barcelona, including the works of Gaudí ...
   
3. ...and the Palau de la Música Catalana.
   
4. In September, I visited Schönbrunn in Vienna...
   
5. As well as Vienna's historic city center.
   

I also got a bonus site...the Sydney Opera House, which Christina and I visited in 2002, got listed. So that puts me at 40.

2008 is a promising year. I have the potential to add sites in Australia, Turkey, the UK and the US. Maybe I'll break the string of fives...

nyny

To accompany the statue, they are playing a 9-11 country song. I was able to endure without comment until the lyrics about not knowing the difference between Iraq & Iran.

monorail

I have now been asked by 3 tourists for monorail tips. I could answer
2 of their questions. I am now researching the other -- can you ride
to the end & just stay on? The answer is yes.

Done Gambling

Well, I have finished all my goals & I have about 5 hours until my
flight. I am very glad I did not go early this morning.

I started playing nickel video poker with a stake of $20. I bounced
between 18 & 23, had a free drink, started smelling like smoke & got
bored. I switched to quarter vp & almost immediately hit 4 of a kind.
I cashed out my 49.25 & am now headed back to the monorail.

I plan to stop at each stop & see if there are any geocaches or
waymarks. (I got an all day pass.)

Spice Market Buffet

They changed the casino from the Aladdin to Planet Hollywood, but left the buffet intact.

Vegas

Well...I made it.

Red Carpet Club

I am enjoying my last saved rcc drink coupon before heading to the gate.

Too tired to drive to the airport...

...or at least too sane. At this point I'm valuing 4.5 hours of sleep in my bed ahead of 4.5 hours in Vegas. I think I have successfully canceled the standby, as well as checked in for the return flight. I'm going to grab my printouts, then go back to sleep until after the morning rush hour.

Mileage Run

Well, I've packed my bags for a trip to nowhere. Or Las Vegas, depending on your perspective. Recently, I calculated my total "Elite Qualifying Miles" on United Airlines, and I discovered that I was going to end up with 96,972 at the end of the year. (For reasons documented a year ago, that's more miles than I actually am flying.) What to do?

One option, through the bizarre calculus of frequent flier programs, was to spent 40,000 "earned" miles to get 4,000 EQM and put myself over the top. But 40,000 miles is a lot. It's more than enough for a flight to the Caribbean or Hawaii, and almost enough for a flight to Europe or South America.

So a $198 fare to Vegas -- that gets me more than 4,000 EQM and 8,000 "earned" miles. And I can fly there during the day and come back on the redeye. Only eight-and-a-half hours on the ground in Vegas. I could have had a quicker turnaround, but if my outgoing flight was late, I could miss my return flight!

So what to do with my eight-and-a-half hours in Las Vegas? Well, by the time I get out of the airport, catch a cab, and account for enough time to get back early enough to make my return flight, conservatively, I'm down to five-and-a-half hours. I identified three priorities:

• Enjoy a buffet.
• Do some geocaching and waymarking.
• Play the nickel video poker machines at the Las Vegas Hilton.

Hmm, even with the monorail to zip me from location to location, that seemed a little tight. So when I did on-line check-in today, I decided to standby for the early morning flight. That'll add 4.5 hours to the whole deal, and if I wake up tomorrow morning too tired to drive to the airport, I can go on-line and cancel the standby.

I said my bags are packed, but really it's just a backpack. I have a book, some spare clothing in case I get stuck, and various electronic goodies. I've transferred about fourteen-and-a-half hours of video to my iPod -- in retrospect that seems like overkill. I bought a battery backup for the iPod that allows me to use AA batteries. I have my phone for Internet access (I may annoy subscribers to this blog with frequent updates) and my camera and GPS for geocaching/waymarking. I have Lonely Planet Las Vegas Encounter and a printout of Wikitravel Las Vegas which I'll pit against each other for usefulness.

Wish me luck!

Sentosa

Well, I'm back in Singapore. I have some cool stories and pictures from Malaysia to post, but they'll have to wait...well, until I set aside some time to organize and post those, along with the cool stories and pictures from Puerto Rico.

My sightseeing ambitions for today in Singapore were rather limited. I headed for Sentosa, which is an resort island off the south coast of Singapore, itself an island. I was actually headed for an island off the south coast of Sentosa. This island is, in fact, the southernmost point on the Asian continent. I headed there for three reasons. One, I find extremes interesting. Two, the site is a virtual geocache, and it allowed me to check off Singapore on the geocaching list. The third reason was not apparent to me originally, until I thought -- wait a second, how can this be considered the southernmost point in Asia? Parts of Borneo, definitely in Asia, are south of Singapore. If we're restricting ourselves to "continental Asia", well, this is an island. I finally realized that we were talking about the southernmost point in Asia, reachable by ground transportation. There are more southerly points, but this is the farthest south you can go without getting on a boat or a plane.

Then I remembered an article I read several years ago about the prospect of taking a train from Scotland to Singapore. This seemed to me to be a wonderful journey. There are a number of obstacles -- some of the train tracks don't exist yet (see this Asia Times article from earlier this year for an update), and at least a couple of countries aren't the best for an American to travel through. So I decided this trip is one I could take in retirement -- that'll give people plenty of time to build the railroads and, well, achieve world peace.

So the third reason is that this is one end of my journey. Maybe some day I'll come back here at the end of that trip. Most likely by then, someone will have built a bridge to an island slightly farther south, though.

Sentosa

On a positive note, I got to ride a monorail to Sentosa, and the rain stopped for long enough for me to see the site. On the other hand, it was very muggy, and switching from the train to the monorail required me to navigate through a mall. I decided to head for the Asian Civilisations Museum next, but I got caught in a downpour while trying to walk there from the mass transit station. At this point, my desire to be anywhere but home evaporated, and I headed back to the hotel. Sorry, George, but my trip to get a Singapore Sling will have to wait for some other trip. I showered and changed into whatever clean clothes I could scrounge, and am about to head back to my room to order room service.

Sarawak GPS

 

I had a really good time on the conference excursion this morning -- more details on that later. Above is a map of the trip we took. To a certain extent, it was pointless to take my GPS along -- it was a bus trip, and we were going exactly where the bus took us. Nevertheless, it made me feel much better to have it along. Bus trips have their pluses and minuses, but one minus is the lack of control -- not only of where you're going, but the information about where you're going and when you'll get there. At least the GPS got the information for me. (For one thing, I could tell we'd get back early based on our speed and the distance back to Kuching.) It was interesting to realize how close the longhouse was to the Indonesian border (the gray line in the lower left). Yeah, it's just a map -- not as cool as a video of a orangutan swinging -- but the latter will take a while for me to upload to YouTube.

Sarawak Museum

 

This afternoon I found some non-raining time to go for a walk. (At lunch, a Malaysian from Kuala Lumpur told me that he didn't understand why the conference was in December...because of the rainy season, they never have conferences in November and December.) I walked along the river and inland a few blocks to the Sarawak museum. As you can tell from the sign above, I have no pictures of the museum to post. Just as well; it was a rather tired affair. Clued in by the Wikitravel article on Kuching, however, I knew to take the pedestrian bridge across the street to a newer museum, skip the exhibit, and head straight to the gift shop. I snagged a set of postcards, an interesting looking t-shirt for myself, and something for the holiday gift exchange at work.

I made it back to the hotel sweat-soaked. I changed and am now in the executive lounge enjoying a refreshing Coca-Cola.

"Conference participants just can’t help being in awe of State’s capital"

So says an article in Monday's Borneo Post. Guess they didn't read my post from last night. :-) To be fair, I think most of the blame for my ill mood lies squarely on the Holiday Inn. Right now I'm enjoying a breakfast at the Hilton that is comprised of an excellent selection of Western, Chinese and Malay dishes.

Marinated Honey Chicken Wing Ball

I don't like to think of myself as the type of guy who travels halfway around the world (in this particular case, to Kuching, Malaysia -- this loses to Sydney by a couple of hundred miles for the "farthest I've ever been from home" honors) to order room service. So I braved a torrential downpour (thankfully my hotel lends umbrellas) and headed to the opening reception. What's that smell? Ah, overflowing sewers. When I got to the Holiday Inn Kuching, I remembered, oh yes, the organizers had planned a poolside reception. I tried to take pictures of the overflowing pool, but I think my camera lens was too fogged up.

When I arrived, I was beset by two gentlemen offering me a sample of the local wine and a discount on a future purchase of it. Jon's new rule: Always drink the local beer, never drink the local wine. Unless you're in France, Napa Valley, or some place you'd drink wine from even if it wasn't local. (Not as snappy with that qualification, is it?) Then I moved on to the appetizer buffet. The mini pizzas were pretty awful -- why do places think they need to provide "international" food -- but the chicken satay was passable. What pushed me over the edge was something labeled "Marinated Honey Chicken Wing Ball". Looking at it, it may have simply been a chicken wing, but I was not going to take any chances. Dispensing with a half-formed plan to try a local restaurant, I high-tailed it back to the Hilton and turned in my umbrella.

Now where is that room service menu?

80 minute walk in Singapore

Singapore

Well, I got about an 80 minute walk down to the Botanic Gardens and back. Boy is it hot here! When I got back around 10, it was downright sticky. I'd better pack up the computer and head out to the airport, but I thought I'd share my quick glimpse at Singapore.

Sunday Morning in Singapore

Greetings from Singapore, where it is just past 8 in the morning on Sunday. I had hoped to have some time to see the city, but when you get into the hotel about 12 hours before your flight out the next day, and they tell you to leave about 3 hours before your flight for the airport, not much of that is going to happen. I will probably finish the post and go for a walk for an hour or so, but any more intensive sightseeing will have to wait until Friday (I think I have about 18 hours then).

The flight from DC was, well, long and boring. The main advantage of my upgrade was that the seat had a "bed" button that converted it into a reasonable approximation of a bed. Which was good, because for 22 hours, there wasn't much else to do but sleep. I did spend about 60 minutes transferring planes in Japan...I thought I'd at least get to see a little bit of the airport, but I was so rushed trying to make the connection that I didn't.

Anyway, it's amazing how far I can travel in 24 hours...and end up seeing so little.

IFL

That's International First Lounge, of course. I managed to snag an upgrade to First for today's trip, so my first ever international first-class trip starts off not with the Red Carpet Club, but with the IFL. So far, the advantages seem to be:

• Better food. They even have Cherry Coke!
  
• Better service. While I was getting the better food, a guy came up to me and made sure I had seen the tiny vials of soy sauce that went with the sushi.
  
• Free wireless access. It's kind of funny, given how much people are paying for some of these tickets compared to the cost of wireless access, but this may be my favorite feature.
  
• Isolation. There are about 100 chairs in here, and I think 3 or 4 passengers. On second thought, this may be my favorite part. :-)
  

Given the parts of this that I'm enjoying, my suspicions that I'm not high-class enough to partake of this on a regular basis are being confirmed. Just as well, as I'll probably be "stuck" in business class on the return flights. (Cough.)

PR GPS

 

The green paths represent where we went this week in Puerto Rico. We took the GPS because it turns out that its North America coverage includes Puerto Rico. It also turns out that the GPS doesn't speak Spanish as well as it thinks. On our first full day, it took us down a one-way street in Ponce. Still, it made it very easy whenever we needed to get back to the hotel.

EuroQuest 2007 Redux

EuroQuest 2007
Originally uploaded by Eric E Haas

Greetings from sunny (and rainy) Puerto Rico.

Eric Haas left a comment on my previous post mentioning that there was, in fact, a picture of us playing Imperial.

EuroQuest 2007

EuroQuest 2007
Originally uploaded by Eric E Haas

Last Friday, Ben, Martin and I went to EuroQuest. I had gone last year as well, you'll recall. Despite the fact that EuroQuest allows us to play games we don't normally play with new and different people, the one picture of us that ended up on Flickr involved us playing a game that we've played dozens of times by ourselves.

I posted a few more to Picasaweb, below.

Euroquest 2007

Jazz Fest Hat

 

I wore my Jazz Fest hat to the Redskins game today. It's not my lucky hat or anything...you can see that from the outcome of the game. But I sure have worn it to a lot of places. Since I'm not sleeping right now, I thought I'd post a collage of the hat throughout the past few years. This is a 2001 Jazz Fest hat...I have a more recent, undated one, but I've tried to stick to my favorite. The pictures are from:

• Cancun
  
• A ferry in Australia
  
• Great Barrier Reef
  
• College Park, MD
  
• Ferry to Ellis Island
  
• Tucson, AZ
  
• San Diego
  
• Washington, DC
  
• Blenheim Palace, UK
  
• La Jolla Cove
  

...and then they repeat. For the past couple of years, the hat has the added benefit that I can feel like I'm showing solidarity with the people of New Orleans by wearing it.

Geocaching Update: Different Kinds of Caches

Geocaching.com recognizes 12 different types of caches. Almost all of the ones I find are "traditional caches" -- that covers everything from tupperware in the woods to film canisters hidden under lampposts. These past two weekends, I found two types of caches I hadn't found before.

The first is a "virtual cache". The one I found was in Silver Spring. Christina and I had a number of errands to run there, so we took a nice walk to this cache, followed by a dinner of Ethiopian food. Virtual caches were good for urban locations where it was hard to hide a traditional cache. I use the past tense, because they have been discontinued. To a certain extent, they were discontinued to encourage people to use waymarks, which are similar. On the other hand, waymarks are generally things you see on the site ahead of time, whereas virtual geocaches bring you to an interesting place that you generally don't know about until you reach the coordinates. Still, it doesn't make a lot of sense to have a "virtual cache", so the only ones around are those which have been grandfathered in.



Another type of cache is the "event cache". Really, this isn't exactly a "cache" -- it's an event. On the other hand, it has coordinates -- and you can put stuff there, which puts it a step ahead of the virtual cache. The event cache I attended was a 15 minute event in Columbia. It was part of a worldwide series of "flash mobs" organized by a geocaching podcast. In the picture (taken by an attendee), I'm the guy in the foreground in the black jacket and jeans. The event was mildly amusing -- someone handed out Hershey kisses, and there was a prize drawing. Apparently the Howard County police showed up to see what was going on...it's sort of sad that a gathering of about 40 people in Columbia is such a shocking occurrence.

Meanwhile, my coins continue to march across Europe.




Coin #1 has crossed the Severn River into Wales. Coin #2 continues its apparent progress towards Prague. I thought they might at least head towards the States sooner...#1 is in what appears to be a difficult cache, so it may stay there for a while... I bought a few more coins on-line that I'll be releasing soon, since this has been fun.

After The Fire

Fire Vehicles in Hotel Parking Lot
Originally uploaded by jongrantham

I made it to San Diego Monday night, a week after I planned to be here. Things were in an upheaval last week due to all the wildfires, and my trip got postponed. Other than smelling smoke on Tuesday (and to be fair that might have been the restaurant), I only saw one aftereffect...I had quite a time finding a parking space at my hotel because of all the fire vehicles from far and wide (Chico is the one that sticks in my memory) parked there. Tuesday morning, there was a meeting of uniformed fire officials in one of the hotel conference rooms, and fire fighters were all over the breakfast area. Tuesday evening, they all had moved on, and the hotel was fairly empty today.

The Web A to Z, Revisited

About three and a half years ago, I published a post listing which web sites my browser suggested when I typed each letter. Let's see how things have changed (or not).

• A is for The Anne Arundel County Public Libraries.
  
• B is for Board Game Geeks.
  
• C is for Google Calendar.
  
• D is for Google Documents.
  
• E is for ESPN.
  
• F is for Groundspeak (geocaching) Forums.
  
• G is for Google Reader.
  
• H is for Hilton.
  
• I is for It's Not About the Numbers.
  
• J is for Jehovah-Jireh Farm.
  
• K is for Somebody's blog I was looking at for a geocaching post.
  
• L is for Lakeside Veterinary Center.
  
• M is for GMail.
  
• N is for Netflix.
  
• O is for Online Go.
  
• P is for Prince George's County Libraries.
  
• Q is for QuestionPro, a polling site that the Washington Post uses sometimes.
  
• R is for the Redskins.
  
• S is for Yahoo! Sports.
  
• T is for Talking Points Memo.
  
• U is for United Airlines.
  
• V is for the Washington Times. For reasons unknown to me, I access their (written) Redskins coverage through video1.washingtontimes.com.
  
• W is for the Weather Underground.
  
• X is for Redskins Radio (aka Triple-X ESPN Radio).
  
• Y is for Youtube.
  
• Z is for zip...I have no web sites for Z.
  

How have things changed? Well, this time, I did the check during football season, so more Redskins stuff than just their site popped up. Also, I read a lot of content through Google Reader, so a number of sites don't pop up because I view their "feeds" more than the site itself. Ironically, Talking Points Memo, another one of the holdovers, appears there because I don't read its feed. I find it too hard to keep up with, but sometimes when I've cleared out the stuff in Google Reader, I head over there to see if there's anything interesting.

The Prince George's library system is another keeper, though they've changed letters. The fourth repeat site was United, so I guess I'm still flying too much.

This time, a lot of sites appeared with letters other than their main name. In particular, Google appears to own me. I can see some new interests I've developed in the past few years -- go, geocaching, buying meat directly from farms, and Netflix.

Hmm. Kind of interesting, but three and a half years seems about right.

Geocaching Update: DNF

So, a couple of weekends ago I went out and looked for some geocaches while waiting for my car stereo installation appointment. First, I looked for one in the woods of Crofton Park. After 20 or so minutes of poking around with no luck, I gave up. Then I headed north to the Odenton Nature Area. I had a nice walk along a trail I didn't know existed, but again, zippo. Nothing there. (That I could see.) Both caches had a difficulty two, meaning, "The average cache hunter would be able to find this in less than 30 minutes of hunting." I guess I haven't made it up to average cacher yet.

When I got home, I posted DNF (did not find) logs for both of these. In the past, I've mostly avoiding these -- a lot of times, I feel like I didn't give sufficient effort to merit the comment. But if a number of people post DNF logs, it tells the owner that maybe the cache has gone missing.

I didn't expect anybody to assume it was missing on my say-so. My 20-something number of caches found marks me as clearly below-average in experience. Still, the guy in Odenton went out and double-checked that his cache was still there (it was). In Crofton, a few people have since found that one. Still, it's not always my lack of geocache-spotting savvy. In Bristol, I looked for one that I'm pretty sure was attached to fishing line in the harbor. I found fishing line, but nothing attached. Sure enough, the next day, it was disabled.

Last weekend saw better luck. Christina and I did a cache that involved a walking tour of Solomons to find clues for the final coordinates. Later in the day, I convinced her to cross the bridge into St. Mary's County so I could add to my Maryland counties cached. That produced this new map (notice that Calvert county has now moved into the "2-9 caches" category):

Fifth Anniversary

Christina and I got back today from Solomons Island, where we celebrated our fifth anniversary. It was a nice two days (and a very nice five years)! Above, you can see a YouTube video of me eating crabs on Friday night. We hadn't had crabs in over a year, so I was a little bit out of practice. Still, we try to make it out for Maryland crabs at least once per year. We really caught the tail end of the season here.

New Car Stereo

 

Somewhat uncharacteristically for me, I splurged this past weekend and got a new stereo installed in my 6-year-old Honda CR-V. The new stereo actually lacks a CD player, but since 99% of my listening is to my iPod these days (and the other 1% is to the radio), I didn't see that as a problem.

Previously, I had been using a low-power FM transmitter that plugged into what used to be called the cigarette lighter. Disadvantages:

• Sound quality wasn't good, especially when real FM stations interfered.
  
• It was easy to jostle the transmitter out of the power outlet, leading to an abrupt ear-splitting jolt of static while driving down the road.
  
• Having to fiddle with the iPod controls while driving.
  
• My iPod sat out for anybody who walks by to see.
  

This new stereo has none of these disadvantages...the iPod connects in the glove compartment and fires right up when I turn on the car. I can control the iPod with the stereo controls. The controls are iPod-like, but actually easier to use when driving. Instead of spinning a wheel, I click through the choices one-by-one. That's easier to do with your eyes on the road.

What really sold me was the display of the album art and the song title on the display. You can sorta see that in the picture above...it's a lot harder to take a good picture of the stereo than I would have thought. (I'll let you guess how many songs I skipped through on the shuffle until I got one I wanted in the picture.)

Geocaching Update: Finding Tupperware in the Woods

This time, in addition to posting some maps, I thought I'd talk a little bit about what I like about geocaching -- and what I don't. One thing I like is the fact that although it's a social hobby (it couldn't exist without a massive network of people), I have yet to meet another geocacher (other than Christina).

There are different types of caches. The type I tend to prefer involve, to paraphrase a T-shirt, finding Tupperware in the woods. I like to walk around a park or other natural, isolated location and find a geocaching container (possibly, in fact, made of Tupperware) hidden in a tree stump or under some rocks.

The type I don't usually like is, well, something like looking for film canisters in parking lots. When I was in California, I found one that was an Altoids tin which had been magnetized and attached to a piece of equipment in an office park. Whee, an office park. One of the closer ones to where I work is near the parking lot of the Bowie Target. I found its general location today. Other than the fact that I wasn't going to climb around looking for it in my work shoes, it had this "cache attribute":



Stealth required. While it may thrill some people to get to sneak around avoiding non-geocachers (or "muggles" as they're called), the last thing I want to do is have to explain to some mall rent-a-cop that no, I'm not really a terrorist, despite the fact that I'm using electronics to hide suspicious containers.

Fortunately, with a $30/year geocaching.com membership, I can create custom queries. A typical one ignores caches that are "micro" in size...which gets rid of most ones in heavily trafficked urban/suburban environments.

A cache in the wilds of Columbia last weekend brought my Maryland county count up to six:


Also, the coin I left in Vienna continued its trek across the Czech Republic,

while the coin I left in the UK moved an exciting 8.9 miles to the north...

Down on the Farm

I was getting maps ready for another geocaching post, when I realized that it would seem like all I have been doing is geocaching lately. So I decided to post about something else instead today.



Christina and I have been trying to eat more grass-fed beef, in the theory that it's healthier than the corn-fed beef. After all, whenever you see a drawing of a cow, what's it doing? It's in a pasture, eating grass. It's not in a pen, eating corn. After all, corn is a New World food, and cows are Old World. Additionally, it's better for the cow.

So last Saturday, I made a trip to Hedgeapple Farm, south of Frederick, Maryland. Right by the side of a major road, they have a little shop set up to sell various cuts of grass-fed beef. Unlike other farms in the "pasture-raised" family, you don't have to buy a quarter cow. We got some delicious ground beef and steaks there on a previous visit, so I went back.



Since I was in the area, I stopped by Jehovah-Jireh Farm, which has a more diverse selection. It's also in a more rustic location -- not only at the end of a minor road, but the little shop is at the end of a half-mile long driveway. I already had beef, but this place raises pastured chickens. I got a frozen chicken (haven't tried it yet), some eggs (even though they're available at My Organic Market in College Park) and some lamb chops. Sadly, they didn't have the ground lamb I was looking for -- maybe next month.

Geocaching Update

Well, the coin I dropped off in Vienna a couple of weeks ago has migrated north to the Czech Republic. That's pretty neat -- a coin I own is some place I've never been. Its first stop was the ruins of a castle. It's currently location...well, I don't read Czech, so I'm not quite clear where it is now. I'm also not clear on how this is contributing towards its goal of getting back to Maryland. Whoa...as I'm writing this, I just got notification that someone retrieved it. We'll see where it ends up next...

Its sibling coin remains stuck where I left it in England; nobody has found that cache since I did.

I've really enjoyed moving around these geocoins and travel bugs. One travel bug I found in Vienna was trying to get to Montreal, so I thought dropping it off near Frederick last weekend was a good start. I also picked up a coin in Vienna, which I dropped off earlier today on the University of Maryland campus. I've been moving a few other things around Maryland, too.



The map progress I've made recently consists of adding Frederick county to my "counties cached in" map.