Category Archives: Geocaching

Quad Cat Info Blast! Brain DrippingGeocachingNew HouseNews

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I’m filing this one under just about everything because it contains one pertinent bit of info from most of the categories. Whee! Here we go:

News: I’m upgrading my computer so my connectivity is somewhat limited. I dropped in a second video card to complete my SLI upgrade path & swapped out my old Athlon 64 3000+ for a shiny new Dual Core Athlon 4400+. I would have went with the 4600 but couldn’t find the part on the cheap. I ran some benchmarks before and after and it looks like my (synthetic) FPS scores nearly doubled in games while my gigaflops (processor speed) actually increased by a factor of 2.4. Very nice and well worth the upgrade. Just wait until I start cranking some multi-threaded apps. 🙂 The downside is that Windows was horrible unstable when I got done so I’m reinstalling the OS and it’ll be a few days before I’m fully productive again.

New House: We’ve passed another “final” deadline on gettig bank approval. Then he attorneys went on vacation. Now we’re waiting (over a week now) for the seller’s attorney to return the phone call & emails that our side has been sending. In the mean time we’re looking at other houses. The bank’s delays have now cost us over 5 grand in interest (over the full term of the loan) thanks to the ever-increasing rates.

Geocaching: Heather & I woke up at 4:30 AM this past Saturday to make it to the “07/07/07 at 07:07” Event down near Cherry Hill. The turnout was unbelievable! Any cacher who’s missing out on events is missing out on a lot of the fun of the sport. Afterwards we teamed up with 7 other cachers and hit 7 additional caches. Funny how that worked out, eh? We took off for South Jersey after lunch and ended up meeting a cacher from the early days of the sport at the family BBQ. We’re everywhere! Also, for the past 17 days I’ve had a streak of geocache finds. I’ve set a new record and I’m still going! Check out my statistics at It’s Not About The Numbers.com.

Brain Dripping: I hate to see news like this. In a nutshell, someone named Eric Dalton got shot in the chest in Winston-Salem NC. If Sarah Connor had paid more attention to the news she could have beat feet before The Terminator found her and killed her friend. But seriously, I hope he’s Ok. I’ll keep ya’ll posted if I can dig up more news.

NJ Tour Update Geocaching

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NJ Counties
Since I last posted my Geocaching update I’ve nearly finished the tour of 21 counties.

5/27/2007 – Essex has fallen! (South Mountain Reservation)
5/29/2007 – Union is no more thanks to the Wachung Reservation.
6/03/2007 – Passaic has been conquered. (High Mountain)
6/10/2007 – Cumberland has been assimilated. (Union Lake)
6/10/2007 – Gloucester has fallen into The Blue Hole.

This week I’ll be finishing off Ocean County and visiting the house we’re trying to buy in Jackson all in one fell swoop.

Here’s the official link to my Tour De Cache log page so you can follow along with all the exciting action!

After this I’m going to go for all 50 states, then every country, then every continent! Ok, maybe not. What I’ll probably do is take a long vacation… one that doesn’t have me driving all over the state in holiday/weekend traffic. 🙂

Ocean Country here I Come!

NJ Tour de Cache Geocaching

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County MapA few months ago I heard about the “Tour De Cache” challenge. If you can manage to find a cache in all 21 counties in NJ you get to log the final cache located actually quite near where we’re buying the house in central Jersey. You also get a nifty trophy coin, but that’s not the real reason to drive hundreds of miles just to find some tupperware in the woods. The real reason isn’t the finds… it’s the hunts. Journey… destination… you’ve heard it before.

Taking advice from other cachers along the way I’ve been finding some of most scenic / interesting / educational sites in the entire state and this past weekend summed it all up beautifully as I explored the Northern & Southern most NJ counties. I climbed 151 foot of light house, saw a WW1 era ship wreck, watched great herons fishing, climbed 1133 foot of mountain, visited 8 parks, 4 beaches & 2 veterans memorials, went shopping in downtown Cape May, explored a future fishing hole, walked along the historic Morris Canal & the worlds oldest boardwalk… all in just over 24 hours. All told I found 14 caches bringing my total to Eleventy One.

Would I have found any of these places without the Tour Challenge? Probably not. I don’t like to drive and gas is overpriced, but I used rechargeable batteries, packed lunches & refilled bottles from water fountains so it made for a pretty cheap weekend away from home. Mostly what I spent this weekend was time. As anyone on the plus side of 21 or so will tell you, it’s a precious thing and I believe I’m making some good use of it. I cached around during the day and spent the evenings with my wife. Life can be pretty alright sometimes. 🙂

As you can see from the chart at the right I’m nearly done. I had originally set a goal of finishing the tour by my birthday but decided that I rather enjoy the trips individually rather than kill myself hitting several counties in a short span. I’d never remember the places I had visited and I plan on taking people back to see these sights with or without a GPS in hand. That’s kinda the point… if civilization crumbles and the satellites fall from the sky the mist will still swirl over lakes after a cool spring rain… the rocky outcrops atop Allamuchy will still stand tall… the sun will still set over the Delaware… and I’ll be there – my baby in my arms, a tear in my eye, a lump in my throat and joy in my heart knowing that, finally, I didn’t have to pay any parkway tolls to get here.

Update: 5/27/2007 – Essex has fallen! (South Mountain Reservation)
Update: 5/29/2007 – Union is no more thanks to the Wachung Reservation.
Update: 6/03/2007 – Passaic has been conquered. (High Mountain)
Update: 6/10/2007 – Cumberland has been assimilated. (Union Lake)
Update: 6/10/2007 – Gloucester has fallen into The Blue Hole.
Update: 6/12/200 7 – Ocean county has succumbed. (JFK Memorial Park)

Looking back over the list I hit 8 Vintage, 7 Hikes, 3 Historical Curiosities, 2 Incidentals & 1 Home away from Home.

January’s Month End Wrapup GeocachingNew HouseNews

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And just in time too… it’s February Eve!

I feel bad that I haven’t written anything in the past month, but it’s been a busy time & I have no excuse other than that I
have posted something on the web, just not visibly. I guess this is a fine time to make my new hobbies visible! Introducing:

http://www.bornado.com

The Bornado is part of the Never-Be-Alone network of birthday gathering related sites. The others are linked at the bottom of this page. The idea is that nobody should ever have to be alone on their birthday. Simple as that.
This is the brainchild of, & a collaboration with, Mom.com. The sites only currently contain a forum where folks where be able to meet up & plan off-line hang outs. I envision regional birthday bashes arranged to celebrate everyone born in February, for example. The meet-ups could be arranged on a grand scale or microcosmic. Two folks could meet at diner just to say Happy Birthday at each other. The forum is up & running stable, but the whole idea is still being planned. A calendar is setup & attached to the forum, but not much else has been arranged. The next step will be to get the word
out & see if anyone actually signs in & posts their birthday. Wish us luck!

The second new project I’ve begun this past month is a blog devoted to my vocation, the IBM AS/400 aka the
“System i“. It seemed that just about every week some odd problem would crop up requiring an odd solution. This is the log of those exploits. There are only a few posts at the moment & most of it will be really dry *AND *OR incomprehensible to those who aren’t familiar with the system. Take a look & leave me some comments, or better yet, blog roll me if you feel the need to seed.
http://www.ericles.com/wrkreginf/

Another hobby I’ve picked up this month stems from a Christmas gift of a GPS device. It’s one of those hand-held gizzies
that’s sold as a hiker’s assistant. I’ve been lost a few times on foot & bike & figure this device will pull my bacon out of the fire. It’s small enough to toss into the saddle back on my bike or carry in a pocket. Most importantly, it can help me find Geocaches! Geocaching is the sport of treasure hunting using a GPS device. It’s an outdoor adventure sport that appeals to out-doorsie types & families & Adventure Buddy Clubs! I signed up with three of the larger Cache-fanatic websites & have been hunting & finding for a few weeks now. Heather even went out with me last week & found a cache all by herself! Here are my current stats:

Profile for ericles
TerraCaching

My Fourth hobby for January is House Hunting. Heather & I are planning on buying a home in the near future! I’m thankful to be in the position to be able to buy a home. However. Ehem. RANT! It’s a time consuming process made ever more difficult by the people who actually sell the homes. Give me ALL of the information about a house so I can make an informed decision please! None of this “you have to see it!” crap. Give me the address so I can check it out! Just listing the township is NOT sufficient! Tell me the square footage! Tell me it’s next to a road-kill dump! Show me the floor plan! If it needs work, fine, if it needs demolished… well, tell me that too! END RANT. I’m just annoyed that I actually have to look at so many houses that I’ll never want to own before I see any that I really like. I feel like I’m wasting my time along with the time of the home owners & the realtor. Unfortunately, there’s no solution to this. Just wait until I start my rant on Closing Costs. Grrrrr! I just have to remember that it will all be worth it when I hang my picture above my fireplace in my living room in my home. BTW: Zillow.com rocks.

One other thing taking up precious precious father time is computer maintenance. Heather’s PC went black two weeks ago & couldn’t be persuaded to show us anything more than a black screen. We went through all of the standard diagnostics for a blown video card including checking the voltage of the ancillary power connector (Those crazy GeForce cards require crazy juice). Long story short, the video card could not be resuscitated& a new one was ordered up via our friend Mr. Internet. Last week my hard drive started to fail. I check on the SMART status of the drive with every boot, but alas, SMART doesn’t have much to say about the little problem I call Sticky Heads. As best I understand (that is to say, not a glimmer in the faintest), the drive incorrectly detects that something is preventing either the spinning of the disc or the free movement of the heads & refuses to spin up the drive resulting in a non-booting PC. This is probably one of those “immanent failure” kinda pre-warning-warnings, but I’ve seen hard disks continue to live for years with this condition. The remedy? Give it bop. That’s right, a slight jostle (while powered down) will force the drive to be no longer confused & 95% of the time it will spin up correctly with the next power cycle. It’s the absolute coolest thing for an IT professional to have at their disposal… it’s so Fonzie to walk up to a computer that appears completely dead (even novices recognize the black screen of death), give it the old thump with your hip and ~Poof~ it starts right up! It wont earn you friends or get you laid, but damn… it feels good. Well, when it’s not your own personal HD dying anyway. The current sweet spot for HD capacity vs dollars is 320GB so I ordered up a pair & that should satisfy my needs… until the next month-end-wrap-up.

That’s all for now. Catch ya next time!

Linkies!:
Geocaching.com – The biggest list of available caches.
TerraCaching.com – High quality caches & Highly competitive cachers
Navicache.com – Home of the “other” types of caches.
Born-On-Same-Day – Part of the Never Be Alone Network of sites
Cake-And-Candles– Part of the Never Be Alone Network of sites
Birthday-Presence – Part of the Never Be Alone Network of sites
1in365 – Part of the Never Be Alone Network of sites