Every Day Carry - Altoids Survival Tin

It's been awhile since I posted.  Got a job at a cool place to work and kind of threw myself into it.  Today I'd like to post something about another passion of mine, Every Day Carry - EDC.  What EDC means is these are the items you carry everyday, to survive.  Survival takes many forms - a forest ranger or farmer has very different EDC needs than someone living in the city.  And if the proverbial shit hits the fan, SHTF, then your EDC will be extra important.

Couple years ago I did an Altoids EDC kit for friends and family as a Christmas gift.  A photo of it can be found on Instagram courtesy of my friend and ex co-worker, Ben Ellis.  The podcast can be listened to here and a photo of me is here.  Ben is a fantastic photographer and he can make anyone look good!

The kit was a lot of fun to make.  It was personalized by person as my sister has way different EDC needs than my brother.  For example, her kit included a cork screw.  His kit included a fishing kit.  I'll have to look and see if I have any photos of the kit in general.  I've started making a public list on Amazon with most of the items in the Altoids EDC kit as well as many other items I love for the inevitable Apocalypse.  

I wanted to include some pictures.   

The first one shows the Gerber SLT 2.5 in the Altoids tin.  You'll notice that the thin, compact design makes it fit nicely into the Altoids Tin at 3 3/8" long, 3/16" thick and not very wide.  

Choose your fire starters - You can have flint with striker, mini bic, you must have some fluff to start the fire, water and wind proof matches and of course, the obligatory fire starter paracord.  That red twist is the flammable component, but you can purchase 50' of it and have great climbing cord.

The knife with packaging as well as the awesome strong lumes little flashlight

Similar to the other pictures, medication is another item where options abound.  You can get a small metal container and fit all your normal OTC in it, get some pre-packaged items like shown here. Don't forget the Benadryl and Imodium as seen in photo in upper left hand corner.  I trim the bubble packaging to minimize space.  another alternative is wrapping your OTC in tinfoil and labeling with a sharpie for what it is, e.g. A for aspirin, Nap for Aleve, T for Tylenol, etc.

Security Breaches and My Password Thoughts

Facebook security breaches have been in the news every day lately.  Are you concerned?  No, because you think you're a smarty pants and have changed your Facebook password, so there!  Well, that might not be enough.  Have you ever went to a new website and they asked you to sign up and offered you the convenience of using your Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter or Google account?  If you elected for convenience then you opened yourself up to the Facebook breach.  Never choose Facebook or Google as a login for accounts, always use your email address.  There is always another choice although often it is a little harder to find.  

What is the Facebook or Google or LinkedIn convenience login called?  In the tech industry we call this the "you as" login or officially OpenID.  We'll log you in as.....your xxxxx account.  

How does it work?  How do it know?  When you click the button for the app to log in as, that website goes out and queries the app (Facebook, Linkedin, Google, whoever) and asks for a token.  The website then stores that token forever for when you come back and login.  That token contains your password from the app.  

What does the Facebook security breach have to do with that token?  If your account info and/or password was stolen from Facebook then the bad guys have access to any site you used the "You as" login on.  That means you've spread your vulnerability across multiple entities.  

Do you believe that the Facebook breach only affected 50,000,000 users?  Of course not silly! Facebook has 2.23 billion user accounts.  

What are the best practices i should follow?

Never use the "You as" feature for new sign ups to 3rd party apps
• If you’re using an easy to see pattern for customizing your passwords for each site or service, then change that pattern (and all of those passwords) 
• always a good idea to have different passwords for accounts involving money, those passwords should be complex.  Pet + a number is NOT complex.  A password CAN be complex but easy to remember.  Here's an example --  a sentence -- Dawn is the best person I know and funny too.   Take that sentence and convert it ---  DitbpIk&f2      That's a complex password but easy to remember for you.  It's the first letter of each word and convert things like and to a symbol and the too to a 2.  Complex passwords should have lower case, upper case, special symbols/characters, and number(s)
• Implement 2 factor authentication on your important accounts, like brokerage, banks, credit cards, etc.  Also called MFA or 2FA (Multi Factor authentication) - basically, it texts you a code that you put in after your password.  Here is an excellent short video explaining 2FA
• Change your birth year on Facebook.  If you put all your personal information on Facebook and someone hacks your Facebook could they use that to get in to other accounts?  Your pet is Fido.  You were born in 1980, your dog was born in 2016, the hacker knows that because you put his birthday party on Facebook.  So chances are really good that some of your passwords are Fido1980 or Fido2016.  Change them!
• Personally, I go as far as putting an incorrect day, month and year as my birthday on Facebook.  My friends know it's my birthday when it's my real  birthday.  I don't care about anyone else....

Trouble remembering all your passwords?  There are many alternatives.  One is the free version of lastpass.com which I use, to store and populate passwords online.  It's free for personal version, costs $$ for companies.  There are other password 

Low tech?  This works great!   https://www.amazon.com/ Password-Keeper-Galison/dp/ 0735344620/ref=sr_1_13?ie= UTF8&qid=1514996876&sr=8-13& keywords=password+book

That book is small enough to hide.  Has tabs with alphabet to quickly find things.  oh and let me state the obvious, if you write them down, don't take the book with you, ANYWHERE

Want more information? Here are some links

Facebook breach and 3rd party apps using Facebook Connect 

What is this "You as" feature?  here

These opinions are my own.  You are responsible for your own account security.  

Tomato Update #2 - 2016

All the plants referenced below were purchased from Tomatomania in March and planted in the beginning of April.  

Aiko is a Japanese olive sized and shaped cherry tomato.  I was convinced at Tomatomania to purchase this from a regular shopper who buys them every year, loves them and says it's a huge producer.  Well, check out this picture.  It surely is.  It is apparently not as sweet as the Sun Gold and a bit larger.  Very healthy in the TSK and fed the PCH today 8-10-10.  I've started to pinch him at the top because well, it's just a lot of tomatoes!

My Sun Gold is in the hanging planter.  Very healthy this year.  Fruit ripening already and I've actually eaten about 5.  Very sweet.  Almost every cherry is cracked.  Perhaps the hanging planter is not right for this tomato.  I used to grow the sweet 100's in it and they never really cracked but this is year 2 or 3 for the Sun Gold and every year it cracks.  

Tomato Update 2016

Wanted to write an update to some of the plants I've got in containers and the ground.  All the plants referenced below were purchased from Tomatomania in March and planted in the beginning of April.

Black Sea Man - has nice sized fruit already, about the size of tennis balls.  Healthy looking plant and it's planted in the Tomato Success Kit from Gardener's Supply. We'll call that TSK for the rest of this blog. Fertilizer 5-6-5 was applied mid May.

Blue Gold - aka Siberian -- Healthy plant in TSK.  I just got around to fertilizing him today and when I was aerating the soil for the fertilizer to go through I discovered two inch long caterpillars of some sort in the soil.  The bottom of the plant had holes in the leaves so clearly they were the culprits.  They weren't horn worms though.  After fertilizing I spread some organic slug killer down. No idea if that will help but what the hell.  This one got PHC fertilizer today 8-10-10.  Obviously higher in calcium.  It will be interesting to see what the difference is.  It's water soluble and you feed from above and it will soak through the container soil.

Chocolate Cherokee - full size tomato not the cherry - This plant is in my wooden wine barrel.  It is off the hook!  The stalks are about 3/4" thick and it is a strong, sturdy plant.  Fruit is growing everywhere and I'm excited to see how big they get.  Fertilized mid May with 5-6-5.

Jaune Flamme - not sure how I got talked into this one.  It was "sold" to me by a Tomatomania staff member as a "early girl" replacement but it clearly is not.  It's actually a golf ball sized tomato not a full sized.  Disappointing as I have too many smaller fruiting plants.  It's also a spindly thing.  It's in the other wine barrel that was started with expensive organic amended soil but still it's a skinny thing.  It has fruit and perhaps it knows I'm irritated with it?  Flamme got 5-6-5 in mid May.

More later on the others.

Addition to our "smart" Home

Recently our timer on the front porch lights went out.  Frustrating as I had only just replaced that timer a few years ago.  Like most timers they are all frustrating as you have to keep setting them depending on time changes and the setting sun.

I was wondering how I could solve all these problems once and for all.  My solution was to add a smart switch to our Wink system.  Currently we had two GE wink bulbs that I purchased in a kit that included a hub.  These smartly do what I easily programmed them to do and that's to go on at dusk (whenever that is) and go off around 6 hours later.

The smart switch I decided on was the Leviton Decora Z-wave compatible one.  I ordered it from Amazon and installed it when it arrived.  The issue was when I tried to add it to my existing Wink system.  What I didn't realize is that the GE kit I purchased just had a little GE controller in it for the lightbulbs and not a real Wink hub.  Off to Home Depot I went and purchased the real Wink Hub.  It is extremely large for what it does in my opinion.  

Set up was a piece of cake and quickly I had the light switch categorized with my other two GE bulbs (one for the living room lamp and one for the outside side light).  I really just followed the on screen instructions in the Wink app on my iPhone.  On the iPhone 6s now in order to edit a light or group you press and hold.

   As you can see by the photo those are my lights.  They are all in the same group - I call it the "security" group.  Wink added some new icons which are adorable, especially the holiday ones.  They even have a Menorah.

So we have an even smarter home now!  Two lightbulbs, a light switch and a Nest thermostat.

Road Trip 2015 - Northern California

After a very long Sunday drive from Los Angeles to Red Bluff, Monday was more about the journey while Sunday was about the destination - aka just getting some mileage behind us.  500 miles on Sunday to be exact.   Monday we headed out of Red Bluff - east.  Some people love to do the coast but we really wanted to see Lassen Volcanic National Park and then do the entire Volcanic Scenic Byway tour up through Oregon.

In some ways we hit Lassen at just the right time and in some ways it wasn't.  The park had just opened the roads a couple days before and as a result the park was virtually deserted.  This allowed us to do the park quickly and give Geppetto a great snow play time.  There was tons of snow as we ascended up towards the peak of Mount Lassen.  I'm sure much of it had melted but at the highest point on the road there was probably a snow bank of about 3'.   Normal snowpack for this area in winter is 331 inches, this year - 71".  23% of normal.  In a normal year this park doesn't open until June.

The bad news was that most hiking trails were closed - but that's ok because dogs are not allowed on any trails.  I had planned for that.  Just outside of the park were several trails we were going to hit.   As we cruised out of the park on the Northern end we stopped to admire Lake Manzanita.  Beautiful.

Off to Old Station, CA just up the road and a hike at Spatter Cones trail.  For some reason as we drove up to the trail head the gates were closed but I noticed a service road a little ways up.  We took that and snuck into the area behind the bathrooms.  You can look at some info of the spatter cone trail here.  We saw a cool looking jack rabbit at the start of the trail.  Silly Geppetto didn't even see him.  Bright orange inside his ears, never seen anything quite like that.

After that we drove the short distance into Old Station and stopped at the only place in town - JJ's Cafe.  Wow.  The BEST pastrami sandwich I've ever had.  I think it was equal to Carnegie Deli in New York frankly.  Dena and I split one which was accompanied by some fantastic french fries.  All the beef used is cured locally and is raised right behind the restaurant.  Yummy!  I regretted  not being hungry enough to try a hamburger too!

After that it was off to the subway lave tube.  That was truly amazing.  It was huge, about 1/3 mile long and pitch black.  We had a flashlight and my cell phone which were quite inadequate.  Geppetto had no issues in the pitch black.  I was a little nervous to tell you the truth.

Sorry, no time to upload pictures, check Facebook.  We also hit Burney falls before going to our AirBnB stop in Fall River Mills (best IPA I've ever had!).

VMworld 2014 - Day 1

I'd call this Day 0 but apparently it officially started yesterday.  Or early this morning.  I landed at SFO at 1pm and never got a second break until 9pm.  That's just day 1 for me.  I walked over to Moscone West and let me tell you - I felt the room vibrate from anticipation - and I don't just mean the vibration from the 6.0 earthquake in Napa early in the morning!

I picked up my free backpack, notebook, t-shirt and water bottle - the essentials really to a successful geek fest.  From there I tried to check in to my hotel but the room wasn't ready.  Back over to Moscone South this time.  Webcor Builders is remodeling or expanding or doing something to the Moscone complex.  I'm not really sure exactly what it is but it's already huge! wow!

At  2:30p I wandered over to Moscone South - trying to find my way.  The first thing I ran in to was the VMware store.  Is it just wrong that I am more thrilled about shopping there than at Nordstroms?  After salivating over all the VMware stuff there I wandered down to my first session - v101 - basically - the "how to" navigate VMworld for newbies.  We were handed a button upon entering the session with a baby pacifier on it and the words - vmworld baby.  Telling.....

After that it was no break and straight in to the Solutions Exchange "hall crawl".  I have worked and perused many a exhibitors area before and thought my experience would serve me well. It did but Wow!.  It's huge and overwhelming to some extent.  I was there for over 2 hours and worked the floor methodically and calculated like I am want to do but I didn't even come close to doing about 20% of it.  SWAG wise?  Total score.  For the 1/2 day today I walked away with 12 t-shirts and all manner of trinkets.  it's not for me - it's for my guys.

I met some great people and got some valuable information but quickly came to the realization that significantly more time would be required.  I've vowed to start at 7am sharp Monday morning.  Wish me luck

Tomato Mania is here!

I love spring.  There are 100's of reasons to love spring - tomatoes are just one of them.  This year, as with the last, I couldn't contain myself at the Tomatomania event at Tapia Brothers Farms in Encino and came away with eleven plants.  Yes, 11.  I think last year was ten, so I'm getting worse.

I'll regale you with the details now and you can salivate.  You can click on any of the highlighted links for more details.

Sweet 100's - typical small cherry that I plant in a hanging self watering container.  99% fail proof.

Cherokee Chocolate - I made a mistake here as I wanted the cherokee chocolate cherry tomatoes but I didn't realize they were out of those and only had the full size.  This is a beef steak sized tomato and should come out looking like the picture.

Cherokee Chocolate

Italian Ice -- a 1" - 1.5" they move from green to ivory white/light yellow cherry tomato that is sugary sweet and is a wonderful summer snack.  

Taxi - I bought this one for Dena as she has been bugging me for a sauce tomato.  Saucing tomatoes are normally Determinant plants, meaning that you can determine their size and ripening cycle.  They are usually all ripe together so you can make your sauce.   Taxi matures its bright yellow tomatoes in just 65 days. This determinate variety grows to about 2 feet tall and 2 feet across. Expect heavy yields of mild, non-acid tomatoes for 3-4 weeks.

Red Zebra - This is thought to be a naturally occurring cross between Green Zebra and an unknown, though certainly red, parent. The beautiful and tartly flavored offspring are gorgeous 2 to 3", round cherry-red fruits with rich orange streaks. I'm sure I'll regret buying this one.  These smaller hybrids are always trouble makers having all sort of issues.  We shall see.

Red Grape - A typical grape shaped red cherry that grows in large clusters. If you like cherry tomatoes I'm going to have a shit load of them!

Sunchola - What was I thinking?  Another cherry? Yes.  Sunchocola fruit has more smoky, sweet flavor, juicier texture and lower acid. Productive, dark green, indeterminate plants produce clusters of 8-12 fruits measuring 1" wide x 1/5" long and weighing slightly more than an ounce.

Dr Wyche's Yellow Heirloom - This heirloom was introduced by the late Dr. John Wyche, who at one time owned the Cole Brothers Circus and used the manure of elephants to fertilize his heritage gardens. The 1 lb fruit is solid and smooth; their color is a glowing tangerine-orange and has a tropical, sweet taste.

Crnkovic Yugoslavian - This one I'm really excited about.  Because it's supposed to be BIG! Extra large 1 - 2 pound pink beefsteaks.  Yes, it's really from Yugoslavia - at one time.

Japanese Black Truffle - Russian Heirloom - The deep burgundy color, with undertones of purplish-black, is as rich as the flavor. We find it high in both sugars and acid, creating a sweet, strong, complex flavor that is hard to beat. The 6-8 oz. pear-shaped fruits.  Again, what was I thinking?

And last but not least - Champion II - A step up from the original Champion, Champion II has the same flavor with much-improved disease resistance for easier gardening success. This variety is a garden favorite, producing large yields into the fall.  Disease resistant - yes!

Technically Frustrating Weekend

Frustrating weekend from a technological standpoint.  I started to extend my WiFi signal as my AT&T Uverse modem (the HGV3800) has such a shitty WiFI range that it won't reach to the front of the house.  It also won't reach back to the guest house.  So Thursday I installed an additional Netgear WNDR4500v2 in the office to extend 2.4Ghz and add 5Ghz to the guest house and yard.  Then, it was thanksgiving and cooking the turkey called.  Next day - Friday, it was raining but I decided to complete the installation of my Sonos system.  I was getting extremely frustrated as the controller (my ipad) kept wanting to upgrade the components but the upgrade kept failing. Also, the components at the front of the house wouldn't pair up even though I installed a wired bridge up there.  Little did I know that all of this was because I was losing tons of packets on my Uverse connection.  I only figured it out Friday night when the TV kept freezing and then the DVR wouldn't reboot properly.  Continuous ping tests show big gaps of packet loss and high latency.

I called uVerse, got cut off 5 times (this is why I have a land line....you can't do online tech support if your internet is down and you can't call them if you have VoIP, because your internet is down - which is how VoIP works.  Also, I have Sprint wireless which means that cell connectivity in my house sucks.)   After a frustrating experience just trying to reach somebody in India I was able
to get through and they are sending a tech for Saturday morning.  I finally had to force Dena to go to bed because she was getting mad because she couldn't do her homework.  No internet, hello!

Saturday morning arrives - The guy arrives at 9:15 am.  It's 11am now - he's still here.  I now have a new modem, all the connection wiring under the house is new, still dropping packets.  He just moved it from Coax to twisted pair - dropping packets. 

12:30p AT&T guy leaves - he's out of ideas.  We still have packet loss and pixelating on the TV.  So irritating.  I'm going for a hike to walk off my frustration and anger.

Update: came home tonight after a Hannukah party and tried to print something and it wouldn't work.  I pinged my router and my printer and was experiencing the same latency inside my own network!  I started unplugging things to find the culprit and discovered it was my Sonos Bridge.  Now, how do I fix that?  At least the internet and TV are fixed.

Pre ThanksGiving 2013

This year we are breaking tradition and we are having Thanksgiving at our house.  We are making it kind of a pot luck where guests are bringing most of the side dishes, Dena is doing desserts and I'm the turkey and gravy gal.  I've always wanted to deep fry a turkey but after some research that seemed like it was going to be a pain in the arse from a clean up perspective.  What would I do with 3 gallons of used peanut oil?  Hot peanut oil.

So I decided to invest (not a great investment $99) in the CharBroil Oil Less Turkey Fryer.  This little beauty doesn't use oil - it uses infrared heat to cook the bird and frankly anything else that takes a long time to cook.  The one I bought holds up to a 16 pound bird and cooks it in 2.5 hours.  I brought it home from Lowes about a week ago and just forgot about it until Tuesday before Thanksgiving when I figured I'd better open the box and make sure it was all there.  Good thing I did because some assembly is required.  It took me about 35 minutes to put the legs on, put the lighting mechanism on and then the handles. Of course, there was a screw missing for one of the handles.

I actually read the directions and it tells you to season it several times (you can do it only once before the first cook if you want) just like you would grandma's frying pan.  This turns the inside chamber a kind of bronze color and allows even heating.  I have to admit, the people on the CharBroil website and customer service are quite nice.  I called Wednesday about the missing screw - they are sending me a replacement.  On the website they have lots of videos on how to cook your bird, mount it, stuff it, carve it, rub it, etc.  The actual cooking part, according to the video, is very, very easy.

To get creative I decided to do a rub on the bird.  A dry rub makes a nice crispy skin.  The rub I dreamed up has paprika, black pepper, sea salt, nutmeg, thyme and a couple other things in it.  I oiled up the bird, then rubbed it all over with my seasonings the afternoon before.  I also stuffed the inside with garlic, shallots, thyme and sage.  This all sat and "marinated" until 2pm Thanksgiving day when I took it out of the fridge, emptied the cavity (so as not to mess up my cooker), popped the bird in the basket and threw it in the "fryer".  If it turns out I'm going to be SO stoked.  You don't put a lid (the provided one) on it unless its windy and debris will get in or unless it 30 degrees outside.

Geocaching and Poison Oak

I had a chance to go out Geocaching today with the Geo Dog.  We were up in Franklin Canyon, an area I'd never been to before.  I was going for a newly published geo cache as the FTF (First to Find).  Not that it's a competition or anything, and not that I'm competitive, but you know....I had to do it!  Fortunately we were first to find and bonus - the cache was highlighting the unofficial geographic center of Los Angeles. 

  After that I couldn't resist picking up a few others in the neighborhood.  The last one I got was in a wooded area and shaded.  Geppetto and I went tromping around and came up with the cache without too much trouble.  We got home and I got on the computer to log the caches.  I had a few pictures I wanted to share.  I by chance decided to read the previous logs from the shady wooded cache (GoldenMonkey).  I was shocked at my stupidity.  I usually read the logs before but I was confident I could find it without any issues.  Every log said "be careful of the poison oak, it is everywhere".  I quickly got on google to see what it looked like.  I'm sorry to say I walked over and through all of it! 

Geppetto promptly went into the bath tub after I stripped off all my clothes.  I am highly allergic to poison oak, ivy et al.  I gave him a big old hug in the car on the way home.  I'm probably screwed.



 

 



 



All of Us - First Day

This is the beach right across the street from our house - this is all of us, except Ian who is taking the picture

Busy Day in Maui

Busy day today - we went down to Makena Beach, aka Turtle Town to snorkel - we didn't see any Sea Turtles but Ian and Sienna saw a black tipped reef shark.  Pretty cool.  Here are a couple pictures.

My Apple Theory

The "Wall Street" pundits just piss me off.  Today those pundits are complaining that Apple didn't make enough iPhone 5s's to meet sales demands over the weekend. This will, of course, cause Apple's stock to dive.  The comment from USA Today  "In particular, analysts were looking for signs that the more-expensive iPhone 5s sold out quickly — a possible sign that Apple had trouble making enough of the devices to meet initial demand."  Now that's just ridiculous.  If Apple hadn't sold out then the stock would dive because Apple didn't sell out so there must not be enough demand.  It's a lose lose situation for Apple and the pundits.  Whether Apple made 2 million or 20 million iPhones for this release they would be complaining about something.   It seems that people hate a winner.  Especially a winner that is from a liberal "march to your own drummer" kind of philosophy. 

Let's look at a few things here - first, the iPhone 5s in gold sold out first.  Why?  Well, in a lot of countries gold is a symbol of prosperity and wealth.  If you have something Gold then you are the cat's meow. I had someone tell me Thursday that if I could get the money and buy as many Gold iPhone 5s's possible then they could be sold in Arab countries for 3x the price.  Did Apple make less of the Gold iPhone?  Wouldn't that have been clever to make less of that model in order to drive demand?  That's called smart marketing people.

But enough about the iPhone 5s & 5c.  This latest Apple bashing spree started on the launch date of those two phones but the problem really began much before that.  In my opinion it a chapter of it started on the launch of iOS 7 during the Apple Developers conference.  I guess that's where I have my greatest complaint of Tim Cook (Apple CEO).  iOS 7 is vital to the iPhone 5s and is part and parcel to it's innovativeness.  One could argue that iOS 7 IS the iPhone 5s.  Tim Cook et al should have kept iOS 7 under wraps and told developers about it on the sly then made a big deal about it during the iPhone 5s launch.  I think this would have had more impact on technically challenged people who are wondering why the 5s is so innovative.

2 Years Ago

Two years ago I was diagnosed with Uterine Cancer.  One of the things that continues to haunt me to this day is my lack of sharing of this fact with my friends, close friends, co-workers, anyone frankly. I didn't want anyone to know.  At the time, that was an important, very important fact.  I forbade Dena to allow anyone in the hospital to visit me (except my mom), for the four or so days I was there. 

When I look back on it now, hopefully with eyes a little more open, I realize that it was selfish.  I didn't want my friends/family/co-workers to see me as weak, vulnerable, sad, in pain, sick or anything else.  To allow people to see me post surgery or let them in pre-surgery was to admit that I had cancer, that it was serious, and that it was real.  I didn't want it to be real.  Who does? 

Years and years ago, when I was in my twenties, I had two great people in my life die of horrible, painful cancer deaths.  One, a friend, another a mentor and friend.  Both refused to be seen in the hospital in their final days.  I resented them for that.  I resented them because I felt cheated of saying goodbye.  One of them disappeared completely off the radar for months during the worst of it because she wanted to protect all of us from the horrors of it all.  She was a tough, stoic sort, and I respect that toughness, but did she really need to bear all that pain and anguish alone?  No, of course not, that's what friends and families are for.  The other, a fellow from Austin Texas, an older guy, who was brilliant, I saw at City of Hope during late stage four and it was awful.  It's an image I'll never forget.  Do I regret it?  No.  Of course not.  I was able to talk to him, joke, reminisce, hopefully provide him some comfort and joy, and say goodbye.  With Sherry, the stoic one, I never got that opportunity. 

I think that I have learned my lesson and that if, god forbid, I'm ever faced with such struggles again, that I have the strength to share it with my loved ones.   The benefits for both parties far outweigh the negatives.  We are humans and sharing in adversity is in our DNA and we must remember to embrace that.  Nothing is gained by being "hard as a rock". 

Rat Wars - part 3 - What am I defending?

Rat Wars 2013 - Part 2

Now that I know the sons a' bitches are out there I couldn't give up.  At first I was depressed for a few days because I felt I was going to lose.  This weekend I got a new vigor for the war and went to OSH and bought a bunch of big rat snap traps.  I admit, I've never used a snap trap before.  I couldn't figure out how to even set the damn thing.  I turned to You Tube to figure it out.  This guy has a great video on how to bait a trap and what to use.

Basically, don't use peanut butter.  They are smart little buggers and know to just lick off the peanut butter from afar.  Also, you need to use rubber gloves, they will not come near anything that has human scent.  Use bacon.  Wrap the bacon around the bait stick with twine or steel wire so that they cannot pull it off.  Good idea. I followed his advice to the letter.  Make sure you bait where they run.  For some reason the buggers are running on the side of my fence, not the top.  So I put two traps on the top and one on the side.  I screwed the traps into the fence so they couldn't just knock them off.

Set them at 5 o'clock and back from dinner at 9 o'clock and had success.  Two down, G-d knows how many to go.  I'm using Tomcat snap traps.  Don't try those stupid black jaw like traps.  Those don't work. You know the old adage, "build a better mouse trap"?  That's BS.  There is only one trap that has worked since the beginning.  The old fashioned snap trap!

Rat Wars 2013 - Part 1

Until now I didn't really realize what was eating my tomatoes.  I feared it was rats but hoped it was squirrels.  The other night, it was official, rats.  Smaller ones.  I thought mice but Dena said tree rats.  There was one in one bush over by the house and 3 in my big Celebrity tomato plant.  They scared me, Geppetto and I them.  Sons of a bitches!

This sent my mind awhirl.  How will I combat this threat?  Cut worms are one thing.  Rats quite another.  Cut worms are not smart, nor are they big!  I devised a plan to encase my Celebrity in small chicken wire with a cut out door so I could get the tomatoes out.  But time was a factor.  I had to go buy the chicken wire, fashion the entire encasement, etc etc.  In the meantime I took to cutting my tomatoes off the celebrity before they were ripe, not green, just orange, before the sons a bitches got them.

Thursday night I was innocently picking Lemon Ice cherry tomatoes off, while picking I was stewing about the loss of celebrity big reds, some of these were 10 - 12 ounces.  I glanced up and caught something out of the corner of my eye.  Dark Grey?  Dark grey rat butt?  Seriously?  Eating my lemon ice cherry tomatoes while I'm picking them???!!!  I quietly put down my handfuls and snuck over to the garage and got one of Geppetto's weave poles.  These are 1" PVC pipes about 3' long that are used to practice weaves for agility.
I walked over and whacked it.  I heard a rustle, Geppetto went ape shit and I suspect the rat was dazed and scurried under the next pot over.   That pot is a large 1/2 wine barrel made out of solid oak.  I have these pots suspended up on top of bricks to aid in drainage, that's where the son 'a bitch was hiding.  I poked and prodded and Geppetto whined and jumped (this is what he does when he "trees" something) and finally I decided to put my back into it and I moved it about a foot from the wall.  Geppetto was able to get behind, I poked some more and a big commotion was heard from behind.  Geppetto trotted out all proud like with the small rat in his mouth.   I screeched and yelled "drop it"!  He never obeys that command.  He did this time.  He dropped it and the rat crawled slowly away and he snagged it again.  I yelled "drop it" again.  Geppetto dropped it. As the rat crawled away again I thought to myself, "How in the hell am I going to kill this thing?"

I tried yelling for Dena but she didn't come.  Geppetto had grabbed the rat again by now, I yelled drop, sit and Leave it.  Which he obeyed.  Amazing what training will do.  He watched that rat patiently while sitting and while I ran and got a long pick up stick thing that my friend gave me.  I grabbed the rat, still squirming a little, plopped it into a garbage bag and proceeded to whack it a bunch more times until it lived no more.  I admit, I felt bad about it.  But it was war.

Round 1 was over.  Round 2 was imminent.

iPhone 5 versus Samsung Galaxy S4 Head to Head

I've had the opportunity to test the iPhone 5 and the Samsung Galaxy S4 head to head.  My testing was for work and it was more from a 4G Sprint (Samsung S4) versus LTE AT&T (iPhone 5) perspective but since I was doing the exact same thing on each phone I couldn't help but compare them.

Samsung S4 impressions:

• screen is bright, big and beautiful.  I loved that about it
• It's too big.  I cannot do anything one handed. When I put it up to my ear I feel like an idiot, like I have an ipad at my ear.
• its slippery.  The silver sleek back makes it slippery so a case is necessary, however if I added a case it would be really too big.
• I felt that I had worse voice calls on the Samsung than on my iphone 4s on the Sprint network.  In areas where I had not had issues before the Samsung had issues.  Why?  I don't know but it is what it is. 
• The keyboard just sucks.  On the iphone I can properly type out even with one hand a significant amount of text without it being morphed in to indiscernible words.  The S4, no way.  Some texts there wasn't a word that was recognizable so I found when I was texting or emailing I had to be paying significant attention to the phone and keyboard so I could choose the corrected words all the time. Irritating.
• I find the Google Play marketplace a pain to use.
• Android features in general do not have the same ease of use that similar functions on the iPhones do.  Everything on an Android take too many clicks or the options are buried in menus below menus.  It's just irritating.

iPhone 5 impressions

• Lighter than my 4s so that was nice and lighter than the S4
• fits quite nicely in the palm of my hand
• fast
• usability crushes the Android OS
• say what you will about iTunes and the app store but I know when I download an app there isn't some malware hidden inside it because Apple has vetted every single app.

Verdict
I'll take the iPhone 5 - hands down, every time

It's interesting how Americans love a winner but only if they win so much.  For example, the Yankees. Everyone loved them until they started winning the World Series too frequently, then people hated them.  Apple is a winner and were the darling of the tech sector for years.  Now - every tech and money blogger bashes them for lack of innovation, too controlling, blah blah blah.  Let's face it people - it's an American company.  Embrace it.  Why are you embracing a Japanese company?  Apple employs 1000's of workers in the US.  Support them - don't bash them.

Geocaching in Edmonton, Part 3

This was our last find.  It was by far the cleverest geocache I've ever seen.  It was really only a fluke that we discovered it.  The kids and my mom are determined cachers and do not give up until the find is made!  Look closely at the picture below.  Something is not quite right.  The birch tree cluster you see there, one looks like its cut off.  Upon closer inspection I thought it was odd that the birch bark was not adhered directly to the tree.  Viola!  The cache was found.  Looking closer at the second picture you see a PVC screw top on it.  This is a real birch log with one side somehow hollowed out, a 2.5" PVC pipe put into it, the original birch bark adhered to it and then its flipped upside down so you don't see the PVC cap.  It wasn't until I grabbed the log and heard a thud inside of the cache container that I realized what it was.