I’ve *Finally* Got Classic Arts Showcase!

I have loved Classic Arts Showcase (CAS) for years. I’ve seen it periodically in places like Omaha and Sacramento; most of the time CAS is played after “regular” programming is over. An example, CAS would play after the public access channel was done playing the local city council meeting and similar programming.

CAS plays video clips of dance, symphony, documentaries, and the like. I’ve seen it play an aria from an opera, the video of Linda Rondstat singing “What’s New”, ballet, modern dance, and all manner of other performances. I’ve wanted it at the house forever.

Now I have it. We got an upgrade to our Dish Network to feed HD to our new TV. CAS was included in the upgrade. I’ve had it on in the house while I was working around the house, and there has been some really good performances on already. I’ve learned some stuff. Two examples, I didn’t know that “Somewhere Out There” was from “West Side Story”. I also didn’t know that the music from the song “A Stranger In Paradise” was actually written by a Russian composer back in the 1800s. Not earth-shattering, but cool to know, for me at least.

If you like the performing arts, find CAS and watch it, it’s great! BTW, it’s provided free to cable companies and the like, get your TV provider to add it to the lineup if it’s not there already.

Jimbo’s Pit Bar-B-Q, Tampa, FL

Wow, this was a good find! I was driving to my hotel-near-the-airport and had just filled up my rental in anticipation of turning it in tomorrow morning, and looking for a light dinner. As I drove along, getting ready to head to a Chipotle, I saw Jimbo’s, and just turning in to the parking lot. Light dinner? That’s not even close to what I got, but it was very good.

I got there around 1830 and left at 1922. It was uncrowded the entire time, but about 40% full when I left.

I ordered a three-meat dinner, chicken, beef, and ribs. All – great! It came with two sides, I got baked beans (OK) and mac and cheese (very good). The chicken was wonderful, a light quarter bird that was smoked to perfection. It wasn’t dry in the middle, but not greasy either. Excellent. The beek was thin-sliced beef brisket. A wonderful smoky flavor, and tender. The ribs has that red crust on them, were tender, had outstanding good flavor. I rated the ribs as 9.5 on a scale of 1 to JTs. They were great. The meal came with three hush puppies, which were nice and light and not greasy.

The iced tea was excellent. Service was casual but prompt.

Did I mention that there was a heck of a lot of food? There was enough to feed me, Raegan and Erin. Ian would have to get his own.

My check was $16.74. For the amount of food I got, that’s excellent value. If I hadn’t been flying out in the morning, I would have brought it back to the room for dinner tomorrow. Instead, I brought the beef and chicken to the hotel and left it for the kitties that live outside.

I would gladly go back to Jimbo’s. Great stuff.

Mo’ Ziki, Largo, FL

Today, we were running a bit behind in our meeting, and so we were looking at shortening lunch a bit. I fired up Google Maps and looked for a Chipotle, but the nearest one was about eight miles away. I commented on that to one of our hosts, who suggested Mo’ Ziki, as being a “greek Chipotle”. OK… I thought.

So we went to Mo’s. The serving style is like Chipotle, you get a burrito or bowl, rice, meat, and veg stuff. I got a bowl, with grilled steak, rice, chopped lettuce, tomatoes, and traditional sauce, which is a variation of yogurt sauce. The meal was OK. I thought it was a little small for a meal. There was little meat in the bowl, and the beef didn’t have a lot of flavor.

So would I go back? I think I would. The meal wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t that good. I would try the chicken or the gyros meat next time.

The iced tea was Gold Coast. It wasn’t horrible, but again, it wasn’t good. As a general note, I have to say again that I really wish that all restaurants would put fresh brewed iced tea out. None of the concentratres are very good, and most are downright nasty.

We were there around 1210, and left around 1250. The place was fairly crowded. My check was $9.21. One note: Urban Spoon as Mo’ Ziki in Seminole, but it’s in Largo.

Widow Brown’s, Largo, FL

Widow Brown’s is one of the dozens of family restaurants in the St. Petersburg area. I pass by it several times on each trip to this area, it seems. I decided to try it for dinner this evening, and liked it.

I got there about 1800, the place was about 1/3 full, and left 1845, and it was getting full.

I ordered the Yankee Pot Roast. On the menu, the Yankee Pot Roast was right above the Pot Roast. I asked my server what the difference was, and she said that the plain Pot Roast was more traditional. Well, I’ll get that next time.

The Yankee Pot Roast was pretty darn good! It was a good-sized chunk of roast, a smallish amount of gravy, and it was smothered with veg stuff. The roast had decent flavor and was pretty tender. The stuff on the top was carrot strings, potatoes, onions, a couple small broccoli crowns, and some other veg strips. The only thing I didn’t like was some largish slices of green pepper. Like stew, roast does not need or want green or red peppers. I fished them out, and still tasted pepper a couple of times. The meal was a decent size, not too huge to overload my stomach.

The meal came with a trip to the salad bar. It was a smallish bar, but the lettuce was good, the applesauce was a nice addition, and the ranch dressing was excellent.

The meal also came with dessert. I got rice pudding with whipped cream on top, good stuff.

The tea was excellent and kept refilled. Service was super nice and prompt. In fact, everyone at the restaurant was very nice, and there were obvious regulars in there.

My check was $11.32, a really good value. I will be back.

PIPA and SOPA

I’m glad that the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) has been withdrawn. I hope SOPA meets the same fate, and soon.

I support protection of IP. I produce IP in this blog. I don’t mind if my views are read and adopted by others, or adapted into other views, but I wouldn’t like it if someone took my views and put their own names on those views.

But PIPA was the functional equivalent of carpet bombing. It’s way easy to grab stuff off the Internet and use it. Rachel Maddow had four examples of people who support SOPA/PIPA, all US Senators or Representatives, who had images from the web being used for their Twitter feeds or websites. None had permission given, or attribution made. If the staff of a Senator can’t get it right, how would the rest of the country?

Making sites, like Google, or Facebook, or the like police for IP violations is not reasonable. It’s like expecting AT&T to listen to the content of every phone call, and make a judgement as to whether the content involves illegal activity.

Better to have targeted investigations of the worst offenders. I think that the issue isn’t things like photos anyway, it’s people selling or sharing music and videos. Let the content owners or their representatives (MPAA, for example) do the legwork, and then get the police involved. Just make sure that due process is followed, and that the punishments fit the offense.

I try to not be paranoid, but I wonder sometimes if the people who write these laws have an ulterior motive. The “Internet kill switch” I think has appeal to Those In Power. Legislation like SOPA and PIPA might be the slippery slope that gets us headed that direction.

The Internet has been very liberating in a lot of ways. It is designed to make sharing easy. If sharing is easy, then things will shared. A government should not be in the business of trying to stop the sharing of legal stuff, whether it be data or ideas.

The NDAA, Indefinite Detention, and the American Gulag

Representative Buck McKeon and Senator John McCain ought to be deeply ashamed of themselves. Deeply, deeply ashamed. They enshrined in United States law the concept of the Gulag. And they are not the only ones. 322 Members of the House, and another 93 Members of the Senate, voted this monstrosity into existence. And even President Obama, who signed the bill into law. All of these people should be ashamed.

I think he should have vetoed the bill. I think that the Congress should have stripped out the parts dealing with detention.

I understand the need to keep enemy combatants from going back to battle. We captured Germans, Italians, Japanese, and others in WWII. But the difference is that we returned those prisoners at the end of the war.

It is not arguable that we were in a war in Iraq (the legality and ethics challenge of that war are another other discussion altogether). We invaded the country, and then occupied it. But we are gone now. The prisoners we took out of Iraq should either be charged with a crime, tried, and convicted or not, in a civilian court. Or they should be released back to Iraq.

The same should happen in Afghanistan when we are done there.

I’ve seen the argument that we are in a “global war on terror”. I don’t buy that; just because we call it a war does not make it one. War is between nations, not nations and terrorists. Terrorists are criminals not bound by the conventions of war. If they are killed during operations, that’s OK. But if they are captured, then they need to be charged and tried.

And once charged, since they are charged with crimes under USC, not the UCMJ, they need to be tried in civilian courts.

And in no way should they be held without charges and trial indefinately.

It amazes me that terrorists put so much terror into some people. Some, like McCain apparently, think that some people are “too dangerous to try”. What a load of crap. It’s political posturing.

One of the reasons this country was founded was that the King of England was trampling on individual liberties here. It’s no difference between King George and the Congress and the President; both are trampling on individual liberties.

The detention provisions should never have been introduced in Congress. The Congress (both the House and the Senate) should never have allowed the provisions to be included in the NDAA. The NDAA should have been rejected, and should have been vetoed. The detention provisions should have been stripped out post-veto.

The detention provisions are contrary to American liberty and tradition, and should not be in law.

President Obama had a signing statement that vowed he will not follow that part of the NDAA. That’s fine, but he should have vetoed the bill and had the detention provisions removed.

What happens after Obama’s term ends? The next President is not bound by Obama’s signing statement. The mere fact that the law allows indefinite detention means that some President, someday, will use it.

There is an analysis of the provisions of the bill (Part 1 and Part 2) here.

Fight back against this, people. It’s the future of the country that is at stake.

“They came for xxxxx, and I did nothing”…

I’m Back After A Short Hiatus

I took the better part of three weeks off from work (and most everything else) over the holidays, and am still getting up to speed. I spent most of the time in a combination of relaxing, entertaining, and knocking stuff off my house maintenance list. We spent some time traveling, like down to Dallas to buy stuff on sale (like a new low-temperature sleeping bag for Ian).

The biggest thing was a remodel of the kids/guest bathroom. I got the tub refinished from some sort of awful brownish color to white, got water leak damage repaired, and got the tub alcove prepped for a new fiberglass surround, which will be installed this weekend along with new brushed nickle fixtures. The old wallpaper was removed, some drywall damage repaired, and the biggest thing, removal of the carpet from the sink area and the 4″ tile from the tub area. Then I put down 12″ tiles over that entire area. It looks great!

I also put down tile in the kitchen (to repair a badly-laid carpet there) and pantry (to cover the unattractive concrete slab).

The biggest thing was buying enough wood flooring to cover the dining room, living room, and entryway. I got the flooring down in the dining room (well, most of it, I still have about two feet to go).

Finally was a lot of cleaning and collecting that we all did. The house is a little less crowded now; there is still a lot of work to go.

A couple of random observations:

We ate a Jason’s Deli over the holiday; I had a seasonal item, beef stew. It was EXCELLENT! I was a little worried when I saw tha the stew had bell peppers in it (no beef stew should have bell peppers). The stuff had beef cubes and lots of veggies, was perfectly cooked, and was in a tomato-based gravy. Loved it! I had some stew at another Jason’s location a couple days later, and the taste of bell peppers was distinct. An email to Jason’s corporate brought a reply that each location made their stew locally (surprising to me). So the good stew was at the location on NW Expressway, and the less good stew was in Edmond.

We did a bit of traveling. One thing I noticed was a relaxation of speed limits north and south of Oklahoma. First, the Kansas Turnpike (a very nice road to travel on) has raised their speed limits from 70 to 75 mph. This is a good thing. The Turnpike also takes credit cards now, in addition to cash. In Texas, it has long bugged me that the interstate highways speed limit would drop to 60 from 70 after dark; that dumb restriction is removed now (at least for cars). So the long haul across the Texas Panhandle is a little faster now. It’s even better in New Mexico, where it goes to 75.

We ate at Braum’s at one point over the break. I decided that I would like to try their chicken sandwich. My evaluation: DON’T. It was terrible. Really. No flavor, unattractive texture, it was not good at all. I didn’t finish mine.

That’s it for now.

We Can Recycle At The House Now!

A couple of years ago, I wrote a gripe about how even though we pay the same taxes as everyone else in OKC, we couldn’t participate in curbside recycling.

Over the summer, our neighborhood association sent out a newsletter that talked about how we might be getting curbside recycling, then over the fall we got another that said that we wouldn’t be getting it.

Then, weekend before last, blue recycling bins were distributed throughout the neighborhood. Cool, I thought!

So now we down to two recycling actions. We put everything but paper in the recycling bin, and it gets picked up and taken to wherever recycle stuff goes in OKC. We keep the paper, and take it off to St. John’s since the school gets a tiny bit of money for the paper we recycle there.

So I’m happy about this. I didn’t mind hauling our stuff to the city of Nichols Hills, but having OKC do it for us means one less side trip ever couple of weeks.

Now, if we can just get fire hydrants…

Hiking Devil’s Den State Park, Arkansas

Summary: 5.4 miles of hiking in rough and beautiful terrain, with high bluffs and lots of trees.

The Extreme 15 patrol of Troop 15 is working up to a serious high adventure backpacking trip, and decided to go to Devil’s Den State Park in Arkansas to backpack the Butterfield Trail. Another leader and I accompanied them. Unfortunately, one of our Scouts got quite ill with some stomach crud overnight, and could not keep food down, so the next morning we decided to do some low-intensity day hiking and then head back a day early. The Butterfield will still be there.

We headed out from Oklahoma City about 1740 and got to Devil’s Den around 2200, after a couple short stops along the way. It was chilly (around 40F) when we got there. Everyone got tents up quickly, and racked out. We shook everyone out around 0730 then next morning. Our first view of the park in the daylight revealed a beautiful area. We were in Area B, above the river, which was burbling happily. It had been down to about 22F, so all of the tents had frost on them.

We had brought a Coleman stove, and quickly got water hot for cocoa and breakfast. Breakfast was the famous eggs and sausage in a ziplock, and everyone seemed to enjoy it, since nothing was left… After Glen and I checked with our less-than-happy ill Scout, we decided to bag the original plan to backpack the Butterfield, and instead left the tents to dry off, loaded up our backpacks, and headed off to day hike.

Almost forgot, the cost to camp was $14 per night. The Visitor Center was closed when we got there, but before hiking I headed over and paid the fee the next morning.

We chose to head up the Yellow Rock trail. It winds around and touches other trails, goes under and around large rock outcroppings, and skirts the top of bluffs that have excellent views down into the valley that the Park is in.

The trail crosses water at many points. Several of these streams had a series of tumbling waterfalls. If the water situation on the Butterfield is similar (no reason to think otherwise), then getting water on that hike will not be an issue. There didn’t seem to be any agriculture to speak of around the Park either, so no worries about fertilizer or pesticide in the water.

One thing about hiking in December – you can see a good, long ways through the trees. I think that the green oaks during the spring and summer are really pretty, but the starkness of the winter, with the leaves on the ground, has it’s own beauty.

When we started out, the temps were in the low 30s. The high got to around 50F after noon.

We took our first break at a spectacular bluff. The ridge in the background is the structure that the Butterfield loops around. The ridge also has a trail along it’s spine.

This was a particularly beautiful stream we crossed. It had a series of small falls above and below the trail.

The hike to the overlook ran along a number of ridges. This was a typical view. The trail was well defined, but I must note that the trail map the Park uses doesn’t show all of the interconnections. The blazes were easy to follow, though.

This hike was 4 miles long, with a maximum altitude gain of over 400 feet.

We had lunch at the Overlook, and then headed back down to camp. We were looking for a trail that paralled a road, but instead just followed the road to camp. Once there, we took the tents down, a couple of the guys took short naps, and then we headed to our next hike.

Before we broke camp, I walked up to some overhanging bluffs that were above our camp. The bluffs had hundreds of steady streams of water coming over them.

The next hike was the short Devil’s Den Trail. It starts and ends at the Visitor Center. This trail leads by some spectacular terrain features! We first came up to some rock formations that lead down into caves. None of the caves were open, due to concerns about protecting the bat populations from White Nose Syndrome.

As you can tell from the pictures, some of the cracks were very deep.

The rock outcroppings were pretty amazing.

There is an amazing waterfall along the trail.

This is near the end of the trail.

This hike was 1.4 miles long.

Here are our hike maps. The first hike to the overlook is in yellow, and the Devil’s Den trail is in blue.

This was a wonderful, if short, experience. The Park is stunning. There is no cell service in the Park proper (it’s in a deep valley), but we got occasional service on the ridges above the Park. I’m going to bring the family here to stay in one of the cabins, and certainly come back with the Scouts to backpack the Butterfield.

Wells and Pumps, Oh My!

Anyone who knows me well knows that I’m cheap^H^H^H^H^H frugal. It makes me sort of crazy to pay other people to do something I can do, or ought to be able to do.

About ten years ago, the pump that pumps water out of our well to the house failed. Coincidentally, I had just been at Lowe’s, and saw that a replacement pump was $500. I called a couple places to get the pump replaced, and got bids from three that ranged from $1500 to $2500; the middle estimate of around $2000 was from the company that initially installed the well. The process was for three guys to come out, pull the pump out of the well, replace it, drop it down the well, and turn the darn thing on again. I watched the entire process, and realized that there was no reason I could not do the same thing.

Sunday, we came home from running errands and found that the house water pressure was 0 PSI; not good. I did some troubleshooting; the pressure switch was good, except for the dead Oklahoma Brownsnake that was curled up on top of the pressure relay switch under the cover, quite fried. Well, that was interesting.

I tested the motor resistance using my VTM; all three readings were in spec. I figured that it was the controller. I ran out to Lowe’s and bought one (they used to cost $100, but now are $70), installed it (it takes about 10 seconds), and… nothing.

So I figured I had a dead pump. I went out to the wellhead, and checked the wiring, and had 230VAC, so the controller was in fact working. Then I felt the water pipe coming up; the pump motor was running! You can feel the vibration running up the plastic pipe. Curious.

I decided that I needed to have a look at the pump. That means it needed to pulled out of the ground. Our well is about 180 ft deep.

Now, the water gets into the house through the well casing (pipe) through a fitting that attaches to the casing. The fitting is called a pitless adapter, and it’s essentially a sliding joint. I tied a stout climbing rope around the fitting, tied the other end to a nearby tree (this was my backup in case I let go of the pipe to keep it from falling all the way to the bottom of the well), got Ian to back me up, and pulled the piping and the piping part of the adapter straight up; it came out easily, and we pulled it up the 18 or so inches.

The adapter fitting is attached to a short iron pipe segment that is connected to another adapter that connects to 1″ PVC pipe. Each PVC pipe segment is 20′ long, and has a female threaded adapter at the “top” of the pipe, and a male threaded adapter at the bottom. The male fitting goes into the female fitting on the next pipe to make a single long string of pipes.

Now one thing I learned from my watching the crew the last time was a nifty tool to save back strain. There’s was made from a steel plate about 18″x6″x1/8″ thick. I made the same thing out of a 2×4. I drilled a 1-1/4″ hole in the middle of the board, and then used a jigsaw to cut a notch out of the 2×4 to the hole. Since the hole is the same diameter (1-1/4″) as the outside diameter of the pipe, and the PVC fittings are about 1/8″ wider, the well can hang from the board while you work on unscrewing the joint.

This is what the board looks like, clean and with an example of how it holds the pipe.

It took about five minutes to make this. The tools were a 1-1/4″ hole drill, the 2×4, my drill motor, and my jigsaw.

I noticed that the top of the pitless adapter fitting was threaded. An iron pipe with a thread on both sides could have a “T” and a couple short pieces of pipe to make a handle could be screwed down into that pitless adapter and be used to hoist the thing up instead of the rope I used.

So I pulled up the first 20′ segment of pipe. It was heavy, but not excessively so. Ian and I alternated pulling the pipe. The process was pull the pipe until the next fitting came up, set the board on the well head, and put the fitting and pipe into the board to support the rest of the piping and pump. I was being very paranoid, and was also adding another rope tied around the pipe at the bottom of the fitting as a don’t-drop-the-thing-into-the-well-casing backup. Note that as you lift, you also need your helper to pull up the wiring that leads down to the pump to make sure it doesn’t interfere with the pipe and such as it comes up. On ours, the wiring was electrical taped to the PVC pipe, and I had to cut it off for each segment. More on the tape later…

The top pipe unscrews from the bottom pipe. We used one set of channel lock pliers to hold the lower fitting in place, and another to unscrew the upper fitting. The detached pipe was set on the ground.

As with most projects, it wasn’t really that easy. One problem was finding tools – if you have seen my garage, you would know that that is a large problem. The 20 ft pipes also got hung up in overhanging tree limbs, so the project stopped for a while so I could hunt up my bowsaw and do some trimming. We also got a ladder set up next to the well so one of us could climb up and help steady the pipe, which waved around quite a bit.

So this process was repeated about eight times. The pump showed up! We put it on a piece of cardboard and I started checking it out. The intakes were completely clogged with electrical tape pieces! I cleaned them all out, then wiped down and cleaned the exterior of the pump. I figured that now the thing would work, since if the intake was clogged it made sense you got no water.

Putting the pump back down was the opposite. We lowered the pump and wiring, stopped at the upper fitting, and screwed on the next pipe section with the two channel lock pliers, repeating this until the pump was down. I didn’t connect the pitless adapters, but rather aimed the outflow downhill, and fired up the pump. NOTHING. There was a little air moving out of the pipe, but that was about it.

So I had a defective pump for some reason that was not obvious. The motor was running, but no water was moving. It was about 1700 on Sunday at this point. We headed out to a much needed dinner and bathroom break (no water in the house, so the toilets were not working either), and then headed by Home Depot and bought a new pump. This one was $400, and included a control box (so I ended up returning the control box I bought earlier that day).

We got back home around 1900, and pulled the clearly defective pump back up. The pump has a threaded female receptacle on top to connect to the PVC pipe, using an adapter… which I DIDN’T HAVE! And both Lowe’s and Home Depot were five minutes from closing. We quickly used some of my frequent traveler points to get a hotel room near school so we could shower and use the bathroom, packed, and headed out to spend the rest of Sunday night at the hotel.

We had another problem during the pipe pulling process, which lead to a second problem. PVC is somewhat flexible, but it does not like sharp bends and torsion force. As Ian was pulling a section, he stepped back a couple steps, and one of the male threaded adapters failed. The pipe headed down the hole (OH CRAP!) but I dove and grabbed it. So one of the pipes was ruined. We tried to unscrew the remains of the male adapter, but we just could not get it off. I tried drilling a hole through it to use a cheater bar, but the thing shattered, and now we had *two* unuseable pipes. I muttered dark words, but figured it didn’t make any difference, we could get the thing down the well, it would be in the water, and if it wouldn’t have enough water to run the sprinkler system, we could worry about that in the spring. One other thing I did was try to pull pipe without disconnecting everything, which lead to a lot of pipe up in the trees.

The next morning, after everyone was at school, and after I went to work for a bit, I went and got the adapter, and went home to install it. I got it installed. I hooked up the three electrical wires using the supplied butt crimp connectors and heat shrink tubing, and then attached the first piece of pipe, got the electrical wires attached to the pipe using zip ties (the clogging electric tape had me bothered), and THEN noticed that I had picked up one of the PVC pipes with the broken connectors. Grrrr… I took it all apart again, got a good pipe, and re-did the work.

When Ian got home from school, we went to drop the new pump in the well. We had a LOT of trouble getting the long pipe string to connect to and screw onto the top of the pump (remember the pipes in the trees that I mentioned?). So I told Ian we were going go ahead and take the pipes apart, and while we were doing that, I told him to turn the pipe one way, and what we managed to do was tighten the pipe to the point that the fitting broke; I had screwed up the “righty-tightly lefty-loosey” rule. So now we had four pipes out of commission. We went ahead and dropped the pump the rest of the way, and turned it on, but no water – the pump was not in the water with 80′ of pipe missing.

So I needed to repair the pipes. This is pretty easy, but the cure time is 2+ hours, and it was already 2000, so time was not on our side. So we did the hotel thing again. I got the family settled in at the hotel, then headed back to Lowe’s. I use the medium grade cement for my sprinkler system, but for this, since the piping had to support 60 lbs of pump, pipe, and water in the pipe, I used heavy grade. Heavy grade wants *six* hours to cure. I headed to the house, cut the bad fittings off, primed the pipes and the new fittings, and glued them up. I left the pipes in the warm garage to cure and headed to the hotel. This was about 2200, so the fittings had until about 1500 the next day to cure.

The next afternoon after Ian got home from school, we pulled the top section (with the pitless adapter) up again, removed it, and then put the four repaired section back on, and finally the top section again. We set the adapter on the edge of the well casing again, turned the pump on, and saw a gush of water. Yea! I turned the pump off after the water was running clear.

Next, we very carefully lowered the pump so the pitless adapters mated. When I was sure they were together, I used a 2×4 to gently tap them completely together. I turned the pump back on, and the tank filled up, and then I turned the valve to let the house pipes fill, and we were back in business.

The tools I used in this project:

Two sets of 12″ channel lock pliers
Propane torch for the heat shrink tubing
Dykes to cut the wire (and compress the butt connectors)
Zip ties
PVC heavy cement
Purple PVC primer
Hacksaw to cut PVC pipe
Well pump
Four replacement fittings
Ladder, flashlights, rope, etc.

The total cost of materials here was about $415. $405 of that was the pump and tax, the rest was a couple fittings and cement. The project took essentially 48 hours, of which about five was actual project, and the rest going to work, running errands, sleeping, etc. I saved about $1600 or more. We did burn some of my accumulated hotel points, but only about 10% of what I have. The weather was not the best, chilly and raining for much of the work. But it got done, was not dangerous, and I fully expect the pump to last another 10 years.

I would not recommend this for everyone. I’m very good with tools, incomprehensibly cheap in some ways, and preternaturally confident (some would say arrogant, but I think that’s a bit strong!), and I did this without screwing the well up (which would have been very expensive). I was very paranoid about dropping stuff in the well and jamming it so I could not pull the pump up). I would almost rather have a cable or something (like a 1/8″ stainless steel cable) attached to the pump so I could use a manual winch (like on a boat trailer) to raise and lower the pump and pipes (curiously, the old pump had a place for such an attachment, the new one did not).

I am going to take apart the failed pump and try to figure out why it will not move water. I’ll report on that later.

Republicans and the Payroll Tax

I think that the Republicans *want* ordinary Americans to have higher taxes, want the economy in the trash, and only want this to be able to take the Presidency in 2012 so they can run wild(er).

The process associated with this effort, at least on the Senate side, worked. Democrats put forth a bill, the Republicans added some things, both sides took less than they wanted, and the thing passed.

I imagine that the Republicans hope that Americans will forgot this, and the other stuff they have blocked, impeded, and otherwise fracked up. If Obama and the Democrats will grow a pair, keep them, and keep hammering the Republicans, then not only will Obama get another term, but the House might be retaken.

I hope so.

So, We Are Fully Gone From Iraq

I am very, very happy about this. It took long enough.

The war was started using false claims by the United States, via George W Bush and his henchman Dick Cheney.

The war cost 50,000 dead, at least, including 6041 Americans. There were thousands of civilian dead as well; estimates from Wikipedia are from 100,000 to half a million. Tens of thousands more were injured in one way or the other.

Hundreds of thousands of American families were disrupted due to deployments. The cost to the United States is at least $1T.

All of this to remove one man from power. ONE. There is no justification at all for that.

Antonio’s Pasta Grille, Temple Terrace (Tampa), FL

I picked this restaurant based on one criteria: it was near I-75. My buddy Harold was in the east Tampa area, and I was in the west Tampa area, and it was a convenient meeting place for dinner.

We got there about 1745; the place was mostly empty; it still was when we left around 1845.

The meal started with some really, really good bread, hot and crusty, and a dip of EEVO, garlic, a bit of red pepper, and balsamic vinegar. That stuff was so good I could have eaten about three times what I ate.

I got the chicken marsala. I had wanted the potatoes that the meal came with replaced with a side of fettuccine alfredo, but our server brought both. It turned out to be way too much food.

That being said, the meal was really good. The marsala was light and not overwhelming in the least. The alfredo noodles were perfect, al dente and just the right amount of rich, and the potatoes were good as well. The iced tea was strong. Our server was enthusiastic and motivated and took good care of us.

So the food was good, the company outstanding, and so it was a great evening. I’d eat at Antonio’s again. My check was $21.98.

An Odd Network Observation

I’m doing some work in my hotel room. The room has a hardwired connection. I put the hotel network cable into my plain-vanilla Netgear switch, then ran two more cables to the two computers I am working on. I am using the network to transfer files between the machines. The connection is DHCP.

So the odd thing is, one machine has the IP address 192.168.6.209. Not unusual, a Class C non-routable address. But the other computer has the IP address of 50.94.39.196. Not a Class C address at all, more like a public IP. WTH?

So the two machines could not talk to each other. I solved the problem by changing the 50.x machine to a static IP of 192.168.6.210, and now the machines can talk just fine.

But it is still odd how the two IP addresses were assigned. Both have the same DNS suffix. The gateways assigned are in the same subnet that the IP addresses are in.

This is the second time I have seen this behavior; last night was the first. I can’t understand how the same router or smart switch assigned IP addresses in two completely different subnets. At least I got the transfers working OK.

I’ve Sworn Off KFC

I remember eating KFC as far back as I can remember. I loved the taste (original recipe, I never liked extra crispy), I loved the buckets. We would occasionally get KFC from the location on East Side Boulevard in Muskogee before heading out to the lake. Was it healthy? Heck no. But it was tasty.

But I’ve had my last, I think. While I have had consistent problems with specific locations over the past couple years, the chain as a whole has also gone downhill in quality and value.

The taste of the chicken has degraded. Maybe the chain is using less quality ingredients, I don’t know. This also might be related to the next point.

The size of the chicken pieces have been getting smaller.

The cost has been going up.

They have gotten rid of iced tea in the stores (some have concentrate, which is vile).

I usually get mashers and gravy; the mashers are more, I think, concrete-like, and the amount of gravy is always inadequate.

I usually get cole slaw; the quality is variable. Most of the time the slaw is too dry.

They are a Pepsi chain; they have Dr. Pepper. I’ve tried both, at multiple locations, and the soft drinks are bad. Consistently bad. I think that they have dialed the syrup down, down, down.

They have honey sauce instead of honey. Not good. They have “buttery spread” instead of butter. Not good.

The last three visits I made to two different KFCs, they had no light chicken for 20+ minutes. Two of these visits were in the evening, and one at lunch, at locations in Midwest City (on Douglas) and in Oklahoma City (on 23rd).

So I am done with KFC by my choice. Quality way down, price up. It’s just not worth it anymore.

War on Christmas Canard – Again

As I drove from the Omaha airport to my hotel this evening, I had the radio on scan, and I stopped it on a station that was playing a story about how the state of Rhode Island put up a “Holiday Tree”, instead of a “Christmas Tree”. The station featured people decrying this as part of a “war on Christmas”.

The segment was followed by another that was about how Tulsa, OK, changed their “Christmas Parade” to the “Holiday Parade of Lights”. Note: the segments in question are on the website for the program here.

OK, so to stake out my position:

1. There is no war on Christmas. The supposed war is fearmongering.

2. The Constitution clearly forbids endorsement of religion by government. I think that a city-sponsored Christmas parade is a clear endorsement of Christianity by that city.

Given that, Tulsa did the right thing. Christians should not be too bent out of shape that the pendulum is swinging back to the law of the land after all this time.

But I want to address the radio segment just a bit more. People who oppose Tulsa changing the name of the Tulsa parade went and did a very American thing – they set up a Christmas Parade of their own (now, they scheduled it at the same time as the city Holiday Parade; I’m sure that was coincidence…). The Grand Marshal of the Christmas Parade is Everett Piper, President of Oklahoma Wesleyan University in Bartlesville.

In this interview, Mr. Piper was sort of contradictory on several points. He first of said said that given that we have a pluralistic society, then people are able to do their own thing expression-wise. Good for him. He also said that if he respects other people’s expressions, they should respect his. I don’t know about that, but I would respect his right of expression…

Then, what really caught my attention. Mr. Piper complained that he thought it was sad that the “culture” was responsible for not being able to have a Christmas parade (not really true, it’s the Constitution), and then he went on for a while quoting Biblical verses, then ended up complaining that he can’t say that sort of stuff without it being offensive.

Now, none of that in particular has to do with parades, Christmas or Holiday. But I find it to be what I have called over sensitivity by religious people. It’s complaining that they are being suppressed, or kept from expressing themselves, based on no evidence whatsoever. Think on this: Mr. Piper, who is the President of a private religious university, was being interviewed by a reporter on a private religious radio network, about his role in a private religious parade. Yet he was complaining, essentially, that his religion was being affected negatively because a city had the courage to follow the Constitution. Not because there was any actual suppression of religion going on. No agency of the government kept his university from espousing any religious sect, nor kept the radio broadcaster from expressing his faith, or kept the private parade from happening.

Any time I hear someone saying there is a war on Christmas or Christianity, I always ask exactly how many people were kept from attending church last week. That’s the real measure of how much suppression there is of Christianity.

06 January 2012 addition:

It occured to me as I just re-read this post that I can recall only three instances of attempts to actually suppress religion expression in this country. All three were by Christian groups. One was a couple years ago; the Department of Defense was setting up to support Wiccans in the corps of chaplains. A number of Christian groups tried to get the DoD to not do that.

Second, the LDS church opening a Temple in NW OKC about 15 years ago. A number of local Baptist preachers went out to protest this.

Third, the attempts by Christian groups to try and stop the building of the Muslim outreach center in NYC (this is the mosque at the World Trade Center that is not a mosque, and is not at the WTC, but is a number of blocks away).

All religious groups should just worship as they like, and maybe not worry so much about other religious groups, or even non-religious groups or people.

Rick Perry Claims an Obama War On Religion

Proclaming he is a Christian, Mr. Perry runs a commercial with claims that President Obama is warring on religion.

The claim is bogus. I wonder if the Christian-claiming Mr. Perry recalls the Commandment pertaining to bearing false witness, or LYING. Or if it even matters to him. Is lying about an opponent OK if you are trying to get elected to the Presidency?

Some Good ACA News

In an article in USA Today
(http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/story/2011-12-05/Medicare-prescription-drugs-health-care-law/51663580/1?loc=interstitialskip), we get some of the first concrete results pertaining to the Affordable Care Act (which some have derided as “Obamacare”).

One of the worst parts of the previous attempt at reforming Medicare was the “donut hole” for prescriptions. The ACA largely closed this hole.

The closure of the “donut hole” resulted in a savings of $1.5B for prescription drugs. There was no increase in premiums.

So consumers win and insurance companies win and drug makers win. How is this a bad thing?

Joseph’s Restaurant, Santa Rosa, NM

We have eaten at Joseph’s a number of times over the past five years. We’ve had burritos, enchiladas, cheeseburgers, chicken fried steak, and other things. This past visit, we had pretty much the same stuff. We stopped there last Saturday evening headed back home from Colorado.

So I am going to say that the food at Joseph’s was good this time, again. The salsa was excellent. The tea was a bit weak, but OK. The food is cooked quickly.

But one thing that is also consistent is the service. It’s not good. It’s slow, the servers disappear for long stretches, and your drinks are slow to get to the table and run dry often.

So the food is good and the service is not. If you go, just allow for that extra time. Our check for four this time was $35.58. Good value, just slow.

Malt Shoppe, Pagosa Springs, CO

Ian and Erin had a hankering for cheeseburgers last Saturday as we were leaving Pagosa.

The kids and I got cheeseburgers and shakes. Raegan got a fried fish sandwich. None of the sandwiches were any good. The burgers were tasteless. The fish was overcooked and had no flavor. The shakes were OK. The Coke was OK. The tea was concentrate and not good.

There were a lot of local people in there, so there must be something good there. We just didn’t have any of it.

Our check was $38.45. Not recommended.

If you want a good cheeseburger in Pagosa, hit Junction.

Chama Boxcar Cafe, Chama, NM

We typically take US 84 into Pagosa Springs, CO for our ski trips. This takes us through Chama, NM. It was lunchtime, so we cruised through town, and settled on the Boxcar Cafe.

We got there around 1300 and left around 1400. The place was uncrowded. Ian got a Boxcar Burger. The beef was cooked perfectly, and had lots of flavor. Erin got chicken fingers that were really good. I got the enchilada plate. This was different for me – the enchilada was flat (just as advertised on the menu), and came with posole, which I had not had before. Every scrap was eaten. The chilis and chili con carne were excellent. Raegan got a grilled ham and swiss, and it was one of the best I have had. The bread was very tasty, there was a good amount of excellent ham.

We ordered three bowls of soup – they were good. The only thing I would count them down on was the iced tea – it was Lipton, and was odd, like a concentrate.

Our check was $50.09. A bit of this was the soup. We would be happy to go back.

Boss Hogg’s, Pagosa Springs, CO

We ate at Boss Hogg’s last year during our Thanksgiving ski trip to Wolf Creek Ski Area. We liked the place enough that it displaced our previous favorite, Junction.

We ate there last evening. Raegan got a burrito and loved it. I got a pork tenderloin, it was excellent. Erin got chicken fettuccine alfredo, and both she and Raegan liked it (Erin could not eat it all, so it was lunch for Raegan today). Ian got a chicken fried steak on my recommendation.

The meal came with a loaf of wheat bread and honey butter; both were really good.

The salad bar was really good; it had excellent clam chowder on it.

Service was a little slow; our server seemed to be focused on several other tables. Our check was $52.27. Recommended.

I Got Trained This Weekend!

I have been a Boy Scout or Scouter for much of my life. I started as a Cub in 1968, aged out as a Boy Scout at 18, and aged out again as an Explorer at 20. I became a Girl Scout leader with Raegan in 1988 (and still am). I came back into Boy Scouts in 1992, and was a leader on and off for a couple years until 2001, when Ian came in as a Tiger. I’ve been a leader since then.

So I would like to become an Assistant Scoutmaster, and perhaps even a Scoutmaster for some Troop. The Boy Scouts had no required training throughout all this time, and only had one required training in the past couple years (that was Youth Protection, a good thing to have). Raegan and I took all kinds of training through the Girl Scouts (things like Troop Camp, First Aid, and the like), and some Cub training (BALOO in particular comes to mind). This was all on top of the experience both of us had as Scouts as kids, and our literally hundreds of nights of camping experience.

But just this year, there has been a push to have formal training for all adults that work with kids. I took a bunch of training offered online, in fact, everything I could take. For a potential Scoutmaster (or Assistant), there are two trainings that you need to have face to face. These are Scoutmaster Essentials, and Introduction to Outdoors Leadership (IOLS). I took SM Essentials at the University of Scouting mass training held about a month ago in OKC, and then signed up for IOLS, which I took this past weekend.

As might be expected, the volunteers who put this training on were enthusiastic and motivated. The format was two days in camp. I packed up my backpack for an overnighter (except I didn’t take fuel for my MSR stove), and off I went at 0820 Friday. I got to camp, got checked in and assigned to a Patrol (the Cobras), got my tent set up, had opening ceremony, and then… nothing until lunch.

Over the next day and a half, we had lecture and demonstration in skills such as fire building, lashing, camp wood tools, knot tying, map and compass, and the like. The most interesting part to me was the fire building. Although Raegan has been taking a helpful fire starter to every GS camp she has been on for the past couple years, this was the first time I have seen one of the cotton ball-and-Vaseline starters used – WOW! That stuff can burn!

We also cooked together as patrols, and I learned how to cook eggs and sausage in a ziplock; that will be forced on some kids in Troop 15 (NO MORE BAGELS!).

So now I’m a trained SM/ASM. I got pitched pretty hard to attend Wood Badge, we’ll see about that.

Occupy on UC Davis Campus Assaulted By Campus Police

From CNN.com:

The school said 10 protesters arrested were given misdemeanor citations for unlawful assembly and failure to disperse. Eleven were treated for the effects of pepper spray, which burns the eyes and nose, causing coughing, gagging and shortness of breath.

A group of protestors, kneeling, with their heads down, were pepper-sprayed by police on the UC Davis campus. The protesters were not even yelling.

Where were the “officers” not arrested also, for assault? If I pepper-sprayed people at random in OKC, you can bet I would be charged immediately and sent to jail.

There are some people who do not deserve to wear the police uniform.

The police in NYC who physically assaulted otherwise peaceful protesters have not been charged yet, to my knowledge. That’s “Protect and Serve”? Don’t think so.

Republican Views of the Occupy Movement – Pretty Sad

Two of the supposed luminaries of the Republican Party commented on the Occupy movement in the past couple days. In doing so, they showed a terrible disregard for the common people of the United States. They also again cause me to ask the question, why would anyone who is not already quite wealthy vote for any Republican?

Newt Gingrich on the Occupy movement:

“All of the occupy movement starts with the premise that we all owe them everything. They take over a public park they didn’t pay for. To go nearby to use bathrooms they didn’t pay for. To beg for food from places they don’t want to pay for. To obstruct those who are going to work to pay the taxes. Now that is a pretty good symptom of how much the left has collapsed as a moral system in this country and why you need to reassert something as simple as saying to them, go get a job, right after you take a bath.”

His premise of the Occupy premise is wrong. He might be confused, but he is probably just making something up to fit his political ideal. His next two assertions are also wrong; we all paid for that public park, and the Occupy people took in portapotties. They did not beg for food; some was donated but most was paid for by people in the movement. I don’t think they really obstructed people on the way to work. His assertion of the collapse of the left is just flat idiotic. Finally, Newt’s statement about “getting a job” is just stupid, given that his party destroyed the economy by throwing wars and tax cuts without having the fiscal discipline to balance the budget, and legislating jobs out of the United States to overseas.

Gingrich is expressing a disdain or hatred of the working class in this country. He is either deluded, or actually reads the news, and so is lying. I wonder which?

Next, Senator John Kyle on the Occupy movement:

“Well, I think it expresses the attitude of a lot of these folks who somehow think money grows on trees and they’re entitled to it and they don’t understand how wealth is produced in this country. It’s produced by people who work and who invest, who take a risk in a small business, for example. they hire people. And that produces wealth to the government that they can then take advantage of. But it doesn’t seem to me that they have an adequate appreciation of how our free market system works to produce the wealth that’s really made us the envy of the world.”

Mr. Kyle is living on Fantasy Island. The wealth of this country has been flowing to the upper 4-5% for the past decade, largely during the Bush Administration (see the chart here if you want to see this). We do not live in a free market, and haven’t for years. Business has had most of the protections during the past couple decades. The fight against the Consumer Protection Agency and the struggle to confirm a head of that agency (due to repeated Republican obstruction of a confirmation vote) is another indicator of this. It is shown time and again that people who work and are compensated fairly for their work will be able to produce their own wealth. The emphasis should be on the people who create the products, not the companies. Mr. Kyle and his cronies encouraging companies to ship American jobs overseas ought to be held accountable.

As I have said many times, any American in the 95% of the country income-wise who thinks that the current Republican Party has anything to offer them is wrong. It is against your own interest to vote Republican, folks. Unless, of course, you want to try to grab the trickle-down crumbs. Check that chart again to see how the Republicans help you.

Random Observations on News

I hope that Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin gets an “ex-” in front of that title, and that the recall effort there succeeds in a big way. He is a poster child for the bait-and-switch politics of 2010. Sadly, the Oklahoma Legislature and Governor are the same way, but I don’t think a recall would succeed here.

I am kind of amazed that various mayors are using the excuse of health and safety of the various Occupy protesters to remove the protestors from the street. I think that those people are exercising the fundamental right of peaceable assembly. The fact that many of the mayors and other politicians are opposed to the Occupy people means that the Occupy people are on to something. The fundamental difference between Occupy people, and Tea Party people, is that the Occupy people are really agitating for the common people, while the Tea Party people are really agitating for business interests.

In New York, a middle-of-the-night raid was used – kind of Orwellian or totalitarian, Mr. Bloomberg. Bloomberg supposedly arranged for a no-fly zone over the raid so that news helicopters could not film the raid. I used to respect Bloomberg, to the point I hoped he would run for President, but my respect for him is fairly negatively impacted now.

The use of riot police to evict Occupy protestors is just a little ham-handed, I think. The unjustified use of pepper spray by police against New York protestors a couple weeks ago is clearly assault and battery, but the NYC police stood by the “officers” who clearly criminally attacked Occupy people who were just standing there chanting.

It has been reported that the library assembled by the Occupy Wall Street people has been at least partially destroyed. If so, it is a further discredit on Bloomberg and the NYC police.

I wonder if John Huntsman has a chance at the Republican nomination. I hope so, but doubt that it could happen.

Newt Gingrich saying he got more than $1M from Freddie Mac for “historical” consulting, as opposed to lobbying, is ridiculous. I think that there should be consequences for the people at Freddie Mac as well, that’s a stupid amount of money for either lobbying or historical consulting.

I think that it is not terribly relevant that Rick Perry forgot the name of a federal government department. I think the fact that he wants to get rid of the departments in question makes him ineligible to be President of the United States.

I think that having a Department of Education is a good thing, if for no other reason than it has promulgates uniform national standards for what students should learn. “Local control” is a code word for getting religion into public schools, including watering down the sciences.

The Republican concept of “uncertainty” due to regulation keeping small business from hiring and growing, I think, is BS. It’s probably easier for them to talk about that, than the laws they passed under Bush to encourage jobs to be outsourced from the US.

This is a random set of thoughts, but I have been thinking more than writing for the past couple weeks.

Duncan’s Cafe, Council Bluffs, IA

Great meal this evening. I hit Duncan’s at about 1830 (they close at 1900); it was almost empty. I got a jumbo bacon cheeseburger, and it was a very, very good burger, great flavor and a huge mass of bacon (that’s my third meal of the day with bacon, not too shabby!). I choose chips as the side instead of fries.

The iced tea was excellent! Far better than the China Mist I had for lunch.

Service was fast, and very friendly. My check was 9.36. I will gladly go back to Duncan’s (they bread their own CFS, how can I resist that?).

Foodies, Omaha, NE

I had lunch here after visiting Tea Smith to get some Yunnan Gold (great stuff!); the two places are in the same shopping center.

Foodies has sandwiches, soup, pizza. I got a Classic BLT. It had lots of B, middling L, and just enough T. The sandwich was excellent, very tasty, with crunchy B. I got it on wheat bread.

The meal came with soup, which today was beef barley. First of all, it was HOT! As it cooled, it was really, really tasty. It had (amazingly enough) beef and barely, but also carrots and celery.

They have China Mist iced tea. I tried some, not expecting anything good, but was pleasantly surprised. The China Mist didn’t suck nearly as much as most of the China Mist I have tried! It wasn’t nearly as good as real brewed iced tea, but it was drinkable.

The place was almost empty when I got there for late lunch at 1500. My check was $11.45. The place was good, I will go back.

“Alleged” Victims

The horrible story about the former Penn State coach has reminded me of something that bothers me: the term “alleged victim”.

I don’t think that I have ever heard this term applied at any time other than when a sex-related crime is under discussion. If a convenience store is held up, the store clerk is referred to as a victim, not an “alleged” victim.

If a rape is discussed, you will without question hear reference to the “alleged” victim. I know that the definition of the word allege can be used this way, but when it is used only for victims of sex crimes, I believe that it casts doubt about whether the crime actually took place.

I know that news people feel they have to use “alleged” when discussing an actual or accused perpetrator.

News people, let’s stick with “victim” when sex crimes are discussed. How about it?

A Note About WordPress Blogging

I was online for a limited time over the past couple weeks due to family issues, and ate in a lot of new restaurants. I blogged about them offline over the past couple days, and just now uploaded them.

One thing, a post would just not upload; WordPress would tell me it was uploaded, but would not display it. The only unusual thing about the post was the length of the title.

The title I was trying to use was:

Sundance Cafe, Quartz Mountain Lodge, Quartz Mountain State Park, Lone Wolf, OK

The title I edited down a bit worked:

Sundance Cafe, Quartz Mountain State Park

So this is probably a buglet in the WordPress upload software. I notified them, and hope they get it fixed.

Sundance Cafe, Quartz Mountain State Park

Quartz Mountain State Park is in the southwestern corner of Oklahoma. It was a lot to offer recreation wise, including rock climbing and rapelling, some hiking, bouldering, and fishing. Last Saturday, Erin went to QM with the Girl Scout High Adventure Team (HAT) to do some rock climbing and rapelling. While they got started on that, I took a hike near the lodge, and had lunch.

The lodge has been completely rebuilt since the last time I was there more than 16 year ago. Much of it burned. It’s beautiful now.

I started my meal with some chili. It was OK. There was little meat in it, and lots of tomato chunks, and no heat at all (except the cooking heat).

My main meal was a chicken fried steak – it was excellent! Not too large, but with very good gravy. It was fork tender and very flavorful. It came with grilled veg that I really liked (excellent grill smoke flavoring) and garlic mashers. The tea was pretty good, but served in tiny little cups, to the point my server brought me a carafe so I wouldn’t exhaust her bringing me refills.

Service was good. The place was deserted when I got there around 1215. My check was $18.97. A good place to eat if you are at the park.

Chubby’s Chicken, Oklahoma City, OK

Last Friday, after we dropped Ian off for a weekend Scout campout, Raegan announced that She Wanted Fried Chicken. How could I argue with that? We headed from uptown OKC out to Peidmont to Chicken and Chops, which was closed… Crud.

I pulled out my trusty Blackberry with Google Maps, entered “chicken”, and Chubby’s popped up, conveniently enough on Northwest Expressway along our route back into town.

We got there around 1900, the place was pretty much empty (there were more arrivals later).

We ordered an entire fried chicken, eight pieces. It came with two sides, including a decent mayo potato salad (you can get mustard-based also). Erin also decided she wanted a fried chicken wrap.

All of this was excellent! We have been looking for a good fried chicken place (do not speak to me of KFC), and had settled on Chicken and Chops until now. The fried chicken at Chubby’s was far better than Eishen’s, Chicken and Beer, and quite better than Jim’s. We ate every bit of our order, and ended up taking part of Erin’s wrap back home.

Raegan and I got iced tea, Erin had water, and Raegan and Erin had yummy root beer floats.

Service was excellent. Our check was $33.82, which I think was excellent value. We’ll be back.

Los Vaqueros Mexican, Midwest City, OK

I ate here a week or so back as part of a going-away for a coworker. Let me saw up front, the service for our part of about 20, even given that there were two other smaller groups, and the usual customers, was excellent. The staff kept drinks refilled, took orders quickly, and the food arrived quickly. They were motivated.

I ordered a pair of enchiladas, a lunch special, I think the #5. They were covered with sour cream sauce, and were really good. They came with rice and beans.

This was a pretty fast and fairly tasty lunch. My check was only $8.10. This restaurant is new in the Mid-Del area, and is well worth going back to.

Jack’s BBQ, Oklahoma City, OK

I drove past Jack’s a weekend back when I was going to a daylong Scout leader training. It’s on 39th Expressway east of Meridian. I went back home and got Ian, and we ate there for dinner.

Ian got the rib dinner, and I got a two meat special with brisket and pulled pork. The ribs, while large, were pretty tough and didn’t have much flavor (Ian didn’t finish them, and that’s a statement right there). My brisket and pork were pretty much the same (I left some behind as well).

I think that the meal was oh so close. It looked good, it just was lacking in the flavor department, maybe just a touch more or less smoking needed? The sides (he got fries, I got something) were OK.

YOu order at the counter and then pick up the order. Tea (which was good) is self serve. THe check for the two of us was $31.17. I probably won’t be back.

Mexico Joe’s, Stillwater, OK

Raegan had her Girl Scouts at Camp Stapley two weekends ago, and Ian and I met them that Friday evening for dinner at MJs. We had previously eaten at MJs a couple years ago, but we get to Stillwater (a city we both dearly love, and where we met) rarely.

Ian and I arrived in the area first, since the Scouts were busy setting up camp. We walked around the campus, and I showed him various places that I had classes in. The Student Union is undergoing a significant makeover (and had a Johnny Rockets operating that smelled WONDERFUL!).

We got to Mexico Joe’s around 1800 and had about a 20 minute wait (we needed a table for nine, it was a Friday evening, OSU was in session, and the day before a football Saturday).

The tea (and other drinks) arrived in plastic logo cups. A couple notes about them: they are SMALL (too small for this major-league tea drinker), but they change color with temperature, which is kind of neat.

I’m going to focus on what I got, which was the MJ Enchiladas. You have a choice of two or three (I recommend three for me). They were good, and covered with chili con carne. The beans were really good, and the rice typical.

The salsa on the table for everyone is smooth and really hot! I liked it, and had two bowlets just for me. That salsa had really good flavor. A couple of the Scouts though it was too hot.

Service was really good in spite of the fact that it was so blasted crowded. The check for our family of four was $42.65, not a bad value at all. MJs is good stuff.

Amish Country Store, Muskogee, OK

I was in Muskogee with my family back on 29 Oct visiting my mother and grandmother. We tried to eat at a local sandwich shop, but it had closed right as we got into town, and we had passed the Amish Country Store on the way in, so we went back there for a late lunch. We got there around 1330 and left around 1420.

The food here was excellent. Ian and I got chicken fried steak. It was thick, made there, tender, and flavorful. Give it a… 10! THe gravy was excellent also (not as good as Raegan’s, but close…). I had Amish Casserole (veg in a cheese sauce, tasted OK) and mashers (excellent). I can’t remember what Raegan and Erin had, but both liked it also.

The tea was good, service excellent, and the food outstanding. Our check was $58.76, but that included some baked goods, including a couple slices of pie, cookies, and some other stuff we took with us. This place is on the list for future visits.

Sweet and Sassy Cafe & Bakery, Muskogee, OK

Raegan and I were in Muskogee a two weeks ago Tuesday to deal with some family matters. We decided to have lunch at Sweet and Sassy, which we had missed the previous Saturday. Disclaimer: Sweet and Sassy is owned by the sister of one of my friends.

That being said, it was good. Raegan had a bowl of soup and half a club sandwich, and liked them both. I had baked spaghetti that came with a roll and small salad, and liked all of it. We both had iced tea, and it was good.

To finish the meal, we had cupcakes. I do not eat a lot of sweets, but those cupcakes were really good, light and fluffy, and icing that I really liked (it wasn’t so sweet that it made your teeth hurt, if you know what I mean).

Our check was $19.37, and we would gladly eat there again.

Paul’s Diner, Muskogee, OK

This place had several recommendations from friends in Muskogee. We tried it a couple Saturday evenings ago on a visit to Muskogee.

Pauls is south of the Peak Bypass on Country Club Road. When I lived in Muskogee, it would have been ‘way out of town. The place is nothing to look at from the outside – classic diner. We got there around 1900 and left around 2000. It was about 80% full the entire time.

I got a big cheeseburger, Ian got a smaller one, Raegan got the fried catfish, and Erin got a chili cheeseburger. It was all good. Raegan was full, but looked longingly at the pecan pie (next time, she said).

Service was OK, the food was decent. If you are looking for fancy, don’t come here, but do come here for the food if you want it fast and good. Our check was $33.70.

Shirley’s Diner, Omaha, NE

I have had several recommendations for Shirley’s, and yesterday afternoon I had the opportunity to give it a try.

From the outside, the place is nothing to look at; just a door in a strip shopping center. Once through the atrium, it lights up, and you are surrounded by photos and memorabilia for various Hollywood stars. My table was a shrine to Marilyn Monroe, lots of nice photos of her.

The house specialty is chicken fried steak. What else could I do? The CFS was fork tender throughout, clearly hand breaded. The meat was a little thin, and was not jus bursting with flavor, but it was pretty good. The gravy was excellent, with pieces of sausage.

The meal came with nice cut green beans, and very good mashers (nothing dehydrated there).

The iced tea was good and kept refilled, and service was excellent. My check was $12.37, and I would gladly go to Shirley’s again.

Pizza King, Council Bluffs, IA

I drove past this place looking for something to eat last night in the Bluffs. The banner underneath the sign read “Pizza, Steaks, Chicken, Italian” or something like that, so I decided to give it a try.

I ordered a ribeye, medium. The steak was very, very good. It was right at an inch thick, little fat on it, and no charring. The meat was tender, fork tender in some places (in spite of being so thick), was cooked a perfect medium, and had a lot of flavor. No extraneous pepper or other spices on or needed.

The meal came with a plain salad (I had ranch dressing, decent), hash browns (yum), and spaghetti (I got it with meat sauce, which was not to my taste).

The tea was odd, like a mix. I only had two glasses (for me, not much at all).

Service was excellent. My check was $21.35. I would happily eat here again.

Dover AFB Mortuary and Troop Remains

On this Veteran’s Day 2011, I read with discomfort of the practice of Dover AFB burning small and unidentifiable body parts of fallen US soldiers, then disposing of the cremains at a landfill. The burning part I am comfortable with, but the landfill part, not a bit.

At St. John’s, we have an ash garden in front of the building where cremains can be interred.

It seems to me that in light of the death and burial sentiments that many in the country feel, and the fact that the soldiers died directly in the service of their country, something of the same should have been set up and used, perhaps at Arlington National Cemetery (near the Tombs of the Unknowns, perhaps), or at a National Cemetery near Dover.

That is certainly more dignified than a local landfill. Whoever came up with that idea should be out of a job.

Hooray for Mississippi, Also

Incomplete poll reports show that the ballot measure to define a fertilized egg as a person failed to pass by a wide margin (~60% to 40%). This is a good thing.

I think that there is an argument that can be made as to eliminating elective abortion at some point, based on the viability of the fetus. But I also think that there is no way that “life, as we know it” is in the millisecond that a sperm makes it into an egg. Reasonable people could debate this.

This got on the ballot due to the binary view of people opposed to abortion. Fortunately, the people of Mississippi thought the better of the fanatical attempt to control the reproductive rights of women.

Hooray For Ohio Tonight

I think it’s great that Ohio voters are going to overturn the union-busting attempt by the Republican Governor of Ohio and the Republican-controlled Ohio Legislature.

I think that a lot of Republican election victories in 2010 were driven by bait-and-switch, or deceptive tactics. If they had come out and said “we are going to eliminate collective bargaining for state workers”, then I think that a lot less votes would have some their way.

The referendum and recall processes that are going on in various states will correct some of this. We need a big push from the top down (listening, President Obama?) to start swinging the pendulum back to the side of the people, instead of big, soul-less business.

Harding Fine Arts Academy, “Zombie Prom”

Weekend before last, we had tickets to see a high school musical production of “Zombie Prom” (really!), put on by Harding Fine Arts Academy. Several of Raegan’s former students were in the play. I have to say up front, we did not have high expectations.

The plot: a teenager transfers in to a high school run by a strict principal. He falls in love with a girl and annoys the principal and her parents, who force the boy and girl to break up. He throws himself into a nuclear power plant, and dies, but returns as a zombie. Will the zombie and his former girlfriend find true love?

So, that’s not really a good plot.

But the cast took that plot, and what came out of it was some amazing performances, and singing. Several of the cast, in particular the principal and the boyfriend, have vocal talent that was stunning! The principal also had strong acting skills that really helped carry the show. The three major characters, principal, boyfriend, and girlfriend, were backed up by a cast that performed numerous singing and dancing numbers with a high degree of precision. One of the dance numbers that was really well done, and funny at the same time, was a tango danced by the principal and another character; the love/hate dialog was a fun dichotomy to the dance.

Everyone on stage really seemed to be enjoying themselves during the performance. The audience also was following closely along. The plot, along with some of the lines, was definitely on the comedy side of the genre, and there were a lot of laughs for lines of dialog, including the singing numbers. There was a lot of really good harmony in the singing, in duets and trios.

The cast was accompanied by a small band. The band music and the singing were always perfectly on time. The band also didn’t overwhelm the dialog and singing, it had great sound balance. The sets were changed without and stumbling or delays, the lighting was well done, and all of the production processes were right on the money.

So, even though we had low expectations, the experience was very entertaining and never boring. I think that there are some potential professional singers and actors in that group. I’ve seen quite a bit of amateur theater over the years, and this cast was as good as any other local group I’ve seen. Kudos to the cast and crew of “Zombie Prom”!

Tobacco and the Government

I listened to an article on NPR yesterday afternoon that struck a chord. The FDA had set up some regulations that required tobacco companies to post graphic images (for example, healthy and smoke-damaged lungs) on tobacco packaging. Tobacco companies, of course, resisted this.

I have a simple solution. If tobacco is so bad (and there is no dispute that it isn’t), then stop making subsidy payments to tobacco farmers. Next, ensure that the taxes changed for each pack reflect the downstream health care cost for treating lung cancer and the other nasty stuff that tobacco use causes.

People would be free to do whatever they want with tobacco in this concept, and would be free of government interference in their decision. I think that if the true cost was factored in (from growing the stuff to paying for the downstream effects), then the cost might rise to the point that people would quit.

Acropol Family Restaurant, Largo, FL

I’ve passed this place a number of times driving between my hotel and work here in Largo. It was recommended to me by a coworker today, and I stopped for dinner. I got there around 1730 and left around 1830. The place was about 50% full when I got there, and getting crowded when I left.

The menu had amazing variation. There was Italian, Greek, American, Tex-Mex, and probably other stuff.

One of the daily specials was fried chicken. I asked my server, and she said it was one of her favorites, and then she cautioned me that I didn’t want to be in a hurry, as it took longer to cook. That’s a positive sign! It means they cook it right.

The meal started with some navy bean soup, it was a biggish bowl, and was really good (and HOT). The chicken arrived just as I was finishing up the bowl, and it was still sizzling from the frying. It was four pieces, a leg, wing, thigh, and breast. And it was good stuff. The breading was not super greasy, and the chicken was juicy and had good flavor. It came with whipped potatoes and chicken gravy. The tea was good, strong, and kept refilled.

Overall the meal was simple, filled me up, and was tasty. I looked at several other meals walking in and out of the restaurant that also looked good.

My check was $10.75. Service was good also. I would eat here again anytime.

Balla’s Steakhouse, Largo, FL

I have run by this place many times over the past couple years, as it is right up the road from my hotel. It’s a fairly casual place, and I hit it for dinner this evening. Great experience!

First, I was there on Karaoke Tuesday! The singers were enthusiastic, and were actually not dreadful.

The meal started with a soup course; I chose chili, and it was really good; I was surprised. The chili had some beans, but not too much, and some very few cut-up jalapenos in it, and it had just the right amount of heat to it. There was also a loaf of semi-rough white bread, with some EEVO and garlic. Good start.

I got a ribeye, it was great! About 95% fork tender, good presentation, and lots of flavor. Great steak. It came with rice pilaf, and with some steamed mixed veg (mainly carrots and squash), all good. There was not a scrap left on the plate. I got some iced tea with it, good stuff also.

Service was decent. My check was $21.35, which I think was very good value. I will gladly eat here again. They also have some Italian entrees on the menu.

Courtside Grille, St. Petersburg, FL

The check says the restaurant is in Feathersound, FL, but I think it’s St. Petersburg; probably a suburb.

I ate here for lunch today, on the way between the airport and the hotel. I got there around 1200 and left around 1400.

I got a BBQ Burger Stacker. It is a decent sized burger patty (1/3 lb, probably), on a bun with cheese, bacon, BBQ sauce, and fried onions. The burger was a touch overcooked. The bacon was really good, and the BBQ sauce was a nice touch. The bun was a touch overtoasted on the edges; a knive solved that. I was not impressed by the fried onions – they were dry and hard, so I scraped them off the sandwich. The meal came with chips, they look like they were made there, and were pretty good. The tea was Gold Coast (the taste cannot be masked).

Service was spotty, but not too bad. My check was $12.26. This place falls into the class of restaurants that I would go to if someone else wanted to go.

I think that the menu was kind of limited, at least for my taste. That’s not a general criticism, just a personal comment on my part.

LodgeNet Sucks, Amazingly Enough, Even More

I have already ranted about LodgeNet. The lame, slow remotes and limited channel selection are terrible. When available, I will always pick a hotel without LodgeNet. For example, I will pick the Hilton Garden Inn in Richardson, TX over the Embassy Suites. Are you listening, hotel people?

So LodgeNet has gone to a new low. Two hotels I have stayed in in the past couple weeks have LodgeNet. In both cases, the LodgeNet “enabled” (really, crippled) TV would boot up, raise the TV volume (too LOUD!), and then go to one of the Lodgenet barker channels.

Now, the TV boots up, and it goes to a Lodgenet generated “buy our crap” screen. There is no escape from this. The volume control doesn’t even work for a while. You have to exit out through multiple screens using the slow, lame remote, before it “lets” you choose a channel (you can’t even direct-select). This all adds 20 seconds or more to getting the TV usable.

LodgeNet is terrible. Why do hotels use it? What do they have against their customers to inflict LodgeNet on us?

Dust Bowl Diner, Muskogee, OK

This place had been recommended by a friend, and it turned out to be very good. I got here about 1200, and left at 1245.

I got a patty melt. The burger was 10 oz, juicy, and lots of flavor. The onions and mushrooms were cooked perfectly. The meal came with a huge amount of decent fries. The tea was good, and kept refilled.

The Diner has wifi, which turned out to be very useful.

My check was $12.39. I would eat here again. Thanks for the recommendation, Chris.

Finally, We Are Getting Out of Iraq

So the President announced that all of our troops would be out of Iraq by the end of the year. Good! It’s about time. That useless war cost us thousands of American lives and billions of American dollars, it was initiated on shaky grounds at best.

Apparently, the Iraqi government asked us to leave. Well, good for them. It’s their country.

Some part of the Right, including a number of the Presidential candidates, went loony nuts when the announcement was made. Failure of policy by Obama was frothed most repeatedly that I had heard. Those people are WRONG.

A Great Weekend Touring Northwest Oklahoma

We had a great weekend touring around part of NW Oklahoma this past weekend. It was sort of a come-and-go party for our Girl Scout Troop.

We headed out Friday evening, had dinner in Guthrie, and drove to Great Salt Plains State Park. This is a cool little park, and the cabins are perfect! We had five of us: Raegan and I, Erin and her friend Bridget, and Ian. Ian crashed on one of our camp cots, we took the bed, and the girls got the futon. The cabin was really neat, with a full kitchen, satellite TV, a view of the lake to the west, and a porch and back yard.

The next morning, we got up and headed around the north end of the lake for Cherokee. At 0810 on a Saturday morning, there were no restaurants open. Not one. We met up with the other two members of the group at the United Supermarket in town, bought some breakfast stuff (milk, juice, fruit, cereal, donuts, and the like), and had a picnic on the parking lot. Erin came up with a good (NOT!) marketing slogan for the place: “Cherokee: come hungry, leave disappointed”.

From there we went selenite crystal digging at Great Salt Plains National Wildlife Refuge (NWR) (selenite is a crystal variety of gypsum). I have never done the digging before, and it was fun! You basically pick a spot, and start digging. We did bring shovels and trowels and such, but we *should* have brought a sit-upon (Bree did), a couple gallons of water to rinse the crystals and wash our hands, and to drink. Raegan brought some gallon zip bags for the crystals. Basically, you dig a minute, and if you feel crystals, you keep digging for a while, otherwise, you move somewhere else and dig.

This is Ian and Erin digging away. As you can see, you can get really dirty!

I’ve seen the salt plains from the air numerous times. They are flat and featureless up close.

The crystals are pretty cool. Most are small, 0.5 – 1 in, but they get bigger. The kids found a couple that were 6-7in.

We had one glitch, we were there on the 15th, the last day of the year (or diggers can interfere with migrating birds), and the gate was locked, but I called the State Park, and the very nice lady there called the Feds (who run the Refuge), and one of them came right over and unlocked the gate for us.

From the crystal digging, we headed to Alva and had lunch. We then hightailed it to Alabaster Caverns State Park and took the cave tour. This is the fourth time I’ve been on the tour, and I’ve enjoyed it every time.

One thing I have not been able to do at ACSP is hike the various trails there. There are a number of them that go down into various canyons that look fun.

I noticed off to the NNE of ACSP a mining operation, it looked like it was making gypsum. I asked one of the Rangers, and she had heard that the plant was mining gypsum gravel for roads. See the discussion later about the Chesapeake Energy facilities and the roads.

We drove to Woodward and toured the Plains Indians and Pioneers Museum. This was a neat museum. It had dioramas and maps from the 1800s, and a lot of artifacts from the early days of Woodward. While there, we were able to try using a Atlatl to toss projectiles at a hay bale, it was fun!

We had dinner at a real diner in Woodward, then checked into Hampton Inn (very nice!). The girls had a swim. The next morning, we headed out again.

We went to Little Sahara State Park to check it out. This was kind of a dud. LSSP is basically only for people who have dune buggies or ATVs. We walked up a hill on the north side of the park and could see the immense sand dunes, but could not walk out to them.

From LSSP, we headed east. I am amazed at the terrain out there. Around Enid, and around Woodward, it’s relatively flat. But between there, you get mesas and ridges that are up to a couple hundred feet above terrain. Some of them look right out of New Mexico. Of course, there is a lot of salt, oil, gas, minerals, etc. under the ground.

There are hundreds of new extraction facilities out in the area. A lot of them were Chesapeake Energy facilities. In some cases, there was a pump jack next to the new tanks, and in most cases, it looked like there was a valve tree where the pump jack used to be. We drove over to look at one. The road was finely crushed gypsum. So I speculate that the near-surface gypsum near ACSP was being extracted and crushed into gravel for all the roads being laid out to the next extraction facilities. There were a lot of white roads. The facilities consisted of some equipment, and two tanks, one labeled “PRODUCED WATER” and the other “CRUDE OIL”.

First, this led me to search for the permit that each of these facilities have to have. There was no searchable data at the Oklahoma Department of Mines. There are publishing requirements in newspapers, but these particular facilities weren’t seen via Google. I asked via the ODoM website, and got a nice email back saying that they could point me to data, but not online.

I also looked at the tank labels, and got a bit more education. The labels have four fields, three of which were used. The blue field is for “Health Hazard”, the red is “Fire Hazard”, and the yellow field is “Instability”. So… the two tanks contain slightly hazardous material with a flash point below 73F, that is stable. I think that the tanks are from a fracking operation, since fracking can use water, and the water comes up with the oil.

We were driving along 412, and this set of formations showed up ahead of us.

So as we went up into the cut, there was a sign, for Gloss Mountains State Park! For some reason, I thought that GMSP was out in west central Oklahoma, but no, here it was. So we pulled off, there is a hiking trail there, and we took it! From the parking area (a head, covered picnic table, but no water), there is a steep trail/set of stairs up to the mesa-let that makes up the state park.

We walked up there, it’s about 160ft, and to the back of the mesa-let. There are a couple benches up there, and very little shade. It’s about 0.7 miles out, for almost 1.5 miles total.

There is so much selenite up there, along with other forms of gypsum. We saw the flashes from reflected sunlight constantly. I took this sample. The first is a bright sunlight reflection, and then I shot the same rock looking straight down from the top.

It just doesn’t look like that rock could reflect sunlight so brightly.

We had a late lunch in Fairview, headed south back to OKC via OK 3. This was a nice, relaxed weekend, fairly inexpensive. Things I was surprised by: we had cell coverage over virtually the entire trip! It was mostly GPRS (a couple places I saw only GSM, a couple of places I saw EDGE). I lose coverage over southern or southeastern OK quickly once I get away from I-35 or I-40, so this was a pleasant surprise. I wonder if it was due to the large number of mining and extraction activities? Which was another surprise, the sheer number of extraction facilities. Also, we saw no less than four gypsum mines in various places.

We visited four state parks (another one of the families visited a fifth) and a national wildlife refuge. Ate some decent food. Had very little inter-kid argument. We really enjoyed having our temporary daughter Bridgett along for the weekend.

There is still stuff to do out there, and there are lots of weekends ahead.

Bigfoot BBQ, Caddo, OK

I was tooling around SE Oklahoma a couple weekends ago (08 Oct 2011), and needed lunch. One of my buddies recommended Bigfoot BBQ. I got there around 1130, and left around 1230. There were only a couple other people eating in the restaurant while I was there, and more people getting takeaway.

I asked if I could get something equivalent to a two-meat dinner. My server checked with the people in back and got assent. I got sliced brisket and ribs. The ribs were decent enough, with a good amount of meat on them, and fairly tender. They were partially smoked and finished off on the grill, I think. The brisket had little smoke flavor, but was really tough, and required some serious chewing to get it down. The meal came with some fries, and something else that was new to me, deep fried green beans. The fries were rough cut and pretty good. The beans were OK. The tea was good.

Service was pretty spotty, I had to ask for tea refills each time. My check was $12.01. I would eat here again; thanks for the recommendation, KUB!

Foie Gras, California, and Bans

OK, so I have read several articles regarding California banning the sale of Foie Gras, due to concerns about how it is produced, by force-feeding geese.

I always wonder how people figured that out in the first place.

I’m not opposed to having animals for dinner. I am opposed to not treating them in a humane manner when killing them.

Regardless of that, I think the very concept of eating Foie Gras is “Yuk”…

Cotton Patch Cafe, Lewisville, TX

I stopped here for lunch last Friday while headed home. I had put the search term “cheeseburger” into Google Maps, and this place popped up.

I got there around 1345 and left about 1420. The meal came with two really good loaflet of bread, with cinnamon butter; I ate both, one before and one after the meal. I ordered the chicken fried steak (yes, I know, a bit more than a cheeseburger!), and I was darn glad I did. It was a lunch sized steak, and was perfect. Breaded there and fried up just right, flavorful, and fork tender. The gravy was also excellent. I got green beans (with onion and bacon) and kernel corn for my sides, and they were also very good, the beans in particular. The tea was great, I took some with me.

Service was a bit slow but stuff got there. My check was $11.10; great value. I’d eat at one of these anytime.

Ranger Grill, Alva, OK

We were cruising between crystal digging and Alabaster Caverns, and the route was through Alva. We saw the Ranger Grill and hit it for lunch.

Ian got a double-meat cheeseburger and fries, the burger was really good. Raegan and Erin got fish sandwiches and liked them, and Bridgett got chicken fingers and like them (although she said the gravy should have been warmed up a bit more). I got a spud with chili, and liked it as well. We all got iced tea (except Ian, who got DP).

This was a pretty fast dining experience, but decent food. We were in at 1240 and out at 1320. Our check was $35.00. Not bad for five!

They do a bit of BBQ also. The Saturday special was smoked sausage, but I’m not a big smoked sausage fan so I didn’t get it. Maybe next time, they will have some brisket…

Polly Anna Cafe, Woodward, OK

We are in Woodward today, and visited a local museum, where we got a recommendation for Polly Anna. It was great! We got there around 1830, and left around 1945. The place was almost empty when we got there, almost filled while we where there, and was pretty much empty when we left.

Raegan got the fried chicken, four pieces, and it was great! I had one of the breast pieces, and it was perfect. Light and crisp crust, wonderful flavor, and juicy but not greasy throughout. The meal came with mashed potatoes (excellent) and excellent cream gravy. Yum!

I got a chicken fried steak. It was mostly fork tender, relatively thick, had excellent flavor, and good breading. Rate that a 9.75! Also got mashers and gravy.

Ian got chicken strips and liked them. Erin and Bree got grilled cheese sandwiches, one liked and the other didn’t.

The tea was good and the service was also. Our meal was $38.35. I would gladly eat here again.

Romas Italian Restaurant, Dallas, TX

This was another place I saw after I left Ozona last week. I decided to check it out last evening. Overall, a decent experience.

The meal started with iced tea (good) and some interesting small (~1.5in diameter) hard rolls. This came with some very good marinara, that came in handy later.

I ordered the Trio Platter. This is chicken parmesan, on a bed of spaghetti marinara, and with a side of fettuccine alfredo. Taking these in reverse, the alfredo was OK. Not quite bland, but not terribly rich, either. It was OK. The spaghetti didn’t have a tremendous amount of marinara, so I used what was delivered with the bread to enhance the amount. The chicken was pounded flat, and was a bit overcooked. The breading was just a touch too crispy, and the chicken was just a touch touch (as in not completely fork-tender). Not a heck of a lot of flavor (probably due to the overcooking).

So not a the best meal I’ve had, but also not the worst. I would go back here again. My check was $12.44, which is not a bad value.

Back Country Barbeque, Dallas, TX

I drove past this place last week coming back from Ozona, and decided to give it a try. I went here for dinner last Wednesday. It was a mixed experience.

I ordered a combination dinner, with ribs and chicken. The ribs were OK at best. They didn’t have very much flavor, and were really fatty. I discarded one altogether as it was small and tough. The chicken started out well, not burned, and had good flavor (I got light meat, a breast). But the deeper I went, the dryer it got, and finally it was so dry that the chicken was tough and stringy. I didn’t finish it.

There were limited sides. I got baked beans and brown beans. The baked beans were good, white beans and BBQ sauce. The pintos were decent. They were flavored with significant chili powder, but they also needed a bit more cooking time.

The sauce was sweet (very sweet) hickory sauce. Almost two sweeet.

I would have liked to see some more sides (like green beans, mac and cheese). There were a number of cold sides like potato salad.

Overall, an OK experience. Some of the other meats looked good, so if I were to go back, I would try them. I got there around 1745 and left around 1845. It was mostly empty. My check was $14.30.

The Occupy Wall Street People Must Be On To Something

A number of prominent conservatives, including the serial liar Eric Cantor, made statements over the weekend in opposition to the OWS people (Cantor called them a “mob”). Herman Cain called them “un-American”.

So Cain must himself be un-American. Protest by the public has been an American tradition dating back the start of the Republic. People protest many things, from the silly to the profound. The First Amendment protects and encourages protests.

The general rage that is being expressed is a good thing as well. The economy of the United States was raped by banks and other companies, enabled by Bush policies that encouraged risky investment instruments. There has been no accountability for any of this; there probably will not be. The best thing is get progressives back in charge of the government, and start undoing some of the damage that was done, and maybe even start getting some of the wealth that was transferred from most of us to the corporations moving back.

Casa Milagro, Richardson, TX

This place was recommended by a friend. A group of six of us ate here for lunch today. It was pretty good. I got the El Tres, which was a pair of enchiladas, one ground beef and one sour cream chicken. They had refried beans and rice as well. The meal was a lunch special, and was only $6.50. The iced tea was good, and kept refilled. I liked the salsa, it was dark red and medium thick.

One thing that was kind of odd; the restaurant will not do separate checks. That’s not very customer friendly. I would eat here again, though. We were there from about 1150 to 1240.

Two Rows Classic Grill, Allen, TX

Last night, after a really fun volleyball match, I stopped here for dinner. I was there 2100 – 2150. The place was mostly empty, except the bar was fairly full.

The meal started with chips, queso, and salsa. All were excellent. The queso in particular was really, really good. The salsa was very smooth, and had the perfect amount of bite to it, great stuff.

I ordered a chicken fried steak. That was one fine CFS, I rated it a 9.5 out of 10. It was fork tender everywhere, the breading was perfect, the beef flavor was excellent. The pepper gravy turned out to be barely peppered (a good thing), and it had a lot of flavor itself. It was a good size as well, not so huge as to make me feel about to explode. You have a choice of sides – I got garlic mashers and merlot mushrooms. The mashers were good, and had the gravy on them, but I didn’t finish them as it was extra volume I didn’t want. I ate only a couple of the mushrooms; they weren’t bad, it just that the wine sauce they were in was strong, and wasn’t something that appealed to me (I prefer fruity wines like Zins). So if you like Merlot, the mushrooms will be good. I should have had the onion rings instead. Next time I will.

Service was pretty good, although my tea ran out a couple times. I wasn’t in any hurry, though. My check was $14.38. I would gladly eat here again.

Billy Sims BBQ, Edmond, OK

OK, with Raegan and I both being OSU people, I have to say BOO! to all the OU stuff on the walls of the restaurant. That being said, it’s some damn fine BBQ!

We drove by the Edmond location and had dinner there about a year ago, and I’ve been to the location in Midwest City a couple times since. The BBQ has certainly not gotten worse.

We ate there last Saturday night. I got a two meat plate (I *cannot* say their name for it without choking… try S**ner M*gic), with ribs and chicken. Simply outstanding. The ribs were so tender as to be amazing, with great smoky flavor, no tough spots, and that red-brown-black crust that shows that care was taken. The chicken, which is served deboned, was juicy all the way through, and was wonderful, full of flavor. For my sides, I got… two more ribs, and some green beans. Ribs as a side item, that is a great idea!

Raegan and Erin also got the same meal, with ribs and chicken and turkey, and it was all just as great.

Ian got a half rack of ribs. Well, that’s what he ordered, I got one of them!

The tea was excellent, service was fast and friendly. The food was as good at JTs, including the ribs, and *that’s* saying something!

Our check was $62.59. Superior BBQ, recommended.

Twin Peaks, Plano, TX

I ate here last evening. I was looking for something light, and ended up a little heavier than I wanted.

First of all, if you don’t like the concept of Hooters, you will not like Twin Peaks. The “Great Views” in their motto refer to the staff, who are all very attractive, and dressed to enhance that.

That being said, service was OK, a bit spotty. It took a while to get my tea ordered, and there were a couple times that it ran out. That never sits well with me.

I ordered the small BBQ wings. They were OK, not terribly meaty, but the BBQ flavor was good.

For my meal, I got the ribeye pot roast. While the meat was roasted pot-roast style, I don’t think it was ribeye. The meat had little flavor. It was tender enough. The gravy (brown) wasn’t too bad. The mashers were good, and the vegetable medley was interesting (it was thin green beans, bacon, corn, and onion).

My check was $23.82, not bad for a largish appetizer and entree. I would go back if I was part of a group, but probably not if it was just me.

Ozona Bar and Grill, Dallas, TX

I ate at Ozona a couple times a couple years ago. It had an outstanding chicken fried steak, reported #1 in the Metroplex from D Magazine, and I pretty much had to agree. I do not get down to that area very often, though. So Monday evening, I wanted something different, and decided to head down to Ozona again.

I got there around 1830 and left around 1930. The place was about 70% full, and the Rangers playoff game was on the TVs everywhere. I got iced tea, and ordered the CFS with onion rings, and extra gravy.

That was a perfect CFS. It was breaded perfectly, cooked all the way through, was fork-tender, and had amazing flavor. The size was good also, in that it filled me up just right. The gravy was really, really good also. Not too pepperly, you could taste the flour and milk, and it was a wonderful complement to the CFS. The onion rings were perfect, thin-sliced, tender, well breaded.

Service was really good, the tea was excellent, just a great restaurant experience. My check was $16.46.

It’s probably better that Ozona isn’t in Richardson or Plano, that would be too close…

A True American’s Apology to Dick Cheney

“The thing I’m waiting for is for the administration to go back and correct something they said two years ago, when they criticized us for, quote, overreacting to the events of 9/11. They in effect said that we had walked away from our ideals, or taken policy contrary to our ideals when we had enhanced interrogation techniques.”: Dick Cheney, on CNN.

The article is in USA Today.

Here is your apology, Mr. Cheney. I am sorry that you are such a twisted, anti-American thug. I am sorry you and Bush and your apologists spit on the Constitution constantly, all the while claiming you are keeping America safe. And I am especially sorry that your butt isn’t rotting in jail, where you so richely deserve to be.

Go back under your sorry rock.

Now, to the “meat” of his comment. Bush and company did over-react to 9/11. At least that’s a polite way of putting it. Invading Iraq under the pretense of Iraq being involved in 9/11 (or the fictional WMDs) was an over-reaction. Taking away American civil liberties was an over-reaction. Implementing torture (not “enhanced interrogation techniques”) was an over-reaction, and an affront to the Consitution and international law. Bush and Cheney did walk away from American ideals. I have no idea what ideals they hold, but they are not American.

Hiking Waldo Canyon, Colorado Springs, CO

Hike Summary: 7.3 miles, 1085 net altitude gain. Decent hike. Started about 1445, and done around 1830.

The meeting I was at got done early, around noon, and after lunch and an email check, I selected Waldo canyon and headed out. It’s very close to downtown Colorado Springs, right up US 24. The parking lot holds about 15 cars. There is no water there, so fill up before you get there.

There is a lot of up here, but it is balanced by some contour following. I took one break to participate in a telecon for work, and another near the top to admire the view and the breeze.

The trail starts out wide and graveled. Note that there is NO cover for this part of the hike. The trail goes up to a loop, and every bit of the pre-loop, and about 1/3 of the east side of the loop, is pretty much exposed to the sun.

A couple hundred feet up, there is a formation of Pikes Granite. It’s pretty cool.

One other thing I noted on this part of the trail, there are tons of sparkles of pyrite in the trail. It makes for an interesting effect as you walk if you are looking down.

As you get higher, you get some pretty decent views of Colorado Springs. I took this shot from a trailet that led a bit east off the main trail. That’s Cheyenne Mountain to the right, and US 24 left of center.

There are some places where you get cover. The trail is always side and well paved. There are very few places where you have to stairstep using rocks or roots.

As you get higher, Pikes Peak comes into view, looming a couple ridges over.

I think this very cool cliff formation is Williams Canyon. More on that later.

Eventually you come to up and over the trail high point, and you are at the top of Waldo Canyon. This pano is naturally dominated by Pikes Peak.

You start heading back down at the point. One thing I noticed, at one place on the trail, there were a bunch of pine pieces; each had a lot of small pine cones on. I wondered if some squirrels had been stocking up.

Going down the canyon, there were a couple mongo boulders – huge!

The trail down follows a creek. This was the only water on this trail, and there was not very much of it. It was clear, at least. This is looking back up-trail. A pool-let of water is just to right of center.

I saw a number of squirrels and some birds, but no medium or large mammals. There was some rustling in the leaves to the side of the trail every once in a while, but it could have been birds, chipmunks, or a cougar, who knows.

Here are the maps for the trail topo, terrain, and altitude:

I have tried a couple times to do a 3D plot of a hike. Excel (which I use to generate the altitude graphs like the one right above) claims 3D capability, but I tried many times, with no luck. I tried GnuPlot today, and generated this in about five minutes:

This was interesting. GnuPlot generated the plot, and using the arrow keys, you can shift the perspective in all three dimensions. Useful? Don’t know. Cool? Very.

I saw a total of about 10 people on this hike, and three dogs. It was about 83F when I got on the trail and about 75 when I got back down. I had cell coverage for probably 80% of the hike. Nice hike, I’d do it again.

My plan had actually been to hike both the Waldo Canyon loop, by going up the Waldo Canyon loop counterclockwise, then head on a trail connector over to Williams Canyon, then to the head of that canyon, then complete the Waldo loop. But, I never saw the connector to Williams Canyon. One thing I did not do before I headed out was download the local topo map into my GPS. I just did a quick look of my GPS File Depot Colorado Map, and it shows neither a Williams Canyon placemark or a trail connecting Waldo and Williams. I will have to go back to find the site that referenced that connector trail and see if there is a GPX I can get. Later.

This final shot is not part of the hike, but it is the sunset behind the mountains as I went looking for dinner. I think that the sun is setting over the Waldo Canyon area.

Happy trails!

Cool Things From the Air, SAN-DFW-OKC, 02 Sep 2011

As I came back from my last trip to San Diego, I saw a couple interesting things from the air. There was a decent fog over the area, and some of the mountains were punching through.

About an hour and a half later, I saw this. I am still trying to find out what it is. Through dead reckoning using the timestamps on the photos, I think this is in the far southeastern part of New Mexico, perhaps part of Fort Bliss. I will keep after it on Google Maps.

Finally, as we came into OKC, I got this photo of Lake Hefner. It is way down.

That’s it!

Couple Neat Weather Shots, DFW-COS and DFW-OKC

Monday I flew to Colorado Springs for a meeting. As we approached COS, there were some amazing presentations of virga in the area. These are the two best pictures.

Yesterday I flew back home from COS via DFW. After we departed, I saw that the inversion layer was especially sharp. I estimate we were at 7000 ft altitude.

Shortly, I was surprised to see that we had a couple thunderstorms ahead of us! These were very small, and were just south of the Red River. I thought this one was interesting because it seemed to have three anvils.

As we got closer, the entire storm structure became visible. This is interesting as the middle anvil is spreading out quite a bit, while there is a large mass of clouds above it. This photo is from the SSW.

We flew fairly close, and these streamers were between the middle anvil and the updraft. The storm did not look like it was rotating. I do not know if these streamers are flowing down or up. This is looking ESE.

Finally, this was in the distance. It looks to me like an “orphan anvil”. It also looks a little bit like a starship to me!

That’s it!

Texas T Bone, Colorado Springs, CO

I actually ate at the location in the northern part of Colorado Springs, also on Academy.

I got to the restaurant about 1900 after a hard and fun hike in the mountains. I left around 2030.

First of all, the place has good wifi! I logged in and caught up on email that had come in while I was up looking for bears.

I got a t-bone (appropriate). The meal started with a very good warm loaflet of wheat bread (wheat, yea!), and some cinnamon butter, very good. I got some potato soup that was very good, with lots of potato, bacon, and smoky flavor.

The steak got there pretty much medium like I asked, and pretty quickly. While I was only halfway done with the soup (grrr, a little bit). The steak was a thin-cut, and had quite a bit of gristle that had to be cut off it. It wasn’t burned, though, so that was good. It had decent flavor as well. You get a side, and I asked for sauteed mushrooms and onions, which were pretty good.

So the meal was pretty good, and I got work caught up. Service was SUPER nice, my server was a bundle of energy. My check was $27.32.

You have to compare where appropriate. I had eaten at the southside restaurant with two friends back in Jan or Feb, and the steak there was better. It could be the cook (they have to have the same beef source, I would think). So the next time, I might have to eat at both on successive nights…

The Firehouse BBQ, Colorado Springs, CO

I picked this place for two reasons: it’s BBQ, and it was conveniently on the way to where I was going to hike afterwards. Convenient, no?

I got there around 1330 and left around 1430. I started with tea, unsweet. It was strong enough to remove paint – a good thing. I upgraded to half and half with the next glass.

I got the BBQ plate, which is two meats. I got brisket and chicken. The meal came with two sides. The BBQ beans were probably OK, except for all the jalapenos in them, so I ate very little of them. The green beans were great (how could “Green Beans With Bacon” be bad?), they had bacon and onion, and had a lot of bacon.

The brisket… it had potential. The problem was that it was tough and stringy, and required a lot of chewing work to get down. The flavor was not too bad – good and smoky. There was quite a bit, also. The chicken was another thing altogether. Smoked chicken, in my experience, is too ofen over-cooked, tough and dry. This stuff was perfect, a quarter chicken with the breast and wing. Great stuff.

Service was prompt and extremely friendly. I would go back here any time, and try some of the other stuff, and get more chicken! My check was $15.55. Yummy!

Black Bear Diner, Colorado Springs, CO

When I was driving from Sacramento to visit Lassen Volcanic National Park, I stopped at a Black Bear Diner off of I-5, and liked it. I drove past this diner when I was tooling around Colorado Springs Monday, and realized that I had eaten in the Diner here about five years ago.

I went there for dinner Monday evening. The meal started off with a very good chicken noodle soup. Thick and hot and not too salty, and very good. The soup came with a very good cornbread, that was hot from the oven, and served with warm, sweet butter. Yum.

The only downer part of the meal came when my entree was served while I was only about half done with the soup.

I ordered pot roast. It was huge!

The pot roast was OK. Most of it was tender, but a couple pieces required some effort to cut apart. The flavor was OK, not spectacular. The pot roast came with mashers. Both roast and potatoes had a decent brown gravy over them; more gravy was requested and delivered. The meal came with green beans. These were very, very good, and had some onion and a significant amount of chopped up bacon. The plate had a lot of celery (not so good) and a couple (ONLY) carrot pieces. Should have had more carrot and less celery. There was also some red/purple onion that needed to be cooked more.

I decided that some cobbler would be good. It came hot, and had a largish scoop of ice cream on top.

The cobbler was huge. It was baked like a chicken pot pie – a complete shell, filled with peaches. The peach was flavored with cinnamon. It was really good, and hotter than heck when it was served. The ice cream was good for cooling it down, and adding some more flavor.

I got iced tea, it was strong and kept refilled.

I got there around 1715 and left around 1830. My check was $19.30. There was a lot of food there. I probably could have split my pot roast with Raegan and we both would have been happy about it. Same with the cobbler. Service was excellent.

I’d eat here again, and not wait five or so years.

Museum of Osteology, Oklahoma City, OK

This place was really, really cool.

Raegan and I are science nerds in the broadest sense. We like natural history museums, national parks, and national monuments. We have stopped unannounced at radio observatories we passed, and talked our way into a tour. We have paid money to go through optical and radio observatories. We thought this place rocked.

We have wanted to visit the museum for six months. Saturday was national museum day, and we decided it was a good day to go.

When you enter, the first thing you get to see is a fish tank inset to the wall of the atrium. In the tank are various bone pieces, and the small beetles that are used to clean most of the non-bone stuff off by eating it. Decomposers at work!

You walk in and get a view of two levels of bones:

Notice the whale skeleton that dominates this area. The story here is that the whale washed up on a beach, and the Museum people found out about it, and spent a long while recovering the decomposing remains. It took (IIRC) two years to get it prepared for the museum.

Another one is a manatee that was killed by a boat. The adult is hanging above, but the calf she was carrying is also on display in one of the cases. I spent some time looking at the differences in the shape of the bones between the two.

The exhibits are broken up into some interesting divisions. I was fascinated by the locomotion section. Through the air, through the trees, along the ground. A number of the avian exhibits had feathers attached to the bones. There were a number of bats, well-exhibited.

This koala bear was not nearly so cuddly.

Erin really like the giraffe – it went from the first level all the way to the second.

Finally, a couple of the exhibits had very understated humor. One of the full human skeletons was holding a hammer (tool user!). This one was also pretty good.

Click on the picture too see the full size version, and check out the two signs.

The Museum has a pretty cool gift shop. It’s the only place I’ve been where you can buy human and other animal skulls and other bony remains. They also had some very neat science-related things to buy.

It’s $5 a person to get in, it’s worth it!

Glad’s Original BBQ, Colorado Springs, CO

I was headed to a steakhouse here in Colorado Springs this evening, and as I waited at a light, I saw this BBQ across the road in a small shopping center.

I got there around 1845 and left about 45 minutes later. I ordered a brisket dinner, with mac and cheese and baked beans. The beans were fairly basic, and were very good. The mac and cheese was baked after it was made, and was a little baked together, but it was tasty anyway. The brisket was fairly tender. It seemed to be fairly tasty. I had to go to some length to verify this. The brisket was drowned in a sauce that seemed to be about 50% standard sauce and 50% cooking drippings. That sauce was like something I might have made (don’t think that is criticism, I liked it!). Regardless, it was good.

My check was $11.70. This was decent BBQ, the serving size was good. There seemed to be a lot more takeaway than sit-down service. I’d go here again.

Note that when I went to Urban Spoon, that website shows Glad’s as permanently closed. The address for that location (3750 Astrozon Blvd) is different than their current address, so I suspect they just moved.

King’s Chef Diner, Colorado Springs, CO

This was a neat find! I was driving through downtown and literally drove by, and since it was brunch time, and my breakfast of crumb cake and tea was six hours and 500 miles behind me, it was time to eat.

I got there around 1055 and left around 1130. This place is small, it has maybe 10 stools at the counter, and a couple tables outside. I got a bacon cheeseburger and fries. The cheeseburger was excellent, a half pound of very good beef. It was cooked medium well, and had the perfect balance of juice. The fries were excellent. Perfectly cooked and flavorful, they were (black) peppered before serving, something I have not tried before. They serve both sweet and unsweet tea, it was strong.

My check was $13 and some change. This diner is cash only, so be advised. There seems to be a strong to-go business from people in the area, and everone in there was very friendly. Recommended.

The Los Arcos, Edmond, OK

We were headed for Ted’s in Edmond Friday evening, hungry, but in a bit of a hurry as we needed to get Erin to Luther around 1900. We tried calling Ted’s about four times to find out what the wait was, but in each case, they did the old hang-up-and-drop-you-back-to-voicemail-hell. We drove past Los Arcos (“The Arc”, as translated by Babelfish), and decided to try it.

As we pulled into the parking lot, Ian finally got through to Ted’s, and someone told him they had plenty of tables and no wait. If the manager of the Ted’s in Edmond reads this, you lost four dinners that night because the people answering (really, ignoring) the phone were very rude.

So we got to Los Archos around 1800, and left right at 1900. The place was about half full when we got there, and pretty much full when we left.

We started with some good queso and decent salsa, along with chips and tortillas (our choice, we got flour). We also got a large order of beef nachos, and those were very good! Especially when you put a little salsa-enhanced queso on them!

Raegan and I got a double order of mixed chicken and steak fajitas with no peppers, Ian got a chicken and cheese qesadilla, and Erin got a cheese quesadilla. All of this was pretty good. I’ve had better fajitas, but I’ve had far, far worse. Both the kids scarfed their entire meals down. All of us had tea, which was good, except Ian, who had Coke.

We ended up with sopapillas, and those were small and tasty. One gripe – they put honey sauce on the table instead of real honey.

Service was good, even though the restaurant was filling up. Our check was 62.61. A little high, but we did have the big nachos on the order. We would go here again. You could do far worse.

One More Example of Republican Double Standard

I started collecting information on the vitriolity of the tea party types in particular (and blogged about this recently), and the Republicans in general. One example I had last night is pretty much typical.

No less than three friends on Facebook posted a link to a blog post, decrying the Obama Administration sticking it to people who use inhalers, as those inhalers are charged with CFCs. [Background: CFCs are known to cause ozone degredation problems, and the US is a signatory on a treaty to reduce CFCs.] Several others piled on in comments.

I wanted to verify the facts, so I started with the blog post.

The blog past is titled “Obama Administration Set to Ban Asthma Inhalers Over Environmental Concerns”, and it makes a couple snide comments about how bad the Obama Administration is giving asthma sufferers the shaft, and then for some reason calls up industry efforts to make low-flow toilets and such.

So since I now know that the FDA is really the source, I went to fda.gov, and sure enough, there is a press release there.

The fact that the CFC-powered inhalers are being banned is true; it takes effect on 31 Dec 2011. But one little thing escaped the anti-Obama brigades:

FDA first began public discussion about the use of CFCs for epinephrine inhalers in January 2006. FDA finalized the phase-out date for using CFCs in these inhalers and notified the public in November 2008.

Anyone with access to a calendar can see that the time period in question was entirely during the Bush Administration.

I reposted this to the Facebook comments with a question as to when the commentary would be turned against the Bush Administration, under whom the regulations were started and implemented?

Not a single recant, not a single comment about how it would take decades to unscrew this Bush Administration frack-up.

To me, this is one more example of the Republican Robot (RR) effect – party solidarity, over anything, including Country, facts, and logic. At least most of the Democrats question their leadership (constantly, it seems).

This is just one example, but to me it is a perfect example of the RR behavior. It includes denial of any Republican role in anything that might be perceived as bad, including the Republican role in creating the current deficit, restricting American civil liberties post-9/11, and even in setting up the economic disaster we are in today (not to mention refusing to help try to fix it, just so they can try to make Obama look bad).

Mooyah Burgers Fries and Shakes, Richardson, TX

I was sort of aiming at a Tex-Mex place on the corner that Mooyah was on, and when I saw “Burgers” I said right on!

I got there around 1820 and left around 1930.

First of all, I missed a little workstation area where you are encouraged to fill out your order, like they do at WhichWich. Next time.

I got the Mooyah burger, with bacon and cheese and mayo, a small fries, a milkshake, and a drink. The burger was not bad at all. It could have used a bit more flavor, but I’d have another one. The fries were rough-cut and copious. The milkshake was OK, but as I got more towards the end, it developed a slight flavor I would have preferred it not have. The tea was… off a bit. I ended up switching to (weak) Coke.

My check was $14.23. Kind of high, but the milkshake and drink were $3.29 (!) and $1.99. The fries (small) were $1.89, reasonable. The basic burger was $4.59, but they get you for another $0.60 for cheese and $0.79. The place was well lit, albeit a bit loud, and I spent the meal working the USA Today puzzle page.

So… Mooyah is basically a kid-friendly clone of Five Guys. I say kid friendly because it has a writing wall, it’s got bright colors, and the logos and such as “looney”.

The clone comment. The fries are in huge quantity, they are cut the same way, they are served the same way (in a paper cup), and the place leaves boxes of potatoes out on the floor. The burgers are small-diameter buns, and have two patties on the basic burger. The burgers are wrapped in foil, and then placed into a brown paper sack, with the cup of fries placed next to them, and more fries piled on top.

So Mooyah is cloning a lot of the Five Guys concepts. The burgers are good, but not as good as Five Guys for whatever reason.

I’d go back, but I would not get the milkshake.

Campisi’s, Dallas, TX

I had dinner at the Campbell and Coit location yesterday evening. I picked it basically by driving by and seeing the sign, and deciding on the spot that some Italian would be nice.

I ordered fettuccine alfredo with chicken. I asked if the chicken was grilled or sauteed, they said grilled, I asked for sauteed, I got grilled. Oh well. The meal was not bad. That’s not to say it was very good. The noodles were well cooked, the meal hot, the chicken OK. There was just not a lot of flavor to the meal. The alfredo did not exhibit the rich flavor I normally associate with the sauce. The noodles didn’t have much flavor beyond flour.

The tea was brewed, but weak.

So overall, I would go back to Campisi’s, but only if I were going with others and they suggested it. I would go a mile south to Cafe Amore first. My check was $13.80.

KEOM 88.5, Dallas Area

This is my favorite music station in the DFW MetroPlex. They mainly play 70s stuff, that’s my favorite decade of music, and occasionally go into the 60s or the 80s.

There is little or no inane DJ chatter (sorry, being redundant there just a bit), they have occasional educational segments, and news at the top of the hour.

But mainly, they play music, good music. Right on; they are the #1 button on my radio when I’m in the area. NPR is #2. Hopefully they might be able to stream over the Internet one day.

Good Riddance to “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, and a Bit of Discrimination

So the DADT policy expired tonight at 0000 Eastern. Good.

The entire concept of homosexuality being incompatible with honorable military service was wrong.

It’s taken long enough to get the policy gone. This is one more piece of discrimination that has been overcome.

Good for President Obama, Congressional Members, our military senior leadership, the media, the public, service members groups like SLDA and IAVA, and other forward thinking people who put the Constitution above politics and religion, to get DADT removed, and provide real support for all our service members.

Hiking Starkey Wilderness Park, New Port Richey, FL

Last Monday I got into TPA near noon, got across the Bay, had lunch, got checked into the hotel, and got the accumulated email taken care of. I wanted to go for a hike, and picked this area. It was about 30 miles from my hotel in Largo.

I got there about 1600. There is a staffed booth for campers. They sort of rudely have a sign in the window that they did not make change. The fee to enter the park was $2. It cost me $5 since they did not make change.

I walked 6.9 miles at this park. I really had no idea where I was going, there were no trail maps at the entrance station. I saw two trail markers – one for the nature trail, and one for the bike trail. I ended up stumbling across another trail, and I essentially walked until I got so sweaty that I decided I was done for the day. It was pretty humid, but not terribly hot.

The first thing I did was find one of the parking areas. On the way there, I passed this guy scarfing grass on the side of the road; he’s about a foot long. I believe this is a Gopher Tortoise, which is native to and common in Florida. I saw one just like him right before I got on the nature trail.

I started off walking along what I thought was a trail through the trees. Not so much. I walked on a road for a while, detoured off the road to an open play area, and then ran across a sign that pointed to the nature trail. The nature trail was a little more like it.

At some point the trail branched, so I took the branch. I ended up in a swamp. It should be noted that there were many places on the nature trail (and everywhere else) where the ground was waterlogged and muddy. But this was a no-kidding, the-body-will-never-be-found, swamp. There were a lot of mosquitoes there as well. I backtracked.

Eventually the nature trail came back to a playground. I came right back to the parking lot my car was in, and that’s where I ran across this very wide trail that led to the south.

I wandered along this trail for a while. I have a pretty good internal compass and distance indicator, so I knew how to get back (and I had set a waypoint in the GPS as well). There was lots more swamp and mud to walk around. I walked out to a point, looked at my sweaty shirt, and turned around and walked back. I sort of looped around another swampy area, then near the entrance station, and finally back to my car.

Here is my path on a topo map, a Google Earth overlay, and finally the park trail map that a work friend found online and sent to me.

The area I hiked is outlined in yellow. There is a lot of park left to hike.

I left around 1830.

Signage for the park is not very good. It’s flat. It’s got a lot of pretty trees and shade. It’s a swamp in places. It was nice hike. Max altitude gain was… 6″ (that was going from the trail to the road surface ).

I really thought the “no change” sign was rude.

One thing that I find myself amused by. My last hike was thousands of feet of altitude change. This one was the equivalent of walking across a parking lot. Both were sweaty.

Picasa – Pretty Cool

After the Yosemite backpacking trip, I wanted a way to share all of the photos I took on the trip. I also wanted to be able to have the other guys on the trip be able to upload their photos if they wanted. I was vaguely aware of Picasa, and so I checked it out.

Turns out Picasa is both a photo sharing site, and an associated app to perform photo manipulation. I downloaded the app, and it automagically spent some time finding and indexing image files on my computer, including the batch of Yosemite photos. I haven’t played with the Picasa app yet. I usually use Paint (either the Windows or Linux versions) or The GIMP when I have to manipulate images.

I uploaded the Yosemite photos. I created a Picasa web account (and since I already had a Google account, that was pretty straightforward), pointed it at the directory where the pictures were, added a title and some other info, and then the photos uploaded. It was fast and easy.

Once the pictures were there, it was trivial to enable sharing. I added email addresses for the other five guys, added some geolocation data to show where Yosemite is on the map, and then looked at the presentation. It was pretty simple, medium-sized previews, which could be clicked to bring up larger, or even full-resolution images.

One thing I had been dreading was captioning, since I had 200+ photos. I have looked at packages that required a lot of keystrokes to caption a picture. Usually the sequence is click the photo, then click a button to caption, type in the caption, then click save or whatever, then go back and repeat.

Not so. I clicked Actions, then Captions, and got 50 pictures arranged with caption space next to them. The process is such that when adding or changing a caption in a field, moving off the field changes the caption automagically (via Javascript, I would imagine). Since the photos were arranged by time, I got into a rhythm of typing in a general caption for a major section (for example, “Day 2, Hiking.”), and pasting it into picture after picture. So the process was click mouse in next the field, Ctrl-V, repeat, unless I wanted to add some additional text like “Boy, were we dirty!”. So captioning everything took about 20 minutes.

Another thing that was pretty cool. If there are people in the picture, Picasa does a decent job of identifying faces, and prompts you to name the people when the mouse crosses the face. It’s optional to actually name.

I noticed that one of the other guys uploaded photos into the album at some point. One thing that I would gripe about, when the album is updated, the people that you have authorized to upload to the album all get notified when someone uploads new photos. The owner of the album apparently does not by default. So I will look and see if there is some option I need to enable for that. Note several hours later: It turns out that I got an email from Picasa, while I was writing this post, that let me know that the photos had been uploaded. So, gripe > /dev/null.

Overall, Picasa on the web is a pretty cool site. I posted a link to the full site from the blog post I wrote for the Yosemite trip, and I think I can recommend Picasa when you have pictures that you want the world to see.

Facebook and Linked Accounts

I have had a couple opportunities to “link accounts” in the past couple days. One was with Urban Spoon, I don’t remember the other one.

So in both cases, the Facebook cookie that is on my hard drive was accessed and read to determine who I was. Then FB was invoked and I was asked to confirm that the site could do a couple things: (1) access my basic information, which includes birthday and such; (2) post things to my Wall; and (3) send me email.

I declined both. Items 1 and 3 I had no problem with. It was the posting to the Wall I didn’t want. I want the things I post to be from or about me. I have no problem with some things being posted to my Wall; for example, I was tagged in several photos from my Yosemite backpacking trip by other hikers, and that tagging was posted to my Wall since it was about me.

But what I suspect would be posted by other sites is mainly advertising. I’m not opposed to getting advertising, but I don’t particularly want advertising posted to my FB Wall in my name.

So to Urban Spoon, or any other sites that want to practice cross-site authentication, I would suggest that you ask for the minimum information first, and then ask the user if they want to allow you to post to their Wall. In the case of Urban Spoon, I’m already giving them free content by linking my blog posts to their site, and not asking anything in return except to access other information on the site. I don’t want them to speak for me by posting to my Facebook Wall.

Urban Spoon, Me, and Eating

As I say in the About Bill Hensley section of this log, “Food, is good”. I love to eat. One of my occasional bits of wit is that food is better than sex, because you have to eat. It might as well be good (the food, that is).

A while back, I wrote a blog post for Boulevard Cafe here in OKC. Someone from Urban Spoon noticed the post, and asked me to link it back to the US website. I checked it out, and then added the link, and have noticed traffic from US to that post every once in a while.

When I was out in Florida this past week, I saw a US logo on a restaurant I walked by. Today, I was sitting around, and decided to check the US site out. It about knocked my socks off, the content was amazing. I decided that from now on, I would link my restaurant reviews to the US restaurant listings.

One of the things I just noticed on the Urban Spoon site was a map of Oklahoma City Restaurants At Night. This is a super cool map! I really like the feature where if you float the mouse over a city/region, the lights on the map change color to yellow and get a bit bigger. Very, very cool.

I think that adding my small bit of content to the US site is really what the web is all about – I have some experience, and I add that bit of experience to the electronic consciousness of the rest of the planet, without giving anything up.

Happy eating!

Religion and Governing

I’ve always admired President Carter. I admit that I didn’t vote for him in my first opportunity to vote in a Presidential election – that honor went to John Anderson, who I liked and thought had good ideas, but I also knew he didn’t have a chance, and so I tried to help him tap into the Federal campaign funds that were available for those candidates that got a certain percentage of the vote.

I really supported Ronald Reagan in that election, who I believed had a plan to fix the problems that I saw in America at that time, while President Carter didn’t seem to have one.

But as I said, I admired Carter then (not least for making such progress in the peace between Egypt and Israel), and my admiration for him grew in his post-Presidential careers, as a diplomat, an advocate for Habitat For Humanity, and similar endeavors.

Tonight, part of an interview that Rachel Maddow had with President Carter was aired on her show. One thing in particular in the interview stood out for me. In response to a question about candidates and their professions of faith, Carter said that while it was obvious that he was a christian, he deliberately severed his religion from the process of governing. He said that he governed strictly by the Constitution and the law.

This is the way that we are supposed to be governed. The Constitution, with the explicit ban of any religious test for candidates, and the First Amendment, requires those in government who govern to do so in a manner that is sect-free.

I know this will make many christian readers angry, but this includes the posting of the Ten Commandments and other religious tracts in public buildings. Either put symbols of all religions there, the same size, or none. None is preferred. People have churches to display that stuff in. If you want to govern as a christian, then don’t run. If you want to govern and you are a christian, cool, govern by the law.

President Carter might have been a man who was President in a time in which his style of governing was out of sync with the mood of the country, but he was and is an honorable man, who puts his service to the country and the human race as a whole at the forefront of his life, and that deserves respect.

Farmer’s Kitchen, Largo, FL

I saw this place as I drove along Bay Drive on Monday. I decided to try it for dinner this evening, as I was going from Largo to Tampa, to spend the night 1 mile from the airport instead of driving there in the morning.

They have a pretty neat special called “Beat the Clock”. There are a bunch (more than 10) of choices, and the cost goes up as the clock goes on: $5 from 1500-1600, $6 from 1600-1700, and $7 from 1700-1800 (note: the amounts here are approximate, close, but representative).

You get a cup of soup or a salad; I got a salad with really good ranch dressing. The was a big roll of white bread that was just a little rough, and OK if a little bland.

I chose the pot roast over noodles. Turns out, it is really roast beef (sliced) over egg noodles, with a tomato-based gravy. The gravy had carrots, onion, and celery in it. The whole dish was simple, filling, and tasty. The beef was fairly tender, the noodles were tasty, and the gravy was very good.

The meal came with a drink (great iced tea) and dessert. You had a choice of jello, something else, or three puddings. I almost got bread pudding, but got rice pudding instead, and it was very good.

My check was $8.28, for an entire dinner. Great value, very good food. Service was great.

The restaurant was playing WDUV the Dove, one of my favorite stations, so that was a bonus.

When I am in the LA area, one of the common sites are restaurants that share a common characteristic: a huge variety of food. Here in the St. Petersburg area, there is a bunch of restaurants that are similar in that they share a common characteristic of basic comfort food in a family setting. Farmer’s Kitchen is one example, the restaurant I ate in Monday is another. I think that supporting these kinds of local eateries – as long as the food is good! – is a worthwhile endeavor.

You have to eat; you might was well make sure the food tastes good.

Cesare on the Beach, Clearwater, FL

I was heading towards the beach for the semi-obligatory view of the ocean (or in this case, the Gulf of Mexico), and drove past this place. I wanted some Italian food, and so decided to give it a try. I got there around 1840, and left an hour later. It was not crowded.

Iced tea came to the table, good. There was also some rough crusty bread, and a dip made from olive oil, with garlic, pesto, and a bit of red pepper, which was GREAT.

I got a ceasar salad, the dressing was creamy and excellent. I ordered fettuccine alfredo with chicken. I asked, and the chicken is usually grilled, but they sauteed it for me. It was a good amount of food, not too much. There was just the right amount of alfredo. They make there own pasta there, and I overheard a server say they had made a batch that morning. It was really good, and cooked perfectly.

So overall, it was a good meal, especially for having a near-beach location. Service was good, my check was $29.96.

Clubhouse Restaurant, Largo, FL

This was a great little place. I was in a bit of a hurry, I had let work eat into my lunch time, and found Clubhouse via a Google Maps search.

I got there at 1145 and left at 1225. The iced tea was good and kept refilled. The place was 50% full when I got there, and 75% full when I left.

I ordered a Skillet. This is eggs scrambled with sausage chunks, hash browns, and onions. Then it’s covered with sausage gravy and some shredded cheese. EXCELLENT! The gravy really made the meal. It was some of the best restaurant gravy I have had. The meal comes with peppers by default, but I asked and they were not added; a good thing.

Service was fast. My check was only $9.39. This place is on the list when I am in the area.

Pappas Ranch, Clearwater, FL

I had been on a nice hike yesterday afternoon, and so needed some calories. I decided to cruise down US19, and saw Pappas as I drove by, and decided to try it. It’s on Gulf-To-Bay Road.

I got there around 1845, the place was about 1/3 full.

I ordered a ribeye. It came just a little less cooked than the medium I asked for, so I let it rest a bit, and it eventually came up to almost medium. The steak was pretty darn good, very tender (fork tender for a lot of it), and had really good flavor. I was happy that there wasn’t any charring on it anywhere. Not a bit of the steak was left. It had a couple onion straws on top of it, and they were good also.

The steak came with a side, and I got “Kick-Ass Beans”. I didn’t like them. They were baked beans, but were thick with jalapenos, and so not to my taste.

The iced tea was OK. Service was spotty. My check was $25.96, and the steak was pretty darned good, so decent value.

Country Skillet Restaurant, Clearwater, FL

I got into TPA around lunch, and hadn’t had much breakfast due to an 0600 departure from OKC, and so I was getting hungry as I drove through the St. Petersburg/Clearwater/Largo area. I saw Country Skillet as I drove by, the parking lot was full, and I also saw the “Free Wifi” sign, so I flipped a U and headed back.

The mix of people ranged all over – age, dress. That’s a good sign to me. I got there around 1215 and was immediately seated, but the place kept filling up the entire time.

The iced tea was excellent, and kept refilled. I fired up my laptop (it takes forever to boot), and ordered the daily special, which was Shepherd’s Pie. It arrived just after I had caught up on the day’s emails so far.

The meal started out with a cup of navy bean and ham soup. It was good, and it had extra stuff in it like carrot and tomato chunks. I liked it.

The pie got there, and it was wonderful! HOT! There was a good amount of slightly spicy beef, with carrots, peas, and potato chunks mixed in. This was covered with very good mashers. The mashers had a thin layer of cheese melted on top (in fact, that was the only thing I could say about the meal – if they had baked the pie to get a good crust on the mashers, it would have been perfect!). It was excellent regardless. The amount was perfect as well, enough to fill up, but not get to the point of exploding.

So I would gladly go back to the Skillet. The other food I saw looked very good. My check was $8.54, outstanding value. Recommended.

Vista and Administrative Stupidity

So here is something dumb. I created a subdirectory (or “folder”) called 5-9 Sep 11 Dallas, to store some expense report documents. I needed to upload them for my expense report.

As I worked on the report, I used the web-based upload function to get the files to the server, and realized that the actual folder name should have been 6-9 Sep 11 Dallas. So since most versions of Windows allow you to change a file/folder/subdirectory name from a file dialog box, I right-clicked the folder, then clicked rename. It started the name change process, I changed the 6 to a 5, and hit Enter.

Vista thought about it for a second, then put up the dialog for requesting and authenticating elevated priveledge. WHT, I thought. I tried just clicking OK, that didn’t work. I did it again, and this time selected my CAC authentication, and Vista informed me that wasn’t elevated enough.

I left the folder name the way it was, then uploaded the files. I then immediately fired up Windows Explorer, navigated to the Documents folder, then performed the folder rename with no problems. So there is a mismatch in the security settings for the machine, or maybe a bug in Vista. Whichever it is, it’s annoying.

Marcus Cafe, Richardson, TX

This restaurant is right across the parking lot from Frankie’s Mexican Cuisine.

I get the impression that Marcus can’t really decide what kind of eatery it wants to be. It has Italian, steak, fried chicken, tex-mex, and hamburgers on the menu. It has a pretty nice and classy interior, but big TVs up with ESPN on. The male servers have nice shirts and long pants, and the ladies wore polos and shorts. No one was coordinated. I’m not saying that is good or bad, but the place has an air of class, but implementation, not so much.

I ordered iced tea, and the crispy chicken. I wasn’t terribly hungry, and so skipped salad and such. My server brought out a couple slices of rough bread that was very good. It was accompanied by a dip of olive oil and some kind of think balsamic vinegar. The “vinegar” was very thick, and pooled at the bottom of the dish.

When the entree arrived, I was impressed enough with the presentation that I took a picture of it:

So this is the layout: A “bowl” of mashed potatoes. This is filled up with some veggies. I didn’t think much of these, and didn’t eat most of them. The mashers were pretty good, and they got eaten. On top of this was the chicken thigh, and then on top of that was the breast piece. You can tell from the photo that the chicken was lightly breaded and well fried.

The thigh was really good, the skin was nice and crispy, not too greasy, and the meat was juicy and tasty; it was boneless. The breast piece was not as good. It was dry in places, and the chicken tended to be stringy in next to the bone. It could have been pulled from the fire a bit sooner.

I didn’t see my server often, and towards the end of the meal, he would work with other tables and not even look my way. I sat for probably 15 min before I could get my check. At that time, I asked for a to-go cup for my iced tea, and didn’t ever get it. I waited about 10 min before I said frack it and headed out.

My check was $21.38. A little expensive for two pieces of fried chicken. It was OK, but not spectacular, especially given that the chicken was not cooked perfectly. Service was disappointing. I don’t know that I would go back.

Frankie’s Mexican Cuisine, Richardson, TX

This place is in a small retail area in a neighborhood, and I traveled past it a couple times going to and from work. I decided to try Frankie’s for dinner tonight. It was a good choice.

I got the beef enchilada dinner, which is three ground beef enchiladas, rice, and refried beans. It was very, very good. The beans and rice had great flavor, and the enchiladas had chili con carne over them. The serving size was not huge, but was a good amount of food. The salsa and chips served with the meal were great, the chips were light and crispy, and the salsa was darker, and slightly more spicy, with great flavor. The tea was good as well.

Service was prompt, the meal came to me quickly. My check was $10.83, which I think was a good value. I’d gladly eat here again.

Comparis, Plano, TX

I’ve driven by this place a number of times over the years. Today, I thought some Italian food would make for a good dinner, especially since I was headed to a nearby sporting goods store to look for sneakers.

I got there around 1745 and was immediately seated as the place was pretty much empty.

My server brought me some of the best, garlic encrusted loaves of bread that I’ve had. It was excellent. I asked for some marinara, it was also excellent, and hot! A salad, with creamy Caesar dressing, was served, and it was also very, very good.

I ordered fettuccine alfredo, with chicken. The chicken is normally grilled, but I asked for it sauteed, and that’s how it was delivered. The dish had the perfect amount of alfredo, and the stuff tasted real – a lot of cream and butter taste, delicious! The chicken was perfectly cooked. It was also a fairly large amount of food. The noodles were al dente. In short, and excellent meal. I ate every bit of it.

I got tea, it was strong and tasted very good.

My check was $17.80, not a bad value. I’d gladly eat here again.

Libby’s Cafe, Goldsby, OK

This was a great find! I got a late start out of OKC headed south to Dallas, and decided to stop here for lunch.

I got a chicken fried steak, with gravy, mashers (they call them Real Mashed Potatoes), green beans, and tea. It was a perfect meal!

The CFS was hand breaded, with a light breading that had just the amount of crunch, it was fork-tender all the way across, and had great beef flavor. The mashers were former bakers that had been mashed, and the green beans had bacon and onion in them. The gravy, which was advertised as home-made, was wonderful, with a distinct flour and sausage taste. Everything was excellent! The CFS was only $8. I also got iced tea, it was great. Service was perfect, fast. I was out of there in less than 30 min.

My check was $10.85. This place is good, I look forward to going back.

Backpacking Yosemite National Park, CA, 26-28 August 2011

I have wanted to do some serious mountain backpacking at Yosemite for years. This year, a two-week business trip to San Diego, which had a three-day break in the middle due to the work schedule at the facility we were visiting, provided that opportunity.

Note: This blog post has only a few of the pictures I took. I uploaded the rest to Picasa here.

Hike summary

29.2 miles, from 4090 to 7983 feet altitude. Total elevation gain: 5750 ft. High waterfall climb, massive views, unexpected hordes of mosquitoes, hard walking, and great fellowship on this hike, with only minor injuries. Five guys, NO bitching (except for the comments about the hike leaders lack of consistency in what is “relative”, as in “After that little rise, it’s relatively level, guys!” ).

We really scored well over 30 miles on this trip. The GPS noted at least an extra 0.5 miles when walking from the second camp out to the rim of the Valley several times, and we had extra mileage at lunch at Chilnualna Falls and at Glacier Point, and another 1.5 miles at the Mariposa Grove. Some serious walking, to be sure.

Getting There

We left San Diego Thursday and headed north through LA towards Yosemite. On the way there, north of Fresno, we saw an interesting smoke/cloud phenomenon. A lightning-caused fire started right outside the park a couple weeks ago, and per NPS policy, the fire is allowed to burn itself out naturally. The fire occasionally flares, and as we were outside Fresno, a flare occurred, and it got high enough to cause a cumulus cloud to form.

We got to Yosemite just before 1700 local. We had to buy a new yearly National Parks Interagency Pass; they cost $80, but are good for National Park and National Forest access for an entire year. It would cost $20 per vehicle otherwise. We hustled to Wawona, and got to the Wilderness Permit office at basically 1659. The Rangers were very accommodating, and got our permit issued, after a briefing on trail impact and sanitization (always camp or crap or pee 100+ft off any trail), fire safety, and bear safety. I also picked up three anti-bear food storage canisters (more than 1lb each).

We ended up each carrying an individual food storage canisters, since the interior was not sufficient to hold more than one mans worth of “smellables”. Each canister was $5 to rent, and they take a credit card as a deposit in case you want to keep yours. We didn’t.

One thing that I had missed was that we needed a reservation in a campsite for the first night. I had mistakenly thought that our permit entitled us to camp free the first or last night, but it turns out that only applies to a backpackers campsite in the Valley. We were cheerfully informed that we could drive the 40 minutes to the campsite in the Valley, but declined (since it would also mean a 40-min drive back in the morning).

One thing: there were only a couple available campsites at Wawona that evening, out of more than a hundred sites in the camp. Reservations in advance are taken, and I recommend making them.

We got a campsite in Wawona for $20, got set up, and then headed to the Mariposa Grove of Giant Redwoods to check out the huge trees there. When we got to the Mariposa Grove, the crew hiked up to the walk-through tree, then back down again. Those trees are amazing.

This is our campsite at Wawona; we didn’t use rainflys:

These are a couple photos of us hiking through the Mariposa Grove:

This little squirrel was eating one of the green pinecones that hung like bananas from some of the trees. He would shake the cone, throw off a “leaf”, and then eat something inside the cone, maybe a seed. A much larger squirrel came along while we were watching, and the little one started yelling in Squirrel, and eventually the little one rushed the larger one, and ended up running the larger one off. Tenacious little guy.

We had dinner at the Wawona Hotel. I wrote a blog post about it here. The staff at the Wawona were reluctant to give out the access code for their wifi, and there is no signal that my Blackberry could pick up, so I was not able to send any status message back home. I tried an ancient and formerly trusty device called a pay phone at the hotel, but it claimed that the phone I was trying to call would not receive my call, but they would be happy to connect anyway for $17. “Up yours”, thought I.

We got to camp around 2030. The sky was clear, and the stars… were… stunning!!! Even with the limited light from the other campers, the Milky way was clearly visible, and the stars were bright. I had to get up around 0200, and so had yet another group of stars visible, along with a super bright Jupiter.

We had breakfast (again at the Wawona Hotel) and final packing the next morning. We got another couple bear canisters (they open at 0830, not 0730 like the website says), filled our water bottles, drove to the trailhead, got our packs on, took a deep breath, and headed out.

Why We Went There, or Backpacking!

We hit the trail the first day at 0941. Our entry was the Chilnualna Falls trailhead, and the altitude was 4090 ft.

The trail was very nice along here. The trail is used by day hikers, so it is wider and smoother than a lot of backcountry trails. There was a lot of shade on the way up.

Since I had planned the route, I knew that the first day would be the hardest. It was brutal. It was hot, probably in the mid 80s, we were going up a steep path, with heavy packs. Even with the occasional fairly level places, we gained 2100 ft of altitude over about 5 hours. We took frequent breaks, but even so, it was an exercise in getting air. I don’t think any of us had problems from the muscle exercise, but getting air was an issue.

As we climbed, the view off to the west was increasingly pretty. We had a good view of Wawona Dome also. We all were thinking, “we are headed up there?”.

We also started seeing the Falls. The Falls isn’t a single or several waterfalls like Yosemite Falls, it is a series of cataracts that tumble down into the Wawona valley. The last one is as we were getting closer to the top.

Across the valley, I saw a structure on the ridge. I put my small binoculars on it, and it looks like an observation tower, maybe for fire monitoring.

When we got to the top, it was clearly time for an extended break. We had lunch, topped off our water, rested for a bit, sunburned a bit, and then explored the area.

A note here on people. On the climb up, we saw three people on horseback, about 10 day hikers, and two backpackers (and those two were headed down). On the second day, we saw not a single person on the trail until we passed Glacier Point Road, and even then, we only saw about ten people, all day hikers. For August, I expected to see more people in the backcountry.

When we were sufficiently rested, we headed back out. We soon found out we were not even at the top of the Falls. Whoops… We kept going up and up and up, and eventually found the top of the Falls, and then branched southeast into true backcountry.

We used every form of water purification on this trip. Lance had a bottle with a built-in filter. I used Aqua Mira liquid. Chuck and Brad had Aqua Mira tablets. Jason had a pump. Of course, we used the boiling method also for the dehydrated meals. The water was uniformly wonderful tasting. We didn’t have any issues finding it, except in one instance on the south rim of the valley, very high (there was a spring in the area, but we couldn’t find it, and we hiked a couple miles dry after using all our water for breakfast).

My original plan had been to make our way into the backcountry to one of the mountain lakes on the trail; Johnson or Crescent Lake. By the time we got to the second trail junction (that either went towards Bridalveil Creek Camp, or towards the lakes, we were pretty much done in for the day. If we had continued on to the lakes, we were looking at five miles or so more, which wasn’t so bad, but it was also about 1500 ft of additional altitude, up to 8500 ft. After talking it over with the team, we turned toward the north, and determined to make camp near the next trail junction, which was about ¾ mile away.

We found a nice campsite near a stream with good water shortly. It also had a fire ring (Yosemite requires all campfires to be in established fire rings). We stopped, pitched our tents, and got camp set up, all while being eaten alive by ravenous and obnoxious mosquitoes! We had limited bug spray, and basically used it all. Those blasted bugs were extremely obnoxious!

Our first day was a hike of 7.6 miles and 3365 feet (!) of altitude gain. Our campsite was at 7455 ft.

Camp was beautiful. A couple of the guys made a campfire, and the smoke helped with the mosquito situation a bit, which was very nice. There were a number of rounded rocks sticking out of the ground, which made for nice surfaces for our stoves.

We got water going for dinner, ate dinner, and then basically retreated to our tents before we became sucked dry. One of the little SOBs apparently was on me in my tent, and when I smacked it, I could not believe how much blood was on my hand.

It was cloudy that evening, and there had been a small chance of thunderstorms, so we used our rainflys. Almost as soon as we got into the tents to escape the mosquitoes, there were a couple passing spits of rain. I don’t think we would have been bothered even if we had not put the rainflys up. It was very pleasant temperature-wise, almost chilly. I was in my sleeping bag, but it was mostly unzipped.

I spent some time in the tent looking at routing, and thinking about our air capacities and legs. I thought about going east-northeast towards Buena Vista Junction for our second night (which was my original plan), but it was up and over some pretty high terrain. Instead I decided we would make north through Bridalveil Camp, and on to the south rim of the Valley.

The next morning, we all woke up earlyish, got our water boiling, ate, broke camp, and got moving around 0900. Everyone was a bit stiff from the uphill walk the day before, but we loosened up pretty fast. It was clear again. And the mosquitoes were back again.

The hike to Bridalveil Camp was about 7 miles, and was level for the most part. The day started out pleasant, but it got warm quickly, and so the sweating started again. The bugs were a little less annoying while we were walking, but were still there. We really moved out along this stretch.

It was a beautiful walk to the Camp. The terrain was varied, from woods to small meadows, to domes off to both sides.

There was an amazing variety of wildflowers along the trail.

As with most trails, there were occasional obstacles. These included fallen trees; this was the biggest we encountered.

We ended up on a ridge that had amazing views of the Parks high country off to the east. We rested here a bit, and drank in the views.

We followed Bridalveil Creek after a while, it was beautiful.

We stopped for lunch at the Bridalveil Creek Camp. They had real bathrooms there! We also took the opportunity to wash up as best we could – we were really dirty. One thing that was interesting, the Camp had pretty much been dedicated to fire crews that had been staged in from all over California. I don’t know if they were all fighting the fire outside of Yosemite, or were there in contingency, but there were a lot of them.

We left the camp, crossed Glacier Point Road, and headed for the south rim of the Valley. We got to the footbridge over Bridalveil Creek, and then headed back up again.

We filled water bottles here, and I think that this would have been a good place to have an extra bottle apiece. Between dinner this evening, and breakfast in the morning, we consumed every drop we carried up there. According to our map, there was a spring very near where we ended up camping, but we never found it (it was August, and the spring might have stopped).

We walked up a couple hundred feet at this point; it was hard but doable. And it was worth it. We ended up on a large mostly open area, and decided to camp there. Walking off the trail to the north, I knew the rim of the Valley was somewhere ahead, and then saw this through the trees:

It turns out that we were right between the face of El Capitan and Yosemite Falls. We stood and marveled at the view for a while. A long while, it was stunning. The pictures really do not do the views justice. Finally, realizing Sun was going down, we went back and set up our tents, then we did some exploring.

That last one, is Luke waving from the next bluff over. The cliff walls below our camp were fairly sheer, thousands of feet pretty much straight down.

Sun set behind the smoke from the fire at the west end of the Park.

Our second day was a hike of 11.7 miles and a net 123 feet of altitude loss (there was still a lot of up there); we were at 7332 ft altitude. This was the single most beautiful camp I have ever been in. You could not be there for more than a minute without looking out at the view. And then standing there for a while. We still had mosquitoes, surprisingly enough, even with the altitude, the dryness of the camp (no water anywhere close), and a nice breeze. We noticed several bats as it was getting dark, and fervently wished them to come over and scarf the darn bugs around us.

That evening, the stars were even more stunning than they were at Wawona camp. The Milky Way was so plain. We saw numerous meteors and about 15 satellites. I stayed out a bit later than the other guys, with my head craned back until it hurt. There were occasional sightings of lightning; a storm was visible off to the Northeast once, but it was on the horizon, nothing near us.

We were all up and moving around 0700 Sunday morning. We got breakfast going and kept looking at that view.

One side note. When we were at the Wawona Hotel, there was an unusual package on top of a car. I wondered if it was a folded up hang-glider, and when the owner came out, I asked and he confirmed it. He said that the NPS gave them a “launch window” for flying at Glacier Point, and that for that weekend it was Friday – Sunday 0800 – 0900. Well, shortly after 0800, we saw this from camp:

That white dot to the right of center is a hang glider. We saw three of them flying around by Yosemite Falls. It takes some cojones to throw yourself off a 3Kft cliff, held up by some aluminum poles and ripstop nylon.

No one was in a hurry to leave that view. We got breakfast done, reluctantly packed up camp, and headed out again. Very reluctantly.

We hiked along close to the Valley edge for the most part. The views were amazing. Eventually we came to The Fissures. The Fissures have two interesting sets of things: the actual Fissures, but also some sheer walls. And I mean SHEER:

There is a railing there, but it doesn’t protect much area.

There is a place marker up there, and I had to compare the reported GPS altitude with the altitude measured by the surveyors who were up there before Oklahoma became a state. They did very well!

After the Fissures, we hiked another bit, and finally found a stream. It was small, but it was flowing and tumbling along, and we pumped everybody a couple full bottles of water, took big drinks, and topped them off again. The water was especially good tasting!

We walked under Sentinel Dome, but we were concerned about the time, so we bypassed walking up it. It’ll be there for another trip!

Below the trail to the Dome, and before we got to Glacier Point, we got this view. Staggering.

The path down to the Point was steep, and much of it was exposed. Hooray for sunblock.

The view from the Point is one of the most beautiful on the entire planet.

The hiking snob in me sort of wishes there was not a road to the Point.

Half of us decided to take the shuttle bus from the Point down to the Valley. The other half decided to finish the weekend out with a hike down 4-Mile Trail. It is STEEP. Luke got a burst of energy and jogged down most of it, wow! Lance and I jogged a bit, but going down is hard on a different set of muscles, so we ended up fast-walking most of it. Along the way, I got this view of Half Dome and the area of the Mirror Lake Trail; I decided this is one of my favorite views of the Dome.

Most of the way down has great aerial views of the Valley, and of course Yosemite Falls is part of that. You don’t usually get a view from directly across the base of the Upper Falls.

And of course here are the Fissures, and the area where we camped the night before. Amazing.

Eventually, we reached the bottom. And a good thing, too, since we were literally footsore. I had to take the obligatory “We were up there?” shot.

Our last day of hiking was 9.9 miles, and we had 3470 ft of altitude loss, ending up on the floor of Yosemite Valley.

Once we got down, we met up with the rest of the crew at Yosemite Lodge. I had three bottles of Lipton Iced Tea from the shop there (that stuff, by the way, is pretty good for mass-manufactured tea). We also went over to the Merced and waded a bit to wash the crud off our feet. And a lot of crud there was. That water was cold, wonderfully cold. I didn’t stay long, as I had washed off my sunblock along with the dirt. I used the bathroom at the Lodge to re-up deodorant, and we waited for my friend Jim to arrive from Fresno to shuttle us back to Wawona.

BTW, the black canisters on the ground in front of us are the anti-bear food canisters we carried. A little over a pound of extra weight.

The timing of our exit from the Valley was such that we got a wonderful backlit view of the entrance to the Valley. Not a bad way to call it a day.

We got our van from the trailhead, had dinner, and headed back to San Diego, arriving at 0400 Monday morning. The next day (or rather, the rest of that day) at work was kind of tiring, but no one crashed, at least until that night.

Here is our hike path over a topographic map, a Google Earth terrain, and an altitude plot. I broke the topo maps into the entire trip, then to zoom in on each days hiking.

This is the same altitude plot, but the waypoints from the GPS are annotated. I also took off the last part of the plot to accurately show that our end point in the Valley was higher than our starting point in Wawona.

Metrics

I was looking for some good metrics from this trip. I calculated the following for this group of guys in decent but not spectacular shape on average.

Average speed over level ground: 1.75mph

Average speed up hill: 0.87mph

Average speed down hill: 2.4mph

This includes breaks. Level is relative, of course ( ).

I was interested in how much fuel to bring for my MSR stove. In the end, I brought way too much! I used the smaller bottle first, it has 11 oz of fuel. Chuck had an MSR alcohol stove also, and we used them in tandem. Mine heated water for 1 dinner, 1 breakfast, and part of a second dinner, and his worked for 2 dinners and 1 breakfast, and part of a second breakfast. I should have only taken the larger (20 oz) bottle, filled half way or so. That would have saved 1.2 lbs.

Wildlife

After the incessant bear briefings, we saw: NONE. There were two deer, both within 300 yards of Glacier Point. A number of squirrels. A fair number of birds, including the beautiful Stellar’s Jay.

Things That Went Right

Food was pretty much right on target. I used a variation of what I called Tracy’s Menu from a previous trip to the Ozarks, and it kept me and the guys fed and going without any problem. Lunch was a tuna salad kit that had three ounces of tuna; they are perfect with the included mayo and pickle relish. One of the other guys had some that was pre-mixed, I might have to find out how those are.

I used two Backpackers Pantry meals for dinner; the Backpackers Pantry Shepherd’s Pie was good, but so soupy it was hard to eat. I’d reduce the water for that by ¼ cup to thicken it up. But the Chili Mac from Mountain House was PERFECT. The perfect amount of food, with decent sized meat pieces in it, and it had just the right amount of chili spice to it. I’d like that for dinner at home every once in a while, great stuff.

I used two Backpackers Pantry meals for breakfast. The package for Granola and Blueberry recommended cold water for rehydration, but hot is much better! The blueberries (and there were a lot of them) were a good flavor for the morning. Peanut Butter Raisin Oatmeal was decent, thick and hot and pretty good taste.

The Katadyn Hiker PRO Water pump for water purification worked well; we used it for the majority of water purification. With a strong pumper, it will fill a Nalgene in about 1 minute. I’ve had those break on a trip, though, so carry backup purification. I prefer the liquid Aqua Mira, since it gets the job done in 30 minutes. The tablets take hours.

Things That Went Wrong, Or At Least Not So Right

I carried too much! I took my pack apart post-trip, and I estimate that there was about seven pounds of stuff that I carried to no good use. I brought and carried a sweatshirt and sweatpants in anticipation of possible low temps, but a last-minute weather check would have showed that those were not needed. It got down to about 60F at the coolest, and the sweatstuff was not needed, is bulky, and fairly heavy. I had also bought a pound bag of M&Ms for snacking, and then packed them into the bottom of the bear canister, and carried them the entire time. So extra load, and didn’t get the benefit of the snack energy: not terribly smart.

I ran out of the powdered lemonade I like to flavor the water with, but it was not a big deal since the water from the streams was wonderful to taste!

I didn’t bring enough bug repellent. I had bought a small spray tube of DEET, and I carry a couple moist towelettes that are DEET soaked, but when shared among six guys that are being eaten alive by mosquitoes, they were used up quickly. All of us should have had the small spray tubes.

This was a first – I got not one, but three blisters while hiking – two big and one small. I never got the predictive hot spots, and when I checked my feet at the end of the trail there were not blisters. But when I woke up the next morning, there they were. They are long gone now.

My Navarros boots failed, both in the same way. The left boot split from the heel to arch, along the foot (not side to side, surprisingly). The right boot was cracked the same way, and was miles away from splitting wide open. That explained the huge amount of dirt in my boot, and why my sock and foot was so dirty (I had thought that it was due to dust leaking in from the ankle).

I had been checking the weather, and the forecast the week before had been for chilly nights in the 40Fs range. In reality, it was in the 60Fs. I had brought a heavier sleeping bag, and should have brought the liner I use in warmer weather – it’s also much lighter. Bring both next time, and select which to take the day before.

During trip planning, I was overconfident of our ability to scale the waterfall the first day. We made it, of course, it just took longer than I thought it would. I had already looked at multiple routes when doing trip planning, so it was easy to reroute us, and the reroute to the rim of the Valley was spectacular, so nothing was lost. The metrics I collected will help for next time.

Would I Do It Again?

YES! This was wonderfully refreshing for me. I love the mountains, and Yosemite in particular, and I almost hurt my neck swiveling around to see all the sights while we walked. I would have liked to see some of the wonderful mountain lakes, but now that is on the list for next time. Staying on the south wall of the Valley due to the reroute we did was a stroke of luck; the views were worth the sweaty walking needed to get there. It was hard walking, but I find that refreshing and uplifting (especially after the pack is on the ground and the tent is up!).

I am already looking forward to my next backpacking trip there. It might take five years, but it will happen.

Point Break Cafe, San Diego, CA

This place was recommended to me as a “locals” place. It’s down by the harbor area below Point Loma. A couple work friends and I ate here last Thursday evening after a long work day. It was almost empty at 1830 when we got there, and still pretty much empty an hour later when we left.

I got a set of onion rings for the table, and something else (I’ll remember what later). The appetizers were all really good, and were eaten long before dinner got there.

My dinner was a ribeye. It was cooked a little short of the medium I asked for, but I let it rest a bit and it got up to nearly medium. It was decent sized and had pretty good flavor, and was tender throughout. There were a couple charred places on the edge, but not too bad. It came with some fried mushrooms that were pretty good.

The iced tea was very good and kept filled. Service was casual but kept up. My check was $40.51, but the appetizers were $10 of that, so not a bad price for a decent steak. I’d go back again.

My Place Bar-B-Q, West, Muskogee, OK

I had dinner here with Ian during our trip to Muskogee.

Ian got ribs. He ate every scrap (except the decent sized piece I pulled off one of them ). The ribs were tender. Not so much smoke flavor, but enough.

I got a couple things. First, chopped brisket. Some places, My Place included, take the chopped brisket and try to turn it into sloppy joe by adding BBQ sauce. It was even so here. I would have preferred it “dry” so I could add sauce to my liking. The sauce was decent, not too spicy. I got fries and baked beans as my sides (I don’t know that we had any other choice). The fries were pretty standard, but the baked beans were excellent. I also got half a smoked chicken and ate the leg and thigh (the breast came back home for lunch tomorrow, or breakfast). That chicken, while small, was excellent. Not dry at all, good flavor, no charring. Great stuff.

The tea was good. Service was decent. Our check was $29.54, not bad considering how much food we got. Yum.

Ollie’s Station Restaurant, Tulsa, OK

I’ve heard Ollie’s was a good place to eat, for years. Today, Ian and I were in transit to Muskogee, it was just after lunch, and so I decided to try it. It was pretty darn good!

Ollie’s is full of model trains, and train-related stuff. It was fun to see. There are three tracks that model trains run on periodically overhead. I am not knowledgeable enough to know all the gauges, but they were large, something like three inches between the rails.

Ian got a double cheeseburger. The beef was excellent, really good. I got a chicken fried steak, with sides of green beans and onion rings. All were clearly made right there. The rings were perfect, just the right amount of breading, and fried up golden brown and tasty. I got some very good ranch dressing to dip them in. The beans had small cubes of potatoes, onions, and bacon, and were excellent. The CFS was breaded right there. It had really good beef flavor, the breading was done right, and the entire CFS was fork tender. Just delicious. The tea was perfect as well.

Our check was $23.17. Service was very good. Recommended.