Geocaching Meeting 3

Progress.

The Great Northwoods Treasure Hunt is moving forward.

Preliminary info: Each of our three communities has chosen their cache locations, 6 each. If a geocacher is one of the first 500 to find 12 of the 18, minimum 2 from each community, they receive a T-shirt (one per team, other team members who earn the finds may buy shirts for a minimal fee.) Each of these finds counts as an entry in a multiple-prize drawing. We will be seeding Northwoodsy travel bugs, approximately monthly for a few months.

Jamie and Kayla came along, and we were interviewed by a reporter. Daily News or Hodag Buyers Guide, I guess.

Geocaching with Dad

This past weekend, Dad & Courtney went geocaching with Jamie, Kayla & I. I helped Dad learn how to use his GPS.

Busy B

We had a good Christmas in Platteville over the weekend.

Went back to work yesterday. I feel good.

Another geocaching planning meeting last night. We need to move. Make decisions. 5 weeks left. The expert geocachers from Eagle River came to yesterday's meeting to offer their insight. Today they posted on a forum asking for WI geocachers input on what would attract them. Within 6 hours there were a dozen posts, all good information. Hopefully this reassurance from downstate will help us take concrete action.

Filing and Programming

Wednesday I helped Dad understand how to sort and burn his pictures to disc. He's got the hang of it.

Yesterday & today, I've been trying to learn some more in-depth programming for my website. When nothing would work right, I researched my providers platform. Apparently the web space they provide is very limited. The lines of code that I tried to use were too complex for my web space. Maybe like trying to explain constitutional law to a 5 year old in order to help him develop better interpersonal bahaviors.

Yesterday Jamie went through his First Reconciliation.

FISH!

We watched this training video (18 min.) at one of our quarterly meetings at Speedee about 5 years ago. Everyone should take a refresher course now and then.

(If that link didn't work, I just filled out this form in order to watch the video.)

Fish

Is this more fun than a barrel full of monkeys?
Or is this easier than shooting fish in a barrel?

Rural Mural

Last night I (with the kids' help) painted the downstairs front room and hallway. Today I (with Shelly's help) painted a mural on the south wall. We've thought of painting over the Sesame Streeters before, but from concrete idea to 95% completion it took about 26 hours. I had thought of painting geocaching symbols over the outdoors, but it looked finished, I think the symbols would clutter the space. On that wall, we'll hang pictures of our family geocaching.

Yip Yip Yahoo!

FINISHED!

3 full days I sorted pictures. They were from as far back as November, 2004. I filled 5 discs (2 copies of each.) 76 movies of about 30 seconds each. And about 4000 pictures. That last number surprised me. I believe I had more pictures this time because the picture files from my telephone (does that phrase sound awkward, Mom & Dad?) are 1/3 as large as my camera's files. So I fit more pictures on each disc.

Content

I pushed through a self-course of the necessary html code to format my recipe web-pages.

I created an icon and placed it. Connected the recipes in the proper hierarchy, and typed out a couple of Mom's recipes. The first one took awhile. If something didn't look right, I'd set out into Google to find the proper html code. No bells and whistles, yet. But a functioning (small so far) web-based recipe book of Mom's recipes.

Our Home Page

Mom's Recipe Book(click on the Recipe button on the left of the dish to pull up the recipe.)

McAfee stunted my HTML programming growth.
Last year I found a weather sticker that I could cut & paste code onto my webpage, simple enough. But it didn't work. I tried to break down the code in my head, to find the error, but I couldn't. I set to the task again today, and I finally learned that my security software perceived my weather sticker as an ad, and blocked it. I fixed the blockage, and kow it works.

I gave up trying to program HTML for a year or so because I thought that I just didn't know how. I was like that pike in that science experiment: in a water tank, he on one side of a plexiglass window, baitfish on the other. He bonked against the plexiglass continually, until he reached the point where he gave up. Then, when the plexiglass was removed, he ignored the baitfish, even as they moved around him.

Northwoods Geocaching Project

Thanks Mom and Dave for keeping me aware of the Tourism Geocaching Grant. Shelly & I went to a meeting at the Boulder Junction Community Center that was organized to develop a plan to build the Northwoods as a quality geocaching destination. A marketing director from Madison, people from the Chambers of Commerce and businesses of Boulder Junction, St. Germain, and Rhinelander showed up, along with some of us concerned geocachers. We taught the people about geocaching, and they seem enthusiastic about getting more geocaches and "treasure" out there. We'll be meeting within our communities, and then again as a large group at the end of the month.

Morph 2

I was reading December's Popular Photography & Imaging that I borrowed from the library this evening. It mentioned a new program from www.morpheussoftware.net and I figured they would have a trial version. Indeed.

GeoConfusion

Mom pointed out this story to me.

Here is the referenced geocache.

Ice-Fishing

Jamie, Dad, and I went out on the ice of Crescent Lake around 3:30 yesterday afternoon. We set up the tip-ups and went in the shanty to jig for walleyes and perch. Jamie and I ended up catching three walleyes on tip-ups, nobody caught anything jigging.

Michaela had been over to see Molly VonOepen's horse. After a few rides around the barn, Phil brought Matthew and the girls out on the ice, about 4:30 or 5.

We all had a good time. We didn't even notice that it was almost 8:00 when we got back to Grandma's house. The last walleye came from the last tip-up as it was being taken out.

Did filleted them for us, and when we got home, Jamie and Kayla and I had a late supper of fresh fish. Michaela coated them with the flour/egg/breading as I fried them.

Historical Locations

I've been writing history, on the new Wikimapia, related to the worldwide user-edited multi-media enclyclopedic Wikipedia.

Users can label places, and describe why they're important.

I labeled Pioneer Park in Rhinelander, and The Barn in Platteville.

Geocaching Growth

A visual representation of the growth of geocaching in the Northwoods during the past 14 months.

Each icon on the map indicates a geocache.

The first image was taken October 22, 2005. The scond image, today.

Check

The doctor said I look good. I can return to work on the 22nd. Just be smart about what I do and lift until then.

Grizzlies and coyotes and influenza, oh my!

Michaela & I have had the flu for three days now.

I watched Grizzly Man this afternoon. A tragic tale.

I especially liked this song from the movie. I think Dad will too.