I'm a Member of Congress!

Yes, Its true. I recently became a member of the united States Bowling Congress!

My friend Shawna called a while back and asked if I wanted to join a bowling league with her a some of her friends. At first I was a bit dubious. I always figured I was on a roll if I could break 100, and hanging out with a bunch of semi-pro's didn't seem like a good time. But she told me this was the Lousy Bowler League, and that seemed like an apt description of my skill, so I agreed.

I must have been suffering from multiple bouts of temporary insanity when I signed up, and later confirmed my commitment to play. The games start at 9 PM, often go until 11:30 PM or later, and are on a work night, meaning I got up at 4 AM that morning, and I have to get up tomorrow at 4 AM.

That being said, it has been loads of fun!

we don't take ourselves too seriously, and have fun meeting new people.

We originally started off with 4 people, but one of our players quit about 3 games in, so for the longest while its just been me and two pretty girls! It's been a burden, but I've done my best to carry on!


Shawna is the highest scorer on our team so far, and is team captain; a post she attained by being the only one able to figure out how to fill in the score card.


Holly is kind of the team cheerleader--she always has something nice to say after every turn good or bad.

And then there is me. I've tried my best to get better. At the beginning of the season I was averaging 98 points per game--pretty lousy, but I took to the internet and found some bowling videos on ehow.com. I got so much grief from everybody when I told them about it, but I think it did some good. I've developed a technique of sorts, and more often than not hit what I'm aiming for! I still haven't gotten a turkey though; I always seem to choke on strike #3 and end up only taking out one pin in the back corner!


that's us, we're the Incredibowls!

Das Auto

One Friday back in July I started up my truck to leave work. I had been out of town all week, and the truck had been sitting in the employee parking lot for four days. It started making some funny clicks, that wouldn't go away. I eventually found that the truck was low on oil, and that it was losing oil pretty quickly; about a quart a month, when before at my regular 3 month oil change there was no oil loss shown on the dipstick. And then one weekend it rained and got kinda cool. The truck began making an awful squeak that I think was either the pulley or the tensioner arm on the serpentine belt. These are probably things that you would start to expect from a 10 year old truck. The interior is also showing its age; worn seats, buttons that have all the lettering worn off, and the arm rest is cracked.

So its been on my mind for a while that it might be time to think about getting a new vehicle. The Toyota FJ cruiser looks very nice. Its more or less Toyota's version of the Jeep. And then there are the muscle cars which have really become popular lately. The Ford Mustang really looks great, and so does the Dodge Challenger.

I had some of this on my mind when a friend of mine invited me to the Barret-Jackson auto auction at Mandalay Bay. There were a few hundred cars up for auction, most of them were beautifully restored American muscle cars, but there were some great antiques too; I recognized a 1928 Model A that looked almost exactly like my grandpa's. 

Looking at the cars was fun, but the real fun was outside the convention center in the parking lot. I wish I had taken pictures of all the stuff going on outside the convention center, but I was paying too much attention to what was going on, and getting excited about fast cars to think about taking some photos. Ford and Chevrolet had big tents set up showing off their new cars, and then just behind the tents they had many of the same cars available for a test drive around a little track. I tried a Buick SUV and the Camaro. If you took a test drive though, they would let you go for a hot lap in a Corvette. 

The corvette comes in two flavors; the regular corvette (C6) and a heavily modified super-fast version ZR-1. The ZR-1 makes about 635 horsepower from a supercharged, inter-cooled engine, and can do a little over 205 MPH. It costs somewhere around $115,000 and if you buy the ZR-1 you have to go to a racing school. One of those racing schools happened to be the guys taking you for a hot lap. In a corvette ZR-1. 

That was honestly one of the most exciting things I have ever done. I climbed in the car, put on my seatbelt and the driver hit the gas; hard. I have never felt acceleration like that before. Not in a jet plane taking off, not on a roller coaster. I was pulled back into my seat and it was almost hard to breathe. And then when it was time to slow for a corner the driver waited until way past the time I would have started slowing down before getting on the brakes, and then he would hit the gas, and I was gasping for breath all over again. I think if I ever decide to have a midlife crisis this is the car I will buy.

Ford also offered hot laps in Mustangs. They had a couple of Mustang 500's and offered the same deal; test drive a car, go for a hot lap. The mustangs were fun, but in a much different way. They had racing seats and harnesses installed, and instead of the crazy fast acceleration and sure-footedness the corvette offered, it was a wild ride going sideways through the corners, being thrown around, and listening to the loud roar of the engine. It was very fun!

And then we noticed that Porsche had a tent set up on the other side of the parking lot. I figured it might be a lot of fun to test drive a Porsche, if only for the right to say I had driven one. Ford and Chevrolet both made me take a breathalyzer to see if I had been drinking. Porsche asked "Have you had much to drink today?" And instead of driving an grocery-getter around the lap at at anemic 5 MPH, they tossed me the keys and said "lets race!" They had three cars, and they would let us drive as fast as we could around the track. After a few laps we switched seats with our minders, and the professionals raced as fast as they could around the track and put us all to shame. I did three or four laps around, and I was in heaven; the other cars were great, but there is nothing like being the person holding the steering wheel and mashing down the gas peddle. The car I drove was a '09 Cayman S, and the first thing I did when I got home was too look up the blue book price on the internet. at $35,000 It was probably right on the edge of affordability for me, and it was a great source of day dreams for a week or two! 

Monday I was sitting at home, thinking about how quiet the house was after all my company had left, and I tried to come up with something to do. I remembered how I was watching Top Gear Sunday night and they said if your interested in fuel economy you should buy a Golf  TDI. The Golf is a little hatchback car made by Volkswagen, and the TDI is a turbocharged diesel engine. The Golf TDI officially gets 30 MPG in town and 42 MPG on the freeway. 

That sounded pretty impressive, so I decided to look up the nearest VW dealership. I was surprised to see there was a brand new dealership that had just opened about 5 minutes from my house, so I decided to take a little drive over there. I was mostly interested in hearing if the diesel  sounded like the diesels I drive everyday, and since I had had so much fun test driving cars at the auto auction, this might be a good way to spice up a boring Monday. 

The salesman let me start one up, and the car was very quiet. I would say that it is just slightly louder than a gasoline engine, but not  noticeably so; mostly  it has more of a hum than a regular engine does. The salesman was pretty nice about letting me drive how and where I wanted. I take the hwy 95 215 exit most days coming home from work, and it is one of those big cloverleaf exits. The truck squeals the tires if you go too fast around that exit, but I thought it might be fun to see how fast I could take it. I was able to go faster than what I thought was comfortable, and it was a very fun car to drive. The car has a 6 speed automatic transmission and the engine is turbo charged, so every time the car shifted you got a little extra zoom as the turbo spun up and started providing boost to the engine. The steering was very tight, and I felt like I had much more control over where the car was going. The truck isn't imprecise, but I would say its like pointing your finger, or using a laser pointer; both get you looking at the same place, just one is much more precise.

I was there solely on a whim to kill a Monday morning, but the Salesman mentioned that they were very motivated to start building a customer base. So, I decided to see what they had to offer. And here is a neat negotiating tip: if you don't want to buy a car and tell them that enough times they will continually lower the price! I eventually got them to go below the invoice price (he actually brought it out and showed it to me), when I decided I better leave before I did something foolish like buy a car. I called my parents for a sanity check, and they were actually somewhat supportive of me buying a new car. My mom gave me quite a few things to think about, and alternatives to look into.



 I took Jamie and Rudy over that night to get their take on it. One thing I was certain I wanted in a new car was room for more than me and a buddy, or me and my two closest friends (have you ever tried to ride three across in the front seat of a Ford ranger?). All three of us climbed in the backseat and closed the doors. I don't think I want to ride back there with three people on a cross country trip, but I think its just fine for a trip across town.

I thought about it for a couple of days, and then decided to go for it. The guys at the dealership were very surprised to see me come back. They were sure I never would. I traded in the truck, and drove home in my new car!  like I said, its a lot of fun to drive, and I look forward to lots of trips in it! 

The car has built in blue tooth, which is great since Nevada just passed a hands free cell phone law this month. Also, the stereo works over blue tooth, so all the music on my iPhone can be played through the stereo and never leave my pocket--how cool is that!?

I'm still going back and forth over whether or not to install a ham radio in the car. There is a perfect spot to remote mount the head of my mobile radio just behind the shifter, but it took me three years to install a fender mount for my antenna on the truck. I don't know if I have the courage to drill a hole in the roof! Either way, I took the sub and amp out of the pickup, and that needs to get installed ASAP!

Anyways, that's what I've been up to this week!

new curtains

This weekend Randi, Cassidy and LaWayne came to town for a quick little weekend trip. It seems like every time Randi or Cassidy visit my family they get coerced into some home improvement project. This trip was no different, but instead of Cassidy doing the work I made Randi bring her sewing machine.

I bought some curtains a while back for my guest bedroom, but they were way too long. I did pretty well in Home-Ec back in high school, and I was confident I could trim and hem the curtains without too much trouble. I asked around to see if any of my friends had a sewing machine I could borrow, but no one seemed to have one (not even their wives!). So, that's where Randi came in. And rather than look like a fool in front of her as I tried to stumble my way through hemming the curtains, I let her have at it.

I ran the iron, and pinned a little bit, but mostly it was her.

As you can see, Cassidy enjoyed not having to throw in with another Norton home improvement project!

Randi did great, and I'm super happy with the results!

The room still looks a little bland, I have a few thoughts to through in a big dash of color, but so far I'm pleased. I never thought home decor would be something I was ever interested in, but looks like I was wrong again!

On the Road

So I've been a busy trucker lately!

A while back I signed up to be the relief driver for the out of town route. The idea was I would fill in for the regular driver while he was on vacation, and occasionally help out on busy holiday weeks. The regular driver only had two weeks vacation, so I figured this would be a fun diversion from the regular crazy Vegas stuff a few times a year.

So that was the idea. The end of June came around, and the boss called me up and asked if I could fill in again for a couple of weeks. It turns out the regular guy did something which a reasonable person would probably call "ill-advised" and that led to me being asked to fill in. After a bit of uncertainty they let this guy go, and I've been out of town ever since.

Anyways, for the most part I have really been enjoying my time out of town.



Everyone I've met has been super nice. There are some very long days though. One day I make a big loop starting in Tonopah going up towards Hawthorne, out to Eureka, and finish back in Tonopah. The trip is just a little over 500 miles, and I have only been able to finish up under the 14 hour limit set by the Dept of Transportation twice.

I was delivering to a little out of the way RV Park/convenient store in Dyer.





Its a little town on the Nevada/California border just over the mountain from Baker, CA. Anways, the lady that runs it gave me a TV shirt after I tried to buy it. Oh, if you've ever heard about the dispute over Boundary peak, you can take a look at it from Dyer.

As I've been driving around I kept seeing all of these Historical Markers along the side of the highway



I saw one after another everyday and always wondered what they had to say on them. Then one day I was reading about a guy who had put together a website about his travels to see all of them. I thought it was a pretty neat idea, and I figure that since I am driving past so many of them I will try it too!



Its been pretty interesting finding so many of them.

This one is not the more common Nevada shaped marker. It actually sits on the corner of the lot I park my truck in, in Tonopah. I must have walked past it a dozen times before I realized what it was.



I was trying to deliver to the Golden Club, but no one was there to accept the delivery.



Austin is a little town where everybody knows everybody I decided to walk down the street to the International Cafe to see if they knew how to get a hold of the owner. I had delivered to the bar, but never walked to the cafe entrance. I was surprised to see this little marker on the side of the building.



A similar thing happened in Eureka. I was across the street looking at the great job they have done restoring the courthouse.



See it there?



And while taking my picture here, I saw another one on the street behind the courthouse:


Anyway, I have a growing collection of these markers on my flickr page.


Knowing I was going to be out on the road for a while I installed a ham radio in the truck.



I wanted to have a backup plan in case something happened and I didn't have cell phone service.



I don't have a very good antenna setup unfortunately. I'm using a magnet mount antenna. I figured it would be great to plop it on the roof and everything would be great. I didn't figure the roof of the truck would be fiberglass! turns out magnets don't stick to fiberglass, so I stuck it on the only thing I could; the visor. The visor is quite narrow, and angled, so my radio seems to be a bit directional, and I worry some that the antenna isn't vertically polarized.



you can see it, its right in front of the second marker light from the left.

Also, Its been really great to chat up some old friends on the radio. There are a few stretches of highway, where I can reach a repeater system and get back to friends in Elko.



I chose this radio for its built in APRS capabilities. You can see I just received a position report from a station called AREA51. APRS basically lets me hook my GPS to my radio and it will periodically broadcast my position to other ham radio operators. Some hams have stations at home or on mountain tops that can rebroadcast these reports to a wider area. Some even send what they hear to the APRS internet services which allow anybody to see these position reports in real time on a map. my favorite site is aprs.fi, where you can see your local hams, or you can search for me: KD7MIR-14. the -14 indicates I'm a trucker. I thought this was a good idea in case I disappeared after a while someone could look up where my last position was and send the police to come look for me.
Also, you might be interested that this setup is very temporary. The control head on the dashboard is held on with masking tape!

I've also been having some fun with one of my scanners. One of them has a new feature they call GPS scanning, where the radio will scan different channels depending on where the GPS tells the radio is. I thought that would be a great feature when I'm scanning the highway patrol. Instead of searching through each site for the entire state, it would just scan the sites that are nearby. I've tried it a few times and it works pretty well, but until I get a splitter cable or a second GPS I prefer to have my GPS connected to the ham radio.
At night after I'm done and sitting in my room I have been running the scanner. I've hooked the radio up to my laptop to decode the control channel of the Highway Patrol's trunking system.



I'm trying to confirm frequencies posted on radioreference.com are correct and in the right order for scanning, and putting site ID's with their frequencies.
Also, there are some pretty interesting sights to see.







I'm intrigued by Goldfield. Its a cool old mining town, that I'm going to go back and visit on my own time and do some serious looking around.



This cow welcomes people to Nevada coming back from Death Valley



and what about this sign? I bet they don't have stuff like this in Idaho!



kind of a fun looking place in Caliente.



Although looking inside it looks like it has been closed for a while.

As you can see, I've been a busy little beaver lately. I think I've got just one more week training a permanent driver, and then I'm back to work in Vegas. I can't wait to sleep in my own bed every night, and be able to cook or go shopping, or visit friends whenever I want!

Question

So I'm eating lunch at Chili's and I notice the stack of coasters the waitress has just left on the table.



The table is tiled, so there is not really a chance that my drink is going to leave rings on the surface. And look how many coasters she left us. Just how many drinks are two people going to have going on at the same time!?

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Safe Computing -- Crash Helmet Not Required

Every now and again I get email from a friend, or a family member warning me about some computer virus that is going around. Lately I've been seeing a lot of these same warnings pop up on facebook. They are always in capital letters warn you that your bank account will be hacked, your computer will be destroyed, and every sentence ends with !!!!

First, the Brits have the right idea:

I know these are all sent with the best intentions, but they really only serve to stir up fear, and offer no real help. I've decided I know enough about computers that I can offer some general advice. Most of this will be best practices stuff; if you follow these rules most of the bad computer stuff won't affect you:

Keep your computer up to date.

Don't click on links or open email attachments

Use strong passwords

Don't run as an administrator

Unless you know you need it, delete it or turn it off

In the next few days I will elaborate on these topics, and by the end of the week you'll know how to stay safe on the internet!


Why does a hacker want to break into my computer?

Mostly it's because they want to make money using your computer. They install control software on your computer and turn it into what is called a bot (short for robot). Hackers build huge bot armies of thousands of computers (some are estimated to be over 100,000!). Then they can use them to send spam, or attack websites.

Spam is a volume business, and if you send enough eventually you will convince someone to buy what you're trying to sell. Since they are using your computer, the cost to send spam is effectively zero.

The website attacks work by telling the bots to all go to the website they want to attack. Most websites don't have enough internet capacity to handle thousands of computers all going to their site at once. If enough computers are trying to go to a single website they can create so much internet traffic that no one can get to the website. This is called a DDOS attack.

Some bot army attacks work on the old protection racket. The Hackers call up a gambling website and say something like this: (with Russian accent) "Wouldn't it be a shame if nobody could bet on the Final Four games this weekend because they couldn't get to your website? For a modest fee I could make sure that didn't happen."

If the website doesn't pay up the hacker tells the bot army to attack, and the website is off the internet as long as the attack is going on. Eventually the website might pay the hackers to go away, or they might pay the first time they are threatened hoping to avoid any trouble.

Some bot armies are available for hire. You can rent them to attack someone you don't like. The RIAA (music industry group that sues people downloading music illegally) has had their website attacked many times like this.

These are the two biggest reasons hackers want to get your computer. There are other things they might want, like your password to your banking site, your credit card info, or your personal ID stuff like Social Security Number to sell to ID thieves.

If you are at work, the hacker might be trying to get company secrets, like the database containing all the credit cards the company has processed, or personal information on all your company's clients.

The main thing to keep in mind though is that the goal of the hacker is to stay hidden on your computer, and take advantage of your computer for as long as possible. Anytime you read a warning about your computer being destroyed, just call it BS; if your computer is broken the hackers can't use it any more.

You're kidding me!

The HOA. Everyone loves their HOA.

The tree in front of my house died. The HOA wrote me a couple of letters and told me to remove and replace it. So I did, eventually, after they threatened to fine me. I'm a rebel that way!

Honestly, I didn't really want to replace the tree, because it was about 1 foot from the wall of my house and another foot from the sidewalk. It just didn't seem like a really good place to plant a tree. I wanted to replace it with a bush or something, but the letter said to remove and replace. So, I did. I even bought a chainsaw to cut it up to make it easier for the garbage men to haul away.

I went to the nurserey and bought a new tree

Yesterday I got my monthly statement from the HOA. They also included a little newsletter.

The newsletter had little hints like don't park your boat in front of your house, where to get a pool pass, and an invitation to meet our city councilman at the next HOA meeting. And on the back of the newsletter was a little article - What to do About That Overgrown Tree?

The article, written by a member of the HOA board, talks about the African Sumac tree planted in front of his house. He talks about how it was "planted in a 5 ft x 5 ft patch of dirt surrounded by driveway, sidewalk and my house." He goes on to write that the tree would eventually grow to 15 feet across at maturity, yet it was planted 2 feet away from his house. He finally dug up the tree, and recommends that "other homeowners in similar situations to consider removing and replacing these trees with something more suited to the space available. For myself, I replaced the tree with a flowering Hawthorn shrub that will remain comfortably confined to that small space."

My tree was an African Sumac just like his. I thought it was pretty stupid to plant it that close to the house, but I replaced it with another tree at the demands of the HOA. All I can say is "Are You Freakin' Kidding Me!"