Life Intrigued

This will be a tough trying to keep my focus on this post while I’m all giddy with excitement due to the Oscars coming on.  In fact, I am so into this star studded affair I’m watching the red carpet shows just to take in the stellar atmosphere.  You know, Seacrest giving me stimulating insights into how such and such mega start became emotionally entwined with her character or some fabulous dude giving me a thorough analysis (yes, even with prompter arrows) on how a particular dress flows with her natural curves and highlights a recent cosmetic surgery… and you? … no… okay, I’m joking, I really don’t give a shit about actor/actresses in general, but I do watch it so I don’t feel bad when I watch one of their downloaded movies.  Do they realize this hurts their “your stealing from the mouths of my shoeless children so stop stealing my movie” mantra when they have awards shows like this?

Oh well, on to something FAR more interesting to me.  This post focuses on a Christmas present my wife got me this year.  Turns out that LEGO  is now producing an Architect line and it turns out they have a Fallingwater set.  We are both big Frank Lloyd Wright fans and had the opportunity to visit a number of his creations throughout the years.  Fallingwater out in Mill Run, Pennsylvania was one of those places.

For starters, the packaging of this kit is quite impressive with a mixture of modern day LEGO construction and Wright featured architecture prints.  I thought the 16+ age recommendation was a little high.  I understand the threat of choking, but clearly any teenager should be smart enough to chew before swallowing and based on the weak cellophane texture of the bagging, those posed no threats to suffocation.

One thing that really stood out was the manual (pictured at the top of the box).   Here is a closer shot.

It consists of a number of pages providing architecture design details of the actual building and related history.  These pictures do not show the crispness of these pages with their gloss black backgrounds.  Clearly there was some graphic artists consulted in the packaging of this product.

Hit the jump to see more details on this project…

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I hardy hello to all my readers out there!  It’s a new month and time to get going on my posts wouldn’t ya say?  I was planning to get some pre-work done on a future post today while at our dog’s Agility Trial.  Unfortunately, that didn’t happen because I ended up taking pictures all day instead.  The good news is I already had another bird set ready to go.  Actually multiple water fowl earned the post spot today.  I’m going to start with one that apparently got the short straw when it came to appearance draws.  I’m talking about the American White Pelican.

I  spotted this one contently paddling along a small river while on our Yellowstone trip.  The growth on his beak signifies this is a breeding male.  Luckily the chicks apparently dig this blemish and is used in their courtship (no, I don’t want to know how) as well as ritualized combat.  While looking through the lens at this guy, all I could think of was one of my favorite scenes from Uncle Buck when John Candy (rest in peace) lit into the grade school teacher because his niece was characterized as a sillyheart.  Maybe he meant a MUSKRAT (dundun dun dun… blog teaser…).

I was actually disappointed I did not get to see him fish.  At a later time on that trip, I came upon a couple of them out in a marshy lake.

Apparently this is their preferred setting.  It is actually a pretty nice picture with the deep color in the trees contrasted against the bright white of the pelicans.  I had to shrink it down significantly which resulted in losing some of its visual.  Let me bring it in a little for you.

As you can tell (even with the zoom fuzz residuals) that it is another breeding male with likely his trophy wife.  Once again I was unable to witness any fishing activity which sounds pretty interesting.  In one of the descriptions in the bird guide, they described the technique.  They work in groups to herd prey into shallow water or they ease into a school of feeding fish gulping ones that stray close to the surface.  This description did not align with the settings I took these shots based on the most I found together was TWO.

Hit the jump to see two more birds being featured today, the Goldeneye and the Canadian Goose

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As much as I benefited from the long month in January, February is basically a cruel joke on my deadlines.  This being the 6th post of the month, I can rest a little easier now and start prepping for the next month of which I already have two of that set already identified.  But you don’t care about that right now, you want to see if my latest read is worth spending any time with.

Although not at a let down level as the US Women’s hockey team that was essentially owned tonight, Down Range: Navy Seals in the War on Terrorism was not as engaging as the previous novel I read from Dick Couch called Chosen Soldier.  The focus of this particular novel was the early efforts in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.  Chosen Soldier was a slight deviation from Couch’s normal topic in that it focused on the Green Berets.  However, in difference of sorts, this book focused more on the land engagements of the new transformed SEAL engagements as it extends its lethal capabilities into the heart of the enemy country.  Dick is still an excellent writer and is capable of translating the semantics and warrior mindsets into something desk jockeys can relate to.  I think the real let down is a result of the lack of good field examples.   This is largely due to the effectiveness of the SEALS in these environments and what appears to be a deficiency in the local defenses.  This has changed since this book was authored (2005) with the emergence of insurgency fighting, but definitely during the early engagements with the Iraq army it was a route similar to Canada over US tonight.  It also did not go as deep into the training aspects of an elite warrior which is one of the primary reasons I spend my wind down time diving into the chapters.  Note, it did give some excellent insights into the Close Quarter Defense system they employ to clear out hostile rooms which is quite fascinating due to the mental aspect of that.

As always, I was able to find some things in the book that make the precious time spent all worth it.  Take the jump to see a synopsis of those items

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This is a first for the Blog.  Today’s post is a recollection of a PC game that I had been playing through and finally made it through the first time last night around 2AM.  It’s a rarity these days I actually feel I get my money’s worth out of a computer game purchase or the time invested in playing it.  After last night, I have to admit there is at least one game that met (actually exceeded) my expectations.  That game is Dragon Age Origins by Electronic Arts/BioWare.

This is essentially a role playing game (RPG) based in ancient times filled with knights, wizards, elves, dwarves and more evil creatures than you could think up on your own in a year.   In the genre of the Dungeon Siege series (which I really liked), this particular game allows you to control the characters in your party, manage their positions, decide their actions in an expansive world.  However, taking that a step further, Dragon Age almost feels like you are interacting with a movie as a result of hours of cut scenes woven into the game flow.  These scenes continually prompt you for responses and actions to take which directly impacts the storyline.  Maybe you want to play as a heartless champion who cares only about killing every evil doer he come across or someone who actually cares about gaining a better understanding of your companions.  As a result, my content requirement was easily met, but there are two other criteria I have that generally impact my enjoyment.  First of all, I do not want to read manuals to figure out how to play a game.  I spend my life reading technical manuals and research to be successful at work, I do not want to come home and tear into user manuals.  If it is not intuitive, there are better things to spend my free time like reading a book.  In this case, the only part of the Dragon Age manual that had to be read was the back panel with the license key.  Granted, it was similar to the Dungeon Siege game play, but there were numerous in-game hints/tips along the way to easily get you through the game.  The other requirements is ease of use.   I will say, if there is a negative it is the difficulty in getting comfortable with the camera movement.  Basically you can zoom in to be eye level with the surroundings or zoom out for a birds eye view to control the battlefield.  Both modes have a full pan feature which can leave you slightly nauseous  if you are sensitive to motion.  It took me 3 or 4 sessions to really get that down to the point it was fluid.  Beyond that, the two button mouse navigation and hotkeys were very effective.  Contrast that with the FallOut 3 game where I literally ripped out of the CD tray and flung it across the room after 30 minutes of playing the game due to having to designate which part of the enemy to target on every attack.

In almost all role playing games I try to assume the role of an archer.  I am not sure what my affinity is towards that classification, but I have been going that route since the first games that allowed you pick your character.  True to course, I selected an Elf for this time through the game:

Note, the screen captures in this post are not cut scenes, but rather in-game play graphics.  Oftentimes you get duped by the commercials that simply show a video and not the experience you get while interacting with the game.  This was my outfit while engaging other characters in a non-hostile environment.  When the whoop ass needed to be brought, the armor came out.  Here is the end of the game character record for my Jagger which shows some of the different items that can be purchased/found/earned/gifted during the course of the game.

Jagger was basically at one shot kills at the end of the game due to my approach at distributing skill points and item equipping.  Trust me, this came in very very handy at the end of the game when the darkspawn were swarming the castle.   While on the topic of skill points, Dragon Age incorporated the common feature of being able to control the character development through distribution of points across a wide variety of skill sets and special powers.  This actually provides an almost limitless game play characteristic due to how these points are utilized.  Being an archer class, I focused on those skills that gave me the greatest range firepower to compensate for the lack of thick armor.  Here is how my talent sheets turned out at the end of the game.

For those planning to play the game, the bottom two on the far right were the techniques that really got me to the end.  I’ll let you figure out what capabilities those have in battle.

I have a bunch more screen captures after the jump.  Be warned, this is labeled as a M (17+) game and it probably isn’t just due to the graphic violence that permeates the game play.  The graphic designer for some of the characters and clothing is definitely male (or possibly female with appreciation of the female form).  Let’s just say that this fictional world must have been experiencing an equally fictitious global warming.

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Since no one has cried “Uncle” yet on the bird posts from the Yellowstone vacation last year, I’m bringing out another set of birds.  These are what I call the Big Birds of the water.  I actually have a better set of this particular bird from a couple of photo session in Lacon IL, but sticking with the theme, here is one I snapped on that particular trip.

This is the Great Blue Heron and to be honest, outside the Eagle, this is my favorite bird.  Not only is this a fascinating looking bird while on the ground, it has a truly majestic flight.  Along with the 72″ wingspan it has a flight form that recalls impressions of the pterodactyl.  Having stood less than 10′ from one while clearing the brush by our stream last year (recall Operation Parkify) I can assure you these birds are huge.  If I was to guess, this bird’s legs are the same length as body to head.  Obviously this particular fishing spot is a few feet deep.  It was interesting just how calming this setting was and it felt more like a painting.  And yes, that is snow in the upper left.  We were out there in the June timeframe, but snow was still melting off.   Don’t worry, I’ll zoom you in a bit.

Based on the plumage this appears to be an adult breeding male.  Interesting enough, I have never seen one nesting.  According to the field guides, they nest colonially in tall trees.  This one also has his head up pretty high which probably gives a better radius for finding  fish/frogs etc. swimming around him.  They will also fold their neck back on itself (as in pterodactyl)  which quite frankly when combined with that sharp long spear of a beak looks like a serious weapon.

Unfortunately, I did not get this in focus due to the low ISO being used for reduced noise, but at one point a bird (guessing swallow) cruised in next to the Heron momentarily distracting it.  This was the only time while watching him that a ripple appeared in the water.

You can make out the fuzzy image of the pesky swallow in the shot above.  Undaunted the Heron stiffened up again, the water calmed and soon he was back on his fishing game.  Expect to see more sets of this bird in the future.

An clever reader may have noticed I pluralized the title.  “Clearly the little swallow doesn’t count as a big bird and there is only one other bird in pictures -what gives blog boy?”  Well, it’s a bonus day because I am also highlighting another set of birds that managed to catch my attention while driving through the park.  My birding awareness must be improving.  As proof, Linda was driving through the park when this scene caught my eye.

Having never seen this particular bird before, I really wasn’t sure what I was looking at.  The legs were somewhat invisible which made it seem like a couple of ground hogs playing on the side of a hill.  Curious, I had Linda stop on the side of the road and walked back to the spot I saw them.  Still not sure, I focused the zoom and to my surprise it had a long neck and legs.   They were pretty far out there, but I’ll try to bring it in a little.

Pretty cool eh?  Hit the jump to see more pictures of these two Sandhill Cranes.

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Happy Valentine’s Day Everyone!  Hopefully you were able to spend some time with your significant others and remember the first time you knew she/he was the one to complete you.  In honor of “Couple’s Day” I bring you some water fowl I came upon while out on our Yellowstone trip last year.  I don’t think I am ever going to get through all the wildlife pictures we took while out there.  Thankfully we’re in the digital age or the film bill would have been horrendous.

First off is the Lesser Scaup.  Warning, these pictures are not tack sharp due to having to pull them in from so far away.  Based on the blurs, I am guessing I also did not have time to put the glass on the tripod either.

As you probably assumed, the male is the more colorful one.  His bill is actually a pale blue which blends in perfectly with the water making him look slightly odd from this angle.  Unfortunately, I cannot tell from the guide books the real difference between the Lesser version and the Greater version beyond the size (Lesser is ~1.5″ shorter and 3″ shorter between the wingtips resulting in about .5 lbs less in weight).  It does appear the Lesser’s have a more southern population during winter than the Greater.

Here is a better set of pictures from a small lake bordered by evergreens.  The trees gave an interesting green reflection on the water.

The green brings out the pale blue on the male much better.  The spooky aspect of the male is the yellow eyes.  In person they really pop against the dark purple head.  As you can tell the Lesser Scaup has all the standard male characteristics as he turns to check out the female’s tail feathers.  Clearly she is playing hard to get.

But in true Valentine’s spirit, she gave in to Cupid’s buckshot.

Just to contrast this romantic scene, there was another water fowl that wasn’t experiencing the joys of courtship.  This Western Grebe was trolling around all alone in a lake to himself/herself.

Unfortunately, once again I was pulling this fowl in from the extent of the glass.  The male and female do not seem to differ much from the pictures in the guides so I can’t tell if this lonely bird was a female or a male.  Following the trend of colorful eyes, this bird actually has a red tint and like the Scaup, really stands out against the darker head coloring.

This shot is pulled in a little more to help show the interesting coloring.  It is amazing how naturally camouflaged it is for his environment and when it moved out of the darker tree reflections you could barely distinguish it from the white clouds being mirrored in the water.   Based on the information in the Smithsonian Field Guide to Birds, the Western Grebe has quite the courtship ritual involving synchronized scooting across the water (just their feet touching the water) and a cute “weed ceremony”  where each bird dances upright with the other while holding water weeds in their bills.  I definitely have to try to get a shot of that the next time I am out West.  Here’s to hoping our little friend above gets his chance to experience this interesting courtship.

Gotta go now, the Olympics are starting up again and this is one sports junkie who never gets enough of athletes trying their best to represent their country… unless it’s figure skating in which case I’ll switch on over to Spike TV.

Today’s post falls into the PURE STUPIDITY category.  For Christmas, a good friend of mine gave me two vise grips from Irwin.  Whoa, before you jump to a wrong conclusion, this was not the stupid part, in fact, it was a great gift especially since I am always misplacing my wrenches.  No, the stupid description applies to the manufacturer of these products – Irwin.  Take a look at the side by side packaging for the two products:

I made it easy for you to see my issue with these two products.  One is supposedly SAE (English) and the other one is Metric.  Intrigued, I asked myself why an ADJUSTABLE wrench would need to distinguish between English units and Metric units.  Isn’t that the trade off between the skinny profile of crescent wrenches needing exact measurements vs. the more bulky but universal wrench.  Curious, I started comparing the packaging more and could only find two visible difference – that being a single digit off of the product number (2078601 – 2078602) and the SAE vs METRIC label.  They even doubled up the measurement indicator 8″ – 200mm on both packages. Turns out there was actually another difference underneath the wrenches, but I’ll comment on that in a little bit.

Somewhat surprised, I turned the packaging over assuming there had to a number of differences on the back to warrant all the duplicate packaging costs.

Unbelievable, there were only TWO differences.  One was the different bar code (one ends in 9 and the other ends in 8), and the span graphics has an SAE label on one and as expected a metric label on the other.  That’s it everyone, two completely different product packaging with 5 tiny differences.    If you were keeping score at home, you might have been surprised at the number 5 and not 4 per the images above.  There was actually another difference you couldn’t tell from the photo angle.  Underneath the tool was a matching picture of the wrench end.  Turns out, there is an engraving on the wrench end with the corresponding ruler increments.  The SAE one has an English scale:

It is very hard to tell from my photo, but there is a scale on the top of the wrench opening in 1/16″.  That engraving is actually on both sides of the tool.  Unfortunately, the metric picture is even worse than the SAE one.

This scale is in MM and as with the SAE one, is on both sides of the wrench.  Am I completely off base here, or is this as ridiculous as it seems to me.  Again, the exact measurement does not matter to me much when using an adjustable wrench other than if I want to take a measurement of the bolt in which case I’ll just slap a measuring tape across the nut.  That is the consumer view of this.  Let’s look at it from the manufacturer’s perspective.  They have to maintain two complete manufacturing product lines (well, at least the engraving step) , two complete packaging sets and keep two order/invoice sets for essentially the SAME product.  Carry this on to the reseller and now you have to have multiple tag sets, redundant shelf space and maintain two scanning/bar code price lookups.

And to top it all off, IT IS NOT A VISE GRIP (check the clamp teeth) it is a WRENCH.  Oh well, big thanks to Sung for getting me the gift, I can now keep one out in the garage and one in my toolbox to address my English and my Metric needs with the same tool.

Holy Crap, I was called out by my brother tonight for my lack of post production this month.  Apparently he thinks I am slacking off and not delivering on my quotas this year.  I don’t want to let any of my thousands (ha) of readers out there to become disappointed so I ran to the keyboard to publish something I overheard at Granite Peak while boarding over MLK weekend.

Actually I overheard two things that weekend that made me practically laugh out loud.  While out on the slopes some fellow boarder friends and I came to rest part way down the hill.  I am sure it was to argue who was going make the first attempt at a  fakey inverter over the ramps in the terrain park.  As we were discussing this, three young kids came shuffling by on their way to another set of slopes.  It is hard to tell in all the snow gear, but I put their age in the 5th to 6th grade range.  They were arguing about something when the target of their ire looks up and says “Suck It!”.  I am not sure what made me chuckle more, the perfectly delivery of the response or the question as to whether this kid really knew what it meant.  I decided for my own peace of mind that he meant it referred to eggs or chocolate covered bacon on a stick.  Otherwise kids these days are getting a lot more action than one would expect.

Having heard this earlier on the slopes probably made me more sensitive to comments being made by kids while I was up there.  After a hard day of carving up the snow (okay, it was the Midwest so more accurate to say ice) we headed into the bar for a little Apres-Ski.  This being a French word for “after skiing” which basically consists of gathering with your friends and drinking alcohol until the aches and pains in your battered body disappear.  This was especially accurate that day since I had lost the feeling in the 4 toes on my right foot thanks to a couple of brutal falls racing my friend on a Snowboarder X course.  A month later and I STILL can’t feel them, but it was sure fun.  Anyway, while taking in the local beverages, I noticed a group of kids sitting at a table next to us.  I am not sure why they were actually there and even if that was allowed, but I’ll leave that quandary for those who have children.   At that table were two boys and two girls maybe in the 7th grade level or possibly 6th.  They were definitely trying their best to act older/mature than their appearance would suggest.  One of the boys blurts out “What a dumb blonde”  I smiled a bit appreciating the classic stereotype still lives on to this day.  As I took another drink I then overhear one of them say “That’s a racist comment” which nearly caused me to spill beer all over me from laughing.  What are they teaching kids in school these days?  If they don’t get this cleared up soon, our Census  forms are going to get very complicated.  The ACLU is going to be demanding the Mohawks get their proper entitlements and the Creased Ear-Lobers need to get extra points on the Firefighter tests.

By the way, I figured I’d make a comment on something that has always bugged me.  It seems like discussions come up around this time regarding someone offended by a classification or assessment effort that is taking place.  I would like to state for the record I am tired of having to refer to my heritage as “White.”  I’ve done a lot of tests and analysis on this subject (okay, that really translates to the last 10 minutes while writing this post).  Based on my findings I think a more accurate assessment would be a Khaki or maybe a Dullish Pink, but clearly not WHITE.  It’s time to stand up and stop this discrimination and I’m not going to stop until I get jus… ooooh cookies!

Yum Yum

Things I am thankful for at the moment:

• Voters in Massachusetts
• My Chiropractors (unless  he is unable to get the feeling back into my four right toes thanks to a nasty snowboard crash a couple of weeks ago)
• Burton product managers (just upgraded my snowboard boots and bindings to the latest advancements – can’t have any more of those crashes now can we?)
• My parents made it down to Florida before the huge storm
• All my blog readers out there (slather on the butter)
• And most importantly that there are 31 days in January – and I needed every one of them to get 6 posts in this month

I am going to close out this month’s set of posts with a bird that posed a challenge for me in a couple of ways.  While out on our Yellowstone vacation, we took a short hike up a trail.  While taking in the beautiful scenery, I heard an interesting bird song coming from a set of trees.  It was a rather unique sound, but the point of origin was difficult to pinpoint.  Slowly the sound was vectored in and it slowly revealed itself.  What was this sneaky bird?  Well, it was this one:

The challenge of actually seeing this bird was matched by the difficulties in actually identifying it in my multiple bird books.  Turns out there are at least 6 variations of this Junco with varying coloring contrasts.  Some have a darker head, some have a larger brown spot on their back.  To be honest, at the time it looked like a shrunken robin without the bright orange belly.  Based on the picture above, it is obvious he had no trouble locating me.

This shot gives a better perspective of the side and belly feathers.  The belly t is a dull orange which lead to the robin reference.  From a photo perspective, I do like how these close up shots came out.  The coloring of the bird coordinated well with the bark of the back trees and the wisps of greenery give a nice depth perspective.  Here is another one that I probably like the best of all of them.  To his credit, even though I was moving around to get different angles he did not get concerned enough to seek safety in the deeper brush.

I hate the fact I have to reduce and compress the images for this website.  The full size raws look significantly better than the smaller versions used for the blog posts.  I might actually look into leveraging a photo service website to use as a repository for the larger images.  That way I could provide links to the full versions if you wanted to see those.

Unlike our friend the Mountain Bluebird the Junco blends in quite nicely with their habitat.  Based on the various pictures of the 6+ variations they all look like the colorings would hide it nicely among the limbs and brush common in the forest.  To demonstrate this, here are a couple of examples consisting of full scenes (reduced for space).  Try your hand at Where’s Waldo.

Now that you know what you are looking for it makes it a tad easier compared my struggle trying pinpoint the source of the chirp.  In case you did have some problems, here is a zoom of it:

I pulled a slight switcharoo on you.  This is actually one of the other variations that has a slightly lighter brown patch on the back.  How about another try:

It’s there, trust me.

Let’s hope they don’t figure out how to use that stealth trait against us. They would probably team up with the Ravens and wreak considerable havoc.  I recommend not making them angry!

Whew, that was a close one.  Wiping the sweat from my brow, I close out the 6th and final post of the month.

This has been a very odd couple of weeks in the cell phone category.  It all started when Linda started getting strange text messages from a strange male at odd hours of the night usually with bodies of “Watz up” or “You no talkin to me no more” etc.  Our guess is some woman gave out a random phone number at a bar or the idiot was too drunk to write it down right.  Soon after that she got a call from a wrong number in the wee hours of the morning.  She informed the caller she had the wrong number only to have the same number call back almost immediately.  This was met by “YOU STILL HAVE THE WRONG NUMBER!!”  You don’t want to annoy my wife while she is sleeping.  Then, yesterday I get a call on my cell from a number I didn’t recognize.  My standard mode of operation is to let those go to voice mail just in case it is someone I might not want to talk to.  Turns out it was a lady inquiring about a house I had for sale in Eureka.  Truth be told, I do not have a house for sale in Eureka, so once again I assumed a fat fingered call and deleted the message.  Twenty minutes later I get a call back from the same number but no message this time.

Which brings us to the tipping point when I decided it was worth bringing to the blog.  Today around 3:30pm I get a call from the same number with the house inquiry.  Figuring someone might have incorrectly put my phone number on house listing, I decided to actually take the call and see what was going on.   To my surprise it is a male’s voice on the other end who asks “Who is this?”  Not about to give any personal information to stranger in this day and age, the immediate response was “Who are you trying to reach?”  He was apparently a little taken aback and informed me that he “was checking a number that was on his phone”.  Alarms started going off at that point and gave my last comment as “Well, I didn’t call it”.  After making a comment that sounded like “uh, well …” he hung up.  After a few moments I began to rewind this call trying to put some context to it.  After a few rewinds I decided one plausible scenario is that the guy could be married to the lady who called yesterday.  Maybe their marriage isn’t going that well and she is cheating around (or he is) and she is looking for someplace to move into.  Mr. Jealous husband is now pulling a Magnum P.I. and trying to track down who she is hanging out with or trying to get some evidence if she is planning something.  If this is the scenario, it probably wasn’t comforting to have another male answer the phone – much less someone not willing to provide any information.

Oh well, I thought it was kind of humorous and decided to share.   If you have other interpretations for how this event might have been playing out, please share it in the comments.