Ramblings of a Stickman

Well not quite yet but I am inspired to do so. Maybe tomorrow.

So right now I am sitting at the Days Inn in Flagstaff in my “nice quiet room” it is quiet as the front desk clerk promised if you don’t mind the freight trains that run a few hundred yards behind the hotel. I think once you travel a bit these types of things just make you laugh more than anything.

I started this foray into the American Southwest after realizing that I really wanted to take a commitment free vacation. No destination, no family to visit, just some good old fashioned American blacktop, my right foot planted firmly on the accelerator and a wide horizon in front. If you enjoy that type of thing Arizona serves it up in spades.

So far I am pretty amazed at the diversity of flora along the route. My overland journey thus far has brought me up from Phoenix via Highway 60 then up highway 89 to Prescott. From there I was thinking of going up 89a across towards Sedona but instead just kept along 89 north all the way to Flagstaff. Highway 89 north is amazing once you get towards Prescott as it carves its way up and over wolf creek pass. All told I climbed up to just over 7000 ft on that beautiful twisty turny piece of asphalt. The amazing thing from gaining all that elevation is that you get to several different types of desert vegetation. Down near Phoenix if was mostly sparse bushes and some cactus but as you start to climb you see big round bushes and in one spot massive smooth rock formations split by the road.

I took some video coming through but the battery died so did not get as much as I would have liked. As I climbed more and more snow appeared until there was a couple of feet piled on the side of the road at the top of the pass. The Faux sport utility I had managed it quite easily. I say faux because it turns out it is only 2wd! the main reason I got it was for the 4wd so I could possibly take some dirt roads as well in my travels. The brief foray I did take onto the dirt the the red Ford Escape was very slippery so I quickly turned around. It also due the the summer tires that it has on it which are terrible for gravel. Sigh .. should have rented the Dodge Challenger instead.

more to come

The tendrils of Canadian roads stretch far and wide and the northern most one ends here. Its hard to believe I am living at the most northern point, accessible by year round road, in this vast country. In a couple of weeks it will have been a year since I first took some pictures of the Inuvik sign at the airport and it seems like time has flown by at an accelerated rate. It has given me time to reflect on many things and all that lays ahead.

The sun is starting to hide its head more and more, in fact last night I drove home around 3 am and it could have been called almost dark! This place has really changed my life in terms of how I see the world. Having Tiffany on the opposite (in all meanings of the word) side of the world only helps to appreciate life all the more. Like I said I have been thinking a lot more lately of all the things I love about this place and some of the things that drive you nuts but without which would render it dull.

lets see.. you could start this off with one of those “you know you live ——- when” so here it goes

• You go to the airport for lunch as a treat on Friday, because the 15 minute drive almost makes it feel like you have gone somewhere.
• There is only one road out and if you want to drive it you have to leave by 5 to a) catch the ferries b) get to Eagle Plains gas station before it closes at 10 p.m because for the next 370km there are no gas stations or towns for that matter
• Driving 1200 + km each way to go to Whitehorse for the weekend does not seem that crazy
• Several times this year the school had indoor recess because it was less than -35C
• You actually know what it feels like when your tires freeze flat on the bottom
• The only fog you see is at -40 when there is an ice fog in town
• You are happy when the price of gas goes down for the year to $1.43/L
• You don’t have to worry about gas prices because a) there are only 2 stations in town b) it all comes in by barge once a year so the price is the same year round
• You always go to the post office after work along with the rest of the town because it closes at 5:30
• Having the road close twice a year for a month at a time does not freak you out
• You are happy when the road opens again so milk is not $9.50 /2L anymore
• A flight to Edmonton is usually $1500 return
• You have driven on an ice road
• You are happy when “fruit man” is on town
• You know what a beech 99, beech king air, and twin otter are
• You think a beat up old 737 is a nice fast plane
• You have flown somewhere as a paying passenger in the co pilot seat
• You can think of at least 5 stores that you shop online at on a regular basis and which ones actually have FREE shipping to the Territories and the Yukon
• The northern lights are south
• The arctic circle is south
• There is only one store open on Sunday and its from noon to 6
• There is 1 coffee shop
• You have flown over the ocean North of mainland Canada
• You have been ice fishing in late May where you drove a truck out on the lake and the ice was still 6 feet thick
• You have no illusions of where your garbage goes because you have seen it first hand
• There is a sign on the main street that says no snowmobiles
• Some kids drive snowmobiles to school
• You know what an oil pan heater is
• You have a piece of yellow canvas on the front of your car in winter
• The only pants you own are jeans
• You think real winter boots are rated to -70C
• You have seen people drinking mouthwash on the main street
• There are graphic anti smoking ads at the primary school
• You have carried frozen fish in your luggage
• You have eaten whale meat (muktuk), seal, moose and muskox burgers
• You have seen at least 3 different stuffed polar bears
• Energy efficient houses have 12 inch (thick) walls
• You know diesel’s work fine in the cold
• There are snowmobiles and quads on display next to men’s wear
• You have walked outside at 3 am in full daylight
• You have seen some of the longest and most beautiful sunsets when the days are short and are in perpetual sunset
• You travel with large plastic bins for “shopping down south”
• You consider McDonald’s a luxury
• You bring back doughnuts when you travel
• Last time you went to the gas station there was a muskrat pelt hanging on the wall for sale

There are many more such analogies that I have found over the year I have been here, lots more to come I think!

enjoy

1. Open Command Prompt.
2. Type the command: rundll32.exe keymgr.dll, KRShowKeyMgr

original post here

To be more precise , the glamorous life of traveling 13 hours on the red eye from Vancouver to Hong Kong. As we queued up to run through the cattle chutes I astutely noticed the loud family with the screaming child and became suddenly far more religious as I prayed they were sitting far far from me. This plane has 67 rows so there is a good chance that they will be distant from me in the cabin.

So we filed on board past the angle parked business class stalls, they have it nice, small walls divide them off from the other occupants in that area of the cabin. Lets face it once you travel enough to use business class you don’t care about meeting new people you care about peace and quiet. A bit unfortunate that we all filed past them as they reclined with their feet up all cozied in, champagne glasses on the sideboard. You would think they would lay the plane out so us mere proles would not have to file past their feet! I think Singapore airlines has the right idea, some may say it appears elitest but really, I don’t want to see the lay flat beds and cabins as I head into coach knowing I will be upright for the duration, ignorance is bliss sometimes.

To rewind a bit,

On my flight from Edmonton to Vancouver I sat next to a pilot who flies for a small airline that services Inuvik. In fact she was was my pilot to Aklavik on one of my trips. I remembered the flight because it was the smoothest landing I have ever had in a plane. Small world. So we chatted about flying in the north and weird cargo (dead bodies wins the creepiest load) planes and snowmaking in general. She lives on Vancouver island and is part of the granola set, patchoulie fragrance and all. What’s kind of cool with her job is the airline said they will fly her to the north from anywhere in Canada!. Also a bit of trivia for those interested is that the Beech 99 she exclusively flies is the 18th one ever made! I bet it could tell some stories. For starters she said it does not fly perfectly straight!

So back to the long haul to HK

Nice seatmates, a part time nuclear power plant operator who is visiting relatives in HK and a quiet mechanical engineer who works in Surrey BC designing industrial pumps and turbines. They both spoke excellent english. The flight was uneventful. I don’t fancy the seat design they employ on that particular aircraft though. Instead of a reclining seat back, the seat bottom just slides forward and the back rest is on a pivot giving only a partly inclined illusion. The tray table is also a bit space age looking with an ingeniously un intuitive release mechanism. the iherrent flaw in the design is that when you push the catch to either the locked or open position nothing happens, Once you get the right position you have to actually pull down the tray by the sides. another engineering improvement gone wrong. The little twirly tray catch has been working fine for decades! just leave it alone! we all know how to work it and it suits the job. Kind of looks like a marketing type designed it, looks nice but works like crap.

I did manage to drift into a 21 hour sleep deprived induced semi comatose state only to be awoken by a screaming child, not my favorite wake up tune. I think any family with small children should have to prove that they have enough childrens tylenol to knock out all their offspring for the entire flight before they can get on board. jokes aside the kid was a bit of a pain in the ass.

besides that the food was good, even breakfast was palateable which is rare.

So now i am leisurely relaxing in the resting lounge which is noting more than several Cleopatra style recliners. They hit the mark because as always the thing i miss the most when flying is the ability to lie flat. Kind of like when you are camping and you don’t realize how much you miss a soft seat to sit on.

more to come after the break

Finally dished out the green for a new computer. Many options and my original spec was a Corei7 system but I found the price tag a bit hard to swallow. Then the Corei5 came out and hey hey what do we have here!! prefect for a budget sytem with some serious power and room to grow in all directions. One major consideration was low power and silent running. Power is very expensive up here and well. I just like quiet! You can see this obvious choise in some of the components that I listed below.

Final specs

Core i5 750 CPU, its a quad core CPU with no Hyper Threading. Memory management is built into the CPU so it connects directly via dual channel

Asus Silent 9600GT Video, silent and uses less power also still a great video card with 512MB GDDR3 RAM. Actually a slightly underclocked version of the regular 9600GT. The normal version runs the GPU at 650 and shader at 1625MhZ compared to 600 and 1500 on the silent version.

G-skill DDR3 RAM, 2x2GB Its RAM but did come in a nice box

RAM ? Gotta love the bling on this box, "where speed is"

Gigabyte P55-UD3R motherboard, one up from base model features beefier power handling, RAID, eSATA and loads of ports.

And check out all the USB, my old machine had 4 ports in back and 2 in front! This has 10USB and internal 2 headers for a potential total of 14 ports

Western Digital Green 640GB drive, green, quiet and fast

My only dissapointment so far is the stock Intel CPU fan. It makes an aweful moaning sound when it runs anywhere off idle and I think the control is tied to load so the speed is always changing. Right now its the loudest part fo my computer! Soon to be replaced by an aftermarket cooler with a vertically mounted fan to flow inline with my two two case fans. The hardest part of the install was actually my extra case fan! The rubber mounts just ripped apart when you tried to pull them through the holes so I use screws and they were very hard to get in place! In the end I used only 3 screws as I was fed up trying to get them in! at least I only have to do that once. It also cuts down on possible PCI card length by the thickness of the fan so my graphics card has only about 1cm to spare.

First few impressions are night and day as to be expected. I am still using XP Pro as its what I had on hand and I want to wait a bit until the bugs are out of Windows 7. It really flies compared to my old rig. As an example when playing World of Warcraft (WoW) my old box ran at 100% CPU with settings on medium getting 15 Frames Per Second (FPS) in game (in front of the bank in Stormwind on a weekend for those in the know)

This pic is the same place in game, all settings on max, 58 FPS.

at the run prompt
sysdm.cpl

I have an ATI x800 video card that worked pretty good under Ubuntu Jaunty 9.04, I could use Compiz etc. but now cannot even use high res in Karmic 9.10

From what I have read this is because the older cards are not supported by the newer version of the X server. luckily I found this great article on how to fix it.

from the run prompt

devmgmt.msc