Skills Required: Cramponing.  Ascending/Descending in snow without crampons, Front Pointing, Ice Axe (Usage, Arresting falls), Rope management (no roping up, but how to help yourself/someone with a rope), Emergency preparedness, Routefinding, Full-on winter camping, Excellent Cardio Condition: Ascending 1500ft/hr with 45#+ pack. 

Gear Required:  Alpine Ascents has a good Gear/Brand list.  Not all pieces are required, but if you have questions about what is good quality gear to get, their reference is an excellent starting point. 

Trip Information: The traverse will start with an ascent of Mt Washington (6288′), followed by Mt Monroe (5385′) and Mt Franklin (4904′).    Mount Washington is the highest peak in the eastern US and is notorious for inclement weather.  There is avalanche risk, no glaciation, and shouldnt be any altitude issues.  The largest risk is exposure.  The highest wind speed ever recorded on earth was documented at the observatory on the summit.  Once Mt Washington is climbed, then there will likely be a night stay at the “lake of the clouds” hut (which is supposedly the nicest hut on the appalachian trail).  The AT joins up with this traverse around this hut (though it does not summit Washington).  We then continue along the AT for the remainder of the trip and should be able to complete it in a shorter amount of time.  Weather is always an unknown and could add lots of delays.  Additionally, there are specific winter routes up Washington (I believe Lions Head instead of the standard tuckerman’s ravine) but this will need to be further researched. 

 For cardio preparedness I run 6 miles 4days a week (8 minute miles or less), I try and bike once a week weather permitting, I try to go to the rock gym once a week, I do yoga once a week.  I occasionally go to the traditional gym for core strength training but normally the other stuff I do takes care of most of that.  I do pack work with a 65-70# pack climbing stairs and outdoor hills once or twice a week, getting up to 3 times a week before the climb.  This particular climb shouldnt be as strenuous as that prep level, but I am using this as the precursor climb to my Ecuador Volcanoes trip through alpine ascents

Links to Topo/Trail map

Mount Washington and surrounding Topo Map

Mount Washington and Surrounding Trail Map

 I just finished the biography of Richard Feynman and found that he used a float tank during his battle with cancer.  The only downside I see with these tanks is that they are generally operated by hippies or pseudo-hippies who are looking to get virtually high without any drugs or some sort of holistic healing quackery. 

 Joe Rogan (fear factor) has a youtube video about his float tank (cost $13k).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEjTXX2rHgA

Here is a list of places which have float tanks.  Some of these sub-links are broken

http://unames.com/floating/where.htm

Who is your choice for President? 

After reading this article on CNN’s political ticker: http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/02/11/huckabee-washington-state-vote-like-the-soviet-union/  I couldnt help but think that Mike Huckabee was parrotting one of Ty Webb’s better lines in Caddyshack (as listed below).  I personally think this country would be better run with Ty than Mike, though it would likely be more disorganized.  On the upside, skinny-skiing would be the national sport.

From CaddyShack 

 Danny Noonan: I gotta go to college.
Ty Webb: You don’t have to go to college. This isn’t Russia. Is this Russia? This isn’t Russia.

     I know other people out there are sushi fans.   Some of you probably want to try making sushi yourself but are intimidated by the process.  Its pretty simple once you have some guidance.   There are three key ingredients:  sashimi grade fish, rice, and a quality knife.

Sashimi Grade Fish

I stopped at a few sushi restaurants after I got the idea to make my own sushi.  I asked the chefs where they got their fish from and I received very ambiguous answers like ’some guy’,'chicago fish market’, or ‘columbus fish market’.  I would not be buying in any type of decent quantity, so the travelling fish markets were out.  Unfortunately I found that there was no good place in Cleveland to buy reliable sashimi grade fish.   Occasionally you can find fish labelled sashimi grade at the grocery store, but it is invariably tuna.   there are quite a few other delicious raw fish which you can eat, so limiting your dinner to tuna only defeats the purpose.  Sushi making is an exercise in diversity, simplicity, presentation, etc. 

Like any new area in your life, terminology can be intimidating.  Sushi takes many words from Japanese, which i am not a master of.  Here are some common ones:

General Sushi Terms 

Sashimi - Raw fish, often served by itself

Sushi - Special Quality short grained Rice

Nigiri - Flat piece of fish laid on top of a bed of rice

Nori - Seaweed paper

Maki - Sushi rice and fish rolled up in nori then often cut into 6 or 8 pieces. 

Fish Types

Maguro - Tuna (most popular because of lack of ‘fishy’ taste.  good virgin sampler)

Sake - Salmon

Unagi - Freshwater Barbequed Eel

Hamachi - Yellowtail

Tako - Octopus

Ebi - Shrimp

Mackerel - Saba

     Now that you have a basic grasp of the terms, where do you buy the fish?  Luckily there is a great site called Catalina Offshore Products where you can buy all these varieties of fish and more. They even have complete sushi party sets which deliver all the fish and accessories you need to host a perfect party. Having used them a few times, I will vouch for the fact their fish is of high quality. Many times at a restaurant, the fish will sit in their refridgeration units for a few days causing it to taste poor. Catalina ships the fish frozen via next-day delivery to ensure premium freshness. Thaw the fish in your refridgerator for a few hours and you are ready to start.

Rice

Sushi grade rice you can buy in many places.  Make sure it is short grained.  You can check out Whole Foods, Wild Oats, or any more boutique food store to find it.  Make sure to also have a rice cooker.  These you can find for cheap at wal-mart.   Before you put the rice in the rice cooker, rinse it thoroughly to get all of the dust off of it.  The water will be milky as you rinse it.  Keep rinsing until it is mostly clear.  At this point start cooking it.  Once you have finished cooking it, add a seasoning packet from Catalina to the mixture.  Mix thoroughly.  You can season the rice yourself, but I prefer the ease of the all-in-one packet.   Now that the rice is ready, you are ready to start slicing some cold dead fish. 

Knife & Fish Prep

    Having a quality knife is key.  Fish is tough to slice through and you need a super sharp knife with a long beveled edge to slice correctly.  I picked up a special sashimi knife at TJ Maxx for $20.  I also bought a knife sharpener stick because keeping it sharp, including sharpening during your prep at times, is essential.  It should be so sharp that gently running your thumb across the blade from side to side should produce a noticeable roughness.  Dont cut yourself, no one likes blood in their food and you look like an idiot.  I’ve only had one cutting incident and it involved someone reaching in to grab a nigiri while i was cutting.  I ended up spearing them.  If you cant find a good knife, google for sashimi knife.  You should be able to find a decent one.  Made in Japan is generally better I think.  The other key regarding the knife is that besides keeping it very sharp at all times you are cutting is to keep it clean.  When you start cutting, the blade gets gummed with rice, fish, etc.  Its best to have a small towel soaked with vinegar handy to wipe down the knife between messy cuts.  If there is too much garbage on the blade, it will effectively dull and your fish cut will be difficult or impossible.

Now that you have the knife ready to go, get out the fish and form it into easily cuttable blocks.  If you are making nigiri, you should be cutting evenly sized slices that fit just over the bed of rice.  You also must cut against the grain of the fish.  The grain is the fatty striations which run down the fish. Its very easy to see in salmon and easy to see in tuna.  The cut you make should be as close to perpendicular to the fatty lines to ensure an even slice.  Getting the motion down right for the slice is tough.  You need to practice and you will mess up.  It is best to do it in one clean motion down the length of the knife and try to avoid a “sawing” motion if at all possible.  If you find yourself sawing, the knife is probably too dull or needs to be wiped.   Dont worry about wasting fish by cutting it into a block.  It is best to have the perfectly shaped nigiri piece.  I use the excess I cut off for sashimi or maki later. 

   To make maki, you will need a small roller.  You can buy one from catalina offshore.  Put a sheet of Nori down, put a bed of rice and some fish bits then roll up the nori around the bed.  You want to arrange the nori, rice, and fish so that it rolls up like a cigar.  Practice makes perfect and you will get this wrong a few times.  I wet the end of the Nori with water to seal up the roll.  Now you have a long tube of maki.  Cut it in 6 or 8 pieces depending on length and serve. 

 Sushi isnt that hard, you will be having fun in no time!

  I am happy to announce the Beta launch of TextShark, the gold standard for Mobile Affiliate Promotions.  TextShark was launched out of a collaboration between myself and Jeremy Enke (http://www.jeremyenke.com).  I am excited to work with Jeremy closely on this product as he is an affiliate marketing wizard and shares my work ethic.  When you have two skilled people working in concert, expect great things!

    TextShark has been in development for more than half a year by the excellent team at Pre23 technologies (http://www.pre23.com).   TextShark is focused on giving affiliate marketers the ability to process micropayments for various products and services by capitalizing on the ubiquity of text messaging to act as an information gateway and payment system.   TextShark uses premium rate text messaging to monetize these products and services. 

      We are the first site to intersect the affiliate networking model with the text messaging micropayment solution.  The goal of TextShark is to enable affiliates to capitalize on promotions without the need to accept credit cards or other cumbersome and trust-oriented payment devices.  The payment ingress is as simple as sending in a text message.   With the ubiquity of Short Message Service (SMS) or Text Messaging, most of the world has the ability to use this payment solution.  Our intention is to enable affiliates to market their own creative promotions and use TextShark to provide the backend network. 

      Currently, TextShark is enabled in most of the EU and the UK.  Here is the coverage list:

Australia (Telstra, Optus, Vodafone)
Austria (Mobilekom, One, Tmobile, Telering, Drei)
Belgium (Proximus, Mobistar, Base)
Denmark (Tdc, Sonofon, Telia, Orange, Tele2)
Finland (Dna, Radiolinja, Sonera, Elisa)
France (Bouygues, Orange, Sfr)
Germany (Victorvox, Mobilkom, O, Vodafone, E, Tmobile, Talkline, Debitel)
Greece (Vodafone, Cosmote, Qtelecom, Telestet)
Ireland (O, Vodafone, Meteor)
Netherlands (Kpn, Vodafone, Tmobile, O, Orange)
Norway (Telenor, Netcom, Tele2)
Portugal (Optimus, Telecel, Tmn)
Spain (Telefonica, Amena, Vodafone)
Sweden (Telia, Tele2, Telenor, Three)
Switzerland (Swisscoma, Sunrisea, Orangea)
UK (O2, Vodafone, Tmobile, Orange, Three)

 During Beta, we are offering affiliates 30% lifetime residual commission on TextShark revenues.  Our normal affiliate rate will be 20% once the Beta period has ended.  We look at the commission bump as incentive for affiliates to help us fine-tune the product offering.  Affiliate signup can be found at http://www.textshark.com/affiliate_registration.php 

 We also offer a forum for technical and marketing help: http://www.textshark.com/forums as well as a Blog for updates from Jeremy and myself http://www.textshark.com/blog.  We look forward to helping affiliates monetize their products and services in the years to come. 

Sometimes I forget I am part of the world and live off the fumes of america: make money, buy things, build things, lather, rinse, repeat. These are highly individualistic goals. “The Grump” seems to find that happiness is found where there is a strong social fabric and context, where people are interested in taking care of each other and legitimately empathize with others in their community.

I think the definition of social context has evolved with the internet. Many of my friends I correspond with over the internet primarily because of their locations. I can fufill many of my social needs on the internet, but face to face contact is still important in other communities to which I am a member.

Death is the ultimate solitude and perhaps the social fabric alleviates that fear in the same way your mother made you feel better when you were sick. If you believe no one cares about you, or you care about no one, you are effectively dead.

Another point mentioned in the article is that Qatar, which has the highest per-capita GDP, isnt that happy. The extra money leads to a breakdown of community and build-up of walls, whether socio-economic or physical. The walling off of a person from another is an unhappy exile.

I would be interested to read a scientific study on the correlation of social ‘connectedness’ to happiness. Happiness is tough to measure quantitatively, but you could probably find excellent data on ‘connectedness’ by plumbing the social network sites like facebook and myspace.

Time to make more friends!

 I recently bought a watch which was far too big for my wrist.  Having had this happen before, my first thought was to take it to a jewelry shop to have it resized.  That would have been smart.  My frugal and investigative side took over and I thought to myself, ‘Hey, all it involves is popping the retaining pins out of the watch and remove the links, why should I pay a jeweler $20?’

        The first step was to check out google.  I found a watch repair site which seemed to have enough information on tools/facilities.  I found it humorous that the watch they dissected actually has easy pop-out pins on the bottom so you dont need to go throught his process.  Regardless, I purchased a set of jewelers screwdrivers at wal-mart for $.97.  Taking them home to start the repair, I found the smallest driver was still too big to pop the pins.  At this point, I started to get creative.

    Items I tried:

1.     Paper clip - nowhere near the correct tensile strength
2.     1/16″ allen wrench:  good tensile strength, still too large
3.     Dart Tip - Good size at the point, but the tapered end expands too quickly, couldnt pop the pin all the way out
4.     Awl -  This worked, but required an amazing amount of force.  Usually when I brute force something, I assume I have done something wrong.

The basic concept is to force the awl into the hole until the pin is forced out the other side.  You will hear a distinct “pop” when it is freed.  After it is far enough out to pull with needlenose pliers, you can remove the pin and link.  The pin sticks at the outside portion of the link on both sides, so it will take a little force to finish the last 10%.   I also found that you should pop all the pins you intend to remove first before removing the links.  Without a proper vise, I was using the watch band to generate resistance against the Awl.   Ideally you would use a small vise and pound the awl with a hammer.  Regardless, once the band is broken, its hard to generate much pushback against the awl.   I ended up removing two links, trying it on without pushing the pins fully back, then removing another link. 

The watch fits great now, though next time I would probably take it to a jeweler so I dont flush my investment. 

 I have extensive experience with the Asterisk PBX/Phone switch and I continue to be impressed with the quality of software and how it has the ability to revolutionize telecommunications services.   Asterisk is really a shining example of the power of open source softwaere.  I am not particularly beholden to open source as the only religion in software development, but for particular types of services, it seems to be successful. 

  To produce a similar IVR system in the past may have taken you months and upwards of $20,000 for all the dedicated hardware and specially licensed software.  With Asterisk and VOIP you can be fully functional in days.   Also, the quality of VOIP service and underlying internet service has really improved in recent years to the point that most people cant tell that their calls are routed over VOIP networks.   The thing I like most about VOIP is instant provisioning.  I can purchase and route a DID or 800 number instantly over the public internet or private trunks without any special and cumbersome additional telecommunications services like private leased lines.   Instant number provisioning and the flexibility of the Asterisk phone switch combine to create many new services which were not able to be provided previously in the antiquated PSTN.   

It seems like databases have been mostly abstracted to XML frontends as well for non-trusted interfaces.  XML is a framework for organizing data usually in a flat text or stream type interface which loads the structured parsing and sorting on the user application instead of the database interface.   

More information on Asterisk can be found at http://www.asterisk.org  with a particularly easy installation at http://www.trixbox.com

More information on XML can be found at http://www.xml.com/ 

I have thought that the big breakthrough would come in solar as radiant heat seems to physically offer the most energy potential; however, the current modes of solar power production didnt seem very efficient.  Before I heard about Nanosolar, I was thinking that some new method of coverting radiant energy to electricity would have to be devised to achieve the lower KWH cost. 

Nanosolar took a different approach.   Instead of devising a new method to harvest energy from the sun, they made the current methods of production significantly more efficient.  Quoting from their website “Nanosolar has developed proprietary process technology that makes it possible to produce 100x thinner solar cells 100x faster.  “.   They claim to be able to produce energy cheaper than coal.

If this claim is correct, it is not only responsible but profitable to use solar technology.   That would be the news the earth is waiting for. 

A more informative blog on the topic can be found at:

http://www.celsias.com/2007/11/23/nanosolars-breakthrough-technology-solar-now-cheaper-than-coal/

 One of the other articles i was reading made reference to the tunguska incident in siberia at the beginning of the twentieth century.  I dont think it was widely reported because siberia is so remote, but a large asteroid hit the earth and leveled a great swath of land with the nuclear equivalent of a 20megaton blast. 

 Here is the wikipedia of the tunguska incident:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event

 Here is a link to an article on the recent asteroid:  http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/Story.asp?Article=207314&Sn=WORL&IssueID=30316

 I read an estimate that one of these large rocks (800M+) hits the earth about every 30k years.   Any amateur astronomer looking at the face of the moon knows that the earth is very proficient at covering its craters. 

-Brad