Below are the log entries and other content posted on
June 13.
Pete's Log: Log Entry 65
Entry #65,
(Coding, Hacking, & CS stuff)
(posted when I was 20 years old.)
work on yanck is going well. url and command line parsing seems to be in order. basic sockets stuff is working. gonna
modularize the heck out of this thing, maybe there can be yanck and yancklib. heheh. working on data structures now. stack, priority queue,
and doubly linked list. that should suffice for now.
Pete's Log: All Your Road Trip Are Belong To Us
Entry #1037,
(Travel)
(posted when I was 22 years old.)
Or: "the American (south-) west for the attention deficient"
Replenishment of the Soul ...
Over the past twenty days I have driven 6507.2 miles through 13
states, checked out four national parks and various state and city
parks, become a Sugar Ray fan, visited a bunch of friends and family,
spent some quality time with Annie, taken over 200 megs of pictures,
and overall had a ton of fun.
I've witnessed the varied beauty and wonder of nature on a small
corner of God's earth, and I've witnessed the diversity of human
activity thereupon. And I've taken detailed notes.
Pictures for the trip will be posted as soon as I make it to campus
and can upload them at a reasonable speed.
Day 1 (Thursday, May 24, 2001)
Miles: 740.8; Trip Total: 740.8
The plan was simple: be on I-80 by 10:00, and follow it west until
Omaha, Nebraska, then find B.J. Rozman. What happened instead: I was
on I-80 by 10:45, then took a detour: I80 -> I294 -> I90 -> I39 -> I88
-> I80. Due to construction and congestion in Chicago, I missed the
spot where, in order to stay on I80, I had to exit the road I was
on. Oh well.
In Iowa, I felt that the state of Michigan had been evacuated, I saw
so many cars with Michigan plates. There was a while where I was
seeing many more Michigan plates than Iowa plates. Something must have
been afoot.
I Arrived in Omaha at about 21:30 and easily found Offutt Air Force
Base, where I met up with B.J. Met several of his friends (Jerry,
Andrea, Michelle, and Romeo) who seemed like very fun people. B.J. was
leaving for Turkey for a couple months friday morning, so he was going
to stay up all night, and sleep on the plane. The remaining details of
my visit there are unimportant, but I had an entertaining time. At
about 2:15 I was still wide awake, so I decided I was going to make it
west of Lincoln, NE. Then about 3:30, my halfhearted attempts to find
a motel room fail, so I drive another couple dozen miles, then pull
over to a rest area and curl up in the back seat.
Day 2
Miles: 708.8; Trip Total: 1449.6
At 9:30 I awakened from my five hour power nap. I hopped into the
front seat and off I was again. But I was actually surprised at how
well I slept, given the circumstances. Good to know for future
reference. I had but one goal: to be in Crested Butte by 20:00
mountain time, for the premiere showing of Annie's movie "The Pudding
Project" ... I knew it was going to be close. The drive across
Nebraska was uneventful, other than a switch from central time to
mountain time, but I got all emotional when I crossed the
Colorado border, and then even more once I could first see mountains
on the horizon. It doesn't take much to make me happy, just huge
piles of rock, really. I tried to take some pictures out of the car
window while driving, but most of them didn't turn out too well, so I
discarded them. But a few of the later ones turned out pretty good. I
took I70 west out of Denver since I wanted to get home quick. I'd
never driven that road in K2, it was exciting. Having only driven that
route in cars with big engines before, trying to convince K2 to climb
those hills really made me appreciate just how big the climb right out
of Denver is. I had a fun game: just how high can I take fourth gear?
Not that I got to really find out, there were times where even fourth
gear wouldn't be able to get above 55 miles an hour. But I was
definitely reminded as to why I'd bought a manual transmission (other
than the obvious fact that they're more fun).
Oh and I noticed that I was passing Buffalo Bill's grave right outside
Denver, after having passed by some other big Buffalo Bill site
somewhere in Nebraska. You'd think I was taking a Buffalo Bill tour or
something.
I no longer buy anything about the economy going downhill. Just about
every truck I saw had a sign on the back saying they were looking for
drivers. Driving a semi doesn't seem like a bad fallback career option
to me: I like driving and have no problem sleeping in the back of my
vehicle.
Then I almost took Cottonwood pass across the divide, before
remembering that I'd probably abused K2 enough for one day. So I took
Monarch pass instead.
Made it to Crested Butte just in time for Annie's movie. It was a very
entertaining film, I'm proud of Annie, it's apparent a lot of work
went into the movie. My only suggestion would be that they should've
spell-checked the credits. But there was a pretty good turnout, they
didn't completely fill the Center for the Arts, but there was a good
crowd.
Then I ended up hanging out at Danica's house with Annie and Danica
for a while. That was amusing. Danica had a Me First and the Gimme
Gimme's cd. We listened to it. It rocks.
Day 3
Miles: 22.7; Trip Total: 1472.4
I slept in today. It was great. Then I got into town just in time to
see Pearl Harbor with Mamie, Annie, and Clay. I thought it was a good
movie. I felt that the love story was overdone, at times it detracted
from the movie, but overall the film was very enjoyable. The action
sequences were definitely pretty amazing, I thought. I don't think
it lived up to my expectations, though. But that's ok. One thing I
definitely liked was the way I felt they tried to show the human side
of the Japanese, that the Japanese were not simply a force of evil.
After the movie, Clay ditched us, but we ran into Danica. After
grabbing some pizza, Annie, Danica and I came to the condo, where
Annie showed me where my Less Than Jake "Greased" cd was. I'd been
missing it for some time, and was ecstatic to be reunited with it. We
then listened to the cd. It was as good as I remembered.
Then Annie and I met up with a bunch of other family and friends at
the Rozman's for a celebration of birthdays for Mark, Evelyn, and
Richard. I got to see a bunch of people I've not seen in a while (at
least not since the last time I was in CB). I let Annie play with my
camera, so I've got a bunch of pictures of people. While there I also
watched Game 1 of the Stanley Cup series, Avs won 5-0. Woo!
Then Annie and I headed to town where we threw a football around in
the streets in the dark. After a while we got tired of the dark, so we
threw it around inside the post office for a while. Then we found
Danica yet again, and she threw the football around with us for a
while, before we decided to play hackey sack instead. So we played
hacky sack in the dark on the streets of CB. Various people (most of
whom knew Annie) stopped and played with us a little. Good stuff. Fun day.
Oh my God, I love the stars. They're so beautiful. I need to live
someplace where I can regularly see the stars.
Day 4
Miles: 35.3; Trip Total: 1508.3
Today I went to mass, where the graduating seniors in the parish were
recognized. Then we went to Annie's graduation, which lasted longer
than I'd have liked, but that's the way these things usually
work. Then a reception afterwards at the Depot. So congratulations to
Annie, she's now all graduated and stuff. Then we ended up at Moon's
house: cousins Mark and Clay; Annie and her friends Moon, Danica, and
Nina; and Nina's friend Emi (sp?) from Brazil (who spoke excellent
English, and who wants to go to Notre Dame). An entertaining time was
had.
I got a lot of good pictures today. Many of these pictures were gotten
by letting other people play with the camera.
Day 5
Miles: 36.2; Trip Total: 1544.5
I think the highpoint of today was watching "A Knight's Tale." This
movie kicked so much ass, it was everything I was hoping for and
more. This movie was one blatant anachronism. Basically a teenage soap
opera type of movie, set in medieval times where jousting has become
the national pasttime. This movie blended all the best elements of
your typical teenage romantic comedy with elements of NASCAR,
professional wrestling, and fake medievalism. It rocked. I laughed so
hard, so often. "Well, the Pope may be French, but Jesus was English!"
And I have to admit, considering what this movie was, I thought the
acting was more than decent, and the action sequences were definitely
cool.
Before the movie, I went by the Alpineer and bought some camping
supplies. I'm psyched to own some of this gear myself now.
After the movie, we went to the Rozman's for dinner. A fun time.
Day 6
Miles: 566.2; Trip Total: 2111.1
Early departure from Crested Butte. Got K2 serviced at John Roberts,
had breakfast with Mamie, Mom, and Annie, went shopping, paid my car
insurance, and then Annie and I hit the road. We took US 50 west out
of Gunnison, stopped briefly at the Black Canyon, then caught I-70
west out of Grand Junction. Stopped in Green River, UT for lunch at a
nice little campground. Also played some hacky sack there. Then we
drove all the way to the west end of I-70. I always thought it went
all the way to the coast, turns out it just dead-ends somewhere in
Utah. We then grabbed I-15 south and made our way to Zion National
Park, where we are camping tonight. On our way to Zion from I-15, we
drove through a little town called Virgin, which we found quite
amusing, especially Annie, and especially when we passed a store
called "Virgin Goods".
I discovered today that K2's cruise control will give up if it falls
below ten miles an hour lower than it was set to. While this
definitely makes sense, I still find it kind of irritating, since if
you're going up a hill, you may not notice that you're gradually
losing speed, until all of a sudden the cruise control turns off and
the car slows down in a major hurry as the engine suddenly finds
itself with no gas.
Day 7
Miles: 281.3; Trip Total: 2392.4
Zion: a Hebrew word that means "A place of refuge" or some such. Zion
National Park is one of my favorite places of the world. In the middle
of the desert of south-west Utah, the Virgin River has cut a deep
canyon into the earth. The Virgin River is, I believe, the steepest
river in the U.S. and the Zion Canyon is filled with a great diversity
of ecosystems and life. Truly an amazing place.
It has been far too long since I slept outside. Woke up at 8:30 after
a great night of sleep. We had breakfast, packed and cleaned up our
campsite, and began a busy touring schedule of Zion National
Park. They've added a convenient shuttle system to the park since I
was last there in order to cut down on traffic. We took the shuttle up
to the Zion Lodge and hiked the full Emerald Pool trail, about three
miles. We then had lunch at the Lodge. After lunch we rode all the way
to the last shuttle stop, and did the Riverside Walk up into the
narrower canyon. After that, we rode the shuttle back down, stopping
at most stops to look around. At the Weeping Rock stop we hiked up to
the Weeping Rock. By 16:30 we left Zion.
We arrived in Las Vegas at about 18:30 local time (which is now
Pacific time), grabbed some food, then drove down the strip right
as it was getting dark. We parked somewhere near the southern end of
the strip and walked up one side and back down the other, spending
about 3.5 hours admiring the various shows going on in front of
casinos.
We finally left Vegas and took US 95 north for about 66 miles before
finding a place to camp: a rest area near Amargosa Valley, NV.
Day 8
Miles: 549.6; Trip Total: 2942.0
The tent got far too warm, far too early for a good night of sleep. I
ended up waking up after maybe four hours of sleep. So after breaking
down camp and such, my first order of business was to buy a map of
California. I had decided to take US 95 north out of Vegas because I
knew San Francisco was generally northwest of Las Vegas, and US 95 was
the only major road out of Vegas going northwest.
Once I had a map of California, I was able to formulate a better plan
of attack of how to drive west from Amargosa Valley to get to San
Francisco. I ended up deciding to take US 6 into California, then
catch US 395 to CA 120, which led through Yosemite National Park. So
we lunched in Yosemite and looked around some as we drove through. CA
120 was a really fun drive, not just through Yosemite, but also up to
Yosemite and down again afterwards. Interstates are cool and all when
you're in a hurry, but the smaller highways have so much more
character.
CA 120 dumped us into the San Francisco area interstate system, I
think we took I 205 to I580 to CA 13 into Berkeley. Then without map
assistance I managed to find my way to the UC Berkeley campus, I was
impressed. After that, however, I had some issues finding Fort
Awesome, since nobody there was answering the phone and since the sun
was low and making it impossible to read street signs. But I found the
place, and then found Perk and Frick, who went to dinner with Annie
and I at a Persian Restaurant, which was quite good. We then met up
with Arun on Telegraph and wandered around a bit before returning to
Fort Awesome, where we lounged briefly, before all those with real day
jobs decided to go to sleep.
Oh, and I'm not entirely sure I approve of how CA and NV do mile
markers. It seems like they may be more informative, but I've found
the markers to be harder to read, especially in the dark, than the
standard white on green. Also, I don't like the fact that the mile
counts reset in every county instead of only at state borders.
Day 9
Miles: 41.6; Trip Total: 2983.6
Today we slept in, which was nice. Nobody was around when Annie and I
woke up, so we got into the car and drove to Alameda. I was actually
impressed by my own city driving and navigation skills, I found my way
without much trouble. I've improved much since my first haphazard
attempts to drive in traffic. From Alameda we caught the ferry to San
Francisco. There we ate lunch before wandering around Pier 39 and
such. Then we took the tour of the USS Pampanito, a WWII submarine I'd
toured the last time I was here. Still fun. Then we looked into
catching a ferry to Alcatraz, but they were all sold out until after
the last ferry back to Alameda, so we simply returned to Alameda and
drove back to Berkeley. Nobody was at Fort Awsome, so we bummed around
town a bit, I am working on improving my understanding of Berkeley
geography. Then we found people. Arun brought Emily to the kommune. So
we all went out to dinner at a brewing company on Telegraph. They had
some good beer, and the food was pretty good too. And we played some
foosball on a Tornado foosball table! Then we just hung out at the
kommune for a while.
Day 10
Miles: 39.7; Trip Total: 3023.3
Upon waking up, Perk, Annie and I headed to UC Computer on Telegraph
to help Perk with some ppp issues on his computer. I got ppp working,
but the modem was not being consistent, so Perk's gonna get a new
modem. Afterwards, we had lunch at a Thai restaurant, then bummed
around Telegraph a bit. I bought a Sum 41 and a Sugar Ray CD at
Rasputin. Then we headed into San Francisco, and bummed around Golden
Gate Park a bit, playing on the playground equipment, playing hackey
sack, and watching a large drum circle, among other things. Then we
picked up Katie Moor from a BART station, then met Arun, Julia, and
Frick at Amoeba Music on Haight. I bought another Sum 41 CD there,
since the one I'd bought in Berkeley didn't have the song I really
liked. We bummed around Haight a while, then went to Kan Zaman for
dinner, where Emily met us. After dinner we headed to Golden Gate Park
again and did some massive group hacking. We even had some passers-by
join us. Fun. Then we returned home for the night.
Driving in San Francisco was interesting. Starting a stick, when on a
steep hill at a stoplight, with a car pulled up right behind you is
definitely interesting. I stalled K2 for the first time of the road
trip in San Francisco. But not on a hill. In a perfectly flat area
with no traffic: I had left K2 in third gear after stopping at a stop
sign. Doh! But I managed all the hills just fine. I can see, though,
how if you lived in a city like San Fran, you might want to drive an
automatic.
Day 11
Miles: 251.7; Trip Total: 3275.0
Today got off to a slow start. After sleeping in again, Annie and I
headed to Telegraph once again, where we bought stuff for Mamie at an
anime store. Then after a lengthy departure process, we finally were
on the road again. We drove north of the bay where we caught CA 1 (or
101) across the Golden Gate bridge. We then just stayed on CA 1 south
for a while, driving right along the ocean most the time. CA 1 is a
very fun road. We stopped in Monterey and watched Shrek. I was
expecting a funny movie with excellent CG animation, and that's what I
got, though the humor was more subtle and intelligent at points than I
would have expected. Good flick. We then drove south a while longer
and at about midnight pulled over into Kirk Creek campground in Los
Padres National Forest, right by the ocean. The moon is nearly full,
the stars are out, and we can hear the ocean. Beautiful.
Oh, and K2 passed the 10,000 mile mark today. Yay K2!
Day 12
Miles: 483.4; Trip Total: 3758.4
On the road again. We continue south on CA 1, with frequent stops to
check out the scenery. We stop at this place "Hearst Castle" since
we'd seen lots of signs for it. It turns out to have a huge, full
parking lot, and a giant visitors center, crowded with people. Tour
buses are filling up, and we're without a clue as to what this place
is. But the visitors center has nice bathrooms, so already the stop is
worthwhile. We finally discover that way up the hillside is a huge
castle, built by William Randolph Hearst, some wealthy publisher
guy. We left without actually seeing the castle, but I've added this
to my list of places to return to and explore some day. We had lunch
at Hearst State Beach.
Back on CA 1, I had an odd encounter: there was some construction
going on, and I pulled up to a flagger who was pointing a stop sign in
my direction. After some time, during which no cars came from the
opposite direction, he flipped his sign to say slow, and I
proceeded. After a couple curves, I encounter a red convertible going
the other way, in this one-lane area. The flaggers had failed us! Can
nothing in this world be depended on?
We stopped by the UCSB campus when we drove through Santa Barbara, and
Annie talked to the UCSB people briefly.
In Santa Monica, we stopped by a friend of Annie's, Jesse Zwick, son
of Ed Zwick, who is apparently a film person of some note, having been
involved in the production of Traffic and Shakespeare in Love, among
other things. Apparently Ed Zwick was actually nominated for an
academy award recently.
After a brief drive around downtown LA, we headed east, away from our
friend, the pacific. We made our way to Joshua Tree, which is now
apparently a National Park, and no longer merely a National Monument,
as it was the last time I was here. The moon appears to be full and is
quite bright, which is cool, since the last time I was in Joshua
tree was during a full moon as well, and the place certainly is
memorable at night during a bright moon.
Day 13
Miles: 491.4; Trip Total: 4249.8
I had some issues today with my left knee: all the clutching I've been
doing over the past two weeks has led to a bit of soreness in my
knee. But a little stretching seems to have fixed the problem.
This morning we bummed around Joshua Tree a little bit before heading
towards Arizona. I had a fun time looking for route 66, since it's not
anywhere on the maps I have and I didn't want to try and look for it
on my way out of LA. But in Needles, CA, I found route 66. Trying to
follow it, it seems it consists only of brief sections of pavement at
a time. So we stayed mainly on I40 instead, but had constant
encounters with route 66. Some day I'll download directions on how to
actually stay on route 66, and will attempt to follow it in its
entirety. For now, it's fun just to get a general idea of what it
does.
We arrived at the Grand Canyon sometime before 19:00, so we got to see
it in the evening sun. I must say, the Grand Canyon certainly lives up
to its name, the thing is enormous. It's cool. I think the Grand
Canyon National Park is also the most developed National Park I've
ever visited. It's extraordinary. But I guess the place probably does
get a good chunk of visitors...
We camped at Ten-X campground in the Kaibab National Forest, right
outside the Grand Canyon National Park.
Day 14
Miles: 31.2; Trip Total: 4281.0
Haha! Friends, I have seen the Grand Canyon, and let me tell you, it
is Grand! Today we just bummed around on the South Rim, taking the
free shuttles to various points along the rim. I quickly gave up
trying to capture the canyon in pictures, though I still ended the day
having taken a decent number of pictures. The canyon is simply one of
the most breath-taking, awe-inspiring, and especially humbling sites I
have witnessed. Words can not do it justice, and simply spending one
day at the edge just isn't enough. I really want to come back some day
and hike down to the Colorado river. Someday I will return and give
the Grand Canyon a proper visit. But for now, I'm glad simply to have
seen the thing.
We also got some quality hackysack time in, while waiting for the
shuttle at the many stops we got off at. I think I may actually be
improving a little. At the end of the day, we stopped by the visitors
center and bookstore, and I bought two silly items: A National Parks
Passport, which is a very touristy thing, but still cool to have, and
"Desert Solitaire" by Edward Abbey, which is a silly thing for me to
buy, since Abbey's political views kind of frighten me, but it's been
good reading so far ... more on that at some later date, hopefully.
After dinner and reading a little, we headed into Tusayan to see if
there was anything exciting going on. The best we could find was a
McDonalds, which actually turned out kinda interesting. It was almost
like a fancy restaurant inside, with antique decorations everywhere,
and a fake fireplace. From where we sat it didn't even feel like a
McDonald's since we couldn't see the counter and such. Crazy. We got
McFlurrys as a dessert of sorts. Then the bathrooms were interesting
too, the toilets had signs attached to them saying "reclaimed water --
do not drink" which is definitely an odd thing, it makes me wonder how
many people consider drinking the toilet water at McDonalds ...
Day 15
Miles: 432.0; Trip Total: 4713.0
We departed from the Grand Canyon at about 9:00 this morning. At
Flagstaff, AZ, we again encountered our friends Route 66 and I-40. We
took I-40 east to Albuquerque, stopping for a while at Meteor Crater,
AZ. Definitely a neat place, it's a huge hole in the ground, the
crater of a meteor impact some 50,000 or so years ago.
Though privately owned, the Meteor Crater site is run very well as a
public site. There's a museum, free lectures and guided tours, and, of
course, the crater. And apparently all the Apollo astronauts trained
at the crater.
We got into Albuquerque before 17:00. We were greeted by Oma and Papa,
and Annie was promptly informed she had to go shopping: Mom had set up
an interview for her at some school in Santa Fe, and she'd need proper
attire. So we went to the mall. I hung out at a bookstore while Oma
and Annie shopped. After that was successfully completed, we returned,
had dinner, and then I had my first shower since leaving the Bay
Area. It was luxurious. Then Annie and I headed to Bob's place and
hung out there for a little while, then we found Brian's apartment and
hung out with him for a little while.
Slowly, the trip is coming to an end. Already, I'm done camping. I
miss it already.
Day 16
Miles: 4.4; Trip Total: 4717.4
We got up bright and early this morning to visit the College of Santa
Fe. Oma and Papa drove us down there, we toured the campus, and then
Annie spoke with some people there. Seems they've got a good program
for theater and film stuff, but I'm not really the person to judge
such things. The campus was kind of interesting. Their main building
and library and dorms were kind of the typical thing I think one would
expect at a small college like this. Then they had this really
impressive new art building that was really neat architecturally. Then
behind that they had old army barracks and trailers that they were
using as the rest of their buildings. Apparently the land the school
is on used to be an army base. Definitely an odd contrast of
architectures.
Once we got back into Albuquerque, we stopped by Zuna and checked out
the new equipment they got since I was last there. We stopped by the
Sisson's again later that evening, so I got to see Ryan, along with
the rest of the family again. Then we found Brian again and went to a
Denny's and had a good meal there.
Day 17
Miles: 418.3; Trip Total: 5135.7
Took off this morning from Albuquerque, leaving Annie behind. She's
been fun to have around on the trip. A last minute decision was made
to call Isabelle Howe, and I ended up driving to Lubbock, TX to visit
her and spend a night. Very cool, Isabelle is a neat person, it's
always fun to visit her, and I think it's been at least three years
since I've seen her.
I stopped in Tucumcari, NM for some supplies, and had a fun
conversation with a woman from Georgia who was on her way to Reno for
some kind of bowling competition. I also saw that the Tucumcari High
School cheerleaders were having a car wash. I was tempted to pull over
for this, but opted not to. Probably for the best.
Arrived in Lubbock at about 16:30. Isabelle, her brother, and his wife
were busy in the backyard putting a new roof over her patio. I got to
witness (and provide trivial aid to) this process.
Later, Isabelle took me on a tour of the Texas Tech campus. I must
say, it is a beautiful campus. Most of the buildings are
architecturally similar, and just look very nice. The campus also
featured a large engineering area, each engineering discipline with a
building of its own, all of them clustered together.
When we got back, game seven of the Stanley cup playoffs was
underway. Colorado won, 3-1. Go Avs! Isabelle's brother and his wife
live near Denver, so the three of us were cheering for the Avalanche.
I've had a great time visiting with Isabelle. I'm really glad I came
this way.
Day 18
Miles: 975.2; Trip Total: 6110.9
Wonder and beauty are everywhere, sometimes you just need to stop and
take the time to look. Since it was recommended by both George
Coppinger and Isabelle Howe that I take a look, I stopped at Palo Duro
Canyon, near Amarillo, TX. Quite a remarkable place. Driving through
the grassy plains of the Texas Panhandle, you encounter some slight
hills and suddenly find this fairly large canyon opening up before
you. I didn't stay long, just long enough to marvel at nature.
Today was for the most part an uneventful driving day. Drove from
Lubbock to St Louis, MO. Left Isabelle's at 8:00, stopped at the
canyon, took a detour between Oklahoma City and Tulsa, had some issues
finding George's place, but in the end I was victorious.
George and I went in search of beer or taco bell, but failed, so 7-11
merchandise it was. Then we watched Dungeons and Dragons, a silly, but
amusing movie.
Day 19
Miles: 0.0; Trip Total: 6110.9
The first day in a long while that I've not driven at least a few
miles. Quite nice. I woke up sometime in the early afternoon, then
after grabbing food headed into downtown St. Louis, where George and I
toured the Anheuser-Busch facilities. George had never done the tour,
despite living in the area for many years now. It was quite fun. The
tour was free, and they give you two free "samples" of beer at the end
of the tour. The samples were actually generous, probably 8 oz cups. A
fun outing.
We then rented a couple movies, following a Matt Lillard theme: SLC
Punk, which is just a great movie, and Wing Commander, which is silly
and such, but amusing in that way. We also watched an episode of
voyager and went to a bar called Harpo's for a little while.
Day 20 (Tuesday, June 12, 2001)
Miles: 396.3; Trip Total: 6507.2
The End. I'm back in South Bend.
George's Dad took us out to lunch. It was fun meeting him, he's an
interesting person. After lunch, we returned to George's place, where
we watched the Series Finale of Star Trek: Voyager. George had it on
tape. It was kind of neat. I'm glad to have seen it.
I left at 16:00 or so. During my first hour of travel, I managed to
drive 25 miles. I never want to live in a place where rush hour is a
regular part of life. The apartement is more or less the same as when
I left it. Except now there's a large pile of mail (the physical kind)
for me to sort through. And I have several hundred email messages to
deal with. I think deletion shall be my savior.
You just can't mess with a man's salad. Word up.
K2
K2 did very well. I came pretty close to doubling the mileage on my
car. I'm very happy with how the trip went. Of little use to others,
but of interest to me is K2's gas mileage, so I'm recording that here
as well:
odo gallons price sale mpg
Mishawaka, IN: 6882 9.363 $1.869 $17.50 37.59
Williamsburg, IA: 7292 10.901 $1.779 $19.39 37.98 *
Alda, NE: 7681 10.262 $1.949 $20.00 35.28 *
Keensburg, CO: 8035 10.031 $1.919 $19.25 40.76
Gunnison, CO: 8453 10.254 $1.999 $20.51 39.60
Joseph, UT: 8830 9.520 $1.799 $17.13 36.24
Las Vegas, NV: 9153 8.912 $1.899 $16.92 34.62
Tonopah, NV: 9397 7.047 $2.049 $14.44 40.30
Berkeley, CA: 9805 10.125 $2.099 $21.25 28.85
Carmel, CA: 10085 9.704 $1.999 $19.40 38.54
Los Angeles, CA: 10460 9.731 $2.239 $21.79 40.31
Needles, CA: 10798 8.385 $2.259 $18.94 35.94
Tusayan, AZ: 11137 9.433 $2.099 $19.80 39.97
Albuquerque, NM: 11551 10.358 $1.699 $17.60 37.13
Amarillo, TX: 11888 9.076 $1.719 $15.60 40.16
Shamrock, TX: 12254 9.113 $1.759 $16.03 39.62
Joplin, MO: 12654 10.095 $1.589 $16.04 39.26
Pontoon Beach, IL: 13036 9.729 $1.799 $17.50
mpg for a particular tank is the distance travelled on that tank,
divided by the amount of fuel added the next time
* these two numbers are slightly off, since the tank wasn't entirely
filled in Alda, NE
So Nathan became the first family member to visit me in Munich. It wasn't a terribly long stay, since he's on a grand tour of Europe, but it was entertaining.
He arrived from Basel Tuesday evening, and we took him directly to Hüttenwirt, as is proper. Wednesday he toured around the city while we worked and then joined us for Ultimate in the English Garden. Since Thursday was a holiday, the Ultimate crew then closed down the Chinese Tower beer garden. A most excellent time.
Nathan left early Thursday. Much too short a trip, but I suspect he enjoyed Munich.
Now it's getting to be time for some more family to show up. :)
Peter Rijks updated his status.
(when I was 30 years old)
Anybody want to go see Social Distortion at Zenith on Monday?
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Made some more progress on the solar library, including an overnight test. Here's what it looks like lit up at night:
I'm pretty happy with it. I didn't take a picture of the light/door sensor jig I put together, but I did get better at soldering Neopixels. The light/sensor unit is composed of 4 sets of 5 Neopixels and the same reed sensor I'd been using. The Neopixels are arranged such that each shelf has 5 pixels on each side. It lights up pretty well. The door sensor seems to work well enough that I already glued the magnet to the door.
I had randomly decided to buy these connectors at Microcenter:
And I was clever enough to use them by cutting one in half and attaching one end to the lights/door sensor and the other end to my prototype board. So it made it easy to install the lights while being able to add/remove the board as needed while testing.
I also realized that to monitor the battery voltage, I would need a voltage divider and there just wasn't room for that on the prototype board I was using. So I moved the project to a perma-proto board which now looks much neater.
I briefly looked into migrating to an ESP32 instead of the ESP8266. The ESP8266 only has one analog input pin. I'd like to monitor both the battery voltage and the input voltage from the solar panel. A couple of my Hackerboxes had ESP32s, but I want to use them in the projects those boxes came with. Hackerbox 62 included an ESP32-S2, which seems promising since it looks to have lower power use than the ESP32. But I couldn't get it working with ESPHome, so I'm sticking with the ESP8266 for now. I'll settle for just knowing the battery voltage for now. My charger board does have signals for "charging" and "done charging" so at least that gives me a little insight on how the solar panel is doing.
The overnight test went well. I did not have the solar panel connected, I just wanted to see how it performed on a full battery.
The temperature in the library is going to be a concern. The battery specs say it's fine to discharge in up to 140 F temperature, but the max charging temperature is 113 F. So I may want to see if I can get the temp down a little. It seems to max out at 120 F so far, but that's still a bit warm. Can you see when a thunderstorm rolled through and brought the temperature down?
The little charging board does support adding a thermistor so it can disable charging the battery when it gets too warm. So I'll probably get one of those.
The voltage dropped from 4.2 to 3.6 over the course of about 26 hours. Which is about half its capacity. So that's not bad. The door was opened several times during the test, which turns the lights on. And notifies us. Jamie made fun of me for running to the front of the house each time to see if someone was actually there.
Anyway, more to do, but I'm happy with this project so far.
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June 13 may be the most verbose day in log history. Helped by having the longest entry ever, but also featuring a good number of entries over the years. So in order to be able to properly link to it, I made a quick update so that my On This Day page can be used for arbitrary dates and not just today.
My review of the Titan A.E. soundtrack when I acquired it was "it's decent. probably good background music for coding." My recollection is I listened to it a lot as coding music afterwards, but at some point managed to forget about it. I think it's been a decade or more since I listened to it. I just rediscovered it and I still think it makes for good coding music.
In other musical resurrections, I recreated my gpm and tsm CDs as playlists. I still remember what gpm and tsm stand for, but I apparently also had plans for CDs titled avm, drm, prm, cbm and dhm. I have no clue what any of those stand for and I also can't find any evidence that I ever made them.
