New Year's Day In-Ko-Pah Hike

The hiking group headed to In-Ko-Pah for a great hike to border monument 261, Blue Angels Peak, along the border fence and back through the Valley of the Moon.

On the way to Blue Angels Peak

One of many interesting rock formations

Blue Angel Peak

Blue sky, brown dirt

Rock

Backcountry Water Update

Red Hat retired their old version of Openshift and replaced it with the Kubernetes-based version 3.  However, they also took away some features in the free plan that I was using, such as cron jobs.
So I spent the last couple weeks doing the migration.

• Replaced cron jobs with JEE batch jobs.  These are scheduled using JEE schedules.  Pretty cool.
• I still need to add the custom domain forwarding (another feature in the paid plans that used to be free).  I am looking at cloudflare as a proxy.
• The service is having problems deploying my app with storage.  I couldn't figure out the root cause so I made some services to reload the data when I deploy a new version.

Old School Computer Fix

I try to avoid household IT work these days but Bengt's computer had trouble with the latest Microsoft patch Tuesday.  The symptom was that it would start to the the "Automatic Recovery" screen then die (usually beeping incessantly).  The weird thing was that I couldn't get to the BIOS to try to boot to a USB.  I was just about to give up and take it to the local PC repair shop when I read the motherboard manual which reminded of the good ol' CMOS.  The manual displayed the pins required to reset the CMOS and after searching the garage for an jumper, the computer booted up!  Windows was able to finish the update and everything was peachy.

Signal Fires Are Dumb

Carry a mirror folks!  And mix in a map and compass and maybe learn how to use them.

Lots of Books

Lots of stuff read and listened to:

• Fleet at Flood Tide by James D. Hornfischer
• It Happened in the Cimarron Country by Stephen Zimmer and Steve Lewis
• The Civil War in the Western Territories: Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah by Ray C. Colton
• Big Pacific by Rebecca Tansley
• Neptune's Inferno: The US Navy at Guadalcanal by James D. Hornfischer
• Mr. Lincoln: The Life of Abraham Lincoln by Allen Guelzo
• Atomic Adventures: Secret Islands, Forgotten N-Rays and Isotopic Murder: A Journey Into the Wild World of Nuclear Science by James Mahaffey
• Atomic Awakening: A New Look at the History and Future of Nuclear Power by James Mahaffey
• Butterfield Overland Mail: Only Through Passenger on the First Westbound Stage by Waterman L. Ormsby

Thanksgiving in New Orleans

Day 1

• Arrived. We stayed at the Marriott Courtyard on St. Charles and Canal St.  It was a great location for getting around.
• Dinner at Luke.

Day 2

• Jackson Square - fairly quiet due to Thanksgiving
• Cafe du Monde for coffee and beneigts - a bit overrated as other places had better coffee and beignets
• Dinner at Cafe Adeliade - good food but they seems a bit understaffed

Day 3

• Walking tour of St. Louis Cemetery
• Lunch at Sweet Grill
• Walking tour of French Quarter
• Dinner at Brigstons - fabulous!

Day 4

• Chalmette Battlefield - great history on the War of 1812 and the Battle of New Orleans
• National WWII Museum - great museum for general WWII history but I sought out the personal artifacts
• Dinner at Commanders Palace - deserves its reputation

Day 5

• Natchez brunch - fun cruise on the river with a cool jazz band, Duke Heitger's Steamboat Stompers
• Literary walking tour
• Flight home

Things for next time

• Cabildo/Presbytere Museums
• 1850 House Museum
• See a jazz show somewhere
• Bayou excursion

Jackson Square

Cafe du Monde

St. Louis Cemetary

St. Louis Cemetary

To Live and Let Die

Chalmette Memorial

Tree with Spanish Moss

Ignatius Reilly

Natchez Engine Room

Joshua Tree Exploring

Instead of rock climbing, the troop went up to Joshua Tree NP for some exploring.  The idea was to do some navigation training and find some cool stuff in the park.  Since all the campgrounds were full, we camped out in the BLM land north of town.  It was pretty flat, dusty and very cold but we made it work.

BLM camp

"High Noon" pictographs

Cross country

Old stamp mill

Long abandoned car

Bighorn sheep (can you spot both?)

Sunset

Weekend Activities

• Finally hiked Iron Mountain - decent hike
• Bengt's Eagle portraits
• Balboa Park to see the Museum of Man exhibits "Living with Animals" and "Cannibals"; also took the cool tower tour

Wilson Peak Hike

Mark and I tackled Wilson Peak in the desert.  It was awesome hike and would be great for the scouts if you drive up to trailhead up the road a few miles.

HALT Desert Backpack

Eagle Scout

Bengt pass his board of review and is now officially an Eagle Scout!

Weekend Activities

The heat canceled a planned hike to Tecate Peak but its was still a good weekend.

• Attended Spike Day San Diego on Friday
• Alabaster Jar Project Gala at CSUSM
• Short hike at Penasquitos Lagoon
• Quick swim in the surprisingly empty pool

Fiesta Island

The troop was back at Fiesta Island for water sports and camping.  We invited the Webelos but only got 1 which was unfortunate.  The scouts had a great time with kayaks and sailboats though.

Commute Lecture Series

Due to my new longer commute, I have been able to get through a few lecture series:

• Big History: The Big Bang, Life of Earth and the Rise of Humanity by David Christian
• Wonders of the National Parks: A Geology of North America by Ford Cochran
• Privacy, Property and Free Speech: Law and the Constitution by Jeffrey Rosen
• Dead Sea Scrolls by Gary Rendsburg

Operation Orchard - 10 Years After

Good summary of this fascinating event.

Mt. Laguna

The first campout of the season was back at Mount Laguna.  We took advantage of a reservation at the El Prado group camp which we all like.  We taught Totin' Chip and got alot of advancement done for the younger scouts.  Everyone had a good time cooking as well.  We took our usual walk out to the Big Laguna and the scouts found a cow trough that provided an impromptu game of algae mat flinging.

Weekend Activities

• Participated in an Eagle Scout Court of Honor and helped out another Eagle in his project
• Ira Glass at the Balboa Theater

Summer Reading

• History of the Medieval World: From the Conversion of Constantine to the First Crusade by Susan Wise Bauer - great overview of the history of the world during this time, not just Europe
• Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James Loewan - eye-opening
• SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome by Mary Beard - long and tedious
• Snow Travel: Skills for Climbing, Hiking, and Moving Over Snow by Mike Zawaski - some material for high adventure training
• The Earth is Weeping: The Epic Story of the Indian Wars For the American West by Peter Cozzens - great narrative
• The Confederate Invasion of New Mexico: 1861-1862 by Helen Haines - short
• Battle of Leyte Gulf: The Incredible Story of World War II's Largest Naval Battle by C. Vann Woodward - dated language but good

Potato Hack Diet

Since I am on my own this week, it is the perfect time to do the End of Summer Potato Hack! Bring on the taters.

Fitness After 10 Plus Years

I have been focused on health and fitness for over 10 years now and I thought it was a good time for reflection on where I was and where I am headed.
In the beginning, I started out with the conventional wisdom stuff.  Low-fat diets, jogging and moderate weight training.  I got bored quickly and didn't see much progress.  My big step came with P90X.  I started the program and finished a full 90 day regime including the diet, for the most part.  I really saw progress and was eager for more.  Next up was Tim Ferriss' book "4 Hour Body". Two things immediately jumped out at me.  One was the diet, which he calls the "Slow Carb" diet.  The other was the high intensity workout stuff.  I started the diet and felt better immediately.  Tim's diet contains a cheat day every week which I think is great for those starting in the paleo/primal world.  I then came across Mark Sisson and his blog Mark's Daily Apple.  This was a life changer. The primal lifestyle really resonated with me and I converted quickly. Now I know how diet and exercise affect me and after a few years, I am healthiest I have ever been.  Grok on!

Current:

• Diet - 90% primal; my main cheats are wine and snacks my son keeps around
• Exercise - I toggle between P90X (usually only doing half a workout but with higher intensity), sprints and weights

Future:

• Vision - my eyes have been getting slow but steadily worse.  I recently got bifocals and felt very old.  So I am going to start some exercises that I got from my father-in-law to help reverse that effects.
• Flexibility - I am not very limber and would like to get more flexible
• Tai Chi - something to focus the mind and body
• Body Composition - I am still looking to drop some body fat to get more tone; I will am going to look at optimizing different diet and exercises

Philmont 2017

The troop had an awesome time at Philmont as Crew 718-G!
We stayed the following camps:

• Minnette Meadows - very nice low altitude trail camp
• Cimorroncito - I finally tried rock climbing and rappelling
• Cyphers Mine - my second favorite camp with the mine challenge, blacksmithing and Stomp!
• Mt. Philips - hailed like snow
• Cherokee Creek - trail camp with a steep climb from the river
• Apache Springs - sweat lodges were great
• Fish Camp - loved the lodge
• Abreu - they let us sleep under the pavilion due to rain
• Stockade Ridge - nice jumping off point for the Tooth of Time

We had rain most of the last 8 days of the trek.  Sometimes it was heavy but our crew did great.  They all had effective rain gear and knew how to deal with the weather.
Can't wait to go back again!