Alaska-geek

Our trip started off from the floatplane airport that's adjacent to the international airport in Anchorage. The first two days were beautiful in Anchorage (as you can see in the picture above from the dock), but low clouds in the mountains prevented us from being able to fly out until late the second day.  We were anxious and a bit frustrated at not being able to go according to our schedule, but once we saw the mountain lake, it was clear that the pilots at Trail Ridge Air had everyone's safety in mind.

Once we did arrive at Iceberg Lake, high in the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge wilderness, we were awestruck with the beauty and grandeur. Our experienced pilot easily and gently touched down on the smooth lake and navigated to the shore to unload us and everything that we would need for the week.

After the plane left, we explored around the lake, and the nearby glacier:

To the left is a photo of all of us over looking the glacier near our first night's camp site

Every morning, we had spectacular views right outside the tent door.  What an amazing way to start the day.  We had a nice relaxing quiet time every morning in the seclusion of the remote wilderness.

We had three rivers to cross including the one in the picture below.  It was in a bit of a ravine, and we had to climb up that cliff you can see on the other side.  This is also where Patrick lost one of his hiking boots in the river!

Since there were no trails in this wilderness, we spend a lot of time walking through very tall grass, or fighting through dense alder thickets.  On the longest day, we only hiked a few miles, but it took us all day.  We were so exhausted when we finally found a flat spot to pitch our tents.

Where we did pitch our tents, we had a beautiful view of the opposite mountains that we'd just come from the day before. We even found a shed antler from a caribou!

Speaking of caribou, on the second to last day, several curious animals came close to our last camp site to check us out.

We were supposed to spend one more day in the wilderness to get picked up by the float plane on Friday, but on our way up the last ridge, the first of us made it to the meeting point, then the last two made it there, but the person in between was not there.  Despite searching for him all day, we could not find him. It was getting cold, dark, and very windy, so we got out the satellite phone and called for help. Boy did we ever get help! The Alaska Air National Guard's 212th Rescue Squadron sent SSgt Cody Inman, Captain Aaron Zamora and the rest of their crew to search for our friend and take us all back to civilization.  Their Pave Hawk came straight to our signal fire, they talked with us about where we last saw our friend, and quickly found him on a mountain ridge and pulled him up to the helicopter. Then they came back for the rest of us, and before long, we were dropped off at the hospital in Soldotna. I can't say enough about the skill and professionalism of these pararescue jumpers and their pilots!  Here's a link to the video of the extraction: http://youtu.be/P3-dd2YQCEg

This was by far the most challenging and exciting trip that we've ever been on.  The solitude was absolute, the terrain was as difficult as it was beautiful, and the excitement of the exit was way beyond what we expected.  We call these annual trips the "extreme getaway with God", and this was the most extreme that I can imagine.  I did a lot of praying and bible reading during the week, and have some solid plans for getting even closer to God and enjoying Him even more completely!

Family-Geek

Can you see the cigarette butt in the picture?

 (above photo from pictureoutdoors.com)

This is a picture of Lake McDonald in Glacier National Park. I stood on the shore of this amazing vista in 2005 during a backpacking trip and learned a lesson in perspective. Here's an excerpt from my journal: “We walked down to lake McDonald to a very beautiful view of the lake and mountains. There were a few cigarette butts on the rocky beach, and as I started to get upset about it, I realized that I was letting a very small detail spoil all the beauty around me...”

Here's a picture of me in the mountains above the lake the next day:

Today, I had to follow through on some promised consequences with one of the kids due to some recent results from school. When a child is so respectful and mature, and such an amazing creation of God, it seems like it'd be hard to get distracted by one small lapse in scholastic performance, but it's what happens sometimes. I know that discipline is an act of love and necessary for continued growth and maturity, but why does it have to be so hard?!?

My journal from that time in Glacier continues: “...God created [my Wife], and [my Kids] with even more love and care than this mountain. Do I see the vast beauty in them, or do I let small details ruin everything?”

I know that God loves me even though I screw up, and I try really hard to express to my family how much I love each of them unconditionally too. I hope they get it.

Air&Space-Geek

We finally took the kids to Kalamazoo Mi to visit the Air Zoo, and were really impressed.  I took the panoramic photo above from the eating area during our lunch break, and what you see is about half of the exhibits. It's well laid out from the early years of flight, through the world wars, modern jets, and into the transition to space with the very impressive SR-71.  In the other hall is one area devoted to space exploration, and one with more WW-II aircraft.
For me, the highlights were seeing the real aircraft up close.  I can't describe how big and impressive the F-14 and SR-71 are in person.  These are big and amazing aircraft!  They also have an engine from the SR-71 on display and a description of some of the challenges that had to be overcome to make an engine that could operate in such extremes.  Being a geek in general, and mechanical engineer specifically, I really eat that stuff up, and could spend all day marveling at these masterpieces of design.  So much so that when we visited the Udvar-Hazy center of the National Air and Space museum near Dulles airport a few years ago, we almost missed our flight because I didn't want to leave, but that's a different story.

For the kids (aged 12 - 21), the highlight was certainly the Flight Simulators.  We were glad to have paid the $15 each for the "Ultimate Ace Package" instead of the regular $8 admission, it was certainly well worth the extra seven bucks.  After a couple of flights, the kids were doing barrel rolls and other acrobatics with impressive control.  They also enjoyed the other exhibits and the hands-on activities and cockpits that they could sit in and imagine flying with the Blue Angels or bailing out over enemy territory.

The 3D movies were also well worth having the all-inclusive pass and spending the time (about a half-hour each) to view.  One was a fun animated film about the Apollo mission from the perspective of a stow-away housefly, and the other was an inspiring story of a B-17 crew from WW-II.
We visited on a weekday during Christmas break, and arrived right at the 9:00 opening time.  We seemed to have the place almost to ourselves until about lunch time, and even then, I wouldn't say it was crowded.  There was a model-rocket clinic going on that day too, and I think a bunch of the people we saw were there for that.  We had planned to stay until the 5:00 closing time, but had pretty much seen and done everything as many times as we wanted by 3:30, and we could have been done a lot sooner than that if we weren't at such a relaxed pace, so I'd say plan for at least 4 hours to see everything.
The kids were really impressed, and at the end of our time at the Air Zoo, they were thanking us for taking them, and commenting on how it exceeded their expectations.  There's stuff for smaller kids, and they'd enjoy it too, but they just wont get as much out of it as older kids and adults.  I'd highly recommend it for kids older than 10, and for adults that are interested in science and technology.

Root-Geek

I've finally decided to "root" my Droid 2.
Verizon puts a bunch of apps on it that you can't remove (bloat-ware, crap-ware, whatever you call it), and it was really driving me nuts to have these running all the time.
Turns out it's fairly easy to do.  Here's a link to the instructions that I followed:
http://www.droid-life.com/2011/09/01/how-to-root-the-droid2-droidx2-droidx-and-droid3-running-gingerbread/

Here's the meat of those instructions (note, I had to search for a 32-bit version of the Motorola drivers):

Download:  MotorolaOneClickRoot.zip

Instructions:

1.  Make sure you have Motorola drivers installed - [Download Drivers]

2.  Download the MotorolaOneClickRoot.zip file from above and unzip it to your Windows PC.

3.  On your phone go into  Settings>Applications>Development and check the box for USB Debugging.

4.  Plug phone into your computer and select “Charge Only” mode.

5.  Navigate to MotorolaOneClickRoot folder and run MotorolaOneClickRoot.exe.

6.  Follow the instructions in the command window.

7.  Your phone will complete 3 steps, rebooting along the way.  When it finishes, you will be rooted.

 Once that's done, I installed Titanium Backup from the android app store, and upgraded to the "pro" version.  Worth every penny!  It lets me "freeze" apps to disable them, and if I want to later, I can uninstall them completely.  I'm a little wary to start nuking stuff right away just in case there's some system function in one of those apps, so I'm happy to freeze them for now.

I should have done this a long time ago!

To India!

One week from today, I'll be part of a team of 10 people from Dow Corning sites around the world traveling to Bangalore, India for a month-long service trip.
I'm very honored to be chosen to represent our company and contribute to improving sustainability in a real way.  My sub-team will be working with Sustaintech to improve their supply chain and quality assurance for cooking products that use less fuel and improve safety and economics for their operators.
I'm very much going to miss my family for the time that I'm away, but we're blessed to have many family, friends, and neighbors that will be looking after them, so I know that they will be well protected and cared for.
Unlike my annual backpacking trips though, I will be in contact with home through blogs, email, skype, etc.  As a matter of fact, the team will have a running blog of our adventures, and I'll plan to link mine to my facebook page so all my FB friends can stay up to date with what I'm up to.
Please pray for our team that we would be well prepared, and that we will have a positive impact in India and in our various home cities when we return.

Science-Geek

I recently read Richard Dawkins' new book called "The Greatest Show on Earth - The Evidence for Evolution" I've not read Dawkins before, and I was really impressed with his engaging writing style and wit. He starts off by stating that "Evolution is a fact, and this book will demonstrate it." and then goes into great and interesting detail on the subject of natural selection.
I kept expecting the natural selection discussion to build into some sort of proof of evolution, but it never came. Showing that natural selection is true isn't surprising or controversial. As a matter of fact, the key word there is "selection." There must be some pool to select from, which is precisely why in the example of the many thousands of generations of E. Coli didn't evolve into something other than E. Coli. Through natural selection, they selected different attributes that were already present, but they didn't become some new thing.
Toward the end of the book, he's honest enough to admit that there's no evidence for what the first steps were, and he comes to the conclusion that "It must have been whatever it took to get natural selection started." That sounds a lot like creation to me.
Far from proving that evolution from nothing to life as we know it today is a "fact", this book simply points out that somehow self-replicating life was created, and life has been making small adaptations since then.

Android-Geek

There are a few applications for the Android phone that I consider to be essential in order to have the functionality that I expect from a smart phone (from the perspective of an ex-iPhone user), and there are a bunch of apps that really add to the utility and experience.
First, the essentials:

1. Bible. This app is free, and has every version of the Bible that you could want. It requires a network connection, but it's pretty zippy. For my off-line Bible needs, I also have a copy of the free OliveTree Bible app, and have purchased several Bible translations for it.
   
2. Notes. This simple app lets me write stuff down. Not exciting, but I gotta have it.
   
3. SMS Popup. By default, the Droid barely lets you know that you got a text message. Installing this app lets me configure the device to wake up the screen and display the contents of a text message when it comes in. It's super configurable, down to the color of the LED and how fast it blinks! You can also set it up to do different things depending on who texts you.
   
4. Touch Timer. I gotta be able to set a timer for baking my flour-less chocolate cake, or roasting coffee. This is the app that let's me time stuff.
5. SplashID Password Manager. When you have a couple-hundred different passwords like I do, it's essential to have a secure place to store them. I can't say enough good things about this app, and the people at SplashData. I had the iPhone version of this application, and the desktop companion. They gave me the desktop version for Android, and helped me easily migrate all my passwords from one version to the other, then wirelessly sync all my passwords to my new Droid!

Ok, so those get me able to do mundane stuff, what about the things that really take it to the next level? Most of these aren't available for the iPhone, and they're the stuff that makes people say "wow."

1. Ringdroid. Making your own ringtones from any part of any song on your device is something that would have been so nice to have on the iPhone, but Apple can't make money off of that. On Android, it's free and easy!
   
2. WikiMobile. A handy application to easily access the source of truthiness on the internet - Wikipedia.
   
3. Google Voice. Get my voicemails automatically transcribed and sent to me by text message?!? Really?!? Oh yes, and so much more. Ring multiple phones at once; send some callers direct to voicemail. . .
   
4. Droid48. Every geek needs to have an RPN calculator. Apparently, this developer also has a C64 emmulator, but even I'm not THAT geeky.
   
5. ShopSavvy. Use the camera on the phone to scan a product bar code, and then automatically look up prices at on-line stores and local stores.
   
6. Easy Envelope Budget. Synchronized virtual envelopes to keep our spending in check. If you know me, then you know that I'm geeky about budgeting and think it's really really important for a lot of reasons. This app makes it super easy to keep track of.
   
7. Scoreboard. Another app from our friends at Google, this one lets you specify your favorite sports teams and aut0matically receive updates when they score. Being a Lions fan though, I don't expect to get many notifications from this one.
   
8. Google Goggles. Last, but not least, this cool new app lets you take a picture of something, and it will do a Google search on it. Curious about a painting? Take a picture, and find out who the artist was. It's pretty amazing.

So those are the apps that I have on my Android phone. There are thousands more out there, and more coming every day. I'm trying to limit myself to ones that I'll actually use so that I don't fill up the phone with junk.