He was born in Canada, but currently lives in Boulder, CO up in Boulder Heights.
I happened to be at the firestation when a wildland fire broke out. Captain asked if I had a red card, and we went off to fight that fire. It turned out to be a small fire (1 acre), so we had it contained and mopped up in under 6 hours.
I was real lucky, because I don’t yet carry a pager, so I wouldn’t have known about the fire except for the fact I was at the fire station (doing truck maintenance).
The neighbor’s been feeding the fox again… She says she’s been feeding the foxes for three generations, with a sheepish look on her face, so I didn’t feel a lot of guilt about corrupting this fox by feeding it. All we had in the house was sushi.
Go figure, foxes don’t like sushi.
Well, seeing another neighbor across the hill’s success (in Sunshine), we put up a hummingbird feeder of our own. It was a resounding success, with up to 8 of the birds around the feeder at a time, of 3-4 different species (Rufous, ruby, and another few).
They go through an entire feeder every day, and will hover in front of your face if their feeder is not promptly refilled. The rufous hummingbirds (female, male is less aggressive) do not tolerate any other species on the feeder at the same time.
The cats are quite annoyed, and are hoping the window develops a hole sometime soon.
So this is what happens to a wireless access point sitting on someone’s deck in a baggie in the sun at 104 degrees Fahrenheit for a month.
Believe it or not, this was still working fine when I disconnected it
We took possession of our house today. It’s on 2 acres, near the summit of Lee Hill in unincorporated Boulder (Boulder County). See here for a picture of the house itself. The view is fantastic, with great North-facing views from the deck of Lefthand Canyon, Jamestown and some of the burn area of the Overland fire of 2003.
Looks like I may get to fight a fire this week. The chief called me up to ask me if I could go fight the fire, and if I could take the pack test (you need to be red-carded to fight a federal fire).
So I took the pack test yesterday (45 lb pack, 3 miles in less than 45 minutes, with a couple of minutes allowance on top of that for 7200′ altitude). I measured the distance using a GPS, so I would be absolutely sure I did the required distance. For the record, my time was 42m42s. (I think I was just over 38m when I took it in 2002, but that was 40 lbs, and I did it at 5600′)
Doctor said I had to wait another two weeks to run, because I still had tender spots on my knee.
I finally got the time to get together with my good buddy and former roommate, the fire chief of Sunshine, Steve Stratton, and set up a long range link between our houses. He has a T1 line (1.544 Mbps up and down) and I’ve been using my Motorola V551 GPRS for internet access for the past two weeks, which is pretty painful. I used my Mac via Bluetooth to serve up the GPRS connection to my other computers. The rate is 100 kpbs which is not half bad, but the latency is terrible (2-5 seconds), and it doesn’t deal well with multiple transactions.
I bought two LinkSys WAP54G access points, and two enclosed outdoor Yagi antennas (EnteraSys RoamAbout Point-to-Point Wireless: RBTES-BG-Y14M), and actually got the link working nearly flawlessly between our houses, which are over 2200′ apart, with trees partially obscuring the line of sight and energy envelope (big oblong) of the transmission (if both were not obscured, this link could go to 8 km). The link is pretty good, but not quite reliable enough for VOIP (I think the wind moving the trees is causing problems).
The antenna is on Steve’s deck, fastened to the railing using some paper wedges, and the access point is in a baggie on the deck (didn’t have enough antenna wire to put it inside).
This is the view of Steve’s house (the roof, circled in red) from my house out the window.
The other antenna is precariously perched on the window sill inside the house I’m renting.
They’re pointed ROUGHLY towards eachother, but not very exactly. The polarization appears critical, as rotating the antenna about it’s access kills the signal. It’s a very good thing the link worked the first time, as I have no signal strength metering on either access point, so everything is binary (link or no-link).
I added WEP 128 bit encryption so other folks couldn’t tune in (also MAC address control), but I have not yet hacked the firmware to boost transmit power (x4 is possible with these APs, as they use open source Linux, and many have hacked them).
Total cost of the setup: WAP54G ($60 x 2) + Antennas ($62×2) = $244. This is pretty good, because the antennas MSRP are over $280 each.
As of today, I’m a green card holder! The interview process was NOTHING like the movie with Gerard Depardieu and Andie MacDowell. 15 minutes in and out.
The interviewer did note that green cards hadn’t been green in 50 years (they’re beige or off-white).
We were worried that they would a) want to transfer our case to Colorado since we’re living here and b) ask for our original marriage certificate, which we accidentally packed in our household goods, which are still in storage.
In any event, all turned out well, and it was quite pleasant actually. I don’t actually have the card itself, but rather a stamp in my passport saying it’s coming…
A week after closing on our house in California, we put in an offer on a house in Boulder that was accepted. We’re going to be living in the pretentiously named covenant community called “Boulder Heights”, up in the front range (around 8000 ft) off of Lee Hill Road. Our house has tremendous mountain views, and 1.9 acres of nearly flat land on the ridgeline over Lefthand Canyon. It’s all been redone on the inside too, with a nice kitchen, bedroom, etc. Unfortunately, I’ll have to join the neighbouring fire department, as this house will be in the BMFA (Boulder Mountain Fire Authority) district, rather than Sunshine (SFPD).
Shopping for a house in California (Kellyfawnia) is like deciding on which is better, airline food or hospital food. No house that we could afford (especially now!) had all the elements we were looking for, and everything was a compromise. And EVERYONE offered huge deposits and an offer over asking price.
Shopping for a house in Boulder is a real pleasure, with a ton of inventory that’s not moving, and many completely new, redone and great houses to choose from. Putting in an offer at asking is unheard of, but since we really liked the house, that’s what we did.
For the techies out there, this house has DSL AND cable modem service, unlike Sunshine. It’s nice to have choices.
