Incursio

How much will we pay? That is a question anyone who has loved someone has tossed about in their mind in one way or another... How much will we pay to save our loved ones? And for almost every sane person, the answer is "whatever it costs". And I understand completely, as a Father and a Husband, and a Brother and an Uncle - I agonize daily over the potential for loss in my family. And I have felt loss in the past, which I would give just about anything to have not experienced. As a loving human, I completely understand the issue. But also, as a rational being, I have to question some things. Because - how much are we as a society willing to pay for THREE mountain climbers? Mountain climbers, who for recreation purposes knowingly put themselves at risk. I would imagine the total financial cost will exceed $100,000. Granted, I am just a damn blogger, I have no real figures in front of me other than what is in that article. But it is not hard to see how our c

Damn. Oregon is not included. T-Mobile Gets Sued Over Termination Fees But it is at least a start. If the suit is successful I can see some sweeping changes to mobile phone contracts. In fact, I predict some "pre-emptive" changes possibly coming soon. I have never understood why they charge so much for service cancellation fees. (They being not the magical "They" that is responsible for almost anything, but rather in this case I mean mobile phone providers in general). I mean - at most they are out the cost of the deal you got on the phone. They already usually charge you a setup fee, activation fee or something like that... That covers their manpower needed for the slightly-above-minimum-wage employee to type your name into the computer and open your box and show you the "on" button. Other than that labor involved, they mostly just need to recoup the cost of the phone. Say there is a groovy new Nokia phone that retails for $200 without any p

Timberline Ski Area on Mt. Hood plans to begin their winter ski season this weekend, 11/16! Mt. Hood Meadows Ski Area is still innaccessible , but can open as soon as the road (Hwy 35) does. Mt. Hood Ski Bowl , and the smaller Summit Ski area , and Cooper Spur are all still awaiting more snow.

The Libre Maps project has purchased and made available for free all of the USGS Topographical maps of the USA. All 50 states. The maps have always been free sort-of, there was just no where until now to actually GET them for free. The Libre Maps project raised enough funds to buy the many gigabytes of data and the Internet Archive is hosting them. These are great 24k scale topographical maps folks. The same types you pay for in sporting goods stores. And many applications on your computers can work directly with them and your GPS. You can get water and tear resistant paper and print them out.. All good stuff... For the lazy in the audience, here are Oregon's.

Well, what a pisser. After dropping $400 for the 4x4 season pass to Meadows we might not get to ski at all. No matter what the snow is like. Highway 35 has been wiped out by mudslides. (I am not sure how long that page will be current, so just in case here is a screenshot of the page...) There are a few pictures of the damage here. Oh well. It is not like I needed that $400 anyway... Here are some more links: FOX 12 reporting Hood River News reports Maybe I get to test my Jeep's off-roading capabilities now. :) That Mt. Hood Fusion Pass - in hindsight - looks pretty good right about now...

Today we went to watch a couple NFL games (that were not being broadcast on local TV channels) at a sports bar that we had been to many many times in the past couple years. On Deck (although their web page sucks, here is the CitySearch profile ). We would go with our family because it was a great location, central city Portland (Pearl District / Brewery Blocks)- they had pretty good food (nothing awesome or worth mention but solid sports bar fare) and the TVs and atmosphere were great. However, as of just a few weeks ago they no longer allow minors. According to one waiter, the new management felt that minors would be exposed to too much swearing. (I am fully aware that it is a BS story but that is what they said). There was no management available on-site that I could speak with, but I was given contact information and I will be contacting them to find out what gives. I mean come-on. Kids who parents watch sports enough to go to a Sports Bar to catch the untellivised games

Flowers, Friend, Before You Die This marker commemorates for all time the gracious generosity of Ira Frost Powers to the people of Portland "And so thy thought, when thou art gone, shall yet live on. - A friend of grateful man" The Birthday Club George L Baker    W.J. Hofmann    Ernest A. Sommer Charlse P. Berg    Ernest L. King Donald J. Sterling Chris D. Bruun    Dan J. Malarkey    Nathan Strauss John H. Burgard    Julius L. Meier    Guy W. Talbot C. C. Colt    Phil Metschan    Wm. L. Thompson Virgil A. Crum    Otto W. Mielke    Wm. F. Turner Charlse E. Dant    Roscoe C. Nelson    Harry B. Van Duzer Kenneth D. Dawson    Emery Olmstead    Dean Vincent Franklin T. Griffith    Ore L. Price    Raymond B. Wilcox Russell Hawkins    Frank H. Ransom    Ralph E. Williams September Nineteen Thirty This plaque is placed on a large rock, in an obscure partially hidden stretch of roadside on Highway 43 in Portland Oregon. Just south of the Sellwood Bridge, al

Official Email Addresses Have you ever wanted to send an email to a couple local elected officials, but all you can find is stupid web forms for comments and no actual email addresses? No? Oh. Well, for those of you who might have or might some time in the future - (which may only be me I guess) - I found this site which lists many of the cities in Oregon and has the actual emails of their mayors and councillors and that sort of thing. AreaGuides.net And for those of you who are not in Oregon - it look like you could get to other states and cities too... Try clicking around. :) They seem like they are good addresses too, as I found the site doing searches for email addresses for a city. I had found one email address for a city that was in a format like "first.last@city.gov" and I knew the names of officials so I started searching for "official.name@city.gov" and found this site. In comparing the sites email addresses to official city sites that do

American diesel fans get screwed... OK, maybe we don't get screwed. But we do have it tough. After having owned a Volkswagen TDI diesel for three years, and enjoying the torquey motor with regular mileage in the 45 to 50 mpg range - I really like my diesel cars... Currently we drive a Jeep Liberty CRD, which is powered by a 2.8L common rail diesel engine. It is a great vehicle. Extremely capable in many areas, it's 30mpg on the highway is not too shabby for a vehicle of it's type. And it's 300 pounds of torque really make towing fun. In fact, the CRD simply feels like it is not happy unless it is climbing or towing. Now, where am I going with this? Well. What do we have currently for diesel options in the USA? Mostly big trucks - which not only are really big - are expensive since the diesel options only come in the heavy duty versions. Volkswagen offers diesel in several of their passenger cars. There is the Mercedes E 3 series with diesel power, althou

Statistically Irrelevant 83% of statistics quoted by blogs are incorrect. (What do you expect? I am busy this week...)

An Inconsiderate Bitch Some of you who read that title might assume that I am speaking of a woman who does not think of others. Well, in a way you would be correct. However, the actual point of this post is to bitch about people who are inconsiderate. in·con·sid·er·ate ( ĭn ' kən-sĭd ' ər-ĭt ) adj. Thoughtless of others; displaying a lack of consideration. Tonight we ate at an italian restaurant, Amalfi's in North Portland, on Freemont street. The restaurant was nice, had reasonable prices, and the food was very good. All in all, I would recommend it - even despite the experience we had while dining there. We waited quite some time, approaching an hour, for outside seating. Outside, between the main entrance and the sidewalk there are two very neat tables with a gas firepit in the middle of each. We had walked past the restaurant a couple of times and thought it looked quite nice so we decided to try. We got our table and my family sat down to enjoy the

Night Ride around Mt. Hood Last night I took a motorcycle ride, from about 10pm to 2am. I rode east on I84 along the Columbia River to the city of Hood River (which sits at the mouth of the Hood River as it dumps into the Columbia in the county of Hood River ) and onto Highway 35. I headed south on Highway 35 around the back side of Mt. Hood to Highway 26 where I turned West. At Government Camp I split off and climb up to TimberLine Lodge , then back down to Government Camp and back onto highway 26 and towards home, making a complete loop around Mt. Hood. The trip was about 175 miles total. Going up into the gorge on the freeway was very quiet, very few cars for a Tuesday night... A few barges on the Columbia looked like iridescent ghosts with their couple lights shimmering from the tugs and the big black barge they push. The moon bounced off the small waves that are ever-present on the Columbia. On Highway 35 I could smell the forest fires, especially since Highwa