Personal posts page 60

thief in my car

in

Since I got my current car from my brother, I’ve left it unlocked almost all the time. Only when I’ve had band equipment or the like in there have I considered locking it. The locks, except the one on the back hatch, froze up and stopped working a while back (one was frozen when I got the car), so it’s hard to lock it anyway: I’d have to climb in from the rear hatch. At the beginning, I even left the key in the car, as that is what my brother had been doing for a while, but I gave up on that out of fear.

As far as I know and can recall, nothing was stolen, even the change left clearly visible.

So today, I went to the library for several hours. There’s a parking garage there. Normally, employees are there and it has gates, costs a ridiculous amount of money. But on the weekends it is free and the gates are left open. When I left my car, I actually glanced in and thought about someone stealing something, as I frequently do. I took my cell phone along, but everything else seemed like it would be fine. Why would someone choose an old rusted car like mine anyway?

When I came back to the car, I quickly noticed the door wasn’t fully closed (driver’s). The thought of a someone being in my car flashed into my head. It become more realistic as I noticed the rearview mirror had been knocked out of place. Then I saw some change from the center console missing. I was still not totally sure at that point, thinking perhaps that I had removed the change there and some other missing stuff at some point. But I was sure when I noticed the case for my jumper cables was missing. I never remove that from my car, save for in use.

So, stolen were:

  • Jumper cables, with a case, a screwdriver, some fuses and other assorted car stuff packed in
  • change from my console and floor, but not from the thing on my dash or the ashtray
  • my photochromatic cycling sunglasses. luckily they were all smeared with some gunk, so the thief will have some cleaning to do. cost me $40
  • my socket set. Craftsmen laser engraved kind, maybe a 96 piece one that I got on sale for like $60. Had some cheap taiwan wrenches and a few other tools in there as well

This is all I know about, as my car is somewhat of a mess, and I’m not exactly sure what all was in there.

I guess I should’ve expected it to happen one day. I imagine the tools or the change to be the biggest drawer. The change would have been by far the most visible, as the tools were tucked underneath the pink panther’s feet in the back seat foot area. I have no intention of locking in the future, mainly because of the extreme difficulty of doing so with this car, but also because of the crappiness deterrent of the car and lack of valuable things.

I may be slow to replace the missing items. I can make up for the sunglasses with cheap spare pares I have for now. They were nice for cycling, but I didn’t use them a whole ton. The tools, I’ll have to borrow for now. I don’t use them that often currently anyway. I’ll wait till I see another good deal on them and need seems high. The jumper cables I’ll probably get soon just to be safe, though I rarely need them and others often have them if I do.

[Update] The sunglasses weren’t stolen: I had just left them in the sailboat. So I’ve got my good sunglasses still. Just no sockets or wrenches or jumper cables.

palm conduit erased important messages

in

I’ve used palm’s hotsync/desktop conduit to backup the data from my palm to my computer. Unfortunately, the software hasn’t been touched by Palm for 3 years. It’s bulky and annoyingly setup, with a required background process if you want to sync at will (I keep it off until necessary), multiple applications, and annoying forced locations of the backup files.

Anyway, due to recent problems with the phone, I had to perform a full reset to delete all applications and whatnot. I used the phone for a while without syncing to restore the old stuff, because I was still having problems with it and also wasn’t sure how to sync without restoring any bad stuff. I recently went through all the backup files and deleted the applications and what looked like related files, allowing me to do the backup.

I was not totally sure what would happen to the stuff that I had done since the phone was backed up, but the word synchronize soothed my fears. I had had pictures, notes, and some important conversations via text messaging that I wanted to save. If I had been smart, I would have created a new profile, backed them up, then tried the old profile, but again, the word synchronize made me feel like it’d be a waste of time. I went ahead and synchronized. It took quite some time.

To see if it actually synchronized, I first checked contacts. The few contacts I had added were indeed safely among the backup contacts. I then looked at the pictures and saw the old photos and the new photos. My hopes were high; it seemed to have synchronized just fine. But then I went to the most important item, the messages. Backed up I had one brief conversation with my brother about zapping PRAM, a message to Paul about not going to an auction plus three spam messages; all things rather unimportant to me. On the phone I had had conversations with two girls from work. One was with a girl who I’ve been strongly attracted to for a while about us talking, with messages spanning over weeks. This one was fairly important to me. The other was with another girl from work whom I had asked to be an anchor for a mock newscast. Most of the messages were about where the shoot was and where she was, but the conversation would still have been nice to have saved. These were gone, not synchronized at all, but replaced with the backup messages. This seems very illogical to me, as there would be no new messages ever generated on the computer, only on the phone. I’m somewhat mad about that. My only consolation is that I had written part of the first conversation in journals on my computer. Not as bad, but still annoying, the call log was also deleted and reverted to backup. This too makes no sense to me. What’s up with that, Palm? Your conduit is in desperate need of an update.

palm problems

in

I’ve had quite a bit of problems with my Palm Treo 650.

Some of the third party software seemed to have caused some major problems with the phone. I know for sure that some problems were caused by a third party application required to make the stylus work for the Treo (Treo’s seem to come with Graffiti hand writing recognition disabled). The phone kept having weird problems like freezing, going slowly, and the like, even while making calls.

The other problem seems to have been related to the battery. The battery seemed to have problems with holding a charge, so I figured it must have been old when I bought it, though I thought the seller said it was new. I took the power adapter with me in the car and used an inverter with that to power the phone so I could make calls while out. After doing that, my phone would go into a crazy epileptic mode where it would flash on and off the startup screen rapidly. Every once in a while I could get it to start up by plugging it in for a while, then unplugging it. It would start up and last for a little while, but eventually go back to epileptic mode. Eventually this became quite permanent.

After finally figuring out how, I did a full reset of the device, getting rid of the applications and what not. This did not help. I got a new battery, figuring the old one was shot and for some reason it needed a good battery to work at all. This worked slightly at first, but it started going back to epileptic mode again. So I figured, as a last try, that it might be a problem with the charger, that perhaps my inverter or something else ruined the charger. I bought a dock thing with a seperate battery charger. After much waiting with no phone through all these problems, the charger worked and the phone works just fine again, like it had when I first got it. The separate charger bay wasn’t necessary, as just the dock charging through the phone works, but it is nice with my additional purchased battery to have a backup in case I forget to charge up. Another $40 about for the two items, but I have a working phone again.

I’m very happy, as the cell phone is quite useful, especially since I have no long distance for my home phone; I was unable to make some calls for a while. It has been very useful for contacting cousin Paul and uncle Al while out of the house. It was also quite useful in contacting a friend Corinne about a mock news program my droogie Dwight is making for a video portfolio, as we needed to meet her at Kent State’s news room and needed a way to contact her to make sure she was able to make it (she was running late).

First Motorcycle run

in

Today I piloted a motorcycle for the first time. It was my cousin Paul’s. He started with a 250cc, then last year upgraded to a 600cc, both japanese sport bike types. He’s quite into it, with a lot of money invested, and plans to take the 600 to a track soon.

He’s been trying to get me to try it out for a while now, but I’ve had little confidence in my ability. Even the 250 seems too big and heavy for me to handle from looking at it and feeling it. But today, him and my Uncle Al set up everything for me to ride, so I figured I’d go ahead and give it a try. Paul explained the operation to me in just enough detail. I sat on it and tried the controls and shifting from neutral to first and back.

Then I went right in to trying to drive it. Kicked it into first, released the clutch, it stalled. Not enough gas. So I started up again and tried the same time. This time I gave it way too much gas. I shot forward with my feet still on the ground, kicking off the gravel to ensure balance (though I’m not sure it was necessary). I very quickly was at the end of the driveway, which was to be my first run. With engine braking and the front brakes I was able to easily come to a stop though. The brakes on that bike are very grabby, which I had trouble with many times, one somewhat painful to the groin region.

Next they moved the bike out onto the street. There were occasional cars going by, which they waved by. I then started off, this time much easier on the clutch. I still jerked forward a bit and had a bit of trouble getting my feet up properly, but much better. Once I was going, I was going. At that point it was a little scary just at the 15mph I was going. I just slowly went along for a bit, with cars passing by and Paul following. I eventually sped up somewhat, but stayed in first gear. We went down to the end of the road (the neck of a T) and turned around. My first turn. The turn itself wasn’t bad at all. I had trouble getting back out of neutral though for some reason. I kept kicking but couldn’t get it to shift. After seeing this a couple of times, I think I have to move the bike with my feet to move the gears in the transmission or something like that.

We went back up the road again. This time I went faster and shifted into second. The shift wasn’t smooth: I jerked forward for sure, and may not have depressed the clutch. But I was able to easily go faster. Those high RPMs on those bikes worry me somewhat. I was able to easily engine brake to slow down, shift down and make the turn back into their driveway.

Paul called a friend of his and was about to leave to see her, but then his Dad and himself convinced him to take me out for a longer run. We went back down the same road as before, me going in second gear and probably 30mph or so, then turned at the end. At that point I didn’t know how to do turn signals, but a look at the next turn showed me. I got up to maybe 40mph there. I was starting to feel more comfortable at the faster speeds.

We went to a new housing development with a road like a b that had no traffic and only a few houses. We went around the loop a number of times. I went slowly around the turns. At first I took them at like 15, then would speed up to maybe 30 on the straights. There were some rocks and some of those raised sewer things, like they hadn’t put in the final layer of asphalt for the road yet, that made for obstacles around the turns and lowered my comfort level. But I eventually made it up to 25 or 30 around the cleaner turns. Paul was of course able to take them much faster and was able to breeze right by me.

I had already gotten up into 3rd and 4th gear by the time we were heading home. I followed him and got up to maybe 50. I was worried about the turns (at intersections, the roads were straight), but it was fairly easy to slow down, much more so than on a bicycle. He left when we got to his house.

I had worn Paul’s older helmet, jacket, and gloves. Those definitely made me more comfortable with the speed and prospect of falling. The helmet was quite tough to get on and off though: he must have a smaller head. I wore the visor open the whole time, for talking purposes. I think I got a little bit of dirt on my face, but nothing that I noticed while riding.

The whole thing was really not as hard as I thought it would be. The controls are not too bad once I got used to them, though I still am quite jerky with both the clutch and the brake. Balance is not hard at all. Turns aren’t very hard either. I never really felt like I was going to fall over. I didn’t have to think about lean at all. I didn’t notice the counter-steer, which is apparently noticeable on these bikes, probably because I wasn’t going fast enough. It was somewhat unwieldy at stops, but nothing awful. It was a little scary going by some cars that seemed like they either didn’t really noticed me or were upset I was on their road.

I think with a few more days of that I’d be comfortable enough to ride it around on easy roads with light traffic no problem. It was fun. Maybe I’ll eventually get a motorbike, have some fun and save some gas.

snow storm

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Last Saturday, my parents had to be dropped off at the airport at around 0500. I was the man to help them out. The weather had been warm the week before, and snow seemed like it had been mostly done for the year. But the news people kept saying Friday there’d be a big snow storm. It got pushed to Friday night, then to Saturday morning. But it came. Friday night it snowed a decent amount. But Saturday morning it just came down hard. Our drive to Cleveland was very slow and tough. The roads were not really plowed very well. At one point we had to turn around and take an alternative route because we couldn’t make it up a hill. My dad’s little Ford Focus didn’t seem to have the best traction. We took the turnpike. It wasn’t very well plowed, but we saw at least three plows on our side of the highway on our way. When we first got on, the fast lane was somewhat well plowed, and we took that until we came up to the plow that made it that way. We passed it by. We were going about 50 mph most of the way. Passing cars was a little scary, especially since some seemed to take up a good portion of the three available lanes very well. It took us quite some time to get to the airport, but we left with extra time in mind.

They said their flight was still on when I dropped them off. I gave them my cell phone number just in case, but they didn’t call. My dad had driven there, and now I had to drive in this weather for the first time. It was definately tough in a non-stickshift car, but still manageable. On the highway, I managed 40 – 50 most of the way, but a few spots required slower speeds. At one point I hit a spot that must have not been plowed at all since the snow started. I lost all traction briefly, but the snow slowed me down very fast. I was able to get past that spot with no major problems. I was going to get on the turnpike to go back, but I sort of missed it: the onramp was a small trench dug out of a snow bank, and I was going too fast when I saw it. I took the regular roads. That was much slower. I was going maybe 25 – 30 there, plus had traffic lights. I was often stuck behind someone. Most of the vehicles out were snow plows doing driveways, and some of them seemed almost oblivious to the fact that other cars were out and about. At one point going up a hill, I really found myself quite unable to keep going. A snow plow was behind me, so I pulled to the side (sort of) to let him pass. It took some tire spinning to get that car going again, but I made it up the hill and continued on.

I made it home, with a few hours before work. I fell asleep for maybe an hour. Then an hour before work, Pyrka, our kitchen manager, called saying that work was closed. The whole day through, not just the morning. It was a 13 hour shift I was losing to the snow. I was definately happy, as I’ve been looking for less hours recently. With school and all I’ve not had much free time. But anyway, I had just woken up and it took a few minutes to sink in. I didn’t even pick up the phone, for some reason listening to the message like it had already been recorded. It was the first snow day I’d had in some time.

Unfortunately, I made very poor use of the snow day. I slept the most of the day away. I was told by friend Dwight that the Summit county police had forbade driving for the day. This was verified on the news. They said people weren’t being cited, but it was a warning not to drive unless absolutely necessary. I was stuck with the little food available at my parents house, where I was staying to watch the dogs. I had some canned soup and some hot pockets. I watched several movies and slept an inordinate amount of time. I started shoveling the snow, but didn’t get much done. I shoveled a lot the next morning before work, but couldn’t get done on time. I had to run to work. I finished shoveling afterwards. All in all it took me at least an hour and a half to shovel my car out of my parents driveway. It really tired me out as well. I can see why three people died from shoveling related to this storm.

I didn’t make good use of my snow day, but I did get to go sledding several days later, my only run of the year.

redo of plumbing fix

in

As I said in my last post, I recently had to cut out a section of pipe to fix a split, but the soldering job didn’t hold. I had been a little worried about the one joint, as I had heat it up a lot to get it to sweat, and the solder hadn’t gone in nicely enough for my liking. It was just a drip, so I had left it go, turning on the hot water section only when needed.

Sunday before last, when it was warm in the 50’s, I went back down to fix the leak again. I unsweated the whole two connection bits to make sure I could get them cleaned well. It’s unfortunately a pain to unsweat anything, as I can never get all the water out at the union I have. I have to push on the pipes to drain as much as possible, then pour a lot of heat into the first joint to melt it. Once I get the first joint open, I can then push the pipes to drain most of the water out, so subsequent unsweats are fairly easy. But that draining, followed by getting enough solder off to get things back together, is the biggest difficulty I have in plumbing.

I heated all the removed bits at a table and brushed off as much solder as I could. I got the two pipe ends under the house as good as I could. I sweat everything back together. The sweat at the same place as last time didn’t look that great, but I figured I’d give it a try. Unfortunately, this time water was spraying out of the joint. There was no way I could leave that while running anything.

I had to go through the whole rigamaroo of draining the water once again. I only unsweat the one joint this time, as I didn’t feel like doing everything all over again. Either in that unsweating process or in a previous one, I must have bent the pipe right as it went into the joint. It was kinda flattened, but not right at the end. I decided I might as well try it out as is, as I’d otherwise have to cut out that bit and cut another bit to replace the whole replacement bit I had made the other day. I really didn’t feel like doing that. I cleaned the two sides underneath the house there as best I could. I tried to go quickly in sweating to get the best joint possible, though I ended up reheating once to pour some more solder in. I just stuffed the flat side with solder, as much as I could get in there. Solder was dripping onto the ground.

I was, of course, rather worried about this joint holding up. To my amazement, when I turned on the water, it held just fine. There appeared to be a little, very slow seepage, but that must’ve just been leftover water from before: I haven’t seen anything dripping since. I’ve checked underneath the house a number of times since then, especially when it had gotten in the teens temperature wise again (I put the space heater down there in advance to ensure no freeze-ups), but have seen no signs of drippage. Soon I’ll remove the insulation again to see if perhaps it is dripping so slow that it is just getting absorbed by the insulation, but I think I am in the clear.

Now, this is good incentive for me to get that floor better insulated this summer. I’m considering putting two heat tape lines on the inside-the-floor piping, just to make sure it doesn’t freeze. I’m hoping that heat on just a little bit will carry through the whole pipe system to make sure it doesn’t freeze up. I’m also hoping that the tape doesn’t get too hot in the pipe insulation under the floor and melt the insulation or even cause a fire.

Plumbing break

in

I had my first split pipe a little over a week ago. The pipes froze for maybe the fifth time this year, on what might have been the coldest day of the year. I had put a lightbulb under the house, but it was no match for that cold and wind. I had shut off the water and opened the valves during the cold. After it warmed up, I put my space heater below the house to unthaw the lines (I had done this once before with fast results). It unthawed them, but I found one hot water line spraying out water.

I shut off the hot water side. Something made me think I had a leak in a cold water line as well. I think my toilet, which has a long delay for its valve to open after flushing, must have opened and when I heard the loud water rushing, I thought I had another leak. So I shut off all my water at my filter, which is inside the house.

For over a week I got my water from the filter: I had removed the filter part and was getting water from the hole that went through it. I boiled water for baths, filled jugs to use for teeth brushing, dish washing, and cooking. The water looked kinda junky, so I got my drinking water from my parents house.

Then one night I came home to find water dripping from the filter. When I went to shut it off, it fell apart and water was pouring out. I shut off my water at the main valve and had absolutely no water for a while. Luckily, the filter was not especially damaged, and I was able to just put it all back together. Evidently, the filter part holds a plastic plate against the valve part, preventing it from being pushed out. So I need to keep the filter on there.

Then I went underneath to fix the break. It was maybe a 1 inch break in the hot water line going to my kitchen. After some time of looking and crawling under my house, I determined that there was in fact no break in the cold water lines. I could have had cold running water that whole time. Without too much trouble, other than getting rather cold, I was able to cut out the old broken bit and put in a new bit with a junction. It held water just fine and finally I had all my water running again. I took a shower that night in celebration.

A few days later (yesterday) it got rather cold again. I put my space heater underneath the house just to make sure nothing froze up again. Unfortunately, a leak has developed, probably just at one of the soldered joints. I was worried about the one that had been there before, with how much heat I used to do some of the new joints. I’ll have to take care of that when the weather gets better. For now, I’m just shutting the valve till I need hot water.

New roommate

in

Toby Manor will soon have a new employee. Dwight Henson, my roommate and bandmate for several years in the past, will be living here temporarily for a few months or so. He wants to stay to look for a job in his desired field (TV or film). He’s had no luck in the two years or whatever it’s been since he graduated, so who knows how long that’ll take.

The preparation for the move has been very rough for me. I’ve had to move all of the junk from my back bedroom to my living room to allow it to become his bedroom. I have a lot of junk, and it really fills up the living room. There is a narrow walkway between stacked boxes and piles of stuff. This of course took a while to do. I’m intending on having a large and long series of garage sales once the weather turns nice to get rid of a lot of this, and hopefully pare my stuff down to a much more minimal amount.

I’ve also had to clean up the bathroom, kitchen, and hallway, known as the communal areas. These have taken a good bit of time and are still not especially ready for their planned roles.

And of course, as is a tradition here at Toby Manor, I’ve had plumbing problems. I went more than a week without water because a pipe burst after freezing for maybe the 5th time this year. That plumbing is a pain and takes some time, since it is outside and underneath my house.

I’ve got lots of schoolwork to do as well. It seems quite overwhelming. I’m feeling enticed toward dropping a class or something.

Anyway, I’m worried that the new employee will want me to do all sorts of work to get the house up to his germophobic and more normal person standards. I won’t be able to do much at least till school is out. We will no doubt get into arguments about how to run things. Living with two people should theoretically be less work than one, but I fear the opposite will be the case.

There are bright notes of the move, though. This will provide me with some much needed social interaction, even if just with Dwight and his girlfriend. It could be cool playing cards and the like. The costs of living here will hopefully go down a good bit. I’m expecting utility usage to go up noticeably, but it shouldn’t overtake the savings of splitting the costs in half. And this whole thing will hopefully motivate me more to do things to get out of this rut I have dug myself into. It’s getting harder and harder to stay in this rut.

Fully entering the cell phone world

in

I had stayed out of the cell phone world for quite some time. I don’t use the phone much, and cell phones cost a lot. A few years back I got a pay-as-you-go type phone, but it was quite expensive to actually call from: I rarely used it, and gave up on it when I accidently missed a payment date and lost all my minutes. Last Christmas, my Mom gave me another pay-as-you-go, with a bunch of minutes. I decided I’d try actually using this one. The first batch of minutes were all free for me, but even with a lot of them, I was able to go through them pretty quickly. When I ran out, it came time to make a choice.

Cousin Paul told me he could get me on his family plan at Alltel for $10 a month. I compared that with Tracfone’s prices. Tracfone would have had a slightly lower minimum price once I paid for their double minutes for life thing, but that wouldn’t be for a lot of minutes. I decided that, if I wanted to actually use it, I should just go with the Alltel. The contract worried me a bit, especially when I found out it was for the crappily ridiculously long two years, but I figured I’d live with that.

I bought a relatively cheap phone from Alltel, new. It’ll have cost me $60 if I get the rebate back with activation and all. It was a flip phone. It had a screen on the outside and mp3 buttons. It could play mp3s and movies. It had a camera. It could browse the web, though I had no interest in that bit because of cost. It worked pretty well, and I was relatively happy with it, except for some UI problems. I had it for about two weeks, then lost it during a trip to Seattle.

Buying a new phone with a contract already in place was ridiculously expensive. The one I had before suddenly became $250. The cheapest at that store was $150, and it was pretty crappy. Elsewhere, I could find down to about $100. So I decided I’d have to go used. I soon found online was the only reasonable place to find used.

In deciding what to buy, I found used phones still weren’t that cheap, though much more so than the new ones. For some reason, I thought perhaps I should just buy a combination PDA and cell phone. I had always wanted a PDA. I’m also very interested in touch-screen stuff. I figured one of the older models would be going for pretty cheap. I found that there weren’t that many models from far in the past, so I had relatively few choices. The newer ones were certainly quite expensive, no iphone or the like for sure (especially since none seemed to be made for Alltel). I always liked the Palm OS, wanted handwriting recognition for sure.

I found the Palm Treo 650 had all the features newer phones had, was available for Alltel, and wasn’t all that expensive. There was one locally on Craigslist, but it was from long enough ago that I didn’t even try for it. I returned, after many years, to eBay. I watched carefully, checked out all the ones available, picked the few I was willing to go for. I bid on several, sometimes going a little above what I wanted to pay and still didn’t get one. I almost gave up and went for the buy it now option. But I managed to win one. It ran $110 with shipping. Not too bad for a “smartphone”.

It shipped extremely fast, got here in a few days with standard shipping. I was quite happy to get my new toy, and played with it quite a bit for the following two days. I was extremely disappointed that Graffiti did not work with it. Stupid that a Palm PDA wouldn’t have that. I was extremely relieved when I found third party freeware to enable it. I also found that there was no way to directly sync Apple’s Address Book and iCal with it, outside of buying a utility just for that purpose. Palm’s Desktop software was rather outdated (hasn’t been updated in 2+ years) but it installed fine. It took a little while to get working, but once I did, it works just fine. The utility does use a bit of constant CPU power, so I turn it off sometimes. It has a calendar and address book app, so I should be able to at least import into those and copy that version to the Palm.

It took me a while to find good apps for it. Palm’s site had a software bank, but much of that stuff cost money. VersionTracker, though, has a good depository, and I found an even better one at softonic. I found some good freeware apps. They were remarkably easy to install. Just a double click in the finder set up a transfer for the next sync. I installed the Graffiti enabling app, a better alarm clock (the default one only had one alarm and wasn’t that good), and a few games. It’s sweet that there is a gameboy emulator for it. I’m still having trouble getting it working well, and haven’t figured out how to get my games over to it, but this could mean I can have phone, PDA type device, mp3 player, crappy camera, and gameboy all in one device.

Hopefully I won’t lose this one. I figured its larger size would help with that. I have full plans to get a silicone type skin with a belt clip for it. That should help a lot, and make it easier to carry as well.

So I called to get it activated. I had to have Paul authorize me to do so. Then, after attempting to activate it the way the guy told me to, it hung up to me and said activation failed. I then told the guy it was a Palm Treo. He said I needed to update my plan to their Smart Choice plan. They started at $69.99. I would obviously need to okay this with Paul anyway, since it’s actually his plan, so I said I’d hold off. Looking on the website, it looked like the Smart Choice plan would be $30 a month more for the main line plus $10 more for each other person. I have no idea why the other people would have to pay more. Since I’d be paying this increase, that’d take my $10 up to $60 a month, almost enough to pay for my own plan.

I was rather distraught with this and mad that Alltel would make me change plans when all I wanted was to use my device as a phone. After I calmed down, I figured that I’d call to verify the cost difference. If it was only like $30, I would probably go for it. It did, after all, have free unlimited data. If it was any more than that, though, that’d quickly overrun the cost of just buying a used regular phone. So I’d have to get another phone, and probably be able to sell this one for what I got it for, maybe even a little more. I finally called back Alltel, and got a different guy this time. I said I heard I needed to upgrade to the Smart Choice plan for my ‘smartphone’. He asked if I had bought it with a contract or used. When I said used, he said I didn’t need the smart choice for it. I was excited, though a little worried that it might not actually work, especially since dialing the setup number hadn’t last time. It took him a while (I guess he was trying to figure out a way for me to use minutes for data). He had my dial a different setup number. After two test calls, we verified: It had worked! After ending the call, I made sure by calling my own house. It worked. I was elated, elated enough to write out this ridiculously long post.

So now I have phone service again, plus a little electronic toy that I can carry around with me. I’ll have to verify that it is good over several days here, but I think it should be fine. I better not lose it though.

Vacation to Seattle

in

I recently got back from my visit to Washington State. It was a pretty good trip, with lots of mountains, trees, and water, as well as sitting in a car. I managed to take 1050 photos there, and to lose my brand new cell phone, purchased just before the trip. And I got to see brother Jamie for the first time since perhaps March when he left for Seattle. I had to skip my classes for the week, but it was at a not so important time in them.

Saturday
My mom and I both flew up, separately, on the Saturday before last. I felt very cramped on the flight, but luckily the seat next to me was empty, giving me extra space. I had a small dinner of a microwave type fried chicken sandwich with tiny salad and M & Ms. I read my psychology book (for class) for a while, and somewhat watched without sound one and part of another movie. I think I dozed off briefly. I also watched out the window quite a bit. It was dark out for much of the flight, but seeing the small splotches of lights on the ground here and there was interesting. The clouds near Seattle were quite lit up, which was quite a site.

Mom flew up well before me and had to get to the condo we were staying at before I arrived, so I had to stay in Seattle for the night. I stayed at Jamie’s house (it took some time before the trip to convince him this was the way to go). It took some time to meet up with him, hauling all my stuff on the bus and then around the city looking for him. My new cell phone helped greatly with our meeting. We took the bus down to his house. It’s a small trailer, a large towable camping kind retrofitted to sort of have the normal fittings of a house, but somewhat crappily. I was skeptical when he said it would be hard to sleep more than two people there, but he was right. We ate pizza and I was introduced to the TV show the Office.

Sunday
I slept poorly and for a short period of time before hauling my gear back to the bus. Jamie had to stay and work the next two days, so it was just me leaving. I asked the bus driver how to get to the Amtrak station, and luckily it was the last stop on that line. Unfortunately, when I got off, there was no clear indication where it was. It took me some time of walking around, but I found it in a small, nearly not labeled building a little ways away. My mom called me as I was looking for it: she thought the train left an hour before it actually did, and that I should already be on it. She called just as a bum looking guy was approaching me, and he said something like have a good trip and walked away after I had been talking for a little while. I had to take the train to get nearer to the condo, a two and a half hour drive away. The train ride was quite comfortable, much more spacious than the plane, and there were not so many people in it. We picked up more at other stops, but I still was able to keep my whole two seats to myself. I slept for a while. I also watched the scenery. A man near me hadn’t payed for a ticket, and then was caught smoking in the bathroom, much to the consternation of the train workers. At our destination, he was seen sitting with a guard, apparently awaiting the arrival of the police, who showed up just as I left.My mom was there in Bellingham waiting for me. She had gotten lost on the way and had to buy a $5 map just to find the place. She brought her GPS unit, named Yoda, but he was of no help. She had rented an SUV, and we left in that.

We went back to the condo, about a half hour away, near the small and isolated town of Glacier. It was in the mountains, primarily a ski area. The area is remote enough that not only did our cell phones not work, our GPS units didn’t either. The satellite radio in the car cut in and out, though it did this even in places nearer Seattle. We spent the day staying in the area, going around the mountains. Many of the roads going up the mountains were one lane, and after a while they often turned into rough dirt/stone roads. We had to turn around the first one we went up because it was washed out at one point. It was quite hard turning the car around in the narrow one lane road. It was very cloudy, the clouds engulfing the mountain tops. We were quick to get above the level of some of the clouds. Much of these mountains were covered by trees, mostly conifers. But at the tops of some of them was snow and rock. This was my first good view of some snow capped peaks: I had been up top of one in New Mexico, but it had been at night, and I had seen some from planes before as well. There weren’t a lot of them, just a at most a few visible at a time. Later that day, when we drove up near the skiing area, we came to a small lake that had a nice reflection of some mountain tops. It’s called Picture Lake or something like that, and is supposedly the most photographed of that sort of lake. There were little birds near us that flew quite close. We also saw a decently sized waterfalls, evidently where many people had died.

Unfortunately, it got dark before 1700, so we didn’t have much time to see things. It and the clouds also made for slow shutter speeds on many the photos throughout my trip.

We ate dinner at a local restaurant called Graham’s, somewhat famous for having been in an early movie. It was a somewhat interesting place. The menu was part of a newspaper that told the history of the restaurant and some other informational tidbits. It had a small variety of somewhat strange items. I went with a stir-fry like dish which my mom had the night before and recommended. It was pretty good.

We called my dad, as we did every night. We lost cell phone service near a strange tree with blue christmas lights in the middle of nowhere at the side of the road on the way to the condo, so we usually tried to call before that. There was a phone at the condo area, a regular phone put in a payphone like terminal for the whole condo to use. We had to use a long distance card with it the couple of times we called from there.

Synopsis of rest of trip, perhaps to be filled in later
Monday
Long drive to shore. Saw Deception Pass, a passage of a river through a narrow gorge, with turbulence that turns over kayaks. Saw a few beach areas, view over bay.

TuesdayDrove to Seattle to pick up Jamie. Took ferry to Orcas Island. Drove up tallest mountain on the islands there. Nice view around, across bay. Could see many big snow capped mountains off in distance. Tried to get into rec room at condo for quite some time, but must have closed early.

Wednesday
Showed Jamie mountain area, mostly what we had seen already, but a bit more. Went up Twin Lakes road. Made it over several rough washed out spots of road, but had to turn around at one very bad one. Got somewhat good views, but was cloudy and of and on raining, preventing good mountain-top views. Jamie and I played ping-pong and swam in pool.

Thursday
Were going into town, so I brought my cell phone. Set it in car next to me, was last I saw of it. Went through Canada to a small bit of the US on a peninsula off of Canada. Got stopped at first crossing, didn’t hear what guy said, so waited in car for a long while before I went into the nearby building, at which point I was told that we were supposed to have come in. The cop guy there seemed to have a strange air of importance, and told me to keep my distance when I got close to him to point out our vehicle. Soon after we were let leave. Other three crossings much less eventful. All had long waits, especially last one, with long lines of cars. Bought no MSG ramen soup at gas station that Jamie ended up getting. Rocky beach on peninsula with lots of seaweed, giant driftwood, plenty of birds on water, decent view over bay of some islands. Not very worth trip through border crossings though.

Friday
Power went out, so woke up 45 minutes late on big driving day. Checked out of condo, drove down past Deception Point towards Olympic Peninsula. Saw sea lions or something in water as drove past, but construction plus missed exit prevented our stopping. Took ferry (much shorter ride) to Olympic peninsula. Walked short way onto 6 mile long sand dune thing with light house on its end. Saw seaweed, giant driftwood. Drove up mountain road to dam, small and uneventful, turned around. Went toward another mountain road, road closed, had to turn around. Dark, had to head to Seattle. Long lines with huge number of cars took ferry to Seattle. Dropped Jamie at home, went to hotel. Briefly used free internet, slept well in bed.

Saturday
Dropped my luggage at Jamie’s. Had pancake breakfast with Jamie. Mom left for early flight, dropping Jamie and I at REI store. Spent much time there looking at ultralight rain garb and the many, many other camping items. Very nice place. Bought small duffel I later used in place of another, slightly smaller and less handled bag, for the flight. Also some camping soap and a durable reflective blanket. Walked around town. Tower had too long lines, though view would have been nice, passed on it. Took space train further downtown, saw Pikes Market. Top floor had food with lots of fresh fish, fruit, also crafts. Narrow lane very very crowded, difficult to walk. Maybe four other floors with antique and other type shops in old-time mall-like setting. Played instruments for a while at Lark in the Morning store. Walked for a good while till found Teriyaki restaurant, ate large meal that I couldn’t finish. Walked good deal more looking for wooden boat place, couldn’t find it. Dark. Went to coffee shop to use internet to find best bus schedule for me to catch my flight. Also looked for shop with used camping gear, but was too late to visit it. Went back to Jamie’s home for a while via bus. Didn’t get to do much other than repack my gear better before I had to leave for my bus. Bus was rather late. Gear easier to carry with better packing, still rather difficult, especially first one which ended up fairly crowded. Second one, guy saw my transfer slip was old, had to pay but couldn’t find money with all my stuff, had to pay on exit.

Plenty of time waiting in airport for flight, read psychology book. Flight boarded slightly late. Rather empty, after women moved, had my row of three seats to myself. Looked out window at darkness a bit. Soon lay down across three seats, fell asleep. Slept till descent approaching Cleveland airport. Woke with sharp pain in ears, like they really needed to have popped many times over the flight, but couldn’t because I was asleep. Every once in a while the right would make strange, loud noises. Ears didn’t pop till after got home and slept. Arrived early. Dad picked up, drove me straight home. Stay awake for a bit unpacking and looking for cell phone. Fell asleep and slept till 1500 or so when parents called. Invited me over for dinner of chili. Looked completely through Mom’s luggage, still couldn’t find phone.