Whimsy On The Road

Posted by Eric

Mug Tree

One of my hobbies is geocaching. It takes me to places I wouldn’t otherwise ever go, and lets me see some unusual things. This past weekend my wife somehow convinced me to get up at 8 am and head out on a day-long caching trip. I wasn’t opposed to the caching, or the day-long part, but the 8 am, on a Saturday of all things, was tough. I’m glad she convinced me, though, as it proved to be an excellent day.

We first drove to Urbana, Illinois, to pick up her brother who is also an avid geocacher. He and I are both working on some geocaching challenges, one involving finding a cache in every county in the state, and another to find a cache on each page of the Illinois DeLorme atlas. While he’s got the advantage of being more centrally located in the state, the real reason he’s kicking my butt on these challenges is that the dude can optimize a route like nobody’s business. Where I might ride around all day and find a few caches in a handful of counties, with him in the navigator’s seat we traveled 250 miles, picking up eighteen new caches in ten different counties and covering six atlas pages. My best. day. caching. ever.

Along the way we saw a lot of cornfields (this is Illinois, after all), some really nice and unexpected forest areas and a big honking lake. But the one thing that really stood out was the tree pictured above. We came for a geocache called Mug Tree, not knowing that there was a real-by-god-literal-mug-tree awaiting us in the middle of nowhere. The cache description calls it a “spontaneous gesture of amusing goodwill designed to bring a smile to the faces of passing strangers”, which pretty much seems to sum it up. Nice to see whimsy is alive and well in the countryside.

Strange Things In The Woods

Posted by Eric

Tree Ring

I was hiking and geocaching in the wooded area behind Joliet Junior College today when I stumbled across this strange arrangement of sticks and grass encircling a tree in a clearing. No idea what the purpose is, but it’s clearly for something.

You know those fantasy stories where the intrepid adventurers are traveling through some ancient forest, and the trees seem to be trying to steer them towards or away from something? Well, these woods may not be ancient, but they do like to confuse anyone hiking through them. It’s almost impossible to blaze a straight trail through the place. I’m sure I could not find this spot again without my GPS.

I Am A Terrible Technology Prognosticator

Posted by Eric

I’ve never been good at predicting where computer technology will go. Sure, I’ve wanted a terabyte capacity hard drive since I first heard the term 15 or 20 years ago, but only recently have I had enough data to justify one. But more storage, more memory, more speed, those are obvious things. Doesn’t take a guru to figure it out.

My first Big Mistake with judging technology was with CD-ROM drives. I read all the geek news so I was aware of them, and eventually they started coming with new computers. But when I got my first one I thought “Well, that’s neat, but I doubt I’ll ever have many of them”. Today I have a 16.5 gallon plastic box in the basement, full to the gills with data CDs, containing god-only-know-what. At a guess, there’s well over 500 discs in there. One of these days I’m going to sort through them and get rid of the obsolete and useless ones. No, really I am.

Same deal when USB first came out. It sounded like a nifty idea, but I couldn’t imagine ever having more than a couple of USB devices. I figured sure, a mouse, maybe a printer. Ooof. So wrong. So very, very wrong.

Laser printer, ink jet printer, two USB hard drives, mouse, Palm, iPod, handheld GPS receiver, Wacom pen table, memory card reader, UPS monitor. That’s eleven devices that are hooked up pretty much any time I’m at my desk. Add a couple of thumb drives, and it’s a real mess. And that’s just on my primary computer. Luckily both of my LCD monitors have built-in USB hubs! My notebook and my server each have a couple of devices attached to them, and there’s a couple more rarely-used USB gadgets floating around, as well.

I can hardly wait to see what I’m wrong about next. Let’s see if I can rig the game – I don’t think that small-device hardware makers will ever standardize power adapters so that we no longer need a metric ton of wall warts all over our homes.