All this week when I got out of my car I heard a Robin make its little squawk and fly away. When I looked in the Holly bush I found a nest which contained 4 blue eggs.
Four Robin Eggs in my Holly Bush
Today on June 9, they had hatched.
Some Baby Robins Hatched Today
June 10
June 10 Robin Nest
June 11
June 11
June 12
June 12 Robin Babies
June 13
June 13 Robin Nest
June 14
June 14 Robin Nest
June 15
June 15 Robin Nest
June 16
June 16 Robin Nest
June 17
June 17 Robin Nest
June 18
June 18 Robin Nest
Spring Fling 2010 arrived Thursday April 29 until Sunday May 2.
There was a WW2 Bomb Loader
A Fancy WW2 Bomb Loader visited the Cabin
The Visiting Canadian Goose Hatched some Goslings at the Dry pond
The Dry Pond made some more birds for Spring Fling
But one of them did not Survive
I sent my son to check out the Goose Nest after the Hatching. This Duckling started to hatch but never finished.
The Mud pit was a little dry, but Zak went in anyway.
Critter Hunting in the Dry Pond
Big Ed doug a Moat
The New Moat is just waiting for Tube rides when it floods.
The Trout in front of the Cabin were hungry, so I grabbed a handful of the Trout food pellets out of the bucket in the cabin. My plan was to throw them to the Trout a little bit at a time. I would take some from the pile in my left hand and toss them for the Piranna Trout to consume. I had a lot of fun making the Trout run from one side of the creek to the other as they chased after the food pellets. A noise from the woods distracted me from my pellet tossing and I looked around for it. I did not find anything and went back to the creek. One piece of my mind was aware that I had yummy food in my hand, so I tossed the stuff in my hand into the back of my mouth. Once I started to taste them, I realized my mistake. I decided it would be a good idea to give them all to the fishes. They were thankful.
Laura figured out that she could reach the really long Ice sickels from an upstairs window. So Eddie and I decided to duke it out.
Eddie, I am your Father
1st Place for Show
Eddie designed a new Pinewood Derby car for his Webelos II competition. It used 3 different colors and a lego driver with an X-wing canopy. Eddie and I cut it to his chosen shape and we sanded it down to 600 Grit. Laura and Eddie Laid down 3 layers of a base coat using Lawn Care Green. Sanded the green to 600 grit. Laura taped the parts of the car that were supposed to stay green, got the can of Red Gloss paint and shot it at the car. The first squirts out of the can must have included a lot of solvent because there was a bunch of big bubbly red streaks on the car that would not dry properly. Laura was sad. I had to scrape and sand the gooey red stuff down to the wood since it had dissolved some of our pretty green paint. I shook up the paint can real good and went at the car again. It did a little better. We bought a new can of red paint. When we had sanded the red paint to 600 grit, Laura taped off the car sections that were to remain Red when the next color was added. The Blue paint went on much better. When Laura pulled off all the tape, we had a Red, Green and Blue car. Then a layer of Clear Gloss. Then all the decals. Then More Gloss.
Meanwhile, Laura had also polished the axles and the wheel hubs. It was then my turn. I had to install the wheels and the weights to bring the car up to 5 oz. This time I decided to use my drill press to pre-drill the axle holes, therefore guaranteeing that the tire axles will go in straight. Wrong. Two of them still went in cockeyed and I had to whap on the axle nails with a screwdriver so that all 4 wheels touched when it was rolled.
I weighed all the parts together before I assembled it and trimmed off the Lead until all the separate parts were exactly 5 oz. I then put all the parts on the car and then weighed it. The car somehow was up to 5.2 oz thus proving that things weigh more than the sum of their parts once assembled. So I started trimming the lead again to get it back down to 5 oz.
I had volunteered to run the Pinewood derby software for the Pack using my Laptop which was connected to the electronic speed equipment on the Pinewood derby racing track. There are 107 kids in our pack. Each with a car. Each car was to have 6 races running on 3 tracks at a time. If you do the math that is a total of 214 races. This would be from 8 in the morning till 3:30 in the afternoon. From my previous years experience, I had learned all the tricks to make everything work together because it would mess up after about 15 races. I would reset power to the timer, unplug and re-plug cables and restart the software. Last year, it always worked. Not this year. This year the special software updated itself over the internet. After the update, it still seemed to work fine. But, after about 40 races, nothing would work and the software would not get the race times from the timing equipment. This would also really really mess up my computer. On a reboot, it once gave me the BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH (BSOD). I would have to shutdown and reboot 2 or 3 times before it came up cleanly enough to run the Racing Software again. All this would be occurring while a room full of about 60 parents and kids are ALL looking at me attempting to fix things and they were not smiling at me. For the little stuff, I would stop the race and signal to the helpers to push things while I did stuff to the computer to verify everything was working again before starting the next race. Luckily the big crashes would wait until the end of the races which would end the competitions. Then I would reboot and give the results to the leaders. BUT, for the last set of races for the Bears, a hard crash happened after the 4th heat with 2 more to go. I stopped the race, fidgeted with things. Nothing worked. Everybody is watching me. I go to the Pack leader and tell him that I need to reboot the computer and it will probably take about 15 minutes before we can restart the races. He makes the announcement and takes the Bears out to play outside. Meanwhile, I am waiting for my Laptop to reboot. Various techies stop by to offer me unhelpful advice on what I should be doing. Eventually, I get rebooted and verify that the hardware seems to be working. I give the signal and all the Bears trudge back in. We finish the last 2 heats with no problems. Afterwords, a couple of parents stop by and tell me that I had the worst job and they felt sorry for me. I thanked them.
For the Webelos II races. Eddie won 1st place for show and came in 4th place for speed. Yay! We go to the District finals on Feb 20.
I left my tent up after OctoberFest. It turns out to have been a bad decision. We got a lot of snow in December, about a foot an an half. Since I had left my tent up, it failed to support that much snow. It snapped a number of my tentpoles and got a little flat.
18 Inches of Snow is bad for a tent
OctoberFest is going to be from Thursday October 8 thru Monday October 12. Bee there. Be prepared for the power Lines to look a little different. The road into the North 60 will deffinitly be different. Be sure to bring something for the Raffle. And bring something to share for dinner on Saturday. Let me know if you want any special announcements made on the Blog. I believe that we will have another Smoked Pig again. Yummie.
WARNING The road from the North 60 to the cabin has changed. I predict that many people will get lost. Be prepared and carry enough emergency supplies to survive a night if you cannot find the cabin. Watch for signs which may or may not be there showing you the way. WARNING
I found a Woods Turtle at the Dry Pond
I parked Laura’s 4trak in front of the Little pile of Wood
We decided to go riding on the Mulch Pile
They took down a lot of trees to make room for the New Tower
They put a New Gravel Road between the N60 and the Power Line
The Power Company is going to add another set of towers to the Power Line. To do that, they are building a new road across the North 60 to get their heavy equipment in. TrailCo is working on the road to the power lines.
They Cut down an bunch of trees
And Shredded up all the brush and Branches
Piles of Mulch
Nick and I caught a snake in the wood bin in the Cabin.
Big Ed got it into his head to replace the Culvert Pipe at the Watsons creek crossing. It also gave him an excuse to use his Excavator.
Before we put the pipe in the hole, we had to inspect it. I had a small problem getting out of the hole so Nick tried to pull me up as I scrambled to get traction with my Tevas. When I failed to get traction just as I crested the lip of the hole, Nick found himself trying to hold my significant weight while it was falling. So I crashed to my knees on the sharp gravel at the top of the hole. Like Ouchie.
After Laura changed the shower head in the Master Bathroom, she noticed that water was coming thru the ceiling on the stairs under the shower when I was taking a shower. So I set up our funky folding ladder on the curving stairs so that I could cut a hole in the dry wall behind the shower.
Drywall Hole to see the back of the Shower
I discovered that there is about a 3 foot gap from the drywall to the back of the shower. Not very useful for attempting to find and fix the leak. So I cut a hole in the guest room to get closer to the back of the shower.
Guest Room Hole To access the back of the Shower
This worked. So I fired up the shower and spent the next 20 minutes watching for a leak. No leak. Bummer. I put a different shower head that I could turn off in order to put the maximum pressure on the pipes and still no leak. I now have 2 big holes in my drywall and no leaks. It is good thing we didn’t call an expensive plumber to find this out. And now that Laura has seen all the wasted space behind the shower, she wants me to put in a new closet or some kind of storage space in there.
My current plan is to go back to using the master bathroom shower until it leaks again. I will leave the holes in the guest room drywall and try to fix the stair’s drywall hole.
If it leaks, then I will know where it is leaking. And I will try to figure out how to use the wasted space in my walls.
Monday Update: It leaked this morning, but not from the pipes to the shower. We discovered a path that water could splash out of the shower stall and leak thru the floor. So…. I poked holes in my Drywall for nothing. I just need to seal the floor better and to keep the splash out to a minimum.
The plan is to celebrate the 4th of July on the 4th of July. Preceded by food if anybody brings some and followed by foo foo if we make any.
Since my lawn maintenance worker decided to stop mowing my lawn, I had to get Nick to fix the walk behind mower that I bought from him about 10 years ago. After Nick played with the carborator, it started on the second pull. I decided to mow my lawn today. So I chased the mower around the yard and when I got about 3/4 thru, the mower started surging and then died. I called Nick, who remotely diagnosed that I had water in my tank. I drained some gas into a bottle and could not tell if there was any water in there. I had to syphon the gas out of the tank and I now remember vividly what gas tastes like. I then practiced spitting a lot. I tore things apart and figured that there was a bunch of dirt at the bottom of the new tank that Nick had put on the mower. The new gas filter he had put on, was full of junk. I was jamming Q-Tips into the drain thing to try to clear out the clog but nothing worked. I eventually put a hose on the drain thing and blew air back into the tank. At first it was hard to blow and then it blew clear. I once again remembered what gas tasted like. When I hooked things back up, the gas was flowing freely. I finished mowing the lawn. Later I decided to chop down a maple tree that was putting too much shade in my back yard with my Axe. It was only about 6 inches in diameter, so I figured I did not need to get out the ChainSaw. After about 3 minutes of chopping the tree went Thump, Thump and was leaning against another tree with a very long 3 inch diametor branch sticking out over the back yard. It was about a foot over my head and I tried to swing at it to start cutting it off. I missed. It was a very hard swing. I had not expected to miss it. My arms continued to move in an arc past the branch and then down straight in front of me. Next thing I knew, it had stopped by hitting my left ankle. I had sharpened my Axe very well. I looked down at my foot, expecting the worst, but found that I had put my hiking boots on in order to mow the lawn. There was no blood. I went inside and took the boot off. I had a 3 inch line of scraped skin starting at my ankle that was beginning to swell. Like Ouchie. I had thought about wearing my Teva sandles to mow the lawn, but in retrospect, I made the right decision.
The Good News: Google Maps has high resolution pictures of the Cabin.
The Bad News: The Images are from Feb 2006. The dry pond is not done and Betsy’s house is full of trees.
It will be there from April 31-May 5. I plan to be there the whole time. Maybe heading up Wed Nite. The usual things will occur. A Raffle, a Fire Pit. Mabe the Tiki Bar will be back. Music is being Negotiated. I cut the tree up that fell down in my camp site.
Itinerary From the Facebook page
Friday: Cabin Fun
Saturday:
Potluck Dinner: Please have you food ready and on the table by 6:00pm. We need someone to cook burgers!
Raffle: Some time after dinner
Band: “Patent Pending” will be playing Saturday Night. They are a Blue Grass band.
Marshmallow Fight: Watch out, you never know when it will happen! I will try to find the big ones
Sunday: Pancake breakfast?
The power lines across the Pancos will be doubled up as another set of powerlines will be added next to the existing powerlines. The start of work will be very soon. They will extend the width by another 150 feet. It looks like they will be graveling the North 60 entrance from Laurel Grove to the powerline.
Changes are happening!
Title: Spring Fling Location: Cabin Start Date: Thursday 2009-04-30 End Date: Tuesday 2009-05-05
Bee there. Things will happen. Food will be consumed.
I have a Brita water filter in my office space which I use to make my coffee each morning. After I made my coffee today, I noticed that there appeared to be a green sticky stuck to the bottom of the flask. I could see it since the container was clear an it was a pretty green blobby color on the bottom. So I went ahead and brewed my coffee. While I was drinking it, I stared at the blob and decided it was not a sticky but it looked like someone had used a green highlighter on the bottom of the container. This seemed like a silly thing for someone to do and I realzed that the green was on the inside of the container. So I stuck my hand in the water and rubbed some green slime off of the bottom. Ah Ha! I thought, I have algae in my filtered water. How did it get there? My fancy filter should remove anything the algae might want to eat. My next thought was that I was drinking chlorophilliated flavored Coffee. I wondered if the brewing process would kill any algae poisons that might exist. Possibly it might actually be healthy. Some sort of macroBiotic NewAge drink. Maybe I have just started a trend. I decided to clean my filter.
Well Brother Jim gave another lecture in August 2008 in Hawaii. I found it by googling around. Anyone who wants to comment on it should contact Jim.
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Beyond Newton’s Method: Generalized Higher-Order Approximation Methods
James D. Turner
Finding the root of an equation f = 0 is a common problem in computational science and
engineering. Many line search and derivative-based methods are available. Newton s
derivative-based Method, discovered in 1669, takes a starting guess, uses first-order
derivative information, and iteratively refines a solution until a specified accuracy level is
achieved. Under well-know conditions Newton’s Method converges quadratically. Higher
order versions of Newton’s Method have been known since Halley’s discovery of a cubically
convergent version of the algorithm in 1694. Chebyshev extended Halley’s cubic algorithm
to vector-systems of equations. The classical higher-order algorithm derivation strategy
develops scalar algorithms and then proposes vector extensions. This paper presents a
three-part strategy for systematically developing and generalizing higher-order versions of
Newton’s method, without introducing ad hoc assumptions or approximations.
Computational differentiation tools are introduced for generating high-order partial
derivative models. New homotopy-based algorithms simultaneously generate differential
correction terms, as well as solution gradients. The solution gradients are exploited in an
analytic continuation version of Davidenko’s method, to provide high-order extrapolations
for the correction update term. Several numerical examples are presented to demonstrate
the effectiveness of these new methods. The resulting math models are compared with
Halley’s and Chebyshev’s algorithms. The proposed high-order successive approximation
strategies are expected to be broadly useful for knowledge discovery applications in science
and engineering where the underlying problems are fundamentally nonlinear.
The PDF form of the Abstract is -> Here
Enjoy
