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: Blog - The CSR
Monthly Edition
Welcome to the CSR Weekly Edition otherwise known
as the CSR Blog. Most people have heard of a Blog by now, but if you haven't, a Blog is
a new term for a web log, or journal. This Blog will contain any information, story, life
changing experiences, editorial, observations, delusions of grandeur, etc. that I want to
share with everyone.
It has been a while. After looking at my last blog entry, I can't believe
it's been over two months since my last entry. For all those concerned enough to send e-mails
wondering if I was OK, the answer is yes, I'm OK.
I am suffering from a nasty cold (sore throat, congested head, aching)
that I've had since Wednesday. The first I've had in years. I think I got it when I went
Christmas shopping in Asheville last weekend. That will teach me to leave the Ranch during
cold reason. So if this entry comes off a little whinny it's probably the way I feel right
now coming through...
The short answer to why I haven't worked on this site is that I've been
working my butt off for NAPA. I have a big project that is due at the end of the year, which
is now only 3 weeks away. I have been putting 120% of all my time into getting the project
done and have had no extra time, or creativity, left over for this site.
Just an editorial note; contrary to what some readers may think (as evidenced
in the utopian e-mails I get), I am not independently wealthy. I must work my you know what
off to stay here at the Ranch. In fact, I could probably live an "easier" life if I didn't
live way up here on an expensive mountain. But hey, who said life should be easy. If fact,
in my opinion, if life is easy, you probably aren't living it to the extent you could!
Don't get the wrong impression of my work. I really, really enjoy what
I do. And after doing what I do for so many years, most of the time it's not that stressful.
The feeling of accomplishment you feel when a project is done and being shipped out to 11,000 customers is very satisfying. Then, when you hear back from some of the customers about
how much they like what you've done and how much better it makes their life, it is very
rewarding.
Even with all the work I've been doing, I've still been wanting to make
some sort of an entry for a while. I really want to get the launch of Discovery that I experienced
back on July 4th up on the site. Over the last few months I have lots of stories, pictures,
and video that I want share.
So it is with quite a bit of frustration that now when I do make an entry,
it's not something anyone is going to enjoy. This entry is to let you know that the Ranch
Cam and Weather Station are going to be down off and on over the next day or so. You see,
I've had a bit of bad luck hit me at an especially bad time work wise.
The quick explanation, if you want to stop reading at this point,
is that my machines are infected with a virus and have to be reloaded. If you want to know
more read on...
This all started Wednesday when I got a call from my Satellite Internet
provider (WildBlue) while I was on my way down to a meeting in Atlanta. They notified me
that I was now over my monthly allowance of bandwidth. The jist of the conversation was
that my Internet speed would be throttled down (almost to dial-up speed) until I'm back
under my limit. If I continue to be over my limit for three months, my account will be terminated.
I knew all these terms already, but I'm shocked that I'm over my limit.
Most of the time I only use about half of my allowance. Of course I was on the road
to an all day meeting and couldn't do anything about it until I got back home late Wednesday
night.
You see, Satellite providers can't afford to offer unlimited access like
telephone or cable companies can. The bandwidth the satellites have is limited and the 100's
of millions of dollars it takes to put a new bird up always keeps the bandwidth at a premium.
I buy the business package which offers the most bandwidth. Usually, I'm well under my limit,
only using about 50% of it.
When I got home, sure enough, I was over my limit. After a lot of
investigating, it appears that one or both of my two computers that I leave on all the time,
have been infected with a virus. It's something that is hiding very well and I can't find,
but it is there.
If you look at the image below you'll see that it looks like the infection
happened around 11/13 and has been using more and more of my bandwidth every day. My machines
are probably serving up spam e-mail to the world.
As you can see from the graph, I have battled with it for the last 4 days.
I have at least stopped the Internet use from continuing to grow, but I can't seem to stop
it. The only thing that stops it from growing is to shutdown my machines at night while
I'm asleep. It is time for a complete reload.
I've spent the last 4 days getting the important data (years of weather
info, years of Ranch Cam images) off the weather station server and I'm getting ready
to reload it.
So, the RanchCam and Weather Station info are going to stop updating for
a while. It usually takes me a couple of days to get a machine formatted and reloaded again
and running the way it was.
Fun, fun, fun.....
I hope the next entry can be an enjoyable one for everyone.
Fall has come on time this year and it is very welcomed. The cool nights
and mornings followed by dry and pleasant afternoons are heavenly. I definitely have fall
fever. It's hard to stay in an work.
The trees are turning really quickly. Here at the the Ranch the maples,
birches, beeches, and hickorys are almost at their peak.
We've had many light frosts, with the first on September 21. These have
helped speed everything along.
On another note, I just got back from another adventure this last weekend.
I went on another expedition to the great American west. I was gone 10 days and it has taken
this past week to recover!
This time I got to spend some time in northern New Mexico and southern
Colorado. I spent a couple of days in Santa Fe and three days in Telluride. It was a great
time.
One day, maybe, I'll be able to get some of the experiences up on the
website. Given my track record though, I'm not going to make any promises.
Late Entry
Night Walking
11:38 pm
I just came back in from a moonlit stroll out across the pasture and up
to the cemetery hill you can see in the distance on the webcam.
The harvest Moon, just two days past full, was like a spot light. I could
see everything, even at a distance.
I went over to the corral and petted and talked to the horses for a while.
They seemed to appreciate the night visit.
As they stood near me, vying for attention, I was surrounded by the steam
from their breath.
As I rubbed on their shoulders, I could feel the warmth underneath their
coats. The top layer has been chilled by the cool damp night air, but they are warm underneath
their fur.
I finally headed on up the hill. I thought the horses might follow me
up, but they stayed down at the corral. They seemed to feel more secure there.
When I made it to the top I could look at a grand sweep of the Ranch.
Down at the pond the moonlight was being reflected off the still water.
But the moon's reflection was dimmed and diffused by a mist hovering over the pond. Tendrils
of mist were reaching out of the pond and off into the woods below it.
The moonlight shining from above combined with the moon light reflected
from below, made the mist abnormally bright. It seemed to be lit from within.
I know that as the night wears on, those tendril of mist will probably
reach over the pasture all the way to the house. They usually do most nights.
As I look over towards the house, it looks warm and snug. There is a warm,
yellow-orange, glow emanating from the windows. A solitary refuge from the cold, dark blackness
of the mountain slopes all around it. An island of warmth and light in a vast forest of
trees.
A tall column of smoke is rising from the chimney. The absolute still
air of the moment, has let the smoke rise high in to the air in a straight column, before
being dispersed by some unseen and unfelt breeze high above.
The scene looks like a something from a fairytale.
I take a moment to consider how lucky I am to be able to have this. Sometimes,
after years of living here, I take it for granted. Sometimes, with all the work that's on
me, it's hard to take time and appreciate it all....
A Barred Owl calling snaps me back into the moment. Another one, father
down the hollow answers back, it's call distant.
The close one calls again "Who cooks for you, who cooks for you alllll".
The distant one answers with he same question. Back and forth they call, on and on. There
calls echoing in the absolute night silence.
I look down at the scene spread out before me again. It is hard to believe
it's real. It almost seems as if it could be a dream...
Well, time to head back toward that warm home down there.
It's time to sit by that fire and contemplate what I have just seen.
It's time to file this memory away into the recesses of my brain. Trying to save the moment.
Well at long last. I got the bear video uploaded to the site.
It contains the few minutes of the bear walking up the creek and a few
minutes of video of the meadow and house after the bear went up into the woods.
Remember, I'm breathing hard because I had to run up from the garage to
the house, upstairs, back down, and set up the camera!
I still didn't have the camera tripod setup when I turned on the camera,
so forgive the shaky camera work. Also, since the bear came through so close to twilight,
the low light caused the video to be grainy. It was actually darker than it appears on the
video. The camera amplified the light that was there to make the image look brighter, but
grainier.
I've got two good versions of the video you can download to your own machine
so you can play it when ever you like. There is also the crappy version you can see here
almost instantly.
As usual, to see the downloaded versions of the videos, you will need
Windows Media Player version
9 or higher.
The High-Def version shows the most amount of detail and downloads in
about 10 minutes with a broadband (not dial-up) connection.
And of course there's the Google Video version, which will let you sort
of see the contents of the video, sort of right now. Anyone can see it, no matter what operating
system (Windows, Mac, Linux) or Internet connection speed.
Just click the play button in the video player below...
It's amazing how many of you use the RanchCam.
Within minutes of a grid appearing over the camera, I was getting questions about what the
heck was going on.
Well, the story of the grid started Wednesday night (actually Thursday
morning) at about 1:00 am as I started to go to bed...
As I got up from the computer and started to think about taking a shower,
I had like a hot flash come over me. I thought dang, I'm hot. It fact, now that I wasn't
concentrating on the work I was doing, realized I had been getting hot for a while.
So I went downstairs to check the A/C thermostat. Uhh oh... It was 79
degrees in the house and the thermostat was set for it to be 67 degrees this time of night.
The A/C was on, but only luke warm air was coming out of the vents. This is not good.
It was too hot to sleep like this, so I went in the out into pouring rain
and checked the unit under the house and the compressor out in the woods. I determined that
everything was in order except the compressor was not on. The cooling fan was running but
the compressor was not on. This was bad news...
After a reset of everything and making sure the air filter was not blocking
air flow to the condenser coils, I realized there was nothing I could do to get it going.
So I turned off the now eternally running A/C and started opening windows.
Immediately the super saturated humidity of the rainy southern night hit me. I immediately
got sticky and wet. Yuck.
Even though it does get cool on summer nights at this altitude, usually
in the mid 60's, the humidity is pretty much the same as it is all over the south. In fact
the dew points are usually in the mid 60's or higher. Notice the similarity in these two
numbers.
Dew point is a measure of the amount of moisture in the air and indicates
the temperature that the air will reach 100% humidity and start forming dew. And guess
what, here at the Ranch, it cools down to that dew point almost every night.
So, pretty much every night during the summer, we have heavy, heavy, soaking
dew on everything. The outside walls and windows of my house are dripping with moisture
every morning. Now imagine that dew taking place in your house. Like the condensation on
a cold drinking glass, everything got wet.
Of course the fact that it was a really pouring outside didn't help. Have
you ever tried to sleep in a wet bed. Yuck. Even during the day, the cloths I was wearing
were damp.
Then there is the bug factor. Because of the high humidity I knew when
I built my house, that I would never want to leave my windows open. So I never installed
the bug screen that came with my windows.
Now that I was forced to open the windows because of the internally generated
heat, every mosquito, spider, ant, wasp, hornet, and bat that wanders through the now open
portals of the windows is in the house.
I learned real quick that I had to turn all the lights off after it got
dark. Every moth and flying insect within sight of my house started coming right on in.
After turning off the lights though, I found that working on the computer
or watching TV was almost funny. Last night I was watching TV with about 10 months flapping
around on the front of the screen. They would move to what ever spot on the screen was brightest.
Finally I got a towel and starting flicking them off when they got too bad.
This sucked.
So... when I got the final word today from the Heating
and Air guys that nothing was going to happen today or Monday because of everything being
closed for the Labor Day weekend. And that it would probably be next Friday or the
Monday after that before I got A/C again. I headed for the garage and those long unused
bug screens...
So tonight, after the 3 preceding miserable nights, I feel like I'm
living in luxury. I'm able to work on the computer without a towel and finally, after four
days, it quit raining so the humidity isn't quite so bad...
... and there is the grid of a bug screen that will be over my office
window for at least a week.
For those of you who haven't discovered it yet, you may want to check
out the new clearer picture available through the new RanchCam
camera.
I upgraded to a new higher resolution more sophisticated camera. The new
picture is not only clearer, but the software built into the computer driver for the camera
does a much, much better job of handling the light level, white balance, and color of the
image.
You can now, finally, see the pastures and the sky at the same time. With
the old camera it was pretty much see the pastures with the sky too bright and
washed out, or see the sky with the pastures too dark. The new image is much
closer to what I actually see out my window.
The size of the image is larger and the fields of view is wider. This
will let you be able to see the traditional view the old camera used to show, but also better
see the colors on the trees in fall and the snow accumulations of the trees in Winter.
At last, I've gotten caught up enough on programming, mowing, weed eating,
and canning everything under the sun, to be able to put up some of my trip to see the launch
of Space Shuttle Discovery.
To get anything finished, I finally had to scale way back on my
original plans. Sometimes reality hits and you just have to do what you can do.
I'm not finished with the video's yet, but I thought I would get up on
the site what I have so far. The rest is to come.
My grand plans to have my trip to the launch of the Space Shuttle up in
a few days are, well, more than a few days behind schedule. I've had my own launch
delay.
One thing that happened is that the after I got back from the trip, I
was exhausted. Tee totally worn out. It's amazing how you can get back from a vacation more
tired than when you left.
It also didn't help that while I was gone for 5 days, the chores at the
Ranch just backed up, ...waiting. The weekend after I last blogged was spent mowing, and
mowing, and mowing, with some weedeating thrown in for fun.
All this mowing and weedeating led to my next delay. My back. While racing
around Monday morning trying to get to Grand Jury Duty on time, I reached down to pick up
a pair of pants lying in the floor. Just as I almost touched the pants, I felt a quick kerrrthump
as my lowest vertebrae came out and my disk squirted against the nerves in my spinal cord.
I went down on my knees and couldn't breath. I couldn't get up. The pain was so intense
it was shocking. I couldn't move.
I finally was able to roll over on my side and then on over to my back.
It was bad.
It still hurt bad but it eased up some. I was too afraid to move. Afraid
that horrible pain would strike again. After laying in the bathroom floor for a few minutes
I tried to get up.
I made it up, but couldn't completely stand up straight. I was just kind
of hunched over. It was bad, but I could walk. I had to get on to Jury Duty. So I shuffled
along, lifted and scooted myself up into the truck and headed off to town.
After sitting in an uncomfortable chair listening to the testimony of
detectives, deputies, and officers for 5 hours, I was in a LOT of pain. The muscles in my
lower back were starting to cramp and spasm. I headed straight for the Chiropractor.
He did what he could, but the cramping muscles would just pull his adjustments
right back out again. Monday, night I finally made it home and on the couch, and that is
where I stayed. If I turned or moved the slightest bit, the muscles would lock down and
cramp. I would be paralyzed with pain and couldn't move.
It was a very long night.
After Monday and Monday night, the pain of the rest of the week paled
in comparison. Through it all I had to continue to work, but I couldn't stand to set at
my desk for more than was necessary to work. I've watched a lot of TV and movies this week!
After four trips to the Chiropractor and the passing of time, its starting
to get better. I can almost walk standing straight up now. I still list to port just
a little, but I finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Needless to say, I haven't been able to work on this website as much as
I had planned this week. While this website is important to me, I'm afraid it has to come
in pretty low on the priority totem pole most of the time. A lot of other things have to
be done first.
Over the last two days I have made a lot of progress on the launch pages.
But it's turned out that this is going to be a big entry, so it will take some more time.
After not getting the new entry up last weekend, I had delusions of trying to get the pages
up before Discovery got back to Earth. Since the Landing is scheduled for Monday morning,
that may not happen.
All I can say is that it's coming .
Oh, by the way, the rain is no longer missing. I was finally able to solder
in a new reed switch on the rain gauge today and replace the humidity sensor. The Weather
Station is back to 100%!
I had a little experience this evening I thought I would share with everyone.
With a story and pictures, it deserves a page all it's own. Click the link to read
Just Passing Though.
It's been a while I know. The month of May just seemed to disappear. I'm
not going to go into why I haven't been able to update the site for the umpteenth time.
You all know the drill.... The rain today though, prevented me from doing any outside
work this evening. This let me have a window of time to make an entry.
I've written to you about how much time I spend on the computer making
my living. But "work work", as I call it, it just a part of what I do at my workstation.
Like they would say at an AA meeting, "My name is Mike Miller and I am an Internet-a-holic".
Before I launch into the whole article I plan to do on the Internet, let me just say
that I love it. While out exploring this great virtual world, I come upon all kinds
of places that I think are cool. Every once in a while, well actually more like every
few hours, I run across something really great.
The other day I found one that I thought I would like to share with everyone. I think
it's cool. This link will be the first in what I'm going to call Mike's Favorite Links.
I'm going to create a new menu and page for it. Some of you may have seen what I end up
putting on here. But most of you I think will have not.
This first link, I think, will fall under the "Art" section. Or, maybe the "Just Cool"
section. You be the judge...
To view and use this webpage you will need the free
Macromedia Flash Player plug-in
for your browser. If you are not sure if you already have the plug-in, keep on reading and
try out the cool link below. If it doesn't work the way I've described, you probably don't
have the Flash player. A lot of websites require this plug-in, so if you don't already have
it, it's a nice thing to have. It can really improve your web experience. Follow the instructions
to install it.
The website the following link will se0nd you to, is part of a new interactive art website
called "10 Ways".
(Hint: To interact with the site, move your mouse over the picture of the man's face.
Put the box where you would like to see deeper, and click. ... Repeat infinitely.)
For more fun, see the rest of the exhibits at
10 ways
Some of you have noticed that it looks like it has been raining here but
the Weather Station was not measuring anything. Well it has been
raining. The poor Weather Station, which has been out in the Ranch weather for four years
now, has started to show it's age a little.
The humidity sensor started giving suspect readings about a month ago,
and has lately been pegged at 100% all the time. The rain gauge quit reporting anything
at all about 3 days ago. This was pretty annoying because we probably got over two inches
of rain in the last few days. Now my totals for the month and year will be short and inaccurate.
I called this morning and got replacement sensors on the way. Hopefully
I'll be able to patch up the station and get it back to 100% next week.
I just reread my last Blog entry... wow it has been a while...
It's the usual reasons, work, work, and occasionally something entirely
different like... work on taxes, etc, etc..
Another reason I haven't written is that I've been spending so much time
at the computer everyday, around 12-14 hours a day, that when I do finish I'm just too tired
to think anymore. Work has to take top priority. After all those hours sitting in this chair,
I usually just don't want to spend anymore time sitting here working on the web site.
I also have other addictive habits that I usually give in to. Most nights
after work, instead of turning on the TV, I read. I started the
Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind, back
in December. I'm now on book nine. Some nights especially near the climax of the book, I'll
read till 4:00-4:30 in the morning. Not good, but what can I say, I'm addicted.
Like I try to explain to my friends who give me a hard time about doing
such things, it's like watching a really, really good movie, and then right when it's reaching
that best part... you have to get up and leave. So, most of the time I stay, er.. keep on
reading... until I basically pass out.
But there is another, more serious reason, I don't update the site
more than I do. One that I'm going to have to do something about...
As I've said quite a few times here, this site has evolved over time.
It started out seven years ago just as a "private" site to let my friends and family know
what was going on as I built my cabin. Most of my friends down in Atlanta couldn't come
up here and see the mountains and the Ranch or the house. The Ranch is so far out that even
close family that live in the county couldn't come out here. So it started out just being
a parking place for some pictures that everyone could get to.
But as time has went on, the site got much more popular, and the audience
went from people I know to everyone else. Even now, when I haven't updated the site in a
month, I'm getting 450-500 people a day visiting. When I'm really churning out the stuff
(or it snows) that goes up to 800 people a day or more.
So, over the last couple of years, I've made this site mostly be a window
onto the beautiful nature of the place I live. And from what I can tell, everyone has loved
it. I have to assume that's why you are here.
However... I have come to realize over the last few months, that I have
kind of painted myself into a corner...
Spring has come almost 3 weeks early this year. I was out the other day,
enjoying all the magic of springtime on this ancient mountaintop, when I thought I should
go get my camera and take some photographs. (See the new Home page
image.)
After getting the camera out and walking around the house looking for
things to take pictures of for a while, I realized that I had been to all those places before.
I had done exactly the same thing before. Taken the exact same photographs before.
That's the way it has been for a while now.
You see, there are still an infinite amount of photographs to take here.
There is still awesome beauty to try and capture for everyone else to see. The whole natural
landscape around me to try and find a way to capture and portray... But,... I've come to
realize, that the quick and easy, out the window, along the road, kind of scenes have been
well documented.
This leaves, the off the beaten path, in the unusual light, at the break
of day, down the rock cliff places to capture. But those are a little harder. Those photographs
take a little more investment of time. Time that has been hard to come by lately..
There is also the other aspect of this web site... this Blog...
I get e-mails everyday, saying how you all like the things I write about
here at the Ranch. Everyone asks about the Ranch, the weather, the seasons, my dogs, my
work. And inevitably everyone always says, "Why don't you write more!".
Well... ,you see, sometimes it's really heard to write about my life here
at the Ranch. Not because I don't want to share it or not because I don't have time to jot
down a Blog entry. It's because, well..., there's nothing going on. Or at least nothing
going on with the Ranch that I've not written about two or three times already. Kind of
like taking the photographs, I've kind of written about the easy stuff. The day in, day
out goings on of my life concerning the Ranch.
You see after living here seven years, life here at the Ranch has settled
into a nice annual cycle. A familiar pattern has emerged. Comfortingly repeating year after
year. And in case you are wondering, yes this is a very good thing. This is why it's so
nice to live out on a mountaintop.
Of course, now that I've written such an admission about my life, I'm
sure The Fates will rain hellfire an brimstone
down on me...
"So", you might be thinking, "the reason you don't take more pictures,
or write more stories, is because nothing is going on in your life." Ahhhhh...
no. That is not it. I have lots going on and lots I would like to say. It's just that the
topics of those things are not necessarily about me living here at the Ranch.
So I guess what I've taken a long time to say is that I'm going to be
making some changes to what I write about here on this site. In the past I tried to keep
the discussion topics all about living here at the Ranch. I will still write about my life
at the Ranch, but I'm also going to start writing about all the other million things that
interest me and that I would like to share with everyone.
By doing this you will be hearing from me a lot more in the future. I
hope that you will enjoy these other topics as much as you have enjoyed my writing about
the Ranch.
I got maybe another 1" over night and today. It's as if it's drizzling,
but its fine individual snow flakes instead of drizzle. Oh well maybe it will stop
one day.
Well, after about 48 hours, I think the snow finally stopped. It has snowed
pretty much continuously since 8:00pm Thursday night. At times it has been a light, fine
snow, sometimes it' snowed hard with big goose down flakes.... for two days...
...I woke up to about 7 1/2" this morning and when it finally stop tonight
I ended up with about 9".
The temperature has only varied between 22 and 28 degrees in the last
two days also, so it all here, drifting around into dunes like a desert.
It's been another nice day to work inside and feed the fire, but from
the looks of the forecast, the Ranch will be back into Spring by the end of the week. Just
in time for the time to change next Sunday. At least with more daylight in evenings it will
seem more like spring...
It has lightly snowed all day long and there is about 6" of snow
now. It is snowing much heaver now, so there is sure to be more.
As you can see from the temperature chart on the
Weather Station page, the temperature
as stayed almost exactly 27 degrees all day. The clouds have come down on the house off
and on, cutting visibly to a few hundred feet most of the day. There is a combination of
snow and hoar frost frozen on everything. The Ranch is certainly still in the grips of Winter.
It is beautiful though. It was a nice day to work and look out at it from close the the
fire.
7:05 am
I have returned! Or at least I hope to be uploading some more pictures
and writing in the Blog again. Of course I've not really been anywhere, I've just not been
able to spend any time on the web site. I've actually been working until 1:00 - 2:00am every
night lately. After I got my corporate taxes done on March 12th, I had to prepare for and
make a quick business trip down to Orlando on the 14th. I went down and back in one day
which was pretty exhausting. All other time has been spent learning a new programming language
and development environment. (For my geek readers, leaning
C# in Visual Studio
2005 Team Suite and
Team Foundation
Server).
It's snowing again today. I have about 2" since last night and it's still
lightly snowing. We also had about 1/4" Tuesday (I think) but most of that was freezing
ran followed by hoar frost. Some of you noticed that I turned the RanchCam toward the hillside
to show the frosted trees. I was looking out my office window at the spectacular scene and
thought I would share the scene with the webcam. 2 minutes later I got an e-mail (Len) saying
how everyone appreciated the view. Good to know that you all are always watching!
Needless to say it is not Spring here at the Ranch. I've still got a little
ways to go. The leaves usually don't come out on the trees here until the last week of April,
first week of May, so I've got at least another month before the scenery changes. Of course
as crazy as the weather has been it wouldn't surprise me if Spring came a early this year.
I still have a few pictures from the February snow I would like to put on the site. Nothing
more boring than to see more pictures of Winter in the middle of Spring, so I want to get
them out there soon.
Anyway, I hope this ends the drought of my writing and showing more pictures.
I finally got some of the pictures from last Monday up on the site. Of
course, there are more pictures from another day of that snow and we've already had another!...
No time for a proper entry tonight. I'm stilling working on getting the
pictures from the last couple of days processed and on to a page for you to view. Still
hope to get them displayed in a few days.
I did want to take a moment say that the coldspringsranch.net website
saw record use Monday. We hit an all time record of 2,354 page views in one day.
Glad to see so many people enjoy the site!
Here's a graph of the last weeks' page views from the software that monitors
the coldspringsranch.net server usage.
As I did yesterday, I've been getting the big question all day,
"How much snow did you get?".
Well, the general consensus among me and all my neighbors is around 19
inches.
Up against my house and all around the yard there are 3 foot drifts. There
are big drifts out all over the Ranch too. Some 5 feet deep or more.
It turned out to be a spectacular afternoon. It quit snowing around noon and the
clouds blew away leaving a crystal clear sky. It was good to see the sun again after almost
4 days.
I had to snow plow (without a plow) through a lot of snow and drifts to get around the
Ranch to take pictures this afternoon.
I managed to get some pretty good stuff. I took pictures and video early this morning
and again this evening right before sunset.
With a total of 164 pictures and 45 minutes of HD video, I won't have enough time
tonight to get the pictures on the web site tonight. ...maybe sometime over the next couple
of days. ...the video will have to wait quite a bit longer.
In the mean time, here's a
teaser photograph.
This is the corral and gate after sunset.
The deep, crisp snow takes on the blue hues of the crystal clear twilight
skies.
I let the dogs out and Sugar and Bandit where running around have a big ole time. The
snow is so deep that its up over their bellies, so the only way they could get around was
to leap around like deer.
Well the next thing I know, Bandit decides to take off out into the Blizzard. I yell
for him, but he's gone. It's a long story but he does this every once in a while.
I get the other two dogs back in the house and prepare to head out.
My big fear was that since he's never been in a deep snow like this and he was having
to literally make these huge 4 foot leaps to get anywhere, that he would just go until he
ran out of energy and then just have to stop. Or being exhausted he would jump down into
a 5 foot drift and not have enough energy to "swim" out. Even though he's a Husky, I was
afraid that he might not survive the night in those conditions. Even if he did, I would
be worried sick about him.
After trudging through snow up to my waist in places for 3 hours, and the help of one
of my neighbors, Gary, I finally found him. I don't know who was more exhausted Bandit or
me. He was just lying there and I had passed right by him but heard him rustle a laurel
leave when he moved his head. I thought I was going to have to carry him home, but once
I got a leash on him he walked, but very slowly.
After I got all the tennis ball size ice balls out of his fur and got him back in the
house, he lay down and pretty much hasn't gotten up.
I finally headed back out to get some pictures. But after a frustrating and exhausting
day, I only took a few.
The last time I was outside around 3:00 we had about 16".
... it's still snowing...
So before I collapse on the couch for a while, here are some pictures of
A Big Valentine Snow.
With our impending snow storm due any minute( already
have 1/2 inch new snow as of this writing), I thought I would implement something I've been
wanting to do for a while.
I've written a program to go pull the latest Weather Warnings and Watches
issued for Haywood County from the National Weather Service computers and place the information
in a page on my site. I started about 8:00 tonight and finished up with the program around
2:00. It looks like its working OK, but if you check it in the morning and it is only reporting
a stream of profanity, I would not be surprised. But, I'm out brain juice for the day
and it will have to do until tomorrow (..err later today).
Now you local viewers can get a heads up on what is going on around here
and prepare! Check out the Weather Watches and Warnings page.
I'll probably update the page later today to let folks know how much snow
I'm getting.
Another quick note for this morning. Even though I usually
have more time this time of year, my work with NAPA, getting my corporate taxes done (due
in 5 weeks!), and learning a new programming language (C#), have really eaten into
my Ranch website time. I have a ton of things I'd like to talk about. Even though I pretty
much work non-stop from 7:00 am till 12:00 am (2:00 am, 3:00 am, 5:00 am!) there doesn't
ever seem to be the time for a break so I can rest and write some really good stuff and
get out and take some pictures. Oh well, like a quote from one of my favorite movies says
"... time enough for rest in the grave" (Conan the Barbarian).
I would like to take a moment and thank all of you for your e-mails. I
get a lot of e-mail from you viewers. Usually between 10-15 e-mails every day. Some
of them are pages long. I do want you to know that I read every single one. I also try to
answer the ones that ask for a reply to a specific short question. However, unfortunately,
I can't answer them all. I would have time for nothing else. It makes me feel bad that I
can't, but it just isn't possible. There are 700 of you and only 1 of me. But, I truly do
appreciate the kind thoughts, observations, and stories you relay to me. Please keep them
coming!
I have made a few changes to the site lately that you may have missed.
First, I've changed the picture on Home page. This is a picture
looking into the Great Smoky Mountain National Park from the Ranch. It was at twilight on
a cold and snowy evening right before dark.
I've also added one other little thing to the site. Sometimes I get requests
from folks wanting to know where they read such and such, or where a certain article is.
With 110 pages currently within this site, even I have trouble finding things sometimes.
Well now there's an easy way. I've added a Search page to
the site. You can always access it from the top main menu or the bottom of every page. If
you don't see it, you may need to hit your browser's refresh button. The new Search page
allows you to do a Google search of only the Cold Springs Ranch website. It's kind of cool.
Since I haven't added any significant new stores or pictures in a while,
I hope the search page helps folks discover (or rediscover) things already here. :)
Just thought I would write a quick note tonight. I'm
back and will be updating the site more over the next couple of days...
For all you folks, like me, whose real reason for watching the Super Bowl
is the commercials, I have a surprise. Google has them all up on Google Video! And the best
part is that you don't have to waste your time sitting through a boring 3 hour football
game to see them!
The response to my Christmas Card video has been phenomenal.
To date it has been downloaded 1018 times between the two versions.
I've gotten all kinds of responses from viewers. All positive. One woman
said it brought tears to her eyes. That e-mail made all the work worthwhile.
Many e-mails have a lot of questions. The number one question being, "Is
that really you playing the dulcimer?". Yep, it's really me. When I send this response to
some of the e-mails, I get back "Why have you not mentioned that you play before now?".
My response is that there is a large number of things that I do that I have not talked about
on this site.
Second most popular question, "Who is that walking with the horses?".
That is Lucy Lowe. I filmed that segment the day Lucy came to walk the horses down off the
mountain for the winter.
Third question, "When will you get a version folks with Apples can watch?".
Ahh, that has been nothing but a headache. I can easily convert a normal video into the
QuickTime format. The problem is that all my source video is high definition and the tools
to do the conversion in the Windows environment are all, lets just say, experimental.
I have made some progress. The QuickTime version of the video is now in
the correct wide screen shape. Prior to now it's been square and all squished. But the file
size is huge, 2GB at my last attempt. Clearly not acceptable for downloading.
However, something happened Monday to help the situation. Everyone's favorite
search engine company, Google, announced their new website Google Video. Their technology
allowed me to create a small ultra, ultra compressed version of my video that I can show
right here in the Blog. It should play no matter what Operating System you have. Of course,
I can't test this since I only have Windows machines.
The video has been compressed so much that you can hardly make out what
you are looking at, but the sound quality isn't so bad. I think it's now even small enough
for folks with Dial-Up access to watch right here in the Blog.
If you like the video and you have a Windows machine with a broadband
Internet connection, I hope you'll still go
download the HD version
to really see what's going on.
So, for all you folks who haven't been able to see A Ranch Christmas Card,
here's a rough approximation of it. At least it's better than nothing...
To play the video simply press the Play button below.
Sorry for not writing for so long. My time since Christmas has been a
long list of appointments and to dos. Accountants, getting my truck serviced, Grand jury
duty. It's been a long series of time consumers. And unfortunately, I won't be able to write
too much tonight. Hopefully in the next few days I'll be able to make a proper entry.
In the meantime, I wanted to pass on something fun that you may want to
see. My friend Lucy Lowe and her business partner Dr. Laura Higgins had their Llama trekking
business English Mountain Llama Treks featured
in the Style section of a local television station WBIR out of Knoxville, TN.
Some of the llamas shown in the segment use to live at the Ranch.
I'm not sure how long the video segment will be available online, so you
may want to check it out soon. The Llama segment was at the beginning of the show. Once
on the page, the "Watch VIDEO" section is on the right hand column. Click the "Click here
to watch this video" to have the video play.
Well its been more than a few days since I last wrote. Sorry, but this
little elf has been very busy. Christmas shopping, wrapping gifts, Christmas dinner preparations,
cleaning house, and my full time+ job that brings home the bacon. But despite all that,
I've managed to pull something off for all you readers and viewers out there just in the
nick of time.
I started this project late Sunday night (6 days ago) after I got back
from my Miller family Christmas dinner (all my aunts, uncles, and cousins). Full of good
cheer, and just plain full, I decided to give a project that I've had rolling around in
my head for the last few weeks a go. Granted, I should have started a few weeks ago. But
there's nothing like a immovable deadline (Christmas) to put the spurs to you.
Admittedly though, if I had known it was going to be this hard I don't
know if I would have started. It took about 48 hours to make, and those hours where a little
hard to come by the week before Christmas. But who needs sleep anyway. However, even with
all that work it was worth it.
The project I'm speaking of is a new video I just finished up tonight.
This one is definitely better than the first one I did... at least I think so.
Here's wishing you and all whom you know a very Merry Christmas and a
Happy New Year...
I took a few hours out of my Christmas preparations tonight to post some
pictures from the last couple of weeks. Check out the new page to see a few
Scenes of Winter.
I would like to write more but, it's that time of year. I do try to slow
down and enjoy the whole season, but you can't stop for long! Never fear though, I will
be making another Blog entry in just a couple of days.
We have some new visitors to the site today. Actually we have a LOT of
new visitors to the Ranch today. To all the folks from
Dark Eye , welcome. You are make making
your presence known. My stats look like an 8.1 earthquake just hit and is continuing to
build.
For all you new viewers, I thought I would kind of sum up this site a
little. It's been a while since I've talked about this anyway...
The purpose of this site has evolved over it's six year existence. It
started off, just being a place to show snapshots of my house as it was being built. Over
the years though, as the many e-mails I get every day tell me, it has evolved into a place
to escape to. Most e-mails are from folks who live I like used to live. Living in a crowded
suburb, commuting hours to work to work in an office cube.
I know how it is to need to see some green, some fall leaves, or just
some pure snow.
So I've come to realize, even over just the last few days, that this site
has become a refuge from the urban.
Now for who I am. In this context I guess I'm a true blue Geek that made
it out of cubeland and headed for the frontier. Now I'm some sort of a hybrid. Kind of a
cyborg. Part Geek, part Rancher, part frontiersman. The juxtapositions of all these can
be jarring sometimes.
Also being where I now live, I can time shift from the 21st to the 19th
century just my refocusing my eyes from my monitor out the window to the amazing environment
that surrounds me. Even after all these years living like this, this time shifting can sometimes
be a little disorienting... but I wouldn't want to live any other way. I get the best of
both worlds.
As far as the future of this site, look for more pictures, more video,
and more stories...
I'm working on some more videos at the moment that you may actually want
to see. My first video, Autumn Snow, was more of an exercise
in video production than story telling.
For the folks that don't know what in the world I'm talking about or what
Dark Eye is, let me explain...
First, it's not some satanic worship site.
Dark Eye is a new website to which anyone
can submit their favorite website. Usually their own site.
Once submitted everyone gets to check out these sites and rank how good
they think their designs are (although it seems to be a little blurry as to whether you
should also factor in the content of the site too). You can also write constructive comments
about them. It's totally cool to see how creative some web designers are and how sophisticated
their web programming skills can be. So far some sites suck, but most don't.
As everyone looks at the submitted sites, the
Dark Eye browse page will list what sites
are getting looked at the most. What sites are rank the highest, and what sites are getting
the most comments. The users of the Dark Eye site control what is liked or disliked. What
is popular and what is not.
It's not the first site to do this by a long shot (I'll write about
digg next time), but all these kinds of sites are cool...
the worldwide sharing of ideas at work. Democracy at work.
Guess which site as been floating around in the top 3 of all the above
categories for the last couple of days?... You guessed it, this site....
...thank goodness I bought all that extra bandwidth for the videos a couple
of weeks ago!
You may not have noticed but I've added code to the site to keep this
sites' web pages a fixed width and centered in your browser. This in turned allowed me to
make a new Cold Spring Ranch header image that spans the entire width of the page. I went
through 21 iterations of the image before I settled on this one!.. I hope you find that
all this looks better and makes reading the articles a little easier.
Second, if you don't come to the CSR web site though the
Home page, go check it out. You'll see that it's Christmas time
here at the Ranch.
Third, I'll be splitting the Blog into multiple pages. All entries can
still be accessed by the "Previous Posts" links to the right. The current Blog page will
only contain entries for the current year. Now that I'm writing more than two entries in
the Blog per year, the Blog was starting to get a little long and was starting to take some
time to load. I'm sure this was a pain for you Narrowband (Dial-up) folks.
Now to the real stuff...
The response to the big "experiment" has been phenomenal. I did in the
end need to get more bandwidth for the video downloads. This turned out not to be too a
bad thing. As the days after the release went by, I saw that I wasn't going to be have enough
download allowance to last but a couple of more days. I started searching and found some
really good deals on some web hosting with good bandwidth.
This website currently gets between 700-800 visitors a day (on snowy days
that number shoots up to 1500 or more!) So far, as of tonight, the Hi-Def video has been
downloaded 329 times and the Medium definition version as been downloaded 347 times. The
amount of folks that are downloading the Hi-Def version surprised me.
So, the results of the experiment are in and they tell me some good things...
A lot of viewers have computer capable of playing the videos.
Folks had no trouble downloading the video. Out of the 676 downloads
so far, I've not had one e-mail asking for help.
A lot of the viewers to the website have broadband Internet connections
and can handle big downloads. This was one of the things I most wanted to find out.
All together, this tells me that I can produce more of these videos and
you guys will enjoy them! Next time I'll crank up the quality a little more on the Hi-Def
version. This will increase files size but I think my hosting company and you, the viewers,
can handle it!
So now go download the video if you haven't
already!
Well after almost a month of teasing I finally have my surprise up on
the site. Exactly a month after shot I it, the video of my first snow of the season is now
available for download.
I've realized for a long time that still photographs capture some moments
very well, perhaps even better than being there. They allow you to freeze a moment and examine
it in detail, allowing you to see more than you normally would be able to see. That is their
power and appeal. However, even though still photographs can capture the light, detail,
and mood of a moment, other aspects of a moment are lost. You lose the information that
is given to you as a place travels though time. Not to mention the whole other dimension
of sound...
Well, now I hope to be able to bring an infinitely small fragment of these
other dimensions of the Ranch to you.
I call this entry "Let the Experiment Begin" because I'm not quite sure
what is going to happed when I put this video on the site.
When you view web page text and pictures from a website, you, or rather
your browser, is downloading the text and pictures from a computer across the Internet to
your computer. This transferal of files causes bits of data to be sent across the Internet
to you. You may not be aware of this, but like making cell phone calls, this transferal
of bits is not free. In fact it can be quite expensive for the website that sends the bits.
It's like a 1-800 telephone call. It doesn't cost you anything to call, but it can cost
the entity offering the 800 number quite a lot.
The company that hosts my website allows me to have a certain amount of
information transferred from my site per month. If I go over that amount I pay BIG TIME.
It's exactly like buying a cell phone calling plan. You are allowed so many calling minutes
per month and if you go over you pay a ridiculous amount more.
Luckily, because of the great expense this could cause, most web hosting
companies allow you to set up your site so that they will e-mail you a warning message if
you start to approach a certain percentage of your allowance. Mine is set up to do so.
I have debated about waiting to put the video on my site until I could
buy more bandwidth. But not knowing how many people will download it, I decided to not
to invest money in something that may not be necessary. If I reach my limit, I will try
to buy more bandwidth. The video however, might have to be removed for a few days while
I work something out.
There is one thing that will help. As you will read on the video download
page, I'm asking, or rather, more like pleading, for everyone to learn how to download the
video permanently on to your computer. This will do two things. First, because you will
download the video to your machine, you can watch it over and over again (if you like it)
without having to download it from my site each time you watch it. Second, for those of
you with slower Internet connections, downloading will allow the video to play completely
and without interruptions as can happen when you try to play video as it is sent to you
(called streaming). Once downloaded, you can even watch the video without having to
be connected to the Internet!
So.. I don't know if anyone or everyone will download the video.
It's just a big experiment. I guess we'll find out....
I was finally able to get some of the pictures I took of the
Peak of Fall from October
21 up on the site.
I'm still working very hard on my surprise "experiment" referred to by
the Teaser Blog entry. After running into a technical problem I hope to have the "experiment"
done in a few more days.
Sorry about not making an Blog entry before now. Work for NAPA has been
consuming all my time and creative energy. I haven't had much left for anything else.
That being said however, I do have something special that I hope to put
here on the site soon. If I can pull it off I think it will open a whole new door for me
to help show people what it's like here at the Ranch.
If that sounds like a teaser it is.
Remember how I wrote below in Turn of the
Season, how quickly fall can pass here. Well it lasted for about 3 days this year. Friday
the 21st turned out to be the peak. It was beautiful. Saturday was a windy cold day, the
first that felt like Winter. Then came Monday...
We had about an inch of snow on things like fence posts and my tractor.
And about 1/2 inch on the ground with the ground still being warm enough to melt the snow...
...more on all that later...
I'll be getting pictures (and more) of the whole experience up on the
site in the next couple of days...
I just came in from walking my dogs tonight. I've stayed out almost an
hour and a half, just enjoying the fall of night and the crisp cold air.
We've had frost for the last two mornings and its already in the mid 40's.
I can see my breath as I exhale and the tops of my ears are starting to get cold.
I lit a fire in the fireplace this afternoon and the smell of smoke drifting
into the night sends my senses reeling. Between the smells of the ripening leaves, the cold
air, and the smoke, my olfactory senses are overloaded. Nothing brings up memories and emotions
like smell.
The Hunters Moon, just one day past full, is so bright and clear tonight
that I can see the whole Ranch. As the moon as been rising the trees at the edge of the
forest have been casting shadows across the meadow by the house. I can see Lucy's horse
and mules, Mikey, Doc, and Kitty over in the pasture grazing. The mountainsides are ablaze
with moonlight. I could walk anywhere tonight, there will be no darkness...
The night is also silent. The cicadas, which have been filling the nights
with their sound are all quite. The only sound is the creek trickling and the water falls
on down the mountain. It is exquisite...
All this reminds me of one of my favorite songs, written in 1993 just
for this time. I've heard Clint sing this song quite a few times at his concerts and it
always sends a chill down my back. I know exactly what he's talking about...
A Change in the Air, by Clint Black
There's something talkin' in the wind
Whispering through the trees
That feeling in my bones again
Just puts me right at ease
It takes me back to all the times
I' ve been here before
But crossroads, old familiar signs
Tell me there's something more
Can't explain, there's something strange about the early fall
It's comfort leaving me without a care
I remain but everything around me hears the call
And tonight I feel a change in the air
The leaves are turning, soon they'll fall
There's a norther blowing in
The memories flowin', I recall
Those changes in the wind
But I can never try to understand
There's nothing you can hold in your hand
Can't explain, there's something strange about the early fall
It's comfort leaving me without a care
I remain but everything around me hears the call
And tonight I feel a change in the air
Yes I'll surely feel a change in the air
If you would like to hear the song (30 seconds of it for free) or buy
it, it's available for 99 cents on iTunes. It's
A Change in the Air, by Clint Black, from the 1994 album One Emotion. If you don't have
iTunes, GET IT! I'll talk more about the iTunes
revolution later. For now, I'm going back outside for a walk to the pond... humming
a certain Clint Black tune....
I started writing this Blog entry several weeks ago. I was going to title
it "The Last Days of Summer"... well... Mother Nature didn't wait for me.
It is definitely Autumn now. The leaves have finally
started their transformation, all be it a couple of weeks late.
Fall is my absolute favorite time year. Cool mornings and warm afternoons
that are just about perfect. They are both figuratively and literally the golden days of
the year.
Fall, like Spring, is a fleeting spectacular event of nature here at the
Ranch. It builds up exponentially. It takes weeks for the leaves to start to turn, then
quickly builds and builds to a crescendo of color. Then it's gone in a blink. Some years
it's gone over night if we have a hard freeze.
As the season changes, I was reminded of an article I read a few years
ago. It was about the Australian Aborigines and how in tune with their environment they
were. It also said that in their ancient calendar there are many more than fours seasons.
They are right.
Anyone who is close to nature and watches, can see that there are many
subtle shades to the year. I had subconsciously known this too, just not realizing it. Looking
back, I realize I've even tried to write about those season here in my old Photo Journals.
There is almost a new season every few weeks if you look close enough to see them.
*
I don't think most folks in the US are really aware of the natural seasons
anymore. Suburbanites follow the artificial seasons created by our popular culture.
Seasons are marked by whether it's Football, Basketball, or Baseball season.
What's in the seasonal isles of Wal-Mart and the home improvement stores. Or maybe its just
the seasons of vacations, like the holidays and the kids being out of school. It's Christmas,
the Forth of July, or Halloween.
Some of these artificial seasons give a little nod to the natural world,
but the natural seasons mean less and less each year.
How many people really feel that Autumn is a time to celebrate the harvest
and the fruits of the summer. How many feel the change in the air. How many people really
feel that calling that stirs this time of year. Something deep down and instinctual saying
"Get ready... Its coming". With "It" being Winter. The time of year when all living
creatures are put to the test.... Except for man.
I'm lucky that I'm close enough to the real world to feel this call.
I'm lucky I'm aware enough to appreciate it... To me this simple pleasure is part of what
life is all about.
* CSR Seasons: I'll describe the ever changing
seasons of the Ranch in much more detail in an upcoming photo journal entry. It should be
on the site in a few weeks.
Sometimes the amount of technology around us is just hard to believe.
In fact I'm sure most people take it all completely for granted. Not realizing how much
science and extreme human knowledge they are using.
Take for example the words you are reading...
I type these words on a keyboard here at my desk. Using infinitesimally
small variations in electrical voltages to direct electrons through a thin wafer of silicon
crystal (my computers' CPU and memory) that in turn control the voltages on plates that
deflect an electron beam scanning a wall of phosphor (my CRT monitor), a pattern is displayed
that I recognize as words, I write the document.
After I finish writing the Blog entry, I use my computers wafer of silicon
crystal to control arms that hover over a stack of metal disks spinning at 120 revolutions
per second. The arms move at incredible speed as they fly back an forth over the spinning
disk altering the magnetic orientation of atoms of iron oxide (my hard drive).
After saving the files I tell the silicon crystal to communicate with
another silicon crystal (my satellite modem) to turn on a radio transmitter pointed up into
space and start varying the radio frequencies in such a way to represent the digital 1'se
& 0's of my words.
The radio beam then travels out into space where some of it is captured
by a satellite orbiting 22,500 miles up into space, almost a tenth of the distance to the
Moon. The satellite has been placed in an orbit that is just the perfect distance from Earth
that it rotates exactly the same rate as the Earth turns below it, giving the illusion that
it is fixed in the sky.
The satellite then gathers my bits and retransmits them down to a receiver
22,500 miles below. The receiver converts the variations in the radio signal back
into digital 1's and 0's and then transmits them through constantly varying paths of strands
of copper and glass to a computer across the North American continent (California).
There it is stored on spinning disks of metal controlled by a wafer of
silicon crystal, until a request for the information comes from your computer. Then the
codes that represent the text of my Blog are transmitted though variations of electrical
voltages through strands of copper and variations in the frequency of laser beams through
strands of glass to your silicon crystal, which then varies voltages on a display to show
a pattern that you can read.
Whew!...
Sounds like science fiction, huh?.... 50 years ago it was science fiction...
It really is fascinating... at least to me...
Two weeks ago, on the Sunday over the Labor Day Weekend, the installers
finally came to install my new WildBlue satellite dish.
When the installers got here to check the cable we found it was the same
company and rated the same as what they are required to install. I was relieved, that would
mean we wouldn't have to bury new cable...
However, upon closer examination they found that my current cable was
not solid copper and they couldn't certify the installation if it wasn't.
They also couldn't use my DirecWay pole to mount the new dish. They were
limited to an 80 foot cable run and the old pole was too far away. I had to pick a new location
for the disk closer to the house.
So it turned out that I had to do a whole new installation, including running new cable
under the house and into my utility room. The standard installation didn't cover any of
this, so I had to do it myself or pay $400 more. I did the work myself, but the installation
guys were nice enough to help.
I hitched up my new auger on the tractor and that made quick work of digging
the 3 foot deep hole for the new pole. The hard part turned to be getting the new cable
through the 12 inch block wall of my foundation.
They arrived at 2:00 and left at 8:30. We were all beat. But after they
left I had my new fast connection working!
WildBlue offers me much faster Internet
speed than DirecWay. My DirecWay connection was up to 400k down and around 56k up. WildBlues
connection is 1500k down and 256k up!
It's great and I'm really enjoying the new speed. The whole Internet it
a much quicker place now. It hard to believe that I'm reading, watching, and listening even
more now...
...just remember when you read my words what a trip my words have taken
to get to you. They are coming to you literally out of the wild blue yonder.
After a long depressing week last week, things around here are looking
up. The weather here at the Ranch this week has been PERFECT! Crystal clear skies. Lows
around 50 with the highs in the low 70's. The humidity has been really really low too. Fall
is definitely in the air. My favorite time of year.
With the coming Autumn, my heart is starting to hear that calling that
you feel this time of year. It's hard to explain... an instinctual feeling of urgency ...
yearning. Something inside that says, "It's coming! Hurry. Finish up what you have to do".
There is also this deep yearning just to be outside. To go into the woods....
...an instinct left from our distant past.
One of my favorite places to go this time of year is our high, high country.
The places above 6000 feet have an even stronger pull now. Of course the area around Cold
Mountain and the Shining Rock Wilderness Area is my favorite place.
Growing up, this area was where our family went for hiking and camping
trips. Since I grew up on one of the shoulders of Cold Mountain, the Shining Rock Wilderness
Areas was just a few miles up the road, about 3000 feet higher, and a different world.
My first camping trip was there with my church. The first snipe hunt...
;) We would also go up this time of year to pick wild blueberries. It was always hard not
to eat all that you picked.
Needless to say a very special place to me...
Back in January, I was approached to write an article for
ROAM Magazine about Cold Mountain. One of the
editors of the magazine wanted to publish an article about Cold Mountain for their Summer
edition. While searching the web for information, they found this site and saw that I grew
up on the shoulder of Cold Mountain. They where impressed enough with my writing to asked
me if I would like to submit an article. I was very honored.
After debating the commitment for a week, I said I would give it a go.
It took me quite a while to get going. But after a month of fact finding
and on and off false starts, I sat down and pretty much wrote the article in an hour.
I submitted the article a few days before the deadline and they accepted
it! After a little bit of editing, they sent me a PDF of the article as it would appear
in the magazine for proof reading. After correcting one mistake on the direction of a road
to take to see Cold Mountain, it was off for printing!
A couple of weeks later I received my check. I was a paid, published writer!
A couple of months later in May, I received a couple of copies of the
magazine in the mail... Cool!
My High School English teacher, Mrs. Passmore, would have been proud.
What an amazing feeling to get paid for something you write.
After being on the newsstand for the Summer I asked the editors if it
would be ok to publish the article on my web site. They where nice enough to say yes,
so here it is.
My unedited original article is permanently on the web site. You can find
it with the menu under Appalachia, Our Mountains,
The Real Cold Mountain.
A PDF of the final article just as it appeared in the magazine can be
downloaded by clicking
here. To view the PDF, you will need the
Adobe Acrobat Reader
plug-in. If you don't have Acrobat Reader already installed you can download and install
it by clicking here.
You can also see the edited article on
ROAM's website by clicking
here.
Given all the trials and tribulations our country is going through, I
get worried about our future sometimes...
I've followed hurricane Katrina closely since early last week when it
looked like it was headed for Florida.
I refreshed my browsers many news and weather pages every few minutes
yesterday as I worked, trying to keep up with what was happening as Katrina came ashore.
Now we know that it was bad... really bad. Its bad not just for the people
who lost their property, their livelihoods, and even their lives because of the storm, but
for the country as a whole. This will affect us all. This is affecting us all.
The human cost from this storm is great. The economic damage done to our
economy is going to be great too. It's already hitting us. Gas prices at the truck stop
where I full up went from $2.45 on Friday to $2.69 this afternoon. Other places in town
where at $2.79.
I'm sure that we will look back fondly at these prices. When gas is $3.25
-$3.50 a gallon, $2.69 will seem like a bargain. I mean, doesn't $2.00 a gallon sound good
already?
Everything is going to be cost us a lot more in the very near future.
With this latest blow and all the other things tearing this country apart,
I think we are all in for a tough time ahead. And that it will get worse before it gets
better...
Although the storm just barely grazed me here, we got rain and a lot of
wind. The Ranch was lucky as usual when it comes to hurricanes. As is typical, Katrina approached
the Ranch from the Gulf and therefore from the south. Because the Ranch is located on the
western front in the middle of the Southern Appalachian Mountains, as the storms come in
from the south or the south-east, the mountains on the eastern front catch all the rain.
Literally raking the water from the sky. In these cases the Ranch is in the rain shadow
of the eastern mountains.
The eastern slopes got 6,7,8 inches of rain from Katrina. The Ranch got
1 1/2 inches!
However, it did pretty much mist, drizzle, and rain, non stop since yesterday
(Monday) evening.
So, as the dreary day has progressed and the news from Louisiana and Mississippi
has been coming in, its been hard not to get worried...
I had to take Bandit to the vet today to have a hot spot checked out.
He's fine and recovering, but it was a pain to get out in the rain.
As I was heading back home tonight, dwelling on the meaning of all that's
going on. I was brought out of the gloom by a brilliant shaft of sunlight. Its light was
awesome and beautiful.
I was reminded that no matter how bad the storm, no matter how dark the
times seem... The storm will not go on forever, and the clouds will lift one day.
And when those clouds do open and that ray of sunshine does shine... it will seem all the
more beautiful....
You know I've said many times that there is never a boring moment at the
Ranch. So many incredible things happen here that you start to get used to the unexpected.
Everyone around here knows what I mean.
Take a story related to me by one of my neighbors...
First, I think I need to tell you that we have many really interesting
characters living around here. I'm sure my neighbors think the same of me.
One of our neighbors is known only has Pallet Man. He and his family live
in a mobile home up on top of a hill.
Pallet Man brings monstrous loads of pallets home on this old 1 ton truck.
He flies up the narrow gravel road with pallets tilting out over the sides of the truck.
He usually drops a few here and there in interesting blind curves as he climbs up the mountain
too. He's notorious for speeding up the road and not moving over. But all that is another
story.
The point of all the pallets is that he strips good boards off the old
broken shipping pallets and builds new fixed pallets. He then sells the fixed pallets. He
actually has quite a good recycling operation going.
However, he has so many pallets that they are stacked 10-15 feet high
all the way around the perimeter of his yard. I call it the Pallet Fort.
The hill sloping down below the pallet fort wall is a pasture. Pallet
Man has a Jersey cow that
he keeps for the family to get their milk. Because the pasture isn't fenced he has to keep
it tied with a rope to a steel spike that he drives into the ground. Every few days he has
to go out and move the cow to another area of the pasture to new grass.
So... you have Pallet Man, Pallet Wife, and the Pallet kids, up on the
hill living in the Pallet fort with the Pallet cow tethered below..
Given all this, let's get back to the story...
Two of pallet mans neighbors; John and Harley guy (another character and
another story) were sitting on John's front stoop having a beer. They are just enjoying
the quite peaceful evening.
All of a sudden, they hear a bunch of yelling and commotion coming from
the direction of the pallet fort.
This is, in and of itself, not too unusual. So they just sit and continue
to drink.
But the screaming and cussing continue and grow louder.
They look up and see Pallet Wife coming into view as she's being dragged
across the pasture on her stomach. She's holding on to the rope tied to the milk cow. The
cow is nonchalantly heading around the base of the hill, oblivious to the screaming and
cussing woman being drug behind.
As she gets dragged around the other side of the hill and out of sight
again, the stream of cussing still being heard, John looks over at Harley guy and calmly
says "You know. Anywhere else... that might be considered unusual."
Indeed..
Then there is tonight...
Around 10:30 I settled in to watch a new DVD that I got today (The Ring
2).
The action is just starting to get a little intense... when a loud, very
rapid series of explosive concussions start hitting the house. Each getting more intense
than the last... then it really gets intense! Two powerful concussions hit the house. Things
started falling off my bookcases and the windows are rattling. The house is vibrating! The
intensity of the concussions gets to the point were I have to admit there was this split
second of, "This is it". Then the concussions start tapering off and finally stop.
My first thought was, "Oh crap. That was a nuclear explosion somewhere
like Knoxville."
I jumped up and ran out on to my front porch. The porch swing and my hanging
baskets are swinging!
It's all quite now and there is no mushroom cloud in the sky.
What the heck WAS that?... Then it hits me!
It was an earthquake!
My phone starts ringing off the hook. I run back in the house to answer.
All my neighbors are calling with basically the same exclamation "WHAT THE HECK WAS THAT!".
I tell everyone I think it's an earthquake.
Man its been a hot day at the Ranch today. Hot and humid. Not a record or anything, tha
t still stands at 86 degrees, but anything above 80 here feels pretty
bad. It got to 81.4 today with the humidity starting out at 100% and ending at 100%.
As is usual on hot Summer days like this, a late afternoon
thunderstorm moved in and I had to quit working early. I can't say I minded. Actually it
was welcomed since it has not rained much lately and it is starting to get dry. I came in
to see if this was just a passing thunderstorm or something bigger.
Since I use
Firefox as my browser, I always have
my news and weather links pulled up on different tabs (maybe I'll talk about Firefox some
more on another Blog entry). After checking out my favorite weather sites it looks like
this rain is going to last the rest of the afternoon. I head off to the shower...
weather linkss would be
something to help out all you folks out there who still wait until the 6:00 news to get
their weather! Who has the time to waste on that?
Back when I spiffed up the site I renamed the Blog you are reading now the "The CSR
Daily Edition". Hahh! I should have named it the Quarterly Edition.
Anyway....
With all the rain we've had from the remnants of tropical
storm Cindy over the last two days, I've had a break from the Ranch chores long enough to
actually make a Blog entry.
Having a break all of a sudden is kind of strange. I keep
feeling like I'm slacking off. I should be out there weed-eating, mowing, shoveling, or
staining something. And I should, but of course I can't.
So the house is nice in clean, the cloths all washed, the
dogs have had a bath, and I'm caught up on balancing the checkbook and paying the online
bills tonight. ...on second thought having a few days off is nice.
Hopefully the new modem will fix the intermittent problems
I've been having. And hopefully the Blog and Photo Journal entries I started on tonight
will end the drought of updates to the website..
I'm not the only fish out of water today....
Sugar found this Crayfish walking across the mulch near the front steps. It must have
had a long walk up from the creek. (Click on the picture to get a bigger picture. Press
the your browsers back button to come back to the Blog)
Well, for those who have been following this site for a while, I guess you've noticed that
the Cold Springs Ranch site looks a little different. After two months of working many many
hours late into the night, I've been able to remake the look of the site. I wanted to give
the site a different feel. A little more sophisticated look as compared to the plain old
site and hopefully make it feel a little more soothing. Kind of like the Ranch itself.
The first thing you'll notice, besides the
new color scheme, is the new Cold Springs Ranch banner and menu that appear on (hopefully)
every page. This menu lets you navigate to anywhere from any page. This menu will
also let me add more new areas to the website without the old main page getting too long
and complicated. I've had some ideas for the site that would not have been possible without
a new way to handle a bigger site.
This site also has a
Site Map on every page. The
Site Map is like a Table of Contents. The page hierarchically lists every page on the site
and is a quick way to scan the titles of all the pages on the site. It can also be used
to quickly look for that certain page you remember reading, but don't remember how you got
to it.
The Guestbook is currently not available
but will be back as soon as I can reprogram it. After using the new site here for a couple
of weeks I was anxious to get it out to the web. I hated to keep looking at the old site
as it was so I decided to share the new look everyone before the Guestbook was finished.
Of course, all did not go smoothly. I was
all set to upload the new site to the CSR server Sunday night. After weeks of tweaking and
double checking that everything looked and worked correctly I was finally ready. Then I
had a "little" mishap.
Well, what can you do? It even happens to
us programmers every once in a while. I had been so close though and then a stupid
mistake took it all away.
I got the rickety old site creation
tool I've been using, cranked up and got it copying the old site back up to the server.
So you guys would have something to see. After that, I immediately got obsessed with recreating
the new site. The deletion happened about 11:30 pm. I dove right in and started to recreated
each and every page. By 3:45 am I had most of the basic site recreated!
Most of the last two months of time spent
on the creating the new site was spent learning the new web site creation tools. So the
recreation of the site was not too difficult, just not what I wanted to be spending my time
on. It's taken me from Monday morning until today to get the site tweaked and everything
correct again. In the end the site turned out better than it had been before, so I guess
it all worked out for the best. I guess.
So... I hope everyone enjoys the new feel.
And now that its done, I have more time to get new pages up on the site!
It is a dark night. As I stand on the porch looking
out I can't see a thing. It's a very dark night out. The
cold mist that has lain on the Ranch all day has finally
lifted, but only a little. It looms overhead, bringing the overcast sky down to almost the
tops of the mountains. The moon is not up. The only light out is the almost unperceivable
glow of starlight filtered through an overcast sky and mist. It is very dark out... I step
off the porch and out into the darkness...
I'm on a trip to the mailbox a kilometer away at the
top of the mountain along the main road that runs along the ridge line. As I leave the glow
shining from my log cabin windows, I wonder if I can really make it. It would be easier
to go get in the truck and run up and get the mail. But I need the exercise and I want to
see if I can make it. I have a flashlight in my hand, but it's off. I don't want to have
it on the whole trip, plus I don't know if the battery will last the whole 30 minutes. Besides
it will only blind me if I turn it on now. So I keep walking out my driveway and up the
road. As I leave sight of the house and head on toward the pond I can't really see the road.
I'm almost walking blind. The muddy ruts of the road are just barely perceivable out of
the corner of my eyes. I can't really see the road when I look at it, I have to look away
and make it out out of the corner of my eyes. It's like fumbling around in a totally dark
room except you are outside and in cold muck.
On I walk. I'm walking the level stretch by the Hay
Meadow. I'm still walking literally in the dark. If I didn't know the way so well there
is no way I could keep going. As I start rounding a curve, I can barely make out the Balsams
as I pass them along the road. Their shapes cast silhouettes against the dim glow of the
sky. I hear the creek and the water falls above the pond. I keep on walking into the night...
I'm starting to climb now. The light snow that fell
yesterday has somehow melted away except for a patch here and there. Those patches glow
in the dim light. Its back below freezing now and the cold air is starting to make my nose
run a little as I start to breathe harder. Just as my eyes are starting to make out a little
more light and dark shapes, the road up head starts looking darker. The road is heading
into the woods. The road is cut into a steep mountain side so there is a high road bank
to my left with woods above, and a dark chasm of blackness to my right as the woods go on
down to the creek a hundred feet below and then back up to the mountain side on the other
side of the creek. I know all this is there in my mind but I can't see it. I can just hear
the creek below in the darkness.
As I continue on up the road the woods press in on
me. There is only a narrow strip of glowing sky above me as the trees start to block out
everything else. I can see the silhouettes of tree limbs and branches above, reaching out
over the road. If I had stepped off my porch into this I would never have been able to see
anything. But my eyes are getting more used to the dark and I can still see, very, very
faintly, the two parallel paths of the road ruts in front of me. Just enough to stay on
course.
I feel a little bit of unease. I'm in the middle of
the stretch of woods now. This stretch is a little more unsettling than most because I know
these woods are a corridor that all the animals use to go from one side of the ranch to
the other. I regularly find bear, bobcat, coyote, and deer scat on this section of road.
With acres and acres of pastures on either side, this strip of woods a couple of foot ball
fields long acts like a bridge for them to cross without having to come out into the open.
If I'm going to run up on anything, this is probably the place I will do it.
Although it's below freezing, the road must have gathered
a little bit of warmth from somewhere today since it's not frozen solid. The road is soft
and wet and the sand and gravel grit is loud under by boots. Quite I am not. As much noise
as my boots are making on the road I can't hear anything. I step off the road and on to
the grass bordering it. I can hear much better now. I have to turn my head slightly one
way or the other to keep the wind from whistling in my ears as I walk. Much better, I'm
a lot stealthier now.
I start to see a soft glow way up ahead of me. It's
the pasture up ahead through the road cut in the woods. I keep on walking, straining to
see and hear everything. Man it's a dark night out. But it is amazing that I can see at
all. That is if you call following a soft blurry smudge out of the corner of your eyes,
seeing. The brighter hole up ahead is getting bigger. I'm getting closer to the pasture
on the other side of the woods. If an animal where to walk across the road, or charge down
the road at me, I could probably make out its silhouette now. I keep up my pace.
As I'm approaching the last curve, I notice that the
fence post about 8 feet ahead of me and to my right is taller than the rest. I stop. It's
the owl that I sometimes see hunting here. He's sitting on the fence post gazing out and
listening to the pasture below. He just sits there. I'm sure he heard me, but he appears
to be still listening for the mice out in the field. Very cool. He, or she, is a
Barred Owl about 18 inches high. It is
a pale mottle gray in the dim light and almost the color of the weathered old chestnut fence
post. I just stand in the dark, amazed at the creature in front of me. I'm amazed that I'm
standing so close to a creature is actually hunting in this darkness. Wow. After a few minutes
I take a step to go on. A ghostly blur flutters and floats out of sight towards the forest
at the far side of the pasture below and is gone. There was not a sound from it. Not one
sound. I marvel at it. A large bird just flew off of a fence post not 8 feet in front of
me and there was not one single sound. Incredible. No ruffle of feathers, no stirring of
air, nothing. It was like it was not real, just a silent ghostly image… I continue on.
At last I get to the mailbox. I open it and I feel
around inside to make sure I get all the mail. I have to take off my backpack and gloves
to unzipped it and put the mail in. I put it back on one arm. As I turn, struggling to get
my other arm through the strap with my jacket on. I look down the road from where I just
came and stop. I can make out the road as it goes back down into the darkness, back down
into the woods. It's kind of hard to believe I just walked up out of that darkness… and
now I have to head back down into it...
Well, I finally got another months pictures, and this
time a real life honest to goodness story, up on the site. Unfortunately it is from September
2003! I am so behind. Even though I've had most of this new page done for a while, I just
couldn't find enough time to finish it up and get it on the site until today. I am finally
starting to catch up on my outside Ranch chores and until the garden starts to come in,
may have a little more time to spend on the web site. I have so much more to tell...
You need to read the entire page of the events from
Missing Llama. The first part
from 9/17 just describes a really nice day at the Ranch. The part from 9/18 recounts a not
so fun day at the Ranch. Some of you have heard most of this story and have been waiting
a long time to see some of the pictures.
A rare double entry on the same day! I've been meaning
to put this on my site for quite a while. Check out this link for a beautiful view from
Purchase
Knob. There are some really breath taking scenes sometimes.
Purchase knob was private property on the edge of
the Smoky Mountain National Park, that was donated to the park a couple of years ago. The
main house on the property has now been turned into a research and education center. The
camera is looking north, north east. Rush Fork Mountain is straight ahead and across the
valley floor about 10 miles away. The road to the Ranch passes by Rush Fork mountain, click
here for
a close up view of it (near bottom of page). The mountain way in the distance and to the
right of Rush Fork Mountain is none other than Mt. Mitchell (6684 feet) the highest peak
east of the Rockies. Its about 45 miles away.
The Ranch is out of view to the left and about 15
miles away.
You can also check a view from
Mt. Mitchell here. The
camera is looking north, north west. The mountains in the distance are along the NC/TN border
in Madison and Yancy counties. Once again the Ranch is to the left out of view. There is
also a Mt. Mitchell weather
station pagee. It just recently discovered this page and have been amazed at how similar
the temperatures here at the Ranch are with the Mt. Mitchell.
2:47 am
I'm up a little late tonight getting some more pictures
on the site. I want to say more, but the thoughts are getting a little sluggish...
I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and has
a wonderful New Year!
Well I can't wait anymore. I had planned on getting
all my past pictures up on the site in sort of a chronological order, but I can't wait any
longer. I want to show you some of what it looks like right now! Besides these should be
seen while everyone still has the holiday spirit. I'll get back to the other pictures later.
Here's another quick entry. I got a few images from
June up on the site. It sure
is nice to see all these images of warmth and green this time of year.
One of the most common questions I get in e-mails
from people who find my web site, is who are you. So to help cut down time spent answer
e-mails, I've put up this new page with a little
about me.
Mayy.
Now I know many of you are looking forward to seeing scenes of snow and hoar frost, those
will be coming be patient. For now, let me take you back to a wet, green and lush, Spring
and Summer.
I finally made it back to the airwaves (or TCP/IP
packets in this case). Sorry to have been gone so long. I'd like to say thank you to all
who wrote wondering if everything was all right. This Spring at the Ranch has been very,
very busy. I have been working my butt off, literally!
I've had to crank up the real work work for NAPA.
I've been working until from 8:30am to 5:30-6:00 pm, then going out and working on outside
stuff, then coming back in at 9:00pm, take a shower, eat supper, and sit back down to work
some more usually until 2:00-3:00am! This has left me with no time or energy for the web
site.
I've been working hours and hours on my landscaping,
mowing the yard about every four days, and mowing my pastures. I gotten my garden plowed,
and planted. Today I even got my garden fence up (but not without losing 5 out of my 6 cabbages
to rabbits first) and the whole thing hoed.
I hope to be back on track with the Blog and getting
some of the pictures I've taken on the site. Although I'm a little too pooped tonight to
write anything other than an explanation of where I've been, I do feel the writing bug starting
to bite again, and you will start seeing more here.
With all this work, I've also not been taking as many
pictures as I was. After a flurry of pictures in April I've really not been taking that
many lately. This will allow me to catch up!
Here are some pictures from a beautiful Spring day,
More of the Road to Town,
Tuesday April 15, 2003 This
should pretty much be the last of the pictures I took while drive back and forth to town.
Well... pretty much the last until there's another change in season.
I wanted to make a log entry tonight, but worked too
late tonight on work work and I've run out of juice. I'm too tired to put anything up tonight.
Look for a LOT of new pictures on Sunday or Monday!
Well it seems that I'm on a weekly schedule for updating
the web site. At this rate I will be buried in pictures and stories!
These new pages I've put up over the last month seem
to have really been a hit. The number of visitors to my pages have increased from the 500
per day range to the 700-800 range! Also the number of e-mails I've been getting has dramatically
increased. I just wanted to say thank you for all the kind words.
There has also been a side effect from all this that
I didn't expect. With all the pictures of the Ranch and now pictures of the areas outside
the Ranch, I've been getting a lot of e-mails asking where I am and for information on how
to buy land here. I hate to say this, but I'm sorry but you are talking to the wrong guy.
As I'll try to explain over time, this place is a treasure and unfortunately it is being
loved to death. I can't help feeling a little selfish.
Tonight, I'm trying to catch up and post some pictures
I took last week. The page I got up tonight was from last Friday.
I titled this page "Nowhere" because this is one of
those Ranch days that made the rest of the world disappear. The snow and the fog surround
the house ALL day leaving a small snug little world that is only 100 feet in diameter. Now,
in the past, when I have described these day to people, they get this kind of worried and
concerned look on their face like I have either gone crazy, or if what I'm describing is
true, that I will GO crazy. Let me assure you that I am neither. I truly enjoy all the weirdness
that the Ranch has to offer. There is an absolute beauty to days like this. Read more and
check out the pictures to see what it's like to be
"Nowhere"
I have done some work on the site tonight, I've added
a Guestbook! Although
I do get e-mails from some of you, I would really like to know who the rest of my readers
are! If you feel like contributing just click the link and add yourself to the book. Let
me know what you think!
Well it did snow! As I've had up on the main page,
I had quite a bit of fun Thursday. At one point the power was out, the satellite Internet
was out, and both my phone lines where down. Thank goodness for generators and cell phones
(even though I did have to walk up to the cemetery to get a signal). After snowing 10" in
7 hours I was starting to get a little worried. Luckily the snow did stop, and started to
melt almost immediately. Check out the images from
Thursday, April 10 to see
more of that day. I'm a little too tired to write much tonight or put of images from today,
or I guess that's yesterday now. I'll put them up later on tomorrow... uh, today.
1:52 am
I just came back inside from walking the dogs. It's
rather nice outside. It's cleared off and warmed up to 38 degrees. The stars are shining
bright and the moon is out. You can hear water dripping everywhere, off the trees and the
house. As I walk out into the meadow and look down the hollow at the setting moon you can
really hear all the waterfalls down the creek. A nice night. I bet tomorrow is going to
be really great, if I can get up.
See what I mean, I just took this picture off the
kitchen porch.
After days and days of rain, it looks like we are
in for some more snow. The forecast out of Asheville is calling for several inches tomorrow
and Friday. We may be in for another deep one. May be, may be not, we'll just have to see.
Theses last few days remind me of how March and April have been most years. Dark, wet, and
foggy. I guess I got spoiled on the usually warm, nice weather! Despite what all the newcomers
to the mountains think, snow is common this time of year at the Ranch. Check out the images
from 3 years ago today, April
9, 2000. Regardless of the snow, it sounds like the weekend will be back up in the 70's.
So it will be spring again. I pulled my blueberries back in the garage just to be safe.
Unreal Tournament
200303!
UT as it's called, is so much fun! The game play is
exhilarating, the graphics are almost photorealistic (click on the screen shots about halfway
down the UT2003 page!), the sound is
Dolby 5.1 surround sound!! With my
500 watt Dolby 5.1 surround speakers
It's a wonder I ever go to sleep. I usually just kind
of pass out at the keyboard.......
Of course I've been taking more pictures too! Here
are a few more from the last few days. To the Mailbox, Monday April 7, 2003
and
As usual with me, and I guess everyone else in the
modern world, I've been really busy over the last couple of days and have not had a chance
to put down my thoughts or pictures. Unfortunately I don't think I have the brain juice
left to do it tonight either! But, I'm still on the new camera kick and have been snapping
pictures left, center, right, behind, above and below. I wanted to get a few of them on
the site tonight before I get buried in them. I'm sure I will eventually calm down and quit
taking so many pictures, but for now bare with me.
No big news over the last two days. Yesterday was
another perfect day. I took a break for a few minutes yesterday afternoon and took a hike
around my property. I went to a place I haven't been to in quite a while, to my hammock
in the woods! I strung the hammock up last year. It is VERY peaceful and relaxing. There
is only forest around you and when you lay down you are just staring up at the trees and
sky and swinging bank an forth. You can check out the photos on
Another Perfect Day, April 3rd,
2003and Quick Trip to Town,
April 4th, 2003
A reminder that the time is going to change to Daylight
Savings time Sunday morning. We'll move forward an hour. By the way, it always changes on
the first Sunday in April and the last Sunday in October. Even though we actually lose an
hour on Sunday, I always love Daylight Savings time. I can get more done in the afternoon
after work!
Do you know who presented the idea of Daylight Savings
time? Why we do it? Check out this cool
site. and you'll know!
Another incredible day at the Ranch. The weather today
was perfect. It was shockingly pleasant. From 19 degrees to 70 degrees in three days. Wow.
We are back in full bore Spring now.
Remember how I said I got a new camera last night
(8:30 am entry below). Well now you'll be able to see the Ranch a little more like I see
it. Check out today's pictures on the
Winter to Spring page **.
8:30 amm
The word of the day is MELTING!
Man it's been nice the last two days. It's a warm
spring morning, but there's still 3"-4" inches of snow on the ground! I ate breakfast on
the kitchen porch this morning in a t-shirt, at the same time I was getting snow blindness.
The contrast is weird.
I was walking out my driveway late yesterday afternoon
close to sunset. There was a very warm, almost hot breeze blowing in my face from the south,
then the next instant there was a cold, cold damp breeze hitting me in the side of the head.
The cold was coming from a breeze closer to the ground flowing over all that snow. The two
were mixing in the air at the same time as I walked, warm, cold, warm cold. One step Winter,
the next Spring. A definitive moment in the transition from Winter to Spring. I don't think
I'll feel that again until October.
With all the melting snow, the streams are rushing.
They are full and have lots of white water. From my front porch I can hear the really big
waterfalls way down the creek now. Sounds nice. I'll have to try to get some shots of those
falls, you guys haven't seen them yet.
By the time I made it outside this morning the power
of the March/April sun had started to work on the snow. The best I can tell without taking
a walk down the creek where the wind doesn't blow, I had 15" left this morning. Man it's
beautiful. Well, got to get back in and work..
Around 5:30 pm I finally went out for an evening hike.
I made a trip out to my hay meadow, then around behind my hill and down the creek. Me and
the dogs stepped out into 14" of snow. Check out the pictures as I head out into the
Spring Snow Storm
As of now, 12:30 am, it's still snowing, hard, and
it's down to 18 degrees. I wonder how much I'll wake up to in the morning? I know it will
be more than 14".
Novemberer and hope to catch
up over the next few weeks.
Also, you may have noticed I finally put a picture
of myself up on the site. I have gotten quite a few e-mails lately from people saying they
like my site, but wanted to know why I didn't have any pictures of myself! Well I finally
gave in and put one up. One reason I don't pictures of myself on the site is that I don't
take any pictures of myself! I asked my neighbor Karen to take a picture for me a couple
of weeks ago for the Cold Springs Ranch Property Owners Directory, and figured it would
do. Thanks Karen!!
Speaking of e-mails you may not realize this but my
site is visited by an average of 200-300 people a day! The number of visitors really shoots
up to 400-450 a day on days when it has snowed. I can only assume that this is because of
folks in warmer climes that want to see what winter really looks like! Traffic has really
picked up since I registered my weather station (and web site) with
Weather Underground last March. People looking
for local weather on Weather Underground, can then follow a link to my page (more on Weather
Underground in a later update). Also, a lot of folks have been coming to my site from Google
and Yahoo. I've also been getting about 4-5 E-mails a week from people all over the world
that like my site. I guess the folks that don't like my site don't bother writing. I hope
to get a guestbook set up one day so that folks that visiting my site can leave their name
and where they're from and a message.
I'm finally back! This Summer has been incredibly
busy for me. I'll explain more about what I've been up too this Summer in a later newsletter.
Today I want to talk about what has brought me back to the web page, a bear! After thinking
that maybe all the construction around the Ranch had scared off the animals, I was reminded
that I truly do live in the wilderness. While reading the newspaper in my front porch swing
this evening, a bear walked out of the woods and into the meadow below the house and proceeded
to wander around. Check out the (grainy) photos on the
A Bear Wandering Through page.
I hope to get back on track and backfill many of the
weeks worth of events that have happened to me soon.
For those of you who don't look at the weather page
very often, you may not have realized that it has been COLD at the Ranch. There has been
a heavy frost on the ground every morning since Saturday (5/18). It has only gotten into
the upper 30's to low 40's for highs! It has been 27-28 degrees every morning with a thick
crust of white frost on everything.. Believe it or not there where a few snow flurries Monday
night! Many plants have suffered. I walked around the Ranch today and saw that all the young
Hickory trees leaves where fried. The young Locust too. Many of the Maidens Hair ferns got
killed too. The Umbrella Magnolia tree in front of my house got the leaves in the top of
the tree killed. I had to do some emergency garden work Friday to dig up all the plants
I had just set out the evening before! I had to pull up my tomatoes, peppers, okra, squash,
and watermelon plants and moved them into my garage. The lettuce, onions, cabbage, and peas
survived the cold. Luckily my beans and corn have not come up yet. Old timers would call
this a "Blackberry" winter because the cold has come while the Blackberries are blooming.
The weather forecast calls for it to warm up from here on out. So this should be the last
cold weather we have until September rolls around in 4 months!
P.S. I'm in the process of capturing about a months
worth of images from video. Look for many new web pages over the next few days.
Well, as you can see from the new
Life at the Ranch pages,
Spring is finally springing here at the Ranch. In fact, as you'll see from later images
that I'll try to get up soon, Spring has practically sprung.
I guess many of you wonder why I make such a big deal
out of this. Well, I guess you would have to live here for a while to understand. First,
I'm kind of like our forefathers before the Industrial Revolution. I'm lucky enough to be
here 24x7x365. So just like our forefathers, which also made a fuss about the seasons creating
holidays and such, I'm here enough and aware enough to notice. Second, the Winter is long
here! Since the Ranch is sitting at 4000-4200 ft. in NC, our climate and seasons are like
the lower elevations of Vermont and New Hampshire. Winter is the predominate season here.
The Ranch doesn't have leaves for 7 months out of the year. The leaves usually are gone
from mid October to mid May. Don't get me wrong, I love the Winter. Autumn and Winter are
my two favorite seasons. In fact I think the Ranch is at its most beautiful October through
January. But Winter seems to hang on for a very, very long time. Although we do have snows
in March and April, usually not that many. So instead of the beauty of all the snow, you
just have cold, muddy, rainy, yuck, for what seems like forever. By the time May rolls around
I'm very ready for a change!! No matter what the calendar says, to me, Spring only last
a few weeks. To me, Spring is the actual act of everything waking up and coming alive. The
wave of change happens fast. Here at the Ranch there is a very comforting and predicable
order to it's arrival. It starts off slowly then speeds up to the point where you almost
can't keep track of what is happening. First the frogs start peeping in the evening, breaking
the silence of Winter. Then the grouse start thumping their mating call by beating their
wings on their chest. The turkey start their mating displays. Then slowly the green grass
starts sweeping away the gray and brown. Before you know it the robins and blue jays return.
The pace picks up a bit more. As the air gets warmer and grass grows higher, the crickets
and grasshoppers start to chirp and buzz. Before you know it the blue birds, gold finch,
and swallows are back and the air is filled with sounds and action. Then the leaves start
popping out. First only one or two trees, then all of them at once! The final sign, when
you know for sure Spring is here, is when what we locals call the "Golden Ring" (wood thrush)
starts singing in the morning and evenings. So, before you know it, in just a few weeks,
the Ranch has gone from the silent, still, bleakness of Winter to a chirping, singing, jungle!
The wave of change is so dramatic and happens so fast towards the end, that everyday you
go out and are amazed at what is happening. Then, before you know it, the wave has passed
through. The changes stop. The wave of Spring is off for higher and more northern lands
and the Ranch settles into its Summer pattern. Although the Summer will be pleasant, its
like Summer in much of the South, and after 5 months I'll be eagerly waiting for the wave
to reverse and bring the wave of change back to the Ranch. Then you'll be hearing me go
on and on about Autumn... Where in just a matter of a few weeks, the air will grow cold
and crystal clear, the frost will bring silence, and the leaves will fall in a glorious
blast of color. And in just a wonderful span of days Summer will turn into Winter...
Maybe it's the length of Winter that makes me ready
for a change. I mostly think it is the amount of dramatic, and fascinating change that happens
in such a short span of time. Kind of like watching a sunrise or sunset. Everything is pretty
much the same for long periods of time with a very awe inspiring, dramatic, short transition.
I've never heard of people taking pictures or writing poems about the sun moving from 1:00
P.M. to 1:30 P.M., have you? It's all about the excitement of the transition.
Some of you have been e-mailing me to see if I'm OK
since I haven't been updating the web site! Yep, I'm OK just busy, busy, busy. Although
I am usually busy with my software work and house work, with daylight savings time and spring
has come a whole lot more work! After three tillers (I'll explain on a future web page)
and a lot of rock throwing, I now have a garden plowed and growing. I've also been cleaning
up a lot around the house. Not to mention, mowing the grass twice a week! At least I'm burning
off some of the weight I accumulated over the winter! I have been videoing some over the
past few weeks. I'm putting up the first installment tonight,
April 18, 2002. Look for more
to come soon.
I've received several e-mails from folks wanting to
know if the leaves are out at the Ranch. The answer is NO! Usually the leaves don't come
out until the first week of May. See
May 5, 2000
I was watching ABC Evening News tonight and they had a report on a local (as the crow
flies) radio station! The station is WDVX out of Clinton, Tennessee. They play "bluegrass,
Americana, classic and alternative country, western swing, blues, old time and traditional
mountain music, Celtic, and folk". We can pick up WDVX here at the Ranch. I listen to them
occasionally when I'm in the mood. My favorites are Celtic, bluegrass and mountain music.
It reminds me of growing up here and good times. I have a varied and eclectic taste in music.
Of course sometimes mainstream music catches up with me. The ABC News report said that the
success of the O Brother soundtrack has increased their popularity. WDVX is a totally independent
radio station run by volunteers out of a camper! You can still walk up and play music live
on the station just like in the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou. The station is just plain
cool. It is so rare to turn on the radio and not just hear the same old top 40, of what
ever chart you listen to. With WDVX you never can tell what's going to be on, but I usually
really like it. Very refreshing. It will broaden your music horizons. If you don't hear
something you like, just tune in later, it'll change!
If you want to learn more about this cool station and if you live outside the range of
it's little 200 watt (yes 200 watts!) signal you can listen to them live on the Internet
by clicking here WDVX.
Click on the "Tune In To WDVX" link to listen in. Check out
their program guide while on that page too. You can see the piece PBS did on them if you
click on the "Check Out the story behind WDVX", then click on the "Interview" and "Video"
links. If you want to help, send in a donation!
Blog - The CSR
Monthly Edition
through a lot of snow and drifts to get around the
Ranch to take pictures this afternoon. 
In the mean time, here's a
teaser photograph.
