Windows 2003 Server Install

Robby and Alison came over this evening for supper and to install “Windows 2003 Server” on my “Steve” computer. We got started a little after 7:00 and worked hard until after 11:00. We encounter a couple of real show stoppers. First we could not find a driver for my “Soundblaster Ensonic AudioPCI” sound card. This must have killed an hour. Then things went really smooth until the very end when we lost internet connectivity. We quit a little after 11:00 with the new server install not quite finished. We’ll try again tomorrow night. It really looks promising. This is really cool stuff. We will have our own AD (Active Directory) domain at home. Looks like my Blog site will be down for a day or two.

5284 Steps today.

Another day at the dentist office

Today was a very abnormally cool day. Andy took Lisa and I to lunch at Chipolte's. They made me a custom Burito which was very good. We ate out on the patio and then went shopping at Microcenter. Thanks Andy. Sorry Chris, you missed it. Chris is floating the Current River today.

I had to go the the dentist this afternoon to finish the work on tooth #15 (top left rear) where I had the root canal two weeks ago. I'm glad that's done.

I went swimming with Bradley and Ashley again this evening. They sure do enjoy swimming. They both jump in the the 9' end of the pool now.

I spent most of the evening logging the geocache sites that we found while on our trip out west. We have now found 812 caches around the country.

I got to get started on the PTOC programming project or I'll never finish it this summer.

Steps today 3480.

Back to Work

Today was the first day back to work at Sprint after 10 days vacations. It was really hard getting up at 5:30 this morning. My mind is still out in the mountains and deserts.

This evening I went swimming with Bradley and Ashley. They seem to really enjoy the swimming pool.

I'm trying to get back to the programming project for PTOC. I'm suppose to write something to handle the club membership this summer. There's so much going on with the kids, Mary and the doctor, and vacation that I'm having trouble getting my mind back on the programming project.

Mary's angiogram was changed to next Friday, July 9th.

5650 Steps today.

Recuperation Day

Today has been recuperation day from traveling nearly 3000 miles in 10 days. We had a very enjoyable trip to a few of the western states.

We took everybody to TomFoolerlies Restaurant for brunch on the Plaza this morning. WOW! what a great feast. Expensive but good.

Everybody left for Arkansas except Bradley and Ashley. We will keep them until Friday when Mary will take them home to Arkansas.

I spent the afternoon editing video and slide shows. There were too many pictures to fit on one CD so I went through and deleted a lot that needed deleting and burned a bunch of CD's for us and the kids.

It's great to travel but it's good to be home.

3329 Steps today.

Kansas City - The Trip is Over

I sure did hate to leave the motel this morning. It was the nicest room we’ve had on the entire trip. We highly recommend the Best Western at exit 81 in Sioux Falls South Dakota.

We’re leaving Sioux Falls at 10:05 with clear skies and a temperature of 65 degrees. We have about 380 miles to travel today to reach our house.

Looks like we’re in a hurry to get to Kansas City. Nobody wanted to stop for breakfast. We filled up the gas tank and headed out. We did stop about 11:30 to grab a picture of the Welcome to Iowa sign.

Seems like we just couldn’t make the entire trip without encountering a snake. We spotted an Eastern Ribbon Snake at the Iowa border.

We have traveled though 7 states during our 9 day trip.

• Kansas
• Colorado
• Wyoming
• Montana
• South Dakota
• Iowa
• Missouri

We stopped for another picture at the Welcome to Missouri sign at 1:45.

4:00 p.m. Kansas City - We decided to stop at Cabela’s and look around for a while. Robby and Allison joined us at Cabela’s. There are a lot of very impressive wildlife displays. We really enjoyed our visit.

Cebela's

6:00 p.m. – We all went to the Rainforest Café for supper. We enjoyed a great meal together.

I guess the trip is over. We arrived home at about 9:45 p.m.

5120 Steps today.

Route Today

Sioux Falls South Dakota

We’re leaving Keystone, South Dakota with cloudy skies and a temperature of 57 degrees this morning at 9:30.

We ate breakfast in the Buffalo Dining Room at Mt. Rushmore while viewing the Presidents. We finally left Mt. Rushmore at about 1:15 this afternoon. There seems to be more to see every time we come. Scott, Bradley, Ashley and I did the Presidents Trail this time. It was about a mile walk, but worth it. Beautiful trail with beautiful sights and a whole new prospective viewing the Presidents.

Mount Rushmore

Looks like we’ll celebrate our 39th wedding anniversary on the road today.

We arrived at Wall Drug about 2:30 and planned a quick stop. It was so interesting that we could not get everybody to leave until about 5:30. Scott, Mike and I had a buffalo burger for lunch. Tasted pretty much like a regular burger to me. It was good. There is so much to see at Wall Drug that we could have spent many more hours and just spent the night here.

Wall Drug in Wall, South Dakota

After Wall Drug we drove through the Badlands National Park. It was interesting, but after Yellowstone I think everybody was kind of bored. I took lots of pictures. Mostly I think about how many thousand places an outlaw could hide from the law. We didn’t get away from the Badlands until about 8:00. Now we have to drive till after midnight to get to Sioux Falls, South Dakota. While driving we have made reservations at the Best Western at exit 81.


Badlands National Park

Oh what a relief! We have BROADBAND High-Speed internet service in the Best Western. We also have a big desk and an office chair. The bad part is, I had to sleep late because we did not get here until way past midnight (about 1:30).

10910 Steps today.
218 Pictures today.

Route Today

Mt. Rushmore South Dakota

We’re leaving Cody, Wyoming about 10:50 with partly cloudy skies and a temperature of 59 degrees.

We enjoyed our best breakfast yet at “Granny’s Family Dining”. We highly recommend it for breakfast. We had the “Ultimate Omelet” (3 eggs, mushrooms, onions, broccoli, jalapeno peppers, ham, sausage, bacon, green peppers with cheese sauce on top, hash browns, whole wheat toast) It is located on US Hwy 14 (Sheridan Ave.) at N 44 31.540, W 109 03.457, in the heart of Cody. An old B&W picture on the wall of a bear leaning on a car begging in Yellowstone reminded me of a trip to Yellowstone when I was 15 years old and the bears were everywhere doing the same thing. Now days you are lucky to see a bear off in the distance. The park rangers hauled all the bears away to the back country.

Our route shows that we’ll have to travel 409 miles today to reach Mt. Rushmore. Looks like another day of driving. We won’t have time for too many pictures today.

I think the ladies are having Wal-Mart withdrawal. We have not seen a Wal-Mart in many days. How wonderful. Scott just said that every day without Wal-Mart is $100 saved.

While traveling east on Hwy 14A from Cody to Sheridan, Wyoming we encountered a rise of 4000 feet in a 13 mile strength of road. After we got up to around 9500 feet we saw lots of moose and snow. We drove through the clouds for a lot of miles. Visibility was very poor and there were lots of signs of moose and cattle on the highway. The temperature dropped to low of 42 degrees.

Moose along the road

We got to Keystone, South Dakota about 9:00. The Super 8 lost our reservation and we were lucky to find rooms at the Miner's Resort for $80. Mt. Rushmore is less than 10 minutes away. Mary's not feeling well this evening so we won't be able to see Mt. Rushmore tonight. Hope to see it in the morning. Keystone is a really neat little town to stay in.

3377 Steps today.
64 Pictures today.

Route Today

Cody Wyoming

We got up this morning at 6:00 and went geocaching around West Yellowstone, Montana. We have a beautiful blue sky with a temperature of 41 degrees.

We got back to Yellowstone National Park about 10:40 and the traffic is horrible. Now I see why the traffic is backed up so badly. It’s an elk with a huge rack on the side of the road stopping traffic.



Elk - Way too close

Baby Elk

We saw an eagle’s nest in the top of a huge dead tree but there was nowhere to park and get a picture.

We had hoped to drive through Dunraven Pass today but the road is closed due to construction. Oh well, there’s still many miles of park that is open and many sites to see.

We took a mile hike around the Norris Geyser Basin and took a lot of great pictures. Love this digital photography.


Mamouth Hot Springs - North Yellowstone

One of the highlights for the afternoon in Yellowstone was viewing Tower falls. The light was right and the top view was beautiful. We walked the .6 mile trail to the bottom of the falls only to learn the trail was closed for the last little section and we could not view the falls from the bottom. I was really huffing and puffing by the time I got back to the top of the mountain.

Tower Falls

We missed seeing the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone because of road construction, but it forced us out of the park at the Northeast entrance into Montana. We had never used the Northeast entrance in the years passed. This turned out to be a real treat. The scenery was awesome. We saw huge herds of buffalo and lots of deer and elk. The mountains and forest could not have been more beautiful.


Buffalo Herd


Many Rainbows over the mountains this afternoon

We arrived in Cody, Wyoming about 10:20. I guess we spent too much time enjoying the beautiful sights along the way today. We had breakfast at McDonalds in West Yellowstone this morning and supper in Cody about 10:30. We had snacks in between.

14901 Steps today.
219 Pictures today.

Route Today

West Yellowstone Mountana

We awoke this morning to a beautiful blue sky in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. We spent about an hour and half walking around downtown taking pictures and buying a few things. We left Jackson Hole about 10:50 with a temperature of 52 degrees.

We drove through Grand Teton National Park took a lot of pictures of the Teton Mountains. It is the perfect time to view the mountains.

We arrived at the Old Faithful area about 2:30 this afternoon. I took Bradley and went geocaching. We walked a mile up a mountain to view Old Faithful erupting and get a birds eye view. I’ve never seen Old Faithful from this angle. It was great. A few hundred feet way and we found the cache site.

Old Faithful from Above

We arrived in West Yellowstone about 9:45 this evening and checked into the Days Inn. No Wi-Fi. Shame on them.

I took 234 pictures today. The most I have ever taken in one day.

Steps today: 19,522 and I feel like it. I’m wore out.

Route for today

Jackson Hole Wyoming

We left Steamboat Springs this morning at 10:30. The Best Western was a little hard to find. They don’t allow signs in this town except for small ones on the building and it’s hard to find things. It’s raining and 45 degrees.

It was Fathers Day yesterday and three of us got to eat free at the Smokehouse Restaurant. I had Smoked Salmon and it was delicious. The three free meals totaled over $44.


Prairie Dogs along Interstate 80


Welcome to Wyoming


Shiprock Special Geocache Site

We were cruising down Interstate 80 this afternoon headed to Jackson Hole, Wyoming and everyone was bored so I decided we would find the “Shiprock Special” cache site. The write-up said it was a mile or so down the Historic Overland Trail. When we turned off the Interstate it was muddy. I stopped and ask Scott if we could make it. He said he had a tow strap if we needed it so I barreled on down the road. Mud was flying everywhere. We made it to the cache site without too much trouble. The map showed us continuing on the Overland Trail to the next Interstate on-ramp. THAT WAS A MISTAKE. The Overland Trail kept getting just a little worst every step of the way. We were scratching up the sides and dragging bottom of Scott and Laura’s new Toyota Camry. We kept thinking it would get better. IT DIDN’T. We finally reached a point where the trail went down a steep mountain. I stopped to survey the situation. As we looked out over the desert we could see no hope of getting to the Interstate. We could see the Interstate but no way to get there. The trail kind of just ended at the gully at the bottom of the mountain. We made the decision to go back the way we had come. By this time I’m sure everybody was ready to shoot me and Mary had cried buckets of tears by now. We turned around and went though the ruts, mud, desert scrub back the way we had come. We must have been 7-9 miles from where we started the trail.

Now it’s 5:00 and we’re 3 hours from the motel in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. I guess I messed up bad. At least the Camry is still running and we have a muffler and gas in the tank. I told them on the FRS radio to not try to talk me into going off road for another cache. They replied that they would try to refrain.

It’s 6:00 p.m. now. We’re headed north on US Highway 191 and the Teton mountains are beginning to show themselves in the distance. Blue sky and a few white clouds on the left and a hard rain storm in the distance on the right.


First View of the Teton Mountains

We made it to the Days Inn in Jackson Hole about 9:00 this evening. We then went to the Teton Steak House for supper. It was great. It's been a long day. I think I'll go to bed.

We hope to make it to Old Faithful and spend the night in West Yellowstone tomorrow night.

Steps today: 7372

Route for Today

Rock Mountain National Park

We stopped to take a few pictures of the river and caught these backpackers crossing the river. This must be scary. It also looks very hard.

Backpacker Crossing the River


Rocky River View

We walked a couple blocks off the highway to view Boulder Falls. It was really roaring today.

Steve at Boulder Falls

It rained a lot today and we encountered snow regularly. The temperature is 33 degrees. And which day is the first day of summer??

Quick Snow Storm

I've got a lot of photo's of elk in the years past, but I've never been able to get this close to one in the wild. I love this shot.

Rocky Mountain Elk

We spent the night in Steamboat Springs tonight at the Best Western. Three ski lifts are outside our window. What a neat view if we were here during ski season. I have a wonderful Wi-Fi connection here. Love that Wi-Fi.

Steps today - 9477.

Route for Today

Boulder Colorado

We did not get away from Salina Kansas until 10:15 a.m. today. Much later than I had hoped for, but we rolled our clock back 1 hour for Mountain Time Zone. So that helps some.

We found the neatest little Jailhouse in Wilson, Kansas(a Geocache site). It was round and made out of stone about 40 feet high. It was a little bigger in diameter than a silo. Looked like there were two are three floors for prisoners to sleep on.

Jailhouse in Wilson, Kansas

We found one of the very first Geocache sites every placed in Mingo, Kansas. It was placed on May 11, 2000.

We made it to Colorado about 2:00 this afternoon.

Holding up the Colorado Sign

We stopped for gas about 3:00 this afternoon and Scott spotted this Flower along side the parking lot.

A Flower Along the Way

We arrived in Boulder, Colorada about 5 o'clock this evening. The Rockies sure are beautiful in the background behind the Comfort Inn.

Route for today
8247 Steps today

Day 1 - Salina Kansas

Our Trip Out West has finally started

We woke up this morning at 6:30 anxious to hit the road. Seemed like there was a ton of stuff yet to do. We finally got it all together at 9:30 and called Scott in Little Rock. They were pulling out of the driveway at the same time.

Our first stop was in Abilene, Kansas. We were looking for 2 geocache sites. This is the first one.

Geocache Site - Texas Cattle Drive - Abilene, Kansas

The other cache site in Abilene was the Eisenhower Library. We really enjoyed our tour of the Library and the Eisenhower home.

Tonight we are staying in the Salina Super 8 motel. It is wonderful. We have Wi-Fi access and a huge recliner.

I have not logged out geocaches yet, but we must have found 6-8 caches today. We really enjoyed our first day out. Scott and Laura will be here any minute and we'll go find somewhere to eat supper.

We hope to be in Boulder, CO tomorrow night.

10116 Steps today.


Our Route today(click for larger image)

We're Finally Packed for the Trip Out West

We are finally packed. It's way too much work to get ready to have fun. We have spent the entire evening cleaning and packing. I think we are finally ready to leave for the trip out west in the morning. I hope we can relax now and enjoy the trip. We plan to meet Scott(son), Laura(daughter-in-law), Ashley(grand-daughter), Bradley(grand-son), Mike(Laura's father), and Vickie(Laura's mother) tomorrow in Salina, Kansas. They are all from Little Rock, Arkansas. Mary and I plan to check out a few geocache sites between Kansas City and Salina tomorrow. My hope is to have access to the internet along the way on the trip and report out progress here on Steve's Blog.

I hope the next report will be from Salina, Kansas.

Stay tuned for some excitement from the Wild West.

Getting ready for the trip west

Here's the Laptop support I've been working on. It's a lot more solid than it looks. I believe it's going to do the job for the trip out west.

Laptop Desk in Toyota Camry

We had more thunder storms and rain today. Unusually cool today.

Spent some time on the phone this evening trying to help Scott get his Garmin eTrex working with his laptop. I think he will have to wait until we get to Salina and he can use my USB to Serial Adapter.

We spent the evening just gettig things together for the trip. I have downloaded 1300 geocache waypoints along the route. We'll only look for a few of these, but I want the caches close to our current location if we get a chance to go looking for them.

New Computer support for the Car

This evening was a busy time preparing for the Trip out West. I started the evening by building a support for the laptop computer in the car. This was not nearly as hard as I thought it might be. It's basically a shelf with four legs down to the floor. This will allow us to have a moving map in the car connected to the GPS to show our car's position on the map at all times. This is really cool stuff and I consider it well worth the trouble. We could never be lost because we always know where we are. This works really well in the back country of Yellowstone.

After completing the computer support we spent a couple hours cleaning out the basement and throwing away a lot of junk. Still much to do here. We've got company coming the day we return from our trip.

Working with Andy at Sprint

Andy Scott shot this photo with his PCS camera-phone while we were on a conference call this morning. We're really working hard this morning. This is what makes work fun.

My First Root Canal

Another photo of our Patio


Today I had to have my first root canal ($900). The left side of my face was the most numb I have ever experienced. I've not felt very perky since leaving the dentist office. Now I have to go back to the dentist and get a new crown.

Looks like Mary is going to be diabetic. We learned how to use her new blood sugar level meter and it showed 149 mg/dl before eating supper.

It looks like our trip out west will be around 3100 miles.

Upgraded to Paint Shop Pro 8.1 today. It has many new features. Looks like I need to spend a lot of time relearning this wonderful tool.

Enjoying the new Patio

Today I trimed the trees in our little forest on the patio. I spent most of the day just enjoying our newly cleaned and remodeled patio.

Just enjoying our patio

We enjoyed a wonderful pot roast from the crook pot for supper.

I spent more time perfecting the route for our trip out west starting this Friday. Here's how the route looks so far.
Route for Trip Out West(click for larger image)
Scott and Laura will start in Little Rock and we'll meet them in Salina, Kansas this coming Friday evening. Mary and I hope to do some gecaching on the way over to Salina from Kansas City. We plan to carry the Laptop computer with the GPS connected. We'll be able to see ourselves driving down the road and hopfully never get lost. Neat stuff. Now I have to build a Laptop support over the console so I don't have to hold the Laptop in my lap for the whole 10 day trip.

I guess I'll have to go to the dentist tomorrow. I've had a bad toothache all weekend.

Saturday - A day at home

We spent most of the day working on our patio again today. Things are really coming together. We spent a lot of time just enjoying the fruits of our labor.

Fountain on our Patio
We went to supper with Robby and Alison this evening at the Salty Iguana. It was great.

Ronald Reagan's Funeral

I would guess that the biggest event in our lives today is Ronald Reagan's Funeral. We have spent many hours today following Ronald Reagan across the nation. The State Funeral in Washington DC seemed to be perfect to us. Every eulogy seemed to be perfect for the occasion. It was nice to hear each of the Reagan children give a eulogy at the service in California.

Bush Delivering His Eulogy

Mary and I enjoyed a nice quite evening at home this evening.

I did some more route planning for our trip next week. I'm trying to download all the geocache sites along our route and plot them on Street Atlas in case we get a change to stop and look for them. I'm amazed at how many cache sites there are in Yellowstone National Park.

Getting Ready for Trip Out West

Today it rained a lot. It did quit long enough for us to get our noon walk completed around the Sprint Campus.

Tonight I worked on the route for our trip out to the Rocky Mountains next week using Street Atlas 2004. Seems like everytime I work with Street Atlas I'm amazed at the things you can do with it. After putting in all the planned overnight stops and Vias I started building queries on Geocaching.com for towns on the route. We hope to find a few new cache sites that happen to be close to our route.

Now that I have all these wonderful waypoints for caches I discover that my PERL program that converts them for use on Street Atlas is broken. That will have to be another project for another night.

After completing the route I worked with Laura (my dautghter-in-law in Little Rock) using Windows Messenger to download the route to her and then help her import it into their Street Atlas. Now that turned out to be quite the experience for both of us. First I sent her a zip file only to learn she did not have Winzip on her computer. Then I sent the real route file and she lost it. The third time was a charm. This was a first for both of us to use Windows Messenger to download a file. It works great. Now we can all see the same map with the same route and discuss our trip.

Our trip will start when we all meet in Salina, Kansas next Friday. We'll travel together in two vehicles to Rocky Mountain National Park, Grand Teton NP, Yellowstone NP, Mount Rushmore and then back to Kansas City.

Stay tuned for the adventures of our Trip out West starting next Friday.

Geocaching in Springfield

Mary Geocaching in the rain in Springfield, MO

Ronald Reagan Arrives in Washington DC

Mary and I watched CBS as Ronald Wilson Reagan arrived at the Capital this evening for the State Funeral. The ceremony was very moving. Former President Reagan was truly one of the nations greatest presidents. Nancy Reagan was usered to the State Funeral by a General who has been at her side ever since her husband died. The riderless hourse representing a leader has fallen was very nervous for some reason. After Mrs. Reagan arrived, there was a band playing and a twenty-one gun salute. The honor guard was very impressive as they removed the casket from the horse drawn wagon. The honor guard carried the casket up the many steps at the Capital. The honor guard changed three times before the casket was deliveried to the Capital Rotunda. The casket weighted 700 pounds. The table supporting Reagan's casket is the same table that supported President Lincoln's casket in the Rotunda. Vice President Dick Cheny led the Capital Rotunda Ceremony.

Noon Adventure at the Sprint Campus

Chris, Andy and I enjoyed a very adventuresome walk today for our noon walk. It was raining today and we could not walk our usual mile and a half around the campus. We chose instead to try to walk a loop from the Main Street Café to the south end of the campus and back to our building on the west side. Our intension was to stay on covered sidewalks and through buildings to stay dry for the entire trip.

During our walk we discovered a display representing all the Patents that Sprint has acquired over the years. We then found two pieces of art in the Maintenance Buildings that was kind of cool.

Kitchen Art

Coffee Pot Art
As we neared the end of our journey, Chris spotted a Red Tailed Hawk looking into a fourth floor window of one of the Sprint buildings. There was nothing else to do but go find that window and see if Andy could take a picture of the hawk with his PSC camera/phone. We did indeed find the hawk still looking into the window of a break room. As Andy was shooting several pictures (which didn’t come out very well) the hawk was spooked and flew away. At least we all got a close up view of the hawk.

Andy caught this shot a couple days after our noon walk

Stay tuned for more adventures on Steve’s Blog.

My First Audio Blog - Sprint Campus

My first audio blog at the Sprint Campus standing in front of the waterfall at Sprint's Townsquare. This is motorcycle day at Sprint, but it's raining and there are no motorcycle's.

Blogging is new to me

During the past few days I have learned about blogging. The results is Steve's Blog.

I tried to use Earthlinks Blog, but decided that Google had the best interface for blogging.

Mary and I are about finished reworking the patio this evening. We added paving stones on the east end and Lava Stone on the west end. It was a lot of work but it's beginning to look nice.

I received the following from Craig Cottingham this evening concerning Geocaching:

Congratulations! Weston Bend River View is one of the finalist for Best Traditional Cache and Night River Bluff Walk is a finalist in the Micro category. Go to http://s94010431.onlinehome.us/kcgeocaching/vote.html to vote. The results will be announced at the picnic on Saturday, June 26th. We'll also post them on the website after the picnic so you can check the results. Have fun in Yellowstone!