Stony Creek Bike Ride
Posted on May 31, 2005 6:58 AM
This weekend (Monday) we went on a nice bike ride at Stony Creek, located in Stony Valley.
The players:
Gene, Angela, Amy, and Chris
It was a great ride. I never knew this place existed. Apparently it is a large parcel of land OWNED and maintained by the Pennsylvania Game Commission. We started on a nice semi level trail that, we've been told, goes on for about 17 miles. On our first try we went about 10.6 miles or so before turning around. Thanks to the guy we met on the trail that had an odometer that filled us in regularly with the mileage! He also took the picture above for us.
The scenery along the trail was great. While there were numerous cars in the parking area, we saw other people along the trail only occasionally, most of them fishermen who bike in to get to their favorite fishing spots somewhere along the trail.
The trail itself is mostly flat. The surface can go from smooth, to gravelly, to downright bumpy. I have to say that the majority of the time it is either smooth or gravelly. I would recommend this trail to most riders, as it never gets too technical. (Remember, we didn't do the whole trail this time.)
As you're traveling out to Stony Valley, you will see signs all along the way with slogans like "Save Stony Valley" on them. This is in reference to a Coalition in place that is trying to stop the Fort Indiantown Gap from "acquiring" Stony Valley, which as I mentioned is State Game Lands, OWNED by the Pennsylvania Game Commission. A friend of mine, who is a PA Game Commission Officer, explained to me that all of the lands owned by the commission were bought and paid for as well as maintained with money collected from hunters and trappers through license revenues. This means that no taxpayer dollars were used to pay for this great stuff. In my opinion, that's the best of both worlds.
I would highly recommend to anyone who loves the outdoors and nature that they go to Stony Valley a.k.a. Stony Creek and enjoy this great trail. If you do love the outdoors and want to know more about the Save Stony Valley Coalition and their efforts I recommend that you visit where you can find information and links to numerous new articles.
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Here's A Taste
Posted on May 18, 2005 10:46 PM
I had an interesting experience tonight. Since a friend of mine is away for the week, we invited his wife and some other friends over for dinner. Some point after the invite, my sister asked if we could watch my niece the same night. It's the middle of the week so there's really no reason why we can't watch her and have dinner with our friends, so we agreed to baby-sit.
I'm not going to detail the whole evening here, but the experience I mentioned in the beginning is the one of entertaining adult friends while you're trying to keep a 3 year-old entertained as well. In the beginning, there was no problem, but as the evening passed I realized that most television-based entertainment that is appropriate for a 3 year-old is most likely not very interesting to adults and a lot of things available and interesting to adults are not necessarily appropriate for a toddler. My first failure was an episode of
Family Guy. Now, I've really not watched even one episode or even a large portion of a show, so I was a little surprised at the content. I think I turned it off right around the point where one of the characters was naked and offering to put on nipple clamps that were attached to a battery. Doh!
My next try was not quite so bad. I have the movie
Shaun of The Dead. Now, I know that about 90% of this movie is inappropriate for a young kid, but I did fast forward to a funny part that I was explaining to my friends earlier that I thought was hilarious. The part where a couple of the main characters (I think) find an undead lady in their backyard but they don't realize that she's undead at first, they just think she's sauced. I did have to stop it at the point before I knew that it turned gruesome, but all was good. The really amusing part, I guess, is that during these different features, I expected my niece to be totally oblivious to what was on the TV screen and just go about her business with her Tigger book, but as I am sure any parent expects, she did exactly what I would have preferred she not do, which is to sit with her eyes glued to the TV.
I think I gave up on TV entertainment for the evening at that point. My friend Gene and I played an XBOX racing game, and my niece played too. I got a mini XBOX controller for the small children so they can hold onto it easier. That went okay, even though my niece is not yet at the point where she understands remote control. (What I do here affects something there.)
At the end of the evening, after all my friends had left, I realized, this is what it's going to be like to have kids. I remember a long time ago, going to my friend Scott's house to watch TV with him after work. I remember that while the TV show was on that we were supposed to be watching, he would spend like 80% of his time in the other room making sure his kid was staying out of trouble or something. I remember thinking, "How can you watch a TV show like that?" Simple answer is, "You can't." So you just have to record the show and watch it if you have time when you're not chasing your rugrat(s). Or in the end, you may find that it's just a show, and someday you'll look back on that time you played mini-soccer (in the house but it's okay, because we're not taking the ball off the floor, right?) but you're not going to remember or even care how that episode of Alias ended.
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Tivoli Workload Scheduler
Posted on May 18, 2005 7:24 AM
At work we're using a product called (TWS) to do all our batch job scheduling. There's a gui available as a front end interface, but it's written in Java. Anybody who knows me knows how much I like Java GUI's. Fortunately, most of the things you can do with the Java GUI, you can also do on the command line. My goal is to become proficient with the command line tools so that I don't have to use the Java frontend most of the time.
In this thread I will post my own little quick reference guide for TWS and the command line tools. Maybe it can evolve into something that I would share with people at work to help them be good TWS operators.
Here's a link to the
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New Pictures 05-15-2005
Posted on May 16, 2005 10:51 AM
My mom is in the process of buying a house. Yesterday (05-15-2005), Angela and I went with her to Halifax to look at the house that she's trying to buy. I took a lot of pictures of the house that I won't post here because I don't think most people would find them interesting, but I will post the pictures I took of Angela and my mom.
I would love to have a house in the country. It is so peaceful out there, and the view is great. I made Angela sit on a little bench and pose for me. She's truly beautiful and someday I hope to share these pictures with our children and our grandchildren. Toward the end of our visit, you can tell that she grew tired of my shutterbuggyness.
Editor's Note
I had at least one request for house
pictures, so I included them.
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