Ring Doorbell For the Win

Looking at my last post regarding my Ring doorbell, I believe I have a love-hate relationship with the device. Today it came to my aid and kept from interrupting me while doing important work. Of course in order for that to happen, I had to have my smartphone connected to it so I could use the camera.

Lately my neighborhood has had a string of door-to-door salespeople ringing doorbells and interrupting my work. Normally it is too much of a hassle to open the Ring app on my phone and see who is at the door so I walk from my basement office up to the door only to get upset about being interrupted. Due to large bombs being exploded out in the Utah desert this week, I have been logged into my Ring app to see what others in my neighborhood are saying about the loud noises we are all hearing.

Today when I got the doorbell notification while working on something very important, I just pulled up my phone and quickly spied my front porch. When I saw 2 people I didn't recognize nor expected, I continued working. About 10 minutes later I finished my task and checked the door to see if they left something. Sure enough they left a brochure about something I am not interested in learning more about.

My Ring doorbell doesn't always work the way I want it to. Sometimes I have to go through and extensive login process just to get access to the camera and that can be frustrating. Fortunately today the stars aligned and it kept me working when I didn't need to get up. Today I like the device. 

IRS Does Not Seem to be Slowed Down

It is tax time again and there seems to be some fear this year because of all the people being cut from the federal government. A lot of people are worried that Elon Musk and his seemingly gang of 20-year-old thugs is going to slow down tax returns being mailed to honest working Americans. Knowing this, I sat down last week and worked to get my extra complicated taxes filed. It took all week but I submitted them on Saturday afternoon. I then read the fine print and discovered I should expect my return within 21 days.

One of the reasons I have a complicated tax return this year is I cashed out a rather sizeable investment which I promptly reinvested in something with much better returns. The only problem is that I have to pay capital gains on the increase over the past 30-plus years. In doing so, I withheld federal taxes as if you owe more than something like $1,000 you will get hit with penalties. The state of Utah is different in that as long as you pay your taxes by April 15th, there are no penalties. My hope was that I would get enough back on my federal taxes to cover what I owe the state. I am actually getting slightly more back than I owe so I might be able to take my wife out to dinner or something. I did my taxes early enough that receiving the federal return within that 21 days would give me more than enough time to pay my state taxes.

Today I had to log into my bank account for a completely unrelated issue and noticed my balance is larger than expected. I clicked on the details and noticed that my federal tax return is sitting in my account ready to be sent to the state of Utah. It only took 5 days for me to receive my refund! This is the fastest I have ever received a tax return.

Let me return to my second sentence in this post about Elon Musk and his seemingly gang of 20-year-old thugs slowing down tax returns. I think this is one myth that doesn't fly with me. Granted my experience is one in 300-plus million Americans and your experience may vary. However I'd like to believe that the mere threat of dead wood being cut from the federal government has lit a fire under IRS workers and they are working with the speed we haven't seen in decades.

Carnage and Destruction

Last week I tried to ski every morning before work only to have my plans thwarted by avalanche danger. The huge snowfall coupled with rapidly warming temperatures created an unsafe environment for driving the canyon between the Salt Lake valley and the ski areas up Little Cottonwood Canyon, Snowbird and Alta. For the first 3 days, I could go to a safe area closer to home and tour to Alien Tower at the top of Suncrest in Draper. Then the warming temperatures melted a lot of snow and I decided it was no longer worth it. I waited patiently and was rewarded on Saturday morning with a safe window where the canyon opened enough to drive to Alta. Then I had to wait until the sun went down for them to open it again. It meant hanging out at Alta until after 7pm even though the lifts stopped running at 4:30.

As the canyon is closed again this morning and probably won't open until Saturday, I used my early morning time to create a video of Saturday's drive up to Alta where I filmed about 80% of the trip. In the video you can see most of the avalanches that crossed the road during the previous week. I missed the first one which is when I decided that I should probably pull out my phone and capture video as others might be interested in the carnage and destruction.

What is it about carnage and destruction that attracts viewers to video sites like YouTube? I get a lot of views of my skiing videos but this one will probably turn out to be one of my most popular. Should someone ask how to get a bazillion views of their video, I would recommend including natural disasters or other train-wreck ideas. People just can't help but watch.

Changing the Weather

As companies that have allowed everyone to work from home start implementing plans to return to office, they are preparing workers for changes. My own company has started recommending online training about how to prepare for the upcoming adjustments in our work environment. I watched a video this morning about we shouldn't be anxious about things that are out of our control and one of the examples was the weather. Interestingly enough, the weather is one of the things you can change and there are many examples of this around us.

I love winters in Utah because I love to ski. Unfortunately summers are just too hot for my taste. Instead of surviving this summer at home, I opted to get on a plane and spend the last 5 weeks in Hawaii. The average daily high is around 83 degrees Fahrenheit with the low around 72. I also get to see the rain daily, something that doesn't happen very often during the summer in Utah. So while I have not technically changed the weather in Utah, I have changed the weather for me by simply changing my location.

There are other examples of changing the weather. If it is raining, you can always seek shelter to where it is dry. If it is not raining and your lawn or plants need rain, you can water them with sprinklers or other types of irrigation.

How about the cold or the heat? How can you change that? Easy with modern heating and air conditioning systems. I doubt very many people would visit Florida in the summer if it wasn't for air conditioning. I also doubt may people would call Alaska home in the winter without heating systems. Sure you may not be able to change the weather for an entire outdoor area, but you can change it for where you are currently standing or sitting.

Often times you will hear an absolute that isn't really an absolute. Someone may say you can't change the weather when now you know you really can. Don't be afraid to challenge all absolutes as you may discover new ways of doing the impossible.

YouTube: It is not Just for Fixing Cars

My family always has a tradition of taking our sailboat out on the Great Salt Lake every 4th of July, anchoring the boat, and swimming/floating for hours. Sometimes we also actually get the sails up and go sailing. The Great Salt Lake is very shallow and is only 35 feet (10 meters) at its deepest. That means you have to walk a long way from the edge of the lake to get to where the water is deep enough to float. Taking a boat is the best way to get to where you can relax and float.

Unfortunately we thought we would have to miss our annual outing as I could not fix the engine on the boat. We really need the engine to get the boat in and out of the marina. Yes, it is a sailboat and we could use the sails to move the boat around but that is very difficult and best done only during emergencies. I have sailed the boat in and out of our slip and the process taught me a whole new list of cuss words I shouldn't use in front of small children.

As the name of the lake indicates, The Great Salt Lake is full of salt. Right now it is about 3 times as salty as the ocean. We often joke that if you drop a wrench into the lake, it will rust to nothing before the wrench lands on the bottom. That salt is not harmful to the sailboat as the hull is made of fiberglass. Unfortunately the same cannot be said of the engine. Our little outboard engine slurps up water from the lake to help cool the engine. At the end of a day of sailing, we run fresh water through the engine to clean out all of the salt. After 19 years of sucking in salt, our engine clogged and I needed to take it apart to clean it.

We had the engine off the boat over the winter and had a local marine store service the engine. One of the things we asked them to do is replace the water pump. They did but they didn't replace the thermostat in the engine and I felt it might be the issue. When we put the engine back on the boat, it ran fine for the first 2 sailing trips and then gave us all indications that it wasn't being cooled properly.

Having replaced quite a few automobile thermostats, I knew the job is not that difficult. I got to the boat early one day over the recent break and pulled off the thermostat housing. Sure enough the 19-year old thermostat looked more like rust than any usable part. I pulled out the old one only to discover the new part didn't fit. I actually wanted to test if water was running through the engine and so I left the thermostat out, put the housing back on the engine, and started it up. There is a telltale that sprays a stream of water out of the engine and into the lake when everything is working correctly. Nothing came out. Knowing that you don't want to run an engine very long without a working thermostat, I shut the engine down, rinsed it off, and headed to the marine parts store. I worked with the manager there to use the serial number of the engine, which I had taken a picture of on my smartphone, and found the correct part. The correct part cost $6 less and so they refunded me the difference.

I didn't want to go back to the boat as the Utah sun was blazing away and being outside felt like being on the surface of the sun. Instead I came home and tried to take my mind off the fact I still hadn't fixed my engine. The next morning my wife and I got ready to head back out to the boat and see if we couldn't get it working. Before leaving home, I found a great YouTube video about fixing the cooling system on outboard motors. The guy narrating the video was from Australia and had an engine with a similar problem to mine. He tried a few things that I always try and had similar results. Then he gave me a small piece of information that I suspected but didn't know: not all of the water that cools the engine exits from the telltale. This effectively said that my engine might be cooling correctly and that the clog could be in the Y-valve where some of the water is diverted to the telltale and the rest exits the engine near the prop.

My wife and I headed to the boat armed with new information. I pulled off the thermostat housing and thoroughly rinsed the cooling path. I also followed the telltale hose all the way to the Y-valve and used compressed air to clean that out. I put the new thermostat back in and it fit perfectly. Then I started the engine and everything worked perfectly. An hour later, our children arrived ready for our annual tradition. YouTube is not just for fixing cars.

A Real-Life Santa Story

Last night we had just finished up with my wife's family Christmas party and several of us gathered back at my house to prepare for the week's coming activities. It was a leisurely Sunday evening at home when my wife's sister got a call from her husband. He had decided to make the 4-hour drive back to Twin Falls, Idaho with his daughter, her husband, and two kids. Unfortunately they started having car troubles and it seemed to be the alternator. With the alternator not charging the car's battery and driving at night with the lights on, it was only a matter of an hour or two before the battery could no longer provide enough electricity for the car to run. Shortly after the first call, we got another one and the car had died 26 miles from the Utah-Idaho border.

Hearing half of the conversation, I decided to call my buddy Brett who loves to rescue stranded motorists. He has a giant trailer and corresponding tow vehicle. He will drop everything to help someone in need. As luck would have it, he just got home and when I asked what he had planned for the evening he responded with, "Where we going?" I told him and without hesitation he exclaimed, "Let's go." I confirmed with my wife's brother-in-law that they could use our help and then headed over to help Brett connect the trailer.

Knowing the problem with the car, we thought we would stop at the local auto-parts store to see if we couldn't bring out a new alternator and fix the car on the spot. Brett loves to go Jeeping and often that means doing trail-side fixes in some of the most adverse conditions possible. Unfortunately it was already 9 pm on a Sunday and all the auto-parts stores in the Salt Lake area had closed. We had the trailer and decided to continue toward the stranded motorists.

100 miles and 2-hours later we pulled off the I-84 to the Howell exit 26 miles from the Idaho border. Brett jumped out from the driver's side wearing shorts, a t-shirt, and a Santa hat. We then proceeded to put the cold passengers in Brett's beefy SUV and make arrangements to get the busted minivan on the trailer. While it is easy to drive a lifted and working 4x4 up the trailer ramp, approach angles and low ground clearance makes putting a non-functioning minivan on the trailer nearly impossible. Fortunately Brett has done this before and we created really long ramps. We also parked the trailer strategically so that we could reduce the approach angle and make it easier on the undercarriage of the vehicle. Then we had to figure out how to push or pull the car up the ramp.

Once again, Brett had done this before and had 2 different systems for getting cars up the trailer ramps. We used a simple chain windlass to get the minivan part way up the ramp. Then we used a second windlass when the first ran out of chain. We continued to pull the car up the ramps and onto the trailer. The process took about an hour as we also had to strap the car down so it wouldn't go anywhere while we drove North on I-84 all the way to Rupert, Idaho. We decided that Rupert was close enough to home that they could get the car the rest of the way home in the morning yet not make me and Brett drive too far.

The rest of the drive went painlessly and we easily removed the minivan from the trailer with the help of a small push and gravity. We pulled the battery from the car and I told my wife's brother-in-law to charge the battery which would allow him to come back and get the car in the morning.

My friend Brett performed a true action worthy of Santa Claus last night. We drove 400 miles and burned through 40 gallons of diesel fuel to help someone in need. Of course, I made sure to refill his tank for him. It is stories like this that remind us all of what Christmas is all about.

Continuing Education and Bad Math

This last Saturday my wife and I attended the 12th Annual Utah Snow and Avalanche Workshop put on by the Utah Avalanche Center. It is the first time I have ever attended and felt it worth my time. It is always good to be reminded of the dangers of winter travel in the backcountry. The moment you become too complacent is when it becomes dangerous.

The first speaker hailed from the National Weather Service and he talked about climate change and what it will do to our winters. For those of us that like to ski, he gave a very depressing talk in that he made the statement that in the next 50 years or so, winter in Utah will cease to exist. Now anyone that knows about long-range forecasts knows that they are always wrong and so it surprised me that there was such a dire prediction stated almost as fact. Anyone that knows anything about weather and statistics knows that you can't apply linear equations to non-linear problems. The long-range weather forecast came from linear regression but we all know that weather forecasting is a non-linear problem. The best you can do is predict weather for the next 7 to 10 days. While I don't dispute that our winters have changed over the past several years, I don't think that we can predict what will happen with the weather in the next 50 years. So in other words, I give the first speaker a failing grade for his math skills.

The next talk extolled the benefits of avalanche safety training but then told everyone in the audience that they are not using that training effectively. He then backed it up with statistics. This time, proper statistics. Interestingly I had to agree with him as did a few of the next speakers.

We next heard about the 4 fatal avalanches we had in Utah last year. We learned things like cause and warning signs to help us avoid similar problems. Then they brought up a panel of backcountry skiers that had been caught in avalanches on the same weekend last year but did not die. That took a lot of courage to go up in front of a bunch of people and talk about mistakes you made. One of the first speakers was the avalanche forecaster who provided an all-is-safe prediction. He felt bad and quite a few people had a false sense of security as we all now know. Then the skiers mentioned a number of red flags that should have had them turning around and not venturing out that day. The biggest was when a lone skier passed a group heading up. The lone skier had been swept downhill 1000 feet in an avalanche and had lost one of his poles. Before Saturday I might have continued up as well. After hearing what happened, I will definitely turn around should something similar happen to me in the future.

My wife and I attended the Workshop to improve our backcountry skills and we both found it to be well worth our time. The workshop cost only $45 and included lunch so we found it to be a good value as well. Furthermore I am an avid user of the Utah Avalanche Center's daily forecast during ski season and felt this helped pay them back for a free service they provide. I'll be back again next year.

The Beginning of Christmas Break

Today marks the official start of my Christmas break. While I have been working from Utah all week, today is the first day I didn't have to work. I did go through e-mails and helped one of my coworkers with a problem but the important thing is that I didn't HAVE to work. I did it by choice.

So what do I plan to do with all of my non-work time right now? Plenty. Of course my highest priority will be skiing every day possible. That will be a nice mix of resort skiing and hiking to the tops of local mountains. I also need to do some work on my 3D printer. Lately my prints have not gone that well and so I need to do some troubleshooting. I also have my usual list of games I would like to play. Realistically that means I will probably just play Red Dead Redemption 2 as that is my current game of choice.

I must also account for the unknown of Christmas morning. There is a very real possibility that I will get some technological toys (especially since I bought myself some inexpensive action cameras that my wife insists on putting under the Christmas tree). Speaking of cameras, I have my Salt Flats 100 video I have been working on for a very long time and will finish that up in the next few days.

This is my favorite time of the year as I have time to work on all of those projects that have been put off throughout the year. The only downside is that I probably need a year and a half to even put a dent in them.

Avalanche Danger

This morning I got a text from one of my neighbors back in Salt Lake. He would like to do some ski touring where you hike to the top of mountain under your own power before skiing down. He asked where I thought there is enough snow this early in the season. As that is something I had hoped to do on Monday morning before heading to the Bay Area, I had some ideas I could give him.

This afternoon I got a call from my son asking me if I wanted to drive out to the Uinta mountains this weekend to do a quick ski tour. For those that don't know, the Uinta mountains are in Eastern Utah. My son asked if I thought there would be enough snow. As he called while I sat in front of my computer, I pulled up the first place to go when thinking about doing some backcountry skiing in Utah: The Utah Avalanche Center. I clicked on the area for the Uinta mountains and checked to see the avalanche danger. It is fairly safe right now for South-facing slopes and dangerous for North-facing ones.

While ski resorts keep you informed about the ski conditions within their boundaries, the Utah Avalanche Center does an excellent job showing the rest of the state. One of my son's concerns is if there is enough snow to even ski at this time of the year. The site showed that there is enough snow and that people are out there making turns. It also showed what to avoid with respect to avalanche danger.

Should you find yourself in Utah (Colorado has an equivalent organization and corresponding website) looking to do some backcountry skiing, the Utah Avalanche Center website should be your first stop before gearing up. It will give you an idea of overall conditions as well as warn you about which slopes are unsafe. After all, it is all fun and games until the mountain tries to kill you.

Enjoying a Solo Roadtrip

Thursday last week I drove my car from San Francisco back to Salt Lake. It is a trip I make about twice a year. Once I drive from Utah to California and then I drive the other way. I do it as I take a lot of vacation at the end of the calendar year and don't want to leave my car unused for such a long time. It is also a great time to do maintenance and take care of licensing.

There are a number of strategies I have used to combat boredom on the trip. On occasion I have enlisted one of my children to drive with me. My youngest daughter often shares with others about the time she flew to San Francisco and only stuck around for an hour or two before driving home. We had a fun time and listened to book on CD. We both enjoyed the fictional story and could talk about it as we drove the 11 hours.

Unfortunately my car is 17 years old and does not have a Bluetooth nor other type of audio connection. That eliminates being able to use a service like Audible. So before my trip on Thursday, I went to the local bookstore and purchased a non-fiction book on CD and loaded up the 6-disc changer in the trunk. At around the 5-hour mark, I swapped out CD's and loaded the remaining 3 as my book required 9 discs. The system works well but books on CD are more expensive than other sources or services.

My chosen listening material recounted the non-fictional story of Apollo 8. There are some familiar characters if you have seen the movie Apollo 13 and I enjoyed the references found in both. The story kept me entertained and the miles seemed to pass quickly. Of course, the 80-mile-per-hour speed limit in Utah and Nevada helped a lot too. If you find yourself wanting to go back and learn a bit about America's space program, I highly recommend the book. It is called "Apollo 8: The Thrilling Story of the First Mission to the Moon" by Jeffrey Kluger.

I plan to bring my car back to California after the new year as soon as I catch a weather window where I don't have to worry about snowstorms closing the freeway around Lake Tahoe. When I do, I will be sure to get another book to listen to. With enough warning, I can probably find a better source for the stories so I can play it from my smartphone instead of on CD. That should save me some money.

The Power of Mentoring

I spent the past weekend in Moab, Utah with my youngest daughter and wife. It was a lot of fun and even though I have been to Moab a number of times, managed to do some very different things. Normally we go down and make sure to visit Arches National Park. This time we bypassed it and spent most of our time in the Sand Flats Recreation Area. It was a lot of fun.

I made reservations for the hotel several months ago and let my good buddy Brett know that we would be in one of his favorite parts of the world. He asked if he could come along and maybe invite a few friends. They all made arrangements to stay in the same hotel and I thought it would be fun to take my wife's Jeep on some of the world-famous Jeep trails in Moab. My youngest daughter did not like all of the company. Furthermore she wanted to hike to some of the well-visited sites inside of Arches and thought Jeeping would be boring.

While I am an expert skier, I am a novice when it comes to four wheeling. Brett has a lot of experience taking guys like me and helping them build their courage. He also brought along another expert to help with the learning process as well as another novice to coach. All us novice guys had to do was to follow the experts up and down the right lines. It was great having proper coaching and by the end of the trip I was much more confident in my off-road driving abilities. More importantly, I was watching my daughter in the rear-view mirror and she had a constant grin. Half-way through the trip I asked her if she wanted to stop riding in the Jeep and go hiking. Nope, she wanted to keep going.

So what does this have to do with computers? Any time you find yourself trying to learn something new with respect to technology, try to find yourself someone who can mentor you. You will progress much faster than if you try to figure it out on your own. It will also be a lot more fun.

Back From Vacation

My wife, son, and I just got back from 3 days in southern Utah at a nice little retreat. It was a wonderful mini vacation with a bunch of friends from the neighborhood. While I enjoy spending time in front of the computer, it is nice to get away and leave electronics behind. I did have my laptop with me, but only used it twice. Both times were to make sure I didn't have any pressing e-mails. In hindsight, I could have left it home.

Someone else planned the entire vacation for me so I just needed to show up. The place we stayed is called the Summit Chateau Lodge and is located near Brian Head ski resort. Naturally I checked out their website before heading down. They didn't mention if they had an Internet connection and so I gave them a call. The owner answered the phone and said that Verizon had data coverage in the area and he had a MiFi device that could allow up to 5 devices to connect to the Internet at the same time. That was all I needed as I didn't plan on doing much work.

As we prepared to leave on the trip, I needed to figure out what car to take. I prefer to do long drives in my sedan, but it is low to the ground and not very good on dirt roads. I plugged in "Summit Chateau Lodge" into maps.google.com and selected satellite view to see that it was a 3 to 4 mile dirt road leading to the resort. That meant my car was out of the question. As it was only 3 to 4 miles of dirt road, I opted for my wife's Subaru instead of the Jeep. While the Jeep would have been fun, the 200 miles of pavement getting to the dirt would have been less than comfortable. Besides, the Subaru Outback Sport gets much better gas mileage. Now that I am back I can say that the Subaru was the best choice. We had fun playing rally-car driver on the dirt road and my sedan would have had a difficult time making it up several steep sections without bottoming out.

Sure I could have gone on vacation without the Internet. Some of my fellow neighbors did. However it sure helped to go down prepared.