GIS Memories Nominated!

Hey, turns out this here famous GIS Memories blog has been nominated to receive an honor at the Blog Asheville Extravablogiversapaloozathon! Wow. I am honored to be nominated in the category, "least likely to care about traffic" or something like that. It's true. I don't care about traffic. In fact, when I first read that, I thought it was talking about automobile traffic in Asheville. I actually don't care about that, but I think it refers to my not caring about the number of people who look at this blog.

I have noticed that the search engine "google" does seem to like my blog for some reason. I once wrote a post about an issue I was having with the GIS software from ESRI. When I went back to searching about the issue, my post was coming out above the entries from the ESRI company itself. Weird.

In response to this honorific nomination, I did a little digging in the stats about what search terms are popular among those landing at this blog from all search engines. Hey Shari, you're at the top of the list. Now you know why your photography is getting so much attention lately! (jk) The Cheerleaders are very popular, and many people are apparently looking to prune their overgrown rose bushes and use their electric chicken buckets. My statistics system is not that sophisticated since I really don't care about traffic. I'm not even sure what time period this covers.

Anyway, after you study the list below, check out all the other great nominated blogs here. If you believe I deserve to win this honor, you can go here and vote for me and the other deserving nominations. (Before Friday September 26, 2008.)

4.93% shari pastore
4.23% authalic sphere
3.52% gism blogspot
2.82% pruning an overgrown rose bush
2.82% geometric network
2.82% expense chart
2.11% how to prune an overgrown rose bush
2.11% gpsvisualizer or gps visualizer
2.11% vw vanagon water pump diagram
1.41% virginia creeper trail elevation profile
1.41% its such a pretty day cause i spent i with you
1.41% january
1.41% nc cheer photos
1.41% cheer photo post
1.41% diesel fuel chart
1.41% blogspot gism
1.41% wearever electric chicken bucket
1.41% stupid mommy asheville blog
1.41% diesel fuel charts
1.41% cheerleader photography
1.41% twin falls cheerleader photographs 2008
1.41% pete zah
1.41% gis class august
1.41% edward west asheville
1.41% the kat box asheville
0.70% prune overgrown rose bush
0.70% emories
0.70% french broad river goldsworthy
0.70% wear ever chicken bucket
0.70% picture of a child like cheerleader
0.70% pressure-fryer chicken bucket
0.70% wear-ever manuals
0.70% gis resumes
0.70% the puffs
0.70% young lovers painting
0.70% eratosthenes sphere
0.70% pressure fryer chicken bucket
0.70% g.i.s.m blogspot
0.70% resumes gis
0.70% g.i.s.m blog
0.70% greatest shot of a cheerleader
0.70% county
0.70% nc map project
0.70% cheerleading photo frames
0.70% cheerleader photo links
0.70% ever wear chicken bucket
0.70% cheerleader picture captures
0.70% great cheerleader photography
0.70% authalic
0.70% wearever chicken fryer manual archived
0.70% girls cheer photos
0.70% air conditioner update
0.70% contributions of eratosthenes
0.70% the arabic gism
0.70% gism concrete
0.70% really
0.70% wearever electric chicken bucket pdf
0.70% wassercooling
0.70% fuel expense
0.70% moon claycombe
0.70% wearever chicken bucket
0.70% hello kitty giss
0.70% sanitary sewer geometric network
0.70% car accident rt 1 kurt
0.70% g.i.s.m blogspot.com
0.70% birthday
0.70% sweetashvegas
0.70% fuel expense fuel expense
0.70% black cheer photography
0.70% overgrown rose bush pruning
0.70% wearever chicken bucket pdf
0.70% golfer kills hawk
0.70% twin falls state park campground
0.70% cartographing
0.70% west asheville
0.70% gism filings
0.70% august
0.70% december
0.70% diesel expense
0.70% electric chicken bucket
0.70% spinning tires a symptom
0.70% wearever pressure fryer
0.70% old arial veiws of colonial beach
0.70% class
0.70% twin falls state bike trail
0.70% colonial beach gis
0.70% puffs
0.70% blogger
0.70% rapid city gis job
0.70% gis class
0.70% kurt vanagan
0.70% tuesday
0.70% wearever electric chicken bucket manual
0.70% vanagon cooling chart
0.70% network
0.70% diesel atom chart

John A. Henderson

Yesterday at church we had a memorial for one of our active members, John Henderson. I knew him mostly from church and his excellent presentations there. Here's his obituary with a summary of an impressive life of healing and helping. John wrote several interesting books which he discussed at our meetings.

At his memorial we read quotes from his books, and I kept this one which I especially liked, "We may not like the fact that random and accidental events determine our lives but that does not alter the reality of it. As we observe the unpredictability of life, we should realize that an intelligent, all-powerful, divine being does not control it."

You might gather correctly that our church is different from many others. John helped to make our group special and he will be missed.

River Rise

Our local river was recently very low. I think it was the lowest in 112 years of record keeping. Check out the chart. It was down to about 200 cubic feet per second (cfs). The triangles show the average is a bit over 1000 cfs. It was so clear and low you could see all the rocks and fish and turtles and tires and shopping carts in the river. I developed a fantasy to walk across the river since it was so low. I waited too long though and the remnants of Hurricane Fay came through and brought a lot of rain. In about 36 hours, the flow went from less than 200 to over 8000 cfs. I should have walked when I had the chance.

Happy Birthday, Dad.

Twin Falls State Park

On the third day of my trip I woke up at Twin Falls State Park. The day before had been one of those exciting travel days when my eyes and head get so full of exciting things I have seen and done. This trip being during the long days of Summer, I had stretched the previous day very long and rolled into the Twin Falls campground in the drizzly dark. I saw no park personnel at the campground, and no campers. So I did the self register thing after finally figuring out which site of the many available I wanted. It was a little spooky being the only one there. I've been to this park before and it always seems under-utilized. It's kind of in the middle of nowhere in southern West Virginia, with miles of 2 lane roads isolating it from those who rarely leave the Interstate. I think it is very nice though.

The morning was a little cloudy and threatening rain. I decided to take a bike ride before enjoying the unpopulated shower facilities. The "Cliffside Trail" departed right from the campground, so it was my natural choice. I took my GPS with me and made the map below with the GPS Visualizer website. If you click it you can see it bigger. GPS Visualizer color coded my route based on the elevation.

The trail started out as fairly level riding on an old road. On the topo map it is labeled as "jeep road." Early on I saw a big flying thing which turned out to be a barn owl. It wanted nothing to do with me and flew off on big silent wings. The trail then started down steeply and I was thinking that I would not like the coming back up part. I almost fell down once. I was going down a steep section and tried to put my feet down and they just slid on the ground. So I crashed down on the crossbar and the pain was enough to make a shy bald Buddhist reflect and plan a mass murder. Actually it wasn't that bad because of my special padded bike shorts.

I reached the "cliffside" part of the trail and the scenery made the quick jump from rolling wooded terrain to much more vertical and dramatic as it seems prone to do in that part of WV. Above is an attempt at a panorama photo done with the tinycam. The weather remained changeable with occasional sun and light rain and low clouds skulking in the gorge as in the photo. The ride back was nice and followed by the hot shower. I packed up and left and still never saw any park employee or another camper.

Tenuous Arguments

On my recent trip I learned that there are Virginians who are still mad about West Virginia's split from the state during the civil war. One of the arguments they make is that it was a violation of the US Constitution for a state to be created from the territory of another state. This seems ironic since Virginia had seceded from the United States at that time. I think that is also forbidden in the Constitution.

Hearing today about the trials now under way at Guantanamo Bay caused me to find similar irony. The media is sequestered away and listens to the trial over speakers that can be muted to prevent them from hearing classified information. One of the defendants was talking about the psychotropic drugs he was presently being given by doctors there. The speakers were turned off so that reporters couldn't hear what the drugs were. It was explained that it would be a HIPAA violation to reveal his health care information. The irony is that the trials are there at gitmo because the government says the US Constitution doesn't apply there. I guess HIPAA regulations reach farther than the Constitution? Now that I think about it, since the defendant was talking about himself, the question comes up: is it a HIPAA violation to reveal your own health care information?

So Much Pollen

There's a B-17 visiting the area this weekend, giving people expensive rides. Flying the B-17 in battle in WWII is an example of extreme terrifying machine drama. It makes me shudder to imagine the adrenaline/excitement/fear of the guys who crewed those planes in war. There are some of these veterans left, and they come out to see the plane and relate stories like this: After one mission, Knight had to land his B-17 with a shot-up tire and one engine out. But he kept his 11-man crew safe. “The co-pilot and I, we really had to manhandle that thing to a stop with brute strength,” Knight said. “But those are tough planes. I’ve seen some that were nearly shot in two come in and land, and the belly would just be bouncing up and down, the ball turret and the gunner gone, of course.” This reminds me that Memorial day has just passed.

So I've had my ears tuned for the sound of huge flying piston engines. I spotted the plane a few times on my way to Arden this morning to pick up some free firewood, and noticed the sky was hazy and yellow. I was parked in the person's yard for about 20 minutes loading up the big old logs. When I said thanks and got back in the car, the windshield had a noticeable new film of pollen on it. On the way back I took the parkway, and the long range views were also now yellow and hazy like the view of the plane. Then I looked at the car ahead of me and saw that it was kicking up clouds of pollen as if we were driving on a dirt road. Amazing. I've never seen that before. That's a lot of pollen.