Ten Highest Peaks of the Presidential Range

Yep, they’re going for Mt Washington. One of the most valuable tools for this trip has been the subscription to the White Mountain Guide Online.
They already knew they were going to be hiking from Pinkham Notch to the summit of Mt. Washington, so I searched for a route among the “suggested Hikes”. Going to the summit appears to be strenuous.
It’s pretty cool to see the whole of the Boott Spur Loop laid out on a map:
But you don’t feel that in your gut like this:

Hope, I’ve added waypoints and much trail description in this Google Earth file.

After 10 long minutes of scouring the web, I found one site that converted the UTM coordinates to latitude / longitude: The Canadian Spatial Reference System’s GSRUG at http://www.geod.nrcan.gc.ca/apps/gsrug/utm_e.php

The link I found was broken (from a 2005 keyhole bbs post) – so here’s the product description from the CSRS website:

Geodetic Survey Routine, UTM/TM to/from Geographic coordinate conversion. Compute either Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) coordinates from the geographic latitude and longitude of a point or the reverse conversion.

My guess is that this is one way he plumbs the public psyche for material – he can get a reasonable approximation of which topics generate the most emotional response. It would make the kind of television that I can’t bear to watch – people being goaded into espousing a position they haven’t fully considered, and then sticking to their guns as their argument is torn to shreds around them. But I can conveniently avoid that part of it by not delving into the comment strings.

“Aggravavor” is the term my kids use when one of their siblings is doing the psychological equivalent of poking them with a stick – as in “Daddy, Jack’s being an aggravavor. He won’t stop singing I want my mullet back.” Scott Adams is an aggravavor on his weblog.

But he’s an entertaining and sometimes informative aggravavor. I enjoyed his 3-part post on global warming, enough to share the links here:

• Global Warming – Part 1
• Global Warming – Part 2
• Global Warming – Part 3

Please consider supporting him by going to his rider page at http://www.aidslifecycle.org/5980 – and check back there from time to time for more stories like this:

I rode up Route 9 from Saratoga up to the top of the mountains between San Jose and Santa Cruz on Saturday. It’s a good 2100ft climb, and a beautiful road.

I was near the bottom on my way up, riding on a wide section of shoulder around a right hand bend when I noticed a Sheriff’s car parked on the other side of the road, hidden from speeders come down the mountain. Just as I was making a note to myself to avoid this guy next time I should come down the mountain a car passed me, and just as the car passed me a guy on a red sport bike (the kind of motorcycle that your mom really doesn’t want you to get) cut between me and the car with a few feet to spare to pass on the shoulder and speed up the mountain. Right in front of the Sheriff. It spooked me pretty good.

I looked across the road at the Sherrif and pointed up the hill with a shrug, and he was already starting his engine. That Crown Vic didn’t need gas.. It was propelled like nothing I’ve ever seen before by unbridled cop rage.

My right pedal is squeaking, and I keep forgetting to grease it before long rides. It made it all the more sweet to peddal slowly by the two of them on the shoulder a mile and a half later.. Squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak, “Afternoon, officer!”, squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak.

The motorcyclist looked sutiably sheepish.

I’d like to thank everyone who’s donated so far. I’m almost half way to my goal!

Jake

Enter a metafilter post titled Birthday present for a 4 year old boy?, and a no-nonsense post from Otis:

Well, I like rockets as much as the next guy. And I know Jack has some stomp power. Plus he could play with this outside with his buddy Fischer. To be fair, I did look at the other ideas on the page, but most were along the same lines as Chrischris – things Jack already has too many of – or kendrak, who is obviously buying toys for her nephew to get back at her older sister for being mom’s favorite.

So, off to Hollipops I go. I was in and out in 15 minutes and even had some bonus little circes for the girls. This is a self contained launcher with handle and storage. Kids have no problem operating this all by themselves – the rockets are soft and it doesn’t take much force to get the rockets flying!

And as you can see from the pictures, a good time was had by all!

Jack gets his stomp on:

Mom takes a turn!

Daddy performs load test (passed BTW):

Gotta have it right now?

In our splendidly diverse and multicultural society, one of the first things you hear when connected to any 1-800 customer support number is “Press one for english” – usually followed by “Marque el ocho para español” although I don’t know why 8 is better than 2 for spanish speakers.

After pressing 1, the next thing you hear is a person with a thick accent introducing himself. No, not a Boston accent or a Texas accent or a Wisconsin accent. A decidedly south-middle-eastern voice, sort of sing-songy with equal emphasis on every syllable: “Allo. Tank yoo fehr calling moh-toh-roh-lah soo-port. My nayem ees Bob.”

So here’s non-tech-support Betsy talking to non-clear-english Bob and after 15 minutes of non-communication she does what any sensible person should. She gets in the car and drives down to the local brick-and-mortar storefront of the company involved. Twenty minutes later, her phone is on it’s way to China and she has a subtitute rental phone about the size of a pack of Trident gum. Way to go Betsy!

The moral of the story is – when we “press one for english” we’re not indicating a requirement that we be connected to someone who speaks clear english. Instead we’re alerting the customer support team that we speak english, and they can do what they will with that information . It’s a fine point that the information we believe we are sending is not always exactly the information being received.