Google Streetview has Exploded!

I was taking a look at the world from my computer in Google Maps tonight - and I turned on Streetview. It has greatly expanded it's reach recently! At least in the Portland area. A few weeks ago, the coverage area was much larger - reaching out into the suburbs. But now - you can see all the way to the Oregon Coast, and up into the Cascades.

Check it out - you can see Lolo Pass Road! This is where we go on our annual Christmas Tree Hunt. Take a look at this! The topo view really gives you an idea of the terrain we drive into to get that tree. These Streetview shots must have been taken in summer...no snowdrifts to drive through on these views...


Or - you can see the starting point for our Tour de Cure ride! This is the end of the road for this route for Google.



Our Tour de Cure fundraising is really kicking in. We reached $3,675 for the team today after a couple of big donation came in. Thank you donors! We are really closing in on our $5,000 goal - with just 4 weeks left before the ride. We should have no problem getting there - the AMEC match is good for at least $1,000 more...

Yard Work 2008 #11

June 20th - cut number eleven. Or maybe only half - I didn't cut the backyard. The grass in the front was long, but the backyard still looked rather nice. Maybe from all the summertime play that has been happening since school finished last week.

We saw Recess Monkey, did you?

In Tualatin on Tuesday nights during the summer, the Tualatin Library hosts various events at the Tualatin Commons. This week the event was a short concert by Recess Monkey.

These three guys were pretty good. They were not Rush, but they resembled They Might Be Giants in their style of songs. You can hear them on their website - I like "Got A Toy But I Played With The Box" the best, I think. "Backback" was a little long....not sure I liked that one, and I think they started to loose some of the audience at that point. They did have a group of kids dancing around that became know at the Recess Monkey dancers. All in all - a very fun time on a beautiful summer night.

A fun adventure - that we almost missed. We had been planning to go to the library that night, before it CLOSES FOR A MONTH! We will be library-less in Tualatin until July 14th. I think we will survive, because we went to the Tigard library on Sunday. I think they have enough books to take of those of us in Tualatin who joined the Summer Reading Club. I've already got three books read. I think Connor, Tegan, and Mick all have me beat already.

Next up this Tuesday, June 24th is the Border Collie International Performing Team. Looks like fun. See you there!

Memorial Day Weekend Camping

Well...I put off writing this post because I needed to get some photos together to add to the story. But going through the photos we took - there are too many to choose from. Looking at the photo filenames - it looks like 270 photos were taken. Some of these were deleted immediately on the camera due to a blink or failed flash or maybe someone didn't want to smile. But threaten to withhold the s'mores - and you'll get at least a halfhearted smile.

So - I decided to create a Picasa album. It is uploading right now - 82 of our best shots. Some even worthly of publication in a magazine. We did get good weather on Saturday and Sunday and on Tuesday - but the other days it did rain. Imagine that - it rained in Oregon on the coast in May. That must have never happened before....

Check out the Picasa album. The photos tell the story. Any questions? Well - post a comment on the blog entry! You know you want to...

Here is a slideshow of the Picasa photos. I hope this works...

Yard Work 2008 #10

June 12, 2008 - our first day of summer. Today the temperature actually got above 70°. Early in the week we had temps in the 40° and very stormy and windy weather.

So - today was lawn mowing number 10. I worked a little on the blade with a whetstone - but I really need to get that dremel working. It sharpens the blade in no time flat.

Checking the weather for tomorrow and the weekend - it looks perfect for the Tigard Festival of Balloons. The wind even seems to be coming out of the north - which is what we need to get the balloons to land in our backyard. Here are some shots from 2006. Last year, 2007, the wind was blowing from the northeast rather hard - so they didn't launch Friday and Saturday. I think they did launch Sunday....but I can't really remember. And I don't have any photos - so maybe they didn't.

Balloons taking off from Cook Park - about three miles north of us

Landing on the soccer field...uh, maybe not...

Not landing by us...continuing south over Tualatin Elementary

Landing on the soccer field - yes!

Kodak CX7530 Camera Photo Naming

Recently - I noticed the file naming on our digital camera was reacting a logical end. The Kodak CX7530 has been giving us great photos since December 2004. The file names are sequential, starting at 100_0001.jpg. While out camping over Memorial Day weekend, I noticed we had reached almost 10,000 photos.

This weekend - while getting ready for Tegan's dance recital - our 9,999th and 10,000th photo was taken.

Pretty good image, don't you think?

So - what happened to the file naming? Here is a directory screenshot of the camera memory card after photo 9,999 and 10,000 was taken.



And here is the main directory where the images are stored - notice two subdirectories?



Now we (and you) know. When the file names fill up those 4 digits reserved for sequential numbering, the first part, the 100_ that I thought was nonchanging is incremented and a new directory is created.


and we start over at 0001.jpg, with the 101_ as a prefix.

Therefore - our camera is good for for 8,999,100 photos - 9,999 photos x 900 directories.

What happens at photo number 8,999,101?

Generic Zyrtec

Springtime in Portland - the allergies start. For me (Brian) the end of May and all through June is a time of sneezing, a runny nose, an itchy mouth, and sometimes even itchy eyes. Whatever blooms at this time - I am allergic to it. Most likely it is some type of grass being grown in the Willamette Valley. We're known for that here.

In the past, I had a prescription for Zyrtec. This stuff really helped, when other stuff I had tried didn't work. This stuff was expensive, and prescription drug coverage helped - but it worked. Zyrtec did not have a generic available - so the co-pay was high. $37 for a 3 month supply. This was about 40¢ per pill.

Two years ago, Zyrtec was raised to the highest co-pay level of around $75. That is just too close to $1 a pill - and I stopped getting it. I tried Claritin when it became available as a generic, since Target had a version. This had some affect on me, but not much. I was miserable for May and June.

This year's allergy season was approaching - and I wasn't looking forward to it. Somehow - I found out that Costco now had a generic version called Aller-Tec. I think I was checking what Costco sold Zyrtec for, as it had just become an over the counter medicine - so I wouldn't get it by prescription anymore. I hadn't heard this in the news or anywhere - so I was skeptical. But looking at the active ingredient, Cetirizine at 10mg - this was identical to Zyrtec.

So - one Saturday morning in May - I had gone outside to do something, and I could tell my nemesis - the grass pollen was in the air. I went to Costco that morning and picked up a bottle - $15.99 for 300 pills! It was so hard to believe! Not $1 a pill, not 70¢, not 40¢....just 5¢ a pill!

So - if you want to save some money (you'd save even if you have to join Costco and order this online if Costco isn't in your area) - get this stuff.

Kirkland Signature - Aller-Tec™ Cetirizine HCL/ Antihistamine Tablets

Compare to Zyrtec - 10 mg, 300 Tablets

$15.99 - Item # 260494

What to do in Portland (5 of 10?) - Vista House #2

This is a two for one post. No extra charge!

Since we didn't have digital photos to show off the beauty of the Vista House in a previous post - Mick's aunt and uncle from Tennessee graciously offered to come visit us so we could take them on a tour of the Columbia River Gorge. They both grew up in the area, so it wasn't a first time visit - but it was just the excuse we needed to get out and enjoy this gem less than 30 or so miles from downtown Portland. So - this post was going to be from the whole afternoon - but with all the good photos, I split it up. These are some Crown Point photos...

Tegan, Aunt Sue, Uncle Earl, and Connor at the start of our day

View from the Women's Forum Park of the Vista House

Another view - from the same park

The Vista House - front and center

Tegan, Earl, and Connor on the upper, outer walkway

Coming soon to this blog...where we went next. The tale will involve how we got there, why we were surprised to be there, and what we missed in the process. But what we experienced instead was wonderful!

Snakes and Arrows 2008 - We went!

Sunday night Rush came to town (or at least, north of town) and we were there!

Geddy, Alex, and Neil performed at the Amphitheater at Clark County on their Snakes and Arrows 2008 tour. The show so good they just continued from last year.



Sorry - but I can't really describe what a great show it was. We had tickets in the first row of Section 203 - with the VIP section in front and below us, and the first section below them. So we had a great view from these seats. These were actually the 2nd pair of tickets I had won from KGON - the 1st pair were 5 rows behind us. We gave these to Jared and his roommate, who had a really good time. The first pair of tickets I won back in March by being the 9th caller at 'the cue to call.' There is a 30 day prize winning limit - but I won the 2nd pair in May. Those tickets gave me a 1 in 5 chance of winning the Snakes on the Stage tickets. These are two seats up on stage, about 15 feet away from Geddy's setup. The guys that did win these tickets had a great time - I'm sure that if I was up there I would have been as animated as they were.

You can see current photos of the tour (the Portland photos were available less than 12 hours after the show finished). Just go to http://www.rush.com/ - and go to Multimedia / Rush on the Road. Check near the bottom for the Portland photos. We don't show up in any of them, and they can't show the excitement of the crowd - but they are cool to see (the two on this page are from there). If you check www.youtube.com - you can see lots of phone camera movies....

All the favorites were played, as well as most of their new stuff. Neil's drum solo was over 3 hours long (not really - but I wasn't looking at my watch). He had some themes carryover from his previous solos (last year here)- but he changed it up quite a bit. I understand a little better how he does this amazing work after watching his DVD - Anatomy of a Drum Solo.

Yard Work 2008 #9

With rain forecasted for the next week (it is time for the Portland Rose Festival after all) - I jumped on the mowing chores yesterday, June 2nd for cut number nine. With the last cutting looking a little ragged, I decided to check out the sharpness of my cutting blade. Sure enough - it was pretty dull. I last sharpened the blade at least two years ago.

I fould a sharpening stone and started on the blade. After a minute or so, I remembered that this was much easier last time because I used my Dremel tool. A quick search of the garage located the tool. A quick change of tool bit to the sharpening bit. Plug it in - and it doesn't work. I spent the next hour trying to get the Dremel to work. I checked the motor brushes which were the most likely candidate for problems - but I didn't notice any problems. Then I took the whole thing apart, clearing out dust and looking for something wrong. I got out the multimeter and traced the power...nothing.

Looking outside and seeing that the rain was starting early - I put away the Dremel and cut the grass. Now - all the dead spots, most likely due to Yukon's work, were clearly visible. So I spent the next hour breaking up the hard spots on the ground, mixing in some better soil, and putting on some grass seed. With the next week of rain - we'll see what happens. It is Rose Festival....