Daily Archives: October 23, 2006

I made those arrows

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My friend Lance says that some things are funny simply because they’re repeated often enough. That’s certainly the case in our house with the phrase “I made those arrows.”

I got the idea for this impromptu post because I heard *ahem* from my wife in the living room a couple of times during Kevin’s weather. Being a video guy, I’ve naturally got my editing/graphics machine hooked to my entertainment center in the other room…so I grabbed an example.

The story behind these arrows is that…well, I made them. Whoopee, right? There are actually a few things still airing on KFYR that I made before I left there three years ago. It’s just that I annoy my wife with these. Accuweather had just shown up to install their brand new top-of-the line weather system, the Galileo. KFYR has two of them now, by the way. Anyway, the Accuweather guy was dismayed to find out that wind arrows were missing from among all the graphics in the machine. Kevin and I had already made sure that all the “First Warn” stuff had been made, so I dashed into my office and belted out some quick & simple arrows. The rest is history.

Now that I think of it, the Accuweather guy took the CD with those arrows on it, probably to use for future Galileo installs. Funny, I never saw a royalty check…

Monday = Sun Day

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One of the characteristics of a North Dakota autumn is the variation in the sun. Not only does it cause temperature swings during this time of year, but it also puts on many faces. Gone are the evenly lit afternoons of the summer, replaced with long, stark shadows even on the clearest of days. Today we were shown a nice range of color, too!

I had sauntered down to Fox Island to get some river shots, which I may post down the road…but then the sky caught my eye and I snapped this one. It was nice to have clear skies, having had nothing but clouds for the Orionid meteor shower this weekend. But the sky wasn’t done with color just yet…

I had grabbed a bag of tacos and headed to my secret sunset spot high atop a hill north of Bismarck, when the sky began to change colors. Before long, those blues had turned to vivid reds. I got a few like this while shoveling tacos into my head. This is actually the MANDAN hill on the east side of town, as zoomed in from quite a ways away. In fact, KNDR’s tower is dead-center in the photo, but is only clearly visible in the full size version.

The temps may be a little low for my liking, but I’ll take those dramatic autumn skies. Soon they’ll be replaced with the dreary gray of winter, and it’ll be interesting to see what we shutterbugs do then!

Geocaching

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Yep, my wife and I have a new hobby. It’s called Geocaching, and it’s a blast…in a nerdy sort of way. It goes a little something like this:

You go to the Geocaching website and find a cache near your location. Then you grab your trusty GPS receiver and head out to find the cache. But for many of the caches, that’s just the start.

Many of the hunts on the site are “multi” caches, involving multiple stages. For instance, you may find a cache at the first set of coordinates that contains a clue for the second location. It may be a “virtual” cache, which means you need to look for visual clues at the coordinates and use them to find the next location. In any case, it’s fun.

Once you’ve found a cache, there’s a written log inside each one as well as some miscellaneous trinket items. It’s customary to leave something of your own and perhaps take something from the cache as well. There are little items called “Travel Bugs” that you take and place in the next cache you find. Then you go back to geocaching.com and mark the cache as found, report on the bug if you found or placed one, and discuss the cache. You can also report a missing or damaged cache and read comments by other people who’ve found it.

I’ve always wanted a nice GPS unit and this was a major reason why. Even better, it’s something my wife and I can enjoy together. There’s a guy with the handle “Agent 6” who has written some really entertaining caches involving North Dakota history. We’ve done a couple of them and they’re really neat…especially if you love this area like I do.

So yeah, Jason…you were right. One of those caches led us up to Grant Marsh’s gravestone. For the rest of you, who might not know what Geocaching is, I hope I’ve been an enlightenment. I also hope to have convinced you to try it for yourself. And just in case the photo above makes you wonder if I always go geocaching at night, wearing a suit…no. Neither. It was just a good opportunity for the photo.