Random Nuclear Strikes

Every year on our wedding anniversary, the wife and I take the day and attempt find some snow to run around in. Some years we have better luck than others, but we always manage to find the white stuff.

This year was no exception, though we did have to go to the base of our resident dormant volcano to succeed.

This is Mt. Rainier, taken through the windshield while driving home from work one lovely morning (lovely because I was done with work for the night).

The peak on the left-hand side of the mountain itself is known as Mt. Tahoma

This is what Mt. Tahoma looks like where we were at yesterday

Oh, and that is Mt. Rainier there in the center of the pic, FYI.

One of the reasons why I still live here and why I will miss it when I finally get employment in Spokane/Cour D’alene is that, as I timed it yesterday, I can go from the Pacific Ocean to Mt. Rainier in two hours and twenty four minutes starting at noon on a Thursday. If I wanted to I could do it in less time and see an actual active volcano, Mt. St. Helens.

Mt. Rainier National Park is one of those places you just can’t visit often enough, especially this time of the year when it is virtually uninhabited. I think we ran into a half dozen other folks, mostly just parked along the road taking pictures. Add to that a couple of CJ/XJ expeditioners scouting for something they have coming up and you can count yourself as nearly undisturbed.

The above pic was taken at approximately 5200ft elevation, meaning that the mountain still has over 9000 feet to go. Strange how perspective gets to pics.

We stopped to use the out houses just after the Hwy-410/Hwy-123 interchange.

From the parking lot

But hey, why not just mosey on over there for a close-up?

Now turn around

We entered the Park on the west side. This is the view just shortly after leaving the East Entrance on Hwy-410, enroute to Yakima through the Wenatchee National Forest.

If I were a better photographer, you would be able to see the Pacific Crest Trail on the hillside above the road you see on the left.

We didn’t get to too much walking around, since she didn’t really dressed for it and our time was a bit tight. But I did have time to hit the dirt a bit once we left the National Park.

Speaking of which, Raging Dave will remember back to 2003 for the First Blogger Blastorama involving the decimation of the Pumpkin Hordes at the end of a spur road outside the ski-village of Greenwater. Well, we tried to go up there only to find that meth-heds have squatted it.

The proper authorities have been informed and I have it on good word that these guy love to go ninja on tweakers. Should have that problem cleared up in a couple weeks. Now if I would have just not been so busy as to forget to set-up a Splatterfest after this Halloween.

Next year, ladies and gentlemen. Next year.

So you’re a left-wing media organ attempting to enlighten the hordes on an idea whose time has arrived. In your mind, at least.

But what to do? You want these peons to think that in order to be accepted by the intellectuals, they need to conform.

And then it comes to you: Run a story about a poll showing a majority of people in favor of this idea!

It’s got to have a herding question that leads people to only answer one way: Check

Since the idea involves children, it has to oversample people who don’t have any: Check

It absolutely MUST oversample Democrats: Check

Steve Gilbert at the Sweetness & Light blog has the sordid details.

I’m looking at this as the market ruling supreme.

Just over two years ago I posted this about how I so very badly wanted the car audio market to produce a quality head unit that prominently featured a USB connection. It’s taken a while, but they’ve come around to finally listening to me and all the other shoppers.

Since Buddy the Jeep came with an AM/FM cassette deck with poor radio reception and 4 speakers, three of which were blown out and one of which was completely non-functional, last week was when I went a-shopping and this was the week I went a-buying.

After a few days of narrowing down my choices to “must have’s”, I ended up looking at these two head units:

Clarion DXZ575USB

Kenwood KDC-X491

Everything else was just too expensive or too poorly thought out, and once I was able to deal with them both first hand, one of them also fell to the bad practical use demons.

I ended up deciding on the Kenwood.

I currently run a full Clarion set-up (except for one very nice Kenwood amp) in my F150 and that head unit has controls which are exactly the same as this KDC deck, down to the number, size and placement of the mini-buttons. This is kind of creepy, because that Clarion deck was state of the art when it hit the market and the only one on the market at the time with the “single knob” style control, which is why I bought it. Everyone else was putting out decks that had multiple knobs and/or just a bunch of teeter-totter type push-button controls, which I had had enough of at that time.

Apparently, I’m a trend-setter.

Kenwood has simplified everything with this unit and made it so simple that someone who couldn’t spell USB could use it. The wise guys at Kenwood even figured out a little plastic door that rolls over the USB connection to keep dust and other debris out of it.

The knob teeters up/down to select folders and left/right to select tracks. The SRC button lets you “source” your music (tuner, USB, CD). Also, if you’ve labeled the folders and tracks, it’ll tell you what you’re listening to.
There are so many EQ settings that I haven’t even tested them all out yet, having gotten stuck on the “User” setting that I customized for myself.

The Clarion was also quite nice, and my only problem with it was, well, the multitude of teeter-totter switches set me off, and the USB port cover was of the type that would be rather annoying to have to deal with if you’re switching out thumbs while not parked.

Btw, I filled in the speaker ports with four Infinity Reference 5022i speakers and an Infinity Reference 475a amp. I have also come to the conclusion that I’m going deaf and will be needing to fill out the sound with a sub. I didn’t do it the first time around because of how much space it would have taken up, but after I tire of the dead pan, I’ll prolly whip out the card for it (and I never thought I’d say this, but for space reasons, I may just go with a tube).

So now that you know what The Wife and I will be listening through while we go snow hunting today, you should prolly know what we’ll be listening to.

Unfortunately, I can’t tell you that because she hasn’t made her musical selections just yet. But I know the Afghan Whigs will be on at least one of the thumb drives I’ll have with me.

From their last and final album, 1965

Citi Soleil

Neglekted

Enjoy.