Hide In Plain Sight

I installed this new app on my iPad anticipating blogging from the field. So far it crashes every time I try to publish the one post I’ve created. This is inexcusable. I hope they get their act together and fix this.

Our friends David and Liza came in for the weekend. They recently moved to California after living in Chicago suburb for 20 years. It was they who got us into geocaching and whenever we get together we always go on a hunt. This time was no exception. David and I decided to drive up to Bagdad, a company-owned mining town about 100 miles NW of Phoenix and hunt along the way. With Fergie tagging along and Sharon and Liza doing their thing, we hit the road. First stop, my currently favorite place to take visitors – The Ranch House Restaurant, in Yarnell. After lunch we continued our journey through Peeples Valley, Kirkland Junction, on into Bagdad, and then home via Wickenburg. The weather was still hot and we only found a few caches, but it was great hanging with each other, and that was more important.

One of the tools we had was my new 3G iPad on which I loaded a few geocaching applications that assisted in our hunt. With the AT&T data plan activated we had service for most of the trip which worked out very well.

As a big Ayn Rand fan, I was delighted to come across a Wired article which has since gone viral about Nick Newcomen who created the largest written message visible only though Google Earth. While I use GE for geocaching, I do like what this guy has done. Read the whole story at his site, and then view everything in GE for more info on how he did this.

We bought an iPad two weeks ago – 32Gb 3G model – and I’ve been looking at the apps specifically for geocaching. Right off the bat, the one developed by the folks at GC.com isn’t designed for this device – it is an iPhone app. While it does work, the display is iPhone sized, and can be blown up to fill the screen, it does distort the image. Hopefully they will rewrite it to take advantage of the device.

I’ve installed two other apps – Geocache Viewer, and iPlunder HD. Both are iPad apps and take advantage of the screen. Of the two, iPlunder is better for field use primarily due to its use of Google Maps a la GC.com’s site. While you have to use a free service, Dropbox, to transfer the data to the app as compared to connecting from the Mac to the iPad via a browser, the mapping function does make life easier. I’ll report back after a field test which will require activating the AT&T data plan.

It’s been a wild few weeks since Kellen was born. He is an unbelievably cute baby, even if his grandfather says so! He has gained over 2 pounds and grown 2 inches. He and Gillian are doing great, although she is exhausted, as to be expected.

Caching has been slow. Sharon and I made a trip to Yarnell and Prescott last Sunday and picked up a few, but the trip was more about getting out of town and cooling off for a day. Great drive, gorgeous weather and a nice day over all. Even Fergie enjoyed it.

Our daughter Gillian gave birth to our first grandchild this evening – Kellen Avery Smith was born at 7:49pm MST weighing in at 7 lbs 12 oz and 21″. Mother and son are doing great.

And here is the exact location where he was born! Yes, I am a nerd.
N 33° 34.707′
W 111° 53.104′

There is a type of container called a nano. It is 9mm x 25mm, and is a devil to find. Today’s hunt required pushing though tree branches with spikes on it, climbing said tree in 95 degree heat and 95% humidity – or so it felt, and hunting for a nano. Two trips to the tree resulted in a find, and then things got weird. The container was covered in a sticky sap. The log was also sap covered. And to top things off I dropped the bottom half of the open container and I couldn’t find it at the base of the tree. Long story short – I emailed the owner, explained what happened and received a reply indicting that while replacing the container with a new one and a clean log, he dropped his, and while hunting for the new one, found the bottom half of the one I dropped. This was one challenging hunt, and I’m glad things worked out with the replacement.

Declaration of Independence

Here is the complete text of the Declaration of Independence. The original spelling and capitalization have been retained.

(Adopted by Congress on July 4, 1776)

The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. –Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.

He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing taxes on us without our consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts: John Hancock, Samual Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

Source: The Pennsylvania Packet, July 8, 1776

If I don’t go early, I’ll never get any this summer. It’s way too hot. So this morning I got up and out to grab a couple, and I was lucky to get my 23rd FTF. I need a road trip to the North country to get out of the heat and grab a bunch on my quest to reach 1000 before the year is out.

My oldest daughter, Gillian, is expecting her first child within 6 weeks. This will be my first grandchild – we already know it’s a boy – and I am anxiously awaiting his arrival. Jill has told me that she’s going to refer to me a “Pappy Cache”!

Anyhow, my mother and sister came to town to attend the baby shower that was held Sunday. On Saturday we went out to show my sister around an area where she is considering relocating to, and grabbed a couple of caches in our journey.

Sunday, my old friend David, the person who introduced me to geocaching, and I went out to grab a few. He hasn’t been out in a while and we went after ones near my house that I haven’t taken the time to look for. It was nice being with him and getting him back in the hunt.