The Best Laid Plans, and all like that

I'm sad.  I have to give up my long-standing Dancing Bear Network.  Let me explain.  You know the old expression -- that it's not how well the bear dances, but that he dances at all. Well, my bear danced quite well, thank you.

Until very recently, I had a network that centered around an aging AirPort Base Station, a PowerPC 8100/100A/V, a LaserWriter 4/600 PS (LocalTalk-only), and a couple of PowerBooks.  To print from a PowerBook, the signal went through the ether to the AirPort Base Station, out the LAN port to a hub to the 8100, thru a piece of software called LocalTalk Bridge, out the printer port, over PhoneNet, to the LaserWriter.  Viola!  The Printed Page!  Happy web-surfing.  Happy e-mailing. Happy Dancing Bear!

Well, recently my PowerBook G4 was stolen.  I replaced it with a MacBook Pro.  Sadly, the MacBook Pro was singularly unhappy trying to talk to the network.  The internet connection kept dropping.  So did the connection to the printer.  The MacBook had to be within 10 feet of the Base Station to operate with any sort of reliability.  *sigh*

In researching the problem, I came to find out that the old Base Station had an output of 15 dBm, but all those that came later had an output of 20 dBm.  So, I got a TimeCapsule -- an AirPort Base Station with a built-in hard drive (to facilitate backups, to share, etc).  Happy, happy!  Joy, joy!  My internet connection is [mostly] reliable and zippy.  Woohoo!

However...

This afternoon I tried to print.  I tried from all the computers living on my net.  The only one that can print is the 8100 -- BECAUSE it's directly connected to the printer.  More research and all I can conclude is that the TimeCapsule (and many of its predecessors) don't route AppleTalk packets.  I can find no reference to AppleTalk in any of their manuals.  *sigh*

So, after a quick scrounge, I may have located a USB printer that I can plug into the TimeCapsule to share with all my computers... EXCEPT that I don't think there are drivers for it for Mac OS 8.6, so, for now, I'll have to keep the LaserWriter connected to the 8100... till I can migrate the apps (and data) I still use off to a different computer.

That's not a Heron. It's a HAM!

Two days in a row I went bird-photo-hiking. I feel a need for the fresh air, the sunshine, and the exercise.  Not that I was bad at the feasting tables, I really wasn't.  But still...

So, yesterday I head off to hike at the southern end of the bay at the (deep breath!) Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge -- not the part on the Newark side, but at the Education Center in Alviso.

Oddly enough, when I arrive I find the gate to the access road to the parking lot around the Education Center is locked.  But there's an area just outside the gate where one can park in a muddy landing area and hike in along a gravel trail.  So, my hike is lengthened by about a half-mile along a winding, up-and-down trail through a restoration area. That's fine.  I'm here for the fresh air, sunshine, and exercise! 

After snapping a few photos around the gardens of the Education Center, I head off down the Mallard Slough Trail. One of the first things I notice is that the American White Pelicans that went missing from Palo Alto Baylands are all camping out on a rocky outcrop in the middle of the mudflats.  It's not that there are thousands of them, but there are a couple of dozen.

The next thing I notice is that oodles of Black-Crowned Night Herons are hunkered down in the reeds along the Mallard Slough.  I have since learned that there's a heronry that causes the trail to be closed during nesting season.  Cool!  We have a protected space just for the herons!

The next thing I notice is that quite a few Snowy Egrets are shuffling along the shores trying to scare up food.  That's how they do it.  They stand on one foot and stick the other a little forward and shake it all about in the mud, kind of like the Hokey-Pokey, till some mud dweller stirs out and gets snagged.  But they're also known to snag a fish now and then.  One gets a fish today and attracts way more attention than was bargaining for!

I also note that several Great Blue Herons are scattered around the flats and sloughs.  As I near a bend in the trail I see a sign that will cut my hike short: Trail Closed for Hunting Season.  Dang!  But right there, near the sign, is a Great Blue Heron fishing for his brunch.  I start taking pictures from a-way back so I at least have something before he spooks and flies away into the forbidden hunting zone.

But he stays and I keep taking pictures as I move closer.  And he stays as I keep taking pictures and moving closer.  I even get past him and yet he stays!  What a ham!

So, yes, I got many photos of him before leaving.  One of his photos is here, there are a couple more on Flickr.

Winter Weather and Walking Among Birds

Well, the days have been alternately freezing-cold and wet... sometimes both!  Yesterday was three or four different weather days in one (rain, WIND, hail, thunder & lightening, WIND, showers, ...), but it was Christmas and we were all gathered 'round the tree or 'round the table at different times all day. And my brother went a little nutz buying me DVDs, so I'm going to have to clear another shelf on my entertainment wall. It was good.

This morning was dang-cold again (thick frost on all the rooftops and ice encrusting the bird bath, but no stalagmites).  Despite being dang-cold, it was nice and sunny, so I dragged Mom out for a bird hike with her new camera. We lasted less than two hours and didn't get any really close views of anything particularly special (except for all those doggies taking their owners for walks).

The Ruddy Ducks have definitely arrived for the winter. The American White Pelicans seem to be gone (but I did see one Brown Pelican). I got a couple of nice photos of Greater Scaups and Canvasback Ducks, so I'll probably shrink a photo or two down to web size and post them here one of these days.

About those Canvasbacks...

A couple of weeks ago, when walking along the same trail, I was hearing what sounded to me like shotgun blasts out on the bay.  I stopped the Ranger Truck going by and asked about it.  They told me that, while most -- if not all -- the private hunting clubs around the south bay have been bought up as nature preserves (with no more hunting), the navigable waters of the bay are still legal areas to hunt waterfowl.  *sigh*

And, now that I see that Canvasbacks are passing through, I see why I keep hearing the blasts.  A Fish & Game Biologist that led several birding field-trips that I've been on pointed out that Northern Pintail and Canvasbacks are the best eatin' of the duck-like birds. *sigh* again.

Now, if we could only teach the birds to stick to the non-navigable waters around the bay...

Houseplants in Silicon Valley

I live in Silicon Valley and I have houseplants.  The thing about living where I do is that most houseplants will also happily live outdoors in bright shade for most of the year.  Some years they'll happily live outdoors ALL year.

But, like the grape farmers, I keep an eye on the predicted low temperatures.  If we're going to have a hard freeze (as opposed to a little frost on the roofs and windshields), the plants have to come indoors or run the risk of freezing.  (That happened to me my first year in this house and many of my plants turned to mushy pulp.  It was very sad.)

Don't get me wrong!  Having more plants in the house is a good thing!  They provide more oxygen.  Many of them go a long way toward cleaning toxins from the air.  They're green and cheery.  They visually soften edges and corners.  They provide 'chi.'

But here's the thing.  When the plants are hanging around outside, they're growing like weeds.  You have to trim them.  And, being a gardener, I can't just throw away the trimmings.  So, I stick them in Mason jars of water where they sprout roots.  Well, then I'm obliged to plant the rootings in soil.  

THEN I end up with even more houseplants to bring indoors for the winter!

So, my house is again a jungle and challenging to navigate.  But that's not too much of a problem, unless I try to entertain.  The problem is in keeping the things watered without watering the carpets.  Heated winter air is dry-dry-dry, so the plants dry out quickly.  The soil will suck up water like there's no tomorrow.  Then, quite suddenly, it will dump more water than the saucer can hold and I have to scramble to keep mineral-laden (nutrient-laden, spore-laden, ...)  water from hitting the carpet where it stains, promotes mildew, mold, and rot, and generally causes havoc.

To keep from all this spillage, I have to water each plant slowly, a little at a time.  So the watering task ends up taking upwards of an hour at least once a week.

But the house is sure green these days!  Now, off to water the houseplants.

The Twenty-First Century Looms Large

Off and on for the last few months, people have been telling me that I need to get with the whole Web 2.0 thing.  They tell me that I need to be on Twitter, I need to be on Faceboook, I need to be on ...  Well, I've started taking those steps, but doing it all at once is making me feel like I'm having a Linda Blair moment now and again.

Well, I'm slowly getting there.  I've even figured out how to have my tweets go straight to FB so I don't have to do double duty, thus saving a few minutes and making sure that I hit both venues.

I've also gone so far as to get on Flickr.  Mind you, this isn't so much for the Web 2.0 aspect (but it can be used that way), but as a place where I can store mountains of photos and not have them disappear into the aether should I neglect to back them up.  *sigh*

My ATT DSL account came with a free Flickr Pro account, but as soon as I signed up today I learned that this free service is going away.  If I want to stay "Pro," I need to come up with ~$25/year.  But it occurs to me that $25/year is an awfully dang'd cheap way to back up ALL your photos worth saving.  And, if you're not interested in sharing with everyone, you can lock it down to just friends or family or both or nobody but yourself.  And you can do it photo-by-photo.

So, now I'm busy picking out the keepers to put up on Flickr.

Oh, you've got to have frie-ends!

The o! so understanding friend who pointed out the zebra hanging in the tree was kind enough to send a few of my photos back to me that I'd sent in her direction after a photo hike!  (Wow! It's almost like backing up your hard drive on a regular basis so you still have your data when your computer gets stolen!  Not.)

So, courtesy of my photo-hiking friend, I also have these lovely American Avocets who were dancing in the low tide of the Charleston Slough at Palo Alto Baylands a few weeks ago.

Thanks!  (Aren't friends great?!)

OK, not a heron either...

After getting some feedback from a blog-o-matic friend (I believe she said something like "thought it was a zebra hanging from a tree at first" :-), I decided that maybe the heron photo was better off in a venue where he would be more showy.

Instead, I offer this photo of a zebra.  I took this one in 2001 in the Ngala game preserve in South Africa.  Sorry.  He's *not* hanging from a tree.  :-)

Not a turtle

I'm still figuring out all the knobs, switches, bells and whistles.  One whistle I just discovered is that I get to post a photo.  

One of the things I'll be posting about will be my hikes-with-camera.  The photo I just posted is one I took of a Great Blue Heron flapping past me up the creek at the southern edge of the Palo Alto Baylands Natural Preserve.

Another thing on my ever-increasing list of To Dos is to actually start that Flikr account and start uploading some of my photos there.  Maybe over the holidays...

The First of the Posts

Today is the first day of the rest of the posts.

You may be pondering on the name of this blog.  A number of years ago a pair of 3-toed box turtles were given to me by someone who was moving and couldn't take them with her. At the time, my yard (both back and front) were overrun with garden snails.  I knew that tortoises liked snails from a friend for whom I collects snails from a previous yard, so I took on Shelley and Mr. T (those were the names they came with, I swear!) to help eradicate the snails in my back yard.

Boy! did they do a grand job!  I rarely find a snail in my back yard.  They're still a problem out front, but not out back.

A couple of years later Mr. T disappeared.  He's either gone walkabout or he's gone to Stovokor.  But Shelley remains and keeps the yard free of snails. She also snacks on the partially-eaten fruits from my neighbors' trees stolen and dropped by the squirrels.  She likes earthworms, larvae, bugs, and many other things she finds in my yard.

Hence, Shelley is my Free-Range Turtle.