JosephH

Sounds like he's figured things out now and just wants to get headed out in the right direction for a change - everyone comes to it at different ages and some never do. I know it can be a rough transition, so good on him and all my the best.

Greg, helpful list and even more helpful recommendations: Until climbers actually learn something about the Peregrines and start establishing trusted working relationships with raptor biologists this issue is going to continue to elude and confound our sport. It should also be noted that in these hard times of economic distress, with relentless calls for cuts to 'big government', you can bet your ass the resources required for the FS, BLM, and state wildlife managers to conform to the letters of the law you cite above are likely the very first to evaporate. The unavoidable net result of those losses will be more blanket, static duration, and unmonitored closures. If climbers aren't prepared to pick up the slack as honest monitors then we'll have to live with the resulting closures. I've been [digitally] involved on and off line with the Summit Rock effort for some time now and my latest comments are over on ST here and speak for themselves. Also, it should be remembered Pagel got into the Peregrine business as a climber so he's not entirely unfamiliar with our world even if appearing unsympathetic.

Maybe we'd been more secure using a couple of trillion dollars to pay down the debt instead of flushing it down a hole in the desert. And maybe the personal debt on your clock points out more the problem along with this red line: Or these lines of effective tax rates: Pretty simple deal - money in, money out relative to the GDP of the country. And who's to blame if you are concerned with the debt? A lot of economic razzle-dazzle and flag-waving by Reagan and successive Bush administrations while at the same time flushing money down military ratholes and paying off corporations and the wealthy. Republicans have repeatedly steered the ship of state into one iceberg after another and you want to give them another shot at the wheel?

Gotta say I don't buy all the [big] govt spending arguments:

During the year I spent on the cruiser we always ran out of 'fresh' food withing two weeks and both our enlisted and officers messes were repeatedly condemned upon inspection. And anytime we were out more than 30 days it pretty much came down to cold cuts, peanut butter, stale bread, and various tasteless liquids and starches dyed and sugared to 'taste'. Logistics and supply chains have obviously taken a turn for the better...

Front part. Did an unleashed high tightrope dismount into the McKenzie river that inadvertently turned into a botched highbar-like dismount which shot me up against a cliff face above the level of the tightrope and then into the river. I ended up collapsing/folding feet-to-face too much after my belt in back snagged on a nubbin projecting from the cliff during my head-down, face-out plummet into the river at the base of the cliff. Separated a triangular piece of bone from the front-top of L5. Spent my fortieth birthday in Sacred Heart in Eugene pushing the drug button. Took about six months in a thoracic clamshell deal to heal up. Never bothered me since so I consider myself lucky in a few ways given the runaway lunacy of a day that I would deny involved any botanical, mycological, or aquavean influences or just being out-of-my-mind desperate to windsurf at the coast on a day it turned out to not be blowing.

Broke my L5 once, not much fun down there when that shit happens. Neuronal routing, organization and behavior is way, way more complex than what we do in high tech networks. If only fiber optics self-assembled... Genetic analysis of synaptic target recognition and assembly

Matt, good for you for managing to arrange a cooperative monitoring session! Establishing working relationships with federal and state biologists charge with raptor monitoring is the best thing we can do in this issue. You can also offer to check and document the nests immediately before or after the closure is lifted if they are interested in that data. Maybe even try to get them out climbing where possible.

Getting senile and barely remember this given it is all so last season at this point. Not even sure I remember what it was though maybe I vaguely remember a nut and cam of some sort. It wasn't there when I did the route a week earlier though, but I'd still be willing to label it as 'Stewart Memorial Rescue Material' if I do come across it in the basement this year.

The biggest PAIN IN THE ASS about the gallery is no one EVER wants to look at their photos in filename order, EVER. The default should be descending chronological or at the very least please persist and restore our settings. Having to put it in descending chronological every single time I use the gallery sucks. That said, the recent improvements in speed are a big improvement.

Yeah, but at that price point you're always equivocating over the allocation of precious resources - smoke or drink? Drink or smoke? There is no god.

There's little tougher in this life then being too broke to buy good scotch and tequila...

Bulletin boards? Jebus, it's obviously even worse than I imagined over there these days. Have the stairs and sidewalk gone in as well?

Those were two old guys who had never been there before, maybe they don't get outside much. It's just another inevitable consequence of Ozone leakage now that DZ/FS is in the guide book.

One day we were doing some engine repairs to our antique, 1938-vintage cruiser about a 1/3 of a mile of a sleepy section of North Vietnamese beach. The entire crew was a pretty beat after a couple of nights doing harbor raids further north and from just being out at sea for going on sixty days which makes everyone a bit more than cranky after the ship's store runs out of cokes and cigs, lifers run out of alcohol, and everyone else out of dope. The gun crews I was part of were all particularly frazzled and having [a shitty] 'lunch' when the general quarters alarm sounded yet again - "general quarters, general quarters, all hands man your battle stations" and everyone goes flying for the exits. We get halfway to the hatches when we hear "Dive! Dive! Dive!" and all go WTF!?!? Turns out one of the guys on bridge watch thought it would be funny as a joke to play a submarine general quarters tape he had. Unfortunately for him, the Captain was one of the guys trying to get some rest after a long night and didn't think it was very funny.

The popularity of the area is lost on the nesting Peregrines and it's pretty remarkable WDFW is making this a voluntary closure for now (which I suspect means it will be monitored for the open which is very good). If this nest isn't successful and the WDFW suspects it's due to climber disturbance then you can bet it will be an involuntary and unmonitored closure next year. Best if WDFW gets the signs up sooner than later and that climbers keep getting the word out.

And that's just the first six-pack. It just goes to show drinking is just so much more dangerous than climbing...

I went through this exercise two years ago and likewise found the peak data to be the biggest issue. Also, doing a native iPxxx app is one thing, doing a cross-phone app is another and I'd go with phonegap, sencha, or mono if I were going down that road as native android apps are kind of nasty.

To paraphrase Rumsfeld on the realities of war: "You don't fight with the politicians you wish you had, you fight with what you have." Nothing new there and right up with saying we just didn't install the right local government as well. Same as it ever was and the same shit we dealt with in Vietnam. And we swept Afghanistan and Iraq initially because they weren't spun up yet and we never did what was necessary to secure the place, nor could we ever had at those force levels. And in what sense is the evolution and perfection of IEDs - (both indigenous and from Pakistan and Iran), increasingly sophisticated and coordinated suicide attacks, and Afghan army infiltration attacks constitute "conventional warfare"? Cluelessness is a perspective; daily rocket attacks on our strongest base eleven years on is reality.

So for eleven years and a trillion dollars we still can't protect the capital and our most secure base. Asymmetric warfare at it's best. We should just walk away, rename it Vietnastan in honor of lessons learned, and call it good. Conditions are not going to improve so keep your wits about you. God you are a fucking idiot; spouting off jargon that you don't understand. 'Asymmetric' has somehow become indecipherable private 'jargon'? I would hope not after spending a trillion bucks perfecting it to the point where we still don't own the roads and can't keep our main base from daily rocket attacks eleven years on. Yep, that's some real secret sauce you're slinging around dude.

Hey what do they say / do about this over there these days? Seemed to be one off the biggest hassles being over there if I recall correctly. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leishmaniasis#section_4 Some dated commentary: http://www.epinews.com/news4_leishmaniasis_OEF_OIF.html And the latest yellow book entry: http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/yellowbook/2012/chapter-3-infectious-diseases-related-to-travel/leishmaniasis-cutaneous.htm

So for eleven years and a trillion dollars we still can't protect the capital and our most secure base. Asymmetric warfare at it's best. We should just walk away, rename it Vietnastan in honor of lessons learned, and call it good. Conditions are not going to improve so keep your wits about you.

Heads up - keep your head down. US prepares for last major Afghanistan offensive

Looks like they're starting to probe Kabul - keep your head down from the minute you leave the airport - hopefully just get a flight from the airport to the base in Kandahar.

Master Cams - $48 bucks a throw; $80 bucks - not worth the difference unless you've got money to burn. A few years back during the recall crisis I was trying to help Dave with some ISO/QA/QC systems work (or complete lack there of) around the axle hole drilling and stem assembly and got to I speak with someone in the business who was also trying to lend a hand and who twice tried buying CCH. He'd run all the costs of manufacturing and said, as designed, they were too labor intensive to be profitable at a retail price point he felt comfortable selling them. His team had done some design refactoring on the stem sleeve to make it easier to manufacture, but neither buy attempt ended up closing for a number of reasons. In the end, I'd say his analyses were spot on.