Little more than a month ago, Kevin and I drummed up the idea of doing some backpacking. I did a bit of backpacking in college, so I’m already equipped and ready to go. Soon thereafter, we convince Rojo and my brother Ryan, who has no noteworthy Internet presence, to join us in our wild and crazy adventure.

The first lesson of backpacking the guys learned leading up to the trip: as simple as it seems, walking to the woods and sleeping there for a couple of nights can quickly require a lot of very expensive crap. Backpacks, sleeping bags, sleeping pads, tents, and more can easily cost $100+ each. Fortunately, I suffered through that realization back in my single days.

The second lesson of backpacking: when you are going to spend the better part of two days in the woods, it is not, not, NOT a great idea to swing by a gas station for some quick biscuits and gravy while on your way to the rendezvous point. Talk… about… bubble… guts. Ouch.

The third lesson of backpacking: don’t talk about backpacking.   …. I couldn’t resist. I just couldn’t.

Our plan was to travel a few hours north into Arkansas around Albert Pike. I spent a number of vacations there as a kid as had my brother. I think we both had forgotten how much we remembered the place until we got there. When I did some backpacking a few years back, it was exclusively around this area on the Eagle Rock Loop in the Ouachita National Forest. On this trip, however, I thought we’d change it up a bit by parking at Albert Pike and deciding which direction to go from there. The loop passes through Albert Pike, so we could just head north or south from there. Bad idea.

When we arrive at Albert Pike, the only trail head we could find was called "Little Missouri River Trail." What bits of information should we have derived from this name?

1. The Little Missouri River Trail follows The Little Missouri River.
2. Rivers don’t go over mountains. They stay at the bottom.

This should be considered particularly important information because it was February. In February, water is cold. Very cold. The Little Missouri River crosses water. Frequently. Here, let me show you the map:

This is an official map. Go ahead. Dispute its accuracy. I dare you.

The point I am attempting to make is that after a series of crossings like these, we decided to just trudge through them in our shoes and socks, find a camping spot, and find a trail that is NOT named after a river the next day. This water, by the way, was not pure. It was filled with microscopic needles of pain, agony, and death. It was very cold. I repeat, it was very cold. Of course, I was the only one that executed this bright idea pictured. Everyone else just walked through it and got their clothes wet. Peer pressure quickly forced me to do the same, but I stood strong for this one crossing. Had I just taken the time to cross the river like this every time, I wouldn’t be participating in the main event at the camp that night: shoe and sock toasting over a mediocre fire. The area received some heavy rain earlier in the week, so dry wood was difficult to come by. Weak fire and wet socks forces one to roast his socks a little too close to the flames. Socks brown exactly like marshmallows.

That night was terribly cold, but we survived it. On the way out the next morning we succeeded in finding a way to cross the river only once and take the road back to the truck. We opted to leave the area and take a back way to the southern part of Eagle Rock Loop that I’ve done before. The up side of this plan was that I knew exactly what was ahead of us. The down side of this plan is I knew exactly what was ahead of us and it wasn’t going to be easy. The map at Albert Pike warned that the Athens Big Fork Trail was "extremely strenuous."

Nevertheless, we started this trail with a renewed vigor, the defeat from the river behind us and mountains ahead of us ready to be conquered. We start off on the trail, and no more than 100 yards in I get us lost, being the front of the train. After 15 minutes or so of scrambling up and down the side of the mountain, the consensus became that I wasn’t too retarded. The trail took an unusual turn that was covered in leaves. The ascent up the first mountain was absolutely a humbling experience. This trail didn’t ease you into anything. It greatly contrasted with the Little Missouri River Trail, whose only difficulties were fluid. The top of that first mountain felt like my personal Everest. I was weak, out of breath, and ready to camp for good, but we had another battle ahead. What’s funny is during the descent of the opposite face of this mountain, I distinctly remember hearing murmurs of "this part will be easy on the way back." As we later learned, this was as wrong as we could possibly be. It was steep and long. In the valley below, there was a medium sized stream which I assume fed into that devil river known as the Little Missouri. We crossed the stream with dry shoes, giving us a second wind to climb the last mountain to our final campsite. It too was very long and winding. So much so, we had to take a break halfway up for photo ops.

The final campsite was a beautiful sight, and that’s about as eager as I have ever been to eat an MRE. The camp fire this time was a victory, as well. We had to hunt for it, but we found enough dry kindling to swindle the wet(ish) wood into burning. And alas, a fire is born. The weather was much more pleasant this night, and by pleasant I mean in the 40’s. Around 8 that night, Ryan thought it was good idea to mention pancakes and/or waffles. This began a shift in the weekend. Waffles… those were our new motivation. Within the hour, rain rolled in and we hit the sack early. Surprisingly, I had some cell reception, so I stayed up a while texting. What a woodsman I am. I know. This night’s sleep was far less fragmented. I only woke up a half dozen times or so and was much warmer throughout the night. This was partly due to the higher temperatures as well as me being better prepared for the night. The interruptions were disturbing. Wolves were howling on either side of us, at one point being easily no more than 100 yards away. The first occurrence of this naturally caused me to shout a "You guys hear that? Not… cool." They heard it, and they were awake too. I have little doubt that the only reason we weren’t eaten alive was because of the layers of funk we had accumulated by this point.

Sunday morning pack-up was performed in record time. Well, record time for everyone but Rojo. Actually, I think this picture accurately summarizes the weekend. Rojo. Gotta love him. At the persistent reminder of waffles from Ryan, we descended the first mountain in 14 minutes, climbed the next in 50 minutes, and descended the second in 11 minutes. Breakfast is no joking matter.

Overall, the weekend was incredibly fun. In all seriousness, taking trips like these truly make you appreciate those little things from day to day… like fire and food. And heat. And dryers. And extra clothes. And drive thrus.

I encourage anyone who doesn’t regularly go camping, backing, or otherwise experience the outdoors to try to do so. I can’t wait for my next trips with these friends, other friends, and family.

As is probably quite obvious, something’s been distracting me since August. No, it’s not the fatty from my previous post, but New Tech (Computer Systems?). Thanks for the recommendation, Chris, but I think I enjoyed it more at Highland Clinic where I was wholly unnecessary. Or not. Being necessary has been quite refreshing, but it’s caused me to neglect my personal tube in the interweb.

New Year’s Day provided some much needed geek time, so I had some time to convert my now unnecessary Windows Media Center PC to a Windows Home Server and I absolutely love it. I understand that Linux is free and can do all of the things WHS is doing, but it is so much easier to do with Windows Home Server. I need data redundancy to protect those important family photos, documents, etc., but I’m not particularly keen on the idea of maintaining a RAID 5 rig and worrying about having the right kind of drive to replace a failed one, controller failure, or whatever else. I need a poor man’s data redundancy, and it seems that WHS is right up my ally alley.

The install was quite pleasing. It took some time, but it was still fairly straightforward. What drew me to WHS was the concept behind the disk management. Install whatever hard drives you have. Don’t worry about which is E:, which is F:, which is G:, where your photos are and where your videos are, and so on and so forth. Home Server handles all of that. It operates on shares, so you have your Photos share, your Videos share, and whatever other shares you prefer to create. Flag a share as needing duplication, and Home Server makes sure the data for that share is somewhere on multiple hard drives. A drive fails? No problem, it’s on another. Home Server handles all of that in the background. I’m really loving it so far. At this point I’ve got two 200GB drives, a 320 GB drive, and an external 200 GB drive. It doesn’t matter which files go on which drive. I just dump them in their appropriate share and I’m done with it.

WHS also supports user created add-ins. The add-in I’ve most enjoyed so far is Xbox Community Feeds. I’m using it exclusively to subscribe to video RSS feeds. Now I can watch my favorite vidcasts (The 1UP Show, Totally Rad Show, Diggnation, Systm, DL.TV) on my 360 without having to manually download them and add them to my video share.

Thanks again to Chris for suggesting Windows Live Writer. It makes the entire process of blogging downright fun! I might even post again before 6 months has passed just so I can use Windows Live Writer again.

We rearranged our furniture in our living room, and my laptop now has terrible wi-fi reception. Solution? Access point!? No, not worth the money. Better router!? Again, my $19 Microsoft Router from woot! has served me perfectly in every other way and I need not spend any more. I know! A parabolic tinfoil reflector for my antenna. (NOTE: The router pictured was shamelessly stolen from the link because I can’t find the memory card for my camera) As it turns out, this little arts & crafts project made all the difference needed. I went from two bars in the Windows wireless connection monitor to 5 bars. Very cool.

Until next time, you stay classy, San Diego.

Discuss.

I wish my lawn were emo so it would cut itself.

“Whack Whack Whack” came a rapping at my door.
“WOOT!” I exclaimed, jumping from the floor.

Peering through the window, I saw the brown man.
He was my own little Santa Claus,
and he reeked of sausages from a can.

“My Xbox is fixed!” I had been so very bored
as I spat at Excite Truck, caring to play it no more.

It was the UPS man, “I’ve got your Xbox!” he boasted.
I thought, “Great, the box is broken and it’s toasted.”

Lo and behold, the box was intact,
Taped up, unlabeled, and unmarked, in fact.

“Heeey, How did you know it was an xbox” I whined.
“That’s easy. I deliver this box all the time.”

I opened the box, and removed my 8 dollar compensation
for buying a product that’s breaking all across the nation.

Lock up. Repeatedly. At less than a month old. Pfaw!

So this has happened once or twice in the past few weeks, but I didn’t concern myself too much with it.

Last night, I knew it was going to be a good night of gaming. Brody (our 6 week old) had been up for a while, so I knew he was going to sleep hard for a good while. Time to play some Crackdown and get some of those achievements I’ve been studying up on.

– Insert Disc

– Watch the ridiculous number of contributor logos that I can’t skip

– Campaign - Solo Play

– Loading….

– I’m in the game! Take a step..

– Lock up.

Rinse & repeat several times, sometimes I may make it as far as hopping into a vehicle, but that’s about it. Hmm. This sucks.

I pop in Rainbow Six: Vegas….

Blast! It did the same thing! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Next game I get from Gamefly’s definitely going to be a Wii game.

My wife says “It’s because it’s an xbox.” — She’s a die hard Nintendo Fangirl.

The Elder Scrolls of Morrowworld (that’s just for you Chris) suggested I put it on a UPS and see if that helps. We did have a bit of storming yesterday, but it wasn’t going on while I was playing or anything. I’m going to give that a whirl and maybe try some nonsense I found online about clearing the cache. Hopefully one of the two will work.

If either of my viewers have any suggestions, let me know.

So I got an Xbox 360. I know, I know. I’m a Wii fanboy, what the heck am I doing!? Well, the Wii is in a dry spell right now— I am fully convinced it’s a spell, and will not be forever— and I’m needing some FPS actiony type fun after a 3 month stint of nothing but Vanguard. The PC is on the back burner because of its proximity to Brody (i.e. not in the living room). Besides, there’s nothing I want to play on my PC right now, and I’m in serious need of some Halo practice if I’m going to be worth a flip on 9-25-07 when Halo 3 hits the shelves.

Birthday = gift cards (thanks Mel/Rev & Gam) = another wireless controller. I’ve finally gotten the opportunity to swing by Best Buy and get one. While I was there, I opted to burn up the majority of my lunch break scanning the aisles and later scarfing down a burger on the way back to work.

While gawking at far more accessories than I could ever afford, the Plantronics GameCom X30 Headset caught my eye. Upon closer inspection, THE EAR PIECE WAS COVERED IN BLACKISH BROWNISH FUNK! Absolutely disgusting. Whoever returned this thing needs to go to the ear doctor or something, because I think he craps out of his ears. Seriously. To top it all off, however, it was listed at full price. No open box sticker. No extra shrink wrap. Nothing. Disgust-o. I snapped a couple of pics of it as I headed to the customer service counter. They turned out terrible, but you can see a brownish blur in the pic. I’m posting them just for the heck of it:

I had less than 10 minutes to get back to work, and there was only a teenage-ish customer service rep to be seen, so I gave her a stern “That’s absolutely disgusting.” and left it with her. I really wanted to complain to a manager. I plan on making a follow up trip on one of my traditionally boring & uneventful lunch breaks to see if it goes back on the shelf.

Sorry for the blurry pics, but trust me that it was funky.

Brody Ashton Gholson

Born: 5-7-07 at 9:31

7 lbs 11 oz.

20.5 inches long

Never has any day brought about as much respect for women in my mind as today. To any of you ladies reading this, I humbly bow. You truly are the superior sex. I am forever in debt to my wife Jen for the 12 hour day she worked today to bring our adorable little boy into this world. It was a long hard road beginning at 6 AM when we arrived. A couple of hours in the doc broke her water and shortly thereafter began what seems to be long term bruising to my hand. She worked hard all morning long breathing through contractions. Not once did I hear a four letter word. In fact, rarely did we even hear a peep from her. She calmly took each contraction at a time one by one with hardly the slightest utterance. For that alone, I’m beyond proud of her. It wasn’t until almost 2 that afternoon that she received the magic injection. The true impression was made beginning around 8 PM when the real pushing could finally begin. Hooray! It’s almost over– or so we thought. This girl pushed, and pushed, and pushed for an hour and a half. By golly I’ve never counted to 10 so many times, so hard, or so loud as I did tonight. I was exhausted. I was exhausted… from counting… to 10. How she felt afterwards, I will never understand. We should all pat her on the back for a job well done the next time we see her. I’ll be doing so for years to come.

I suppose most of you would like to see the little fruit of her/our labor. I’ve created a photo album on Flickr. The link is below. I don’t think any of the pics have caught it yet, but he has a well defined dimple on both cheeks.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gholson/sets/72157600190539898/

^ This link goes to the specific album for “Brody’s birth.” I’ll be updating it more as I get more people’s cameras from them.

I admit, Mondays aren’t my day. Mondays are at the bottom of my favorites list in 8th place just below “Funday,” a day I tried to convince my wife that God created just for me so that I would have time to play Vanguard. It’s yet to work thus far, hence the reason it’s nearing the bottom of my list.

As I was saying, Monday’s aren’t my day. My disdain for the day has only been amplified by today’s morning events. Sam Champion, the most amazingly stereotypical weatherman and the butt of my morning humor, was absent this morning. What a way to kick off the week. *sigh*

As a side note, after looking up Sammy on Wikipedia for the above link, I question how this will come across. Apparently he’s a strong supporter of the LGBT community, and the standard dose of homophobia all straight men possess told me to post about something else so as not to come across gay. Ahh well. That fact only further solidifies my belief that his hair is just a little too perfect and his teeth are just a little too white.

To top things off, the local morning weatherman Mark Rowlett set me up for a fall. When Sam’s lowly replacement cut to the 10 second spot where the local weather is covered, Mark was there in all his glory. He started rambling about the dreaded day (Monday). He worked his way up through the week on to Thursday & Friday. This was the moment. I drew in a breath, ready to let out an obnoxious wail of a chuckle, here he goes… ” and on Sa——” NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!1!!!! Sam’s replacement was back! They cut Mark off early! Oh the agony! You see, Jen (my wife) and I get joy out of the fact that Mark Rowlett puts no T’s in the world “Saturday.” It sounds like “Saurday.” It really is an incredible anomaly. You should check it out.
These are the sweet little nuggets of joy that help me along through my week. On this Monday, I have been robbed of two of them. Perhaps I’ll make up for it this Funday.

In other news, Bacon Ranch Pringles own my soul. Yum.

In other other news, Microseth.com is now alive again. Rejoice!

Well, it’s Monday. And this somebody has undoubtedly got a case of ‘em. It’s not the typical Monday, though. It’s the “Pre-Wii” Monday. Just under a week left. The days are growing longer, though. I thought I’d chart out a graphical representation of it for ya, too.

As you can probably tell by now, I do, in fact, have the handwriting of a 4 1/2 year old. I’ve accepted that fact. You should too.