It's Official 29Nov16

It's official... Kala and I now have a postal address in Summit County. Given our location off the US Mail route we have rights to a free PO Box at the post office. We officially went to get it during our recent visit to the mountains. This allows us not only to get mail but do things like car registrations and deliveries... all which typically carry tax advantages. Nice.

It's official... The hardware is out of my left paw and I'm in therapy preparing for a late start on the official ski season. I just decided it was judicious to have this surgery before I went off Cobra insurance coverage. The cutting from Dr Cassidy went well and while it hurts like heck, the therapy to an even better grip than prior is going well. The stuff they took out was much bigger than I'd imagined - no wonder it bugged me. Nice.

Planning To Fly Fish 28Nov16

Fishing season seems complete with crowds on the PT and snow finally on the ground in Summit. There may be a slot here and there but it's also time to have hand surgery, refill the fly boxes and plan new targets for 2017. As to my 2016 fishing excursions, New Mexico was a bust (due to poor timing on my part) and North Carolina was pretty marginal (due to east coast put 'n' take fisheries). I may have to dust off the aborted 2014 SW Tailwaters trip and some others. Too, Backpacker just ran an article on all the long haul trails so perhaps a bigger multi-day along the CO Trail or CDT is in order. Anyway, Terry & Wendy Gunn may help me choose.

New Crusher 26Nov16

Gotcha - still mine with 260K miles. I decided to clean out and update from fishing season so the Crusher is new-like. I rotated tires and pulled the spare into the mix for new tread - I cleaned the car out completely and bought new floor matts - I replaced the windshield - I got super duct tape (black Gorilla tape with 2X adhesive) for the bear-injured rear quarter-panel window - I got a new battery for the winter cold starting needs. It's all good and running smooth.

Crowds Have Arrived 23Nov16

Believing the day before Thanksgiving would be OK, I hit the PT. Nope - the crowds have begun on this winter fishery, or perhaps a bunch of college kids were there ~ I've never seen the Nature Center lot this full. I turned around and left for Valco where the story was similar so I dropped in for just an hour and a couple smaller rainbows before heading home. I've found an overcrowded stream here does not fish very well in the late fall - early winter, and that notion was confirmed again.

DP-X1 DAP Birthday ~ Awesome 21Nov16

For my birthday Kala got me the Onkyo DP-X1 I had lusted for after attending the RMAF. This portable Digital Audio Player (DAP) is like an iPod on steroids. I put it through some paces over the last couple days and I have to say it's awesome. In part success is about the UI for DAPs but this is only part of the story for me as it also needs to support a number of HD Audio aspects and here's where the DP-X1 soars. The DP-X1 effectively integrates a good solid state headphone amp with a very good DAC with a fine Android-based content library. The firmware around the DAC enables support for all key file formats (MP3/AAC/M4A/OGG, FLAC, DSD and even MQA) directly; it does so at all appropriate sampling rates. And, spectacularly, it also does a real-time transcode from any lesser format to DSD! The most important thing of course is that it simply sounds great. I tested with my full size Audeze cans which it actually drove "ok" ~ a tough test for the amp section. It did much better with my Shure IEMs (In Ear Monitors) and other less power-hungry headphones - the 1st pic shows the DAP with my IEMs. I still need to verify and hear how it does through the balanced output, another fine feature, as I have no balanced cabling for my headphones (yet). Other pics shows support for MQA, a comparison of MP3, FLAC & DSD64 on Pink Floyd's Breath from Dark Side of the Moon. My in-laws also joined the DAP birthday with a cool red top-stitched leather case. I've been loading my favorite music on the DP-X1 and the copy and library synching system seems to work well ~ the display and metadata in the library is not as compelling as some other music apps I use but that's fine as the display is often off, saving energy. I'll get almost .5TB on board the pair of MicroSD cards. This DAP also connects directly to streaming sites (TIDAL, Spotify) and music stores (Google Play, etc.) but I've not tested those aspects and they are less important to me here that the ability to play my high def stuff. It does jump on my WiFi no problem and connects to Bluetooth stuff for output there. Long term reliability and battery life will be as important as the great sound ~ so far, this thing is all it should be.

New Backup Strategies 18Nov16

I've used iDrive (300G) on on our Win7 server to backup key files from all our devices and especially our images. I've never backed up the 1TB of music really. iDrive was $60/year - equivalent to AmazonDrive's unlimited annual fee. So, I set out to find a backup scheme that would store on the AMZ cloud drive instead (so I could use the additional AMZ capacity for Plex media and be able to stream from the cloud rather than my Blodgett-based server). Arq5 did the trick but testing showed upload was very slow and after 3 days of backups over evenings I was only 1/5th done with the first 400GB. I abandoned Arq5. I then tried Macrium Reflect with an eSata cabinet of four removable Hitachi Ultrastar 2TB drives (these are the old IBM drives - I bought two new ones @ $50 each). During tests I could do full backups of 1.5TB data in ~2hrs; this setup screamed along at >800Gbps at times. I chose local backups and dropped iDrive. For offsite storage of backups I simply do a complete backup to a removable drive and take that drive to Silverthorne. Simplicity reigns and now everything is fully backed up

Winter Flows On The PT & 4Crunched To Fl4t 15Nov16

Matt hit a deer on Woodmen - instant kill for both the beast and the 4Runner. Mostly just plastic was busted, but a lot of it - it totaled the vehicle (~$9K)! Grrr... I'd recently put new shoes and ~$3K repairs into it to keep it going to 200K. So... the 4Runner is 4Crunched. We bought a new Subie CrossTrek "for Matt." Kindof his choice but we ratified - while a smidge loud in the cabin, it's a blast to drive in manual. The manual transmission 2017 XT Premium sports a 2.0L Boxer (flat) engine and is really pretty nice. Matt'll pay it off to us over next several years - but I probably lose my spot in the garage till he leaves.

I saw the flows from Pueblo Rez had dropped to near winter levels on the PT so headed down there today. Yet, flows are still above final and the water is still way off color. Good news is though that we had a nice BWO hatch as well as plenty of midges. I caught a couple of nicer fish among a decent day's payload. Key producer was #22 Jimi's Axe though others on the line landed some too - #20 Black Ice, Squrimy Wire ObiJaun, and #20 RS3 or Silver Surfer. Pretty crowded actually and a gorgeous fall day, again.

Faceplant Cafe @ ACBF Nov16

Locomotion was a bit of an issue by the end of the ACBF as I faceplanted right onto the bridge of my nose. I had a doc there who said "apply pressure" and the profuse bleeding ultimately stopped. Kala and Mary gave us rides to and from the 'fest. It was a decent show with friends and we tried most of what was offered. I focused on the IPAs of course and the pumpkin beers. Nearly consensus was that the the better IPAs included the Vail Brewing Co's Gore Ck, Jak's DIPA, Durango's, Resolutes's and Verboten's. Good times though my nose hurts a bit.

Rod, Ride & Brue 04Nov16

Yoho and I set out to tame the 'bows of the Pueblo Tailwater but instead faced increased flows to ~175cfs and REALLY slow conditions on this sunny fall day. I was bound and determined to get Jim into some big PT rainbows so was a decent guide for a while... hard for me as you might know. We went to "sure thing" spots to no avail - and it wasn't Jim's casting, float or rig - fishing sucked on the PT today. I ultimately caught a few small fish on Jimi's Axe and Yoho had some small fish on too but fishing was painfully slow. We dined and then blew off fishing any more about 2pm. We fortunately saved the day with a nice ride on the Pueblo Lk trail system where we climbed out of the south shore lot on Dukes and went around the lake to Inner Limits and then back to the lot on South Shore... not a lot of climbing but a really nice set of single track and a blast. We capped it with a stop at the new brewery named Brue in downtown Pueblo. Decent Leadhead IPA and a very nice space. A cool band was setting up in a separate room as we left ($5 cover) and the nice patio had some nice folks enjoying the evening.