Visiting K2 In NCarolina ~ GR8 Fall Visit With Hikes, Birds, Family, Food, & Theater 14Oct26-19Oct26

Kala and I headed to NCarolina to visit Karla & Kevin. We arrived Wednesday night, visited briefly, and rested for the onslaught.

Thursday morning we headed to a local lake and hiked around it on a very nice day. We lunched at Wongs' Tacos, "so Wong it's right" ~ tasty. Afterward we went to Sylvan Waterfowl park. The bird sanctuary was an awesome several acre park with a number of large cages of keen birds from around the world. We returned to Raleigh in time to dine at Pickled Onion and watch the TNF thriller where Broncos bested the Seahawks. I found the tasty Surf Wax hazy from Burial ~ my favored brewer in NCarolina.

Friday we enjoyed a great tapas dinner at Mateo's in Durham's foodie area near the excellent Durham Performing Arts Center (DPAC). We then went to the fabulous musical Maybe Happy Ending. This show was very good ~ happy story/book, cute, very funny, well sung and acted by all the actors and it used a set that was the coolest thing I've ever seen. So fun ~ highly recommended, as is DPAC, sound was excellent.

Saturday featured rain all day so we chose to largely veg in front of TVs for college football games. We even ate in and enjoyed Karla's charcuterie plate with a nice Amarone wine K2 wanted us to try. Great wine and great games not always won by the "good guys."

Sunday was again a football day ~ it's "Holy Day" for these fantasy football fans. Before all that though we did go to a very cool craft art cooperative called Cedar Ck gallery. We met Kyle at the shop to visit and have him pick some birthday gifts for his new house in Durham. We even saw some glass blowing and making demos. It was great to see Kyle as it's been a minute, and we were fortunate to meet his partner Isaiah. Afterward we ate at the Carolina Ale House, with a hundred TVs blasting NFL games; I do mean blasting. Back at the nice new K2 home in Raleigh we completed our watch-fest and enjoyed good pizza.

Monday we went to Crooked Hammock Alehouse after the women completed some more Jari estate work. We played weird card game and setback before going to the airport. The return home to COS was not fun with mechanical issues making our plane late to arrive in RDU, cascading to an assured missed connection in DEN to get home. We booked a rental car for a drive instead of flight and found out how to make righteous claims and unwind from other stuff. Admin load but we got home at 1:30am fine. Great visit with K3.

Smalltown Gathering Concert @ Riverside Park Salida ~ Fab Friday Lineup Heard Between The Raindrops 26Sep26

Smalltown Gathering @ Riverside Amp... I headed out the Ark to Salida to catch a late season "music" festival.  I'd not been to the Riverpark Amp in Salida ~ It is a completely awesome venue right on the headwaters of the Arkansas River and right in town. So, the location is sweet, and more astounding is that the sound is very solid halfway up a modestly inclined patch of grass. Highly recommended. I was a skosh late (due to BC20X drop off at Salida RV Resort when the check-in office was closed) to grab my bracelet for the WE. Undeterred I contacted a golf cart attendee, parked the RodFthr, and jetted to Riverpark.

Lindsay Lou... Was first on the schedule for the fest' and delivered as always: strong and fun. She's a Berklee kid with great pipes, good writing peppered now with personal insights, and a kid, and a pile of close friends in Nashville and further. I've heard her live to my grin on several occasions and I got there to hear the last 20 min of her set, which was delivered with the awesome Mimi Naja as collaborator... she's a co-leader of Fruition and smokes on strings like the mandolin, and has pretty adjacent vocals to Lindsay, but was harmonically deferential here. The set was stellar and a great Fri kickoff... I didn't go to yoga. I will "always" seek out Lindsay sets, and Naja sets (she's back later this eve).

Slap Dragon... I've heard this killer Nashville alt-jazz group on YT and elsewhere, pretty recently. They call it jazz-grass or groove-grass but they're more of the former and less of the later. Still, completely amazing sound. The jazz-inspired lead contralto Laura Berens (nasty and powerful) and Scott Mulvahill, who brings the groove, met recently ~ results are whack. For the Salida show special lead guitar guest from CO Alex was stellar. This was their CO debut, following their 1st album drop, Mission Statement. Easy to compare Laura with some of my favorite female leads like Anna Moss, Rachel Price, and Sammy Rae... just an amazing vocal instrument on board here. 

Lowdown Brass Band... From Chicago this larger horn band was short at least 1/2 the team due to a traffic accident on 285. Maybe next time boys. Rap & horns were good but... I listened and departed for the keen local fare, rather than the food truck and "bar" at the festival. Tres Litros Clarity of Mind hazy IPA was tasty (later confirmed by local GL as "the choice") and Amicas was, as always, tasty. I said I wanted a beer an a margarita with green chilies and she said they made jalapeño margs; I had to clarify, I wanted pizza with chilies and a beer.

Magoo... - This is a stellar 4 pc acid-grass band from Colorado. Dobro played a “Beard” guitar - I’ve not seen black steel on dobros but Pippus assured me it’s nouveau-nouveau. I've heard Magoo before, notably at the Dillon Amp and howdy what a sound. They crushed us at Smalltown... so good that Joe wanted to share 'shrooms but nah... I gotta drive back to the Salida RV Pk (aka, the 4 Seasons), and maybe elsewhere. Joe was a neighbor center stage 7 rows up; he's a 10x sound engineer for the Grammys and so we knew some shit. Show was astounding with Dead covers and so much more tight to me. Plenty of weed was revealed and gummies seemed out like candy... I had to drive.

Fruition... Now they are something more to stand for here. This is an amazing dark writing ill-definable alt-country, alt-emo, hard-rock band with an amazing front trio throwing best harmonies on lyrics that rip at the heart. They acknowledged this was their "last fest show in CO," despite being a staple for many here, the show was important, and very good. The vocals were clearer here on the upper Ark than even in Dillon, I cupped my ears to delineate the 3 but yeah, so very good on every song. This is a band with remarkable edges 3 ways defined by the songwriters... all are amazing. The show was a stunner.. glad I was here.

Da Boyz & Da Rig... Moontricks are another psychedelic bluegrass band. They too were delayed due to the traffic on 285; it was late and I didn't wait around ~ so I could go see Greg. Here's the BC20X rig I took out to Salida and I stayed at the Salida RV Park (the Four Seasons!); I did not ride but the hitch and rack worked well. After the show I gathered with Greg and Rick at the Poncha Palace and had a beer around the fire ring ~ it got pretty cold for the first time this fall.

Nest Net Update ~ WiFi, Xfinity, And Cat5e 13Aug26

This is really an UPDATE to lame network performance musings HERE... While I was getting almost 1Gbps patched directly into the router, my WiFi experience in some parts of the Nest was not consistent. It seems time-of-day and day-of-week dependent. We know both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands are crowded, which slows down WiFi when the bands are "congested." Still, I don't know yet if it's that or Xfinity itself is congested and slowing, or even throttling me... they do have this problem and this capability. I do not use their gear and they do not control my WiFi, as they do some. I need to find a free scheme to regularly test on the wired and wireless sides to see who is slowing whom. That's not say I'm not much faster, I am. Just inconsistent on WiFi. Remote areas of the Nest now get >300Mbps and decent pings on 5GHz band and the macStudio is strong on WiFi 5GHz but varies with time ~ here's 6pm, 8pm, and 11pm. I plan to do even better.

Cat5e Wired Ethernet Build @ The Nest... So my first move was to terminate the existing Cat 6 cabling with Cat5e/RJ45 jacks and plugs to at least get wired Ethernet into the Nest study and to my macStudio. I don't know why it wasn't done prior here but at least the low voltage wiring was in place. It was painful and laborious to terminate some of the rooms' runs in jacks and add plugs to the like lines in the storage/wiring closet (if one can even call it a wiring closet). I'm gonna need to clean all that up someday but right now I want function. I have rug burns on knees and elbows, and sore hands, but it was worth it.

Network Termination Tools... I asked Kala to assemble the gear & tools and plugs & jacks into a kit that Bob could tote up aboard the BMW adventure bike (as he was inbound for Sierra Ferrell). I needed an impact punch down tool, a ratcheting plug clamper, a bunch of Cat5e jacks & plugs, and a network tester.

Terminations & Test... Since I was a once a product guy at FNET, I was thankfully presented a prototype of the NetTool, which I still use. I really only was using the wiremap function today... I placed a special dongle in the jacks I punched down, went to the "wiring closet" and inserted my new plug termination into the NetTool and it tested the wires for continuity and arrangement. Sometimes I got it right, many times I did not and had to redo (see the handful of spent RJ45 plugs).

Ethernet In The Study... This is the part where we say "it was worth it." I celebrated completion with Vail's Blur.

Blog updates are so much faster now. I just wished it'd help me hike faster and jump further.

Update 16Aug26 ~ Bump WiFi & 2.5Gb Switch... I took a look at WiFi results mid-day in remote areas of the Nest. I didn't isolate WiFi but I did do measurements and changes at the same time. I sense there's a mix of my router's hardware performance, WiFi congestion, and Xfinity variability at play and I want to sort it out. Positioned remote from the WiFi access point (AP) I ran a test with mediocre results.

I did a little WiFi dive and noticed everyone in the area is on channel 153 in 5GHz band (pretty sensible right in the middle). Still, I bumped my AP to run in 161 and ran another test with ~2X the bandwidth without loss of latency. Good update.

I also received a future-proofed 2.5Gb 5 port Ethernet switch I ordered and installed in the "wiring closet." This will give me high performance wired switched access in several rooms of the Nest. Of course I tested in the study again from the macStudio... good to the Internet but only to 100Mbps, though latency is improved, as expected. The run from garage wiring closet can't deliver above 100Mbps?! The link from the router to switch auto-negotiates to 1000BaseT (all the router can do) and delivers 1Gbps when I test directly connected to it. I forced the study link to be 2.5Gbps to the switch. But after the study run and it's patch cord (changed out - not an issue) all I get is 100Mbps. I am not splitting hairs here ~ while it is kindof a long run ~60ft, it should work at 1Gb. I guess I have to yet again review punch-downs and terminations. I expect if I ever add a server here in Summit, performance between local clients and that server needs to be 2.5Gbps. Hmmm... right now WiFi is appreciably better.

While there is still work to do I am much better off as to bandwidth but sacrificed latency. Dang it ~ it's the latency man. Though, I will surely return the new NightHawk RS700S WiFi 7 router/AP as it's been discovered to have a backdoor from the NSA. Sheesh.

Update 29Aug26 ~ Better WiFi But Still Blocked On Wired... Kala and I sped to Summit mainly so I could grab some backpacking gear here. The ride was decent on Sat mid-day ~ Kala had the CrusherNet on her macBook the whole way broadband. Summit is cooler and we did some chores Sat PM. We dined fine at Pure on salmon bowls and headed to hear the Turnpike Troubadours at Copper during their Union Peak weekend. It was mobbed and no parking was to be had within 1.5mi of the stage. We rolled around for 15min and then blew it off. Dang. Back at the Nest we prepped for visitors in Sep26 and did some more net testing and installations. I replaced an aging router/AP and the new one is excellent. WiFi 6 for my mac, Kala's iPad, and my iPhone are better that the congested channels, but 5GHz and 2.4GHz serve spots well still. I tested WiFi "reception" around the Nest to strong results. Here are tests from Nest extreme locations... sure it is off hours but the WiFi rips. I've not even dropped in the 2 additional pucks of the mesh yet.

However, equally remarkable but flipped negative, I've not gotten the uplink from "wiring closet" to study to yield more than 100Mbps. The router does 1G fine, the switch in the "wiring closet" spits 1G fine. But upstairs on the long run with Dave's terminations and punch downs, life still sucks. Hmmm...

Update 19Sep26 ~ Fried Gear From Power Surge Or "Scheduled Maintenance"... I lost contact with the Nest network about a week ago. I checked Xfi outages and found there was "scheduled maintenance" in my area. What I found on arrival back in Summit yesterday was my cable modem was fried and would not even power up (not the wall wart ~ the modem itself). I know it could've been a power surge (which I do protect against to 2100 joules) but the coincidence is odd. I have no Internet service while here, except the trickle through a tethered iPhone. I did try a old Moto DOCSIS 3.0 modem but activation processes just yielded "not supported." Argh. I guess I'm throwing away a lot of stuff for connecting to Xfi. Tethered works on text stuff but latency is brutal. I used it more on day 1 here but despite having unlimited data on my line, AT&T throttles me to 128Kbps for tethered after just ~5G. Using Elon's CrusherNet provides decent bandwidth yet still poor latency (satellites of course) but I have to be close to the receiver and leave the Crusher outside. Here are tethered and CrusherNet.