Friday – Saturday 4/2/10
Trip: 16.0 miles (plus another 3 mile road hike back to car)
Elevation: 128ft (max) 42ft (min) ~210ft (total accent)
Time: ~8 hours total hiking
Temperature: 85 F
Wind: Light breeze
Conditions: Clear, no precipitation, low humidity
Pack Weight: ~24lbs (overnight load)

Summary:

Myakka State Park is pretty typical for a South Florida lake/wetland. Full of wild life, flooded during the rainy season and miles of densely packed palmetto scrub brush with the occasional island of mossy oak or scrub pine. Oh and it gets hot. Really hot. And muggy if the humidity is up. Did I mention mosquitoes? But if you’re lucky and you time your trip right, hiking in South Florida can be rather pleasant. Myakka is close to the Gulf so in the spring when the sun starts to set, a nice breeze kicks up keeping most of the evening bugs at bay and provides some relief from the afternoon heat. The only real issue is dodging around days or weeks when the spring rains have flooded the low lands, basically putting everything under 2-3 inches of standing water. We managed to get everything but dry trail so I can’t complain too much about the trip.
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I’m still not happy with my photo gallery layout. To make matters worse, a recent update fubar’d the individual picture selection so I’ve reverted to the flash pop-out as a temporary fix. Works great unless you’re viewing a full size photo – then you get the scroll bars and too much detail.

I love the Ngallery mod for the backend, I just need to figure out a better way of displaying and organizing the photos on the front end.

Born February 23rd, 2010 at 5:44am, the latest addition to the Minnesota Tobers has finally arrived. Weighing in at a healthy 7lbs 9ozs, baby Kendal and Mom are doing well. We can’t wait to officially meet her this summer at our annual family reunion in Steinhatchee, FL (and visit with my nephew Ethan).

Congratulations Scott & Nicole!!!!

It’s that time of year again. Melissa and I are making the trip down to Gainesville FL for our second annual alumni weekend. After 10+ years of not doing anything FL Crew related (or rowing in general), we’re both trying to get back into supporting our alumni and it’s been fun getting back out to the boathouse for a weekend tour of the facilities. I might even squeeze my not-so-lightweight frame back into a shell for a brief reminder of what made rowing such an addiction during my college years.

Florida Crew Alumni,

Invitations were sent out last week to the 4th annual Florida Crew Family and Alumni Weekend. Some of you may not receive one because your physical address is not on file. A copy of the invite is attached to this message. It explains how to RSVP and gives a description of the event. The festivities start Saturday, February 20th. The event continues to grow every year and I guarantee it will be worth the trip to Gainesville.

Hope to see you there!
Family and Alumni Weekend Invitation

Regards,

Mark Gallrein
Florida Crew Alumni Coordinator
FloridaCrewAlumni@gmail.com

It’s not often that commercial technology in the public sector makes such an intuitive leap into the modern world that I actually notice the change. Sure, plenty of stuff changes behind the scenes all the time but we pump gas from the same kind of terminals that have been in use for 20+ years, pay for products using the same small plastic cards (or cash), stack our groceries on the conveyor belt, etc. It might not sound like much but you develop a habit of doing things. All the steps you go through to accomplish some mundane task.

Take deposits for example. Sign the back of the check, find a damn deposit envelope (always seem to be out when you need one), fill it out, enter the amount into the machine, confirm the total, etc. Pretty much the standard procedure for ATM deposits for the last 10+ years (not having to fill out the envelope is the only change I can remember). But when I went to deposit a check at my local Wachovia branch this morning, I was completely thrown for a loop.

The old machine was gone, replaced by a brand new design. This ATM didn’t have a hard to see, 8″ green CRT monitor running some outdated piece of ATM software from the 80s. The new machine was sleek and modern. A large, brightly lit touchscreen LCD dominated most of the front panel with a user interface that was actually pleasant to use (I didn’t have to fight with the card reader to accept my bank card either). However, the most noticable difference was the lack of a deposit envelope container. As I stepped through the deposit process I realized Wachovia had just made deposit envelopes obsolete. You select the deposit account, feed the check into the slot and the ATM auotmatically scans the check for the amount. All you do if verify the total and finalize the transaction. Apparently it will take up to 30 checks or a stack of cash all at once.

This is really nothing new – desktop/commercial check scanners have been around for years so it’s not like the banking industry just figured out how to scan a check digitally. I just want to give them credit for actually putting that tech to good use in a way that makes this annoying process even easier.

That’s pretty cool.

I remember playing all 6 games on my friend’s console. Gripping the joystick (black, square base with a single red button) between the web of our thumb and pointer, we’d play for hours until our hands started to cramp. Atari has converted them into flash based web games:

Atari Arcade

Bonus Link: Muppets return to YouTube!