On the Cliff (Niagara Escarpment) overlooking Lake Winnebago. The park is a great place to wander around. 

The Niagara Escarpment

The Niagara Escarpment

What do Lake Winnebago and Niagara Falls have in common? The Niagara Escarpment. This is a big bedrock ledge formed through erosion that forms the Door Peninsula as well at the Bruce Peninsula (in Canada) and Niagara Falls (see the map on the link). It also makes digging difficult in the western parts of my district since the bedrock is so close to the surface (from an Eagle project). The only reason I looked this up was that I was hiking Sunday at High Cliff State Park just outside of Appleton on the north end of Lake Winnebago and wondered why there was a cliff there. It's a steep hike from the cliff bottom to the top where the camping area is, but it provides a great view of the lake (see photo posted after this post). I would never have guessed that there was a cliff like that in central Wisconsin. Now I know why.

Google Announces Plan To Destroy All Information It Can't Index

Read all about it.
Courtesy of the Onion, America's Finest News Source.

Footnotes

Paint Stripping:

If you buy an old home, don't decide to strip the paint on your own. Eddie started stripping the paint on his stair railing a while ago and is still working on it. His house is about 80 years old and the stair railing appears to have at least six layers of paint on it that need to be stripped so that it can be stained. The worst part is that it wasn't originally sealed before painting and that paint of all varities has been used on it (oil-based, latex, etc.). I went over Saturday to help and even with some nasty chemical strippers it still was taking a long time to even get the top layers off. His dad suggested the project in the first place and I am sure that he is laughing manically as Eddie works on it. The other project suggested was to strip the wallpaper, but he said that the railing would be a better project--wrong.

The Worship of the Packers:

Friday night was an exhibition game for the Packers where they got their butt kicked. We got to the Box (our favorite sports bar) at about half-time and it was as close to dead silence as a bar gets. It could be reasonably expected that it would liven up after the torture was done, but it stayed quiet. We went out to several other establishments--all of them quiet, even for Sheboygan. The only explanation was the Game. It's only the preseason folks. It was fun to torment the fans about losing to the Lions--not that that looks likely given their performance or lack thereof last night. It will be a long season for both teams.

Living Models:

While I was walking through the Fox Valley Mall in Appleton on Sunday I was surprised to see live models at Abercrombie and Fitch. Now I don't usually pay attention to that store since it is a little beyond my income and snobishnish level, but I was suprised to see a female and male model posing just inside the entrance to the store as I walked by. The guy was just standing there is his jeans, but the girl was wearing a shirt with her pants--that's not fair. Also, I thought the sign on the mall door says no shirt, no shoes, no service. I guess that only applies to mere middle and lower class mortals. It was weird.

I will note that the mall felt a lot like Oakland County. There were a lot of rich high school and college kids shopping for back to school as well as a lot of other none too poor folks around. The parking lot was packed. You would have thought it was Christmas.

Curtains:

My whole purpose shopping was to seek curtains for my bedroom windows. I was sleeping Saturday morning when I dreamt that someone was shining a flashlight in my face and it hurt. Low and behold it was the sun and I wasn't dreaming. The sun has moved far enough south in the sky to be out from behind the other building at 6am. Even with the blinds shut it is still difficult to sleep once the sun comes up. Given this curtains seem like a good plan. I thought this would be easy. Nope. First there was sizing. My windows are 4 foot square, but the curtains only come in 5 foot or 7 foot lengths and the 5 foot size is relatively rare. Then there was finding a simple design and reasonable choice. In the end I visited 8 stores in person and several online before finding a compromise choice online today. All that for curtains.

Work:

I will note that I am not the guy to run your popcorn training. My burning distaste for the program comes out in my presentation no matter how hard I try.

We played kickball as a staff on Monday. That was a lot of fun. Our staff is rather more competitive as a whole than I thought. The teams were north versus south with the DFS and Scout Exec on opposite teams. The south team (I am part of this) was the Scout Exec's team and we got beat 20-15 in a 9 inning game. The best quote was from the Scout Exec "a leader should be honest, so I will say that I suck (at Kickball) which I do. Now I can say that our team sucks." It was a great team pep talk that met with universal agreement on our team.

One positive note is that I finally have a district chairman after 7 months without one. It was one of the shortest recruitments ever--not even two minutes. It will be nice to have a lead volunteer to work with who I am also becoming friends with.

Ta, Ta for now.

Don't Build Below Sea Level

It seems that God finally got irritated with the Gulf Coast and decided to erase it. I haven't been able to watch much of the coverage, but what I have seen of Katrina's damage is stunning. I have to agree with Barry that the mayor who compared it to the recent tsunami was being a bit shallow, but he wasn't far off. The human cost will not be anywhere near as high, but the damage won't be far off even with all of the warning. Who has seen recently 80% of a major metro area submerged and continuing to flood over a day after the initial storm as well as a number of smaller metro areas all but erased from the map where even the basic services we take for granted are gone? Not even Andrew had this kind of lingering effect. The impact of the storm looks like it will actually affect us across the country--not something that happens often--as if gas prices weren't high enough. The idea of having refugee camps on the scale that this has created that will likely have to house people for many months here in the US is certainly unpleasant. Shoot, we complain when it takes a couple of days to have power restored and they are looking at 4-6 weeks to restore power in New Orleans. At the same time everything will have to be completely rebuilt--absolutely mind-numbing.

The part that truly displays human folly is that all of the cities hit are planning to rebuild in the same exposed locations. This would be a great chance to rebuild in a less vunerable location, but people being people they will go back and expect it not to happen again or expect that they can beat it if it comes again. Sheer folly. Who builds a city below sea level in the first place? I realize that the Netherlands are partially below sea level but at least that country is not in a hurricane prone area where storm surges, torrential rains and flooding has a reasonable chance to overwhelm any countermeasures. Oh well, this will keep the news agencies busy for a while and create a lot of jobs in the rebuilding process. Hopefully something good comes from the tragedy.

The other high or low point is that this is still early in the hurricane season with September, statistically the busiest month, yet to come. We'll see what happens next.

Get Together

So as I previously mentioned I will be home for Labor Day weekend. If you are in town and feel like driving to Water-tucky we'll be having a get together at Smokey Bones on Sat. the 3rd at noon with folks from CVC and, of course, the alumni are invited. If I don't see you then or at some other point in this visit I will be home for Thanksgiving, likely the whole week. Hope to see you soon.

Pure Nerd--No surprise there...

This is courtesy of a link on Barry's blog. Really entertaining.

Pure Nerd

60 % Nerd, 39% Geek, 34% Dork

For The Record: A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia. A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one. A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions. You scored better than half in all Nerd, earning you the title of: Pure Nerd. The times, they are a-changing. It used to be that being exceptionally smart led to being unpopular, which would ultimately lead to picking up all of the traits and tendences associated with the "dork." No-longer. Being smart isn't as socially crippling as it once was, and even more so as you get older: eventually being a Pure Nerd will likely be replaced with the following label: Purely Successful. Congratulations!

My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 54% on nerdiness

You scored higher than 55% on geekosity

You scored higher than 59% on dork points

Visits

So I have hosted family not once, but twice in the last week. First, my grandparents came down from visiting the family farm a week ago for lunch. They brought with them my great aunt and uncle whom I had only previously met a few times and we met with my second cousin at lunch. My 2nd cousin is actually a 20-year Sheboygan resident so it seemed appropriate to my grandparents that I meet her. It was nice to see them. Funny that it took them visiting for me to actually take time to walk the shops on the riverfront.

This weekend my mom, sister and one of their friends came to stay with me from Saturday through today. I took them on a whirlwind tour of the Sheboygan area on Sunday. This included the Kohler Design Center (think of a showroom/museum of Kohler products--my third visit), the Kettle Morraine with stops at Parnell Tower (see picture) as well as a few other viewpoints, and the state beach which is beautiful with soft white sand and a gentle drop-off perfect for wading. They took the day yesterday to visit Door County (the finger that sticks off of north-eastern WI) which I have yet to visit. It was nice to see them without the drive, but it was odd to have three people sharing my apartment with me.

I will actually be returning home for a visit over Labor Day weekend. This will be the first of 3 trips home over the next several months with Thanksgiving and Christmas visits following. I have purchased an I-PASS for my truck to save on the hassle of the tollway around Chicago. Now I won't have to stop for the annoying toll booths or worry about having change. With the amount you are required to start with on it I won't have to recharge it for a while. The only downside is that it is a box that you mount behind your rearview mirror so that won't be very attractive. Oh well.

Also this last weekend was Lakefest. This is one of the largest of the many festivals in Sheboygan. Ed and I went down there for a while on Friday evening to see what was going on. It was interesting. There were a lot of people three sheets to the wind, predominantly over 30, all rocking out to some oldies band. There was also the typical high school groupie crowd wandering around lost. It was a large crowd all things considered and I am sure there was enough beer consumed to keep a dorm building happy for weeks.

Besides the oldies band there was a good blues band playing in a different pavillion. The band was the Groove Hogs (I am listening to them as I write on my Rhapsody account). The (new) lead singer looks like he is in his mid-twenties but has an awesome voice to sing the blues. The crowd in the tent was smaller, but more amusing. A drunk old guy was dancing with an invisible partner for a long while and there was some middle-age woman in stretch pants with a ballerina dress over it who was also dancing on her own for a long time--both were hilarious to watch and, I am sure, well-inebriated. I'll probably try to go see the Hogs play again. It actually looks like they will be playing at the House of Blues in Chicago in September (according to their website) so that might be worth going to. We'll see.

Me with my mom and sister last weekend while they were visiting. We are standing on top of Parnell Tower which overlooks the Kettle Morraine State Forest. You can see over 20 miles fom the top of the tower on a clear day. It will be awesome when fall comes. 

The trail along Lake Michigan that I walk several time a week. It's about 1.5 miles from my apartment to reach it, but I love to go down there to smell the lake air and feel the breeze. It's like the ocean minus the saltiness. Just figured that I needed to post a peaceful picture. 

Customer (Dis)ervice

There is one thing that can really get old about this job--being reasonably polite all of the time. This is usually not too hard since I can always pretend to care when I really have other things on my mind without being too obvious. There are times however where I would prefer to completely deconstruct a person's point-of-view. I did this several time while working at the theatre both with customers and employees. Here, however, that would be decidedly counterproductive in most situations.

Yesterday was the closest I have come to laying into a volunteer in quite some time. I was delivering my packets to leaders' homes and finally met a leader that I had not yet met up in the north part of my district. Apparently there was bad karma between this leader and the professional that he previously worked with. There really wasn't much conversation, just him ranting about a lack of support more than liberally sprinkled with obscenities. As I stood there stunned, he went on for a few minutes then abruptly stopped and walked back into his house without so much as a by-your-leave. If it were not for the shock factor, I probably would have lost my temper. Anybody who uses obscenity as the vast majority of their words especially in the first conversation with someone strikes me as small-minded. The other part that was frustrating was that he complained of a lack of support, yet I have personally left several messages for him that were not returned and know that Brian has tried to call him. His biggest threat was that he would step down and leave us the mess. This struck me again as small-minded; if he is mad at the professionals, taking it out by abandoning the kids he works with is not going to help things. I can survive people being upset with me; Lord knows I had enough of that at the theatre. What I cannot abide by is taking out your frustration on an uninvolved party. It is simply terrorism at that point so I will have to do something to keep the peace and keep the kids involved.

I'm not really sure what precisely I will do from here. One thing is that he is in Brian's service area so he is technically his problem. Of course I still have to advise Brian on what to do and give him a heads-up. At this point, smothering him with decency while seeking to replace him seems like a good strategy.

Yes, he did get me a little cranky. Suprisingly he was the only one especially since I did not call to warn anyone that I would be stopping by to deliver their packets--why waste another night on calls when they will need time to look at the information to have answers for me about their recruitment plans. One more strike in the paradigm shift I am attempting here in my district.

3 Years and Counting

So yesterday was my third anniversary of being a professional Scouter. At times it doesn't seem that long and then other times it seems like forever, of late it feels like the latter. In a way it is a bit entertaining since I should just be able to considering a transfer now (by the official policies), not starting my seventh month in a new council. I think that early move may be part of why I often feel so much like a rookie at times (more so lately) even though I know that there was little left in Clinton Valley Council that I was likely to learn. There certainly is, however, a lot I have left to learn in my job now.

Another three years doesn't seem unlikely at this point. There is certainly enough to keep me busy here in my current district. The mildly irritating part here is that the more I learn about what's going on, the more there is to overhaul or replace. The upside of this is that it gives me more room to try new approaches to common challenges and bring a breath of fresh air where it has been stale for a long time. So far I have not caused any heart failures but I will certainly keep folks on their toes.

I can't say that I have been any more inspired this week than others. Actually, it has been almost a record low week for motivation. Perhaps it is the knowledge that the fall is looming like impending doom or that the summer was way too short. The length of the weekend certainly did not help (see below). I know part of it is that I am in week 2 of my associate's time away (for training) and I am keenly missing his help on the ever-growing number of projects. I really noticed it the last three days where I have been a delivery boy dropping off fall recruiting packets off to all of the Cubmasters who missed the training session (most of them). This was a total of almost 300 miles of driving at a time of near-record (in real prices) gas prices. I did work it out though and found it was still cheaper to drive them around than mailing them.

Okay, enough about work, the weekend was more entertaining. Let me lead off by saying that it was another really long weekend. Also a definition is in order, the group of us that hang out regularly, predominantly from Michigan, in their mid-20's and mostly Kohler employees have begun referring to ourselves at the A-Team (yes, the one with Mr. T). There is also a B-Team and the ladies are the C-Team. Anyways the A-team got together all three days of the weekend which is rare. It started Friday with a combined A-Team, B-Team, and C-Team BBQ at Ed's followed by a round-robin visit of several establishments ending after 2 am.

Not much of Saturday morning was seen by anyone except the two poor souls who had to, respectively, work and volunteer early that morning. There was a good aspect to the lack of sleep for the guy who had to work, in his sleep-deprived state he was debating buying a big TV then he dreamed of it during a nap. This inspired his purchase of a 50" widescreen Sony TV. It is beautiful. I call it divine inspiration. Of course several of us had to go help him set it up and stare slack-jawed at it.

Given how tired everyone was and the fascination of the new TV, we all managed to decide to go to dinner. The waitress was greatly amused by our table and we had a great time there and decided to go out again. After visiting our home establishment and deciding that the band sucked, we ended up at the closest thing to a dance club in Sheboygan. That actually is not the best description of Dave's Who In. It is a two-level bar with pool tables and karoke on the first floor and a sort of hip-hop dance club upstairs. The consensus had the A-Team and company stay downstairs to play pool and sing along with the karoke singers. We didn't leave until after 2am. I did get to drive Ed's roomate's CTS home. What an excellent car. I am aiming to take it out to the freeway to play soon.

Sunday was more tame with the A-Team and C-Team spending the day at my apartment complex pool to the entertainment of the manager and her husband. I should have gone home and slept that night, but that would have made sense. Instead I rode with Ed down to Chicago O'Hare to pick his girlfriend up from the airport which was a 5 1/2 hour round trip. Chicago was certainly pretty all lit up at night, but I don't plan on making another trip like that any time soon.

It was a long weekend, but it certainly was fun. One amusing note was that I was carded for the first time going to a bar this weekend and it wasn't just once, but four times. I didn't think there was a drinking age here...

SimSoc

In the continuing saga of convincing my bosses to send me to classes outside the normal BSA professional curricula and getting others to pay for it, I spent today in the first official session of the Sheboygan County Leadership Institute hosted by the Chamber of Commerce. I am the only participant who works in a non-profit, but am suprisingly not the youngest person there. This was an all day session held at one of the local resorts (the Osthoff) and was a unique experience.

The program was called SimSoc for simulated society hosted by Dr. Peppers (no joke) from Clemson University. There were 30 or so pages of instructions explaining the game so I will really summarize. In essence you have four groups of people in seperate regions with a limited ability to communicate between them. As it turns out there is a limited number of resources (jobs, subsistence vouchers--required to survive, travel permits) that are available for the groups to use to support the society. For those societal forces that are not represented in the groups there is a set of "natural laws" that define what is allowed. At the end of each turn the overall society has a set of indicators that are measured based on actions of the groups. If you are confused, good, we all were when we started.

What we did not initially realize was that the groups started out with a disproportionate share of resources. One group had nothing to the point of no chairs or table in their room to my group which had more than ample income and resources to support our membership--assuming cooperation. Given this, our group ended up with a very "American" viewpoint quite unintentionally and ended up with a reputation similar to our nations minus the propensity to drop bombs on those we don't like. We were first concerned with taking care of our own, then with being as productive as possible so that we had spare resources to share with others which we did in a thrifty/efficient fashion. The unique part of this for me was to sit on the corporate side of the table and get many requests for assistance but knowing that my liquid resources are minimal as the rest are tied up in business and manufacturing without readily transferrable value yet with a necessary impact on society.

The most entertaining twist of the day was lunch. Our group had a table fully set with formal settings and individual plated meals with salad, soup and dessert. We automatically assumed that everyone had the same. Not so. The poor group was literally given bread, water, and soup with no spoons, knives or even napkins so they went to the other regions begging. My team initially thought that they were joking, but did give up a lot of food to that group. The other two groups got sandwiches and hot dogs respectively. Apparently the lunch is served based on how the individual groups are doing for themselves. We Americans were the best off in all catergories and made a very American assumption that everyone else was as well.

Without boring you with a lot of details that won't make sense without playing the game, I will say that it was a lot of fun. My group was great to work with. Ironically, it was the two youngest guys (myself and another guy) who caught on the quickest and ended up running our region--effectively I might add. It got heated at the end as the society as a whole started to crumble (our region was fine...). The biggest fault our class had was in not working as a team across regions. By the time we started to it was all but too late to arrest the societal decline.

The whole process was enlightening since it did a very good job of modeling societal pressures and challenges in a hands-on way that actually had an effect (minimal, yes) on you personally. It would be a great project for secondary school students to help them understand how a society functions. Shoot, our government should play and get a different perspective on things. I may try to add it to the next Venturing leadership course I have the chance to teach as a great learning tool that is fun.

Next month the class is doing a day of team-building which should be interesting. One side note, we played the name game (circle with each person repeating the names of the people who spoke before them) with 25 people and I ended up as the 25th person who had to say everyone's names--I managed to remember all but the last guy (next to me). My moniker: Jaberwocky Jake.

Back soon.

Day Camp is DONE

Finally, the sordid saga is done. I had the pleasure of running our second day camp last Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Once again, we only had 40 kids participate from 5 packs and the Parks and Rec department. Overall, it was not bad, but it really wasn't horribly productive either.

Uniquely, this last session was a partnership (in its second year) between the district and the Manitowoc (a city) Parks and Rec Department. The upside of this was that they provided the majority of the staff (except range officers) and handled the facilities arrangements. The downside was that Brian and I got to handle the paperwork and certification process. The partnership made the certification process much more interesting than it has need to be. Thankfully I had a good inspector that I knew who worked with me to find the correct phrasing to make it work out.

One thing I will say for the Parks and Rec staff is that they were predominantly attractive, college girls. They did seem to be really young and have attitudes which didn't make it as fun as it could have been. I can't complain too much since I would have had to recruit staff otherwise.

I did actually have to work this camp beyond admin. I got to run the BB range on Range Day. Three of the five packs were well behaved and got a lot of shooting in. The other two packs, however, were a handful even with decent adult assistance. It was the first time that I have wanted to rifle butt stroke (think pistol whip...) kids at a range I was running. I managed to restrain myself however. The downside was getting sunburned again. Luckily it was just my arms and neck so sleeping wasn't bad.

Overall, I am not impressed with the day camp system in this council. The system might have had some serious issues in CVC, but at least there was some level of coordination between programs especially in planning and preparation. There is none here and the equipment in the trailers is far from adequate. I felt like McGuyver at both camps using duct tape and paperclips to build GPS units. It is now on my goal list to either completely overhaul day camp or get rid of it in my district.

Thank goodness its over.

Shuttle Replacement?

I might have spoken too soon. This site outlines what is expected to be NASA's choice to replace the Shuttle system. It is strikingly similar to proposals from several near future sci-fi novels. It almost makes sense to base the Shuttle replacement on proven propulsion hardware from the Shuttle.

Another competitor is t/Space which stands for Transformational Space Corporation. The main partner of interest in this group is Scaled Composites--the company that brought you SpaceShipOne. Their design is a whole new system, but it appears to be well thought out and is already in testing phases. I would expect that this will be developed with or without NASA's cooperation as a private space vehicle.

These are only two of the projects that are out there, but they both offered more concrete data than the other competitors. Here are, however, links to some of those proposals.

Lockheed's Proposal

White Knight and SpaceShipOne up close and personal. 

Airshow Redux without the burn

Saturday I visited the largest and most expensive ($35 to get in with parking) air show that I have ever been to. The Experimental Aviation Association (EAA) airshow, Airventure, is a week-long event held every year at their headquarters in Oshkosh, WI. At a regular air show most of the display is military or civic aircraft with a smattering of personal planes and some other aviation-related displays. At the Airventure (website) private aircraft take center stage with military and civic aviation as fillers. The event goes beyond seeing aircraft to having a large variety of workshops, a speakers' series and numerous booths with vendors from aviation-related industries and aircraft manufacturers. It is a full-blooded aviation enthusiast's heaven.

I had initially planned to go see a few of the speakers (Dick Rutan--first pilot to fly around the world on a single tank of gas, and Chuck Yeager--first man to fly past the speed of sound) but was not able to roust myself early enough to get there to see them speak. When I got there I was lucky to arrive just in time to catch a spot in the last parking lot that was within walking distance of the show. There were plates from all over the country in the parking lot and I heard folks with accents from other places in the world walking around the show. I was disappointed in the map of the show that I got in the program I purchased because it did not show where the planes I sought were parked. The Force, however, was with me and I was able to figure it out without directions. First, I visited the Warbird display area (retired military aircraft in private ownership--mainly WWII fighters) which was nifty. There were several planes for sale with price tags including a 1950's vintage British jet fighter for $35,000. From here I went to the main display area.

I should mention that I had two very concrete reasons to go to the show and both were on display and did flying demonstrations: the Global Flyer (recently became the first jet aircraft flown around the world on a single tank of gas with a single pilot--Steve Fossett--an Eagle Scout) and White Knight with SpaceShip One (part of a recent rant). For both aircraft, this was to be the only public static and flying display especially for SpaceShip One which departed Sunday for its new home at the Air and Space museum in DC. These planes drew large crowds at their area. I was a bit jealous of the kids because they were invited to actually touch and look inside these planes whereas the adults had to content themselves with looking at them from across the roped off line. I knew that both aircraft would be on display, but I did not know that I would get to see both in flight for flying displays. They look very fragile but are amazingly graceful in flight and were awesome to watch.

Besides the Warbirds and Rutan's two planes, the military had a good display and I saw my future personal airplane, the Beechcraft Starship. The flying demonstration was very cool. It started with the Global Flyer departure followed by some Warbird displays including a mock attack complete with pyrotechnics. After this, the jet Warbirds got into the act with some high speed flybys. Then the White Knight took to the air with SpaceShip One in a captive carry and did several flybys narrated over the PA system by its designer Burt Rutan (company website) with his insights into its flying characteristics and a promise that it would be in regular operation with passengers by decade's end. Awesome. The Harrier demo that followed couldn't quite compare even though it was pretty neat. I did not stay for the acrobatic demonstrations.

It was well worth the time and money to go and I am looking forward to going next year. It may even be worth taking time off to spend a couple of days there going to the speakers forums. I took 99 pictures that day, a sampling of which can be found here. Taking pictures of planes in flight is tough. I think I need a better camera and more practice to get some really neat shots. For the record, I did not get burned this time, the sunscreen did its job.

Senate Provides Support for Scouting

Senate: Boy Scouts can continue to use military bases

Here is the background on the Senate vote I refered to in my previous posting. This was the best article since it has a link to the actual text of the bill. The section discussing Scouting can be found at SA1342, Sec.1073. It makes interesting reading.