Friday, January 9, 2009 - Oliver Lee Memorial State Park, Alamogordo NM

Sitting in the Shade, Oliver Lee Memorial State Park, Alamogordo NM, January 9, 2009

The light is on...

This morning I took a walk in the park to try to figure out if it would worth my while to move to another site for a stronger Verizon signal and found a pretty consistent 2-3 bars on my cell phone all over the park. Nope, moving won't help.

Then I plugged the USB720 modem directly into the laptop and took it outside to walk around and see if for some reason it would pick up a signal directly that it wouldn't pick up while plugged into the router. Nope. But I got absorbed in fiddling with the VZAccess Manager software that has never worked with the modem (but I keep hoping I can fix whatever the glitch is and keep trying this & that) when I noticed the little green LED on the modem was on solid indicating it had locked on a signal. Oooh! A signal! But no access through the VZAccess Manager - I still haven't gotten that to work.

Inside I go, plug the modem back in the router and fire it up.

We're on! And cooking! This thing is really cooking!

Bye, I've got stuff to do.

Night camp

Site 7 - Oliver Lee Memorial State Park, Alamogordo NM

Verizon cell phone service - good signal
Verizon EVDO service - very good signal and access speed ( I have to qualify this - during my January 2008 visit the signal and access speed was excellent - in January 2009 it was practically non-existent during the day and slow at night with unpredictable short periods of excellent access)
Go to Oliver Lee Memorial State Park website
Go to Oliver Lee Memorial State Park on my Nightcamps map
Check the weather here

Rice Toss

After the dinner our hosts conducted us to the beach. Among the presents was a large supply rice for the fleet. It was put up in straw sacks or bales containing about 125 pounds each. By the pile stood a company of athletes or gymnasts chosen from the peasantry for their strength and size and trained for the service and entertainment of the court. At a signal from their leader, who was himself a giant of muscle and fat, a sort of human Jumbo, they began transporting the rice to the boats. It was more frolic than work. Some of thembore a bale on each hand above their heads, some would carry two laid crosswise on the shoulders and head, while others performed dextrous feats of tossing, catching, balancing them, or turning somersaults with them. I saw one nimble Titan fasten his talons in a sack, throw it down on the sand still keeping his hold, turn a somersault over it, throw it over him as he revolved, and come down sitting on the beach with the sack in his lap. Beat that who can. If you imagine it "as easy as preaching," try it the next time in a gymnasium. But let me advise you, first make your will.

The Logbook of the Captains Clerk, John J. Sewell, Lakeside Press, 1995 pg 256

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