Morton Fox's journal

Went for an on-site job interview in Wilmington at noon today. It's an odd location -- a solitary office building hidden away behind apartment buildings and woods. I recognized the general location when I got there because I'd been to Rockford Park and Trolley Square before. It's a small startup-like operation. There were only 3 people at the office today, so we all had a meeting in the conference room. What's interesting about this interview is while they wanted to hear about my career experience, a lot of the work I did after hours was relevant too. It's a shop that does a lot of scripting. What's more interesting is even my knowledge of macroeconomics and my experience investing in gold, silver, and oil were relevant because what they do involves both tech and commodities. With so much of what I've done coming up in the interview, I'm afraid I may have talked their ears off. :) Anyway, I thought the interview went fairly well.

After that, I returned home to have a pot pie and change into my ragged geocaching clothes. I had two hours before sunset so I headed out to Bear and Newark to do a bunch of geocaches that were listed within the last day or so. ":O Baby!" was the strangest one of the bunch. It's rated at difficulty 4 / terrain 4 and the cache description talks a good game about taking precautions and bringing climbing equipment. It wasn't that hard this evening at dusk, although I could see how the steep slope going down to the creek would be slippery if it has rained recently. In the end though, it turned out to be a short hike in the woods next to the Old Country Buffet strip mall.

In the evening, I had Endless Enchiladas at Don Pablo's in Newark to use my last $10 reward. I had 12 enchiladas, 4 each of beef, chicken, and cheese enchiladas. I think I still prefer Taco Tuesday, but it's good to try the other all-you-can-eat deals once in a while. Then I went shopping at the new Christiana Mall Target. On the clothing racks, I noticed they had pre-ripped, pre-stained jeans. I compared those to my own ripped, stained jeans. Hey, looks like my pants actually became more fashionable while I was hiking in the woods getting them all muddy and torn! Who knew? :)

( The caches... )

Cloudy, 75-80°F. It was a pretty busy day. Made some phone calls in the morning. Then I forged ahead on some software projects. I went out late in the afternoon only because I needed something.

Of course, I did some quick geocaches since I was out. Little Gunn and Just Passing Through are both around Concordville / West Chester and both just off US-202, making for convenient access. "Little Gunn" is pretty interesting. This small cannon is a Vietnam War monument tucked away in an obscure location. You'd think a war memorial would be out by the road where everyone can see it, but no, this one is in the bushes on the side of an unused parking lot.

It's interesting that Amazon has started sending the Kindle out to brick-and-mortar retail stores ahead of the shopping season. Since I was in the area, I stopped at Target to look at the Kindle display. (Well, that's not the actual reason I went to Target but since I was there...) It was already sold out! Funny, I wasn't sure about getting a Kindle Wi-Fi at $139 but I guess other people thought it's a deal.

Heavy rain today but I had to go out to take care of a couple of things. I went to Target to return a plastic tub that was too small and get a bigger one. Found out that 30-gallon containers are on sale this week so that's perfect. After that, I went to Newlin Grist Mill Park in Concord for the Ball and Chain geocache. It was't good weather for walking around outside but this one is only 400 feet from the parking area so I couldn't resist. The waterfall was really going because of the rain.

Sunny and 34°F. Headed northeast up I-495 and I-95 into Pennsylvania and found geocaches in the towns mentioned in the title. Most of the caches were rather straightforward. Only "Phobia #5" and "Cache Squad" took way longer to find than should've been the case. "A walk in the park" was more like a dangerous steep bushwhack in the park but it reminded me of the way geocaching was done back in Northern NJ. I was already somewhat familiar with the area around Media. 5 or 6 years ago, I went geocaching there after Anthrocon and I did still remember some of the places where I stopped for caches and even one office parking lot I used to make a U-turn. (Funny thing is there's a cache there now.)

At the end of the day, we took an alternate route back to Target in Brandywine to exchange the shower curtains for a different color. (In retrospect, blaze orange shower curtains weren't such a good idea. No danger of a deer hunt in my bathroom, last I checked. :) ) Also took a stab at finding the "Cache Squad" cache at night. It is in the Concord Mall area, just off the Best Buy parking lot.

( The caches... )

Sunny and 29°F. It was a brutally cold day, more because of the 30mph winds than the temperature. Made a quick stop at the Wonder Bakery Outlet in Cheswold to refresh our bread supply. Then we went geocaching in downtown Dover, then West Dover, then South Dover, and finished up in Camden. It was slow going at first but the last 6 geocaches took only about an hour.

Stopped at Target in Dover after that to check what they still had in their after-Christmas clearance sale. There wasn't much left. However, there were good deals on peanut butter and laptop sleeves.

( The caches... )

I planned on attending the Santa LOVES PIZZA!!! geocaching event, but since it's in Dover, I figured I might as well make a day of it. The first stop was to drop off yard waste from the past two days of yardwork at the mid-county yard waste drop-off site. No charge for disposal so it's a good place to bring all the tree branches from the backyard. Then we stopped at the Wonder/Hostess Bakery Outlet in Cheswold.

After that, we started on the geocaches for the day. Didn't do too many in Dover. The first few were south of Dover. Then there were a bunch in Magnolia and a bunch more in Milford, including one Sussex County geocache I needed for the Delaware Counties Challenge. (really easy because there are only 3 counties in Delaware :) ) The physical cache for the counties challenge turned out to be just behind a Target store, which is convenient because I needed to get a few items from there. (Interesting how shopping and geocaching can interweave.)

Finished the day at the geocaching event, which was at Uno Chicago Grill in Dover. It was a good event. I didn't know everyone there but I knew a few people from having attended a few previous December events in Northern Delaware. We had chicken fajita pizza, buffalo chicken pizza, and nachos. The appetizer was free because of an email list coupon. I'd signed up for Uno's mailing list just a few days before the event so I could use the intro coupon at the event.

( The caches... )

Good weather this evening so I went to Ramapo Mountain State Forest for two geocaches. I started at the upper parking area along Skyline Drive. The first one, On A Walk with My Grandson, isn't actually that far from the road. The catch is the part of the road it's near is 0.35 mile from the parking area. The last time I went that way, I walked on the side of the busy road for that 0.35-mile stretch. This time though, I noticed a new white-red trail going roughly in the right direction so I tried going that way. It turned out to be a connector to the Cannonball Trail. From the Cannonball Trail, I went to the white trail and then to the cache site. Piece of cake. Just above the cache site, there is a large area of bare rock surface, which is typical of mountain tops around here and a good place to sit and watch the sunset.

After that, I continued down the white trail towards Hawk Nest 1. This part of the trail was steep and rocky. Near the end of the hike, I switched over to a pipeline cut briefly before bushwhacking uphill the last 200 feet to the cache site. I felt rather hot after the effort of climbing up to the cache site so I removed my jacket and put it down on a large rock. Well, guess what? The cache was hiding just below that rock! This is the second time in two weeks my jacket helped find a cache. My shopping bag is so jealous. :)

After the hike, I went to Spring Valley and Nanuet to get a few items. I finally used the Free Diet Dr. Pepper coupon. The reason why I didn't use it earlier is the coupon was actually for $1.59 and all the places I've checked around here sell the 2L bottle higher prices than that. So my strategy was to wait for a sale. I found that sale this evening at Target in Spring Valley: $1.25 for the 2L bottle. Great. As I was driving past KFC in Nanuet, I noticed a window ad for their new grilled chicken meal so that's what I got for dinner. I thought the sides were better than the chicken but it's KFC so what do you expect?

Such a mixed bag of weather. The temperature was as high as 72°F. Then it dropped when it started raining in the afternoon. I never know whether to bring a jacket. In the evening, it stopped raining just long enough for me to go and find the Before the Giants: Eagles Edition geocache. It's in Rockleigh Woods Sanctuary in Rockleigh. Starting from the parking area behind the Rockleigh municipal building, it was a 1.2-mile round trip walk through the woods. However, most of the trail was relatively flat. The only notable incline was the last 1000 feet before the cache site. That part was a walk up the ridge alongside this rocky stream.

After that, I went to Palisades Center Mall in West Nyack. I'd just received a Digital TV Converter Box coupon (which looks like a debit card), so I thought I'd go get a converter box at the Target store in the mall. I also took a quick peek at Steve & Barry's in the mall and I noticed that they have size 17 shoes! That's amazing because I rarely see anything over size 14 at the usual stores. I wear size 15 wide myself but maybe 15 wide is 16 or 17 with extra toe room. I'll go and try their largest sizes the next time I need shoes. There's a Subway in the mall, so I got yet another $5 footlong.

Joined the Twit-Out today, so I wasn't on Twitter for a full 24 hours. Twitter had been experiencing periods of slowness and going down for hours at a stretch almost every day with not a word from Twitter about the reasons for the outages, so a bunch of Twitter power users decided to hold a temporary boycott and move the discussion to Friendfeed. I have to admit that I was cynical about it. I thought it wouldn't be any better than the Livejournal "writers' strike" -- worse than that even because on Livejournal, some users pay for service and have economic leverage in making demands, whereas on Twitter, all user accounts are free accounts. But I went along with it anyway because I might as well get some work done on my nascent Friendfeed client in Vim script. (coming from the same nut who wrote a Twitter client in Vim :) )

Well, the Twit-Out turned out to be fun. We had many conversations and I made a bunch of friends on Friendfeed. It appears that the people at Twitter are starting to communicate their problems a little better too. At least, their public admission of failure is a step towards solving Twitter's problems. I'd say let's tough it out and give them time to work out the scalability issues. Livejournal was slow too a number of years ago but it has improved to the point where I rarely see any server lag. Besides, we can hang out at Friendfeed when Twitter's down. :)

Still sunny this afternoon but not as hot. 50°F. Another day, another two geocaches. The first one was The Rhodo Ranger in a residential area in Park Ridge. It was on private property but hidden with permission. Even knowing that permission had been granted didn't help much because it still felt a bit creepy puttering around on someone's yard. Fortunately, the cache was right at the edge so I didn't have to step off the road. It's strange that I had trepidations about this cache. Last Summer, one of the caches I found in Central Pennsylvania was in the cache owner's garage and I had no problem at all going for that one. Even met the guy because he was just coming home at the time when I was there.

The second of the two was Tiny Stash Tree Cache in Wood Dale County Park in Woodcliff Lake. It was in a fairly open area of the park but off the beaten path.

This evening, I finally did the monthly (I think I skipped December though) mall errand trip to Palisades Center. I saw that Jo-Ann Etc, the crafts store, was going out of business and had discounts as high as 75% but they didn't have very much left that was of interest. Target, although not going out of business (yet), also had a significant number of items at 75% off. (Lots of overstock, so Target may have had disappointing sales during the holiday shopping season.) In particular, they had some $5 jackets and $6 pants. How could I resist? While trying on those $6 pants in the fitting room, I was surprised to discover that my pants size had gone down from 42 to 40. Even size 40 was loose, so it could be even lower than that, but the size-40 pants was what I bought. I think I first noticed the reduction in waistline while on my December Delaware trip when I had to stop in the middle of a hike and adjust my belt to keep my pants from falling to my ankles. In Newark, DE, if you drop your pants in the park, you run the risk of sending the wrong signals. :)

Cold day at around 40 to 45°F, but not intolerable. The weather forecast called for rain but it ended up just being cloudy.

Early in the day, I spent too much time on some geocaches involving longer walks. Those were worth doing, but I only had 7 finds when the sun set. Fortunately, there were 4 geocaches in Northeast Philadelphia that were doable at night.

Stepped on something disgusting that might have been left by a feral cat (or perhaps a feral human being) near one of the cache sites. It was dark so I didn't see it. Good thing the next cache site was near a Target store. I went in and washed my shoes in the restroom. I should've learnt my lesson from the poop episode in Bristol, but noooo.... I keep going back to that region.

Dinner was at Old Country Buffet in the Oxford Valley area. I've actually never been to that restaurant for dinner. It was interesting. I didn't eat that much by my usual buffet standards but I did try everything that looked interesting and I had enough fried fish and seafood patties to be satisfied. I also tried putting soft-serve ice cream in my coffee. I got the idea from someone else at the restaurant. That was the most creamy coffee I ever had! Also, I heard someone say "The cake is a lie" at the dessert table. Uh oh... video game catchphrases are leaking out into the real world! :)

( The caches... )