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Yesterday, we drove up to the Brainerd area to ride a section of the 110-mile Paul Bunyan Trail. We started at the Southern trailhead in Baxter and did a 10 mile down-and-back for a 20 mile ride. We did it in about 3 hours for a nice steady biking pace.

While we were taking a break at the 10 mile marker a small pheasant/grouse (I don’t know my birds, meh) came out of the brush and walked right up to us. We guessed that it was looking for food, which it wouldn’t get (especially since we didn’t have anything on us). It kept circling around our feet while we stood there. When Brit tried walking around it would run and try to nip at her sneakers. Eventually we got back on our bikes to turn around and it even tried following for a little bit. That was one strange/confused bird.

The ride back probably took a little longer, deciding to turn around at the 10 mi. mark was a good choice.  We stopped at the Culver’s in town to satisfy our worked up appetites before heading home in the evening.

It was a really nice trip to get out of the normal routine and do something in a different place. We’re already thinking about going back for snowshoeing in the winter

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Due to unexpectedly heavy spring rains in eastern Montana and above average snow pack in the Rockies, the Missouri river has been running higher than it has in over 50 years.  Lake Sakakawea, the reservoir behind the Garrison Dam got so high that the Arm Corps of Engineers had to open the spillway gates for the first time ever.  In Bismarck, the river is flowing over 5 times faster than what it usually is this time of year.  At my last check the river level was near 17.7 ft. and projected to crest over 19.5 ft.

What makes this a little different from your normal spring flooding is that this isn’t a week-long affair.  The water could stay as high as 17ft well into August.  Already the high level and flow have begun to scour away at the banks of the river.  If it lasts for months, some bends could be completely different from before.

In Bismarck, the southern third of town sits on the flood plane. Everyone has been sandbagging and diking for about two and a half weeks.  Some of the people outside of the city limits and protection zone also went straight to moving all of their things out of the house.  There still haven’t been any mandatory evacuations, but it’s getting close.  Water has been up on sandbag levies for a week now, and rising daily.

Even with the sandbag levies in place, not everyone is safe. The ground under that part of town is all river sediments from being built up on a flood plane.  The groundwater has been creeping up right along with the river.  Some houses are sitting in a perfect sandbag levy which isn’t even touching the river water and yet, the basement is full-up with water.  The water table is within 5 feet of the surface for much of that part of town.

Some people still remain optimistic but with such an extended forecast of high water, others aren’t holding out much home.  All we can do now is wait and see.

You can see more photos of the flooding here: Missouri River Flood 2011 on Flickr

Meggy Jr.

Bulbdial Clock

Bulbdial pieces

Bulbdial construction

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If you live in the Twin Cites area you too can get access to Pete’s CNC Router and many other cool shop tools, all for $50 a month. Join up at TCMaker.org, get trained in and you’ll be cutting, turning, and burning things out in no time.

Here are some photos from the event, enjoy:

The photos in this slideshow are copyright 2010 Skyler Kehren and released under the BY-SA Creative Commons license.

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This idea came from this video of Sterling “The Bubblesmith” Johnson.

We went to the Chief Lookings’ Village park in Bismarck which overlooks the Missouri river.  The park is very open and has a large hill that slopes down to the river.  There was a nice breeze, perfect for making super bubbles.

We started off with a clothesline rope that seemed more absorbent, which I thought would help.  It didn’t work very well.  Next, we tried simple cotton string.  After running the twists out, it worked perfectly.

It took a few minutes to get used to opening and closing the wand, but after we got the hang of it we were in business.

We did at times have a 12 foot “bubble tube” running from tip to wand.  We also got some watermelon sized bubbles to float a good 20 yards or so over the edge of the hill, and smaller ones well over 100 yards.  The wind got a little bit too strong and uneven to get some of those really large bubble tubes to actually release and stay in one piece for very long.

While we were blowing the bubbles we had a few vehicles pull up and just hang out for a few minutes watching the show.   I said we were just so popular it was because everyone was calling their friends. lol.

Here’s some other photos of our adventure!

Here are the links to everything I found to make the wand and bubble solution. Enjoy trying this out for yourself.

Wand: http://www.instructables.com/id/GIANT-bubble-blower/

Bubbles: http://www.soapbubble.dk/en/bubbles/bubblemixture.php

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Finally, to celebrate; here is a wonderful performance of the birthday song by my dad.

PS Prepare yourselves, all ye who leave me phone messages.

PPS My blog was taken down for a few days due to a snafu in a configuration file and the fact that I was celebrating my birthday over the weekend.

I was worried for a bit that I’d lost everything.  Thankfully fixing one line of code make everything work just fine again.  Also, I recently signed up for an account with Backupify to backup my social media endeavors in case the worst happens.  Things like this are also nice* wakeup calls for better routine db backups and maintenance.

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Happy Holidays by zachschwoebel

I hope that you are enjoying the holiday with your family or other close loved ones.

If you faced travel I hope it went smoothly and you arrived safely at your destination.  If you were snowed in by inclement weather or otherwise unable to celebrate I hope that you will still make the best of it.

Now get off your computer and go have some fun!

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Some of the information, like your name, profile picture, and current city is actually less invasive than having your name, number and street address in a public phone book.  But the rest of them are things you used to have a degree of control over.  I reckon most users felt ok with their circle of friends knowing that they’re a member  ”I’ve partied in a cornfield” but I don’t think they were planning on sharing it with  everyone on Facebook, and beyond (make no mistake, it’s available to a lot of people/companies now)

Users gave this information to Facebook with a respectable degree of confidence that they got to decide who had access to it.  You knew that if you joined “My hometown can out drink your hometown!” your friends might see it.  But not, say, your employer whom you’ve specifically not friended because they have no business knowing who your friends are, what pages you like or what things/ideas you personally associate yourself with.  Now, theoretically, everyone can get access to this information, it’s “publicly available.”

The reason Facebook has pulled this bait and switch on it’s users is because it’s actually part of their business model.  Get users to input trusted information, use that information in combination with information gathered from their friends to sell targeted advertising, Profit.  Letting you keep your information to your self, if you so chose, was costing Facebook money they could have been bringing in from more specifically and more easily targeted ads.  By labeling this information “public” and completely removing your control from the loop, Facebook has made it easier to make more valuable associations and thus make more money.  All without caring what your intent was in having a Facebook profile in the first place.

Personally, I keep my Facebook account to keep occasional tabs on friends, and increasingly, family (I just friended 3 aunts in 2 days, and they all found me.)   I didn’t ask for, nor do I want, anyone outside of the people I’ve accepted as friends to know which groups i’m in or pages i’m a fan of.  I didn’t join those  groups or friend people for that information to be in the public record.  This is in contrast to my website, blog or Twitter, for example, where from day 1 I had the expectation that every character I typed would be in the wide open for a lot of people to see.  I expected the exact opposite from Facebook and am very disappointed.

What Facebook should have done is made the control of these settings more granular, not removed it completely.  I really like the new privacy control over the status updates, where you can select whom you’d like to share each individual post with.  They should have extended this control to your friends list, groups, and pages.  If I have a Facebook account and I really don’t want you to use my information (like it was in the past!) I should be able to make that decision for myself.

If you look, not even that hard, you can find a lot of information about me on the internet. Information that in large part, I have put there with the intention that it was going to be on the open internet.  I’m really not afraid of having my name around the internet, what i’m upset about is the means by which Facebook has come to this point with the private information of millions of people.

For you, Facebook might really be the only “web presence” you have and you may have considered it your little corner of the internet, accessible only to the people you choose.  Well, it’s increasingly becoming less and less of your corner and more and more of Facebook’s file on you.

I say something because apparently Facebook cares about what their users think, and I want it to be a better experience for all of its users.  But when they have the authority to amend their terms (and rightly so) without notifying you or requiring any action on your part and then  suddenly redefining how they handle your information it makes me think they really are barely listening at all.

End Rant.  Care to comment? I’d like your opinion if you have one, even it it’s “meh, who cares.”

PS Don’t ever say anything sarcastic or vent on Facebook.  The world might react, and take off your head.

BisHack is my attempt to spark some interest for a hackerspace in Bismarck.  I essentially want to continue the great times I had back in Minneapolis with the folks from TC Maker.

Since I’ve set up my workbench a few weeks ago I’ve been working on a few projects and I’ve really started to miss meeting up with other makers and chatting about/showing off the projects we’re working on.  Ultimately I would still like to have a place to actually meet up with makers and work on those projects together.  I’m hoping I can find some people to start a small space, or at least meet up for drinks.

If you know any makers/hackers in the Bismarck area, please send them to BisHack.org

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Congrats to the Burfs!

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