Welcome to 45° 28′ 18″ N, 122° 39′ 11″ W. I got a new toy this week, a [GlobalSat BT-338](http://www.globalsat.com.tw/english/products_detail.php?p_id=74) Bluetooth GPS unit. It is basically a matchbox-sized brick with a couple of LEDs, a GPS receiver, and Bluetooth radio.
It looks like it is all batter, with one that is supposed to last all day. It also seems to be more sensitive than my old Garmin GPS-12XL, and got a signal inside a building, in my pocket, in my bag, and under trees while raining, all places where the old receiver had problems. I had tried connecting my old receiver to my old Clie PDA through a serial cable but that wasn’t practical.
My Treo can connect to it by Bluetooth and programs can get their position. I have been using [Mapopolis](http://www.mapopolis.com/) for mapping, and [Cetus GPS](http://www.cetusgps.dk/) for general GPS routes and tracks. The routing and driving directions with Mapopolis seems to work well and it has the ability to reroute from the current GPS position.
A couple of weeks ago, I went to the store to get a larger memory card for my camera. On my Vancouver trip, I forgot my extra cards and ended up having to delete pictures from the full card.
I ended up getting a 1 GB xD card. When I got home, I put it in the camera and discovered that my camera won’t recognize the card. Some googling found that my camera, an Olympus C-755, can’t handle the new 1 GB xD cards. How they could produce cameras for a relatively new format that couldn’t handle that size I don’t know.
Luckily, I was able to return it and get a 512 MB card. 512 MB seems to be the largest card that my camera will ever handle. And since xD is a proprietary format only used by Olympus and Fuji, it is likely that my next camera will use a different format. Also, the xD cards are twice as expensive as other formats. For the cost of the 1 GB xD card, I could have gotten a 2 GB SD card. The xD cards are also noticably slower than the SD card I use in my Treo.
I had run into a similar problem with my old Sony Clie SJ-30 and its Memory Stick. The early Memory Sticks were limited to 128 MB and that is the biggest size the Clie I gave to my brother will take.
The second wildlife encounter was with an animal in the chimney. As I was getting ready for work, I heard a banging in my chimney like an animal had gotten trapped. I opened the damper but it hung on and didn’t fall down. Figuring I would deal with it later, dead or alive, I closed the damper and went to work.
That evening, I prepared to catch it by putting a bucket underneath for the expected rodent. Instead, what dropped down was a bird. The starling then flew around my apartment sending ash everywhere. It finally flew out after I turned on the outside light.
A while ago, I had my first recent wildlife encounter. On one of the coldest days of the year, I looked outside and saw a brown furry lump on the edge of the bluff. On closer inspection, it turned out to be a real big rodent. I first thought it was a beaver but it had a straight round tail.
After some research, I discovered it was a [nutria](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutria). A South American rodent, it was imported to Oregon and is taking over, crowding out the native muskrats and beavers. Evidently, it doesn’t like cold weather and this one looked miserable in the cold.
I wanted to see one of my favorite bands,
[Great Big Sea](http://www.greatbigsea.com), play in Portland.
Last time, it was a pretty spontaneous event. I took a different route home and passed the theater where they were playing later that night. I was surpised to see them on the marquee. I went home, ate dinner as fast as possible, came back, and saw an awesome show. Even cooler, another of my favorite bands, [Carbon Leaf](http://www.carbonleaf.com), was fronting for them.
Today, the show was sold out when I got there. I knew about it in advance and even wrote it down in my calendar. I should have bought tickets or gotten more details this weekend. I could have even bought tickets online this morning. I wasted time and didn’t get there until 30 minutes before the show started. By which time it was sold out.
My flight down to San Diego on Christmas Eve stopped in Oakland. I had a window seat with a good view of the Bay Area as we were landing. I got a couple of good photos of San Francisco.
Some more interesting pictures from 2005 which I didn’t post at the time. The weekend of 12/17, the [Oregon Rail Heritage Foundation](http://www.orhf.org/) gave rides on trains pulled by the [SP 4449](http://www.sp4449.com/) steam locomotives along the track that goes by Oaks Park across the pond from my place.
I was hoping to take a ride but I had a cold. Instead, I got to hear it blow its whistle and watch the train go by puffing a white cloud. You can see in the photo that half of the Oaks Bottom pond is frozen. That Sunday, it snowed an inch of snow; the second picture has the train going through while it is snowing. I don’t know why I didn’t take a picture of the snow outside.
One of the best parts of 2005 which I neglected to post about was Thanksgiving. I flew out to North Carolina and stayed at my brother’s place in Carrboro. My parents and grandfather also flew out. We did the same thing last year but instead of exploring North Carolina, this year we relaxed and saw family. And ate good home-cooked meals.
The best part was seeing my niece Rose for the first time. She was three and a half months at the time. She was very cute and lovable. I loved watching her wiggle her arms.
One cool thing is Neil and Lara’s friends the Olsens visited. Both the Olsen children were old friends; they brought their significant others and their mom came out to spend Thanksgiving with her family.
For Thanksgiving itself, we went to my Uncle Tim and Aunt Judy’s place in Raleigh. There were 14 people at dinner.
I took my normal walk down to the Willamette River at [Sellwood Riverfront Park](http://www.portlandonline.com/parks/finder/index.cfm?action=ViewPark&PropertyID=668).
The river was the highest I had seen it. Two years ago, it was almost as high in April but this is January. Normally, there is a beach, then a four foot wall with benches and picnic tables on a flat area on top. There are strairways leading down to the beach.
Today, the water was lapping at the base of the benches. The stairways were completely submerged and flooding on the paths. There is a floating dock which was sticking straight out from shore. It is hard to see in the picture but the river is confused mess with eddies, currents, and debris visible on the surface.
About 28 minutes ago, the first leap second in seven years was inserted. The clock went from 23:59:59 UTC to 23:59:60. Here in Oregon, this happened at 15:59:60. This was done to keep UTC in sync with the sun. The difference between atomic time (TAI) and UTC is now 33 seconds.
Linux handled this automatically. My home server printed out:
Clock: inserting leap second 23:59:60 UTC