My new 2008 BMW

From BMW R 1200 GS

Today, I solidify my commitment to this journey. Today, I buy the bike. At this point, I can smell the faint sweetness of adventure coming to fruition. Buying the bike marks one of the biggest commitments yet to my going vagabond. The excitement has me giddy and unfocused at work; all I can think of are open roads and an endless desire to ride.

New Cameras

In March of 2002 I bought a Nikon D100 6.1 megapixel Digital SLR camera and lens as an uber cool 18th birthday present to myself. In nearly seven years, I've collected 11,828 digital photos with my D100. The math equates to about $0.25 per shot.

I did not know it while shooting, but on December 28, 2008 at 5:50:55 PM, I used my D100 for the last time to take a very fitting photograph of trailing car lights and a fading sunset over Cook Inlet.

On January 15, 2009, I took the very first photos with my new Nikon D90 12 megapixel Digital SLR camera and Nikon 18mm - 200mm f/3.5-5.6G ED IF AF-S DX VR-II Wide Angle Telephoto Zoom-Nikkor lens. Together, the ensemble sings sonnets that make me wonder why I waited so long to upgrade. Moments later, those initial shots were followed by the first of many with a new Canon PowerShot SD 880 IS 10 megapixel digital sub-compact camera.

The two new cameras with extra batteries, a Hoya 77mm Super HMC UV(0) filter, a Nikon Speedlight SB-800 flash, and a Nikon ML-L3 wireless remote were altogether only 2/3 of the cost of my D100 setup. I send a special thanks to photographer Ken Rockwell for his insightful reviews of these products.

I'm super excited to capture many more great photos with my new equipment. One particular scene I've been developing in my mind for years came to fruition this evening on Home Depot hill in Wasilla, overlooking the Parks and Palmer-Wasilla highway intersection. The other shot in this series, at Trunk Road overlooking the Parks Highway and Mat-Su Regional Medical Center, is available in my photo gallery.

Disable case-sensitive find in Firefox for Mac

It seems that Firefox 3 for Mac shipped with at least one annoyance: a case-sensitive Quick Find setting turned ON by default.

I searched the about:config advanced Firefox settings for a fix; these steps disable the annoyance and return the find feature to its proper, case-insensitive state:

1. Open a new tab in Firefox, type about:config into the address bar, and press return on the keyboard.
2. Type case into the filter field.
3. Double click on the preference accessibility.typeaheadfind.casesensitive.
4. Change the value from 1 to 0 and choose OK.
5. Close the about:config tab and test your newly improved case-insensitive Quick Find on any page.

Click the screen shot thumbnail above to see the appropriate final setting.

[EDIT]
My incredibly intelligent brother recommends disabling the case sensitivity by pressing Command+F and un-checking the obvious "Match case" box.

Fix: "boot from hard drive ..." error for Vista and Parallels

The Problem
I did something to my Boot Camp installation of Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate, and I don't know what that something is.

When I launch My Boot Camp in Parallels Desktop, it hangs on the black screen with a persistent "Boot from hard drive ..." message. While Vista hangs during boot in Parallels, it works just fine booting by itself. Ugh.

The Fix
I browsed many forums in search of a solution; none worked for me. Bound and determined, I decided something had to be done.

This fix is inspired by the information found at Microsoft's website that describes how to use bootrec.exe in the Windows Recovery Environment.

The steps below outline how I configured Parallels to boot to the Windows Vista installation DVD to access the Windows Recovery Environment and how I used bootrec.exe to fix the master boot record on my Boot Camp partition. The figures at right are screen shots of the steps.

1. Start by modifying the boot devices in your Parallels Boot Camp configuration. Under the advanced tab of Hard Disk 1, change the device connection from IDE 0:0 to IDE 0:1.
   
   
2. Select Yes to the warning message, and Parallels will automatically set the CD/DVD device connection to IDE 0:0. This will configure Parallels to boot to the Windows Vista installation DVD.
   
   
3. Stick the Windows Vista installation DVD into the optical drive, and run the Boot Camp virtual machine inside Parallels. Hard drive booting will fail, and Parallels will continue to boot from the DVD.
   
   
4. Select Next at the Windows Vista installation welcome screen, and then choose to repair your Windows installation.
   
   
5. Windows will search for installations and prompt you with a list; choose your installation and select Next.
   
   
6. At this point, Windows will attempt to repair your installation. If you've done this before, the repair may fail, and you must select to view the advanced options for system recovery and support. Otherwise, the list of options will present itself.
   
   
7. Choose the option to open a command prompt window.
   
   
8. This is the step that involves the information at Microsoft's website. Execute the the following command:
   
   bootrec /fixboot
   
   
9. Wait for the operation to complete successfully, and then execute this command:
   
   bootrec /fixmbr
   
   
10. Wait for the operation to complete successfully, and then close the command prompt window and select to restart the computer.
    
    
11. Stop the virtual machine while it attempts to reboot.
    
    
12. Return the boot devices back to their original configurations (see steps 1 and 2 above). Under the advanced tab of Hard Disk 1, change the device connection from IDE 0:1 to IDE 0:0.
    
    
13. Select Yes to the warning message, and Parallels will automatically set the CD/DVD device connection back to IDE 0:1. This will configure Parallels to boot to the hard drive as normal.
    
    
14. If all went well, your Boot Camp installation of Windows Vista will no longer hang at "Boot from hard drive ..." as a Parallels virtual machine.
    

Garmin GPS + Parallels + Windows Vista/XP

Today, for the first time, I successfully connected a Garmin Oregon 300 hand held GPS device to Windows Vista via Mac OS X 10.5 and Parallels Desktop.

While the Garmin 300 jives very nicely when booting natively into a bootcamp installation of Windows Vista, communication fails with Parallels' default guest USB configuration.

Out of the box, Parallels prompts the user for action concerning connected USB devices. Choosing the "Garmin International - Composite" device from the list of connected devices produces an error message:

USB device you are trying to connect to the virtual machine is being used by another application. Close that application or unplug the device and plug it again. Then try to connect the device again.

To avoid this error message, change the default USB configuration from requesting user input to automatically connecting USB devices to the guest operating system.

1. Disconnect the GPS device from the Mac if it is already connected. Shutdown the virtual machine if it is already running.
   
   
2. Open Parallels Desktop without starting the virtual machine.
   Launch Spotlight with Apple + Spacebar, type Parallels Desktop.app, and press Return.
   
   
3. Edit the USB configuration for the appropriate virtual machine.
   Click USB Controller from the list of configuration options.
   
   
4. Configure Parallels to automatically connect USB devices to the guest operating system.
   Choose Connect to guest OS from the USB Connection Options drop down menu.
   
   
5. Close the virtual machine preferences window by clicking OK; start the virtual machine.
   
   
6. Once the virtual machine loads, the Parallels Tools initialize, and all booting and login activity complete, connect the Garmin GPS device to the Mac via a USB cable.
   
   
7. Wait as the Garmin GPS device saves all waypoints, routes, and trip log information to GPX format.
   
   
8. Windows Vista prompts you with an Autoplay dialogue if the configuration is proper. Otherwise, you will see the same error message as before.

At this point, you're free to run Garmin MapSource to transfer waypoints, tracks, trip logs, and maps between Windows and the Garmin GPS device through Parallels on your Mac. The Garmin MicroSD card is also accessible via this method.

Hiking Marmot Mountain

Mike and I like to drop everything and go hiking when the weather permits. Fresh snow and blue skies seem to draw us into the mountains. Today is Friday, October 17th; the sky shines brilliantly blue over the snow capped mountains to the north of the Valley, and as the sun begins its decent to the west, we head into the mountains of Hatcher Pass.

Check out the photos of our short afternoon hike in my Picasa Web Albums gallery.

Hiking in Hatcher Pass: Summit Lake

For September 6th, Michael and I hiked the Summit Lake trail in Hatcher Pass. With no indicated destination or duration, we simply packed our gear for a day hike and took off for the mountains. Leaving my tent, sleeping bag, and sleeping pad at home was at the very least indication of a short hike.

Our day started late; we left the trail head around 3:30pm. September/October are the months we experience very near equal parts of daylight and darkness. By 9:00pm, the night sky makes outside tasks very difficult this time of year. I knew this when we started our hike, and I made a mental note that we should turn back around 7pm.

The hike up the ridge line was quite spectacular. The blue skies left us earlier in the day around 1:00pm, but the high cloud ceiling made the hike worthwhile despite the lack of my favorite color in the sky. The specialists forecast rain, we prepared ourselves with rain gear, gloves, and warm undergarments just in case.

Michael secretly set a goal: we were to walk the ridge line until view of the Valley was unhindered by additional mountains. The goal was not unreasonable. In fact, we reached that point around 7:00pm--very well on schedule. Unfortunately, my right knee began burning excruciatingly at that very point, we were facing 30-mph sustained winds and very horizontal rain, and we still had the 1400ft decent from our peak 4850ft elevation with which to contend.

Easy, huh?

The decent was painful. I took 800mg of Ibuprofen and wrapped a brace around my knee. Despite the pain bleeding through, I knew that without a tent, overnight survival would be rough--even though it would have made for a hell of a better blog entry. Maybe next time.

We hit the parking lot around 9:30pm; the sky was definitely too dark for our activity. Next time, I'll take my tent, sleeping bag, and sleeping pad. I plan to offset the extra ten pounds (33% additional pack weight) with a new ultra-compact point and shoot camera (more on that later).

I've posted the photos from both my and Michael's cameras to my Picasa Web Albums.