I’ve noticed that not many of the hiking guidebooks for the Tucson area are thorough enough to be worth buying a single one. Since that’s the case, I’m going to start compiling details about hikes online to make it easier to get information about the hikes in the future. From now on, as I do a hike, I will be putting up a post about it with detailed information about how to get there, what kind of hiking conditions are there, pictures if I bring my camera, maps, etc…

Aaron, Jenny, Lauren, and I went to the Banff Mountain Film Festival a number of weeks back and saw a bunch of their kick ass films ranging from rock climbing, to mocumentaries, to really neat documentaries. By far the best of the movies was a film called “Balancing Point” produced by Sensei Studios. It’s a number of clips where various people balance rocks in a number of interesting ways… you can see a version of it at Sensei Studios (hopefully they pull it back online) or here.

The gas prices are going up again. Even Costco is selling it for above $2.60 when just a month ago it was $2.12 a gallon. To top it off, apparently, Exxon’s CEO made $144,573 average per day over the last 13 years… yes, PER DAY!!! In his last year of service, which ended in December, he made over $400 million; makes me think he’s taking our money for himself rather than trying to help the American public.

When will the gas/oil tycoons learn? There’s change on it’s way (in the form of hybrid and alternative fuel vehicles and nuclear power plants) and they won’t be the Kings of the Hill for much longer.

Smart companies like Toyota, Honda, and VW are paving the way with their vehicle offerings and will leave the SUV and wasteful-car producing companies in the dust. I predict that, within 5 years, there will be so many people moving away from sub-30-mpg cars in favor of over-50-mpg vehicles that the only way to keep customers will be to produce cars that are greener and more efficient and possibly reach for the 100-mpg mark OR to pass legislation limiting the strangle-hold that the gas companies have on the public (I’m hoping for the first case).

I’m looking forward to trading in my current Toyota Rav4 for the hybrid version when it comes out in a few years! Until then, I’m going to look into carpooling or biking to work again.

Here’s a list of reasons why my next computer will be an intel-based macbook or ibook (whatever they will call them when they come out).

OSX Unix-base operating system

Two words … boot camp

As of now, no major threat viruses

As of now, no major spyware threats

Typically*, they just work

Did I mention Unix?

* All software has it’s quirks; Apple has a better and more stable OS in my opinion and has fewer issues (read BSOD) than PCs do.

I’ve finished the preliminary integration of google maps into my site to maintain a list of geocaches I’ve found and links from them to the geocaching.com webpage associated with the caches. I’m still tweaking it a touch and making sure I can legally use the geocacing.com icons, but should be up and running before long. Next step is to fix the issue with the text boxes that I’m having and I’ll really be ready to roll. To see the work in progress, click on my page titled GeoCaches Found. I’ve also added a Google maps page for things to do around Tucson for when people visit us out here. For that map, click on the Tucson Sights page.