Rake, pipe and missing pliers

Over the past three days I have spent much of each day raking my corral.  Since I had more cattle for a longer period in the corral last May I had lots and lots of dried cow pies all around the corral.  And in that I hadn't raked the corral for a few years now you'd agree it was past time to do so.

In the last photo above notice the small mound of dirt.  When raking I discovered a plastic pipe in the ground.  The end was open (with dirt) and looked to have been struck by a lawn mower or something similar. Wrapped around the pipe was part of a heating tape.

I dug down a yard or so until the pipe curved to the south and the heating tape ended.  I am not positive where the pipe went as I didn't want to dig a trench to find out. I suspected it went to the well near my cattle's water trough though I could not see a plastic pipe near it.  Why the pipe came out of the ground at this spot in the corral is a mystery.

With my hand rake I raked the entire corral.  I dumped many wheelbarrow loads of manure and dead grass in three lows spots in the corral and also some places in my garden.  Dried cow manure is a good fertilizer.

I raked so much that Friday I broke the rake I had bought last year (or the year before?)  I broke the metal rake not the handle.  Fortunately I had bought several old rake heads at an auction last year so I was able to replace broken the rake head.

While raking the back corral I found the pair of pliers I had lost back in May of 2007 when my uncles and aunts from Washington State visited me.  My aunts and I had worked on my corral fence and I had lost one pair of pliers.  As much as I searched that year and next I never found the pliers.  Last year in the Spring I had burnt the dead grass along the corral fence and kept an eye out for the pliers and never found them.  I gave up looking thinking I had lost them somewhere else in the yard

Friday as I raked the cow pies I looked up and the sun was just right and I noticed the pliers hanging in the fence. What?!  I had been by the fence a million times the past three years and had already raked by the corral near where the pliers hung.  It is a mystery why I never saw the pliers until now.  Naturally after being out in the elements all these years they have a little rust and a weathered look.

Antler gate

A different kind of gate.

Another kind of "fence".

Census work and dogs

There are a few challenges in delivering census questionnaires.   In this post I will talk about one challenge: dogs.

I didn't have any real problems with dogs.  With that I mean dog bites.  In my training class I met a woman who worked for the census back in 2009 to map addresses was bitten by a dog.  Then earlier this week I met a woman who was recently bitten by a small dog as she delivered a census questionnaire.

I did encounter:

• friendly dogs who snuck up on me and greeted me when I opened my car door.  Surprise!

• dogs (and one cat) who got into my car when I left the door open while talking to the home owner.

• dogs who brought me sticks and wanted to play fetch.

• a dog who brought me a Frisbee and wanted to pay catch.  I did toss him the Frisbee for a few minutes and he was good in catching it.

• dogs that peed on my car tires.  I think three of the four wheels were marked.  I didn't wash them as dogs who approached me by the car suddenly shifted their attention from me to smelling my car tires.  Even with all my driving through water and snow the dog urine seemed to have stayed on my car wheels.

• dogs that had a loud or piercing bark.   They tended to be small dogs and constantly barked.  The owners seemed to be accustomed to the bark and only tried to shush their dogs after I started to wince from the sound or would ask them to repeat their answer as I couldn't hear it. I thought my ear drums would burst from one dog's barking. 

• one house had six to eight dogs in the yard to the main house entrance.  They were all Siberian Huskies and all were quite excited to see me, jumping around and barking constantly.  I went around to the other house door and found another six to eight dogs inside the house running around from window to window to sliding glass door to bark at me.  No surprise that the house looked to be a mess inside.

• two vicious looking and sounding dogs inside a house with a glass door.  My, why large teeth they had. 

• a brusque woman who said if I came back not to get out of my car if her dogs were in the yard.

• one dog I kept an eye on as it half slunk and occasionally bared its teeth as I walked to the front house door.

• and the two dogs in the following photos.  I left the census questionnaire on the gate.  It took them 6 seconds to get from the house to the gate.  I guess they took their time as I wasn't inside the gate.  The lighter colored dog has a chain trailing it.

Gopher start

I trapped my first pocket gophers of the year.  I set a couple traps before I started my census work a few weeks ago, and now that I am done with delivering census questionnaires, I checked those traps today.  Both traps had a dead gopher.  Yes!

Trap number one had the gopher I was trying to trap last year to be my 250th pocket gopher.  He wasn't my 250th, but instead my first.

My second pocket gopher and trap were buried in dirt.  It is Spring and the pocket gophers are paired up for breeding and babies.  I cleared and left the trap for the other gopher.

Vader cat

Arrows fly

One of the sights on my census route Tuesday.  (Yup!  I drove slow on his driveway.)

Snow and census

After a long period of beautiful Spring-like weather, last night it rained and today it snowed.

I may have mentioned that I got a census job.  I deliver census forms out in the countryside.  The census doesn't mail the forms to post office boxes, and since a number of small towns in our part of the country only have P.O. Boxes and no home delivery, we have to hand deliver the forms everywhere except (I believe) the city of Kalispell.  My form was hand delivered last week.  

Today's snow made going up and down the steep narrow driveways "interesting". Sometimes I had to take a run at the driveway to make it up. One time I started slipping sideways towards the edge as my car struggled to get up a steep driveway only a car width wide. Yikes!! But I always made it. Some driveways are narrower than some forest service logging roads I have been on - and that's saying a lot. I guess some people don't have money left over after building their large log house mansion on top of their small mountain/hill to build a better driveway.  Else they only visit their house in the summer and don't mind a narrow, steep and winding driveway.

I guess a new hire went off the road on Monday down in the Swan Valley - and that was before today's snow.

When I get time I'll try to upload some icy road photos from when the weather was nice.  A few times I parked my car at what I thought was the top of an icy driveway in order to walk the rest of the way.  Two different times when I leaned against my car for a moment as I was getting ready for my walk, the car began to slide down the hill until I grabbed it and stopped it from sliding further.

The gloomier weather today appears to affected the mood of people I met. After some interesting and sane people the past few days, today a larger number of people were grumpier and anti-Census. Sometimes I think the Flathead valley has a larger number of 'idiots' (for a lack of a better word at this late hour) than other areas. Very short sighted people.

This morning I had a discussion with one guy who planned to only fill out the question about the number of people in his household and asked me what would happen if he only answered that question. It is not in my job description to "sell" or explain the census questionnaire as the form has a toll free number to call if the person has questions.  I didn't know the answer to his question other than I think the census will later send a person to talk with him in an effort to get the rest of the form answered.  I believe in the census and tried to save the government money from sending another person by explaining the census's importance.   I don't think I changed his mind unless he chews on what I said and later decides to fill out all of the form.

On sunnier days for other people in a similar mindset I might have have made more of a dent in changing their perceptions.  By the end of my talk I did have one guy apologize for being so rude to me when I first approached him. He even apologized twice.

I do find that the 'anti' women are less receptive to a discussion. I don't know why.  They probably don't like some man disagreeing with them. Out of the hundreds of forms I have delivered I've only had two people slam the door in my face when I tried to deliver the census form and they were both women. I barely got the words out that I was from the census when they slammed the doors. And one time when I held the envelope up and wouldn't go away the lady then yelled at me "This is a free country and I don't have to take the census!" before closing the curtains to her sliding glass door. So much for my ego and thoughts of charming the ladies.

Yellow bug

I guess this is where Herbie the Love Bug went when he was put out to pasture.  Sad.  At least his hubcaps are still shiny.

Red Pontiac

A beautiful old car I came across today.  Love the hood ornament.

Down the Swan

Here are a few photos from my recent drive down the Swan Valley.  The first two photos are of Swan Lake.

 

 

Pretty massive entrance!

Well being of U.S. states

Montana, North Dakota and Minnesota all aren't doing too bad.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/125849/Hawaii-Tops-Utah-Nation-Best.aspx

Hawaii's residents had the highest well-being in the nation in 2009, pulling ahead of 2008 leader Utah, and coming in with a new high state Well-Being Index score of 70.2. Utah and Montana are also among the top well-being states in the country, sharing the same score of 68.3.

Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index 2009 state-level data encompass more than 350,000 interviews conducted among national adults aged 18 older across all 50 states. Gallup and Healthways started tracking state-level well-being in 2008. The Well-Being Index score for the nation and for each state is an average of six sub-indexes, which individually examine life evaluation, emotional health, work environment, physical health, healthy behaviors, and access to basic necessities.

The Well-Being Index is calculated on a scale of 0 to 100, where a score of 100 would represent ideal well-being. Well-Being Index scores among states vary by a narrow range of 9.7 points. The 2009 Well-Being Index score for the country is 65.9, unchanged from 2008.


On a state-by-state basis, U.S. adults' average satisfaction in 2009 with their own standard of living -- that is, "all the things you can buy and do" -- fell in a fairly narrow range, from 82.3% in North Dakota at the high end to 69% in Nevada at the low end.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/125834/Standard-Living-North-Dakotans-Satisfied.aspx

Trivia

• Number of U.S. states in which laws exist that require children to pay for the medical care for indigent parents: 30

Minimum number of states where nursing homes have used these provisions to sue children of non-paying residents: 2 (Pennsylvania and South Dakota)

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=8074570&page=1 

• Amount that one House Democrat on the Banking Committee lost in a stock scam between 2000 and 2005: $3,000,000

(Office of Congressman Alan Grayson (Orlando, Florida))

http://www.businessinsider.com/rep-alan-grayson-ponzi-scheme-victim-2009-7

• Number of times Bush and Obama, respectively, used the word "evil" during their first six months as President: 18, 14

• Minimum number of Americans named either John or Jane Doe: 212

• Estimated number of U.S. adults who believe the media did not adequately cover Michael Jackson's death: 6,500,000  -- or in other words 3% of the U.S. population

http://people-press.org/report/526/coverage-of-jackson-death-seen-excessive

Road trip

Tuesday I went on a road trip (minus the bars and liquor).  Every day - for what seems like forever - has been cloudy, gray and gloomy.  I needed a change.

I decided to visit Missoula, MT -- 130 miles away.  I have lived in Montana full time now for almost 9 years and have only visited Missoula once during this time.  Since the livestock auction is well on the edge of Missoula I don't count my visits there.

The morning was our typical recent very foggy morning.  It wasn't until I reached Flathead Lake that I left the fog behind.  Then when I dropped down into Missoula over two hours later did I pick up signs that the Missoula Valley also had been foggy that morning.  By afternoon all signs of fog was gone and the weather alternated between cloudy and rainy.

When my dad was alive we had visited Missoula a few times.  And when he was hospitalized in Missoula for open heart surgury I spent a few weeks there.  So I have some memories of Missoula.

I visited their large indoor mall and over the noon hour it was dead.  Hardly anyone was around.  About the only activity were the moms sitting watching while their young kids played in an indoor play area.

I visited the REI store to compare GPS units.  I have been researching which unit to buy and I wanted to see the units in person and talk to someone who uses them instead of merely reading another online review.  After seeing the screens side by side I ruled out buying an Oregon model due to the dim screen.  Now I need to watch for one of two other models (Dakota or DeLorme) I am interested in to go on sale.

I didn't visit the hospital and that area as I wasn't on a mission to retrace steps but I did walk around downtown.  Missoula is a college town. While I don't believe the university was nearby, its influences could be seen in the types of stores downtown. Kind of hip and urban.  Still, the university must be some distance away as the stores were also a mix of bland and dowdy.

Parking meters everywhere. I hate paying for parking.  As my goal was to merely wander around I found non-metered parking on the edge of downtown.

Train tracks run by the north edge of town, between the town and the interstate.  Unlike the trains that run across northern Montana which mainly carry grain or shipping containers, the trains I saw in Missoula only carried coal.

 

Here is the train station. Apparently it is either owned or operated by the North Pacific railroad due to the logo. Considering the last passenger train came through in 1979, the station is quite nice and is well maintained.

Don't you love the old brick buildings where the owners painted billboard advertisements right on the side of the buildings?

Newer building art.

And just plain odd art.

Here is an example of what looks to be classic 1960s architecture.

Doesn't this look like a new building trying - and failing - to look 'old' and trying to fit in with the old building styles?

Being a university town Missoula is a bicycle friendly town.  Here are examples of bicycle parking areas both on and off the sidewalk.

Here is a photo of a house on a mountain overlooking Flathead Lake.  Whenever Tammy and I drove by this house we would forget to take a photo until it was too late.   This photo is not that great but at least I got one driving by myself at 70 mph.

Here is an example of the difficulty of road building along the west side of Flathead Lake.

As you can see from the photos - no snow. In fact there was no snow (other than on the taller mountains) starting at the north end of Flathead Lake and then south.  Most mountain tops disappeared into the clouds.

A number of drivers drove slower when you couldn't pass them then faster when you could.  One old farm truck pulled out in front of my and two other vehicles when we finally could go highway speed.  This truck then drove 45 to 50 mph in a 70 mph zone and we couldn't pass him on the mountain roads for quite some time.  *argh!*

During my trip my driver's door window quit working.  I rolled it down then up.  After that nothing.  At least it quit when closed. All the other car windows still work.  Today I checked the car fuses and learned apparently one fuse controls all windows.  So the fuse doesn't seem to be the problem.

I think my road trip worked.  The days since Tuesday have been partly to mostly sunny and feel good.

Lion smell tonight

I don't know what a mountain lion smells like.  A few days ago when I told my neighbor Bob about the mountain lion Wyatt thinks is on his property, Bob claimed they had a strong smell, similar to a skunk.  Bob told me it now made sense when the other night their border collie dog didn't want to go outside.  Usually he can't wait to get outside but that night he didn't want go outside to go to the bathroom. Jan said it smelled like a skunk was outside.  Bob thought it was odd as he didn't think skunks were active and out and about this time of year.

Tonight I just stepped outside a minute to get another log for my wood stove and noticed a strong though faint smell.  Maybe a little similar to a skunk smell.  Hmmm.... could it be that a mountain lion came through my property earlier this night?  Good thing I keep a few logs just outside the house door.

Happy Valentine's Day

Lions, auctions, pumpkins, video games... Oh my!

I know I haven't posted much lately on my blog but it has been because not much is going on.  It is that time of year where one waits for Spring. And I haven't felt like posting an entry with little to say.  So I have been saving up.

While I haven't been doing as much as I'd like to, I have done a few things.  I have cross country skied a few times and also gone hiking several times in the snow.  I am working on going through those photos and writing up blog entries about them.

I finally cooked the three small pumpkins I grew in my garden last year.  They were green when I picked them before the heavy frost.  They all turned orange and I finally cooked them now that I needed pumpkin paste for making bread and muffins.  They were just starting to get soft, but otherwise fine for cooking.  The pumpkins had excellent seeds, and after roasting them, I am munching on them now.

The icy driveway has now melted.  When I was back in MN and ND the snow wasn't shoveled and got packed down then literally turned to one large sheet of ice as it was in the shadow of the house much of the day combined with the runoff melting from the roof.  The temperature has stayed in the range of lower 30s to near 40 the past week and that finally took care of the ice.  I still have snow all around.

Today I went to an auction.  There was nothing advertised of interest to me as it was antiques, collectibles, flooring, carpets and firearms.  But it wasn't far away and I hadn't been to an auction in a while.  I arrived hours after it's 9 am start time.  Nothing of interest, though one item was a Defenders video arcade game and another was a Foosball table. 

Wyatt was at the auction with his girlfriend.  This was the first time I met her and she seems very nice.  Of course this then made me miss my girlfriend and had me wish that she was at the auction with me.

Wyatt also told me he has seen signs of a mountain lion on his property to my south.  He has seen tracks and deer caucuses from kills on his land.  He thinks it is a young to medium sized lion.

Good thing my other neighbor didn't replace her small horses after the previous (now deceased) mountain lion killed them.  And I suppose I'll have to be careful when out in the pasture until the lion moves on.

Bill update

Monday afternoon after re-taking the census test I stopped by the nursing home to see Bill.  Marilyn was also there so I had a chance to visit with them both.

I used to hike with Bill until he fell on ice one year ago this week and hit his head.  The swelling in his brain ended up giving him the symptoms similar to many strokes.  He lost his ability to speak other than gibberish, though from his eyes he appears to be aware.  Also he is somewhat paralyzed on one side and can't stand or write.

I hadn't seen Bill since last summer and I had expected his condition to have deteriorated since then, especially since the government health care system won't provide for therapy anymore as apparently they don't want to throw 'good money after bad'.  With no therapy he hasn't improved, but even after all this time he looked good.  He didn't seem to have deteriorated any further.  Perhaps his 'good' physical condition is a result of being in  good shape from all the hiking he had done.  Then again, not exactly a good thing when one is now trapped in their own mind unable to effectively communicate with the world or do most things for themselves.

I spent three hours visiting with Bill and Marilyn.

Cheryl, Bill's niece from Wisconsin, is a 'Jill of all trades' and a photographer.  She had sent Bill three photos she blew up to various poster sizes and which Marilyn had hung on the wall in Bill's room.  They were very nice photos.  One was of the Northern Lights seen from Wisconsin, a waterfall we had seen during a hike she went on with us when she was here last Summer, and the third photo was of Lake McDonald.

Waistband for skirts

Last month when going through my mother's stuff, in her sewing stuff, I came across a kit for making skirts.

Just look at the drawing.  That is so "1960s" that it is classic.

The following image is of some stretchy decorative material for the skirt or waistband.  I like the pattern.

Re-taking the census test

Since I had scored only a 97% on the census test the first time I took it a year ago, I decided to take it again in an effort to improve my score and try to get 100%.  If interested, the account of when I first took the test can be found here.

One would think 97% would be good enough for me to get hired as a census worker, but that has not happened so far.  I spoke to a person who was hired for the preliminary work in 2009 and she told me that everyone she worked with was a veteran, and that is the only reason she believed she was hired as she did not get a perfect score on the test.  Veterans get a 10 point bonus to their score.  So if they scored a 90% on the test, their total would be 100%.  If they scored 97% on the test their total would be 107%.

Flathead Valley has lots of veterans and right now the unemployment level is near 11% so competition for jobs is fierce.  A far cry from North Dakota where census officials in the western part of the state were on the local news pleading for people to be census workers.  North Dakota has the nation's lowest unemployment rate.  Western North Dakota is where the massive oil exploration and development is happening and the problem is not finding a job, but in finding a place to live.

I am not a veteran so the best I can do is 100%.  I agree with helping veterans, but getting a 10% bonus is a little too much.

The test is 28 questions.  I also learned that if you get only half (or 14) correct, this is not a score of 50%. but a score of 77%. Huh?!  Only the government can come up with a decision like this.   So it appears someone can test badly and still get a good score.  Add in a 10% bonus and my friend said that explained some of the 'doorknobs' she worked with on the 2009 census prep work.

You know.. as to how important the census is to the states for apportioning money and representation, and the claims of census under-counts etc., you'd think the states would try to ensure qualified census workers were hired - even if the federal government is the one doing the hiring.

The test was again held today at the local job service center.  There were two sessions and I took the noon session.  Last year there were 20 to 30 people taking the test; today there were eight of us.  Of the eight people, three of us were re-taking the test.

People re-taking the test did not have to fill out the forms again.  We only needed to show our passport or several other ids.  We still had to locate on their maps the grid with the location of our address.  Apparently the census bureau tries to have you work in this area or a nearby one.

Unlike the last time I took the test, the census worker conducting the test was experienced in running the testing session.  We started and ended on time.  He also graded the tests at the end and gave us our scores.  Apparently there are four tests as I had test D.  He had a template for each of the tests and he laid the appropriate template over our answer sheets to quickly check the answers.

I was halfway through the test when I realized I was taking the test I had taken last year.  The questions started to be more and more familiar.  Unfortunately I couldn't remember what I had answered last year.  Uh oh... the pressure is on now to get a higher score.  How could I live it down if I got a lower score on the same test?

I finished the 28 questions in a little over 20 minutes of the 30 minutes allotted to take the test.  I spent the rest of the time double checking my answers and was able to double check half of them.  This was good as I discovered I had one answer wrong.  For the question about matching names, my question had two names not found in both lists instead of the one I had initially thought.  Combinations of: Allan, Allen, Schmidt, Schmitt, Marie, Maria, and various versions of Roderiguez.  It is easy to confuse these names.

This time I scored 100%.  If I hadn't gotten 100% I could have taken the test again at 3 pm as there were seats available to do so.  Apparently you can take the test over and over with only your highest score counting even if you get a lower score on a later test.  So I imagine most people who take the test end up with high scores.

I was pleased with my test score especially as I had not practiced with the test quiz online at the census department's web site.

Now I have to wait for them to call me if they hire me. Apparently they are hiring people to work this Spring to follow up on the people who do not fill out their census form and mail it back.  Then in August or later they need people to tabulate and verify the census data collected.   Like I said before the Flathead Valley has lots of veterans so my odds of getting hired is lower than you'd expect for a person who got a perfect score on the test.  Then again, I wonder if one would want a job collecting census data from people who don't send their forms in?  Knowing the number of anti-government types in this Valley, this job may not be that pleasant.

Ceiling Tree

Going through my mother's stuff today I came across this old newspaper clipping.  It is of my uncle.

Yup, that sounds like Rick.

Chicken, birds, footprints

Quiet times here.

The weather is middling.  Not cold.  Not warm.   We have had a few instances of snow the past few days but it appears to have added up to less than a half inch.  The snow is not good for cross country skiing, yet there is enough old snow to prevent hiking or doing much else outside.

So I read.  I have many large stacks of magazines around the living room waiting to be read.

Today I cooked a chicken (plus garden potatoes and carrots) in a crock pot.  My first time ever cooking in a crock pot.  It turned out good.

So I eat and read and get fat.  And dream of Summer.

The other day I had a bird in my garage. The way the garage was built the big garage door doesn't completely close.  The bird was flying around inside banging into walls and the window and crapping on things.  I was afraid it would break the window.  I once had two flickers in my bard and instead of flying through the open door they went through two windows.  The bird then had flown into the attic above the bunk room attached to the garage.  I walked around the outside of the bunk room and banged on the wall to encourage the bird to leave.  Eventually it walked out of the garage and flew away.  A flicker.  *sigh* Those birds get into such trouble.  In addition to breaking my barn windows, I once had a flicker fall down my house chimney.

Other animals about was a large cat I surprised in the pole shed when getting firewood.  And owls hooting in the night.  Get those mice!

A few days ago I visited Bob and Jan.   I bicycled over and in doing so I noticed trampled snow in my hayfield on my southern boundary. Hmmmm.  I followed the foot tracks across my hayfield then south pasture all the way to the river.  It looks as if they crossed the river channel.  I didn't.

Along the way I found a few young tree branches broken.

It appears they followed the power lines that led to the neighbor's irrigation site across the river channels.  From the broken branches they must have felt the branches would grow toward the power lines years from now.

Bob and Jan told me that the day before I got home the electric transformer on the power pole near their property blew with a loud bang and they temporarily lost power.  The electric company had to come fix it.  That would explain the foot tracks across my property following the power lines.  I imagine they had to find out why the transformer blew up. If you remember I had heard last week noise from the neighbor's irrigation site across the river. He must have shorted the electric lines or something to blow the transformer.

First impressions back

My first impression immediately when I got off the train at Whitefish last week was the smokey smell.  The smell was from all the wood stoves in the Valley.  When one is here all the time you don't notice it.  After a few days I can no longer smell it.  The first day back the smokey smell did seem a little strong.

Even with the above freezing weather the Valley had here recently, there was still snow on the ground when I arrived.  My first day back I shoveled snow from the driveway and the yard.  On the sidewalk to the house door the snow had turned to ice and between an ice chipper and the warm temperatures I was able to clear it.

I am not sure my house's furnace was working correctly.  The house was a little colder (mid to upper 40s) than the thermostat's setting in the lows 50s.  I had to take the thermostat cover off before it would trigger the furnace to start.  I cleaned the thermostat's contacts the next morning and that seemed to have fixed the problem.  Ever since then I have used my wood stove for heating the house.

No broken water pipes - which is always good.
No mice moved into the house when I was gone.  That was good.

My first night home I went to bed early and slept 11 hours.

I had to get a new battery for my car as my car wouldn't start without being jumped by another vehicle.  The old Everstart battery from Walmart was purchased back in April of 2002 and the warranty was for 6 years.

I am in a winter holding pattern.  The snow and frozen ground prevents me from doing stuff on my to-do list.  The snow, due to the recent warm temperatures, is crunchy crusty and not good for cross country skiing.  The temperature is not so cold where one is happy to just be inside.  But it is warm enough to make a person to start thinking about Spring without being able to do anything about it.

I am just trying to get my equilibrium/routine back after being away.

Daylight deer and mountain views

Around 9 am Wednesday morning I saw ten or eleven deer in a line come from my pasture, run across my hayfield, jump the fence to the road, and continue eastward.  A mixture of bucks and does.  No fawns.  It was odd to see so many deer at this time of the day.

Later in the day I went to check my pocket gopher traps in the pasture.  No trapped gophers.  Instead that pesky gopher again covered my trap with dirt.  So much for my last ditch effort to catch my 250th gopher for 2009.

While in the pasture I heard human and machine noises from across the river.  Due to the trees I couldn't see the cause for the activity.  It sounded like it was coming from the area where the neighbor formerly had a irrigation pump to pump water from the river.  Perhaps he is again installing an irrigation pump.

Anyway, all that commotion would explain why so many deer were out in the open during daylight.  Usually the deer spend the day in the trees around the river.

Here are photos I took later that afternoon of my view of the Swan Mountain Range.

Back home

I am back home.  I took the train from North Dakota on Saturday.

The train was a half hour late into Minot.  I don't have a watch so I am not sure if we made up time and got to Whitefish on schedule.  I think we did.  While our stop in Havre seemed shorter than normal, our later stop in Shelby was longer than normal.  Besides once I got home, by the time the clock reset itself to the correct time, the time was 10 pm, which leads me to believe the train arrived on time into Whitefish by 9 pm.

The train was fairly empty.   Initially the main train attendant had me go down three cars to board.  After I did so I decided to check the car several cars up closer to the middle of the train.  I had been placed near the end of the train and that meant a longer walk to the depot once the train arrived in Whitefish.  The second car had few people on board and I even saw a woman going to Whitefish who I had seen earlier in the Minot depot.  She said the train attendant told her to board this car.  So I went back to the first car and told the train attendant I would be moving up two cars.  She was fine with it.

My car had an odd smell to it and Amtrak needed to take the car out of service for a bit in order to do a deep cleaning of it.

I pretty much slept or read magazines and seldom looked out the window at the landscape.  I do remember seeing in the night the large number of red lights on top of the windmills west of Shelby.  Later it was pitch black by the time we reached the mountains.

A strange bearded 30-something guy sat at the end of the car.  When he wasn't wandering up and down the aisle with his ipod's earphones in his ears, he was explaining his shirt choices to various people.  I think he wore three or four or five different shirts that day.  Later, as he passed by, he made a snarky comment about the two military men's conversation.

For the entire trip one of the military men saw in the seat behind me.  Then the last two to three hours of my trip another military guy stopped and started up a conversation.

The guy behind me was an ex-marine who had left the service last year after a five year hitch doing mainly aircraft maintenance. He was 23 years old. The second guy was an Army ranger on his way to being stationed at Fort Lewis in Washington state.  The ranger was in year five of an eight year commitment. He was 22 years old. The two had an interesting conversation comparing and contrasting their two branches of the military, the weapons they had a chance to fire and the helicopters their branch of the military used and ones they had flown in.

The Army ranger talked about his tour of duty in Iraq several years ago.  When he was 20 he was in a firefight where the U.S. servicemen were outnumbered.  Because the ranger had injured his foot several days earlier his best friend was the person who kicked in the door instead of the ranger.  The best friend was shot up and killed when he entered the room.  The ranger got his friend (200+ lbs not counting the body armor) and carried him out of the room and back to the Humvee.  Apparently a side effect of carrying his friend was the ranger's Kevlar body armor got twisted around on his body.  Under fire the ranger was shot.  It wasn't until he reached the Humvee and deposited his friend that he noticed blood.  A medic came over to help him and the next the ranger knew he woke up in the hospital.  Apparently, since the Kevlar vest was twisted, a bullet got through and bounce off one of his ribs.  He was sent back to the U.S. to recover and also got a purple heart medal.  He never went back to Iraq as his unit finished their tour of duty and came back to the U.S. before he went back to active duty.

Both men had killed enemy solders and agreed that it annoyed them greatly when people who weren't in the military wanted to know how many people they had killed.  They didn't mind talking about that part of combat with other solders but did not like talking to others about it as they wouldn't understand having never been in battle.

I noticed the marine didn't talk much of his combat experience keeping his comments mainly about military life, his likes and dislikes.  The marine thought many of the people he worked with were lazy and complained and whined, and a number were overweight.  He liked the job but not the people so much and that is why he left the service.  He described himself as a 'by the book' kind of guy.

The marine loved flying and got his pilot's license for small planes before his driver's license as his parents wouldn't let him get a driver's license until he was 18.  Right now he was taking time to enjoy life before deciding what to do next.  He was smart and saved his pay and now has enough money to live on for a while.  This train trip was to go from Seattle to Chicago for one day to wander around Chicago before returning to Seattle.  Four days on the train for one day in Chicago.  Ya, he has time to burn.

Both were six foot five inches tall and looked military.

Other comments:

• neither liked serving in Iraq.  One couldn't tell friend from foe and the locals were not trustworthy.
  

• They didn't care for crowds as the enemy would mingle with crowds and then toss explosive devices from the crowds and the military had no way to fight back as they couldn't shoot into the crowd. The enemy knew the military's rules of engagement and limitations and used them well.
  

• Iraq was too hot
  

• the marine didn't like serving with women in his unit as they would get pregnant so they would be sent back to the U.S. He also had a female military pilot come on to him but she was several levels in rank above him which made a relationship between them a no-no. Being a 'by the book' guy he was the one who turned the relationship down.  The ranger liked serving with women, but I believe that was more due to his being young and horny.
  

• Neither felt it was good to have a girlfriend or wife when in the military both for the reason it was hard on the women when the men were deployed overseas, and because the relationship had a hard time surviving when they were overseas.
  

• it was hard for them to readjust to life in the U.S. after being in Iraq. The ranger talked about how jumpy he was and how he didn't like crowds for some time after returning.  He also declined consoling as he felt he didn't need it.  I think consoling should be mandatory for people returning from a combat tour of duty.
  

• The ranger thought he would be going to Afghanistan soon and didn't really want to go.
  

Mid January thaw

After the very cold temperatures last week, we are now in a mid winter thaw here in North Dakota.  The temperature the past two days has reached 42 degrees.  Above zero!   Wow!   Nice.

With the warmer temperature on Tuesday my brother shoveled snow from part of the house roof.  Once the snow was on the ground I shoveled it away from the house.  It was nice to get outside and get some exercise.

Trivia night

Since I am in Minot for a little longer I decided to attend trivia night tonight.  Also helping was the warm weather as the temperature was around 20 above and not 20 below.

I walked to the bar.  With all the snow Minot has right now most sidewalks are buried under snow.  I had to walk on the street.  This was not a problem as there were hardly any cars out and about.

I thought I was late to the 7 pm start but when I went inside I didn't see any of the regulars at trivia night.  No one.

I hung around outside for a little bit weighing whether to leave.  I asked a guy coming inside whether the bar still had trivia nights and he said yes.

A short time later a few of the regulars arrived and then Ed (the host) and Al came.

Darrel and Mona didn't come so it was just Al, Marvin and I for a team. We called our team the "3 Blind Mice". We did better than expected.  For the first contest we came in second with 14 correct answers out of 20 questions.  In the second contest we tied with several other teams for second place with 12 correct.  Both times the winning team had 15 answers correct.

To be fair, a few of our correct answers were guesses.

Marvin won one of the "quarter in the bucket" trivia questions.  He chose a long ice scraper with brush for his prize.  Pretty handy right now.

His trivia question:  What state has the nickname of 'The Inland Empire'?
Answer: Illinois

The bar clientele were average to ugly looking. Partway through the contests two 20-something women came in and sat at a table next to us.  They were sitting mostly at my back on one side so I couldn't see them.  Marvin could and commented how attractive they looked.  They did look out of place.

Minnesota and Montana have banned smoking in all indoor places including bars.  North Dakota still allows smoking in bars and my clothes now stink of cigarette smoke.  Yuck.

After the trivia contests were over just before 9 pm many of the trivia regulars left and did not stay for karaoke later that evening.  I left also.

A few questions:

1. What color are papaya seeds?
2. In what city was the first All-star baseball game played?
3. Battery Park is located on the south end of which island?
4. What kind of hat did Bat Masterson wear?
5. What island was invaded under the codename 'Operation Urgent Fury'?
6. What is the plural of: basis?
   
7. What 1984 movie about underdogs starred Robert Carradine and had the tag line "Their time has come!"?
   

The answers:

1. Black
2. Chicago
3. Manhattan
4. Derby
5. Grenada
6. bases
   
7. Revenge of the Nerds
   

No train

Guess I'll be staying in North Dakota a little while longer. Even though the temperatures since Saturday have now warmed up to the 20s above zero, Amtrak is being very conservative and are not restarting their trains until Tuesday.  I had a ticket for the train on Monday.  The local Amtrak agent told me I had to rebook my ticket.

Also, today my brother and I went to the grocery store to get a couple items.  Tons of people were there, the checkout lanes were filled, and most people had carts full of food.  Who goes grocery shopping at 5 pm on a Sunday?!

Cold train

The temperature has again risen above zero degrees. Hurray! The past few days the temperature has ranged from a high of minus 10 to a low of minus twenty-five degrees.  I haven't been outside for a few days now.  Not since the day I shoveled part of the driveway wearing wimpy gloves and almost froze my fingers.  You know your fingers got cold when they hurt as the blood starts moving again while the fingers warm back up.

The local news last night had a story about the Amtrak train stranded in Minot due to the cold.  The train seems to have arrived four hours late the previous evening and stopped here as the train's brakes had frozen in the cold weather across eastern Montana and North Dakota.  Eastern Montana had quite a number of towns with temperatures in the minus 30 to 40 below range.  The train passengers interviewed were not happy.  A few even decided to get off the train and fly the rest of the way home even though it was expensive to do so.

Oh yeah!  Global warming baby!

With air temperatures as cold as 33 below in Havre, MT on Thursday and wind chills of up to minus 52 through stretches of North Dakota, problems erupted with both rail equipment and the tracks themselves.

Amtrak did not run westbound trains from Chicago on Monday or Tuesday. The train ran on Wednesday, then was suspended from going any farther west than Minneapolis on Thursday. There was no service Friday or today.

On the eastbound route there was no service beyond Whitefish Thursday through today.

Even though the National Weather Service forecasts warmer weather along much of the Empire Builder route in the coming days, an Amtrak spokesman said he couldn’t predict what will happen.

It appears I made the journey from Minnesota to North Dakota just in time on Sunday before Amtrak stopped running trains.  I know on the train I did take the train attendants had left the doors under the bathroom sinks open in an effort to prevent their pipes from freezing.

Monday I take the train back to Montana.  I hope everything is straightened out by then and the trains are running again.

Cognitive dissonance

Ah... yes.... Evidence to the Contrary.  We've all argued a point, and while we have presented evidence supporting our position and the truth, the other side refuses to see the light.  In your experience, have your arguments ever changed another person's opinion?  Tell the truth now. 

Here are a couple articles that explain why and how people cling to their beliefs even when they are wrong.  For the strategies people use to resist information that conflicts with their beliefs, I have encountered them all.  Now I know the names.

The first link is to a shorter article and the second link is a longer study.

http://correspondents.theatlantic.com/lane_wallace/2009/09/all_evidence_to_the_contrary.php

How is it that people can cling to an opinion or view of a person, event, issue of the world, despite being presented with clear or mounting data that contradicts that position? The easy answer, of course, is simply that people are irrational. But a closer look at some of the particular ways and reasons we're irrational offers some interesting food for thought.

In a recently published study, researchers found that people often employ an approach the researchers called "motivated reasoning" when sorting through new information or arguments, especially on controversial issues. Motivated reasoning is, as UCLA public policy professor Mark Kleiman put it, the equivalent of policy-driven data, instead of data-driven policy.

In other words, if people start with a particular opinion or view on a subject, any counter-evidence can create "cognitive dissonance" - discomfort caused by the presence of two irreconcilable ideas in the mind at once. One way of resolving the dissonance would be to change or alter the originally held opinion. But the researchers found that many people instead choose to change the conflicting evidence - selectively seeking out information or arguments that support their position while arguing around or ignoring any opposing evidence, even if that means using questionable or contorted logic.

Needless to say, these findings do not bode well for anyone with hopes of changing anyone else's mind with facts or rational discussion, especially on "hot button" issues. But why do we cling so fiercely to positions when they don't even involve us directly? Why don't we care more about simply finding out the truth--especially in cases where one "right" answer actually exists?

Part of the reason, according to Kleiman, is "the brute fact that people identify their opinions with themselves; to admit having been wrong is to have lost the argument, and (as Vince Lombardi said), every time you lose, you die a little." And, he adds, "there is no more destructive force in human affairs--not greed, not hatred--than the desire to have been right."

I would define a true intellectual as one who cares terribly about being right, and not at all about having been right.  Easy to say, very hard to achieve.

http://sociology.buffalo.edu/documents/hoffmansocinquiryarticle_000.pdf

Strategies for Resisting Information

Here are the strategies used to resist persuasion that social psychologists have identified:

• counterarguing (directly rebutting the information),
  

this category was a fairly small portion of our interview sample, and was limited to partisans who were coded as either average or above average in their political information. 

• attitude bolstering (The most popular strategy was to quickly switch the topic to other good reasons by bringing facts that support one’s position to mind without directly refuting the contradictory information), and
  

• selective exposure (ignoring the information without rebutting it or supporting other positions). 

In addition, we identified two other strategies of resisting information that have not been previously noted by social psychologists:

• disputing rationality (arguing that opinions do not need to be grounded in facts or reasoning), and
  

• inferred justification (—the most unusual of our findings— a strategy that infers evidence which would support the respondent’s beliefs).  People begin with the situation and then ask themselves what must be true about the world for the situation to hold. People who displayed inferred justification assumed that since someone they trusted said or did it, there must be a good reason for it.

'Shhh!' on a full train in the New Year

I am back in North Dakota after spending the holidays with Tammy in Minnesota.  To all my Minnesota friends who I did not contact when in Minnesota... sorry.  I had good intentions to call or see you, but between spending time with Tammy and the cold Minnesota weather I rarely went outside.

As to the Minnesota weather... the Minnesotans should worry more about global cooling than global warming.  My October visit to Minnesota had cold temperatures and plenty of snow.  This visit had snow (naturally) but also very cold temperatures.  Sub zero temperatures.  Tammy and I went to see the movie, Avatar, (in 3-D) and the temperature outside was -18 degrees.  High temperatures that never got above zero - ya, we had a number of those days.  Well below normal temperatures.

When I left Minnesota the train to Red Wing, MN ended up being 2 hours late and never arrived until almost 11 pm.  It took us almost an hour to drive to Red Wing and in that time the train lost another 25 minutes so I was in Red Wing forty minutes before the train.

The train unloaded five people from two cars.  The conductor made sure first one then the other of the two cars stopped in front of the station so the passengers didn't have to trudge over train tracks and through the snow to get off and on the train.

I left Sunday night so I expected the train to be relatively empty.  Who would be traveling a Sunday night in January?

I think only two people on got on the train in Red Wing.  The conductor assigned us seats as the train was full.  Huh?!   Okay, maybe lots of people were traveling to Minneapolis and I would get a better seat after we arrived there.

Lots of people got off at the Minneapolis station but lots of people then boarded the train. Huh?!   Before the passengers boarded in Minneapolis the train attendant moved people to free up pairs of seats to make it easier for couples to sit together.  I had an aisle seat next to another passenger so I didn't have to move.

Why all the people traveling on a Sunday night?  Everyone would be arriving at their destination Monday morning or later.  I found that many of the passengers were going to Grand Forks.  Why there?  The university started Monday and these people didn't want to get there any sooner than necessary.  The train was scheduled to arrive at 4:52 am.

I used to travel that way when I lived in Minnesota.  Several times I returned from vacation at four or five in the morning before heading to work at eight or nine.  That is the providence of the younger people.  And I preferred to be on vacation than in Minnesota.  For me now, the reverse is true.  I rather be in Montana than on vacation.

Also lots of people were getting off the train in Minot.  Minot usually is a busy stop.  I don't know why Minot was busier than usual.  The people getting off the train in Minot didn't look like college students.

My seat mate got off at Grand Forks.  He was a faculty researcher returning to the medical department at the University after spending the holidays in Chicago.  He was sleeping across the two seats when I boarded the train and the conductor had to wake him to move so I could sit down.  In the hour it took for the train to reach Minneapolis an incoming phone call woke him and he talked until we left Minneapolis.

I just love cell phones. 

My seat mate was oriental and spoke in Chinese or Vietnamese or whatever which was good as it was easier to tune out his conversation not knowing what he was speaking about.  After he ended his phone call he and I ended up talking.  We talked about my life, my past life at IBM, his past job as a researcher in the pharmaceutical industry, and his current job at UND as a medical researcher until 2:45 am when he went to sleep.  I read for another hour or two before sitting back and going to sleep.  The train attendant never turned off the car's lights until some time after the researcher and I ended our conversation.

Sometimes when I get excited I speak in a louder voice.  But this night when we talked we spoke quietly.  So quiet that between his accent and soft voice I had to occasionally ask him to repeat words. Early on in our conversation a young woman sitting in the row behind us with her boyfriend or husband got up and asked us to talk quieter or not at all as she claimed the sound and pitch of our voices was annoying and was keeping her awake.

It must be me she was talking about as other women in the past have complained that the sound and pitch of my voice grated on them.    These other women turned out to be strange and self absorbed people so it wasn't just the sound of my voice they had problems with.  Therefore, as this was a public place and I can't change how my voice sounds, I merely tried to keep my voice low.  He was getting off at Grand Forks so if we didn't talk now, we'd never talk.

Later another flaky young woman, sitting in the two seats in front of us, started "shhhing" occasionally.  Again we weren't talking loud, weren't done with our conversation, so we kept talking quietly.  This woman later moved to the seats in the row ahead of her which were empty.  When the train attendant came by he told her she was sitting in reserved seats.  She told him she moved because we were talking so he let her stay there and changed her old seats to reserved seats.  We had been talking very quietly so he never said anything to us and let us continue talking.  Besides, the train's lights were still on.

Many people can't or have trouble sleeping when traveling.  I may sound harsh, but that is something they have to work on rather than expecting other people to cater to them.  Otherwise instead of ignoring it I would have had the overweight woman snoring loudly in the seat across the aisle from mine change to another position to stop snoring.  People who snore should not lay on their back when sleeping around other people.  But, I tuned her out and went to sleep.

The young woman, and the black guy in the seats across the aisle, were both going to Minot.  She told him she was connected to the military, hated living in Minot and couldn't wait to leave.  Another flaky woman.   He had gotten out of the military but stayed in Minot because there are lots of jobs there.

My brother was there to meet me when the train arrived into Minot well over two hours late. The two plus feet of snow that fell in Minot during the Christmas blizzard still covered lots of things.  Many cars parked in the train station's parking lot were still buried under snow.  I saw many huge and tall piles of snow during the drive to my brother's house.

Happy New Year

I hope you had a great New Years.

Today in Minnesota is it well colder than normal as the high temperature struggled just to get above zero.  Brrrrrrr....!!!  Back in Montana the temperature is in the mid 30s with calm wind.

Hmmm... why am I in Minnesota?  Oh yeah, spending the holidays with Tammy.

Next year we'll spend the holidays in Montana where the weather is nicer than Minnesota.

What did I do today?  After getting up after 2 pm, showering and breakfast, Tammy and I replaced the bad left turn signal bulb on her van.

*stretch*

Now... time to relax.