Destructive collecting

This past weekend I took Little Guy to find a carnelian. One of the iphone apps I have gave directions to the site, which took us about an hour and a half to reach. It was a nice drive and to my surprise Grim and Mandy had decided to tag along. Upon reaching our destination we were confronted with signs that made no bones about how the property owners (a tree company) felt about looking for said rocks. I was pretty surprised, until I started to take a look around. Almost very bend I could see in the creek had huge areas dug out along the banks. The hills beside the gravel road also showed massive amounts of destruction from individuals digging away the sides. Further up the creek piles of rock and mud were evident from screening and dredging for these rocks. Since when is mining activity attributed to a "hobby"?

I came across two locals on horseback and they told me that the area used to be a madhouse on the weekends with groups of people who identified themselves as being from rock clubs. While not all bad behavior can be directly attributed to these types of clubs, I do think they bear a big part of the responsibility for the site being closed. To overtax an area with too many people can take a huge toll on the locals who live in the area and want to enjoy some peace and quiet over the weekends. Not capping arranged trips to a certain amount of members can result in chaos and possibly bad behavior due to competition for getting that "rock". I've seen it happen before at other sites when there is too little room, too many people. Total madness.

In addition, if you are using mining techniques to get said rock, you are no longer a hobbyist- you are a miner! Buy a plot of land and mine it, but don't ruin rock collecting for those who like to casually walk streambeds and pick up rocks already exposed. At the very most, only digging out a rock that is half in/half out with a rock hammer. But to tear away a creekbed, adding to the sediment load.. bad! If you can remove a rock and it makes little to no visual difference, then that is a hobby or getting a rock sample. But if you are removing massive amounts to the point an entire bank is cut away, you are destroying the environment!
So thank you very much greedy people- you just effectively ruined one of the few FREE & educational activities I enjoyed with my children. At least for that area. I'm sure if this continues unchecked, more and more sites will become off-limits.



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Meteorite Men

I am so addicted to this show! I think I like it so much because the two guys showcased on the show, Geoffrey Notkin and Steve Arnold, remind me a lot of those I have been in the field with before. There is always a quirky person in every group, you know the one- he is chasing butterflies (or gathering tree sap- yes, tree sap) instead of measuring strike and dip on the outcrop you just climbed 200 ft to find and have yet another ridegback in the distance to conquer. It's tough to keep your temper at them, but they are just so darned puppy-ish you can't chastise them for fear your temper will boil over so you keep it all inside to protect his feelings. (Or at least for me). Then you have the guy who dresses like Charles Darwin (not sure what to say about that one) but he was smart so you don't really care how he dressed, you just wanted him on your team because he got things done. And then there is the loner who works on the outskirts of the group, but once you get to know them you find out they are a MENSA member and while not really as well-versed in geology as you would like, their sharp wit and sense of humour make you laugh at yourself. It's always a good thing to remember to laugh at yourself. :)


So as I watch this show, I see little nuances of the quirky things I have seen exhibited from people out in the field before and I feel strangely comforted. I think perhaps it is because I miss my motley group of friends that I have gathered. It's always tough to move away from people you admire and conspire with, especially for me when it comes to geology. When I watch this show it just flat out makes me laugh. The two of them [Geoff and Steve] banter at one another just as I have done with my friends out in the field, and they enjoy busting on one another as friends tend to do. (I would have had a field day teasing them about the snake boots- the only person I have ever seen wear a pair of those was the Charles Darwin guy, so yeah, um... yeah.). Not saying it's a bad thing to wear them, it just hasn't been a common practice in my experience so I would find it a bit funny. Plus Geoff takes forever to get ready once they arrive at the spot. Every geology trip I have ever been on we pile out of the van as if  we were told it was about to explode. If anyone lagged as Geoff does to get ready they would find themselves quickly alone wondering where everyone had gone off to. Unless it was an outcrop stop, at which point by the time he was finished everyone would be piling back INTO the vans. ha ha. So I enjoy watching him fiddle with getting his snake boots and gloves on as Steve is off and running. 

While the meteorites they find are pretty cool too, once they make their finds I usually prefer the part when they take it to the guy to put in the mass spec. I have to say they are quite talented in finding their treasures, and they are pretty clever in how they go about choosing sites to explore. 


If you haven't had a chance to see this show, I really encourage you to check it out. 



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Rock paper scissors...

After some thought, I feel I have been a little (or rather more than a little) unfair to Husband in regards to invading most of our closet territory. As I walked about the house and garage, I came to the startling conclusion that I have more than invaded most areas around the house with small-ish piles of rocks. This is not to include the rocks I collect and keep in the living room as a quasi display. I can't really call them decorative because most women who enter my home are unimpressed, as not all of them are what they would see as pretty- but I keep what interests me. Such as black calcite. From all outward appearances it is probably quite ugly to the average person, but to me it is absolutely lovely.

I figured I'd swallow my embarrassment and show you what my coffee table and "little" messes look like because I am curious if other geologists have these small piles of rocks around their home too. I know I need to defenestrate a lot of what I have gathered, as not all of the rocks I have are keepers. I just grab what I see of interest at the time and look later, as there have been numerous times I've kicked myself for NOT grabbing a piece. Such as the greenschist I came across on a field trip. I didn't grab it because I hadn't realized I already had a piece of corbin gneiss in my pack from the weekend before and hence by the time I had hiked in I was too tired to put anything more in my pack, and I wasn't about to dump the corbin gneiss.

Now I wish I had just sucked it up and grabbed the darned greenschist! It was perfect- all shimmery and a stunning shade of green. At any rate, there are times when you intend on returning to a spot but it just never happens, so it is best to grab the piece then and there. Especially when you know they are nice pieces. (Sometimes I grab leaverites just because I am curious, although usually only when I'm not packing long treks:).
To get back the subject about my messes... I went into the garage and noticed that Husband had put my hiking boots next to my rocks because I had failed to put them away last week when we went out.

All my rocks were neatly off to the side of the garage from the first trip and the rocks from the second trip were in a pile at the front of the garage. I had once mentioned to Husband that I didn't like the rocks mixed until I had sorted through them and labeled the ones I intended to keep, but I guess I hadn't specified that it didn't matter when we collect from the same area if the rocks are mixed. Especially when it isn't formal (if it were they would be labeled out in the field or immediately thereafter) and furthermore, we got the rocks from a stream bed. So I kinda chuckled, but was touched by his efforts. I REALLY need to sort through these and eliminate the leaverites.

Despite my best efforts, I am never able to keep everything organized for very long before rocks start spilling out onto the floor. At some point I guess I will have to put some away or have a room to just put them in in order to establish some form of organization, but with moving so often I find that more of an idea for the far off future. I have tried to slim down the rocks I decide to keep, but for some reason or another I cannot bear to part with them. Some I found during Field Camp, some were given to me by peers, some just are too interesting.... sigh. What do you guys do to thin down your piles of rocks? Or do you even bother? Is it really an issue? Maybe I'm just normal and I have nothing to worry about. As long as we aren't over our weight limit for the military to move us it's all good there. And we are far from that, amazing as it is! I think we are allowed around 24K and last move we only had 16K so I have plenty of rock room there :)

But with it all said and done, I should be ashamed of myself for even questioning why Husband invaded my side of the closet, especially since I have infested the house with my rock piles. Granted, he has never complained, but perhaps that is because rocks are cheaper than Pier One. Oh, I used to love that place- but as you can see from the pictures, I have little room for decorations without giving up rock space. What to do... pretty rock, Pier One candle. Rock wins every time.

Maze of distractions

Today (er, make that yesterday- just saw the time) was nothing but one distraction colliding into another. It began quite productively by registering for next terms class, but when I returned home it just went down the tubes. The lady at the registrars office said I should apply for special services due to my ADHD, and while I cringed at even the thought of it Husband talked me into at least looking into what they have to offer. The way I see it, if I can't hack being in classes and taking exams like the rest of my peers then perhaps I don't have any business in my field. Nobody ever claimed Geology was easy. However, while I may not have a 4.0 it is still above a 3.0 and this was accomplished without any special accommodations. In addition, I managed to successfully get through classes with a B or better where I hadn't as of yet taken the prereqs.

 But I digress.. To appease Husband I went in search of the paperwork from my original diagnosis of ADHD. In locating this paperwork (finally found it in the master closet) I realized Husband has slowly but surely taken over the closet. I'm not sure what first caught my attention to this fact, as I generally don't notice such things, but it was so obvious I stood there and laughed. Then went and got my iPhone to take pictures for proof! The two pictures were taken of opposite sides of the closet. The upper one is "his" side, but the picture to the right is supposedly "my" side. The ONLY thing that is mine in either of those pictures is the black trunk on the upper left is filled with geology gear I use when I go to the field. Everything else is his. LOL. This just cracks me up! I thought girls were the closet hogs?!

After that was accomplished I spied an old box with all the letters I had sent off to Husband while he was in Iraq. I started reading through a few but had to quit after awhile, as it wasn't really a place I wanted to return to in my mind. I mainly just looked at the script and remembered how I had used pen and ink to write to him during that time. It was easier because you didn't have to apply as much pressure and as prolific as I was about writing to him I was starting to get blisters. I generally wrote a letter a day, and they averaged about 5-7 pages. It was a run-down of everything we had done for the day and anything else I could think of -even to the point of movie reviews. We would email as well, and he called once a day around 11am (most days unless he was on a convoy). I felt quite lucky compared to most wives at the time who rarely heard from their husbands. Even though we had both venues to communicate (email & phone) I always wanted him to have something from the mail guys when they came around. I know when I received one of his letters in the mail my heart would jump a beat and I would cloister myself off to a quiet place (usually the backyard with the lulling ocean waves in the backdrop) to read.

We sent packages back and forth to one another and in the ones he sent to me were beautiful marble vases. One of them, a covered bowl, arrived crushed but it had been wrapped in bubble wrap so well it still held the original shape. So I bought some super glue and pieced each of the little parts together until it was whole again. It took a few tries because it would collapse when I started getting to the concave portion of the bowl, but in the end I managed to get it to work and the glue-job wasn't very noticeable. The lid didn't fit as nicely, but I didn't care. I still have that bowl- which surprises me because it has survived 4 moves since then. After I was finished upstairs I brought the paperwork down to my office (at least that is still all mine:) and began to wonder what I had done with the letters Husband had sent to me. I had to dig around through a few boxes I still have yet to rummage through from the move here last summer (hey- after 4 moves in 4 years you'd be a little unmotivated to unpack too, trust me! :) but I located the box of all the letters Husband sent to me. They are so like him- all the same envelope, ordered, structured, tidy. Everything I am not.

I looked about my office and had to sigh to myself for still having boxes on the floor with books I haven't unpacked and put away. My bookshelf is a total mess because I pulled out a bunch of books when I was researching my latest finds - I'm too embarrassed to take a picture of my living room coffee table with all the rocks and books strewn about. Even my rock hammer sits there next to a rock I cracked open on the living room floor (but vacuumed up the evidence before Husband could tell what I had done). Usually I do that outside, but it was late. And dark. And cold. And inconvenient. He doesn't ever get angry with me, but I feel bad when I've let my rocks cause such a mess of things. Which brings to the point that I had wanted to get them put away today, but obviously, despite my best intentions, that did not transpire. I am not even going to try and project when I may get all these tasks in my mind to completion, all I can say is I'll get to it when I get to it. Hopefully sooner than later. :)



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Upgrading my iPhone

Today I decided that I needed to look into what the new iphone coming out this summer will look like/feature. I want to upgrade to at least the 3GS (as I only have the 3G currently) and before I did, I figured I would check to see if the 4G was worth putting it off a few months.  I originally bought an iphone because it didn't have keys or parts where dirt can get in and cause issues. My stint in Jordan with all the sand (and mud) was a deciding factor in going with the iphone's sleek design and minimal moving parts. The man at the phone store really tried to push a blackberry on me, but I was really digging the touch screen and button-less keypad of the iphone so his opinion was thrown to the wayside. The design itself was just what I needed. In addition, I loved the big screen. I have never liked using my thumbs to text, so the keyboard was perfect for my "tapping" preferences. The apps were just a bonus at the time- but this was before so many cool ones were developed. Now the apps alone have me hooked.

My issue now with my 3G is that a couple of apps I want/need are not compatible, and I need the GS. I also REALLY want the video camera. I think making a few mini video would be fun, and there are times when impromptu events could be recorded. I don't like to drag a lot of things around with me when I go places, so having the camera on the iphone is really nice. I use it as my primary source for images, mainly because it is what I have on hand when those unexpected moments occur. Another thing I use my iphone for is music. I don't listen to the radio, and I hate having to change CD's in the car, so I just plug in the iphone to a device that feeds through the radio for my music during car rides. I am coming close to having used up the 16GB memory my current iphone has, and deleted a substantial amount of my albums to provide more room for apps. Thus, the 32 GB offered will be nice.

But do I need the 3GS or should I wait for the 4G to be released? I did a quick search on the 4G and found a couple of pages, but you can see one of the main sources of my information I found here.

As I was reading about the new 4g, I was aghast that a removable battery was rumoured to be part of the design. BAD move apple! This would just mean that a seam would be in the design, and hence a chance for dirt to get into it. Not to mention that when you drop it, there is a chance of the part getting loosened and no longer fitting as smoothly into the slot. I just don't like the idea. Granted, if I am listening to music AND running a tracking app, the battery can die fairly quickly. However, if I am planning on a track, I either bring a car charger, or don't run both music and app together. I would rather do the latter than have a removable part in a phone that I bang around a lot. It just will not work for me. I'm fairly abusive to my iphone, and it has held up very well- but if a removable part is introduced I think I will run into a lot of problems.

While the 4g is said to have a front facing camera for ichat/video conferencing, I would never utilize this option. If I was going to video conference, I would use my computer. It may be a nice option if I were traveling a lot and had no access to a computer- but if that were the case, I seriously doubt 4g coverage would be available.

Then there is the OLED screen. What the heck is OLED anyway? Alright, here is what I found out about OLED. Sounds impressive enough, although I didn't have any issues with the original iphone, so this doesn't really bear any weight on my decision to go or not to go with the 4G. However, to be thorough, I did a search to see what the difference between the two screens were (LCD vs OLCD). Low and behold, I found a site talking about the selling point of the OLCD.  The side-by-side image of the two screens is admittedly striking, but when I am out in the field the sun always glares off the screen- so when it really comes down to it, the OLED screen is nice but not a selling factor for me personally. Having said that, the aspect that the OLED takes up less battery life does catch my interest. Therefore, I cannot discount this new screen entirely as part of a weighing factor in my decision.

I have been an AT&T customer for quite some time, and when I first purchased an iphone it was without any discounts (full price). The second iphone was also at the full purchase price because I was not a new user, but rather a returning user. I was upgrading my phone and giving the old one to Husband, but being as it was only 1 year apart and I had renewed our AT&T contract with the first purchase only a year prior, I wasn't eligible for any discounts (contract renewal etc). It was about a year and a half ago that I purchased my 3G, so I don't know if I am eligible for the 299.00 version, or if they will charge me 599.00. I refuse to pay full price again, as it really annoys me to be a loyal customer and yet treated like crap by a company. We had to pay 1000.00 last year for over limit fees due to Grim talking during prime time (he now knows the value of a lan line since he no longer has a cell phone), so that company has taken enough of our money. Don't get me wrong, I like AT&T- it isn't their fault we had a teen talking over limit, although it would have been nice to have recieved some kind of warning regarding our over limit. They send alerts via text for all other reasons- and we had the plan for 3 years prior with no over limits...  heck, even my bank calls me when I have weird and excessive/unusual transactions. But I digress. For the sake of argument, I will just assume we can get the phone at the 299.00 price.

My deciding factor on the new iphone 4G is the design. Granted, all the images on the web to date are "rumors" and none are confirmed, but for the most part the specs on these rumors are generally accurate. This is why I have to say NO to the 4G. That replaceable battery just kills it for me. The image(s) I found leave for a more boxy design, and I prefer the design of the current iphone. It is much better than the 1rst generation in that it fits in my hand much better with its gentle slope/curvature, and while a tab thicker than the first generation the 3G/GS is much more comfortable in my hand. A couple of the images for the 4G portray it to be more like an enlarged ipod with flat edges, losing its sleek design.

There are a few that are a bit more like the 1rst generation in regards to shape (i.e. less boxy than the titanium concept), as shown left, which is a bit more like the 3G/GS (detailed review here), however it does seem to resemble the 1rst generation quite a bit more. As with anytime you upgrade with an iphone, you never know what the summer will bring. (Each summer has a phone upgrade, or at least that is the current trend). Presently, my research regarding the new iphone 4G has really only garnered me a large amount of rumor and a list of specs. Looks like I am apparently in another crap shoot with yet another iphone purchase, as the last time I upgraded it was only a design and memory upgrade - and a few months later the GS came out. Grrr.. Sometime this weekend or next week I'll head out to a AT&T store and see what they offer me. It would be nice to know more about the video capabilities of the iphone- how long, ease of use, etc etc. I suppose I will check into that later on. I would be happy with any type of video ability at this point.