Normal Normie

My sister and I were chatting by phone with each other recently. We were talking about a variety of random topics that came to the forefront that month. One topic rolled around the premise that certain people prefer to blend in to the general masses rather than to stand out. Somewhere in the heat of that topic I summed it up as....

"...but even I would, in that particular instance, prefer to fit in with the general masses, and aim to be normal."

She, in her usual snappy responsive way, instantly replied, "Don't worry, Norman, you're anything but normal!"

....which begs the question: "Are climber's normal?"

Columbia Gorge Basalt formations

 The Columbia River Basalt Group formations are spread across northwestern US states.

The basalt flows have been gradually exposed in the Columbia Gorge over eons of time by ancient river floods and other weathering processes. The Gorge cliffs visible today are prominent steep eroded rock cliffs several hundreds of feet high (such as Crown Point), while some notably taller basalt rock formations exist, such as seen near St Peters Dome (ranging several thousands of feet tall).

Much of it is unclimbable, or its barely climbable (at least in the normal sense of the word, where today's rock climber generally desires some sense of 'security'). Where the steep cliffs are utilized for rock climbing purposes it's always prudent to wear a helmet, whether ice climbing or adventure climbing. In those rare key lucky spots the rock can be reasonably stable (again, in a relative sort of way).

Geology books have their own unique coded way of describing this crazy rock structure type. 

Yet climbers usually need their own specialized kind of phrase-ology. A more descriptive phrase for adventure climbing spots like Crown Point would be....

"...Vertical cliffs composed of cube-ish rectangular blocky cobblestone hunk-ish chunks of detached, or hollow sounding rock, mostly variable fractured 4-8" sized cobble blocks, infrequently in rare locations as taller columnar jointed blocks, weathered exfoliating stone (split by numerous seams or cracks), vegetated (i.e. brush, grass, etc), mossy in spots, lichen in spots, some notably chossy aspects where the weathering process is vigorous, random stone rubble heaped ledges, with certain few rare parts of steep cliff surprisingly solidly connected (yep solid enough for bolts!), yet due to the nature of the pig its always adventure-ish entertainment helmet recommended terrain provided it fits your key rock climbing skill set caliber..."

Hmmm....guess its time to do a repeat fun run up West Chimney!

Genetic entropy

 Genetic entropy is the Law of Entropy.

From order to disorder.

From a 'state of ideal' to a state of uselessness.

From a higher level to a lower level.

From shiny stainless steel bolts to rusty old bolts on a climbing route.

It's an eventual winding down of everything in the Universe.

Browser engines

"Edge pretended to be Chrome, and Chrome pretended to be Safari, and Safari pretended to be Mozilla. And Edge used EdgeHTML but revealed it not, and Chrome used Blink, but revealed it not, but Chrome pretended to use WebKit. And Webkit pretended to be KHTML, and KHTML pretended to be Gecko. And confusion abounded excessively on the face of the web."

A quote from a post on a web master forum about the structural source code behind various popular web browsers many people use today. 

1966 Mustang

Did anyone every tell you that vehicles can sometimes be a literal "money pit"? Well, it is true....

Long ago when I was fresh out of high school and a mere young punk I managed to save up a dollars worth of $ to purchase a 1966 Mustang convertible with a 6-cylinder engine. The exterior was totally black, with specialized chrome-plated side pipes, and chrome rims, and big wide tires on the back end — all jacked up fancy like a roaring beast muscle car betting on first place — that is, until you glanced under the hood and realize it had a very old well-used oil-leaking junkyard acquired V-6 engine that could barely handle normal driving range functionality.

Well, I think I may have owned it for all of about nine months, and the continuous stream of maintenance issues and $$$ costs hit me financially again and again — from a constant stream of vehicle repairs that ranged from minor mechanical engine problems, to carburetor issues, to brakes issues, to something else — you know — car things that just kept going wonky on an old well used auto.

Eventually at the end of that summer I finally reach the utter low point where my lowly first career choice income could not match the steep near constant vehicle maintenance costs — none of my frustrated youthful finagling's linked to that Mustang car equaled a positive sign of anything, so later at the end of that summer I took the well used car to the nearest used car dealer and sold it "As Is", to let someone else be consumed by the burden of maintenance factors that surrounded that vehicle.

Done — gone. Nowadays, being well situated in a reasonable residential zone in a small town with a plethora of nearby stores to suit all my wants and needs, I am convinced that bicycles are a much better mode of transportation for locale commuting purposes.

Sailweed Junction

 Holiday season was upon us, and Christmas Day was a mere seven days away. The Christmas tree was in place in the front room with its tip literally touching the low ceiling of the tiny tiny rental home in inner Sailweed District in the inner parts of southeast X-land. Sailweed District is of course, noted for being the somewhat poorer persons part of town (amongst other things), where the working class proletariat dwell.

All round the base of the Xmas tree lay a fine knee-deep selection of gift wrapped packages awaiting that special day to be opened by the two lovers who live at the residence.

The rental home stood just a mere few yards from the paved sidewalk, and its big front window seemingly advertised our Xmas tree and its colorfully wrapped packages to the entire passing world.

Saturday arrived sunny, bright and cold, so we opted to take a short drive over to a local city park and enjoy a short midwinter day's walk.

A few hours later, upon return to our rental home, we arrive to discover that we've had unknown visitors, and the front door has been quite literally — kicked completely off from its hinges and was laying flat on the living room floor!

Much to our dismay the front room was a messy shamble of strewn items. Yep, ALL of our Xmas gifts were stolen, and the bedroom was ransacked in a hasty search and grab for minor things like jewelry.

And when asking our immediate neighbors (think 100'x200' sized city lots) — who were all at home on both sides of our residence, and who literally live mere feet away from us — neither of our neighbors had heard any sound, nor saw anything!?! Really!

The only nice thing we could ever find to say about Sailweed District is just how quickly we moved out of of there!

Yet our departure was not quite fast enough for we also had our Honda Accord's ignition switch busted off in a random thief's nightly attempt to steal our vehicle too . . . .

ReEx patterns

 A bit of RegEx indeed....

^(?:([0]?\d|1[012])|(?:1[3-9]|2[0-3]))[.:h]?[0-5]\d(?:\s?(?(1)(am|AM|pm|PM)))?$

Matches times in a variety of formats.