Friday, September 24, 2010

Well Hello Harvest Moon

Yesterday was the first day of fall and the the first Harvest Moon in 20 years. Neil Young sang a song about the Harvest Moon way back when. I knew it was time when my friend Kellie from MO posted on her Facebook wall that the morning smelled of damp oak trees and smokey chimneys in the Ozarks Mtns where she was working. My mind shot back to near Cherokee Pass Mo where I grew up hunting. Those early fall mornings with the thick fog rising off the pastures and the fireplace smoke curling up from the old cabins along the hollers.

The harvest moon from last night, I missed it rising from the horizon where it's at it's best.

 To me the fall season is the best one of the four. How can you beat apple cider, pumpkin pie, bonfires, ripe persimmons and Halloween? Hockey also starts up and this Blues fan is always glued to the radio or TV watching the coolest game in the world. And we can't forget the hunting season either. Our annual ADSH squirrel hunt is always the first weekend in Oct. It will be 33 years and counting for our gathering near Plato MO this year.

The last harvest moon I can remember I was bowhunting deer near Swan Lake NWR in MO. I had stopped by the refuge to film some big bucks one evening. The local farm boys where running combines all day and night trying to get the corn in on the refuge land. I came out of the marsh along Yellow Creek after dark had fallen and there across the moonlit cornfield was the harvest moon, perched perfectly on the horizon. The big lunar orb was so large it felt like I could reach out and touch it. I paused to take in what I was seeing, the combines running in the foreground against the moonlit timber in the background.

So what are your fall memories and fall traditions?

Sunday, September 12, 2010

Dove Opener 2010, Cibola AZ & Blythe CA

I spent 6 days in some of the hottest dove hunting areas along the Colorado River in Southern CA. Here's some video of the fun and sights.

Part 1



Part 2

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Hello Tokyo, Is This Thang On? New HTC EVO Phone

Got my grubby hands on a new HTC EVO smart phone last week. In and out in 30 minutes at the Sprint Store. Took my old cell company AT&T about 30 minutes to activate the new Sprint account. Pretty easy to figure out the functions, the battery life seems a bit weak at first look. Audio does have that underwater sound to it on calls sometimes. Surfing the Interwebz, sending messages, posting pics from the camera to Facebook all worked perfect.

The best part of the whole deal was working with Clarisse. She was 3x hotter in person than in this pic. Lord have mercy.


First week with the HTC EVO smart phone. The GPS app with say location and go is slick, only screwed me once out of maybe 20 trips (bout 1/2 mile off).

The 2.2 Android OS has a root hack finally posted over on xda-developers.com but sweet jeebus it's 3 pages of DOS commands. WTH? I need that WiFi hotspot tether bad for the laptop. Not to fret, a one click root process is about done.

The flashlight app is the shizzle in rattlesnake and scorpion country. Email, Twitter and Facebook was easy to set up. This is my first touch screen phone, it does take some getting used to for typing and not hitting the wrong link or icon on a screen. Size and weight are good for my tee shirt or surf shorts pockets.

The 3G WiFi screams in town, out in the boonies not so much. It's workable for the Internetz and email. YouTube videos are a joy to watch on the big screen with no stoppages to buffer or herky jerky playback. The EVO has 4G  (4rth generation) capability which rolls out here in SoCal in the fall of 2010.

The Friends Stream is nice to combine Facebook and Twitter feeds into one screen to ease the boredom in the airport.

So far Sprint's coverage has been good, even out in the empty desert south of Cibola AZ.

I went with the Aliph Jawbone Icon ear bud, The $39 hardwired ear bud the Sprint Store had sucked and the salesman warned me not to even try it. If that is so why even have the crappy non functional one on the rack to tempt suckers like me?

The one big beef I have is the lame AC/DC micro USB charger plug that plugs into the bottom of the phone. It doesn't lock into the phone so it's constantly having to be plugged back into the phone when you move the phone around in the car or on the table. I guess many of the new phones are using this type connection for power and data but some engineer needs to rethink this weak link FAIL.

One other minor bitch is my older IBM laptop doesn't have USB 2.0 so I can't sync the phone to that older laptop.

The camera is pretty good, I'm shooting 1 meg high quality pics that are stored as .bmps. Video worked fine to record the neighbor's drunken wife swerving all over the road on labor day weekend. The one small nag is close up pics sometimes are not in sharp focus, not sure if that's me or there is no macro mode or what.

Low light pic wasn't too bad on auto setting.



Fast action (30 mph) pic was okay, some overexposure in upper right.


I know, you're wondering "Why not an iPhone"? Well, to be brutally honest I'm tired of all the "Network Busy" errors from AT&T's overloaded network. The iPhone is just too popular right now. I like the bigger display of the EVO and the fact their apps are catching up to all the iPhone apps. Add in that Sprint has built their network out a lot better than AT&T and you have my vote. The Sprint phone bill is also cheaper, $69, if you need unlimited data and messages. I made my new phone decision after putting a Droid X, Samsung Captivate and iPhone through some testing. The one biggie I wanted but didn't get was the Super AMOLED screen which works better in bright sunlight.

Bottom line, if you need to take your office on the road so you can read email, share pics and video on Facebook and Twitter, surf the wild wild Interwebz, find addresses in the dark, this is a must have tool. 

Oh yeah, almost forgot, you can also make phone calls with it since it's also a cellphone. I almost forgot to add that part in from all the fun I'm having using the other features.