Finding Places to Camp in AZ for Free

May 19th, 2013 by joey | No Comments | Filed in Fun, Happy Living

I am a Boy Scout leader, and we don’t exactly have a big budget, so I’ve been scouring resources looking for places we can camp for free.  And I’ve found some cool stuff.

If you’re in the west, you are in luck…  BLM land is public land.  What this means is that you can do just about anything that isn’t destructive on blm land.  You can even stake a claim and mine for minerals if you get all the right permits.

Camping on BLM land?  Yup.  4 Wheeling?  Yup.  Having a Camp Fire?  Yup (as long as there aren’t any burn restrictions in place).

Another option, is National Forest land.  The rules for each national forest / park are unique, but most out here allow you to practice “dispersed” camping A good example is Tonto National Forest.  You have to obtain a pass ($8) to use any of the established recreation facilities, but you can go a distance from them and setup camp without a problem.  (While there aren’t any set limits, a good rule of thumb is to be at least out of site of any established area.)

So, now the question is, how do you find BLM land or a national forest near you?  You can go here: http://www.geocommunicator.gov/blmMap/Map.jsp?MAP=LAND  or use Google Earth, with a “Network Link” (a fancy name for putting in a url to pull map data from) to view BLM land.  To find a national forest, it’s built into Google Earth, just go to “More” click on “Parks / Recreation” and select National Forests.

Ok, so, let’s say you want to be 100% sure and not trust these maps to be 100% accurate (Trespassing Charges can be a real pain).  First, figure out what county the place you want to camp at is in.  Next go to the counties website, and look for the assessors area (One good thing about property taxes, the counties REALLY want to keep track of who owns what property).  Most counties have an online map tool you can use to find the spot you are interested and view the ownership information.

Another option here in AZ is State Land Trust land.  While NOT public land, you can get a permit to use it (for all the usual outdoor recreation stuff) from the state.  It is $15 / yr for a person, $20 / yr for a family, and some amount for a group pass (but the group pass is only good for 5 days).

Anyways, now that you know how to find a place to camp for free legaly.  Go enjoy the privacy and solitude camping in the middle of nowhere provides.

bitnami vm – “Unity is supported on Workstation 6 or later virtual machines only.”

May 13th, 2013 by joey | No Comments | Filed in Geek Stuff

Recently while setting up a bitnami vm on my computer so that I can test some changes to our deployment system, I wanted to run the vm in Unity mode, and it wouldn’t let me.  It gave me this error message: “ Unity is supported on Workstation 6 or later virtual machines only.”

I found the fix here: http://communities.vmware.com/thread/239606 (not changing the resultion, but editing the vmx file).

The fix is a piece of cake, just shutdown the machine, edit the .vmx file and:

“…change “virtualHW.version” from “4″ to “7″ in the vmx file.”

Restart the vm, and VIOLA! Unity works!  (Unity is totally awesome btw…)

 

Using ADB to play an Adroid game – Hill Climb Racing

May 9th, 2013 by joey | No Comments | Filed in Fun, Geek Stuff

Last year about this time I wrote a php script that would play Defeneder II for me on my Kindle Fire.  Now I have a new phone (HTC One X) and a new Game (Hill Climb Racing).

I really want to drive the upgraded tank through the forest and just smash all the trees, but I’ve been playing a lot, and it takes a lot of time to get that many coins….

So I revived my old code, EXCEPT! Now you don’t need to do all the send event stuff, there is a new adb shell command called input.  input lets you easily simulate taps.

You don’t even need php, “Hill Climb Racing” is such a simple game, that just a repeated swipe (a tap is too fast to keep the gas pedal down, so instead a swipe pushes the pedal down for a hundred milliseconds??  Which is enough for the car to creep across the levels) keeps the game playing, over and over and over again.

On my HTC One X, the command that works is:

adb shell input swipe 1100 500 1100 550

I’m on windows, so a simple shell script to repeat this over and over for hours on end is all that I need.

for /L %%a in (1,1,10000) do adb shell input swipe 1100 500 1100 550

Yay!  Fully Loaded Tank Here I Come!

Now to play with Screen Cap and see if I can make something that will play a game intelligently.

The busy life of a bootstrapping business owner.

May 7th, 2013 by joey | No Comments | Filed in Business, Life

For those that don’t know, Bootstrapping is when a company starts without any funding.  My company, Novak Solutions, is bootstrapped.  Today, I realized how busy and varied my day was.  Here’s what I did, am doing, and need to do.

What I’ve done Today:

  • Woke up to a small server issue and worked with my brother Jordan to resolve it. (a bug in our php mutex code was filling nimrod’s (that’s the server’s name) /tmp dir.)
  • Setup our new Merchant Account (Thanks Ken!)
  • Had a call with our accountant (btw, he is really really really awesome, and if you are starting a small business and need one, call Nick Cola, CPA in Safe Harbor Florida, and ask for Tony
  • Had a call with a client that wants to give us some equity in their company in return for the hard work we’ve given him so far and to secure us as a permanent resource for his company.
  • Told a few people about how my wife and I almost drove into Bartlett Lake last night in the dark (Note to others: If you follow the dirt road to Bartlett Flatts, without any warning it goes into the lake, no parking lot, no warning signs, no concrete ramp, it just runs into the lake, so drive slowly once you leave the pavement…)
  • Answered a bunch of emails.
  • Read some technology article.
  • Searched in vain for the bigdoor.com api documents…
  • Setup meetings for tomorrow.

What I’m Doing:

  • Writing a blog article before I sit down to read said companies Operating Agreement…

What I have to do still:

  • Read said Operating Agreement (at least it can’t be any worse than reading Great Expectations in 8th grade english class… right?)
  • Come up with an actionable marketing plan for our new Gmail HUD plugin for tomorrow.
  • Update Gmail HUD Plugin pro / lite decision code so we can give people pro for 15 days when they sign up for the lite version, and again every few weeks for a day to keep them wanting pro.
  • Spend some time with my wife.
  • Shower…  j/k, I managed to squeeze that in already today.
  • Read my scriptures
  • A lot more that is definitely going to get pushed to tomorrow.

But! It’s a great life, and I am learning a TON!  A few years from now, Novak Solutions should be running like a clock, and I can go on an extended cell phone free vacation!

 

Ships I’ve Indexed

April 28th, 2013 by joey | No Comments | Filed in church

As part of the LDS Church’s Indexing Effort, I sat down at my computer tonight and “indexed” a dozen or so passenger manifests.  While I thought it would be boring, it was actually quite fun.    One of my favorite parts was to do a search on the ship the passenger manifest was for and read a little about it.  It seems there is an online record of some kind for most ships from WWI onwards.  Here’s a list of the ones I found out about.

  • SS Rijndam (2) - Became a floating casino until she was scrapped in 2003 (and she sank on the way to the scrap yard in India)
  • NYU Victory - A WWII Victory Ship named after NYU.
  • SS United States - The SS United States is interesting because it has the highest power to weight ratio of in commercial passenger liner before or since…  She had 240,000 Shaft Horsepower and drove 4 18′ props.   Very cool.
  • USNS McGraw (I belive this is the USNS Francis X. McGraw): This is another Victory Ship.  It was used in 1971 to move Chemical Weapons from Okinawa to Atoll
  • USNS Private William H Thomas - This was a casualty evacuation ship, that later became a transport.  In 1956 she aided in the rescue of survivors from the sinking Andrea Doria.  This was cool because the crew list I indexed was from March 3rd 1956, just 4 months before the sinking of the Andrea Doria.  The captain (master) of the ship was the same on this list as assisted in the rescue (according to this page) http://www.andreadoria.org/TheRescueShips/Default.htm
  • SS Nassau - This ship traded hands LIKE CRAZY

 

An Exciting Night of Police Action!

April 5th, 2013 by joey | No Comments | Filed in Life

Last night, about 10pm I’m in our kitchen when I hear a knock on our rear sliding glass door.  There’s a guy out there dressed in black with a flashlight.  I hesitate while I decide whether I go grab a gun, or if it’s a friend.  Then I notice the radio and badge.  I hurry to the door and open it.  A mesa police officer breathing heavily says “There’s a guy running from us in your backyard, keep everyone inside.” (as he says this, I see a guy in shorts and a wife beater running across the top of our fence being closely pursued by 2 other officers, and lots of shouting).

I do as he says, and real quick run to the other back door, make sure it’s locked and lock the dog door.

I peak out front, and see 12 police cars (no lie) surrounding us and neighbors homes.

A little while later, and officer knocks on our door and gave me a quick overview, and ended it with “He fell into your yard, would you like to press criminal trespassing charges?”  I ask him a few questions and decide to press charges.

Turns out the officer stopped the guy on main street (the street that runs behind our house) near the motels (very sleazy establishments).  He said he questioned the guy, and he started playing the name game, whereupon he took off running.  Living near down town mesa has it’s benefits, one of which is extremely fast police response time, and within minutes the poor guy was surrounded on all sides, with our house in the middle.

Today one of the officers came by and asked if he could look for his batton.  Seems he lost it in the scuffle.

Once again, I’ve got to say thanks to our local law enforcement.  As much crap as they get, and as rough as they are sometimes, they do a good job of keeping the bad guys away from most of the good guys.

Joey

Epson Connect – Scan Right To Your Dropbox / Google Drive / Evernote / Email account…

January 28th, 2013 by joey | No Comments | Filed in Business

I’m an Epson fan.  Why?  They are the cheapest Cost Per Page inkjet printer I’ve seen.  (I think mostly because the print head is not part of the cartridge, unlike HP, although that may have changed).  Recently, I spent 45 minutes at my new office trying to send 30 page fax…  First the fax machine wouldn’t feed properly, then it couldn’t communicate with the other end (after taking forever to scan all the pages).  Then I tried the communal multi-purpose machine…  Nope, wouldn’t scan to my email…  Finally a lady in the office let me scan from the multi-purpose machine to her computer, and then I emailed it to myself, bought 100 pages of scan credit at some online fax site, and faxed it.

That day, I went home and ordered an Epson workforce scanner.  The big feature I wanted was the feed scanner.  I was tired of piecing together multi-page scans at home.  So the auto-feeder is what I wanted.  When I unpacked it though, I got a WHOLE LOT MORE.  Epson connect is a service that lets you set up scan destinations.  It can be an Email Address, A Dropbox Account, Google Drive, Evernote, or a Box account.  When you push “Scan to Cloud” on the printer, it goes out to epson connect’s website, and looks to see what you’ve configured for possible destinations.  Then, it gives you a list.  You push scan, and VIOLA! In seconds your document is in your account!  No USB, no crappy software (like the Epson Event Manager thing), etc…  Just pure clean simplicity and convenience.

Way to go Epson!!!  You just made my life a whole lot easier.

Places To Camp in Tonto National Forest

January 22nd, 2013 by joey | No Comments | Filed in Scouts

I was looking for a good place to take the Varsity Scout Team I coach and I saw a lot of “Dispersed” camp sites in the Tonto National forest, however, there wasn’t a map that had them all listed, which made it very difficult for me to pick the closest one, or see which ones were near each other.  So, I made a google map (Once again, Google Rocks) with all the dispersed camping sites in the Tonto National Forest (that were listed on their website).

Here’s my map: https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msid=202696527499164379956.0004d3bf5baafe5b087b9&msa=0&ll=33.938803,-111.074524&spn=1.629189,2.90863

After making the map, I went out to Rattle Snake Cove to see if it would work for the team, and it was awesome!  Pictures coming…

Enjoy!

Joey

Beautiful sunset…

January 11th, 2013 by joey | No Comments | Filed in Uncategorized

Two photos I snapped with my phone on the beach on Padre Island.

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Funny photos from Christmas

January 11th, 2013 by joey | No Comments | Filed in Uncategorized

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My wife’s family is pretty awesome. Here are a few photos of shenanigans that occurred prior to Christmas… Enjoy.

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