So this weekend I decided to watch all the YouTube "Road Trip" by Jon Schmidt videos I could find (most of which are contest entries). After my journey, I created a playlist containing them all. This is the result:
You can visit the YouTube Road Trip Contest playlist page here.

See my fan page for my nephew's contest entry at: www.huntergifford.com

The direct URL to Hunter's performance of Jon Schmidt's "Road Trip" is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzNu3Ipe87E

Whenever I have to update Windows systems to the latest version of Flash Player, I find it very annoying that Adobe's Flash Player download page does NOT offer links to directly download the installer files for later offline installation, both the Mozilla Firefox-based plugin as well as the MSIE version.

Another pet-peeve: Software udaters or installers that automatically add desktop icons. NEVER never NEVER never NEVER add an icon unless you ask me and I authorize it, foolish software installer writers!

And when I went to update Java (JRE) on a Windows box today, lo and behold, it wanted to auto-bundle a toolbar with the UPDATE! At least they gave me a choice (I declined as always). But here's a good idea: if it's an UPDATE, use the SAME SETTINGS/CHOICES that I picked when I FIRST INSTALLED YOUR CRUMMY SOFTWARE. That means NO desktop icons, NO "extras" like toolbars.

It's annoying how many software installers add one or more new Windows services always running in the background consuming RAM, CPU, and some minor bit of network bandwidth. Here's another hint, software developers: GIVE ME A CHOICE and let me choose to NOT have that junk installed. I will always manually check for updates to your software when I choose. I don't need an updater process. Nor (Apple), an iTunesHelper or mobile device service on PCs that I don't use iPhones/iPads/iPods with.

Today when I ran Apple's, Software Updater, it politely allowed me to update iTunes/Quicktime (but it annoyingly added a desktop icon for iTunes--BAD Apple!), but it also auto-checked the install option for Safari. Thank you for at least giving me a choice, Apple, but once again--USE THE SAME CHOICES AS LAST TIME! That is, don't by default enable the installation of software that I did not explicitly enable and install the last time I ran your installer or updater. REMEMBER my CHOICE and HONOR IT!!!

Most people probably wonder why I rant about such minor annoyances. Well, when you end up being the go-to person for your family members who rely on you to keep their computers up-to-date with the latest software versions and security fixes, perhaps you'll understand why it can grow so VERY very OLD to have to constantly clean up after software installers that don't give enough choices and don' honor those choices.

Now, for my own use, here are the links I usually end up using for Adobe Flash Player:

• http://fpdownload.adobe.com/get/flashplayer/current/install_flash_player_ax.exe MSIE ActiveX vesion
• http://fpdownload.adobe.com/get/flashplayer/current/install_flash_player.exe Mozilla plugin version

Now I just hope Adobe never changes those addresses.

Yamaha Clavinova CVP-509PE (Polished Ebony)I'm looking forward to replacing my old, broken, out-of-tune, super-cheap acoustic piano with one of these digital pianos, a Yamaha Clavinova CVP-509PE (the PE stands for polished ebony, the color/finish).

While I do love the feel and sound of a true acoustic piano, for a small living room, a digital piano offers so many more features, including a karaoke function that I look forward to using.

I can't wait for it to arrive. Thanks to Tony Beatty, one of The Piano Guys at The Piano Gallery of Southern Utah for hooking me up with a sweet deal. And thanks to Paul too! They rock!



One of The Piano Guys has apparently been putting together a bunch of pretty sweet piano videos. Here's one of Jon Schmidt playing one of his songs, Game Day, in nearby Snow Canyon. My nephew, Hunter, loves to learn and play Jon's tunes. (And I've got to admit I quite like 'em too.) I wish I could play like those guys, but not badly enough to practice.



And while I'm embedding YouTube videos, I might as well embed one of my nephew, Hunter, playing one of Jon Schmidt's tunes, "Road Trip" which Hunter learned by ear first, before he finally had a chance to see the sheet music. Hunter is a mostly self-taught pianist, who, at only fourteen, blows my mind with his skill.



You can also see it via www.huntergifford.com, a little "fan site" page I stuck online for the fun of it.

Owen's Loop Trail along the St. George Red Hill rim - Approx. 1.5 miles one-way, 3 miles round trip)I've hiked this trail (the Owen's Loop trail) a bunch of times this spring. It's close, right in town. I can drive up to the Brooks Nature Park at the top of Main Street (452 North Main, St. George, Utah), park, and head right up the trail.

Please forgive and ignore the obviously wrong GPS route data that caused the straight red lines on the left-hand side of the Google Earth route map screenshot.

This trail is also a fun one to do in the evening. I've watched several sunsets from atop the Red Hill. My most recent trip was on Friday, the 7th of May, 2010. I found the Grandpa's Toolbox geocache out at the end of the trail where it does a loop on the westernmost side of the Red Hill.

Hike Route in Google EarthThis evening I downloaded a bunch of old waypoints and tracks from my GPS and plotted them in Google Earth (using a Ruby script to covert the GPX data to KML). I found this route that Kendall and I hiked one eveing, on Tuesday, 16 March 2010. It was a BLAST!

I need to do that one again. It's especially nice in the evening. You arrive at the edge overlooking State Route 18 and Snow Canyon, a perfect place to watch the sun set over the sandstone crags of Snow Canyon State Park.

And traversing the rim of the southern Diamond Valley extinct volcano cinder cone is fun too.

I think Kendall said they used to refer to this (or a similar hike) at Red Mountain Spa as "Jones' Bones"--due to the, ahem, remains atop the hill. (Don't worry, they're just old, bleached animal bones someone found, collected, arranged in a display beside the trail to look a bit like human remains.)

I'm one of those paranoid people who creates a new email address for each and every different service I sign up for or organization I give out my address to. That allows me to track down problems more easily, and also, should I start receiving junk mail at an address, identify the organization who leaked my information.

For the past few years, I've been getting junk email to an address I created exclusively for and only used for communicating with Zions Bank, an address that would be relatively difficult for a spammer or junk emailer to guess. Fortunately the junk mail volume is fairly low, but it does make me wonder, how did a bank, those financial organizations we trust with our money, managed to drop my email address into the hands of spammers?

Just today I got my first item of junk mail addressed to my old Vonage VoIP email address. Several years ago, I was a Vonage customer. I created the email address back then exclusively for communications with Vonage, and it too would be relatively difficult for a junk mail sender to guess out of the blue, even using a dictionary to brute-force attack my mail server.

I haven't been a customer of Vonage for years, but now I start getting junk email via the address that only Vonage should have had on record. Oops! Looks like Vonage's customer data is insecure just like Zions Bank's customer data.

It's difficult to want to trust either of these organizations in the future. At least it (so far) appears to only be my email address, and not other personal information. I don't see any unusual activity to indicate identity theft, but I'll certainly keep my eyes open.

Good luck, Zions Bank and Vonage, in earning my trust in the future. Once trust is broken, it's difficult to earn it back.

Klipsch ProMedia 2.1 Speakers (black cloth front covers removed)Just like I said two years ago, the Klipsch ProMedia 2.1 speakers still hold the title in my book, the Best Stereo Computer Speakers. I've yet to hear anything that bests them.

Why am I repeating myself? I recently bought another set for another computer system. That's why. And I'm listening to my iTunes music collection on my pair right now as I write this. They sound wonderful. They sound even better after a few weeks of use than they do fresh out-of-the-box.

New, the set isn't cheap at around $150, but likewise, that's a great price for speakers that sound this good. Amazon.com often has them available, usually via various sellers. I grabbed my latest pair from the local Best Buy at about the same price.

Nineteen months ago I gave a progress update on my get-out-of-debt status. Slowly (a bit more slowly than I should), I'm still inching toward that goal. Whereas that year-and-a-half ago, my non-mortgage-debt-to-mortgage-debt ratio was 55% (roughly), it has now inched own to only 35.7% (and remember, I'm on a 15-year fully-amortized mortgage, so what I owe on the house has decreased too over the intervening period by about six percentage points).

I paid off the 14% credit card I mentioned. Unfortunately I replaced it with a short-term zero-percent loan that I'll have paid off in full by September.

And yes, I did pay off my RAV4 completely only a few months after my last update. It's wonderful not having a car payment! (Though that only makes me guiltier for not having done better, considering the cash-flow improvement that made.)

What I really need to do is start a future-car savings payment instead, so next time I buy a car, I can pay cash up front (no loan). And I'm never going to buy new again. The first year depreciation is terrible on new vehicles. Ug!

I say my progress has been slower than it should because a few times over this year-and-a-half, I've slipped back into old bad habits, having spent money upgrading my PC, television, and replacing my living room sofa and love seat set. The furniture is responsible for my short-term zero-percent loan I mentioned above.

My remaining outstanding debt is at amazingly low interest rates. I have to be grateful for that. All of my debt (house included) is under 5%, all rates fixed (so long as I maintain on-time payments) for the life of the loans. That's hard to beat (much to the consternation of the loan salespeople who call me offering credit consolidation loans, none of whom can come close to even matching the rates I pay). That is really helping me pay down principal..

As for saving and investing, recent surgery (Sept. 2009) ate up my savings even with great insurance paying the bulk of the bills. My SIMPLE IRA (that's my employer-sponsored retirement plan) has finally recovered from the stock market plunge of the past few years. Still, I'm behind where I should be in retirement savings. As for non-IRA investing, I still own several Vanguard index funds (two are non-IRA, one is in a Roth IRA) and recently resumed monthly automatic contributions to those which I'd suspended for about a year.

This progress update is really to help motivate me to dig in, renew my zest and zeal, and work harder at getting debt free. And yes, I'd like to call in on the Dave Ramsey radio show and shout "I'm debt free!" when I reach my goal.

I hereby commit publicly to update my progress monthly. That will help me stay on track.

Another Evening Hike in the Red Cliffs Desert Reserve North of Washington, UtahSo Kendall and I went hiking again. This time we parked at the new Washington, Utah exit against the base of the red cliffs Interstate 15 passes by and started up the road, into the Red Cliffs Desert Reserve along the Grapevine Trail.

We followed the path (it was a dirt road) as it wound up the hill then headed northward beneath power lines that feed a well in the sandstone watershed foothills of Pine Valley Mountain.

About two-and-a-half miles up the road, the road ended (at the wellhead) as did the power lines, and before us, in a sandy bowl, was a big chunk of sandstone at the very bottom of the bowl, surrounded on the west by black basalt cliffs from an extinct volcanic vent (an old cone stood above the cliffs, likely the source of the ancient lava flow), and on the east by the sandstone foothills of Pine Valley Mountain.

Despite the path being a road instead of a hiking trail, it travels through beautiful desert terrain. The weather was cool, a storm mounting north of us atop Pine Valley Mountain, the sun sinking quickly in the west, the air pleasantly cool as the distant storm blew soft tendrils of breeze down from the mountain towards us.

And the sandstone playground at the end of the hike was well worth it! Grapevine Trail ends and Bracken's Loop Trail begins at the rock. I don't know what the rock's called, so I started calling it Bracken's Rock.

At the base of the rock, Grapevine Wash forks and winds around the rock base on either side, carving the sandstone, sculpting it as only nature can. Both Kendall and I had to scramble up the rock to the top, just to say that we did. I sat for a bit on the top, then stood, as the breeze picked up and began gusting from the north as the distant storm boiled and brewed above on the mountain slopes.

Before we left, Kendall and I had to test the acoustics by singing at the top of our lungs. Sure enough, the black basalt cliffs on one side and sandstone hills on the other provided perfect echo surfaces, singing right back at us.

We departed Bracken's Rock following the Bracken's Loop Trail northeastward along the base of the basalt-sprinkled hillside, then eastward, then up out of the wash bottom to the base of the sandstone cliffs there, then southward. Since we didn't have a map and weren't sure how long Bracken's Loop would be, and since it was getting dark quickly, the sun having set some time ago, we decided it was best to turn south, and followed a fork of the wash along the sandy bottom bottom, then linked up again with the original Grapevine Trail.

The hike back was enjoyable in the dark, the storm behind us on the mountain blowing cool, cool air against our backs, and the lights of Washington glimmering here and there before us.

We rounded the end of a hill and angled westward again, and suddenly, spread before us, below us, were all the lights of St. George and Washington, revealed in their glory. It was beautiful.

Thankfully, the lights of the communities reflected of the cloud cover to light our path, since no stars were visible, and the sliver of moon we'd seen earlier was now obscured by thickening cloud cover.

When we arrived back at the vehicle, my GPS claimed our adventures had taken us 6.28 miles. Not bad for me, considering that post-Sept. surgery I could barely walk a few city blocks (back in October).

Thanks again, Kendall, for some good, fun exercise in the beauty of Southwestern Utah's spectacular desert landscape.

P.S. Kendall, you'd better post some of your pictures.

Hike Route - 4.3 MilesKendall stopped by and grabbed me from work this afternoon before the sun went down so we could get out in the beautiful weather and light and go hiking. We wanted some place close by, so we chose the Chuckwalla, Turtle Wall and Beacon Hill trails (the three form a loop) in the lower Red Cliffs Desert Reserve.

It was a beautiful late afternoon/early evening, the sun hitting the red cliffs at a lowering angle, the air crisp and cool. We parked at the Chuckwalla trailhead lot immediately off Utah State Route 18 just north of where it crosses Snow Canyon Parkway in St. George, and started down the trail, descending into the canyon past a cliff wall packed with people rock climbing. There was quite a crowd on the cliffs.

The trail was down hill for the first part, descending into the canyon carved by Halfway Wash. It was nice, as it got me limbered up, warming me up for the rest of the hike. The Chuckwalla trail descends to the Halfway Wash floodplain, then follows it northward.

After a while following the wash north, at a trail intersection, we turned westward, crossed Halfway Wash, and immediately started up the hillside, and were soon walking on slick rock, weaving along the base of the cliffs on the Turtle Wall Trail.

I've got to say, the Turtle Wall Trail in the evening light is stunning!

Just a hair past the two mile mark, we reached a look-out point overlooking the Entrada golf course, green fairways nestled in black basalt ancient lava beds far below us.

After a pause at the overlook, we headed northward, until we intersected the Beacon Hill Trail, where we turned eastward and churned through the sand, then descended back into Halfway Wash. As we descended again, the sun hit the sheer red rock cliff face in front of us on the western side of Halfway Wash, below State Route 18 (but you can't see it from the road). What a beautiful sight!

Once at the bottom of the wash again, we followed the trail southward, back to our point of origin. It was a hike made-in-the-shade (literally, as the sun was so low that by this time the canyon bottom was in shade).

The hike ascending back up the eastern side of the wash to the parking lot was the perfect end to the hike, even though by now my fingers were a bit chilly and I was ready to get in the vehicle and warm up a bit.

Thanks, Kendall, for stealing me away to get some exercise outside!