A Day Late

Remember my post a week or two ago about being able to print out a copy of my fishing license online? Well, it turns out the online version of the license is only good for 30 days after it is purchased online. From that point on you have to carry the “original” document they send you in the mail. I guess that defeats my idea of having multiple licenses so I’m never caught without it.

Anyway, I can understand why they do it. It probably wouldn’t be too difficult to alter the online version and print out one with a different name, appearance, etc. The problem could be solved by having the field officers carry around a PDA or something so they could verify the license # and make sure the information is accurate, but I understand that’s probably asking too much. After all, remembering to take my fishing license with me isn’t that difficult (I know no sooner than I say that, I’ll forget it and get a ticket).

I’ve spent the last week fishing quite a bit, both bait and fly fishing. The conclusion, I’m much better at bait fishing (since it doesn’t take much skill) but I’m still determined to stick with fly fishing. Although it’s more difficult I think it’s more fun, and also more rewarding when you actually catch a fish.

Anyway, last week I went up to the Hobble Creek catch basin quite a bit. It’s just a small catch basin but they stock it and it only takes me about 10 or 15 minutes to get there from my apartment. I found a good little spot and caught 2 fish in 10 minutes. Unfortunately it got too dark, but I’m sure had I stayed I could’ve caught all I want. They’re only little planter fish (probably 7 or 8 inches) but sometimes that’s good enough.

I went fly fishing on the Provo River around Vivian Park both Friday night and also Saturday afternoon. Friday we didn’t have much luck, but I did catch a couple on Saturday. Ok…well, I guess that depends on your definition of catch. I should say I “hooked” two fish, although the first doesn’t really count. I was trying to cast again and I couldnt’ get my line to come out of the water. It didn’t act snagged, the line moved freely but just like it had a little too much drag on it. I gave it another try and noticed a little 4″ guppie go flipping by me in the water. After a little wiggling it was able to get off the hook which was fine with me. It’s not a fish I would’ve been very proud to catch.

The second fish was a different story. It was a pretty good fighter and when I finally got it to the surface it looked pretty good size. I’d guess around 12 or 14 inches. Unfortunately just as we were reaching down to grab it my line snapped (I should get a net). Actually I think the knot on my hook may have given way, I probably didn’t tie it very good. To say I was ticked off is an understatement. Esspecially considering that was the last thing we caught all day long. I guess it doesn’t matter, I would’ve released it anyway, but the fact it was almost in my hand and got away was infuriating. Despite the frustrations I’m gonna try again.

Oh, I was using bead head pheasant tail nymphs (size 18 I think) when I caught both of them. I think I’m going to go again this Wednesday with some friends. We might try the middle provo and see how if it’s any better. I’ll probably post an update on how it goes.

Dave Fletcher beat me to the punch on posting about the online version of the Wildlife Review published by the Utah Department of Natural Resources. I downloaded it and printed out quite a bit of it. If you like to fish (or you’re someone like me who liked to fish at one time but hasn’t done it for a few years) it’s got some good information.

I also purchased my fishing license online which was really slick. Not only does it provide a printable version of the license immediately. It also creates a permanent URL for the license and sends the purchaser an email with a link. That way if you lose the license you can simply click on the link and print out another copy. GREAT IDEA! I printed off a couple copies right off so I can keep one in my wallet, another in my car. Maybe I’ll print off a few more to keep in my tackle box and fishing vest. Won’t ever have to worry about being caught without my license.

I’ve only gone fishing for a couple of hours over the last week but hope to be going more. If I go enough I may have to create a fishing category in my blog. We’ll see. I’d really like to start fly fishing which I haven’t done for about 10 years. I still need to stop by the sporting goods store and pick up a little more “gear” before I can do that though.

I’ve spent the last few days at work working on some Windows logon scripts. Unfortunately it seems that Visual Basic Scripting is the best option for doing it. I’ve never touched Visual Basic and my only experience with Basic amounts to a few classes when I was in 6th grade. Am I the only one that finds Visual Basic a completely non-intuitive language? Honestly if I didn’t have some script archives and resources I dunno what I’d do (by the way, the script is working fine, so far at least).

Ya know, sometimes after working with something for the first time it’s difficult at first but then you start to gain a greater appreciation for it. This just hasn’t happened with Visual Basic. I want my C/C++, Java or Perl back. Anything but Visual Basic. Yuck!

With my new found free time I decided to read a couple books I’ve had for a few months. The first book I read was the new John Grisham book, “The King of Torts“. I have to say, I’ve yet to read a John Grisham book I haven’t liked. I think it has to do with the fact they’re so easy to read and he also does an excellent job of developing the characters. This book was no exception. It wasn’t my favorite Grisham book but I still enjoyed reading it a lot. I’d give a synopsis but it’d be too hard to do without giving away key parts of the plot. Anyway, good book, if you have the time I recommend it.

The other book I read was “The Sigma Protocol” by Robert Ludlum. I saw this book on the discount shelf at the bookstore for only 4 or 5 dollars and decided to get it. Ludlum wrote “The Bourne Identity” and I’d been wanting to read one of his books for a while. I didn’t really enjoy this one as much as I’d liked. It kept my attention but I never really got “into” the book. Although I only saw The Bourne Identity this book reminded me of it in a lot of ways. Basically one man who can trust no one with a small army pursuing him around Europe. I think I just had a hard time with some of the plot. A lot of the pieces that fell into place seemed to do so a little too conveniently for me, but it was definitely worth the $5 I paid for it so if you see it on the discount counter and have some time, consider it.

It’s stories like this that make me nervous about flying. I guess the glass half full take on the story is everyone hopefully passed out before they hit the ground.

I wrote a nice long rant yesterday about Qwest DSL with MSN as the ISP, but I wasn’t paying attention and closed the web browser before I posted it (hate it when I do that!). Anyway…my temper has cooled a little since then which is probably a good thing. Maybe I should make it a rule that I can’t rant about something until it’s been at least a day since it happened.

Anyway…what happened was one of my brothers built a new house and had it wired with Cat-5 cable. He asked me to come over and setup his network and such. He already signed up with Qwest DSL with MSN as the ISP and they had shipped him an Arescom Net DSL modem. I setup the network, connected a wireless access point, etc, then connected the DSL Modem to the hub. At first the DSL modem wouldn’t connect up through Qwest so I spent a few hours on the phone with MSN tech support (most of the time on hold) and they finally decided to send a Qwest tech out to check the lines. Turns out they had configured something wrong on the line when they hooked it up, so that was fixed and I got an internet connection. I checked his laptop and it successfully got a DHCP address from the DSL modem and connected up to the internet fine.

I figured that was it, but my brother called a few days ago and said he tried hooking up a second computer to the network and couldn’t get it to work. I was trying to think of a cause when I remembered something strange I noticed when I was on the phone with tech support the week before. The subnet mask on the modem was set to 255.255.255.252. I remember at the time thinking that was very restrictive (my binary skills are rusty so I didn’t realize HOW restrictive until I thought about it some more). That’s right…the DHCP on the modem will only give out 1 IP address. I meant to check on it the week before but got distracted and forgot about it. I did some searching online and came across these two links: link1 link2. Yeah…so I guess this NETWORK modem they sent only works with 1 computer. How dumb is that? I told him to call MSN and cancel his service and call Qwest and have them change his ISP to XMission (who is an AWESOME ISP, by the way). So he called MSN and they said they’d credit his account for 4 months of service if he wanted to purchase a router to connect the multiple machines up to the modem. I have to admit, that’s a pretty good offer (this is what tempered my rant). The router I bought was cheaper than 4 months of service would have been, so that’s what we did. Everythings working just great now. I still think the network modem they sent is dumb, but oh well. One of these days I’ll have to write another rant about Qwest. It’d would be a long one though, so I’ll save it for another day.

I’m sure everyone works with people like this. You know the guy. The guy that needs to have the fastest, latest and greatest computer/piece of technology despite the fact he spends the majority of his time doing word processing. This guy at work has been harassing me for months to get more RAM for his computer (he has 256 MB currently). I was open minded to the request and setup a counter on his system to record the memory used to a log file every 10 seconds and let it run for a few days. After reviewing the file I learned he had an average of 100 mb free at any given time and only once in the 5 day period for approximately 1 minute did he exceed 256 MB usage. With statistics like that it’s hard to justify adding more. None the less, he’s been relentless at insisting that’s what’s causing his system to run “slow” (he has a 2 ghz machine by the way). I’m almost to the point of just giving him more RAM so I don’t have to go through this every month. Aggravating!