Author Archives: Maria Langer

Sedona’s Coffee Pot

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The view from our motel patio.

Mike and I took Mike’s mom to Sedona when she visited in February. We spent the night at what I think is Sedona’s best kept secret: Sky Ranch Lodge. I wrote a bit more about that overnight trip here.

Sedona's Coffee PotWe had a rim-view room that overlooked some of the most beautiful rock formations Sedona has to offer. We spent the late afternoon on the room’s back patio, sipping wine and watching the setting sun change the shadows on formations like the Coffee Pot shown here.

We enjoyed the peacefulness of Sky Ranch and have already made reservations to return for a weekend in the autumn. We’ll come back with my Jeep and tour the red rocks and Oak Creek Canyon at the height of the fall colors.

Respect

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You have to earn it.

It has been suggested to me that I sometimes exhibit a certain lack of respect for some authoritative figures. I certainly can’t argue with that observation.

But the way I see it, someone has to earn my respect to get it.

I’m not some little pissant who blindly follows the leadership of decision makers just because someone picked them to make decisions. I have a brain and I know how to use it.

I have no respect for decision makers who lack the intelligence to see the the long-term consequences of their decisions. I also have no respect for people who abuse their political power for their own ends. I’m seeing entirely too much of that in Wickenburg these days.

Come on guys, get a life. Your domain of power is an insigificant spot on the map: the Town of Wickenburg, AZ. Stop milking it for your own benefit and think of the people who have to live here — the people who voted for or appointed you. Do what’s best for the community — not for yourself or your friends.

Until you do, don’t expect any respect from me.

Gravatars Update

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I’m having second thoughts about that gravatar feature.

Last Saturday, I added a gravatar feature to this site. As I discussed in this article, the gravatar image for anyone who had one would automatically appear when they wrote a comment on this site. Just a kind of cool and funky way to add more personality to the site. Not that we get so many comments here.

On Saturday, I also submitted my own gravatar for rating and approval. And I’m still waiting for it to be approved.

Now in this day and age, we’re all pretty accustomed to immediate gratification. You apply for something online — a new account to access a Web site, etc. — and you get an e-mail message with approval within minutes. This is commonplace. So the fact that I’ve been waiting five days for a perfectly acceptable photo (G rated, I assure you) to get approved makes me wonder how serious the folks at gravatar.com are about this system they set up.

I was over on the site and it appears to be the work of a single very talented but very busy person. He’s working on Gravatar 2.0 (whatever that is) and asked for volunteers to help him rate and approve new submissions. Over 100 people volunteered, including me. I offered up to an hour a week until he was caught up. I didn’t get any reply.

The forums are a mess of extremely frustrated new users (like me) who have been waiting to use the feature. Some of them claim they’re embarrassed because they set up the feature on their sites and they’re one of the few people who don’t yet have a gravatar. I don’t feel that way. I don’t expect most of the visitors here to have one. But I am anxious to see if I implemented it correctly and the only way to do that is to see a comment from someone — like me — who has a gravatar.

Part of me urges those of you who are interested to go to gravatar.com, apply for a free account, and submit an image. Then kindly remind the management there, in the forums, that you’re waiting. Maybe that’ll put a fire under their butts and they’ll use some of those volunteers to rate and approve all the gravatars in the queue.

The other part of me says forget about it. Maybe it was just a bad idea.

I’ve always had a problem with patience. Maybe this is a test.

In any case, I’ll let you know when my gravatar appears so you can see how it’s implemented on this site. I’ll probably write an article about it for WordPress users, too. But first I need to make sure I got it right.

Time, apparently, may tell.

Podcasting Stats

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Stats can tell you a lot of interesting things.

I spent most of this morning updating the daily podcasts for KBSZ-AM, the local radio station.

KBSZ‘s Around the Town broadcast was my first foray into the world of podcasting. I wanted to experiment with the new technology but didn’t have any content available to experiment with. KBSZ was already doing a daily radio show. Why not podcast that?

Well, what started out as a fun and education project has become a bit of a chore. It isn’t difficult to turn their broadcasts into podcasts — especially since I also do streaming audio for them and my computer automatically records each show for me — but it is time consuming. You see, I can be a bit of a perfectionist at times. KBSZ’s show never starts exactly on time and never ends exactly on time. So there’s stuff at the beginning and end that needs to be edited out. Then I need to upload the podcasts files, create the podcast entries on their Blogger account, link the podcasts files, and publish. It takes about 15 minutes per episode. If I were smart, I’d just do it every day. But I’m not smart. I wait until there’s about 2 weeks worth and knock them all of at once. It took two hours this morning. Two hours that I should have been working on my WordPress book.

I do plan, however, to get very smart. I’ll skip the editing and fully automate the process. More on that when I find time to do it. Hopefully soon.

While I’m messing around with the podcasts, I often check the download stats for all podcasts and other files on my server. I serve all files from a GoDaddy.com hosting space. They give you a good amount of disk space and bandwidth for only $3.95/month — and even cheaper if you pay a year up front. So all podcasts and book support files live there. No need to bog down my limited bandwidth with visitor downloads.

Due to a server glitch, all stats prior to November 18, 2005 were lost. No big deal. I just started using that server seriously in August 2005. But it’s good to know the start date for the stats.

By looking at the stats, KBSZ can see who their most popular guests are. For a while, I was number 2 (behind the high school football coach — hey, sports are important here in Wickenburg). Now the top slots are held by the folks who make sure all their friends know about the podcasts. Some of the really smart ones link to the podcast from their own Web sites, further increasing the number of downloads.

While I was checking stats, I checked the stats for my own podcasts. I found that my video podcasts are among the most popular I do. That doens’t make me terribly happy, mostly because they’re a royal pain in the butt to create. Recording my voice reading a script is one thing, but inserting a bunch of screen shots at key points is another. Still, I’ll try to make folks happy by delivering a few more audio podcasts.

The excerpt from my Mac OS X Tiger book is by far the most downloaded file on my server. The Panther excerpt isn’t far behind. You can find both of those in the Mac OS QuickStart support area.

All this, of course, reminds me that I haven’t done a podcast in about two weeks. I’m behind already. Maybe I’ll throw something together on the plane to Austin on Wednesday.

Perkinsville

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The ranch at the end of the line.

In February, Mike’s mom came out to Arizona to spend a week with us. She’s in her 80s now and although she’s still pretty mobile, there are limits to the things you can do with her. Among our activities was a ride of the Verde Canyon Railroad.

The railroad is a tourist attraction through-and-through. They ask you to get there an hour early — that’s so you’re stuck in a corner of Clarkdale where the only restaurants and shops are their snack bar and gift shop. Our “first class” tickets entitled us to snacks on board, but we worried that it wouldn’t be enough for the 4-hour ride. So we spent another $30 on burgers, hotdogs, chips, and soda like everyone who was waiting.

But the train ride itself is thoroughly enjoyable, especially if you like to simply relax and watch the scenery go by. The narrow gauge railroad winds along the southwest side of the Verde River, one of the few Arizona rivers that runs year-round. From the train cars — including the outdoor observation cars which are extremely pleasant — you can see a variety of wildlife. We saw bald eagles and glimpsed two different herds of javelina. On a previous trip, I remember seeing deer. There’s a recorded narration, some hokey music, and some extremely knowledgeable “conductors.” Our guy in the open car had brought along photos and the Plants of Arizona book to identify plants. And unlike the folks at the Grand Canyon Railroad, these people aren’t squeezing you for tips throughout the ride.

PerkinsvilleThe ride ends at Perkinsville, where the canyon opens up to a broader valley. There’s a ranch there and the train stops literally in front of the ranch house. The place appeared occupied — there were horses and cattle there — but there wasn’t a person in sight. The conductor guy told us the story. Years and years ago, when the railroad was built, the land at the ranch was needed as a station to take on water and fuel for the steam engines. The railroad had offered the land owners a lump sum or a royalty for the use of the land. The Perkins family had taken the lump sum, giving up their control of the right of way. Today, under new ownership, the tour train had control of the land. The people who live in the house make themselves scarce when the train stops there on every run.

Verde Canyon EngineWhy does the train stop at all? Well, this is the place the engines are moved from the front of the train to the back for the return ride. There’s a siding there and while we’re waiting, enjoying the scenery and feeling kind of bad for the people who have to deal with 130 tourists a day looking into their windows, the engineer takes the two engines and moves them. The task takes about 20 minutes and they sell ice cream sandwiches to us while we wait. Then we’re on our way back to Clarkdale at a slightly faster speed, leaving Perkinsville behind.

Do I recommend the Verde Canyon Railroad? Sure. Why not? Just get a good lunch in Cottonwood or Clarkdale before getting to the station. Don’t pay extra for the first class seating. And spend the entire journey on one of the outdoor cars where you can really see what’s around you.