Urban park trails

On Saturday August 13, I went with other OA members to the Carrie Murray Nature Center in Leakin Park. The weather mostly cooperated, as we had a lot of outdoor program for the Scouts who attended, but a bit of rain later in the day pushed us inside to the classroom.

Planning for the event had been tricky, as most Scout units do long term camping in June, July or August, and the OA national event SummitCorps also took a week out of the schedule, not to mention the planning time for it. Different stations had been proposed for the Expo in the city, and we ended up with Cooking, Camping Promotions, Leave No Trace, Pioneering, and my station on the Baltimore Historical Trails.

During a planning meeting the week before the event, I got a chance to check out the Nature Center and the surrounding woods, including taking a hike for about 45 minutes. There is a lot to see in the area, and while the trails are well-worn, there has been serious attention paid to maintaining them.

Photo 1 - the day's activities started with an opening ceremony by several Boy Scouts.




Photo 2 - The Scouts learned about the Baltimore Historical Trails and patches, but seemed just as interested in a map of the city from the 1950s. "You are here!"





Photo 3 - what would a Scout activity be without food? Joe Spellman cooked up the hot dogs.





Photo 4 - Nentico Lodge Chief Ryan Kivinski led the Scouts on a hike, passing by historic artifacts and the Orianda House in Leakin Park. It's a big park, but because we had a map, we did not get lost. No, really.





Photo 5 - Lodge Adviser Mike Parrish, Lodge Vice Chief Zach Dowell, and Lodge Chief Ryan Kivinski, left to right.





Photo 6 - the trail back to the parking lot by the tennis courts (Eagle Drive!). After the rain, note the puddle behind the water bar. A few of these need to have grade changes to the drainage goes off the trail.




Photo 7 - Photo mapping, afterwards, trying to get pictures into Google Earth. The pictures in the top row middle and right were rejected since they have too many "people" in them. The middle one I was able to crop and have accepted later.






Photo 8 - A screenshot from Google Maps, showing the expanse of trees in this park. Anyone notice the typo?





Till the next Scout event in the park!

Summer camp, day one,try three.

Camp Spencer, 2011.



Sunday arrival, followed by health re-checks, and swimming tests.





Typing this at the Scouting Academy, formerly known as the First Year Camper program at Camp Spencer, Broad Creek Memorial Scout Reservation. Leaving for camp Sunday morning was the usual confusion with getting last minute health data, checking phone numbers, and, reminiscent of sandlot baseball team picking, deciding who rides in which car. I should have had a bit more coffee for the ride, as I was beat when we reached Camp Spencer.

Check-in started at 1 pm, and we made it to camp a half hour ahead of that. With staff still shaking down the process, the typical pinball bouncing around occurred before the official time approached. I sidled up next to the registration desk at a few minutes before 1 pm, and was able to get our troop through staff host assignment quickly. The goal of starting medical checks at 1:30 seemed optimistic, given how slowly the site inspection and tent assignment process usually goes. But we made it to the dining hall and through swim checks with little hassle.

Using the newly won iPad and the now venerable Droid 2 as the mobile hot spot while in the woods has presented some new challenges and learning opportunities or, more simply, hassles. The biggest pain has been trying to figure out how to get digital images from either the iPad or a digital camera and then put the image tags in this blog. Blogspot itself has been a little flaky, though how much of that is beginners non-luck and how much actual bugginess I am unsure. Sites like flickr and picasa have each put roadblocks in front of the methods I have used for years to embed images. I resorted to sticking the memory card in the phone, rebooting in the process and other tricks like emailing myself picture linkPs.

OK, fire drill at camp. Gotta go!

Chesapeake Chapter Ordeal 2011 and The Finder of Lost Objects

Last weekend in the wind and rain, Nentico Lodge 12, Order of the Arrow, Chesapeake Chapter, held our annual Ordeal for new members and returning Brothers. Again this year I assisted with registration, as well as general service around camp and some membership duties for the Lodge. Rain was predicted on Saturday, but the Friday check-in and sleeping "under the stars" remained dry.


REGISTRATION UPDATES

With more pre-registrations this year than I remember from prior years, we entered as many as we could find into the OA LodgeMaster (OALM) database before the Chesapeake Ordeal, intending to minimize candidates spent in line before the ceremonies. That worked out well, with only a very few people showing up with no records. As usual, though, not everyone who planned to attend showed up, with 8 possible Ordeal members unable to be inducted. They were identified as having no Clan after everyone in attendance had been assigned to an Elangomat.

I puzzled over how to deal with their records, since deleting them from the Chesapeake Ordeal event would lose their pre-pay status. So I decided to move their event record to the next one chronologically. I could not see how to do that from the OALM Event Manager screen; you can only delete from there.




On each individual record in the Membership Manager screen, I selected their Attendance history record, modifying it from the Chesapeake Ordeal to the Arrowhead/Thurgood Marshall Ordeal. Hopefully, if they can't make that one, someone else will push their record to the next Ordeal in the season. At the end of their eligibility, we'll need to figure out what to do, as we still have their registration fee.






LOST AND FOUND

At the end of the weekend, I waited at Camp Saffran for the Summer Camp open house scheduled for later Sunday. As each person left, gear, papers, and other materials lingered in the Nentico Pavilion and the administration building. Once everyone else was gone, I decided I needed to get a lost and found going. I carted the useful gear home and shot the photographs below.

Since that time, one new Ordeal member has picked up the bedroll, but I still have a rain coat, water bottle, and pair of gloves (plus a carved arrow on a string). If you can identify these, let me know and we'll return them to their rightful owners. If not, I guess they go into our Troop trailer with other found objects.

Defenders Trail, Day Two

(Originally posted February 20, 2011; updated April 20, 2022 to fix image rot)

Since I walked the middle section of the Defenders Trail first, in January, I would have to complete the entire trail in 2 remaining steps, whether on one day or two. And since I'm hiking the trail by myself, I want to be extra cautious in not overextending my reach, to find my car is miles away as it gets dark, stormy, or tiring. After flipping a mental coin, I chose the northern part of the trail as my next segment. Two historic monuments/areas I wanted to be sure to visit on this hike were Battle Acre, and the Aquila Randall monument. A bit of research on the old Defenders Trail guide book, searching the internet with the excellent Historic Marker Database (HMDB), and viewing maps both online and on paper led me to decide to park near Battle Acre, hike south past the Randall monument, then return to my starting point, looping as far north as time, weather and my condition allowed. Near Battle Acre park are houses, some row homes, and some individual. To minimize interfering with neighborhood parking, I left my car on Kimberley Road very near North Point Road and walked over to the park.  

 

48016973

The two photos of the marker, and the center of the park itself, on the HMDB, don't show the whole picture, as it were. The park is surrounded almost entirely by a fence, but it's split in parts, and the gate pillars are askew, as seen above. Because the park is bordered by busy roads, commercial establishments and high density housing, it felt more like a vacant lot than a park on a winters' day. The sad condition of the American flag on a pole at the center contributed to the rundown feeling. I thought of North Point Boulevard, along with North Point Road, as resembling a dollar sign; the older "road" section being the "S" part, winding along the the original topography, and the newer "Boulevard" section as the 2 straight lines cutting through in a wide, smooth bypass of anything close to nature. I guess that's the price of progress, having fast roads where you barely know what you're driving over, but it means a few things to planning and executing a hike. 

Normally, I'd want to travel on the older road sections, because that's where the local historical events happened, and because slower traffic can be less risky to the pedestrian. But the newer four lane divided highway has wider shoulders and off-road sections to walk on, including paved surfaces wider than a car, while the older two lane road has few if any sidewalks, and the off-road section is typically not paved any wider than the white stripe down the side, plus the drainage ditches can be hazardous to walk near, requiring more concentration to each footstep than to the world around. 

With all that, I chose to walk on both old and new areas, varying my route to minimize back tracking. With more people, and more cars to drop off and pick up, you might be better off staying on the older roads, as long as you watch intently for traffic at the narrowest parts. Pedestrians seem scarce around here. The Aquila Randal monument is less than a mile away from Battle Acre, on the other side of North Point Boulevard. 

The crossing of North Point Road is tricky, as the northern part merges onto the four lane in a tight curve with low visibility. I'd recommend getting to the east side of North Point Boulevard at the Cove Point Road intersection since it has traffic lights and cars actually stop for periods of time. 

The intersection with the eastern part of North Point Road is a "slow down and turn left" process, where you'd be racing across the median to get to safety.

48016573

Unlike the HMDB photos, which show the business to the south of the Aquilla Randall and North Point Battlefield monuments in the background, the above shot is from the road, with the nearby residence behind. And when I say nearby, it's more like the statue and plaque are lawn ornaments, as there is no separation between their yard and the historic area. You could obviously drive right past this and not notice the historic significance at all. 

The remainder of the hike on February 12, 2011, was more contemporary than historic, as I traversed industrial areas near the Beltway, taking a side trip over I-695 to railroad sidings, warehouses and maintenance buildings. Probably the most pleasant surprise was near an enclosed "pond" that I thought was for stormwater management, but may actually be a tidal marsh of sorts, when I startled a great blue heron that was crouched in the vegetation not far from the highway (several feet). As it took off and spread its wings widely, I fumbled to get the cell phone camera on and pointed in the right direction. If you zoom in and look closely, you can see it is on the far side of the water by the time I snapped this.  

 

48015472

Once I reached the area I had hiked on the first leg, I turned back north, generally following the wider North Point Boulevard, but side tracking onto North Point Road for variety. When I was parallel to my car, after about 2 hours of walking, I continued north and west toward the shopping center now called North Point Plaza. The older guide book mentioned a "North Point Shopping Center", but I'm not sure if is that one, or the smaller North Point Village Shopping Center near where the drive-in was. After seeing very few people outside of their cars for nearly 3 hours, the activity at the "Amish Market" and other Saturday commercial activity was a big contrast. As I have visited portions of the Defenders Trail, I've taken many pictures, uploading those that might be interesting to Panoramio, and then to Google Earth. Before I started walking, I noticed Google Earth had few if any photos of the neighborhoods in this historic peninsula. 

With the second leg complete, there are now 56 shots tagged with DefendersTrail [dead link], along with others in the vicinity. The Google Maps truck has driven on North Point Road, and North Point Boulevard, but there is no substitute for putting your own feet on the history trail.

Court of Honor Chili

I threw in what I had in the house - garlic, onions, some beans, tomato sauce, chili powder, meat, and what I got at the local grocery store - more beans, and pepperoni.

Yummy!

OA LodgeMaster Client Server testing

The Order of the Arrow membership database system is called LodgeMaster, also known as "OALM" once you've said "Order of the Arrow Lodge Master" too many times. I tried out the client / server set up for practice. It works, but there are things to be aware of. Below are many screen shots; I'll talk about them in this beginning text.


Let's see, over 15 images of 50KB each or so, that's 750KB. Should not take too long to download...


Image (1) show what the server screen looks like, once you've switched on the feature. I am not showing the setup screen, but there is a key that is generated which each client will need to enter to connect.

Image (2) shows what a client looks like, after connecting. While the client machine will still have a database running, user screens will be connected to the database on the remote server.

Since clients will use one central database, rather than the distributed databases, I would make sure no client machines enter data except in the server/client connection during an event. Otherwise, no new or changed records on the client machine will be visible to anyone else until after all have synchronized later.

Images (3) and (4) show the error messages if a client machine does not have the server's IP address and current key (which changes on each open and close of the server).

So what about synchronization? Neither the server nor the clients can synchronize to the central database (in the cloud) while either are running remotely. See image (5). Because "all the eggs are in one basket", I would recommend trying take check points during the event, such as late night, early morning, or maybe mid-day. All clients need to disconnect, the remote server needs to be switched to normal mode, then synchronization started. That way, all is not lost should that machine crash, especially since the clients databases have no records of any entries during their remote access time.

Image (6) shows what happens when the server goes back to normal mode.

Most of the remainder of the images were recorded during test scenarios where I shut down either the internet connection, the server, or crashed the client process to see how the client/server behaves. Unfortunately, while one message claims "returning to logon screen" I was never able to re-connect a client process once the linkage dropped.

Stopping the client SQLServer process did nothing to restore a live connection; the MSACCESS process apparently manages the menu screens. That makes sense once you realize the client connects to the SQLServer database on the remote machine.

If the remote server is stopped and started again, a new key is generated, meaning each client will need to start up again with that key.

Some of the error messages are not connection-related, but due to bugs in OALM or Microsoft software. "Invalid object names" seem to be due to broken records inside the database. The "Microsoft Office Access has encountered an error" could be due to a bad call, or just general bugginess. Business as usual in the software world.

Despite these test results, I didn't lose any data or need to reboot either system. Given this will be used in a field situation, with lines of people sometimes waiting for check-in, it's important to practice under adverse conditions to anticipate and avoid problems. Motto of the Scouts, right?



(1)



(2)



(3)



(4)




(5)



(6)



(7)



(8)


(9)


(10)



(11)


(12)


(13)


(14)



(15)


(16)


(17)

Troop 174 Checks Out National Gaming Day

Post by Guest Authors - Boy Scouts Working on the Journalism Merit Badge.



Preliminary work on Journalism Merit Badge

Event:

National Gaming Day

November 13, 2010


Author (1) - Terrell

National Gaming Day was held on Saturday, November 13, 2010, for the youth and community to come together to play games at public libraries all over America. In Baltimore, children and youth volunteers who do community service played games at the Herring Run Branch of the Enoch Pratt Public Library, on Erdman Avenue in the Belair-Edison neighborhood.

The librarians put out fliers in the community and posted it online. Then, on Saturday, they put out board games for children and families to play, such as Candyland, Monopoly, Connect Four, Chess and Checkers. They also had computer games to play. They put up a screen in the children's section of the library, with a projector, so the kids could play Wii games, such as volleyball and bowling.

They also planned a matinee and popcorn. Some of the games used household materials. The children were stacking paper cups and plates as high as they could. You could hear a lot of laughter and see the cheerfulness.

Cheryl Dishon, children services specialist, said, "National Gaming Day through the American Libraries Association is an effort to connect communities with the educational, social and fun aspects of games and playing board games together." "We're trying to get our neighbors to come in and enjoy the library beyond just researching and looking for books to read."

Most people think of the library as a place for school or learning or information. This library is participating in National Gaming Day to bring more people in to the library to play games and get on the computer. At this library, you can play games in the library but you can't borrow them to take home. This library has movies that you can check out for seven days for $1.
Patricia McLaurin, a mother of two children, came to use the library to check out some books and movies, and saw that games were being played. She said her children had fun.

Also participating at the library was Jordan Bell, a seventh grader, who is doing community service by playing games with the kids.

Author (2) - Winston

The Belair-Edison neighborhood Herring Run branch library celebrates their annual National Gaming Day on November 13, 2010. Poonam Mukherjee, librarian team manager, likes National Gaming Day because it brings families together and encourages people to come again. The library provides games for patrons to play for free.

There were board games such as the most popular "Wits & Wagers" family game, video games like Nintendo Wii sports and PC games. It is called National Gaming Day because it is being held across the country, including Herring Run and Edmonson branches of the Pratt library, according to Poonam Mukherjee of Enoch Pratt.

Game players included youth from elementary to middle schoolers. Some sponsors for National Gaming Day are Demco, which sponsored the video games, and North Star games, which sponsored the board games. North Star gave out over 1500 game kits throughout the United States libraries.





Playing Wii at Herring Run library on National Gaming Day




Poonam Mukherjee (Library Team Manager ) and Cheryl Dishon (Children's Services Specialist) of the Herring Run Branch




Screen shot of the event invitation


Thanks to Ms. Jean, Ms. Pauline and Mr. Jim

OA Lodge Master - who's eligible for Brotherhood?

Here's one way to use the Order of the Arrow "Lodge Master" web portal to find Brotherhood eligible candidates.

(1) Log on, go to the Member Report Builder

From OALM

(2) Open the Filter Wizard to select and sort the data.

From OALM

(3) Add fields to the default view, by clicking on the field selector.

From OALM

(4) Add an Ordeal date range. The reason you might do this instead of looking for current dues paid members is you might find some active members whose dues are lapsed. While I chose a 5 year range, Mr. Tony suggested the range be set to dates older than 10 months. If the chapter's next brotherhood event is scheduled for May 1, 2010, then set the ordeal date range to <= 07/01/2009.

From OALM

(5) Add a chapter to focus on.

From OALM

(6) Pick current level = Ordeal, to find those who need Brotherhood.

From OALM

(7) The most important step, after leaving the Filter Wizard: click Refresh.

From OALM

(8) Use the field selector to pick important fields such as contact info, dropping constants such as state.

From OALM

(9) I don't show the sort selection button, but here are the results by dues year. You could sort on Ordeal date instead for a similar view.

From OALM

Our work here is done.