Why is my annual OA dues renewal letter so late?

Since I took over the voluntary position of adviser to the Membership Committee of Nentico Lodge, I've learned a lot about mailing. Maybe I learned things that I would rather not have known, but I've had to in order to assist getting membership renewals delivered. Since one just arrived today for my son (mine was paid for via the Golden Ticket), I figured it was time to review the steps. Next year we'll do better, I hope.

My training began prior to the LLDC in December 2010, but that was more or less my formal start of the role. We talked about OA LodgeMaster quite a bit, and not so much about the dues process. At that point, I knew we needed to draft a letter, prepare a mailing list, and that was about it. I wasn't thinking about envelopes, postal meters, or much else yet to be revealed.

07-Dec-2010

Harry sent me various forms of the Lodge letterhead, as he has the originals and it didn't make sense for me to scan anything. I thought it would be good to avoid any printing where the masthead or any other boilerplate text is already.

08-Dec

Tony sent me the contact person for the mailing house. In subsequent days, I talked to the person about the process, what format they needed the letter and mailing list in, and other steps that needed to occur. I sent later emails and left voice messages, which stopped being returned. That was strange, but what did I know?

12-Dec

Tyler and I worked on the language of the letter, trying to include updates about recording emails, and fitting everything into place.

13-Dec

Tyler, Harry and others reviewed the draft letter, moving things around to make it work

16-Dec

I met with Eric and Casey to go over the money and resource side of this; Eric said he could set up onlines dues payments. I was a little leery of changing the letter, thinking it was going to go out in a few days, and we had not tested dues collection or reporting.

22-Dec

Tony gave me more instructions on producing the mailing list, and other tips on the process, such as where the envelopes were, or should be. Then it was Christmas, and I stopped working on this until after the New Year.

08-Jan-2011

Bob and Tony and I corresponded about where the dues letters were. I thought we just needed to do a few more things and they would be sent out shortly.

10-Jan

I started working with a new contact from the mailing house, after learning the previous contact was gone late in December. We went over what they had, what they needed, and what I needed to do.

11-Jan

I worked with Joe and Casey on topping off the postage meter, based on the number of letters and the non-profit rate we've always used.

12-Jan

The mailing house found 4 addresses with forwarding instructions in the US system; I found new addresses from ScoutNet. They said changing these would be a re-work charge, so I said never mind.

13-Jan

The mailing house sent images "for approval" of the letter, and the envelope. After reviewing it, I found some fields were not lining up as my document had them

14-Jan

I sent back the revised instructions and the mailing house updated the letter so that data fields were correct.

15-Jan

We sent a mass email to Lodge members, telling them dues renewals would be mailed out soon. Fewer than 100 bounced. The online dues renewal was not quite ready, but we've gotten about 20 as of the end of January.

17-Jan

The online dues renewal was ready. A few folks tried it out.

18-Jan

One set of envelopes was ready for pickup. I drove a set down to the mailing house.

20-Jan

The postal meter funds were ready, but the mailing house needed 1000 more envelopes, as they miscounted their stock.

21-Jan

Big surprise - the mailing house postal clerk said that the letter can't be sent under a non-profit stamp since the content included personal information. After much back and forth, we realized this was strictly true, though it had never been mentioned in the past. They had printed and stuffed the envelopes, but could not mail them. We went through our options, all of which would cost money. There was a lot of shock factor.

29-Jan

Joe suggested we take out the personal parts of the letter, as an option. I didn't like it much, as it would kick back the timetable, but the extra $900 was going to be hard to justify.

31-Jan

The mailing house gave a quote for a revised letter, which was much less than the first class postage would be, so we decided to do that. It meant finding new blank letterhead (over 2,000 sheets), and new envelopes.

01-Feb

We ordered more stationery from Harry.

03-Feb

The mailing house shredded the old letters and we approved the new format. It wasn't exactly what I was looking for, but my towel was out and waving.

07-Feb

The letterhead arrived at the mailing house.

10-Feb

The carrier envelopes (the outside window envelopes) were delivered to the mailing house.

14-Feb

The return envelopes arrived at the mailing house. This was the last piece of the giant puzzle for 2011.

17-Feb

The dues renewal letters are in the mail...

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.  

 

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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.

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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.  

 

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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.

Defenders Trail, Day One

(originally published January 16, 2011; retrofitted April 20, 2022 to fix bad links + images)

I've switched from researching/reenacting the Baltimore Historic Trails (though that documentation needs work) to walking the Defenders Trail along the North Point peninsula. There's a great, but somewhat dated and fuzzy, guidebook authored by Buzz Chriest that I'm using to find my way. My hike on January 15, 2011 was more physical exercise than historical research, as I left the book in the car, on purpose, and simply walked along North Point Boulevard. I spotted two of the historic markers along my route. I began at Saint Monica Drive, parking my car near the entrance to the community of row houses to the west. It's probably called Battle Grove, although redevelopers may have cuter names by now. I wanted to view the site of the defunct North Point drive-in movie theater, which contains only transient vestiges of motion picture audience participation. The location of the screen has concrete footers, presumably cubic yards of the stuff, and rusty sawed-off bolts where the framework was anchored.

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 A modern-day construction entrance, complete with gravel intended to prevent soil from leaving the site, stands as a warning that these bones of the 1950s/1960s drive-in movie popular culture icon will soon be taken away for burial or perhaps reuse as road fill. Heading generally south on North Point Boulevard, I soon reached Wise Avenue, passing the intersection with old North Point Road along the way. The major landmark at Wise Avenue, for as long as I can remember, is Pop's Tavern.

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Between Wise Avenue and the Beltway interchange are many industrial buildings, some off-shoots of the now-shrunken Bethlehem Steel mill at Sparrows Point, and other major and minor chemical, maintenance or construction facilities, with a smattering of restaurants and bars. After walking under the railroad and Beltway bridges, I jogged (meaning shifted, not running) over Bethlehem Boulevard to North Point Road, and the route to Fort Howard. Before the highway build up, North Point Road probably hugged closer to the waters edge, but this has been erased by time. The Edgemere neighborhood on both sides of North Point has streets named for characters of the War of 1812, including Wells, McComas, Armistead and Ross. 

 See myedgemere.com [2022: dead link redacted] for more information on the history of these names.

The Aquilla Randall monument is northeast of where I started my hike, so I need to visit that on a subsequent stage. In front of the Sparrows Point Middle/High School buildings is a historic marker of the Battle of North Point. Of course, it's documented in the "Database of Historic Markers" but here's another view:

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It's another 3 miles or so to Fort Howard, the southern tip of the peninsula, but as the winter day was short, I turned around when I reached Lodge Forest Road. On the way, I spotted this excellent yard art work:

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At first I thought this was a neighborhood snowball stand or something, but I'm not really certain. Whoever created it has flair and technique. On the way back to my car I took shots of the historic marker on the west side of North Point Boulevard that I had spotted on my way south.

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Besides being nearly embedded in the industrial area fence, it has a curious "overwrite" of the General's first name, on both sides, as if he had been misnamed on the first try and then renamed afterward.    

 Recent historic photo (1980s?) of the marker, showing the underling first name.  

 I have at least two more areas to walk - the remaining trail past Lodge Forest Road all the way into Fort Howard, and the surrounding areas near where I parked, including old North Point Road, and these locations:

• Joshua Barney marker (at Patapsco High School and Center for the Arts)
• Battle Acre
• Aquilla Randall

Not a bad start with a chilly, brisk winter's day.

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?



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Winter Camping, LNT Style

The troop camped at Broad Creek this weekend, where lows on Saturday morning were around 26 degrees F. To get the cheerfulness going, we had a small wood fire, in a commercially available fire pan. We didn't cook in the big pan; we had propane-fired camp stoves to boil water.

The breakfast was "eggs-in-a-bag", with whatever ingredients we had, tossed into a plastic bag, and then boiled until appropriately consistent. I had brought my wood-burning backpack stove, so I took a few charcoals from the troop fire and boiled my own cooking/cleaning water.





Yum! Hot breakfast, Leave No Trace way -- with no cleanup, plus a built-in hand warmer.



Too bad I forgot the chili powder. "Bam!"

Bengies 2010, Top 10, and More

I listed "top 10" movies at the Bengies Drive-In Movie Theatre on Netflix while that site had decent user community access tools. Fortunately, I copied off the 8 years of content, and published it as:

http://jspath55.blogspot.com/2010/03/lists-of-movies-that-played-at-bengies.html


That list included an updated "Top 10" for 2009. In 2010, I visited the Bengies as much as possible, not just to see the shows, but also checking out the marquee nearly every week. Below are 28 photos of the marquee, from the operating weeks between April and November. I missed a few, but not many.

On FaceBook, the Bengies admins asked "What was your favorite DouBBle or TriPPPle feature this season?" I'll avoid the easy answer of the Dusk-To-Dawn shows on Memorial and Labor Day weekend (on the grounds that those were not strictly 2 or 3 movies).

I'm going with the September 24-26 weekend line up, known as "Face Fleas thank you Please, Owls Flipped on Inception" on the email list, which included:

1. Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole
2. FLIPPED
3. INCEPTION

I had seen Inception before, once all the way through, and once part way through (it was a Friday and I could not stay awake for the last feature). On the third viewing, Inception held up. The other 2 were great drive-in movies. I could have picked other sets just as easily, there were so many great mash-ups.

Top 10

And now for the top 10. As in earlier lists, I saw each of these at the Bengies, at least once, during the current year.

1. Inception
2. Get Low
3. Megamind
4. Shrek Forever After
5. Iron Man 2
6. How To Train Your Dragon
7. Despicable Me
8. Secretariat
9. RED
10. Robin Hood
    

Almost-rans: Toy Story 3, Salt, The Last Airbender, Cop-Out, The Spy Next Door, Shutter Island

Honorable Mention (from "FaceBook Night At The Bengies"):

E. T. The EXTRA TERRESTRIAL
NORTH BY NORTHWEST















List culled from the Bengies email service for 2010, not necessarily complete, or in chronological order, but mostly.

Key: "Y" = saw it; "!" = on Top 10 list for 2010; "?" = saw part of it (or can't remember it); " " pretty sure I missed it.

Y THE SPY NEXT DOOR
Y COP OUT
? IT'S COMPLICATED
Y KICK-ASS
Y HOT TUB TIME MACHINE
! HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON
Y THE BOUNTY HUNTER
! IRON MAN 2
! SHREK FOREVER AFTER
! ROBIN HOOD
Y SHUTTER ISLAND
Y THE KARATE KID
  KILLERS
Y THE LAST AIRBENDER
? GROWN UPS
! INCEPTION
! DESPICABLE ME
  The Twilight Saga: ECLIPSE
Y SALT
Y DINNER FOR SCHMUCKS
  VAMPIRES SUCK
  THE SORCERER'S APPRENTICE
Y TOY STORY 3
? The SWITCH
Y THE EXPENDABLES
Y The OTHER GUYS
  THE LAST EXORCISM
Y Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole
Y TAKERS
Y GOING THE DISTANCE
? THE LOTTERY TICKET
Y FLIPPED
? The TOWN
Y E. T. The EXTRA TERRESTRIAL
Y NORTH BY NORTHWEST
! RED
Y GET LOW
  GREASE SING-A-LONG
! SECRETARIAT
! MEGAMIND
Y DEVIL
  PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2
  HEREAFTER
Y DUE DATE
Y THE SOCIAL NETWORK