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!

SummitCorps - Thursday July 14, 2011

Thursday.

It was very foggy this morning, with temperatures lower than any other day of the week. I put on a long sleeve T shirt, but packed a short sleeve for the afternoon. Breakfast was once again various packaged foods, including cereal bars, granola and trail mix. Nothing spectacular, but there was hot coffee and plenty of drinking water.

We returned to the same spot as before, and since we had connected our trail to the crew working near us, we went over trail sections we had cut before for finish work. One of the challenges of the day was removing a number of logs that were on the side of the trail, stuck together in a way that was likely to cause water to back up, or more logs to cover the trail. There was also continued work on a section that was very rocky; we pulled out the largest rocks, then rearranged some of the to make a passable trail. Once that was done, we took buckets and buckets of top soil to the low spot.

Much of the day was spent fine tuning sections of trail work by viewing the grade by eye, measuring the slope with a MacLeod, and digging out the high spots that would cause future rain to collect on the trail instead of running off. The work was demanding, and much less rewarding than blazing trail, seeing how far one can get ahead.

One of my tasks on Wednesday and Thursday was working on a slope that seemed to have about 4 inches of top soil, embedded with many rocks. Once I found the clay underneath, that meant a lot more soil and rock removal to keep the track usable. A side effect was using that material for fill dirt in other low spots. We needed to keep going back over different sections to pull the duff aside, again making sure the trail would drain.

Links

- photo bucket
- blogspot

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SummitCorps - Wednesday July 13, 2011

Wednesday.

Yesterday I tried to blog using the iPad, and though I can type mainly correctly into the little floating, moving windows, editing pictures and grafting them onto the blog is painful. I spent $30 for an Apple brand dongle, that merely connects the pad to the SD card, because, well it doesn't matter why. It just is that way. The pictures look nice when moved from the camera to the pad, but I've not found a way to crop or shrink them (don't need the entire 1MB JPEG to be uploaded or downloaded, really), and of course, once uploaded to most sites I can't find the URL of the image with any built-in tools that I have found. It's rather silly to have to go find an "app" to view the source code of a web page.

So I'm back to the PC.

Today I felt better physically, though mentally it is still a challenge to be out here far from home.

We kept hearing dogs howling for the past few days, and learned that the National Park seems to have wild dogs. I guess there aren't enough bears to keep the canine population down. The park rangers said they'd like to get rid of the dogs.

Today's trail work was more physical than before, as we needed to move a lot of rocks out of the tread, along with more top soil mixed with the rocks than in prior days.

We saw a bit more wildlife, though I'm not sure why, including chipmunks, various insects, and a few birds and butterflies.

Our trail connected to the next group's, but we need to do a bit of finish work on the tread and on the drainage before we decide it's good. Digging through the rock, top soil, roots, and then grading it is tough on the muscles.

There was a section of serious rock work, where the first of our crews to the location pulled out several large rocks, and by large I mean 2 to 3 feet across. But once those were pulled out, more rocks were found below them. So we'll need to level it out somehow, anchoring and leveling the rocks so the trail is passable on a mountain bike. We're doing "blue trail" meaning the tread is 24 inches wide, or as Bryce calls it "Sweet Single Track."

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Picture from day one - The Summit, slightly visible as a mound of dirt on the hill across the highway from the National Guard Armory




The Summit

SummitCorps - Tuesday July 12, 2011

The second morning of onsite Summit Corps trail work started similarly to Monday - reveille at 5:45 am, meeting for breakfast at 6:30, bus ride starting before 7, and at the site by around 8 am. The food was similar to yesteryday, Philmont trail breakfast and lunch, with oranges and apple juice for breakfast along with various bars, cookies and dehydrated fruit, and crackers, cheese and other packaged goods for lunch.

When we started down the trail, it looked like we would be making progress at the same rate as Monday, but we soon hit a section of rocky soil that slowed us down. Not too many tools could be used in that section, and it became a debate how deep to dig, not to mention what to do with the rocks pulled out. We typically would be putting them on the uphill side of the trail. The rocks could be used later for fill areas, such as from pulling out a stump or fallen log.

Our crew works with different tools, though as the days pass many seem to have a favorite task or area to work on, such as blazing the trail (corridor clearing), cutting small stumps with a pick mattock or cutter mattock, or breaking trail tread with the "Rouge hoe", etc,

There were also more difficult sections of trail to build today, with obstacles such as tree trunks, stumps, and insect attacks including bees and mosquitoes.

Picture links (stupid iPad)


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SummitCorps - Monday July 11, 2011

Monday.

Monday started early at SummitCorps, with real bugle reveille at 5:45, assembly at 6:30, and bus departure before 7AM. The food was a "Philmont breakfast", as was the lunch, but fortunately coffee was available. I drank little, just in case the bus ride was longer or bumpier than predicted. The "20 minute" ride was more like 30, making it seem like our work site is in another county, if not state, from the Bechtel Family Summit.

We had a tool talk, short work assignments, and then we got to work. Water breaks were hourly, and for the people from western stated (like Colorado), the humidity was painful. As I'm used to yard and trail work in this climate, there was not a huge inconvenience for me, and I kept drinking water at a good clip.

Lunch on the trail was around noon, consisting of bagged food like chips, fruit bars, granola, etc., along with a can of ham loaf. It was tasty enough, and filling, but we looked forward to the country fried steak for dinner.

We worked almost 200 yards of finished trail, with another 100-plus of rough cut into a dense thicket of green briers and other growth. We stopped when we got to Point CB5B, which you may or may not be able to find on the site updates.

The drop point was near "Rocky Top Retreat", a low key collection of tents and outbuildings that looks like a way station for the whitewater rafting and other local activities. I think they will benefit from the trail work we're doing.

The Lodge Chief and I started on a plywood sign that will represent the Nentico Lodge flap. We had fun trying to eyeball the design and use the paints available to create a reasonable facsimile.

Pictures, if I'm lucky.

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SummitCorps - Sunday July 10, 2011

Sunday.

I was hoping to be able to post updates from SummitCorps on a daily basis, expecting that even if I could not get connectivity on the trail, I'd have it at the base camp. I was hoping Glen Jean, West Virginia was going to have a cell tower nearby. There may be, but my phone, when it show service, is on extended or roaming staus, and I have yet to get a data packet up or down from here. So I'm writing this as if it will be posted soon, and hope that somehow I can. If you read this before Saturday, then I get through the matrix. My car is parked several miles away, where there is coverage, but getting there before the end of the week is problematic.

The drive to West Virginia was only a bit longer than my estimates, and there was only a short period near the end that I grew weary of driving. To alleviate the fatigue, we pulled into a State information center. After chatting with the two people on duty, we found out on is an Eagle Scout and Cub Scout leader. He knew about "The Summit" and expressed his appreciation that we were working on the project.

I was prepared for conversations with the Lodge Chief on the drive, knowing that I needed to chat so my mind didn't wander. We covered many topics, from the past and future OA Conclaves, to the picnic last Saturday, to the City Scouting initiatives, as well as my career and visions of his future.

Checkin was fairly smooth, though something went wrong with our deposits. We found out the Summit is not far away, but as it is under construction, we were not going to get any tours of the site. We drove the wrong way trying to find the National Guard armory, and saw the gate and guardhouse entrance. You can see a mound of dirt at the top of the hill from the armory.

The route that we came into the area by the SummitCorps base camp, we did not see the New River Gorge bridge, but it's not far and people told us to check it out Saturday. It's closed one day per year for BASE jumping. Most of the project attendees will be doing whitewater rafting on the river Friday, though I an scheduled for mountain biking.

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...

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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