Our plan for this day was to climb to the summit of North Twin Mountain (elev. 4761′) via the aptly named North Twin Trail. According to the AMC White Mountain Guide, this trip would cover 4.3 miles in 3 hours and 40 minutes and gain 2950′ in elevation. The trail itself would follow the Little River for about 2 or so miles, crossing it 3 times, and then climb up one of the ridges on the northeastern slope of the mountain. The last half mile would be particularly steep before cresting about .2 miles from the treed summit. In spite of the trees, there are two ledgy viewpoints which would give us near 360 degree views of the surrounding countryside, if the weather cooperated. An optional extension of this plan would take us further away from civilization by following the North Twin Spur trail over to the summit of South Twin Mountain (elev. 4902′). In the end, we decided against that side trip for reasons which will become clear.

Because darkness falls early this time of year, we got a very early start on our day. I picked Gary up at his house at 4:30am and we immediately set off. We were going to eat breakfast at the Tilt’n Diner in Tilton, NH at 6am, but it was closed when we got there at 5:40am. Unperturbed, we topped off the gas tank at the Shell station next door and continued north. Some place had to be open somewhere. About 40 minutes later, we found Peg’s Restaurant in North Woodstock, NH and had a breakfast of french toast, ham (bacon for Gary) and home fries. By 7:30, we were on the road again.

As we approached Franconia Notch, we began to see that maybe this day would not be a typical late autumn hike. While the forests were a sea of gold, orange and brown, with tinges of red here and there, the upper flanks of the mountains were white. Not a solid ski slope white, but there was enough frost/snow to make us wonder. Rounding the corner of Cannon Mountain, where the Old Man of the Mountains used to be, I could see that the branches of some of the trees were encased in ice. Beautiful, but also an omen of sorts. No matter, I had many warm layers in my pack, two pairs of gloves and my new Stabilicers. How bad could it get?

We got to the trailhead a little before 8am. Immediately, we got an idea of what the day might be like. There was snow on the ground in the parking lot and in the surrounding countryside. It was lightly snowing little snow pellets and our breath was smoking in the chill air. I looked at Gary and a smile broke wide on my face. This was going to be a fun day. We geared up at set off at 8:05am.

The trail was wet from the previous day’s rain, but it was beautiful nonetheless. It was covered in gold and orange and brown leaves. The air around us was filled with lightly falling snow pellets and the crackling of those pellets falling on the leaves overhead filled the air. The clouds were low, but it was still early in the morning, enough time for the sun to burn the cloud cover away hopefully.

At 0.8 miles into the hike, the trail crosses the Little River for the first time. The Little River is well named. While not a river even by New England’s exaggerated standards, it is no easily forded calm stream. There were several boulders and smaller rocks with which to cross, but almost all of the possible routes had breaks with swiftly flowing torrents passing through. So, Gary and I picked our way further and further upstream in an attempt to find a passable route. The guide book does mention that there is an unmarked path that hikers can take to avoid the first and second river crossings if they’re comfortable with bushwhacking, but we opted to do the river crossings.

After a while, I found a decent rockhopping route and leaped across one of the torrents. Gary, with his heavier pack, couldn’t make that leap so we both continued upstream on each side of the river. After quite a hike, he was able to cross, but now we were quite a bit away from where the trail had crossed. Instead of backtracking, we decided to climb up the riverbank and bushwhack across on a steady compass bearing until we hit the trail, which we did in 5 or so minutes. Gary then marked that point on the trail so that he could backtrack on the way down and easily recross the river.

In about a half mile, it was time for the second crossing. As we approached the river, however, the skies opened up and a downpour of snow pellets fell all around us and on the rocks that we’d be using to cross. The pellets now clung to the rocks making our footing quite treacherous in places. Still, we had to get across the river.

Again, we had a difficult time finding good routes to use to cross. Once again, I got myself over half way across to a position where I’d have to jump. This time, however, the distance was a bit too great to try with my trekking pole and backpack. So, while balanced on two pumpkin-sized rocks with a torrent of water churning in front of me, I tossed my pole across to the far side. Then I took my backpack off and heaved it across, thinking, as I tossed it, that it was heavier than I thought. Luckily, it made it across just fine. Now, with no weight on my back to throw me off, I flung myself over to a flat wet rock on the other side and grabbed the boulder that it sat against. Safely across, I looked back at Gary who looked at me like I needed some professional help.

With no good routes to choose from, Gary decided to ford the stream. He took his boots and socks off, put on a pair of crocs, hiked up his pant legs and walked across in shin-deep frigid water. After he crossed, he simply dried off his feet and legs with a bandana, put his boots and socks back on and we continued on.

After about another half mile, we came to the third crossing. This one was easier, but it still took some fancy rockhopping to get across. By this point, we’d covered 1.9 miles and still had 2.4 miles to go.

Now the trail started climbing in earnest. The first half of the trail had followed an old logging railroad bed and the grade was somewhat easy. Because of that, we were only at around 2500′ and still had 2200′+ to cover in the next 2.4 miles. So, onward and upward we went.

It was at 2800′ or so that we started noticing that there was more snow on the trail than leaves. A look into the evergreen trees around us also showed anywhere from a half to a full inch of snow encrusted in the branches. Within the next 200′ of elevation gain, the gold and orange and brown of autumn was a memory; we were now fully in winter.

And it was beautiful. Absolutely, breathtakingly beautiful. After hiking almost non-stop since the beginning, we stopped for a water, snack and layering break in an area I called the Cathedral of the Pines. Snow-covered branches formed holy arches over the trail mere feet from our heads. The sides of the trail revealed glimpses to views of white evergreens and, lower down in the valleys, the autumnal colors that we’d just hiked through earlier. Nearer, plants caught in mid-autumn held onto gold and orange leaves while snow clung to their stems and branches. I turned to Gary and said, “Whether you believe in God or the Entropy of the Universe, regardless, they do great work.”

After our break, we restarted the climb. It got quite a bit steeper, but I barely noticed it. Instead, my eyes were fixed on the wonder around me, a smile frozen to my face, but not due to the increasingly colder temperatures around us.

As we continued to gain elevation, the snow got deeper and deeper and the trail, which had been merely dusted, was now completely covered. We discovered loose rocks underfoot by stepping on them and either turning our ankles or slipping a bit. (Thankfully, my ankles are pretty flexible.) After a while, we came upon one of those types of trail obstacles that one finds in the Whites, a 4 foot high granite wall that needed to be scambled over. The two inches of snow on it made it dangerous as well as tricky. This is where Gary decided to put his stabilicers on. While he did that, I made the scamble and hiked a bit ahead. After seeing more of those types of obstacles ahead, I put my stabilicers on too.

The stabilicers were a godsend. Whereas we’d been testing every footstep for slippage, the stabilicers gripped both packed snow and granite with ease. Within minutes, were were cresting the ridge and came to the first of the two ledgy outlooks. Unfortunately, we had very limited views. The sun had not burned the cloud cover away. However, the terrain around us was beautiful to behold. The evergreen trees around us were completely white with snow and rime ice coating their very needles.

With no views at the first, northerly outlook, we continued on and reached the summit in 5 or so minutes. The hike along the gently sloping ground was breathtaking. We marched through a powdered corridor of white-encrusted scrub trees, the latter providing shelter from the steady winds and gusts that whipped across the mountaintop.

After reaching the summit, we took the side path to the second, southerly viewpoint, but the clouds were there as well. On top of that, the open face exposed us to the frigid winds. Undaunted and tempted by the chance of catching some kind of view in case the clouds parted, we set up camp, layered up and had our lunch.

We stayed only long enough to catch some decent views and finish our lunch. Even so, it was difficult keeping our extremities warm. At one point, Gary was hopping and flapping his arms to get the blood going to his feet and hands, yelling, “You too will believe a hiker can fly!” I then followed suit and as we were jumping around crazily, the clouds started lifting. “Faster! Faster!” I shouted, willing the clouds to part, and part they did. We were treated to glorious views of the countryside. By the time Gary got his camera out, quite a bit of the view was obscured again, but he did manage to catch one of me with the autumnal valley in the background.

It wasn’t long after this that my toes were completely numb, so I packed up my stuff and headed for the shelter of the trees at the summit proper. Gary stayed behind a while and tried to catch more views with his camera. At one point, he called me back and I ran to catch glimpses of Mount Garfield, Galehead Mountain and the Galehead AMC Hut. As awesome as that was, my toes were still numb and I soon ran back. The running managed to get some circulation back into my toes, but not enough.

After about five minutes or so and a couple more pictures, Gary and I were heading back down, deciding to forego the side trip to South Twin. The descent was as beautiful as the ascent. Still, I was concerned about my toes. The boots I was wearing were three-season dayhikers and I was only wearing regular wool socks. They were not rated for winter hiking and I’d spent a couple of hours hiking through snow and lounging in an exposed position on the mountain. Slowly but surely, as we made our descent, feeling came back to each of my toes, except the big toe on my right foot. Suddenly, about 20 minutes into my hike, my big toe came to life in a blast of searing pain. But only parts of it. As I kept hiking down, other parts of my toe would spring back to searing life, each step bringing a new adventure in pain. Finally, after about 5 minutes of that, everything was back to normal. I could feel all of my toes.

The descent was tricky even with the stabilicers. With all the snow, we couldn’t tell which rocks were solid and which would roll under our feet when we stepped on them. The stabilicers were great for gripping, but gripping something that would roll and shift wasn’t helpful. Quite a few times, my ankles turned and twisted this way and that. Apart from that, we made good time heading down.

When we got near the Little River, we took our stabilicers off and delayered. We were back in autumn again.

We crossed the Little River again and did it easily this time, having crossed once before. A half mile later, we came to the difficult second crossing and decided to bushwhack down the unmarked side trail along the river’s edge instead of having to make those two difficult crossings. We made better time, even with some of the confusing meanderings that the trail took. Eventually, we were back to the leaf-covered golden trail and back to the car.

It was an awesome hike. We changed seasons, made difficult decisions, encountered obstacles and figured out how to overcome them. We had the right equipment, if only just barely, and came through without even a scratch.

Above all, we had fun. This kind of hike brings me back to my pre-teen days of rockhopping across streams and trekking across snow-encrusted pastures and woodlands with cold toes and a cold nose. All in all, not a bad way to spend a work day.

My mother-in-law has been living in an attached in-law apartment for the past 9 years. For the last 4 of those years, she’s been fighting breast cancer and staying ahead of the game. Unfortunately, since January, she’s fallen victim to increased dementia and has lost most of the ability to take care of herself.

These things do not happen overnight and they do not happen gently. In February, we took her car away from her because of a thankfully minor traffic incident. The only thing that got damaged was a mailbox and her front bumper. However, just prior to the mailbox getting whacked, she had come to a full stop in the middle of a fairly busy intersection and almost got t-boned by an oncoming car. Thankfully, the driver of that car had reflexes that were up to the task of self-preservation.

Now that she was at home, though, she began to decline much more rapidly. Finally, on the morning of April 27th, I heard her calling me from her apartment. As in the famous commercial, she’d fallen and couldn’t get up. It was worse than that, though. She’d blacked out and had no memory of falling and the bruises on her head and arms were pretty severe. Given that she also has osteoporosis, it’s a wonder that she hadn’t broken anything.

That event marked the months-long journey for us into the issues of elder care. During that time, she went to the hospital, to a rehab facility for physical therapy, got sent back home with us, fell again, went to the hospital again, went to the rehab facility again. This time, though, we knew that she really couldn’t come home. My wife spends most of her day seeing to my autistic son’s needs. Before my mother-in-law came home with us the first time, we tried to impress that fact to the caregivers at the rehab facility, but to no avail. The dirty secret among the elder care industry seems to be that someone has to fall 2-3 times before alternatives are offered. After she fell the second time, we received better advice from case managers and caregivers.

After a bit of searching and digging into my mother-in-law’s financial records, we were able to find a nice assisted living facility that she can afford, with some additional help from the Veteran’s Administration. As her late husband was a WWII veteran, she’s eligible for a $1000/mo assisted living benefit. Since the VA is a government body, it’ll take some time to plow through the paperwork, but at least the benefit is there.

Of course, nothing occurs in a vacuum. While all of this was going on, numerous changes were also taking place in other aspects of my life. Even now, my mind is running at 110% capacity trying to make sure that I don’t forget anything. However, the elder care saga is finally drawing to a satisfactory conclusion.

Late last week, I also became a professional web designer when Compass Games’ new website went live. While putting in several hours each week over the past month and a half, I wrote a content management / e-commerce system from scratch that allows users to view company news, view their product catalog, view each individual product, place items into a shopping cart and use PayPal to pay for those items. It is not a self-sufficient system, I still have to hand modify the data, but it works well enough for now.

I had planned on using Joomla! for the website infrastructure, but the boys at Compass were in a hurry to move to a new system, so I decided to push ahead and write code instead of trying to force 3rd party software to do things it may not be able to do. The problem with using 3rd party software is that it is written with its view of the world and, to use it as efficiently as possible, you need to understand that view. With a prototype already written in Dreamweaver and agreed upon by the principals, I decided to make use of the raw HTML/CSS produced by Dreamweaver and turn it into a data-driven template. The results speak for themselves.

The next phase of the project is to install/populate a new forum based on phpBB3 software. Compass Games’ old forum was a public thing hosted at yuku.com. I wrote a script to suck all of the posts out of it and will try to repopulate the new forum with the users and data pulled from the old, public one. We also have to build a Compass Games related theme to make it unique. Once that’s done, we link to it from the new website and we’re good to go.

There are still some CG projects in the pipeline. One thing that I’m going to add is a copy of my on-line dice rolling system to their site. This will be first of many game aids that could be hosted there. I’m also going to add an RSS feed to the news system as well as add a Site News area so that website-related announcements won’t clutter the company-specific ones.

Finally, there are some other longer term projects coming down the pipeline which are going to challenge me even further than my recent accomplishments. It should be interesting.

I did care, however, a little bit b/c the failed installation left a 20GB unusable dead zone partition on my hard drive. Yesterday, I decided to clean house and embark on another project. I decided to blow away the dead zone and the Kubuntu Linux partition that I haven’t used since I installed it and instead install a different leaner meaner ArchLinux distro in a smaller Linux partition and create a shared HFS+ partition that both operating systems can use. It’s a simple enough project really, a 6 or so on the Geek Difficulty Scale.

Except, that Apple’s Disk Utility application kept crashing whenever I tried to repartition the drive. Using their lower-level diskutil utility failed as well. Evidently, the failed WinXP installation really hosed the dead zone partition information.

After spending last night backing up all of my OS X data (code, music, photos, etc.) to my 1.5TB disk array, I came into work today and booted my laptop to the Kubuntu Linux CD and essentially reinstalled Linux. By reinstalling Linux, I can use their disk partitioning tool and repartition the drive the way I want to… assuming that the dead zone could be read. Long story short: the Linux partitioning tool was able to read and delete the dead zone partition. I did have to create a large Linux partition out of the dead zone and the original smaller Linux partition and finish the install, but it was time well spent to get my hard drive back in working order. After Linux installed, I rebooted to OS X, ran Disk Utility and removed Linux. My hard drive is back to being one huge 250GB HFS+ partition.

I’ll play with ArchLinux later…

Meanwhile, I’ve gone back to doing some Crucible-related work. Crucible is my web applications / services platform. It is based on my own set of derived data protocols, which is timely given that Red Hat just decided to patent the process of requesting web services through CGI using the SOAP protocol. I looked at SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol, a misnomer if ever there was one) a few years ago and found that it was overhead-heavy. My system uses 3 different protocols: XmlCGI (a variant of XML-RPC), YamlCGI (similar to XmlCGI but based on YAML) and JSON. XmlCGI and YamlCGI can be used for both input and output data transmission, while JSON is an output-only protocol geared toward Javascript browser request handling. XmlCGI and YamlCGI could be specified as output protocols if need be and would be primarily used for standalone, non-browser clients who wish to request services over the Internet.

Crucible is still in the alpha testing phase. I have some basic debug services working under a variety of protocols, but the support needs to be fleshed out for complex data types. Once I get past this hurdle, I can write some real web services.

I’ll start with the illness, a stomach flu that caught us by surprise while we were vacationing up north in Gilford, NH, on the shores of Lake Winnepesaukee. Our plan was to spend a relaxing long holiday weekend on President’s Day weekend and go skiing and/or showshoeing. While Saturday and Sunday were pleasant with swimming in the hotel pool and spending time at the Funspot arcade with its large variety of current and classic video games, my wife came down with an intense, violent stomach flu just after midnight on Monday. While she spent the day in bed with occasional hurried trips to the bathroom, my son and I stayed in the living room part of the suite and hunkered down as best we could.

We came home on Tuesday and the hour and a half drive back home was uneventful thanks to some anti-diarrheal medicine. However, while my wife very slowly recovered, my son and I got hit with the bug just after midnight on Wednesday morning, the day I was due back at work. Calling this thing violent was an understatement; the full contents of my digestive system were emptied in almost no time flat and left me in a near delirious state. I spent the rest of the day on the family room sofa in extreme agony in between numerous bouts of fitful sleep. I would wake up, sure that hours had passed, only to see that I’d only been asleep for 15 or so minutes. Meanwhile, the muscles in my arms, legs and shoulders were a mess of aches and it felt like someone had beaten me about the midsection with a 2×4.

It took me until late Sunday to fully recover. It took my son nearly the same amount of time. However, he didn’t seem to have the same illness. Instead, he contracted something called Fifth Disease and, while my wife and I stayed in a state of elongated nausea, he had numerous fevers ranging from 101 to 104 degrees Fahrenheit.

It took my wife about an extra week to fully recover.

Meanwhile, my side projects with Compass Games continue to move forward. I have taken over their webmaster duties and am now in the process of overhauling their site. All I’m going to say is that the HTML coding of the site left a bit to be desired. It looked like an HTML editing tool like FrontPage was used and then the results were cut-and-pasted willy-nilly where needed to fill a void. Ghastly, ghastly stuff.

My goal was to use a software package called Joomla! to redesign their site, but time pressures have pushed me away from that at the moment. As I am not experienced with Joomla! and Compass Games needs to have the site updated tout de suite, I have decide to postpone the Joomla! installation and configuration to a later date and have instead used my own home-brew templating system based on Ruby scripts, Javascript and the erb Ruby code module. So far, it’s all coming together nicely.

Other projects continue to vie for my time as well. I’ve made a ton of progress on my Crucible web application framework and I shall soon use it in a production environment with my dice roller application. Zoran continues to keep me busy as well. Not only am I involved in several concurrent projects, but I’ve also been tapped for a possible management position in the near future. If this does happen, it will add another set of challenges to my career. I hope it happens sooner than later.

One of my current projects is a paying gig, a redesign of a game company’s website, complete with a forum and an e-commerce engine.  The money’s not bad for a side project and it’ll give me some street cred as a professional web developer.  Plus, it’s fun.

My wife’s health issues have subsided.  The culprit was a combination of a hiatal hernia and a narrow part of her esophagus.  The hernia was causing acid reflux which would then hit that narrow part of esophagus and cause intense pressure and pain.  Her esophagus was stretched, a phrase which makes me gag, and she was given a prescription to treat the reflux.

Meanwhile the flying squirrels were evicted from the attic.  I hired a team called The Bat Guys and they did a bang-up job.  They are also going to handle the clean-up, which will begin once the weather in the Northeast calms down.

Finally, Zoran shuts down for the holiday week, so I enjoyed that time with my son and we played several games together.  We got a Wii for Christmas and we enjoyed the Wii Sports very much.  On top of that, we played several spur-of-the-moment roughhousing games on the sofas.  Great fun was had by all.

A baby squirrel running amok in my mother-in-law’s kitchen clued us into the problem. Earlier today, I climbed up into her attic and discovered the numerous turds that had been collecting up there. Nice. Looks like I have a major clean-up job over Thanksgiving weekend.

I really can’t relate the scope of all that has happened in the past couple of weeks. Instead I can give a breakdown of the current situation:

My Son’s Health

On top of my son’s (high-functioning) autism sits peanut and tree nut allergies and asthma. Well, the asthma kicked in strongly last week as what started as a simple cough turned into a full-blown series of asthmatic complications. So now my son is on albuterol and Flovent, the latter a steroid-based medication that turns my loving, peaceful son into a monkey with no impulse control. Every time he’s on the Flovent, his problem behaviors take flight. Thankfully, the school knows and has been helping him adjust, though he had his worst day yesterday.

My Wife’s Health

Over the past few months, as I’ve related before, my wife has had a series of episodes which features severe abdominal and chest pains. Finally, after a battery of invasive and non-invasive tests, the episodes were caused by a hiatal hernia, which caused a series of reflux events which then forced itself against a narrow part of her esophagus. The fact that we have a definite diagnosis helps, but other issues came up and the search for the diagnosis for the hernia triggered a series of other tests in other areas which prompted yet more tests. Etc. Thankfully, everything else has turned up negative so far, but all of these tests take time.

My Mother-in-law’s Health

My mother-in-law has breast cancer. She’s also 83 years old and is reaching a point where she wants my wife to be with for all of her appointments. Since my mother-in-law is not one to handle stress lightly, my wife has been keeping her own health issues a secret from her mother. This makes the scheduling of all the appointments a tricky business.

My Son’s Therapies

As I mentioned, my son is autistic, or, officially, suffers from PDD (Pervasive Developmental Delay). The fact that he has come as far as he has is a godsend and is the direct result of many, many hours of behavior therapy. These therapy sessions have taken place in our house over the past 5½ years, though now they are taking place out in the community. In addition to behavior therapy, my son also undergoes feeding therapy because he lacked the ability to chew. Like a stroke victim, my son lacked the fine motor skills needed to learn how to eat solid food. Again, after many years of trying, and after many setbacks caused by the school’s occupational therapists, he is finally getting that skill down. All these therapies, while beneficial, take time after school. The sessions themselves take up six hours per week, not including travel time.

My Car

I should have known better. Ever since I got my car’s emergency brake cable fixed, it’s had a hard time moving on very cold mornings. On previous occasions, whatever was causing it worked itself out by the time I got down the road. Well, on Wednesday I found out the reason. My left rear brake caliper was frozen shut. I discovered this while on my way to work after a motorist came up next to me and frantically shouted that my car was burning, whereupon I bailed in a hurry, grabbing my iPod and laptop computer bag. It turned out that my car was not on fire, but there was certainly enough smoke pouring out of the left rear wheel assembly that showed that ignition was near. Fast forward to today, I still don’t have my car back. Parts had to be ordered, the dealership wouldn’t stand by their work, yada yada yada… Being house-bound sucks, particularly since I’m still responsible for my tasks at work.

Zoran

I can’t get into particulars here, due to customer secrecy and all. Suffice it to say that I’m a major part of a team that supports Zoran Imaging Division’s most important customer. I’m also involved in another project for ZID’s #2 or #3 Japanese customer, depending on revenue. (Those two customers alone combine for $21million annually.) That project was the reason I went to Japan last May. Couple that with learning the Postscript language and being involved on a consultant basis on yet more internal projects and my time is certainly maxed out.

Extracurricular Activities

Without going into details, I have several projects of my own going on. I run and maintain this blog, a web forum (Barscape), an on-line dice rolling service (Dice Service) and a series of wargame battle resolvers (Britannia, Samurai Swords), but I’m also building a fiction site for a friend of mine, building an on-line Britannia game manager, building and maintaining two web sites in partnership with another guy (Vision Forge Films, Shining Full Clear) and building and brainstorming two game development projects with the aforementioned partner.

Other

Finally, when I’m not doing anything else project-related, I play chess at Chess World, plan hiking expeditions in the White Mountains and play with my son. Additionally, I’m a member of the US Chess Federation, though I’m unrated and haven’t played in a tournament all year, something I’d like to change soon.

Needless to say, I’m running at full capacity.