When placed by surveyors in the 30s, their elevations and/or coordinates were very accurate. In fact, if you compare the original 1930′s measurements with super accurate modern GPS equipment, most are within an inch or so. However, the positions of most benchmarks that record elevation were only generally described in the 1930′s or 1960′s. The latitude and longitude coordinates for most of these are just rough guesses based on comparing the text location description to a map. Benchmark hunting involves using a GPS, old general descriptions, and a bit of luck and skill to try and find the original markers. Once found, you can log your finding and the marker condition to help the government and surveyors know if they can be utilized in the future.

As a Christmas Eve activity, Abbie and I researched a few interesting benchmarks to go look for. The coordinates we had were only accurate to within 1/4 mile or so. And most of the descriptions reference things from the 1960′s that are no longer there – such as old fences, telegraph poles, etc. With the GPS, the descriptions, and some big winter boots, we set out on an adventure to see if we could find them. We went four for four!

Our first benchmark was described as being embedded in the foundation of an old building. Luckily the building (the Trenton Feed Co-op) is still standing (barely).

The benchmark was originally 6″ above ground, but as the parking lot was improved and added to, it is barely visible today. We had to dig a bit to see all of it.

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The next benchmark was buried in a rock outcropping in a field. It took a bit of digging around to locate it.

We went on to find two more after 1/4 mile hikes along some rail road tracks.

Anyway, we both had a wonderful time and have likely found a new hobby. I enjoy using geeky technology and old fashioned ingenuity to try to find old stuff and Abbie is excited to find more treasure markers.

Enjoy the video. Be sure to click the HQ button for best quality.

To see how the rest of our reunion went, please reference this Christmas video.

While a substantial portion of humanity is donning tin foil hats and dancing on top of L.A. skyscrapers with “Beam me up!” signs in hand, I was a bit skeptical because radio signals are naturally occuring and rather common in outer space – we’ve detected plenty of them. A closer reading of the article reveals that the announcement was simply that a bunch of nerds built an antennae big enough to detect it’s first extra-solar radio signal. It would be like me saying, “This is the first photo taken of M51 with my telescope” and the world somehow believing that the photo was the first ever taken of this galaxy.

So let’s pretend that this is a message from aliens on a different world, here are my thoughts on what it would likely mean:

- Princess Azura wants to transfer 6 Billion Riles to your account as she is trying to get her recently deceased father’s (an oil tycoon and the previous regent of her planet) funds out from under the newly imposed Military Junta on Sagittarius 19. What she needs from you is your Social Security number, address, phone number, bank details, etc.

- It’s just Jodie Foster’s dad, he wants us to build a machine.

- Is Amanda there? Amanda Hugginkiss?

- Never gonna give you up. Never gonna let you down. Never gonna run around and desert you.

- Hello. We are a very advanced civilization, could you help us get Windows Vista to run faster?

- Hitler at the Olympics

- Is your refrigerator running?

On a somewhat related note, I’ve been asked to present on astrophotography at a big star party tomorrow. Details at http://www.awhc.org/page.php?n=star_party

fired from radio shack

I’m trying to imagine what you can possibly do to get fired from Radio Shack. Certainly being rude, ignorant, or lazy won’t get you fired. I’ve personally seen that talking on the phone and texting instead of helping customers is quite the norm. Perhaps he/she didn’t ask a customer to provide a telephone number at checkout?

janitorial animated gif

Here’s one:

reasons why the right to bear arms should be banned

What part of “shall not be infringed” do you not understand? The Constitution does not grant or give us rights. God does. The constitution simply enumerates those rights. As such, those rights cannot be banned. You can take away one’s guns or make it illegal for one to bear arms, but you can’t take away a god-given right.

statistic more people shot you know than an intruder if you won a gun

Yes, guns are more likely to kill a family member than an intruder. This is partially because some gun owners are idiots. My car is more likely to kill a family member than it is to kill someone else – this doesn’t keep me from driving it.

stupid girls butt crack

Yes, it’s one of the things that annoy me – and as such, I don’t look for it on Google.

lazy eye

Here’s one:

things that christians do in church to annoy me

I’m annoyed by people that continually take their children into the foyer to play, then wonder why their kids don’t sit still during church.

This is closely followed by people that are “grateful for the moisture we’ve received”. Nobody calls it “moisture” when they’re not praying. You never hear, “I looked up at the cloud and got some moisture in my eye” or “Let’s go have a moisture-ball fight” or “We must have gotten at least 6 inches of moisture today”. Besides, moisture means there’s just a little bit of it – in which case, you should be grateful we received more than just moisture.

princess aurora

Otherwise known as Sleeping Beauty. Yes, I have a four year old daughter.

using a whistle to annoy telemarketer

Clever idea. I prefer answering then immediately hanging up. Or telling them I’m dead.

747 manual

Several years ago I wrote a tutorial for a Boeing 747 add-on for Microsoft Flight Simulator. This page is the #1 Google search result for “747 manual” and near the top for most searches about the Boeing 747. While the tutorial is intended for the simulator, it is accurate enough to be useful in real life. I hadn’t thought about this before until I found people searching for things like “instructions on how to fly a real boeing 747-400″. I hope I’m not on some FBI watchlist or something.

astrophotography gallery

While I think my gallery is rather meager, it is the #2 result for these search terms and gets a lot of traffic.

mark martin pit crew

They do move a bit faster than the old man does.

child pornography

This one got my attention. Then I realized how this search phrase pointed to my site. 15 people came to that page after searching for “child pornography”. Scary!!!

Chris Farly baby

Here he she is.

orbital operations

Another highly visited page and another #1 Google result for yet another tutorial I wrote. This one is for a very cool spacecraft simulator. If you ever wanted to learn about orbital mechanics (the science of getting around in space) or find yourself needing to dock with the International Space Station, this is the place to start.

vatsim tracker

I wrote some web applications for pilots (of both real and simulated aircraft) that are very popular. The most popular one allows you to view all online pilots for VATSIM, a popular flight simulation environment, in Google Earth. If you have Google Earth, you can check it out. Each of the planes represents a real human that is flying in this simulated world in real time.

life alert humor

I’m glad I’m not the only one that thought it was funny.

smith family reunion

Sorry, but I’d venture a guess that we’re not the Smith’s you’re looking for.

pictures of my hot wife

Can’t help you there, but I do have pics of MY hot wife.

why do nice people annoy me

I’m not sure, but I can tell you why they annoy me. (#1 in Google for this one too!)

jamie lee jones

This is my worst nightmare – the offspring of Jamie Lee Curtis and Catherine Zeta Jones – the two most annoying people on the planet.

hack to get free airtime

It’s illegal, but here’s a good place to start.

why be a nascar fan

Why not?

crazy cake

Here’s one.

are race car drivers stronger than football players

With or without their cars?

ralphie i can t put my arms down!

Then how are you typing that overly long search phrase???

wayne smith on christian websites

Dad? You been chatting with those Lutheran’s again?

In this one, watch for the rocket that comes back and nearly hits the camera. You can hear it hit the stage behind him.

This an edit of a photo taken across the street from Ground Zero in New York.

This one is of a small cemetary in Switzerland.

The original is here.

The Thunderbirds performed and put on a great show as usual (except for the occasional crash – in-cockpit view). Abbie screamed her head off after the sneak pass when one of the F-16′s sneaks in from behind and flies over the audience at close to the speed of sound. It was awesome!

Hey, you ever see the opening scene in Top Gun? I think the inverted pilot is ‘communicating’.

I’m sorry, but anybody that jumps out of an airplane ON PURPOSE has got a screw loose. One guy that jumped had 5,000 career jumps. Can you say, “death wish”?

Here’s an interesting 4 ship formation. Can you identify the planes?

This is the F/A-22 Raptor fighter. At over $100 million each, this thing packs more technology and goodies than any other fighter out there. It was pulling was wicked sweet maneuvers, including a backflip (seriously!).

So the other day I’m at a military conference and Boeing has one of their military flight simulators there.

I told them I was a flight sim junkie, so they loaded up a carrier landing in an F-18. Well, I’ve landed on the carrier 100′s of times in Janes F/A-18, so I felt pretty comfortable with that.

The guys working the sim had their jaws on the floor as I came in right on the line and just missed the 4 wire and boltered on my first attempt. They said that they’d never seen anybody, including some pilots, do so well their first time. I flew the circuit and nailed the 2 wire the next time around to the cheers of a small crowd that had formed. It was pretty fun to see how amazed they were – they said it was the best circuit and landing they’d seen by someone who’d never either done it in real life or in their sim MANY times.

Though I’ll probably never be a pilot, I did get my brief moment of glory in the cockpit.

So he sent an e-mail to a few friends, they sent it to a few others, and so forth. It eventually ended up in my inbox and now there are loads of people helping in the effort, but he hasn’t quite reached his goal. So do your part for the degradation of society and click the link below.

http://www.helpwinthisbet.com/

UPDATE: The guy won the bet tonight at around 9PM. He got the last 100,000 hits in less than 45 minutes and he’s now quickly approaching 3 million.