Quick! Can you name all of the otters shown on the of Otter Pops box?
Aww….you cheated, didn’t you?
While you’re busy memorizing them, I’ll be busy taking the next four days off of work to go on a few extended trail runs and hopefully squeezing in a few rounds of Arkham Horror. Now, I know that Lovecraft was a racist of the highest order (“The Rats In The Walls” and “The Horror At Red Hook” anyone?), but putting that aside he wrote some amazingly frightening stories of people placed in situations where humans were never meant to be, exposed to knowledge they were never meant to know.
See y’all Wednesday morning!
…having to work on your birthday. I should be out celebrating, but I instead find myself here:
Oh well…such is life. I’ll just have to catch up on my festivities this weekend. Perhaps an extended trail run in the desert? Yeah, that might just be the ticket.
While wandering about the vast dank recesses and dusty tomes of the ‘net this past weekend I happened upon a quick mention of something called “callsign UBV-76″. The writer mentioned the unending signal of UBV-76 while waxing eloquently about the amateur radio scene of his youth. This casual, offhanded, throwaway reference piqued my interest. It seemed like a code or a secret handshake used only within the confines of a highly specialized and overlooked subset of society.
Damn it, I had to know more.
Curious, I did a bit of research and came up with the following:
UVB-76 is the callsign of a shortwave radio station that usually broadcasts on the frequency 4625 kHz (AM full carrier). It’s known among radio listeners by the nickname The Buzzer. It features a short, monotonous buzz tone, repeating at a rate of approximately 25 tones per minute, for 24 hours per day. The station has been observed since around 1982.In rare occasions, the buzzer signal is interrupted and a voice transmission in Russian takes place. Only three to four such events have been noted.
There is much speculation; however, the actual purpose of this station remains unknown.
This signal has been interrupted only three times since its discovery. At each interruption a Russian voice could be heard reciting a series of letters, numbers, and names, the latter of which possibly being a phonetic alphabet.
Some people theorize that this station is used to direct the Russian military in times of crisis, while others believe that it serves as a sort of “dead man switch” for a doomsday weapon.
I love the mysterious, the alien, and the unexplained. It’s stuff like that that makes my world go ’round (well, that and artichokes). I hope you take a moment to read up on this topic. Information can be found at the UVB-76 wiki page and a recording of the buzzer can be heard here.
I finally received my Mt. Whitney permit for this year. Seems the original copy either got lost in the mail or an unscrupulous neighbor absconded with my letter. I became fed up with waiting and gave a call to the Whitney permit office, where they verified that my permit request had been accepted and that a replacement letter would be sent right away.
And whatdoyaknow…it arrived!
This year I’ll be taking altitude sickness medication, which I hope will help me cut two hours from my time last year.
See you on the mountain in September!
I’ve deactivated my Facebook account.
Now, this really isn’t a very big deal for me. I hardly ever logged in to my account, preferring instead to make my life visible on my blog. But for those people who spend an unhealthy amount of time on Facebook, I could see it being a nearly Herculean accomplishment to click that “deactivate” button. I guess it would be akin to asking a hard core World Of Warcraft player to cancel their toon or a hipster to give up his traditional morning triple latte macchiato.
When deactivating my account, this captcha appeared. No, Facebook, I'm quite sure I want to deactivate. Thankyouverymuch.
What had me concerned about Facebook was their lack of security and their willingness to sell my personal information to third parties. Any site that requires me to take ten steps to secure my personal information isn’t for me. Shouldn’t all of these steps be enabled as a default setting? And with new buttons popping up, it seems as if Facebook is doing all it can to take your information and disseminate it to anyone asking for it.
And so, to my legions of followers on Facebook (all five of you), I’m sorry for dropping out. My profile pic will never darken your wall again. Feel free to keep up with me on my blog. Sure, I can’t poke you from here, but I think I can live with that.
