GPS Jamming Map

Is anyone else interested in a map of GNSS (GPS) jamming areas? Well here you go:

https://www.flightradar24.com/data/gps-jamming

I've been seeing discussions about this in recent years, but I find it interesting, to see where it's happening. Here’s the article about it:

https://www.flightradar24.com/blog/gps-jamming-map/

Belmar Park Walk

 

We enjoyed a fun Monday afternoon walk at Belmar Park, with snow still in the ground in some places, and some muddy spots in others. The rookery was well-occupied by Cormorants this time of year.

Dust bunny

Amorphous Bean kitty, helping to clean my blinds from the backside…

Post-Snow Friday

 

It's a beautiful 23-44° partly sunny Friday in Littleton! 

 

The snow remaining on my deck looks nice, but the depth is laughable, in comparison to the photos my friend in Highland Ranch has been posting. 

 

The birds are happy that all the snow has melted off their feeders. The Bird Buddy’s solar cell roof has continued to keep its battery fully charged all year. 

 

It’s pretty breezy out there, but my weather station is still clogged with snow, so the anemometer is currently useless. 

 

The kitties are happily entangled while snoozing as we enjoy our breakfast.

Snowy PI(e) Day!

Happy snowy 30-36° Thursday morning! 

It's PI Day - 3.14! That's a pretty rough approximation of PI, which being irrational, has an infinite non-repeating number of digits in the mantissa. Many years ago, I memorized the first 10 of them: 3.1415926535, but the reality is, going through engineering school, 3.14 was about all we could read on the slide rule anyway. 

 

So… we DID get our snow accumulation after all! The weather app on my phone has been refusing to admit there may be a snowflake in the future… until today, faced with inches of snow on the ground, and still falling, they finally begrudgingly added a few snowflakes to today’s forecast.

 

We were awake at 4:19 a.m. this morning, because the power went out for about a minute. The only clue when we’re sleeping, and the power goes out, is that the smoke alarms chirp for a second, so I woke up long enough to realize what had happened and note the time, then started to back asleep... when the power came back, the alarms went off again, this time for much longer, a definite wake up call… but we still managed to fall back asleep for a little while. Then later, while we were up and getting ready for the day, the power went out again, this time for an extended period. We forewent our usual hot meal, with my traditional delicious homemade latte, and settled on cereal and milk for breakfast. We were going to bake a pie for PI Day, but with the power still out here, maybe a trip to the local bakery makes more sense… Oops… they’re closed too, with employees and customers being advised to stay off the roads…

Kitties marveling at the snow. 

 

Update 12:10 - Power’s back on 3 hours later! After seeing my friend posting about his 19 inches of snow in Highlands Ranch, I went outside to measure our snow depth - I found 19.5 inches in a nice undisturbed flat spot out front. 

With the power back on, we ran down to the grocery store, and picked up a pie to bake. I’m trying something new - a Dutch Apple pie from Willamette Valley. It was twice the price of Marie Callendar’s, but I have a special place in my heart for the Oregon coast, especially the Portland area, so… I’m hoping this means I’m spoiling myself. And… it’s in the oven!

Hollywood!

Apparently, the red anti-collision light at the top of the Capital Records building in Los Angeles has been spelling out “Hollywood” in Morse code for the past 70 years. Pretty fun!

https://twitter.com/historyinmemes/status/1766712590766624778

Bird Watching

We spent a fun Saturday morning out on a bird watching expedition sponsored by a local bird supplies shop. I guess we’ve fully embraced the retirement lifestyle, as we were somewhat challenged to be up and out before 7am, in time to grab breakfast at the coffee shop, then drive 45 minutes to our meet up place. We met my sister and the rest of the group in Lafayette at Waneka Lake, and hiked over to Hecla Lake and back. Nice hike. Not too many birds, but it was still fun to socialize with people that know far more about birds than me.

We started at Waneka Lake, and saw this Cooper’s Hawk right away. My photos of it were pretty much a joke, with the hawk being so small, it was hard to pick it out in the picture. Then I tried holding my phone up to our guide's spotting scope, and after some persistence, I was rewarded with this beautiful image. 

We really like those spotting scopes, OMG they bring the bird images so close! We were flirting with the idea of buying one, but then we saw the price online, and were pretty much dumbfounded at the $5,000++ price for the scope and required accessories, like the eyepiece and tripod.

Then we saw some Mergansers...

Long’s peak looked really spectacular from our close perspective in Lafayette

Three intrepid amateur birdwatcher/hikers

Snowy front range mountains

Nice little trail between lakes

Our guide Sarah and her awesome spotting scope

The second lake we visited was Hecla Lake. There were a few more birds, but in general, it was a pretty quiet day for birding.

These two pelicans were pretty, and they were dipping into the water in a really graceful, synchronized way.

Cute view of the Rocky Mountains through a viewing port in a birdwatching station