Bike, Hike, Geocache - follow up

Seems I got some poison oak or something on that last hike. Bummer for me. Internet research shows that once contact has been make, symptoms show from 5 to 15 days after exposure. Well, the bumps and itchy on my legs match that profile pretty well.

Trying over the counter medication Cortisone Creme did cure the itchy symptom, but did not do anything for "curing of the exposure". Additional Internet research suggested making a baking soda paste and applying to the area. This make the itchy go away and actually dried out the bumps and sores. My vote is "yes" for baking soda.

Troubleshooting an application

Normally I would not openly criticize someone else's programming choices. However, what I experienced today was not something I expected to ever have to do. You see, there is this application that ran faster on a multi-core server than on a 500MHZ workstation. When run on the workstation, the cpu usage pegged as high as it could go. Folks were more willing to discuss the various performance characteristics of machines running this application rather than dig into this code and fix it.

A quick code survey revealed the developer-programmer had coded no logging statements, I mean none, zero, nada. There were maybe 12 or so source files that went into main() so the magnitude of this challenge was not that significant. I had code surveyed this in the past and pretty much each file had just a few functions each.

Approximately, 3 hours of adding many printf statements, compiling, running, adding more printf statements, compiling, running, the bug was found. Seems there was some code that allowed an overrun, placing the code in a loop (thus the pegging of the cpu). This loop needed to go all that way to 2,147,483,647 before exiting. No wonder the multi-core server made quick work of this. However for the poor 'ol 500MHZ workstation that is a lot of clock cycles. No wonder it took so long. Poor thing.

A few lines of code went into this to check the boundries, specifically "if less that 1 or greater that 12", then "continue". This so called fix, allows the application not to run all the way to 2,147,483,647 before exiting. I have no clue what possessed the developer-programmer to take that approach when parsing that particular file.

This was a fairly aggressive approach to fixing this problem. But in these cases a person really needs to be aggressive, maintain focus, stay with it and code in as many printf's and needed, run the compile and test iterations and keep moving on until finding the offending computational operation.

Bike - Hike - Geocache

This Saturday was something different, multitasking. Combining bike, hike and geocaching on one trip. Reason for bike, saves time going down the hill. Hike, well I know I'm pushing the bike up hills. Geocache, well, this is the main reason for today's outing.

Wrote down and uploaded 10 geocaches, only got 4. These were really good ones, nice done camo'ed containers. According to the geocaching web site, these have not been visited in several weeks. Glad to report these are still there.

The bike portion went fairly well. It did save time. The overall distance was 12 miles with a movement time of a little over 2 hours. Walking 12 miles would have took a very long time. There were some bumpy and hilly dirt roads, these were mostly going down hill. Had to be very careful and I'm happy none of the welds on the bike broke.

Hike part, that went ok too. Not sure of exactly how many miles were actually hiked what I do know is most of the uphill parts I was pushing the bike. Some hills were only a very slight grade, oh well, pushed when I needed to.

Overall, I brought enough water but should have drank a lot before I departed the trail head, then pushed down at least 2 bottles sooner than I did. Lesson learned. It was ok fun but not that great.

Sycamore Canyon Hike - Columbia Hikers Break-in

Today was the first hike of the year. Took long enough to get up and get out there. Took the same trail as the 24-Dec-2010 hike. Since my old Nike hiking shoes did not survive the Hanakapiai Trail (back in August), it was due that I get some new hiking shoes. I did not do too much research, rather settled on a pair of Columbia Hikers. Not sure which style they are.

I wear a 10.5 regular. While wearing these around the neighborhood walking the dogs, I've noticed that I get some foot pain. Maybe they need more breaking in. Hope that is the case. For this hike, these were laced very loosely, not enough that my feet would move around too much, but just to that point. Overall, it worked out ok. I'll keep them. I do notice that the soles do not flex a whole lot. That may be the cause of the foot pain around the neighborhood.

The hike was pretty good. Parking lot was full, first time that happened. Started out at 10:50 and got back a little after the noon hour. I marked each stream crossing with a waypoint just to bring some excitement. Unfortunately, these did not upload into google maps, bummer. There is another application I can use to get those out, though it's on the PC. Other than that, plenty of sun, sunscreen came in handy and reset the gps before heading out. This time I believe it was almost a 5 miler. Good news is that I found a geocache on the side of that bridge.