I really wish the powers that be would do something about domain squatting. Any decent name is unavailable, or simply unattainable due to the high price… when most of them are sitting unused.
How might we influence those powers to do something about this? I can't imagine anyone in opposition except for those who make a living off of squatting.
When I could still go caving 30+ years ago, I wanted to visit Ellison's and drop Fantastic Pit, yeah... 586 feet free, that would've been fun.
But I was too busy discovering/exploring/mapping caves in California to ever make it to Ellison's Cave.
In fact, I was working in a cave I discovered in Sequoia National Park that was 900 feet directly about another cave some friends had discovered several years before, Hurricane Crawl Cave.
The small group of NSS cavers I was working with had an M.O.U. with the Natl Park Service to explore and map any caves we discovered, and we gated Hurricane at their request after we finished our survey and drafted a map of the cave.
As it's a hazardous cave with a stream and deep vertical drops, it is now a locked closed gated cave, and only vetted cave explorers and scientists are allowed in.
I was hoping to make a vertical connection between the two caves via a pit I hoped would be deep enough to shatter the depth record of Fantastic Pit, but my health ran out before I could make that connection.
Perhaps some day a determined caver will continue the work I was doing and find that connection pit.
Might be some primordial fear letting itself be known to me, but when it comes to caving, I can't help but read the "Fun" here as using the Dwarf Fortress definition of "fun".
Thanks for sharing this story. I love when I can learn a little more about the experience of something fascinating like Caving but that I don’t have any personal experience with through someone’s comments on HN.
How does one get into Caving or become a “vetted cave explorer”?
Join a local caving group\club (grotto in the US I believe). Pretty much the only way, unless you happen to know an experienced caver that you can tag along with.
not OP, but I just find caves fascinating. You can be wiggling through small passage for hours and hours, and then suddenly find yourself in a cavern large enough to fit an airliner that not even the most powerful lights can see the other side of. There are passages that are completely white with flowstone, others with enormous crystal pools, others with formations that seem to defy gravity, and others with bones of prehistoric creatures (and of course most of them which are just boring old rock\sand\mud).
Also, cavers are just fun to be around. It takes a certain type of person to want to go and get wet, cold and muddy in the dark for hours or days at a time.
That sounds incredible! (Even though I could never do any spelunking) I have only been in one cave really, and what amazed me was the supreme silence. Like hear your own heartbeat silent.
Caves are a major frontier right in our (karst) backyards. They were discovering huge new caves in the 2000s in WVa. Major mapping efforts were a lot of fun. Project cavers would dig all weekend hoping to open up a new passage (and they did). I stopped when white nose syndrome showed up in the bats and it was possibly spread by cavers.
white nose is scary. I’d imagine this happens to the bats a lot. they live so densely that these kinds of epidemics are almost inevitable. looks like this time it was cross-oceanic human contact that kicked it off though
I agree, but even when I was installing/servicing hydro, wind and solar systems years ago, solar was still the least expensive way to go if one had sufficient solar exposure.
And solar panels have drastically come down in price since then too, so solar is certainly the most economical way to go for off grid power these days.
From my experience, smaller scale Wind Turbines are more hassle than they are worth, at least in the early 90's when I was servicing them.
First, one has to complete a wind survey, so installing an anemometer for a full season to get an idea of the annual wind resource, in order to properly size the turbine.
Of course, one can use weather service annual wind velocities for your local area as a general guide, but every place has it's own micro climate, so a site local wind survey is essential.
And one also needs a Tall Tower to get the turbine well above any close by hills, trees, or structures, otherwise quite a bit of efficiency is lost.
Towers are expensive, and usually require specialists to safely install them.
And smaller scale wind turbines also need to be maintained at least yearly, which requires climbing the tall tower to do so.
And wind turbine systems were very expensive back then (12-20K US$), but costs may have come down since then, not sure.
They also can be a bit noisy when wind speeds are higher.
I also can't really speak about the micro wind turbines I see for sale, other then to remark they are not as efficient as larger turbines mounted on tall towers, and I don't see them as viable, reliable sources of power.
I also would like to hear from someone who's been installing wind turbines in recent years, to see if things have changed in a positive way.
Micro Hydro is a bit of a misnomer here, the link leads to a device thats more like mid sized hydro.
In the early 90's I was installing/servicing micro hydro systems here in rural Northern California, on properties off the grid where there was no sun due to all the redwood trees.
We were using tiny Pelton style turbine wheels, and our systems produced about 500 watts 24/7 (10-12 Kilowatt Hours) on the small streams in our coastal mountainous area.
Once the infrastructure was built (dam, penstock, base for the turbine, wiring, control system, etc), the systems were rock solid reliable, and required minimal yearly maintenance.
The one major problem was that they were VERY LOUD, so couldn't be near the living quarters because it was so annoying.
Eventually, it became nearly impossible to legally install them in our County due to Fish & Wildlife Regulations concerning the damming of waterways, no matter how small ("Won't someone think of the salmon";-).
Not sure how loud this new turbine is, but due to County and State regulations it seems to me that this so called "fish friendly" turbine will still have very limited locations where it can be installed, at least here in California.
Yup, when I saw the initial report I wondered if it was a murder/suicide, or an extremely distracted or inattentive driver.
I've driven that section of Highway One South of Pacifica many times and it's narrow, so it could have been an accident, because lots of folks have gone over the cliff there and died over the years.
I hope the survivors of this family will be able to recover, and if the driver really did attempt to murder them, they should never get out of prison.
And the Hart family murder/suicide happened just about 20 miles North of my current town at my favorite turnout, which I now can't hang out at and enjoy the view anymore, too brutal of a memory.
I walked by the Hart family the day before the tragic event, they had just come out of our local ice cream shop, and couldn't help but notice them due to their mixed race.
As far as I recall, it was determined that it was only the driver who did it, as the rest of them had been heavily dosed with Benadryl.
The body of one child was never found.
Also, several years before that and about 10 miles further South, a mother drove her van off the cliff in a similar murder/suicide at Blues Beach.
I believe they all survived but the baby had permanent brain damage due to being upside down for hours before a local discovered them.
We use the Armed home option at night, we do remember to turn if off, because the digital calendar and lights in the kitchen won't turn on when it's activated.
Kids are always a good excuse to create silly and fun projects :D
Back in the 60's through the 90's we also had Haltech and Halted Specialties, electronics supplies and surplus in Sunnyvale/Santa Clara, each about a mile from each other.
Many folks confused the names.
As I recall, both of them had resident cats as well.
My High School electronics teacher turned me onto them in 1969.
It appears Haltech is defunct, and not surprising since the owner was OLD when I was shopping/browsing there in the 70's - 80's.
Oh, looks like Halted changed their name to HSC and may still be in business.
If you believe radio kits were as advanced as one could buy "back in the day", I guess you never looked at a HeathKit catalog, they offered all kinds of kits more sophisticated than radios.
In 1980 I got one of these kits for my auto repair shop, and yes, it was quite a challenge to build, but it saved me hours of automotive diagnostic time.
A comparable automotive ignition analyzer scope at the time was thousands of dollars.
Actually, rescuers did use a rock hammer drill to place anchors to attach pulleys to, so he could be extracted, unfortunately, the drill bit broke and they had to return to the surface to get another one.
Then (tragically) after they set the last anchor, one of them broke out from the passage wall, and that's when he slipped back down further than before, it was so damn SAD!
