Water, water, everywhere

[altivo]

The temperature has held at 50°F for much of the day. There is still a lot of ice and snow lying about, but it's melting furiously. I haven't seen water running like this since a day in June of 1999 when we got over four inches of rain in a single day. The mud is indescribable. The pastures and vegetable garden are awash or still snow covered, depending on the amount of shade any particular bit gets. The creek is flowing furiously, with a current that would undoubtedly knock a child down and would probably challenge a grown person to keep their feet if it were deeper. I suspect this means that in a day or so, route 176 south of us will be flooded, as often happens when there is heavy runoff, and a lot of truck traffic will be detoured down our road which is really too narrow for it. The bad part is, the drivers don't slow down at all. Between the noise and the danger trying just to get out of our drive, I really hate that when it happens. All I can say about this is thank goodness for rubber boots.

I did some little hunting about for clear sign of fox presence, but found nothing definite. The snow is too decayed and granular to hold clear footprints, and the mud is too wet and soft to retain them. The sounds we heard last night were definitive enough, but may have been occasioned by their den flooding out if it was one of the three I know of on our property. All three are along the creek, and though the entrances are well above water level still, ground water may well be seeping into the den proper. We'll have to wait and see what develops, and I'll be listening tonight for more fox barks.

I've got the Linux version of the Echolink client, called EchoLinux, running now. It's only release 0.17 so I'm not surprised that it seems a bit fragile. When it works, it works. But it seems to have a tendency to exit unexpectedly and with no visible reason. Still, it works well enough that I've been listening to the audio from the ISS and Endeavor (this is rebroadcast over the amateur radio network) and I was able to connect to a couple of repeaters and at least make myself heard. The USB headset that works fairly well with the Windows software turns out not to be suitable for this Linux client because the client appears to choose the first soundcard in the system and offers no way to override that. Consequently I pulled a little button mic out of the drawer and plugged it into my built-in sound. It seems to work as long as I remember to turn on the mic boost.

Comments

[captpackrat.livejournal.com]

The snow has been gone here for several days, but there's still mud everywhere. Even the gravel driveway feels spongy.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yep, that's the next phase. Usually doesn't last long here though because we get enough wind to dry things quickly.

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

All you need is one of those "speed camera zone" signs made up and just place it before your street. :)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Except they don't use those here, so people wouldn't know what it was. "Speed Radar Controlled" is more typical here, but it so rarely means there really is someone watching, and so many people have those radar detector things in their cars that they just ignore it.