AKA: Why I bailed
AKA: Discretion is the better part of not being dead

Snow conditions don't warrant a solo trip up a class 3+ route that I have no experience on. Here is a picture of the Crestones taken yesterday:

As you can see, there is still plenty of snow. Furthermore, the standard routes on both Crestone Peak (left) and Crestone Needle (right) involve ascending narrow couloirs that hold snow longer than the rest of the mountain. Also, it's rather steep. Here is a photo showing the last thousand feet or so of the route on Crestone Needle:

I don't need to be doing that when there's loose snow and I don't have solid footing.

I'm going to salvage something out of this weekend, I'm just not sure what yet. But whatever it is, I'll live to tell about it. :)

[photos courtesy of/stolen from 14ers.com]

I was going to go backpacking up to Cottonwood Lake tomorrow and then spend a couple days climbing Crestone Needle and Crestone Peak, but it looks like they got a fair dumping of snow last weekend and it hasn't melted off. In fact, pretty much all of the fourteeners in Colorado are covered in loose, unconsolidated snow. Which is a bummer because it's too soft and light for snowshoes, crampons, or ice axes to really do much good, but it's deep enough to prevent boots from getting positive grip on rocks and it'll make hiking through it a pain.

So I may not go into Colorado tomorrow morning as planned. I may take a trip down to the Gila, or maybe just take it easy... who knows. More on this when I make up my mind.

Nina and I climbed Ladron Peak yesterday, via a class 3 route on the west face. It was a challenging climb made more difficult by the fact that I forgot to put all the food in my pack, so we were starving the whole time. The scarmbly upper section was a lot of fun, and there was a certain amount of adventure factor since I couldn't find a single trip report for this peak on the internet. Thus, we had no idea of how to go about reaching the summit of this peak which appears to the untrained eye to be completely surrounded by cliffs on all sides near the top. Unfortunately, I also neglected to pack my camera, so there are no pictures. But in case anyone else wants to climb it, I'll post a route description here:

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Ladron Peak: West Face
Class 3
2,600' gross gain, 8.7 miles round trip

From exit 175 on Interstate 25 (UTM 13 33096E 3810082N), north of Socorro, NM, take a left off the exit ramp onto paved "Old Highway 85" heading SW. After about a mile and a half (and having crossed the Rio Puerco), turn right onto improved gravel County Road 12 (UTM 13 328929E 3808574N). Follow CR-12 for about 20 miles, going around the mountain on its north side. Turn left at UTM 13 303041E 3816938 onto another good gravel road. After 0.7 miles, turn left again (UTM 13 303442 3815894). After 2.2 miles (UTM 13 304872 3812935), take a final left onto a faint unmaintained two-track. You will need a high-clearance vehicle for this portion of the drive, though 4WD should not be required. This track ends after 0.3 miles at fence with a pedestrian gate (UTM 13 305253 3812743). This is the trailhead.

Beyond the gate at the trailhead, go due east until you find the gravel road; follow this road ESE as it heads towards the mountain. The imposing western face of the Ladrones is obvious ahead. Keep an eye out for interesting fossils in the limestone along this road. After about a mile, the road ends. Just before the road ends, it turns down into the bottom of the wash. At this turn, a series of black rubber water tubes leave the road and continue east. A good trail runs along these tubes; follow this trail east and continue up the valley. The trail ends in the vacility of a small spring that is being used to feed water into the tubes (UTM 13 306954E 3812133E). The remainder of this hike will be bushwacking.

Hike northeast up a short rise to gain a ridgeline with a good view of the remainder of the climb. Look for and follow a good game trail contouring due east and losing a bit of altitude to reach the rocky wash separating the ridge you were just on and the next, less distinct, ridge to the north. It is this less-distinct ridge that you will climb to reach the steeper final summit push. Follow the ridge up its centerline, making your way through the thick juniper and assorted cactus. There is a small flat spot on the ridge at UTM 13 307996E 3812138N which has a small clearing and makes a good lunch spot [should you remember to bring any food, see above]. This spot also marks the end of the gradual ridgeline hike and the beginning of the steep and sometimes technical mountain.

From this spot, there are numerous routes to the summit with varying levels of technical rigor. To maintain a maximum difficulty of class 3 scrambling, go up from the lunch spot to a small cliff band. At the base of the rock, traverse left (north) to the point where the rock band ends and there is a narrow talus flow coming down the slopes. Ascend the talus to its top. You are now just west and directly beneath the summit block. Look for an obvious weakness in the cliffs to the left (north). Work your way up the crack to a notch in the summit ridge. You'll see two cairns nearby, one of which marks the highest point of the Sierra Ladrones (it wasn't obviously clear which was higher, but they are only about 100' of ~flat hike apart).

The USGS 7' quad labels a nearby summit as Ladron Peak; I'm not sure if this is mislabeled, or if Ladron Peak is simply not the highest point in the range. We took the easiest route we could find, which ended up being low class 3. Excellent class 4 and 5 climbing routes were apparent all along the upper portion of the route described here.

The view from the summit is extrordinary. Major visible New Mexico summits include Mt. Taylor, Cabezon Peak, the Sandias, the Manzanos, the Oscuras, Salinas Peak, South Baldy, and the northern Gila. Also visible are the cities of Socorro and Albuquerque.

The kings of pen spinning.

I thought my two meager pen spinning techniques were impressive... clearly I didn't spend enough time in Debate Club, which it seems is where everyone learns how to spin pens wildly around their fingers. Perhaps the Japanese are master debaters...

[Also, file the soundtrack under "bad."]

Needed a pesky QFN-16 part reflow-soldered onto my latest wacky creation at work, and we don't have our own reflow oven, so I took it over to the main fab shop. The fab shop does contract electronics fabrication for anyone at the lab, but their primary customers are the folks who build spacecraft. So everything sitting on the benches was wild mil-spec, rad-hardened, gold-capped flight hardware. It was pretty cool.

I felt like a bit of a doofus talking to their head fabricator and putting in my work order for a single 16-pin chip to be reflowed on...

So the keyboard on my phone... stopped working. Not entirely, but some of the keys don't work at all and others only work in certain modes or applications. I found ways to make calls and receive calls, but the more advanced functionality of the phone is baborkinated. The real kicker is that the "center" button doesn't work, which is the only way to unlock the keyboard after powerup. So I power up, it waits for a few seconds for the center button, then goes back to sleep. In order to actually use the phone, I have to either remove and replace the battery, or do a soft reset with the tiny button inside the battery door. Either way, the startup process takes about 20 seconds.

Basically, I need to get a replacement. Which is inconvenient since I'm going on travel in 3 days. The phone is still under warranty, so they agreed to ship me a replacement overnight (for $15 rush shipping, ugh)... which is good. There wasn't any hassle which was nice, but in the process of trying to revive the phone I did have to erase the contents. So basically, if I had your number... I don't now.

Oh, and speaking of travel, I'll be in the Twin Cities this weekend. If you're there are won't be at Brent's wedding, give me a shout. Maybe trying to call me isn't the best idea; so send me an email.

I have designed an instrument that is composed of several modular boards (a main processor board and a number of peripheral boards) which can be combined in any arrangement, provided that there is always one (and only one) main processor board). The boards communicate with each other via I²C. Usually, I²C serial slave addresses (7 bits) are set in hardware for a given type of device, with perhaps 2 or 3 pins available for hard-coding unique slave addresses among a group of otherwise identical devices. In this case, the I²C serial slave address is associated with the microcontroller on each board and is entirely software-configurable.

The issue is this: at startup, I might have two (or more) identical peripheral boards in the instrument and have to be able to get unique I²C slave addresses into each one. I cannot hard-code the slave addresses in firmware for each device. Some sort of automatic unique address distribution scheme has to be implemented in the main board in order to handle this. I do have a laser-etched unique serial number available from a Dallas Semiconductor DS28E04-100 on every board, but I need a way to generate a unique 7bit I²C address for each board.

This is my first-order solution:

1) Main board initiates the algorithm by sending a broadcast write to all devices asking for a response.

2) Each peripheral sets its slave address to a temporary value (e.g. 0x7F) and attempts to send a data packet to the main board with a payload consisting of the board's unique serial number (from the DS28E04-100) and the board type identifier (hard-coded into the firmware of the peripheral). The write attempts will all collide, and the automatic I²C bus arbitration will elect a winner. All boards that lost the arbitration will continue to try again until they win and get their message through.

3) When no new I²C messages have arrived at the main board for a millisecond or two, there are no boards left trying to get their serial numbers in. The main board goes through its accumulated list of board serial numbers and assigns a unique I²C slave address to each one. It then sends a global broadcast message for each board which contains its serial number and associated I²C slave address.

4) When a peripheral board receives a global broadcast that matches its unique hardware ID, it sets its own slave address to the one contained in the message.

5) The main board then tests its delivery of slave addresses by sending non-global targeted messages to each of the slave addresses on its list, asking for an echo back of the board's unique serial number. If the returned serial number matches, then a confirmation message is sent back to the slave.

6) If it is found that the I²C bus arbitration is less-than-perfect, any lost devices can be found by restarting the process selectively for only those devices that haven't received a slave address and confirmed receipt with the main board.

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Is there an easier way to accomplish this?

The problems with major technical universities these days stem largely from errant fire trucks.

Successfully climbed Carrizo Peak this weekend along with James, Jess, and Eric. Passed on Palko Peak in favor of green chili cheeseburgers at the Outpost in Carrizozo. It looks like the Orizaba expedition this winter is a go! James, Eric, and I seem to get along well and the general feeling was that it would happen, this year.

So starting now I begin ramping up my endurance. I'm going to go biking or climbing whenever I can. By the time December rolls around, I'd like to be climbing Pajarito Mountain (behind Los Alamos) several times a week with increasingly heavy loads in my pack. I figure if I can do the 1,300' ascent up one of the double black diamond routes (from 9,100' to 10,400') at the ski hill with a 50 pound backpack, it'll be similar to climbing 1,300' or so at higher altitude with no pack. Of course, I'll have to climb ~4,000' on Orizaba, starting at 14,500'... but we'll see.

Who knows, this may even be sufficient impetus to get me trail running in the canyons around town. But don't hold your breath.

Last weekend, Nina and I climbed a 10,098' mountain in central New Mexico called "Manzano Peak." We were in a cloud for the bulk of the trip so the pictures aren't that great, but we did find a spherical mushroom bigger than Nina's head. Manzano Peak is the highpoint of Torrence County, NM. Combined with a nearby unnamed point which happens to be the highest in Valencia County, I now have 99 county highpoints under my belt and am rapidly approaching some sort of arbitrarily-defined threshold of dork++.

This weekend I will not be passing into the realm of county highpointer centurion status. I will, however, be climbing a couple of mountains near Carrizozo, NM which happen to be some of the most prominent peaks in the state. I'm joining a guy I met this spring, who may become my climbing partner for Orizaba this winter (though I think that trip might be slipping to next year). He speaks fluent Spanish and is already eyeing the peak, so I'm hoping we can make that happen. 18,500'... here we come. But first, Carrizo Peak and Palko Peak.