Yes, but no.

Napoleon is believed by many to have been a shorty.  Perhaps so by today’s standards, but he was above average height for the period in which he lived.

During the Napoleonic wars, the British Tory press depicted Napoleon as shorter than average.  This perception took hold and persists to this day.  Napoleon complex is a supposed inferiority complex where short people compensate for lack of height with over-aggressive behavior.  The clichéd image of Napoleon in popular culture is of a comically short petty tyrant.

The misunderstanding over Napoleon’s height arose over the differences between the English and French systems of measurement.  The French Revolutionary government established the first legal basis for the metric system in 1795.  Implementation was poorly managed and the system was widely unpopular.

By imperial decree, in 1812, Napoleon instituted a revised system.  Under it, the pied (foot) was 1/3 metre, with 12 pouce (inches) in each pied.

While the French system of metre, pied and pounce were similar in concept to the English Imperial yard, foot and inch, the French units were actually 9.3% larger.

Under the 1812 French units, if Napoleon was about 5 pied (feet), 2 pouce (inches) in height, he would be just under 5 feet, 8 inches by the English system.  The average height of European men at the time was about 5 feet, 3 inches.

Perception misconception.

Our three night stay at Arches National Park was in the Devils Garden Campground. Eighteen miles from the park entrance, the campground is located in the middle of red sandstone fins, boulders and rocky hills, Utah juniper and pinion pines, yucca and prickly pear cacti.  The La Sal mountains can be seen in the distance. There are also a few arches nearby. One of them, Skyline Arch, was only a short walk and climb from our campsite, though climbing up into the arch itself was a bit of a stretch.

The nearest town, Moab, is 23 miles away, so there is very little light to pollute the night sky, making the campground a great place to view  the wonders of the night sky.

Like most U.S. national park campgrounds, Devils Garden has no hookups for water, electricity, or sewer.  Facilities do include potable water, picnic tables, and grills, but there are no showers.  There are 50 sites that can be reserved between March 1 and October 31.  This is a very popular campground and, for anyone who would like to camp here,  I would recommend making reservations.

Selected Information Resources:

Arches National Park.

• National Park Service
• Wikipedia
• Wikitravel
• Discover Moab
• GORP
• The American Southwest

After finishing the Delicate Arch hike, we went to the visitor center, near the park entrance.

Dedicated on September 17, 2005,  the Arches National park visitor center includes, outside the front entrance,  Matthew Gray Palmer’s Desert Animal Series sculptures –  a bighorn ram, ewe and lamb, two ravens and two lizards.    These still life animals are popular with visitors (pdf).

The sculptures provide a close-up look at these magnificent animals.  To make the sculptures, the artist first made life-size wax models of the animals. A mold was made from the wax, into which molten bronze was poured. Additional details are worked into the bronze by hand to make the pieces as realistic as possible.

Palmer, a resident of Washington state, is a mixed media sculptor who also draws and paints.  In 1995 he created Parallaxis, “an endeavor dedicated to making a difference in the world by educating people about natural science and conservation through public works of art and multimedia events.”

Raven:

Raven:

Bighorn sheep ewe:

Bighorn sheep ram:

Bighorn sheep lamb:

Bighorn sheep ram:

Whiptail lizard:

Selected Information Resources:

Arches National Park.

• National Park Service
• Wikipedia
• Wikitravel
• Discover Moab
• GORP
• The American Southwest

Our first hike of our 2011 visit to Arches National Park was the 3.0 mile (4.8 km) round-trip trek to Delicate Arch on September 21.  We had done this hike almost exactly 4 years before, so we knew what we were getting into.

The trail begins at the parking lot adjacent to the old Wolfe Ranch cabin.  A side trail near the cabin leads to some petroglyphs.

The Delicate Arch trail has very little shade.  Most of the trail is over open “slickrock” sandstone – a term given by early settlers because of the difficulty of their horses’ metal shoes getting traction on the sloping surfaces of the rock. There is some exposure to heights.  The trail can be a brutal hike during the summer, when temperatures can exceed 100°F (37.7°C).  The park service recommends at least a quart of water per person on this trail. Across the rock, the trail is marked by rock cairns.

We had planned the southwestern part of our trip for late September into October to take advantage of cooler weather.  The high temperature for our hike was probably in the low 70s.

The trail to Delicate Arch is a nice hike and I heartily recommend it for a spring or autumn hike, or  even an early summer morning hike provided you’re off the rock before the extreme heat of the day.

Selected Information Resources:

Arches National Park.

• National Park Service
• Wikipedia
• Wikitravel
• Discover Moab
• GORP
• The American Southwest

The weather was much different.  It had been a colder winter overall and, on February 9, 2011, we had our second snow in a week – and it was a very respectable snowfall.

This year, our warmer-than-normal winter has returned to seasonal temperatures, but we’ve not had any snow or ice since sometime in November or December, and that wasn’t much.

How is the winter trending in your neck of the woods?

After 2 weeks in Colorado, we left Grand Junction on a short drive to our next destination, Arches National Park.  It was 131 miles (211 km), mostly on Interstate 70, though the actual straight line distance was 60 miles (96.5 km).

As we traveled west in Colorado several days earlier, the landscape had gradually changed from high mountain forest and tundra to high desert country, with quite a bit of farming in the Grand Valley of the Colorado River (once called the Grand River).  Driving west into Utah, the landscape became more and more desolate with a stark and fascinating beauty.

This was our third visit to Arches National Park.  The previous two were brief, but this time we had three nights reserved in the park at Devils Garden Campground.

Arches National Park is in eastern Utah.  It has over 2000 natural sandstone arches and many other interesting geological formations, such as spires, balanced rocks and sandstone fins.  It was designated a national monument in 1929 and became a national park in 1970.

Selected Information Resources:

Arches National Park.

• National Park Service
• Wikipedia
• Wikitravel
• Discover Moab
• GORP
• The American Southwest

Some rights reserved by macie3k

A new comment on one of my blogs says, “I have read a few good stuff here. Definitely worth bookmarking for revisiting. I wonder how much effort you put to create such a great informative website.”

At first glance, this very complementary comment might appear to be legitimate, but it’s just too vague, with no correlation whatever to the content of the post.  It’s comment spam.

The funny thing  about this particular comment spam is that it was left on a post titled “Hello World.”  The blog isn’t even active.

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When I went to update our virus protection software last month, I upgraded to a product that had more protection, and didn’t think anything more about it.

Friday, I was viewing my e-mail spam folder prior to permanent deletion and found a message from Norton telling me that my virus protection software had been automatically updated – the old software that was no longer on our computers.

Time to contact customer service.

I managed to get online and find the customer service link.  There was a note that said that the customer service online chat was the quickest way to resolve problems, which was fine with me.  I don’t care for dealing with customer service by phone and, with chat, there’s no struggling to understand the representative’s accent – and there was no way I was going to try to resolve this with e-mail.

The wait was just a few minutes and I “worked” on other things while I was waiting.  The customer service “expert,” to use Norton’s term for their representatives, was able to help in a relatively short period of time.  He did offer to apply the subscription time to our current product and refund 10% of the renewal price.  I told him,  “I would prefer the full refund instead.”

After he had processed the refund, he wrote, “I’ve noticed that you have been waiting for longer than expected. I’m sorry for this inconvenience and as a gesture of good will and to thank you for your patience, I would like to add an extra 30 days to your subscription. Is that ok with you?”  How did he know it was my birthday?

He didn’t, of course.  Funny thing, though, it was his birthday, too.

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Some rights reserved by balleyne

It’s unfortunate that unethical individuals and organizations try to take advantage of people through the internet.

Imagine an online world where you didn’t have to deal with spam, viruses, phishing and scams.

Unfortunately, that innocent online world only lasted a few short years.

I was subscribed to a few genealogy online mailing lists that went silent in the 90s when a guy in Atlanta selling laser printer cartridges sent one of his ads in a mass email to the lists.  At the time, the mailing lists were hosted on a server at Indiana University.  The load from that mass emailing crashed the server and, eventually, that incident forced the mailing lists to find a new home.  That was my first exposure to the impact of internet spam.

Today,  staying protected from online attack requires spam filters, a good virus protection program and a firewall to prevent unauthorized access to your computer.

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How about you?  Any recent spam or virus issues?

This is one of those (secretive  s-h-h-h-h ) benchmarks that lots of folks seem to want to keep hush-hush, no more than whispered about, when they get there.

Not me.  I’d rather just face it (and get it over with) and embrace it (what more can you do?) fully.  Today, I turned sixty.

Every day, about 330 or so boomers reach this point.  Born in the 50s, radical in the 60s (not me!) and early 70s, settled down in the 80s, splurged in the 90s, and lost our financial butts in the 2000s (not me ).

Supposedly sixty is the new 30 – or is that the new 40?  I don’t know about that.  I think it’s just rationalization for some people, to make them feel better when they get there here.

I took another tack on dealing with this benchmark and it really helps to lessen the impact.  Over the last year, as the time  grew closer and closer, I just more and more started thinking of my age as 60 instead of 59.  After all, since last summer sometime, I’ve actually been closer to 60 than 59. 

I don’t feel 60 – mentally or physically.

Retirement? Still doin’ it – part time.

Check out Exit78 on Facebook.

Great accomplishments are overrated.  I prefer to “go with the flow.”

How about you?

Cartoon shared from Calamities of Nature.