We got off Route 80 and went onto the local roads. We went through a small town and saw some Trolley Tours. That might be a way to see this Gap thing. We looked around and decided not to take the tour, but were told of several overlooks up the road where we could see the sites. We went off to the scenic overlooks.

The first one answered our questions, in a way. It turns out, the Delaware Water Gap is a US National Park along the Delaware River. At the southern end of the 60-mile long park, where we happened to be, is a pass through the mountains where the river passes through. Thus the “Gap.”

We went on up the road to the next observation point and parked. Walking through the parking area, I spotted a hiker walking down the road. The Adirondack Trail passes through this area. We had seen it cross the road just a short way back. So I wasn’t surprised to see a hiker with full backpack walking along the road. But what caught my eye and made me decide to take a photo was a big white sign with the message “LOVE LIFE” in red letters above his head.

He saw me taking his picture, even from a distance and waved. I waved back, just being friendly and letting him know I enjoyed his sign and appreciated being able to photograph him. He started crossing the road and walking towards me, so I walked down to the edge of the road to meet him. He gave me a card with his information on it and told me how he was walking around the US and had already walked 26,000 miles! Wow!

His name was Steve Fugate and he has a website www.trailtherapy.com.

I asked if he was hiking the ADK Trail and he told me that he had already done that, but was just passing through the area on his latest trip. I told him that I’d send him the picture I took and wished him a good trip. It was all over in a minute or less, but it was quite intriguing and I couldn’t wait to check out his website.

When you run into someone like that, you never know what you are getting into. People with signs often are pushing some religious agenda and you wish you had run the other way, but not Steve. He was doing his own thing and did genuinely wish anyone who would listen to Love Life, so he had a message, but chooses to spread his message by example. On the most basic level, I guess that’s still a religious message, but one we can all agree on. I won’t attempt to try to tell his story – I wouldn’t do it justice anyway – but you can visit his web page and read all about how how came to start hiking and many stories of his travels. It’s a moving and inspirational story and I urge you to check it out. A documentary about him is in the works as well.

In case you’re not familiar with this program, you can learn a lot about it at the official website of FIRST or you can watch the kickoff ceremonies Saturday. I’d urge you to do both, if you’re curious about it.

The program is a High School-aged competitive Robotics program that culminates in robots from all over the world trying to win the events in the Championship held this year for the first time in St. Louis MO.

But winning is just a goal. The real challenge is the whole process for the season. The kickoff both unveils a game the robots must play to compete in, and is the start of a six-week period when the teams are allowed to build their robot. At the end of the six-weeks, it’s hands-off and the robot is sealed for shipping to the competitions starting in march.

Every team is given a basic kit of parts and the same information about the game. They must figure out how to play the game, which is played by an alliance of three robots against another alliance of three robots. You need to cooperate with your alliance-mate, who are from other teams and schools that you may have never met before to prevail over the other alliance. But don’t beat them too badly, they might be you alliance partners in the next match held in round-robin fashion.

The team must analyze the game and determine what they want their robot to be able to do. Every game has too much to do. A common pitfall is trying to do it all and ending up doing it all poorly.

Then they must design a robot that does what they want it to do. Coming up with ideas and solutions, building prototypes, debugging them and getting the final result built all in six weeks is a daunting task. The team works every day they can for the six weeks. Our team works Monday through Saturday. We’d probably work Sundays, if we could get into the school!

This is the 20th Anniversary of FIRST and the program has grown to well over 2000 teams today. Our team, The Warlocks, Team 1507 from Lockport High School, is in it’s seventh year. A really neat page with the history of all the past seasons can be seen here.

To get into the game and see the Kickoff as it happens, the best place is NASA TV, which is carried on DirecTV on channel 289, Dish Network on channel 212, many cables systems (check you listings) and online by NASA TV. If you have your own satellite dish, there is information on getting it directly on the NASA page as well.

The program is simply called Unlocker 1.9.0. I had earlier versions of it on another computer and the last time I used it, it popped up a message informing me there was a new version of it available for download.

First, let’s talk about what it is and what it might do for you.

If you have ever done a lot of moving or copying files from one place to another on your computer, or from one computer to another across a network, you’ve sooner or later had an error that says it can’t be done because the file is in use by another program. That’s annoying enough. Usually you go and close the file in whatever program it was open in, or just close the program, and the problem is cured.

But sometimes, a file just gets marked as ‘open’ and you can’t get it to get free to move no matter what you do. Certain unruly programs are nastier about that than others, leaving the file locked even after the program is closed. Sometimes a reboot is needed to free the file up. Very annoying, but it’s just one of those Windows annoyances.

I found Unlocker as a solution to that. Not only does it let you resolve this issue, it sits there quietly monitoring things and comes up automatically whenever you run into a locked file. It lets you do whatever you need to fix it. I get this all the time with files I want to delete. One of the options is to delete the file. It’s simpler in use than it is to describe.

Well, the last time I used it, it told me there was a new version. So I clicked on the link to the web site and got a 403 error – website not found. Happens all the time. Site change hosts or whatever, so I googled it and found it available at Download.com and downloaded it.

I was happy to see there that it had been updated to work with Windows 7 and for either 32 or 64 bit systems. So I decided to put it on my laptop which runs Win 7. As soon as I did, I got a warning from my virus program that said it contained spyware.

That dissapointed me, but considering the programs track record so far, I hoped it was a false positve or excessively cautious warning. but before I installed it, I wanted to know more.

Once again I looked for the authors’ web page and got the error. It was in french and gave no clue to a new site. There was an email address on the download page, so I sent off a quick email, thinking I would never hear anything.

I went to the downloaded file, a self-extracting .exe archive and rather than open it and risk the wrath of my antivirus, I extracted the contents and looked for the cause of the warning. I scanned each file individually but the AV program must have marked it to ignore. But I soon saw why it warned me: it had a couple of those ad-based add-ons (I think one was Yahoo toolbar) that frequently come with free software. So I went ahead and installed it. Each of the spyware-toolbar-adware programs came up with an option to opt out of installing them and I was happy to skip them and get on to the program. Sorry I didn’t support the program, but there are enough people who might miss them to pay it’s way.

Anyway, today, I got a pleasant email from the author with an explanation that there was a problem with the program web site, he hoped to solve it soon and that there was an alternative site with all the information on it.

Okay, so not only did a useful program get updated to use with Win 7, the virus warning turned out to be an overreaction and the program safe, but the author quickly answered an inquiry about a free program. That’s exceptional in this day and age and I thought I’d share that here.

Visit this site: Stuff and Mutterings

I guarantee, it’s all good (well, except for the ones he says are bad) and not the same old, same old you’ve been hearing on the radio since Halloween.

Here’s the Shonen Knife video:

Shonen Knife has been a guilty pleasure of mine for many years. I was elated when Robby became affiliated with them and has been promoting them in the US. We went and saw them play in Buffalo a few months back and got to meet them after the show.

As we left, someone at the door was passing out sample CDs from Scott Celani, The Corrections and The Filter Kings. It was an EP and a couple of the songs on it were Christmas songs. I remembered that those groups had a show at the Tralf recently and said so to my wife. She said, “Is the Tralf still around? I haven’t heard much about it lately.” Of course it is, but I haven’t been paying a lot of attention to the shows there of late.

So, I went online and checked their web page. I was pleasantly surprised at the number of exciting (at least to me) shows coming up in the next few months.

I’m not going to list every one. They have their own web site to do that! I’ll just comment on the ones I really like and let you know why.

In the very near future Robert Randolph and the Family Band is playing there. I’ve seen them a couple times and their high-energy show is always worth seeing. I’d imagine, with their show in December, they may include some Christmasy music, especially since their roots are in gospel-based music. It should be a Holiday show to remember.

Also coming up is Tom Stahl and the Dangerfields. I’ve seen them several times as well, including a holiday season show at the Tralf. It must be a tradition! They’re a local group and a popular band in the area. Tom is a gifted songwriter with a vast catalog of original material that will make you think as you tap your toe.

In January, there was a surprise that has me really excited. Eddie Cain Irwin has a show. I’ve never seen him live, although I’ve listened to and seen many of his video songs online. I even interviewed him for my old podcast. He had a project where he composed a song and shot a video using it each day for a year. It was called Eddie’s 1 Minute and it was such a cool, innovative project, I had to feature it on the podcast. I know he does play around the area some, usually small venues, such a Clarence Center Coffee, but this is the first big show I’ve heard of and I really want to go and see it.

At the end of January, a little-known legend is coming: Popa Chubby. He’s originally from NYC, but lives in France and is huge (no pun intended) in Europe. I came across a review of him on a web site somewhere and really liked his music. He’s an amazing guitarist, playing blues, psychobilly, and straight up rock. He’s married to his bass player, Galea a very interesting personna in her own right. Hope she’ll be there with him. Lockport band, Wanted By The FBI is the opener.

Those are just a few highlights of what is listed on the Tralf site. Typically, the further away dates are sparse, but more fill in as they get closer. Rarely a week goes by without three or four good shows there. You just have to check for them.