Anchorage

Today is a departure from my normal writing, and just a collection of random thoughts:

Dateline Downtown, Alaska, August 5, 2011: Wow, I know it's been cold, wet, and windy here lately, but today some friends on Twitter report the first sighting of "termination dust" on the mountains in Anchorage(!).

If you haven't heard of it before, termination dust is the first snowfall of the year, indicating the pending termination of the summer season. All I have to say is that August 5th sure seems early to me.

As I'm seriously thinking about moving back to the Lower-48 at the end of this year, I thought I'd make a list of things I'll miss about Alaska if I do leave:

I've been very busy lately, and haven't taken the time to write any blog posts in a few weeks. The reason for my busy-ness is that I've created a new computer programming company in Alaska, Valley Programming.

On this day in history ... 5:36pm, 1964 ... a 9.2 magnitude earthquake rocked Alaska for more than five minutes, followed in the next several days by more than 10,000 aftershocks, with eleven aftershocks in the first day having a magnitude greater than 6.0. I'd write more about it here, but I've covered a lot of it already in my 1964 Alaska earthquake facts article.

March 26, 2011: Sorry I haven't posted anything here in a while, I've been busy setting up my computer programming business in Alaska. The last 48 hours have been a bit of a problem as well because the company that provides internet access here in Palmer, Alaska has had problems keeping their part of the internet working. Hopefully we're through that now.

Alaska moose news: A Fairbanks, Alaska woman was injured a few days ago in Anchorage, Alaska while attempting to pet a moose, a wild moose. As expected, the moose kicked her.

The moose was reported to be in the Town Square Park area in Anchorage, and had been seen there all day feeding on the trees. The woman, reported to be in her 20s, was kicked in the chest and shoulder by the moose after attempting to pet it. After she was checked by medics, she amazingly didn't have to go to the hospital.

Sigh, I woke up this morning to read that the Northern Lights -- the Aurora Borealis -- were very clearly visible from Fairbanks in the north to Juneau in the south, including all points in between, including Palmer, Alaska, where I was sleeping.

I've signed up twice to receive Northern Lights alerts (using two different email addresses), but for some reason I'm not receiving them. But this one is also my fault, as I left the earphones in my phone last night, and while a friend and former neighbor tried to call me from Wasilla, I never heard it ring.

2011 Iditarod Race Route News: Digging around between the Official Iditarod website and the Official Iditarod Race Guide, I've reproduced the table below of the Iditarod race checkpoints and the distances between the checkpoints.

There are a couple of differences in the Iditarod checkpoint distances between the website and the guide, so I've used the distances from the official website wherever there was a discrepancy. I'll try to figure out which source of information is correct.

I'm a little behind schedule, but nonetheless, I am getting my new computer programming and web design business set up in Palmer, Alaska this month. The business is currently named Mat-Su Valley Programming. The reason for the delay is that some of my websites are doing so well, I need to upgrade my web servers to keep up with the increasing traffic. The devdaily.com website gets millions (and millions) of page views every year, so it's usually the big one, but my other websites are doing very well also.