Brian writes the Apps. Becky does the design research, arranges the permissions and licensing, and does the promotion. They have three apps so far: Bag of Dice – A variety of dice to use for different games. A free App. Downloaded for free, but Becky and Brian get advertising revenue for “clicks”. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/bag-of-dice/id486230092?mt=8 Finger Labryinth – A soothing choice of finger labyrinths to follow. A digital labyrinth. A low-cost App. $1.99. primarily for ipad https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/finger-labyrinth-hd/id417756245?mt=8 Family Med Track – a more elaborate App. It tracks medical history, allergies, and medications (with reminders) for the whole family, including the pets. Only available for the iPhone right now, but Ipad version will follow. $2.99. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/family-med-track/id556379623?mt=8
Fuel mileage
On the way up to Colorado from Texas we drove in 5th gear a lot because we had that shudder in 6th gear. I got to wondering how much that was costing us in fuel; driving at higher rpm in 5th gear. With our monitoring system, we can track multiple trips, so I set up two different trips, one for 5th gear and one for 6th gear. I tracked these trips while we were driving on wide open fairly level roads. I set cruise control on 65 and alternated the trip tracking, 10 minutes in 5th gear, 10 minutes in 6th, then back to 5thand so on. I alternated to eliminate the variable of terrain as much as possible. The result? How much was it costing us in fuel economy to drive in 5th gear instead of 6th? A counterintuitive result. We got a full mile-per-gallon better in 5th gear than we did in 6th!
There are too many birds on the planet
Well, too many for us to keep track of anyway, so we focus on North America. But that’s about 900 birds and some of them are really hard to get to, so mostly we concentrate on Texas. And Colorado. But still, we can’t spend all our time traveling all over the state, so sometimes we just focus on Counties. We found a manageable challenge. See how many birds we can get in selected counties. Or get at least 100 birds in counties we spend a lot of time in. We’ve seen more than a hundred birds in several counties in Texas. We’ve got over a hundred birds in Weld County and Douglas County in Colorado, where St Vrain and Chatfield State Parks are (where I walk every day). But we just realized this year that in the county we lived in the longest, Boulder County, we only had 73 birds. Some counties are barren and don’t have 100 birds, but not Boulder. It’s a big county with diverse habitat. There are plenty of birds there. We lived in Boulder County for 30 years, but most of that time we weren’t counting birds. Part of the problem is, when we stay here now, we don’t stay in Boulder County. There aren’t any campgrounds in Boulder. We’ve made forays back to Boulder County the last couple weekends. Now we’re at 90 birds, but we’re running out of time. No easy access to Boulder County from Chatfield; we’re on the other side of Denver. That 100 bird count, in the county we’ve lived the most time in, might have to wait for next year.
St Vrain State Park
Our last day here this year. The cold weather has let up and we’ve settled into typical Fall weather. Sunny, calm, still sub-freezing nights, but highs in the 70s. Travel day tomorrow. Not going far though; just back to Chatfield. Judy’s ear is not completely better, but it’s better. My vision is more comfortable now. I’m getting used to the new lens. We just noticed
Trailers don’t have backup lights. Did you know that? Motorhomes of all sizes have backup lights. Motorhomes back up. Trailers back up. People backing up motorhomes have to see behind them when they back up. People backing up trailers have to see behind when they back up. People are just as likely to back up trailers in the dark as they are to back up motorhomes in the dark. Why don’t trailers have backup lights?