Xydexx Squeakypony

So Many Castles, So Little Time

2011-09-17T14:54:00.000-07:00

So many castles, so little time...

—Xydexx

Xydexx The Eccentric Ruin-Exploring Weirdo Is Off On Another Adventure...

2011-08-30T17:13:00.000-07:00

Need to put together itinerary and list of castles to visit. (Important Research!)

So much to do.

—Xydexx

Musical Interlude

2011-07-12T09:27:00.000-07:00

—Xydexx

Known By My Enemies

2011-06-27T18:04:00.000-07:00

As I said earlier, I have the magical ability to instill great rage in people over the internet. The funny part is I can do this without even trying. Simply existing is enough.

It's funny how certain people who claim not to take things seriously are so quick to show just how seriously they take things. They're always flipping out and making shit up and threatening to drop dox over whatever it is they've deluded themselves into thinking I've done.

*shrug*

And I guess I don't really have much to say about that, because the bottom line is it says more about them than it does about me.

—Xydexx

Hey

2011-06-17T07:32:00.000-07:00

If you're paddling upstream in a canoe, and a wheel falls off, how many pancakes fit in a dog house?

None, stupid, ice cream doesn't have bones.

Mount Kindrift

2011-06-11T14:55:00.000-07:00

The latest Minecraft seed I'm playing on singleplayer is Mount Kindrift. Because I turn procrastination into a very amusing art form.

—Xydexx

Minecraft Seeds

2011-06-01T22:40:00.000-07:00

Haven't updated in a while; too busy playing Minecraft and finding interesting worlds to explore with seeds. Will post some soon though, and pictures of wacky terrain.

—Xydexx

Kindrift's Obsession With Xydexx

2011-04-28T18:12:00.000-07:00

I don't know what it is with Kindrift's weird little obsession over Xydexx. I mean, I can understand Kindrift being upset Xydexx wouldn't boink him on FurryMUCK and all. But just because he doesn't get to fool around with a squeaky inflatable unicorn stallion isn't any excuse for him getting all crazy about it. Besides, I thought being crazy was my job, y'know?

But I've never met Kindrift, so I don't know what his issue is. Apparently he has a lot of them, though. Maybe deep down in his heart he wants an inflatable character like everyone's favorite squeaky pony, but is afraid his pals over on Vivisector will kick him out of their little clubhouse or something. Aww.

Oh well. Hope the guy finds whatever it is he's looking for.

—Xydexx

Xydexx: Still Squeaky

2011-04-26T20:24:00.000-07:00

Sold my sense of humor for some magic beans! It's true!

—Xydexx

How To Delete Drama From Your Life (Continued)

2010-12-11T14:10:00.000-08:00

Continued from previous post...

6. Burn your television. How many hours did you watch last week?

I don't really agree with this one because it misses the point. TV isn't evil; it's just a time-waster. You could say that about any leisure activity—watching movies, playing video games, surfing the internet. The message to take away from this one is about getting your priorities straight, not how bad TV supposedly is. And this is coming from someone who pretty much doesn't watch any TV at all. (I do, however, watch movies on NetFlix.)

7. Create a network of healing. What are the characteristics of the most supportive possible environment you can think of?

Totally agreeing with the quote "In order to remove drama from your life, you have to remove those that thrive on it." I've made it a matter of policy in recent years to avoid the dramamongers who thrive on lulz.

8. Enlist your inner governor. Are you treating each experience you experience as a test of what you believe?

I am still perfecting the art of treating things like a six hour lecture on the Lifecycle of Highway Signage, but at this juncture it's safe to say I get a lot less bent out of shape about things than my critics do.

9. Reinvest your misfortune. What would you have to learn from this mistake to make it no longer a mistake?

Adopt, adapt, and improve. I'm all about being flexible and learning from my mistakes.

—Xydexx

How To Delete Drama From Your Life

2010-12-11T10:51:00.000-08:00

Scott Ginsberg has an entry on his blog on How To Delete Drama From Your Life, which is good reading, and (mostly) good advice on how to delete drama. Because drama is stupid and who needs it, y'know?

1. When it doubt, write it out. How do you let all of your noises out?

Indeed, letting idiots control what you say and bottling it all up inside is a Bad Thing. I let my noises out in this blog, which I know pretty much nobody reads.

2. Impose your own order on chaos. Do you refuse to be conquered?

My mantra though troubled times is Mom's advice, "This too shall pass." I'm always looking for the silver lining.

3. There are no emergencies. Have you deleted these clowns from your life yet?

Pretty much this. In recent years I've made it a point to distance myself from the Big Drama crowd and those who thrive on it.

4. Intentionally step out of the current. How do you talk to yourself when you experience stress?

I already walk away from drama and drop out of arguments so often that the dramamongers have coined a term for it: "Pulling a Xydexx." I try to avoid arguing with idiots on the internet and go ride my weirdo bike around. There's always room for improvement, though. Some things really aren't worth the energy.

5. Self-importance is self-delusion. What illusions of self-importance are you ready to delete?

Not applicable. My life doesn't revolve around one crisis after another. There's work to be done, and I do it well. The kudos and recommendations I get speak for themselves.

(To be continued... taking a break to watch The Office with Rigel.)

—Xydexx

How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love WikiFur

2010-11-04T09:49:00.000-07:00

"I used to be weary of WikiFur's contradictory and mercurial standards, but then I realized nothing is going to be done to remedy them. These days I think WikiFur is akin to watching a TV network dedicated to running over watermelons on an expressway. It's so much easier to deal with and makes so much more sense if you look at it as entertainment instead of information."

So I was thinking the other night (a dangerous thing, I know): Maybe my critics are right; maybe I do take things too seriously sometimes. I mean, back when GreenReaper announced he was creating an encyclopedia by and for the Furry fandom, that was an idea I wholeheartedly supported. Why wouldn't I take something like that seriously? True, GreenReaper did have a tendency to lend credence to the less-than-credible in the name of "neutrality" but I (perhaps at my own peril) didn't pay much attention to it because I felt at least his heart was in the right place, y'know?

But WikiFur was started in July 2005, and the cracks are definitely starting to show¹. Over the years WikiFur has suffered from scope creep and a particularly insidious definition of what qualifies as a reliable source. To wit: If you believe it, it's true as far as WikiFur is concerned. To say that this harms WikiFur's credibility is an understatement. People can (and have) added patent lunacy to WikiFur, and the position of the Admins there is that said lunacy is a content dispute and not vandalism.

This wouldn't be so bad if it were just GreenReaper, who over the years has gained a reputation for giving soapboxes and megaphones to kooks. What's really disappointing is that there doesn't seem to be a single Admin on WikiFur today willing to stand up to that nonsense. Unlike Wikipedia, WikiFur doesn't have a dispute resolution process (and they seem in no great hurry to implement one).

And so it goes. If the powers that be over on WikiFur aren't going to take their site seriously, why should I? I've gotta admit, laughing at the hypocrisy is a lot less stressful that wasting endless months trying to change it... but that's because it's the path of least resistance. And it's an understandable choice considering the low return on investment attempts to improve WikiFur have garnered at this point.

—Xydexx

¹ "And while you're at it, make sure your anthropomorphic animal fandom encylopedia [sic] has articles about, you know, anthropomorphic animals." —Kellie Gator, in her WikiFur Rant

Ancient Toll Roads

2010-11-02T13:46:00.000-07:00

So I was thinking of creating a page about old Virginia turnpikes... at least the ones in my local area. I looked on Wikipedia and found an exhaustive list of them, but scant information otherwise. It's interesting how many of the turnpikes were built 150-200 years ago, and the roads generally still follow the same alignment and many of them still have the same name (e.g., Leesburg Pike). But some of them don't... the Charles Town and Berryville Turnpike is better known as Route 340 these days. The Leesburg and Aldie Turnpike is Route 15.

There was a Leesburg and Point Of Rocks Turnpike Company, incorporated on February 17, 1898, with the purpose of building a turnpike road from Leesburg to the Point of Rocks bridge (probably following present-day Route 15). Apparently there was a toll gate on the Leesburg end somewhere. I should check my old maps and see if I can find its location. James Head obliquely mentions the turnpike in his 1908 book History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County Virginia.

Also, I'm recently amused by the Fake Berryville Pike. That certainly deserves a page of its own at some point.

—Xydexx

Nom Nom Nom Pumpkin Raisin Bread

2010-10-27T06:55:00.000-07:00

It's that time of year again... time to make Pumpkin Raisin Bread.

It's wet and drizzly outside today. I'm at home (on call) from work, so I need to do something with my time. It's not like I have a lack of things to do, anyway. Due to everything that's going on, Rigel and I are not having folks over for Halloween this year. We are, however, going to try to make it to the Rally To Restore Sanity on October 30 down on the National Mall.

—Xydexx

Xydexx and Rigel's Colorado/Utah Adventures

2010-10-18T15:06:00.000-07:00

Leadville, Colorado was full of old brick buildings, over 100 years old. When you go through these towns, you notice a lot of buildings were built around 1889 or 1890. Back in the day, fires would wipe out pretty much the entire town, which is why they switched to more fireproof construction later. (Sure enough, according to the internet Leadville had a fire in March 1889, in the store of the Plymouth Rock Pants Company, which spread to nearby buildings in the Opera House block.)

Leadville, Colorado has many brick buildings more than a century old.

—Xydexx

Xydexx and Rigel's Excellent Adventure

2010-10-08T09:09:00.000-07:00

Busy pony is still busy. Rigel and I just got back from a week or so in Colorado and Utah. We went to a wedding, explored ghost towns, rode on a narrow gauge railroad, took a gold mine tour, visited Andy & Lisa, and took lots and lots of pictures. Rigel will be writing a detailed trip report soon.

Pictures (about 15% of them I've gotten around to uploading) are up at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/xydexx/Colorado#

The internet is for prawn...

Work continues to keep me busy. I'm working from home today, but not much to do so I'm running errands during my downtime. I have 120 miles to go to meet my biking goal for this year. Today's a nice day, so I'm going to ride out to the post office and return their mail tub. Kill two birds with one stone.

&mdashXydexx

Busy Pony Is Busy

2010-09-13T23:15:00.000-07:00

Things have been rather busy as of late, with all of the... things... going on.

Abandoney!

2010-08-23T17:32:00.000-07:00

An abandoned house on Old Ox Road.

I rode my weirdo bike out to Dulles today and took pictures of old abandoney houses along the way. This one is one of the few remaining structures left from Willard, VA, which was obliterated when Dulles International Airport was built back in the 1950s.

—Xydexx

Xydexx The Chronically-Disorganized Pony

2010-08-23T10:11:00.000-07:00

I need to find someplace to put all the stuff I bookmark while I'm browsing around on the internets. I keep finding all kinds of cool stuff, which leads to more cool stuff, until my bookmarks in Firefox are filled with awesome.

It's a nice day. I'm heading out biking in a bit.

—Xydexx

NÜDEL BLOC

2010-08-11T10:43:00.000-07:00

And now, back to our regularly-scheduled blog:

It's like Cup-O-Noodles, except that it isn't.

I need to get out more.

—Xydexx

The Bottom Line

2010-08-08T22:53:00.000-07:00

Ultimately, I can take consolation in knowing Rigel and I aren't nearly as awful as Triggur is.

BIG SEKRITS!!!!!!!!!1

2010-08-02T14:31:00.000-07:00

Psssst... hey... those idle ruminations about WikiFur and Flayrah and GreenReaper that I posted to the internet totally by accident and don't want anyone to see¹ got accidentally posted over on Xydexx's Pronk-Powered Webpage. But since nobody actually reads this blog I don't think anyone will notice.

I'm such a clumsy pony! It's hard to type with these squeaky rubber hooves, though.

¹ Well, according to some people, anyway.

Even If Xydexx Loses, Xydexx Still Wins

2010-07-31T05:47:00.000-07:00

How To Deal With Trolls. Because someone had to say it.

GanseVOORT!

2010-06-09T14:48:00.000-07:00

Nothing brightens my day like saying GanseVOORT! Well, that's not entirely true I suppose... lots of things brighten my day, just in different ways. Yam hats. Balloon architecture. Bagpipe maintenance. Running over trolls with a highway paver. Drawing a map of Magical Unicorn Pony Land.

QotD

2010-06-01T06:10:00.000-07:00

Found this in my archives, thought it was relevant. Some things never change.

"For folks who have so little interest in this argument, they sure have a funny way of showing it. But then, we always knew some people just can't get enough of me." —Xydexx

It's interesting how certain folks are running around claiming I'm such a moribund has-been, yet can't seem to stop talking about me.

As the saying goes, nothing makes [some] people freak out more than OMG XYDEXX. -:)

(And as certain individuals are so interested in this page, I may as well put it up again. I've certainly got nothing to hide, and people should know the whole story.

Oh, Seriously Now...

2010-04-18T16:06:00.000-07:00

If I could do that, I'd never leave the house... -=)

Like A Bunch Of Trained Sheep

2010-04-17T22:56:00.000-07:00

Seriously, it's like fighting the Crocs from Pearls Before Swine.

Yes.

2010-04-12T22:32:00.001-07:00

Together, we made enough noise to keep the wolves awake.

Clueless People

2010-04-02T10:17:00.000-07:00

People who have No Clue:

The ones who think I'm trying to turn Furry fandom into a fetish wonderland
The ones who think I'm trying to whitewash all the sex out of Furry fandom

Seriously, some days I wonder what planet these people are on. (But then I realize it's too nice a day for that and I go pull a Xydexx and ride my weirdo bike around, yay!)

Taxes! (Ohnoes! pop, hiss!)

2010-03-29T16:46:00.000-07:00

Taxes are done (tentatively). Hello $3,000 refund. Not as much as last year, but certainly nothing to complain about. -:)

I Am The X Man.

2010-03-29T08:57:00.000-07:00

I could laugh at their attempts at "humor", but for the most part they're really not that funny¹. And there's more important things I should be doing with my time... like my taxes.

¹ Well, okay... I'll admit "The X Man Cometh" was kinda amusing... but all the rest has been done to death already, seriously.

Cake Wrecks!

2010-02-26T08:27:00.000-08:00

When Good Food Goes Bad! Cake Wrecks!. Hilarious pictures of cakes gone bad... bizarre and creepy and horrible and funny and sometimes looking like squashed hedgehogs. Awww!

It almost makes we want to deliberately order a cake using William S. Burrough's cut-up method or MegaHAL and some random image, just so I can have a purple cake with a penguin on it that says THE RAIN WASHES MEMORIES FROM THE GLANDS OF COWS.

In other news, I found out today that Big Mama's House Of Soul recently moved to the former location of the Steel City Diner. I'm apparently the last one to find out about this, and everyone else knew weeks ago. I'm looking forward to trying them at Anthrocon! (When we went last year, all the hungry furries had eaten all their food and there was nothing left.)

Things I Don't Get

2010-02-10T17:31:00.000-08:00

I'm having trouble figuring out if this site is serious or not.

Everybody doesn't like something...

2010-01-19T07:02:00.000-08:00

...but nobody doesn't like inflatable Bambi. Seriously, I want to buy a hundred of them and fill a room with them.

I've been working on my much-neglected websites a lot lately. Aside from the Holey Bubble, there have been additions to the all-new Xydexx Map Department, which features information about the long-forgotten village of Eastview, New York that was wiped off the map by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. I think I'll work on the map for that today.

Bannerman's Castle Collapses!

2009-12-29T13:14:00.000-08:00

I got some depressing news from Rob Yasinsac the other day: A significant portion of Bannerman's Castle, the abandoned weapons arsenal I used to visit up in New York, collapsed sometime last weekend. There's a huge piece missing from the main tower, which no doubt makes the entire structure that much more perilous. This is very unfortunate, as the recent news I heard from Bannerman's Castle Trust was that they were trying to preserve one of the towers on the breakwater that is in imminent danger of falling into the river. There's just not enough money to save it all.

Happy Festivus For The Rest Of Us

2009-12-23T15:20:00.000-08:00

Yay, it's Festivus! The holiday for the rest of us! I've started updating the Holey Bubble, a gallimaufry of optimism, sage advice, pronkification. It's full of squeakiness, just like a pony is.

A few excerpts:

"If I remember correctly, this issue had to do with pirates trying to take away their macaroni and cheese, and Cheesasaurus Rex saves the day by sitting on them or something." –Squeakypony 6

"Cottage cheese will break apart not unlike broccoli when launched, where as Xydexx will simply bounce off whatever he runs into, thus Xydexx is the I Ching hexagram for 'boing.'" –Squeakypony 11

"Friar Emeritus of Nipples, Xydexx Squeakypony" –Squeakypony 26

There will be more eventually, once I return from New York.

Happy Awesome Day

2009-12-22T09:12:00.000-08:00

Happy Awesome Day!

Well, I've gotten all my Yakmas shopping done. I noticed the other day I'm a lot less stressed out about the holidays this year. I'm guessing this is due to establishing a new base of operations for trips to New York. I'll be going up to New York on December 24-26. Xakor will be in town from Utah. I'm bringing Renfield up from Virginia; he'll be staying over on the 23rd. Then we're going to Mom's place on the 27th. Busy, busy!

Tonight is our usual bowling night at Village Lanes in Leesburg. We've been going there regularly for years. There's another fancy-schmantzy bowling alley/sports lounge which is going to open across town in the Village At Leesburg. We might try them once just to see what it's like, but we're pretty sure we're gonna stick with old school Village Lanes.

My mediocre bowling scores for the past nine weeks:

10-20-09: 132/154/140
10-27-09: 90/82/119
11-03-09: 126/122/133
11-10-09: 115/107/158
11-17-09: 104/119/89
11-24-09: 154/106/110
12-01-09: 107/107 *
12-08-09: 92/104/125
12-15-09: 142/103/120

* We usually bowl three games, but arrived late and could only do two.

Yech. That's about a 117 average. My average used to be around 120-121. I'm gonna have to do a little work to bring that up.

"New Year, New Start," says Xydexx

2009-12-13T16:27:00.000-08:00

I'm sad to report that Renfield and Cheryl have apparently broken up. She wanted all of his stuff out of her house, so for the past few days I've been shuttling back and forth to West Virginia helping Renfield move back to Mom's. Renfield drove his Neon and I drove my Prius.

We loaded up books and car parts on the first run. The second trip we packed all his clothes, and he tried to jumpstart his Dodge Ramcharger, but it wouldn't start. Then he got the Neon stuck in the mud at the bottom of the hill. It figures.

We eventually decided the Neon was just digging itself further into the mud, so we returned the next day bright and early when the ground was frozen. We bought gas for Renfield's other Dodge Ramcharger, and he hooked a tow chain to the back of the Neon and pulled it out. He also swapped out the battery in the first Dodge Ramcharger and got it running too. I got to drive the Neon (stick shift) while Renfield drove the Ramchargers to their respective locations off the property. It's been about twenty years since I've driven stick shift, but I managed.

Our trips around West Virginia were punctuated by random crazy animals. A squirrel on Route 522 that didn't get out of the way in time ("What's that in the road?" *thump thump* "It was a squirrel.") and a crazy dog that lurked on the side of the road and tried to eat Renfield's Neon as we drove past at 40 MPH.

Renfield himself is pretty depressed about his recent turn of events. He doesn't have a job and is moving back in with Mom. I told him to have hope, there's a new year coming. New year, new start. Optimism.

Addendum / Errata / Et Cetera

2009-11-03T16:54:00.000-08:00

My grandparents on my father's side were living in Beacon by 1976. I remember because that's when Hurricane Belle came through. Lucky Charms cereal had just gotten new blue diamond marshmallows the year before. Mount Beacon Incline Railway was still operating back then. We took at least one trip up the incline railway before it closed, though there wasn't much to see at the top besides the ruins of the burnt-out casino.

I Can Has Deployment?

2009-03-04T09:42:00.000-08:00

According to my e-mail I may be deployed as early as tomorrow morning. W00t! Sitting at home cruising the internet all day is nice and all, but it doesn't pay the mortgage and I really really really need to start doing some productive work for a change.

In the meantime, I am now the proud owner of Adobe Creative Suite 4! And it works quite nice, though it takes up almost all the remaining room on my hard drive. I was thinking of getting a new external hard drive to kind of organize all my files, and was shocked to discover I can pick up a 500 GIG hard drive for like $150. WTF? Seriously? I knew memory was getting cheap, but 500 GIGS? How will I ever fill up all that space? I could fit both of my computers on that and it wouldn't even be half full! That's amazing!

I found a site a while back with links to 150,000 free fonts and dingbats. Because one can never have too many fonts. I've been collecting them since 1995 or so. I remember I used a font called BoinkOMatic on the Albany Anthrocon banner ads.

Talking about Swedish Butter Cookies the other day got me thinking about my grandparents on my father's side, so I ruminated about that for a while. I should probably write down what my childhood was like before I forget it all. It's like forever ago I did stuff like go to church and Sunday School and all that. Going to Mount Pleasant pool. Playing video games on the newfangled Atari 2600 we had. Building forts out in the woods. Sneaking out late at night in the summer to cause mischief and then helping Xakor deliver newspapers at 5 in the morning. Good times.

Swedish Butter Cookies

2009-03-03T13:26:00.000-08:00

Lately with my considerable downtime I've been baking cookies. These turned out really yummy, and now I have about four dozen oatmeal-raisin cookies to eat, NOM NOM NOM.

All this cookie-baking got me to thinking about some cookies my grandparents on my father's side used to make back in the day. They were very thin butter cookies, with brown edges. These grandparents passed away in the late-1980s, so I haven't had these cookies, much less thought about them, in about 20 years.

So I did some hunting around on the intertubes to see if I could find out what they were. They are apparently called Swedish Butter Cookies or Brown Edge Wafers. Currently I've got more cookies than I can shake a stick at, but once they're finished I think this will be my next recipe to try.

Swedish Butter Cookies

1 cup sugar
1 cup butter
2 eggs, beaten
2 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. In a large bowl, mix butter and sugar until creamy. Add eggs and vanilla. Add flour and salt; mix well. Drop from teaspoon (1/2) on greased cookie sheet. Bake 12-15 minutes. In theory, makes 60 cookies.

And then maybe after that I'll try my hand at making my grandmother's famous butterkuchen. Ye gods, so much butter.

Xydexx / Xydexx / Xydexx

Updated Flickr Photos

2009-02-20T15:17:00.000-08:00

I've added some more photos to my Flickr account, mostly of Midwest FurFest and Further Confusion.

There's also a nifty mapping function on Flickr that allows you to add locations for where photos were taken, so I tried that out a bit on my biking and modern ruins pictures.

I've invented the Xydexx food group: Xydexx is part of this nutritious breakfast!

I've also invented a new drink: French Kiss Vanilla Schnapps + Pony Malta = FRENCH KISS PONY. Except the Pony totally overwhelms the French Kiss (so you can't tell you're French kissing a pony...)

Despite people's best intentions, I am not devoid of humor.

Xydexx's Time Wasters du Jour

2008-10-14T13:14:00.000-07:00

We're halfway through October and it's 84 degrees outside. I'm gonna go biking if I can pull myself away from the internet long enough to do so.

In the meantime:

The Color IQ Test — Arrange the rows of colored chips by hue order. Tricky. Gosub eyeball.

The Eyeballing Game — Test your ability to eyeball geometric lines and angles and shapes and positions.

Super Bowl Of Eyeballs — Because everyone wants one. It's part of a nutritious breakfast.

Xydexx Squeakypony's Photostream — I've been adding new pictures from my biking trips around Northern Virginia to my Flickr account. Another 124 miles to go before I reach my goal for the year.

Future Plans

2008-07-13T18:27:00.001-07:00

I'm going to go look for and possibly explore Pleasantville's Lost Cave with Renfield next time I visit New York. A visit to the Mount Pleasant Historical Society may be necessary to get background information.

I have my Anthrocon 2008 pictures up. Only about a dozen of them, mostly fursuiters. I didn't have a lot of time to take pictures this year.

Albany Post Road / Graymoor

2008-05-08T21:45:00.000-07:00

Milestones on the Old Albany Post Road in Putnam County: Milestone 55 is about 100 yards north of where the Appalachian Trail crosses. Milestone 54 and 53 are south of there.

Abandoned stone structure near Graymoor, NY: On the hilltop west of Route 9, approximately parallel to the south entrance of Graymoor, there appears to be an old stone structure with a turret of some sort.

Milestones on the Old Albany Post Road

2008-04-22T13:25:00.000-07:00

Nobody knows exactly when the milestones were placed along Old Albany Post Road. Some guess between 1769 and 1779. The were definitely in place by 1789.

The Old Albany Post Road was created to deliver mail between New York City and Albany. Though it has been widened and straightened over the years, the route still follows much of present-day US Route 9. Here are some of the pages with information on the road and milestones, sorted by county:

New York City and Bronx:

The Post Road – William Bryk's column in the New York press describes some of the history of the road and locations of some of the milestones in New York City.

Historical Guide To New York – Published in 1909 by the City History Club of New York, this guide has a list of the milestones on Manhattan.

The New York and Albany Post Road – Published in 1905 by Charles Gilbert Hine is a book about walking tours of the entire route and points of interest to be found along it.

Westchester County:

Hudson Valley Ruins: Milestones – Rob Yasinsac's page with pictures of the existing milestones in Westchester County.

Requiem For The Post Roads – General overview of the history behind the road and details on the route through Westchester.

A Toast To Taverns – Also of interest, it has information on the taverns along the route.

A Handy Book Of Curious Information – Published in 1913 by William Shepard Walsh, this book contains a section on milestones and their locations in Westchester County.

Putnam County:

Capsule History of Old Albany Post Road – General information and history of the road near Philipstown in Putnam County.

Dutchess County:

The Milestones Of Dutchess County – A video presentation by Marist College documenting the locations of current and former milestones along the route in Dutchess County.

Columbia County:

Village of Kinderhook – A page on the history of Kinderhook mentions Milestone 137.

There was also apparently another post road on the west side of the Hudson. No information yet on whether this route had milestones or not.

Recently Visited Links

2008-04-07T14:53:00.000-07:00

Well, let's see what fun things I've been surfing around at lately, according to my bookmarks...

Xydexx's MiniCity — Minicity is like a web version of Sim City. Post a link to your city in your blog or journal, and each click you receive improves your city by adding population, industry, transportation, security, environment, and so on. Some of the cities are ginormous. There is also a small chat window where you can talk to your neighbors and encourage them to visit your city. A fun time-waster.

The David Rumsey Map Collection — A collection of old, old maps! I could spend hours on this site. There are old maps of New York which include the long-vanished village of Eastview (obliterated in 1931 when the Putnam Division railroad was re-routed). Of current interested is Christopher Colles' A Survey of the Roads of the United States of America, published in 1789. It depicts the old route of the historic Albany Post Road, complete with notes of where the taverns, blacksmiths, and milestones were. The only problem is it requires Insight viewer to actually view maps.

How To Make A Gingerbread House — A recipe for a gingerbread house. Usually, one makes gingerbread houses during the winter holidays, but I think they're so delicious that any excuse to build and devour one is a good one. I also think it would be interesting to experiment and see if one could use a difference cookie dough for the walls, i.e., build a sugar cookie house. That might be fun.

NumSum — NumSum is a free online tool that allows you to create sharable spreadhseets and connect with folks who have a similar interest. I set one up to keep track of my bowling scores, then used the graph creator to chart it, and discovered my average has slowly been going down this year. I may set one up to track my biking mileage as well.

Search Bloomingdales for Xydexx — Nope, you can't find Xydexx here. Try next door at the inflatable rubber pony factory.

Tegaki — A Flash-based online drawing blog where all entries and comments are handwritten. Extremely addictive... I've been spending a lot of my free time there lately. A drawing tablet is highly recommended but not mandatory. Lots of amazing drawings despite the limited tools you get to use.

Test

2007-03-21T18:19:00.000-07:00

Testing.