Justin pointed this out to me today: Google's Calculator. Not only does it do simple and complex math operations, it will also convert between different units. For example, type in "1800 cubic centimeters in cubic inches", and it returns 109.842739 cubic inches. Pretty sweet--I'm sure i'll be using it quite a bit.

I spent about four hours working on the Subarus yesterday, and managed to get the transmission pulled from the '88, and transferred the shifter/linkage assembly from the '88 to the '87. I think I'm going to transfer all the smaller parts now, like the clutch cable, pedal assembly, and the front-end parts, before I actually install the transmission. That way I'll have more room to maneuver under the '87. I've decided to let the registration lapse on my truck, since it's not much use to me in the winter, but that means I've got to get this Subaru up and running before the end of next month. Once I finish the transmission and the front-end, I'll probably register it, but then I'll have to fix some oil leaks before I really drive it much. Seeing as how I never drove this car before buying it, I hope that when I drive it for the first time with a manual transmission, I don't find a bunch of other problems that I have to deal with. Well, at least I'll have a good donor car in that event--everything but the engine from the '88 is at my disposal.

Traci and I hid our first geocaches yesterday while her mom watched the kids. It was nice being out alone, but we didn't have nearly enough time to do everything that we wanted. The first one we hid around Kenilworth, near a vent shaft for the coal mine. Surprisingly enough, there were quail all over the place, and judging by their tracks and all the droppings, they even spend a lot of time inside the vent shaft. I hadn't been up this canyon since I lived in Kenilworth, so it's probably been 20 years or so. There were quite a few waterfalls cut into the cliffs, including a few that you could climb (there's a link to a picture of me climbing one on the cache page). I'm definitely going to return and do some more climbing, since I didn't have the time to do much while we were there.

We hid the other one between Carbonville and the highway. This one should be pretty tricky for most people to find, especially when using a GPS, since from the highway it would appear to be just a few hundred yards away, but you have to drive a few miles out of your way to find the dirt road leading to the cache. It had a nice view overlooking Carbonville, and the Price River snakes around just below the ridge where the cache is.

We wanted to look for at least one other cache while we were out, but we had to be back in Price to pick up the kids before 5:00, so we'll have to do it later this week. There are quite a few caches within 10 miles of our house, but I've only found one so far. I've found five others as well, but they were all either near Huntington Canyon, or just off the highway in Price Canyon. I think we're going to place a few more pretty soon, but I think I'll do these ones somewhat far away, in some pretty remote locations. The only problem is that I'll have to be able to check on them whenever necessary, so they'll have to be in places where I actually don't mind going out of my way to get to.

It's starting to look bad as far as my appeal to the DMV goes. Their position is that they are statutorily bound to deny any license plate application that doesn't meet 41-1a-411 and/or R873-22M-34. In other words, they aren't allowed to use any discretion when issuing personalized plates. Even if they wanted to issue the plates, they couldn't do so legally.

Even though it looks like my appeal will certainly fail, I'm still keeping it alive for now. I wrote letters to several state lawmakers--Senator Mike Dmitrich, Representative Brad King, Speaker of the House Marty Stephens, Lt. Gov. Olene Walker, and Gov. Leavitt--asking each one to review the situation and make some sort of allowance for anybody to have their last name on their license plate. My argument was that denying the license plate does more harm than allowing it, since the hundreds of people in the state of Utah with the last name Udink are much more offended now than the small handful of people who may be offended if they see the plate and take it out of context. Hopefully they can make a small change to the existing law that will allow the DMV to exercise a little discretion in special cases such as mine. My fingers are crossed, but I'm not counting on anything.

Phew. We spent nearly all day getting ready and going to Monument Peak. We woke up later than we'd hoped to (not that I'm complaining about getting to sleep in 'til 10:00 am), and we didn't even leave town until 1:00 pm. We drove past Scofield and headed up Eccles Canyon, then turned onto a dirt road at the Carbon/Emery county line. From there it was a beautiful drive to the summit, but damn, it was cold and windy once we got out of the car. We still hung around for quite a while, but we were all frozen by the time we left--didn't even think to bring jackets. When we got back to the paved road, we continued west and went to Huntington Canyon. We found two caches there, one on south Skyline Drive and the other near Electric Lake. Traci had a lot of fun playing with the GPS--she had to be my navigator, because I weave all over the road if I try to pay attention to the map on the display. We got home well after dark, and both mine and Traci's mom had called our house and left messages on the answering machine wondering where in the hell we were.

I'm pretty glad that we didn't go camping, 'cause this was much better than just sitting around a campground, and a lot easier than loading the trailer up and hauling it up the canyon. It's not likely that we'll go camping again this year, but we'll certainly go on a few more day-long drives like this one. The first weekend in October, I'm going with Mike and Matt for two hikes in one day. We're going to hit an unnamed peak in Wasatch County, but since it's such a short hike, we'll try another one later in the day--either Thurston Peak in Davis & Morgan counties, or Deseret Peak in Tooele County. I'm going to have to keep hiking between now and then, because I'd really like to get accustomed to it enough that I won't be dead-sore by the end of the day.

While I was in Provo yesterday for work, Lynette Byrd from Motor Vehicles called my home and left a message on the answering machine, but I didn't get back until after business hours. She asked me to call her back to talk about why they denied my personalized plate application, but it really sounded like she wanted to talk me out of appealing the matter--otherwise, any issues should be dealt with during the hearing next month. I tried calling her back four times today, and got forwarded to her voicemail each time, so instead of leaving a message and playing phone tag, I'll call her back Monday or possibly just send her an email.

On my way home from work, I stopped and found a couple of geocaches. One wasn't the best site for a cache--right off the highway, but still a half-way decent place, I guess. It's where I took this picture from last year. The other was an excellent place, however. It was just a little way up the dirt road from the Tucker rest area, near where we went camping two years ago. The really cool thing about it was that there were nothing but fossils in the surrounding shale. You would literally have a hard time picking up a rock without it having some sort of fossilized sea life in it. Of course, it wasn't anything spectacular, just a bunch of different sized and shaped shells embedded in the rock, but I'd like to return someday soon and really dig around in the hopes of finding something unique.

A concealed firearm permit holder stopped a robbery attempt at a bus station in Provo yesterday (last article on page). The article doesn't mention if the suspect was armed, so I'd assume that he wasn't.

The Utah State Tax Commission received my appeal notice, and sent me a Notice of Initial Hearing in return. I found it hilarious that the person who entered my information into their computer system misspelled it "Undink." Maybe she was trying to tell me something. =) I called the Appeals Unit this morning and talked to a woman named Ann, who promptly fixed the error while I was on the phone with her. At least she was good-natured and understanding about it, and I can only hope that everybody at the Tax Commission is that way (well, except for the guy who denied the plate in the first place). The hearing is scheduled for October 27 in Salt Lake City, so I've got plenty of time to do some research and prepare my arguments. I'm considering hiring an attorney to represent me, but I've really got other things that I need to spend my money on--that is, unless somebody would be willing to do some pro bono work? =) The problem is that my case probably isn't something that an attorney would be willing to take on free or nearly free of charge, and even if I paid an attorney to handle the case, it's not really a legal proceeding, so the expertise of an attorney may not help me much.

A reporter with the Sun Advocate called me yesterday and asked some questions, and said she figured not many people around here would have heard of the story from the Tribune, so she wanted to write something up on it too. I think it'll be in tomorrow's paper. I did have a couple of people ask me about it already--one woman who knows my wife saw us in the grocery store and stopped to ask if that article was about me, and another guy that I know who distributes the Tribune down here stopped me in Kmart and asked if I needed some copies of the paper. My grandpa read it in the paper too, and apparently he was pretty pissed off about the whole thing. For that matter, I'm sure a lot of Udinks aren't happy to have the state of Utah declare their last name officially offensive. The highest concentration of Udinks in the U.S. live in Utah, so why the state would suddenly deem the name offensive is beyond me.

We were going to go camping this weekend, 'cause we probably wouldn't have gotten another chance this year, but it looks like we won't be able to swing it. Traci and I have got too much going on this week to get ourselves and the trailer ready to go. Instead, we're driving up to Monument Peak for the day on Saturday, then we'll take a nice long bike ride on Sunday. And Friday, Traci will be out of town with her mom, so Michael and I are staying home and going for a hike that evening (hopefully he'll be up for it--he's probably a little young for hiking around in the mountains too much).

My GPS receiver arrived today, and I managed to play around with it for a little bit to make sure I can use it the way I want to. I created a waypoint (over a benchmark on Wood Hill) in All Topo on my computer, then hooked the GPSr up to the computer using the cable that came with it, and transferred the waypoint to the unit. Then I hopped in the car and took a drive. It actually zeroed out at 13 feet from the actual spot I should have been at, which is pretty decent accuracy for going between a USGS map and a GPSr. It's nice to know that it'll work that way, so I can use it to make sure I'm heading in the right direction when hiking around to all the highest peaks in Utah over the next year or so.

After hitting Monument Peak this weekend, I plan on going to another mountain in Wasatch County with Mike and Matt on October 4th. I may also hit two other nearby peaks before October, but I really need somebody to go with me (Ty? =)). Then there are two more that are within an hour's drive from Mike's place, and hopefully I can climb those before winter sets in.

This was in the Salt Lake Tribune today:

Expect an appeal: Price resident Dennis Udink was surprised when his application for a personalized license plate was turned down by the Utah Division of Motor Vehicles. All he wanted was his last name -- "Udink" -- on the plate, but his request was denied by the division's assistant director Kevin Park because there cannot be "sex reference" on a Utah plate.

Udink finds it ironic that the Utah Tax Commission, which collects taxes on his vehicle, doesn't have any problem with his "offensive" last name.

We've spent this weekend in West Valley at Mike's house (still here, actually), and it's been a pretty relaxing couple of days so far. Matt has been up here all weekend too, and we haven't seen him in more than 2½ years, so it's been pretty good to just hang out. We all went for a drive up Butterfield Canyon yesterday, and the damned Mazda started making that funny noise again--turns out that it's the automatic hubs (NOT loose lugnuts). Whenever I put it into four-wheel drive and take it out again, then get up to 40+ MPH, the hubs start making a grinding/rubbing noise. I think they're not fully disengaging like they're supposed to, but backing the vehicle up for about 20 feet seems to do the trick. I think when I go to the junkyard next week to get a few other small parts, I'll look for an Explorer with manual hubs that are in good shape, and get rid of the damned automatic hubs. I don't really trust them even when they do work, 'cause you can't tell visually whether or not they're locked in, and you have no control over them if something goes wrong. At least for now, I know what the problem is and how to get around it, but I don't want to wait until something breaks to get it fixed.

When I registered the Mazda last week, I applied for personalized license plates bearing my last name. This morning, I received a notice from the DMV stating that my last name contains a "sex reference," and that it couldn't be approved for use on a personalized plate.

I just mailed off a Petition for Redetermination, along with a rather lengthy response as to why I should be allowed to have my last name on my license plate. They have no problems accepting a check bearing my "offensive" name when I pay for my vehicle registration, so why should a license plate on my car bearing the same name be any different? I also emailed Rolly & Wells at the Salt Lake Tribune, hoping they'll print something about it in their column (though I'm not counting on that). Now I have to wait for the state tax commission to notify me of the next scheduled event in the appeals process, so I'll just sit back and see what happens. I think I'm prepared to hire an attorney to represent me, as long as it doesn't put me in too much debt, but either way, I'm going to take this as far as it can possibly go--no giving up.

By the way, this spawned a new poll question, so please vote.

Well, somebody must really hate me. My wife's uncle called first thing this morning to tell me that the only thing wrong with the Mazda was that all 20 lugnuts on the vehicle were loose! That's why the right-front wheel was making noise, it was about to come off. So now, as you can imagine, we're pretty worried that it'll happen again--there's no telling who would want to do something like that. We don't even know if it happened since we bought it, or if somebody did it while the car sat in Traci's dad's driveway. This is something I'm going to be paranoid about for a long time. I'm going to start carrying my torque wrench in the car so I can check all the lugnuts for tightness before I go anywhere. This is pathetic.

I swear, if I ever catch anybody fucking around with my car, they're going to get an automatic bullet to the head, no questions asked. I figure that it's justifiable, seeing as how my whole family could have died yesterday. The road coming down from Price Rec is extremely steep and winding--we're damn lucky that nothing happened on that road, or else we'd have been mincemeat.

...I mean really really shitty luck. We packed up the whole family and went for a drive up to Price Canyon Recreation Area, and on our way home, the Mazda started making a funny noise. It was like a clunking/grinding noise coming from the front-right wheel, but when I stopped and looked at it, I couldn't see anything wrong. After looking for a minute or two, I touched the wheel hub, and it burned my hand. I think the wheel bearing crapped out on me, but I wasn't about to try driving all the way home. I ended up hitching a ride into Helper while Traci stayed with the kids in the car, and I called her mom to come pick us up. After we got home, I called Helper Auto and met the tow truck driver in Helper, then rode up with him to pick up the Mazda. We left it at Helper Auto, where hopefully they'll have it fixed by tomorrow. We're were going to go to West Valley to stay with Mike and Ali this weekend, but if the car's not fixed, we won't be able to. If I have any more car problems in the near future, I'm going to go insane--or even more so than I am already, anyway.

I've been wanting to buy this book for awhile now, but instead I waited so that somebody could actually get me something that I really wanted for my birthday (I'm really hard to buy for). It's called High in Utah - A Hiking Guide to the Tallest Peak in Each of the State's Twenty-Nine Counties. The book has driving directions, maps, detailed trail descriptions (if a trail even exists, which it doesn't for many of the hikes), estimated hiking times, and a lot of other information about each mountain peak. I have every intention of hiking all 26 peaks (some counties share a high-point), and four others that are described in the book.

I'm starting with one of the easiest, Monument Peak in Carbon County, since it's the closest. You can drive right to it, so it's not a big accomplishment or anything, but I've always wanted to go to that area anyway. We're going camping, probably for the last time this year, in Huntington Canyon next weekend, and Monument Peak isn't far away from where we'll be staying. Though I'd like to hike King's Peak this year (Utah's tallest at over 13,500 feet), I don't have the equipment for an overnight stay while hiking (it's a 30 mile hike). I'll have to save up some money and slowly buy the equipment that I need throughout the winter so I can tackle it next summer.