I’ve climbed Kilimanjaro in Africa, and been to Mt Everest Base camp but never been to South America. A British fellow I met while trekking the Himalayas in 2008 just asked me if I wanted to tackle Aconcagua saying he “fancies it”. Well, if he fancies it, then we must climb i say.

Steve Dabney is currently on an around the world tour, currently in Peru and about to visit Machu Picchu, and popped off a note through facebook asking me if I wanted to climb again. I’ve not looked into the Aconcagua mountain climb at all, so will be doing some brief research about it before I decide. I must say thought, that cursory info about the mountain has gotten my attention and the climbing bug has again bitten.

Aconcagua is located about 15 kilometers from the border with Chile in the Andes mountain range and roughly half way north to south along the west border of Argentina.

Are Technical Skills Required for Aconcagua?

In answering a question from a reader on the 7 Summits website, they say “Aconcagua can be climbed by people without technical climbing knowledge as the main routes are mostly snow and ice free.” I’ve looked at a bunch of photographs from the website and around the net and yes, it looks similar to Kilimanjaro in that technical climbing skills for Aconcagua are not required. As with Kili, physiology is most important – can your body acclimatize and adapt to the attitude quick enough. I had no issues on Kilimanjaro or while climbing to Everest base camp.

How Long Does it Take to Climb Aconcagua?

Kilimanjaro took 7 days, 6 days up and 1 day down. Mt Everest Base camp took 9 days, 5 days up and 4 days down (and we skipped two days), but I’m told that it takes 2 to 3 weeks to climb Aconcagua. That’s a bit more than I had anticipated. I like the idea of acclimatization and adaptation, so taking it easy on the way up is fine with me, but that’s a bit of time for the climb if you ask me. At least the wife will be happier, because right now she’s not too thrilled with the idea of me climbing again.

7 Summits also advises to imagine summit day on Kilimanjaro and then expect three days like that on Aconcagua and that porters are not carrying your load, you are. If you’re interested, Mens Journal posted a trip log of the writers summit attempt that is a really good read.

hmmm, more fun!

Climbing Aconcagua sounds like something I may very well add to my things to do before I die list, and after much talking and approval from the wife, should be something I’d consider for 2010 or 2011.

Edmonton photographer Darlene Hildebrandt participated in the Edmonton Photo Walk and was selected as the winning photographer this year with her image of the Gibson Block building.

My personal favorite image is Darlene’s unique view of the siding of the Shaw Conference center where the world wide photo walk began. I’ve included it here.

32,600 photographers participated in the 2nd annual World Wide Photo walk this year, so she’s got some stiff competition for the world title.

Good luck Darlene.

You know, you see some things and you ask yourself “I wonder what he gets paid to do that?” you know? This has GOT to be one of the worst jobs in the world.

what would it take for you to enter an elephant’s rectum? Some things should simply be automated.

Good argument for outsourcing though I guess.

I’ve been looking for a solution to this for awhile now.

I have a very popular natural health and weight loss website which publishes a monthly newsletter. Subscribers to that newsletter get my free report “How I Lost 300 Pounds – How To Lose 10 Pounds a Month, Every Month, Until You Reach Your Goal Weight”. Those who follow the directions in the report often go on to report that they’re getting the results and losing the weight while feeling much better. The free weight loss report is a way for me to offer some really great content in exchange for an email address.

I’m sure you might be in the same situation.

So, in giving them a place to download the material, on my download page, I also want to offer other reports to the general readership. In offering other reports of value, it’s a way to show them that by subscribing, the get the “big one”.

I wondered “how do I password protect part of a post or page?” but not the rest.

Apparently it can’t be done.

Until I found this plugin: Password – Partial Post Protection (which didn’t work out of the box as claimed I might add). On that page, half way down it is the link. It’s tucked in between a few other wordpress plugins but a little hard to see if you just scan over it.

What it does is add a little box above your publish section in the upper right hand corner of your write post page in your wordpress admin. It uses shortcodes as you see in the image and everything within the shortcodes becomes password protected.

Code Is Broken Though

It’s a single file and out of the box it wont work. In order for the form to submit the password back to the page for authentication, you have to press the submit button (obviously), but the <input> field for the submit button uses type=”button” which does not submit the form.

Line 67 has to be changed from <input type=”button” ……..> to <input type=”submit” …..>

Have a look at how it works:

The next section of this post is password protected!
(password is “test”)

And this part is now visible again:
And this part below the password protection is again available to readers without the password.

This first solution does not make use of the built in password protection feature of wordpress.

A Second Solution

Funny enough, after looking for a solution to this for hours, I happened to read over the sitemap of a page I had open in a tab in my browser and found another solution to this. I haven’t tried his show the intro to password protected posts wordpress plugin, but I’m running a few others from him.

This second solution makes use of the <-- more --> tag and actual wordpress post password protection.

Seems to me that the first solution using short codes is a bit easier.

So there you have it. If you want to know how to password protect part of a post or page in wordpress, these two plugins may do the trick for you as they have for me. Now, I can move forward and create the download page for my readers that hides the bonus report until the subscribe for the password.

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and seriously! Dont do this in your basement!

Nobody seems to have expected this sudden change of heart by the Stelmach government, but it’s created a lot of happy campers. Beer campers that is.

I prefer red wine, but when I do drink beer (and I do enjoy the odd pint), it’s not usually domestic. I enjoy Corona, Heineken and Alexander Keiths, the only domestic beer I drink.

When the beer prices went up in April, a Calgary reporter Peter Akman to inquire about the price of a 12 pack of Labatts Blue.

A case of beer in Alberta was selling for $24.99, second highest only to the Yukon which charges $26.90. Can you believe that?

So now we’ve dropped $1.30 a case and we’re saving a few bucks while the government loses. Maybe we’ll just roll the savings back into more beer.

Whadayathink?

This time, my outlook locks up while synchronizing and it’s really been pissing me off.

When Outlook is open, it begins to download the mail, then the synchronizing icon shows up in the task bar with it’s little message.  Then outlook freezes up and I have to shut it down and send in an error report.

Today, I finally found a solution and am posting it here for my own purposes.  I NEVER want to lose this little piece of information because it finally worked.

How To Stop Microsoft Office Outlook from Synchronizing

If you right click on each of the email folders and select “properties” you will see a check box: Automatically generate Microsoft Exchange views”.

UNcheck this box on each email folder.

You will still get a very brief “synchronizing” message, but ONLY while it is actively linking to your POP account.

There, hopefully I can find this again if and when I need it and maybe help someone else in the mean time.

Btw, before I tried this, I renamed my old .pst file, created a new one, and it still did the same thing.  It WAS NOT a corrupt .pst file.  Then I did the procedure above, then imported my mail and folders from the old .pst file.

and that… is finally that!

Dog For Sale

* Free to good home.

* Excellent guard dog.

* Owner cannot afford to feed him anymore, as there are no more thieves, murderers, or molesters left in the neighborhood for him to eat.

* Most of them knew him as ‘Holy Shit‘

Flickrvision.com

Very clever – superimposed over a map of the world, which scrolls, pictures pop up in real time. Nice way to spend the afternoon, spying on flickr uploaders don’t you think?

Grab your favorite beverage, sit back and enjoy the show.

update: oh, nice nice nice, check out the 3D view and watch the globe spin as pictures pop in! Cool

The Real ID is supposedly supposed to make Americans safer, but just takes them one step closer to a National ID and then a world ID.

The NYTimes, in a January 12, 2008 story says

The federal government issued national standards on Friday that states would have to meet in order for driver’s licenses they issue to qualify as identification at airports and federal buildings, setting the stage for a confrontation with states that have voted not to cooperate.

I was just wondering earlier when the US was going to remove “land of the free” from the lyrics of their national anthem seeing as how they keep allowing their government to make policies that take away their freedoms.

Is it just me, or do the citizens of the United States just not get it? My opinion? they’re watching too much tv and simply tuning out while they’re tuning in.

For further reading (and viewing) go to www.freedomtofascism.com and watch the movie of the same name on google (freedom to fascism on google)