As an engineer, I am commonly comparing a two or three different options in a simple table. It is a great way to compare things. I really have wished to see something like this for our candidates (presidential or otherwise) in this and past elections. For some reason I never seem to be able to find them.

Anyway, I ran across a nice article comparing the proposed tax policies between McCain and Obama and thought it was going in the right direction. They have a nice table in the upper right corner "Breaking the Numbers Down" that shows some estimates about how different income levels will be effected by the proposed changes. At the very least take a look at the table if you don't want to read all the text (I don't blame you).

Here.

I don't want to get into McCain's policy vs. Obama's here, but will comment on one snippet that I thought was interesting (since I think both candidates are going in the wrong direction):

Under both plans, all American taxpayers could pay a price for their tax cuts: a bigger deficit. The Tax Policy Center estimates that over 10 years, McCain's tax proposals could increase the national debt by as much as $4.5 trillion with interest, while Obama's could add as much as $3.3 trillion.

What's the deal with this? Last I checked the national debt was already at 9+ trillion and this is impacting the value of the dollar in the world economy. Now I am no economist, but why is neither candidate pushing for a balanced budget? Republicans -- what happened to fiscal conservatism? Democrats -- what happened to reversing the mistakes of Bush? We should be paying back our debts to China, not incurring more. If that means higher taxes, I don't want to pay them but I understand it may be better for me and the country in the long-term.

This past Saturday Janel and I were planning on doing Dog Mountain in the Gorge. On our way out there, we encountered overcast skies and colder than expected temperatures so we decided to bail and do a couple short hikes in the Gorge that we have not done yet. After about an hour the clouds burned off and it turned into a beautiful day, but oh well :). The hikes were pretty good.

We started off doing the Latourell Falls trail. Latourell Falls itself is one of my favorite falls in the gorge. It is very close to the road though, so we usually just stop by and had not ever done the 2.7 mile loop hike up to Upper Latourell Falls. For those of you looking to do the hike, definitely start out uphill (not downhill towards the lower falls) as the view are better this direction.

Upper Latourell Falls turned out to be a good waterfall. Not quite as large as the lower falls, but still worth the hike.


The lower falls are of course great. Definitely take a quick walk down to these falls from the historic highway if you are ever in the area.


On the way we also saw a snail which I thought was kinda cool :).


Next we moved on to the Oneonta Trail. We started up from Horsetail Falls and first hit up Poneytail Falls. It is one of those falls that you can walk behind, but really not all that exciting if you have done that sort of thing before. The ones at Silver Falls are better.


You then head along the gorge to the West. Not really that exciting. I got once decent photo out of it though.


Next you come to a little view into the Oneonta Gorge. This is a really thin canyon that comes up to Oneonta Falls. It is supposed to be a really fun hike -- but only in the late summer when the snow melt has settled down and on a hot day (the water is really really cold and you have to wade through it). Here is a (poor) photo where I try to capture the gorge (admittedly not that well).


Finally, we headed up to Triple Falls. We had a nice picnic along the river just above the falls.


All in all, I would rate the Latourell Falls hike a 3.5 and the Oneonta Trail a 3. You can see all the photos from Latourell Falls here or the photos from Oneonta Trail here.

So I got all excited today. The iPhone price dropped from $399 to $199.

Then I looked into it some more...

The first thing I found was that the $199 price was with a new contract. Okay -- I expected that. Still though -- keeping the $399 price and adding a GPS and 3G is not so bad. I might be able to swing that.

Then I found out the second detail (which they are not as "open" about). The price of the data plan that AT&T requires for the iPhone is increasing from $20/month to $30/month [source]. So, over the coarse of two years -- that means $240 in additional cost.

Now I understand that Apple (deservedly) should get a good margin here. And AT&T needs to cover the costs of their 3G infrastructure and I am fine with that. However, it shameful how Apple and Steve Jobs presented this to their loyal customers. Preaching about making it more affordable. What a load of crap.

I have decided to start a trail log to keep track of all my hiking. You can see the link to it on the right in the menu. Not sure if anyone actually cares what all hikes I have done and what I thought of them, but it is there if you are :).

We took a backpacking trip out to the Olympic National Park Coast this weekend. This was Janel's first backpacking trip and she did a great job :). Allen and Chrissy joined us, along with my co-worker Rob, his wife Beth, and two of their friends, Jeff and Colleen. We drove up and stayed in Aberdeen Friday night (home town of Kurt Cobain -- quite a dump), hiked out Saturday to Toleak Point, staying there Sunday, and hiked back and drove home Monday.

You can see select photos by srolling down or looking at them in my photo gallery here. Or you can see all the photos here. Read on for some details about the hike.

We started at the Third Beach trail head near La Push, WA and headed South (toward Oil City). This is called the "Central Coast Trail". There are a couple of campsites and beaches along the way, and it is a great hike. It is ~3-4 hour hike for the 7 miles down to the Toleak Camp.

The trail starts out in a rainforest. You hike down a little over a mile to 3rd Beach through the woods. This first mile is really not all that exciting...


Once you hit the bottom you find yourself at 3rd beach. This is a pretty heavily travelled beach, as it is a popular day hike and you can camp there.


After hiking down third beach, you quickly come to the Taylor Point overpass. This is where things get really muddy, and where we caught up to Rob and crew (they drove separately from us). Below the first pass you come to another short beach. There is no campground down here.


After another short beach hike, you come to Scott's Point. This has an overland pass, or you can try to scramble over some slippery rocks if the tide is out. We decided to do the latter. It was a lot of fun, but I think took a good amount more time than the overland pass would have taken. Below is a picture of Allen balancing on a rock.


Right after the bluff is Scott's camp. There is a good water supply here and a good beach. We kept on chugging and had lunch near Strawberry Point. There is another campground here.


After this we kept on rolling and eventually made it to Toleak Point. There were a lot of people at this site, and for good reason. It was beautiful and makes a good stop-off point for people making the trip all the way down to Oil City.

Here is a picture of where we setup our camp.


Here is a picture of everyone sitting around the fire at our camp looking south to the point.


A picture of the point looking South:


A picture of the point looking North West:


And finally, a great sunset from our campsite looking out towards Strawberry Point:


On day 2 we split up and did a couple of day hikes. About half of us took a long hike south down on the long beach towards Hoh Head, and the rest of us (including Janel and I) took a shorter hike south to Goodman Falls.




Here is a photo looking up towards Toleak Point from a bluff to the south:


Along the overland passes there are a bunch of ladders that are uses for getting up and over the bluffs. Here is a photo of Janel and Chrissy below one of the ladders on the way to Goodman Falls.


We also saw a bunch of bald eagles from our campsite on day 2. Here are two photos:




On day 3 we got up early to try to get home early. We decided to take the overland pass at Scott's Bluff rather than scramble over the rocks and it proved to be a lot faster. We also got to rapel down the far side which was a lot of fun. Here is a photo of Janel on her way down:


On the way home we stopped at "Sully's Burgers" in Forks, WA. It was not all that exciting :).

Now that we are all moved in, I decided to take some photos of our new house. I hope you enjoy a little photo tour :). I have some additional photos in the photo gallery if you are interested. Click here.

As you walk in the front door, you come into our living room.



If you walk in and look back, you see our office. I am not going to show a photo in there because we have not really finished that room yet.



Here is another view of the living room looking back into the family room and kitchen and into the backyard.



If we walk back to the back of the house, you can look left and see the kitchen and our table that we eat dinner at.



To the right is the family room.



Here is a view of the family room from the kitchen.



Here is a look out the sliding glass doors onto our deck. There is a large flowering tree that provides shade on the deck.



The previous owner did a good job with landscaping. Here are the views to either side of the deck.





Let's go back inside now and head up the stairs. Here is a view looking down from the top of the stairs.



Upstairs we have three bedrooms and two baths. Here is our guest bedroom. I do not have a picture of the other room as it is currently empty and not very exciting.



Here is a photo of our master. Sorry the photo is coming out so dark.



And finally, a photo of our master bath.

The weather is finally getting nice enough (at least on some weekends) to do some hiking. Janel and I made a trip out to Angel's Rest in the gorge. We have reached the point where we are doing hikes for the second time, so this is not a new one for us. It was a nice way to start out the season -- about 4.5 miles and 1200 feet of elevation.



This past week I took my group at work on a Quarterly to Eagle Creek. This is in my opinion one of the best hikes in Oregon, and most of my group members had never been there. We actually ended up making it all the way to Tunnel Falls -- ~12 miles!