It’s funny that when I mention going to the Alligator farm here in Colorado, even people who have lived here all of their lives look at me like I’m making a joke.

I know, it seems pretty odd, especially if you know the area. Mosca is a arid area of Colorado, very close to Alamosa and the Great Sand Dunes, it could really be described as a high plains desert.

Underneath that area of Colorado, are several Aquifers, lots of water, that can be tapped into. The Alligator farm itself has a 2,000+ feet deep well.

Originally, the Alligator farm opened up to grow Tilapia. This was going pretty well, except that they needed to find a way to get rid of all of the dead fish, and what was left over after the fish were processed. This sounds like a job for an Alligator!

They brought in an alligator, and it did well. So they brought more in. The interesting thing is that people would bring their unwanted exotic pets to the Alligator farm too.

Now the gator farm has a whole slew of creatures, from Wallabies, constricting snakes, bearded dragons, the biggest snapping turtle I’ve ever seen, tortoises, and of course, lots of Alligators.

It’s a pretty fun place to visit. When you go in you can buy a bucket of “gator chow” and feed the alligators as you go through. The tanks that hold the Tilapia are much like an aquarium, and there’s lots of animals to see.

Several times throughout the day, they wrestle the gators, and all of the staff is about as friendly as you could want them to be.

While we were there we started talking to a group that was sifting in the pond. Turns out they were looking for Alligator teeth, they fall out naturally, and they were even nice enough to give us a few.

We also mentioned that we had missed the wrestling of the gators last time, and it didn’t look like they were going to be able to do it that afternoon due to weather. Well, one of the guys got out of the pond, went over and wrestled with one of the alligators for us. It was really nice of them, especially considering we were the only ones there at the time.

We’ve made trips down there just to see the alligator farm, but there’s lots more to see in the area. If you happen to be visiting the Great Sand Dunes, or just passing through, I really suggest stopping by the gator farm.

The Alligator farm is located at:

9162 County Road 9 North

Mosca, CO 81146

(719) 378-2612

Colorado Gators Website

Profile on Colorado Head Waters

Posted in Animals, Attractions, Colorado 2 Comments »

I was supposed to go see the Foo Fighters Tuesday (July 15th, 2008), and luckily I happened to check Red Rock’s web site, because I saw that the concert has been put off for a couple of months due to illness.

Although I was a little disappointed, it wasn’t such a big deal. With family visiting, we’ve just been running around like crazy, and I didn’t relish the idea of driving so far away, and then driving back in the wee hours of the morning.

Yet, the babysitter had already been arranged, so why not take advantage of that?

I planned a fun filled evening with my wife, and the first stop was the book store. I buy her a book now and then when she needs something to read, but there’s nothing like browsing the bookstore to find something that you’ve never heard of, but that looks really good.

While I was at the bookstore, I ran across one of my favorite series, as well as some other work by the same author. That was my inspiration for this post.

The Coldfire Trilogy by C.S. Friedman

Book 1 - Black Sun Rising

Book 2 - When True Night Falls

Book 3 - Crown of Shadows

These are some of the best fantasy books I’ve read. Mankind leaves earth, and ends up on a planet where thoughts are unknowingly shaping the planets energy, creating what we think about.

This may sound great, but all of the popular monster stories that we’re told start creating the monsters that used to be fictional. The use of machinery becomes impossible, because worrying that it won’t work, makes it not work. Thinking that your gun may backfire, makes it backfire.

Mankind is reduced to using only the simple tools that our minds can easily grasp, swords, axes, saws, etc.

After a long time, our origins have been forgotten, and mankind has just continued on with their lives. The end result is the medieval world of swords and sorcery that is the backdrop for the story.

My wife was never into reading Sci-Fi and Fantasy, but I talked her into giving these books a try. Now she’s hooked and she pretty much only reads fantasy now.

Photo: "Bleacher Seats" by Kerry A Adamo

Posted in Books No Comments »

You know the game I’m really waiting on, but I still look forward to playing StarCraft 2 when it comes out. I was a huge fan of StarCraft, and I’m going to need something to tide me over until Diablo 3 is released, right?

This wallpaper has a group of Marines in the foreground, with a Nuclear warhead going off in the distance. Good stuff!

You can find it on the StarCraft 2 Wallpapers Page, it’s the second one down at the time this is being written.

Get Some!

Posted in Wallpapers, Games No Comments »

Boy, time sure flies when you’re having fun! I’m going to skip the normal link post today to talk a little bit about the last year.

It’s hard to believe that one year ago I made my first post here, “Welcome to Port 16 – and so it begins”. I was so excited when the idea for the domain name first popped into my head, that I just couldn’t wait to get the hosting set up, even though I was going on vacation.

Like a lot of blogs, I started out strong, and then petered off later on. It seems like especially since January, I’ve been having some difficulty posting. I hope to change that, and get back on track. I don’t think I’ll be able to get back to posting daily, but I’m going to do my best.

What have you learned?

1. It’s not easy posting every day. This is especially true with a busy work schedule, and the demands of a family. I haven’t even come close, although there were some stretches where I was able to pull it off, it’s a lot of work.

2. You can meet some really great people blogging. I’ve been really fortunate to meet some other great bloggers through my blog, and it’s really been great to have conversations with them, either on the blog, or through emails. I’ve also had readers email me with questions, and I’ve really enjoyed the feedback, as well as having the opportunity to help them out too.

3. It’s hard to turn visitors into readers – Granted, I haven’t worked at this as hard as I should have, there are some other tricks that I could employ. Still, as you’ll see later, I’ve had a ton of visitors, but it’s nowhere near the same number of people who subscribe to my blog.

So, what’s next?

Of course, I’m trying to get back into posting again. I also think that I’m going to be changing the direction of the blog some.

Port 16 has always been my personal blog, but I’ve posted a lot about technical topics. The tech content isn’t going to leave entirely, but since I’ve started Two Guys Tech with Art, I’m going to be focusing most of the tech content there, and posting more about non-tech personal stuff here.

Can we please see some numbers?

Being the geek that I am, I like to see stats. So here’s what I’ve got.

- 156 – The number of posts that I’ve made to port 16.

- 13 – The average number of posts per month.

- 29,068 – The number of absolute unique visitors I’ve had.

- 23,212 – The number of unique pageviews that my most popular post has had.

- 4, 057 – The number of unique visitors I had on November 23rd, 2007, which was my best day ever.

Now, to qualify those numbers some, I only saw such large numbers of visitors because Pearl had stumbled my post about WindDirStat, which sent a flood of traffic to me, for several months.

Conclusion

The last year has been really great, and I think that I’m going to be blogging for quite a long time. I just renewed my hosting account for another year, so no fears there.

I would really like to thank everyone who’s stopped by, and everyone who comes by regularly. I really appreciate you guys and gals taking the time out to read something that I’ve wrote, and I hope that you continue to find things that are worthwhile here.

Thank you, I look forward to another year of blogging.

The Photo is “Birthday Cupcakes” by Heather Shelley

Posted in anniversary, Blogging, BlogNewsandUpdates 4 Comments »

Last Tuesday, I was kind of floored when I found out about Diablo 3 being announced, but alas, it was too late for Wallpaper Tuesday. Not this week!

This week’s selection if the Diablo 3 logo, from the official Diablo 3 Media page, it’s available in many, many resolutions, so feel free to grab the one that’s appropriate for you.

Don’t worry, they don’t have a huge number of wallpapers there, so I won’t be able to just keep picking them from the site, I’ll have to go out and find some other wallpaper topics too. Enjoy!

(Update: I totally forgot to set a date in the future, so Wallpaper Tuesday was published Monday night. My apologies to anyone who cares. I’ll try to be more detail orientated.)

Posted in Wallpapers 1 Comment »