Have you seen the movie Wild, with Reese Witherspoon? I am writing this while in the wilds of the back country of Grand Teton National Park, near Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

It's 6:00 am and I hear the pretty songs of early morning birds and the rush of cascading mountain streams.

Yesterday I hiked from Jenny Lake to Lake Solitude. My husband, Mike, and I figured it was 5.5 miles and approximately 2,500 feet of elevation gain. We hiked the North Cascades Trail which follows the river formed by the mountain streams from above. We were thankful for the well groomed pathways and trail signs prepared by the forest service and the plentiful shade of the woods we traveled through. We pitched our 3 man tent in the North Forks designated camping area and enjoyed our private spot with a view of The Grand Teton and its neighboring peaks plus the Paintbrush Canyon Divide.

While at Lake Solitude, elevation 9,035 feet,  we had a nice chat with Anthony, a young man from southern California. I learned of two new tech gadgets that would be handy for bikers, sailors, joggers, and hikers - Spot and Solar Charging Panels.

If your smartphone lithium ion battery is bloated it will spin freely. Watch this video which demonstrates how to test your battery.

Does your PC or laptop monitor go dark sooner than you'd like? Does your PC or laptop go to sleep sooner than you'd like?

The Power Options control these functions. To access this screen on a Windows laptop click on the battery icon and choose POWER OPTIONS. This will give you a screen with many pre-programmed power options, and a radio button will show you which option your system is currently using. Click on the CHANGE PLAN SETTINGS link for your current option. You will see the screen shown here.

There are four factors that can be adjusted to optimize the usage of power: dimming of display, display on or off, computer on/off, brightness of display. The first three factors can be set to activate at different times. The fourth factor is a global setting and in effect whenever the computer is on.

In this example, if the laptop is running on battery the display will dim after 2 minutes of inactivity, the display will turn off after 5 minutes of inactivity, and after 15 minutes of inactivity the laptop will go to "sleep" mode and appear to be turned off. The current setting is to have maximum brightness for the monitor. If this user adjusted their display brightness to a lower level, they would conserve battery power whenever the laptop is in use. If the laptop is plugged in, the durations are set for a longer period of time as there is less concern about battery utilization/depletion.

Here are the options for time delay settings. The shorter the delay, the more power is conserved and the more often you will have a delay to view your monitor or bring life back to your sleeping system. If you have nosy neighbors you may want the display settings to be shorter for privacy.