USPrimetimes was built by a Sportsman - Conservationist from the ground up and from the field, literally. To help other sportsman gain a better understanding of the rhythms of nature. And of course, to see more Wildlife and Fish.
This site was started on a hunch in 2003. Mark observed some relations to Predator activity, the Moon and Sun while performing a Ranch Depredation experiment in Arizona several years earlier. Funding was secured to study the subject further.
After field observations in many locations a Prototype was built in 2006. It was then compared against a multiple Camera System (over 8) which included custom Camera traps, advanced Audio technologies that are unique (a Wildlife Caller builder whom is the most respected by wildlife professionals wants to buy it), Weather Stations, and field observations in the Helena National Forest until 2008. Results confirmed the relationship.
The system was rebuilt for realtime use where performance and stability were the key requirements. From the Astrophysics computations, Decision Engine and User Interface, to the server OS and supporting server software. All were manually rebuilt and/or recompiled for the task. This hard work paid off with response times ranked in the top twenty percent or better Worldwide by Google. It is important to note the server is a basic workstation with one Dual Core Processor and little bandwidth, doing tens of thousands of computations a day and serving hundreds of thousands of pages per month, not to mention all the other stuff it does. For the skeptics out there, it can all be proven to the right interested parties. It also has the added benefit of four year old child proofing, at least so far.
During the final in depth testing phases, USPrimetimes was formed in 2009.
The Forecasts presented on this site are based on a combination of the Solunar Theory and a decade of Field Study in the Arizona and Montana backcountry on Predator-Prey interactions.
About Developer Mark Vitt
Technical Background:
Mark has been building software since 1982 and have been broad ranged from BIOS/OS/Network level to Decision Engines and Websites
on varied platforms. Many different languages have been used to build these projects from Assembler to PHP.
Mark says he "learns at least five new things everyday, even in the woods"
Some of his works are/were distributed from CNET, SourceForge, Novell Netware Manager v2, Ziff Davis, JCSM Retail, among others, and include OpenSource contributions.
Published Work:
Killer DOS Utilities, Prentice Hall Computer-QUE (Simon & Schuster), By Allen Waite. Contributed Network Disk Information (NDI.EXE)
Neat Stuff for Windows, Brady Books (Simon & Schuster) By Corey Sandler and Tom Badgett. Contributed Text Watch, A MS-Windows INI utility (TWE.EXE)
Contributed Undocumented Technical Information for the following books:
Network Interrupts, Addison-Wesley, authored by Ralf Brown and Jim Kyle (Netware API portion)
UnDocumented DOS - 2nd Edition, Addison-Wesley, authored by Andrew Schulman (SDA/DTA Interaction, Credited on Interrupt List diskette)
Outdoors/Research Background
I began spending a great deal of time in the outdoors from an early age and have lived in many rural and remote areas from Sub-tropical Rain Forests,
Low and High Deserts, to the Rocky Mountains. The late nineties to 2013 were spent in the Arizona and Montana backcountry alone, working on software, or with the family in the heart of the Helena National Forest, Montana.
I have been bitten by almost every species of spider in North America FYI: Size doesn't matter with spiders.
Met some curious Bobcat, Cottonmouth, Elk, Fox, Frog's, Javelina, and many other critters on my journeys.
Contributed my time and expertise to
Bottlenose Marine Mammal Research, Wildlife Audio Research, and other Wildlife projects related to Predators.
Although I gain a lot of satisfaction working on software and USPrimetimes,
being alone far from any pavement or other modern things is my favorite place to be, mostly just to see what the Wildlife and Fish are doing.
Mark currently resides outside of Florence, AZ spending most of his time on software development and teaching the little ones the wonders of the wilderness.
Smelled this cat about twenty yards before stumbling onto this track and quickly looked back before pulling out the camera and taking this picture. In true Mountain Lion form it was walking away looking back at me and vanished down a canyon. Funny thing is I stopped at the smell and looked around, then moved on thinking it was lingering due to the fresh rain.
