Can I walk wich you?

I went to a party from a website, I may have just joined, I'm not really sure. Bootsnall.com - ever heard of it? Well, there was free wine, a flag quiz, and free wine. I left at about 11 or so and walked back down Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd looking for either bus 4 or 44, not seeing it I kept on walking. I came to Freemont Street and I knew that one of those buses went down it.

As I crossed, a black guy said "Hey, how's it goin'?" I said "Pretty-good!", "Can you spare some change?" Me - "No, sorry." I kept walking, well limping because my ankle is a little jacked up right now. Three brothers and a black lady were coming up the sidewalk, one of them said "Hey, what's going on?" Me - "Not much." And, when I came up to the black lady she immediately did a 180 and said "Can I walk wich you?" Me - "Hee hee." Her "You know you're a sweetheart?" Me "Hee hee," still limping quickly along. She peeled off at about that time. I came to bus stop, called the number and was told a bus was coming in 1 minute, I was like SWEEET! Counted up my shrapnel and fisted it for quick deposition into the coin-taker. Made it back to the hizzle, I might have watched a lil' bit of televizzle before sacking out.

So what's the altitude? - I said it's outta sight!

I like this video! It's just an opportunity to have them easily clickable. Cheers!

One More Reason to Celebrate

Posted on my company's intranet yesterday:
Please extend congratulations to JT in the Portland Office for passing the LEED exam. This places JT as the third LEED™ AP in the Northwest office! In addition, JT was just notified that his Washington State License is forthcoming. These accomplishments are very important to the success of the Portland office, as we solidify the World's Best Company's foothold in the Northwest.

Names changed to protect the innocent...;^)

Here's a video to celebrate:
MIA Paper Planes

Site Visits

As part of my job I have to go to job sites to perform construction services like making sure the curb is at the right height or the bioswale is constructed to our design. This is a screenshot from one of the remote cellular camera the school district has installed at the school construction sites we designed and are performing construction site services at. I pulled up the photo during time during the weekly meeting, my little grey car can be seen under the weather stats (I expanded - so cool!). It is really cool, you can have the website do a time lapse video, I need to perfect it because right now it will only do one day of photos, I want to see a few weeks.


This is a photo of a detention pond for the stormwater runoff, the water will hang out here, to settle out any sediment before it is released off-site, they also put little growies in the pond to make it like a real pond. The green stuff is hydroseed: a mixture of grass seeds, fertilizer, cellulose fiber (newspaper), and mulch - all of this is specified by the specifications and construction drawings including the amount of coverage and weed purity.




This is great! An up close picture of a brown praying mantis that I spotted while walking around. It is sitting on a traffic delineator. The close-up look at hydroseed is also neat.

Creamy or Chunky Shaving Cream

I'm out of shaving cream and so I thought I would try using peanut butter to shave with, I heard it could be done - I probably read it in Men's Health or something. I only have Adam's Chunky Peanut Butter, as you can probably guess it wasn't good, the chunks gummed up the blades of the Mach3. I had to run the blade under water longer and use my finger to clear the blades and the little rubber ridges.

I got the job done, but I'm gonna have to get some of the real stuff, makes me think about Burma Shave. An English teacher in middle school would have a book of old Burma Shave road sign advertisements and read them to the class. I can't remember any of them except that they were catchy and they ended with "Try Burma Shave."

I don't think I smell like peanut butter, but how hot would it be if I did? ;^)

Un ano adia & Office Envy

Image00001-reduced
Originally uploaded by red_5_rogue

It's been a roughly a year that I've been in Oregon and at my job. I love both. This year has been great! I've met a ton of cool people and had a lot of fun.

I've been experiencing office envy for a while. I've gone to a number of other engineering and architectural offices, a lot of them I really, really liked. The things I liked about them were their office layouts, location, conference rooms, location, amenities, and location. I would love to be downtown, I would love to have a bigger conference room, I would love to have a view, and I would like to do more things with my coworkers. The picture was taken at local firm that is having a chess tournament after work, they have beer and snacks and the winner gets a Wii, how cool would that be. We don't have enough people, much less anyone that would be able to stay given that most of my coworkers have familial obligations. I did get cake for my one year anniversary at work. And, we do have 2 microwaves.

Rough Draft - Kona Blog

I typed this partial blog on my phone, I will come back and fix typos, grammar, and punctuation. And, add more to it/embed photos. My Hawaii Photos

The flight to the Big Island was decent, I had the seat open next to me, finished a chuck palenhuik 'Diary.' at the Honolulu airport I ran into a coworker, who'd spent the week before me on Kona. Met up with Ritchie stopped at a Safeway to get some grub. I was blown away how they've got pretty much every store,paved roads,and cars we have available in America, its amazing. It rained a ton on the drive back to Ritchie's condo. We had some rum and diet coke, things were going okay until we ran out of coke and had a shot of Jack. I'm not going to go into the foggy details but I woke up with a bandage on my eyebrow, lacerations on my scalp and we needed some resolve carpet claener for the carpet.

Next day hung out for part of the day then went for a run on Alii Drive, tons of tri-athletes were also out running or cycling around training up for the Iron Man happenening in 2 weeks. They were really fit!

Its as good as time as any to talk about the 'fish.' the fish is a plastic fish given to anyone who has gotten riled up by something, it can be a prank or a project related issue. Mr. Daily consistently has the fish, anyone/anything can get his goat. Mr. Daily thought it would be appropriate that dick get the fish since he was in hawaii. I don't know what dick's reaction was when he came back from vacation to find the fish at his desk, but mr. Daily was less than pleased about it, I could hear him grumbling about it. And, someone had tied a congratulations balloon to his chair.

Back to Kona. Drove out to volcano where ritchie's new family has a house. We were jonesing for pizza and found some great pizza in hilo. We bought this movie 'oldboy' at the walmart. About the hawaiian walmarts: they are weird, they are the same as one's in America, I think it was because they were overstaffed that creeped me out even more.

So, 'oldboy' is this crazy korean movie about a guy that's been kidnapped and held in a prison for 15 years, he pretty much goes nuts when he gets out. I'd highly recommend watching it! But, nah, i'm not going to say...

The next morning we watched that one movie alec baldwin and anthony hopkins being lost out in the alaskan wilderness and there is a big grizzly bear that wants to eat them and alec baldwin cheated on anthony hopkins with anthony hopkins wife and tried to shoot and fell into a bear trap and died later just before they were about to be rescued.

Party, HA!

This video is technically safe for work, but not appropriate for work.

Max Encounter Last Night

I was heading back home from a class downtown last night, waiting at the Max stop at Yamhill and 1st Streets in downtown Pdx. I'm waiting for the yellow line train and up walks this black guy talking to his friend and carrying a 24-pack of beer.

He says "You look homeless as a mutha-f---!" real loud. I thought he was talking to me, but then I realized he was talking to two homeless kids loitering around the kiosk.

Then, he's like "You want some beer, man?" He drops the nearly empty box of Budweisers on the ground and those homeless guys grab a couple cans each.

After all of the cans of beer have been distributed the black kid and his friend get on the blue line train (to Gresham). I'm just standing there for a bit and look over at one of the guys and he says "Hey, wassup." I say "Nothing." His friend says "cool it, man." Then the other guy says "hey, you wanna beer." I say "Nah." His friend says "It's okay if you have one, you're wife won't even find out about it, just drink it quick and then get some mouthwash or chew on a stick of gum." "No thanks," I said and walked across the platform to look at something.

9-11

I've been really busy lately, but I wanted to say a little bit about September 11. 7 years ago today I was at Fort Hunter Liggett in Jolon, CA. The base went on lock down and I went back to my hotel room and slept, waking up to see the news every now and again. Because, the work was put on hold for the day I probably went to the Base's gym to burn off some energy.

9-11 really changed America, I'm not sure it was all for the best. I don't know why but whenever I'm walking around I'm on the look out for terrorists, which is odd because what would they look like. Well, the terrorist spotting is something I also add to the other things I'm looking for when I'm out.

Dog Run

Last Saturday morning I met up with the Red Lizard Running Club for what I thought would be a normal road run. What I didn't know is that every second Saturday dogs are brought out from the Multnomah County Animal Shelter for runners to take on the run. I was like, hey, I'll do this and I was given the most rambunctious Labrador puppy, Kimbo. Kimbo, in Cambodian, means dog who will do everything he can to pull your arm from your socket and trip you.

Actually, it wasn't that bad, Kimbo was super jazzed to be outside and around other dogs so he was constantly pulling to get up to other dogs in the lead. If I ever passed up other people and was out in the front, Kimbo settled down and healed much better.

A weimaraner from a weimaraner rescue program was also brought out for the run. They seem like really cool dogs, I like the grey coloring.

Top Projects 2008

Apparently every year the Vancouver Business Journal (VBJ) has a special supplement showing the top construction or development projects in the city of Vancouver. Vancouver is a city across the Columbia River from Portland and is known of more of bedroom community for Portland workers who don't have to pay property tax in the State of Washington.

Two of the projects struck me as being inordinately lame:

#44 Sonic Drive-In on 850 NE 192nd Ave




Another project of dubious merit but not officially listed because information was not available:

Dutch Bros. Coffee - a franchise based drive-thru coffee chain in the Northwest. Its a drive-thru coffee place, how is it a top project?






I have no idea how a burger or coffee chain's construction of another franchise location is representative of a city's top project.

Movie Wrap Up

I saw 2 movies on the big screen this week:

Batman: The Dark Knight - I really enjoyed it. I saw it on an IMAX screen, right up close and that made it all the more engrossing. I would highly recommend it, there's been a shift from the original campy comic book feel from the movies with Micheal Keaton to a dark plot driven and action driven story about heroism and the baser mentality of people. I thought Heath Ledger was an awesome Joker, really creepy!

FLOW (For Love of Water) - A documentary on the world water crisis. Visiting numerous towns and villages around the globe we were shown how water is becoming a commodity that is increasingly controlled by large multinationals who aim to profitize the water supply/distribution in regions were people can't afford the water and will continue drinking water from polluted rivers and streams. Other issues are the displacement of people with dam development and the other problems associated with dams - algal growth and methane production (methane is a greenhouse gas). Closer to home, Nestle, CocaCola, Pepsi who sell bottled water often go into a community and develop a large well that draws so much water from the aquifer that streams dry up, sink holes form, and other people's wells dry up.

This movie was shown at the Hollywood Theater as a benefit for Engineers Without Borders. I haven't heard how much money it brought in for projects, but the theater was full and a bunch of raffle tickets were sold - so I'm sure the goal was acheived.

Flex Nuts

The weekend before the 4th went camping a couple of weeks back with Brandon, Andrew, Gabe, Michelle, Danielle, Sabrina, Laura, and TQ. It was very cool weekend at Beverly Beach. We started early and stopped at Camp 18 for huge, huge breakfast.

We also stopped at the Tillamook Cheese Factory. That was fun. Danielle took some great photos!
Beverly Beach

After camp was set up, we started right off with some Absynthe. Then onto vodka.












That night Andrew and some others went and took some cool photos on the beach.

















Saturday:
I went on a hike with Laura and TQ to the Yaquina Bay lighthouse and met up with the group at the Rogue Brewery Public House. We got back to camp and hung out, then I cut up pre-cooked sausage, Gabe did the potatoes and onions, for Hobo stew. Hobo stew is a bunch of sausage, potato, onions, carrots, and a little bit of butter wrapped up in a tinfoil pouch and put on the fire for about 20 minutes. They turned out really good. Brandon did up some yams or sweet potatoes in tinfoil on the coals which were awesome too.

Why is this post titled "Flex Nuts," well Andrew has got me onto Lil' Wayne and one of the things he says in one of his raps is flex nuts. Flex nuts is what the camp cop did when he came into our campsite at 11:45 pm asking to see the leader of the group. Brandon came out of the tent and answered all of his questions, handed over her driver's license and waited up while the real cop was supposed to come back and give an official fine of $100. He told us he gave the first warning by just driving by and that he has a second option, he can evict us from camp. He was trying to flex nuts and thats not cool.

Well, no fine has been sent to Brandon yet and its been two weeks so its not too likely to happen now.
AC's Photos

This embedded video from Youtube is sort of how it was like driving back home. Isn't Will Arnett hilarious?!

Dirty Half 08 - Better than last time

After training for about 7 weeks I ran the Dirty Half Marathon on June 8th, 2008. This is a 13.1 mile course on single track in Bend, Oregon. I ran it last year at 2:00:00 and this year at 1:57:00, that's about 15 seconds better per mile than previous, I think my time was actually better because Horner and I were late to our heat, we had to run to the start a couple of extra minutes there. It was another great experience: I had a great time training, spending time in Bend with Daver & Horner, and running the race!

There was beer provided by Deschutes Brewery and veggie burritos after the race, I'm not so sure the beer was a good idea because I ended up not feelin' too hot later on.

http://dirtyhalf.footzonebend.com/images/dirty_half.jpg
I finally downloaded the software to take the GPS data off of my Garmin watch. It can only store one run or course, but it is really cool.

I can produce any number of graphs showing heart rate, distance, elevation, speed, time, pace. The Garmin software can also output the way points to Google Earth and each way point is clickable to display the heart rate, distance, elevation, speed, time, pace. Really cool!!

Zenger Farm

I'm in this volunteer mini-camp where every Saturday we do a different volunteer activity related to sustainability. It hasn't really been explained whether its environmental or economic sustainability we are supposed to be learning about, but I'm pretty sure its the environmental kind.

Zenger Farm is located far out in SE Portland. Zenger Farm does outreach and educational programs relating to sustainable agriculture. I think they have camps for kids to come and look at the vegetables and pull off veggies. The farm itself is operated by 47th Avenue Farms, an organization that provides fruit, vegetable, and eggs to people depending on the kind of share they purchase. In return for using the land 47th Ave Farms lets Zenger Farms use their crops as a classroom.

I went out there last Saturday as part of my sustainability teamworks deal. In the first picture we're 'hilling' potatoes. Hilling potatoes is where you take soil (I can't call it dirt according to my soils professor, its soil) and pile it up over the stalk of the plant leaving about 6 inches exposed. The potatoe is a very hardy plant and this will help produce more potatoes. See that's sustainable, if you have only a limited amount of space, as this farm does, then by hilling you are increasing your yield without using arable land.


We also put trays of seedlings into the hoop house for the farm to get starts quicker then replant. Looked like tedious work putting one individual seed into about 72 little holes per tray. Other people are filling the trays with soil and another person tops the trays after they've recieved seeds.






That Saturday was also a special work day for share holders that reduce their seasonal cost by working at the farm and they'd be having a potluck afterwards. Well, I wasn't sure whether I wanted to stay but after I'd heard that someone was making ice cream I had to. For the meal I got a sausage and chatted with some of the guys that work full time for 47th Ave Farms. Really cool people that want to get more experience with growing their own food.

I was talking with a couple of guys and I asked him if they've ever thought about getting some really big speakers, there was a pause and I said ya know to play music...Not a big speaker like Al Gore, I thought that was going to illicit some laughs but they started on about how they'd met some another sustainable farmer that was doing some cool things with seeds and maybe he'd like to come and speak.

Well, the ice cream was awesome and a girl that I'd worked with on the potatoes went down to the raspberry plants and brought them back up to the farm house and gave people each a few to drop in their ice cream. That made it even better!

Rafting

I went to a Junior Chamber of Commerce last night and the topic was getting you personal finance in order by evaluating your debt situation, income, and goals. If you want more information about how to get your finances in order definitely eliminate your debt after creating a 3-month emergency fund then visit Yahoo finance to get ideas on how to start building up savings or a retirement.

Anyways, most of the people at the JCs like to party so that's why I go, plus to learn about personal growth topics like I briefly shared above and to find out what other cool things are going on around Pdx. I learn something new about most of them every time I go which is very cool

Well, we might have a rafting trip in August led by a new member named Pete, who is a really cool guy. It'll only be 50 bucks which is really cheap. He also likes to buy road bikes of CL and fix them up, he might be a good person to talk to when I want to get a little faster commuter bike.

Ciclovia - For the local bohemian

In Portland last Sunday (6-20) PDOT or Portland Dept. of Transportation ran an event called Sunday Parkways. For the morning and part of the afternoon 6 miles of roads were shut down to cars. People ran, biked, and walked between like 5 event centers where there were bands, DJs, Cliff Bar booths, discount helmets, jugglers, food vendors, other community related booths.

PDOT based this event on Ciclovias, which were started and are still done in Bogota, Columbia.
http://bikeportland.org/2007/07/31/more-on-ciclovias-from-bogotas-former-parks-commissioner/

http://blog.oregonlive.com/breakingnews/2008/06/north_portland_tries_enginefre.html
http://www.oregonlive.com/editorials/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/editorial/121426711658461.xml&coll=7

http://npgreenway.blogspot.com/

So what I helped with is a non-profit that does a thing called Safer Routes to School, these are former bike messengers or bike enthusiasts that go to local schools and teach kids how to ride their bike safely and observe traffic laws. What they were doing at the ciclovia was getting people that wanted to check out a bike and a helmet and ride to another park as a group. I just rode along and hung out, I should have been trying to get more people on bikes.

Where the story turns to become "for the local bohemian" is when I meet up with Jonathon, it was cold and sprinkling when I got there early Sunday morning. Jonathon suggested we go to his place to get some coffee and pick up some jackets, I was like sweet! So we go to his house and his house mates are sleeping outside on the sidewalk to protest a local ordinance that allows cops to roust homeless people and then they can't get a restful night sleep. For some reason I was reminded of a similar Sacramento experience.

The other thing that I noticed was a ton of fruit flies in the kitchen, then I noticed they were coming from the open indoor composting. It was a little gross.

I don't know how many of you like to whisper to dogs, I'm not a professional but I like to whisper nice things to dogs like: "Your a good dog, yes you are." At Jonathon's place there was an old and very friendly German shepherd that I whispered to and petted he liked it, I miss having a dog.

Jonathon made some coffee for me and another guy and set out some hummus he'd made. I didn't have a travel mug so he grabbed a jar with a lid for me to use for the bike ride to the next park. That jar wouldn't hold hot coffee much less me even handle it for more than a fraction of a second. He found another one of his travel mugs and we were off. Jonathon could also speak Spanish pretty fluently with some young women who were interested in the Safer Routes program.
My pictures:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/47943073@N00/

If you went to this please support the next one by email the city council members:

mayorpotter@ci.portland.or.us
dsaltzman@ci.portland.or.us
samadams@ci.portland.or.us
Nick@ci.portland.or.us
rleonard@ci.portland.or.us

"Lost" episode of my blog

Warning: Lost spoiler!
If you can imagine this as the future parts of Lost where it doesn't make a whole lot of sense because Jack has a beard and is freaking out then it jumps back to the Island and something happens. Well, that's what I'm going to try to do for some of the parts of my life.