Lazy Blog

I know it's been a long time since I rapped at ya, but my POS computer bit the dust and I didn't want to put a new video card, or motherboard for that matter, into the box. This opening paragraph inspired by Jim Anchower.

Jim Anchower's Hard Rockin' Home Page

I bought a shiny new laptop, it's totally awesome, it's really fast and has a really good video card. Windows 7 seems alright to me, but I'm having problems figuring out how to make audio come out of the HDMI jack, it says it should but it don't...

Lazy post: email converted to a blog post.
I just love bringing up the Za za za song. But, I have good reason to because last night there was a great interview on Fresh Air of Jake Adelstein who was a reporter in Japan who often covered the Yakuza. Really interesting about how a bunch of the crime bosses came to UCLA medical center (or other Cali medical university) for liver transplants with help from the FBI by rolling on some other Yakuza dudes.

http://www.npr.mobi/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120237244

Transcript:

http://www.npr.mobi/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=120237244

The book sounds really good, plus other book whose authors have been interviewed on Fresh Air have turned out to be great: Fahreed Zakaria's The Post-American World, Illicit, and that book about the ADM informant.

20 Bucks Richer!

I was bet $10 that I couldn't eat 40 ounces of chili while traveling for work. My coworker saw a can of chili, 2.5 pounder and bet me $10 that I couldn't eat it in an hour. Then the contractor saw us as we were walking back to our car from this grocery store, tried to get us to come up to his room because he had some bourbon, ice, and water - he asked us if we like bourbon and I, right off the bat, said 'no.' That guy was, I don't know... a little too much for me, but he heard the details of the bet and added his $10 if I could finish it in 30 minutes, I was still down. So next day lunch time comes around and I am also not allowed to heat the chili up, okay, that's fine. I found a big spoon and borrowed a guy's leatherman to open it up and went to town, I finished it in 10 minutes!

I was on the rowing team as a freshman in college, the coach for the freshman boat was this tall skinny guy and he said that when he was going to school he'd load up his plate with food and just start shoveling the food in, he was burning so many calories on the rowing team that he needed to do that, but he learned that about 20 minutes in the stomach finally realizes you're full and tells the brain, so I knew that I couldn't dilly dally.

My coworker was trying to freak me out by saying "Ya know, I've always wanted to tour a Western Family food plant. I'll bet it's the kind of place you walk through and see some nasty stuff and never want to eat again!"

Crazy Dream - Mad Men

I think all dreams are a bit crazy, this one was wild! I wasn't sure when I'd get a chance to write it out, but this evening I didn't get anything done and forgot to do the run I was supposed to do (speedwork: 5 miles including 1600m (1 mi) @ 8:15 min/mi with 800m (0.5 mile) jogs). So, I'll describe the dream.

I don't know if anyone's been watching Mad Men lately, there's been a merger and a bunch of the other stuff going on... Anyways the scene starts there.

I don't remember much before the part where I'm given a weird little quiz book and I sit down to fill it out. Then this woman comes and sits down next to me and starts taunting me, I tell her to shut up! She won't, she keeps saying that now that there's been a merger that her dad will be my dad's boss. I don't like that so I knocker her backwards in her chair and tell her to shut up, she gets up and leaves.

I go back to the test, one question I remember is that somebody's wife hosted a themed dinner around A) a letter from the EPA or B) a bill from the EPA. I think the wife in question is Don Draper's.

Next scene is the British guy with the red hair walking the office about to tell everyone about the merger, there's a blown up W-2 form with the new name and address of the new company projected onto a screen he walks past. He says "But, first let's show you this movie to show you how this all happened."

The movie starts in a bright, shiny lobby with a black and white tile floor, the camera starts out above Don Draper as he walks over to two other men that I got the impression were reclusive owners of the other company. Then, Roger Sterling walks over and the British guy walks over, all three are wearing London Fog rain coats. Then they have like a group hug (maybe a manwich) and smile really big. Then Don Draper and Roger Sterling walk to the right of the group and open up umbrellas. But, the umbrellas turn out to be organic like flower shapes that suck them up.

End

Cupcake Party

I went to the Hoot's condo with Hanna for a cupcake party. I used some 'no pudge fudge' brownie mix, but with the cake option. Then put some of our homemade peanut butter on the top, healthiest cupcakes there. But, I ate like 6 cupcakes and a few glasses of wine, definite sugar crash happening now.

I need to develop a savory cup cake! Tortilla chips and cheese and beans?

Street Breakdancing

Audio Book Run Down (1)

I got a new job, woot! But, when I was searching for work I was also doing stuff around the house (see the tags marked home project and while I did them I often listened to OPB, music I've got, or audio books. I'm sorta new to audio books and devoting a little bit of the focus to the story while doing something else can be tough.

Here's the list:

Homer's The Illiad then The Odyssey -

Both were great tales of mythological conquest and adventure, I liked the Odyssey more because there was more travel involved while the Illiad is staged in and around Troy, when names are mentioned it's harder to keep track of what they are doing if they aren't moving somewhere. Made me want to reread Route 66 A.D., a great book about the beginning of travel and tourism in times of Ancient Rome.

Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers then The Tipping Point then started Blink - Outliers is about individuals and other groups of people who have bucked the trends and been successful or limited their success by the culture, period of time in which they lived, and social interactions. Once example I found interesting was about some airline pilots in Korea, because of their social structure the co-pilot often speaks in a differential tone to the captain even when there are serious problems the plane may soon encounter, this made Korean Airlines an outlier because accidents were happening more frequently not because of inexperienced pilots or planes needing repair but because there was an ingrained culture of hierarchy.

I liked The Tipping Point to learn how some new fashion trends had gotten started.

Blink, seemed like stuff I already knew so I didn't finish that one.

Elmore Leonard's Tishomingo Blues, Freaky Deaky, City Primeval, Bandits - These were all great bubble gum novels about detectives bending the law, con men setting up a grift, organized crime, but what made them all great was that they were read by Frank Muller. I just found his personal website and learned that he's dead! He's the best!! Luckily I've got more Frank Muller narrated books for the bus rides.

Conan Doyle - Sherlock Holmes The Sign of Four - Good story, I couldn't really get into it, but I've got just about the whole Sherlock Holmes collection so I may do them all.

Sunflower finally bloomed

Sunflower finally bloomed
Originally uploaded by red_5_rogue

This 3 foot tall sunflower finally bloomed, I hope I get some seeds to eat and save to plant more of them next season.

Activity Universal Associates

I went to the farmers market up in St. John's this morning and there was a band called Activity Universal Associates playing on the stage. It was the oddest band I'd ever seen. The video isn't good, I totally cut out the guitar player, but I was more interested in the sound machine the other guy is playing. He use this white card that starts to slide on this machine and makes a series of sounds, then when he slides it back it repeats. He had a couple different kind of cards with different music on them.



This is the only link I could find about them.

Dad's New Undies

Okay, so a little setup for this one: it's my birthday yesterday and I'm driving my Dad and Stepmom all over. We go to the Mississippi District so they can see the table I want to build at the Rebuilding Center. I took them all the way down Albina from my place, slowing down to see the rose garden at Penninsula Park and all that. Come up to Skidmore Street, which is pretty much where the Mississippi shite is all popping off. Dad decides that he's going to create a line of lingerie geared toward the wiping challenged male...called Skidmore's! The tagline will be: "Hi, I'm Bob (my Dad's name) Skidmore and are you tired of your wife nagging you about your underwear always having skid marks, well have I got the thing for you. Bob Skidmore's skidmore underwear!"

God, he kills me!!

Other lines for the commercial: "Honey, are my skidmore's clean?"

Took the 'Rents to the salt shop(pe) on Misisip "This salt is making me thirsty!" and then Amnesia brewing "Can't remember now where we were going~?" Beat that Jason!

Then burgers and beers at Wine Down off Burnside, that burger is amazing!

Maceo's Six Degrees

The Beav

There's a couple of things going on in this post: a book report of Cannery Row by John Steinbeck, thoughts about sardines based on the recent NPR article I heard today, and a broader look at Monterey & Fort Ord.

Cannery Row is the street in (New) Monterey, California that in the 1940's was the processing locale for sardines, tuna, and other things like squid. Steinbeck's novel is set after those plants have basically ceased operation. The book isn't about the fish processors, their workers, but about the people that inhabit the area around it. I don't know if I will be able to go to my book club meeting about this book, if I can then I'll know a bit more about the book. Bottom line - read it!

I think I've only had sardines from a can once, but since then not so much. Sardines were over fished, but they've recovered now, the season is pretty tight so they may be tough to get. A short recipe in this NPR article sounds really good! Because they're small they don't have the high mercury concentration that tuna might because of their place on the food chain.

I love Monterey! I spent many weeks out at Fort Ord doing range recon and sampling groundwater. The most fun thing was hiking around the different ranges with Charles Luckie, Tom Ghigliotto, and another guy whose name I can't recall, to do what's called range recon - going around by foot through the scrub brush, previously burned areas, and poison oak to locate exploded ordinance. Because Fort Ord is being transferred over to the city or the state the lead contaminated areas need to be cleaned up, the lead being from bullets soldiers had shot at targets in those range areas way back when. But, working with those guys was great, I laughed so hard at the jokes they'd make, and have a great time hiking around. Their nickname for me was the "The Beav!"

Luckie with the GPS backpack and Tom stretching one morning.


Long run of conveyor belts to move soil out of a range for off haul.

The other thing that I did at Fort Ord is PDS or Passive Diffusion Sampling, in the picture below you'll see a coworked re-attaching a PDS bag to a rope that will be lowered down into a groundwater well. Those wells were scattered all over the base and were monitored on different schedules (ie quarterly, semi-yearly, etc). That was fun too!


Justin about to send the PDS bag back down the well.

One of the other things I would do is: bike around in the back area of Fort Ord on the paved roads that had been open to cyclists. That was a great spot to do hill work. I went one night out by myself, everyone (Luckie, Tom, and the other guy) had warned me not to because mountain lions would jump out of the trees and take me off my bike. I thought that's bull and went out anyways, I had charged up my bike light but it still conked out, I kept going a little ways, but was too freaked out so I spun hard back to the truck. Luckily there was a full moon out!

Cannery Row is now a tourist spot with different shops and a really awesome aquarium! Monterey also has a fun art scene:

Blown glass.

A lot of nights after doing range recon or sampling were spent at the English Ales Brewery in Marina, just north of the Base. Some good strong micros!

Book Report - Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

I got the audio version of Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell and listened to it straight through in one day of working on one of the bedroom doors. This was a fascinating examination of a number of different people in history who happened to make it big by not necessarily being a genius, but by mostly hard work, using the system to their advantage, being in the right place at the right time, and taking advantage of how they were raised and socialized.

That is just a part of the book, there are so many other examples of other human controlled events that can be considered outliers that I can't write them all down.

When I've listened to other audio books it never really sticks with me unless I concentrate really hard. But, I think that because it was read by the author and the concepts were explained well, I remember a lot of it.

Dirty Half - Dude Thousand Nine!

I jacked up my foot running up Leif Erickson a while back and recently learned that I broke my foot, so I've been gimping around in an Aircast boot. I rested my foot after the incident, but it didn't get any better making running and training for the Dirty Half painful. The doctor, after looking at the x-ray fit the boot on my foot and the boot was so nice, it isolated the heal area and my mood immediately improved. I've been wearing the boot for about 3 weeks, I wore it up to Bend to hang-out and stuff during the Dirty Half weekend with Nate and Amy.


Great time, but really boring just sitting around during the race, oh well - I got these really cool pair of socks for helping set up tables and tents before the run.

This photo is attached to show the ugly car that Nate was forced to rent for the week and whose outlandish color was the driving force behind him getting a speeding ticket as we were driving over to Bend.

Relating to the injury: had a follow up with my doctor last week and he felt my foot and prodded in a few places, he told me that I could start wearing a really nice sport's brace and taper off the boot and taper in the brace - then eventually slowly resume light activity. Which is great!

Morning Mini Proj

This is a an old steel box I found down in the basement, I don't know if was for coal or not, but I suspect it was. I brought it up and decided to cut up some of the cedar paneling I'd ripped out of the basement. Buzzed them up by just eyeballing them and they fit in nicely. (Bottom grate removed and I'll probably take that to a recycler.)


Now, I just need to put some soil/compost in the box and plant something. I probably need to figure out where I want it first, because it is HEAVY even without soil in it.

French Doors

I've spent the past few days, invested about 6 hours into a couple of French doors that had a nice stain on one side and white latex paint on the other. I've been using a combination of a heat gun and scraper to get paint off and also some orange gel paint remover. The gel works well after I've got the top layer of paint or stain off.

French door with white paint removed.


French door with white paint.



French door with a stain, accidentally blistered some of the stain as I was trying to remove paint from the door edge.


French door with stain partially removed, will still sand it to remove the stain and scratches.



A movie of the heat gun blistering the latex paint:



I also took a break to see what I could do with the heat gun and an old vinyl record I have.

My new Whip!

My new bike - classic puegot
Originally uploaded by red_5_rogue

I bought this bike yesterday at a yard sale a block from my place. Marked down from $100 to $35 with a note saying that it had just had a $100 tune up.

Sidebar: I broke a bone in my foot on April 24th, I thought it was just a sprain and I'd been living with it, running on it, biking on it all during that time. Finally went to my podiatrist and figured it out, got a bulky aircast to isolate the bone, which feels so good.

Anyways, I was able to ride it with my aircast and it rode very well and the gears even popped into place.

There is a registration sticker from the City of Davis from 1972! There's no rust on the bike, just needs a front basket, and I'll probably clean the chain/gears today.

Compost por los casitas

Portland has a governmental organization called Metro, they do planning, run the zoo, and coordinate waste disposal (they do other stuff, I don't quite know all of it). Because they pay for Portland's trash to be hauled out to eastern Oregon so they have green waste bins and recycling to pare down the amount that has to be hauled out, to further reduce waste that encourage people to set up worm bin composting in their homes and apartments.

This is one example, but you can take a small plastic container, drill some holes in it and you're good.


You need special worms called red wigglers, these guys like to climb all over in compost piles and break down the food waste while normal worms just like to stay in the soil. There can be ways that the bin starts to attract fruit flies and smells bad, but there are ways to fix those problems. Many people on craigslist sell their extra red wrigglers.

The benefits are that you can get rid of the green food waste instead of throwing it away while producing a soil amendment for your house plants, garden, or neighborhood garden.

Metro's worm bin composting website

I have also just learned about compost tea this is where you take some compost and you steep it out in the sun. Traditional European formula: Steep 1 part compost in 3 : 9 parts water, with optional additions of a handful of basalt-meal or granite-dust and seaweed powder, and stand at room temperature ( 20 - 25C°) for 3 – 24 days, with frequent stirring. Sieve through cheesecloth or a fine mesh screen. From Wikipedia on the subject.

Don Quixote Book Report

I joined a book club whose focus is reading and discussing the classics. And, I have enjoyed it immensely because we are reading works that have been influential in literature, the stage, and film. A prime example is Don Quixote. Written in the early 1600's by Miguel Cervantes, an interesting fellow with an adventurous background and a very learned man who interspersed citations and quotes within the book relating to classic mythology and chivalric books popular at the time. The ~1,000 page book is divided into two parts with two significantly different tones, I liked both parts, but lots of people tend like the second half. There is an interesting history to the book and what's funny is another author tried to continue the first part of the book without Cervantes' permission and in the second part published after the first Cervantes poked fun at this other author.

After reading the book and really thinking about how America needs more people that dedicate at least part of their lives to chivalric ideals I wrote an email to President Obama to that affect, I know it's probably bonkers, but I think it's a valid opinion because so many people are just out there for themselves and don't do anything to help society. What would the country look like if more people volunteered a few hours a week.

Below you'll find a video for the song Bonkers by Dizzee Rascal, it's fun to dance to!

Star Trek

David Letterman's Top Ten Things You Won't Hear in a Star Trek movie:

Presented by Leonard Nimoy.

2. Live long, prosper and keep hangin' and bangin'!

1. I find the choice of your hair piece highly illogical.

God I love them both!

Swine Flu - How It Was Spread!

Here's how the the Swine Flu better known as the H1-N1 Virus was transmitted to humans.

Home Eco Party

A few weeks ago I had a home eco party, it's kinda like a Tupperware party, but instead you learn about how to make your home more ecologically friendly. I invited a neighbor, some friends, and my mom and sister came up, there were about 8 people there. A volunteer from the Center For Earth Leadership came over and we had an open discussion of the home survey/questionnaire that I had given everyone I'd invited.

The questionnaire asked people to think about:
*how much meat they eat,
*how often you run your clothes washer (do you use cold water cycles),
*if you are able to dry your clothes outside,
*if you've had a home energy audit and will implement the suggestions,
*do you grow your own food,
*do you compost and use your compost,
*do you limit toxic cleaners and toxic home products (weed killers, etc.),

We went through each section of the questionnaire talking about what other alternatives exist or are out there to use instead of window cleaner (vinegar & water), for instance. We went into my bathroom and measured the water output from my shower head, it's 2.5 gpm.

Some of the specific things I learned about taking care of my home and buying food:

*buy in bulk - save old containers from hand soap, oatmeal, granola, lotion, laundry detergent, honey, tea, peanut butter - these are staples that I need to get pretty often and at stores that sell stuff in bulk they let you tare the container at one of the check stands then refill them;

*put reusable grocery bags in your car and on the door knob to remind yourself to use them;

*disposable materials are never beneficial to the environment - if you can use cloth napkins, real plates/glasses/silverware you will save money and know that you aren't wasting resources on a one time use product;

*reduce the amount of meat you eat - meat is produced with a lot of resources going into it, cows have to have crops grown and irrigated to feed the amount of energy/resources that go into a pound of beef is many times that for a pound of wheat;

*I don't want to use pesticides so I'm using my weed popper to get the dandelions out then pour vinegar into the little hole to kill the roots;

*practice minimal flushing - "If it's brown, flush it down; if it's yellow, keep it mellow."

My minimal flushing sheet for your toilet:


http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddkncvj_12c4jtpvfv


It was also special because the 'volunteer' that came to facilitate the home eco party was Jeanne Roy, one of the founders (along with her husband) of the Center For Earth Leadership and the Northwest Earth Institute. Jeanne and Dick Roy Bio/Article:
http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC43/Roy.htm

Flying Spaghetti Monster

I don't know if y'all know who the Flying Spaghetti Monster is, but the monster is the deity for a parody religion. One of the things they talk about is how global warming is inversely related to the number of pirates. When the SEALs took out 3 Somali pirates I grew concerned and decided to figure out what this would mean for Somalia. I crunched a bunch of numbers to develop my Global Warming Potential(GWP) of Somalia. GWP is just a number given to different gasses relating to their potential to increase global warming by not allowing infrared radiation to escape Earth's atmosphere, also known at Radiative Forcing.

I found Somalia's CO2 production per year with data up to 1995, then added 100 metric tons per year. Their main economic production is farm animals, I assumed they had goats, who produce about 23 m3/yr of methane. Methane has a GWP of 12, CO2 has a GWP of 1. I found the area of Somalia and the percentage of the area that is wild pasture lands and cut it in half, assumed 5 goats per acre, and assumed a growth of 100 km2 of pasture land used for goat herding. The GWP of the country is contributed to more by their pastured animals than by the CO2 sources.

I don't know how many pirates are in Somalia, but a loss of 3 will probably be made up pretty quick.






This is the supporting chart that was originally sent to the Kansas Board of Education.













Sources:

http://www.inra.fr/productions-animales/spip.php?page=en-article&id_article=332
http://www.studentsoftheworld.info/country_information.php?Pays=SOM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Somalia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somalia#Economy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somalia#Economy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_potential
http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Print_Ch02.pdf

Rise Up!

I've got the Blazer bug! They're in the playoffs, they've got 2 home games to start out the series. They've brought it all together for me with a new marketing campaign "Uprise" with the Portland Blazers, see the rap video below:



Don't UPRISE too hard because the Portland PD has some new cars that totally look bad ass!

When this place turns into a barren wasteland they'll come in handy!

Outside Looking In

I decided to smoke one of the Cubanos I bought back from Hondo, smoked it out on the back porch, it was hard not to feel a little self-conscious about it because the house next door could see me, but I had a glass (or cup) of Shiraz. I looked up into my kitchen window and thought it was a good picture that showed how I live. My dad hates it that I leave cupboard doors open like that.

I guess I should also say that I lost my job this week, I thought that by smoking this cigar and drinking the wine I'd have better introspection into my life forth coming. I couldn't think of anything other than I smoked this Cuban much better than in SPS (San Pedro Sula, Honduras - at the wine bar where all the hotties were). And, the other thing about my job is that it was at the cost of others that were more valuable for the work, no work was in hand, and apparently I was the low man on the totem. But, I realized that I when you pin your tail on one client, or classification of clients that do work only in the school site work, you're not gonna make it. Far be it for me to say what's gonna make it in this econ, but it's tough.

In a more positive news, I can finally re-do my mortgage (probably) because I'm out of work, thanks 'Bama for the financial something act. More info on my new garden plot manana.

The neighbor has two black cats, I enjoy calling them "gatos negro."

Dropping Easter Egg bombs on that A!

I just found Dollhouse when I was browsing Hulu last week. It's a pretty good show, there is something about it, I don't know if it flows very well, there is something off about it, but I'm going to keep watching it. The premise is that dolls can be loaded with any persona or combination of personas to be whatever their client wants.

I fell head over heals for "Altered Carbon", "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_Angels", and "Woken Furies", by Richard Morgan. All three books are science fiction stories about a dystopian future where people can change bodies, called sleeves, by changing the stack or memory chip. The protagonist in these books is a guy Takeshi Kovacs.

I was watching an episode and the guy that changes the persona in the dolls was talking to another person about a Japanese guy that had made a discovery in brain research or something. I stopped it and zipped back to see if he mentioned Takeshi Kovacs, but he hadn't, dang, I'd hoped he had...

Midnight Madness

It's always an adventure to walk home down MLK, you are 90% likely to run into a wacko. Case in-point: Saturday night, walking up MLK to catch the 6, had some time after calling the Trimet phone number so I walked up North and came to the Plaid Pantry and I really needed a salty snack, I got a can of Pringles then walked out. I noticed there was a stop right there so I made sure it was for the 6 and ate my chips.

This dude walked up to the stop and said something in a real loud deep voice, I don't know what he said, but it caused me to look up and see a dude with crazy hair like Christopher Lloyd in Back to the Future carrying one of the Portland Recycles reusable grocery bags. He came up to me and said he just got out of Detox and they let him keep his space bag. I didn't understand space bag (I must've shaken my head or cocked it to one side like a dog) and so he came closer and showed me. I thought he was talking about the Franzia boxed wine because it has a 'space' (-slash- futuristic) shiny mylar bag inside of it, on second thought he might have just been referring to the bag that the Bureau of Environmental Services has been giving away.

West Linn

I posted on my Twitter that I was going out with Nancy to help her redo a wetland delineation out in West Linn, OR. We had some fantastic weather and I was able to take this picture of Mt. Hood clear and bright looking straight down Hidden Spring Mountain Ranch Road or something like that.

This photo taken with my G1, woot!

There are a ton of huge houses in West Linn, quite a few situated way back from the main road. I observed a geezer hooking up his garbage and recycling containers to the bumper of his Escalade one day. "Oh, honey, please bring the cans back in."

The wetland delineation work was fun, it was good to get out of the office, I was in charge of using a machete to clear a path through the blackberry bushes. I got pretty good at it, but my forearm started to ache after a while.

Mr. Daily and the Fish

Mr. Daily is a coworker at my engineering office, he is an interesting fellow.

He loves to use the phrase 'However, comma...' to start a statement in counterpoint to someone's idea, I'm not saying that he immediately jumps in to suggest a better alternative or tear down someone's concept, but it's just an odd phrase to use.

Quite a while back the administrative manager called him Mr. Weeks as he was walking through the front entry to go to the bathroom or something, she enjoys making up other time related alternatives to his name. His retort was his name ('daily') being mentioned in the Lord's Prayer. He was referring to 'oh lord, please bless us our daily bread...', I heard all of this because I was set up in the conference room off the front entry QC-ing some plans, I said 'we think pretty highly of ourselves don't we Mr. Daily (using his first name).' To which he responded with a slightly embarrassed chuckle and hitched up his khakis then adjusted them back down and walked off. The admin laughed 'that was pretty good!'

We have a toy fish that is passed around to different people when someone gets all bent out of shape on something. Mr. Daily gets the fish all of the time as a result of his tendency to fly off the handle, so he always ends up with the fish. For 2008, he was letting his hair and beard grow out and towards the end of the year he’d taken to tying his hair into a small pony tail. This was noted by many and more importantly by the guys that enjoy setting Mr. Daily off and giving the fish back to him. The decided to memorialize the pony tail by adding a pony tail to the fish. See the picture below.

Table Ideas

I need a new table badly, something longer, bigger that can seat more people. I've been looking a little bit. Money is kinda tight so all the deal emails from World Market are sometimes enticing.

This table is interesting, looks nice and big. Cost - $529 - not too bad.










I've been to the Rebuilding Center here in Portland and they have a table that is gorgeous. It's constructed of reclaimed wood from deconstructed homes nearby. Good place to start, to get some ideas. This one is cost prohibitive at $1700! It is for a good cause though - supporting the Rebuilding Center and their programs.
I'd get the 72" table, the one shown here is probably 12'.



My dad is going to have some free time very soon and a new project is a opportunity to buy some new tools in his mind so I went to the library and got a set of plans for a trestle table that looks really nice. Cost unknown at this point.

A Little More Snow In PDX

We got some more snow starting some time today, it will probably melt off. We had snow about 2-weeks ago. Here are some pictures.
Today.












2-weeks ago.

Book Report

I recently read this book and really enjoyed it. It is both about a small country in Africa and an Englishman named Basil Seal. Basil is the main character in many of Evelyn Waugh's books, he is sort of a worldly bon vivant that has fallen into a the position of High Commissioner& Comptroller of the Ministry of Modernisation and being helped by an Armenian named Krikor Youkoumian. They came up with strange new laws and policies that the backward country was not prepared for. This was such a funny book, I was reading it on the Max about Youkoumian who was able to find Basil at the train station and got him a seat on the train by moving his wife to the livestock car and giving her a jar of cherries, I laughed out loud at that.

Modernisation eventually became too much for Basil, the Emperor had attended Oxford where he had briefly met Basil, and was prone to thinking up new ways to modernize his country. Everyday it was something new for Basil to try to figure out how to write a new policy/law, from statewide morning exercises and community singing to a ill conceived birth control pageant. The final straw was when the Emperor started printing his own money and his uncle who had been chained in a cave was 'resurrected' and made Emperor.

Go purple!

Reclaimed water is a new source of non-potable water that many water suppliers are offering to some users in both areas that typically experience water shortages (Contra Costa County) and those that typically wouldn't like in Happy Valley (OR). I think this is a great idea, it reduces the amount of effluent water typically sent to a river or other receiving water body, provides water that's non-potable (not drinkable) to users that don't need potable water such as: golf courses, construction sites, heating/cooling facilities, and other manufacturing processes. I'm not sure how clean (what level of treatment) the water has to be for use food crop production or livestock, I think those regulations are still being developed.

Here is the purple pipe developers are required to use. Notice the warning on the side. -I lost the photo somewhere, but it is purple/pink pipe with "CAUTION - RECLAIMED WATER" dot printed on the side. Found it!



Here is a standard hydrant installed by Contra Costa County, except this one has been modified with a 2 1/2 inch port versus the normal 3 inch connection for fire hoses. The County let's construction companies (typically) borrow a special meter assembly and they pay by calling in every month the amount of usage.

My version of the hydrant layout:


Other presentations on recycled water use.
http://www.watereuse.org/sections/california/northern-california/meeting/presentations

Double Dream

Portland got an inch of snow overnight, it is pretty strange to get 2 rounds of snow here. ODOT is warning of patches of black ice, I don't really know if anyone got it any worse. I haven't been doing anything all day except sleeping and watch old TV shows, just looked outside and the snow's gone, oh well.

I slept for about 10 hours last night and that's a record for me, the cold medicine I took might have helped, but I took a half dose. This morning I had two dreams.

Dream 1-
For some reason I was talking with another really large engineering company and they'd hired me. My new office was going to be out in the mid-West somewhere, but I was still going to work on projects going on in Portland, so that doesn't really make sense. I remember walking around the building where I interviewed and it being a really nice place, it was on the water and people got along with each other. I tried to figure out whether I'd want to drive my car out to my new place in the mid-West or fly there and have my car shipped out. I also remember going back to the place and wanting to ask more questions but I was flumoxed and didn't want to ask them, questions so that I could compare the two jobs apples to apples. Then I woke up and went back to sleep.

Dream 2-
I was with a group of friends in this large building and I was trying to get even with this other guy and I was going to do it by squirting him. Growing up, my sister and I would stay with my Grandparents and they've got some old time toys that my mom, her sisters and brother would play with, one old toy was a green squirt gun that would fit in you and squirt from between your fingers when you pressed the plunger down with your thumb, I think it was from Green Lantern or something. Anyways, I think I had something similar to this filled with Sprite and I had it hid in a cup to disguise it. My friends thought squirting someone with Sprite was wrong so they left, so I got close enough and I squirted him in a group of people. Then all the other people started running around screaming and stuff, I knew the jig was up so I ran off. This must have been a warehouse where trains would drop stuff off because there was a huge pile of bananas on the loading dock and I grabbed onto the mesh sack that was holding them all together and swung down onto the ground about 12' down, all the bananas fell on top of me and I pushed them off and started running down the tracks, over the large angular rocks to safety. Then I woke up.

Afganistan ain't in good shape

I listened to a speaker tonight from Azad Mohammadi who is the Energy, Power & WAter Team Leader and Senior Water Sector Advisor with International Relief and Development (IRD) and is working in Afganistan. It is pretty bad over there, they've been dealing with war and internal conflict for the past 40 years so they haven't done anything with their infrastructure during that time. He said that a tanker truck used to haul waste Mondays and Wednesdays will be used to haul water on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

This guy also said that if anyone is interested in doing work in a post conflict region he could hook us up. "Post conflict" right...

Hondo Part Uno

This is what I sent in for posting on the corporate intranet.

JT in our Portland office recently traveled down to Honduras for a little bit of fun and some volunteer engineering work.



In J's words



" I traveled from December 12 through the 23rd flying to San Pedro Sula, meeting up with friends from Sacramento in Tela and exploring areas nearby like the Punta Sal (Exit Point) Jungle Preserve for a nature hike, snorkeling, and fresh fish lunch and a tour of the Garifuno village of Miami for another lunch of freshly caught fish with rice and beans, and fried plantains.

Next caught an early morning bus to La Ceiba, but my former co-worker and I stopped mid-way to look at landfill project in La Masica. The property for the landfill had been purchased, but the funding window had closed to construct the landfill, so he will attempt to resubmit the proposal for funding from a Non-Governmental Organization and provide design for the landfill. Meanwhile, the nearby cities have been dumping trash on the dirt road that goes through the property and an old man who was squatting there prior to it’s purchase has landfill leachate running through his shack, not a pleasant situation. The other problem is that there is a small stream that goes through the valley into a small marsh, it may be possible to reroute the stream and use the marsh for leachate treatment. My friend in Honduras is worked with Engineers Without Borders on projects in the States and used those contacts to do engineering design for landfills, water and wastewater projects on a voluntary basis for towns around La Ceiba. I am also involved in Engineers Without Borders and visiting the yet to be constructed landfill and meeting with locals knowledgeable of the proposal documentation and talking informally with a government leader about the next steps was a really great opportunity to see how some other projects are developed; it was also interesting to listen to the technical issues being discussed in Spanish, I have only had 2-years of high school Spanish, but I was able to comprehend a lot of it with help from our translator.

From there, met up with the rest of our group who took the later bus to La Ceiba and explored that bustling city’s street markets, a park built by Standard Fruit (Dole), and getting a donut at Dunkin Donuts. Our group took a ferry to Roatan (Isla de Roatan) to relax on the beach, snorkel, and eat local food. Roatan has such clear Caribbean water to look down at some really pretty reef formations and colorful fish.

Then back to La Ceiba for a night then over to this place called the Jungle River Lodge for rafting on the Rio Cangrejal and a nature hike through the jungle, part of the Pico Bonito Jungle Preserve, across the river from the lodge. We slept there a few nights in wood bunk beds, met some other travelers, and played Uno by candle light. Our trip was over, back to San Pedro Sula for a flight to Portland and a foot of snow! I had an absolute blast! "

Uno by candle light is tougher than it sounds, it's really hard to differentiate the blue, red, and green cards. We had to double check before putting every card down when it got really dark.