Party Glob

Nearly Screwed a Brew!

2011-05-25T21:26:00.000-07:00

Two weeks ago I brewed a 5-gallon batch of beer that was going to be a pale ale using Irish Yeast. I screwed up big time by letting the temperature run up to about 180deg F while it should have gone no higher than 160deg F. By letting it elevate that much I inadvertently locked the sugars in the grain. The whole point of the mash is to release those simple sugars for the yeast to consume.

I noticed I had a real problem when I took a sample and checked the specific gravity and it said 1.013, which is pretty much where the final gravity should be after the yeast has eaten the sugars. I went next door to my neighbor who is also a homebrewer and told him what my OG (original gravity) was. He said that was really low and brought out a couple of his brew books to the porch to see what I could do.

We found that adding honey would be a good option because yeast converts about 99% of honey into alcohol. I borrow his digital scale and got my old honey viscous again and poured 4.3lbs of Oregon wildflower honey, it should bring the OG back up to 1.060 (may need to recalc that) with a potential ABV of 3.5%. Oh yeah, this is going to be a light ale using Irish yeast, Irish Ale Yeast - Wyeast 1084. The reason I chose Irish Ale yeast is that when I rack this one into my spare carboy I am going to reuse the yeast immediately in the next batch which I will make during weekend Staycation. Gonna be an Irish Coffee Mint Beer, using peppermint/spearmint from my garden, espresso from AJ's (24oz espresso => ~37.5mg caffeine per 12oz!).

This is a shot of the batch, it volcanoed pretty violently after the temp in the kitchen activated the yeast, that slug of honey in the bottom helped! The airlock is super crusty, it probably won't come clean, but they're only a buck and I got the benjamins rollin' in!

The other reason to use this strain of yeast is because it's pretty versatile, here are some of the styles that Wyeast suggests:

American Barleywine
Baltic Porter
Dry Stout
Foreign Extra Stout
Imperial IPA
Irish Red Ale
Oatmeal Stout
Other Smoked Beer
Robust Porter
Scottish Export 80/-
Scottish Heavy 70/-
Scottish Light 60/-
Spice, Herb, or Vegetable Beer
Strong Scotch Ale
Sweet Stout
Wood-Aged Beer

So if I figure out how to store yeast rather than continuous usage I will be able to make quite a few different things.

Random Photos

2011-05-05T22:36:00.001-07:00

Phil, a guy at work retired on April 1st, he left behind his 2010 Jackasses (and the funny things they say) Calendar. You should see Miss April!!

View west down the center line of Rosa Parks Blvd waiting for the bus at 5AM to go to the airport to go to Spokane. Got lots of comp time for coming back on the evening flight.

Some people from the neighborhood at the seed exchange.

View from the floor of my office lobby.

Fixin' Things

2011-05-05T22:13:00.000-07:00

For a while I was living in two worlds, one was the post-apocalyptic Mojave Desert from Fallout: New Vegas and the other was real life. But, they connected when my dryer died, well, stopped putting out heat. I have a really old dryer, made in like the 60's, it is commonly known as the "halo of heat" because of the heating coil around the front of the drum.

I used the book pictured below only after I'd taken it pretty much apart - the controls, wires, top of the shell and tested the resistance going through each of the thermistors. I looked in the book and it had a step by step procedure, 1st was to examine the power coming in, which I should have done first. The power coming into the dryer had either vibrated or shorted apart, luckily I had a new connector and enough existing wire to fix that and it worked fine. I did end up with a few extra screws but they're only for the sheet metal shell.

In Fallout you can get books that will improve your skillz during the game, if you want to repair something like a robot or a set of armor you may need to use one of these books to temporarily improve your skill score like Fixin' Things (pictured below).

It turns out the Reader's Digest doesn't make these Home Repair books much anymore, probably because everything is so digital. But, it did come in handy for this old dryer.

Dave's Kill Mill

2011-01-11T20:07:00.001-08:00

That's Dave Dahl from Dave's Killer Bread (and a friend) at an event tonight, him and Colonel Arnold Strong spoke tonight at a Bright Neighbor (brightneighbor.com) sponsored event. The topic was how to develop a thriving community supported business and they both spoke about their experiences and theories that lead them to where they are today.

I drew a lot of parallels to Dave's story of coming out of prison and wanting to find the thing that is organic with a short shelf life and improve upon it, it sounds a lot like a theory of technology innovation I learned about in my Engineering and Technology Management class last quarter about technology imitators. They are the people that will dissect an existing technology in the market to make it better. The benefit if it's already successful that a market has already been established for it and you don't necessarily have to reinvent the wheel to recreate the process, but its not an innovation.

Where Dave differs is that he's got a strong passion behind making bread and improving the quality of the bread. He was baking bread before his incarceration, so he already knew about bread and the business. Dave's story.

A quote from Machiavelli on Innovators:

"It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than the creation of a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institutions and merely lukewarm defenders in those who should gain by the new ones."

Niccolo Machiavelli - From "The Prince", another great read!

After the end of the discussion Dave and his friend rocked out and played us three songs. We all sang along to Mustang Sally, it was awesome!

Washougal: A Zip Line Runs Through It

2010-12-24T06:46:00.000-08:00

In a world, where the economy is in shambles, one over zealous County intern infiltrates a zip line operation to bring it down from the inside and ruin everyone else's fun!

Zip Line Controversy - Columbian.com

Feds Sue Washougal Man - Columbian.com

Gov v. D.Hoyt - Justia.com

How to be more of a Portlander

2010-07-10T14:11:00.000-07:00

Sort of like a feature I did on another website I'm again high on caffo and I need to make a costume for the Night Ride tonight, just like before I decided to re-purpose some old clothes to make a Cast Away type outfit.

Using my same Benchmade (made in Oregon) knife to create the frayed edges that key to the effect.

Least this episode won't be lost in the ether!

No, but I've got a Three-Five-Seven.

2010-06-23T07:17:00.000-07:00

Dad said in jest to me after the old man had turned back after asking “You boys got a tow strap?”

This is what I'd call about midway into my Father's Day adventure. It starts out like this:

Meet Dad at his house, drive to Rainbow Lake to meet my Sister according to her text message directions which said grab the map out of the Winco bag tacked to the street sign for Cooper Ridge and follow road 205 and pink ribbon the whole way. Easy right?!

Everything was cool until we tried to find the route up to Rainbow Lake, it was about 7pm on Friday night when we pulled up into the hills. 'Reprod' is a new word I learned to describe the area around Rainbow Pond, it's where it's clear cut then re-planted to reproduce the timber.

My Dad and I were driving for about 2 hours trying to find the right road, there was no road that was 205, there was no pink ribbon, and the Google map left for us in the Winco bag was just a line tracing a white line for some unlabeled road on this map. Dad was getting ultra mad, like: I didn't f'ing sign up to hunt around in the backwoods for a campsite. So at about 9 we were done and heading back out to the highway to sleep there the night, driving down this steep gravel road through the reprod I noticed headlights from another truck coming up, so we pulled to the side so they could pass. We pulled over, but the lights weren't advancing, so we crept down a little further and rounded a corner to find an old truck stopped.

This old guy comes shambling up to us and says 'You boys got a tow strap?' like we'd turn around the truck somewhere and pull him up the hill, with his tent trailer. Dad said, no sorry, but we backed up to a wide spot and helped them push the truck and trailer. The old man was also carrying around a fat old dachshund close to his belly, he climbed back into the truck and gave it some gas, but it wouldn't go!

As the old man climbed out of his old truck, with the dog still hunched into his stomach a large Pyrex measuring cup fell out of the cab, my Dad grabbed it and handed it back.

The old guy had some friends behind him in a Mercedes SUV and one of them backed the pickup truck and trailer down to a wide spot. We asked the old man where he was heading and he said 'Rainbow Lake,' Dad said 'We were headed there to find my daughter's camp.' The old guy said 'Rainbow Lake is great! It's so nice!' He proceeded to tell us how to get there, we decided to continue our plan to sleep by Highway 22 for the night and look for Twisted Sister the next morning. As we passed by the Mercedes Dad told that guy that we were just going down to sleep down at the bottom. 'Okay man, we'll see ya down there. Hey, happy Father's Day, man!' So weird! Dad returned the holiday wishes and we rolled down.

Fast forward (because this is getting really long!) to my Sister showing us the actual way to get up to her campground that she intended with her map and the few pieces of pink tape she put out. It was this rutted out, overgrown, practically a goat trail of a logging road, but we took it up, no way we would have found this on our own! Didn't catch any fish and got really cold, but spent some good times with Dad, I just wish he'd chill out sometimes!

We hiked up to Marion Lake, a real lake, with Sevlyor rubber rafts and fished for about 5 hours, got a bunch of nibbles and cold feet. It was pretty fun though! I would row the boat as my sister would hold the two rods and we'd kind of troll with out neon, sparkly marshmellow compound on the hook.

Another thing about this trip: my Sister and I pulled our raft in before Dad, he finally showed up to the little beach, you could really tell how much concentration he had on his face and coordination with careful paddle strokes to get that little raft around a snag and to the beach.

Dog Show!

2010-04-01T06:42:00.001-07:00

This past weekend I helped at a canine (has anyone noticed how K9 and canine mean the same thing but kinda bring up different connotations) agility competition. My role was to sit in the ring, not move, or make eye contact with the dogs, and reset or change the jumps.

It was amazing to see how well trained and speedy these dogs are. These pictures show some of the typical obstacles. In the first round the owner can have the dog do them in any order for maximum points, this was also the round where there was an area where only the dog could go into. This forced the owner to direct the dog by verbal commands only to get the bonus for doing the 3 obstacles correctly.

The most common dogs for the agility competition seem to be dobermans, german shephards, border collies, but there were also shaggy afghans, poodles, scotty dogs and other tiny dogs who were pretty dang adorable! Especially when the small ones would rum up the teeter toter and scrunch down as it would slowly tip down the other way.

A guy that works in finance in my office was also there with his wife and their dog, he also takes photos to sell at the show, he's shared a few with me.

Joe's dog leaving the weave obstacle.

Dog going up narrow ramp.

Bishu jumping an 8" jump.

Beagle jumping and 8" jump.

Bishu coming out of the chute.

Big dog jumping.

Big dog coming out of the chute.

At some point during the show, while there are dogs barking and people cheering I dozed off.

Piedmont Neighborhood Update

2010-03-11T20:57:00.000-08:00

I just got back from the Piedmont Neighborhood Association meeting, it was great, I signed up to help a local school build a community garden - I'll use my rain barrel skills for good now. It was funny, a woman stood up to introduce herself as a person involved in the Stop The Columbia River Crossing (stopthecrc.org) and a couple of people were also there to promote the $4.2B mega highway, bridge, and lightrail project.

I am going to write a letter to the Portland Parks Department telling them that they should grow fruit trees in their parks, people can enter a lottery to be able to pick bushel of apples when they come ripe, for example.

I'm also going to write a letter to the Portland Bureau of Environmental Services telling them to build more bioswale treatment facilities in our neighborhood. These will treat (and store) road runoff prior to their entry into the UICs that handle our road runoff in this area of Portland.

We may be getting a Farmer's Market soon at Ainsworth and Albina, in the vacant lot there. That would be so great for the area.

Brew-a-thon

2010-03-05T20:31:00.000-08:00

Last Sunday was a big day of beer brewing and total fun! I want to get into brewing beer, so I got my Dad's old kit (carboy, bottle capper, bottles, tubes, other things that I don't know how to use yet) and headed over to my coworker Brian's house to make some beer with him and his friend Ox.

The night before we spent about $200 on malt extract, yeast, and malt grain. Brian had thought up 6 recipes for different kinds of beer, when we get done we'll have a: nut-brown stout, IPA, a red, a dark lager, a citrus blonde, and something else I can't quite remember.

We had malt cooking on two burners inside and a turkey deep-fat fryer outside, then added the malt extract, then the hops, then the rest of the hops. It was quite a process! I was there about 9 hours, Brian didn't wrap up until about 11pm. That all after he drove up from Corvallis with a hangover after partying it up after the Floater concert.

During the off time we drank beer and played a couple games of Settlers. Settlers is great! It's got this board made of hexagonal cards that you rearrange for each new game, it's really fun and fast paced!

I will have to let you know when I get my share of the 32 gallons of beer, which will be about 100 bottles of beer (on the wall) to try to fit in my fridge!

Gary Johnson

2010-03-05T19:52:00.000-08:00

The guy in the center of the picture is Gary Johnson, former governor of New Mexico whom I had a chance to hear speak a few weeks ago at Lola's Room, I'll get back to this place. He is running an exploratory campaign right now to decide whether to run as Libertarian, I'll get back to them. He's a really interesting guy, he was or is an entreprenuer; he started a handy-man business and grew it to over a thousand employees, he sold it before becoming governor.

He talked about his background and answered questions from the audience. This was one of the few times that I've been around a politician and it was really interesting when he answered questions from these people, straight off the cuff and honest.

I'm a poster boy for big government, my position was created through ARRA (the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act), it has a website where contractors and other employers enter how many people they've hired as a result of the stimulus every quarter. Anyways, Gary Johnson is the man when it comes to keeping government small, he cut 1,000 jobs during his two terms (which seems like as many would be reduced through natural attrition), while the guy after him increased their roles by 4,500. He also talked about how he is different from the present governor from A to Z, he told about 'H' which was for 'helicopter', he flew in it something like 6 times, his successor has flown in it 1,000 times and purchased one for his official use, seems wasteful to me...

Another thing I liked about him was his stance on legalization of drugs, he talked about a policy called harm reduction. Harm reduction is the reduction in harm that a drug user would cause themselves or others in order to get their fix. An real world example he had of this was from the chief of police in Zurich, Switzerland, if anyone had an addiction to heroin they could get an authorization to have as much heroin as they needed. They would no longer need to steal to pay for the heroin, dealers would have to move somewhere else, and the drug disputes would be handled in the courts. This police chief told him that crime had been reduced significantly in Zurich.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_E._Johnson

I've been reading a lot about the Libertarian ideals lately and though I'm not a Republican nor one of the crazy Tea Party people, I feel more and more like our liberties have been taken away.

About Lola's Room: it's usually a dance club at night playing eighties music while people bounce up and down on the bouncy wood floor. That made it kind of an odd venue for this event.

Lazy Blog

2009-12-14T20:45:00.000-08:00

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!

2009-10-01T21:33:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-24T20:46:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-07T20:48:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-06T16:20:00.000-07:00

Audio Book Run Down (1)

2009-09-06T09:01:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-29T11:33:00.001-07:00

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

2009-08-22T13:01:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-02T22:26:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-27T10:02:00.000-07:00

The Beav

2009-07-19T10:32:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-17T10:26:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-06-29T11:12:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-29T10:57:00.001-07:00

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

2009-06-23T16:03:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-06-07T09:17:00.001-07:00

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

2009-05-30T22:02:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-29T08:59:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-08T00:02:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-05-01T10:20:00.001-07:00

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

Home Eco Party

2009-04-22T09:27:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-21T22:57:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-04-18T19:27:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-08T21:04:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-03-22T19:59:00.000-07:00

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

2009-03-22T19:48:00.000-07:00

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

2009-03-05T07:35:00.000-08:00

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

2009-02-24T08:02:00.000-08:00

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

2009-02-10T20:27:00.000-08:00

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

2009-02-10T09:45:00.000-08:00

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

2009-02-10T06:35:00.000-08:00

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!

2009-02-09T07:52:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-25T16:21:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-14T21:11:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-13T12:40:00.000-08:00

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.

Can I walk wich you?

2008-12-07T21:16:00.000-08:00

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!

2008-12-02T07:44:00.000-08:00

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

One More Reason to Celebrate

2008-11-18T07:50:00.001-08:00

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

2008-11-09T18:53:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-07T07:39:00.000-08:00

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

2008-10-30T22:10:00.001-07:00

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

2008-10-20T07:46:00.000-07:00

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!

2008-10-20T07:44:00.000-07:00

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

Max Encounter Last Night

2008-10-14T12:03:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-11T07:33:00.000-07:00

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

2008-08-12T07:26:00.000-07:00

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

2008-08-12T07:05:00.000-07:00

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

2008-07-25T07:37:00.000-07:00

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

2008-07-20T21:03:00.000-07:00

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

2008-07-13T18:51:00.000-07:00

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

2008-07-08T21:21:00.000-07:00

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

2008-07-02T21:31:00.000-07:00

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

2008-07-02T21:13:00.000-07:00

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

2008-07-02T20:57:00.000-07:00

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.