Dave's Kill Mill

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

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

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!

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!

Party, HA!

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