Fencing Project

So my dumb-ass friend, Bling! decided to replace his fence this weekend. (Sorry Bling!, you knew I had to open like that)

For those of you who don’t know Bling! he just can’t do anything ½-ass or even close to normal. He has to go above and beyond on the projects that he works on. Now, I can’t fault him for this because I am not a whole lot better myself.

But he decided to replace his fence and do it himself. He’s got a decent sized backyard and the cost to replace the fence was going to be several thousand dollars. He calls me up and asks if I can come by on Sat. to help out. No problem.
Saturday I get there and no Bling! He’s gone to the hardware store to get some chain and a “come a long.” Why? Well, in order to remove the old posts and put the new ones in Bling! rented a bobcat with a hydraulic lift and auger on it. But remember all those storms and rains we had gotten? The ground was super soft and the bobcat was stuck down about a foot or in the mud….in what is now nice trenches in his backyard.

The first thing we did was spend about an hour getting the bobcat unstuck and back on the trailer so now it was out of commission which put us back to manually digging out all the old posts and what-not. The mud was still making it ultra-difficult to get the posts out and after a while we decided to cut them off below the ground-line rather than spend all day long digging posts out.

Next came putting in the new ones. I didn’t have much more time to spare on Saturday as I had other things to attend to but I suggested he go rent a two-man auger so while he did that I help move materials around. Bling! bought everything as raw material (slats and supports). They said that the difference in price to purchase pre-built 8-foot sections of fence was fairly substantial. So I started carrying slats and what-not back into the backyard.

Bling! got back with the auger and was not in a very good mood and I was about to jet, but it looked like this was going to do the trick. I called him later and he said that they still had to hand-dig a couple of holes but that they got all the posts set and the concrete was drying.

It was just one of those projects that kept having things go wrong. I hope they started going right after I left….maybe it was me?

I never heard from him on Sunday (it rained again), but he said he got his fence finished and that it looked good. Maybe he’ll post up a pic.

Between his fence and my lighting project and I am tied and done with projects for a while.

Lighting Project

If you’ve followed the blog for a while you might remember my posting about getting the photo of Lone Peak.

http://invioletlight.blogspot.com/2008/02/year-in-making.html

After getting the photo mounted it needed lighting which kicked off a new project. The first thing to do was find some lights that I liked. The problem there is that I found a few that I thought would work but didn’t after I tried them out.

I ended up going with some Tech Lighting products called Freejack with the Swivel head.

Yesterday I finally got them installed. It took longer than I thought because I had to make all the measurements without a good frame of reference. But then I got the holes cut and the cables ran and wired it all up.

Hit the switch and…..nothing. But that was easily fixed after finding that one of my wires came lose while I was stuffing them up in the junction box.

I am pretty happy with the lights. I have some slight aesthetic work to do on them, but it’s pretty minor. I used a 34-degree beam bulb with a frosted anti-uv lens on it. Here is the finished product.

Ireland Gripped by Panic as Flooding Continues

Thunderstorm In Texas

I always find it amusing how Texans are afraid to go to California due to earthquakes, but Californians are afraid to come here due to thunderstorms. Some of my co-workers are happy to say “give me an earthquake any day.” I truly don’t understand this because you can seek shelter from a thunderstorm, but your ass is toast in an earthquake if it’s severe enough. Where are you going to go? If it’s a bad storm or a tornado you can avoid the path. Try to avoid an earthquake.

I once had a co-worker of mine tell me a story about coming to Texas. They were staying at a hotel in the DFW area. A storm rolled in and they went out on the balcony of the hotel to watch it. He said after a few minutes a bolt of lightning came down and split a tree in half about 50 yards away with enough thunder to rattle the windows and stand the hair up on his arms. As he put it, he said “fuck this” and went back inside.

Well, last night we had a good one. It was not only big in terms of physical size, but it was also big in severity. If you’ve ever seen Doppler radar displays of storms you have probably observed that they start off with a light friendly color and then go to yellow and then red if it’s severe enough. Well, last night the swath of yellow and red extended for about 100 miles north to south, and probably 15 miles east to west. On the front of it were numerous rotations and several tornadoes were spawned as a result.

But here is where it gets fun. On the occasional rare occasion you might have seen the radar turn blue or purple. This was the case last night, but it went further than that. It was black. I’m not kidding. The Doppler radar had huge black cells in them where the hail coming down was softball size and straight-line sheer winds were in excess of 100mph with rain coming down at 3+ inches / hr. I figured that they made them black to indicate you were doomed if you were caught in that shit. They might as well have put up little skulls and crossbones in the black part. I’ve never seen black cells before.

I guess I was lucky. I was just south of one of the black cells by a few miles, but got nailed pretty good by the red, yellow, and purple. The rain came down so severely that I couldn’t see across the street, and then it started hailing. Fortunately nothing big, but fairly intense.

From this pic you can get an idea of what I was looking at out of my front door. You can see the hail starting and it raining pretty good. Just to let you know, the reason the sky is blue is not because it was twilight and the sun was going down. This was taken at 9:30pm at night. It was pitch-black with the storm, but I happened to snap this one off right as some lightning lit up the sky.

The next picture is a picture of my back porch (please excuse the mess). It’s kind of hard to tell, but the rain was sheeting over my gutters it was coming down so hard and my yard as well as the porch were flooding. The really sad part? I live on a hill. That’s how hard it was raining.

But hey! I survived and as far as I can tell the only real damage I sustained was that one of my struts on my rooftop antenna came loose. I’ll have to jump up there and fix it. At least my house wasn’t shaken apart and the earth didn’t open up to swallow me whole. I’ll take the thunderstorm.

It’s All About the Ride….

We had a pretty good ride this weekend. We took off on a south-easterly route as opposed to a south-westerly route like we normally do. I had ridden part of this before and knew the road would be good with lots of beautiful scenery.

It was cool on the ride, but not cold. Just about right as long as you had some gear on which is to say that you would have been cold without it and you weren’t hot with it on. I always ride with gear on, but my friends often do not so it was good to see them sporting jackets, chaps, etc.

It’s springtime here in Texas and though it’s significantly cooler than normal the flowers are out in bloom and just about everything has greened up nicely. The bluebonnets are out, but not in mass numbers like they usually are. Sometimes, it’s a sea of bluebonnets as far as the eye can see. I think the cold has kept them at bay, though.

There are all kinds of reasons why we ride and I’ve read some very good summaries of why people ride. I am not sure that I care to list all the reasons I ride as there are many. Sometimes that reason is very simple – I am one of the small percentages that can actually ride a motorcycle whether that is because of the ability to actually ride, or because I am not afraid to ride. Not many people ride bikes and that makes us (riders) a small close-knit community.

Other times, it’s the little kid in the car next to me waving at me as he eyes my bike. They are already realizing there is a something different about riding a bike that goes beyond being stuck in a cage just as I knew there was a kid. I wave back and their face lights up even if the mom is cursing me in the front seat.

Then there are all the people that I meet when I ride. People just seem to be friendlier. “Hey that’s a cool bike, what kind is it?” at the gas pump. Stopping for lunch might yield a “What a gorgeous day to be out and about. I wish I was out there.” I am not sure if riding bikes turns you into more of a social being, or if we ride bikes because we are social beings. I think it’s the latter.

And when you are riding you get to experience the world. You are in the world and a part of it. Not stuck in a cage where you are isolated from sound, the smells, the sight and the feeling that the world has to offer. You might argue that you can get that in a convertible and I’d argue that there is still a big difference between having 2 tons of metal wrapped around you with a windshield and riding upon a machine that exposes you to the elements.

And yes, I can twist up the throttle and run through the curves harder and faster than most people ever would in a car. As I lean the bike in I am aware that my contact patch with the road is a mere ½-inch per tire and I get to physically work my motorcycle through the corner as I feel the g-forces push on my body and my bike. Knowing that at any moment an error in judgment or traction could wind me up in the ditch, or worse. Enter the corner too hot or simply realize that there is something in the road and you will find the pucker-factor quickly kicking in. For some reason I find all of this simultaneously exhilarating and oddly fascinating at the same time.

And through it all, it’s my peace….my zen….my chi. It is not only unwise, but very difficult to think about anything else but the sheer effort of riding in this manner. I often find that I am very relaxed during the ride as well as at the end of it. One of my friends told me that while on the back of my bike they zoned out to the extent that they couldn’t remember sections of the ride. How often do you get that relaxed without falling asleep?

But I also am mystified by some people and their preference of riding just as they must be by mine. In the motorcycle world you have a few basic categories of riding: Street, Off-road, and Stunting. If you ignore the fact that stunting and off-road is illegal on the street that means most people ride to commute, or ride for pleasure, or both. In any case that gets us down to two basic categories – cruisers and sport-bike riders. And though there may be a whole plethora of sub categories those are the two main ones.

And somehow, those are two worlds apart in the motorcycle community. If I put aside all of the animosity between the two camps I still don’t quite understand cruiser riders vs. sport riders. I’ve done both. I had a cruiser. I always wanted one and I finally got one. And then I realized that it was not conducive to my riding style. After a ride in New Mexico and grinding my pegs down (by leaning into corners) I realized that my style was more aggressive and I gave it up for a sport bike.

And what I’ve found since riding a sport bike is that the entire reason we ride is different. You can analyze why that reason exists but it’s there. Sport bike riders apparently live for the twisty road. The one that curves endlessly and offers the sights, smells, sounds and feeling that one cannot get from a highway.

Cruiser riders live for the interstate and the long slab down a well traveled highway. Put your feet up on the highway pegs and drone endlessly down the highway as mile after mile unfolds.

One might say that I am generalizing, and I am. But let me put it to you like this – when I get out and ride the roads I like to ride I rarely see cruisers. I see other sport bikes from time to time, but not many cruisers….until I get on a major highway and then they are all over the place. I could probably note every bike and factually cite that cruiser riders are on the major highways 80 or 90% more than on the back roads. Seriously, on one ride I counted about five motorcycles for nearly 100 miles. Then I got on a major highway and quickly racked up over 100 motorcycles (almost all cruisers) in only 20 miles.

And that’s what I don’t understand. Why is there such a huge disparity between where sport bike riders like to ride and where cruiser riders like to ride? Granted, the bikes themselves are made for different purposes, but it’s clearly not the machine that forces you to do one or the other as both machines are capable of either one. If you want to ride the back roads, you buy a sport bike. If you want to ride the highways you buy the cruiser.

But I take almost no pleasure at all from putting my bike on an interstate and slabbing it down the highway. I’d rather not ride the bike than be forced to endure this for hours on end. Turn the tables, though, and some of my cruiser rider friends would say the exact same thing about the roads that I like. It’s that different.

So while I don’t get understand the difference it’s why I ride that counts. It’s not about the destination. It’s the journey that lies beneath my tires and for me that is not found on the interstate.

I'm Addicted

So easy, so simple, yet.....

Police Tasers

I read an article about a man that was tasered so severely that he had a massive coronary and lost all but a fraction of his heart muscle. Doctors cited his ejection fraction at 10% or less and couldn’t estimate how long he might live.

Prior to being tasered for over 65 seconds straight, as well as receiving 10 taser shocks in under 2 minutes the guy was a healthy working-class adult.

Now, before I go any further let me assure you that I am not someone crying over a person getting hit with a taser. The police have a very dangerous job, and we empower them to use force I order to constrain criminals and protect themselves. And let’s face it, most criminals won’t simply stop and cease whatever it is they are doing because you ask them nicely.

This guy had a drug problem and had just made a drug purchase when he got nailed by the police for a traffic violation. In the ensuing stop he resisted arrest and got tasered.

I’ve not yet read any incident where the “victim” complied completely and still got tasered or beat. It’s probably happened, but most of the articles I’ve read are simply this:

Failure to comply with the officers
*And*
An excessive use of force (i.e. the taser).

Aside from ignoring the matter the police only have a few options when enforcing the law and / or detaining potential criminals:

Asking them to comply (i.e. stop!)
Physical confrontation and contact without weapons
Physical confrontation and contact with a club
Confrontation with pepper spray
Confrontation with a taser
Confrontation with a gun

A gun is clearly and definitively a deadly weapon. Pepper spray has been shown not to even affect some people at all, or at the very least not provide enough stopping force to ensure the safety of the officers.

Tasers, somehow, seem to be the best choice. They provide stopping power and limit the distance the office must be from the suspect. But somehow, we’ve gone wrong. I think part of the problem is that the potential long-term effects of tasers are just being realized. It was assumed that tasering someone didn’t really do any irreparable harm, but apparently there are plenty of medical cases citing otherwise.

Due to this assumption the officers have apparently taken this to mean it’s OK to just taser someone whenever they don’t immediately comply with the officers request. Clearly we have a lot of cases where the immediate repercussions of one’s actions is far more severe than the infraction.

Last year, the Fort Worth police department reported five deaths from tasers. That’s reported and proven and doesn’t account for any unreported deaths or other injuries that may have been linked to tasers but wasn’t proven.

While I don’t believe we should take tasers away from police officers I do think there should be a general policy review of how and when to use a taser. Maybe it would help improve public relations and prevent some unnecessary harm to citizens.

And let me flip that coin over for a moment – when a cop asks you to stop, or get on the ground, or sit still just do it. And then there won’t be a reason to use ANY force on you.

More Thought On Climate Change

I had a hard time eating my lunch today. It was a tasty dish of linguine and clams, but it was what I was reading that was making me sick. In the observer there is what could have been a very interesting article had it not been so slanted and full of errors and inconsistencies that it made me not want to eat.

The subject of the article was about our national parks and how park officials are dealing with….well, I’m not quite sure. In one paragraph it was global warming. In the next it was climate change (the buzzword since apparently global warming isn’t happening). Which is it? Global warming or climate change? They couldn’t seem to decide and flip-flopped back and forth between the two.

Sigh…. So I struggled to get through the article, but then they started citing warmest temperatures on record (factually incorrect) for several parks, rising sea levels eating away the costal terrain (factually incorrect), etc.

But…I kept trying. I was able to get as far as mentioning that park officials aren’t quite sure what to do. The general operating procedure for environmental sanctuaries has typically been to let nature take it’s course and not interfere.

But suddenly, this isn’t good enough. The landscape is changing. Species are dying off, or moving out. And of course, it’s all due to climate change or global warming. I’m not sure which, if you go by the article.

So now, if you are a greenie you may not like what I have to say (not that the first part of this hasn’t already got your hackles up).

Climate change has been happening for billions of years. Guess what? It will continue to happen for billions of years. Many of us like to think of California as a beautiful paradise with oceans, giant redwoods, and luscious green fields…..but it wasn’t always this way. Over the span of a few million years, a significant portion of CA was transformed from desert to the forests that inhabits it today. Some of CA is still desert. And do you think that the species of animals that inhabited some of those original deserts and swamps are still there now that the redwoods are growing? Of course not. They moved on. They adapted, or they died off. This was not man’s doing, but nature’s doing. The natural evolution of life on our planet.

Look people, this is a natural occurrence of our planet. I’m not trying to convince you that people can’t or don’t have an impact. They certainly can. And ultimately we are also part of this natural system.

But part of the problem is that now people are not only trying to stop or significantly reduce man’s impact (not a bad thing) to the environment but those same people are now impacting the environment just by trying to “save” it from itself, or what might otherwise be a perfectly normal step in climate change and evolution.

The environment was not meant to be static. Stop thinking of it in such a limited capacity as the scope of recent history and the near future.

And do you really want to make a difference? Then stop breeding. That’s right, you heard me. Stop breeding. Stop having so many freaking kids. Stop letting illegals pour into the country by the millions. Stop trying to save every single person on this planet that probably shouldn’t be here due to evolution.

OMG! What am I saying? How can I be so cruel?

It’s simple…. For every human being in our country, or on the planet for that matter, we feel that we must provide the basic necessities of life. That pretty much comes down to a handful of things:
Food
Water
Shelter
Medical treatment

In order to provide food we must transform the landscape to provide the food in the form of crops or farms (animals, fish, etc.).

In order to provide water we must damn the rivers, change their flow, and drain them. This also plays a role in providing food.

In order to provide shelter we must cut trees, mine for gravel and other minerals (bricks, concrete, steel).

In order to provide medical treatment we must again harvest certain chemicals, we must manufacture chemicals, and we must also test those chemicals.

And somehow we have to have education in order to teach people how to farm, irrigate, build and treat people.

And once all that is done, there must be a system in place to transport all of these goods and people from one area to another (our infrastructure)....

Why? Because there are too many freaking people.

I know, I know. I’m a bastard. But it’s quite simple.

Forget renewable energy, forget hydrocarbons for a moment and think about the very basic principles of why we have to have that stuff in the first place. It’s because we have to alter our planet to accommodate the people.

So if you really want to do something to “save the planet” then stop breeding, stop trying to save everyone, and stop participating in a world that requires being altered to support everyone. Can you do it?

Emergency Exit From a Tent!

A few weekends ago I was down at Fossil Rim with a pretty lady and we stayed in one of the “permanent tents” that they have down there. These are pretty cool structures that are a hybrid between a tent and a permanent structure. The walls have studs in them, but the actual walls are made of canvas. They are tiny. Maybe 12 long x 10 feet across in the main room and then the bathroom is just large enough to stand at the sink / toilet. Don’t get me wrong, these are very cool just not very big. So you can imagine that I cracked up when I saw the emergency evacuation procedures posted above the toilet.

My thought is that if you can’t find your way out of this then you really are a ‘Tard.

Jake Walks Among Us – Pt. 1

Bling! and his wife went out of town to attend a wedding this weekend. Since I didn’t have much going on, I agreed to puppy sit for them. Their puppy is Jake. Jake is a bloodhound and German Shepard mix. He mostly looks like a bloodhound with some darker markings of a Shepard…..that is until Mrs. Bling! sticks his ears up and then he looks a lot like a Shepard.

Jake is still a puppy, but he’s a large puppy. At just over three months old he already weighs just over 30lbs. He’s pretty smart and fairly well disciplined, but I can tell he’s testing me a bit to see what his boundaries are.

I wasn’t paying real close attention and he grabbed the cord that lets my Venetian style blinds up and down. Naturally he tugged on it and the blinds came down and then pulled the cord back. He thought this was a game and wanted to keep playing.

He also managed to pee on one spot of the carpet….in fact, while I was typing this he peed on a spot on the carpet, and I had just taken him out. But it’s not all his fault. He’s in a new environment, and although I’ve been around Jake before it’s not the same thing as having his true masters there.

I also later realized that I can take Jake out four times in an hour, and he’ll use the bathroom every single time. That dog can go!!!

Jake Walks Among Us – Pt. 2

I’m into my second day with Jake. Last night was off to a rough start as Jake wanted to play while I was trying to cook dinner. So I gave him his dinner first, and then worked on mine. That seemed to work out a bit better.

Of course, I had to take him out a few times, too. Then I tried to kick back and watch a DVD but Jake would have none of that….at least not at first. It took me a while to get him settled down and then he wouldn’t leave my side while he slept. I even took a nice hot soak in the tub and he came in to lay next to the tub….then next to the bed.

And then I was woken up in typical dog-style-fashion with him being bright eyed and bushy tailed at 6:00am. He came in and barked once at me and then put his big paws up on the bed. He didn’t try to get in bed, just wanted to make sure I knew he was awake….which meant taking him immediately outside to pee and poo. Then it was breakfast time.

I took him for a jog to get me some breakfast. Jake is testing me, I can tell. I’ve had him on three walks now and every time he doesn’t mind me nearly as well as Bling! and Mrs. Bling! He’s still good, but not as good. He has a much harder time “heeling” with me than with them.

So I kept him outside and played with him a bit before doing some yard work. Jake does not like new things and new noises. The lawnmower terrified him and I hadn’t even started it, yet. I tied him up with a long piece of rope so he could sit outside in the grass or under the truck. When I was mowing or weed eating, it was under the truck. Take a break and he’d chill on the grass.

We’re still feeling each other out a bit, but I’m onto his game. Wear his ass out and then he sleeps for a while….

Jake Walks Among Us – Pt 3

I must have worn Jake out pretty good yesterday as he crashed pretty hard about 9:00 and slept ALL night long. He woke up once in the morning to be let out and then promptly crashed back out.

Naturally, he woke up at an “inopportune time” and I had to feed him and then play with him a bit to calm him down. After that it was off to the park. I walked him, ran him, and let him chill in the shade. We had other dogs and kites so he got to play with the dogs and chase the kites. Other kids played with him and all in all I’d say Jake had a great time.

As soon as we got back to the house he sacked out. Bling! came by to pick him up and take him back home. He was so tired he didn’t want to get up and go home. But alas, away he went.

It was a lot of fun and responsibility having him around for the weekend. I really enjoyed his company even if we had to test each other every now and then. But I think it would be a lot easier with two people instead of just me. I also have to re-think whether I should get a puppy or not. I am not traveling nearly as much but I still think that’s a lot of work and effort to keep a watchful eye on the puppy and it would be hard for me to ask anyone to do that.

As much as I miss him, it’s also nice to have a break. Now I know how parents feel with kids….. And at least I can go over to Bling!’s (how is that for grammar?) and still play with him.

Moving to Montana Now – Pt 2

Some of you may know that I’ve been up in Montana a bit here and there for vacations and work. Over a year ago, I had an opportunity to live in MT but ultimately turned it down for several different reasons with one of the biggest ones being the sheer expense of moving up there due to the housing costs.

I’ve had one of my friends who is into real estate keeping an eye on things for me and I’ve also had a chance to check out some properties while I was hanging out up there. The recent collapse of the housing market and tightening of the economy has really brought the cost of homes and land down by a significant margin.

That being said, I finally made the plunge and invested in some land up there. It’s a pretty sweet spot up in the foothills of the Bear Canyon area. It’s got a little creek running through the property of 10 acres and is totally surrounded by trees and open fields.

But there is one catch, I can’t afford it without selling my house so I’ve also made the decision to sell my house and move up to MT. I know I can’t get as much as I’d like for my house here, but I have quite a bit of equity and that will help pay for a new house to be built up there.

I’ll be in the mountains, with the animals, and have skiing, hiking, biking, fishing, etc. all nearby and no more blistering summers and 2 weeks between seasons.

It’s going to be difficult announcing this to my friends and family, but I guess I’ll have to start making the phone calls. Wish me luck…..

This Kind of thing Pisses me Off

Why is this allowed to happen? Simple – American has no federal law that defines the national language of the United States. I’ve already pointed out that state and local governments can pretty much pick any language that they like.




If you think this is about what language that we speak, you may be missing the point. The real point is that we are allowing multiculturalism to tear apart the United States one little bit at a time. We are losing our unity. That is the point.

Think your Mac is Safe?

On March 27th at a hacking contest a hacker compromised a Macbook Air in two minutes. Comparatively, the Vista box was not compromised until two days later. And the last update I read indicated that the Ubuntu box was still standing.

Here is the original article.