In the Rural Doghouse....

So Ive been looking around the net for a decent deal on a pickup when I ran across this little bit in an advertisemnt for a farm truck. I spit my beer out. If anything like this came out of my mouth Im sure the closest female wouldnt hesitate for the instant slap. A good laugh though:

"This HD truck is all equipped and ready to help your wife with the winter feeding and fencing chores..You might be surprised how much work she can get done by herself with this outfit..Besides the anniversary is prolly commin' up..The ole' 2 birds w/ 1 stone theory apply's here..Power, economy, durability, and her in a better mooooo..'d at the end of her long day ..priceless !! The unit is in excellent condition.."

Speechless!

Ponzi Schemes....

So there I was reading some stories on Neatorama about the infamous ponzi schemes directly related to the current Madoff incident. This reminded me of a similar deal that happened down in Costa Rica. The CR thing was an interesting story, collapsing just previous to my arrival. I never really knew the whole deal but I was surrounded by the people effected. Retirees. Older women, the ones who came down with their complete saving to drink margaritas amongst the young surfer beach dudes and relax in the sun. Fail. They all lost it all.

As the wiki article here states:

"The Brothers was a large investment operation, eventually exposed as a Ponzi scheme, in Costa Rica from the late 1980s until 2002. The fund was operated by brothers Luis Enrique and Osvaldo Villalobos. Investigators determined that the scam took in at least $400 million. Most of the clientele were American and Canadian retirees but some Costa Ricans also invested the minimum $10,000. About 6,300 individuals ultimately were involved. Interest rates were 3% per month, usually paid in cash, or 2.8% compounded. The ability to pay such high interest was attributed to Luis Enrique Villalobos’ existing agricultural aviation business, investment in unspecified European high yield funds, and loans to Coca Cola, among others. Osvaldo Villalobos’ role was primarily to move money around a large number of shell companies and then pay investors. In May 2007 Osvaldo Villalobos was sentenced to 18 years in prison for fraud and illegal banking. Luis Enrique Villalobos remains a fugitive."

Yikes. All this makes the idea of real estate pretty strong. Im hiding all my money in foreign cars in the driveway. Should work well over the long run I think....

Interaction Distraction....

In addition to doing mega mapping and design for the holidays, Ive become preoccupied with self-education. Not the fastest at this process, I need to take breaks for backyard pond development and mud research, rain gutter approach and installation, snow ball application towards agilty training in a special ruddy broken eared dog, and more server based coolness that I was previously unaware of as of last night.

I have only built one such website previously, in Oregon, long since gone. Now I tackle myself with uploading and hosting my own business site, as business is looking fair for the near future. You can check out the specs here: X and remember that this is continually a work in progress.

Of course I am open to positive and negative criticism, as well as help and pointers in HTML via MS WORD.

All I can say its an ugly fugly road in the beginning.

Note: As the router has changed so has the IP for the ftp server. To avoid this problem of changing all the time, paste in "geographicsinternational.hpshare.net" to your ftp client and all should work better, if at all.

On the Economic Crisis....

I was out of work before the collapse, so the crisis doesnt really affect me...

- Me

Robocop.....

I didnt know this before but rbc IS awesome!

Anatomy of a Raft Guide....

Digging in the Dirt....

You might think that was a literal title. Its not. But considering how the dust accumulates here, it seemed fitting as I dusted off the gear I found. Heres a taste of the coffee induced weirdness from this mornings dig-around. The weird part is why I took the photos. The really weird part will be in the next post. Unfortunately I had to be the main model, as Kona cant wear a lifejacket efficiently.

haha lmao.....

Speaking of Beer....

The crystals made by beer after a sweet super freezing method at Florida State University....

Instructionals....

Today were going to learn about the keg, how it works and why its sweet.

First you need to know why:

"Beer is Proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy" Benjamin Franklin

Now that we have that out of the way....the parts that make the whole, or fill the glass.

First and foremost this needs to be recognized as a system.

In the center you have the keg (beer containing unit), CO2 unit on the right (pressure), and the faucet (dispensing apparatus), and the thanksgiving turkey base (soup).
You can disregard the soup for now. Before you even get a keg you need the ability to serve it. A hammer and a screwdriver might work for an evening, but that rash and inconsiderate to your guests. So a delivery system can be tight, like a CO2 tank and regulators and gauges, that start looking like space shuttle components, you know the fun is about to begin.

The gauges represent the volume in the tank and the pressure in the line to the keg. 10+ psi is sufficient to get the beer out without power spraying the drywall out. You're going to want a nice cool temp from 40 to 30 degrees F. Note: big knob is the on/off and the little flat screw is the psi to the keg line.

Now once the non volatile gases reach the keg and pressure it, it can squirt the goods out the other side. Remember the reason this is cool: Price and Longevity. At about half the price of pint at the bar, and a really long shelf life due to the inert gasses that don't spoil the goods, the potentials are endless.
This piece is called the coupler, and depending on what continent you keg is from decides the type of coupler needed to really hook into this beast. Sometimes called a sankey.

The faucet is the most recognizable part. Responsible for the beer-glass transfer. Depending on the beer and the gas, faucets determine the pour. Nitrogen gassed beers like Guinness require a spinny thing to release the gas during the pour giving that thick rich head we all love. The one pictured is a standard pour.

So to pour keg beer you need something to push it out (CO2) and a pour jobber (faucet). Simple, efficient, fun.

We can go more into detail next time

Polls Me Along....

Get over there and VOTE!

--------------->

If you havent noticed yet, youll be seeing some nifty and strange polls on the right side, updated about every 2 weeks or so. Enjoy.

Because its Shelving me Crazy....

Heres the idea: Lots of books require lots of shelves. But these shelves need to be neat. Most neat. Below you will see two sites for planned shelving, one a sketch and one a photo to help imagine the thing. Ideas and suggestions welcome.

The media room:

The office walk:

Note: Hutch seen in pic is for sale!

Dogfish Head....

I present you here an excellent excerpt from an article in the New Yorker about a crazy good brewery and some beer history:

'The seductions of drink are wound deep within us. Which may explain why, two years ago, when John Gasparine was walking through a forest in southern Paraguay, his thoughts turned gradually to beer. Gasparine is a businessman from Baltimore. He owns a flooring company that uses sustainably harvested wood and he sometimes goes to South America to talk to suppliers. On the trip in question, he had noticed that the local wood-carvers often used a variety called palo santo, or holy wood. It was so heavy that it sank in water, so hard and oily that it was sometimes made into ball bearings or self-lubricating bushings. It smelled as sweet as sandalwood and was said to impart its fragrance to food and drink. The South Americans used it for salad bowls, serving utensils, maté goblets, and, in at least one case, wine barrels.

Gasparine wasn’t much of a wine drinker, but he had become something of a beer geek. (His thick eyebrows, rectangular glasses, and rapid-fire patter seem ideally suited to the parsing of obscure beverages.) A few years earlier, he’d discovered a bar in downtown Baltimore called Good Love that had several unusual beers on tap. The best, he thought, were from a place called Dogfish Head, in southern Delaware. The brewery’s motto was “Off-Centered Ales for Off-Centered People.” It made everything from elegant Belgian-style ales to experimental beers brewed with fresh oysters or arctic cloudberries. Gasparine decided to send a note to the owner, Sam Calagione. Dogfish was already aging some of its beer in oak barrels. Why not try something more aromatic, like palo santo?

Calagione was used to odd suggestions from customers. On Monday mornings, his brewery’s answering machine is sometimes full of rambling meditations from fans, in the grips of beery enlightenment at their local bar. But Gasparine’s idea was different. It spoke to Calagione’s own contradictory ambitions for Dogfish: to make beers so potent and unique that they couldn’t be judged by ordinary standards, and to win for them the prestige and premium prices usually reserved for fine wine. And so, a year later, Calagione sent Gasparine back to Paraguay with an order for forty-four hundred board feet of palo santo. “I told him to get a shitload,” he remembers. “We were going to build the biggest wooden barrel since the days of Prohibition.”'

See the rest of this enormous and great article here at the New Yorker!

I like....

I cant believe that the state actually did this....

The Ultimate Frisbee....

Stolen Fileage....

Different from silage. I noticed last night that a bunch of my favorite music has made an escape from the ftp. So Ive made some changes and the only place upload is going to be the Other folder, everything else is read only. I may be adding some SSL security features with the current asian threat. Be Careful.

As well Ive added a new poll on the right:

Bit'thes....

After taking a gander at my ftp bc some friends were having some failed transfers I found something very interesting. Stupid idiots over in Asia are trying to hack into my system. Bitches. Bitches. Bitches....

Eye Que....

I just randomly took an IQ while waiting for Brians image to render and I scored a 119...Im not sure if thats any good, but thats what I got.

Logging....

Not nearly as cool as the Owl Incident but fun nonetheless. Over the last couple weeks of cold evenings and way colder mornings the wall of wood has diminished. I had to replace an entire side of said wall with unseasoned split wood and start chopping up the old logs and mixing with the less new logs for fire with superb quality and niceness that shimmers with the evening briskness and broken moonlight through drafty windows. And a glass of wine. Shimmer.

Shimmer.

As you can see the vehicular collection plays musical parking slots on a weekly basis and the driveway gravel is so deep places that you need 4x4.

Smegma is not for the light-of-heart.

Interesting Candidate....

L'scaping....

Heres a crazy photomerge of the patio rocks from the roof. These things are cause of exhaustion and back pain. I reckon once they get laid out its gonna look pretty sweet.

Great Owl Transfer....

Great gooberries..... this is awesome. See how Brian dealt with this one!

File Transfer Protocol....

New goodies are up. Check the videos folder for the 1st season of Dexter, which is probably the most weird show Ive watched, about a serial killer, who is a forensic police detective.

Coming soon will be the pics of my flagstone quarry, being dug for the new back patio. Of course you cant have a patio without lumberjacking too, so expect some new baby trees on the vicinity!

Downloading....

As apt as I am to go find some new entertainment frequently, I have to say how awesome somethings truely are. For example, Taken, is pretty much only available by dl and still isnt released in the states, and what an amazing movie it is. Another, the Firelfy series...a space cowboy low budget adventure into the best cast ever, imho.

You may wonder why I bring this up? well with the ftp charging...theres going to be new and rad availability for friends and family, and Ill probably discuss my new findings, new and old.

New findings:
-Cowboy Bebop soundtrack. Awesome
-Hertzfeltd movie sketches
-Snl Jeopardy
-Never say Nevis Again (kayak movie)
-Ninja Scroll

This is just a taste in archives!

Real Life....

Pure Awesomeness....

New in the day are all server based.

1. Upgraded the RAM from 512 to 2Gb. How awesome is that? It took some serious invasive surgery to make it happen though.
2. FTP server is up and running. And it seems to be FAST. With Garrett as my personal tester we made it happen in two days of extreme frustration.

Thanks to the tutorial I was able to disassemble, strip some screws and reassemble, power on and adjust page file settings. Way faster now.

Note: check out the poll on the right....Vote!

Disappointing...

After just reading this,

"My life is in God's hands," Palin said. "If he's got doors open for me, that I believe are in our state's best interest, the nation's best interest, I'm going to go through those doors."

I cant help but think wonder what would happen if people actually made their own decisions and held themselves responsible for them as well. If I remember correctly, 'walking' was a trial and error thing. I didnt know that political offices were managed by god?

Nor did I know that someone with a felony charge could even be considered for any office. Looks like nows my chance to run for office.....

Server City....

It here. New and improved. It is, infact, weird. Still getting used to Windows Home Server and all its nuances.

Holy Handgrenades Batman....

Bozeman Police Report....

- A woman reported that a man was trying to break into her neighbor’s house on Chisler Drive in Belgrade at 11:35 a.m. She called back and said the would-be burglar was actually a tree.

Pipestone Revisited....

In all the mess that is leftover from College, scattered around the house, I found a stack of cds. In this stack is a disc labeled pipestone. I inserted said disc into lappy and found all the gis data from my mapping project Senior year. Stoked, I present the findings here:

Smuggling Grapes....

I dont like baseball, period. Last night I decided to take some time off working on the klein to watch some world series action. Boy, was I wrong about the action. None. Never is, never was. So we came home and I worked on the bike some more.

Switched the handlebars back with a chop chop and applied the brakes and shifters where I could. It apparent that Im in need of some parts, ie, levers and shifters. but for the now the bullhorns will have to work....

12 Pair of Wheels....

So over the last week, I had high hopes of getting some work done. Those dreams were crushed (thankfully) when I got this phone call. Damon was in town. He and friends rode their bike for 3+ weeks and were in Taos, where a friend was taken out by a flying dead dog that was hit by a car. After a little hospital time and some brewskies, I picked em up.Some beer in bottles and kegs were drained. Some shisha smoked. Grand tales of the phenomenal were told. The Klein was rebuilt, if not frankensteined and doors modified and replaced on the flunder. Hangovers were free of charge.

Change....

The original cast, reunited. The message is different but I think youll get the point. Remember the originals form 8ish years ago? I laughed really hard on this one!!

Overload....

The first wood run with the pickup proved that the 'flunder was up to the task, if only just once. It rode on the axle the whole way home. Either way its still fun to lower the tire pressure and do some high speed laps on the mesa.
Before we left to cut I was checking the tranny fluid and was warming it up in gear when this happened. Funny.

If you havent seen the beautiful dogs lately, see them here. A MUST SEE

Debauchery in Red....

If the 'Flunder could drink, it would be a rambling idiot. Great farses would be told and many a crowd gathered.

The 'Flunder took its maiden voyage to the mesa today. Lots of high speed turns. Lobey guttural engine noises. Some bad ones too. Some major miss-shifts. Lots of small trees flattened. Lots of puddles' moisture redistributed to the undercarriage. One giant front end bottom-out. A little bit of air time on the rollers. No doors. All mud is game.

Some new developements include the doors being halved, making a 2x4 armrest on it, and bolting it on. Ideas, bc Im way open for ideas at this stage. Remember that cost is an important thing to keep low. Wheels and tires are cool bc theyre swappable to the 4runner. Ideas?

Debaticles....

After watching the final debates I learned a thing a two about the american public. Most are ridiculous. I think Im gonna vote for "that one over there".

On the same page is this....absolutely hilarious. And it has some amount of truth to it or it wouldnt be funny.

And THIS, which is to say that I learned a lot about some of the political platforms of the candidates and took the quiz, which told me Im correct about how I feel and who Im voting for.

Toasting It....

The hard drive is a burning. I set stuff to render and come back hours later only to find its not done yet. But its ok I found a way to pass the time. Digging. I dug a trench from the driveway to the back yard where there will soon be my own custom drainage pond. If I could only find some bentonite. funny thing is I started emptying the water barrels and watching the water flow only to find it not only doesnt go to the end but disappears into the nothingness. Nothingness is a synonym for gopher hole. 150 gallons sucked up by gophers. Made me made so I started excavating the tunnel and found that it goes the distance of the house plus more into the neighbors lot. Ugh.
Illustrator and Arcmap. A match made in heaven. My first combo print that turned out to be so high res that I completely lost my schist. Note my unorthodox hillshading from the SE.

Reedumacation....

Well I have been wanting to learn some cool things lately, and with the mapping things kinda oozing under the door I figured I better relearn Illustrator. I found this rad 30 day tutorial to learn the basics. Since I tried some other mini tutorials and only got to the 4th word before hanging it up and going to bed, I figured this is a great place to start. And it is.

The other day I was eating breakfast at the airport and found myself surrounded by beer and tequila paraphernalia. I was admiring the beer labels and how they differ. Then it hit me, I should make a Geographics Intl label to throw on my maps as a source label. I drew it out and now am learning tracing and everything else. Pretty stoked I am.
Not stoked about the headache I have had for the last week, lingering. Better go play in the rain or something.

Mania of Tiles....

Progression feels like a removing a limb with a spoon.

Tile Mania....

One of those projects that I have always wanted to do is mosaic tile something. Right now is the first and probably the last time I will do this. Not that its difficult, you just need to be in the right mind frame to do such tedious work on purpose. Morning should be a great time, but with the addition of coffee youre too shaky to stick a tile to the side of a barn. Midday, maybe but playing outside seems a better option. Afternoon, works well but the eyes are already tired so end up feeling crosseyed. Evening, should be nice but end up staring at corner for half an hour without moving, so the progression is slow.

I started out the top with a simple guilloche pattern. When the tiles arrived I realized I ordered too few, so I started getting creative with what I had versus ordering more. the top is going to have this flowing frosting effect oozing over a wall of cobalt blue, which is my favorite tile color to date.

Prepping the surface: clean and cover with a glue/water mixture. Draw pattern. Tape off sides so the glue and grout dont inexplicably expand their range.


Prepping the tiles: Soak soak soak. Peel off mesh. Probably the most mentally taxing part of the job.



Gluing em on: dab of glue on surface and stick the tile, line it up, repeat. Run out of tile, soak tile, peel tile, dry tile, wait, stick, repeat.

The Keg Died....

The keg died.

Clay Ducks have No Chance....

Some footage from the explosive weekend (in more ways than one!!)

True Woodsmobile....

With the help of a small collection of junk Ive been saving since college (why?) Ive been transforming the Pathflunder into something marvelous (if youre a redneck).


I have added a utility rack. This way when youre hitting the whoops out on the mesa you know exactly where that sharp axe is (...going). It also looks fairly bad ass. Soon to come might be roof lights and perhaps some mirrors.

Projectos....

With the end of rafting season and the unemployment season just beginning I finally have time to so all those ridiculous projects I have been talking about. My attention span has been flooded. I can no longer talk on the phone and write things down at the same time. As well, with such insane projects I have the major need for motivational music. Diving through the stacks of college era CDs I start throwing in stuff I havent heard for long time or have never listened to, I just own it. Not to anyones surprise a lot of said music is better left on the shelf, but every once in a while I find a real gem. For example, I just popped in Chemical Brothers - Push the Button. Fantastic!! Buffalo Head Tom... not so good. I wish I could find my old copy of Information Society, that stuff rocked, with samples from star trek and such.

Stay tuned... project info ahead!

Website....

I need one. Trying to start a side project to sell my mapping skills. Someone out there can hopefully point me in the right direction. Brian? (Florida or California)


Ive been working on a bunch of river maps. Mainly bc the ones I have seen suck to the largest degree. This needs to be remedied. Maps are cool, so they should look good and not lame.
Other thoughts (open for opinion) include making a series of maps, large scale, and matting them and displaying them around town for sale and such. Its an art display with actual information. I think that is rad.

The image above is a map of the Taos Box, DEM vs Topo. If you have anything you want mapped, printed, designed, let me know. The plotter prints up to 42 inches wide by 100 feet, so it CAN be big.

Ass Full of Pipewrench....

Not Enough Proof....

What Im about to tell you is fact. Though it may not seem so, its true.

A very brisk morning, to the point of considering wearing the bed until things warm up. Two full days of rain and the air temperature seems to cut right through you. Need Fire. I spark up the coffee maker and head outside for some logs. The gate is swollen sticky from the moisture, but reluctantly squeaks open. Two slow steps later I see a little movement from just beyond the trailer. A tail. A giant puffy white/grey tail. This may be the largest bunny I have ever seen, I think to myself. 2 more steps and I find out that my large bunny is indeed a giant bobcat. Bigger than any other I have ever seen. It looks at me and hides behind the pathflunder while I try and snap a camera phone pic. I am dumb. It disappears behind the wood pile never to be seen again. I need a cup of coffee.

Post Event Thoughts:
- that could have been 2 dead dogs
-must've weighed 150lbs
-looks a little different than my friends pixie-bob
-that thing was gone in stealth with a quickness
-need more coffee, that was rad

EDIT: PROOF....

Look, Left of the rear bumper. Grey CAT!!!! Apparently the guys at the bar said it might weigh at max 40 lbs. Could be? Unfortuneatly the pic leads the viewer to believe tha cat is smaller than it actually was, kinda like fishing.

3, 2, 1...Ignite!...

A better video has presented itself.

So I present it to you:

Pathflunder....

So once I actually got started, things just rolled together. Pieces came out, new ones went in. Put the sombitch in gear and go.

As you may have known the bolts were pretty well broken off in the block. Joe had the idea of using a left handed bit to pull those suckers out on their own accord. And of course it worked like dream. Too bad theres no way reach said bolts with american designed mechanical pieces of crap. Ive said enough.

But just look at how nice that pops out. 1, 2.

And heres the new ones, in place and ready to go. I have the bad habit of tightening the bejeebus out of engine bolts, thus stripping them. So for this round on a purely worthless vehicle, I kept my monster pipes on easy and just loved them in there. I bet they fall out.

Note all the grimes and grease on everything. I believe thats going to play a part later....

Weve got some rust. Weve got some chunky burly rust. Weve got some missing parts too.

We also have a complete gasket kit. New. In the box. Minus the parts I lost. I really dont care. At the same time, since I was thinking about actually starting this beast up, I thought itd be nice if I checked the oil. The dipstick was in all ways black. Black, chunky, nasty. I hate to put 5 bucks into this thing, but it looks like Im gonna have to change the oil at some point.

So this is another one of my first videos. Unfortunately I think I had my finger on the mic the whole time (again). So I didnt make another one. There are a couple funny happening in here, especially if youve never seen the beast before. Enjoy!