gregjsmith

July 24, 2006

Sprinkler Project Update

Remember that sprinkler project I took a while back, back in March as a matter of fact. I had planned to only take a few weeks to complete it. Here it is 4 months later and it’s still not done.

I did make some progress. I have the valve box installed, vaves installed and one of the two lines hooked up. All I need to do is install the 2nd line and leak test and I can burry everything.

OK, so I admit that general laziness has slowed the project. I’m also going to blame the weather. We’ve had so much rain that the 24 inch trench has filled up with water to the top. There hasn’t been that much time in between rains to let the ground dry up, and I don’t want be playing in the mud. Depending on how the weather cooperates I plan to make this a priority again.

July 17, 2006

Spaceport America

Goodbye Southwest Regional Spaceport. Hello Spaceport America. New Mexico officials planned to unveil the new name Monday for a proposed $225 million space hub where British billionaire Sir Richard Branson hopes to send paying tourists on suborbital flights. The previous name was a mouthful to pronounce and didn’t reflect the cutting-edge vision of the project, said New Mexico Economic Development Secretary Rick Homans.

I’m not sure I like the new name. Having a space port is cool no matter what the name.

July 17, 2006

Santa Ana Arena

What’s in a name? In the case of Rio Rancho’s $45 million, 160,000-square-foot arena and events center, about $500,000 a year. The Santa Ana Pueblo has reached an agreement with the city of Rio Rancho to purchase naming rights for the center for $2.5 million for five years, Mayor Kevin Jackson said.

Link

July 12, 2006

Channel 4 News Chopper

The Channel 13 news is reporting on channel 4’s news helicopter crash. Yes, yes, they called it a “hard landing” but I saw the video, it’s a crash.

The news helicopter from KOB-TV was in the Taos area today covering the story of the missing University of New Mexico police officer when something went wrong. Late this afternoon the chopper was carrying a news photographer and pilot when it made what the station is calling a hard landing. That was serious enough to break the skids on the bottom of the chopper. Video aired later showed the chopper on its left side with its main rotor blades snapped off and most of the cockpit window glass missing. We’re told by KOB that neither the photographer nor pilot suffered serious injuries. Neither was identified.

July 11, 2006

Free Zooomer Accounts

Zooomer is a photo sharing site built off the same APIs as Flickr, but is being much more aggressive at adding features. They are now giving away free pro accounts to bloggers, all one has to do is post a picture from Zooomer (as I have below).

IMG_7230Hosted on Zooomr

I already paid for a 2 years of pro accounts on Flickr, should I switch?

[Update] Doesn’t look like I will be switching, Zooomer only allows bloggers that own their own domain to sign up for a free account, when I put my blog in I get the message, “Uh-Oh! The blog url that you gave us belongs to another member on Zooomr!”

[Update] OK so I over reacted. I needed to post a pic from my account, not just any old pic. My bad, sorry Zooomer. SO Here’s a picture I uploaded.

April 30, 2006

Poor Quality Roofing Jobs

This is what a poor quality roofing job gets you, shingles that literally blow off the roof. In this case it appears that the roofer may have put one nail in the shingles then stapled the rest of it. Yes, freaking staples!

I’ve blogged about it before, New Mexico gets very windy in the spring and fall. This spring we we had winds up to 50 MPH and the windy season seems, to me at least, have lasted longer than normal. The winds came from the west and this side of the roof faces west. Along with the poor attachment of the shingles leads the the perfect recipe for this problem. The previous owners must have had this problem because they had nailed many of the shingles on this side of the roof down. Yet they made the problem worse by nailing through the visible part of the shingle, which is bad because they essentially broke through the seal of the shingle, leaving a place for water to leak through. All those nail heads had to be covered with tar.

Repairing these missing shingles was pretty easy. I collected all the blown off shingles from around the property rather than buying new ones. I carefully slid the shingles under neath the tiles above it, where it was missing, and put it back in place where it matches the position of the other shingles. I then lifted the tile above it up enough so I could put some nails in, 4 nails per shingle. The nails are under the shingles where they belong and safe from the elements. Hopefully the tar on the shingles melts and holds the whole mess together, or at least thats how its suppose to work.

April 27, 2006

Remodeling Continues

An attempt this weekend to repair my leaking bathroom resulted in new stuff. First we tried to fix the leaking sink, only to find it so old and corroded that it was better to replace it. I had planned to replace it at some point and I really didn’t like the double-ugly cabinet. That’s how I got the pedestal sink along with the new faucet.

Time to tackle the toilet, but pretty much the same thing. Old, corroded and ugly. Initally I was worried the new 1.6 gallon toilet would not flush as well as the old 5 gallon, but I’m happy to report that it is doing a fine job. I also upgraded to a nice padded seat.

I also removed the old, ugly, cheap-ass cabinet that was hanging above the toilet. I replaced the square mirror with this combo round mirror and medicine cabinet. I don’t care for the way it sticks out of the wall but i am happy with the look. Total trips to Home Depot for the project: 4.

March 26, 2006

Ditch Digging

Spring appears to be here, with summer just around the corner. Time to get the backyard ready and get grass growing. Thankfully the previous owners had grass growing and working sprinklers. What I need is a modular and scalable sprinkler system, since I plan have more than one source of water and many more things to water. I will need to dig up the current system and redo the primary control system.

The problem with New Mexico soil is it’s a layer of sand on a layer of clay. When thats been covered up with rock and plastic for many years, with no water to soften it up, you end up trying to dig through cement. The best method for digging is to dig a small hole, fill it with water, let it soak, then dig a little more out. Plus the previous owners surrounded the control valves with cement, making it even harder to get in there.

Today I managed to dig about 30 inches where the control valves are. Why they hell they are that deep I have no idea. In New Mexico you only need about 18 inches deep for the valves. It’s just insane and I’m going to have to remove some of the concrete to get to to the valves. Something I was hoping to avoid.

I also forgot to mention the other valve. Once valve controls the sprinklers and the other controls… something else. I have no idea. It goes out to the yard but there’s no other obvious sprinkler heads. All I know is it’s busted and was making a nice little spring in the yard. I managed to dig that pipe up to find a huge crack. Once I replace it I should be able to tell where it ends up.

March 22, 2006

FBI PIRACY DIVISION

While I was waiting for my truck to be ready at MBS, I was on my computer and decided to look for some wireless networks. Although there is a small office building near the shop I seriously doubt there is a FBI Piracy Division located there. I also seriously doubt they would name their wireless network “FBI PIRACY DIVISION”, more likely this is security-by-misleading. I suspect the result will be that it just attracts more hackers.

March 20, 2006

Free WiFi For All

In the past week I’ve been to the Albuquerque SunPort, the Boise Airport, McCarren International Airport in Las Vegas and Sky Harbor in Phoneix. All have had Free WiFi. I’d like to salute you in those airports that made the decision to have free wireless. You make my time in these airports much better than would I had to pay for it (nothing worse than having to pay for it, and yes I’m talking about WiFi). In fact I’m writing this from McCarren now.

Phoenix is the only place I had problems with signal quality. I’m not complaning, I’m just saying.