Category: Happening In The Desert

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Oops, Jim Owens Fails To Mention Felony Abuse Charge

DukeCityFix covers the former mayor of Rio Rancho’s little predicament.

It seems that state legislative candidate (District 60) and former Rio Rancho Mayor Jim Owen failed to mention his 2001 felony child abuse charges in campaign questionnaires over the years.

The charge was related to corporal punishment and he may have been set up. None the less he’s been a little dodgy by not reporting it while running for the legislature. This sort of thing is always going to come out. He should have just mentioned if regardless of the technicalities of the language.

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AMREP Has Record Quarter

I guess you could say that AMREP owned most of Rio Rancho at some point. They basically started Rio Rancho, the first house I bought here was made by AMREP. Thankfully they are out of the house building market.

Their latest financial report is a good indicator that the real estate marked hasn’t slowed down that much here.

Revenues of the Company’s AMREP Southwest real estate subsidiary were $37,092,000 in the first quarter of 2007 compared to $7,689,000 in the same quarter last year. This substantial revenue increase was primarily due to increased sales of both developed and undeveloped lots in AMREP Southwest’s principal market of Rio Rancho, New Mexico, where interest in the Company’s landholdings did not appear to be impacted by the slowdown in housing that has been reported in many parts of the country.

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KRQE 5.1 Audio

Having spent a lot of time and money on home entertainment equipment and set up, I’ve been pretty bummed that the local CBS station (KRQE) doesn’t seem to broadcast in 5.1 audio, just stereo.

Greg, It is not you, Currently we do not broadcasting in 5.1 audio. We do have improvement plans in place that will include the purchase of equipment to allow us to broadcast in 5.1. Look for this shortly after the first of the year.

Franklin Lilley
Director of Engineering
KRQE/KBIM/KREZ

It’s cool that they answered my email

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Phoenix Serial Shooters Caught

One was a custodian at Sky Harbor International Airport and a sports photojournalist ; the other, a friend with a criminal past who returned to the Valley several years ago after living in Minnesota. On Friday, police identified the two — Dale Hausner and Samuel Dieteman — as the suspects who have terrorized Phoenix area residents with a series of random shootings for more than a year, Phoenix%u2019s police chief said Friday.

Link

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Eclipse Gets FAA Approval

Eclipse Aviation Corp., the Albuquerque manufacturer of the Eclipse 500 very light jet (VLJ), received provisional certification from the Federal Aviation Administration today. The company expects to receive full certification by Aug. 30. That will enable it to start delivering its Eclipse 500s to customers.

This is good news for the job market here as Eclipse will be hiring more. It looks like Honda may be a competitor, as they are coming out with their own small jet. It’s not clear if it’s a VLJ class plane however.

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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.

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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

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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.

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FBI PIRACY DIVISION

FBI PIRACY DIVISIONWhile 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.

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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.