Doesn't Fit In

February 28, 2009

13 Bodies Found On Albuquerque's West Side Amole Mesa

Victoria Chavez anbd Michelle Gina Valdez were identified as 2 of 13 bodies found at KB Home’s housing development on Albuquerque’s Amole mesa on the west side of town near 118th and Dennis Chavez SW. Police think that one person buried the bodies between 2001 and 2005.

The problem, as The New Mexico Independant points out, the police are treating this as if these are cold cases and the person who did it isn’t currently active. Yes, the two bodies that were identified had criminal pasts. That does not mean all of the bodies were those of criminals? What if there’s still a serial killer on the loose?

Does anyone else feel like we’re being told: Yes, we are still pulling bones from the ground but these people were drug users, prostitutes and transients (and not coincidentally, apparently all women) so… all you normal people out there in ABQ, sitting on the couch watching this on the news, you have nothing to worry about.

Jeremy Jojola, a reporter for Channel 4 KOB, has set up a blog called Mesa Mystery to track the largest crime sceen in Albuquerque’s history.

When the crime scene is gone the housing construction will continue. There are no state laws that the real estate agent or developer has to reveal the site was the location of a murder. Will people remember and still buy houses there?

The Albuquerque Police have set up a tip line at 1-877-SOLV-APD (1-877-765-8273)

February 27, 2009

Ghost Shadow: Albuquerque's Real Life Superhero

Apparently Albuquerque has a super hero and his name might be Ghost Shadow. Might be because he (and I’m assuming he is a he) didn’t want to tell the Alibi what his real superhero name is.

According the email interview, Ghost Shadow is 42 years old, wears a kevlar suit and sometimes a mask and has been doing it since 911.

I don’t keep up with the superhero scene here in town or elsewhere, but I haven’t seen any reports that attribute crime fighting to any of these guys. You would think that if a mysterious hero saved someone from crime that it would be on KOB.

February 26, 2009

Train Engine AT&SF 2926 Restoration In Albuquerque

Johnny Mango has a terrific story on Duke City Fix about the restoration of the Atchison Topeka and Santa Fe railroad locomotive 2926. The locomotive sat in Coronado Park in Albuquerque from 1956 to 2000 and was a jungle gym until they surrounded it with chain link fence and then finally moved it in 2000.

They are trying to get the train restored in time for the statehood centennial in 2012. They need another $500,000 to complete the project in time.

killbox has a number of pictures of this train on Flickr.

February 17, 2009

Obama Speaks At My High School Tomorrow In Mesa, Arizona

Update 02/18/09: View video and more news on this event from Channel 3 in Phoenix.

President Obama will speak at Dobson High School in Mesa, Arizona tomorrow. I graduated from Dobson High in 1992.

Apparently they announced it monday morning and people rushed to the school to get tickets. Obama will be speaking in the school’s gymnasium which holds about 2000 people but there were only 400 tickets released.

ronaz08 on YouTube has a video of his sons waiting in line on Monday which shows at least a 1000 people lined up.

It’s interesting that Obama chose the state of Arizona, where McCain is a senator. Obama apparently didn’t inform or invite McCain to the event. The other senator for Arizona couldn’t change his plans.

“That’s too late for me to change my plans,” Kyl said. “In any event I wouldn’t be speaking. I would be standing there while he’s announcing something that I know nothing about. The time to talk about these things is before the fact, not after the fact.”

Of course, there are protests being organized.

Although I don’t miss living in Arizona I might have planned a trip back home if I could have acquired tickets for the event.

February 16, 2009

Mobster Movie Style Death In Rio Rancho

New Mexico’s location to Mexico means there’s often some sort of dead body out on the mesa related to drug trafficking.

Danny Baca was apparently supposed to take about $7000 worth of drugs to a drug cartel contact in El Paso. Instead he decided to come to Albuquerque. A mistake since they found his body, which had been burnt and shot, out on the mesa.

Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Department says Baca was killed over a relatively small amount of money–but the drug cartels aren’t know for cutting people breaks.

You would think anyone getting into the drug business would know this.

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February 13, 2009

Ed Grothus Of The Black Hole Died Today

Ed Grothus, proprietor of the os Alamos Sales Company most commonly known as The Black Hole has died today.

Ed Grothus worked at Los Alamos National Labs building nuclear bombs, quitting that job and becoming a anit-nucelar activist and then founding the The Black Hole. The Black Hole is a store which has military surplus and salvage equipment from the Los Alamos Labs in New Mexico. The Black Hole web site says they are a recycler of nuclear waste. The Black Hole is famous for providing movie props and materials for artists.

Ed was the subject of three documentaries: Atomic Ed & The Black Hole, Los Alamos und die Erben Der Bombe and Laboratory Conditions. He also received various awards.

There is a video on YouTube entitled The Black Hole in which Ed tells his story.

February 11, 2009

Wonderful Restaurant Namaste Cuisine of India and Nepal

I’m not going to do a full out resturant review here. I’m not a good person for that. I don’t normally venture out of my comfort zone when it comes to food. If it wasn’t for my freinds I would have never tried Indian food.

Now I love Indian food. In Rio Rancho there is terrific restaurant called Namaste Cuisine of India and Nepal located at 1520 Deborah Rd. NE. I’ve only had the buffet. I don’t know the names of all the dishes but I really like the rice, spinach & cheese, meatballs and chicken in some sort of sauce.

If your in Rio Rancho be sure to check it out and read nmgastronome for a real review.

February 3, 2009

Making A Small Repair With Hydraulic Cement

This last summer I had issues with my under ground duct work leaking water from where the evaporative cooler connects to the cement duct work. The fix involved fixing a large amount of cement in a vertical application. It’s easy to miss something when patching cement on the inside of a 18 inch hole. I’m not sure if the picture I posted to Flickr shows it very well but I missed one little void, a slot just big enough for a quarter to fit through.

To my great frustration this small slot was enough to flood the underground duct work with water during a rain storms. Once I indentified the problem I had to figure out a way to fill that hole back up with cement.

Regular cement shrinks when it dries. I used hydraulic cement which expands as it dries. To apply it to the hole I mixed a very small amount of it in a ziplock bag with water. I then cut the tip off the bag and and squeezed it into the hole like cake frosting.

It worked great and so far there hasn’t been any more leaking. The real test will come during the summer monsoon season.

January 31, 2009

Radiant Floor Heating Elements Installed

This was a long work week. 4 x 12 hour shifts and workouts afterwards meant I had little energy left at the end of the day to work on the master bathroom. With the weekend here I finally was able to complete the installation of the heating elements.

The first step was cleaning the living piss out of the floor. I’m installing an insulating layer, which the manufacture of the heating system says will improve heat transfer. It’s not required but I would like to try to use this as the primary heating system for the house. (One Project Closer did this same project and there’s some debate in the comments on whether or not insulation is needed. They went without the insulation.)

The insulating materials is a dense closed cell foam that’s about 1/8″ think. It has a black plastic mat on the under side and attaches to the floor like contact paper. I have to first put a tacky glue on the floor and let it set for about 20 minutes.

If I was experienced at this, I could have cut the mat in one or two sections and applied it all at once. But I’m not so I cut it into small pieces and applied it to the floor a little at a time. It was much easier that way.

Installing the heating elements was a little more involved. Not only did I need to cut it, I had to do some manual wire layout where the floor was not square in front of the shower.

Since I will be embedding the elements in self leveling concrete, it’s important that they are anchored onto the floor so they don’t float up in the SLC.

The heating element is sewn onto the green mat but the round edges are not. They can easily stick out and have to be glued down. The manufacturer recommends using hot glue, a procedure I tried. After about a half hour and when I ran out of glue I thought there had to be a better way. There’s no way I can do this when I do the much larger master bedroom.

I found double-sided carpet tape at Lowes. I taped the green mat to the floor then taped the rounded edges to the mat. Not only does the double sided tape do a better job of holding down the mat it’s a lot faster and easier to put down.

Next up is to lay the self-leveling concrete. Concrete is still kind of magic to me and SLC is just that much more of magic. I will definitely need help with this part.

January 25, 2009

Installing The Electrical Controls For The Radiant Floor Heat

It’s been months since I have worked on the Master Bathroom project, I think the last update was in July or August. Call it a lack of motivation. My friends have noticed a lack of progress and have really been lying down the guilt.

Sometimes it takes some mocking and peer pressure to give me a kick in the pants.

This weekend I ran wiring thought the wall. The plan here is to run the main power from the breaker to a GFCI receptacle. From there it goes up to the thermostat. Power runs from the thermostat to the radiant floor heating elements and a temperature probe runs from the thermostat and will be embedded in the floor.

I still need to drill the hole through the top plate in the wall cavity and run the wire over to the breaker box. I don’t need the connection to the breaker box right now.

Another interesting thing I have noticed is the walls are filled with cellulose insulation. The insulation has settled over the years and there is a good 6 inch gap at the top of the celling that is missing insulation. I suspect the rest of the house is like this.

I’m thinking that at some point I will have all of the stucco removed and I will put a layer of styrofoam around the house and put new stucco over that.