Doesn't Fit In

January 21, 2009

Taking Pictures On Pueblos Prohibited?

A story on the local news says taking pictures of or in pueblos is prohibited. There’s several pueblos near Albuquerque and the Rail Runner goes through them. The train conductor attempts to stop passengers from taking pictures of the Pueblos while the train runs through their land.

What is their legal right to prohibit photography where it’s legal to photograph in every other public location in the US? Can they really do anything about it? What will the Rail Runner do if someone continues to take pictures?

January 19, 2009

Former Rio Rancho Mayor Lands In Jail

Man, what is the deal with this guy. How did he ever con himself into Mayor of Rio Rancho?

Former Rio Rancho Mayor Kevin Jackson has landed in trouble again.
Jackson is in a Pennsylvania prison charged with violating a protection from abuse order filed by his wife.
The former mayor was being held Monday at the Erie County Prison, in lieu of a $20,000 cash only bond.
Charges against him include violating a protection from abuse order, burglary, criminal trespass and carrying a firearm without a license, according to a Pennsylvania State Police report.

January 19, 2009

How Corrupt Are New Mexico Government Officials?

I have often thought that New Mexico government is more corrupt than it should be. At least comparing to where I come from: the Phoenix Metro Area. Apparently I’m not the only one according to the New Mexico Independent.

The numbers were good when we looked at how New Mexico did in terms of raw numbers of guilty officials (we were 48th) and guilty officials per capita (46th). But then there was a twist: ”Reporters who cover the Roundhouse in New Mexico think it’s a pretty darn corrupt state — we’re ranked No. 3,” Marjorie Childress wrote. “…Does this mean our reporters are biased? Or does it mean we have really poor ethics laws and really poor prosecution by U.S. attorneys in our state?” she asked.

This is all in relation to Governor Richardson withdrawal as commerce secretary and the pay-to-play scandal. Prior to that the Manny Aragon courthouse construction scandal. Even prior to that the Rio Rancho Mayor.

January 13, 2009

Rest In Peace Annie

Annie, the family dog, died today. Technically she belonged to my sister but lived with my parents. She is a mutt from the pound and was probably abused.

They took her to the Vet a few days ago and she had respiratory problems and maybe cancer. She had lied down on the floor near the front and passed away. Her hearing went out a few years ago so it’s not unusual for her to sleep and not wake up for anything.

I estimate her to be around 15 years old, maybe older. She was with us for around 12 years.

January 12, 2009

Moonlight Over Spruce Hole

Moonlight over Spruce Hole, originally uploaded by gregjsmith.

I completed my third yurt trip and it was by far the best. The basic concept here is that we cross country ski to a Yurt and spend a few days away from the world. The Spruce Hole yurt is nice because it has bedding and is fairly large. The yurt itself is located in Colorado just across the boarder from Chama, NM. All we really need to carry is food, drink, clothes and personal hygiene items. There were four other people besides my self on this trip and we stayed for three nights.

This is usually the only cross country skiing I do, I’m mostly a down hill guy. Plus I’m not in any great shape and I therefore tend to be the slow one of the group. Caring a 30 to 40 pound pack doesn’t help. The first several hundred yards of the trail are all up hill. It is grueling work getting there but worth it once we finally arrive.

This particular trip was planned around the full moon. The highlight was our moonlight ski in the nearby Spruce Hole meadow. The moon was incredibly bright and blue. It was an incredible experience that I can’t begin to describe with my pathetic words and pictures. Speaking of which, taking pictures in moonlight requires a tripod which I didn’t have. Yet I managed to take a few decent pictures. You can find all the pictures I took on my Flickr set. They are all geotagged so you can view them on a map.

January 2, 2009

Spaceport America Gets Virgin Galactic

The future is here. Sales tax increases started today and Virgin Galactic has signed a lease with Spaceport America in southern New Mexico.

Under the terms, Virgin Galactic will pay $1 million per year for the first five years for use of the terminal facilities, and, for the next 15 years, will pay a fee based on an amortization of the remaining total cost of its facilities.
In addition, it sets a tiered fee scale — with a minimum charge of $50,000 per month — that hinges upon the number of flights launched by the company each year. A third fee charges the company $30,000 each year to rent ground space for the facilities.

Creative Commons photo from generated

December 12, 2008

ArsTechnica On Intel Making Batteries

I love ArsTechnica, but I have to question part of an article that Jon Stokes wrote today about Intel making car batteries.

I bring this up because Intel doesn’t actually make as many chips over here as they used to. Most of the company’s sales are overseas (Asia is the biggest market), so that’s where a large and growing percentage of its workforce is, as well. The company’s pronounced shift in moving jobs abroad has been a sore spot for American Intel employees over the past decade, but I hear that, internally, the Intel top brass makes no bones about the fact that they have no qualms about moving the plants closer to the customers.

I am employed by Intel in the manufacturing side of their business. I don’t pretend that I know everything that is going on but I’m pretty sure this part of the article is incorrect. Most of Intel’s manufacturing is in the United States with the rest in Ireland and Israel. The only Asian capacity is in China and it hasn’t finished construction.

I also don’t know anything about Intel replacing manufacturing capacity in the US with factories outside of the US. My opinion: It costs billions of dollars to build a factory, Intel isn’t about to move capacity from existing locations to overseas unless there’s economic reasons to do so and highly skilled worker base. Just because the customers are there doesn’t seem like a good enough reason.

As far as Intel making batteries? I have to agree with the rest of the article. It’s better if Intel invest in battery tech R&D rather than try it themselves. Not that I wouldn’t love to see Intel broaden out in other ventures. Intel has failed at every attempt to make non microchip businesses (see LCOS and the watches they made that I can’t find a link to) as profitable as chips and top management knows that.

October 17, 2008

No Public Access To Xprize This Year

I went to the second annual xprize cup competion in Las Cruces in 2006. Although incredibly windy it was a great event to attend. This year they don’t have the money for a public display so only registered attendees get in. What a bummer.

“The Cup as it has traditionally been held is not (going to happen this year) because of funding levels it takes to run a massive public event,” Steve Landeene, executive director of the New Mexico Spaceport Authority, told the Sun-News.

“And the fact that the air show at Holloman is not on this year … that was part of the decision-making process that went into saying, ‘Hey, we don’t have the funds to have a massive public event.’ So what we’re doing this year is kind of a hybrid,” Landeene said.

October 3, 2008

1957 Buick Super For Sale

Down the street from my house is a 1957 Buick Super for sale. According to the sign it only has 87K miles on it and they are asking $5750. I have no idea how well it drives but body and interior did appear to be in good condition for a 51 year old car. Not a bad price for a vehicle that runs let alone one this old.

I would totally buy a car like this if I had the money and place to put it and didn’t already have a project car (that I haven’t worked on in years).

October 1, 2008

Pecos Hiking Trip

Last weekend I went on an overnight hike with two friends to the Pecos. Pecos is located east of Santa Fe, about 2 hours away from Albuquerque. Actually, the hike itself was to the Hamilton Mesa which is north of Pecos.

The original plan was to hike 7 miles in but when we were 2.5 miles in and found some good campsite, why keep hiking? During the day the weather was perfect and in the middle of the night it was piss-ass cold. A good sleeping bag helps with that.

This was an opportunity for me to get geotagging down with my SG-289 data logger and and to take some HDR photographs. The geotagging didn’t work out because the stupid SG-289 didn’t record more than a few dozen points. I swear I read 609 points on it at one time.

HDR photography was much more successfully. I took nearly every picture with auto bracketing on and about a quarter of the landscape photos made good HDR. The two problems with the pictures were moving objects such as wind blowing trees around and most of the photos were taken free hand without a tripod. Photomatix Pro did a pretty good job of aligning images but it can’t do much about the moving objects, at least in this case.

You can view all the pictures in my Flickr set: Sept 2008 Pecos Hike. Note that pictures of people have privacy set so you have to be a friend or family to view them.

Here’s an example of a non HDR and a HDR photo.