Butt – Doesn't Fit In

March 10, 2011

South Side Gate Replacement

Residential fencing in albuquerque and Rio Rancho used to be made of wood until the last 20 years or so. While they build fences of block now I have a older house and all of the fencing and gates are made of wood. For whatever reason a large amount of it has decomposed and fallen down mostly since I moved in.

The gate on the south side of the house is the worse and it’s also the primary access to the back yard with a vehicle. I decided it was time to get off my butt and replace it with not only a fence that isn’t falling but with one that has more privacy.

I didn’t go into this project with any detailed plans. I knew I wanted to bring the gate to be flush with the front of the house, the old gate sat back about 6 feet. I also wanted a short gate for people and a long gate for vehicles with a 5 foot fence section at the edge of the property.

I started by adding a single post on the first day to get an idea of what I was doing. I dug a hole, leveled a 4×4 redwood post and anchored it with some quick setting cement. That was it for the day. The next day the City of Rio Rancho inspector came by and red tagged the house due to the old falling gate and “debris” they could see in my back yard.

I found the timing strange and I have to wonder if someone called or the inspector just saw the work I was doing and decided to complain.

It took another day to build the corner which consisted of the 5 foot fence section and tying into the old fence. The biggest difficultly was positioning the sections of 2x4s around a rather large yucca. The plant is nice looking but very pointy and I left quite a bit of blood on the plant.

The main part of the fence was completed 2 days after I started. I had to go back at least three times and redo the position slats since I screwed up the level. I know several ways not to level fence slats.

The continuation of this project will be to clean up the river rocks on the side and level the ground. I also need to continue with the 6 foot fence along the south side of the property.

May 31, 2005

Live Pigeon Cam

Unfortunately, I have some pigeons living on my patio. That’s unfortunate because 1) They crap all over the place, 2) They have a nest with a egg in it. I cannot bring myself to get rid of them with the egg there, actually it’s their second one. Had I know about it before they laid it I would have done something about it.

To get something useful out of of the situation I have set up the pigeon cam. Running off my 500mhz first gen iBook, a iSight and EvoCam you can watch as the butt ugly baby is born (and believe me, they are ugly). Click on the image to see a 640×480 image. I will be adding it to the side bar as well. I’m also working on a time-lapse.

http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=gregssite-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=0976141604&fc1=000000&=1&lc1=0000ff&bc1=ffffff&lt1=_top&IS2=1&f=ifr&bg1=ffffff&f=ifrI’ve seem the mom and dad birds do some weird things so I will try to point them out when I see them. Also check out this MetaFilter post, who knew people ate them?

Update 06/01/05 3:44 PM: I wanted to mention that the picture updates only when there is movement, But EvoCam still seems to struggle to upload to my iDisk. I’ve also put in the link to the timelapse movie but doesn’t seem to be accepted by QuickTime in the browser, it works fine when I view it from the finder.

January 10, 2004

It Hurts

I’m tired and I’m in pain. My butt and my arms hurt. Despite my pain I had a good time because today I made a feeble attempt at snow boarding. I already know how to ski, more of a advanced beginner – no where near a professional, I thought I could use that experience to snowboard. It turns out that the experience of each foot having a board strapped to it is far different then having a bigger board strapped to both feet at the same time.

When I first learned to ski I fell down a lot. Having to pick yourself up a couple of hundred dozen times in less then 8 hours with muscles that don’t get used a couple of hundred dozen times in less then 8 hours is where the pain comes from. I suppose if I exercised more (or fell less) that wouldn’t be a problem.

Speed equals control, more or less. The faster you go the more you can control your skis. But if you do loose control your going really fast into a tree or something. When your first learning to ski it’s scary to go fast because you (or at least me) are afraid of loosing control, so you want to try to take is slow. Then there’s that whole balance thing, however I believe that you only get good at that with practice. So your slow and you have no balance. You fall a lot. It’s the same deal with snow-boarding. But balancing on a snowboard is different from balancing on skis (as I learned the hard way). I had no balance and was afraid to go fast. And I fell a lot.

I went out with a good friend from work who is also learning to snowboard. He’s a bit farther along then me as in he doesn’t fall nearly as much. He has been going out with his 7 year old son who also went with us today. Since we spent our time on the bunny hill we didn’t need to buy a lift ticket because you can hike up the hill in snow board boots with relative ease (relative being the key word). His son did get a lift ticket and as he passed me up while I was lying on my back he said if I need help just holler. Uh that’s ok, I’m nice and comfortable here.

Ski Santa Fe was the location of this trip and it costs $32 to rent the snow board and boots.