https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/RLGCmnX_yH4?version=3&hl=en_US&hd=1
In New Mexico and Arizona we are waiting anxiously for some rain. Arizona’s July 5th wall of dust known as a haboob seems to have marked the beginning of the Monsoon. These walls of dust moving into the Phoenix area are not new, I remember them nearly every year when I was growing up. This year it was a particularly large one.
The weekend outlook from the NOAA shows the seasonal shift in winds and moisture from the south.
People are still looking for the Lost Dutchman Mine in the Superstition Mountains in Apache Junction, Arizona. Including Jesse Capen who disappeared looking for it in January of 2010.
He had planned to return to Denver in time for Christmas, but he either walked away or was taken from his campsite, and his whereabouts remain a mystery. He could have been bitten by a rattlesnake, shot by another prospector or fallen and broken his leg and been devoured by a bear, Burnett said.
“Deputies suspect foul play may be involved because there is no sign of him,” she said. “Even if he would have been eaten by wild animals, there would be shoes and clothes left behind.”Capen, who had never married, worked a graveyard shift as a bellhop at the Sheraton Denver Downtown Hotel the past 11 years. For 10 years, he spent his free time studying the legend of the Lost Dutchman mine.
“This is beyond obsessed,” Burnett said. “He has more than 100 books and maps on the legend. This was like research for a Ph.D. This is a classic case of a man’s search for treasure.”
I’ve been camping a few times in the Superstition Mountains when I lived in Arizona as a kid. It’s hard to believe that a area relatively close to a major city, with today’s technology of Google Maps and GPS locators that someone could disappear so easily.
As far as I know, Jesse Capen has not been found.
When I was a kid growing up in Arizona one of the few memories I can recall is visiting the Ahwatukee Arizona “House of the Future” with my Cub Scout group. The house was built in 1979 at a cost $1,200,000 dollars. It was a demonstration for a planned community. It appears to have lost money every year it was sold.
Surprisingly there is no Wikipedia entry on the subject but I did find a June 23rd, 1980 article from InfoWorld on Google Book Search.
The house was designed by Charles R. Schiffner of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. Built over 30 years ago it featured an advanced home automation system with five Motorola 6800 processors linked together. The system was designed by Motorola who was the major employer in Arizona at the time.
It’s important to note that the Ahwatukee home is not a computer controlled home, rather the home permits the tenant to to be in complete control of his environment, making the important decisions which will then be carried out by the microcomputer system.
That’s a quote from Charles E. Thompson, some marketing genius who seems to want to keep people from being scared of the computer controlled house. It’s also worth mentioning that 30 years later, I have been able to reproduce everything that house was capable of for a few thousand dollars and that such home automation capabilities have not yet caught on although the energy saving technologies have.
The house still exists today at 3713 Equestrian Trail, Phoenix, Az and can be seen on Google Maps. Although they gave tours back in the day for $3, I can’t seem to find any information on who the current owner is or even pictures of the interior on the internet.
Update 2016-01-14 More pictures of the house can be found at PrairieMod’s “More House Of The Future“.
Update 2012-12-27: I have found 10 photos from my trip from the early 1980’s.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Here I present to you a approximately 3 minute video made with some photos I took at South Mountain Park in Phoenix last week. It is a shortened version, with some of the personal photos removed.
I have been using Still Life for this sort of thing but have found Photo To Movie superior. Especially since it allowed me to export a dv file in the 16:9 aspect ration (which is how all my movies are since iMovie HD came out). I also really liked the quality of the titles and are looking for a way to duplicate them in iMovie when doing regular movies.
This movie is a MP4 encoded with H.264, which allowed a decent quality movie that has a 869 x 480 resolution but only be 7.1 MB in size. But you will need the latest and greatest version of Quicktime to view it.
I sent a email off to Dial Manufacturing of Phoenix, Az but I suspect it’s going to be easier to just replace the darned thing.
Doesn't Fit In 