Google – Doesn't Fit In

March 14, 2011

Missing Person Looking For The Lost Dutchman Mine

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.

February 1, 2010

Raffle For A House In Rio Rancho, New Mexico

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If the HGTV Dream Home Sweepstake doesn’t work out, there’s a raffle for a $190,000 house in Rio Rancho, New Mexico. I looked for it in Google Maps and found that part of the Cabezon development that the house is supposed to be in is photographed properly but not mapped properly. I had to use a few different mapping programs to find the house, which doesn’t seem to actually built yet It will probably be a fine house if you don’t mind living next to dirt lots for a while.

2483 Corvara Drive in Astante Villas Gated Community at Cabezon in Rio Rancho, NM. GRAND PRIZE: Win a beautiful brand new home valued at $189,900 or $100,000 CASH. Additional 100 CASH Prizes to be given away. Tickets are $75.00 each. Drawing will be February 27, 2010 at the home to be given away. This raffle benefits El Ranchito de los Ninos Children’s Home — a home for children who do not have a home of their own and are unable to live with their biological families.

September 28, 2009January 14, 2016

Ahwatukee Arizona's House Of The Future

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.

May 11, 2009

RADLAC: Electron Beam Propagation Experiment

In 2005 I found a cool framed illustration at Goodwill. It was marked for $16 but was on sale for $8. Other than being a “Electron Beam Propagation Experiment” my google searches tell me this is some sort of weapon made at Sandia Labs. The original frame has been replaced since it broke (it was ugly and damaged anyway).

Today someone left a comment with a little more info on Flickr.

Score! I’ve been researching pulsed power experiments at Sandia, and I just stumbled across mention of the RADLAC machine. RADLAC was built for the USAF & the SDIO to evaluate ultra-high-power, pulsed electron beam accelerators as potential “Star Wars” directed energy weapons.

Wanna sell it? 🙂

Heck no I don’t want to sell it, it’s one of my favorite pictures.

May 5, 2009

More On Goats For Vegetation Control

A few days ago I wrote about Google using goats to control grass on their property. Techcrunch didn’t seem impressed and was worried about the jobless human mowers.

The city of Mesa, Arizona has used 70 goats for the last 50 months to clear vegetation around a water reclamation plant. They expect to save $10,000 by using goats.

Besides being cost effective, it reduces the use of fossil fuels, toxic chemicals and pesticides. It’s a pollution-free way of ridding the three retention ponds of compromising vegetation, Satter said.

Goats’ bodies break down plants in such a way that they won’t grow back when it becomes waste, making the job more permanent than what a machine can do.

It’s not mentioned how many people it took to mow the grass with machines vs. taking care of goats. I suspect goats are more labor intensive that mowers.

April 17, 2009

Mcdonalds Sign Crushes Car In Window Rock Arizona

A couple driving from Tucson, Arizona to Chicago had their Chevy Trailblazer crushed when a Mcdonalds Golden Arches fell on it in Window Rock Arizona. 60MPH winds were apparently responsible for causing the sign to fall down. They were pretty seriously injured. This is probably part of the same storm that is in New Mexico now and I’ve had winds this fast at my house before. Imagine driving down the freeway with this kind of weather.

Window Rock is located on the Arizona and New Mexico border, north of Gallup New Mexico and north of Interstate 40. There’s a picture of Mcdonalds on Google Maps that could be the sign that crushed the car.

Via Jalopnik

May 31, 2008May 1, 2016

Resolving The 6X Red Blinking Light Of Death On My Sony TV (with pictures)

Find Sony TV Parts

The following is meant for informational purposes only and not meant to be an instructional guide. This information is meant to give a basic concepts on how the thermal fuse is replaced, It doesn’t cover everything thing and can vary on other TVs. If you decide to replace your own thermal fuse based on this information you do so at your OWN RISK.

For information on the Sony Wega flat CRTs with a similar problem (in this case a model KV34HS420), visit Lee Devlin website and view his posting titled “Fixing a Sony Wega with a 6 or 7 blink code“.

A few weeks ago I was watching my Sony 60 inch rear projection TV (model KDF-E60A20) when the screen turned blank and the normally green power-on indicator started blinking red. I thought, this has to be a bad thing. My first assumption was the bulb died.

The bulb did not die, there is a whole other indicator light for a dead bulb. What was actually happening is the power-on indicator light was blinking 6 times. Some googling on this subject indicated that the thermal fuse had blown and it needed to be replaced.

Sony apparently has a service bulletin (E29102171) that covers the replacement. In order to access this information you have to be some sort of authorized service personnel. I did find a website where you could obtain the service bulletin but they wanted $12 to join the site first. Let me go on for a moment and say why I think this is a total scam. It seems the damaged thermal fuse situation is a design flaw and Sony’s replacement part is totally different from the original. This website is profiting off the situation by providing information was created by Sony. I won’t link to the site here, but if you search google for this issue you will surely find the site in question.

This is something that Sony should be fixing for free. I’m reading people are paying around $400 to get this issue repaired. I repaired mine for $17.91. The part itself was only $4.80. I ordered part 191002393 from Sony’s service site (It’s available from Amazon.com for $5.95). Here’s how I replaced mine.

First, the thermal fuse is simply a small electronics part on the end of two wires that connects to the harness in the TV. The wire comes wrapped up in a small package about the size of two dimes. Shipping costs $11.95 to ship it in a giant box full of bubble wrap. Thanks Sony for wasting resources getting this to me.

The thermal fuse is located under the lamp housing in my TV (and can be seen using the procedures for replacing the lamp in the manual). It’s a dime sized device mounted to the bottom of the TV with two wires coming out of it. It took me a while to figure out that this monstrosity is the thermal fuse considering how tiny the replacement is.

Unfortunately In order to get to the wiring harness I had to remove the rear panel of the TV. There’s about 10 screws that hold that on. Then I removed the fan housing to gain access to the original thermal fuse. I followed the wires back up to where they connected to the wiring harness. I unplugged the original fuse and plugged in the new one and ran the wires to where the original fuse is.

I did not remove the original fuse. It’s somewhat difficult to get to and doesn’t hurt to keep it on. I wrapped the new fuse wiring around the old one. There may be a actual place to mount the new fuse but i didn not see the service bulliten so I cannot say for sure. It’s important to point out here that the purpose of a thermal fuse is to shut off power in case of an over heat situation. If for some reason the lamp overheats you don’t want it to catch the TV on fire. Having the thermal fuse in close proximity to the lamp seem logical. If you happen to know exactly where the fuse should go, please leave a comment.

The preceding is meant for informational purposes only and not meant to be an instructional guide. This information is meant to give a basic concepts on how the thermal fuse is replaced, It doesn’t cover everything thing and can vary on other TVs. If you decide to replace your own thermal fuse based on this information you do so at your OWN RISK.

Find Sony TV Parts

If you found this usefull, you can support this site by purchasing something from Amazon. How about a new Sony LCD Lamp?