I’m still waiting for The Village at Rio Rancho to open. According to the Albuquerque Journal “Unser corridor attracting more business, development“, the area is growing with business. But its not clear what is going on with The Village.
The Village at Rio Rancho, proposed for 65 acres across the street from Rust, remains preliminary, according to Geisel.
“We are excited that the developer is starting to make plans for the next steps in the project,” he added.
On the City of Rio Rancho’s page about “Kamp Out for Kamp Rio” there is about 10 paragraphs on how to stand in line. This is so people can sign up for Rio Rancho’s apparently popular “Kamp Rio 2013” summer day camp for kids.
“Standing In Line” Rules and Etiquette
The Parks & Recreation Department staff makes every attempt to ensure that the registration for summer camp is a fair process for everyone. The summer camp line is nothing unique. Throughout life, we are all subject to “standing in lines”: Black Friday shopping, theme parks, concerts, at the grocery store, etc. As with every aspect of life, there is a protocol that should be followed.
Stay In Line At All Times. Anyone who has claimed a spot in the registration line is required to stay in line with the exception of short restroom breaks. If an individual, who has claimed a spot in the registration line, needs to leave for any reason that person needs to be replaced temporarily by a family member or friend until the person returns.
A Tent Or Chair Does Not Hold Your Place In Line. An individual will not be allowed to place a chair or tent to claim their spot in the registration line. Do not leave for work/school/home/shopping/restaurants or anything else until your registration has been accepted by Parks & Recreation staff or your tent and chairs will be removed by city staff.
Do Not Reserve Or Hold Spots For Others. Think how annoyed you would be after hours of waiting, suddenly and out of nowhere, five friends join the person in front of you making your wait even longer?
Be Patient – Everyone in line is in the same situation. Don’t be come irritated with others in line or with the Parks & Recreation staff.
Restroom Break – If you leave the line for any amount of time longer than short restroom breaks, you cannot expect to come back and take up your old place.
Respect Personal Space Of Others – While there is no need to stand body-to-body in the line, there is also no need to extend your tent/bbq grill/chairs/picnic-tables, etc. amongst a large space. Doing so will only irritate people and heighten tensions.
No Smoking In Line! If you are a smoker, now is not the time to light up – save that until you get home.
No Line Jumping – Quite simply – don’t!
“Standing in line” has universally understood rules and etiquette, but there are still those who break the rules mentioned above. With that said, the above rules apply and everyone’s cooperation and attention to this matter is sincerely appreciated.
The weather is warm and I can resume my walks/running near my neighborhood in Rio Rancho. I came across this grafiti “Free Adam” and “Fuck the pigs”. Who is Adam why does he need to be freed?
From KOB.com “Rio Rancho residents concerned over Intel emissions“
Rio Rancho residents said they are worried about breathing toxic fumes after receiving a letter from Intel on Wednesday.
Thousands of residents found a monthly update from Intel in their mailbox, mentioning hydrogen fluoride emissions.
David and Aimee Thurlo said Intel has been a good neighbor, but the letter has them questioning their safety.
“The letter has absolutely no information on there. It is, to me, ambiguous,” Aimee Thurlo stated.
Good Job Intel. Send out a ambiguous letter about a chemical you have been emitting for years and freak every one out. No mention if it was also sent to residents of Corrales, who really hate Intel.
A article on azcentral.com titled “Air Products grows to keep up with Intel” explains how Air Products makes air products and ships them to the Intel site in Arizona. This is probably similar to how it’s done for Intel in Rio Rancho, NM.
The company removes all components of air except nitrogen, oxygen and argon. Then in those white, angular towers, it separates out those three gases with very low temperatures. Oxygen turns to liquid at minus 297.3 degrees Fahrenheit, and nitrogen turns to liquid at minus 320 degrees.
Then the liquid is boiled, producing pure gas.
“We use compression and expansion, like the air-conditioning unit on the outside of a house,” Jordan explained.
Nitrogen gas made in Chandler goes directly into the pipeline, a structure intended to last 100 years.
Back in October, the local news station KRQE recently two stories about Rio Rancho. I like living in Rio Rancho, I like being on the edge of civilization and I will deal with the occasional scorpion, dust storm. Or cows.
When I moved here 15 years ago I used to drive around in the desert that is now Northern Meadows. There were cows then just like there are cows now.
Residents in Rio Rancho’s North Meadows say they don’t know what to do with a growing problem. A cattle herd has been traveling from the west ends of the city limits into neighborhoods causing car crashes and eating gardens at some homes.
Another thing I did when I moved here was to go out and shot guns at the end of Southern Blvd. Then there wasn’t a house in site but now that the area has developed, people, not me, are still out there shooting.
That’s because Sara–who asked News 13 not to use her real name because she fears retaliation–lives in an area that is a popular but illegal shooting range. She said she often hears nonstop gunfire, especially on weekends, from people shooting weapons in the desert near her home at the far west end of Southern Boulevard near 38th Street.
Having people guns near and at your house makes having a cow problem not so bad.
http://www.krqe.com/video/videoplayer.swf?dppversion=7267
Governor Richardson was with Mayor Tom Swisstack of Rio Rancho today to announce that Green2V will build a million square-foot factory and headquarters in Rio Rancho. With Advent Solar and Schott AG building solar factories in Albuquerque, I wondered when one would build in Rio Rancho.
I have a number of concerns about this company, primarily that the company doesn’t seem to exist. As far as I can tell the privately owned Green2V doesn’t have any buildings or even a website and Wikipedia doesn’t have a page for them. The companies CEO, Bill Sheppard, is a former Intel New Mexico manager. Convenient since I suspect a large number of Green2V employees will come from the Intel New Mexico site. I don’t know where they are getting their money to build this company, what experience they have or what their business plan is.
The only thing I know is that their ambitious plan involves building in downtown Rio Rancho and that they want to start shipping in 2011. I hope this works out.
Update: Just to be clear, I’m not suggesting this is some sort of scam. I really want this to work out and I may even want to work for Green2V. I’m suggesting it’s a little early to get excited. It could turn out like Tesla, Lions Gate or Signet Solar, all established companies that planned to build in the Albuquerque area and didn’t for one reason or another.
The temperature has been in the 60’s and 70’s in Rio Rancho and Albuquerque this last week. I decided to stop work on the master bathroom project and foucus on outdoor projects why the weather is good. There’s a good chance I will be sent out of town in spring and early summer so I won’t get a lot of chance work on the outdoor projects until fall.
There’s a structure in on my front porch under my front window, the best I can think to call it is a flower box or a raised planting bed. It’s about 8 feet long and two feet wide and a permanent structure made of brick.
The previous owners had something growing in it. I’m not sure what it was as there is no signs of life in it and it’s filled with potting soil. The only thing that it has really been used for is a litter box for the neighborhood cats.
This area of the front of my house is ugly and I get disgusted to look at it every day I walk by it. I’ve been thinking about what I wanted to do with this area for a while, I considered tearing it out and concreting the whole area but that’s going to be just as ugly as the mess that is already there. I decided to make it into a desert rock garden with a few low water usage native plants. This will also be the prototype for what the rest of the front yard will look like.
I’m using low water usage desert plants in the yard which generally like sandy soil. I removed about 6 inches of potting soil (and cat crap) from the raised bed and replaced it with sandy New Mexico dirt from the backyard. I didn’t worry too much about the dirt being clean and I doubt the plants will care.
Of of my goals with this project is try and reuse materials I already have. I searched my property for volunteer plants that have sprouted up around the yard. I found two different types of Yucca in the yard (yucca is the state flower of New Mexico). Yucca is a rhizome and from what I have read, appear to be pretty forgiving when removing from the ground.
There was one kind of Yucca in the very front of my property near the road. It was challenge digging these two plants up because of the spikes on the end of their leaves.
Further up my property there are several more mature Yucca plants of a different variety. They had some smaller plants sprouting near them. The smaller plants were much easier to dig up. I actually don’t know exactly what kind of Yucca varieties any of these plants are.
I was dissapointed that I didn’t find any cacutus anywhere on my property. I ended up buying a small barrel cactus from Lowes for about $10. In retrospect, it was probably easier to buy the cactus and transplant it from the panter rather than dig it up. Getting it out of the planter was difficult enough by itself. Each of the Yucca plants would have probably cost about $10 each, so I saved about $40 in plantings.
I found some small bunches of what I believe is buffalo grass on the south side of my property. They have been growing there for several years but I have a feeling they won’t survive due to the lack of a full day’s sun at the front of my house.
The material I have in the most abundance is rock. It’s unfortunately the kind of rock I would rather not have. It’s small, less than 1 inch, round and grey river rock. The original landscapers were in love with this stuff. It’s everywhere, in the front yard, in the backyard and on the side yard.
The side yard has a thick layer of the round river rock and this is where I access my back yard with a vehicle. Driving on round river rock is very much like driving on marbles. A better choice would be to use the angular aggregate and if I was starting over I would use decomposed granite. In any case I’m stuck with this stuff so I will try to reuse as much of it as I can and make it look nice.
There’s also a small amount of dark red volcanic rock aggregate, which is native to New Mexico, and larger boulders in the yard. I used both the river rock and the volcanic in the raised bed.
This is my first attempt at desert landscaping and I think the results came out good. You can view all the photos of front porch landscaping project on Flickr.
The next project will be to do something about the ugly 1970’s white rock that borders the raised bed.
RIO RANCHO, N.M. (AP) — Intel Corp. said Tuesday that it expects to cut more than 1,000 jobs at its Rio Rancho plant as the company ends production of an older silicon wafer technology. Intel will stop making the 200-millimeter wafers at the plant by the end of August, and affected employees will be offered severance packages or can apply for other jobs within the company, spokesman Jami Grindatto said.
Anyone who works at the Intel Rio Rancho plant knew this was coming. I know a large number of people that have been waiting to for a chance to get out with a severance package. Still, this sucks. One fifth (20%) of the people that work at this plant will be gone wether they like it or not.
The AP article doesn’t mention when Intel expect to have everyone out but this KOB article say they start in August.
A article from the Albuquerque Tribune says:
Larry Waldman, a senior economist with the University of New Mexico’s Bureau of Business and Economic Research, projects the layoffs expected to come in August could cause the loss of another 1,000 jobs in places such as the retail and service sectors. “It’s not going to be just 1,000 jobs when you look at effects on other parts of the economy,” said Waldman, referring to retail and service jobs that might supplement Intel workers. While that may not be the rosiest picture, Waldman said the losses will have only a minor impact on the economies of both the state and Albuquerque metro
Update 5/7/07: From the Trib:
U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici has asked Labor Secretary Elaine Chao to assign staff from her agency’s Dallas office to coordinate job placement programs for the 1,000-plus workers expected to lose their jobs at Intel Corp.’s Rio Rancho plant.
Wow, things happen quickly. I didn’t write about this last week because I really didn’t expect it to go through. I made an offer on a house, about $10K under listed price. This house was a repo and needs some work (not as bad as the others I’ve seen thought). It was a multiple offer situation and I though for sure I wouldn’t come close since people have been paying list price.
I was surprised when I was informed early this week that I had the high offer, but they wanted to get another $5k out of me. No way was I giving them any more, I though my current offer was generous. To make a long story short, I signed the contracts yesterday. It’s mine!
This house is located in the same neighborhood that the other house I made an offer was on. It’s on a 1/2 acre, a nice rectangular 1/2 acre with easy access to be the back yard on both side. The interior needs carpet, paint and is a little dated (was built in the late 70s as far as I can tell), but other than that it’s not in that bad of shape. It also has city water and sewer. Many of the house in this area of Rio Rancho were built before there were hooks and have septic systems or wells. I lucked out there as well.
Over all I’m happy with this purchase so far, I got a deal and it has the basic configuration I was looking for. I have some big plans to add on and will be writing about them here.
Doesn't Fit In 