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?
Who Is Adam?
Moths Cause Horrible Car Crash
From the Denver Post, “Miller moths prompt crash, explosion in Colorado Springs“
A vehicle driven by a teenager Tuesday night veered off of the side of the road, slammed into a tree and exploded into flames apparently because of miller moths, according to the Colorado Springs Police Department.
This story might sound silly that someone could be distracted by a few moths. But Albuquerque has had the same plague of miller moths and I could imagine there were so many moths that it looked like a snow storm.
Does Arizona's Dust Storm Mark The Beggining Of The Monsoon?
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.
Spring Snow In Rio Rancho New Mexico
For the last month the weather has been mostly sunny and warm on the days I work and either windy, cold or rainy or all of the above on the days I’m off. I had a some sun and little wind yesterday but today it snowed.
Were not getting anything like Denver’s projected 20 inches of show. The lack of cooperation by the weather isn’t helping because I have a number of outdoor things to do around the house before I potentially go out of town for three months starting in May.
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.
Garden Hose Quick-Connect Connectors
Back in October of 2007, Cool Tools recomended Melnor Quick Connects for garden hoses. The quick connects are similar to quick connects used on air tools. I am a big fan of these quick connectors and I use them on all my hoses. The only problem with the ones recommended by Cool Tools is that they are plastic.
There’s a number of problems with the plastic connectors for which I don’t recommend them. If you leave them outdoors all year round they get brittle and they don’t take a lot of abuse like when your dragging your hose across the cement. Instead I recommend the brass connectors such as the ones made by Camco
Another issue with these things is they tend to get dirt in them and expand and contract with the weather. Sometimes you have to bang on them to get them to move again, try doing that with a plastic part.
Sprinkler Project Update
Remember that sprinkler project I took a while back, back in March as a matter of fact. I had planned to only take a few weeks to complete it. Here it is 4 months later and it’s still not done.
I did make some progress. I have the valve box installed, vaves installed and one of the two lines hooked up. All I need to do is install the 2nd line and leak test and I can burry everything.
OK, so I admit that general laziness has slowed the project. I’m also going to blame the weather. We’ve had so much rain that the 24 inch trench has filled up with water to the top. There hasn’t been that much time in between rains to let the ground dry up, and I don’t want be playing in the mud. Depending on how the weather cooperates I plan to make this a priority again.
Doesn't Fit In 