Men Hardly Working

Worth 1000

2012-02-04T08:41:00.003-07:00

A Response

2011-12-10T22:24:00.007-07:00

Normally I would type a long letter explaining my position and giving reasons for what and why...

In this case such and effort would be pointless. The person is question knows who she is and I am just not in the mood. Plus she has already made up her mind on things she still does not know the whole story on. So here is the reason for the response (in Rage Comic form from memebase.com).

edit 12-13-2010 - Get over the generator. I don't want it, or need it. I can buy A dozen of them if I wanted to.

Thanksgiving be gone

2011-11-17T18:24:00.002-07:00

Starting this year we are not doing thanksgiving. Everyone is absolved and released from coming over to our house. Please attend to your own families. We will just be having normal meals. Death to tradition! Christmas.... (yeah I'm looking at you!) you're next!

Knights (mare) Inn

2011-07-24T20:45:00.015-07:00

So yesterday about eight-ish in the evening I noticed that the AC in our house sounded a little funny but didn't really pay attention to it. Around nine-ish I noticed it was getting warm in the house. So I check on the AC and sure enough the Inside fan motor isn't running. I can also smell a strange oil like smell, and cold air coming from the return. Great! we call J.R. Perkins but they can't come out till 10am. I can't sleep if the temperature is above 79. So the choice was go to my moms house (yeah right) or a get a hotel for the night.

I looked up hotels to see what was near by and there wasn't much to choose from, a Motel 6, a Holday inn, and a few others. I figured the Motel 6 would be ok. My wife said lets stay at the Knights inn on 32nd st and earl. Uhmm ok I guess. Called and they said rooms were $45.00 per night, ok we quickly packed up some stuff and off we went.

Well..... The room was rather big, had a fridge and microwave, but.... and that was a BIG BUTT!

It had the following issues:
Decorations... There were 5 count them FIVE of this picture in the suite.
Missing Items.... The Smoke detector, Hair Dryer, and several light bulb were missing.
Damage... There was a large hole in the wall in the bathroom.
The toilet seat was not attached to the toilet (so that was fun).

The Beds were like sleeping directly on a box spring.

Cleanliness.... My pillow looked like a car mechanic had slept on it, and well just pretend that those aren't blood stains on the curtains.
But.... I digress.

SO, we went to bed around 11:00 and everything was fine as there was almost no one in the rooms nearby. Around some time in the middle of the fucking night! I hear a knocking or banging noise, (and it woke me up). I start to go back to sleep and it's happens again! Oh... It's someone banging on the door! "Hey Odie! let me in!" BANG BANG BANG (on the door). WTF! CRACK CRACK CRACK (on the window) Uhm! hmmm! Yeah this isn't funny. LUNGE! (against the door). OK I'm up! "ODIE!" (that ain't Garfield). I sneak up to the windows and see a blurry brown colored person (dammit I sneak back and get my glasses). Yeah there is a guy out front in a wife beater t-shirt and bling (can't see much because I don't want to move the curtains). BANG BANG BANG LUNGE (against the door again). I go back to the phone and call the front desk:

Front desk: "Front desk can I help you?"
Me: "uhm yeah there is some guy banging on my door and yelling"
Front desk: "OK I'll check it out"
Me: "Thanks I'd appreciate that"
Lunatic: "Knock BANG CRACK ODIE! LUNGE"

The one time I didn't bring my gun! Oh look it's one of those fold up suitcase holder thingies.

So while I wait for the front desk guy to come out, I'm waiting by the front door so if this guy breaks in I can smash him in the face with the suitcase holder while screaming "I'm going to eat your eyeballs" in the most demonic voice I can muster.

Finally the front desk guy comes along and I hear an exchange that goes something like this:
Front desk guy: "hey! what are you doing?"
Lunatic: "Uh I'm looking for this girl that's staying in this room here"
Front desk guy: "They left yesterday"
Lunatic: "well I just got here and I'm looking for them, and so now I'm leaving... now"

I waited a minute or so and checked out the window. The guy was gone. I went back to bed but did not get back to sleep for about an hour.

Did I mention my wife slept through the whole thing? Well she did.

She only woke up when I went over and poked her in the leg and said "Next time we stay at the Motel 6!"

I got up the next morning and took a shower where I noticed the tub and ceiling were rather close together and the light fixture in the bathroom (which was right over the tub) was missing it's cover and one socket was broken. So if say a tall guy like me wasn't paying attention and stepped back my wet hair would have touched the broken socket and I would have been electrocuted.
Oh and whats up with this?
all in all I give it a half star for no bed bugs (so far as I could tell) and another half star for no dead hooker under the bed.

Sony Vegas 9 pro freezes when rendering AVHCD

2011-03-09T19:03:00.004-07:00

Posting this for anyone searching for a solution or work around for this problem. The problem is that if you are trying to render a video in the AVCHD for burning to Blu-ray, for some odd reasons Sony Vegas Pro 9 (8 and 10 as well) may hang or freeze or crash or give an out of memory error.

I have been researching the problem and trying all the solution (or lack thereof) on the internet. While the problem definitely exist in Sony Vegas and not with your hardware. I do not have a solution. I do have a viable work around.

First the issue seems to be caused by the AVCHD encoder not being able to handle certain scenario's. In one case I was rendering a video that included panning over still pictures and cross fades. at certain points the program would always freeze at exactly the same place. My fix at the time was to replace several of the stills with smaller images, and less complicated pans. I then rendered the video in short blocks on several computers at one time and joined them together re-rendering in AVCHD. Other scenario's are multiple clips in different video formats like AVCHD and quicktime H.264. The ACS Encoder does not like certain aspects of the H.264 quicktime files.

My workaround is thus. I can render the video just fine in any other format. So what I did was render the video in full 1080p using the Windows WMV codec at a bit rate of 16 megabits per second. Then reloaded the clip and rendered it in AVCHD. IT rendered easily and the video quality seems to be just fine.

What have I been up to lately

2011-02-24T19:33:00.001-07:00

I have been really busy lately and most everything I do is posted on my Youtube channel.

For Everything Else There's Mastercard

2010-12-31T14:40:00.008-07:00

So my Heater stopped working last Friday 12-24-2010. I went up to see why and could not tell. Called Geottl to look at it. seemed some kind of overheat sensor tripped because one of the pipes on my heat exchanger popped loose from it's mount. The pipes are press fit in place no welding.
Geott no longer is owned by Geottl but by ARS (whoever they are). Apparently 2 years ago they sold out leaving everyone high and dry. The "Geottl" repair man told us that the part is no longer available and that we would have to buy a new unit for only $9000.00 minus a $1500.00 government rebate (rebate ends 1-1-2011). Yeah right, I am still paying for a new sewer line and not about to get a new AC unit until I absolutely have to.

This morning we removed the heat exchanger, and took it to Cliff's welding in Mesa. Went and had lunch, walked around a Goodwill for awhile and picked it up again.
I had them weld all the pipes so the exchanger will last longer.
We re-installed it, installed new screws wherever we could, cause the old ones were stripped or rusted. Turned it on and she fired right up.

     Half a tank of Gas for my Brother $20.00
Lunch while we waited for the repair $35.27
                                       Welding job $62.48
                 Box of self tapping screws $4.50
         Labor for my 2 brothers help $120.00
                                                 Total $242.25
                                                          ------------
                                            Saving $8757.75 PRICELESS!

Home Video of our Dream Vacation

2010-10-11T07:47:00.001-07:00

Good times....
Good times....
My favorite was when my lawn was ground to a pulp.

Our Dream Vacation.

2010-10-09T18:53:00.012-07:00

Hey everyone, Check out these pictures of our dream vacation, and it will only cost us $6800.00.

Yup... That's right, Kathi and I get an all expenses paid vacation to...

A NEW SEWER LINE!
Thank you Orangeburg pipe!

I WIN!

2010-09-18T08:15:00.007-07:00

Me: Tank you have to go!
Tank: No way I like it here, it's comfy.
Me: Well, your going, but first you have to loose some weight!
Tank: What do you mean?
Me: We're going to have a talk. SAY HELLO TO MY LITTLE FRIEND!
Tank: Wait! What are you doing with that SAW!?!?
Me: Muhuhuhahahaha!!!!
Tank: AAAaaaaaarrrrrggggggghhhhh!!!!! what a world... what a world....

And so I cut him up in to little pieces.

He begged and pleaded for his life, but I would have none of it. I made one concession, I removed the door to haul his carcass out. Never give up! Never Surrender!

My Stock Pics

2010-09-17T19:45:00.003-07:00

Recently found where 2 more of my pictures have been published. I found this site. Here is a pdf preview with one of my pictures on the cover. The book can be purchased much cheaper at Amazon.com.

This picture is on the cover.

This picture is on page 17.

Making Progress

2010-09-12T09:15:00.003-07:00

Taking advantage of the unusually cool weather this last week. I expanded the hole in the front of the tank and cut out a large section of the rear of the tank.

Never Give up! Never Surrender!

That Damn Tank

2010-09-05T14:08:00.004-07:00

Previous owners of our house had installed a solar hot water system. When we got the house it wasn't working. I had long since removed the panels from the roof as their weight was damaging it. However, the hot water holding tank that was part of the system, was installed on the side yard, near the actual hot water heater. For some STUPID reason they had built a "closet" around it. Apparently they figured this tank would never break or need to be replaced because there is absolutely no EASY way to remove the tank without destroying the closet or the tank.

SO for the 14 years we have lived here I have been trying to remove the tank with out destroying the closet. A couple of years ago I bought a pair of pneumatic shears to cut away the outer covering of the tank, but had nothing to cut the tank up with. The tank cannot be rotated as there are pipes coming out the top of it in to the closet containing the hot water heater. The pipes cannot be removed because I cannot reach the solder joint without removing the roof. It cannot be tilted as the tank extends all the way up into the top of the closet. Nope, I will have to cut a large hole in it and then cut the tank up from the inside and remove it piece meal. Cutting torches and grinders are out of the question as I do not want to burn the house down.

I recently borrowed a reciprocating saw, and picked up some VERY expensive metal cutting blades from Lowe's. I managed to cut a decent sized hole in the tank. Hopefully over the next few weekends I will have this damn tank gone. NEVER give up! NEVER surrender!

Slow Summer

2010-07-31T10:43:00.002-07:00

It's been a slow summer. That which I do to make money is taking up most of my time. Anything New that I have been doing is on Youtube.

Eric's and Coleen's wedding

2010-06-15T17:32:00.008-07:00

For those that do not know Eric Zanovitch got married last weekend 6-12-2010 (isn't that one of the signs of the Apocalypse?). Here is a link to the pics Kathi and I took, And here is the video of the actual wedding.

On the way up to Las Vegas we rode a helicopter at Hoover Dam.

I was going to stop and maybe go on a tour but the place was a zoo, traffic was slow, etc. As we got to the other side I saw a sign that said "Helicopter rides $29", So I pulled over.

The $29 ride was only 2 minutes long, but they had a 5 minute ride for $59 that takes you over the lake and the dam, as well as the Mike O'Callaghan - Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge being constructed. The third option was a $99 dollar 10 minute ride. We chose the middle one, I grabbed my Sony bloggie, and my Sony HDR-XR150 handycam and started filming with both as soon as I could. You will note that towards the end Kathi and I are wearing what look like fanny packs, but they are not, they are flotation devices. We surmised their purpose was to make the recovery of our mangled bodies easier in the event of a horrific crash in the lake (I digress).

Kathi sat up front as I was too fat for the weight and balance. I did my best to film whatever was interesting with 2 cameras, and try to see the sites.

Kathi later said "Everyone should get to ride in a limousine that isn't taking you to a funeral, and a helicopter that isn't air-evacing you to a hospital." Well I haven't rode in a limousine yet.

To make the video, I synced up the 2 video streams in Sony Vegas Pro 7. and then chose the more interesting parts of the 2 streams. I chose the music for obvious reasons (we're in a helicopter what else would we use).

The helicopter is a Bell 206 Jetranger (thank you Daniel). If you think the ride is expensive, understand that they cost around $500 per hour to operate. The company is Dam helicopter, inc. The helicopter was very small inside. There were 4 passenger seats and it was about as roomy as my wife's Ford Focus. There were no other passengers.

Learning To Fly

2010-05-11T15:58:00.000-07:00

Major Tom coming home

2010-05-06T19:35:00.004-07:00

Youtube blocked this so I uploaded it to Google video.

It's irritating as There are dozens of copies of this song on youtube, and I am pretty certain they don't have permission either.

First Music Video

2010-03-04T21:59:00.001-07:00

For those that don't know, I have a channel on Youtube. Where I have been uploading some of my video's. Here is my most recent one.

Sanity

2010-02-20T17:50:00.000-07:00

I will now take from you, your Sanity.

Greatest Action Hero Ever!

2010-02-12T08:19:00.001-07:00

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Electropolis

2010-02-03T08:21:00.000-07:00

Electropolis from Kevin McCullough on Vimeo.

How to Crash Airplanes 101

2010-01-31T20:07:00.000-07:00

So... a week ago I bought a Parkzone Radian from the Hobby Bench on 19th ave and Northern, and Daniel bought an upgraded Guan Li A-10 from nitroplanes.com. We were both chomping at the bit to fly them this weekend.

Self - "No don't do it, it's too windy!"
Me - "Shut up self!"
Self - "Maybe Daniel will talk some sense in to him".
Daniel - "FLY AIRPLANES!"
Self - "I'll be over here if anyone needs me...."

So my plane is totaled, There were pieces missing and I can't glue the nose back together. I am trying to locate a replacement, but no one has the fuselage in stock right now. Instead I took the receiver out of the Radian and put it into the Hawk sky, so I can fly it on 2.4ghz. That almost ended up bad as I had the elevator servo reversed on my first take off attempt today, and the plane was tail heavy because I didn't have the battery far enough forward. I would have flow again today but just after I landed the wind kicked up again...

Self - "Oooooh, Now you listen to me!"
Me - "Whatever."

Daniel tried flying again today and was doing a pretty good job until his transmitter or receiver cutout and the plane dropped out of the sky like a rock.
The above image was taken seconds after his A-10 crashed (trips over).
So then we had to repair it.

So after much epoxy and tape we got it back together.
Daniel reports later in the day that there is a problem with one of the motors.
We also worked on his old Cessna, which has 2 bad servos and now a broken propeller, This is what happens when a propeller walks up your arm, when it comes on unexpectedly.

Two words "NAZI Spiderpanzer"

2010-01-28T14:49:00.001-07:00

Daniel's First Flight

2010-01-24T19:03:00.013-07:00

Yesterday my nephew Daniel stopped by with Karen his mother, he found out I had an RC simulator. So he stayed overnight playing on the simulator. Since he was real good at it (and he had sort of flown an RC plane before), the next day (today) we got up somewhat early and went to the vacant lot and, I flew the plane once, then let Daniel fly. Here is that Flight.

Here is another Flight Daniel did with the camera facing to the rear.

And this flight I flew with the camera mounted on the belly of the plane.

Finally here is Daniels flight with the camera pointed to the right. Watch for the loop.

Total flights for today was 5 for me and 5 for Daniel.

Joseph Ducreux Sings - III

2010-01-16T09:16:00.000-07:00

The Tasting

2010-01-14T19:28:00.003-07:00

If you have been reading my previous Posts Here, Here, Here, and Here. You know I have made my own BACON! So.... How does it taste. Well pretty damn good. First off this is BACON! that is not for the faint of heart. This is Fire Fighter BACON! This BACON! makes the smoke alarm go off when you bring it out. The closest any other BACON! comes to this is "Newsom's Old Mill Store Hickory Smoked Country Bacon". Since I used Alton Brown's Scrap Yard Challenge BACON! cure, this BACON! is a little on the sweet side (but not much) you definitely get the taste of molasses and cider every once in a while. The BACON! is not salty, in fact The next time I make it I will drop the Sugar and maybe add an additional half cup of salt to the brine. It does not have the "hammy" taste that many bacon's have. There are no nitrates in this cure so the meat will not be a pretty pink (but I couldn't care less). Because of the extra sugar the BACON! tends to brown quickly, and if cooked at too high heat will burn easily. The smokiness varies but is refreshingly strong. One of my brothers described it as "eating a burning building, or campfire" There is relatively little curling, and almost no splatter as I did not "inject" the cure into the bacon like most manufactures do. The meat has a light almost porky flavor and the fat is where you will find the molasses and apple cider flavors. Mike reported the BACON! is good, but every once in a while you bite in to a part of it that taste "REALLY GOOD". The meat is very tender, as compared to how it was before being cured (I cooked some up before hand to compare).

Things I would change:
Get skinned, loin end bellies (they are thicker).
Skip the extra sugar in the cure.
Add a little extra salt.
Cure the bacon for 5 days instead of 3 (cure needs more time to penetrate).
Smoke with Cherry, or Apple wood.

Joseph Ducreux Sings - II

2010-01-13T08:20:00.000-07:00

Visit from the Pentagon

2010-01-12T16:49:00.002-07:00

Seems someone at the Pentagon is interested in the Dynam Hawk Sky, I got 2 web hits from there for 1 hour 7 minutes 55 seconds. They were searching for "Dynam Hawk Sky Review". Strange..... but veeeerrrryyy inTEResTING!

First Crash

2010-01-10T18:28:00.007-07:00

So we went out today to fly the plane again, even though it was a bit too windy. First flight I did pretty good, the repairs to the landing gear held. Landing was tough as I had a 5 to 10 mph head wind. The plane either wanted to stay up or wanted to nose dive. Flight 2 went well. Flight 3..... eh not so much. I misjudged the distance and flew over the apartment complex nearby (which I did not want to do, the wind was blowing me way off course). On the last go around I was over the parking lot and flew into a palm tree (ouch). It put a small dent in the right wing, and broke the hot glue joints (nothing major). Foam planes can take a lot of punishment. Here is the video.

Flew it several more times, landings were a bit tricky. So you know if you haven't destroyed the plane, why stop? The last flight was going good, I even did another barrel roll, but as I came in for a landing I over corrected, flipped over, and nosed dived straight into the ground. Severely bending the landing gear, and munging the nose. See for your self.

More pictures from Chris.

Oh The Carnage, Note the cockpit cover to the right of the plane.

Well "Trips over", we went home. Later, using epoxy and packing tape I glued all the cracks in the foam, and tried to put the nose back into shape. I straightened the landing gear, re-glued the wings on, and we will see how she fly in a week or two.

First Flight

2010-01-10T08:42:00.003-07:00

Ever since I was a wee lad, I always wanted a remote controlled airplane, but I/we never had the money/time, or whatever. So recently I started looking online and found a website www.nitroplanes.com. I saw a lot of planes I liked, and had to have, but finally settled on something more on the trainer side. I picked the Dynam Hawk Sky (weird name, I guess "Sky Hawk" was already taken). Anyways. I ordered it and the E-sky Flight sim and USB 4 Channel transmitter. I read up on it and it had some bad reviews, so I downloaded Clearview and installed that on my Windows XP Media Center pc, with our 37" HD TV. In the meantime I ordered an extra Battery and one of these.

Although I have actual flight time, and soloed in a Piper Warrior, used many different flight simulator, I figured it would be worth the money to practice on the sim before trying to fly the real thing. Turned out to be a good idea, as I crashed a lot. So for the last week I have been practicing for 1 or 2 hours a night. Of the many planes I tried the Cessna 182 seemed to fly like a real "small plane". I tried to find a Hawk Sky to download, but no one had that Aircraft. The closest was the Easy Star but it doesn't have ailerons.

Yesterday morning while the BACON! was smoking I began building the plane. A couple of days prior I had found a forum discussing the "Hawk Sky" and read up on it, good thing to. I put it together using Epoxy and hot glue, instead of the glue that came with it. Here it is disassembled.
The instructions were relatively easy to follow, even though they were written in Engrish. Prior to actual assembly I connected everything up and verified all servos worked. I put the rudder and elevator on with epoxy, and the main wings on with a small amount of hot glue on the leading and trailing edge wing roots, this way if I needed to take it apart again I could. I attached the servo cables to the rudder and elevator, and tightened them with loctite. The Instructions had no information about how to wire or attach the motor (So I guessed). I also insulated the connections with shrink tubing instead of the small and inadequate insulators provided. Since the tech support at nitroplanes lied about the second battery I ordered I had to modify both of them so I could use them in the AC. Once assembled I centered and trimmed all the servos so that all the control surfaces were centered and neutral. Later in the day Chris and Mike came over and we went to a vacant lot near 40th street and McDowell (the city of Phoenix does not allow RC planes in their parks). Here is the plane Fully assembled and ready to go.
I did not put on the decals as I do not care that much about them, and they were munged in the box. I also mounted the small gum spy camera in the cockpit, So without further ado here is that video.

Just before flying it today I did some practice with a similar glider. I would say that the Clearview sim helped a lot, but the actual airplane was easier to fly than any of the ones in the simulator. I would have had more footage but the spy camera for some reason discharged it's battery very quickly. So here is some footage from the ground. Please excuse the glitches the tape needs to be replaced.

There were only 2 mishaps, One when I landed the first time (the landing gear fell off and we had to look for the wheels). However I was warned that this would happen, So I hand launched it for the remainder of the day, and the second was when the first battery got low and I lost signal, the plane semi crashed on a pile of dirt. It was kind of like those cheesey effects where in TV shows the plane always flies behind a hill before crashing, and all you see is the explosion.
I found the plane to be quite responsive. I did several loops and a couple of barrel rolls (Star Fox would be proud). I even strafed Mike and Chris, and almost hit myself as well. So here are a bunch of pictures courtesy of Chris.

Tonight I Reattached the wheels to the landing gear and epoxied it back to the frame. I also epoxied some Teflon tape to the underside of the fuselage so that if I have to do anymore belly landings it will save some wear and tear on the foam.
So anyone looking to buy this aircraft as their beginner RC plane will not be disappointed, and to anyone that says you can't learn to fly an RC plane using just a simulator, my response is:

Joseph Ducreux Sings - I

2010-01-10T08:09:00.000-07:00

The Pellicle and the Smoke

2010-01-09T08:22:00.006-07:00

First let me say that the freezer bags half filled with water did a very good job of keeping the cure at around 36 degrees. 4 bags last 24 to 36 hours.

I got home last night around 5pm. drained the cure and hung up one of the slabs to dry for an hour. While that was happening I setup the smoker.
To power the fan I used an old multipurpose hobby electronics deal, thingy....(I don't remember what it is called). It has a signal generator, variable ac power supply, and variable dc power supply (among other things). Which was given to me by one of my sisters ex-husbands.
Anyways, I hooked the variable dc connection to the fan and set the voltage so that it would run the fan at the lowest voltage that would make the blades move. I then attached this to an electric timer to turn on and off about every 15 minutes. Off 15 minutes on 15 minutes.
I loaded the smoker with hickory wood chips and kept an eye on it till 23:00. Adding wood chips every 30 minutes or so. I ran a rod through the meat and hung it in the center of the cold smoker. I had to cut off the bottom 3 inches to keep it from touching the bottom of the can. I hung that piece from the rod as well.
After 5 hours of smoking I pulled the meat out and cut it into 4 or 5 inch wide pieces and froze them. I will slice later. I immediately fried some up, but will save the taste report for later. This morning I got up at 06:00 and did the same thing with the second slab. I will smoke this for at least 6 hours.

Joseph Ducreux Insults You - III

2010-01-07T07:34:00.000-07:00

The Cure

2010-01-06T08:27:00.001-07:00

Last night I made my cure for the BACON! I skinned the bellies as well. I will not post pictures as it was rather gross, and extremely difficult. The nipples did not help matters (yes nipples). For some reason the phrase "it puts the lotion on..." kept popping into my head. Anyways the bellies are in the brine, in a cooler, with bags of ice, which I will have to change out about every 12 hours. Next step
"the pellicle".

Joseph Ducreux Insults You - II

2010-01-05T07:32:00.000-07:00

Joseph Ducreux Insults You - I

2010-01-02T07:31:00.000-07:00

Building the Smoker

2009-12-31T16:45:00.003-07:00

Way back when I first got into smoking meats, and before I decided to invest in a real smoker, I built the Alton brown Trash can Smoker. It worked so well I immediately purchased a real smoker. In preparation for smoking my BACON!, I converted it into a cold smoker. I went to Home Depot and purchased a second garbage can for $22.00. I had a long length of thin aluminum dryer tubing (never used) and some other parts. First thing I did was attach the Aluminum tubing and reducer to the new trash can at the bottom using pop rivets and duct tape on the inside.
I Attached the ducting with a large hose clamp. Attached a computer power supply fan to the top of the can on the opposite side.
The finished can looks like this.
I attached the other side of the hose to the old smoker and duct taped it in place.
I will be using a hot plate to generate the heat for the smoke. As a test I powered on the fan, lit some paper towels and put them in the old smoker. In a few seconds smoke came out. and after traveling through the long tube it was cooled by the outside air. Here is the results.
Unfortunately I do not have the meat ready to smoke yet, so I will start curing it this Wednesday and smoke it on the weekend.

The Once and Future BACON!

2009-12-30T13:56:00.005-07:00

Well..... After a long absence, I finally have something to blog about.

IT'S BACON!!!

I have been wanting to make my own BACON! for a while now, but I had to wait till the outside temperatures were low enough for cold smoking. That means I have a narrow windows of opportunity over the next month or so. Cold smoking requires temperatures of 70 degrees or less. Today I went to Hobe Meats at 6044 N 16th St, Phoenix, AZ and picked up 2 whole pork bellies (frozen, skin on). They were $4.99 per pound. Total was over $100.00 (if your gonna make BACON!, make a lot). I will be using the Alton Brown Cure for this, and will probably smoke them next week (once I build my cold smoker). Stay tuned.

Hardware Review: Optimate Pro-S

2009-10-23T19:50:00.009-07:00

The Optimate Pro-S is a battery charger/de-sulfator, made by Tecmate. The model I purchased came from www.batteryxpress.com and is the older version. The difference between the 2 is in the styling and the new model lets you choose the type of battery connected to it.

I purchased this battery charger because I have a growing collection of sealed lead acid batteries removed from uninterruptable power supplies. Many of them are completely dead but some may be just sulfated.

The unit claims to be able to recover a battery with as low a voltage as .8. It is primarily designed for "power sport" Lead acid batteries, used in ATV's, and motorcycles, but will work on any 12 volt lead acid battery.

Once I received the unit I selected some batteries, including one that had .5 volts. I expected the one with only .5 volts to fail but would try it anyways. As expected the .5 volt battery did not even register with the charger. I attached the battery to a standard charger which did not see it either. So I tricked the regular charger by jumpering a good battery to the bad battery while it was on the charger. This started it charging. Once it got to about five volts I hooked it to the Optimate. Interestingly enough it did not do a desulfate which is strange for a battery of this age (I later found out why). I left it on the charger for 24 hours but it was a no go.

I decided to just try batteries with at least 12 volts. It took a call to the manufacturer and some experimenting, as the instructions are written kind of like a run on sentence in a computer program. Here is what I found. If the charger is turned on when connected to the battery (manual says to do this) it does not check if the battery is sulfated even though the manual says that is the first thing it will do, however if the charger is connected to the battery after it is turned on it will test for sulfation. It appears that this is a bug in it's programming. The newer unit is supposed to be better behaved. The unit is supposed to indicate if a battery is good, ok, or bad using 3 lights, Green, Yellow, and Red. With combinations of the Green and yellow light for readings in between good and ok. I was never getting an indication of whether the batteries were any good. Just to test I hooked it to a known good battery and left it overnight. In the morning it registered good. So I started trying other batteries. I quickly found 2 other batteries that were good and I didn't know it.

I also found that If you repeatedly desulfate a battery you can revive it. Case in point I have 5 batteries that would not register as good, bad, or in between. I found that if I cycle though the batteries, letting each battery rest after its desulfating cycle, over time the resting voltage slowly climbs up. This worked so well that a battery I found that had a date code of July 1996 was brought back to good condition. Only testing will tell if it really is good, but the results were surprising.

I have also ran it on several of my car batteries, to see if they are still good, and they all are. I probably should have paid extra for the newer version, but once I got the kinks worked out, I am quite happy with the unit.

Update 5-6-10 None of the sealed lead acid batteries I tested, were revived enough to be used in a ups again.

Drunkest Guy ever

2009-10-20T17:16:00.006-07:00

2001 Space Odyssey Drunk

Old Timey Drunk

Remixed

This was too funny to pass up.
Note that this is appears to take place at 10:48am on a Tuesday.

Restaurant Review: Eden's Grill

2009-10-09T20:20:00.003-07:00

Looking for new or different places to eat, I keep tabs on a website called Feasting in Phoenix. First I read the reviews and if a restaurant is interesting to me I check it out on the Maricopa county Website. I see how the restaurant does on it's inspections. The go/no-go decider for me is if a restaurant has "EVER" had roaches reported. If not, I will check it out. So recently I went through the website and found several restaurants I could try. Today we went to Eden's Grill. Seth at Feasting in Phoenix gave it a decent review so decided to try it out.

The restaurant is pretty long drive from our house. It is not a very big place, nice and cozy. The staff are very friendly. We started with the houmous which came with pita bread, it was creamy but it could of used a bit more spice. I ordered the Gyros plate, and Kathi ordered the Chicken and Gyros plate. My plate was a lamb and beef gyro (very good and not overly spiced up), it came with basmati rice that was flavored with something like Garum masala and it had golden raisins and almonds mixed in (very good). It also came with onions, some flat bread lightly seasoned with cinnamon and sugar and a small side of a yogurt sauce. Some of the Gyro meat had a sweet candy like sauce on it. Kathi's came with Gyro meat, and a small chicken fillet kebab. Hers had most of the stuff mine had except no flat bread with cinnamon. Kathi really like the rice. The only problems with our meal was that it was enough food for 4 people. We ended up taking most of it home for later. This restaurant is well worth the drive.

Monkey

2009-09-30T21:04:00.003-07:00

Demotivational poster. Monkey: I am not one

Demotivational Poster

2009-09-30T20:50:00.003-07:00

Cloning: Just because you can do something... Doesn't mean you should.
Yeah I know, and old Photoshop, just trying out a program I found to make motivational posters.

Best Bread EVAR!

2009-08-27T19:45:00.019-07:00

I have been searching for years, experimenting, trying different recipes in my attempts to find the perfect, easy to make bread recipe. I have 3 (Three) bread machines. I have tried to make sourdough starter and sourdough bread, in most cases what I got had more in common with beer than bread. Nothing had that perfect mix of:
Nice crispy crust.
Chewy Texture.
Great flavor.
Nice big bubbly holes.
Didn't require lots of work.

Until now.

Yesterday In what was probably my last attempt I googled "crispy bread crust" and stumbled upon the greatest non secret on the Internet, "Bittman's no knead bread". Everywhere I clicked people were raving about it. I read several blogs and even found the original video that shows how to make it. I had to try it immediately. First here is the video:

Now the recipe:

3 cups all-purpose or bread flour, more for dusting
¼ teaspoon instant yeast (Fleishmann's Highly active yeast)
1¼ teaspoons salt
Room temperature or cooler water.
Cornmeal or wheat bran as needed.

1. In a large bowl combine flour, yeast and salt. Mix the dry ingredients thoroughly, then add 1 & 1/2 cups water, and stir until blended; dough will be shaggy and sticky. Cover bowl with lid or plastic wrap (not air tight). Let dough rest at least 12 hours, preferably about 18, at room temperature, between 70 & 80 degrees.

2. Dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles and has expanded 2 to 3 times original size. Lightly flour a work surface and place dough on it; sprinkle it with a little more flour and fold it over on itself 4 times (DO NOT SQUISH).

3. Using just enough flour to keep dough from sticking to work surface or to your fingers, gently and quickly shape dough into a ball do not squash or knead. Generously coat a cotton tea towel (not terry cloth) with flour, wheat bran or cornmeal; put dough seam side down on towel and dust with more flour, bran or cornmeal. Cover with another cotton towel and let rise for about 2 hours. When it is ready, dough will be more than double in size and will not readily spring back when poked with a finger.

4. At least a half-hour before dough is ready, heat oven to 450 degrees. Put a 6- to 8-quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic) in oven as it heats (no plastic). When dough is ready, carefully remove pot from oven. Slide your hand under towel and turn dough over into pot, seam side up; it may look like a mess, but that is okay. Shake pan once or twice if dough is unevenly distributed; it will straighten out as it bakes. Cover with lid and bake 30 minutes, then remove lid and bake another 15 to 30 minutes (check every ten minutes), until loaf is beautifully browned. If not sure take the breads internal temperature, it should be between 190 and 195 degrees. Cool on a rack for 30 minutes.

Makes One, 1½-pound loaf.

The hardest part of making this bread is transferring the risen dough to my dutch oven without it collapsing too much.

Several points to know if you want to make this bread.
Watch the video.
Do not use regular yeast.
Do not skimp on the salt.
If you use kosher salt use 1 and 3/4 teaspoons.
Do not pat, punch, squish, or otherwise rough up this dough in anyway.
You must use a dutch oven or some other lidded pot at least 1/4 inch thick.
When mixing the dough, the instant it comes together in a single mass, STOP cover it and walk away.
Just before you put the dough in the heated dutch oven cover the dutch oven bottom with cornmeal or wheat bran, DO NOT spray with Pam or use oil as it will instantly smoke and make the bread taste funny.
If you want a crispy crust the next day, place the bread in a 350 degree oven for 10 minutes.

Here are the pics I took.

The first picture is right after I mixed it, The second was The next morning about 12 hours later (it makes snap, crackle, pop sounds). I forgot to take a picture just before I shaped it 18 hours later, or after it was shaped.

The third picture was taken after I removed it from the Dutch oven and the last picture was after Kathi and I ate some of it. I actually over mixed it or the bubbles would have been bigger.

Now the science:

The reason for the instant yeast is that it is mixed with ascorbic acid (vitamin C) yeast get hyper active in the presence of vitamin c. Regular yeast could be used but you will need 3 times as much and it still won't give you quite the same results. The salt is there to slow down the yeast, and because it is not overly mixed the individual salt grains create localized areas where the yeast don't grow as well. The hyper active yeast make big bubbles in the dough. Letting it ferment for 18 hours adds flavor to the bread. If you smell it just before you shape it, it will smell a little bit like booze, as the yeast have turned some of the natural sugars in the bread to alcohol. Folding the bread 4 times creates crevices, when the bread is turned upside down in the dutch oven, these crevices open up and allow steam to escape. The dutch oven creates a miniature steam injection oven which is what makes the crust perfectly crisp.

Home Invasion (or Ratatouille?)

2009-08-01T11:52:00.008-07:00

About 3 am I got up and was in the kitchen. I heard a noise coming from our range hood. It was making a clicking/banging noise similar to what it makes when there is a storm outside. The vent has a damper valve to prevent air from blowing back into the house. However it was never installed correctly by the previous owner. Anyways I looked outside and there was no wind blowing.... Hmm... oh well, back to bed!

Around 7am I wake up and go into the kitchen, The noise is still there, and there is a whole bunch of sticks, twigs, and debris on the stove??? I look under the hood and the filter is ripped up (but not all the way through). I wake Kathi up and tell her I think something is stuck in the vent pipes above the stove (I'm thinking cat, cause I have had that happen before just not here).

I pop the vent filter off and clean it, I look under the hood at the same time as Kathi does and a small pair of beady black eyes are staring back. Kathi freaks out."aaaaaahhhhhh! A RAT!!!!"

I quickly locate my pellet gun (luckily it had 2 pellets in it). I pump it up, take aim and...... I can't pull the trigger. I move the safety, take aim...... and can't pull the trigger WTF! Meanwhile the rat is trying to get out of the vent through the fan (which was not on), after messing with the BB gun again I realize I forgot to push the bolt forward. I fix that, take aim and...... Pop! Headshot!.

Ooooh.... right..... rats bleed and flail about after being shot in the head. So the rat falls through the opening and onto the stove, where it twitches and squirms for a few minutes.

Here is a picture, but you will have to click the link as it's a little gory.

SO! Once Remy stopped twitching I picked it up with a paper towel by the tail and put it in a ziplock freezer bag and straight into the trash.

GREAT! now I gots to clean up this mess. So down comes the range hood and everything on the stove gets a bath in bleach water, a salt shaker, and some decorative items on the wall get tossed.

Now a trip to home depot to get all the right parts to fix the vent and block the vent on the roof with mesh. While leaving Home Depot we ran into Gerry Meek. We return and after much cursing, etc. we get the vent fixed, the range hood back up, and I blocked the vent on the roof with mesh. Once on the ground I drink about a gallon of water as it is about 110 outside and I burned my ass, legs, arms, and anything else that touched the roof. But all openings on the roof, etc are rat proof now. I'm gonna take a shower!

Too bad for "Little Chef" though....

Bizarre Foods II

2009-07-19T13:00:00.007-07:00

The crayfish I had caught on our trip to Woods Canyon Lake, had been flash frozen on dry ice. I had brought them back and kept them in my freezer until this weekend. So, after spending an exorbinate amount of money catching these little buggers,
we finally got a chance to cook them up and eat them. Here is what 11 pounds of uncooked crayfish looks like.
I fixed up 2 pots with salt, lemon juice, generic crab boil, hot chili powder and cayenne pepper.
I put 4 pounds in one pot and the rest in the other, boiled the little suckers for 10 minutes and let them sit for 15. I served them up with butter and in small batches so they would stay warm.We all had quite a bit of them, including Sean who really like the tail meat. I even sucked the heads of a couple of them, though I don't know what the big deal is, what you get out of it just taste like the water it was boiled in. It wasn't bad but it wasn't a big thrill either.
These crayfish tasted way better than the frozen ones you used to be able to get from Walmart, not fishy at all. The flavor was closer to actual Lobster than anything else. Plus Woods Canyon Lake is a very clean lake, So I'm not worried about any contamination. My attempts at purging worked very well, but some of the larger ones could have been purged a bit longer. Though the whole meal still only amounted to a lite snack.

The Man, The Woman, The Lake, and the tiny little water bug things. (Vacation 2009)

2009-07-13T19:23:00.003-07:00

07-05-2009 - After many months, Kathi and I finally get a vacation, and a chance to use our trailer for more than a day or two.

After over preparing (and packing everything you could think of) for several weeks, we loaded up the truck and trailer and left for the Aspen campground up on the Mogollon Rim. We left way earlier than we needed so the truck would be less likely to overheat hauling the trailer up the steep grades to get to the Rim (glad I got the towing package).

Kathi slept part of the way up. Since we could not check in at the campground till 2pm, we stopped at the visitors center just up on the Rim. Kathi slept in the car while I sat around and watched the piles and piles of campers leaving from the Woods Canyon lake recreation area. After a while I got board and we drove to Heber to see if my relatives Betty & Russ were at their cabin (they weren't). We stopped by Kathi's cousins cabin which was for sale for $138,000.00.

We checked in at 2pm, setup camp, and crashed for a while.
We went to sleep pretty much when the Sun went down.

07-06-2009 - I was up with the Sun (Kathi was up... and then back down again), and went down to the lake, I set my crayfish trap and also tried catching some using a small fishing pole with a large hunk of chicken on the treble hook. I caught about 5 good ones this way. A couple of hours later I went back to camp and got Kathi. We came back and I did some fishing. I didn't catch any fish but when I pulled in my trap I had 14 crayfish in it. I reset the trap and did more fishing. At one point there was a very young kid on another part of the lake that was trying to catch some minnows. We know this because his parents were trying to get him to come back to the car because they were going home. Brian (we know his name was Brian because his parents kept yelling it across the lake) was wailing and blubbering "I want to catch a minnow". This went on for some time with various family members screaming across the lake that he needed to leave and even promising ice cream, etc. There is nothing more ridiculous than a small child wandering through the mud and water of a lake up to his waist carrying a small bucket and a minnow net, blubbering the whole time that "you hate me", and repeating over and over "I want to catch a minnow". At one point he caught a minnow, then after transferring it to his bucket, he tripped and fell, spilling the minnow, prompting more wailing. Eventually he worked his way out of the lake and left, never realizing his dream of catching a minnow. Around noonish the shade was gone and it got quite warm, so we went back to camp, napped, had dinner, and returned later that day to check the trap. there were only 4 crayfish in it. I baited the trap

and threw it back in the lake.

Total crayfish for today 23. I began purging the crayfish at camp using a 5 gallon bucket, and an aerator powered by an inverter and a car battery.

07-07-2009 - Up again with the Sun. Froze the previous days crayfish. Went to the lake and checked the trap and there were 35 crayfish in it plus some minnows. We spent most of the day at the lake. After trying once again to catch a trout using a drop shot, and corn, I decided to try one of the minnows caught in the crayfish trap under a bobber. I finally got some nibbles, and something on the line. I reeled it in and had caught a trout. We checked and baited the trap again that night. there were 3 more in the trap. Total crayfish for today 38. I cleaned and froze the trout in the ice chest full of dry ice.
07-08-2009 - Once more up with the sun. We checked the trap and I had 48 crayfish. I did not reset the trap as it is not productive enough in the daytime. Since I was low on dry ice we drove in to Payson. We stopped at a restaurant called "Tiny's Family Restaurant". where the food was meh. We went on to the Walmart, I picked up some extra shirts, a couple of flashlight bulbs, and some minor fishing supplies. We returned and rented a boat at 10:45 trolled around the lake seeing the sites, and not catching any fish.
Kathi wanted me to take her picture but as the lake was pretty crowded an opportunity did not arise, so she took matters into her own hands.When I went to return the boat, after the first battery died, I connected the second battery. For some reason the boat was reeeeaaaallllly slow. I looked at the battery and noticed the wire on the positive terminal was smoking. It seems the positive lead had worn down to only 2 or 3 little wires. I stripped the insulation and connected the wire again. We were once again on our way at a much higher speed. We got back to camp and I took my daily shower (a trailer with a shower is awesome). I made dinner. For Kathi I cooked up the trout, and I had a Ribeye steak.Kathi also had her daily shower. Back to the lake and set my trap for the night. Although I had been charging the battery for the aerator, the voltage got too low in the middle of the night and the inverters alarm went off. It's a lot of fun freezing crayfish in the middle of the night. The moon was out and high in the sky, so I did not need a flashlight. It was absolutely, totally quite.

07-09-2009 - 4:30 am, up early to take pics..... I SAID 4:30 am up early to take pics.... Come on Robert get your ass up! So I dragged myself out of bed, and woke up Kathi. Those pics are for a later post, here are some pics using Kathi's camera.

Afterwards we checked the trap, and found more than 40 crayfish, but only 32 were keepers.
We returned to camp, charged the battery on the trailer and the one for the inverter (something I did every day). I was a bit bored and so we decided to hike along the side of the lake to the general vicinity of the off limits Eagles nest. On the way we found some very tame chipmunks, and fed them peanuts, pumpkin seeds and raisins (they did not like craisins).

Somewhere along the way we must have brushed up against either some poison ivy. I got a small rash on my right hand and Kathi got rashes above her knees. We returned to camp after picking up some calamine lotion and setting my trap. That night we did some stargazing, and Kathi got to see her first shooting star. I saw 4. We both saw a satellite or possibly the International Space Station. Then to bed.

07-10-2009 - Up with the sun to find that the trap had been pulled in and left in shallow water (by some asshole), but it did have 19 crayfish in it. At 07:40 Kathi rented a boat again and we proceeded to troll around and not catch any fish.

We did however get some pics and video of the eagle and it's nest.

We returned to camp for a while, showered and decided to try not catching any fish again. So off to the lake, which was very crowded. I found a shady place next to "Valium dad" and his kids, they may have been the people who messed with my trap as they asked about it. I had not brought any bait. I tried several lures and gave up.
I did catch a minnow with my net and used that as bait. I caught a crayfish accidentally with the minnow, and removed his tale (which continued to flick) and used the meat as bait. I did not even get a nibble. After a while we had to leave as a storm was coming.
We got back to camp and it started to rain. It rained for about a half an hour. So we did some packing, had dinner and went to bed. Sometime in the middle of the night I got a really bad headache. I got up and took a vicodin which helped me get back to sleep. (queue ominous music).

07-11-2009 - Woke up and I still had a really bad headache (not a migraine). I just couldn't do anything. I felt flushed, slightly woozy, but not dizzy. I thought maybe I was slightly dehydrated even though I had drank lots of water all week (in fact almost nothing but water). Kathi did most of the packing. I managed to do some. I drank 2 bottles of water and felt good enough to help complete the packing and get the trailer down, and connected to the truck. We drove to Payson even though I felt miserable. When we got to Payson I followed the signs to an urgent care and saw the doctor there. They checked my blood sugar (120), and did an EKG (normal). They pronounced that nothing was wrong except I was dehydrated or had an electrolyte imbalance. They recommended Gatorade. So we left and picked up some. I drank about a quart and felt better. The drive home was mostly uneventful if not hot, and I did worry about the truck on some of the grades. We got home, unloaded the truck and tried to relax. The total number of crayfish (weighing just under 11 pounds) was about 160 (safely in my freezer), and they only cost me about a couple hundred dollars.

I won't go into what we found in our back room when we got home....

Jawbone Prime Review

2009-07-07T06:08:00.000-07:00

For almost 2 years I have owned one of the original Aliph Jawbones. Recently I thought I had run out of the ear loops. The problem with them is that body oils or sweat causes the rubber to dissolve and the nickle plating to rub off, so you get only about 6 months out of one of them. The other problem with the original Jawbone is that it is very uncomfortable to wear after about 5 hours. So last week I ordered the new Jawbone Prime.

I got it and immediately noticed how small it is (about on half to one third the size). Supposedly you do not need an ear loop to wear one. The buds that come with it are designed to hold it in your ear without them. Well...... That is fantasy. Here is reality.

The only ear bud that would hold the device in my ear was the largest one, but it was so tight it was painful. The other buds would only work (sort of) with the help of one of the loops. I tried wearing it for about a week and gave up. Any movement of my jaw caused it to pop out of my ear. The other major problem is that because I was constantly having to mess with it I was inadvertently hanging up on people and turning the device off. There are 2 hidden buttons on it, both can be pressed accidentally buy just holding the device.

Luckily I found my last ear loop for my original Jawbone. I contacted Aliph for more and they refused to sell me any. I did find some on Amazon.com and other places. I have 2 on order. That should last me at least another year.

Aliph likes to sell the jawbone as some kind of fashion statement or jewelry, instead of selling it based on it's awesome noise canceling abilities. Personally it is not attractive, but that doesn't matter as I couldn't care less if it looked like a wad of gum shoved in my ear as long as it worked and stayed in place. I am not the only one who thinks this. check out their forums for other peoples reactions. I spoke with some people at a local phone retailer and they report that the only people who buy them are those that reasearched them and want them for their noise canceling abilities, everyone else chokes when they see the price.

Maybe in another year I will give them a try, hopefully they will get their act straightened out.

Chopped Review

2009-06-27T21:11:00.003-07:00

I usually don't critique TV shows but this one really bugs me. The Food network has a show called "Chopped" The premise is:

Take 4 chefs.
Have them make a dish.
Give them "secret" ingredients.
One of theses ingredient will be weird or just doesn't go with the other.
Have semi famous food critics critique the food.
"chop" the chef that can't make something good with the ingredients.
Repeat until only one chef is left.

This is how it really goes over.
Take 4 chefs.
Give them "secret" ingredients.
One of theses ingredient will be weird or just doesn't go with the other.
Have snarky self obsessed critics berate and belittle them unmercifully when they can't make something absolutely awesome using a crappy combinations of ingredients in a ridiculously short amount of time.
Film the loser as he/she leaves the building practically in tears.

Seriously, whats the point?

Ding Dong the Ped is Dead

2009-06-25T18:44:00.002-07:00

Since we are about to be inundated with vacuous stories and news shows about Michael Jackson, and you know someone is going to pinch off a movie about him, I would like to get the ball rolling and recommend that the part of Michael Jackson be played by Christopher Walken.

Children... Don't make me... Tell you again.. About.. the Scootching...

Penny's in Heaven

2009-06-22T17:38:00.013-07:00

Sometime in 1996 we acquired Penny from Marjorie. Before that she had lived with Karen, and prior to that with Kathleen in California. At one point there was a website catscan.com. where you would put your cat on a scanner and scan them, then upload the picture. Here is Penny's catscan.
Shortly after we got her she began to gain weight, so fast in fact we thought she had gotten pregnant even though Karen insisted she had been fixed. Turns out she was just eating a lot. I put her on a diet and she was only allowed to eat about 3/4 to 1 cup of food a day but did not loose an ounce of weight, even on cat diet food. At her heaviest she weighed about 15 pounds.
One of the surprising things she did was beg to be petted. Here is a video of her doing this.

She was still doing this up until about a week ago. She would often wake Kathi up to be fed, even though I was the one who fed her. She loved to sit on my chest and rub the back of her head on my chin. Her favorite food of all time was crab legs. Here she is pestering Kathi for some.

WANT!

About a year or so ago she started loosing weight. in the space of a few months she lost almost 10 pounds. she also became real picky about her food. so much so that we had to buy her canned cat food to get her to eat. Here she is partaking in one of her favorite activities "rolling in the dirt".
As you can probably tell she is very skinny in this picture. She loved to be outside. When ever we let her outside she would roll in the dirt, eat grass and sit either under our plum tree or under our grape vines. Now she rests forever in one of her favorite spots. This morning Kathi and I took her to the vet to be put down. Over the last several weeks she had been getting worse. She was barely eating, and could not even jump up on the couch to sit on my chest. It was so bad that sometimes the only way I could get her to eat was to chew my food and give it to her.

Last Saturday 6-21-09 was the last time she ate anything. A kingly meal for a cat. Kathi was having crab legs again and giving penny all she could eat. She must have ate at least a half a cup.

J.C. got a goopy eye last week. We cleared it up with eye drops. Sometime after that Penny got the same, but in her case she was having trouble breathing, wouldn't eat, and was barely drinking water. this morning we took her in to be put down, we thought it was best as we suspected she had a broken tooth and other problems.

The vet confirmed that she had a respiratory infection, at least one broken and abscessed tooth, and a lump on her thyroid (the reason for her weight problems). They gave her a sedative with some pain killers in it, she slowly fell asleep with Kathi and I comforting her, and then they gave her the injection to stop her heart. She went quickly, we wrapped her in one of my old t-shirts and took her home for proper burial. She will be greatly missed.

B.O. Will Save us!

2009-06-22T08:40:00.003-07:00

Try JibJab Sendables® eCards today!

Or not.

Restaurant Review: La Taza De Oro Bistro (The Gold Cup)

2009-06-17T19:53:00.011-07:00

Update: Restaurant Closed some time around 10-2009

I was informed of a really good Mexican restaurant near my house "Asi es la Vida" (This is the Life). I had been trying to have lunch there all last week but was too busy. Today I happened to go by there at lunch time, but noticed they were changing the sign. Seems they are under new ownership (oh well I will try it anyways). The interior of the restaurant is very brightly painted. However all the tables were set like you might find in a high end restaurant. I was presented with a menu by one of the servers who seemed surprised to see me there. I was asked if I wanted Chips and Guacamole (you bet I do), and a drink (Pepsi). There was not a lot of people there, a Doctor waiting on some other people, and a couple came in later.

My appetizer arrived and it was a nice mound of guacamole with the chips embedded in it, in a ring. I was also presented with 3 small bowls containing Pico De Gallo, a red chili sauce, and a green sauce (possibly a tomatillo sauce). The Guacamole and chips were very good, with just a little too much onion. The 3 sauces were all quite good (hot but not too hot). I order as my entree the Adobada described as "Fillet of Pork tenderloin with Guajillo Peppers and garlic, served with Chilaquiles, beans and rice". I got mine sans beans. While I waited, my drink was refreshed without my prompting (which is good).

When my meal arrived I was surprised as most Adobada I have had consists of chunks of slow cooked pork served in a spicy but not overly spiced red sauce (lots of red sauce). This was a thin grilled (tender) tenderloin medallion with a thin coating of the Guajillo pepper and garlic sauce. The rice looked like what you would get from a Japanese restaurant. I had never had Chilaquiles so I started with that first. The sauce was quite good and not overly spiced everything was piping hot. The rice while not colored red like most Mexican rice was really good and spicy (even with carrots, corn, and green beans in it). The vegetables in the rice were very well cooked. Finally I tried the Adobada. Wow this was really good. It kind of caught me off guard and so I looked in the direction of the severs and one came over to see what was wrong. I had to inform them that nothing was wrong it was just that the food was really good.

I finished up and got my bill. They neglect to inform you that the chips and guacamole is extra, but no matter at $3.95 it was well worth it. The Adobada was $10.00 and I did not catch the price of the drink. No matter. I highly recommend this restaurant. While this is not the Mexican food I am used to (the Americanized stuff) it is more authentic then you will find in most restaurants in Phoenix. Check it out.

3602 N. 24th St.
Phoenix, AZ 85016

Three Wolf Moon Tshirt - The Song!

2009-06-04T21:25:00.000-07:00

Hab da Pumpkin

2009-05-27T14:44:00.003-07:00

The Long awaited sequel to Baman Piderman, Find da Sandwich:

Three Wolf Moon T-Shirt

2009-05-22T15:56:00.003-07:00

Behold the Glory that is the Three Wolf Moon T-shirt, Be sure to read the reviews.
You must buy one!
Pickup some Tuscan Whole milk too.

Movie Review: Star Trek (The Lamest Plot)

2009-05-10T20:24:00.012-07:00

When will hollywood learn that the quickest way to make a crappy movie is to use "Time Travel" as a plot device, and so it is that we come to the polished turd that is "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" (no not that one, the new one).

While were on the subject lets throw the canon in a corner and take a massive crap on it. Then take the pieces that didn't get any shit on them and throw them back in to the movie willy nilly.

I almost didn't go to see this movie when I heard it involved time travel. I mean the instant you bring TT into a movie it is nearly impossible to reconcile the paradoxes thus created. Seriously.... Deranged miner blames Spock for the destruction of Romulus so he "ends up" going back in time and once there decides to exact revenge on Spock by destroying Vulcan and Earth. Oh yeah Spock also "ends up" going back in time 25 years after that, and mean ol' Romulan guy is waiting for him, captures him and then proceeds to destroy Vulcan (and kills Spock's mom too the big meanie), and now we have 2 Spock's in one time and some junk that makes "Black holes" called "Red Matter" (imaginative name ay! cause it's matter, and it's red... get it?), and all the history of who, how, and what is thrown out the windows (the canon). So if Romulus is destroyed what would be the point of attempting to make peace with a race who's planet will be destroyed in a supernova some time in the future? You figure out the logic (or lack thereof) behind it all.

Next up lets change some of the characters.... Like making Spock and Uhura hot for each other (what, Ohhhh!, Huh?). Wasn't it Nurse Chapel who was hot for Spock, Oh... Right she's not in this one. Oh and Uhura rooms with a green Orion slave girl with a bad body paint job (cause Starfleet needs horny oversexed controlling women in it's ranks). Well make Scotty an eccentric guy with a little alien comic relief dude for an assistant. Then there's the reckless, yet some how always right Kirk. Except Kirk was never reckless. Spock is played as a brooding know it all (borderline EMO) douche bag who flies off the handle over the slightest insult, and don't even say "yo mama" to him. Then for good measure toss in a little bit of Sulu and Chekov (just a little cause we don't know how to develop their characters). Though we will make Chekov an over reactive spaz. Then there are the Vulcan's who have suddenly become snotty eugenics types who conveniently have emotions whenever they feel like it.

Now the ships and equipment... The inside of the ships vary from hospital like sterility with a touch of art deco discotheque thrown in, to what looks like a large chemical plant , sewer plant, or maybe a brewery. The hand phasers did a silly mechanical switching from stun to kill. The giant mining ship looked like it escaped from an episode of Babylon 5. For a utilitarian device it has a lot of unnecessary nasty/evil looking spikes and protrusions all over it. I could just see some Romulan ship designer having his design rejected for not being SCARY enough "damn the cost! I want my mining ship to scare the piss out of an asteroid before I strip it of minerals". The Enterprise looked like Chihuly Thew up and out came the plans.

Okay... Enough Bashing, now to the things I did like about the movie.

The CG and special effects are top notch. The battle scenes are nice and messy, and sometimes when we are outside the ship there is no sound (just like in real space). We get to see the Enterprise maneuver more like a fighter jet then wallow around going only left and right like they did in most of the TV series.

There were some quite funny, but mostly irrelevant moments throughout the movie. There is even the gratuitous red shirt who gets killed. Doctor McCoys Character is nearly spot on, and he spouts a few of TOS cliches. We actually get to see Captain Christopher Pike do something more that go "beep" or even "beep.... Beep....". The original communicator even makes a couple of cameos.

For the most part though they might as well have made the movie about a completely different set of characters that had nothing to do with the original.

Go see it, but try not to think about it too much or you'll end up bashing it on a blog nobody ever reads (oh wait).

Carlsbad Tavern Habanero Cheeseburger

2009-04-30T19:19:00.005-07:00

The other day I picked up a copy of snoozeweek because it had a story about Star Trek. While looking for the story I happened upon an article about the 50 best hamburgers in the U.S as chosen by Bobby Flay. I don't know how they picked them, but doubt they tried "every" hamburger in "every" state (I digress). Anyways I looked to see what was the best hamburger in Arizona and they had the "Carlsbad Tavern Habanero Cheeseburger".

I have eaten at CT many times and never tried it, so today I tried it. At first I almost chickened out because the description states "This burger may cause temporary blindness or loss of hearing." But you only live once.... (twice max). While waiting for my order I noted 2 tables away an older couple in their late fifties had ordered the same thing. The waiter had come over to them and said "I told you it was hot" The guy had only take a couple of bites out of his and looked mad. The woman had eaten about half of hers. The waiter asked if they wanted a box and they said no. The woman stated that she liked spicy food but this was too spicy. They left almost all of their food. While waiting another couple sat down 1 table away and the woman wanted to order the CTHB. The waiter warned her that it was VERY HOT. She chickened out and ordered the Green chili burrito, the guy ordered something that looked like chili, but wasn't. Neither of them finished their food or took any home, leaving enough food for 2 or 3 meals.

Finally my CTHB came and I took a bight, it was hot but not anywhere near as hot as I thought it would be. Being lean ground beef it was a bit on the dry side. It came with fries and a small salad. The salad had their house dressing "jalapeño ranch". The fries were coated with something that made them crunchy (if it was spicy I couldn't tell). The hamburger was "meh". If you like spicy food you should try it, but otherwise it wasn't super wonderful. The waiter seemed surprised that I finished it. I overheard another waiter say that most people can only eat about half of one, then they start sweating profusely. I would say compared to the "Sun pork" I had at some Chinese Restaurant, and the "Chile Colorado" I had at Arriba's this was number 3 with the "Sun Pork" being so hot I couldn't finish it and didn't sleep all night, and The Chili Colorado being almost to hot to finish.

I have eaten at CT many times before, and of the things I have tried I would recommend the "Carlsbad Ribeye (excellent)". the "Prime rib Quesadilla (Very good)", and the "Carne Adovada plate".

Update: On a later visit I ordered the CTHC and on that occasion it was about 3 times hotter than the first time. It was so hot that I almost couldn't finish it. The next day I had serious stomach problems (repeated trips to the restroom), and a bum that looked like a Japanese flag! Eat this burger at your own peril.

We didn't start the flame war

2009-04-14T16:44:00.003-07:00

Not safe for work, Not safe for children.

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Motivational Poster "Success"

2009-04-08T16:45:00.002-07:00

Purple Potatoes

2009-03-27T09:19:00.009-07:00

Ever since the episode of Dirty Jobs that takes place on a potato farm where they grew blue, purple, and red potatoes (colored on the inside), I have wanted to try them. Since they aren't sold in any store I can find in or around Phoenix I ordered some a couple of years ago from some smug organic farm. They were seed potatoes and so were rather small. I was able to make a fair sized batch of mashed potatoes from the blue potatoes. Yes the resulting mashed potatoes were blue. The purple potatoes I ordered at the time were fingerling's and not good for much. The reds were small also. I planted them and did not get good results. Ok... I got NO results. Sure they sprouted etc. but the blistering summer heat here killed them rather quickly. Although a couple of the plants still survive so we will see. Anyways...

Several months ago Eric called me and asked if I was interested in some purple potatoes from the Pikes place market in Seattle. I said yes and he sent me 5 pounds, however... When they arrived they were in bad shape and I had to throw many of them away. the remainder I ended up planting.

Last week I found another smug organic potato farm in Maine that sells eating potatoes and ordered 10 pounds from them. I got them last week and despite the bad packaging they arrived in good shape. Why did I order them from an organic farm, well because you can't get them from anywhere else because your average mister and misses consumer thinks that a potato is white on the inside and ONLY white on the inside, any other color is either poisonous or would taste funny (whatever). Since mister and misses consumer aren't likely to buy these any time soon you won't find them in your local produce aisle. To recap my reason for ordering them is because they are blue, red, or purple, and NOT because they are organic.

SO... Here is what they look like on the outside
Not very big, and below is what this particular type looks like pealed. The ones Eric sent me were completely Purple.
Once placed in the water they immediately turned the water blue and during cooking the water turned aquamarine.
They Mashed up to a nice pastel purple.
Here they are served up with some chicken gravy and some of Alton Browns recipe for homemade Fried Chicken.
Some things to know about these Purple, Red, and Blue potatoes. They require a slightly longer cooking time (about 5 minutes longer), and they seem to have more starch in them so they will be a bit thicker. otherwise they taste exactly like.......... potatoes. Kathi said they would be great for an Easter dinner. The Blue and Red variety's make Blue and Red mashed potatoes. However I found that the Blue potatoes will be kind of gray when first mashed, then as they are exposed to the air they will turn bluish purple. The purple ones get darker purple after being exposed to the air. I have not made the Red potatoes yet.

Only the Japanese!

2009-03-25T11:54:00.002-07:00

This is supposed to take place in Vietnam. I defy anyone to find large tracks of deserts and camels in Vietnam.

Luke Days 2009

2009-03-22T12:19:00.025-07:00

Yesterday we went to Luke Air Force Base for Luke Days. March 21st and 22nd 2009. First let me say that whomever thinks that an airshow should be held in March in Arizona should be shot. To anyone out there thinking of holding an airshow in Arizona these are the only months to have one.... Ready.... got a pencil? November, December, and February. That's it. Second how is it no one had the idea to sell umbrellas at the airshow? Third, whats the point of having security, and a list of what you can and cannot bring in, then completely ignoring said list (sometimes).

So it began:

I wanted to get there before 9am but I guess not (I'm not bitter). Anyways we got there about 9:30, there was a mile long line to get into the parking lot. While waiting in this line we caught up with the line to get into the base and we let Mike and Daniel out to hold our place, while Chris and I parked the vehicle. Once we parked the car we found Mike and Daniel. These 2 OLD people behind us had a fit because they thought we cut in line. It mattered not to them that we explained that we all arrived at the same time and that Mike and Daniel were holding our place. The said they made their own family go to the back of the line (dumb assess). The old people failed to notice that other people up ahead were doing the same and their sacrificing their family was in vain. The line continued to grow and folded back on itself twice to the point that it was about 3 miles long. We did not get to the gate till around 11:00 (the airshow started at 10:45). The security screening was a joke. They funneled everyone through 4 lines, the 2 lines on the left were for people with bags. Seriously they should have had at least 2 gates open. The 2 bitchy old people didn't bring anything so they got in before us anyways (dumb asses). Backpacks supposedly weren't allowed in, yet they allowed people in with them. They spent all of 5 seconds looking in my camera bag and did not even look under the stuff on top (who knows what I might of been hiding in there). When we went to the airshow at Goodyear airport in 2006 there were dogs sniffing everything (but not this time). I do have to admit that the probulator mark 6 is less painful than the mark 5 or 4 (they chafe). Once inside we made a beeline for the flightline and found a spot right up to the fence. I later learned some people waited over 2 hours to get in to the parking lot only to give up and leave.

First thing we did was setup our chairs and (those of us who brought them) umbrellas. I then drank a liter of water. Chris set out to find an umbrella and buy some food and more water. I gave Daniel a Radio released his bonds and he ran off to take pictures of any and all airplanes he could find, as well as climb in as many as he could.

Before the F-22 Raptor was to fly Daniel came back with some Chicken Tenders and french fries. We watched the Raptor fly, which was awesome (way... way... better than the Thunderbirds), but just before it was supposed to join up with the P-51D, P-47, and A-10 for the heritage flybys I heard the pilot report a failure with the hydraulics, and it had to land early.

The remainder of the airshow was standard stuff (except for an aerobatic Helicopter). We all were quite hot. Daniel kept trying to steal my shade. This group of Chinese guys who were near us disappeared for a while, except for one who fell asleep. They returned for the Thunderbirds. During the Thunderbirds they sounded like a pack of paparazzi photographing Paris Hilton's Merkin.

For some reason all through the show someone saw fit to interrupt it constantly by running large buses back and forth right in front of the spectators. And I am not sure what this dudes job was but he was sure in a hurry to do it.
This was the first airshow I have been to at Luke that they had actual "armed" guards everywhere. Really?!?! Oooh I felt so safe. I'd like to write more about the airshow but it was too damn hot and too damn crowded to see any more.

So here are some pics.
Oh... One more thing. Redbull your drink sucks, and covering every cool looking aircraft in the show with your crappy logo sucks the big green one. Same goes for you too Geico.

I'd like to thank the following:
DiHydrogenMonoxide.
The people at Quantaray/Sigma for making a crappy zoom lens (90% of my pictures are blurry).
Luke Air Force Base for their ambiguous, silly, and un-enforced security rules.
My good friend hydrocodone (for my back) without you I would not have made it through the day.

Chaparral Bass

2009-03-15T13:47:00.003-07:00

Today Kathi, Chris, and I went to Chaparral park in Scottsdale. We got there around 8:00. We were trying for Trout but not having any luck. We even tried for leftover catfish, and bluegill. Around 10:45 I decided to go walk about. I started walking south around the park. I got about 100 or 200 feet from where Kathi, and Chris were and I cast my line with an old beat up rattle trap on it. In one area on my second cast I thought I had snagged my line. I saw a large bass on it, but it got away. I decided to cast again in exactly the same spot and caught the 3 pound bass below.
I let it go.

BRAINS!!!

2009-02-13T10:17:00.002-07:00

I had to have an MRI done due to some inner ear problems. I asked the Tech to give me a copy on CD, so just to prove to those that would doubt, I do have a brain.

And here it is.

Here it is again Labeled.

Oprah is Dead!

2009-01-29T16:56:00.002-07:00

Oprah is Dead

Atom.com: Funny Videos | Atom Originals | TV & Movie Spoofs

Canceled Crestock

2009-01-26T12:20:00.004-07:00

I canceled my Crestock account and had them delete my images. I site their severly inconsistent reviewers, and lack of return on images sold.

While they maintain that they "only accept images of the highest quality" I have found that they reject images that were accepted by dreamstime, and accepted images that were rejected by dreamstime (they did not know I have images on dreamstime). They accepted some of my (really bad) first attempts at Stock Photography. Then there is the paultry return on a sold image. Most images I sold returned only $0.25 and on very rare occasions I would get $1.00.

I am not the only one who has had the same problems. Their forums are full of similar complaints. With some "professional Photographers" having had whole batches of submissions rejected (200 to 400 images) because one or two pictures in the batch did not meet their standards.

Maybe some day I will try using them again, but not until they get their act together.

They did not remit my $7.50 for the images they sold.

Bacon Tasting Part VIII

2009-01-12T14:53:00.004-07:00

Today I tried Nueske's Applewood Smoked Bacon.

I wasn't sure I would get to try this bacon as it is very pricey, between $19.00 and $22.00 per pound in some cases. I happened to be at AJ's fine foods and stumbled on it. It is $8.95 for a 12 oz. package, that's $11.94 a pound.

Here is the review from an MSNBC article:

"Despite the company’s claims of using particularly lean hogs, our tasters found this bacon “very fatty” with “hardly any meat,” and many complained of its “overwhelming smoke flavor,” which was akin to eating a “wood-burning stove,” or “ashtray.”"

When I opened the package I thought I would be disappointed. Usually bacon's with a smokey reputation smell like smoke as soon as you open them. This bacon did not. I cooked up 3 slices and within a few seconds of hitting the pan the bacon began giving up it's smokey goodness. This bacon is not as smokey as Newsom's. The tasters at MSNBC must have gotten a different batch, or are not used to heavily smoked meats. I would say this batch was a medium smokey bacon. Just the right amount of smoke for someone who may not be used to it. The bacon had a perfect amount of salt, just the right amount of sweetness, no overwhelming ham taste, and in my case almost a 50/50 meat to fat ratio. This bacon barely curled, but did have a little more water in it than I would like. The smokey after taste lingered for a good 30 minutes after eating it.

This is a gentleman's bacon.

Photography Road Trip II

2009-01-04T11:13:00.011-07:00

Generally I would write up a long post about something we did, but since Chris & Mike did such a good job, I don't have much to write about. Check out their blogs by Clicking on their names. Here are some of the pics I took:

Chris & Mike having a snowball fight.

A Bigfoot Sighting!

Three Bro's

Some HDR Pics:

Are you a Photographer?

The most ridiculous collection of Bike's, motorcycles, snow mobiles, lawnmowers, and other crap you will ever see at "All Bikes" in Rye, Arizona.
On another note, someone forgot to load up my heavy coats so I was stuck wearing 2 light jackets. Here is my home surveillance video of the culprit loading the van. Note in the upper right hand corner of the screen that he puts my coats in the back of my truck, loads some of the stuff into the van then walks right by them.

Later I called Kathi and here she is taking them out from the back of my truck.

Poor Mans HDR

2008-12-24T17:00:00.011-07:00

This technique is good for fixing up an image if you do not have software that can do single frame high dynamic range processing. As an example here is a picture I took outside of Payson, AZ:
I took this picture on a tripod with the flash set to rear sync. The picture is not particularly bad, the sunset is nice but a little bright. The background behind us is almost completely black.

Step one - in Photoshop press Control J to create a duplicate image.
Step two - on the menu bar select Image/adjustments/desaturate.
you should now have 2 layers, one that looks like the picture above and the other that looks like this:
Step three - with the desaturated layer selected on the menu bar select image/adjustments/invert.
Step four - with the second layer selected change the blending mode to soft light.
Your image will now look like this:
The image is "technically" perfectly exposed but doesn't look quite right.

Step five - with the second layer selected from the menu bar choose Filter/Blur/Gaussian Blur. Move the slider all the way to the right. Click OK.

Your Second layer will look sorta like this:
Your completed picture would then look like this:
Notice that the Sunset has been slightly darkened and the dark background has been brought out. My wife and I have also been ever so slightly darkened as well.

You can now Merge the layers down, convert to 8 bit, and save as a jpeg if you want.

This technique works best on 8 bit jpeg's. It works ok on some 16 bit pictures.

To automate this process you can create an "Action" and assign it a function key, on my computer I have f2 set to do this. Consult your Photoshop help on how to create an Action.

Pure Gold

2008-12-24T08:29:00.003-07:00

Let's see more of this!

Photography Road Trip

2008-12-21T14:59:00.009-07:00

Yesterday Chris, Mike, and I went on a road trip early in the morning. We left at 06:00 in the general direction of US60 east. We went through Superior, and Stopped off the side of the road a couple of miles east of the Queen Creek Tunnel.
The temperature outside was 30 degrees. We took some pictures of the Brush and a fence covered in frost.
None of these pictures I took are sellable as they are not completely in focus. We froze our asses off, and went back to the tunnel to take some more pics. I tried to do some light trail pictures but it was too bright for that. I did take a picture of an old water generating plant near the tunnel.
We then drove on to globe, sight seeing along the way for anything worth taking a picture of. We found an old Diner by the side of the road and took some pics of it.
Some where between Claypool and Globe I took some pics of a train.
I had to remove the road name before I could upload them to Dreamstime. The road name was Toledo, Peoria, & Western.

While in Globe we found a restaurant called "Chalo's Casa De Reynoso".
We got there just as the doors were opened. The Chips were crispy but not tough. The Salsa was very flavorful, nice and spicy. The hot sauce strangely was as spicy as the salsa but had not much flavor. Chris and Mike ordered 3 cheese enchiladas and a cheese crisp each. I ordered a Cheese enchilada, Beef enchilada, and a Taco. The portions were large for the price we paid. The cheese enchilada was excellent. The cheese was completely melted and the enchilada sauce was very flavourful. The beef enchilada was filled with what I would call red chili burro filling. Good but little spice. The taco was excellent the tortilla was perfectly crisp and the filing was very finely shredded beef, with just the right amount of spice. The service was cheerful and friendly. The bill not including tip was $32.00 and change. While waiting to pay the bill another person in line told us that the owners had another restaurant at 3138 S. Mill, in Tempe. We will have to check that out later.

After that we headed back to town. We stopped at the Bullion Plaza Museum. Admission is free. There is a reason for this. It looked like a yard sale inside. We saw the entire museum in about 10 minutes. Before leaving Mike engaged the two older ladies in conversation and because of this it took us another 20 minutes to leave.

We did a little bit more site seeing and went home.

Hunting for Nothing

2008-12-13T19:55:00.002-07:00

Today we went to the FMR again. When we arrived the sun had not yet risen, and there was no fog this time. The moon was full so I took some pics, only one turned out really good. I had to work some magic to get the moon to look correct and have the picture properly lit.
The previous 3 pictures I submitted 2 weeks ago were not accepted, for reasons I figured they wouldn't be. They were over processed. Oh well they look cool anyways.

We drove a bit further in to avoid any atv'ers, although there weren't many out this weekend. On the walk out I saw not one single cotton tail or jack rabbit. Chris shot a Quayle, Mike didn't see any rabbits either. I did come across the trailer we found out there before. I also found an unreadable sign on a pole more than half a mile from the nearest dirt road. Chris found a place where someone excavated a hole recently for some unknown reason. He also found a large plywood target that was setup on the side of a hill.
We hiked to a small mountain/large hill and hiked up to see what was on the side of it. From below it looked like someone had built a small platform or building out of flat rocks, but when we got up there we found it was just a volcanic outcrop of cracked rocks.

On the way back I stopped to drink some water. I put my rifle over my shoulder, took my water out of my fanny pack, and at that moment a large cottontail broke from cover. I never even got a chance to shoot at it. The same thing happened to Chris earlier in the day. About a quarter of the way back I stopped to take a breather, Chris was to the NNE of me and fired his shotgun at something. That caused a Jack Rabbit in the brush ahead of me to break. I shot at it several times but my rifle stove piped and it got away.

When we got back to the vehicle Chris and Mike took some pics, and we went home.

Each of us hiked about 4.2 to 4.3 miles.

Bacon Tasting Part VII

2008-12-06T15:57:00.003-07:00

sigh......

Another let down. The other day I tried "Vande Rose Farms Applewood Smoked Bacon". As reviewed by the Grateful palate, and other sites. This bacon was raved about.

Here is the The Grateful palates review:

"Ranger Danny's Tasting Notes: My favorite. Lovely appearance, exquisite balance, remarkable meat. All this needs is a fork and knife. 4 oinks. Ranger David's Tasting Notes: One of the best bacons ever! Taste and balance are tremendous. It all starts with with a great pig, man."

Here is the review from this article:

"Tasters raved that this bacon — which scored a distinct few notches higher than the rest of the lineup — has it all: “Nice balance of sweetness to salt, great deep complex ham flavor, very meaty,” with a “faint fruity taste, sweet and salty.” Extra-big slices and “genuine” smoke flavor were big hits with our tasters."

Now my review:

This a dry cured bacon. Rubbed with brown sugar, salt, pepper, etc., then smoked (so they say). I found this bacon to be almost completely devoid of smoke flavor/smell. The bacon was a bit on the salty side, the texture of the meat was close to that of tender beef jerky (a bit dry), and had a mild ham flavor. The fat had a sweet flavor to it, and there was a LOT of fat on the cuts I got. The fat was extremely tender and almost creamy (not chewy at all). This was the only bacon I have ordered (so far) to come in a retail package like store bought bacon. If it wasn't for this packaging I would have thought my bacon had been switch for some inferior store brand. This is awfully pricey stuff for .75 lbs of bacon, that's right, for about $14.00 you get 12 oz. of bacon. That makes this bacon $18.66 per pound. This is bacon for some poor little rich kid that "don't like strong flavors, or smells". Meh!

Need more proof check here.

Hunting in the Foggy Desert

2008-11-29T16:28:00.007-07:00

Today we finally got to go hunting for the first time since the end of spring. As usual we went to the FMR. When we arrive there was a light fog over the desert. This is the third year in a row that we came out here in November and there was fog. The sun was rising from behind a mountain and the fog was thick enough you could look at the sun with out any protection. I took several pictures, one of which was good enough to submit to dreamstime.
There were a lot of ATV riders (fleas) camped out in the area, we found a place away from them and I took some more pics, 2 of which I submitted to dreamstime.
Chris went off to make a happy bush sad, at that time he flushed a Jackrabbit. The only one of us that had a firearm ready was me, I attempted to shoot it with my .357 pistol but it was too far away. We set out in a north westerly direction. I got a jackrabbit about 15 or 20 minutes into our walk. I saw another one about 15 or 20 minutes after that but it was too far away. we walked a total of about 2 miles each round trip. When we got back near the car we found this.
I'm curious how it might have got here as we were nowhere near the impact area. We took a break and then went in a south easterly direction. Mike got a cottontail just minutes into the walk, and I got one shortly after that. We got out about a half a mile but there were so many "fleas" we turned back. I walked about 3 miles, Chris about 3, Mike walked about 4.

Generally I don't like the desert, but in the winter and early spring it is one of my favorite places to go. When it is really foggy it can be a little spooky, since you sometimes can't see more than 50 yards in any direction, everything is totally quiet (except for the water dripping off the plants). When something does break and run it can be quite startling. It is also challenging as you have a very short time to react before the rabbit disappears in to the fog. It is an experience I will never forget.

Bacon Tasting Part VI

2008-11-27T17:43:00.002-07:00

Ahhhhhh...... Bacon.

Today we try "North Country Smokehouse Applewood Smoked Bacon" Here is The Grateful Palates description:

Artisan: North Country Smokehouse
Tasting Notes: A bit more savory than the cob-smoked offering from this producer, but same thick cut. This is a precocious little bacon that will surprise you with its moxy and flair.

Like "Newsom's Old Mill Store Hickory Smoked Country Bacon" this bacon has a strong but pleasant smoky taste, and is not at all salty. It is very savory, with a bit of a tang to it. This bacon has more water in it than the other bacons, but not a lot. The package states that it is cured with maple syrup, and while it does taste slightly sweet, it does not taste like maple syrup. I detect a note of creosote (but in a good way). Ham flavors are prevalent but not overpowering. The fat on this bacon is where the flavor lies. This bacon tends to curl a bit while cooking. This is comfort bacon.

Bacon Tasting Part V

2008-11-19T17:12:00.006-07:00

Once again I was let down, I misunderstood what the label on this last bacon "Nodine's Smokehouse Double Smoked Bacon" mean't.

Here is the Grateful Palates description:
Artisan: Nodine's Smokehouse
Tasting Notes: Our only double-smoked style. Intense smoky flavors. Delicious with omelettes, chilaquiles, and huevos rancheros.

I guess they got a different bacon than I did. This bacon gets it's double smoke name from the fact that it is smoked once with hickory, and then again with juniper berries. Whatever the case this bacon had little smoke flavor, and was not salty. Nothing to write home about.

Bacon Tasting Part IV

2008-11-14T19:33:00.002-07:00

I admit I had high hopes for this next bacon, "Tripp Country Ham-Country Bacon Brown Sugar Cured" as it's description intrigued me:

Tasting Notes: Brown-sugar cured, with a mysterious secret recipe that includes red pepper and cinnamon. Thick cut. Meaty, complex flavors. Juicy. Great intensity with a slight spice. Fantastic!

This was a thick cut bacon, but for some reason it looks like the slab was cut in half as the pieces were shorter than the others. This bacon had much more fat than the other ones, as a result it curled the most out of all of the bacon's I have tried so far. This bacon is a bit on the salty side, and it has a taste I would describe as kind of sour. I could taste nothing of the red pepper and cinnamon. This could be because I eat some pretty spicy food and would not notice it. My wife however does not like spicy foods and did not report it as being spicy. As I said before this bacon had the most fat of any of the bacon's, in fact a couple of pieces were about 95% fat. This bacon had a light but pleasing amount of smokiness about it. The sour taste I mentioned above reminded me of "Farmer John Ends & Pieces", which this bacon taste almost exactly like. Once again there was very little if any sweet taste about this bacon. The bacon was definitely juicy. An OK bacon.

Bacon Tasting Part III

2008-11-13T12:53:00.006-07:00

The verdict is in on "Dan Philips Special Brown Sugar Hickory Smoked Country Bacon" it is too salty and not hickory flavored enough.

Today I tried the "J. Samuel Whiting Bacon" here is The Grateful Palates" Description:

Sweet aroma, thin and crunchy. Perfect balance like a fine cut diamond. Sweet and powerful, almost fruity. Addictive, soft, lush, judicious use of fat and sublimely balanced. AWESOME and hedonistic. Very unique, sweet, yet savory bacon. Kids love all bacon, but they will especially love this bacon made by J. Samuel Whiting Meats in Pennsylvania.

I find this description interesting as it does not exactly describe this bacon. The Bacon I got was wide, and very thick. On the label it said it was cured with maple syrup and brown sugar, as well as hickory smoked. I found it had practically no hickory flavor or smell at all. I believe that when the bacon was being made a truck load of hickory wood drove by, but that was about the closest this comes to being hickory smoked. It is definitely sweet, but not too much. This bacon taste more like ham than any of the others. The bacon was tender and not at all salty. When they say that Kids will love this bacon they would be correct. This is not a bacon for the adult palate, unless your "milk toast". I could not detect any flavor reminiscent of maple syrup in this bacon. The bacon does have a sweet smell when cooking, there is a bit more fat on this bacon, and it did curl more than the others, but by "curl" I mean it barely curled. This bacon is on par with what is available in your local grocery store. Final verdict... Meh!

Bacon Tasting Part II

2008-11-11T10:45:00.001-07:00

Sunday I cooked up a slice of the "Newsom's Old Mill Store Hickory Smoked Country Bacon" for Chris who promptly swooned under it's influence. He even went so far as to try and lock me in my shed so as to get the rest of the bacon. I served the rest as a desert after dinner to several members of my family. all who tried it liked it (yes some people refused to try it).

This morning I cooked up a batch of "Dan Philips Special Brown Sugar Hickory Smoked Country Bacon". My initial reaction was one of a let down. I may have over cooked it a little, and mixed with eggs and toast, didn't allow the full flavor to come through.. Kathi reported it wasn't her favorite, and tasted sour. I thought it was very salty. However just a few minutes ago I cooked up a small batch for tasting purposes.

Here is The grateful palates description:
Artisan: Gatton Farms
Tasting Notes: This is my own, secret, private cure. Only Charlie Gatton and I know the recipe. I set out to custom design the perfect bacon and I think this is it. It has an incredible balance between sweet, hammy pork flavors and salty, savory flavors. The flavors are intense and the meat is succulent. A bold new bacon that stands up and says 'Eat me!'

My review:
This bacon is not as heavily smoked as the previous review, but it is definitely more smoked than your run-o-the mill bacon. one thing I have noticed with these Bacon's (so far) is that when cooked they shrink but they do not curl. Thus making for even cooking. anyways... This bacon has a nice smoked flavor, the ham flavor is more apparent then the previous bacon. The bacon is sweeter than the previous but I would not be able to identify the sweetness as coming from brown sugar. The bacon is salty and the saltiness varies with the width of the bacon. The narrow sections of the bacon are very salty and the wider ends are more sweat. This bacon is slightly more chewy than the first one. Personally I would expect a bacon with the words "Brown Sugar" to have a prevalent brown sugar/molasses taste which it does not. At times the hickory flavor explodes from the bacon and other times it is not as strong. All in all a good bacon.

Bacon Tasting Part I

2008-11-06T14:04:00.016-07:00

Having become disenchanted with the bacon I can buy from the store, and accidentally stumbling on the website www.gratefulpalate.com while checking out an article listed on www.fark.com, I decided to check out some of the bacon's listed in the article. The bacon I ordered were rather pricey, ranging from $10.00 to $15.00 per pound. I ordered the following bacon:

Dan Philips Special Brown Sugar Hickory Smoked Country Bacon
Newsom's Old Mill Store Hickory Smoked Country Bacon
Tripp Country Ham-Country Bacon Brown Sugar Cured
Nodine's Smokehouse Double Smoked Bacon
J. Samuel Whiting Bacon

I received the Bacon in 2 days, it came in a silver pouch made of padded bubble wrap and a single Ice pack. I was a little worried as it arrived at room temerature, a quick email to The grateful palate confirmed what I pretty much knew. Since the bacon is cured and smoked it would be fine.

The First bacon I tried was "Newsom's Old Mill Store Hickory Smoked Country Bacon".

The websites description is as follows...
"Tasting Notes: Sweet, salty, lovely, delicate powerful like an iron fist in a velvet glove, the kind of bacon to write odes and sonnets about. Silk, silk, silk. Like a virgin bacon eater, touched for the very first time. Life begins with Newsome's bacon."

At the time I tried this bacon I did not know which one it was (no label), I had to contact the The Grateful Palate to get a list of what I ordered.

Upon opening the package the smell of hickory smoke wafted over me, encircling me like an anaconda ready to constrict. I cooked the bacon as recommended, on low heat in a frying pan. The hickory smoke smell was absolutely intoxicating. I am a big fan of smoked meats and barbecue (I have a smoker), so I knew I would be in for a treat. The bacon wasn't as wide as most bacon and cut to about 1/8 inch thick. I noticed that unlike cheap bacon there was no buildup of water on the uncooked side of the bacon, as a result when the bacon was turned over it did not splatter and throw grease everywhere. The bacon cooked up golden brown. I took my first bite and was nearly overcome with a feeling of pure smoked bacon ecstasy (I think I saw God), each bite invoked an image of camping. The smoke flavor was very strong, the bacon was salty and tender, with just a hint of creosote (not always a bad thing). I detected only a slight hint of sweetness. The smoke flavor lingered for a long time after eating it. WOW, I can never go back to the cheap stuff again.

continued in part II

Kathi Carpe Cyprinus carpio

2008-11-02T19:28:00.009-07:00

Back in October Kathi and I were going to take a weeks vacation at Woods Canyon Lake. Due to her Mothers illness, that didn't happen (I'm not bitter). In preparation for this, (among other things) Kathi bought a state fishing license, so she could try fishing, and help me catch some crayfish, (must have a state license for this) on the trip we didn't take (I'm not bitter).

Now that summer is FINALLY coming to an end. We have had a couple of weekends that were rather cool. The first weekend we went out Kathi (who hasn't fished in almost 20 years) in her excitement at getting a bite, either nearly ripped the fishes lips off, or (if she had hooked one) would have launched it across the park. So needless to say (though she got some bites) she did not succeed in her efforts to land a fish. On that Trip I caught 3 Carp. I do not remember if Chris caught anything.

The next trip was not much better, I think I caught one, and Kathi caught none. I think Chris caught one.

On this trip I caught a small Bass using a rattle trap (on my second cast) which I released.
Kathi insisted on taking my picture with it.

The real fun began when after about an hour of waiting, Kathi got a bite, I could tell right away it was a pretty good sized one. At first she started to panic because it was putting up quite a fight, I told her to set the hook and she did without hurling it's lips across the park. Then she said "aren't you going to help me?", no! (if you want credit for it you have to reel it in). Her drag wasn't set quite right so I reached over and modified it so the fish could get some slack without getting off the hook. The fight only lasted a few minutes with Kathi saying "I don't want it to be mad at me" (she feared it would come out of the water cussing and bite her). Once she got it close to shore, Chris was able to get it in a net. It weighed 7.5 pounds. In order to get a picture of it and her, I gave her some rubberized gloved and she went to pick it up, causing it to start flapping about, which caused Kathi to make a weird freakout noise. I took her picture,
and she released it (again making a weird scream). We stayed for about another hour, we would have stayed longer but it started getting hot. No one else caught anything.

Aspersing Asparagus

2008-09-08T15:21:00.008-07:00

Some of you may or may not know that Kathi was recently diagnosed "Insulin resistant". She was told to eat healthier and exercise. So in an attempt at expanding our diet and to eat "healthier" we have been experimenting with Asparagus.

Mind you this was not something we were looking forward to as we both had experiences with this so called vegetable when we were younger and neither of us has really touched it since. In my case my mother made me eat it when I was very young and I nearly barfed. Several months ago while at Karen's house she served Asparagus, and taking a "no thank you" serving I tried it and pronounced it "edible" (this had nothing to do with Karen or her recipe).

To ease us into this I looked up some recipes that we might possibly be able to tolerate.

First up was Rachel Ray's Bacon Wrapped Asparagus (what can go wrong with a recipe that includes BACON).

This is pretty simple, coat several sprigs of asparagus with extra virgin olive oil and pepper, wrap with bacon and bake or grill.

First impression:
There was practically no flavor from the asparagus. The asparagus did not taste like bacon, and the bacon did not taste like asparagus. Asparagus taste like.... asparagus. The closest thing to it would be a mixture of grass and very, very, very...... very mild broccoli.

Next up Alton Browns asparagus and mushroom risotto.

I never had risotto before, it takes a rather long time to make.

First Impression:
Once again "is there asparagus in this?" The risotto was pretty good but next time I will leave out the white wine, asparagus, and lemon zest. The portobello mushrooms were extremely good.

and finally pasta salad with portobello mushrooms, grape tomatoes, and asparagus. This is a Paula Dean recipe.

First impression:
What's the point of putting asparagus in this? The recipe as written was pretty bland. I had to spice it up with some zesty Italian dressing and extra red wine vinegar. The salad otherwise was very good, next time I will add some red bell peppers, cucumber and feta cheese (leaving out the asparagus).

Conclusions:

If asparagus is put in front of me in the future I will eat it, but I won't go out of my way to use it. It's relatively expensive and brings nothing to the recipes it is put in. Asparagus is boring and bland. How my mother made it taste terrible I will never know. Like zucchini recipes, asparagus recipes were invented to dispose of the offending item with out actually throwing it away.

It does have one interesting side effect....

Time to Photoshop

2008-09-04T19:40:00.010-07:00

I'm bored....

So it's time to photoshop.
Today's Victim is Eric.

Eric's Shop of Horrors.
Hey... What do you want for 20 minutes of work.

Eric and the holy Grail!
Yeah... Yeah... Another 20 minutes.
American Pie anyone?

OK, I'll stop now.

THE GREAT STORM OF 2008

2008-08-29T13:01:00.010-07:00

Queue ominous music....

Last night here in Phoenix at about 21:30 a couple of huge storm rolled through the valley. Winds were measured at 85 to 90 miles per hour (officially) and at 100 mph (unofficially). The first storm passed just barely to the south of us and dropped 1/2 inch hail. It also knocked several branches off of our pine tree in the front yard.
Our power went out for about a half an hour. When power came back on I checked out the Weather channel and found that another storm was heading right for us. We went to bed and the second storm hit some time after I went to sleep. It knocked out power again at some point. I got up arround 00:00 and called SRP they were aware of the outage. I went back to bed. I had a 700 watt inverter connected to a truck battery to power a fan so I could sleep. At around 05:00 I woke up again and power was still out. I called SRP again and they said power would be out until about noon. I got up and deployed my 3000 watt Coleman generator (you do have one as well, right???). I used it to keep our Refrigerator and freezer working. I also broke out the new 1200 watt 2 stroke camping generator and used that to power our TV so I could see what was going on in the world.

I drove around to see some of the damage. I found trees down everywhere.

7th street between Oak and Camelback was hit the hardest with multiple poles down in the street.

Plus all the signs over the suicide lane were blown at a 45 degree angle.

Some time around 9:30 the power came back on.

Kill ominous music...

Boring

2008-08-19T15:24:00.001-07:00

Nothing going on... Sorry.

SuperStars! (in HDR)

2008-07-29T19:59:00.005-07:00

Last weekend was Karen's Birthday. She had her birthday up at Juniper Well Ranch near Prescott. Kathi and I went up Saturday morning and got there about 10:00. First thing we did was walk up and down the train tracks that run by the ranch.
We did not see any trains. It was very warm up there and for most of the day we did not do much. I went around and took some pictures of the horses.
Karen wanted me to take pictures of her and Alyssa, so I did, Here are some of the Cheesier ones:

SUPERSTARS!

Later that night Karen and her friend prepared a dinner of ribeye steaks, potatoes cooked with bell peppers, onions, and paprika, in butter, and kabobs. Some really expensive gasoline... I mean Tequila was served as well, of which I had about 4 shots.

The next morning I got up at 6am, The Tequila from the previous night was un-naturally devoid of hangover, so I went out and took some early morning pictures.

Kathi and I went into town and had breakfast, when we returned everyone had awoke from the dead. We fed carrots to the horses one last time, said goodbye to Karen and went home.

And Now for Something Completely Different

2008-07-25T20:50:00.001-07:00

Movie Review (WALL-E)

2008-07-09T19:11:00.005-07:00

I don't go to the movies to be preached at. So as you can guess I was not happy with the "message" being preached by this movie. I know that most movie trailers do not accurately depict a movie but I would say that the WALL-E trailer straight up lies.

While there was some funny bits in this movie, they were all served up covered in a thick tasteless gravy of "save the planet", "Stop being a consumer junky", and "get off you ass and exercise". The "love story" also got lost in all the "save the planet" BS.

This is the first Pixar movie to feature live action people in it (why??? I don't know...), there were also CG people who all looked like overstuffed gummy bears. The juxtaposition of the real people and the CG people just kind of made me go WTF?

The only redeeming thing about going to see this movie is the short film "Presto" that plays before it, Presto was extremely funny and had no heavy handed "message".

This is the first Pixar movie that I will not be buying on DVD.

As a forewarning the next Shrek movie is supposed to have a "save the planet" message in it too, (yippee).

If you must insist on making a cereal (sic) "save the planet" movie, that's fine, But call it something like "the day after tomorrow", or "an inconvenient truth", then you can jabber all you want about proving the existence of man-bear-pig, while yelling EXCELSIOR! as you leap off the stage.

I couldn't have said it better

2008-07-09T08:16:00.000-07:00

The ultimate War Simulator.

City Lights

2008-06-30T16:24:00.004-07:00

I thought it would be interesting to go up onto South Mountain and take some night pictures of the city. This first Pic was taken with a 30 second exposure, and processed into an HDR pic.

This is also a 30 second exposure, enhanced with Photoshop.

This one is a 30 second exposure and I set off the flash in the middle of it to bring out the nearby objects.

The final picture was a 30 second exposure with the flash set to rear synch, and triggered with my wireless remote.

While up there we noticed the smell of something burning.

Pinetop Lakeside (In HDR)

2008-06-25T19:58:00.002-07:00

Recently Kathi and I wanted to take our trailer and go camping. We wanted to camp at Woods Canyon Lake, but they are booked till August. After some searching I found a campsite in Lakeside that had openings. Last Friday we went up to Lakeside and stayed at the Lakeside campground. I have no pictures of it as it was pretty boring, plus all the camp sites were crammed very close together. If we had brought a tent we would have had no place to set it up, as the space available was taken up by the picnic table, fire pit, and trees. We left town around 13:30 and arrived at around 17:30 18:00.

When planning the trip I found there were 2 routes to get to Lakeside, one went through Payson and the other went through the Fort Apache Indian Reservation. My Mapping software insisted that going through the Fort Apache Indian Reservation was the faster route, but once I told it not to use any dirt roads It gave the distance as 184.7 miles. I then had it run the route through Payson and I got a distance of 184.7 miles?! So... given the choice we went through Payson.

The trip was very hot, and climbing the 6% grades with a trailer had the engine running quite warm, however once at the top of the rim it was smooth sailing to Lakeside. As we went through Payson the temperature was 102.

This time we left with time to spare and took our time setting up camp. Because of the fire danger in Payson being Extreme I stopped at the Payosn Walmart and picked up a portable propane BBQ. I had to assemble it, and we made hamburgers for dinner. We went to sleep shortly after the sun went down. We did not light a fire as it was very warm.

The next morning we were up with the sun I made breakfast and after a quick shower in our camper we headed out to rainbow lake as I wanted to do some fishing and maybe catch Crayfish.
However Public access to the lake is mostly restricted to the north side. There was very little space to fish from and most of it was in use or the water was shallow or choked with weeds.
I looked for crayfish but only saw dead or the remains of dead crayfish. Kathi looked into renting a boat but they were not renting because of the weed problem.

So instead we went for a drive to Show Low lake, I do not have a picture of the lake but the lake is designed as reservoir and it had steep sides lined with boulders, once again access to shore fishing was very limited. So we went to see if we could find Kathi's friend Suzie's mothers cabin as it is for sale. The cabin is located in a nice little wooded neighborhood in Lakeside, I did not take a picture of it, the cabin consists of an old single wide trailer with an add on on the front. A neighbor reported that it was in need of a lot of repair.

We drove around and found this

It's the "Pinetop Fire Department live Fire Trainer". Right next to

The Pinetop Fire station.

We had lunch at a restaurant whose name escapes me. It was starting to get warm and also looked like rain, so we went back to camp closed up the flaps on the trailer, then went in to town to see "Kung Fu Panda" (funny movie you should go see it). Afterwards we went back to camp and took a nap. Later on we went back to the lake where I tried to fish, but due to very high winds I only got about 45 minutes of fishing before I had to give up. We drove around some more and I took this picture:
We went back to camp I made dinner (Ribeye steaks), and we went to bed shortly after sundown.

The next morning once again up with the sun and we started packing. We had breakfast at a small restaurant called "Darbie's cafe". Where they serve breakfast big enough to choke a horse. We went back to camp finished packing, checked out and headed home. On our way through Heber we saw this:
I didn't take many pictures since when you have seen one pine tree you've seen them all, as illustrated by this picture I took at the Mogollon rim overlook just before you head down from the rim.The trip home was uneventful.

Flagstaff and Route 66

2008-06-09T19:38:00.015-07:00

This last weekend I had to go to Flagstaff on Friday June 6th for non recreational purposes. I finished setting up the kiosk at the Flagstaff mall at about 1pm, and Kathi and I had lunch at a Mexican restaurant (the name escapes me). We visited the Flagstaff train depo and did some train watching.

I estimate that in the town of Flagstaff a train goes by on average every 10 to 15 minutes. We then had a light dinner at the Village inn next to the Super 8 motel we stayed at. Here is the view of from our second story window.
The picture is fuzzy because it was taken through a screen I couldn't remove. The trains go by at night so often you have to sign a waver saying you won't ask for your money back if the trains keep you awake (I never heard them while I was sleeping). The next day we decided to drive Route 66 from Flagstaff to Kingman. Okay... we didn't decide to go to Kingman we just ended up there. When I started my car I got a check engine light, I got the diagnostic code P0455 and called my boss, The code was that my gas cap was not on or I had a severe vacuum leak. I checked the gas cap and found that it was just sitting there. I put it back on and the light didn't go out. I think someone tried to siphon my gas. I decided to get a locking gas cap when we got back into Flagstaff. On our way out of town we passed through Williams, Ash Fork, Seligman, Peach Springs (inspiration for Radiator Springs in the movie Cars), Truxton, Crozier, Valentine, and Hackberry. Except for the fact that the towns we passed through were mostly boring, and there was not much scenery, There was one nice thing about this section of route 66 there was practically no traffic. Here see for yourself:
Generally if I am driving on any highway, at least one yutz will come up behind me and ride my tail. Not only did that not happen but I never saw anyone driving behind me for the entire trip. I only saw a few people in front of me but they were locals and they got off the highway before I got anywhere near them. Until I got to Hackberry I didn't see more than 4 or 5 cars going East. So if your ever on I40 and you get to Seligman, Make sure you have a full tank of gas and take route 66. The speed limit is 65 mph, and I didn't see even one cop car the entire time. You will see several of these:

Yup that's right... Burma Shave signs.

We got to Kingman (and it was boring). We did find this small park with a Locomotive in it.

Next to the park was an old electric generating plant, now a museum. We stopped in to use their bathroom, but did not go into the museum, of course there was a train running nearby.
The ride back to Flagstaff was long and boring and we took I40 this time. We got back into Flagstaff and I got a locking gas cap. I reset the check engine light and it hasn't come on since. We had Dinner at Buster's (Kathi had Salmon and I had Prime Rib), later that night Kathi wanted to sit outside somewhere. So we went down to the train depot and sat out to watch the trains. An Amtrak train was schedule to arrive at 8:51pm, but did not arrive till about 10pm. I decided that this would be good time to get some night shots of light trails as the trains went by. I took alot of pictures but most of them looked alike. Here are the better ones:

Kathi took some video as well.

The next day we checked out and headed for Sedona We stopped at a scenic overlook, I took a picture of us and an HDR picture of the Scenery.
We passed through Oak Creek Canyon, and stopped in Sedona for about 45 minutes. We didn't stay very long. I was extremely tired and I didn't even take any pictures. The rest of the ride home was the usual heavy Sunday traffic.

Unsolved Mysteries of Seattle III

2008-06-02T13:47:00.003-07:00

Unsolved Mysteries of Seattle II

2008-05-24T18:56:00.003-07:00

Unsolved Mysteries of Seattle I

2008-05-18T15:40:00.000-07:00

Part one of a three part series of "Unsolved Mysteries of Seattle".

Blast from the Past

2008-05-12T19:06:00.008-07:00

A long time ago.... Way back when I was going to Monte Vista Baptist Church (25 years?), Eric, Alan, and I got a hold of some video equipment and decided we would make a music video. The song we chose was "It's a Personal Thing" by Steve Taylor and some band. From their album On the Fritz. We only sort of completed two verses from the song. For reasons I no longer remember we never finished the video. So for your enjoyment (and Eric's embarrassment) Here are the only 2 good takes:

You may need to turn up the sound for the second clip.

Things to note:
The Podium was borrowed from the Church.
The Microphones are just an old light fixture.
The background flag is an old 48 star flag I still have.
I still have the foreground flag.
Alan is out of frame handing props to Eric etc.
Eric's "Mother" is a cutout from an album by "Michelle Pilar" (I think).
Lighting is provided by an old slide projector.

Seems appropriate for this election year... I'd vote for him.

La Palmas Hot Sauce Recipe

2008-05-06T17:31:00.004-07:00

Back in December 2005 (after I broke my leg). My favorite Mexican food restaurant (La Palmas) closed. The owner sold the property and now there is a Walgreen's at the location. Supposedly he was going to re-open somewhere else. La Palmas used to sell their hot sauce mix for $5.00 a package. You just mixed it with tomato sauce and Voila! Well my personal stash of this mix is now gone. So after some experimenting I came up with my own recipe. My recipe differs slightly in that it is uses much less Oregano and slightly less Garlic. The original dry mix had so much Oregano... it was green. So until and or if La Palmas ever re-opens here is my version of the recipe:

1 Tbs + 1 1/2 tsp plain Garlic powder (no green stuff)
1 Tbs + 1 1/2 tsp Onion powder
1/4 cup fine ground Mexican Oregano
1/4 cup ground Hot New Mexico (Hatch) Chili's (adds heat and makes it red)
1 Tbs ground Cayenne Pepper (wusses can leave this out)
2 Tbs crushed red pepper (the stuff you put on pizza)
2 Tbs Paprika (makes it redder)
2 Tbs Black pepper (superfine grind is best)
2 tsp Kosher or table salt (leave out for those with high blood pressure)

Combine all DRY ingredients in a container or jar with a lid. Close lid shake vigorously to mix. When ready to use, add 1 Tbs of the mixed DRY ingredients to 1 - 8 oz. can of tomato sauce, and 1/4 cup plus 2 Tbs of water in a jar. Close lid and shake thoroughly to mix. Place in refrigerator for at least 2 hours (overnight would be better). When ready to use shake vigorously and serve.

Fishing with a Drop Shot

2008-04-28T15:52:00.003-07:00

For a while now we have been fishing (and having good luck) using a drop shot. There are several types of drop shot out there, The Carolina rig, The Texas rig, and the Wacky rig to name a few. We use our own rig that I will call "the Guildig rig". Using this rig we have caught Bass, Carp, Trout, and Catfish.

You start with a swivel hook.
Tie this to the end of your fishing line on your fishing pole with a clinch knot. This way you can change out from a drop shot to a lure quickly if you need to.

Next take a length of fishing line 18 to 24 inches (anything from 6 to 12 pound test), and using the clinch knot tie a Swivel
to one end, thread an egg or bullet slip weight
of about 1/4 to 1/2 ounce on the line (pointy end toward the swivel) and on the other end attach a swivel hook. It should look like this:
If you want it more Carolinaish put a bead on after the bullet weight. To use this, attach a slip bobber on the end of you pole above the swivel hook (the bobber should allow the line to pass through it freely). Attach your newly made drop shot to the swivel hook, attach a fish hook to the swivel hook at the end of the drop shot.

The purpose of the drop shot is to fish on the bottom. The purpose of the slip bobber is to show were your line is, and to give a visual signal if the line has a bite. The slip weight helps in casting, holds the line on the bottom but does not offer resistance when the fish bites.

Once your drop shot is ready, bait it. For Carp use corn or dough baits, for Trout use corn (if using corn for trout or carp completely cover the hook) or live worms, for Bass use live or fake worms, for Catfish use anything edible.

Casting:
For Carp, Trout, and Catfish, cast where the fish are (usually in the water), let the line sink to the bottom, if your slip bobber is attached correctly it will slowly walk up the line and stop at the surface. now wait, and watch the bobber. When it disappears under water set your hook and reel in your fish.

For Bass remove the slip bobber if using a finesse technique, or leave it on if using live bait.

Drop shots work best in lakes and ponds with relatively smooth bottoms. Here in Phoenix we have used this rig at many of the local urban lakes, and the Tempe town lake. If fishing with corn, It works much better if you chum the waters around where your hook is on the bottom with extra corn. Chumming is legal in Arizona as long as you don't over do it.