Periodic Journal of my wanderings

It is the brand from my grandfather's farm. He died when I was 14, but him, his farm, and my summers there has had a great influence on my life.

It is on the back of my left calf.

Just got commissioned to do the weirdest thing yet.

Bunny's gaping bleeding open wound.

( Gore grossness )

As happens pretty often, a photo ends up being liked but not loved. I'll go out and try to shoot this shot again and get more in focus while keeping the colors and composition I like. I like it enough to post, but only this once and never on alderflats.com.

PDX to DEN
DEN to IND

Meeting Meghan at the terminal in Indiana. A treat since it's pretty rare that we would be traveling separately and you can't get to the gates without a ticket.

Will be in Indiana for a week, then home for four days, then heading to Eastern Oregon for a week for deer hunting near Dale.

Actually, no guano at all. But I have had a bit of an annoying bat issue since I moved into the apartment. One or two bats would some times take their daily naps in my entryway. This wasn't really an issue, aside from occasional dive bombs and un-nerving hanging rats with wings above my head.

This all changed Sunday morning when I opened my door, and there were four bats. I had been meaning to install a motion light out there to hopefully ward them off, but had been lazy about it because they hadn't really been a problem. Bats are nest loyal and let their friends know when they have found a good spot, so the time to act was now.

I bought a motion light last night and by this morning the bats were gone (They come and go) so I jumped out into the entryway and swapped out the old light for a new motion sensing one. We will see if this works. If it does I will jump for joy. If not, it will still be worth it, as the light switches were wired in series and so the bottom switch had to be on for the top on to function, and this eliminates using witches at all.

My car is now in working order again.

Dad had the motor replaced with a lower mileage used engine and all seems to be well.

In the process though, everything about the car was altered, as far as driver interfacing controls. The brake pedal and clutch engage at different spots, making shifts and braking a little odd. Not helping the shifting is that the shifter is now an inch farther away from me, towards the passenger. Not a lot, but enough for me to reach out and grab nothing every now and then.

Quirks aside, I am enthralled to have my car and freedom back.

It is also worth mentioning that the car has noticeably more power. New engine and all, I haven't been stomping on it, but there have been a few places that I would have had to downshift before, and now I don't. Like being able to drive sylvan hill in fifth gear.

Might be the cam, might be a valve, might be a valve spring. Whatever it is, it won't go anywhere under its own power. Hillsboro towing came by and picked it up just now, and Terry at Aloha Auto Service will let me know what exactly is the problem.

I totally love my White iMac. It's just the right size, performance, and has the super sexiness that OS X comes with standard. The only thing that bothers me is that after about an hour of Warcraft, I start to see texture tearing as well as some times the video will just black out. When this happens I have to hard reboot.

My first solution was to download am SMC fan controller application. This seemed to do the job rather noisily, but I soon didn't even notice that all my fans were pegged at 5000 rpm.

I've recently been brainstorming how I would better improve cooling. While my solution more or less works, I still run into overheat situations. I suspect that the heat piping or heat sink have some sort of issue, but I have torn apart my iMac just far enough to tell that I'd rather not.

The heat pump for my apartment is right next to my desk, but the air blows right past the desk and I can't feel any of the cool air putting my hand next to the computer. If only I could direct some of that air to my iMac...

I came up with this as the solution.





( Full size photos and explainations )

It is also worth noting that this machine came to me cheap due to it having been shipped without any padding and having recieved some damage. Not enough to make it worthless, but enough to make it cheap. There is a scratch on the screen, the base is bent (Causing it to lean all the way forward and fall over unless I have something back there bracing it) and the GPU temps are higher than normal. CPU temp stays low, but the GPU seems to have issues staying sane under load.

Melissa tipped me off that there was a small following of people who are trying to save JB Thomas Junior High School from demolition. While I am not sure where I stand on the issue, I do know that before tearing down an 81 year old historic building, all affairs should be in order. The people of FOTOS (Friends of the old school) do not believe that the district went through with all the legal paperwork and surveys they should have to make it all legal.

There was court this morning between FOTOS and the district. I went to shoot some pictures, support the cause, and see what all the fuss was over. I was yelled at by the court reporter that no photography is allowed, and the actual proceedings were only 5 minutes long. Rescheduled for Thursday morning at 9am.

The real fun of the morning came when I was leaving. In the elevator on the way out I was asked by a lady who I was with.

"With?"

"Yes. Are you with a paper or station?"

"No, I am just a local. I'm a photographer, writer, historian, and former student at Thomas, so I came down to take an account of the goings on and show my support for the school."

"I don't think you should be down here posing as media."

Confused, I just looked at her and cocked my head in question.

"Someone might mistake you for a reputable news source with your camera and notepad."

"Well I don't think anyone will mistake me for media, and I would not falsely say I was. Who are you with again?"

"I'm here reporting for the Hillsboro Argus." The doors open. "Well, I'm against a deadline here and I have to go."

"Oh, I hope you have time to run your paper through a spell checker so you can sort out your your, you're, they're, there, and theirs."

She started to wind up about something, but I just walked in the direction of my car.

I might have blown on the rescheduled court date on Thursday. But after this, you can bet your ass I'll be there, with a notepad and an audio recorder.

Treasure wasn't supposed to foal for another two weeks. Right now is her projected due date, but she's ben two weeks late on the previous two babies. Not the case this time. Bob got up this morning to feed and clean stalls, and there was one too many voices in the barn. Turns out, Treasure couldn't wait another two weeks and dropped the baby last night. Grover must have been born close to midnight, because her hooves were solid and she was dry and clean by the time she was found this morning.

I like to wear an undershirt under pretty much any shirt I wear. I find it more comfortable.
In addition to comfort, they prevent me from sweating out through the pits. I do this quite easily because the distance between my arm pit and the tops of my shoulders is pretty wide. A shirt fitting there would be a tent on me everywhere else.

I have run into a problem over the years that I have yet to really solve.
Undershirts and short sleeved shirts often have the same sleeve length. More often than not, the undershirt has longer sleeves. So given enough time, the under shirt pokes out from under my shirt. I hate that!

I own three brown undershirts I got from an military surplus store that seem to have a good sleeve length. But they are wearing out and they are almost rags now.

The other oddity here is that I'm tall (6'5") and to be able to tuck in my undershirt, it needs to be a tall. XL-Tall are WAY too long usually in both body length and sleeve. L-Tall are 'okay' body length, but sleeve length is virtually unchanged between the two sizes.

The only solution I've thought up is to buy a bunch of undershirts that fit my body and have someone hem up the sleeves to a reasonable length. But finding a shirt that does what I need would be more ideal.

To make it so this post has something for everyone, here is a picture of Steve Martin ironing a kitten.

This time, curls.

15400 Pushups
8900 Crunches
10085 Curls
735 Squats

Since June of 2007

Taken on his birthday, yesterday.

Last night I went to the JB Thomas Jr High pre-demolition open house.

It was fun to see some familiar faces, smell the venerable smell of the 86 year old school, and snap some pictures.

When I was there, I wasn't as interested in history and the cool old building itself as much as I am now. So as an adult it was very cool to see some of the things they don't let you see as a kid. The boiler room, the shooting range, the teacher's lounge.

The librarian of all the people remembered me most vividly. While we were chatting she put in a dvd that had some camcorder footage from when I was there. We had fun pointing out people we knew then, know now, and me passing on who had passed. We both teared up talking about Mike Lutheran and Jeremy Benjamin and how and why they died.

During different times as I was walking around, soaking in what I could, I paired up with Alex, April, and their son Reed; then later Melissa and Emilie Bullard of NW Morgan fame. April and Emilie were a number of years before Alex and I, Melissa was a few years after us. Just enough of a gap to remember different teachers and different ways of doing things. Security change vastly between the early 90s and late 90s.

I was disappointed to have run into Sarah Henry there, and have her avoid me. We shared some moments and a serious crush with each other in High School, and it would have been nice to chat. But she avoided eye contact, kept a safe distance, and I am jut not forward enough to force the issue.

It will be sad to see the space that the school is in now reduced to just being athletic fields. But such is the way of progress and the bottom line.