A story from Espanola New Mexico is just too good to miss.
According to court documents, it was while he was driving around town with the dead bear hanging out the back of his flatbed, that his 17-year-old girlfriend started texting Lopez.
Lopez allegedly told his girlfriend he was on official bear duty.
Unaware that the underage girl was following his pickup, he made a stop at another girlfriend’s house.
I took some video while flying near Mount Hood in Oregon from my iPhone 3GS. I posted it to Flickr, which I prefer to YouTube due to the better privacy controls. But Flickr only allows 90 seconds of video. I also posted a version to YouTube but I think I may force myself to keep my iPhone videos to less than 90 seconds.
Now that I’ve had some time to use the video capabilities from the iPhone I find it’s OK but not great. It can be a lot better when there’s good lighting. It won’t replace my HD video camera anytime soon but ability to instantly upload to online video sharing sites is a huge advantage.
Since the built in iPhone camera application doesn’t support uploads to Flickr for videos, I used the $2.99 Mobile Fotos app.
Outlaw Desert Racing (warning site has autoplay music upon load, controller at the very bottom) had a race in Rio Rancho, New Mexico this past weekend. You can see some of the video of that race on YouTube.
This race was USA vs. Mexico and you can read a little more about it on an examiner.com article.
The city of Rio Rancho has been putting in roundabouts all over the place and installing “road diets” which I didn’t know what they were called. I learned about them in a Rio Rancho Observer article.
Road diets, according to the United States Department of Transportation, are often conversions of four-lane, undivided roads into three lanes. The fourth lane may be converted to bicycle lanes, sidewalks and/or on-street parking.
The Federal Highway Administration touts roundabouts as being safer than four-way stops.
Roundabouts are touted as being safer because there are less points of conflict than with a four-way stop. Eight with roundabouts, compared to 32. There also are no right angles, meaning less of an impact if a crash were to occur.
According to the Department of Transportation, roundabouts have contributed to a 90 percent reduction in traffic fatalities, a 76 percent reduction in injuries and a 35 percent reduction in crashes. The DOT also says the roundabouts are safer for pedestrians.
New Mexico Business Weekly has an article on Intel’s Fab 11X build out. This is the factory I work for.
When Intel Corp. finishes upgrading its chip-making factory in Rio Rancho next year, it will operate one of the world’s largest clean rooms.
The company started a $2.5 billion upgrade to its Fab 11X manufacturing complex early this year to produce Intel’s next generation, 32 nanometer chip technology. The new chips are smaller and faster and consume less energy than Intel’s current 45 nanometer chip technology.
When the upgrade is complete, Fab 11X will include 400,000-square-feet of clean room space, said Tim Hendry, vice president of the Intel Technology Manufacturing Group and the Fab 11X plant manager.
“It will be the largest clean room operated by Intel globally, and one of the largest in the world in general,” Hendry said. “The corridor that runs along the outside edge of the clean room is a quarter-mile long.”
Sometimes I have to walk the distance of that factory frequently. It’s a good way to get exercise. Read the whole article at New Mexico Business Weekly.
Last week I took one of my usual day trips to Portland and lost my drivers license ID. That really sucked. I didn’t have much problem getting through airport security but I wasn’t able to rent a car. Thankfully I was able to get a friend to give me a ride.
My bad luck last week was completely reversed this week when I arrived at PDX (Portland International Airport) and found my name on a 2008 Chevrolet Corvette ZHZ at the Hertz lot (The ZHZ is a special version of the Corvette built just for Hertz). I did not request this car but for some reason they gave it to me at the price of the rental I reserved.
I double checked the rental paperwork in the car and sure enough my name was on it and so was the Corvette. I sat in the car for like 5 minutes just trying to catch my breath. They must have either not had enough cars or upgraded me based on the amount of cars I have rented from them. Or both.
After I completed my business I drove the car up I-5 into Washington. Unfortunately I had mileage limits and only a few hours before I had to be back to the airport. Not that I would ever do anything illegal but I managed not to get a ticket dispite coming across a few highway patrol cars on overpasses. One of them even followed me from a half mile back for a while.
The Corvette is truly a race car. I have never driven a Corvette or a car in a Corvette’s class before so this was a real treat for a car guy like me who has no resources to do car things. If Hertz did this to encourage me to continue renting cars from them then it worked. I will love you forever Hertz!
Intel has a slide show on Tom’s Hardware on how Processors are made. I found it to be well done but I have to wonder if this is some sort of advertisement for Intel.
The ingot is then moved onto the slicing phase where individual silicon discs, called wafers, are sliced thin. Some ingots can stand higher than five feet. Several different diameters of ingots exist depending on the required wafer size. Today, CPUs are commonly made on 300 mm wafers.
In Mid April I started a Solarization experiment where I use solar heating to kill off everything in the soil of my back yard. So far the results have been mixed.
The weather in Rio Rancho has cycled between days of heat and days of cool with rain. The cool days help to create a greenhouse effect under the plastic that cause plants to grow and the days of heat have killed them off. This is good since it’s easier to kill plants than seeds. Hopefully everything that can sprout has sprouted and died.
Since we haven’t had enough days of heat in a row, I don’t think the ground has really baked deep into the soil. It doesn’t appear it has baked the surface enough to decompose organic matter there.
The cycle of rain and heat appear to be over and we are now we are just getting heat. Parts of dead vegetation with sharp edges along with the prolonged time in the heat has caused some of the plastic to break down and break apart. Of the two sheets I put down one has almost completely broken down. The other sheet of plastic is partly shaded and has held together, it is currently experiencing a greenhouse effect with some plants growing underneath.
All the early summer rain has caused a large amount of goat heads plants (Tribulus terrestris) to sprout outside of the solarization area. I did my best to pick the plants but I had to violate my rule of not using chemicals and apply Roundup to a most of the back yard. My concern with using Roundup is the potential of creating weeds that are resistant to Roundup. Also, Roundup is turning out to be toxic.
This will be one of the few times I used chemicals to control weeds. Depending on how much time I have for the rest of this summer, I will try to apply more plastic to the backyard to take advantage of the late summer heat.
I am setting at PDX (Portland International Airport) near my gate for a flight that leaves later today. I arrived this morning for quick work related business. Somewhere at the security checkpoint at Phoenix International Airport and boarding the plane to PDX I lost my ID.
I didn’t find this out until I was in my Rental car getting everything ready to drive off. It turned out to be a very stressful day. Obviously rental car companies will not allow you to drive off without a drivers license. I have to thank my good friend Mustafa for coming down to the airport to get me and take me to where I needed to do my official business.
He brought me back and I approached the TSA officer and told them I lost my ID at Phoenix. They took me aside, teased that the rubber hoses were over there, and asked to look at what I did have.
I pulled out everything in my wallet with my name on it, he looked it over and then I found my Costco card that had a picture on it. A crappy picture but it was something. That was it. No further pat down, not special baggage checks. I supposed bad guys don’t walk around with worn out credit cards, Costco cards, voter and library cards. He also quizzed me on some items in my checkbook.Despite the bad reputation TSA gets, I have never had a bad experience with any of the officers.
If they didn’t find my drivers license in PHX, I have a real pain to go through to get a replacement. That’s a story for another blog post.
An article in the LA times reports on New Mexico’s success in reducing DWI’s.
New Mexico, home to high rates of alcohol abuse and miles and miles of open road, is now ranked 25th in alcohol-related fatal crash rates and is expected to place lower when the latest rankings are compiled later this year. From 2004 to 2008, the number of DWI fatalities here dropped 35%, from 219 to 143.
The article also discusses the successes of the vehicle interlock device that requires a convicted drunk driver to blow into a device to operate their car.
I can relate first hand how well these devices work. I have a friend who is alcoholic. It amazes me how many times he has been driving drunk and didn’t get caught or kill somebody. He recently told me how he came out of a bar drunk and tried to start his car. He blew into the interlock device somewhere around 20 times and a person with him finally convicted him to stop trying.
My friend is like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. When he is sober he completely understand that he should not be drinking and driving and that he was too drunk to drive. When he is drunk he looses all concept of reason and tries to drive, he actually kept the interlock device installed on his vehicle even after he was no longer legally required. This is exactly the type of person the interlock device is designed for.
Interlock devices only help for those that have been convicted of drinking and driving. They don’t help for those that haven’t yet caught and I once read a statistic that one could drink and drive several hundred times before getting caught.
