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Illegal Immigrant Hunting Permit

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This sticker was sold by a store owned by Agfinity in Eaton, Colorado.

This sticker was sold by a store owned by Agfinity in Eaton, Colorado.

Former NM TV news reporter Jeremy Jojola, now in the Denver area, is reporting on some stickers that are printed with “Illegal Immigrant Hunting Permit”. In his blog post “Intimidation Tactics by Agfinity Over Possible Hate Speech Sticker” he talks to a spokes person from the company that made the stickers.

During that phone conversation, media/marking employee Mark Reinert alluded if I did a report on his company he would possibly send “candid” video of me to another television station “if we have to” and that they would talk to my “superiors.”
While Reinert didn’t directly indicate what the video captured, he hinted it shows me planting evidence against his company.

Of course he will be reporting about it. I will be updating this post with his local news article when and if it’s available.

Introducing Always Very Busy

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Sometimes I go out and buy a lot of food to cook only to find the kitchen a mess and decide to go out and eat instead. This is how this blog has become. I have recently made some changes to clean up and focus the content, in the hopes of actually writing more.

The first thing I did was to delete about 30% of the content. I removed all posts about politics (there’s plenty of more qualified people writing about politics). I reduced the number of categories and re-categorized posts.

greginthedesert.net is supposed to be about Me, Greg, in the desert. So I have started a new blog called alwaysverybusy.net to write about tech and gadgets and other stuff that keeps me always very busy. I’m also considering another spin off site where I can focus on photography.

I’m still in the process of moving and removing posts. I still have the problem of Google not indexing this site so more work is to be done.

Intel Cancels Larrabee

An Intel blog updates on Intel’s graphic’s chip program and says Larabee is no longer. Anandtech has a good analysis of the blog.

Intel cancelled plans for a discrete Larrabee graphics card because it could not produce one that was competitive with existing GPUs from AMD and NVIDIA in current games. Why Intel lacked the foresight to stop from even getting to this point is tough to say. The company may have been too optimistic or genuinely lacked the experience in building discrete GPUs, something it hadn’t done in more than a decade. Maybe it truly was Pat Gelsinger’s baby.

I don’t know why Intel can’t make Larrabee happen but I am disappointed that Intel can’t be competitive with AMD and Nvidia.

Greg In The Desert Review At The Kindle Blog Report

I want to thank Ann Currie at The Kindle Blog Report for reviewing Greg In The Desert. Not only do I like the attention, but the review was positive.

It is well written. It does not rant. You can follow it…well once you get to know (and love) Greg, you can follow his ramblings. Usually, if you have read my past reviews, I am not a fan of “rambling” blogs, but this one is a little different. In the description of his blog, Greg says it is about “Technology, Apple, New Mexico, Rio Rancho, Home Improvement, and Automation among other things.” And, he sticks to that (those) theme(s). And, he does a good job while he is at it.

I put a lot of effort into making a readable, well written blog . This sort of feedback is encouraging considering I failed 8th grade english. Hopefully I can get real life out of the way and get more posts up.

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What Google Takes Away, Google Gives Back

At the end of last year Google did something with its page rank algorithm that caused my site to loose most traffic from Google. I thought the problem was due to excessive load times on my site. I used Pingdom to narrow the load times to a javascirpt from a WordPress contact form plugin. The javascript took about 4 seconds to load and was loading on every page, including pages that did not have the contact form.

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Once disabled the load times were down to a more reasonable level, although they have crept back up according to Google Webmaster Tools. As far as I can tell it’s images causing the load times. It was a good exercise for me to understand load times but it was a change made completely on Google’s part that caused the loss in traffic. The site not only got the traffic back but it increased a little. Also, when the traffic did come back the site had a significant increase in comment spam, so much that I had to turn off comments for certain posts.

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Meanwhile, I took a much need break from the blog and completely ignored everything (except approving comments) and missed that TechCrunch linked to one of my pages. Causing a nice spike in traffic.

Serious Eats Likes Sopaipillas, Watch Out For Fake Honey

Serious Eats, one of my regular food blogs, has been in New Mexico. Recently they describe Sopaipillas.

Deep-fried, the dough pieces puff up dramatically, crisping on the surface while remaining soft and tender inside. The perfect sopaipilla? The outermost layer, fried in the oil, should be paper-thin and crisp on the corners. When properly fried, the interior will separate into two layers: the chewy yet soft layer of dough directly underneath the browned shell, followed by the innermost layer—soft, a little stretchy, and just cooked through.
While each New Mexico restaurant has their own rendition, all tables are stocked with a bottle of honey, the traditional condiment for slathering.

Sopaipillas are something that most people out of state complain to me about once they have had them in New Mexico. Rarely can they be found out of state.

One thing to watch out for in New Mexico are restaurants which use artificial honey. It’s some sort of concoction of sugary syrup that looks like honey but usually contains high fructose corn syrup. It’s more common that most people know and most restaurants won’t admit to it.

Bocce Ball Court Installation

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Sunset Magazine’s Fresh Dirt blog has and article about a couple in San Diego who replaced their pool with a Bocce Ball court. I found this interesting because the people I know who play Bocce Ball usually play on any surface they can find.

The Bocce Standards Association website has information on the international standards of a Bocce court. At 76 x 13 feet, it’s something I could fit in my back yard. I may have to try building one.