Greg In The Desert

HP is bringing 1300 jobs in the way of a support center to Rio Rancho. HP is receiving tax breaks and the 1300 jobs could be realized by 2012.

According to the Albuquerque Journal, it’s likely to be build near the new downtown in the same are where the Santa Anna Star Center is. Yet another building that can be added to the list of building to be built in the new downtown which actually are not.

In another example of crack reporting (or reporters on crack) at the Albuquerque Journal:

Jobs at Hewlett-Packard mostly would be in customer support and sales. They could help offset layoffs at Intel, which remains the state’s largest private-sector employer despite cutting about 1,000 jobs during the last year.

I’m not sure how that works. The Intel layoffs were last year and new HP jobs are not likely to come for a while. A year or two at least. Maybe they will come in time for the next round of layoffs.

In any case based on what I read on the Consumerists, HP needs all the support center help it can get.

Note: I don’t actually know of a new round of layoffs at Intel. I’m mostly being sarcastic but I wouldn’t bet on anything in these times.

I’m sleeping on the couch tonight because I have a bunch of crap on the bed. I get settled in and start to doze off when I get a loud nock at the door. That freaks me out. I don’t have unannounced visitors at the house at this time of night. I look through the crack in the blinds and I see a Rio Rancho Police patch.

Yikes! I search around for my pants. I open the door and there are two Rio Rancho cops with flashlights out. They ask my name then ask me if I know a few other people. Never heard the names. Then they ask how long I lived here, if anyone else lives here, etc. Eventually, they realize I’m not the droids they’re looking for.

Another lady comes out of the darkness with paperwork and they start discussing it. Not sure what was going on but I suspect they were trying to serve warrants. They ask me a few more questions then they decide to leave. I’m sure they also ran my plates since they asked if that was my truck.

I’ll give them this, they sure are stealthy. I heard several cars drive off but I didn’t hear a single thing when they came to the house, except for nock on the door.

Now I have to try to get back to sleep.

I had noticed a spot in the road in front of my house for a few weeks, thought it was a oil stain or something. I had also noticed some water at the end of the driveway that came from nowhere. The source of the water became very apparent last week when it started bubbling out of a crack in the middle of the street, right where stain was.

I called the Rio Rancho water department, they were out the next day, put a cone out and marked the street. They day after that they had fixed the leak leaving a dirt patch in it’s place, I hope they plan to come back and put some asphalt there.

Spring appears to be here, with summer just around the corner. Time to get the backyard ready and get grass growing. Thankfully the previous owners had grass growing and working sprinklers. What I need is a modular and scalable sprinkler system, since I plan have more than one source of water and many more things to water. I will need to dig up the current system and redo the primary control system.

The problem with New Mexico soil is it’s a layer of sand on a layer of clay. When thats been covered up with rock and plastic for many years, with no water to soften it up, you end up trying to dig through cement. The best method for digging is to dig a small hole, fill it with water, let it soak, then dig a little more out. Plus the previous owners surrounded the control valves with cement, making it even harder to get in there.

Today I managed to dig about 30 inches where the control valves are. Why they hell they are that deep I have no idea. In New Mexico you only need about 18 inches deep for the valves. It’s just insane and I’m going to have to remove some of the concrete to get to to the valves. Something I was hoping to avoid.

I also forgot to mention the other valve. Once valve controls the sprinklers and the other controls… something else. I have no idea. It goes out to the yard but there’s no other obvious sprinkler heads. All I know is it’s busted and was making a nice little spring in the yard. I managed to dig that pipe up to find a huge crack. Once I replace it I should be able to tell where it ends up.

The Blu-Ray consortium has decided to choose three different techniques to prevent copying content (primarily movies and music). Blu-ray is a contender to be the replacement for the current DVD standards. Let’s take a look at the three methods:

• BD-ROM: This is some sort of watermark that is put on “genuine” disk created by the manufacturer. Copies wouldn’t have this nor would the blank disk you buy to make a back up or those evil pirates in Asia.
• AACS: The is the Advanced Access Content System which will require that your blu-ray player call the mother ship before playing a disk. It checks your disk and if it doesn’t meet the security standards of the mother ship, then the player becomes unusable. Yes, your player becomes useless and it will always need a connection to the internet.
• BD+: This is a system that allows the encryption scheme be kept on the disk, not on the player. So if someone hacks through the encryption, they can make new disks with new schemes. With current DVDs, every player has the encryption scheme built in. Once it was hacked all disks were vulnerable.

Not only will you not have control over the media that you purchased, your won’t have control over your player. However, I have no doubt that there will be either crack or work around all these techniques. Either by hacking the player or the disks.

See also these articles: Register, Tom’s Hardware. The other contender is HD DVD.

Have I told you how much I hate living in an apartment? What, no? Well I cannot believe that because I really hate it and I usually tell everyone how much I hate it. From the lack of water pressure to the crappy dishwasher and walking up three flights of stairs. I will really be happy to be out of this apartment.

The housing market, she no good for me. She real good for seller. A while back I wrote about a house I wanted to buy only to find out there was a contract signed the day I looked at it. This was the house on a 1/2 acre with a giant antenna in the back yard. It was listed at about $135,000. One might get $130,000 for a house in this neighborhood for that much if it is in absolute pristine condition, this house was/is not.

This house has a flat roof and it had a leak at one point. I would say half the walls and ceilings in the house will need to be replaced. Not to mention pain, carpe, wood root along the outside and kitchen needing remodeled to name a few. Were talking a easy $30 to $40K in work is needed and I think I’m underestimating that number. Yet the house sold for $130,000! Some person, who must be on crack, has more money than sense actually bought that house for near the asking price. I’m guessing that that they would need to sell the house near the $200,000 mark to get their money back.

This hasn’t just happened once, this has happened twice. Another house on the same street in a similar situation. Not nearly as ba, they were asking about $120,00. A little lower but still needed lots of work. I offered $105,000 would go up to $110,00. Someone came in and offered the asking price. It’s insane I tell you. INSANE!

The popular thought is that people from California are selling their homes for a half million dollars. FInding that the Phoenix market is turning into California’s market, they come here where’s it’s cheaper. Thus people have plenty of money to spend more on our cheap houses, even if they need work. What’s $30K when you just made $200,000 on your last house?

As for me, my lease is up 31 October. Seems like a long ways away, but I’m getting worried.

The 4th of July was pretty uneventful for me. This year I sat on my roof and watched whatever fireworks were going off. The best display was at the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta grounds, which I got on video.

Because of the recent fires in the Bosqe, there has been a big crack down on illegal fireworks. Didn’t stop people in my neighborhood though as I saw several fireworks going off that exceeded the requirements. They were fun to watch, I was just worried that someone was going to catch something on fire. Luckily there were no fires around my house.

What does Bosque mean, I found the following:

Early Spanish explorers bestowed the name Bosque (pronounced boss-kee) meaning “wooded.”

So there you have it, it means a woods.