Greg In The Desert

• Camping 101: What to Take & Where to Go – If you are a working stiff, a 3-day camping trip is the ideal way to recreate yourself. Sneak out of work for a day and a great big adventure lies before you. But so many of us have no gear or no experience here in the mountain west. And many would like to get started camping but really have no idea how to begin without going broke at REI. So here are some thoughts from a person who has camped out for over 50 years and just last summer camped his way across America hauling everything on a bicycle.
• An Evolutionary Explanation for Sexual Smell Differences | Wired Science from Wired.com – "Women have a larger interest in reproductive events because they have fewer opportunities for passing on their genes than men," said George Preti, a Monell Chemical Senses Center organic chemist.
  In a study published Monday in Flavour and Fragrance, Preti and colleagues found that women were able to detect body odors masked by other fragrances. Male noses quickly lost the scent.
• After earthquake, Italians ask questions about building codes | csmonitor.com – Four days after a devastating earthquake in central Italy left more than 280 people dead, attention is turning to whether a culture of impunity toward building codes contributed to the high number of casualties.

  Many of the centuries-old buildings in L'Aquila, where the 6.3-magnitude quake struck overnight Sunday, sustained severe damage. But newer buildings were also affected. With Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi vowing to rebuild the stricken town, some experts say, more stringent building codes are needed – along with tougher enforcement to ensure compliance.

• Al Jazeera English – Middle East – Iraqi protesters call for US exit – Abdel Wahab Al-Qassab from the Strategic Studies Centre in Doha, Qatar, which researches political and military strategies, said that Iraqi public opinion is overwhelmingly in favour of US forces leaving the country.
• Scorpion biodiversity | Science Blog – Scorpions possess resistance to high temperatures and the ability to conserve water for long periods of time, and as a result thrive in hot and arid parts of the world. But is this global distribution also seen at a more local level? Reporting in the open-access, peer-reviewed journal PLoS ONE April 9, Doctoral student Shmuel Raz and colleagues at the University of Haifa, Israel now show that this is indeed the case, even when European-like and African-like habitats were separated by no more than 100 metres.
• Jennifer Huard – It’s All Happening…: Winslow Sandstorm – 10am – We had just pulled over because visibility was down to… well, you can see. As soon as we pulled over, the traffic in the lanes came to a halt. Truckers slowed everyone down and stopped traffic before the idiot drivers who didn't know any better started a chain reaction pile up. No accidents to report, everyone kept their cool and no one got hurt.

  We sat there for over an hour as 40mph winds whipped the dirt up, gusting to 60pmph. Soon the traffic slowly started moving, so we joined the caravan and rolled on down the highway into the clear blue a couple miles up the road.

• Rio Rancho economic outlook upbeat – New Mexico Business Weekly: – Also, the state will receive $30 million in funds for weatherization and energy efficiency programs for housing, much more than it has received in the past, Denish said. This will help people stay in their homes, she said.

  Sandoval County, which has the highest foreclosure rate in New Mexico, will get about $1.7 million in neighborhood stabilization funds from the Mortgage Finance Authority to help get abandoned homes back on the market by repairing them and helping first-time homebuyers acquire them.

  During a question and answer session, Sue Cleveland, superintendent of the Rio Rancho Public Schools, said the ARRA funds do present a challenge because they don’t take into account state equalization formulas for school funding. As a result, Rio Rancho will get the least amount per pupil from the ARRA funds even though the system is already struggling with growth issues, she said.

• Electric Radiant Floor Heat | Efficiency – Typical DIY bathroom electric radiant heat installations will run $300-500 over their unheated counterparts. Add in up to $750 more for professional electrical and material installation. And after the installation, the floor requires power to keep your investment producing a warm, comfortable atmostphere. So the question is: how much power will your investment consume?
• Decoding Intel’s New Logo Stickers – Columns by PC Magazine – If you go shopping for a new Intel-powered desktop, laptop, nettop, or netbook in the coming weeks, you'll notice some changes. This month, Intel updated its logos to hopefully simplify the buying experience. Along with these new logos, there's a new standardized 5-star rating system to go along. So how do you tell the difference between a Core i7 and a Celeron (aside from the price)? Well, here's a decoder ring.
• Apple – iTunes – 1 Billion App Countdown – As of today, nearly one billion apps have been downloaded around the globe. So we just want to say thanks — a billion. Download an app and you’ll automatically get the chance to win a $10,000 iTunes Gift Card, an iPod touch, a Time Capsule, and a MacBook Pro. Just go to the iTunes Store, browse the App Store, and download your best app yet.

It’s been almost two months since my last post on the master bathroom remodel progress. I had to wait for a special order shower head to arrive which took over a month. I also had to pay for the previous months remodel.

The special order bathroom fixtures I bought were very expensive. I can’t believe I spent so much on them. Non stock fixtures are simply not cheap and i really didn’t like the stock fixtures. I think i will be really happy with them once they are installed but I didn’t expect to pay that much for them.

Today a plumber friend came over and help me install the new shower and vanity plumbing. OK, really he did all the work. I have never done any copper soldering before so I wasn’t able to do this myself. Now that I see how it’s done it’s really not that hard and i think i could do it myself next time.

The first thing which needed to be done was to replace the dual control shower controls with a single control and route the shower head from the west wall to the south wall. There wont be a regular shower head installed here, it will be a handheld shower with a slide bar. Therefore I thought it would be best to install it on a separate wall from the shower controls.

I decided to move the vanity from the north wall to the east wall. I think i can better utilize this small space and install an extra cabinet next to the sink by having the cabinet on the east wall. The connections points however were too far over to be hidden under the sink. The cold water outlet and the drain pipe both needed to be moved over several inches.

I can now start putting the walls back up. Before I do I will put some insulation in to act as sound dampening materials. I also ordered the electric radiant floor heating for both the master bath and bedroom. Warmly Yours is having a 15% off sale for order of $1500 or more which i took advantage of. It may take me a few more months to pay that off and start work on the bathroom again.

I know what I said, that the sprinkler system is going to be my priority. Give me a break thought, the back yard is sitll pretty muddy and now full of weeds. I’m now sure that the sprinkler project will have to wait till next year.

It’s on to indoor projects, the first of which is the master bedroom and bathroom. I had a demolition party scheduled for the end of August, where I invited some of my friends over to demolish the house. Surprisingly, most of them didn’t show up. Enough did to get most of the work done.

For the bedroom the goal was to take the closet from the neighboring bedroom to create a bigger overall closet. This was accomplished.For the bathroom the goal was to remove the framed in shower. Both of these were accomplished. After the demo was completed, with drywall and crap all over the place, is when I questioned what I have done. After two trips to the dump and probably 6 hours of clean up I’m not sure I did make the right decision.

The framed in shower was not usable. It had been leaking pretty badly for quite a while. The lower framing was rotted, the water had leaked into the bedroom and there was even plant roots growing about a foot up the interiors of the wall. One doesn’t expect mold in a dry state such as New Mexico, but there was plenty of mold in the walls.

The next step is to plan for the rebuild. Since it’s a small room, 7 foot by 8 foot, I’d like to put in a corner whirlpool tub with a shower. I think I can get a 54 inch by 54 inch corner tub to fit. I also plan to put in a electric radiant floor heating. The plan here shown is from Warmly Yours.

Can anyone loan me a few thousand dollars?