Greg In The Desert

• New Mexico Independent » Schott Solar banking on public investment in sunshine – That Schott Solar is barreling ahead with plans to become New Mexico’s flagship solar manufacturing company, despite the current recession, makes sense considering where the company is coming from.

  Dr. Gerald Fine, CEO of the North American branch of the German company, sees a dynamic in the U.S. now similar to what caused the solar energy industry to take off in Europe five years ago. Germany went on to become the largest consumer of solar energy products worldwide, and he predicts

• Confessions of an Introverted Traveler – Features – World Hum – But I don’t seek people out, I am terrible at striking up conversations with strangers and I am happy exploring a strange city alone. I don’t seek out political discourse with opinionated cab drivers or boozy bonding with locals over beers into the wee hours. By the time the hours get wee, I’m usually in bed in my hotel room, appreciating local color TV. (So sue me, but I contend that television is a valid reflection of a society.)
• Judge Orders Halt to Illegal Robocalls Selling Deceptive Warranties – Today Judge John F. Grady of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois issued a temporary restraining order stopping telemarketing company Voice Touch, Inc., its principals James and Maureen Dunne, its business partner Network Foundations LLC, and Network Foundations principal Damian Kohlfeld from making any further calls in violation of the Do Not Call Registry and other provisions of the Telemarketing Sales Rule and the FTC Act. The FTC filed the case yesterday, charging that the defendants were operating a massive telemarketing scheme that used random, pre-recorded phone calls to deceive consumers into thinking that their vehicle’s warranty is about to expire.
• Follow Ups: REI Says ATM Photographer Is Welcome In Their Store Any Time – REI's Director of Corporate Communications contacted us with an official statement about the recent showdown between two Loomis security guards and a customer with an iPhone at one of their Seattle stores. She says despite the document Shane says he was forced to sign at the police station, he is not banned from their stores. Below is REI's official statement.
• Steve Stucker Explains the Recent Night Winds in Albuquerque – We call these "back door fronts" because most fronts come from the west or northwest. When the cold air pushes up against the central mountains (Sandias/Manzanos) it is sort of like hitting a wall, or an air dam, thus the wind gets forced into and through the little passes, gaps and canyons in the mountains, causing breezy to wind conditions in ABQ. It wasn't windy everywhere this morning, ABQ had the strongest winds in the state. The pattern is just a combination of the placement of high pressure and low pressure, and until we get a big "kicker"—some big system that moves through and knocks these little systems out of our area—the same basic pattern will continue for the next week or so at least, not windy every night, but every few. Friday night is probably our next big blow. God bless…..ss
• Clearly not a craigslist fan – Meanwhile, the backpage.com (owned by Village Voice Media) “adult entertainment” section for Greenville, SC has about 60 ads for the last 3 days, many of which are quite explicit, quoting prices for specific sex acts, close-up photos of bare genitalia, etc , etc (Be careful, even the index page has photos that are not-safe-for-work).
• HOW TO – Make a cheap “pager scanner” « adafruit industries blog – In this video (m4v) we show you how to take a $10 pager and make “pager scanner” – it can see all the pages and pager data on the pager networks – surprisingly it’s still used for a lot of interesting things and for transmitting data to many devices. Breadboarding diagram here…
• LOOPRumors – E*Trade launching iPhone App? – LoopRumors sources confirm that E*Trade Financial is working on an App for Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch. The company is said to have a very secret beta circulating internally. E*Trade currently has a native application for Blackberry phones, but the iPhone counterpart promises to be more robust and add much more functionality that the current Blackberry version.
• Apartment Therapy The Kitchn | Restaurant Recipe: Buttermilk Fried Chicken from Ad Hoc – It's been quite the week for fried chicken. First we gave you Grandma's recipe, then we showed you oven-fried crispy chicken. And now we're giving you one more crispy, greasy, delicious recipe for fried chicken, and it's from Chef Cruz of Thomas Keller’s restaurant Ad Hoc. Apparently great chefs love fried chicken too!
• Chinese Forum Poster Describes Next Generation iPhone Details – Mac Rumors – We've been keeping an eye on some reports coming out of Chinese forum Weiphone over the past couple of weeks, and it appears the reports are starting to spread. In early May, a forum poster from the Chinese site posted specs and a screenshot from what is claimed to be the next generation iPhone.

I certainly don’t want to turn Greg In The Desert into a political blog (I know there’s not enough of those). However my friend Steve usually has interesting things to say about current events and thought I would give him a chance to express his opinions here – Greg.

German and FRENCH (mon dieu!!!) banks have received US taxpayer money…. nice… No wonder our deadbeat ‘free market’, ’self-regulating’, ‘privatized profit – socialized risk’ banks won’t say where the funds went.

I think the ‘terrorists’ have succeeded in taking down more than a few buildings with box-cutters. Thanks to our incompetent response! Talk about taking the opportunity to get one’s agenda to sail through our society… fueled on fear and extravagant, expensive war theatrics (and precious blood)…. What’s the current threat level? Orange? Pink… yes, PINK is where we are told we are headed. We sure got our underwear all tied up in knots. And BinLaden is still free! But that is understandable… if you kill the bogey man, how ‘ya gonna scare the suckers? Worked for 7 years.

Meanwhile, all our retirement plans are pushed out another 5-10 years…(my optimistic assessment). I sure hope WallMart opens up a few more stores because we sure are going to need a lot of those ‘greeter’ positions for our ‘Golden Years’.

Excuse the rant, but I just looked at my retirement funds. Foolish me! On the bright side, I do not make over $250,000 so at least I can bask in the afterglow of my tax cuts of recent years instead of worrying about my taxes going up…. oh, wait, I did not make 250k in recent years either — so my tax cuts were not even noticeable, and I can’t remember which gas station took the proceeds of those economic stimulus checks….. I certainly do not notice them in the current balances in my retirement funds…. Gee… I never saw this coming! — as most of you know!

And now we are bailing out FRENCH and GERMAN ( and who knows what other foreign) banks with our children’s future taxes… WOW!!!! …. or more to the point, WTF!!!!!

Anyone else feeling outraged? Is anyone’s ‘conservative ideology’ getting shaken by our current reality? And why are all these ‘free-market capitalists’ going to the ’society’ (sure sounds like PINK socialism) to be bailed out? I do not want to hear anyone bitching when Wall Street has to submit to a crapload of regulations in the future. In order for vultures to thrive, we need a bunch of suckers. And we sure do not have a shortage there.

And now all we hear from the solution-deprived perpetrators/enablers of this mess is that the new administration wants to take us into a socialist society! Socialist like the fire department, the city and state police, the National Guard the city and state road department, the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, air-traffic control, the Coast Guard, the Forest Service, the National Park Service, the national highway system, the CIA, the NSA, the ATF, the school systems (K-University), the unemploymnet system (which too many of us may be relying on soon)…and if you combine ALL of these, they pale in comparison to what Wall Street (and foreign banks) are are getting from US taxpayers…. gee we sure are a bunch of PINKOS!!! Karl Marx must be smiling in his grave (and BinLaden from his cave) right about now! How did we get here? Who reigned while we blindly headed here? Just exactly WHAT got VETOED in the last 8 years (besides that one stem-cell research-containing bill).

And, by the way, Rush Limbaugh needs to go on a diet and should quit dressing like he is auditioning for the Sopranos because his mouth is obnoxious enough for our country. Also, after cheerleading us into this mess with his FAILED, EXTREMIST brand of ideology, he should temper his pie-hole and quit trying to lead the GOP into being the Goose-stepping Obstructionist Party…. which too often has placed party before country in recent years. We gave W 8 years, can we give Obama at least 4 before we try to sink him along with the country? We are headed down HARD… help or get out of the way, OK Rush?

Oh yeah… here is the article that set me off: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123638394500958141.html

Amazon’s new Subscribe & Save beta sounds like a terrific idea. It would save me a trip to the warehouse club for less interesting things.

Our new Subscribe & Save program is a great way to save an extra 15% on items you use routinely–coffee, shampoo, laundry detergent, and more–while helping to make sure you don’t run out. Benefits include:

• A delivery schedule that fits your needs–every one, two, three, or six months
• Extra 15% discounts on our everyday price, whether you subscribe for a single month or for years
• Free shipping on every order
• E-mail reminders of upcoming shipments
• The flexibility to change your schedule or cancel at any time–no risks, no fees

I’ve started using Amazon’s grocery service over the last 6 months and have liked it so far. This seems like a great extension.

Friends of mine are moving to Israel for a few years. They will be living in a newly built house during that time. Although they are living in a relative safe area, the houses are built to withstand an assault. Here are some interesting things to note about the construction (and a few pictures).

• The house has an alarm system.
• Some windows have a metal shutter system. Others have a roll down protection system.
• The windows and doors all appear to be heavy duty in design and made of metal.
• According to my friend, “By law, every new house in Israel has to have a security room – lockable from inside and airtight.”
• “All houses and building here are made out of concrete – this is good for shelling protection as well as taking advantage of cooling.”
• “This means all interior walls are also concrete.”
• “I think they simply tile everything they want tiled, then smooth the walls with plaster and paint it.”

Interesting how a constant threat of a terrorist attack dictates the building materials and design of housing. I assume that there aren’t a lot of McMansions there either.

Side of the house. Nothing too unusual looking here

Safe room. I guess you fill it full of important papers, food and guns

Metal security shutters. Where can I get these in the US?

Channel 7 in Southern California has a news report (from October 4th) with Ken Fairbanks of SmartLabs, who makes all the Insteon gear I write about. Along with the article is a video showing some of the stuff Home Automation can do. Its a short clip but shows some interesting things, like the control of blinds (which I haven’t figure out how to do yet).

You don’t need Insteon to do the stuff in the video.

This house was listed with the clause that the seller would “clean up debris and weeds”. There was quite a bit of weeds and some “debris” but it wasn’t so bad. When I made my offer I said I would would clean up the weeds and crap left behind. They accepted my offer and the rest is history.

On the final contract, they put back in that the Seller would clean up the weeds and debris. WTF? According to the seller’s agent, it was “already scheduled”. OK, whatever. Last week the people they contracted to clean up the place, and oh boy did they do a terrific job. Some of the debris had value to me, but the clean up costs vs the costs of the items more than likely even out. Check out these before and after pics.

Front of the house, not a lot of weeds here, but it was nice to have it cleaned up. Makes a difference in the look of the place from the road.

The partially finished storage shed. I think there was some interesting things in here I would have liked to have had. There was also a big wood pile next to it which was taken.

This is the back yard, showing the back 1/4 acre that hasn’t been devleoped. I didn’t expect them to clean up these weeds.

The vegetable garden. Again, will be a lot easier to get stuff growing here too.

The once grassy area in the back yard (sprinkler system is present). It will be a lot easier to get grass in now.

What a successful mission for NASA as the Mars Rovers reached their 1 year anniversary on Mars this week. The Rovers were originally suppose to only live for 3 months but now will continue their missions indefinitely.

Yeah, it’s kind of nerdy to be on another planet and look at rocks but they’ve learned some interesting things. Most importantly finding signs of water.

Be sure to check out the top 10 color images from 2004. Looking at these images I’m thinking that some environmentalist will complain that we are scarring the environment of the Mars surface with vehicle tracks.