Greg In The Desert

KOAT wants experience.

KOAT, New Mexico’s News Leader, is looking for two experienced reporters to aggressively cover breaking news.

Responsibilities:
Live reporting in field and on set required.

Requirements:
Excellent writing and communication skills required.

Experience:
Minimum 2 years experience reporting in a commercial broadcast newsroom.

To apply:
Resume, including references, writing samples & a DVD along with a cover letter stating where you found out about this job to: Sue Stephens, News Director, KOAT-TV, 3801 Carlisle Blvd NE, Albuquerque, NM 87107

My indoor cat Saturn has apparently made friends with a outdoor cat. On more than one occasion I have walked up to the back door to find my cat staring at the back door while a black cat is walking off. It usually spots me before I spot it and starts walking away.

I never hear my cat making any indication that she dislikes the black cat and as far as I can tell, they just sit there staring at each other through the glass. Mostly I only notice the quiet since Saturn has stopped running around and spazing out.

Last week I drove up into the driveway and saw the black cat sitting on the front porch, with my cat watching out the front window. The black cat wouldn’t allow me to approach it and ran off. Where the black cat was setting was a large dead rat, with it’s guts pulled out.

I’ve read that a cat will leave a dead animal for its owner as a sign that the owner doesn’t know how to hunt, the cat is trying to show them how it’s done. In this case, Perhaps the black cat was trying to show Saturn how to hunt since she cannot go outside. Or the black cat is trying to impress Saturn with it’s hunting skills.

I have no problem with Saturn learning to become a better hunter through this method. Especially if it reduces the rat population in the neighborhood. Saturn has done a great job at eliminating the crickets, scorpions and other bugs from the house. However unless I get any varmints in the house, Saturn will have to be happy with hunting twist ties and pieces of plastic from the trash.

Normally I wouldn’t write about the murder, death, kills in Albuquerque. The local media does a good enough job at that. I didn’t see the local media tell the horrific details that buggs did on a photo in his flickr stream.

Tiffany Toribio placed her hand over her 3-year-old son’s mouth as he slept on this playground bridge in the middle of the night.

She held him down until he stopped squirming.

Toribio then performed CPR on her son Tyrus who started breathing again. He was shaking, his eyes were rolled back. She then suffocated him again. She placed her hand over his face until he stopped breathing.

Only this time she didn’t revive little Ty.

She dug a hole with her hands in the sand underneath a swing set, put Ty in it and buried him.

A portal (pronounced port-al not port-ol) is what they call porches in New Mexico, at least when referring to Santa Fe style architecture.

This weekend I helped my friend Rick install a portal along with three other people. He said he needed help with raising one beam and it would take an hour. Riiiiight…

We ended up putting up the whole porch cover and it took about 5 hours. That’s OK, he will be over helping me with my projects.

We connected together 8 inch posts to corbels creating a 12 foot tall structure. This structure weighed too much for even five guys to raise and our first attempt failed with the corbels nearly falling off. OSHA would have shut the operation down.

Once we finally got the posts raised and used temporary 2×4 supports to keep it from falling over. Luckily there were no strong winds.

We them raised five 8 inch vigas (cross beams) that also weight too much and yet somehow we figured out a way to get them 12 feet in the air. We did not install the latillas, that’s Ricks job.

View the whole flickr set from my friend Rick on his flickr page.

A few days ago I wrote about Google using goats to control grass on their property. Techcrunch didn’t seem impressed and was worried about the jobless human mowers.

The city of Mesa, Arizona has used 70 goats for the last 50 months to clear vegetation around a water reclamation plant. They expect to save $10,000 by using goats.

Besides being cost effective, it reduces the use of fossil fuels, toxic chemicals and pesticides. It’s a pollution-free way of ridding the three retention ponds of compromising vegetation, Satter said.

Goats’ bodies break down plants in such a way that they won’t grow back when it becomes waste, making the job more permanent than what a machine can do.

It’s not mentioned how many people it took to mow the grass with machines vs. taking care of goats. I suspect goats are more labor intensive that mowers.

Google is mowing their large areas of vegetation with goats. This is a great idea, something I may investigate when I get the grass growing in the back yard.

At our Mountain View headquarters, we have some fields that we need to mow occasionally to clear weeds and brush to reduce fire hazard. This spring we decided to take a low-carbon approach: Instead of using noisy mowers that run on gasoline and pollute the air, we’ve rented some goats from California Grazing to do the job for us (we’re not “kidding”). A herder brings about 200 goats and they spend roughly a week with us at Google, eating the grass and fertilizing at the same time. The goats are herded with the help of Jen, a border collie. It costs us about the same as mowing, and goats are a lot cuter to watch than lawn mowers.

Ed Grothus, proprietor of the os Alamos Sales Company most commonly known as The Black Hole has died today.

Ed Grothus worked at Los Alamos National Labs building nuclear bombs, quitting that job and becoming a anit-nucelar activist and then founding the The Black Hole. The Black Hole is a store which has military surplus and salvage equipment from the Los Alamos Labs in New Mexico. The Black Hole web site says they are a recycler of nuclear waste. The Black Hole is famous for providing movie props and materials for artists.

Ed was the subject of three documentaries: Atomic Ed & The Black Hole, Los Alamos und die Erben Der Bombe and Laboratory Conditions. He also received various awards.

There is a video on YouTube entitled The Black Hole in which Ed tells his story.

• Apartment Therapy The Kitchn | Food Science: Explaining Reactive and Non-Reactive Cookware
  eramics and stainless steel are considered non-reactive. While these don't conduct heat very well and tend to have 'hot spots,' they won't interfere with the chemical structure of the food in such a way that changes the look or edibility of our food. Their other big advantage is that once they're hot, they stay hot for quite some time! Aluminum, copper, iron, and steel (not 'stainless') are all reactive. They conduct heat very efficiently, and therefore, do a great job of cooking our food evenly. However, these metals are reactive with acidic and alkaline foods. If you're cooking with ingredients like tomatoes or lemon juice, your food can take on a metallic flavor, especially if the cooking time is very long. Light colored foods, like eggs, can develop gray streaks.
  (tags: science cooking)

After the layoffs my job changed some. I am no longer on compressed work week and moved to first shift (not my choice). I lost pay in the process. I also am busier and have more responsibilities than before..

I am thankful to have my job.

I’ve got plenty of things going on, but not in the mood to write about it. Hopefully things change in a while.

I hesitate to blog about work, thinking it will get me in trouble. The most pressing issue in the last month, maybe the last 6 months, has been the layoffs at work, New Mexico’s Intel site in Rio Rancho. Last week everyone got their “message”, either placed in the same position, placed in another position, Not placed with redeployment or just not placed. I was placed with some changes to my current position.

I was prepared both mentally and financially to be laid off. My years of employment at Intel would have provided me with several months of pay. The state is helping everyone find jobs (you know, our Governor is running for President). There was also the chance of going to school. I know, I should be grateful that I have a job particularly since Intel pays so well. Especially for New Mexico. But there were some benefits to being laid off and I am ready for a new career. Or that’s what I have convinced myself leading up to last week. Not to mention that the whole process left a bad taste in my mouth.

There is no good way to do a layoff. There seems to be bad ways to do layoffs. The common way, it seems to me from talking with others who have gone through layoffs at other companies, is that people are suddenly missing one day without warning. You show up to work and a bunch of people are no longer there. Intel’s way was different, it was a process. I could go on and on and on about this, but I will leave it at this for now. Since I still have a job, I want to keep it and stay out of trouble.

The whole reason for these layoffs, which has been widely reported, is that Intel is moving from 200mm to 300mm wafer sizes. There are two factories here, a 200 and 300 one. Merging them together with all the wonders of automation in the 300mm factory means you need less people to run it. New Mexico didn’t have the only 200mm factory, all other factories like this should pay attention to what happened here.

It’s good that I have a job, at least I can focus on other things that don’t involve looking for a job. I paid off my debt in preparation, that was also a good thing. This next year should bring along some changes, time to hold on for the ride.

Related: June 30, 2006: Intel — will it, or won’t it?