Greg In The Desert

Santa Fe is the capital city of New Mexico but it’s not nearly as populated as Albuquerque and is known for being artsy and for electromagentic sensitive people.

A Santa Fe man who says he suffers from electromagnetic sensitivity is suing his next-door neighbor for refusing to turn off her cell phone and other electronic devices.

Arthur Firstenberg, who has actively opposed the proliferation of wireless systems in public buildings, claims he has been made homeless by Raphaela Monribot’s rejection of his requests.

New Mexico is the right place to live to get away from all electromagntic signals. The Very Large Array in Socorro, New Mexico is in a signal free zone. One does not have to go far into the desert to get away signals but living anywhere near or in a city is a bad idea.

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.

I wrote about an rumored Apple tablet computer as far back as 2004 and now it seems to be confirmed by the Wall Street Journal.

While the device’s ship date hasn’t been finalized and could still change, people briefed on the matter said the new product will come with a 10 to 11-inch touch screen—which would make it closer in size to Apple’s line of MacBook laptops than its smart phone.

John Martellaro at macobserver says this was part of a controlled leak because he used to do the same thing when he was a Senior Marketing Manager at Apple. I always believed that Apple did controlled leaks like this and they have figured out how to control the hype around product releases.

Supposedly this thing will be announced in a January 27th event. I’m also hoping for an updated iPhone and especially a updated Apple TV.

A article on off-grid.net describes Rio Rancho, New Mexico as a sort of shanty-town and if your foreclosed you should move here.

Here in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, residents are beyond the reach of power lines and piped water. A few have solar panels or small wind turbines. For others, like a shanty built by Liz Owens, 57, the cost of renewable power sources and drilling a water well is prohibitive. Generators and plastic water tanks are common yard features.

I know no one that lives like this but I have been out on the mesa and seen these sort of buildings. I would not encourage people who have have had their house foreclosed on to come to Rio Rancho and build similar buildings (actually maybe a shanty-town on the Rio Rancho mesa would be interesting).

The problem is the city of Rio Rancho is growing quickly, or at least it was. As it grows these buildings are finding themselves in the middle of developments. These sort of shanty buildings don’t fit within modern developments.

A friend received a phone call from a scammer. The phone call sounds just like a number of email phishing scams I receive although I have never heard of them on the phone. Here is an account of the phone conversation.

I answered the phone and a person with a indian accent said I had a cashiers check for somewhere around 3 or 30 million dollars, it was difficult to understand with his accent. He said he was from the US Treasury Department. He also said I had a 2010 Mercedes waiting for me and it was already insured with Global American.

I asked him how I get it and he said he needed my address or he could wire the money to me. I told him no thanks and hung up.

The only time my friend answered was from the phone number 876-454-2568 but they had two other attempts from 876-835-3966 and 876-446-2966 which we also think were from the same scammers.

It it’s too good to be true, it probably is. Government agencies don’t cold call people to tell them they have money. My friend will be reporting this to the FTC for whatever good that will do.

After writing my post on the “How To Eat Chicken Wings Video”, I got a craving for some chicken wings. I called-in an order at the nearest Wing Basket and drove down to Albuquerque to get them.

When I pulled up to the place I could see a car sitting in front with it’s lights on and people inside. It took me a few minutes to get parked and out of the car. As I got out, the passenger of the other car got out and hurried to the door. We both seemed to race to the door but I did stop to open the door for the other person. She ignored me as I opened the door, not even a thank you, probably because she was too busy talking on her cell phone.

She was now first in line and both the cashier and myself were getting annoyed as she kept asking the same questions since she didn’t pay attention to the answers the first time because she was too busy talking on her phone. Since I was the only other person in the place it because pretty clear their one call-in order was for me. They only had one cashier so they could only do one order at a time.

Eventually she made her order. It was the smallest least complicated thing on the menu and it only took her 10 minutes. I’m not sure if she was consulting with the person on her cell phone or made this choice all on her own. Once she got out of line, she seemed oblivious that there was someone waiting in line behind her.

My Wings were delicious once I got home to eat them. The point of this story is to explain why I hate people and try to order everything on the internet.

Wordpress can sure be a bitch sometimes. If you visit the site directly you may have noticed it has been down about 20% of the time due to an “500 Internal Server Error”. I contacted Dreamhost support and they told me it was due to too much memory usage.

I’ve checked into why you’ve been receiving these internal server errors, and it seems your scripts have been getting automatically killed by our Process Watcher script due to your sites going over Memory limits on the shared server. To keep the site from overloading and crashing the server, certain functions on your site are “timing out”.

With my old host, I was cut off suddenly and without notice for excessive CPU usage on a shared host. I was forced to switch to DreamHost and I have to give them credit, at least they didn’t cut me off and tell me to get lost.

Conveniently, DreamHost was offering a discounted personal server plan which gives me control over memory usage. The great part of this service is DreamHost cranks up the memory capacity to 2300 MB for free so an average load calculation could me made. In my case it was calculated to 150 MB with a 300 MB burst capability.

Not only were these internal server errors making difficult for people to access the site, it was making it difficult to post to the site. Assuming no more technical issues, posting should pick up.

• Review: NeatReceipts for Mac Review | Scanners | Macworld – NeatReceipts ships with a small portable scanner that you use to scan documents into the NeatWorks application. (NeatWorks works with several other scanners and is available for purchase separately from the NeatReceipts package. The Neat Company has a list of scanners that work with the program.) When a scan is complete, NeatWorks begins performing optical character recognition (OCR) on your documents; depending on the size of and amount of information on your document, this can take anywhere from a few seconds to just under a minute to complete. When the OCR is done, NeatWorks does two things: it tries to determine the type of document you’ve scanned (text document, receipt, or business card), and then populates data fields with information it finds on your document based on the document type it has selected.
• New gel is stronger than steel – Latest News – MSN Tech – Scientists have created a gel that acts like muscle when charged with electricity but is far more powerful.
  The "aerogel" is almost as light as air, as stretchy as rubber, and stiffer than steel by weight.
  Made with ribbons of carbon "nanotubes" – tiny hollow tubes of carbon – the material can expand to 220% of its original length or width in milliseconds when electrically charged.
• Apartment Therapy The Kitchn | How To Make Finger-Licking Fried Chicken It’s Not As Scary As It Seems – After getting married, one of the first things we learned to make was fried chicken. With a husband whose Grandmother had award-winning chicken frying skills, it was a quick realization that we too would soon be learning the trade. Even though a fryer lives in our pantry, we don't bother. With techniques that are simple and are sure to produce perfect results each time…just make sure to lock the front door so you don't have neighbors following their noses into your kitchen!

  There is a fear of frying. We know… and it's ok, we're here to help you overcome just in time for picnic season!

• Identity Theft and the Economy – After four years of steady declines in identity theft cases, the new report found a 22% increase in the past 12 months. This adds up to 1.8 million more victims in 2008 than 2007. Identity theft is making a comeback.
• News : Rio Rancho trying to get share of federal stimulus money – Rio Rancho Observer – Rio Rancho officials are making sure their city gets its piece of the pie.

  Earlier this month, the city got news from the Mid Region Council of Governments that it would receive $14 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to extend Paseo del Volcan from Iris Road to US 550.

• News : Presbyterian still on hold – Rio Rancho Observer – The construction of Presbyterian Hospital in Rio Rancho is still on hold, but Elizabeth Brophy, a spokesperson for Presbyterian Healthcare Services, said the company is still committed to building a hospital in Rio Rancho.

  “We are very committed to Rio Rancho and the residents of Rio Rancho,” Brophy said. “We want to be able to provide services needed in that community and we will continue to focus very hard on that.”

  The construction of the $230 million hospital is on hold because of the bad economy. Presbyterian Health Services’ board of directors decided last year to hold off on issuing $200 million in bonds until the economy improves and there’s more clarity in the economy.

  “It’s frustrating for all of us on every level,” Brophy said. “We want to fulfill our promise but we are still coming to Rio Rancho, it’s just frustrating.”

• News : Secret bases and UFOs on Rio Rancho man’s mind – Rio Rancho Observer – The Northern New Mexico town of Dulce has long been associated with rumors of UFO sightings and an alleged secret military base underneath a mesa, but Rio Rancho resident Norio Hayakawa is hoping to provide the town’s residents with an opportunity to dispel those rumors, or perpetuate them.

  For a one-day conference, Hayakawa is bringing together residents, former police officers and Jicarilla Apache (Dulce is on a reservation) officials to discuss the rumors and to give people an opportunity to come forward with new information

• Mexico’s woes draw renewed focus now by the United States – A maelstrom of drug-related violence. A brewing trade war. A wheezing economy.

  The United States has sometimes treated its southern neighbor like an afterthought, but Mexico's growing problems are taking center stage now as a parade of U.S. Cabinet members descends on Mexico City ahead of an April 16-17 visit by President Barack Obama.

  This week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will visit, trying to find common ground on contentious issues such as border violence and trade rules before Obama's trip.

• Land use may have been responsible for the 1930s dust bowl – Ars Technica – The dust bowl can be attributed in part to natural climatic patterns such as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation; however, a recent paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science suggests that the agricultural expansion of the 1920s my have played an important role in amplifying the drought.
• 10 business lessons from ‘Battlestar Galactica’ | Topics | Macworld – You think your business has it rough? The people of Battlestar Galactica have lived through a recession you wouldn't believe. With dwindling resources, a skeleton crew, enemies constantly lurking out of view, and a pervasive threat of annihilation, Admiral Adama navigates the vast unknown. Like any leader, he makes his share of mistakes–sometimes with devastating consequences. But regardless of the fate of that ragtag fleet, the tale of Galactica is rife with lessons that can benefit any business leader.

There were 50 people laid off at the Intel Rio Rancho site on Monday according to New Mexico Business Weekly. They were part of the CS group.

“The new layoffs will affect corporate service groups that have responsibilities for overseeing facilities and operations,” Shipley said. “The layoffs announced last month are more specific to our manufacturing groups.”

These layoffs were announced in November of 2008 before the 100 – 200 layoffs were announced but not widely reported. So far no one I know was let go but I haven’t heard from everyone yet. My thoughts go out to anyone who was let go.

Monsterfishkeepers.com is a message board for people keeping big fish in big tanks. User johnptc posts pictures of a giant tank being made of concrete block and steel.