Greg In The Desert

I thought I would try to turn a negative into a positive with my scorpions situation by capturing them and keeping in them in a glassed habitat in the house. Perhaps there’s money to be made selling scorpions.

The first thing I did was to clean out a 10 gallon aquarium that was being unused.

I then added cactus from the back yard.

I then added some sandy soil (commonly referred to as dirt), also from the back yard.

I then added a pile of rocks, from the front yard this time.

I then added the scorpion (Vaejovis flavus). This one came from inside the house.

The first scorpion died after keeping it in the tank for about a month. This was despite providing it several crickets that it quickly ate.

Since Saturn the cat came along, I rarely get a scorpion before she kills them. Plus she is has eliminated the scorpion food supply in the house so I don’t know that I will get much more of them. The tank currently sits empty.

According to Live Science, a few dinosaurs were still roaming around New Mexico 500,000 years after the great apocalypse that killed the rest of them.

The whole idea that a space rock destroyed the dinosaurs has become controversial in recent years. Many scientists now suspect other factors were involved, from increased volcanic activity to a changing climate. Either way, some 70 percent of life on Earth perished, and an asteroid impact almost surely played a role.
Scientists recently analyzed dinosaur bones found in the Ojo Alamo Sandstone in the San Juan Basin. Based on detailed chemical investigations of the bones, and evidence for the age of the rocks in which they are found, the researchers think some dinosaurs outlived the crash that occurred 65 million years ago and stuck around for a while.

New Mexico is a popular place for Dinosaur hunters because of how well fossils has been preserved.

I’m being very careful this time around, not jumping into anything unless I’m very sure it’s what I want. I looked at two house this week.

This house, being a HUD home, was foreclosed on.

• The interior was pretty dated, probably was built in the 70s.
• For a HUD home, it isn’t in bad shape but does need work.
• The house is good size at ~1500 square feet, but the kitchen is smaller than my apartments!
• The yard is probably a 1/4 acre, but oddly shaped.
• The landscaping isn’t too bad. Mostly dead grass and no rocks.
• Asking price is $85,000

Although it seems cheap, it gets bid on. Bids are due on this house by the end of next week. My concern is that I could get outbid by a contractor who can do the fix up work cheap that I can (which is apparently happening with the HUD homes around here). Even though it’s the fixer upper that I’m looking for the kitchen needs more work than I think I’m prepared (or know how to) do. Not to mention the yard is oddly shaped.

This house didn’t have any lot size info on the MLS, only saying it was on a culdesack. To make a long story short, the house was pretty nice inside but the lot was very small.

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.

Mac Rumors has a link to some screen shots of Panther. These look pretty real to me. However I am somewhat disappointed at the picture of what appears to be a new type of Finder window. I hope that Apple isn’t trying to copy Micro with the look of navigating the hard-drive. However it does look like they took the metal and aqua “themes” and combined them together. That looks pretty nice, as compared to the inconsistent metal look that they randomly spread around now. And I do believe that Apple has purposely let these and the leaks of the “G5″ powermac leak to build up hype before the WWDC on Monday.

If this is the new finder view I will be quite unhappy.

[Update:] Just for the record, I was wrong. The new finder rocks. Could have done without the metal interface but I’ve gotten use to it.