The Everglades are burning. Something like 11,000 acres are currently on fire just west of where I am currently working. I had left the sunroof open on the truck - not all the way open, but tipped up - and when I got done with work, my brand new truck wsa full of ash! I had to fiddle with the power windows at 70mph to clear it all out!
Here are some photos of the sunset and the smoke from the fire.
I have spent over 3 hours on the phone with people from my recent job tonight. My former supervisor called with some questions about some options regarding the old website. A friend called with some programming homework questions, and another friend called with other programming questions as he is just starting out.
It is just kinda funny. I don't like using the phone, and it has been ringing off the hook the last couple of days between friends, and the car dealership calling to make sure I am happy with the vehicle.
I burned up half this month's minutes on my phone plan just today! Oh well, better to see them used then to be not used, right? I also seem to find it humorous that I usually spend more time using my phone as a modem with my Nokia 770 then using it for voice.
I bought myself a present today. In my typical fashion I bought myself the best of the bottom. I bought a tricked out 2007 Ford Escape. It isn't the hybrid that I have been dreaming about, but I just can't afford one of those (much less FIND one). Ford is offering 0% financing on their trucks and I qualified!
Dude, it has EVERYTHING, (well, not a GPS, as my mom pointed out), keyless entry, security system, moonroof, the bigger 3.0 V6 (vs the 2.3 liter), in dash 6 disc CD changer that reads MP3 Discs and has the speed-dependant volume feature, class II trailer hitch, power everything (although I think a power seat is a bit excessive if you ask me).
I test drove a lot of cars today. They had a nice little Focus with 3600 miles on it, but with me being so tall, the 4 door Focuses have a terrible blindspot with the door pilar. The older cars coming off of leases were not much cheaper then new, and with the financing I got on the new, it would have worked out to be the same money in the end.
I like how it drives, it fits well. I can see out of it. I can actually use ALL the review mirror! Part of the view isn't cut off but the roof. And the best part... NO dealership vandalism - no sticker on the back of it!
Well, enough of me rambling, on with the VIDEOS!
Yeah, I know it may not be a big deal for a lot of you, but this is the first car that I bought having SEEN it first. It's the first car I bought that didn't have MORE miles on it then the prior one. And while it's the smallest of the SUVs that Ford makes, it is totally tricked out!
Today was my last at work today. I guess Friday the 13th is as good of a day as anything.
Two and a half years of doing the same website - well, over half a dozen of them. Of Having my website on the back of city buses. Of a 100,000 unique visits a month. Of really great people.
My friends from work had a going away party for me today. They pooled together and got me a really great going away present, but they couldn't agree on what it was going to be, so I got a gift card for a lot of money! They ordered pizza from my favorite pizza shop.
Thank you everybody!
I just about left without getting my stuff off the walls.
I will miss everybody there at RAGFL! You all have my email address and this website! Keep in touch.
I finally made time to work on my boat tonight. This Friday is my last day at my current job, and I start my new one on Monday, so I have been busy. I have also made a bookshelf between now and my last PakYak update. I went out and bought a brand new bicycle tube this last weekend. I was thinking about getting one that would fit my bicycle, as I have patched both tubes on it at some point. This tube was cheap though.
I didn't cut it straight, I let the curve of the tube work for me. I let the arc in the tube follow the natural curve that the finished assembly wanted to follow. I used a knife sharpener to punch the holes in the tube. It is the closest thing I have to an awl shape, and it was already in my pocket, so it was really handy.
A short video of putting the snaps onto the rubber endcap. I am using the tooling that came with one of the two snap kits I bought.
Here it is ready to assemble. I found it is easier to stretch the tube onto the bolt and slide it all the way down, then add the next piece of boat.
Here it is assembled. Mine seems looser then what I have seen in other people's photos.
If I may suggest not drilling holes on the ends of each of the end side stringers... It makes adding the other half of the snaps less then ideal. I hadn't drilled out the end stringers for the opposite end of the boat, so I only had to deal with this issue on one side.
I bought screw in snaps as seen on the right. But I was worried that with the hole already there, the snap won't be that strong due to the risk of tearing out the end of the stringer. I tried to pop-rivet the snap on, but my rivets are too thin for the holes I had drilled (sized for the bolts that are used to assemble the rest of the boat).
I ended up using the screw in snaps. I just centered the snaps between the end of the stringer and the hole. Time will tell if this was a wise choice or not.
Here is a close up shot of the final rubber end cap. It looks like I am going to need to trim the end of the bolt short. I will also probably get some nylock nuts for these bolts as well. They already have a rounded end so I don't have to worry about the skin as much.
I have been bouncing an idea around in the back of my head for something similar, if not so... extensive. My idea was to use the south 5 feet of a high rise building as a farm. The noonday sun won't really allow much deeper reach of direct sun, especially in more southern locations. Essentially you set up a vertical hydroponics greenhouse.
If you figure 1 acre of land is 43,560 square feet. A 200 foot wide, 5 foot deep swath of a 44 story building will yield over an acre of urban "land" for growing produce. According to the referenced article, an acre of hydroponic grown strawberries is equivalent to 30 acres of traditionally grown strawberries. Other similar sized crops would be able to be grown as densely as well. Or, another view of it, these urban vertical greenhouses has potential to grow as much food (actually more) per acre of land as their rural, traditional farmland, even including the surface streets, and shorter buildings that are blocked from the sun by the towers.
Only a percentage of the building would relinquished for growing crops. The southern 5 feet would be walled off by glass walls to keep troublemakers out of the greenhouse. If the high rise was a condo or an apartment building, the residents could have access to their own little gardens in a section of the greenhouse on their floor, or they could "rent" it to the building farm coop. Local restaurants found in the first floors of these buildings would be able to have fresh, locally grown produce (within a few hundred lateral feet if not immediately "upstairs") available to them. The low transportation costs and high yields would address the high cost per square foot value of the floorspace. (Does anybody have any numbers for this? If managed as a aquaponics vegetable and fish farm, growing lettuce just on the floor would yield in excess of 24heads/case * 45 cases per week * 52 weeks per year = 56,160 heads of lettuce and 900lbs/6 weeks * 52 weeks = 7,800 lbs of fresh fish a year. This is not even close to utilizing the space efficiently - just a rough estimate that you would probably need to produce about 10X this to make it cost effective at market prices. )
The buildings would reap other benefits beyond a regular food and income source from the rent of greenhouse space, or the direct sale of produce and flowers (depending on how the building owner did it). The large quantities of growing plants would be an active air filter, helping maintain a healthier air supply, and reducing heating/cooling costs because of the reduced need to ventilate the building. The hydroponics water could provide a lot of thermal mass and a ready distribution method for heating/cooling during the day by heating or chilling the water at night when the energy costs are lower. I am leery about gray-watering foodstuff plants, but I have no qualms about ornamental plants such as flowers. Office buildings would have a bit of the outdoors pulled inside, providing a more relaxing environment.
Maybe I would finally be able to buy a decent tomato in the city!
We have all read stories about the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, but how cool would it be to see the High Rise Gardens of Boston?
The Everglades are burning. Something like 11,000 acres are currently on fire just west of where I am currently working. I had left the sunroof open on the truck - not all the way open, but tipped up - and when I got done with work, my brand new truck wsa full of ash! I had to fiddle with the power windows at 70mph to clear it all out!
Here are some photos of the sunset and the smoke from the fire.
