Japanese Tsunami Before and After

Satellite images at the Guardian

Office Flooring Done

Holy. Mother. of God. It's over.

Question:

Part a) How long does it take to lay 280 sqft of bamboo floor?

Part b) How long does it take if the dorks who built your house put in 1/2in differential height from one foundation to the other, and you must flatten the floor to within 3/16in over 10 feet?

Part c) How long does it take if you already have an 8-5 Mechanical Engineering job?
-Note: Occupation of Engineer multiplies final product quality requirements by 5x, and therefore total time elapsed is affected by 10x. If you can see the GD&T callout for Part b) in your head, and make it into a "YOUR MOM" joke, multiply by an additional 3x.

Part d) How long does it take if you have a 1-year old?

Part e) How long does it take if your wife also has a 9-5 job and even though she'll take care of said 1 year old for 4 hours a night while you are off trying to answer Parts a) Through d) inclusive, still wants some time to eat, sleep, and have a personal life?

Answer: Well, all in all, you're into it from at least from Thanksgiving to about St. Patty's Day.

Ouch.

And correction: MY work in the office floor is done. Baseboards and moving outlets and patching drywall goes to some poor sap that won't be such a poor sap after I pay him. I want my life back. I'm done being Mr. Project. Mr. Project is gone. Mr. Short-2-hour-easy-fixit Man is still around. He's good friends with Dr. Likes-to-Mountainbike-Sedona-in-his-Free-Time Dude. Those two guys hate Mr. Project. They kicked him off the island. He's a lame, lame wad of big ol' boring bones.

So with Mr. Project gone, the small things can now get done. Like "enjoying my weekends." That kind of thing.

So here are the pics. Hey it's not splitboarding, but it was pretty much what I dreamt about for 3 plus months. (Why is there no entry for dreamt in the spellchecker? C'mon Google!)

Here is the evolution of the S corner view:

Laying different thicknesses of OSB and sanding:


Laying felt between the different thicknesses and felt over the top:


Underlayment over that:


Unpackaging the wood:


Laying the wood:


Done:


And Yes- in case you were wondering. There does indeed exist a CAD model of this office. I made it in Draftsight. Every flooring contractor needs a CAD dweeb. In my case, the flooring contractor IS the CAD dweeb. Heh.

The whole Picasa album is online, in case you want to see all the gory details.

Splitboard Lou Canyon 3/1/11

That's not a command. That's a fact.

Mark Thurston and I took a leisurely stroll up the San Francisco Peaks twice in one day last week, only to fall back down again. Fast. The first run was a little crusty but we found the right spot on the second run.

All of the pictures Mark took are here on Picassa. He took some pretty good ones! I have some video but it takes time to slice and dice the boring parts (there weren't many).

Thirteen hours of effort, but it's always worth it.

Good Journalism

Below, an interview with Sheriff Dupnik after the shooting in Tucson. Courteous and discreet, yet she still managed to cut through the grey muck this guy was using to cloud the issue.

I've seen what Mad Dog Megyn is capable of. If she interviews someone and smells BS, she usually takes them on with a fury. Not this time. I think she did a good job here.

You Heard it Here First

Wikipedia's List of Common Misconceptions

Lake Tahoe Snowrides

Justin Y and I are the best mismatched snowboarder/skier pair I know of, and we hit up another 3 days of tree dodging, powder swallowing adventure in Tahoe.

Homewood
Land in Reno at 8, dressed and equipped at Homewood by 10:45. Homewood was where I first learned to board in the trees in 2001 with Pitterle (remember him?...really?). Everytime I go back I remember why.

The snow was heavy but steerable, and 6-12 inches deep where the trees are just dense enough to keep out the scaredycats. The snow fell all day but it was so wet it dripped off the lift chairs onto our heads and legs as we were carried us up the mountain. We had wet jackets and gloves by the end of the afternoon, but it was a small price to pay.

You know what? Never mind. Homewood sucks. You wouldn't like it. Don't go there. I'd rather keep this secret to myself.

Heavenly Day 1

We got to our S Lake resort (above) before a night of wind and snow and power outages set in. It brought 2 ft of new snow but it kept us from getting to the mountain until 9 or 9:30. no matter: we still got to the top in time to line up behind the ski patrol's rope barrier. When they let us under the rope, we and the other 50 people waiting became a mad throng of screaming wild Indians, leaving plumes of powder in the air and streaks in the snow behind us.

After swimming in, and and choking on, the snow on the lower face of Gunbarrel for 3 runs we cleared our windpipes and went further up the hill. After 3 runs there, we heard whispers of another lift opening up nearby, so we rushed over there, and found, yes, another ski patrol rope line just above the base of the Sky Express lift line. After a while they gave the go-ahead, and we again made our Indian massacre of the chairlift.

We got to the top and it was even better, drier snow. It was the perfect run. At one point I had passed everyone, and was all alone. All I could see in front of me was untouched wilderness of white powder approaching me as fast as gravity would allow.

We stayed in the Sky Express for the rest of the afternoon, until we were too tired to do any more. When you push past your limit, you make mistakes. Here I am just a few seconds after I crashed into a tree, contemplating my error, replaying the previous 30 seconds in my head, re-evaluating my place in life, meditating on Newton, etc.

Heavenly Day 2

On the second day, another set of lifts opened up, and it took us into the SkiWays Glades. It was the most surreal riding I have ever done. The whole place was peppered with squat pines, and in the space between them, windblown snow dunes. They were like natural quarterpipes, but you had to think on your feet if you didn't have the speed to get over them.

The snow is nice at Heavenly but what most people don't know is that there is quite a bit of wildlife there. Here I snapped a picture of the native Giant Sasquatch. Click on the image to see him closer. It was amazing.

The most interesting non-ski related thing that happened was the conversation I had with a guy on the lift chair. As soon as I sat down, he started speaking with an unidentified accent and the guy next to me, who was clearly American, would giggle. He asked me, "Where are you from?"

I said, "Arizona."

He said, "Ah, I am from a little country called Iran."

I repeated, to make sure I understood his accent, "Iran?"

"Yes, have you heard of this place" Another giggle from my neighbor.

"Yes. I thought the student protests there were going to be able to kick your president out of office, but no such luck!"

"Ah, you do not like the President of Iran?"

At this point, I think I am either an involuntary cast member of Borat 2, or this guys is just plain joking around, so I just decide to put it all on the line. I say, "No, I think your president is a Dirt-Bag."

The guy next to me laughs histerically, but the Iranian continues, "He doesn't like Israel much. Do you like Isreal?"

I told him. "I like Israel just as much as any other civilized, Westernized society in the Middle East, or in other words, better than all the rest!" More laughter.

He changed the subject said, "What are you doing for New Years Eve?"

"I will be in Las Vegas"

His eyes light up, "Ahh, Las VEGAS!"

"Yep," I say. "Home of the Spearmint Rhino"

He explodes, "AHHHHH! YeeeAAAAHH. Spearmint Rhino!" And followed this up with the craziest maniacal laughter I have ever heard.

"Wow," I said. "Whenever I hear a guy from Iran laugh like that, it scares me a little."

"We don't have Spearmint Rhino in Iran. It is forbidden."

I told him, "That sounds terrible!"

At this point, the lift was reaching it's destination, he made our farewell. He said, "You have a good day, and maybe sometime you and I can open a Spearmint Rhino in Iran! HahahHAHAHA!" More maniacal laughter.

After I got off the chair and told Justin about this exchange I think we both agreed this guy was faking it. After all, if it was real, I'm pretty sure he would have taken out a scimitar and chopped off my head.

The rest of the day we rode the Glades and wore ourselves out suprizingly late in the afternoon, considering it was our third day.

The view of the lake was as good as ever. That damn Sasquatch kept following me.

All in all I'd have to say that whoever thinks Heavenly is a snowboarders hell has not explored the place that well. If you're on blue groomers the whole time, yes, there are a lot of catwalks. But the more wild areas between the manicured runs have a lot of room to explore. We stayed on the California side the whole time for two days in a row.

Thanks to Justin's lady Tara for giving us the S. Lake resort hookup! It was a fun trip.

I hate to plaster a website full of baby pics but...

..it's just got to be done now and then.

I made a beautiful sculpture the other day:

I'm not sure if this is "Magnum" or "Blue Steel."

This is against Target policies.

I don't have any Lumberjacks stuff. Lia got the jump on me.

A filthy dirty elf.

Obama and JFK Debate the Laffer Curve

At Dan Mitchell, via Glenn Reynolds.

Newsweek is Worthlesss

The only time I read Time or Newsweek is when I have to go to a doctor's waiting room. Every time I do, it makes me want to cause myself severe physical damage as punishment. (Remember when I wrote this? I read that TIME piece back in December at Lia's Obgyn appointment right before we had Reia.)

At Lia's doctor appointment today, I had the pleasure of reading this stinker about how Japan's socialized medicine is Oh-So-Awesome. They actually say that it's a universal system, but not "socialized medicine" (the "scare quotes" are theirs).

The description of how the system works vaguely resembles reality, but many of the facts are wrong or are left out. What's extra funny is they seem to have read this article in the WaPo and that was pretty much the entirety of their research, yet they contradict the source article several times, probably because the Washington Post doesn't paint as rosy a picture.

Much like in Canada, the Japanese spend a lot of time waiting in line for care. Hospitals are legally constrained to be not for profit, as are insurance companies. Doctors are paid far less there, hence there shortages of them.

Newsweek denies the system is socialist, just as the left denies Obamacare is socialist, but the truth is that 70% of expenses are paid by the goverment. How is this not a socialist system if the vast majority of cost is distributed amongst the taxpayers?. Okay, so I guess it's 30% non-crappy. My bad.

Score One For the Good Guys

Congratulations everybody! You won't ever have to listen to me bitch about this anymore!

Arizona speed cameras going away

That's right. I consider it a very personal victory since I have pissed and moaned and made my discontent known to everyone who would listen. I've yelled and screamed and convinced others to not mail in their tickets and told everyone I could not to ever pay them. I've even gotten several photoradar tickets mailed to me myself (and to Lia when I drove her car). Guess how many I have paid? If you guessed ZERO, you win.

Whatever forms of tyranny may be present in this world, at least I know I fought against one form of it and won, suckers!

One caveat to this, of course is that if by some small chance I get caught in another city like Tucson or in other states that have these Pint-size Oppress-o-cams, the bitching will start all over again. But I'll probably just do what I did before and throw the ticket in the trash.

The banner pic, by the way is of rapper DMX's photo-radar candid on the Scottsdale 101 at Shea Blvd. Heh!