Meaningless Statistics

Statistics: This blog has existed for 5 years (what?!?), there have been 124 posts resulting in an average of 2 posts per month. We all know how much statistics lie, but I am sticking with these numbers and claiming I post something every 2-3 weeks, mostly because I think about posting something that often.
More statistics reveal that my grade this semester was a B. This is a little concerning to me because I don't know if the teacher was doing a +/- system or not (the school uses it, but in practice many teachers don't). If he is than I am rather disappointed in myself, that means I didn't do very well on the final. I will probably never know since I don't get a copy of the final back, nor has he posted the final test grades, and he is on travel until mid January and is essentially incommunicado. Oh well, I am a big boy. I will just move on to the next semester... which will be a class on the lovely topic of LASERS!!!! My path to mad -scientisthood is finally bearing evil and delicious fruit (kind of like a tangelo, or a pluot).

I should be leaving for work in about 15 minutes and have yet to put on pants.. so I think I will have to cut this post short.

Its been a month since my last post.

What has happend? Taking a page out of Eve's book.. I will make a list of things I remember from the last 30 days or so:
-Some work travel (Buxton, NC.. look it up, I had too)

-Lectures that are hard to concentrate on

-homework that confused me because I refused to take the shortcut even though it was staring me in the face the whole time

-shopping for baby stuff (lots of that)

-Thinking of baby names

-Cleaning the garage and getting the motorcycles inside

-Cleaning up the front yard (good news, my truck can handle a ton of rock.. barely)

-Thanksgiving

-Holiday Shopping (yah for cheap clothes)

-Spending time with good friends

-lots of cake at work (3 days in a row.. weird week)

-Weather that can't make up its mind

Grad School Blues

My teacher is an asshat wrapped in a douche bag. 5 hours of my life vanished and I still get to lose 2o points. I should have just blown the assignment off.
Why would you write an entire chapter on solving a series of equations using a specific method, then have the very first assignment be to solve those equations using a different method. A method, by the way, that is described as cumbersome and complicated in the textbook, and only explained as a method that will be assigned at the end of the chapter.
Way to force me into re-inventing the wheel in a pre-determined inferior method. Good job guy, you have successfully made me want to quit school and burn all my textbooks on top of your desk. That is a unique feat. There should be an XBOX achievement for that.

Chugging along

My wife is making a baby.
I am making my grades.
Something seems a little unbalance there. Maybe I should make something else too. Yah, I should make a pizza. That should even things out.

I have been feeling the pressure lately and for no particularly good reason. Best I can figure is some last minute travel for work was enough of a disruption that everything else in my life the last few weeks has felt like is held together with duct tape and bailing wire. This isn't very remarkable except for the fact that it hasn't been. Things have been under control and run pretty much according to schedule.

Yesterday was a great "break" day. We probably should have done it last week on our anniversary. We went to the Desert Botanical Gardens, met a friend for a long and entertaining lunch, hung out at the Harley shop down the street for a rally/car show, and finished it off by watching RED. By the way, RED is a great freaking movie. It is just a genuine, doesn't take itself seriously, good movie. The good guys win, the bad guys lose, and the explosions follow the quality not quantity rule (and then sneak in some more quantity).

If I was a little more motivated this early on a Sunday morning, I would upload a picture or two from the butterfly house at the Botanical Gardens. Its Monarch season.

Getting up the hill

My birthday has come and gone. This one was a milepost. A nice round number. It is a BINGO point in the flight of life.
My wife was determined to make this one special and she went all out. She kidnapped me and took me up to Sedona for a night. I got a helicopter tour while I was up there. We came back and I had a very chill party. I had a great time, I assume everyone else did also. I have found my circle of friends and acquaintances has grown to the point that my house does not hold them all, so we had the party at The Monastery.
She also got me a bunch of presents. I feel very loved. I would list them here but I don't want to sound like I am bragging (but I am).

In case you were wondering

I didn't die on the mountain.
I didn't summit either. If you are familiar with Long's Peak, I made it to the Keyhole, started up the backside and decided I probably had enough energy to summit, but not make it back down. I took some amazing pictures. According to the GPS I did about 14 miles, started at 9200 ft. and topped out at about 13,200 ft. Not bad for a day hike from a city boy living in the desert.
It was a great trip. There was lots of just hanging out and having a good time the rest of the weekend. I would like to do it again.

Countdown: T -7 days

I fly up to Colorado in 7 days for the big hike of doom. I am pretty excited. I see 3 big things happening on this trip.
1. I get away from work for about 5 days.
2. I climb a big mountain.
3. I get to hang out with my best friends and drink a bunch of beer.

Number 3 is definitely the part I am looking forward to the most, but number 1 is currently coming in a very close second.

Summer in full swing

Well, summer is officially in full swing. What does that mean? Well, first of it is hot. Damned HOT!
It is 6 am, the sun isn't up yet and it is 90 outside. Also "monsoon'' season has started. That means the humidity has DOUBLED. To be clear, by doubled I mean it went from 10% to 20%. Kristina was thinking about getting a food dehydrator.. I am thinking of just leaving some fruit slices outside for a day.

Summer also means that the Syfy (I still hate that name) channel has started its run of summer shows. USA and TNT have followed suit. Burn Notice, Royal Pains, and Leverage are all back and this week Eureka and Warehouse 13 started again. School starts again in a month, so between TV and video games I think I will be making great use of my summer break.

I am not really looking forward to this semester. (do I ever look forward to school?) I will be taking Electromagnetic Fields and Guided Waves (EEE 541). The book that accompanies the class has been lovingly referred to as the big black book of equations. This will be my third course on Elecrtomagnetic fundamentals which tells me electromagnetics is weird and complicated stuff.. but we already knew that. I think the topic suits me well.

This summer has yet to be particularly interesting. I am in a comfortable rut at work, getting new projects faster than what I already have can be completed. I haven't done anything that really resembles a vacation yet, but I have the big hike of doom in about 3 weeks and I expect the days surrounding the hike to be full of booze, explosions, and fun (not in that particular order). I do feel a little left out on the vacation front, but I think that is mostly from getting spoiled with big trips (big for me at least) the last 2 years and the last minutes business trip to upstate New York was canceled at the laster minute and instead I spent a day on the phone trying to walk the local technician through the tests I needed to run. It all worked out fine, but sitting in my cubicle on the phone all day is much more frustrating and boring than getting to go visit someplace green.

I will stop whining now and let you get back to your life. Until next time faithful readers, be lazy and don't finish anyth

Hiking

I have been meaning to make a post about my recent hiking trips but I just can't seem to get around to it.
"Hold on," you say. "Aren't you posting about it now?"
No, not really. I want to throw down a full on report giving the day hiked, trail hiked, average speed, thoughts on the hike, and pictures taken along the way.
This requires a bit more organization an time than I am willing to put into it so instead I have decided to write about what I wanted to write. Its like a tribute song to the greatest song in the world. This post is nothing like the one that I actually wanted to write.
I will give you a very brief rundown of the trails to date:

Camelback Mountain:
Camelback Mountain Peak
Piestewa Peak (Squaw Peak)
Piestewa Peak base loop (Freedom Trail)

South Mountain trails:
National loop to Hidden Valle, jump to Mormon Loop back

Superstition mountains:
Peralta Canyon to Caves Trail

Next weekend I am hitting up Mt. Humphreys as a "midterm" to help gauge my progress. Its at altitude and should be a pretty good tool to help me gauge how well I have been preparing for Long's Peak in August.

Dance Party!

This video popped up on my radar (yes, I have a radar) and I found it hilariously entertaining. It also reminded me of some great times at weddings and some awesome New Years Parties. I share it with you now.. don't worry.. it starts a little slow.. give it a minute or so.

Now with more flooring!

The kitchen is done, but I failed to snap picks before moving stuff back in, so I will wait until its all moved back in and finished to post any more pictures.

Status un-Quo

The 84% on my final resulted in a B+ in the class.. barely.. I was something like 0.3% away from an A-.
The kitchen work is in full swing. Here are some pictures of what has been done so far. The flooring get started tomorrow.

I am tired.

Motorcycle is fixed, wife is in Japan, dog is now with Beth and Jimmy. Kitchen is all packed and moved and the remodel starts on Tuesday. Got an 84% on my final.
I am going to take a nap.

Action packed week

This week is shaping up to be pretty intense.
I have my final on Wednesday, my wife leaves for Japan an Thursday, I hope to get my motorcycle back from the shop sometime this week, and the cabinets for the new kitchen should be in on Monday or Tuesday. This means on top of everything else I have to pack up the kitchen and laundry room while they tear out the flooring in the kitchen, dining room, and laundry room as part of the final repair from The Fire.
Once the new flooring is in they will be putting in the new cabinets and counter tops. My wife should come home from vacation to a brand new kitchen.. with the same old appliances. Maybe there will be a new sink though, we will have to wait and see.

Needless to say I feel a little stretched. It is hard to focus on the tasks at hand with so many waiting in the wings. Yesterday after chores and errands I gave up and quit studying for my final (I think I only got about 1.5 hours in), stopped packing the kitchen (ok, didn't event start), and watched Star Trek in Blu Ray.
Oh yah.. on Friday I picked up a Blu Ray player. The Home Theater PC had a DVD drive that was dying (it would crap out about halfway through a movie and would take some gentle persuasion and coaxing to get going again). Friday I went to Fry's to pick up a spare SD card for Kristina's trip and grab a new DVD drive when I find they are having a sale on Blu Ray drives for $50. I decided to pick up the Blu Ray drive and Sunday I picked up Star Trek in HD. It looks really really good.

Long live the Spatula King

Some of you may remember a certain email from about 7 years ago that made little sense but was still highly entertaining. It was the one where I, the Spatula King, was pondering my Breakfast Kingdom and was in search of members of my court.
I feel that as a King it is my duty to regale you from time to time with tales from my kingdom. Today I bring you the tale of Edward, the brave spatula who exemplifies the spirit and spatulicity of all spatulas!

Where has all the time gone

The pace of my life keeps accelerating at what I feel is an unsustainable rate. There are just too many things I want to do and not enough time to do them. I am spending so much time trying to enjoy life, I don't get any time to enjoy it!
Work and school are evil, the new game Just Cause 2 is glorious, and I haven't figured out how I am going to find a free weekend or 6 to do some loooong hikes in preparation for Long's Peak in August.
I'll figure it out eventually.. I always do.

Short update

Most of the restoration work is done on the house. All the electrical is repaired which means the wall in my office used to get to the back of the breaker box is finally back together and painted. I am moving back into my office this weekend very slowly since I am using the opportunity for a long overdue clean and purge.
The garage is completely repaired but not usable since all the stuff is still piled inside. I am parking the motorcycles in the garage again, which is nice.
We are still waiting on the flooring, which means we are waiting on a washer and dryer. Its not the contractor's fault.. we have decided to make a few changes to the kitchen since the flooring is coming up. I am not willing to spend the money on this house to "redo the kitchen right" but I am attempting to move one cabinet to reposition the refrigerator and get new counter tops. Since Kristina is dead set against putting lipstick on a pig, we are replacing our perfectly good but 30 year old laminate with perfectly good 0 year old laminate counter tops. Coupled with the new flooring and the painting we did on the cabinets last year the kitchen won't look fairly updated.

It other pointless and random news, Phoenix has received a lot of rain this year. We are already past 4" which is more than we received all of last year. The yard is a mess, both front and back, and between the house stuff and school, and all the other little things it is becoming hard to find time to deal with it. There is so much stuff growing where there isn't supposed to be and I know that if I don't stay on top of it, when the rains stop in a few weeks its all going to turn into a big dead brown mess... after, of course, flowering and playing hell with my allergies for a few months. And since I am surrounded by empty, foreclosed homes those yards area a mess too and there is no one to take care of it.

Also, I have decided once again that school sucks and I don't like it. This is going to be a long 5 years.

Turning it around

So.. its been a week.. my house is still a mess. I am still missing a large portion of my ceiling, but work has been halted while we wait for the inspector to sign off on the new electrical stuff. My attic has had all the insulation sucked out, so it get to about 80 in the house during the day and the heater runs for a good portion of the night.
The inspector should come on Monday and as soon as he is done they can start putting up new drywall. Hopefully I will be done with the repairs this week, or early next week at the latest. My wife and I are getting pretty eager for a return to normalcy.

Tom and I spent the better part of yesterday running cat6 to a few of my rooms, a job only made possible by the missing insulation. BTW, when I say "attic" I mean a crawl space above the house. It is only about 4-5 feet from beam to peak up there (I am 6'4"). It wasn't a very pleasant day. We got 4 runs done to 3 rooms and had our ass handed to us by a cross brace sitting in the middle of the wall in the master bedroom. Thanks to the slope of the roof there isn't enough room to use an extended drill bit and we decided it wasn't worth it to cut out a section of the drywall so we could notch or drill through the cross brace 2x4. Looks like the media center extender is staying on the wireless network. In the end I think I can accept a gigabit ethernet drop in the spare bedroom, the office, and 2 in the living room. I debated on putting one in the kitchen but decided the day had gone on long enough and even though the microwave plays hell with the wifi I just don't need it enough to make it worthwhile.

We are trying to make the best of the situation and taking this opportunity to get some other long delayed upgrades done. I got a motion light put in on the side of my house, since I had so much access to the "attic", and am moving/upgrading the lighting in my garage.
It feels nice to get some of these things finally done and done right.

House Flambe

My house tried to kill me yesterday by catching in fire. It failed miserably.
Everyone got out fine, we are ok and the house is in pretty good shape. Electrical fire in my crawl space from the 220V line running to the water heater. The smolder of doom started above the laundry room and we found it before it really caught. The fire department ripped down the ceiling in the laundry room and half the garage chasing the smolder through the insulation. We are crazy silly ridiculous lucky. Insurance adjuster has already been out with a contractor and electrician. They will be back this morning to run new house mains and replace the water heater which means a little demo work in my office to get to the back side of the breaker box to replace the breakers and run the line. After that the real fun begins (work permits from the city, replacing ALL the insulation, structural engineer to sign off on the scorched ceiling beams, etc. etc.)
We are staying in the house tonight even though we where offered hotel rooms. I will skip the hot water for the opportunity to keep an eye on the abode that tried to kill me. Might post pictures of the torched wires, rafters, and missing ceilings.. might not.

My wife and I had both just returned home to meet with some friends (waiting in our driveway) to head out for the day. Kristina was bringing back the dog from getting its nails trimmed and other doggy things and I was coming back from the dentist. Our friends where leaving there 2 dogs at our house as we where planning on being out well into the evening. Because my wife had the dog she went into the house through the garage, and thus the laundry room and thought it smelled like burnt marshmallows. We started checking the water heater and following the smell.. mostly out of curiosity. There was a warm spot near the door and since I am freakishly tall I was able to touch the ceiling and feel a hot spot. Got the ladder and poked my head through the crawl space hatch that is in the laundry room and saw small wisps of smoke and blackened insulation and beams around some wires. Told Kristina to call the fire dept and ran out to pop all the breakers in the house. Posted my friend on the ladder with a fire extinguisher to hit anything if it actually ignited (felt confident leaving him there.. anyone trained to fight ship board fires can fight them in my house). Fire Dept came and was able to take care of it before it actually caught and turned into a real fire. Plenty of damage though.. the thermal imager the captain used was registering over 500 degrees on the inside of the ceiling.

Not quite the eventful weekend I was hoping for. My wife did a pretty good write up of the events of the fire. You can find it HERE.

Photos from Seattle

As promised I uploaded a few of my favorite photos from my trip to Seattle.

hoooray school

So I'm blogging as I watch the 3rd lecture in my return the time/money hole known as grad school. I can already tell I am going to have to work harder at getting into the mode of self motivation. Its mostly changing my mindset to realize that I am back in school and must budget time to devote to it. I forget that I need to find an additional couple hours every few days to watch lectures and that when I do.. I'm not done! There is still homework to work on, and now the I am essentially learning alone the only feedback I have that I understand what is being presented is myself. This may sound like an odd statement, but it is very useful to have someone you can sanity check with. The result is that I am spending more time than usual reviewing material trying to make sure I did not miss understand the theory and methods involved.

On unrealated topics, I was in Seattle ealier this month and have some pictures I want to post.. a lot of them. They are not very interesting.. landscapes and close ups of plants and stuff (I figured out why Seattle is called "The Emerald City"). I need to cull the herd so to speak and pick 3 or 4 of my favorites to share. They will come eventually. If you are curious what Seattle is like in early January the answer is very simple.. cold and wet. Coming from Phoenix the dreary weather was actually a refreshing change. Unfortunately, just as I was ready to go back home I did.. to find the exact same weather followed me and has decided to stick around for 2 weeks. Oh well.. such is life.
The storms where interesting.. lost half a tree in the backyard and about 30 shingles, but there have been no leaks up in the crawl space so I think everything will be alright.

Hello 2010

I like 2010. Its only been about 35 hours, but so far it has been a lot of fun. 2010 is also a fun number.. it eludes to patterns and codes. Every time I write it I want to continue the sequence.. 201000-10-20-30. I bet I could start a nice conspiracy theory or end of the world hysteria by using the sequence to pinpoint a date and then randomly correlate some event to it.

Christmas was.. well.. this blog is public so I'm not going into details. It wasn't bad, but a whole day in a small house with 9 people can get a little hectic, especially when 3 of those people only have a combined age of 17(7+6+4) and they recognize you as "Uncle Jungle Gym." On the gift front I once again managed to spoil my wife and I feel very good/proud about that. I have a great shot of her look of shock when she say her new camera. I don't think she will let me post it though.. maybe it will show up on her flickr account though.
I also was finally able to successfully maneuver my wish list into acquiring something very useful for the zombie apocalypse (see previously mentioned plans to start a dooms day theory).
I got a Springfield XD .40 cal. Its is the 4" Tactical version with a ported barrel.
It looks like this, except I have a green grip instead of all black.

I am very happy.