May 2015 – Page 2 – Bus Driver Jim

bdjMap

It’s time to introduce my latest map app. It’s still in beta, yet functioning very well. The concept is: create a google spreadsheet in the cloud containing individual legs of a road trip around the U.S. that only require a place name and location for each leg. Then, generate a dynamic route on a google map.

Here’s the first worksheet, coinciding with my road trip next month:

When you run the program using this data, it produces this:

Click on any leg and you can navigate forward and backward along the route, showing the distance between points in miles and driving time. The last leg plots a route back home. Pretty damn sexy I think :-)

If you would like to jump in to my world and take this app for a spin, click here!

Road To Yellow

I’ve been watching a new road being built just south of my base off fifth avenue. Today on my lunch break I took a walk down the road, not knowing how far it went, or what I would find at the end.

What I found was a great dandelion covered meadow. An old guy and his grandson drove by and he told me that someone had bought the property and needed a road to get to it. Only the horses that pasture here could access it before now. Click the photo below for more shots…

New Map App

I’m creating a cool new map program that plots out my upcoming summer trips. It uses all of the tools I’ve been developing lately, and it’s just, nice.

Here’s a couple of sneak peeks at the results:

I’ve added a waypoint to this mix at Tacna, Az so I can drop down south into Tucson and avoid the stupid craziness of Phoenix and Mesa.

Propane

Steph asked me to take a picture of the propane dispensary at Andy’s 66 station in Victor, for her boss. I figured the best way to get them to her is to use my blog. Please contain your excitement about this post :-)

Update: Turns out this is the wrong thing. Enjoy these wonderful photos because shortly I’m deleting this shit!

SlideShow

First Summer Trip

I’ve been hunkering down in my office this evening, planning out my first summer trip. It’s fun being a computer programmer with the summer off because you can create tools that allow you to analyze and structure an adventure, and then live it:

For this first trip (as soon as school is out around here) I’m going to return to familiar territory with a first stop at the great $27 room in Mesquite, NV, followed by a day in Lake Havasu, AZ. Then I’m off to the unknown hot-springs of Truth or Consequences, NM, up to the eclectic Taus, NM, a layover in Fort Collins, CO where my niece lost her life, on to good old Evanston, WY and then home.

Driggs, ID to Mesquite, NV
- 623 miles
- 8 hours 41 mins
Mesquite, NV to Lake Havasu, AZ
- 234 miles
- 3 hours 32 mins
Lake Havasu, AZ to Truth Or Consequences, NM
- 607 miles
- 8 hrs 55 mins
Truth Or Consequences, NM to Taos, NM
- 280 miles
- 4 hrs 19 mins
Taos, NM to Fort Collins,CO
- 350 mi
- 5 hrs 33 mins
Fort Collins, CO to Evanston, WY
- 373 miles
- 5 hrs 32 mins
Evanston, WY to Driggs, ID
- 212 miles
- 3 hrs 48 mins

That’s 2,700 miles and 40 hours of driving. I’m ready…

Mothers Day 2015

Went to my sister’s house in Alta, Wyoming for brunch today. All of the immediate family were there and it was quite nice actually. I didn’t focus my photos on people today, just things that caught my eye, like the new fence, a lack of nearby neighbors and a cool greenhouse. Coming home down Stateline a slow moving animal mosied across the road. It was very sloth like. Click the picture below for the photoset.

Greetings

I discovered a great e-card vendor this morning: Jacquie Lawson! I paid $14 via PayPal for a one year subscription which allows me to send an unlimited number of customized e-cards to friends and family. Based on the positive feedback I’ve received so far, it was money well spent on Mother’s Day.

It’s a well constructed system, you even get a confirmation email when the recipient receives and views the card. Here are the previews of the ones I sent this morning:

Dreams Of Love
Colourful Cargo
Water Colours
A Tropical Treat
Birds and Blooms
The Florist
Butterfly Bouquet

Mothers Day Flower

I went all out for Steph’s Mother’s Day tomorrow, today. After tying a big one on last night, after a generally shitty day, with my neighbor and nephew Brian, I got dressed and went grocery shopping with her!

Broulims was handing out free flowers to women that walked through the door and looked like they were probably mothers. How do they know? Anyway, Steph got this flower and I’m thinking phew, off the hook! Actually, I’m a good guy, I contributed to her airfare to Seattle this summer last night. Before I got drunk with Brian…

…and yes, we need a new screen door. I’m thinking of starting a gofundme page.

Finger

The new Windows 10 includes the middle finger emoji. I want this OS and I plan to use this icon, frequently!

Or if you prefer, as Betty pointed out, a caramel apple! (Leave it to an old broad :-)

Fire HD Computer

I synced the bluetooth keyboard and mouse that I had for my Google Nexus 10 to my little Fire HD tablet, and they work perfectly. The system now has a screen, an OS, a cursor and keystroke entry. That’s a computer folks, and the whole set-up is smaller than my old trusty Acer netbook.

I also installed an app called EverNote which lets me create documents on it that are transferred to the cloud as soon as internet is encountered, which then become visible on my desktop. That means I can blog from my bus :-)

Piper Paper

If pretty piper laid beneath a pile of printed papers, how many piles of printed papers could pretty piper pluck?

Dementia

I’ve got a sweet little old senior that’s been riding for about a year now, and I’ve watched her dementia progress. I take her three times a week from her nursing home, to Senior Meals and back, and the home has no problem letting her venture off for lunch. She’s ambulatory and cognizant, just losing a few brain cells every day.

Lately she’s been asking me how long I’ve lived in Teton Valley as soon as she boards the bus and is strapped into her seat. I tell her ten years (or is it eleven, I can’t remember). She then goes on to tell me she was born in Pocatello, lived in Chicago before coming here, and loves Teton Valley. She tells me this every day she rides…

She has a great sense of humor about her memory loss, and sometimes it’s pretty comical. The other day she was convinced she was 181 years old, and who am I to correct her. I did tell her she looked wonderful for being that old.

Today when I picked her up at Senior Meals she asked how long I’d lived in the Valley. Wait, that was this mornings question, so I replied three days. Suddenly, something happened in her brain. She was convinced I was a new driver and wanted to be sure I knew how to get her back to her nursing home. I told her yes I did but then she started giving me directions anyway, pretty good ones actually. She asked me if I’d ever been to her nursing home and I said, yes, bus driver jim showed me the place this morning.

Sometimes this job has some amazing surreal moments :-)

Saddleback

Shortly after we moved here, a large structure began appearing in the Teton Saddleback Vista subdivision. It turned out to be a classy indoor horse arena. Rich people could buy an expensive home in the subdivision, along with a horse or two, and have them boarded and available for riding all year-round. It was a cool deal, until the crash hit.

Last October an Australian mining mogul named Clive Palmer bought the arena at auction for a steal and he’s having the thing disassembled, transported to his ranch in Pinedale, WY and then put back together. Must be nice to be filthy rich…

Vulgaria

Vulgaria is a castle somewhere in Europe ruled by the baron and baroness Bomburst. It’s also what Porsha calls Ellen’s special area, but I digress…

It’s shaping up to be chitty bang up Sunday:

The above are photos of this mornings carrot, celery and beet juice, and here’s my new Oregon Coast map for this summer and my new National Area map.

Bart Stations

I’ve created a new JimsMap worksheet containing every S.F. Bay Area Bart Station.

I have a lot of history with this transit system, I rode it from the very beginning when I lived in Oakland, and commuted daily to the City. My ears still remember the pressure change as we flew under the Bay.

Here’s my new Bart Station Map. The exact locations were determined by Google geocoding but I know the actual station entry points could be improved.

Anyone with a tablet or a mouse could drag these locations in real time to a better spot and improve my map. I wish I knew someone in the Bay Area familiar with Bart.

Oh wait, Skoge? It’s really easy to change the physical location of any marker in my map system by simply dragging the marker around. A real computer with a mouse works great but finger dragging with a tablet also works :-)