Runway Madness

The Driggs-Reed Memorial airport is a 7300′ by 100′ runway with a double wheel landing gear weight capacity of 75,000 pounds. In other words, we can handle big planes. The Huntsman patriarchs from Utah have a huge presence here with a five-star hotel on the way, and they needed a commercial airport to handle their customers.

In the event of a plane crashing at our airport it’s good to know that the Junior High would be the first to go. If the high school was the first hit we would lose that whole two-year educational investment! In other words: what were they thinking?

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Categorized as The Valley

Hansons Hay

Hansons farm off of N 500 W, north of Hatches Corner in Tetonia, is a casual working ranch. I drive by there three mornings a week and several cows are always in the road and he just lets them wander all over the property while munching on the hay. Most ranchers keep the two separate.

Here’s a map. (Drag the map to the right to see this spot…)

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Coverage

Ahhh, the things I find interesting that other people might not… I put my new Bing Maps V8 program into Aerial mode at the U.S. level, turned off labels, and then turned on Streetside view. The “blue” areas represent coverage.

It clearly illustrates that Microsoft has a lot of work remaining to photographically map the entire United States. They’re obviously playing catch-up to Google Street View, but the image quality is much better! It also appears that the focus is the U.S. while Google is mapping the Earth and beyond.

I wonder if Microsoft is hiring people to drive the camera trucks this summer?

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Bmap8.com

I was so impressed by Microsoft’s new Bing Maps V8 that I created a new domain this morning called bmap8.com. On one hand it’s another five letter domain name to entice the spammers that want to develop a website for me, and on the other it’s a nice short reference to the API without the word bing.

I’ve been working hard on the code today and it’s ready to be previewed if you’re interested. Enter a place into the input area, and submit it. The place can be anything from a full address, a city, or a zip. Once the map is presented, click the Map Type button upper right and select Streetside. Click anywhere to explore the images. That’s all the program does now, so have fun looking at high-quality imagery. Click below to go…

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Bing V8

Microsoft just released their preview version of Bing Maps V8. I used V7 to show an aerial view of the properties in my TetonValleyMap so I decided to implement their new version today. It’s now live.

What I discovered is that once you’re viewing the aerial view you can select a street view that is similar to Google Maps, but with amazing imagery. Below is a screen capture of the Coulter Building in downtown Driggs. Judge the quality for yourself…

Here’s Steph’s work:

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Tanks

Steph runs the Suburban Propane outfit here in Teton Valley so I hear a lot about the propane business, and my awareness of propane tanks has heightened. Some of the tanks around here have weathered many harsh winters over the years, and it shows in what I perceive as an artistic way.

These are a few I’ve noticed recently and I think I should build on this post as I travel the Valley.

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YouFO

Just some interesting video I found today…

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Double Up

A new double-wide is going up in the Driggs Gemstone sub-division at Ruby and Garnet. You out of towners may wonder why I’m even mentioning this but it’s kind of a big deal. This sub-division has been frozen in time since we moved here, a victim of the crash, and I haven’t seen anything new show up here, until now.

Gemstone was designed as low-cost housing with a view and a new double-wide fits right in with the neighborhood. Somebody has actually bought this plot, acquired a modular home, had it shipped here, and built a concrete foundation for it.

I did a little research and this .31 acre plot at 265 Garnet Ave (lot 265 blk 4 gemstone sub sec 35 t5n r45e) was purchased for $10,000 by a Wyoming non-profit corporation, the Karl M. Johnson foundation, out of Jackson, WY.

Hmmm, I suspect this is intended to be a rental. Buy a plot in a low-cost area, ship in a double-wide, rent it out. Not a bad business plan…

btw: I know the sweet little old English lady that lives in that house in the background. She rides with us frequently…

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Thawing

Spring is finally here, the property is reappearing from under the white shit, and the mice are running out of places to hide. Piper’s going out once a day now, in the early morning, decapitating the little cute fuzzy things.

Summer is right around the corner, but sometimes it’s a very long corner around here…

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Categorized as House

Hub

If you have any electronic devices that require charging you probably plug them into an A/C outlet. Modern charging systems are basically USB cords plugged into their A/C device and if you pull the USB cord out and ditch the device, you have a better option.

My new Sentey LS-6141 arrived this evening, and I love it. It’s a brushed aluminium USB 3.0 hub that plugs into A/C so you get direct power, with a nice long USB cable that plugs into a USB 3.0 port on your computer. There are ten ports total and three of them are charging ports! I’ve connected and charged tonight my phone, my Nexus 10 tablet, and my Android Fire tablet with this hub, ditching three A/C chargers.

I stuck my mouse adaptor into the far left port and I still have six high-quality ports available, two of which will go to charge my scanner and it’s speaker, which still need a powered USB port to charge, just not as much as the larger devices.

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Mouse Basket

This is Steph’s new baby basket creation for our friend JoAnn’s new granddaughter from her son Colton and wife Shelby:

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CC Benny

Last Tuesday morning I walked over to the fancy restaurant at the Pioneer Hotel in Laughlin to have Crabcake Benedict. I deferred at the last minute for some Prime Rib Hash (that I regretted) and swore I was going to make my own CC Benny when I got home. Here’s this morning’s creation:

That’s Bernaise sauce btw, not Hollandaise.

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TVM v2.0

My Teton Valley Map is up to version 2.0.

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