Dumb Phone

I don’t have a smartphone, I have a dumb phone, also known as a land-line. For $72 a month I have a phone in my house connected to an outside wire, with internet service via DSL. I also have no contract. No penalties if I bail. Nothing…

I have a Google voice account that allows me to text from my home computer at no charge and receive replies via my Gmail account. I can also make long distance calls through that service, which get routed to my land-line phone. Also free. My unlimited Skype account lets me make calls from any of my computers for about $30 a year.

Before I went on vacation I had a work provided cell phone. It was handy for connecting with parents, customers, co-workers and the office. As I embarked on my adventure I had no phone, and no GPS. Now that I’m back I still have no phone and I like it!

Back in my Seattle days I had my company supplied supervisor phone, a bulky two-way radio, a Nextel and my personal phone which was part of a family plan with Steph and Riley. I knew it was just wrong when I walked into my bank with all of them attached to my hip and the teller referred to me as the most wired dude he had ever seen :-)

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Guest Bed

With the kids coming to visit it was time to convert Steph’s Craft Room back into the Guest Bedroom. Riley and Jess are relative newlyweds so we figured that the cool log bunk-beds weren’t an option. Neither was the blowup mattress used on other occasions.

What you see here is a new four inch queen-size memory foam mattress that I just bought, on top of the air mattress, with a down comforter. Very comfy!

Sure beats this :-)
This is just for sleeping. For computing and T.V. our big old family room is available.

SlideShow (Guest Bed)

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Categorized as House

Snow Spotted

We just had a nice little storm blow through and it dropped some rain in the valley and blew out the remnants of our summer smoke. It also dusted the hills behind Pete’s house with the first snow of the season.

Riley and Jess are visiting for a few days, arriving Thursday, and the weather and air quality should be perfect. A trip up to the Targhee ski lift is planned, which should be spectacular, and this little dusting will be long gone :-)

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Categorized as House

Backyard

I guess it’s just progress but new houses are popping up all around us and our view is being blocked at every turn. One of these days some neighbor will be able to hear Steph scream when I put my cold hands on her back.


Oh wait, it’s our trees that are blocking the view… Truth is, only one new house has appeared around here in seven years, and it’s out of scream range.

SlideShow (Backyard)

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Categorized as House

LegiDate

This is an interesting little program I’ve whipped up today. It presents our Members of Congress, sorted by their birthdays, oldest to youngest. Hover your mouse over any age break and you can see how many members are that age or older. For example, sixteen of them are 80 or older, and all but one are men. Kinda blows my mind. Yours?

The items in green are links. Clicking on a Name takes you to my LegiState program, selects the State and presents the person. Clicking a State does the same, showing all members of that State. Bioguide and OpenSecrets links are also available.

I’m sorry that they’re all unattractive people (except Kirsten Gillibrand of course). Here’s the program in it’s own page

OMG! I found a House member from Illinois (Timothy Johnson) that was born the same day I was and it looks like his picture was photoshopped from the nose down! Yep

They should run this guy through the Sex Offenders registry!

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Categorized as Site Stuff

My Mechanic

I’ve had several automotive projects that needed done to my two vehicles but I’m burned out with the hourly rates charged by our local vendors, $85 an hour, and often the charges escalate as they go.

Riley suggested Craigslist so I went there and grabbed the mechanic at the top of the list, a guy named Ron. Turns out I found a man of integrity! He drove up here from Idaho Falls (1.5 hours), plugged in his air compressor and went to work. Two hours later he had replaced the front brake pads on Steph’s vehicle (Lucy), replaced the master clutch cylinder on Jill (my travel truck), and replaced her front and rear shocks.

He charged me $45 an hour for two hours. I paid him $120. Ron expressed an attitude of communal understanding where the cost of labor is real, not inflated. I really liked this guy and plan on using him again!

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Categorized as Vehicles

Corn Kerned

Last night was the big test for the cracked Corn Kernler! I had earlier foraged through the big crate of fresh corn sitting on the floor at Broulims for the smallest ears I could find amongst all the large ones I knew wouldn’t fit… I found three.

We boiled the corn for 10 minutes but then had to let them sit for a while because they were too hot to handle. This resulted in cool corn on the plate so you might consider a little nuking. Anyway, the bottom line is, it worked! Steph gave it a thumbs up.

By the third ear the top of the device was hard to remove because it had gotten slippery from the corn juice, but other than that, pretty cool.




… and Steph just had to comment on picture number four ;-)

SlideShow (Corn Kerned)

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Red Rock

Our Public Works guys have been finishing up 5th street this summer, first laying down a concrete sidewalk and now adding these decorative stretches of red rock.

I’m beginning to see a pattern and I like it. I pick up Head Start kids right up the road from here and I was initially parking in the dirt that preceded this rock. I now have a driveway between the rock reserved for loading my kids.

I should note that Teton High School is at the end of this road. The whole theme around Driggs the last two summers has been creating safe access to our schools.

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Categorized as The Valley

Sidewalks

Crews were working on the brick portions of our new downtown sidewalks. It looked like they were rubbing in some sort of chip-sealer.

I love the way Driggs looks now, it’s a very classy little downtown certain to impress the tourists coming through, and I consider myself an expert in small town tourism after logging 16,000 miles last summer.

I wonder if the Russell’s matched the color of their TWR restaurants roof to the new sidewalks? Or maybe it’s always been that color, don’t know…

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Categorized as The Valley

Kerneler Review

A while back I pinned the Plow and Hearth Corn Kerneler onto Pinterest, and it went sort of viral (currently 898 repins and 314 likes).

I emailed Plow and Hearth thinking I may get a free product out of all the leads I was sending them, but they told me it had generated no sales. They were thankful for the publicity and offered me a discount. Nah, too much hassle so I just went ahead and bought one 12 days ago. It was $12.95 plus $6.99 shipping via FedEx, and arrived today.

I was jazzed, it looked fairly well made with sharp jagged blades, and then I noticed the cracks. They sent this thing via FedEx in a bag with no internal padding! Pretty dumb…



I’m not even sending it back. I’m going to pin this post on Pinterest so folks can get the real story and then I’m sending this link to Lakisha at Plow and Hearth.

btw: I’m still going to try this thing out, even with the cracks. Stay tuned…

SlideShow (Kerneler Review)

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Old Truck

I pass this old truck often. It’s just South of the Gateway Chevron outside of Victor on the way to Jackson. It’s been here at least as long as I have…

The Valley is littered with charming old equipment like this. Gotta love it!



I also walked through those weeds that leave little stick bombs on your socks and shoelaces, just so you can see this truck up close.

SlideShow (Old Truck)

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Categorized as The Valley

Main Stage

I was parked in the shade this afternoon next to the new Music on Main stage. The city of Victor built this just prior to last summers music scene.

I didn’t attend any concerts here this summer, due to traveling and indifference, but I’m impressed with the woodwork, very nice! They even built a concrete ramp to accommodate equipment movement, and stoned performers. No steps to trip on here!



Maybe I’ll make one or two shows next year…

SlideShow (Main Stage)

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Categorized as The Valley

Leaf Free

I’ve been busting my butt getting leaves off the burms today. This process only ends when the last leaf falls off, and as you can see here this process has a way to go.

Ouch! Steph just slapped the back of my head. Ok, it was her doing the raking, but I’m writing some great code and watching some good football. That counts! ;-)

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Ice Water

We drove down to Rexburg today to purchase auto parts and ammo. I’ve hired an Idaho Falls guy to come up here and work on our vehicles for $45 an hour, if we supply the parts. Sure beats the rate of the local car jockeys that think their wrenches don’t stink!

As to the ammo, Riley and Jessica are coming to visit this month and he needed some exotic 45 caliber for his old rifle so we could do some shooting when they get here. Found some… I might even buy a sweet little Mossburg 500.

Just before Newdale there was a water wheel that wasn’t going anywhere due to the fact that the temperature was 15 degrees. It made for a great photo shoot though!





SlideShow (Ice Water)

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Categorized as Travels

Bates Colors

Sometimes you don’t need to speak about the beauty of a very special place. You just need to soak it all in and appreciate everything it is…

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Categorized as House