May 2013 – Page 2 – Bus Driver Jim

Pipers Owie

It’s been a tough week for our kittie. Along with being traumatized by the dogs last week she’s been dealing with a bite on her side, probably from a fight with another cat. We’ve been putting peroxide on it but there was swelling under her skin and this morning she went to the Vet.

They shaved the area around the wound (that’s a four inch haircut) and drained it. It was infected and she’s on antibiotics now.

Steph also got an infected tooth extracted today so the two of them are hunkered down on the couch, watching Netflix. Now where are my rubber gloves…

Evening update: Piper is doing great! I’m thinking that what I perceived as depression this last week was just that she was sick from an infection. Oh yea, Steph is also doing better, she just ran to town for ice cream. :-)

Jamr

We’ve got a surprisingly high number of restaurants here in Teton Valley, considering our population. It’s also a very fluid market and a bunch have come and gone and a few have jumped the shark for me and I just won’t go back.

Yesterday our new Mexican restaurant Agave jumped before I even tasted the food. I had high hopes for this place, it looked trendy and different, and just before they opened at eleven I gave them a call. A girl answered and I ordered a pork burrito to go and said I would be there precisely at 11:45 to pick it up (I was on a tight schedule).

I called back at 11:44 and asked her to have it cut in half since I was splitting it with Steph. When I walked through the door it was obvious that she had forgotten my request and was scrambling to get the order in. As I stood around the counter for another 15 minutes I was getting steamed. I thought that this better be a mighty fine burrito or I’m done here. Not a good way to treat a brand new customer in a small town.

It turned out to be a sloppy wet mess covered in sauce and liquid cheese. I was hoping for a mission style, the kind you hold in both hands. My buddy Skoge introduced me to the real thing in San Francisco’s Mission District back in the seventies and I’ve had a few good ones since. Not here, this joint is a JAMR (Just Another Mexican Restaurant)!

Traumatized

Last Friday two punk dogs came on our property and chased Piper up a tree. One of them growled at Steph and as I came out of the house yelling loudly they headed to the back field, and I chased after them. At one point the bigger dog stopped and I thought he was going to confront me.

I’m way too old to be intimidated by a dog and I was very pissed off. Sad to say that there is no headline in the local paper this week about “Man kills dog with bare hands” because they kept on going.

Then we had to get Piper down. She was way up one of our thinner leafless trees, about 15 feet. I climbed up to her and Steph got the ladder. It’s a tribute to how much she trusts us when she allowed me to pluck her from a branch and hand her off to Steph.

The really sad thing about this is that Piper is very traumatized now. She used to sit in the field for hours waiting for a vole to pop it’s head up. Now she knows the field is not safe. If she was there when the dogs came she wouldn’t have had an escape route.

As a result she doesn’t go outside much now and stays close to the house when she does. I know this girl very well and this event has definitely affected her.

This is Steph’s old jewelry box located in the furthest part of the house, up against the corner of our bedroom. There’s nothing behind her but wall here, on both sides…

Charge

After that sweet Rav4 EV visited our driveway recently I’ve been interested in the refueling issues that owners of these cars face, so I did some research. I’ve discovered a U.S. government agency called NREL (National Renewable Energy Laboratory) that provides an API (Application Programming Interface) which presents a current data set of the locations around the country with electric vehicle recharge stations, by State.

I signed up for their API and then developed this new mobile app called Charge, based on their data. I have to say that not every location is represented as I know there are some in Wyoming but they’re not showing up here. That said, the number of locations in this live data-set is impressive. It takes a bit of time to load up California :-)

I’ve also implemented smart-caching into the app so that once you load a State it stays in memory. When you click on a location within a State it shows the specifics of the charging station. You can launch a Google Map to the place by clicking the address and if you click a phone number it will open your phone app so you can call them.

You can run the app Here.

At Peace

…

SlideShow (At Peace)

Rav4 EV

A distinctive vehicle visited our driveway yesterday afternoon, an all electric Toyota Rav4. This could be the only one here in the Western States, outside of California.

Truly an amazing car, it’s like a large computer on wheels!

SlideShow (Rav4 EV)

Ping

Whew, what an afternoon! Just as I was getting this post together I had to chase two badass dogs off the property and climb up a tree to rescue Piper. Done, now where was I, oh yeah, last night around 9:00pm my internet went down. This morning it was limping along in bad shape so I called my provider, SilverStar.

I’ve been a customer of theirs since moving to the Valley going on eight years ago and my initial connection was about 1.3. A few months ago I signed up for a smartphone contract and bumped my internet speed up to around 4.0.

Their tech guy Dale was in the neighborhood today and he was out to the house by 10:00 (did I mention terrific customer service!). As we were testing my system he got the word that there was an outage in my neighborhood, which caused the problem in the first place. He went off to fix that and I went downtown to the SilverStar store, got their brand new modem and bumped my speed up to 10.0.

SilverStar technicians used me throughout the afternoon to debug their maintenance procedures and Dale dropped by again when they were done. He uploaded the latest firmware to my new modem and made a few phone calls to make sure I had a great connection on the upgrade. Here’s the result:

Update: It’s amazing! Test your connection here and let me know how it compares.

Fishing Hole

It was dark and gloomy at the fishing hole south of Victor today. The thunderstorms were trying to form but all they accomplished was to strike a contrast between water, mountain and sky…

Barley Up

Local farmers are getting ready to dig up this prime soil at the foot of the Big Hole mountains and plant the finest barley in the land. Anheuser Busch and millions of beer drinkers around the world are anxiously awaiting this Fall crop…

These photo’s were taken this morning…

SlideShow (Barley Up)

Small

I posted recently about Piper being at risk from large predator birds that hang out in the trees at the edge of our back forty. I spotted her out there again yesterday and took this shot to establish some relativity to the issue of her vulnerability.

She’s a good sized cat but she looks so small here…

Whitey

This is a twelve second video of the old white buffalo off of Cedron Rd in Victor, which I took last week. If you watch this boys expression before he turns away you can see the disdain he has for yet another stupid human taking pictures.

Virtual Orb

I couldn’t watch the Kentucky Derby last Saturday because my off the grid TV setup doesn’t get NBC and I didn’t feel like tracking down an online stream.

Orb’s come from behind win was pretty cool but this virtual video from the Kentucky Derby’s official YouTube channel, is even cooler!

Parade Video

Here’s the 2012 Victor Parade video I created today:

…and here’s a standalone version.

Smideo

I’m playing around with some new software today, which converts a set of photos into a video. I can then add a title and soundtrack to it using my primary video editor.

Pretty funky first attempt, I’m sure I can improve the process :-)

Hunted

Steph called me over to our front door yesterday and as I walked out on the porch I saw a surreal sight. There were two large objects out in the field. One was on the ground, motionless. That would be Piper hunting voles. The other object was directly above her at the top of a tree. It was a very large bird, hunting Piper.

I’m assuming it was sizing up it’s options. Stories abound about small dogs being snatched but Piper weighs more than ten pounds. The bird would also have to take her out quickly or feel the wrath of some really bad ass claws (trust me, I know about those). I gave Piper my special come here kitty call and she just rolled over on her back in the dirt. Did I mention surreal? I don’t think she knew it was up there, watching her.

The predator spotted me and lifted itself gracefully into the air and split. I love birds like this unless their hunting my cat. This one was very big, eagle sized at least. I didn’t have my glasses on so I don’t honestly know the species.

So, besides wolves, coyotes and mountain lions, I need to add attacks from the air to my Piper worry list…