Teknoviking

Our house in Bisbee sits at just about 5050 feet on a south facing slope about five miles from the border with Sonora. Its a beautiful view, with panoramas down deep into the mountains of Mexico. On a clear day I swear you can almost see to the Sea of Cortez (You can’t, but it does seem that way!)

Bisbee is located between two deserts. The Chihuahuan to the East and the Sonoran to the West. Despite that, the altitude gives us wonderful weather throughout the year. Most years we receive all of our rainfall in the late summer when the tropical monsoons roll up from the tropics. You can actually watch the thunderstorms build to the South and roll up the mountains. Its really lovely.

Winters here are usually very dry (this year has been a bit of an exception…) and the difference between summer and winter moisture can be very challenging. Last year I built and extensive drip water system and put in a bunch of native, and low water trees and plants. The idea is to start off on the public water system and eventually move the entire system to rain water cache to provide the primary water supply for the plants. I am also looking at grey-water systems to provide some additional moisture in the gardens and for the trees.

Winter seems to be letting up here, and all of the trees, except for the Mesquite, are already budding out. The Mesquite are usually the last to come in.

So, I spent the last couple days walking the irrigation system and replacing some of the drip heads, patching pipe and resetting the timers for Spring. There is just something amazing about watching trees grow in this country and I can’t wait for the rest of the plants to start coming in.  Won’t be long now!

I have been tinkering with some small simple robots from  a wonderful book  called “Junkbots, Bugbots, and Bots on Wheels”. They are easy to build and lots of fun to play with. They are cool on a completely different level than my first generation “Lego Mindstorm” gear and I am really enjoying the scrounging, found art-aspect of the construction.

Restoring a “Time-machine” backup today on an OSX server. I am really not sure I can wait around that long, maybe I should go do lunch…

What is that in dog years?

When we moved out from the Commonwealth and I took the job here at Cochise County, the bigest challenge that I faced was turning the department around. It had a poor reputation throughout the county as an insular non-partner and  very poor service provider. Moral was shot and everyone was either rowing in a different direction, or not rowing at all.

By pulling the team together and making them owners of their own destiny, we managed to turn the department around, set a course and provide stellar service. We are now the premiere service department in the County. Are we done? No way!

There is always room for improvement and we have again set our goals for next year.

The primary litmus test we use for everything from project assessment to personnel reviews is the staff created VME document. We review this document every year and use is to set our goals and manage our interactions.

If you would like to see the before and after snapshots of the department, check out these two presentations:

First 30 Days - What our challenges were when I started back in 2007

2010 All Staff Meeting – How far we have come to date. Be sure to check out the department survey results.

If you’d like to see more details or additional presentations, check out the presentation page.

All in all, I am very proud of the job my team has done to make this happen. They are a talented bunch!

Today I dumped the Ubuntu Netbook Remix (9.10) on my Lenovo S10 in favor of trying the Moblin 2.1 Beta .

I did the install from a DVD and it went very smoothly. The only thing that doesn’t work out of the box is the Wireless due to the S10’s Broadcom Drivers. You can however find a pretty simple fix right [HERE]. I’ll be applying that latter tonight.

My initial thoughts are that it is darn slick. Its really fast on the ATOM processor and the OS feels very snappy. Graphics are very user friendly and fit the small screen to a T. I like it a lot and you should try it out if you get a chance.

I am going to play more with it and then get back here to drop y’all some more notes.  Happy Moblin!

One of the advantages of living in the high-desert is that at 5000 plus feet, we have incredibly clear night skies.  The only place I have ever been where the stars have been brighter is the middle of the Mojave.

I am breaking out my little 4.25″ Newtonian reflector this week to gaze upon the heavens. I wonder whats out there…

Spent most of Sunday  night back and forth to our microwave/radio hop up in Mule Mountain updating some routers and testing some new connections with ‘topher. The weather came in really strong and we went from about a quarter inch of snow, to nearly four inches in just a few hours. Driving was exciting to say the least. Reminded me of the kind of snow fall you see in New England. Beautiful, but so heavy at times that coming back down the mountain we had to stop several times to let the wind shift so we could see.

Here are a couple shots from my phone. Not the best quality, sorry!

Snow at Mule 1

Snow at Mule 2

Just received a National Weather Service warning here at work that the County is under sever weather watch until Thursday afternoon.

Seems the snow level is at 3000 feet ( I live at 5020 feet…) and that we are supposed to get 1-4 inches in the valleys and 6 – 10 inches in the mountains.

So far the NWS has been completely wrong this year, but here’s hoping!

As you probably already know from reading past posts, I really enjoy going to the target range and shooting. Well I recently ran across a series of targets from Law Enforcement Target Inc. that are designed to be life size (or is that undead size…?) Zombie silhouettes.

They are inexpensive and very high quality. I can’t wait for a nice day to head out and wreck some vengeance on those brain-eating fiends!

I have the TV in the garage set-up next to my Bowflex and bike so that while I am working out I can watch movies or TV series of interest. Currently on the set are all nine Episodes of “Wolf Lake” staring Lou Diamond Phillips and lots of other talent you will recognize.

The story is about a town outside of Seattle called, appropriately, Wolf Lake, where Detective John Kanin goes to try and find his missing girlfriend among a town full of werewolves. Dark, spooky, and suspenseful.

The series first aired in 2001 on CBS and was cancelled after 5 episodes despite being nominated for two Emmies.  I think it was then bought by SciFi  (before they changed to SyFy…) or UPN who then aired the remaining 4 episodes in 2002.  SciFi aired the series again in 2007. There is supposed to be a 10th episode somewhere, but I don’t know anything about it.

Anyway, its a very pretty and well acted series (especially for CBS). Its made of good bite-size chunks are perfect for workouts! (or werewolves) If you haven’t seen it, I recommend finding it and enjoy a fun romp through the Pacific Northwest woods!