7-Falls used to be one of my favorite day-trip outings in Colorado Springs, but not any more. We stopped by there with a little time to spend on our way back from the Rocky Mountain Street Rod Nationals in Pueblo last Sunday. The price is way up, and there is literally no parking. Even the pullouts nearby are sign-posted “Not for 7Falls (whatever that means?), but I parked at one anyway. I believe what it means is they have cornered the market on money-collecting opportunities for the attraction. Pay for parking, pay for entrance and even pay to ride the tram a half mile to-from the base of the falls. It’s a nice place to visit, but not worth the money any longer, IMHO.
Helluva Hailstorm
Mother nature gave us a good pounding yesterday. Trees and flowers were shredded and Michelle’s Jetta is dinged up pretty good. The scary part was a tornado that passed about 2 miles south of here while it was forming and touched down 20 miles further east a few minutes later. The hail at this location was up to maybe an inch in diameter. I’ll be on the roof inspecting and cleaning gutters today…
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CTD is Back on the Road
It’s been almost three years since my 1st Gen Dodge Cummins was victimized by car thieves. That was a real bad day, but every cloud has a silver-lining, as they say. Now the (C)ummins (T)urbo (D)eisel is rocking an upgraded interior like no other.
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Here’s a link to the CumminsForum post announcing the newly finished project, with all the details.
Plymouth Volleyball in the Rockies
Mountain Climber
Your Own Personal Echo Chamber
Time for another FaceBook rant! An article published recently in Rolling Stone magazine does a good job of correlating the numerous issues begetting contemporary social media cyber culture.
Whether Facebook is just a reflection of modern society or a key driver of it, the picture isn’t pretty. The companies awesome data-mining tactics wedded to it’s relentless hyping of the culture of self has helped create a world where billions of people walk with bent heads, literally weighed down by their own bullshit, eyes glued to tele-screen style mobile devices that read us faster than we can read them.
As one of FB’s overtly public victims (including ALL traditional media and news sources), Rolling Stone may have an ax to grind. But as with all memes and stereotypes, regardless of their truth or relevance today, the sentiment (or thing) had to start somewhere.
In this case, Mr. Taibbi’s analysis appears to me to be spot on. That is an accolade journalists rarely get from me these days. I’m presently leaning towards agreement that a Ma-Bell-Style breakup might be the best course of action. I think that’s the least we could do for “a giant blood-engorged tick hanging off your frontal lobe.”
Springtime Wrap-Up
The seasonal-transition thunderstorms are coming fast and heavy now, with summer right around the corner. We’ve had small hail up to about nickle-sized twice in the past two weeks. The first forsythia pic was taken about three weeks ago before the leaves budded out. That is one of the only house pictures where you can actually see the solar panels on the roof. The last three pics were taken over a month later on June 11th, with everything in the front flower bed blooming nicely and the Roses of Texas still very “not” yellow. The rest were just this week. There are two new rose bushes under Phoebe’s window and 2 new upright yews along the north fence in back.
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The pond is running well with some new plumbing and the liner almost where it needs to be. The fountain has two pumps in tandem now to maximize flow when in use. A 3-way valve before the 2nd pump allows it to be turned off, maintaining internal circulation with just the one bottom pump. The bottom and filter pumps now both run 24/7, giving the entire habitat great circulation and maximum aeration with the fountain running.
We are close to making it a year-round feature at this point. As long as it can be cleaned out reasonably well, one small circulation pump running over the winter should keep it well maintained 365 days/yr. The design allows everything to settle into the low center spot, so cleaning should be just a matter of running a sump pump in there for a few minutes to clear out the sediment. It will take another annual cycle of liner treatment and testing the cleaning procedure before attempting a winter with dormant fish living in it.
Re-finishing the deck and fabricating a new railing for it is the only planned big project remaining for the year.
You saw it Here 1st
I lamented the passing of SBIRS, even as the next asset (GEO-4) was undergoing post-launch initial on-orbit testing. This should clear up any confusion or debate about the future of USAF’s missile warning system.
The Job Market
Why would a guy like me, retired going on 3 years now, be worried about the job market? It’s because I keep getting calls and emails from recruiters. There must be something wrong if they cannot find qualified engineers younger than 59. Various warnings about the declining STEM (Science, Technology, Enginnering and Math) situation in this country have been bandied about for decades, but the problem won’t go away. It crosses boundaries between issues like immigration, national security and global economics. Kids need to get off the iPhones and on the computers.
CTD Interior- Final Update
There’s just two things left to do: Finish coating the floor and put it back together. The floor had 5 coats of bedliner on it in the 1st row pic. It had 10 before the last 2 pics in the 2nd row. Installing the new stereo equipment was the last of the hardware work, with the subwoofer install still remaining. Two mounting brackets needed to be fabricated to mate up with mounting studs already in place on the floor. (Later June update) The sub showed up on June 5th and it just barely fits between the seats with room to clear the stick shift in all gears.
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Cold Spring
The Russkie Bots are Back!
The pattern is so obvious, it’s literally embarrassing. And they’re known as hackers. Meh. I guess they get a little annoyed when their Buddy Assad’s chemical weapons facilities get destroyed. Oh well, better luck next time…
Front Landscaping Complete
This project was on my To-Do list for many years. One of the 1st things I did after we moved here in 2003 was build a cinder-block retaining wall off the corner of the garage. At the time, it was just a quick ‘n dirty solution to creating a parking space for the trailer. I did all the rest of the landscaping around the house over the years in the Red River color scheme, so it eventually started looking a little ghetto, viewed from the north. 150 12″ blocks took me the better part of 3 days. That was the big one for this year out of the way:
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Spring at the CO Shaffer's
Another Great Haul
I decided to get started on the last landscaping project in the pipeline today. the north property line presently has a half-decent concrete block retaining wall I put in right after we moved here. But it doesn’t match the rest of the stonework around the house, so I’m finally getting around to upgrading it. First step was hauling a big load of retaining wall blocks from Home Depot. 100 of them comes to about 2,350 lbs. in the bed with 20 lbs. in the bag:
The last big haul with Francie’s party furniture demonstrated volume capacity, but was probably less than half this weight. Going down the road it looks and feels like it can handle more, but is technically overloaded at his point. Good enuf.