LarryC’s World

I’ve finally uploaded photos from our trip. they are in my galleries in an album called “California Nev trip, June-July 2008. You can go to my gallery pages by clicking on the link on the left, clicking on any photo on the right, or by clicking on he image I have here:

Well, we’re back in New Mexico. It was a great, fun, exhausting trip. It was great because we had a chance to see just about everybody I wanted to see on this trip. We spent good quality time with Sarah, and surprisingly Diane, whom we haven’t seen in almost 5 years. Also saw Homan, and visited the few who are still at the old stock exchange and even saw Virgie, my old co-worker from TSA. We visited Irene’s sister Shirley in Fallon, NV and stayed with our friend and ex-neighbor Linda in San Jose. Now we are glad to be home!

As I usually do, I kept a diary of my mileage. We traveled 3099 miles. I bought 122.6 gallons of gasoline, that cost $521.25. That equals an average price per gallon of $4.22. As usual, the cheapest gas was in Las Cruces and Lordsburg, New Mexico. In fact, those were the only places on the trip that were less than $4.00 per gallon. Honorable mention goes to Fernley, NV. where gas was $4.04 per gallon. The most expensive gas on the trip was (same as last trip) Tonopah, NV at $4.65. I averaged 25.28 mpg for the trip. Considerably less than the 33 I used to average in my Honda.

Now, I don’t like to make accusations or to insinuate that there may be some less than honest filling stations in the world, but…. I averaged between 27 and 28 mpg for every open road segment, except two! Those fillups occured in Buttowillow, CA, a gas stop on I-5 about 30 miles before the grapevine, and a fill-up in Phoenix (also close to the freeway). On both of those segments, my mpg was about 22. It doesn’t make sense to me, that freeway driving at moderate speeds (65 mph) would vary so drastically. And, I know that every time someone complains about this type of thing to newspapers or TV stations, they send someone out to verify that the pumps are accurate. But, the anecdotal evidence that pump gouging occurs is pretty strong. Almost everybody I know has a story to tell similar to mine.

When we returned to Las Cruces, the “monsoon” season had arrived! My neighbors tell me that we had almost 2 inches between July 1 (the official stat of the rainy season) and July 8. After we returned, we had about 3/4 inch in the next few days. That means we have now had almost half our average annual rainfall of 6 inches. Anyway, the photos are being sorted and resized, and Ill upload them shortly.

As we were driving through Western Nevada on Hiway 93, the air seemed very hazy. In fact in Hawthorne, it was so bad I could barely make out the mountains just a couple of miles west of town. When we got to Fallon, I mentioned it to the locals and they told me it was smoke from the California fires.

Today, as we drove over the Sierras on I80, it was pretty clear in Reno, and Truckee. But when we got down to Placerville, the smoke was thick. And it stayed smokey all the way into San Jose. While driving to Nevada, we did notice a rather large fire in the mountains southeast of Tucson. Then one of the neighbors in Fallon told us there was a fire near Phoenix. Coupled with the fire we had near Las Cruces a week ago, it seems that the west is on fire!

Oh, a quick gas price update… gas was $3.72 in Lordsburg NM; $4.15 in Vegas; $4.49 in Tonopah, NV; $4.03 in Fernley NV (between Fallon and Reno), and when I got to San Jose it was $4.53!

I think I found the photographer of that photo. Here is a link to a site with more photos: More Organ Mountains Fire Photos.

Well, I wasn’t going to post this photo until I found out who took it. But, so far I have been unable to track down the photographer, and it has been sent to me by multiple people. So here it is:

I do not know who took this picture, but from the exif data on the photo I know it was taken around 1:00 AM on June 15 with a Nikon D3. It appears to have been taken from the east side of A Mountain and is looking East at the Organs. The lefty edge of the fire is the Dripping Springs Natural Area, and the right edge is Soledad Canyon. Our house is somewhere near the bottom right edge of the photo. This was obviously a time exposure because of the star trails in the sky. Also, the full moon was on the 18th, so the moon was pretty bright Sunday morning. You’ve got to admit it is a dramatic picture.

As I write this, the Weatherunderground gizmo says the ‘official’ temperature in Las Cruces is 102! The thermometer at my house reads 100! Needless to say, it is hot. It is also dry. The humidity  has been in single digits, and never above 20%.  Of course my swamp coolers are very efficient at that low level, they’ve been keeping the inside in the 70’s. Even though we live in the desert with little vegetation, these high temperatures and low humidity have made the little vegetation we have very dry and the fire danger is high. Saturday (6/14) afternoon, a grass fire started in the Dripping Springs Natural Area. It quickly spread over the ridge into Soledad Canyon, and appeared to be heading down the canyon towards our area.

Saturday night we were treated to the sight of a line of fire, heading down the mountain. And, Sunday morning the flames appeared to be very close to the houses nearest the mountains. By Sunday afternoon though, a wind out of the Northwest blew the fire back on itself, and with the help of backfires set by the fire fighters, the advance towards our neighborhood was stopped. The fire did blow up over the mountains and into Ft Bliss. When it headed east, it sent up an impressive smoke column. I have posted a few photos in my gallery, in the “Views Around the Neighborhood” album. Here is a link.

Fortunately, no houses were damaged, and only a few homes closest to the mountains were evacuated. I was never worried, but I was concerned. If the fire had gotten into the housing area, it could have spread faster and might have threatened the whole neighborhood. But, that never happened. A friend of mine sent me a great photo of the fire taken Saturday night. I will post it as soon as I get permission.

In my post about DirecTV, I alluded to the fact that I had purchased a new TV.Well, here it is: Philips 42″ flat screen.

It isn’t a high-end set, but it is pretty nice. It is possible to spend close to $3,000 for a 42″ flat screen TV, but frankly for a guy who wears bi-focals, and isn’t getting any younger, I could not see a significant difference between those high-end ones, and my lower-middle priced model. It is a full 1080p model, but a recent study I read said that the average person cannot tell the difference between 1080 and 720p models. I liked the clean look of the set. The speakers are hidden on the back (and have pretty decent sound). In the store, the picture was comparable to the more expensive brands.

The other feature that appealed to me was that it had a full compliment of inputs. In addition to 4 HDMI ports, it also had 2 component video, and 2 s-video ports, and has an s-video, and HDMI port on the side for attaching portable devices. It also has a USB port. If you aren’t familiar with all of the terminology, you need either HDMI or component video to get HD programming to the TV.HDMI is preferable, because it is a single digital cable that carries both video and sound. Component video requires 5 coaxial cables (3 for video, 2 for sound). USB is a data port that is common on computers.

While I’m talking about cables, if you check the price of cables at the local Best-Buy, a six foot HDMi cable will set you back 50-70 dollars!. Order your cables online! You can buy the same Belden(brand name) HDMI cable that the stores sell for $50, for less than half that price at Blue Jeans Cables. If you don’t mind using made-in-China generic cables, they cost even less at Monoprice.com. I have linked to both of those web sites.

Oh yes, you may have noticed that I mounted it on the wall. I used 2 8 foot HDMI cables, 1 for the Dish receiver, and 1 for the DVD player.

Just in case you haven’t noticed, I’ve added 2 new gizmos to the web page. On the left, I’ve added a box that lists the latest average gasoline prices by State. Remember that they are the state-wide average, and your local price may vary. The gizmo cycles through all states alphabetically. If you don’t have the patience to wait for your state, you can type in the 2 letter state abbreviation and it will list that state and stop the cycling.

On the right, I have added a gizmo that reports the current cost of the war conflict in Iraq (remember it is NOT a war because the US never declared war). These numbers, by the way, are the official government count. There are those economists who claim that the current cost of Iraq is closer to 3 Trillion dollars, not the 500 Billion that the count shows. Just in case you were wondering where your tax dollars are going…

By the way, both of these gizmos are compliments of zFacts.com, a very interesting web site with lots of economic data. If you visit, check out the article on the waste that is corn-based ethanol.

It was bound to happen. It has been 3 months since we lost poor Simba. I was suffering from dog withdrawal. So on Friday May 2, we went to visit the Safe Haven Animal Shelter. They are a No-Kill pet shelter here in Las Cruces. I knew that if we visited a shelter, we would not return home empty-handed. Sure enough, this little black Dachshund mix stole my heart. She was in a kennel with two other small dogs, and she was the shy one. It took her a while to even be willing to get close enough for me to pet her. I think I am a sucker for the shy ones.

She is about a year old and neutered, but it appears she has already had a litter.Our vet said she is in good health, no parasites, and good teeth.While I love all dogs pets animals, I am settled on mutts as my favorite breed. And, I think I will always adopt from a shelter from now on. Actually, I have always adopted from shelters or rescue leagues, except for Sasha, Sarah’s Dalmatian. Anyway, without further ado, here’s Lucy:

So what’s been happening with you? Well, let’s see… here in New Mexico, Spring has arrived. The temperature almost hit 80 today. We’re up to over 700 clients visiting the AARP TaxAide program. I’ve filed almost 600 federal returns so far, and done another 130 or so NM State returns, other than those filed with federal returns. Between TaxAide, Meals-on-Wheels, and the Dripping Springs natural area, we’ve been working 5 days a week. Oh yes, I had to replace my car.

As noted previously, we had a little accident at the end of February, and our Accord was totaled. So, we had to replace it. The vehicle at the top of his post is our new chariot. It is a Hyundai Tucson. I bought it because: a) It was cheap, b) it is a high-clearance vehicle which is important on our dirt roads, and c) it got the best mileage of all of the small-SUV’s. The trade off was power. If I had opted for the bigger engine, it would have had good power, but mediocre mileage. With gasoline topping $3.19 a gallon in Las Cruces, I opted for the small engine.

In other news, Cristian won Project Runway, not my favorite, but my favorite has never won. I hadn’t seen any of the Academy Award best picture nominees, although Irene had see “No Country”. And, we did enjoy Paris. That’s all for tonight. We are working Easter Sunday at Dripping Springs. Traditionally that is the busiest day of the year there, lots of Easter picnics. I’ll update again soon.