Ridin' the MeMe Train

Yeah, memes can be fun. I found this one a good exercise in thinking through some of my favorites. I was tagged by Parenthesis who writes Random Blurbings.

The list...name my Ultimate Five:

Book: Fahrenheit 451. Helped teach me to read, read, read and build a large book collection.

Painting: The Giant - N.C. Wyeth. I saw this at an Art Gallery...the size floored me.

Place: Italian Alps.

Relaxiation CD: I was going to say Highway to Hell from AC/DC but how relaxing could that really be? So, Ill go with Johannes Brahms.

Dinner Guests: Socrates. George W. Bush, Osama Bin Laden, Lance Armstrong, Homer.

So there you have it. The train has pulled into the station.

I am electing to not contiune the meme from here. But if a reader feels so compeled, Bring it!

Faith in Science

All through the night and this morning...and even now as I write it has been raining pretty hard. Flood warnings are in effect...my little rain swale and road side ditch are flowing like mad and at about 6:30 am water starting dripping though the celling near the wood stove pipe.

"Oh Fuck!" Were the only two words I got out before I leaped into action. Knocking over chairs to get to the stove, grab a bucket and get it catching I realized that I would be spending some QT this morning with my attic.

I pull the car out of the garage, get the ladder out of the shed and get my self into the attic space to check out the situation. Unexpectedly, the rain was not coming from the stove pipe hole. I traced the water over to a roof truss. It was seeping in, probably through a nail hole or crack in the asphalt shingles. After moving the insulation I could see it was running down the truss onto and across the sheet rock celling to the stove pipe.

How the fuck am I going to stop this? Its not like an actual hole that could be plugged. Then in a BRILLIANT flash of ingenuity some help from physics, hydrology and an old episode of Mr. Wizards World I did this:

<-------------------

Wet string is tied around the wood and runs down into a bucket. The surface water tension will now divert the water from the wood to the string and capture it in the bucket. I tied two for redundancy. I watched it for a little while and it seems to be working. It only needs to be temporary because the rain should be stopping later tonight. I can probably fix the shingles this weekend.

Faith in science comes in, in that I had to still get to work and leave the apparatus unattended. If the laws of physics don't change between now and 6pm I should be all set.

Isn't Science Great?

Sex Day

Friday was sex day. No, not some day inventented on the internet where because some something like to save energey you should stay home and have sex in the dark or anything like that. Nope, it's the day of the sonagram that we could find out the sex of our baby.

I have been working like crazy to get an image from the DVD of the kid into blogger. I just cant see to get an image that will work. So, hopefully on Monday Ill get to scan the printed out copies and have that up.

But to let the cat out of the bag, we are having a BOY.

We are both very excited and were hoping it would go this way.

So in the side bar I have created a poll: Name my Baby. Please vote.

Thank you all.

***UPDATE***
I finally got the images scanned. Here is the money shot:

Earth Day

Yesterday was earth day. I didn't have any post in mind so I didn't really do anything topical about it. Then I remembered that while attending art school SteveDean had done a drawing/ political cartoon for the school news paper for earth day. Here it is:

Sadly, the message is more true than ever.

Riding past Road Kill

The weather is finally decent enough that a bike rides are more frequent and more enjoyable. Riding at 25 deg F can be adventurous but lets be real, at 65 deg F it's much better. This past Saturday I took out my recumbent for a little casual spin around the backroads.

One thing I have noticed recently is that in the early days of Spring riding I come across lots of animal carcasses. Critters that were road kill a month or two prior, were frozen into a snowback, but are only now visible, rotting and smelling 'oh so nice'.

Back to Saturday, about halfway through I rode past this fine looking critter. My best guess is that is/was a fox. The teeth were in surprisingly good condition. So, being an occasional mildly-twisted individual and recognizing a blog post when I see one...I snapped the pic. for the world to see.

I then sped home with excitement to get a better view of the image. Unfortunately, I dumped the 'bent as I turned into my gravel driveway too quickly. Oh well. Nothing broke, my scrapes will heal and the camera is unscathed.

Low-flow Sampling

At work collecting groundwater samples

Drilling Day

So today I posted this pic. from my job site. I was the geologist on site supervising the installation of replacement monitoring wells. Here is the field pic sent from my cell phone:

If you read this post before 18:30 EST then all you saw was the image. It's way to tough to add text. So here I am now in the comfort of my bedroom office typing away.

Back to the drilling. As far as drilling goes it does not get easier. The weather was bright sun 53 deg. F. 6 wells. No soil sampling. Drilling in sand. 30 feet deep. Done. The other big factor is that these two guys are the best and fastest drillers around. They start early, work through lunch and get the job done.

All I had to do today was ID the well location and check it with the construction manager with the utility plans and say "drill there, 30 feet, 15 feet of screen. flush road box".

It was a good day to be a geologist.

Meat run

Our trip to The Little Alaska Farm.

So I just figured out that I can post a pic from my cell phone directly to my blog. Its actually very simple in blogger; just send the picture as an email to the addy in the preferences section. *Poof* post.

WooHoo Cool! The image above is from a trip Wife and I took over to Wales to get some meat. Not just any meat mind you, but grass fed, localy raised, and butchered. The LAF had everything we could ever possibly need in the meat department. It was a great experience...we now have a meat guy. We left with about $140 in stew beef, t-bones, tenderloin, chicken, sausage and others. As we were driving away wife and I say

"Fuck Hannafords with there steriod jacked up cows and chickens."

I definately suggest everyone switch, it's better for you health, better for the environment, the local econonomy, better for everything.

This was just a trial run for us. Once we get it all sorted out we'll be splitting a half-cow with our parents...all meat cut to order and packaged in vacuum sealed bags ready for the freezer. I can't wait.

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Carbon Trapping

Last week I attended a lecture on trapping CO2 emissions before it is expelled into the atmosphere. Called CARBON SEQUESTRATION, the idea is basically to include a processing facility on the tail pipe of coal fired power plants and pump the CO2 into deep geological formations. Deep like 8 kilometers.

The lecture was at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine and titled: Geologic Storage as a Carbon Mitigation Option. by Michael Celia

I tried to keep some notes: Currently CO2 in the atmosphere is about 385 parts per million (ppm) As measured by ice core data. That concentration is higher than any time in the past 500,000 years. CO2 is projected to double in 50 years. 50 years!

If CO2 were to level off today...in 2060 global temps are projected to rise by 3 deg. C. As reference, when we talk about the Greenland ice sheet melting only 1-2 deg. C is usually the number thrown around as sufficient; add in the projected increases and CO2 really takes control.

So the lecture was about how to 'trap' CO2 under ground. There are a few methods and places to put it: Old oil and gas reservoirs, coal beds and deep saline water formation. The DOE web site describes these.

Dr. Celia is a computer modeler and apparently a very good one. There are so many aspects to this issue I would get a honorary PhD if i blogged it all. But anyway it seems that Dr. Celia really has looked at all the issues in making this viable; from how the concrete will act in the deep wells to the number of wells making holes in the ground, leakage, storage volumes and everything else imaginable.

But without getting into the nasty and boring details I figure it is the thoughts I walked out of the lecture with that blog readers would really like to know. After all just Google 'carbon sequester' and you will be bombarded with information.

Carbon Capture and Storage SlingShot Thoughts:

• We have to try. This echos' my thoughts on geoengineering in general (1,2,3,4).
• We have less than 50 years to turn this Carbon ship around. More like 1 year.
  
• It is VERY unlikely that the coal fired plants will be retrofitted with CS facilities within 50 years.
• The human effect on the atmosphere in undeniable.
• The Earth has great natural carbon sinks.
• Humans are overwhelming the system.
• Carbon sequestration can work but it is only a small part of the solution.
  
• Humans suck and there is nothing you can do about it.

TreeHugger also wrote up a piece on this issue. Some points were ok, others not so good. They mostly pulled quotes from a book. and those quotes are contrary to Dr Celias' studies. It is another perspective and that is always good. Plus the image I used is from their article and I didn't want to steal it outright ;)

Art Monday - A Show

Everybody loves Art Monday. This week it is even better because I can announce that at Conundrum Wine Bistro in Freeport, Maine has Steve Dean Art hanging and on sale.

If you know where the Big Fucking Indian is in Freeport, you know where Conumdrum is located.

Here is one example of a piece hanging:

2 Nose Man
Ink on paper.

Stop by today, buy something and support art. Or got to the web site and send Steve an email. He is also now doing people and pet portraits. Capture your memories with art today.