Watery Wednesday - Idaho Falls

The family just got back from a visit to Idaho Falls, Idaho to visit my father. We had a pretty good time visiting and sightseeing.

One of the nice things about Idaho Falls are the.. , well the Falls.

The Snake River has a natural falls there. The City of Idaho Falls has captured some of that natural elevation difference and diverts some of the water through a bulb turbine to generate electricity. The city has generated electricity off the river since 1900. Presently the three bulb generators produce about 100 million kilowatt hours of electricity annually from the nineteen foot elevation across the Falls.

But there is plenty of water for the Falls. If it were anywhere else it might be a tourist attraction in itself but tourists who Idaho Falls are in a lather to get to the nearby Yellowstone National Park and Grand Teton Park so they whiz right be the Falls.

They are missing out is what I say.

Graffiti Wednesday - C'mon Dog!

Graffiti that has been there long enough to fade and streak by Nemesis. Another example unofficially tolerated graffiti. Personally I think it is clever. Nemesis executed it better than I photographed it I have to admit. I'm thinking that the dog and human figures are stencils. But what do I know.

Check out Jen one of Oklahoma's blogging stars. She got me started on this graffiti thing. She blogs about a bunch of stuff.

Also check out FatCap, a great web site with all sorts of information about graffiti around the world. Find out who the graffiti all stars are in your town. Their database doesn't list Nemesis. He doesn't google either. Anybody who this person is?

Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson

I just finished Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson. I don't generally read Science Fiction but I think this book transcends that genre.  Imagine a world a few years down the road from ours, but not too far but long enough for domestic robots to become commonplace, where there are chips and control systems in our cars that do most of the driving and sense, communicate, and react to other cars to avoid collisions. Where the military deploys robots in non lethal duty in Afghanistan monitoring villages. Now imagine that all these robots and computers and sensors are interconnected.

Next imagine that the machines start to take over. The same computers, communications, and sensors that enable cars to avoid collisions, well ... do you get the picture? Or that the military non lethal robots suddenly know how to pick up, load, and fire machine guns. Or that Afghan Taliban and American soldiers uniting to fight the machines. (The terrorists have years of experience fighting robots and drones.) This book is about the machines taking over and human resistance..



Mr. Wilson is a PhD robotics scientist who gave up the field to write books. I think he's going to be a star. His book reminded me more of Stephen King that straight science fiction. He has the perfect way of making the commonplace, scary and frightening. Robopocalypse is going to be Stephen Spielberg's next movie.

For now though, Daniel Wilson is an engaging smart, funny cool guy, who gives book readings at small stores in Tulsa and yells to his Godson that he can only have one cookie.



Sweetie got my copy signed by the author. No, you can't borrow it. His next book out is Amped. You'll bet I'm getting it.

Break a Leg Kid!

Son SuperPizzaBoy just finished up his two week summer camp at Clark Youth Theater here in Tulsa. The camp capped off the two weeks with three performances last week to show the parents what their kids have been doing.



There was singing, dancing, skits, and improv comedy. The kids really went all out to show their stuff. We could tell that the instructors and leaders had really prepared the kids well to show their stuff.



Of course, in a show of stars, SuperPizzaBoy was our star. He loves the stage and we love how his face brightens up when he performs.



This was his second year at the camp plus he participates in the Clark Theater Youth Improv workshops every weekend in the Fall and Spring.



Anyway, Kudos to the staff of Clark Theater, the kids who participated and to the parents who support their  kids.

Go Cheetah Go

No, this isn't a Camera Crtters meme entry. This is about a robot named Cheetah that I saw in Scientific American magazine. that can travel four legged over ground. At least on a treadmill.




Cheetah is being developed by the DARPA "Defense Advanced Projects Agency" for possible military use. That's all great and everything but can't we use this technology for better uses? Like to help people rather than assisting in killing people? Don't get me wrong, I want our troops to have the best of whatever is available as soon as we can get it to them, but still.

Ho about rescues in really rugged country. Rig one of these puppies up with a GPS and a detailed map and let it go find people people who need help. Or patrolling our borders perhaps looking for groups of illegal immigrants who might be dying of thirst in the Arizona desert. Or maybe for fire departments to send into burning buildings where they don't know if anybody is in there or not. Or how about carrying tourists down and back out of the Grand Canyon and other pack trips.

I'll tell you what though they have a lot of development work on this device. How is it going to deal with mud, sand, rocks, and water? They are going to have to seal the thing up. Plus where will it get its power? Batteries or a gasoline motor, or what? It'll be fun to see where they go with this thing. Plus for military uses it seems quite noisy.

What do you think? You have any ideas for something like this?

Weekend Reflections - Turkey Mountain

One of the ponds on Tulsa's Turkey Mountain Park.

Weekend Reflections

Skywatch Friday - Sunday Morning Run

Sunday Morning Sunrise run alongside the Arkansas River.

I'm loving the camera on my Ipod Touch. It does a lot more than play music.

Skywatch Friday

Signs - Filler'Up!

Stokely Event Center here in Tulsa has lots and lots of old signs including these old gas station signs.


They also have their own geocache on the site also named Totally Stoked. No, I haven't found it yet; yes I have looked for it, fail.

Signs, Signs,

Road Trip to the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum

Saturday a week ago,son and I loaded up the car and headed down the highway to Oklahoma City.



We pulled off the turnpike at Wellston and drove down Route 66 to Pops near Arcadia to get us a soft drink. Pops has almost every kind of soft drink known to man. We bought two each. Usually we only get one but it was hot that day. We drank one and put the other in a cooler we brought along just for that purpose. So we could drink something cold on our way back.



Don't ask my why I always get some sort of Black Cherry soda at Pops. I'm a Diet Doctor Pepper guy usually. Diet Creme Cherry flavored if I can get it. Don't judge me. I always like diet Orange Crush.



Next stop was the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. We love this place, just love it. It will always be the Cowboy Hall of Fame to me though. I've been going here ever since I moved to Oklahoma twenty six years ago. It has really changed over the years.



One of my favorite places is their big banquet hall. They have five massive triptych paintings by Wilson Hurley. Together they are called Windows on the West. They are huge and spectacular. My employer has a Wilson Hurley painting in the lobby. I saw him there some years ago up on a step ladder touching up the painting.


(The Leader's Downfall by William R. Leigh)

The museum is cram full of Western Art of all types.



They also have lots of other exhibits about life in the west for cowboys, soldiers, and regular families.



Ronald Reagan belongs in the Museum. I'm assuming that George W. will be there one day. His dad, George H. won't nothing wrong with him, he is just not western. Barack Obama won't be there either. I mean you either have it or you don't. I grew up in small towns of the west with cowboys, I had many western friends, some of my family are western. I don't have a western bone in my body. I don't have anything against it, its just now me. But I still like this Museum.



They have a great rodeo exhibit. They explain all the events and have a mock up of a rodeo arena, great fun.



They have a great section on the west in movies and television. That is Kirk Douglas above.



SuperPizzaBoy's favorite is Prosperity Junction a western Town. He really liked the pulpit in the church.



A mock up of an early day classroom. I hate to admit it but this is how my class rooms in Price, Utah looked like when I was a kid. Inkwells in the desk and all. At least we didn't use the inkwells.



Early day bank.



I caught him bellying up to the bar. Kids!



I love this hat exhibit. Tell you what though, when I first saw it it reminded my of a tank full of jellyfish. Is there such a thing as Cowboy Hat Jellyfish?



With that, we loaded up, grabbed our second sodas from Pops and headed back home.

I just love road trips, have you been on one lately? Tell us about it.

OurWorld Tuesday

Finding Something that is xSTINKt

Last Wednesday evening after work I headed over to Turkey Mountain here in Tulsa to go running and find a geocache.

It is hot here in Tulsa and when it is hot I like to go running in the woods rather than the concrete and asphalt. It also just so happens that there are lots of geocaches on Turkey Mountain, good ones, hard to find ones.

The map to the left shows the caches on Turkey Mountin. The happy faces are the caches that I've found. The stars out caches that I have hidden. The little green boxes and the question mark are the ones left to find.

Wednesday night I went looking for the xSTINKt Cache. I had looked for it before without any luck. It is hidden by a very clever geocacher who goes by the tag adairmd.

I took along my geocaching GPS receiver and my running GPSr and my Ipod touch. It has a camera and I am using it a lot these days. Lots smaller and easier to carry than a regular camera.


A good omen about six minutes into the run. A deer! I've seen lots of deer on Turkey Mountain but they don't generally stick around long enough for me to fumble around with my camera. It is right in the middle of the photograph above just to the right of the slender tree in the middle. Makes me think I need to carry a better camera! One with a zoom.


Turkey Mountain has lots of ponds from one end to the other.



I popped out onto the powerline right of way for a little bit just as another runner went running by.



That evil adairmd, owner of the cache, has promised to delete all logs of the cache that show spoilers. Sorry adairmd, it is my journalistic duty as a blogger to leave nothing out. Above is a look of the sky from the cache location. Below is a pic of my GPSr.


The dead giveaway is the leaf below. Study it carefully, when you see a leaf exactly like that then you are within three feet of the cache. In all serious, I'm not giving any hints, except for the leaf. This is a unique cache and he wants you to find out what is unique about it for yourself. The cache was placed in April and I was only the fourth one to find it. It's almost a two mile walk from the parking lot to the cache site. Most people are not going to go that far especially if they are not familiar with the trails on the mountain.



It started to get dark on the way back. I've never run in the dark on Turkey Mountain but I have run in the twilight. I love it.



It's still hot on the mountain but you are out of the direct sun and off the reradiating hard surfaces of the city. Also, there are not very many people up on the mountain. It's pretty quiet except for the mountain bikers getting a little rambunctious.



The sun gets really low and really colorful.


It's a great place to gett your head on straight.

I uploaded my run to Garmin's website. You can see my route and a whole bunch of metrics on the run by hitting the green button below. You'll go to the website. And then hit the little triangular "play" button like you playing a cd player. You'll be amazed by how slow I run and how long it took me to find the cache.


Hey, you can do better? Get after it!

And by the way, adairmd is a nice guy

Geocaching 101

To Rome with Love by Woody Allen with Alec Baldwin, Penelope Cruz, and Ellen Page

Sweetie and I went to see "To Rome with Love" the new movie by Woody Allen. It is a complicated, ensemble comedy that has several pretty much disconnected stories set in Rome. The movie ranges pretty wide and uses a medley of American and Italian characters to cover romance, infatuation, mistaken identity, the natures of celebrity,  innocence, Pagliacci in the shower, and reconnecting with the past. He also takes a subtle swipe at those of us in love with social networking.

Woodey Allen plays his typical neurotic character (and does it well), Alec Baldwin does a great job, but Penelope Cruz portraying a hooker sent to the wrong room really steals the show. She is smart, sassy, and of course very beautiful.

I loved this movie. I think it sparkles. If you like Woody Allen movies, then you will probably like this one, if you don't like Woody Allen movies then I don't think this will be the one that changes your mind.

I give it four stars out of five.

Weekend Reflections - Volkswagen

I was leaving work the other day and noticed this bright, shiny, and clean Volkswagen reflecting the sky and neighboring buildings.

Weekend Reflections

Skywatch Friday - Mottled

Downtown Tulsa early Monday morning.

Skywatch Friday

Graffiti Wednesday - Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame

A bench on the Boston Avenue Pedestrian Overpass near the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame. I don't think this  is an official color scheme for the city. I think somebody, on their own initiative, painted the bench red and stenciled the images on in honor of three performers. I don't know how long it has been like this but from the worn condition of the red paint I think it has been there for some time. I think that some graffiti is unofficially tolerated in our fair city. I notice that some "bad" graffiti disappears quickly but more artistic graffiti is allowed to stay, at least for a while. I run on the cities Riverparks trails two or three times a week and I've noticed that a lot of graffiti in visible areas disappears where more "artistic" works have been allowed to stay. I don't know who is making the call, the guy or gal with the brush or one of their bosses but I applaud the judgements being made.



Still there, as of last week.



Painted over, for some time.

I like to see a little discretion used by our public officials. When they mouth "we are just following procedures" to justify stupidity it makes me cringe.

Does anybody out there have any idea who the guys on the bench are?

My friend Jen in Oklahoma City started the Graffiti Wednesday meme is posting about graffiti today.

The Pot Thief Who Studied D.H. Lawrence by J. Michael Orenduff

One of my guilty pleasures is reading J. Michael Orenduff's "Pot Thief" Series of books. It is a about a pot seller (like in ancient southwestern Indian pots, not marijuana) named Hubert Schuze who owns has his shop, and adjoining residence in the Old Town section of Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Hubert gets most of stock from two sources, he digs the pots up in total violation of Federal Law, and he makes very good copies of existing pots. He is not greedy but he has lots of expenses. He is helping his nephew get through college and he is helping an elderly couple with their steep medical expenses. Still, when he has enough, he is liable to close the shop and take a nap.

(photo by Yogi, Heard Museum, Phoenix, AZ, Hopi-Tewa jar)

In this latest adventure, Hubert is induced to give a lecture on old Anasazi pots at the University of New Mexico's D.H. Lawrence Ranch. He has a second agenda. Somebody has offered him a three for one trade if he can find an old Taos Pueblo pot that somebody wants.


(photo by Yogi, Heard Museum, Phoenix, AZ, Work by Dorothy Torivio of Acoma Pueblo)


Hubert goes to the ranch, and a bad snowstorm hits. There is no way in or out, the telephone lines are down and there are zero bars on the cell phones. There are about ten guests and some staff people, and guess what. Somebody starts killing the guests!


(Another photo by me from the Heard Museum in Phoenix, a Hopi Tewa jar by Helen Naha)

So we have a classic murder mystery but this one is self conscious. The characters talk about the classic murder mysteries and so the story is kind of inside out.

All I can say is that Mr. Orenduff is a great writer, the books are readable and interesting and full of southwestern culture. I give the book four stars out of five. Which is great.

You can get the book from Mr. Orenduff himself. He'll mail it postage free and autograph it, or you can order it off Amazon. You can get them very reasonably priced for the Kindle.

He is working on "The Pot Thief who studied Lew Wallace." I can't hardly wait.

My reviews of Mr. Orenduff's other books (totally out of order!!):

The Pot Thief who Studied Pythagoras


The Pot Thief who Studied Escoffier


The Pot Thief who Studied Ptolemy


The Pot Thief who Studied Einstein