Bling

Damn! Now we're going to have home invasions to steal our doorknobs. Well, I guess it could be worse.

Robert "Boochie" Burrest Jr. has always liked to tinker.

As a child, he'd go around his neighborhood with a wagon full of tools, doing odd jobs. In high school, he'd make his own wooden shoes. As he grew older, he began customizing cars.

About eight years ago, after fooling around in his workshop, Burrest came up with his first invention. It's a wooden or metal ring on which you can screw an assortment of decorative doorknobs.

Maybe ol' Boochie here can figure out how to get rappers to use these doorknobs, instead of gold teeth, as a new status symbol.

Foreclosure Rates

Not that I'm saying some houses have been overpriced, or anything, but here is a diagram of the foreclosure rate in the area where I grew up. Each little house symbol denotes a property in foreclosure.



Now, here is the area where I live now. If you looked really closely you'd see I had to fudge a bit. I had to zoom out by one more step in order to get any foreclosures to appear.

It is hot.

Very hot. And humid. Very humid. Mikey is staying indoors except to water flowers and take out the trash. A/Cs on full blast 24x7.

So, I'm playing on the computer, transcribing my grandmother's diaries from 1937-1941. I'm about 85% done. The best part is that I got a new 22" LCD monitor yesterday, to replace my old beater of a 17" CRT. Much easier on the eyes, and I can open multiple windows at once, and see them all.

Arctic Ice Disappearing due to Bush Administration and Volcanoes, but mostly Volcanoes?

Yeah, volcanoes. Under the ice cap.

Recent massive volcanoes have risen from the ocean floor deep under the Arctic ice cap, spewing plumes of fragmented magma into the sea, scientists who filmed the aftermath reported Wednesday.

The eruptions -- as big as the one that buried Pompei -- took place in 1999 along the Gakkel Ridge

Meanwhile, in the Colorado mountains...

...they're still skiing.

With an average of 3 feet of snow still covering the upper slopes of Aspen Mountain, the Aspen Skiing Co. will open the top of the mountain to midday skiing this weekend.

Seven runs and 45 acres of mostly intermediate terrain will be served by the Ajax Express lift, officials announced Monday.

The mountain will be open to skiing and riding Friday through Sunday; the Ajax Express chair will run from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. daily. Skiers and riders must upload and download on the Silver Queen Gondola, which will be running from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., with the last ride down at 4:30 p.m.

No, that's not a misprint.

It all evens out

It's been really hot here on the east coast, but on the west coast, all that climate change has people dying.

A Bellevue man who intended to spend only the day on the slopes of Mount Rainier has died after being caught in a blizzard.

Two others in the hiking party, suffering from frostbite and hypothermia, are awaiting rescue at Camp Muir at the 10,000-foot level.

What? It's June. Surely that can't be right. Hmmm, better check another story.

As Western Washington residents thaw out after the coldest June week on record, forecasters say drivers heading for the mountain passes could expect up to 5 inches of snow to fall by Tuesday morning.

What the hell? That can't be right. We were all supposed to be suffering the hottest temperatures ever seen. Well, I guess not in Washington.

With summer only 11 days away, what Seattle has is higher sustained heating bills from the unusually persistent chill of what is now the coldest spring on record for the Seattle area, traction tires required to slip through the passes Tuesday and a threatened growing season for local farmers.

Overall, daytime high temperatures in the region have averaged at least 10 degrees below normal -- while overnight lows have been only slightly chillier than normal -- translating into more gas and electricity use higher bills.

Whew! So I guess they'll be spared a little longer than us.

Almost a Darwin

So close. So very, very, close.

Some of the folks on my project team were meeting with the people in the VDOT bridge section to discuss a new product being built with our GIS Roads layer. It's intended to help steer overweight vehicles over appropriate roads, and to keep them away from weight restricted bridges.

In the middle of the meeting their beepers and phones start going off.

A one-lane bridge in Giles County collapsed yesterday when a heavily laden cement truck tried to cross the weight-restricted span.

The state Route 713 bridge over Walker Creek was posted with a restriction limiting the maximum weight of vehicles to 8 tons.

"It appears that an overweight vehicle violating the posting collapsed the bridge," said Malcolm T. Kerley, the Virginia Department of Transportation's chief engineer.

The 2003 Mack truck was carrying 15½ tons of cement, said state police Sgt. Michael Conroy. "The [cement] alone . . . pretty much doubled the limit on the bridge."

"This is an example of why we post weight limits on bridges," Walus said. "We want to remind all drivers to heed posted weight limits and follow posted safety instructions."