There's a pretty big wildfire right now near Price Canyon. My mom came over and told me about it, and we could see the smoke rising above Wood Hill just north of Price, but we couldn't see the base of the smoke plume, so it was really hard to tell where the fire was at. We drove up onto Wood Hill, and we could see that it was somewhere north of Helper, probably right in Price Canyon. I went back home and got the Subaru, then headed up the canyon to check it out. Just a few miles up the canyon, there was brush on fire right next to the road, but the majority of the burning was high up on the mountains. There were dozens and dozens of people parked on the side of the road so they could take a look at the fire. You really couldn't see much from the side of the road, but I figured if I headed up to the top of the canyon, then went east on Emma Park Road, I'd have a nice view of everything. When I got up on top, I could see the smoke plume really well. The further east I drove, the more I realized that the fire was a lot closer to the top than it appeared from afar. I passed the fire command center just a few miles down the road, and further on at Matt's Summit (the highest point between US-6 and US-191 on Emma Park Road), there were a few people (including my wife's uncle Bob) parked there with a good view of everything. I could see an airplane dropping supplies by parachute to the firefighters on the ground. As I drove towards US-191, I crossed into the shadow of the smoke plume, and didn't come out of it until about 8 or 9 miles later. When I got back to the power plant in Price Canyon, the Helper fire department was there spraying down the huge stores of coal that they burn for power. I'm sure if that caught on fire, it'd be one hell of a disaster, and the fire was probably only a mile or two from that area by then. I'm going to drive back up there tonight and try to catch some pictures of the fire in the dark, at least if it's still burning by then. Until then, here are the pictures I took already today.

Update: There are more pictures, same place as the above link. Ty drove us all up there (including Mandi), and it was a pretty spectacular sight. It made me realize how scary it must be for the firefighters who were out there trying to fight it at night. They had Emma Park Road closed off this time, so I'm sure the fire must have reached the road up there. It's too bad too, because I think we would have gotten some badass pictures from there.

I had planned on installing a workbench in my wife's craft room last night, but I ran into a snag. I had bought some concrete screws to mount some L-brackets to the walls, then I was going to mount a piece of melamine-laminated particle board on the brackets. But drilling the holes for the concrete screws was taking forever. At the rate I was going, it would have taken me two days to drill the 15 holes that I needed. So instead, my wife called her dad, and he brought over his concrete-nail gun. It uses .27 caliber charges to shoot the nails into the concrete, but when we tried shooting a nail through the mouting hole in an L-bracket, it blew a hole in the bracket and tore a chunk of concrete out of the wall. I think the problem was a combination of too big of a charge and too short of a nail. So we cut some 2X2 boards to length, and used much longer nails to mount them to the walls, and it worked perfectly. My ears are still ringing a little bit. My basement smells pretty bad now (like burned gun powder), and I'm surprised none of my neighbors called the police because they thought they heard small-arms fire. But at least the hard part is done now, and all I've got left to do is get some different brackets to mount the table-top with, then install a new light fixture. Oh, the joys of home improvement.

Now that I've got two computers up and running here, I ordered a Linksys DSL Router/4-Port Switch. It was $70, plus free shipping, from EMS Computing (found 'em using Price Watch).

Now I'm going to have to rearrange my office, and start drilling holes in the walls and burying cable. Crap, for that matter, I actually need to buy some cable. =) One of the walls I'm going through is concrete, so that should be really fun to drill through. I'd prefer to install wall plates for the network connections, but all the outside walls are concrete in the basement, which is where both computers are now.

Remember a couple months ago when this comment was left (bottom of page)? Stoopid (a name that's apparently indicative of his actual intelligence) said "cops don't work on commission."

Well, in Provo, they do work on commission. It's not that they get extra money for each ticket they write--rather, they get to keep their jobs. Here's the Salt Lake Tribune story, detailing how "Police administrators are 'strongly encouraging' each officer to write at least three tickets a day, a showing that could help pave the way for a good performance evaluation." But it's not really a quota: "'This is just a minimal performance standard our [Police] Department has set,' Provo mayoral spokesman Michael Mower said Wednesday. 'It's only three tickets per 10-hour shift for each officer. So it really is pretty doable.'"

At least some Provo City councilmen have the right idea, though it doesn't necessarily mean they're going to do anything about it. Mark Hathaway says, "It seems rather unsavory if police officers have to write three tickets a day. I want them to write one every time they see someone breaking the law." That makes perfect sense to me. And councilman Stan Lockhart is quoted, "But the last thing I want is to have a Police Department that believes its job is to generate revenue." I've always thought a police department's primary job was to generate revenue. Preventing traffic accidents is only secondary. And preventing/solving real crimes is an entirely different matter--it's a completely different aspect of their jobs. Cops serve two purposes--to generate revenue, and to "protect and serve" when they're not busy parked on the side of the road, passively aiming their radar guns as each passing motorist.

They had a used equipment auction at work today, and I managed to snag a pair of Vivitron monitors (15" and 17") and a Gateway computer (P-166). I'm just using the hard drive, video card, cdrom, network card, and floppy drive from the computer to put in my old PII-266 for my wife. I only paid $60 for everything I got, so it was way worth it. I'll probably use the case, power supply, and motherboard for target practice.

Whoa. I just got my truck back from the Ford dealer, which is the first time they've done something in the time they said it would take them. Actually, since they sent the driveshaft off to a shop that specializes in them, I'm not surprised it was done on time, because Community Motors had nothing to do with it. They built an entirely new driveshaft for my truck, and it's beautiful. Seriously, it's so shiny and new looking. I took it out on Airport Road and pegged the speedometer (for the first time since I've owned the truck), and probably got it doing about 90 MPH. It was the smoothest ride I've ever had in that truck--no vibrations at all. It's too bad I spent so god damn much money fixing the thing, because it's nowhere near worth dumping that much money into a truck that old. Oh well, I'm a sucker...what can I say?

Michael managed to get a bottle of my wife's nail polish and throw it into a laundry basket, and it made it through the washing machine and into the dryer, where it exploded and ruined every single item of clothing in there, with the exception of one t-shirt. I had a few old shitty shirts that got nail polish on them, but I could care less about them. I also had a decent pair of pants, my favorite t-shirt, and a brand new pair of shorts that got ruined. My wife had a lot more clothes in there, which are now all crap. Looks like we're going to have to do some clothes shopping when I get my next paycheck.

Hey, look at the bright side--at least now I have a lot more clothes to wear for doing yard work or working on my vehicles.

I added a new section today, just some miscellaneous stuff.

I wonder if I'll ever feel healthy again. I've felt like total crap for the past two weeks, and things don't seem to be shaping up at all yet. My cold is still hanging on, and I was awake for a good part of last night because, well, you don't want to know. My sunburn is just about done peeling, so at least there's that. I always feel dirty when I've got dead skin peeling off my back and shoulders for some reason. =)

My body is really tired. I spent a lot of time the past few weeks walking and hiking and driving all over the place, and in addition to being sick, it's really taken a toll on me. Yesterday didn't help, either--I took two loads (including a trailer, so that's really four loads, just two trips) of weeds, tree branches, and other crap to the landfill, and I ended up with a headache the rest of the day. At least my back yard looks quite a bit better. Still needs some work, though.

I've been incredibly bored lately, mostly because things are really slow at work. We've had a little downtime, waiting for something to do, and when you sit around all day just being "available" in case something comes up, it gets tedious.

I got my truck back today, but I'm bringing it back to the Ford dealer on Monday to have the driveshaft repaired. It's pretty much drivable right now, but when you get over 65 MPH, there's still a slight vibration. I only took it home today so I could move my camper and haul some stuff off to the landfill. At least I know I'll have it completely fixed when my wife's family reunion rolls around next month. I was beginning to wonder if they'd ever fix the damn thing.

I created a section for all the survey markers I've found or looked for, so I don't have to bore everybody with the details here on the main page. We took the long way up to Springville yesterday, up Indian Canyon and across Emma Park Road, and found a few new markers along the way, then we found a few more in Springville and Provo. I had a cop get suspicious of me while I was taking a picture of a marker near the railroad crossing on Freedom Blvd. in Provo, and he came over to find out what I was doing. I'm surprised I haven't had more cops get curious before that, 'cause I suppose I do look suspicious sometimes, especially looking behind the bushes around public buildings like post offices and courthouses. I've cut myself on more barbed wire and trespassed on more properties in the past couple weeks than in my entire life. Oh well, it gives me something to do other than just sit around the house.

By the way, the real reason we went up north yesterday was for a doctor's appointment for my wife. She jumped off the diving board when we were at the pool on Saturday, and she went deep enough that she heard a loud pop in her ear, accompanied by a severe pain. When she surfaced, she was really dizzy, and her hearing has been pretty bad in that ear since. It turns out that she broke her ear drum. I didn't know something like that would just heal on its own, but she has to go back to the doctor in a month or so to make sure it's healing up nicely. I actually looked in her ear with a flashlight, and I could see the hole--it was pretty nasty looking.

So now that Audiogalaxy is shit, what else is out there to steal music with? I need to get some new stuff.

The power just went out for a couple hours here, and it went out two other times in the middle of the night earlier this week. I'm trying to figure out what my power bill goes towards paying for, because it's sure not electricity.

I got a really good chance to test the brakes on my Subaru yesterday. I was going south on Highway 10, behind some jackass in a blue mid-'60s Ford truck. As we approached an intersection, the guy started slowing down and got half-way into the right turn lane, but he didn't have his turn signal on. After braking for a second before realizing this guy was going to turn right, I started accelerating and got over half-way into the left turn lane to get around the asshole. All of the sudden, he decided he was going to turn left instead, and cut right in front of me. I slammed on the brakes and locked them up, while he cut from the right turn lane, across the straight lane, across the left turn lane, and onto another street. I came just a few inches from hitting the left rear quarter panel of his truck, and I skidded across the left turn lane and the oncoming traffic lane and came to a stop on the left shoulder. He stopped, presumably because he heard me skidding, but never once did he actually look back, not even when I was inches from his truck. I didn't even bother getting out of my car, because I was so damn pissed off that I was afraid I'd hit the guy, so I just drove off. I wish I would have at least yelled at him, but I'd have rather not spent the night in jail for assault. If you see that nice pair of skidmarks across the left turn lane at the south Indian Hills entrance, those are mine.

I've had a cold for nearly a week now, and it's really starting to piss me off. I thought I was getting over it Saturday, but after going to the wave pool and getting sunburned all to hell, then going to the demolition derby, I came home feeling like total shit. I've been living off of Dayquil and Nyquil since then, but it doesn't seem to help much except to get me spaced-out sometimes.

The derby was ok, but definitely not as good as the past few I've been to. Last year, my throat hurt from all the cheering and yelling I did, but this year it was just kind of a sit-and-watch event. Maybe if I'd been feeling better, it would have been more fun. At least it was cool having a bunch of friends there. Ty and Mandi showed up at my house a few hours before the derby, along with Big Russ and Sarah (who just moved back to Price), to make sure we were still going. Jaysen and Michelle went too, and so did my mom. We went more than an hour early, and it was still hard to find good seats. Next year we'll have to go even earlier, 'cause I want to sit front and center.

Traci and I went looking for more NGS benchmarks yesterday--we spent about four hours this time, and only found one out of the four we searched for. One was supposed to be in a bridge south of town, but the existing bridge is in too good of shape to have existed back in the '30s, so I'm sure the marker got tossed when the bridge got replaced. Another one that we couldn't find had the most vague directions for any benchmark I've ever seen. It was supposed to be 7.2 miles south of Price, in the concrete headwall of a culvert west of Highway 10 (it didn't say how far west), 20 feet east of a pole (doesn't describe the pole or its location), and at the base of a hill (I didn't see any real hills out there). That one wasted the most time, and was the most frustrating. There is supposed to be one at the county courthouse, but I couldn't find it. The one we did find is in an old building just three blocks from my house, near the police station. The marker was in the wall behind some bushes near an entrance, and it was painted the same color as the surrounding brick, so I almost didn't see it. At least the entire trip wasn't a waste, but I could have accomplished as much in about 5 minutes. Oh well, looking is half the fun. I've found only four markers so far, ruled out a few more, and have about 30 more to search for in this area.

The past few days, I've gone on a few trips looking for NGS benchmarks in and around town. I've searched for a total of seven, and found only two. The rest either simply weren't there, or the roads and landscape have changed so much that the directions written back in 1934 (when this area was surveyed) are no longer accurate.

These are the two I found: KN0136 was easy to find, and I was using only a USGS topo map--it was before I found the explicit directions on Geocaching.com. KN0139 was also extremely easy, because it was set into some concrete around a window at the post office.

KN0089 was buried under decades of gravel that the railroad has dumped in what they now use as a parking lot. I may be able to find it if I bring a shovel. I couldn't find KN0091--I looked in the south abutment of the railroad bridge, but it's been partially buried since they re-routed Main Street and built the overpass on 100 North. KN0092 isn't there anymore, because they got rid of the old railroad crossing and built a bridge there instead. I think KN0138 has been removed--the concrete in the east retaining wall of the bridge is so badly eroded that about 4" of rebar is sticking straight up from the top. KN0513 is hard to find, because the cemetery and the surrounding roads have changed a lot since the directions were written. I may try this one again if I have some time to kill someday.

A Price City Ordinance Enforcement officer (the dog catcher) and a PPD officer just showed up at my house a few minutes ago, wanting me to remove a metal stake that I had placed near a sprinkler head on the parkway in front of my house to keep my neighbors from running over it. Their driveway narrows as it enters the street, and they're all too lazy to move their cars over 3 inches to avoid driving on the grass. The cop said they'd received a complaint that the stake was a hazard to kids on bicycles. So I was cooperative about it and took the stake out, but now I've got to find a way to keep my neighbors from running over the sprinkler head. I think a shotgun would do nicely.

Seriously, I think if it gets run over and broken, I'll just call the cop that made me remove the stake and let him deal with it. But I'm afraid that even though it would be destruction of property, it would end up being a civil issue, which wouldn't even be worth pursuing for a $2 sprinkler head. Fuck, I hate people.

I found what I think may be a hobo spider in my basement today. Actually, while Michael was running around playing downstairs, Traci spotted it moving in a corner right by him. I went over to look at it and noticed the funnel-shaped web, but the spider had crept back inside and under the baseboard and I couldn't see it. I just grabbed a can of Tralomethrin (1R,3S)3[(1'RS)(1',2',2',2'-tetrabromoethyl)]-2,2-dimethylcyclopropanecarboxylic acid (S)-alpha-cyano-3-phenoxybenzyl ester and d-trans Allethrin (damn that sounds pretty scary) and sprayed it all over that corner. I think I'll wait a day or so then poke around there with some long tweezers and see if I can retrieve the dead spider, just to make sure it was a hobo. Anyway, I'm really paranoid now, I keep thinking I can feel spiders crawling around on my legs. It's strange, I'm usually not scared of bugs, but after reading about what can happen with a hobo spider bite, I'm a little (unreasonably) freaked out.

There's a pair of stupid public forum articles in the Tribune that just make me laugh [one, two]. The first has about the most idiotic statement I've ever heard: "Here in Washington there is a ban on all guns in the District. I can certainly say that I feel safer in downtown D.C. than I ever did on the university campus because I know that nobody is carrying a legal weapon." Leave it to a woman to make a statement this stupid based on how she "feels," rather than actual facts. In the year 2000, there were 41.8 murders per 100,000 inhabitants in Washington D.C., compared to a whopping 1.9 in Utah [D.C./UT crime stats]. She may "feel" safer (moron), but she certainly isn't. Another quote by this woman: "Certainly, making guns illegal in certain places is no guarantee that nobody will break the law, but I feel good knowing that the government has taken a stance that there is no tolerance for these weapons." Again, she "feels" good about the government's stance on weapons. But let's not forget the government's STANCE ON MURDER. God damned stupid idiotic moron.

In the second article, the guy not only makes some absurd statements, but doesn't back it up with any reasoning whatsoever: "The days of packing a gun for self-protection expired well over 100 years ago. We are no longer in the wild, wild West. Such action would solve the current problems with the University of Utah and the district court judges' gun lockers." So this guy is saying there is no need for self-protection? I would think that's up to each individual person to decide--it's called SELF-PROTECTION for a reason. And in that last statement, he reasons that since banning concealed weapons will solve the problems of some other idiots, that nobody should be allowed to legally conceal a weapon. Allowing concealed weapons on the U of U campus and putting gun lockers in courthouses would also solve the problems, so according to this guy's logic, concealed weapons should be legal.

I went to Atwood's barber shop today to buy tickets for the demolition derby, and every single person in there gave me a very strange look when I walked in the door. I guess that's not very funny, unless I mention that I shaved my head last week.

I just finished up a new layout, but I'm not going to put it up until tomorrow (well, technically later today). I didn't think I'd ever come up with something better than the current layout, but I took a picture Friday evening that I just had to do something with, and it turned out ok. Since I rearranged the left and right columns a bit, though, it'll take a little work to get it all sorted out in Greymatter, and I don't want to stay up much later tonight.

Update: There you go, it's up--the regular old variation on a theme. I haven't really poked around to make sure everything looks ok, but I'll find out sooner or later, I guess. I moved the poll and quickies to the left column, which looks ok on the main page, but for the archive entry pages, since they don't appear on those, it looks retarded having an empty column. Oh well, I'll come up with something.

I went back down to the Ford dealer on my lunch break, and they still hadn't started work on my truck. I told Owen that I'll pay them for what I owe them, and that I'll be taking my truck home with me today. He told me that they were just finishing up an alignment on somebody else's vehicle, and mine was next in line to go up on the rack. After my wife and I yelled at him for a bit longer, we decided to give them another chance at fixing it. So we left, and I went back a little over an hour later, and it still wasn't in the shop. I talked to (ok, yelled at) Owen yet again, and told him I wasn't leaving until they started working on my truck. Not ten minutes later, it was in the shop being fixed.

They got it done around 4:30, but they'd found a vibration somewhere. He told me to come down and take it for a drive to see whether or not I wanted them to tear back into it and find the vibration. I drove it, and decided that there's no way in hell I'm taking my truck back like that. So they've still got the piece of sheeit, but I'm going to harass the hell out of Owen every day to make sure my truck is their top priority.

I'm in the middle of doing a write-up of my experience with Community Motors, which I'll put up here when this whole thing is over with, and send a copy to the owner as well. I wouldn't recommend them to anybody for even the most minor repair. Hell, I figured that with as major as the problems with my truck were, they'd be the best place to take it to, but even the most insignificant mechanic in town could do a better and faster job than this shit.

Not only are my plans for this weekend shot, but probably for the next few weeks as well. I was hoping to move my camper out of the way so the power company can come trim some trees in my back yard, the same trees that wore the shielding off the power lines last year and caused a fire. I was also going to haul off a bunch of old weeds and rocks and tree branches from my yard, but that's not going to happen for quite a while. I really should have just threw my truck in the gutter, and bought another.

Ok, I am so fed up with Community Motors. They've been jerking me around for so long now, and they've finally run out of excuses. My truck has been waiting since Monday to get a new tie-rod end and ball-joint on the front-end, both of which together should take less than two hours to replace. Yesterday, after I complained to Owen, the peon overseeing the work, he said he'd get it in that evening, but that it probably wouldn't be done until this morning. I was going to drive out there after they closed yesterday to make sure my truck wasn't sitting in the back lot, but I never got around to it. So I went down this morning after they opened, and sure enough, it was sitting where it has been for the past three days.

Instead of complaining to Owen again, which obviously didn't do any good yesterday, I came right home and called Community Motors, asking to speak to the owner or a manager or something. I talked to the service manager, Earl, and told him about my problem. My truck has been there for more than 2½ months, and there's no way that every single vehicle that's been worked on since Monday could have been there longer than mine. Earl said he'd find out what's going on and call me back, but it's been an hour since then and there's still no word. If my lunch break rolls around and I still haven't heard from him, I'll have Traci drive me down there, and I'll leave in my truck. Either Dinosaur Tire or Grako's could easily fix the front-end in a few hours, so I'll have them do it instead.

The thing that's really bugging me is that by delaying all of this work, they're delaying their payment. The sooner they get my truck finished, the sooner they can have my $1,500. I guess they just don't need the money that badly. If I don't get the problem resolved today, I'm going to let everybody know what a bunch of incompetent retards the Ford dealer has working for them--spend your money elsewhere, because they surely don't need it.

Looks like somebody's making a movie out of the Clive Cussler novel Sahara. (Here's some more info.) It's about damn time. Raise the Titanic was pretty awful, but this sounds like it'll actually be sweet. If so, many more Dirk Pitt movies should follow.

However, if George Clooney gets the part of Dirk Pitt, the movie will blow goats big time. Two other names mentioned in the article are Matthew (ctrl-v :) McConaughey and Hugh Jackman. I can see McConaughey playing the part, but not Jackman. It'd be even better if they found a nobody to play the part.

I think I'm more excited about this movie coming out than any other movie, ever.

My truck now has a working transmission and rear driveshaft. Yeah, it's drivable. Now they've got the front-end work left to do, and a safety inspection. It should be finished today, but knowing those assholes at the Ford dealer, it won't be done until tomorrow. This afternoon when I get off work, I'm going to clean out my camper and get it ready to move, then tomorrow after I register my truck, I'll move the camper out of the back yard and into the driveway, and get ready to go camping this weekend. I think we'll head out to Tucker, where we went last year. I'm probably stupid for counting on them having my truck ready in time, because when I make plans around somebody as unreliable as the Ford dealer, I set myself up for disaster every time.

For the first time in years, a local radio station is playing rock music--for three hours a week. Fucking lame.