Getting pumped thinking about "Winter Hell-Hike 2006"

Come on people, who is in? 13 hours shivering in a tent. 10 miles up hill post-holing through snow with a snowboard on your back. snowblind, frostbitten toes, camp coffee- winter hell hike will purify your soul.

Where will we go this year???

This is my wife.


In one way or another she is gonna be president.


So y'all better step back.

ps. matt you missed my skillz, next time I know you will be there.

east coast- relax
west coast- wake up and suck the java.

A time for Apples and Steelhead.


Sunday we made cider and picked apples with lots of kids. It was wild man. I have lots of digestive problems now.

Saturday I went to attempt steelhead fishing with my boys at the confluence of the Clearwater River and the Snake River at Clarkston, Washington. I had no clue what I was doing but I did learn something... Apparently, these oversized trout like to swim along the Idaho side of the river and I did not have the device to blow up my raft or have the ability to fish in Idaho legally. You can fish in a boat with either a ID or WA license but if you are landlocked you have to be licensed for the given bit of earth you stand on. We caught two bass then gave up. Of course bass are the one fish out here that they warn you about eating. Although, a little extra mercury is not going to change our already crazy disposition.

I came home and took out three books at the library. I think I was presenting my lure outside of the steelhead's hangout. From what I read, they hang out near the bottom. I'm going to try this jig-float setup next, I have until June to land one of these beauties. Meanwhile, I can read Moby Dick to take my mind off my troubles.

Im a weasel.

I'm a weasel.

How to create websites to influence others, get famous or get fired.

I was thinking about fixing up my original website that is located on the personal.palouse.net server. Just out of curiousity I thought I would google the server to see what other palouse inhabitants have posted. The results seemed tame enough a guy named Joe's website and a breeder of some long nosed dog. So I took a look at the sites, a little bummed I couldn't find anything else happening around my homebase.

Turns out Joe likes Guns and explosives and helped to put together a big festival in Lewiston, Idaho involving using high powered rifles to shoot things into oblivion. He was also fired, from what I gathered, for using a goverment computer during his extensive website creation. One of my favorite spots on the site was the posted letters from people who wanted assistance on making bombs from everyday materials that he declined. http://www.boomershoot.org/

He worked for PNNL a prominent goverment laboratory of the Northwest. You can see his "Pacific Northwest National Laboratory versus Joe" story at http://www.pnnl.info/.

On a side note, I learned from his blog of a similar situation of a flight attendent fired for posing for some shots in her uniform and posting them to her blog. She got fired and she is fighting too.
I really want to post a picture of her but she might sue me. Check out the Queen of the sky.

No Post .

Yesterday one the first 9/11 anniversary that I really remember pondering about what happened that day on the East Coast. I was really tempted to make a post, but in a way I didn't want to post anything on the topic. I think my focus on terrrorist issues and other American apocalyptica is result of that dang "Long Emergency Book" I read this Summer.

Although, I disagree with the author of the book, it was an enjoyable read (at some level?!) and I still check his online journal every now and then. He pushes his rant harder and harder each time, and now he is claiming that the price of natural gas to heat America this coming winter along with other economic problems is going to crush this country just in time for the Christmas season. According to his figures, "natural gas was $3 dollars/1000 cu feet in 2003 and is around $12 dollars/unit at the present and the price could climb to over $15 dollars/unit."

Some of the stuff he writes about concerning the end of oil economy sounds nice (if you mentally delelete the peroid of chaos and anarchy) such as, leading your donkey drawn wagon into town to sell the produce from your garden watching Wal mart and Mcdonalds culture disintegrate into ruins, while we dance around the nuclear reactor...wait, what?

Any way this stuff was making me worried about even thinking about moving to the south. The book noted the strong connection between guns and religion in the region that translates into something like rebel vigilante-ism in the event of a crisis. Anyways, I am not waisting time on this fear anymore. If I move to North Carolina and the big Hurricane hits, my family will either survive or not. I will not live in fear because of what could happen. This seems easy until I consider that I never want my children to suffer unneccesary pain. You just can't be fearless when you gots kids.

Transgenic mosquitoes.

Since we are planning a move to North Carolina I decided to take a few minutes to see what jobs are available at the present. I was searching the job base at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. I came across a Post Doc in Entomology and even know I don't have my PhD. , I thought I might take a look just for kicks and to see what's happening in the Raleigh bug world.

The position was being offered in Dr. Fred Gould's Lab working on engineering a transgenic mosquito that would be used to combat mosquito-borne disease. The plan is to insert a gene that would be later be activated and would prove lethal to the bug. Apparently, this "genetic package" would operate when a promoter was triggered by an environmental response such as day length. Day light hours and temperature commonly effect changes in the insect life-cycle.

Doing a quick search to find a bit more about the subject, I found that another lab is taking a different stab at the transgenic mosquitoe craze. Junitso Ito's lab at Case Western Reserve, Ohio is working to create transgenic skeeters that have antiparasitic genes in their midgut epithelium. These critters get to be carefree and disease-less and live fruitful lives, as long as the technique turns out to be successful. If not, I guess it is back to spraying the shit out of them.

I think I prefer helping the mosquitoes out with these parasites that hitch a ride in them, instead of making them go "pop" after they mate. It just seems harsh to lead them on by letting them go through all the trouble of surviving from larvae stage to adult, mate selection and egg laying for nothing. But either way, transgenic mosquito engineer has to be a pinnacle of uber-geek jobs and I would probably be put myself in que!

Sources:
http://www.cals.ncsu.edu:8050/agcomm/magazine/fall01/cmntysrv.htm
http://www.cals.ncsu.edu/entomology/gould/
http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v417/n6887/abs/417452a_fs.html&dynoptions=doi1022170907
(photo and figure used w/o permission)

This summer has been a whirlwind. I got a new job, my wife is in turbo mode to obtain her PhD and we hauled the kids across the country in late July for vacation. It has been taxing mentally and physically and everybody is now recovering. The picture to the left is a rare moment of rest for me and my boys taken in June.

Wifething also got me a canoe in June. It is super great but, I don't have a vehicle big enough to get me and the canoe to the river. The picture depicts our friend from her lab who delivered the vessel to our house.