Badges? The veggie car don't need no stinkin' badges

Here in California there is a new law. It seems that if you drive a hybrid car, you can buy a sticker that allows you to drive in the carpool (diamond) lane. Well, it turns out that the sticker is kind of ugly and that hybrid owners are a bit anal. This combination adds up to a bunch of cry-babies. Will forwarded me this very funny string of hybrid sticker bitchers.

Seems like most of these foolios live down in SoCal, where the traffic is really bad and they don't like to muck up their precious hybrids with a ugly sticker. Oh boo-hoo! I guess you folks aren't as "green" as you think, since non of them actually carpools. See, if you carpool you don't need a sticker. Wow, what a concept!

Well, the veggie car does not need any sticker! That is because I drive a few folks to work most everyday. Today there was a total of three people in the car on the way to work. However, even though I had three people in the car I did not drive in the carpool lane. That is because there is no carpool lane on Hwy 17, which is the way I get to work everyday.

I also don't subscribe to the "Ass, Gas, Grass or Cash" policy, because everyone rides for free!

I guess I have something in common with the SUV drivers... I also think most hybrid drives suck. (Except for Will, he is cool)

Technorati Tags: Veggie Car

Virtual Podcast

I have always wanted to do podcasting. However, I don't have a fast connection, or a newer computer, so I have not done any yet. I was going to get a new computer and DSL and I was looking forward to doing podcasts. I wanted to share "my music" with all you out there. I had read in Rolling Stone how "They" weren't cracking down on people posting music in podcasts. Well, I guess times have changed, as you can read from this podcaster. Seems that "They" are now suing folks, so no more podcasts of cool music. That is a shame, because I wanted to do it too. I have only just recently looked for podcasts and I actually found some. I downloaded one and listened to it... It was lame. These guys were talking and talking. By the time they got around to playing music, the song they played was "Highway to Hell"... Lame.

Anyway, I have decided to do my own podcast, without recording anything, like me talking or whatnot. Just music for you to download. So here is my podcast, broken down into individual songs. I have found some good songs from bands I like and have put them in a list, just for you. Download them and play them in order and now you have my podcast... It is just split up into individual songs and I am not doing any talking. Just songs.

Podcast #1 Jam Bands
Bazooka Speaker Funk- Keller Williams
The Elevator- Particle
Devon 2000 Space Jam Live-Dr Didg
Pipe Bomb-Vinyl
Pudding- Jessica Lurie
Breath- Keller Williams
Eighty Cylinders- Yonder Mountain String Band
Square Dance Messiah- Hypnotic Clambake

Technorati Tags: Podcast Music Free MP3

Big Sur, like two weeks ago.

Went to Big Sur again two weekends ago. It was a nice day. We went down and had lunch at Nepenthe. Nepenthe is a very cool resturant, located on a cliff above the Pacific Ocean. While in Big Sur, we also stopped off and saw the waterfall that is in Andrew Molera State Park. I bet you did not know that there was a waterfall in Andrew Molera, but there is.

Check out the views from Nepenthe



Here is the waterfall in Andrew Molera State Park. Kind of small, but it is there.



The sun going down over Point Sur



The view south from the Bixby Creek Bridge



Technorati Tags: Big Sur Nepenthe

The Jessica Lurie Quartet

Went and saw Jessica Lurie last night at Don Quixotie's (click here for mp3's). There were not many folks there at all, but I saw Aric, so that was cool. You might know Jessica from her last project, Living Daylights. I saw the Living Daylights play at the High Sierra Music Festival a few times in the past.

It was a really great show, and Jessica is singing now and sounds great. I bought the CD and it is most excellent. I guess Jessica is living now in Brooklyn, but still has one foot in Seattle. I of course had to do some name dropping after the show and said I know Marc Fendel. I asked her if she had heard his new project, Swampdweller yet. She said no, but had just done a improv recording with him for some big band stuff, so that was great to hear.

Well, now you know the inside scoop about musicians you never heard of. Make sure to follow the links and download the free mp3s! Free mp3s are cool.

Technorati Tags: Jessica Lurie Music Free MP3

Runnin on Veggie (Runnin on): Tales of the Veggie Car Part II

I got a comment left by someone that liked the first installment of the adventures of the Veggie Car. Anyway, here is a short bit I wrote for the employee newsletter that will be coming out this week... At work, where you won't read it.

Since I am lazy (and want to keep you up to speed), I just thought I would repost it here so I don't have to write anything.

Check it out...

Runnin’ on Veggie.

I commute 60 miles everyday, but has not paid for gas in four months. How do I do it? I converted my 1983 Mercedes 300 D to run on Waste Vegetable Oil that I get for free from the back of restaurants.

How does it work?

The short answer is: “Surprisingly well”.

The longer more technical answer with some history follows:

The Diesel Engine was first displayed for the public in 1900 at the World Exhibition in Paris. This new engine design amazed engineers and the public because it ran on peanut oil. Rudolph Diesel was a forward thinker, as you can see from his quote from the early 1900.

"The use of vegetable oils for engine fuels may seem insignificant today, but such oils may become, in the course of time as important as petroleum and the coal tar products of the present time."

Approximately 80 years ago, the petroleum industry created a gasoline fuel for these engines and they were nice enough to name the new blend “diesel”. Since that time, the original use of peanut oil was all but forgotten.

The use of vegetable oil in the diesel engine was re-discovered in the 1970s, and people started experimenting with this new “old” technology. Over the course of the past 30 years many people have experimented with veggie oil in their cars and have come up with a practical way for it to be used in today’s diesel engines.

Now that you have a bit of history, I will go into the technical details of the car itself. The theory behind this technology is you start the car on diesel, and when it is warmed up, you switch it to veggie oil. A few miles before you get to your destination you switch it back to diesel. Switching it back to diesel purges the fuel injector system of the vegetable oil, so when you go to start up the car the next time, it is not gummed up with cold veggie oil.

To get any diesel car or truck to run on veggie oil, you just need to install an extra fuel delivery system that can be switched on or off, that delivers hot veggie oil to the engine. One also needs a filter for the veggie oil and a way to heat the oil up before it goes into the fuel injectors. That is it! No internal modifications to the engine are needed. Just get that veggie oil hot and filtered and it can go right into the engine. Hard to believe, but it is true.

Burning veggie oil instead of diesel is also better for the environment and better for your engine. Vegetable oil is a natural lubricant, so it extends the life of your engine. Also, burning veggie oil has less particulate matter and burns no sulfur (burning sulfur creates acid rain). All in all, running vegetable oil in your vehicle is much better for the environment than even conventional gasoline engines. When you use vegetable oil, you are also reusing resources and saving them from the landfill. (Actually, the waste vegetable oil does not always go in the landfill, it is usually collected by a tallow company and fed to livestock-Yummy!)

Not only is it better for the engine and the environment, but running on waste vegetable oil is FREE! Yes, you heard that right, it is possible to get the waste oil for free from most restaurants. Restaurants have to pay a tallow company to haul their waste veggie oil away, so they are usually happy to let someone take the oil, so they don’t have to pay for removal.

Once you have a source of oil, you pump it out of the barrel into some kind of container and take it home. At home you need to filter it. The setup uses a 1 micron sock filter that drains into a 55 gallon barrel. Also, it is best to heat the veggie oil to burn off any water that might be mixed in with it, since water is very bad for your fuel injectors. The barrel has a hot water heater element installed in the 55 gallon barrel that the filtered oil is stored in. You just turn it on and the oil heats up and the water evaporates. After that it is just a matter of putting the oil in the gas tank and driving away.

The whole conversion cost $3,000. ($1,500 for the car, $700 in parts and $800 in labor) and since it has been converted, there has not been any repair costs, or gas costs. The costs involved, after the initial conversion are the purchase of sock filters to filter the oil. These cost about $3.50 a piece and last for at least 20 gallons of filtering, and usually they last for more. The car runs just as well as it does on regular diesel fuel with no loss of power and the gas mileage is the same. The only way to tell the car uses vegetable oil for fuel is the exhaust smells like BBQ chicken!

Technorati Tags: Veggie Car

Local Bigfoot Sightings

Being a member of the Bigfoot Discovery Museum, I get the inside scoop on any local sightings here in the Felton area with the best documented sighting being this one. That being said, I always like to hear about sightings from the BFRO. The BFRO just posted a new sighting from the Ventana Wilderness. You can read about it here. I have been out that way, but have never seen a bigfoot. However, I do have pictures from the area this sighting took place. Check them out.



From the description of the BFRO sighting in the Ventana Wilderness, I am pretty sure that this shot was taken right in the general area of the sighting. You can see the brush is pretty thick.



Here is a shot of the Carmel River.



As always, you can view more pictures of the Carmel River in the Ventana Wilderness at my Flickr Account I also uploaded at Flickr all my pictures of Round Lake if anyone is interested, you just might have to poke around the site to get them all.

Technorati Tags: Bigfoot Ventana Wilderness

Felton Jam House session 5 posted.

Yep, we finally have another Feltonjamhouse.com session posted. Served up hot and tasty for your listening pleasure. Go there right now and download them all. Don't forget to expierence my great singing on the song, Le Monstray. It is a song about a shirt that is about some wine.

technorati tag:Music mp3

Irresponsible pet owners should burn in hell!

Well, it has been a sad day here for the last couple of days as our cat "Mayhem" has been missing. To make a long story short, it seems that a neighbor's dog got out, ran the neighborhood and ended up attacking and mauling our cat. Luckily, we have other neighbors that are very nice and saw the whole thing happen. They rescued our cat and took it to the Vet and paid $800 out of their own pocket to pay the Vet and save our cat. We just got Mayhem back yesterday and he is pretty tore up. All kinds of stitches, and now he has three "drain tubes" in his chest and belly. Also, it looks like some permanent eye damage and possible brain damage. The cat is seriously messed up, and it still might not live. He is under 24 hour watch and the vets are coming back again today to check on the poor guy.

The owner of the dog does not seem to care (We know who it is) and has not tried to contact us. Looks like I am going to have to write him a letter to see if he will take responsibility for the actions of his pet. The guy is a complete dumb-ass so I doubt if he will do anything. If not, it will be my first time suing anyone. I was raised not to sue anyone, but people have to pay for their mistakes and take responsibility for their animals.

Of course, he could have skipped all this drama if he actually took the time to train the dog not to run the neighborhood when it escapes, but that obviously did not happen.

I just want the cat to be ok. We are so glad that Mayhem is back home because we were going crazy not knowing where the cat was or what happened to it.

cat Dog Attack

View From the Summit.

Went on a small drive on Saturday. Ended up on Highland road up on the summit in the Santa Cruz Mountains. I took a couple of pictures.

Here is a view from the summit. That is the Monterey Peninsula the distance. There is snow on top of Mount Caramel, but you can't really see it the picture.



Also saw a cool waterfall.



Did not see too much snow, but people were blogging about it, because it did snow on Friday night.

You can check out other people's pictures of the Santa Cruz snow at these links. Here is a picture and another one here (Check out the gnarly pict of Hwy 17!) Here is another picture of snow and here are a few more.

Snow on Hwy 17

There was snow on Highway 17 on the way home from work today. I have never seen that much snow on the summit before. Luckily I had my trusty cameraphone and was able to take some shots. Here they are.













I am glad I had the cameraphone. That thing is fun.

In other blogging news, I have added a section on the right of all my on-line profiles, so you can check it out.

Make sure to check out flagr.com It is a brand new website where you post your favorite places on the earth. The idea is to fill it up with all kinds of insider info on what is good and where to find it. Very Web 2.0. Anyway, it has only been on-line like five days or so. Hopefully it will become very popular. I signed up for it and you can see my two posts when you check my profile in the right hand box, or just click here.

I also made my bloglines RSS feed reader public (also known as a blogroll). Now you can check out the RSS feeds I view. They are on the right, or you can check them out here.

Snow Santa Cruz

Whoa, funny blog here.

So I have not really looked around and found any blogs that are good. I have found many blogs that are ok, but none that I think are really good. I don't know if I think my blog is any good, or if anyone reads it, but that is besides the point.

I was surfing around the net and found this blog, dad gone mad

It is a very well written blog and reading it I actually laughed out loud.

Now that we have that understanding, how about some pictures?

This is round lake. We went backpacking to this nice lake in the Sierras last summer. This view is actually from our campsite. If you ever go to round lake, make sure you look for this campsite. It is up on the hill a bit, but it sure is nice.





This is Bryce Canyon. We went there last spring. This is part of a longer trip that we took to Utah. If you visit my flicker photo page, you can see more.

Backpacking camping Pictures

The Meat Puppets rock and so does the internet.

I was just listening to the Meat Puppets. They are a really great band that I have been a fan of since the early 90's. I have bought most of their albums and they really are a talented bunch of LSD taking fools. I think I heard somewhere along the line they take LSD, but who really knows.

I just like to keep the myth alive.

I wondered if other bloggers were talking about the Meat Puppets, so I checked on Technorati but not too many folks are interested in the Meat Puppets, and the ones that are, mostly know them because of the Nirvana unplugged album. However, when I was snooping around, I found Derek Bostrom's webpage. He is the drummer of the Meat Puppets. While I was there checking out his page, I found out that the band had been broken up since 1996. I had no idea, but hey, I am getting older these days and don't really keep up on my favorite bands anymore. I have a poster from 1994 I got at a Fillmore show that has been hanging on various walls at many places since I got it.

Here is a picture of the poster that I just took with my cameraphone and then emailed to my flicker account. The wonders of modern science.

Even though the Meat Puppets have been broken up for like 10 years, they still have new product. Just recently I bought a Meat Puppets DVD that has a bunch of poor quality video of various shows they played. I really like the DVD, even though the video quality is crap. The sound quality is fine, and the video rocks in general. I also like the interview with Thurston Moore from Sonic Youth. He tells this great story about the first time he heard the Meat Puppets (Sonic Youth was opening). All the "Punks" kept yelling at Sonic Youth to "Play Faster" and then the Meat Puppets came out and played so fast that the kids were blown away. At least that is what he said in the video.

I remember the first time I saw them was at the Universal Amphitheater around 1991 and they were opening for the Violent Femms. I had never heard them before, and by the end of the set, I was hooked. It is rare that I instantly like any band, but these guys were rockin'. I really liked the harmonies, the "country" sound and the fast beat.

If you want to hear their set, here is a link to a Fillmore show that was from the same tour that hooked me when I first saw them. Check out the free mp3's of the Meat Puppets live set from 1991.

I think the Meat Puppets were one of the great underground bands that stayed underground till the end. That is cool for the fans, but it kind of sucks for the band, since they never "made it big". Rock and Roll is a hard business and you have to give them props for getting out there and playing all the small clubs and gigs. I just think they were a good band that was unique with their own sound. The Meat Puppets were a group of very talented musicians that hold an important place in the history of Rock.

Music Meat Puppets

Butano State Park

Went to Butano State Park today. It is a nice State Park, even though it is small. I took some pictures with my cameraphone. That thing takes surprisingly good pictures. Here are some of the better ones.

This is some Turkey Tail mushrooms


These were looking good. Rumor has it you can eat them and they are not only tasty, but good for you. I am not going to try.







This Flower was blooming.


I am not sure what kind of flower this was, but there were a bunch of them around. It looks like things will be looking really good in a couple of weeks or so.

Little Butano Creek

This is Little Butano Creek. It was running a bit muddy, and I did not see any fish. The picture is a bit blurry, but still looks ok when the picture is small.








Another shot of Little Butano Creek



This tree looked good in the sunshine



I am always a fan of moss on trees. As you can see, the sun came out for a bit today. It has been raining and raining for the last week or so, and will rain some more next week.





The Forget Me Nots were blooming too.



This was a good excursion, and it was not very crowded. I highly recommend Butano State Park for either a short visit, or overnight camping.

State Park Redwoods

My First Google Earth Post.

Hey there. Well, I thought I would post my first Google Earth file for you all to view. That is if you have Google Earth. This is a flyover of one day of our honeymoon. This area represents the "back road" from Vancouver to Kamloops Britsh Colombia Canada. To view this flyover and have it look good, you have to change the settings. Go to "Tools" then "Options" then the "Control" tab, then click the "Advanced" box. On "Driving Directions Tour Options" put "70" in the "camera tilt angle" and "1500" in the "Camera Range" box. Then press play and kick back and relax. Check it out because it is "just like Beggars Canyon back home". You can download the file here. Note it is a zip file because I could not figure out how to post a klm file.

Vancover to Kamloops

Technorati tags: Google Earth

Weekend Update.

Ok, three posts in one day, some kind of record. How about a weekend update? This weekend was, as always, too short. I took the day off on Friday and I worked in the yard. I transplanted some plants. Actually, they were primroses. I planted them like three years ago, and they keep coming back and flowering. So I decided to round them all up and plant them in one space. They look pretty good, and I did not have to pay for the flowers which is always good.

Also, I got the numbers from my tax return back. I am now rich.

Saturday we decided to go to IKEA and get some stuff. Bought a Tunheim Shelf and some kind of bench to sit on that stores your shoes inside. Saturday night we went to a party. It was a combo birthday party for a 1 year old and a 40 year old. It was pretty mellow. Then we came home and I started to put together the IKEA furniture. That always takes some time, but I was able to build the stuff. Note to self: IKEA furniture that has hinges always take longer to put together than IKEA furniture that does not have hinges.

Sunday, we went to a brunch that was also a party for Amy. You can check out her myspace profile here. That was fun. Then came back and worked on more IKEA furniture, and then moved said furniture around. It is still a mess and today is Wednesday, but we are figuring it out. Sunday afternoon we went to Cirque Du Solis, "Corteo" in San Jose. I have to admit, it was very cool. Quite the impressive production. Totally worth the $85 a ticket.

We also watched some movies. We watched:
1) "A Perfect Man" with Heather Locklear and Hillary Duff. It sucked.
2) "Broken Flowers" with Bill Murray. It was pretty good until the end. The end sucked.
3) "Elizabethtown" with Orlando Bloom. This was a totally terrible movie.
4) "Alone in the Wilderness" with someguy. This was really, really great. It was a documentary about a guy that moved up to Alaska and built his own cabin with hand tools. The whole thing he built himself with just handtools. Then he lived there for 35 years. It was really great!
5) WalMart-The High Cost of Low Prices. This was totally good. I already hated walmart, but now I hate them even more. Highly recommended.

Some of the other movies we have seen in the last couple of weeks include...
1) Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills. This was pretty good. I think the weird looking father did it.
2) Turtles Can Fly. This was a movie made in Iraq that was kind of disturbing. Foreign movies are always strange.
3) Speak. This is an excellent movie. I thought Mr Neck was great.
4) Female Trouble. This was a John Waters movie and it stared Divine. Divine was a good actor, and the movie was pretty funny. Now I like to call people "Dawn Davenport" because I think it is funny. They don't know what I am talking about, but who cares if I think it is funny.
5) Wedding Crashers. It was ok. There has not been a really funny movie made in a while I think.
6) Crooklyn. A Spike Lee Joint that I had not seen. I was not impressed. His other movies are better.

Spread between those movies were some episodes of the L Word and Little House on the Prairie.

Ok then, how is that for a post?

Some really cool Unique Fountains

Ok, this post is about fountains. Not Fountains of Wayne, but very nice, custom fountains that you can afford. Of course, I don't know if you want the fountains, or if you even have a house to install them in. I just think they are great designs and so I am providing a link. Did I mention that these fountains are designed by my very own Pop? Yes, it is true, so check out the tallent that runs in the family. Click here to view the Unique Fountains.

technorati tag:Fountain

Felton Jam House Session 4 is posted.

Yep, that is right. Session 4 of Felton Jam House is posted for your download pleasure. I hope you like it. Check it out, right here.

technorati tags:music mp3