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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
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| Monday, July 6th, 2009 | | 7:12 pm |
| | Tuesday, May 12th, 2009 | | 7:29 am |
Barringer Hill
It's about an hour's drive north of here. Quotes from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barringer_Hill . Barringer Hill is a famous geological and mineralogical site in central Texas.
Described by the United States Geological Survey as one of the greatest deposits of rare-earth minerals in the world, the pegmatite was the first place geologists discovered fergusonite, monofergusonite, thorogummite, yttrialite, and nivenite. ... Hess describes the intrusion being surrounded by a graphic granite of peculiar beauty and definite structure, being more like a text-book illustration. A central quartz mass was described more than 40 ft (12 m) across, with distinct white bands, from one-eighth to one-half inch wide. Within the white bands were found fluid inclusions and bubbles that moved only slowly when the specimen was tilted. Between these bands the quartz is glassy and clear. At one place a vug was found large enough for a man to enter, lined with smoky quartz crystals reaching 1000 lb (500 kg) or more in weight. A large crystal of smoky quartz was removed that weighed over six hundred pounds (270 kg). It was 43 inches (1,100 mm) high and 28 inches (710 mm) broad and 15 inches (380 mm) thick (1090 by 710 by 380 mm). The feldspar consisted of an intergrowth of microcline and albite, of a brownish flesh color, and occurred in large masses reaching over 30 feet (9.1 m) in diameter.
...
Of the 47 minerals discovered at Barringer Hill, gadolinite, a radioactive form of yttria, triggered the most interest at the time. ... The seventy-three pound group of crystals (of gadolinite), found in March 1903, was the greatest "find" of record in this mineral; but just one year later, a mass of roughly crystallized gadolinite was found, partly imbedded in the bed-rock at the northeast corner of the hill, that measured thirty-six inches long, eleven inches (279 mm) thick at the widest part, and weighed a little over two hundred pounds. It was apparently free from alteration.
...
Masses of coarsely crystallized fluorite up to four hundred pounds (180 kg) weight were not rare, and some of these had very large faces of the cube and rhombic dodecahedron. Its color varied from dark green to puce and purple, and colorless transparent rough crystals having remarkably perfect cleavage were sometimes observed. Some of the fluorite was true chlorophane and exhibited a brilliant green light when strongly heated and viewed in the dark. One mass was self-luminous, at night, without heating it. Enormous crystals of orthoclase were common, some over five feet in diameter. Quite frequently small veins of very perfect red feldspar crystals (highly-twinned), and upon which albite crystals were attached, were found bordering the fluorite and penetrating it. In the feldspar, well crystallized menaccanite was sometimes observed. Yellow rutile, of the sagenitic variety, was observed in only one instance and then upon smoky quartz crystals. ... Very fair amethysts were found in the west end of the hill, in cavities in the feldspar. Masses of biotite, four feet across, were met with and always indicated the presence near-by of the rare-earth minerals. Of particular note were the unusually long radial lines projecting in many directions from the bodies of ore richest in thorium, uranium and zirconium. Hidden named these occurrences "stars" and eagerly sought for them, as positive "pointers" to ore. At one point he noted a redness of skin and burning sensation when mining these, that he attributed to radioactivity, which was poorly understood at the time.
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Mineral specimens from Barringer Hill eventually found their way into collections across the country, including the Houston Museum of Natural Science, the American Museum of Natural History in New York, Harvard University, and the University of Texas at Austin. What do you do with such a unique geological treasure? The Barringer pegmatite was discovered in 1887 and, until its disappearance beneath the water of Lake Buchanan in 1937, was one of the most significant places in America from a mineralogical standpoint. It's about 90 feet or so down. My tinfoil hat wants to know: What did they find that scared them so much that they buried it beneath a lake? | | Wednesday, April 1st, 2009 | | 5:39 pm |
| | Sunday, March 29th, 2009 | | 7:39 pm |
Roof Damage
I climbed on the roof today to see if there was any damage from that hailstorm. ( Was there? Oh yes. )The whole roof pretty much looked like that. The roof is 12 or 13 years old, so it's not like it has many years of life left in it, but still. We'll probably be going with a nice sheet metal roof, and never have to worry about this again. | | Wednesday, March 25th, 2009 | | 6:03 pm |
| | Monday, March 23rd, 2009 | | 10:18 am |
| | Wednesday, March 18th, 2009 | | 1:12 pm |
| | Tuesday, March 10th, 2009 | | 7:43 pm |
| | Saturday, January 10th, 2009 | | 5:09 pm |
| | Wednesday, December 10th, 2008 | | 8:18 am |
| | Saturday, November 22nd, 2008 | | 4:48 pm |
Moontower Ride
I went on that Moontower Ride last night. The idea was to ride by all the surviving Moontowers. It was scheduled to start at Juan Pelota's, a coffee shop attached to Lance Armstrong's bike shop downtown, at 6:00pm. I biked there direct from work, up in Round Rock. Austin Police have been cracking down on cyclists lately, so the word was that we were to stop at all red lights. This caused a few issues, since there were a couple of hundred people along, and the group kept getting broken up because we couldn't all make it through the green lights downtown. In retrospect, it probably would have been better to have people corking the traffic to keep the group together. We passed a few towers, then stopped for a bit at Drungo Icehouse. They were having some sort of "cyclist appreciation night", with $1 beers for cyclists. I took the opportunity to rehydrate. It was a tad cold, in the mid 40s, and we stayed there a bit too long. A good chunk of the people either stayed there, or went home at that point. Pansies. The rest of us kept going. A few towers later, we stopped at the Long Branch Inn (another bar). We stayed there for longer than we should have, too. A lot more people peeled off here and went for food, including some of the people who were supposed to be running it. Wimps. A couple dozen of us continued on, past the remaining towers, finishing up at the one in Zilker Park sometime after 10pm. I think it was around 18 miles for the ride itself. A few of us went for burgers, and then I headed back home, getting back at around 12:15. Total distance for me: 55.8 miles. Yeah, it was cold. I wore a longsleeve sweatshirt, sweatpants, and gloves. As long as I kept moving, it didn't really seem that cold at all. The gloves REALLY helped - without them, it would have been really uncomfortable. All in all, a lot of fun. | | Sunday, October 26th, 2008 | | 6:15 pm |
Socket A motherboard?
Anyone have an old socket A (Athlon XP) motherboard they don't need anymore? We got new machines for the girls. I was going to use their old systems to cobble together an upgrade for my Linux box, but both of the motherboards from them have issues when powering up. | | Thursday, October 2nd, 2008 | | 8:29 am |
| | Monday, September 15th, 2008 | | 11:07 am |
Harvest Moon Cruise
Saturday night, I went on the Moonlight Cruise. It's this bigass annual bike ride. It started downtown on the Lamar pedestrian bridge at 2AM. I left home at 12:30 and rode down there. Once I hit 38th, I started seeing other people on bikes heading the same direction. Arrived at the bridge to find several hundred people already there. At 2-ish, we all hit the road. It really is impressive seeing that many bikes all heading out in a solid mass of blinky lights. There were at least two people hauling sound systems, several people in costumes, a couple tall bikes. I saw one kid around 8 or 9 on a small BMX bike, riding with his dad. We rode all over the place. From the bridge, we went to Palmer auditorium, across the river to downtown, down W 6th, up to 38th, then Shoal Creek almost to Highland Mall, back down south, and finally wound up on top of a parking garage. I headed back home, got there around 6:30AM. Total distance ridden: 49 miles Much much fun. My camera is crap, so most of the pictures I took didn't come out, but here are some of the ones that did: The crowd at a rest stop. This was at the Randall's parking lot on 35th, near Kerby Lane. Some idiot brought fireworks, and was shooting them off. I guess he hasn't learned lesson 1 on how not to attract the attention of the police. Atomic batteries to power! Turbines to speed! (mildly NSFW) | | Saturday, September 13th, 2008 | | 2:44 pm |
"Let me fix that for you"
I mentioned that I was thinking of putting Gwen's tricycle up on Craigslist, since it sits in the garage and she hasn't ridden it in awhile. "You can't do that! She might still want it! Hey Gwen, do you still want your tricycle?" "YEAH!" Ok, no tricycle on Craigslist. But having been reminded of the tricycle, she wanted to go ride it. She doesn't pedal, she scoots along with her feet. Very cute. She also scoots it up to the top of the driveway, and lets it roll down, making a hard right turn onto the sidewalk. Lots of fun, much wheeee. I noticed that one of the wheels had a bad squeak in it, and didn't spin very freely - obviously too tight. The other wheel would spin, but would rattle - obviously too loose. I pop the wheels off and adjust them, and while I had them off, I put a little chain lube on the axle. Much better, they both spin free and smooth now. "Here Gwen, try it now!" "Ok!" Down the driveway she goes, makes the hard right onto the sidewalk, and SMASH! flips over. Guess it was a bit faster now... I expected screaming, but she was fine, no scrapes or bruises. She thought it was fun and tried it again, but this time dragged her feet to slow down on the turn. | | Saturday, September 6th, 2008 | | 8:56 am |
| | Saturday, August 23rd, 2008 | | 9:05 pm |
| | 6:45 pm |
| | Monday, August 18th, 2008 | | 7:54 am |
Saturday Night
Since losing the truck, I've been biking a lot more to places I would have driven to. It wasn't that big of a stretch, since I've been doing the 12-mile round-trip work commute for 3+ years. But now if I need to go buy something, and the something will fit on my rack, I'll bike. A side effect of this is that my definition of "too far to bike" has changed. Before, if it was more than a couple of miles, I'd have taken the car. Now, I'm not really sure where the upper limit is. That bike ride last weekend was a start. Then I see this ride notice: http://atxbs.com/?q=node/315Hmmm. Midnight Saturday night. Looks like fun. But it starts downtown on the river, and I'm way out in suburbia. Better leave early. 9:30PM, I get ready to leave. It's drizzling. Uh-oh. But it's slowing down. I was going to drop by the post office on the way and mail something, so I decided that if the rain didn't let up by the time I got to the post office, I'd go back home. Fortunately, the rain stopped. I biked down Jollyville, crossed the Arboretum and 360, cut through a neighborhood to Steck and then Shoal Creek, and took the bike lane to 38th, then Guadalupe through downtown to the Lamar pedestrian bridge. 16 miles. I hung out with the people waiting, and more and more people showed up. There were easily over 200 people there. Around 12:20, we start riding, here and there, heading south. No idea of the route we took, I just followed the crowd. It looked pretty cool - a big mass of bicycles, with lots and lots of blinky lights. One guy had a this with a sound system mounted on it, and played music through the whole ride. We biked through St Eds campus, then headed east, crossed I35, over to Pleasant Valley, biked over the dam, headed back to 6th street, and eventually wound up at the Capitol, where things wound down, and people started heading home. 17 miles. I took a different route home than I used coming in. I went up Guadalupe to 38th, then over to Burnet, and took that all the way up to Duval, and from there took Amherst to Parmer and then home. 14 miles. I got back in around 5am. Total distance: 47.1 miles. I was bit zonked the next day, but that was more from the staying out late than anything else. I had fun. I'm thinking the next time there's a full moon on a Friday or Saturday night, I'll be there... | | Saturday, August 9th, 2008 | | 5:15 pm |
How I spent my Friday night
Wendy and the girls are out of town for a few days. The implications of this took a little while to sink in, mainly that I was free in the evenings to do stuff. I biked up to the Drafthouse and saw Dark Knight, and on the way home visited ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) stoda and bfly for a bit (they're on my bike route). Then Thursday, I see this announcement for an informal bike ride, meeting at Spiderhouse at 6pm Friday. Normally, I wouldn't be able to make such a thing, but there was nothing stopping me this time. I checked the maps, figured 10 miles there, bike around a bit, 10 miles back home, no problem. So when I left work on Friday, I biked on down to Spiderhouse, got something eat, and met up with the riders. Students, mostly - I was probably 20 years older than any of them. We biked around, stopping at various places, and eventually wound up down on South Congress. Then people start heading home. We head north, back through downtown, the Capitol, campus, and finally it's just me and one other person heading north, back up to Spiderhouse. She was going to stop there, I was going to keep going home. It's about 11PM. She turns, I keep going. 30 seconds later, POW! My front tire blows out. I didn't hit anything, it just blew. OK, no problem, that's why I carry a spare tube. Change the tire, pump it back up. POW! It blows again, while I'm pumping it up. Crap. I'm thinking I must have pinched the tube. Well, that's OK, that's why I carry a patch kit in addition to the spare tube. Patch the original tube up. Change the tube. Extra double check the tire, to make sure there's nothing poking though it, and I'm not pinching the tube, and there's nothing stuck to the rim. Pump it up. POW! Ok, this is getting old. Patch the tube AGAIN. Change the tube AGAIN. Pump it up AGAIN. POW! By this time, it's pushing midnight. I walk to Spiderhouse and lock my bike up at the rack there. I figured that was a safe place. Go inside, looking for a payphone. I didn't have any phone numbers on me, but figured I'd call a cab. Guess what. In a cafe that caters to students, all of whom have cellphones, there is no payphone. I ask a waitress, and she says the bartender will call me a cab. ("You're a cab!") I dropped a couple bucks in the tip jar. So I get a cab home. The in-laws left their station wagon here while they went on the trip with Wendy and the girls in the Prius. I have the key. I drive it down, get my bike, bring it home, and crash. It's about 1:30AM. I had some errands to run this morning, and didn't get to look at the bike until this afternoon. It seems the bead had separated from the tire, and was unable to hold the tube in under pressure. So no matter what I did, POW! I sent an email to Specialized asking if something like that was covered under warranty. The tire's about 18 months old, and I've probably put close to 2,000 miles on it, but it still had at least another year or two left. No big deal if they don't replace it, but it never hurts to ask. In the meantime, I put on one of the stock tires that came with the bike, so I can have something to ride on. |
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