Land Of The Brew
Finally looks like winter is going to arrive in the Flagstaff area soon. This storm is shaping up to be a pretty significant one, with snowfall totals being measured in feet. Our good buddy Lee was interviewed at KNAU the other day talking about the upcoming winter weather.
While watching Oregon State’s Rose Bowl bid fall apart, my house had a friendly visit from one of our local sheriff’s deputies reminding two of my house guests that they couldn’t park on the streets in the county between November 1st and April 1st… ever. Now being a typical county residence, my house has a two-car driveway, which is usually filled with our two trucks, so I have found myself in a holiday party-throwing quandary.
Before macro climatic warming events began, Flagstaff and the surrounding area used to get snow, a lot of snow. Of course, snow removal equipment needs adequate access around the streets to get rid of all that white stuff, so the city has a pretty cut and dry policy of not parking on the streets overnight, meaning Midnight until 7 AM in most of the city, and 3 AM until 7 AM in the historic downtown area (mainly to accommodate bar employees and patrons). The county, however, hasn’t done that great of a job clarifying the issue.
Searching the web for the Coconino County seasonal parking ordinance will return you with absolutely nothing of substance besides a few interpretations of the ordinance. The actual law is County Ordinance 86-6 so kindly emailed to me by Julie Moyer at the Board of Supervisors office.
Any motor vehicle parked in a manner that presents an obstacle to efficient snow removal operations may be cited.
So does this mean if the vehicle is parked and there is absolutely no snow removal activity happening at that time, that vehicle is legally parked? Or does it mean, as the local deputy had suggested, that vehicle could be construed an obstacle if snow removal were to happen sometime in the future (or past)? I imagine the latter is the case. Now if the county could let me know how I am supposed to clear my driveway on my way home from work so I could use it, without parking on the street to do some quick driveway shoveling, I would be able to sleep at night. And forget about having anyone over to your house that has to drive, lest you will be spending lots of time and money driving to the impound lot. Maybe my lawyer type friends could figure this one out.
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I have been putting off getting into the whole portable music device market for some time, and have had a pretty poor attitude towards iPods over the years, but finally succumbed to the latest offering from Apple. The new iPod Touch has enough things going for it to turn a blind eye to the lack of playable music formats Apple allows and other nagging negatives like iTunes. I bought the 16 GB version with 2.1 firmware for around the same price a 30GB iAudio X5L costs, which makes me sad, but the ability to add useful applications and surf to webapps specifically designed for the touch made it more appealing.
The wifi capability of the iPod Touch is really what made my final decision to purchase one. With the ability to stream Pandora in the brewhouse, there is never a need to battle the evil disc skipping stereo we use. The battery life with streaming music playing is drastically shortened, although I have not had an issue with running out while brewing (so > 7.5 hours). Now if Pandora would keep adding variety to their music and if you could do other tasks while streaming with their app, I think they would have a real winner.
There are of course tons of applications that vary in usefulness available in the iTunes app store. So far I have been using Sportacular for sport scores, FStream for streaming internet radio, and Lux Touch (a Risk game) for wasting time.
I have recently discovered a bunch of nice webapps for the iPod. These are basically websites that have been optimized for the iPod/iPhone and Safari on the device. One such application that I use is thinkpod. My broker (who seems to get most of my money these days) has been developing a relatively usable interface for trading on the iPod. Once thinkpod has the charting abilities that their other mobile platforms have, like thinkAnywhere, I will be using the iPod to continue my portfolio’s downward spiral.
Over the last couple weeks, I have been pretty pleased with the iPod Touch. I will post my findings of good apps/webapps here as I find them, and feel free to leave me some suggestions on what you people use.
It has been 11 months since Barlow’s TPLO surgery and recovery has been a roller coaster ride for him. For most of the summer, things were going as good as could be expected, but in recent weeks we have seen some return to his old ways. Nowadays he wont put much weight on the surgery leg, and is showing some signs of stiffness after exercising. Our vet has cursorily confirmed the surgery is as it should be, but has said we need to treat him as an arthritis dog. Lucky for Barlow, that means losing some weight. He loves to diet. Hopefully the next few weeks will show some strengthening of the leg. Time will tell, but until then, fetching has become a thing of the past.
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Telluride was Telluride yet again. Flagstaff Brewing Company was once again representing at the Blues and Brews festival. This year’s festival was marked by record breaking crowds, record breaking beer consumption, and (in my book) record breaking sunshine. This was probably the best festival in a few years as far as the music lineup was concerned. John Hiatt was probably the biggest surprise, probably because I haven’t seen him in forever. Warren, Trucks (both), Dirty Dozen, and Joan all were up to festival standards. For a special treat Warren Haynes and Susan Tedeschi-Trucks, with Ron Holloway, preformed a great set up at the conference center Saturday night, making for a sleepy Sunday morning.
The breweries were out in force as usual on Saturday morning. Despite adding a couple breweries to the roster, overcrowded beer lines were standard. We drained the three FBC kegs in record time, and I would venture to guess most breweries were out of beer within 2.5 hours. Overall, one of the more memorable festivals in recent times. Until next year Telluride!
63 weeks, 4 days