Phlegmatic

Holy crap

madhatte — Sun, 10 Nov 2013 18:33:06 GMT

Has it really been two years since I posted here? Weird.

The "SWAT Team" Story

madhatte — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 13:58:52 GMT

I debated for a bit on how much of this to tell, because I can really get to rambling when I'm of a mind to, but in this case I decided to just stick to the events of the one day in question, and offer as little foreword and afterword as I can get away with.

In 1997 I was sub-contracted to do forest measurements for the BLM's Current Vegetation Survey program in western Oregon. The boss would hand out "packets" of work, ten plots to a packet, and we'd go get more when we were done. The plots paid $1200 apiece, and my partner and I split the cash 50/50. It was a pretty intense study model, so this was actually a pretty reasonable price for the quality and quantity of work we were expected to produce. Our habit was to camp near moving water, and to drive to work sites and back daily. Once a week we'd go into town for laundry and groceries and such. We tried to camp at least a half-mile from each other in order to stay out of each other's hair; evidently it worked because we're still good friends. The moving water provided a place to bathe and also clean-enough water to boil for coffee. Lake water always smelled funny to me.

In this case, we were camped along the Siuslaw River, just downstream from Siuslaw Falls, and at a road intersection where a small stream (Dogwood Creek? Apple Creek? I don't remember) crossed. There was a cluster of gravel piles for road maintenance there, so we simply camped on opposite sides of the gravel pits in order to preserve personal space. At the time, I was living in a '74 Suburban. With the rear seats folded down, I had room for a narrow futon mattress, all of my gear, and a bunch of books and music. It wasn't a bad way to live at all. My partner had a small camp trailer, so I'd do my cooking there in the mornings and evenings. When the sun went down, I'd wander back across the gravel pit to my truck and read until it was time to sleep.

After a couple of weeks camped in this place, on a rainy night, a truck towing a trailer pulled up along the road. A lady came out and knocked on the trailer door. My partner and I were inside drinking beers and listening to a ballgame. She asked if she and her husband could camp there. Well, it was public land, so we couldn't say no, but it was awful nice of her to ask, and we told her so. They were there for a couple of weeks before they moved on. Somewhere in there a couple of kids showed up in their camp, looking to be about 12 and 16, respectively. The older one had a quad which he'd ride all over the gravel pit. They were polite and outdoorsy and didn't bug us at all.

One day we came back from the woods (to the woods? not a paradox, because camp is camp) and they were gone. Oddly, they had left a bunch of stuff, some of it obviously not garbage. In particular, there was a nice canoe that had seen very little use. Well, the older kid showed up a couple of times riding the quad; turns out the family had moved down the road a mile or so in order to not run afoul of the rule permitting camping on public land for two weeks. We were not under this time restriction, as our contract stipulated that we could camp for the duration of the job on any BLM land.

Eventually we got to the end of the "packet" and were divvying up the cleanup work before moving on to the next site. Partner got up before I did, and was gone while I was making breakfast. About halfway through my second cup of coffee, I heard a helicopter. Didn't think much of it until I heard it again, and then again. I scanned the sky for smoke, but there was none to be seen. The helicopter was circling about a half-mile from me at an elevation about 1000 feet above the ground. It kept circling, and I began to get annoyed by the noise. I stepped outside to take a closer look, and heard more noise, this time closer. In fact, it was on the opposite side of the very gravel pit that I was in, but the source of the noise was obscured by two piles of gravel. I walked toward the noise intending fully to clomp up over the second pile and give somebody an earful.

Well, I clomped, but instead of dishing an earful, I received an eyeful. There, on the other side of the pile, was a full SWAT team, probably fifteen or twenty strong, armored car and all. There were two ambulances, and also a second helicopter. One balaclava'd officer turned to another and asked, "D'you think I should bring the sniper rifle?" The other replied, "Couldn't hurt". It was about then that the news crew arrived. I read the names of several local towns from the doors of cars and trucks -- Eugene, Cottage Grove, Veneta. The news crew was from Eugene.

This was in the days before cell phones were widespread, and I didn't have a CB in my truck, and didn't expect my partner to be near his anyway, so I got kind of nervous about the possibility of him barreling into camp unaware that there were guns drawn. I had no idea yet what this was all about, so I asked the sniper guy what was going on. He was cagey, as police are, telling me only that there was an "operation" going on and that I should go back to wherever I came from. I asked who was in charge, and was pointed in the direction of (what else) the news crew. There was a sheriff there; evidently this was his show. He was from whatever county Reedsport is in (I don't feel like looking it up). I told him who I was, and what I was doing there, and what I was concerned about, and asked what I should do. He said, off-handedly, "well, if he runs, he'll probably go that way" -- pointing upstream toward Loraine -- "so don't go there". My partner had gone the opposite direction that morning, so he was believed to be out of harm's way, but my goal was in the direction the sheriff was pointing, which basically put me out of business for the day. I figured I might as well at least be there when my partner got back so I could explain what was going on.

After awhile, the place emptied out. There were gunshots in the distance, far enough away that I couldn't make out an approximate caliber. About then my partner limped in on two flat tires and a banged-up rim. We pulled the tires, threw 'em in my truck, and headed for town, the better to be away from whatever was going down, and to get the tires fixed.

As we returned to camp that evening, the procession of police, emergency, and news vehicles passed us on their way out. Late that night, while sitting in the trailer drinking beer as usual, we were visited by an unusually mannish-looking woman who introduced herself as a detective from Eugene. She asked if we knew the people up the road, and what did we know about them? We asked why the questioning and why the late-night visit; she told us in a confidential tone (innocent until proven guilty and all) that our neighbors had been arrested in conjunction with a series of car thefts stretching along the coast from Astoria to Brookings! Moreover, shots had been fired, notably by the older of the two kids. The whole lot of them were in custody, and would we pick them out of a line-up, please?

Well, they'd done us no harm, and we didn't know anything about any car thefts, but it turned out the canoe was stolen, as was the quad. I don't remember my partner agreeing to cooperate at all; I agreed to point at pictures in a photo line-up to simply say "I have seen this person", but nothing more. Later it turned out that the adults were thrill-seeking tweekers who stole stuff for the rush. Apparently they didn't sell any of it, just left it behind (hence the mysterious canoe), and had been on a spree for a couple of months already before they pulled into our camp. Weird.

Punchline came a couple of days later when we turned in our work. The boss had seen the news coverage, recognized our camp from the aerial view, and thought it was us! His first words were "how did you get out of jail so quick?"

-- the gravel pit looks totally different now, and from the debris in the river, it looks like the bridge has been replaced. That was where our neighbors were -- somewhere up the road across the river.

Is it... it is! Another placeholder!

madhatte — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 02:18:13 GMT

busted wrist/consequences
game cameras
convergence technology
goddamn corporate shills
government wackery
cool noises
fire season
El Nino/La Nina
20th Reunion

It stays crunchy, even in milk

madhatte — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 01:26:40 GMT

So: busy as usual.

3rd Annual BEB party, this year in Tampa, FL. A great time was had by all.

PNW ArboristSite Get-Together in Springfield, OR. Another hoot and holler.

Training in various places and on various subjects.

More writing, mostly procedures and papers for work. One of my procedures is being adopted by the USFS as a training aid. Kind of proud of that.

Finally out-waited the boss and got that raise I was supposed to get forever ago.

Have seen some cool stuff, met some cool people, been in some cool places.

Loved and lost, but didn't lose a friend out of the deal. This is kind of important because the lady in question is a good friend and it would be tragic to lose that over a silly old romance gone kaput.

Finally catching up on old bills from I-don't-even-remember-when.

Have a ton of pictures, but don't even know where to begin as far as posting them goes.

Placeholder! Shut yer trap!

madhatte — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 06:24:36 GMT

Found a bunch of notes from ca. 2000. Evidently I compiled a bunch of emails during a server change or something. Some interesting stuff in there from The Boat and such. FB friends have already seen a quote from those archives.

A word or two

madhatte — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 17:32:16 GMT

Still alive, still busy. Fire season is over. Took a few days of vacation, visited the desert and the mountains. Didn't take a whole lot of pictures. I don't know why. Drove a bit over 1000 miles in 4 days, slept at elevations varying from 2000 to 6000 feet. Now, to head North! Gonna need a vacation after this.

0.000001 inch accuracy

madhatte — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 21:20:44 GMT

stood on one foot for almost five minutes until I fell over but the couch was there to catch me so everything's OK

With Sprinkles

madhatte — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 21:19:19 GMT

where did my USB stick go

where

Oh Man Yeah Now

madhatte — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 21:18:23 GMT

Drinkin' coffee now

It is May 15, 2010

madhatte — Sun, 16 May 2010 03:56:36 GMT

A few things:

projects coming to fruition

times changing for better or worse

shifting power dynamics, both family and professional

entropy catches up with the best of plans

new friends, skills, associations

seasons change quickly and just in time

obsolescence for fun and profit

gravels? grovel!

flashlight

chairs

yesterday don't bother me at all

keep on truckin'

Incremental Change

madhatte — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 04:41:03 GMT

I've been using Linux Mint as my primary OS for about 3 years now. However, some of my machines were not -- how you say? -- "compliant". Yes. Well. All of my gear is about the same age and so it all failed at the same time. As I replace dead HDD's, I am purging my non-professional world of non-Open-Source software once and for all. I've had an excuse or two for awhile for keeping this or that alive, but now, I don't see anything I can't do with a VM or WINE to fill in the blanks. Gimme a couple of weeks here and I should be almost copyright-free at home.

Mr. Mooney: Shut it. You know how things work. Snark at a cat if you need to let it out.

Last 48 hours

madhatte — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 19:38:05 GMT

At work Friday, I spent the morning on the phone with vendors trying desperately to get a part which has proven itself to be built of Unobtanium. Early afternoon I bucked big blowdowns out of a road separating a Reserve Natural Area from a proposed timber sale.

After work I went to a co-worker's house to autopsy a tree. It was a non-native species, so I was unable to suss out what had killed it. I suspect that it brought its own demise with it from the nursery. It was a young Norway Spruce, possibly as old as 20 years. Big fat growth rings, so it had been vigorous before croaking. It was pouring sap from an old branch scar even lying on the ground. I bored a tunnel from the down side through with my saw, hoping to find heart rot, but no luck. The roots were equally unhelpful in diagnosing this pathogen. In the end I slabbed a big chunk off of the resinous side for further analysis.

Got home to a small party in the making. Deston's on his way back to the Mountain for the season, and taking my younger brother with him as an acolyte. There's work to be done. Burned up a pile of milling scraps in the woodstove. Went to bed late, got up later.

On the road yesterday, truck loaded to the gills. On the freeway, a hiss and a pull. Roadside analysis showed a flat driver's side front tire. Miraculously, I discovered that I had no jack. Axe? Sure. Tools? Indeed. Come-a-long? Of course. Jack? AS IF. Limped it off the road on a flat going about no miles per hour. Called Les Schwab for roadside assistance. They got me on my spare so I could drive to the shop. Did, only to discover when I got there that they didn't have the tire I needed, but the shop downtown did. They didn't charge me for the roadside, and I went to my favorite used-tire joint instead of downtown. Deston had given me 40 bones for gas and expenses, the tire cost me 43 mounted and balanced... that's 3 bucks out-of-pocket for roadside assistance and a new tire. Not bad, I say.

Got to Kalama late, unloaded, trucked back north. I was supposed to go to McKenna to see a Johnny Cash cover band with my boy James H, but by the time I got north of Grand Mound, I was already starting to nod off. Got home a bit before ten PM, checked email, went to bed.

Coffee and leftovers this morning, and Spring Cleaning begins. Gotta get some order up in this chaos. Too many computer parts. Too many car parts. Too many wires. Can't repurpose everything, I guess.

Tomorrow: more vendor-wrangling, more wetland delineation, more timber sale layout. Life is moving pretty fast these days.

Brief update again

madhatte — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 22:25:07 GMT

Busy as usual. Here are the highlights of the last few months.

Family stuff:

Grandma died a couple of weeks ago. It was more a relief than anything, as she was late-stage Alzheimer's and hadn't been much more than a walking husk for almost a decade. My mother and aunt are sort of sad, but are also mostly relieved.

Dad's Parkinson's has been up and down in recent months. The weirdest is the interaction with Omeprazole (a PPI for gas reflux) which made it difficult for him to speak. He stopped taking it, and the breathing oddness has tapered off considerably. Don't know what to make of that one. Ah, well, progress is progress.

Middle brother gave up on PDX and moved to Oly. That means all three of us are in the same town for the first time in almost 20 years (I think I remember him heading for Seattle in '92). Everybody is more or less getting along. Most peculiar.

Work stuff:

Fire season is over, and we're busy fixing the mistakes the seasonal crew made marking timber sales. There is some thought given to using them less as workhorses as they don't necessarily all see the forest the way we want them to. I argue that it's a training discrepancy which can be corrected with oversight and time invested. We shall see what we shall see.

Big plans for the next few years as I try to push further agendas.

AEC (Army Environmental Commission) wants more cut, and so do the Corps, but there aren't a lot of stands ready for aggressive thinning. Garrison wants more open ground for toodling around in Strykers. The community at large wants more prairie restored. I have proposed a plan to achieve all three by removing the prairie-colonization forest separating Johnson and Weir prairies in order to re-connect historic Tenalquot Prairie. That would put ~ 100 million board-feet of timber on the ground over a three-to-five-year period (we're currently aiming at 9 million per year) while opening up > 1000 acres of prairie to restore. Restoration would need to be a community effort -- schoolchildren pulling Scots-broom seedlings, Washington Native Plant Society surveying for endangered species, The Nature Conservancy leading prescribed burning and girdling projects, etc. Best of all, the newly-restored prairie, stumps ground instead of ripped, would be far from high-quality native prairie, so the Army could drive around there to their hearts' content.

I want also to create a market for specialty hardwoods. Cherry, Maple, Alder -- usually we only sell Douglas-Fir. Hardwoods in these parts generally sell poorly as timber, but what about value-added -- say, cants milled on-site? What about figured wood for veneers? Furniture? Musical instruments? These are all totally unexplored markets, at least by Ft Lewis. I think we can make a mint while improving stand health.

Studying root disease intensively. Mapped all of the observable infected individuals in a recently-cut sale for the GIS recently, as well as dramatically changing the way we look at disease pockets in the forest. We isolate by not cutting now rather than by over-cutting. That way we capture the genetic diversity of the survivors rather than taking our chances with planted seedlings from god-knows-where. Dropped a red snag for one of the COE foresters a couple of weeks ago to demonstrate how multiple diseases can infect a single tree, confounding efforts to pinpoint causes of mortality. Take-home message: there is no "silver bullet" for forest pathogens, and every single tree needs evaluated individually for removal or retention.

Personal stuff:

Been busy as hell working on the usual bewildering array of projects. Here's a few:

Still working on Matt's Jeep. Got the new engine prepped to go into the frame, transmission/case hung etc. Waiting for better weather. All of the adapter parts have arrived. Gonna wire the new install in place since it's a total transplant and nothing will line up properly. Should be fun. It's just DC.

Playing with 2-stroke engines a lot lately as I've inherited the shop's worth of chainsaws for maintenance. Kind of like working on 'em -- they're simple. Got a few at home to play with, too. Right now I have D'Stone's small log mill and rails at my house, Ought to go buzz a few planks out of the cherry and maple I've dropped lately to see what I've got. Need to grind a Granberg-style milling chain for the purpose. Right now I only have one ground Oregon-style.

Camera is dead again. Like clockwork, it died at 6 months, just like all of the others. Forestry is rough on electronics.

What else? Geeze, I dunno. Lots. That's life, I guess. Fire season is just around the corner and with it comes lots of training in the very near future. Just did RX 310 with TNC -- didn't think I'd ever get that one. Lucky timing! Guess that's it for now.

OH -- Mr. Mooney -- Still trying to figger out how to ship your transaxle. It's such a weird size and weight, I keep running into dead-ends. You know how it is.

LOL BUTTS

madhatte — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:09:07 GMT

You know what's one of my pet peeves? No matter, I'm gonna tell you anyway: those damned vinyl stickers in the bottom driver's side corner of the rear window of SUV's and mini-vans with the stick-figure "daddy", and slightly shorter, a stick-figure "mommy", and, in descending height proportional to age and gender, stick-figure effigies of any children the couple might have, followed by size-proportionate stick-figure pets.

I figure the reason they start at the left side of the window (as read) is because there are tiny dots representing household rodents, insects, and microbes, all proportionately and asymptotically smaller. I figure if they REALLY wanted to put things in perspective, they'd start with brontosaurs, then move toward blue whales, then elephants, then cattle, and so on.

Maybe the "descending order" scheme is for crossing off hit lists? Naah. Too easy.

Check out this madness

madhatte — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 00:31:25 GMT

Skinning a Robot Horse

Hello Livejournals

madhatte — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 04:14:57 GMT

You're not Facebook. I like that sometimes. Sometimes I forget that I like that. Sometimes I take the lightning-fast updatery for granted. Sometimes I just want to read about cartoons. Then, of course, I remember that LJ is still there, slowly and patiently archiving my days in a logical and orderly format. Oh, if life were only so straightforward!

I guess this isn't much of an update, but what the hell. It's bedtime and I need my Beauty Rest.

Holy crap it's hot here

madhatte — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 02:33:51 GMT

I think we've broken all records for wind, cold, snow, rain, and heat this year. At least the spring was nice!

I have been freaky busy with work the last three months or so. 14-hour days have not been unusual. There's just so much to do.

The fire season I was worrying about all winter? It's here, and it's a doozy. Fortunately, we have a GREAT crew this year, and some excellent leadership. I am qualifying quickly and am fast-tracked for leadership myself, which is OK, because these are MY woods, dammit, and I intend to take care of them.

Takin' a break on the fireline:

Seriously -- ON the fireline:

Another:

Got a new kitten. His job is to keep Her Highness happy while I'm at work. His name is Feller Quentin. He's good people, if a bit rough around the edges. Pictures when I get around to uploading them.

My middle brother tells me he's moving to Oly next week. That would put all three of us in the same town for the first time in almost 20 years. Weird. Not sure of what to make of that.

No, that's not everything, not by a long shot, but it's all I have energy for right now. I'll try again in a couple of days.

Wait... what?

madhatte — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 02:20:09 GMT

Maybe tomorrow

madhatte — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 06:14:01 GMT

I should post a bunch of my recent fire pix. Damn, I'm tired. It's been a long day. Swinging a drip torch and chainsaw all day really takes it outta you. Also, all my gear smells like smoke. OT is pretty rockin'.

Holy Crap Busy

madhatte — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 19:50:15 GMT

1) I have internets in my house again. Two weeks without such niceties led to more reading than usual.

2) I has new kitten. He's pretty awesome, though unrefined. Her Royal Highness will surely whip him into shape soon.

3) Work is INSANE. I usually start the day in the shop, maintaining tools and equipment. Then there is the morning meeting when the seasonals come in. Then I work on maps and the database for the stand exam program I'm working on. Then there's the billion-and-one picayune details of working for a Federal agency. Then, around 2 PM, a fire breaks out, and I'm there until we beat it into submission. I usually get home near dark. Lots of OT and hazard pay. It's fun.

4) Projects at home include two cars and a motorcycle.

5) I may be part of a research grant involving big moneys for alternative energy. I will say no more now lest I jinx myself.

More later, I do declare.

charging

madhatte — Sat, 30 May 2009 21:05:58 GMT

Got blind-sided by an insurance bill between paychecks this week. Gonna sell some Euros and Canuck-Bucks for gas money to make it to Monday. Odd that I'm still living hand-to-mouth. Oh well. At least I have a stable job.

Job stuff: insanely busy as usual. Having a blast. We have actually assembled an AWESOME team of folks this year so my earlier worries about manning proved unfounded. Also, the training issues that had me so concerned are being ironed out rather well. All in all, things are great and only getting better.

In the staff meeting this last week the "squeaky wheel" in our group grudgingly stated that it was my time and attention everyone would be fighting over the most. It's nice to be appreciated.

Had an interesting moment of diplomacy the other day. New kid rolls in, 19 years old, chip on his shoulder. Somebody brings me a saw that won't start even though it ran fine the day before. I cracked the airbox off, saw that the spark plug wire had come unseated, and plugged it back in. Started on the first rip. New kid has a bunch of extraneous suggestions, basically attempting to be included in the conversation, but the problem was already solved. I didn't mean to blow him off, really, but I'm sure that must have been how it felt. Later the same day, I was working on another saw, and I could not for the life of me get it to run. New kid walks in, and I hand the saw to him. I say, "These are the things I have done", and list them, and then ask him to look it over for a second opinion. Turns out he couldn't figure out the problem any more than I could, but I made a friend out of him by including him in the process. I felt pretty OK about that.

Last weekend in TX was awesome. My friends are awesome. I had more fun than should be allowed by law. Can't wait for the next BEB get-together.

BEBCon '09

madhatte — Tue, 26 May 2009 16:52:33 GMT

Photo album here:

http://s7.photobucket.com/albums/y289/madhatte/BEBCon%2009/

Description to come. I'm still in Austin so it's likely to be a few days before I get to any kind of write-up. Needless to say, a good time was had by all. Next year it'll be in WA, either based out of my house or out of a to-be-determined location elsewhere in the area.

Voice Post

madhatte — Tue, 19 May 2009 04:20:01 GMT

A real conversation I just had

madhatte — Thu, 14 May 2009 01:55:36 GMT

Grocery Bagger Girl: Do you want this cat food in a bag?

Me: It's already in a bag.

Grocery Bagger Girl: Do you want it in another bag, then?

Me: Hrmm... a bag in a bag? That would be meta-bagging. Is that even legal in this state?

Cash Register Guy: I'm pretty sure they outlawed meta-bagging here years ago.

Grocery Bagger Girl: WHAT?

Real Quote From Real Spam

madhatte — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 13:28:02 GMT

"Topic: Eugenics 30. it's waterproof - good if you're going to take the air bed camping or someplace. "