Making an Impact

The recent loss, and recovery, of several computers reinforced the idea of the utility of the internet and computers in general.  Without internet access it was difficult to maintain real time contact with the owner, especially when 80 guests were expected for a wedding and he was traveling.  It was impossible to order computer parts needed to repair the broken computers and impossible to upload any information about the Painted Pony Resort or the area.  Fortunately the problems were resolved, one by one, and the ability to communicate with the rest of the planet re-established.  As a measure of the utility of the ability to communicate (and have an impact on the rest of the world) from the heart of the San Simon Valley, tallies of  some of the materials created and published from a trailer were collected.  To date, there were a total of 1,942,520 views of the material produced by a guy in a trailer sitting in the desert, demonstrating that even in an isolated place like the bubble it is possible to create and distribute material that interests other people.  While in the grand scheme of things 2 million views may not be much, in the final analysis, the most important measure is the effect on local business.  That is do other businesses see a tangible result as a result of these efforts?  Six weddings at the Painted Pony Resort (with more scheduled) is consistent with the notion that by providing interesting information about the area does bring in more business.  Who would have thought the San Simon valley could be a wedding destination?

The ability of an individual to create and then reach out and present the material to others on the planet is unique and only possible with a computer and internet access and as a result I believe the internet is most democratizing tool invented by our species.  Everyone has a voice in the marketplace of ideas and everyone has a chance to be heard and make a difference.

Data:

Google Earth photographs - 1,260,214 views.

 
Blogs:
 Blogging from the Boot Heel - 68,990 views

 The Sky Gypsies - 50,302 views

Website:
 The Painted Pony Resort - 72,778 views

Flickr photographs - not available

Hiking maps - 256,038 views

YouTube videos - 125,750 views

Photobucket - 108448 views

Desert Gardening

Not having a green thumb nor being a gardener an inordinate amount of time is spent gardening at PPR.  In the past, buying plants from nursery's was the way new plants arrived at the Painted Pony Resort.  But not any more, instead gardening skills were developed in an attempt to grow new plants for the estate.

Awhile back trees were purchased and stored on the estate, but a number up and died.  All received the same amount of water and care, yet some would inexplicably die.  Frustrated and to combat this loss of investment dollars it was decided to grow trees and other plants from seed and cuttings.  Starting with spineless prickly pear cactus pads provided by Mountain Valley Lodge the first attempt was successful.  Planted around the estate and at the entrance to the Rustic Cabin, as long as the transplanted cactus were protected from the rabbits by chicken wire they survived.  Without chicken wire the rabbits and cattle destroyed everything.  The next attempt was Agave (starting with drought tolerant plants seemed prudent since my gardening skills were initially non-existent).  Several small Agave were rooted and successfully transplanted but the Javelina also found them tasty and the first crop of Agave were lost to rooting Javelina.  But eventually by protecting the plants from these browsers the problem was resolved.

Emboldened by the initial success with drought tolerant plants, oaks were chosen for the next try.  Oaks grow on the estate and in the fall acorns abound.  Usually, these are removed from the courtyards and left on the open landscape surrounding the houses where the birds and other wildlife consume them.  This past fall though several hundred acorns were saved and used for the next experiment at growing plants for the estate.  The acorns were bagged in wet potting soil and left in the refrigerator for several months.  Once germinated the acorns were transplanted to 1 gallon buckets outside.  Watering and watching the buckets on the ground for any sign of sprouting was slow.  After several months nothing came up.  Periodic soil disturbances were noted in the containers and eventually the realization dawned that something must be stealing the buried germinated acorns.  Emptying several buckets no germinated acorns were found.  The best guess is that by keeping the buckets on the ground rodents and birds were digging up the acorns for food.  So, more germinated acorns were planted and this time the buckets were raised off the ground, see below.  After another couple of months of daily watering small sprouts began to appear.  Over a dozen oaks have sprouted so far and once established these will be transplanted to individual containers and then replanted for use as a wind break at the Rustic Cabin.

While a slow process, the results of these gardening experiments are proving fruitful and will provide the estate with locally grown plant resources.  The next species will be the Afghan Pines found on the estate.  A number of pines were lost as a result of irrigation problems in combination with the big freeze 2 years ago and require replacement. 

A Christmas cactus, Agave, and Spineless Prickly Pear grown for the estate

An Oak seedling sprouting

Keeping the germinated oaks above the ground reduces rodent activity

Addendum:  Five of the 20 sprouted oak seedlings now have leaves as other seedlings sprout in the makeshift raised planters.

Five seedlings have leafed out in this experiment.  Empty buckets and buckets of dirt are the controls.

The Changing Face of Computers

Years ago in college interactions with computers took place in special facility, climate controlled and populated by men in white lab coats.  Computer facilities had an air of a scared, hallowed, and special place where through the high priests of the computer facility you could submit your punch cards to run whatever program you had slaved over creating.  Now fast forward to today, computers are ubiquitous, even in the refrigerators at the Painted Pony Resort.  There is talk of the internet of things whereby all our handy appliances will be in communication with each other.  But what happens when your computer goes down and you live in a very rural environment?  This happened a couple of weeks ago when the hard drive on the desktop computer went south.  Knowing the utility of having backups, out came a little netbook which served as a functional backup for a several days.  Then suddenly it too took a nose dive,  a complete recovery of the netbook operating system was useless, it too was no longer functioning.  On to plan C, a very old and slow laptop running an early version of Windows XP.  Since guests were about to arrive and it was imperative that I have communication with the owner back east, the old laptop was the last hope.  After a night of work it was working, sort of.  It was possible to email, in a basic version of Yahoo mail, but nothing else was possible.

After letting the owner know of the communications problems he shipped an old laptop of his while I began investigating the desktop computer to get a list of parts needed for the repairs.  Having no place to work it was out to the open air garage when there was room to work on the desktop tower.  In contrast to the early college experience in the sacred halls of the computer facility, the garage is open to the elements, hot, and has a gravel floor.  So sitting on the ground with the desktop tower placed on top of some boxes and a handy leatherman tool the dis-assembly began.  Off with the covers and after several minutes with the air compressor the interior was clean.  Instead of grounding with straps and wires, I just held the metal case and stood barefooted on the gravel of the garage.  After identifying the important connections to the hard drive, out it came. 

Several days later, when the owners old laptop arrived it was online again to locate suitable replacement parts.  Of course in addition to the new hard drive a new operating system was required, so both Windows 8.1 and a new 2 TB hybrid hard drive were ordered along with cables to allow the installation of a solid state drive received as a Christmas present.  During this time guests came and went and cleaning the estate took up all the time, but eventually parts arrived via UPS and a day was taken to rebuild the desktop computer.  After installing the 2 new drives and loading a new operating system the desktop was up and running.  Loading the operating system as well as other programs on the solid state drive should decrease the amount of work the hybrid hard disk drive experiences and will hopefully lengthen its' lifespan.

Quite a change from the old days when computer access was a lab coat operation, now it is work on the computer where ever there is room, don't worry about climate control and the gravel garage floor will be suitable as workspace.  Special tools, bah, just whatever is in the tool box.

Now it is on to data recovery from the 2 old had disk drives.  Think I'll get the tractor and go out to grub some mesquite from the riverbed first.

The desktop computer back in service with a 700-900 year old Tularosa fillet rim bowl sculpture on top

Addendum:  The cables arrived that allowed the transfer of data from the old hard drive to the newly installed hard drive.  Quite a relief and it was possible to recover all the photographs that were stored on the old drive so all the aerial photographs of the boot heel as well as hiking photographs are now safely recovered and stored.  The hard drive partition with all the programs was bad but the data on other partitions was fine which is what allowed the recovery.