The Noisettes

To survive a 6+ Richter Scale earthquake first you have to make sure you don’t fall down. Keep your balance. Once the initial earthquake is over make sure to run out of the structure you were in and get to a safe place. In an ideal situation the staff of the resort at which you are staying will direct you to a safe and covered place, triage, and distribute food and water to everyone.

If you are at a resort in Costa Rica you may have to do just a little more to make it through because the resort staff may just decide to say something to the effect of “screw those tourists”; things like scavenging through the wreckage of restaurants and rooms for food and water — and toilet paper — in the dark, carrying firewood to make your own fire, and using as much charm as possible to convince some other tourists to let you sleep in their rented van. That evening you should then try to make arrangements for a helicopter transport — at any price — with virtually no levels of cellular service. When that doesn’t work you should then try to sleep in the van parked on the side of the cliff while it rocks back and forth quite regularly from aftershocks.

Eventually the next day, after not sleeping and sitting in relative terror the entire night before, you should then wait patiently for your $850 helicopter to show up for half of the day. While you wait you should eat the pineapples you scrounged, drink the remaining water and Coca-Cola, enjoy a cold Hershey’s bar (kept cool in the small cooler you picked up in the destroyed restaurant), and watch as the helicopters continually take out other people and leave you at the defunct resort. By some stroke of luck or through sheer force of will you will find another resort-owner-provided helicopter that can seat three out of the four people in your group and you take advantage.

The remaining person in your group should then get taken by four-wheeler across the ravaged countryside to meet up with the rest of the party.

The Red Cross should be in place by now, providing transportation for your party, sitting with luggage by the roadside, to a nearby refugee center. If your eyesight is good you should then accidentally bump into your travel agent’s driver and wrangle a ride back to San Jose where you then hook up with another driver to take you three hours to your next hotel on the Pacific coast. At that hotel you should immediately take a shower, eat, and crash on a comfortable bed.

When you return to the States you should then swear off eco-travel for at least a few years and stick to locations with minimal seismic activity.

Here’s where we were:

MAP

Here are some news articles about the earthquake:

Reuters
China Post
CNN

And here’s the room we were supposed to stay in (before the earthquake made that all moot):

Blah, Pictures, Prius, Trips costa rica, earthquake, impromptu camping trip, vacation

We’re happy to announce that tonight at 8 PM we became Auntie & Uncle to Avery Lopez Moad. Agnes’ sister added the first grandchild to her side of the family tree.

Agnes’ sister was still recovering so we couldn’t get any pictures of her, but Sam just couldn’t get enough of his son!

Congratulations to Lee & Sam!

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The holidays are upon us which means it’s time for Christmas lists. My list is relatively short, a little silly, and mostly centered around house stuff.

Let’s get to it!

0. World Peace

1. The Black & Decker Gecko Grip Level ($24.99)

2. Nordstrom Smartcare dress shirts, 16 1/2 – 33 (sale-priced only, please)

3. Westin Heavenly Bed (~$1500)

4. Red Ryder BB Gun

That’s all for now, I guess.

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I can’t help it. I love busting chops. It’s my pleasure.

The home-building blog I love to hate, The New York Times‘ Dream Home Diaries, is in full swing. Ms. Davis and Mr. Brown’s home is framed, sheeted, and moving on to the next stages.

Some of the most recent posts have been pandering, bowing to past comments about their home’s lack of any green sensibility in their build. The latest post is the most hilarious and at the same time severely frustrating.

Here’s the situation:

The authors are building a custom home on a barrier island near St. Petersburg, Florida, and make this big deal at the beginning about finding the right architect for them. After some false starts they end up hiring a firm in South Carolina to design their Florida beach home. Skipping over the massive size of the house relative to their supposed initial budget of $350K and the roof deck fiasco involving the scared-of-heights husband to today, now there is this.

The authors just got a call from their builder that they’ll need to have a third A/C in their home with two floors of living space because of the way it was designed.

Two floors. Three A/C units.

And the best part — the architect didn’t even plan out a closet for the air handler!

They even had the nerve to try and pass off their new unit as some kind of green plus:

“The good news is that John is a closet environmentalist. He recommended an American Standard Heat Pump System that both cools and heats — believe it or not, there are nights in Anna Maria when heating is needed — that is both energy efficient and environmentally friendly. It has a Seasonal Energy Efficiency Ratio of 14, which means we can save up to 43 percent on our energy bills while doing our part to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”

Um, the minimum SEER on new A/C units is 13, and since when did building a three-story 3500+ square-foot home for two people on a barrier island with three A/C units constitute “doing [y]our part” to reduce greenhouse gas emissions???

Here’s where the chop-busting comes in. Back in July when the Davis-Browns made their first panderpost about green building — after they already had plans and a builder — I asked the following question:

Have you had your architect design the home with air flow in mind so that you won’t need three massive Trane units humming full time to cool the place? Right-sizing of your HVAC system should be a major focus since AC makes up most of your electricity bill down here in Florida.

Normally I save “I told you so” for my younger sister, but in this case I just couldn’t let it stand.

Unfortunately at this point it doesn’t matter. The design is pretty bad, the builder is having to make changes on the fly to make up for the holes, and the authors are still trying to pass themselves off as everyday pennywise Yankees with a blog about their home building process.

With this couple’s budget and time their house could have been a green masterpiece without sacrificing at all. They have a garage at the base of the house that would have been perfect for a grey water system and the structure could have easily been SIPs.

Oh well. I wouldn’t be surprised if the authors turned out to be scientists running an experiment on how quickly they can exasperate genuinely helpful people.

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Agnes is a cool photographer. I’m her tech support nerd and photo equipment mule.

Sometimes I convince Agnes to do nerdy things with me, like see the latest comic book-derived movie, and I suspect it’s more of a spousal support thing.

Well tonight she’ll be with me as we wait in line to get our copy of the newest operating system for our Macs, OS X 10.5 Leopard.

Hey, the first 500 people get a free t-shirt.

And I thought this was hilarious. Here’s what shows up when you browse Windows PC shares on your network…

…the non-sexy beige CRT monitor and Blue Screen Of Death.

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…I’ll try to get driven in a stretch Prius.

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To return the American Standard toilets we purchased and get the dual-flush TOTO ones.

I’ll have to see about getting a better price than $400.

Blah, Our House

I love stories like the one below because they inspire me to be more thoughtful about the building process. A lot of the things we’ve done to this point with the Dellwood house have been in the spirit of green-ness, but I won’t lie and say that some of those decisions to reuse old portions of the house were driven by our limited budget.

Hiring a crew to rip out virtually everything old, bad, or in need of a little work would have been a lot faster and easier — with the right budget — but would have been the wrong thing to do. It also would have been a mistake.
One of the great things about our project is that we were able to reuse so much of the wood from areas we cleared in other areas of the house. A wall in the studio originally had some termite damage, so we grabbed a bound-for-the-Dumpster baseboard from one of the rooms, ripped it, and installed it as a new plate. The old 2×4s are incredibly dense, old growth pine and after 86 years in the house are still straighter than any piece of lumber you can buy at Lowes!
Link to the original article

IF the idiosyncratic, ’40s-era cottage Alice Keller bought in Shoreline, a small city just north of Seattle, had a style, it might be called classic teardown. The ceiling in one room was so low she couldn’t stand up under it. A downstairs bathroom was so narrow she had to wiggle sideways to get to the toilet. None of the windows matched.

“It was livable, and quirky,” Ms. Keller said, “but in ways I didn’t find amusing.”

The place was crying out for a wrecking ball, but Ms. Keller, a 63-year-old retired teacher of English as a second language, who has an environmentally aware conscience, didn’t want to scrap the building materials only to buy new ones. Instead of having her 1,300-square-foot house bulldozed, she hired Jon Alexander, a contractor who shared her environmentalism and was willing to dismantle the home shingle by beam, and build a replacement with the same two-by-fours.

The crew left the garage and a portion of the subfloor intact and broke the concrete driveway into chunks for a back patio. A gas water heater, fiberglass insulation and windows landed at the RE Store, a local nonprofit shop that sells used or excess construction materials. The drywall, shingles and extra concrete went to a recycling center.

Ms. Keller was able to reuse around 90 percent of the original house. “I just like reusing things,” she said. “You can end up with something with more character.”

Read more…

Blah, Our House

Stainless steel certainly has that cool “professional” look, but looking to the future I think going with a darker, less maintenance-needed style will fit our personalities a little better.

It will also save us around $200 per appliance. So that’s another plus.

For example, the Fridgidaire GLGF389G range below has five burners, a griddle attachment (hello pancakes!), convection oven, and can be had for ~$800.

And with refrigerators, the non-stainless versions seem to have a lot of the cleanliness and price advantages as well.

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I used to be a huge fan of new music. Sadly, nowadays I listen to more old stuff than new and don’t even know what’s coming out…except this:

Today I sent my pre-order in to Amazon.com for Argentine Federico Aubele’s Panamericana album, scheduled to be released September 18.

Here’s a blurb from his record label, Eighteenth Street Lounge Music’s (think Thievery Corporation) website:

“The highly anticipated follow up to Federico Aubele’s critically acclaimed debut, Gran Hotel Buenos Aires. Aubele delves deeper into rich latin sounds with virtuoso guitar playing, hypnotic rhythms, smoky dub atmospherics, and the sensual vocals of Amparanoia, newcomer Natalia Clavier, and a collaboration with Calexico.”

From the few tracks I’ve heard on MySpace, I’m 100% convinced that this album purchase won’t let me down.

My days as a music reviewer are over, so I won’t try to write a whole article on this. I’ll just say that “Postales”, “Esta Noche”, and “Contigo”, are all superb songs and that Aubele’s 2004 debut, was a slick, Latin guitar-over-beats magnum opus.

Go buy it!

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A coworker of mine just pointed me to a tool that will be extremely useful in our next phase of reconstruction: trim & finishing.

The FINECUT Flush Cut Power Hand Saw from Bosch. $99 at Lowe’s.

3.5 amps

2,000-2,800 RPM

Blades mount on left or right side for excellent visibility and total versatility

Precision sawing, including flush cutting in wood, wood composites and plastics

Variable speed, match speed to workpiece and task

Flush-cutting ability – Blade can lie flat on work surface while cutting

Extended Protection Plans are available for an additional charge

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I read a story on Treehugger that showed a pretty stark image of where we’re at with our water conditions at the moment.

While many people feel it’s nice to have a big lawn but is it really worthwhile, cost effective, or even necessary?

Having a lawn: Pros

• Provides a soft surface you can walk on.
• Looks pretty.
• Keeps dirt & sand in place.
• Kids can play in it (if the lawn is big enough)

Cons

• Requires regular watering to keep alive…
• …If you’re able to keep bugs from eating it.
• Costs money and time to maintain.
• Attracts dogs that like to poop.

As a solution I’m really digging the idea of a lawn with fake grass. I saw a bunch of them in Las Vegas and was struck by how awesome they looked and how smart it was to give up the dream of growing grass in the desert.

I’m not sure how the city and historical would feel about it, but I’ll look into it. It sure beats contributing to the water problems the state is experiencing.

And you don’t have to mow it!

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Now that the haze of the red-eye flight back has lifted I’ve finalized some impressions from the trip. Here they are (in worst to best order):

The Bad

• US Airways is an awful airline. Don’t even try to complain because US Airways doesn’t even have a real person answer when you call!
• The Imperial Palace is an awful hotel with a shortage of elevators, dated rooms, uncomfortable mattresses, no amenities, no concierge, and an overpriced buffet. But other than that it was just fine
• The Poker Room at the Planet Hollywood Casino (née the Aladdin Casino), while nicely decorated, is perhaps one of the worst on the Strip because of the noise from the adjoining piano bar. Imagine trying to contemplate a pre-flop all-in call with pocket kings when a terrible piano-singer is hammering out Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” with a bunch of singalong drunks in the next room. I was up at a pretty good table and actually left because of the music.

The Good

• In-N-Out Burger. Perhaps the greatest fast food chain ever.
• Treasure Island’s Poker Room is a nice little place. The 1/3 NL games and daily tournaments are a lot of fun and the players were the nicest I had encountered overall. The hotel itself seemed very swanky and updated. I’m kicking myself for not pushing harder to stay at TI because the location would have been perfect: it’s connected to the Mirage, diagonal from the Wynn, across the street from the Venetian, and next door to the Fashion Show Mall. We ended up playing most of our poker at TI…
• The Caesars Palace Poker Room is good because I won money there without having to invest much time It was a bit too big for my tastes and kind of had the feel of an airplane hangar though.
• The Wynn’s Terrace Point Cafe is an indoor/outdoor restaurant that overlooks the pool, has the cool-mist going while you eat. We chose not to wait in the hour+ line for the buffet and instead took the advice of a nice Wynn employee who recommended the cafe. The food was surprisingly well priced even though when I asked if the food was “reasonably priced” the lady responded “It’s the Wynn,” which translates roughly to “No, it isn’t.” Chris and Kevin got a prix fixe prime rib special with a salad and crème brûlée dessert for $28.
• Noodle Asia in The Venetian was a nice lunch of pot stickers, real imported Asahi Super Dry beer — not that Canadian “brewed under supervision of…” crap — and generous portions at a, again, reasonable (< $20) price.
• Metro Pizza at the Ellis Island Casino was excellent and fed four hungry gamblers for about $20. The BBQ there smelled incredible but we didn’t go back to eat it.
• The Fashion Show Mall had a MNG by Mango store, which allowed me to pick up a “thanks for letting me take a vacation without you” gift for the wife.
• Crown and Coke. For a $1 chip tip I was able to enjoy a drink that would cost me at least five bucks in a bar.

More to come as I remember more of the trip

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The original article can be found here.

May 23, 2007
The Minimalist – For the Love of a Good Burger
By MARK BITTMAN

I’M sure you know how to make a burger. But do you make a burger you love, one that people notice, one that draws raves?

In a world where “burger” most often means a thin piece of meat whose flavor is overwhelmed by ketchup, mustard, pickle or onion, it doesn’t take much effort to make a better one. In fact, it’s almost as easy to cook a really great burger as it is to cook a mediocre one.

When I was young, my mother and her friends produced good burgers. They used different butchers (some were kosher), had different preferences (chuck, round or sirloin), and cooked either in a pan or the broiler (there was no grilling, except when we visited some relatives on Long Island).

A favorite recipe in the neighborhood called for garlic powder, an exotic ingredient in 1958; chopped onion; and — gasp! — Worcestershire sauce. This avant-garde recipe was treasured and shared sparingly.

What the burgers of my childhood all had in common was high-quality meat, and this is exactly what is missing from most of the backyard barbecues I visit. I see people buying everything from packaged ground meat to frozen patties. With these ingredients, the best they can hope for is to mimic fast food.

The key is to avoid packaged ground meat. When you buy it, you may know the cut of the meat — chuck, for example — and the fat content.
Read more…

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Don’t worry. We’re not moving to a McMansion.

I saw an interesting list on Treehugger today. What do you think?

1. Sprawl development contributes to a loss of support for public facilities and public menities.
2. Sprawl undermines effective maintenance of existing infrastructure.
3. Sprawl increases societal costs for transportation.
4. Sprawl consumes more resources than other development patterns.
5. Sprawl separates urban poor people from jobs.
6. Sprawl imposes a tax on time.
7. Sprawl degrades water and air quality.
8. Sprawl results in the permanent alteration and destruction of habitats.
9. Sprawl creates difficulty in maintaining community.
10. Sprawl offers the promise of choice while only delivering more of the same

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