Colorado State Singles Handball - 2x

This past January 10-12 my girlfriend Lyric and I went to Arvada, Colorado for me to play in the Colorado State Singles tournament. The previous year, my friend Oleg and I attended the same tournament (blog post coming soon with that!) The tournament is run by a number of friendly handball players, and it is a pleasant change scenery and nice to spend time in Arvada.

This was probably my worst performance in a handball tournament in the past three years, but the trip was still enjoyable. I was sick with a cough, and constantly tell myself that in order to play well, I need to drive up, or fly, the day before. We drove up the day of the first match, and I warmed up for about 15 minutes after driving for six and a half hours. Plus, I moved up a division from "B's" to "A's." So, I lost every tournament game and was quickly eliminated.

  

This reminded me of my paintball days. 

Lyric organized all aspects of the trip. She picked out a very cool, and inexpensive, bed and breakfast from the website airbandb. The place we stayed was about the same price of a Motel 6, but it didn't have any of the sketchy-ness associated with Motel 6. It was a fully converted basement from a friendly, older couple. They have TONS of space available now that their seven boys grew up and moved out. As well as picking out our lodging, Lyric also packed us burritos, sandwiches, fruit, Gatoraid / Poweraid drinks (from powder, since I am cheap.) My least favorite part of traveling is eating crap, and filling my body with a bunch of expensive, low quality, high fat, food. Lyric made sure that this didn't happen.

In addition to the tournament, we went out to dinner with Lyric's friend from Texas and her friend's friend, as well as going out to breakfast and lunch (with a Groupon!)

After Dinner 

Lyric enjoying a Groupon-fueled mimosa.

I'm really glad Lyric pushed us to see the Red Rocks Amphitheater. Normally when I go on handball-vacations, I am extremely focused and basically don't do anything except my best to compete at the top of my game. Since the competition didn't work out quite so well, it was nice to have tourist-y things to do together.

 I love those red pink pants my mom gave me before starting graduate school (7 years ago...) The Jessie Pinkman hoodie she gave me for Christmas (1 month ago) matches them well.

 I try not to take pictures of random kids I don't know, but this little dude looked awed climbing around all the rocks.

Walking around at first, I was like "Where is the amphitheater? This is the side of a mountain...?" and then you keep walking, and see a gigantic amphitheater.

This trip was a lot of fun, mostly because of my girlfriend Lyric and her suggestions about activities.

Gemini Taurus 3 Ring Saw

This year, for Christmas I purchased my dad a truly thoughtful present - a Gemini Taurus 3 Ring Saw. My girlfriend and I tiled two bathrooms for my parents, and now we are tiling their garage. This saw will be very helpful in allowing us him to finish this tile project.

The Taurus 3 is a wet ring saw. Most tile saws are the equivalent of a table saw for tiles. With a table saw, or a standard tile saw, it is not possible to cut curved surfaces. Additionally, the curvature of the blade needs to be accounted for while cutting, since the top of the tile will be cut before the bottom. The Taurus 3 is more similar to a jig saw, which allows for curved cuts.

The saw and all parts came in a nicely labeled box.

 The instruction manual was pretty good. I especially liked the part where they described how it was possible to cut in all directions and how regular users of ban or jig saws tend to back their tile piece up - which is not necessary with the omni-directional cutting blade. The manual seemed to be missing very much information on regular care and maintenance. 

 This video looks super funny. I haven't watched it yet.

 "Are instruction manuals really only for communists?" This may be the best instructional video I have ever watched...

 Unlike a traditional tile saw, there is no pump. The spinning ring blade picks up water directly. This piece can be covered with a bottom cover when using the saw in hand-held mode.

Side saw view - no water or protective top on (yet.)  

 Filling up the reservoir...

 ... and lubricating the gearing.

 Preparing for a cut.

 This is why you shouldn't use a wet saw inside.

 

After cutting a few practice cuts with the new ring saw, I realized that it was not a good idea to cut long, straight, cuts with it, since it was difficult to cut straight. So I setup my other wet saw for those types of cuts.

The non-ring wet saw makes clean cuts a bit difficult, without flipping the tile over and cutting it again, sort of blind.

But it's possible to grind down / clean up those edges using the Taurus 3.

Double Trouble

I have just, just started using this saw and I am not using it to anywhere near its capacity. I'm basically using it as an extension to the standard tile saw, which I am familiar with using. It will be very fun to try and start incorporating circular patterns into decorative tile projects using it, or finding other uses. So far, I am pretty happy with it. The only improvement I would suggest is that the water reservoir also have a holding container for the bottom of the saw. The bottom part of the saw is supposed to be removed when used in the tray (so the saw can effectively pick up water) but it can be placed on the saw when using it as a hand-held unit. I am positive that my dad, or I, will end up losing the bottom cover, since there is no snap-tight place for it.

Cherry Silver 2014

Today my doubles partner Gerald Cervantes and I put on a handball tournament. Gerald wanted to organize a tournament together, and I agreed as long as it was the simplest tournament possible. The Cherry Silver tournament fits that description.

Everyone is placed either on the "Cherry" team or the "Silver" team. I think these colors are used because the University of New Mexico has cherry and silver as its colors. The tournament is doubles, which means there are four people on the court at all times, so it is kind of crowded compared to singles. All the players only play one match (two games to twenty one, and a possible tie breaker to eleven.) There is no ladder advancement, or elimination. The winning team wins more matches. Earl Badger is a retired surgeon that plays handball, and he creates the teams. This year, like all previous years I played in, the seeding was extremely well balanced. There were thirty two total players in the tournament, three of which have the last name "Stinar." This made sixteen teams of two, for eight matches of two-on-two. We started matches at 9:00, 10:30, and 12:00, finishing around 1:30.

The Silver team had five match victories, while the Cherry team only had three. Everyone on Silver team won a commemorative beer mug. We had a table setup at the athletic club to organize the tournament. The only picture I have of the entire event is of my girlfriend and I sitting at the table!

My match was EXTREMELY close. I played with Roger Zimmerman, against Carl White (the UNM handball coach, my old teacher) and Mike Linley (a UNM graduate student.) Carl and Mike beat us the first game 21/17, we beat them the second game 21/20, and we beat them the tie breaker about 11/2. I'm not positive about the scores, but I think those are close. I'm pretty sure the second game was 21/20.

Brian + Lyric Manning The Organizational Table

After the tournament, many of the participants headed over to the Edelweiss am Rio Grande German American Club for beer and food. We had sub sandwiches, potato salad, chips, and dessert for people to eat. With entry in the tournament came two beer coupons.

Gerald and his wife took care of the majority of the organization, other than seeding. I helped out with a few things, but this tournament would not have happened without him taking on most of the responsibilities. As long as Gerald was happy, I'm happy to co-organize the tournament again next year. Thanks to all the participants, and those that sponsored the tournament.

I wish I had more pictures! If anyone has any, please email me them and I'll update my blog post with more pictures.

Love Thy Neighborhood

I've been part of my neighborhood association ^{1 2} for the past four or so years. It's called the University Heights Association which is bounded by Central and Garfield from north to south, and from Girard to Yale from east to west. We needed content for our upcoming newsletter, so I figured I'd write an article about the last neighborhood cleanup, and after party, and include the article in my blog.

My favorite activities to do with the association are the neighborhood cleanups. During these, a number of neighbors walk through the streets and the alleyways to pick up gigantic old couches, refrigerators, mattresses, tires, chunks of concrete and other trash that students, bums, and other miscreants dump in our neighborhood. We usually have between one and three pickup truck crews roaming around, supporting the walking crews to haul away larger items. The cleanups occur after the semester ends in order to allow students time to move out.

Normally, the city provides a garbage truck for us to use as a place to get rid of the trash. This year, the city said they would not be providing this service (despite the high gross receipts tax, property taxes, and ever increasing bond issues, in Albuquerque.) So we used a portion of our association budget to rent a gigantic dumpster.

 The 80-foot dumpster was full by the end of the clean up. 

Three board members (I/ Brian Stinar, Augustine "Gus" Grace, and Andy Mattern) were part of a sub committee that wanted to organize a party after the neighborhood cleanup. Part of the condition everyone on the board agreed to for me accepting the Vice-President-ship was that the association would throw (at least) one fun party during my term. We wanted to make the after cleanup party super fun.

Gus owns the property between the church on Silver and Yale and Silver and Harvard. He envisioned food trucks, music, and beer. We made it happen. It was a complete success, with between 100 and 200 people attending.

I was in charge of providing home brew beer. We had about 17 gallons of beer bottled that I brewed. This, and minor logistical help were my main contributions. The amount of beer was perfect - we had about four bottles left over, and the donations covered the expenses and a few visits to food trucks.

 During the event we signed up new members to the neighborhood association.

I think the event was a complete success. My friend Efrain Grijalva coined the term "Love Thy Neighbrhood" when he helped with a previous year's cleanup. Thanks to my girlfriend, Lyric Hammonds for helping me give away beer at the event, Andy and Gus for helping organize the party, and the rest of the association for putting together the cleanup, and cleaning up tons of junk.

Egg Thief

Lyric Hammonds, my girlfriend, has four chickens she takes care of to get fresh eggs.

Titan - The white one on the right

Schezwan - The butternut one on the left

Kung Pow - The speckled one on the left 

... and Cobalt by herself

Do their names give a hint which two were given to her from an Asian friend?

About three months ago, Lyric would get two eggs every three days. As the weather became colder, the eggs started to drop off, and she received fewer and fewer. This was despite a gift of two additional 'rescue chickens' from a friend. She somewhat expected the drop off, due to the cold weather and introduction of new chickens to her flock, until the chickens started producing zero eggs.

My girlfriend lives in a rapidly degrading neighborhood around University and Gold. Her neighbors are mid level drug dealers, distributing (mostly) weed. A half-way house just opened across the street from her. Someone was sleeping in a van in her parking lot. She's looking for a new place, but it's difficult to find something within her price range and this close to the university and community college. I became convinced that someone was stealing her eggs. This suspicion was further increased by the fact that she found TWO eggs on a very, very cold morning, when no one would want to go outside for an egg stealing mission.

I've been taking care of her chickens over the winter break, and during part of this time the egg thief was on vacation. At the earlier part of the break, I was consistently receiving an egg a day from the chickens, sometimes two eggs a day. After Christmas day, it's back down to an egg every few days. The egg thief is back.

Initially, I came up with all sorts of elaborate "traps" for the egg thief that would not also injure the chickens. My favorite idea was to block off the egg laying area to the chickens from the inside, and leave the hatch accessible. Inside the hay, I planned on placing a large rat trap with an egg on top. After realizing that chopping off someone's finger with a rat trap would likely require considerable explaining to members of the the judicial system, I decided against that idea. Also nix'd was the idea of setting up a web cam to record the coop area from inside my girlfriend's house. I really didn't want to involve the police in catching the egg thief, or start a fist fight, over eggs.

The conclusion I finally came to was to lock the coop.

Chicken Coop - Post Latch Installation

This latch was able to correctly install - no accessible screws.

This latch had accessible screws - due to the shape of the lid here, any other installation would have been difficult.

 I did not worry too much about the exposed screws, as the hinges have exposed screws. 

It would still be possible for someone to steal the eggs by unscrewing three screws, but in my limited experience with thieves they are not interested in any kind of work, or forethought, at all. Likely, this will increase my girlfriend's chicken egg output. I'm not 100% positive that someone was stealing eggs, and this will help us find out. My friend Rob suggested that the thief may be non-human. Rob also suggested a goose as a 'watch dog' against the non-human variety of egg thieves. Lyric confirmed this, and said she would only be interested in a goose if she hatched it from an egg in an incubator, since otherwise the goose would be too mean to her.

The materials cost about $20 for this project. With the cheap, small, regular eggs I buy being around $1.25 / dozen, we'll need to get 16 dozen (192) eggs before this project pays off. Lyric said her awesome, free range, extra large eggs cost $5 / dozen. At the Brian cheap rate, that's about six months of eggs at one a day. Lyric's hippy/expensive rate required 48 eggs to pay off, or about 1.25 months. Mostly I like helping with the chickens because it turns table scraps and other garbage into eggs, and my girlfriend likes it. Economically, it might not make the most sense in the world (unless you like blowing your money on 'natural' foods), but it is fun and her chickens are nice.