Christmas 2009 in Silver City

A White Christmas in Silver City, New Mexico

This year my family and friend Efrain spent Christmas in Silver City, New Mexico. My family is from there, and my parent's house is a little more comfortable for a large number of people than my one bedroom apartment.

When driving from Albuquerque to Silver City, one has two main options. One option is to cross the mountains through NM 152 and drive through Hillsboro on the east, the black range of mountains, and then come out in Mimbres on the west and continue on to Silver City. The other approach is to continue south on I25 until Hatch, take the NM25 through Hatch and to Deming, then take NM 180 up to Silver City. Both routes take approximately the same amount of time if the speed limits are heeded, Hatch-Deming can be much quicker if you choose to speed.

Going through the mountains is a much more scenic and pleasant route, but passing through the flatlands of Deming and Hatch has a significant advantage - Deming has a country club which my family can play handball at! One of our favorite things to do as a family is to play handball. I got into town a little bit late to play on the way in, but we were able to play on Christmas Eve.










Here is one short video of my mom verses Alan. Additional, longer videos are coming soon.


In total, Alan Gast, Colleen Stinar (my mom), Donald Stinar (my dad) and I played in Deming this time. Efrain wanted to stay in Silver City and work on a welding project, so he wasn't able to make it. Autumn Stinar (my sister) was working at her new job at the Javalina Coffee Shop, located in downtown Silver City.

Autumn M. Stinar working away

Numerous Patrons of the Coffee Shop

My family also likes to eat sandwiches from Diane's Bakery Sandwich Shop, also located in downtown Silver City. Outside the sandwich shop, the entire block was transformed from a somewhat run down industrial district into a beautiful commercial area with about four different eating establishments.

Frozen Fountain in Downtown Silver City

Efrain R. Grijalva at My Family's House

One of the nights in Silver City, my family went to eat dinner at Isaac's, also located downtown. We saw our friends the Kellerman's. Travis Kellerman was visiting from Albuquerque and his mom Karen and father Harry retired to Silver City.

Travis Kellerman - Albuquerque Politico at Isaaic's in Downtown Silver City

Efrain R. Grijalva - Low Light Conditions at Isaac's

I also spent a lot of time working on backups at my parents medical office. My father has all of his patient records stored electronically, and I am his system administrator. Performing a test restore on a new server is important, but not something that many would consider interesting.

Jalapeno Popcorn

This weekend I accompanied my girlfriend and a few of her friends to see the Twilight Movie, New Moon. Despite living in New Mexico for over ten years, I still find certain things interesting. One example of such a thing is the delicacy know as "jalapeno popcorn."

Luckily, I was not accosted for recording elements of the new movie, nor for taking unauthorized photos of people. The couple in front of us was enjoying this jalapeno popcorn.

Car Auction

My friend Oleg and I attended a car auction here in Albuquerque. We went to observe and measure how the car prices compare to similar cars on Craigslist. Our comparison is still in the works, but I would say on average the cars are slightly higher priced, but the outliers are significant.

Bentley's Auctions had a DWI seizure auction and I thought it would be fun to attend. New Mexico has a significant problem with drunk driving, and the state decided it would be a good idea to take someone's car after a conviction, so I thought I would see if I could buy someone's car (cheap), but they weren't quite cheap enough to motivate me into buying anything immediately.

Below are some pictures of the auction, and below that I have some video.

The auction had a bit of a carnival feel.

New Mexico used to have a single zip code, "505", which was the subject of many tatoos. Unfortunately, we now are 505/575, which doesn't look quite as good. 5{0,7}5 is also an option if you know regular expressions.

My friend Oleg

Hot Tub Moving Project

My house in Albuquerque is rapidly getting fixed up and becoming more comfortable, but there is one critical element missing, my hot tub. The past two weekends I have come to Silver City to help my parents with their computer network, to visit, and to work on getting my hot tub up to Albuquerque. Last weekend, we were very short on workers and I didn't make any progress on preparations for this project (but the network admin stuff came along well.) This weekend, it will be close in terms of labor. The work crew is going to make an attempt tomorrow.

Today I spent about three hours demolishing my father's float setup on his flat bed trailer. Silver City has a Christmas parade and a 4th of July parade, and my dad always enjoys creating comic floats that somehow incorporate the parade theme, promotion for his business and humor. The trailer had a wood frame to facilitate the attachment of lights and decorations, but it was fairly rotten. The flat bed trailer is barely too small for my hot tub (the width of the trailer is 76 inches and the hot tub is 79 inches wide.) My general plan is to put the tub on the side, with one edge propped up against the trailer railing. Hopefully the fiber glass liner and pseudo-wood exterior are able to withstand the force of the tub! I'll help my dad rebuilt the float setup before the next parade, I am grateful I do not have to rent a trailer for this project.

While living in Socorro, my car suffered thousands of dollars worth of damage in the massive hail storm. Rather than using the insurance money to fix my car, I realized the damages were entirely cosmetic and I did not want to concern myself with appearing to drive a stylish vehicle. Instead, I realized that I could use the money to accomplish one of my dreams, to have a hot tub at my house as an undergraduate student.

I am not Asian, but this is the specific model. If you want to come and use it, send me a message!


This is the actual color of mine.

I got a "Tiger River Bengal" one of the more inexpensive models made by Hot Springs. My family has always been very satisfied with Hot Springs hot tubs and I look forward to improving my back yard with this addition.

Leader Tech

I have been greatly enjoying my new job at a small software company in Albuquerque called Leader Technologies. The job is right next to the north diversion channel trail, so I can ride 9.3 miles each way to work safely, I work on very applicable projects which customers are interested in, and I work closely with very intelligent and nice people. Overall, I am very glad I choose to experience private industry.

Lately, I have been working on a number of data visualization routines. When I first started here, I was working on a general framework to replace our existing chart generation software. I have some before and after pictures. Before and after pictures are usually interesting, either with houses, people's physique, or computer programs. These before and after pictures aren't the most stunning things in the world, but I thought my blog would be a good venue to share what I've been up to.

These are generated with Java code, using the JFreeChart graphing library. Currently, I am working on a project to apply some of these chart types to visualize our mail server's log, so our customers will be able to understand what is going on with our system in a visual way.

VBAR - Before

VBAR - After



VSTACK - Before


VSTACK - After




PIE - Before



PIE - After (3D)



PIE - After (2D)



HSTACK - Before




HSTACK - After




LINE - Before




LINE - After



AREA - Before



AREA - After