Speaking of varied weather, yesterday morning we had our first snowfall of the season. The inch of snow wasn't there long, melting in a couple of hours. Still, they closed the road to the the summit of Mauna Kea for a while, to the dismay of the astronomers. Mauna Kea means White Mountain in Hawaiian.

You can always see the current weather on the summit at the following URL (http://www.jach.hawaii.edu/we...). Many of the webcams have an animation feature where you can see a day's worth of video compressed down to a minute. If you watch closely, oftentimes you can see stars during the nighttime sequences or the reflection of the moon on the top of another observatory.

Speaking of stars, I hear the Jefferson Starship is scheduled to appear on island. The group evolved from the Jefferson Airplane fame. In a way, I have a history (albeit small and fleeting) with the Airplane and Starship. When I was a DJ in Kentucky, I would trek to radio programming conferences where I met such artists as Roger Miller, Michael Nesbitt and Kris Kristopherson, among others.

At one conference I met Augie Blume who was promotion manager for the Airplane. He handed out records and promotional materials. Grunt was an offshoot of RCA and featured such artists as the Airplane, Pappa John Creech and Jack Bonus.

Augie was trying marketing the materials to radio stations but commercial and college venues. He also distributed a newsletter called the Grunt Newsletter, a couple pages of info about things happening in the industry. At the time it was not a really flashy publication, but was a fun read. He suggested I write something and submit it. Up until then, my biggest literary contribution to a publication was a few lines in the Jocks column in Billboard Magazine (primarily read by radio and television stations and some in the music field).

I still have a copy of the newsletters here in Hawaii. My contribution was a look at radio station automation and how stations could do away with disk jockeys and engineers and have the programming manager phone in his work. At the time I'm sure many people laughed about the notion. However, today many stations are automated. One station I visited was WOLD. WOLD may sould familiar to some as the basis for a song about an aging DJ. WOLD, the name of an actual station which used Schaefer Automation to control the empty studio.

My Dad was involved in a real estate deal and the company made automation equipment for radio stations. I interviewed there but for some reason did not impres the management. I don't know why. I think I would have made a great addition to the company, having electronics and radio background. Nowadays you don't need cart machines and turntales and giant equipment to automate a radio station. A simple small computer can do the job as everything is now done in software. I could write the software now myself with my skills from Hewlett Packard. With MP3's and a bit of code, you could actially carry a complete station (minus the transmitter) in a very small package. MP3 plays are essentually the same technology minus some timing circuts and links to pull in news from external sources.

A year ago I played with an automation system called SAM that does all of this. The software worked fairly well except they seemed to lack a couple of important features. I found it difficult to jump into the middle of programming if starting fresh and trying to synch up with the current clock. Also stations often pad with instrumentals as they aproach the hour and then pull in a newscast. You might need 30 seconds of usic or a nimute or so. The software didn't seem tohave a way to fill periods like that as easily as I would liked. Still there was a programming language available and I'm sure if I had hacked away for a while I could have made it work. I just thought it should have been built in. Then again, I only played with it for a wek or two.

So there you have have it, snow and stars, all tied together in a neat package.

Speaking of packages, I just had a birthday but it left a lot to be desired. My hosting company decided to move all the servers across the country with no warning (they had technical issues at the old site and needed to perform a "flash cut"). I spent most of the day fixing problems and SSL certificates. Also, I wanted to take Koa down for a run along the beach but he lost his collar that morning and I didn't ahve a spare. Dogs must be on a leash at the National Park, so we just played in the yard awhile.

That is all for now, may your day be filled with Aloha and may all of your snow be at least a couple hours away, just like here!

I am at the office and saw a pod of spinner dolphin swim by. You can tell they are spinners when they jump out of the water and, well, spin! The guests marvel at the sight, but although I am always impressed, we see them often enough.

My pump came in for the water catchment system, but was slightly damaged in transit. The company I ordered it through is requesting a new pump.

I don't have a quote yet, but will have someone installing the pump and water lines soon. Then it is getting the roof and gutters replaced and I can order dirt and start planting.

I really am trying to get the coffee in the ground before the end of the year. I need the water system working to do that. Oh it would be very easy to throw money at the project but without money to throw, I have to juggle things a bit.

I have some orders for coffee, but have none roasted at the moment.

Koa continues to want to play fetch and/or catch all his waking hours. A problem appears to be that he does not want to venture off the lanai to go to the bathroom, unless I go play first. This sets a bad precident and is behavior I also see at 3 in the morning when he needs to go out. He will whine some, so I wake up, put him on the lanai and he sits or lies there and only after a while will venture down and go. I try to doze in the chair near the door so I can hear him bound up the stairs or whine again.

I finally finished my taxes (from April) and today is the deadline to mail them, although I'm not too worried, they owe ME money, but I want to get the request in for that free gov'ment money heading my way :-) The free handout is like the free government cheese giveaway, except there is no cheese, only dollars.

Actually, Koa loves cheese, so free cheese would not be that bad either.

Until next time...

Mark

First, I got up and took Koa outside. We played a bit (primarily catch and fetch with a stick). He really loves fetching and I think he could do it all day (that is, when he is not sleeping or eating).

I left him inside while I went and sprayed some Roundup-type weed killer over part of the area yet to be planted. These chemicals are fairly safe in that they sit on top of green leaves and interfere with the plants ability to convert sunlight to useable energy. After a coupe tankfuls, it was time to eat something. Although not the best breakfast, I opted for macaroni and cheese! Then back out to spray some more.

Along about 10am I was ready for my next project, mowing the grass on the upper section of the farm. I drove around in circles until 2 things happened. First I was about out of gas and second, another part came off the mower! *&^#^$%%*&^%*( I am just so irritated. The last part to come off was a spring that holds an idler wheel against the belt that turns the blades on the deck. When the spring came off earlier I found yet again that nobody stocks parts for these mowers here in Hawaii. I tried to buy it online and the shippintg would have been $30 for a $15 part! Until I can find a way to get the part cheaper, I decided to use a spring I had here from my last brake job on the truck. I knew it would not last long, but at least I got lots of grass cut.

Then I came in and worked on my friends new website. She is selling pet food here on the island and is about ready to open the site and shopping cart to customers.

Along about 1pm I started some laundry so I have clothes for work. I used to hang the clothes on a clothesline but finally decided to hook up one of the dryers I have. because of logistics I located the dryer in the downstairs bathroom by building a heavy-duty extension cord. I made sure that it was safe and able to handle the current. I would not suggest others do what I did, but I used to do electrical work, wiring houses. Besides, this is not a permanent solutions. Soon I'll get the utility room cleared out and paneled, etc. Actually, it would make a perfect coffee storage area. maybe I'll move the washer and dryer under the house and reconfigure the room. Stay tuned. At the rate I'm getting projects done, it should be a couple more years before I can report my preogress :-)

As I was doing the wash I noticed a pinhole leak in the PVC that runs to the utility sink outside. That line comes off a tee from the main line and services outside. The libe from the water meter comes up the property, splits to a faucet under the house, also to a line tha truns to the utility sink and the line that waters the nursery plants. That is the line that was leaking. Finally it also goes to a reducer and into the house. Thus to fix the pipe I had to shut off water to the house and drain that part of the line. Luckily, there is a convenient cutoff I put in a few years ago. I may also add another cutoff or two so I can fix things like this without cutting off the whole house. Turns out that the washer does not go into psin if there is no water pressure so I had to wait until the pipe cement dried before finishing the laundry.

I ordered and received a small batch coffee roaster and have already performed a few test batches. Today I ran a number of batches of green cooffee through it and took copious notes. The unit will not roast coffee to a dark level with oil, and it is piossible that if you do things incorrectly, you could start a fire in the beans if they got oily in the unit. Thus they have carefully set the limits so it is difficult to get beans too dark. This unit will help me do small batches for customers without having to roast a large batch and they store the roasted hoping for orders quickly. Of course, for large orders or dark coffee, I will still send the coffee out to get roasted.

Based upon the cost of the roaster and the price of electric, I won't pay off this roaster any time soon!

It is now 6:00pm and I'm checking mail again and blogging. Then it will be dinner and time to dump the laundry into the dryer. I've got some tax items to address and then off to bed so I can get to the office by 8am tomorrow. In fact, I need to get there earlier because the Ironman race starts at like 5am or some such hour and many of outr guests will be checking out early t oavoid road closures and there will be lots of questions on how to avoid traffic.

There should be live video from Kona on the internet and I assume the race will be covered by some sports channel. It should also be rebroadcast weeks from now. The coverage has won awards in the past and is well done. It is also an opportunity for people to see and learn a bit about where I live.

Speaking of telecasts, Wheel of Fortune was filmed here recently and that should start being shown in another month or two, so watch for that too.

For now, I must run (and not in the Ironman race).

Aloha!

I got up evry early so I could get ready and drop Koa off at Sandras for the day. I also have been having a dead battery and had to jumpstart the truck. Koa got dropped off at 7am and I stopped by work for a few minyutes then was off to the airport for an 8:30 flight. I amd eit with plenty of time.

I'm not a big fan of Go Airlines. They appear to have come into the market here, using unfair tactics and put ALoha Airlines out of business. They had offered cutrate fares for months until Aloha folded, then their parent company announced Bankrupcy reorgination 2 days later. Their fares them went back up to be competitive with Hawaiian (their competition). They also lost a suit having to do with unfair practices against Hawaiian and the Aloha suit is still pending.

Add to that the little problem they had here with a Hilo flight. They were flying a scheduled flight from Honolulu to Hilo (about a 50 minute flight or so). The flight bypassed Hilo and was headed towards South America. The tower was unable to raise the aircarft for 20 minutes. Finally the plane turned around and landed. The pilot and copilot were fired for both falling asleep in flight... I believe there was another casee similar to this with their parent company Mesa.

When I borded the flight today, I noticed the CRJ200 was very very old and may be the oldest airplane I've been in.

Anyhow, I get to Honolulu and get out to baggage claim and ground transportation. I had to call a freind back in Kona to find out where I would catch the Kaiser shuttle. I followed directions and was able to board it. There were 8 of us and it was packed.

Upon arrival at Kaiser I checked in and was called quickly for the MRI. I sat in the MRI waiting area for a while, shivering the whole time. A woman there was draped in a blanket to keep warm. I swear it was 65 degrees there.

After verifying that I had no metal in me (bullets, stents, pacemaker, etc) I laid down on the table. I had chosen classical music for the experience; The 4 Seasons. I've don an MRI before and did not go nuts in the enclosed space, but I figured that the music might help anyway.

This machine was doing my head, so it was quite small. I did not have to get undressed, I just could not have any jewelry on, etc. The machine has a small mirror so you can see outside the machine at the mountain beyond. That was neat and helped you from feeing cramped. I did have lots of problems keeping awake though. I had been to a luau the night before and had only gotten about 5 hours sleep.

After the MRI I caught the shuttle back to the airport. I tried twice to be standby on flights prior to mine, but they were all filled. Having only eaten crackers all day, I finally decided to go over to the adjoining terminal to get food. I got there fast but then had a big surprise. At my Go terminal there was a guy selling a sandwich for $8. THAT is why I opted for the food court. However Burger King was $8 or so for their combos! Next door was Lahaina Chicken for about the same prices. Including drink and sides, I got a better meal, but it cost just over $14! Still, I had to eat and it's a good thing.

I went the back way to the Go terminal. Since I was already in a secure area, I was escorted back to the Gate. My 5:30 flight was delayed almost an hour and I got back to Kona Airport at 7:15. I then had to zoom on down to COSTCO to buy a new battery for the truck.

A quick trip to Sandras to get Koa and then on to the house. Along the way, Koa decided to fall asleep in my lap as I was driving. I wish he would not do that!

I got home and opened up my mail. My MRI has already been read and my Doctor has sent me an email telling me so far, things look fine!

In other news, my roaster has not yet arrived, but I hear the water pump for the tank project is here. I'll go up into town Thursday to get mounting specs.

In the meantime, I'll read some email tonight and then get to bed. I have to work at the condos tomorrow.

Depending upon the size of the order or how much green I want to roast, I have used two different sources, Greenwell's or Sheppard's. The price was about the same but here are the differences.

Greenwell is a large coffee processor. They manage some local farms and have their own coffee farm. They get tour busses in and have samples of coffee for tasting. They are a major player. They are also local to me and convenient. If I need coffee roasted quickly, I can drop it off and maybe get it the same day or the next. They close early Friday and seem to clean the roaster then and open again on Monday. They are closed holidays. The minimum batch size is 20 pounds for their commercial roaster. The roast is consistant.

Then there is Sheppards. It was started by Ken and Christine Sheppard, long time Kona coffee farmers. Ken decided to build roasters and they can roast just a few pounds or more at a time. If I give them lots of coffee, they roast in batches. The process was performed at MaryLou Moss's house up the mouantain from Kailua-Kona. The roast is fairly consistant, but can vary batch to batch as it is a more manual process. The roasting is done outdoors on a lanai (porch) and often the wind blows or worse there is rain nd roasting will be suspended until it stops. Roasting here is done 1 or 2 times a week, but i an emergency, they can roast almost any time for me. I try not to have emergencies, but they are quite responsive to my needs. They are also quite a ways from my house and somewhat convienient from work, but not really.

Depending upon how quickly I needed the coffee and in what quantity, determined who I used. If I had lots of coffee, needed lots of grinding, or needed a very consistant medium, it was Greenwell. If the roast was darker or smaller batches, I'd have them do it up at the Moss farm. This is because sometimes the wind would blow a bit and we didn't get the beans out quite quick enough to meet my specifications. The coffee was never ruined, but getting a perfect, consistant roast was slightly difficult. Still, we would mix the beans between batches and it all evens out.

There are times when I needed a couple pounds of very light roast or something just a bit darker, yet didn't have time in my schedule to accomodate a customers special request. I may have just solved that.

I just put in an order for a small coffee roaster for the house. It can roast 1 pound of green at a time and looks to have quite repeatable results. Including shipping it will cost about $400 but I think it will be worth it. I can roast a batch in under 30 minutes and end up with about 12 ounces of roasted each time. Still, I think this may solve part of the problems I have had. I will still Use my other options for larger batches, but I think I can really make use of this.

On a side note, years ago I bought a grinder and when I would ned a bit more ground than what I had onhand, I would dump whole beans into it and out came ground. After many years I finally burned it up. I have not yet replaced it and probably will not for a while. The grinder was under $100 as I remember, but still, it was messy and a pain to try to grind a few pounds of coffee at a time. It was not really designed for the amount of coffee I was grinding.

If I get another grinder it will be long the lines of a professional Bunn (like at the stores), not a home unit. These Bunns cost many hundreds of dollars and weigh a lot! Shipping is quite a bit to Hawaii, so perhaps I will look for a used one here.

In any event, I hope to receive the roaster soon and will report back.

Yesterday we painted one of the walls in the office. It used to be a semi-gloss dark green and with numerous nail holes and chips in the concrete, it looked horrible. We have some managers coming in a few days and so we spruced it up a bit. It is now a nice light blue. The other well is a beige, so if I put my head on the desk in just the right place, it is like I'm sleeping on the beach and looking up at the sky. Not that I sleep in the office, certainly not while guests are there.

I dosed Koa last night with 1/2 a tablet of Comfortis, a new flea treatment. This time he did not get sick, but sure looked like it. I'll give him the other 1/2 today. This is a monthly treatment costing about $10 a pill for large dogs but if your dog tolerates it, it is an easy and effective treatment. The most common side effect is upset stomach. However, the fleas start jumping off the dog in about 15 minutes to 1/2 an hour! I assume the cost will come down as other companies start making it. It seems to be related to a natural insecticide discovered in the Caribbean earth near a rum still. It certainly has great properties if it turns out to be really safe for animals. There are no insecticides to spray, things like fleas mustingest the product through the carrier, thus the chance of killing other insects or so on is eliminated. As I say though, there may be some side effects and it is also being used as an insecticide in organic farmming.

The Ironman race is nearing again and already we have seen an increase in people running and jogging along the road. The race may not be the traffic problem it has been in the past, as we have not opened part of the new roadway between the harbor and town.

Now for farm information. I am in a race against time to get plants in the ground this year. I have ordered the piping and water pump for the catchment tanks. I interviewed a guy who is sending me a quote on installation of the above. Part of the assembly can start soon as the long black pipes are in stock. However, the pump and driplines are probably 3 weeks away.

For those not yet coffee farm experts, here is the project...

The farm is about 1400 feet long by 230 feet wide. It slopes from the upper side to the lower where the house is, and the altitude drop is only about 100 feet in all. That makes for a very small slope, especially compared to some other farms where you get tired just looking up the mountain. Mine is an easy walk uphill.

The house is at the bottom of the property and the there is a driveway currently down the middle of the farm. I had a new driveway cut along the south side of the farm and have used it some. Soon I'll have to use it all the time because there will be pipes blocking the current driveway.

The new coffee will be planted in rows spaced 10 feet apart. The trees will be almost in hedges with trees 5 foot apart form each other. To look at the farm from the air will be a row about 200 feet across and each sucessive row a bit higher up the land.

Each of the 5 acres I'm planting will be irrigated by itself in a zone, thus 5 zones. Running along each row of trees will be a drip line that slowly soaks the roots with no evaporation.

There is a 25 foot diameter, 6 foot high tank near the house that collects up to 20,000 gallons of rainwater from the roof of the house and garage. When that tank is full, it can be pumped up to fill the upper 3 tanks, for a total of 80,000 gallons of rain water. There will be filters to keep the water generally clean so it does not clog up the small holes in the drip lines.

Because the drop of 100 feet over the planting area is not enough to develop a lot of pressure up top where the tanks are, I need to get the help of Rube Goldberg to make it work. Hold on to your hat for this one...

The bottom tanks water will be pumped up to fill the top tanks. When full and if I need to water the upper 2 acres, I need pressure that the top tanks cannot develop in that short space. Thus I turn some valves and use the pump near the house to also pressurize the drip line for the upper 2 acres. Then I cut off the pump, go up top and swap lots of valves. Then the water in the upper tanks flows down the same pipe towards the house, except that it is diverted to the lower 3 acres of driplines. There is a flow valve to make sure the water does not re-enter the bottom tank. So to review, the bottom tank feeds the upper 3 tanks and water the upper 2 acres. The top 3 tanks water the bottom 3 acres.

While filling the upper tanks from the lower tank, I start the pump and wait. I have no automatic cut off, so I will have to somehow verify how much water is pumped up there. I could use binoculars from the house and watch for water coming out the overflow pipe. At gas stations, they stick the tank with a long wooden pole and look for where the wetness stops when they read the depth. It is a lot like an oil dipstick. I'll probably come up with a sight tube and/or electronic sensor of some sort.

So when the tank pipes are all installed, the drip lines have to be laid. They will run across the property every 10 feet and will slowly drip water to each tree. I have the lower half of the farm already punched for trees but when the dripp pulls up the rock to make a hole, there is rock all over the ground. Because of that I need to hire someone to remove those rock fragments to make the land smoother between rows. That will make it easier for me to mow between rows. The tp half of the farm is mostly grassy now that I can mow it easily. There are no holes, thus no large rocks to move, Yet!

Currently the gutters on the house go the wrong direction and there are no gutters on the garage, so I have to fix all that. Then I'll snow coat the roof to make sure that I fix any small leaks in the roof.

I have to get the gutters into the bottom tank and get them supported to hold the weight.

Then I have to get 220 volts run to where the pump will be located and get a concrete pad to put the pump on. I'll cover all that with a roof of some sort to keep the water off the pump and wires.

Once all the pipes and wires are in I can order a truckload or two of dirt delivered and cover it until I can get people to move it around the farm. We will mix dirt with fertilizer and start planting. As sections of rows are planted, I can get the dripline run to irrigate them.

I am not sure if I will be planting trees or parchment. The trees are nicer to look at and grow faster, but they will cost $5,000 just for the first section I'm planting. It depends upon how much money I have left which option I choose.

As I said, the trees will be planted in rows. There is a pruning method that has us trim one row of trees each year for three years before we start over. Thus, if you letter the rown A, B C, A, B, C etc, you would prune row A's the first year and Rows B the next. Because the trees grow at such a rate, this gives good yield with easy pruning. You just stump one row each year rather than spend lots of time doing little prunes on each tree. This new method requires you to stagger your planting. Thus where I have 1500 holes, I'll only be planting 1000 trees the first year and 500 the next. It would be possible to plant row A the first year, B the second and C the third, but your initial yeild would be a bit less also becuse of the pruning method. The way I'll plant is supposed to be a bit better yeild the first crop. In any event, the tree growth will soon even out.

I wanted to create a pulping and drying deck here to pulp cherry while waiting on my big crop. The problem is that when cherry is pulped, it must be dried right away and that requires someone to rake the beans often the first few days. Since I work up in town to pay the mortgage, that makes it impossible to do at this time. I guess I could hire someone to rake, but I guess I'll wait. It will probably be put where the garage is. Since it does not need to have a real roof (just plastic sheeting to catch and direct rainwater), I may build it now and hook up the needed gutters.

One way to help would be if I fix up the downstairs of the house and rent or trade out the space to someone who would be willing to work in exchange for a place. Some farms here have WOOFERS, usually workers who do that on organic farms. I don't think you have to be an organic farmer, but it would help. WOOFERS stay at your place and perhaps eat in town. You provide shelter and they provide an agreed-upon number of hours fixing, building, planting or picking things. The trouble is, I would beed a WOOFER to build the place that other WOOFERS would use. It is a vicous cycle :-)

As you can see, farming is not a simple task and often involves complex decision and complex funding options. By the time I get this place fully operational, I'll be ready to retire. Again!

Recently there has been a report of a bqack door where hackers can utilize browser scripts to redirect your mouse to other webpages (and I guess, thus allow them to click on install buttons).

In any event, I loaded a script blocker and just before saving my blog entry and posting it, I saw there was a script on Tblog and enabled it. I think it updates the tblurt area but in any event, the body of my blog disappeared and no back or forward button would bring it back.

I'll try again later.

Sigh....