Piss On The Devil

Path to the Devil's Tramping Ground

Devil's Tramping Ground

Anyone who grows up in NC hears of The Devil’s Tramping Ground.

I’ve lived out here in the country for over 10 years now and I decided it was time to finally go and see this thing.

On the way I stopped at The Old Place for breakfast. Pretty busy. Naturally, I had some homemade biscuits with country ham.

Then on down NC 903 to Harper’s Crossroads which is where the infamous spot is located.

Yep – it’s a natural perfect circle in the woods. It’s like a circle of dirt and gravel surrounded by woods.

The gravel is the clue. From the looks of the gravel, which is quartz and granitic and the fact that it’s only in the circle surrounded by clay and soil – my guess is the spot is a small igneous batholith or laccolith from which the overlying sedimentary structure has eroded away. The top of the batholithic structure has also eroded down to a flat top. The surrounding sedimentary erosion resulted in the rich soil outside the circle. So, you have a granitic circle which doesn’t support growth surrounded by rich sedimentary soil which readily supports vegetation.

Not sure if the devil walks around it, but from all the litter and debris it’s obviously a party spot for the local kids.

Of course, being a guy, in the woods, and having had several cups of coffee – naturally I . . . .

NC State Football

The fan “Blog of Record” for NC State athletics is StateFansNation.

Started by one guy, it now has multiple contributors and is the place to go for good articles and links along with the usual chat and criticism.

One contributor, LRM, has written a series of articles about the recent history of NC State football. LRM sums up almost perfectly how I’ve viewed and experienced NC State football over the past decade or so. The hopes, dreams, highs and lows.

I, of course, was at the home games he describes – such as when we first beat Florida State at Carter-Finley. And I was at many of the away games - the Gator Bowl victory over Notre Dame and the game at UNC where the refs gave the game to the Tar Heels. I was also at the ECU Peach Bowl (and both ECU brawls at Carter-Finley), the cow bell Peach Bowl, the Florida Gator Fog Bowl and the thrilling triple overtime game at Ohio State.

Along with the hiring and firing of Amato, implementation of Life Time Rights, the facilities investments and building program, Phillip Rivers – LRM describes everything pretty much as if he were writing for me personally.

Part I – The 1990s

Part II – 2000 to 2006 (Chuck Amato)

I want to add to something that LRM touches on in Part II. He mentions the inconsistency caused by assistant coach turnover.

Actually, I think there was more to that than just inconsistency.

Assistant coaches under Amato left – every year. Far more than typical attrition.

It’s one thing if you have a great program and assistants get hired away for promotion type jobs – like coordinators or head coaches. But that wasn’t the case here. Coaches were just plain leaving. Every year.

Was it mismanagement? Could they tell the program wasn’t being run well? Or was it they wanted to get away from difficult working conditions?

I think they wanted to get away from their boss – Amato. My, off the cuff, not at all informed, and totally unsubstantiated opinion is that Amato was a dick to work for. Possibly emotionally unstable. Probably personality disorder. Which would go along with his outsized personality and ego.

Even before things began to disintegrate on the field – I was watching the yearly coaching exodus and I wandered what the hell was going on.

Part III – Phillip Rivers

Part IV – TOB

Part V – 2009 and Beyond

I agree with TRM 100% on this year and the future. We’re going to be a very improved team. I’ve been telling folks that this year we should be 7 and 5. With a break here, a little luck there - maybe 8 and 4.

One thing for sure – we’re going to be IN every game we play.

The important thing is – TOB has laid the groundwork. Each year we are going to get fundamentally better and better.

Improving from, say, 3 and 9 to 6 and 6 is a lot easier than going from, say, 8 and 4 to 10 and 2 or better.

I don’t expect the breakout to happen this year. I think 2010 is the year NC State will take its place on the national map.

And from there – anything is possible.

August 2 Weekend Update

Not much to blog about.

So here's a couple of pictures.

There's this guy who rides around downtown Raleigh on bicycles outfitted with American flags. And sometimes POW flags. He's been around for years and years. I drive by his house on my morning commute. I snapped this photo this week while waiting at the traffic light.

 

Sunday, Nuke and I went to the The Old Place restaurant. It's way out in the country. It's been there for years. The food is served buffet style - and it's all homemade. A bit pricy as buffets go - around $14 per person - but it's like going to Grandma's for Sunday after church dinner.

BTW - follow the link to the restaurant - click on their menu link and take a close look. Yes - they really do have "that" on the buffet.

LOL

 

We went late - around 6 PM. If you go there right after church on Sundays - prepare to sit around outside and chat with all the other waiting folks as it's totally packed.

Bummer

 

President Barack Obama is coming to Raleigh Wednesday to hold a Town Hall Meeting. The event will be at the Broughton High School Gym which is a typical school gym - a rather small venue. I'd guess maybe 500 - a thousand tops - could fit in there.

With such a small venue - the demand for tickets would be great and supply tight.

I was very surprised when I got a call Sunday afternoon asking me if I'd like to attend.

Of course! Awesome!

OK then - come by the school Monday (today) to pick up 2 tickets. Bring ID, etc. etc.

Well - I happen to have scheduled 2 days of contractor interviews for Tuesday and Wednesday.

When the State needs to hire consultants / contractors for design work - we request proposals - sift through them - pick out the top candidates - interview them - select who we want to hire - then negotiate a contract.

Typical contracts are in the hundred thousand(s) range. Pretty good money - but nothing to get excited about. Lately we've been getting a dozen or more interested firms per project. Usually we interview 4 firms. Pick the best - and carry on. Happens all the time.

This particular project is different. It's for some very complex landfill and contamination investigation, remediation, and implementation of clean up. There's hundreds of these sites in NC. The budget for the initial contracting is $40 Million.

We plan to contract with 4 companies (instead of 1) and are gong to bundle multiple sites together per contract. The average contract will be $10 Million - which is bit more than the typical couple hundred thousand.

For that kind of money - there's been a LOT of interest. We received dozens and dozens of proposals.

We're going to interview 6 firms on Tuesday and 6 firms on Wednesday. Select 4 - and go from there.

This is just way to important a project for me to hand off to someone else at the last minute. Plus - If I did get someone else to handle it - they'd have to commit for both days AND all subsequent negotiations and everything else that goes along with the project.

As much as I'd like to go see the Prez - there's just no way.

Bummer.

Sooooo - the tickets are going to Nuke'em and a guest of his choosing.

Of course, Nuke's politics are a bit to the right of Attila the Hun.

In the interest of National Security - I went ahead and alerted the Secret Service.

They said they already knew all about the Nuke'a'Nator and would have plenty of tasers on hand.

LOL

Just kidding.

Nuke seems to be really looking forward to going.

With such a small venue - it's gonna be up close and personal for this type of event. I bet he really enjoys it.

If he gets to shake the President's hand - I'm gonna be pissed off big time.

Feeding Mama Raccoon

A short video of feeding one of the raccoons that visit the house. I didn't do any editing. My camera records in .mov format and I don't have any apple editing programs.

I've been experimenting with some online video conversion sites - to convert to .wmv - which is the Microsoft format - for which I do have an editor. But so far, the quality of the converted file is seriously degraded.

So - in this case, I uploaded the raw video.

This is the routine - I get home from work - she shows up and bangs the screen door - I (or Nuke) feed her.

She has us well trained.

If it's raining, we put the food bowl inside the screened porch and prop open the porch door with the block of wood you see sitting on the deck.

Like I said - well trained.



Oh, a quick note about my asking her about her arm. She injured her left arm - she had been limping for a couple of days. No outward sign of damage and nothing looks broken. She's walking a lot better now. Seems to have been a minor injury that is just about healed.

2009 ACC Football Schedule

I really like the Football Helmet Schedule. As always - click on the image for a larger view.

Analog Person

I'm kind of like the cliche - I'm an analog person in a digital world.

I downloaded the image to my pc. Where I then tried to upload it to this blog. Which on every attempt, I got an error message. Something to the effect that the file is corrupt.

Besides being a bit insulting - the message really didn't give me much to go on to fix the problem.

Wondering if the file had a virus or something - I ran it through a couple of anti-virus programs. Nope - nothing wrong here.

So - I went back to the original web site and downloaded a new copy. Tried to upload the new file to this blog. Same result.

After a few attempts - I finally decided that maybe the problem was that the image was .pdf format and maybe that doesn't work with blogger. So - I opened the file with Adobe Acrobat and then saved a copy in .jpg format.

Bingo! No problems uploading.

I guess these are things that some people just 'know'. But for me - it's a struggle.

On the other hand - why couldn't the error message tell me something useful - like - "blogger does not support .pdf format" - or even just a generic "the file format you are uploading is not supported". The message telling me the file might be corrupt was pretty much misleading. Granted, it made me aware that the file wasn't going to upload - but heck - I thought that I might have downloaded a file with a virus or something.

I just hope when the time comes - my walker is manual and not digital.