Big Smoky Valley

Entrance to Big Smoky Valley

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Back in Vegas this morning

Las Vegas today.....

Keeping my arms around the BAM Crew

Almost 15 years and 30 thirty pounds ago (hey, at least my hair is the same color and on my head) I was able to keep tabs on my three little ones pretty much by just listening to the sounds of what they were up to--or perhaps the lack of sound. Nowadays, things have changed a bit. I can't grab all three together without a major hassle but I can still listen, albeit to a different kind of noise, and keep track of what they are up to. And while the Crew thinks they are all grown up, they still pretty much have the same personalities of the little ones in the picture :)

Mini-go-round

Mini's favorite playground equipment are the up and down spirals for the parking garage at the Las Vegas airport. She races up and down these just to get all dizzy :)

Not Even the Birds Want These

At least for right now, while other sources of food are available, these bright berries are being left alone by our feathered friends. Maybe in another month or two when food becomes a bit more hard to come by.

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Late Fall in the Volunteer State

Still showing some of their vivid fall colors, this plant still has a few berries that the birds haven't gotten to yet.

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Blue Raider Does Community Service

This college coed, back for a few days of R&R with the family over Thanksgiving, is donating her time to help decorate her parents home for the holidays. Welcome back Miss B!!!

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Professional Garland Installer

Everyone has their own specialty and the littlest Princess is a killer on garland installation on stairway handrails---plus she makes a pretty good batch of sugar cookies to go with the festivities.

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The Few, the Proud, the Dolphin Fan in Titan Country

Wearing the outdoor protection that will serve him and his father well at LP Field in a few weeks when the Dolphins come to Nashville to spank the Titans, this die-hard fan is preparing to retrieve Christmas decorations from deep under the stairs to help kick-off this Holiday Season.

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Opus 200----No Service? Not a Problem :)

Home for the holiday these past few days and nary a buzz....one of the benefits of rural living.

No Rest for the Wicked

Even the folks in Sin City have to sleep some time. This up and coming outfit is more than willing to help them get the best sleep possible.

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Vegas tonight......

The "Forever" Golf Tee

The spike sitting on the sticky note in the photo appears to have began life as a 1/2-13 x 3 hex bolt but was worn down inside what is referred to as the "Tower Mill". The mill is auger driven and uses 1" balls to grind down whatever is left of the ore into essentially dust. Ocassionally, foreign objects like above enter into the system and are found during PMs.

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New Neighbors

Got home tonight (the photo has been greatly lightened hence the excessive grain) and have a new neighbor....cozy little log cabin. More to follow I'm sure.

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Deviation of the Normal kind

An invaluable tool in calculating where a process is from a mathematical point of view is the ol' Bell Curve. Most things (milk expirations, crop yields, the words I type in a blog post) all have fairly Normal distributions, or can be fitted into a psuedo-normal curve. Once you have this information it is only a few clicks of a calculator, the placement of reading glasses on the nose and then looking up the z value on the chart above to find where you sit under the curve.....

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Another Point of View

I was recently putting together another report and took the time to gather a map of the overall site---with labels. For the sense of scale, the pit viewed from this angle is about a mile across. The dedicated pads (heap leaches) form one of the largest in the world and are still growing everyday. The community of Hadley can be seen at the very top right of the picture and a few buildings of the town of old Round Mountain at the center bottom.

Dead Rhino

Mentioned before as an "infamous" event...our borrowed Rhino, typically an unquestioned asset to exploring desert canyons while carrying the needed supplies (like lunch, beverages, lame teen-agers), had to be towed home due to a probable fuel/air issue. The Wrangler pictured above towed the Rhino home with gravel spewing from the tires, hence the right-handedsness of the photo. Fun still had by all of course as lunch was served via Wrangler courier :)

What's Up Doc?

While attending the Fall Craft Festival this past weekend I entered a raffle supporting the local chamber of commerce---and won. While this prized lepus is not quite in the same category as the Grand Prize winner during the Health Fair mentioned in an earlier posting, this little hand-crafted bunny will be given to the Little Princess upon my return next week for Thanksgiving.

Industrial Dental Care

One of the many little improvement projects that go on constantly is better wear and maintenance on the big shovel teeth. The large bucket has seven replaceable teeth to help dig into the loose, blasted rock. Each of these teeth (pictured in blue) are attached to an adapter (yellow) and are changed out approximately monthly due to wear. The adaptors stay on (most of the time anyway) the bucket itself and provide for a relatively easy switch out for new teeth.

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All the way to China

For those of you that follow the blog and have seen the pictures of the pit, this very tentative mapping shown in the photo will give you a sense of scale. The upper most concave black line is the current pit bottom, lowest concave black line describes the pit bottom as planned. The concave red line waaaay in the bottom is the "blue sky" pit configuration and would require pretty much an entire mine infrastructure move.

Felt the Earth Move....

Got a text from the little woman telling me she felt the earth move. Now, I'm not the suspicious type, but I did check with the USGS just to be sure :)

Epicenter was just a couple of miles away in a creek bed.

Earthquake Details

Magnitude	3.4
Date-Time	Friday, November 06, 2009 at 06:12:39 UTC Friday, November 06, 2009 at 12:12:39 AM at epicenter Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones
Location	36.088°N, 89.402°W
Depth	9.7 km (6.0 miles)
Region	TENNESSEE
Distances	6 km (4 miles) NNW (342°) from Dyersburg, TN 12 km (8 miles) WSW (255°) from Newbern, TN 21 km (13 miles) SSE (160°) from Ridgely, TN 120 km (74 miles) NNE (25°) from Memphis, TN 292 km (182 miles) SSE (165°) from St. Louis, MO
Location Uncertainty	horizontal +/- 0.3 km (0.2 miles); depth +/- 0.7 km (0.4 miles)
Parameters	NST= 24, Nph= 27, Dmin=2 km, Rmss=0.04 sec, Gp= 40°, M-type="Nuttli" surface wave magnitude (mbLg), Version=B
Source	Cooperative New Madrid Seismic Network
Event ID	nm1010

Newest Blue Raider

Wandering around the MTSU campus this fall, most people assumed that Big Red was just a fellow student---he wore the shirts, went to the games, was the main squeeze of an Honors coed, etc. The timing didn't work out for this semester but come this spring he'll be official. Congratulations!!!!

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Moon over Jefferson

With the time change yesterday, I got to watch the Moon come up over Mt. Jefferson on the way home late this afternoon. Some snow is still seen on the central and northern peaks from the storm last week. The mine's waste rock heaps are at the bottom of the photo directly under the moon.

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Jett Canyon in Cinemascope

Merging a few shots of Jett Canyon's entrance---site of the infamous sputtering death of the Rhino....