You could have picked a worse locale...

... Paul could have tried to set up shop in Ester. That's my attitude towards the Goldstream General Store. About two years ago, you may recall there was a stink about the employees going on strike. The store used to be owned by some nice folks who decided to sell it quietly. So quietly that almost no one knew about it until it was done. The problem was the new owner had strong opinions about tattoos, religion, politics, and just about everything else. And they were 100% to the right of right. And he was rather vocal about them. Well, that's fine - that's anyone's right - but you have to question the business savvy of starting an outwardly conservative business in what's basically a valley full of hippies, dilettante dog mushers, unwashed students and university staff. The valley isn't as liberal as Ester, but it's pretty close. 

The problem, and the reason this  is back in the news, was because the new owner tended to talk to his employees about religion. A lot. In a hostile manner. Leaving aside the wisdom of talking about religion at work (there's a time and place, and that's neither), the employees thought the content of the conversation amounted to harassment at the least. Things to the effect of `Catholics are the root of all evil` and how they would go to hell. At least two employees have sued over this, and thus far, one has won. I'm surprised it's taken two years for the case to worm its way through the courts - this was about as open and shut as it gets, given the amount of evidence that Paul was saying those things. Getting redress for being obviously wronged through the courts is an incredibly slow process. I might have just said `forget it` and dropped the case myself.

What really gets me is the guy's business plan. It's terrible, to be blunt. This is Goldstream we're talking about here, no one wants to buy stuff they picked up at safeway, brought to the general store and slapped a mark-up on. You want to make bank in the area, open a store that sells local foods, or organic food, or anything of that sort. Make it a pick up location for those organic farm distributors that are so popular on campus. Sell to the clientele you can get,  not the one you wish you had. If they had even a little bit of local goods there, they would have many more customers than they actually do.

Happy Solstice!

Don't worry everyone, we'll be right back to this in no time flat:

Happy solstice!

PSA: UAF open tomorrow, Wed. No Classes

Nov. 23, 2010

To: UAF community

From: Brian Rogers, Chancellor

Re: Classes canceled Nov. 24, university to remain open

Classes at the University of Alaska Fairbanks main campus and all UAF Community and Technical College locations will be canceled for Wednesday, Nov. 24, due to continued hazardous weather conditions.

The university will remain open for business on Wednesday. Because road conditions vary throughout the region, employees should use their own discretion as to whether or not to come in to work. University buildings and services may have adjusted business hours due to staff availability. Please contact departments directly for more information.

Those employees who choose not to come in to work should check with their supervisors to determine which leave options are available to them. Supervisors should remain flexible during these unusual circumstances. The following options are available:

• Employees can take annual leave for all or part of the day.
• Employees may work all or part of the day from home if workload and department needs allow this option. This work can also include taking SkillSoft or other online training from home. Supervisor approval is required.
• With supervisor approval, employees who do not have adequate leave may stay home and use flex time to make up some or all of their missed hours.
• Employees who do not have adequate leave may stay home on Nov. 24 and work on Friday, Nov. 26 to make up missed time. Friday, Nov. 26 is a regularly scheduled campus holiday closure.
• Employees may elect to take leave without pay.

Please call your HR consultant at 474-7700 if you have questions about how to handle leave time; HR will be checking phone messages during the closure.

Finally, I want to thank everyone for their patience and flexibility during these highly unusual circumstances. Like the school district, the state and every other agency/business in town, it has greatly impacted the way we do business this week. Our decisions on what to do have been based, first and foremost, on the safety of our students and employees.

Please check uafalert.alaska.edu or call 474-7UAF(7823) for the most current information about closures and class cancellations.

How Icy is Fairbanks?

Just how icy is Fairbanks right now? Here's a gem that I found via Alaskan Dave (who is not dead, judging by his twitter account) Down Under: http://yfrog.com/mgyv5pj

Goldstream is better than that. Marginally. Just stay away from Ballaine.

New Freds West

I swung by Fred's West this morning to grab some gas and odds and ends I needed, and finally saw what all the construction was about - two massive foyers on the north and east side, for containing shopping carts. I'm not sure what the heck they're supposed to accomplish, aside from looking very impressive.

And then it occured to me... Freds is now heating a massive, two story, glass lined foyer that's constantly opening and closing as people enter and leave the store. Is it just me, or is this a massively bad idea? The energy required to keep that volume of air toasty warm must be staggering. The surface area to volume ratio has got to be massive, especially with their tall, pointy roof. It's a grotesque waste of heating and perhaps the single worst design you could have for anywhere in Alaska, never mind Interior Alaska.

Fred's:

Pictures

Pictures

Pictures

Recruitment

What can I say? They know how to make an offer people can't refuse.

Why you should participate in the Census

The best reason to participate in the census, I was told, is to keep Anchorage from running the state.

I imagine in Anchorage, people are being told the best reason to participate in the census is to remind everyone else they're half the state's population.

:P

Just stating the obvious

I picked this up from the National Weather Service:

Statement as of 7:22 PM AKDT on March 15, 2010

... A colder and drier than average start to March at Fairbanks...

During the first two weeks of March the average temperature at the
Fairbanks International Airport was 3.5 degrees... which was 2.3
degrees below average. The month started mild with well above
average temperatures on the 3rd through the 6th... including a high
of 40 on the 3rd. It turned much colder during the second week of
March... with a low of 26 below on the 13th.

So far this March a total of 1.6 inches of snow has
fallen... which is 1.4 inches below average. For the season only
24.8 inches of snow has been observed... which is 38.3 inches
below average. The snowfall total for the winter season ranks as
the least amount of snow since the winter of 1952-1953.

For the next several days temperatures are expected to moderate...
with above average temperatures expected Thursday through Sunday.
Little or no precipitation is expected through next weekend. The
average high this time of year at Fairbanks is 25 and the average
low is 3 below.

Yea. 38.4 inches below normal. I'll believe that. Riding over tussocks, you nearly fall apart from the horrible vibrations. It's not to say we can't have a late spring sudden snowstorm, but it'd take 3ft of snow to put us back near the black, and that's a lot of snow, even in Valdez. And we didn't really have any -40, aside from a day or two of it. Not that I'm complaining, it's just odd...

Why is this year so warm and dry? I thought the PDO was going cold... which could explain the dry, if it weren't for the "Warm" part of that sentence. I'm not a meteorologist, but I'm curious why the climate was like it was. And, is this what the Arctic is going to look like in the future with Climate Change. If so, it can keep it!

Cease and Decist

A list of ads that it does you NO GOOD to show me on TV, in Fairbanks.

• Dairy Queen
• Olive Garden
• Burger King
• Comcast Cable
• Applebee's
• Red Lobster
• Sonic
• Travel to Alaska
• Verison Wireless
• Best Buy
• Dunkin Doughnuts

So stop showing me those ad! Honestly! I'm not going to drive to the states just for some Red Lobster...
Though, I do like Tim Hortons. Why don't we have one anywhere in AK? There's a crime...

Funny thing is, at Fred Meyer's, they sell gift certificates to a lot of those places. Why? Why, I ask? What possible use is there?

Yukon Quest Start

The Yukon Quest started on Saturday. Since I'm on the Road Today through Thursday, I figured Tuesday is a good day to fling up some pictures. :)

Pictures

Tanana Valley Meats

Something is rotten in Tanana Valley Meats:

FAIRBANKS — After Travis Marsh shot his first moose back in September, a nice 52-inch bull near Delta Junction, he couldn’t have been happier. The thought of having a full freezer of tasty, high-protein meat made his mouth water.
[...]
But Marsh and Morgan were left with a bad taste in their mouths after waiting almost two months to get their meat back, and they say it was rancid. Not to mention the fact that Marsh dropped off 421 pounds of meat to be processed and got back less than 200 pounds.

I processes my own game (the way god intended), but I've heard good things about Interior Alaskan Fish Processors (Aka Santa's Smokehouse). Their rates are reasonable, and I've eaten their breakfast sausage, and it isn't half bad! Not as good as our own, of course! ;)

Nothing pisses off someone more than working hard to catch an animal, only to have it go bad on them for things outside their control. All the effort, and this place just ruins it all. And then there's this gem:

Miller said he has a list of about a half-dozen customers who have called to complain about how long it took to process their meat or the bad-tasting meat. One of the complainants is threatening a civil suit against the Tanana Valley Meats because he and his hunting partners took in 315 pounds of moose meat to get ground up and it all came back bad.

In that case, Miller said he offered to replace the hunter’s 315 pounds of moose with beef, a trade the hunter seemed receptive to but had not agreed to as of Friday. In other cases, the plant has reduced processing fees or offered full refunds, he said.

 My head would explode, if it were me in that situation. Replace with beef? Are you nuts? I don't want to eat beef, I want to eat moose! It'd be like replacing bars of gold with a bag of rocks. I'm getting angry just thinking about it, and I didn't even have my meat ruined! And then the owner goes on to blame the hunters. If it were just a few, that might be believable, but this large number? Blah.

It sounds like there's a resounding `Don't use Tanana Valley Meats`

Santa Update

An update to the North Pole Santa letters story:

FAIRBANK — Santa’s elves in North Pole may want to sharpen their pencils.

The U.S. Postal Service announced Friday that it is resuming a program in which volunteers respond to some of the estimated 150,000 letters to Santa Claus that accumulate at the post office in North Pole.

New security measures protecting letter writers’ identities will ensure that personal information about small children doesn’t fall into the wrong hands, officials said.

Leaders at the Christmas-themed city and statewide applauded the decision and credited postal workers in Alaska for acting to keep the tradition alive.

Pictures

Advice to the Fairbanks Newbie.

Yup, it's that time of year again! New Student in Fairbanks? Welcome to the middle of nowhere*! Fairbanks can be a great, exciting place to live, but like anywhere else in the world, it takes some getting used to. Here's some basic tips to help you get by:

• Homes come in to varieties - dry, and wet. Dry places have no running water. In Fairbanks, this is not a big deal. You haul your own water in a carboy from a water seller, and campus is littered with showers for students. Please leave the showers clean, though!

• Don't go out and buy everything with the words 'Polar Fleece' on it. Instead, wait until it starts to cool off, and look at what the Locals are wearing. And then, after you've seen how Fairbanksans manage, dress like the locals. Otherwise, you'll waste a lot of money. You'll probably notice we dress in layers, and we're not too fashionable.
  

• Get your vehicle winterized now. Buy studded tires before the first snow. There's always a massive backlog of people at the auto shops in town who need that work done when the white stuff starts flying. You can have studded tires on your vehicle as early as September 15th. It's not a bad idea to make an appointment for the 16th, just so you're not caught off guard by snow.

• Be social! Go out, meet people. Drink at bars (if 21), attend student events. Especially around campus, there's lots to do. I'm always perplexed by people who say that Fairbanks is full of introverts. Michael Feldman said something to the effect of `There's no where else where you're around so many people who like to be with other people who don't like people.` ;)
  

• Develop some outdoor hobbies so the winter isn't as boring. If you're trapped inside, of course Fairbanks seems like an awful place! I would remind you that for a minimum of a year, you'll be a non-resident for hunting and fishing purposes**.

• Get ready for some stickershock, because stuff isn't as cheap as it is in the states. It runs from 25% to 33% more than it runs down below. Frozen foods are expensive in the summer. Fresh produce isn't really fresh in the the winter (and the summer, it can get pretty questionable too). If you're aware of this, things go much smoother. If, like me, you love to do confectionery stuff, be prepared to shell out big money for extracts (besides vanilla) and uncommon spices. Sometimes, I just have friends in the states send it up to me, since it's cheaper.
  

In general, try to have fun. Don't hole yourself up. And whatever you do,

• Don't tell us how you did things back in [insert lower 48 state here]. People will say, "That's nice." But they'll be thinking, "What a jerk." You're not in Kansas anymore! :)
  

*The villages are not the middle of nowhere. The villages are the far-edge of nowhere.
**Yes, you can fish in the winter. It's as fun as fishing in the summer!

---

While we're on the topic of students returning to UAF, here's a comment from the article "UAF Prepares for Swine Flu Outbreak:"

Swine flu will work just like everything else at UAF. It will show up late, move excruciatingly slowly through the bureaucracy, get lots of talk but little actual help from the risk management office, hang around the Pub far too much, provoke quite a bit of dorm-room puking, and finish its two-year program about seven years from now. Then it will just hang out on campus hoping for a job.

Too funny!

HDR failure

I tried to make an HDR picture using my bracketing feature on my camera and Photoshop. Sadly, it didn't come out. But one of the exposures looked pretty okay on its own.
I was told you have to pay money to ride the rides. Huh? What a rip-off! I knew there was a reason I didn't go to the fair...

Pictures