Scott Schrantz's Blog

Wow, I’m late. No, really late. Here is October, half over, and I’m just now posting the September update to the Ormsby House Gallery. That’s just sad.

You’d think there couldn’t be any more exciting stuff to be done. But you’d be wrong. Go to the update to see where they’re putting paint now!

The movement to get a light installed at the corner of Stephanie Way and Hwy 395 is making some progress. The organizers have collected nearly 6,000 signatures on their petition, but more than that, they’ve actually gotten the State to start doing something. And getting a government agency even to consider action is a massive accomplishment.

According to quotes in the Nevada Appeal and Reno Gazette Journal, NDOT has been studying the Stephanie Way interchange, and lumped the stoplight in with a couple of other bullshit ideas in the name of “keeping their options open”. They’re holding a meeting this Saturday, October 15, from 9am to noon at Carson Valley Middle School in Gardnerville. The point of this meeting won’t just be to talk about the signal, but to discuss “safety on Highway 395 between highways 50 and 88 in Minden”. Good god, leave it to the government to take something simple and drag it out to include all kinds of irrelevant crap. Among the options being discussed will be installing a signal at Stephanie, lowering the speed limit through the valley, and eliminating the left turn lane at Stephanie.

And I just want to stand up right now and say that if they eliminate that left turn lane, then the whole of the Nevada Department of Transportation can lick my left nut. What in the holy hell do they think that is going to accomplish? Lowering the speed limit is going to piss people off enough, and in the end everyone’s just going to drive 70 MPH through there like they do now. But if they take out that turn lane, that I use at least once a day, that hundreds of people who live out Stephanie use at least once every day, they’re going to have an angry mob on their hands. We’re going to descend on their office building on Stewart Street and rip it apart brick by brick, and then we’re just going to cut across the median to make a left turn onto Stephanie anyway. Does NDOT seriously have their collective head this far up their communal ass? Seriously?

Come on. Already nobody makes a left turn from Stephanie, because you have to sit there for ten minutes waiting for a break in traffic. Now you want to make it so nobody can turn onto Stephanie? Why don’t you just tear up the goddamned road if that’s the case, if you really want to make it that hard for people to drive on it. Do they want to shuttle traffic onto Johnson Lane? And if they do, do they have any plans to widen it from the two lanes it is now? In the middle of all their “studies” and “guidelines” and “consideration”, did anyone stop to pull down that big dusty book from the shelf? The one titled Common Sense? This is why people hate engineers. Jesus.

Everyone wants a stop light at Stephanie. Stop dicking around and give it to them.

The scheduled demolition of Station #1 that was supposed to happen this Monday, hasn’t started yet. The building is looking tired and ragged and ready to come down, but its fate has been prolonged another few days.

When it’s finally torn down, you’ll see it here. Stay tuned.

I added something pretty cool to the Dining Guide yesterday. If you visit the listing for any of the restaurants (or most of them at least) and scroll to the bottom, you’ll find a map to the restaurant’s location. This is an interactive map, so you’ll be able to drag it around, zoom in or out to get a better sense of where in town the restaurant is, or even switch to a satellite picture to see the building itself.

I think this is pretty neat, and don’t be surprised if you start seeing more maps popping up on the site in the future.

Update, October 17, 2005: If you’ve been trying to look at the new maps in Internet Explorer, you’ve probably noticed you couldn’t load the page. Until today, the Dining Guide was only accessible through Firefox. But now IE can see the pages again.

The Nevada Appeal has another full-page cover story again today. That’s starting to become quite the tradition around the paper, to devote the entire front page to one story. But it’s okay, because it’s a story I’m interested in. So I’ll let them slide this time.

The story is all about Tunnel #2 on the V&T Railroad, one of the biggest obstacles left to the reconstruction effort now that the Overman Pit has been filled in. The article, of course, is written by Becky Bosshart, who seems to be the paper’s V&T beat reporter, and is kicking all kids of ass with that assignment.

The Virginia & Truckee Railroad had six tunnels when it was fully completed. This is Nevada, after all, and every once in a while you’re going to run into a mountain that’s tough or impossible to go around, so you’ve got to go through. And they did go through, six times. Tunnel #1 was built on Duck Hill, near the top of the grade leaving Carson City and going up to Lakeview, Washoe, and Reno. Thousands of motorists pass by the remaining scar every day on Hwy 395, and if you know what you’re looking for it’s pretty obvious. This tunnel collapsed sometime in the early 20th century, and they were able to build a shoo-fly around it, but you can still see the odd depression in the hillside that used to be the tunnel entrance.

The east entrance of Tunnel #3. It’s still open, but don’t go in there. Seriously.

Tunnel #3 is visible from the road too, if you look from the right angle. The tunnel is on the grade above Gold Hill, as you’re travelling up to Virginia City. Bob Gray tried to reopen this tunnel in the late 80s so he could run his trains through it, but there were too many collapses and it couldn’t be made safe. So they built a shoo-fly around it, too, and left both the entrances open. I’ve been inside Tunnel #3, but it’s a pretty foolish thing to do. The ground is littered with boulders, and you never know when another one’s going to come down, maybe right on your head. Make sure your life insurance is paid up if you’re going to go explore Tunnel #3.

Coming up on Tunnel #4.

Tunnel #4 is the only one that’s been fully restored. It’s just a few hundred yards east of Tunnel #3, and it cuts right through an impossible ridge that stood in the way of the V&T tracks. The train runs through it every day on its way between VC and Gold Hill, and if you’ve got a steam locomotive in front of you it’s pretty exciting as the tunnel fills with water vapor and a fog starts to form on the windows. With the diesel engine the V&T has been running the last few years, though, it’s a little less exciting. The only thing the tunnel fills with are diesel fumes, and you start to wonder if you’ll make it to the other end without being asphyxiated.

Tunnel #5, in the background next to little Sammy.

Tunnel #5 is a strange case, since the trains go through it every day, but most people might not realize it. That’s because the tunnel has been daylighted, meaning the roof has been ripped off so it really just looks like you’re going through a stone canyon. But not only has the roof been removed, a highway bridge has been built over the top. So when you’re going through the tunnel you’re also passing under a road. Not as much fun as going through a tunnel, but the bridge is a great place to take train pictures from.

Believe it or not, this is the south entrance to Tunnel #6. It’s somewhere behind that big tree to the left of the building, and the tunnel runs right next to the foundations of St Mary’s Chruch.

Tunnel #6 is another strange case, since it’s hidden right in plain sight. It’s there, but you won’t even realize it unless you know the story. That’s because Tunnel #6 is plugged at both ends, yet it’s right in downtown Virginia City. When the V&T rails finally reached VC, there was one more little ridge that was standing in the way. They had to drill this hole through the ridge so they could get to the other side, where they planned to build the depot. After the tracks were removed in 1938, the tunnel was closed and a road was built over the north entrance. Bob Gray never bothered to reopen this tunnel, but it is in the plans for the final phase of the V&T reconstruction effort. The current V&T track dead ends right at the south entrance, and somewhere beyond that, underneath E Street, right in front of St Mary’s Church, is a tunnel waiting to be reopened.

But this brings us to Tunnel #2, the most mysterious of the tunnels, because it’s the most inaccessible. It sits about halfway between Gold Hill and Mound House, and you can only get to it on foot or by four-wheel-drive. It’s the one tunnel even I’ve never seen. Both ends of the tunnel were collasped in 1969 after the inside was damaged by fire, but construction crews have been cleaning things out this summer, trying to see if the tunnel can be saved. That’s what Becky Bosshart’s article is all about. I suggest you go read it, because she was actually there, and talked with the work crews, so she’s got a better handle on what’s going on. Tunnel #2 is a crucial part of the reconstruction plan. Without that tunnel being reopened, or a shoo-fly built around it, no train is ever going to travel between VC and Carson City. But if it can be restored, a journey on the V&T should be quite an exciting ride.

Did you get your rebate? The tax rebate checks were sent out yesterday in the mail, with every Nevada resident getting between $75 and $275 for each car that they registered in 2004. We got our three checks, and found a personalized little note from Governor Kenny inside the envelope.

One thing you want to watch out for is that you might have to pay taxes on this check. The minimum amount of the rebate is $75. But if you paid less than that to register your car in 2004, the remainder of the $75 is taxable. And, if you got the $75 "senior rebate" even though you don’t have a car, the whole amount is taxable. Yeah, it’s kind of a screwed up deal. But you’re only going to have to pay $1 or $2 in taxes on that amount, so you’re still ahead in the long run.

Here’s the link to the IRS explanation of what’s going on.

I got to fiddling around tonight, and ended up making the restaurant lists over at the Dining Guide a little cooler.

I’ve got tons of back-end coding to work on, and this is how I spend my time? This site is never going to be ready to launch.

The old firehouse on Curry Street is finally about to have its date with the wrecking ball. After years of being abandoned and “slated for demolition”, Crews are set to come in Monday to begin the task of taking it down.

For decades this building, at the corner of Curry and Musser, one block from the Capitol building, was Carson City’s main fire station, home to the all-volunteer Warren Engine Company and later the Carson City Fire Department. This station was built in the 1950s when the Warrens outgrew the house right across the street. For 20 years it was the only fire station in town, until two more were built in the mid 70s. But this building remained the headquarters until the 1990s, when the CCFD outgrew its surroundings once again and moved to a brand-new station on Stewart Street, a couple of miles away. Ever since the move, the building has been empty. For a long time they’ve talked about tearing it down to provide more parking for the state offices in the capitol complex, particularly the Attorney General’s office right next door. But nothing’s ever been done about it, at least not until now. They finally stopped putting it off, and now the demolition is scheduled to start in just a couple of days.

And it’s not like it’s going to be a great loss to the city. This isn’t one of Carson’s grand historic buildings. It’s a cold war turkey, a concrete bunker in the middle of downtown. By contrast, the original Warren Company firehouse across the street is a wonderful sandstone structure that echoes the look of the Capitol building and Abe Curry’s house a few blocks away. I guess there’s something that could be said here about the decline of architecture during the mid-20th century. One is a historic treasure, and the other is a utilitarian building that has outlived its utility.

Not everyone agrees, of course. Just today in the Nevada Appeal they did a story on Darrin Berger, a Carson native who says the firehouse is historically signifigant and deserves to be saved. He has more than just a passing interest in the station, since his grandfather was a member of the Warren Engine Company and worked out of the station. But even Darrin concedes that it’s a little too late to stop the demolition now. He’s just upset that there wasn’t more of a movement to save it.

Personally, I’m ready to see it go. It’s not a terribly interesting building, and while it does have 50 years of history behind it, it spent nearly a quarter of that empty and unused. So it’s not a terribly useful building either. Some buildings are worth keeping around just for the sake of keeping them. Carson City certainly has its share of those. This firehouse, unfortunately, is not one of them.

But what do you think?

They’ve talked about it for months, and now it’s finally happening. This weekend the State is mailing out tax rebate checks to everyone in the state - at least, everyone who registered a car in 2004. The way it’s going to work is that you’ll get a full refund of whatever you paid to register your car (or cars) during 2004...up to $275. This is part of the governor’s plan to take advantage of a budget surplus, by giving it back to the people.

You can read more about the rebate at the DMV website, or in the Nevada Appeal. And there’s a website set up where you enter your license plate number, and it will tell you exactly how much your rebate is going to be. So make sure to check your mailboxes on Saturday!

Yeah, I’ve been neglecting the site lately. That’s why I want to build it up to be a community site; so everyone else can keep it running in my absence. But I’ve still got to build those features in before that can happen, and that’s what’s going to take time.

I’ve been trying to figure out what system to use for the main CMS/blog engine behind the site. Right now I’m using Movable Type, just because it’s what I know and I could whip up a quick and dirty installation with no problem. But that’s no good because I want features that MT doesn’t have, mostly in the way of user management and single sign-on. Plus I’d have to pay for a multi-user installation, and I’m trying to keep this site profitable with only $20 per month in ad revenue. I was looking seriously at WordPress for a while, but it also is geared a little too much towards a stand-alone blog, and wouldn’t mesh well with the rest of the site. Drupal? Geeklog? Mambo? All good systems, and all with their disadvantages. Each one of those would take boatloads of tweaking and customizing to get working just how I want. But mostly, each system I looked at wanted to own and control the whole site, and I only want the blogging engine to be a small part of the larger whole. Yet I want to have comments on every page, even the static ones I hand code myself. I guess I’m just a picky nutcase.

So I’m taking the fool’s route, and coding my own system. Yes, it’s reinventing the wheel, in a big way, but it’s the only way to get a system that works the way I want, and that integrates with the site the way I want. I don’t want to have to build an entire blogging system from the ground up, but they’ve forced my hand. The problem with WordPress and all the others is that they’re too complete and have too many functions. They have their own admin pages and complete database schemas and complex template engines that are built on a impenetrable mess of PHP functions and classes. Have you ever looked at the WordPress source code? It’s not meant to be tampered with. I was looking for just a barebones blogging engine that I could plug into my own pages, but each of the popular systems is already a complete package. They’re made to install and run right out of the box. All I want is pieces, not a polished product. It’s like buying an entire toilet when all I need is the float and the flapper.

So where’s the blogging equivalent of a flapper ball?