Just Deserts
I spent the middle of the week visiting clients in eastern Washington. I deal with a winery in Richland that is just putting the finishing touches on a public tasting facility that will include a restaurant, retail sales and classes. Another is an agribusiness with two locations.
The terrain couldn’t be more removed from the lush growth I was cavorting amongst over the weekend. It’s basically sagebrush desert east of the Cascades, receiving about 6″ of rainfall a year. They grow a cornucopia of crops in the region - potatoes, onions, hops, wheat, grapes both for wine and for juice, asparagus, apples, apples, apples - all with water drawn from the Snake and Columbia systems.
The photo shows all of this - sagebrush, an irrigation rig in the middle distance, and, lining the ridge in the background like an unshaven chin, wind turbines.
It was in the mid-100s over there, which made for balmy 80-degree nights perfect for running (it’s dry heat, after all!). I only suffered on Thursday, when I had to drive in my ac-less car for about 75 miles in midafternoon. When I reached my client’s, their doorhandle put a serious burn on my palm - the doorknob to Hades, I thought.
Amusing bit: you’ve probably heard the term “sneakernet” - a computer networking method involving copying data to a floppy disk and walking it over to another computer? Well, the agribusiness client with two locations needs to share data, but the telephone infrastructure at one location only allows for about 8k linespeed, and pokes a lot of holes in that. So, we deployed a technique called “spudnet” - each week after payroll, a zip disk makes its way between the locations on a truck carrying potatoes.
