The Tunnelweb Spider I had an encounter with a New Zealand Tunnelweb Spider To anyone who knows me it s a well known fact that I am more or less terrified by most anything of the arachnid variety It s entirely an irrational fear this I know but I can t seem to get over it for whatever reason Thankfully I think spiders are about the only things that I am afraid of Of course I also think most anyone would be afraid of a tunnelweb strong The Tunnelweb strong photo 3412 273 0 right A tossed a quarter next to the spider to give it some perspective photo The other day while still living in my flat in Dunedin I strolled into my bathroom or toilet for a quick pee break So far there was nothing unusual about this sudden urge to urinate I began peeing and as I looked down to my left just near the upright shower was a GIANT New Zealand Tunnelweb spider Now that I was in a state of complete terror not to mention mid stream instinct kicked in and I immediately stopped my flow and jumped about 6 feet to my left far far out of harms way Once I calmed down a bit I ran to get my camera and though I usually get pretty close to the subject in my nature pics I kept my distance for this one These were zoom lens all the way I tossed an American Quarter on the ground near the spider to give it some perspective FYI an American Quarter is just under an inch in diameter This spider clearly spawned about 2 25 of them strong A Peaceful Spider strong Is there such a thing Though the Tunnelweb is about the size of a Tarantula like the Tarantula it is not poisonous Don t confuse it s name with the Australian Funnelweb spider The Funnelweb on the other hand is quite deadly Also like our Tarantula however this spider can inflict a very painful bite if provoked to do so If you look between the small front two legs you can see the very large black fangs touching the ground below After this whole encounter with death itself I did a bunch of research on the particular spider Though I had seen them around outside I had not seen one in my bathroom but that is apparently somewhat normal As I read every so often a Tunnelweb spider will find his way into a house and when it does it becomes severely dehydrated usually to the point of death The spider will immediately seek out a source of water with it s sensing tools and this usually lands it either in the bathroom or the laundry room Apparently sometimes they are able to sustain themselves for awhile in the bathroom as they can live off of the leftover humidity from showers and drops of water on the floor Usually though they wither and die pretty quickly This one was obviously somewhat resourceful

The Gas Caps photo 16384 364 0 right A photo of N733CP the plane I was flying in this story Note that this picture was not taken at the same time photo The following story takes place at the Austin Bergstrom International Airport the Lockhart Municipal Airport and 3 000 feet above the ground between those two locales On the second flight I ever made during my flight training I was responsible for the pre flight inspection Though neither Dustin nor myself had a great deal of experience with these sorts of procedures just yet I decided that I d be able to figure it out one way or another Of course the or another part of that was preparing to reveal itself to me We had been taught in the previous lesson that there is a very specific methodology to doing a pre flight inspection The formula is mainly just geared at making sure you don t overlook any obvious steps and so it s important to always go in order For a person like myself who likes to do many things at once this linearity took a little getting used to Nevertheless I did the flight inspection as requested and was ready to get going Upon completion of my pre flight inspection our new instructor Garrett came out to greet Dustin and I just prior to the flight We were planning a short comfortable afternoon voyage out to Lockhart 50R as we had done the week before For those who don t know Lockhart is a small town located about 30 miles south of Austin From ABIA it s a straight shot and thus makes for a great training facility I taxied out of ABIA and took to the skies heading south towards Lockhart When we got into the area Garrett had me doing all sorts of aerial drills I was mostly working on turning around a point controlling my altitude and some basic navigation After about 20 or so minutes of this we entered the pattern at Lockhart and touched down Garrett instructed me to taxi the plane over to the gas pump there gas is sold much cheaper in Lockhart than at ABIA and was planning on having us gas up the plane As I parked and killed the engine he got out and climbed onto the sidestep to see the top of the plane When he came down he very calmly asked me to step out of the plane I did He asked me to walk around the plane and take a look at the top of the plane and see if I noticed anything of interest I climbed atop the plane as requested and much to my great surprise the plane was missing both of its gas caps I could tell that Garrett was pretty angry at the situation but he did his best to remain in good spirits and was not too outwardly angry with me We called in the problem to someone back in Austin and as it turns out I had simply left them on top of the plane and they must have fallen onto the ground as soon as I engaged the throttle We had to wait about 30 minutes but someone brought them to us and all was well Months later I was speaking with a flight instructor who was adamant about the fact that planes cannot fly without gas caps since the lack of pressure would simply suck the gas right out of the wings While I m sure it s ideal to have them in place I had to respectfully disagree with this person s analysis

The Waco Window This is nothing more than another relatively short college antic that took place in Waco and involved Tom Kelley Nathan Christianson and of course me I had come up to visit the guys in Waco as I had done a few times before and as we had done a few times before we got pretty drunk The story with Tom and I usually went something like this Ludlow always finds a way to get into trouble Tom always finds a way to get into trouble put them together and something terrible is bound to happen to someone else The strange thing in this case was that I think Nathan had more involvement in the destruction than did Tom Either way Tom always played an integral role Some time in the latter part of the evening we headed over towards one of their friend s apartments Across the street from this apartment was a new condominium being developed The three of us happened to walk over that way to pee And yes I m sure we could have just used the bathroom inside but this seemed like a better plan at the time Who doesn t love peeing outside Once we d zipped up the next logical step was to break some of the windows at the new development Yes nothing more than drunken college vandalism at it s finest This is actually where I don t think Tom played a huge role as a very rare change In fact I seem to recall him being inside of the house doing something entirely different than Nathan and I albeit probably still destructive but I digress Nathan and I began picking up 2x4s on the ground and hurling them at the windows from no more than 20 feet away Naturally you d expect that the windows would have shattered into pieces but they did not In fact the windows seemed to absorb the shock of the wood with pleasure With each new impact the window would let off a springy sounds and sent our pieces of wood to the ground Over and over again we tried to destroy these windows each throw more frustrating than the last How was it possible that two drunk college 18 year old guys couldn t destroy these windows Well needless to say our luck was about to change quite heavily After repeated failed attempts at breaking the windows a local Waco squad car and then another pulled up at the scene Evidently someone had called them in for vandalizing a local property At this point in my life I d experienced run ins with the police so many times for mischievous behavior that I m not sure I was even phased They asked us what we were doing and of course we explained that we were just casually checking out the property After being told that they were called there for people breaking the windows we rather pompously pointed out that the claim had been false as none of the windows were in fact broken After some back and forth debate and running of our licenses something I would never let happen today we were told we could go on the condition that we didn t drive our car evidently the cops were also keen to the fact that we d been drinking a bit They went so far to tell us that they were going to periodically check on Tom s car throughout the night and if it was gone they were going to come and get us The moral of the story is that high cost windows are your friends even when you are trying to kill them

Austin Pets Directory div class pageImage img src http www ludlow2014 com themes Default images Blog AustinPetsDirectory_bothpages jpg alt Austin Pets Directory class alignright size full wp image 252 br The campaign spread in the Austin Pets Directory div One of the best parts of running a political campaign is getting to meet new people in all sorts of life experiences One of those people I stumbled across happens to be one of Austin s most amazing by the name of Liz Parker Liz is the city s go to for all things related to dogs She is a volunteer at the Austin Animal Shelter Austin Pets Alive and also happens to own a local print magazine called a href http www austinpetsdirectory com Austin Pets Directory a And wouldn t you know it she wanted to do a story about the campaign in her magazine We had a great time with it and I love the writeup she did The article reads as follows Kevin Ludlow is a lot of things He s a writer musician a successful owner and operator of a software firm an avid animal lover and most notably he is a candidate for the Texas House of Representatives in District 46 He is passionate but thoughtful and pretty brilliant There are a few people who make the world a better place and we think Kevin Ludlow is one of them A Houston native we love em almost em everything about him and 16 year Austin resident Kevin has always had a penchant for both writing and political activism His involvement with civic activities began when he was a student at the University of Texas at Austin After graduating with a BA in mathematics in 2003 Ludlow traveled to New Zealand where he lived for a year After returning to Austin Kevin returned to writing He was inspired by the feedback his political musings received and in 2012 that feedback fueled his drive to publish a book em American Healthcare A Moderate Approach em In August of the same year Ludlow along with Jad Davis founded the JKPodcast a weekly political science podcast The show quickly grew in popularity and has thousands of listeners When Kevin decided to run for office he never imagined getting this far I thought if I can get even 16 of the votes that s a huge accomplishment he says But the Libertarian party had other plans Thanks to the party and its volunteers and thousands of supporters who believe in Ludlow s positions on both state and national issues he has made incredible progress Growing up the Ludlow family had no less than two cats at a time Kevin also enjoyed caring for the family fish gerbils hamsters and even a crawfish named Bob He s also had a Sheltie named Barney the Dog a Chihuahua named Freckles and Senor Taco a dachshund He is a big time fan of the put bull breed and is always pet sitting for friends If you care about issues like drug law reform LGBT marriage and Equality and women s rights or just want to learn more visit Ludlow2014 com

Daily Texan Firing Line Submission Take away all of the nails and screws Not a bad idea to cut down on the materials used in bombs But why stop there Get rid of aluminum tin copper silver and every other metal on the periodic table Ban the creation alloys synthetic metals and anything else that could be used for shrapnel We could have a whole society built with wood rope plastic and an occasional squirt of glue Maybe we could just live in tents I agree with Ryan guns don t kill people people kill people But let s change that just a bit People buy guns and then people kill people Would it help to change the second amendment Probably People argue that taking away guns is taking away from their entertainment I guess it is always fun to go and pop Bambi now and then but how much is that fun really worth Does anybody think that the people in Colorado are saying It s so great that Americans can buy guns off of the shelf to hunt with Of course not If the banning of guns will cut back on your leisure time find a new hobby I certainly do not want anyone banning football It s a great sport Likewise I am sure that hunting is just as great of a sport But when crazy fuckers start going to Oshmans to stock up on footballs walk into schools and start killing people with them I will be happy to change my opinion

The Warm Chubby is No More Well the times they are a changin It was about that time and I have sadly moved out of Warm Chubby and the Shipwrecked Ostrich For now I am staying at Tisa s flat about 1km from where I was We will be here today and tomorrow and then it is off to Lake Wanaka again but this time with Emma We ll be celebrating Christmas with her family and then returning to Dunedin on the 26th pending a pair of bus tickets As soon as we return we ll get to packing once more and on the 27th we fly to Auckland and will be staying with my former flatmate Nick My family will be in the air at that time and we will rendezvous with them on the 28th some time in the late morning I need my rest That takes us to a two week trip around the North Island South Island and Sydney Australia We ll then be back in Dunedin on the 11th of January only to pack for good and have hotel reservations in Wellington for the 15th 19th in such time we will be finding a place in the city there

The Sprint Password photo 36006 740 0 right photo Towards the end of 2008 I decided it might be time to stop using Spring as my carrier and jump on a network that would offer me a smartphone and a reasonable data plan I spoke with AT T regarding the iPhone but their top tier service was really expensive upwards of 160 per month ridiculous T Mobile was offering all sorts of deals on the newly released Google G1 a phone that I preferred anyways and so I was convinced to go with it However the truth of the matter was that I didn t really have any particular problem with Sprint had a pretty good and grandfathered price plan and didn t want to go through the hassle of switching providers Sprint had been offering a hybrid smartphone not really a smartphone but it had reasonably good data processing on it and I thought I could simply negotiate for a better deal with them using AT T and T Mobile as my ammunition I called their customer service and as expected they started asking me for all of my personally identifying information such as my name address date of birth and etc Once this concluded they asked me the answer to my secret question Evidently that question was What is your favorite hobby This was an awful question to ask me because I have so many hobbies and couldn t for the life of me remember what it was The guy was really cool about it and said to give it a go so I started listing off hobbies that I thought might be unique to me Playing the guitar Flying airplanes Riding motorcycles Software developing Singing Writing It went on for about a minute or so and I probably went through almost twenty hobbies of mine At this point I really could have been anybody rattling of hobbies The guy finally stopped me and said he would take a look but without saying anything else just started laughing somewhat out of control Mind you I had absolutely no idea what was going on or why he was doing this He finally asked me if I wanted to know what the answer was to my secret question Of course I did He responded this question can suck my balls We had a pretty good laugh about it for a minute I just kind of shrugged the whole experience off as humorous and was glad the rep was so friendly about it Unfortunately it did NOT help me to get any sort of better deal despite my best efforts and so I just settled on T Mobile

Dreux s Tale of Jury Duty Crockett and I were hanging out with Dreux the other day and he told us all about his experience with jury duty here in Travis county We were surprised that he was picked for the case at all being a logical engineer and all but he was His reward was sitting and listening to 5 days of civil trial strong The Suit strong The lawsuit came from what is no doubt an upsetting tale but in my opinion was frivilous all the same Essentially an F 550 work truck was making a left turn at a stop light crossing a highway in his turning lane Mind you he was actually the second car waiting for the green left arrow As the arrow turned green thus giving him the right of way the car in front of him went through the intersection and he proceeded to so the same Perpindicular to his car and coming from the left at about 55 MPH or so was another car The driver ran the red light and the right side of her car smashed into the large grill bumper of the F 550 severely injuring her passenger and backseat daughter in a carseat So much in fact that life flight was needed at the scene The woman s daughter suffered severe head trauma and will apparently never be the same again To a lesser extent this was apparently also true of the passenger Oddly enough the lawsuit actually came from the injured child s father and from the mother of the passenger They the plaintiffs were seeking a claim of negligence on behalf of the F 550 turning left claiming that he has a responsibility to ensure no cars are coming even if he has the right of way For that they attempted to justify he was 20 at fault and were seeking to award 10 000 000 in damages which results in 2 000 000 after factoring his negligent part Long story short Dreux and the 11 other members of the jury found in favor of the defendant and therefore awarded no damages to the plaintiff It seems that one of the largest points made was that by the time she ran the light all lights had been red for two seconds the defendant s light had been green for 8 seconds and the woman driver s light had been red for 10 seconds Not to mention her light had been yellow for 6 seconds prior to it turning red strong How One is Selected for Jury Duty strong There was some confusion amongst us trying to decide how one is selected for jury duty It seems that some of us believe it comes from registering to vote others believe it s merely having a license It seems to vary from state to state and possibly county to county but here are the rules for Travis County The jury wheel which is the list of potential jurors comes from three lists all registered voters in Travis County all registered voters from neighboring counties that reside within Austin city limits all persons in Travis County with either a Texas driver s license or a Department of Public Safety identification card Each year the Voter lists and DPS lists are merged by matching the names as best as is possible to minimize duplications The merged list is given to the Travis County district clerk The district clerk county clerk and sheriff then meet to reconstitute the jury wheel by replacing the old list with the new one Jury summonses are sent from the jury wheel on a random basis About 120 000 to 150 000 summonses are sent each year To read more about this visit a href http www co travis tx us district_clerk jury A1 asp http www co travis tx us district_clerk jury A1 asp a

Acoustic Looping with a Violin Bow I ve recently been doing some experimenting with a violin bow after a friend of mine started teaching me some basics Granted she is playing on an actual violin but it translates to guitar fairly well The result was a harder sounding back beat with a nice wah wah tick and a deep swell from the violin bow I was basically just forming an E chord and running the bow over the strings with heavy distortion to get the effect iframe width 521 height 391 src https www youtube com embed SqGo_cJG3xM frameborder 0 allowfullscreen iframe

Speaking to TX NORML at the Flamingo Cantina div class pageImage img src http www ludlow2014 com themes Default images Blog LudlowNORML_640 jpg alt Kevin Ludlow at TX NORML class alignright size full wp image 257 br Kevin Ludlow addressing TX NORML from the stage at the Flamingo Cantina div I was approached by a href http www texasnorml org TX NORML a a few weeks back and asked if I would consider being the speaker at their u a href https www facebook com events 548176608626017 pcoming monthly business meeting a I excitedly accepted the opportunity For those unfamiliar with the group NORML stands for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws They are a massive national organization with a presence virtually everywhere They are responsible for shedding light on so many of the problems with drug prohibition in the United States and actively seek candidates who are interested in reversing this nightmare in the country As one of those candidates I was honored to speak at the event There was a pretty sizable crowd my speech was very well received I look forward to meeting with them many more times before the election