Pooka is the best.
Month: May 2008
Anachronistic tribe in Brazil. Those pictures could have been taken at the jungle cruise in d-land. Look, the back side of water! Ha, that one gets me every time.
I’ve been copiloting extractions of IS goodness in Houston, which basically involves watching a needle pierce aerogel, compiling and uploading code, steering a remote webcam, and looking for little spots on a computer screen.
It’s carbo-load time! Which means I’ve been eating oatmeal, potatoes, and pasta. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
RED MENACE
Phoenix detects a cosmic ray! I can’t believe this thing costs found hundred million dollars and it can only detect ONE cosmic ray. Still, it was worth it. Another neat shot of the entry.
Back in berkeley after a nice memorial weekend in the emerald city. Really sleepy though.
reminder
Rock n Roll
The San Diego Rock ‘n Roll Marathon is next Sunday. The event will also serve as the 2008 JUICE Marathon Championships. When I alerted the marathon race director of this fact, he hired this guy as the official event photographer.
sincerely yours,
Sweetness
Sequoia Adventure or New Boyfriend Always Wants To Do Stuff
Sequoia NP photos! And the SO’s photos, including two videos at the end. One is self-explanatory, the other needs some explanation. We were walking through Crescent Meadow and in a stream we saw several baby trout hanging out. Nearby were a bunch of big carpenter ants, so naturally I picked up one and through it in the water – the ant was gulped down by a little trout in the blink of an eye. I threw two more ants in the water before I got scared that I was training the fish to hang out under the bridge and wait for the suicide lemming ants to fall. But to paraphrase Kurt C., it’s ok for fish to eat ants because they don’t have any feeling.
In a great upset, my favorite part of the park were the many beautiful meadows. We read in the official park literature that it was acceptable to walk out onto the meadows on the fallen logs, so we did that several times and it was really really great. We attempted to hike to the alpine lakes but were turned back by snow, despite the 100+ degree temps just down the hill. Also awesome were, of course, the giant sequoias including the largest living thing on earth: General Sherman. It’s unfortunate that such a noble, peaceful, beautiful giant is named after a ruthless heartless jerk. Maybe they should rename the tree Gordon Shumway.
We saw some golden marmots on our hike to Tokopah Falls – they had some pretty nice real estate. Hiked up Moro Rock with steps carved into the granite, more sturdy and less terrifying than half dome. This was one of the prettiest scenes in the park, it was along the big trees loop that circumnavigated a meadow with giant sequoias around the perimeter, including the twins Ned & Ed. From there we tore down the hill and to Hanford in the Fit, and made it to the train depot a full six minutes before my train left – thereby maximizing our weekend vacation. I’d like to return to live in a Sequoia every summer for thirty years like Tharp did.
choo chooo
I made it home from the San Joaquin valley on the train: things that I learned from my train rides:
A lot of people like to fish, especially on streams near the railroad. Some of them moon the passing train.
The “dining car” consists of refrigerators full of microwave food, and they’ll heat you up a delicious cheeseburger real nice.
The seat-side electrical outlet is handy if you want to watch Futurama episodes.
Trains don’t go very fast.
Train people really do say “all aboard” and wear outfits with hats and lots of chains.
The San Joaquin valley grows a lot of corn.
A woman at my table was reading a book called “How to play easy to get”. The book was like 200-300 pages long. Of all the books available to read, why did she pick this one? Was she deciding between that book and like, The Grapes of Wrath? Later, the guy at my table was dealing himself blackjack hands and tapping the cards when he wanted another from the dealer (himself), then he’d deal a card, and he’d bust and throw his head back and sigh loudly. He did this for a couple hours. So the final thing I learned was: some people take their lives and just throw them in the toilet.
free-range kids
Good article in the LA Times yesterday on the disappearance of free range kids. You just don’t see kids outside by themselves anymore. I guess they’re all playing video games watching TV and getting fat – that’s the price you pay to be “safe”.
Your child stands about the same chance of being struck by lightning as of being the victim of what the Department of Justice calls a “stereotypical kidnapping.”
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88
I set up an external backup drive on my MacBook via Leopard’s program “Time Machine” – I named the drive DeLorean (of course).
train, trees
I get to take the TRAIN this weekend to Sequoia NP where the SO will be pining away, and see the largest living thing on this planet: General Sherman, and also I get to hang out in Crystal Cave. What can possibly be better than that? Disneyland? Maybe. I got a 20% discount on my train fare, making the ride cheaper than the gas it would take me to drive down there. Everything’s comin’ up Millhouse!
Noctambulator 
