Mehal's Musings

On 2012 Resolutions

2012-01-02T20:44:00.000-08:00

It's a new year, and time for new resolutions/targets. In no particular order, we have

Quit casual gaming. I feel really lousy after gaming in general, but I feel the worst after spending more than 1 minute playing anything on my iPhone. Quitting gaming proved too tough, so I just quit heavy-duty gaming and thought that would work better. But maybe I had it reversed; maybe I'll feel better allowing myself Skyrim and forbidding anything purchased from an AppStore.
Get back in to music. I've flirted with this idea a few times, specifically considering going back to trumpet or piano, or picking up an electric bass and trying to teach myself.
Finish History of the World. I'm making progress, and this is the year I finish.
Top-rope more. Pretty much all of my climbing has been bouldering. I never got used to the harness, so it's time to get used to it.
Camp in the Snow. Not sure where, doesn't have to be hike-in, but I'd like to try it. Bonus points if it's in a snow cave.
International Travel: Let's just say travel outside of the North American continent to some place that isn't India. I won't set destinations as a specific goal here. I do have a lot of vacation to burn this year, so I can't fall back on that excuse.
Solve a problem I have with a technological solution. Currently in progress, so let's see if I can finish the fight.
Five puzzle pieces by years end. Amazon employees know what I'm talking about here.
Do a better job of dissenting. For some reason, I like being the one person in the room with a different opinion. But I'm not very good at convincing the entire room to go my way. Last year, I finally managed to have my first "12 Angry Men" moment where I reversed the rooms position on a hiring decision. This year, I'll try to get better at it. I may never go to law school, but that doesn't mean I don't get to relish debate.
Weigh in at 130 lbs. Got close a couple of times in the past, but I'd like to keep it on this time.
Failing that, stop wearing thick/baggy clothing to hide the fact that I'm skinny.
Climb one of the Cascade Volcanoes. I have no excuse for not doing St. Helens, and it's not much training for me to do Adams.
Make my den look nice. Bonus points if it's a room in a new place.
Eat at a table, not at a desk. Starts tomorrow. I'm not going to eat at my desk at work, or at home.
Be funny. Two days in, and I've made people laugh both days. 364 to go.
Use more umlauts. I like using umlauts in the New Yorker style, so I'll try and evangelize this practice.
Learn how to throw a frisbee with a good forehand. I've come close to this, and I'm maybe a couple weeks of solid practice from getting it solid.
Raise at least $1,000 for a charity.
Every time I'm in an argument with a religious person, and I use any argument that invokes "starving children," I am now required to donate $20 to aid in the cause of famine relief or local food banks. Partially, the argument is tiresomely cliche; partially, it's good to help.
General amnesty for everyone. I have a tendency to hold grudges, and sometimes it's a net positive when they motivate me to accomplish good stuff. It's also fun to fantasize about elaborate payback plans. But I don't think any of the grudges I currently hold are doing me any good. So I'm going to declare a complete amnesty for anyone who has wronged me in the past. It doesn't mean that I've forgiven or forgotten, just that I'm going to try to not let it affect me.
Troll For Great Justice. I troll mostly because I enjoy being a jerk, but maybe it's time for me to use this ability for good. A good troll should work to take people down a notch, and to quote Sports Night, "Point out what is important by mocking that which is not." So this year, I resolve to put on my trollface only when I think I can make things better.

On 2011 resolutions

2011-12-31T17:31:00.000-08:00

Evaluation of public and private resolutions

1. Make someone laugh every day: I recorded 4 days where I did not induce laughter. Better than last year. Almost-pass

2. Become a white-card Scrabble Player: Oddly enough, I actually quit playing this year. I felt kind of burned out around the summertime and am taking a break. Fail.

3. Cycle n * 100 miles in n days, where n >= 2: I barely rode this year. Don't think I went more than 20 miles. Fail.

4. Create a crossword puzzle: Nope. Fail.

5. Write some app for the Kindle: Turns out, my job isn't super friendly for that. But my current team actually has me working on a Kindle app. Semi-pass

6. Get in a legal fight and win: I stayed out of trouble, but I won a good number of legal arguments with people. Pass.

7. Spend one day outside of my apartment without seeing another person. Came close on some isolated hiking, but not close enough. Fail.

8. Interview for a job that isn't for a tech company. Pass.

9. Start figure skating again. Not even close. Fail

10. One one-arm pullup. Pass. Although I am suspicious that I didn't use proper technique...

11. Travel. Abject Failure. Didn't really make plans this year, alas.

12. Deliver a truly excellent toast. Pass

13. Go one month without using one of the Seven Words. Pass.

14. Learn how to make at least one cocktail. Semi-pass, it's a pathetically easy drink

15. Reorganize my library with some decent bookshelves. Fail.

16. Talk in front of 1,000 people. Close, but not quite. I spoke at Ignite again, but the crowd doesn't quite breach 1,000.

17. Solve one problem with a technological solution. Incomplete. Work in progress.

18. Read "A History of the World." In Progress. 300 pages out of 900 down.

19. Have a nice, stimulating scientific discussion with an attractive woman at a party that does not have anything to do with the Drake Equation, airplanes on treadmills, bears, or dopamine. Pass. Supernovae, deserts, and mitochondrial eve were discussed this year, among other things.

20. Get obsessed with things. Pass. I threw away much of my work/life balance this year to try and do better at work, and I'm actually pretty glad for it. I've also focused on becoming a good photographer again and am making steady progress. Being well-rounded is nice, but maybe it isn't really for me.

Why's everyone coming here?

2011-08-03T20:08:00.000-07:00

A large number of people suddenly visited my blog today, and looking through the site metrics, it seems like they got referred via their e-mail clients. I'm suddenly concerned I just spammed a bunch of people. Can anyone comment on how they got here?

On getting defamed

2011-05-28T01:46:00.000-07:00

I haven't used this blog to air my dirty laundry, especially since a few people I work with read this blog. But something happened recently that I feel the need to talk publicly about; partially for catharsis and partially to share what I learned from this.

I work with a lot of non-engineers in job capacity. At first, I didn't like this, but I've grown in to it fairly well. I pride myself on being able to explain technical problems to non-technically minded people without sounding patronizing (A hard drive is like a book...). Additionally, I've kept my optimism about how Amazon works. I came to Amazon believing that it is truly a customer-centric company, and still think it is.

Sadly, I got caught up in a political power play three weeks ago by people more concerned with their own agenda than actually helping our customers. I won't go in to details, but to be brief: Something I said was taken grossly out of context, and the way it was taken out of context makes me believe that this was done with some malicious intent, either towards me or my team. A person in a senior position used this remark to further his/her agenda, and in doing so, made me look foolish to a large and important audience. I got in a fair amount of trouble, spent the entire weekend cleaning up this mess and lost face with my team and partner teams. It's the last part that I mind the most. Having a reputation as an intelligent and dedicated person is maybe the thing that I'm most proud of in life, and this person ruined a lot of it.

It's been a few weeks, and I put off any kind of retaliatory action. I'm very conflicted on what to do. As far as I can tell, my options are

Let it go. I don't have concrete evidence that this person really conspired against me, or acted with the intention of damaging me. It's self-centered for me to act the victim here. Typically, I've ignored direct threats at work, figuring that I can win over the aggressor at some point in the future through quality work.
The problem with this is that if I let incidents like this go, I'll get bullied forever. As Picard would say, "The line must be drawn here."
Confront the aggressor. I haven't had a large amount of interaction with the person in question. Walking up to them and saying "You done me wrong" is liable to backfire. Furthermore, what would satisfy me? I would deem a private mea culpa insufficient, because the offense was public.
Be passive-aggressive. Every request from this person, I'm going to sandbag and stonewall. I don't enjoy playing politics, but I know how to fight dirty at stuff. But playing turf wars isn't customer centric. Additionally, I will probably lose in the long run to someone with a better understanding of the workings of the company.
Write anonymous feedback about this individual, explaining how they defamed me. The problem is, my feedback won't be anonymous. My name is in the mix, and anyone reading it would know who was doing the complaining. Additionally, the person in question is far more senior than I, and will likely escape any real harm from negative feedback I give.
Break in to their car and hide tarantulas. This is expensive, and live tarantulas are difficult to obtain.

It's not the nicest thing to say, but retribution feels damn good. So the central questions to weigh are

If I seek retributive action, what doing the target the ideal amount of harm, without injuring anyone else?
If I let this incident go, what is the probability of it reoccurring?
Would any retributive action really make me feel better, especially given that I'm still upset weeks after the incident?

I think what I've learned is to be more careful about what I say. There's a saying: "It's not paranoia if they are really after you." Now I know that's the case, and since I know the offender has read this blog, they might know that I know. Going forward, I'm not going to volunteer long explanations, and I'm not going anywhere with rough estimates. Essentially, I'm going to Miranda myself, because anything I say can, and will, be used against me. When anyone asks for information, I'm going to make sure I understand why they really want it. And it's not that I don't trust people I work with, but I now realize that their objectives aren't always aligned with mine.

On speaking at Ignite

2011-05-17T23:04:00.001-07:00

I'm speaking at Ignite tomorrow. Come down to the King Cat theater and hear me try to talk about board gaming for 5 minutes, along with far more articulate and famous people.

http://www.igniteseattle.com/2011/05/ignite-seattle-14-details/

On technology versus magic

2011-03-07T01:09:00.000-08:00

All the talk about the iPad 2 brings me back to some thoughts I scribbled down when the iPad 1 launched. Most of it is incomprehensible, mostly due to a combination of alcohol and fine-tipped pens but what I do remember is getting ticked off at the iPad presentation. Specifically, every single time one of the presenters said the word "magic."

Arthur C. Clarke famously said "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." It's an interesting thought; we generally think that Newton or Pythagoras would look at a TV and scream witchcraft, so would we react the same way to stuff from the far future? But it is completely irrelevant to the iPad. Because let's face it, it isn't sufficiently advanced. That's why the presenters kept saying "like magic." Really people? Are we that impressed by smooth screen transitions and touch interfaces? Because I have a really shiny object in my pocket if you're that easily astounded.

Apple-hating aside (and I shouldn't single out Apple, they aren't the only ones who talk this way), I guess I just hate the word "magic." "Magic" has no process, while good technology is the product of smart and dedicated people. "Magic" is known only to a few arcane-empowered individuals, while anyone can go get an engineering degree and interview for a job with us (hint hint); or at minimum buy me a beer and listen to me ramble about architecture. "Magic" was this mystical thing that people used to explain what they couldn't explain until a scientist or technologist gave a real explanation that let people actually apply this knowledge for some good. Technology builds civilizations. Magic amuses kids at a birthday party.

So let's have some respect for products and the people who work on them. When someone calls great technology "magic," they are denigrating it and the people that worked on it. They're saying that this thing just happened out of nowhere, with a puff of smoke; that no one really knows what is going on with it and in a few years, no one will remember it. There's no greater honor we can give great technology than calling it great technology.

On reverse stalking

2011-01-05T22:53:00.000-08:00

I keep pretty close tabs on who comes on my blog. I'm curious to see if anything I've written got linked somewhere, if someone I just met just Googled my name, how often Google crawls my site or what unusual combination of search terms leads people here. Some comments

Someone from Syracuse keeps on coming here via LinkedIn. I don't think I know anyone in the 'Cuse, so I'm thinking it must be a recruiter. Let me save you the trouble: I'm an Upstate NY and have lived enough of my life among lake effect snow and crumbling infrastructure.
I'm able to track screen sizes and I have to know how anyone can have a screen that is 32768x1024. Send me a picture please
My pictures are generally higher ranked by Bing than by Google. Additionally, the Bing queries have more to do with the actual pictures than Google.
Someone from Britain keeps Googling "Mehal Shah" and comes here. Pal, I'm the number one "Mehal Shah" on the Internet and I ain't giving up that spot easy.
Can someone go to Antarctica and access this page? I have a checklist I'd like to complete.

On New Years resolutions

2010-12-28T00:14:00.001-08:00

It's a new year, and time for new resolutions. Here's a few

1. Make someone crack up every day. I was mostly successful with this last year. By my count, there were 11 days where I didn't make anyone laugh (including a "haha" or "lol" seen through communicator). I will have an exception for days when I have no human interaction (detailed in a future goal), but my goal is 360 days.
2. Become a white-card Scrabble player. This means average 365 or more points a game, usually with 3 bingos. Right now, I'm 300+ with 1.5. Additionally, I'd like to break 700 in a match.
3. Cycle (n*100) miles in n days where n >= 2
4. Create a crossword puzzle. I haven't done this since 2006 and it would be fun to put some effort in to this. Bonus points if it is pun-tacular.
5. Write some app for the Kindle. It might be text-only-DOOM but I might have to deal with copyright for that.
6. Get in a legal fight and win.
7. Spend one day outside of my apartment without seeing another person.
8. Interview for a job that isn't for a tech company, just for the heck of it.
9. Start figure skating again. I'll be happy if I can skate backwards without looking like a klutz. Don't expect me to do a Phillipe Candelora impression.
10. One one-arm pullup. And none of that weak-stuff where you grab your arm with the other one.
11. Travel. I have this goal every year and did well last year. This years list of possible destinations

Iceland
Finland
Northern Ireland/Scotland
Southern France
Cyprus
Patagonia
Turkey

If interested in any of these destinations, please contact me. Intra-country transport will be mostly on bus, with some sections of bicycling and walking. Northern European destinations will most likely include Iceland as a stopover.
12. Delivery a truly excellent toast
13. Go one month without using one of the Seven Words. I used to take great pride in not cursing, but since I joined Amazon.com I've let this habit lapse.
14. Learn how to make at least one cocktail. If I can do this, I'll make a Dark and Stormy for anyone who visits my apartment.
15. Reorganize my library with some decent bookshelves. And the irony of owning a 400 book collection while working on Kindle does not escape me.
16. Talk in front of 1,000 people. I came pretty close to doing this Ignite in 2008. Not sure how I'll do it this year but it is worth a shot.
17. Solve one problem I have with a technological solution. I've thought about simple problems like "Who's turn is it to pay for dinner?" or "What's that Wikipedia article I was going to read?"
18. Read "A History of the World." I know a lot of things, but there's a lot more I don't know. I know a whole lot about Ancient Rome, but very little about Carthage or Zimbabwe. I'd like to fill in the gaps of my historical knowledge.
19. Have a nice, stimulating scientific discussion with an attractive woman at a party that does not have anything to do with the Drake Equation, airplanes on treadmills, bears or dopamine. Those topics have been done this year.
20. Get obsessed with things again. I'm at my best when I'm focused to a nearly insane level on things. I've dialed it back over the past few years, but maybe that was a mistake. So this year, it might be time to dial it back up.

On Ireland: Appendix

2010-11-27T01:17:00.000-08:00

I picked up a lot of good tips along the way and might as well have a section organizing them.

Preparing for the Trip

Practice, practice, practice. Unless you are in good shape, you aren't going to enjoy cycle touring. I'm not saying that you should ride a century every weekend, but you want to get to the point where you can pedal 12 km/h pretty much all day.

Ride with weight. Panniers throw off your steering a little bit and you should get used to it before your tour. I wish I had done this more.

Know the route. With one exception, I never felt lost anywhere in the country. Not only does knowing where you are give you more time to enjoy things, you will worry less. I'd spend a few minutes each night memorizing the route and important towns along the way.

Pack light. I took about 8 lbs more than I needed to and could have spent that weight more wisely.

Don't skimp on quality panniers. You're going to have a hard enough time keeping stuff dry.

Get a hard commitment from your partners. I was never worried about Helen bailing because we had both committed to the trip several months before.

If you are a guy and want to have kids, wear padded underwear.

Pick your partners carefully. It isn't just a matter of whether you'll get along with someone, you need to know that you'll be able to rely on each other through rough patches. Whenever I was grumpy or hurting, Helen was usually fine and able to help me out, and I'd like to think the reverse was true as well. Someone who's liable to give up on stuff easily may not be up for a rough cycle tour

Trip Execution

Get a good estimate for how long you think each days riding should take and adjust your pace accordingly. If you are ahead of schedule, take random stops at interesting looking things along the way. If you are way behind, consider cutting the days riding short rather than straining yourself to complete the objective, or look for a bus you can hop on to make it to the end.

Don't let weather get you down. Enjoy the good weather when it comes, but when it starts raining, talk about anything but the rain. It's cliche but true; everyone talks about the weather but no one does anything about it. Alternatively, a good "aw shucks" attitude can go a long way here.

Plan rest days. It's not just a matter of fatigue, it's fun to have a day where you don't need to worry about an objective.

Wear a goddamn helmet.

Take turns in front. It's not just a matter of drafting. I'm pretty sure Helen would have gotten sick of staring at my back for 600 km if she was trailing the whole time.

Talk to other cyclists. They're a great source of information on upcoming conditions, and if they know short cuts, they can save you time and energy.

Eating: Helen and I would usually eat a big breakfast and dinner, and snack a little instead of breaking for lunch. Breaking for more than an hour would have been tough to recover from.

Be a celebrity. Cycle tourists are novelties in many spots. 95% of the population thinks you are some hardcore beast. Bask in the glory and let it invigorate you the next time you have trouble riding.

Talk to anyone and everyone. Half the fun of being a traveler is being a stranger and being able to interact with other strangers in a fun manner.

Strongly Endorsed Ireland Locations/Activities

Skellig Michael. If I had 24 hours in Ireland, I might consider spending it trying to get to that island for another two hours.

Cliffs of Moher

Dublin Literary Pub Crawl

Cycling around Valentia Island

Killarney Lakes boats

Overrated Ireland Locations/Activities

The Blarney Stone. We didn't go, but I've seen it in a bunch of lists on this subject, so I figured we'd include it.

Kylemore Abbey. Really, looking at it from the outside is the best part.

Killarney. I felt like the city was a giant tourist trap.

I'd also be wary of anything that is overselling itself as "authentic" or "traditional."

And finally
The Ten Commandments of Irish Cycle Touring
I. Thou shalt bitch, but not be a bitch.
II. Thou shalt wear a helmet, else thy brains will be smeared all over the curbside
III. Thou shalt remember when the last pub stops serving food, else be prepared to scarf down bread and jam for dinner.
IV. Thou shalt maintain near continuous visual contact with thy partner, and not go more than 120 seconds without checking on her.
V. Thou shalt determine thy power food, and be ready to purchase and consume it when needed.
VI. Thou shalt not substitute an internal compass and mental map for a real compass and real map.
VII. Thou shalt remember that riding is more than the means of transportation, and enjoy the random sights you’ll see along the way.
VIII. Thou shalt celebrate every achievement
IX. Thou shalt not feel guilty about eating or drinking anything
X. Thou shalt love thy cycling companion, for she blocketh the headwinds when they are strong, giveth the shot bloks when thou hast low blood sugar and maketh the entire journey exponentially more awesome.

On Ireland: Part 4

2010-11-27T00:30:00.000-08:00

Last odometer shot of the trip

My biggest challenge the next morning was taking a shower without getting my bandages wet. After getting ready, Helen and I decided to enjoy the arts festival. There was a play that billed itself as a reenactment of the American/Soviet space race done by two guys with props. That was good light fun, and we went back to the hostel to make plans for the evening, as well as eat a nice diverse assortment of some cheese we picked up. Dinner was this nice spot that straddled a little river, and Helen had a nice philosophical debate about Satan’s involvement in my accident.

I was in the mood for another play, and Helen was kind enough to humor my every move so we went to another theater to try and get tickets for Uncle Vanya. The show was sold out, but we lucked out when a man sold us two extra tickets. The cast was very good, and the play had a decidedly more comic slant than the text suggests. We walked back to the hostel and went to bed.

The next day was to be the last day in Western Ireland. Helen had found this bus tour company that would let us go around Conemarra. I was really looking forward to biking around it, with its barren landscapes, scenic lakes and an actual fjord. In my condition, this was impossible so going on a bus would be the next best thing. Our tour guide was a pretty lively fellow who gave Helen and I a bit of a scare when he welcomed us on the tour of the Cliffs of Moher, before correcting himself.

Connemara is the region to the northwest of Galway. The land is granite, and not as arable as other parts. However, until the potato famine, it was one of the most populated places in Ireland. Oliver Cromwell (the guide would spit when mentioning his name) forced a lot of the Irish to move to these barren lands, saying “To Hell or to Connaught.” (Connaught is the name for the northwest part of the island). The Irish people, however, had just started to realize how great potatoes were and grew them all over Connaught. To compensate for the lack of soil, they would haul seaweed and spread it on the ground to make arable land, meaning that it took decades for anything to grow in some parts.

Of course, all this came crashing down on people during the potato famine. The Irish had grown very reliant on one crop; by some estimations potatoes account for 90% of the calorie intake of the Irish. So when there were two straight years of failed potato crop, Connemara was devastated. There’s stories of villages wiped out by famine, of starving people walking roads in search of food, of Britain failing to provide proper aid to the Irish people, and of other people volunteering whatever they had. Particularly memorable was a Native American tribe that suffered the Trail of Tears, and donated a few hundred dollars to help the Irish that were enduring the same conditions. In many ways, Ireland has not recovered from the famine. The population of the island has only recently reached pre-famine levels, and the countryside of the west is filled with abandoned houses from the famine.

I’d like to think that our history classes were relatively even-handed, but there’s definitely some historical figures and nationals who are portrayed as “good guys” or “bad guys,” sometimes deservedly, sometimes not. The Greeks were good, the Persians were bad, which is why Thermopylae was totally awesome. The Germans got their comeuppance in two World Wars. August Caeser was a tyrant, but he was a good tyrant, as opposed to Genghis Khan who was a bloodthirsty savage. I think the key difference I saw in the Irish view of history was how downright awful Britain had been, specifically Queen Elizabeth I and Oliver Cromwell. Elizabeth is portrayed more positively, maybe by virtue of being a woman or maybe because she expanded British power in an era when they were underdogs. Cromwell is seen as a great reformer and someone who ended blood dynasties. But both enacted policies that were pretty much genocide in Ireland, and I had no real idea until this tour.

We made many stops on the bus ride, but there were a few notable ones. Cong was a nice place and supposed to be the final destination for the bike tour. Helen and I walked around the abbey in the sun and took pictures. By the way, if it looks like the pictures here suck, it’s because I was still in pain and couldn’t focus on getting a decent shot. A thousand apologies.

We also stopped at Kylemore Abbey, which is a picturesque manor on a lake that now houses a dwindling convent. There’s about 10 elderly nuns remaining on premise and they’ve had no luck recruiting new members. The abbey has some wonderful gardens and a nice path for walking around it. At the same time, they charge you an arm and a leg for anything there. The clouds burst open and it rained so hard we had to go inside. Normally I’d be willing to bear the rain, but I needed to keep my bandages dry.

There was also this nice spot in between two of the large lakes of Conemarra. A cyclist blazed by us and I vowed to come back in a few years and finish what I had started.

The tour guide poked a lot of fun at us, dubbing us “The Mad Cyclists.” Most of the bus was filled with French high schoolers who weren’t paying much attention, so he had plenty of time to answer my questions. Helen was asleep for much of the trip; I think being in a moving vehicle just knocks her out. I’m envious.

We got back around 5, packed up and went to the bus station to leave Galway. It started to rain pretty hard again, and the station wasn’t exatly much shelter. Around 8:30, we got on the bus to Dublin and rode through the dusk and twilight. I started to write a speech for a wedding I was going to officiate, but passed out once we got on the highway. Eventually, we pulled in to Dublin and took a cab to Dun Laoghire. Dun Laoghire is a largish suburb to the east of Dublin and a nice place to stay. There’s enough interesting things in the immediate area, and you are a short train ride away from Dublin but don’t have to pay Dublin prices for things. John, the owner was kind enough to let us in when we came in at midnight and helped us put our stuff away.

Sadly, my rain jacket was a casualty here, lost in the cab ride over. I offer a poem in memory.
There once was a blue rain jacket,
When it rained, I made sure to pack it
But in a cab to Dun Laoghire,
I left it (my theory)
And that’s how I’ve come to lack it.
My rain jacket had born over two weeks of punishment without a tear or leak. It shall be missed.

I fell in to bed and was asleep pretty quickly.

I had intended for Dublin to be the relaxing part of the trip, so my condition didn’t really restrict activities. So we took things easy the next morning. After breakfast, we went around town looking for bike boxes. I also picked up a suitcase to replace the one I abandoned in Durrow. I also needed a rain jacket. Helen found this hot pink one that was slightly too small for me and I had to struggle to put on. I’m pretty sure she gave it to me just for a laugh. Thankfully, I found a blue one that fit. We then took a train in to Dublin. Helen found a hostel for her to stay in on her way back and got information on how to get around Northern Ireland, which was her next destination.

After that, we went to Trinity College. Ten Euro gets you a witty student or former student who will lead you on a walking tour of the grounds, point out the buildings and give you a good history lecture. I was iffy on it, but the admission included the nine Euro charge to go and see the Book of Kells, so we figured it was worth it. Our guide was good fun and we learned a lot of amusing stories about the college. I think the most worthwhile thing he did though was giving more context to the Book of Kells.

The Book of Kells is a Bible written and illustrated about 1200 years ago. A great deal of work went in to the illustrations, with the first letters drawn in the shapes of mythological creatures, various words stylized and illustrations of scenes done in great detail. And if I left it at that, you’d have a nice exhibit that you’d check out for about 10 minutes and then move on. Indeed, Helen’s guide book described the scene as people shuffling in, looking at the two pages on display (the Book is open to two different pages for a few months), then shuffling out. Our guide pointed out however, that the Book is one of the few examples of truly original artwork that scholars have to this day. The artists were working in isolation, with very little knowledge of what new innovations there were in illustration. He encouraged us to examine everything as closely a possible because of how unique this work is.

So with that in mind, Helen and I spent a good two hours in the exhibit, looking at details of individual pages and what materials were used until we actually entered the chamber. The book was opened to two pages and I tried translating some of it for Helen with my long-forgotten Latin knowledge. The book isn’t huge, and I can see how some people who hurried in to the exhibit would be disappointed. Luckily, we weren’t one of those. I had an amusing chat with the security guard and asked if anyone had ever tried to steal it. He eyed me suspiciously, but then told me a story about his first week on the job when there was a power failure. The alarms on the book were on a different system and the book drops down to an underground safe in the event of an emergency. He, of course, had no idea that this was the security procedure and just saw the book vanish in to the floor.

We headed out through the Old Library, which was used when filming Episode III. I wish they allowed photography, and perhaps one day I will sneak in, render the guards unconscious and take some lovely pictures. The books are sorted by size, not by title, so the shelves don’t topple over.

After that, we took a walk over to Dublin Castle. We got a spot on the last tour and went over to a nearby library and checked out an Asian art exhibit then headed back for the last tour. Dublin Castle is home to the President and is used for official state events and entertaining. The back end is this amusing patchwork of extensions to the building, each of which is painted a different color.

We got on the train back to Dun Laoghire, and it started to rain pretty hard by the time we disembarked. Dinner was pretty nice, but the highlight was this excellent dessert called banoffe pie, a blessed union of banana, toffee and pie. Helen and I went back to the B&B, took apart our bikes and went to bed with the intention of getting up early the next day.

Neither Helen nor I had an alarm set, so we overslept by a good couple of hours. We needed to be Dublin by noon to make the last tour bus to Bru Na Boinne. We had planned on making the earlier one, but this wasn’t going to happen. We ate and hopped on the first train we could get. Helen dropped her bike off at the hostel, while I checked out the Ancient History museum and gold exhibits. We met up again at the tourist center and hopped on the shuttle to the Boinne valley.

I’ve mentioned my love for all things old, so Bru Na Boinne was a wonderful place to be. There are three burial mounds, thought to be 5,000 years old. This means they predate pretty much every civilized society with the possible exception of the Sumerians. The people who built them are lost to time. They actually predate the Celtic migration to the island. The exact purpose of the burial mounds is uncertain, but what is known is that the entranceways line up perfectly with the sunrise on the Winter Solstice. Some think that the Neolithic people believed that the dead spirits of their kinfolk would travel on these beams of sunlight to the afterlife. Others believed that the tombs would be reminders to their spirits to make the days grow longer again. I’m just surprised that any culture would place faith in anything that would require any period of sunlight in Ireland.

Our tour guide made an interesting point here. The Neolithic people who built these tombs had little knowledge of physics, writing or math. They had to struggle to feed themselves and survive each winter. But they were able to construct mounds that were so water tight that in five millenia of Irish weather, water has never made it in to the interior. They were the true masters of stone and earth.

Some of the scenery was Tolkienesque.

We left Bru Na Boinne around 4 and made it back to Dublin around 5. Our last outing, The Literary Pub Crawl, wouldn’t start until 7 so we spent time in St. Patricks Green checking out the statues and people watching. I imagine we were a good sight for people watchers too, as I noticed a few lingering glances at my mummy-like cast.

The Literary Pub Crawl is done by a two actors from local theater companies. It is a walking tour of about a mile around Dublin with stops where they reenact scenes from plays, novels and other works of literature while you drink heavily. It was a must-do for the both of us. We piled in with our tour group of 30 people to a pub, where Colm Quilligan sang “Waxie’s Dargle” to open things off, and then led us on a great walking tour. They did scenes from Waiting for Godot, The Risen People and even read some letters from Oscar Wilde from his travels around America. There was plenty of good craic with the entire tour group and we got to chat for a good while with Colm at the end of everything.

Helen and I had made dinner plans at some swanky restaurant to celebrate the end of the journey. However, upon exiting the last pub, it became clear to us that the six pints we had collectively drank would make navigating the twisting Irish roads difficult, so we ducked in to this American-style diner and ordered burgers, fries and brownies. And of course it was delicious. We talked about the end of the trip, and I mourned how sad I was to leave with unfinished business, while Helen was psyched about making it to the Giants Causeway. After dinner, we cabbed it back to Dun Laoghire, and I sadly noted that I had less than twelve hours left in the country. We packed up our stuff, and chatted until late in the night, then turned in.

The last day, we woke up and headed down for the last breakfast we’d have together. Helen helped me get to the bus stop, since I couldn’t carry my bike and suitcase. Fittingly, we got rained on for a few seconds but just a few. The bus to the airport arrived, and we made promises to do this again in a couple of years.

My journey home was relatively uneventful. I made nice conversation in the airport pub with a Frenchman and drank my last Guinness. I was in and out of consciousness throughout the flight, mostly due to exhaustion and the transition from physical activity to the lack thereof. I ate a ton at O’Hare, my body still thinking that it needs 5000 calories a day to survive. Eventually, I landed in Seattle and met my parents. They did not freak out too much at my appearance and took me to my apartment. I crawled in to bed, closed my eyes and wondered what I would do now that I was back to my normal life.

And so here's to you, Ireland. I have seen every shade of green on your hillsides; I have greeted a stranger as my brother in your pubs; I have sang your songs, drank your drinks and rode your roads. I have been refreshed by your sea breezes and battered by your gales. I have stood in the ocean, and dangled my feet hundreds of feet above it. I have been winded by your climbs and invigorated by your descents. I've seen an old friend enter the next phase of his life with a wonderful bride. I have left my name in guestbooks, my tracks on paths, my footsteps on staircases and my blood and bone on the curb side. I've seen almost 600 kilometers of your land and have done so in the company of the best travel partner I could have asked for. And I can't wait to see you again.

On Ireland: Part 3

2010-11-03T23:06:00.000-07:00

We stayed up pretty late and talked, but felt super rested the next day. We had breakfast, then joined the two ladies from yesterday and a few others on this van archaeology tour of the Dingle peninsula, lead by a former cop named Michael. We saw a lot of neat stuff. There were Ogham Stones, which are about 3,000 years old and have inscriptions of old family names. We saw the Blasket Islands, which I was hoping to visit but the seas were too rough to make the journey. We stopped at the Gallus Oratory, which is one of the oldest churches. It looks like an inverted boat and it is built without the use of any mortar.

Breakfast

Ogham Stones

Yup, that's a palm tree.

Slea Head. I'd like to come here on a stormy day for some end-of-the-world shots

Our guide

This church has withstood 1500 years of Irish weather without any mortar. Very impressive.

Along the way, we drove by some people cycling on the super narrow road, and our guide remarked “On the left, you’ll see some crazy American cyclists.”
“How do you know they’re Americans?” I asked
“Because they’re wearing helmets!” And we all laughed a bunch, and I felt proud to be an American.

We also took note of all of the unusual plants in Dingle. There were a fair number of exotic plants, like palm trees and these red flowers from Peru. The Ventrys, the British family who administered Dingle during British rule, traveled throughout the world and collected plants that flourished when brought back to Ireland. I wouldn’t expect to see palm trees this far north, but apparently they thrive with all of the rain and the mild climate.

A lot of Dingle’s tourism industry originated from interest generated by the 1970 Robert Mitchum film Ryan’s Daughter. I think the guide mentioned it a bunch of times, and I made it a point to watch it when I went back and revisit Dingle in film. It’s a charming movie, but best watched right after visiting Dingle.

After the tour, I spent some time writing post cards and Helen explored some part of Dingle. I grabbed some ice cream and she made dinner arrangements at this dedicated seafood place called Out of the Blue. Apparently, the chef checks the seafood catch every day and decides if he feels like cooking. If he doesn’t, he’ll close down the restaurant for the day.

We arrived back and I hoped to catch a boat to the Blaskets, but no such luck. Instead, we took a walk along Dingle Harbor, up to a watchtower and soaked up the sun. I knew we had two pretty rough days up ahead, so I figured that we should get some serious relaxing done. We ducked in to a small chapel as well, and looked at some amazing stained glass windows in the cathedral. I was hesitant to shell out a couple Euros for the windows, but I honestly don’t know why. No photography was allowed inside, but witnessing them is well worth the small price of admission.

After the walk, we went to dinner at Out of the Blue. The chef knew in advance that there was a vegetarian in the house, and he made what can be best described as a hash brown with some wonderful spices, along with every single side dish that they served. Helen had some manta ray wings, which I never knew people ate. Both were excellent. We also split dessert, a wonderful chocolate brownie. When I cut it in half, steam rose from the inside and we both looked at each other and said “Ooooo...” It is one of the most vivid memories I have about any kind of food.

We were pretty stuffed from dinner, so we took a leisurely walk around the remaining part of town that we hadn’t seen, checking out the road to Connor Pass. After some writing and photo viewing it was time for bed. Tomorrow was going to be a rough day.

We got up the next morning, packed and had breakfast. The weather was none too pleasant, with overcast skies and drizzle. Margaret warned us that the view from the top of the pass won’t be that great. I was more worried about the descent and hurtling down at light speed in slippery conditions. We got on our bikes and went on our way.

Connor Pass was going to be the hardest climb of the trip. We were going to climb about 1,000 feet at a 5% incline, so it was going to be a long slog but nothing that should be too taxing. I climb 200 feet regularly as part of my commute, but I don’t do it lugging 30 lbs of stuff on the back wheel. Still, I figured I should be able to make it with maybe needing one stop.

When we approached the pass, a lyrca-clad cyclist hurtled down past us. I wondered if he does the pass as part of his morning commute or workout. I am a little envious of that guy.

Up we went. I wasn’t hitting a good rhythm though, and had to inch up in the granny gears for a good chunk of the climb. I had to stop when I started to feel a little dizzy and eat some shot blocks, and Helen kept cranking away. After 45 minutes of continuous climbing, I saw a sign for the viewpoint and sprinted for the end (sprint meaning went about 20 km/h) right behind Helen.

The view from Connor Pass was less than specatular. We couldn’t see more than 200 feet through the fog to the north, but we could see a little further to the south. A nice man in a car took our picture and we started the descent. We stopped a lot though, partially for speed control and partially to let cars go by us. Then, with the wind at our backs, we bolted to the east across the Dingle peninsula on the North End. There was a great view of the ocean to the north and we made great time to Tralee.

I changed the route when we were in Tralee. Instead of taking the direct route to Listowel, I figured we should swing by Ardfert. There was an old Cathedral there, and although it was going to be a short detour, it meant no big hill climbs. It started to rain pretty heavily by the time we left Tralee. We rode through some nice wooded territory (not a lot of that in Ireland) and got to the cathedral. We spent a lot of time there talking with the curators, largely because they were inside and dry. But the site was very interesting, and we learned a lot about what goes in to preserving an 800-year old structure and what research gets done. There was a map of all the bodies buried in the cathedral and how it was destroyed in local territorial battles.

After we explored the site, we talked some more with the curators about the area. I decided to be a coward and ask for directions, failing that trip goal I had set which was “Do not ask anyone for directions while on the bike.” One of the curators told us that he used to work for a bike touring company and would drive around a truck that would carry the tourers stuff. Helen shot me a look that could have been interpreted as “You did NOT tell me that was an option on this trip.” We reconcilled to being wet and set off to Listowel and shelter.

For some reason, the image that sticks out the most in my mind is this giant factory we saw with a few killometers left. After all this time in pastoral scenery, the factory was a jerk back to the modern age.

We got to the road to Listowel, but our hostel was in Billeragh. I guessed wrong on directions and we rode in to town instead of to our hostel. I was exhausted though, and after walking the bike through the city, couldn’t contemplate riding any more in this rain. We found a pretty good B&B, who’s proprietor told us that we were “Mad, absolutely mad” to cycle in this weather, peeled off the wet clothes and grabbed dinner in a little pub called the Horseshoe. The barkeep seemed even more aghast at the fact that we were cycle touring, crossing herself and saying “Mary bless them” under her breath. She was awesome. We finished dinner and went back to the B&B for some sleep. I overheard a weather report that tomorrow was going to be just as rainy, and decided to keep it to myself.

The next day opened with a little bit of sunshine, but I wasn’t optimistic about it holding. We had breakfast and walked down to the farmers market for a bit. I had some supremely nasty chocolate covered seaweed. So much for all food being good while on a cycle tour. Then, we were off for Tarbert and the ferry. We made pretty good time and I clocked us averaging 20mph for a flat stretch of a couple miles right up to the ferry. The ferry ride was a nice 20 minutes, and it was cool to see a few tourists in cars checking us out in our gear.

We took a break in Tarbert for some lunch, then started riding north. There was some wind at our back and a break in the clouds that lasted an hour. We met one rider heading south, who warned us of some dangerous curves and how Doolin was waaay far away. We determined that she was not nearly as badass as we were, and pushed on to Spanish point. I was hoping to see some pieces of wreckage, but we had trouble finding the actual point, and figured “Eh, close enough” after a while and kept on heading north.

I made a tactical error when we got in to Ennistimon. I asked a traffic cop what was the best way to get to Doolin, and went in the direction he was pointing. Unfortunately, he was directing traffic, and we headed about 5 km off course before I realized the error. He was pointing at the cars, but gesturing in the other direction with his head. Whoops. We got a bit of a scenic detour. At one point, I noticed a man drive by us with a camera out of the window pointed at us. I’m glad to represent the crazy cyclist community whenever the opportunity arises.

We got back on track and headed north to Lisdonvarna. I knew that there was supposed to be a road to Doolin before we got to town, but we started getting close with no sign indicating anything. Irish roads are not well signed, especially in County Clare. We went by one intersection, and I stopped to evaluate. I had seen several cars make that turn and my intuition said that it was the road to Doolin. But I had gotten lost once already and Helen didn’t look too happy enduring the rain, so I didn’t want to risk getting lost. We kept on that road.

After about 2 minutes, a car stopped and flagged us down. Turns out, he was looking to go to Doolin as well, and didn’t know the way. I saw an opportunity, and asked him to take that previous road. We’d go on it as well, and he would double back if he saw no sign of Doolin after 10 minutes. I got a kick out of the fact that an Irishman asked me for directions in his home country.

We started riding down the side road and crested a hill. I saw a town up ahead and knew we were on the right path. We stopped in a convinience store to confirm, and chat with the lady who kindly informed us that we were “mad” and should both “get a life” instead of cycling in this weather. She dropped the gentle mocking and warned us to be careful though of aggressive Irish drivers. With that, we coasted in to the Ailee River Hostel and dryness.

The Ailee River Hostel is a wonderful place with a great assortment of people hanging around the peat fire, chilling out in their rooms and just making conversation with strangers. Helen and I peeled off our clothes that had been soaked through, threw stuff in the dryer and found a place to grab a nice 9PM dinner at McGann’s. We were joined by two girls from France whose names escape me but were very nice to chat with. The bar was supremely crowded but there was enough room for the four of us to talk, me to lose a cider-chugging contest to Helen and a couple of us to get in to an argument about Lance Armstrong. The music was alright, but we figured that we’d go over to Fitzpatrick’s for some more music.

Fitzpatrick’s wasn’t as crowded, and had a nice modern-ish setting to it which was a nice contrast with the dive-ier McGann’s. The band was three musicians and a 12-year old boy singing. I remember hearing a great version of Galway Girl and the boy running offstage after he was done. A couple people in the audience came on stage and sang as well.

Walking back to our place, we talked about our plans for tomorrow. Originally, we were going to ride in to the Burren and spend the day exploring. However, the weather was getting downright oppressive. We had been rained on for two straight days and we needed to wring them out. We were super close to the Cliffs of Moher and I wanted to check them out. I got a vibe from Helen that she wasn’t exactly enjoying things as well, so we decided to stick around in Doolin for the next day.

We took it easy the next morning, got off to a nice lazy start and walked around town a bit. There was another Farmer’s market, but it was a little lean on things. However, there was some of the cheese on Helen’s “Cheese to eat” list that we consumed. We then walked back in the other direction to the Cliffs of Moher, and were subjected to very hard rain on the walk. We actually ducked for cover under some stranger’s front awning for a bit. After waiting for a bit, we saw the start of the cliffs but were on private property, and had to walk another mile to get to the center.

The Cliffs rise up to 400 feet above the pounding Atlantic, and you can walk straight up to the edge and see that it is a very very long fall to the bottom. There is a paved path as well as an unofficial-off-limits-beware-of-certain-death path that pretty much everyone goes on. We walked up and down for a good hour, but the rain got pretty oppressive and forced us to seek shelter inside the visitors center with about 300 other people. Eventually, it let up enough for us to walk home.

You might be wondering why there aren’t so many pictures of the Cliffs. That will be explained later.

We walked back and dried our clothes by any means available. We then headed to dinner, which was alright, and dessert which was fantastic as usual. The night was young so we went to Fitzpatrick’s for more music. Instead of a band, there was a solitary guitar player. He wasn’t exactly a traditional Irish music player; I counted songs by Johnny Cash, Dire Straits, Steve Earle and Stephen Foster. However, all of those are amazing artists and he did them all justice. I see nothing wrong with that. In particular, his version of “Folsom Prison Blues” was great. I guess the awesomeness of Johnny Cash spans all cultural divides.

We went back and planned out tomorrow’s riding. I knew we had a lot in store since we didn’t ride that day and had to get to Galway. We wanted to explore the Burren and I wanted to leave at least an hour to check it out. So we figured we could make it in to the Burren and take this walking tour of it offered by a local farmer, then make it in to Galway with plenty of time to spare. I was hoping to catch the World Cup final.

We got a late start the next morning, but it was well worth it. Three straight days of rain gave way to a wonderful morning with blue skies, and I barely took notice of the fast pace we set as we rode up the coast of County Clare to Hag’s head. On our left was the ocean, and on the right was The Burren. Oliver Cromwell (spit) had a general who visited the land and proclaimed that it was “a savage land, where there is not enough water to drown a man, nor a tree to hang him, nor soil to bury him.” Instead, it is exposed limestone carved by wind and water. We rounded Hag’s Head and headed west with the winds at our back and going pretty fast, but unfortunately not fast enough to catch the noon tour. The tour guide’s father was kind enough to give us tips on where to go in the immediate area. I wanted to check out this abbey, but he warned us that the shortest way involves going through a field that has a highly territorial bull.

Instead, we walked about a mile and got to a place with a clear view to the north in to Galway Bay and started hiking up the path. The karst landscape was really fun to walk on and we hopped from stone to stone, taking a pretty scenic route up that went by boulders and stone walls until made it to the top. Not exactly an awe-inspiring summit but it was a good break from the bikes. I saw some rain clouds to the Southeast though, and we hurried back.

We rode back on to the main road by Galway Bay down a slope so steep, my rims were burning hot by the end. We then started to ride East in to Galway and got rained on pretty heavily with about 20 km to go. After ducking underneath a gas station for a brief respite, we figured that we might as well press on and get to Galway. The road turned in to a highway with a median with about 5 km left for town and Helen bolted in with the promise of dryness up ahead. I was cramping up and couldn’t keep up that well.

We dismounted once we got in to the main part of the city and walked our bikes around it. Galway has about 75,000 people in it, which makes it larger than every other city combined that we had ridden through. It was pretty strange to see so many people in one spot after being in rural areas for such a long time. It took us a little while to find the hostel, but we had a pretty nice setup in a very clean youth hostel and one of the most refreshing showers I have ever had. After that, we wandered the city and found a “traditional” Irish food place that served somewhat mediocre food with excellent Irish coffee. Drinking it made us both pretty wired. When we exited the restaurant, there was a mob of Spanish people yelling and chanting. Spain had just won the world cup and everyone was partying. We went over to the Spanish arches and chatted with some people. Three guys were drinking and seemed to think I was Spanish, so we went over and talked with them for a while. One of them offered me something in a paper bag which I drank, and Helen was fairly shocked at this action. I suppose the day is not complete unless I shock Helen just a little. And with that, we went to bed.

The next day, we walked around the city and checked out the art galleries. We found a cheese shop and got five different things, completing the Lonely Planet list of “Cheese to Eat” in Ireland. There was time to check out some of the art exhibits for the Galway arts festival as well. I really liked the blue paper Matisse cutouts. There was this weird Spike Jonze film about clumsy lovesick robots that I kind of liked. There was also utter trash. This one short film was just pictures of street lights. I think Helen and I stuck it out for about five minutes, then looked at each other as if to say “I thought you knew why we were here,” and walked out.

All cars make way for the Guinness Truck

The next destination was the Aran Islands. I was really looking forward to this part. The weather was looking pretty good and I wanted to see all these high cliffs with the ocean crashing against it like there were in Man of Aran. I bought the ferry tickets, and we started to ride to Rossaveel, about 40 km away which is where we would hop on the ferry over.

I like this picture of Helen. Take a note as to hour narrow the space on the side of the road is. Not even a foot.

The ride west was a lot fun. The hills were rolling a little bit but not enough to drain us. We gunned it at about 20 mph for a good stretch, just for the fun of it. I actually tried to attack a lyrca-clad cyclist about 200 feet in front of us, and closed the gap to 50 feet before he turned off. Everything was so perfect.

At about 16 km in, I felt a little bump on my right side, right when a car passed me very very close. All of a sudden, my front wheel started swinging left and right violently. I fought to control it, but I couldn’t maintain and with a final jerk, the front wheel turned 90 degrees to the right, clipped the curb and I went down pretty hard.

I can still the impact writing about it. My hands came off the bars on impact and were crushed and ground pretty good, and I gave the curb a solid headbutt before hitting my face. Everything went black for a couple seconds, then could open my eyes. My ears were ringing and everything was sounded about 30 decibels lower. Helen stopped and mouthed something at me, but I couldn’t tell what. I untwisted my feet from the pedals and dragged myself on to the sidewalk trying to think about what happened. I noticed that a good chunk of my two front teeth were missing as well. For some reason, that bothered me the most.

Helen got my stuff off the road, then we took a look at my injuries. My left hand had blood all over it, as well as bits of asphalt. As we started to bandage them, I knew that something was very wrong. Of my five fingers on the left hand, I could really only move one of them without difficulty. We hadn’t removed my shirt, but I knew there were abrasions all up and down the left arm that needed to be at least disinfected. The ringing in my ears had died down, but I was still woozy. I was worried that my head was bleeding, because every time I checked, I’d find blood. Turns out, it was just from my fingers instead of my scalp. Helen reassured me a bunch of times that my head was fine, at least on the outside. A kind gentleman who runs a Chinese restaurant in the area stopped and called the EMTs, and a man who lives in a house across the street agreed to hang on to our stuff while we went to the hospital.

I’m not going to go in to full details about the hospital, just things took a while but they repaired my fingers and put a pretty elaborate bandage on my left hand, as well as patched up my left shoulder, knee and ribs. My upper lip had to be glued back in to place.

I will say that Helen tried very hard to keep me upbeat, and for that I am very grateful. I’m pretty sure she’s sick of me thanking her.

We found a small hostel back in Galway, and grabbed a taxi van that brought us to the crash site. We got our bikes and stuff, thanked the man who helped us and went back, where we relaxed on the couch and watched Shrek 2.

That was probably a bad decision for me. I hate Shrek 2, for it symbolizes so much of what I dislike about some modern movies. Celebrity voices for no reason, catchphrases for things that had a shelf life of a month, jokes that you can see coming miles away, the whole thing didn’t put me in much of a better mood.

I called my mom, stating “I’m about to say something that sounds really bad, but it really isn’t.” She took the news pretty well. Helen and I went off to bed, and the pain started to go away when I drifted off to sleep.

Around 3:30 in the morning, I woke up and slipped out of the hostel. I was angry, and at pretty much everything. That driver ruined my trip because he just had to blaze down the highway and couldn’t wait to pass me in a safe manner. I was angry at an ER doctor who completely missed a dislocated ring finger until Helen pointed it out. I was angry that I wasn’t strong enough to keep control of my bike when it started to go out of control. For some reason, I was annoyed at Helen because she didn’t wear a helmet, and if she had gotten hit things would be so much worse.

I think a lot of my unhappiness came from the fact that this trip was mine from the start. I was out here on a trip that was mostly of my design. I made the call to do this on bikes, even though I’m not an experienced cyclist. I wanted to do this in a country where I had little familiarity. I was pushing my body beyond a level that I knew it could go. It was a fairly risky decision, and I just paid the price with injuries that I worried were going to be permanent. I knew that my fingers were going to be dented, even after they were done healing. I figured I’d be walking with a limp for some time. My favorite activities are hiking, rock climbing and biking. Without strong shoulders, I can’t carry a pack; without a strong grip, I can’t grab holds; if my mind is freaked out about errant front wheels, I won’t be getting on a bike anytime soon.

Then, I started thinking about before the crash. I thought about along the Ring of Kerry, telling Helen stories about working security at the Fremont Solstice Parade while the sun set over Dingle Bay. I thought about all the fun of Shane and Jin’s wedding and dancing in a conga line to “Is this the way to Amarillo?” I thought about strangers who were so kind to us, who thought we were such novelties, who didn’t care about how different we were from them and who talked our ears off with stories. Everything had been fun.

And really, was this crash a big deal? My bike would be okay, and my camera was alright. I lost one memory card that had pictures from the Cliffs of Moher and The Burren, but they weren’t that amazing and I just have an excuse to go back now. The netbook was tough enough to take the crash and I could recover the data if the whole thing went kaput (it was just fine). We only had two days of riding left. And I’ve hurt myself worse anyway, I have stories about falling off cliffs, bear encounters and other things I’ve done to myself in the name of adventure. Sure, we get hurt. But we also get better. I figured I’d be annoyed for a couple days and then I’d go back to enjoying everything.

I walked back to the hostel, stumbled in to bed and didn’t open my eyes until noon.

On Ireland: Part 2

2010-09-30T23:52:00.000-07:00

The next day didn’t look too happy from the start. We awoke to overcast skies and some rain, but our hostel proprietor told us that the day should improve as time goes on. We arrived at the Killarney boats plenty early. I searched around for the boat that would take us all the way to the end and after some inquiries (and difficulties with thick brogues) found the right boat. The rain let up, and by the time the boat cast off, there was a good amount of blue in the sky.

This is one of the best teasets I have seen in my life.

Helen is psyched to go

The ride through the lakes was wonderful fun. There were two couples embarking on their own adventures. Two were going to bike the Gap of Dunloe, two were going on foot. We chatted a little bit, but mostly just absorbed the scenery.

At one point, the rapids got very rough. The boat driver pulled to the side and had the women hop out, then pulled to the narrowest part. “I hope you’ve all eaten your Weetabix,” he said. Incidentally, I had. The guys hoped out, grabbed ropes and pulled the boat through some pretty fast current after a couple minutes of struggling. The women came back to the boat to find some very satisfied looking gentlemen. Helen later claimed that she would have been strong enough to pull the boat through instead of me, but sadly we’ll never know.

Looking satisfied by our sheer manly strength.

We got to Lord Brandon’s cottage, ate some bananas for cramp prevention and hopped on our bikes for the climb up to the Gap of Dunloe. The road winds uphill for a few miles through a few nice houses with a great view to the south. It was pretty bright, and the sun started to wear me down a little bit. I was cranking away in the easiest gear and still was tiring out. Eventually, I saw a bend in the road and decided this climb had bested me. I called to Helen that we should take a break by the road bend up ahead.

The road bend

Luckily, that road bend was the very top, and we were treated to a great view down the Gap of Dunloe. We took a break and chatted with some of the folks at the top. There were two cyclists who said “We’re from Germany, just like your bags!” Glad to see the Ortleib cult spans all over the world. We took a few pictures on the descent downward, and then booked it to Killoglin. The descent got pretty steep in some parts in the gap and I was riding the break for a good amount of time on the descent.

Helen goes down the Gap

At the top of the Gap

I'm throwing up the horns here because I am riding through the "Cork and Kerry Mountains" listening to Metallica's version of Whiskey in the Jar and if you don't know that song, click here now.

In Killoglin, I saw a sign indicating that Killoglin was 25 miles away, not 18 as I had thought. I was a little annoyed; we were already behind schedule and I didn’t want to skip dinner, so I set a pretty brutal pace in to the wind, planning to wear myself out and then let Helen lead for the last hill climb. There was one particularly wonderful moment on this ride when we saw the ocean for the first time. We were going uphill in to a strong wind but we didn’t care because we were so incredibly high on life. The ocean road winded up a sea cliff, about 300 feet and we could see across Dingle Bay as well as due east.

We bended away from the cliffs and approached what I thought was the penultimate climb in to town. The road was dotted with some very scenic small towns, B&Bs and the interior mountains of the Iveragh peninsula. As we winded to the top, Helen enthusiastically took point and led us downhill. I was pretty surprised to then see a “Welcome to Caherciveen” sign, meaning that there was no final hill climb. More importantly, it was time for food.

Dinner was a pretty good meal at a seafood bar right by the B&B. Caherciveen is a pretty dead town after 9:00, and I think we were about a half hour away from everything closing. We ate, took a little walk and then went to bed hoping that tomorrow’s weather would hold up for our Skellig Michael outing.

That red salsa with the bread was amazing. The Smithwick's not so much. Serves Helen right for the temerity to drink something other than Guinness.

Stats for that day

Skellig Michael, the island monastery, it should be noted, was not in the first couple of drafts for this trip. Looking at the map, it seemed to me like any ferry to the Ireland would require a 2-day diversion from the main road to travel down the Ring of Kerry. Furthermore, there was no guarantee that we’d actually be able to go. Boats for the Skelligs land only if the sea isn’t too choppy around the islands, and from what I heard, there’s about a 40% chance that the boats will abort. I was worried that if we planned on going to Skellig Michael, we’d spend two days riding to a place that we may never get to see. I was more inclined to get to Dingle quicker, but Helen’s opinion prevailed during the planning stages, and I found enough fun things to do in case the Skelligs didn’t work out.

We woke up around 8, ate breakfast and started the ride to Portmagee. I tried to set a fast pace, but I couldn’t get going beyond 20km/h. Helen didn’t have much trouble keeping up with me. The ride is was enjoyable, with partly cloudy skies and a good view to the north of Valencia Island. I took note of the main road visible on that island since I thought we might hang out there if Skellig Michael didn’t work out.

We got in with a good amount of time to spare before the boats took off, but there isn’t exactly a lot to do on the ride around Portmagee besides wait for the boats. The good news though, was that the boats were going to head out, so we hopped on right when the clouds started to gather and it started to rain a little. No matter, the current was smooth enough to land on the Skelligs.

Our boat operators were two young Irish lads, our age or younger. There was also a nice elderly married couple from Cork and their daughter and son-in-law (or son and daughter-in-law, I forget). They were very nice to me, and pretty much wanted to adopt Helen after ten minutes of chatting with her. A few minutes after boarding, we were underway with a couple other boats in the fleet.

The first half hour of the ride was a lot of fun. I managed to get the camera out and get some one-handed shots of the chop we were cruising through. Helen compared it to surfing, since she spent a lot of the ride standing in the door to the cockpit. After the first part though, I started to feel a little seasick. At first, I could distract myself with some conversation with the others, but after a while, I crawled in to the cockpit and stared at the deck. Turns out, I should have kept my eyes on the horizon, as that is a common remedy. We approached Bird Rock, and one of the drivers commented that there were about 40,000 birds nesting on the island. Helen said that the scent of all the droppings combined with the diesel from the engine made her feel a little queesy. For the record, everyone else seemed to endure the ride much better.

We both managed to avoid throwing up, and we managed to hop on to the island pier and crawl towards a place to sit down. We rested there for about 10 minutes, and then got up and started to walk up the ramp that would lead us to the main stairs that the monks took. I was pretty cranky, but walking did me some good and the clouds started to break. We saw a lot of birds here as well, and could hear a lot of puffins as we approached the steps.

At the steps was a man who surely took great pleasure in his job, which consisted of warning tourists that they will surely die a horribly and splattery death should they make one false move when walking up the 623 steps that lead from where we were to the monastery. He pointed out a couple locations where there have been fatalities within the last year. With that pep talk, we were on our way. I left behind my telephoto lens and we started the walk up.

I think we saw our first puffin up close around step 10. Around step 50, we noticed there were puffins everywhere. We had hit the jackpot apparently; puffins do not inhabit Skellig Michael year round, only for a few weeks out of the year and we were fortunate to see them in force. I had so much fun watching them and taking pictures that I completely forgot how seasick I was.

About 1500 years ago, some Irish monks decided to find a nice quiet place where they could settle and contemplate God in peace, so they chose Skellig Michael. Not content with living on this rocky pyramid, they decided to put about 623 steps in the cliff side and walk all the way to the top where they had built their beehive huts, house of worship and yes, a small graveyard since they’d stand a good chance of dying on this crag. Skellig Michael is a truly astonishing place, symbolizing what great lengths people will go to in order to achieve spiritual fulfillment. The cynical mind may call it a monument to insanity, but I suppose I’ll stick with devotion.

Yes, I faked the lens flare. Next time it'll be real.

That's step 300 or so

Looooong way down

This picture bears further explanation. There’s two main peaks on the island. The monastery is on the lower one, but the sharper, steeper and more dangerous one has a hermitage big enough to house one monk there. This means that at some point, one of the monks in the monastery said “I’ve had it with this life of luxury and all this chatter! I’m going to get me some peace and quiet!” In other words, no matter how crazy you are, there’s always going to be someone to out-crazy you.

By the time we were halfway up, I felt perfectly fine and was in my element shooting. I elected to not use the polarizer on the way up, figuring that the light would get harsher as the clouds dissipated and I could make better use of it on the descent. The monastery itself is quiet modest and crowded with tourists. I couldn’t get a quality photograph of the whole thing, but made do. The historian there answered many questions, and I was surprised to hear that Vikings had sacked the island on multiple occasions, meaning that monks weren’t the only person crazy enough to clamber up those stairs.

I thought I was making good time on the descent, but apparently spent way too much time taking pictures because when we got to the bottom, we saw that we only had five minutes until the boat left. Of course, we hadn’t paid yet so we knew they weren’t going to leave, but we still hurried back. The ride back was not nearly so choppy, but Helen started feeling pretty sick halfway and slept on the deck. I’m not sure how Helen is able to sleep that easily. It is a skill I wish I had.

After landfall, we had a snack and went over to the Skellig museum. Helen took a nap on a rock while I explored the museum, then we decided to explore Valencia Island. The weather was absolutely gorgeous, so we rode to Knightstown along the channel that separates the island from the mainland. I set a pretty brutal pace for a good stretch of it, and we had the wind at our back, so it was fun to zip down those roads. We had the roads to ourselves. I think there were more abandoned houses than occupied ones on the western half of it.

We made it to Knightstown on the eastern edge of the island, and were thinking about taking the ferry back but there was still about five hours of daylight left. We decided to make the trip to Geokaun Mountain, the highest point on the island. It would be about a 400 foot climb, and we’d do about 2/3rds on bikes. After a brief stop to explore an abandoned church-turned-graveyard, we biked up to the parking lot, locked up our bikes, declined to pay the entrance fee since we couldn’t figure out where to pay it and set off on a walk to the top.

I didn’t keep track of distance or elevation for the walk, and it was kind of nice to break from constant metrics evaluation for a change. I ride with a cycling computer, so I can know how well we are doing at any given point and how much more we have left. It’s good to know these things but sometimes you have to take a break from continuous self-evaluation. So don’t ask me how long it took to hike up. Lets just say it was a nice brisk walk, with wonderful views to the north of the Dingle Peninsula, tomorrow’s destination.

I think we took it a little too easy on the walk up and down though, because I saw the sun start to set and wanted to have a good sunset shoot at Ballycarbery castle. We got back on our bikes, took the ferry from Knightstown to Caherciveen and then road quickly to Ballycarbery, about 4 kilometers away from our B&B. I actually set a personal best on the descent to Knightstown, hitting 40 miles per hour at one point. I will probably never try to go that fast again. It was too dark to see how fast we were going, so lets say that we blazed by at a world-record pace of 100km/h past very confused cows, trying to catch the last few rays of sunlight.

We got there with what I thought was about 15 minutes to work, so we set at it. I violated a cardinal rule and didn’t use the tripod, since the best shots were at eye level. Overall, I was surprised with the results. I’m a big fan of the silhouette shot that makes it look like there is smoke rising from the castle.

Yeah, I'm a fan

I love me some pink clouds

After that, we went back to town only to find that every place that served dinner worth eating had closed. I had a late lunch, and Helen wasn’t too hungry so we grabbed some stuff from the grocery store, and ate it before tomorrow’s ride.

Summary of the days riding

By the way, tomorrow’s ride wasn’t suppose to happen. I thought I had scored a major trip-planning coup when I found a ferry that runs between Knightstown, but that ferry only runs on weekends. I wasn’t exactly looking forward to a super long ride tomorrow and went to bed a little antsy.

We woke up the next morning, ate breakfast and set off. It didn’t look like a good day for riding at all. We were getting rained on and buffeted pretty well for the first part of the journey. Helen was having a little trouble with her bike handlebars too when we were riding cliffside. However, the strong winds were at our backs and we made pretty impressive time getting in to Killoglin, where we took a break for lunch. Helen had some some shrimp-salad-type-thing, and I had one of the best cups of soup I have had in my life.

I should point out here that Irish food probably isn’t as good as I am making it out to be, but you have to keep some things in mind. We had been pedaling hard for the last few hours in rain and wind, and anything that was hot and spicy in any way was the most delicious thing imaginable.

We took our time with lunch, which may have broken our rhythm, but wasn’t too much of a problem. We also saw the clouds starting to lift a little bit as we turned back in to the wind for the ride in to Dingle.

The road in to Dingle along the Dingle Peninsula was one of Helen’s favorite rides on the trip. The road was straight, but mostly level, with the occasional small hill climb and coast. To the right, we could see the mountains on the Dingle Peninsula just underneath the cloud cover. To the right, we were right by Dingle Bay and could see in to the Ring of Kerry, where we had just come from.

We were used to seeing road signs in both English and Irish, and I could actually understand the Irish road signs. But this one, riding in to the Dingle Peninsula threw me for a loop. There’s 3 languages on it, and we’d later see one that had Polish on it as well. English is for general consumption. Irish is mandated by law, and it is not uncommon to see signs where the English has been vandalized beyond recognition and only the Irish remains. French is for tourists. German and Polish are for truck drivers, who often come from those countries. There have been numerous incidents of trucks getting stuck in mountain pass roads and needing to be disassembled in order to be removed, so I guess the authorities want to make sure the message gets through.

We took a break when we got to Inch Strand, which is a long sandbar that extends a few miles in to the bay. We took a break to refuel and explore the beach, which was filled with surfers and washed-up jellyfish that I almost stepped in. I took the opportunity to reflect on how awesome my hair looks after there’s a helmet on it.

After that came the tough part. Visibility had dropped to about 50 feet and the light breeze had become a stiff headwind. I was struggling up the first hill after our break at Inch. Helen decided to motivate me by impersonating Sarah Palin. Every time she gleefully shouted “You betcha!” I felt energy surge through my legs and kept cranking away. She took point with a few miles left and we rode in to town. We had trouble finding the B&B and looped through town a couple of times before seeing a stretch of cottages. It was about 6:00, we were soaked and cold, and the odometer read 98.4 km. I told Helen, and we looked at each other and kept riding west out of the town for .8 km, then turned back to make the metric century. This was Helen's first century so she was pretty excited. I have a couple metrics and a nonmetric under my belt, but this ride was way tougher than those.

We knocked on the door and met Margret, who owns The Last Cottage. She’s a pretty neat lady, who just finished her Computer Science degree after she retired. She also had a dog named “Hasno” as in “Has no leg.” Poor little thing is missing one of its rear legs. One would think this would slow down the dog, but this is not the case. Hasno can run sideways faster than most dogs can run forward. The thing is like a crab.

We told Margret where we had come from, and that we had ridden 100 kilometers today. She remarked that we were “Mad, absolutely mad” which is the most awesome thing to hear, especially when said with a British accent. After devouring all of her biscuits and showering, we walked down to Murphy’s pub. We both had a celebratory beer and ate dinner, and I had the first of what would be many orders of lasagna on this trip. I’m not sure when this happened, but a while back, all the pubs in Ireland had a convention and there was a panel that went something like this:
Proprietor 1: I say, what’s the meaning of all of these vegetarians I see?
Proprietor 2: Quite, surely we must find something to feed them with.
Proprietor 1: Indeed, indeed, I say, and I have become a great big fan of this Garfield cat in the Sunday funny pages.
Proprietor 2: Well, then logically we should start serving lasagna to them immediately.

The pub was very nice. There was a banjo player singing a lot of traditional music and I was pretty psyched when he started playing “Whiskey in the Jar.” It was nice to hear that song, especially after listening to the Metallica version. We also met two nice ladies at the bar from New York. One worked for the district attorney’s office, and we talked about our jobs and philosophy and Ireland. The other did something else, but what I remember best is that she was on this Paleo-diet that Helen found super interesting. We hung out there for a couple of hours and planned to meet up the next day for the archaeology tour. Helen and I went back, where I found some more biscuits that had not been eaten and proceeded to eat them.

At this point, you may remark “Mehal, shouldn’t you be controlling your biscuit intake?” And I would remark that I had should biked a hundred klicks in the rain and wind and I will eat a damn biscuit. So there. Plus, these biscuits are super fine.

We stayed up pretty late and talked, then had the most restful sleep we've had all trip.

On Ireland: Part 1

2010-09-17T18:24:00.000-07:00

Time to write about that little Ireland trip that I went on. This is going to be a fairly lengthy post, and it will get rambly and uninteresting at times, which is why you have a Page-Down button. For reasons that will be explained later, there are some sections that will be light on photographs.

This trip began nine years ago, when three college freshmen showed up a week early to learn how to fix computers for a work-study job. After nine years, Shane decided to get married in Ireland and invited me to join. I was originally planning on declining, until I got a couple timely bonuses from work and found myself thinking “Why not?” Later, when I was chatting with Helen on IM, I somehow invited her and she somehow accepted. What started off as a weeklong circuit on the eastern coast became this trip. “Go big, or go home.”

Helen and I are not experienced bikers. Before we started planning and training, I don’t think I had ever ridden more than twenty kilometers, or with any kind of weight. Neither she nor I have done a bike tour either, and I’m certainly no expert traveler. I’ve never been to Europe, or really out of the country. So to say that I have some apprehensions is an understatement.

Training wise, I started riding between 50km and 100km on the weekends. I got a bike trainer and rode it while watching nature documentaries, making a point to gun it whenever there was a nice predator-prey chase sequence. I also started bike commuting. Helen started doing some riding as well. By the time the trip date rolled around, I felt reasonably confident that I’d be able to do the route. Helen later told me that she had some doubts about her biking ability, but didn’t let it show too much.

I upgraded to a Bianchi Volpe shortly before the trip, and consider myself a satisfied customer. I also picked up a pair of Ortleib panniers because it rains from time to time in Seattle, as well as Ireland. I passed on the fenders to save a little weight, figuring that my stuff is waterproof enough. I packed a decent amount of synthetics, wool, and padded cycling briefs. For some reason, I packed a pair of jeans and a button-down shirt, thinking that there would be times when I should “look nice.” I also brought a suit for the wedding, but did not plan to take that on the cycling portion of the trip. Electronics-wise, I brought my phone, Zune, Kindle and netbook, which meant bringing four separate charging cables. Boo. Camera-wise, I brought my 40D, 24-70L, 200-400 (in vain hopes of any wildlife photography), flash, big tripod and little tripod. I was glad we decided not to camp, so I could spare another 10lbs camping gear.

Bike, packed up and ready to go

Wool socks, very important

Helen and I did a lot of planning. We took a few weekends and planned out the entire route, booked lodging (which turned out to be unnecessary) and spent the next few months getting psyched. This was an especially big deal for me since I have never really traveled internationally, aside from day trips to Canada and family trips to India. This would be the first time I’d really get to explore another country, and experience their culture.

Packing the bike took two tries to get right. Eventually, I was able to put that monster in and had enough room to pad the sides. Everything was zip-tied pretty securely, so I felt pretty confident that my bike would make it in one piece. Those zip ties where very useful and I now consider a necessity for packing stuff. My other stuff was packed pretty quickly in one suitcase. I tried to sleep that night, but didn’t really get any and figured I’d get some sleep on the upcoming 8AM departure.

Scott was kind enough to bring me to the airport at 6AM and I got to the United check-in counter. I was shocked to see a massive line this early in the morning, but I guess a lot of people had plans. I had a large suitcase and bicycle, and had to drag my stuff through the line.

The flight to Chicago may have been eventful, but I don’t remember much of it. I was in a semiconscious state for most of it. I can rarely get any kind of satisfying sleep on a plane. It is about as restful as dozing off in a lecture, where your head is tilting forward and snapping backwards every fifteen minutes. Ordinarily, I can just power through periods where I don’t sleep enough, but the physically demanding nature of this trip has given me cause for concern.

In Chicago, I proceeded to get lost in the tunnel network of O’Hare trying to get to my terminal. For the record, seeing the departure gate board read T5 does not make you think “Terminal 5” but “Gate T5.” Eventually, I made it there and met up with Emma, another friend of Jin and Shane who was also planning on cycle touring the Ring of Kerry and Beara Peninsula. She wouldn’t be with us, but we exchanged a good amount of information.

I was awake for most of the evening flight, and spent it reading some books on my Kindle and just mulling things over. Around 430AM, I looked out the window and saw another plane speeding along parallel to us. It isn’t easy to take a picture out the side of an aircraft, but I did my best here. I think I watched us fly next to this plane for a good half hour before we overtook it and left it in our vapor trail.

I watched random things that were on the inflight broadcast. I particularly remember a recording of a Celtic Woman concert at Kilkenny Castle. I determined that Kilkenny was not nearly as spectacular as I had thought from some guidebooks and axed it from the itinerary. I also noticed that music video directors can’t stay focused on a subject for more than three seconds without cutting away to a new shot. Stop doing that! Those of us who have not have our attention spans ruined by music television deserve a nice shot of an attractive Irish diva for a good 30 seconds.

First glimpse of Ireland

I got off the plane, waited in a long passport line and was asked “business or pleasure” by the passport official. I was tempted to reply “Cycling is my main business!” but decided that it would not be a smart way to enter the country. There would be many future opportunities to embarrass myself.

I turned on my phone and was a little annoyed to see that Helen was running two hours late. I grabbed my luggage and bike box, and found a spot to hang out. I was horrified to see though, that the fork had punched through the bottom of the box. I made a note to better pack that next time, fixed the box and settled in with my book and some tea to wait for my partner.

Helen and I have known each other for nine years, and become close friends over the past two, but our relationship has been through the phone and instant messenger. So it was really wonderful to see the woman behind the keyboard after so long. We were both pretty nervous about this trip, and when I returned from a trip to the bathroom, I saw her praying for a safe journey. We had to wait a bit for a coach to Durrow, and were slightly worried that we were on the wrong bus for a bit, but eventually came to a stop outside Castle Durrow. We unloaded from the bus, and the Irish weather welcomed us with a brief torrential downpour. I ran in to the castle lobby to see if anyone could loan us a cart. Luckily, one of the bellhops had a car and we threw all our stuff in there for a drive to our room. A couple bellhops helped us get a net total of six bags and two bicycles in to our room.

Castle Durrow isn’t a medieval stronghold, but more of a villa built around what was once a small castle. We showered, decompressed and snacked on a couple scones that Emma was kind enough to have sent to our room. Then, we had some time to kill before the welcome barbecue so we explored the grounds and walked through the gardens. I briefly entertained the thought of playing tennis on a grass court, but it was time soon time to eat.

I got to meet a Reid, an old friend from Penn at the reunion and learn more about Shane’s dark and sordid past. I also got to meet his dad, who I have heard crazy stories of involving Indonesian revolutions, cross-country skiing with a keg of Guinness and the fact that we both want to Socotra Island someday. I was unable to partake in the Korean barbecue but was told by Helen that it was “gooooooood.”

Helen and I also drank our first Guinness in Ireland. Many people say that Guinness tastes better in Ireland, and it’s more than just legend. Reasons include:
• Bartenders know that pouring a pint is a long process, and a smart one at a party will have a few pints that have already settled.
• Guinness has quality-control representatives that ensure that the tap lines are cleaned out every three weeks.
• The longer the beer is in the keg, the more the taste will degrade.
• You having a total blast and everything tastes better

Strangely enough, this was the first beer I’ve had with Reid and he seemed to take it as an opportunity to “beer-mentor” me. Helen and I also downed two pints of Bulmer’s Cider, which puts most of our bottled and canned cider to shame. At this point, I felt the need to join in with the karaoke and joined the chorus of “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Fatigue and jet lag soon got the better of both us, and we went and crashed.

I woke up at 5AM the next day and snuck out to wander the grounds some. I erred in not bringing my camera, because there were a couple nice shots of horses in the mist. I read for some time in the drawing room, found Helen and walked more of the grounds before breakfast. In a sign of things to come, we ate a large amount of toast, and I rediscovered that jam is really freaking good. Helen got the infamous black and white pudding, which prompted a couple at an adjacent table to say “You know what that is, right?” She was a big fan of the black pudding and I wolfed down the eggs.

Next, since it was still morning, we started assembling our bikes. My concerns about the fork were unfounded, and both of us would have been ready for a test ride in less than half an hour, were it not for a gentleman named Eugene. Eugene is the groundskeeper, and also a great source of advice and craic. We talked about the surrounding area, what we can anticipate up ahead, and the wonderful burden of a father about to see his daughters about to be married. He threw out our boxes, and left after an hour. Helen and I took a short ride out of the town and through a couple rolling hills. Everything checked out, and after a constitutional and change of clothes, we were off to the wedding.

I’ve never been to a conventional Catholic ceremony, although I’m not sure if this was 100% traditional. The priest, Father Joe gave a very nice speech on Shane and Jin, and the ceremony had a lot of music and incorporated some Korean traditions. Father Joe profusely apologized for his Korean pronunciations, but I don’t think anyone minded too much. I also remember him criticizing the church for passing harsh judgment on people who have remarried. Mostly, I remember the couple beaming at each other.

Aside: I’d like to put together a guide for non-Catholics on how to conduct themselves during a Catholic Mass. If I hadn’t been previously advised, I would have taken the Eucharist which is a serious faux pas. I also didn’t know what was with the “peace be with you” part. Any priest reading this, please get in contact with me. Really, I think this could be done for any religion. So, any priest of any religion interested, let me know.

After the wedding, there was plenty of good craic at the reception. Helen and I got earfuls of stories and advice on what to do, what not to do and encouragement to drink various things. Pimms was the big hit of the afternoon. Some of Shane’s cousins were at our table; two of them came close to convincing me that we should stay in Howth instead of Dun Laoghire. There were wonderful toasts, but I wish they had warned me there would have been multiple ones so I wouldn’t have downed my glass with the first of many toasts to the happy couple. After a few hours of conversation and drinking, it was time for bed.

The next day, it was time to depart. After breakfast, we packed up our stuff and started saying goodbyes. Shane, his dad, and I all talked about this hypothetical Yemen trip that we’d all like to go on and promised to keep in touch. I mailed my extra things to Dun Laoghire, gave Eugene the empty suitcase and got ready to ship out. I made the hard decision to leave the Gitzo tripod behind, as there was no easy way to put it on the pack. Any metal-worker, please contact me if you would be interested in helping me manufacture a bike rack that will support a tripod. Easy money. Sadly, the photograph of Helen and I at the start of the trip has not survived. Suffice to say, it’s the two of us grinning silly with loaded bikes and fresh with the feeling of being at the beginning of something grand. A few more good luck wishes and goodbyes, and with that, we were off to Cashel.

Helen would later tell me that she was nervous about keeping up with me on the trip, but I think she lost that sensation after about ten miles on our way to Cashel. I hadn’t anticipated the wind to be as strong as it was, or my burden to feel so heavy. I also made a big mistake when I put my telephoto lens in my backpack, because after an hour, I felt it dig in to the nice fleshy spot above my kidneys and started to feel a fair amount of back pain. This, along with some expected headwinds and unexpected leg cramps had me inching along at a pathetic 8mph for a good chunk of the journey, making it an inauspicious start. Helen was pretty high on life though, reminding me about every fifteen minutes that we were ACTUALLY IN IRELAND and the trip was no longer in the planning stage, but the execution stage.

Sunny South East my foot

Helen and I were very distressed at the amount of advertising we saw for lousy American beer.

Eventually, we started to get rained on and pulled over to put on our rain gear. Oddly enough, that’s when I started to find my rhythm and stopped struggling so much. Eventually, I saw the rock rising over the plains of Tipperary and we rode in to town. The rain had let up when we were in town, but we were too late to see the Rock with enough time as well as find a nice place that was still open for dinner. We went to the hostel, which is adjacent to Hore Abbey and spent some time exploring it.

I found it really interesting that we were allowed to just wander all over this old and ancient site. Hore Abbey is about 750 years old, making it twice as old as pretty much every surviving structure in the US, so I’m used to treating old sites with a hands-off attitude. But here was a gorgeous ruin, unsupervised and free for both humans and cows to explore. We hopped a fence and walked up to the abbey. The lighting wasn’t exactly great; it would be about five hours until sunrise so we just wandered all over the abbey. I was surprised to see tombstones inside the abbey. Much later, someone explained that when a church or monastery or any holy site falls in to disrepair, it is usually converted in to a cemetery. The ground has been consecrated, so it might as well be used for something holy.

I was a little cheesed to see that the back scaffolding was under construction, but I suppose its better than the thing collapsing on our heads.

We hung out for an hour, then walked around looking for dinner and Cashel blue cheese. Most spots indicated in the guidebook were closed, and we weren’t adventurous enough to go for some pub grub, so we went to an Indian restaurant. The waiter was a fun guy to chat with, and the only brown guy I would see until we got to Galway. We discussed how he got to Ireland, places he’s lived and our mutual love for Lady Gaga.

Helen went for a run and I investigated boat packages for Killarney in the hostel, then we horsed around in the abbey around sunset before turning in for the night.

The next day, I woke up absurdly early and snuck out to wander that same Abbey. Like I said, I love ancient places. We then walked the town at 8AM, grabbed breakfast which for me was rhubarb pie and coffee, and made our way to the Rock of Cashel.

The Rock of Cashel is a fort that was occupied by the Kings of Munster. The dominant feature now is the cathedral, built in the 13th century. The Rock has a long and bloody history of wars and massacres, and is eerie to wander around inside. I highly endorse Rick Steves’ guide, because it gives a pretty good description of the interior. I remember a lot of the artwork had intentional inaccuracies to symbolize man’s imperfection, like drawings of hands with too many fingers or arches built slightly off-center.

The Rock also looks over the plains of Tipperary, and I looked at the next part of our trip trying to judge the wind and the weather. Mostly though, I just enjoyed the view.

After that, we grabbed our stuff from the hostel and headed off to Limerick Junction via Tipperary. When we exited Cashel, there was a sign that said warned of how many accidents there had been on this stretch of road, which wasn’t exactly reassuring. There were a few steep hills and a strong headwind towards the end, but we made it to the station in time for a train in the mid afternoon to Killarney.

Once there, we figured that the Black Valley wasn’t going to happen, so we found a spot to stay and explored Killarney for a while. Helen gave me a scare when she went about a roundabout the wrong way, and we spent a good 5 minutes trying to find each other after we had gone in different directions. There was plenty of light, so we walked for a few hours in the park on some nice trails. The ride to the park was great because it was the first time we could ride without panniers on. I had us going 20mph for a good stretch of that road. After dinner, we wandered through a fair and a concert, then went back and turned in.

Ross Castle

Boats tied up near the castle.

As we walked by this cannon, Helen remarked that "Guys always want pictures next to guns." So I had to oblige.

Helen decided to have some fun with long-exposure shots.

Summary of that days riding

On Craig and Xiaoyi's wedding

2010-09-06T22:21:00.000-07:00

Last Friday was the wedding of two of my closest friends, Craig and Xiaoyi. It was held in Destin, Florida, famous for white sandy beaches. I had the good fortune of officiating the ceremony. Highlights included

Checking Texas statute to see if I could marry the two of them in the airport since our flight to Destin had been canceled
Riding in a Mustang convertible over a giant floating bridge
Xiaoyi saying "We have to hold hands?!" during the rehearsal
The look of panic in Craig's mom's eyes when I did my impression of the "Mawwage" speech from Princess Bride during the rehearsal
Mixing up the words "success" and "sickness" about 45 times when practicing
Eric, Yang and I dancing to "Paper Planes" complete with pantomime gunfire
Playing shallow-water ultimate with a football
Stargazing with Yanka in the Gulf and realizing that I can't ID constellations
Idle conversation on a pontoon boat
The most hardcore celebrities game I've ever played
Playing "Never have I ever"
Being part of Craig and Xiaoyi's wedding

Thanks guys; it was truly an honor that I will treasure. I wish you all the best that married life has to offer.

On the Fremont Parade

2010-06-19T22:13:00.000-07:00

I was having dinner with a tabletop group one time and was recounting a story of an old D&D game. My character rode a triceratops, and we were about to enter a dungeon. The beast could not fit through the narrow passages, and I was trying to make arrangements to leave it behind, when the party mage said "Don't worry! I'll shrink your triceratops!" Jason, who was listening to this story, pointed out that it is possible that no one had ever said that sentence before. Since then, I've kept an eye out for things I say or here that might fit this description like "I believe that will have a negative impact on the stripper's self-confidence" and "Where the hell are my fluorescent orange sticky notes?"

I worked security for the Fremont Parade today. Some choice quotes:

"You're overdressed! You're overdressed!" (5-year old to me, regarding the fact that I was wearing clothing.)

"I need you to pick up your rainbow streamers and move behind the Lenin statue." (Me, and he did)

"Mobile 2, in pursuit of rogue naked cyclist." (Me, and I didn't catch him)

"I'm sorry, but that does not constitute a body paint job." (Overheard)

"Where's that unicyclist? I'm going to crack his skull with my bike pump." (Me, and no I didn't.)

"Please step back fifteen feet, or you will be run over by a yellow submarine." (Shawn and I)

"Does anyone have eyes on the tango-dancing Batman and Robin?" (Overheard)

"The penguin fell off her bike, but she appears uninjured."

Sometimes, I wonder what normal people do for fun in normal cities. It must suck.

On hosting trivia

2010-05-11T23:59:00.001-07:00

Craig and I hosted trivia last night. We can't post the picture rounds (1 round on Radio Personalities, the other on movie fight scenes) but we can post the rest of the questions. Comment if you have guesses.

Astronomy
1. Astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli observed lines on the surface of mars. Due to a mistranslation, what were the lines interpreted to be by many?
2. A rock that falls from outer space and lands on earth is called a meteorite. What is the term for a rock that is thought to be a meteorite, but later is determined to have a terrestrial origin?
3. Most objects in the solar system are named after characters in Greco-Roman mythology. However, what is the origin of the names for the moons of Uranus?
4. Before exiting the solar system, Voyager 1 turned its camera towards earth and took a picture. What famous name has been given to this picture?
5. Gustav Holst wrote a seven piece orchestral suite called "The Planets." Which planet did the suite omit? For the purposes of this question, Pluto is not a planet.
6. No, really. Pluto is not a planet. What is the correct term for Pluto, as well as Ceres, Haumea, Makemake, and Eris?
7. The presence of intense radio waves and x-rays has lead astronomers to conclude that a supermassive one of these things lives at the center of the galaxy.
8. Sam, Miss Sam, Ham and Enos all made valuable contributions to the Mercury space program. Who were they?
9. The Mars Climate Orbiter crashed as a result of of confusion between the metric and imperial units used for force. For a half point each, what are the metric and imperial units for force?
10. There are a few hundred moons in the solar system, but this giant moon of Saturn is the only one that has an atmosphere.

Supreme Court:
1. During her confirmation hearings, Judge Sonya Sotomayor was asked about a ruling she made on possession of these weapons made famous by Bruce Lee and Michaelangelo.
2. When he's not presiding over the Supreme Court, Chief Justice John Roberts vacations in this Irish city famous for stabbings and bawdy poetry.
3. Senator Jim Bunning recently implied that Justice Ginsberg had "this kind of cancer, and the kind you don't get better from." What kind of cancer, the kind that recently killed Patrick Swayze, was he talking about?
4. Before he was a judge, John Paul Stevens worked in Naval Intelligence. His codebreaking skills allowed the Allies to find the plane of this Japanese Admiral and shoot it down.
5. Most Supreme Court Justices do during hearings this all the time, but Clarence Thomas hasn't done this since February 22nd, 2006.
6. Radio coverage of the confirmation battle over Justice Alito is prominently featured in this controversial 2006 documentary about a religious retreat in Kansas.
7. Antonin Scalia graduated from Harvard Law Magna Cum Laude. What higher honor would he have received if he didn't slack off so much and applied himself a little more?
8. Last week, Stephen Breyer wrote a what could be considered a dissenting opinion regarding what change to the Supreme Court?
9. Anthony Kenendy wrote the majority opinion in the 2003 landmark case of Lawrence vs. Texas. What did the ruling effectively legalize?
10. In the Simpsons Episode "Itchy & Scratchy: The Movie," who is shown to have grown up to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court?

Washington State History
1. A 9th Circuit Court Ruling in the year 2000 banned Makah Indians from hunting these kinds of animals.
2. In 1983, 3 men gunned down 14 patrons of this casino at the intersection of Maynard and South King Street.
3. Harry R Truman and David Johnston were the two most famous casualties of this 1980 event.
4. Kenneth Pinyan died in 2005 in Enumclaw, and the Washington State Legislature called an emergency session to ban the activity that caused his death. What was the activity?
5. Tim Eyman has proposed 15 initiatives that made it on the Washington Ballot. How many of them passed, and were not declared unconstitutional?
6. Hazard Stephens and PB Van Trump were the first people to complete this activity, which around 10,000 people try to do every year.
7. Congressman Joel Pritchard spent most of his life in politics but may best be remembered for inventing this game in 1964, which is a freakish cross of tennis, badminton and raquetball and is played by millions of gym class students and senior citizens all over the country.
8. A stray pig almost caused a war between the United States and Great Britain in 1859. The treaty and arbitration process wound up awarding these islands to the United States.
9. 1963 marked the completion of this bridge, which is the longest floating bridge in the world. There are three acceptable names for this.
10. This bridge collapsed in 1940, and lives on in architecture and physics textbooks as a prime example of how not to do it.

Dance Instructions:
Given these instructions, identify the dance.

Songs
1. Shimmy to the left and turn your body facing right with attitude and bite your lip. Bring arms up in the "claw" pose and take two steps to the right. Stop then claw to the left--claw to the right--claw to the left and at the same time take two steps towards the left. Stop again then claw to the right, claw to the left and jump up once.
2. Slide to the left, slide to the right, criss-cross, criss-cross.
3. Put your right hand on your right hip and your left hand on your left hip. Circle your hips three times with the beat of the music. Hop and clap as you make a quarter turn with the group. Repeat the steps until the song has ended.
4. As you lean forward on your left foot, raise your right leg behind you and turn your palms, which are still in a prayer position, outward. Pull your arms backward toward your sides as if you're swimming. This is the "Superman"
5. Bend your arms at the elbow and hold them somewhat tight against your body. Swing the forearms back and forth, up and down throughout the duration of the music video. Just make sure your forearms swing in the same direction. Once in a while, change the arm swaying with a few claps to the beat. Optional: Grab a pair of 80s sunglasses, full black suit and trenchcoat.
Moves/Dance Styles
6. First, make sure you have a good backflip. Bend your knees, then throw your arms forward. When your arms are fully extended at eye level, lift off. When you're at the peak of your jump, kick out.
7. Jerk quickly at your waist to one side. With another quick jerk, bend down at your waist. Quickly stand up straight, and then, repeating the same procedure, quickly, with a sharp jerk, bend the other way. All the time you are bending from side to side, continue bending your arms at the elbows, up and down, fast and sharp.
8. Add to the circle by raising your arms with your elbows bent and your hands up. Step forward with your right foot and hop while lifting your left foot and turning your body to the left. Raise and lower your arms as you rotate your hands, as if you were screwing in a light bulb. Continue the steps all the way around the circle.
9. After the preparation steps, push off the floor with your left foot. Extend your right leg straight out in front of you and your left leg straight out directly behind you. Your legs should basically be in a split in the air. Point your toes hard!
10. Roll or rock onto your chest, beginning near the sternum. As you do that, tense your legs and push them back. This will keep them from flailing about and form a crescent shape in your body. When rocking forward, push up forcefully when your chin nears the ground. This will kick you legs immediately to the ground.

Movies
1. Roger Ebert's review of this 2006 film said "I liked the absurdity. I like the incongruous use and misuse of mutant powers, and especially the way it introduces all of those political issues and lets them fight it out with the special effects."
2. Val Kilmer encounters meth-heads, dirty cops and noseless psychopaths in this 2002 film that shares its name with a California body of water.
3. Jack Black and Steve Zahn rescue Jason Biggs from a disasterous marriage with Amanda Peet in this 2001 comedy.
4. This 1999 animated sequel is the highest rated movie on Rotten Tomatoes. It also is the last animated film to win the golden globe for best comedy before Animated Films were given their own category.
5. Peter Jackson didn't have a massive film resume before being handed Lord of the Rings. This 1996 horror film starring Michael J Fox is what convinced producers that he was up to the task.
6. OJ Simpson's last major film appearance was in this 1994 action/comedy. He won a Golden Raspberry for Worst Supporting Actor.
7. Steven Seagal saves the Alaskan Wilderness by setting fires and blowing up Oil Rigs in this 1994 film.
8. Gene Hackman and Willem DaFoe fight the Ku Klux Klan using torture, violence and sheer bad-assery in this 1988 film.
9. Vincent D'Onofrio had to gain 70 pounds for his role in this 1987 movie, setting a record amongst Hollywood Actors for biggest weight gain for a movie role.
10. What actor or actress is in all nine of these movies?

On poetry

2010-04-02T17:02:00.002-07:00

I read Jabberwocky. Then I felt inspired.

'Twas sunny and the barista
Did smile and wink at him
He walked up to the scrum board
With a mug filled to the brim

"Beware the backlog, young dev!
The tasks that drain, VMs that drool!
Beware the ticket queue and shun
The wretched CM Tool!"

The vorpal keyboard 'neath his hands
Long he toiled with little luck
He tore his hair and paced about
And harshly whispered "fudge!"

Suddenly the ticket queue did jump
Alarms spiked to great degree
The inbox filed with new requests
Marked with high priority

Sev one! Sev two! And through and through
The vorpal keys went clicky-clack
He resolved them all and to the board
He went galumphing back

"And, has thou solved our high pri bugs?
Does the task list show a dent?
Oh frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
And drinking the team went

On my Amazon.com pager

2010-02-11T00:22:00.001-08:00

(This is an assignment for my creative writing class)

I have a pretty decent collection of gadgetry and electronic devices. I have a couple computers, one with a touch screen. I have a home server that coughs dust out the fan exhaust port but does it's job adequately. I have three laptops, one for work, one for play and one for working while playing or playing while working. My time working on mobile and embedded devices left me a nice collection of phones and music players. When I go to bed, there's nine or ten blinking lights wishing their master good night. I am the master of my devices, with one exception.

Part of writing code for a live site like Amazon is ownership of it, so when a piece of code breaks the developing team has to fix it before someone can’t buy a book and the company misses out on five dollars of revenue. Somewhere a monitor notices something is wrong which triggers something that triggers something else that triggers another thing in the software-Rube-Goldberg machine that is Amazon.com's architecture. At the end of it all, a pager goes off and a developer somewhere rustles out of whatever he or she was doing and gets to work. And since I'm on call this week for my team, that would be my pager.

Pagers seem so 1990s. They are one way communication in an era where we're used to all communication being two-way. Someone (or something) wants my attention and wants me to do stuff. If they called me, we’d have a conversation and I’d be able to explain to them why they’re wrong and why the thing that’s melting down isn’t actually my team’s responsibility so won’t they kindly take care of it. If nothing else, they’d know that there’s a human being somewhere else who’s life was just inconvenienced. Maybe they'd feel guilty about waking someone up at three in the morning. But when it's time to send a page, it's as simple as changing one box on a web page or sending mail to page- at amazon.com. The pager is an interface to me that lets someone (or something) interact with my engineering functionality without dealing with my human flaws. Of course this isn't entirely necessary for the bulk of pages for my team, which are caused by automated monitoring processes. These processes never feel guilty.

I’m on call for my team right now, so my pager occupies a slot on my right hip. It’s a cheap piece of plastic with a battery in it and slides right in to a cheap plastic belt clip. My hands hate being idle, so when I’m standing around, I’ll pop it out of its holster, fidget with it, then snap it back in. I wish there was a trigger guard on it so I could twirl it around like some old west gunfighter. But when I take it out and reholster it, I don’t bother to look at it for new messages. When they come in, I’ll know.

Pagers have many faults, but lack of volume isn’t one of them. I think that’s the one reason Amazon spends money on pagers instead of using people’s cell phones. You can sleep through your cell phone. Maybe it’s on vibrate, maybe the volume is low, maybe it’s the same jingle or song clip that you’ve heard a thousand times before. The sound of your phone ringing is a pleasant, welcoming noise. Somewhere, a friend or family member of significant other wants you and you can look forward to a nice chat about your day and plan something to do in the near future. The ring of a phone is a friendly “Hello.” This pager going off is the electronic equivalent of “OHMYGODOHMYGOD.” It’s not even a normal sounding alert noise. Plenty of devices emit a single-frequency tone that is perfectly neutral. My pager seems to have a little something else to it. There's a little bit of static that comes out of the speaker when it goes off, not totally noticeable but enough to slink its way in to your ear canal and rattle around there. It's almost supernatural really, like the fact that a machine is crying out for your help results possesses your device to actually cry out for help. My pager isn't just a collection of circuits and wires, it's powered by some banshee.

If you’re awake when it goes off, it’ll be a nice shock to your ears and product burst of adrenaline. This is doubly true if you are fast asleep, it’s three in the morning and some automatic monitor thinks one of the servers is down and wants a human to check it out to make sure. Stop and think about it for a second. A machine somewhere suspects that there's a problem, so it deems that the best thing to do is to rouse a human out of bed to go and make sure everything is okay. I don't know what that means about my order in the universe, but I do know that it has bad implications for my willingness to defy machine overlords when the robot uprising is upon us.

On true love, statistics and incorrect applications of the Drake Equation.

2010-01-26T23:36:00.000-08:00

So here’s a link to a paper that has been sent my way a few times over the past few days, either through Twitter, Facebook links, IM or carrier pigeon. Please read it here.

Let’s put aside the obvious questions of “Why are a bunch of people sending Mehal a paper on the mathematical probabilities of love” (answer: I don’t know, ask them) and “Shouldn’t you be doing something more enjoyable right now?” (answer: Insert appropriate yo-mama joke here), and focus on three glaring errors I can readily see in this paper.

Not all variables are independent variables. I suppose this is a problem with the Drake Equation as well as this person’s essay. If we have two events, with probability p1 and p2 of occurring, the probability that they both will occur is p1 * p2 IF AND ONLY IF p1 and p2 are independent. 50% of all Americans are male. 50% of all Americans have Y-Chromosomes. But this does not imply that a randomly selected American has a 25% chance of having both Y-chromosomes and a mantenna array. I don’t know enough about astronomy to whether all the variables in the Drake equation are truly independent but Backus’ statistical analysis of London’s women is fraught with error. For example, depending on what activity Backus is doing, he may find a greater than 26% chance of meeting a college-educated person. Maybe he should consider hitting up trivia night.
Lack of rigor: The author has spent a lot of time explaining some variables (percent of women that have college degrees, percent of college educated women that are attractive) but chooses to completely ignore others (percent of women that find him attractive, percent of women that are single). Bull-honkey. If you’re going to write a statistics-focused paper, take in to account all statistics before coming up with your final number.
Empirical contradiction: If you read Aristotle’s treatises on physics, two things come to mind. First, he’s an eloquent writer whose work bridges a multi-millennial gap and allows the reader to effectively visualize and contemplate his points. Second, he is absolutely 100% wrong about some fairly basic things. Heavy bodies do not fall to the earth faster. An arrow flies in a parabolic trajectory, not a straight line. If you come up with a hypothesis that is refuted by empirical observation, you either discard your hypothesis or find some explanation for why the empirical observations are incorrect. As I write this, there are 3 wedding invitations on my desk (congratulations to you all) and a couple e-Invites, all from people who had high standards for love and have found people who met them. If Backus thinks that my observations are incorrect, Occam’s Razor places the burden of proof on him.

In short, a brief plea to the internet. The next time someone wants to generate a paper on the probabilities of finding true love, at least get it peer reviewed. And remember that love is the most confounding of all variables.

On the sounds of my day.

2010-01-21T23:10:00.000-08:00

Creative Writing Assignment for 1/22/2010: Topic - The Sounds of My Day

This is an assignment for a creative writing class.

I had a professor who once joked about the sound of a room full of programmers. He said that the dominant noise would be the hum of twenty five cpu fans, followed by the continuous clacking and clicking of a few thousand keys and mouse buttons. The monotone would only be broken by the nose of a sliding chair and a harshly whispered "Shit!"

I was thinking that when I walked away from my office desk on Tuesday. When I'm in the office early in the morning or later at night, that's a pretty accurate description. Most people are gone, and the people who are still there are either on a deadline and too busy to chat, or prefer working at those hours specifically for the quiet time and the lack of interruptions. But I actually knew very little about what it sounds like during peak hours. I'll have my headphones on, so my average day is filled with a lot of music. Different music goes well with different engineering tasks. Architecture design requires reflection and focus, so no music with words. Instead, Baroque music with special preference for chorales. Implementation calls for energy and speed. Some prefer techno or trance, I'll listen to prog rock or Jamiroquai depending on the mood. When I hit a bug, dial back the intensity and replace it with something a little jazzier. As I grow more and more frustrated, I'll turn down the volume to focus until I kill it completely and fix it. Then, for cathartic value I'll put on some nice angry metal and write some mail. On more than one occasion, I've accidentally included Queensryche/Dethklok/Zeppelin lyrics in messages.

With all this in mind, I got in my car and headed to the University District to play some Scrabble. Scrabble's a noisy affair when it's with friends. There's friendly (and sometimes unfriendly) arguments over word definitions. Multiplayer matches will have people half-jokingly accusing competitors of forming alliances against other players, a noted problem when two of the players are in some sort of relationship with each other. And of course there's some trash-talk. That's how I'm used to playing, so playing at a Scrabble club for the first time was a big contrast. My first opponent, who threw down on this very blog and is the organizer of the club explained me the rules pretty clearly. "Play your tiles, announce your score, then hit your clock." Talking in almost any way is banned. Announcing your word can give away whether or not you are bluffing, and half the words that are "scrabble-useful" I have no idea how to pronounce anyway.

A Scrabble club is a pretty quiet place. The air rumbles through the ducts at a low drone. A bag of tiles makes a small racket as it's shaken. A couple chairs slide when a challenge is made, and the players walk to the computer that has the word judge. Even if you aren't looking at the adjacent board, you can form a guess as to what's going on. First, some tiles get shuffled. Then, there will be a "clack-clack-clack" as they go on the board, fitting perfectly in the little slots on a deluxe Scrabble board. Then, a number gets announced. Then, if it's a really good play, you'll hear a harshly whispered "Shit!"

On Scrabble with Councilwoman Jean Godden

2010-01-09T16:21:00.001-08:00

So I won a charity auction sponsered by The Stranger and earned the right to throw down with Councilwoman Jean Godden over burgers at Two Bells. Here's what went down.

The match date was sent in December, which meant I had less than a month to prepare. If I had mad video editing skills, I would have made a clip interspersing me doing pullups and hunched over my iPhone playing Scrabble set to "Gonna Fly Now." Sadly, I do not, so I'll have to ask you to use your imagination. I wound up playing about 90 games on my iPhone and 15 in cafes with people I know, just to stay sharp and see if I could gain a deeper understanding of the game than I currently had. I've played a lot, but I'm used to playing the same way and felt like I needed to break out of my habit in order to put up a good fight against someone with about 50 years of experience.

I didn't exactly build up my vocabulary in these games, but I worked a lot on my board shutdown game. Something a lot of players don't realize is that you only have to win a Scrabble game by one point. You get nothing for hundred-point victories beyond bragging rights. So if you have a strategy that will give you a small victory, it is way better than a high-scoring but risky game. It's the equivalent of a football team sticking to their rushing attack at the end of a game. I got good enough to reliably win any match provided that I could take the lead and hold it for two turns. Two turns is enough time to shut down open spots on the board and gobble open triple letter scores. Once you've established a lead and made it very difficult for your opponents to rack up points with Bingos or tile multipliers, you've come very close to winning.

I also starting using a different way to shut down triple word scores. In my talk, I mentioned building unextendible words that stop one tile short of the triple word tile. Another way is to place a C or V in the spot diagonally adjacent to a corner triple word score. There are no two letter words that have C or V, so these spots are closed off to anything other than an S or blank. If you are careful and use a word that has no one letter prefixes or suffixes, you've eliminated the triple word score.

Lastly, I worked on my tile counting. It's impossible to know what your opponent has, but you can alter your strategy on what you think they might have. In the endgame phase, if you think your opponent has a Q, close off all the stray I's. If they have a J, close off the O's. If they have a Z, close off the A's. X's can be played off any vowel, so that's more trouble than it's worth. When it's time to score, you are guaranteed 16-20 net points, plus your opponent never got a chance to play them, giving you a net of 30 points. Knowing that there are no more S's and blanks means you don't have to worry about your words getting pluralized.

I wasn't the only person training. When walking by the councilwoman's car, I noted a printout of the two-letter word list. So I knew that she was coming to play, but I also knew that she didn't have word lists memorized.

I didn't know what to expect from Councilwoman Godden. She's played Scrabble for at least 50 years, has a board in her office and writes about it in her columns every so often. At the same time, one of her aides e-mailed me stating that she is a "living-room player." At the time, I assumed that it was part of a psych-out operation on their part, and vowed not to be fooled by it. Lowering expectations and lulling your opponent in to complacency is a pretty basic trick.

The councilwoman had a booth and warmly greeted me. We ordered burgers and got straight down to business. She had a fancy custom-made board that her staff had given her as a gift that would rotate so you never had to look upside down. I got lucky on the opening draw and got AADIRV?. If I had a better vocabulary, I would have been able to pull an opening game bingo and throw down GRAVIDA for 70-something points. Apparently, GRAVIDA is a pregnant woman. But instead, I put down VARI(E)D for a good start.

The councilwoman hung tough throughout the game, and made some good strategic plays. She put a Q on a triple letter and briefly pulled ahead at one point. Later on, I had exposed a triple word for her and she wasn't able to get it. Rather than deny it to me, she took the riskier path of exposing a second triple, with the intention that I'd grab one and she'd grab the other. Luck was not on her side though. I grabbed one, and when she couldn't grab the other, I took it as well. By the halfway mark of the game, I was in pretty good control of the board. She managed to put the X on a triple letter, but I grabbed the last two triple word scores with IKON and SHIRT. With the high value tiles gone, no room to bingo and no good multipliers left, I wound up winning 320 to 277. Overall, a solid (if ordinary) victory by me in the face of a good effort by the councilwoman.

I didn't pull out the dirtier set of tricks I use, mostly because I didn't want to risk blowing the game over a failed bluff effort. The councilwoman put down FLOR and SUD, but I let those both go. I knew FLOR was a bluff, but it gave me a shot at a triple word score, and SUD was too late in the game to be a concern. I wasn't too certain about the legality of IKON, but figured it was good enough to try. For the most part, good defensive play won the day.

While all this Scrabble-ing was going down, the Councilwoman and I had a great chat over politics and Seattle. After the game, I got to visit her office and talk with her staff. I got to view the parking garage for councilmembers and check out the artwork our sister cities have given to us. Our newly elected mayor Mike McGinn gave his inaugural address which was great fun to listen to.

On the whole, it was a pretty good day and a nice break from what's been a rough week. I've been remiss about charitable contributions this year, so it was nice to be donating to a few worthy causes and get a good experience out of it. Councilwoman (or any staff checking out my blog), I'm always up for a rematch!

On Public New Years Resolutions

2010-01-01T16:09:00.000-08:00

Okay, lets make some resolutions on New Years. They're fun to do :-)

Write more. I have a blog, I have a URL pointing to it and I have stuff to say. I'd like to blog twice a month, but I'll be happy to blog once a month. I'm also taking a creative writing class and resolve to be awesome at it.
Climb challenging stuff. Last year, I resolved to get belay certified and did that. This brings up a new set of possibilities. Learning to lead once I feel supremely comfortable belaying is good. I'd also like to climb a V4 at some point.
Travel. If I can pull off at least one of these trips, I'll be satisfied

Backpack around Southern France, Italy and Spain. Bonus points if I can hit up Carcasonne
Climb the Golden Hinde on Vancouver Island
~~Yemen~~ Way too dangerous
Galapagos Islands
Somewhere in China that's not Shanghai
Iceland...always Iceland
Climb Triple Divide Peak in Glacier National Park

Crazy-tricked-out-touch-screen-voice-activated-pc-project. Details available on request.
Get an app published on the iPhone app store, and a different platform
Memorize all 3 letter words in Scrabble
Go to a foreign country and swear at a foreigner in his native language
30 pullups. I made 20, and think I can go further.
Pitch an idea to a politician
Take a certifiably badass panorama shot
Use the word "irony" correctly.
No more Flintstones Gummy Vitamins. Don't judge me, everyone has their addictions.
Shoot the cascades on a winter dawn
Two-day solo backpacking trip. I had one planned out last year, but cut it short due to the heat and mosquitoes. Will attempt again this year.
Make someone laugh every day. I've actually had this as a goal for about the past 10 years, but I've cheated and included online conversations in the mix. "lol" rarely means "laughing out loud" so that's no longer good enough for this goal.
Put an end to my obsession with numbers that are powers of two.

On Birthday Resolutions

2009-10-29T22:34:00.000-07:00

Most people make New Years resolutions, I make them on my birthday. A few of them are of a personal nature, but here's a few that I'll share with status updates

Memorize every country, it's capital and flag: I feel like this is warm up for some much larger goal like "Buy a flag and wave it on the capital steps of every nation" in the world. But for now, this is a good goal for doing better at trivia night. As of now, if you give me a sheet of paper with 195 lines, I can write down all countries and 85% of their capital cities. Flags, I'm only at 40%. There's a lot of countries with flags that are some combination of red, yellow and blue.
Climb something impressive: Total fail here, and no excuses. I had time to do some scrambling in between jobs, but decided to ride my bike around Seattle instead.
Read History of the World by JM Roberts: A while back I realized that my knowledge of history is deep in some areas, but non-existent in others. For example, I know a lot about Greece, but virtually nothing about Persia other than they tried to invade the Greeks and then go their asses kicked by Alexander. I can talk for hours about the second World War, but know maybe 5 things about pre-European African History (outside of Egypt). So I got this 900 page book that I started when I was in high school with the vow to finish it. Slow progress, I'm on page 100. On the upside, I'm learning a lot about Minoans.
Overcome fear of public speaking: I haven't done this yet. I spoke at Ignite, and it was fun but I was still pretty spooked. I think I'll have to do it more before I can pronounce this done. Hosting trivia has helped me in this aspect, and I can better handle people booing me.
Get some famous dude to sign my book: I got Richard Dawkins to sign my copy of Blind Watchmaker. Accomplished.
Cook a multi-course meal: Haven't done this yet. I have maybe 3 dishes in my repotoire, so I need to know how to make more dishes first.
Quit gaming on my home laptop: This has been tough. I have a tendancy to binge when I get a game. I have to play it front to back, in every permutation before I force myself to uninstall it and throw away the CD, like an alcoholic who pours his stash down the toilet. I am fairly certain that I'll backslide when the next Call of Duty comes out.
Take an extraordinary picture: I am really satisfied with some of my work from Mt. Rainier. Now, if only I could motivate myself to edit it.
Care about local politics: I'm generally a straight-Democratic-ticket voter, but in Seattle that's somewhat redundant. Many local elections are non-partisan. Originally, I had aspired to attending events in person and asking direct questions to candidates. But I'm going to settle for spending about 2 hours looking over positions before sending in my ballot.
Grow a nice goatee: Tried it. Reaffirmed my contention that most guys should not get facial hair. My assessment was confirmed by females, so it has to be right.
20 pullups, 10 finger pullups: The best I got to was 15/8, but I've slacked off on morning workouts. Tomorrow, I'll start again.

On unknown people from Frisco Texas

2009-10-16T14:23:00.000-07:00

If you scroll to the bottom of my blog, you'll see a hit counter/site tracker thing. Lately, some one from Frisco, Texas has been frequenting this blog. I have two questions for this person.
1) Who are you sir/madam? Have we met? If not, I am very honored to meet you through this medium.
2) The site tracker says that you have a linux diplay that is 32000x1024 pixels. That is incredible. Any truth to it?

On Steely Dan

2009-10-13T23:21:00.001-07:00

Just came back from Steely Dan. I hope that when I am as old as Don Fagen, I will still be able to rock out that hard. It's fun to watch artists who have been around for that long show everyone that they still have raw talent and can have fun on stage.

With that, some observations

There were two guys who were signing the concert. It was amazing, and I was watching them for a good chunk of the concert. You have to be pretty good to keep up with the rapid fire lyrics of "Reeling in the Years" (Youreverlastingsummeryoucouldseeitfadingfast. Soyougrabapieceofsomethingthatyouthinkisgonnalast) and it's fun to see how lyrics are interpreted in other cases. Example: "Fine Colombian" from "Hey 19" is motioned by bringing a flat plane up to ones nose. In between lyrics, they would rock out to air guitar/air piano.

Why do people leave the show before the final encore? You paid good money for this show, are you in that much of a hurry and worried about beating the traffic that you have to bounce early?

Trumpet player dude: I am better than you. Or at least I used to be. Well, no not really.

Man, I want to play baritone sax. If I could learn another instrument in addition to trumpet, it would be bari sax. Or take it a couple steps lower, and play the contrabari sax or the tubax. It's got that wonderful raw sound that dirties every soul that hears it

On trivia at the Old Pequliar

2009-09-30T01:14:00.001-07:00

My team and I hosted trivia at the Old Pequliar last night. Here's what we asked

Round 1: Geography
1. From 1971 to 1997, this was the most populous country in the world that started with the letter Z. Now, it is the most populous country that begins with the letter D. What is the current name of this country?
2. The flag of this country is green, with Arabic text on the front. By law, it can never be lowered to half-staff, and created controversy when FIFA put the flag on a soccer ball.
3. Yakuskt, Irkuskt and Kamchakta are all territories in Risk, and parts of what actual country?
4. In the year 2000, the International Hydrographic Organization determined that there were five oceans in the world, instead of four. What is the newest ocean?
5. What is the most visited national park in the United States, with 9 million annual visitors in 2008?
6. What is the least visited national park in the United States, with only 847 visitors?
7. In 1961, the African countries of Tangyanika and Zanzibar merged to form what country?
8. What is the only island in the world that is occupied by three countries? Bonus: Name all 3.
9. In the 2008 Olympics, what island nation won the most gold medals per capita, with one gold medal per 500,000?
10. What is the most populated island in Washington State?

Round 2: Quadrangulation. Given the 4 definitions, name the word
1) A system of measurement, something you put on a ball, an ethnic group, a kind of horn
2) A market, something the pope gives, a night court character and a male
3) A video game company, a location in town, a sail and a boring person
4) An Egyptian God, part of a match, a card game and something a QB shouts
5) A fish, a kind of road, a weapon and a fictional captain
6) A kind of door, a kind of carriage, a geological formation and what the Battle of Endor was.
7) A wrestler, an action movie, something under a famous dome and a song from Quadrophenia
8) A kind of lizard, a part of a roof, something you watch and something that watches you
9) A former NFL quaterback, a character on Battlestar Galactaca, slang for a submarine and someone who is about 50 years old.
10) Slang for money, a fictional drug dealer, a derivative of heroin and a word that makes you smile.

Round 3: 1980s Cartoons
1. From 1980 to 1982, this comic strip cat co-starred with Dingbat, a vampire dog. He would later return in his own show, starting in 1984.
2. This PBS show debuted in 1987, featuring cartoons like Math-Man and Dirk Niblick of the Math Brigade.
3. A gothic girl named Lydia can summon the title character of this 1989 cartoon with a poem that begins “Though I know I should be wary, Still I venture someplace scary, Ghostly haunting I turn loose…”
4. This animated show that ran from 1981 to 1989 is generally credited with saving Hannah Barbera productions from extinction.
5. This series based off a video game chronicles the adventures of the title character, his wife, child and dog “Chomp-Chomp.”
6. In 1985, the National Coalition on Television Violence claimed this show was the most violent show on television, even though none of the party members were Chaotic Evil.
7. Brittney, Jeanette and Eleanor were the female counterparts to the main characters on this show that ran from 1983 to 1990
8. This show follows the exploits of a gymnastics coach, his crime-fighting team. In the opening credits, the title character drives a bus and throws a crocodile helluva far.
9. This cartoon featured hybrid animals named Bumblelion, Moosel, Rhinokey and ran only for a short time in 1985. Though only 13 episodes were produced, they were aired until 1987.
10. Sometimes some clues go slipping through the cracks, but these two gumshoes are picking up the slack.

Movies
1) After The Matrix and V for Vendetta, the Wachowski Brothers proceeded further on their quest to ruin everything with this 2008 anime adaptation
2) A teenage loner pushes his way into the underworld of a high school crime ring to investigate the disappearance of his ex-girlfriend in this 2005 film.
3) Tim Robbins portrays a fairly obvious ripoff of Bill Gates in a film that was internationally known as "Conspiracy.com"
4) Kazaam was not Shaquille O'Neil's only thespian undertaking. In this 1997 film, he plays an crime-fighting armored super-hero
5) This 1995 Morgan Freeman film was voted the eight scariest film of all time by entertainment weekly
6) Brendan Fraser defeats Thomas Hayden Church for the affections of a young lady, despite his general lack of clothing in this 1997 film.
7) Whoopi Goldberg and 8-foot rubber dinosaur team up to solve a murder mystery in this 1995 direct-to-video movie that is every bit as bad as it sounds.
8) When this 1974 disaster movie was released, theaters screened it using "Sensurround Sound." Massive speakers caused plaster to fall off ceilings, dishes to break and in some cases, noses to spontaneously bleed.
9) Samuel L. Jackson has said the phrase "This is some repugnant shit" in three different movies: Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown and this 2000 remake.
10) What actor/actress was in all 9 of these films?

On the Buffalo Bills

2009-09-27T23:37:00.001-07:00

I once dated a girl who asked to come watch Buffalo Bills games with me, an incredibly moving gesture. It is as if she understood what pain I go through on sixteen Sundays a year. She knew that she couldn't alleviate it so she would take the choice to bear the same pain herself. Of course, the more likely explanation is that she didn't know what she was getting in to, but I like to believe my little dream.

To be a Bills fan is to know a deep and profound form of suffering in the world of sports. The Bills win some, and lose some like any team, but the loses are of a particularly cruel nature. Sometimes, things come in the form of blown calls by officials who are part of some league-conspiracy against small market AFC teams. Sometimes, it's a freakish bounce of the ball that lands right in the hands of an opposing DB. Sometimes, it's a simple glance at the schedule and realizing that the Bills have one of the toughest roads to the playoffs in the league.

All this suffering is something I have grown to accept. It wouldn't surprise me if the Bills never win a Super Bowl in my lifetime, and I don't expect them to do so. What I do expect is that the team not be as pessimistic as I am.

Today, the Bills played the New Orleans Saints, one of the most explosive teams in football. For three quarters, the Bills held the saints offense to ten points. Truly a stellar effort, and it should have been all over ESPN were it not for the fact that the offense only put up seven points for the entire game. Some late 4th quarter scoring gave a final score of Saints 27, Bills 7, even though the Bills were in it for most of the contest.

I won't disparage a single player on the Bills. They are all fine athletes worthy of praise. For all the sad talk about the Patriots loss, hanging within one point of one of the best teams in football is nothing to be ashamed about, especially considering how young the offensive line is. I'll even leave TO alone. As much as he runs his mouth, he's a good receiver and can back up a lot of his talk when he's used well.

But when the game was on the line, late in the 4th quarter and the team needed a score, Dick Jauron pulled the offense off the field on 4th and 1. Yes, the Bills were backed up on their side of the field. But they were down by two scores. Jauron needed to get aggressive, or show at least a little faith in your players that they can get a difficult task done. Instead, he punted away the game since he wanted to stick with his conservative philosophy of coaching.

This "prevent offense" mentality has permeated the entire mindset of the organization. The best example is how Edwards has lost confidence in his ability to be a gunslinger, which might be why he checks down so often. It may earn a few first downs, but doesn't put points on the board. It may be a good strategy for beating a weak team like the Bucs, but it won't have a shot against a team like the Saints. In fact, the only offensive points were scored on a fake field goal.

A lot has been said about Dick Jauron's stoicism. Stoicism isn't a bad thing. It's good to have a steady hand at the tiller, and to keep emotions in check when dealing with a complex job. At the end of the 2008 election, Barack Obama received a lot of praise for his ability to "stay cool" under all circumstances. Perhaps Jauron is of the same mindset, and that's fine. But Obama had the ability to transcend his stoicism and inspire people to bold action. Jauron does the opposite.

In an episode of West Wing, a staffer says to the Chief of Staff "It's not the battles we lose that get me, but the ones we don't suit up for!" Jauron doesn't seem willing to try to win the big games for fear that he'll lose.

Jauron won't be coach for much longer, so I won't start a "Fire Jauron" petition or anything. Even if Buffalo makes the playoffs, I would hope that owner Ralph Wilson sees that Jauron's mentality isn't suited for professional football. Wilson has a good chance to change the direction of the team, and maybe give this suffering fan a little hope.

On the passing of Ted Kennedy

2009-08-27T14:49:00.000-07:00

And now, a blog post that doesn't have pictures.

Ted Kennedy died recently, and a lot has been said to eulogize him. I won't get in to an enumerated list, but the man has passed an incredible amount of legislation.

The one accomplishment I do want to talk about is the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. Before this bill was passed, immigration to the United States was restricted to mostly Western-European countries in an effort to preserve the ethnic makeup of the country. These quotas were established to keep out the "undesirable" Europeans, such as Slavs and Italians. People from Asia were completely excluded from moving in. Government was actively participating in keeping America looking the same.

INA1965 repealed these quotas and made it possible for non-Northern-Europeans to become Americans. This was at a time when most people thought races shouldn't mix, that Catholics would make lousy presidents and you could make a good run for president on a platform built on hating the darkies. It was perfectly acceptable to say that America was a WASP nation, and should remain that way.

In a speech he made on the bill, Kennedy makes a curious claim. He says that the bill will not "upset the ethnic mix of the country." This claim is ridiculous. Take away the established quota and remove of the ban on Asians and of course you are going to have way more Asians in the country. Make the rules favor skilled workers, and you're going to have immigrants come in who will are likely to be successful and be big influences on their community.

So what was Kennedy thinking when he said that? There's two possibilities I can think of.
1) Kennedy honestly did not know what he was talking about: I find this unlikely. Every thing he's written, every interview I've seen with him, the man came off as someone who knew what he was talking about.
2) Kennedy knew that the bill was going to change the country's ethnic makeup and decided to lie to people. I find this interesting. We live in a republic, not a democracy. We are supposed to elect our best people and tell them to make decisions. Private citizens can influence the process by lobbying, donations or throwing the bums out when they do stuff they don't like.

--aside--
If you are one of those people crowing about 2nd amendment, using the "bullet box" instead of the ballot box, bringing guns to political rallies or talking about how the right to bear arms is the freedom that guarantees all of our other freedoms, just shut up. Shut up. You are incredibly dumb and a disgrace to sentient life forms.

I've moderated my position on guns over the years; I'm no longer in favor of an outright ban. I think a gun-owning society can be a law-abiding one. And I can even have a reasonable discussion with some people on the legality of assault weapons. But there's a lot of dumb stuff being said by gun nutjobs (distinct from gun owners). When you say "Use the bullet box if the ballot box fails," which has been something said a lot at rallies and on the radio, you are basically saying that the 2nd amendment and popular sovereignty gives you the right to override the democratic process and kill popularly elected officials. My god, that is dumb.

I don't like to rank the importance of rights people have, but I think I state that the right to bear arms is NOT the most important to guarantee a free and democratic society. First, there are plenty of societies that are much more restrictive on gun ownership than ours. Some of them make it downright impossible to open many kinds of guns, but don't have governments that engage in mass oppression. UK and Japan come to mind.

A counterargument is that the UK, for example, is not free. Why not? If the answer is "because they don't allow gun ownership," then the entire argument is tautological. Gun ownership is necessary for a free society because a free society is one that allows gun ownership? Lame. STFU. If the answer is "the UK is not free because they have a big government with all kinds of socialist policy," then I wonder what this has to do with guns. The UK has a big national health care plan. Are we to believe that if the UK had open carry gun laws, they wouldn't have national health care? I'm inclined to think not. But if I'm wrong, and open carry laws prevent large government programs? How could that be? A society that owns guns will prevent their government from getting large? It seems like the implication is that gun nutjobs will engage in violent acts and intimidation to keep this from happening.

Screw that. Gun nutjobs are poorly-endowed cowards who feel afraid of every small piece of change they see, every person who isn't like them and anything they cannot rationalize with their meager brains. Is the national park so dangerous that you need to have pack heat when you go for a hike? Are you so worried about terror attacks at the mall that you walk around with a revolver in your purse?

Michael Westen, a fictional character on Burn Notice once said that "Guns make you stupid." He's right. When someone brings guns to a political rally, they delude themselves in to thinking that the optimal way to solve political problems is with guns. Instead, they come off as a cowardly idiot who feels the need to intimidate the opposition because they don't know how to make a decent argument. So gun nutjobs: Please shut up.

Ok, rant over

Where was I? Oh yeah, Ted Kennedy and the deceptive nature of his speech. I think Kennedy knew that he was misleading people, or at best didn't know and didn't care about how this bill would affect (and effect...ooo obscure meaning) the ethnic makeup of America. He thought he knew better than the ordinary American, and didn't have any trouble engaging in some deception to get this point across. How Machieavellian. I'm a little conflicted on this. Of course, politicians should be honest, or at least lean in that direction.

At the same time, this bill has personal significance for me. Because if that bill never passed, I wouldn't be here. My dad was able to immigrate here because the racial quotas were lifted and the ban overturned, along with millions of other South Asians. I was never on medicare or have been part of a union, but this legislation is directly responsible for my existence. So I feel I owe Kennedy a debt of gratitude. And I am saddened that it took his passing to make me realize this.

Reflections on Shi Shi beach

2009-08-11T00:24:00.001-07:00

Hiking alone is one of my favorite activities, partially because it's an opportunity to let my mind ramble on to no end. So here's what I wrote about hiking Shi Shi. I'll try and give a more detailed writeup about that trip later.

Around five in the morning, I woke up to the sound of a bird singing the same seven note pattern every ten seconds. I lay in my bag and pondered the beauty of this repitition. A few seconds later, I got fairly annoyed and thought about finding a rock so I could regain my solitude. A few seconds later, I realized that I was exceedingly cranky, and a long walk on the beach would do me some good. I loaded up the 300mm, packed the tripod and set off.

At 6AM, the tide had rolled out enough to reveal some tide pools, filled with anemones, starfish and crabs. For a few hours, these creatures have to survive in this hostile environment. The only food they have are their fellow inhabitants, and the natural ethic of not eating your own kind breaks down. I saw a sea star float over a smaller one and arch it's center in what I'm guessing was the beginning of it's breakfast.

Hiking the Olympic Beaches has a number of challenges. For one, you have to be aware of the tides. Two, the ground you walk on is not stable. In some places, it's fine sand that sinks a few inches with each step. In others, it is slippery rock. At one point, it was a giant mass of seaweed that had washed ashore. Third, the beach at low tide has kind of a strange smell to it. It isn't exactly appetizing.

And yet, you are rewarded because there is something so unique every few hundred feet. First, I squeezed through some rocks and hopped over a pool filled with hermit crabs. Then, I walked by a boulder about 8 feet high. The top was exposed and rough, but the bottom was polished to a mirror shine by the tide that had retreated. Reaching the beach required making my way through a pile of seaweed the size of an end zone that had to have been at least a foot deep. My foot was surrounded by surprisingly vibrant greens and purples, and the ground gave off a sea-like salt odor with each step. Inching through the next hole, I saw a beach composed of pebbles. The fog was particularly dense here, with visibility limited to 50 feet. The hole to the next beach was jammed shut by a massive dead tree wedged in it. I wondered how long that tree had been there, and if it would decompose anytime soon. Driftwood can stick around for a while.

Next time, next time, next time. Next time I bring a flash. Next time, I come determined to fill my CF cards and a few rolls of film. Next time, I will come with an appreciation for the small beauty of the beach. Next time, I won't lug this 300mm lens that weighs me down and represents the artistic rut I feel I'm in as a photographer sometimes. Next time, I think as I head back to rejoin my companions.

What makes Shi Shi so unique and beautiful? Is it the tide pools, a property of the rocks underwater and the dramatic flucuation in tide levels? Is it all the life that in each pool, and how the struggle for survival plays out before my eyes? Is it the small beauty in the pattern of a barnacle shell, or the savage power of the waves as it wedges entire logs in the walls of the cliff?

Here's the disturbing part. None of what I described is that unique to Shi Shi. Lots of places have tide pools, sea life and strong waves. The difference, as far as I can tell, is that Shi Shi doesn't have people. The Olympic Beaches are one of the few wild beaches left in the United States, and possibly the world. In a sense, the beauty of Shi Shi comes from the absence of humans. It makes me wonder what's so great about us.

This isn't the first time I've thought this about us. When I first saw the Milky Way galaxy, on a summer trip to Arizona, I was disheartened to hear that the reason I couldn't see it back home was because of light pollution from the cities. It seemed sad that one of the side effects of civilization was eradicating the beauty of the stars. I think the same is true with the beaches. A while back, I wasted some time browsing Live Maps and randomly zooming in on the Pacific Coastline trying to find unoccupied territory. There seemed to be virtually no land that wasn't a road, a public park or someone's house. Before we came in, was the whole Pacific coast like Shi Shi? I'm not advocating retreat from civilization, or that everyone has to give up their beachfront house or that I suddenly realized that human civilization damages the environment. I'm not sure if I'm advocating anything, other than this simple idea: Our world manages perfectly fine without us, and we should remember that we are not masters but recipients of it's hospitality.

My experience speaking at Ignite! Seattle

2009-08-05T00:03:00.000-07:00

Most of you know that I quit Microsoft on the 24th of July, and that I'll start at Amazon on the 10th. What do to in the meanwhile? I've spent some time on Rainier (pictures to come), riding a bike, programming some mobile apps and overcoming my fear of public speaking by talking in front of a large audience.

Ignite Seattle happens every few months. A few hundred geeks pack in to a room and a few speakers get up and give PowerPoint presentations about some geek-interest topic. There are rules about presentations. 20 slides, 15 seconds per slide, no control over transitions. It's a pretty long story on how I got signed up and why I went ahead and did it considering that I break in to a cold sweat when talking in front of more than 3 people. But I figured I'd have some time to prepare a good talk where I would not shame myself and my ancestors.

I am an Scrabble player, and enjoy teaching other people. I am not a conventional player, in that I don't memorize word lists. I rely more on guile and bluffing to win when against a superior opponent and I find this makes for a more interesting game. So I took what I knew about this style of play, combined it with what I knew about playing good defense and made a presentation called "Fighting Dirty in Scrabble."

The Ignite! format is tough to handle. I have a tendency to ramble a lot, and having only 15 seconds to make a point is tough. It's a real challenge to distill knowledge in to that little time span. Additionally, the audience won't be reading slides in great detail. I did my best to have as little text as possible to keep most of the attention on me.

The hardest part (for me) was to be funny. Anyone can make their friends/family/significant other crack up. It's because people's perception of what is funny depends more on the messenger than the content. Scrabble is a fun game, but it isn't easy to make humor come out of it.

I spent about 2 days working on slides, and the day of the presentation going through it about 10 times. By the end, I had the 15 second timing down enough to the point where I could present with my eyes closed and still hit the slide transitions. I had a few silly slides and jokes and figured I could make enough people laugh so they wouldn't be bored. I did a quick dry run in front of Shawn who has spoken at Ignite before and got some advice.

At the theater, I met up with the speakers. It's hard not to feel somewhat outclassed by people who are published authors or have a reputation beyond their immediate circle of friends. It's also strange to see people talking economics, philosophy, community organizing and computer science, while I'm about to go on and talk about how to put tiles on a board. All of them were friendly and encouraging. I managed to relax a little and enjoy the talks that preceded mine before going on.

I have a tendency to get in to bad situations, usually the result of my incompetence. When I get in to one of those situations and feel the urge to panic, I'm usually able to suppress this urge to panic for about 10 minutes while I do whatever it is I have to do. Once 10 minutes are up and the nervousness-inducer is gone, I'm fine. So as I walk up the steps, that's what I do.

If I were to practice again, I'd practice holding a microphone. I gesticulate a lot and having to hold on to a mike silences one of my hands, as well as makes me asymmetric. When I get nervous, I also tend to hold on to whatever is in my hands with a ferocious death grip.

I'm pretty sure I know what I'm talking about in this pose. I'm discussing why it isn't the end of the world when your opponent plays a bingo. My thumbprints are probably still on that microphone. All my hand motions that I was used to doing are a little thrown off, but I'm getting by.

And yes, I know I have big ears. I rent them out to SETI.

I had a few goals for my talk delivery.

Get the audience to crack up at least twice: It's tough to say without the video of the talk, but I think I made this happen. I think one was 3/5s of the way and the second was towards the end. The opening part of my talk was a lot more strategic, and apart from a Street Fighter Shoutout, nothing that was going to have reliable laughs. I was worried that if I couldn't get a laugh every couple slides, people wouldn't enjoy the talk but my concern seems to be invalid.
Deviate, but don't deviate too much: I debated writing my every word and memorizing that before the talk, but decided against that. If I had tried that and slipped up on a couple words, I would have been pretty lost. I managed to stick with my general script just fine and changed up some passages to better suit the audience on the bluffing slides
No "uhs." Apparently I failed at this. I'm going to wait for the video, but it might be as high as 10, meaning one every 30 seconds.
Hit the slide timings. I missed one timing and had to stall for a few seconds, but the rest seemed fine.
Get at least one cute girl I don't know to compliment my talk after it was over. Yup, accomplished.
Come off as friendly and cheerful. Probable fail here. The impression people gave me was that I came off as a friendly guy who would stab you in the back. In retrospect, that is more in line with my speech and I shouldn't have set this goal. In his recap of the night, Anthony Stevens said "All I'm saying is, when you play Mehal in Scrabble, bring a sackof doorknobs. He's that dirty." I guess I got my hair cut too short, because my devil horns are showing.

Most of the feedback I got was pretty positive. I had a few people tell me that they were going to fight back against their friends/family/significant other using what I had taught them. Excellent! The world needs more competition.

I am not hypercompetitive. I don't feel the need to win every competition I enter in, or every board game I play. Despite the first line in my talk, I don't mind losing that much. But I do feel the need to be in the fight and I feel that most people have that attitude. Fighting Dirty is meant to let novice players stay in the game against stronger ones. I hope I got more people interested in matches, and I was pleased to overhear people planning games in the near future over the course of the night.

Ignite! was a great chance to speak and step out of my comfort zone. If you have knoweldge about something random and want to share it, you should give speaking a try. I'm mulling over a few topics for next time.

Why you should put down your phone and go read Moby Dick
5 minutes of Photoshop
Even more dirty tricks in Scrabble

Or maybe I'll go back to the audience for the next one. Who knows...

Pattern Study

2009-03-27T02:14:00.000-07:00

Patterns are an interesting subject to work with, and I thought I might be able to derive some out of pictures I took that wouldn't work as photos on their own.

I like the tesseract-pattern this clip from Qutb Minar displays

This is a building facade in Jaipur

This was a neat door in Jaipur. I blurred the image save for the sideways crosses to give it a little pop.

The annual one-finger salute to the Academy

2009-02-26T23:59:00.000-08:00

Another year, another Oscar ceremony and another year for me to vent annoyance at the Academy (even though for the most part, I agree with their choices).

First, lets start with what was good

The idea of having previous winners introduce each individual nominee was nice, even though it seemed a little self-congratulatory
"A Life In Pictures" was an incredibly moving animated piece, and unlike anything I've seen. It's from Japan, but is a far cry from any anime style. It also outpaces the more CG-heavy shorts with the exception of Presto.
Finally Werner Herzog receives a nomination for something. Encounters at the End of the World is one of my favorite documentaries, and I'd like to see him win something before he retires
A reduced number of presenters kept the show moving at a much smarter pace
On the indie-front, I'm glad that Frozen River and Melissa Leo got some attention for an amazing Oscar performance

And now, a large enumerated list of things I didn't like

This nonsense about "Best Animated Film" needs to stop. For one, it's going to wind up as the "Give Pixar an Oscar" award for most years. Generally speaking, Pixar produces one high-quality product a year. Dreamworks produces one decent animated film a year. And somewhere, another film is squeezed out like toothpaste. In addition, the creation of this category seems to imply that animated films do not deserve to compete with live action films. I don't know if this is paranoia from the Actors Guild concerned about the fact that a trash-collecting robot can induce more emotion than some of it's members, or if it is some snobbery about animation not being "serious work." Either way, it has to stop. WALL-E was a high quality product, but let's also not forget that Waltz With Bashir was a great animated piece that was good enough to compete in the Best Foreign Film category.
Once again, the Best Original Song category is a waste of time. In the entire industry, you could not come up with more than 3 songs? Not to mention that two of them were from the same movie. It's a minor improvement from last year, where Enchanted had three nominations in this category, but not by much.
Too often, the Academy gives the impression that there is a certain kind of film that gets nominated (and wins) and certain kinds that don't. I don't know if that is true, but there's no way in hell Toyland wins best live action short if it wasn't about the Holocaust.
No love for The Fall? I find it difficult to take categories such as Costume Design seriously when rich and creative work like The Fall goes unrecognized while someone gets a nomination for making a bunch of California actors look like they live in San Francisco about 30 years ago.

Finally, I suppose I should make a top ten list for things I saw in 2008. In no particular order, they are

WALL-E
The Fall
Tropa de Elite (Elite Squad: This awesome film about Brazilian Police Commandos)
Encounters at the End of the World
The Dark Knight
Slumdog Millionaire
Gran Torino
Frozen River
Quantum of Solace
Burn After Reading

All in all, I suppose it's a conventional list. Mad props to SIFF, without which I would never have seen The Fall, Elite Squad and Frozen River.

And Academy: I expect results next year. But I'll settle for some more thought put in to the Best Soundtrack award.

More photos from India

2009-02-25T01:46:00.001-08:00

I'm managing to do a little more editing these days.

These are some stone pillars at Qutb Minar, a giant minaret located in Delhi. I liked how all pillars were unique and how they formed an unusual vanishing point. I didn't think I could get detail for all of them, though, so I just focused on the nearest one and shot away. Apart from some darkening on the right hand side, I didn't have to do that much serious manipulation. The stark shadows on the left of the pillar serve to bring out the detail in the front.

I'm pretty happy with this shot and it might get printed in a few days.

The patterns on the wall made for nice tesseract-like shots

And, apropos of nothing, here's a parakeet

2009-02-09T01:23:00.000-08:00

I haven’t blogged about photography in a while, so here goes again. I’m writing this while on vacation in India. We just saw the Taj Mahal today and I shot about 5 gigs worth of photos. Here’s about some adventures I had with one.

Aside: The Taj Mahal is big. I know it sounds silly to say that, since it’s a monument of great renown, but you don’t realize how massive it is until you enter the complex. I could give you it’s height, but that’s just a number. I could compare it with the other buildings in the complex, but they are all puny compared to the Taj. The best way to describe it to those who have never seen it is this.
1. Picture the Taj Mahal in your mind
2. Make it twice as big
3. No, bigger than that.
4. Make the top bulb larger. That thing is huge.

Anyhow, on to the photos—err, photo. When I walked through the entrance gate, I managed to get the entire complex framed by the archway, looking like this.

It was about 7:45 in the morning. The good light had long since gone, and the pollution that is Agra’s second most prominent feature had created plenty of haze to disrupt good shooting. The Taj faces south, so the right side is illuminated. There’s already a bunch of people in front of the Taj, two haircuts sticking in the picture and a crow that need to be edited out. Clone Stamp tool, I chose you!

Some rotating and centering gets us this. I think the framing walls are asymmetrical in the shot, and need to fix that some other time. The left and right side have no interesting detail, so I decided to crop out early on and go for a square image.

Now for the curves layer. Curves layer is where I do most of my work. There are no highlights in the picture. The Taj and the sky are very similar in color, but the outer part of the Taj is different enough from the sky that the curves layer can do some good work. Once I made the contrast, I darkened the sky and did some adjustment layer blurring to get this.

That’s somewhat better. Individual marble slabs are now more visible and the monument pops out from the sky a little bit. The top bulb has a little halo, but that's no big deal.

Sadly, this isn’t good enough. Now, it’s time for the Hue/Saturation layer. I’m too much of a snob to use Hue/Saturation most of the time, except for adjustments of 5%. I get annoyed when I see photos where someone turned the saturation up by 40%. A lot of people seem to think that the more colorful something is, the better it is. A quick glance at a hooker's eye shadow should correct this belief.

So I open up the tool and turn up to 5%. Nope, no effect. 10%? Nothing. 20%? Nothing. I edge the slider in to hooker territory at 50% and still see no effect. Man, the colors are extremely dull. In mild annoyance, I turn it all the way up to 90% and get this.

Well…that was a little unexpected.

Let’s get something straight. I’m a photographer, not a digital artist. If I have to invest a lot of work to "fix" an image that was poorly composed or shot, I’ve failed to create a good photograph. The end product, no matter how realistic-looking is digital artwork, is not a photograph. I’m not implying that digital artwork is inferior, only that it’s not what I do.

Still, I have to admit I kind of like what happened here. Some less-than-perfect work when painting the curves layer now shows up as bright illumination provided by the rising sun on the right side of the dome. Anyone who’s read the Odyssey will appreciate "Dawn showing her rosy fingers" in the background, now that the trace amounts of red in the bottom of the sky are getting expressed. The noise generated makes this seem more like a pointillist painting, with the imperfections akin to dabs of a brush stroke.

Very well, I said to myself and took off my photographer hat.

Since it was a lot of fun ruining the image by adding color, I figured it would be nice to ruin it by removing all color. A lot of beginners convert to black and white by selecting the "Desaturate" option, but I prefer to use the Channel Mixer adjustment layer.

Again, the slopping work with adjustment layer painting proves to be a bit of a blessing in disguise. Now, the top bulb appears to have something of a halo. A lot of the realism has been sucked out of the ex-photo, leaving something I’d expect to see on the front page of the Wall Street Journal.

That’s not bad, but let’s see if we can get something older looking. I revisited the channel mixer layer, then turned down the halo. I then added noise to the background, opened the sharpening tool and turned it up. Way up.

I think this way makes the script on the archway pop a little more, and makes the silhouette have a little more character.

And since I had gone this far, I figured I might as well try some sepia action. First time for everything.

Yeah, also a last time for everything. Sepia images need a lot of contrast, and this photo doesn't have it. It's alright, but interesting detail is lost. The west side of the Taj is getting sucked in to a brownish-yellow noise cloud. Now that I think about it, that’s a pretty good metaphor for the pollution from Agra that’s damaging the Taj also.

Anyhow, I just wanted to share what I’ve been finding on this trip. I may make this set of Taj photos in to a little 4-piece set, though I’m unsure how well these will print. It’s worth a try.

On Giving

2008-12-25T15:57:00.000-08:00

Everyone feels a little more generous around the holidays, and I'm no exception. I think I made some generous trades the last time I played Settlers of Catan which is very out of character. But I'm going to try and do something a little more substantial this coming year if I can convince the gift recipient that I'm willing to make this donation.

I'm a big fan of the TV Show "Sports Night." In one episode, Dan (an anchor) is having a bit of a crisis. He wants to give money to some charitable cause, but there are so many to chose from. He tries to rank charities in terms of importance. Animal welfare is more important than music education but less important than cancer research, etc. Eventually, his partner sets him straight.

Casey: "You're not going to solve everyone's problems. In fact, you're not going to solve anybody's problems. So you know you should do? Anything! As much of it and as often as you can."

I like that sentiment. If everyone gave to only the most important cause in the world, not a single dollar would go towards my public radio station, the animal shelter down the street or maintaining the local park. Sure, the dollar that I'm donating to these causes would generate more good trying to cure disease, but you shouldn't think of opportunity cost here. The point is, are you doing some good? Are you making someone's day just a little bit better? With that in mind, I'm calling on the University of Pennsylvania engineering school to accept my donation. Here it is.

I, Mehal Shah, would like to donate sufficient funds to the School of Engineering at The University of Pennsylvania to provide all bathroom stalls with double-ply toilet paper in order to operate for one full year. I would like to know how much toilet paper the engineering school uses and pay for the upgrade to the double-ply. I feel this donation will, in some small way, improve the lives of every SEAS student through their studies.

Trivia

2008-09-17T11:39:00.001-07:00

So my team wrote trivia for OP yesterday. Here's the questions. You can e-mail me for the answers or leave them in the comments.

Round 1: Geography
1. In what country will you find Gangkhar Puensum, the world’s highest unclimbed mountain?
2. Only one state has a king on the back of its state quarter. Which state is it?
3. What country produces almost 25% of the world’s banana crop but barely exports any of them?
4. There are two recognized flags that are non-rectangular. One belongs to a country in Asia. The other belongs to a US State. Name them both.
5. When Herodotus composed his list of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, he placed two in what is now Greece, two in Turkey and two in Egypt. In what modern country will you find the site of the last one?
6. The National Three Peaks Challenge is an endurance test that requires participants to climb Ben Nevis, Scafel Pike and Snowdon in one day. On what island are these peaks located?
7. What is the most populous country in the world that has an official monarch?
8. The only penguins in the Northern Hemisphere can be found on what Island Group that is also famous for tortoises and finches?
9. In “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” Slartibartfast takes great pride in designing these natural formations which can be found all along the coasts of Norway or the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska.
10. What is the highest mountain in Washington that is not a volcano?

2008-09-17T11:38:00.002-07:00

Round 2: Sports and Games
1. Pierre de Coubertin invented this sport for the 1912 Olympics to simulate the skills needed by a cavalry officer trapped behind enemy lines.

2. Klaus Teuber invented this board game in 1995, which gave us the wonderful phrase “I have wood for your sheep.”

3. A Salchow, Toe Loop, Flip and Lutz are all jumps featured in what sport?

4. Two NFL players have kicked 63 yard field goals. Name both for a half point each.
5. Alphabetically speaking, what’s the first word in the official Tournament Word List for Scrabble?

6. Penhold, Shakehand and Seemiller are grips that are talked about in the context of what sport?

7. A chapter in Freakonomics is devoted to match fixing between Juryo and Rikishi participants of this sport.

8. If you are a cruciverbalist, what are you spending your time doing?

9. What is the largest United States city by population that does not have an NFL, NHL, NBA or MLB team?

10. Who holds the record for most appearances on the Wheaties box, with 18?

2008-09-17T11:38:00.001-07:00

Round 3: Biology

1. About 25% of all species on earth belong to what biological order that the ancient Egyptians considered sacred? (Either the scientific or common name will be fine).
2. Which of the following fruits is a berry according to the scientific definition: Gooseberry, Cranberry, Blackberry, Strawberry?
3. An argument in 1951 between two men in an Irish Pub over European game birds gave rise to what famous book?
4. According to a recently passed Washington law, it is now illegal to come within 100 yards of what animal?
5. Two species of primates are native to Europe. Name them both.
6. Anthropopedies Ameriborealis is the official scientific name for what somewhat mythical creature?
7. Earl, Fran, Robbie, Charlene and Baby were the main characters in what biologically inaccurate sitcom?
8. If you have a heavy burden, you may have tied what bird around your neck?
9. Mastodon skulls are believed to be the inspiration for what creatures from Greek mythology?
10. What is the largest animal ever to live on earth? (IE, including extinct species).

Tiebreaker: In miles per hour, what is the average air speed of an unladen European Barn Swallow?

2008-09-17T11:37:00.002-07:00

Round 6: Acting Work – Name the character that all three actors have portrayed. Example, Mark Hamill, Jack Nicholson, Heath Ledger = The Joker

1. Aran Thomas, Anthony Hopkins, Brian Cox
2. John Cleese, Bruno Ganz, Alec Guiness
3. Mel Gibson, Ethan Hawke, Richard Burton
4. Cary Elwes, Kevin Costner, Sean Connery
5. Jason Widener, Emilio Estevez, Martin Sheen
6. George Burns, Morgan Freeman, Groucho Marx
7. Ciaran Hinds (pronounced Ki-ar-an), Karl Urban, Rex Harrison
8. Joan Woodbury, Jill St. John, Brooke Shields
9. Graham Chapman, Clive Owen, Tim Curry
10. Michael Caine, Kelsey Grammar, Patrick Stewart

2008-09-17T11:37:00.001-07:00

Round 7: Movies

1. This 1982 biopic holds the record for most extras in a movie scene, with approximately 300,000 people appearing in the opening funeral scene.

2. This 2001 film about a little girl who loses her name is the highest grossing film in Japanese history

3. Marlon Brando had several scenes in this 1980 sequel, but they were all cut when he sued for a percentage of the profits from the first film. His lines were reused 26 years later when this series was remade.

4. Bill Murray was slated to be in this 1995 animated film but lost the producer’s phone number, forcing the makers to go to Tim Allen. Bill Murray deeply regrets this mistake.

5. Christina Ricci and Doug E. Doug team up to solve a kidnapping in this 1997 piece of crap Disney remake.

6. Randy Newman was nominated for 15 Academy awards and lost every single time until 2001 when he was nominated for this film.

7. James Caan, Michael Caine, Sean Connery, Robert Redford and a whole lot of other famous people take part in the ill-fated Operation Market Garden in this 1977 film.

8. Chef Thomas Keller was called in to create a modified version of the title dish of this 2007 movie, because the original dish looks fairly disgusting.

9. Renowned Sci-Fi author Leigh Bracket wrote the script for this 1980 sci-fi epic. Sadly, she died before it was released. This movie is now the top-rated science fiction movie on IMDB.

10. What actor or actress is common to all 9 of these movies?

SIFF Reviews

2008-06-17T13:35:00.000-07:00

Over the next few days, I will post some reviews of films I saw at SIFF

Black and white is fun

2008-03-23T23:57:00.003-07:00

Black and white is fun, originally uploaded by darth_mehal.

Droopy flower

2008-03-23T23:57:00.001-07:00

Droopy flower, originally uploaded by darth_mehal.

The annual one-finger salute to the Academy

2008-02-26T08:18:00.000-08:00

Some of you may say that it's too late to gripe to the Academy, after the awards. Well, you're wrong.

First, let me say that it was a good year for movies. I was happy with all five of the nominees for best picture, and although I was sad that Atonement got no love for anything beyond it's amazing soundtrack, it was understandable.

But, there were a number of faults committed this year that earn you a binary 4 (00100, represent it on your hand if you don't get it).

Did everybody forget to see Sidney Lumet's masterful Before the Devil Knows You're Dead? One of the best movies of the year, yet not a single nomination? Bah humbug
Ditch the best song category...or at least don't nominate the same movie 3 times for it. Alternatively, Madonna had a nice performance where she did a medly of all the nominated songs a few years ago. Do something like that.
With all that time that you have now have, use it to feature "Best Soundtrack." One year, Yo Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman did a nice duet/medly/thing and it would be nice to see it again.
Documentaries need to get a little more love, especially ones like Ghosts of Citie d'Solei which was one of the best movies of SIFF
No nomination for Superbad for best original screenplay? I admit, it was nice to give the award to Diablo Cody for her first effort but Superbad's dialogue tops all the hipster talk that was Juno's defining feature.
Get rid of the best animated film category. Movies like Ratatouille are good enough to compete with live action fair. The fact that there is a separate category for animated films creates 0the impression that animated films are somehow inferior to live action ones.

Butchart Gardens

2007-12-29T13:07:00.001-08:00

Butchart Gardens, originally uploaded by darth_mehal.

Winds at the top

2007-12-29T13:06:00.001-08:00

Winds at the top, originally uploaded by darth_mehal.

Butchart Gardens

2007-12-29T13:05:00.001-08:00

Butchart Gardens, originally uploaded by darth_mehal.

Butchart Gardens

2007-12-29T13:04:00.001-08:00

Butchart Gardens, originally uploaded by darth_mehal.

Why I'm in a good mood right now

2007-02-23T20:30:00.001-08:00

The annual one-finger salute to the Academy

2007-01-25T16:03:00.000-08:00

Dear Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences,

I know I said I'd take a break from blogging for a while, but the latest crop of nominees forces me to make one quick post.

First, I'm glad to hear that Mark Wahlberg was recognized for his inspiring performance in The Departed, which was one of my favorite movies this year (in a year filled with many spectacular releases). When you have a cast that includes stars like Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio, and Jack Nicholson is playing a supporting role, it takes a lot of effort (and profane language) to stand out.

I'm also glad that Dreamgirls was kept out of the Best Picture category, making room for something else. I'm not sure why it was decided that it was "The Film to Beat" this year but thankfully it no longer holds that title.

However, there are a number of areas where greatness was not recognized, earning you a vicious bird-flipping. In no particular order:

Why the total snub of The Fountain? I can understand that not everyone understood the movie, and it had pacing issues. But it is undeniable that Fountain had some of the most creative usage of special effects this year. Much of it has to do with the extensive usage of macro shooting. For those who don't know, macro refers to very very close-up photography. Instead of spending a lot of money to get a nice looking CGI giant squid a la Pirates (which was nominated), only $140,000 was spent to produce very creative imagry which is encouraging to smaller film companies with ambitious goals, especially those looking to make action/sci-fi films.
Why was Science of Sleep overlooked? It had one of the most moving and sad stories of the year and deserves some recognition for creative waking-dream sequences.
I don't understand why The Queen was so good.
Come to think of it, lets take out the best picture/best director nominations for The Queen and replace them with nominations for Children of Men and Alfonso Curanon. The 12-minute single-shot sequence towards the end completely sold me on that movie and I believe its the best thing I have seen all year.
Finally, and this is hardly the Academy's fault, I'm sorry that Conversations with Other Women did not receieve as much attention as it should have. Its small on plot and style, but makes up for it with two excellent acting performances and a soundtrack that fits perfectly. This movie deserved a better promotion effort.

Comfrotably Numb

2007-01-08T09:50:00.000-08:00

Greetings,

I'm going to be taking a hiatus from infrequent blogging. There's a number of reasons, but it all comes down to the fact that I need to reorder a fair amount of things in my life. So that'll mean not too many pictures will be posted over the next few months. In the meanwhile, I leave you with this.

Cutest shot of the year

2006-12-17T23:56:00.000-08:00

This meadow ain't big enough for the two of us

I hope you like El Capitan

2006-12-07T18:16:00.000-08:00

So I finally finished editing Yosemite pictures. Here's some of the better ones. I'll add commentary later, but for now, just pictures.

I really wish I could do something about the overexposed grass in the center...

Grasshopper Pass photos

2006-11-19T18:41:00.000-08:00

Some more pictures from Grasshopper pass.

I'd like to thank Shawn Murphy for driving, my polarizer for being useful and my jacket for keeping me from freezing to death.

Some golden larch trees:

Larch from the underside (my favorite)

View from the last death-defying ridge traverse, where we chilled out until sunset (see next post)

Who turned off the heat?

2006-11-01T16:08:00.000-08:00

Sunset over Mt. Ballard.

The title of this picture comes from Shawn's remark as the sun dipped below the mountain and we were abruptly greated by wind and what felt like below-freezing temperatures.

Ruby Beach Sunset

2006-09-06T01:09:00.000-07:00

So to pick off from last time, sunset is approaching and we've just finished the rain forest. Dinner or photography?

Kenny leans towards dinner. After all, the next day is Shi Shi beach, which is going to be the tougher of the three days that we're on the peninsula. Plus, the weather isn't looking so great as we drive out of the rain forest.

I'm not so certain. Part of it is me not willing to risk missing good shoots. Part of it is the fact that I've just eaten like 4 handfuls of salty peanuts and don't need any food for a while. I say that we press on and head for Ruby beach for some shooting.

William is a complete wuss and refuses to commit one way or another. But as we approach 101, some sunlight appears off to the West, the direction of the beaches. We bid farewell to the chance at a good dinner and head off for the beach.

I've covered much of this subject in a previous post about the Olympic beaches but I'll rehash. The beaches are an amazing and challenging scene to shoot during sunset. First, there's the light. You are shooting directly into the light, or perpendicular to it depending on the time of year. On one hand, this means you get a great variety of colors as you'll see in the pictures on this post. On the other hand, shooting into the sun usually doesn't work out well. You'll wind up with the sunlight overexposed and details in many other things completely blacked out. There's about 20 minutes of perfect light.

Next is the changing scenery. With sunset comes rising tide. The beaches can be pretty dangerous at rising tide if you get caught in the wrong spot and get cut off. There was no danger of this during our shoot, but its something to keep in mind during an extended beach hike. The hard part is how the waves sneak up on you and wreck your scene.

Third is the sand. Sand gets freaking everywhere. Sand and camera gear do not like each other. Well, the camera gear doesn't like the sane. I'm sure the sand is quite ambivalent about the relationship.

Fourth is the clouds. Cloud formations are a joy during sunset if you can predict what colors they will turn, or if you can use them in your composition nicely. This time though, there was a contrail in the sky. This contrail ruined a bunch of scenes and I would just like to use my blog to tell the pilot that I'm none too pleased with him or her.

Without further ado, lets start talking about some pictures.

From the parking lot, its about a 5 minute walk to the beach. There was still a lot of light at the time, too much to shoot west. Ideally, I would have spent time spotting future scenes or clearing out space on my flash card. Instead, I went after a few scenes.

The neatest part of this shot to me is the rock in the foreground that looks like its looking out to the ocean. Note that the sky is still fairly normal, but there's a hint of color in the clouds.

This tree interested me for many reasons. First, it was one of the few trees that were on the beach itself, instead of the bluffs. Second, it was dead yet still standing. The tree had almost an artificial quality to it. Third, I had just finished reading Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons. One of the things in book is a bio-mechanical god named The Shrike, who impales his victims on the Shrike Tree. This tree reminded me of it for some reason. This tree was lit by the softer light, which meant that it was easier to capture the bleached color of the tree without totally losing shadow detail.

Now we're starting to have some fun. Shooting directly into this much light results in a silhouette effect, which really works in a scene like this. However, the light show hasn't really begun. What we are left with is a good silhouette against something of a subdued scene, which doesn't really have that much appeal.

This scene took a little bit of weird positioning to find. What I was looking for was a spot where the sun exactly reflected on the water of a streamlet entering the pacific, so that it would have a golden sort of appearance. I was a little too late to get the sun fully stretched to the width of the river, but at this time, the light was a little dimmer. The sun still lines up with the streamlet nicely. The sun is overexposed on the water of course, but the sparkling effect works nicely. However, I don't believe this would actually print well.

This is a good example of two things I mentioned earlier. First, contrails suck. There was one at the top that I had to work around which prevented me from using more of the horizon, which is why this picture appears a little crooked. Grr. Second, this is a good example of perpendicular soft light doing its magic. The bluffs take on a much more saturated effect, especially the red tones. Even the trees are a little reddish, but not so much as to look unworldly. There is some reflection off the rocks in the foreground as well which I couldn't really control. I was also quite fascinated with the way the damp sand reflects the scene partially.

Ah, mr. telephoto lens. Its always fun to find a use for you in landscape scenery. In this case, it was pointing directly at the setting sun and getting some beams. The effect is somewhat exaggerated in Photoshop, but not that much. This is another print that looks nice on your screen, but probably not in a print. Also, I wish I had more time to plan this scene out but the sun was moving quite quickly at this point.

The sun has pretty much gone beyond the horizon at this point. Its now the best time to shoot West. The rocks are silhouetted, no way around that. But that stupid contrail...grrr....

I spent a lot of time trying to see how to fit that sea stack in the shot. As time went on, I ran out of memory and had to start deleting images. A most painful process and also a waste of good light. With the tide lapping my ankles, the light fading away, I cleared a good swath of memory and took one last scene.

Note that the contrail has gone. Good. Now we can get to work.

Those who like the Rule of Thirds will be happy here. For those who don't know what it is, when composing a photo its a good idea to put the subject you are focusing on at 1/3 1/3 intersections. Imagine a 3 by 3 grid being laid over your scene. The horizon should go on one of the horizontal lines. The strong point of your subject belongs at the intersection of the lines. Look at pictures of people and note where their eyes are. Good photographers will often reflexively compose their pictures this way. Its not to say that all good pictures have to be this way, its just a good heuristic.

So the sea stack goes in the lower right intersection. The horizon here isn't exactly clear. The clouds and ocean actually blend toghether. No matter, they will go a little shy of the 1/3 horizon. We are left with a nice divide between the sky and the sea.

The sea is receding from a wave, which means that the seafoam leaves a streaky sort of effect with a relatively long exposure like this shot. There's no way I'm going to freeze the wave in motion, so might as well make the motion work for me. Its an effect that I only realized after I looked at these pictures, and one that I intend to take full advantage of when I shoot at the beach next time. Small parts of it reflect the sky.

As for the sky, there's a number of things I like of it. Part of it is the color, of course. I'm a fan of red fading into deep blue for some reason. I guess its because I really like the color blue or something. Part of it is the clouds as well. None of them are super-nicely lit up but that's ok. They match the peaceful mood of the scene. The magenta spot on the far right kind of bothers me, because it hints at a gorgeous scene blocked by the sea stack. However, the sea stack can't be cropped in half without ruining the image

But what I like the best is the vanishing point that the waves and sky hint. Look at where the waves seem to emenate from. Now look at the clouds. They kind of match. Whats more, the vanishing point is about 4" to the left. I'm not sure why, but that really appeals to me.

Anyhow, enough braggery. Next time, it'll be the story of our shoot on Shi Shi beach.

Finally! Memorial Day pictures!

2006-08-17T14:54:00.000-07:00

Well, you thought they'd never be coming? You were almost right.

Over the next week, this blog will be jam packed with pictures from Memorial Day hiking with William and Kenny. So, without further ado, I present our drive to, and hike in, The Hoh Rain Forest.

Kenny and William arrived Thursday night. We got about 5.5 hours of sleep before we had to wake up to catch the ferry across the sound.

There's Kenny. It was a pretty cold morning.

Once across the sound, we paid a visit to Pat O'Hara. This guy is freaking good. He's one of the best landscape photographers in all of the Northwest and it was very interesting to hear some of his tales as well as get some helpful hints about shooting in the Olympics and Northwest.

After that, it was off to the ranger station for camping permits. We had a feeling the weather wouldn't be good for camping that day so decided to abort Shi Shi for that day and go there the next. We had a pretty mediocre lunch at this crab house and saw what may have been the freakiest woman ever who's picture I will not post due to privacy concerns. Lets just say that if you're going to dye your hair red, dye ALL of it.

Then, it was drive straight for the rain forest. The drive takes you past Lake Crescent, where we stopped for a little shooting.

The light wasn't good for anything in color, but the low-lying clouds and dappled light made for some interesting compositions in black and white. This might be a 2x1 print.

Then it was straight for the rain forest. The Hoh Rain Forest is one of the few temperate rain forests in the world and has many scenes that you won't find in many other places. We opted to go on a .6 mile trail but spent about 2 hours on it.

Here's Kenny photographing a fallen-over tree. The roots structure will often get covered in moss and form a 10-15 foot high wall. Its interesting how stuff grows on everything in the rain forest.

There's a numer of challenges that shooting in a dense rain forest present. One of them is the rain. Luckily, it was a light drizzle and the forest canopy provided enough cover to keep our gear relatively dry.

The second is the light. Having any sky in a shot guarantees that it will be washed out. This isn't a problem for some people, but I absolutely hate it. Also, you don't have the option to wait for low-contrast light around sunrise/sunset because the forest will be far too dark. As a result, you have a problem where bright areas distract the viewer from your subjct.

Case in point: The bright spot in the top-left corner really weakens this picture.

The third is the sheer multitude of shots you can take. The best part of shooting digital is the massive amount of memory you have. But the number of pictures you can store does not come close to the number of interesting scenes in a place like Hoh. Consider this log.

I thought it was a fairly interesting log and spent some time examining it. But soon enough, I become more interested in the miniature forest on the log.

Even this doesn't solve the problem. Whats more interesting here, the foreground or the background? Horizontal frame or vertical? I spent a lot of time puzzling over this. As I grow more experienced, maybe I'll make better decisions about this.

Kenny, stop taking pictures of yourself.

Here's me puzzling over a tree. Is there any way I could shoot this? Probably not. But Kenny took a nice picture of me thinking about this.

William spent a lot of time checking out this tree.

Here's a banana slug.

I saw Kenny taking pictures of leaf patterns. I followed suit and came up with two that I'm pretty happy with.

I really like how the overlappings create leaves-within-leaves.

Anyhow, we finished up the rain forest and started debating between going to the beach and getting some dinner. That'll be the next post.

Planning next year's hikes

2006-08-07T18:52:00.000-07:00

Beargrass and Bee

2006-07-19T23:09:00.000-07:00

From Mystic Lake in Mt. Rainier

Crossword Puzzles

2006-07-10T22:02:00.000-07:00

I've made two puzzles for you all to gnaw on. Print them out and enjoy. E-mail me for hints/feedback.

Puzzle 1 (Easy)
Puzzle 2 (Hard)

Click the "Download Large Size" icon and print it. And use pen. Pencil is for lightweights.

Point Reyes

2006-06-26T16:37:00.000-07:00

The Olympic photos are taking a little longer to edit, largely because of me not being home at all since vacation. But I did visit San Francisco and get some good shooting in Point Reyes.

A couple views from the end point of Tomales Bluffs

Immature Brown Pelicans

Brown Pelicans

Cormorants?

Red-winged Blackbird (Possibly print-worthy)

Put your best foot forward...

2006-06-07T17:34:00.000-07:00

...Or in this case, your best shot. Cynthia demanded pictures in a more timely manner, and since there is no greater pleasure in my life than making Cynthia happy, I shall do so. A warning to the small but loyal readership, the blog will be getting a little picture-heavy over the next few weeks. My apologies to those who are uninterested.

Since this shot was probably the best one I took over the trip, I figure it will merit a nice long story. Those who don't like my storytelling, use the scroll bar.

After a good shoot in the rain forest (details which will come in a future post), William, Kenny and I headed back on the rain forest road. It was about 6:30. Kenny wanted to head back to Forks and grab some dinner and extra rest for the next day, which involved a hike to Shi Shi beach. I wanted to shoot for sunset at Ruby beach. We wouldn't be back at Forks until 10:00, eliminating dinner, but I was willing to live with it. I didn't expect a great shoot though. The sky was completely overcast and it had been raining off/on the whole day. Still, I wanted to give it a go. William was a complete wuss and refused to make a decision.

As we drove onward though, to the intersection of High way 101 and the current road, where we would have to chose between food and photography, we saw a small amount of light off to the West. At this point, I became quite enthusiastic about our chances for a good sunset and managed to convince the party to go along. As we drove along, the break in the clouds would wax and wane until we were within ten miles of the beach when it started to open up significantly. We made it to beach in good time, with plenty of time to shoot in the good light. However, the tide was rising which created some issues that I will mention later.

Looking up and down the beach was a great sensation. To the south, there was dense low cloud cover. To the north, dense low cloud cover. But to the West, there was the sun, miles of sky with a few interesting cloud formations and some of the best shooting light I have seen in some time. I set out from William and Kenny and headed down the beach.

There were a number of minor obstacles on this shoot. I was low on memory, with maybe about 2 gigs left. Normally thats more than enough but when you consider that I was heavily bracketing all scenes and shooting RAW+JPEG, it goes quicker than you expect. I spent some time actually deleting photos while shooting. The beach was a little more crowded than I would have liked. There were a couple photographers who got in my shots which was annoying. There was also a big ugly contrail to the northwest. I detest contrails. I can't edit them out and they usually ruin a nice cloudscape. For much of the shoot, I didn't point my camera West.

But the main obstacle was the rising tide. Anyone hiking the Olympic beaches needs to have a tide chart, or at least know that they are getting into when they head down. High tide and low tide are about ten feet apart, which means that if you hike down a beach to an outcrop during a rising tide, there may be no beach on your way back. Many hikers have been trapped and killed in this fashion. I wasn't in danger of dying, but I was in danger of having to make a nasty rock traverse if I stayed too long in an exposed location. It also meant that sand formations I wanted to shoot were short-lived. I'd get in a good position for a miniature stream and delta, only to see a wave wipe my scene clean. Or, I'd be marvelling a scene only to realize that a large wave has just come up to my ankles and I need to move inland.

All told, I shot maybe 10 different scenes which I will post later. I think 3 of them may become prints which is a pretty good haul and is almost enough to justify the entire trip. I also had a nice chat with a few other photographers/hikers on the scene (some of whom had no idea about the tides). As time went on, the light started to improve. The contrail had gone and the sun was below the horizon to the point where I could shoot to the west with no fear of overexposing anything in my image. I was out of memory at this point, deleting bad images as was taking what I hoped were good new ones so I became more conservative. One of the last shots I took was this one.

There's a lot of things that combine to make this shot work especially well. The most obvious factor is the light. Its low contrast so I can get all detail in the sky in nicely. I can get some silhouetting on the rocks but not a full effect which isn't a bad thing. There is a nice open area of clouds and I cropped out one on the top that was not helping the image that much. The color is very cool which accurately reflects the scene, and it is not oversaturated like many sunset shots can be. But what works the best in my mind is the water. I like how it breaks against the submerged rock in the lower-left foreground for a swirling effect. Since it was dark, I had a half-second exposure which is enough to nicely capture the motion of the waves.

There's a number of things I learned from this that I'm going to put into effect when I go back. The most important one was how to use the waves. Any shot greater than 1/500 will have some motion blur, so it makes sense to use it. I had other shots of this scene with better clouds but none had the water motion at the bottom, which is why this one wins. In the future, rather than relying on luck, I plan to get the water to look the way I want it to on camera.

Anyhow, thats a long explanation on how this photograph came to be. I hope you like it. Feedback (and title suggestions) are appreciated.

What I did Memorial Day Weekend

2006-05-29T23:54:00.000-07:00

A roomy 2-person tent to myself, a nice pad, a good book and shelter from the rain. Eat your heart out Sheraton.

Posts from Olympic National Park will be up later this week. Check back!

Mehal's secret recipe

2006-05-01T01:08:00.000-07:00

Take 1 rainy day.

Add 1 good shelter from the rain in the woods

Combine 1 Jalapeno bagel with garden vegetable cream cheese

Top with 1 amazing Vernor Vinge book.

Relax and enjoy.

Places to hike

2006-04-05T13:51:00.000-07:00

Hikes I'd like to do this summer:

Sahale Glacier (North Cascades)
Thornton Lakes (North Cascades)
Ptarmagin Ridge (Mt. Baker)
That lake that has a really nice view of Mt. Shuskan (Mt. Baker)
Alpine Lakes (Mt. Baker)
Mt. Si at Night (I-90)
Mt. Jupiter (Olympics)
Blue Glacier (Olympics)
High Divide (Olympics)
Deer Park (Olympics)
20 mile beach hike (Olympics)
Enchanted Valley (Olympics)
Muir Snowfields (Mt. Rainier)

Lets see how many of them I get to.

Hurricane Ridge

2006-03-15T12:27:00.000-08:00

Note: Hit refresh a couple times if this post is messed-up looking. Stupid blogger.

Last Saturday, I made it out to Hurricane Ridge with some co-workers for some snowshoeing. I haven't documented a snowshoeing trip yet, so here goes another long blog post

Our location was Hurricane Ridge in Olympic National Park. I've been there 3 times before, but never when the place was covered in about 7 feet of snow. So, off we go.

I dropped back from the main group pretty quickly in order to take some pictures. Although we were in the harsh midday light, we were also at cloud level which meant that visibility would range from several miles at some points to 100 feet at others. The sunlight was diffused nicely for much of the hike.

Here, the sky opened up nicely to the North.

Hmm...which way to go

These birds (Swallows) are quite unafraid of humans. One would up landing on my head later on in the hike, and another sat on my snowshoe. This proves that my telephoto lens repells wildlife, because when I bring it, I get few things but when I leave it in the car I am an animal magnet.

We hauled up Hurricane Hill, which was tough for me because this was the one icey patch of the hike. At the top, we met a few people.

Visibility at this point was under 100 feet, so I spent some time trying to capture snow-covered trees. Some made for interesting compositions.

And now the group shot. I don't know why but I have a strong tendancy to fall over when running into a group shot and wearing snowshoes. I think its the whole turning around business.

Of course the sky then opened a little for our actual shot. From the left: Siew Moi, Paul, Jim, Me

On the way back down, I stopped and took a few more pictures. Clouds were starting to lift a little for some better lighting.

A little while later, I found the perfect spot and sat down for about 20 minutes for some good shooting.

This was a terrific spot to be. The sky was clear right above me but the valleys to both ends had clouds rolling in and out. Every so often, a strong gust of wind would try and rob me of my hat. I noticed mist moving away from me and realized that it wasn't mist, but loose snow blown off the ridge drifting south towards the heart of the Olympics.

I think this is the best one of the lot. Might be a 18x28

I'll post this one later in black and white.

Flowers on Mt. Rainier

2006-02-28T09:28:00.000-08:00

Some experimentation on a shot from 6 months ago.

In Sepia (not so great)

Selective BW

Rainier Sunset

2006-02-22T10:33:00.000-08:00

Again, sloppy foreground but still has potential.

Another photo

2006-02-08T20:53:00.000-08:00

Photo I'm doing a little more work on. The foreground is sloppy but I like the composition

Why people are nuts

2006-02-04T22:12:00.000-08:00

Back in high school, my history teacher named Mr. Miller was giving a lecture about mass executions in World War II. Mr. Miller's one of the smartest people I know, so it stuck with me when he said "As long as I live, I'll never understand why people would want to murder a child simply because of who his or her parents are." And I realized something. I'm a pretty smart guy, and there's many things I didn't understand then, and still don't. But when Mr. Miller said that, I knew that there were some points of view I could never possibly agree with or even sympathize with no matter how compassionate I tried to be. Back then, I couldn't name it. But now, I think I can.

I, Mehal, have no capability to understand why anyone would want to burn a building, threaten somebody's life or engage in any act of violene over a cartoon.

I mean, its a cartoon. Its a semi-comical drawing (albiet not that funny) about Muhammed, and I know you guys don't draw him. But these cartoons are meant to crack wise. And its meant to perhaps irritate people and offend people. And all those people holding "death to the Danes" signs fell right into it, spectacularly. At some point, didn't any of them step back and think "hey...the cartoon was meant to portray Muslim fanatics as idiots...and I'm acting like a total idiot..." and, you know, go home? Its beyond me completely.

Alright, show yourself!

2006-02-02T14:03:00.000-08:00

In the past few weeks, I've noticed a large number of hits from the Center for Clean Air Policy. Who's watching me?! I demand to know why!

The annual 1-finger salute to the Academy

2006-01-31T16:50:00.000-08:00

Dear Academy,

I have not seen very many of the movies you have chosen to nominate for awards this year. However, this year, the fault is largely mine. I have had many weekends to go and see Brokeback Mountain and Capote and missed out on a good opportunity to see Crash. So you sinned last year for failing to nominate Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and I sinned for being a little lazy.

That being said, your failure to recongize the magnificent documentary Grizzly Man earns you some obscene hand gestures. Sure, this was a good year for documentaries. Murderball is an interesting tail of guys in wheelchairs overcoming obstacles and beating the hell out each other. March of the Penguins seems to be a hit among the conservative demographic that you have to throw a bone to every so often. (Note to conservatives: Penguins vote Democratic. Much of this has to do with Global Warming). But the greatness of Grizzly Man and Werner Herzog seems lost on you. And you don't have a good excuse. Just like me, YOU NEVER SAW IT.

There was a New York Times article citing this very point. Documentary films aren't treated with the same respect that the fictional ones are. I understand Hollywood is a business and fiction sells. But that doesn't excuse, you know, NOT SEEING THE MOVIE.

So, Academy, I YAT KAY you most vigorously. If you don't know what that means, look it up.

Oh yeah, and would it have killed you to recognize Episode III for a special effects category? Or recongize that there's still good acting in a blockbuster like Batman Begins? I suppose I shouldn't get my hopes up.

Sincerely,

Mehal Shah

Sports Night

2006-01-16T14:33:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Greg, I have been watching the first season of the extraordinary pseudo-sitcom Sports Night. For those who do not know, Sports Night was an Aaron Sorkin (of West Wing fame) creation that lived for 2 years on NBC, where it was loved by critics and a small cabal of fans, but shunned by the network for the horribly crimes of intelligence and low ratings. As a West Wing fanatic, I find it interesting to watch Sorkin develop his style in this show. For example, a common motif in Sorkin dialogues is a conversation like this.
Person A: x!
Person B: x?
A: Thats right, x!
Person B: Really, it seems that x has occurred
Person C: Hey everyone, did you hear about x?
Boss: What the hell are we doing about x?

The only difference between SN and WW is in SN, x="We need to interview sports celebrity" and in WW, x="There's a nasty story about us in the press."

But its not just rapid-fire witty dialogue. There's quite a few actors/actresses that had minor roles in SN and bigger ones in WW (or vice versa).
Janel Maloney comes on as a wardrobe assistant in SN, becomes Josh's assistant in WW
The woman playing Bobbi Bernstein in one episode becomes a hooker Sam befriends in WW
Dana goes from Director of Sports Night to director of the Republican Agenda.
Gordon goes from bigshot lawyer to bigshot Political News Host.
Teri Polo, going from bigshot market analyst to future first lady.
And of course, Joshua Malina plays a slightly eccentric genius who has an uncanny ability to both attract and repel women in both shows. A condition which I am familiar with. At least partially.

Joshua Malina's character, Jeremy, stands out amongst the cast for me. When he appears in the pilot, he's a disheveled, akward genius. This kind of character is commonly used in television sitcoms for cheap laughs and so characters never have to do any research. And of course, this character falls in love with a cute girl who likes him for his nerdiness also in the perfect yin-yang relationship. But by the 10th episode, Jeremy's akwardness is written out. Sorkin realized that someone of Jeremy's intelligence may still have personal issues, but is far more mature than stereotypicial middle school nerd that he seems modeled after. He's brought Dana down to reality, he's stood up to Isaac and we find that he's a protective older sibling to a college-age sister. And of course, he's in a loving relationship with the assistant producer, Natalie who is a cute girl that likes him for his nerdiness. That is until the first "fight" when he spends an evening playing tennis with a friend of his that happens to be some famous actress. Which, in the context of a poker game (West Wing foreshadowing...) results in this wonderful exchange.

Throughout the episode, Jeremy has been taking a lot of money from everyone, particularly Natalie who's education at the hands of some frat boys seems to be failing her. The bets to her, after Isaac has reluctantly folded a strong hand. And I'm going to do this scene from memory, because this scene illustrates how great a show this was, but also its failure to escape generic sitcom-like behavior that may be why the show only lasted two seasons.

(Jeremy just bet 50, Natalie raised 50).
Jeremy: Natalie, take back your 100 dollars.
Natalie: Raise 50!
Jeremy (seriously): Natalie, listen to me. You've lost a lot of money to me tonight. You're going to be living the rest of your life on a charitable donation from the Jeremy Goodwin foundation. Take the money back and fold.
Natalie: Scared?
Jeremy: I have a straight. You have three sevens.
Natalie (dismissivly): You don't have a straight...
Jeremy (amazingly seriously): Look at me. I'm not lying to you. I have a straight.
Natalie: How do you know I don't have a big house?
(Inappropriate laugh track: See note 1)
Jeremy: A full house. Dan folded the six you need, and I'm holding the other one. You don't have any kind of a house. You don't have a pup tent. You've got trip sevens, and I have a straight.
(stands)
I want you trust me right now. I want to say to yourself "Sure, I dated a string of jerks. They were stupid, they were mean to me. Maybe this one is different though, and maybe I shouldn't adopt the break-up-with-him-before-he-breaks-my-heart strategy with him." I want you to trust me when I say that when I started liking you, I didn't stop liking tennis. I want you to trust me when I say that you have no reason to feel threatened by any woman no matter how glamorous you think she is. But most of all, I want you to trust me when I say that you have three sevens, and I have a straight.
(Pause: See Note 2)
Natalie: You're bluffing so hard its comming out of your ears.
(Inappropriate laugh track again)
Natalie: Three sevens!
Jeremy: Six, seven, eight, nine...and a five.
(Collective groaning)
Natalie (sweetly): I don't deserve you...
Jeremy: No. You don't.
(Natalie eventually pleads Jeremy into letting her stay for the night, essentially meaning that he forgives her).

Note 1: Inappropriate laugh tracks
Sports Night cuts back on the laugh-track usage over the course of the 6 or 7 episodes. In the beginning, its close to the regular frequency. I despise laugh tracks. Its as if the director is sitting on the couch next to me and poking my shoulder saying "Isn't this funny? Come on! Come on!" Its an invasion of privacy and my annoyance-free zone. Later on, its reserved for pretty obvious moments where I've probably cracked a smile and don't mind it that much. But in this entire scene, the laugh track has no place whatsoever. This isn't a comedic scene, and if someone thinks it is then they're not looking at it maturely IMHO. The fact that the show had trouble distinguishing comedy from drama, because of things like the laugh track, is one of its failings.

Note 2: Possible conclusions
There's three conclusions to this scene.

Natalie folds
Natalie calls, Jeremy was bluffing or Natalie somehow had a stronger hand.
Natalie calls, Jeremy had a straight.

Scenes 1 and 2 are what pretty much every other sitcom would do. Scene one is the "awwww" moment where Natalie magically trusts Jeremy and all is right in the world. But thats not going to happen. Scene 2 satisfies many requirements, like "nerd gets outsmarted" and "psych! gotcha!" But number 3 is what makes the scene work. Because of course Jeremy was telling the truth. We know how much he values his relationship with Natalie. Is he really going to tell her to trust him and betray her in front of her colleagues at what seems to be a rough point in their relationship? Of course not.

And finally, the end where Natalie cutely says "I don't deserve you" and Jeremy glares at her and says that she doesn't. Jeremy's hurt and a smile isn't going to take away the fact that his girlfriend doesn't trust him. If the scene had ended here, I would have applauded at my screen. But it doesn't. Because Natalie works her wiles some more and of course Jeremy caves and forgives her, which isn't to say that it wasn't unrealistic or anything, but that it wasn't necessary for us to know that. The point of this scene was to show Jeremy's no pushover, and it ended with him getting pushed over, like he would have been in every other sitcom. Happy ending to a story, but not to this scene.

Anyway, just some random thoughts.

Goodbye to Leo

2006-01-06T20:13:00.000-08:00

Hello all,

I had a pretty enjoyable winter break, chilled out in SF with relatives and generally kicked back. Got to do some hiking in Point Reyes which was nice, although I have no worthy photos to show you.

But thats not the point of this entry. The point of this entry is to say goodbye to a man who's inspired a lot of my life. He's the actor Jon Spencer who brought to life the legend, Leo McGarry on the West Wing. So I guess this post is in memory of the character and by proxy, the brilliant actor who played him.

Leo taught us a lot of things. He wasn't a perfect guy, in fact he was an alcoholic and drug addict. I remember him explaining his situation to someone and explicitly said "I'm an alcoholic." Never mind that he hadn't had a drink for years when he said that. He knew that alcoholism was something he'd have to fight his whole life and that he would never really "recover" from it. He valued true honesty to friends, his people and himself.

Leo wasn't exactly the nicest guy out there either. He had a tendancy to get irrated with everyone on his staff, and even the president. But he was always respectful and constructive in criticism. And he did it in order to make things better.

What I'll remember the most is how he was full of love. Love for his staff, when he stuck by them when they got in trouble or depressed. Love for his Office, when he knew that he was in a position of power and saw that it was his duty to listen to those who rarely get listened to. Love for his country, when he realized that the best thing he could do was to get a good man elected president.

I don't know what will happen to the show. I know it won't be the same without the actor/character that I'll miss the most.

Some photos

2005-12-19T01:18:00.000-08:00

Few more photos that I've touched up. I've printed three of them and they look nice.
Number 3 doesn't look quite right, I still have some work on that one to do.

Sorry...

2005-12-15T13:35:00.000-08:00

I apologize for not updating for some time. Part of it is because I have nothing fun to post. They'll be some pictures up here sometime soon, and maybe some of my West Wing fanfic writing. Or, I might take the blog down altoghether and replace it with my general site. We'll see.

My life: Rated

2005-12-03T09:25:00.000-08:00

This Is My Life, Rated
Life:	7.7
Mind:	7.8
Body:	8.8
Spirit:	9.5
Friends/Family:	4.4
Love:	2.1
Finance:	9
Take the Rate My Life Quiz

Stupid quiz that I took anyway because I saw it on Kenneth's blog

The supreme artist of Taco Bell

2005-11-24T21:00:00.000-08:00

I flew in to Jackson today, via Dallas. In Dallas, I stopped for a taco bell burrito in one of those airport food courts. Normally, ordering taco bell is a bad idea when the food preperation is within sight of you, because you see the device that squirts the burrito interior into the newly-microwaved tortilla which doesn't exactly make you salivate. Obviously, one should look away, but I could not help it.

However, what I saw was not some pimply-faced teenager throwing toghether a burrito. Instead, I saw a pimply-faced teenager who viewed the burrito as a higher calling. He took care to ensure proper bean and cheese dispersal, so you don't have the notorious clump at the bottom that errupts out in a Mexican food avalanche destined for your pants. He scooped out some onions, pondered the amount scooped and put some back! No doubt, he thought "Hmm...there are too many onions here. I should put some back to ensure the customer gets a good burrito." Then, he properly folded the tortilla to ensure a stable burrito.

He handed me his creation. "Thank you sir," he said.

"No," I replied. "Thank you."

Zion National Park

2005-11-08T00:47:00.000-08:00

Just got back from Zion. William and I had an absolute blast, and we have a good collection of photos from a pretty successful expedition. Here's a few, until I get the full site up on friday.

Vivid fall colors

Swift streams

Narrow (and impossible to photograph) canyons

Hidden spots to explore

Light playing off the trees on the canyon floor

Can't wait for a year to go by, then maybe I can head back. Until then there's lots of post-processing to do here!

Stupid Flickr

2005-11-07T21:44:00.000-08:00

Please stop trying to be cute in your e-mails. "Oh, it looks like you forgot your password! Don't worry! We'll send it to you and this time, remember to write it down!"

    
     _
    | |
    | |
   _| |_
 /| | | |-.
| | | | | |
|         |
 \_     _/

Ahh that felt good.

But in all fairness, this whole uesr-friendliness thing needs to stop. I don't want a computer to get cute with me, thats something only real people are allowed to do (and even then, only under limited circumstances). When some regular internet service starts doing it, its invading the man-machine distinction that I highly value.

Just give me my password and leave me alone.

Stop spamming my blog

2005-10-27T10:40:00.000-07:00

Past few days some spambots have been putting comments in the posts. Boo.

I've always wondered what its like to be one of those people who writes spam scripts. Do they really have no shame? Do they realize that they are ruining the internet for other people? I just don't get it. In the meanwhile, blogger should try putting in one of those messy-handwriting-recognition things in order to cut down on this.

Oh yeah, Harriet Miers got taken down! WOOHOO! Take that Bush administration! Hopefully, Bush will now nominate a moderate at the level of O'Connor who will pass with lukewarm support so we can move on to Karl Rove being thrown in prison.

Oh yeah, I'm headed out to Utah next week friday. Once I get the photo site up, should be some good stuff on there.

Harriet Miers

2005-10-12T23:37:00.000-07:00

With all the fracas over Harriet Miers, I guess I should say something about it.
For starters, this isn't the Scalia Jr. that I was really worried about. So I guess thats a good thing. But the thing about a justice like Scalia is that he is a brilliant (though completely wrong) mind that (sometimes) stays independant. Harriet Miers seems to have Bush's favorite quality: She'll never say anything to make him unhappy. The lady writes fan mail to him for crying out loud. She's his LAWYER for crying out loud. This is a ridiculous example of cronyism and tremendously stupid.

I'm wondering if the Senate Dems should confirm her. Personally, I could go either way. But I'm thinking send her packing and give the Shrub another defeat. Stall in time to take back the Senate in 2006 and we'll get a moderate on the bench.

End of hiking

2005-10-02T23:59:00.000-07:00

It seems that there will be no more hiking this year. Weekend hike through Thornton Lakes ran into some foul weather, and it won't get better until next July alas. Still, it gives me time to review a lot of photos.
Ordered a few massive prints today. I love getting that warm fuzzy feeling when I do that...

Cascade Pass Hike

2005-09-18T23:29:00.000-07:00

Edit: 20x30 BW print I'm gonna make from this journey

I'm guessing this post will mess up my blog template. I'll try and figure a way around that.
So last Saturday I went hiking/photographing in the North Cascades. Its about a 3 hour drive up there, including a long stretch on a bumpy gravel road that I hope didn't destroy my shocks. My goal was to hike all the way up to the Sahale Glacier camp, physically touch the glacier, take in magnificant views along the hike and see if I could spot some large wildlife in the process. Needless to say, none of that happened, but thats not to say I didn't have a good experience.

Overall, I hiked about 11 miles. The hike has about a 3,500 foot elevation gain which isn't so bad when its spread out through about 5.5 miles but its still enough to make your joints ache.

On the drive over, the first thing that caught my eye was the Snowflake Glacier. Thats this thing

Its kind of a skinny glacier, but don't be fooled. The cracks you see on it are pretty big. Throughout the hike, I would often hear rumblings sounds which were icefalls from the Glacier.
So, I loaded up my pack and set off. For a hike like this, I brought my Rebel XT with 28-135 and 200-400 lenses (the latter is pretty hefty) and my tripod. I also packed about 1.5 liters of water, 4 clif bars and some dried mango.

The first thing to know about the day is that it was very cloudy, with the level at about 3,500 feet (about the altitude of the trailhead). So its not like fog where it hugs the ground. These were normal clouds that had just ran headlong into the mountain and I'd be hiking through. Visibility throughout most of the hike was about 100 feet in front, like this picture

No, my tripod wasn't crooked. The trees all seemed to be leaning one way, and a lot of times they only had branches on one side. It would make for some nice BW photography next time I go.

This grouse was standing on the trail in front of me, so I managed to get this one. Then he started running too much for me to get him. I have a lot of trouble paning with my telephoto and still need to get used to it.

The clouds were pretty thick, which wasn't too bad at this point because it made the air pretty cool but not unpleasant.
After 90 minutes of pretty fast (for me) hiking, I made it to the Cascade Pass, a place that is supposed to have some amazing vistas. Well, here's what I got.

Well what do you expect? I mean, I'm in the middle of a cloud. I started to think that maybe I'd make a quick trip down to the lake in the middle of the basin and then hurry back to Seattle in time for a shoot of the Seattle skyline. Hiking up Mount Sahale didn't seem to fun when I couldn't see it. I started on the trail down but kept getting lost on it. I took a seat to re-evaluate and sarcastically said to nobody "Where the hell's Mount Sahale?" Yes, hiking alone makes you slightly nuts.

Peek-a-boo!

I figured that the cloud cover would break somewhere up there, so broke off the lake trail and went on the Sahale Arm trail, which is about 2 miles of steep climbing among fields and rocks.

A mountain in a cloud is kind of a strange place. I was past the treeline pretty quickly, which meant fields of strange small plants like this

When I saw these rocks, the first thing I thought was "Holy crap! Polar bears!"

Yeah, my vision doesn't work too well up there.

Also I think this is a Ptarmagin

As I was about halfway up the mountainside, a mammal bolted across the trail about ten feet in front of me. "Holy crap! A baby cougar!" I thought. But no, it was actually a hoary marmot (I think) which is a kind of large rodent. It bolted into its hole, which gave me some time to bust out the telephoto and wait for it. Sure enough, it poked its head out after a few minutes of waiting and decided I wasn't a threat.

Pretty quickly though, another marmot came along and bullied this one off. This fellow wasn't shy at all and stood around, posing and strutting for quite some time.

I'm not sure how well these photos show it, but this guy was Big. I think maybe about the size of a large housecat, and quite fat too perhaps in preperation for winter hibernation. After some time, the marmot started munching away and I did the same with some mangos.
I was really pleased with the performance of my telephoto. A lot of these images were hand-held, which is tough when its a little dark and you're at the long end of your lens. Despite this, the images were very sharp.

Hiking in a cloud has definite advantages and disadvantages. An advantage of the moisture is that you don't want for water. At this point in the hike, I had taken maybe two drinks of water after 5 miles of hard hiking and wasn't thirsty at all. A disadvantage is the moisture covers everything in water. The ground becomes muddy, the rocks start to get a little slippery, your glasses and lenses fog over and you wipe sweat from your brow only to realize that that the water is cold and you are basically condensing water all over. The low visibility and fogged-over glasses meant I lost the trail a few times once maintainence ends and all thats left is an "implied" path through some rocks. Still, I kept going and could make out this through the clouds.

A little further and I broke through cover. Was it worth it? You tell me.

I found a spot to sit and watch the clouds roll into the basin and roll back out for a good half an hour while basking in the sun and eating. It was truly a great experience that no 800x533 picture can fully justify. The second picture of that bunch might become a large print (any buyers?). I don't have a positive ID, but I believe we're looking at the Yawning and S Glaciers as the clouds spill over Pelton Peak.
I was seriously hurting after this hike after a few spills and sore muscles on the hike back down, but the viewing made it worth the whole trip. If it was a clear day and I had seen that view from the Pass or somewhere lower, I'm not sure I would have appreciated it as much. Insert your "not the destination but the journey" quote here. I was also pretty happy with my shooting. After a couple hikes that didn't produce any satisfactory shoots, I was glad to get in a good one.
And the kicker to all this is that I didn't even make it all the way to the top of the hike, at the Sahale Arm. I looked up and figured it would be the same view. But I could have been wrong. I guess thats a motivator to come back out here come next July when the snow clears out.

My friend and colleague, Kien (kienlam.blogspot.com) made some pretty good edits to a couple pictures. Here's a couple

Check out his site, he's got an amazing portfolio.

Internet at last!

2005-09-12T09:17:00.000-07:00

Finally, I have comcast internet. I might take this blog down or somehow move it to my existing website, we'll have to see.

Pittsburg, Kansas

2005-09-04T22:04:00.000-07:00

Who keeps google searching me from Pittsburg Kansas?

Rant

2005-09-01T21:10:00.000-07:00

I know that we're supposed to pull together in times of tragedy like what has happened in New Orleans but I have to say this.

President Bush, you are a douche.
The hurricane hit New Orleans a few days ago but you still stuck around your ranch, when you had no trouble flying back to DC on 4 hours notice to stick your head into the Terri Schaivo case. Did you kick FEMA and Homeland security in the rear to get them down to relieve the shortened national guard forces? No. Then you took the time to visit some bases, hug some troops and rub elbows with a country music star while people were drowning and New Orleans descended into anarchy. Then you went on TV and gave a lousy speech that epitomizes what a failure you've been. Did you call the Oil industry to suck it up and take a hit in the profits so people can afford to drive to work? No. Did you announce a plan to figure out what went wrong in disaster preparation to make sure that the next disaster doesn't cause the same social effects? No. Then you said "no one could have anticipated the levy breaking." FEMA FUCKING TOLD YOU THIS AS ONE OF THE WORST DISASTERS THAT COULD HAPPEN not that it stopped you from slashing NOs levee budget or allowing development on barrier islands that would have stopped the storm surge. And don't get me starting on the evidence that global warming fuels stronger hurricanes, not that it would matter to you.

And don't complain about me politicizing this tragedy. You threw 9/11 in the face of anyone who disagreed with you and you dragged corpses out of the rubble of the Towers and the Pentagon and made them speak words supporting idiotic wars, freedom-restricting laws and your own party's convention like you were a fucking ventriloquist. No wonder NY and DC voted to keep you out of office. So when I criticize your leadership, I'm doing it because I love this country too much to watch some idiot, Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative, screw it up as much as you have.

You keep talking about how America is strong and will come out for the better after this etc etc. Your platitudes don't mean shit. There's snipers shooting at people evacuating the wounded and people are dying waiting in line for buses. Right now, America is weak and a whole lot of it has to do with you. So use your power you've abused through your administration and try and do some good with it this time. Not that I have any high hopes for you.

Stuff

2005-09-01T10:23:00.000-07:00

To those who expressed concern, my parents are doing fine in Mississippi. The storm knocked out their power and they've been without it for a few days but other than that, things are fine.

Its pretty eerie looking at New Orleans, because its exactly what I imagined when I stayed there one night, looked out over the city and wondered what it would be like if the levee broke and the city flooded like a tour guide said it would. Roofs became islands, the chairs Cafe du Monde would float in the streets and the French Quarter would be ruined. It seems thats whats happened.

Unrelated: The Seattle library system is great. Being able to request books, movies and CDs online is like Amazon without the money. Last thing I got was a Zero 7 CD: When it Falls. Check it out.

RIP Bob Koch

2005-08-22T10:47:00.000-07:00

For those who do not know, Bob Koch of Koch's deli has passed on. Anyone at Penn who has never been to Koch's has missed out on a true Philadelphia institution. Koch's was known for many things.

Hoagies so massive, you had to struggle to take a bite out of them
A 40 minute wait for a sandwich that never seemed too long
Bob would know you by name, or if not by name then by sandwich.

After my first visit to Koch's, I could never go to a Subways and come out happy again. 6 slices of cheese? What the hell? I demand my 20+ slices of Alpine Swiss. In my many visits, I only managed to KO 1 hoagie after a massive effort and two root beers to watch it down. Truly a feat.

I don't know if Koch's will be open now that Bob is gone. I hope it will stay open for the sake of everyone in West Philly. In any case...Bob, this hoagie is for you. Thank you for your efforts to make me fat.

Movin' out

2005-08-15T21:33:00.000-07:00

Moving to the apartment tomorrow, hope it goes well.
Tried out a new piece of software called "Konfabulator." Some mac users will recognize it as a ripoff of spotlight...failing to realize that Konfabulator was out before Tiger :-). Basically, its a bunch of widgets for things like Wikipedia search or the weather that live on your desktop, and appear when you do something like hit f8 (in my case, I found a way to map my #6 mouse button to it). No fly-out effect light spotlight, but still quite nifty.
www.konfabulator.com

Weird...

2005-08-08T15:53:00.000-07:00

I visit my blog today and its somebody elses. Not sure why...

Few more pictures

2005-08-04T10:13:00.000-07:00

My office

2005-08-02T11:29:00.000-07:00

Cynthia wants photos and I only exist to please her.

Go see Equilibria

2005-07-23T17:20:00.000-07:00

Coolest movie I've seen in quite some time (well, since Usual Suspects). Its part 1984-Distopia style movie, part totally sweet action. Find it in your local video store.

Work is going so-so...I can't get stupid dev environment working so I'm kind of stuck. Office pictures coming soon.

First day as a Borg

2005-07-18T16:55:00.000-07:00

After the traumatizing experience of reading Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince (must...not...spoil...) and starting the highly enjoyable Forgotten Realms series, and playing pool and hanging out with some microserfs this weekend, I started work today. The orientation was actually pretty cool. Some of it was the usual rah-rah that you would expect, but it was good to meet other people. This is especially true for software devs that are different ages than me. Its interesting (and slightly terrifying) to think that I'm going to be working with people that have been in this industry for several years.
Everyone asks if I'm excited about starting work and I usually give a "eh" answer. Thats not to say that I'm not excited, its just that there's a level of horror involved that lessens my anticipation. A whole lot of friends, family and coworkers believe that I can do a good job here; I'm just worried I'll dissapoint people. But I'll suck it up and head off to work tomorrow, which is the most hopeful attitude I can muster right now.

In Seattle

2005-07-13T17:45:00.000-07:00

Just moved into Seattle. Things are going pretty well here, I'm starting to get used to the place.
Here's something I noticed: The whole city is insecure. When I got my apartment keys, the guy didn't ask me for ID. The library doesn't have any anti-theft system. I got a card without giving an address. This is a sign of people who are either incredibly naive or who live in a low-crime trustworthy city. Just a thought.

Anyone know what this is?

2005-07-10T11:58:00.000-07:00

I took a picture of this mammal, I think its a yellow-bellied marmot but am not sure. Can anyone help?

Some pictures from vacation

2005-07-06T20:42:00.000-07:00

Here's a few pictures I took on our amazing vacation. There's more to come in about a month or so, but consider this a sneak preview.

We saw a whole bunch of interesting things:

Mellow sunsets

Wild creatures

Jagged mountains

Brilliant clouds

Serene waterfalls

Unworldly hot springs

Placid lakes

And good friends

AOL Notice

2005-07-05T19:10:00.000-07:00

If you're using AOL, you have my fondest apologies. Also, you should try viewing this blog outside of AOL. For some reason new posts don't appear because of the cache on that top-speed business.

Wait a sec...if you're using AOL how would you have gotten that message?

I'm back!

2005-07-03T22:19:00.000-07:00

Whew...what a trip! Summary to come in a couple days, along with a couple pictures before the main trip website comes up, and some seriously long posts.
Just about a week until I ship out!