Pictures From The Rim : Part One

Along The Rim Trail

After we ate lunch at the Bright Angel Lodge and perused the gift shop for swag, we took the "tram" down to the eastern end of the South Rim Village and walked along the rim trail back to the western end of the village, which also had the ice cream shop.

We started the hike about three hours after we had finished the Hermits Rest route. It was interesting to see how the canyon had visually changed. At high noon, the colors had seemed somewhat washed out but you could really see the various layers in the rock strata. As we were rounding into early evening, the colors started to become more intense, but the shadows had merged and expanded and now tended to delineate larger features, like mesas and valleys.

Don't Feed The Animals!!!!

So there are signs posted all over the South Rim Village that tells visitors in no uncertain terms that they are not to feed any of the animals. This includes the squirrels and ravens, no matter how cute they look or how far up your pant leg they climb.

None-the-less, Scottland and I get to the oh-so-convenient snack stand at the end of the Hermits Rest Route and find tons of people sitting around feeding tastey little cheeze doodles to an army of squirrels and a flock (a murder?) of Ravens. I couldn't help but walk through the crowd while loudly (yet conversationally) telling Scottland how stupid people would have to be not to see the signs posted everywhere telling people not to feed the animals.

I did get a cool picture of a raven, though.

The End of the Line

The views from Hermits Rest were all sort of the same, but the plants provided attractive framing for the views of the canyon. After we got to this part of the route, the "tram" turned around and went back to the South Rim Village. We could have stopped at Mojave and Hopi point, but decided we'd rather do other things. It was a good choice on our part to make. Besides, when we started to walk the rim trail at 4 PM, the sun had gotten much lower in the sky and the colors were much more striking.

Pima Point

Looking west towards Hermits Rest and the end of the route.

As Scottland pointed out, after a while the overlooks start to all look the same. I think that's what was great about hiking the rim trail and seeing the other two points later in the day. The experiences were all really different.

Views From The Abyss

I guess it's called the abyss because the angle between the viewer and the colorado river is much steeper, on account of the river bending towards the south rim at this point. These pictures don't really do it justice.

Powell Point

The cliff/shelf/cliff nature of the walls of the Grand Canyon is a result of layers of easily eroded shale between more resistant layers of sandstone and limestone.

Looking west towards Hermits Rest. Visibility in the Grand Canyon (particularly during the winter) can easily exceed 100 miles. It was 93 miles the day we visited.

Trail Overlook and Maricopa Point

A view of the bright angel fault and the trail down to the bottom of the canyon. Hikers are endlessly warned never to try to hike to the bottom of the canyon and back in a single day. The trail is 12 miles long one way

Views from Maricopa Point. There was a ranger here with telescopes set up to allow visitors to view a cave entrance in the canyon wall where a pair of California Condors were known to be nesting. We saw them flying over head, as well as one of their offsrping. One of them flew close enough for us to see the tracking number painted on it's belly.

The Hermits Rest Route

Riding the "tram" and stopping at the various view points along the Hermit's Rest Route was the first thing we did when we reached the grand canyon. We skipped Mojave and Hopi point and walked from Maricopa to Powell Point. Between Maricopa and Powell is an abandoned Uranium mine that's been fenced off due to high radiation levels around the mine entrance.

Grand Canyon

On Tuesday during our excursion to Phoenix, we drove north to the largest hole in the world, or at least North America. Perhaps the Marianas Trench is a bigger hole. I last visited the park in 2001 but Scottland hadn't been there since he was a very small child.

As usual, the place was just amazing. Before we got there, I told Scottland about my theory that it's the giant auditory nothing in one half of the world that makes the Grand Canyon so spectacular. It's not enough to see the giant hole, it's that you can really FEEL that it's there because sounds just go out and never come back.

Since we were coming up from Phoenix, our visit was limited to the south rim which is where I visited the last time. On that visit I did two thing. (1) I rode this tour bus thing between eight different lookouts over the canyon and (2) got horribly sunburned.

I managed to avoid getting sunburned by slathering myself with SPF 50 (this was a strategy I employed throughout the Phoenix trip to avoid getting burned) and was pleasantly surprised to discover that I could spend 10 hours in the sun of the high Colorado Plateau within getting even a little pink.

The vehicle tour was as cool as I remember, though Scottland was correct in his observation that after a while all the points start to look the same. After the vehicular tour we took a different bus to the east end of the south village and walked the rim trail (about 2.5 miles) to where we had parked our car. I didn't do that the last time and it was a cool experience. Very different from riding from lookout to lookout.

By the time we got back to the car is was maybe an hour and a half until sunset. We had gotten lunch at the Bright Angel Lodge (and discovered that you could rent rooms and cabins at the South Village), hit the gift shop and the ice-cream shop, which helped eat up a lot of time. I wanted to drive back to Flagstaff via the east entrance of the park so we hit a couple of the lookouts you can drive to on your way out of the park.

In particular we hit Indian Watchtower, which has this replica of an old Navajo (I think) watchtower that used to be there. The view from the watchtower is really different from the rest of the south rim, in that it's right at the point where the Canyon curves north. So, in addition to being able to see up the axis of the canyon rather than across, you can also see a long way across the painted desert and can see the canyon of the Little Colorado.

After we left the Indian Watchtower we exited the park and drove through the reservation that abuts it. As usual there were lots of weird little shacks on the side of the road selling trinkets. Scottland particularly liked the one that said "Nice Indians Ahead."

The drive back to Flagstaff was really cool, as we were driving across a relatively flat expanse of grass covered land as the sun was setting was setting behind a big clumping of cinder cones (We were in the area where you'd go to see Sunset Crater), with clouds covering the sky except in the west. The grass had already dried out and gone dormant, so it was brighter in color than the clouds or the mountains and more reflective. All of these things together had the effect of making it feel like we were driving through some enormous miles high cave. It was really cool.

The rest of the drive back was relatively uneventful, though Scottland was really freaked out by the multi-thousand foot descent off the Colorado Plateau on an unlit interstate where the maximum speed is 75 mph. We pulled off the interstate at one point to look at the desert night sky. It was amazing. I've seen the Milky Way before but never as an enormous, solid belt of milky white across the sky. Very cool.

Flight To Phoenix

While flying to Phoenix we passed right over the top of Mt. Rainier, which was pretty much covered in clouds. Except for a little nub at the top. I took a cool picture of the phenomena. It looks a bit like an island in the clouds.

Phoenix Fest 2007

For the last week of his six week sabbatical, Scottland and I flew to Phoenix. Why Phoenix? Well, mostly because we wanted to go somewhere warm and unfamiliar to either of us. We managed to visit the Grand Canyon, Taliesin West and the Phoenix Botanical Garden. Other than that, we mostly spent time in the pool reading and drinking. I also managed to do some research my book.

The picture is an interesting image of Phoenix and the area to the north of it. It was generated by combining a linear data set from the USGS and an elevation data set generated by some space shuttle mission, whatever that means.

Moses Lake Triathlon

I managed to achieve one of my major goals for the year today when I completed the Moses Lake Triathlon. Your basic olympic triathlon consists of a one mile swim, a twentyfour mile bike and a 10 K run. A sprint triathlon halves all those distances. The particular event that I participated in was a "family" triathlon, which is a sprint triathlon where the swim distance has been halved again to a quarter of a mile.



Swim Time : 9:28
Transition 1 : 5:32
Bike Time : 55:23
Transition 2 : 0:58
Run Time : 34:33
Total Time : 1:45:56

To be frank, the race was really freaking hard. I managed to complete it and my times weren't abysmal, but the start of the 3K run after the 12 mile bike ride was pretty difficult. Still, I enjoyed myself and I'm planning on doing another one in Mid-September. It's funny how competative stuff like this can make a person. Though my only stated goal was to complete the triathlon, I'm already plotting ways to improve my race time.

Cardboard Cut-Outs or the Real Thing?

My mother was in DC last week as part of the activities related to her winning the state of Oregon's teacher of the year award for 2006. One of those activities was having her photo taken with the President and Laura Bush.

Aquarium Setup - Steps One and Two

I'm putting together a 55 gallon freshwater tropical community aquarium.

Step One :

1. Assemble aquarium stand


2. Place aquarium


3. Wash 60 lbs. of gravel and put gravel in tank


4. Add water


5. Assemble and install filter


6. Assemble and install lights


7. Place aquarium decorations

Step Two :

1. Calculate tank's watts to gallon ratio for lighting. (1.45)


2. Generate a list of desired plants based on light ratio and placement in tank.


3. Generate sketch of plant placement and determine number of plants needed.


4. Order plants from online distributor of aquarium gear.


5. Have plants shipped overnight.


6. Add chlorine and chloramine removing chemical.


7. Put plants in tank.


8. Add water to the lip of the tank.


9. Add fertilizer to water.

Biodiesel Production Facility of the Future

I finished my research for the Biodiesel Production Facility Of The Future (BPFOTF) and was able to generate the attached map. I'll be using it to sketch out the bits of action that take place at this particular locale.

This chunk of research ended up being a very useful thought exercise for me as a whole. It serendipitously enabled me to sort out some related bits of setting material that I hadn't even thought to put effort into developing.

I'll definitely be applying this technique to other parts of the outline that are causing me trouble.

Syndicate

Since December of 2005 I've been working on a card game that I have high hopes of being able to sell as an actual product one day. The game started off as a business based RPG, but I quickly realized that an RPG rule-set that simulated running a business would be about as fun as doing your taxes. It then occured to me that a card game might be a lot more fun, and I began putting said game together.

I've gone through about five iterations so far and have actually gotten to the point where I have a prototype deck I'm in the middle of playtesting. Iteration six will probably get printed and cut sometime next month, but so far things are looking really good.

The picture I've attached to this post shows the current prototype deck on the left with the three prior iterations on the right. The 1st iteration consisted of about 1,000 index cards and sadly, I didn't keep them.

Making a game is a lot more work than I thought it was when I started out.

King Canola's Coming to Kill You

This post is part one in a series of posts that will fully cover my "down the rabbit hole experience" I had when I attempted to use the internet to do research for my sci-fi novel.

My daughter and her girls were telling jokes. Stephanie hit her mom's arm with the back of a butter knife in a gesture, "Oh mom", not hard enough to hurt. My daughters arm split open like it was rotten. She called me to ask what could have caused it. I said, "I'll bet anything that you are using Canola oil". Sure enough, there was a big gallon jug in the pantry.

Part One : A Writer's Toil

This whole thing started yesterday as I was toiling away on the outline for my sci-fi novel. I’m currently working on the part of the narrative that takes place in a bio-diesel facility south of Sacramento. Sketching out this particular set of scenes has been much more difficult than the rest of the outline so far.

After ruminating for a while on what the source of the problem might be, it occurred to me that I should engage in a creative exercise and see if that helped to knock some ideas loose. Sometimes, a bit of “world-building” helps me to really get into the center of what I’m trying to write about. So, I set out to do some research on the internets about how one goes about making bio-diesel.

This portion of the research went easily enough. Not surprisingly, most of the “civilian” websites on bio-diesel production weren’t very informative. What else would you expect from a bunch of hippies but poorly organized information? Eventually though, I ran across a number of academic sites that had plenty of relatively well-detailed information. From that information I was able to develope a generalized process schematic, and from that start generating an actual map of the facility.

In my head and on paper, the bio-diesel production facility of the future was taking shape.

***

In the next installment of the series, the author will blog about his efforts to select the ideal oil seed crop of the future.

Dungeon & Dragon Cancelled

Yes. The news went out today. Finally. September will be the last month that the magazines of Dungeon and Dragon will publish issues.

I can't say that I'm surprised. In fact I'm not. Those of you that know me should know why.

I can't really comment on Dragon, as I've never read it, but I can tell you that the quality of Dungeon's material has lagged pretty badly for quite a while. Paizo had the the rights to use WOTC's entire catalog of D&D IP and yet all they did was continue to publish adventures that were nothing more than a rehash of 1st edition adventures.

I can't imagine that WOTC was ever pleased that Paizo wasn't supporting the new products they were putting out by publishing material that completely ignored its existence. Hello, Eberon?

I can say that I'm glad I decided to cancel my year-goal of submitting ten articles to Dungeon. It was a smart move on my part.

I can say that I'm excited to find out how this new online thing is going to work. From what I can tell, WOTC is going to be looking for contributors, and I plan to contribute.

Transitional Terrarium

I originally put together my carnivorous terrarium in October of 2004. It's never done poorly, but when I finally managed to get rid of a scale infection it developed two years ago it really took off.

It looks quite cool now as the plants have grown around the objects I added to it early on and some unexpected specimens came in with the original sundews, venus fly-traps and pitcher plants.

I think I'm going to need to feed it again in the very near future. My hunch is I can buy fruit flys off the internet and just dump them in the tank.

Spring 2005










Summer 2005










March 2006










April 2007

Seattle Snowmageddon 2007 Part Deux : The Re-Freezening

It snowed yet again in the wee hours of the morning. That's the third time this winter. Scottland is working from home again and we look forward to tales of 8 hour commutes to work from our friends.

West Seattle Winter Wonderland

Complete with cars spinning their tires as they attempt to climb the supremely icey road immediately south of our house. Not as many people are trying it this time around, so I'm guessing a lot of people have learned their lesson from the storm in late November. Apparently west seattle got the brunt of the "Great Blizzard of 2007", as they're predictably calling it on the evening news.

Caught Comet McNaught

As promised, I have managed to take a picture of the comet this evening as the weather was cooperating quite nicely. Nothing like a nice mass of freezing cold arctic air to suck the clouds from the sky. It's amazing what you can do with just a digital camera and a railing to set it on while you take a longer exposure.

Comet McNaught!!!

You'll have to take my word for it, but the very faint smudge just a little below the center is my very own photo of Comet McNaught. This morning while perusing APOD I learned that this comet (which I'd read a bit about on APOD at an earlier date) had brightened significantly in the last few days and was now visible to the naked eye. I ran over to a good vantage point this morning to try and see it, but couldn't. Later that day I used "Your Sky" to figure out where and when I'd have to look to see the comet. I figured I would have to wait until Thursday (When a mass of bitterly cold polar air is forecast to rid the sky of clouds for two days) to get another chance. I was wrong. The sky miraculously cleared about half an our before sunset this evening (Jan 10th) and stayed clear long enough for me to watch the comet for about 20 minutes. It was awesome. I haven't seen a comet with my own two eyes since Hale-Bopp in 1997.

This House Is Clean

I have just finished reinstalling my operating system and all other files on my laptop. My computer is squeaky clean.

Oh, and by the way, I was in Disney World for the last week.

Pineapple Express

It's rained a lot the last few days here in Seattle. That's what happens when moist air blows up from the Southeast. I think this picture sums it up quite nicely.

Shuffling Cards Is Hard Work

It's always weird when my Chemical Engineering background shows its ugly face in unexpected places.

I've been working on a collectible card game for the last couple of months and have just completed the second major revision of my game concept. One of the more annoying hassles with these revisions is that I have to print out, cut and then shuffle the revised deck. It always bothers me that putting the new deck together takes almost as much time as the re-design does.

I've managed to reduce the printing and the cutting to about as efficient a process as they can be without investing in new tools. There's definitely more fat to trim, but I need to wait until I know exactly what the base deck is going to look like.

Until recently, shuffling was the real beast and wildly inefficient in that I could spend a significant amount of time shuffling with a mechanical card shuffler and still come away with a deck that I just KNEW wasn't as random as it should be. The deck is currently quite large (I'll shrink it once I have a stable mechanic and can use play testing to figure out what the minimum optimal size is) so it's difficult to get all the cards spread out through the deck.

Usually what I do is split the cards (which start off as a highly ordered stack where numerous cards of the same type are all right next to one another) into a number of smaller decks that can be processed through the mechanical shuffler. I then split each of these smaller sub-decks in half, combine halves from different sub-decks and then run each recombined sub-deck through the shuffler a number of times. I then split each subdeck in half again and repeat the process. If I'm methodical I can get a decent amount of randomization across the deck, but I have to shuffle a number of different sub-decks that is, at minimum, equal to the square of the initial number of sub-decks. Even after all that, the amount of randomization is sub-optimal.

Shuffling is annoying and I hate doing it. So, having printed and cut the most recent revision, I decided to take a shower and vote before getting down to the business.

Oddly enough, showers seem to be where I've had most of my (hopefully) good ideas regarding my card game, and today was no different. My mind was wandering haphazardly around the topic of card shuffling, when I suddenly thought about, of all things, molecular diffusion.

Imagine if you will, a large tank filled with salt water. Then imagine that I very carefully and slowly add another volume of water, this time with no salt dissolved in it, such that the layer of fresh water essentially sits on top of the salt water. The dissolved salt will immediately begin to diffuse via brownian motion into the fresh water. The water will also diffuse from the fresh water layer into the salt water layer, though probably at a slower mass rate.

Diffusive mixing of liquids is an exceedingly slow process. I remember reading in one of my mass transfer texts that after a year the diffusing molecules described in the system above would only have managed to penetrate a few centimeters into the other layer. This why you stir when you want to mix two things together rapidly. Adding convection into the mix greatly increases the rate of mixing.

And that's the mental leap. Shuffling cards in the previously described manner is essentially a macro version of diffusive mixing. No matter what I do, it's going to take a long time to randomize the molecules, err I mean cards. The only way to increase the rate of mixing is to add in convection. So that's what I did.

I grabbed two large plastic tubs from the basement closet under the stairs and dumped the entire revised deck into one of the tubs. I then transferred those cards into the other tub by letting them fall into it over a distance of a couple of feet. Within about five minutes, the deck was entirely random. Now all I have to do is go through all the cards, repack them into a proper deck and flip half of them around. That will still take far less time than it would have to properly randomize the deck via diffusive mixing.

Sir! Please Put The Christmas Wreath Down!

My partner sent out this email about something that happened last night. I'm just going to paste it here for posterity.

Happy Halloween!

You'll never believe the hilarious end that Aaron and I had to our Halloween night.

We go all out for Halloween with ghosts, ghouls, gravestones, dead bodies, cauldrons, mannequins - the works - and thus we've plunked quite a bit of money into decorations. In past years, teenagers have decided to steal some of the decorations out of our yard late on Halloween night and so we've begun the habit of moving all decorations into the garage after the last trick or treater to avoid theft.

By about 9:00 p.m. Halloween night, the trick or treaters had peetered out and Aaron and I, along with our friend, Suzanne, began to remove our Halloween deocrations from the front garden. This took only approximately 20 minutes (setting up takes 2 days!). Suzanne then took her leave and Aaron and I began to take care of the mannequins and pumpkins that were inside the house. By 9:30 p.m., I was standing on a stool on the back balcony removing a hanging ghoul. I noticed a group of late trick or treaters walking across the street. I quickly jumped down and shouted to Aaron to turn off the lights and close the blinds (as this is what you do when you don't want anymore trick or treaters). I ran inside and helped blow out candles and the like until the inside of the house was completely dark and all Halloween decorations had been removed.

Aaron sat down to work at his computer in the dark kitchen while I ran downstairs to fetch the Fall wreath to put on the front door. When I returned to the main floor, I noticed a light flash across our side windows. I didn't think much of it until I looked through the window adjacent to our front door and saw two people moving around in our front yard with flashlights. I moved closer to the door and noticed two police cars outside and recognized that the people in the front yard were police officers.

"Aaron?" I called into the kitchen, "Why are their police officers on our front lawn?"

Assuming the officers were looking for a thief who had escaped into our neighborhood I opened the front door, the fall wreath still clutched in my hand, and walked out onto our porch. The porch was pitch black as we had turned off all outside lights in addition to those inside. Suddenly, flashlights were pointed at me and a voice shouted at me from the yard (our porch has a half flight of stairs down to the yard).

"Sir! Please step down here! Quickly, Sir!" The voice boomed from behind the flashlight.

I descended our front stairs assuming that I was in danger as there was a "bad guy" using our backyard to hide from the police and the officers were attempting to protect me. I came face to face with one of the officers, a stocky, somewhat attractive white male, and he looked at me very seriously and continued to speak in his firm tone.

"What do you have in your hand? Do you live here, Sir!? Who are you?"

For a fleeting moment, I thought my friends had gotten me a stripper and this was all a joke. But then I noticed a third police car pull up to the house and before I knew it, six police officers were surrounding me. They continued to ask me who I was and if I lived in this duplex. I kept explaining that my partner and I lived in the house and that it was a single-family dwelling, not a duplex. I also explained that it was just a Fall wreath in my hand and I slowly set it down on the front steps.

By now, Aaron had descended the stairs and joined me on the front lawn. The officers continued to pummel us with questions and we kept explaining that we lived at this residence and that there was no one else in the house. They didn't seem to believe us and they kept asking the same questions over and over.

One of the officers checked Aaron's car in the driveway and asked if one of us was Aaron Cooke. Aaron, of course, raised his hand in response.

The head officer finally explained that a burglary had been reported at our house and they needed to confirm that we were not the burglars! The lightbulb went off in my head and I told the officers that we had quickly removed our extensive Halloween decorations and it may have looked as if we were robbing the house - especially when I was high on a stool on the balcony removing a hanging ghoul.

Two of the officers then asked if they could come inside with us and examine our ID's. We continued to explain that the fast removal of our decorations most likely looked suspicious to a neighbor who had not yet met us. When the officers entered the house, they saw the back balcony and it became clear to them that the neighbor assumed that the back balcony was the entrance to the second-half of our supposed "duplex" and my actions to remove the ghoul very much could look as if I was breaking and entering.

The officers examined our ID's and clearly saw that we did indeed live in the house. By then, the officers had calmed down and began laughing with us over the circumstances. At that point, a fourth police car pulled into our driveway! The officers explained that they take burglary calls very seriously and had responded within minutes (no lie!) to the 911 call from our neighbors.

As the officers apologized and thanked us for our cooperation on their way out the door, I asked them if they'd be willing to take a picture with us as our friends would never believe what happened.

Five officers posed with us on our front stairs - the sixth officer took the picture and the other two remained in their car.

As they departed, I jokingly told the lead officer that I thought, at first, he might be a stripper. This caused all of his colleagues to burst into laugther. He looked up at me sheepishly and told me that I had just given his fellow officers teasing ammunition for weeks to come. I apologized, but he then grinned at me. I think I gave him a bit of an ego boost that night!

So...if you live in West Seattle and your report a burglary, know that four police cars and eight officers will come to your rescue!

Enjoy the pic of Aaron and I with Seattle's finest! We're considering using it as this year's Christmas picture!

Happy Halloween!!

Scottland & Aaron

A Bio-luminescent Future

Saturday was the annual Halloween Party at the HOF. Pictures will be forthcoming. My main contribution to the party (besides general help setting it up) was in the lighting department. In particular, I contrived to generate mason jars full of a murky liquid that radiated an eerie glow in a variety of colors. Most party goers seemed to be pretty impressed by them. I know I was.

At one point in the evening, I spoke to Elyse about a concept I have that's related to my science fiction novel. In the novel, a small group of people have access to some pretty far out bio-engineering technology. One of the many non-reproductive artificial life-forms they've created is a type of tree/bush that constantly produces small fruit-like organs. These fruit-like bodies produce luciferin during the day and luciferase at night. The enzyme (luciferase) and the substrate (luciferin) combine after dark to generate a soft green (or whatever color you want I suppose) glow and are used as a means of lighting public spaces (and private ones as well, I suppose.)

Anyhow, the point that I'm getting to is that said organisms already exist!

Gay Book Signings Are Not Different From Straight Books Signings!!!

'Twon and I were chatting on the phone this morning. After a while we got off track and started wandering through a discussion of what makes a twink a twink. We bumped into Lance Bass, who kindly offered himself up as a proto-typical (though rapidly aging) twinkbot. Naturally, he was followed (at a respectable distance so as not to get any twink on his smooth, worked out chest) by Reichen.

Distracted by all things Reichen (Did you know that his original name was Richard and that he's not actually a German citizen?) I sent 'Twon on his merry way. Perusing through Reichen's personal website I discovered that he's just written a book on being closeted and in the Air Force Academy.

He wants you (the potential book purchaser) to know that you DO NOT need an invitation (it's at the bottom of the book tour schedule) to attend a book signing. For some reason, I find this amusing. If I ever manage to get something published, I hope I don't have to make this clarification to my potential readers.

Oh, and by the way, in case you were lucky enough to be invited, the appropriate dress for a Book Party at the Broadway Bar and Grill is business casual, not a fishnet thong.

I Have Seen It

My prediction for future episodes of BSG.

Baltar will be put in some sort of position of power over the Cylons as a counter to the loss of consensus that the Cylons appear to be experiencing. This jives pretty well with the original series.

I'm still waiting for the Space Nazi's and the Glowing Angels.

Inflatable Klingon War-Birds

In Robert Jordan's blog, a recent entry talks about how a writer friend had died. One of the works of this fellow that Jordan mentions is "How Much For Just The Planet?" Jordan considers this to be the only Star Trek comedy ever written.

The little gears in my brain start spinning and I think to myself, "I've read what can only be described as a Star Trek comedy. I wonder if it's the same book?" I pop over to Amazon and look the title up. Sure enough, it IS the novel in question, one of only two I've ever consumed.

I'm not sure I would consider it "good" but it does contain a number of hilarious descriptive scenes that to this day occasionally pop into mind when my brain starts wandering. Just to get a sense of what this literary masterpiece contains, here's a short list of things I remember.

• Di-lithium cookies sheets.
• A partially inflated Klingon War-Bird.
• A Pie fight between the crew of the Enterprise and a number of Klingon diplomats.
• A replicator that uncontrollably spits peppermint milkshake all over the inside of a cramped escaped pod.
• An avian-based humanoid star fleet officer that eats what looks like a bird seed ice cream cone.

Good times.

My Mom Is Famous

Here is the article.

That Would Ennh Oh

Normally, when I read about something vaguely politics/goverment related in the press I have a "on the one hand, but on the other" reaction. In the case of the recent article in the New York Times on loosening regulations to allow more biomedical testing on prisoners, my reaction is an unequivocal "absolutely not, never, maybe when the sun bloats up and boils away the oceans."

To me, the potential for abuse when you combine a profit motive with prisoners that don't live in a free enviroment and that likely won't understand what it is that they're being asked to do is just so ridiculously high that I think it's absurd that people would even consider it. But then again, a lot of people don't seem to think that prisoners are really people so I suppose I shouldn't be surprised.

My What A Big Back Log You Have There

A lot has been accomplished and/or experienced since my last BLOG UPDATE. Here's a quick list:

Went to Sunriver for the week long Bi-Annual Jacobson family reunion.
Rafted the North Upqua.
Visited many exciting volcanic features.
Made much progress on the refurbishment of the yardscape.
Saw Thievery Corporation in concert.
Saw the musical version of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.
Finished the 1st iteration of my capitalism themed CCG.
Watched much of the one and only season of Firefly.
Took many photos of my cat in various compromising positions.

Needless to say, assuming I ever post again, the next few posts will be about the above topics.

The Joys of Owning A Laser Printer

I attempted to print some stuff out on heavy weight paper 216 g/m^2 using the color laser printer that Scottland won last year. It didn't go so well. For some reason, the toner wasn't melting to the paper like it should. Instead, it was falling off and smearing all over the paper. I took a look at the Owners Manual and saw that it contained hardly any useful information. Basically, it told me how to set the printer up and install new paper and toner.

I talked to Rob (Amy's boyfriend) and he suggested that I try using a more glossy type of paper. He also suggested that I go to Paperzone, which is located in SODO, right across the street from the really fancy two level Krispy Kreme. At Paperzone, I had a frustrating conversation with one of their employees. Basically, she told me that guessing the type of paper that would work in a laser printer was a roll of dice. She helpfully pointed out the free samples of paper that you could take to test your printer on. I grabbed a few of those and went home.

My hunch all along had been that I simply didn't have the printer set-up correctly to handle heavy paper like this. After I got home, I ran the samples of paper and had the same problem, though I noticed that the lightest weight paper I grabbed had the least problems. I went through the Owner's Manual more carefully and noticed some references to a "User's Guide." I went through the pile of stuff that came with the printer and found no User's Guide. Then I went to the Dell website and searched through the online technical documentation. After a while, I found the Users guide. It pretty clearly wasn't something that would have been packaged with the printer, as it was more like an interactive help file for your computer than a publishable document.

So, I downloaded the User's Guide and went through. I quickly figured out how to change the weight of paper the printer was expecting to encounter and ran through a couple of print jobs to see if the changes to the printer settings had any effect. Everything printed just fine. And now, I can print onto card stock.

Exciting, no?

Hear My Prayer, Lord of Destruction

Some interesting visuals for your persual.

Magic Mushrooms Are Scientifically Groovy

From the Seattle Times ne Washington Post.

Psilocybin, the active ingredient of "magic mushrooms," expands the mind. After a thousand years of use, that's now scientifically official.

What I'm more curious about is why some people have positive experiences while others have negative experiences.

The Office

This is my office. I just love me some of that bright yellow paint. It's a very warm and inviting room and I don't like leaving it.

Scary Scary

I was perusing LGM and other blogs they link to, and eventually happened onto a comment that led to this blog entry.

She sums the whole thing up nicely and without all the bloviating clap-trap you see on most right and left blogs these days. All I have to add is, "what in the nine hells is wrong with people these days?"

It seems like the internet makes people more comfortable with busting out the type of stuff that you'd usually only hear the crazy haired guy wearing the 'JEEBUS IS COMING!!!!!!!!!' sandwhich board standing on the street corner say.

Phases of the Moon

I just took some pictures of my beloved Cascadian House Tiger and put them together as a single piece. I think they're kind of cool. This is a photo-sequence of her reaction to me as I came up from behind with a camera while she was stretched out near the door to the upper porch.

At long last . . . Something to blog about

After all, I can't imagine that the two people who read this really care to hear more about my daily efforts to revitalize the grounds at Chateu West Seattle.

Scottland and I saw An Inconvenient Truth on Saturday and we both thought it was relatively well done and informative. More so for the S.O. I think, as I've already seen or read most of the technical material. I did not, however, know that China has higher vehicle fuel efficiency standards than the US.

We both agree that the personal material wasn't as good and we would rather have seen more of the presentation. I figure that the personal information was put in for those audience members that would come down with a bad case of the Narcolepsy if they had to sit through two hours of technical presentation. Cynical types claim that the personal information was in there because Al Gore is planning on running for President again in 2008. I'm not quite sure I follow the logic of that argument.

Oddly enough, watching the movie made me think a bit about South Park. This season there was an episode titled Manbearpig that lampooned Al Gore. After I saw the episode I did a quick bit of research and figured out that the episode was specifically mocking Al Gore's global warming talk. Taking the episode at face value, Manbearpig is global warming doesn't really exist. Al Gore is just talking about it as an attempt to get people to pay attention to him.

Now, I don't really have a problem with the show making fun of Al Gore, but I do take issue with those ass-hats trying to take the position that human caused global warming doesn't exist. Scottland says I shouldn't take the cartoon too seriously and he's probably right. Still, I'm just bothered by it.

X-Men 3 : The Last Stand

Saw it with Ron, Andrea and Ryan. I wasn't very impressed. Ron put it best with, "Better than Star Trek 3, Worse than Star Trek 1."

Jacked Into the GRID

I'm posting from my laptop while sitting at my desk in my fancy new, bright yellow ofice. I will post pictures later. This room is 100% undiluted Aaron.

Also, for those who were burning up inside wanting to know the answer, it turns out that the problem with one of the CD's from Amazon was caused by the CD drive in my lap-top beginning to crap out. The other CD really was defective. It looked like someone had leaked some kind of solvent all over the read side of the disc.

UPDATEUPDATEUPDATE

Long time no post. Since my last post I have dropped out of graduate school, moved back to Seattle and am now living with my partner, Scottland. In the future, I will attempt to be a published writer of some sort. A more in-depth update will be forthcoming, though I have a hunch that the five or so people that read my blog already know most of the details.

In the meantime, please read this pro-nuclear power article written by the founder of Greenpeace.