Thingtestataionessality.

Chinese restaurant called TRANSLATE SERVER ERROR

2008-07-16T10:59:00.000-07:00

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/07/15/chinese-restaurant-c.html

Good times.

New Favorite Song - Mushaboom

2008-05-31T14:36:00.000-07:00

Feist - Mushaboom, from the album Let it Die. (download)

So many of you probably know how lots of the music I enjoy comes from movie soundtracks. In particular, I'm kinda in love with the Garden State soundtrack. I was even reading a forum the other day where there was a whole thread about other artists to look at if you liked that soundtrack. There were a bunch of recommendations, including Feist, who I had never heard of at the time. I became and instant fan.

Days later, literally days, the new ipod nano came out and the commercial was basically her music video for her song "1, 2, 3, 4", which is a good song, sure, but I was like... "fuck, now everyone likes her. I'm not hip anymore" So this song, which by the way is way better than "1, 2, 3, 4" is my swan song to the 2 days I was hip. Enjoy.

BTW, if her song had been "1, 1, 2, 3" him... well then... different story.

New Favorite Song - Paper Planes

2008-05-10T14:11:00.000-07:00

M.I.A. Paper Planes (download)

So I'm sitting in Delta of Venus eating my Mexican scramble... no wait, I'm waiting in line about to order my Mexican scramble and soy decaf mocha and this song comes on. Delta usually plays some pretty eclectic stuff, so it's a nice place to hang out if you want to hear stuff you wouldn't normally hear. Actually, I'm not about to put my hip cred on the line here, for all I know, I'm the last person to have heard this song.

It's one of those songs that you hear and can't help but nodding your head to the beat. Remember that scene from "High Fidelity" where John Cusack's character throws on "Dry the Rain" by the Beta Band, and everyone in the store starts to bob along. You know, right before the shoplifter scene. Yeah... It's like that. Who doesn't love lyrics like:

No one on the corner has swag like us
Hit me on my burner prepaid wireless
We pack and deliver like UPS trucks
Already going hell just pumping that gas

The only problem is that I was just doing some video editing and had to download a David Hasselhoff song as a joke for the soundtrack which comes on right after Paper Planes if I don't catch it in time. Lame. So consider this my first installment of my New Favorite Song. Come back for more.

Burning man plans

2008-04-05T22:18:00.001-07:00

Hey kids!

Just wanted to shout out (in the parlance of our times) to those of you 1) I know are going to burning man, or 2) I still may convince to go. I'm sure some of you already have plans, but I wanted to let you know my plans and invite any of you who were interested to join.

Look, I've got certain information, certain things have come to light, and uh, Avi and I are going to have a Big Lebowski themed camp, but probably a pretty casual attempt at it, quite possibly the laziest in black rock city. We plan on setting up a bowling lane, offering free white russians and sasperilla, (maybe some lingenberry pancakes) and setting up a generator/laptop/projector

/screen to show Big Lebowski... well... not nessecarily every night. I'm thinking of making a big sign calling the camp either Logjammin' or Gutterballs.

woh... lost my train of thought here.

Unfortunately, I'm probably only going to be able to get there Wednesday night. But I guess that's the way the whole darned human comedy keeps perpetuating itself, down through the generations, westward the wagons, across the sands of time unit-- aw, look at me, I'm ramblin' again.

To get tickets (if you still need them) go to:
http://tickets.burningman.com/
they are currently $295.

Take 'er easy for the rest of us. Catch you further on down the trail,

-Andy

A Show With Everything but Yul Brynner

2008-01-14T18:30:00.000-08:00

So we finally left the island about 2 days after we thought we would. I know, I'm in Thailand and there are thousands of other things to do, but... it's a very hard place to leave. I was even asking about internships at one of the dive shops (I'm horribly under qualified by the way). We spent the first 4 nights on the busy part of the island (between Tonsai Bay and Lodalum Bay), and then we moved up to Laemthong Beach for 2 nights on the north side of the island which is a lot quieter. This area turned out to be mostly honeymooning newlyweds so the three of us were a little out of place.

There are a handful of other small islands around the main island, and we hit a number of them, hanging out at the beach or diving. I was looking online for a map of all the islands to add here, but couldn't really find anything to my liking. I'll have to put together some sort of Google Maps/Earth travel map when I get back. Because yes, I will admit it, I've been using my GPS to track where we've been.

I did finally put some pictures up. Check out my Picasa web album to see them. I only uploaded a few of the many I took, because I usually like to go through and edit them before I post them, but I thought a couple of you might be anxious to see what I'm up to.

The bad news is that I didn't make it to Angkor Wat. Mostly because we stayed a couple extra days on Ko Phi Phi and I would have had to skip most my time in Bangkok. Brandon and Doug weren't interested so I would have had to make the trip to Cambodia on my own, which I might still have considered had it been super easy. I called around and checked on the web for tour information and was getting rather complicated and mixed results. I'm sure in the end I could have made it work, but I decided I would be fine spending 2 days exploring Bangkok instead.

Which is what we did. We got in really late so the first morning was spent sleeping in fairly late the next day. Doug went to meet his friend Chin who lives in Bangkok, and Brandon and I wandered around some of the famous shopping areas. Most noteable was the Panthip Plaza, which is 6 stories of consumer electronic shops, and the Chatuchak Weekend Market, which is a huge outdoor market where you can buy pretty much anything from food to cheap cloths to... pets. I wasn't feeling great that night, so I skipped out when the other guys went clubbing.

The next day we went to Wat Pho, the location of the famous reclining Buddha. Next door was the Grand Palace where we saw more temples. After that... more food, more bars, more walking, more temples. Then, a dinner cruise down the Chao Phraya River. Which can only be explained by this video I took.

Our last night we went to perhaps the most amazingly swanky bar I've ever been to. I took a couple pictures, but the ones on company site are much better. I can't describe it, you really should just look at the pictures.

We said goodbye to Brandon in Tokyo, and Doug and I are now staying with our old high school friend Bryan Hollar (remember that guy!?) . We just got here, so I'll post more latter. I'm having a lot of trouble with Bryan's Japanese keyboard, and every time I go for the space bar in the wrong spot my writing starts to 絵えいおえおあ or something. I have no idea what that says.

Editorial note: blogger is giving me trouble right now when I try to upload inline images so I've given up after just the two. I'll try to add more later.

Day 5 in Thailand

2008-01-07T06:43:00.000-08:00

I found an internet cafe on Ko Phi Phi so I'll try to take a moment to post an update on my trip so far. Actually, it wasn't really hard to find one.

For a tropical island they seem to have plenty of them. You walk down the street (path really) and the stores go like this: Massage parlor ("Maasaaaage?? You want Maaasaaaaaage?"), tattoo parlor (you don't want to know how temped I am, if only to try to communicate to them how to do a tattoo of Euler's equation.), smoothie bar, dive shop, restaurant/bar, internet cafe, massage parlor and so on with the occasional souvenir shop tucked in.

There's so much to tell, but it's somewhat late, and I'm getting up for an early dive tomorrow, so I'd like to go to bed at some point, but I'll try to hit the highlights. As I mentioned in my last email, we were looking into the scuba diving, and once we got to Phi Phi island Brandon and I signed up for the 3 day course which gives you a lifetime certification to rent scuba gear internationally. Doug is already certified so he's been finding ways to entertain himself for the last 2 days while Brandon and I are in the classroom or out in the water. Doug is going to join us tomorrow, when we go on our last day of diving for the course. I've really been enjoying it, but completely expect that what my brother-in-law Neil warned me will be true: that as soon as you go scuba diving, snorkeling feels pretty lame. In fact today where we dived, there were a handful of snorkelers who were in the water near us, and I couldn't help feel anything but pity sitting on the ocean floor staring up at them desperately trying to dive deep enough to briefly see the fish up close. In just 2 dives today we saw a lion fish, puffer fish, moray eel, jelly fish (or something that looks like jellyfish), 2 leopard sharks (maybe 8 feet long), an octopus and a shit load of other crazy cool fish I've already forgotten the names of.

I can also see why this becomes addictive for some people, both scuba diving, and the whole island living thing. My instructor told me how she began working here. She originally showed up on the island to vacation for a week. She walked into a dive shop and asked them about doing a dive day trip and they asked her how much experience she had. She said she was a master diver and they asked her when she could start. "No, I'm just interested in diving today", "When can you start working?" the repeated. That was 3 years ago.

The island is nice but it is pretty tourist heavy. I'm trying very hard not become That Tourist. You know, the one who complains they heard such and such place was better before everyone found out about it and now it's super crowded without any trace of irony. But I still feel a bit of regret that it's so overrun, tempered with guilt knowing I'm just as much to blame. After a couple of days though, you just start to see through it, and you start to find the little things that make it feel more comfortable. The couple from Canada who you keep running into who are super nice. The amazing sunsets and natural beauty of the land. The bar you like on the beach that isn't so crowded, that serves white russians and pad thai, that plays a strange combination of electronic trance and Credence Clearwater Revival (trust me, it feels more natural then it sounds). Eventually you just kinda ingore all the rest that isn't going anywhere, but isn't really getting in the way of your experience anyway. Dear family and friends: be thankful I'm not a master diver (or have any other tourist industry skills), I'm not sure when you would see me again.

(Obviously none of these pictures are mine. Just like the Guatemala pics, there ones I shamelessly stole off the internet. The two landscapes are actually Ko Phi Phi. I'm hoping to buy a waterproof camera tomorrow, but I'm told the pictures don't really come out that well. And yes, I'm taking plenty of my own pictures as are Brandon and Doug, so I'll have plenty to bore you with later.)

Anyway, We leave on the 9th, and most likely straight back to Bangkok. We are going to try to get at least a day in Cambodia at Angkor Wat, but we've yet to figure out how that is going to happen. Hope you are all doing well. :)

Safely in Thailand

2008-01-07T06:37:00.000-08:00

Hey kids! (and Lucas and Stacie who've made it clear they are adults and don't find myfamilial endearments clever)-

Quick note. I made it safely to Thailand. We flew into Bangkok where we spent the firstnight then flew into Phuket today. Tomorrow we are taking a boat to the island of Kho PhiPhi (insteresting fact: it was where the movie The Beach was filmed which probably meansit's going to be way over crowded). I think I am going to get scuba trained while we'rehere because I've heard it's slot more fun then doing it in the states.

Very little is planned after that until the 13th when we need to be back in Bangkok forBrandon's flight home (except we are going to try to pop over the border to Cambodia for acouple of days to see Angkor Wat if we can). Then doug and i fly the next day to Tokyo.We spend a week there then back to Cali in time for me to start the new job (assuming Iactually got it... Long story...er...long other story)

What Kind of Subatomic Particle are You?

2007-12-23T11:45:00.000-08:00

I know... normally I hate these sort of quizzes. But it's the holidays, and I'm a little bored today. Embrace your inner geek today.

What kind of subatomic particle are you?

Neutron -- You don't take sides, you just sort of hang out and blend into the crowd. If someone lets you loose though, you can cause some serious damage. If you are arround too many other neutrons you get bored and start to decay.
Take this quiz!

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Your Fake Twitter, Courtesy of Facebook

2007-12-17T21:13:00.000-08:00

I signed on to twitter a while ago, mostly because Phil browbeat me into it, but it sounded like a great idea, making text messaging social. Txting 2.0 if you will. I don't want to go into a lot of detail about what it involves, but in order to understand the rest of this post, it's important you understand at least a little bit about what Twitter does.

From the Twitter Wikipedia article:

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send "updates" (text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) to the Twitter website, via short message service, instant messaging, email, or [desktop] applications...

Updates are displayed on the user's profile page and instantly delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them... Users can receive updates via the Twitter website, instant messaging, SMS, RSS, email or through an application.

So... in short, if I'm sitting at Common Grounds Coffee in Davis, I can txt from my phone to Twitter "Hanging out at Common Grounds" and whoever has an account set up to "follow" me will get a txt on there phone with my latest post. Sounds fun huh?

The only problem is I have a grand total of 3 friends on Twitter, so it kinda limits the whole socialness aspect. Thats where Facebook comes in.

Facebook which has a similar concept with their "status" field which recently got updated with mobile abilities. You can txt your status to facebook, and set up the site to txt you when your friends change their status. It's slightly less feature rich, and far less hip, but basically accomplishes the same thing, a stream of random updates of what my friends are up to. I have over 70 facebook friends, so that makes it a no-brainer for me.

Plus I don't have to abandon Twitter altogether, right now I can send one text message to both facebook and twitter, just in case I start to use twitter more in the future.

Eddie Izzard- Death Star Canteen

2007-12-17T16:30:00.001-08:00

Someone has way too much time on their hands. But God bless them for it. For those of you who know what a big Eddie Izzard fan I am, you'll know I couldn't help but pass this along. This guy also has a bunch of other lego/Izzzard mashups, but this is the best.

Found via silliness.org

Tag: The Movie Trailer 2001

2007-12-04T00:33:00.001-08:00

When I was at UCSC my friends Brendon and Mick (and others) got together to make this movie. Although I played a small role in the production, I'm proud to have been a part in this brilliant work. See if you can spot me. Thanks to Brendon for digging this up again.

Debbie Turns 50

2007-09-16T00:55:00.000-07:00

I made this video in 2004 for my mother's 50th birthday. It's the first time I tried to make a "slideshow" type video, and the first time I tried to use Adobe Premiere.

Comm?union

2007-09-16T00:47:00.000-07:00

As a senior at UC Santa Cruz, I was involved in the annual theater festival known as Chautauqua. The festival is made up of entirely student written, directed, acted and produced plays and films. One of the interesting works that was accepted that year was a Italian Futurist "script". I put script in quotes because in the true vein of Italian Futurism, it was just an one page diagram with abstract designs and words written all over it. Four directors were chosen to interpret this diagram and produce a short staged version. As you can imagine each director took it in an entirely different direction and all 4 productions were as interesting as the were divergent. The process fascinated me so much that I decided to do a short video project about it I interviewed the author (Kelly) and the 4 directors and cut together a video which was also shown in the festival. Originally I wanted to make the video itself follow the theme of Italian Futurism, fast, chaotic and inevitably confusing. It wasn't pretty, so I started over. In the end though, I found a nice (I would say post-modern) editing balance of enough jumping around to respect the ideas of Italian Futurism, but narrative enough to actually tell a story. I hope that the viewers felt the compromise worked.

It's one of the first videos I ever made (with some video logging help from my friend Mike), and looking at it now, I definitely notice it's shortcomings. But I left it intact just the same.

Rachel and Neil's Wedding Video

2007-09-11T18:17:00.001-07:00

The video slideshow I made for Rachel and Neil for the wedding on 7/7/07. Granted, the quality isn't that great considering youtube's limitations. But you get the picture. Again, thanks to everyone who helped me out.

Videos from Guatemala

2007-09-11T18:05:00.000-07:00

I took a bunch of videos with my digital camera, and as such, they aren't the highest quality. But a handful of them were fun, so I thought I'd throw them up here. Emjoy!

Lava at the top of Pacaya:

Pacaya, as we were driving away we saw eruptions from the the top of the volcano:

We took a tour of a cave near Coban, and as we were leaving thousands of bats flew by us to get outside:

Some random parade we encountered while in Antigua. I think it was a high school performance of some sort:

Weirdest thing ever. I wish I could tell you what the hell is going on here, but I don't speak Spanish:

OK, I'll Tell You

2007-09-04T12:33:00.000-07:00

So I'm back, safe and sound.

For those of you who didn't figure it out, I went to Burning Man. The first time for me. For those of you who have never gone and want to know what it's like, I can tell you some stuff, but really you have to experience it for yourself. There is a quote on the web page that says something like "trying to describe burning man to someone who hasn't gone, is like trying to describe a color to a blind person." It's kinda true.

I took a bunch of pictures with Doug's camera, so I have to wait until I get them from him to put them up. I'll let you know. If you want a sneak peak, just look at flickr pictures from burning man 2007.

The only thing I would enjoy more is if next year, I could get a bunch of friends to go. Think about it. Don't you need a week off in August?

Out of Contact

2007-08-29T12:51:00.000-07:00

Hi kids,

I'll be out of contact (both phone and email) for a number of days, but should be back to civilization on Monday the 3rd. See you all then! I'll be in Nevada if you must know.

Breaking News!

2007-08-23T15:49:00.000-07:00

The Wall Street Journal is always on the cutting edge of tech news. I'm sure you don't know this yet, but the kids these days are using an alternate slang vocabulary fueled by habits formed in chat rooms and online gaming. Even appropriating misspellings of words and using numbers in place of letters. Crazy kids! What will they think of next?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118679550023894850.html?mod=fpa_editors_picks

In other news, the Wall Street Journal is breaking the story of an alleged affair by president Clinton. Impeachment proceedings to follow? Stay up to date with The WSJ.

2007-08-20T23:35:00.000-07:00

I've tried to hold my blog to at least some standard of maturity. I have now failed at that. This made absolutely no sense to me, but I could not stop watching it.

There is The Confusion!

2007-08-11T21:15:00.000-07:00

Not really, but I wanted to let you kids (who read my blog) know a couple of things.

1. I am back safe and sound from Guatemala. It was a fantastic trip.

2. The last post was actually written before I left, but the reason you are not seeing it until now is that I didn't get a chance to edit and proof it and add pictures... er... picture. Because...

3. As soon as I got home, I got hit hard with some sort of head cold which has really taken me out of commission. Those who know me well, know I don't really get sick that often, and this took me by surprise. The only thing that makes sense is that my body was nice enough to know that getting sick while traveling was not in it's best interest, and just waiting until I got home to pounce.

4. I am currently uploading everything from my trip. Here you can find pictures (on Picasa Web Albums), and here are the videos (on YouTube). Yes I'm a Google whore.

5. When I get a chance and have the interest, I'm planning on going back to the posts and rewriting them, and swapping out the pictures for ones I actually took myself. Maybe even some interpost video as well. You're lucky I didn't bring my GPS unit, or you would have to suffer some KML based travel narratives on Google Earth. OOOO lucky you...

6. Honestly, I've been a little bummed that I haven't gotten any comments on my blog in a while. What, you guys don't care? Or even more surprising, you guys don't have any snarky comments to make?

Last Post From Guatemala

2007-08-07T18:25:00.000-07:00

So, tomorrow is my last day down here, so this will likely be my last post. I intend to go back and edit all of my old posts and add actual pictures I took, maybe add more detail as well considering I wrote the posts rather quickly and it's a lot of "then I did this, then I did this, Oh!, then we did this thing". Kinda boring and list-y. Speaking of boring and list-y:

We left San Marcos on Thursday and took a boat across the lake to the city of Santiago Atitlan. It's the biggest of the cities around the lake, but doesn't get nearly the tourist interest as Panajachel or San Pedro. Even so, it's still full of tourist, which would bother me if I wasn't, well, one of them.

We only went through Santiago to catch a bus (finally I got to ride one of the famed Guatemalan Chicken Busses) towards San Lucas, but got of early. We were headed to a small farm run by a guy Nikki met years ago while in the Peace Corps. He came to her school in Belize to talk about the work he was doing on his permaculture farm, called IMAP, and told Nikki that if she was ever in the area, we should come visit it. We didn't give him much warning, I think Nikki emailed him a day or so before, but he still extended the offer again, and even said we should stay at his house.

After we got off the bus in what seemed the middle of nowhere, we walked down a dirt path for about 20 minutes until we saw signs for IMAP, which stands for Institute of MesoAmerican Permaculture (not Internet Message Access Protocol. Geeks.) I can't say I know much about it, it's deffinately more Nikki's balywick, but it's a type of sustainable aggraculture. We took a tour of the farm, and the primary goal seems to be education. Everything they do on the farm, they try to do in a way that is replicable. Follow the links above if you want to find out more about it.

Friday morning we took a boat to Panajachel, where we did some shopping. Pana, the tourist and travel hub of the lake, is nice, but not much to talk about. We stayed one night and left early in the morning headed to Coban, known for it's coffee production and eco-adventure-tourism. So of course we had to check out both.

The first day there we took a shuttle 2 hours to a site called Semuc Champey, which is basically a nature reserve surounding a series of pools and waterfalls above an underground river, and is possible the most beautiful place I have seen in my life. The travel pakage we bought included a guide to take us first up a long hike to a view point where you can see all the pools, then you walk back down, and swim from pool to pool, evetuall taking a rope ladder down below one of the waterfalls into the cave where the river cames back out of the ground. Yeah, totally boring sounding, I know. I'm going to wait until I can get my own pictures up before I go into more detail, but if you ever go to Guatemala, this is something you cannot miss.

That same day, on the way back to Coban, we stopped at the Lanquin Caves for a short hike in and out of some of the larger caverns. As we were leaving, we happend to be there at exactly the right time of day, when all the bats start flying out. I'm talking thousands of bats, thick as a swarm of flys. Some of the parts of the cave are so narrow, that the bats had to fly at and around us to get out. So close that a couple of them actually hit me.

The next day was a pretty lazy one in Coban. We visited the Dieseldorff family coffee plantation on the southern end of the town. The tour itself was short but informative, and the best part was the coffee tasting at the end.

After that, one day back in Antigua to rest, and then fly back in the morning.

On the Lake

2007-08-01T11:20:00.000-07:00

It´s officially half way through my trip here, and I´ve been putting off writing another entry because... well, I´ve just been lazy.

We made it safely to Xela on Thursday, although the traffic was pretty bad. 7 hours on a shuttle instead of the 4-5 it should have taken. But it was worth it. We stayed at the same house that Nikki had been staying at before I came, so she knew the family and most all the other students staying there. Almost all the meals we ate were family style our hosts kitchen. She made some great strawberry pancakes.

One night we went to a local theater which I was surprised to find out was just a large tv screen with couches set up around it. Although we were the only ones there, so we got to pick from a list of about 150 movies they had, and start it whenever we want. It made me think that would be a great business idea in the states, to get a building with a bunch of smallish rooms that could hold about 15 people max, and have movies they could pick from and serve them food. It possible illegal though, considering the laws about public showing of movies may be interpreted pretty strickly. Regardless, it was a great place to hang out. Only downside? They didn´t have The Big Lebowski.

Another side trip was to Fuentes Georginas, a natural hot spring about an hours drive away. 2 of Nikki´s house mates, Jamesh and Wendy joined us, and we ended up staying in the water for hours.

On Sunday we took a shuttle to Panajachel, which is known as a touristy place with lots of shopping, but we only stopped for a quick bite before jumping on a boat to San Marcos La Laguna, where we have spent most the last 3 days. The boat trip was pretty harsh. Although it was only 40 minutes or so to cross Lago de Atitlan, it was incredibly crowded and we were lucky to get the seats that we did. Others were forced to sit up on (or just hug) the walls of the small boat. If we had hit any serious turbulence, I´m sure a couple of them would have ended up in the water.

San Marcos is beautiful. My guide book describes it as ¨Guatemala´s premier New Age Centre¨ but I´m not really sure I see that. It´s tiny, hardly anyone here. There is a small native village up the hill which gives the area it´s name, but we´ve stayed mainly down by the water where the hotels, restaurants, and ok... yoga and meditation centers are. We got a great room at the Aaculaax, which is a hotel made almost entirely from recycled materials. It´s a little more pricey then most hotels in the area, 250 Quetzals a night (a little over $30, 1Q = 7.5$ ish) but the view is amazing, especially from our room. I´ve never regretted more that I am unable to upload the pictures I have taken, but it will just have to wait.

I´ve haven´t been this lazy in years. That´s saying a lot considering I´ve been unemployed the last 7 months. The town is so small there are no banks, real stores or anything like that, so as we were running out of money (and things to do), we had to jump on a boat across the lake to San Pedro La Laguna where we found an ATM, after a 5Q taxi ride up the hill. It was one of those auto rickshaws I saw all over the place in India. It reminded me how much I wanted one in the States, it´s perfect for around town travel. Anyway, we bought some playing cards, and dice in San Pedro, and after lunch, jumped on a boat back to San Marcos. I wasn´t so lucky this time, and was a wall huger all the way back. I was pretty soaked by the time we got off.

This morning we ate at the hotel restaurant which we have eaten at every morning we´ve been here. When Nikki stayed here before, one of her favorite things was their crepes. You could get almost anything on it, but their specialty was nutela and bananas. The first morning when we tried to order them, they told us the blender was broken, so no crepes, pancakes, liquados or anything like that. Devastated, we went ahead and ordered other things, and I have to say, the best thing I have eaten this entire trip was the bacon, egg, cheese sandwich I got. We went back every morning only to be told the same thing, the blender was broken, but it would be fixed tomorrow. Finally, today they had borrowed a blender from a neighbor and we were able to have our crepes. Worth the wait, but I have to say the sandwich was better.

I can´t say enough how peaceful it is here. It reminds me of the tea plantations I visited in Kerala, India a few summers ago. Much different climate, but the same solitude and comfort. Just like there, this is the type of place I would imagine going if I wanted to escape from the world to write a book or play or something like that. If you need a retreat from life, seriously consider coming here.

Thats all we´ve done so far. Next on the list is Coban. The internet (and power) here is a little sketchy, so I haven´t had a chance to proof this because the computer keeps crashing, so I´m just going to post as is. I´ll clean it up and add pictures later.

First Couple Days

2007-07-26T12:35:00.000-07:00

Ok, I have a little more time today to actually check in. Let me catch you up.

My friend Nikki came down here to Guatemala (Via Belize) several months ago. She is going to a spanish school in Xela (also known as Quetzaltenango, the second largest city) and even though I keep telling her her spanish is just fine (as if I could tell), she is now planning on staying until December. She was in Belize for 3 years doing peace corps and I always said I would visit but never did. So I finially had to make good on this trip.

Anyway, I flew down here on the 23rd, but didn´t actually get in until the 24th. I flew into Guatemala City (the capital and largest city), but didn´t really see any of it, unless you count staring out the window of a cab. I made it to Antigua (the old capital) within a couple hours and met Nikki at the hotel. We didn´t do much beyond wander around Antigua becuase I was pretty tired from the red-eye flight. We did see some beautiful cathedrals though, one of the things Antigua is known for.

Yesterday, the 25th (happy late birthday Dani! Sorry for missing it) we hiked up Pacaya, an active volcano outside of town. It was a pretty brutal hike up, Í´d tell you the elevation change, but I chose to leave my GPS unit in the states (I know! Crazy!). It was the first time I have ever seen active lava flows, not to mention getting within about 20 ft of them. We even toasted marshmellows. I took some pictures, but haven´t figured out how to upload them yet. I´ll let you know. The hike down was even worse though, becuase it started to get dark as the fog was rolling in, and at some point we lost members of our tour group (not to worry, we found them at the base). Nikki and I stumbled every couple minutes, and it´s amazing neither of us fell. We saw others fall, but I don´t think anyone got too hurt.

Shortly, we´re about to get on the bus to go to Xela, where I´ll get to meet some of the people in Nikki´s classes. She just got a job at a cafe there that she starts after I leave, and she has an interview for a job teaching enlish while we are there. I think we stay until Sunday. Then on to Lago de Atitlán.

Hope everyone is doing well, and I´ll post again as soon as I can.

GUA

2007-07-25T13:03:00.000-07:00

Quick message, because we are about to take off to go climb an active volcano, but I just wanted everyone (the few of you who read this blog at least) to know I made it to Guatemala safely and met up with Nikki in Antigua. I will try to write once in a while when I get a chance, but if not, I will be back on the 9th and will let you all know then.

Shitty Weekend

2007-06-24T21:53:00.001-07:00

Ug...

So on Thursday I bought a brand new digital camera (the Canon Powershot
S3 IS if anyone cares) and was having a great time playing with it.
It's the first camera I've had that actually seems to have a decent lens
and seems to take great pictures. It has all sorts of fun goodies like
12X optical zoom and complete manual controls. It was only 6
megapixels, but does it really matter past like... 5? Anyway, great
camera. A great camera that I owned for all of... say 28 hours.
Seriously. It's now either floating in the back of a cab in San
Francisco or a cab driver or passenger is one Canon Powershot S3 IS
richer. Damnit. I hadn't even started drinking that night so I can't
really blame anything but my own carelessness. The cab company's lost
and found opens up on Monday, and even though I still have the receipt
with the cab number and everything, whenever I call they just say to
call on Monday and talk to the lost and found folks.

Also, this morning I was driving to meet a friend from brunch in West
Sacramento and as I pulled off the freeway I almost ran a red light.
Actually "almost" is to nice a word. I zoned out for some reason, and
when I realized what I was doing I was part way into the intersection.
I slammed on my breaks stopped about half way in (didn't hit anyone
thank God) and then backed up to my line shamefully. Then I noticed the
cop sitting on the other side of the intersection. So I sat through my
red light, knowing I was moments away from getting a ticket for running
a red light. I basically just pulled over once I crossed the
intersection and the cop pulled up behind me with his lights on. At
least I can do traffic school.

What bothers me most though, more then the ticket, which is in the end
just money, is that I have no idea why I was spacing, and complete
surprised myself at how dangerous I was driving. I could have killed
myself or someone else. I mean, I don't really do shit like that. I
know what you're going to say, that people who run red lights may not
even notice, so maybe I am doing it all the time. But I noticed I was
running it, and that I don't think I've ever done before. Maybe I'm
just a crappy driver.

Lame...

Good news

2007-05-24T20:23:00.000-07:00

Hi all,

I know I'd talked to a number of you about this, but I know I didn't talk to
everyone becuase my mom herself wasn't until recently being public about it
outside of a small group of friends and family. Before you get worried I'll
tell the end first and say she is home safely.

About 2 months ago my mom went in to see a doctor about chest pains. During a
routine x-ray, they saw a suspicious lump in her chest. Further tests revealed
good and bad, it was indeed a tumor (about the size of an egg) but it was on
her rib, and not on her lung as they had feared most. Other evidence such as
calcification, seemed to lead the doctors to believe it was benign, but they
still didn't want to take a chance of leaving it in. She was scheduled for
surgery to remove the entire upermost left rib, and part of her breastbone.
Apparently becuase that rib is partial under the collar bone you can function
just fine without it. Although the surgeon did point out her rugby career was
over. The only complication is that the area of the chest they were working in
was quite delicate as many importand nerves and arteries went through there.

She went through surgery on tuesday. Neil and Rachel came up from Berkeley, as
well as my mother's friend Helen and I to spend pretty much the whole day in
the hospital. The had her scheduled for 1 o'clock, but she wasn't awake enough
to say goodbye to until about 10 that night.

In the end she recoved amazingly well, and the 3 to 5 days they estimated that
she would need to recover in the hospital turned into 2 days, which is great.
I brought her home today and she will still require 2 weeks or so of physical
recovery, which means I'm pretty much staying in davis for the next two weeks
to help her out.

They are going to do tests on the removed lump now that it is out (doing a
biopsy ealier would have been practically as hard as removing it considering
it's location.) At this point, it may just be accademic whether or not it's
cancerous, but I guess knowing may affect future treatment.

Anyway, this email was mostly a lazy way of letting you guys all know at once
that she is doing good if you were worrying about her, but since I had forgoten
who I'd talked to about it previously, ironically this email may just serve to
worry you. Sorry about that.

Hope you are all doing well, and I hope to see you soon!

-a

Hotel for Rachel's wedding

2007-05-23T20:22:00.000-07:00

Hey kids! (er... those invited to my sister's wedding)

Just wanted to let you know I'll be getting a room at the Courtyard Marriott in
Emeryville, the one mentioned on the invite that all the out of town guests are
going to stay at. You may have already gotten a room yourself or live close
enough that you will just go home after, but I wanted to let you know that as a
backup plan (or as your only plan) you can of course crash in my room. They'll
be lots of people going from the reception to the Hotel, so if you end up
drinking too much and can't make it home you'll know this is always an option.

Plus... it's where the cool kids are having the after party, cause they are
kicking us out of the hall in Piedmont at 11.

Yay weddings!

-a

P.s. if more than a couple people actually take me up on this i can't offer
anything better then
slumber-party-style-blankets-on-floor-space-or-bed-craming. but if you think
you're too old for that then that is just sad. plus less than ideal sleeping
conditions is always better than drinking and driving.

Pictures!

2007-05-21T20:15:00.000-07:00

Hi kids!

I just wanted to let you know that I've been using flickr (www.flicker.com) to
upload pictures from my camera phone here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/71207411@N00/

In the past I've found camera phones to be, well, the dumbest thing ever. I
always got phones that had them, but the novelty quickly wore off because the
quality was poor, and it was difficult to get the pictures off. Especially
with sprint service. I just discovered that using flickr is a non-crappy way
to display pictures from my phone. When you sign up (free!) you can set up and
email address that you allows you to email pictures from you phone. And now
that my new phone can take pictures just over a megapixel, they aren't nearly
as bad as they used to be.

Anyway, I'm letting you know this for 2 reasons. First, of course I love to be
the center of attention and love people to check out my pictures and leave
comments or whatever, but also, I wanted to let you all know how cool flickr is
and if you have a camera phone and haven't really figured out what to do with
the pictures, you should really give it a try.

There aren't a huge number of pictures up yet, but I've found myself actually
uploading a picture or so most days, so check back every once and a while. If
you are technically inclined and like that sort of thing, you can also get the
rss feed of my photos here:

http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gne?id=71207411@N00&format=rss_200

Also, If you do end up setting up and account, or if you already use flickr,
please let me know because I'd love to see your pictures as well.

-a

New Blog

2007-05-02T14:50:00.000-07:00

So I got a little tired of Wordpress, not because it is bad software, but because I really didn't want to put in the investment of constantly updating it, uploading patches, and constant customization. Call me lazy, but there it is. Also, the commenting was getting out of control, I had over 3000 spam comments and didn't want to go through deleting them. The idea of moderating comments is lame. I much prefer the captcha method, but it didn't seem to be available in Wordpress, so I switched to blogger for that (and the above reasons).

A note on the transfer of old posts. There was no export/import option, so I did it all manually copy/paste style, which presented a couple problems. Firstly, because I had a bunch of lame posts on my old blog that were mostly just camera phone pictures, a system I am now using flickr for, I just deleted a bunch of them. Secondly, although I was able to back-date the posts, the comments were not so manageable, and now all the old comments appear to have been posted today, May 2nd. Whatever.

Hope you enjoy the new blog, let me know if you think anything is missing.

Fun Raft Trip!

2007-04-23T20:32:00.000-07:00

Hey Kids in the greater bay area! (and avi who is an honarary BA resident).

Every year my friend Mike from Santa Cruz organizes a summer raft trip. I've
gone the last couple of years and it's been lots of fun. Like Mike says below
it's a pretty tame trip (lots of coasting in the raft) but there are a handful
of rapids; I did get tossed out of the boat one year.

http://www.yikes.com/~pengo/images/rafting_2006/DSC_0475.jpg
(ok, thats not me, but you get the idea)

All the boats are 2 person, so it's easiest if you bring a partner, but even if
you don't there will still be someone to partner up with. In fact, i don't
have a partner yet, so you can ride with me! Yay!

Technically it's a weekend long camping trip with the rafting in the middle,
but sometimes i have skipped the camping part and shown up for rafting, and it
hasn't caused any problems.

Read Mikes email below to find out the details.

Hope you're all doing well! Right now, I'm in Denver hanging out a cool cafe
(Kathryn and Vinit, when you move here you should check out Stella's Coffee
Haus) and am just happy my car is running again, and i'm not stuck in
bumblefuck new mexico, so that I might be able to make it home at some point.
Long story.

-a

Action shot from 2004!
http://photos.andyvw.net/main.php?g2_itemId=25505

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 17:06:35 -0700
From: Mike Fahmie <ipengo@gmail.com>
To: ipengo@gmail.com
Subject: The Raft Trip Email

The Raft Trip this year will be July 20th - 22nd Rumsey, CA

group picture from last year:
http://www.yikes.com/~pengo/cgi-bin/imgloaderon.cgi?/~pengo/images/rafting_2006/&DSC_0708.jpg

Basically, we go camping and rafting every year, and its a lot of fun, so we
go back again next year with more people. This is probably around year 12,
with the attendance of the last trip at 50 persons. The river, cache
creek, is a class 3 (out of 5) which is usually rather tame, and considered
a beginners river. We camp friday and saturday and raft sunday.

A notable change in format this year will be the food. The size has got to
the point where preparing all the group meals is too much of a
hassle. Firewood, drinks, ice, and lunch on the river will be provided but
the rest of the food and drink should be considered BYO. I'm anticipating
"food groups" to form up on the wiki and I intend to start my own as well

Jo Chou is maintaining the website where you can find up to date information
www.therafttrip.com

I'll be maintaining the list where you can see who's going and who's paid,
currently listed is everyone who went last year.
http://www.yikes.com/~pengo/rafting2007

The cost for the trip will be maximum (will know after drinks and camp
supplies have been planned) $60, again this doesn't include meals at the
campsite!

If you are interested respond to this email and I'll add you (and your
guests) to the list and give you further updates as they come (such as,
remember shade tent city? well this year I have something much stupider
planned!)

-mike

p.s. as always I'm disorganized and lazy so I'm sure I forgot to add some
people to this list, you'll get this message soon or overhear it being
discussed by those you thought were your friends.

p.s.s. I know July 21st is when the new harry potter book comes out, shut
up it's awesome you just don't know, maybe amazon delivers to campsites.

Cause I should be Working

2006-10-10T14:30:00.000-07:00

if you want to waste some time:

http://www.sp-studio.de/

Alaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaska

2006-05-14T14:47:00.000-07:00

I was going to write about the work we are doing up here, but I realized I first need to provide a little… um… context. So, the Island I am on is Called Annette Island, and it is near the southeastern-most corner of the state, near Ketchikan, about halfway between Anchorage and Seattle. The island has only one town, Metlakatla with a population of about 1400 people.

A little history of Metlakatla according to Wikipedia:

1886, William Duncan, a Scottish tanner and lay minister of the Anglican Church, had a doctrinal dispute with the Church authorities in Metlakatla, a village near Prince Rupert, British Columbia, Canada. He and a devoted group of Tsimshian followers decided to leave Metlakatla. Duncan went to Washington, D. C., in the United States and asked the U. S. government to give his group land in Alaska. The U. S. gave them Annette Island. In 1887 the group arrived on the island and built a settlement in the Port Chester area of the island. The town was laid out in a neat grid pattern and contained a church, a school, a tannery and a sawmill. They named the town New Metlakatla, after the town they had left behind, but later dropped the "New". in 1888, William Duncan returned to Washington D. C. and lobbied the U. S. Congress for an Indian reservation on Annette Island. Although the reservation system had not been used in Alaska, this request was granted in 1891. Annette Island contains the only Indian reservation in Alaska.

During World War 2, the US military build an airbase on the island south of the town. I've heard for primarily refueling reasons. During the next decade while the airport was being operated, fuel tanks, pipelines and all sorts of other environmentally suspect things, crisscrossed the island. And because Chevron's fuel was stored in the tanks and piplines, Chevron is partially responsible for the cleanup now taking place.

This project has been going on for a little over 5 years now, and has included all sorts of work. The hope is that we will be completely done this year. The other SECOR folks I am up here with right now have been working on the site since the beginning, so it's great to get all the background to the site, but also a little weird getting involved now that the project is almost over.

I know people are probably curious about the work I am actually doing, so I'll try to give a little more detail here. When I first showed up, I flew in with Bob, and we met Belinda on the island, who has been working here the last month. We spent the first couple days supervising a crew of local workers excavate the soil below an old wood stave tank. The tank was holding some sort of petroleum and the soil beneath it was pretty heavily impacted. But the tank was way back in the woods, not near the road, so we had to excavate by hand using shovels, buckets and wheelbarrows. That went along with sampling the bottom of the pit and sidewalls to make sure we were getting it all.

We were also doing a lot of GPSing of old and new sample locations, as well as the area we were excavating. If you've looked at the pictures I added, you'll see the large Trimble backpack I'm wearing, that's the GPS unit we are using. It's actually a lot of fun, and it may turn into quite a bit more interesting field work at other sites. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

The first weekend Belinda left and a couple days later Ann showed up. She's our expert in natural resources, and her job is to-vegetate the area we excavated. So we've spent the last couple days planting. I'm totally serious. We walk around until Ann is struck by divine inspiration, and cries out "Those plants there" and points to some grass on the ground that looks exactly like all the other grass on the ground. So we dig it up, put it in a bucket, carry it about 150 yards or so, and plant it. And fertilize it. The we go find Ann who has found some other grass... er... "native plants" and the whole thing starts again. It took 5 of us about 3 days to do over 100 plants

In our spare time we have been hiking and kayaking, so we're keeping busy and having fun. That’s about it for now, we've done a couple other things, and there is more we are doing next week, but that’s for later.

Why is Ted Nugent Stalking Me?

2006-05-03T14:44:00.000-07:00

So after cooking our Sunday house dinner (mmmm… Lasagna, thanks Liz and Sam for helping and Rachel for the Salad, Thrice Beaned) I decided I could postpone packing until Monday morning. Because my flight to Alaska where I would be working for 3 weeks in the cold and rain and in the middle of nowhere didn't leave until... Monday morning. But late monday morning, so I had an couple of hours. At about 6:30, I got up and packed all my stuff and Rachel picked me up. Because we had planned on bad traffic to the Oakland Airport, I had plenty of time to kill once she dropped me off, until Bob (one of my coworkers whom I’m working up here with) met me at the terminal shortly before the plane boarded.

The flight to Seattle was nothing special, although we did fly pretty much directly over Mt. Shasta, which was pretty cool. Bob said on a clear day you can even make out people on the peak. The next leg to Ketchikan was fine too. The one funny thing I noticed was that the guy in front of me, wearing a cowboy hat, was reading Playboy, which I thought was pretty odd. But to each his own. When Bob and I were waiting for our luggage, he asked me if I noticed the same guy in the cowboy hat. Thinking he thought the Playboy thing was odd too, I said “yeah! Did you see him reading Playboy?” and Bob said “What? No… That was Ted Nugent!”. And I said “Who’s that?”. I mean, the name Ted Nugent sounds familiar, and I think he’s famous for something music related, but this is the second time now that I’ve run into him (the first time in Ohio… I’ll tell you sometime) and still don’t really know why people I know who are over 30 seem to think he’s famous or something. He can’t be that famous if he flies coach. I finally had to look him up on wikipedia just to know. Anyway, Bob gets a picture of him in the background by pretending to take a picture of me.

So Bob and I walk down to catch our float plane, and who should be the only other people on the dock waiting for another float plane but Ted Nugent and his two boys? So Bob strikes up a conversation and we all laugh about how Texans have funny accents or something like that. Then his float plane came.

Our float plane trip was really fun, I’ve got a video on my camera of us landing, but it’s about 50 megs, so I’ll have to show it to whomever when I get back.

Belinda met us at the dock, and we walked to the house we’re staying out. I’ll take some pictures at some point, but the house itself is not that exciting. The view from the porch is pretty damn nice though. We walked down the street and ate dinner at this little convenience store, because the restaurant is closed on Mondays. Yes, “The” restaurant. We came back to the house and then went down to the local high school gymnasium to play Pickle-Ball (yeah, I’d never heard of it either) for an hour or so. Then… um.. sleep. Only to get up the next morning at 6 am. But that’s for my next post. Cause it’s taken me long enough to find enough time to write this much.

Anyway, the point is I made it safe, and I’m having a good time. When I get a chance (maybe this weekend) I’ll tell all about the actual work we are doing up here. But for now, enjoy the pictures I put up so far.

I Know What You're Talking About

2006-04-22T14:43:00.000-07:00

I've started to play a little game at work. Whenever anyone asks me how I'm doing, I simply give them the day of the week. At first, I'd offer the more generous "Oh you know... it's Monday" or the standby "Thank God it's Friday". But recently I've gotten more ambitious with just a "Thursday" and a knowing eye roll. It's surprising how easily this is excepted. It's like I'm taping into a wealth of unstated drama. Like, when I say "It's Wednesday!" they always respond with a "tell me about it" or a "I know what you're talking about". Ironically enough, with the possible exceptions of the more obvious Mondays and Fridays, I really have no idea what I'm talking about, and far less of an idea about they think I'm talking about. The easy conclusion is that it really doesn't matter at all what I say, that we're simply exchanging pleasantries. Bu t it can't be only that. If I were to respond to "How's it going?" with something pleasant but more obscure like "gotta stop and smell the roses", I think it wouldn't be received as well, although in some ways, it's just as meaningful a response. I think there is something just understood in the working world about how we are all supposed to agree on exactly what a Thursday is supposed to feel like. In my book, Tuesdays would probably be the hardest to pull off and luckily, Tuesdays I work at home.

My next challenge is to see if I can start responding in days of the week that aren't actually the current day. Or maybe days of the month. "Well, it's the 14th..." And they'll say "Yeah... Sure is. Suuuuure is".

The People All Call Her Alaska (Part II)

2006-04-20T14:43:00.000-07:00

So I have actual dates I will be in Alaska. I leave Monday, May 1^st (at 10:30 am if anyone wants to take me to the Oakland airport) and after a stop in Seattle, I take a float plane from Ketchikan to Annette Island. Still no concrete news on what I’m doing up there, but I’ll keep ya’ll posted on this blog. I come back on Friday, May 19^th (at 7:45 pm if anyone wants to pick me up at the Oakland Airport. :) )

Ignorance is bliss. And more.

2006-03-28T14:42:00.000-08:00

I read an article today about how people who are unskilled at something, are often unaware how unskilled they are, because they don't know enough about it to recognize competence. Anyway, the article was mildly interesting (if somewhat obvious), but there were two quotes mentioned that I really like:

"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge."

-Charles Darwin

"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt."

-Bertrand Russell

The People All Call Her Alaska

2006-03-18T14:40:00.000-08:00

Good news and bad news.

The good news is that I finally know my schedule for doing field work up in Alaska, which means, for one thing, I know for sure that I am actually going.

The bad news is that it’s not going to be nearly as much time up there as I had hoped. Mostly because the actual scope of work that our company is doing up there has decreased dramatically. Instead of 6 months of constant work, it now looks like a shift in April, one in May, and then another sometime around September.

I am scheduled to go up for most of the month of May. I leave on the 2nd, but am not sure when I get back. The shift runs to around the 25th (I think), but I told them I’d like to be back by the 19th for Lucas’s thing, and they thought that was likely. But we’ll see.

Anyway, if you are curious where exactly I'll be, it's around here.

Johnson O'Connor Research Foundation

2006-03-07T14:36:00.000-08:00

So I did this thing. Johnson O'Connor Research Foundation

You can read in much more detail on their site, but the idea is this:

You sit through two different 3.5 hour testing sessions where they give you many different tests to measure what they call your "natural aptitudes". Then there is a ~2 hour exit interview, where they go over your results.

Oh… and you pay them $600.

The premise is that you have innate aptitudes (things such as spatial thinking, creative output, manual dexterity...) that develop between the ages of 6 and 16, and then remain at about that level for the rest of your life. It isn't a measure of intelligence, education, interests, or experience.

The point is that you will find a job more rewarding if it appeals to more of your aptitudes, and (perhaps more importantly) avoids those areas where you have... shall we say... no aptitudes.

Make sense?

So everyone whom I told that I was doing this has been very curious about the tests and results. The questions I get fall into three main categories:

1) What kinds of tests did they give me? What were they testing for?

2) How did I do? What am I good (and bad) at? What jobs should I be looking into?

3) How did I like it? Did I find it useful? Would I recommend it?

As to the first question:

Sometimes I have gone into quite a bit of detail about the test when talking to friends, but I don't think I'll do that now, because I think that if anyone reading has any interest in going through this program as well would not benefit from knowing all the details of the tests. If they are like me, they would try to outsmart the test and possibly skew the results. But while talking about my results, obviously you'll get some idea of what they are testing, if not how the actual tests themselves work. If you do want more detail, let me know and I’ll tell you all about it.

Question genre two:

First off, they try to really cement the idea that scoring high on a test doesn't always mean you are... smarter or better... it just means you have that aptitude. In some cases, scoring lower was actually better for certain jobs. In other words, they tried to frame all the tests as basically value neutral. For many tests, I found this more or less convincing. Sometimes (manual dexterity for example) there really was no way to positively spin the idea that someone had absolutely no manual dexterity. Like me, I scored pretty damn bad (lower 30th percentile or so) on all the manual dexterity tests. The only positive is that... well... who gives a shit. It means I shouldn't work on an assembly line, or be a dentist or surgeon. Done! No worries! The other test that I did pretty poorly at was where they measured how quickly you could scan written information. Sucked at that one. So I shouldn't be editor or be doing proofreading. Great, no clerical work for me.

There were a couple of tests that were obviously value neutral. On a test that measured how well I collaborate with others on a project vs. working independently, I ended up right in the middle, which didn't surprise me. Another interesting test measured how far in the future I should set my goals. Meaning: did I find satisfaction in achieving short term goals or long term goals. On that one, I scored at the very extreme long term goal end. The facilitator actually said that people in my situation often have to set unachievable goals to stay motivated. This resonated with me, and I realized that another aspect of this, at least for me, was that I often find myself becoming very unmotivated and a poor performer as I approach a goal. College was a perfect example of this.

A couple things I scored very highly on were the spatial thinking tests, which means I should be considering things like engineering and architecture. They also mentioned that this aptitude in particular is important to use. Many other aptitudes, even if you score highly on them, won't really cause a problem if you don't use them. But for spatial thinking apparently, not using this aptitude will cause frustration and unfulfillment.

I also scored very highly on the creative output test they call ideaphoria (which I like). Meaning... obviously, I need to find something that has a creative (and if possible tangible) product result or goal. They mentioned this was an interesting mix with the spatial aptitude, because often people who go into engineering and architecture don't get to use this aptitude, and that this should be a concern of mine. Interesting note, scoring poorly on this test is actually a good thing for people like surgeons, who shouldn't be having a constant creative stream of thought when they are doing work on, for example, someone's eye.

The tests that surprised me the most were auditory tests. They test for 3 things, pitch discrimination, pitch memory, and beat memory. I scored highly on all three, and the administrator asked was surprised to find I didn’t play an instrument. This coupled with the spatial and creative thinking suggested to her that I considering something like sound design or engineering.

I scored well on lots of the memory tests (memorizing words, numbers, designs, photos) but it didn't really come up in our conversation much, so maybe it's not that important.

The only other tests I found interesting were the two tests that measured reasoning skills. One was labeled "inductive reasoning" and the other was "analytical reasoning". The different was described to me, and I think it goes something like this. If, when presented with information, you can quickly synthesize it, and come to one conclusion (think ER doctor or nurse who need to make a medical decision quickly based on symptoms.) then you have high inductive reasoning. If you are given a beginning step, and you can reason your way, more methodically through many steps to come to a conclusion, then you are using your analytical reasoning (think solving a math word problem). In some ways I see them as intuitive vs. logical reasoning... but who knows. Anyway, the point is that I did very well at the analytical, but only mediocre at the inductive. Ok! I get it! I can't be a surgeon! jeez...

Ok... so I’m sure there were other tests I am forgetting, but they must not have mattered that much. The main points for me were:

1) Long term goals

2) Tangible products and results (contradiction with 1?)

3) Use spatial thinking

4) Use creative thinking

5) Use auditory skills if possible

With all that, the suggestion that kept coming up was sound design/engineering, which I have to admit, I hadn't put much though into until now, but am definitely going to look into more.

Conclusions (or question genre 3)

If simply asked to recommend this program I would. I found it very useful and informative, and very much worth my $600. Although I would have many caveats and warnings depending on whom I was talking to. The main thing someone needs understand is that exactly they are offering (which I think they make as clear as possible). They are not going to give you a list of your top 10 career options. They are not really going to take your actual interests into account much. They don't consider your education background, or your social skills, which most of us know greatly affect how easy it is to get a job. Basically, they don't give much advise about how to start careers, or change. They simply state that if you are doing a job, they can predict which aspects of it will be rewarding and which will be frustrating. All in all, if used correctly, this is an incredibly important and under represented career advice niche. I find this sort of information most useful as a framework when applied to an industry or job you are already considering. It will give you great ideas about what to ask during an interview, how to evaluate a job offer, and ideas for new jobs and industries to look into. It also provides a good vocabulary and way of thinking about your current situation. Giving names and reasons to the previously vague feelings of unfulfillment (if that's what you have). Like... "Oh, now I understand why I don't like doing task X", or "That’s why I really enjoyed working on project Y, I should look for more Y-esque projects. Mmmmmm... Y".

At first I didn't think this, but I now think it is also a good motivator to make some difficult career decisions. To get off your ass and think about what you want to do with your life. So I recommend it to almost anyone. Special shout out to Carryl for suggesting it, Danielle for getting me to do it, mom for loaning me the money, and Rachel for being my graphorific note-taker. Oh, and dad for making sure it wasn’t a scam.

Also, if anyone is interested, I have all sorts of documention about the aptitudes and my results. I left with LOTS of paperwork. And two books about aptitudes.

del.icio.us/andyvw

2005-12-13T14:35:00.000-08:00

So I was having this problem whenever I tried to adopt some sort of new online technology, like hosting a gallery of pictures, or reading peoples' blogs. I couldn't decide if I wanted to use some online service that was already set up, or to intall a service on my own web page. Becuase it it much more time intensive to do maintain the software and do the hosting yourself, the choice came down to whether it was my content, somethign I felt like I wanted to own. In those cases I would use my own service. (And by "my own service" I of course mean a friends server and Bandwidth that I rarely pay for.)

For expamle, I've installed Gallery to host my pictures and Wordpress to host my blog on "my" server. But, i use bloglines to read RSS feeds, and just started using del.icio.us to host my bookmarks.... So. This was a long way of saying, here is my del.icio.us bookmark list:

del.icio.us/andyvw

and here is the RSS feed for it. Enjoy!

Bletchley Park

2005-09-18T10:39:00.000-07:00

I just had a rather remarkable experience Today. I visited Bletchley Park, the center for British cryptanalysis during World War 2, located about 40 miles north of London. It was a relatively last minute visit (part of a last minute trip come to think of it) and I hadn't even thought of it before I left the US. But when I got to Amsterdam I though of it, and looked it up. It was actually quite hard to find any information about it, it wasn't even mentioned in the Lonely Planet guide to Great Britain. I eventually found it online and decided to go on when I got back to London. I was only going to have 1 or 2 days in London, but as soon as I thought of it, I knew I wanted to go. I found out their hours, found a train I could take and was all set. Then, I started to wander around their site and was very suprised to noticed that the day I had planned to go, really the only day I could, was a special reunion event where vetrans who had actually worked there during WW2 were meeting! There were presentaions, movies and music all planned. Seriously, I was just hoping they were going to be open that day.

So I show up this morning and it was pretty cool. I went to 3 lectures, 2 were very good. One was on the actually mechanics and history of the enigma machine (with some nice math on the difficulty of breaking it), and another was a similar discussion of the ideas behind the code breaking machines called bombes. The second talk was perhaps more thoeretical, going more into depth about Alan Turing's work with information theory and computer design. The other talk I saw that day about the recent (2000-2002) theft of an enigma machine, was a little less interesting. I have already forgoten her name, but it was given by the current director of Bletchley park, and she spent way too much time trying to draw paralelles between the thrilling work done in the 40's compared to her involvement in trying to track down the stolen enigma machine. Plus, she was plugging this book about it she wrote, which sounded equally overly dramatic.

Two highlights of the day though.

They organized a photo shoot of all the vetrans who had shown up, and I wandered over there to take my own picture of them. While I was taking a picture I started talking with a man about ... I don't even remember, I think huricane Katrina of all things... and we talked a bit more and I noticed he was wearing a "Vetran" sticker (my sticker said "Weekend Visitor") so I asked him if he was a vetran from Bletchley. He said no, that he was instead in the RAF, and he guestured to the group being pictured, and said that his wife worked here during the war. We kept talking and his wife came over and the three of us talked for about 10 minutes. I'm not sure we talked much about Bletchley itself, but it was still thrilling to talk to two british WW2 vetrans. I wish I had gotten a picture with them, but that would have perhaps been too much.

The second highlight came when I wandered around into one of the other buildings behiend the park and noticed a replica of one of the bombes that was being worked on. The bombe (and another code breaking machine called the Colossus) is credited with being one of the first semi-programmable computers. It was the result of a brilliant idea that Turing, as well as other cryptographer/mathematicians came up with to break the enigma code that involed some basic mathematical properties of the enigma code, as well as amazing leaps in autoamating most of the cryptographic work. Unfortunatley, all of the bombes themselves were destroyed after the war, so no authentic ones acutally exist today. But they are almost done with a working replica. It's been harder to create than one might think becuase of the secrecy involved in creating them, and the loss of most all the documentation. The remarkable thing was that today, the main engineer was there with a group of vetrans who had worked on the original bombes and they were all discussing how the progess was going. I just stood there for probably well over 20 minutes watching these excited 80 or 90 year old women (women outnumberd men at Bletchly 3 to 1) poke and prod this machine, and most interestingly, point out to the engineer all the things they thought he was doing wrong. What was crazy, was outside and even just down the hall, the few other turists who had shown up didn't seem to notice this was even happening, and continued to walk around in a daze listening to their self guided audio tour. They talked about operating the orignal machines and all the difficulties and excitements they had. The engineer even turned it on breifely in responce to one of their questions. I can't believe I was lucky enough to wander into it. I only took a couple of pictures becuase I didn't want to intrude that much, but now I wish I had gotten up the nerve to ask them about it myself and maybe get a picture of them with the bombe.

Anyway, just wanted to talk about that before I forgot any of it. I'll try to put up the pictures I took soon. Probably on Tuesday or Thursday next week when I get back to the Bay Area.

Got in just fine

2005-09-06T14:34:00.000-07:00

this is a quick email to let you know i got into london ok.... the internet
connection is expensive, so i am going to have to leave it at that...

tell all the others that would care...

talk to you all soon....
-andy