Yes, there were news items from before this. But they were deleted because I...didn't save them. Oh well.
This is the strangest program to come from me in a long, long time. It takes a seed file, an input file and a magic number. Next, Babelizer reads the lines from the input file, and then randomly writes lines to an output file! Babelizer is based upon a similar program found in Foucault's Pendulum, but you can read about the program and download it here.
The Gaussian Matrix Solver uses a modified version of Gauss's method to solve systems of linear equations. Really, it's not a very complex program (compared to JPeriod99 or WebServ), but it is a major time saver! If you ever wanted an easy way out of Chapter 8...
Next up: Scribble Pad! My next program will be even more ambitious than my current efforts. Eventually (if lazy me ever gets around to doing this...) I will create a whiteboard / chat collaboration program that will let people run discussions over the internet using Java's RMI technology. Needless to say, this isn't even on the drawing board, and, given that I'm a second-semester junior, this program probably won't see the light of day for a while! So no, this isn't a product; it isn't even vaporware yet.
A simple hexadecimal calculator (broken) . It does the usual stuff that any calculator does, plus it converts between hex, decimal and binary! It also has bitwise operators (shift, and, or, xor, etc). It also has a memory function. Built in Swiss-army knife, just as seen on TV. Ok, I'm kidding.
For those of you with 32-bit Windows, you can now use a native program to invoke JPeriod99--but only if you're running it as an application. I also added a big, funny-looking splash screen graphic and a progress bar to show you how far the program's loaded. Access the new Periodic Table here.
Over February break, I wrote a pseudo-proxy server in Java. It fetches pages from one server and sends them to a client. You can look at the program itself here. No demonstrations are running, because as it turns out, the proxy'd sites have become free... (and now, post-boom, they're not free anymore! (2003-11-30))
This month, I added the Caltech Library and the Britannica dictionary to the list of search engines. I also rewrote jSearch so that it can be easily embedded in any page on the web while also remaining up-to-date. For a faster jSearch, go (link deleted).
This is my latest release of Internet Utilities. It also happens to be the first release. Right now it will only do DNS lookup, send HTTP requests to servers (it also shows you the headers!) and scan IP addresses for web servers. Read here.
My network has a firewall. Sure, it prevents attacks on computers inside the firewall, and I appreciate that. But, what if you want to send print jobs to run when you're away? You can't...from outside. However BackTalk does this. Install it on a computer (you'll need a task scheduler of some sort to automatically run this program) and it will read a job script over HTTP, and then execute commands you specify. Read about BackTalk Script Parser. The best part about this program is that it leaves the firewall intact! You must have access to an inside computer for it to work at all...you also must have a server somewhere to serve HTTP pages.
With this new version, we've packed all the secret stuff into a Virtual File System embedded within the server itself. No more port 49152 monkey business! I also implemented a thread cache, optimized the server to make it quite a bit faster. Maybe it's running (link deleted) or, better yet, (link deleted) to see the new kubiak.menloschool.org (an internal Menlo thing, you realize... ).
After thibs' power supply blew out and kept us in the dark for a week, I have new utilities posted! ipprint sends files to a specified IP address and port-- useful for printing to any recent-model HP LaserJets. "add" is NOT a calculator --it is a miniature web server used to defeat advertisements on the Internet. Simply reroute the offending ad agencies' servers to 127.0.0.1 in the HOSTS file, start the server (in the background, I hope) and away go the ads! Read about Internet Printer or Advertisement Defeater.
I added a cool new file listing script to my web site! Now you can get full directory information from the browser--try it here (broken) . (Apparently, this was considered newsworthy in 1999...)
Check out my (ahem) adaptation of Woodley's Random Sentence Generator here.
Hey! I'm going to Italy this summer with the local Menlo classics teachers and a bunch of my friends! I'm really looking forward to this trip--we leave Monday, June 14th and come back Tuesday, July 6th. Factor in a day to recover from jet lag, and I'll be up and running sometime around Thursday, July 8th. There are 15 days, 10 hours, 24 minutes, 55 seconds until we leave!
New site enhancements! I have finally fixed the bugs that cause problems in Netscape 3.x! Furthermore, I modified this site so that you can access the menus without having to have layers (for Netscape 3.x users); instead of upgrading to Netscape 4.x, all you have to do is just click on a menu title and you get a page with the menu's content on it.
No more Spanish! At last final brain shutdown comes! Alas, the seniors are gone. The last of them graduated at 11:07 this morning, the fourth day of June of 1999. Now I step up to the bat, becoming a senior, and get to think about the road ahead, stress about college applications and other stuff. But wait! We have to choose our history and English classes again! Ugh. Oh, well. Farewell to seniors. Well, all is not lost yet--a few are going to Italy with me, and a bunch of us are going to the beach(?) next week.
I finally finished converting my old 78rpm LPs onto tape. Old scratchy things; here's a list of songs.
A month ago, Martha Mendoza, a reporter for the Associated Press, interviewed me about how my spending my summer working for a computer company, rather than loafing on the beach or flipping burgers at an In-N-Out. Read the article.
View my prototype web site here (link removed). I've fixed all the problems with resizing Netscape windows, improved Netscape 3 useability, and introduced CSS to take care of all the display parameters...although the HTML 3 presentation tags (FONT, B, I, etc.) remain. Also note the new jSearch. (The menu links don't work, for the most part, because I don't have the upload bandwidth to do a full publish (maybe 8/25/99?)
Announcing the arrival of yet another Linux box on campus! Two, actually. The first one is LinuxPPC (offsite) running on a 7600/120 (that's a 604, for all those interested). With a paltry 48MB of RAM and ~600MB of free disk space, it's nothing compared to the other box...except that this computer doesn't get hard reset! <smirk> To get at this computer via AppleShare, open the Chooser and select "ThibsFloppy" in "High School Faculty". If you want shell access, connect to "172.20.9.226" (INSIDE Menlo, thank you very much) and log in as user "kubiak" password "kubiak". Please don't do anything strange to the box or security might actually get enforced (i.e. no more shell access for guests!) Yes, the box is inside the firewall. No SSH tunnels and no sending xterms please. If you want further instructions as to using this machine, AND you're inside Menlo, click here (link deleted). Otherwise, you can view the same (well, almost the same) page here (link deleted) on thibs.
Later...Woodley (offsite) assimilated an iMac in the Writing Center with LinuxPPC. It's a 333MHz iMac with 64MB of RAM and a 3.3GB hard disk. Woodley politely asks people to log in on the console as user "macos" (no password) to get to MacOS rather than pushing the power button. No SSH tunnels and no sending xterms please. The machine is at IP address 172.20.9.99, incidentally. That's INSIDE the firewall.
The Internet Printer and the BackTalk Script Parser have been updated to reflect Menlo's recent printer changes. I've fixed a few bugs in JPeriod; development of the XML-ized reconfigurable version continues. Eventually, I hope to make it so that users can add more information to the atom database and then add custom property viewers to the program WITHOUT a recompilation of the program.
Fixed some bugs, stuff that accidentally didn't get updated, added a few links. Reconfigured Apache to send custom-formatted error pages (i.e. error pages with headers and footers) and also to give directory listings that are consistent with the site's overall look and feel. Menlo also updated its main web site today; give it a look (link deleted). Don't expect a whole lot of new content between now and...Thanksgiving; I am very busy with college apps.
For all of you that remember that strange song that Kubiak was always ranting and raving about while we were reading The Great Gatsby, I posted the lyrics to (most) of the verses in that song, as well as a MIDI version and some history of the song and its vaudeville beginnings. Read about it here. I'm also going to Boston this weekend (and Matthew and Alice and Tyler and Lesley will be there too...)
Made it so that you can bang the Enter key in the "Phrase" field and invoke the search. (1/14/2000) Added the Free Online Dictionary of Computing to jSearch! (1/14/2000) Added the Internet Movie Database (offsite) to jSearch! (1/1/19100 <smirk>)
This is a web presentation of my project proposal for my Biotech class. Next semester, I will be optimizing a PCR reaction to detect polymorphisms in the Milton gene of Drosophila. Hopefully, we'll be able to find a correlation between these genes (which control the operation and construction of the fly's eye) and human chromosomes. Read more.
Some rabid Slashdot (offsite) reader posted this thing in response to a poll about waffles. Very, very strange. Very nerdy, too. Disks == waffles? I guess... Read more.
Whoa...here it is, the last day of July...first batch of friends are leaving for college in 20 days. I'm not leaving until September 26th...but don't expect me to be on thibs a whole lot after that. UCSD has a notoriously slow ResNet (thank you, Napster/iMesh/scour!)
mod_ssl up to 2.6.5...OpenSSH up to 2.1.1p4...mods perl & random are gone...Poll 0.71...
A Java ntalk client is in the works and slowly getting developed on weekends. So far I can send request to the talk daemon and establish (very badly piped) communications...if the callee uses telnet. But this is a 0.0000001 quality nonrelease. Oh...wrote a simple PHP photo album for thibs.
Moo! I leave for college on Friday morning. Last bits of apache work: Zope 2.2.1, Squishdot 0.7.1, mod_ssl 2.6.6, OpenSSH 2.2.0p1.
I've arrived! I spent quite a bit of Welcome Week rearranging my entire schedule, alas, but now I'm virtually a sophomore! Anyway, I'm finally getting settled in, visited the beach, and am ever so slowly making new friends. I miss all the old ones! Anyway, those of you who are interested can examine my class schedule (offsite). [Note: This schedule has been updated to reflect WI02. --D]
No, you're not seeing double; it's just that this site has been dead for a year now. This is shameful, since I arrived at college last September as one might expect--but nothing's been updated to reflect this. A BogoMIPS calculator has been written.
At long last, this site has undergone the facelift that it's been needing for quite some time. The menus, although quite cool, were a major maintenance liability, and they don't work in all browsers. Plus, they were JavaScript; hence search engines could not index this site. So now we have XHTML 1.1/CSS2 compliant pages that are generated on the fly by PHP.
While rummaging through my hard disk on the computer at home today, I made quite a discovery--an archive of old photographs of Douglass Hall, taken some time in late 1997 before the renovation began. You can see these photos on the Douglass page of the photo album. Also read the last update.
Well! At last, the Java YZ page has been merged into the Domicile. The old jyz.sourceforge.net site has been replaced with a redirector. Also, the interactive site map applet has been sucked over from the main thibs page and modified to display a map of all the pages in the Domicile.
Gosh, I'm no longer in the 'teenager' category...
While combing through father's computer over Winter Vacation, I happened to chance upon an archive of my very first website. After stewing over it for a month, I have decided to post it for all to see. Not that there's a whole lot to see, and it's not very good. But keep in mind that it was 1996 and that I was in junior high then--do not look for heavy polishing. View this Exhibit.
I've also decided to place the old archive of the DDD site (this site's predecessor) in the Exhibits section, in case you miss the old menus and the old look. Actually, that site is not very different from this one, aside from some slight reordering and the facelift. View this Exhibit.
I've modified the What's Cooking (page deleted) page to indicate what I'm really up to--it hasn't been a whole lot. It also might be cool to dabble in mathematical constructions and twelve-tone music...if I had the time.
Writing and production has begun for Dementia VI! It appears that some sort of nature documentary was already filmed at the tail end of season 5, although details about the other sketches are, well, sketchy. Also, based on rumors flying about, certain members of the Dementia crew are working on some sort of big project to be released at the end of the season. More details as they come in.
The race is on! Woodley put out a train set for YZ-Windows, and now Darrick will have to follow suit! More details forthcoming...for now, look here for screenshots!
<snort> Train sets...hah! Darrick has far too much to do--final exams, reading the Aeneid for no purpose other than self-amusement and curiosity (seriously, even though nobody seems to believe it). Mandelbaum's translation, for those of you who dabble in that sort of thing. Oh yeah, I also posted more clips from Dementia V.
A new quarter is upon me! As usual, I've posted my daily schedule (offsite) for everybody to gawk at. It's unfortunate about CSE 141L-- evidently the department is not going to let me in off the waiting list, even after giving me the runaround several times. Morons. Oh well, I suppose I ought to ease up on the workload anyway.
Yo! I installed a new photo album management system to play with. Go look at it here.
At long last, Darrick has finally posted the first generation random sentence generator on his web site! It's a silly thing; turn on Java for full effect, and then click here for some mind-blowing...words.
I've written a tool to measure disk throughput versus location on disk. Having gotten several friends to use it on their own machines, I've collected some sample graphs (broken) . Very interesting parabolic and linear patterns...hmm....
Moved down to San Diego, into Costa Verde. Whee, what fun, and a month before school starts, too! :-) RoadRunner fast (for now, anyway; let's hope it stays that way.)
CSE 120 (Operating Systems), CSE 141L (Microprocessor Design), CSE 131A (Compiler Construction, Part I), and CSE 111 (Object Oriented Design). This will be interesting. But at least I get four day weekends.
As the summer begins to shimmer its last rays over the horizon, I find myself staying surprisingly busy, despite this being the summer of not much to do. At the moment, I am re-reading some old favorites (Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum (offsite)).
Moreover, I've been beefing up on some new things, such as file systems and, more interestingly, information retrieval systems. It'll be interesting to see what sort of strange ideas pour out of my head, and, more importantly, will I actually do anything with those ideas? Virtual train sets sounded cool, but alas were of somewhat dubious practical value, and thus they seem to have fallen by the wayside.
Also hosted the Summer's End party, where Sam showed us how to cook teriyaki salmon and we (sort of) celebrated roommate Clay's (offsite) birthday and Labor Day. Tanner visited, and all was fun! :-)
Announcing a seek-time analogue of bogodisk; I ingeniously named it bogoseek. See the program (broken) or see the graphs (broken) .
Enough said. Look here (offsite). Oh yeah: Sam created a multilingual (offsite) version of the Random Sentence Generator; now it supports English, Japanese, "romanji", and Hebrew.
Burned hand on stove. Swore a lot. Banged head against various silly memcpy bugs and other heap-corruption nonsense. Gosh I hate C++. Programming an operating system (Nachos) is hard work. It's fun, but draining. Hopefully I'll never have to do this again in my life. (Just watch, I'll probably end up at some company doing OS kernel work...)
Now that that's over, I've finally gotten around to writing down at least a few ideas about a hierarchal metadata-rich object storage system for computers. Read more here.
For this (WI03) quarter: CSE 127/131B/101, ECON 4. I'm also tutoring CSE 80. An actual schedule will be posted in a day or two, via the schedule link (offsite). This quarter will be interesting...
Hooray. I survived winter quarter. Now for another quarter, and possibly even a job, too. We'll see about that. I'm happy. Also became of age a couple of months ago. Funny how I've grown up quite a lot in the space of three months. Lots of networking last quarter ;-). Also kinda amusing that technically, this is a blog, but I rarely feed it anything. Oh well--those who know me best probably don't need to read a blog anyways to know what I'm up to.
I'm in the graphics class this quarter, so maybe you'll see some screenshots of various renderings posted here.
Started work at Sun Microsystems (offsite) today. I'm working in the Enterprise Server group, writing ...something... involving giant computers. Wooo!
Bored. Does this web site make any impact if it gets updated and there's no-one to read it? Including the webmaster himself? I could complain about my life, but that would bore me, so I won't. Maybe I'll just go take a nap instead.
I've rearranged the site layout a bit. Gone is the new photo album. I never finished integrating it, and I never removed the old one, so it stays. UCSDementia is now officially off the air, so it's been moved to the exhibits page.
After years and years of procrastinating, I've finally gotten around to digitizing the photos that I took while touring Italy in 1999 with some friends from school. This online album, unfortunately, lacks the souveneirs that the paper version of the album contains and a few photos that should be kept away from public display. Anyway, enter the Italy album.
My fourth and final year of UCSD has begun. Journal updates will probably become slow again. Suffice it to say, work, school, and investigatiosn of my post-graduation life have begun, and I have very litle time left over.
Last August, my faraway friends Adam and Christina flew out to California. They once went to elementary school with me, but they both moved away years ago, making this meeting quite a coincidence. We went around to San Francisco and spent the day roaming around the city and the Bay; take a look at Christina's Photos or Adam's Photos (offsite).
During last summer, I have been working on jGrid , which is a grid management package for the Java platform. It takes a set of jobs, in the form of Java command objects, distributes them for processing on a grid of Java2-enabled computers, and sends the results back to the original client. The result: instant massively parallel computing in java!
As you've probably noticed, this page looks drastically different from what you've been used to seeing. This is my XML/XSL experiment; what I'm trying to do is to write a web site entirely in XML and XSL. The original content is written in XML and transformed into these dandy (X)HTML pages that you see here. Furthermore, I've finally decided to drop support for the slop that is Netscape 4's rendering engine. XHTML tags have almost no presentation information; all the formatting details are in the CSS style sheets. Better yet, I've set up the stylesheets so that the window chrome goes away when you print the page. Cool, huh? Unfortunately, it will be quite some time until the entire site is converted over to this new format.
Today I found out that I have to file for graduation before 28 November if I want to graduate in March. That's right, a month from now, for something that isn't even certain. That puts things into perspective for me...do I really want to rush everything through *now*? What if I suddenly decide to take another quarter for fun stuff? Maybe I should just do that anyway. My minor declaration needs to be filed _before_ I apply for graduation too. And the CS degree check won't come through for at least 4-5 more days. Ugh.
Went to see a pretty good play with Brian this evening. Also found out what chardonnay tastes like. In other news, my degree check came through without any surprises, so IF I manage to pass CSE166, then I'll be done with CS in December! Now, the big problem is that I have no idea if I can pass the class. In other news, I'm still looking for a research project for the rest of the school year and a real job after that.
jGrid is now up to v0.53! Premiering with this release is a distributed Mandelbrot set plotting program! Take a look at my poorly-colored image here. Like the other example programs, the Mandelbrot plotter splits the process of drawing the fractal into a bunch of smaller chunks (256x256, currently) and sends those jobs out for processing. When the jobs come back, the results are stitched together into the final image. See jGrid, the lightweight grid package that makes this all possible.
Everybody--I will be back home for Thanksgiving the evening of the Nov. 26 through the 30th. The 27th and 29th are already taken. Anybody want to go to Ti Couz or something? Also, I will be home for Christmas Dec 21 - Jan 3, except the evening of the 27th. Please feel free to suggest outings as desired. In other news, the Me section has been completely converted to the new format.
As strange as it seems, I have obtained a free subscription to LiveJournal. This moment of weakness was fostered by the desire to slap comments onto Maddy (offsite) and Clay (offsite)'s journals as something other than Anonymous Coward. In any case, I now have one of my own, which is rather pointless since I've had one here since October '98. So now the question becomes--should I cross-post entries, or abandon one of them? (We all know I'll ultimately abandon both due to time constraints, but I can dream.) See journal (offsite).
Ah, Thanksgiving! The first glut of real food since Labor Day. The food was filling, although I probably shouldn't have played football with my cousins; now I'm sore all over. Downtown San Francisco is aglow with lights on all the buildings, and the air is cold enough to make it feel like it's really wintertime again. I'm looking forward to finishing my classes (two homeworks and four finals to go!) so I can jet back here, and do all the Christmasy things I always do around the holidays.
Two more days until I'm done with CS. Assuming I pass all my classes this quarter. Wow. Never thought I'd actually reach the end of college as I know it...all that's left for the next two quarters is (hopefully) some research classes and other fun random classes that I've been waiting to take for the past four years. And maybe I'll finally catch up on the (two-year-long) list of books that I've been meaning to read. Well...maybe not. In any case, I still have two more finals to finish...bye.
I'M FREE!! I'VE FINISHED THE LAST OF MY CS FINALS! THERE ARE NO MORE MAJOR CLASSES TO TAKE! WOOO! I might mention that I have to _pass_ those classes, and in any case I still have a minor to finish. But I'm DONE! Muahahahahahaaa!
Grades are out. I passed. I'm certifiably done. Hoo-ray! Now if only my mother wasn't dying.
There are some people I'd like to thank, and in no particular order--dad and grandma for keeping this household and mom together, Yvonne for keeping my mother together, the Wilkins for having their silly Christmas tree...the Trainas (and the other neighbors) for their support, Steph and Greg for spending a Saturday with me in San Francisco (or the other way 'round) keeping my mind off this awful situation, Woodley for helping me to change a tire (and providing an escape valve when I needed to get out a bit), Melissa for *carrying* a tire, Uncle Charles and Aunt Vicki for visiting today, Uncle Larry & family for visiting earlier, cousin Nicole for letting me know what's going on back home, and the folks of El Camino Hospital, Manor Care, and Odyssey Hospice for their support. I've probably omitted scores of other people; this is not deliberate; I'm just tired. These peoples' efforts will not be forgotten.
Most of you who are close to me probably already know this, but I felt the need at last to post something on my public web site. Why, I don't know for sure, but it felt good to post something. Anyway, my mother has been fighting breast cancer since August of 1999. Despite a brief remission in 2001, the cancer recurred in 2002, and in mid-2003 we discovered that it had spread to other parts of her body. Unfortunately, one of those parts happened to be her liver. We tried chemotherapy, and for a while it worked...until her liver started to fail. It seems that she had both the fast and slow moving varieties of cancer, and the fast-growing kind took over in the liver. So that brings us to today--she's too weak for anything like a liver transplant, so that effectively rules out any treatment at all. With no liver (and no immune system, either), she will not last very much longer.
Merry Christmas, everybody! I've converted the photo albums to use the new build infrastructure and put them up on the main web site. That means that I'm two sections away from being done with the site conversion! Perhaps I'll even get this whole job done in a short amount of time...and I love listening to the christmas morning music on ClassicFM (offsite).
We buried my mother yesterday. Hopefully, 2004 will suck less.
I have been selected for inclusion into the aforenamed organization (offsite). Hoo-ray!
Ok, I think it's high time that I contributed another story. Following my mother's passing, I have made a few decisions about the remainder of my time at UCSD:
Why have I done such a thing, you ask? A lot of it has to do with reflections that I made during Winter Break--I did have an enormous amount of free time to think about such things. I spent the first two weeks of the year in a stupor; now it is time to get on with my own life as the acuteness of the pain fades. Thus, I must move forward.
There is something that stands out prominently in my mind. We were talking to the minister who was to preside over the funeral service. He asked us what had brought my mother some hope in the past few months. Dad replied that mom had been looking forward to retirement, for which she was due in just a few years. More than forty years of work, and she never got to relax for more than a few weeks at a time. She was fortunate to have worked in several places with quite a few people who she liked--there was an impressively long line of former co-workers who showed up to the funeral.
This has made me realize firstly that I need to devise structure for my life in which I can balance work with enough play time to keep me in high spirits. Secondly, I must not allow work to become a place that I find bothersome. (Luckily, I like working for Sun.) Third, I need to identify college friends who will likely be friends for life, and work on strengthening those relationships before school ends and we all go our separate ways.
I'm working on a network simulator for a senior project. Read more about it here.
Winter quarter is over at last. Tomorrow I embark for the Bay Area for the very last spring break that I'll ever have; this is the turning point wherein my range of options for the future will be determined. This break is already jam-packed, as my cousin is leaving for Florida on Wednesday. Plus I need to go see friends and family and various Sun people. No sleep for me!
Next quarter, I have one class, a senior project (SurfNet), work, and a lot of time to goof off. Yes, I designed next quarter to be that way... I also will need to make a decision about where to go after graduation. As much as I hate to leave my friends behind in San Diego, I'm 90% sure that I will be moving away after graduation. I _do_ have a lead on a job that might bring me back here on occasion, so all is not lost.
As for the quarter that just ended, I had three economics classes. I think two of them went moderately well, but I worry about the third. As long as I pass it, I'm ok. The professor knows me, so perhaps he'll be lenient. Also, some friends and I have been teaching ourselves how to cook dinner. We're at the point where we can have dinner nearly every week, though with only twelve weeks left to graduation (== fourteen weeks or so left), I don't know if the pace is going to pick up next quarter. I hope it does, though we'll see how the timing works out. After all, it is the last chance I may have to enjoy those two friends for a while.
Once more unto the breach...today marks the beginning of Spring quarter. I have finished a major in Computer Science and a minor in Management Science. What's left? I still need to acquire a job, and finish SurfNet, which is now a senior project. Tentatively, I'm enrolled in Econ 172B (???) and CSE160 (Parallel Programming with MPI) and will be on campus Tuesday and Thursday. I have normal work days on Monday and Wednesday, and a half day on Friday. I think this quarter is going to be fun! It had better be...
Announcing BorkOS! BorkOS is a joint effort by Darrick, Woodley, Steven, et. al. to write a general-purpose operating system for personal computers. At the moment, we only support a very narrow range of hardware configurations (Bondi Blue iMacs and possibly the B&W G3) but we are rapidly adding soft parts to the source tree (networking and a filesystem were added last week!)
So I was at Grandma's house over spring break, and as I usually do when I visit her, I go rummaging through her basement to see if I can find anything interesting. In her basement, I found four dark jugs with very intricate white patterns printed on the outside. They were quite bizarre patterns too--snakes, various detailed claws, and bird parts.
I thought to myself "Hey, I should move this under the light so I can get a better look at these prints!" Hence, I picked up the jar and tried to move it. It was _heavy_! It was around this time that I realized that I wasn't staring at an obsidian jar with white animal skeletons printed on it--I was looking at a transparent glass jar with animal skeletons *inside* it! Ack!
Later, I went upstairs to talk to grandma about these jars. She nodded and then remarked that those jars had been there since at least the early 1960s. In fact, she added, that those jars could be made into a very strong drink to help out with one's mind and one's physical strength. Puzzling--how could old dried bones in a jar do that? Perhaps it was meant to be boild as some sort of tea?
Unfortunately, I was wrong. There was a key ingredient that was supposed to have been in the jar. This ingredient gives this stuff its strength. What was it? LOTS AND LOTS of ALCOHOL. :D
The project that I was working on at work has been cancelled. Big layoffs are likely to be coming in a month or so. All the job requisitions have been frozen for now; I'm pretty certain that they would not even be able to offer me a permanent position for some time. Fortunately, I think my position is pretty well covered at the moment, but I need to consider what to do about this situation for a few more days.
I have taken a position as a Linux kernel developer at the IBM Linux Technology Center in Beaverton, OR. Therefore, I shall be moving away from San Diego at the end of June, 2004.
As the world now knows, Sun is laying off 3,300 people, merging the three server divisions, and has cancelled the UltraSPARC V and all related projects. All this turmoil going on inside the high-end server division means that my chances of landing a job there are nil--not that anybody really wants to be around in the face of pending layoffs. But my co-workers might not be so bad off--most of them will get moved to the next project. I won't. Secondly, the layoffs mean that the people I was talking to inside the Solaris group can't make any offers. So that's a rather large part of why I took the IBM job. It's a good job in a less-expensive region. Who could ask for anything more?
(Well, it would be nice not to have to leave my friends behind...)
The reduction in workload has given me a lot more free time to work on SurfNet. I've finished the internals of the data-link layer simulator, and am wrapping up the final bits of a "RPC syscall" interface so that external programs can call into the simulator. A rough API spec can be found here (offsite). Soon I will begin designing the network layer; we will be implementing a subset of IP for simplicity's sake. I also hope to begin offering snapshots for download, on the (somewhat small) chance that people care to take a look. Enough hand-waving for now.
Thibs, which used to host this site, has been pulled off the network for reasons that I don't care to talk about. Nasty Menlo political stuff. Anyway, this means that all mail sent to thibs will bounce, and (for now) this site has been migrated elsewhere. So perhaps thibs will come back soon, but I don't care--I think I'm going to cut my losses and run email/web content elsewhere.
Today marks the end of my first year working at Sun. To celebrate this occasion, I also lead a seminar in which I compared and contrasted Linux to Solaris in terms of system use and administration. Amazing: The seminar is the crowning achievement of a year of work, and nowhere close to how I had expected to mark the event.
I went around to the Muir, CS, and Econ advising departments yesterday. I ran a degree check, showed it to the advisors at all three, and they all said that I'm clear to get a diploma. That means I'm done, and I (technically) don't even have to pass my classes to get it. Not that I'd do that...
Last weekend, I ventured up to Portland for a second time, to look for an apartment to rent. Imagine my surprise at finding that (a) it's about half the price up there, and (b) the people there are really friendly! Aside from the usual anxiety from leaving friends behind, I think I'm going to enjoy starting anew in a different place.
I am still going pedal-to-the-metal with SurfNet. I have to build a save/ restore function, and enough IP networking to get UDP sockets working by the end of the quarter. Wheee...I'm wondering if that's really going to happen.
As of today, I no longer work at Sun. I arranged to have my last day today, so that all the paperwork would be in before the layoffs hit. In other news, my apartment rental application in Oregon has been approved, so next year I'll be living in a nice two-bedroom apartment next to a creek in Beaverton. Finally, finals and SurfNet are due tomorrow. Eep!
As of _today_, I don't have any more academic commitments to meet at UCSD. My last econ final went...ok. The SurfNet final project presentation was Wednesday afternoon. The professors seemed to be quite satisfied with what I delivered. It will be interesting to see what happens next year when they use SurfNet as the project codebase!
Today, I took Steph's easy (meat and cheese) lasagna recipe, added various vegetables to the mix, reduced the amount of ground beef, and baked it. That was some of the best lasagna I've ever had! All cheesy and meaty and the vegetables were cooked just right, so they were still tender and not mushy.
So now Darrick's Domicile lives on another computer. I figured I should move it from the machine that it was living on to a more permanent location. Thanks to Woodley for hosting this machine for us as a replacement for thibs. Maybe thibs will come back; maybe it won't. (Who really cares at this point?) Anyway, I think everything should be working as it was back on thibs...though I still have a fair amount of stuff to upload. So perhaps some of the stuff under the Projects directory won't work. Heckle me if it's broke.
Another short update: RoadRunner is being turned off today. Therefore, I shall have only sporadic email access until some time around July 1st, when I get squared away in Oregon. I will check email once a day (or so) from campus, if I can. In any case, the worst news is that I'm about to lose my 124-day uptime on frog (the firewall). Sadly, moving requires loss of uptime. Drat. Well, Google can cache this entry and the record will live on forever.
Bright and early this morning, the movers arrived, packed up all my stuff (not the computer; I made sure to stuff it back in its original box with copious amounts of padding). By 11am they were done loading and took off. Now I don't have any furniture (except my roommates' ;)). This will probably be my final entry from San Diego.
The movers are coming to take my things to Oregon. THis means that my firewall machine will have to be taken offline. After 127 days of continous uptime, it is time to say farewell to Linux 2.6.3. When I get there, I'll have a shiny new 2.6.7 built for it!
This morning, I shoved the last of my stuff into my suitcase, went to breakfast with Stephanie at the Broken Yolk Cafe in PB, said good-bye to her, and flew away to Portland, Oregon.
I have arrived in the Silicon Forest! Linux hippies and open source rockers abound all over the place. I've picked up a fairly nice place next to a murky pond full of ducks; strangely enough, furniture stores lurk nearby. I shall be taking delivery of various new furnishings in the next two weeks. Perhaps my San Diego junk will arrive tomorrow. In any case, I shall fly back to the Bay Area soon. Oh: I need a cell phone.
I will be departing (with car!) back to Oregon on the 18th of July.
My San Diego stuff (computers, etc) arrived today. I _think_ most of it is intact. We'll see if the computers still work, though...in any case, I shall return to the Bay Area on Sunday evening, possibly in time for fireworks.
Just got an Olympus C765 in time to go on a quick road trip up to Oregon. Hopefully I'll have a bunch of photographs to post after that.
Arrived safe and sound in Oregon. Road trip photos to be posted shortly.
I've uploaded and organized the photos that I took in July...here.
Today was my first day on the job at the Linux Technology Center in Beaverton, Oregon. Upon arriving at work, I was given two empty computers and told that these would be my electronic companions...and that they needed software, as they were wiped clean prior to my arrival. Well, I thought, this shouldn't be too difficult; I've installed Linux on plenty of computers...let's see what they gave me.
One machine is an IBM NetVista P3-866. I hadn't realized that P3s came in that particular denomination. Oh well. The bigger problem was that the onboard video has wonderful lines going across it in X. So the solution: Find another video card. And now I get a screenful of garbage upon exiting X. In text mode, no less. The best part: a giant 21" CRT. Yay! Now if only the video card had enough RAM to drive it...:P
The second machine? A ThinkPad with a Wonder Woman sticker on it! This machine didn't give me nearly as much trouble...until FC1 ate the grub config. If all the company tools weren't on our custom FC1 CDs, I'd blow it away and install Debian. Oh well. Wonder woman shall simply have to make due with this indignity until I figure out how to host those tools elsewhere.
Tonight we went to Andina (offsite) in the (upscale) Pearl district of downtown Portland, courtesy of Steph's uncle Gary. The food was good and tasty, and the drinks were exotic. End result: we were both sloshed. Good times had by all.
Steph and I went for a walk. We quickly discovered that Walker Road goes out in the country...and the sidewalk ends. This forced us to trample through a field and some high weeds to get back to sidewalkland. Fun, except for those who wear sandals. I think she went to see museums and gardens around Portland today. I had work. :P
This weekend, Steph and I drove up to Timberline Lodge on Mt. Hood. This lodge is about 6,000 feet above sea level, at the treeline. We took off on the Timberline trail, which circled the timberline, and saw amazing things: snow, streams, trees, big bugs, and Swedes. There were a lot of short gnarled trees, and a few BIG PATCHES OF SNOW!
So we played around in the snow a bit. Tossed some snowballs around, and threw handfuls of snow at each other. It was fun! And really cold! I didn't bother to bring mittens (heck, I don't _have_ mittens!) and my hands froze. My camera captured Steph aiming a snowball at me. :P
Continuing down the trail, we encountered a big crevasse with a creek in it, and an even bigger crevasse with snow in it. We decided that we'd gone far enough, and turned back towards the parking lot. By the time we got back, it was nearly 6pm and we were quite exhausted. Oh well. We sat in the parking lot watching the sun set...only it didn't set, because it was the middle of summer and the sun doesn't go down until 8:30pm.
Eventually we figured it was a good idea to go home, so we piled back in the car and drove up 35 to the town of Hood River in the Columbia River Gorge. There, we found unnavigable streets and a cafe with ok food and some really really delightful cake! We shared a big slice of chocolate cake and loved every bite of it.
Later, we drove down the mountain and stomped around Multnomah Falls in the dark. Then we drove home. Photos are posted here.
Mmm... dinner at Brian's grandparents' house. Cooked by their German friends the Ziglands(?). Pictures.
Since yesterday was the last full day that Steph and Brian were going to be in town, we decided to head out to the beach on Friday afternoon. We drove westward on 26, stopped at "Oregon's Largest Tree" and turned left onto south 101. We stopped in Cannon Beach, which had a bunch of touristy shops: restaurants and kite stores.
We went out to the beach and tried to head towards a really big rock out in the ocean. Unfortunately, the winds came up very strongly and we decided (after Steph threw a frisbee at me and it blew up and behind her 100 feet) to turn back. Then we decided to get a kite. We got ten feet out of the door and it started pouring on us. Yuck! We fled back to the car...until we realized that Steph and I were pretty much soaked.
We had dinner in soggy clothes. The food was passable, but not the best fish and chips I've ever had. Afterwards we hopped back into my car, cranked the heat all the way and sat there for a good 15 minutes. By then, the rain had stopped and it was still windy, so we took the kite out.
The kite flying was slow at first, as we struggled to figure out how to control the thing whilst in the air. I discovered that it was easier to steer the kite if we reined in about half the strings. After a few minutes of flying the kite, I slowly (re)learned the basics of kite control. We all took turns flying the kite--even Steph, who didn't want to at first.
The sun went down, so we drove home. They left this morning. Pictures here.
Last Tuesday, I went on a walking tour of northwest Portland with a group known as Meet in Portland (offsite). We went to see various buildings, and I took some pictures to go with it. The A810* photos are from that event.
Today, I went downtown again with someone I met through craigslist. We went to the Portland Farmers' Market (offsite) at Portland State University. We went to the Chinese gardens, only to have my camera battery die, so that's about where the pictures stop. We had dinner at a little Italian cafe downtown and rode the MAX out to the middle of nowhere because it was air conditioned. Later, I decided to make a run for it and snapped three photos of a gorgeous sunset. Those photos are prefixed with A814.
I finally built up the courage to visit the east side of Portland. Seems like it's a hopping place full of lovely old 1930s houses with porches and narrow driveways. There seem to be a lot of neat little cafes and bars and movie houses and clubs and art galleries and things out that way. Anyway, this is the story of my trip out there.
Today I went to the Kennedy School (MiPL event) to hear a jazz band. "Kennedy School" isn't actually a school anymore--it's a tavern/hotel/performance venue run by the McMenamin brothers, who started buying old buildings and turning them into places to socialize. They have the whole building decorated as if it was still a 1920s era school, complete with the all the trimmings and furnishings, and quite a lot of memorabilia and minor exhibits touting the building's history. A nifty place, and certainly not what I was expecting. The first time I heard "Kennedy School", I thought we were going to hear some high school jazz band.
Anyhow, the plan was to go there and listen to jazz music. That's not quite what happened--I ended up drinking beer and chatting with several women I met in the outdoor cafe. Most of the people who went to this event actually _live_ on the east side, so it's easy for them to get to places like this. I spent a good long time talking to various people, trying to get a taste of what the east side is like. I also ran into Christi, who I met on the MAX and who introduced me to MiPL.
Christi and I decided to check out Last Thursday (offsite). This event has its origins in First Thursday, where a bunch of people go roam around art galleries in NW Portland and drink themselves silly. Of course, the Pearl is expensive and all the artwork is too. Seeing this, the NE people decided to have a massive block party on the last Thursday of each month. So they do. Artists go there to sell their wares, people go there to have exotic food in cafes, and I wandered around looking at cool lamps.
So I think I like East Portland. Wish I had moved there. Will try to move there next year. It's a way to live really close to downtown, yet be far enough away so that I can get to know my neighbors and have a lot of fun.
Brian's grandfather invited me to go sailing up the Willamette river today. Apparently a friend of his is visiting, and so they decided that the weather was good enough to warrant a sailing trip. So we went out to Multnomah Channel to a marina, where Grandpa Vernon keeps his 30-foot sailboat moored. Some photos.
We eased our way down the channel on motor power until we got into the wider river. After cutting the engines, we unfurled the sails and began tacking downstream towards the Columbia River. It's actually quite a lot of fun, once you get over the rockiness of the sailboat (and figure out the lingo that they use.) Pulling lines can be tricky though, as you don't really have time to head to the bow to untangle things. It's actually felt similar to the kite flying of a few weeks past--slowly I became acclimated to the art of handling wires.
Upon reaching the Columbia, we looked eastward for a spectacular sight of Mt. Hood. Like the sight of Mt. Rainier from downtown Seattle, Hood looked as if it was floating upon the clouds. Anyway, we continued our downstream tacking until we reached a big red ship from China. At that point, Grandpa Vernon announced that it was time to head back, so we came about and reached for the wind.
Going downstream, we saw quite a lot of interesting sights--jet skis, a big Mississippi paddle-boat that was really making good time, a granary with a big wheat cloud over it, and a lot of barges. By this time, we were on motor power, as it was time to start putting things away and wrapping up the sails. We docked the boat, covered it up, and I went home.
Today I drove all the way out to Laurelhurst Park in Southeast after work just to play volleyball. Really, that's a silly justification, as SE is far away and I suck at volleyball. But what I got instead was yet another short trip out to unknown places; the Laurelhurst district is full of quaint old 1930s/1940s era houses, complete with porches, actual gables coming out of the rooftops, narrow driveways for rinky-dink cars and (presumably) hardwood floors. I spoke with Joe, who lives in the area, and he said that it is a nifty (and inexpensive) area to live in if you like old buildings.
[Update] Some people wanted to know how I was at volleyball. Better than I was in high school, and occasionally able to pull of a good spike or two. I could improve quite a bit with just a wee bit of practice and training. Maybe that's a good idea. Just need to flesh out these control problems and I'm good to play again.
A week ago, you got a story about Last Thursday. Naturally, I had to go see First Thursday (offsite) in the Pearl district. This expedition was quite a bit different--the art galleries I saw were much more formal, they had glasses of wine for sale, and actual mounting pedestals for the artwork. There was a huge wall of glass flowers, a 10' piece of wood for $100k, some blurry-looking things, and all the usual stuff you'd expect.
I also found a furniture store connected to the art gallery. They're entirely run by volunteers, and I started talking to one of the ladies there about woodworking. Strange, as I'm only an armchair woodworker. :P Anyway, she showed me several pieces, including a computer cabinet made entirely of wood that had been pulled off of old ships and old buildings. I must say, it's a better way to recycle wood than to turn it into particleboard...
Next came the student exhibition at the Portland Northwest College of Art. Two pieces stand out in my mind--one was a man attached to a wireframe horse, tethered to a hook in the floor. He was walking around and around in a circle, with the rattling horse chassis dragging behind him. Very amusing... The other piece that piqued my fancy was a large rectangularly crystalline structure suspended from the ceiling. Various letters were glued to parts of the structure, though they did not seem to spell out any words. It was very confusing-looking, and interesting to stare at. Wish I had the kind of concentration and dedication to build a metallic crystal...
Afterwards, the group I was with retired to Ringers Pub for drinks and dinner; several people competed to build towers out of food menus. Much fun!
Went sailing again. Not much wind until we went back to the marina. Boo. But--I forgot to note in last week's post that we saw a sea otter in the marina. He he he. Didn't think I'd see one there.
I made a giant lasagna! Thanks to Steph for the base recipie and myself for adding vegetables. I remembered the recipie that I used 3 months ago for Steph's Easy Lasagna, only this time I added steamed zucchini and carrots, powdered garlic, onions, Cartini(?) mushrooms, and ricotta cheese. Good, except for the part where I burned the cheese crispy.
Sunday, I met the MiPL group at Upper Macleay Park for a quick hike up to Pittock Mansion (offsite). For those who don't know, Henry Pittock was the local news magnate in Portland (the Oregonian, in fact) during the latter half of the 19th century and the first part of the 20th. In 1909, he decided (at the old age of 76!) that he needed to build himself a great mansion atop a hill overlooking Portland. These photos are the result.
Pittock Mansion is a great huge house built out of cinder blocks. From the pictures, you can see that there are wood panels covering the house's internals. Each room has a distinctly different style and quite a few lovely pieces. I was especially impressed with the intricate woodworking in the library and dining room, the fact that they _had_ a paneled elevator, the huge walk-in refridgerator (before WWI!) and the pipe contraptions upstairs that were called "showers". That and the hardwood floors. The observant reader by now has undoubtedly noticed my affinity for old buildings with hard wood floors.
Afterwards, we sat on the lawn eating lunch. Eventually I got bored and went down the hill and walked around the trails in Forest Park for the afternoon. Unfortunately I was out of flash and couldnt' take any photos. But I have plenty of photos of greenery and will undoubtedly take many more. In any case, I followed the trail so far I wound up in downtown! So I went home.
Author's note: The Portland photos have been broken out by where they were taken. Also, I recovered the photos I took of being downtown with Greg. And, there are more pictures of the Wall of Boxes.
To continue my never-ending Labor Day weekend, I half-organized an outing to the Columbia River Gorge today. Back on Wednesday, I went to a presentation by a guy who wrote a book called "100 Classic Hikes in Oregon" and had drinks with some of the other people who went afterwards. We decided that it might be a fun idea to form a small hiking group and go somewhere. After a few days of trading emails, we settled on a Monday hike to see Horsetail Falls, Oneonta Gorge and Multnomah Falls along the Columbia River. See photos.
We met in the parking lot of the Gateway TC MAX station way out on the east side. Three people showed up--myself, Lara, and Dave. As it turns out, Dave is an ecologist/biologist who studies waterways--nearly perfect for what we had set out to do. We piled into Dave's pickup and headed eastward on I-84.
The first place we went was the Horsetail Falls trailhead. The falls are actually at river level right along the street, and the trail snakes behind the waterfall. It was a fairly steep hike at first, as we rapidly ascended the gorge face until we were well above the initial waterfall. There, we found yet another waterfall in front of a big crack in the rock. Dave said that this was caused by backsplash eons ago when the waterfall was aligned more vertically.
From there, we continued to ascend, and I took pictures of the Gorge area. Wonderful pictures. The next interesting geological feature that the trail brought us to was Oneonta Gorge. As it turns out, you can't really see the associated waterfall from anywhere except river level, and even then only if you wade up the (icy cold) stream a half mile. So we stood above the gorge and looked into the crack. I took more photos of the surrounding area.
From Oneonta Gorge, we took a sharp left and headed inland to Triple Falls. We spent a while watching the river (Dave was looking at water flies on rocks) and getting thirsty--so we headed further inland. I took some pictures of various fungi, mushrooms and spiky plants that we encountered along the trail. But, it didn't seem that there would be anything else interesting along the trail for quite a ways, so we headed back down to the highway and drove to Multnomah Falls.
For those who have seen the pictures from the expedition to Mt. Hood with Steph, it's pretty obvious that my photos of Multnomah Falls are terrible because we got there well after sundown. Not this time. We arrived smack in the middle of the afternoon, when the place was swarming with tourists. Despite them, I managed to get some good pictures of the falls. Steph: You might be interested in these photos.
But we weren't yet finished. Continuing westward on the Historic Columbia River Highway, we drove far up the mountain to a big observatory named Vista House. From there you could see miles up and down the Columbia Gorge and deep into Washington State. Unfortunately, it was a somewhat hazy day and so I couldn't see all the way to Mt. Hood or to downtown Portland. No matter; I captured the spectacular vistas on my camera.
By that time, we wanted some food and drink. Dave brought us to the Tippy Canoe, which seems to be a bit of a redneck bar out in Troutdale. Maybe it was just because there were a lot of bikers and bartenders out there for some reason. In any case, we had delicious burgers and some ice cold drinks. Very good. By this time we were tired, so we ate the food, listened to the overloud live music, and went home. What a day.
Meet any hot biker babes at the Tippy Canoe?
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This weekend, I arose at the crack of dawn (namely 10:15) and picked up Jason at the airport. Months ago, he decided to come visit me in September so that we could run around Portland and watch the Everwood (offsite) 3rd season premiere. Anyway, both of us were in the mood for some good Saturday brunch food, so I took us back to SE Hawthorne. We parked and chowed down at the Bread and Ink. The food was delicious, and the egg noodles took care of me foodwise for the rest of the day. Jason professed amazement at some of the SE area high school buildings.
We strolled westward on Hawthorne until I motioned leftward towards some houses. All around that region of southeast are a lot of old houses that are left over from the turn of the century. Some of them, of course, are in poor repair, but others look fabulous. Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera, so I still lack photos of this amazing area. But wow! Wood frame houses with porches and gables and everything! Some of the sidewalk blocks had dates on them -- apparently that area of Portland was built in the early 1900s, because the sidewalks are 100 years old. The curbs even have rings on them to hitch horses.
These houses were rather small, so we crossed Hawthorne to take a look at some more houses. These houses were every bit as nice, though to me they seemed slightly larger. As one heads north, the houses become larger and newer, though newer == 1930s _here_. We made a very important observation that day: If you go 50 feet away from Hawthorne street, the neighborhood noise drops to zero. In a suburb! This part of SE, between about 20th and 40th avenues, is just amazing to someone who has lived (and still has to put up with) noisy neighbors.
In short: pleasant, calm, quiet neighborhood with quaint turn of the century homes on somewhat small lots. For prices that I might just be able to afford. Oh, and I got a wireless access point for my PowerBook afterward. And we had really yummy pizza at the Old Chicago down the street from my apartment.
I finally sat down and wrote out generic comment posting functionality that can be added to any part of any page on my entire website! So now people can give me feedback directly. Knock yourselves out; we'll see how well this works.
The comment feature is pretty sweet.
The comment thingy is cool. Yeah, that's all.
Sunday, we headed out on an excursion to see the Lloyd Center, downtown, and a whole lot of other stuff. See all my pictures.
After a late start, we got on the MAX and took it all the way to Lloyd Center. For those who don't know, the Lloyd Center is a great big mall. By my standards, nothing too impressive. I did get to look at the trenchcoat selection at Meier and Frank. Maybe I'll get one ... maybe I won't. The cold and slight rain that falls upon us now is making a fairly strong argument in favor of this. Something funny happened while we were strolling about the mall:
Mom: I wanna stop in here a moment...
Kid: Mom, NOOOOO...
Mom: But I need underwear!
Kids: (tugging her away) Eww!
Yes folks, we were outside of Frederick's of Hollywood. Continuing our Sunday escapades, Jason and I hopped back on the MAX and took some pictures downtown. We saw the Portland Art Museum exposed, as well as various cool looking edifices on our way towards Powell's. Speaking of Powell's, I ended up buying The Da Vinci Code (we have Steph to blame for this), a book of maps and a big laminated wall map. The big map is now hanging on my dining room wall.
After steaks at Stanford's and a failed attempt to take a photo of a MAX car with an Everwood ad plastered on it, we drove back out to the same middle of nowhere place that I took Brian and Steph to see the sunset. Once _again_ I sort of missed the sunset, though this time I got really awesome photos of the silhouettes at sunset and the surrounding fields. Since Jason and I didn't really have to get back at any set time, we decided to see where the little country road would lead us. That was a bit of a bad idea, because we ended up on a gravel road for a bit ... but it also led us to four mouldering railroad coach cars.
From the pictures, the four cars look like they've been abandoned. Surprisingly, they haven't been--someone had painted "5/16/04" on all four of the cars' underbellies. So there must be _somebody_ (besides a couple of yuppie cityboys) who care about these cars. So there are the cars in my photo album. They're sort of decaying and obviously not well watched; they have also come quite a ways. Two appear to be from the Boston area, which is a good 3,400 miles from where we were. Oh well. I got some cool photos of the cars and their trucks. I am a nerd, what can I say.
A few new things around here: First, all recent (Spring 2004 and beyond) photo albums have the new comment code attached to them. Second, Jason and I put up a major amount of the wallhangings that I brought with me. The pagoda print is now in my bedroom. One of the Shanghai pictures hangs over the bookshelf in my dining room. The huge map of Oregon that I bought is now in the dining room. My big scroll hangs in the hallway. At last, this place is coming together!
Well, Grandpa Vernon and I went sailing again today. Except today there was an Alaskan storm blowing through Portland, so it was cold and rainy. So we spent most of the time going up the Willamette with the motor on, till we reached what used to be shipyards during WWII. We motored around there too, looking at the remains of a mighty shipbuilding empire. After that, the rain went away and the winds came up, so we hoisted the mainsail and ran downriver back to Multnomah Channel. I motored up there a ways just to see what it looked like; finding nothing, we went back, moored the boat and left.
Where do I begin today's wonderful story? Oh yes, with another photo album. This weekend's adventure takes us to the western side of Mt. Hood, along various forks of the Sandy River, up to Ramona Falls for some mushroom hunting escapades. Unfortunately, the resident mushroom expert could not attend, so perhaps she'll slip into a future journal entry.
At 9:30, Lara, David and I met at the Stumptown on 45th and Division in southeast. After ingesting some warm drinks, we piled into David's pickup and headed east to Mt. Hood. The plan was simple: Hike the Ramona Falls loop trail and try to find and identify as many mushrooms as we possibly could. Unfortunately, we forgot to bring mushroom guidebooks, so we snapped a lot of photos instead and now hope to identify them from the warmth of our homes. Names of the mushrooms will, of course, be added as they come in.
As we were heading towards the falls, David pointed out various features of the meandering Sandy River (apologies to him for whatever bits I get wrong). The photos I took show a fairly flat basin with a lot of former riverbed piled up with small stones and gravel. I think he said that the wideness of the river's path of destruction relative to the actual width of the river indicates that the path of the river changes frequently, but that it hadn't endured a tremendous flood recently.
Continuing along the trail, we found the first mushroom! A little tiny reddish orange thing. It turns out that there were more that were closer to the parking lot, but at that point we were too busy chatting to notice. Up the trail we went, following the river's crazy course, until David pointed out some really tiny mushrooms. See picture a9190032 for what I'm talking about. I'm quite impressed with the (auto)focus that the camera settled upon, and wowed by the clear foreground and the blurry background, which make the mushrooms easier to see. But enough about my camera.
Further up the trail, we saw more trees and a few more tiny mushrooms...and then we hit Ramona Falls. These falls, said David, are made from basalt formations. However--basalt is very very hard and not especially porous, so the water is forced to come over the top of the rock, instead of being able to wear its way through it, like what we saw with the falls at the Gorge. By this time, it was raining quite hard, so I only had enough time to snap a few pictures of the creek as it roared away from the falls. Later on, the rain stopped long enough for me to whip out the camera and record some more basalt deposits along the canyon that the creek runs through. The walls of the canyon were steep, and thus the creek looks like it doesn't shift all that much.
Downstream from the falls was a canopy of trees. This meant that the ground and the trees were damp, moist, dark, mossy ... and full of mushrooms! I saw a fair number of varieties of mushrooms--most of them were a blend of red, orange and yellow (see a9190050), though I saw a lot of brown ones (a9190094) too. There were a few that looked like pastries that I've eaten (a9190058), one that looked like it was from a fairy-tale (a9190061), corals (a9190070), clusters (a9190080), and "funny orange slimy things (a9190098). I don't know their names; this is new to me. I noticed a disturbing trend among some of the mushrooms that I saw--a lot of the mushrooms had been pulled out of the ground! We suspect that's the work of mushroom hunters; indeed, as we were pulling out of the parking lot, we saw some Asiatic people with buckets and knives.
Returning to the trail, we eventually left the company of the thick tree canopy and returned to the river. By this time, the rain and clouds had really come in thick; compare the river pictures at the end (a9190105-107) to the ones at the beginning. Actually, I like the fog effect quite a bit, except for the rain-getting-on-my-camera part. :P
Just outside the parking lot, I saw a boulder that had obviously been cleaved in half by water. I've seen things like this before, but the match between left and right half is spectacular. Amazing what a bit of moisture can do to big boulders.
As a side note: After I went home, I attempted to make beef with snow peas. Unfortunately, I forgot the peas and threw in all the vegetables that I had left. The strange but tasty result can be seen in the Food! section.
I spent the second half of this week in San Jose, CA for some training classes. However, I had a vacation day to use, so I spent it travelling around the bay to see Greg (offsite). As usual, see the pictures and read the story. This time, the story is short.
After waking up far too early to catch a 10am flight out of Portland, I arrived in the Bay Area, got the rental car and drove to Menlo (offsite) for lunch. Needless to say, I took some pictures of the rather plain looking buildings that were put up last ye
