the return

Wow, it's been almost a year since either of us has posted on this site.

I just spent my first night in the new apartment. Our furniture hasn't arrived yet, but the place has great potential. The layout is a little weird, but I'm looking forward to decorating. We never really did much with the place on Maui.

Rupert is settling in. He handled the travel much better than I expected; hardly made a peep the entire time. And I know it was seriously unsettling for him. He's had so many changes to deal with over the last month. This morning he's been following us around the house as if he's afraid we'll both disappear somewhere.

I'll try and keep up some (more) regular updates. It'll be a nice break from my job search, which begins tomorrow... dun dun duuuuun :O

Yea yea

So I know i dont post much. So heres an update.

Lets see.. snorkeling on Christmas. That was fun but cold. It was a bit windy and the sun was hiding... the tourists didnt seem to mind... I guess we are just wimps

Then we went out surfing this past weekend. That was a ton of fun, until it got wind blown. There were a few turtles who came and hung out while we were surfing. That was a ton of fun. I'm still a little sore tho, but it defiantly felt nice to get out an do stuff. Oh and we had some epic badmiton going on.

There is free badminton up in Makawao every other Monday. So ive been trying to go to that when i can. Lots of fun... laid back and stuff. And they provide all the equipment. Fun stuff.

Neverwhere

I just finished the above novel, an adaptation of a BBC series by one Neil Gaimen; an author known best for his graphic novels. What a strange and round-about way of doing things. A writer of graphic novels takes a television series and makes it into a book. It's nearly as strange as the story itself.

However, I really enjoyed it. There's a very quirky sense of humor and a dark irony running through the whole, and while certain elements are certainly well established in literature already (gawky man becomes unwitting hero completely against his will) the characters are unique enough unto themselves to make it interesting. There are times where his humor borders on the unbearably corny, but having seen the first episode of the BBC series I can see why. (It must have been an awful struggle to beat the corny out of it. I don't recommend the show unless you're in for that kind of thing.) The book was involving, and an easy read too, a perfect chapter-by-chapter bit to read before bed.

It makes me want to go and find his graphic novels, which I've heard have won all sorts of awards and "done for graphic novels what Shakespeare did for the play." That is, he's brought them properly into the realm of 'literature.' And I do like Shakespeare ...

You may have also seen one of Neil Gaimen's other works floating around. One of his other novels, Stardust, has been made into film (rather than the other way around... how boring) I've heard it is also very good, though not as dark as most of his other work.

Rain, Rain Go Away

Well, the winter season has started in earnest here on Maui. We had brownouts all Tuesday evening, and then Wednesday morning the wind started. 50 mile per hour winds through the valley, coupled with torrential rains. On North Kihei Road no less than 8 power poles toppled over barely 20 minutes after myself and a group of my crew left, soaking and muddy, from the farm there. They closed the road, and it's still closed this morning. By the time we got back to the offices at 9:30am the power was out all over Kihei.

The power went out in Haiku as well shortly after I got home, but was on again in about 2 hours, though we've still been having brown outs. On my way to work this morning my boss called to let me know that while the power finally went on in Kihei at about 8pm last night, it was out again by 9. The road in front of our farm is still blocked off, and as I was talking to him I was approaching the side road I usually take down to the valley. It was also closed. I'll have to wait and see if the samples we had frozen in our -80 freezer survived the power outage. Maybe this will convince someone to finally put in a generator for our lab.

At this point I was going to add a link to the Maui News, but it appears that their servers are down now as well. When I checked this morning for news on the power situation in Kihei they they hadn't been real clear, but it did describe some of the carnage all over the island. There was a mudslide on the North end that carried a house off of its foundation, and two people in another home had to be rescued from their roof by helicopter. In Kihei there's been substantial flooding, and on the Big Island on the Kona side they're having problems with fresh water sources being compromised and water lines busting. Power's been spotty all over the place.

Luckily we're pretty cozy up here in Haiku, aside from the occasional break in electrical service and the fact that we had to close a few of our windows for the first time in months it's been fine. And it's still not snow and ice ;)

Nightmare Before Christmas + IMAX + 3D = Win

So this past weekend was pretty darn awesome. Bri flew out to San Diego (oh by the way I'm out in San Diego for work at the moment for a few weeks). She got here Thursday night.

Friday we went to a Stars concert at the house of blues. That was pretty cool. Good show, good times. We ended up getting downtown a bit earlier than expected so we had some time before the show in which we decided to go have fun in a hat store, which was quite possibly the highlight of the evening. Bri ended up getting a hat at which point we proceeded to the concert. Kind of an interesting crowd at said concert... there were some pretty die-hard stars fans there.

We got home pretty late and crashed.. and slept in.

We woke up Saturday and Allen took us out to Dim Sum. As usual we ate too much. We then proceeded to the San Diego zoo and spent all afternoon there. We got quite a few pictures which will be posted... at some point... tho unfortunately the camera battery died half way thru. Afterwards we went out to a Cuban restaurant for dinner, and again ate too much. Grabbed some coffee and then proceeded to the movie theater to go see Nightmare Before Christmas in IMAX 3D goodness. I sang along... because you have to.

Sunday we got up, ate a light breakfast and headed to the climbing gym. Turns out its pretty close. Climbed for a good few hours... until our arms were so sore could barely open doors anymore. Afterwards we met up with Allen for a late lunch at an Indian restaurant. We went to Fry's to geek out and coffee and then headed downtown to an Irish pub thing for some food and music. Sundays they have some Irish dancing, and then afterwards they have a really good session.

All in all, a great, but exhausting weekend.

On music distribution and dinosaurs

Obviously digital music distribution is a big deal for someone like me on multiple levels: as a music lover, a musician and a geek. Now I'm sure I could go into some huge post about my thoughts and feelings about it all but instead, I'll just direct you to this link

Enjoy

Living Vicariously through the interwebs

Found this site and thought it was worth sharing.
God bless the internet.

I always find webcams to be sort of odd. What is it that people find so fascinating about watching other people who don't know they are being watched? Its kinda stalker-ish I guess. I mean webcams have been around for... a LONG time, but this sort of collection is... well kinda crazy.

Which brings me to a point, if I have to have one. Seems to me that the trend on the internet is to group EVERYTHING. We have this sort of collection mentality. This is a perfect example. We used to be able to download songs... now we download full albums. We don't download episodes, we download entire seasons of tv shows. Just look at places like youtube... One site for pretty much any video clip imaginable.

I don't know where I'm going with this, but I felt like I had to write more than just the link.