December 2004 Archives

I set up a blog for Kara, visit IF YOU DARE!

The beavers carpool is working out great, plus as an added benefit it comes with a daily mail thread loosely based on when we are planning on leaving. Today the thread was poetry themed and we were challenged to come up with limericks. Kieran (who, after the fact, claims that the limericks were supposed to be beaver related) posted hers here. My critique for her limerick was primarily focused on the fact that most good limericks sound dirty. To demonstrate, I created my own about Jeff:

There once was a guy from Vancouver
He studied and learned a maneuver
He tried with his might
But it was too tight
He shouldn’t have trained with a Hoover

I challenge y’all to come up with a better limerick than that! Post away in the comments, but original limericks only, please!

I never knew that my stupid wart would become a reoccurring character on my blog, but what the hell... I went to the podiatrist on Tuesday and things weren’t looking any better from last time. This time the cantharidin was shelved and we switched back to the good ol’ freezing method. It hurt MUCH less, but will it do any good? We shall see... I’m getting to the point where I’m ready to yield my whole foot to the wart. Perhaps if I give it some prime real estate, I might get some rad super hero ability in return... Find out tomorrow, same wart-time, same wart-channel!

A bunch of us installed the MSN Messenger 7.0 Beta today and we’re having a lot of fun with it!! The coolest new thing they added was the ability to send handwriting to your friends.

Here’s an IM convo that Ritchie and I just had, complete with beautiful drawings (it says it’s Kara, but it’s really me). Oh, to understand what we’re talking about I should mention that the beavers carpool forgot me today! They all went merrily to work and left me sitting at home wondering what the heck was going on. Fortunately Tongman came to the rescue (My Hero!)

As evidenced here and here, I have recently become a fan of Arrested Development. Brett gets the Arrested Development Referrer Points because he sat me down for lunch right before Thanksgiving and shared the Good News of AD. Kara and I were planning on driving down to Portland for Thanksgiving, so I bit torrented the first season so I could watch it on the laptop for the drive down. Since then we’ve watched the entire first season and have caught up on the second season as well. The show is so smart and funny and the characters are enjoyably quirky. I swear that David Cross’ character, Tobias Fünke, alone could carry a hilarious show, but throw in the rest of the messed up fam, and you’ve got something that is incredibly entertaining. Kieran was right when she said "You owe it to yourself to be watching this."

From: Lisa Davis
To: jake
Sent: Thursday, December 09, 2004 9:28 AM
Subject: Fwd: [Dec 2004] 5 yrs retiremennt

Hi,
Have you ever thing of retire in 5 years weathly?
5 years early retirement plan # click here
Best Wishes

From: jake
To: Lisa Davis
Sent: Thursday, December 09, 2004 10:08 AM
Subject: Re: [Dec 2004] 5 yrs retiremennt

I thing about this all time! One question though, are we talking about a 5 year long retirement, a retirement in 5 years, or a retirement 5 years earlier than my expected retirement? You seem to imply all three, and if possible, I would like to sign up for all of them.

Thanks,
Jake

Have I got a treat for all you me-ites out there, a lost episode! I was going through my entries tonight and found a post that I had saved in draft mode back on Oct. 10th and never got around to finishing it. Here it is in all its ENHANCED glory!! That's right, I didn't just post it as is, I was stricken by the Lucas bug and messed around with it!! So, it's not only a lost episode, it's the Special Edition of the Lost Episode!

10-10-2004 11:55pm
Bought, played, and beat Katamari Damacy last Wednesday. It’s one of those wacky Japanese games that puts a permanent grin on your face. I guess I’ll try to explain it (expect weirdness). The King of the Cosmos, for some unknown reason, destroyed all the stars. He has put you, The Prince, in charge of replacing all the stars. How you ask? By sending you to earth to push around a little sticky ball (Katamari) to run over stuff and make your ball bigger (think rolling a snowman, only with everyday items like tacks, batteries, and pencils). As you roll up more and more stuff, your Katamari grows, which allows you to roll over bigger and bigger things. By the end of the game your Katamari is big enough to pick up skyscrapers, stadiums, and even islands! So, just how wacky is this game? Well, watch the intro movie and revel in the glorious Japanese-ness of it! (If you aren't seeing video, download and install the codec from here.

Besides the wacky/fun of the game, the music is absolutely stupendous! If I fail to find the music online (Phil, HELP!), I might go so far as to import the soundtrack (eek! I'm crossing into new geek territory).

Update: I found the music at suprnova.org; I dare you to listen to this terminally happy song and not love it.

Note: I had to remove the files in this post because they started getting downloaded like crazy and it nearly maxed out my 5GB/mo. traffic limit...

Sunflower seeds have been my snack of choice for as long as I can remember. My dad used to eat them a bunch, and we would hang out in the garage and spit the shells right on the floor! Once I got a job/money and could buy my own seeds, I’d constantly have a bag going. Of course you can’t spit the shells inside the house, so I learned to be quite resourceful at finding receptacles to spit in*. My love for the seed was so well known that on multiple occasions I have received buckets of them for birthdays/Christmases. BUT, those happy days have come to an end because apparently I have ODed on sunflower seeds. Every time I now eat them, I get an upset stomach! It took me a while to note the correlation, but since then I have tested my hypothesis on multiple occasions with different batches and every time I eat them I feel sick. It’s pretty weird to be effectively banned from my favorite food. I mean, I assumed I’d experience it one day with steak (after my first heart attack) but, sunflower seeds?!!? Because my tummy-tum feels icky?!? Lame.

* My favorite innovation pulled from the “feedbag” idea. While reading, I found it difficult to juggle the book, a spit cup, and the bag of sunflower seeds, so I took to using a plastic grocery bag (like from Safeway). I was able to lie back on the couch, hook the bag handles around my ears and voila the “spitbag” was created! Man, I think this might be the first time I’ve ever typed something for Less Than Me and seriously considered not posting it out of embarrassment, but what the hell...

We leave for our three week vacation in Maui on Thursday and we are getting super excited! However, the thought of being disconnected from the net for three weeks was something I didn’t want to consider... So I signed up with NetZero last night. (don’t let the name fool you, I’m not getting interNET for ZERO dollars, it’s costing me $9.95) I installed the client last night, but since we have no phone line, I cannot test it out before we get there (and I’ve never even used the modem before on my laptop). I’m sure there will be multitudes of problems, but I can’t complain, I’ll be in Hawaii!

I went to the podiatrist again today and when I got back to my office I walked in to see THIS! It was bad enough to post, in words, the embarrassment that was the spitbag, but to see it staring back at me, at my place of work, was just TOO MUCH! Appalled? Aghast? Horrified? Yes on all three counts. I quickly pulled it down, stuffed it in the filing cabinet (where Mr. Philip, the resident mannequin head, usually lurks) and asked my office-mate, Daniel, for the name of the perpetrator! I assumed it must have been Bray, since he is my most loyal reader on the fifth floor, but no, it was Ritchie! After I complimented Ritchie on his handiwork, I decided that I better get some pictures of the atrocity, so I set it back up and snapped a few for the website.

Reese, are you happy to see a digital rendition of the spitbag? Didn’t think so.

We arrived in Maui at 2PM yesterday; completely clear skys, 85 degrees! It took us a ridiculous amount of time to get a rental car, but even though “they were out of mini-vans” we got one anyway. The condo is awesome, it’s right on the water! I’m hearing waves hit the beach while I type these words. Here are some pics from our balcony, the pink ones are from the sunrise this morning.

Kara has a passable description of yesterday over at Spicy Princess. I’ll add a few details...

Yesterday we went grocery shopping for breakfast food, beach food, and booze. The prices are absolutely insane and we were at a regular grocery store, not a little mini-mart. I was going to get some ice cream, but the Breyer’s half gallon of Mint Chocolate Chip was $7.70 plus tax!!!

After we went shopping, my mom and sister stopped at Starbucks. I went in with them to, I guess, get an iced latte, but had to leave before we got to the front of the line. There is something SO wrong about leaving Seattle to go to Maui and then going to Starbucks!

The shops in Lahaina were standard beach shop fare, though the art galleries were entertaining. I’ve officially become a fan of surrealist painter Victor Bregda; his stuff is fascinating to look at!

We brought a handful of boardgames to entertain us during the downtimes and last night we played Carcassonne: The Castle. Kara beat me as per usual with all the Carcassonne games. Someday I’ll learn her secret and use it against her!

Today we are going to spend all day at the beach, so lots of sunscreen for my Mr. Phillip-like skin.

I did some looking around a few days ago for the best beaches in Maui (thank you internet) and came up with Wailea Beach. We went there on Saturday morning, and played in the ocean! There were two boogie boards in our condo so we brought them along and tried them out. It’s not too hard to do and it’s pretty fun, though my ribs were a little sore in the morning, so maybe I was doing it wrong? Once we got back from the beach, we swam at our pool but it was ridiculously cold compared to the ocean, so none of us wanted to jump in. Me and Julie decided that we’d hold hands and jump in together on three. Watch what happened.

Yesterday we set off for the north side of the island to see what we could see. We were in search for another beach, but also enjoying the sights along the way. We ended up at Iao Valley where we took a bunch of pictures of pretty green hills. After that we headed to the shore to see what the beaches looked like, but they were no good for swimming. The beach was short and steep with rocks and big waves, so we made a beeline back to Wailea. The sun was behind the clouds for most of the day, but it was still warm in and out of the ocean. Thumbs up to Wailea!

So, suprnova.org went dark a few days ago but it’s not yet time to start the funeral for bit torrent. Kieran said that this week’s Arrested Development was the funniest ever, so I decided to see how hard it would be to download it in a world without suprnova.org. The answer is not hard at all! I browsed the comments on Slashdot and found alternative sites (I ended up going with tvtorrents.tv, which has an IRC room #tvtorrents on efnet) and the show is currently downloading.

Now the observant few of you might be wondering how on earth I’m downloading a TV show over dialup, and the answer to that is, I’m not! Some dope in a nearby condo has a linksys wireless router running with all the default settings. So, not only can I connect to his network for broadband, I was able to log on to his router (linksys factory logins are user:<blank> pass:admin) and forward the necessary ports to my computer! It’s a pretty bastardly thing to do since I’m hogging all of his bandwidth right now, but I see it as me trying to teach him a lesson. I mean, I’m not doing REALLY mean things like changing his password and taking down the router, etc. Anyway, AD will be here in 1.3 hours and all without the help of our dearly departed suprnova.org.

A new blog has been added to my links on the right... birr! I waited to add it until I saw some continuous action on the site, and I was pleasantly surprised this morning to find quite a bit of new stuff. Billy posted a link to some awesome pictures in a comment below, but here is the link for anyone who missed it.

On Monday we took the Road to Hana (a scenic route with over 600 curves and 50 one-lane bridges). It was absolutely beautiful; we took an insane number of pictures of the beautiful landscape. Our first stop along the way was to hike the Waikamoi Ridge Trail where we hiked among a number of exotic trees including guava, mango, and bamboo.

Another neat stop was the village of Keanae which is located on a small peninsula. There were large waves crashing into the rocky shore which created fantastic sprays high into the air. While we were there we bought a bag of taro chips (taro is a local root used to make poi but can also be fried ala potatoes) and a fresh warm loaf of banana bread; both were delicious!

The highlight of the trip was definitely the visit to Hale o Pi’ilani Heiau, the ruins of an ancient place of worship for the native Hawaiians. We weren’t able to get super close to it, but it was still amazing to see. The surrounding grounds have been nicely maintained and all sorts of unique native plants are grown along the trail to make it even more interesting! I took a bunch of pictures of the heiau and grounds and stitched them together for an awesome panorama shot. The file is a little over 4 megs, but it’s worth the download. You can see my family on the far left walking toward the heiau, they should give you a good frame of reference of just how huge this place is.

After the heiau, we reached the town of Hana where we were finally able to eat lunch! At this point we had driven about 55 miles, but it had taken us around 4 hours due to the crazy road and all of the neat stops. After Hana, we had to decide whether to go back the way we came, or continue along the Hana Highway which would eventually loop around the rest of the eastern part of Maui. We chose the latter even though a long stretch of it would be a one-lane unpaved road. It was quite an adventure riding in our rented mini-van along the rugged trail, but it also granted us some of the most beautiful sights I’m sure any of us will ever see.

By the time we finally made it back to our condo (about 10 hours after we had left), we were all definitely ready to be out of the van! But at the same time, we also had the feeling like we had just done something very special. We had trekked around the perimeter of Mt. Haleakala and had seen numerous unforgettable sights.

Yesterday morning we swam at our pool while the sun hid behind the clouds. My mom and Julie went to get pizza for lunch and when they got back it started raining. It rained pretty much all day, so we hung out at our condo and didn’t do much (TV, books, videogames, internet, etc). When we had enough of sitting around, we decided to go to a mall and walk around. We window shopped for an hour or so and then had dinner at the food court. All during this time, there was a dance recital going on in the center of the mall so we watched a bit of that as well. It was a pretty low-key day but it was nice recoup time from all the stuff we’d done since we got here.

On Wednesday we tried to go to Ka‘anapali Beach, one of the alleged best beaches of Maui, but when we got there, there was no parking! We drove down the coast and finally found some parking about a mile down the way. We walked to the beach by the parking lot, but the beach kind of sucked. The ground under the water was rocky and the waves were weird and unpredictable. After a while Kara and I walked down the coast over to Ka’anapali and the beach was SO much better! The waves were really big, but we were able to get out past the breakers and just float up and down on the waves!

On Thursday we tried to return to Wailea but once again, NO PARKING! We drove down the street again and stopped at Polo Beach. I offered to run down the beach for reconnaissance before we took all of our stuff down. The beach was way too packed and it also looked rocky, so we decided to drive down the coast a bit more. We saw some cars pulled off down the road, so we stopped again and this time my dad ran to check it out. He came back with a thumb up so we brought all of our crap to the beach. This was the most fun day at the beach yet! The waves were HUGE but it stayed shallow for quite a while out. These waves would hit with such power that if you weren’t careful, they’d throw you all around! Once we got out further from the beach, we were able to float over MOST of the waves. Sometimes a super huge wave would come and would break right around where we were. I got rolled by one of those waves, and that was NOT FUN! I was tossed around like a rag doll and got salt water in my mouth and up my nose. After that mistake, I learned how to deal with these waves. When I saw one coming, I’d swim straight for it, and dive straight into it before it broke. Because of the way the water curls, I would get turned underwater and pop straight up out of the ocean behind the wave! It was weird sensation diving horizontally into a wall of water, but this technique worked really well. My dad and I went out many times that day, and I didn’t get rolled again after that first scary time!

On Friday, we decided to take a break from the beach. We had to take our snorkel gear back to Lahaina so that determined which way we were headed. We ended up going to the Whalers Village in Ka’anapali which is a shopping center surrounding a whaler museum. We all looked at shops for a while, and then the girls continued to shop while my dad and I went to check out the museum. I was surprised at how interesting the museum actually was; it described the hellish conditions of a whaler’s life and also went into detail about how they harvested each section of a whale and what each part was used for.

Yesterday morning ate yummy breakfast and did the whole Christmas thing. I got another sweet Bionicle so take THAT Brett!! At around noon, Kara, Julie, and I decided to go to the beach. We drove to Maalaea Beach, which is right down the street from our condos, but the beach and waves were too small. So we got back in the van and drove toward Kihei until we saw a bunch of cars pulled off the side of the road. We got out and stayed at that beach for a while. I wasn’t planning on getting in the water, so I sat up on the beach in the shade and read Azkaban. There were a bunch of holes in the sand, and I soon realized that they were crab holes! If I sat still for long enough, crabs would start peeking out of their holes, which freaked the crap out of me! I couldn’t handle sitting there, so I greased myself up with suntan lotion and got in the ocean only to discover that this beach sucked too! The waves were really small and the water stayed shallow for far too long. But now that I was in the water and ready to play, I figured we might as well drive to Wailea. Thankfully we found a parking spot and were able to hang there for a few hours. While we were there, whales started breaching a couple hundred yards out from shore! We could see them popping out of the water and spraying water into the sky; it was quite amazing.

The Prisoner of Azkaban was supposed to win me over to the Harry Potter series (see here and here for why). It didn’t. It was entertaining enough, but it didn’t make me understand why grownups are so excited about these kid books. This was definitely the best of the first three books (probably because it was all new to me since I haven’t seen the movie) but it still seemed too simple to get excited over. Lupin’s secret was obvious from the first moment they met him on the train (ragged clothes teamed with that name, c’mon!) and although I didn’t figure out all of the real story about Black, I figured the story of record was not actually the way it all happened. I have to say, though, that the back story of James Potter, Black, Snape, et al. was interesting.

So would I recommend it? To kids: definitely. To adults: only if you want to read a kids book. To me: I brought it and Goblet of Fire so I guess I was going to read the next book regardless of how I felt about Azkaban.