Category: Personal
May 26, 2008
The Playmobil Experiment
So, a few months ago my wife begged for a Playmobil set. I looked over what she wanted and thought it seemed fine. She ordered it. When I got out here, I got to see it all set up. It was a great, happy forest scene across two pieces of furniture.
Then her brother came out to visit this weekend. And, without prompting, made some changes. This prompted Laurie to create a collection on Flickr, in my account, for our Playmobil Expirement. Her text on the collection sums it up best:
A tranquil forest setting comes into contact with household visitors...
So here's how it works.
We have this great Playmobil set that looks a lot like our house, yard, etc. We set it up in the spare bedroom, which will eventually be a kids room, but for now is a guest room. Then we invite our houseguests to customize it as they see fit. And we document the results in picture and video form, as well as do an exit interview to make sure we understand what we're seeing...
The normal configuration will be available later. Laurie had to reset it and we haven't had a chance to take those pictures just yet. These are more entertaining, anyway.
()
(0)June 24, 2007
A Month Goes Fast
Once again, things have gotten very busy. This has been true more so with stuff outside of work than stuff in work. That is to say, work is keeping me busy but personal life is overwhelming my time.
That's not to say things aren't going well. They are. Very well. Now, you'd think that this would give me lots of good stuff to blog about. It has. It just hasn't left me with the time to blog about it. So, many things go by without comments.
Speaking of comments, the comment spam has been enormous lately. I've got the protection turned up pretty high, but a bunch still gets through. If you try to leave a comment and it never appears, it may have gotten lost in the mix. A direct email can fix that, for now. I'm hoping that Movable Type 4 will actually do more to allow valid comments to get through.
Read the rest of "A Month Goes Fast"May 15, 2007
Birthday Cake Video
Below you'll find a video showing the birthday cake that Laurie made for herself for her birthday party. She had some help from one of her friends during the final decorating. The cake inside is a carrot cake, but I'd call it more of a spiced carrot cake as its quite flavorful. The critters are made out of fondant while the frosting is orange butter cream and the cake was encased in marzipan. About 2/3rds of the bottom section fed about 20 people at the party. We still have leftovers.
April 11, 2007
Beijing: In Retrospect
Well, I'm definitely late in getting out a Beijing post. It's now been about a week over six months since we were there. We were only there for a few days, though, so there really isn't all that much to it.
When we got there, we did the typical: we went shopping! Like Hong Kong, haggling is the norm in Beijing. 
We went to many of the markets, including the famous Friendship market. Apparently, it used to be the only place foreigners were allowed. These days, we can go almost anywhere.
We also went to see Tiananmen Square as well as some of the other nearby sites. Although full of formal guards, we were never bothered.
All over the city were signs and displays for the Olympic mascots. The Olympics are definitely a huge event for any city, but they seem particularly so for Beijing.
On the last day we had planned to go out to the Great Wall. Unfortunately, I got sick. 
We decided that Laurie should still go on her own. After all, we had already scheduled for a car to come to pick us up. So, she did go on her own. She had a really good time, too, even though I couldn't go with her. :o
She did find that it was nice enough that we will return again so I can see it and she can see more of it.
The hotel would give us fruit, which was great. One day we got a piece of fruit that we did not recognize. I spent the next hour searching online for it before we even cut in to it. Eventually, we determined it was a dragonfruit. Turns out that the taste is much less strong than the looks. 
It was like a weak melon in flavor, but stil tasty and quick to eat with a spoon.
. . .
Well, that concludes this series of memories on our trip around the world we took last September for our honeymoon.
I hope this didn't bore too many people, but it has helped both of us remember more of our trip.
March 19, 2007
Journey to Beijing: In Retrospect
Alright, so this is a little silly since we never left the airport on our way from South Africa to Beijing, China. However, the travel time was a good chunk of our trip and is still quite memorable in part because of the length and in part because we have no pictures. (Sounds ironic, huh?)
We left South Africa many days after we had planned on leaving. Our travel changes only included the times of the tickets and not the route. So, our first hop dropped us back in to the Johannesburg airport. We didn't spend much time there and I hardly remember it.
Not long after, we were off on a decent length flight to the Kuala Lumpur International Airport. Here, we spent about 12 hours waiting for our next flight. We didn't have to leave the secure section of the airport and we decided not to. As it turns out, this was in the middle of the day and Ramadan had just started. Our guide books told us that the most likely place to find food would be in the Chinatown section. Well, see, we were headed off to China anyway, so we decided to go get some slept -- we had already been up a long time.
There was a transit hotel in the security section that rented by the hour, although mostly in four hour blocks. I forget if we stayed four or six hours, but it went very fast and only marginally helped our fatigue -- but we did get to shower, which was nice.
After that, we headed out in to the great KLIA which, like any modern airport, is basically a shopping mall. This proved to be entertaining so we went around looking at things and grabbed a couple of trinkets and ended up with some of the local money.
Our next flight was quite short since it was just going to Thailand. We landed and proceeded to have the next eight hours to wonder around the Bangkok airport. This was not quite as good of an experience as KLIA since we had to exit security, pay the taxes, etc. Then, we couldn't check in right away so we had to make do for a couple of hours on the external section of the airport, which didn't have quite so many shops to kill some time. However, we saw plenty of the military presence we had heard about.
The coup, as it turned out, was mostly non-violent and we probably would have been fine had we not changed our plans. However, there were a few issues that made us very glad we did change our plans. First, banks and ATM's were closed the first few days, so money would have been a problem. Many other shops and sights were also closed. Finally, the weather was absolutely terrible the whole time we would have been there. We didn't leave the airport because the middle of the airport had a very large enclosed courtyard where we could see the massive amounts of wind and rain, even though it was protected on all sides by a many-story building.
Our next flight to Beijing was a bit longer, at over five hours, but that wasn't the interesting part. This turned out to be what felt like a very budget flight. The plane was noticeably old and hadn't been retrofitted with new seats or signage. It still had ash trays on the seats and other signs. This was also a flight between two non-English speaking countries and with a destination that is relatively rare for English speakers. That didn't prevent them from speaking in English on the announcements, when there were some. The rest of the flight was uneventful and we got some needed rest.
I recall choosing the local breakfast rather than the western breakfast that didn't look all that good. As it turns out, it was this huge thing of rice porridge that was both quite good and very filling. I say it was good mostly because I like rice and it can be spiced up some. It was relatively bland, though, but after being in transit (including driving to the airport in South Africa) for over 40 hours, food was food.
We landed and had a decent drive in front of us to our hotel. That's another story, though.
March 16, 2007
South Africa: In Retrospect
We left our friends in Kenya when we headed off to South Africa. They were to spend another few days there and then head either to South Africa or back home. We weren't to meet up with them again, so the rest of our trip would be just us.
I was probably most impressed with South Africa. We were originally only going to be there a few nights to do some wine tasting, see some of the area, and go shark diving. That got extended due to last minute notice of the coup in Thailand and the media black-out while we had to make our decision.
I have a number of good memories from South Africa. We had this great little VW car that had an amenity list that included seat belts and head lights. It had no air bags, no radio, no fuel injection, and pretty much nothing else that you might find in a car these days. And yet, it was a brand new car, although certainly not legal in the US.
Our meal at the top of a hill had a fantastic view and lots of really good meats and foods to eat. It was a bit cold and windy, but it certainly was memorable. I was a little surprised at how empty the restaurant was, but it was a weeknight and not anywhere near town. It looked like it could serve really large functions.
Our drive over to the coast took us through a great pass that was scenic and rocky in much the same way that my drive over Highway 17 in scenic and full of redwoods. It wasn't all that much higher or longer of a pass, either, especially if compared to taking Highway 9, instead.
The coast I recall as being absolutely wonderful and very much like our own coast here in central California. The coast road is windy with lots of great views. Every stopping point has a view south of vast openness of water filled with whales and dolphins. Our own view occasionally has a whale; we've seen one while we've been here, but we've never seen a dolphin from the coast.
The jackass penguins were really quite fun. You walk on boardwalk over their area while they are right under and around you. The only thing separating you from them is a fence with fairly narrow slats. These slats are too narrow for a foot but not too narrow for a penguins beak. I got pecked by one!
Naturally, one of our strongest memories was sitting in our hotel watching TV within about 18 hours of our flight to Thailand. Flipping through the stations, we saw mention of a coup in Thailand! There wasn't much information about it and while we were watching for more information we got word that Thailand had cut off media communications from inside the country. That meant we wouldn't learn any more about it. So, we quickly contacted our travel agent, had our flights moved, and contacted a place Laurie had stayed in her first trip to South Africa, Phantom Forest eco-lodge in Knysna. All of our changes went off without a hitch and instead of heading to the airport the next day, we drove farther our towards Knysna.
This turned out to be convenient since our shark diving trip had been cancelled and possibly pushed off to a date when we wouldn't be in the country because of rough weather. So, we got to stay at the wonderful Phantom Forest that will be my best memory of there. The huts are on a steep hill and partially up in trees. It makes for a very private, very in-the-forest feel. It was very pleasant and truly wonderful.
Our shark diving trip turned out to be shark watching, which still got me seasick. The waters were still filled with silt and had maybe a foot or two visibility. People who did go in the water couldn't see anything where we could see all of the action from the top deck. It was really quite something! I hope to go back sometime and actually get in the water with the sharks. (Hopefully when I go back I'll have figured out my motion sickness issues.)
After our wonderful time in South Africa, we were off for a long journey to Beijing.
March 13, 2007
Kenya: In Retrospect
Following the post on Egypt, I'll be talking about some of the major items that I remember about Kenya, both good and bad. Six months is a relatively long time for remembering details, but they stick around longer on particularly special events.
Many of my best memories still come from the Mara Bush Camp. It was our first stop and our most rugged one, too. It's a real, moving camp that gets set up in a different location yearly. There was no power to speak of in the tents, except for a battery to keep some LED bulbs powered for night use. This probably helped give it some lasting impact.
At the end of the day, we often all gathered in a lounge in the dining tent (there were some power plugs there) and all had either Tusker or Amarula. It was one of the few times during the day that we could actually just relax. Outside of that, we were usually out and about taking pictures and roaming around on the dirt roads, keeping an eye out for critters. This turned out to be particularly tiring. That's part of why there weren't daily blog entries from that time.
During one of our outings, we had a great encounter with a number of baby lion cubs. There were lots of other vehicles around, but that didn't seem to bother any of the lions. They pride had various lions about to watch for food and threat, but the vehicles clearly weren't considered a threat. They walked right in the middle of the autos and even very close to us. They were so amazingly cute. Laurie got some great pictures and we may have even gotten some good video (sure, it's been 6 months, but that doesn't mean we've had time to go through all of our media).
After the Mara Bush Camp, we headed over to Fig Tree, which wasn't far away and allowed us similar routes during our drives. Sitting in the tree patio drinking Tusker, avoiding the monkeys, and watching animals out on the plains are my main memories here. In fact, I almost forgot about them before I went looking through the pictures again.
After we left the Masai Mara, we stayed in Amboseli. My main memories of here were of lots of elephants and mosquitos. It was very odd that our previous camp, which was right on a river, had no mosquitos but in a permanent structure, there were tons of mosquitos. We got to see lots of elephants, including many baby elephants.
Our next adventure was a high-speed convoy between Amboseli and Tsavo. Supposedly, there had been previous conflict in the area which led to a weapons build-up. We weren't allowed to leave Amboseli without being part of the convoy. For most people, this wasn't a problem since they weren't driving themselves. We, however, were the only people who were self-driving. Although it was worth it and no one bothered us about it, it wasn't normal.
The drive itself was uneventful until we missed our turn-off to Finch Hatton's and got ourselves in to some sharp volcanic rock that we could have avoided. This gave us a flat that we had to deal with at the gate. Some people tried to help us with the jack, but it wasn't until someone came up that was familiar with how to fix a dust-caked one that we got it working. It worked as we thought, but being front mounted it got the brunt of the dust and thus got all muddle up. Everyone was very helpful though and gave us better directions to backtrack and get in to Finch Hatton's.
Finch Hatton's itself was absolutely wonderful and is probably my best memory of the whole trip even though we were there alone. It was certainly the best place that we stayed. Our tent was right over a water hole with lots of hippos and crocs. We're hoping to return soon. ;)
The final memory, which still lingers on many of our bags, was the massive amount of dust that was kicked up in many areas. Even with all of the windows and hatches closed, the car would not seal and would fill with dust that got all over and inside of absolutely everything, including out lungs. We can see the color of the dust on many of our bags still. It was truly permeating.
Unlike our feeling for Egypt, where even now we don't want to go back, we've been wanting to go back to Kenya since. That said, we never truly felt all that well while we were there. We were taking all the various medications and such, but whether it was from different food, too much dust, general fatigue, or something worse, we were always not feeling quite right. Maybe next time we go we can spend longer to get more adjusted to the climate and food.
March 12, 2007
Egypt: In Retrospect
It's been six months since we took our honeymoon around the world, going through Egypt, Kenya, South Africa, airports in Malaysia and Thailand, and China. Overall, the trip was absolutely great. We tried to blog through the whole trip, but a number of things got in our way, not the least of which was simply fatigue after keeping busy all day.
The farther away you get from a memory, the more those memories seem to consolidate on just a few moments in time. This time in September, we'd already left Egypt and were in Kenya.
I thought I would share some of my strong, lasting memories of Egypt and perhaps along with a new picture or two. That doesn't mean I'm going to go over everything I remember, but just some of the big, important items. Laurie has also posted her memories of the Egypt part of our trip on her blog, Naturally Speaking.
My main memory of our visit was that everything was very dirty and dusty. 
And by dirt, I mean that there was garbage everywhere, in particular, in the streets and where one walked. This was particularly notable in the markets where you literally had to walk on refuse while looking up out of the throng of people at old, crumbling buildings that look like they would collapse at any moment. The waterways, although covered in filth, also had many egrets in them, as can be seen here.
Also, don't trust what anyone says on the streets. We got convinced to go off in one direction, only to find out they just wanted our money for a camel or horse ride. We didn't want to comply, so they sent us further along only to find out we (supposedly) weren't supposed to be there. On our way back out, guards and others were cracking looks and probably laughing. It was not a pleasant experience but we fully learned that flat-out lies were expected. (And that's isn't of the misleading type of, "Buy this, best quality, real," that we would become so familiar with at the other end of our journey.)
Within the Citadel, I happened across the filthiest restroom I'd ever seen. It was also probably the oldest. Scary, too, was the fact that locals were filling up their water bottles. From the looks of it, it would have been safer to fill up a water bottle from a puddle in an overcrowded cow pasture. I didn't have any small notes on me at the time, so the tip I gave to the attendant was a bit larger than normal (by about 20x), but was barely $2 US. After he realized what it was, he came running out when I was already 100 feet away or so thanking me profusely.
A while after that, we got to hear the call to prayer while overlooking the city. That was an absolutely amazing experience. The sound and enormity of it was profound. It's just not possible to miss the right times with that sort of announcement. Naturally, off in two directions groups of pyramids could be seen through the haze, too, which just added to the mood of the view.
The last impression was the absolute chaos at the airport on the way out. I wrote about that before, so I won't go in to much detail now. Suffice it to say, if there had been a panic from real or a false threat, people would have died. It could have been from being knocked over and trampled during a brief break in the crowd wide enough to fall in to. It could have been from one of those metal luggage carts being dropped, since they would be handed over people's heads when they were in the way. It didn't help that there were absolutely no other white people in sight. We felt very out of place and a bit disturbed by the whole experience.
However, it should be noted, that the people who actually did work there were actually all nice. Sure, they had to deal with the chaos, but we never had any problems with them giving us a hard time, either going through the entrance security, checking our bags, checking our passports, or even at the gate security where Laurie kept setting off the metal detector. (Eventually they let her through after asking if she had a knife or gun because they couldn't wand her because they had no female staff. I suspect if that had happened here and no female was available for "wanding" she would have been held until someone was found.)
Those are my main memories that help remind me that if we ever do go back to Egypt we'll skip out on Cairo and head off to the other sites. Hopefully they'll be a little more official and organized than the pyramids. I'm not counting on that, though.
February 15, 2007
On Our Way To Hawaii
So, I'm typing this while on the plane to Maui. We are being "forced" to go to Hawaii. The horror! Heh. ;) The first time I went to Maui was with Laurie last April (2006). Right after returning from that trip we learned the Laurie's friend Kate was going to be getting married on Maui in February of 2007. Well, it's now February of 2007.
15 Hours Ago, Valentine's Day Evening
I left work at the usual time or a little bit early. Laurie had picked me up, leaving our Jeep behind to drive up to Concord and go out for Valentine's Day. The drive was fairly light on the traffic and we got to take advantage of the carpool lanes (although there are far fewer than there should be).
We decided on the way up to try to go to Claim Jumper with my grandmother since it was near a couple of other restaurants for backup as well as a CompUSA. Well, we got up there in good time and only had to wait about an hour for a wonderfully large dinner. Claim Jumper has super-American-sized portions. I mean, the portions are large even for a typical American restaurant. The food was good, though.
Why a CompUSA? Well, we currently have two Canon 30D DSLR cameras. However, when fully kitted they can be a bit too much in many situations. So, we've been wanting a regular, small, pocket-sized point-and-shoot digital camera. What better than trying one out while going to Maui for a week?
So, we picked up the Canon PowerShot SD900. It's in a titanium case, has a 10MP sensor, a reasonably sized screen (although other cameras like the SD630 had larger screens). It still has an optical viewfinder for saving battery (from 230 pictures to 600 pictures per charge). Of course, I'll be writing more about this later. We're not yet totally convinced this is the point-and-shoot for us, but we'll see. This size and weight are great, so far.
12 Hours Ago, The Middle of the Night
We tried to get to sleep early since we had to leave the house at 5:30am. So, we got to bed at about 11:30pm and about half hour later I got in to a terrible coughing fit that juts wouldn't stop. I must have been coughing violently for an hour or so before getting back to sleep. I kept poor Laurie awake who also didn't get any sleep the night before.
7 Hours Ago, Rude Awakening
We got rudely woken up by a very loud mechanical alarm clock that wasn't anywhere near us. However, it went off at the right time. My phone went off a few minutes later, but I was already up by then. Some Starbucks, a trip to Longs for some cough stuff, and a drive to Oakland airport, we were ready to go through security.
It's always fun going through security with multiple laptops. Luckily, they only ask you to take laptops out and not cameras, phones, as other gadgets. Although the line was quite long, it went relatively quick and we had maybe a 15 minute wait at the gate before boarding.
Back to the Present
So now I'm still sitting here on my Dell XPS M1210 laptop writing this entry. I'm in a middle seat, but with Laurie next to me it's not so important. Laurie is also on her Dell Latitude D820 doing some photo editing (some exciting news recently got her even more excited about such things and her blog is now far more popular than mine).
So what other kit do we have with us? We're actually traveling fairly light. Of course, you know we have both of our laptops. These are to help with dumping pictures from the one Canon 30D DSLR that we brought and now the Canon SD900.
For entertainment, we have my Nintendo DS and Laurie's Nintendo DS Lite (yeah, she gets the better one -- we actually had that one first and then I got a regular DS for me as it was a good price). Of course, we also have our Apple iPods which is her 8GB Gen2 Nano and my 80GB Gen5.5 Video.
We also have a Bluetooth mouse with us, some extra batteries for the 30D and the mouse, in addition to some books in hardback format. Yes, those are real paper books. That's about it for the electronic gear. We have some Netflix DVDs and are hoping that the hotel connection will be good enough for some streaming Netflix if that isn't enough.
All of this stuff with built-in wireless raises an interesting question: is it really against the rules to use Bluetooth or WiFi on the plane? There are planes with WiFi for Internet access (we even got use that on our around-the-world trip). First, we were playing Club House Games with our DS's. Of course, they were connected with WiFi. Secondly, we're using the Bluetooth mouse to help out with the photo editing.
Naturally, when we were connection the Bluetooth mouse we saw a phone or two that were still on. One of them had the persons name. I thought about calling out the name, but didn't really want to advertise that we were using wireless devices, too. ;)
January 1, 2007
Happy New Year
Here ends a nice 4 day weekend (for me) and begins a nice, new year. Laurie and I had some great time to ourselves to watch movies and play boardgames. I had hoped to make one last post before 2006 was over but, obviously, I was unable to.
Christmas was full of family cheer. As with Thanksgiving, the was the first Christmas dinner actually hosted at our house. All went well. Shortly after we had a quiet party for folks that couldn't get out of town. This had some fun casual games, the third run of our chocolate fountain, and generally some good warmth and holiday visiting.
New Year's came and we realized we hadn't put the champagne (an almond flavored California champagne) in the freezer to chill some. It was quite yummy, but still had the champagne flavor to it, so we refrained from emptying the whole bottle right before bed.
Have a safe and happy 2007!