Time for Real Life

In Antarctica

2006-08-27T00:27:00.000-07:00

I'm in Antarctica now and have started a new P.G. blog about it. (it's fer me Ma!)

http://adamonice.blogspot.com

Give it a read if you are so inclined. Hopefully there will be pictures soon.

Underwater Archeology

2006-08-15T06:06:00.000-07:00

I spent the past weekend SCUBA diving on the Burlington waterfront right between the EPA superfund site and the sewage treatment plant. The scenery on land isn't great but the number of wrecks underwater is fascinating.

The superfund site is an old barge canal that was built back when Burlington was the third largest lumber port in the U.S. and was the main stopover for cargo traveling between Montreal and New York City. Extending from the canal into the lake are two breakwaters that would keep waves from hitting canal boats as they entered the canal. These breakwaters extend for a couple hundred yards into the lake and after the canal closed became a place to tie up old boats which would eventually leak and sink. The result is a large number of wrecks sitting in 10-15 feet of water.

The lake water is cold enough to preserve the wooden wrecks so as part of an underwater archeology class run by the Lake Champlain maritime Museum and my favorite dive shop Murphy and I spent the weekend mapping artifacts on an old lake schooner called the Excelsior.

The double-masted boat was built in the 1850's was retired and then sank off the breakwater as a result of neglect around 1895. In the early 20th century with canal closed its breakwater was only getting in the way of boat traffic and a hole was opened in it using heavy equipment or explosives. (probably the former) The hole was opened right where the Excelsior was, ripping off its rear half.

This made for an interesting wreck to dive since there are boat pieces mixed in with the big logs and rocks used to make the breakwater. We spent most of our time over the forward portion of the ship where we could document the locations of artifacts like shoe bottoms, pieces of iron rod and chain, jugs that held who knows what and odd things that we drew for the archaeologists to identify. One artifact Murphy found was completely out of place for a commercial boat of that age and figuring out why it would be there drove the archeologist leading the class nuts.

There were two classroom sessions along with the weekend of diving: An introduction last Wednesday and one tomorrow on how to conserve artifacts that have been removed from the lake. Of course any artifact found on a wreck in Lake Champlain must stay on the wreck by state law unless it is removed as a part of an approved archeological expedition. On the side of the lake belonging to New York State no human-made item may be removed from the lake bottom. In Vermont stuff sitting on it's own is fair game. (so we Vermonters can pull golf balls and old beer cans out of the lake without becoming criminals)

I got to drive the float.

2006-08-07T13:59:00.000-07:00

Last week I was confronted by two delemas: 1) I am not hiking right now so I have to find other things to do. 2) I tend to complain about the state of politics but find I can do little about it aside from voting and when I am in Antarctica I am actually not allowed to express a position for or against any candidate in a U.S. election.

As a solution to both of these issues I spent a couple of days last week volunteering for Scudder Parker: Vermont’s democratic candidate for governor. (I voted for the Republican incumbent in the last election but his ability to do what he promises for Vermont has been disappointing)

I spent most of Thursday on the phone with volunteers getting people to commit to marching with Scudder (that is his real name) in a parade on Saturday.

On Saturday morning I showed up and was put in charge of driving the float. The float is called the “People Powered Engine” and looks like a cross between a locomotive and an Airstream camping trailer. When I first heard there was a bicycle-powered float I was a bit worried it would look as unprofessional as some of the other “great ideas” I have seen local groups enter in parades. The PPE, however, was solidly built, (even using rivets) can be towed on the interstate up to 65 MPH and is a huge hit with the parade audiences who have seen enough restored John Deere tractors to last them for a while.

Four bikes have been bolted to an old boat trailer that makes the chassis of the float. A person sits on each of the bikes and pedals to power the float. About 20 feet ahead of them a bicycle seat was welded to the frame behind a set of handle bars that turn a couple of 12-inch tires. There isn’t a floor to the float so if we needed an extra kick I could get off my seat and push but the pedal power was very effective at getting us moving. The hardest part was trying to steer while looking through a four inch hole that was four feet in front of me. The best way to keep on the road I found was to keep the yellow line on the road between my feet but that didn’t work so well on the dirt roads.

In all it was a really fun way to spend a Saturday and I’m looking forward to driving the float again tomorrow.

Pictures of the float can be found here and here.

P.S. If Simmons was in charge of confetti he obviously didn’t show up.

Update: Walking distance to Canada

2006-08-07T12:25:00.000-07:00

An updated version of my essay on hiking the long trail is now available on my new web page. This version has pictures.

I was hoping to post a PDF but alas I no longer have a PDF creator. The process did give me practice with GooglePages but I really miss the “print to PDF” function in Word. Does anybody know of a good free PDF maker that doesn’t leave a watermark on the page?

Cheers

Popular Mechanics - Electric Lotus

2006-07-27T11:58:00.000-07:00

An electric car that has the body of a Lotus Elise a range up to 250 miles that can do 0-60 in 4 seconds? If only it weren't $80-100K.

Popular Mechanics - Electric Lotus

Great view, cheap rent, walking distance from Canada

2006-07-26T17:42:00.000-07:00

Great view, cheap rent, walking distance from Canada.

I’m back at home after a 7-night solo hike through 100 miles of Vermont’s Green Mountains. This was an “unsupported” hike, meaning I carried all my supplies for the entire hike on my back. In one day I climbed over 3,500 feet while setting a new personal distance record of 21 miles. Overall the hike was four times longer than my previous longest hike and I collected a good share of stories along the way.

The part of the Long Trail (LT) I was hiking inspired outdoor enthusiasts to extend it and construct the world-famous Appalachian Trail (AT), a 2200 mile trail from Georgia to Maine which connects all the mountain ranges in the Appalachians . During my week hiking I shared camp sites and a good amount of conversation with many “thru hikers” who had either left Georgia in March or April or departed from Maine in May.

Thru hikers of the AT get a lot of credit from me. These are people who put their lives on hold for 5-8 months to hike. Their currency is weight: they all know exactly how many pounds they are carrying and will mail their sleeping bag and cooking gear ahead a couple hundred miles to lighten their packs by 4 pounds. They will only carry 2-4 days of food and spend occasional days “taking a zero” (as in zero miles on the trail) to hitch-hike to grocery stores, hostels, or the homes of old hikers for supplies, showers or a meal with fresh ingredients that would have required refrigeration. Thru hikers could tell me how to get the post office to ship packages for free, how many calories per ounce are in a bagel, or why almonds and walnuts are the best nuts to put in trail mix. They only filter their water if it is absolutely necessary and would rather sleep in a three-walled open shelter than set up their tarp or lightweight tent.  They have lost anywhere from 5 to 40 pounds on the trail, are mostly over 30 (some pushing 70), many are divorced or recently ended a long relationship and all of them have stories to tell about why they are hiking. Some are “professional hikers” who only work three months of the winter to support their hiking.

Some of these characteristics apply to people thru hiking the LT though it is a shorter hike. Many AT thru hikers will say it takes about 300 miles to get into the “trail lifestyle” so in the southern part of the state where the LT and AT trails are one, the LTers pick up on the lessons and tall tales of the ATers have to give.

I had hoped to thru hike the entire 272 miles of the Long Trail from Massachusetts to Canada. So despite my feeling of accomplishment I am a little disappointed by an old injury which caused me to cut my hike short. I sprained an ankle two years ago hiking in boots with poor ankle support. After five days of hiking the Long Trail my ankle started hurting again. Even with bandages and plenty of what some hikers call “vitamin-I” (ibuprofen) it was clear by day seven that continuing the hike without properly resting my leg would risk doing more damage. I have spent most of my summer getting physically qualified to work in Antarctica and I didn’t want to risk losing my job because of a hiking injury. If there is still a Vermont when I get back from Antarctica there will still be a Long Trail but making the decision to be an adult and put work before the trail was surprisingly tough for me emotionally.
While the AT thru hikers probably get the most respect, there isn’t really a class structure on the trail. When I mentioned I was “just hiking the long trail” to an AT hiker he pointed out that there is no “just” about hiking hundreds of miles. No matter how long or short I was hiking many hikers accepted me as “one of them” because I was happy to be in the woods unlike the 90 something percent of the population still at home in the “real world.”

Both AT and LT thru hikers give each other trail names. These are the names people call you by on the trail and the name you use to sign log books or leave funny messages for the next hiker to use a shelter behind you. A trail name is usually easier to remember than someone’s real name because it has to do with a feature of their personality or gear; picking your own trail name is frowned upon. The people I met along the trail had names like Hobbit, or Pokie (who was both slow and threatened to poke anyone in the shelter that snored). One guy who hiked with a walking stick in his right hand earned the name Right Side. I was named Ti or Titanium because of my super-light Titanium alcohol stove and cooking gear.

Those who aren’t thru hikers fall into a few categories, the most loved being the “trail angels,” those who work minor miracles using “trail magic.” Trail angles are usually retired hikers who make life much better for the hikers by leaving jars of peanut butter or snacks on the trail with signs saying “Thru hikers, help yourselves!” Occasionally they stock coolers or leave milk crates full of soda and beer in cool streams. Some even grill burgers for hikers by the trail or build “secret shelters” to replace the hiking shelters that local high-school kids commandeer for parties.

If you aren’t a trail angel you are probably a day hiker or a section hiker. These groups usually park a car at a trailhead where a road meets the trail and hike to the top of mountains or into the woods for a couple days. Day hikers have small packs if any at all and can be woefully under-prepared for a change in weather. (If a person makes it into the news for getting stranded or having hypothermia in the woods many thru hikers assume they were day hikers) Section hikers usually have packs larger than those of thru hikers since they only have to carry them for a couple of days. There is some truth to the adage that “people with a lot of gear are campers, people with only a little gear are hikers.” Both day and section hikers smell of deodorant and perfumed soap and can be easily recognized by thru hikers who ditched the bear-attracting scented products in their first hundred miles on the trail. Some thru hikers take it upon themselves to toy with section hikers for their own entertainment. One thru hiker known as “El Guapo” carried a Mexican wrestler’s mask with him as a “luxury item” to scare section and day hikers.

Aside from the occasional ranger (aka “ridge runner”) or homeless person living in a shelter, the other group one encounters on the trail is known affectionately as “the cheaters,” or “the tourons.”  These are the people who pay to take chairlifts or roads up the mountains to see the view rather than having a view as a reward for a good hike. They tend to ask a lot of questions about thru hiking. Hikers are generally happy to have some human contact and to tell their stories. At times, however, “the tourons” can be callous and remind hikers of the reasons they decided to spend so much time in the woods in the first place. One woman from New Jersey asked me and an AT thru hiker “What do you people do to support yourselves so you can walk in the woods for months?” which sounded a lot to me like, “Get a job you hippie!” An infamous question not dignified with an answer is “Why’d you walk all the way up that side if there’s a chairlift over here?” Many hikers brush off the more annoying and judgmental of the tourons in ways similar to how most people deal with the Jehovah’s Witnesses at their door. While most tourons are pleasant, the only redeeming trait of many is the food from their picnic lunch that they may offer or leave behind.

With that cast of characters it was a fun week. I still probably spent over half of my time alone in the woods which was great for thinking and de-stressing. There is something nice about going to bed at sunset and waking up at sunrise knowing the only thing I have to do that day is put one foot in front of the other. Before I knew it, I was 100 miles beyond my starting point and in a lot better shape both physically and mentally. The hike showed me I can make it on the trail for an extended period of time without showers, toilets, or heated shelter during cold rain storms. With that experience I am definitely going to go back and finish the hike after I return from the ice.

And away I go

2006-07-16T18:08:00.000-07:00

I'm about to begin hiking the Long Trail in Vermont. A 272 mile hike along Vermont's ridge line stretching from Massachusetts to Canada. With any luck I should be finishing up on or around Aug 6, but since it is vacation I won't be rushing to keep to a schedule. If you want to come join me give me a call on my cell phone (look it up on facebook) and leave me a message. The rough plan (subject to change when I feel like it) is as follows. Wish me luck!

DAY	HIKE TO:	MILES	Estim. book HOURS
7/17	Congdon Shelter	13.4	9.5
18	Goddard Shelter	14.4	9.5
19	Story Spring Shelter	8.9	5.5
20	William B. Douglas Shelter	16	9
21	Peru Peak	16.3	10.75
22	Greenwall	14.7	8.83
23	Cooper Lodge (Noon resupply @VT103 9mi 5.75h)	19.2	12.25
24	Rolston rest	12.5	8.6
25	Sunrise Shelter	14.4	9.25
26	Boyce	13.8	9.25
27	Cooley Glen	9.7	7
28	Theron Dean	15.1	9.75
29	Montclair Glen	12.4	7.75
30	Duck Brook (afternoon resupply around Jonesville)	13.4	8
31	Taylor	13.2	9
1	Whiteface Shelter	15	11
2	Roundtop Shelter	11.2	6.75
3	Spruce Ledge	14.8	9.5
4	Hazen NotchCamp	14.7	10
5	Shooting Star Camp	13.2	9.5
6	Canada and Trailhead for pickup	5.7	4

Keep cool but don't freeze

2006-07-13T08:13:00.000-07:00

"Keep cool, but do not freeze." — From a mayonnaise jar, but also makes a good winterover life rule.

Some other good Polar Quotes gathered on the Net

Smart car in the US

2006-07-10T08:36:00.000-07:00

While searching for a parking spot the other day I remembered the two-seat smart car that I first say in Italy back in 2000.

Americans finally can buy them since the Zero Air Pollution corp. (ZAP) now has government approval to bring them to the U.S. and make modifications to make them U.S. street legal.

The closest dealer to me is in New Hampshire but I don't think I will be buying one very soon for two reasons:

Asking price is from $25,700 up to $31,000 if you want a convertable.
ZAP corp. Also made the Mini-ATV my SCOPE team replaced nearly every component on.

I guess I'll just have to wait until early 2008 when SMART starts selling their cars here themselves for under $15k. Article: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13593486/

Wheeeeeeeee!

2006-07-07T18:46:00.000-07:00

Wheeeeeeeee!

After months of hearing I “should be going” I now have it in writing.
Hi Adam
This email is to inform you that you have been Physically Qualified for deployment. Congratulations and have a good trip!
The only thing to stop me now is getting lost on my way to the airport.

Wired News: It's the Economy, Stupid

2006-07-05T15:45:00.000-07:00

Interesting article that popped up in my gmail inbox.

Wired News: It's the Economy, Stupid

2006-06-30T11:45:00.000-07:00

This was given to me by a family member.

If you are a scatter-brained blonde and would like me to post something equally disparraging toward all other people please comment below and I will give you equal space to respond. :)

Ferdinand Porche's Magic Smoke

2006-06-26T14:03:00.000-07:00

The Beetle is coming along slowly. I have been spending my time in the engine compartment tuning the engine so it likes the new carburetor I just installed. Tuning the engine is nothing like tuning a piano. It’s much louder and requires standing over the non-emission controlled exhaust pipe while I rev the engine -probably not the best thing for my health.

The engine's mechanical components are behaving relatively well but while it was in storage for the last couple of years a new problem developed. Humor me a bit while I give a little lesson about VW’s…

There are two a total of six lights on my dashboard.

One is so I can see the speedometer and fuel gage at night.
A second is on the radio (which had the serial numbers filed off).
A third tells me when I have turned on my turn signal (in either direction).

Since VW didn’t design the dash with separate left and right turn signals you would be correct to assume they didn’t waste the other three lights on reminders for routine maintenance items. Of those three lights:

One means that half of your brakes have failed. (not all your brakes though, the sensor only measures the pressure differential between the front and rear brake cylinders. VW assumes any idiot can figure out that all the brakes have failed so it doesn’t need a light)
Another light informs you the oil pressure is less than 10% of what it should be. When Ferdinand Porche wasn’t designing the Panzer and Tiger tanks for Pre-War Germany he was put to work on “the people’s car.” Porche thought a radiator would be excessive for the practical German Folk and put in an extra-big oil cooler so the engine’s own oil would be its coolant. If this light comes on for more than a split second in a turn when the oil is sloshing around it means the engine has no coolant and is about to turn itself into a block of Aluminum-magnesium alloy.
The final light tells the driver that the generator has stopped generating power. The generator recharges the battery so if this light comes on it tells you the battery is the only thing running your spark plugs and the engine will stop running once the battery runs out. In his enthusiasm for liking systems together Porche also extended the shaft that turns the generator through the generator and installed a big as fan on the other side to blow air past that extra-large oil cooler I mentioned. The generator light coming on can also mean the belt that turns the combination generator/fan has broken and there is no air cooling that oil which prevents the engine from to turning itself into a block of metal.

It was the final light that came on. Luckily for me the belt has not broken so Porche’s monster lives, for now.

A test with a volt-meter confirmed, however that the generator is not charging the battery so if I want to drive it anywhere other than my driveway I’m going to need a battery charger and an extension cord.

Another aside: If you know cars you will notice I didn't say "alternator" before, until 1973 beetles got their electricity from a DC generator. Most cars today use an AC alternator with a rectifier to turn the power back into DC. If you are intrigued by the generator/alternator debate there are lots of pages about it on the internets; I will spare the rest of you.

Anyway the generator has a charged coil of wire, which is rotated through a magnetic field that is created by a stationary coil of wire. Changing the voltage in the stationary "field coil" changes the strength of the field and the power output of the generator. A voltage regulator underneath the beetle’s back seat (next to where I stow my jumper cables) controls the field voltage. Right now it isn’t sending any voltage to the field so I don’t get any energy out of the generator.

The regulator isn't solid state, it has two electro-magnets with spring loaded contacts and resembles an old telegraph. With a constant field generators create more power as you spin them faster so when the regulator is working and I rev the engine it quickly opens and closes contacts to reduce the average current flowing through the field coil. This has the side effect of creating a clicking sound under the back seat when I rev the engine which is very assuring to my passengers. :)

The reg seems to be broken so I disconnected the car’s battery and tore the cover off last night to poke around inside and see if anything was obviously wrong. Everything seemed good with the power off so I cleaned off all the contacts reconnected the battery and tried poking it with a screwdriver while the car was running. (Poking at live circuits is probably not the smartest thing in the world to do but it’s a 12V system so in theory it can’t hurt me too much) For once I was glad all this electrical stuff was under the back seat since I could play with it while the engine was running and still see the generator light on the dashboard.

A continuity test showed me one contact is suspiciously closed no matter where it is positioned. I didn’t touch that one in this test. Instead I closed the other contact which was normally-open. There was a mild blue spark but it did get the generator light to go off. Impressed by my initial success I shut the engine off.

With the engine off, however the generator light was still on and magic smoke seemed to be finding its way out of the regulator. Having read the generator light being on when key is off means the battery is trying to turn the generator like a motor, and knowing magic smoke getting out is always a bad thing I pulled the negative strap off the battery again to kill all the power in the car.

Post-mortem examination revealed closing the contact by hand allowed the contact to weld itself shut. It was easily opened again but at present I am not any closer to getting the regulator to work; if it was kind of dead before it’s probably really dead now.

Luckily new regulators are only about $30 but I would like to figure out how this thing is supposed to work. If anyone finds wiring diagrams for electro-magnetically controlled 12V generator voltage regulators let me know. In the mean time I hope your summers are going well.

No Worries

Warning: oddball campaign ad

2006-06-26T13:02:00.000-07:00

Since I’m making a few posts today I figure putting up one political related one won’t hurt anyone:

http://vernonrobinson.com/twilightzone.shtml

As I understand it, this is being run by a real candidate in North Carolina. He doesn’t really say what he is going to do about anything he mentions in the ad but but I give him credit for making an ad that looks different than other campaign ads.

Rude Awakening/ magic VW smoke

2006-06-26T06:21:00.000-07:00

Normally it would just be a figure of speach but today I actually was awakened by an ant crawling into my ear. It took me quite a while to get it out, stabbing it with a q-tip didn't work and eventually I had to wait patiently while it grew tired of made loud noises by walking across my eardrum and worked its way back to the surface. I felt no remorse for crushing it when it did finally come out. *disgusted shiver*

Right, so while I'm not getting insects out of my skull i've been working on getting my deployment paperwork ready for Antarctica, working on my beloved, but still moody air-cooled VW beetle and catching up on my reading.

Someone posted a comment on my last post about internet "on the ice." The NSF still warns the connection is primarily for uploading scientific data but I should be able to push some bytes back and forth periodically. I even hear McMurdo station (aka. Mac-Town) recently had wireless installed in the coffee shop so I can have a Starbucks-like experience while I am drinking my hot fluids to thaw out.

I dug this picture out of the pre-deployment handbook of what our end of the internets will look like. Since I am a "general assistant" it may be my job at some point to go knock the icicles off.

I started writing a description of how my adventures with the VW have been going and the books I've been reading, but each is probably a post unto itself so I'm going to post those sepparately in the interest of your attention spans.

No Worries

Poked and Prodded

2006-06-16T11:44:00.000-07:00

Poked and Prodded

While getting undressed in an exam room on Monday I heard the nurse telling someone outside the door to “give the guy in there everything but a pregnancy test.” I was free to go from my Antarctic medical exam after two hours but only after I had been plugged into an EKG, had numerous reflex tests, was asked about every scar on my body (and why I only have freckles on half of my neck) had given a urine sample and lost five vials of blood; which, by the way is fun if you haven’t been allowed to eat anything in the past 12 hours. There were a few other more routine things but luckily for me I’m under 40 so I got to skip the prostate exam.

That paperwork is now all filed and sent in. Now I just have to wait for the test results and a dental exam and I should be cleared for departure to “the ice” in August.

I got my computer re-imaged last week so this week I decided to go for the FullGoogle and installed the Google Pack with all of its wonderful options for indexing my personal data. The scary feature I saw was sharing information on what websites have been viewed across computers. I know Google had stood up for privacy but I don’t really want a list of all the websites that I’ve been to kept anywhere, much less a server that could be in a foreign country. Guess I’ll have to stop looking at those anarchist-weapons-of-mass-Pr0n sites.

I probably wouldn’t have thought too much about the data aggregation if I hadn’t just signed a paper three days ago saying I waved my rights to privacy in the mail being sent to me through the US Air Force while I am in Antarctica. So please refrain from forwarding me any copies of Anarchist-Weapons-Of-Mass-Pr0n Monthly.

In other news this week I was volunteering at the Hospital where I got to deliver all the flowers from the loading dock to the patient rooms. Being the “flower guy” has its perks since everyone is instantly happy and grateful when you walk into the room. (unless, of course, they are comatose) It beat the job I had a couple years ago of bringing people to the morgue.

The hospital also seemed to be having a special on newborn babies. I must have gotten to every room in the maternity wing. One person got a bleeding heart hanging plant that was more like a bush and took up half of the elevator on the way up. A couple of neo natal rooms had multiple deliveries. (of flowers that is)

I have a job on Monday as a “patient” for medical technicians and nurses who are being tested on caring for bed-ridden patients. Apparently I have to lie in a bed and seem grumpy and in pain while they try adjusting the bed, changing bandages and being tested on other skills for dealing with people who can’t move very well. Should be fun. :)

Heroic Computer Dies To Save World From Master's Thesis | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

2006-06-10T07:54:00.000-07:00

Trying out my "blog this" button in Firefox:

Heroic Computer Dies To Save World From Master's Thesis | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

I've been in Boston for the second half of this week getting some repairs done on my laptop and just generally hanging around. The "official" reason for my being here is to tell the summer students who took over my team's SCOPE project the nuances of how things work on the tractor and the stories behind "Why the hell did you do that?" Hopefully it was helpful for them.

I stayed up too late last night watching funny videos on the internet and now it's time to get up and be a functional human being.

P.S. This is something else that was on randomness.

GOP takes aim at PBS funding - The Boston Globe

``Dick Cheney and the Republicans have decided to go hunting for `Big Bird' ...once again," -Rep Edward J. Markey , a Malden Democrat

You should see this

2006-06-06T11:52:00.000-07:00

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2078944470709189270&q=al+gore

A trailer for the new Documentary on global warming called "An Inconvenient Truth"

Critic Roger Ebert says: "You owe it to yourself to see this film" In the same review he likens the "debate" over global warming to the "debate" tobacco companies created between the 1960's and 1980's around the reality that smoking increasing the risk of cancer.

Despite the "debate" around smoking many smokers did get cancer.

I acknowledge some may see this as political because of the name on the documentary but there is a lot to back up what is being said. Peer reviewed journals overwhelmingly acknowldege what is going on. Climatic scientists unfortunately do not have the advertizing budgets to get their message on for-profit news channels which are sponsored by oil company commercials.

Please at least watch the trailer and if you are an over-achiever go see the movie. At the very least you will be better informed. I for one think it is time to stop branding everyone who talks about the environment and conservation as a liberal.

It started with a railing…

2006-06-05T20:06:00.000-07:00

My grandmother’s neighbor injured her knee and needs a railing to make it up her way- too-steep garage stairs. Two days ago I offered to help and while I was building it someone else in the neighborhood stopped by and asked if I could build them one. Today while building the second railing I was asked by another person to paint a room and fix a door handle. If I'm not careful I'm going to end up with a full time job as a handyman.

This part of Vermont has had some amount of rain fall for 24 out of the past 26 days. So when I saw there weren’t any clouds in the sky today I decided it would be a good time to try out the new hiking pack I bought over the weekend. After finishing the railing I went into the mountains. Even with a full pack I did 2000 vertical feet up and down in just over 4 hours which is pretty good since I haven’t hiked in months. My legs are going to be angry tomorrow that we already drained the hot tub for the summer.

Tomorrow looks like more working on Antarctic deployment paperwork and a little reading. Hopefully I will make it to one of the Burlington Jazz festival performances this week.

For now I am going to go take a shower.

This is hilarious

2006-05-26T07:40:00.000-07:00

This is hilarious,

http://youtube.com/watch?v=d9UXw0fQmno&search=hey%20thanks%20for%20reading%20my%20comics%20today%20by%20the%20way!

Compliments of Mr. Chavez.

Draft commencement address

2006-04-26T19:08:00.000-07:00

The following is a crack at a speech I wrote to read at graduation. I’m posting it to get it off my desktop. I’m cleaning my desktop to avoid doing real work. I need to finish my Olin Self Study and I am a long way from doing that. It has caused me by far the most stress of any class this semester and I have very little to show for it. Of all the things I have done in my senior year my OSS is the least favorite of all the stuff I have had to do.

2006 Commencement greeting

"On behalf of the Class of 2006, I welcome the students, faculty, staff, our partners family, and friends to Olin's first commencement.

By an interesting coincidence it was 1735 days ago when I stood behind a microphone under a different tent at 1735 Great Plain Avenue and like the other 30 first students who were first on campus, I had to introduce myself. Naturally I talked about how anything could be fixed with duct tape or WD-40. Today after what is probably the most unothodox engineering education attempted in modern history I can stand here and admit I know better.

For all of us in the Class of ’06, whether we were the 30 here opening day, the 14 spread around the world or the 32 still applying to colleges who were drawn to the shiny static-proof envelopes, it has been a long journey.

While I may have counted the number of days I can’t count how many hours of sleep were lost or how many romances began and ended during my time here. I can’t count how many times I forgot a negative sign, how many times the magic smoke got out, how many cups of caffeine were sacrificed for the greater good or how many times I cried.

This won’t be one of those.

These last few years in a word, were intense. But as the student greeter I’m not here to dwell on them. We’ve known since we’ve been here this day would come, and we’re never going to forget it. Nostalgia will come soon enough without my help.

We may be making history but history in my eyes isn’t made by people who dwell on how big what they are doing is. History is made when people are not content to sit, think, complain and settle but by people who for some reason cannot live with themselves unless they stand up and do something.

I have a moment here to do something meaningful so let me thank all of you for doing whatever you have done to be a part of this. Thank you for helping every one of us who called Olin home to become harder, better, faster and stronger than we were when we moved in.

Thanks for trusting a bunch of kids to help build a college and for giving us a hand when we needed your experience, your wisdom, or the listening ear of a friend. Please don’t get too comfortable and don’t let this be the end. Continue to do the crazy things you do for as long as your body and your spirit will allow.

Once again welcome, thank you, and for as long as you ARE, may you continue to DO.

Amusing

2006-03-20T07:31:00.000-08:00

Amusing: http://boston.craigslist.com/about/best/aus/135744279.html

Google Video

2006-02-05T20:11:00.000-08:00

Watch the Super Bowl Ads here: Google Video

There is no game to distract you from them. :)

Google Stock

2006-02-03T11:48:00.000-08:00

Google is trading at $382/Share right now. I should buy some. I probably won’t buy any though and when it is up to $500 I will kick myself for not buying it at $382. This is the way of petty investing.

A new day a new blog

2006-02-02T22:27:00.000-08:00

A new day, a new Blog.

Today seemed busy. In an almost comical start to the day I had been awake for a couple of hours during the night worrying about missing my 8am class. Of course this made me tired so when I did finally get back to sleep I slept through my alarm. <Sigh>

I heard back from the Fulbright Commission today that I will not be getting a grant to go to Australia. I took the news as a good thing because I will be able to apply for jobs now in earnest. There was a networking/job search seminar that I went to tonight so things are looking good. Only 107 days left to finish off strong. Time to make them count.

In other news I deleted the blog I had started last November. It was fun to look back on but it’s not who I am so I figured there isn’t any benefit to having people rifle through my past. Today is a new day and I’m going to post my stuff now to Planet Olin.

Somehow I have managed to stay up until 1:30 so I am going to get some sleep now.