So I'm hanging out in Kodiak again. We're waiting on some personnel to get underway on Monday to Dutch Harbor where we'll pick up a bunch of scientists and start on FISHPAC, a habitat research project that will be conducted in the southeastern Bering Sea.

Planning on a few hikes this weekend before we leave. Also a bunch of the crew are going bowling this Friday at Tsunami Lanes here on the Coast Guard base. I think it might be the preliminary tryouts for the Fairweather's team for Hydro-Bowl this winter (the Hydro-Bowl trophy is currently in our possession).

I had a good time in Homer last week. Picked up a few books at a used book store, which included a collection of Leonard Nimoy's poetry. Also got some new music, its a local Homer band called Three Legged Mule. And spent some time at the infamous Salty Dawg Saloon drinking the local Homer brew which is exclusively bottled in Sobe bottles.

For work we setup two tide gauges for our work in Kachemak Bay in August. The gauges were installed in Katsitsna Bay and Bear Cove (click either to see the active tide data on tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov).

I was largely involved in the additional work outside of the actual gauge installation. We had to recover any existing tidal benchmarks, set additional benchmarks as necessary and reference the benchmarks to the gauge with differential leveling. I was one of the few people with ample experience with the tasks from my previous job as a land surveyor. It was particularly difficult conditions so it was a good initiation to leveling for the people without much experience. And I recovered one of the benchmarks that had been buried over the years! They had no expectation of finding it.

The ship has been in Homer since last Wednesday and I think we'll be leaving tonight. The picture is the mountains to the southeast of Homer. I'm on my way to a tide gauge that we installed last week. We're finishing the work to estabished the benchmarks we are referencing for the gauge.

Above are a few photos from a hike across Old Womens Mountain during the in-port in Kodiak over the last weekend. Its more of a ridge than a mountain. Its a 4 mile hike with 1200 ft elevation gain which is basically all in the first 3/4 mile. Went out for sushi twice over the weekend and it was surprisingly good.

Last night we came into the Shumagin Islands just south of the Aleutians, midway out the chain. The "total population as of the 2000 census was 953 persons, almost entirely in the city of Sand Point, on Popof Island." I'll get some photos in the next few days. Pretty remote, so we're not getting the Dish Network out here so instead of watching TV I went down to our "gym" for about an hour and a half. The weather is pretty dreary, foggy, winds 15-20 knots and raining. We anchored up in reasonably protected little bay. After the gym I hid from the wind and rain in a corner on the fantail and drank tea and smoked a pipe with one of the Junior officers while a few people fished off the fantail.

Today we went into Sand Point very briefly and we should be headed back out shortly and get some ships hydro done.

So I made my way up to Ketchikan, Alaska, on friday. Got to the ship just fine and went out drinking with some of the crew.

Saturday I just bummed around in town. I found a little stand that said "locally roasted coffee" so I got talking with the guy. He had worked in Seattle for about 6 years at a coffee shop and commented that his current setup made it hard to make decent esspresso, but the tourist coming off the cruise ships could care less. The roastery, Raven's Brew Coffee, has a shop up the road from town. One of the blends is called Three Peckered Billy Goat, which I thought was funny.

Yesterday went for a hike on the Deer Mountain Trail (a photoset). It was a 2 mile hike in with 2,000 feet of elevation gain. We got up into the left over snow pack from last winter!

Today we got the launches over the side for patch testing. We will be using them next week for the project!

See you all later. It will be harder to update once we're under way because the internet connection is painfully slow and costly. Our next inport should be two weeks from now, but it may be sooner.

Also I made a little links and info page with some usefull stuff for keeping tabs on me.

I still have to sign paperwork in the next week, but I should be shipping out June 6th to meet up with the NOAA Ship Fairweather somewhere in Alaska.

So the first thing that I'm gonna try to fix is the ship tracker. In theory it updates every hour, but it hasn't updated in the last month. So watch that if you're interested.

Got out of the office today, which meant traipsing through the forest, machete in hand, killing nature that got in my way.

Well, I think so Brain, but... balancing a family and a career? Ooh. Its all too much for me!

Well, I think so Brain, but if they called them SadMeals, kids wouldn't buy them!

I think so Brain, but if Jimmy cracks corn and no one cares, why does he keep doing it?

I think so Brain, but it's a miracle that this one grew back (holding left leg).

Uh, yeah Brain... but where are we going to find rubber pants in our size?

I think so Brain, but the Rockettes?, I mean its mostly girls, isn't it?

Well, I think so, Brain, but if Clark Kent wore contact lenses, wouldn't he look just like Superman?

http://blather.newdream.net/a/areyouponderingwhati_mpondering.html
http://www.patman.org/interests/comics/ponderings.asp

I googled myself today... I've done it in the past and I've been like the first three pages, now I'm the first 5 pages. Not sure how I feel about that. Not really important stuff though. But I found that a photo of mine was credited and used on the KEXP blog!

Bill Moyers interviews the Reverend Jeremiah Wright in his first broadcast interview with a journalist since he became embroiled in a controversy for his remarks and his relationship with Barack Obama.

If you have time I highly recommend you see the video on PBS.Org

( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

( Meme )

When I first started going to school I went to study Bio-medical Engineering. I was very interested in brain machine interfaces (BMI), ways to control electronic devices with interpreted brain activity.

Emotiv Systems has made the gaming device that I imagined being a part of the development for. Called the Emotiv EPOC™ the headset "uses a set of sensors to tune into electric signals naturally produced by the brain to detect player thoughts, feelings and expression." The release is planned for late this year, you can reserve one online for the initial release. Most importantly it will ship with software to map keystroke and mouse commands to interpreted brain activity.

A little bit of web history resurfaced yesterday and today. The Game Neverending Prototype, which influenced the creation of Flickr, popped back into existence. It was live back in '02-03. It was in the tradition of MUDs and to my mind represents a solidification of many of the concepts of Web 2.0 just before the technologies appeard, specifically AJAX, that would facilitate the evolution.

All that being said, I was silly happy to see everyone and be back in the game after 5 years. It was an amazing community that loved to play creatively.

And it was soo nice to see my house in Cheerio again...

A large duffel bag hung awkwardly askew across my chest, my messenger bag hung opposite.
In tow was the rest of my belongings in a wheeled suitcase.

Leaving failures behind me
I entered the airport's departures hall.

In a row of seats against the tall glass windows near my airline's check-in desk sat an aging woman.
Paper birds trapped in silent flight hung overhead.
Her hair was now peppered,
her features were now heavy with loss.

She had travelled several hours by bus and train to say goodbye,
    again.

A few awkward words were exchanged as I removed my bags,
    and we hugged.
Fear, loathing, longing and love welled up.
This moment lived in dreams and nightmares a decade old.

She tried to apologize to the boy I once was,
but for everything that wouldn't matter to a nine year old boy.
She didn't apologize for leaving.

I absolved my mother without giving her forgiveness, explaining
I would not be the person I was in that moment if it was not for the life that lead me to it,
and I realized I liked who I was in that moment.

This is the first time that I've written down an idea and let it evolve over several drafts. I finished this draft yesterday after trying to explain what I like in poetry. I wrote:

My aesthetic for poetry is distinct, subjective, and personal. I usually prefer free verse. I appreciate grand ideas presented with simple language (but there are exceptions). And I am fond of emotionally charged imagery. I don't regard my opinion as being definitive of any widely held aesthetic but just that, an opinion. Which is all to say I know what I like and its very possibly not whats popular.

My latest paper project about 2/5 done. The wave form varies in height based on the sine wave.

Moose Drool cans in the ceiling of the food shack at the bottom of chairs 4, 5 and 6 at Mt. Baker

E.T. came to the ginger bread neighborhood...