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Summer Recap

Zion National Park

Hiking in 108 degree weather, repelling down a canyon, smashing my hand and losing half a fingernail and finally finding the car at 1:30 in the morning can only mean one thing: another Kuliga Epic. Thanks Mike.

Vegas

Winning 3rd at Binions afternoon tournament, buying our way past the line at studio 54, riding around in an SUV limo giving rides to random people, Christophe flogging club security.

Lexi's Birthday Penguins

I couldn't have hoped for this day to go any better. Penguins have a whole lot of personality. The baby penguins were very curious and demanded your attention. Happy Birthday Lexi.

Hiking the Bay

Coastal trail in Point Reyes: 12 miles, Barnabes Peak: 5 miles, Berry Falls in Big Basin: 11 miles, Mount Burdell: 5 miles, East Peak of Tamalpais: 6 miles, Steep Ravine to Stinson beach: 4 miles and of course Twin Peaks many times over.

Billy and Mandy

In one week Billy found a job, they found an apartment, we helped moved them in and Billy started work. It was an incredible accomplishment. Welcome to the neighborhood.

New Blogger Beta

Check out the new Blogger Beta, stuffed full of tasty new features (sidebar widgets, graphical template editing, labels, and lots more). This is what I've been working on for the last year or so, and I'm proud of the job the team has done. The new infrastructure should be a lot more stable and extensible. Eventually you'll be able to migrate any existing blogs you have into the new system - we're trying to do this a little slowly to make sure stuff works.

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Dusk on the mission /

Dusk on the mission
a bicycle rattles by
says overthrow bush

Penguins!

For my birthday, Andrew adopted me a penguin at the San Francisco Zoo. We got to go meet the penguins a few weeks ago. They even let us hang out with the little baby penguins. The baby penguins are shedding their fluffy fur and growing their adult feathers so lots of them look like they have little mohawks. The keepers separate the baby penguins from the adult ones so they can socialize the babies and show them that a person is the alpha penguin. (The penguin in this picture spent a lot of time standing on my shoes.)

The zoo has about fifty Magellan pengins. The penguins usually pair-bond (although some females will consort with more than one gentleman due to the gender imbalance). Each pair of penguins will live in one burrow. Here, you can see some penguins going through everyone else's burrows looking for neat stuff. The keeper said that there are even some pairs of gay penguins.

The penguins all have distinct personalities, so it's pretty easy to tell them apart. (As a cheat sheet, they have color-coded tags on their wings - females are tagged on the right, males on the left, with a variety of colors.) This penguin is named for Napoleon Dynamite, because he often would have a look on his face like "I can do whatever I want". This is especially obvious with the baby penguins learning to swim. Some of them take to it right away but others need to be thrown in the water a whole bunch before they learn.

(flickr photos)

The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco?

The fog rolls in
on little cat feet
and sits there, as though waiting for a mouse

OK, so it not actually cold outside in the absolute sense of things, but it is not exactly warm enough to walk to the bus in a tank top, either. (Not that it's warm enough in my office to wear a tank top anyway.) But the Los Angeleans insist that this is by far colder than any summer has a right to be.

The fog came in a few weeks ago and just stayed. When I was in the car this morning the fog was thick until after Daly City, when it cleared up right away. This evening it was sunny all the way back, with just hints of fog at the tops of the mountains visible from the 280, until Daly City again, when it became like driving through Tahoe just as it's getting ready to snow. There's not much of a view from the house now, although the street lights and car headlights trace nice patterns in the sky.

What's in a name?

If a computer gets a new shell, does it need a new name?
Clearly it's important that the computer have a name.
And it just wouldn't be right to have two computers with the same name.
(They become terribly confused. I once accidentally christened a second computer "whitestar"
and it promptly developed defective RAM.)
The computer in question is my oldest laptop.
Not the first, but now the oldest.
Its name is (was?) My Laptop,
because this uniquely identified it as the only portable computer in our apartment.
My Laptop has been to three countries (and three offices) on two continents
over the course of four years
and has seen all generations of RedHat since 6.
Something rattled inside the case if you left in on too long,
and the battery didn't really charge much anymore
and grease on my fingers had gradually worn away the letters on the keyboard
(so I think you could probably tell my password from just looking at it).
It had cat fur stuck on the outside because CM spilled a coke
and then sat on the computer (because even though this is sunny California
my cat likes the warmth of a computer fan).
So when the fan stopped working last week, and My Laptop wouldn't boot,
I took it for dead.
I took it into the office to recycle it, but they had a spare T23 shell on hand
(all the parts except the hard drive)
so they took the hard drive out of the dead, rattling case
and put it inside a shiny new body.
It's just like nothing ever happened to it
(except it's sprouted more memory and a builtin wireless card).
But is it really the same computer?
Does My Laptop need a new name?
It probably should get a new password.

I won 3rd at Binion's Afternoon Tournament

A full house 3's full of 9's and a lucky outdraw where my Ace-8 drew out against a pair of 8's gave me the stamina to last until the final 4 where I busted out with Kings vs. Ace-8 vs. King-8. The King-8 had way fewer chips than I so I got 3rd and he got 4th. Not bad for a days work and a 110 investment.

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The Teacher Has Now Become The Student

After 5 years of teaching, I'm leaving to become an art student. Part of me is disappointed that I'm abandoning a career that let's me give back to society and part of me is disappointed that it took me so long to leave a field that didn't recognize any of my contributions.

I'll miss my students most of all. Whether they were the very bright and focused who would ask me the tough questions that truly tested my knowledge of my subjects or they were the irresponsible and immature ones that needed me to support and discipline them so that they could reach the high standards of our Academy, they all made me feel that I was making a difference.

The frustrations that I'm happy to leave behind are all related to the adults I had to deal with as I tried to change the system for the better. The list of top offenders include:

1. Administrators who could not hold to procedures and always left problems unsolved until they had grown to catastrophic proportions.

2. Administrators who wouldn't share their knowledge or contacts with me when I was supposed to be learning how to take over their position when they leave.

3. Administrators who forgot that I had digitized their workflow the year before and require everyone to submit their work in writing again.

4. Administrators who put me in charge only to then veto my decisions and sow confusion and frustration amongst the teachers I was helping. Not to mention making me look like an ass in the process.

5. A union that stood in the way of several sensible reforms. My personal favorite of these was their refusal to require on-line grades without a renegotiation with the district.

6. Parents who we never saw no matter how many times we tried to call them in to talk about the problems their students were having in class.

7. State Administrators who refuse to let our Academy change its focus to biotech, a growing industry with entry level positions for students who complete an 18 week course after high school.

8. The teachers who were flat out terrible. They're a very small percentage, but the damage they do to their students and the reputation of our profession is irreparable. Most of them will never leave the profession either as they are tenured and their incompetence keeps them from even considering entering a profession where their performance actually matters.

9. Adults at all levels of the system who let personal conflict drive their decisions rather than the welfare of their students.

The list could go on and on.

Now that I have left teaching, I will be entering the Academy of Art's MA Photography program in the fall. It does feel good to be able to focus my energy into my creative outlets. I've nearly completed the dark room in my garage. I just need the plumber to finish and then to arrange for some ventilation ducts to a fan over the sink. Though I learned on film cameras, I never got into development. It was always easier to just send it out and get it developed, but now I'm more interested in greater creative control rather than convenience.

My classes start on September 7th, which gives me the opportunity to finally go to burning man. I'm going with a group of 25, made up of techers I know and some Googlers too. Our camp is Daliwood and will feature art inspired by Salvador Dali. Gen is putting together a version of the aphrodisiac dinner jacket (covered in blacklight reactive shotglasses) for me to wear. We're not going too crazy on our own art installations as we want to be able to spend a good deal of our time enjoying the playa. We're camping within the larger Asylum camp, so we'll be right in the thick of it in the downtown section. It will be loud at night, but that should be fine if my plan to switch over to sleeping days works out.

I hope to get some good photos on the playa, but I am also aware that photographers and videographers have become very intrusive at burning man. It's almost a sin against the purpose of burning man to come to observe rather than participate. So I'll take a page out of Jodi Cobb's book and build a sense of closeness before taking any photos. I'll also try to put the camera away now and then to just have fun on my own.

Brush fire stopped traffic on the 5

Escape from LA

This is what traffic is like at 2pm at the farthest outskirts of LA. It's 106 outside and the AC can hardly keep up. This is why nobody ever asks me why I left.

Conspicuous Consumption

Josh asked me along to Math and Physics Day at Great America this past Friday. This gave me the chance to finally buy one of those ridiculous pictures that they take at the end of the loop on a rollercoaster. The photo was ridiculously overpriced for its terrible quality but the fact is they got a monopoly on cameras fixed at a position to catch my response to going through the upside down loop. There are many things money can't buy, but you don't count silly souvenirs like this among them. If you peruse the picture closely you might notice that I'm the only one in the front row who is holding their arms out. What's this world coming to?

We Came. We Blogged. We Conquered.

The spoils of victory for our dominance in the Chieftan's Trivia Night. Ironically, we won enough to cover the drinks we had during the competition. The real credit for the victory goes to Gen. Most of the question, we all knew the answers to, but whenever most of us were stumped, Gen came through. Together we made a great team, each filling in the gaps of the others knowledge.

We're Blogging this Right Now

...was our team name for the Trivia Competition. True to our namesake, we shared news of the event with an uninterested internet public through minute by minute web updates. I feel like a Gargoyle out of Snowcrash.

Lake Tahoe at Sunset

I hate the idea of a private beach. It's fine if you own the house right next to the beach and the beach is your private yard, but when the only stretch of beach near south shore is gated off from use by some condo coop, it can really ruin your day. I shouldn't have to walk a half an hour to get a view of the sunset that doesn't involve iron bars. Especially when none of the people who own the private beach are out using it. Luckily, the luxury homes that were under construction next to the private beach did not yet have their fences up, so I got an unobstructed view of a great sunset.

Spring Breaking in Lake Tahoe

I had to go to Tahoe this week to pick up my skis, which had been left there since I broke my ankle. As the previous post explained, my trip got unexpectedly extended when the GPS sent me into unincorporated El Dorado County on a wild goose chase. The car suggested a forest service road that would take me over to the 88. About 30 minutes down this road, the blue line that represented my path disappeared and the GPS reminded me to "Follow all local traffic laws". I found a path on the map that would get me to the 88, but about 20 minutes down that path, I came across the washed out bridge and had to turn back. This kept me from getting to kirkwood before they closed so I had to spend the night in Tahoe. I grabbed a sandwich for dinner and snuck on to a private beached on by some hotels near the shore. The view of the sunset there was great and I had a lot of fun trying out all the manual settings on my camera. The next day I got my skis and tried to hike Grass Pond, but the road there was...wait for it...washed out. Damn! I drove back towards San Francisco and came across a nice hill so I walked up it as far as I could before the growth got to thick to continue. Though there were many unexpected obstacles to my trip, I was happy with the outcome.

www.flickr.com andrew_casteel's Spring Breaking in Tahoe 2006:05:10 photoset

Tomales Point Hike

Pat Higgins was up from Colorado to interview with Google so he and Babcock and I went hiking in Point Tomales. It's only about an hour and a half north of the city. We stopped at the nearby lighthouse first. There were tons of ravens and even a few turkey vultures hanging on the updrafts from the cliffs. All along the hike there were elk herds. The end of the hike wound around the cliff edge down to where the end of the trail had collapsed on to the rock below.

www.flickr.com andrew_casteel's Point Tomales Hike at Point Reyes 2006:05:06 photoset

GPS is not omniscient

Though I love my prius, sometimes one just wishes one were driving the General Lee from Dukes of Hazzard so that with a squeal of the tires and a loud "Yeeeeehaaaaw" one could cross this pathetic divet in the road in a slow motion, parabolic arc.
.