jtalbot/blog

Quilotoa

Mon, 05 Jun 2023 22:30:00 -0600

We drove from Quito to Baños by way of Quilotoa today. When the plan was originally pitched, I thought Quilotoa was (mostly) “on the way” to Baños. When you’re zoomed out far enough on Google Maps, the detour from Latacunga to Quilotoa doesn’t look like a big deal, but it’s a narrow, super windy road through the high mountains with a lot of steep ups and downs. It added an extra 3 hours to the drive (plus the amount of time we spent in Quilotoa). We wound up spending most of the day driving with a pretty good hike to break things up. It was just about perfect.

Cotopaxi

Sun, 04 Jun 2023 22:30:00 -0600

At over 19,300 feet, Cotopaxi is very high. It’s the second highest peak in Ecuador (after Chimborazo). It is the third highest active volcano on the planet. Because of its proximity to the equator and the equatorial bulge caused by the spin of the earth, its peak is nearly 6,000 feet further from the center of the Earth than than the center of the earth is from the highest point on Mount Everest.

Walking Tour of Quito

Sat, 03 Jun 2023 22:30:00 -0600

We skipped breakfast today because we were headed out to an all-day walking food tour of Quito. Breakfast is included with our room, and it’s probably a nice spread, but we decided to get a little extra sleep this morning. We ate late last night and really overdid it and we will probably be eating early and often on the food tour this morning, so eating breakfast would have been a mistake. Instead, we just met in the lobby of the hotel and then grabbed an Uber to take us to the center of the old town where we would start our walking tour of the city.

Arriving in Quito

Fri, 02 Jun 2023 22:30:00 -0600

This is going to be an interesting trip. We bought our airplane tickets just two days ago. We drove home late Monday evening after camping in Canyonlands. Wednesday around noon Brett said he found cheap tickets to Quito this week and we had 2 hours to decide if we were going. We have talked about visiting Ecuador for years. Our only choice was to say yes. So we bought tickets Wednesday afternoon to fly out at the crack of dawn Friday morning. We drove to Salt Lake Thursday after work and started planning the trip that night. We figured out a good outline of what we wanted to do and see, booked the first few hotels and activities, and went to bed sometime after midnight. About 4 hours later we were driving to the airport. I think that’s a record turnaround for us.

The Needles

Mon, 29 May 2023 22:30:00 -0600

One of my favorite national parks is Canyonlands National Park. The confluence of the Green and Colorado Rivers is the center of the park, dividing it into three distinct and disconnected districts. To the north of the Colorado and east of the Green lies the most visited district of the park: Island in the Sky. To the west of the Green and the north of the Colorado lies The Maze, which is one of the most remote places in the lower 48 states. To the south and east of the Colorado river lies The Needles. It’s not as easy to access as Island in the Sky, with its paved roads and close proximity to Moab. It’s not nearly as remote as The Maze, which takes a full day of technical driving to reach.

White Pocket

Sat, 13 May 2023 22:30:00 -0600

This morning we got the bad news that none of our geo-fenced lottery permits had come through. It wasn’t too surprising, but it meant we had no plans for the day. Should we just call it and drive home? Should we try to find some other feature to explore? We opted to visit one of the other amazing places inside Vermilion Cliffs National Monument that Mark had heard about. None of us knew anything about it other than it’s usually pretty crowded because it’s supposed to be pretty awesome. I have never hiked Coyote Buttes at all. I haven’t seen The Wave in person. But I can’t imagine it’s any better than what we experienced at White Pocket. This place was amazing and we had it completely to ourselves. There were a couple people there when we arrived, but they all left before we walked out to the formations. It doesn’t get better than that.

Mother's Day in Kanab

Fri, 12 May 2023 22:30:00 -0600

Mother’s Day weekend is a great weekend to go camping. Nobody else is doing it. We decided to head east to Kanab, Utah with some of our friends from Orem. It never turns out how we thought we wanted it to, but sometimes it turns out great. This was one of those times.

When we decided to move to Southern Utah, I thought we would probably visit Zion National Park all the time. It’s been 18 months and we haven’t been even once. We actually visited Zion more often when we lived hundreds of miles away. That may seem pretty pathetic until you realize we are surrounded by magical places that we haven’t ever seen. One of those places is Vermillion Cliffs National Monument.

Amman, Jordan

Sat, 04 Feb 2023 22:30:00 -0700

Another Sweet Marriott Suite

Driving into Amman was an interesting experience. It’s a big city. It’s a modern city with skyscrapers. All the buildings are white and/or glass. We wound around the city until we arrived at the Marriott Amman. It’s a very nice hotel, but there are very few properties that can compare favorably to where we stayed last night (the Al Manara in Aqaba). That was really something. The staff here in Amman were extremely generous. Not only did they upgrade us to a suite, but they also provided a gift card to eat free at one of the on-site restaurants. We went to the sports bar and had a reall good hamburger before heading off to bed.

Up the Dead Sea to the River Jordan

Fri, 03 Feb 2023 22:30:00 -0700

There are three main ways to drive between Aqaba and Amman. When we drove from Amman to Aqaba a few days ago, we took the center route (highway 35). Today, on our way back from Aqaba to Amman, we decided to take the western route (highway 65) along the shores of the Dead Sea. I think the eastern route (highway 15) may actually be the “fastest” way, but it didn’t look very interesting, so we never took it.

Aqaba and Snorkeling the Red Sea

Fri, 03 Feb 2023 13:30:00 -0700

As we drove into Aqaba after a long day in Wadi Rum, we saw a Safeway. We tend to visit grocery stores to buy drinks and snacks and it was pretty exciting to see a name like Safeway.

Al Manara

When planning this trip, we knew the stay in Aqaba needed to be a nice respite from camping in the desert of Wadi Rum. So we booked the ultra luxurious Al Manara by Marriott. It turned out to be even swankier than we anticipated. It was super nice and we got upgraded to a huge suite overlooking the bay. It’s the type of place that put a hand-written note, addressed to me, in our room before we got to it. And there was a big plate of really fancy sweets. I may have decided I love macaroons after that. Such a fun thing to have when you first walk in.

Wadi Rum

Thu, 02 Feb 2023 22:30:00 -0700

We have wanted to go into Wadi Rum ever since our first taste of Jordan back in 2011. We drove past Wadi Rum on our way to Petra that day. It looked amazing - like a completely unique and separate version of Southern Utah. We always wanted to come back and see it, but with so many new places to go, it looked like it might not happen. Luckily, that first trip to Petra was way too short and we didn’t get to see all the things we wanted. So it was easy to convince us to come back to Jordan, spend a whole day at Petra, and then go camping in Wadi Rum. It sounded just about perfect.

13 Miles of Petra

Wed, 01 Feb 2023 22:30:00 -0700

Our hotel in Wadi Musa was perfect for what we needed and wanted. It may not have been as fancy as the Marriott hotels where we have been staying, but it nailed almost everything we wanted for this location. The staff, like every single person we have met or seen in Jordan, was extremely friendly and did everything they could to meet our needs and wants. What was it we needed? We needed an early breakfast so we could get into Petra before the crowds. There are approximately zero restaurants between the hotel and the entrance to Petra, definitely none that would be open as early as we would be leaving, so we really needed to eat breakfast at the hotel. They had breakfast ready just after 6 am. And that’s not all, they also packed us each a to-go “breakfast” to eat for lunch inside Petra. They really shined. We only stayed the night at the hotel, checking out before heading off to Petra in the morning. We needed a safe place to park the car with all our luggage in it, and they told us we could leave it parked in the closest parking spot to their front door all day. It really was perfect.

Kerak Castle, Dana, and a Traditional Meal

Tue, 31 Jan 2023 22:30:00 -0700

We needed to give the Dead Sea a few days to calm down so we decided to drive south to Petra via the inland route which meant climbing up and through the steep cliffs along the eastern edge of the Dead Sea. The road up and over was very narrow and extremely windy. It’s a good thing nobody else was on that road because getting past each other could have been dicey.

Moses and Mount Nebo

Tue, 31 Jan 2023 13:30:00 -0700

We flew on Egypt Air from Cairo to Amman this morning. The flight is just barely longer than an hour, but they still managed to do a full meal service. None of us were hungry, having already sat for a really good breakfast in the executive lounge at the Cairo Marriott earlier that morning. I can say without a doubt that the food options on our Egypt Air flights were definitely lower quality than all our other flights on the trip.

Cairo and Giza

Sun, 29 Jan 2023 22:30:00 -0700

This is our first-ever trip to Egypt. When we originally started booking this trip we anticipated seeing more of Egypt, but the final plan put us in Cairo for only about 36 hours before continuing on to Jordan. We decided to sleep two nights at a hotel in Cairo, but it still felt a little bit like a really long layover.

Going through customs and immigration in Cairo was super easy. We already had Egyptian e-Visas linked to our passports. The e-Visa program is pretty slick. And yet, getting out of the airport still felt like it took forever. That was all caused by the rate at which bags were delivered to baggage claim. It took nearly 30 minutes between the time our first bag came out until our final bag came out, and there were still lots of people from our flight waiting for their bags when we left the airport. It felt like no more than two bags ever came out at the same time. Sometimes it felt like several minutes between each small batch of bags - almost like a single person was carrying a bag in each hand from across the parking lot in order to get them on the conveyer belt. Maybe we were just really tired and that caused some time dilation, but it felt crazy slow.

A Walking Day in Paris

Sat, 28 Jan 2023 22:30:00 -0700

We flew directly from Salt Lake City to Paris in just under 10 hours. It’s a fantastic flight and it was even better being in the comfortable seats in Delta’s Premium Select area. Brett has Diamond Medallion status with Delta and was able to get us all upgraded on the longest leg of the trip. Thanks to favorable tailwinds, we landed in Paris about 30 minutes earlier than expected, giving us about 12 hours to go out and enjoy the city before jumping on our next flight to Cairo.

Zagreb Bike Tour

Sat, 08 Oct 2022 22:30:00 -0600

We left Sarajevo this morning and drove to Zagreb, the capital and largest city in Croatia. We stopped long enough to go on a bike tour of the city, grab a few bites to eat, and then we drove back to where it all started in Ljubljana, Slovenia for our fight home.

Dragon Cities

Saint George and the Slain Dragon

Our Last Night in Sarajevo

Fri, 07 Oct 2022 22:45:00 -0600

Despite all the scars from wars, Sarajevo still feels very much like a typical European city. It feels more like “Europe” to me than Split did. I’m sure that’s the influence of the Habsburgs. As we walked around the city tonight, I found myself thinking about how important Sarajevo has been in the history of Europe and the world. And I’m not just talking about hosting the Olympics. It was the first city in Europe to have electricity, tramways, and other technologies.

Rakitnica Canyon

Fri, 07 Oct 2022 22:30:00 -0600

We got up extra early this morning because we had to be in Konjic by 8:00 for today’s adventure. We’re staying at the Swissotel in Sarajevo and they serve breakfast from 6:30 to 10:30. I think that’s the largest breakfast window of any hotel we’ve seen. And the breakfast spread was really good. So we met everyone for breakfast at 6:30, ate quickly, and left the hotel by 6:50.

Konjic is a popular tourist town for mountain adventures like rafting and canyoning on the upper Neretva River. We were scheduled to do two canyons with some river boarding (think boogie boarding down a mountain river). Unfortunately, the water levels are too low right now for the river boarding, but we still got to hike the canyons and float the rivers in our wetsuits and life jackets.

Mostar and Sarajevo

Thu, 06 Oct 2022 22:30:00 -0600

I’m writing tonight’s blog in Notepad because the Internet connetion here at the Swissotel in Sarajevo is so terrible. I can’t even check my email via Wi-Fi. My cell phone is working perfectly thanks to T-Mobile, but I only get 5 GB of free international data each month, so I don’t want to overdo it. But this Wi-Fi situation is upsetting. The rest of the hotel is really nice. I am super impressed with the quality of everything else, so it’s sort of crazy that I can’t get Internet access in my room. I’ll post this the next time I actually have Internet access.

Split, Croatia

Wed, 05 Oct 2022 22:45:00 -0600

We left Krka National Park on the slow boat back to Skradin at 9:30 am and then walked back to our hotel. We had officially checked out of the hotel before we left for Krka earlier that morning, because checkout time was 10:00 am and we had no way to guarantee we would be back by then. So we cleared out our rooms and put all our bags and gear into the van before heading out. But we left our van in the hotel parking lot while we toured the park. We arrived back in Skradin around 10 and walked back up to the hotel to get our van and drive down the coast to Split, the second largest city in Croatia.

Krka National Park

Wed, 05 Oct 2022 22:30:00 -0600

We got up early again this morning and had yet another breakfast at yet another hotel. It was, once again, a pretty good spread. We had packed all our bags prior to eating breakfast, because checkout was at 10 am. That’s a bit early, but we left our van in the parking lot and put our bags in the van. Then we walked a couple minutes through town to the boat dock where we caught our ride into Krka National Park.

Plitvice Lakes National Park

Tue, 04 Oct 2022 22:30:00 -0600

We had another unexpectedly good breakfast this morning. Our hotel isn’t very big, and the breakfast/dining room is equally small. But they managed to put together a pretty good spread. Lots of cheese and charcuterie, several kinds of granola and other cereals, multiple kinds of juices that were really good, yogurts, fruit, etc. I wasn’t expecting it, but it was really good. So we left for the park full and ready for the day.

Mala Mojstrovka Via Ferrata

Mon, 03 Oct 2022 22:30:00 -0600

We met for breakfast exactly when the hotel started serving it, at 7:00 am. Once again, the spread was amazing. Today they had another huge set of items, mostly different from yesterday. I was amazed. This is a good sized hotel, but the breadth of high quality items at the breakfast buffet really impressed me again. If I’m ever in Bled again, I will definitely try to stay at the same hotel, despite the slightly late hour at which they start breakfast. Everything else about the breakfast and the hotel is really great.

Fratarica Canyon

Sun, 02 Oct 2022 22:30:00 -0600

The hotel was hot. I don’t sleep well when it’s too hot, and it was too hot last night. We tried opening the door to let in the amazingly cool and fresh air from outside, but it was so noisy that we had to close it. Maybe leaving it open and loud would have been a better choice, but instead we suffered and didn’t really sleep more than about 4 hours each. That’s a terrible record for our first night here after a full night of not sleeping on the plane. So we’re going to have to solve something for tonight. Hopefully there won’t be as many late loud parties tonight since it’s Sunday. We’ll see.

Saint George to Ljubljana

Sat, 01 Oct 2022 22:30:00 -0600

A long time ago in a galaxy far away, we booked a trip to Ljubljana, Slovenia. We knew we wanted to spend some time there and to see some of the surrounding countries. We got our flights and seats and all that fun stuff booked and paid. Months later, Delta threw us a curve ball. We live in Saint George, Utah, so when we book international trips, we have to decide if we’re going to fly out of Las Vegas or Salt Lake City. The rest of our friends on this trip were flying out of Salt Lake, because they live near there. We opted to fly out of Las Vegas because it was a little cheaper and shorter for us (once you add in the drive to and from either LV or SLC). But there we were, about 6 months after making our choice and Delta cancelled our flight and booked us on new flights that cut a full day from our trip. There was no way that would work, since the rest of the crew wasn’t going to be missing anything and we would have a hard time catching up with them. So we had to make some hard choices and wound up starting our day 3 hours earlier, adding an extra stop in Detroit, and being pretty upset at Delta… But at least we could still arrive in Paris with the rest of the group and then journey on to Ljubljana together. Delta wound up changing little things like plane sizes and schedules, but they didn’t amount to enough for us to have to do anything.

Goodbye Crete, Goodbye Greece

Sun, 10 Oct 2021 22:30:00 -0600

Today was our last day on Crete. I really enjoyed Crete. It may not be the “paradise” spoken of by our taxi driver on Santorini, but it’s a pretty, amazing place. The north side has all the cities and is fairly green and beautiful. The center has surprisingly tall and steep mountains. The south side has beautiful beaches. We spent the day at one of those beautiful beaches today.

Driving from Chania to Elafonisi Beach is a challenge. The roads are windy and very narrow. In some places they are so narrow only a single direction can proceed at a time. We passed through what looks like a railroad tunnel, barely wide enough for the microbus we were driving. The road takes you through a few small towns where you are sometimes forced to pull to the side into a driveway so traffic coming towards you can get by. If you get carsick easily, this may not be a good trip for you.

Knossos to Chania

Fri, 08 Oct 2021 22:30:00 -0600

The Megaron Hotel continues to impress. Breakfast was perfect. I finally got to try the fried donut balls with sesame and honey. They were excellent. There was a ton of fresh fruit, some Greek yogurt, an omelet bar, a ridiculously well stocked dessert bar, and everything else you could think of. Fried meats like bacon and sausage? yes. Sandwiches? yes. Salads? of course. And like all the good places, they provided plastic gloves for everyone to use as they approached the buffet.

Santorini to Heraklion

Thu, 07 Oct 2021 22:30:00 -0600

We got up early to see if there was a response from the boat tour company. They replied during the night. They’re not running the boat that does tours of the volcano this time of year, but offered to have us take their other boat (at twice the price) to visit some beaches. Unfortunately, that didn’t work out either, so we had a day of relaxation ahead.

Taking it Easy

We got up, packed our bags, and walked to a nearby bakery for breakfast. This one doesn’t have a beautiful view and doesn’t really cater to tourists. That made it a lot cheaper, but it was also a lot more complicated for us to order. I ordered something I had never seen before called “salty pancakes”. Brett got an omelette. Charmaine and Jess each got a Greek yogurt. The portions were huge, as they always are in this country. It was a real job eating all our food, but we managed to do it.

Santorini

Wed, 06 Oct 2021 22:30:00 -0600

It’s pretty cool here right now, so we didn’t see the need to get up super early to start our big hike. We got up at a reasonable time, walked around town until we found a nice breakfast place overlooking the ocean, and then started walking from Fira to Oia.

Breakfast was pretty good, but it was more expensive than it was worth, in my opinion. I guess that’s what you get when you go to a place with a nice view. Instead of the typical Greek yogurt, I went for some coconut yogurt with mangos and chia seeds. It was tasty, but I definitely could have used a bit more food before setting out on our hike.

Meteora to Santorini

Tue, 05 Oct 2021 22:30:00 -0600

The day started early. We had to drive back to Athens in time to catch a flight to Santorini, and that meant leaving the hotel before 7:00. Breakfast doesn’t start until 7, but we hoped to sneak in and get a doggie bag for ourselves anyway. No. The lady setting up the buffet wasn’t going to fall for our tricks and excuses. We did finally talk her in to letting us grab “a role” before walking out to the car.

Meteora

Mon, 04 Oct 2021 22:30:00 -0600

We went to bed a little later than usual last night. We enjoyed a sunset session from one of the viewpoints above Meteora, then drove down into Kastraki and had a late dinner at a local pub. The Gyros continue to be pork or chicken only, no sign of lamb anywhere.

Despite the late-ish night, we still wanted to be up for sunrise at one of the overlooks. We got up around 6:00 and headed up into the hills/rocks. It was nice, but it wasn’t magical like the previous night had been. Part of that is probably because the newness of the view was starting to wear off, but the real difference was the lack of clouds. People underestimate the value of clouds when taking landscape photos.

From Athens to Meteora

Sun, 03 Oct 2021 22:30:00 -0600

We went to bed a bit early last night. For some reason staying up through the night on a flight will do that to you. So we went to sleep around eight and woke up around five. That’s a bit earlier than we were hoping, but the traffic noise was starting to build and it didn’t seem like we would be able to fall back to sleep.

Today is Sunday. A lot of things seem to be closed on Sunday, even in Athens. We walked around the hotel in search of an ATM, an electronics store (hoping to buy a plug adapter), and to find some breakfast. We found an ATM at a bank across the street from the hotel. Across another street from there is a bakery called Bread Factory. We had no choice but to buy some pastries. The pastries were good, especially the mini Pain au Chocolat.

Off to Athens

Sat, 02 Oct 2021 22:30:00 -0600

We picked up Brett and Jess then picked up Steve and headed to airport. Steve took our car back to his house and will get it to Dave when he comes into town. The plan is to have Dave use the car while he is in town and we are gone. Dave will park the car at the airport when he flies back home, which is just a few hours before are supposed to arrive. So it will only need to be parked at the airport for a couple hours. We brought an extra key fob with us, so Dave can lock his key in the car when he parks it. I think it’s a great plan. I guess we’ll see how well it works over the next little while.

Pacaya por fin

Tue, 20 Apr 2021 22:30:00 -0600

We originally planned on hiking and camping on Pacaya last month, but it decided to blow its top sending enough ash raining down to force the closure of the airport in Guatemala City. We hoped the two big eruptions would release enough pressure that things would calm down and we could still camp on the volcano before we head back home. Things worked out well and we were able to make our trip to Pacaya and see lava last night and this morning.

Mixco Viejo (Jilotepeque Viejo)

Fri, 16 Apr 2021 22:30:00 -0600

Sometime around 1450, the Chajoma Maya moved their capital to Jilotepeque Viejo in order to make it inaccessible to their hostile neighbors. The city itself had been built a few hundred years earlier and they hoped moving their capital here would help them keep their warring neighbors out. It didn’t work. They were captured and ruled by the Kaqchikel Maya and eventually removed from the site shortly after the Spanish conquest of 1524. The site was never used again.

Pascual Ab'aj

Thu, 15 Apr 2021 22:30:00 -0600

Before leaving Chichi, we took a short hike up to Pascual Ab’aj, which is a Maya sacred site that survived the arrival of the Spanish. There used to be a carved idol at the site, but some Catholic Action members defaced it in the 1950s. It’s still an active site, though. You can see real Mayans conducting rituals there every day.

Lost and Found

Even the cows knew we were lost

Chichicastenango

Thu, 15 Apr 2021 18:30:00 -0600

Twice a week the main square and surrounding streets of Chichicastenango are transformed into the largest open air market in Central America. People come from miles around to buy and sell goods. Some are grown, some are reared, and many are hand-made. When we have visited in years past, there have been hundreds to thousands of tourists combing the market for bargains, but this year was very different.

We have always wanted to stay at Hotel Santo Tomas, but it was always completely full, forcing us to stay in some of the other hotels in town. This year we had no trouble booking 2 large rooms. And when we checked in, we found out we were the only guests in the entire hotel. They told us if we wanted to use hot water to call them and they would turn on the boiler for us. They were not running it because the hotel was empty. That probably meant the other hotels in town were also empty. And that probably meant there were no tourists in town for the market.

Cortes de Pelo

Mon, 12 Apr 2021 22:30:00 -0600

I needed a haircut before we came to Guatemala. I didn’t get one because of various factors and the way I prioritized my time. After another five weeks of uncontrolled growth down here, I was in bad shape. Brett and his boys were also looking shaggy, so we found the barber shop with the highest reviews in Antigua and set up some appointments to get haircuts.

The major hair style down here is the fade, which is a cut where they use a shorter set of clippers on the sides and back to taper and blend it all the way down to your skin at the bottom. It gives the look of your hair fading away into your skin. It’s especially popular among teen-agers and college kids. Brett’s younger boys were very excited to get fade cuts and they turned out great. Brett and I didn’t go quite as extreme, although Brett did get the hot-towel straight-razor shave. Goodbye beard.

Lago de Atitlan

Sun, 11 Apr 2021 22:30:00 -0600

One of my favorite things to do is jump off of stuff into water. A few years ago we visited Lake Atitlan and did the usual thing of hiring a boat to take us around the lake. One of the places we stopped that day was at a little platform someone had built where you could jump off into the lake and take photos with the volcanos behind you, and then easily climb back up and do it again and again.

Master Electricians

Sun, 11 Apr 2021 18:30:00 -0600

We don’t see this very often in Antigua, but when we travel to smaller cities in rural areas it’s common to see complicated connections on many of the power distribution poles. This weekend we took a boat to several of the cities on the shores of Lago de Atitlan. Each of the cities we visited had power poles with more connections than you can imagine. I only snapped a few photos, but I think you can see what I mean. Imagine how much work it is to add/remove/change a connection on one of those. You have to not only know what you’re doing, but you have to be able to move carefully so you don’t get crispy.

ChocoMuseo Antigua

Thu, 08 Apr 2021 22:30:00 -0600

We went to the ChocoMuseo in Antigua today. We signed up for the “bean to bar” workshop. This wasn’t our first chocolate factory tour, but this was so much better than any of the others. They didn’t include picking cocoa pods or fermenting or drying the beans, but we did get to roast them, grind them into paste using a mortar and pestle, make various chocolate drinks, and finally make our own chocolate bars. We also learned a lot along the way. I really enjoyed the whole experience. If you’re ever in Antigua and you like chocolate, this is a workshop for you. And it’s only $25 per person. Very worth it.

Semana Santa en Antigua

Fri, 02 Apr 2021 22:30:00 -0600

One of the big reasons we chose to visit Guatemala this time of year was to be in Antigua for Semana Santa. They do some amazing things for Holy Week here. Some of the festivities were cancelled by the Catholic Church because of covid, but some of the traditions lived on. One of the most famous is the tradition of creating beautiful “carpets” out of colored sawdust.

The artists work through the night to create these works of art that don’t even last through the day.

The Suicide Shower

Sun, 28 Mar 2021 22:30:00 -0600

If you want to take a warm shower south of the border, you’ll probably run into what a lot of gringos call a “suicide shower.” You walk into the shower area and look up at the showerhead. It has electrical wires running into and out of it. Yikes. This is because they don’t waste a lot of gas and/or electricity down here doing things like keeping a huge tank of water hot. Instead, they only heat the water right when and where you need it.

Semuc Champey (Part 2: The Pools)

Sat, 27 Mar 2021 22:30:00 -0600

We regrouped after our lunch break. Our guide explained that each of us had a choice about how to get to the turquoise pools on top of the limestone bridge that is Semuc Champey. The hard way is to climb the stairs up to the lookout and then continue and descend the stairs to the top of the pools. He said it might be too hard for some of us and seemed especially worried about parents with kids. The alternative is to skip the cliff completely and just walk up the flat path along the river, similar to what we had walked earlier with our tubes, just on the opposite side of the river.

Semuc Champey (Part 1 - Below the Waterfall)

Sat, 27 Mar 2021 18:30:00 -0600

We slept pretty well last night, despite having 3 of us in the room and sharing a double bed with Charmaine. The only time I woke up was when I was freezing and had to adjust the air conditioner so it wouldn’t be so cold. Tessa said something about how she’s glad she brought her blanket from home with her or she would have frozen. That’s a good air conditioner.

The long ride to Lanquín

Fri, 26 Mar 2021 22:30:00 -0600

We got up and ate breakfast earlier than usual this morning. It’s Friday, which means we’re not working – just trying to get our adventure on. Some of our previous attempts haven’t worked out exactly the way we hoped, but nothing stands in our way today. We’re headed to Lanquín to see Semuc Champey Natural Monument. It’s about 200 miles each way, but it usually takes 8+ hours due to traffic, construction, narrow winding roads, slow trucks, etc. Our driver pulled his van up to the house at 8:00 and we headed out.

Settled In

Thu, 25 Mar 2021 22:30:00 -0600

It’s amazing how quickly we can go from being awed by living in a big house with two chefs making amazing meals every day, someone doing all the cleaning, making my bed every day, doing my laundry, and a gardener who’s here three days a week making all the indoor garden areas, fountains, stairs, etc. look amazing… to taking it for granted.

Taking all that for granted? Yes.

We’re getting ready for our trip up to Semuc Champey tomorrow and I just caught myself wondering why my dirty clothes were still hanging on the clothes line upstairs and hadn’t been dried and folded yet. How did I get to that point? I’m very upset with myself for coming up with such a thought.

Ash Tuesday

Tue, 23 Mar 2021 22:30:00 -0600

Pacaya blew its top again today and they had to close down the airport. Our weather forecast in Antigua was for “Volcanic Ash”. I think we got a little bit lucky with the winds today because some locations got several centimeters of ash on the ground and we just got a heavier snow than normal. But it’s probably a good thing we’re not trying to camp up there tonight. lol.

Pacaya can wait

Mon, 22 Mar 2021 22:30:00 -0600

When you make plans to summit volcanos, your plans have to be flexible. Volcán de Pacaya just began a new intense eruption yesterday and a new period of increased activity, so the country closed the National Park. Nobody gets to go near the volcano until it slows down. We got the email about it today, so we won’t be climbing to the summit tomorrow night to watch the lava flow down the side of the mountain after all. We’re hoping it will calm down enough before we have to fly back to the United States in a couple weeks, but there’s no way to predict what it will do. Brett’s kids are pretty upset about missing it, but there’s nothing we can do except enjoy our other activities. We’re still expecting to have a great weekend in Semuc Champey this weekend, but even that depends on the weather.

Last day in Monterrico

Sun, 21 Mar 2021 22:30:00 -0600

We went to bed around 9 pm last night. We must be crazy gringo party animals. We invited Nate to sleep on the pull-out bed below our bunkbeds last night because he didn’t sleep very well on the couch in the family room the night before. There are no window coverings in there and the lights from outside were shining right on him. He fell asleep almost immediately, but he didn’t last very long. There was thumping music and fireworks keeping the rest of us awake until about midnight. And that’s about the time Nate decided he would rather sleep on the couch than in our room. I guess we are too noisy with our random coughs and snoring. I woke Charmaine up a few times to get her to stop snoring, but I think I slept pretty well overall.

Villas Aqua los Cabos de Monterrico

Sat, 20 Mar 2021 22:30:00 -0600

Surprisingly good breakfast

I think I slept pretty well last night. I had the remote control to the air conditioner in bed with me, and I actually got cold enough at one point that I had to set the temperature a little higher so I wouldn’t freeze. That’s exactly where I wanted it to be.

Omelette breakfast with platanos fritos

Our Monterrico Adventure Begins

Fri, 19 Mar 2021 22:30:00 -0600

Feeling Fine

As expected, I felt fine this morning. I didn’t want to get too crazy, but I did eat some pan dulce and drank a little orange juice. We worked some magic and found a nice Airbnb on the beach in Monterrico, rented some cars from Alamo, and headed south for a beach adventure. It isn’t El Salvador, but it’s the next best thing.

Our Airbnb hosts were hurrying to make our unit ready for us and said they could have it available by 2:00 pm if we returned the Excel spreadsheet with our passport numbers and license plates. The form had to be filled out by us, then signed by the owner of the unit and returned to the property management and security dudes prior to our arrival or we wouldn’t be allowed in the gate. Of course, we couldn’t fill out the form until we knew our license plate numbers and we wouldn’t know those until we picked up our rental cars.

102 in Antigua

Thu, 18 Mar 2021 22:30:00 -0600

It’s funny how quickly things can change. Yesterday we were trying to make plans for the weekend. Last night I was just trying to survive. I woke suddenly at 2:30 am with a stabbing pain in my gut. I could feel all the muscles in my abdomen starting to tighten up. I went quickly to the bathroom and puked my guts out. That was my routine every 2 hours for the rest of the night and on through the whole day. I didn’t sleep for more than about 45 minutes at a time from 2:30 am on. I had a fever that would spike and then drop and then spike and then drop. We measured it at 101.7. I felt terrible. By morning I looked terrible too.

Planning our weekends in Guatemala

Wed, 17 Mar 2021 22:30:00 -0600

We have recently been trying to make plans for this weekend. One of the things we want to do while we’re down here is swim the limestone pools in the river at Semuc Champey and swim through the Grutas de Lanquín. We really enjoyed swimming through the ATM cave in Belize and it sounds like the caves in Lanquín have a similar adventurous quality. Both of those adventures require relatively dry conditions, but the forecast for this weekend up there is for lots and lots of rain. We’re still in the dry season here, but the jungle can get rain anytime. So we can’t do that this weekend.

Working from Antigua

Tue, 16 Mar 2021 22:30:00 -0600

We can’t just play and eat all the time. We have to do something to pay the bills. Luckily, that something can be done remotely when there’s a good enough internet connection. The house we rented in Antigua has such a connection. It’s definitely not fast by our standards at home, but we’re able to do multiple simultaneous Zoom meetings without any trouble, and that’s our definition of “good enough” down here.

Our Chefs are Amazing

Mon, 15 Mar 2021 22:30:00 -0600

Last night we decided to meet at 7:45 each morning for scripture study before breakfast. I’m not sure how well that will work for me, because I’m used to sleeping until I wake without ever using an alarm. That usually translates to me waking up around 8, but there’s no guarantee. I’m definitely not a morning person, so we’ll see how it goes.

I didn’t get to sleep last night until about midnight. Then I woke a few times due to noises and other things. By 7:00 I definitely didn’t feel like I slept enough, but it was time to start the day. Our two chefs were here and preparing breakfast. They cut up fresh fruit into big bowls. We had pineapple, watermelon, cantaloupe, blackberry, and papaya. I sucked down a lot of fruit. I’m so in love with papaya. The main part of breakfast was “typical” Guatemalan. We had eggs, black beans, and platanos fritos con crema. I loved the fresh fruit. The eggs had a nice salsa. The black beans had a really complex flavor.

El Tenedor del Cerro

Sun, 14 Mar 2021 22:30:00 -0600

Brett and Nate like to punish themselves. They proved it by getting up early and going for a run our very first morning in town. It wasn’t a long run, but it was on the cobblestone streets of Antigua, which can’t be fun. A few minutes after they came back, Brett got a message from someone he knew when he was on his mission here years ago, who just happened to be in Antigua with his girlfriend for a cake piping class.

Church in Antigua

Sun, 14 Mar 2021 18:00:07 +0000

I didn’t pack the right attire for attending church here. I packed my usual Duluth Trading Company cargo pants and a dark polo shirt. I can get away with that most of places we go, but not here. They dress in their best clothes for church in Guatemala. I didn’t plan for that, so I found myself feeling underdressed. But we still went.

The church is on the other side of town from where we are staying, so we started walking around 8:30 and got to church around 8:50. We wondered if they would be doing church via Zoom here or not. On one hand, it’s a little harder for people to get around, so, being able to do remote church seems like a great thing. But, on the other hand, we wondered how many people would have access to a computer and internet in order to watch church remotely. As it turned out, they have both. Church is conducted live, in person, and they stream it over Zoom.

Cerro de la Cruz

Sat, 13 Mar 2021 22:30:00 -0600

Today was our first whole day here in Antigua. It was a Saturday and we didn’t have anything on the schedule. We walked around town, bought some ice cream, enjoyed the fountain in the center of town, and then met up with one of Brett’s neighbor’s for lunch. Adam just happened to be coming to Guatemala this week and knew Brett had served his mission here. He sent Brett an email asking what sites he should see while in town. Of course, when he heard we were going to be here at the same time, he wanted to meet up and say hi. So we did.

Breakfast in Antigua

Fri, 12 Mar 2021 23:00:00 -0600

Antigua has continued to grow since the last time we were here. There are a lot of great places to eat. After a long trip to get here, we needed to eat (and drink). Before we could go off wandering around town, we needed to get settled at the house we rented to be our home base for the next few weeks. We toured the property, met the gardener and the maid, and decided who would stay in which room. Let me just say, this place is fantastic. We knew it would be nice, but it’s even nicer than the VRBO listing made it look. This is going to be a great trip.

Guatemala City to Antigua

Fri, 12 Mar 2021 22:45:00 -0600

Our layover in Los Angeles was just over five hours. That’s a long time to sit in uncomfortable chairs in a small terminal where almost everything was closed for the evening. At some point Brett and I talked about what time we thought we would be in Antigua in the morning. We were scheduled to land in Guatemala City around 6:00 in the morning. We thought that would probably be early enough that traffic wouldn’t be bad yet. We knew it would take some time to clear customs, especially with needing to verify every passenger held a recent negative test for covid, etc. We thought we would probably be leaving the airport by 7:00 and be in Antigua (20 miles away) by 7:45 or 8:00 – just in time for breakfast. We thought that was a fairly conservative estimate. We thought we had it all figured out.

Disappointed with Delta

Fri, 12 Mar 2021 22:30:00 -0600

Flying first class on Delta isn’t what it used to be. A lot of that is because of the coronavirus, but a lot of it is because of cost-saving due to the pandemic. Gone are the drinks to drink as the rest of the plane boards. Gone are the warm towels. The seats are still spacious and soft, but that’s about the only thing that’s the same. Not only were we never asked what we wanted to drink, but there were no drinks at all. Instead, they gave us a ziploc bag with goldfish crackers and a 4 ounce bottle of water. We were disappointed, but I think Charmaine was really upset. If I read her reaction correctly, I think she was somewhat upset that we had spent the money (miles) to fly first class only to have this extremely downgraded experience. Her entertainment system was broken, so she couldn’t watch anything. She fought with her entertainment system for an hour or more and seemed so frustrated that she almost seemed to be holding back tears. We had the flight attendants reboot the system and it eventually started working, but it was definitely not a great experience.

Lanai: Barge Harbor & Second Cathedral

Thu, 21 Apr 2016 22:30:00 -0600

Yesterday was originally going to be our last day diving on this trip, but after getting skunked at Molokini Crater earlier in the week, Charmaine scheduled us to hit the crater this morning. We were pretty excited for that after seeing how amazing the visibility was out there yesterday. We checked in at the shop and walked our stuff down to the dock where Captain Levi was directing traffic. The boat going to Molokini was packed full and the boat going to Lanai for a drift dive was half empty. Levi suggested we would have a better time doing the Lanai drift than going to Molokini again. The crater is very popular and crowded for a reason. But he said the Lanai drift dive is special. We looked around and saw the old dude that puked all over the place was on the boat to Molokini and saw how much room there was on the Lanai boat and saw that the dive crew going to Lanai were all people we already liked (and Captain Dave was going to be diving with one of the groups today), so we had Captain Levi call the shop and switch us over. We’ll always be glad we made that switch. At the time there was a bit of joking about us being the good luck charm that got the manta, the dolphins, and the whale the day before. We even suggested Mitch switch boats as a joke… he had to work the Molokini charter because they needed as many crew as they could get with a boat that full.

Molokini: Edge of the World & Reef's End

Wed, 20 Apr 2016 22:30:00 -0600

Getting skunked a second day in a row was upsetting. Worse, the dive we had originally scheduled for today is the dive we wound up doing yesterday – Mala Pier. I wouldn’t be too sad about diving there again, especially since it was our best dive of the trip, but Charmaine went in to the dive shop and changed some things around so we could go to Molokini today. It’s not the world-famous Molokini Crater, but it’s still Molokini. We signed ourselves up to do two drift dives at Molokini. The dive shop requires every diver have a flashlight and safety sausage, so I got to buy a safety sausage. Charmaine already had one (and a dive knife).

Maui: Jabberwocky & Mala Pier

Tue, 19 Apr 2016 22:30:00 -0600

Remember that time we almost dove Second Cathedral on Lana’i? People are starting to wonder if we are bad luck. Once again, we braved the rough water and parked our boat at our desired dive site, only to be turned away and have to dive somewhere else. This time it was the Molokini crater. We arrived after a fairly easy crossing, to find only 2 boats there. That’s very unusual. It’s the most visited spot in all of Hawaii, getting more visitors per year than the USS Arizona. The two boats were pulling their divers back and heading out. The forecast had changed and they now expected the wind to really pick up soon, so everyone was getting out of there before it got ugly. We decided to dive some spots closer to Lahaina. The first site was called Jabberwocky.

Lanai: No Name Paradise & Lighthouse

Mon, 18 Apr 2016 22:30:00 -0600

The rain has been pounding and the wind has been howling since we landed on Maui, but that doesn’t have a huge effect on conditions below the surface. We were all set to dive Second Cathedral on the south side of Lanai today. We braved the rough crossing in this weather, tied off, and dropped the first group of divers. Then we realized the boat was drifting. The mooring ball had severed its rope and we were no longer tied to anything. We tried recalling the first group of divers, but they didn’t hear us, probably because we had drifted too far from where we dropped them before attempting to recall them. So we waited while they completed their dive. We didn’t get to see the cathedral.

Molasses Reef

Sat, 23 May 2015 22:30:00 -0600

Today was the last day of diving this trip. Nobody was sure what the name of the dives were, because it’s a holiday weekend and we were lucky just to get moored on a ball somewhere along Molasses Reef. The reality is that all the dives are pretty close to each other and you can be moored above one spot, but wind up doing one or two of the spots right next to it. So both dives today were somewhere on Molasses reef, but they probably didn’t follow any officially named dives. We just went were we could be a little further away from all the other divers.

Winch Hole and Wellwood

Fri, 22 May 2015 22:30:00 -0600

It’s a holiday weekend. All the boats are packed. Ours was no exception. We had 20 divers, 4 dive masters, and even a couple snorkelers on board. We were among the first to board and we got the premium seats close to the back. We also managed to get the best guide on the boat. If only I remembered his name so I could write it here. Unfortunately, I am terrible with names and his is now lost. But he had a plan to make sure we were the first group in the water at each dive location and it worked. There were a ton of boats at each location, so our dive master took us in a slightly different direction than all the other groups and it made all the difference.

Ryan's Beach and Aquarium

Thu, 21 May 2015 22:30:00 -0600

Brett and Jess arrived yesterday and joined us on our dives today. It was so calm yesterday and I hoped it would be as good today, so they could enjoy some of this sweetness. It was. And they did. Both of our dives were along Molasses Reef today. Our first spot was at a place they call Ryan’s Beach. I suspect it has another name, because when they said it, the rest of the crew laughed. It’s probably something like Valerie’s Beach, but I can’t seem to look it up anywhere.

Spanish Anchor and North Star

Wed, 20 May 2015 22:30:00 -0600

When we woke up this morning conditions looked epic. The trees and flags were still. The water was as flat as you can reasonably expect the ocean to get. We were worried if we let our excitement show that we might jinx it. Both dive spots this morning were on Molasses Reef, which is a fairly shallow reef, so I hoped the calm water and shallow depths would lead to some good pictures. When we arrived at Spanish Anchor, it wasn’t as clear as I thought it would be, but it was as calm as anywhere I’ve been diving.

Woody's Ledge and Christmas Tree Cave

Tue, 19 May 2015 22:30:00 -0600

We hit two spots on French Reef today. We started things off at Woody’s Ledge. The surface was calm, but the visibility wasn’t good – 25 to 30 feet at most. They put us in a group with a bunch of folks that hadn’t been under water in a while and needed to do a weight check before we got going. So we all jumped in the water and Alison (our dave master) started helping them do their neutral buoyancy checks. Charmaine popped her head up and yelled “a huge turtle!” and immediately descended to check it out. I decided to follow her instead of staying with the group. The group was going to be fine, but I needed to stay with my buddy.

USCG Duane and Aquarium at Molasses Reef

Mon, 18 May 2015 22:30:00 -0600

It rained again last night. I worried that the water would be rough again today, but it wasn’t. We bought some dramamine yesterday and took some before bed. We took another round this morning before heading out. I’m not sure if it was the drugs or the calm waters, but we were both fine all day.

We did our second deep dive today. We decided to do all our deep dives before Brett and Jess get here. I don’t think Jess enjoys going deep and there’s certainly no need to go deep to see anything other than wrecks. The wreck we saw this morning was the USCG Duane. I took the camera down inside the enclosure for the first time. I brought the big flash because I knew there wouldn’t be a lot of light at depth. That full rig is pretty heavy. Speaking of heavy, I took 18 pounds of weight today, which proved to be way too much. It’s easy to compensate for too much weight, but there’s no way to compensate for having too little. Tomorrow I may try a little less.

Back Under Water

Sun, 17 May 2015 22:30:00 -0600

I really like how Rainbow Reef runs their scuba business. Everything is top-notch and professional. The rental gear is always high-end and brand new. They make you do some of the work, but it helps you do things right. I really like them. They are why we came back to Key Largo. We were so impressed with the way they did things when we were here doing our Advanced Open Water certifications last year.

San Jose to Key Largo

Sun, 17 May 2015 02:00:00 -0600

We took a taxi to the airport. It costs about $40 each way (after tip). Parking at the airport is $15 per day, so the $80 taxi ride is a money saver for any trip longer than 4 days. This trip is going to be a bit longer than that.

When you hire a taxi to take you to the airport, you never know if they’ll pick you up or drop you off on time. Will they drive the same route you drive? Do they drive faster or slower than you? So you plan on a little extra time. We also allowed a little more extra time because we knew we would be checking a bag filled with our scuba stuff. We had scheduled the driver to pick us up at 9:30. He called at 9:20 to make sure he had the right address. He showed up right on time, drove the shortest route, and got us to the airport by 9:50. We walked straight to the self-check kiosk, checked in, turned in our bags, walked through security without stopping (there’s never a line in San Jose) and sat down at our gate. I guess we didn’t need as much buffer as we thought. We had nearly two hours until our flight was scheduled to leave.

Auto Supremacists

Sun, 12 Aug 2012 22:30:00 -0600

Car marketing teams try to come up with model names that make people think the best things about their cars. They don’t want you to think they are just good; they want you to think they are the best. It’s always about the superlatives and being superior.

As I ride my bicycle around town, I’ve started noticing these feelings of superiority migrating from the cars to the drivers of the cars, or at least there are drivers out there that believe they are superior, simply based on the car they are driving.

'Tis the season for data recovery

Mon, 03 Jan 2011 22:30:00 -0600

I was updating some ID3 tags on a few songs today when I got an error saving the new tag. The mounted file system to my music share had become read-only. I checked the exports file on my server. It was read-write. I checked my fstab. Everything looked good. I checked the file system itself on the server. Trouble. One of my drives had failed moments earlier. Luckily, the array was configured for RAID-5, so no data was lost, but it’s still going to take a long time to rebuild it.

Upper Crust Grill - Heyburn, Idaho

Sat, 25 Jul 2009 22:30:00 -0600

Wow. I didn’t expect to find a place like this in Burley. My expectations for food establishments in Burley were set very low by a terrible experience I had at Wendy’s on my way through town several years ago. But this town has come a long way in my eyes since I started participating in the annual Spudman Triathlon. I have come to realize just how beautiful it is to be right here on this part of the Snake River. And now I’m finding great places to eat. Burley keeps finding new ways to impress me.

Blue Lemon - Highland, Utah

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 22:30:00 -0600

I live in a part of Utah County where there are very few businesses of any kind. We can’t even get pizza delivered to our house from any website other than Dominos.com, which is just sad. So when Charmaine’s little sister, Lisa, wanted to go to a local restaurant, because it was so good, I was more than a little skeptical. When Charmaine confirmed that she had been there previously, and that it really was quite good, I figured I should give it a shot.

Food Critic

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 18:30:00 -0600

I moved from the Seattle area to Utah County about four years ago. One of the hardest parts of that move was the extreme lack of good food in Utah. I grew up in Utah and always figured we had good food here, but just in the expensive restaurants. I was wrong. There is no substitute for seafood only a few hours old, and it will never be possible to have that kind of freshness in Utah. One coping method I’ve found is to go on vacations, with the goal of eating great food being high on the list of reasons for choosing a location.

Red line

Tue, 18 Sep 2007 22:30:00 -0600

After a short swim today, I decided to take a ride up Provo Canyon. My previous rides up Big Cottonwood Canyon and American Fork Canyon were so much fun that I decided it would be a nice relaxing ride to help me get my mind off all the stress at work. It was not at all like the other two rides, nor was it relaxing.

For one thing, Provo Canyon is a freeway. I guess that didn’t really cross my mind until I typed it just now, but it’s true. Provo Canyon is a multi-lane divided highway. The ride up the canyon was a lot of fun. I had a great tail-wind pushing me up. In some spots I was able to hit the “red line” a few times (75 mph – indicated). I imagine I was only going about 65 mph, but that’s a topic for a different day. It was a great ride up the canyon.

Motorcycle Skills Test

Thu, 13 Sep 2007 22:30:00 -0600

Several months ago I started the process of getting my motorcycle endorsement to my Utah driver license. The written test was a piece of cake, but everyone warned me about how hard the skills test would be. Luckily, they don’t let you take your skills test until several months after you take your written test. I think this is mostly due to the number of people waiting to take the skills test. Today was the day I was scheduled to take the skills test.

Alpine Loop

Mon, 27 Aug 2007 22:30:00 -0600

I took my scooter in for its first oil change a few weeks ago. The Scooter Lounge was having some sort of Scooter Rally where a large group of scooter enthusiasts all rode up American Fork Canyon together. They invited me to go, and bring Charmaine, but I wasn’t sure how well it would handle the canyon with both of us on it. I figured the scooter was made for two people, but probably two Taiwanese people. I had just ridden up and over Sun Crest and up Big Cottonwood Canyon the week before that. It slowed itself down to 35 on the road over Sun Crest… and that was by myself. So I declined.

Motorcycle wave

Fri, 03 Aug 2007 22:30:00 -0600

Riding a motorcycle is like joining a fraternity of some sort. If you haven’t ever ridden one on the roads, you may not have noticed. When motorcycles pass each other in opposite directions, they usually give each other what I’m calling the motorcycle wave… each rider drops his left hand to wave to the other below the handlebars.

I realize that my scooter is far from being a motorcycle, but it doesn’t look like a typical scooter, either. I guess the larger wheels make it look somewhat like a motorcycle to motorcycle riders approaching from the front, because I get the motorcycle wave fairly often. It’s such a simple thing, but it adds a lot to the experience. I’m more and more convinced that I’m going to end up with a real motorcycle at some point.

Motorcycle Learner Permit

Tue, 31 Jul 2007 22:30:00 -0600

Silly me. I thought I could head down to the local DMV office during lunch and get my motorcycle endorsement. I completely underestimated the number of lines and the speed at which they would move. As my 1:00 meeting got closer and closer I realized I wouldn’t finish the tests by the time I had to leave. At 12:50, I was about to leave, having done nothing but wait in lines for 90 minutes. It was pretty disappointing. But then I checked my email and saw a message from my boss telling me not to worry about the 1:00 meeting. He had rescheduled it to 3:30 to allow me to stay there and take the test (so I wouldn’t have to re-wait those 90 minutes some other day).

Scooter

Fri, 27 Jul 2007 22:30:00 -0600

After a year of consideration and on-and-off research, I finally found a way to stop driving the Nissan Armada around. The point of not driving it is to save the miles/wear-and-tear for the real reasons we bought it… to drive large groups of people around and to haul large items around. It was never meant to be a commuter car. We bought it when we lived in the Seattle area and we never drove it to work. It sat parked in our garage most of the time. We brought it out when people came to visit us, when we took road trips (what a great car for road trips), and we hoped to buy a boat and/or other toys that we would haul around behind it… but then we moved to Utah. Gone are the days of carpooling to work in the morning.

Ubuntu Server

Thu, 17 Aug 2006 22:30:00 -0600

I finally upgraded my Linux firewall at home. I had a hard drive warn me that it was going to die soon (S.M.A.R.T. saved my bacon), so I decided the time had come to overhaul the system.

I recently switched from Windows XP to Kubuntu at work, so I thought I’d use Ubuntu at home as well. In the process of figuring out what packages I wanted on my server, I played with various ubuntu derivatives. I wanted to keep it light weight, so I decided to go without any GUI or with the Xfce included with Xubuntu over VNC. In the end I went with Ubuntu server with no GUI at all.

Comment Spam

Wed, 09 Aug 2006 22:30:00 -0600

It’s funny. I had pretty much abandoned this blog a long time ago, but here I am contemplating actually blogging (my last false-start probably shouldn’t count). Why? Because the WordPress php script notified me of some comment spam that was recently added to an old post. That was sort of amazing to me, since I have never advertised my site anywhere. There has never been a link to it from my homepage (there isn’t even a homepage right now). In fact, I don’t think there has ever been a link to my blog from anywhere in the world. But somehow the spiders and spammers found it and started adding comment spam. That’s pretty interesting to me. Why not until now?

Personal Information Loss

Tue, 07 Jun 2005 22:30:00 -0600

Your personal information is not yours at all. Companies collect it, buy it, sell it, archive it, mine it, crunch it, and even lose track of it. Many companies have recently disclosed that they have lost track of the information they collected on their employees and customers.

Citigroup has begun the process of notifying 3.9 million of its current and former customers that information about their accounts (names, addresses, phone numbers, social security numbers, account numbers, account balances, transaction histories, etc.) has been lost. Apparently, this data was contained on backup media that was being shipped to an alternate location. Citibank shipped the backup tapes on May 2nd, but didn’t realize they were missing until May 24th.

Clearly Not a Copyright Violation

Thu, 21 Apr 2005 22:30:00 -0600

I like movies. I buy the movies I enjoy on DVD, so that I can watch them with my friends. Sometimes I expose my friends to movies that they really enjoy, but probably would not have seen if it wasn’t for my recommendation (The Spanish Prisoner). Other times they introduce movies to me that I wouldn’t have seen if it wasn’t for their recommendation. We give our honest assessment of each movie when asked.

Shaved Aggression

Mon, 04 Apr 2005 22:30:00 -0600

When you shave your head, you become more aggressive.

In high school, I was on the swim team. In preparation for the state championships, we would follow the tradition of many swim teams across the world and shave our bodies. The theory behind it was to cut down on drag. More hair meant more drag. More drag meant more effort required to swim fast. So we shaved our arms, legs, chests, backs, and even our heads in the name of eliminating drag. Freshly shorn, we swam to victory. Looking back, I think we gained as much from the feeling of being shaved as we did from having less drag.

and so it begins

Thu, 31 Mar 2005 22:30:00 -0600

how do you start a blog? this is the question that’s been on my mind ever since i installed wordpress and created my about page. actually, i wrote a first entry at that time, but i was messing around deleting users and found out that deleting a user also deletes all the posts of that user (too bad they didn’t warn me of that when i clicked on delete). but it wasn’t anything worth worrying about losing.