Andrew Bunner’s blog

Dear Fourteen Blog Readers (according to Google Reader),

  After reading Anil Dash's hilarious analysis of the Facebook vanity-url feature, I decided it was time I got my own "home page". Partly I wanted to try out another awesome blogging platform from Six Apart, and partly I wanted a place where I could play around with some personal programming projects and run my own software stack.

  Visit the new home of Andrew's Bunner Blog.

  I've used a larger font to boost my page rank.

-- Andrew

Angela and I volunteered for an Oracle-sponsored event that had us working for the Marin Marine Center for a day. Summary: Most fun animal poop cleaning ever! The center has a clean, well-run operation. They take in abandoned and injured marine mammals and nurse them back to health for eventual release. Mostly young elephant seals and sea lions (though they get otters too; no space for whales/dolphins).

They gave us some training and, within an hour, had us cleaning out the elephant seal pens with the elephant seals still in them! We were practically nose-to-nose with them. They have huge, cute eyes and they're very curious. Angela's job was to herd them away from the me (with the hose) and my partner (with the scrubber) while we cleaned. It was really fun.

Check out the whole album on Picasa.

The third-phase of our volunteering was even more fun (the second-phase was weighing out frozen fish--not as fun). We got to feed them! Young elephant seals are used to drinking milk and they have to actually learn how to eat fish and even to recognize that fish are food. For some of the animals, this is a big hurdle. They don't really chew their food that much, they just swallow the fish whole and, to do that, they have to get it past a gagging point. For the poor seals that have trouble with this, the volunteers actually hold the animal down and shove mostly-thawed fish down their gullets with metal tongs. They don't look like they enjoy it at all.

A problem most of the animals have there is that they're very underweight. They should be these bulging, sausage-like creatures with no discernible neck. But, from the pictures, you'll see that these little guys have a distinct neck and a small-ish head. Not good for survival in cold Pacific water.

If you ever get a change to volunteer at the Marine center, I highly recommend it. They're looking for regulars who can do one shift a week (it's really fun). Get in touch with them if you want to try!

(fanboy misspelling is reference to "Eat It Vid Boi" level of original Marathon game)

http://technologizer.com/2009/04/23/whatever-happened-to-the-top-15-properties-of-april-1999/

I uploaded some of the photos here on Vox. I couldn't get my bulk-uploader to work for Vox anymore so the rest are on Picasa. Check them out in my Steamboat Springs gallery

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It's beautiful here and there are NO crowds. Angela and I skied mostly Storm Peak Express and Pony Express today. The process feels like it's reduced the lateral stiffness of my tibia and femur... I'm very wobbly after a day of bump skiing. Dad is holding up well in his advanced years, though his equipment is disintegrating (because of its advanced years). He had black foam from his "still working" goggles all over his face today. I suggested upgrading some of his gear and he told us about his seven-foot hickory skis that he still has. Awesome.

Two more days of skiing left. Angela doesn't seem tired at all. Wish me luck.

We took the family out to see elephant seals at Ana Neuvo park this holiday weekend. It's mating and birthing season so there's a lot of action on the beach. We didn't get to see any R-rated action, but we did see some males fighting and a few yearlings suckling.

We visited the California Academy of Science this holiday weekend. Way too crowded! The best part was this conversation between a five-year old boy and his dad in the men's restroom...

Boy: Are these automatic toilets?
Dad: Nope!
Boy: Wait. Yes they are! I don't have to go.
Dad: You came in here for a reason. You must have to go. Don't worry they won't make a loud noise.
Boy: I don't like the loud noise! It's scary! I don't want to go...
Dad [coaxing]: Here just come up close to the urinal...
Boy: Why so close?
Dad [nudging boy closer]: A little closer you have to get close enough to pee
Boy: [sniffling sounds, then peeing sounds]
Boy: How does it know I'm here?
Dad: There's a sensor on the top. See?
[I finish, the boy finishes, then I step back and mine flushes... it's quite loud. The boy covers his ears and kind of ducks when my toilet flushes and I say...]
Me: See? That wasn't so bad.
Boy [puffing out chest]: Actually, I'm five! I LIKE loud noises!

  That was my favorite part of the trip :-) The museum itself is an incredible building with amazing wildlife inside, but the gripes were pretty significant. They let way too many people in. There were lines for everything. We didn't even get to the indoor rain-forest because there was a crazy line for it. Bah.

  My other grip is the exhibits didn't have enough information. I was staring at a tank full of alligator gars (really big fish!) for a few minutes and the placard had just one sentence about the fish "A large fresh-water fish that feeds on other fish". You don't say?

  Here's a picture of us on the living roof:

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  And here's a picture of a HUGE sea bass. Did you know they can live to 100 years old?!

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The holiday weekend has brought with it a revelation of weight gain. Skiing in Mammoth Mountain I was reminded that I've been enjoying Google cooking for about 6 months now. And it has not been without cost.

During vigorous skiing, my ski pants now come forcefully unbuttoned!

This brand of wardrobe malfunction doesn't have the potential for comedy that you might think (no half-naked skiing). My ski gear is difficult to remove even with extraordinary focus and force of will. So the pants stayed on. But it felt wrong--I'm supposed to be buckled-in, locked-down, zipped-tight and buttoned-up! -sigh-

Aside from this, the ski trip was a success. The most serious injuries were banged-up toes and one finger that I accidentally nicked while trying to cut a squash.

Also: Angela had a mega-Scrabble-win. "Montage"... all seven letters!

On the surface, the kids of Fiji seem deprived: fewer than two shoes, no Nintendo DS's anywhere (seriously! not one!) and they participate in harvest work a little learning to stand on their own. Turns out these are some of the happiest kids of seen and they're a lot of fun. Here's what happened on our second day...

We set out to climb Des Vouex peak--the second highest peak on Taveuni. At the top there's a type of flower that grows nowhere else (like in Batman Begins) and, if you're lucky, you can see the crater lake off in the rainforest on the other side.

It's about a five-mile bike ride to the start of the trail and then it's a (practically) unbroken ascent over unpaved, rutted, rocky and unstable ground. We locked the bikes up around a village and proceeded on foot once the road/trail got too steep.

Here's the village we passed on the way up:

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You can click on any of the photos for a bigger version.

Just after this village we ran into a bunch of young kids carreening down the mountain (shoeless) with plastic shopping bags tied to strings trailing above and behind them. Kites! They were having a blast. They were much to quick for my camera, but I did manage to get these kids playing in a tree. There are three kids in this picture... can you spot them?

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Now we're onto the real hike. Serious up-hill. But the kids from this village came running after us and asked if they could join us! Why not? So here's our rag-tag band of hikers:

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They like being in photos a lot. I'm the head poking out in the way back. About an hour into the hike the kids took us to a "water stop". Which was somebody's uncle's house that had rain water coming out of a pipe and into a drinking trough. Not wanting to seem rude, I splashed some on my face when offered. Here are the kids taking break:

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Our next rest-stop was another hour uphill. Apparently some Indians live way the heck up the hill and are smoothing out the road with this:

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It gets colder and steeper and harder as we go on. The kids are kicking a soccer ball around. Many of them are barefoot and a couple are one-shoed. Periodically, the one-shoers would trade (or steal) each others shoes. Nobody seemed to mind the rocks but Angela and I.

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By the time this picture was taken, I was getting a little tired. We asked the kids if we were almost there yet and they argued for a few minutes in Fijian before telling us, no, we were not even close. We trudged on as long as we could, up into thicker jungle and colder mist. Three hours into it, we realized we weren't going to make it without turning it into a death-march kind of adventure. The trek down was fast, but a little dangerous. Here I am cooling off:

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As we came back to the village at the bottom of the trail, we spotted these kids playing a game with tires. As far as I can tell, there's an offense and a defense. The offense rolls the tires down the hill--pushing them with sticks--towards the defense. The defense tries to stop the tires before the careen way, way, way down the hill.

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When we got back to the bikes we found a group of kids who got very quiet once they saw us. They'd been trying to figure out how to undo the lock! When I went to put in the combination, they all crowded around to see what I was doing. It wouldn't be cute here in the states, but something about these would-be unauthorized-borrowers was fun.

When we finally got back, we were pooped. Awesome day!