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My trip to Hawaii a few weeks was terribly short… Took off Saturday 8am, landed at noon. Saturday night I went to a birthday party at with an old friend that now lives in Hawaii, hi Heidi! It’s interesting that Heidi had friended me on Facebook after 10 years at exactly that moment. Just the next morning, I was on my way to fly to her in Honolulu!

Dinner Saturday night was fun.

Ala Moana park at sunset

Just a few moments before I took this, a surfer passed by that tiny gap in the break below the sun. It would have been a perfect picture. I get to keep that image in my mind. All you get is this awesome photo.

Long boats near Ala Moana park

Sunday was work. Man it was hot, humid, and sunny in Honolulu! Sunday night,

Monday night we hiked at night partway up to Mānoa Falls. It was pretty rad! Walking along, I saw a fallen flower at my feet, oo pretty. then I scanned with my flashlight to find a few more next to me… and a whole lot more! Wow, I walked right into this thing! Another spot, I was walking along and saw “something big” away to my right. I scanned with my flashlight and saw a wall of sorts about 50 yards away. And then I scanned up with the flashlight… hmm, it’s big… it’s flat… it has vines on it… scan up some more, it’s really big, and bumpy or something, 30 feet wide and scan up some more, 40 feet tall, 50, 60, what is it, 80 feet tall with branches at the top! It’s a 100 ft tall wall of a tree with multiple trunks completely covered with vines!

Hiking toward Manoa Falls at night

At the mention of me going hiking at night, my host told me that was a terrible idea, I’d get killed, fall off a cliff, get mugged, or worse. I asked him what I should do instead to see Honolulu, and after 3 times of prodding, the best he could come up with was “Sit down and have a drink at a bar in Waikiki. That’s the real Hawaii.” Needless to say, I went hiking instead.

Greetings from Honolulu. That's Diamondhead behind me :-)

How I spent my Valentines Day. University of Hawaii beat Nevada in overtime. A good, tight game, if you like basketball.

On Monday and Tuesday I trained our clients staff how to put together the rig. It was fun from a teaching perspective, though awfully awfully hot in that parking lot.

My last meal was at this Japanese restaurant with my client, finishing with a tasty toast ice cream thing covered in honey, cinnamon and sugar :-)

There wasn’t enough time to do what I wanted to, but there never is.

In November I visited a very good friend in Virginia. At one point she mentioned how she was unhappy that her ex made off with the waffle iron. I thought pensively and sadly to myself how the utter lack of home made waffles in her life was only multiplied by the loss of the iron itself. Thus began a search for a great waffle iron. It was a surprisingly long road.

I had bought a Villaware model 2001 from Williams Sonoma in 2001 that I am very happy with. But it’s a Belgian iron and she said she didn’t like such big crusty waffles. Besides, they don’t make the model any more, the replacement isn’t that well rated.

I stood in the San Francisco Williams Sonoma googling their waffle irons; starting at $180, you would think the All-Clad machines would be well rated, but “eh”. Surly Table was about the same. Standing in the basement at Macy’s, the Cuisinart $30 iron got good recommendations; and then I realized it would cost almost as much to ship it as it cost. Finally, I got a trial subscription to Cooks Illustrated online to look at reviews. They liked the M840 Wafflepro Express. I read a gazillion reviews. Many love, some hate. It was good to see that most of the hates were things like “It doesn’t make my mom’s traditional recipe the way I want it to!”

So here’s what I got her from Amazon:  Chef’s Choice M840 WafflePro Express Waffle Maker, Traditional Five of Hearts

Is it a good waffle maker? Late one evening, about 2 weeks after mailing the machine, I got the following text:

Im drunk and i have been eating waffles all night. You are amazing

This is about the greatest text I have ever received.

Each month AAA’s magazine “Via” has segment where they ask readers to contribute tips. Here’s one I submitted and they published in the west coast March 2011 edition, with great help from Charlotte! It’s neat that they illustrated the idea as well :-) Illustration by Michael Klein.

They sent me a AAA T-Shirt and a $25 check :-)

The House voted to bar Planned Parenthood from federal funding on 2-17-11. They cut funding for HIV tests, cancer screenings, birth control, and more, putting millions of women and families at risk. We can’t let it go unanswered. It’s time for you and me to stand with Planned Parenthood. Sign the open letter to the reps who voted for this bill — and to the senators who still have a chance to stop it.
http://www.istandwithplannedparenthood.org/

Yes, this is real. The National Right to Life Committee and StopTheAbortionAgenda.com is strongly in favor of this amendment. Nuff said. I signed the Planned Parenthood petition.

Though it’s doubtful the bill can really stand… Here’s some snippets from OpenCongress Blog. Read the whole article there.

…
First, the Senate, which is still controlled by Democrats, will never agree to this. Some Republicans – namely Sen. Olympia Snowe [R, ME] and Sen. Susan Collins [R, ME] – have even said that they would oppose an attempt to block Planned Parenthood from receiving funding. Senate Democrats are confident they have the votes to block this.

The second problem is that it is clearly unconstitutional. Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution forbids Congress from passing bills of attainder, i.e. laws that punish a specific individual or group that have not been given a judicial trial. The Republicans passed a similar bill of attainder last year against the community organizing group ACORN that resulted in the federal government being sued. The Republicans may want to repeat that, but nobody else does.

One more thing to be clear on here. Planned Parenthood does not receive federal funding for abortion services. That has been against the law since 1974. They currently receive funds for other health care services, like cancer screening and family planning. But abortion services are subsidized exclusively by private donors. This amendment is about killing Planned Parenthood, not about blocking public abortion funding. That’s already blocked.
…

I just sent this email to info at crimespotting dot org.

I’ve noticed that very few murders are reported on http://sanfrancisco.crimespotting.org. From May 2010 to today I only see 3 murders, all in November. The San Francisco Police reported 50 murders in 2010 (http://informant.kalwnews.org/2011/01/san-francisco-sees-murder-spike-despite-crime-drop-in-2010/). http://oakland.crimespotting.org doesn’t seem to have the problem of underreporting murders.

Do you know why this is? It would be good if something could be done about it. I’d appreciate a response.

Thanks

For a while I thought that San Francisco’s murder rate was MUCH lower than Oakland’s, like 10 to 1. It appears that the Oakland murder rate is twice San Francisco’s (.21 murders per thousand vs .11 murders per thousand)

I’ll keep you, fair reader informed as to the results of my query.

I’m on a plane back to the mainland. That was a whirlwind, exhausting trip! Jumping on cars for 6 hrs a day in 87 degree, humid and no wind never felt so… umm.

That said, the night hike (almost) to Manoa Falls was pretty awesome. Discovering a 100 ft tall wall of a tree by spotlight is pretty awesome and spooky! And at one spot, right near the entrance t the park, the trees above looked like the sillouette of an incredible circulatory system, wow!

I have 2 tickets to see Robert Ballard in San Mateo Wednesday night. Want to join me?

Undersea robots, adventure and Leonardo Dicaprio!

Call or email. More about Robert Ballard.

This note is so I can remember this for myself. Brent at work tells me that if you need to put a rack on a vehicle and you need it to be done right, especially if it’s a difficult install (ie. drilling holes in the roof of your car), these are the guys to do it.

http://www.racknroad.com/

Their nearest locations to me is San Carlos and San Jose. A bit of a trek, but worth it for tricky installs.

I just got an Android phone, AT&T Samsung Captivate SGH-i897.

What are the essentials for this phone? Here’s what I’ve got so far to change the phone from PITA to awesome

Google Voice – ($free) to avoid the ancient “You have 2 new messages. To listen to your messages, press 1” and replace it with visual voicemail on my phone and computer. Installing it was ridiculously easy after spending an hour hunting on the forums. I went to my (pre-existing) google voice account online and clicked Settings | Voice Settings | Activate Voicemail next to the description of my phone. I typed a few characters into my phone to enable forwarding and Tada!

Touch Calendar Free – ($free) so I can look at my entire calendar at a glance. I can’t navigate around it smoothly but it’s better than the default calendar

RealCalc – ($free) stupid Samsung put the buttons on their calculator in the wrong places! It’s stupid! RealCalc has the buttons in the right places and a lot of bells and whistles that don’t get too in the way

Hi-Q MP3 Recorder – ($3.00) the built in voice recorder sounds like crap and has a mediocre interface. This one is a lot better.

Screen Filter – ($free) The phone is blindingly bright at night. Even at the lowest brightness, it is an excellent flashlight. It is dangerously bright when trying to use the GPS in the car. Screen filter works well to put some kind of “software filter” in front of the screen. Sometimes it turns itself off but it mostly works great.

No fix yet – The AT&T Samsung Captivate (SGH-i897) has 4 buttons at the bottom of the screen. Actually they are “soft” buttons with no tactile feedback. Well, after 3 seconds of inactivity, they turn off, making it impossible to find the buttons in the dark! I don’t have a fix for this yet. I heard of an app called something like “Keep the Lights On” or some such but I lost the reference to it and I have to root my phone to install it. PITA.

I’m still not ready to switch to Gmail as my primary email but it’s working well enough. I’m not switching because: 1- last week the gmail at the office was running slow a while due to Google’s fault. 2- Also last week Google switched our office’s Google Docs interface to something newer and betterer. I wish they had asked/told us before doing that!! I don’t care how new and exciting the new whatchamacallit is, not mentioning that things will be changing freaks me out. It reminds me of the absolute power they have over my email.

NoLed – ($free) when you miss a call, there is no blinking light on the phone telling you that you missed it. Uncool. NoLed fixes that. It might draw too much battery, the jury is still out.

3G Watchdog – ($free) It is difficult… impossible to tell what apps are doing on the phone. They could be downloading porn, burning up your monthly data quota. This should tell me if that happens. The ethos of the platform is pretty much that programs can run in the background whenever they want. That kinda freaks me out.

Battery Graph – ($free) I’m a program to keep track of my battery usage because I haven’t really figured out what drains the battery the most. Some users see 5 hours of battery life, some 30. I really really want to have 30 and not have to think about it.

Installing programs is nerve-wracking because so many apps want access to my data. Does Facebook need access to my Contacts list? If I give that cute new game the power to read and write to the SD card, will it be able to steal data and send it to Russian spammers? The “community” is no help because as of yet, I haven’t come across any group that has recognized malware; there is no procedure for dealing with malware!

The places to look for help appear to be (in decreasing order of usefulness)
http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/
http://androidforums.com/
http://www.xda-developers.com/
http://www.appbrain.com/
http://www.androidcentral.com/
http://www.androlib.com/ ??
http://www.samsung.com/us/support/owners/product/SGH-I897ZKAATT

So, dear reader, what am I missing? Comments welcome.