TDC

Quick swim report from today - 1.3 miles, ~53deg water, ~45 min

2011-05-14T23:58:00.000-07:00

I stopped wearing a wetsuit the week before last as Folsom lake was starting to warm up pretty good. We have had a few cloudy, cold, days since then, though. Today was one of those. I really didn't feel like getting in when I got to Beals Point today and was already feeling a little chilled before getting into the water. I'm really glad I got in, though. It always feels good swimming, running, etc. once I get moving.

There were five of us in the water today. We swam straight across to the tree and stopped to wait for the last two people to make it across. I was starting to feel pretty cold standing there so followed the levy making the return trip. My form felt a little sloppy, probably because I was thinking about being chilled and not staying as focused as I could have. About half way back, I could feel the blood-flow cut off to my forearms, hands, and lower legs; They didn't really feel any more cold than the rest of my skin, being in the chilly water, but all the muscles that far out became very sluggish and weak. Not a problems for swimming, though, since that uses all the bigger muscles in closer to the middle.

This used to happen to me when I rode motorcycle year round. To keep warm on rides in the winter, my body would restrict blood flow to the arms and legs, but the core would just be radiant with heat. When I'd get to where I was going and get off the bike, the valves controlling blood flow to my extremities would all open back up and I could feel hot blood flush through my arms again as circulation returned to normal.

It's interesting having a crash course in cold tolerance while swimming, but it's a little unnerving because it takes place out in the middle of the lake. I recall, back when I used to ride lots, that staying warm was mostly a matter of keeping focused and not worrying about how cold my fingers felt. I kind of expect that if I paid lots of attention to my form and kept my body calm, I could stay comfortable for quite a bit longer in these conditions. It's also good to know that the body goes through a predictable process as it starts to cool off, so one should be able to clearly assess when it starts to become a risk to stay in the water longer. The body is highly adaptable and robust, and our limits are mostly mental in unfamiliar environments.

Running and familiarity with one's body...

2010-05-22T14:58:00.000-07:00

I've been exploring a different style of running for about a month now in which one lands on the midfoot or forefoot instead of the heel with each step. Without getting into that too much, I wanted to post a response from this thread on a Minimalist Runner forum:

Pain, or sensation, is objective information about what's happening in our bodies. There are a rainbow of sensations that we can experience. The way we respond to each sensation depends on it's colour. By it's nature, sensation draws our attention, but the more familiar we are with the (colour of the) sensation, the better we understand it, the more control we have over how much awareness we put toward it.

Some sensations we are familiar with. Of these, we recognize some but put little thought into them unless needed. For example, the sensation of each step as we walk, we pay little mind to unless we are traversing rough terrain. Other sensations we are familiar with, like the sensation of a pulled muscle, we pay much attention to because we know (instinctually and logically) that antagonizing this sensation means we can do great or irreparable damage to our bodies. New sensations, we pay much attention to. We contrast them with similar sensations from other parts of the body, etc. New painful sensations certainly raise a flag saying that we need to figure out what's going on.

I, also, have been adjusting to running on the forefoot over the last ~month, and have gotten to experience all kinds of sensation from my body. To begin with, I get the sore calves during almost every run. They are getting much stronger, but the sensation of my calves getting tighter and tighter during a run has gotten very familiar. It is an indicator how how much more I can push my calves until they need to repair, so during a run, if they hurt a lot, I go easier. If they feel really good and I want to push, I do. After I run, I take a day off to let my muscles repair and I am stronger for the next run.

What you mentioned about the occasional joint pain during a run, I think I can relate to. Since many of the muscles I use running on the forefoot are underdeveloped from years of heelstomping, they tire out and begin to break down quickly, per the calf muscle paragraph above. As the sensations from these muscles become more intense, we naturally try to offload the stress from them to neighboring (auxiliary for the particular activity) muscles. This puts new stresses on our joints, etc. As my muscles get tired, my form gets sloppy, and my joints start to feel it. This is my body saying that it is too tired to push hard without possibly getting hurt. When I get to that point, I don't always walk, although there's probably nothing wrong with that, but I will change around the activity some until I get home. For example, I might increase the cadence of my footsteps and pay particular attention to how softly I step, etc.

:-) In short, you're not being an argumentative jerk, you raise an interesting point. In Born to Run, Chi Running (haven't read yet), and all over the minimalist running sites, they mention listening to one's body. I think this ultimately means getting familiar enough with our bodies that we know what each colour of sensation coming from them means. We learn to be in tune with what our bodies are experiencing, in addition to our own mental games while running. When we understand our bodies well, we know when we can push further and further without getting hurt and we also know when to stop. This allows us to run closer to our limits often in a controlled manner.

On a side note, you mentioned the blister thing. One a hiking trip, we had better pay attention to that blister or we're going to be miserable and risk infection if it gets bad. I've seen pictures of ultra-marathon runners coming home w/ huge blisters, but they are running races and are planning on taking the time when they're done to care for these wounds. If you want to keep running all week long, it's worth making the effort to not get the blister.

An Old Rant

2010-02-28T00:19:00.000-08:00

We are each responsible for our actions on the web.

It is not realistic to expect to completely regulate copyrighted resources on the web as this can not be done without restricting access to free (as in speech or beer) resources. It is also unreasonable to expect to use copyrighted materials for free without consequence.

Entities which choose to do business on the internet and distribute their copyrighted resources there need to consider that the value of the web is rooted in the ideas woven into it's design from the beginning: openness and sharing. The value of our web to our society is in it's ability for us to create virtual communities where we can share knowledge and experience, allowing for and encouraging specialization and advancement in all fields. To effectively do business on the web, entities need to distribute their property in such a way as to (1) provide incentives to their customers to buy product through their distribution channels and (2) make their distribution channel as accessible or more accessible as their competitor's.

In thinking about this, it seems as though value to a web oriented culture is most intrinsically found in providing services and platforms that build upon it's strengths. It is counter intuitive to try and build a business on the web around sales of generic media (copyrighted materials) and policing customers to make sure they pay for it. There are millions of people on the web who love to make content for free and who are, frankly, often times better at it than the companies who are trying to sell the same thing.

The Myvu Wearable Display

2009-07-31T10:48:00.000-07:00

The Myvu crystal looks like first relatively practical platform for the average, everyday, gargoyle. They offer full vga, 640x480, resolution; just the minimum for graphical applications, and ample space for light console work. At $300, this is the first vga wearable display within reach of the average geek consumer.

Myvu Reviews:
On Gizmodo - A comparison against the Zeiss Cinemizer
CrunchGear - Just a review
Geardiary
Engadget
Gadling
Gizmag

These all rehash pretty much the same things: They're not HD, but still really cool. They're nearly unanimously recommended if one travels a lot, but otherwise found hard to justify at $300. You'll look like Jordie wearing them. That's where the monocle hacks come in ;-).

Myvu Hack Links:
Make - Myvu display in a wearable computer
Make - Myvu solo goggles take apart...
Make - Myvu crystal as a wearable headmounted display

Images:
flicker - myvu parallax - This is a great set of images showing the internals and how to modify a myvu to be less intrusive.

VGA->RCA Converters:
http://www.amazon.com/VideoSecu-Computor-Presentation-Converter-VGA2TV/dp/B000X3FAJU/ref=pd_sim_e_4
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0000CD08Z?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&tag=cnet-ce-20&linkCode=asn

At least w/ my EEE, one of these would be required. Some higher end systems have native hardware support for RCA.

Half Dome

2009-07-15T21:22:00.000-07:00

So that's the cable going up to the top of Half-Dome (above). It's pretty cool. Here are a bunch of photos of halfdome and the trail going up to it:

There were marmots up on top! They're about the size of house cats and seemed as mischievous and lazy. One we say was just laying in the sun on some rocks. When people came and looked at it, he stood up and looked back at them. I think it made it uncomfortable when I snuck around behind it and poked my head out of some rocks w/ a camera to take pictures... Another we came across was trying to get into the backpacks of a couple people who were sitting on a rock above it watching it. The marmots and other critters on top of the dome are very sneaky about steeling food from tourists.

Inspiring young minds

2009-07-12T16:18:00.000-07:00

I just saw this at Ted.com

How do we create a generation with the drive and skills to succeed? Give them building blocks and let them play and learn to create. Give them the opportunity to build upon their successes and learn from their defeats, yada yada.

Anywho, this is cool.

Morris Meadows Hike

2009-05-28T22:58:00.000-07:00

I've been trying to think of what I want to say about hiking last week every day since getting back... I don't just want to list where I went, what I did, and how it smelled. I also don't just want to talk about the place itself. Here's my take on the human relationship w/ this place:

I took a week off work, last week, and went hiking in the Trinity Alps. I've never been there before, but my sister and her husband went last fall and said it was beautiful. I'm not exactly sure how I ended up there myself. I'd been planning to take a hike on the PCT with a couple good friends, but it was to early in the season to do the stretch of trail we wanted to do. Somehow, we got to talking about the canyon creek hike in the Trinity Alps.

BTW, the Canyon Creek and Morris Meadows hikes are beautiful. They are both well suited to multi-day treks. For example, one can camp at Morris Meadow the first night and do day hikes to a number of lakes a few miles away from it before hiking back out.

We got a lot of great information about Canyon Creek and also the trail up to Morris Meadows from a couple guys that work at Sports LTD in Redding. They set us up w/ maps of the area, and helped us out w/ what gear and food to bring, etc. They were regulars to places like this and had a lot of experience to share. Good stuff.

As it turns out, it's really simple to pack out into the woods for a couple days. In fact, hiking up Canyon Creek or to Morris Meadows isn't really like going out into the wilderness at all. They're incredible places. The lakes up above Morris Meadows make me think of Yosemite. They aren't as heavily trafficked as Yosemite, but there is a steady flow of people along each of these trails all summer long. It's a very human (but not touristy) place to go over the weekend or a few days because of this. Even considering the bears, it's our place, at least along the trails, like so much of the rest of the world.

Hmm... I think that what I'm saying is that it is a very controlled environment, because of all the human traffic in this area, despite being out in the sticks. Hiking these trails is being without the ammenities and comforts of home, but it's not like going out into the wilderness. So... someone who doesn't normally camp or hike shouldn't be intimidated by spending a couple days in the Trinity Forest.

I don't really have any experience hiking or surviving in the wildernes, aside from a few day trips up different mountains and the couple hikes we (myself and a few great friends) in the Alps last week. This was very much an experiment, at least for me, learning about what gear, food, shoes, etc. to take and be comfortable/sustained. One really doesn't need much to spend days or even weeks out in the woods. Also, well trafficked trails, like those we hiked in the Trinity Alps, don't even require good maps or navigational skills to hike, so long as one doesn't deviate too far from them.

We found that there are just a few simple items needed for a successful three day hike out into one of these places from Spring to Fall, without consideration to rainy days or camping where you can't build a fire:

A decent pack that fits: A 65L pack is great. Bigger works, but you don't want to fill a bigger pack and hike around w/ it. Try one on in a store and get help sizing it, as a correctly fit pack makes a big difference in one's comfort and endurance.
A sleeping bag w/ compression sack: Most packs now have a pocket for the sleeping bag at the bottom, and most sleeping bags now will pack down relatively small. A 40 degree (F) bag works great once the snow melts in the Trinity Alps. A 20 degree bag might be a smidgen more comfortable really early in the season.
Sleeping pad: Some of these pack down very small. For their weight, I found that they make a worthwhile difference in comfort at night.
Small tent or tarp: This may not be a requirement. I borrowed a small one person tent this time. It kept the bugs off of me at night and provided a wind barrier during one of the colder evenings. My friend M. just rolled his sleeping bag out on a small tarp and called it good.
Pants and shorts: Or maybe just pants. Just something light weight. Those polyester pants w/ the zip off legs are cool. I wore a pair of shorts and brought a light pair of fleece pants for if it got cold.
One or two shirts and a sweater: Since it doesn't mater how dirty or stinky one gets when hiking, there isn't much of a reason to bring more. The sweater's nice in the evening. My fleece sweater did a great job taking the edge off the night's cold in my 40 degree bag.
A pair of clean socks and underwear for each day: It's so important to take care of one's feet and crotch. I found that regular briefs were the best at preventing chafage.
Shoes that you have worn for at least fifty miles before the hike. Running shoes work fine, but expect to stop frequently to pick rocks out of your socks from the trail. High-top shoes might be advantageous. If you like going barefoot, it might be worth trying wrestling shoes or some other variation of a moccasin. Blisters will ruin your trip, so don't buy new shoes right before going.
A cooking pot, spoon, fork, knife, cup, matches, and lighter: All one's food can be cooked in one pot (shared between people even). It's not worth packing more than that.
Food:

1/2 cup dry grain per day to cook for dinner; rice, quinoa, barley, etc.
Two pkgs instant oatmeal per day for breakfast.
A reasonable amount of Fresh or dried veggies per person per day. Cook it w/ your grain at dinner.
1 pkg salami for third day (so good).
Powdered milk and coffee teabags. Powdered milk makes coffee and oatmeal so good in the morning.
Dried fruit and jerky for snacks. Dried mangoes are sooooo good. Bananna chips, trail mix, etc.
1 bagel per day for lunch.
1 bottle of hooch for drinking around the camp fire and first aid.
Salt, pepper, generic spices, butter: in small containers (zip lock bags) and not a lot of each.

It's important to remember that we're perfectly capable of not eating for a week, so there's no reason to bring a whole bunch of food that's just going to get packed back down the hill. Food for several days gets really heavy.
Dried stuff is both light and cheap. I only spent about $10 on food for each three days of hiking. It's probably worth experimenting w/ the freeze dried meals. It's pretty simple to just add hot water to a bag of stuff for dinner, and they are pretty light. I found that the Chicken Stew meal from Mountain House (I think that's what they're called) was pretty satisfying, but the spaghetti was shit. Neither of them were as good as sautéed veggies with quinoa, but they offer variety.

Misc:

Flash light and backup batteries/bulbs
First aid kit.
Soap for dishes, hands, etc.
Toilet paper and maybe wet ones packets.
Hat and sunscreen, particularly if you're pasty/nearly transparent.
Small shovel or trowel for clearing area around fire pit and burying solid human waste. I think they're required if you make a fire.
A bear canister for areas that require this.

Water bag and filter: My 3L camel back style water pouch was great. Just set it at the top of the pack. With a water filter, water doesn't have to be boiled before consumption. With as much water as we were drinking, it was totally worth having. I used 2.5-4L water per day. That would have been a pain to boil in a small one qt. pot ahead of time.

That's not much stuff is it? Not really. These are what I consider to be necessary for eating and sleeping on a trip without foraging or hunting. They'll all pack easily in a 65L bag. Additional types of things might be helpful for a longer trip.

Um... I'll talk some about some experiences from hiking last week below.

One of the things I was uncertain about on this trip was what to eat. Maybe I don't cook enough at home and I didn't know what sorts of things to bring. I came away from these hikes with a lot of confidence. I'd be totally comfortable now traveling on a well groomed trail for a week or more at a time in fair weather. It'd be pretty easy to scale up the above food stuff for extra days, adding a little more variety as well as quantity.

I still need to work on navigation for longer hikes to more obscure places. There are great topographical maps available from lots of places. The forest service office has them, and they can be found on google maps or google earth. There are a number of other places. Even w/ a topographical map, though, I don't have the skills to figure out which ridge I'm on and trek cross country. A lot of people use gps now. Talk about easy, right? It's probably a good idea to get familiar w/ a gps before taking off blazing a new trail, though. This stuff w/ require more consideration.

Well... It's 11PM and I've lost my train of thought. Here are some photos of plants and critters we saw up there:

The Morris Meadows trail head is about 17 miles from the CA-299/CA-3/Main St junction in Weaverville. Here is a map showing how to get there from the junction. Hwy 3 winds around Trinity Lake for a few miles before the Trinity Alps Rd. turn off. It's about 15 miles out Trinity Alps Rd., the last couple of which are unpaved, but in good condition.

We arrived pretty late in the evening and decided to camp just a couple miles into the trail. There are established camp sites every few miles along the trail. We opted to trudge off into the brush at a nice spot by a creek, though, and cleared a little fire pit.

Ha ha, we opted to bring a whole chicken to cook for dinner the first night and set up a rotisserie over the fire. We sprinkled it w/ salt, pepper, rosemary, and a couple other spices and slow roasted it. After about 45 min, it was cooked through and delicious!

The second day, we packed up camp and hiked the rest of the way up to the meadow. The trail follows the Stuart Fork River for about 9 miles before reaching the meadows. The trail is in great shape and crosses a couple of large footbridges.

Here's where the trail opens up into the meadow:

There are lots of nice places to camp around Morris Meadow. We found a nice spot by the creek in the back corner of the meadow.

We had a relaxing evening after setting up camp and took off to explore the next day. M. and hiked up to the first of the three lakes further up the valley. The first of the lakes is about 1k feet higher than the meadow, so the trail up there winds out of the pine trees into buck brush and exposed granite.

The lake has a big hand-built dam. The middle of it's been torn out, so it doesn't hold water any more, but it was probably used for some mining operation years ago. There's an "abandoned ditch", as it's called on the maps, on the opposite side of the valley Stuart Fork river runs up that the water from this lake probably used to be routed along.

We hiked out the next day. That is all.

Sailing on Ruth Lake

2009-05-11T23:27:00.001-07:00

View Larger Map

I met up w/ some family and a couple friends here at Ruth Lake this last weekend. The sailing there was great. Ruth lake is man-made and sits in a long valley. There's a steady wind that blows through just about all day. It really rips in the afternoon. We made a lot of progress learning how to handle the boat out there this weekend. The steady wind helps a lot when you're playing around w/ the sails and figuring out what works.

One of the locals there told us to learn all the sailing lingo. I dunno what it's called, but we can turn across the wind, from an upwind run to downwind, much more smoothly now. That's tough to do in a strong wind because it wants to pull the boat over when you're pointed straight across the wind. We let the main sail way out as we turn across to de-power it and then leave it out for the downwind run. Yah yah... It's kind of exciting when we jibe, too, changing directions when running downwind, because the mast swings across the boat against the wind. It's taking some practace to control it so it doesn't just slam across to the other side. :-) I got hit in the head by it on saturday... that was funny. That's why we wear life jackets.

Here are a couple shots of our camp on the lake shore. We were on the Southmost inlet off the side of the lake.

And one of the water where the boat's parked :-). I think we got some action shots from the road up above the lake. I'll try and get a couple of those posted up next week.

A Movie Review: Slumdog Millionaire

2009-03-09T20:25:00.000-07:00

Hmm... I'm feeling cynical right now so take this as the opinion of a cynic:

The movie should have had a shitty, depressing, ending. The lives of the poor orphaned kids in the shanty slums of ghetto India were portrayed as inconsequential worry-free vacations. The movie was absolutely w/out the feelings of desperation that arise when you have nothing and struggle to survive. They spiced it up w/ loves lost and sold by siblings into sex slavery and colored that w/ the noble altruistic intent of a knight who's success in rising from the shit hole he was born into that is only overshadowed by his effectively wining the lottery and writing it off as fate. This would have been much better as a non-fictional documentary.

Needs, wants, culture

2008-12-12T00:35:00.000-08:00

After a talk w/ some guys from work this evening, I've kind of puked up my short term memory along w/ the response of my frontal cortex to the interference between the short term memory w/ my subconscious and long term memory. Eh, something like that. Here it is, unedited and unabridged:

I talked for a while tonight w/ two of my counterparts at work from the Russian campus. We are all in Santa Clara for training. We contrasted cultural norms and understandings, as much as we could in the short time. Much of it, I captured in abstraction, but I think I can generalize a bit to describe a bit about all of us, independent of our cultures or locale.

We accept what we have as the norm. If we have less, we are content with it because it is the best we can have. If we have more, we become complacent and will come to have less. One of my coworkers talked about a story his grandfather told him:

A man came from Russia to the united states. He was so unsettled by the condition of things that he, to summarize, moved to a yellow house and hid away. In Russia, for years, generations, they had little. There were two types of bread, one type of cheese, every couple months, if they were lucky, they could buy sausage. At the new year, they could buy bananas and oranges. When the man came to the US, he saw the supermarkets where all kinds of things were available. This man had grown up in a world where they believed that what they had was the best. That they were in the best place in the world. Then to come here was dumbfounding.

Here, I have grown up in a world where we live in excess. We are only satisfied by fulfilling our wants. We accumulate things, only to create new wants. We are without need. If we need, we often only have to to stop buying fast food, DVD movies, alcohol, and cable tv, and we no longer need. It is true that there are people trying to survive in our country, but so many of my class are indebted and struggling, only because we serve our wants.

Perhaps I'm ranting a bit. I really believe that we need to loose some of what we have to truly appreciate our position. We could have more, but we need not what we have, and most of us really do not know what we have or how easy we have it. To have less, to learn to live with less, would be a blessing. At the same time, there are things of real value which we must preserve. There are things which are of true value to us, power, which we must maintain. Freedom of information. Our real power, to understand ourselves, our world, our relationship with the world.

I feel as though I am on a gentle downhill slope. It would be so easy to burn my extra momentum because I can regain it so quickly right now, but I need to store it. There will be uphill ahead of me. I need to turn uphill, another direction, and store my energy.

What I said above, about having less, there are two ways to understand, at least that I can see. To have less is not necessarily to throw what we have away and just live with less. It can also be to turn and face the uphill once again and begin marching up it. Right now, we are freewheeling, riding on the momentum of our fathers journeys in life. If we try to pedal the bicycle of life we ride now, our feet can not turn the pedals fast enough to speed us up, because we are rolling steeply downhill. We must either turn back uphill so that our energy is not wasted, or we must build a bigger cog for our bicycles so that our turning feet propel us faster, across the bottom of the hill, and up the far side, giving us momentum to drive our next ascent.

To propel ourselves past the bottom feels reckless to me. The faster a bicycle goes, the more unstable it becomes, like going very slowly, too easy it becomes to fall. If we choose momentum in our current direction, alternatively to turning back up hill and progressing up slowly, we will only find ourselves so-high on the other side of the valley. There is only so fast we can go and maintain stability, so we can only reach so far up the other side with the energy we have now. How far we make it up the other side depends on how far we are from the bottom of the valley. If we turn up hill now, never reaching the bottom of the valley, we are likely to maintain a much higher position on the hill. This would only be inverse if we were already right at the bottom of the valley, where the amount of momentum we would loose turning back now would put us at a lower spot on the hill than if we charged through the bottom. I don't think this is the case.

To turn back up the hill is akin to a paradigm shift. It is is a change in the way we live, but it is change under our control, by our initiative. To charge across the bottom of the valley is to give control over to the world around us. It is to hold steadfast to our ways and only change only as we are forced to by the up heaving slope ahead of us. At the point of turning up hill, changing direction by our own initiative, we loose most of our momentum; our energy has gone into changing our direction; and we must decide to ourselves how we will climb back up.

I just took a shower and am about ready for bed. I've been thinking a bit more about this. We spend a lot of energy in pursuit of leisure. One way we do this is with technological toys. We buy computers, video games, cell phones, etc that we we do not necessarily need. At the same time, our next generation, come time for them to be the ones designing the technology that will further our civilization, our tools for advancement and greater efficiency, will have an understanding of those tools and a direction in their designs because of their experience with them. The question may not be whether it is right for us to consume so much of these sorts of products, as we are creating the technological infrastructure of our future, but whether we ought to exercise more discretion in our use of these tools.

There is no clear black or white to any issue, the use of our technological toys or experiments included. Like most questions, we must depend on our sense of ethical discipline to judge what is right for us. It is good to use these tools as they are made available to use, but we must measure our need and not delve into excess. For all issues which concern us, we are most benefited by learning to exercise our sense of ethics, morality, whatever. We must recognize that each of us plays a part in the creation of our world and that we are responsible for it's upkeep. A sense of pride is important in making decisions about or needs and the way things ought to be. Our sense of pride can, and ought to, be a result of hard work in creating the world as we see it, and arising from hard work, that sense of pride is balanced by humility or humbleness because we know that where we are is a result of hard work and not a god-given right. To not take it for granted.

Samwel Cave

2008-12-03T17:48:00.000-08:00

Last week, my dad reserved a day for us and some friends to climb around in Samwel Cave, out the McCloud arm of Lake Shasta. You have to pick up a key from the Forest Service Office just off the Wonderland Blvd. exit, north of Shasta Lake City, on I5. It's no hassle, just a $10 deposit.

The cave is about 60 minutes outside of Redding, and really cool to look around in. Check it out:

This is right by where we parked. The water in the lake's pretty low right now, but the view's good. From the road, you have to walk down a hill to get to the cave...

And then you enter the dark chasm in the hillside...

Where there's a hole you have to climb through... This is where it gets serious. Not like the subway caves where you walk down the stairs ;-)

Everyone snakes along a ledge at the top of the first room to get inside.

It's really a good idea to wear a hardhat in there. The ceiling is low. Next time I'll definitely wear some kneepads too. It's pretty warm inside though, so jeans and a long sleeve shirt are great.

I love these pictures. Being in a cave gives you fantastic red-eye.

There were, it felt like, five main rooms, pretty closely connected to each other. There two to the sides of the main room, by the entrance. Another is below, connected by a 15', narrow vertical tunnel, which was very pretty. The last is down an 80 or 100' pit in one of the side rooms. This one is probably the most pristine of them all, as I don't think it gets much traffic, but we'll have to make another trip to descend into it.

Some of the rock formations in there are huge.

The room w/ the pit in it is large. The pit is in the back corner. There are formations around some of the edges.

Those are several feet tall. Should have gotten a face in the photos for perspective.

That's Lara looking into the pit on the right. Maxx is holding on pretty solidly. You can't really see the bottom looking over the edge there. The hole's about 6 foot across, w/ a ledge around half of it. Most of the rock around it is slick. The graffiti's appropriate.

The pictures don't really show how dark it s in the cave. It's very dark with the lights off. After a wall, if you're wandering around with the lights off, you might start to think you can see a little bit, but it's just a hallucination.

Anywho, we decided to head out, so we pulled out the maps. It took us three days to make our way out of the cave. The batteries in all of our lights died and we spent some time wandering aimlessly. We were fortunate enough to come across a number of crystal pools in the dark. Had we not been able to replenish our thirst, our situation may have been dire. In the end, we discovered that our noses were our guides. They lead us by the dry, cool, scent of the outside air nearest the entrance to the cave.

The way out was actually in the corner of the room. We shimmied through the corner w/ a rope.

As we were making out way back to the entrance of the cave, Maxx and Lara found another room. I mentioned it above. You climb down a narrow tube and, sort of, end up in the basement. It was nice down there. The air wasn't as humid as above, probably because only a couple of us climbed down.

The photo on the left is looking up the tube you climb through to get to the basement.

The ceiling in the basement was way cool. Little crystals. All over.

It was relaxing just kicking back in the basement. Everyone else had already exited the cave. We turned off the flashlights for a couple minutes and listened to the silence. Then it was time to go.

Good times.

On Dreaming:

2008-11-13T01:03:00.001-08:00

For the first two or three weeks after I moved into my apartment, I had vivid dreams every night for almost three weeks. I would wake up and remember all kinds of things, as though my dream had just been my experiences the day before, only more random. One of my dreams, I wrote about last week, it was kind of the culmination of the previous couple weeks dreams, I think, because of how intense it was and because my dreams have been pretty much back to normal since them. The actual dreams aside, I have been more aware of entering into the dream state since then.

I usually fall asleep quickly. There are nights when I've got something on my mind, but I'm aware than I'm getting myself off on a tangent when I let my brain spin it's cogs working on whatever. There is a point, kind of a cusp, where I become aware of the dream mind. I can really only describe it as a feeling I have. For a moment, or a minute, I'll loose myself along a strand of thought that feels like a dream, and then I become aware of that feeling. Perhaps it's when the theta waves in the first stage of dreaming are kicking in.

The feeling is like pure thought, only abstraction, without words... thoughts that are like words, to me, are those that are very familiar to me. They are like the language I use to think about things. When I'm working on an abstract idea in my head, that idea is something I can only describe as a form that I'm molding. It hasn't yet become a part of the tool-set, or vocabulary, which I use to build the forms.

When I become aware of the feeling, it is like trying to remember something complicated that I had just thought about. Like looking at a cloud, then looking away, and not being able to see the cloud any more. What's left is an abstraction which isn't as detailed as, for example, the experience of actually looking at the cloud. Thinking about that abstraction, I can say to myself, "it was that thought." Then if I focus on it, I become aware of that thought's details, and if I look back at the cloud I can see that it is the same cloud. There don't have to be details though. I can simply think of it as that thought, without giving it any meaning, and it's there, only a feeling.

I'm reaching a bit, but hopefully painting an okay picture. When I realize that I'm in the dream state, I am aware of the feeling of that state. I can think about other things and begin to wake back up, or I can immerse myself in the feeling and I'll be asleep in moments.

I had an experience a year or two ago that was interesting. For a couple nights in a row, I became aware of myself entering the dream state, but my awareness didn't fade as I began to dream. I was able to watch as I began to dream. One of those nights, I remember, I decided to prove that I was dreaming. I was in a living room and, random as it is and as random is appropriate for a dream, I decided that I would play a Simpsons episode backwards on the television front of me. In what seems like a couple moments, and entire episode appeared to flash across the screen in reverse, from the closing scene to the intro to the show. In retrospect, I doubt it was really a complete show in reverse, but only a representation of what I thought it might be like to watch a show in reverse in a dream. :-)

I've read about Yogis who, through years of intense practice of meditation, were able to maintain conscious awareness all night long as their body and brain slept. Very interesting. At this point, I only wish to be able to remember more of my dreams when I wake. Really, if I can remember my dreams, it means that I was consciously aware of them. Each day, I know that I was consciously aware during the day because I can remember what happened. To often have recollections of one's dreams probably means that one is maintaining conscious awareness through them. How interesting, to heighten that awareness.

I should try to differentiate between awareness and conscious awareness. The meanings of the words are fuzzy to begin with; there is no clear definition of awareness and consciousness is often synonymous with awareness. Even when I wake and can't clearly remember my dreams, I still have a recollection of having experienced dreams during the night. I believe I am always aware at some level. When I am consciously aware, I probably use more of my normal language for thought, and my experience of the dream is recorded in my long term memory in a way that I can recall it. When I remember it after waking, I can understand it on some level.

When I remember a dream, the dream experiences resonate with waking life experiences, and in the contrast between those I find meaning. It is akin to riding a bicycle for the first time in a few years, and then remembering all the times you rode one growing up, all the places you went, the feeling of the wind against your skin. One might only be riding in a circle in a parking lot now, a pointless thing to do, but meaning arises between the present experience and the past memories. So when I am able to remember and make sense of a dream it is because I can contrast that dream experience with those of waking life. The same tool-set I use for consciously thinking about my waking life experiences can be used to understand those dream experiences.

Purpose in meditation or even just focused, collected, thought... When meditating, I pay attention to nuance in thought. I don't just bounce from thought-word to thought-word. I notice the abstraction that makes up the words. With practice, I learn new thought-words to describe those abstractions, and the process continues. I wonder if that practice develops the language I would need to remember and understand more of my dreams. Those abstractions which I try to understand feel like the abstract thought of the dream mind. When I'm falling asleep and feel myself drifting into the dream mind, that feeling I experience is like that abstract thought that I don't yet have words for.

Blar, time for bed, for dreams.

Just now, I am so focused. I miss this feeling. When I was in High School, I would stay up all night working on stuff on the computer. I would get in the zone, so to speak, where all of my awareness would be consumed by my interactions with the computer. The only sensory input I am aware of I that of the text on the screen, the feeling of the keyboard under my fingers. I can see other stuff in the background, but I think nothing about it, beyond acknowledging it's presence in order to make note of it now. I don't have a spatial awareness of my body. Normally, I have a sense of place in my environment; where I am in the room, where my arms and legs are relative to the rest of me. Now, I lack a sense of spatial proportion. It can feel like floating, or as though my head is just above the floor where I'm sitting. It is of no consequence. If I stop my eye-twitch, everything in my field of view fades to gray, to black. ... Deep breath, stretching now, and all is as normal as I want it to be, once again.

I really need to take a shower and go to bed now. I hate getting up in the morning when I've stayed up too late.

Wild Dreams Last Night

2008-10-29T11:35:00.000-07:00

I love dreaming. The dream mind is an incredible canvas. Some of the crap that happens in dreams just blows me away.

I've had vivid dreams every night for the last three weeks since I moved into the new apartment here in Folsom. Last night was no exception. Yesterday evening, I was feeling particularly thoughtful. I started reading the book Siddhartha again (I read it once a year or two ago). I also spent a bit of time reading about and sending an email to some friends about about next weekend's trip down to SF to go to the California Academy of Sciences to see, primarily, the planetarium. I read an article about it a while back talking about how state of the art it is, and the incredible voyage through the universe they take you on. I finished up the evening by taking some time, the first in a long while, really, to meditate and try to clear my brain, and then taking a shower.

So the first thing I remember from my dream was an astronomical tidal and weather simulation, literally. I had no awareness of having a body, the only thing in my awareness was this simulation going on in my brain. The simulation, I believe, was an analysis of the effects different, sometimes radical, orbits of the moon around the earth on tidal and weather patterns. It was complete with vector field maps of wind speeds and directions across the curved surface of the earth, as well as the tsunami wave patterns around the globe associated w/ the different lunar orbits. It seems as though there was a lot more stuff going on in the dream that I can't recall now, nor can I begin to portray how incredible it was to experience this stuff in a couple paragraphs. I can't say that there was a rhyme or rhythm to the order or importance in how I approached each part of the simulation; it was probably more like playing in the sandbox doing random stuff than anything, and just as unscientific, as well ;-P.

The next thing I remember after the simulation is being on a floating platform in the middle of the ocean. There was a building in the center of eastern styled architecture. There was a desk around part of it right down on the water. There were a few people in the building, a couple that I knew. I and a girl snuck past the others out onto the deck where we lay on our backs looking up at the stars. The sky was crystal clear, the stars were incredibly bright and I was a little mesmerized. It is interesting that I don't know any constellations or were any stars are in the sky, really, and in the dream I couldn't pick out any either.

At some point, I began to see divisions in the sky; perhaps I was looking for symmetries in the stars. I found a line through the sky where each side was a reflection of the other. Soon, I could see them everywhere, and the first that I saw now extended all the way down into the ocean next to me. It was sort of an unreal shimmering, rippling, mirror surface that extended all the way up into the stars. I reached out and touched it. Anywho, this scene did follow a weather and tsunami simulation, and by now the weather was picking up and waves were beginning to thrash against the side of the building. The last thing I remember in this scene is making my way around the deck toward the sliding glass door into the building.

Next, I am in an apartment, presumably my apartment, and there is a really old bum sleeping on the couch. I think I awoke (in my dream) and was thinking about how I was going to get rid of the bum on the couch and how I didn't want to leave him alone in the apartment when I went to work the next day. While I'm thinking this, he begins to talk in his sleep. It sounds like he's praying and thanking god for the nice place to stay and how he's not alone outside any more, pretty much, and then says something about going shopping at Target w/ my room mate the day before. This is about when I actually woke up.

Coincidentally, it was now just turning 3:00AM and as I was taking a leak in the bathroom, my room mate B was just walking in the front door to our apartment after running to the office late night to work on a computer system that he forgot to look at that evening. We sat out on the porch for a bit, drank a beer, and BSed about Linux network monitoring software and my dream.

California Hot Springs

2008-10-29T11:30:00.000-07:00

I found this cool map of a bunch of hot springs in CA. I would like to find one that has to be hiked to, somewhere up in the northstate.

Sentience and Finding One's Self

2008-10-28T17:10:00.001-07:00

Part of a dialog w/ a random person on the internet:

A: Are there any sentient beings on a path to Buddha nature? With out this being a goal, attachment, because you are on your way to realms. Happy Nirvana and Samara. Peace out

B: Although I can't say I know where Buddha nature is , I walk a path. And while I walk a path, I can't decide if I follow the path or if it follows me. Each bend obscures what is to come and everywhere I've been gives meaning to that which follows. There is something to be said about being on the path. While what comes is always changing, here I am.

In Soviet Russia, Virus gives you AT&T DSL.

2008-10-23T19:57:00.000-07:00

So I moved into a new apartment last week w/ my friend B. It's a really nice place. The living room's very open and the bedrooms are fairly private from the rest of the house, we have a nice view from our large balcony of a nice quiet and safe neighborhood. My only complaint is that there is only one spot in the house where we are able to pick up an unencrypted wireless network connection; we had to sign up for internet service.

The service was finally turned on today, although we got the modem and installation software in the mail last week. I hooked it all up first thing when I got home, popped in the installation CD (You can set it up manually, BTW), and got a nice surprise from AT&T. The following picture really says it all:

I checked the damn thing with AVG as well as McAfee and they both detected the trojan on the CD. That just blows me away. I'm going to call customer support and express my concerns when they open tomorrow.

All hail Linux!

On Bigotry and it's Advantages:

2008-09-01T02:25:00.000-07:00

It's labor day weekend. I was out for a ride yesterday, Saturday, evening, and stopped at a bar near Grass Valley. Not to drink so much as just to talk. A man I was speaking with outside the front door told me a bit about the town we were in. He mentioned, among other things, that there were many bigots in the town. I think that's going to be the case everywhere.

Anywho, I mention this because my conversation with him got me thinking about the advantages of bigotry. Now that I think about it, bigotry exists because it is a tool that has aided the survival of humanity over the years. I would go so far as to say that bigotry is an unavoidable characteristic of all life. It is true that it is not a constructive way of resolving a problem, but to the bigot, some problems need not be solved, only conquered. (Ha, this makes me think of Gödel's incompleteness theorems!) Is conquer not a solution? Bigotry can be a helpful tool for uniting like minded people, like a common point of identity, to drive a cause.

:-) For example, there is, in our country, an enormous bigotry toward the middle eastern culture and religion. It is true (is it not?) that this puts up a wall between our people and those of the middle east, but it also makes us more tolerant of our behavior toward them. Our bigoted intolerance of them is used to build tolerance of our own.

I don't like using examples like that. They are too personal. I and others (that I identify with) identify with this country, so to say that it, the country, is something is to say that we are something. I am not necessarily as objective if I am thinking about something that I identify with... The idea that made me think of the above example was that of the warring tribes I read and heard about in history class so many years ago. Can one fight against another if they do not believe in the purpose of their cause? In the case of two warring tribes, they may be fighting over natural or economic resources. To win a fight and gain those resources is undoubtedly helpful for either tribe, but who is just in taking those resources?

Assuming possession of the other tribes resources could be the means of their demise. Does one tribe deserve to live over the other? If two tribes are fighting over the only watering hole for 100 miles in the middle of the Sahara desert, there is no question that each knows the consequences of their actions. Whether the watering hole is large enough to support both tribes or not, to make war against the other is to assume that they are not as deserving of that resource. In this case, the tribe which is the most strongly bigoted against the other may have an advantage in fighting against them. For that tribe, bigotry is the characteristic of their perceived differences from the other tribe and the justice in their actions because of those differences.

For a moment, I felt like saying that it is also a tool of faith, but I don't believe this is the case. It is a tool of religion, perhaps. This, of course, is dependent on there being a difference between faith in general and faith in religion. Religion is something that persists in time. For this to happen, it has to have somewhat rigid doctrine. Bigotry is an unavoidable consequence of this. Faith with out religion can change. For me, faith feels like questioning, listening, and trying to humble myself. If I am rigid in what I believe, I have nothing to question, and no answer to search and listen for. If I am not humble, I become more rigid. The bigot is not humble? Perhaps I am bigoted against bigotry.

Hrm... I've got a bunch more to say about bigots :-), but I'm far enough down this train of thought for tonight.

Stars and Constellations

2008-08-28T21:44:00.001-07:00

I laid out looking at the stars last weekend. It seemed like there was something new to see every time I looked at them. I could not begin to remember them all. How would I know if every time I looked at the sky, each star were in a different place?

The stars, they were never so bright, as that night. Our eyes gave depth to each part of the milky way. Every star, a soul. Every one I know, the brightest. My life in shining beacons. Around the north they turn, like my life, always turning. But where is the north? To what does it point, and what is it to each beacon? And which star am I?

The north star is my guide. It shines brightly for me. But if I can not find my place in the world, how can I see it? Mars shines brightly as well, but it would not do me well to follow mars when I am lost in the woods.

The stars are many. Every shape is in them. Every story. Every history. One can not know them, and not know their tale. Without understanding, they can not be seen. To see without meaning, how would one know them? Different, every time I look, when they are but stars. But knowing them, I see my entire world when I look at them. Each of the brightest, a point of reference, person, place, or time. And those more dim, too, but subtly. Deeper I look and more I find. Each time I look, I see those whose stories I have lived. And what?

Eating fried chicken, asparagus, wild rice mix, and listening to The Moldy Peaches.

Where I'm at

2008-08-27T13:23:00.000-07:00

Well, it's bee a couple weeks since I posted on here. I was really in the groove for a while. Well, I've got a few new things going on now:

I got a new computer this week. I haven't had a working PC at home for a while, so this is a nice change. It's a small form factor system w/ an Intel Atom processor, 945G/GS graphics, and room in the case for just one HDD and CD-Rom. Although the Atom isn't very fast, everything on the system board is passively cooled; there is only a single small fan to pull air through the case. This is very nice as my old Dell P4 system was very loud and could be heard through my bedroom walls.

From the 6th to the 14th, I have some time scheduled off work. I've been thinking about what I want to do w/ the time. I'm craving adventure! I want to take off first thing after work on Friday the 5th and head for the coast. I'll take a few days and follow Hwy 1 and Hwy 101 up across the Oregon border. I won't really be on a strict schedule, so I'm going to stay flexible. I figure I'll cross into Oregon on Sunday the 7th and ride a few hours up before either heading inland or setting up camp for the night. From there I'm not sure. I need to do a bit of research on where the best roads are and what's good to see up that way. I plan to be in Redding around Wednesday, the 10th. A hiking trip somewhere around there is in order, as is some sailing and hanging out w/ friends and family.

Today's comic on XKCD, here, got my brain off on a tangent. I'm sure I've heard of Gödel before, but whatever I heard, his "incompleteness theorems" seem more significant to me now. There's a write up on Wikipedia here. I don't understand it well enough to explain it yet. Wikipedia paraphrases the first and second theorems as follows:

We can never find an all-encompassing axiomatic system which is able to prove all mathematical truths, but no falsehoods. If an axiomatic system can be proven to be consistent and complete from within itself, then it is inconsistent.

Ah... I just stumbled upon the book, Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid. I have to read this now.

RE: Bohm's bummed: wave theory needs 10,000x light speed to work

2008-08-13T22:01:00.000-07:00

In summary of The Article on ars technica: Unless there exists an absolute frame of reference relative to which all things exist and interact, particles can not become entangled and maintain locality without violating special relativity. Entanglement can be demonstrated and, as per this article, it has been shown that there is no absolute reference frame.

This means that entangled particles are non-local. They affect each other instantly no matter their distance from each other. That is to say, entangled particles exist in relation to each other outside of spacetime.

That's so cool.

Rant - Censorship, NBC, and the Olympics

2008-08-13T21:31:00.001-07:00

China's making every effort to present a positive image to the world during these Olympic games. A part of that effort is to censor athletes, reporters, and visitors of the games. All the while, they're cheating in the games, hiding the slums of their cities behind temporary walls put up around event areas, collaborating with the highest bidding news corporations to falsify television broadcasts.

NBC does not report truthfully on the games or China. They even censor the comments made in response to the articles they put up on their nbcolympics.com web site:

The Cycle of Want

2008-08-13T17:46:00.001-07:00

I'm feeling irrational right now. In all of my irrational wisdom, I have decided that there is no reason why I shouldn't be riding a motorcycle that makes 100+ HP. Seriously. I could keep riding this 250 with it's measly 25 HP and pansy suspension or I could have a 1000cc monster with all it's rashed up fairings stripped from the frame, sticky radial tires, ultra bad-ass USD cartridge forks...

I'd have to get some leathers though. Leathers are expensive. I like getting 60mpg too. But... the love... please, think of the children. And the wheelies! Oh the humanity.

Diving at La Jolla Cove, again.

2008-08-12T12:46:00.000-07:00

We went back out to the cove this morning. The tide was pretty high and still coming in, so the water wasn't as calm as it was yesterday. Jess and Jesse went out for 30 minutes first thing, but came in pretty quickly. It sounds like they got worn out swimming against all the movement of the water. They did see a couple guitar fish and some lobsters while they were out, though.

There was still 1800 psi in the tank Jess was using when they got back in, so I went back out for a few. There was only about a 4' visibility today, yesterday was closer to 20', and the currents seemed to be spinning me in circles. What an experience. I had to check the compass every few seconds to make sure I kept moving the same direction. I went out NW from the beach in the middle of the cove, toward open water, and tried to start moving W around the shoreline. There are a bunch of rock formations around the coastline to the W of the beach. Anywho, only being able to see a feet in front of me and with the water moving around so much, I couldn't really get to where I was going.

I didn't see a whole lot of fish this time out, but there was a seal out a ways that I must have swam around with for twenty minutes. This totally made the dive worth while. The whole experience was kind of a trip, trying to keep my bearings, being isolated by the lack of visibility, and having the seal bump into my legs over and over, coming in and out of the murkiness in the water around me. There were a few times I was peering at the compass and kicking away feeling something bumping my feet and looking back to see his dark shape there by my fins. He came up under me a few times and I felt daring enough to touch him with my hand a couple times.

I surfaced three or four times during the thirty or so minutes I was out to get my bearings straight. I was pretty far out when the tank pressure was getting down toward 500 psi. Since I was getting tired of trying to get anywhere by looking at the compass down in the murk I just came up and swam on the surface back toward the shore. I was actually a little worried, as it seemed like I was getting carried further out while I had been trying to move W toward the shore earlier. It's not possible to immediately see how far one's moving along the shoreline when not right up against it. Anywho, I didn't see any more of the seal once I came up to to the top and started swimming back.

No new pictures of this time out.

Diving at La Jolla Cove

2008-08-10T23:29:00.000-07:00

We drove a couple miles over to La Jolla Cove today for some diving. Jesse's dad bought an extra set of gear last week and we get to use it this weekend until he picks it up on Monday, so we had two BCs and regulators to use today.

There's a little beach in the middle of the cove w/ a lot of people swimming and snorkeling. The water's a little murky right up by the beach, but clears up a ways out. There are kelp forests and some really cool rock formations to explore.

I'm not sure what kind of fish the yellow one is. There are a bunch of them and they'll swim up and look at you. Jesse spotted a seal at some point so we chased him around a bit.

Jesse got one close picture of him, right up face to face, and then we went off to look at other stuff. I spotted Mr. Seal following us around a couple minutes later :-).

There were a few guitar fish. I brushed the sand once while I was swimming and startled one that swam away quickly. We found a couple others between some rocks. One was hiding with the lobsters! There were tons of lobsters hiding in the rocks.

We had a lot of fun. There is so much life out there in the water. With the waves coming in, everything is moving. The plants, kelp and seaweed, move in and out over holes between rocks on the ocean floor. There are patches of shells where the remains of different creatures have fallen for years. Even moldy looking patches on rocks turn out to be big slugs and stuff. I'm sure there are countless living creatures we swam right by because they are so adept at blending in.

The sunset was really nice. Jess took this picture at a different beach this evening when we were driving around looking for somewhere to get some food. Anywho, we're going back out tomorrow morning. It's getting late so we have to get some sleep. Peace.

Concert and Horse Races at Del Mar Fairgrounds

2008-08-10T22:17:00.000-07:00

My sis and her husband invited me down to their place in San Diego this weekend for a visit/vacation. I got here on Friday and have to head back home tomorrow evening.

On Saturday, we went out to the Del Mar Fairgrounds for a Ziggy Marley concert. We got there a couple hours before the show started so we got to watch a couple horse races at the track. I've never seen a horse race before, but it's pretty exciting. The first one was only about a half lap. The horses start on the other side of the track and wind around the corner toward the grandstands and finish right in the middle of the straight stretch in front of the stands. Everyone in the grandstands gets up out of their seats and starts yelling and cheering. It's hard not to get caught up in the excitement, even if you're only betting w/ pretzels. Anywho, we didn't get any pictures of the race from up in the stands, but the picture on the right is from the center field looking up at the grandstands.

The concert was advertised as a beer festival and Marley concert. It turned out the beer was $7 a can, so that didn't pan out, but the concert was pretty good. The show started with Daemian Marley around dusk with a cloud of skunk scented smoke rising from the crowd.

Ziggy came out after a bit and we started shuffling up closer to the stage. Here's a couple pics of our friends who met up w/ us there. In the left picture, Dave's getting hit on and Ashley and I are just standing there. On the right are Jess, Jessica and Ashley. We had a lot of fun dancing around in the crowd. Good times.

Solar Power and the Grid Infrastructure

2008-08-07T12:35:00.000-07:00

Unless certain conditions are met, a grid distributed power system with central points of power generation will not die off or go away. The grid will remain in place as long as the cost of maintaining the grid infrastructure and central power generation facilities is less than maintaining independent power systems at each end node (home/business). Assuming only wind or solar power generation are used, the grid will remain in place as long as the cost of maintaining the grid is outweighed by the savings associated with having a central power storage system and central power plants/generators.

With increasing dependence on solar and wind power, we have to account for the duty cycle of power generation resulting from solar and weather cycles. Either power must be stored for use during the night or non-windy days, or a grid must be in place so that regions with sun and wind can carry the regions not generating enough power. In any system, a balance will be reached between cost of maintaining storage systems and supporting the grid infrastructure.

For a remote home, the cost of hooking up to the grid will be much more than installing solar panels and batteries. For a medium sized remote town, there may be some benefit to a small grid connecting the solar systems of several homes. For example, if a family is out of town for a period, others in the town can make use of their extra power. With larger cities, states, countries, the cost to maintain power generation systems at each end node will be much greater than keeping up central power systems and maintaining the grid. In LA, the installation of solar panels on everyone's rooftops would probably create a huge market for transporting and sales of stolen solar panes. But if all the panels are in a fenced field along side the freeway, they can be maintained and protected by a minimal staff.

I ran through a few case study thought-experiments:

(case 1) Consider a system in which each home/business "end node" has is purely powered by solar and is not connected to a grid. There is a duty cycle associated with it's power generation because of the daily solar cycle. Since no power is shared between nodes, each end node must generate and store enough excess power to support itself through the night, cloudy weeks, or periods of heavy use.

This system has the unique advantage that there is no interdependence between nodes. But, each node must have larger panels and bigger batteries or another source of energy (maybe a generator) to create it's own buffer for the solar cycle and irregularities in weather.

Also, any maintenance to this system must be performed at the end node. In a larger scale system, like a city, the cost of monitoring and delivering parts and technicians to each node, in addition to the redundancy of equipment required at each node, would mean a much higher cost/node for power than a centrally powered grid system.

(case 2) Now consider a system in which each end node generates wind/solar power, but they are connected to a local/regional grid to distribute power that is generated.

Each node must generate less power (fewer solar panels) because the extra power available on the grid can buffer fluctuations at any individual end node. Also there is potential for a centralized power generation or storage system, in addition to the power produced at each node. For example, a central node could have a large generator to provide power for an entire town/village after dark. Something to this effect may or may not cost less to operate and maintain than storage at each individual node.

This system has an added cost of maintaining a grid infrastructure, so for it to be practical, the costs associated with the grid must be negated by the savings in expense at each end node. Efficiency losses in moving power across the grid should also be accounted for. Maintenance must still be done at each node.

(case 3) Consider a system with central wind or solar power generation and power distributed on a grid.

There grid must be maintained, but nearly nothing must be done at each node after the initial hookup. Scalability is improved because central power generator nodes can just be added to the network without touching the end nodes.

It is unlikely that solar/wind power will be a complete solution for anything more than individual remote homes or small communities. The duty cycle of generating power with these technologies leaves a gap to be filled at night, etc. Aside from reservoirs behind hydro electric plants, storing energy can be cost prohibitive, so there need to be other technologies in place to fill that gap.

Zen and Thai Food

2008-08-06T19:28:00.000-07:00

There's a "Zen Meet-up Group" here in Sac. It's a pretty small one. I decided to go to the meeting yesterday, which was held at the Thai Cottage Restaurant in Sacramento.

It was really kind of a funky evening for me. In the fist place, I don't go out and meet random people all that often. I like to though, and perhaps I'll try to more now :-P. I wasn't really in a talkative mood last night either. And when I say it's a small group, I mean the only person that showed up aside from me was the guy that started it. I, not feeling super talkative, was kind of counting on there being a couple other people there to carry on the conversation.

But anywho, it was a pretty cool anyway. Thai food's really good. I love spicy curry. And the guy that organizes the meet-up is totally down to earth. He had a bit of an accent, not a thick one, but I'm not too used to that I guess, and it was a little hard to understand some things he said. That may be in part because he was kind of soft spoken like me. We talked a bit about zen, experienceing the moment, thoughts, etc. I left feeling like I have a couple good things to work on.

He said a couple times, "thoughts are bad". This was interesting to me. I can understand this a bit as it's kind of embrasing the idea of being aware of things and not letting thought and idea distract you from the experience of each moment. Although I can relate to this, I find a lot of beauty in thought too. Thoughts take on many forms.... and that is what I like, their form. Everything, even a clear mind, has a form. I kind of suspect that a calmly abiding mind is of a form that resonates with any other.

When thinking, each thought perpetuates itself and describes itself, and when other thoughts rise, if they resonate with the current thought they are brought into one's awareness, and their relationship with the current thought affects or shapes the next. So the thought that is a clear mind or a calmly abiding mind might be one in which the way any other thought resonates with it only produces the clear mind again.

Thay may not be right though. A part of having a clear mind is not bringing other thoughts into one's awareness. And the changing forms and thoughts taht are thinking happen within one's awarenss? Ah well, I need to meditate a bit more and ponder over this. The world is too busy when I'm staring at the computer screen to experience this stuff anew. Need quiet.

Redding Underground

2008-08-04T13:00:00.000-07:00

I was just reading an article in 2600 about a guy who, back in the 80s when he was younger, got a hold of a master key to the Amsterdam subway tunnels and went through a big effort to copy it. He and his buddies would do tours for out of town friends and go exploring.

Reading about this has kind of kindled up some old ideas I had about looking for the tunnels under Redding. Friends have told me about access to the tunnels under the old SLC building down town. I don't doubt that there are others and that there are subtle or obscure entrances to them around town. I've heard that there's underground access all the way under the city from nearby the Cypress street bridge at the Sacramento River to the storm drain along side hwy 44 near Sunset Market, but that may just be one big flood drainage pipe.

There may be WWII era bunkers buried somewhere. Any large buildings like the hospitals, municipal buildings, or the Convention center could have unadvertised lower levels and access. There may be interesting structures left over from the Shasta Dam construction in the hills above Keswick Dam. Contrasting 1940s photos and maps with more current versions to locate bulldozed roads and buildings around or just outside of town could reveal some cool stuff. There also may be remnants of old structures visible in Google Earth.

To-Do List:
- Need to gather up my spare keys and organize them. (not related, but something I need to do)
- Need to look up lock picking and play around a bit.
- Need to look up 40s era and newer maps, photos, and engineering documents.
- Recruit minions to research!

Ride Report: Auburn and Lost on Hwy 49...

2008-08-03T22:44:00.000-07:00

I had my first good ride on the new bike this evening. I did the valve adjustment and idle mixture adjustment yesterday and was really pleased with how the bike ran today.

My ride started out in Folsom. I had intended to take Folsom Auburn Blvd. up to Auburn and then take 49S over to Salmon Falls Rd, and back down in to Folsom. The ride up Folsom Auburn to Douglass was uneventful, and I stopped off at Borders to see if they had a copy of the Keith Code book, but they didn't :-(. Going to get the book was kind of my excuse for taking the bike out and going for a ride. Book or not, this is were the fun starts. I saw a real live hooker just past Indian Hill Rd on Folsom Auburn! So wierd... that seems like a pretty expensive area, and I don't think I've ever seen any hookers around town before, but I haven't really been looking either.

After spotting the hooker, I made my way up to Auburn and cruised through town to take a look around. It was just about dusk when I got there so things were pretty quiet. Auburn seems like a nice place; it has that small town feeling, w/ the old shops and all. So, somehow I got on to Hwy 49 N instead of 49 S. About the time I was rolling through Grass Valley, I decided to stop at a gas station and look at a map. :-) I couldn't figure out where exactly I was ( I guess my sense of direction isn't so good), but the kind gas station attendant instructed me to get onto 49 S to make my way back home. Nice fellow.

49 S took me to a road that said turn L to go to Hwy 80 (Belt Rd, I think) and Hwy 80 took me back to Auburn, and from Auburn, I found Hwy 49 S again and decided that I would ride out to Placerville and make my way back home from there on 50. I really don't like going back the way I came from when I'm out for a ride, so Placerville sounded like a much better alternative than just riding back down Folsom Auburn Blvd.

By now, it was pretty dark out, so I was on the lookout for deer and stuff. I saw five live deer, one dead deer, one live possum running down the side of the road, and smelled three skunks after I made my way back onto 49 S heading away from Auburn. Luck was on my side and I found the street sign for Salmon Falls Rd and got to skip the whole Placerville thing and just head home. Now I'm enjoying a delicious beer and winding down for bed. :-P

I'm still getting used to the 250 a bit. I guess I'm used to having a bit more power from riding my SV for a few years. On the SV, I used to work the throttle and use more acceleration to stand the bike back up coming out of corners, whereas with the 250, I find myself having to use a bit more input on the bars, particularly if I'm not in the right gear and the rpms are low. Not a bad thing, but different. I am happy with the performance of the 250 and I'm really happy with it's gas mileage. I've only gone through three tanks of gas so far and am getting close to 60 mpg. This is quite a contrast against the 35-40 I used to get with the SV, and I haven't even put the 15 tooth countershaft sprocket on yet.

I think riding the 250 for a couple years will be a good experience. I'll have to be more aware of my gear selection ahead of time in each set of corners, and the suspension isn't super forgiving so I get plenty of not-so-constructive critisizm when I ride like crap, so I will be encouraged to not be sloppy w/ the throttle and my line.

I really need to get a digital camera. Maybe I'll do that and next time I'll have some nifty pictures.

110 mi.

Wooo! I got a shiny new bike!

2008-08-03T00:06:00.000-07:00

It's been way too long, over a year, since I sold my SV. I finally bought a new Kawasaki Ninja 250 from a friend last weekend.

Really, the only way I could justify getting another bike is if it would pay for itself in a couple years in saved gas costs. That's what I tell people. But really really, they're just a lot of fun. The 250 has plenty of pep for zipping around town and running up and down the freeway.

I haven't decided if I want to do a bunch of stuff to the suspension on this thing. It's really soft. I think it would be worth installing a zx600 shock on the back as well as respringing the front and installing cartridge emulators. Those shocks are pretty cheap, and the emulators are pretty much the only thing to do with the forks on these bikes.

These bikes run really well when they're in a good state of tune. The carbs are set pretty lean from the factory and the valve need to be adjusted pretty early on as all the parts in the top end settle in. So, I decided to adjust the valves and set the idle mixture screws (as per the ninja250.net forums) today. The valves were all on the tight end of the allowable range, some a litte too tight, so I set them all at the looser end. My seat of the pants dyno says I got a little extra power from these adjustments, but I need to do a better job sycing the carbs pretty soon.

Woo Hoo.

It is Random

2008-07-30T21:30:00.000-07:00

The Universe is random. Under the premise that all things have the qualities of awareness, change, and relationship, it only makes sense. It is from awareness of other things that things can respond to and change. It is change that they respond to, and it is the relationship between things in which there is change. Things which repeat themselves are not changing. The universe does not repeat itself.

Pay attention.

Minimalism really makes sense...

2008-07-24T19:59:00.000-07:00

EDIT: I feel like this was a crash course for me in thinking about minimalism. It's gets my interpretation of the idea down, but it's not very clean. Too much attention to detail and not enough about the philosophy of minimalism. I feel like there's probably a set of rules or something by which any part of life can be evaluated to gauge it's necessity. Also, in establishing this, I may be able to understand my attraction to minimalism.

I'll have to put some thought into this, and hopefully simplify my life a bit in the process.

------------------------------------------------------------
Minimalism really makes sense. To the extreme, it's not necessarily acceptable within our society, but with some consideration a balance can be found between the excessiveness of our culture and simple necessity.

What is necessary for daily life? I have a few needs that need to be considered for day to day operations: clothing, hygiene, eating, home comforts, computing, transportation, and tools for upkeep of transportation and everything else. This article takes into consideration my specific needs, but another person may be able to simplify some areas and add more detail to others. There may be quite a few people who fit into my mold pretty well though. Each of the above categories are explained in detail below:

Clothing is really only important because I have to be presentable at work and because societies rules will make it difficult to spend time around my friends if I look like shit. There are three categories of clothing that I need for survival. There is clothing for looking for work or for going to special events, clothing for working and daily life, and clothing for riding motorcycle. Pretty simple.

The clothing for daily life is easy. I need some nice shirts and pants and clean underwear and socks. When it gets really cold in the winter, I need to have a sweater or jacket to wear.

When I'm looking for work, I need to have not quite casual pressed dress shirts and pants with a tie. This works for weddings too. So, maybe two dress shirts, two ties, two pair of dress pants, and a pair of dress shoes. These are all in similar color and stored in a dark corner of my closet.

I haven't put a lot of thought into eating, but most of my meals can be made with the following: A large and small pot, pan, sharp knife, cutting board, plate, glass, coffee cup, fork, spoon, and plastic containers for storing extra prepared food. The minimalist would probably purchase mostly fresh fruits and vegetables when possible, and buy other foods that can be stored dry in bulk, like dried fruit, nuts, rice, pasta.

From my perspective, the minimalist only needs a couple things at home outside of the kitchen. A couple of pads are nice for sitting on, a desk, maybe a book shelf, and sleeping materials.

It's pretty much the norm now to sleep on a bed. Whether the minimalist has a bed or not, the following are still needed: pillow and cover, sheets, and both a light and a heavy blanket.

Hygiene is simple. The minimalist needs the following: Toothbrush, toothpaste, and floss; razors and shaving cream; soap and shampoo; and deodorant.

If hygiene in the home are considered, not much more than a broom, rags, and vinegar are needed.

Computing is an important part of life now. Even the minimalist can benefit from a computer. For the average person who doesn't do a lot of heavy design or programming on their system, a simple laptop is all that is needed. It is low power, has enough screen real estate for looking at pictures and watching videos, and is functional on the web.

All I need (that should probably read "want") for transportation is a motorcycle. I've learned through experience that the right gear will get me anywhere, any time of the year and in any weather. I have a truck now too, and I am reluctant to let go of it. I'll just leave it parked for a while and see what happens.

Assuming the minimalist is motorcycling for transportation, some consideration must be made for motorcycle gear. Motorcycle gear is as follows: Helmet, gloves, jacket, pants and boots. The helmet gloves and boots are pretty simple. I'll explain them first and then get into the jacket/pants stuff.

The full face helmet is universal, good in any weather, and is only replaced every few years or if it (your head) hits something in a crash. Two pairs of gloves are required: There is a set of leather gloves for dry moderate to hot weather and there is a waterproof synthetic pair for cold and/or wet weather. And, a pair of waterproof boots w/ good ankle protection can be worn year-round.

There are a crap load of different types of synthetic and leather motorcycle jacket/pants/suit options for riding in all different types of weather and climates. From a minimalist's perspective, all that is necessary is a mesh jacket with a removable liner for moderate weather and a good one piece synthetic riding suit for extremely cold and wet weather. I don't mention a good set of leathers because a dedicated minimalist is not going to be out corner carving on the weekends; that isn't a minimalist activity ;-), it's an activity requiring extreme specialization of skills and gear. It is arguable (and justly so) that leathers, as opposed to synthetic textile gear, should be worn for commuting on the freeway, but that's a topic for another article.

It is important to consider, at least from the minimalist's perspective, that motorcycling is only cost-justified if a low power, low maintenance, bike is ridden. Motorcycles and scooters can achieve much better gas mileage than most cars, but many larger (600cc +) sport bikes can drop below 30mpg when ridden with gusto. Smaller bikes only sip the gas and also do not eat up costly tires and chains as quickly.

Upkeep of transportation is pretty much just a good set of tools. There are very few things, at least considering regular maintenance, that the minimalist can't do to his/her vehicles without simple tools and maybe a set of jack stands. Beyond the jack stands for a car, a set of rafters in a garage or a more complicated lift might be needed to do some stuff to a bike like working on suspension or pulling a motor, but the minimalist probably knows enough people w/ a garage to not have to worry about that. Everything else, tune ups, valve adjustments, carb work, can be done with a good set of tools, cans of carb and brake cleaner, and a clean work environment.

Other things in the minimalist's home can be mended with a needle and thread, JB weld, bailing wire, and duct tape.

So on that note, we are left with my ideas on what is needed, but not necessarily what is not. I'm going to go find a bunch of stuff from my room that I can throw away.

Left Behind

2008-07-14T22:54:00.001-07:00

Two weeks back, I panicked for a few minutes thinking I had left my laptop 150 miles up the freeway North of me at my parent's house. I pulled off at a truck stop to go through the crap in my truck to find it. Not until I had already called my friends to search their living room for it did I find it buried on the passenger floorboard, and breathed a sigh of relief. At one in the morning on a Sunday night on the freeway, a forgotten laptop means a bunch more gas burned and probably a missed day of work going to retrieve it.

That Day

2008-06-23T21:39:00.000-07:00

That day, when I got that news, I decided. I wouldn't ever say anything unkind to anyone again. To never talk down to anyone. I don't really remember what it was like before, nothing specifically at least, but then I didn't have a reason.

I still do. Sometimes I'll say, do, or think something at someone's expense, and some times it feels good, but I know it's not right, not true, and not how I want to be. It's hard to realize it in the moment though.

I think I understand a little now. What I think comes from within. What I think about them is the part of me that resonates with what I see, and I'm saying it to myself. So to everything I see, I wish only to respond with love.

Abstract Thought

2008-06-23T19:13:00.000-07:00

It is not enough for me to look at a problem and see a solution, an idea which solves the problem. I've had ideas which seem to hang in my mind by a single thread, or in a delicate balance, for just long enough to spit them out IRL on whatever I'm working on. And then the idea's gone. I can only focus on fragments of it. And when it's in my head, I don't really know what it means, only that it feels right. The idea was abstract, but it's form fit the problem.

A number like one million is a good example of an abstract idea. It is simple to think about. The words resonate in my brain. Easy. But to visualize one million is difficult or impossible. I can't focus on 10^6 objects in my head. I can visualize one object, or a pair, or a trio of objects. I can see a pattern of shapes which I can count and recognize as three. But as the number grows, the number of objects increases, my attentions shifts from the objects to the form that describes the number of objects.

The idea of the number one, or of a single object, is an abstract one as well though. It is something I learned. And, although the idea of "one" is familiar to me and I can relate it to the world, I'm not too sure what it means beyond that. Given a context of counting, the idea of one fits: each piece that I count is one. But in the context of magnitude, it doesn't necessarily fit so well. The Red Sea is a size one. This does not really make sense without an additional context, like the water in the Red Sea being being a unit volume for comparison against other bodies of water. (rework this example)

Ah, so every thought is dependent arising. But what does this say for my understanding of any given abstract thought? I believe that this means that to find meaning in any thought, I must seek out context. But that can't be right... What is the meaning of meaning?

If my relating one idea to another gives meaning to that idea, then meaning is the relationship between two ideas. It is the way each ones form fits with another.

TSU

2008-05-27T20:36:00.000-07:00

No idea is my own, I only pick and choose ideas from the world around and shuffle them around in my head as I see fit. Here's one such idea:

"A human being is part of the whole, called by us 'Universe'; a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest--a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely but striving for such achievement is, in itself, a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security."

-Albert Einstein

"What is Awareness?" is a sort of koan I've taken upon myself. I like this question because it gives rise to so many other questions, and because in trying to answer it, I also answer many other questions. It is a path which leads me in many directions and to many places. I hope to find an understanding of myself among those places.

So, for kicks, I've decided to compile a number of anecdotes in order to paint a picture of some of the places I've been to so far. Some famous guy said a while back something along the lines of, what good are ideas if you cannot communicate them... So this is an exercise; more of a rough sketch than a painted picture. I hope to paint shiny pictures some day.

In consideration of the notions of:

Many worlds, many universes, or many parts: As far as I can reason, no part (world-system) can exist independently of another. I figure that there is (1) either some level of isolation (but not complete) between each part or that (2) each part effects everything within each other part so uniformly that changes in one part do not significantly change the relationships between things in other parts. I believe that the above ideas 1 and 2 may be fundamentally the same.

For two things to exist independently, they must exist independently within something, or else to each the other does not exist. To exist together in something means that they have a medium for interaction. Consider a glass of water. Does a bubble on the surface of the water exist separately from that rest of the water or from another bubble somewhere else on the surface of the water? Neither bubble exists separately from the water because it is the water. The bubbles do not exist separately from each other either; they exist relatively to one another within that medium. For example, if a chemical like alcohol is added to the water and the surface tension is reduced so that one bubble must pop, so will the other. The same conditions that make one bubble possible also make the other possible, and to take those conditions away from one bubble is to take them away from every bubble.

Causality: One's understanding of causality has enormous bearing on one's approach to the problem of free will and fate. Classic western philosophy teaches of a causal chain in which each part of the chain is affected by the part before it, and affects the part after it.

I don't think I can approach this without an understanding of dualism and monism. Are the two bubbles above two separate things because they are two, or are they one thing because they are the same water? The causal chain idea seems to depend ont a dualistic view, in that each part exists independently of the other parts despite their having an effect on each other. How can each part be causally connected, a part of the same causal chain, but exist separately?

Suppose each part exists as relationship between other parts, and those other parts exist as relationship between even more distant parts. To affect one part is to affect the relationship between (all) the other parts. That (the last two sentences) sounds like an oxymoron to me because I am using the idea of parts to argue against the existence of parts. What I'm getting at is that there exists only relationship.

Fate and Free Will: The answer to the question of free will is Mu. The problem of free will is contingent upon our existing separately from our environment, a mind-body separateness, and perhaps dualism. I need to get into this more later, but the above glass of water metaphor still applies. The mind and body arise from the same glass of water.

From another point of view, there is no one thing which captures or defines the human experience. It is everything in the world around us which makes us what we are. A body floating through the vastness of an empty universe is a meat popsicle. And, it is our experience of the world around us which gives it the meaning we ascribe to it. We are completely intertwined with this world, so why must we be able to act independently of it to have free will? We affect the world as it affects us. We move together and we are both free.

On second thought, I could stand by a mind body separation and look for further separation between my body and the world. If the world is my extended body, must I act independently from it to poses free will?

But seriously though, I wouldn't know free will if it were a brick knocking me in the head. What basis do I have for making decisions but in response to my desires? My desires are always changing. It is not as though I have some ultimate goal that I, in everything I do, am working toward, or do I...

Big and Small: Simply, those things which adapt and repeat themselves continue to exist. Nothing stays the same, but patterns which are flexible and can repeat themselves in varying environments persist in time. Size and complexity are only a matter of our perspective, and patterns repeat themselves everywhere in and around us, without regard to apparent division by scale.

Change and Awareness: Awareness and change go hand in hand. Without awareness, nothing could exist. Without change, awareness couldn't exist. If nothing changed, then there would be no interaction and therefore nothing to be aware of.

Randomness: Perhaps the universe is akin to a random number generator; always changing in order to perpetuate it's own existence. If the same thing happened, exactly, over and over, then nothing is changing and there is no awareness. But, is anything truly random? Is that even possible? Perhaps things appear random because we do not understand them or the environment we share.

Time and Space: It does not seem logical to me for spacial dimensions or time to exist as we perceive them. For there to be such a thing as distance, that distance must exist in something, but what does that something exist in? Time is much the same. Lengths of distance and time are only such relative to other lengths of distance and time. They have a relationship to each other, but they do not exist independently or absolutely. I expect that this idea can be extended to information in general.

Information and Relationship: When I say information, I mean literally everything. Information is a very abstract idea. For example, every atom contains much information. It has an associated spin, mass, charge, etc. Except, it's not so much that it contains those, but rather that it is those. It is the information made up of the patterns of energy which we describe as spin, mass, charge, etc. Perhaps Information and Relationship are analogous.

Imagine a cup sitting in the center of a table. If I push the cup to the edge of the table, It is not so much that I have moved the cup but that I have changed the relationship between the cup and it's environment. I have also changed my relationship with my environment. Well, it's not really my environment any more than it is the cup's environment.

Thought: Becoming more familiar with my own thoughts, I have recognized a couple things about them. A thought perpetuates itself only for a short while in my awareness; it has an inherent instability. It also describes itself, however abstractly. Each thought is also akin to a key which makes available related information, but that is probably just a nifty feature of it's self descriptive nature. I would argue that all thoughts are abstract. That alone, they have absolutely no meaning. It is only in context that they are given meaning.

Consider the idea of a cup. Without the idea of thirst or the idea of grasping things with one's hands, the cup is only shape or a container. Without those ideas, the cup is even more abstract. How about the idea of math? Although many mathematical forms are beautiful, they are meaningless without describing the world or describing other mathematical ideas which describe the world.

The Worlds Inside and Outside: I look in to see out and I look out to see in. Thought is not so different from things we experience in the physical world.

What is finished?

2008-05-27T19:41:00.000-07:00

I am hesitant to say anything, let alone to publish written word. The trouble is that no thought of mine feels finished, or it is at least that finished feeling is a rare one. Here's a random thought, unfinished:

I will not fall into believing that I am what I think I am. I will not take it for granted that I have the opportunity to live as a human. I will see that my identity is transient; waves of life wash through me and I see myself in them. I swim in a sea of life, waves all around, and come to realize that I too am a wave.

Spacetime and Spin

2008-05-12T22:21:00.000-07:00

Here's a really cool article up at stanford.edu's spacetime collection.

Many of nature's deepest mysteries come in threes. Why does space have three spatial dimensions (ones that we can see, anyway)? Why are there three fundamental dimensions in physics (mass M, length L and time T)? Why three fundamental constants in nature (Newton's gravitational constant G, the speed of light c and Planck's constant h)? Why three generations of fundamental particles in the standard model (e.g. the up/down, charm/strange and top/bottom quarks)? Why do black holes have only three properties—mass, charge and spin? Nobody knows the answers to these questions, nor how or whether they may be connected. But some have sought for clues in the last-named of these properties: spin.

It's pretty heavy reading after the first paragraph but covers some amazing territory, relating gravity and electromagnetism, and explaining frame dragging. Here's something interesting to consider: If you look up at the sky and spin around, you'll see the stars trace circles around your field of vision, and your arms will swing out away from your sides. Are you spinning around in the universe or is it spinning around you? According to relativity, it doesn't make any difference. Either way, there's still a frame-dragging effect between your frame of reference and that of the universe, warping space between your body and the cosmos, so that your arms fall away from your body.

Changing

2008-04-23T23:09:00.000-07:00

I haven't decided how to finish this yet. I'll update this post when I write the rest of it.

Not as solid as we seem
Birds and rocks and trees
Ripples moving in the world
rippled world, indeed.

Always changing, even
standing waves are moving
our planet keeps on spinning
stars flicker, some day die

like the tides, the moon around
so we rise pulled by the sun
each day the rise and fall
each year the dawn of seasons

...

from light the dark, shadows cast
few the great are to the small
as greater yet are to the great
so on the shadow falls the light

...

The Walk of the Hawk

2008-04-21T18:30:00.000-07:00

Hawk is living a dream of his youth... 18 years walking through 66 countries, 80k miles, talking only his staff and a 100lb pack with him.

"For Hawk this dream walk is an outward and an inward pilgrimage. By nature he is a philosopher. Who believes that most people consciously or unconsciously are searching for answers to three questions: Who am I? Why am I here? And where Am I going?"

http://www.hawkwalk.com/

Questions - 2

2008-04-14T23:23:00.000-07:00

I feel the wind blow
The wind moves me
As it passes around
And not through me
Do I move the wind?

2: You are the wind.
1: Still air makes the wind.
2: You are only the sensation of the wind or the idea of stillness.
1: What is the sensation of an idea?
2: Being Human
1: Maybe. I've found nothing but abstraction in ideas. I run circles around myself with nowhere to grab hold.

Questions - 1

2008-04-11T14:59:00.001-07:00

Turn my arms the clock
Hang my legs there too
From each the other turns
Alone where do they move?

Dancing on a rainy day
Stomping puddles moving feet
Each time droplets fly
Who makes the rain?

Found and Finding

2008-04-10T23:08:00.000-07:00

Although I can't say I know where Buddha nature is , I walk a path. And while I walk a path, I can't decide if I follow the path or if it follows me. Each bend obscures what is to come and everywhere I've been gives meaning to that which follows. There is something to be said about being on the path. While what comes is always changing, here I am.

Thoughts Give Rise to Thoughts

2008-03-15T11:55:00.000-07:00

What does it mean to think? How much of the thinking process are we aware of? It is fairly clear to me that my awareness is not the same as the thoughts in my brain, my brain, nor my body. Although that ought to be the topic of debate some other time, these are my experiences; I doubt they are unique to me.

I am sitting, clearing my mind. Like a balance, my mind wants to sway one way or another into thought. Thoughts rise from my mind to my awareness. Some are rejected and more rise. Occasionally, my mind relaxes and holds onto one of the thoughts; I am aware of only that thought as it begins to change, and I am aware of my mind following each change, down the rabbit trail, so to speak. Eventually, a thought rises reminding my mind that I am trying to clear my mind and I release my thoughts. To think and to remember, in short term at least, feels very much like I am holding onto the thought which is dictating the thinking or which is resonating the pattern describing whatever I am trying to remember, so that is how I describe it. It is as though the thought describes itself and perpetuates it's existence in my mind in the same motion.

The way in which my thoughts rise to my awareness is what interests me now. With a clear mind, my only thoughts are those which rise to my awareness. It is almost as if this clear-mind-thing is more like a thought which serves to preserve itself in my awareness. It is a thought which perpetuates itself without describing anything, rather than the absence of thought.

What does it mean to be aware?

2008-03-10T11:53:00.000-07:00

What is it to be aware? To experience awareness? To experience? What is it to be conscious? In the dictionary, these words define one another, but none are explained. Perhaps awareness is a fundamental part of everything.

In what ways are we different from the world around us? We are made of matter, energy, as is our environment. Protons, neutrons, and electrons are assembled into atoms, which are assembled into larger structures to make our bodies and our brains. These fundamental pieces also make up the rivers, mountains, and the air we breath. Also, any part of this system we exist in can be smashed up and broken into building blocks smaller than the atoms. When we smash the atoms, we get the protons, neutrons, etc. When we smash those, we get quarks, neutrons, and a plethora of other particles. Some of these particles are without mass, but are responsible for the binding forces which hold together atoms and other aspects of our world. We are made of the same stuff that makes up the world we live in. All that is different between us physically is how we are put together.

We are made of the same things, but we are put together differently. Is this enough to say that we are not the same as our environment? That we do not share aspects of what we experience with our environment? To say this gives rise to problems which are difficult to approach if we are trying to support the idea that we are special. - Before I go further with that idea, I must explain. I can't begin to say that we, or what we experience, is not special. But, perhaps our experience of this is not unique to us alone. - What does it mean if we, through the advancement of what we call technology, create artificial life? And this is not as far fetched as it once was; we are already successfully simulating functional pieces of rat brains on small supercomputers. Our simulations act as do their biological counterparts. If, over the next few decades, we are able to simulate an entire brain and hook it up to a body so that it can interact with the world, can it be conscious?

This is a fairly macroscopic approach to the problem of consciousness and one which we can relate to. It can be difficult to think objectively when our object of consideration is closely related to how we define ourselves. (Yes, I am saying that if you don't agree with me, you're doing so out of some emotional bias! Please humor me and disregard that :-) Here is another approach to the problem of awareness:

If I walk quietly into a room where you are sitting while the lights are off so that you do not hear me enter, are you aware of me? I expect not. What is different when the lights are on or if I thump my feet as I walk? If the lights are on when I enter, the light will reflect off of my skin and into your eyes and you will become aware that I have entered the room. If I stomp my feet as I enter, sound waves will ripple out through the air and cause your eardrums to vibrate making you aware of me. It is through the effect I have on you that you become aware of me. Cause and effect. What other sorts of things are subject to cause and effect? What things are not? I can't conceive any that aren't. If two molecules of air travel coincidental paths and bump each other, their paths and energies are affected. During the moments in which they are close enough to have an effect on each other, are they not aware of one another? Perhaps not conceptually, but maybe through experience. We humans experience and are affected by many things that we have no conceptual knowledge of. We do not need to understand to experience and be aware of the things that affect us.

Burning Gas and Spinning My Weels

2008-01-28T23:21:00.000-08:00

I had a few things on my mind driving back to Sac from Redding Sunday night. My truck get much better gas mileage without the camper shell on it. I'm pretty sure I was pushing 35mpg driving back. I did 55mph the whole way though. I'll see where I'm at later this week after I empty the tank and will post up my city driving/ fwy avg. I've been at around 26mpg with the shell but saw 28 a couple times before I put it on. I've gotten quite a bit better at coasting, slowing down overall, and conserving gas since I put the shell on.

I'm excited about a couple things right now. First thing is motorcycling. I'm dieing to ride a bike again. Aria let me make a run over to the dam on his two fifty last weekend and it was wonderful. It was... just like riding a bike... go figure. It's still pretty second nature. The suzuki shop in Redding has a couple used KTM LC4s in stock. One of them, a 2001, only has 1k miles on it. They're asking $3k for it, but it's been wrecked. There may be better deals to be had. The Suzuki DRZ 400 may still be the way to go. It's a really low mainenance bike. The LC4 needs to have the valves checked with every oil change, whereas the DRZ can go 10k to 15k miles between checks once it's broken in. I do like that the LC4 has the tappet style valves, as they're super easy to adjust compared to the shims on the DRZ. There are a couple quirks with the LC4 motors to be dealt with, as well, but they make 50HP stock, compared to 35 for the DRZ. :-) Ultimately, the DRZ is cheaper, more bullet proof, lighter, almost as powerful w/ a couple mods, and probably the way to go.

Back to gas mileage... After I finish the yurt, I want to buy either one of the three cylinder geo metros or an old vw rabbit (diesel) with not too many miles. I'll weld up a light tube frame for it and make a custom fiberglass body for it. It'll be super ultra aero dynamic and get me 100mpg+. The best car ever. It'll prolly even have a radio.

It'll look kinda like the solar car in the picture above, except not quite as flat and it'll fit two. Think half a slightly smooshed ice cream cone with a perfectly smooth shell and undercarriage and fairings over the wheels with a small luggage compartment in the back. It'llbe round at the front and pointy at the back. I've already got all the construction details worked out for the shell. :-) Fsck paying for gas.

Check out this ghetto honda civic, here. This one doesn't look super nice, but it's a proof of concept. This could be imporved upon, alot.

I've been driving 500+ miles per week for the last month and a half. At this rate, I buy about 19 gallons of gas per week. That's $55 per week, at $3 per gallon. That's over $200 per month. If I got 100mpg, I could cut this down to 5 gallons of gas per week, for a grand total of $60 per month on gas. This is realistic. lol.

I'll post an update after I've read a ton of books on aerodynamics.

Peace,
--Dan

Currently reading :
The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality
By Dalai Lama
Release date: 12 September, 2006

In Response...

2008-01-06T22:40:00.000-08:00

Some one told me not long ago about something they regretted. I don't know whether they intended to say what they did or if they were intending to show humility. Anyway, after spending a little while last week considering what I might regret, I came up with the following:

Regarding what you said to me the other day, do not dwell on the past. We all have regrets, but no regret, regardless of the words it inspires, can describe or capture the entirety of our past. Life is a many headed beast/wonder. Any idea we have about it is but a glimpse of the shadow of one of it's heads.

Because of the nature of our minds, it can be difficult to realize the good when thinking of the bad, but fortunately, this also goes the other way. In times of good, the bad is but a distant cloud; out of sight and mind unless we look for it.

Is the now not good? As is everything, the now is dependent arising. If the past were different, things would not be the way they are; they could be better or worse. It is impossible to know which, though.

There is no sense in yearning for what might/could have been as that will only result in dissatisfaction and unhappiness. If, instead, we (1) focus on all that is good and that we have to be thankful for and we (2) live by our own moral/ethical code and act as we believe we ought to, then life is good.

Sorry

2007-12-03T22:03:00.000-08:00

Dan is drunk. Please disregard any drunkedness in the following posts.

I love you.

--Dan

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Part of a three part series:
"The Infinite Transportation System"
"Okay, Perhaps I Have to Spell it Out..."
"Sorry"

Okay, Perhaps I Have to Spell it Out...

2007-12-03T21:32:00.000-08:00

The part of me that wants to keep typing says that that someone may not get it. The idea is this: There is no perfect lifetime of transportation. It's practically paradoxial to say that the world is perfect. We could not exist in the "perfect" world. But at the same time, we do exist. Things would not be the way they are if the world was not the way it is. Perhaps the world is perfect, illogical as that may be.

Next time... I'll argue for the logic of paradox.

--Dan

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Part of a three part series:
"The Infinite Transportation System"
"Okay, Perhaps I Have to Spell it Out..."
"Sorry"

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Migrated Comments:

psykotron said...: I'm sorry to have to tell you this but you are incorrect. You see... Existence is perfect. It is all the result of a very large calculation. It's mathematical perfection you see. Sure the local permutations might not be congruent with the way we would like things to coalesce, but that's not actually the point.
Anyways, hope you're enjoying your drunken sloberness.; December 3, 2007 10:16 PM
Dan said...: You're right, in a sense.

Perhaps perfection is a non-issue. It is completely subjective. We have no way of knowing if we could exist if things were at all different from the way they are.

If we call it perfect, we do so out of necessity.; March 11, 2008 11:38 AM

The Infinate Transportation System.

2007-12-03T20:57:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine was approached by one of those hard core Christian guys who wanted to tell him that evolution never happened the other day. That's all good; to each their own, I say. I'm sure we could all argue blindly one way or the other (prolly less blindly toward evolution; there's some good ol' fashioned science behind that idea, lol), but that's beside the point.

Anywho, there came a point in the conversation when my friend tried to argue that the world is perfect, and the Christian guy was like, what about all the starving people, the raped kids, and the folks who get hit by cars? I don't care who's right, but I thought the idea that the world is perfect is interesting. I put forth this question: Of what significance would god be if there wasn't a bit of trouble in the world? Without the shit, all us self centered fools (I, for one, know that the world is still flat and we are the very center of the universe) would be gods in paradise, with infinite room to expand across our planar universe. At some point, the center of our world would serve only as transportation to the parts we hadn't filled up by breeding like rabbits. Eventually, the growth of our enormous transportation system would parallel that of our sex crazed speces in the process of catapulting us out to new flatlands.

Can you imagine that? The world would be so perfect, that we'd have nothing better to do than churn out kids; fuckin's fun aint it? With no shit, we've got nothing to do but seek out the greatest pleasure. So, we'd get to the point, prolly 10 or 20 thousand years from now, where all the new folks would spend their entire lives in transportation to flatlands which we hadn't completely taken over. They'd experience the pleasure of a lifetime of luxury travel. It'd be the shit.

Fsck. I could go on, but even I'm tired of this. Good day, and good night. --Dan

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Part of a three part series:
"The Infinite Transportation System"
"Okay, Perhaps I Have to Spell it Out..."
"Sorry"

Experiencing Faith

2007-11-27T22:43:00.000-08:00

From webster: Denomination Experience Faith

One's faith would be meaningless if it did not directly relate to one's experiences. One's experiences give meaning to one's faith. Everyone has different experiences; no one lives the same life. Because everyone's experiences are different, everyone's faith is different. This is irregardless of one's assumed denomination.

At the same time, there are many common elements between different denominations; there are some elements common to all denominations, like morality or virtue.

Every Day is a Good Day

2007-01-26T23:26:00.000-08:00

The following is reproduced without permission from http://www.doku-zen.de/index-en.html

One of Kuwahara Sensei's favourite expressions to portray in calligraphy is "every day is a good day". I've even got one myself at home. Everyone knows the saying; you hear it all the time even outside Zen circles. But what does it mean, exactly? I suspect that not everyone who says it really knows what they're talking about.

To me, every Zen saying means pretty much the same thing. Whether you say "Every day is a good day", or "How red the plum blossoms!" or even "The Buddha is three pounds of flax", you're always pointing at one and the same truth. You might as well say that every day is a bad day – at least then people wouldn't be tempted to quote you so often! The point is that the expression is not the Buddhist equivalent of "have a nice day", i.e. that you can find something good in every day. Or worse, that if you somehow live your life "buddhistically", that every day will magically become some happy, sunny and peaceful dream-world.

On the contrary, "Every day is a good day" really means that in this life, on this day and at this moment, you have absolutely no choice. "Good" in this sense therefore doesn't mean "as opposed to bad", but rather "as opposed to nothing at all", since everything else is purely the product of your own imagination. You are standing right where you are and that's the end of it: you can make choices for the future, but the present is right here and now: this is it! To take a concrete example, I'm often in a lousy mood when I get up or when I get home from work. I just want to write off the rest of the day and mope around. But Zen tells me that I only have my own means, and my own tools, to work with right now, so get to it! It's easy to think that I'm having an "off day" and that I'll feel better tomorrow, but in truth it's not some mysterious mood that's making me unhappy, but rather that very comparison to tomorrow itself. Wishing I were otherwise just makes me even more pathetic: I'm not superhuman, so that the only way that every day really becomes a good day is if I give up all theoretical comparisons with "a potential me" altogether.

Understanding this and putting it into practice are two different matters, of course. That's where Zazen comes in. And by coincidence, the expression turns out to be very handy with regards to doing Zazen itself, since most people only ever sit when they happen to be in a good mood for it. That's dangerous, however. If you want to really understand the truth of "Every day is a good day", it's better to set yourself up a weekly Zazen schedule beforehand and stick to it, regardless of "good" or "bad" mood. That, way, slowly but surely, you will come to understand the meaning of the saying. In the meantime, you can at least buy the calligraphy!

What's this Life for?

2007-01-26T03:33:00.000-08:00

The way I see it, we've got one shot. We can make anything we want of it.

I've got a lot in my head right now. I'll try and put some of it down coherently. I feel like, in the spirit of "we can make anything we want of it", that I should say, don't take anything I say or anyone else says at face value. We all see the world differently and need to find our own meaning in things.

Our family, friends, society, put constraints on us. They expect us to act a certain way, to live a certain way. As we grow up, we reflect everything we see and hear. It's a part of learning to interact and communicate. It seems to me, though, that at some point this becomes boring and mundane. We grow tired of just copying and doing what we were always told we should be doing; trying to measure up to other people's standards.

Isn't everyone else going through the same thing? They were taught all kinds of things and continue to teach similar things to others. It's a big continuous cycle. But, I ask, where did it start? Everyone's saying something a little bit different. Who's right and how do we know that they're right?

At some point, don't we have to ask what's important to ourselves? What do we want to do?

Of course, no man is an island. The things, activities, ideas, that I love are a hundred times more joyful when I'm sharing them with someone I love. So communication is important. All those things that reigned us in when we were growing up give us a basis for sharing later on.

Hrm... how do I say it? If we can break some of the constraints on us, that tell us who we should be, we can start to be who we think we ought to be. Why should it matter who we are or what kind of life we live, if we're acting by our own compass and embracing what's meaningful to us? This philosophy ought to be held highly over being another sheep in the flock. Take the road less traveled! Why not do what we believe in and be passionate about it and confident in it?

If people around us are afraid to accept us for who we are, isn't that just indicative of closed-mindedness and self-consciousness? Aren't they just afraid of what some other people will think, like, guilty by association? What if the confidence we show them, leading our own lives, rubs off a bit? So what if someone puts a label on us, if we aren't so concerned with what other people think? All the derogatory sexual, racial, gender, etcetera, terms that are used to keep us in control are meaningless if we don't get offended and feed the ego of whoever's spitting them. Why not respond with sympathy? They're just as confused as we are, probably. A little love might turn them around!

This journey we call life, is exactly that! Nobody really knows where we're going or what's really out there. But every day we learn something new. We can choose to believe anything we want. I see the whole thing as a great mystery! Each day brings about excitement and new revelations. Each day is an opportunity to take a chance, broaden our horizons, and try something new. We've got a chance to come up with some new material to feed the next generation and make our world what we want it to be.

Blahr, 'nuff for now. Peace.

What's important?

2007-01-10T02:13:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking about this a bit. When it comes down to it, what's more important than our relationships with the people around us? Sure there's all kinds of stuff we want to do and accomplish, but it's just a means to sharing something with someone else.

This is good, but how can we be closer to the people around us? We know that our friends and family have certain expectations for us. It's reasonable for us to meet some of those expectations. Sometimes it's not; we have different beliefs and hold different things important to us. But if we have a plan, if we have things we want to accomplish and we are making steps forward toward those goals, then we can be sure of ourselves and have no reason to distance ourselves from others.

Sometimes people tell us what we need to change or do differently. A lot of things are difficult, if not impossible, to do differently if we don't have a good reason or motivation to do so. Some things we have to learn for ourselves. There's no shame in this as long as we continue to learn as we go along. I kinda feel like the journey is the fun part anyway. It's good to deviate from the normal path once in a while and gain some perspective. If we aren't stumbling blindly (sometimes if we are, too, I guess ;-) , then we can learn all kinds of things to share. If we lead by example and are open with others, they may respond and share a bit and grow a little closer.

Something else to consider is that if we do have a plan and are somewhat sure of ourselves, we can listen to others without feeling threatened. You can just say (or think), "that's cool, but I still want to try this", to whatever they tell you. Then you can try not to scare them and tell them your idea. Oh yah, groovy.

Song of the Sausage Creature. Super Cool.

2006-12-30T01:56:00.000-08:00

This is probably of of my favorite wirtings on the web...

There are some things nobody needs in this world, and a bright-red, hunch-back, warp-speed 900cc cafe racer is one of them - but I want one anyway, and on some days I actually believe I need one.
...

Read it here if you're interested: Song of the Sausage Creature, by H. S. Thompson.

A bit of my take on Motorcycling

2006-12-30T01:02:00.000-08:00

If you ride and you haven't read "The Pace", go read it. Seriously. I'm not just trying to be a jackass.

One thing I've noticed is that as cities grow larger, there's more traffic, and people are more impatient and easily angered. Probably my favorite thing about riding in the city is that riding allows you to escape a lot of the chaos on the road. You can lane split up to the front of a line of cars waiting at a light and take off quickly enough to catch the line of cars at the next light and repeat the process. This way, the bulk of the cars on the road are either behind you or stopped in a line in front of you; it's easier to maintain a good defensive position on the road when you aren't stuck in the middle of a clump of twitchy cars and it's easier to spot hazards ahead of you.

Unfortunately, it takes a lot of riding to learn how to move through traffic efficiently and maintain some margin of error. There's a pretty steep learning curve, but after a while, near death, butt puckering, experiences become few and far between. I guess I was pretty lucky to get to start in a smaller city like Redding. I actually got run down by a small pickup truck right after I got my old bike (first one w/ a shifter; I'd been riding a 250 scooter for a while). It's worth noting that this happened only moments after I patted myself on the back for riding so well over the past two weeks and let my mind wander for a couple seconds. It's a pretty good bet that the next time I get myself into trouble, I'll be a little too confident in what I'm doing and or I'll just be spacing out.

Maybe the most important thing I do when I ride is to look ahead and plan each move I make. This works for traffic or the twisties. (I'm climbing up onto my soapbox) It's a fact (statistics blah blah...) that most (greater than half of) motorcycle accidents are single vehicle accidents; Rider error. I've watched myself as well as almost everyone that I've ridden with run wide through at least one corner. I've seen more than one rider panic and ride into a ditch, pasture, grove of trees, etc. Check out the following from the pace regarding entering a corner:

.... If the brakes are required, the front lever gets squeezed smoothly, quickly and with a good deal of force to set entrance speed in minimum time. Running in on the brakes is tantamount to running off the road, a confession that you're pushing too hard and not getting your entrance speed set early enough because you stayed on the gas too long. Running The Pace decreases your reliance on the throttle and brakes, the two easiest controls to abuse, and hones your ability to judge cornering speed, which is the most thrilling aspect of performance street riding.

If I have decided upon and set my cornering speed before I enter a corner, then instead of puckering my butt and riding the brakes all the way to the double yellow and then banking wildly into the corner (I've done it too many times), I can put my attention toward looking through the corner, looking for obstructions in the road, thinking about setting up for the next corner, etc. If I'm not traveling at a speed I'm comfortable with, then I won't be able to change my line mid-corner or straighten up and come to a stop if need be.

Blah blah blah... developing as a motorcyclist is a life-long process; There's always more to learn, the scenarios are always changing, there will always be another humbling moment when life (the road) puts you in your place; every moment is an opportunity to grow and learn something new. (Okay, I'm off the soapbox.)

The theme songs of our lives.

2006-12-28T02:00:00.000-08:00

Music conveys so much emotion and meaning. To hear a thousand songs is to live a thousand lives. The song is an extension of the artist's feelings, experiences, and emotions. These make them absolutely unique, but for an instant, when we hear their songs and are one with them. To sympathize, share in love and life, realize we are all the same.

Currently listening :
The Paul Simon Collection: On My Way, Don't Know Where I'm Goin'
By Paul Simon
Release date: By 05 November, 2002

Car Hunting and Peace of Mind

2006-12-13T01:30:00.000-08:00

Car hunting is hard work. I haven't actually gone to look at any yet, but I've been thinking a lot about what would be good to get and pouring over all kinds on craigslist. I'm pretty set on a van of some sort. Maybe a minivan w/ the way gas prices are going. I'd love to have Chevy Express 1500 passenger van, but there don't look to be but a few of those w/ low miles that can be had on my budget. The little four-banger minivans might be a good way to go, as long as there's room for a few snowboards and people.

Peace of mind is simple, no? Consider what ails you. Is it an inward or outward affliction? Take time to decide why and by what method it affects you. Maybe talk to someone who might be able to help you.
There are many people who care and would like to help. They may say things you don't want or don't like to hear, but remember that everything they believe is a result of unique experiences that are different from your own. Their perspective may hold the key to what your looking for, or it may not. They only way to know is to listen with an open mind.
What steps can you take toward a resolution? Change doesn't happen overnight, so take baby-steps. although change takes time, surrounding yourself with like minded people can help now. Each day, reflect upon your goals and remember what you're working for. You are beautiful.

The eternety of a moment.

2006-11-28T01:48:00.000-08:00

Every moment is a lifetime. We are not the same people now as we are now. Is what makes a person not a continuous state of being, but an ever changing infinite number of unique experiences?

This will have to be elaborated on. I'm beginning to agree with Hume.

Monolithic Domes

2006-02-17T17:46:00.000-08:00

There was an article on Hackaday about building cardboard geodesic dome shelters (They used them at the Burning Man Festival). That got me thinking about the unusual house thing I always ponder over. Once of these could be scaled up into a structure similar in design to a really nice yurt.

I found one of the things I really missed about Redding down here in Sac. Sacramento has it's very own "Sacramento" river trail. It goes from Folsom along the river right down to Sac State. Freaking neat. Hrm... I guess it's not quite the same. Folks don't acknowledge each other down here. The pavement's nicer, though.

--Dan

No Way! Er... Yah.

2005-11-29T23:32:00.000-08:00

Jo people. Happy Tuesday.

That is all.

Today's Update

2005-06-22T23:33:00.000-07:00

Hey everybody. I gave notice at work a couple of days ago and am moving to Sacramento at the end of the month. Wow. I got a super internship in Sac. That's the main reason I'm moving.
'Nuf for now.

Random Thought: Pocket Bikes

2004-12-17T23:35:00.000-08:00

There are a bunch of people that race pocketbikes down at the fairgrounds in Vallejo on saturdays. A basic China bike can be had for under $250 shipped and the guy that does the pocketbikegp site was telling me that he expects to be able to start getting midbikes for abotu $550.

I'm seriously thinking about getting one so I can go down and participate in some races. The vallejo guys have classes for just about any pocketbike as well as midbikes. All you really need to get started are a pocketbike, a heavy jacket, knee sliders of some sort, gloves and a snell certified helmet. See their homepage, liked to below.

PocketBikeGP.com
EBay.com