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Our Hawaii Trip

Monday, January 4th, 2010

We spent the last five days of 2009 in Hawaii, primarily on the Kona side. It was an amazing time. We had warm, sunny weather, did plenty of snorkeling, went to a luau, saw turtles (including while snorkeling), visited Blue Sky Coffee, the Kona Brewing Company(fresh Wailua Wheat and Pipeline Porter were out of this world), saw steam rising from Kilauea caldera and lava flowing into the ocean, visited the southern most point in the USA, spotted one nene, and we had the amazing luck to spend barely a half hour at the Black Sand Beach but we were in the right place at the right time to be the first humans to see a baby Hawksbill turtle as it crawled up through the sand of its nest and ventured off into the ocean (click here for video)!

Pictures are over at flickr, but here are a few highlights…

Lies

Turtle

Snorkel

Luau

Sunset

Lava

Gecko

Palm trees

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A cold night

Thursday, December 24th, 2009

It’s a cold, clear Christmas Eve which made a good opportunity to play with my new toys (lens and tripod).

The Moon - December 24, 2009

The Moon - December 24, 2009

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Thankful

Friday, November 27th, 2009

2009 Thanksgiving

Still didn’t manage to finish the dining room for yet another Thanksgiving. But it’s the love in the room that matters. We had a lot of love gathered around the table this year.

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Signed off on Portland TechShop woodworking

Thursday, August 27th, 2009

I took the second of two classes for the woodshop basic safety sign off at the Portland TechShop this evening. In the first class we made push sticks for the table saw. In the second class we made a board (yes exciting stuff)!!

I’ve never actually used a jointer previously and having access to multiple (including a 12″ one with a long table) is great. And I’ve never used a quality table saw. The nice one at TechShop really points out the cheapness of the Sears one I started with. But now I’ve got access to a great woodshop for projects!

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Tigard 7th/8th girls first lacrosse game

Friday, April 10th, 2009
Madi's first lacrosse game

Madi's first lacrosse game

Madi’s team played their first lacrosse game of the season. For most of the girls it was their first game ever. They fared reasonably considering they were up against experienced girls. They learned a lot during the game and really stepped up. Us parents on the side line managed to start figuring out what was going on too.

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30% in March

Wednesday, April 1st, 2009

The numbers for March are a bit convoluted due to the meter being switched out by PGE half way through the month.  When the next bill comes I assume it will show the final value from the old meter.  I don’t have that number.  It shouldn’t amount to even a 1% difference I’d think given our normal daily consumptions, but from what I do have it looks like 30% of the electricity our household consumed in March was generated on our very own roof.

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22.4% of our electricity in February from solar panels

Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009

Another month and another set of stats off the solar panels: February saw 22.4% of our household consumption coming from the panels. We’ve had rather sunny weather, but it’s amazing how quickly the days become longer this time of year and even on the partly to mostly cloudy days the panels’ production is up notably compared to the shorter days’.

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Easier driving in Portland

Friday, February 27th, 2009

Looks like Google Maps has quietly added non-freeway traffic in the Portland area. One thing I love the most about the iPhone is near instant easy access to Google Maps’ traffic info. It saves me a lot of time on the road. There are a few notoriously bad areas though which I drive through blind and fairly often drive into bad traffic. Now I can avoid them when they’re congested.
I am curious though to see how accurate the info proves to be. The lights at intersections have traffic sensors, but I’ve never seen evidence that they were networked or feed data much of anywhere. Much of the congestion could go away if the lights were talking together and being cycled in conjunction with one another instead of in competition with one another.

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Coffee drinking while scootering

Wednesday, February 25th, 2009

corazzocoffee.jpg
I’ve been thinking for some time of rigging myself something to nestle a coffee holding vessel somewhere on my scooter. Corazzo seems to make good products (though I bought a larger fancier Italian lap blanket instead of theirs) and this seems like an obviously handy one to have.
But patent pending, self-levelling, auto-gimbal? Either they’re trying to patent basic physics (inertia, gravity) or that is supposed to be internet humor…

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Zwickelmania

Sunday, February 15th, 2009

I learned a new word in German yesterday…”Zwickel”. Apparently that’s a spigot, in particular on the bottom of a brewing cask used for sampling beer.
The local wineries have twice yearly open houses that seem to draw crowds well. On Saturday Oregon’s breweries gave it a go under the “Zwickelmania” banner. It sounds like turn out was good, so here’s hoping they do it again.
We “only” went to HUB. One of their brewmasters gave us a tour and a few samples of their exquisitely crafted beers. It was amazing to see the “air locks” (bucket with a plastic hose blowing off the top of the fermenter) on their massive fermenters blasting away. That many gallons of wort sure kick out a lot of CO2. Makes ours look absolutely puny.
Among the various interesting things we learned about HUB is that they (the brewers) have an open door policy Friday evenings, they welcome homebrewers and the curious to stop by for a chat, and even sell barley and yeast! And they use Young’s yeast for some things…I’ve got to try getting some of that for our next batch of chocolate stout.

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