I’ve just upgraded to a T60, so I’m selling my IBM Thinkpad T42. SOLD. (read more »)

I think I’m being told I need more sleep. (read more »)

I just finished watching part I (“From Pole to Pole”) of the BBC’s new series called Planet Earth (co-produced by BBC/Discovery Channel/NHK), and so far, it has been the most awe-inspiring wildlife documentary I have ever seen. Luckily, I have a 150″ screen and projector here at home, which turned out to be the perfect way to experience the scenes presented in the show. It was beautiful, incredible, and inspiring. I’m nearly beyond words… (read more »)

uw photos!

I met some interesting people at the blogging dinner event last night (you know, the one with the long name). The Stanford Harmonics sang, reminding me of my freshman year of college (you are basically greeted by a capella when you arrive at Stanford!), we drank Stormhoek wine, and ate really, really delicious chocolates from Charles Chocolates. At the end of the evening, I silent-auctioned a few of my underwater prints and matched the total amount for a donation to Sea Shepherd, my favorite marine conservation organization. (read more »)

pam @ lake merritt

I’ve been too busy to post the normal photos you see here in this journal — you know, the ones that have a bunch of photos of people you don’t know…

Here are some photos of: 1) a hike on Land’s End with Geoff Nuttall and Livia Sohn, 2) Jesse Litchenstein’s visit to do research for a novel, 3) a dusk walk around Lake Merritt with Pam Kong, 4) Sarah Kemble’s last moments in San Francisco, and 4) a dinner with Warren, Lynn, Livia, Ray, and Jack after a concert featuring Barry and Livia (where I randomly bumped into Rebecca Carson!).

catherine!

Catherine came through town a few weeks ago, and she, her lovely friend Amanda Hawn, Amanda’s boyfriend and I had a couple of nice meals together. After dinner one evening, I had tea with Catherine at her old-fashioned hotel in the middle of San Francisco, and we both felt like we might have been sitting there in the 20s. At a table across the room, two older women sat around, one completely covered in sequins and the other in white fur. I even got a shot of me posing by a life-sized painting of a dude holding a cigar. It was definitely not my version of San Francisco! :) (read more »)

After my RAID went critical yesterday morning, I assigned the failed drive as a global spare (for kicks), and the RAID started rebuilding automatically. 30 hours later the rebuild finished, but the machine hung upon running CHKDSK. (read more »)

I’m away so much that I no longer know what to do when I’m home and alone. Normally, when I return from extended absence, I spend my time struggling to catch up, seeing friends and going through the huge piles of stuff waiting for me. And then, I leave again.

I’m half way through my two weeks at home — my longest period here in the Bay Area since October, and I still think I’m going to leave a lot of unfinished business when I leave again on the 4th. The TODO list is growing faster than I can get through it, and it gets worse every day.

But really, I just feel like taking a break — a break without feeling guilty about not catching up. It’s not as easy as it sounds.

Shit happens, and hard drives fail. I woke up this morning to a “corrupted directory” notice and beeping noises coming from the server area under my stage. As a reminder, my main server holds an 8-disk RAID 5 configuration + a system drive, and has been running smoothly for quite awhile now.

I’m in the process of rebuilding the array using the original drive (it is still spinning and accepts a rebuild option), but I’ve also ordered a replacement drive so I can shove the thing in if the RAID fails again. The rebuild will take 30 hours, so I have some time to wait for the replacement to arrive. :) The next time I build a RAID, I’m going to have a dedicated spare in the mix so I don’t have to stress out about sourcing a matching drive.

The failure orphaned hundreds of files, which were recovered and placed in a useless directory structure by CHKDSK. Chris Emura has always warned me about data loss in RAID 5 failure and luckily, I am always backed up (onto a ReadyNas 600 system). When the RAID finishes its rebuild, I’ll do a restore from the backups.

I’m on track for my failure rate of 1-2 drives a year (out of the 20 or so that I use).

I’ve only been back for a few days and I gotta say: the Bay Bridge is a f’in nightmare. I arrived home (to SFO) late Sunday evening, and by the time Geoff and I made an attempt by car to get me and my 200 lbs of luggage back to Oakland, the now-standard midnight traffic on the Bay Bridge was already terrible. We aborted, and I spent the night at their place in the city.

CalTrans currently reports:

I 80 [SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA] IS CLOSED TO EASTBOUND TRAFFIC FROM THE JCT OF US 101 TO 4TH ST /IN SAN FRANCISCO/ (SAN FRANCISCO CO) FROM 0001 HRS TO 0600 HRS 7 DAYS A WEEK THRU 6/2/06 – DUE TO CONSTRUCTION – A DETOUR IS AVAILABLE

… but because the detour used to start at 1AM, I have been operating under that assumption and heading home each night at around 12:15am. By then, traffic is already really bad, and tonight was no exception. I left San Francisco at 12:05am and wasn’t able to get onto the bridge for over half and hour. It gets worse. There was a surprise onramp switch (chaos!!), and the four-way intersection just before the onramp was completely jammed with cars and honking taxis trying to squeeze into the lane that would eventually lead to the bridge. People were pissed.

… but I suppose tonight was better than the first time I discovered the existence of the detour, which resulted in a 3.5-hour trip across the bay (home at around 4:30am!). THAT truly sucked.

Whoever is organizing the bridge construction is completely incompetent. Don’t even get me started on the weird-ass 5th-Street-offramp / bizarre-right-jog on westbound 80 just past the bridge. That thing causes traffic at nearly all hours of the day.

I’m tempted to move away — or back to San Francisco — until the bridge construction is done.

This is really bizarre. I just took a hard disk out of my friend Sarah’s old computer, and the drive smells like body odor! It’s the sort of stench that is hard to wash off.

Sarah is from Hawaii, and it is both humid and warm in Hawaii. I can only speculate that the heat and moisture helped bacteria to grow inside the computer, and that the sort of bacteria that grew there was a similar type to those that give body odor its smell…? There was speculation during dinner that the colony most likely was seeded by her ex-boyfriend. :)

Whatever the reason, it was really gross.

I spent the last week as one of the four photo pro at the Kona Classic 2006 (sponsored by Sport Diver Magazine, PADI, Body Glove, and others). As part of the event, we dove the manta ray night dive at Garden Eel Cove, which was absolutely amazing! Our dive operators ID’ed 17 mantas that night, and just before we jumped into the water, we were treated to a bright green flash at sunset. It was as perfect a night dive as one could imagine.

Here’s are two videos or raw footage I shot that evening (updated with 2nd video): (read more »)

I was over at Livia‘s place the other night, and when she turned on the TV, up popped a re-airing of Vienna Teng on PBS! I pretty much never watch TV, and having a friend show up on the television upon it being powered on is a strange coincidence indeed.

Obviously, I had to get a super-dorky photo of me in front of the tube:

i am a dork, part 315,164.

Crap. I am leaving for the Kona Classic in less than 5 hours. I should get some sleep.

kim/sather wedding

Wuy and Monica were married two weekends ago in White Bear Lake, Minnesota. The ceremony was short and sweet, and it was great to see everyone so happy!

Most of us flew in on Friday night and made our ways to Half Time Rec, which according to The Innernets is an “authentic Minnesotan-Irish bar.” Well, that night, Halk Time Rec wasn’t so Irish, but there was a country/folk band there, and people not in our party were singing along and pounding on tables. Gianni, Scott, Ajay, and Elliot wore awesome green T-shirts celebrating Wuy’s impending fate (see photos). Obviously, they were joking because everyone loves Monica. :) Most of our party left early, but I stuck around and hung out for a bit with Josie, Chuck, and Jessica. (read more »)

Matthew Oldfield (Scubazoo), Peter Mooney (Scubapix), Stephen Wong,
Eric Cheng, and Simon Christopher (Scubazoo)

I just realized that I never posted details about my time at the Asia Dive Expo in Singapore (last weekend of April). I wrote up a report for Wetpixel.

I spent much of my time at ADEX with the FiNS crew (Tony Wu, Edmund Tee, Paul Lees), Jason Heller (DivePhotoGuide), Peter Mooney (Scubapix), the Scubazoo boys (Simon Christopher, Jason Isley, and Matthew Oldfield), En-Lai Yeoh (AP), Stephen Wong, Takako Uno, William Tan, Wetpixel members Cor Bosman, Julie Edwards, Paul Ng, Lena Goh, and Mathieu Meur, and folks representing diving in Papua New Guinea (Vilia Lawrence, Max Benjamin, and others)…

I know — no one cares… but it’s posting it here makes it easier for me to find later on. :)

Ahhh, I love computers. I recently acquired an eVGA e-GeForce 7900 GT CO SUPERCLOCKEDâ„¢ PCIe video card from NewEgg. After I installed the unit into my el cheapo Dell machine, I was greeted with a lovely blank screen upon reboot. I knew the card was installed properly because my computer actually booted into Windows properly (I could VNC into it); it was just that the video part of the video card didn’t work. Here’s the fix: (read more »)

Dell 2000FP 20″ LCD monitor for sale, with power cable, DVI cable, and analog VGA cable. 1600×1200 pixel resolution, analog, DVI, s-video, and composite inputs. Very good condition. $300, for pickup in Oakland (or, I can deliver, if you are conveniently located). Contact me if you’re interested!

Some of you have been asking me about Vienna Teng‘s new album, Dreaming Through the Noise. Well, you can stop asking me because you can simply place a pre-order directly from Zoë/Rounder Records! Yep, on July 25, 2006, the new album comes out. I’ve been listening to it, and it’s very good. If you liked her other two records, go pre-order the new album now. :)