Irrelevance Glorified

At the end of last year, I visited Bruce and Tina up in Walla Walla. I forgot to bring my camera, but I did have my phone on me, so I took some pictures and videos with it. It came in handy when the kids did something amusing at dinner. Here they are…

Flickr Set here.

Nile likes to stuff animals down his pants. And they also like to wear cookware. Very nice. Also note the tendency to do something cute until the parents try and take a picture of it.

Cyrus is a grazer. So after some weak attempt at eating, he would scream to be let down, and then he would wander around and every once in a while eat something. Anyways, he would periodically shout “Up!”, asking to be picked up. Then Bruce or Tina would say “No Up!”, denying his request. And then he would cackle loudly, walk over to the other parent, and then repeat.

Nile pushed his toy something-or-other (maybe it was the lawnmower?) through the snow. I can only imagine what an experienced tracker would have thought if he came across these tracks in the middle of the woods.

I think this preceded some episodes where Nile pushed how close he could get to whacking Cyrus without getting in trouble.

A perfect metaphor for being a parent. In case you don’t notice, Nile is in the background, ready with a baseball bat in case Cyrus can’t finish the job.

When I visited, Cyrus had a bit of an awkward sleep schedule. He would get really tired at lunch. If they let him go to sleep, then he didn’t really eat much lunch, and he would wake up later hungry and pissed off. So the main effort was to try and get him eat as much as they could until he conked out.

I just can’t imagine how this is a comfortable sitting position for children.

There were times where he would fall asleep with food in his mouth.

Last September, one my good friends from college tied the knot. Russell was kinda an inherited friend — he went to high school with Yusuke before Yusuke joined me at IMSA. So, when I went to UIUC and roomed with Yusuke, I ended up hanging out a lot with Russell and Cameron. Russell is a very likable guy. In fact, he would annoy me greatly because whenever we went out places, people were always coming up to us and greeting him. He was always knowing people. Infuriating. Anyways, after graduating, he went up to Wisconsin to work for Kimberly-Clark, becoming our go-to guy for absorbables. Early last year I found out that he had become engaged to a lucky lady, and was planning his wedding for later on that year. When I found out that Yusuke was engineering his vacation to coincide with the wedding, I knew I had to make it. A number of the pictures below showcase his adorable daughter Itsuki. I often wonder what goes through the head of young children when they visit another country where they don’t speak the same language. I mean, it’s gotta be weird to get into a big metal tube, appear in a strange new area with lots of strange looking people, and all of a sudden no one understands you! Maybe I’m just underestimating the youth of today.

Flickr Set Here
Slideshow Below
Pictures & descriptions after the jump

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Last year, when I was planning out my vacations, I noticed that I had stuff for July, September, October, and November, but no August. Well, luckily Bruce and Tina were free for August, and they graciously offered to host a visit in Walla Walla. The last time I had the pleasure of going up there, they were renting a house and their youngest was basically a sack of potatoes. By this time, they had bought a place, and little Cyrus was turning one. Nile had taken an interest in all the pictures Bruce had taken in the past, and so he knew who I was, and had seen lots of proof that me and him had met before. I was looking forward to not needing a “warm up” period with him, at least. Just as advertised, when I was picked up at the airport, he greeted me with a “Hi, Uncle Jeet!” rather than just staring at me suspiciously.

With all the rugrats running around, long hiking trips were out of the question, but I’m a pretty low maintenance guest. All I look for is an opportunity to relax with friends. So we did a little wine tasting (Walla Walla has a huge number of vinyards), a little light hiking, and played some Axis and Allies.

Flickr Set Here
Slideshow below
Pictures and Descriptions After the Jump

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This is a bit out of order, but whatever. Last July, I decided to spend Independence day in Seattle, visiting my good friends Cameron and Gina. It was my first visit to their place since their kid, Ariana, was born. My visit was also a catalyst for our old college friend, Dave, to visit from Champaign. I think he enjoyed the west coast.

I had heard that Seattle put on a decent fireworks show, but due to budget restrictions, they canceled it that year. After a furious donation drive effort, though, Seattleites raised enough money to put on the show anyways. Personally, I think that’s a bad precedent to set. Now, they’ll never get funding for a fireworks show. Anyways, we were going to go to the fireworks show, but the weather was somewhat uncertain, and we had a baby to transport as well. So we decided not to go to the fireworks, but try and check it out from the upstairs balcony, which technically had a view. But some trees were blocking the view of some of the shells, so we decided to check it out on the TV. After watching it on TV for a while….we remembered that watching fireworks on TV is usually not very entertaining. So we watched a movie. However, I did enjoy reflecting on this gradual descent through various levels of laziness.

Flickr set here.
Slideshow Below.
Pictures and Descriptions after the Jump.

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Well, in the last post, I claimed that I was only like six months behind on pictures. Then I actually looked through all the pictures in my camera and realized that I was quite wrong. So, I’ll just see if I can’t play some catch up (seriously).

Most of the hikes I go on are in the Bay Area proper. I’ve joined a few Bay Area MeetUp groups, so the selection of hikes is usually some sort of compromise where each location is reasonable no matter where you live. This week was a bit different, in that the destination was quite a ways south, near Big Sur. If I lived up in San Francisco, this might be prohibitively far away, but it works out decent enough for those of us down at the South end of the bay.

This weekend’s selection was Andrew Molera State Park, which lies right along the ocean near Big Sur. The trail is mostly exposed, with all the vegetation being scrubby bushes, probably because of all the salt mist. I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of wildflowers, though. We started out from the parking lot heading towards the beach, then hung a left and took the ridge trail up some steepish hills. The view would have been spectacular…if it hadn’t had been cloudy. The clouds in themselves weren’t so bad — mornings are often cloudy in California. The clouds/fog gradually retreats towards the coast as the sun rises, until only blue skies remain. However, since we were right on the coast, and not particularly lucky this day, the clouds lasted most of the hike. This was good news for those easily sunburned, but a bit disappointing to me. The ridge trail loops around to the Panorama and Bluff Trails, which skirt the coastline at a lower elevation than the ridge. From there, there are a few easy opportunities to head down to the beach, which we took advantage of before heading back to the trailhead. All in all, it was pretty enjoyable, and we went a little further south to grab an early dinner at a nice restaurant with a view.

I ended up taking some pictures of plants, but as usual, I didn’t know what they were. I figured that there had to be some wildflower identification sites out there, so I did some searching. The first resource I found was sponsored by the California Academy of Sciences, and was a database of flowers. This was exactly what I was looking for, in that it allowed me to search by color and and number of petals, which is about as much as a flower ignoramus such as me could handle. However, it wasn’t quite as comprehensive as I needed. That’s when I stumbled upon Calflora.org, which is a database of all sorts of California plants, both flowers and non-flowering plants. The awesome part of it was the What Grows Here? database, where you could put in a city or county or a state park and it would list all the species that they’ve found in that area. Pretty sweet. Due to that, I think I identified most of the flowers that I took pictures of.

Flickr Set Here.
Slideshow Below.
Pictures & Descriptions After the Jump

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Wowsers! I’m only six months behind on my updates.

I hate crossing time zones for personal trips. The flights are always so inconveniently timed and long. So when it comes time for the year-end holidays, I tend to stay on the West Coast. For Thanksgiving last year, I visited my friends Cameron and Gina up in Seattle. Looking back, most of these pictures are of their < 1 year old daughter, Ariana (aka Ari). Partially, that's because we didn't do a whole lot of exciting, picture worthy things. But mostly, it's because she is phenomenally cute. So yeah, enjoy pictures of squirmy happy baby. Again, I was too lazy to grab my camera most of the time, so most of the pictures and videos are with my phone.

Flickr set here
Slideshow below
Pictures & Descriptions after the jump

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Back in October 2010, I traveled back to Chicagoland for the wedding of one of my cousins. Due to the frenetic pace of school/work and the time/cost of travel, I rarely see any of my relatives. Because my Floridian sister can’t stand the cold (scientifically speaking), she rarely ventures North during the non-summer months. However, all bets are off for weddings. Family weddings are generally Rao-fests, where I see the relatives that I never see otherwise. This one was nicely timed, in that it was also my birthday. I forgot my camera on this trip, so I started taking pictures with my cell phone. It is a functional camera and can take decent videos, but the still image quality leaves a lot to be desired. So I’ve supplemented these pictures with pictures from my sister and my cousin Tara.

Flickr set here.
Slideshow below
Pictures & Descriptions after the jump.

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Last August, I went to Colorado for the NREL‘s 20th Silicon Workshop. This is a really nice conference series concentrating on crystalline silicon photovoltaics (as opposed to thin-film silicon, CIGS, Cd-Te, and solar thermal). It’s a nice mix of industry and academia (mostly industry), and the sessions touched upon the current problems facing the industry as well as a look into the future of the technology. It also happened to be in Breckenridge, a ski resort town. Of course, it was August, so there was no snow on the ground, but it was still a picturesque area. I was intrigued because Breckenridge sits at about 9,000 ft in elevation, which is already close to the highest I’ve been (on land). So, this trip not only offered a chance to learn about silicon photovoltaics (awesome), I could do a little bit of hiking on the nearby mountains and hit a personal best for hiking altitude.

Anyways, here are some pictures of the trip. I didn’t take very many; it was raining most of the time and I didn’t get to really explore so much.

Flickr set here.
Slideshow below.
Photos & descriptions after the jump.

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This one has been sitting in my Flickr account for a while, and I’ve just been too lazy to put it out. But I have enough other stuff that I want to post up that it’s time to man up and start posting.

Back last May, I visited Mount Tamalpais State Park, great wilderness area just north of San Francisco in Marin County. I’ve hiked in MTSP three or four times total, and each time has been fantastic. There is a nice mix of landscapes and wildlife that I just find really pleasant and relaxing.

My itinerary for this day was the Matt Davis – Steep Ravine – Dipsea trail route, a highly recommended one from a number of hiking guides. The trail starts out high, descending through a beautiful ravine centered around a creek (still flowing pretty well, as it was still May). The trail crosses the water multiple times, so there were a number of bridges. The trail emerges from the trees into a great view of Stinson Beach and the Bolinas Lagoon. The trail descends to sea level, and passes through the downtown of Stinson Beach, before heading back into the hills. After completing this ~ 7.5 mile hike, I took some scenic pictures of San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge from the Marin County Side.

Picture set on Flickr, here
Slideshow below
Pictures & descriptions after the jump.

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This past May, I visited Maker Faire again. You might remember me posting about it two years ago. It’s an annual exhibition of artisans, hobbyists, tinkerers, etc. put together by MAKE magazine. I didn’t attend last year, but looking at the press coverage, it seemed that many of the exhibits were the same, so I don’t think I missed all that much. I was interested in seeing if a two year gap would provide more changes. Nicely enough, my manager Al was also interested in going, so we met up at the San Mateo Fairgrounds and wandered around.

I am more of a scientist than an engineer; I might be able to talk about the fundamental thermodynamics of how an engine works, but I wouldn’t be able to make even a rudimentary engine. The mere thought of putting that all together leaves me dumbfounded. That’s one reason I love Maker Faire — it’s full of people who can take an idea from the flimsiest (and sometimes stupid) thought all the way through to an actual object. Anyways, I took a bunch of pictures, so hopefully you will enjoy them.

Pictures here.
Slideshow below.
Pictures & descriptions after the jump.

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