| in which my job is fun |
[May. 14th, 2008|02:13 pm] |
As some of you know, I am somewhat underemployed - not that I mind. I do end up doing a lot of mindless drudge work that really doesn't need my advanced degrees. On the other hand, sometimes the mindless drudge work is kind of cool.
One of the things I do is publish climate model data to the Earth System Grid, a web interface to a distributed data library. Users need accounts to retrieve the data. I have a list of all of the institutions people have listed on their account information and am going through the list with Google, Wikipedia, and Wikimapia, making a spreadsheet of institution names, URLs, and latitudes and longitudes with which to make a Google Earth KML file that will show all the places our users come from. It's sort of like archaeology, starting with a fragment of pottery (CIHEAM-bari, IRI, PIK) and trying to recreate who, what, and where. Plus, yay for getting paid for playing around the web all day! |
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| spring is sprung, it's time for river running |
[Apr. 24th, 2008|09:10 am] |
The problem with having nice friends who invite you on river trips and loan you nifty inflatable kayak thingies is that then you get all covetous and want to spend money and get your own.
That's me on the Dolores river, paddling the Fat Cat, which is kind of like a cross between a kayak and a cataraft. Steve and his girlfriend Sue are on the cataraft in the background, and Britt, who took the picture, is in an inflatable kayak (duckie). Britt and I traded crafts on and off, but I felt a lot more confident in the Fat Cat and used it in all the named (class II and III) rapids. Part of it was because the cat is more stable and the seat's higher, so I could see better, but part of it was because during my first stint in the duckie, the wind was blowing really hard (well, it was blowing most of the trip!) and one astonishingly strong gust overturned the duckie and knocked me into the water. Yep, I took a spill in flatwater - and had no problem with any of the rapids. Clearly, I have a very special talent. Sigh.
The Dolores is a nifty river. The section from Slickrock to Bedrock (yabba-dabba-dooo!) starts out in a fairly open valley which the river paradoxically travels through crosswise; the valley subsided after the river was entrenched. Then it enters a classic desert sandstone canyon which was occupied by pre-Puebloan cultures who left plenty of artwork behind:
( More pictures and more river rambling. )
I should add that we drove our NEW SPORTSMOBILE YAY out to do this trip (well, it's just a couple hours west of here) and we camped in it the night before we put in - everything seemed to work beautifully. I'm pretty excited about the prospect of more desert trips this spring, and mountain trips this summer.
 Except now I want a Fat Cat. (Britt wants just a regular inflatable kayak, like the Aire he was using, which costs maybe a couple hundred $ less - not much difference, really.) Steve got his at the Outdoor Retailer show in Salt Lake, which we went to last year and came back from with all sorts of schwag and pro-deal stuff. So the question is, do we shell out the money for the boats now, so we can play all spring and summer, or do we wait until OR in August and maybe save a thousand bucks between the two of us? Thing is, this is a wet year, and there are a lot of tiny rivers which are not normally runnable that we could do. Like the Escalante, which is very tempting - remember this picture from our hike last year? It's runnable maybe one year in five. And this is it. Steve offered to loan us his boats again - but then reconsidered, because he wants to come with us, and he'd need one of them! Then again, we could just rent inflatable kayaks, which I'd be fine with as long as we did flatwater rivers. Decisions, decisions.
But I think we will go to OR again. I guess I should work on our website so it looks a little more legitimate... :-) |
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| oh hai |
[Apr. 7th, 2008|08:31 am] |
Wow, has it been a month? Um, distracted with my other journal? Distracted with politics? Distracted with...ooh, shiny!
Yeah, I'm kind of like that. I still read my flist on this journal, never fear (although pretty much just once a day or every few days).
Today is my wedding anniversary. Britt's been putting up with me for 17 years of official wedded bliss (plus a bit more than a year of living in sin). The man deserves a medal, he does.
Anyway, we are busily tarting up our Sportsmobile and hope to do a shakedown long-weekend cruise to Utah this weekend - that will be a good start to getting back to this journal's usual pictures of outdoorsy stuff. |
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| the next adventure |
[Mar. 5th, 2008|09:28 am] |
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This weekend we are headed up to Laramie to look at a used Sportsmobile. It's a lot like our old Westfalia Synchro, except, you know, with an actual engine instead of a hamster wheel. Absurdly expensive, too. Um, yay? |
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| Gary Gygax memorial haiku |
[Mar. 4th, 2008|01:50 pm] |
Saving throw dice fall
but we all, ultimately,
use up our hit points. |
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| you know you live in Colorado when... |
[Feb. 15th, 2008|04:38 pm] |
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...you wake up to a snowstorm, and in the middle of the afternoon go for a run in t-shirt and shorts. |
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| some additional caucus thoughts |
[Feb. 6th, 2008|05:07 pm] |
The Electoral Vote site (which is syndicated at ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/syndicated.gif) electoralvote) has some interesting analysis of the Super Tuesday results. In particular, the Votemaster (Andy Tanenbaum) sorted the Democratic popular vote percentages and came up with the interesting tidbit that the most overwhelming majorities for Obama were in caucus states:Obama did extremely well in caucus states and Clinton did very badly in them. How come? Turnout in caucus states is always low, usually about 10-20% of the electorate. Only highly motivated people bother to show up, especially the Democratic caucuses, which go on for hours and people haveto publicly defend their choice. Obama has a smaller, but extremely active and loyal following, especially among younger voters. These are precisely the people who can swing a caucus state by showing up in droves and working hard to convince the other voters that Obama would make a great President. In primary states, the media, especially TV ads have a much bigger influence. This was certainly the case at our caucus, where we had a lot of people who had never before come to a caucus, and all but one were Obama supporters. (They were not all young, by any stretch of the imagination.)
One anomaly in the table of percentages is New Mexico, which is listed as a caucus state but split nearly 50-50 between the candidates. Since Durango's only half an hour from the NM state line, we get New Mexico news in our daily newspaper. When I read the coverage of the caucus, I immediately thought: hmm, that sounds more like a primary than a caucus. I did a little Googling and found out that yep, the New Mexico "caucus" is basically a primary. There is no discussion, no open voting. Voters cast ballots at the caucus site and then leave, and they can even cast absentee ballots in advance.
I think Obama's success in caucus states says a lot about his appeal. He inspires people. And I think that's important. |
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| caucus circus |
[Feb. 6th, 2008|12:11 pm] |
Well, it's over and it was a blast. For those of you who don't know, my husband and I are co-committee-chairs of La Plata County's Precinct 3 (Colorado) for the Democratic Party. We started at the 2004 caucus, at which there were 12 people. At the 2006 caucus, we had 6. Last night, we had 39.
( I belong to no organized political party: I'm a Democrat. )
Then, a bunch of us went out to one of the local brewpubs and drank beer and watched CNN reporting the results on the TV over the bar. Woo! Next time, I'm going to suggest we hold the caucus in the bar. |
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| House meme |
[Jan. 21st, 2008|01:46 pm] |
Via ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) zadcat. I've linked a bunch of answers to photos, although many of them are from the remodel so some of the background things have changed (like the front door in the floor photo).( Our house is a very very very fine house ) |
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| deer in the snow, and a house update |
[Jan. 19th, 2008|09:58 am] |
I took these pictures last week but just got around to uploading them to Flickr. Remember the big pile of branches and tree limbs that were left from the big honking snowstorm? Turns out that's a deer buffet. ETA: Hee, they're out there again today!
( Couple of deer pictures. )
Also, an update on the ( roof situation. ) |
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| Bobby Fischer Memorial Haiku |
[Jan. 19th, 2008|09:10 am] |
Playing chess with Death
Even the most skilled masters
Have to lose sometime. |
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| Sir Edmund Hillary Memorial Haiku |
[Jan. 11th, 2008|11:03 am] |
Some are old, some bold
But few old, bold mountaineers --
There's one fewer now. |
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| Cochise Stronghold trip, Thanksgiving 2007 |
[Dec. 11th, 2007|09:31 pm] |
I, um, just remembered that we took a bunch of photos of this trip. Me, Britt, Kristen, Rolfe, and Gregory went to Cochise Stronghold, which is in southern Arizona about a million miles eleven hours south of here. We'd intended to do a bunch of climbing, but the weather got sucky; we climbed What's My Line (5.6 A0) in cold, windy conditions and then bailed on doing anything other than hiking around a bit the next day, because it snowed. Phooey.
Kristen climbing
Britt rappelling
Me in a horizontal chimney (possibly the exit of Inside Passage, possibly just some random squeeze)
Me, Gregory, Kristen, and Rolfe around our campfire
Seventeen pictures here on my flickr page. |
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| love |
[Dec. 5th, 2007|05:55 pm] |
I went for a run this evening, through the neighborhoods to the south and then across the highway to a park and the river trail, where I turned west - and headed straight into the most gorgeous sunset ever, vivid pink and gray waves of cloud over the mountains. I wished I had a cell phone with me so I could call Britt and say, "You have to go outside and look at the sunset!" It was phenomenal.
The run was pleasant, and then I got home, and as soon as I stepped in the door, Britt said, "You must have seen the sunset! Wasn't it amazing?" It turns out that the pink wash of light in the window had been so remarkable that he went outside, and watched the sunset in its full glory. And it made me so happy - all I could think of was, "Yay! He got to see the sunset, too!" |
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| evel knievel memorial haiku |
[Dec. 3rd, 2007|08:38 am] |
motorcycles fall
with max acceleration
to jump River Styx |
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| the best thing about living in Durango |
[Nov. 16th, 2007|09:46 am] |
It's not the mountains to our north and east or the redrock desert to the west. It's not the Animas River running through the heart of town. It's not the awesome blue-sky weather.
It's the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory, and their twice-yearly second-quality chocolate sale, and as a previous customer I get to go to the pre-sale tonight instead of the regular sale tomorrow, and if I get out of there with less than 30 pounds of truffles, toffees, chocolate mints, and so on, it will be a miracle.
OMG CHOCOLATE YAY. |
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| epistolary |
[Nov. 12th, 2007|06:25 pm] |
Dear La Niña,
It's not that I actually mind walking downtown in shorts and a t-shirt in mid-November. But the mountains look kind of stark, all brown with no snow on them. More importantly, we ponied up for weekday passes at Purgatory Durango Mountain Resort, and we would like to get our money's worth this year. And of course, this year's snowfall will turn into next summer's water supply, and the plants I put in the yard this summer are going to die if I can't give them at least a little.
Yes, I know that it's still early in the winter, and our big snowfalls typically happen later. But we're currently at 10% of normal snowpack for this time of year, which does not bode well. So if you don't mind, could you move the jet stream just a tad southward? The San Juan River Basin will thank you.
Sincerely yours,
Ilana |
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| naming of names |
[Oct. 28th, 2007|09:57 am] |
I'm reading The Devil Wears Prada (and I'm only about halfway through, but so far I really like it - I haven't seen the movie) and I just encountered a character named "Ilana." And I can't help it: I always get a little weirded out, a little thrilled, and a little tossed out of the story, because that's my name, damn it, that is me, and what am I doing in this story?
At least in this book I seem to be a sympathetic character, unlike most of the others in the book (and if I turn out to be a supervillain, please don't tell me!). I was a little depressed when reading The Source because I got killed fairly early on. Ditto that really bad movie, The Arrival, and hey, that character was even actually named for me (although she was modeled on Susan Solomon), so I was totally justified in my over-identification. Then there was the Harry Potter fanfiction story I read (because it was a meme: search on your real name at ff.net) where I was a History of Magic teacher who'd gone to school with the Potter, Sr. generation, an animagus from the age of six, and a half-elf with waist-length azure hair and a nice set of dragonfly wings. (All at the same time.)
Do the rest of you get this weird jolt when you read your name in fiction (or hell, in a newspaper article)? I feel ridiculously proprietary about my name, maybe because I was thirteen years old before I met someone else who shared it (and she didn't spell it "right," so she sort of didn't count). I can't imagine what it would be like to be named Lisa or John or something like that. |
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| Escalante hike |
[Oct. 3rd, 2007|05:14 pm] |
So, some of you may be familiar with the Windom Deathmarch. Ahem. Britt and I have just returned from backpacking in the Escalante region of southeast Utah, in which we made this literal (sort of!) by exploring both Death Hollow and Little Death Hollow (which are two completely different areas some 30 miles distant from each other). Our victims were our friend Kevin, who lives in Annapolis, and his girlfriend Jenny.
( Death Hollow )
( Little Death Hollow )
And if you haven't had enough, you can see all 37 photos on our Flickr page. |
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