All in all its another brick from the wall.

I had to go by my old USF house house to meet a contractor regarding window replacements and to fix an issue with one of the tenant's sinks and decided to run by campus to check out the new student center. The new building is fairly grand and will be quite the focal point for campus activities. It has a 3-4 story atrium with modern rooms, displays and a great layout that I wish was available when I attended the university. I did get in a couple of shots of the old building being demolished and could even see the remains of some of the rooms in which I use to hide away to study. I rarely get a chance to visit the campus any more, but it is nice to walk through on occasion.

Have you ever wondered why aquarium water tastes funny?

Kristen was able to get a couple of passes to the opening of a renovated/updated area called "Ocean Commotion" in the Florida Aquarium. Through her work with City of Tampa Riverwalk project, she has been in touch with many of the downtown businesses and attractions and knows many of the associated marketing people. We arrived a little early and had name tags waiting for us as we walked around for a little while. There was an open bar available along with hor d'ourves also being served as we sat around and enjoyed the exhibits in relative solitude. The opening itself didn't take very long with a relatively minor showing as the event was in likely competition with the baseball playoff game that evening; which was mentioned several times in the brief speeches.

There were not any really huge changes as I didn't recognize any additional exhibits as this seemed to be more of a rebranding or minor renovation than anything significant. The redesign, however was quite nice and I enjoyed the more vibrant colors where previously it was a fairly dark area. The public thoroughfare was completely refurbished along with a new theme; something along the lines of a voting for a favorite animated character at the end of the walk through which there were various interpretative displays conveying different characters. While it was obviously geared towards children, my anecdotal experience with kids has me guess that they really are not so interested in that kind of theme. Having interactive displays is great, but they really are not going to go much more in depth than pushing a few buttons to see a change and won't really process a lot out of it. I'd be surprised of anyone ever pays attention to the theme of voting for a character other than parents that are dragging kids along and specifically directing their attention to it in a "Here honey, you need to come here and enter your vote. Do it right now I tell you!" The overall increase in visual and interactive displays will appeal to a young audience that would more appreciate the color and technology; 'oh look, something shiny!' I would love to see a display that actually has a real, serious FAQ list near each display, or just one collection per section. Something like a list regarding SCUBA diving for the shows or basic elements of each species would be useful for those interested in taking the time to learn more but not wanting/remembering to google when they get home. I did like the new exhibit and plan to continue the membership I've had at the Fl Aquarium for the past few years. My new camera hasn't come in yet, but when it does I may try to find a time in the late afternoon before closing to bring it out with a tripod and get in some decent shots. I have a new wide angle lens coming in as well, so hopefully my future panoramic shots will require less stitching, but with applications such as photosynth becoming more popular, it might not be necessary.

Is the Cesarean Section an historic district in Rome?

While reading some travel forums for idea of next year's trip, I found a post of a great deal from NYC to Rome for ~$320 round-trip. I had been planning on doing Peru and Ecuador next year, but now looks I'll either have to move it or squeeze in another trip. I have now booked the flight and leave NYC April 28 and return May 12. I'll probably add an extra day or so to play in New York so I can take in some shows, see sites, etc, so this will probably end up being a 17-18 day trip. This will be my first trip to Europe, so I'm excited about the possibilities. Over the next few weeks I'll start making plans and seeing what is out there. I need to check out travel opportunities to places such as Athens and Paris (which I'd definitely think I'd like to spend a couple of days to get to the Normandy beaches). Overall I travel cheap and light, so hopefully the entire trip would cost $1500-$2000with airfare, but we'll see if that is realistic. This year's New Zealand / Australia trip was a bit expensive because a lot of specialty events/activities (bungee jumping, liveaboard SCUBA trip, etc) and a lot of flights (12-14 different legs). If anyone has insights or ideas, then definitely let me know!

Squirt guns don't soak people; people soak people.

One of the really fun annual hash run events is the Super Soaker trail. Everyone is instructed to bring a water gun and it is fun to see the array of water weaponry that shows up. This year the trail and on-after party was at Dab's house north of Tampa. Trail was a nice mix of terrain and there were several stops with water to allow reloading of ammo as well as stashes of water balloons for impromptu ambush attacks.

If a man is talking in the woods and no woman hears him, is he still wrong?

For the weekend Kristen and I headed to the FL/GA border for a campout with the hashers. This was a new site, but it seemed to be a lot further than I thought and took quite a bit of traveling. We took up the daiquiri machine for its first realy workout and it was quite the hit! The campground was lacking a bit, especially hookups for the kitchen area, but we made do and had a good time seeing some old friends and generally just having a good time.

On the batting end of a no-hitter.

After attending a friend's birthday dinner at Wild Wings (my favorite place ever to eat from Charleston that now has a location in Tampa), we headed to another bar to listen to Stormbringer, one of Kristen's favorite cover bands that she has followed for years. As I haven't been in a long while, we headed to Hollywood Studios (formerly MGM Studios) Saturday at Disney last weekend to putz around. Even though it was a Saturday, there really were not too many lines. The stunt car show, which I have never seen, wasn't operating, however we were able to take in many of the other activities such as the Indy stunt show, Rock 'n' Roller Coaster, and a few rides on the Tower of Terror; so overall a typical park day. I finally sent in my broken camera lens this week, so hopefully I'll get it back sometime in the near future. I'd really like to play with HDR photography as well as Photosynth and make some photo point clouds of places such as a theme park in the near future. Kristen has been deal with a lot of stress as she gets overloaded with work projects, so tonight I took her out to dinner at the Jerk Hut and the local fun park to do some racing and batting to slam out some tension. We took in a few laps of the go kart and about a hundred pitchs in the cage and felt much better.

Life in the fast lane

Here it comes!

There it goes!

What this explosion needs, is a little more cowbell.

Corn oil is from corn, whale oil is from whales, baby oil... Naaa

I was working at the office a bit yesterday in the parking lot when a small car pulled in reeking of smoke. A kid and his friend came out, popped the hood, and started staring at the engine, so I walked over to see what the issue may be. I looked around and saw some burned areas on the metal as well as smelled unmistakable burned oil. My first guess was a gasket had blown and oil was getting into the combustion chamber or the engine had thrown a rod. Dr. Cox, the tenant in the other building happened to be there and looked at the oil dipstick and mentioned it was strange that oil was all the way up the rod and maybe it was splashing out. He wiped it down, returned it, and then checked again and the same result. The oil wasn't part way up the indicator, it was most of the way up the rod itself. The kid was extremely confused and said "I just added a jug of oil today, I don't see why there would be a problem." I asked him how much oil he added and he said "you know, a full jug" to which I tried to clarify if he meant one of the quart containers. No, apparently it was one of the full containers, about 5 quarts. I was a bit surprised and said "This is a small engine and probably take 3 quarts max, you have to be careful when you change the oil and check it as you add to be sure you don't go over. You're probably have oil splashing out of the dipstick and burning on the hot engine,", to which he added "what do you mean 'change'? Where do you do that?" Apparently he never drained the old oil and simply added new oil. The 3 quart capacity engine probably had 6-8 quarts of oil in it which might have even lead to a blown gasket. This kid didn't seem to understand that the engine doesn't consume/combust/burn oil; it merely lubricates moving parts in a sealed system. On top of all that he mentioned that he was on his way to sell the vehicle, so I hope the potential buyer was smart enough to have it checked out or especially be wary of the burning smell that'll be impossibly to completely remove now.

I am constantly surprised by people who will spend 5-9 months of full, untaxed salary for a complex mechanism and not take an hour to go through a manual that explains the critical systems. They'll spend hundreds more on stereos and new rims, not not even try to comprehend how the system works. I tried the help the kid and send him on hiw way, but I wonder if this will be chaulked up as "oh well" or will actually be a learning experience.

In a hurricane, you can fly anything. Landing is the problem though.

I've been working a bit over at the Alafia River house on various projects for a few weeks. One of the bigger projects was the installation of a front driveway gate. We'd been searching Craig's List for a while and found a large gate in Sarasota that I picked up a month or so back and did the welding earlier in the month. It took a bit of calling, but found a metal supply place that had 6" square tubing to be used as a vertical support as well as online searches for the hinges that could take the weight. After a lot of digging, concrete mixing, and leveling, we finally got it installed. Then we had to do the digging to install the code panel, egress button, and control box. The last bit was to bring out the generator and drill through 1/4" steel to install the necessary brackets before putting in the opener. After all the work, the gate has been installed with the last of the work involving just burying 800 feet of 12v cable to the nearest electrical outlet to install a transformer for the control unit.

While working on the gate Saturday, for whatever reason a seemingly healthy tree decided to give up the ghost and fell right onto the workshop. Tropical Storm/Hurricane Fay had brought in some rains, but there was almost no wind when the tree fell and it wasn't raining at the time, so I'm not sure what caused it. A large hole was punched through the ridge line as well as by the soffit. I had to go up to the roof and as it was raining cut apart enough of the tree so that I could put in a temporary tarp. Now the beginning of my week is spent cutting out the broken roofing, putting in new pieces, and reinstalling new shingles.

To be a Redneck, you must have been a 'snipe' hunter more than once!

One of hash friends is from Alabama and is quite proud of his heritage, so every year we celebrate his birthday with a Redneck Hash trail run. The theme is for everyone to dress up in their most country outfit and do a trail and on-after in a country area in our case Seffner. We had a pretty large turnout and a good time with plenty of rednecky spots and trail twists. Everyone cam so well prepared that we actually seemed to have blended in with the real local crowd without much comment. Kristen won the 'Purtiest Girl' contest, most deservedly, and got a lovely beer can trophy!

If women can fake it all the time, then why not the Chinese?

http://www.athlists.com/?p=36

I'm so over the 'Olympics' even before they began. I had a party at my house the evening of the opening ceremonies, but that was more an excuse to have friends over rather than any interest in what was going on. When receiving the bid a long time ago, it was promised that there would be unfettered access to the media and that all these changes would be made. Nothing was done except to hide the reality of life there. Just because that government wants to put on a biggest PR campaign, tens of thousands of people are harmed.

Reporters at the Olympics are constantly finding access blocked by the 'Great Firewall' to many Internet sites. The 'spectacular' fireworks seen on TV were faked by computer generated graphics. The claim was because it was 'too dangerous' for helicopters, but no one buys that. While there were fireworks of course, the external display shots were all pre-made, with even some camera shake to trick the user that it was real or live. The girl that sang was fake. Sure it was a real girl on camera, but the singing was lip synced and was the pre-recorded voice of another girl that was deemed to not be cute/perfect enough to be on display. Walls are put up all around the venues, not for security, but to keep people from seeing the reality of the poverty of those that live nearby.

Now there are additional articles about China passing off gymnasts under the age, possibly 14 according to reports, as being at least 16, the required minimum. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/27/sports/olympics/27gymnasts.html?_r=3&hp=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print&oref=login [use login no-forced-login and password buggeroff to read article w/o registering]. Even the weather was sort of faked with complex concentric defense networks to take out any terrorist clouds of vapor by salting them before any approach the Olympic complex.