I'm Going Home - A deathbed song.  You might say I'm channeling my wife on this one (I'm not a religious person but she is).  

Out Of Time - Inspired by the life of a poor character in an ever present dungeon crawler game with a countdown.  We spend all of our time imagining ourselves inside the game.  They'd probably just want to get out!

After that you can choose 3 others.  At the orientation, the instructor Patrick suggested the best other 3 for us to do but gave some leeway in case we wanted to do something different.  Thankfully everyone was fairly laid back and agreed to go with the offered suggestion:  Underwater Naturalist, Wreck Diving, and Night Diving.  

After a brief delay (someone forgot their weight pouches)  we started with Underwater Naturalist.  Thanks to a good bit of experience due to my normal buddy's photography, I had a fairly good knowledge of the regulars we would see before we even got started.  I ended up with a nice survey of marine life and easily passed the requirements. For Underwater Navigation, we just had to do a simple rectangle, with compass headings, and using kick stroke counting to "measure" the distances.  We ended up more trapezoidal...one team almost triangular ;-) but I think in the end we all had it figured out.  Unfortunately we weren't able to find the instructor's dive cache.  That was supposed to be a stretch goal, but alas it didn't turn up.

A few more winter storms interrupted the continuation of our instruction.  Two weeks later we finally got out again on the Waterhorse boat.  This time over to the Yukon.  It's really amazing to see for yourself.  Dropping down the line above the mid section of the ship, seeing the big guns and the outline of the whole ship under you.  It is just one of those things that pictures really don't do it justice.  We had a huge school of blacksmiths (fish) swirling around us.  It was great!  Unfortunately we were limited by air to a short Deeper Dive.  The partial color loss was obvious at 95 feet deep.  Otherwise nothing to it.  I was kind of expecting to go deep enough to find out what nitrogen narcosis feels like but no luck (or lack of luck) this time.

After a surface interval we were ready to get back into the water for the Wreck Dive.  And there I made mistake #3.  Just to rehash... Mistake #1 was flooding my underwater video camera.  Mistake #2 was flooding my first dive light.  Both just expensive stupid mistakes.  I guess you could say I had my first "real" mistake. 

Mistake #3.  My buddy and I didn't do buddy checks.  We did them the first dive.  Everything good, and ready to go.  But alas, on the 2nd dive we didn't.  He's much less experienced (not that I have all that much, but I certainly had more, and know better).  Thankfully it had no serious reprecussions.  My buddy didn't remove the regulator from the tank between dives.  And thus the boat crew didn't fill his tank.  He was back in the water with the same amount of air he'd come out with!  So, back on the boat he went.

Thankfully there was an already full tank, to swap to.  It didn't hold up our Wreck dive too long.  But... I spent the whole dive, that evening, and even the next day, burning the idea into my brain.  That shouldn't have happened.  Thank goodness we didn't get any futher before he found out.  So I plan on being the really annoying, very particular and detail oriented buddy from now on to make sure that doesn't happen again.

With the threat of more storms coming we decided to try (and succeeded) in pulling off the Night Dive two days later (tonight).  We dove La Jolla Shores.  Thankfully its very familiar to me now.  Not quite to the point where I have a mental map, but I have a decent idea of where things are.  We dropped in a bit after sunset. Unfortunately, a little too shallow.  Thats usually no big deal, but the particulates were thick.  It was a no fun swim out to the canyon. We traversed the main wall for a good while, and then headed in.  Got to see an Octopus, a Juvenile Horn Shark, and numerous crabs, nudibrachs and the typical La Jolla Shores flora.  Something big kicked up a cloud of silt as we were approaching one part of the wall.  I really wanted to know what it was but it was either hiding well in the silt cloud or already gone.  We surface to a beautiful night sky, and a nice easy kick in to shore.

 I picked up an Astromaster 130EQ Telescope from Costco.  It seemed to be a good starter telescope, with minimal cost.  It came with decent recommendations on a few of the astronomy forums.  Good sized newtonian reflector, equatorial mount, and a motorized tracker option.  For less than $200, it's an amazing deal.  I ended up also buying the extra eyepiece and filter kit, but skipped the motor mount.  I'd read that it was a little coarse.  The finder scope leaves much to be desired.  I just rough point, and use the 32mm eyepiece to center what I'm looking for.  Then I just swap finer and finer eyepieces to "zoom" in on the target.

The local weather report is the first stop before a night of viewing.  The Clear Sky Chart is an amazingly valuable tool for that.  I can plan when I should be out for optimal viewing, or if I should just find something to watch on Netflix ;-)  and call it an evening.  

Edit:  Looks like it was public knowledge back in August of last year!  

There hasn't been much progress in buggy whip manufacturing in the last century.  And I'm pretty sure the vast majority of the population is perfectly fine with that.  Likewise, at some point computers will reach a level of miniaturization that is "good enough".  Then they will stop shrinking.  Consumers will not pay the premium.  And that effect trickles down.  Same for bandwidth usage,  image resolution, etc.  Take for example the new Nokia 808 Pureview 41 mega pixel camera.  It's amazing.  So amazing that the lens can't handle it.  That might drive lens quality to improve, but its more likely to follow the current course; some marginal improvements in the image quality for a final image size significantly less than 41 MP.  Its cool.  Sure.  But its not a breakthrough.  The march of progress slows, and flows into other things.  

I guess you might say I'm waiting for the paradigm shift.  From desktops to laptops to PDAs, and smart phones and now tablets.  We've come a long way.  Or have we?  

   

Over the course of 3 weeks, we had 3-4 classroom sessions, talking about the basic language, mechanics and physics of scuba diving.  The instructor Ed had an excellent grasp of how to teach the material, and I thought gave a great balance of humor and seriousness.  Between class sessions we had pool dives to get used to breathing through a regulator, being underwater, controlling our bouyancy, and demonstrating a number of skills.  The most awesomely fun skill to practice is mask clearing.  It takes a while to get used to.  Good thing they start it in the pool.  Mask clearing can be a whole new level of suck in the ocean when the freezing ocean water first hits your eyes.  On top of that, its  stinging salty water!  After the class and pool sessions we graduated to doing some shore dives at the aptly named La Jolla Shores.  I'm quite familiar with that beach.  Its our "goto" destination when we want to surf and don't have much time.  It was odd being there with the diving crowd, and seeing the surfers head out to do their thing.  The first shore dives were only down to 20 feet or so.  After demonstrating all but a handful of necessary OW skills we finished up with a boat dive to the Los Coronados Islands aboard the Humbolt.  With most of our skills out of the way, we were able to spend a majority of the dives actually acting like divers =)    We did both Coronados dives at a site called Lobster Shack, to a depth of about 40 feet.  Here I learned from my first personal mistake.  

The night before I had been trying to get everything ready.  I knew we had an under water video camera.  But I couldn't remember how deep I could take it.  Of course, I couldn't find the manual either.  I found the camera the next morning just before I left.  Still sleepy, I looked at it.  On the side it said 15m.  Oh good I thought.  I knew that we were only going to about 40ft.  Oh boy how wrong I was.  I had some decent footage of the surface.  The camera went odd about 20 ft down.  On surfacing I found the cause.  In my haste, and tiredness, I misread the damn thing.  It wasn't 15m.  It was 1.5m.  Who the heck writes 1.5m anyway?  So.. there went a few hundred bucks.  Lesson learned... or so I thought.

Personal mistakes aside, scuba can be a dangerous endeavor.  I make it a habit to read the ScubaBoard accidents and incidents section every so often.  That way I can 1) learn from other's mistakes, and 2) keep a good level of respect for diving.  

San Diego is an excellent place for someone to take up diving.  Many of the most prolific organizations are represented through the local dive shops.  The main ones I took under consideration are PADI - the most popular and recognized world-wide, NAUI - the second most recognized organization, and GUE - the Global Underwater Explorers.  Of the three, GUE provides the most training, and actually makes the most practical sense, but only after the fact.  Like many experiences in life, its hard to know what you need until you really get into it.  Having said that, I've started with PADI and I'll continue with it probably through the Rescue Diver Certification.  

The Dock File:

The Eclipse ICNS replacement

We got problems folks. BIG problems.  Trying to push a few pathetic do nothing bills is beyond crazy.  The President has described this as our Sputnik moment.  How limited.  Sputnik was a milestone of achievement that indicated the technological superiority of another nation over the US of A.  The people of the nation banded together in interest, in scientific, and in technological achievement to slay the dragon of a people's inferiority complex.  Not that such a thing bothers me.  Whatever can drive us forward without dragging us into the abyss of inhumanity is worthwhile in my book.  To see our nation's financial system crumbling, and in turn our global influence wain, and have all of that set in relation to a single satellite launch is staggering in its implication.  Do we make so little of the problem facing this Nation?  

How many moments have we heard of something occurring in this nation that made you shake your head in disbelief?  Rampant corruption, idiotic bureaucracies, debauchery, stupidity of previously untold degrees, and more.  How many times have we heard of hundreds of millions (or even billions) of dollars being wasted on government cancelled projects, cost over-runs, or outright fraud?  

Ladies and Gentlemen (and everyone else...) the check has arrived.  From WW2 through 1963, the Income Tax rate topped out at 90%+ depending on the year.  The data is here and its pretty compelling.  How did we pay for WW2 and Korea?  Topped out taxes!  If employers were looking at earning less than 10c on the dollar after some rational limit or pushing that $ into business infra, R&D, or heaven forbid... actually paying their employees MORE!  Perhaps 1) we'd not have this deficit and 2) we might actually be progressing as a Nation rather than "falling behind".  For those who might question this, call it un-American, etc... Remember this includes the entire era of the 1950s.  It covers the span of time when Norman Rockwell was painting many of the iconic images we associate with American life.  The idea that low/no taxes is Conservative is pure insanity.  You want low/no taxes?  FIRST pay the bills.  The country must pay its bills. Then we as a Nation can practice living within our means.  If you still want a lower tax burden, and you are willing to accept the corresponding reduced services, go for it!  

One of the most profound messages needs to be delivered to our nations leadership, for they are failing in this regard:

"Try and leave this world a little better than you found it and when your turn comes to die, you can die happy in feeling that at any rate you have not wasted your time but have done your best." Robert Baden-Powell

Oh my yes what a surprising thing to do.  Its not like we don't have an example of a US Fed Chairman doing the EXACT SAME THING.

oh and on an unrelated note... the Highlander won.  It is so nice =)

I like the idea of owning at least one real 4wd vehicle, but the reality is that the new 4runner SR5 sucks.  There is no central diff, and no rear locker!  Basically you can't do 4wd on hard surface, and its really a 2wd vehicle even with the 4wd engaged.  If you were in a situation with one front wheel spinning and one rear wheel spinning... you are stuck!  They gutted the best thing about the Gen4's offroad capabilities!   We could move up to the limited and get the central diff.  That gives full time 4wd, but still no locker.  Or move to the Trail, but no 3rd row... AND no central diff.  Insult to injury; both are way more than I want to spend bling-wise.  

Why is there no SR5 + rear locker + Torsen central diff?  I could have a full time 4wd, and actually have the ability to get unstuck a heck of a lot more often.

With the SR5's capabilities seeming to be crippled, the Highlander AWD is looking much more attractive.  Smoother ride, slightly more room, and a few grand cheaper.  If I could get a rear locker on it, I'd feel much more confident than without, but there are some pretty good off asphalt reports, particularly of driving it in the snow.  The new Highlander is damn ugly, but I don't care too much about that.  

If the SR5 4 runner were a little more capable, or the Highlander AWD a little less... it'd be no contest.  Alas.