Not Eaten By Bears

So I got back from Inyo National Forest yesterday, where I went backpacking with DaveM last weekend. Had a pretty good time, with the usual types of adventures that I have on trips.

Day 0: Got to the Mosquito Flats trailhead late, late Friday night and crashed in the truck. Dave had the luxury of sleeping in the campground with Taita (his black lab). I didn't really sleep the night before, so I crashed hard. Fortunately it was far too cold for mosquitos to be a problem. The altitude is around 10,000 feet.

Day 1 - The Long Hike: So our plan was to make it to the Lower Pioneer Basin Lake to camp that night. I had a huge ass pack and as it turns out, am in not the greatest physical condition. Not that altitude helps much. The trail is about nine miles from the trail head and we had to go through Mono Pass at 12,000 feet or so. The outbound journey is mostly uphill. Going uphill I had to make frequent stops because my heart rate went way up (160+ bpm) trying to futilely to pump oxygen. We didn't get started until noon because we had to drive back to Mammoth Lakes to get a wilderness permit. The first part of the hike was decent, with a relatively gentle grade. We stopped for lunch at Ruby Lake, which was icy cold (there were traces of snow all through the area, more so at higher elevations). The next leg of the journey brought us over Mono Pass, which was tough for me, with probably the steepest climbing of the trip. However the day wasn't over by a long stretch. We travelled through the fairly barren summit area past Summit Lake over the next valley, where we could see our eventual goal. We had hoped that we could make it to Lower Pioneer Basin Lake by five or six, but as it was, we didn't get there until 7:30, well after dark. Along the way my body appeared to have completely run out of glucose. I couldn't think clearly, and really had to concentrate on where I was putting my feet down. In the gathering gloom I also started to see weird things out of the corner of my eyes. The shapes of things looked like other things to me, e.g. I thought I saw a shed in the middle of the woods. I ate all my trail mix, but it really didn't help. Dave got ahead of me as we were ascending the final rise to the camping area and I got to a part of the path where they'd dropped a couple of logs to divert water runoff and I couldn't tell if the trail just stopped or what. So I took the opportunity to change into warmer clothes (the sun was down at this point and it was quite chilly) and get my lamp out. Dave made it back to me in a short while and led me back to the field where we ended up camping. I felt like the guy in "To Build A Fire" who freezes to death in the Yukon when he can't build a fire. I just wanted to sit on a log and not move at all. Eventually we got our tents up and made some dinner. With some food in me I felt 1000% better. I got a nice exposure shot of the moon that illuminated the field we stayed in that night. I had the moon shining down on my tent that night when I went to sleep, which was really nice. It was extremely peaceful there, there weren't really any noises. Just what I was looking for when I left the Valley.

Day Two: Got up the next morning and finally got a look at the basin. Nice and remote. After a little breakfast, Dave and I hit the trail back. We decided to camp back at Ruby Lake, so we wouldn't be super tired after another long hike like the previous day. It was pretty funny, I didn't recognize a lot of the trail we'd covered the previous day when I was so spent. We made decent time, given that there was a lot of uphill climbing to do and I was pretty sore from the previous day. We stopped at Summit Lake, where Dave decided a high altitude swim (11,800 feet or so) was in order. We made it down to Ruby Lake before sundown this time and I didn't run out of energy until we had stopped hiking. I just lay in my tent for a while, not bending anything. Again, food helped. The only sounds that night were the gurgling brook and the jets that periodically overflew our site. It was colder this night (although there was frost on the tents both nights) and I couldn't get more than an hour of sleep or so. I don't think I ever got past REM sleep, because I had a ton of crazy dreams.

Day Three: Got up and had a chilly breakfast, because the valley we were in didn't get direct sunlight for nearly an hour after we got up. Dave sliced up what was left of the salami and we had "birthday sausages", which I joked didn't need any candles because they had enough tallow in them already. :-) Hit the spot, anyway. We hit the trail and the trip back to the trailhead was a piece of cake, all downhill or level hiking. We stopped in Lee Vining on the way back to check out Mono Lake, but didn't really have time to look at the Tufa. Oh well, maybe next time.

Got some photos here. There's also a map of our route here. The red line is the trail route. The numbers are:

1. Mono Pass, the high point of the journey.
2. Summit Lake, where Dave went swimming.
3. Where I saw The Wall.
4. Where I hit the wall.

Dental Nightmares

I saw this article over on Manda's blog. Evidently some dentist cooked up a scam to get a bunch of other dentists to perform painful, shoddy, and unnecessary dental work on low income patients so they could defraud Medi-Cal out of insurance money. I hope the irony of his situation becomes apparent to this joker as Bubba knocks out all of his teeth with a pipe (so he can't bite him) in prison.

Change In Travel Plans

Looks like I'm going to go backpacking with DaveM in Inyo National Forest, instead of Sequoia. If a bear eats me, someone feed my cats! :-)

Cat Stevens - Potential Terrorist

Oh, for Christ's sake. Yusef Islam, formerly known as the pop singer Cat Stevens, was pulled off (in Bangor Internation Airport in my old stomping grounds) a transatlantic flight and denied entry to the United States because it turns out that he's on a TSA watch list. Of course, it would have been perhaps nicer if they could have figured this out before the frigging plane was in the air! How does Cat freakin Stevens get on a terrorist watch list? What is wrong with this picture? Hello? McFly? Hello? [article]

Interesting Thoughts From Richard Clarke

Richard Clarke was on The Daily Show flogging the paperback version of his book when he put forth an interesting idea.

The Iraqis that we are currently fighting in Fallujah, are they responsible for 9/11?
No.
Did they support Saddam?
No.
Do they support al-Queda?
No.

So why are our troops in Iraq?
That's an excellent question.

Ghost In the Shell 2: Innocence

Well, this wasn't quite what I expected. On the whole, I liked it a lot, but I am in a distinct minority. This movie draws on a lot of Shirow's ideas from the manga. E.g. Technological forms are the natural extension of our DNA expressing itself. And Oshii (the director) elaborates on these themes at length. I think the long existential dialogs lost a lot of people. I kinda liked it. But not everyone will. There were a lot of beautifully rendered scenes. However, I didn't like the mixture of 2D and 3D animation some of the time because I didn't think they composited very well. Oh, and I am certain to be rendered a heretic, but I really could have used a dubbed version. It's really hard to follow the wordy, philosophical subtitles and watch the animation at the same time. Probably rates another viewing (by me, a lot of the people I went with will probably never go to a movie with me again :-)), but I don't know if I'll wait until the video comes out or not.

Change In the Weather

Oh yeah, one other thing. I think summer may be on its retreat here in The Valley of Eternal Heat and Smoke. I woke up this morning to the sound of rain pattering on the roof. Sweet, delicious rain! And the temperatures are markedly down from the heat of just a couple weeks ago. Finally.

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

Saw this this weekend. Wow! Wow! Wow-frickin-wow! They have made an art deco style movie! It's like what the makers of the old Buck Rogers serials would have done if they had modern video technology. The visuals are astonishing. The acting is tolerable, given that it's a genre picture. And that's saying a lot, given that I don't think that Gwenyth Paltrow can act her way out of a paper bag and I am not known for being an Angelina Jolie fan either. I think I may have to see this one on the big screen again.

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Listening to: Time to Die from the album American McGee's Alice by Chris Vrenna

Happy Birthday... To Me!

Ok, it's actually a little early. But my old TV was doing weird, weird things: changing to all blues and reds and black. And my birthday's right around the corner. Soooo, after a bunch of price/performance comparisons (ok, I looked at some reviews on the web) and a few trips to Fry's, Best Buy, and Circuit City, I ended up with my spiffy new widescreen Panasonic 34" HDTV. It's soooo big. The Omaha Beach scene in Saving Private Ryan, for instance, is insane. I may not leave the house for a while. :-) Thanks to Aki for helping me manhandle it into the house, Jeff for lending me his truck, and Mike for helping me to get the stand.

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Listening to: Diamond from the album Snatch Original Film Soundtrack by Klint

Ghost In the Shell: Innocence Opens this Weekend

At Camera 7. Also this weekend: Sky Captain and Lewis Black is in town. Looks like a busy weekend.

Jason Ricci

Since, by chance, both Aki and I ended up not doing the things we expected to be doing, we ended up heading over with Rachel to JJ's Blues Bar to see Jason Ricci. This guy plays unnatural sounding harmonica! He's really phenomenal! We had split after the first set, alas. It made me very sad to hear that after traveling from Nashville, the club did not want to pay Jason & company. It was also disheartening to hear that he had to play 300 days a year to make a living. Check his calendar! I guess that's the whole paying your dues thing. Here's a sample of him playing. The rest of the band was also great, too! There's more stuff on his site.

Postcard From Florida

(Thanks, Sue.)

Make A Speech For Shrub

From my friend Ben I got a link to the George W Bush Speechwriterwhich uses a clever little soundboard. Enjoy!

The Care and Feeding of Neil Gaiman

Interesting article aimed at potential handlers for Neil Gaiman for conventions, book signings, and whatnot.

Photos of a Alien World

Astronomers think they may have a picture of a very large planet in a nearby solar system. The potential planet is 25 times the size of Jupiter. This would be the first optical evidence of an extrasolar planet. [article]

Do Not Wash Your Car

More laughs from Craigslist Bullshit or not? Probably. But funny, very funny.

A Night At the Opera

It appears that San Jose has an opera company. I am thinking maybe a trip to the opera might in order. Maybe The Marriage of Figaro or Carmen.

Airport Express!

My internet access is now solid again, thanks to my shiny new Airport Express! Yay! It's good to have friends who work at Apple! Yay!

Ju-On: The Grudge

So I saw this horror film "From the Makers of Ringu" on Saturday. It involves ghosts or a haunted house or some kind of curse involving people who are murdered in the midst of a murderous rage. It's kind of an infectious curse, because people who experience it seem to pass it on to people they meet and tell about it. And there's Toshio, who will no doubt be remembered as The Japanese Haley Joel Osment the creepy kid whose presence is premonitory to Bad Things happening and the Crawling Lady who is really bad news. There's lots of games played with camera angles so you see the things the characters don't see until it's too late and the characters seeing things you only hear. This movie has a lot of creepy moments. Lots of odd details that you might miss if you aren't paying attention. I imagine a lot of people would find it scary. I've never really found a horror movie that scared me that much, except for Jacob's Ladder. But this movie has lots of tingly moments. Unfortunately, I got to the end and said: "Huh?" It's also shot in an episodic fashion, with the episodes not in chronological order. Or, I don't think so. It was hard to make out the chronology, actually. So, in a lot of ways a good film, but with some flaws. I may have to watch this one again, to try and make sense of it, but I may do it on video.

Resident Evil: Apocalypse

Saw this on Friday. I didn't like this one as much as the first one, because it didn't have the same sense of mystery to me. However, for a bang-bang-kill-kill movie it is quite adequate. There's lots of Mila zombie ass kicking, some great effects shots, some less great effects shots, a few moments where I said: "Yeah, that'll happen." and nipplely-goodness for those of you waiting for Mila naked. Just do not, I repeat, do not think about the plot points too hard, or even, at all. Just pay your nickel and take the ride.

Dog Shoots Man In Self Defense

A Florida man was trying to shoot some unwanted puppies. One of them got the gun away from him and shot him instead. He now faces animal cruelty charges. [article]

Japantown Anime Faire

I've been meaning to mention this earlier, but have been strangely busy. There is an anime convention of sorts this weekend in Japantown in SF. Randy Milholland the artist who does Something Positive will be there as well as Aeire the artist who does Queen of Wands. Finally the talented Wendee Lee is also supposed to be there. You may know her as the American voice of Faye Valentine on Cowboy Bebop, among other roles. I may go on Saturday, depending on work, etc, etc. Speaking of which...

The Latest

Got a new Airport Express yesterday have yet to try it out.

Going to see Ju-On: The Grudge tomorrow night at 7 and Office Space at midnight.

May go to Resident Evil: Apocalypse tonight, depending on how tired I am.

Saw the sunrise again today. Starting to dislike it. Now I must go back to work. Workworkwork.

Some new pictures are up.

Slowly but surely, I chisel away at processing the pictures I've taken over the past couple of years. Here are some from a trip I took to Idaho a couple of falls ago. I'll be posting more as I get more processed. Man, that's slow.

My Pets Are Legal Now

Evidently, up until last week, there was a limit of two pets per household in San Jose, so I had the extraneous third cat. Now the limit is five (three dogs), so I don't have to worry about the pet nazis breaking down my door! [article]

Donnie Darko Revisited

Saw the Director's Cut of Donnie Darko last weekend. Most of the new footage was stuff that I saw as deleted scenes on the DVD that's already out. There was some new CG they added to explain things better. Not sure if I liked the Director's Cut more than the original theatrical release. They changed some of the music and that really took me by surprise. And not in a good way. Having seen the movie so many times, I expect to hear The Killing Moon by Echo and the Bunnymen in the intro. I'll probably go see it again one more time while it's in the theaters. I still haven't resolved the ending in my head.

Bad News, Good News

Tired. Tired. Tired. I slept most of Saturday and a good part of Sunday. Worked some unreasonable amount of hours last week. Going in to work some more today. Sigh. My back feels like shit, I'm not sure why. It could be because I spent too much time lying on my couch which appears to be self-destructing. But the good news is that I have resolved to go here the weekend of 9/25-927 to do a little car camping, some hiking, maybe even some caving. I told my boss I'd gone for a three day weekend, but I've actually taken time off for four days. I need to get out of the heat and the filth in the valley.

Welcome Maddie Miles!

My friend Manda finally had her daughter Maddie after 3.5 days of labor (!). Eight pounds, fourteen ounces. Mom, Dad, and Child are all doing well.

Need To Get Away

Feh. I am so pooped. Been working too much, taking (mostly) unwarranted flak from various quarters. I need to get out of the valley. Go somewhere where there's (relatively) clean air, green trees, not too many people. I'm thinking maybe Sequoia/King's Canyon at the end of the month. Shit! It's September already. Dammit. Anyway, it'll be cold, but good. The air and people around here have me down.

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Listening to: Don't Make Me Prove It from the album Eight Arms to Hold You by Veruca Salt

Donnie Darko, Donnie Darko!

The Director's Cut of Donnie Darko by the (so I am told) really hot Richard Kelly, is being released on Friday September 3, 2004. I plan on seeing it this weekend, possibly the late show on Friday, if it's at Camera 12.

Hmm, someone with a lot of time on their hands and flash has made a fairly elaborate web site.

[trailer] [large trailer] [large trailer in WMV]

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Listening to: Mad World from the album Donnie Darko by Gary Jules

Removing IE From Your Windows Box

My friend Fred has a page for those of you who want Windows, but don't want IE on it. How to remove IE from Windows. Now why you would want Windows when there are a couple of perfectly good alternatives that I can think of, I don't know. :-)

I have not tried this, nor am I recommending it. If Windows digs up digs up your dead grandma's grave to molest her body or sends out credit card applications in your name or signs you up for NAMBLA, don't blame me. I use a Mac. :-)