Author: Dave

I would like to take this moment to dedicate a special thanks to my friend Tracy. At the beginning of this month, she forwarded an email to me about the Southern California Earthquake Center and summer internships. Mind you, she is in Boston… majoring in Mathematics. How this email arrived in her in box, I will never know. But knowing that I love geology, she forwarded it along to me! I checked out the website and decided to fill out an application, two days before the deadline (April 5th). I’ve been waiting around since then for word of their decision. Something like 70 students from across the country applied for it.

I GOT IT!!!

Looks like I will be moving back down to Southern California for the summer to work at UCLA! Words cannot describe how excited I am to have gotten this. There are a few issues I need to work out, namely if I will be living at my parents and commuting or renting a place in LA somewhere. We’ll figure this out as the time draws near. It is supposed to start at the end of May. What a great experience. All thanks to Tracy for informing me too!

Anyway, I flew back up here yesterday morning after spending the past few days in So Cal. It was beautiful weather and definitely nice to see my parents and hang out with many of my friends again. It was a fairly relaxing experience from the non-stop tedium that is going up here at the moment. My research paper is finally almost done and only 3 weeks late. Good thing too, cause two more papers are coming up soon, plus a final presentation. Ah, to live life in a stressful environment!

Braces supposedly come off in four weeks! You can tell it’s so close, my teeth needs to move just a little more…

Alright, off to write a few more things in my paper before I go to bed. Until next time!

Alright! Courtesy of their manager, I get to see the Offspring tomorrow night at the Warfield. I have backstage passes too! I’m looking completely forward to that! I haven’t seen them in over a year and they put on a really fun live show, so I am definitely looking forward to that.

I’ll be back down visiting Southern California from April 21 – April 24, mainly for an orthodontist appointment. I am supposed to get my braces off! We’ll see though, since it still looks like there is some moving that needs to be done before then. I miss a lot of people, so that will be good to see friends and family again, although for a very brief amount of time.

I also applied for an internship this summer for the Southern California Earthquake Center. It looks like the competition is pretty tough. If I get it, I’ll be moving back down to So Cal for the summer while I work on that. We’ll see what happens with that, but I think that would be such a great experience. I was looking through the list of people who have had internships with it and I found an old friend from high school that I haven’t talked to in years! I sent her an email recently, so that was cool to talk to her again. Considering all the news reports about possible earthquakes in Southern California this summer, I think this could be a perfect timing for an internship.

See everyone soon!

I’ve been sick the last week! It all started out as a simple cold and developed into this horrid sinus infection. After going to urgent care yesterday, they gave me some antibiotics, and I already feel 100% better! Too bad I didn’t do that earlier in the week, since I am missing a geology field trip that is currently going on this weekend. Doh!

Between school projects, geology trips, work (and lack thereof, due to being sick), being sick in general, this has been one of the most stressful weeks of my entire academic life! Luckily, it is coming to a close.

So I’ve moved into the new pad! What is it like so far? Well first off, check out the view:
First, Second and the stairway I have to climb to get to the house! I need to do some fixing in my room though. The curtain rod decided to fall out of the wall for no good reason, so for now, I have the curtains nailed to the wall.

In other news, it looks like NASA has extended the missions for both the Mars rovers too. That is exciting to see. I’ve been following those things like mad the past 3 months. NASA is hoping they can both last until September, which would put them at 8 months of being operational on the surface, or nearly 3 times longer than scientists had initially planned.

Evidentially I spoke too soon in my last post. The people at that house called me back! So we set everything up and I will be moving all my stuff over there tonight. Once I get pictures of the new place, I’ll post them. I’m looking forward to this so much.

Alright. Doing some cleaning up and redesigning of certain parts of the site. First and most notable (or not…) is that I’ve eliminated the news page entirely. It really conveyed no important information, and any news that I need to pass on will just be written in my blog anyway. So, goodbye news! Secondly, I’m trying to setup a forums section for discussion of certain topics. The forum is basically up and running but I don’t really have a public link for it yet since I’m still trying to sort out some basic issues. This is probably a useless feature that will most likely involve discussions mainly about geology between myself and me. Anyway, once I get all the kinks worked out, I’ll make the link public.

I spent part of this week apartment/house hunting for rooms to rent. I came across a good offer on craigslist and went to go check it out. $490 for a room in a 2 story house in the Golden Gate Heights area. It had an AMAZING VIEW. The people who lived there were very cool and the whole setup seemed great. I was really looking forward to it and thought I made a pretty good impression on them. Evidentially not, since they never called me back, even after I called them a few times during the past couple of days. Argh! Oh well, my closet will have to suffice for now.

Anyway, I just realized that it’s 3 in the morning. What on earth am I doing up at this time? I guess trying to enjoy as much of my last day of spring break as possible. Though thanks to this, I’ll probably be sleeping through most of it!

Today, my parents, Michelle and I went down to SF-MOMA, which is the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Apparently, it is the second largest museum in the United States consisting of contemporary art. Overall it was neat. Though I don’t think I am left brained enough to grasp some of the very abstract things that some of these artists attempt. For example, why is a piece of blank canvas considered art? A urinal signed by someone in 1917 is also considered art. It is interesting to think about, but all it mostly accomplishes is making my head hurt!

One of the floors was dedicated to photography, which I found much more interesting. In fact, one of the rooms on that floor had quite a few pictures of Redlands! That was surprising and nostalgic. Another interesting section was based on nothing but objects. There were sculptures as well as various “everyday” objects that were on display.

To get into the spirit of things, I think I will get myself into this whole “modern art” phenomenon as well. The following piece is entitled with something that has nothing to do with the picture (this seems to be one of the rules when creating modern art). The title: “Watermelon Over a Blue Moon.” Secondly, I have applied a few bright and weird colors. Third, I leave it up to your own interpretation! 🙂

“Watermelon Over a Blue Moon”

Yesterday, I had my 30 day review at work. It went completely great! None of the supervisors had any sort of complaints about me. We went over the file that is kept on me and there were a few good comments written in there from some of the supervisors as well! The review form had two sections on “Good Things” and “Things that need Improving”. The Good section was full of comments and the Needs Improvement section had almost nothing. Just very basic stuff such as “Needs more experience on the floor.” That made me so happy, I think I had a huge cheesy grin on my face the rest of the day.

Other random things that are notable: Went swimming today for the first time since about September. I love water! I wish I was a stronger swimmer though, that comes with practice. Hopefully I’ll go a lot more. I definitely want to get back into a workout routine as well. I had one for awhile then got caught up with moving/school/work. Also, met a very cute girl from London today, who is on vacation. That was a neat experience.

Need to start looking for a new apartment too. The room I am staying in is entirely too small, plus our lease is up in a few months anyway. If I can find something, I’ll probably move out immediately. I may end up looking around Haight, Fillmore or Church. Those are my top priorities, though those areas may be kind of expensive. We’ll have to see how this goes!

Lastly, David and I were jamming last night. I was showing him ideas I had for a new song. He came up with some awesome riffs and suggestions that really inspired me. I think I might create a cheesy web page detailing the evolution of a song. There may even be vocals and lyrics eventually! Stay tuned for more info! 😉

[Updated: (3/23) 2:03AM] – Click here to check on the evolution of a song! A crappy mp3 is also posted.

I attended my first antiwar protest today. It was a powerful experience. There were people from all types of backgrounds, all sorts of opinions and even all levels of intelligence there. One of the coolest events was seeing Peter Camejo speak. It’s really too bad he isn’t taken more seriously, he is an amazing orator and does a great job at getting his views across in a rational matter. You can view pictures I took of the protest here.

Yesterday I went exploring and ended up walking for a few miles along Ocean Beach. It was such a beautiful day. I will have to post those pictures soon. In other news, Michelle went down to Southern California to visit our parents for the first part of spring break. Michelle and my parents are driving up tomorrow and they will spend a few days up here. I’m excited to see them.

Spring break is now officially in session. Though sadly, I will be working through it for both my job as well as a report in geology. We’re analyzing a landslide that happened in Marin and basically coming up with erosion rates for a small watershed for the past 13,000 years basically. It is going to be such an intense report and I haven’t even started. Due in 3 weeks too!

Got the job at TJ’s! Rad! So that will give me a much needed financial infusion. So far it has been pretty good working there and everyone I work with is really friendly.

The last few weeks have been extraordinarily busy though, between working and school. This past weekend we went on a field trip into Marin and measured a landslide that happened in the 1980’s for our geomorphology class. It was a busy day, but what an amazingly beautiful area. I will definitely have to come back there.

Last week I planned to drive back down to Southern California after classes got out at night. On the way to school on Wednesday, something like 2 inches of rain fell within 30 minutes, creating all sorts of flooding and power outages. School ended up being cancelled, so I took the opportunity and drove down earlier than I had planned. Though it ended up raining the entire drive home, so that was a stressful 7 hours.

I had an orthodontist appointment and I was dropping my car off since I hadn’t touched it while I’ve been up here and also don’t want to have to worry about parking tickets or it getting broken into. After my orthodontist appointment, I hung out with friends from all walks of life during the day. It was good to see a lot of close friends again as well as some of my geology buddies that I’ve left behind down there. Interestingly enough, one of the guys I am going to school with up here knows a friend of mine at Cal State San Bernardino. He went to high school with her and they both attended some geology classes together over at R.C.C. Crazy!

I bought an adapter for my computer so I uploaded some videos to the site. Check out the downloads section to see them, but I don’t recommend trying if you are on dial up. They are pretty hefty downloads.

I was coming home from school yesterday and got off the train like I normally do. As I’m riding the escalator up, I notice a rather frail old man in front of me. He steps off the platform and takes a few small steps, more like shuffling his feet. I was thinking to myself, “Hmm, that doesn’t look natural.” As soon as I finished that thought, he collapsed. As he fell forward, he landed on a lady who was in front of him. She was caught totally unaware and landed flat on her face. I remember exclaiming, “Oh shit!” I ran to old woman who was laying face down and to see if she was okay. A few other people did that same. Looking over to the old man, his eyes were rolled up into his head and he was on the ground shaking. My phone had no reception in the station so I stood up and yelled for someone to call 911 or get the BART police. After a few more moments of yelling this, one of the people working one of the transit booths ran over and told me that BART police were on the way.

Another guy went to help the old man, who had now come to. We picked him up and asked if he was alright. He was still completely unresponsive though and mumbling a bunch of random words. There was no way he could stand on his own, so we carried him to a railing and had him sit against it. Two police officers showed up a few moments later and started asking some questions. I explained what happened along with another lady who was tending to the woman who fell. After a few moments, the officers said we were free to go. As I was leaving, the old man looked at me, waved and gave a thumbs up sign.

Still no luck regarding the job hunt. Waiting for TJ’s to call me back. Crossing my fingers and hoping they liked me well enough. Back to the grind!

Classes finally started last week. Originally, I was signed up to take Geomorphology, Paleontology, Volcanology and Physics II. Total of 14 units and a fairly large load. Volcanology ended up having only one other person in the class with me, so that will most likely be cancelled. I ended up dropping it anyway, so that frees up my Wednesday nights. Physics II is going to be hell and from the reviews I’ve read on teacherreview.com, I need to stay as far away from this woman as possible. So I dropped that. That only gave me 7 units (I believe I need 8 to qualify for full time status). SFSU has this requirement called Segment III classes that all students are required to take. They are basically a choice of classes from a large group that you must take. I chose a geology related one entitled “Our Violent Earth”. It seems like it will be cake! So this semester should be relatively easy.

Had a job interview with Trader Joe’s on Friday. As I was sitting down, I noticed my application had a post-it note attached to it that said “Good 1st Impression.” Awesome! I felt fairly confident about the interview too. They said they would call me this week sometime to inform me of their decision. Hopefully I nailed it!

My bedroom is basically complete. My main computer is hooked up and I am back in business! So what does my bedroom look like? Check out the pictures! And no, those posters aren’t mine. I just haven’t had a chance to take them down yet. Pretty cramped quarters if I do say so myself. The cool thing is that I built that bed myself. I’m quite pleased with that.

Pic 1 – Looking inside the bedroom.
Pic 2 – From the inside, looking out.
Pic 3 – Under the desk.

Also posting a new song that I actually put together quite awhile ago. Entitled “Electromagnetic” since it was completely put together on the computer. I was messing around in Fruity Loops and creating some drum beats and bass lines when I came up with it. It is kinda catchy. 2 minutes and 38 seconds is the run time. 2.5mb download, get it here.

Lastly, I meant to post about this last week. Upon my arrival to San Francisco 2 weeks ago, my car had been parked out in front of my sister’s apartment for not more than 3 hours when I received my first parking ticket. It was kind of like a welcoming present.

Everything that I need to survive is up here, though I did leave a lot of stuff back at home. My first full week in San Francisco is coming to a close. It’s been non-stop though. Between packing things away, building a loft bed for my room (that way I can actually have room!), buying food and eating it as well as job hunting, I’ve hardly had time to relax. My computer is still in pieces at the moment since I don’t have a desk or anything to set it up on. I’ve been using an old laptop that my mom doesn’t use anymore to check email and do internet browsing. Right now, I’m updating this page from my sister’s iMac. Not too keen on how this will work. Hopefully things should be finalized in the next few days and I can post pictures of my new life.

Lately, the weather here has been absolutely beautiful! Perfectly clear skies, temperature slightly on the chilly side. Tonight it’s been sprinkling and it looks like there is rain in the forecast for tomorrow. The wet and cold weather that San Francisco is known for is definitely something I’m going to have to get used to. Haven’t seen much of it yet however. Knock on wood I guess!

On Saturday night, Megan B. was in the San Francisco area since her choir at Chapman University was on a tour of the Pacific Northwest. Saturday was their last night of the tour and since she was in town, we decided to hang out. I met her at Fisherman’s Wharf where she introduced me to loads of her choir friends. Later on we went to go eat at some very pricey sea food restaurant. We had a bunch of left overs that no one was going to eat, so I asked them to bag them for me and I ended up giving 3 bags of food to homeless on our way home. Yay for noble causes! Anyway, it was definitely good times seeing Megan again as well as some of her friends that I’ve seen on prior occasions as well: Jeff, Emma and Brittany.

I have an appointment with the chair of the geology department at SFSU tomorrow. Walking around it today and last week, their department actually seems quite large. Where we basically had about 2 classrooms to ourselves at CSUSB for geology, they appear to have an entire floor dedicated to the department. They even have pictures of all their students posted on the walls. It looks like there are at least 25 geology undergrads there, so it is a pretty decent sized program. I think it will be a challenge, but I’m definitely looking forward to it. School starts Wednesday!

Been putting out lots of applications and resumes for job hunting too. It gets so repetitive filling out the applications. They all ask exactly the same questions and are pretty much setup the same way, except the front page where a company’s logo will go. It’d be much easier to have a standardized form, print it up and just drop it off, but I guess this way weeds out all the lazy people. 😛 I did have an interview today though at SFSU’s bookstore. I felt pretty confident about it. We’ll see how it goes though. He still had others to interview throughout the day and I am supposed to call him back tomorrow.

EDIT: Doh, using Mozilla’s WYSIWYG editor on the Mac, it totally screwed up my webpage. Time to open this in a basic and boring text editor and do it the old fashioned way. Ugh!

Hey look, an update!

Been doing quite a bit of house cleaning on the website to update some information, correct broken links, add new links, add some pictures here and there. Probably nothing too noticeable though!

After spending a week up in the Bay Area and doing a lot of contemplating, I’ve finally decided that I’m going for it. Been packing all my stuff and will be moving to San Francisco come this Tuesday. I have so many things of my life now packed away into boxes. And I won’t even be able to bring them all mainly due to current circumstances. For the time being, I’ll be living in this large closest/storage room thing at my sister’s apartment. There isn’t much room to bring a lot of my stuff up, so I’ll have to bring it up later and after I muster up enough money to get my own place.

This last week has been absolutely busy though. From packing, to saying goodbyes, to hanging out with people. I have so many feelings going through my head, from being excited, to nervous, to sad. Though it’s not like I’m saying good-bye forever. I’ll be coming back to visit. I already have some appointments to come back down here in a month for an orthodontist visit.

Today and tomorrow some folks in geology are going orienteering down in the Anza Borrego Desert that is kind of near San Diego. I really want to go, but won’t be able to attend since I still have quite a bit to finish packing. Tonight I also have some plans with some more friends to hang out as well.

Saw Michael Moore’s “Bowling for Columbine” yesterday. I’ve seen this movie before, but it is extremely well put together. Watching it a second time, I’ve concluded that the film mostly leaves it up to the viewer to decide what the problem is in America. While I dislike guns (I wouldn’t mind even more strict laws in place), it is ultimately our society that is the root of the problem. While debating this the other day, I came upon the realization that even if all guns in America were somehow magically removed, you would still have violence. (This is why debating with an open mind is fun! You can learn, understand and see things you might not have thought about!) Granted, you most likely wouldn’t find people robbing a liquor store with a bow and arrow, but our society has such a violent shadow, this wouldn’t change many things in my opinion.

I watched one of the Mars Rovers land about 2 weeks ago on NASA TV. Since then, I’ve been following it so intently. Partly because I find it so amazing and cool, though also partly because Spirit is a robotic geologist. I’ve been looking at all the pictures coming back and even posting in forums such as Slashdot, talking about the latest discoveries.

It’s late and I need to pack a bunch of random stuff that is laying on my bed before I can go to sleep. Until next time!

Hardly any updates as of late! Leaving later today to spend the week in San Francisco/Berkeley area. I’m really contemplating going to school up there. Hopefully I can get an appointment with an advisor at SFSU sometime this week to help straighten things out and work out a possible schedule.

In anycase, have a happy new year!

Cool! A song I’ve been basically putting together for the last 3 months is finally finished. Part of me wanted to just get it finished and out of the way and the other part was looking for something to do while avoiding my physics homework. Anyway, you can download the final product here, entitled “Tsunami Rock”. It is really a working/honorary title, since it was recorded using the guitar I bought from Tsunami Bomb’s guitarist. Total song length is 4:52 and it’s a 4.6mb mp3 file. If you check out the music page, you can find previous iterations and earlier versions of this song as I went along. It was originally (working title) entitled “Simple Punk”.

School is almost done! One more week of classes to go plus finals. I have quite a few projects that are nearly due for many of my classes. The biggest one, which is thankfully almost finished, is entitled, “Sediment Loads of the Lower Colorado River.” Basically, I’ve concluded that at present levels, sediment will completely fill Lake Mead by 5743 A.D. Of course that isn’t factoring in isostatic subsidence, Lake Powell filling up, debris flows from the Grand Canyon, or even if Hoover Dam will last that long, so take that date with a large grain of salt.

Anyway, I hope Thanksgiving was great for everyone. Personally for me, it is all about the pumpkin pie! 😉

I used to love to post my political propaganda all over my website, but I’ve kind of toned down in recent times since it’s somewhat useless. Just lately though, there is something that makes me extremely irate:

Because obviously education is the least of our concerns: Our new governor of California is cutting $223 million dollars from the state’s universities. Now how rad is that? The Cal State system already increased tuition this year by 30% compared to last year, while the UC system increased their tuition by 25%. Now with this huge cut, how much more is tuition going to have to be increased next year?

I guess it is somewhat arguable that we would have eventually had to do the same under Gray Davis. But the thing I didn’t like about Arnold’s solution for balancing our budget was his mentality of “We’re going to cut taxes, but keep spending the same!” How on earth do you balance a budget that way? Glad to see he’s had a change of heart. I mean not only is he cutting out a source of revenue by repealing Davis’s car tax, he’s also cutting spending on one of the most fundamental and important parts of people’s lives: their education. Hmm, could it be because that intelligent people vote democrat? I mean Karl Rove, Bush’s advisor, even reportedly said, “As people do better, they start voting like Republicans – unless they have too much education and vote Democratic, which proves there can be too much of a good thing.”

Granted, it’s inevitable that there are going to have to be budget cuts, but why is education always the first thing that is looked at? Ugh. Whatever though. Maybe I’ll have less homework to do now. Heh. :-/

In other news, new Offspring album entitled “Splinter” will be released next week. Thanks to the wonders of the internet, I’ve been able to hear it. Sadly, I don’t think I will be parting with $13 on a new album from them. It’s especially sad since this is one of my favorite bands of all time too! Why can’t people make good music again?

More related music news! I’m a “model” for Tsunami Bomb! Hah! Basically I know the chick who does the merch stuff on their website. She asked if I had any Tsunami Bomb shirts and to take a picture in one. You can see the results of my dorkage on their website. Click Store -> Click on the first shirt you see that has a fire extinguisher on it.

Regardless of the overall depressing tone of this entry, things have been going good! School is winding down and lots of projects are piling up and nearly due! About 2 more weeks then we’re done! After that, I’m taking part in a geology project where we will be using some expensive GPS equipment to track movement of the Pacific and North American plates in relation to each other. It’s not too glamorous work since we basically sit and babysit a large GPS receiver all day. However, it’s fascinating what we will possibly be able to find out though!

Well, until next time! Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

You may have noticed that it’s been quite awhile since the last journal entry. Life has been extremely busy!

In any case, I believe I have been blessed with strange super powers. I’m not talking about the ones that many people I know have, including my close friends. The ones where it seems that by the mere virtue of them sitting in a vehicle, they can turn any traffic light they approach from green to red. No, mine are much more unique.

When going for a walk around the neighborhood, campus or basically any place during the evening, it seems that as I approach certain streetlamps, they will turn off or turn on. I’m sure many would write this off as a random occurence, but it happens often enough that I notice it! Not sure exactly what it means however. And it’s somewhat inconsistent. They’ll be nights where I somehow affect every light on the street and other times where I can go days without noticing anything. I’m sure it’s all completely random. But if I do have some strange super power, it’d be nice to know how I use it. I don’t see how affecting random lamp posts will help me save the world. I also notice I have the same affect on SPRINKLERS! Gah! I can just imagine my name: “The Wet Lightbulb Boy!”

Wet Light Bulb Boy in Action!

Changing subjects, I’ve noticed a lot of people trying to get in touch with me during the week can’t figure out my schedule for this quarter, so I went ahead and posted it! Not sure if it will be that useful, unless you want to stalk me, but feel free to try. You can find it here.

Registered for next quarter this past week as well. Current classes that I’m enrolled in:
Geology of California
Structural Geology
Stratigraphy
Perspectives on Gender (general education class I need to get out of the way)

18 more units! My time should be much more open though which should be nice. I want to take Physics II to get that out of the way but there is a scheduling conflict with Structural Geology. Talking with some of my professors to see if we can work something out, which may involve taking the classes at the exact same time… so I’ll be making up a lot of work. We’ll see where the pieces fall into place on that.

Not too much exciting news lately. There was the Old Fire in Waterman Canyon that happened 2 weeks ago. I took some pictures from on top of Strawberry Peak when my dad had to take some equipment up there to get the emergency radio system back on track. You can check out the fire approaching Crestline in these pictures. I know of one fellow geology major who lost their house in that fire and a girl in another one of my classes also lost her house. Extremely sad. We even lost a few temporary classrooms at school and it was closed for 2 days

It’s quite late and I have to wake up for classes in a few hours, so it’s time to go to bed. Hopefully you’ll here from me again sooner rather than later!

Alright, you might have noticed that there have been no updates in quite awhile. School has just absolutely been killing any free time I have. Of course my sister says, “maybe if you didn’t write these long blogs that no one reads, you’d have more free time!” Quite right Michelle! Whatever though, it’s a mixed blessing. It is a great feeling to actually have stuff to do, but at the same time, there is hardly any free time to do stuff I enjoy or for leisure. It’s somewhat easy to fall behind too with all the stuff going on right now.I need to seriously reconsider this 18 units a quarter thing… because next quarter I’m considering doing 19 units. 😀

What’s been going on as of late though? A lot of geology stuff, however that isn’t the only thing. About a week ago, Maureen hooked me up with a research project that she is helping out with that deals with a lot of radio astronomy. I haven’t been able to spend as much time on that as I’d like to, especially since there is quite a bit to learn. To give an overly simple explanation as to what we’re looking at: Looking inside a dust cloud and seeing just what the heck is going on. I suppose it sounds somewhat bland, but the concept is fascinating, especially considering that we’re some of the first people to *ever* see these objects. But then again, I’m a huge geek. 🙂

This past weekend, we had a 3 day excursion in our geologic mapping class to Rainbow Basin out near Barstow, CA. We were mapping rock formations for all 3 days. Rainbow Basin is a beautiful area and I’m sure I would enjoy it much more on my own volition. Apparently, something like 80 temperature records were broken across the country this weekend, including Barstow (which is in the middle of the Mojave Desert anyway). One of our fellow students took a temperature reading and it was 102 degrees in the shade! A lot of water and a wide brimmed hat helped to alleviate any discomfort though.

Regardless, it was still brutal: Friday, Saturday and Sunday our schedule was to be out there working from 8am – 5pm. You could take breaks whenever you wanted, but we had a lot to get done. We had to take lots of attitudes of all the beds, identify different rock types throughout the whole basin, map where different rock types contact and also note features such as faults and the axis of folding that is going on in the area. Despite the heat (which was primarily the only thing that worked against us on the trip), it was cool to apply our knowledge and see how it works out in the real world. However, despite having 3 full days to work this weekend, quite a few of us are going back out tomorrow in order to finish up some mapping. I have a few pictures I took of the Rainbow Basin area and some of the things we were doing while out there. As soon as I get more time, I will post them, most likely on the geology part of the website.

The weekend before that, a few of us went out to Trona (which is another place that is basically in the middle of nowhere) to do some mineral collecting. We collected large pieces of a mineral called hanksite. It forms from evaporite deposits and creates these beautiful crystal structures. Then we camped around the Trona Pinnacles, which were just awesome as well. All in all, I have had A LOT of geology lately! I’m sure most of you probably have had your fill of it by now anyway. 😉

I’m writing this up from the library at school at the moment and then emailing this to myself so I can post it when I get home. Pretty lame, I know! I should probably be studying for a midterm that I have in 5 hours, but we all need breaks right?

Lastly, some music news: I am now the proud owner of Mike Griffin’s (guitarist of Tsunami Bomb) Epiphone Les Paul Custom that he has used for the last 2 years. He even recorded parts of “The Ultimate Escape” (their most recent album) with it! RAD! You can check out the guitar here. The red one is mine and the black one is his. It was definitely an awesome deal in my opinion. I even got to go backstage to pick it up too. That was fun! So yes, that makes 8 guitars. However, 3 of them are currently up for sale! I just need to find some people interested in buying them: Squire Stratocaster, Gretsch Electromatic Sparklejet and an Epiphone Les Paul Gothic.

Is it bad that I’m already starting to count down school being out? I think it’s only because I’m tempting death and taking *18* units this quarter! After two days of classes, I am already beat. At least I have tomorrow off… however, I have some stuff to do for our geologic mapping class.

What is my geologic mapping class? It’s on Fridays, from 9am until 5pm. That is no typo. It is somewhat fun, but at the same time, insanely stressful. There is a lot to learn and being out in the sun all day doesn’t help. Granted, we’ve only had one class too! Ugh!

Anyway, this is quite a short post. I’m happy to be on this new domain. Check it out! I hope to implement some cool stuff soon… like COMMENTS for each of these posts. That would be rad! Of course, I doubt the 3 people that read this would comment, but I digress! See you next time.

[Updated: 11:16PM] – Testing the new comments system! Have at it. If this works, we should have comments for EACH post! Nice!

Well, the title is somewhat misleading, it should probably read, “I forgot what taking a shower feels like!” I’ve returned though, and now I’m all clean and shiny again. I absolutely LOVE the Sierra Nevada mountains. The scenery is just so gorgeous. It’s hard to believe beauty such as this is only about a 4 hour drive from the “controlled chaos” that is Southern California. After spending 5 days up there, it is such a depressing sight to drop back down through the Cajon Pass and see… nothing. The air is so thick you can chew it. 😛

We did quite a bit while we were up there. One of the highlights was hiking to Bishop Pass, which is one of the many entrances into King’s Canyon National Park. The elevation is at 11,972 feet so it definitely takes your breath away. Took some awesome pictures while up there as well as geeked out at all the glacier related geology. Definitely awesome.

Did some fishing while we were up there too and I caught my first fish ever! That was rad! I proceeded to catch two more as well. I ended up letting them go however. They were too small to be worth anything, but regardless, that made my day!

We pretty much took the day off yesterday and drove around. We went up to check out the June Lake area, then recreated a geology trip (I’ve been on 4 of them to the Owens Valley alone!) where we checked out Obsidian Dome, Devil’s Postpile (my first time seeing that. Check out the top, where you can see glacial polish and striations), the “Earthquake Fault” in Mammoth and the Mammoth Hot Springs. One interesting thing to note: Since we made that day technically a “geology” day, we found this sign at Devil’s Postpile to be quite humorous. Especially since we came to Devil’s Postpile to learn about geology… not geography. 😉 All in all, we logged nearly 200 miles of driving around yesterday.

We also decided to do some off-roading trails that we’ve seen on some previous trips. We took a trail and ended up following it nearly right back to our camp (22 mile trail). It basically ended on a glacial moraine that was 500 ft above where we were supposed to be. By this time it was pretty dark and the trail looked treacherous, so we ended up stopping the truck on a few occasions and walking parts of the trail in the dark to determine whether or not it would result in us plummeting to the valley floor. We safely made it though! However, that excursion took nearly 2 and a half hours. Good fun all around though!

It’s nice to be back home though… of course it may only be for a day. A friend’s cousin is going up to San Francisco for the weekend and she invited me along. So I think I may go and visit my sister while I am up there. Yes! This summer has just been awesome.

[Updated: 10:46PM] – Uploaded a short video clip from the trip. Yes, we’re idiots. View “Playing With Fire” (477kb). Also, for those of you who care, new Offspring album due out in December. Thanks to their manager, I have a DVD that features a music video of a new song entitled “Da Hui” 🙂 Uploading it sounds tempting, but that’s how I was nailed the first time!