Dave Schumaker

So allow me to setup this story:

Because of busting my ankle a few months ago, I missed an important field trip for one of my classes. My professor believed it was prudent that I should go and make it up. The free time I would have to make it up before I planned to head home was this weekend. The location? Point Lobos State Reserve, just south of Monterey, which is roughly 2 hours away.

I tell my roommate Bre about this last week and she tells me about a friend of hers that lives in Monterey. She said she’d go down with me on Friday night, and we could stay at her friend’s place. Excellent! That means I get to wake up on Saturday, drive about 15 minutes to check out all the geology I need to see and head home!

It turns out, the last substantial meal I had eaten was right before we left our house to drive down there. Once in Monterey, we went out for a few drinks with some of her friends and then came home. At about 9AM on Saturday, I woke up, packed everything up and hit the road! Bre was going to hitch a ride back with her friend that afternoon. That worked out fine, since I don’t think she’d want to tag along while I looked at rocks for a few hours.

I did notice that I was quite hungry and figured I’d just grab a bite to eat at some food place on the way there. The problem was that I didn’t find any food places! Oh well. Time for some geology! After spending roughly 3 and a half hours there (Beautiful place! More on that later!), I decided to head back towards San Francisco. The only problem? How do I get home? I didn’t feel like spending the whole day driving up highway 1, which winds all over the place. So I took the first major highway I saw that headed east. I figured it would eventually have to cross the 101. Besides, I’ve never been to Salinas, time to check it out! (Unbeknownst to me at the time, Highway 101 crosses right through Salinas. Score!)

The whole time I’m driving, I start to realize just how hunry I am. It’s now about 3pm, and I hadn’t eaten anything in nearly 15 hours! Some of you might be wondering how I’m still alive by this point.

I started thinking about my favorite place to eat in the world: In ‘N Out! Unfortunately, the closest one I was aware of was in San Francisco. No problem! I’d just hold out for another 2 hours or so and eat there. It would be like a celebration of sorts!

Finally, the highway I am taking winds through Salinas. I was passing all sorts of fast food restaraunts, but nothing tickled my fancy. It was all about In ‘N Out. I briefly wondered if Salinas had an In ‘N Out, but figured that they were way to cool for this city. Driving a little further, I came upon a sign that pointed to an entrance for highway 101! Excellent! I figured that I should get gas before I leave though.

As I am filling the car up with gas, I take a second to lean back, relax and take in the scenery. I look up to find that right across the street, there was an In ‘N Out burger! I nearly came to tears! It was like it was meant to be. It is for that reason alone that I now know for a fact that God exists. Oh yes!

Anyway, Point Lobos was a pretty awesome place. While hiking on a trail and looking down at my map, I turn a corner to stumble across a young deer munching on some grass. That was pretty awesome to see. I had passed up some parents hiking with their kids a few minutes earlier. So I just sat down and waited for them to catch up, that way they could see the deer as well. I have to say that definitely made my day! Awesome.

I have one last thing to do for school before I can head home. We collected 36 minerals this semester in out mineralogy class, and we have to write out some detailed information on each mineral that we collected. Not too difficult, but quite time consuming. As soon as that is done, I plan to drive back down to Southern California. The current plan looks like I may be driving down sometime tomorrow evening/night. Depending on how I feel though, I might delay it one more day and drive down on Tuesday morning.

I’m coming back up around January 13th I believe (I was leaning towards the 10th, but it looks like I have an orthodontist appointment to do on the 12th. Doh!). School doesn’t start for us until January 31, so that leaves a whole lot of time to do something. I was personally contemplating a road trip to check out Crater Lake (if we can get up there? It might involve snow showing… hmm) and then perhaps driving up into southern Washington to check out Mt. Saint Helens! Yes, a road trip of geology/volcanology. It really will depend on weather conditions though. Evidentially, my friend Phil was having a similiar plan for a road trip in January and wants to drive up to Seattle! We will definitely have to collaborate.

Anyway, time to go write up a few more minerals before going to bed. All most there, I just need to sprint to the finish!

2 more weeks of school left, 1 of which is finals. However, I only have 2 finals in 1 class (mineralogy), so that eliminates a lot of stress. This is a good thing since this stress is again added back because this next week is another insane week! It’s pointless to even describe it at this point. But I’ve lived through the rest of this semester, no reason why I won’t live through this one…

In other interesting news, I found out something extraordinarily funny and somewhat depressing at the same time. For example, navigate to Google and enter the following phrase: horrible faces. Then notice the first link. Click on it if you wish, for it takes you to a rather unflattering picture of my sister and I! It’s actually pretty funny that we’re ranked number 1 on Google for such a generic term. Who knows how long that will work for, since they update their index fairly often. For posterity:

Anyway, it looks like I have a whole weekend of writing papers and studying ahead of me (and I’m not even procrastinating!)

The best thing about Thanksgiving and the rest of the holiday season isn’t the fact that we get and receive all sorts of love from friends and families, it isn’t the fact that people are so cheery (which they should be all year), or the familiar jingles on the radio that we missed (or dreaded) hearing all year. It’s all about how ubiquitous pumpkin pie is… my absolute favorite desert/meal of all time. I may not be able to live off of it, but I’d be more than willing to try!

So what’s gone on in the last week or so since I last posted? The usual: being absolutely busy. However, some great deity up above must read this blog and felt some sort of pity for me, because two of my exams last week were moved! To next week! That spreads things out, and slightly decreases the stress in my life. Until I think about an optical mineralogy exam on Thursday which we haven’t even had a chance to really go over the subject matter at all. Looks like I’ll be spending Wednesday night in the lab, along with some fellow students. So yes, another week, another 3 exams!

I also talked to the athletic trainer at school about my ankle. I’ve never sprained my ankle, so I don’t know what to really expect. It’s still sore when I pivot or if I walk too much. He explained to me that I could be looking at up to 8 more weeks of this type of pain! After that, I’ll be able to play sports that have a lot of high impact activity again. However, people who severly sprain their ankle have a 70% chance of respraining it again within a year! I think I should do it right now just to get it out of the way… 😉

On Thursday night, I increased the number of Klutzy-Things-I’ve-Done-This-Semester, setting a new record. My roommate Bre asked if I wanted to go out with her and some of her friends to get a few drinks. I almost didn’t know what to do, especially when faced with a decision such as hanging out with a few interesting people or staying in and writing a paper! We all went out and part way through the night, I am talking and somehow my drink falls out of my hand. And spills all over Bre’s leg and foot. Oh yes! That was awesome.

Dave’s Klutz-Point tally so far this semester:
Fall down stairs at school: 4
Spill acid on my notes in lab (whole bottle!): 2
Cut myself with knife in lab practicum: 1
Spilled potable liquids: Countless times
Spilled potable liquid on person: 1

I think that factors out to about 12 million Klutz-Points at the moment. I guess my goal this semester is to see how high the counter can go.

Friday night – Saw Napolean Dynamite. That movie was absolutely hilarious! I definitely recommend it for anyone looking for a good laugh. Plus, the theater we went to on Haight Street was just completely rad as well. I will definitely be going back to that.

Our parents came up on Wednesday to visit Michelle and I. They stayed at her place and enjoyed it quite a bit. I personally like Michelle’s place a lot, and was anxious to show them my place, but somewhat apprehensive too, since I didn’t think it compared all that well. Evidentially I was wrong. Both of my parents were thrilled with it, and my mom even described it as “a modern mansion.” That feels pretty good. I definitely don’t see myself moving out of here anytime soon. I might even be getting a bigger bedroom too if one of our roommates moves out.

Our turkey dinner didn’t turn out as planned, but despite that, it was still fun. And I think we all made up for it by having extra helpings of pumpkin pie! OH YES.

They also brought the dogs up as well! I miss them and wish I could have a dog up here. We took them to the beach and they LOVED it. It’s too bad the beaches in Southern California don’t allow dogs. They had fun and frolicked through the waves with a lot of the other dogs that were on the beach too. We saw a side of them that we’ve never seen before. Took quite a few pictures too. That was enjoyable.

The parents and the dogs both left earlier today to go back home. That was nice to see them again and was probably one of the best Thanksgivings that we’ve ever had as a family. Michelle and I will be back down in So Cal around Christmas time though, so that will be the next chance to see everyone again.

Anyway, happy holidays.

It’s nearly 2AM and I have a paper due in Structural Geology in roughly 10 hours. Of course I’ve had about 3 weeks to do it, but in true college student fashion, I wait until the night/morning before! I should really do something about my procrastination problems, but I figure I’d just put it off.

Anyway, my insane schedule for the next few days:


11/17. . .Wednesday. . . . . . Paper due in Structural Geology
11/18. . .Thursday. . . . . . .Mineralogy Identification Exam
11/20. . .Saturday. . . . . . .Mineralogy Field Trip
11/22. . .Monday. . . . . . . .Exams in both Structural Geology and Stratigraphy
11/23. . .Tuesday. . . . . . . Another exam in Mineralogy


Yes! Despite overwhelming odds, I will try to keep a positive attitude about this. I welcome these exams with open arms! Bring it on!

Also, an awesome link recommended to me by my friend Peter:
TerraGalleria – Lots of high quality photos of almost every national park in the United States. Awesome!

A site I stumbled across earlier today showed some amazing pictures of the Auroras/Northern Lights that are currently going on. These pics were taken just a few days ago:
http://www.extremeinstability.com/04-11-8.htm

As the title suggests, this past week has been a tough one. Michelle and I ended up leaving on Monday since she had to be at work on Tuesday. We rolled into the city quite early in the morning. I had noble intentions to make it to minerology (which was a mere 6 hours away), but when my alarm went off, I threw it out the window along with my noble intentions.

So effectively I only had 2 full days at home, which were spent hanging out with Nic and Dan, purchasing things (Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas), playing said things, studying for a huge minerology exam and writing a paper. Sadly, because of this somewhat hectic schedule, I wasn’t able to meet up with some other people I had wanted to see and ended up flaking out by not even calling them. Ugh. I apologize guys.

On Wednesday, it was raining which naturally made everything quite slippery. I decided to celebrate by throwing myself down the stairs! In the process, I slightly tweaked my *other* ankle! So now I have two gimp ankles! Let’s hope I won’t have to be running from any predatory animals, man-eating cars or other villans in the next few days.

I decided to make the best of Thursday by taking an exam for Mineralogy, where I coughed up random knowledge of mineral formulas, such as the chemical formula for cerrusite (which is PbCO₃) in case you were wondering). A late night study session at school on Wednesday night with some fellow friends greatly helped out, so I feel slightly confident about my exam. It will probably turn out to be a 32%, which (thanks to the insane curve in our class) will equate to an A-. Yes!

As if I didn’t torture myself enough on Thursday, I decided to continue writing a paper for my stratigraphy class which was due on Friday. I stayed up until 1:30 in the morning writing it, woke up at 5:00am and finished it at 9:00am, which was just in time to go to class. A total of 3 and a half hours of sleep! I think I was able to make it through the day simply based on how delirious I was.

We also had a field trip this weekend for our stratigraphy class which we voted to turn into a one day trip. So we leave tomorrow at about 7am.

Earlier this evening I was reorganizing some of the photos in my gallery and deleting a lot of useless/redundant/bad photos. Specifically, looking through pictures of Tsunami Bomb that I took this summer at the Troubadour and getting rid of a lot of random photos there, so now it should only consist of the best. Some of them are even posted on their website too! If you go to their photo gallery and scroll down to the July 16th show, you will see 3 rows of pictures from that show. The last row of photos are mine. Awesome! No credit on the site though. Ah well.

Changing subjects once again: This semester, I’ve been tasked with rebuilding the SF-ROCKS (Reaching Out to Communities and Kids with Science in San Francisco) website. You can view the old website here. We just went live with the new site last week, and you can find it here. I’m pretty happy with it overall. Still some stuff to add and things to clean up, but I think it’s quite an improvement. Of course I might be biased. 🙂

Next week is the annual Geological Society of America conference in Colorado. Many of my professors will be attending next week, so some of my geology classes are cancelled. I’ll be taking advantage of this situation and flying back home to So Cal for a few days to visit family and friends. Then on Tuesday I will be driving back up, which means I’ll have my car! It will be nice to be mobile again. However, it was still pretty easy to survive up here without a car for the last 10 months.

I went with a friend from Berkeley and saw a play entitled “The Real Thing” last night at a theater downtown. That was fun, especially since I hadn’t been to a play in quite awhile. I think I prefer live theater to seeing movies. It’s a lot more fun, and interesting how complex and large stories can be told using a simple set and few props. Pretty powerful experience in my opinion.

My temper has kind of cooled the last few days and I’m not as angry over the results of the election as I previously was. However, I saw some pretty sketchy stuff at school on Tuesday that made me sad at how people have to act. I posted about it on a friend’s website:

The dread I was feeling probably represents what can/might/will happen on both sides of the political spectrum, and it was especially evident today at school. I get to school to find a large protest forming in our quad and chants of “NO MORE WAR”. Noble I suppose.However, as I approached, I noticed a table in the center of the crowd and two people sitting down at it with emotionless looks on their faces. Turns out it was a Bush/Cheney table. Not sure why they were setup on November 3rd, but regardless!

Anyway, I guess this whole crowd and makeshift protest started when two Muslim women ran up to their table with a Palestinian flag and started irrationally yelling at these two Bush/Cheney supporters, as if every problem in the world is specifically these two students faults. How they had the balls to sit in the middle of this crowd that was yelling all manner of obscenities at them, I don’t know. But I admire them for that and I am truly ashamed at the complete bullshit that “my” side was giving them. I walked away in embarrassment.

At lunch, I sit back in the quad to see what new antics are going on. These four girls were making quite a big deal of the failed prospects of Kerry and espouting such insightful lines like “Bush had to cheat to get through Yale and had to cheat to get through this election!”

Maybe I’m confused, but even through my ultra liberal eyes, I think Bush handily won fair and square, and by a large margin. The claims of cheating were LUDICROUS. Then a group of guys decides to tell them to, in a polite way, “Shut the Fuck Up!” Of course this sets the crazy women off and a screaming match ensures about who can say “George Bush Sucks!” or “Fuck You!” the loudest.

Ugh. The hypocracy that the liberal side showed today was downright shameful and embarrassing. Many of us have claimed that we get the “Patriotic = No Dissent” quite often from conservatives and are shouted down for offering our point of view. Yet, these exact same people turned the tables and did it to others! Yelling at people, insulting them, dehumanizing them and screaming profanity at them, all because they believe that their guy is doing the right thing. It makes me sick.

I’m not happy with the results of this election, and I was angry/depressed this morning. But the majority of Americans spoke and approved of Bush’s policies. I accept that fact. It makes me unhappy, but I am willing to accept it and move on. While I still disagree on many of his policies, I will not shout people down simply because they voted for him.

Ugh. At the moment, I don’t see how the nation can be unified. We are so completely polarized (and the split was still almost 50-50 for all intents and purposes). There are many angry with each other on both sides.

Regardless of who is our President, I think it’s a sad state of affairs when we degrade our brothers and sisters simply based on their idealogical beliefs.

Anyway, it’s time to finish packing!

Ridiculous.

In anycase, it looks like the people have spoken, and apparently they approve of the President’s policy of disaster and destruction in resounding fashion. Four more years of death, four more years of fighting a war that no one has ever bothered to explain if we can even “win”. How many more of our friends, relatives and innocent bystanders on both sides of the ocean will have to die for naught?

And while we’re at it, we’ve managed to strip rights from our fellow brothers and sisters in 11 states by creating laws that declare the marriage between two people who love each other as illegal. Somehow this is supposed to protect the “sanctity” of marriage, as well as protecting and preserving the family unit in the United States. Perhaps I’m just confused, but when the divorce rate in our nation is over 50% and people like Britney Spears can get a drunken marriage, only to have it anulled a mere 3 days later, it is my opinion that the institution of marriage is already completely destroyed.

It’s embarrassing. I guess I should ultimately come to grips with the fact that I live in an extraordinarily conservative country. And it appears to only be getting even more conservative.

I guess this also means four more years of being shouted down with informative remarks such as “If you don’t like it, then get out!” Perhaps it’s high time to consider that idea. Instead of UC Berkeley or UCLA for grad school, I’ll start looking at places in New Zealand, Canada or Sweden.

After debating with myself and thinking quite hard about who I will vote for, I finally cast my absentee ballot for Kerry and sent it in. I’m not all that happy with the decision, but after thinking about the other choices on the ballot, I feel that represents the best choice.

I have this sense of dread hanging over me though and I can’t quite explain it. I’ve been feeling down and I think it has to do with all the news of the election and what’s going on abroad. To quote some friends, “It’s as if there is some impending doom.” Judging by the polls that have been going on this past week, Kerry isn’t doing all that hot. Ugh.

I fail to see how the Bush administration has been good for our nation when we haven’t been this polarized and divided since the Civil War.

We’ll have to see what tomorrow (today?) brings I suppose.

Cal State system approves 8% fee hike for 2005-2006. Note: This is our FOURTH fee hike in as many years!

So what does it look like overall? Before all this fee hiking madness, the cost per semester to attend San Francisco State University was $913.00. After digging up some links and reference sources, I put together a small table showing the increase over the last few years in the Cal State system.

Net Increase (4 years): $694.44
Overall increase (percentage) from 2001-2002: 43%

References:

SFSU 2001-2002 Tuition: $913.00
http://www.sfsu.edu/~bulletin/noindex/0203/fee.htm

2005 8% Fee Increase:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2004/10/28/state1826EDT0141.DTL

2004 30% Fee Increase
http://www.calstate.edu/pa/news/2003/BOT0703.shtml

Alright, just completed a new tune. Check it out! 🙂 4 minutes, 3.8mb download.

Download “Out of Life.” Still need to lay down a vocal track at some point (I say that about all my songs) and get someone over to record a bass line. Other than that, it is complete! Check it out. 🙂

I’d like to take a quick moment by announcing the following:

These last few days, I’ve been watching some of the greatest baseball that I’ve ever seen. It was with great pleasure that I was able to watch the New York Yankees engineer one of the greatest chokes in all of sports history, blowing a 3 games to 0 lead.

I’m quite happy for the BoSox, and they definitely earned it!

Alright, in other news, my ankle is well on the way to recovery thankfully. I went to the emergency room on Friday night and got it x-rayed and they confirmed nothing was broken, then recommeded that I stay off it for the next few days. I can walk around almost perfectly fine now, but I still feel quite a bit of pain and there remains a rather large bruise on the bottom side of my ankle.

Despite the doctors orders, I “snuck” out of the house and saw Hot Water Music play on Sunday night with David and Michelle (MP3’s available on their site). That was the first time I’ve been able to see them. They put on an energetic show. I was surprised at how few people there were there. These guys are an extraordinarily talented band and it’s a shame they don’t get more respect. Next time they come around, I will definitely check them out again. I imagine the show would be quite a bit more fun without having a gimp leg. 🙂

This last week at school has been absolutely killer. Between work, writing papers, studying for insane mineralogy examinations and an endless attack of geology field trips, I have no free time! I’ve been getting 4 – 6 hours of sleep the past few nights and it is really taking a toll on me. Things should settle down momentarily after this weekend though, so I can catch up on some well needed rest, especially with the coming flu season.

For those who want some excellent reading material to put you to sleep at night, my report from the internship this summer can be found here.

Lastly, mark your calendars! Looks like I’ll be back down in California from Nov 5. to Nov 9, when I will be taking my car back up here with me! That will be awesome to finally have that up here.

Alright, 11:55pm, class in a mere 8 hours. Time to write more papers! I wonder what it’d be like to pull an all nighter and just go straight to school…

Last night I went to Berkeley to play volleyball again. Overall, it was quite a bad night. Too many egos on the court, too many people that think they are olympic caliber players and giving other people crap. We’re all there just to have fun. Regardless, I realize there are going to be ultracompetitive people in any type of sport you play, whether it is for fun or part of a league. Ultimately, I can shake that off and just ignore them.

So about 45 minutes into the night, I go up to hit a ball that is tight to the net, land funny, causing my ankle to roll. I hear a large “pop!” and on the ground I go! Oh yes, I sprained my ankle. I have never done that before and this hurts like nothing I’ve ever felt.

Despite the pain, I was able to walk on it a bit last night. Now today, I can’t even put *any* pressure on it! Luckily, David and Michelle were home and gave me a ride back to my place all the way from Berkeley. I don’t think there’s any way I could have made it home otherwise. I’m planning at some point to go to the school’s infirmary and get this thing checked out, just to make sure I didn’t break it. The only question is, how will I get to school and walk halfway across campus, all without crutches?

As luck would have it also, I should be leaving right now for a field trip in one of my geology classes. Obviously, there is no way I could have made it this weekend. I’m getting pretty good at missing these trips. Last year, I missed a major one because I came down with the flu and a sinus infection. Ugh! Go figure.

Anyway, here’s to hoping for a speedy recovery.

The past few weeks have been extraordinarily busy. There is probably a lot to write about that I will forget. Regardless, some highlights… or lowlights, of the past few days:

I had midterms last Thursday that I describe as being disasterous. Namely, it was my midterm for mineralogy that caused problems. It was a timed test where we had about 6 rocks in a tray, and we had 13 minutes to identify all the minerals in each rock before passing the trays on. About halfway through the test, I reach over to my folder and knock over a bottle of hydrochloric acid! It spills all over my desk and smites some of my notes (which start to fizz!). I had to take a few minutes to clean that mess up and didn’t end up finishing that tray of minerals. Then when the test was nearly over, I was playing with my knife (which we use to test the hardness of certain minerals) and ended up slipping, slicing my middle finger right open! The thing proceeded to bleed for the next 35 minutes until I finally managed to get home.

Luckily, those days are past. I think it’s a testiment to my klutziness. Anyway, we have a field trip for mineralogy for the next 4 days. The itinerary is to hit up the Sierras and Owens Valley. Among the stops we will be doing are Bridgeport, Yosemite, Bishop, Lone Pine and an area near Death Valley. Most of this area is like my second home, since Dan (sometimes Nic too), go there quite a bit for hiking/camping expeditions. Not to mention the countless other geology field trips I’ve been to in the Owen’s Valley. I’m looking forward to this though, almost completely packed for it. Just need to buy some food for this weekend in a little bit.

I also went to REI and with the intention of picking up a few things… and ended up buying a massive amount of crap. That place is like a drug dealer. So much good stuff! If it wasn’t for that place and Guitar Center, I’d probably be pretty well off!

Speaking of Guitar Center…

I found this interesting device made by Line 6 called the GuitarPort. Basically, it hooks straight into your computer and simulates a large number of different amplifiers and effects pedals. I figured for $99, it wasn’t that bad, and if I didn’t like it I’d just bring it back.

After playing with it for the last week, I have to say that this thing is AWESOME. Since it plugs directly into the computer, it makes it extraordinarily easy to record as well. I put together a small mp3 to show it off. The following example is about 1 minute long (1mb download) and features 4 different guitar tracks mixed together. Enjoy!

Out of the Way Demo Download. (1 minute long. 1 mb download.)

Alright, time to do some final packing and then I’m off for a few days!

Back up in the Bay Area after the conference this weekend for the Southern California Earthquake Center. That was a pretty great experience. With all the free food and drinks, I think I’m definitely going to become a scientist for that reason alone! It was also great seeing many of these people again. My friend Brandee even got to meet my parents. The conversation with my mom afterwards went something like this:

Mom: “She is very pretty! And she’s so much nicer than your other girlfriends.”
Me: “Yeah, but she isn’t my girlfriend.”
Mom: “You know, you always go for the exotic looking ones!”
Me: “But I’m not going for her!”

I told Brandee and she got quite a kick out of that! Anyway, it was definitely a fun time, though I kinda tweaked my damn knee when we were playing volleyball. It is still sore. I still want to play volleyball tomorrow night over in Berkeley though. We’ll have to see how I feel.

Anyway, regarding the subject of this post, I bring you the following pictures. This one was taken last week while there were wild fires burning in Northern California.

And this second one, taken when I was flying home on Saturday evening.

It feels like every muscle in my body is sore, making today most unenjoyable. How did I reach this sorry state of affairs? It all begins with volleyball.

I haven’t played a serious game of volleyball since I left high school some 4 or so years ago. I’ve been yearning to play lately, especially after watching the olympic teams compete. The problem is, I’ve had no one to play with up here. Interestingly enough, Michelle recently found out about these open court volleyball sessions they have once a week at the Berkeley YMCA. She told me to check it out, so I went last night! After not playing for 4 years, I played for 3 hours last night!

It was completely fun, and I felt ecstatic afterwards. I am definitely going to go back and play next week. They play 6 vs. 6 and many of the players are just awesome! I got some pretty good advice yesterday and quickly fell back into the groove. David and Michelle watched me play for a bit and they were impressed. That made me feel great. It also helped that I nailed a kill within the first 30 seconds of the game! Hah, awesome!

Anyway, flying home tomorrow! Have to present a poster at SCEC meeting in Palm Springs on Sunday and Monday. A poster which isn’t completely finished yet! Ack! Quite a lot to due before then. I am also taking a writing proficiency test tomorrow for SFSU and am somewhat nervous. No reason why I should be, but regardless.

Anyway, off to packing stuff!

Oh yes, from the creator of the original “It’s raining people” comes a new sequel! This time, it involves geology students, cliffs and paragliders!

Eh. We had a geology field trip along the coast and beach today. This is an area near a place called Ft. Funston, where there are massive cliffs overlooking the ocean. People take advantage of this by para-gliding and hang-gliding off of them. Anyway, we were looking at sedimentary deposits down on the beach all day today.

About midway through the day, we’re sitting at the base of a cliff when I hear one of my fellow students exclaim, “Whoa, oh shit!” I look up in time to see a paraglider coming into the cliff’s above our head. If he was a few feet lower, he would have smacked right into the side of them. Fortunately, he was able to catch a ledge that was directly over our heads. However, by “catch a ledge,” I mean crash land into it and slide across the top of it, nearly falling 50 feet down off the other side.

A shower of cobbles, pebbles, dirt and dust came raining down on our heads and we bolted out of there, leaving some of our notebooks and things to get buried. We all just kind of looked up in stunned silence. After a few minutes, he finally got up, precariously close to the edge off the cliffs. Luckily, it appeared he was physically okay, besides being a little shaken up. Unfortunately, the ledge he landed on had no way to get down to the beach and no easy way to get back up to the top of the road. A few people yelled up to him and asked if he was okay or needed help, but he waved to us and declined. We resumed walking up the rest of the beach examining stuff for our class.

Still, that was an incredible sight, and I couldn’t believe I was seeing it.

Anyway, here is a pic I took afterwards to scale everything. He wrapped up his parachute and threw it over his back while he tried to scale the cliff back up to the road. Note how high these cliffs are, especially compared to him!

Here we go, there are 3 days left to see if Dr. K-B’s prediction for a M6.4 quake or greater to strike Southern California. Not sure how I feel about this myself. He has an interesting track record, and reading his paper, it looks like they tried to verify their method by applying it to quakes that had already happened. (A few test cases resulted in false positives though, predicting a quake where no quake happened) However, they still feel they only have a 50% chance of success.

Anyway, some interesting articles for my Southern California breathen:
http://www.dailytrojan.com/main.cfm?include=detail&storyid=709259
http://www.sacbee.com/content/news/science/story/10598421p-11517150c.html
http://www.hidesertstar.com/articles/2004/07/30/features/feature2.txt

With the Republican Convention happening this week, and Mother Nature throwing down a hurricane on the east coast, it will be interesting if she tries to wreck havoc by throwing a wrench into the west coast at the same time…

The first full week of school is winding down. Pretty good so far. My only complaint is that one of my G.E. classes has to rank as one of the most boring classes that I have ever taken. Normally, I probably would just ditch it, but it’s right between two other classes, so I figure since I’m already on campus, I might as well make myself useful.

Spent the last few afternoons down at Ocean Beach. I sat on a sand dune and did homework yesterday. That was a peaceful experience and I got quite a bit done. I went running along the beach today as well during sunset. There was hardly anyone out, I practically had the place to myself. That was just an awesome experience. My roommate Colin, might try and take me out surfing one of these upcoming weekends. I’m excited, though aprehensive at the same time. That whole “weird things I can’t see” in the water factor, scares me. Just running along the beach today, I counted 15 jelly fish washed up along a small stretch. Ack!

In some sad news, a student at SFSU died yesterday from injuries he suffered on a school field trip this weekend. He was a brand new incoming geosciences student, so I wonder if this will have some implications on our department. I didn’t know the student, but very sad stuff nonetheless. I wish his family and friends the best.

Alright, a few hands of Texas Hold ‘Em awaits with the roommates! This will be the fastest $20 I’ve ever lost. (I’ve yet to actually win a hand in this game.)

Alright, looks like everything is back in working order. The photo gallery has finally been restored, using the latest version available. Let’s see how long it lasts this time.

The past two days have been absolutely gorgeous up here. Not a single cloud in the sky, and not too hot either. I took a few pictures today from the small park across the street from my house. I ended up stitching together this (beware 1.4mb!) picture of San Francisco to create a neat little panorama view. Quite awesome I think!

Also, I applied the same method to take a picture of my room now that I’m finally moved back in. This didn’t come out as well as the San Francisco panorama though. All I really need to do in my room is hang some posters up on the wall and everything will be set! If one of the roommates upstairs moves out, then I’ll probably end up taking the room and I can finally get rid of that blasted loft bed. Anyway, pic of the room.

I also discovered an interesting thing while browsing through some random recording archives on my computer. This is an interesting (albeit simple) little chord progression, but I love the way it sounds. I might have to play with that a little more. Anyway, this mp3 is about 500kb. Check it out!

Going over to Berkeley tonight to hang out with my sister and David for a bit. I’ll have to write more about school later (as well as how I made a great fool of myself tumbling down the stairs).

Stay tuned! 🙂

After an enormously tedious 8 hour drive on Monday, I am finally back in San Francisco. I think that I would normally get depressed or saddened by foggy and gloomy days, but when I arrived to find my neighborhood enveloped in fog, it just felt so awesome! It was that perfect kind of weather that is just *perfect* for a fire. Granted, we don’t have any wood for our fireplace at the moment…

Everything is finally unpacked and organized. My room is kind of small for the amount of stuff that I have though. However, it still has a nice, small dorm type of feel to it. It actually looks lived in, especially compared to the baren and uninviting place it was before I left for my internship. One of our roommates upstairs may be moving out in about a month, and his room is a bit bigger, with an awesome view of the ocean too! I might try to snag that. It’s about $140 extra a month, which isn’t too bad in the scheme of things.

I was also able to land a job at school! I’ll be working on the outreach program for the geosciences department, helping high school students with various research projects. I’ll also be maintaining their webpage for them as well. That stuff is right up my alley and should be relatively simple to do.

First day of classes was today too. It’s going to be a brutal schedule. I’ll be on campus for nearly 8 hours a day for 3 days a week. Despite those huge hours, I still will be going to school the other two days as well! Yes! School every single day. This is going to be brutal. The schedule that seems to be set in stone at the moment is: Sedimentology & Stratigraphy, Structural Geology, Mineralogy and Violent Oceans & Atmosphere. I will be having an enormous amount of field trips to go on for these classes, so I’ll have relatively few free weekends this semester. We’ll just have to see how it pans out!

Dan and I went on a short camping trip to the Sierras this weekend. That was a blast. We did quite a bit of off roading in his newly aquired Jeep. We discovered some interesting things on these expeditions, such as the Inyo Craters. I’ll try to post some pictures soon, once I get my gallery back online.