Fun in the Sun

Warm weather and clear skies have finally returned to the bay area. Thus, it is time to get out and start enjoying nature again! Along those lines, yesterday, Brett and I visited Point Reyes National Park (view map).

We got there around 4 p.m. and found the road down to Chimney Rock and the Point Reyes Light House closed to the public. We were disappointed because that was our destination, but we decided to just turn around and head down to Drakes Beach (at Kenneth Patrick Visitor Center) and see what we could see from there. When we pulled into the large parking lot, it was mostly full and there were a fair number of people there. We saw the visitor center and went in to talk to the park ranger. She told us that right now is peak migration season for Pacific gray whales and they pass by the CA coast, so a lot of people come out to watch for them. Thus, they close the road down to Point Reyes Light House and Chimney Rock to their tour buses only until 5:30, due to the large volume of people wanting to go down there to watch for whales and the small parking lots down there that cannot accommodate them. Fortunately, we were there late enough to miss the *huge* crowds, but she said that 700 people had taken their bus tours down that day.

We decided to hang out at Drake’s Beach until 5:30 and then drive down ourselves. We were able to do some pretty hiking and look at some beautiful views of the shoreline and the ocean after a short hike up to some high cliffs.

At 5:30, we headed down the road. We briefly went to Point Reyes South Beach, but there were a lot of people sun bathing and surfing and the views weren’t that interesting, so we continued down. We did not go to Point Reyes Light House, as it seemed like that’s where most cars were going and it would be more crowded and we were more interested in the wildlife and the views. We headed off to the Chimney Rock side of the peninsula. On the way down, we saw elk and some hawks. There were also a lot signs for Historic Ranches, and thus lots of cattle guards and driving through pastures with cows where you had to watch for them on the road. Some were close enough to touch if I had rolled down the window and tried.

We ended up in a *tiny* parking lot (less than 10 parking spaces) on the Chimney Rock side of the peninsula. They must normally get hardly any visitors when it’s not whale season. We took the hiking trails down to Chimney Rock and when we got to the shore, we saw two large groups of elephant seals hanging out on the beach. We were again up on high cliffs, so we were looking down on them below, laying on the sandy beach by the water. The best part, though, was that we sat and watched the water for a while, and started seeing whales spraying water as they crowned for air off the shore. The ranger told us that there had been 7 reported whale sightings all day. We watched for about 10 minutes and saw 4 different sprays although we never saw more than that.

There were large amounts of time spent in the car, including miles and miles on Sir Francis Drake Blvd as it passed through towns, forests, and hills, and at times was fairly winding and at times fairly narrow. However, it was a worthwhile trip,

More Warcraft Updates

So WOTLK is imminent and I have managed to upgrade my gear a bit via battlegrounds. I did end up with Merciless Gladiator’s Crossbow of the Phoenix and was also able to get the two-handed sword. I was really loving the look of that polearm, but my polearm skill was pretty low, so I went with the sword. I also was able to upgrade my shoulders and now I have Merciless Gladiator’s Chain Spaulders. I’ll probably have enough honor for one more piece before the expansion. At least it will be a bit easier to level with the better gear. Hopefully new items will start dropping off mobs that are better than those I have, especially the non-upgraded items, and I’ll be able to replace it all within a few levels. Those shoulders look bad ass for now though!

I’ve also been enjoying the achievements added in the Echoes of Doom patch. When I first heard about the achievements system, I thought it seemed dumb and uninteresting. But I’ve been surprisingly sucked in! Only to a certain extent though. If I see one that seems easy to attain, I do the little bit of work to get it. Those that seem like chasing a ghost, though, like the Perfect Storm achievement, I don’t bother with. If it happens, it happens, but I’m not going to alter what I would be doing in a given play session so I can try in vain to get it.

I also have found the Halloween related world events and the expansion pack related world events rather fun. A lot of people having been qqing about the latter, but it hasn’t bothered me that much. There have been several occasions when I was trying to play and I got turned into a zombie and had my plans interrupted, but I took it as an opportunity to have fun in a different way than I was planning. It has been interesting to do something new and I haven’t found it that disruptive. I guess most people didn’t have the same attitude though.

Lastly, I was hoping to get my epic flying mount before WOTLK came out, but alas, almost two months later, I am still only at just over 3000 gold. At that rate, I will never get the 5000 I need before the expansion comes out. I know you can’t use your flying mounts for a while in the new expansion areas, but I was just hoping to have that out of the way and put aside so I wouldn’t have to worry about it when all the new and interesting content from the expansion was at my disposal. Oh well, at least making the gold to buy the mount should be cake and will seem less like grinding with the new content to go through.

My Fine Feathered Friends

I have been living in a new apartment complex since May, which has the same man-made ponds throughout as my last apartment complex. Since moving in, I have befriended some of the local duck regulars by feeding them periodically. After the first few times I gave them some bread, they started recognizing me. When I’d pull into my parking space after arriving home from work, they would quickly waddle over to my car. It was so adorable. I was surprised how quickly they started that behavior, after only two or three feedings. I guess birds are smarter than I realized.

There is one particular pair of ducks that I am quite fond of. They are a male duo that hang out together. I like to think of them as brothers. I have never really liked mallards that much. I don’t find them that attractive physically and they seem to be such jerks as well. The duo with which I have become buddies are not mallards, although I have no idea what kind of duck they are. They are larger than mallards and do not have the characteristic green head with a white band around their necks either. They instead have this really cute coloring where they have white chests with brown feathers mixed in with the white. They seem to be the only two of their species around here, so they hang out with the mallards, but I try to make sure they get more food than the others. I got some pictures of the boys the other day, which I have posted here.

There is also a mallard family that has some babies, which are cute despite my dislike of mallards. I have been unable to get any pictures of them because it’s always dusk when they show up. I’ve tried taking pictures, but they come out too dark or too washed out when I turn the flash on. There is also a goose couple that’s been hanging around for weeks with their babies. I have been able to get some good photos of the goose family, which I have posted here.

The Surf and The Sun

This weekend, Nicole and Steve invited me to go to a park called Fort Funston in San Francisco, which is a beach park that allows dogs off leash. I took Sammy and, as far as I know, that was the first time she’s been to the beach or seen the ocean.

The beach at Fort Funston was great. There was a lovely view of mountains in the distance both north and south of the beach. There was an awesome assortment of dogs throughout the day, mutts and purebreds alike. The weather was perfect, too. The beach is usually so cold because of the wind. On Sunday, it was windy, but not exceptionally so. It was fairly warm, about 80 degrees, so the wind just served to cool things down to a perfect temperature. The water was still freezing though!

Not surprisingly, Sammy had no use for the water, which probably was only in part due to the temperature. She is prissy about being wet *or* cold, so she wouldn’t have liked it either way. When she first saw the water, she walked up to it, just far enough to be standing in about an inch of water. She tried to drink it and then reacted by shaking her head with her eyes squinted closed and gnashing her teeth at the salty taste. She started to walk out of the water, with her back to the waves. She then paused, tried to drink it again, and, in the midst of having the same reaction again, was smacked in the bottom by a large wave. She left the water indignantly and didn’t go back the entire time we were there. At one point, I took her by the collar and tried to get her excited about running after the waves as they went out and running away from them as they rolled in, like the other dogs were doing, but she was not interested and walked off wondering what was wrong with me.

She did enjoy the sand though. She fell asleep on the warm sand for a while. Later, we buried her and she didn’t care at all. Finally, it was time to go. There is a fairly steep climb to get to and from the beach. It was somewhat trying to climb down when we first got there. The sand moving underneath your feet means you have to push off extra hard with your calves to get anywhere. Getting back up was less fun, of course. I had to pause a few times to catch my breath. Sammy pushed right through it and left me in the dust. She was slow, but steady, and waited for me when she got to the top.

The only downside of the whole thing was caused by my own absent mindedness. I tried to be well prepared for this outing. I put sunscreen on all my exposed skin before leaving the house. I wore jeans and a t-shirt for the occasion, thinking there would be a cold wind. However, at some point, I did some wading in the water, so I rolled up my pant legs to keep them from getting wet. The mistake came when I never put them back down, since it was plenty warm. We were there for about 3 hours, mostly laying on the sand. The result was that I got a severe sunburn from knee to ankle on the front of both legs. There is a lot of tightness to the skin, pain, and swelling so it’s probably 2nd degree. I read up on how to treat burns last night, and the advice to keep them bandaged was invaluable. Today was way less painful with the bandages on. Hopefully the healing will begin soon and be quick!

Last, Nicole took lots of great pictures of the outing!

Asteroid Imminence?

As soon as I finished my last post, a friend sent me this link. How timely!

Apophis – The Killer Astroid?

The Sky is Falling

I saw a show called Mega Disasters on the history channel that was really interesting. The episode explored the catastrophic effects of an asteroid 2 km long hitting just off the coast of Los Angeles. It is widely believed that the Chicxulub asteroid impact of 160 million years ago wiped out the dinosaurs and 70% of all living things. The show used that impact as an example to project what would happen in the theoretical Los Angeles asteroid scenario. As an introduction, the narrator gave a bunch of details about the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. I didn’t realize that we knew so much about it, but the following are some of the details.

The asteroid was 6 miles across. As it entered the atmosphere, the fireball in its wake would have been miles wide, appearing to set the sky ablaze. It impacted the earth in the Gulf of Mexico near the Yucatan peninsula. The asteroid easily cut through the water, vaporizing it, and continued into the sea floor, leaving an initial crater in the ocean floor 60 miles across and 15 miles deep. The energy of the impact was comparable to 100 million megatons of TNT. That’s 6 million times greater than the 1980 Mount St. Helen’s eruption. The flash from the impact would have been brighter than 1000 suns.

All the displaced ocean water along with tons of gravel would have come raining back down on the coast within minutes. The initial impact ejected a fireball that spread over 100 mile radius, incinerating everything in its path. In addition, 2000 mph (yes, two thousand, that’s not a typo) searing hot winds shot out from the blast. Tsunamis resulting from the impact swept over the Americas with 150 foot high waves. The impact triggered magnitude 10 earthquakes, causing landslides that sparked additional tsunamis. Note that no magnitude 10 earthquake has ever occurred in recorded human history.

The final radius of the impact crater after everything settled was 100 miles. The immediate destruction radius of the impact was about 600 miles. However, while this devastation in unparalleled in human history, it alone does not account for the mass extinction caused by this asteroid.

The debris ejected from the impact effectively set the sky on fire all over the globe. Molten rock ejected into the air, heated the atmosphere to 1200 degrees F (again, not a typo). While this temperature is hot enough to cause flash fires on its own, the molten debris also fell back to earth, causing more fires. Any animal that could not seek shelter underground or underwater would have been burned alive.

Apparently the evidence shows that the species that survived this event were ground or water dwelling. However, even a number of underground and water dwelling species went extinct. After the fires and molten rock settled down, ash and other debris remained in the atmosphere, causing months of pitch black and dropping the temperature across the globe, long enough to effect food chains and result in the deaths of entire species.

As for the theoretical Los Angeles 2 km long asteroid scenario, it wasn’t as interesting, perhaps simply because it hasn’t actually happened. The blast would annihilate not only Los Angeles, but all communities within 100 miles of the coast. A firestorm would consume much of southern California and tsunamis would hammer the entire western coast. The resultant dust cloud would cover much of the Midwest, devastating crops for at least a year. Millions of people would die from the direct effects of the impact, and millions more would suffer from resulting famine. It’s not the same as molten lava raining from an atmosphere hot enough to spontaneously combust any living creature, but I still would prefer not to experience any such thing.

Haast’s Eagle

I saw an interesting show about New Zealand recently. Much of the content referred to things I already knew about, at least generally, but there was some new and interesting information as well. As one would imagine, before humans found it, New Zealand was colonized only by creatures that could reach it by air or sea. For the most part, it was inhabited by birds. Since there were no predators, particularly snakes or mammals, a lot of flightless birds evolved. Flying takes up a lot of energy, and since there was no need to fly to escape predators, many species evolved away from that ability. Under these circumstances, the Moa evolved. The Moa was the largest bird ever known to man, which the first humans on the island of New Zealand hunted to extinction about 750 years ago.

The most interesting thing I learned was that along side the Moa evolved a bird large enough to prey on it – the Haast’s Eagle. I had never heard of this bird before. The females were the larger of the sexes and weighed 30 lbs. The wing span was 10 feet, which apparently is small for that weight, but was better for the dense forest terrain it hunted in. They were actually big and strong enough to take down Moas, which themselves were about 12 feet high and weighed around 550 lbs. According to the narrator, the power of the eagle when it hit its prey from a dive was the equivalent of a cinder block dropped from an eight story building.

Now, enter the humans, also large, upright-walking prey, matching the eagle’s hunting pattern. I don’t know if there is actual evidence that it happened, but an eagle that size accustomed to such large prey could easily take down a human. It would certainly be frightening to share habitat with such a predator knowing that you would be an easy kill by its standards. Imagine living in a world where you had to be worried about being taken down and eaten by a giant bird. It’s the stuff of horror stories.

The wikipedia article on the Haast’s eagle also implies that the Maori, the original human settlers of New Zealand, may have been threatened by a bird of this size. The Moa article has some interesting information as well.

XBox Livid

A few months ago, I was playing some XBox games with a friend of mine on his 360. We couldn’t access certain features of the game and we thought it might be because I didn’t have a Gold membership for my account. So, I went ahead and signed up even though I don’t have an XBox, but of course, that didn’t end up being the issue, so we still couldn’t play what we wanted to. Fun! I tried to cancel my subscription both via his XBox and online that night and discovered that they require you to call to cancel. I knew immediately that would be a pain in the ass. They obviously made the conscious decision to not give any convenient ways of canceling accounts. Thus, I could only assume that forcing customers to talk to someone was intended to make it even harder, at least in part by having the customer service representative make the process as difficult as possible.

So I procrastinated calling them for a while, as I loathe these kinds of situations, but finally called this morning. I went through an automated voice menu, of course, and eventually got to a menu where one of the options was ‘Cancel My XBox Live Account’, so I selected that option. I was then connected to a customer service representative. He confirmed that I wanted to cancel my account and then proceeded to have me confirm all kinds of details about my account. He made me repeat and spell everything, sometimes more than once. I got the distinct impression that it wasnt that he didn’t understand, but that he was trained to make the process as difficult and frustrating as possible in the hopes that the customer would give up and change his mind. It just wasn’t believable to me that he was that inept, despite my unwavering faith in the capacity of humans to be complete idiots.

So after we get through that painful process, he informs me that he cannot actually help me with my request. He has to transfer me to the Billing and Cancellations department. Given that the menu option I chose in the automated voice menu was “Cancel My XBox Live Account”, it was perplexing to me that I was transferred to someone who couldn’t help me with that request. Furthermore, he confirmed at the beginning of our conversation that what I wanted was to cancel my account, so if he couldn’t help me, why didn’t he just transfer me immediately to someone who could. Let’s see…could it be an attempt to make the process frustrating enough that I might give up? No, they wouldn’t do that, I’m sure.

He then proceeds to put me on hold for about 6 minutes, coming back every few minutes to tell me how busy Billing and Cancellations is and that someone will be with me shortly. Finally, a woman, who I’m sure was from a totally different department and not sitting at the desk right next to his, picks up the line. She proceeds to have me repeat all the same information to verify my account as the first guy. I know, it’s a big shock. You couldn’t have seen that coming the second the first guy told me that he was going to have to transfer me to someone else. I mean, I’m sure Microsoft really wants to help facilitate good customer service experiences and wouldn’t needlessly ask people to repeat information over and over in the hopes of wearing them down.

Once we were finished going over every detail of my account again, she began the “talk the customer out of canceling” portion of the conversation. She asked me my reason for canceling, as I knew she would before I even called. I explained to her that I dont have an XBox, that I subscribed at a friend’s house a few months ago but havent used any membership features since then, so it’s not remotely worth it to me. I was pretty sure she hadn’t heard that reason too often, if at all, before. Like a true trooper, though, she managed to come up with some retorts that I’m not even sure were from her training manual. They just seemed too ridiculous to be official, but maybe I’m giving Microsoft too much credit.

Her counter offers included, “You should consider buying your own XBox because you know, you can transfer this account to your own XBox.” Okay, yeah, I’ll go spend a few hundred bucks so we can avoid this hassle. Another suggestion was, “Are you sure you don’t have a friend or family member with an XBox that would like to take over your account?” Uh…seriously? ‘Hey, Bob, I was going to cancel my XBox account, but then I realized that if you take it over, and we go through a bunch of hassle to change all the billing and contact information, and you want a gamer tag that represents who I am and not who you are, it would just make more sense. Oh, and *your* XBox Live Account, well, you can just get someone else to take that over, because you don’t want to cancel that either. It just doesn’t make sense if you think about it.’

So after I deflected all that crap, she said she would cancel the renewal charge to my credit card, but not the account so I could keep using it. Yes, thank you for not deleting my free gamer tag. Although, as a final ’screw you’ to someone who made it through the cancellation gauntlet, I wouldn’t put it past Microsoft.

There Be Dragons

I logged into WoW for the first time in a while the other day and discovered there had been a fairly big patch. In addition to the ability to create level 70 characters with epic gear for use in PVP tournaments, they had added a new area, the Sunwell. I looked around and figured out that I could get to it via a flight path from Silvermoon City. I flew up there just out of curiosity. I didn’t find it particularly interesting, but when I went to the flight master to return to the mainland, I discovered my mount was one I hadn’t seen before. I took some screen shots, just because I thought it looked cool. It was nighttime in the game and as I was taking screen shots a big full moon made it presence known in the sky. It was a marvelous effect for my screen shots, especially since I was sporting a pumpkin head, left over from a special Halloween item I still had on hand.

First was a cool dark shot in the rain with my pumpkin head all aglow.

Next was another side shot as his wings hit the top of their cycle.

Aww, in this one, his wings look like a heart. : P

Then, the moon showed up and made for a really great shot as it shone down upon us.

Last, the moon lined up perfectly behind us, serving as an evil halo to my pumpkin head facade. It looks wonderfully sinister.

MTX

On January 25th, I went to see the Mr. T Experience at the Bottom of the Hill in the city. I have seen them numerous times before and always thoroughly enjoy their performance. The last lineup I saw was Frank, Joel, and Jym (my favorite lineup in fact), so needless to say it has been a while. The lineup now is Frank and Jym plus the newest members, Ted Angel and Bobby Jordan. I hadn’t ever seen the latter two, so I didn’t recognize Ted despite the fact that he was standing next to me for much of the Hi-Fives performance. He kind of reminds me of Giovanni Ribisi. Add to that my attraction to younger guys, and I was content with the eye candy he was providing. Frank was also wandering around, looking either tired or drunk. I’m not sure which, but I know from first hand experience that pushing yourself to do the same things as you get older can wear you down. I think his wife was there, too. I have no idea what she looks like, but Jordan was with me and he thought it looked like her.

The Hi-Fives aren’t really my kind of thing, so I waited patiently for their set to end, and was happy when it finally did. Then, MTX came out and did their thing. There were some songs from their more recent albums, Alcatraz and Road to Ruin, that I didn’t recognize. They also played a ton of great classics, including Sackcloth and Ashes, Ba Ba Ba Ba Ba, I Fell For You, You’re the Only One, Hell of Dumb, Swallow Everything, The History of the Concept of the Soul, King Dork, …And I Will Be With You, and More Than Toast. I did notice that either Ted or Bobby (not sure which, maybe both) was off key on a number of occasions, sometimes enough so that it messed Frank up and pulled him off key as well. I know I am biased, but Joel really did a great job of singing back up. Their voices were great together.

They were gracious enough to do two encores, after the audience chanting MTX repeatedly. I find chanting creepy, so I didn’t participate in that, but I did my part with cheering and clapping. Frank noted at the beginning of the second encore that he was getting to old to keep playing so many songs. It was definitely strange, first of all, seeing Frank looking as old as he does now, but also seeing him singing with guys that are probably younger than me! Regardless, I had a good time and I’m glad I went.