Mikki, Nina, and I went down to White Sands National Monument for a bit of backcountry camping this weekend. There are photos here. It was nice and warm, and a good time was had by all.

As per Jason's link, I have only seen 162 of these movies. I own 11 of them.

What people call my sugar gliders when they can't think of what they're called:

Squirrel gliders
Glider babies
Rodent gliders
Sugar squirrels
Flying rats
Chipmunk gliders
Cute little... thingies

...continued from Brent's journal entry.

Rules:
Bold what you've played and finished.
Italic what you've played and not finished.
Underline what you own but haven't played.
Then add three of your own.

New Rules:
Remove all games you've never heard of.
Remove all games listed on platforms you've never touched.
Playing on an emulator counts.
Having the ROM does not warrant and underline.

1. Final Fantasy VII -- PSX
2. Metroid -- NES
4. Halo -- Xbox
5. Resident Evil -- GameCube
7. Sonic the Hedgehog -- Genesis
9. Super Mario World -- SNES
10. Star Wars Trilogy -- Arcade
11. Final Fantasy IX -- PSX
18. Metroid Prime -- Gamecube
19. Chrono Trigger -- SNES
20. Final Fantasy IV -- SNES
21. Final Fantasy X -- PS2
24. Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask -- N64
27. Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles -- Gamecube
28. Baldur's Gate II -- PC
30. Myst -- PC/Saturn/PSX/DVD
36. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (PC/X-Box)
37. Final Fantasy VI (SNES)
38. Skies of Arcadia (Dreamcast or GameCube)
42. Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker (GameCube)
45. Ultima Collection - PC
53. Rygar: the Legendary Adventure - PS2
54. Prince of Persia: Sands of Time - XB
56. Super Metroid - SNES
58. Final Fantasy Tactics - PSX
59. Ico - PS2
61. Rez - PS2
66. Super Mario Sunshine - GC
67. NBA Street Vol. 2 - XB/PS2/GC
68. Final Fantasy XI - PC/PS2
76. Sam and Max Hit the Road - PC/Mac
77. Punch-Out!! - NES
79. Breath of Fire IV - PSX
81. Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past - SNES
82. Bionic Commando - NES
85. The Curse of Monkey Island - PC
90. R-Type Delta - PSX
93. Phantasy Star II - Gen

and I add the following:

94. Attack from Mars - Pinball
95. E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial - Atari VCS
96. Hunt the Wumpus - TRS/80

I bought my Ford Ranger (used) a year ago today. It's been a reasonable truck for what I use it for (and infinitely better than my Subaru Legacy). Here are some one year statistics:

Some notes: The repairs/modifications statistic may seem strangely high, but the bulk of that figure went into A) new tires all around B) new stereo and speakers C) and the initial comprehensive repair job when I bought the car.

I have had to add a quart of oil to the truck 15 times. Approximately every 1100 miles. The engine is tired and burns oil. But that's OK, oil is cheap. If I had to replace the clutch every 1100 miles that would be different.

I took the truck on 10 trips to the Guadalupe Mountains near Carlsbad, 1 trip to the Lake Como road on the Blanca Massif in Colorado, 1 trip to the South Colony Lakes road near the Crestones in Colorado, 1 trip to the Uncompahgre trailhead road in Colorado, and 3 trips down to Socorro.

I gimped the clutch so bad that it smoked... twice.

In another year, I suspect I will have a much higher paying job and will either be saving up to buy a brand new truck or have alredy done so. Wish me luck.

Christina is having a big BBQ food party at her house tonight and I'm bringing veggie kebabs and cream cheese jalapeno poppers. I had to go to the Food Hole in Santa Fe to get fancier produce for the kebabs. While I was there, I noticed that they carry Patak's sauces. They don't carry the vindaloo paste that I like so much, but they did have a Rogan Josh sauce that I tried out last night. It's super easy - just fry up some chicken cubes, pour the sauce on, and simmer for 20 minutes. Mmm good.

I've never really understood biathalons, triathalons, decathalons, etc. Why is each one always composed of the same sports? If you had a competition composed of just biking and swimming, why wouldn't that be a biathalon, too?

I think there should be more variety in these events and you should be able to construct the triathalon of your choice, composed of individual sports that you enjoy. So if you like skiing and want to do the biathalon, but don't know which end of the rifle is which, you can swap out the rifle component with, say, discus.

Some biathalons could lead to real humor value too - consider the synchrnoized swimming / Greco-Roman wrestling biathalon.

For myself, I have created the MouserTriathalon. It starts with a full series of bowling, followed by a game of ultimate, and then you have to play 100,000 points worth of Galaga. Nina's triathalon would be similar, except the Galaga requirement would be replaced with like 8,000 games of air hockey.

So today I biked to work. I plan on doing so regularly from now on, except when there is snow. It's about 3km each way and most of the way to work is uphill. This is nice, because it is a relaxing easy ride on the way home. But to get more of a work-out of it, I decided that when I don't have something to rush home to, I'm going to bike towards the LANL back gate, as far as I feel up to, everyday after work and then turn around and head home. The beginning of that extra-credit trip is a long grueling hill up to the ski hill turnoff. Today I made it most of the way up that hill, adding an extra 2.5km round trip and a lot of vertical to my workout for today. Tomorrow I'm likely to skip the extra credit as I have ultimate right after work. But with luck I'll make it farther and farther down W. Jemez road each time and I'll get enormous and huge.

So one of the guys who I go Orienteering with owns a share of a Cessna 182 airplane and occasionally flies it around for fun. He called last night and said he was going out for a night flight and asked if I'd like to come along.

Well of course...

Anyway, so I got to fly the plane. A lot. Basically if we weren't landing or taking off, I was in control of the plane. We flew from Los Alamos to the Santa Fe airport, where we did a couple of touch-and-go's. Then we went south to the Double Eagle airport in Albuquerque and landed. We were going to do a touch-and-go there but the runway was a little short so we stopped, backtracked, waited for some other traffic to land, and then took off again. Then it was back up and over the Jemez Mountains and a loop over Los Alamos before landing.

It was all night flying and the moon wasn't out, so there wasn't much to see other than city lights, but it was still great. My only complaint is that the instrument layout in the 182 is not condusive to flying from the copilot's seat. Some critical gauges are hidden behind the pilot's stick.

Nina came too, but was tired and fell asleep for about half of the flight. For the part that she was conscious for, she had a good time. I can't wait to do it again. Ugh this probably means I'll be compelled to get my pilot's license when I have some more money... and that will make we want to go in on a plane... and that will make me poor. Oh well.

Well, Robin and I were successful again at our mountaineering endeavor. We successfully climbed Mt. Lindsey (14,042'). Here are the pictures and here is the trip report.

Also, I had neglected to write up a trip report for our trip up Uncompahgre Peak last week until now.

As of this morning, the code that implements my adaptive multigroup radiation diffusion algorithm is working without obvious errors. This is the algorithm that constitutes the bulk of my thesis. This means that I am now in a position to produce the data needed to complete the thesis and finally get the writing done. And that means that I'll graduate soonish. And THAT means that I'll get a real job out here at the lab... and that means my salary will double.

In celebration of this major milestone on my way to financial freedom, I went out on lunch and bought a road bicycle that I've been looking at for some time. It's a 2004 Specialized Allez Sport Triple. It's in the back of my truck and I haven't gotten to ride it yet. But hopefully, it'll help me get in better shape for mountaineering.

Speaking of which, Robin and I are going to climb Mt. Lindsey (14,042') tomorrow.

Thursday after work, Robin and I stopped off at the ISR division picnic and grabbed some free dinner, then drove up to Colorado for some camping and a dayhike 14er. We drove through Pagosa Springs, CO, and ate at the "Europe Cafe" which makes an excellent lasagna. We didn't arrive at the Nellie Creek approach road near Lake City until just after midnight.

We got up at 5:30am and made breakfast, then drove the 4 miles of 4WD road up to the Uncompahgre Peak trailhead. The stream crossings were a little exciting but otherwise the Ranger had no problems making it up this road. We were on the trail by 7:00. The weather was amazing - no wind, no significant clouds, and very warm. There was still a lot of snow here and there but we managed our way through or around it.

The hike was easy and we made it to the summit just before 11:00am. Because of the snow, our route was slightly longer and involved more gain than the standard trail route - about 8 miles round trip and 3,000' gain. The elevation of Uncompahgre (aka Unpronounceable or Unspellable) is 14,309' which makes it my new personal highest elevation. It also claims the titles of the 6th highest point in Colorado, the highest point in the San Juan mountain range, and the highest point in Hinsdale County, CO. In the latter ragard, it made for my 69th county highpoint.

On the way down, we glissaded down some large steep snowfields which cut about 1000' of the elevation off the hike in a very short period of time. As a result we were back to the truck in under two hours. We stopped at the True Grits Steak House in Alamosa, CO, for dinner - highly recommended. They give you a ton of food and it is excellent.

Pictures from the trip are in the gallery here.

Snippet from an email from Lance:

If you ever make it to San Fran, lemme know and we'll go blow something up.

P.S. For the benefit of any monitoring services looking for terrorist activity, we'll blow up a sex doll. With our mouths.

Robin and I decided that on Friday we're going to climb another big mountain in Colorado. This time it's Uncompahgre Peak (14,309'). It's the sixth highest point in Colorado, the highest point in the San Juan Mountains, and also a county highpoint. However, I'll be climbing it with Robin which means, based on our previous track record, that something will go horribly wrong. I've gone on more mountaineering trips with Robin than anyone else - and none of them has ever been successful.

This time we're stacking the odds in our favor, though. It's a relatively short hike (<8 miles round trip), a modest 3,000' of elevation gain, and the approach trail is largely on the southern slopes of the peak, which should be clear of snow. For this reason, we're packing for a fast-and-light ascent which means that I'll be somewhat less ultra-slow than usual. Also in our favor, we're driving up Thursday night and camping at the trailhead. This means that we can be hiking at first light, giving us a ton of time to do this relatively short trip. The weather recently has been great - it'll be hard to mess this one up, but I'm not making any bets just yet. It is Robin, afterall.

So before bowling on Monday Nina and I went to check out the latest effects/disaster movie by the guy who brought us such Sci-Fi classic shitplates as Godzilla, ID4, Stargate, and Moon 44.

Let me start off by saying that the effects are really quite good. The tsunami crashing into Manhattan is only outdone by the tornados in LA. On the other hand, there were some small detail effects that were biffed... like the snowshoe tracks that don't line up with the snowshoes, etc. But this is obviously a big whiz-bang effects show and if you're going to see it, you should see it in the theater for this reason.

One thing that usually irks me about big-budget FX films that was thankfully lacking here was lousy acting. I think all of the principals gave good performances that did not distract from the bad science and ham-handed environmental ethics lessons of the film. I like Dennis Quaid and Jake Gyllenhaal a lot, anyway.

The only real problem with the film was the writing. The movie is blatantly pulled along by the effects, and when you find yourself at a portion of the story that doesn't rely on effects... they throw in rabid timberwolves - presumably to give the computers and effects nerds something to work on. Spare redshirts are kept in the story to be killed or injured later during relatively dull sequences, but just like in Star Trek, they don't actually contribute anything to the film outside of their moment of rope-cutting drama.

I understand why Emmerich put these elements in the film... because without them it's just a bunch of sweet storm effects surrounded by interludes of people in jackets. But filler drama, however dramatic, doesn't make the movie any better.

Despite all my bitching, I enjoyed this film - but on a strictly SFX level.

This just arrived yesterday afternoon. It is really great. I think the Gondry disc is the best because A) it has the most content and B) he is a total nut. But the Cunningham and Jonez discs are great too. The Cunningham offering is a little skimpy and I wish the Gondry disc had a commentary track for the videos, but all in all I highly recommend these DVDs.

So Nina and I went bowling again on Memorial Day because we were both too sore to climb Cabezon, which was our original plan. I did well, bowling my best game (159) and best series (386) yet. And I'm getting tired of paying so much for bowling, so I bit the bullet and bought my own shoes. I ordered them from BowlersParadise.com and they were cheaper than the lame-looking ones that they have at the bowling alley in Espanola.

Right now I'm paying something like $1.50 (daytime) and $2.50 (evening) to rent shoes each time I bowl, so in somewhere between 20 and 35 outings I'll have saved enough to pay for the shoes.

I'm really liking the bowling shirt that Nina made me. No photos yet, because the embroidered pocket is still in production. The shirt doesn't really match the shoes I bought, but I guess not matching is sort of the rule in bowling, right?

In dorkier bowling news, the stats script that Brent and I have been working on is now fully operational for individual player stats. Check out the numbers for Brent, Nina, Crystal, Mikki, and Me.

The next step is to implement an online league where we can compete against each other and have leage stats, etc. Coming soon to a website near you.

There was a special caving trip to the second, third, and fourth paralells of Cottonwood Cave this weekend for the purpose of cleaning up some carbide dumps that have been there for ages. Cleaning carbide is not fun and nearly impossible, but getting to go to these usually off-limits areas of the cave was an opportunity I couldn't pass up.

The highlights of this trip (aside from hours of picking up spent carbide dust off of mud...) were epsomite needles that were unimagineably fragile, a large gypsum chandelier, and the fourth parallel's "mud passage," which has 2-3' deep boot-sucking mud that makes really humorous noises as one slogs through it. The mud passage is really taxing to move through, but the walls are lined with amazing helectites, soda straws, and shelfstones that make it one of the most beautiful rooms I've ever been in.

Having to cart in a whole change of clothes and spare boots (and having to cart them back out with about 20 pounds of bonus mud) was no fun, but the trip was still one of my favorite trips on record.

The following day I led a group out to Lonesome Ridge Cave as part of my small cave mapping/inventory project. I think we're just about done with that cave now. Eddie and I managed to map the northern passage to its terminus which ended up being only abou 20 meters, though we did find pools with water in them towards the back. It was a fun traverse because it is just a 0.5m wide crack that you end up stemming across with the floor occasionally dropping off by as much as 8 meters.