I missed last month's dark night on account of the Hawai'i trip. Tonight was sub-excellent. There were significant clouds moving through and we really only had one clear window that moved from east to west. I did manage to see the Trapezium, Saturn, Mars, and the Merope Nebula over the course of a brief 35 minute observation. One of the other guys had brought his binocular viewer along, which was nice except that it required independant focus on each of the eyepieces and someone kept adjusting one of the eyes all wonky so that whenever I would get a turn I would be seeing double and had to re-adjust.

...on the way down into my lab this morning, I managed to slip and fall down the stairs. Now my ass is killing me.

Well, it's official. I just got back from court and I'm a CRIMINAL!

Let's rewind to Tuesday, when I was pulled over on the way to play handball. Turns out the registration on my truck expired and I had no idea. I pulled up to the stoplight and a cop pulled up behind me. I happened to have my radio turned on at the time, and I heard him read off my license plate. So I knew he was going to pull me over when I made my turn, but I figured one of my break lights must be out or something.

Anyway, turns out the sticker on my license plate reads, "Jun 05," and that's... in the past. He was somewhat apologetic, but wrote me a citation and said I had to go to court before the 9th of February.

So this morning I went to the MVD and got my registration renewed. Turns out the root of the problem is that the MVD still had my old address on file, so the reminder they sent me never got to me. Re-registering my truck costs $80! Yowch. Then I was off to court, for the first time in my life.

I was expecting a menacing judge in a black cape or at least some gavel action. Turns out that, because my "offense" was so puny, I just talk to some clerk lady through a window at the municipal building. So it's $100 in fines and a $45 court fee and I'm done. But I was required to enter a plea, and the only two honest choices were guilty and no-contest. In this particular circumstance the two are equivalent, but I decided that no-contest sounded less... guilty.

So there you have it. I pleaded no-contest to being a 1^st degree dumbass. I can't expect to just start at the top; my life as an international crime syndicate mastermind has to start at the bottom and work its way to the top. But still, I think being a criminal makes me like 300% tougher. Don't mess with ME!

During my lunch hour on Friday, I applied to college, got accepted, registered for a class, and made some noodles.

UNM-LA: The Poster Child of Academic Rigor.

I'm taking an introductory Russian language course offered by one of the interpreters in our group. It's offered through UNM-LA, so I had to become a student. Which, apparently, involves having some 16-year old girl glance at my one-page application page for approximately 20 seconds. "Looks good. Here's your registration form."

I look forward to being able to say, "Your sunglasses are ridiculous" in Russian.

(PS: it's Ваши солнечные очки смешоны.)

Maybe it's a good thing that my trip to Moscow in two weeks has been cancelled...

The caller ID information associated with my lab phone was wrong, so I was instructed to use a web form to update the information. Fully automated, seemed convenient. But wait...

Unfortunately I can't link you to the page because it's behind our firewall. So I'll just describe it. It's a simple HTML form that you fill out and it submits the information to a script which, presumably, changes your caller ID information in the PBX. Some issues:

1) The "Requesters Name" field only accepts 15 characters, making my name "Richard William" which of course won't match any records in their database.

2) The "First Name" field for what you want your caller ID info to look like only accepts 5 (five!!) characters, so my options are Richa or Mouse.

3) The "Last Name" field only accepts 7 characters, so I'm Richa William.

4) When you click the submit button, it's not actually going to a CGI script... it's a mailto: link which, for me, is bound to my gmail account (not my lab account). And of course their server rejected it as coming from an off-lab address.

So I had to cut and paste the content from the mailto: and put it into the proper account, then go in and change three of the ten field values in order to get it to work. I don't even know if it has worked as it sends no confirmation of receipt. For all I know, it borked on the fact that someone actually had a first name longer than five characters and died.

Wow. I wonder if they hired Scott Litman for this coding?

NOTE: Those of you who do not want to read about me urinating, feel free to go elsewhere right about... now.

So I think I've mentioned before that I have enrolled in what is called the "Human Reliability Program" here at the lab, wherein they certify that I am reliably human. Even though I have not yet received my certification, I am already on the list of people who at least once a year will be subjected to random drug testing. And today my number was up.

I got the call this morning that I needed to come out to the cool HRP-mobile (a custom RV) which was in the parking lot. Once there, I would be required to blow into a tube and pee into a cup. No problem with the alcohol test; my lungs were in good working order (and I don't drink). Unfortunately, I had gone to the bathroom about 5 minutes before this phone call. So there was approximately zero urine in my strategic stockpile.

I had 15 minutes before my "appointment," so I proceeded to chug 2 liters of water. Basically I drank until I felt like I had just eaten a huge meal and was incredibly full. I went out to the RV and did the alcohol test (0.000% blood alcohol level, what a surprise). Then they handed me the cup and off I went to the little bathroom in the back of the RV. Now the cup has a line to which I must fill, and it was only about 60ml, but there was just no way that was going to happen. I gave it a good shot and produced about 15ml... and that was it. After a few minutes I gave up and gave them what I had.

They told me it wasn't enough and I'd have to drink some water and try again. Then they measured the temperature and determined that it was cold (since it had been sitting in the cup for about 4 minutes) and this was bad. Apparently if you hand them a cup 'o urine at the wrong temperature, they assume that you gave them someone else's urine or something. And that means....

Yes. You have to prove to them that you are peeing into your own cup by... letting some guy watch you pee. I had three hours from my "first attempt" to produce the requisite 60ml, and this time someone had to watch.

And that... like... totally blows.

I drank another liter of water and made that fucker wait for the full three hours in protest. By then I had to go to the bathroom so bad I didn't really care if the queen of England was watching; it was going to happen. And 60ml was no problem.

But wow... how embarrassing.

In honor of the Pluto probe launch, and all the hype of it reaching a speed 47,000mph due to copious gravitational slingshotting en route to Pluto... I just wanted to make sure that all of you knew that the fasted man-made object (larger than a tennis ball) was Helios II (launched in 1976), which reached a maximum velocity of 153,800mph (16,128,000,000 rods per fortnight).

You can thank me later for this fabulous service I provide for humanity.

Unfortunately we didn't have internet access while on the Big Island so I missed out on blathering on endlessly about all the fun stuff we were up to. And now so much has happened that I'm reduced to just providing the following list of cool stuff:

• Snorkeling at night with giant manta rays
  
• Snorkeling during the day with green sea turtles
  
• Green (olivine) sand
  
• Flying over an active volcano in a helicopter
  
• Touring a couple of the big telescopes on the summit of Mauna Kea
  
• Watching the sun set from the summit (13,697')
  

  I've been putting off writing about it because there's so much to tell. And now it's becoming clear to me that a detailed writeup isn't going to happen. So tonight I decided to cop out with the above list and a link to the photos. But my gallery script got corrupted... so I'm trying to upgrade to a new version and that failed due to a lack of the latest version of php. So it's a project and the photos aren't there for you to see just yet. In fact all I've succeeded in doing is gimping up the skin for my gallery so now it looks like total ass. Sweet.

We were only staying in the Waikiki Grand for one night, so the plan was to move all our stuff over to Mikki's house once check-out time rolled around. This didn't end up being until noon, so we had half a day to do whatever we wanted to do in the Waikiki area. Top of the list on the Nina-generated itinerary was to climb to the top of Diamondhead, an interesting volcanic crater sitting on the shore adjacent to Waikiki. The highest point of the crater rim rises some 700' directly out of the ocean.

The western wall of the crater could been seen clearly from the hotel and appeared to tower over the city, but there was no frame of reference and it wasn't nearly as tall as it appeared. We weren't sure where the trail to the top started to we had the hotel call us a cab to take us there. When the cab came... it was actually a full-sized limo. Urmm.... Well whatever, we got in the limo and he drove us the ~2 miles to the entrance to the park. We felt like pretty big dorks driving past people who were hiking up the entrance road to the Diamondhead State Monument in a limo... But as we arrived at the entrance gate, we saw that indeed every taxi there was a limo. In fact, during the entire time we spent in the Waikiki area, we saw exactly one regular-sized taxi and dozens of limo-taxies. I guess that's normal here. But it sure felt weird.

Anyway, Diamondhead is really coool. Geologically it's interesting because it's a mile-diameter crater that was apparently formed in one giant volcanic explosion. It's also interesting because the military installed a bunch of pill boxes, bunkers, and tunnels throughout the crater walls prior to World War I, and turned the center of the crater into a military fort of sorts. Half of the crater interior is still a military storage area. The other half is now a nature preserve and the trail to the top ends at an old bunker complex. You hike through old tunnles and up a spiral staircase into a pillbox looking out over Waikiki. From there, you crawl out through the viewport and around onto the top, which was a fire base observation post. It's sorta fun and appeals to the urban explorer in me. The view was great:

Waikiki seen from the summit of Diamondhead

The trail was rather crowded, despite the fact that we got there before 8am on a Saturday. I took some pictures of birds (none of which I could identify) down in the crater bottom and we made our merry way. The entrance road actually goes through a tunnel right through the crater wall. As we walked our way out we passed by at least a dozen limo cabs and felt less weird about having arrived in one.

Arriving back at the hotel, we packed up our stuff and called Mikki, who was again picked us up and drove us to our next destination, her house.

Next on the agenda was Haunama Bay and my first snorkeling ever. Haunama Bay is another crater feature, but this one is breached on one side by the ocean and the entire thing is now just a shallow lagoon filled with reef. I rented some snorkel stuff and off we went.

Initially I found it very hard to breath with my head underwater without hyperventillating. It took some mental control to convince myself that I could do it without causing harm to myself. I quickly got the hang of it and was happily off snorkeling in the very warm and clear water. The fish were incredible, it was like being in Bob's saltwater aquarium, only the fish were an order of magnitude larger. In places the reef was very close to the water's surface (it was low tide) and it was hard to get from one deep art to another without running a high risk of getting either reef rash or putting your hand/feet down on a sea urching (or both). But we all managed to do it without injury.

After awhile Nina and Mikki retreated to the shore to lie in the sun and warm up; I elected to return to the water for more snorkeling which, by this point, I was thoroughly enjoying. I went to a different part of the bay and saw even better fish and a large green sea turtle! It was extremely cute and I hung out with it for some time. You're not allowed (by law) to touch them, and this guy apparently had it in for me as he kept swimming up underneath me and tried to push me around. I (mostly) avoided touching his shell and just watched him being curious about me. Anyway it was really cool and a bummer that Nina and Mikki missed it.

We had some local ice cream and mochi then went out for dinner at the Kona Brewery which was tasty, though they forgot to place the order for our pizza and only served us our appetizers. Oops.

New Years is celebrated in Hawai'i with.... copious fireworks. The firecracker density in Hawai'i tonight is about 100,000 per occupant or 1 per square centimeter. It is ridiculous. The weather forecast for tomorrow actually calls for "smoke" as a result. Not my favorite. Even at Mikki's place in the suburbs of Honolulu there are people on every corner firing stuff off and have been for the last hour. At least her house has wireless. :)

Happy New Year, welcome to 2006! This message for those of you in New Mexico for whom it is already 2006. Here it is only 9:00pm and I'm sleepy. Goodnight!

So after all the singing and dancing at the airport terminal in Phoenix, I proceeded to have a very pleasant 6 hour flight and I was in Hawai'i! This makes 49 US states visited for me, with only Alaska remaining. We did fly past most of the other major islands on the way in and I could see that there was no snow on Mauna Kea, etc. Very nice view. Good weather.

The Honolulu airport has two terminals—an international terminal and an "inter-island" terminal. Nina and my flights showed up withing 10 minutes of each other, but at different terminals. We were using cell phones to try to figure out how to get to each other, but it turned out to be more of a challenge than we figured. No worries, we found each other. Yay.

Mikki (ex-roommate, now living on Oahu, for those of you just joining us) arrived and picked us up at the airport in her cool Camaro convertible. She drove us to our hotel (The Waikiki Grand) where we dropped off all our bags and then went in search of "fancy drinks." We ended up at a place called "Lulu's" on the Waikiki beach strip, which was just down the street from our hotel. From there I got to see my first Hawaiian sunset out over the bay and my first sumo wrestling on TV. We went and walked along the beach after dinner but by then it was dark and uninspiring. Waikiki is clearly not the part of Hawaii that is interesting to me. For dinner we walked a mile or so away from the beach to a sushi place recommended in Nina's guide book called Tokkuri Tei. It was amazingly good. The waitrons there were tiny, but mighty.

The Waikiki Grand has no wireless, free or otherwise. Suffering from 3 and 5 hour of jetlag, we said farewell to Mikki and went to bed early. It was a great first day in Hawai'i.