When I grow up...

 ...I want to be a Mauna Kea Ranger, like Don.

Triple Rock

Flying west, passed through the San Francisco Bay Area the weekend before a meeting of the Nearby Supernova Factory, which meant there would be people in town from places like Paris, Lyon and Bonn, as well as the usual ones from Berkeley and the surrounding area.

If you ever want to get a bunch of cosmologists to show up for something, the secret magic word is, of course, "brewpub."  In this case, the Triple Rock Brewery & Alehouse on Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley. My cousins in the area are also susceptible to the use of this word.  Unfortunately, I failed to get photos of a few people who were there.

L-R: Sebastien, Arnaud, Emmanuel, waitress, Kerstin, Nicolas, Clement, Matthias, Greg, Joanna

A flight to... where?

We had a pleasant flight, really, and it even got in early... but I think Alaska Airlines need to be more consistent in what they call Kona.  Consistently calling it the right name would be a plus.

This is high-speed rail?

Viv and I are on Amtrak's Acela, which people try to pass off as "High-Speed Rail" here in the USA.  I hear it gets up to 150 briefly, somewhere in the wastelands of Rhode Island. Compares well to other things here, but not so well to 200 for the TGV or 250 for a bullet train... :)

I do not want cheezburger - I can has Viv.

I hadn't heard anything from Viv during her connection in Amsterdam, so I checked a flight-tracking site, which claimed it knew nothing about any flight from Entebbe to Amsterdam today.  So I called the airline, got transferred a couple times, and wound up with a human who also had no knowledge of that flight from Entebbe to Amsterdam, but was able to tell me that somebody had gotten on the flight from Amsterdam to New York using the ticket I bought her.

So five of us were waiting for her by the door she was supposed to come out after she went through immigration and customs. We had big signs, and cameras, and stuff.  She got lost or something, went out the wrong door, wandered around until she spotted us, then sneaked up and grabbed me from behind. Sneaky, sneaky Viv!

RIP, Surfer Man

I'm shocked about the death of Andy Irons.