No POTD

Friday shopping

Maile, left, went into some haggle mode again to get some kamaaina discount on this hula guy clock for Tony's mom. Tony is from London, England and is visiting Hawaii. Maile met Tony in China and he will be teaching in Dalian where Maile was working the past few months.


The sales gal holds up the hula guy clock. One of only two left in the shop.


Me, Tony and Maile in the shop.

Black Thursday

Just before sunset power went out at home. We checked the circuit breakers which were fine but discovered about five or six other neighbors were also out of power. So just a half-dozen homes were hit with some isolated freakish power outage. Here I get some work done on the laptop and uploaded much of the photos seen here since the cable modem still worked plugged into my backup UPS. I turned the screen red so I wouldn't lose my night vision.


Three hours later and it was pretty darn dark so I had to fire-up the lantern which is a hold-over from my days living in Honaunau when I first got to the island. Back then the power went out at least once a week (no kidding) and some weeks it would go out three times or more.

The outages back then were usually brief (15 minutes to a couple of hours) but coming from Honolulu this was quite a change. In Honolulu if power went out for 5 minutes it was a big deal, if it went out for 30 minutes that would make the front page of the newspaper. A regular catastrophe, no whirling blenders at Jamba Juice, people stuck in elevators, no lights or air conditioning in those hemetically sealed offices, no gas pumps working, sewage plants overflowing and no TV, gasp! Once power went out at KGMB-TV during the Superbowl, the entire game was off the air and the transmitter was dead. They did re-run it later that night, like anyone cared by then. That's like someone offering you a Krispy Kreme doughnut after stuffing yourself with cheap Love's Bakery cake doughnuts, barf...a good thing too late.


About four hours without power and just in front of my place HELCO finally got the power back on. Turns out that a cable went bad so they had to re-route the power via another line. I expect power to be turned-off sometime tomorrow as they work to replace the bad line underground.

When you live on the Big Island you have to be prepared. Flashlights, battery powered alarm clocks, candles, lighters, lanterns, water jugs, etc. Old timers know the routine so much so that you can verify it whenever there's a shipping strike. Good luck trying to find rice or toilet paper in the stores, old-timers have been through it before and stock-up on items. Yep, a little power outage won't stop them from eating SPAM™ or Vienna Sausages right out of the can without cooking.

City boy that I was my neighbor had to come to my rescue when I first moved to the Big Island during a power outage, she let me borrow menora she bought at a garage sale with a couple of candles. Nothing like the loss of the Internet and TV to bring people together, I spent tonight hanging out with the neighbors chatting away in the darkness. Life ain't so bad without electricity.

Going to the Oceans for the pool

click on the images to see the video


Aaron gets a bead on the break and introduces himself to the competition. Aaron teamed up with Troy an old Chico State college friend of Carolyn's. Ocean's Sports Bar has a pair of new pool tables and dart boards for people's shooting pleasures.


More video of the crew at Oceans enjoying the favorite beverages in hand.

Getting Wired and un-wired

Spent the evening finishing up a network at a home. One cable modem and two computers in the home.

Initially I bought a Linksys router for $44 at Wal-Mart and was going to install a totally wired network but then I found this Microsoft router with both 802.11g WiFi and four Ethernet ports for less than $40 at Costco. What a deal! The choice was easy, I returned the unopened Linksys to Wal-Mart and set-up this router. I built my own cables and did a run to where the second computer was set-up with an Ethernet port. Both computers work great on the wired network.


And as a bonus I can get online, as can visitors to the house, via the WiFi network. It's encrypted and password protected so it's not an open network but it works great. So for those who want to go wireless run down to Costco and pick one of these babies up.

Adventure Monday

Carolyn gets ready to head into a lava tube during Adventure Monday on the Kona Coast.


Near a lava tube opening inside the cave.


Three grins in a row at Puuhonua O Honaunau National Historic Park.


A Carolyn sandwich with a couple of local bruddahs.

No POTD

No POTD

Yep, still on vacation and no photos taken today either.

Vacation

I'm on vacation so I may not be posting many photos or it could come in a big bunch depending on what I'm doing.

Spent the afternoon at the Hippie Hut setting up a network and will probably be back there soon to finish the job.

Smashing Baby!

This pick-up truck put the smackdown on a utility pole on Hualalai Road which cut-off power to areas of Kona. Aaron and I were on our way to Brian's place to welcome him back from vacation and check-out all the photos he shot along with enjoying some tequila and Kona Brews.


Because I'm techincally on vacation I pieced together some of my gear for Aaron to blast away at the accident site. Here he scurrys under utility lines that we assume are turned-off (at least the electric company guy indicated that). The pole was still shifting and you could hear it buckle against the ground as it moved.


Time for some close-ups. He must be thinking "I'm doing pretty good hand-holding this 5 second exposure, just a few more...shit where did that flash come from?"


More creative angles on the scene.

Clean inside and out

Waxing after washing inside and outside this car.


After the dryer blew open the plastic back window even more.

A lesson here, don't take your car through the drive-thru car wash if you don't have a back window. I flashed my lights at this driver as she drove into the car wash when I pulled up but she soon figured out that everything was getting wet in her car and she resorted to holding up the plastic that is supposed to be the back window.

I've gone through this car wash before and had my nostrils detect car wash soap inside the car only to find one of my back windows cracked open a smidgen and gone into contortions to get it closed asap.

What does this do?

In a previous post I had mentioned that my hard drive was dead. The light would go on but it wouldn't spin up. Well, I found the problem, these things don't work too well without one of the above do-hickeys plugged into holes.

I was testing a Windows laptop and needed to plug into a power strip so I pulled a plug out, this turned out to be the Firewire drive plug. So now with the drive plugged in everything is working well once again. This is good as it teaches me to make sure I have important stuff backed up as any of these drives could go or get stolen at any time.

Tako, Taco

There's a place in Waimea on Kawaihae Road that is a favorite for Mexican food called Tako, Taco. It's play on words as Tako=Squid in, what is it? Japanese? Anyway, you don't need to have squid tacos, they have veggie food, fresh fish, cow and pig if you prefer.


My plate of Baja Fish Tacos as I devour it. Very filling and oh so yummy.

Peter Pan or Skippy?

Okay, as an update I do have a photo to post for July 20th. It's the poster for Peter Pan outside the auditorium where I was shooting photos of the crew. Looks like a fun production and I recommend people to go.

Cactus flowers

So the hedge of catus blossoms didn't bloom for me but Maile had some in her dad's apartment that had opened. These flowers only bloom once during a midsummer's night only to die in the morning. You gotta catch 'em when you can.

Like old times

It was like old times seeing Maile working in Middle Earth Bookstore again. She's a natural at it and always has an answer for anyone entering with a question about books, life or the universe. I on the other hand, while minding the register for Maile, got an older guy that insisted that the bookstore must not be that old since it was named after the movie (Lord of the Rings) and Middle Earth. I told him it's been around for quite awhile and was named after the books by J.R.R. Tolkien, but he insisted it was named after the movie as he had never heard of the books and the bookstore must have only had the name for a year or two.

Maile's filling-in during her summer vacation here in Kona.


And who happens to show-up just at closing time but Walter the cat. Because Maile has been in China I haven't been to the bookstore much and I hadn't seen Walter in awhile, we were wondering if he was still around. Walter can go missing for days only to reappear at his leisure. Here he saunters into the bookstore as we try to get the place closed-up after getting the bookstore sign inside.


Walter walks past the register counter and heads for an area behind it with tall stacks of cat food tins.


Walter sucks-up to Maile as she gets a bowl for him with cat food, a mushy mix of Friskies and water. Although she claims to be allergic to cat fur Maile has a soft spot for Walter.

Wassup with the tounges?

Why does everyone feel compelled to stick their tounges out when I take their photos? I was waiting for a hedge of cactus blossoms to bloom, they never did, but a few mongoose were taking advantage of cat food behind Uncle Billy's. The cats, fat and happy, were busy sitting on car hoods watching gekos running around the cacti.

How now Mao?

A little gift from Maile in my car. Chairman Mao. Apparently taxi drivers in China have this hanging on their rear view mirrors in China.

Dead meat

What you're looking at is a 180GB Firewire hard drive filled with files of documents, images, etc and it appears to be dead. Hmmm. the drive will not spin-up and doesn't make any noise. Been like this for a couple of days now and I'll probably have to open up the case and swap the drive into another firewire case to see if that makes it work. Otherwise it's gonna be a real bummer. Is that why IBM sold their hard drive division to Hitachi?

Getting Durty

Carly relaxes after work at Durty Jake's where Poncho Man had a gig providing the live music.


Andrea gets up to head for the dance floor. A low-key kind of night.

Feel the burn

Spent the day on the water on the official's boat for the Moku O Hawaii canoe regatta championships in Hilo Bay. Had to somewhat swim to get into the boat after handing my photo gear over which I kind of expected. Got a good sunburn as I forgot the sunscreen and spent the afternoon shirtless shooting the races since I had to let my T-shirt dry out on the boat.

Comfort Food

Ah, pizza. Half Garden of Eden, half mushroom at Mahina Pizza. A good pizza hidaway for those who don't want the hustle and bustle of Kona Brew Pub.


Maile gets ready to dig into the 'shroom side of the pizza.

Maile and I were in a pizza mood, must have been the late night pizza offered by Travis which really surprised Maile as being good. She said the last time she had a frozen pizza many years ago it was terrible. I explained how great advances in frozen pizza technology had occured since then. She was also suprised how good Mahina Pizza was and why she had never eaten there before (she's been gone for about 6 months, Mahina Pizza has been open about 8 months).

Maile is the reason this blog was started, so she could see what was going on in Kona while in China. Does she really need to see what's going on now that she's here?

If I had a dollar for every time I wanted a drink...I'd be at Mike's

Me, Joe and Jim at Michaelangelo's (Mike's) for dollar drink night.


Poncho wanted to get into the action by taking cellphone photos, but his phone doesn't have a camera built-in.


Travis and Maile discuss issues concering the world. Notice Maile got the dress she wanted too.

This blog is getting cut-down as far as party photos go. Much too much. Maybe they'll appear elsewhere.

"You don't know the half of it."

Yes, there were photos from the night of the 13th (and very early on the 14th) but I think I'll leave those offline. This little video was shot by Maile who thought my camera was in still mode instead of movie mode. I think the audio explains it. Click on the image above to view the video.

No photos from the 13th

Is 13 really an unlucky number? Or is it lucky? See tomorrow's post from the 14th.

And they complain about ATVs on the road?

Okay, people make all kinds of complaints about ATVs on the road, how would you like to get stuck behind this thing at 15mph?

Dante's Inferno and Deconstruction

Poncho and Andrea get ready to leave the Kona Brew Pub after some dinner. Poncho and I had nothing stronger than iced-tea, you can't support the liquor tax revenues every night.


Maile grabbed my camera and strained to shoot this sunset afterglow over a rock wall. Those are the coconut trees at Hulihee Palace.


I got an unhappy call from Carly. She said someone smashed into her car and here she is just as she pulled up back at the office. She went to the mini-mart to grab a soda and a gal reversed into her driver's side door despite her being parked and her blasting her horn at the gal.


Another shot of her car "Dante" with the smash. The gal who hit her had some huge white SUV which explains the white paint streaked onto her door.


One of Kona's finest drops by the office for the belated police report. Note that this cop drives a Mustang. Because most officers drive private vehicles you see all kinds of cars with their blue lights on them: Mustangs, Z-28s, SUVs, Trans-Ams, etc. You can't get away from these cops if you try to speed to get away or go four-wheeling. They'll come after you.


And the deconstruction of the darkroom has finally begun. The deconstruction guys tear the place apart.

This is what the darkroom used to look like.


The deconstruction crew hauls away hundres of pounds of darkroom cabinets, walls and support beams.

Shoots and shots

Aaron is in the dark and editing his shoots for the day of kids activities and canoe racing.


A shot of tequila later at Durty Jakes with Maile.

Ocean's Eleven (p.m. that is)

Aaron and I get to have some cheers at Ocean's Sports Bar late Friday night. Consider it a Sports Shooter's belated birthday drink.


Travis and Andrea enjoy Ocean's and some live music by Poncho.


El Ron playing the Cheshire Cat at Ocean's.


Joe supporting the Rolling Rock beer company.


Andrea illuminated a beer gel, Kona Brew's Golden Ale (aka Big Surf brew).

Maile makes it back

Maile of Monkeyprints blog fame made it back to Kona from Dalian, China. As we cruised by her old haunts she spied this dress in a shop next to Middle Earth Bookstore where so used to work and quickly went into Chinese haggle-mode trying to get a kamaaina discount. The colorful summer dress fit her well and I have a feeling she will get it eventually, not at full price. She tried to hide as I shot this photo.


Here Maile gets a reunion with her pop Gean at his working place. I left them catching up on things along with talk of non-profit corporation mergers, transfers of properties and other complicated business talk that makes up her dad's typical work day. Thank goodness we have someone like Gean to figure all of this stuff out.

Dollar days at Mike's

Once again dollar drink night brought us out for a few rounds. Ron, Travis and Brett (Travis' brother) kick back with a few doubles.

Travis later decided that he was drinking too much, so he started ordering doubles in a short glass. He was drinking too much soda and upped the alcohol ratio.


I take aim at Carly with my cellphone camera as Jim looks a bit stunned. I'm not sure how many drinks Jim had but he started inviting everyone over to his (and Ron's) place Sunday for a BBQ. Trouble was that Jim wasn't even planning on being in Kona on Sunday, he was going to Hilo.


Andrea and Tim hang at the end of the table closest to the bar, good idea.


Joe tries his best imitation of Gene Simmons, or maybe just an imitation of Andrea and Carly.


Travis, Peggy and Andrea shake it on the dance floor. Naughty By Nature.


Carly and a jet-lagged Brett on the dance floor.


Ron uses a tantric mantra to stay calm.


So much for the mantra and concentration.


Andrea follows the "no hands" rule as she gets a pseudo lap-dance.


Carly performs the Vulcan nerve pinch on me. Take me to your leader.

A new Moblog

A new Moblog.

This is another picture project inspired by my friend Jenna (see link at right to her page). It's called the Alphabet Moblog. It's a photo game/challenge to get photos of everyday objects that form letters of the alphabet. You don't take photos of actual letters, just objects with shapes that lend themselves to letters. You can hit the link on the right to take you to the Alphabet Moblog.

To contribute visit the page to find out instructions how you can play too. Stretch your imagination and see things for more than what they appear to be at first glance. I only got two object representing the letter "A" and now we're moving on to the letter B.

No POTD...again

Time to start shooting photos.

40% less oxygen, UV sunburn, cold wind at 13,796 feet

Went up to the summit of Mauna Kea for work today. Click on the image above for a 360 degree spin on the summit where you'll see a lele (altar) on the summit, Mauna Loa and observatories. Movie is 1.8MB in size.


I'm on the edge of Lake Waiau, the highest, shallowest lake in Hawaii and the third highest lake in the United States at 13,020 feet.

It's amazing how tired a person can get hauling a bag full of camera gear at high altitude after a drive up from sea-level. Next time I'm leaving the bag in the car.

No POTD...again

Aaron arrives, parties with the girls and fireworks fly

It's early in the night and Aaron, our new photo intern, hangs out with Carly his roomate over at Durty Jakes. Note that at this point things seem to be quite calm at this early stage. Thanks for the 1800's and beer Aaron!


Andrea makes a few phone calls to get more people out and get this party started.


Aaron gets to meet Andrea. What's with all the tounge action?


As they'd say on Wayne's World, "Extreme Closeup" of me Carolyn and me. It's not easy to compose these photos with my Canon s500, was so much easier with my Nikon CoolPix 4500 with the swivel lens.


Carolyn uses my cellphone to text message Travis. The message? "We want Peggy"


Ron, Peggy and Travis hanging out at Durty Jakes after Carolyn's special request for their presence.


The 9:30p.m. fireworks show in Kailua Bay as seen from Durty Jakes.


Aaron starts to feels the effects of the alcohol and sits up on the wall and makes like a photographer with his cellphone camera.


Aaron's other roomate Carolyn. Must be checking out who's going up to Lulu's.


Aaron and roomate #2 Carolyn.


Andrea's friends Travis and Nancy enjoying themselves at Durty Jakes. They're staying at the Hippie Hut.


Dodgeball anyone? Rani made it out for the fireworks and set-up a date with Ron to go to Dodgeball. I think Ron used to be a professional dodgeball player in the minor leagues.


Travis perfroms some Sublime for the audience before we leave for Ocean's sports bar.


The new sports bar Oceans behind Hard Rock Cafe.


You're gonna have to study the other photos above to decipher who's bumping 'n grinding here.

Sue's Swim

That's Susan Lalanne pointing to the shorebreak before the Hapuna Roughwater Swim. If that last name looks familiar it's because her uncle is Jack La Lanne the original fitness guru. Sue is a fitness nut too and is often swimming, running and canoe paddling.

The shorebreak was big at the beach which made it a challenge for swimmers just to get out into the water for the race.

Who's bugging me?

Went to a brushfire today and Carolyn found out this guy had hitched a ride into our office on her. This praying mantis (I think that's what it is) juvenile was set free outside the office on the bushes in front of my car. I figured if it ate the bugs before they climbed onto my car better yet.

Computers and Coffee

A morning treat of troubleshooting computers. Sheree's Dell Computer has become infiltrated with Adware/Spyware that has taken over her Internet Explorer. It forces it to go to a specific search page, you can't change the home page, and has a million of pop-up ad windows and prevents her from even typing-in a URL to go to a website.

The cure was to go the website http://www.pchell.com and go through an 11 step process to remove the spyware. A pain in the okole but after two hours of messing with the computer I got it free from the nasties, upgraded her Windows XP Home Edition, installed Mozilla Firefox as an alternate browser and imported the Internet Explorer favorites into it.

This is why I like Macs which haven't been exploited as much as Windows OS computers to various virii, trojan horses and other crap like that. Sure buying a Windows computer might seem cheaper but loss productivity is really a bummer. Note that I installed a WiFi access point on the computer so my Apple PowerBook and her Dell Latitude can connect to the Internet wirelessly which is very sweet.


Because Sheree lives on a coffee farm I took this quick snap of coffee cherry still green and not ready for harvest on the trees. When they are bright red they'll be ready for picking.


And back in my car I found a couple pounds of fresh roasted Kona Coffee Sheree and Doug left me. When living in Kona it's always a good idea to have a few coffee farmers as friends.

Carly's Angels

Andrea, Carly and Carolyn strike a Charlie's Angels pose at Michaelangelo's. We had just about the whole club to ourselves again and because they pretty much don't start their nightclub until 10:30p.m. that's about the right time for everyone to finish work and drop by.


Andrea's photo of the vortex in action...ah, you gotta ask one of the girls about that. Though the vortex doesn't seem to be breaking through the card game behind.


Carolyn gave my camera a spin and blasted a few photos, this one of me. Hmmm, maybe I ran out of rum and coke or something.


Another photo by Carolyn. Albert, left, gets into a poker game with Ron along with Joe and Travis. I met Albert earlier at Lulu's, he's one of Cathi's old friends from Honolulu where he used to promote and produce parties at various clubs. Now he's living in Florida and was amazingly still awake after three plane flights and several time zones to get to Hawaii that day.


Here's the other half of the impromptu poker game at Michaelangelo's with Travis, right, teaching Joe to play. Ron has been trying to get a regular weekly poker game going at his place for awhile so he's now got Travis recruiting players, carrying around a deck of cards around helps too.


Karen and Chris made it out to Mike's too. I'm sure they would have hit the dance floor but it was still a bit early. Actually on the previous night dancing was more like just moving around a few inches up/down, left/right, front/back as the dance floor was packed and there was no room to really dance. That's why we like Thursday nights.


The girls work on getting Travis onto the dance floor. Andrea claims Travis busted some kind of Michael Jackson dance moves but like the Loch Ness Monster, Big Foot and affordable housing seeing is believing. He wouldn't repeat the moves, something about plausible deniability.


Carly and Travis take over the spot usually held by spinning dancing dude. This is an older guy that usually has a ballcap on and is dancing by himself on the speaker cabinet. He can sometimes be found at some of the other clubs too.


Okay, Carly has had a few drinks and Carolyn shows-off her dirty dancing feet.


Carly goofs for the camera as Travis probably wonders if this photo will make the blog.


Andrea and Poncho. Poncho bartends at Cassandra's on Thursday nights so he got to Mike's late. He is also going to be at the opening of the Ocean Sports Bar behind Hard Rock Café Friday night. So many friends, so little time.


Travis proceeds to surrender his car keys as we head over to C&C's place. We had our designated drinkers, the others drove.

What happened to everyone after this wasn't documented. Let's just say yoga, jaccuzzi, freediving, The Captain, cloves and flashlights. I think that about sums it up. The only thing missing was the pizza. Gotta put that on the checklist next time.

The Cat came back....

Got to hang out with Cathi, a former West Hawaii Today writing intern, at Lulu's. She has since gotten out of the newspaper business and gone where the pay is much more decent in PR. She gets to travel all over for a company that used to be based in Honolulu but has since been bought out and moved to the mainland. Cathi and I got to be good friends during her stay in Hawaii during the internship and when she moved back to Hawaii to live and work. She's on the Big Island to attend a friend's wedding.


Me and Cathi on the top of Mauna Kea many years ago when she was an intern, you can see Keck II in the background being built, the twin scope to Keck I dome on the left. I think that's the Subaru telescope on the left of the Keck Observatory under construction.

Note that Cathi has a pair of crutches. She had broken her ankle while bike riding, or should I say bike crashing near the End of the World which is the endpoint of Alii Drive in Keauhou. Never go bike riding with a hangover and try to stop on loose gravel, that'll get ya. This is only one or two weeks after the break (she said her foot was 90 degrees the wrong angle) and one of her last assignments so she insisted upon doing it. At one point our guide on the mountain for Keck, Andy Perala, looked at her and noticed that her lips were blue from the lack of oxygen just and she was about ready to drop, but she didn't and recovered fine after resting a bit. I did have the shlep all of my gear along with all of her gear on the mountain.

Ladies Nite at Mike's

In what has become known as a night out at Mike's (aka Michaelangelos nightclub) Andrea and Carly taunt and tease.


Carolyn on the other hand does her impression of a grumpy sleeper, not that she was grumpy or sleepy at all as she was happy to hit the dance floor. I had a little better photo of Carolyn but it was hopelessly out of focus.

The dance floor was packed at times while Andrea and Carly pondered the intricacies of load-bearing capacities of the dance area on this 2nd floor as we could feel the dance floor flex.