Ecol deals with the Debian cabal. What is the cabal you ask? There Is No Cabal. The Cabal exists only in your imagination. |
You could call me Dr. Don, but why bother? (Wednesday Jun 18th, 2008)
I've been
in school as a student for almost all of my life up till now. While
that's a relatively normal thing for younger people, the older you
get, the rarer and rarer it is.
Finally, on Monday I went through the ceremony which marked the end of
my tenure as a student who is actually enrolled in school, and the
beginning of my tenure as a student who happens to also contribute to
and convey knowledge. That's right, I've finally managed to finish my
PhD in Cell, Molecular, and Developmental Biology. It's been a while
getting here, but with my dissertation completed and accepted by
graduate division, my defence completed, and finally being hooded by
my major professor, I'm done!
Getting my PhD has resolved a few fundamental dilemas that I've always
had. First, I now know what to put in that pesky "Mr/Mrs/Ms/Miss/Dr"
field. Before, Ms. was technically correct, but no one apparently
knows that means Master and confuses it with an abbreviation for Miss.
Now I just put Dr., and no more confusion. Second, dealing with
pretentious people and physicians who insist on being called Doctor
becomes easier. I can now ignore their silly titles with impunity.
[And yes, those of you who haven't spent an eternity in the ivory
tower should just call me Don anyway.] Next, I now have the covetous
union card that enables me to teach at instutitions of higher
learning.
Unfortunatly, that also means that I no longer qualify for student
discounts anywhere. Of course, I must admit that lately the people at
movie theaters have been looking at me askance when I ask for a
student discount. I'll have to wait 36 more years until I qualify for
the senior discount.
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Joshua Tree (Monday Jun 9th, 2008)
Mark
and I took a trip to Joshua Tree over the previous weekend. We hiked
in towards Pine City on Friday night and set up the tent near the edge
of the day use area. It took us about 10 minutes of wandering in the
dark with head lamps to find an area that was far enough off the trail
and appeared to be flat and rock-free enough to set up a tent. Mark
happened to find a miniature cholla cactus in the dark and of course
managed to stab himself with it, which added to the excitement of
setting up the tent.
When the sun came
up the next day, we were finally able to see where we had actually set
up camp. A series of amazing bolders were to the south east of our
campsite, and we spent some time in the morning exploring them as we
finished off our slightly smushed pop tarts.
We then packed up the tent and our bags and took off to see Pine City
itself (which is in the day use area). It appears to be called that
because of a few ancient conifers which have managed to survive in the
desert, though I'm only guessing based on what I saw.
From Pine City, we took off cross country heading north-west towards
Queen Mountain, where we wandered around through a ton of gullies and
dry washes. (Note of caution: be very careful in areas like this
during the rainy season. Rain miles away can cause flash floods.)
Eventually we found a neat place to camp around noon a bit south east
of Queen Mountain.
We set up the tent, dropped off the packs and then went wandering
around to boulder some of the neat rock formations and lollygag about
looking at the neat scenery. During this entire time, the only
evidence of humans we had seen were a few footprints on the trail into
Pine City, a couple balloons in advanced decomposition, and a single
glint off a car windshield more than 10 miles in the distance.
The next day, we hiked back to the car, and drove back into
civiliation. It's been a while since I've been to Joshua Tree, but
I've remembered now why I like the place. It's really hard to beat for
getting away from human presence into a relatively pristine
environment. [The closer to summer you go, the harder it is to handle,
and consequently, the fewer people you're going to see.]
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Moving on slowly (Tuesday Sep 4th, 2007)
Considering that the last entry here was for 2004, I obviously haven't
been updating this much.
Lots of things have happened since then, but I'll probably actually
get around to describing them once I've finished the email->diary
interface that I'd planned on writing a long time ago.
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Back from Burning Man (Tuesday Sep 7th, 2004)
I recently got back from a really exciting trip to the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, just outside of Gerlach, for Burning Man. Chris Martin and myself left from San Fransisco early Sunday morning, and got into camp at Big Time (9:30 and Sedna) a few hours before the sun started to set, which was really awesome. Along the way, we had a bit of fun with my car, as I managed to tweak the left front control arm pretty hard against a bank on a dirt road. Luckily, the car was still driveable, albeit badly, after that incident.
The first few days we helped set up the camp, and spent the nights wandering around the playa checking out the parties and the various installations. This was my first time at Burning Man, and the lengths to which people go to present themselves, their artwork, their camp, and to just have a great time are astounding. Almost everyone is dressed up, or has lights, or is having a great time. It doesn't matter when, day or night, someone is up and wandering around in great spirits.
Many of the art installations that I happened across were absolutely fantastic. Observer Observed, which the picture on the left (and it's reflections belong to) was an absolutely fantastic cube of half silvered lexan in the middle of the desert that picked up the reflections all around, both of the temple and of the setting sun in the background. From inside, you can actually see out, although a shadowy reflection of yourself is also projected on whatever is outside.
Of course, the man itself burning on saturday night is a really important part of the festivities. I'm told that the man wasn't as impressive this year as it has been in the past, but still, the concept of a huge structure that is only built to be burned in a celebration is rather impressive, even if the flames only reached a few hundred feet into the air instead of thousands. |
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Don Armstrong
Self portrait, sometime in 2002. I shot this using a standard second surface mirror with a garbage digital camera and then pulled the contrast out a bit and cropped in the gimp. The original image and others in the series are in the gallery (and linked from this picture.)
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