I flew home this past Saturday morning to make it to a potluck at my 104 year old great uncle’s senior citizen’s home. On his wall is a letter signed by George W. Bush wishing him a happy 102nd birthday.

On Sunday, I made an 18lb turkey and a pumpkin pie from a recent Cook’s Illustrated recipe.

I’m flying down to San Diego tomorrow for Thanksgiving, part 2.5.

Here’s a little snap shot from seat 17A of Jamaica Bay on Saturday morning, taken with the new (replacement) point and shoot.

My camera shutter died. It was somewhat of a spectacular failure. I was shooting a picture, the camera made a “ka-krunk” noise and the viewfinder has half blocked out. I pulled the lens off and out falls the mirror. Looks like the adhesive that holds the mirror to the reflex plane failed. Hopefully Canon won’t charge me as it only has about 30,000 actuations on it.

Before my camera died, it took a picture of an alligator at the Baltimore Aquarium.

Dear blog, I wrote in you very infrequently in the past 2 months, but I thought about you alot. Here are some thigns I might have written about had I written in you:

• Saw The National at summer stage. Matt Berninger tried to climb on me
• Went to Baltimore for the purpose of sleeping with some sharks.
• Saw Thievery Corp at Summer Stage. Wow show, but some sound problems.
• Made the 2008 Vendys site. Pretty happy with it, learned some coding and life lessons.
• Got a little Muji thing which really cleaned up my desk.
• Read “What I talk about when I Talk about Running” (kottke explains) and consequently did some running
• Managed some fun little/not-so-little projects at work–a new Uploader running on Air and a service akin to Netflix, but with SD cards and uploading videos.
• Took at web usability class at NYU, a questionable investment of time
• Sold a photo of some pho to Gourmet Magazine (upcoming issue)

That’s just the stuff on my Gcal. I wonder what I did that I can’t remember?

Here’s some dolphin tail.

Montauk is awesome. I tripped out there a few weekends ago. This photo is from Montauk, but not reflective of the experience. Don’t worry, I’ll write about it in a sec….

The peak of Mauna Kea is the #1 best location of earth for star gazing and astronomical research due to it’s great distance from any major city, extreme elevation and clear weather 90% of the year. The Mauna Kea tour also included awesome star gazing.

The visitor’s center at night. All lights on the mountain are red to minimize light pollution.

The Milky Way. The red on the ground was caused by the red interior lights of the tour van.

Mauna Kea is the tallest mountain on earth as measured from its base (which is actually the ocean floor) to its summit. I’m not quite sure how Mt. Everest doesn’t have underwater height included as well to maintain it as the tallest moutain as well as the highest point on earth.

I heard about a bus tour (yeah, lame, not normally my first choice, but given time constriants) that drives you from sea level in Kailua Kona to the peak of Mauna Kea (13,795 ft) and back down in about 8 hours. The “bus” actually turned out to be a highly modified mini bus with raised suspension, 4×4 tires, skid plates, and some possible engine modifications like a larger intercooler and oil cooler. It seemed a bit overkill at first until we reached the end of the pavement where the smooth highway turned into a washboarded, up-to-18%-grade dirt road that provides access to the many observatories peached atop the summit. The buses also do several trips a week so they’ve gotta be pretty tough.

At the visitor’s center (9,200 ft), botanists are trying to cultivate the Silversword plant. It’s very near extinction for several confounding reasons: It only grows on the slopes of Mauna Kea and Haleakala between 3000 and 10000 feet, its flowers blossom only once after they’ve grown between 5 and 20 years and also require cross pollenation (insects transferring pollen) leaving scientists with a pretty tough task of forcing the plants to make babies. Aside from that, they’re probably the prettiest plant I’ve ever seen. In person, the leaves looked like shimmery white icles.

I also borrowed/stole our new HD camera from work (Canon HV10, quite awesome). Here it is remembering the sunset for me. More videos to come…

Beaches on the Big Island. The locals say that Kauna’oa aka the Mauna Kea beach is by far the best beach. It has great snorkeling on both ends of the beach and soft soft white sand that gently runs into the ocean. It was so good, I drove 45 minutes a couple hours (the opposite direction of the airport) before my flight home just to enjoy it one last time.

Kekaha Kai State Park. I saw what looked to be the makings of an awesome sunset, so, while driving down the highway, I pulled off into what turned off onto what happened to be a 4 wheel drive beach access road. 2 miles and a couple scrapes on the under carraige of the Hertz Toyota Solara convertible later and I was at a completely isolated locals beach enjoying the sunset.

Black sand. Hmmm, lens is a little soft in the corners…

Honu. Lots of sea turtles. I tried to make friends with a few, but it’s hard to make friends with someone when state law prohibits you from being closer than 20 feet.

Sunset, Big Island.

Two weekends ago I went to Hawaii for a very special occasion. Sort of a family vacation. I spent 4 days on the Kona side of the Big Island of Hawaii doing the best stuff that could be done. I did lots of research, planned ahead, keeping in mind I only had a couple days in Hawaii. I had a google doc with notes, urls and phone numbers. In retrospect, I probably should have taken a day to lie on the beach or next to a pool, drink mai tais and think about nothing…that’s what vacations are for.

Kauna’oa Beach at the Mauna Kea Resort.

3rd time in Vegas in 2008. Less productive this time due to the gracious nature of theplatform people. In a creative rut urg.

At the Japanese Tea Garden, I saw this over exposed tree, so I took a picture.

Top of Tank Hill. Poppies holding of for dear life.

I heard about Tank Hill from Paula. It’s another one of those wonderously under-utilized assets in the city. It’s an easily accessible knoll on the Sutro Tower hill that has great views of San Francisco at sunset (and sunrise) and could be a prime location for a wind turbine power plant (it was windy as all hell). Put this in NYC, and you’d have a crowd every single night (see previous post). When I was there, there was only several other people.

One of the immediately shocking differences between New York City and San Francisco, is that, despite having very similar resources (world class dining, great parks, great events), New York City’s are guaranteed to be over crowded with a line around the corner, while things in San Francisco feel untouched…it feels like you’ve discovered a part of the city that no one else knows about. Such was the case with the Japanese Tea Garden. It was essentially empty unless you count the ducks, but they’re not people. Put the gardens in NYC with a warm spring evening and this place would be ruined.

I like the sun and I like Japanese Maples, so here’s a photo of the two enjoying each other’s company.