Help Dan Climb His Way to the Top

Hello Everyone, and welcome back to another episode of "Holy Crap! Cameron Actually Put Something on the Blog!"  But this time it's for a good cause.

*cue Stairway to Heaven intro*

And that cause is to view video of Dan getting his butt kicked by 1,098 steps.  That's right.  All 56 floors of the Republic Building in Denver.  Oh, and something about lungs too.  Anyway, here's the sales pitch:

"Hello all,
Yep, it's that time of year again, time for me to beg everyone for $5. Once again, this Sunday I will be climbing 56 floors and almost 1100 steps. Unfortunately for me, begging for the $65 in total donations is the worst part and what I have to do right now so that I can climb. I always promise myself I am going to solicit this money earlier, but just can't make myself do it.
Here's the link: http://www.lung.org/pledge-events/co/denver-climb-fy12/local/event-information.html On the left hand side there is a place to 'Donate". Please "sponsor a climber". Enter "Dan Smith" and then click on my name in the participant box. Under the video screen are small letters which say "Support Dan!", click on this and the rest should be easy. Give what you can, or if funds are tight, no worries.
One last thing, it's kinda late notice, but you can sign up to join our team (by tomorrow) and climb with us on Sunday. You may have to climb at a different time, but we will still be there I am sure.
Thanks for reading..."

Now, to be fair, Dan hasn't exactly agreed to record the whole ordeal on his iPhone yet, but I'm sure that if we can raise the $65 bucks he's aiming for in pledges, then I'm thinking we could talk him into it. I know what you're thinking, and OF COURSE I'd post the video here as soon as I got it.  And the way I figure it, raising the money should be no problem.  If everyone who reads this blog would chip in five dollars, just a measly little $5, then counting my $10 donation, that'd bring us to about....carry the one.....ten dollars.  Which according to some people's math is already practically half way there.

So do a good thing for a good cause (tax write-off) and help the guy out so we can all laugh through the ages at the video and thank the heavens it wasn't us on those stairs.

God Bless the News Media

Because they need all the help they can get.
(No offense, Matt)

Yep, we had an earthquake yesterday.  A pretty good one.  But really it was just one quick bump and then it was over.  As it was Sunday, I was of course at "Church" (weekly beer and darts at the neighbors' house) with several people from the neighborhood.  When it hit, we calmly walked out of the basement, stood there for a couple of minutes, and then went back in.  Everyone was (and is) fine, and there was no damage.  Nothing out of place when I got back to the yurt either.  So all is good and fine.

Living on a volcano, we do get earthquakes from time to time.  Not quite enough to say "often" or "regularly", but enough to where they're not typically worth mentioning.  So it seems funny to me that this one made the news.  Must have been a really slow news day.  And of course, some media outlets just can't help but get a little carried away.

This article, for example, made me laugh out loud. Title: "Terror as magnitude 5 earthquake rocks Hawaii's Big Island"  And then, in the last line of the article: "Yoshimura said the [Civil Defense] opened its Hilo Emergency Operating Center immediately after the quake, but closed it down when no calls came in after 45 minutes."

Fox News said the quake was on Oahu.

*sigh*

Crazy reporters......

Anyway, all is well here.  Nothing to worry about.  Just a little dust shaken off of the rafters is all.  But thanks to everyone for checking in just the same.  See you all next week!

New Year, New Crap

Happy New Year everyone!
I have a new phone that will let me blog and post photos from anywhere.... when I should probably be doing something else. Like telling Kalewa he should use eye protection.

Situation Normal

Sunrise - not volcano glow

Good morning! Well, the coffee's hot and good, but I had to warm it with propane instead of molten rock running alongside the yurt. And it also seems that all of those hours of childhood training, playing "The Carpet is Lava" in the living room, have thus far amounted to little more than wasted time.  I had planned on getting up this morning, making a nice pot of coffee, relaxing in the hammock while I had a cup or two, and then running for my life.  Instead I'll have to settle on making a nice pot of coffee, relaxing in the hammock over a cup or two, and then running the mower or weed whacker.  But on the brighter side, I do like coffee, and I have some amount of affection for living, so all in all it's a good morning. 

Turns out they call these quick successions of earthquakes "swarms."  A dumb name, if you ask me, but then again you didn't, so I won't go into it.  

If you'd like to read more about the volcano and it's current grumpiness, here's a person who by all rights should know more than me.

The Hills Are Alive

"... with the sound of something...."

Hello everyone!

First off, FYI, I'm 100% A-OK.  Nothing going on here apart from one little tremble that didn't even come from the mountain.

What am I talking about, you may ask?  Well, if you don't know, that's good news.  That means my blogging has worked, and nothing serious has happened (which was probably going to be the case whether I posted about it or not). But in case you have heard something, and are checking here for an update, everything's fine.

What's happening is this: Mauna Kea is acting a bit fussy.  A little after 2:00 pm local time,  the USGS recorded a magnitude 4.5 quake on the northwest slope.  Two minutes later there was another measured at 3.6.  Since then, at the time of this writing (five hours later), there have been 27 other smaller earthquakes in that same place.  If you wanna check out a regularly updated list, go here.  If you click on the cluster on the north end of the island, that'll give you all the info for the most recent quakes.  If you check out the south end, near Pu'u O'o, then you'll see the 3.5 magnitude quake that I felt just before writing this.

Even with all of these quakes, I haven't felt any of them other than the one by Pu'u O'o (pronounced poo-oo oh-oh).  In fact, I had no idea anything was going on until my good friend TheMatt sent me a text asking how things were going.  He's a news photog for KOMO in Seattle, and saw something about it come over the wire. 

Why is this happening?  Who knows?  All I know is that I nearly failed geology in college.  I just can't get excited about rocks and schist. *rimshot*  But what I do know is that I'm happy it's a lot of little quakes instead of one big one.  I've always heard that's a good thing.  And if there's one thing I've learned, it's always believe what you hear as long as it makes your current situation of potential volcanic eruption appear better.

One theory though, posed by Des (who likes cooking), is that I'm not preventing anything by writing, but instead manifesting a potential natural disaster just so I have something to blather on about.  Perhaps. You can form your own opinion about that.

In the meantime, I'm going to post this, cook some soup, wrap the dogs' feet in tinfoil (just in case), and watch Dante's Peak before bed.

Oh, and I'll also be drinking beer.  There's no way I'm letting the volcano take my beer.  To paraphrase Charlton Heston, that volcano can have my beer when it pries it from my hot, melted hands.

I'm Back! (But I Might Be Leaving Again Soon)

Always know where your rake is.

I was going to write a post about this, but the further I get away from the moment, the less funny it sounds.  Now, with perspective, I realize I really just wanted to make a picture of ALF holding a potato rake in space.

Anyway, here's the article that inspired it.

http://www.virgingalactic.com/news/item/sir-richard-branson-and-new-mexico-governor-susana-martinez-dedicate-the-virgin-galactic-gateway-/

That said, it seems to me that opening a space port with no working spacecraft is kinda like me saying I'm opening a brewery because I have a lot of empty bottles.

Or something.


On the upside, I'm working on converting the yurt into a space ship.

Still Not Back Yet....

....but in honor of the Kaiwiki Lebowski Fest (what we call it when anyone in the neighborhood besides me watches The Big Lebowski) I found some great visuals.

And of course they must be shared.

"Turn to the power of the Dark Side, you human paraquat!"

(bonus points if you get the reference just I made to yet a third flick)

found here

 A Lebowski Anime-style?

found here

(some weird stuff there - you've been warned)

Screw you guys, I'm going bowling.

found here

Lastly,

You must ask yourself (and then do the opposite):