Tim’s Ramblings

I was flipping through some of the pictures my parents took with my point and shoot and found an interesting shot that not only gives you a better perspective of just how VAST Waimea Canyon is, but it also shows you some of the, quite possibly, stupid stuff I did to get some of these shots.

Here is a shot of the lower part of Waimea Canyon. This area is still green and relatively lush as compared to the dry canyon further up. This is around the 1500′ mark.

Pretty huh?

Yes, I know the clouds are a bit washed out…I was still trying out different settings with the camera.

Anyway, looking at the shot, you can tell it’s pretty high up and it’s very wide open…but I found this shot taken by my dad a bit further up to give you a perspective of just HOW wide open and big the mountain range is.

Yup. That’s me on the lower right. Just where was I standing you ask?

Keep in mind…to get there I parked at a designated lookout point but I hopped the guard rail and went down a pretty steep rocky hill to get to that “platform”. And see where the dirt ends about 2 or 3 feet in front of me? Yeah. It really ENDS. From there it was a direct drop off straight down.

When I was setting up the tripod taking pics, it didn’t really bother me. Looking at it now I’m thinking to myself, “it was incredibly windy, the dust was a bit slippery with my sandals…WHAT THE HELL WAS I THINKING????”

Eeeesh…

Anyway, that’s it. More pics will be coming soon (^_^)

Sitting in the familiar President’s Clug Lounge in Houston. This one I haven’t been to in a while but they are all the same. Same furniture. Same so so coffee. Same power plugs that sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t.

This morning though, I’m slowly coming to terms that I am no longer in the tropics and will soon be coming face to face with 40 degree weather in Cleveland. Wooo.

But in the meantime, here are some more “postcard moments”. This time these are from Opaekaa Falls. I took a drive out there today (or yesterday I guess) after I left the condo (check out was 10am) since I had tons of time before my flight and before I had to return the Hummer. It was a so so day and a bit cloudly but I managed to get there during a slight break in the clouds.

As usual, pics are linked to a bigger one!

We’ll start off with a artsy shot. Ooooh. The background is out of focus. Oooooh. (^_^)

The falls themselves were kinda far away. Well…not when you see then in real life but my lens doesn’t zoom that much. Soo instead you get another artsy wide angle shot :)

The other side of the falls was a nice meandering river with kayakers and a clearing. There were even some cows just lazily wanderng around. This is one of those shots where you had to be there to truly see how nice it was.

Anyway, that’s it. I’ll get to the other pics later.

Ok. I hate this lounge. Holy crap. It’s like every rich family brought all of their rug rats with them into the lounge and is letting them run wild. I swear I’m going to punt some of these kids if they don’t shut up…

Or maybe I’m just cranky from lack of sleep…

Maybe…

(-_-)

Too many pictures so this will actually be behind a cut.

Alas, today is my final night here in Kauai. Very sad… I dropped off my parents at the airport at the buttcrack of dawn (5am) which meant I had to wake up and hit the road earlier than the buttcrack of dawn…and I don’t really know a term for that…other than it was 4:15am. Then I had to drive all the way back. Oh, and did I mention this island is DARK?? It’s dark. Really really dark. And the roads are windy and hilly. FUN!

But anyway, got home, did some e-mail and passed out again. Then woke up and decided to go check out the Kilauea Lighthouse. It was gorgeous. It was awesome. It was beautiful. It was unbelievably crazy windy. Yow. Then did some shopping and just kinda chilled.

It was a nice vacation. This island is so…so desolate and so not a tourist destination. Very natural. No big gaudy hotels. No 500 people luaus. No obnoxious kids or gigantic Japanese tour groups or annoying retirees from the midwest. Just…nice.

Aaaanyway, off we go. To see the rest of the photographs or, as I have started to affectionately call them myself, my postcard shots, click on the link after the first photo!!! Oh, and of course, they are linked to a bigger shot too. Feel free to grab it (but if you use for anything please give me credit!!) (^_^)

Here is a shot of Wailua Falls. It’s actually 3 falls in one and it is beautiful!

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Tonight was the last day here for my parents. Tomorrow I drive them to the airport. But since the airport is so damn far away I have to get up and leave with them by 4:15am. Yaaaaaaaaaay….

So it will be an early night for me. Tomorrow once my parents leave I will be on my own so I will probably hit some of the beautiful beaches with the camera and see if I can take some good shots. Not much of a beach bum myself so I probably won’t be sunbathing. Not sure what I’m going to do really.

Hard to believe the week is almost over. Oh well. I got a nice ring and 2 aloha shirts along with TONS of pictures so it was a nice break after all. I leave Saturday evening and I get into Cleveland Sunday at around 1:30. In another words my jet lag is going to be the mother of all jet lags next week. Fun…can’t WAIT.

Today dad and I took a trip to a gorgeous waterfall. Those pictures are coming. If you have me as a friend on Facebook, there is a preview of the falls as it’s the one in the background of my new profile pic :)

This post consists of 3 shots of dusk here at the condo. The first is actually facing east and I managed to, with some clever exposure and digital work, get the color of the sunset that is being reflected off the atmosphere.

The second is a shot of the west side. Alas, sunset itself was behind the mountains and the condos so you get a nice shot of the ocean instead.

The third is the view from the golf course. If nothing else, if you golf this course, you get a kick ass view of the mountains shrouded in low clouds at dusk.

As usual, each pic is linked to a larger version :)

And now. The wedding pictures.

I got the permission from the bride and groom so here, for the first time ever, are the shots from the wedding (^_^)

Originally the wedding was supposed to be at Tunnel Beach. But the little cottage that the two of them rented had a really BEAUTIFUL view so they decided to do it there instead. The benefits of not doing it in a church :D

The dinner was also there as well with D doing the grilling. It was nice. Informal. Small (me, my parents and his parents and that’s it). He was in sandals. She was barefoot. Cool (^_^)

The bad thing? I…forgot my camera battery… GAAAAAAAAAH. But I took enough pictures with the spare :) Yaaay. And due to that, I was actually able to listen and actually watch the wedding as opposed to running around taking shots :) And after I ran back to get it, before the sun went down I managed to get one really nice shot of the sister which is below.

So here she is. The lovely bride (^_^)

Yaaaay.

And here are some shots from the ceremony!

More coming soon.

Part 3. As usual, the pics are linked to a bigger image. This time we went to Waimea Canyon. The so called Grand Canyon of Hawaii. It’s gorgeous. It’s absolutely beautiful. It’s breathtaking.

Alas, no camera, no matter how nice, how wide angle, how expertly shot, can ever…EVER replicate what it looks like in real life. Ever. But here’s a shot anyway :)

To get there, it was a loooong drive all the way around to the west side of the island and up an incredibly steep and winding and very narrow road…in a Hummer H2. It was…challenging. I feel sorry for the cars coming down the hill and saw me coming up. But I promise I didn’t run over any small cars with the Hummer…well…that I know of at least :) The lookouts were amazing and well worth the harrowing drive up. Here’s the main canyon. Keep in mind, the far side is one mile away and we were about 3500 ft. up.

(yes, this one is a bit touched up…not much though, the dirt really IS that red)

Further up the trail it started to get cloudy. Or we were entring the clouds. (non-enhanced)

Still, very very beautiful. Just sooooo hard to get the colors right.

Then on the way back, we stopped by the southern coast. Windy as hell but gorgeous. GORGEOUS!!

More pics coming soon!!

And yes…i know…after a while you’re going to get the “yawwwn…more scenery…oooh…woo…” feeling. So when it’s all said and done this will all go into a photo album :)

Hello again!

About to go to bed but I wanted to post a few more pics before I do.

The wedding was today as well. It went off without a problem and it was very nice. Done over looking the ocean and it was quite pretty. Pictures? Well, for that I need the bride and groom’s permission so those may have to be on a “ask me and I’ll show you” basis for later on a more personal level. We’ll see.

In the meantime, here are 4 pictures. As usual, they are linked to bigger ones.

The first one here is a shot of the taro fields in Kauai. Taro is the Hawaiian root vegetable. Purple-ish in color and pretty starchy. Depending on the preparation, it can be quite good though.

The next one is a shot from a distance of some of the cliffs off the Northern part of the island. Those cliffs are all but inaccessable I have heard. Very pretty though.

Next are my 2 attempts at star photography. I didn’t have one of those manual switches so I had to rely on my camera. Each one is at 30 second exposure with some post work done to bring out some of the more faint stars. Turns out well though. The stars here were gorgeous. The last 2 nights were cloudy so we couldn’t see anything but tonight the stars were out in full. I got lucky and managed to catch the big dipper before it got obscured by clouds though.

Here is the dipper :)

The next is just the shot of the stars over our roof. The weird spots you see on the roof are paint marks since the condos we are staying in are being painted right now. It really is quite pretty in real life. Hard to describe even in pictures!

Tomorrow we are planning on going out to the “grand canyon” of Hawaii. We’ll see how that goes. If the roads are too narrow for the Hummer, we may turn back. Some of the roads up north were ridiculously tight…. We’ll see. Hopefully some more cool pictures coming soon!

3 new pictures.

2 are similar at the first one. Better shot. Prettier. The last one? It’s the view out of my window at 6am. Why was I up at 6am? The damn roosters….

But hey, it’s a hell of a view to wake up to huh?

Each picture is also linked to the same picture at somewhere around 1600×1200 resolution jpeg if you want to snag it for a wallpaper or something. Oh, and for any of you that really want to, I have links below for the full sized version. Keep in mind, the full size ones average at around 4MB.

Oh, and as usual, comments are always ALWAYS welcome, positive and/or negative (^_^)

Here are the large ones:

Made it to Hawaii last night. It’s GORGEOUS!!!

I’m also totally jet lagged and tired. But still. It’s BEAUTIFUL!!!

Here. Let me show you.

This is the view just a few steps away from the condo we are staying in. Nice huh?

It’s a golf course in the back but still, really beautiful. And the Hummer H2 that I rented is really fun to drive! I know I typically HATE those cars but now that I’m the bastard in the Hummer, I can see the draw… Heh heh heh.

The only negative thing so far? Well…2. First, my parent’s luggage never came through…stuck somewhere in Honolulu I think. Hopefully we will get it soon.

Second? There are wild chickens EVERYWHERE. Wild roosters walking around like they own the place AND they crow in the morning…like roosters do. At 6am. Outside my window. For godsakes….

Evil evil birds…..

Anyway, the weather is 50% rain every single day. I guess that’s how it is here in the island. But hopefully there will be nice days so I can go and see the sights and test out the camera. Fun!!

…now…to do some work e-mail…

*sigh*

Here I am at the Continental lounge. Tonight I get back to my place around 11-ish. I then need to go to the office to print out stuff (my printer is not being happy with me…), do laundry, repack, and be back at the airport by 7am. Fun times fun times…

Anyway….

So…I realize I just bought a nice wide angle lens… I realize that my trip to Hawaii was not what anyone would call “cheap”… But as some of you know…I buy stuff when stressed and I’m going to stick with that excuse…

Though most of you also know that that I wanted this so it truly is an excuse and nothing more.

Some of you have heard me talk about this. Some of you have seen it. I finally broke down this past trip to Japan and bought it. Behold, the Fujitsu FMV Biblo LOOX U50X/V (it’s the little one on the right…)

Woo!

It’s one of those new UMPC’s (ultra mobile PC) but it’s a full PC at heart. It’s so tiny the specs are minimal but it’s running at 800 MHz, 1GB of RAM, 40GB HD, and…well…Visa… But the full OS, not some gimped one like on the mobile PC’s. Of course it has wireless built in along with, since I bought this in Japan, a one-seg TV tuner. The US version comes with a camera like on the Mac and blue tooth. Eh. I’ll use the one-seg more.

I also went with the Japanese version since I can then run programs in both languages while if I just had a US OS, Japanese programs can be problematic.

Oh, and the screen flipps around to become a tablet PC too.

The Visa hand writing recognition blows but I can use a nice floating keyboard with the stylus for most things and if I need to write e-mails I can always use the keyboard. Also, for a comparison, the laptop on the left is my work laptop (also a Fujitsu) and that is a 13.1 inch screen.

Here’s a more closeup shot of the new toy.

You can see the fingerprint reader on the right of the screen. Also, this PC can be used as a handheld so the nub you see on the top of the keyboard on the right is a mouse nub while on the left are the right and left buttons. Once you get used to them it’s not so bad. You hold it like an oversized Nintendo DS and it works pretty well.

The only problem so far (besides everything concerning Vista…and there are a lot of those…) is that the wireless antenna is weak. I’m in the Continental Lounge and the signal is not strong where I am sitting but my laptop can pick it up fine while my LOOX is having problems maintaining the signal. Oh well. If worst comes to worst, I can pick up one of those WiFi boosters and just slap it into the side of this thing and get a better signal.

Ultimately this little guy is an internet PC. It’s for having it around in the living room so I can look up stuff or just check e-mail easily and quickly without dragging even a laptop around. It’s quite convenient really and, since the hotel did not have wireless, I also picked up an ultra small portable wireless router:

Just plug in the ethernet cable and you have instant wireless (well…this thing needs to be plugged in too unfortunately). It’s so easy it’s ridiculous. The WEP key is on the bottom and instantly in my hotel room I had wireless internet. Ahhhh…

I won’t say how much this cost…you can look that up yourself at Fujitsu’s site (in the US it has a different name). But it’s cute, I like the color (blue!) and it’s convenient and light. It won’t be the only laptop I travel with but it will be a nice addition. And once I get an extra long lasting battery it’ll be even better. Combined with ultimately getting a solid state HD?? Woooo! But that’ll be a bit further into the future since the solid state HD’s are ridiculously expensive.

You have to agree that it’s cute (^_^)