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Ha'ena Beach (Kaua'i Day 3)

bolsinga@gmail.com (bolsinga) — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 20:00:00 GMT

I got up this morning and it was raining. This didn't give me high hopes for camping over the next 6 days.

I drove up to my first camp site, Ha'ena Beach, and immediately met a couple of beach bums. One told me he had been in the Navy and immediately asked me if I wanted any herb. The other guy (both in their 40s or 50s) showed me the shells he found on the beach that AM and some necklaces he had made as well. Apparently with some shells you can get $60 for a film canister's worth. The problem is that the shells are about a quarter the size of a peppercorn, basically big pieces of sand.

I walked around to get a feel for the place to see if I wanted to stay there. There were no tents here at the time, except for one on the beach. I asked the lifeguard if you could camp anywhere, and he answered only on the grass. After his tone, I didn't ask about the tent right there on the beach.

I left to get some more supplies in Hanalei (only 15 minutes away), and I returned to set up camp about 11:30 AM. By then there was already another tent set up. It wasn't raining when I started setting up my tent, but it was pouring for a bit after I started. This also disappointed me. It stopped soon thereafter. This is pretty much how the rain for the rest of the week went.

After setting up, I decided to just do beach hiking for the day. I started by hiking east towards Hanalei (and past Tunnels Beach). This beach is coarser with many more shells. There were lots of people snorkeling at Tunnels Beach. Next time I go to Kaua'i, I'm definitely going to snorkel.

So I return to check on camp. More tents have arrived, with more locals. So I then I hike the opposite direction towards Ke'e beach. This is the end of the road. Here there are still more reefs. There's a great reef lined pool to swim in here, with lots of people snorkeling too. I hang out a bit to watch people and the surf. I talk to some mud caked folks who had just hiked to Hanakapi'ai Falls, and decide I'm definitely going to do it the next day.

So I hike back to camp before dusk, and I make my first camp dinner. Not bad! It's an old staple of mine: pasta and sauce.

After dinner, I meet a nice family who are just setting up camp as I finish dinner. I'm not sure of their relationship until after sitting and talking with them. It's Claire and 2 of her children: hippie dread-locked Peter and cute Alice. They are from Sebastapol. We talk about all sorts of things. It surprised me how young they are (18 and 13). I thought they were 5 years older! I clearly know nothing about teenagers anymore, I see and know so few.

Lazy in Hanalei (Kaua'i Day 2)

bolsinga@gmail.com (bolsinga) — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 19:59:00 GMT

I woke up at 7:30, just about sunrise. I made a lazy breakfast and got on the road to get the camping permit. There was quite a bit of traffic to get back to Lihue, especially in Kapa'a. It was Monday morning, I guess.

You can only get county (and state) camping permits in Lihue. It's cash only. You also have to pick exact dates for county campsites. I asked, and they don't have a weekly pass. So I picked 2 nights each at 3 different campgrounds. The woman at the counter said they'd probably be lenient if I had a permit for a different campground. It's only $3 a night! My plan is to head from the north coast down to the west over 6 days.

I needed propane for my stove, so after this I went from WalMart (they had no propane) to Kmart. I also got a small soft collapsable cooler for my beer, eggs, coffee, tortillas, pasta sauce, and salsa.

Back in Hanalei, I stop to get a coffee right around lunchtime. There's lots of cute women here. I think I head back 3 other times during my stay.

I get back to the hotel and make some snacks for lunch to bring to the beach. Peanut butter sandwiches and an apple. You slice up the apple and put them in the sandwich when you're ready to eat. It's great tasting. It's my staple for midday meals for the week.

While getting the damn tags off of the soft cooler, I jab my left hand with my knife, right where my index finger meets my palm. I immediately feel like I'm going to regret that for the rest of the trip. The injury wasn't too bad in hindsight, although I can still feel it when I make a fist now.

That afternoon I finally see the propeietor of the hotel. He says it was raining 6 to 4 inches an hour just the day before I got there. They had had some campers staying there who didn't want to deal with the deluge. I start to feel worried about camping.

So I go to the beach. I jump in for awhile and body surf. It's so much fun. While I'm drying off, I see a woman jogging on the beach so I decide to run it myself. I ran from the middle to the west end, back past the middle, to the pier and back. It felt great. I read it may be a 4 mile run or so. When I get back to my spot, I cool off with some more body surfing.

I wind up talking with two Canadians sitting on the beach, they may be father and daughter. We talk politics, mortgages and more. They had been there a few days and told me about all the rain that had been happening recently. I guess the two days I've been here have been the only sunny days since. Their friend had been stranded in Hanalei, since the road was flooded over.

The woman, a tall thin pretty woman, had just come from a trip in New Zealand. Man, you gotta love vacation times in other countries. She said she had tried hiking that day (and the day before). But she couldn't since the trails were closed after the rain. She mentioned about 6 inches of mud on a 3000 foot cliff. I'm not sure if I'd want to do that either.

Nevertheless my plan is to get up early to see if I can make the long hike up on the Na Pali coast. If not I'll just sit on the beach again. Decisions, decisions.

For some reason I find myself watching TV before I go to bed again. I sure won't be able to do that while camping on the beach. While listening to the radio on the car and watching TV today, it occurs to me yet again how grating, horrible, and annoying advertising really is. There's a freaking commercial where they are giving fast food taste tests to people who have never had it. They are all dressed in typical native clothing. Ugh. All I can guess is that people become attenuated to it. I have no idea how we got here it has to end.

Arrival in Hanalei (Kaua'i Day 1)

bolsinga@gmail.com (bolsinga) — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 20:00:00 GMT

I arrive in Lihue about 3 PM without any incident. The airports here are mostly outdoors, which is odd. I get the rental car and drive all the way north to the end of the road. I head back to Hanalei to get to where I'm staying for the night, The Hanalei Inn. It is perfect. I can tell it's going to be laid back, because the door was open with the key sitting on the nightstand. The A/C is running, and has that terrible swampy smell of window A/C. I turn it off and crack a window.

I get into my bathing suit and head to Hanalei beach about 2 blocks away. I jump in for a little bit. It's not too hot out (about 75 to 80 degrees) and the water is refreshing. The sand is really nice and soft. The surf is strong, but fun. The clouds are over the mountains and the sea, as they are for most of the rest of the trip, except when it rains.

It's strange but I get 3G service nearly everywhere here. For some reason I thought I was going to be in the middle of nowhere. I decide to send a snapshot of the beach to Facebook without comment.

I decide to see if I can stay another day at the Inn. I hadn't gotten a county camping permit before I left and the government office was not open on Sunday. They are also all the way back in Lihue (about an hour in traffic). The inn let me know that I could stay another night. This will give me more time to get settled and oriented.

The room has a small kitchen, so I get some food for breakfast and dinner for the week at the grocery. It's dark out now, so I take a bottle of beer to the beach. There's lots of beautiful stars everywhere. I can see the Milky Way.

After a bit, I head back to inn. The neighors in the next room are blasting their TV. I reluctantly turn mine on to drown out the sound of theirs. I fall asleep about 9:30.

Geeking Out

bolsinga@gmail.com (bolsinga) — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 19:59:00 GMT

I have updated my local source control and build system to use git. In the previous Colophon page, you'd see the svn revision of the source used to create the program that creates this web site. Now you see the git commit hash. Isn't that great? Also I can now have more than one entry on a given day.

A Fresh Start?

bolsinga@gmail.com (bolsinga) — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 20:00:00 GMT

So I got back from a vacation to Kaua'i. It was wonderful. I'll have more stories and pictures coming.

Today Chip is 13! I can't believe he's a teenager already.

Relief in Sight

bolsinga@gmail.com (bolsinga) — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 20:00:00 GMT

It is only one month until the worst President of all time it out of office. It's been a long and horrible 8 years. I can already feel my stress level declining. I won't wince when I hear the President speak. I won't look at the New York Times front page with dread every morning, wondering what new outrage the President and his administration have brought upon us. January 20th cannot come soon enough!

12/19/2008 - Tom Jones @ Apple Campus

bolsinga@gmail.com (bolsinga) — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 05:00:00 GMT

Apple typically has Beer Bashes every 3rd Friday or so, more during the summer. They'll set up the newest gear Apple just announced, or the fitness center will have kiosks, things like that. Earlier in the week the Beer Bash was announced as sponsored by iTunes, and would have a special musical guest. We speculated about who it may be. In the past, Apple has had a mixed bag of acts show up for events, although none that I can recall at a Beer Bash. The place was more packed than I've ever seen it. It was actually kind of nutso in there. The beer was free, and you can drink quite a bit of free beer in an hour. Finally around 5 PM, the head of iTunes, Eddy Cue, gave the cue to Mr. Jones, who bounded out and sang "It's Not Unusual". He and his band sounded great. Of course they also played "What's New Pussycat". They played a few new songs (one of which features fairly distorted guitar) and some Christmas tunes. In all, I think they only played about 30 minutes. It sure was a fun and funny way to end the year at work!

Resolved

bolsinga@gmail.com (bolsinga) — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 20:00:00 GMT

I signed up for a 10 week guitar class that starts in January. I'm really looking forward to it.

Last week I ran 5 days out the the entire week. I took 3 days off, and ran again today. I want to shoot for 5 days on, 2 off.

I know that last Saturday morning (probably actually late Friday night), I decided to start my New Years reset early. Both of the things I mention above are the types of self improvement stuff I start around that time of the year. It just came earlier this year. Hopefully I can keep it going longer too.

12/12/2008 - Mudhoney, Wooden Shjips @ The Independent

bolsinga@gmail.com (bolsinga) — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 05:00:00 GMT

The opener was interesting. A Farfisa, a standard rock 3 piece, and lots of delay on the vocals. Oh, and they played only 5 songs in about 40 minutes or so. They have a drone, where they will get into a groove and play the same thing over and over. They had echoes of Spacemen 3 and early 90s shoegazer in there. One song sounded strangely like Devo slowed down. I think that it's surprising how garagey this sounded, and it brought all three styles together in a nice way. When I got the ticket for the show in the mail, I thought it was strange that they had a typo in their name, but no, that is how they spell it. The main attraction was on next, and they don't look much different than I remember. They played lots of really great songs that I hadn't heard before, and they played all the hits I remember too! Mark Arm has an awesome voice, I'm not sure if it is that it fits their music so well, or if it defines their music, but it works well. For many of the songs I hadn't heard before, Mark didn't play guitar. So during these time he could act more like Iggy Pop. There's a lot of Iggy in Mudhoney. They made some reference to some band being on a reunion tour, which I took to mean that they aren't on a reunion tour. Man, they've been going at it for 20 years. That just sounds crazy when you say it out loud. The Stooges had started out 20 years before Mudhoney had started. Anyways, I'm digressing. I loved Mudhoney back in the day. They are just as fun and loud and rocking today as when I first got to see them play.

Holiday Greetings!

bolsinga@gmail.com (bolsinga) — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 20:00:00 GMT

I've thought alot about it. For years, ever since I moved away from Chicago in 1996, I've been buying Christmas cards each year and sending a bunch of them to friends and family. I think I'm going to take a break this year.

So here's to all my friends and family that I'll be thinking of this year:

Dave Alexander; Marc, Ellen and Lucy Augustiniak; Chris Blumenberg; Dennis and Marcia Bolsinga; Michael Bolsinga; Brian, Edie, Jack, Fiona and Francesca Campo; Diane Campo; Jeff, Valerie, Rachel and Benjamin Campo; Mary Alice, Bill, Liam, Matt and Dan Connors; Kelly Cronin; Matt, Tamara, Lucas and Nora Daley; Matthew Daley; Robin Dannevik; Marika Davis; Marianne and Baltie de Ley; Tim, Lisa, Jack and Mike DeLisle; Rob, Tanya, Iris and Pearl Dimpsey; Sheila Diombala; Sara Diombala Sanchez, Victor Sanchez and Aden Sanchez; Kevin Elliott; Phil, Jen, Luke and Charlie Falkenholm; Alexandra Fraser and Ted Rzad; John, Becky and Jack Fuller; Pari Ghorbani; Brad and Mason Gilchrist and Suzanne Mason; Kate Glass; Alice and John Halloran; Claudia Halloran and Reed Lee; Victor Hernandez; Rebekah Hodgson; Seth and Ahmory Hodgson and Sarah Hirneisen; David Holloway and Brandi de Garmeaux; Penelope Horcha; Larry & Judy Jones; Larry, Emma, Max and Marisol Jones; Benjamin Kosnik and Abigail Derecho; Kim Laama; Lois Leen; Krystal Lewis; Jim and Hope MacGregor; Michelle Marie; Regan Martin and Teresa Radcliffe; Ginger McGilvray; Colleen Murray; Alysha Naples; Erika Ohlsson; Al Pacer; Andrea Pacer; Corrine Pacer; Jennifer Pitt, Andy Mueller and Owen Mueller; Ivan and Anna Posva and Brigitte Binkert; Ron Pranica; Josh Radding and Yasmine; Jeff Radice; Andrew Reynolds; Emily Rice; Adam Rosenberg and Natasha Kesaji; Lu Sapien; Kim, John and Josie Scannell; Jennifer Schaffer; Mark and Corinne Scheitler; Cindy, Allen and Rainey Sellars; Aram Shumavon and Mary Riley; Angie, Bret, Cole, Mia and Ella Staehling; Graham Stewart; Arshad Tayyeb; Karen Tsao and Thilo Heckrodt; Salim Virji and Anna Potterat; Jeff Wagner and Kate Hoag; Dennis Waldvogel; Jeff, Vanessa, Ethan and Max Wickenkamp; Jennifer Wickenkamp; Jonathan, Kim, J.J. and Rose Williams; Jon and Robin Bruns Worona; Elowyn Yager; Eric Ziegler

Brazen Politics

bolsinga@gmail.com (bolsinga) — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 20:00:00 GMT

The story about Gov. Blagojevich and his plans for appointing Sen. Obama's successor is nuts. It is so crass and over the top, especially while everyone knows that he's under investigation, there has to be something crazy about it. So I read the Gov usually is at home on the North Side of Chicago all day. With that and his raging delusions of grandeur rantings on the phone, it makes me wonder if he's on drugs or something. I mean how else could he have so little regard for the fact that he's under investigation and trying to threaten newspapers and sell Senate seats to the top bidder? Nuts.

As a side note, he was my Illinois State Senator when I last lived in Chicago.

12/2/2008 - The Sea And Cake @ The Great American Music Hall

bolsinga@gmail.com (bolsinga) — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 05:00:00 GMT

The Sea And Cake sounded great. They are such a tight band. The drummer was mixing it up by putting a little regular half beat into typical songs. They played lots of hits, and lots of new ones. They played one I couldn't place; I can only assume it is on the EP I don't own. Aram knows their sound guy. When I asked him what he does when he isn't their sound guy, he described himself as the sound guy to the over 40 band set. This was a very good time.

A San Francisco Hipster Dilemma

bolsinga@gmail.com (bolsinga) — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 20:00:00 GMT

When I was walking home late a few weekends ago, I overheard this (and only this sentence) being spoken by a woman walking in the other direction while talking on a cellphone:

"I was like, 'How does your pot smoking even compare to my eating disorder'?"

Wasting Time, or Time Is On My Side

bolsinga@gmail.com (bolsinga) — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 20:00:00 GMT

I like working at Apple again. I have less time to waste time.

I don't think I've opened boingboing.net (and I won't even link to them, hah!) in about 2 months. Thanks to Dave Alexander mentioning it on his site, I tried kotte.org. It's been much better. High quality, low volume, the Disney references approaching zero.

Last week he mentions "Timeline twins". This is a mental math trick I always use. I like to use them to realize how old I am.

Here's a good one. Kurt Cobain died 14 years ago, 1994. Fourteen years before that, 1980, John Lennon died. I have a John Lennon memorial pocket knife. I was really sad when Lennon died, and I was only 10. To be honest, when Cobain died, I made a joke about how he'd be spotted for years in supermarkets, ala Elvis. So much for my predictions of supermarket tabloid fodder.

Here's another: We're further from The Sex Pistols than they were from the beginings of rock and roll. I'm not sure if I see much progress since then.

So many things

bolsinga@gmail.com (bolsinga) — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 20:00:00 GMT

I've been busy and having fun since the last update.

I went up to Mendocino's Anderson Valley this weekend. It was beautiful. We stayed at a friend's cabin off the grid. We searched for mushrooms and did tastings at a few wineries.

I've updated my personal source repository to git from svn. I've been using it for stuff at work, and its been working out nicely.

I'm going to Portland for Thanksgiving. My parents are going to be up there while we visit my aunt and uncle and cousins.

This is "Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia" on YouTube. This movie is crazy intense. The 1970s and Pekinpah were so interesting. Watch this if you haven't seen it, before it is inevitably gone.

11/18/2008 - Pylon @ The Independent

bolsinga@gmail.com (bolsinga) — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 05:00:00 GMT

I had first bought a record of theirs only a year ago. But I had heard of them for years. R.E.M. had done a Pylon cover on their b-sides record, "Dead Letter Office". The Pylon record is great; it sounds like something I can't believe I hadn't heard earlier. Their influence was pretty damn big. So they were on tour for this re-release, as far I know. They started out with lots of the older songs and they sounded so good. The crowd was dancing up a sweat. The singer even pulled a few on stage to dance along. All the band but the singer were dressed in their "Cool" t-shirt. They pretty much just rocked out and kept the talk down to "Thank you". I was dancing myself. The crowd was surprisingly skewed younger rather than older, which was nice. I love seeing bands like this rock. They seem like real people really rocking.

Hope

bolsinga@gmail.com (bolsinga) — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 20:00:00 GMT

So Barack Hussein Obama will be our next President. I'm so very happy about this, it's very hard to explain. When I watched his acceptance speech in Chicago, I was jealous I wasn't there. And it was a beautiful unusual warm November night there. Part of me wants to say I know all about him, since I'm from Chicago. But he became a state Senator after I had left; the first I heard of him I think was when he was running for the U.S. Senate to fill a seat of Republican from the northwest suburbs who had defeated Carol Mosley Braun, the first female African American Senator, whom I helped elect in 1992. Obama ran against the cynical choice of Alan Keyes, an out-of-state nutjob who replaced the Republican candidate whose divorce proceedings from the Hollywood starlet about forced sex club visits were too much to handle for the Republican moralism fashionable at the time. Crazy politics.

But then I saw Obama's memorable speech at the Democratic convention. As the eternally long presidential campaign started soon thereafter, I didn't like the talk of Hillary Clinton being the next obvious choice as the annointed leader. I felt that we had gone through enough baloney about who slept with whom and who's skeleton was in what closet. At the time, I liked Bill Clinton better than all other options. I was by now just tired of the drama. I figured the Republicans would continue to make hay and feast upon her nomination. So as time went on, I heard more about Obama. I just checked my emails, and the first email I have referencing him is from 2004. I think there was talk of Ditka running against Obama for a short bit? Anyways. I liked Obama because he wasn't into political bullshit (at least on my radar) and he was from Chicago. I pretty much decided upon him as soon as it was clear to me he was running.

When I watched him speak on Tuesday night, I was really emotional: I cried. All I could think while listening to him is that this is what I want my President to say. It was like a nice tall cool glass of water. I want him to lead me and my country to a better place. To not accept the bullshit that is given to us. At the same time I knew he was pulling every single string that I have to be pulled. And I didn't care. After the last eight years, my strings needed, no had to be pulled! We needed this win so that we can get our country back on track.

In my story of America, it slowly, painfully, is always getting better. By which I mean more democratic (and not just the party). At first, the Electors in the Electoral College were appointed by the state governments. In addition Senators were also selected by state legislatures. Only the House of Representatives were elected directly by the people. Soon, Senators and Electors were selected by the popular vote. And by the popular vote here, I sure don't mean everyone. The types of problems we've fixed were abolishing slavery, women's right of suffrage, abolishing the poll tax, normalizing elections, the voter's rights act, and changing the voting age to 18, the same age one can die for this country. In my mind this has been a steady hard nasty progression for the better. It is simply this progression that gives me hope about this country and keeps me optimistic, despite all the naysayers and my own tendency towards cynicism.

When I watched Obama's speech, and saw the shots of the Chicago crowd, and thought of my old neighborhood and my old city and my new neighborhood and my new city, I saw in Obama people I know. People who are smart, are urban, have travelled, have interesting family stories, have hard family stories, and who are some of the best people I have met and known. This is the type of person who will help us in our time of need. I feel very proud of my country this week. I can't stop smiling. We'll stumble along the way, and it will be hard work, but I'm more convinced than ever that we can do it. Yes we can.

After about 5 hours of studying, I sent in my ballot my mail tonight

bolsinga@gmail.com (bolsinga) — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 19:00:00 GMT

It's always great to hear Wayne from The Flaming Lips explain just about anything.

I'm going to vote by mail; the voter's guides together total 400 pages!

bolsinga@gmail.com (bolsinga) — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 19:00:00 GMT

Please check this out. I thought it was pretty damn funny.

10/22/2008 - Stereolab, Monade @ The Fillmore

bolsinga@gmail.com (bolsinga) — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 04:00:00 GMT

Stereolab played lots of old and new songs. Laetita looked and sounded as beautiful as ever. This time around they had a background singer. The last time I saw them I remember how much I missed it. The unusual thing was this singer was a guy. He'd sing pretty quietly, not falsetto, so it lent a different take on the songs. The band also seemed more into it than other times I've seen them. Laetita apparently had a sore throat, and she played with Monade as well. At one point during the show I was thinking about how long Stereolab had been around: nearly 20 years! The songs sound great; I hope they keep coming back.