After dinner on Saturday evening with friends Beth + Loren, we snagged their press passes which meant we could wander around amongst the mushers and teams setting up for an hour or so which was awesome! We then headed over the lake to where the teams pull off and in to a little wooded area. It was really good fun seeing the teams start their Iditarod journey, and I’m now resigned to following the race progress via the GPS tracking on Iditarod Insider.

Today we had a lazy day around Anchorage as the weather wasn’t too good for heading down Turnagain Arm, but it was still good fun. Back to work tomorrow, and with 3 x 8Gb memory cards full of photos to process on the evenings. At least it’s Spring break at UAS so I don’t have much college work to get done over the next week or so and have time to process them. I’ll have photos on flickr as slowly over the next few days hopefully.

I haven’t packed any clothes yet, but at least am checked in on-line and have my camera gear packed I’m taking a little more than I had for the K300 races and Holiday Classic where I stuck with the 18-200 the whole time, as I’m hoping to get a little more landscape shots done around Turnagain Arm and such, we’ll see. My poor MacBook is rapidly running out of space and will barely hold one 8Gb memory card, let along the three of them I carry! So, it might need to wait until I get back to Bethel to post some photos.

Of course, it’s blowing snow and IFR here in Bethel right now, and the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center and Alyeska Resort are closed along Turnagain Arm due to severe weather, but hopefully we’ll be okay and have a great weekend! If nothing else, will be nice to get out of Bethel for the weekend. Heading up to Fairbanks for 4-5 days at the start of April, so at least gives us a couple of trips out of the delta to keep us going as winter rolls on.

istartedaproject365andamnowmorethan150daysintoit(whichshowshowlongitsbeensinceiveblogged!)
iturned26andstilldontfeellikeagrownup
ibecameabigfanofprismkites
itraveledtolasvegasforalongweekendwithbethanytomeetupwithmyfamilywhichwasawesome
iwonahandinthevenetianpokerroomwithace/kingsuitedasholecards
ifinishedmyfirstsemesteratuaswitha4.0gpa
ispentchristmasandnewyeariniowawithbethanysfamily
igotanewtattoo
igotengaged
ibegantoneedamuletohaulallmycameraround
iphotographedtheheckoutoflocalsleddogracesandhadmultiplefeaturesraninthetundradrums
ipassedmyapplecertifiedtechnicalcoordinatorexamsinosx10.6havingneverseenwithsnowleopard
ibecameweirdlyaccustomedtodrivingontheriverinmytruck
igottoridemysnowmobileafterlousysnowallwintersofar
iwillhavecompleted18collegecreditsthroughuasbytheendofjuneafterregisteringformoreclassestonight
ihavetakentostudingthebibledailyandevenwenttochurchlastsunday
iamgoingtotheiditarodacoupleofweeks
ihaveanothertripbookedtofairbanksatthestartofapril
inolongerwearadressshirttowork

I will try to blog more. I usually can’t be bothered and end up with short updates on twitter or Facebook. If you’re wanting to keep up, that’s probably easier. And my flickr photo stream.

Winter is definately coming too, I guess we’re officially in to fall now, and given it was 28F this morning with a good thick frost and hasn’t risen above 38F today, that figures. As much as the fall colors are nice, it really is kinda an in-between season – not quite warm enough for boating or walking around exploring, but not cold enough for a good freeze-up and snow for snowmobiling. The down side to all this is although I love my house, the big windows and lofted living room don’t do much for keeping heat in As a test this evening I brought the heating up to 70f then turned it off. Within 2 hours the temperature had dropped 5f. 62f is about the lowest I can keep it at, 64-65f is about as low I can go and stay fairly comfortable, so with the temperature only being 38f outside, I’m not looking forward to what will happen when it’s -38f outside!

The PFD amount was announced today, an annual payout for Alaskan residents from investments of monies gained from the mining of minerals such as oil. This year it’s $1,305 and should hit my bank account on October 8th. Nice little delayed birthday present! I’m hoping it will help pay for flights somewhere at Christmas, since my Vegas tickets (7 weeks tonight, but who’s counting?) are all paid Won’t be heading back to England, am trying to wait until next summer when I could fly return direct from Anchorage to Frankfurt for like $800.

I never really think back on my times in Tunt and long to be back or wish for things to have turned out differently, but have thought a few times over the summer how different it must be for the teachers that find themselves stationed around Bethel in Napaskiak, Oscarville or Napakiak, or up around Kwethluk; or west coast sites like Mekoryuk, Toksook Bay or Tununak. The southern coastal sites like Tunt, Kong and Kwig are quite, quite different, and feel a lot more remote and desolate. I couldn’t imagine trees like I’ve seen around the Kwethluk or Gweek Rivers, and even small rolling hills or the abundance of bird life or fishing when I was living in Tunt. A year ago this past weekend I was spending the Labor Day weekend moving up to Bethel, and I can first remember feeling something not quite right after my second day on the job here whilst phoning back that the evening.

Contrast to today where I was calmly balancing so many district-wide servers, networking and licensing issues, whilst also taking my first college class through UAS where I’m enrolled on a bachelor’s course, and tonight have been running Facebook and Skype through my iPhone. I own a truck and a boat, and my snowmobile came back home last night and work started on replacing the rear suspension assembly for the coming winter. I would never have believed I could have found myself living in such a situation.

My first political science class went really well and seems like it will be pretty interesting. I spent the rest of the evening working on my readings for next week. The first of my oceanography classes is Monday afternoon and I have some readings to do over the weekend for that.

I also finally got an iPhone up and running out here today It’s taken a lot of patience, but other than the same restrictions on any cellphone out here in Bethel with regards to lack of data coverage, it works great. There are a few apps I’ve installed such as Facebook, Tweetdeck, Skype and Shazam which are cool, and I have a friend coming in to town next week that am sure will point me in the direction of even more. It really is an awesome little device, and even things like text messages bring on a whole new meaning when it’s formatted like iChat conversations. Very happy with it!

This fall semester I’m taking two classes, both of which are a little different, but that’s the whole point. Classes are ‘Intro to Oceanography (OCN101)’ and ‘Intro to Political Science (GOVT102)’ through the Ketchikan campus of University of Alaska Southeast (UAS). I have a 3 hour class each Monday afternoon for Oceanography and a 1 1/2 class each Wednesday afternoon for Political Science, and work has been accommodating shuffling around the couple of hours in early finishes to be made up elsewhere in order to support it. I guess it’s all in their best interest anyways. The rest of the class is self study at home, which works great for me and is how they run mso of the distance courses. Will see how the course load goes with two classes per semester like this, and hopefully register a little more in advance for spring classes, as Cultural Anthropology which I initially tried to register for was already full.

Fun times, and I’m quite excited to be doing something other than computing. I guess the hardest part has been actually doing something about it – applying, getting registered, etc., as is so easy to just do nothing and get by with things as they are.

That weekend I found out one of my best friends from school had died in a car crash. Finding out by reading such seemingly meaningless posts on Facebook and having the comments going back and forth made it all seem so impersonal and frustrated me a lot. Partly why I haven’t blogged for a while. The one plus point was at least I had some kind of a connection, regardless of how impersonal it seemed.

A few days later, a friend made it in from Anchorage to photograph local events for the paper. That was fun, and gave me an opportunity to try heading home from work on a sunny day, hook the boat up, drop it in the water, and go play for a couple of hours. Knowing I have that kind of freedom makes such a difference, so we had fun going down to and exploring Napaskiak and Oscarville. Plus, she also made a good photo of me:

Since we’ve had a few good spells of weather and fishing opportunities, we also headed out with Captain Macy (and Erin…), Brian and Bethany to go fishing.

With four of us out there, it was a fun afternoon, though the little noseeums gave me some grief! This is me fishing with Bethany:

Last weekend Jeff and I decided to go explore the Gweek River in anticipation for moose and bird hunting. We did a little fishing, but not much around there except pike, but we had a good day exploring a new area. An hour and a half out of Bethel, quite a way’s up the Gweek, we stepped ashore and found a bunch of moose tracks in an area quite unlike anything I expected of the delta, and very reminiscent of Scotland:

The photo’s don’t do it justice as I just had my little point + shoot, but it was quite a beautiful area. Jeff is certainly going to return in the 10-day moose opening from September 1st onwards.

I also then purchased a Remington 870 12-gauge shotgun this past week to get out bird hunting. The act of purchasing and owning a gun doesn’t phase me anymore, but to walk in to the AC grocery store on a lunchtime and walk out 20 minutes later with a gun was a little weird. So, Wednesday night Jeff + I took a walk out across the tundra just getting used to it (he’s been great in going over the safety aspects, the gun components, hunting methods, etc. and is looking forward to a partner this fall), and Nikko ended up leading the duck count, managing to retrieve an already injured white-fronted goose. Bird hunting doesn’t officially open until September 1st, so we weren’t really looking at doing much ourselves, but again, is nice to have more options for getting out on an evening and weekend now.

This weekend Erin is moving, which is helpful, as Bethany is then moving in to her old place the following weekend. Means Iain’s Moving Services are required for two weekends, but beer and pizza are good forms of payment. If this fairly okay weather holds that we have today, am sure Jeff will be forcing me to go out on the river too. Which would be just awful I have a few more snowmobile parts coming in soon too to get my Indy 500 ready for the coming winter. The temperature dropped below freezing and gave a good frost a few days ago, so we’re definately easing out of summer.

We hauled in 33 salmon, 31 of which were silvers, in three main drifts of around 5 minutes After heading back home and sorting out the boat, I then headed home with 17 silvers. I can see the appeal of fish camp to give you somewhere to cut fish if nothing else! It gets messy. This was my two rubbermaids after unloading the truck:

I’d been picking up fish fish here and there from the Tundra Center, so already had a 3 silvers, 2 reds, and maybe half a dozen chum, but I just about managed to squeeze in the 17 silvers from today! This is one full freezer, and also staring to see the appeal of a separate freezer:

Overall, a fun afternoon, if leading to a long evening spending hours cutting fish!

I also then called up the immigration department after not being able to check the status of my green card renewal online or on the phone for a week or so. I had received a request for additional information which was due back by July 23rd, and I was getting concerned the mail had messed up and they hadn’t received all the paperwork I sent them. After being transferred up the chain to a supervisor and starting to really get worried, I then had to explain my problem again, which the very helpful lady didn’t seem to understand. She casually informed me my case had been approved on July 22nd and that the new green card had been queued for printing and mailing out Well, that certainly was a lot better than I was expecting! I think I had to ask her to repeat it, just to make sure!

Hopefully it arrives pretty soon, as I’m still a tad nervous until I actually have it in my hand. Would much rather still be able to see the status in writing online as being ‘approved’ as with previous cases, but certainly sounds like it’s for real! Within like two hours this morning I’d tied off the last couple of major things with being over here and getting through the renewal on my own. Has also gone through incredibly quickly if so, given I didn’t file until the end of March, but then I had got a biometrics appointment within 3 weeks, and everything seems to have moved smoothly. Will see what I get in the mail over the next couple of weeks.

Last night I went to fill up the gas cans for boating and literally as soon as I stepped out the truck the heavens opened! As I’m filling up the cans, I say to the guy at the next pump doing the same thing: “You going out boating tonight?”. He looks up, dripping wet, smiles and says “Nope. You?”. I look up, dripping wet too, and reply “Nope”. Regardless, Jeff and I decided today we were going, rain or no rain!

That was my truck + boat at the top of the small boat harbor south ramp waiting to lower in to the water. I’m slowly getting better at reversing the truck with boat trailer, but am glad Jeff is around to help and is patient! It’s quite difficult trying to learn to reverse a trailer in the first place, let alone when you’re going downhill and in to water, the last part of which your brain tells you is stupid!

Anyways, we’d wanted to go run the Napaskiak River so we knew where it came out and what it looked like, as it’s on the main Kuskokwim channel between Church Slough and Kwethluk, the primary marine highway I guess. Here’s a rough map of our explored areas now:

Red was today’s play time, yellow was our camping trip a couple of weeks ago. The others have been shakedown runs of Jeff’s boat and mine or from exploring the Kwethluk River before our camping trip. The Gweek River is next up, the one just starting at the top directly north of our red route from today, which is meant to be quite pretty and good for wildlife. The Kisararlik (sp?) is also a planned trip, past Kwethluk and heading off in the top right hand corner, which is a good fishing river apparently.

Gas wise we got to within about a mile of the boat harbor coming back before I ran out of gas. There was still a little left in the tank, but that whole red run was done on 6 gallons. Not bad for a 2-stroke. As a comparison, Jeff’s yellow run was done round-trip on about 12 gallons, so there’s seemingly not much between the 2-stoke 30hp and 4-stroke 40hp, though Jeff is pushing an 18ft boat loaded up wih gear which then shows how fuel efficient it is. But, even at $5.10/gallon, that’s a good 2 hours or so on the river today for $30, and fun going exploring some new waterways

It’s ‘92 Chevy S-10 4.3l V6 4wd pickup which for a Bethel truck is in a pretty good condition Will haul my boat to the harbor and back and get me around town rather than walking in the rain. Quite pleased with it!

Yesterday I moved the seats round in the boat, as is more natural for driving from the opposite side. Hopefully is a little easier driving like that. But, the engine itself ran just great, a lot better than I was expecting, very little vibration so the prop is good, and was okay on gas too. A little loud with it being a 2-stroke, but not uncomfortably so. Overall, very happy with it!

We then swapped out boats and headed way up the Kwethluk River with Jeff and the dogs to go camping. The weather was just great, and with a little breeze, very few bugs either. After a little battle with the fishies, I finally landed a pike which went straight on the grill Tasted great:

Our camp site was in a really nice spot, on a little beach and getting enough sun whilst still staying fairly cool:

My tent was a bit small for the dogs as well, though just fine for Jeff + I, so we will need something a little bigger to have those guys getting a more comfortable night away from the bugs. But, overall, was a good shakedown trip to figure things out for next time now we know what we gear have that works and doesn’t (and not to leave stuff in the boat unless you want it covered in dew in the morning!). Am tired today, but good fun!

There was another 172, a 207, Maule and Aviat A-1B docked along the shore, plus this Piper PA-18 belonging to the State Troopers or Fish & Game, looking just awesome in HDR with such intense blues:

I’d set up a function key on my EOS 50D to allow the AEB switching to be easily able to shoot more than 3 bracketed exposures, so these photos and others on Flickr were from a 1EV 5 exposure sequence in Photomatix. This gave a much more even tone and less graininess which I experienced doing a 3 exposure sequence last week with the abandoned Army truck and burned down house. There’s definitely some great uses out here to capture the range of tones, especially blue skies. I can imagine in the winter time especially there could be some fantastic opportunities at sunrise and sunset!

Being around whilst people in the parade were getting ready gave the opportunity to get Iditarod 2009 musher Harry Alexie to pose in a dog-sled cart:

I pretty ran the length of the parade route, meaning I got to a bunch of shots from different parts around town which although tiring, was actually pretty good fun. No-one seemed to mind the idiot sitting the middle of the road whilst a dog team or truck was coming right towards me. Which was nice. Here is the well adorned Girl Scouts float:

At the carnival itself, the were some fun little market stalls set up, food vendors, raffle tickets for sale, etc. I managed to find a fun shot of Brian Kay adorned in the stars and stripes:

One more photograph I made mainly for the newspaper was of a couple of elders enjoying the festivities going on around them:

All in all, I was really happy with how the day turned out. I filled an 8Gb CF card in like 3 hours with 360+ RAW photos and then spent pretty much all Sunday processing them to get them in to the paper for the the 8.30a.m Monday deadline. But, they ran 6 photos in full color which was cool. More photos from the day are detailed in this flickr set. I’d then ended up spending the rest of the 4th out on the river with Jeff, so was a great day!

Which means I have a DMV title for a boat trailer, but technically no car to haul it!

Am working on that part But, am planning on leaving it down at the boat harbor once I get my harbor permit tomorrow. Is weird to think I have a snowmobile and a boat as my methods of transport. Can’t wait to get out on Saturday and take it out for a spin!

There must be a fantastic story about this old army truck. I will try to pick people’s brains tomorrow on it!

Right next to this location, there’s also a burned out house just sitting having never been cleaned up. Again, would like to find out a little more about it. I can only hope everyone got out safely. This is still my biggest fear with living out here:

These HDR images were created using the awesome Photomatix software, which I realized very quickly, and with HDR in general, not just this piece of software, requires a good number of images to work with. The Canon EOS 50D by default only does 3 auto bracketed shots at up to +/- 2 stops exposure. I have found a good tutorial to quickly adjust this to 9 to 12 shots which I hope will reduce the graininess present by a lack of range in the tonal adjustment processing. 5 to 9 images seems to be a good standard for creating HDR images. The tripod and balllhead were awesome in setting these up, with ballhead so much easier to quickly and precisely line up what you wanted, and the quick release plate meaning I could also easily move to somewhere else lining up shots.

I’m looking forward to experimenting more. I know with the right conditions or filters, I may seemingly be able to achieve results close to these, but even photographs I made at what I would consider the right settings and looked very respectable pale alongside an HDR composed shot now. Check out the large resolution versions on flickr to see what I mean It works really well, and just the effect I was hoping I’d be able to achieve.

And we may not have KFC in Bethel, however there was a QFC at one point:

But, the important thing was getting another front page photograph on the Tundra Drums of my shot of Joseph repairing his salmon nets:

Very happy I have a few extra photos on flickr I got from Friday night which were fun. Tonight I had some friends over for poker which then moved on to Rock Band which was great fun too!

In 10 minutes I was able to promote a replicated LUN on our off-site DR SAN, rescan for volumes on our off-site DR ESX host, and then add the VM to the inventory and power it up. Given our replication scheduling and speeds, I should be able to bring online a fully-functional VM in a state no more than 2 hours behind what the production server was. I’ll take that Finishing off the documentation for the infrastructure and can move on to other areas, such as migrating more of our physical servers in to the environment – I’ve already decommissioned 7, and currently running 17 production and 5 dev VM’s.

Today I bought the bullet and plumped for OS X and iLife updates, taking my MacBook from OS X 10.4 to 10.5 and iLife ‘06 to ‘09. Was literally 3 years ago last week I got the little guy, and I have to say, after a 2Gb RAM upgrade pretty much right away for under $80 and then a hard drive replacement, also around $80, after 18 months of abuse (literally – more than a dozen major airline flights, bush airlines, and 2 month road trip!), it’s been flawless and still powers everything I need without leaving me wanting. It’s probably the most impressive piece of computer equipment I’ve ever bought (I would say electronics in general, bit I do love my Canon EOS 50D!). Given I’ve seen hundreds of new machines passing through the office and workshops this past week for imaging and inventory, I know what the current crop of MacBooks run at, and for general day to use, this 3 year old baby is holding it’s own still!

I did head out to Pinky’s Park on Tuesday to watch a little softball:

Four night’s a week there’s a fairly informal league for teams to play in which was good fun:

Wednesday night I then took a ride down to the river to check out the boats moving in + out from people fishing. The last week or two there has been a good run of salmon, with fish drying all over town outside houses:

I also met a cool old local called Joseph that I watched repairing his salmon nets with the traditional tools:

He let me hang around a good 10 minutes or so watching and making some photographs, with one his dogs also keeping watch on the proceedings in case anything good happened:

On Friday, Jeff had Dennis and I round for a roast dinner. I got to play with my new Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 lens which I have fallen in love with! This is Dennis playing barman and making sure not a drop of tequila was spilled:

And then the chef himself taking a break after dinner to drink + chat:

I submitted a few photos in to the Tundra Drums after they got in touch asking for some possible photos to run in next week’s edition. Hopefully they like some of them and they get printed. Large sized photos of these ones here are on my flickr account.