The Newberry Adventure II photo set on Flickr.
For Michelle and I’s first adventure, we went to the Newberry National Volcanic Monument to cover some of the territory I didn’t on my first trip there. It was totally worth it. (This all happened on Saturday, buy the way. Sorry it took so long to get this posted.)
We started with the lava tube cave, which is a totally underground passageway that runs about a mile horizontally. The cave used to transport lava. Go figure. It was way easier than the Buckner Cave adventure, and required no gear save a gas lantern, which we had to rent. It was a neat experience, but I don’t think Michelle wants to do it again anytime soon.
Then it was on to the Lava Cast Forest. Now, the road to get there almost made it worth not going. The Jetta was not made for such abuse. It felt like 9 miles of railroad tracks. When we got to the parking lot, we were the only car without 4-wheel drive. The lava casts were holes in the flow where the lava had surrounded large trees. The lava hardened, and the tree eventually died and biodegraded, leaving a “cast” where the tree used to be. Pretty neat.
The next stop was Paulina Peak, which you can see in the above picture. It was about 4,500 feet higher than Bend, and the temperature must have been 20 degrees lower. It was very cool, though. You could see for hundreds of miles in any direction, and you could see just how large the caldara of the Newberry volcano is.
Our last stop was the Big Obsidian Flow, which I talked all about in the Crossing the Emyn Muil post. It’s still striking.
I know some of you were wondering what living arrangements look like out here. Michelle and I do have a nice apartment, and we’re nearly unpacked, and we only lack a few things (one such thing is a couch). I uploaded some photos of the apartment to Flickr and created a set for them also.
I’ve created a
Su Doku resource list that I’m going to update with relavent and cool links to Su Doku stuff online. Enjoy.
Lately, Michelle and I have grown addicted to a puzzle game called Su Do Ku. I usually get the version from the New Zealand Herald, which updates much earlier because, well, it’s tomorrow there before it’s tomorrow here.
The puzzle consists of 9 boxes which contain 9 smaller boxes. Inside each box, a number must be placed. Now, each number, 1 through 9, can appear in each of the 9 boxes only once, and it can appear in each row and column only once. You begin the puzzle with only a handful of boxes filled in.
Now, it may not sound all that difficult, but it is a brain excercise. After doing it for a few weeks, I prefer it to any crossword puzzle or word puzzle. Don’t worry, you don’t have to be good at math. The use of arabic numerals is only out of the convenience of using a set of 9 symbols that are already universally recognizable. The game requires logic, pattern recognition and problem solving skills. Whereas a crossword puzzle (especially the New York Times’) requires a vast knowledge of words and cancelled sitcom character names.
The Su Do Ku puzzles also get more difficult as each week progresses, as they give you fewer numbers to begin the puzzle with.
While Su Do Ku hasn’t found it’s way into mainstream America quite yet, it is a hit overseas in the Pacific Rim area. I think I heard that the LA Times just started printing it. I would strongly encourage anyone who even remotely likes puzzles to try one of these. I have always liked crossword puzzles. I’ve also always sucked at them. The Su Do Ku just seems to make sense to me.
I’ve been doing quite a bit of work around here, although it may not look like it. My favorite improvement is the new ‘weighted categories’ section on the archives page. It shows which categories I post in most by increasing their size. Pretty nifty. I spent my day off Wednesday going through all of my posts (especially the Ten Weeks posts) and reworking the categories to be more helpful and informative.
I also added a handful of other plugins, including Dunstan’s Time Since plugin, which changes the time punch beneath each post title to a more conversational format. This seems to not be working right.
Also, the categories are listed conversationally, also. (i.e. “Blah blah was posted in Culture, Games, and Interweb” instead of “Blah blah was posted in Culture, Games, Interweb.”
But all that is really just housekeeping stuff. Who cares about reading old stuff, right?
I’ve implemented Jonas’ Super Archives plugin, which makes it a breeze to sort through the Apostrophe S archives. Go ahead, try it. Just click on “archives.” It’s pretty cool.
On another similar yet old-and-not-that-exciting note, and also under the I-should-have-done-this-a-long-time-ago category, I’ve added all the posts from my old Ten Weeks blog to the Apostrophe S, so if you dig in the archives for summer of 2004, you’ll find all those posts. Not that interesting, but at least they’re there.
Also, you may have noticed things look a little different around here. I’m testing Michael’s awesome K2 theme, which is currently in alpha. I’d like to tinker a bit and make it look like my own, but I’m going to keep updating this with the straight releases until it’s out of beta. I think it looks pretty sharp, though, don’t you?
P.S. Oh, and I’ve switched to a 4-day work week, which is pretty cool. Makes for long shifts, but I think I’m going to like it. Heck yeah, three-day weekends.
UPDATE: Also added a few additional pages with actual information on them.
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