Random Thoughts

Its warm. Very warm. Very nice. I went to the beach. I saw some whales. I saw some other stuff too. If this stay son, it will be a good thing for a while. I miss the rain already though. I must be crazy. Oh well.

I recently went on vacation. I was stupid enough to play around with my camera and format the card I had. I intended to press Cancel but somehow I ended up pressing OK and it started to wipe everything out. Needless to say, I was very pissed off. This card have over a week's worth of pictures and at 1GB was a lot of random pictures that should have been preserved. One of my travel companions at the time worked in an electronics store and mentioned that he had software that could recover the pictures. I was not too impressed because I didn't think the software would do _that_ much. At any rate, I locked the card and stopped using it. I kept it with me (and as a result had to dump pictures onto CDs more often) and brought it back. I finally got a hold of the software he mentioned and I tried it out. No luck. My camera, when connected, does not display as a removable drive on my machine. For some god-forsaken reason, my 7-in-1 card reader does not work. So, I give up on recoverin...

The Cinnyris genus has interested me of late after seeing a picture of a regal s unbird from the DRC. I have lived in Africa, Asia and North America. I know what poverty looks like. I know that a lot of governments would rather spend time taking care of their human resources rather than the other natural resources. It makes sense to try and feed your populace rather than say protect a species of plant or animal. Taking that into consideration, think for a minute about the Regal Sunbird. Do we really want to destroy this creature? I cannot make a convincing case for saving it especially when there isn't a government in place and civil war is the name of the game. But really, aren't some things worth saving? There is unrest in the forests of the DRC. People train in there. People cut down trees. People shoot at others. Others clear trees to cook food. This beautiful passerine's family falls into the endangered species list. Maybe we as humans cannot stop our own progress. We...

I've been on a binge of late. I have been shopping for all sorts of stuff. I started with an apartment. Couldn't afford it. Moved on to smaller things. I bought a pair of black Diesel Remy shoes. Probably the softest shoes I have ever had. They are SUPER comfortable too. I got a pair of Merrell Mesa Vent II shoes for doing the grind. Very comfortable. Of course... my time didn't improve by that much. I got a Puma Beluga Football jacket. Its colour is officially Pompeian Red-Moon Rock Gray. Looks cool. I got a pair of quicksilver Slang shorts. They are awesome! I also ended up getting Jeans at Mark James (they have a summer sale on now). I got a pair of Diesel Clerby jeans (these are extremely soft) and a pair of 7 for all mankind relaxed jeans. They're both getting altered (hopefully, with the original hem in-tact). How much has all this cost? I would estimate it at over $500. Ouch. And hooray for our dollar being so much closer to being on par to the US one.

Seeing as I haven't really driven very far with the car (except for Whistler), I decided to go to a different place with the car. The boys and I drove to Seattle bright and (somewhat) early (as in 8am). We had to wait for a bit at the Peace Arch border crossing and after a few questions from the border person, we were in the United States! If anyone is wondering, questions were along the lines of a) where are you going b) what are you going to be doing c) are you bringing any food d) how do you know each other (I guess two white and one non-white person does bring up that question) e) do you all work, and where do you work This being the first time I got to drive on the I-5 with the new vehicle, I had my fun with cruise control etc. They make good roads in the US. They also make large flags. We saw many a giant US flag by the highway, mostly in car dealerships. We got out on Exit 202 to the Seattle Premium Outlets because we had heard many things about the bargains there and becaus...