Eric’s Ephemera

The Rest of Hawaii

I've finally uploaded most of the pictures from the Hawaii trip (here's the Flickr collection). I didn't get a chance to update much while we were there because we were doing something all day, back for a quick crash and shower, then out to see the sights at night, then to bed kinda early to get ready for the next day. But here's a brief recap of the trip:

Monday, May 11th
Landed at 4pm after 13+ hours of flying and layovers. Checked into the hotel, went to the mall next door for some food (pretty awesome outdoor mall), and kept ourselves awake as long as we could. Which turned out to be 9pm Honolulu time.

Tuesday, May 12th
Went down to the hotel restaurant for breakfast. Good but overpriced. Ran into a co-worker there and talked about plans for the trip. She recommended the Expedia desk for ideas and help with planning, so we stopped there after for some ideas. The person there was very helpful, and after half an hour we had planned and booked the entire week.

Back in the room, I spent the rest of the morning working through business emails and reviewing the curriculum for the upcoming training. In the afternoon, we went down to the Ala Moana beach park to rest and swim. [pics]

Setup for the training was at 6pm, and after that a number of the training team members went out for dinner at a Japanese buffet.

Wednesday, May 13th
First day of training, from 8am to 5pm. After the training, a few of the training team members went to the Shorebird in Waikiki for dinner. (All the Waikiki pics from various nights are here.) Beautiful location right on the beach, and you grill your own meat. Neat twist, great food, fun night.

Thursday, May 14th
Second day of training, but a half day. By 1pm, we were done, and the entire training team went to Germaine's Luau later that night. A bit hokey, but still lots of fun ... and it included a Hawaiian buffet and some free drinks! [pics]

Friday, May 15th
We made plans to visit Kualoa Ranch on the other side of the island that day. We started with a tour of the surrounding jungle in Swiss 6-wheel Pinzgauer's. Very fast, very bumpy, and very fun. The scenery was amazing, of course, and the guide made some good and cheesey guide jokes, but also knew his local lore, flora, and fauna. We also got to see some of the sets for Jurassic Park, Mighty Joe Young, Tears of the Sun, and Lost (including that creek they're always drinking from). After that, horseback riding through similar terrain. I enjoyed it, but Thuraya's horse was a bit slow and stubborn. Ironically, she's the trained rider. I just kind of sat there and enjoyed the view. [pics]

That night, we wandered around Waikiki and wound up getting dinner at a roof-top Tiki bar.

Saturday, May 16th
We spent the day on the Kai Oli'Oli ("fun in the water"), the boat used by Ocean Joy cruises. They took us up the East coast of the island, doing some dolphin watching along the way, and then let us snorkel off shore for about an hour. Lots of fish and coral, but no dolphins or sea turtles. Still a good time. Thuraya was nervous at first (thinking that sharks would find us and eat us), but settled in quickly and enjoyed it. [pics]

That night, we celebrated her birthday early at Ocean House, a really excellent restaurant next door to the Shorebird. They were all out of the dessert Thuraya wanted, though, so we vowed to return another night. Instead, we got ate more gelato and wandered around Waikiki again.

Sunday, May 17th
The day I was most looking forward to, and my favorite. We booked with Hawaii Shark Encounters, who took us out on a boat three miles off the north shore and let us climb into a cage to watch sharks swim around us. The sharks are drawn there by crabbing boats that often throw chum into the water, so when the shark boats show up, so do the sharks thinking they're the crab boats. Works out well for everyone. We got about 20 minutes in the cage. I could have stayed for hours. I was impressed that Thuraya actually got in, given her fear of sharks, but she did and loved it. [pics]

Later in the afternoon, we went parasailing off Ala Moana beach. The water was rough by then, and the banging boat did not make for a smooth take-off or landing. Still, once we were in the air, all was smooth and the view was fantastic, if too short. After about 5 minutes, we were pulled back in to watch a few poor girls on the boat with us loose their lunches over the side. [pics ... don't worry, no puking]

Monday, May 18th
We spent the day kayaking with a Twogood Kayaks guide. We left from Kailua beach and paddled out to Na Mokulua, two islands off the shore. Once there, we ate some lunch on the beach, climbed around on the rocks, and did a little snorkeling. The surf was rough again, so landing and launching were a challenge, particularly in the tandem sea-kayaks we had. But I'm proud to say we caught air at least once and didn't tip over. [pics]

Our last meal in Hawaii was at Duke's, named in honor of the father of modern surfing, Duke Kahanamoku (who wore his pants really high on his waist with all the other guys of his day). Food was just OK, but the atmosphere was great and there's really no room to complain about beach-side dining.

Tuesday, May 19th
Our flight left Hawaii at 12:30pm Honolulu time and landed at Washington Dulles at 6:30am EST on Wednesday morning, which meant we had to stay awake for about 36 hours. Small price to pay for a great trip.

Hawaii Day 2 - Shorebird and Gelato

WEDNESDAY: After a full day of training, the training team went to dinner at the Shorebird, which sits right on the beach in Waikiki. You grill your own meat over a huge grill and garnish with the many choices from the salad bar. It was a delicious meal at a beautiful setting. Afterwards: gelato.

Ala Moana Beach Park

TUESDAY: We spent the afternoon of the first day at the Ala Moana Beach Park across the street from the hotel.

Getting to Honolulu

MONDAY: We were down in North Carolina visiting my family for Mother’s Day, so on Sunday we had to drive from there back to Richmond to get bigger suitcases and repack everything. Then, we had to drive up to Woodbridge because it was $150 cheaper per ticket to fly out of Dulles than it was to fly out of Richmond.

By the time we left Richmond, it was midnight. Ten minutes outside of Richmond, we hit traffic. Apparently, they decided to close 95 down to one lane for some construction. It took me an hour to go 10 miles. We finally pulled into Woodbridge at 3:00 in the morning, leaving about an hour for sleep before we had to get ready to catch the morning flight out of Dulles.

We flew from Dulles to San Francisco, a 5 1/2 hour flight, and then from San Francisco to Honolulu, a 5 hour flight, struggling the whole time to stay awake so our clocks wouldn’t be too horribly off when we finally arrived.

When we landed at Honolulu, it was 5:00 pm … not late enough to sleep yet. We checked into the hotel (a little underwhelmed with the small size and rooftop view of our room) and headed to the outdoor mall next to the hotel to find a little food. Finally, around 9:00 pm, we returned to the room and allowed ourselves to pass out. We felt pretty horrible and weren’t sure if we’d be happy with our hotel in the morning, but we were in Honolulu, so there really wasn’t much room to complain. And yes, everything looked much better after some sleep.

Easter 2009

My parents came to visit during the Easter weekend. We had a great lunch with the whole family on my mother's side, hosted at my cousin's beautiful new home. We spent most of the rest of the weekend playing games, but did venture out to Belle Isle one afternoon. I was surprised by my mother's willingness to cross the bridge to the island. She's usually terrified of heights, so the last thing I expected her to do was walk across a bridge suspended high over the James River that sways with the wind. Good job, Mom!

Richmond at Belle Isle

Testing how Posterous handles images, Flickr, and geotags.

Tech Tools of the Moment

If you've been following along, you know that I got an iPhone a few weeks ago, which has sparked two very time-consuming things: 1) exploring all the possible apps, from the productive to the pointless, and 2) taking another look at what I'm doing online, because many of the iPhone apps tie to various online services. In the process, I've discovered some pretty cool things, but don't have them all figured out yet or know whether or not I'll actually use them.

I've also been thinking again about online identities and the various lengths to which people will go to construct them. For me, these things come in waves and are usually prompted by new technologies ... I'm a sucker for the toys. But then, once you've got those toys, you've got to think about how they define you, in various ways, to yourself and to the rest of the online world. And that world is harder and harder to ignore or dismiss as trivial.

But enough pseudo-virtual-philosophy. Here are some of the new toys I'm playing with:

• Twitter: I've had a Twitter account since the service started, but I've never really known how to take advantage of it. For one thing, I don't understand where people find the time to post as often as they do or to keep track of all the updates. Nevertheless, I've decided to give it an honest go for at least a month. Expect an update.
  
• FriendFeed: Again, it's been around for a while, and I've had an account for a while, but I'm just now starting to see its value. It collects everything I'm doing online and then allows me to decide how I make that available to others.
• Mint: Really loving that I can see all of my financial information in one place with one login: accounts, debts, investments, assets, everything. With the new customizeable categories and budget, it's even more useful. And with the iPhone app, I always know how closely I'm sticking to that budget (no thanks to the iPhone or its service plan). Plus, Mint is free!
• Toodledo: Dumb name, great service for keeping track of "to do" lists and goals. Plus, excellent iPhone app.
• TripIt: Email your travel itenerary, and TripIt organizes it all into a very readable format, then adds maps and weather recommendations. You can also collect other information around the web and import it into your trip. And yes, two great iPhone apps pull this information together to use on the road (TravelTracker and FlightTrack Pro).
  
• Goodreads: I've been a loyal LibraryThing fan for years, and I'll still use it to track my actual book collection (for which it's well-suited), but Goodreads just seems more social, allowing me to share what I'm reading with others, and linking into my Facebook account ... which is where most of the people I want to share that info with already are. So far, I really like the clean interface, effective Facebook app, and blog widget.
• Shareaholic: Really easy little Firefox addon that lets me quickly share something online with other services: Delicious, Twitter, Google Reader, Facebook, etc.
  
• Feedly: Pretty awesome feed-reader interface, with built-in sharing and annotation. It lays out your feeds in a nice "magazine" layout, letting you quickly click in and out of stories, and highlighting the feeds you read most. Not a replacement of Google Reader, but a very nice complement.
• Location-aware tools: Nothing specific here, but the idea is interesting. Most of all, I appreciate the ability to geo-tag photos. If I were on a trip, geo-tagging my location would be fun and interesting, but for everyday use, it still seems unnecessary. We'll see ...
  

Anyone out there using any of these? Something similar? Something better? Or ... anyone got a good argument in support of Twitter or location-aware applications?

Under a Giant Microscope

Playing with my iPhone (admittedly, way too much) has led me to discover the world of location-aware social networks. Here's what I know so far:

• You can let Twitter know where you are and even provide a link to your location on a map.
• You can embed geo-data into photos so they can be mapped, too.
• You can join one of the geo-networks and see yourself and your friends on a map. The big three seem to be Brightkite, Loopt, and Whrrl. And Google just joined the party, which means if you have a Google Account, you can let the world find you on a Google Map.
• Facebook and Myspace should follow suit pretty soon ... making your status update also a location update.

I've always been a pretty tech-positive, early-adpoter kinda guy, but I gotta tell ya: this stuff kinda freaks me out. Of course, I downloaded Loopt and Whrrl immediately to try it all out, and I'll be giving Google Latitude a test run soon. But as far as an "everyday use" kind of thing, it's a bit creepy. I can think of some instances where it would be awesome (city-wide scavenger hunts, tracking the house-arrest compliance of your arch-enemy, finding your teenage daughter at 11:03pm on a Friday night, or exploring a new city with a pack of friends), but I still get a cold little shiver up my spine if I think about it too long.

So, as you can tell from the last post, playing with all these new toys has me wondering if maybe I should just grab a pen and a journal and head for a remote cabin in the woods. Except, horror movies start that way, too ...

Twitter Dilemma

[update: I removed the embedded video and just added a link to it instead because it would automatically play on every page load ... which is annoying.]

Video: "Twouble with Twitters"

So, I have a Twitter account, and sometimes I even post things there (I guess the word is "tweet"), but I'm still on the fence with the whole thing. I know that it can do some good (see the end of this other "Current" video for examples), that it has recently broken into mass-cultural awareness, and that many people are completely addicted. I don't see anything wrong with it, really, I just still don't quite get it.

Using it to post helpful links, cool resources, or interesting news items makes some sense to me, and the way many teachers use it to share educational resources and build awareness about issues also makes sense. And that's the direction I lean. But the rest of the tweets ... "I'm awake and drinking coffee" kinds of tweets ... well.

So, I don't tweet often. If I find resources, links, or news worth sharing, I might. If I'm doing something exciting I might. But probably, I'll just share things on Google Reader, update my Facebook status, or write a post here or on my main blog. Is that so wrong?

Maybe I'm not hip enough for Twitter ...?

A Little iTunes Wish