If we had a Marriage, These Would be its Thoughts

Our trip to Mordor

September 7, 2009 10:41 am

We wanted to do something to get out of the house this weekend. I found out about a program at Point Reyes National Seashore where twice a month they take a small group down to the lighthouse at night, give a little tour, and illuminate the lighthouse.

It sounded like fun. Then I found out that they were doing a sand sculpture contest the next day! We thought it'd be a fun way to spend the weekend. However, it being Labor Day weekend we couldn't find any way to spend the night anywhere near Point Reyes. Every campground was full, every motel, hotel, and inn. So we had to drop the full-weekend activity thing. But we did still get to go on Saturday and see the lighthouse.

We packed up and headed out around 1. We drove out to San Anselmo and stopped at a Subway to get some sandwiches. We bought a bag of ice and some sodas and put it all in the cooler and continued on our way to the seashore. Once we made it to the National Seashore we still had to drive out to the lighthouse which is on a tip of land which is actually on the Pacific tectonic plate.

So we reached the park which has no entrance fee (yay!) and continued driving out towards the lighthouse.

On the way we stopped at one of the beaches; Jess even played in the icy water; which turned out to be dangerous due to the monsters:

Once we finished playing at the beach (that is, once we got hungry) we finished our drive to the parking lot near the lighthouse. After our tasty, tasty dinner of Subway we still had some time, so we adventured out to the sea lion lookout point. By this time the fog was really starting to roll in and we were reminded of the Lord of the Rings when Sam and Frodo are wandering around in the fog.

There are supposed to be sea lions down below us. We couldn't see any, but we could hear some barking.

Finally it was time to head out to the lighthouse for the program. We saw some wildlife along the way, such as this deer:
I also was able to get some pretty neat pictures:

It was weird standing under the trees. The fog was so dense that it was condensing on the trees fast enough that it was actually raining beneath the branches.

We met up with the guide and walked down to the lighthouse (308 steps!). Here you can see the actual lighthouse and in the next picture is the currently used, automatic light which is operated by the US Coast Guard.

After some tour information it was finally dark so I got a fun picture of the automated light on our way into the lighthouse.

Inside you can see the inner workings of all the original gearwork that made the beams rotate. This is apparently a big deal, most historic lighthouses don't have the original gearwork. Even more impressive is that the gearwork still works too. They can't actually turn the structure at the moment though. Apparently there is a structural weakness in the roof and the rotating of the 6000 pound light structure could cause the roof to collapse. So they're working on getting funding to replace the roof (which requires removing the entire light structure piece by piece first).

Then the guide removed the curtain from the light and we got to see it all lit up. Apparently they keep the light on all the time to keep the building dry and warm (to help protect the equipment), so they have a curtain up to keep it from blinding tourists and confusing people trying to view the actual light, I guess.

Then we got to walk back up the stairs of Mordor. It was dark and cold and our legs were tired. It was so foggy you couldn't see more than a small section at a time.

Then we got to get in the car and drive all the way back. It was foggy for about half of the drive through the park, so it was slow moving. We stopped for some deer that were crossing the road and several rabbits ran across in front of us. But we made it home. It was a lot of fun.

Boomers!

10:22 am

We eat at Panda Express occasionally. It's just on the opposite corner from our apartment complex, so we like to walk down there every now and again. Well, we were down there a couple of weeks ago and there was a sign that, if you buy a 3-entrée meal, you can get a coupon to Boomers! for a free ride on the go-karts or a free game of mini-golf, and you get some tokens to use in the arcade. Since Jess likes to get cream-cheese rangoons with her meal she ends up almost always getting a 3-entrée meal. So we got a coupon and kept it. Then we went back to Panda a week later or something and did it again.

On Friday we finally went to Boomers! to use our coupons. We stopped at In'n'Out for dinner on the way. The only reason this step gets mentioned is that I have to include the picture of the end of a potato I wound up with in my tray of fries:
Exciting I know.

Anyway, so we went to Boomers! and decided to play a round of miniature golf. It was fun. Here I am teeing off:
Jess is lining up her shot:
It was one of those nights that it started getting cold really fast, so I put my hood up. Jess promptly made fun of me, despite the fact that her ears were freezing:
At the end of the course was a fun pagoda structure!
Jess beat me on the front 9, 23 to 28. But she ended up with a handful of 6's on the back nine and I ended up winning 53 to 59.

After miniature golf we went inside to get warm. We perused the arcade games and I found my long-time arcade favorite "Police 911". It's a shooter game where it detects your body movement allowing you to crouch and hide behind things (which is how you reload). I enjoy it. So here I am crouching behind a barrier to reload:
It was fun. And it was nice that it cost us $0 (aside from the Panda Express which we would have eaten anyway).

Government Bureacracy, FAIL

August 26, 2009 4:21 pm

I had to fill out 50+ pages of personal information so that some unnamed government agency can investigate my life. Oh, if you're even reading this then there's probably a good possibility that you'll be getting a personal visit from an agent from said agency within the next 6 months or so. So if some agent comes knocking on your door asking questions about me, try not to be too annoyed.

Anyway, back to my crankiness of the moment. I was filling in the information about my spouse and I had to provide place of birth. Well, that seemed pretty straight-forward, so I filled it in like so:
After submitting everything I got an email with "things to fix". One is that I need to come up with contact information for the supervisors I had during my summer internships at Aetna like 5+ years ago. Yah, that was fun. After, like, forever, I managed to find a generic HR phone number. After forcing my way through to an operator (No! I'm neither a current employee nor retiree!), I was told I can send a fax to the Payroll Department (and I have a phone number!).

Sorry, got sidetracked there. The thing I need to fix which is pertinent to this post is:
In case you can't read it, that says "Was your Spouse born in Puerto Rico? If so, please delete PR from the State and enter Puerto Rico in the Country field."

So, despite the form having an option for "Puerto Rico" as a state, and saying not to put a country unless born outside the United States. I'm supposed to ignore that and instead list Puerto Rico as a country.

Well, I tried that. Now the System is yelling at me because if she wasn't born in the "United States" then I must provide a Document Type and Document ID Number that proves she is a US Citizen. NewsFlash! Puerto Rico is part of the United States, that's why it's in the friggin' drop-down box! GAH!

Ok, Fine. At least Jess' birth certificate has some kind of ID Number on it. Oh wait! It has 5. An "Area Number", a "Register Number", a "Certificate Number", in big huge bold font a "Birth Number", and some unidentified 6-digit number stamped on the back in red ink. Well, they're getting the "Certificate Number" so they better be happy with that, though I'll bet that in 3 months I get a call asking about why they can't find Jess' proof of citizenship.

We're not done with the idiocy yet though. In another section I'm supposed to: "List three people who know you well... whose combined association with you covers at least the last 7 years." Ok, I can do that. APPARENTLY NOT! I was told that in order to fix that I need to "List 2 verifiers that have known you at least 7 years to present, with up to date information." Completely conflicting information. Oh, and it can't be anyone related to me in anyway, and I can't have listed them anywhere else in this form already (my roommates, professors, landlords, etc). There is NOBODY that fulfills this requirement. Friends from high school won't count because we haven't been close friends in the past 6 years. No one from college will count since that tops out at 6 years, and I've already listed anyone of note as roommates. GAH!

If they're so good at their jobs of investigating backgrounds, why am I doing all the work!

California State Fair

August 24, 2009 7:03 pm

We went to the California State Fair on Saturday. It's in Sacramento, so it was about a 1.5 hour drive away. But we had nothing else going on and somehow Jess has managed to never go to a state fair like thing ever. So we had to remedy that.

We went up in the evening once it was starting to cool down for the day. We're still learning how the weather out here works and so far have concluded that we're no good at predicting how it will go. Sometimes the sun sets and the temperature drops 20 degrees instantly (like when we went to the play last month), and sometimes the sun sets and the temperature barely changes (like at the fair). We had changed into pants and I carried around our jackets the whole time thinking it would get chilly. It didn't.

Sadly we forgot to bring a camera and by the time I remembered that we needed pictures we were already half-way done. So all I have are a handful of cell-phone pictures.

First thing we did was buy cotton candy, a requirement for Jess anytime such a possibility presents itself. Then we wandered through some of the buildings to learn about all the fabulous crap that we never knew we needed (the life-blood of any state fair). Upon leaving one of the buildings we ended up on "the farm". We went into the Insect Experience where we saw all sorts of gross things like gimongous moths and butterflies, hissing cockroaches, crazy stick bugs, and other such wonders. After seeing enough of that we went and visited the Kiwi vines (Kiwis grow on vines, who knew?). Then we rested our feet and watched them show off some of the horses.

By this time we were starting to get hungry and began questing for further fair-food. A funnel cake was a must, as always. It wasn't great, but I think that just keeps up the carny-tradition of low quality food for five times the price anyone would reasonably pay. Not wanting to leave without the full experience of this motto we got some low quality French fries. With a large helping of ketchup we were able to finish those off.

Being filled with grease we were ready to head in to the Garden of MAGnificent Proportions (their capitalization). Here's were I took some pictures:
Whose life is complete without a giant snail, giant frog, and giant radish and shovel?

We then wandered through the art exhibits and then my feet were ready to fall off. So we went and took a ride of the giant swings before heading home:
I was going to try to take a picture while we were actually swinging, but they got us going at a pretty good speed and I didn't want to watch my phone shatter into a million pieces.

That ends our trip to the California State Fair. It is gigantic. It seems vastly larger than the Utah State Fair and even the Big-E, and I hear that this year's was smaller due to the financial problems, so normally it must be huge.

New Phones

6:36 pm

Jess and I have switched to our own family plan for our cell phones. So we now have new phone numbers. If you need our new phone numbers, email one of us and we'll get it to you. Or I suppose you could comment on this post and we'll find a way to get it to you as well.

We ended up going with T-Mobile for several reasons. The main reason that they offer more minutes for the same price as all the other family plans that were available. The other reason is that they let you tack on unlimited data (internet access) for $10/month. Whereas the closest competitor is $30/month and if you want to use a device other than your phone they'll charge you $60/month. So, having my little Nokia n810 I thought that might be handy. Since they were also offering a 30-day trial of the data access I've been having fun trying it out. I've decided it's great if you're traveling a lot and want to stay connected. But rather unnecessary otherwise. So I'll probably cancel it and add it back on for $10/month when I do lots of traveling for the month (assuming I'll be able to actually do this).

So far I'm happy overall with the switch. It didn't go off without a hitch, but that's, sadly, to be expected. The first problem was that we wanted to keep our old numbers, but you're only allowed to do this if your name is on all the accounts. Since my name wasn't on my old account (being part of the family plan) I couldn't keep my number. And since we were putting the new plan in my name, Jess couldn't keep her number. But, that's probably for the best anyways, this way people who live here can call us from landlines without paying long distance.

The second problem was that they gave us phone numbers that weren't local to Livermore. Which was really stupid. So I had to call them up on this one. After getting sent in circles on their stupid menu system I got a hold of someone (thankfully their call centers are actually in the US and the workers speak intelligible English). They changed the numbers for us, but I was still annoyed when they acted like they were doing us a big favor by not charging $15 each line to change the number.

The phones themselves are good and pretty much exactly what I was looking for. I searched for weeks before doing this to find phones that were good at being phones. We don't want phones that try to be a camera, music player, fish scaler, gourmet chef, and, oh, and maybe make calls too. We want phones that are phones first. I finally found the Motorola w490:

The review I found gave it 3 out of 5 stars and said something along the lines of, "It is good at making calls and has incredible battery life (8+ hours talk-time tested), but the music player isn't very good and the camera isn't very good." That sold me. I'm happily using my phone as a phone.

Another aspect of our plan that has made me happy is that T-Mobile isn't going out of their way to be obnoxious. The phone comes completely unlocked. You can add a microSD card for extra space. It charges through a standard miniUSB connector which you can charge from a socket or your computer (if you happen to have the proper connector), and you can transfer files over the connection or even use the phone as a modem. They don't stop you from loading your own songs to use as ringtones, they don't stop you from tethering your device via Bluetooth and transferring files or using the data connection. You've paid for the hardware and they let you do what you want with it. Very refreshing considering most companies (I'm looking at you, Verizon) still screw you over in this respect pretty badly.

Unfortunately, T-Mobile is still following all the other American companies and screwing you on text messages. I'd be perfectly happy to sign up for a 100 text a month plan to be split across our phones for $1/month (heck I'd even pay $1/month for 50 or even 25, it's still better than $.20 per message), but I'm not going to pay $5/month/phone for some ridiculous number of messages that neither of us is possibly going to use. So we'll live without text messages. Hopefully the FTC or DOJ or whoever it is will finish their investigation and rain down fines and penalties until this collusive practice ends.