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May. 6th, 2008 @ 10:42 am Rockband Guitar
So, my rock band guitar that came with the set . . well, lets face it, it never worked quite right, but I was leaving for Africa so i thought I'd let it slide for now (the gravity switch for overdrive activation wasn't working right, I would have to hit the whammy bar while lifting the guitar to make it work most times). Now, the strum bar is starting to screw me up, which is the reason that people down the road have probably been hearing me scream "CURSE YOU MOLLY HATCHET!" over and over again for the last couple nights. However, I discovered this was a common problem, and just contacted EA support so they can send me a new guitar. I think I'm going to also go out and buy the xbox 360 guitar/game pack so I have a second guitar to use with the game anyway, and it'll let me rock out while I'm waiting for the replacement to arrive.

Also, I took my car in for service today, getting the breaks done and got an estimate on fixing the windows (passenger side doesn't go down, and the driver's side has been acting up). I need new tires very soon, but I need them to hold out just a little longer, at least until my next paycheck, because my breaks are going to cost $535.00 to fix. Ugh, I love cars, but also hate them. This only firms my resolve to buy an old datsun 280z pre-smog so I can work on everything myself. The windows . . . jeeze . . . apparently it'll cost $260.00 per door to get the quick fix, and $540.00 per door to get the long-lasting fix. Yes, thats right, the windows will cost more than the breaks. I can't deal with that right now. The driver's side window works for now, and at least the passenger side window is in the full-up position, so I can ignore that most of the time.

Why does everything cost so much? I have a good job and I still feel like I'm just barely scraping by.

Cheers,
~J(R)
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snow suit, BEAR, Boxer, James, Rock, Alcatraz, Face, tattoo
May. 5th, 2008 @ 02:19 pm Abney Park
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May. 1st, 2008 @ 12:24 pm Africa Pics
To check out my pictures from Africa, click here:

http://s34.photobucket.com/albums/d108/alphajager/South%20Africa/?albumview=link&special_track=nav_album_album

Enjoy
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snow suit, BEAR, Boxer, James, Rock, Alcatraz, Face, tattoo
May. 1st, 2008 @ 11:23 am Travel Journal: Africa (pt.2)
April 22, 2008: Kruger National Park, Skukuza, South Africa.

(1015)
This entry is continued from the last. Today started off well enough. Dave and I started working on the bundle adjustment again and things have been running fairly smoothly. However, today we may have experienced a fatal problem with our spectrometer. If we can't fix it then we have to pull it out of the plane and completely and substitute it for the survey camera. This would mean a complete uninstall of CASI as well as a new install of the camera, which would mean a new bundle adjustment. . . .

(1345)
Update: as one of the few people here with any significant electrical know-how, I've been picked to help out with the trouble shoot of the spectrometer problem. The remote tech says that its probably a blown capacitor but there is no way of knowing that until we pull off the access panels and get our hands in there.


April 23, 2008: Kruger National Park, Skukuza, South Africa.

(1415)
Last night we had a birthday celebration at the houses for Shawn and Robin. There was a bbq (or Brye as they call it here) and beer, and lots of our contacts in the park who came out to join us. Matt Colgan drank far too much wine and ended up praying to the porcelain god for a while last night. No one really got a decent amount of sleep, so work today has been somewhat numbed. We started the day much as we ended work yesterday: pulling off the spectrometer casing and the IMU to troubleshoot the problem. Unfortunately we are no closer to having discovered the actual cause of the problem, but at least we flew for a while today. In fact, I got to come along for the ride and sit in the co-pilot's seat. It was a lot of fun. Now we're back at the lab doing what we can with what we've got.

Greg has cancelled his trip to DC to deal with this.


. . . No entry for April 24, 2008 . . .


April 25, 2008: Kruger National Park, Skukuza, South Africa.

(1515)
So, after having a day off to wait for the status of the CASI, it appears that the sensor has unexpectedly started working properly. The Engineers, Greg, and everyone are at a complete loss as to explain why, but as long as it keeps working I see no reason to question it. The engineer said "Well, it looks like CASI is happy now." . . . whatever that means. Once we get home I imagine that we will need to send the spectrometer to Canada for diagnosis to hopefully prevent this from happening in the future. In other news, Ruth and I took a game drive today. We saw a huge pack of babboons on the road, and a giraffe came almost right up to the car. I got some great pictures.


. . . No entry for April 26, 2008 . . .

April 27, 2008: Kruger National Park, Skukuza, South Africa.

(????)
In a strange turn of events, it appears that I will be going home earlier than expected. Instead of May 8th, I'll be leaving to come home tomorrow, which means that I will be home with just enough time to celebrate my birthday.

Yesterday and the day before I was out with the field crew taking tree measurements. Like I said before, its not difficult field work, I've just grown to dislike being out in the field. Yesterday got stabbed in the leg by an Akashia Grand tree (or Horned Thorn Tree). As I was maneuvering through the brush to get a DBH, a branch whipped around and stuck me in the leg. It wasn't all that painful, but certainly surprising. After I pulled the thing out of my leg, ten minutes later I realized that there was something sticky on my leg . . . I'd been bleeding into my pants and socks. The puncture wound soon closed with the swelling, and I now have a very lovely bruise to show for it. (Yay internal bleeding)

Later last night, Ruth started an arm wrestling competition between her and I. Afterwards, Matt Colgan wanted to try and beat me. I won them all, but of course everyone started making excuses: 'your seat was higher!', 'you weigh more!', and 'you bent your wrist!'.

-Lame excuses.

Today, Dave and I are going to take another game drive down to the Lower Sabie. Should be fun.


April 28, 2008: Kruger National Park, Skukuza, South Africa.

(10:45)
Today is my las day in Africa. It has been a very interesting trip so far. This morning I was woken by Matt scrambling to get out the door with the field crew cause he'd overslept. My morning was fairly relaxed after that. I ate breakfast and chatted with Ty and Dave, and then Dave and I spent a few hours securing a ride to the Neilspruit airport where our plane to J-burg is picking us up at. I sold my green laser to Hayden, our pilot, who has been completely enthralled by it since I showed it to him the first time. I traded it for $50, which should be enough to buy another one to modify in the same way. Also, I left my travel speakers with Ruth so she can borrow them for the rest of the trip. Finally, I gave my field hat to Villy, our favorite game guard, because he was admiring it the other day and I really had nothing else to give him to show my appreciation for all his work for us.

We spent only an hour or so in the lab this morning trying to trouble shoot more of the sensor problems. At this point I think one of the sensor engineers has to step up and go through it, because our collective knowledge and experience are certainly not enough to fix it before the campaign is over.

I am going to miss South Africa, but thankfully I have many pictures and stories to share. Hopefully one day I'll get the chance to return.

-End-
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Apr. 22nd, 2008 @ 10:38 am Travel Journal: Africa
Travel Journal Update:

(As transcribed from my physical journal I am keeping while here)

April 15, 2008: Pretoria, South Africa.

(07:00)
This marks my first night spent in Africa. The travel here was something of an endurance challenge seeing as how we spent something like 23 hours in the air confined to coach airplane seats. I can’t say that I faired too badly though. I was able to sleep a little bit on each of the three flights it took to get here (SFO to Detroit, Detroit to Amsterdam, and Amsterdam to Johannesburg) though once we got to the hotel-house I was hardly able to sleep at all. I think I slipped in and out of sleep a few times and at least once dreamed about searching the room for an alarm clock so I could finally have a reliable record of the time. I had planned on using my cell phone as a time piece, but the night before we left I forgot to charge it, and my power adapters don’t appear to work properly here even though they claim to work for the continent of Africa. I’ll buy a new adapter when I get a chance and see about purchasing a cheep watch in case that plan busts.

(Continued at 16:45) Kruger National Park, Skukuza, South Africa.
We finally made it to Skukuza and the research camp here. The state of the slums outside the major cities is terrible, and in fact just like what you see in those old Sally Struthers commercials from the 1980’s. The research camp, however, is flipping amazing. It is hard to believe I am here.

Unfortunately, even though I checked online, it appears that I have no cell phone reception outside of Johannesburg, which is the last place I was able to check my voicemail.


April 16, 2008: Kruger National Park, Skukuza, South Africa.

(15:15)
Today was our first day out working in the park. I’ve been paired up with David Knapp and assigned to help him perform what is known as “the bundle adjustment” for the aircraft/imager interface. Part of this process requires that we go out to our airfield and select ground control points and measure them with a very precise GPS unit. The plane will fly over and acquire data that we will then correct in x,y,z space using the gps points we measured and the onboard aircraft icu.

This morning was spent doing some recon of the airfield as well as setting up our mobile computer lab in one of the conference rooms here at the Kruger Science Services building. Dave and I drove around and got lost for a little bit before eating lunch at one of the overlook areas. It was very nice and reminded me that I am very lucky to have this chance to be here in Africa. Also, I got a phone card and called home today to let everyone know that I made it here safe. I felt bad for waking Aimee up at 4am, but I really just wanted to hear her voice and let her hear me.

As I am writing this we are currently waiting for some of our gear to arrive by truck which should happen around 4pm (less than an hour from now).

Animals I’ve seen today:
Crocodile
Impala
Wart-hog
Tortoise


. . . . No entry for April 17, 2008 . . . . .


April 18, 2008: Kruger National Park, Skukuza, South Africa.

Yesterday we spent most of the day acquiring GCP’s at the Skukuza airport. Most of that time was spent setting up the gps base station, and then waiting 30 minutes for the gps to collect data before moving on to the next site down the runway. Dave and I unfortunately pissed off a pilot who almost landed on top of us as we were driving down the runway back to the hangar. It was a little tense after that. I got to hang out with the local monkey population while we waited for Greg, Ty, and Ruth to finish their initial flight-check of the CAO and LiDAR system. At the end of the day we all re-grouped and went to one of the three available restaurants here at Kruger.

This morning we set up the flight gps and headed over to the mobile lab to deal with our newly discovered IT problems. The Kruger IT guy has yet to show up, it is now 9:10 am.

. . . After all that it turns out our solution was to move to an entirely new lab location where all the lab computers can access the wireless network. It is slow, and so far totally unreliable, but it functions enough to do what we need it to. Hopefully this improvement will take some of the pressure off Greg, who is obviously freaking out a little bit.

. . . . No entry for April 19, 2008 . . . . .

. . . . No entry for April 20, 2008 . . . . .

April 21, 2008: Kruger National Park, Skukuza, South Africa.

Yesterday was my first day out with the field team. The work itself wasn’t too intense, and at one point some elephants got really close and we had to be very careful while our game guards shoo’d them away. Data processing in the evening was long and not without a certain amount of frustration as well as Greg’s rising temper. That made getting to sleep last night difficult.
However, we did get to watch as 5 lions ate a fresh Impalla kill by the staff housing with appropriate mood lighting thanks to the thunderstorm that had swept through last night.

Today we are continuing to work on the bundle adjustment. Everything is going ok, except that all email today seems to be impeded. I rewrote an email to Aimee 3 times before giving up. Also, I still feel like the computing group moral was dented a little after Greg’s outburst last night. We’ll see how that situation develops.

April 22, 2008: Kruger National Park, Skukuza, South Africa.

Today since I’m in the lab again, I’m going to see if I can download some of my pictures to one of these hard drives so that I can share some of them with the folks at home.

As of today, Animals I've seen:
Crocodile
Impala
Wart-hog
Tortoise
Elephant
Lion
Giraffe
Hippo
Giant Snail
Python
Monkey
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snow suit, BEAR, Boxer, James, Rock, Alcatraz, Face, tattoo
Apr. 9th, 2008 @ 04:08 pm How many animals have I eaten? Updated list
Fowl:
Chicken
Turkey (farmed)
Turkey (wild)
Pheasant
Ostrich
Duck
Goose

Mammal:
Beef
Lamb
Pig (farmed)
Boar (wild)
Buffalo (or Bison)
Watter Buffalo
Deer (venison)
Elk*


Fish:
Salmon
Trout
Swordfish
Cod
Halibut
Sturgeon (eggs)
Chilean Sea Bass*
Tuna*
Yellow-Tail*
Red-Snapper*
Eel*
Mackerel*
Urchin*
Jelly-Fish*
Squid*

Shell-fish:
Lobster
Crab
Clam
Mussel
Oyster
Abalone
Snails
Shrimp*
Scallop*
Prawn*

Reptile/Amphibians:
Frog
Sea Turtle
Alligator

Insects:
Crickets

Unknown:
Sea Cucumber*

* forgotten items added to the list
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snow suit, BEAR, Boxer, James, Rock, Alcatraz, Face, tattoo
Apr. 8th, 2008 @ 11:30 am How many different animals have I eaten?
So, the heading topic came up as a question to me as some friends and I were dining at a totally vegetarian restaurant in Chinatown. I knew the list was long, but I honestly didn't know how long till we started listing animals. I wrote down the list, which ended up being numbered into the 20's or 30's, but at the moment can't find it.

I can however now add "water buffalo" to the list thanks to Jeb's aunt who smuggled some in from Tibet. It was delicious.

Fowl:
Chicken
Turkey (farmed)
Turkey (wild)
Pheasant
Ostrich
Duck
Goose

Mammal:
Beef
Lamb
Pig (farmed)
Boar (wild)*
Buffalo (or Bison)
Watter Buffalo
Deer (venison)*
Elk*


Fish:
Salmon
Trout
Swordfish
Cod
Halibut
Sturgeon (eggs)

Shell-fish:
Lobster
Crab
Clam
Mussel*
Oyster
Abalone (or "Mermaid Pussy", as some might say)
Snails

Reptile/Amphibians:
Frog
Sea Turtle
Alligator

Insects:
Crickets

This list is by no means complete, I was just trying to recount some of it while I could still remember. It will be edited in the future as I a) find the original list, or b) remember other animals I've eaten.

*edited to reflect one re-spelling, and three missed mammals
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Apr. 8th, 2008 @ 11:27 am Because Joe did it.


The Unofficial Rock Band/Guitar Hero Purity Quiz

Shredding Skill (Average: 59%):

86%


Obsession and Devotion (Average: 43%):

85%


Showmanship (Average: 39%)

90%


FINAL ADJUSTED SCORE

(with judicious usage of Star Power):
93%

Average Finish: 62%

starstarstarstar


FOUR-STAR PERFORMANCE!


Brought to you by My Name Is Might Have Been, the post-apocalyptic Rock Band comic


Take the quiz yourself!

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Apr. 6th, 2008 @ 02:11 pm I forget . . .
Tagged by [info]theoni: List ten fictional characters you would have sex with (in no particular order) and tag five people to do the same.

(I listed the actor, then the fictional role)

1. Mila Jovovich as Leloo Dallas from The Fifth Element
2. Angelina Jolie as 'Acid Burn' from Hackers
3. Monica Belluci as Persephone from The Matrix Reloaded
4. Nicole Kidman as Satine from Moulin Rouge!
5. Bette Midler as Dixie Leonard from For The Boys
6. Marilyn Monroe as Sugar Kayne from Some Like it Hot
7. Renee Zelweger as Betty Seizmore from Nurse Betty
8. Michelle Pfiffer as Selina Kyle (Catwoman) from Batman Returns
9. Promethea (comic book character)
10. Jewel Staite as Kaywinnit Lee Frye (Kaylee) from Firefly
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Apr. 3rd, 2008 @ 09:04 am A recent discourse between my boss and I
Hey ##Boss' Name##,

Here you go, insert work related stuff here</>.


Cheers,
James "The Blood-Diamond" Jacobson
____________________________________
Reply:

Hey Blood-Diamond,

You forgot the attachment.

##Boss' name##

____________________________________

Response:

Sorry, was getting shot at by rebels . . . narrowly escaped, but forgot the attachment.

Coast is clear,
here you go.

James
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Apr. 2nd, 2008 @ 11:12 am Question of the day:
"So, while we're in Africa, if we happen to . . . I dunno . . . 'find' some diamonds, can we keep 'em?"
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Mar. 28th, 2008 @ 01:58 pm Dragonforce: Sonic Firestorm
Holy crap . . . .


Just got this album. Its like my heart is going to explode with awesome.

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Mar. 27th, 2008 @ 12:58 pm Newly downloaded
Smashing Pumpkins: Zeitgeist
Smashing Pumpkins: Machina Machine of God
The Bravery: The Bravery
The Killers: Sawdust
Waterloo to Anywhere: Dirty Pretty Things

So far, I am enjoying them all.
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Mar. 21st, 2008 @ 05:48 pm Awesome Job
I just spent the last two hours at work drinking beer and playing Frisbee.


radness unmeasurable.


~J(R)
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Mar. 20th, 2008 @ 03:59 pm South Africa
Looks like I'm probably going to be in South Africa on my birthday this year.

Go figure.


~J(R)
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Mar. 18th, 2008 @ 05:26 pm Fundamental Sentinel Units
Went to a talk about the up and coming National Ecological Survey Network (NEON). It was . . . um, interesting.

Apparently, according to NEON . . . humans are called "fundamental sentinel units".

At least with the prospect of continued NSF funding, we can eventually be upgraded with the rest of the network technology.


Yeah, cyborgs, bitches.
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Mar. 18th, 2008 @ 09:52 am Uh oh.
Greg came up with a fairly wild look in his eye to me just a moment ago after I was eavesdropping on a conversation about how there are probelms in Hawaii and S. Africa and asked . . .

"Hey James, how are you with field work? You have problems with snakes or bugs or anything?"


. . . . great . . . .
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Mar. 14th, 2008 @ 11:45 am BATTLE!!!!!!
TROGDOOOOOOORRRRRR!!!!


VIKING!!!!!!!!!!
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Mar. 13th, 2008 @ 04:11 pm This is for Theoni
Photobucket

WIZARD!!!!!!!!
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Mar. 11th, 2008 @ 09:17 am Doy for Wolfmother
You know, it's only 9:30, and I can already tell its gonna be one of those days where I need a little Wolfmother to get me through.

Cheers,
~J(R)
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