@#$% computer part II

well, my Dell has officially shit the bed (to steal a quote from my dear friend Corlean who was the first to experience my research travels through baja and is now knocked up and milky on an island in the Carribean with her chef husband...)

now all i'm receiving is a "no hard disk drive or optical disk"

in other words, it won't boot up.

and i had been very diligent about backing up photos on to CD whilst in Mexico but didn't get a chance to the last week. and the saddest part about that is that on the last day of diving I was able to go to the wreck again and this time the visibility was CRYSTAL CLEAR. oh god it was A-MAYZ-ING. the little (40 cm) garropa were so beautiful and i got some good pictures and now they're trapped inside the autistic mind of my DELL pc which i've hated ever since I got it and I'm going to find a place to get it repaired and to transfer whatever information is pertinent to me onto another drive and hurl that thing out of my car like Lane Meyer did when he hucked his radio out of his assy stationwagon for playing crappy breakup songs after his girlfriend dumped him for Roy Stalin...

seriously, i'll do it.

so of course now i feel i'm way far behind in this blog thing because i was waiting to blog when i had pictures and i don't want to tell the story without pictures because, golly, the pictures just make it all worth while (at least for me) in spite of the loooooong loading time.

so dear, single reader of mine, please be patient while i experience my technical difficulties and i promise pictures will be worth it (at least the ones i kept ON the camera @#$%ing DELL!!)

ps i'm typing this post on my faithful, trusty, and dusty MAC G3 laptop that is going on 9 years old now, didn't cost NEARLY as much as that assy DELL, and has had less than HALF the problems in that time that i've had with that assyDELL in 1/3 the time. oh and please don't get me started on DELL "award winning customer service....."

and in complete rebellion i ordered a mini MAC from amazon.com today and it should be here next week. it has everything i NEED right now and can afford, not everything i WANT mind you but the price was perfect for me right now and i'm so over the DELL and I already have a mac usb keyboard and mouse. now all i need is the monitor, but i may try to see if i can use this G3 monitor with it for now.

@#$% computer

so midway through the trip, my computer started doing some weird shit. it started innocently enough with minor kachunking sounds and it sounded slightly like the fan was trying to start but can't. then brad tried to hook up his camera to my computer to download some pictures and the screen went black with a small blue box in the center and said "Beginning to dump physical memory."

now, i'm not an expert but i think that is BAD.

the point is that i have tons of pictures to upload here but first i have to download them to my computer and then resize them and then put them up here.

i apparently can't do that right now because i rarely can get the damn thing to boot up and when i finally do it will only stay running for about 20 minutes at the MOST. of course, there is also the issue that at the moment the pictures are safe on the camera...

not that it may matter because apparently since i announced my return, the few people that were reading this blog have stopped. so if anyone just happens to come back, i wanted to let you know that i will be keeping up this blog, even though i am no longer in baja per se, i have shitloads of baja data to deal with and i'm going to continue to regale my reader with that info. but for now, without pictures.

i'll make it up to you, i promise...

big dork

well, we made it back safe. i'm staying with Brad for a bit to get some work done. i have lots to tell about the trip back but because i'm a complete dork i just wanted to say i'm typing this from here:

http://collections.ucsd.edu/mv/index.cfm

hee

they have sooooo many fish! i'm playing with fish! yay me

coming to an end

well, the urep volunteers have left and i didn't have much time while they were here to post. now they're gone, brad's back and we're going to chill a day or so pack up the van and head back to california. =(

i find it harder to leave everytime i come here.

i'm beat (part 2)

so for those who have been asking here's a picture of me


hee. yeah i know i'm in trouble. double hee

so this isn't the best picture in the world but i think it's cool because there are two color morphs of grouper, the normal leopard pattern and the golden. noone really knows what's up with the golden. people used to say oh the goldens are always male or they are so rare or they are the "kings" of the group. none of that seems to be true. now when we're watching spawning what we seem to see as far as courtship behavior is that the males are all agitated and swimming rapidly and bumping into each other until they bump into a female and then they chase her. well, this gets the attention of the other males and they all try to chase her and be the one (ones) closest to her when she spews out her eggs. but the females are so fat and full of eggs they're sluggish and they hide from the males until of course they get found andthen the race is on. so here is a picture of a golden FEMALE fat with eggs starting to get chased by some males


so unfortunately our decision to go ahead and go to the island wasn't as successful as we had hoped. the visibility was still bad and everyday there were strong winds all day and all night from the south. it was hard to keep camp together, get work done and dive and sleep. we did our best but sometimes the current was so strong we could only manage one dive in the afternoon because it simply wasn't safe or productive to do another. we did have some good dives in the morning and saw some cool stuff when i did my fish counts.

this turtle swam right by me then went down under the rock and just started SCRATCHING himself. i think i heard him purr...

i love these fish. it's a spotted scorpionfish. he tries to trick things into thinking he's a rock.

this stingray was HUGE!!! i know there's no scale in the picture but just imagine that the head and the wing part was large enough to cover my entire body like a blanket. NOT KIDDING!

so we did the best we could and dove and worked 14 days straight and finally got all our crap off the island.

we headed back and CRASHED. then the next day was a day of rest (may 28) and then sunday i had to pick up new volunteers at the airport. and, it's been, um, interesting....