Author: Peg

News flash – there was a cereal killing overnight in Kona. I found the evidence on my walk to get the morning paper 🙂

Good air quality today. Nice calmer ocean. Water warm and clear. But no fish. Still – a good day.

We had oranges, avocado, chicken and sushi for lunch. Salami sandwiches are on tap for dinner.

A complaint about the Mac OS. I want my * back. Maybe I’ll have to read up on Spotlight and figure out how Mac People do wild card searches.

The Kona Seaside isn’t your average hotel. It may be cheap – but it has character. And characters. BTW – this guy played a mean ukulele.

Reviewing my investment strategies. In the past, I never took large positions in “overseas” stocks. But, I decided that if I really think the US economy has been seriously damaged by the general lack of national fiduciary responsibility – well, I should do something. To that end I am moving 20% of my equity portfolio into non-US companies. And, in the fixed income portion – I am buying 10 year TIPS next week. And, I added Nice Systems to the wild ass speculation portfolio.

The food fairy provided a whole bunch of really good oranges and 3 to die for avocado.

Surf was still up today – but so was the vog – that would be Volcano smOG. And the grass fires continue – so the air was gray today. Hence, another surf pix from yesterday.

Speaking of our grass fires. The same 3 fires have been going on since before Xmas. The fire department is starting to come under criticism and ridicule over its inability to put out the fires. The fire department gives out all manner of helpful hints about dealing with the smoke: leave the area, don’t smoke cigarettes, keep your windows closed.

I just “finished” 2003. Down to 1,564 images. I’ll make another couple of passes thru – deleting more. But, since I started with well over 6,000 – I am pleased.

Carlton is playing “museum guard” tonight. His Palace was rented for a wedding – they will feed him – and yours truly will truly enjoy having a beer and cheese sandwich for dinner.

Oh, the problems of the leisure class: I am having trouble with the “help”. As in “It is hard to get good help these days”. As a economy measure our hotel seems to have replaced many of the experienced maids with new, just off the plane from the Philippines girls. They are nice as can be – but – it takes them 30 minutes to “clean” a room – if they don’t have to change sheets. Hence our room does not get around to being cleaned until after 4PM. Not acceptable. Tomorrow I am going to point out that it is just as easy to start with my room as to finish the day with my room. If they can not manage that – I’ll tell management that I’ll clean my own room thankyouverymuch – but please reduce my daily tariff by $5.

Today, after I finished doing the laundry and defrosting the fridge, I took the bus 4 miles up the road and walked back to town – stopping at every surf site to enjoy the watching the waves and cheering on the surfers. Our surf is never great, nowhere near epic – just so-so at best. But, hey, its the only surf we gots.

I came back with 200+ photos. I deleted them down to 38 as soon as I got back home. You see, I am trying to do better. And 2003 is down to 1,942 images.

Suddenly taken bored. Is it a bad sign if you get bored on your 16th wedding anniversary? Nope, I think I am bored with the images from 2003. I am now down to 2,402 images.

“They” told us yesterday that we would be getting 10 foot waves in our bay this evening. No sign of 10 footers. Not even 5 footers. But, lots of wind and chop. So, I confined my swim today to the hotel pool. I took today’s picture on New Year’s Day – from the ocean. I was snorkeling and popped up for a moment. The view was so nice, I just snapped off a picture.

Hey, it is important to know when your poi was delivered/manufactured. And, it isn’t cheap. Especially considering that you can not pay most mainlanders to eat it.

Still chomping thru 2003 photos. Have gotten the number down under 3,000. The more a do, the better the delete key looks.

Speaking of “key”, Carlton is watching slack key guitar on TV. Slowly the southern boy is being “localized”.

I am stuck in 2003, deleting and deleting and deleting… down to 3,246. I am really tired of 2003. But, I am going to finish. And then start another year.  And, delete, cull and catalog every new photograph as I go along.

This week I am shooting with my 25mm fixed lens… in completely automatic mode. Just a little training exercise.

Had an excellent morning snorkeling across the street from the hotel. The air  is really bad today (the volcano, a couple of range fires, and lack of wind). But, the lack of wind made for nice snorkeling. Love that new wetsuit. I stayed out for about an hour without freezing to death.

I was chilly, however – a hot shower and a bowl of clam chowder for lunch was welcome.

Have battled the images for 2003 down to 4080. I think that 2003 was the year that I realized that you can take all the digital images you want to without paying any additional money. I am learning to delete early. And often.

New favorite things:

1. My wetsuit
2. My MacBook Air
3. Readability – its free – get it now. http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/
4. Lightroom – I am using the 3.0 beta – will spring for a real copy when it comes out.

Woke up on New Year’s Eve Morning and what had come in over night – a pirate ship. Turns out that the pirate ship is a floating college class. A very expensive class. It is being adversely effected by the economy. They had to cancel the spring semester. And they cut out the French Polynesia portion of the fall semester. They replaced Borabora with Kiribati. Not a good trade. The ship motored out in the afternoon. Heading to Honolulu.

Knocked the 2003 image collected down to 4,887. Still have a way to go.

We had a really peaceful New Year’s Eve. The cops were not called. All the male hotel workers spent the night at the hotel. But, all they did was sleep. Very quite.