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I also want to tell a brief story about the baby squirrel pictured below. He was tiny and cute and very energetic. He visited us on Sunday at sunset for the first time. He did quite a bit of hiding from me while I was trying to capture his picture. Eventually he scampered off with a bit of wood that he perhaps confused for food. Anyways, when I woke up in the morning at 7am I noticed that our basket of dry food had been left out and not placed in a car. Then I noticed that said basket was rustling, and shortly after that the head of this small squirrel was visible. He exited the basket with what was left of a packet of Hershey’s milk chocolate following a night of smore making. I ran up to him and he ran away, leaving the chocolate on the ground beneath the picnic table. I picked up the chocolate, put it on the table and walked away for a few minutes. When I came back the chocolate was gone without a trace. I sincerely hope that chocolate does not harm small squirrels.

These are from Sarah’s Camera:

John at the Jama Masijd.

John is tired of riding this autorichshaw 20km back to the hotel.

The walls of Agra Fort

A wedding ceremony at Sriram’s grandmothers house. This is his ready to go live in the mountains because he has had second thoughts play outfit.

Sign seen on the streets of Hyderabad doesn’t make a whole lot of sense:

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For best viewing, use the in a larger map link. Or, see all the pictures included in the gallery below. Hover text provides captions in the gallery, or click through to cycle one per page.

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We stopped at each place marked in green. We skipped over duplicate stores, chains, and stores we didn’t know existed. We carried score cards. Here is the digital representation of mine:

¹Like most flavors at Emack and Bolio’s this cake batter is infused with chocolate. This is not an acceptable thing to do and still call it cake batter, but that is what they do.
²Also bread and water were provided at no cost at Picco’s.
³The flavor of the Cinnamon (and they Honey flavor that I tired) were so intense as to deserve top honors. However, we were unable to finish these flavors due to their intensity.
⁴J. P. Licks has suddenly, and without warning discontinued the cake batter flavor at all of their locations. This is not acceptable as it was the best cake batter flavor available in the city and my favorite ice cream overall. Until such a time as cake batter is returned to the menu I am forced to boycott J. P. Licks. I did get in line and ask for cake batter, only to be told they they don’t have it, to which I responded, “Ah, never mind then.”
⁵Bacon flavor was also available and I tried a spoonful of it. Someone got bacon flavor and was unable to finish the salty delicious treat. I had tired corn flavor earlier in the week and thought it quite good, but I was unable to finish my small size of it either.

The clear winner was Picco’s. Picco’s is a sit down pizza restaurant that also hand makes ice cream for their desert menu. They were great sports and sat a table for 13 who intended only to have ice cream. They also provided bread and water at no charge, which was most appreciated. Surprisingly appreciated was the bread! The flavors at Picco’s are intense, rich, and wonderful. I could taste the gainyness of the cinnamon in my ice cream! Everyone agreed this was the best place.

Clear runner up in my book Toscanini’s. Toscanini’s, since inciting me into their store for the first time in years with their ROFLCon inspired “Internet” Flavor (vanilla + grape nerds) has become my favorite ice cream parlor. The fact that J. P. Licks has recently committed seppuku has only help them reach the top. Other excellent recent flavors include Fig Newton, Ginger, and the best remaining cake batter flavor in town! Enough said!

How many people with teen-aged children do they think there are on Ok Cupid?

Certainly there are people with children on the site. Overwhelmingly these children are toddlers from the random sample of profiles I’ve come across. Note, that is not a statistically random sample at all, but still the number can not be that high. Plus, I was logged in; the site knows for sure that I don’t have any children, let alone teen-aged children. Now, acne could be something people using online dating sites in general might worry about, but I think I would use a different angle to target that audience. Maybe this ad was just not tagged correctly and the software is fine, but in any case, showing me that add is a fail.

It is a huge embarrassment for US President Barack Obama that he proposed – admittedly under pressure from the Republican opposition – to expand offshore oil drilling greatly just before the BP catastrophe struck.

I didn’t make a post about it at the time, but I never understood why he did this. He pushed his health care package through congress without considering anything else for almost a year, and then, as soon as he got what he wanted (or as close as he could ever get to what he wanted) then he decided to appease his opponents. I could understand it if he tried to appease his opponents by throwing them this bone in order to get some leverage for the health care debate, and maybe that is what actually happened behind closed doors. I doubt it though, because if that was the deal, some embattled senator somewhere would have used that as a reason to support the “unpopular” health care bill. I can’t fathom what made him change his mind about drilling.

Back when the story about Obama being for drilling first broke and during the election, I was not against offshore drilling. What I am against is “drill baby drill” as a solution to our energy crisis. As covered in this long ago post about a talk given by a chief BP scientist that I was at:

[Given the] types and quantities of unconventional oil [that] are available at [certain] price points… [and] if the world can handle stable $140 a barrel oil there are literally trillions of barrels of unconventional oil that are profitable.

Some of that oil is deep under the ocean, and I’m sure that we will someday need it. To get it, we have to pay for it with higher prices. Apparently we also risk what is currently occurring. The point is that we don’t need it now. Luckily the spill did happen, and despite the fact that it made my guy look pretty stupid, and could easily destroy much of the environment and economy right where I grew up, it may propel us in the right direction.

Now all bets are off. In the United States, offshore drilling seems set to go the way of nuclear power, with new projects being shelved for decades. And, as is often the case, a crisis in one country may go global, with many other countries radically scaling back off-shore and out-of-bounds projects.

What we do, in fact, need are artificially high energy prices, not all at once, but gradually, forcing us to follow a more sustainable path. It’s awful that this spill had to occur to show the opposition and Obama what a folly it is to drill more now, but if it leads to higher energy prices in the long run maybe some good will have come of it.

I could have really used content aware fill, but sadly that feature isn’t in the gimp yet (actually looks like maybe it is, but plug-ins are way too much work). Lucky for me snow is very organic and the smudge brush emulates it well enough. It is also pretty good at background plant matter. Anyways, it in fact looks nothing like the Logan’s Run Lincoln Memorial, at least from the movie, but oh well.

Los Angles from the Air:

The first time I headed to Roswell was also my first time in L.A. Although, I never left the airport, so that makes counting it a bit strange. I find, that I airports count as going to a state but not a city. Such as, “the last time I was in California was when I flew through LAX to Roswell”, is fair but to replace California with L.A. isn’t. I suppose this is because cities have a character that one needs to explore to say that one has been there. States do too, but it highly varied from area to area, and people don’t expect you to be familiar with every area to say you have been there. One can often get a good sense of whats its like in a state from the airport; not so with a city. Anyways, here’s a shot of the iconic LAX entry way:

We worked at the airport in Roswell. The airport is something of an airplane graveyard, or at least long term, until the economy gets back on track storage yard. There are on the order of 100 planes in various states of disrepair strew about the airfield.

Working in Roswell sucked. But one day we took a half day off from working and went skiing for a full day. From the top of the slopes one can see nearby Sierra Blanca (on the left), the southernmost high peak in the contiguous United States, which means that all higher peaks are farther north. Towards the right, in the basin one can see White Sands.

On the way back from this first trip to Roswell I completed a challenge feat. I was on the ground in all four continental us time zones within one day. I accomplished this feat by flying from Roswell (Mountain) to Los Angles (Pacific) to Minneapolis & St. Paul (Central) and back to Boston (Eastern). It was the only time on any trip to/from Roswell, that I had a layover in the Central time zone, and therefore the only time I completed this feat. Google latitude should offer rewards for this sort of thing ala foursquare.