Dear Fourteen Blog Readers (according to Google Reader),

  After reading Anil Dash's hilarious analysis of the Facebook vanity-url feature, I decided it was time I got my own "home page". Partly I wanted to try out another awesome blogging platform from Six Apart, and partly I wanted a place where I could play around with some personal programming projects and run my own software stack.

  Visit the new home of Andrew's Bunner Blog.

  I've used a larger font to boost my page rank.

-- Andrew

Angela and I volunteered for an Oracle-sponsored event that had us working for the Marin Marine Center for a day. Summary: Most fun animal poop cleaning ever! The center has a clean, well-run operation. They take in abandoned and injured marine mammals and nurse them back to health for eventual release. Mostly young elephant seals and sea lions (though they get otters too; no space for whales/dolphins).

They gave us some training and, within an hour, had us cleaning out the elephant seal pens with the elephant seals still in them! We were practically nose-to-nose with them. They have huge, cute eyes and they're very curious. Angela's job was to herd them away from the me (with the hose) and my partner (with the scrubber) while we cleaned. It was really fun.

Check out the whole album on Picasa.

The third-phase of our volunteering was even more fun (the second-phase was weighing out frozen fish--not as fun). We got to feed them! Young elephant seals are used to drinking milk and they have to actually learn how to eat fish and even to recognize that fish are food. For some of the animals, this is a big hurdle. They don't really chew their food that much, they just swallow the fish whole and, to do that, they have to get it past a gagging point. For the poor seals that have trouble with this, the volunteers actually hold the animal down and shove mostly-thawed fish down their gullets with metal tongs. They don't look like they enjoy it at all.

A problem most of the animals have there is that they're very underweight. They should be these bulging, sausage-like creatures with no discernible neck. But, from the pictures, you'll see that these little guys have a distinct neck and a small-ish head. Not good for survival in cold Pacific water.

If you ever get a change to volunteer at the Marine center, I highly recommend it. They're looking for regulars who can do one shift a week (it's really fun). Get in touch with them if you want to try!

At the bottom of the Washington Post's article entitled

Time Warner to Spin Off AOL, Ending Ill-Fated Deal

there was, as usual, a "people who read this also read..." linkbox, which is a mechanism used to figure out articles that may be similar based on the behavior of readers.  And the most highly correlated article was:

Obese Indiana woman's body hauled away by wrecker

which describes how a 750-pound corpse, too heavy for the usual equipment, was winched up onto a flatbed truck,  covered with a carpet, and transported to the morgue.

Now that's crowdsourcing!

(fanboy misspelling is reference to "Eat It Vid Boi" level of original Marathon game)

http://technologizer.com/2009/04/23/whatever-happened-to-the-top-15-properties-of-april-1999/

Seen at a Carson City, Nevada strip mall:

Take classes at the strip mall!

Can you imagine taking classes between the Big 5 Sporting Goods and the Port o' Subs?  Until I saw this, I couldn't.  But wait, what does that sign in the window say?

Not just public, but also free

Well, the campus might not be the biggest, but it certainly is a better deal than all those expensive public high schools!

Here's a tasty-looking cookie:

Yum, Ginger Crunchy Cookies!

Sounds delicial!  I wonder what's in them...

Ginger-cookies-ingredients

OK, so sometimes ingredient lists on third-world food products are a bit inscrutable.  Often one suspects the makers are not quite sure what the concept is behind the list, but they know they have to include one to export it, so they just copy from some other product.  In other cases, though, the only plausible explanation is a malicious translator.  How does vegetarian ham (whatever that is) + grounded pepper (none of the flighty stuff) + fermented bean curd + shallot + chicken bullion + MSG = ginger crunchy cookie?  Or, really, anything else at all? 

Any alternate translations from Mandarin speakers?

At a Chinese supermarket recently, I ran across something I hadn't had before.  So of course, I had to have it.

Artichokes!

When I was a teenager, my father directed Sam Shepard's Curse of the Starving Class, and the one thing that has really stuck with me from that play is the recurring gag in which the father has procured a refrigerator full of artichokes, and everyone in the family keeps peckishly opening the refrigerator door, exclaiming Artichokes!, and closing it.  Indeed, though I like the giant thistles, the tea admittedly tastes like what I imagine to be the flavor of the water left behind after boiling them overlong.  But a closer examination of the handy "nutrition facts" reveals a startling amount of nutritive value in these pedestrian-looking teabags:

Artichoke Tea is Surprisingly Nutritious

242 calories per serving of vaguely artichoke-like water!  Just the thing for my weight-gaining regimen.  The 56.8g of sugar is a bit disconcerting, though...

I uploaded some of the photos here on Vox. I couldn't get my bulk-uploader to work for Vox anymore so the rest are on Picasa. Check them out in my Steamboat Springs gallery

100_1145

It's beautiful here and there are NO crowds. Angela and I skied mostly Storm Peak Express and Pony Express today. The process feels like it's reduced the lateral stiffness of my tibia and femur... I'm very wobbly after a day of bump skiing. Dad is holding up well in his advanced years, though his equipment is disintegrating (because of its advanced years). He had black foam from his "still working" goggles all over his face today. I suggested upgrading some of his gear and he told us about his seven-foot hickory skis that he still has. Awesome.

Two more days of skiing left. Angela doesn't seem tired at all. Wish me luck.