Bierfaristo Blog

I've started writing posts several times, but haven't found time to write more than the beginning of a paragraph. I'll try to actually get something out tonight.

We got off to a slow start with catching mongooses, but today we made a lot of progress. Buzz had always been enamored with laying out grids of traps, but the past few days have convinced him that using traplines along roads is a more efficient use of effort. We've caught a fair number of mongooses in the past couple of days. We've caught around 20 so far.

We're sampling in a few new areas. We're trapping near the refuge headquarters and also at the north end of the refuge, near a public swimming pool. I've been trying to take more time to just look around, now that we have the students to do the lion's share of the actual work.

Near the pool, there is a population of iguanas that go out into the lawn to eat grass and other greens. They are shy around people, but aren't afraid of cars, so we could get some good pictures of them from inside the car.

There is another guy here who studies bats. We took him out to see our mongoose operation and we're planning to go out with him "batting" sometime. Daniel already got to go with Jonathan and George (the bat-guy's son). They caught 20 or 30 Artibeous and the boys got to release them. Coincidentally, there was a bat low down on a tree near the cottages today that we all got to look at. For him to be hanging around in the day, suggests that he's not healthy. We tried to poke some mango into him and he seemed to be eating lustily. Hopefully, he'll pull through. They're cute little guys, with soft fur like a chinchilla.

This evening, we also visited the turtle researchers on the nesting beach. We went to a spot where a green turtle had recently done some excavating, but hadn't actually nested. We could see the tracks, though. It sounded like that was all we were going to get to see. I was sitting in the sand watching, when I saw a baby sea-turtle back up the beach. I ran for it, to make sure the pelicans and ghost crabs couldn't get it. It turned out to be a leatherback nest they had missed. We rescued all of the babies and then got to take them to the other side of the point and release them. It's wonderful to watch the little guys struggle into the waves and swim away. Mission accomplished.

The rain ended and today was another beautiful day in paradise.

Today we tried to lay out a grid of traps. Buzz had the goal of setting out a grid of 25 traps in a grid with 25 meters between each trap. In the scrub under the tropical sun it was incredibly brutal. After a couple of hours, I was exhausted and soaked with sweat. And our GPS was dead. Buzz and the students managed to set out 20 traps on the grid.

We had set traps the day before along the road. We checked the traps and found only a single mongoose. The mongoose was already tagged -- we had caught her first in 2007 and again in 2009. She was an old female with almost no teeth left. Somehow, even without teeth, she's managed to hang on. We wonder what they eat after their teeth give out.

In the evening, we had the chance to go out and see baby sea turtles again. Daniel had seen the before, but Charlie hadn't, so we took him out. Luckily, just as we arrived, two scientists arrived with a bunch of baby turtles, so we got to see hundreds of baby leatherbacks. We stayed for a half hour as they got started processing them, and then headed back. I was glad Charlie to to see them.

Originally, we were supposed to out with a guy to catch bats tomorrow, but it turns out that the owners of cottages are having a pig roast, so instead we're going to do that.

Traveling to St. Croix is really pretty easy: just two flights. You leave around breakfast time and arrive just after lunch time. I hate flying, but its about as painless as one can ask for.

We arrived this year under heavy overcast. There is a tropical storm somewhere to the north, which they tell has has brought a lot of rain over the past few days. The colors are all muted in the gray half-light and there's hardly any breeze.

The water is still nice, however. It's not as clear as usual. Reportedly it's a bit murky for snorkeling, but its still warm and salty -- that's good enough for me.

After cooling off in the ocean, we went to the Lost Dog for pizza. I posted the following haiku:

La Perdita Hund'... ja la plej bona pico en la tuta mond' / The Lost Dog... absolutely the best pizza in the whole world.

I felt a bit bad about running out on the staff trying to sort out issues with the server migration. This evening, there was a note from Chris that they'd solved one of the key issues with mail. Now I don't feel so bad.

Now its after 9pm and I'm exhausted. It's been a brutal week. Time to get some sleep.

I spent an intense week, culminating last night, preparing for and then migrating the department services from an old server to a new one. It's a server we've had for about 10 years and it has everything running on it. I was primarily responsible for migrating the file and web services -- including a complex scientific web application. Last night, I was in the office until 3am trying to stitch things back together. Today, most things are sort of working, but many things aren't quite right. Still -- we did it and the world did not end. Now we can go forward and make things better.

Today, we went to see Jonathan Coulton perform with his new band. He played a mix of old and new songs. The Iron Horse was packed with his fans, who sang along with all the old favorites and listened raptly each time he performed something new. We always enjoy seeing him perform, although its quite different when he doesn't have Paul and Storm to warm up the audience. On stage, he affects having quite an edge, which works for him pretty well.

I had seen that John Hodgman was going to be there and when he saw that I was going to be there he mentioned via twitter (I guess that's called "tweeting it" to use the vernacular.) Within minutes, I had another half-dozen followers on twitter. I wonder how long before they discover that, instead of some interesting funny man, they're following some weirdo who writes Esperanto-language haiku.

Afterwards, I posted two comments, I said

limako was not just soft-rocked by @jonathancoulton & actually touched @hodgman with (his) hand / devas nun gardi la manon kontraŭ memorigaĵ-stelistoj

and

famulo staras inter la homar'... kvazaŭ mem homo / the celebrity stands among the people... as if one himself. #hajko #haiku #senrujo

It was nice to meet John Hodgman. I shook his hand and he spoke with me for a few moments. He was very genuine and thanked me effusively for the little translation I made for him several months ago. He invited me to speak with him further after the concert, but he was swarmed with people, so I just remembered myself to him in passing as I left, with his earnest thanks following me. I was pleased that Lucy got a copy of the book that had that bit for Richard for his birthday.

After we got back, we finished packing for St. Croix. Tomorrow we leave early for our next big adventure.

It's our last night in Champaign. Tomorrow, we're planning to stop at the Pine Hills Nature Preserve in Indiana, and then drive back to Massachusetts. We'll probably need to stop on the road someplace and will get home sometime on Friday.

We've had a great visit! We did a lot of fiction writing -- I wrote thousands of words. I finished one story -- at least a rough draft. It still needs a lot of work, but was satisfying to finally get it written. I have two other stories in progress. The three of us also wrote a draft of a collaborative story. We had a lot of fun.

It's all been over much too quickly, but I'm also looking forward to a quiet weekend at home before going back to work on Tuesday.

Daniel, Lucy and I have been enjoying our visit to Champaign. We've spent much of the days in the library using the private study rooms to write. I've started writing a new story and worked a bit on an older one. We haven't done as much Esperanto as we'd planned to, but Daniel has done the first few lessons at Lernu and Phil and I have worked on a translation.

Last night, we escaped the heat by going to a movie. We saw Toy Story 3 in 3D. It was fine, although the franchise seems a bit tired to me. It didn't really break any new ground.

This morning, we took a tree walk down a street with an interpretative booklet to identify all the trees. Some I knew, many I had once known, but had forgotten, and some were entirely new. On a hackberry, we found two cicadas emerging as adults. One was already mostly done and the other just emerging from its exoskeleton. We watched for half an hour while it drew itself out and unfurled its wings.

Later today, we plan to go to a water park (if the weather cooperates) and then we are scheduled to have dinner with Barbara. We're keeping busy while maintaining a relaxed pace.

It takes most of two days to drive between Western Mass and Champaign-Urbana. We generally just drive until we're ready to stop and then stop someplace at random for the night. This year, we were near Kent, Ohio and stopped at a Comfort Inn just off the expressway. During the night, I took a few minutes to read up on the Kent State shootings and, in the morning, we drove over to visit the memorial before setting off for the day.

It was a clear, summer morning with the sun just rising as we pulled into the parking lot by Prentice Hall at Kent State University. There are four small regions demarcated by short light posts that indicate where students were killed. Lucy was shocked to remember that so many had died. The spot where Jeffrey Miller was killed -- the student featured in the Pulitzer Prize-winning photo from the shootings -- was closet to the knoll in the background from where the troops had fired.

We were all very moved by the memorials and walked silently among them then up to a sign with information about the shootings and about the memorial. We walked up to the metal sculpture to see the bullet-hole. We didn't stay long -- maybe 20 minutes -- before getting back into the car and heading back to the highway.

Today, Lucy, Daniel, and I headed out to visit Philip in Champaign. We got a good early start and drove until early evening before finally stopping in Kent, Ohio. We made pretty good time, stopping just briefly for gas and quick rest stops. We stopped for a few minutes in Scranton for lunch at the Coney Island Texas Lunch. We fell in love with the place years ago and try to stop whenever we go through.

We're staying at the Comfort Inn in Kent and finding it very satisfactory. They have a nice pool/water park which Daniel liked a lot. They're also right next to a passable Mexican restaurant. I got one of their specialities: the Brimfield Special. It is an odd burrito with chicken and onions, smothered with a cheese sauce and garnished with shrimp. Weird, but really really good. It's not Enchiladas Jocoque, but still very tasty.

Exhausted now.

Lots of great stuff on the teh interwebs today. gripping story about human trafficking, you are not dead (by the guy who posted the human trafficking thing),a birthday surprise, an offensive translator, Hacking the Academy.

A faculty member recently proposed that University classrooms on campus would be "no wireless" by default. Sigh... I sent this reply:

This won't work (on technical grounds), but I would oppose it on
philosophical grounds as well.

From a technical standpoint, it's not feasible to exclude wireless
networking from classrooms. The base-stations that are providing 802.x
connectivity in classrooms are part of a network providing connectivity
generally in an area. Moreover, many devices students are using are
using 3G (cell phone) technology and are not part of the University's
infrastructure. The only way to stop them would be to either enclose
the classroom in a giant Faraday cage (impractical, unless you're the
NSA) or jam the signals (against Federal law).

I've heard the arguments before and I know how passionately people feel
about this issue. When the printing press was first created, I'm sure
that some faculty thought it was terrible that students could just buy a
book, rather than having to create their own hand-written copy from what
the professor read (that's the etymology of "lecture" after all). As
the printing press changed the nature of knowledge, I believe the
network is changing what it means to learn. Trying to shut it out of
the classroom is denying that reality.