Spoke at Ignite SF last night which was at jwz's awesome DNA Lounge. Spoke about Scuba Diving robots. Ignite is an interesting format as it is a series of 5-minute lightening talks, twenty slides per talk which change automatically every fifteen seconds. If you're looking for a speaking challenge, I definitely recommend you try it out.

Went diving yesterday with brad and whitaker. Weather was awesome and the ocean was quite calm. Great day for diving! Dove around Butterfly House in Monterey,, first dive was really great (despite having to scale a cliff in scuba gear to get to it) and the second the swell had picked up a bit but we still managed to find a neat kelp forest.

Whitaker and I then cooked some great yellowfin tuna from Whole Foods and oysters on the barbecue. Cooked the fish in a mixture of olive oil, lemon, garlic, butter, salt, and pepper and it turned out really nice. Was a bit beyond seared, but certainly wasn't overcooked.

Back home after being in Portland for four days for my cousin's wedding.  Finally have working internet at home now, so spent the day catching up on work/life email.  Woke up early to take my car in for service around Hyde and O'Farrel, walked home, dealt with getting internet, walked back, drove car home.  Early flight in the morning, watching Fight Club though ready to pass out.  whitaker, we should go scuba diving this weekend.

My new scuba bling card!

Oh the things you find on eBay http://cgi.ebay.com/Russian-Military-Scuba-Nitrox-Rebreather-IDA-71_W0QQitemZ7184625774QQcategoryZ1300QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Webzine seems fairly dead today compared to yesterday. Thinking I may take off pretty soon. Need to do laundry and homework when I get home today though. Not looking forward to doing either. Slept like 14 hours last night and still tired. Scuba class next weekend which should kick ass. Also need to do "homework" for that. Need to deal with getting a hotel down there. Think I need to get out of the city every weekend and do something. This weekend hasn't been boring, but not stimulating either. Wish Monterey wasn't so damn far away or there was diving closer. Maybe I'll go for a nice drive this afternoon, except traffic seems sucky. Bleh.

So I just read about a Monterey Bay cleanup that apparently happens every year. Bunch of divers get together and bring up trash from the bottom from around the wharf. Is this Saturday, would be cool to go so am thinking about it. Only thing is scsi, brad, and whitaker are all busy. Also need to move shit from Whitaker's place to ours, but I should be back by mid-afternoon. I dunno, would be nice to sleep in. then again this sounds pretty cool. http://www.sfreefdivers.org/cleanupdive_2005.html

Back from diving and seeing grandparents. We ended up at the Breakwater, dove the metridium fields and then the wall. Was great visibility compared to normal, but diving in a large group, 3 groups of 5 that all stuck togeather, was a bit much. Second dive was just in pairs. Stopped in San Jose on the way home. Was tired as all hell. Had good Mexican food with grandparents. Now back and clean and gear is drying.

Decided I'm going to dive tommorrow. Brad, Whitaker, and Frank are all busy, but the shop is doing a "fun dive" down there so I'll meetup with them. Once this load of laundry is done am headed to Stockton to borrow tanks from Frank and grab dinner. Then planning to stop in San Jose on the way back in the afternoon after diving and get dinner with my grandparents. Caught my grandma off guard when I just called her about it. :P So should be fun as long as I don't kill myself on the drives. Was surprised at how quickly laundry / cleaning went today.

So I have a theory about how my credit card number was stolen. The dive shop we rent stuff from uses old sk00l paper to track rentals. We thus call and tell them what we need, they write it down, along with our CC number and expiration in case we don’t return the stuff. They then file these in three boxes on a wall "Today", "Tomorrow", and "Sometime". We go into the shop, tell them who we are, they get our stuff, and have us sign the paper as well as add address and driver’s license info. We then pay them cash, or with CC, for the rentals and they keep the paper. Thus from the time our CC numbers are written on the paper, til they are filed somewhere after we return the stuff, the papers are in an easily accessible place to anyone in the store. Theoretically, someone couldn’t just come in and copy down numbers, ideally staff would notice this, but it is definitely plausible someone could. Would be an easy game for a few people to have enough to keep staff busy while someone copies down CC numbers. Also depending on where rental forms are filed, or disposed of, numbers could be captured at that point.

Beyond this theory, I can’t think of another way someone would get my card number. Especially since one of the fraudulent charges for a small amount was declined, theoretically it could have been to a CVV2 error.

Bleh.

So then next question is if this is the case, are these people smart enough to do something with a CC number, name, address, phone number, and drivers license number.?. Seems to me that if they were interested in identity theft they wouldn’t tip their hand by making small obvious charges upfront. Seems to me more like seeing if the card worked before they make large charges; at least I can hope.

Guess when I go into the local shop here to pick up a new bigger gear bag, I not only will bitch at them about the poor customer service in their Monterey store, but also grill them about what they do with those papers and how they protect our information.

After like 45 min in the shower have all my scuba gear washed. I've been dunking it at the dive shop in their soapy stuff then really rinsing it well in the shower in the past. My neoprene stunk like rotten ocean, or Ryan's hand, really bad today. So decided to bust out the BC cleaner and neoprene shampoo the shop gave me when I bought the shit. Of course they only give you enough to use it like two times. So now it is all clean and smelling lemon fresh. Now to take it to the porch to hope it dries somewhat reasonably.

After I toured the condo, and talked with wcu wrote the owners a shortish email thanking them and just readdressing the two things there were sort of worried about, income and noise. Got a nice email back today saying they should be letting me know for sure tommorrow evening. I fucking hope we get the place, would suck if we don't. :-\

Now to dry off more, move wet scuba gear, and relax to be up at 5:00 am to be in to work.

bleh, too many things going on right now. Looking for somewhere to live, finishing up big project at work, wanting to buy more scuba gear, tired and frustrated. Want to do this course for the third weekend in September. Also wanting to do a drysuit course with scsi. I don't really want to move to a drysuit right now, but would like to have the knowledge and give him someone to do it with. Really too bad whitaker is leaving before all of this. Houseboat in two weeks which should be another nice break.

This fall will be taking two online classes from RIT, "Data Analysis" and "Man-Made Hazards"; two gen-ed classes. Math should be easy since I already took stat in HS and hopefully the science one will be interesting. Also want to look into doing an EMT certification course, have wanted to for a year or so. Guessing I'll do the same in winter in terms of a few online classes. Then work on transferring somewhere out here for Spring or next Fall.

None of these issues alone are too bad to deal with, just all compounded suck.

So in the search of more things to eat up my money with Scuba, apparently the dopest tank. PST E7-100. It is 2 inches shorter than the normal aluminum 80 and gives you 20 more cubic feet, although at 3400 PSI. Also will let you drop about 5 pounds from your weight belt.
http://shop.divebooty.com/1721.html

Now that I'm showered and clean, and my gear is rinsed again, diving was a lot of fun today. Nice to be on a boat so we didn't have sand or lugging shit all over the place to deal with. Was a bit crowded, but not that bad. Three dives today:

9:48am
- 25 min
- 78ft max
- 55ft avg

11:25am
- 27 min
- 78ft max
- 42ft avg

1:25pm
- 17 min
- 68ft max
- 54ft avg

I wish the computer software wasn't so lame in terms of output options. I need to work on delaming it.

Gallery by Whitaker

Woot, more about diving later. Bleh, just mopped like 3 inches of water out of my trunk / spare tire well. The tarp was good last time, but this time the mat under it was wet, the carpet under that was wet, and low and behold there was standing water with no place to drain. So now my car is drying, figure I'll put it back together and Febreze it in the morning.

Woot, scuba lessons now!

So the curtains in my room are not sun blocking at all. Normally wakes me up around 7am and I decide to sleep another hour. This morning I was awake so decided to go into work early. Best thing evar! Nice to have an hour and a half to just code solid without meetings or people to deal with. Not that I dislike interacting with others during the day, we all rely on each other to answer questions and such, but just powering through code is so much easier when you're not distracted. Now doing laundry all evening. Way too much to do. Also need to study the scuba stuff tonight some more. New FAQ stuff went live on the site today, could have been smoother but wasn't horrible either. We really need a better way to test things before they go live. Nothing broke, just a few small things not working right.

Edit: Not bad for laundry since aparently the last time I did it was 5 days short of a month ago.

So $175 for the class and $400 for equipment later I'm now signed up for scuba with brad and whitaker.