cheftako @ 2005-05-09T17:09:00

2005-05-10T00:10:25Z

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth full sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don't search around for the coolest book you can find. Use what's actually nearest to you.

"I'm not saying it's actually Cthulhu but do you know the reason why H. P. Lovecraft started writing those stories?"

Look, its a fish, its a cetacean, its a

2005-05-09T19:56:36Z

bird. hunh?

Ok a little background for the title. So a couple of friends, including zyxwvut was nice enough to invite me to go scuba diving. I hadn't been diving in 9 months, so was both excited to get to go diving again and aware that I really needed to keep my skill up to date. So saturday morning, I got up, got my gear together and piled into there car for the drive down to Monterey. We grabbed some pastries on the way down and ended up at Breakwater. (The beginner dive spot in Monterey but a nice place to dive and an ideal place to keep your basic skills up to date). We rented tanks. Normally I would have used my own but they need there yearly inspection before being used again. So I got to rent a normal steel 120. Which in many ways was much nicer than my high pressure steel 80s. Unfortunetly the dive shop gave me low pressure fills for both dives. (Thus cutting into my bottome time) I decided to leave my dive camera behind. I've been coming to the conclusion that taking the dive camera down lessons the experience. The problems is two fold. The first is that its one more piece of gear you have to look after and manage while doing an already challenging task. The second is that you tend to focus through the lense and miss everything that the camera isn't pointed at. On the upside you get a record of what you see, which is an incredible things when you have on of those special dives. So the first dive was a decent dive. Saw a lot of eggs sacs (The starfish seemed to be gorging themselves on these), the start of the metridian fields and a good sized crab. The dive want down to 50 feet. The second dive had some great moments. The most shocking part of the dive was at 45 feet down a duck like bird went swimming past. I'm not sure I would have believed my eyes except another bird cam swimming past a few minutes later. I've been diving there several times over the last 5 years and thats the first time I've seen a bird swimming there. (According to one of the local dive stores, it was probably a mud hen) I also got a swim by from a sea lion and found a monkey faced eel resting out in the open. (Not unusual to see them but they are usually hidden back in the holes in the sea wall.)
The skill sections of the dive went very well. I was mostly working on breath and water column control. These two go together in a very fundamental manner. Whenever you breath in your increasing your bouyancy. Whenever you breathe out your decreasing your bouyancy. You should never hold your breathe, as it can easily lead to life threatening injuries. At the same time you have a BC which can be filled or emptied for much the same effect. However it is much harder to make as minor adjustments with your BC as you can make with your lungs. (Add to that my drysuit which can also act as a seperate BC) In addition any air you put into your BC is not going into your lungs and so shortens your down time. So the less air you put into your BC while getting the bouyancy control you need the better. (Mind you the most important thing is to always be in control of your bouyancy) Both portions of the practice went very well. I was able to keep my breathing very controlled and easy throughout the whole dive. I still need to work on my air consumption. Its still worse than it should be but that will come with time. My ability to maintain my depth/bouyance just where I wanted it went very well.

My first quiz

2005-04-07T00:35:30Z

So I've already broke down and taken a quiz. More to see how they worked in this medium, than to see how I would "do" but thats kind of interesting as well. Anyway you can blame lurkingowl and kratkrat for this one.

You scored as Existentialism. Your life is guided by the concept of Existentialism: You choose the meaning and purpose of your life.

“Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.”

“It is up to you to give [life] a meaning.”

--Jean-Paul Sartre

“It is man's natural sickness to believe that he possesses the Truth.”

--Blaise Pascal

More info at Arocoun's Wikipedia User Page...

</td>

Existentialism

85%

Utilitarianism

70%

Hedonism

70%

Strong Egoism

55%

Justice (Fairness)

55%

Kantianism

45%

Nihilism

45%

Apathy

25%

Divine Command

What philosophy do you follow? (v1.03)
created with QuizFarm.com

Welcome one and eight

2005-04-06T02:01:51Z

So this is essentially just my standard hello world demo to see how the system works. I'll follow it with something a little more interesting once I have a better feeling of what I want to write here. Till then hope your all doing well.

Tako's Revenge

cheftako @ 2005-05-09T17:09:00

Look, its a fish, its a cetacean, its a

My first quiz

Welcome one and eight