Month: December 2006

Posted on

Santa came!

Click on the picture of Torsten and Santa to get a movie of Torsten’s appreciation of Santa’s visit. If you want to see a bunch of photos from the Christmas festivities (mostly Torsten opening packages!), check out the 2006 Christmas gallery.
Torsten was completely delighted with the whole Christmas experience. On Christmas Eve Eve (Dec 23), during nap time, the “big boy bed” (bunk bed) was setup. That was just the beginning of the excitment. On Christmas Eve (day), Matt and Carrie got a Christmas present of Nana and Grandpa Bob watching Torsten so they actually got to go up to Eaglecrest and ski together!! (What a novelty for parents of a 2 year old!) Check out some of our Christmas at Eaglecrest pictures by clicking on the image of us on the ski lift:

After the Christmas Eve nap, we all went back up to Eaglecrest for the music, torch lit ski parade, and finally Santa’s arrival. Torsten was very (barely) patient as he was one of the later kids to be given a present from Santa (he received a Playdoh Factory and was very appreciative. The whole time up at Eaglecrest was exciting!

On Christmas, we opened and enjoyed presents, pausing to play and read, and finally running out of steam–so Torsten has presents left to open on Dec 26, and probably Dec 27… We all went to a great Christmas dinner at Joan, Doug, and Eva’s place.

We hope you had a great holiday celebration!

Posted on

Nana and Grandpa Bob arrive!

We are all excited to have Nana and Grandpa Bob here in Juneau.  We are all relieved they made it in, even if it was delayed.  They descended into a snowstorm and high wind warnings.  Torsten is really enjoying their company so far, and Carrie and Matt are looking forward to getting to ski together at Eaglecrest tomorrow.

Posted on

xmas “break” geeking

The copier is busted, so I can’t do my note xeroxing prep-work for next semester.  I’ve got about 30 minutes until I meet Dr. Satoshi Miura to re-install the gravimeter over in the library (this is part of the ISEA or International geodetic project in SouthEastern Alaska.  Check out the recent ISEA AGU abstract about it.  That link might even work..)
I’m trying to install xubuntu on my Mac OSX 10.4.8 machine in parallels.  It seems really slow right now, but I am going to wait and see.  I think it is because ubuntu is trying to repartition the drive (partman is the main process running), while I set parallels to dynamically create and resize the virtual disk.  If I give up (it is hung at 15% on the installer), I might try to create a fixed virtual disk file.  I might also switch over to a debian netinstall attempt.  This all came about because the one app I need in OSX that I just continually battle with is gnucash.  So if I have a Linux box running and gnucash is an apt-get away, perhaps life will be a tad bit better.  I’ll document the battle in the comments, in case someone else has the same brilliant idea..

waiting (im)patiently
Posted on

San Fran: Fall AGU

We are all down in San Francisco for Fall AGU. What a great week of science and catching up with friends. We were very bad at both keeping up with photos and with blogging. So very quickly, here are our two good photos, and we are waiting to get friends photos (send ’em, or even put your favorite on as a comment here!). Also, I’d love to get my notes from the meeting online, but so far I’ve only managed to bookmark a few other folks blogs. Check out the day one of Fall AGU Virtual Globe blog over at the Google Earth Blog.

Carrie and Torsten on the Carosel

Torsten in Heaven (street musicians)

Posted on

Ginger Bread House Building

The UAS Alumni and Friends organized a gingerbread house building. I think it was co-sponsored by the dentists of Juneau. Hard to say if Torsten or Carrie had more fun–Torsten definitely ate more candy, and Carrie really got into the artistic decorating! We all had a blast, and enjoyed decorating (and later chasing sugar amped-up kids!) with Jill and family, Myra, Sophia, and John.
Check out all the photos from the ginger bread house fun!

Posted on

Hawaii Photos

Hawaii Family Photo

I finally got a chance to put together a photo gallery from Hawaii. (If you’d like to check out all the photos, they are in this gallery.) It was a great trip, enhanced by reading about all the snow that was dumping on Juneau. Kristen, Jarrod, Ava, and Willa thought the idea of a break from the Alaska winter was a good idea, and joined us on the Hawaiian visit. We enjoyed staying at the Sheraton Waikiki right on the beach and exploring Oahu. We wish we had more time to explore other islands–we’ll just have to go back soon!
The trip itself was initiated by Matt’s presentation at the Acoustics Society of America on the bat detector–the poster was Matt, Carrie, and Allan Hall (a 2006 NSF REU summer student). It was well received and we made several good contacts. Allan was able to come to Oahu to join us (since he goes to school at Univ. Hawaii in Hilo, hopping over for a quick conference during finals week was actually possible!).

Don’t miss the “you were there” video as well!

Posted on

North Shore

Matt took the afternoon off from the conference to head up to the North Shore and the Waimea Valley Audubon Center (at Ed’s recommendation–thanks Ed!). Kristen, Jarrod, Ava, and Willa all went along with Carrie, Matt, and Torsten. We hiked up to the falls and pool and all went for at least a good wade in the pool. Here’s the whole gang at the international market where we ate dinner last night.