I didn’t post a lot of photos in the previous entries about the New Mexico trip so I’ll post them here. Click on the “Read More” link below to see all the pictures.
Yes, you’re looking at the map correctly. We effectively took the long way back home from Santa Fe. We got up early and headed out for Carlsbad. We intended to stay the night and take Friday to drive back to San Diego.
On the way to Carlsbad we stopped in Roswell because, well, how could you not? There was all kinds of cute alien stuff all over the city. All very cheesy, all in good fun. We stopped to get some frozen custard and alien artifacts for our family. Since the last tour in Carlsbad started at 2pm we didn’t dawdle very long and were back on our way.
Carlsbad cavern is simply amazing. None of the pictures do it justice. It’s impossible to comprehend just how huge everything is until you’ve experienced it. I’m a huge fan of the place, even though the photography was difficult. Once you get in to it a little bit you lose all natural light, and what light is thrown is (photographically speaking) very dim. Your eyes get used to it pretty quickly. The variety of formations is pretty impressive, and the walk down through the natural entrance is a treat. You can take an elevator down if you’ve got bad knees or just don’t feel up to it.
It wasn’t until we were down in The Big Room that I realized I could have elevatored down with the tripod and taken some long exposures that would have come out really well. We intend to go back since they have guided tours that go off the normal walkway. That sounds like a blast. When we go back I’ll take the tripod and get some good shots inside .
After coming up the elevator to the surface we decided to just gun back home as fast as we could. We tend to do this. We did it in Cabo San Lucas and drove all the way from the tip to San Diego in one night. We did the same thing again this time. I believe we left around 4pm and didn’t arrive at home until around 4am. It was a long drive and we took shifts sleeping and driving.
Wednesday we decided to head out from Santa Fe and see Taos and Los Alamos.
Taos is a small artist community that’s got some touristy places to look at arts and crafts. It’s a pretty little town high in the mountains with some very nice shops. We stopped at a place that had some tremendous lavender ice cream. After poking around for a while we made the short drive out to the Taos Pueblo, the oldest inhabited structure in the US. Apparently a few natives still live there without plumbing or electricity. There’s a small fee to get in, and another fee if you want to take pictures. Obviously, we paid. There was a tour that would take you around and show you the place; we weren’t interested. Strolling around for a while gives a good sense of history, especially when it’s really quiet.
After driving for quite a bit we ended up in Los Alamos, birth place of the atomic bomb. We went to a museum or two and had lunch before heading back. Anybody who’s seen SciFi’s Eureka will appreciate the similarity. Since we couldn’t get in to the labs we couldn’t find much to do aside from look at a museum or two, so we bailed kind of early. On the way out of town we stopped at a restaurant decorated with shotgun shell Christmas lights.
We spent the rest of the day relaxing at the B&B in Santa Fe. We needed the rest so we could make the drive down to Carlsbad the next day and see the cavern.
Tuesday morning we got up early and decided to go to a few of the local attractions: the skyway tram and the bio park. Since we had to check out by noon we decided to scout out which place had safer parking since all our stuff would be in our car for one of the attractions. We headed out to the bio park and found the zoo portion right next to an elementary school. Check. Off to the tram we go. It’s on the outskirts of town so we got to see just how much sprawl there is in town. Quite a bit of sprawl.
In San Diego we have McMansions. Big houses built for people who were trying to get in on the housing boom and wanted to live some place big. Generally they were far larger than they should have been and pretty tacky. Well, Albuquerque has McPueblos. No joke. We saw quite a few as we headed up to the tram. On the way up the slope we were treated with the sun still rising over the mountains as clouds tried to get over the summits. It was lovely. Finally we made it to the base of the tram and found it … closed for repairs. Albuquerque: 2, Dave & Jess: 0.
We went back down the hill to see the bio park and aquarium. The zoo had just opened and there were a few school kids running around. We hurried in and tried to get to see some sleepy animals. It wasn’t difficult, they were rather sleepy. There were a pair of Sulfur Crested Cockatoos that were happy to see us. They would sing and talk and generally carry on. The zoo in San Diego is better, but this one was much more relaxed so that earned it some points.
There was supposed to be a little train to take us from the zoo to the aquarium. It never showed up. I though trains were always on time? We drove to the aquarium and found it… quaint. They had some little freshwater tanks, and some little salt water tanks, and one big shark tank with a few other critters. They also had a jelly tank that looked straight out of the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach. There was also a garden that had a ton of school kids running around, so we didn’t stay very long. Albuquerque: 2, Dave & Jess: 1.
Over all this city seemed like it just wanted to get its work done and be left alone. Maybe I didn’t get a very good impression of it because we didn’t stay very long. Maybe it’s just not a very stay-and-explore kind of place and more of a stop-for-a-few-hours experience. Either way, we were on to Santa Fe!
About 30 minutes outside of Santa Fe Jess called around looking for a place to stay. We happened upon the Guadalupe Inn, which is tremendous. We were able to get a nice room (with jacuzzi tub!) just a few blocks from the main touristy part of Santa Fe.
After settling in briefly we headed out in search of lunch and came across Café Dominic just a few blocks away. The food was outstanding and smothered in green chilies. After a brief rest we headed to the plaza to see all the artist shops and general touristy stuff. This was generally nice and we had a good time walking around and getting to relax. The air was slightly chilled and standing in the sun for a second would take the edge off.
For dinner we headed out and found ourselves at Tortilla Flats. We were starving and the food was tremendous. We were introduced to sopapillas; a food more addicting than heroin. We’ve since come back to the room and I’m about to jump into the jacuzzi. So far this vacation is rocking.
After a very good nights sleep at “ti” Jess and I awoke to find Las Vegas shiny and new — it had rained while we slept. We headed out for breakfast at Rio’s Carnivale Buffet, known for being awesome. Since we don’t really know the layout of the Rio we inadvertently entered near the convention center. Immediately we were bombarded with conventioneers wearing badges and walking at a good clip. Pretty conventioneers. Odd. Walking down one of the hallways we saw hanging posters featuring women wearing not all together that much. Odd, but this is Vegas.
We found our way to the buffet after making it through most of the casino floor. I love the way they do this; unless you walk in the front door you can only get places by going through the casino. Awesome. Breakfast was good and we had a mind to our long drive ahead so we didn’t dawdle. On the way back out near the convention center we noticed significantly more moving trucks than when we arrived. We asked somebody what was going on and got a great reply.
International. Lingerie. Convention. Those were the last three words we heard as we left Vegas.
Heading out we crossed over the Hoover Dam. It looks like there’s currently a project underway to build a bridge over the gorge. We stopped to take photos and give Jess a sense of scale of the place; she’d never been there. She was most impressed with the art-deco style of everything.
Now that we’d crossed into Arizona we decided to leave as quickly as possible. We flew through the desert as fast as we could. There’s not much to see there; not even much in the way of bushes! As we got closer to Flagstaff the storm that we’d last seen in Las Vegas showed up. We pulled over in Flagstaff to stretch and refuel. As we were out checking tire pressures it started to snow on us. In Arizona. It didn’t last long nor did it produce much but we were shocked just the same.
We flew the rest of the way to Albuquerque without much interesting happening. There were some dinosaurs on the side of the road but we didn’t stop because we still had a long way to go, and not much daylight left to make it there.
Actually arriving in Albuquerque on the other hand, was a bit… different. We drove around for a while, at maybe 8:45pm, and the whole city was dead. If stuff wasn’t closed it was empty. We drove around thinking we could find a decent motel to stay the night. That was optimistic. We ended up staying at a Quality Inn near I-40 because it was late and we were tired and wanted to put our stuff in a room with a lock. We headed out looking for dinner and found … not much. Again. After a bit of driving we concluded that we couldn’t find the obvious restaurants at all, if any were still open. We tried, honestly. But we ended up at Wendy’s. Albuquerque: 1, Dave & Jess: 0.
Sunday afternoon Jess and I squeezed our kitty and headed out the door for Las Vegas. Anybody that’s done this drive will tell you about how boring it is, so I’ll save you. We did have a good time chasing a storm as it headed over the desert, over the mountains, and eventually in to Las Vegas. We are the mighty rain gods! We made very good time since all the traffic was coming back and got in to town while it was still light out.
We decided to get a room at Treasure Island since, honestly, Pirates beat Ninjas. There was one small flaw with our plan though; stupid corporate marketing. Quietly, in the night, the corporate shills that market the Mirage and Treasure Island hotel/casinos decided to rebrand Treasure Island as simply “ti”. Weak. They got rid of the cool swash-buckly theme and replaced it with “sexy” and “modern” all-lowercase-because-we’re-hip-to-the-intarwebs. Jerks.
We found our way up to the room and dropped our stuff off. I expected them to have Wifi, but I didn’t expect it to cost $11.99 per day. That’s why I’m blogging about all this now. We found a restaurant after falling down the elevator that looked like Islands on crack. Being tired and hungry, we proceeded fearlessly. What we got wasn’t so much Islands on crack as Islands as cooked by crack-heads. The food was overpriced (but not for Vegas) and not very amazing (par for the course?). We took our left-overs upstairs only to figure out that there was no mini-fridge in the room. Of course not. If you want more food, please, go buy more food.
So we decided to see about the Fremont Street Experience in Downtown Las Vegas.
Wow. That place was sketchy. Not only were there small crowds of people walking around tipsy, it had the most gaudy tourist-trappy nonsense I’d ever seen. Many of it not fit for print or picture. Yes, it was that bad. Luckily the parking only set us back $1. Of course, it would have been “free” had we gotten our ticket validated inside one of the participating casinos. I expected to have my wallet quietly lifted when I set foot inside one of those places though. Really. It’s that sketchy.
Getting back to the hotel was easy and we thought we could catch the pirate battle at 11:30pm.
No, no Pirates for you. Not yours. This has been replaced with some “Sirens of ti” nonsense that we decided not to stick around for. Apparently it would have been some women writhing around on the boats where there used to be awesome gun battles and giant flames. If I hadn’t been so tired it might have been a good time; all the driving combined with Fremont St had pooped us, so we headed off to bed.
Went out with Jake to the Yukon this afternoon. This was supposed to be a morning dive but had to get pushed back to 1pm. Honestly, I’m glad it was since we had some time to get Jess’ camera retro-fitted to do InfraRed. It’s very cool and I’m sure she’ll post some pictures at some point
The descent was easy until about 35 ft when my computer decided it didn’t know how much air I had. When we got to the bottom of the mooring we had a brief “discussion” about what to do. Basically, we decided to cruise around a bit and see what we could see, not staying too long. Since on the last dive Jess and I breathed at about the same rate we figured we could guesstimate and come back up early.
While we were down there we saw hundreds of blacksmiths all hanging out on the westward side. The water wasn’t too clear, but there was lots of fish food out for them to eat, so they were happy. I also saw a señorita or two, and one giant male sheephead. Around the time that Jess’ computer read half-way we decided to turn around and get back up the ascent line. I was a little nervous since I didn’t have any way of knowing how much air I had. Really there’s no way it couldn’t have gone well, I always breath slightly slower than Jess so there wasn’t much of a real risk.
On the way back up the mooring we saw nothing but pea soup. At around 15 ft my computer decided it did know how much air I had left — about a third of a tank, I was still doing better than Jess
Since I’ve got my MacBook Pro running Parallels, I can finally download the dive data from my computer. Below is a graph of our depth throughout the dive. Since we didn’t take the camera this is the only pic you’re going to get!
On Wednesday night I decided that I needed a new lens before Jess and I headed off to New Mexico on vacation. I decided that Canon’s 24-70mm f/2.8 USM L lens was the appropriate one. I’ve been drooling over this lens for a while now for a couple reasons.
It’s constantly fast — the maximum f/2.8 aperture means that I can get shots in less light, more easily
It’s a good range: 24mm → 70mm is a handy range. Our 18-55mm was probably the one we used the most when the 100mm Macro wasn’t attached
The Ultra Sonic Motor in the focusing mechanism means that it’ll focus quickly and quietly.
It’s got nice glass in it that keeps contrast and saturation high, reducing the amount of work needed in post-production.
It’s a bit heavy. Honestly this is a good thing and makes it easier to hold steady.
On a side-note; I don’t see how local camera shops can stay in business trying to sell these things. I bought the lens & filter at B&H and had it sent via UPS Next Day Air for $50 less than just the lens + tax at a local store. That sales tax just kills the deal.
As is the standard blogger tradition when you get new camera gear, I took a picture of the cat.
So I wrote my first Windows GUI app this week. I wrote it in C# with .Net 1.1 (long story). It’s point is to perform the Knuth Shuffle on a deck of some size n. It’ll do the shuffle n! times with a random delay between shuffles. This random delay is required since the .Net 1.1 random number generator uses the current time as a seed, which is horrid. Without a pause it’ll generate the same shuffle many times.
The shuffle algorithm itself is relatively simple:
Start at one end of the deck
Pick a random card between the current position and the other end of the deck, at random
Swap the current card with the one selected above
Repeat until you get to the end of the deck
Since this algorithm goes through the deck only once it’s pretty fast and as good as your random number generator.
As you can see there’s a field for the size of the deck and two fields for the range of the delay you want between shuffles. There’s a counter for the number of times a deck is created more than once, and a counter for the total number of unique decks created. Below that is a nice progress bar and a countdown timer.
The settings in the picture took a little over 1 day to run. Increasing the deck size from 10 to 11 puts the ETA 13 days in the future. Upping the deck size one more time from 11 to 12 puts the ETA 5 months in the future!
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Yes, you’re looking at the map correctly. We effectively took the long way back home from Santa Fe. We got up early and headed out for Carlsbad. We intended to stay the night and take Friday to drive back to San Diego.
Wednesday we decided to head out from Santa Fe and see Taos and Los Alamos.
Tuesday morning we got up early and decided to go to a few of the local attractions: the skyway tram and the bio park. Since we had to check out by noon we decided to scout out which place had safer parking since all our stuff would be in our car for one of the attractions. We headed out to the bio park and found the zoo portion right next to an elementary school. Check. Off to the tram we go. It’s on the outskirts of town so we got to see just how much sprawl there is in town. Quite a bit of sprawl.
There was supposed to be a little train to take us from the zoo to the aquarium. It never showed up. I though trains were always on time? We drove to the aquarium and found it… quaint. They had some little freshwater tanks, and some little salt water tanks, and one big shark tank with a few other critters. They also had a jelly tank that looked straight out of the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach. There was also a garden that had a ton of school kids running around, so we didn’t stay very long. Albuquerque: 2, Dave & Jess: 1.
After a very good nights sleep at “ti” Jess and I awoke to find Las Vegas shiny and new — it had rained while we slept. We headed out for breakfast at Rio’s Carnivale Buffet, known for being awesome. Since we don’t really know the layout of the Rio we inadvertently entered near the convention center. Immediately we were bombarded with conventioneers wearing badges and walking at a good clip. Pretty conventioneers. Odd. Walking down one of the hallways we saw hanging posters featuring women wearing not all together that much. Odd, but this is Vegas.
Sunday afternoon Jess and I squeezed our kitty and headed out the door for Las Vegas. Anybody that’s done this drive will tell you about how boring it is, so I’ll save you. We did have a good time chasing a storm as it headed over the desert, over the mountains, and eventually in to Las Vegas. We are the mighty rain gods! We made very good time since all the traffic was coming back and got in to town while it was still light out.
Wow. That place was sketchy. Not only were there small crowds of people walking around tipsy, it had the most gaudy tourist-trappy nonsense I’d ever seen. Many of it not fit for print or picture. Yes, it was that bad. Luckily the parking only set us back $1. Of course, it would have been “free” had we gotten our ticket validated inside one of the participating casinos. I expected to have my wallet quietly lifted when I set foot inside one of those places though. Really. It’s that sketchy. 
So I wrote my first Windows GUI app this week. I wrote it in C# with .Net 1.1 (long story). It’s point is to perform the Knuth Shuffle on a deck of some size n. It’ll do the shuffle n! times with a random delay between shuffles. This random delay is required since the .Net 1.1 random number generator uses the current time as a seed, which is horrid. Without a pause it’ll generate the same shuffle many times.