2008 Rav4

I took some time off of my posting in order to log some information on my 2008 Rav4 (V6 Sport, if that matters, hey, it's got the JBL's... ;-) Since I purchased the car a couple years ago, I've been recording every gallon of fuel that goes into it.  Yes, I'm strange that way.  But I also figured that it would present some interesting information on my driving habits, and overall cost of ownership of a brand new vehicle... which I'm still amazed that I own.  To date, I have spent a little over $3500 in fuel and driven over 23,100 miles on just under 1100 gallons of gas.  I don't actually have TCO numbers right now because I haven't figured in all my insurance premiums, plus what the interest expense was and all that stuff... but I'm sure I will at some point.

Anyway, I decided to graph my lifetime fuel mileage verse each fill-up mileage, and this is what I got:

The red line is the lifetime numbers, while the blue jumpy line is the MPG for each fill-up.  Now, I know that -40 has to have an effect on your mileage, what with autostart and all, so I had to graph another one verses temperature.



This is the result:

The bars are my MPG, and the line is temperature in Fahrenheit.  The chart goes from 80 degrees down to about -45.  Doesn't look like it's gotten too cold this year does it?  Well, at least not too bad when I had to fill-up.  Since I had these cool graphs, I wanted to change the legend so I remember what I was looking at, and after a few minutes of "how do I do that?" I asked someone who always knows the answer to my questions: Google.  One of the first pages that I clicked on was a feature request to OOo.org: Ability to directly edit legend text / modify series names.  The bug report is from 2003. :-(

How is it that a seven year old feature request hasn't made it into a program that is directly competing to be the replacement office suit?  Come on OOo... get with the game!

Chena Hot Springs

There's nothing quite like sitting in hot water with snow all around you
in the middle of March in Fairbanks. That's the whole draw of going to
Chena Hot Springs. Sure it smells sulphery, but when it's -10 or -20
outside and you're in a bathing suit having a snowball fight with your
best friend in water that's about 100 degrees... well, that's just a
different experience all together.

Before and After

Everyone likes before and after photos! Wait... not before and after a
wreck... unless you're some kind of masochist. Are you!?!?

The fist picture is my brand new (hey, new to me) 2004 Rav4 in the
spring of 2007 before I left Lincoln. Shinny hu?

The 2nd picture is after my trip to Alaska, also in the spring and about
15 days after I'd paid it off... Ain't that the $@*!? I turned a
corner and had a head on collision with a Ford Excursion... yeah, the
big ones. She turned 90 degrees in the intersection, and I traveled at
least 90 feet the direction she was headed.

I found out a couple of really nice things through that wreck though:
#1: Yield to bigger vehicles... (you'd have thought I'd already knew
that... ;-)
#2: Airbags are comfy... (Just like a feather pillow traveling at 90
miles per hour) *Pifff*
#3: Airbag propellant burns... Not just your skin (missed me!) but your
lungs too... get out of the vehicle!
#4: Rav4's are safe!... I only had a little bump on my knee that I
didn't even realize I had until the cop asked me if I was fine over ten
minutes later. (I'm 6'2" and the 2004 was not so big itself)
#5: Insurance is a good thing... They wrote me a nice check (minus $500
for the windshield that broke in Colorado)

If I learned more from that experience, I can't think of it right now...
But I do know that the pictures are impressive!

Ice Park

Look at this photo carefully, as it probably fooled you. The arc and
all of the decorations are made of ice. Yeah ice. They have a contest
every year where people from all over the world come to try their hand
at making some crazy sculptures out of big blocks of ice. Some of the
sculptures have some really thin parts that end up being sheet ice that
looks like glass. In the middle of winter, this is one great event to
get you outside for a bit.

Ice Canoe

The only thing worse than going down a freezing cold river in an ice
canoe is going down a freezing river in an ice canoe and not being able
to tell why you're cold and all wet... oh, and where you're going... ;-)

Bonfire, take 2

This is the same fire as this:
http://zloof.blogspot.com/2007/10/bonfire.html and it makes me laugh
every time I see it. Just look at the people in the background... You
know the older couple (my "Alaska Parents") are looking at the young'ns
thinking about how little sympathy they are going to give Seamas when
his skin melts off because of his proximity to the fire.

I think Smokey the Bear would have a conniption fit if he saw this
photo... but he'd also be glad to know that we did prevent a forest
fire... by starting our own! ;-)

Moonshot

This one is a strange photo. It was just after the lunar eclipse in
Fairbanks (my photos weren't all that good of the actual eclipse... no
tripod, no zoom lens... just a red dot in the sky...) and I kept playing
around with nighttime photography. I know that you usually don't want
them, but the lens flair from the moon in this picture really captivates
me. I guess that's what you get for a 2 second exposure.

Lake

For what it's worth, I have no idea where I was when I took this
picture. I just re-read my own post from this day, and it explains a
lot of why I can't remember any of it... Long day:
http://zloof.blogspot.com/2007/07/day-22.html

I am reminded, however, of the line in Lord of the Rings: "I have no
recollection of this place." How true...

Alaska Trip Bridge review

Well, my pictures get a little thin through parts of Canada. Turns out
I was infatuated with the number of small bridges on the road system. I
couldn't tell you if I took pictures of all of them or not, but here's a
selection of the better photos of them. Believe it or not, all of these
were taken on the same day between 11am and 8pm on June 7th, 2007...
It's kinda funny because it's 07-07-07... lol. Hey, I thought it was
funny. (you don't have to laugh to make me feel better, I can't hear
you... ;-)

Pemberton Trails

Somewhere along the trails of Pemberton (just down the road from
Whistler... The Winter Olympics are going on there right now) I stopped
to take this photo of a tiger swallow tail butterfly, who was
inexplicably more tired than I was that day. Read about the whole
adventure again: http://zloof.blogspot.com/2007/07/mtb-pemberton.html

Mt. Rainier

Here's a series of photos from my day at Mt. Rainier. The first is from
somewhere on the road up to the Visitor Center where you could actually
see the mountains. I don't really remember where I took this one. The
next is, yep, you guessed it, another path picture. The third is as far
up the trail that I went. There was this plateau on the way to the peek
that seemed to stretch a mile in all directions. And the trail to get
up there... wow was it destroyed. A good challenging hike! I think it
made the pictures much better too. Every time I stopped to take a
picture I waited a little bit to catch my breath and compose the shot a
little more.

Space Needle

Just a classic shot of the space needle in Seattle. I still don't have
much desire to spend the $$ to get up to the top, but when I was in
Seattle in December we went up on a different building that we had all
too ourselves. Which was much more enjoyable I thought. Still, it's a
pretty sweet tower.

Mount St. Helens

It may look kind of like a different planet in this picture, but there
was plenty of new growth around this mountain. If I'd had more time I
would have loved to hike all the way to the crater, but I obviously
didn't plan my trip well enough for that adventure. I'm still in awe of
the place. It had an eerie calming power on you.

Japanese Garden, Portland, OR

This is another shot from the Japanese Garden in Portland. It must have
been a little late in the season for for flowers like this one (or to
early because there weren't too many blooming flowers like I would have
expected while I was there... but I'm none to good at the botanical
stuff) Path pictures are still some of my favorite pictures to take, as
you can probably tell from the variety of posts so far.

Bear Tooth Pass

This was the only "unplanned" road on the whole trip. I had planned on
returning through Yellowstone to get to Glacier National Park, but
instead I took this detour, and wow was it a great road! I saw snow,
sheep and amazing scenery as well as talking to fellow travelers about
photography stuff. Good times. Well worth the trip. Especially if
it's out of your way!

Yellowstone National Park

I didn't see too much of this park, so it'd be nice to go back sometime,
but it was so big that it took a long time to get to anything
interesting the direction I went... Still, some pretty colors. This
was a sulphuric pool of some kind. I just liked the blues, and how
clear it all looked. Very sweet. It's almost better without the smell. ;-)

Grand Teton National Park

It's a simple picture, but it's still pretty pretty... at least I think
so. There was this little trail that went around the lake, and through
some woods. The two pictures that I posted on the blog were taken at
opposite ends of this trail from this picture.
http://zloof.blogspot.com/2007/06/day-7-8.html

The reason I didn't post this photo before was that there was a fly that
streaked his way through the image before... it wrecked the sky in the
photo, but because I've learned a lot more about photo editing in two
years, you can't even tell that the little bugger was there... well,
it's hard to anyway ;-)

My Neice

Ok... I promise... last double post of a picture, but can you blame me?
I mean the kid's cute...

I haven't seen the squirt in almost a year, and since I just received my
paperwork in the mail today to PNG, I most likely won't for at least
another year. It's a shame yes, but there are still so many things to
see in the world! So, wander on!

Bow Fishing

It may have been posted already, but it's still a great picture of me
and my friend Manning out on the lake bow fishing for carp... You can't
beat it.

Belize Photo 4

Enough said... ;-)

Belize Photo 3

This picture was taken at the Belize Jungle Dome, where we stayed (excellent place, I highly recommend it).  It looked pretty neat as a full color photo, but my Dad and sister got a little lost in the background and I wanted to make them more of a focal point.  I can still tell how little I knew about photo editing from this photo, but I'll let you wonder about it.

Belize Photo 2

This is a great example of Heiligenschein. How do I know that word?  Well, I've always liked space stuff, and at some point I started reading up on the moon landing hoax.  One of the claims from proponents is the "hot spot" effect in some of the photos.  Maybe it was just the fact that cameras were so expensive in the early 70's that people just hadn't ever looked through a lens to see these kinds of effects.  But on the other hand, this "Holy shine" was visible with the naked eye, and the only reason I took this photo in the first place!

And yes, I was riding a horse... Don't worry, it doesn't happen very often... ;-)

Belize Photo 1

Here's a photo from 2007 when I was in a cave in Belize.  The guy who had discovered this cave on his property was our tour guide, and this photo was a close up (not quite macro) photo of the side of a piece of pottery that was from the Mayan's who knows how long ago.  I'm a big fan of spelunking, however at the time, I hadn't had much experience with very low light photos, so most of the cave pictures weren't very good.  This one is still a great reminder of that day.

My Really Old Photos

Because I won't be in the country starting in February (I'll be in Papua New Guinea on a year long mission trip) and probably won't have access to any internet or possibly even my backup hard drive, I figured I should start cleaning off some of the photos that are on my computer.  So, last night I backed up my photos and started deleting them from my computer, but I get so distracted when I'm doing that.  Of course I want to look through them and see if there are any good ones that I'm not going to see for a really, really long time.  Turns out, there are a few winners that haven't ever been posted anywhere before.

The conclusion?  To post them here.  I will be posting them over the next couple weeks before I leave in (mostly) chronological order starting with some Belize photos from early 2007.  You can look forward to those.