Declan’s Blog

Today’s lunch in Santa Barbara. Holly kept it to make into a hat.

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We tried a new place for lunch yesterday called Little Sheep Mongolian Hot Pot (address: 4718 Clairemont Mesa Blvd, San Diego, CA 92117). It was very niiiice!

Phelan (@imagium), a BarCampSD buddy, had requested a while back that when we declare a BarLunch on Twitter that we pick somewhere in the Kearny Mesa area, closer to him so he could join us. Being a good manager, I put the work back on him and he suggested this great new place.

Here’s Phelan and surprise guest luncher Erika!

Paige was there too, but we kept her under the table.

First, they bring out a big pot of soup (original, spicy, or a split pot with both) and set it to boil on a hot plate in the middle of the table:

Then they bring out a platter of thinly sliced meat, vegetables, tufu, noodles, string mushrooms, and monkey brains.

Ok, maybe not monkey brains - fish balls and meat balls.

Then you cook. Yer own lunch. Why do we have to pay if we’re doing all the work?

Mmm! It was very good! Gabe give’s it a thumbs up:

Even the boy liked it!

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Nathan was promoted to Brown Belt in Kajukenbo last weekend:

Lots of cool action shots:

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Let’s hope he uses his power for good…

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I can’t decide whether this is cool or obnoxious:

Five planes flying at high altitude in formation dot matrix printing the sky is geeky cool. Reading about insurance companies and bad radio djs in the sky is kind obnoxious.

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From www.skytypers.com:

Five aircraft flying at 10,000 FT. emitting biodegradable vapor "PUFFS" in a dot matrix pattern. These puffs are regulated by an onboard computer that controls the sequencing of the vapor to form the letters in the sky.
The average time to skytype a character, "The size of the empire state building," is only four seconds! The hang time for a eight mile long (25-30 characters) skyboard is three to seven minutes. That's a lot longer than a fifteen second TV commercial... or the average sign on the road read at 55 mph in 7 seconds!

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Twice. Twice the stupid dog fights with a skunk in the backyard.

For the record, peroxide, baking soda, and vinegar take out about 80% of the stink. For the record, 20% skunk stink is still almost unbearable.

Stupid dog.

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I got to go to ALA (American Library Association) in Anaheim, CA this year. I’ve worked in Libraries IT for the last 5 years, but have never made it to an ALA. Anaheim is just under two hour’s drive from San Diego, and Robert tricked me into teaching a class, so I went and had a great time. Man, those librarians can drink!

I got to see one of my favorite geek librarians, and fellow photographer, Cindi Trainor:

She takes lots of portraits, I’m more of the candid shot guy:

Although, if the light is right, even I can’t resist a pose:

That’s Tombriarian on the left.

Another Harvard buddy I ran into is Kenley Neufeld:

He’s a hoot and gave me a Twitter fix on his iPhone when my Blackberry was giving me trouble.

Dan Suchy from UCSD also came up for a day:

He was in the “special librarians” seminars all day.

More pictures, lots of new librarian twitter friends met:

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Way back in June, Robert McDonald, David Minor, Ardys Kozbial, Chris Jordan, and I taught a day long seminar on Data Grids in Libraries for LITA (Library & Information Technology Association) in Anaheim, CA as a pre-conference for ALA (American Library Association).

Anaheim = Disney, don’tcha know?

All of the images from the class:

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Those first few images are of a mystery device that was installed over my hotel room door. Never did figure out what it was. I’m not interesting enough to surveil…

The class was a lot of fun, especially because it was small and the attendees got really involved in asking questions.

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Last Wednesday was a full moon very close to the summer equinox, so Erin and I went out to the park and waited for it to come up:

Not great, but some cool color. I should have brought out the telescope, but it’s too heavy for my mule… um, Erin to carry

The Girl and the Moon:

A tree with moonshine:

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Congrats to Nathan (on the right - his buddy Gerry is on the left)!

Nathan graduated from Westview High School yesterday. Grandma came out to see:

And Diardra and Doug flew out too!

Erin was thrilled to cheer on her brother:

After the ceremony:

(Can you spot Nathan?

We went to Adams Avenue Grill for some nom:

Of course, since I borrowed a killer lens from Patrick (thanks dude!), I got a few nice shots around the restaurant as the sunlight was fading:

Here are lots more:

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