Mike Kullen weblog

Raking leaves for Obama

2008-11-03T14:20:48-0800

I've often heard church-going friends of mine say that they were reluctant to put any overtly religious symbol (e.g., Jesus Fish) on their car, because it would add all this extra pressure to be a kind & courteous driver, to best represent their group.

I have felt similar pressure about our Obama yard sign. Elsewhere in our town, there are plenty of campaign signs (about 3-1 Obama over McCain), but on our quarter-mile stretch of road, ours is the only presidential sign at all. And our local polling place is in a building directly across the street from our house.

Thus it was that at 8:30 last night (3 hours past dark), I was still out in the yard, raking leaves, until the whole yard looked presentable. Have to display the sign with pride.

So if Obama wins Pennsylvania by a couple hundred votes, and it all traces back to 100% Obama votes in my little precinct, you'll know who's responsible.

You're welcome.

Snow in October

2008-10-28T13:12:33-0700

It's October 28. It's snowing. Something ain't right.

Welcome back Kim!

2008-09-19T06:47:06-0700

Speaking of people who recently resumed their blogs, it looks like Kim is back too. Cool...

Kathy for Obama

2008-09-17T21:58:06-0700

Kathy has a new special blog all about the current presidential campaign. You can find it at http://obama.kathichelle.com/. So far she's covered war, religion, abortion, health care... you know, just some little stuff.

Check it out.

Hawaii 2008 - a few photos

2008-06-10T07:47:25-0700

Back in May, Kathy & I took a trip to Hawaii, this time visiting the Big Island. It was somewhat quieter than Maui, and somewhat less lush & green than Kauai, but there was a lot to see, especially with wildlife and volcanoes. There were several excellent snorkeling spots, including one right next to our hotel, so we could just walk over with mask & fins and take a swim anytime.

As usual, I took tons of pictures (a little over 3,000 I think), and as usual, it's taking me forever to sort through them and post the keepers online. For now, I have a handful of photos (and one video) posted on Flickr, including turtles, eels, molten lava, and a rare Hawaiian Hawk (even thousands of miles from home, there's no escaping the hawk photos).

Besides the wildlife that we caught on camera, we also saw an endangered Nene (Hawaiian Goose) and a Hawaiian Owl, though we didn't get pictures of these (we sped past the Nene on the highway, and the owl flew across the road at night). It's definitely true what they say about Nenes grazing by the side of the road and nearly getting run over all the time.

For our trip, we had the mixed blessing of lots of volcanic activity at Kilauea (the only active volcano in Hawaii). The upside was that we got to see molten lava splashing & steaming at the ocean's edge. The downside was that the fumes were blowing everywhere, shutting down some areas of Hawaii Volcanoes National Park (to avoid exposure to poisonous sulfur dioxide), and also casting a gray haze in the sky for almost the whole week that we were there. Breaks of blue skies were rare, but we definitely enjoyed them when they appeared.

It was definitely worth the trip, and there was plenty to see. But I think our next visit will be to either Oahu or Maui again.

Update (6/14/2008): I also posted a few more of the photos from our previous Hawaii trip in 2005. I'm sure I'll catch up eventually.

Tuesday Night Raptor Club

2008-04-30T16:18:47-0700

On the way home from work last Tuesday, I noticed one of our local red-tailed hawks was perched in its usual spot on top of a cellular phone antenna tower. I had been looking for another opportunity to try out the new telephoto extension on the camera, and the best test is to use it on a subject I've photographed before, to see how much closer I can get under similar conditions.

So, the same as I had done a couple of times last year, I drove into the parking lot near the antenna tower, snapped a few photos of the hawk perched on the antenna, and then more as the hawk got spooked & flew away. Fortunately, the flying away involved some circling around overhead first, so I had plenty of opportunities to take some in-flight shots.

The only downside was that it was cloudy and getting close to sunset when I did that last week. Then last night (another Tuesday), I saw the hawk was there again, on a brilliantly sunny afternoon, with vivid blue skies. The hawk followed much the same pattern again, taking off a few minutes after I arrived, but this time I had much better lighting, and more time for in-flight photos before the hawk disappeared beyond the tree line.

I put all the new photos in the existing Flickr set from when I visited the same spot about a year ago. You can tell that the recent ones toward the end turned out a lot better than the early ones from last year.

Losing the lower-left corner

2008-04-23T07:24:51-0700

To celebrate primary election day in PA yesterday, I went back and took the Political Compass test again. It was so sad. Apparently, a year and a half of home ownership must be taking its toll on my "lower-left" principles - instead of being negative 9-point-something, I'm now barely negative 8-and-a-half on both axes:

Economic Left/Right: -8.62
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -8.56

For comparison, *all* of the credible presidential candidates for this year (even Dem ones) show up somewhere in the upper-right quadrant. The only Dem candidate (dispensing with the label "credible") who's with me on the lower-left is Dennis Kucinich, with roughly -2.5, -2.0. Next closest is John Edwards, at about +2.5, +1.5, giving me about a 10-point spread. Not too long after that is Obama, at about +3, +2.

Of course, at our office, Bruce is still the standard bearer, at -9.75, -9.79. If I believed in authority, I'd say he was one.

The secret to rock-hard abs

2008-04-16T09:54:11-0700

Here's what you do.

Catch a respiratory virus that gives you a persistent cough for 10 days (so far). And I mean persistent - I cannot overstate this point. Even after a full dose of NyQuil (or more), you should lie awake in bed for hours, unable to stop. Convulse with the effort of coughing out every last bit of your breath, then take a big gasping inhalation (sometimes only halfway in), before falling back into the next cascade of coughs. Repeat "n" times.

To slim down & better show off your abs, it would also help to accompany this with a sore throat that makes you completely uninterested in eating (or ideally, unable to do so).

I'm not saying that my plan is actually yielding any beneficial results, but hey, it's only day 10. And at least I have a plan.

Anniversary Plagues, round 3

2008-04-11T08:30:25-0700

This is getting ridiculous.

On our first anniversary, Kathy & I took a trip to Jamaica. We both got really sick, and had a miserable journey back home.

Then last year for our second anniversary, we stayed home in Philly. We had snow (in mid April), an overturned car in front of our house, and I again got sick from something I ate.

Our third anniversary is coming up in a few days. So far this week, I've had a sore throat (so bad that I would wake up out of a sound sleep just trying to swallow), a cough that's keeping me up all night & giving me muscle strains from the contortions, and just last night I added pinkeye to the mix.

Either I've got some bizarre curse, or I just happened to spend a whole afternoon with a toddler last weekend, and picked up every possible affliction that's going around at his daycare group.

Flickr video!

2008-04-09T21:30:34-0700

I just found out tonight that Flickr now supports video clips as part of a photo set.

I'm starting with posting a video of the bald eagles, which I had originally posted on my own web server.

I'm sure I'll have more soon.

Trying Atom again

2008-03-06T18:36:52-0800

Almost exactly a year ago, I did some experiments with using Atom to replace the old RSS feed from this site, but I didn't actually put that into production until now.

Behold the new Atom feed, with all the delightful images, links, & formatting: http://www.salubrio.com/mike/index-feed.xml.

Enjoy it in Firefox, Thunderbird, Bloglines, etc.

Update (3/7/2008): I changed the filename to not include "RSS" since it technically isn't RSS anymore.

More Australia - Walkabout at You Yangs & Serendip

2008-03-03T06:43:21-0800

As promised last week, I've now posted the wildlife photos from our Walkabout tour at You Yangs Regional Park & Serendip Sanctuary, two wildlife parks outside Melbourne.

This set includes all the koalas and kangaroos, as well as lots and lots of Australian birds.

YABEPS

2008-02-23T13:25:02-0800

Yet another bald eagle photo shoot.

I went to Conowingo Dam again last Monday (my 3rd visit so far). The weather was supposed to be Mostly Cloudy, but we ended up with blue skies for most of the day. A fog had just lifted when I arrived, and rain started falling just as I packed up to leave, but in between was mostly beautiful, warm weather.

This time I was using our own camera (instead of the one I borrowed last time). I was trying out a new telephoto extension for our camera, which gives some extra zoom and also collects more light, which makes it easier to get a quick, focused shot.

I didn't get so many overhead flight photos on this visit, but there was one particular spot, on a low branch in a nearby tree, where two different bald eagles posed for close-up shots. First an immature eagle was feasting on a fish there, and then an adult eagle bullied that young one away from the perch, and proceeded to stay there striking poses for over an hour.

Best of all, I happened to have the camera running in video mode right when the adult chased off the juvenile, so I got a video clip of the whole event.

All in all, a nice, satisfying visit.

More Australia - Melbourne

2008-02-23T13:05:21-0800

I've finally gotten around to sorting through more of the Australia photos, so we now have the set from Melbourne. This includes a game of Australian Rules Football, a van tour around the city, a visit to the Immigration Museum, and some general wandering around town.

Next up, I should have some more of the wildlife photos from You Yangs Regional Park & Serendip Sanctuary soon. Update: Got 'em.

Iggles 2.0

2008-02-08T14:02:39-0800

A couple of weeks ago, I went back to Conowingo Dam for more bald eagle photos.

This time it was pretty darn cold, and there wasn't much activity until the electric company turned on the generator at 4:30pm (thus churning out the free fish). By that time, the light was fading, all the other people had gone home, and I could barely feel my toes. Even so, I took about 400 of my 800 pictures just during that last hour or so at the end of the day.

The point of this trip was mostly to try out a different kind of camera, a Canon Digital Rebel borrowed from Jane. I think it went pretty well for my first day out with a DSLR, but there's still plenty left for me to learn.

Trying to give my poor wife a heart attack.

2008-01-20T22:25:18-0800

Kathy's Giants are going to the Super Bowl. They tried to mess it up a few times (mostly fumbles and missed field goals), but finally managed to pull out the win.

Of course, this just means we can schedule additional heart attacks for the big game two weeks from today. Let's just hope it goes better than 2001.

Congratulations, Jo!

2007-12-27T16:03:32-0800

My sister-in-law is an incredible chef, and I found out today that the restaurant where she works, Momofuku, was rated #1 Best New Restaurant in NYC by the New York Times. Hard to get better than that.

And here I thought the coolest thing about Jo was that the answer to "How are things at work?" includes the phrases "knife bag" and "squeeze-bottles of pork fat".

Iggles!

2007-11-05T07:10:21-0800

I mentioned in my earlier post about Hawk Mountain that we got to see a bunch of migrating birds of prey that day, but no eagles.

That omission has since been rectified.

We were talking to Dan, one of the volunteers at Hawk Mountain, about what we might see that day, and how we were really hoping for an eagle.

"Well, if you want to see bald eagles, you should really check out Conowingo Dam, especially in the winter."

So I did.

As it turns out, besides having arguably the best hawk migration site in all of North America (Hawk Mountain) just an hour and a half northwest of us, we also have arguably the best bald eagle site east of the Mississippi just an hour and a half southwest of us.

Conowingo Dam is in Maryland, just over the border from Pennsylvania, where US Route 1 crosses the Susquehanna River (the dam itself is also the bridge for US-1). The dam has a hydroelectric generator, and the water that passes through the generator brings fish along with it. The fish, often stunned from getting knocked around in the turbines, make an easy lunch for eagles & other birds on the downstream side. Also, the moderate climate here makes this a good destination (with a steady food supply) for migrating eagles from up north, so the eagle viewing gets even better in the winter.

Last Sunday, I went for a few hours, and I took some pictures.

This was in late October, as the migrant eagles from upstate New York are just beginning to arrive. In another month or two, it should *really* get good.

Hawks etc.

2007-10-18T06:43:11-0700

I've added two new sets of hawk photos on my Flickr account.

First, a couple of weeks ago, I went to pick Kathy up after work, and a huge red-tailed hawk swooped right over my head, carrying its dinner. I (along with a very patient Kathy) ended up hanging out there in the parking lot for about an hour & a half, taking tons & tons of pictures. Besides the pictures, I also got some of it on video.

Then, this past Saturday, Kathy & I went to Hawk Mountain Sanctuary, a little west of Allentown. They have a couple of good mountain lookouts right on the migration path of several species of raptors, including various hawks, falcons, and eagles. We got some pictures of the migration, and also some closer views of rescued birds (a great horned owl and a red-tailed hawk) back at the Visitors' Center.

We were at the North Lookout for about 2 hours, and must have seen at least 100 sharp-shinned hawks, a handful of red-tailed hawks, and the occasional osprey, Cooper's hawk, American kestrel, northern harrier, and northern goshawk. We also saw at least a dozen turkey vultures go by, but those looked more like local scavengers than migrators (looping around at low altitude, rather than cruising with definite direction & purpose).

The official count that day included 2 bald eagles & 1 golden eagle, but we didn't get to see those. Guess that just gives us reason to go back...

Back from Upsidedownland

2007-10-02T10:28:32-0700

Kathy & I are recently back from a 3-week trip to Australia. We had a great time, and we have tons of pictures, but it'll probably take us a while to sort through the pictures & put them online.

For now, we have a quick photo preview from the first few days (outdoorsy stuff near Melbourne), and a more complete set of underwater pictures from snorkeling & scuba diving at the Great Barrier Reef.

That set of underwater pictures contains about 135 photos, narrowed down from 900, and we still have another 1,800 land pictures to sort through. I'll post more as I have them ready.

In the meantime, back to catching up on 500 other things...