Just watched an episode of Smash Lab, and I think it'll be my last. It's Mythbusters dimwitted cousin. The crew (with the possible exception of Chuck) says the most inane things and have no personality. With Mythbusters 1/3rd of the show is geekiness, 1/3rd is the crew, and the last 1/3rd you fast forward through with your Tivo. With Smash Lab it's about 1/5th geekiness and the rest fast forward. Mythbusters' endless recaps have always annoyed me, but that's what Tivo is for (that and commercials), but the content to noise ratio on Smash Lab just isn't worth it.

Stop doing pointless small experiments just to fill time, the thrill factor of a minor car crash has long since worn off. Show us the maths and get on with the real thing. Spend less time on the flat personalities and more time on the project build, the behind the scenes setup, and all the interesting technical details we want to see. Get rid of the narration and recaps. Stop being so safety conscious, we like seeing Tory get hurt on Mythbusters.

Haven't blogged in a while so I figured I'd post some things I've been doing.

Went rappelling the two weekends after leave near the autobahn. There was one really nice face I'd like to climb, but a guy told us it's off limits because 4 people died there, so we'll have to find some place else. Not like we have much time though since we'll be deploying soon.

Last night went to Poseidon's with some of the guys (Koval, Southard, Block, Howson, Wollaston, and one other I'm spacing out on). Four of us got the Marathon Plate which is for 4 and it had so much meat we couldn't eat it all.

Went over to Rick's tonight for some BBQ. Had a bunch of ribs and wings and chilled out for a while.

Heading back to Germany yet again, this time I probably won't be back for quite a while. I'm typing this from Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport this time, I've got about 2 hours until my flight leaves. I had a pretty laid back trip this time, not going out that much or visiting too many people. One and a half trips to Meteor Crater and 3 days in Tucson with my Dad was about it.

On Thursday I went to Chiva Falls with my Dad, pictures will be up on Monday. It was pretty cool, it was flowing good but it would be interesting to see it with a lot of water.

The Office is the funniest show ever. Just finished the Ben Franklin episode, Dwight quizzing him at the end was hilarious. If you haven't seen it, check it out. Click on the images below to see the Amazon page for that DVD.

Well, I had planned to go see the famous Meteor Crater today in northern Arizona, but about a hundred miles out I realized I left the battery for my camera in the charger. D'oh!

I decided to turn around at the next stop and try again tomorrow, or sometime later this week. At the next turn off on I-17, Stoneman Lake, the road looked interesting and I had never seen the lake so I decided to give it a try before heading back. Hoping it would be interesting but not too interesting because I hadn't my camera to take pictures of it. Well, it turned out to be interesting but not the kind I hoped for. About 5 miles down the road I got stuck in the snow. Luckily an older couple happened by about 15 minutes later and had a shovel, and about 20 minutes later I was out. I couldn't even take pictures.

The battery didn't even need to be charged but I wanted to make sure since I hadn't charged it since I got the camera (over a month ago) and had taken tons of pictures. DSLRs rock on power usage, especially when you use an external flash!

Update: It turns out that according to the web the lake has no water in it. I'm not sure if I'm disappointed or not, finding it's actual status would be interesting and maybe if it had a little water it would have been frozen. That would have been cool.

I'm in the Portland airport, waiting for my flight using the free WiFi. It's great to be back in the states again, although not as good as last time. This makes my 6th flight transatlantic. This was one of the more pleasant ones, there was a decent amount of room in the plane and I slept most of the way. I've never flown to Portland before, will have to look at my old itineraries to see if it's shorter or not. It's a nicer place to fly than Chicaco or Houston though, since it doesn't get nearly as much international traffic. It is a pretty nice airport and really quiet. I'm was expecting a ton of people to show up going to the Superbowl, which is in Phoenix this year. Dowdy flew on the same plane as me but I lost him in the customs line so that should be the last of Baumholder I'll see for two weeks, Hurrah!

Somebody was stabbed tonight.

In the ass.

No, it wasn't serious and in fact is was rather amusing. I won't say who did it. I happened to be taking pictures of the snow from the 3rd floor and was on my way downstairs when it happened.

Pictures: The Stabbing

Getting my wisdom teeth pulled today, it's going to be loads of fun.

Update: They're gone. The procedure went really quick, but the odd thing is I remember parts of it like it was fast forwarded. I bled all over the sink changing the gauze the first time, but since then I haven't needed any gauze and it seems to be healing nicely. I've been sleeping lots, half from the jet lag and half from the procedure I think.

I got some Percocet for the pain, but I've only taken 1.5 of them so far instead opting to take plain aspirin. The first half of a Percocet took the pain away nicely but not for very long, and the whole pill I took next made me sick and dizzy so I think I'll stick with the aspirin. I ate some solid food after 24 hours, not so bad just careful not to chew back there.

Update 2: I got dry socket. They put an 'artificial blood clot' in it which tastes like clove paste. blech! I have to go back tomorrow afternoon and hopefully get that stuff removed, it's really nasty. I really want to just chew something, really chew something, and knowing I won't be able to for a while is frustrating.

Well, I'm leaving to head back to Germany in about 4 hours. It was nice seeing everybody and spending some time back in the states. I'm really not wanting to go back! The flight will take up a whole day of my leave, which sucks. I'll be back in February though, that's not too far off.

Went Quail Hunting with my uncle Mark and cousin Stephen in Wickenburg. We saw maybe 6 birds, it was a disaster. Mark got one of course and we spent the rest of the time walking all over the desert for more. Usually there's quite a few of them out there but they weren't there today.

I've modified a shell script I found on Tech Life of Recht to download my Pictures from SmugMug. You can download your entire gallery with the second script or just one album with the first. It uses MD5Sum to check the hash of existing files before downloading them, so you can periodically run it to backup your pictures without wasting bandwidth.

Bugs/Todo:

Files that have duplicate filenames will cause the script to download both but only save one

Expand it into a full sync up/down

Handle video (currently skips videos)

DONE: Store files in named Category/Subcategory/Album Name directories instead of AlbumID

DONE: Fix for the SmugMug URL Privacy Key added on Feb 8 2008

DONE: Options to list albums (-A) and list files (-L) by Robert Krawitz

DONE: Compatibility fixes in the download logic for OpenSolaris

smugget.sh - Downloads an Album from SmugMug

allsmugget.sh - Downloads all Albums from SmugMug (in conjunction with smugget.sh)

albums.sh - Creates a mapping of Album ID to Category/SubCategory/Album Name

albumsymlinks.sh - Uses albums.sh to create human readable directory structure

I've changed hosting providers to Site5. They offer effectively unlimited disk space and bandwidth, so I can now make backups of my photos (or anything else really, 1TB of disk is a lot) and host My Videos (in lovely h.264 format). I've also got my own IP address now, so that should help with the problems I had with the Military firewalls and the old site.

Migration was a snap, a few tweaks here and there and that was it.

I'm back in the states and at home in Arizona right now, it's good to be back. I need to pick my truck up from my Dad some time and visit the families for Christmas. The Defer Christmas is at Aunt June's this year.

My camera is supposed to arrive on the 28th, the first order got returned because nobody was here to sign for it. I had to reorder and this time I'll make sure I'm here. The flash and 50mm lens are both here. I also got my flashlights from Quality China Goods, they're pretty sweet and should put the Surefire's we have at "work" to shame.

My luggage left on the flight after me, I filed a claim and the delivery company was supposed to call today but nothing so far.

I opened a ticket with Dell for my laptop and am hoping to have the repairman out here on the 28th so I can kill two birds with one stone. I'm hoping to get my projector fixed while we're here too, or at least sent off to the repair center. My computers here both work fine. My mom got herself a new HP laptop that looks pretty decent. Had to fix her email which hadn't been working for 3 months (she has been using hotmail temporarily). The Tivo upgraded itself and the Windows PC downloaded 59 updates.

Speaking of killing birds, hopefully we can get a dove/quail hunt together for the new year.

The cat is going to overload from too much attention, I miss having pets around.

I finally took the plunge and bought a digital SLR, a Canon EOS 40D. I've been thinking about it for a while, and finally decided that since I'm so fond of available light photography I needed a camera that could handle it. I'll likely be upgrading my SmugMug account to Pro to handle the larger pictures and potential of selling stuff. The Pro account also has HD video support so I can start uploading some of my video too.

I'm back and finally done with this year's field problems. It felt like a really long rotation even though it was only 2 weeks. Owned some targets with my SAW (as usual), and drove the 1SG around a lot but not much else to mention. Christmas leave is going to rock.

The drive back took 12 hours 30 minutes and boy did it suck. I had to fix my windshield wipers by running a wire from the running lights to the wiper motor. Worked like a charm actually. Headlights needed rigging too, the wires in the high beam switch were corroded. Truck needed a new transfer case the other day too, she really didn't want to come home I guess. Temperature gauge is still on order.

No pictures because I left my memory card in the barracks, there wasn't much to see anyway.