101 Posting Ideas: No.3

Continuing with my goal of finishing all 101 of GREAT BLOG IDEAS.

Numero 3 is write a tutorial:

Being an excellent chef like myself, how about a tutorial for Thanksgiving dinner. So just say, "Mom, Gramma...fuck off.....I got this one."

Tutorial: How to make a great Thanksgiving Dinner:


1. Go to the store and purchase the following items: Large Turkey, Gravy, Cranberry Sauce (can form), Potatoes or Squash or Both, Pre-made Stuffing, 2 or 3 30 racks of either Milwaukee's Best or PBR, Green Beans, Pre-made Pie, and Fireworks(A trip to Indiana may be required).

2. Before Lions game make sure you are least half way through your first case.

3. Finish Case. Now you are ready to cook.

4. Start cooking prep, one hour before eating.

5. First, rinse and prepare green beans for steaming.

6. Steam Green Beans.

7. While beans are getting prepared, start your prep for turkey.

8. Punch a large hole into the turkey.

9. Insert, potatoes, cranberry sauce, squash, stuffing into Turkey. Insert a long, thick wire through turkey.

10. Set up a rack 18inches above ground, outside for the turkey.

11. Place Fireworks under grill rack.

12. Place stuffed turkey onto of grill rack.

13. Light fireworks. Because fireworks, like sparklers, burn at 2000 degrees C, your turkey will cook fast. Use wire to turn. Turn once after 10 minutes.
*you should buy enough fireworks to last 20 minutes or more.

14. While watching fireworks, finish 2nd case.

15. After firework cooking, your turkey should be nice, crisp, and tender with all of your fixin's cooked with it!!

16. Serve with Green Beans and pie.

Bermuda Lacrosse

BDA Laxxxx, the chillest place to lax it up. At least that's what the website says:

http://bermudalacrosse.com/index.html

Battling a cold, last Sunday, I finally got to play lacrosse. One of the first things I did when I began my packing for Bermuda was seeing if lacrosse was played down here. So and behold, I found the website and checked it out. The roster wasn't too impressive with the sole D-1 guy being 6-0, 275 and the majority having Bermuda Lacrosse listed as experience. But they had just recently played in the world games and as well sponsored a few tournaments on the island. It looked well organized, so I contacted the guy and let him know I'd be moving down here.

Few emails later since I've been here, the past weekend was the first time I was able to play. Luckily enough, they were having a tournament within they're "club". Aparently, there's about 60-70 guys involved with BDA lax and about 20 or so show up regularly on Sunday mornings to play. However, this weekend, they divided up the club into Canadians, Bermudians, and Americans calling it the Tri-Nations tournament. It happens once a year. Perfect. I showed up around 11:30am to Bermuda college and watched the women's team finish they're scrimmage. Found my contact and he introduced me to a few guys and let the Americans know I'd be playing with them. They were happy to hear that I had some experience. All of the guys were real friendly.

The Canadians and Bermudians played first, it was alright lacrosse. Most of the guys are over 26 or so(some are way over) and a lot haven't played for too long, but the balls not on the ground too much which is the best thing to see. After waiting and waiting, team USA got to play team Bermuda. Team USA won; after, we played Canada and won again. It was a lot of fun. It was especially a lot of fun doing whatever I wanted out on the field.

After the game, I had a few beers with some of the guys from the team and chatted to see what the hell other people on the island do. I've got diving lessons and squash match set up for the future. I've also got an unofficial invite to play on the National team for the World Games in 2010. Pretty pumped about that if everything works out.

Holidays: Round 1

Hey all,


So, Wednesday, Thanksgiving Eve kick-starts the "biggest days of" trifecta. I'm talking about the Biggest Bar night of the year, Biggest Feast of the year, and Biggest Shopping day of the year. Just what mostly every single American lives for, boozing, eating, and spending money. Yayyy.

However, here in Bermuda, I have work tomorrow. Bermuda picks and chooses which holidays to celebrate and American Thanksgiving isn't one of them, but I do get a holiday called Boxing Day. Until a few months ago, I never heard of it, but it's the day after Christmas and something to do with giving gifts to employees after their day of Christmas. UK's version of bonuses. I personally think it means you get in a fight with whoever gave you the worst gift.

While you're all enjoying your couches watching the Lions get run over by the Titans and then suffer again through the Cowboys game, I will be staring into a microscopic picking out zooplankton for half the day. Looks like they've added another game to Thanksgiving too, Eagles vs. Cardinals. Perfect, another 6hrs of post-ESPN coverage force feeding us FatNabb.

You'll be happy to know that I will indeed be eating Turkey and all the fixin's. Our Dining Hall is fixing together a feast. You've gotta understand that there's not too many of Americans here at BIOS. Besides my boss and his family, there are about 4-5 staff members present at BIOS that are American, plus 15 or so Fall Students. Many people are gone on a cruise or off taking vacation time. So besides the dinner, it feels nothing like thanksgiving at all. The only way I'm getting a whiff of all the Turkey day activies is through facebook statuses.

Anyway, things around here are starting to die down severely. A cruise is gone, several staff are vacationing, and the Fall research interns have returned to college. There was a sendoff last night with dinner downtown in Hamilton and I gotta be honest, the city looks pretty nice prepping for Christmas time. I have just found out and scheduled my vacation back to the states for the christmas holidays.

I return Dec. 23rd to Troy. I leave for Bermuda on Jan. 4th.

The next few months should be particularly quiet, though. No more students around and the worst time of year, weather wise, so many Bermudians are off of the Island. Just in general, Bermuda has no major events.

I'm looking at it two ways. I will be bored...I think. But I'm also looking forward to it. The weeks I've been here have resulted in work, fixing myself in, and The Wind/hanging around. One of my main reasons for working in Bermuda was education, but on my own time. There's shit tons of materials for a better understanding of all the work in the marine science field and it will be a great time to do so.

I'm also excited to start getting involved with the Aquarium. I've always wanted to see what working at an Aquarium is like and Bermuda Aquarium Museum and Zoo(BAMZ) is the perfect spot to do so. They've got sharks.


That's all for this post.

Happy Bar Night and Happy Thanksgiving to everyone.


Cheers,

Doug

Blogs, Blogs, Blogs

I've spent a good amount of time finding websites/blogs that are fairly easy to navigate and always have interesting stuff, usually daily, and usually only 15minutes or so are required to look it over. I was searching for the best blogs ranked by CNN or something, but I came across this blog and its post, 101 Great Posting Ideas that Will Make Your Blog Sizzle. Haha, how hilarious is this. I think my next goal will be to find really, really shitty blogs in both content and writing styles with the authors taking it very seriously.

How the hell does a blog even sizzle. Don't you want your blog to become popular? Something sizzlin' should only be used to describe bacon fat. Nothing else. Not women, not a football player who's rushed for 200yds, not even how I look on a Saturday night.

But in respect to 101 Posting Ideas, I'll try to get through a couple each day. Starting with...

1.Brainstorm by matching up your readers wants and needs using the Visitor Grid method of brainstorming.

I have no idea what Visitor Grid method of brainstorming. If someone can tell me, I'd appreciate and still not use it because I already know what you want. Sizzlin photos of me. I mean photos of me that have been heated on a greased frying pan.

2. Write a post by examining the pros and cons of an issue.

Issue: Watching the entire trilogy of Jurassic Park instead of doing work.



Pros: Increased Stamina
Sharper Vision
Raised IQ
....MOVIE ABOUT DINOSAURS

Cons: It is only a trilogy.
Jeff Goldblum is not in the third.

I'm gonna tear through these Posting Ideas.

McBride

McBride on the left

Here's a short film of Learning to Skateboard by Danny McBride. You might recognize him in Pineapple Express, Hot Rod, and Tropic Thunder.

If you got a chance, look up more videos if you can find online. I guarantee you will enjoy them.
He's also about to come out with a movie called Land of the Lost co-starring Ferrel.

Plot Synopsis: "A forest ranger along with his two children inadvertently stumble into a mysterious land populated by dinosaurs and other creatures, including the mysterious and dangerous race of Sleestak."

The Manchurian Microchip

"The myth: Chinese intelligence services have concealed a microchip in every computer everywhere, programmed to “call home” if and when activated."

God, this would be kind of freak if it were true.

Oh, Hi Mr. Ehringer. You just wrote an article about this actually being a reality. Great. Where's the link?

Manchurian Microchip


The U.S. has to have some ridiculous intelligence operations going on in China. Guess we'll just have to wait 20 years for them to make a movie about them.

Pirates

Here's a link to a story regarding a recent pirate attack. Kiddnapping a 1000ft long supertanker with up to 100 million dollars worth of crude oil.


I'm curious to see how many damage one of those rockets would do to a tanker? Aparently Somali pirates usually attack in a few bottles between 6-8 people. If I'm a 500ft long tanker, which SHOULD be supplied by some crew dedication to watch and defense there is no reason I should be afraid of this dinghy.

I honestly think this is near the beginning of more and more pirate attacks. There is little defense out in the open ocean and with more and more fishing vessels getting retired they can be easily bought(or stolen). And it's not like RPG and automatic weapons are hard to find in Africa and SE asia.

Back Home

Yo, yo. It's good to be back. I've put off writing the past few days just because the past 1o days or so kind of wore me out. Also, I've been putting the posts up because I've learned that people are actually reading this. And I'm assuming when they tell me they're reading this is that they've read it once or twice. But a thank you too a Mr. Elyachar that reads it everyday no matter what. I think that may put him into competition with DBell on Bermuda's biggest fan.

Just a recap of the past week.

Sat(11-8)-Wed(11-12): 60miles south of Bermuda. On a ship. In the Atlantic. I learned how to tie 3 knots.

Thur(11-13): Back to Detroit. Within an hour, ate McDonalds.

Friday(11-14): I got a ring.

Saturday(11-15): Sat in the rain and sleet to watch UM football. Left to see Bond. Ricks for 5+ hours.

Sunday(11-16): Back to Bermuda. No sleep for 30 hrs.

Monday(11-17): 74 degrees. How's the snow MI?


I guess I'll go into more detail on the Cruise and the Weekend in MI, but to start watch this video........see now you're already laughing.


B241 - BATS Cruise #241------Leg 1: Saturday(11/08) - Wednesday(11-12)

Work Deck, waiting to leave

I think another FAQ will be the best way to recap the trip.

Q: Doug! How was your cruise??
A: It was fucking awesome.

Q: Oh...well what'd you do?
A: Um. Saturday, we departed early around 8am or so. It took us about 6 hours to cruise out to our first deployment site. Ship traveled at 10knots. 1 knot = 1 nautical mile/hour. Nautical mile is a little farther than a mile. At our first station(station as in general lat/long, we have stations for multiple research areas) we threw in a CTD. Conductivy, Temperature, Depth. It looks like this:


So basically at each station or so we'd drop this big CTD down in the water. It gets dropped down to whatever depth, let's say 500m. Once it gets to its maximum depth it will start to be pulled up. At a specified depth, a large bottle, is "fired" or closed from the boat remotely and retains about 12L of water. There are 24 bottles attached to the CTD, CTDs are dropped multiple times at each station if necessary, and sampling depths ranged from 4200m(about half of Mt. Everest) to 150m. It took about 4hrs for the CTD to hit 4200m.

Besides many CTDs, we worked on the Main Deck to deploy several buoys. For CTD's scientists don't do anything with lowering it or bringing it back up. So working on the Main Deck was more enjoyable because I got to do shit with a workvest and a hard hat on. On a boat. In the Ocean.
Sorry, I've gotten off track with the FAQ.

Q: What did you do on the work deck.
A: I wore a work vest and a hard hat. On a boat. In the Ocean.

Q: That's it?
A: Basically, I didn't do too much, but help out and hold lines...just being taught safety stuff and what basically they're doing. A few crew members help out to operate the A frame(big thing that holds the line. Directly above the photographer in the photo) and the winch(yellow thing, center of photo) that pulls line in. The chief scientist works with the crew and is in charge of the 1 or 2 other scientists helping with the deployment. So, I held lines, helped pull buoys in, attached instruments to line. I also learned how to tie off the line to a cleat. Never really did that before, but I got the hang of it after having the crew/sci's wait on me for fumbling around with the line and knot for the first few times. After much practice, I got a round of appluase when I did it quickly and flawlessly. Jojo, the philipino crew member operating the main winch bet me I couldn't tie one down in under 3 seconds. I made it in 1 second. What up Jojo.

Q: How long were you working?
A: Not long, each scientist has his or her own deployments and occasionally helps out others, but you might have to work 2 hrs deploying. Maybe 2hrs prepping and 1hr collecting water from a CTD. Somedays you have nothing going on, somedays more. They were relatively easy work days though.

Q: What did you do besides work?
A: I slept about 12 hrs a day. The seas were calm, so it gave the boat a nice rocking motion that puts you right to sleep and makes you not want to get up. I ate a lot. The two cooks, Greg and Buddy were phenomenol. Huge breakfasts everyday and great lunches and dinners. Plus they had a huge drawer or candy, with those candies with the strawberry on top and the liquidish center. Also, lots of movies and tv series were watched in our lounge. The lounge made me realize, leather couches aren't comforable, unless you like having an itchy, sweaty back after 2 hours sitting, watching a movie. And of course, I did a lot of time just hanging out on the top deck with a few other students, that were accompanying us on the trip. Very relaxing.

Q: Did you see anything cool?
A: Flying Fish. I was hoping for a pod of dolphins to swim by. Then have one get attacked by a shark, but as the dolphin is getting taken down, his dolphriends come back and start jumping out of the water to dive bomb the shark. Doing tons of crazy flips like in seaworld. The shark can't take it and starts swimming away, ONLY TO RETURN WITH MORE SHARKS. I think I got a shot to see it next cruise.

Q: Can you swim while out there?
A: No aparently, some lady got her leg ripped off by a shark. I think this made me want to jump in the water even more.

ahhhhhh. No more swimming off research vessels.

Q: Anything else interesting?
A: Of course, I wouldn't of written that if nothing happened. When we were returning to Bermuda we got a Mayday call from a sinking Sailboat. I guess we had seen the Sailboat at about 3am the previous night and never radioed to them(wasn't neccessary at the time). So, we had to get off the Atlantic Exploer to hop on to the pilot boat(directs big cruise ships into Bermuda) about a half-mile off from Bermuda. The group was rescued by a Chinese Tanker who was much closer than our R/V Atlantic Explorer, so the it was not neccessary for our ship to respond to the Mayday call.

Anyways, the trip was great, I'm excited to go back out there which will probably be in January or Feb. Its pretty cool to think that this is my job.


Back to MI

Ughhhh, more writing. Aparently this is the time to give shoutouts. We'll see.

I flew back in Thursday for the weekend return to Ann Arbor. I immeidately was rushed to a McDonalds by my parents. I think I didn't order maybe 2 or 3 things on the Dollar Menu.

Thursday and Friday consisted of getting more things together for my apartment. I now have a shower curtain.

Friday night, was the big reason I flew in. Championship rings.


It was real, real good to see everyone. I was very happy to hear Robert has a job and that Lehman still has one. I forgot how large Graham is, jesus. How the hell was I cool with standing next to you for 4 years?

As soon as the rings were receieved and the congradulations were said the weekend turned into a blur. Starting with Ricks and ending with Ricks. In between was a return to the lacrosse house. A sleety, miserably bad football game by Michigan. And the new Bond. All in all a great weekend.


Returning to Bermuda was long and tiring, but I noticed something as soon as I got there. I was home. And I was happy to be there. It was great to see everybody and return to real home, but it made me relieved to know that I made the right decision to commit 2 years of my life to Bermuda.

So that's it for catching up. I can now get back to post more crap a find online and make you read. Thanks for reading Ely. You're the only one that would read this far.

Cheers,

Doug

World is Flat

If someone told me 500 years ago that the world was round, I would knock him out...or maybe just try to exclude him from my groups of friends. Flat or round, I was pretty blown away by finally being out in the open water. It's somewhat of a difficult feeling to explain, it's nothing spiritual or awe-inspiring, but just really, really cool. Seas were relatively calm, the work was fun, the crew was great, and the food was delicious. So I have much to talk about, but it is nearing bedtime and also an early wake up, so the blog on the cruise will have to wait until tomorrow where I have a long block of time to type away.

Rainbow is for Zenga


CTD - I forget the Acronym, something like Conductivy Temperature and not Depth. Each little bottle holds 12L. It gets lowered to a depth and on the ascent each bottle gets water at a certain depth. CTD depths ranged from 150m-500m to up to 4200m deep(2.6 miles)

Flatness

Moon

I worked a little on the cruise too.

Cheers

B241

I'm pretty tired right now so this post will be nice and short.

I will be leaving on my first cruise in a few hours or so for 5 days at sea. This cruise is part of BATS. Again, Bermuda Atlantic Time Series. I'm very excited, it feels like some discovery channel shit.

On Thursday, we spent the day going through ship protocols and what will be needed for our sampling and measurements. Today, was hauling our stuff out to St. George's and tying everything down. I will give a nice long boring description of everything once I return on Wednesday.

But right now, I'm grabbing my last few things and taking a bus in to St. George's to spend the night on the boat, so I won't have to deal with arranging a taxi in the morning. Anyways, should be a great trip.

Cheers


Oh yeah, bonus cheers for the new president elect, wish I could of been in the states to witness it.

Cymothoa exigua

Here's a link to something pretty out there. A ridiculous parasite/crustacean that replaces a fishes tongue. Check it out....Cymothoa exigua

Climate Change

An interesting article by TIME.com...if you've got some free time I'd suggest the read

Bacconaise

Too good to be true or too disgusting. I'm not a big fan of Mayo, but if I try this, there's probably a 140% chance it's going on everything.

Mickey D's

Is this true...water no longer free at McDonalds. Please inform, all we have is KCF in Bermuda.

Fat Cats

Found this story about Goldman Sachs, wasn't sure if it'd a topic in the States. GS has a 7 billion in pounds devoted to salary and bonuses....AFTER its 6 billion pound bailout. Now, I've got no fucking clue how contracts and salaries work in the financial world, but this is absurd. 3 million on average for each partner..........I just don't know what to say. But please read the story of the fat cats

Halloween

Halloween!!!! You know what that means, time to change your Facebook picture. Gotta let everybody know what you were for Halloween.

I wasn't satisfied at all with my choice of costume this year. I didn't think about bringing anything down, so last minute I went into Hamilton to look at what they had. All the Adult costumes were ridiculous, who the hell wants to be Barney Rubble or your classic "Pimp"... are you kidding me? The morons who are making the costumes must have a ridiculous surplus. Also, I wasn't going to be paying 70 bucks for a costume, plus all the sweet costumes like an Eyore jumpsuit were for kids. I debated for about 7 minutes deciding whether or not I could fit into it. Anyway, I grabbed a box, cut a hole in for my head, taped on an alarm clock and book and made some drawers with marker and boom, and you got your One-Night Stand. I wasn't going to be going out into the city, so I felt it was appropriate to wear it to the Wind. I wouldn't dare be caught out with it on at a club or bar. The Wind suprisingly had a pretty good turnout, 50 or so total which is large for the place. A good amount of the younger staff, plus 20 or so Fall08 Students, and a group of Freshmen Princeton kids were here for the week. They started a dance party. One-Night Stand guy immediately found a reason to be obnoxious.

Tobacco Bay



On Saturday, I headed to Tobacco Bay with a few people to hit up another snorkeling spot in St. George's. I was pretty impressed by it. You can see from the pic that the beach is on the right and the sandy bottom extends out midway into the bay before it starts to get deeper. There's also a bar right by the beach, but I think it's closed down for the year. When I first checked out the Bay it was packed by Tourists. On Saturday, the cruise ships are gone so the beach was nice and quiet. Another good thing about Tobacco is the big rock formations, they were great for climbing up and jumping off into the sea. For some reason I saw a few golf balls lying maybe 5m or so deep and wondered what the hell...apparently you drop a golf ball to see how deep it is before you jump off into a spot. It's like a tiny round Secchi Disk(used for determing visible light depth). I don't know, I wouldn't really trust a golf ball before jumping in. Anyway, an octupus was spotted as well as an underwater cave was found. The geek that I am, I'm itching to get my hands on a field guide to start IDing what I've been seeing.

BATS Cruise

So I got some pretty cool news a few days ago. I'm going on my sampling cruise, which will be departing on Sat. November 8 and returing on 12th. Only a short cruise, but it gives me time to learn some basics while the Research Tech I'm replacing still has time to teach me a few things. I guess this is an appropriate time to talk about the research that I will be associated with.

I will be the tech for analyzing samples of almost everything phosphorus, this includes...Total Dissolved Phosphorus, Soluble Reactive P, Particulate Organic P, and I think a few more P analyses. All of this is part of BATS, an acronym for the Bermuda Atlantic Time Series. It is a long-term sampling effort to gain a better understanding of the biological and chemical cycles of the Deep Ocean. It is extremely relevant to Climate Change, particularly understanding carbon exchange between the oceans and atomosphere. My work with phosphorus relates to biology of phytoplankton, a major component for removing carbon from the atomosphere. An overview: http://www.bios.edu/research/bats.html

But enough with the scientific crap, I'm jacked to go on this...
The crew is mostly Philippine, I've met a few of them after the ship returned Wednesday. They usually have parties on the dock when the return. They've got a hoop on the dock, I think I might be taller than all of them. Apparently great cooks as well.


Somewhat of a short-post, but I've got a few links to post. I'll try to post more this week and keep a few notes on my days at sea.

Cheers,

Db