San Jose Tech Museum

John and Becky invited me to go to the Tech Museum with them today. This is John in the jet propulsion seat. He had to maneuver his seat to shoot a light beam at targets as they appear. I think it must take some practice to become good at it.

This John, or at least a projection of john in a space suit. He looks happy to be in space.
Becky is designing an Integrated Circuit. I believe the cute haircut and style give an advantage in the IC design.
John and Becky both were participating in electronic finger painting on the screen and making some very creative designs.
Becky looks pretty good as a goalie ready to play with the sharks.
This is John and Becky with their thermal images.
We had a fun time and saw some cool high tech stuff.

New Camera - Taking Rocky for a Walk

Mom gave me a new camera for my birthday. It is a Canon T3i with 18-135mm lens. I love it. Thank you Mom!!!

I have been reading the manual to try and figure out how to use it. I took Rocky for a walk this evening after the sun went down. The following photos were of some pretty flowers that I passed by on the walk. As can be expected Rocky did not want to stop and "smell the roses". i am still learning how to use the camera features. Most of these were using the telephoto to focus on the flower while the background is out of focus. i think my favorites are the first and last ones shown here.

The next two had the flash on which changes the colors somewhat.


I'll keep reading the 320 page manual and move on to other kinds of photos.

Happy Birthday Mark!!!

Today is Mark’s birthday (July 23). We took Mark and John and Becky to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. As has become tradition, we ate lunch at the Fish Hopper before going to the aquarium. See my posts from January 22 and March 28 for more about Monterey and the Fish Hopper restaurant.

From the window by our table at the restaurant, we could see several sea lions lying on the rocks. Only one was moving around much.

I took a few photos in the aquarium but most of them did not turn out all that great. One of the exhibits that I really like is the different kinds of jellyfish. I like the moon jellies because that is the kind of jellyfish that we swam through a school of while scuba diving in St. Thomas a few years ago. The mature ones are about a foot in diameter. These are some of the moon jellies on exhibit.

One of the exhibits showed explained different kinds of sea creatures. We found ourselves on one of the description cards.

The following is a close-up of the text.

After the aquarium, per tradition, we went to Ghirardelli for desert. I really like their hot fudge sundaes.

It was a fun day celebrating Mark’s Birthday.

4th of July – Skyline to the Sea Trail

On the 4^th of July we decided to go for a hike in Big Basin State Park. Mom was going to be going on a 13 mile backpacking trip from Big Basin to the ocean on the Skyline to the Sea trail on July 8-9 with the level 4 girls before girl’s camp. We thought it would be fun to become familiar with at least the first part of the trail so we invited John and Becky to go with us.

We found some great redwood logs and stopped for a “family on the log” photo.

We found a geocache.

After the hike, we went with john and Becky and some of their friends to watch fireworks. We stopped at Blue Rock BBQ to get some of the best smoked pulled pork in San Jose and sat on blankets and ate BBQ while waiting for the fireworks to start.

On Friday morning, July 8^th, Mom and the level 4 girls started their backpacking trip. 11 miles and several sore muscles later they made it to their campsite. I was one of the people that had agreed to pick up them and their equipment up on Saturday at the beach at the end of the trail. I went early so I could hike up the trail and meet them coming down. This how I found the group coming down the trail.

They did make it to the beach.

Mom made it all the way to the beach.