Question Solved

A couple months ago Chris was in Omaha for the stockholders meeting of Warren Buffet's company Berkshire Hathway. Bill Gates is on the board and he was in attendance. I was most interested in hearing about Mr. Gates rather than the boring stockholders meeting. Chris said that Bill only left the room when all the lights were off between presentations. He also never stood up when he was introduced. That led to pondering on our part regarding his everyday life. Does the world's richest man have bodyguards? What about bulletproof limos? Is he stalked by paparazzi? Does he drive himself to work?
Thankfully, the last question was answered today as a friend of a friend of Cherie's passed along this photo. It appears that Bill Gates does in fact drive himself to work. It actually looks like he's in the middle of work as he's obviously reading from the papers propped up on the steering wheel. Perhaps he should make use of a driver after all.

Malibu

The vew from my office today.

A Good Reason to buy Canadian Diamonds

Finally, some media interest about blood diamonds in Africa. Leo, I guess I can finally forgive you for choosing to star in the gross debacle that was Titanic.
New film starring DiCaprio rattles diamond industry

"The Blood Diamond," a film in production starring
Leonardo DiCaprio, could hurt diamond sales and the livelihoods of people in Africa, industry leaders warned on Tuesday. The Warner Brothers film being shot in Africa shows how "conflict diamonds" financed bloody civil wars. DiCaprio portrays a mercenary jailed for smuggling in Sierra Leone, where a civil war lasting until 2002 killed 50,000 people.
Industry officials attending the opening of the World Diamond Congress said the situation with conflict diamonds had dramatically improved in recent years and expressed concern that the movie would not reflect this.
"The problem of conflict diamonds is practically over," Shmuel Schnitzer, outgoing president of the World Federation of Diamond Bourses (WFDB), told Reuters at the conference in Tel Aviv, among the world's top diamond cutting and trading centers.
"To show a film that will lead the public to think the situation is still the same is an injustice to our industry which has done so much," he said.
In a press release issued in February, Warner Bros. Pictures said The Blood Diamond, starring DiCaprio and Jennifer Connelly had started production in South Africa and Mozambique.
It did not say when it will be released and company officials could not be reached for comment. The unofficial IMDb movie database has the U.S. release date as January, 2007.

A Giving Guy

I realize this isn't news anymore but..I was very pleased and impressed when Warren Buffett announced that he was going to give approximately 85% of his wealth to various charitable organizations. I'm proud of the fact that the two richest men in the world are demonstrating some social responsibility. I can only hope that others will follow their example.

Very Random Happenings

A collection of thoughts and pictures from the last couple weeks...

Reason #56 why Sonja loves summer: Crepes!!!
Parrots that were hanging out on the telephone wires by the house the other day.
There is a new study that was just published in the journal Nature that believes that Southern California is about due for a massive earthquake in the near future. I guess that the southern portion of the San Andreas fault moves dramatically every 200-300 years and it's been about 250 years since the last major event. Chris and I have lots of earthquake supplies in the garage but I'm always worrying that we don't have enough. Then I glanced in our pantry. I think that I won't have to worry about Chris running out of beer in the event of a major quake; we seem to have ample quantities of both the can and bottle varieties (plus some random juices).
I was in Phoenix (again) last week and noticed these very cool seed pod things. I have no idea what they are but they're very festive.
We practically flew over our house on the return flight. You can tell its southern cali; look at all the lovely smog.
Other random pictures from the flight. This was a dry river in the desert (near Palm Springs).I hope I never have to live in a residential development like this. I'll bet every single house looks exactly the same. That was one of the major reasons that Chris and I moved from Irvine to Santa Ana. Irvine is a planned community that was built in the 1970s. Every neighborhood has three or four different models of house that are all painted in slightly different colors. How boring. Our neighborhood in Santa Ana is totally original; none of the houses look the same. It's a great neighborhood with a lot of character.

National Bring Your Dog to Work Day

June 23 was National Bring Your Dog to Work Day. Bailey had a fantastic time cavorting with the other dogs in the office. Mark's labs Porter and Amber
Hanging out in the cube. Now that looks like a spoiled dog!

Wedding Stuff

For those of you that are coming to our wedding, we have set up a website with hotel information, activities and directions to the wedding location. The website can be found at left under the title Chris and Sonja's Wedding Website or you can click on it here. We hope you can come join us on July 15th!

WORLD CUP

Ok folks, it's time for the US to join the rest of the world in supporting the real game of football; yes, I mean soccer. This is a sport that takes skill, talented hand-eye coordination, and extreme athletic endurance. It also does not require its players to walk around in too-small leggings, helmets, and shoulder pads.
Here's the skinny:
The Brazilians, the reigning world cup champs, just beat Australia (2-0) and are moving on to the second round. The US lost to the Czech Republic (0-3) in their opening game. They tied with Italy (1-1) in their second game. In order to advance to the second round, they must beat Ghana on Thursday and have the Italians beat the Czech Republic.

This is Brazil, cleaning up. The Australians actually did a great job of holding them off in the first half but were unable to stop the famous Brazilians in the second half. Remember, Brazil has all the Rs (Ronaldo, Robinho (called the next Pele), Ze Roberto (shown here) and Richardinho)England has David Beckham and Michael Owen (shown below) on their side; however, their star forward, Wayne Rooney, may not be able to play due to injuries.

I think this is Ghana. They'll play the US on Thursday. The United States got off to a rocky start in the world cup this year. Brian McBride (below) took an elbow to the face but later recovered to join back in the game. Italy actually did all of the work in the match as their team captain made a goal into their own net resulting in a 1-1 tie. Thanks, Italy!
Team Captain Becks. That reminds me, I need to rent Bend it like Beckham, one of my all time favorite movies (well, not counting the made for tv version of Pride and Prejudice)
If you get tired of watching the game, you can always watch the crazy moves (and celebrations) of the players:
Or they REALLY wacky fans:
Check out those teeth!

Spam

I had to remove all of the comments from the blog because some random guy wrote lots of strange and rather creepy notes on all of my pictures. I guess it's the internet version of graffiti. Anyway, I had to hide all of the comments because I can't selectively erase one or two. I guess this is one of the dangers of posting to a public forum. Thank you for those of you that did write legitimate comments (I really enjoy reading them!) and hopefully I'll be able to post again in the future without nasty remarks from one random individual.

Aquarium of the Pacific

We went to the Aquarium of the Pacific today in Long Beach. It was fun to visit and they have lots of great animals but it doesn't hold a candle to the Monterey Aquarium. The aquarium was also hosting a Pacific Islander festival which was interesting but it also attracted hordes of people. The two Queen Marys. By the way, here's an interesting fact: the old Queen Mary is packed with asbestos. It's great building material.
This is obviously a shorebird, as evidenced by the long legs. This is a black-necked stilt (Himantopus mexicanus)



Sea lion (not my favorite animal)

Petting the rays.
Shovelnose Guitarfish (Rhinobatus productus)

The Smartest Creature in the Sea

Of all the animals at the aquarium, I think my favorite has always been the octopus. They are so wildly fascinating and they are also incredibly intelligent. I met a giant octopus (Octopus dofleini) while scuba diving in Washington several years ago. It was living under a sunken rowboat. It literally took up all of the space under the boat; it was huge! There are stories of octopi in the pacific northwest patting down scuba divers in search of morsels of fish that they had hidden in their BCDs. Imagine being searched by an animal that can reach up to 23 feet from tip to tip.

Dazzling and Dangerous Exhibit

The aquarium has an exhibit titled Dazzling and Dangerous and details some species that, while very exciting, can be venomous to humans. People often confuse the words venomous and poisonous. The word venomous often describes something that will actively inject a harmful substance into the body (examples: snakes, black widow spiders). My understanding of the poisonous is that it is something that will cause death or bodily harm through ingestion or dermal contact (cyanide) but that it is not actively administered by a plant or animal. So, the rattle snake and banded sea krait below should be listed as venomous while the poison dart frog shown below should be listed as poisonous. The frogs eat several species of ants, which have previously consumed toxic chemicals from plants. The frogs secrete the poison from glands on their skin. You would likely not die simply by touching a poison dart frog, however I wouldn't recommend eating one or picking one up in you have cuts in your skin. Species of the genus dendrobates, one of my favorites while living in Costa Rica, are commonly called poison dart frogs. This one is a green and black poison dart frog (Dendrobates auratus). We used to catch the strawberry poison dart frogs while living in La Selva but I've only seen a couple of the green/black variety and that was closer to the coast. This friendly looking snake is a southern pacific rattlesnake (Crotalus oreganus helleri), native to southern California.

This is a banded Sea Krait (Laticauda colubrina), probably one of the most venomous snakes in the world. There is no treatment for a bite from a sea snake; however, they typically are not very aggressive and rarely bite people. I believe my dad had a bit of run in with one of these (or a close relative) while diving in Indonesia. His was unusually aggressive and I believe my dad had to exit the area rather quickly. Was this also when the incident with the trigger fish occurred?
This is a rather fuzzy picture of a Lionfish (Pterois volitans), also a highly venomous creature. They may be beautiful but I would not recommend crossing paths with this guy. He is aptly named.

Grouper

I caught a 30-pound grouper off the coast of Panama when I was living in Costa Rica for my junior year of college. It was only later that I learned that grouper are suffering from population reduction problems throughout the world. If my recollection serves me correctly, it seems that grouper can reach weights in excess of 500 pounds when fully mature. They reach sexual maturity only after several years. Unfortunately, gruoper are prized for their size (and tasty flavor) so naturally the large ones are suffering the most. This has caused problems since the small grouper are not yet able to reproduce and those that have achieved sexual maturity have been over-fished.

Little Sharks and Big Rays