Our main database server seems to have gone down.

This could be extremely ugly. Please cross your fingers for a swift recovery here at IPAC.

Update 30 minutes later:

Thank you, thank you. I single-handedly crashed an IPAC operational database server that has been up for 500 consecutive days. Argh.

Apparently I went over some disk space limitations on a test database table. I’ve been inserting, deleting, inserting, deleting over and over as I ran regression tests, not realizing that “deleting” just means removing pointers, not actually clearing out the data. So eventually on an insert, it brought the whole thing to its knees.

I have now learned my lesson: instead of deleting all rows from the table, just drop the damn thing and then recreate it.

All is well.

The festivities began Saturday morning: all the Pomona folks met for breakfast at 10:30 at the hotel restaurant. We met up with Nicki and Justin, who we see fairly regularly in Los Angeles (but it’s always great to hang out with them). Boyar was also there, one of my fellow physics majors, as well as Emily from Glee Club, Jon, Anu, and Sharon (Torrin’s friends, who I recognized but didn’t really know that well), Matt and Leor (more friends of Torrin, from high school).

After everyone had scarfed down their pancakes and french toast, we all went to get dressed and prettied-up for the actual ceremony. A shuttle picked everyone up at the hotel at 1pm, and I wound up sitting across from a very familiar-looking redhead. My thought process went something like this: “I know her. Why do I know her? I think I have a picture of her. A picture of her and me..” Finally I figured it out: we had met in Dublin! It was Joanne, who was Torrin’s au pair for a few years some time back. When I went to Ireland, he gave me her phone number, and we met up for an evening of food and drink with some of her friends. It was great to see her again!

The ceremony was held at a modern-looking Catholic church, with about 90 attendees. The Pomona contingent stuck together, taking up a whole row. None of us are particularly religious (nor, to my knowledge, are Barb and Torrin, but at least one of their families must be), so there were a few points in the ceremony that I feel compelled to mock.

First, the hymn selection. Uck. Now, singing hymns was always the one part of church that I liked, so I know for a fact that there are some hymns with decent tunes and lyrics. For this ceremony, we sang “Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee” (otherwise known as the Ode to Joy rip-off), which wasn’t too bad. But the second selection was all about the blessings to befall the married couple if they just trust in and adore god. Nice enough sentiment, but it was splattered with some unfortunate visuals like “Your spouse will be like a fruitful vine” and “Your children like olive plants growing at your table.” Anu, who wasn’t actually looking at the words, later reported that she thought it was “awful plants.” “Awful olive plants” became the catchphrase of the day.

At the end of the ceremony, the priest blessed the couple, and asked the whole congregation to do so as well. We all had to hold our right hands up as if over the head of someone in front of us. Half of us later reported that it felt like a creepy “Heil Hitler” moment; the other half (or at least, me) was SORELY tempted to make the “live long and prosper” sign with the outstretched hand.

On a serious note, Torrin and Barb both looked STUNNING. Barb was in a gorgeous strapless gown, and Torrin always looks pretty nice in a tux! They’re so obviously crazy about each other that it was great to see them up there, both positively glowing.

The ceremony only lasted about 40 minutes (NOT a full mass, yay), after which everyone headed outside to blow bubbles at the departing bride and groom. Maybe arming all the Pomonans with bottles of bubble goo was not the best idea, as bubble wars soon ensued.

We were back at the hotel by 2:45, and the reception didn’t start until 6. No sooner had we stepped off the shuttle than discussions began as to where we could procure beer. Justin and Jeff set off to a gas station that was kind of within walking distance, and the rest of us headed up to one of the hotel rooms with as many different sets of cards as we were able to purchase from the gift shop. The five girls present launched into a very aggressive round of Pounce (think competitive Solitaire). It turns out that we all make these kind of grunting, pissed-off-animal noises when playing Pounce, which was kind of funny.

Once the boys returned with beer, more college-style hijinks ensued. Pounce became sillier and sillier, and then Sharon introduced the “Ass game,” where you replace one word of a movie title with the word “Ass” and see what the funniest things you can come up with are. Notable entries from Saturday (Star Wars and Disney movies make particular good ones):

Ass Wars
The Empire Strikes Ass
Ass of the Jedi
A New Ass
Attack of the Asses
The Ass King
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Ass

Well, you get the idea.

After Anu had cleaned up in Pounce, and I’d observed several rounds of bridge (that is one weird game, I must say), it was time to go freshen up and hit the reception.

Torrin and Barb threw an excellent party! Once again, all the Pomonans were together, this time at the Zinfandel table. We prided ourselves on being the table that went through the most bottles of wine (not Zinfandel, though). Aside from the drinking, we had a truly excellent time eating, dancing and socializing. The music selection was top notch (included opportunities for swing dancing and polka - my calves are still killing me).

There was a bit of a to-do over the wedding cake. After the bride/groom cake cutting, the cake itself was carted out of the room to be sliced up and then presumably served to guests. Instead, a pile of little foil-wrapped packages soon appeared by the door. I guess in some places it’s traditional to take the cake home instead of devouring it at the reception. In place of cake, some sort of fried saurkraut rolls were served (Polish tradition). Barb seemed a bit upset at the mix-up, but we all assured her that no one minded. Torrin’s dad finally made the first move and just dived into the foil packages, at which most of the rest of us followed suit. Mmm, wedding cake.

Everything else seemed to go smoothly. There were the usual first dances (Torrin and Barb’s was to Dave Matthews “Crush”), the bouquet-tossing (caught by maid of honor Melissa, if I remember correctly), garter throwing, de-veiling (everyone circles around Barb and Torrin as her veil and his jacket can finally be removed), and of course, the polka. :) We had a great time at the Zinfandel table; Amol took charge of making sure there was always a bottle of Merlot at the table, and Christina eventually took it upon herself to start ordering rounds of shots for everyone.

Justin and I sneaked out for a cigarette towards the end, which we smoked indoors, in the hallway. That just felt weird. We’re both way too used to California. It just feels dirty and wrong to burn a cigarette indoors! I’ve been darned good about not smoking for the last few months, but it’s just too tempting to resist after 10 or 11 drinks.

I even managed to do a little catching up with Barb and Torrin. Sounds like life is going really well for both of them. Torrin’s got one year left of school, after which it will be Barb’s turn - probably somewhere on the east coast to study pathology. They had such a great group of friends and family at the wedding; it was really a terrific vibe to be surrounded by so many people who truly wished them the best!

The reception wound down around 1am, and once again, the Pomonans gathered upstairs for a nightcap and general silliness. At this point, people seemed evenly divided between about-to-pass-out drunkenness and overly-excited-and-silly drunkenness. (I suspect I was the latter.) I chatted up maid of honor Melissa, who was VERY, VERY excited to meet me because she is also about to marry someone 8 years older, who’s kind of a quiet type, that she met at work. We discussed the merits of older men while Imol told a “scary story” about an Indian soothsayer that ended in his jumping suddenly at one of the girls and scaring the bajeesus out of her. Boyar lay face down on the bed (he had to catch an 8:30 am plane the next day). I remember laughing like crazy about something, but I cannot for the life of me remember what - it’s probably just as well, as I’m sure it was highly innapropriate material.

After about an hour of “college time,” I finally said my goodbyes and crashed. Woke up at 8:30 the next morning to the worst hangover I’ve had in YEARS. I’m just not that much of a drinker these days! Luckily I’d spaced it out over a long time Saturday, or I think I would have been pretty unpleasantly sick (not a good way to be on a 4-hour plane trip). I managed to survive the trip home - and Jeff managed to put up with my being rather out of it - and by Sunday night I was feeling relatively human again.

It’s so cool that Torrin and Barb are married! :) I enjoyed the reunion-esque feel of the weekend so much, at times I almost forgot we were there for a reason. They’re both such fabulous people, who saw me through some pretty depressed single-person moments in college. I love that we’re all happily married now, just a few years later. Yay!

Jeff and I have just returned from a weekend in Chicago for my friend Torrin’s wedding to his long-time girlfriend, Barb. Pictures are here: http://gallery.thelaitys.com/v/chronological/2004/20040925_wedding.

There was a 3-hour break between the ceremony and the reception, during which time all of us Pomona grads gathered in a hotel room to drink and play cards (just like being back in school). I think everyone had polished off at least 2 beers BEFORE showing up for the reception.

Which had an open bar.

And a very attentive waitress who was happy to oblige our frequent requests for bottles of Merlot.

Then someone started ordering rounds of shots for the Pomonans.

Finally crawled into bed around 2am (had to get up at 8:30 to head to the airport). Grand total for the day: 3 beers, 4 glasses of wine, 2 cocktails (amaretto sours, mmm), 2 very large shots (Kamikazes?), 2 cigarettes (thanks to Justin, my fellow non-smoker). Over the course of 10 hours, though, so really it’s not as bad as it looks.

Then again, it’s now 9pm the following night (11pm Chicago time), and I’m only now beginning to feel NOT hungover. Next time Torrin and Barb throw a party, I’m scheduling the flight back for at least 24 hours afterwards…

I’ll post more fun weekend-wedding stories tomorrow, when the hangover is completely cleared (I hope).

My mood is greatly improved today. Partly because the weather is so darned pretty! When I stepped outside today, the sky was a brilliant blue, with really nifty-shaped clouds floating around. They’re sort of stringy-looking, like blobs of cotton that have been pulled apart.

When I was driving over the hill between Glendale and Pasadena, however, I had a clear view to the south - where a thick layer of smog has settled over LA and Orange County. Quite a contrast! Too bad I didn’t have a camera on hand. :)

I’m also happy because I found two new television shows that I like last night. Ok, so it’s a silly thing to get excited about, but it’s nice to finally have some tv to look forward to again. Jeff and I watched JJ Abrams’ “Lost,” which was FANTASTIC (we expected no less from the “Alias” creator), and also tuned in to a show called “Veronica Mars” that got a good review on Ain’t It Cool. TV Guide described it as “Buffy” meets “Nancy Drew,” which seems about right - plus it had a grim streak to it that I really liked. I’d definitely recommend both these shows to any other tv-geeks out there!

I was just digging around in my gallery… here’s one for Ben and Kathy:

No making fun of my dress (or my sister’s dress).

Feel free to make fun of the boys, however. :)

We spent today at Catalina on the Cee Ray. When we crawled into our “double” bunk last night, I remembered why I’m not a huge fan of this boat! There are 4 double bunks, and they aren’t, really: at the feet, they’re the same width as a single, and they widen to about 1.5 times that at the head. Comfy.

It was a pretty rough ride out; for the first time, I thought I might actually wind up hanging over the rail. We had 3-4 foot swell all the way out to Catalina. The plan was to dive Farnsworth, on the far side of Catalina, but our captain took one peek at the conditions on the other side of the island and turned the boat around to stay on the lee side. Smart move!

We had some great dives anyway, at Eagle Reef and Doctor’s Cove. Eagle Reef may be my new favorite Catalina dive site: it’s basically series of huge piles of rocks, covered with kelp and lots of fish. Since it’s actually made up of distinct boulders, there are lots of nooks and crannies to go poking around in, and I scared up quite a few lobsters and shrimp. Mostly, I enjoyed the fish-watching. There were huge schools of baitfish (anchovy, topsmelt, sardines) darting all over the place. We also saw all the usual suspects: sheephead (I saw some fighting each other, mouth-to-mouth), garibaldi chasing away intruding fish, senoritas who darted at their reflection in Jeff’s dome port, juvenile kelp bass that would drift right up to your mask, the pretty blue-and-yellow juvenile blacksmith, rock wrasse and opaleye. And of course, the rocks were littered with bluebanded gobies, one of my favorite fish.

Jeff puttered around getting some practice in with the camera, while I settled in for 45 minutes of fish-watching (with occasional breaks for Jeff-watching). Visibility was great, and the water was warm - great place for 2 long dives!

Our second site of the day was Doctor’s Cove. Not quite as nice: a shallow kelp forest next to lots of sand. We didn’t find anything too exciting in the kelp, but on both of our dives we ran into bat rays out in the sand, munching around in it to dig up food. Each time, the ray was swarmed by other fish trying to get some leftovers. We also scared up a couple of soles in the sand and chased them around for a while, and several times ALMOST managed to get a picture of a giant kelpfish - unfortunately, when you play hide and seek with a kelpfish IN THE KELP, you’re bound to lose.

It’s a good thing I had some Drammomine left: if we thought the ride out was rough, the ride back was even worse! The wind and waves kicked up quite a bit while we were parked at Doctor’s Cove. We were right at the northwest tip of the island, and could see around the corner where the whitecaps were really picking up. As the boat headed for home, I popped a pill and went to try to sleep through the worst of it. Luckily, I succeeded, but woke in time to enjoy some of the “smaller” 6-8 foot swell as we surfed our way back towards the harbor. Our bunk was up in the bow next to the outside bulkhead, where we could hear something (the bilge? Water tank? Sewer system?) sloshing around every time the boat rocked. And lying on your side was impossible; you got knocked back and forth so much that lying flat on your back was the only option.

I felt fine - yay for Drammomine!

Pics for this dive are here: http://gallery.thelaitys.com/v/underwater/uw-20040919_catalina. Even the large versions on the gallery are sampled down to 1Mpx (from 6 to start with), so email me if you want the full resolution versions (that means you, Ben).

We spent the afternoon in Pasadena. First, Jeff and I grabbed lunch at Corner Bakery. When I sat down, I noticed Ben and Kathy’s friends Sam and Dan sitting at the table next to me. I think I’ve met them once in person, but it was some time ago - mostly, I recognized her because I occasionally read her blog (which is linked from both of the Brantleys’ sites). I wasn’t sure I should say anything in case it was a little weird (”Hi, you don’t really know me, but I read your journal…”). At some point, we made eye contact - and I could tell she recognized me as well.

So I said something like “Hey, aren’t you Sam.. Ben and Kathy’s friend? I’m Anastasia; I think we’ve met once. And I read your blog.”

To which she immediately replied: “Oh yeah - you have the underwater pictures on your site. I look at them some mornings when I get into work. And I’ve also looked at your wedding pictures.”

I find it funny that we both kind of know each other, even though we’ve barely met. Gotta love the internet. :)

After lunch, Jeff and I played in the pool with the new camera housing. Ben came to join us and practice his freediving (which he’s getting pretty good at). Jeff took several incredibly unflattering pictures of me, including this one which is nonetheless kind of cool:

And here’s Ben crawling along the bottom of the pool, as he tries to extend his freediving time past a whole minute:

I was completely wiped out after playing in the pool, which surprised me because we really did very little in the way of diving. But I guess we still had to lug all our equipment in and lug it back out, which is half the battle. And it’s just as well I’m tired; it’ll make it easier to sleep on a boat tonight. :) Tomorrow, hopefully, we’ll get to dive at Farnsworth Bank and take some real pictures!

Just took a peek at the Bonaire webcams, and for the first time ever I actually spotted a diver posing for the ReefCam. In a few months, this will be me:

Today I got a little present at work in the form of two UPS boxes from California Digital Diving - our Aquatica housing and it’s various accessories have arrived! One box held the housing and the handles. The other (much larger) box contained the dome port, port shade/protector, strobe, sync cord, strobe arms, and various replacement parts, screws, etc.

Unfortunately, what none of the boxes contained was a readable manual. The Aquatica housing came with a very polite note from Aquatica saying that they had not yet printed the manuals, but if I send in the warranty card they’ll send me one when they’re available. The strobe manual was only in Japanese. I was able to figure some things out from the pictures, but I’m not sure enough of anything to risk dunking it in water just yet:

Other than inserting batteries and setting off a few test flashes, I didn’t try to do anything to the strobe. It has various exposed connectors that I imagine need to have things plugged into them before you get it wet. I do like that it makes a distinctive noise when it’s charging up, and has a light that switches from green to pale red to bright red depending on how charged it is. I tucked the strobe back into one of the boxes and started putting together the housing.

First, I attached the handles to the housing. Easy.

Then, I tackled the dome port and shade. This was a little trickier. The dome sits down on a ledge inside the shade, but it didn’t seem very secure, and had no obvious way to attach it. I did notice about a zillion teeny-tiny, headless screws that came as replacement parts with the shade. I looked closer at the shade and noticed it had similar screws set into its circumfernece in four spots - however, there were no matching holes in the plastic of the dome port base. I finally took a big hint from the tiny screwdriver (I forget what they’re called - the hexagonal-ended, L-shaped thingies) taped into the paper wrapping around the dome port, and just started screwing. The screws ate easily through the plastic at the base of the dome port, until they were halfway lodged in the dome port with the remaining half still in the shade. I shook it around a bit by the shade to make sure it was in there solidly, and it seemed to have worked.

To give it a “dry run,” so to speak, you’re supposed to fill it with paper towels (instead of an expensive camera) and soak the whole thing in the bathtub overnight. So I filled it up and snapped these pictures - the dome port does some funny things to the camera flash!

The whole contraption is now happily sitting in the bathtub - hopefully when I check it tomorrow morning, its innards will be nice and dry!

Today, we made our fourth successful Southern California beach dive - and they’ve all been in Laguna. I think I may have finally been convinced of the merits of beach diving (in Laguna anyway - you’re not going to drag me back to Leo Carillo or Old Marineland anytime soon!)

We hit Shaw’s Cove, in Crescent Bay (off Wave Dr, right next to Laguna Sea Sports). Shaw’s was actually the site of my first attempted beach dive back in November ‘99 - the first place my scuba class went after the pool. It turned out to be a rather poor choice that day, with monster waves that kicked the bejeezus out of most of us just trying to go in for a skin dive. The instructor eventually called off the SCUBA portion of the day entirely, but not until I’d already been totally put off the idea of beach diving by my bad experience.

Turns out that when conditions are good, Shaw’s is in fact a very pleasant dive. The stairway down to the beach is a little bit longer than Diver’s Cove or Picnic Beach, but not nearly as bad as Marineland, Woods Cove, or a dozen others - in other words, we both found it pretty do-able. At the bottom, there’s a rocky point jutting directly out into the ocean from the right side of the beach; that’s what we planned to follow.

Not that we didn’t have a few hiccups on the way to the dive. First, there are no facilities at Shaw’s Cove, so I dragged poor Jeff on a mini-hike all the way over to Heisler Park for a bathroom stop. Then, I realized I’d forgotten my flat mask and snorkel, and would have to dive with my HydroOptix (not the end of the world, but I prefer to be able to see on the surface when doing beach dives). Then, I remembered that snorkels are mandatory in Laguna, and the lifeguards will turn you around if you don’t have one - so I walked up to the scuba store a few blocks away and rented a pink snorkel for the day. But wearing a snorkel always makes my HO mask leak - so I wound up borrowing Jeff’s old flat mask instead.

We finally suited up a little before 9am, and headed down to the beach. The surf was almost nonexistant; the occasional 1-2 footer just about reached my waist. Much better than the last time I was here! We made it in without incident, and descended near the rocky point.

We headed south until we came to the crack in the rocks known as “the crevice,” one of the main draws of this site. On a low-surf, low-surge day like today, it was easy to go swimming inside the crevice, through some rocky arches and swim-throughs. We saw lots of fish in there (mostly garibaldi), a huge pile of big lobsters hiding out in a crack, Proliferating Anemones (short pink/purple anemones with thin, short, tapered tentacles), chestnut cowries, and several partially-devoured spiny sea stars (by what, I can’t imagine).

Picture of the crevice from California Diving News:
In the middle of poking around in the crevice, we discovered our camera had been accidentally left on “Land mode,” so none of the pics were really coming out. Oh well!

After checking out the crevice, we continued south along the reef. Jeff spotted a sole in the sand, and an octopus curled up into a hole in the rocks. We also saw several obviously-new divers - Shaw’s is a popular place for classes. One guy was compulsively checking his gauges, and so completely unable to notice that I was pointing out a sole directly under him. Some others kicked up enough sand to reduce the 20+ visibility back down to 10-15 - still pretty good for a beach dive!

The biggest surprise to me was the temperature. On our last beach dive, at nearby Picnic Beach, we found it extremely cold at depth - low 50s! But today, it didn’t go below 66 degrees, even down around 40 feet. We were mostly up around 25, in 68 degree water. I could have done without the hood!

We’d definitely like to go back and check it out some more. Maybe we’re finally learning to love beach diving, which would definitely help save us some money! :)