R.I.P.

R.I.P.

My good turtle friend succumbed to her illness while Mrs. Turtle and I were out of the country. She will be burried at a private ceremony shortly.

Diving

Diving

I´ll get the pictures up after we get home, but the diving in the Galapagos was simply amazing. Anywhere else will be boring now. Yesterday we had two "bad" dives where we "only" saw 8 huge sea turtles, several Eagle Rays, and hundreds of different types of fish, including puffers (some blown up!) and Blue-and-Gold Snappers, which I will call Berkeley Snappers. And those were, by far, the most boring dives. On the first day we saw two packs of hammerheads, which were absolutely awe-inspiring; and on the second day we saw tons of White-Tipped Reef Sharks, including two that were mating, or at least engaged in a mating ritual. I can´t wait to go back!

I love boobies!

I love boobies!

Sorry there haven´t been any updates in a while. We were on a ship touring the Galapagos Islands. We´re now on the island of Santa Cruz, in the town of Puerto Ayora, where we will scuba dive for a few days before returning to mainland Ecuador.

We´ve seen all the amazing creatures you see on nature shows about the Galapagos Islands: blue-footed boobies, red-fooded boobies (both morphs), Nasca boobies, sea lions (including tons of newborns!), fur sea lions, huge pods of bottlenose dolphins surrounding out boat, a huge pod of pilot whales, a pod of commjon doplhins doing amazing acrobatic flips and jumps, vermillion flycatchers, most of Darwin´s finches, many sea turtles (from a few feet away, in the water!), manta rays, a huge eagle ray, marine iguanas in many different color combinations, land iguanas, great frigatebirds, magnificent frigatebirds, red-billed tropicbirds, Galapagos hawks, many species of fish, flightless cormorants, Galapagos penguins (Mrs. turtle swam with them), a white-tip reef shark, lava herons, striated herons, giant tortises (dome and saddle-shelled), lava lizards (many pregnant), briliantly-colored Sally Lightfoot crabs, waved albotrosses, brown pelicans, beautiful swallowtail gulls, Galapagos owls, scorpions, the only type of snake on the islands, and more. Photos will be forthcoming.

Interview

Interview

I had an interesting phone interview today. I think I did ok on the technical part, although the question was kind of hand-wavey. He told me that he wanted a solution that didn't make assumptions about the inputs (so no radix sort, for example), but the solution he was looking for involved hashing, which definitely involves assumptions. I was a bit rusty, since I haven't done that sort of algorithm for a while.

Anyway the company sounded great, except that they work 10am to 10pm every day, except that most people only work half days on Sunday. Um... Okay... Sure...

The reason I asked in the first place was the "free dinners" that they bragged about on their fliers at the career fair. Free dinner is good but I'd rather pay for dinner and get to see Mrs. Turtle every now and then.

Busybusybusy

Busybusybusy

We've got a lot to do to prepare for our vacation. We're going to the Galapagos, first on a cruise to see the islands, and then spending a few days diving. It should be tons of fun, but there is also tons to do.

The Kaiser travel clinic insisted on giving me a shot for Yellow Fever. I told them that Mrs. Turtle is the first Asian woman I ever dated, and really I don't have yellow fever, but they wouldn't listen to reason. Mrs. Turtle also got a Tetanus booster shot, which is very painful for a few days after the shot. Luckily, I got mine a few years ago.

We also have pills of live Typhoid to take, but my acne medicine (an antibiotic) would kill it, so I have to wait 3 days before starting the vaccine, to let the antibiotic clear out of my system.