Enthusiasm

Been a long time since I blogged and I think that I will start doing so again more often. It’s a great way for me to get things off my mind and recently I’ve been very stressed out. Fortunately I’ve had a good avenue for channeling my stress… WoW. Of course WoW has it’s own stresses, especially since I’m managing HILYMI again (thanks to my guildies who pulled me back), but overall I think I’m taking a more stress free approach this time and enjoying the game.

The holidays were good and my niece, Ms. Rachiepants, has been growing sooooo much. The little tike is already running around and being a trouble maker. I love seeing here every week when I go over to Rays. It seems like every week she’s doing something or saying something new.

Kerrie and I have been doing quite well. Thanks to some assistance with a counselor, we’ve been more focused on quality time with each other and balancing “me time” with “us time”. We’ve also been exploring more and more things to do together including painting, more and more cooking together, and our latest new activity: geocaching. Expect a lot of blogs soon about geocaching, painting, and of course HILYMI. We also have several camping and other trips scheduled in 2010 so it’s going to be a very eventful, thankfully in a good way, relaxing year for us. 2009 was very stressful and it will be nice to enjoy 2010.

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Friday drive in the storming rain
Friday ceremony
“Always Ready”
Saturday, Hurricane Ridge and the drive there
Sunday, Mt. Rainier, Mt. St. Helens, Packwood (jo jo’s), Hood River, Mt. Hood, Timberline Lodge, homeward bound

The Facts
Satellites Show Arctic Literally on Thin Ice*:

• Satellite monitoring of arctic ice began in 1979
• 2008-2009 winter had the fifth lowest maximum ice extent on record
• Six lowest maximum events recorded have all occurred in the past six years (2004-2009)

*Source: NASA (http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/arctic_thinice.html, 04.06.2009)

What is causing the accelerated melting of the Arctic ice sheet?
Potential Conclusions or Hypothesis

1. This is just part of the natural cycles of the earth
2. Volcanic and other tectonic activity has caused temperature changes in arctic ocean temperatures
3. The steady and constant increase in global CO2 production has caused global climate change due to CO2’s greenhouse effect

Discussion
On the basis of my personal and professional knowledge of global climate change, these are the facts that I know regarding the natural cycles of the earth and man’s “unnatural” influence on the natural order of things. Personally this is an important topic for me, being environmentally conscious, but professionally this is an important topic because I manage the development of Environmental Cap & Trade software, so I’m well versed in all the supporting information like the Kyoto Protocol and global legislation regarding climate change.

1. There is a natural order and cycle of the earth that results in global warming and global cooling cycles, but these cycles happen over a long period of time, generally over hundreds of thousands of years.
2. CO2 and other green house gas producers and reduces are the primary drivers in global warming and cooling.
3. CO2 has been globally recognized by the Kyoto Protocol as one of the 4 leading green house gas contributors to global warming.
4. Man has increased the production of CO2 globally, consistently, and at an ever increasing rate.
5. Volcanic and tectonic activity might be contributing but there is little data to support this hypothesis.

These natural and unnatural systems seem to be in conflict. I believe that this is both a natural process, but also man’s influence on the natural process is worse than some people would like to believe. The change we are seeing is faster than earth scientists believe can be explained simply through natural systems. Therefore, I select the final hypothesis as the most likely reason for the accelerated melting of the Arctic ice sheet: The steady and constant increase in global CO2 production has rapidly increased the speed of natural cycle of the earth, causing accelerated global climate change.

Supporting Argument for the Thesis
Earth scientists agree that the “natural” cycle of the earth is as follows. During an ice age period of hundreds of thousands of years, the global ice sheets advance as global cooling occurs. Once they advance, more and more trees are killed by advancing permafrost. Less trees means less CO2 reducers and the global CO2 amount increases dramatically over hundreds thousands of years. Once CO2 levels are high enough, more solar radiation is trapped in the atmosphere, global warming occurs and the ice caps recede and trees advance north. The cycle repeats itself.

Man has changed the “natural” cycle of the earth by the following actions. Burning fossil fuels such as coal and oil based products has advancing the rate at which CO2 is generated in our atmosphere. Not only has it accelerated, but if it wasn’t due to recent efforts by global governments, the rate would be increasing more and more every year. Countries like the US and China continue to advance the rate of CO2 production year after year. On top of CO2 production, man has also deforested, reducing the amount of CO2 reducers globally.

Climate change is a *hot* topic these days. Arguments continue on both sides of the table, but people have begun to see the global effects of climate change. This change has affected our agriculture, ocean currents and weather patterns, coral reefs have begun to die due to temperature increases, and worst of all we have begun to see increases in global sea levels. Countries are beginning to make legislature change recommended by Kyoto Protocol. Even the United States, one of the largest CO2 producers in the world, has presented The American Clean Energy And Security Act of 2009, which would meet and exceed the suggestions of the Kyoto Protocol within the United States. Global climate change is real and the world is beginning to realize and support my hypothesis that CO2 production need to be reduced to bring balance back to the natural order of things. 

*Note: I originally wrote this as part of a logic and critical thinking assignment for school, but decided to post it here as well.

I’ve been really stressed out recently and thought it good to take a nice 4 day weekend. President’s day being Monday, all I had to do was take 1 additional day off and BAM, 4 day weekend here we come. Overall it has been very relaxing and I even took the time to volunteer for Potluck in the Park on Saturday which was my first volunteer work I’ve done in a very long time and first one dealing with the homeless. Besides that I’ve been working hard all weekend with Kerrie on the garden and things in the garden have been looking better and better. All the RnR has been good for me I think. My stress level is lightyears lower than it was last Wednesday. I even got a good bit of gaming in this weekend and finally hit renown rank 31 in Warhammer which means I’m now able to wear my Annihilator gear.

Just got back last night from a 3 night, 4 day camping vacation over the weekend. We went to the high desert of Oregon, East of Mt. Hood. We went on a 5 mile hike, enjoyed a lot of great camping food, saw places of Oregon we’ve never seen before, rowed a raft across a VERY large reservoir, and got plenty of rest and relaxation. Kerrie took tons of pictures and I’m sure if you’re curious she’ll have them up on her blog soon.   More information on the Prineville Reservoir can be found at: http://www.prinevillereservoir.com/

As a result, I haven’t blogged in a while, but now it’s time to catch up on life, the goings on in the Warhammer community, and do some gaming.

Oh yeah and on Thursday I fractured 2 of my bottom front teeth and chipped one of my top middle teeth resulting in 2 root canals and to ensure proper reconstruction of the bottom of my mouth, they did a total of 4 cap reconstuctions. Right now I have temporaries in and the perminents come in the first week of August. But hey, they took a bad situation and as a result my smile, bite, and overall mouth health will be better in the long run.

Got a haircut and decided to have a picnic with Kerrie today. We got some ribs, strawberries, pineapple, cornbread, and Newman’s Own Pink Lemonade and headed to a random new park on the GPS. The weather was nice and we sat under two very large trees over a park bench. The food was great and the company even greater. We weren’t at the park for long, but it was nice to completely get away from technology and life for a while. We need to do that more often. I doubt Kerrie would complain.

After the Picnic we headed to Ikeawhere we dreamed a bit more about out future house together. It was nice being able to completely skip over the couch section at Ikea since we now have that awesome leather couch we got a little while back. Kerrie got some storage cubes for her yarn shelf / bookcase thingie. Of course meatballs were had and we grabbed coffee on the way home. The rest of the day was spent reading my book and relaxing with Kerrie.

So this morning I drove into work through snow just fine. I was anxiously awaiting my copy of BC to arrive in the office before going home because the office was closed early. I called, they confirmed it was going to arrive, I waited, I waited… at 4:50 I called again and they said it’s not coming. So I’m pissed off now because if I knew it wasn’t coming I would have left hours ago.
So I quickly run to my car, slipping and sliding along the way, and began to carefully drive home. Let me tell you this was the scariest hour and 15 minutes of my life. I swear in parts of my trip I was gonna die… Thanks to a comforting voice on blue tooth phone, I was able to make it home with moral support.
After spending some time yelling at an unfortunate DHL Shipping employee, then began my evening of hearing from everyone how awesome Burning Crusade was despite the continuous world crashes. So I spent the evening powerleveling Hatred’s Pally. It was fun, we tried different techniques and found that Felguard PL’ing is the most affective means to PL. Hopefully the weather is better tomorrow and I get my copy.

Hike was from 11:06 am – 12:43 pm, 5.0 miles, 10,003 steps, 98 minutes, 3.4 mph. This was a truly great hike because we hiked strait through it with no big breaks and we blazed through the trail at a decent speed. On top of that neither of us were hurting afterward. It was very much a cardio/calorie burning hike this time as apposed to previous hikes which have been very endurance/muscle building. One really nice bonus to the hike was coming across 2 baby deer and their momma crossing the trail in front of us. The one baby was very cute as he/she had a hard awkward time get up on the boardwalk which covered that part of the trail. Good hike. Did Sweet Tomatos salad bar again afterward.

Kerrie and I did our biggest hike thus far: Forest Park 7.6 miles, 3.6 mph average, 2 hours

Tryon Creek as usual was a beautiful hike. We did a completely different side from what we did before and it was a pretty hard hike. In parts it was super steep and in other parts almost completely flat. One thing that sucks is in the middle of the hike I knocked my pedometer off my belt and I guess the batter shook loose and I lost all the data for the first half of the hike and days before. I think it was roughly about 5-6 miles in 2 hours.

On a side note, we saw the Divinci Code after the hike and lunch and let me tell you it’s so awesome. I’m totally inspired to read the book now when/if I have free time to do so. Well done and to all the critics, they can bite my ass.