The Travel Bug

I've been bit, I think, and it's not going away any time soon.

After having a long conversation about potential places to visit in Europe last night and poking around on Atlas Obscura, I feel restless. Just as I had been feeling like the "weird"-flavored places were starting to dry up in the area, I have a whole new database to poke through.

Anyway, since I'm reading about interesting places and sights anyway, I figured I'd compile a little list with descriptions, for my own reference and for (hopefully) the benefit of my reader. Readers? No, probably the former!

• Northlandz - a collection of model trains that is apparently second-to-none. It features thousands of train cars being carted around by engines, over eight miles of model track, a forty-foot bridge and a thirty-foot-tall model mountain. Last I checked it costs $13.75 per adult to get in, but from the sound of things it's well worth it. Open until 5:30pm on Saturday and Sunday. Located in North Jersey. Driving distance from home: 74 minutes.
• Monument to the War of the Worlds - in 1938, a broadcast of the War of the Worlds by Orson Welles on CBS radio sparked controversy and set a few people into a panic, thinking the Martian invasion to be real. The first landing of the alien crafted was reported that night was in Grover's Mill, New Jersey. Erected at this supposed landing spot is a monument to remember the occasion, a rock slab featuring one of the tripod landing craft. Located in North/Central Jersey. Driving distance from home: 50 minutes.
• Fonthill Museum - a castle constructed at the turn of the century for the collections of Henry Mercer. It's filled with artifacts from the everyday lives of those living in the area in the 18th and 19th centuries. Costs $9 per student to get in, and it's open Monday through Saturday from 10am to 5pm. Located in Northeast Pennsylvania near Doylestown. Driving distance from home: 56 minutes.
• The Land of the Lost - a bunch of dinosaurs built out of car parts created by Jim Gary, who died in 2006. He is the only person to have a solo exhibition displayed in the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. The dinosaurs are located scattered around a yard in Central Jersey near Asbury Park. Free. Driving distance from home: 71 minutes.
• The Holmdel Horn Antenna - a twenty-foot aluminum antenna that was first used in the 1950s and 1960s to discover the origins of the universe itself: the Big Bang. The antenna is retired and is now mounted in the middle of a field and is open to the public. Driving distance from home: 86 minutes.
• Popcorn Park Zoo - a home for rescued animals in the New Jersey pinelands. Apparently it's fairly unusual and has a lot of exotic animals you wouldn't think to find here. It costs $5 and is very near the town of Double Trouble, New Jersey. It's open until 5pm every day. Driving distance from home: 80 minutes.

If we hit all of them, it'd take about six hours and a little under $40 admission. Sounds like a fun Saturday to me!

Snowpacalypse: Snow Fear

I woke up today like it was any other day. I rose from bed, brushed my teeth, took a shower, and got dressed. As usual, I flipped on the television and what confronted me was literally the most horrifying thing I've ever heard. Well, at least in the top thousand most horrifying things.

Now, what I'm about to show you, if you were a trained meteorologist, might give you a heart attack. See if you can spot what's so frightening about this PROFESSIONAL RADAR IMAGE:


It's difficult to see on the image, but there is a fairly large snowstorm on the horizon for the east coast. Gasp! Just in case you missed it, I have circled it here for your convenience:


Whoa!

Anyway, after hearing this devastating news, what did I do? Of course, as a lifelong Minnesotan, I am used to snow and ice having a presence around me for several months of the year. I should be able to simply shrug off the notion of its danger, right? But then, I'm a resident of New Jersey now. And what would a lifelong New Jerseyan do in such a situation?


Run to the nearest grocery store and panic whilst purchasing as much food and water as possible. I could be trapped in my apartment for what, almost a month at this point! After heading into the nearest Wegman's, I was greeted with chaos and panic all around me.




Frightening. At least six people were trampled in the shuffling, though the gore and bodies were mopped up before I could withdraw my camera.


This is one of the many people purchasing a shovel. Now, being from Minnesota, the idea of a homeowner owning less than three shovels terrifies me more than you could imagine.


My survival supplies. God help me.

Anyway, here's some "before" pictures so that I can keep track of some of the action.




Me looking very worried.


Stay tuned for my impending death!

UPDATE @ 11:41p
Apparently Philadelphia is already planning on declaring a state of emergency now. There's no wind outside and it's kind of scary.

Week in Review, Year in Review

So, I've been in New Jersey for a year now. Doesn't time just fly sometimes?

With that said, it's been a year of strange contradictions. As is necessary when moving to a new place, I've said a lot of goodbyes to people back home and many hellos to new faces. It can be rough sometimes; I've had higher highs than I've ever had, and most definitely been down into some low holes, but overall I have to say I've become a pretty happy person.

A lot of the time, I'm insecure about my abilities professionally, intellectually, and socially, but things around me seem to just keep confirming them to me. I shouldn't ignore this fact. Professionally, I'm charged with a great deal considering my short tenure at this position, so someone must have faith in me. Intellectually, I can't ignore all the things I don't know for long enough to realize what I do. And socially, I always feel like things are missing, like I'm not doing my best.

But lately, I've been feeling better on all fronts. I'm taking control of my job, really making myself visible and doing the best job I can to keep track of all of the work-related thought-threads running through my mind. I'm taking control of my learning, exploiting my desire to learn more by making myself keep track of the world around me and striving for the continuation of my learning. And socially, well, I've been too wrapped up in fantastic and thoughtful conversation to worry about that in the past week and a half.

Goals are good, though, and they're there for a reason. They can't be an obsession (at least not healthfully), but simply a point on the horizon that you're shooting for. My first goal is to bridle my impatience - in my eyes, one of my worst faults. Even now, I'm staring at the clock, waiting for the time to pass so that I can be, well, not here anymore. I'm always looking around the corner and anticipating rather than living in the moment. No more of that.

That said, though, I do need something to look forward to. Right now, that's the Monday trip to the zoo that I've lined up with Natalie. The bird sanctuary opened quite recently, and I'm excited to see the renovations. As Wikipedia describes:

On May 30, 2009, the Philadelphia Zoo opened the McNeil Avian center, the zoos renovation of its classic bird house. It features two species that are extinct in the wild: the Guam Rail and the Micronesian Kingfisher. A theatre presents a nine minute, 4D, movie about migration, following the migration of an animated oriel named Otis.

It probably won't top my old favorite parts of the Philadelphia zoo, namely Big Cat Falls and the Amur Leopard exhibit (the latter featuring the titular rarest cat in the world), but I'm sure it'll be up there in the rankings. Hopefully the weather holds up and all goes as planned schedule-wise!

Long Beach, New Jersey (3/21)

Ah, so today I had nothing to do. I poked around at a couple folks and it seemed they were quite busy as they tend to be, but no matter! I can certainly improvise given the right amount of desperation. And the muse struck; with the addition of the new GPS to my gadget arsenal, I could safely wander and not worry about having a repeat of last weekend. And with that, I was off.

I wandered down Route 73 and to Route 70, heading east toward the coast. I wanted to think, and I supposed that the ocean pummeling the shore was a good soundtrack for that. I was soon barreling through the pine barrens. I stopped to take a few photos, since it was pretty refreshing to see these sites in my new state. It had been awhile since I had escaped the concrete and glass of the cities and suburbs.



Anyway, it was a pretty enjoyable ride. I hadn't traveled on the state routes for very far, so it was good to head to a portion of the state that didn't enjoy an interstate pass-through. After taking two or three photos, I realized that the in-camera memory would only hold a grand total of five; a new memory card was in order. When I was nearly to the Garden State Parkway (which shoots north all the way to the New York City area from South Jersey), I noticed a plaza with a Best Buy and Target, so I pulled in. The shopping center was in a place called Manahawkin, which to me is such a ridiculous name for a city.



As you can note in that last image, those spaces were for fuel efficient or carpool cars only. I should have scolded that lady riding alone in an SUV, but I didn't care enough. I would suppose that my car fits the bill, though.

Regardless of proper parking etiquette, again I was off, heading down Route 72 toward Long Beach, New Jersey. I really didn't know that this was my destination until I got there, honestly; I just wanted to wander somewhere that involved water and sand, and a moderately long drive. The pines gave way to smaller trees, which gave way to land too soft and sandy for anything of height to grow in. A couple of bridges later and the reason for Long Beach's name became pretty evident.




In the map above, obviously, Long Beach is the super long strip of land jutting into the sea. The last photograph was taken facing west, clearly, since the mid afternoon sun was in that direction. I kept driving and eventually I got to land's end, complete with a nice public beach that was desolate thanks to the mid-forties weather.

Just the beach.

I'll keep this in mind if I find any unexploded shells.

Don't get ripped...

My shadow. I know there's a super deep thing that I can say here, but it escapes me.

Footprints and a gull.

I spent a bit of time pacing about on the beach before heading up into the city to look for something to eat. It's strange sometimes to walk around coastal cities, as everything seems to have one or several decks, and the feeling that you get when you glance oceanward and see nothing but sky over the buildings.

Familiar territory.

I'm sure they have a million of them, but this would work well on Planet Money's signs of the economic downturn.

The kind of surf shop my dad would love to see.

I walked around a bit before spotting the Wawa above, and decided that would be a pretty good option for food, since the sunset was approaching pretty quickly and I wanted something quickly. I'm not a big fan of eating in restaurants alone, anyway. So I went in and got dinner.

Yes, welcome. I hope nobody noticed the flash when I took this.

Would have been an okay food option had it not been boarded up. And by boarded I mean cardboarded.

Tasty fish.

Dinner. Only a little bit sandy. And yes, that's a scary claw of some variety!

So I ate up my sandwich while sitting on a nice log bench, waiting for the sun to sink lower and lower in the sky behind me. I watched a few guys in full body wet suits surfing for awhile, and assumed they were ridiculously cold in the ocean water. I snapped a few more shots as the night started to creep in.

A cool looking house/whatever it was.

I took a bit of video, too, though I'm sure the quality isn't that great. The soothing ocean sounds are pretty nice though, I must admit.

After it started to get darker I decided to start heading back, so I walked up to my car and marked the beach with my GPS. To my surprise, it automatically named the spot "beach", though I wanted to be a bit more specific, so I changed it anyway. Pretty impressive, though, that the little thing realized I was at the coast.

Walking back - my car's on the right side.

This was a pretty cool view, I thought.

Made me laugh on the way out, so I snapped a picture on the return trip.

I liked the name of the road.

And I arrived back home at about 8:30. A pretty good day trip, I must admit. The GPS handled everything mightily, with naught a discouraging word as I deviated from its planned trip and it had to compensate. I chatted with Adriana on the way back for a few minutes to discover she was also on the road from Duluth back to Minneapolis.

For those of you interested, the coordinates of my GPS marker are as follows: 39.649839, -74.173553

A Trip to the DMV

It finally happened today. I became an official resident of New Jersey, replacing my Minnesota license and getting new plates for my car. It was a joyous occasion, to be sure, but as anyone will tell you, the DMV isn't all that much fun.

First of all, since New Jersey has to be contradictory and unique, it's not the DMV in this state. It's the MOTOR VEHICLE COMMISSION, or MVC. It's a little ways up I-295 in a city called Mount Holly, which was fairly easy to figure out with a little cellular assistance and Google Maps. Eventually I pulled in, noted down all the information about my car, and headed in.

Oh, that reminds me. New Jersey uses a "six point" identification system, which requires you to have documentation that "adds up" to six. For instance, a birth certificate/passport is four points, an out of state license is one, and a social security card is one. It took me about an hour and a half to finally find my birth certificate this morning, but with that done, I was off.

After getting everything processed, I was given the number 94 when they were on 79. Not so bad, and it didn't take that long, about forty-five minutes at most. I got called up, and the entire process took about forty-five more minutes thanks to the computers getting screwed up for a bit, and number 106 was called before I got done. Eventually I had to take the obligatory photo for my license, my title got transferred, and I was given new license plates. It surprised me - they gave me my actual license and plates right there in the DMV.

So now I guess I'm an official resident. I have to put my plates on and get my car inspected in the next two weeks and then I'm good for another year. This is really something I should have done a long time ago...

Priorities

I've been thinking lately of goals, setting them and achieving them. I never set many goals, honestly, I just sort of float along saying "come what may". I suppose I'm handicapping myself by not allowing myself to succeed in this fashion, though of course I also can't fail. But anyway, let's set some goals, shall we?

First of all, I haven't seen the ocean in months. I believe the last time I did was taking the Cape May ferry back in early September and walking along the beach in Delaware. Thankfully, I'll probably be going to the beach in only a couple weeks with Adriana, seeing as she's never seen the ocean. This should get me off the hook for this "see the ocean in the next month" goal, but we shall see.

I need desperately to find some kind of art to hang on my walls. I'd rather avoid posters, considering it probably looks fairly messy. Just cheap, framed bits of art, maybe landscapes or cityscapes (bonus at night!) So let's see, for this goal... let's say at the end of March I need to have at least three bits art adorning my humble abode. Probably one in the bedroom, one in the foyer, and one in the living room.

I want to do more electronics work so my skills don't get rusty, especially on the programming side. Namely, I would like to grab a microcontroller (let's say Arduino because I'm impatient), an LED driver (TLC5940 is familiar) and some LEDs, perhaps RGB. Toss them on a project board, wire 'em up discretely and I've got another cool thing I can hang on the wall, or at least plug into it. If I think pretty elaborately, maybe a one color 10x10 or RGB 5x5. The latter would require five of the driver chips, which isn't too bad for a three color capability, and only about $25. Okay okay, I'll stop being all techie now and just post a bunch of pictures that a system like this could display!

Of course, it's also animated, so there's endless possibilities. Here's the template in case you want to make your own - please do and send 'em to me! (Right click, save as, open with MSPAINT and use the fill tool)

AAAAGH

Why does the east coast suck so much? There are literally no grocery stores open after midnight here. WHAT WILL I DO IF I WANT GRAPES AT 3:17AM?!

Seriously I wish there was one. I want to pick up bread and milk.

Election Results

Well, last night certainly was eventful. The results I was watching closely are below.

• Barack Obama and Joe Biden defeat John McCain and Sarah Palin for the presidency and vice-presidency of the United States of America.
• Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey retains his Senate seat over challenger Dick Zimmer.
• Senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota is locked in a recount race with challenger Al Franken. The current margin is 42%-42%, with Franken trailing by less than 600 votes.
• It appears Ted Stevens of Alaska has won his seat over Anchorage mayor Mark Begich, despite Stevens' recent felony conviction on charges of corruption. If Stevens does indeed win, it is likely that he will resign and a special election will be held within ninety days for his seat. Look out for Palin trying to take his place and burst onto the national scene.
• Michele Bachmann retains her Congressional seat for Minnesota's 6th District, defeating Elwyn Tinklenberg. The race was closer than it would have been if not for Bachmann's McCarthy-esque statements on Hardball with Chris Matthews a few weeks ago.
• John Adler defeats Chris Myers in my home Congressional district, New Jersey's 3rd. This represents a pickup in the House for the Democrats, as Adler replaces retiring Republican Jim Saxton.
• Tim Walz retains his seat as Congressman from Minnesota's 1st District, defeating Brian Davis handily.



• Arizona, Florida, and apparently California have voted to ban gay marriage within their states.
• Arkansas has voted to ban gay adoption, preventing homosexual couples from adopting children.
• Colorado overwhelmingly shoots down an amendment that would define life as beginning at the moment of fertilization within every constitutional context. This would have essentially given a day old embryo the same rights as a forty-year-old person.
• Maryland votes to allow video slot machines in certain areas within the state, with procedes being directed to the education system.
• Massachusetts denies a ballot initiative that would abolish the state income tax.
• Michigan votes to legalize medical marijuana and permit stem cell research with embryonic stem cells.
• Washington state votes to allow doctor-assisted suicide.

Overall, a mixed bag. The Stevens and Franken races have yet to be called, so I'll update this once everything comes out in the wash. Apparently the Coleman-Franken race could be awhile, though - those from Washington state who remember the governor's race a few years back know what I mean.

Thus far today at work I've been reading meltdowns from various conservative sources around the internet. One of them unironically suggested that people who don't have a job should not be able to vote.