Philip Fibiger

I feel like something really cool could be done with this, but right now I don’t have any great ideas.

I read a couple of interesting news articles this morning. First, it seems that the US military made a pretty big tactical mistake during the battle at Tora Bora, and bin Laden escaped. I’d be very happy if this war came to an end (although I understand that it’s not going to, at least not in the foreseeable future), and this seems like a huge missed opportunity.

Also, I thought this piece on a new VW that gets 235mpg was pretty cool. While I still think that fuel cells and other alternate forms of energy production will be our long term solution, it’s nice to see a company taking the current technology a step (and in this case, a big step) forward. This thing gets between three and fives times the fuel economy of the honda insight, and seems to hold about as many people and as much stuff. As cool as this technology is, I’m not ready for it, and it’s not ready for me. I still want a vintage sports car as my next vehicle, and I can’t see myself moving to a car with lesser performance than my current car. When this technology can be applied (maybe to a slightly less radical end) to high performance cars, I’ll wait in line!

My family’s been visiting, and it has been a week of natural and man-made wonders. I spent friday at Disneyland with Emily, my parents, and my aunt and uncle. It was awesome (and a bit surprising) that when asked if he had any suggestions on what to do on Friday, my uncle suggested Disneyland. It’s pretty similar to Disneyworld, I recognized most of the rides, although the last time i’d been there it had been viewed through the eyes of a six year old. So when my uncle asked me how long Space Mountain lasts, I replied “I think about 10 minutes.” Of course, it was over in about one.

On saturday we went to the La Brea tar pits. The statues outside in the lake were lame, but the museum was cool, and the sites where it was just tar bubbling up from the ground were amazing. There was a tree in the park that was sitting on a pool of tar, and it had sucked the tar up through the roots. There were places four or five feet up the trunk where the fresh tar was oozing out of the bark of the tree, and it had adapted. The fact that this tree was still living just blew my mind.

Sunday we went for a hike in Leo Carillo state park in Malibu. Passing hikers said ’some people we ran into said they saw two rattlesnakes, but we didn’t see any.’ Of course about 400 yards down the trail, There was a rattlesnake sunning itself in the middle of the trail. We made enough noise that it eventually slithered off into the bushes, but it certainly took it’s own sweet time. It was tense for a few moments, but never really frightening. I had my camera in my pocket, and never thought to take a picture. We saw another, larger snake (probably a rattlesnake, but it was further away and I couldn’t tell for sure) crossing the trail on the way back.

Oh, I collected a bunch of tadpoles and i’m going to try to grow some frogs.

We went to the San Diego Zoo this past weekend. It was really nice, the zoo was a lot cleaner and well maintained than the LA Zoo, and generally had a better collection. Emily maintains that the LA Zoo had better monkeys. The giant pandas were definitely the highlight of the visit, and well worth the 5 minute wait in line to check them out. I took a few pictures of animals during the visit.

I saw Mark Kozelek at the House of Blues. The show was a lot of fun, his voice sounded great..it seemed like most of the audience was there to see The Church, and as a result, was inattentive and inconsiderate while Mark was playing.

Wow. Today was officially my last day at (well, 50 minutes ago it was still today) Colonize.com. It was fun, I enjoyed my work, but it’s time to move on. I’m excited about my new job although as with most things unfamiliar, it’s a little intimidating. Wish me luck.