It has been almost two years since the divas were split up -- Gail works on JavaFX and I work on Cloud Services. I have been thinking about starting a new blog ever since, and I finally got around to doing it. From now on, I will be posting at altocirrus.wordpress.com. In addition to talking about NetBeans, Ruby, and Rails, I will be getting into cloud applications and other bits of cloud information that I come across.

- diva#2

After several years of going back and forth between the mainland and Hawaii, we decided to make the Big Island our permanent home. It was hard saying a final goodbye to my California friends, but it will nice being able to spend more time with the friends I have made here.

If there are any Java or Ruby user groups on the Big Island, please post a comment and let me know.

Nenes

Puako Sunset

These humpbacks were spotted off of Kaiopae Point north of Kawaihae Harbor. If you ever do any whale watching on the Big Island, I highly recommend Eye of the Whale Adventures. Beth Goodwin has been following whales or over 26 years and really knows her stuff.

While on the tour, they played a live feed of the male whales singing. Awsome! To listen, go to Jupiter Research Foundation's page. You can hear the feed until late May.

Kalahikiola Church

The October 2006 quake of 6.7 magnitude toppled and damaged many historical buildings, including this community church. It might take up to $3 million to restore this historical monument, which has been operational since it was built in 1855.

Bufo marinas

The photo hunt theme this week is "gross" and I had not come up with any good ideas for the theme. Then I came upon this big fellow today. I believe he is a Cane Toad, also known as Marine Toad. In Hawaii the toad is called "Poloka." These toads have toxic secretions that will ooze from glands on their neck if they feel threatened. About 50 dogs a year die from mouthing the toad. It is rumored that secretions are hallucinogenic, but you might end up with tongue fungus.

Anaeho’omalu Bay

In 1978 the green turtle was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. They seem to be making a comeback, because I usually stumble upon a few warming themselves on the sand whenever I take a stroll on the beach.

I finally got a chance to visit the Getty Museum in Los Angeles over the Christmas holidays. Fortunately, we were there during the sunset, which gave the buildings wonderfully warm hues. Getty's memory now lives on in his desire for the diffusion of visual arts.

Ok, so we've been tagged. If you don't know what it means to be tagged, please read James Branam's most excellent description of Internet tagging. Here are five things about us that we haven't previously shared:

• Gail's first real job out of college was working as a journalist on a small-town paper. She covered the school and police beats. Chris did it backwards. She didn't graduate until she was fifty. Her first job at 15 was doing the payroll in her family's swimming pool business.
  
  
• Gail confesses to being a John Grisham fan and is currently reading his latest book The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town. Amazingly coincidental, Chris has the same book on her MP3 player and is listening to it during her noon walks.
  
  
• Gail swam in a fjord in Norway. The water was darn cold. Chris looks forward to swimming with the turtles in Kiholo bay, which she will be doing on a regular basis starting next week.
  
  
• Gail has written to the same penpal in Germany for more than 35 years. Chris rode on a train through Germany.
  
  
• Gail has visited every major alligator farm in the United States and has seen all 25 living species of crocodiles and alligators. Chris used to live without phone or electricity in a log cabin one mile off a dirt road.

And while we're at it, we might as well fess up to the fact that we're wearing wigs in our picture on the Java Studio Creator Blogs page.

We hereby tag the following people: Jennifer Ball, David Botterill, John 'JB' Brock, Joseph Silber, and Marina Sum

Note: A little investigating shows that we came into this game on the tail end. As of 1/10/07, a search on blogs.sun.com for "5 things" turns up 2,150 results. There are 2,781 blogs. Of course, not all of the search results are related to this meme, but there are probably also entries in this game that don't have "5 things" in the title. We can assume that this virus is spreading even faster than the Norovirus that wiped me out last week. Climbing up through the ancestor tree, I discovered that the closest common ancestor we have with Jonathan Schwartz is Tim Bray.

I took this picture on January 31, 2005. We had had several weeks of non-stop rain and that day was the first time it had let up. Having been cooped up for weeks, we jumped at the opportunity to take a drive and scope out the swollen rivers. The lovely little valley where I took this picture and been so under water that a pre-school's playground equipment was nested up in the trees.

I am using Photo Hunters as an excuse to post my photographs. They provide a theme each week. This week's theme is new. I think it will be fun to try and meet each week's challenge.