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Awesome Report Cards

Andrew and Jonathan had their parent teacher conferences this last Friday. Both of the boys received glowing reviews from their teachers. Andrew got straight A's on his report card! Jonathan isn't graded on the 4.0 scale yet, but his report card was very good as well. Both boys have been participating in the power hour after-school program and working on their homework right after school while they are at the youth center. We have been working a lot on reading and spelling in the evenings and the hard work has been paying off. I'm very proud of my two boys and all the great effort they have put into their studies this school year. Cyndi and I are very fortunate to have two smart and hardworking kids.

Veteran's Day Marlin

I've been very busy at work lately, but even so, I decided to join my buddy Jon for some fishing on Veteran's Day. The moon was a waxing gibbous, a very good moon for wahoo fishing. We headed out from the Hagatna Boat Basin at about 6:20. We had wahoo fishing on the brain, but John Eads, Captain of the Lucky Strike said that there were marlin around, so we decided to run straight to the number 2 buoy and see if we could hook up with a marlin or some mahi mahi. We hadn't had the lines in for 10 minutes when we got the first knock down. The fish came into the spread and hit two different lures. No hook-up, but it was a great way to start out the day! We worked the buoy until Jon had drawn a clover leaf on the gps, then we headed for the coast to check out the wahoo bite. We headed in straight for the pinnacle off of double reef. There was another boat already doing laps over the pinnacle, so we headed North up the coast. We fished all the way to Urunao before we got our first wahoo strike. The fish was only on for a few seconds and missed the hook. Unfortunately, that would be our outcome for every wahoo strike that morning. Somewhere along the way, we hook a small barracuda, that Josh reeled in. Other than that, we hadn't caught another fish all morning. We decided to take a quick break and go swimming at Double Reef for about 30 minutes. The swim felt great, and afterwards we headed back out refreshed and ready to catch some fish. We worked our way all the way up to Ritidian again without so much as a nibble on any of our lines. We started heading back South, when John Eads comes in from the number 2 buoy and catches a wahoo on the inside at Ritidian Point. He also mentioned that he caught three mahi and a small marlin out by number 2 as well. After hearing that, we made one more run back up the coast to Ritidian with the hopes of picking up a wahoo. When we got to Ritidian, and again had no strikes, we decided to head offshore and go marlin fishin in the deep blue waters of the Philippine Sea. We decided to run a line from Ritidian to number 2. We were about a mile into our run when the first marlin of the day hooked up. He came in close and nailed Rodney Jr. running on the starboard flat line. He was taking out a lot of line from the 12/0 senator and I slowed the boat a little. Then he started coming straight at the boat! I sped up again to get the slack out of the line, but it was too late. A few seconds later, he spit the hook. While we were all standing there in dismay, we look to the back of the boat, and there is another marlin all lit up in neon blue swimming right behind one of the lures that was dangling at the back of the boat. We quickly put the boat in gear and let the lines out with the hopes that the marlin would go after the lure. No hook up, so we continued on towards number 2. About an hour later, we're all yanked from near boredom when the starboard flat line gets yanked. Fish is immediately off and makes a bee-line for the port rigger. Then nothing but that sweet sound, zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz, as the line goes screaming out of the 50w. Next thing ya know we have a pissed off marlin jumping behind the boat. We put one of the guys that Jon brought along on the reel and had him go to work. Reelin in a marlin, even a small one, is no easy task. Check out the agony on his face in the second picture above, it says it all! About 15 minutes later, we had the marlin at the side of the boat. Jon was able to wrestle the lure out of the bill and after a few pictures we revived the fish and released it. At that point we decided to call it a day, and pulled the lines and ran in to the Boat Basin. What a great way to end a long day of fishing!

Underwater Earthquake

This past Sunday, Cyndi, Andrew, Jonathan, and our friends Ken, Beth took the Rod Bender up to Double Reef for an afternoon on the water. I brought my speargun, and while we were there I did a little spearfishing. While I was stalking some Mu, and was almost laying on the bottom at about 40 feet, all the fish scattered. A second later, I was startled out of my wits by the loudest sound I have ever heard underwater. It was a very violent sound, like something was exploding. At first I thought that it was a large boat or ship. But I was very close to the reef and it came on very suddenly. The sound was so intense, I could feel it in my chest. I looked up and all around and didn't see anything. I surfaced very slowly, looking in each direction to make sure I was not about to get hit by a boat. I surfaced and there was nothing in sight. No boats, no explosions, nothing but my boat and family about 200 yards away. It was at that point that I figured that it was an earthquake. I asked everyone else if they had experienced the loud vibrations, and with the exception of Ken, nobody else had heard or felt anything. When we got home later that evening, I checked the news online, and what da ya know, there was a 5.1 earthquake off the coast of Guam. Truly a unique experience.

Debian 4.0 r5, OpenOffice.org 3.0

For the past few years I have pretty much used macs on a day to day basis for my computing needs. I think right now, Macs are the best choice for most home users. They are powerful and very easy to use. I will probably never switch full time to another OS other than Mac Os X. I recently set my Windows XP machine up in order to sync my BlackBerry Curve with Mobile Me. I have the Blackberry syncing with mobile me via Microsoft Outlook. So far it is working pretty good.

Just for kicks and to refresh my linux skills, I decided to setup a linux box. I downloaded a copy of the latest Debian distribution and installed it on a quad-core intel box that I picked up from my friend Ed at work. Its a pretty new system, he purchased it in the last year or so, but in the mean time he also purchased an iMac and is now a never-lookin-back switcher. Its only got a gig of ram right now, but Debian screams on it. I will probably drop another gig in to maximize performance. I am having fun hacking at the command line again, and now that I have a linux box up and running I will start using it to write some code and do some web development. Its nice to be able to test your web sites on a linux box every now an then to make sure that they view correctly on some alternate browsers.

I have also installed OpenOffice.org 3.0 on both my Windows XP machine and my 24" iMac. I am downloading it for linux as I write this post. I am planning on putting it through it's paces over the next month or so and I will write a review of my experiences with it. My review will focus on usability, cross-platform compatibility, and MS Office compatibility. So far, I have been impressed with the clean interface and the robust functions...more to come later.