Back To School

Feels so nice to be back in school .. suddenly feeling i'm 15 yrs younger...coming back from Microsoft with lotsa old ppl (where most ppl are in their 40s-50s)... talk nothing but techie stuff or company hierarchy and politics... to a place with 80% students 20 and below.. young and full of enthu. Its so refreshing to find so much energy back again in the atmosphere!!

Time and again I have felt it would be so nice to be in a univ than any of the top 10 from the Forbes' list... just wonder why Forbes doesn't consider univs!! (more importantly .. designation of grad students ;) ). Of course .. that does not go to say that I didn't enjoy my time at one of the top companies from the list.. I loved all the free unlimited drinks .. thats never to be found at univs...I did enjoy my own room (guess MS is one of the few companies that provides private 10 x 10 x10 offices.. for all full time employees.. and some lucky interns like me!) where I could surf the whole day .. and be very productive and efficient in deciding the best place to visit the following weekend!!

I should appreciate and thank MS for all the time and infrastructure they provided me for planning and executing all these visits and even more so for paying me to do all this!!... I visited a few places around.. Mt Rainier, Mt St Helens, Mt Hood, Olympic National Park(Hoh rain forest, hurricane ridge, lake crescent etc), Yellowstone National Park, Redwood National Park, Oregon Sand Dunes National Recreation Area, Crater lake, downtowns of San Francisco, Portland and ofcourse Seattle... Columbia River Gorge (lotsa waterfalls including Multnomah), snoqualmie falls, silverlake falls, beaches in Oregon and CA!!!! and some of them twice .. so that I could take Ramya around when she was there on a free trip sponsored by MS!!! Not only visiting these places.. but also drafting most of this blog abt these places, organizing all pics taken at these places and even making a map of places visited!! So herez the map...(its interactive just in case u r interested in the details)



PS: btw, I also worked on and in fact completely owned a component for correcting some broken power management system of USB devices on Vista and my code is going to ship in a month.. and be running for sure on more than 50 million Vista users with updates enabled.. and further down on lots more in Vista SP1!! MS rocks!!!!!!!

The Other Face

There is more to yellowstone than just hot springs.. there is the famous yellowstone canyon, there are plains and waterfalls! Some snaps of the other face of yellowstone:

Yellowstone Canyon

Lower Waterfall

Upper Waterfall

Yellowstone River Basin

Do remember the small herd of animals in the corner of this pic.. u'll see more about them later..

Travertine Terraces

Undoubtedly the BEST feature of Yellowstone national park.. is the travertine terrace of mammoth hot springs.. Its so attractive .. that every person who explored this feature in the early 1800's has named it his own way.. some call it the main terrace or upper terraces.. some call it the canary springs, some call it travertine terraces...

All of this is formed by underground water table getting heated by parts of dormant yellowstone volcano.. and the rising steam dissolving lots of calcium carbonate on its way up.. The mineral rich boiling water that flows out.. quickly deposits calcium carbonate forming grand marble laid terraces.. generously painted from the palette of colorful thermophiles (micro organisms that use the heat energy of hot water as their source of energy!), filamentous algae and cyanobacteria. The result is strikingly unique!!.. Enough of desciption.. is what u would be saying by now.. result is here for u to see... Click on the pics to get the best view

Celebrating Independence Day with Colors from Yellowstone

Chosen colors (tricolor) from yellowstone hot springs to celebrate 60th Indian Independence Day..These might not be the best out there but is perfectly suited for the occasion. Also note that these springs at Norris, Yellowstone are extremely dynamic.. so, may be... it was shedding just the right colors to celebrate Aug 15th!!!

Saffron, White and Green .. jai hind! :)

Reflective Splendor II

Just want to make sure that I post most of the "ordinary" stuff before posting anything from the "Palette of Thermophiles" coz I am sure once I start posting the range of colors from Yellowstone hot water springs ppl would lose taste for any such reflection photography.

Weather was just perfect for a visit to this huge park that requires you to walk atleast about 20 miles on boarwalks and mountain trails by the end of the day.... Bright day... clear sky... temperature in high 50's (about 10-15 deg C ...finally got used to the 'F' scale :) )... all in all, a wonderful day and place for nature photography.

An ice cap on that would have definitely added to the beauty of it.. but its too much to ask for .. on a day as beautiful as this.. in mid Aug.. The best time to get snow covered mountains here would probably be some time in mid june.. but then .. u never know what impact the snow and lower temperatures would have on the color of the thermophiles in the hot springs! Btw the park is closed from early Nov to late Apr due to inclement weather and excessive snowing.

The waters of Swan lake where the moutains were reflected were not half as clear as the rest of the springs in yellowstone, but the view was splendid!!

1800..

...miles in less than 46 hrs.... thats the distance I drove during this weekend..

Some more details and facts:

i) Where to ?

Yellow Stone National Park, Wyoming

ii) How far ?

790 miles to the northern entrance (the nearest one).. about 160 miles loop inside the park.. one time zone away :)

iii) How long a drive ?

12 hour drive each way ... Thanks to long stretches of uninhabited regions in eastern WA and large parts of Montana...where I was the only guy within visible range of about 20 miles radius...( more importantly..no cop ;) ) ... This was shortened to 11 hrs each way...more on this later...

iv) How long was the visit ?

15 hours spent at the park(including driving in the loop).

v) Why only Yellow Stone ?

• coz ...believe it or not ...therez only one Yellow Stone in this entire universe!! :)
• coz its a scenic wonder,
• A large natural chemistry lab, geology lab and microbiology lab.. all squeezed into a forest
  
• A wildlife forest (I mean it.. u do see "wild" life... not dogs. period.)
• A photographer's paradise with colors from out of this world.. (or should i say from inside the earth ?)
• Its US' first (always interpreted as world's first by ppl here) national park, established in 1872.
• It has lakes, mountains, river, canyon, water falls, wild life and above all some of the most colorful hot water springs and natural geysers!
  

If there were any better place within drivable distance .. I mean less than 3 days of drive!! I would have chosen that instead!!

(the start and title look similar ? but I have been innovative.. I have been creative in coming up with my own style of writing and my own different title!! u see .. all the numbers are different in my case.. If u feel thats absurd.. you can check this video or this.)

For pics .. check out the next few posts..

Picturesque

Quite some time now since I posted anything lush green..a picturesque landscape... after all thats what is "at its best" all over WA... wall paper stuff is what I am referring to here..You would be surprised to know that most of windows wall papers (infact almost all Vista wall papers) come from either Washington or Oregon state. Most of coastal pictures are from Oregon while anything green u see are from WA. Here are two such pics .. basically my attempts to get atleast my own wall paper.. first from WA and second from OR coast... the second one is currently my Vista wall paper.. coz I luv its simplicity

Flying Colors - Last Edition

In continuation of an earlier post (!camoflauge) featuring how the colors of butterflies make them distinctly visible on any background and hence easy to spot for a quick pic...

And finally .. to let you know that butterflies are not always colorful. On a day, not as lucky as the ones on which the first two were taken, u could find this... transparent, colorless one!!

Grizzly Bear

Grizzly Bear - the special native of western US.