Random Thoughts – A Darker View

Solid Rock is Not Forever

Living with active volcanoes, one gets to see new landforms appear regularly. The landscape can get rearranged with little notice, with places I once visited buried under new rock. In my time living on Hawai’i, I have seen roads, bays and tide pools, and entire neighborhoods disappear under new lava. Watching new land created by these flows of liquid rock is mesmerising.

The 61G lava flow ocean entry at Kamokuna under the light of a full Moon

The opposite is also true around here, sometimes prominent landforms are erased by the actions of flowing water, or the incredible power of wind and wave.

Thus we bid farewell to the Hōlei Sea Arch, cast into the sea by the heavy surf generated by Hurricane Nolo.

The arch was one of the features of Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park found along Chain of Craters Road. Featured on park maps and served by a viewpoint and interpretive signs, thousands of tourists have stood atop the cliff to admire what waves had sculpted from the jagged black sea cliffs.

Those same waves have erased what they carved. Sometime around September 27th, the arch fell into the sea. Apparently, no one witnessed its fall, there are no Facebook posts or YouTube videos of falling rock. All we have are before and after photographs. This is understandable as the park was closed during the hurricane.

I last visited the arch over a year ago, travelling the park with my parents. It had been noticeably eroded by the waves, appearing much thinner around the base than on previous visits. It was only a matter of time.

Hōlei Sea Arch and the sea cliffs along the southeastern coast of Hawai'i — Hōlei Sea Arch and the sea cliffs along the southeastern coast of Hawai’i in 2025

Throw me Away

Cleaning out an entire business operation has led to a few discoveries.

Hidden caches of tools, bottles of unknown substances, pieces of strange equipment that even I struggle to identify, and so much trash… All of the stuff a couple dozen employees leave behind in five years of a busy algae-growing operation.

This included a stack of five laptop computers, two Macs and three pc’s. So one evening I handed off the Macs to my wife to check while I diagnosed the pc’s.

One Mac is toast, a cracked screen and damaged case, clearly dropped at some point. Checking the model and vintage, we find it is not worth the effort to fix… One for the bin. The second Mac is questionable, with a flaky charge port and dodgy WiFi.

The pc’s? One, a very low-end HP model seems fine.

The second machine, a more promising-looking Lenovo IdeaPad that is only a couple of years old. Opening the machine, stuck beside the trackpad, I find a bright yellow sticky note with large, friendly letters written in Sharpie… “Throw me Away”.

Hmmm… Maybe not.

Well? The machine boots easily enough, screen, keyboard, and trackpad are working just fine. I am presented with the login screen for an employee who left the company over a year ago. I cannot go further, Windows and the drive are locked down pretty hard.

This is not a real concern, I really do not want another Windows machine. I downloaded the latest version of Ubuntu and set up a USB drive. The machine boots just fine into Linux off the thumb drive. It took some command-line futzing and a fair amount of AI assistance to find the right Linux commands to wipe the hard drive. I cleared the encrypted Windows partitions and configured an Ubuntu install.

After waiting for Ubuntu to install, I found I have an operational laptop that seems to be in pretty good shape. I wonder… why the doomed sticky note? Was it the lockdown and encrypted drive that stopped anyone from re-using the machine?

Well? I need a reliable work machine, and Windows has become increasingly unacceptable over the years, time to get serious about Linux. I peel off the yellow sticky note and follow the instructions… I throw it away.

The Futility of Going Home

I had not been back for over four decades.

My parents sold my childhood home shortly after I joined the Air Force in the mid 1980’s. They abandoned the suburbs and bought a very nice home in the city, which they still own today. It is this home I stay in when visiting Portland. For four decades, this is now “home” in many ways, but not the house I grew up in.

My childhood house is still there, along Sunrise Lane in the far southwest of the Portland metro area. This is the home featured in childhood memories spent roaming deep forests and neglected orchards. A green childhood of trees, sheep and chickens, endless mowing, picking blackberries and plums, or wandering a wonderland created by another ice storm.

Hurricane Lala

Lala was not our first hurricane.

After two decades of island life, we have been through a few hurricanes. In general, our location on the island, in the lee of a 13,802ft mauna, has protected us from the worst. Stiff winds and heavy rain from some, while a couple of hurricanes have passed with blue skies and almost no wind for those of us in the lee.

Lala was not our first hurricane, but it was the most serious yet.

A wee bit late to work…

The usual morning run, cruising down the Queen Kaʻahumanu highway to Kona and work. Running chill, with the tunes on and a beautiful day for a drive.

Repairing a flat tire — Repairing a Flat Tire

The polite but also very rude chime of the tire pressure alarm annouces a bit of trouble.

The tire pressure is down into worrisome territory and dropping lower as I watch. I pull over and confirm, the rear passenger side tire is indeed losing pressure. Closer to home than work I turn around and limp back to the house.

Salmon Roast

Roasting salmon over open coals in a traditional manner

Greenwaste Run

One county service I make good use of is the local greenwaste facility. A well practiced routine… load it up, tarp it down, and off.

Another load off to the county green-waste facility.

Happy 4th of July

Fireworks over Palm Trees — A fireworks display over the coconut palms of the Fairmont Orchid resort

The state just enacted some stiff new penalties for illegal fireworks, effective immediately. This is in response to a really bad explosion at a house on Oahu last year that left a couple local families greiving. Wondering if this will have any real effect on the huge amount of illegal fireworks that get lit in our neighborhood for the 4th and New Years.

A Productive Weekend

I usually try to accomplish something each weekend, something I can look back upon and tell myself I did not waste my days off.

A pot roast assembled and starting to simmer, dinner in eight hours!!

This weekend I accomplished a bit more than usual.

I did start the weekend with a fairly long todo list, one that still has unfinished business despite a good run at it. And, of course, a couple more items got added to the list as the weekend progressed.

Yet Another Hurricane

It has been a wet weekend here as yet another hurricane makes a swipe at the island.

This has meant over an inch of rain and some strong winds at the house. A pair of 14,000ft mauna between us and the oncoming storms has worked as usual.

The windward side took the brunt of the storm, but this was a marginal hurricane. In general there have been no major impacts on the island beyond some localized flooding in the usual places and downed trees blocking roads.

I did deploy a new rain gauge this weekend, just in time for the deluge. An electronic tipping bucket of my own design that seems to be operating quite nicely.

Hurricane Hone passing south of the islands bringing wind and heavy rain the the Island of Hawaii on August 25, 2024