I Love Me Some Raw Fish.

So this past week 's been pretty all over the place, I went to a Cage the Elephant concert, grabbed some conveyor belt sushi, built a beer pong table, and did some deep sea fishing.

So if you didn't know, Cage the Elephant is a band. Some guy Rob works with got tickets to see them at Aloha Tower - which is about a block from where I'm staying - so we went! They were just OK live, but still, live concerts are always fun, and this one was no exception. Sadly, you couldn't get up to the stage without a VIP ticket, which cost like double the normal price. Luckily: the lead singer from the bad didn't like this fact, and made the security guys let people through. I gladly jumped the divider and got my butt to the stage. The show wound up being really fun, and I learned that Matt Shultz - the lead singer - is really into crowd surfing.

It's a crappy photo - just like any other picture taken on a cell phone at a concert - but at least it shows how close I managed to get

Next up is conveyor belt sushi. Now, I've seen conveyor belt sushi on TV before, so I was super stoked to try this place out. Naturally, it was everything I could've hoped for. The place is all you can eat, so naturally we stuffed our faces until we couldn't anymore. Healthy? No. Awesome? You betcha.

Before Mass Consumption: excited and trying out my best Asian tourist impression!

After Mass Consumption: A total of 61 plates and 3 bowls. This picture shows my fellow diners and I trying not to puke on each other.

On to the new table! So Rob and Lindy have been installing new doors around their apartment, and when we were done there was this 8-foot sheet of plywood and some trim left over. I immediately suggested we build a sweet new beer pong table, and my wonderful hosts concurred. Rob and I ran out to get some spray-paint and varnish, and after some staining and taping, a table was born.

- I think this is the part where I mention that I'm 21, and that this blog neither supports nor condones the consumption of alcohol in any irresponsible or underage fashion. I sincerely encourage all readers of this blog to drink responsibly and obey all applicable drinking laws. -

Now look at the table we made! It came out awesome!

I got to paint the Islands in the Middle!

And finally: deep sea fishing. While Lindy went to some stupid baby shower (lame), Rob and I joined a bunch of his shipmates for a deep-sea fishing expedition. We got up at 4:30 to go, so naturally, I slept for the majority of the trip (I am in no way, shape, or form what you might call a "morning person"). I was, however, awake long enough to catch the biggest mahi-mahi of the day and a tasty little yellow-fin tuna.

Almost all the fish we caught for the day. There was one more tuna - but we cut it up on the boat and ate it all sashimi-style. Pretty much the freshest sushi you can get.

As you can see here: mine's bigger. I attribute this to the fact that I'm awesome.

So that's about it for that week. Work's been pretty cool, but I'm not so sure I can talk about a lot of the things I've been doing on the internet. Navatek's pretty far ahead of the curve in terms of CFD and funky hydrodynamic hull shapes, and they've been pretty willing to show me whatever I want to see.

Leter today my girlfriend, Cait, is getting in from California. She's spending a few days here, and I'm sure we'll be doing the full out Hawaiian tourist thing, so check back for photos and stories about all of Hawaii's biggest attractions.

Let's get up to speed...

So when we last left the tale of Steve in Honolulu I had just got back from hiking up Koko Head Crater. The next weekend we all went out to Waikiki for Rob's friend Joe's birthday. It was pretty fun, we ate dinner at some cheeseburger place, and then tried to find a Karaoke bar so we could make Joe perform what I'm told is an expert rendition of *NSync's timeless classic, "Bye Bye Bye." The only bar we found was a total dive, and - much to everyone's dissapointment - Joe wasn't feeling it.

If we had gotten him to sing, I imaging it would have been something like this. Except Joe is a 6'5" Junior Naval Officer who a number of people refer to as "Grizz" due to some similarities with a Grizzly Bear. Obviously, we all missed out.

The next day we did some snorkeling and attempted some spearfishing, but there were no fish, so we were pretty unsuccessful. We did, however, spend a nice day at the beach, so that was cool.

Last weekend we thought we'd go check out the North Shore a little bit to grab some lunch from one of the famous Hawaiian Shrimp trucks and see some surf. I don't have any pictures of the actual beach, because I only used my film camera and I'm bad about getting things developed. I do, however, have these:

Here's the Shrimp Truck we went to.While to shrimp scampi is the more classic of their dishes, I opted for the "Spicy Plate." The girl working warned me "are you sure? It's like, really spicy." Naturally, I only took this as a challenge, and proceeded to burn my entire mouth.

Then we got shave ice at Hawaii's famous "Matsumoto's Shave Ice." SO MANY FLAVORS.

Then we stopped at Turtle Beach on the way home. Which is exactly what it sounds like.

And finally, here's a picture I took on the way home. Nothing too special here, just a sunset.

So It's Been a While...

So my laptop battery broke, and I've been pretty bad about staying on top of this blog lately. Sorry to anyone who came here hoping for frequent updates, I promise at least one a week from here on out, if not more. Lets get started on fixing my procrastination:

I guess I'll start with the weekend of January 21st. I got my first chance to dive in Hawaii (I'm pretty into SCUBA, for anyone who didn't already know), it was pretty cool. It was a beach dive off "Electric Beach," aptly named after the power plant located just across the street. The cooling water runoff for the power plant empties about a hundred feet off-shore, so a quick snorkel gets you to the end of the line. With all the warm water pouring out, there's plenty of coral growth, and the dive was awesome in spite of some choppy conditions. I'm sorry I don't have any pictures, I forgot to steal my dad's underwater housing before I left in January. But don't worry, there was a lot of surge, and I'm terrible at underwater photography. You're not missing anything. Promise.

The next weekend - the weekend of the 27th - we went for a hike up Oahu's Koko Head Crater. Basically, there's a decent sized crater on the southeast end of the island where - during World War II - there was a bunker housing a radio communications center with a small railroad track up the side for equipment transport. Nowadays, people hike up the unused tracks to the long-since abandoned peak. The tracks themselves are pretty dull - basically just a long set of stairs - so we hiked up the other side of the crater and along the ridge. Here's some pictures:

Here's a view of the crater from the base. Not the hardest hike in the world, but it gets a little steep here and there.

Once we got to the rim of the crater, I took this picture of the hollow and the peak on the other side. This started our walk around the rim, with some stupidly steep drops on both sides of the path. This was where the hike started to get cool.

This ledge seemed like a cool place for a picture. Here's me with Lindy, one half of the Webbie couple that was kind (and maybe stupid) enough to take me in for a few months. If you look for the little point to the left of the peak in the previous photo, that's the ledge we're sitting on.

Here's something weird I learned on my hike: despite Hawaii's tropical climate, some of the peaks on the south side of Oahu are arid enough to grow cacti. The cactus to the left is one of the bigger ones we found, the photo on the right is a cactus flower, which is surprisingly cool looking in person.

Here's me at the Peak. Welcome to Hawaii...

The original railroad tracks headed down from the outpost at the top. Not unlike the old greenhouses next-door to Webb, old derelict railroad tracks are pretty cool, in a spooky-weird kind of way.

One of the sketchiest railroad platforms I've ever seen. And that's coming from someone who's transferred at Jamaica after midnight.

And of course: the stairs down the west side of the crater. Definitely not as fun as the back-side.

Other than that, things have been great! Work's pretty cool, I've been doing some basic hydrostatics work and material estimates for a few designs. Nothing incredibly interesting to talk about, but the sort of stuff that's fun to play with. I've spent most weeknights out with Rob and Lindy and friends from Rob's ship in Chinatown and Waikiki, bar hopping and generally acting like the responsible and respectable role models we are.

So that about covers that week here in Honolulu. I'll probably post right up to date tomorrow, that way I can say I'm back on track with this blog. Sorry again for taking so long to post, I got a little too busy enjoying Hawaii.

So Here I am in Hawaii...

So I may have forgotten to start blogging when I first landed in Hawaii, but I'm here now so here goes nothing! I guess I might as well fill in the past two weeks...

So I landed in Honolulu 2ish weeks ago - Tuesday the 3rd, if you want to get specific - and started work the next day. I've been living with a few friends of mine, Lindy and Rob, both Webb alums I went to school with my freshman year.

Work's been pretty fun; I've already had a bunch of projects tossed my way - some cooler than others - and Navatek seems to trust me to do a pretty good job on things, which is awesome. There's a bunch of cool things being built in the yard, and I've already done some hydrostatics stuff on a boat so that we can install this on it, and I've been doing a bunch of cost analysis work for one of the company's latest concepts, the BLB-160. I'm not exactly sure how much private company stuff I'm allowed to publish on the internet, so I'll just leave those links to Navatek's site for now.

Outside of work, Hawaii is awesome. It hasn't dropped below 70 degrees here since I arrived, and the weather is amazing every day. I'm staying in downtown Honolulu, and I ride my bike (like 3 miles) to work every day. Chinatown's just a few blocks away, and there's a bunch of bars and pubs and restaurants over there, which is awesome when we don't feel like cabbing it down to Waikiki (the real touristy, nightlife-scene part of the city). Last weekend we went out for Chinese New Year, and then we headed to the Marine Corp Base on the north end of the island for some camping (Rob's in the Navy - having a friend with a military ID has it's little perks). Driving accross the island was awesome, Oahu's supposed to be the least lush and pretty of the Hawaiian islands, and if that's true then the other islands have to be friggin' extraordinary. We're supposed to go hiking this weekend, I'll try and take some rad pictures and throw 'em up in my next post.

So yeah, I guess that's all for right now. Say tuned for more frequent updates, and cheers from Hawaii!