Puffy is dead

Monday morning we thought Puffy was dead, but he wasn't, he was just really sick and motionless. My coworker Tatiana and I almost had a heart attack when he jumped at us when we tried to scoop his lifeless body out of the tank. He came down with a fungal infection what biologists scientifically call "ich" (pronounced 'ick')

I got him some medicine and tank conditioner but it was too late, he died Tuesday morning, God rest his soul. I have pictures but they are too disturbing and makes me cry :(. He turned black and had what looked like lint all over his body. I'm thinking that "roommate" had something to do with his and steve's death. Apparently "roommate" couldn't stand the guilt of being a serial-fish-murderer and committed suicide on Thursday morning.

Today my coworker Kim helped me clean out the tank really well (tank probably killed all three) and I put some tank conditioner in the water. I'll go back to Crystal Cove in Murrieta sometime next week after the tank gets all nice and conditioned, and get another poor soul puffer and see if he can live longer than a week.

Puff Daddy aka Puffy

DSC_0035, originally uploaded by jonathanerichall.

Meet my new fish, Puff Daddy. Puff Daddy is a Spotted Leopard Freshwater Puffer, and he's diggin his new home, freshly cleaned from when Steve ate the big one.

Salt water puffers are my second favorite fish, so I thought since they dont make freshwater girabaldis, why not go for it.

Probably the only one not happy about Puffy moving in is his roomate, who we've always called roomate. The fish guy at the fish store said that puffers like to peck at fins, so we'll see whos faster, roomie or puffy. My money is on puffy, hes my man.

Awesome T-Shirt

You can buy one at www.TShirtHell.com

Steve is dead.

Steve is dead, originally uploaded by jonathanerichall.

1:24pm on Thursday June 14, 2007.

Oooh Stevie boy, the (sewer) pipes, the pipes are caaa-aaaa-ling.

For all those who don't know, Steve was given to me by my coworker Kim for my last birthday, see the post here. Just recently my boss Jessica upgraded his digs to a sweet self contained aquarium with a filter, read about that here. Today he started swimming on his side and tried to commit suicide by jumping out of the aquarium. We moved him to a new bowl with fresh clean water but it was too late, Steve started swimming to the bright light.

He's sort of our office's mascot, and will be missed. :(

Vacation Part I: Laughlin, Nevada

So what seems like 10 years ago, I invited my buddies to go with me to Casino night at my school, Cal State San Marcos. The previous time I got pissed because I went "broke" and they wouldn't give me any more money, but the money dude didn't have a problem giving out loads of cash to his buddies. So this last time, we came prepared. Needless to say we cheated our asses off, even stealing a few hundred "fake" bucks that turned into many raffle tickets. Mikael put his tickets into the "Weekend in Laughlin" "Grand" prize. I put "Grand" in quotes because actually the trip was worth $40 bucks and the iPod or Xbox was a way better prize.



So a year later we finally take advantage of the free weekend (last 2 days it was valid) and went to laughlin. Mikael, Aaron and I met up with my roommate Kristi, my sister, Luke, Leah, and Sam.



The trip was fun, lots of drinking(1 straw per drink: see above), gambling, and swimming in the ice cold river. The highlight of the trip was going scuba diving with Kristi's dad who lives in Bullhead. Aaron and I had brought our gear and tanks and Mikael woss'ed out and spent the day with luke on his new boat. Kristi's Dad had heard about a Bus and a Van that someone sank into the river, but had not found them yet.

Right away Aaron, Kristi's Dad and I found the bus. Below is a picture of me driving the bus! EXACT CHANGE ONLY!!!!!



Seconds after finding the bus we found the van not too far away:



After finding the bus and van we walked across the beach we were at and dove a second dive into a popular rock diving cove where we found a fire extinguisher, chairs, boat ladders, shoes, and A BOAT!!! We had no idea a boad had been sunk nearby until we accidentally swam across it.



The trip in all was pretty fun. It was my first time diving in freshwater other than Cazi's mom's pool :)

Next time it would be a good idea to take a bag or something to collect the hundreds of beer bottles at the bottom of the lake. It's pretty sad how many there actually are, I guess when your a drunk dumbass who's trying to get laid, polluting the lake is the least of your problems.

View all of my Laughlin, NV pictures on my flickr account here.

My brother the Star Wars geek :)

check him out at 2:18 left, his wife is the blue one.

May the force be with him....or not (storm troopers dont have the force)

What the hell has Jonathan been doing lately???

Well, I've been vacationing, actually a lot lately. Which means when I get back to work, I'm super busy catching up, which means when I get home, I don't want to get on the computer, which means no time blogging, which means not keeping you in the loop. Well enough with the excuses, and here is the kicker, I'm still not gonna blog about the vacations....today. I will this week (maybe). But to catch you up, here have been the last few weeks.

• Memorial Day Week in Laughlin, Nevada. Gambling, scuba diving, and drinking
• Took the RV out on her maiden voyage for a weekend at Lake Hemet, CA
• Took a last minute 3 day Carnival cruise aboard the Paradise to Ensenada, Mexico for some more gambling, drinking, and dancing.

I'll be uploading lots of pictures to the ol' Fickr account and will link you soon. enough for now, bed time.

Finally a video about going "green" that makes sense.

I'm usually the first one to mock an effort to go "green" or the like simply because its mostly hype or coming from a hypocritical former presidential nominee. I finally ran across this video that was posted on TreeHugger.com, it contains the theme, "What can 1 person do." Finally a video that makes sense, something that is practical for someone to do. I take the position that we shouldn't force legislation on big industry or taxing companies to reduce emissions. What I think works is educating the public and encouraging large industry to make changes from within. I myself is better convinced by a reward than a punishment. One thing the video mentions is light bulbs, this is one practical thing that everyone can do. I've seen these bulbs as cheap as 97 cents at Walmart or the dollar store. I mean, why not?