Human Baton

Check out The Human Baton. This guy is going from the west coast to the east coast and back over holiday break. Not that interesting except he is going the whole way with just rides and lodging from Sports Racers. I've signed up to drive him from Seattle to Portland.

Merry Christmas!

Got back from Rochester a couple of hours ago. A good time was had by all. The little girls got two nights of presents (and rumors of a third with the other grandparents). Luckily the first night was presents we could all play with. So we had a little family DDR and Guitar Hero competition. Jen has fallen for DDR and thinks its the best workout ever and I need a lot more practice at Guitar Hero.

Christmas Eve started with the traditional delicious egg rolls. Sorry had to drool for a second. Next up was presents and then some French Silk Pie. I don't think its that unusual that as I get older the food is more important than the presents :-)


Christmas Day we just hung around and watched our presents since we mainly got DVDs and headed back to Madison after dinner.

Now onto some serious vacationing. Ready... stop thinking... NOW!

In Madison

My flight was delayed about an hour and a half because our flight crew hadn't arrived from Denver yet. They made up some time in the air and we arrived about an hour late. O'hare was a mad house, but I once I got the car (which of course wasn't the one I reserved, but I'll save that rant for later) things went pretty smoothly. Ok, time for some sleep, need to leave for Rochester in about 7 hours.

Big Blow 2006 Day 2

Day two opens with me in a 50 degree apartment and still no power. The three blankets and feline heating device had done there job and I was plenty warm. Some text messages had come in on my phone so I figured out that if I stayed away from it, it could actually get a signal. So I called Jen and used the speaker phone to check in. I flipped on the radio to get an update on the world and not much had changed.

Luckily there was enough warm water left in the hot water heater to squeeze out a quick shower with it cranked all the way up. With no hope of power soon I figured I had better check in with the world and see what was going on. I knew from the radio downtown Seattle was fine and had never lost power. So I headed over there to find a coffee shop.

Living up to stereotypes I didn't have to walk more than a block from my parking spot to find a Starbucks. I got some coffee and started digging thru 36 hours of email. Had an interesting conversation with an recovering heroin addict in a wheelchair about laptops, drugs, and suicide. Turns out his 10th suicide attempt was the one that put him in the chair. I heard from most of my coworkers that they were coping as well. George won by finding a bar that has WiFi and food. Mike lost with 3 trees on his house and still no power. He was at the Kirkland library recharging his laptop and using their WiFi.

My parking spot was up at 6 so I figured I would head back and see if I had power yet. Keep in mind it gets completely dark by 4:30 these days. So I get to the bridge and I can see lights in Kirkland. So I start getting excited. I take my exit and drive through south Kirkland and all of the lights are on. Getting more excited. I get to the last turn before my place and everything is dark. There is light south of Kirkland Ave, but none north of Kirkland Ave. So I parked and went in to my place just to double check and yep still cold and dark.

Fifteen minutes in the dark jogged my memory that there was a Starbucks just up the road that should have power now. Of course I got there 5 minutes after they closed, so I tried to steal use their WiFi from the parking lot. The signal was pretty weak so I gave up and went to get some dinner. Encouraged by the thought that power was only a block away I went back for another check after dinner. A couple blocks away I could see the Christmas lights on Park Place and I knew we were in business. This was about 9pm. So I was out of power for roughly 45 hours.

Just to keep things interesting as I'm walking into the building a fire engine shows up. I guess the alarm was going off again. I helped the firefighters find the sprinkler room and headed back to my place to check on what was working.

Heat and lights were already going and I plugged all of the electronics back in. Internet and cable were already working. I was getting a better cell signal. So everything was pretty much back to normal. I can still see that the other side of 85th was still dark, but I was warm and out of the dark. I settled in to enjoy some TV and internet. I wrote up the first part of this story and got caught up on email.

If I haven't mentioned our fire alarm system is really sensitive or buggy or something. It went off again and the combination of someone running their dryer (vapor looking like smoke) and the whole town smelling like wood smoke from people's fireplaces everyone was freaking out. The plumber was still there and silenced the alarm so at least the fire department didn't show up this time.

So thing are pretty much back to normal now. I heard today that they got the office cleaned up and we won't have elevators right away, but I can go to work tomorrow. I just spent today catching up on email and basically enjoying all of the modern conveniences I was missing.

I'm sure some more random stuff will pop up over the next couple days, but wanted to get this out while it was fresh. Later.

Big Blow 2006

Can't take credit for the title, some guy on the radio came up with it, but I liked it.

So where have I been all this time? Well the preceding few weeks was me just being busy and not having much to post about. You can watch my shared items for links/interesting blog posts when I haven't posted in a while. That's where I put the best stuff I've found.

Now where have I been for the last 48 hours? Figuring out how to live without electricity. Thursday night we had a big windstorm sweep through about 10pm. It started with torrential rain around 4:30pm that flooded my neighborhood. I ran the 80 yards from work to my apartment and got absolutely soaked. I hopped in my car and headed over the hill to Redmond for someones going away party and a couple traffic lights were out and causing huge backups in traffic. Took me about 45 mins to go 3 miles. After dinner everything had cleared up and I headed home.

The winds started to pick up around 10 and the lights were flickering pretty regularly. I started hearing thumps out in the parking lot and took a look and whole shingles were coming off of the room and landing on the cars in the parking lot below. Luckily that was the extent of the damage to my apartment building. The sane numbers say there were gusts to 69mph with some insane numbers like 100 way up in the mountains. They closed the 520 bridge about 11pm and it didn't open again till noon the next day. It sustained some minor damage, but pretty much what they expected.

The first brief power outage was about 11:30, but then around midnight the power went down for good. Being the ill prepared single male I am I searched around for a light source. I finally found the LED glasses I bought for working on my 944. Only one side was working, but it was better than being in the dark. I found some magazines I was behind on and read those till I fell asleep assuming the lights would be back on by morning.

Friday morning opened with no power so I took a "warm" shower and went over to the office. The shower was only warm because I had to leave the bathroom door open so I could have some light while I showered. When I got to the office there was a note on the door saying the office was closed due to flooding and no power. I guess the lowest level of the building (our parking garage) had about a foot of water in it.

Since I figured there was an email waiting for me telling me if I was supposed to be working waiting for me I went in search of some place with power and internet. I made a circuit of my known Starbucks and they are were all dark. The only place with any power was downtown Bellevue and that was only enough for the traffic lights and few businesses right on 8th. I concluded my loop back in Kirkland and found the QFC working in a diminished capacity. They had enough power for minimal lights and to run the registers. I grabbed some water, canned soup, bread, and some treats. Figured it would be enough for a day or so till the power came back on.

I never did find any internet and my cell wasn't working. I decided I'd try my pager to see if it at least still worked. I managed to get an email to Jen to let her know my situation. Guess carrying this thing around finally paid off.

So after a few more magazines it started occurring to me that it was going to get dark real soon and I should probably find some way to get more light than my little glasses could throw out. So I went back to the QFC and picked up some batteries for the little radio I had found (its that little pink one I've had forever) and some candles. They only had scented candles, but at least they were big and on sale. Little bit of wisdom about using candles for light while I'm on the subject. Go the lightest color ones they have, white is best. The darker ones absorb a lot of their own light.

The expected overnight lows were in the low 40s and I have electric heat. So I put on a jacket and put down the blinds to hold in what little heat I had. I lit up the candles and put the radio on the news channel hoping to hear that my power would be on soon. Luckily I was pretty severely behind on my car mags so I had plenty of reading to do by candlelight.

Around 11pm I noticed a light bloom coming from what looked like the Totem Lake area. Being bored out of my mind I figured I'd go check it out. I stumbled down to the parking garage in the dark only to find that the gate had been closed. After a bit of fumbling around I figured out how to raise it manually. This is not an activity I'd want to do very often. You have to hold the release chain in one hand while pulling a loop of chain with the other that does the actual lifting. The surprising part was on the way down the thing just about free fell and the chain managed to beat up my hands pretty bad. Bruised fingertips suck when you are trying to type.

With my car now freed of the garage I headed up to check out the light. All of the lights were on in the Taco Bell and Jack In The Box on 116th, but no one was inside. So they must have just left the lights on when they closed up the night before. I also found a gas station that was running and didn't have a line so I topped off the tank while I had the chance. There had been stories all day on the radio about gas lines at the few stations that had power so this was definitely some good luck.

One surprising thing was how quickly I tired of eating cold food. I really wanted a hot meal and went searching for one. Downtown Bellevue was completely lit up by this point and I found the Jack In The Box there was up and running. I was also finally able to get a cell signal and check my email from my phone.

A public service reminder: if the traffic light is out at an intersection you are supposed to treat it like a four way stop. This includes stopping no matter what. I saw quite a few cops out reminding people of this fact last night. However I would like to say in general I've been very impressed with the people and drivers of the Puget Sound area. 99.9% of people have been very calm in waiting at the backed up intersections and in line for food or gas. Something like this can quickly get ugly and it hasn't.

Another side note: star gazers must love power outages. The stars out last night were phenomenal. Doubt I'll see another sky like that around here till the next massive power outage.

So with both my car's and my belly full I headed back to my apartment to get some sleep. I parked the car over at the office since I didn't feel like doing another cycle of opening and closing the gate. I grabbed an extra blanket and crawled into bed with my radio and Sturgis. BTW its about 55 degrees in my apartment at this point.

That concludes the first 24 hours of the outage. Stay tuned for day two.

I have the power!!!

Power for my building came on around 9pm after a brief 45 hour outage. Buildings 100 yards away are still dark, but there is progress being made. Many more details to follow.

I was not in fact smashed by a tree

As of about an hour ago my whole neighborhood was still without power. Well actually most of the east side doesn't have power. I'm sitting in a Starbucks in Seattle getting warmed up and reconnected with the world for a while. I'll write up more of the story a bit later.

Oh, and Neil I finally have something to write about now :-P Enjoy your heat and lights.

Back in Kirkland

My flight back was pretty uneventful. It took about an hour to get my bag in Seattle because they were short staffed because of the weather. So I didn't get home till 3pm PST. The roads were pretty clear except for the few places the road was shaded.

Ok, lots of work email to catch up on and I need a nap.

Delayed in Madison

My flight from Madison to Chicago was delayed enough to make it impossible for me to make my connection. Then everything else was booked up till Tuesday morning. I could have spent tomorrow sitting in the airport hoping to make it on a flight standby. However I didn't feel like cramming myself into whatever seat they would happen to find for me tomorrow.

So now I'm on the 7am flight out on Tuesday. I'll just work from here tomorrow and I'll have my apartment manager check on the cats.

At least I didn't get stranded in Chicago or Denver. I'm also currently winning the weather game (50 and raining in Madison vs 34 and snow in Kirkland). I will not miss trying to drive the 911 in the snow.

Cell phone unlocking legalized

The Library of Congress ruled on some new copyright rules. The big one is that you can now legally unlock your cell phone. This means you can take your phone from Cingular and use it with T-Mobile, just swap the SIM card. Not sure about Verizon and Sprint since they use different technologies.

Wanna see where I work?

Scoble visited our offices a few weeks back. Here is the video.

Casino Royale

I give it a thumbs up. Best one since GoldenEye.

Its not a secret that poker is an integral part of this one and that makes this one much more approachable than the original with baccarat.

My only real criticism is there are about three endings in the movie. Each time they manage to bring up one more twist. Its fine since its all good stuff, but it just feels a bit weird.

Anyway if you like Bond go check it out you won't be disappointed. However you might be fighting the crowds, took me four tries to get tickets.

It wasn't me

I would just like to preemptively state that I was nowhere near Washington County during my last trip back to Wisconsin.

Back in Kirkland

I'm safely back in Kirkland.

My trip back was pretty uneventful, the flight from Madison to Denver was a little late, but I had a long enough lay over in Denver that it didn't matter. I like flying thru Chicago better , less time on the small plane, but Denver works in a pinch. Denver also has the advantage of not having to change go all the way from C to F concourse like I do every time in Chicago.

The weekend was good, the Badgers could have played a bit better, but they are young so I'll cut them some slack. It was also very nice of Wisconsin to welcome me back with a snow storm. Reminds me of why I'm in Washington :-)

Time to get to work.

Moving the goalposts

Dear United,

Your flight isn't actually on-time if you just change the arrival time on the board to the time that the plane is going to show up, not when it was supposed to show up. You aren't fooling anyone. We all have the real time printed on our boarding passes. Knock it off.

Sean

In Madison

I'm safely in Madison.

I decided to mix it up and take the city bus to the airport for my first class flight (burned some miles for the upgrade). It worked pretty well, but I ended up on the local instead of the express bus and got there about 10 minutes later than the express.

First class was nice. Not worth actually paying for over the economy plus, but definitely worth spending some miles on the upgrade.

Flight into Madison was only about half full and on time. So just dropped Jen off at her class and now its time for a nap. Hockey tonight!

It's Official

Allen concedes the Virginia Senate race. So the Dems take both houses. This is gonna get interesting.

Go Vote!!

Enough said. I mailed in my ballot a week ago.

Flooded falls

Check out this video that one of my teammates shot of Snoqualmie Falls. Make sure to look at the Wikipedia link on there to see what the falls normally look like. BTW its still raining.

There is no substitute

From My 911

Ever since I got rid of my 944 I've been regretting it and been plotting my way back into another Porsche. I figured the Cayman was my shot since it was much closer to my price range than a new 911. I finally had a chance to sit in a Cayman at the Seattle Auto Show and quickly concluded there was no way I could fit in out without losing an arm. As usual leg room was fine, but the car was just too narrow for my shoulders.

Having ruled out the Cayman as a possibility left me with either going back to a 944 or finding a 911 I could afford. I don't really have the right setup right now to keep a 944 running. They frown upon doing oil changes in my apartment's parking garage and hauling my tools in and out would be a pain. So I started researching 911s.

I did some very detailed budget projections and figured out what I could truly afford and worked that into a price range then went hunting for cars to look at. In Bellevue I found a nice 2001 911 Carrera with 65k miles. The colors weren't quite right (light gray interior) and the car was a bit dinged up, so I kept looking.

Turns out across the street is a place called Park Place which I fear will forever have a hold on me. They only handle used high end, collectible, and sports cars. They are a new dealer for Lotus, but there is no way I'll ever fit in one of those. They had exactly what I had been looking for a 1999 Black/Black Carrera 2 in my price range. It only had 45k miles and was in perfect condition. Not even any swirl marks in the paint. It also has the manual seats which seem to give you a bit of extra head room over the powered seats. I need every fraction of an inch I can get, but there is just enough space and I can drive it very comfortably.

To do my due diligence I checked out a higher mileage car at another dealer in Seattle, but it again was the wrong color (silver exterior). I figure if I'm getting my dream car it needs to be perfect. So I headed back to Park Place to see what kind of deal they had come up with while I was out. After a couple of round of back and forth we basically agreed they would give me what I owed on the lease on the Mazda and I'd pay sticker price for the 911. I signed the papers and drove away with my new(-to-me) 911.

I love it so far, I haven't had too much of a chance to really push it since its been raining so much. The only real downside is that I am now limited to only having one friend at a time since the backseats are a joke. Either that or I need to start befriending smaller people :-)

Rain, Rain Go Away

The last few days have been how most people think the weather is like in Seattle. Constant real rain, however this isn't normal and even has the locals a bit freaked out. Also the fact that there is flooding shows this isn't ordinary.

The modern economy amazes me

I bought one of the new iPod shuffles to take to the gym. It is so tiny you can clip it on your shirt and not worry about it while you are working out.

This little tiny piece of plastic started out in China, flew to Alaska, then flew to Indiana to clear customs, and now it will fly back to Washington to get delivered to me. Its just amazing that they just sent it 2500 miles past its intended destination just to clear customs.

The Kornstedts visit Seattle

So Becca saved me the effort of writing up this weekend. They came, they saw, they kicked my ass at foosball. Go check it out.

DST I'll miss you

So yeah, its almost 5pm here and its getting pretty dark already. I was curious so I checked on sunrise/sunset times for December here. Shortest day of the year is 8h 25m 14s long. Sun up at 7:55am and down at 4:20pm. For comparison Madison's shortest day is 8h 59m 36s with sun up at 7:26am and down at 4:25pm.

Its not as big of a difference as I thought it would be, but we'll see what it actually seems like living through it.

Best Ride Ever

You ride in a whiskey barrel through the history of Scotch Whiskey.

The Kornstedts are coming, the Kornstedts are coming

Head for the hills!

Sorry, its late and I thought this was funny.

In any case Becca and Neil are coming to visit me this weekend. I can't wait.

Another Racing Season Comes to an End

ALMS and Formula 1 wrapped up their seasons this weekend and Champ Car only has one race left in their overextended schedule. So now its time to concentrate on hockey till things start to warm up again.

Michael Schumacher retired after this Brazilian Grand Prix. It was actually a very good race. Schumacher needed to win the race and have Alonso not score any points to win the championship. His weekend got off to rough start when he had mechanical problems during qualifying and had to start 10th. He worked his way up to 4th before he got a puncture while passing Fischicella and fell to back of the field. He managed to work his way back up to 4th again by the end of the race. It was a fitting way for him to go out. Showing he still had the raw speed. Next year is going to be very interesting with Alonso and Kimi changing teams, a single tire supplier, and no Schumacher. Only 5 months till the start of next season :-)

ALMS will see Acura come in to challenge Porsche in the LMP2 division. We'll see if Corvette and Aston Martin can agree to some rules to race by. Possibly Peugot will bring their new diesel LMP1 car over to fight with the Audis. Should be fun.

As far as hockey, the Badgers are off to a solid start and I'm looking forward to their games with Boston College with weekend. The Red Wings on the other hand are having some problems. Hopefully they can get straightened out before too long.

Christmas Ticket Booked

I'm flying in and out of Chicago. It ended up only costing $100 extra to fly into Chicago and rent a car for the 10 days than to fly into Madison. I'm arriving late Friday (22nd) night and leaving late on the 1st. So I'll be around for the hockey right before New Years.

Trader Joe's

My nutritionist recommended that I check out Trader Joe's for some stuff to eat on the weekends when Google isn't feeding me. The selection is a bit limited, but the prices and quality are excellent. I know the one in Madison just opened, so thought I'd let you know its worth checking out.

I tried the Chicken Masala with some of the frozen Naan. Both were pretty good. My only change would be to make the masala a bit spicier.

I'll have to go back when I can spend a bit more time, this time I only had about 10 minutes till they closed.

Roomba

So I needed a vacuum and figured why not get one that can do it all by itself? I ordered a refurbished Roomba Discovery from eCost using the $10 off for using Google Checkout. So even with shipping it was only $150. I'm impressed with the job it does, should really help keeping the cat hair and litter in check. Speaking of the cats Sturgis pretty much ignores it, but Nox really doesn't like it and hides when I turn it on. When its on carpet its pretty quiet, but can be a bit noisy on hard floors. So a big thumbs up and now they just need to invent one that can vacuum my bed and couch too.

Check out the shared links on the side

I've switched over to using Google Reader for my RSS consumption. One of the nifty features is being able to share items and have them published as a feed and page for others to look at. If you look on the right side of the page you'll see the last 5 things I've marked to share.

Watching the Badgers on TV isn't cutting it

So I'm coming back for the Denver series Nov 10th and 11th. Landing early Friday and leaving Sunday night. Now to figure out the best way to get to the airport here.

Grand Prix of Road America 2006 Pt II

So the big story that came out of the race was Katherine Legge's spectacular crash in the kink. Thanks to a little luck and the strength of the car she walked away with bumps and bruises. We saw the remnants of the car brought up to the paddock is three separate loads. The first was the main monocoque, then the engine and tranny, then a load of random bodywork.

I waited way too long to write this up so I'm not remembering many details. Neil took some great pictures. We all had a good time. Lots of great food was consumed.

I'm looking forward to next year when Champ Car and ALMS are going to run on the same weekend. So I will definetly be at Road America Aug 9-12th. Everyone should be there too, its going to be a great weekend.

Grand Prix of Road America 2006 Pt I

From 2006 Champ Ca...

This is way overdue. Sorry. I wrote most of it, but never finished until now. To put this back in context, this picks up the Friday morning after I got back to Madison.

Lets see. Where did I leave off? Oh yeah Friday morning.

The U-pack guy woke me up a little after 11 to drop off the ReloCube. They drop it off with this crazy three wheeled all-terrain forklift. It was pretty cool. I pretty much just napped for the rest of the day. Friday night we went to the Great Dane for the friday fish fry. If you haven't tried their fish fry I highly recommend it. Its Canadian walleye fried up in a beer batter made with their beer. Truly excellent. We had an early morning the next day so we all headed home.

Jen decided she had homework to be done so she was going to join us latter in the day for dinner and skip the track on Saturday. So I picked up Becca and Neil at 7am at the OP and we headed for West Bend. Kitty Neverlost was our intrepid guide for the weekend. Everyone had fun playing with her. We dropped off Becca in West Bend at her parent's house and headed for the track.

Saturday's schedule was mainly practice and qualifying, but in person it doesn't make a huge difference. As long as the cars are running its all good. It was overcast and threatening rain for most of the day. It finally followed thru later in the day. We got a bit wet while watching Champ Car qualifying, but we managed to make it to the car before the serious ran started. We drove around and parked at turn 3 and watched the Formula Ford race from inside the car. Those guys were doing very well considering how hard it was raining.

After the Formula Ford race Neil and I headed back to West Bend for dinner with the Schemelin family. We got back a bit before Jen did so we made a beer run to the Pick And Save. Dinner was excellent and we finished off the evening watching Lucky Number Slevin
and enjoying some good Wisconsin beer.

I'll write up race day next.

Pictures are up over here.

Go Wild!!

So I haven't been playing very close attention, but someone just pointed out that the Wild are 6-0. Which is good cause the Wings aren't doing that great. Ok, I guess I'm spoiled since the wings are 3-2-1 which isn't that bad. I splurged and bought NHL Center Ice for the season, so you have a lot more hockey news to look forward to.

Tideland Finally Getting Released in the US

After more than a year Terry Gilliam's new film Tideland is going to finally see a US theatrical release. Looks like he finally got a deal with THINKFilm to do a limited US release. I'll get to see it in Seattle on November 3rd. Keep an eye out for it and go see if you have a chance. Also go check out the stunt he pulled in front of the line for The Daily Show.

Google Buys Youtube

This is gonna be interesting.

Hiring movers is so worth it

I hired some guys to empty out the ReloCube once it got here and they were impressive. They emptied it out in half an hour. Unfortunately they have a 3 hour minimum, but it was still worth it. I'm just happy to finally have some place to sit down. Now to unpack all of this.

300

The trailer for 300 is out. It looks awesome. If you don't know what 300 is, its another graphic novel by the same guy that wrote Sin City (Frank Miller).

I'm Alive

Sorry for the lack of posts. I'll write up the big trip back to Wisconsin last week soon. I picked up a cold and that wiped out my weekend. I blame my co-workers kids. One big differences between Mountain View and Kirkland is that everyone here seems to have a family and everyone in Mountain View was single.

Ok, back to work.

They finally added mobile support to Blogger Beta

Nox exploring the garbage can.

Madison

I'm safely in Madison. Just dropped Jen off at her classes and now I'm waiting for the ReloCube to be delivered.

Flight was decent. The guy sitting next to me went to the bathroom then a couple minutes later they were asking if anyone was a doctor or medical personnel. Never did find out what exactly happened but I had an empty seat next to me for most of the rest of the flight. So I'm not sure if he was the one that needed help or he was giving it. In any case I was happy taking up my seat and half. No sleep on the plane so a bit tired and punchy. I really need to invest in one of those travel pillows. They showed Nacho Libre on the plane which was nice cause I've been wanting to see it, but now I'm glad I didn't spend any money on it.

Getting the car was pretty painless. Not as easy as it could have been since it was so early and the desk at the airport wasn't open. I'm very happy with it. If I spent a lot more time in my car I'd definitely want something like it. Also the traffic in Chicago at 6am is nuts and that was the traffic trying to get out of town. The traffic trying to get in was even worse.

Ok, time to get reacquainted with my cats and try to get some sleep.

Sea-Tac

Well, I'm glad I was leaving and not picking someone up. The road into Sea-Tac was backed up for about a mile for the arrivals and there were people parked along the side of the road for another mile. I decided to just park at the airport since they have a decent weekly rate and anything to shorten the trip when I get back with a very angry cat is worth it.

I left myself plenty of time to get here and it was a bit too much. I'm here at the gate an hour before the flight leaves. Check-in was easy, it wouldn't let me auto check-in cause I have the animals on the ticket. Security was a breeze and I got the ride the subway here at the airport. There are two remote terminals that are connected to the main terminal via the subway. So its not like some airports where the trains will just get you there faster, if you want to get the the N or S gates you have to take the train.

Its also a different perspective on flights out here. Being in the middle of the country you can get a more or less direct flight everywhere. The flight I'm taking is continuing on to Atlanta after Chicago. I suppose a direct flight from Seattle to Atlanta overnight wouldn't be that popular.

Another random thought. They finally had to re-record the security messages they play constantly to remind people about the liquids and gels thing.

I was dumb and forgot to get my iPass password before I came to the airport. So it cost me $7.95 to get it. I lost the password and my Starbucks script when my file vault was corrupted a couple weeks ago.

That's all I got for now. I'll be in Chicago in a little under 5 hours. Pickup some time from going with the jetstream, but lose two hours for the time change.

The perils of search-and-replace

The perils of search-and-replace
Originally uploaded by marnanel.

Arrr... It be Talk Like A Pirate Day

Avast, me hearties, September 19th be International Talk Like a Pirate Day.

Reno Balloon Race 2006 Time Lapse Video

This is very cool. They must have the box winds like in Albuquerque there cause it looks like most of the balloons landed where they took off.

Who wants some turkey to go with their hockey?

Just booked my ticket for Thanksgiving. I'll be arriving 7:30amish on Thanksgiving and leaving 6pmish the following Monday. Hockey tickets have been secured and they should be good games against Michigan and Michigan State.

Update: Make the flight home on Sunday. Oops.

Stanford Prison Experiment

I found this documentary about the Stanford Prison Experiment on Google Video. If you are at all interested in psychology you should definetly check it out. I'll warn you that it is pretty long (about 50m), but I think its very interesting.

Russian's Advice on Drinking Vodka

Must be the weekend, people keep sending me stuff about drinking.
A russian tells you how to survive a night of drinking vodka.

Drink more == Make more money

http://digg.com/business_finance/Alcohol_use_helps_boost_income_study

I can't move my arms

My trainer destroyed my arms yesterday. Typing this hurts. Do you have any idea how hard it is to take a shower when it takes great effort to raise your arms above your shoulders? Ok, enough whining.

I probably didn't tell everyone, but I signed up for this program called Health for Life here in Kirkland. Its pretty nice, I get a doctor, dietitian, health coach, and personal trainer for 6 months. So I'm eating better, just started exercising. I'm down about 10 lbs already, which sounds great (and it is), but still have a long way to go. Those couple of months of unlimited gourmet food in Mountain View didn't help my weight any.

Back to typing as carefully as possible.

FSU to Phase Out Academic Operations

Florida State University To Phase Out Academic Operations By 2010

I knew it was just a matter of time.

Washington so far

From Going to Kirk...

The most frequent question I've been getting is "How is Washington?" even from the locals. To start with this is the view out of my office window. So I could be doing much worse and yes those are the Olympic mountains way out in the background. Kirkland is fine. I honestly think you could swap it in for Middleton and you'd barely notice. You would just wonder where all of these hills came from, but its a nice affluent suburb with all of the franchises you'd expect. I've got my Target, Walgreens, McDonalds, Taco Bell, even found a Qdoba. The grocery stores are Safeways and Fred Meyers instead of Copps and Cub. However the density of Starbucks does kind of give away where you are. I've yet to find a grocery store that doesn't have one in it. I can think of at least 5 within a couple miles of my apartment, including a 24 hour one with a drive-thru. I've only had time for couple quick trips into Seattle, but I've liked it so far. I'll probably save the touristy stuff for when Neil and Becca visit in October.

I haven't had long to sample the weather, but so far its been pretty good. Looks like we are up for a bit of colder turn in the weather. Highs in the 60s instead of 70s and every few days in rains in the morning. I'm still curious how I will deal with the winter grey here, but as of right now I still think its going to be better than the bitter cold in Wisconsin.

Post any question you have in the comments and I'll do my best to answer them.

REI Flagship Store

I ran over to the REI Flagship store in Seattle tonight to get a camping chair to sit on in my empty apartment. If you didn't know what you were looking for it would be very easy to miss it. They have this crazy little mini forest out front of the store where I think you are supposed to try out the hiking and biking gear. From the street it just looks like a some kind of park. I'll have to go back sometime in the daylight and take pictures. Luckily I knew where it was and found it just fine and I know have someplace to sit and watch my new TV.

New TV

From New TV

My shiny new Sharp LC-32D50U arrived on Tuesday much to my delight. I picked it because it was one of the few models out there with a DVI port. This makes hooking up my Mac Mini just easier. It also has two firewire ports so when I get my D-VHS deck out here I can view the native pass-thru of the video from the source thru the TV.

I've got the HD DVR from Comcast hooked up via HDMI to it. I'll just add the choir that HDMI cables are ridiculously expensive. It can record two things at once, but the overall user interface leaves quite a bit to be desired compared to a TiVo. Also the included drive is pretty tiny once you start recording HD. It only holds something like 10-15 hours of HD content. I'm very tempted by the new TiVo Series 3, but I'll wait till people get them in their hands to make a final judgement. Also OnDemand is becoming a pretty useful feature these days.

Badger Hockey iCal

I know at least Jen was using the Badger Hockey calendar I had published in the past. I'm moving over to using Google Calendar and someone has already entered all of this info for me. Just subscribe to this URL in iCal.

Finally found a hole in the copy protection

These guys saved whats left of my weekend. I was looking for more info about the cable box Comcast gave me and stumbled across this. The FCC ruled a while ago that the firewire ports on digital cable boxes have to be enabled so people can record digital content to their DVHS decks. Then Apple comes along and writes a virtual DVHS deck in software. So all I have to do is record whats coming out of the cable box and then VLC will play the file as it is recording. So I can finally watch TV and not just listen to it. I found this a bit late to watch the Formula 1 race, but at least right now I'm watching some Speed World Challenge races and I'm very happy.

Other good news is my real TV should be here on Tuesday. This hack should get me thru till then. Also in the future if I want to do some work with the video from the PVR I have a good way to get it into my computer.

Common Courtesy

I hope you can read this, the camera in my phone isn't that great. Basically somebody in my building is very unhappy that some other people are hogging some carts. I will say this isn't completely unfounded since I didn't even know there were community carts to be used since I had never seen one.

This just got me wondering if you have to harp on people to get them to do something is it really "common courtesy"? Its obviously not that common or we wouldn't have to teach people about it. I also found this amusing since it went up while the apartment manager is away on vacation. So I guess somebody was lacking their normal outlet for this kind of complaint and decided to take it into their own hands.

I'm liking Blogger

So Blogger is at least as easy to use as iWeb. I can update it from anywhere. Even my phone. Check out my mobile blog. Whenever they get the mobile blog support into the Blogger beta I can actually roll that into this main blog and send in updates from my phone. Pretty sweet. I can also go back to using MarsEdit if I don't want to use the web interface. Not sure which I like better yet, they are both pretty good.

So if you've been thinking of starting a blog and maybe putting it off cause you don't know how or are just plain lazy (I'm looking at you Neil). Setup a blog on here and give it a whirl.

Nigierian Scam Mail Comes to Life

I've already pointed you at Ze Frank at least once. If you haven't checked out The Show you really should. Ze recently spoke at TED and his opening was hiliarious.

iWeb Blog Continued

This blog is a continuation of the one I started over on .mac with iWeb.
http://web.mac.com/smmurph/iWeb/Site/Blog/Blog.html

Really Really Bad Technical Day

Technology hates me today. I finally get my cable and internet installed today. I'm "lucky" enough to get the new Comcast PVR with the HDMI output. So I don't have any way to test it until my new TV arrives next week. I get the bright idea that I can get an HDMI to DVI adapter and use my monitor to watch TV till my new one shows up. However HDCP decides to bite me in the ass and it won't work. Fine, I can listen to TV now. Better than nothing.

Next I'm setting up my new wireless router with the new cable modem. Everything working fine. Then my laptop locks up so I force reboot it. It comes back and I try to log in and it tells me it can't let me log in now. I do a search on my other computer and it saying there is something wrong with my FileVault home directory. So I boot the laptop into target mode and attach it to my Mini. Try to mount the home directory, no dice. Corrupted. Try some repair utilities nothing works. So I can at least move the old image out of the way and make a new one so I can at least use my laptop, but I've lost my home directory for now. I'll check with the helpdesk at work on Monday to see if they have any tricks to fix it, but I'm not holding out much hope.

Anyway one of the things I lost in my home directory was the files I need to keep using iWeb for my blog. I'd been thinking of ditching it for a while anyway. So this was a nice kick to take another step in my Googlification and start using Blogger. Now I have to get a new entry into my iWeb blog to point people here.