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.