Greg

I'm envious of this commute

I know a lot of people that live on the East-side purely because they don't want to deal with the commute.  And, I'll agree, one of the crappy things about living in Seattle and working in Redmond is that you can't ever be quite sure how long it will take you to get home.  Mariner's game?  Add 10-15 minutes.  Sonics game?  Add 15-25.  Wreck in the middle of the bridge?  Eat dinner in Bellevue.

After 5+ years at Microsoft Aaron has decided to leave the company - his last day is in a couple weeks.  The part that really makes me jealous?  His new commute is a 5 minute walk from his condo...  This, I've decided, is better than working from home in a 'home office' - if you do that then being at home is also being at work.  Living close gives you the benefits of seperate work and home life coupled with not losing an hour to commuting each day!

It's a little bit weird to both me and Clodagh that Aaron is leaving - it means no more S+'s for sporting events, softball games, etc...  Best of luck to you in your new endeavors :)

A weekend of activities

My parents were in town last weekend - it's always nice to spend a bit of time with family :)  I think I've mentioned it before, but it's also nice to have visitors periodically because it's good motivation to see things that you wouldn't ordinarily go see/do.  Two main things that we did (other than eating at some nice resturaunts):

Leavenworth: Leavenworth is a bit of a weird place - a few decades ago when the town's fortunes were waning, it reinvented itself as a Bavarian village.  Including some people flying to Germany to learn the dances, songs, etc.  Once you get past the fact that there isn't really a strong German heritage, its a nice way to spend a day...  If you aren't driving back for a while, or are staying the night, there are a number of wine tasting rooms for your enjoyment...  We didn't partake as we weren't staying too long.

Alki Beach: This is somewhere I had actually been before :)  Located on the tip of West Seattle, it can have a great Southern California beach feel to it at times...  The 2nd floor deck of Duke's chowder house also seems like a fantastic place to watch a sunset though we were a couple of hours too early.  Decent size trail/path for running/rollerblading, given that you're still in an urban area.  Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera with me or I could have gotten some cool photos of the Seattle skyline.

These are a great reminder that there are lots of really cool, individual areas to the city that I don't take advantage of nearly often enough.

Photography is harder than it looks...

Recently I finally made the purchase of a nicer camera with more widgets and knobs to play with.  I had been thinking about it for quite some time, and as I was trying to take photos on the hike realized that it might have finally been time to take the next step with photography.

What I had forgotten is that taking really nice pictures can be hard at times.  The more of the photo that you control, the more there is for you to forget to adjust...  So, it's been a crash course in f-stops, shutter speeds, zoom, camera shake (bad!), etc. trying to bring back the things I had learned in photography classes in high school.  Fortunately, I realized that with a digital camera you can just take the same shot 5 or 6 times in a row until the settings are closer to what you want; there's no need to worry about wasted film.

All of this just reminds me how good people, like Jude, who really know what they're doing are.

Oh, and you can find some of the pictures I've been taking while fiddling with the camera and walking around lake union here.  Right now (9/22/05;~8am) there's just one picture (one from our walk over to the boats afloat show) online because community server is a pain to upload photos on, but i'll be adding some of the better ones over the next few days...

On blogs and posting

Then there are others that just have one post and nothing more, but no reason why. Maybe they started a blog, realized they didn't like it, or didn't have time and then forgot to delete it. Or couldn't find a way to delete it.

Then there's the third category. A couple of my friends apparently have quite a lot to say (to themselves or others). Lots of regular posts about random stuff - some of which are interesting or funny and some of which... aren't. ;-)

Those that do have posts are a good way to catch up on what someone has been doing and serve as a reminder to get back into contact - particularly the friends from college that you only talk to on occasion. See, the internet IS good for something :)

And the exodus begins?

Back from Vegas

Just got back yesterday from what has become the annual end of summer trip to Las Vegas with the usual suspects...  The trip didn't start out on the greatest note - Clodagh and I showed up to the check-in counter 40 minutes precisely (remember this number, it'll be important in a moment) before the flight was supposed to leave.  It wasn't until we were in the shuttle from the parking lot to the airport that I started becoming a bit concerned about making the flight.  Go to use the check-in kiosk and it told us to talk to someone...  Clock ticks two more minutes before we can get someone - down to 38 minutes before flight leaves.  The person tells us that automatic check-in is closed 30 minutes before the flight and starts to call the gate to talk with them, until they see we have luggage to check and then just tells us to go talk to customer service.  All the while glancing back and forth at the clock.  Apparently in crazy airline math 3:08pm - 2:30pm = 30 minutes not 38 minutes.  Once we had waited in the line, the "customer service" rep insisted that we were just too late, that we should have shown up two hours in advance.  Every time they were about to say something unhelpful about us needing to pay, or flights being oversold, or the likelihood of getting on the standby flight it seemed to alway involve "well, since you missed your flight" and I had to keep coming back with "no, we were here with 8 minutes to spare by what you've told us.  You have prevented us from boarding my flight."

Yes, I do admit that we had cut it way to fine and so were at least partly to blame.  But seriously folks, how can you keep telling us that check in closes 30 minutes early when we had those extra minutes a straight face?  And then keep telling us we should have shown up TWO HOURS before the flight.  Do they not have lives and jobs?   Morale of the story is that you should be at the airport an hour before hand.  38-40 minutes is a little too short. :(

The irony is that there was basically zero line to check-in and through security so we would have made our flight with time to stop and buy water and magazine.  Instead we got to hang out in the airport for four hours until we finally got on the last flight they offered for that day.

The actual being in Vegas was fun - I really should stop playing craps (where throughout all of my vegas trips I'm at a net loss) and stick with poker (where I'm at a net gain).

Can I call it or what?

It's now September - which is creepy enough in an of itself.  But in a radical change to our day-to-day life, we actually have a working dishwasher again!  This morning the cabinet dudes came and installed the bar faucet and reconnected the dishwasher.  There's still an end-panel to a cabinet that has to be installed, and if all goes well we'll have an electrical socket moved but both are really small potatoes compared to being able to put things in a dishwasher again.

Including this morning before it was installed we've been without the damn thing for parts of 5 months...