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2008-11-19T11:55:00.002-08:00

As currently planned, from the 21st of December to the 19th of January, I'll be in: Boston, New York, Boston (again), Lexington Park (Maryland), DC, Seattle (briefly), Taipei (possibly), Hong Kong, Dongguan, Hong Kong (again), Los Angeles (LeiOut!), and finally back home to Seattle. Yowsah!

2008-11-14T11:55:00.002-08:00

Overall, I'm pleased with the outcome of last week's election: of course Obama, but also Chris Gregoire, the majority in the House and Senate, and the multitude of ballot initiatives that Washington voters managed to sort through and get right. Unfortunately, there was some collateral damage, most notably, Prop 8 in California.

Though far from the first time a state wrote discrimination into its constitution, I think the passing of Prop 8 caught a lot of people off guard, California being generally regarded as a liberal state. Having been in San Francisco the weekend before the election, I knew the race was going to be a tight one, but that doesn't make me any less unhappy with the result. It's very disappointing that we're not only not ready to accept gay relationships as equal to straight ones, but that we're willing to take such a big step backwards and write into explicit law that discrimination.

Given the general response here to the election (see this post), I'm hoping Seattle can muster a good showing at the upcoming Prop 8 protest. That's where I'll be tomorrow.

2008-11-07T08:42:00.005-08:00

Two editorials on Obama that caught my eye last Friday: one by David Brooks, the other by Paul Krugman. Both smart men, they have vastly different takes on how the president-elect should approach his upcoming term.

We had Craft Day on Sunday, and also took the opportunity to officially rename it Crafternoon. I didn't take photos, but folks were baking, decorating, sewing, knitting and debugging robot arm power supplies (which ultimately didn't work, unfortunately).

For a few weeks, I was doing really well at not being too busy. But then I took a couple of trips, with a visit from dad (which I enjoyed) sandwiched in between, and thing ramped up again. I'm starting to feel a little sick, which I'm taking as a sign that I'm not exercising quite enough and extending myself a little too much. Time to reel it in.

2008-11-05T08:52:00.009-08:00

I left a relatively small election night party in downtown Seattle last night to head up to a friend's house on Capitol Hill, but never made it there.

The atmosphere downtown around 9:30 was festive - Obama had won, and both he & McCain had given their speeches - but not much was going on beyond the honking passing cars and waving, cheering pedestrians. I hopped on the bus at 6th & Pike and made it about two blocks before we ran in to a couple hundred people marching down towards Pike Place Market. Along with a bunch of other folks, I got off the bus and joined the crowd in an impromptu parade. We hooted & hollered our way to 1st and Pike, dragging more and more people along with us, eventually meeting up with the crowd exiting The Stranger's party at the Showbox.

The mood was amazing and joyful and positive. Strangers high-fived and hugged each other, spontaneous chants of "Yes we can!" and "Obama!" sprung up, people carried signs or banged on makeshift drums, and there was dancing and laughing and crying.

After a half hour or so, the crowd in front of the Market started dying down, and I made my way up to Capitol Hill, where I found an even bigger rally at Pike & Broadway. There were probably two or three thousand people in the streets making merry. I spent almost two hours there, cheering, congratulating, and running into friends in the crowd. It was hard to tear myself away, but sleep beckoned and I'd done all I really wanted to do.

Pretty amazing night!

It should be noted that the police, while very much present at the rallies last night, kept their distance and were on their best behavior. They kept people safe (diverting traffic when necessary, etc.), but allowed the revelry to continue without restriction. Well done, SPD.

More pictures of the election night festivities in Seattle here, and some great photos of Obama from the past year or so are up on the Boston Globe's Big Picture blog.

2008-11-03T11:58:00.002-08:00

Taipei was a whirlwind of a week: two days travel (one on either end), three days on the ground. I packed about as much into those three days as I could: visiting a college friend, eating all sorts of fried goodies, wandering neighborhoods, visiting bars & dancing 'til all hours at clubs, and, oh yeah, doing a bunch of work. It was a good time, if way too short.

As previously mentioned, I didn't have much warning about this trip, and I'm hoping the next one (January or so?) will afford the opportunity to spend an extra couple of days traveling somewhere in Asia. Tokyo appeals, in part because I'm already flying through there, so it's just a matter of finding a hotel for a couple of nights and exploring. But I've also gotten recommendations for Thailand, the Philippines, and rural China. Nice to have so many awesome options!

Before I learned about the Taiwan trip, I bought some tickets to visit friends in San Francisco over Halloween weekend. I might not have planned it that way if I'd known about the 30 hours I was going to spend on a plane the week prior, but it worked out just fine. Thanks to Laura & Alex for their amazing hospitality, and to the Make-Out Room for living up to its name.

Finally, progress again on the robot arm! I found a power supply on eBay, and should be able to get back on the task of getting the motor drivers & control code up and running. From there, I'll integrate Matt's inverse kinematics code and see if I can't get the whole arm moving around.

2008-10-16T09:31:00.001-07:00

Just a quick note to say I found the secure notes app I'd been looking for on the iPhone. Check out mSecure. It's $1.99, and does exactly what I want it to do. How often can you say that about something?

2008-10-13T22:03:00.006-07:00

Well, a bunch of things conspired to postpone our $7/day food challenge. Another time, I hope...

One of those things is an upcoming work trip to Taipei. I just learned I'd be going last Friday, and leave on Sunday. I'll be in the city for all of 3 days, and have plenty to prepare for the trip, so it's left me a little stressed. I am excited to see a new place, of course, and also to reconnect with a college friend who lives there now. Hopefully I'll have a bit more notice next time, and will be able to schedule an extra day or two to spend seeing more of Taipei.

Although I was a little disappointed not to be playing at Regionals this past weekend, I did make the most of my new-found free time. Drew, Jeff & I hiked up to Lake Stuart, in the Central Cascades, for a fantastic overnight.

For now, pictures are up on Drew's Flickr account. We brought one camera up between the three of us, and though I did much of the button pressing, Drew did his fair share, too, and also did all the post-processing (which looks great). I'll probably put up a copy of the photos on PicasaWeb soon.

2008-10-06T08:56:00.004-07:00

Recently, a friend in the public health field quoted an article or report that said the average American eats for about $7 per day, and then went on to suggest we should try it for a week.

The latest data I can find is from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in their 2005 Consumer Expenditures Survey Results. Table A on page 3 shows the annual expenditure on food to be $5,931 per consumer unit, with an average of 2.5 persons per consumer unit (isn't it nice to know how the government thinks of you, Mr. or Ms. Two Fifths of a Consumer Unit). This comes to roughly $6.50 per person per day. Yikes.

I'm totally game to try this, and am already fascinated by the changes required. No coffee from the espresso stand in the morning, no going out to eat (save perhaps fast food), very little meat, and so on. I remember being frustrated to learn after reading Walden that Mrs. Emerson cooked Thoreau dinner all the time; I'll do my best to make mine a more authentic experiment, but I'm sure there will be some inherent unfairness and inaccuracies. I'll post my thoughts after next week.

And it doesn't go without saying, we're incredibly fortunate to be in a position where this is temporary, and just an experiment for us. It does seem a good time to try this, though, given the financial climate. There's an interesting article in the New York Times today that describes how economic down times can actually give people more time to focus on slow things like cooking and paying attention to their health. One (small) silver lining, I suppose.

2008-10-02T11:42:00.002-07:00

Are you registered to vote?

2008-09-26T08:54:00.004-07:00

I spent yesterday on/near Mt. Rainier, hiking above Mowich Lake. I put up some photos from the day here. You can also see a panorama I took using the Gigapan hardware in Spray Park here.

It was fun to play with the Gigapan device, but it has a few fundamental problems. It's too big to carry around all the time or just leave attached to your tripod, and too expensive for casual users (the beta version was ~$250). But, it doesn't accomodate larger, prosumer cameras like mine (at least not without some hacking), so it's hard to take the really detailed panoramas like the ones they show on their site. I think they either need to drastically reduce the size or the price before it can be a commercial success, or go after the higher-end market and redesign it to work with larger cameras/lenses.

The good news you can infer from yesterday's hike is that both my ankle and shoulder are on the mend. I wore an ankle brace all day, and it didn't bother me 'til the last half mile, and even that wasn't bad at all. And in spite of the fact that I was carrying 10 or 15 pounds worth of camera gear, my shoulder held up just fine.

I did buy some tickets to visit the Bay Area - I'll be there October 31st thru November 2nd. Halloween in San Francisco, anyone?

2008-09-22T09:27:00.003-07:00

My body's taken quite a beating in the last couple weeks: a sprained ankle, bruised hand, dislocated AC joint (shoulder), and about 8-10 bee/hornet stings. Not so fun! That makes me a little glad the frisbee season's over and very glad that recovery can begin in earnest (the ankle's been bothering me for quite a while).

And yes, for better or worse, the frisbee season is over for Shadrach. We had a fairly mediocre showing at Sectionals this weekend, and lost by two points in the game-to-go against local rivals Moonshine. Though my feelings about being done with frisbee for the year are definitely mixed, I was disappointed not to have played in our games Sunday (after the shoulder injury late Saturday).

What's next? There may be a trip to the Bay Area in my future (probably the weekend I was planning on going to Corvalis for Regionals), and I'll put in some more time on the robot arm project, but beyond that, I'm not sure, exactly.

2008-09-19T08:18:00.001-07:00

I've really been enjoying my new iPhone; it's a first-generation version I bought used from a friend who upgraded. I followed these instructions to unlock the phone to work with T-Mobile, and it went without a hitch. I haven't installed lots of applications, but the basics (phone, web, maps, contacts and calendar) are intuitive and satisfying to use. I am a little miffed at the lack of a good Notes application (I'd love the iPhone equivalent of Safe, but would settle for a decent app that synced notes to the computer), but I'm figuring it all out.

One of my goals in getting the iPhone was reducing the number of gadgets in my life - of the phone/Palm/MP3 player trio, the new phone will definitely eliminate the need to carry around my Palm (I've been using a T|X for a couple years now), and maybe eventually the MP3 player, too.

I've largely been focused on Sectionals, which is this weekend. Interesting to note that at the time I'm writing this, the top four seeds in our section (Shazam, D'oh, Shadrach and Moonshine) are all ranked in the top 25 teams, and that counts teams that only came together for one tournament (so it's really more like the top 15 teams). We definitely have a tough section, but I'm confident Shadrach can make it to Regionals.

I have had some time for other fun stuff, some of which I'll write about when frisbee's over. Ice cream features heavily, as does rug shopping.

2008-09-09T09:09:00.004-07:00

The big news for today? I'm getting an iphone:

Granted, it's a first generation model (used, about to be hacked to work on T-Mobile), but I'm still pretty psyched!

2008-09-02T14:29:00.009-07:00

Recent cheers & jeers:

Boo: Full Tilt Ice Cream turned out to be a bust. They were out of most flavors, the ones I tried weren't so hot, the pinball tables they have aren't so hot either, it turns out it's hard to play pinball and eat ice cream at the same time, and there was a high school band playing in there that made death metal sound like a lullaby. I won't go back, and neither should you.
Yay: Shadrach won Spawnfest. While we would've liked to be in the "Elite" division, I'm glad we did well in "Classic". The rainy finals game was capped by a pretty spectacular catch by yours truly (sadly, no one was video taping) - a great way to end the weekend.
Boo: Unfortunately, there are only two bids from Sectionals to Regionals this year. The Washington/BC section in particular has quite a few top notch teams (Shadrach, Shazam, Moonshine and D'oh), any of which could beat most regional contenders in other parts of the country. Because the less competitive teams in the area get enough play in city leagues, there's no incentive for them to participate in the Sectionals tournament, and the number of participating teams directly determines the number of bids to Regionals. So we've got six teams, four of them really strong, vying for two bids. It's gonna be a tough tournament.
Yay: Sam & Jane's wedding. Check out some photos from a great weekend on Whidbey Island.

And an extra little shout out to website redesign. While it's not really the most earth-shattering change, it does make me happy.

2008-09-01T10:55:00.002-07:00

In lieu of a real update, I'll just say I've been busy, and, for the most part, having fun of late. I've finally decided to do some site upgradin', in part 'cause I want a new look, and in part 'cause Blogger still hasn't fixed their site-feed bug, but I'm too lazy to switch to Wordpress, so I figured out a workaround.

You'll see some big changes in the next day or two. Feedback is appreciated!

2008-08-13T10:08:00.002-07:00

I've been meaning to put together a page with my favorite spots in Seattle for quite a while, but I just got around to it in time for Rif & Anna's upcoming visit. Check it out here, and feel free to send along other recommendations. It's most definitely a work in progress, but it's a start.

2008-08-04T12:13:00.006-07:00

Last week, I finally got around to making a new housing/frame for my Chumby, which I won a few months back from Bunnie's Blog. I like the idea of the device (essentially an internet-enabled alarm clock) well enough, but the design really didn't do it for me, and I tore it apart the day it arrived.

I picked up some scrap plexiglass, and went to town on the laser cutter & table saw. Some plastic weld (MEK, I think) holds the two pieces together. I pared the circuit boards down to the barest essentials (and got rid of the riser board, connecting the WiFi directly to the main PCB), and mounted the big switch directly to the base so I can thwack it easily from bed to snooze. It's woken me up on time and with traffic, weather & news every morning since last Thursday. Way to go, Chumby.

I spent the weekend in Portland, leaving early Friday to get a fun day in before playing at Kleinman. Drew and I met up with some friends of his down their, and we all had a exceptionally good lunch at Pok Pok, a Thai restaurant in south east Portland. Everything we ate was great, from salad to dessert.

Kleinman didn't go as well as I'd wanted. We lost Sunday morning to another Seattle team that we really should've beaten. They played well, to be sure, but we gave the game to them by not running hard and making some big mental errors. We've definitely got some work to do for Spawnfest and Sectionals.

One redeeming part of Sunday (after our loss and all) was Portland's King Burrito. I wish Seattle had one of these - my lunch was a gargantuan carnitas burrito and a drink for $4.95, ready in about 3 minutes. And it was good, too. Damn.

For better or worse, Thursday will mark the first time I've picked up my knitting (I've now been working on my sweater for 9 years!) this year, as it's Stitch 'n' Pitch. And since it's a ballgame, I probably won't get much done on the project. Thankfully, I haven't changed shape much in the last 9 years, so it'll likely still fit when I'm finished (next year, perhaps?).

I'm headed up to the World Ultimate and Guts Championship in Vancouver on Friday to watch the tail end of the competition. I've been enjoying the web-updates on the site, and I'm looking forward to seeing some of the games in person, as well as checking out Vancouver (by bike, no less). Though I've been in Seattle three years, and Vancouver is only two and a half hours away, I haven't spent more than 12 hours there, total. Glad that's getting fixed this weekend!

2008-07-20T12:32:00.002-07:00

I had a great, if quick, trip to the East Coast and got back on Thursday night. I was in Boston, northwest Connecticut, New Haven, Manhattan, and Boston again, all in the span of 7 days, and saw tons of people (in large part, because of Tova & Pete's wedding) along the way. I'd say look for pictures soon, but I seem to be pretty bad at putting up photos these days, so don't hold your breath.

I was a little jealous of all my frisbee friends heading off to Against the Grain this weekend in Oregon, but I probably would have been unhappy to travel again so soon, and it's been a great weekend in Seattle so far. I installed a new light fixture in my kitchen, played some frisbee, spent some quality time with friends, and made it to the farmers' market this morning on Capitol Hill.

While at the farmers' market, I finally got to sample some Half Pint Ice Cream, which was great. The proprietress comes from Jamaica Plain (home of JP Licks), and she knows her ice cream. The chocolate-orange this morning was as good as Berthillon in Paris, previous holder of the "best chocolate-orange ice cream" title. Half Pint takes it away 'cause it's significantly closer.

With the arrival of Molly Moon's, Half Pint, and now Full Tilt Ice Cream in White Center, I'm declaring the ice cream drought in Seattle officially over. Since I first arrived three years ago (really, three years?!), it's been my biggest complaint about Seattle. Guess I need a new complaint!

2008-07-07T12:24:00.004-07:00

I had an amazing 4th of July weekend, starting out with a trip to Safeco Field for a Mariner's game, followed by three fantastic days at Potlatch, and capped by a stellar dinner at The Dahlia Lounge Sunday night.

Potlatch was spectacular, in many ways. Our team, DarkHorse, was pretty high profile - we had great jerseys (nice work, Drew), won some big games (one against the Canadian champs, who'd just beaten Shazam, the current US champs), and partied hard. We ended up coming in ninth out of about a hundred teams, and were pretty satisfied with that outcome.

I was amused to see this article in the NY Times yesterday. Matt (the subject of the article) came to a company lunch a year and a half ago, and we all chatted about his travels & dancing. In fact, there's a pretty great video somewhere of my whole company up on our newly constructed skateboard halfpipe in our new office space doing the "Matt Harding" dance and looking foolish - I'll have to dig that up. His story is a great one as far as I'm concerned - he's made a great life for himself, and taken a very unconventional route to get there.

And in ice cream news, I made some fantastic rhubarb-strawberry ice cream for some friends' birthdays over the weekend. Not hard at all (just cook the rhubarb down with some sugar, and then mix with cream, a little more sugar, and chopped strawberries), and very tasty. The extra sugar helps the ice cream stay soft, but it isn't too sweet in the end 'cause of the rhubarb. And it looks like Seattle has another homemade ice cream source: Half Pint sells cones at the Capitol Hill Farmers' Market on Sundays from 11-3. I'll be checking them out next weekend since I'm headed out of town tonight for a week.

My good friend Tova is getting married this weekend, and I'm headed back to the East Coast for a whirlwind week-long vist. I'm looking forward to seeing friends & family, a trip to my family's place in Connecticut, pizza at the Village Oven, plenty of ice cream, the not-that-new-anymore ICA, and of course, the wedding.

2008-06-23T17:56:00.002-07:00

Shadrach had a great weekend near Portland playing at Logjam. We played really well as a team (especially since it was the first tourney of the year), had a lot of fun at the party, and actually did quite well.

Life continues to be busy, so I continue not to update this blog too often, somewhat to my disappointment. C'est la vie, literally.

2008-06-12T09:25:00.002-07:00

Well, my being "busy for at least another week or two" turned in to three or four, and I'm still scheduled to the gills. What's surprising is that I've gotten pretty used to it. In the past, I'd get sick (from too much stress and lack of sleep) or just get fed up enough that I'd cancel plans or drop one or two regularly scheduled activities. But so far, I've been sustaining a nearly full schedule for a couple months. Of course I'd prefer a little more free time, but who wouldn't?

So what have I been up to? Among other things, some volunteer work, frisbee team captaining, a little bit of square dancing, eating, more eating, watching performance art, and some bleach stenciling:

Drew recently moved to Capitol Hill (welcome to the 'hood!), but his old place ("The Hedge") in Wallingford served as a great hangout and social hub for the past year. To commemorate the temporary dispersal of Hedgers (two of his roommates are moving to NYC for grad school), we made sweatshirts. Not bad, eh?

2008-05-19T22:09:00.002-07:00

I'm still really busy, mostly with frisbee, at least for another week or two. So here are some sites that actually get updated with reasonable frequency:

In Maseru - Becky's blog about living and working in Lesotho
XKCD - a brilliant, geeky web comic published three times a week
Little Chef. Big Knife - a frisbee friend's blog about cooking & culinary school.

And, for those keeping the ice cream score at home, I've been to Molly Moon's three times in the past week. Sweet.

2008-05-13T08:35:00.000-07:00

It's been way longer than I wanted it to be since I last posted. In part, I'm settling in to the new job, and it's not really appropriate to write from work, but I suppose the gap is mostly due to sheer business.

I'm working hard at setting up Shadrach (the frisbee team I played for last year) for the coming season. Drew and I are simultaneously recruiting, managing administravia (renting fields, etc.), holding tryouts, and making sure everyone involved is having fun and feeling like their opinions are heard. I definitely wouldn't say it's a thankless task, but it's still lots of work.

I also signed up to be on the board of my condo association, and I'm close to declaring that a thankless task. The system is set up in a way that rewards the squeaky wheel, even at the expense of the greater good, and that's too bad. I'm trying to fix it, but I have limited time and, to be honest, limited motivation. Between work & frisbee, I've got enough system-fixing and people-managing to do already.

I was down in San Francisco this weekend for a bar mitzvah (only the second or third I've ever been to) and caught up with some friends on Saturday night for roller disco! It's really pretty amazing that the rink is even still open. I think they must have bought the building years ago, or have some wealthy benefactor, because the place was empty. There were maybe 30 people in the huge rink, but that didn't stop us from dressing up and gettin' down. Check it out:

On Sunday, after a lovely brunch on Mother's Day with the whole fam at Bistro Vida in Menlo Park, Matt and I made our way up towards the city. We took in the sights for a couple hours, grabbed some great ice cream, hung out in Mission Dolores Park, and ate some delicious burritos before hopping planes back to our respective homes. Good times.

But I saved the biggest news for last. After 3 years (and that's only the time I've lived here and waited), Seattle finally has a homemade ice cream shop that I can be proud of. Molly Moon's in Wallingford had their grand opening on Saturday. I missed it (being in SF), but went by last night for some excellent salted caramel and very tasty "scout" mint (mint flavor with grasshopper cookie chunks) ice cream. It reminds me a lot of the Toscanini's that was in Harvard Square - there's a chalkboard behind the counter with flavors written out, and it's similarly appointed with simple wood counters and a few stools in the window. It feels like home.

Those who know me at all (and even some who don't) have heard me rant about Seattle's lack of ice cream. Those who read this blog know whenever I travel to other cities, I head straight for the ice cream, and know that I was desperate enough to buy an ice cream maker on eBay so I could make my own. I've even entertained fantasies of opening my own shop. But now the wait is over - see you at Molly Moon's!

2008-04-26T10:46:00.003-07:00

If you're in Seattle in the next week, you really owe it to yourself to see Planey B-Boy, a great documentary about an international breakdancing competition (it's playing at the Varsity). Not only is the dancing unbelievable, but it's a very-well put together movie - not too much sappiness, but still retains some humanity, and it has some excellent characters. Keep an eye out for the breakdancing grandma! (And it looks like the film is playing in other cities, too - definitely worth a viewing.)

The breakdancing grandma reminds me of a story from college. I had called my grandmother to say 'hi', and we were chatting about what she'd been up to lately. Mind you, at this point she was an eighty-something year-old, 5 foot tall woman living on her own in Manhattan. She said she'd been to the movies, and really like a film with "this man, and his dancing." She said "it was a little violent for my taste, but really funny." After a bunch more questions, I finally figured out that she'd gone (all alone) to see Rumble in the Bronx - way to go, grandma!

2008-04-22T17:07:00.003-07:00

Well, my email is back up, but my distaste for Cedant's services remains. Drew suggested I might wait 'til he switched over to a new server/host and then buy some space off him there - I think I can hold out another couple months, and we'll go from there.