The weekend before last was Sarah's birthday and as part of
that, last weekend we took a trip to Victoria, BC. I've got a map of our trip locations and photos. Not all the
photos are on the map but they're all in the trip photo set on Flickr. It turns out there's a lot of tourist intended
activities right around our hotel which was in the inner harbor and downtown Victoria area. As such we didn't get a rental car and did a lot of walking.
On the first day we checked out the Royal British Columbia Museum which had
some interesting exhibits in it and the Undersea Garden which was interesting in that its like a floating aquarium but was a bit grimy. There was a group of Japanese tourists next to us during the
undersea show in which a diver behind the glass in the ocean would pick up and parade various animal life. The group all repeated the word starfish in unison after the show's narrator and one of
the tourists was very excited to see the diver bring over the octopus. The diver made the octopus wave to us while it desperately tried to get away.
We flew in and out of the Victoria International Airport
which is a smaller sized airport. Although we needed our passports we didn't need to take off our shoes -- what convenience! The US dollar was just a bit worse than the Canadian dollar which was
also convenient. The weather was lovely while we were there and I only got slightly sun burned.
While re-reading Cryptonomicon I thought about what kind of information I'm leaking by posting links on Delicious. At work I don't post any Intranet websites for fear of revealing anything but I wondered if not posting would reveal anything. For instance, if I'm particularly busy at work might I post less indicating something about the state of the things I work on? I got an archive of my Delicious posts via the Delicious API and then ran it through a tool I made to create a couple of tables which I've graphed on Many Eyes
Sarah and I saw the Kids in the Hall "Live As We'll Ever Be" Tour in the WaMu theater in Seattle this past Thursday. I'd only ever seen their television show so it was cool to see them live. I thought that them being in a live format on stage would make the show significantly different, but other than having a bad seat and not being able to see very well, and the Kids sometimes ad-libbing or breaking character, it was like watching their show. It consisted of mostly new material with some returning characters like the Chicken Lady, Buddy Cole, the head crusher, etc. Their Facebook page has two videos that they played during the show.
I've been using the best Kids in the Hall fansite with an archive of searchable transcripts since high school. But now days what with all the new fangled video websites I can link right to some of my favorite sketches from the show. Like the Inexperienced Cannibal.
And the meta-sketch The Raise.
Sarah and I have finished playing through the games "Paper Mario", "Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door", and "Super Paper Mario" last week (including the various Pits of 100 Trials). We played them all on the Wii, because even though Super Paper Mario was the only one released explicitly for that platform, Wii maintains compatibility with Game Cube games such as Thousand-Year Door and Paper Mario although originally released for the Nintendo 64 is now available as a pay for download game on the Wii's Virtual Console. So, yay for Nintendo!
I think my favorite of the three is Thousand-Year Door mostly because of the RPG attack system. In Thousand-Year Door and Paper Mario when you come into contact with an enemy you go into an RPG style attack system where you take turns selecting actions. In Super Paper Mario you still have hit points and such, but you don't go into a turn based RPG style attack system, rather you do the regular Mario jumping on bad guys thing (or hitting them with a mallet etc...). Thousand-Year Door and Paper Mario are very similar in terms of game play but Thousand-Year Door looks very pretty and has made improvements to how your party-mates are handled in battle (they have HP and can fall as you would expect) and there's an audience that cheers you on during your battles.
Even if the gameplay sucked the humor throughout the series might be tempting enough. Mario's clothing and mustache are mocked throughout and standard RPG expectations are subverted. I hate to describe any of these moments for fear of ruining anything but, for instance, an optional and very difficult enemy who may only be killed after hours of work only results in one experience point, or a very intimidating enemy who you imagine you'll have to fight actually challenges you to a quiz.
Despite how I personally rank them, all the games are great and I'd recommend any of them.
![[sprague's photo of Corteo in Maryland]](http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2322/2465010137_9e6f945bb0_t_d.jpg)
Sarah and I went to Cirque du
Soleil's Corteo this past Wednesday. Its in Marymoor Park quite near the main Microsoft campus. They setup
large circus tents in the park including a gift shop, overpriced concession stands, and long lined porta-potties. Despite all this the show was very entertaining and quite enjoyable. The show is
like a circus directed by Terry Gilliam or Tim Schafer and otherwise I'm not sure how to describe it, but I do recommend it.
Last weekend while Sarah was up in Canada for a spa weekend with her sister and her sister's other bridesmaids, I went to Saul and Ciera's
wedding in Three Rivers, California near Sequoia National Park. I flew into Fresno picked up a rental car and my GPS device navigated me to a restaurant with the wedding location no where in sight.
"No problem," I thought, "I'll just call someone with an Internet connection and..." I had no cell reception. What did people do before GPS, Internet, and cell phones?
A waitress in the restaurant pointed me down the road a bit to the wedding location which was outside overlooking a
river. Their wedding cake was made up like a mountain with two backpacks at the top and rope hanging down. Ciera's father married them and the ceremony was lovely. The music after included Code Monkey to which all the nerds were forced to get up and awkwardly dance.
Besides getting to see Ciera and Saul who I hadn't seen in quite a while, I got to see Daniil and Val, Vlad, and Nathaniel. Since
last I saw Daniil and Val they had a child, Katie who is very cute and in whom I can see a lot of family resemblance. The always hilarious Vlad,
Daniil's brother, was there as well with his wife who I got to meet. Nathaniel, my manager from Vizolutions was there and I don't know if I've seen him since I moved to Washington. It was fun to
see him and meet his girlfriend who was kind enough to donate her extra male to male mini-phono cord so I could listen to my Zune in the rental car stereo on the drive back.
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