2007 Aug 6, 4:07I've moved from my previous apartment in Redmond into Sarah's condo in Kirkland. Over the past week I'd been coming home from work and packing and sorting all of my belongings. Everything had a few
destination options:
- Sarah's condo
- Storage
- My office
- Recycle/Donate
I donated two carts of computer related junk (two CRTs, two desktops, six laptops, untold number of cables, piles of network and sound cards, etc) to
RE-PC and
six garbage bags of clothing that I either never wear or into which I have worn holes into friendly looking clothing donation bins. Of course I still need to find some place to get rid of my 15 inch
CRT TV, VCR, DVD player, and X-Box. I finally emptied my bags of coins that had been collecting for about seven years (one of the bags was from my college orientation) through Coinstar and got ~$160.
Some items seemed to fit very well at work like my
satirical RIAA propaganda poster and my
Darth Vader Nutcracker. This past weekend I had movers come and actually move my furniture. Most of its now in storage except for
my living room which is moved into Sarah's second bedroom. Now all I have to do is unpack...
move personal repc recycle nontechnical 2007 Jul 15, 5:08This previous weekend Sarah and I went to Canada for my friends Palak and Meghal's wedding. Our five day stay took us on
the route from Toronto, to Burlington (for the wedding), and then Niagra.
In Toronto we visited the
CN Tower, the
ROM, and the
Bata Shoe Museum. We generally acted like tourists walking around taking photos of things, putting on sun block, and not saying 'eh'. But we could have been worse
like the drunk American college students in front of us in line for the CN Tower asking the guide if the CN Tower is taller than the Stratosphere in Las Vegas. We stumbled upon the
Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibit which was really interesting. Sarah in particular recalls the cute stuffed animal
monsters.
After Toronto we drove to Burlington where Palak and Meghal's wedding would take place. We got up early and made it on time to the wedding which was
lovely. I hadn't attended an Indian wedding previously so it was a new experience for me. During the ceremony the child in front of me kept peeking over her parent's shoulder and staring at me. It
lasted all day with a break after lunch during which we drove around and experienced small town Ontario. After the break cousins performed dances for Palak and Meghal and then we all danced the night
away until the wee hours.
In Niagra we stayed in a hotel room with a falls view which was lovely. We went on the
Maid of the Mist tour that takes tourists
right up to the falls in a boat and drenches them. We also went on the
Behind the Falls tour which was not as fun. In both we are
given rain coats which are essentially glorified plstic trash bags. For dinner we ate in the hotel restaurant which had a lovely view of the falls. At night the falls are lit up in various colors
with gigantic lights.
niagra wedding personal toronto nontechnical 2007 Jul 14, 3:12
I've been at Microsoft three years as of last Thursday. It makes me feel old but on the bright side I've upgraded offices. I now
have an office with a window. Its actually a coincidence that I got this office at the time of my Microsoft anniversary but I like to pretend. I've had a single office for only four or five months
now so its a nice surprise that I'm moving into a single window office so soon.
Of course this move means I'll be leaving some things behind. For instance the hanging dry erase pen holder that I created out
of office supplies I will leave attached to my old white board. My new office has fancy whiteboards with trays built-in (sooo fancy) so I know the person coming into my old office will make better
use of my hanging dry erase pen holder then I would. I explained to him that the rubber bands need to be replaced every eight months or so and not to exceed the maximum weight restrictions.
Additionally, the office art masterpiece I created I will also leave behind. When Bill Gates was featured on the cover of
Diversity Inc. for his amazing
philanthropic acts many of us got copies in our mailboxes. I
collected mine and some from the recycling bins and put up five of the covers on the wall. Eventually others added to it which was my intent, but I only started this when I eventually checked my
mailbox a week or so after the magazine arrived so there weren't as many covers left with which to work. At any rate I ended up with eleven on the wall. I'll leave the interpretation of the artwork
up to the viewer.
microsoft personal office nontechnical 2007 Jul 11, 3:52I realized that I have short list of chicken related things I find humorous and they're all available for the linking to via youtube.
Chicken: The Powerpoint Presentation. This is a power point presentation of a research paper written in the
language chicken. (
video)
Bluth Family Chicken Dances. From the show Arrested Development many Bluth family members had their own chicken
dance. (
video)
Peter Fights the Giant Chicken. A man sized chicken fights Peter from Family Guy for multiple
minutes in several episodes mimicking famous action sequences. I must admire the writers dedication to the gag. (
video1,
video2)
roundup video personal chicken humor nontechnical 2007 Jun 25, 3:13I keep seeing 'Ozzie' on emails and such now due mainly to
Ray Ozzie who is now the Chief Software Architect at Microsoft and his brother
Jack Ozzie. Whenever I see his name I think of
Ozzie from Chrono
Trigger. He was one third of a trio of villains, the other two being Flea and Slash. I feel like I should be thinking of the
Ozzy for
which this Ozzie was named but I really don't.
My next thought on Ozzie is
the Scottish guy who went to my high school. He'd shout
'Ozzie! Ozzie! Ozzie!' to which listeners were compelled to respond 'Oi! Oi! Oi!'. The wikipedia article on the chant has some thoughts on the
origins but I suppose at Microsoft it could take on entirely new meaning. I really hope I'm someday in a meeting with Ray or Jack Ozzie and have the opportunity...
ozzy personal ozzie random nontechnical 2007 Jun 21, 2:38Unspun is a social list creation website from Amazon. For instance, you could create a list named '
Most Desired Features for Next Version of Internet Explorer' and users of Unspun fill in and
rank the answers. There's a mix of serious answers that are excellent suggestions, fan-boy answers that are lame, uninformed answers that are already implemented, and hilarious answers that are
awesome. The following is the very short unsorted list of the awesome suggestions.
-
Innovative Anti-Phreaking Technology
-
Given the work done in IE7 on anti-phishing, subsequent work on anti-phreaking just makes sense.
-
AXELROD 2.8 Acceleration with XML Bindings
-
I'm not sure what AXELROD 2.8 is but accelerating it sounds good. Also I enjoy binding things to XML so...
-
Larger Buttons for My Mighty Fingers
-
For maximum humor this should be read by Richard Horvitz as Zim of Invader Zim. This
one makes me laugh every time I read it.
amazon personal ie humor nontechnical 2007 Jun 11, 4:20
My manager has come back this week from a 10 week vacation and paternity leave. In response and similar to
other office hacks some dedicated coworkers and I decided to do something to my manager's office.
While gone we knew my manager, Venkat, was getting into meditation. My coworker Vishu had the excellent idea of easing Venkat back into work by making his office
better suited for meditation. To start with, we updated his nameplate with an
Om.
Next we emptied his office of anything that could distract him from meditation and replaced it with a yoga mat. Of course I left a copy of the specification
for the remodel in his office.
microsoft personal office humor nontechnical 2007 Jun 11, 3:36This past weekend I was invited to two BBQs. Consequently, the weather took a break from the heat to drizzle.
The first was a lunch BBQ in celebration of Sarah's mom getting her Masters degree. Sarah and I went to her sister's house on the East-side where we had traditional foods you might associate with a
BBQ including some enjoyable sausage. There was a bit of Wii to be had and Sarah's mom killed at bowling. Sarah seemed a bit dismayed at this. I guess Sarah didn't expect it since she's had more
experience compared to her mom who was playing for the first time.
For dinner we drove over to Seattle to have a BBQ at Jeannie's house. Jeannie's family and my family became friends through our church when I was born and Jeannie even babysat me. The second bit
about the babysitting is how Jeannie would introduce me at the BBQ. I met her boyfriend who seems like a cool guy. He works for Microsoft as a consultant and has traveled to various countries for his
job. Guests had been instructed to bring side dishes and so there was quite a spread which was eclectic as well. We brought red potatoes, humus, and pita bread. As it turns out, one of the other
guests had produced humus in bulk as a supplier and apparently had a grudge against the big humus chains. We played it cool and she didn't say anything so we can only assume she didn't know it was
us. Jeannie was a great hostess and I had a fun time.
bbq washington personal nontechnical 2007 Jun 7, 4:35
A few weekends ago Sarah and I visited the
Woodland Park Zoo (Finding its website I'm amazed that its domain is 'zoo.org'. Somebody in Seattle was
quick on the domain registration.) I liked the zoo except for all the children. Human children... As visitors to the zoo... What did you think I meant? The kids are everywhere! Shouldn't they be
inside playing video games or something?
There was a gorilla that was wrapped in a dirty blanket. It looked like a homeless person and very sad. I'm reminded of the episode of the Simpsons in which
the octuplets work at the zoo and the scene in which while Homer is breaking out the children a gorilla tries to get him to take her child too. Looking for a
clip of this to post here I can only find clips from the Simpsons in German for some reason.
Like this one.
Two thirds or so of the way through my camera started running low on power. We were forced to choose which animals were camera worthy. Is it too common? Is it cute enough? Etc. Sarah
took a very nice shot of some hippos under these conditions. Unfortunately I couldn't get a good angle and view of the Elephants. But they were cool and had an interesting habitat (that's zoo for
large-ish cage.)
zoo personal nontechnical 2007 May 17, 1:04I've seen several humorous kitty related stories recently and then happened upon the whole
lolcat scene. Rather than post all the links to humorous
kitty lolcat photos to delicious I figure I'll roundup the links here.
A cat in England enjoys
riding the bus and does so regularly (
associated lolcat commentary).
A cat
trees a bear (also with
lolcat
commentary).
xkcd has a
comic on the topic of lolcat commentary. xkcd also had a
non-lolcat cat related comic recently that I found
funny.
And now I'm out of commentary so I'll just... "X cat is X":
interested,
aggressive/defensive. VG related:
SF,
Zelda. Other:
cookie,
sad.
roundup comic kitty personal cat humor nontechnical 2007 May 15, 8:38
Last Saturday Sarah and I went to the
Sculpture Garden in Seattle. Its laid out with
exhibits all outside running down to the water.
Sarah and I followed the trail of sculptures down to the shore and took some more photos on the sand and rocks on the mini beach. There's also a green house
but it was closed the day we were there. The glass of the green house is tinted green and the long walls of the house slope down in the back giving a forced perspective to the viewer on one
end.
The sculptures aren't roped off rather they mingle with the normal urban artifacts. There are little signs around that politely ask viewers not to touch the
art for fear of damage that reminded me of the show Arrested Development.
sculpture washington personal art seattle nontechnical 2007 May 13, 12:16My parents and grandmother came to visit the weekend before this current weekend, starting Friday May 4th. They arrived via their new motor-home which is quite the machine. Of course its my parents
motor-home so its very well decorated inside including drapes and mini-chandelier. I didn't have a memory card for my camera at the time but I'm sure my parents will put up photos on their
new blog dedicated to their motor-home at some point in the future.
At any rate, they parked the motor-home in an
RV park in Issaquah so that Friday night I drove over to them and we ate at the conveniently
closely located
Pogachas. The next day they came over and I showed them the various cool looking things my computer connected to my flat
screen TV can do. This includes
Vista Media Center showing my photos from recent trips and
Google Earth mapping out our respective homes and my recent trips (and Paris). Additionally, we played Wii which, unsurprisingly based on anecdotal evidence
from varied sources across the Internet, was a seeming hit. Mom broke records playing bowling with my dad and I, Dad did an excellent job fishing, and Grandma's slow but steady win's the race
approach to cow racing worked very well.
The next day I drove them to Seattle and we walked around Pike's Place. My parents made dinner that night at my place which was very good and made my apartment actually smell like cooked food. Also,
we exchanged Christmas gifts. For the past two years I've flown back to my parents' house for Christmas and ended up with gifts I couldn't take with me in both directions. Those I left at their house
they drove up and I was able to give them the ones I left at my place. They started the drive back the next day. I really enjoyed seeing them here.
motorhome family personal nontechnical 2007 May 11, 7:48
After
Carissa and Elijah's wedding Sarah and I went to San Francisco. We drove in, well Sarah drove anyway, still in
the PT Cruiser Sunday morning and checked into our hotel,
Hotel Diva. I was originally concerned that I wouldn't fit in as I don't really consider myself a
diva, however the hotel was cool. They have Internet rooms setup in various themes, the front desk is always staffed, our room had a very modern look, and when we entered the flat-screen over the
front desk was playing an episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force.
We walked around a bit before going to the
SF Museum of Modern Art. There was a Picasso exhibit at the time
which we could see for only $3 more. It felt kind of wrong like my ticket was super-sized. I think the most memorable piece I saw was
three white
panels which consisted of three blank panels. Art. Sure. After that Sarah wanted to see the giant Hello Kitty store she had heard of from her sister. We ended up going to the Westfield Shopping
center which has a disappointingly average sized Hello Kitty store. Apparently the giant one is gone. That night we went to
First Crush for dinner. I had a
flight of wine which consists of three one-third sized glasses of various but complimentary wines. It was a great restaurant in terms of food, drink, atmosphere and service.
The next morning we were even more the tourists when we went down to Fisherman's Wharf and Pier 39. We visited the famous wax museum and purchased multiple
pounds of taffy. On the way back to the Oakland airport we got to experience a little traffic as part of
the
580 freeway had collapsed the morning we arrived and was still under repair on our way out. We survived of course and I think the trip went rather well.
sanfrancisco personal california sfmoma nontechnical 2007 May 5, 10:05
Carissa and Elijah are married! Sarah and I flew to Oakland the Friday of two weeks
previous (April 27th) into the Oakland Airport. We were on the same flight as Jon which was fun but we weren't seated with him. Instead I was seated between Sarah and a middle aged lady who enjoyed
talking to herself. It seemed a bonus if others such as myself listened but not a prerequisite for her speaking.
Sarah and I rented a car and we drove Jon first to Hayward where he was staying then we drove to our hotel in Dublin. The car we got turned out to be a PT Cruiser which was a
surprise of course but actually wasn't that bad. The power windows are controlled by the center console rather than by a switch near the windows themselves which led to several embarrassing seconds
when we later tried to pay the toll for the Bay Bridge.
The next day we went to Carissa's wedding which was lovely. In a small church with white roses Carissa's mom married Carissa and Elijah.
Afterward we went to the reception at the Senior Center. "Senior Center" may conjure up images of rolley charis that smell like old people but it wasn't like that at all. It appears to be a community
center funded by the Senior Condos next door so it was very nice.
Carissa is the first of the college roommates to get married! I guess I'm just having trouble imagining any of us getting married...
wedding friend personal california nontechnical 2007 May 1, 3:48The Sunday of the weekend before last I had friends over and we watched Antitrust and Sneakers. Watching Antitrust makes me wonder if Bill Gates has seen it. Tim Robbins plays a character that is
essentially based on him but so over the top that its ridiculous.
A few days before that I watched The Prestige with Sarah. I can't tell if I was or wasn't supposed to know what was going on until the end but it was cool anyway. I didn't know until later but David
Bowie plays Tesla which is just awesome all the way around.
We also watched The Illusionist sometime before. Both movies are adaptations of novels with stage magicians set in turn of the century England. And I enjoyed both of them. I thought one would be a
rushed attempt by one studio to compete with the another on the same ground but that doesn't seem to be the case. I've noticed this before with those asteroid disaster movies and the two movies about
Truman Capote. It turns out Wikipedia has a
huge list of competing similar movies.
personal movies nontechnical 2007 Apr 21, 11:38This previous Wednesday, I went to
trivia at the
Wilde Rover. Our team consisted of Sarah, myself, Jane,
Eric,
Rachel, and Ansen. Before the last round we were 16th (out of ~32) but after the final round we were 6th!
The previous time Sarah played there the exact same thing happened. Of course you must be in the top five to win money (or last place who gets their money back). You could say, of those who didn't
get any money we did the best! I didn't contribute too much except for spotting a street from Paris in the picture round and knowing which generation the Wii is of Nintendo home consoles. Mostly I
focused on increasing our bill =)
bar game personal trivia nontechnical 2007 Apr 15, 4:06For the past several months I've seen various articles suggesting why bees are disappearing. At first I thought this was another crackpot's article that somehow made it onto digg.com. But they keep
coming and sometimes from credible sources. After the article I saw tonight I thought I should go back and put together the various articles I've read on this topic. Bees may be disappearing due to
pesticides,
new organic pathogens,
genetically modified crops,
mobile
phones, or
climate change. Apparently,
the US hasn't been keeping accurate counts of its
bees so we don't know the extent of the situation. There's an
interview with Maryann Frazier, M.S., of the Dept.
of Etymology at Penn State and a
congressional hearing on the matter.
I know this is all very serious and could signal the end of our ecosystem as we know it, but I can't help throwing in the following links as well. The bees could be
hiding in this Florida couple's kitchen. Or perhaps they're laying low while being
trained by the government to fight terrorism. Or
they're hiding in extra dimensions that we mere humans can't perceive (I'm fairly certain that's what this
article is suggesting. Really. Read it. Seriously. Its awesome.)
roundup personal bees nontechnical 2007 Apr 15, 7:37Friday Jon, Daniil, and I saw
Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters. It was really
great. The quality of individual Aqua Teen episodes varies wildly but this movie was very funny. It was like watching an excellent episode that happened to be 87 minutes long.
I had some difficulty generating interest for the movie as many didn't think this was 'their kind of movie'. I asked Sarah and she said no but I talked to her about it again later after she watched
a clip and she said she really didn't want to see it because it looked too weird. I asked her what she saw in the clip and she said a man with weird pants was talking with french fries while a
drink was getting a meatball to push him around in a cart.
Well, when you put it like that it does sound weird...
movie personal nontechnical 2007 Apr 8, 3:46This weekend was fun. Sarah and I went out for Jane's Birthday. We ate at a little Italian restaurant where our group was almost too large for the place and afterwards went to the
Viceroy lounge. The website apparently isn't very representative because although I looked at it before going out and I'd been to the place previously, I didn't
realize it was the same location until we got there.
I got several games for my Wii through Sarah's connections including
Wii Play and
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. We played both of them and I thought
Find Mii was especially fun.
Sarah's bunny is getting pretty big. Its been biting through wires now includig part way through the power cord to the cable box. You'd think after getting to the copper that it would learn to stop.
At any rate, it didn't hide any eggs. I don't have any new photos but you can see
the old bunny photos via my Vizicious
tool.
personal nontechnical seatle wii 2007 Mar 13, 8:16Over the weekend I went with Jon and Sarah to see
Zach Galifianakis perform at
The Moore who was awesome of
course. I hadn't been to The Moore before but it was very cool. The space is very vertical with two levels of balconies making it seem small in the other dimensions. We were on the middle level so
when Zach climbed off the stage to talk to the audience we couldn't see him.
Before the show we ate at
The Steelhead Diner. I enjoyed my chicken sandwhich but the place seemed a little full of itself with salt and pepper that had
been infused with this and that. At any rate it had a nice atmosphere and good food which I suppose is the point.
The opening act for Zach was another comedian whose name I don't recall. He was pretty funny but seemed to do just a tad too much pandering to the Seattle audience. "The administration should do
something different than what they're doing currently!" *Audience Cheers* is sort of equivalent to "Its great to be here in... Seattle!" *Audience Cheers*.
personal seattle nontechnical
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