My parents visited this past weekend, met Sarah's parents, saw our house, and met our bunny. On Friday we went to BluWater in Kirkland which was pretty busy and the service was slower and slightly worse than we usually find. Saturday my parents helped us with our yard quite a bit and for dinner we went to the Icon Grill with Sarah's parents. I had forgotten how much I enjoy the food at the Icon Grill - I had the very tasty meat loaf. Dinner went well and afterward we stopped at the Three Lions pub in Redmond. On all previous occasions I had tried to go in there the place was packed for a soccer game. This night however there was a man with a guitar, singing and it wasn't nearly as packed. I also found that near the bathrooms on the wall is what looks to be James Bond's jetpack.
On Sunday we went out to see Jeannie and Carl and see the renovations to Jeannie's place. We met up with them at the Fremont Market to which I hadn't been previously, and had a look around there before going back to Jeannie's to see the lovely work they'd done to her place. For dinner my parents took us out to the Melting Pot for my approaching birthday. It was fun having my parents up and I look forward to the next time they're here.
I finally replaced my old regular cell-phone which was literally being held together by a rubber band with a fancy new G1, my first Internet accessible phone.
I had to call the T-Mobile support line to get data added to my plan and the person helping me was disconcertingly friendly. She asked about my weekend plans and so I felt compelled to ask her the same. Her plans involved replacing her video card so she could get back to World of Warcraft and do I enjoy computer gaming? I couldn't tell if she was genuine or if she was signing me up for magazines.
I was with Sarah in her new car, trying out the phone's GPS functionality via Google Maps while she drove. I switched to Street View and happened to find my car. It was a weird feeling, kind of like those Google conspiracy videos.
The phone runs Google's open source OS and I really enjoy the application API. Its all in Java and URIs and mime-types are sort of basics. Rather than invoking the builtin item picker control directly you invoke an 'intent' specifying the URI of your list of items, a mime-type describing the type of items in the list, and an action 'PICK' and whatever is registered as the picker on the system pops up and lets the user pick from that list. The same goes if you want to 'EDIT' an image, or 'VIEW' an mp3.
I wanted to replace the Google search box gadget that appears on the home screen with my own search box widget that uses OpenSearch descriptors but apparently in the current API you can't make home screen gadgets without changing parts of the OS. My other desired application is something to replace this GPS photo tracker device by recording my location to a file and an additional program on my computer to apply those locations to photos.
Saturday we went to Kirkland Uncorked,
a wine tasting festival near our home. We took the bus and after finding the correct one (they really should have different numbers for buses that are on the same route but traveling in different
directions) made it to the festival. Unfortunately I don't remember any of the names of the wines just which ones I enjoyed by order. Recalling that I enjoyed the first one I had and the second to
last one, doesn't really help me find them again. There were local artists who had setup booths and Sarah got
a lovely necklace. After that we ate at Cactus which, because it was such a lovely day, had all its windows and doors open.
Sunday was quieter. A few household chores and plenty of GTA4. I almost got the One Man Army achievement but I found that after four minutes with six stars I eventually dropped back down to three stars without realizing it.
Last weekend after Saul and Ciera's wedding, I drove up to Pat, Grib, and Jesse's
house to which I hadn't previously been. I got in late and they'd just finished a UFC party. The next day Grib had to travel for work but the rest of us met Scott and Nicole, Jesse's girlfriend at
a place for breakfast. After that we went back to their place for some Rock Band which I hadn't played previously and Pat took the opportunity to show off his real life musical skills on the banjo.
This weekend, Jesse and Nicole are up visiting Seattle. On Friday, Sarah and I met up with them at the BluWater Bistro in Seattle which sits right on Lake Union. The view was nice although difficult to see from our table and overall I like the sister
restaurant in Kirkland better. They were both short visits but it was fun to see people again.
Two weekends ago it was actually sunny and kind of warm so Sarah and I went down to Spud Fish and Chips and Juanita Beach Park. We ate fish and chips on the dock. I took a few pictures and this
time actually put some geographical information on Flickr so now I've got a map of my tiny fish and chips journey. On the map click on the floating marks to view the associated photos.
Flickr provides access to the geo data associated with your photos via GeoRSS feeds. And Google Maps displays GeoRSS feed content on their maps allowing you even to edit the data but doesn't appear to let you easily export the GeoRSS. Live Maps does the inverse, allowing you to create and export GeoRSS data but not import it. I'd like both please. Oh well.
This past weekend Sarah and I went to
Laughs Comedy Spot in Kirkland and saw Doug Benson who frequently appears on VH1's Best Week Ever. Doug Benson seemed drunk or high and messed up a couple of jokes but otherwise was at times very funny. There were
three comedians on before him sorted from least humorous to most. The place was smaller than I thought it'd be and required a lot of work to flag down a waitress to obtain a drink.
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