Playing catch-up

To summarize last week, for the terminally curious:

Saturday, the wandering Jaguar E-type driver Larry Wade arrived at my house with his daughter. Partially inspired by my summer roadtrip with Nicholas a few years ago, he was out on a tour of the West with his kids. I gladly extended an invite to stay here at Chez Goolsbee, and helped him arrange an automotive checkup with Geoff Pickard to have a look at his E-type after a few thousand miles of road tripping. He planned on sending his daughter back to LA and pick up his son, but the fine efforts of United Airlines completely destroyed his planned smooth kid-exchange schedule. Sue entertained his daughter with a trip to see horses, while Larry picked up his Nicholas-age son. The two boys hit it off well and we had a huge dinner Sunday night at our house.
On Monday, Sue & I has a busy day in Seattle, dealing with a legal issue that my company hired her to perform… As in all legal proceedings it was a royal pain in the posterior, and nobody came away happy, but it was all done, so we were satisfied to be finished with it. We dropped off Larry’s daughter to get her flight home as well. My father was in Seattle and came home with us, so we had a full house!
Tuesday I took the day off and went for a drive with Larry & son, bringing Nicholas along too. We went to Fidalgo & Whidbey Islands, with a nice stop at Deception Pass. You can see the photos here. In the evening we all went out for Mexican food here in Arlington as Larry’s treat.
Wednesday I took my dad back to Seattle for his flight home, and worked. The Navy’s Blue Angels arrived and we watched them land at Boeing Field from the building’s roof.
Thursday I was invited to a CTO/CIO/Geek-thing by a bandwidth broker here in Seattle, where we were shuttled out to a houseboat moored on the log boom in Lake Washington. We had a front row seat for the Blue Angel’s two practice flights that day. I was surrounded by high-level geeks who had just experienced an outage at a competitor’s facility earlier in the week. The second or third outage for some of them. The timing could not have been better as we are just completing a major build-out of our facility, and unlike other datacenter’s in Seattle we have power and cooling to spare (we are running at ~10% of our capacity right now!) Needless to say, it was a fruitful day. The ironic cherry atop the sundae was there were also two people from a huge company that we had lost the deal on for colocation earlier in the year, who picked this competitor over us. They were still not “live” at the new place, but it was interesting to see their faces as the other customers of that facility complained about their problems.
Friday my family came by the office mid-day and picked me up for a weekend trip down to Oregon to visit relatives. We drove Sue’s new Jeep Liberty CRD down and back to central Oregon’s high desert. We ran on roughly 25% home brew fuel, and turned a respectable 27 MPG. While laying in a hammock and watching the stars Friday night I witnessed two satellites orbiting in near-identical paths… one following the other very closely. Almost as if they were just about to, or had just completed a docking maneuver. Fascinating to see.
We spent some time Saturday being separated from our money at the Deschutes County Fair… a very expensive day indeed (I haven’t been ripped off that bad since Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, UK). If they could have dinged us a dollar a breath they would have. Sigh.
Sunday we returned with my Mother-in-law in the Jeep, Christopher & I sharing the driving duties. I spotted an E-type in Biggs Junction, Oregon… a series 1 2+2.

So that’s what has been keeping me away from blogging of late.

Insanely busy, mind the gap.

The past week has been VERY busy for me, leaving no time for blogging. In fact I’m in a motel in Madras, Oregon at the moment and this is the first time I’ve looked at my website in a week!

So here’s a pic to tide you over the weekend:

Any guesses?

Kevin got it: An Auburn.

Here are some more pictures of the same car (from the 2005 Colorado Grand.)

Car Photo of the Day… Quebec!

This shot has a sort of “je ne sais quoi, eh.” 😉

Taken at the 2003 New England 1000 vintage rally as we lined up for a start from the Chateau Frontenac. That space in front of the Aston-Martin became ours shortly afterwards when the official rally photog wanted to shoot the impressive facade of the Chateau looming above the equally impressive nose of the Jaguar XK 120.

I took some other shots that day, as the location was awesome, so look for the scene again in the future in this “CPOTD” location. I picked this one as it has a wonderful “Summer” feel to it.

That day started wonderfully as you can see, but a few hours later we missed a checkpoint and earned a 1 second penalty (after running a perfect rally up to that point) and then to add injury to insult, threw a fan belt, and ended up blowing ourselves completely off the competitive scale. It became a tour after that… but we did stop at a racetrack and had some fun.

–chuck

Technology moves forward, right?

Ten years ago, I spent a year where I was basically “commuting” between Seattle and London. I shed laptop, and desktop computers and made an Apple Newton 2000 my primary computer for that year. I did all my email, systems administration, etc from that little paperback book sized unit. While in Europe I used a GSM card and my Nokia phone for connectivity (via a RAS server in our London office), and in the US I used a Ricochet Wireless Modem, from Metricom (may they Rest In Peace.)

Nowadays I carry around a 15″ G4 powerbook and a PalmOne Treo 600 (yes, I’m always a bit behind the bleeding edge these days!) and I find that in many ways I miss that Newton. I found it funny to see this online today:

“Two gadgets, Ten years between them, One fight to the death!”

Amusingly enough, the Newton wins.

For all the crap that Apple got for the early versions of the Newt, they did get their feces amalgamated pretty damn fast, and by the time the 130 shipped with NewtonOS 2.0, the damn thing was rock-solid. But, like so many other first-to-market technology, the early stumbles never allowed them to catch on as well as they should. Only those of us that fully took the plunge ever really understood how good a miniature computing device could be. Now were just awash in mediocrity and end up toting a bag full of crap around.

–chuck

“Mr. President, I think you may be missing the point…”

My son, who is angling for permission to purchase this particular game, showed me this link. It is.. Hilarious.

The voice actors do an awesome job of recreating the cadence, inflections, demeanor, and mispronunciations (not to mention the malapropisms!) of their subjects. I love how the “Bush” character goes so well from the “scripted” to the “unscripted” Bush. I love how the Tony Blair one politely, and indirectly (but with that wonderful restrained English disdain) corrects Bush’s abuse of the native tongue.

It is dead-on accurate. Well done.

Having played host to “viral marketing” websites prior to the whole youtube/googlevideo phenomena, I’m a bit familiar with the genre. Unfortunately these things so often fly under the radar of mainstream media. Too bad that the publisher can’t afford airtime on a major network because I’d love to witness the furor that this would generate if aired during “Idol” or even better Fox News.

But then I’ve always been one of those smirking $#!+ stirrers. 😉

–chuck

Car Photo of the Day.

OK, so technically it isn’t a car photo. This is the Seattle Cossacks Motorcycle Stunt Drill Team at an appearance at the Arlington 4th of July parade many years ago. These guys are amazing and this photo does not capture how amazing they really are. They are just beginning their performance in this shot, which much much more to come. I like the photo though for the composition.

If you ever get a chance to see them perform, I highly recommend it. They used to be a fixture in the Arlington 4th of July parade, but I haven’t seen them for a few years. They are appearing this weekend at the Evel Knievel Days in Butte, MT. So if you’re in Butte, go.

Here are some more photos of the Cossacks:

Check out their website for more.