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January 31, 2005
Home again, home again, jiggedy-jig
Just got a call from the escrow company - our sale closed and recorded today - we own a house again.
It would have been impossible without the incredible patience, support, and assistance of Jonathan Fink, our realtor - if you need to find a house in the Seattle area, we highly recommend him.
Our experience with Scott Delhaute of Sterling Custom homes has been generally positive. He's a good guy, trying to do the right thing, and we've always managed to reach reasonable compromise. He proved me wrong and hit his dates when I was convinced there wasn't a snow-ball's chance in hell that he would.
On Thursday and Friday the movers will be delivering our worldly goods to the house - and we'll be back to a 2 car, 3 motorcycle, suburban lifestyle.
I miss the city already.
Posted by dberger at 4:48 PM
"Euro Hip-Hop Fusion"
I dunno what to call 'em - but Nizlopi shuffled to the top of my jukebox play queue this morning. A professor in the cs department turned me on to these guys while I was there doing my MS - and gave me perhaps the strongest recommendation he, as an Irishman, could; "I normally hate the London accent, but these guys are really quite good."
Anyway - they've got demo tracks on their site - check 'em out.
Posted by dberger at 9:47 AM
God I hate Verizon
We moved out of our place in CA in November - and I cancelled our Verizon phone service shortly thereafter. I'm still trying to get those incompetent bastards to leave me alone.
This weekend, I got a letter from a collections agency on behalf of Verizon saying we owed them $35. Now this was strange for at least two reasons.
Reason the first is that I had spoken to them over a month ago when I got a bill for DSL service in January (see previous note about having had the line disconnected in November of last year). Seems that the phone side of the house hadn't correctly coordinated with the DSL side of the house and they were happily billing me for DSL service over a local loop that had been de-provisioned. They issued a credit for a couple months service and I figured that would be the end of that.
Silly me.
The second reason the collections letter surprised me was that, regardless of the whole DSL situation - Verizon direct debited our bill from our bank account - had for years, and had (for the same amount the collections agency was yelling about) just two weeks ago. Now they shouldn't have - 'cause we didn't owe them anything, but they did.
So they took money, and then sent the account to collections for the same money.
So I had a rather terse conversation with the DSL side of the house and got (another) confirmation that the credit was issued, and this morning called the phone side of the house to give them a little bit of grief.
Thing is, I never enjoy ripping into some front-line customer service person. It's not their fault they work for an incompetent organization...
Anyway - in theory the situation is resolved. Verizon has always been a pain in the arse - ask me one day about the 18 months it took me to get DSL service. I guess in that light, it's only fitting that it be similarly hard to get rid of.
Ah, what a Monday.
Posted by dberger at 8:39 AM
Seattle Underground
Dawnise and I finally took the Seattle Underground tour yesterday. We got up late - the first day in a while we didn't have anything pressing to do, and went down to the Crumpet Shop for brunch. While munching on our crumpets, we started into the classic "what do you want to do today?", "I dunno, what do you want to do today?" exchange.
We decided, at great length, that we'd swing back by the apartment on our way down to Pioneer Square to do the underground tour. The weather has been great lately, and Sunday was no exception - we got to the tour in plenty of time to buy tickets for the 1pm, and then walked around Pioneer Square to kill time.
The tour itself was, IMO, well worth the $10 admission - the guides were very knowledgeable and quite charismatic. As for the folks who built this city - well, let's just say that building it on rock 'n roll would have been a huge step up. What they did build it on, the first time, was sawdust. Seems logical right - you've got a booming lumber industry, a literal mountain of sawdust, and you need landfill. Never mind the whole "sawdust is organic and will decay over time" problem.
"Other kinds said I was daft to build a castle in the swamp..."
Anyway - after a 20 minute historical talk we broke into two groups and went underground. Got some pretty good pictures that I'll be uploading "soon."
After the tour we went out to ... drum-roll please ... do more shopping! During our outing we stumbled on a Krispy Crack with the HOT sign on, so we stopped in for our bi-annual donut fix. Just like a drug dealer - the first one's free, but you can never stop at just one.
On the house front, in theory we close escrow today - fingers crossed. The movers are scheduled to bring stuff out on Thursday and Friday, our new mattress comes in on Saturday, and DirecTV will be there to do the install on Sunday. Once I get the cable modem I ordered I'll schedule Comcast to come out and hook up cable modem, and then we'll decide if we're getting a traditional land-line, or just going VoIP.
Posted by dberger at 7:32 AM
January 29, 2005
Carnivore Mecca
We did our walk-through on the house this morning - some little stuff (cosmetic) the builder will be addressing this weekend, and we found a solution on the paint. See it's wet up here. Really wet - not that it's raining much - just that the air is very moist. So the paint on the house isn't drying - and the mud around the house is so, well, muddy, that the painters ladder is sinking in over a foot. So we decided that the builder will do his best to make the street-side of the house look finished, and give us a bit of cash back against him coming back once the place has dried out and finishing the exterior painting.
After the walk-through we tried to hook up with Brad and Kat, but Kat wasn't feeling well, so we hopped the next ferry back to the mainland and went out to complete some furniture shopping that had been interrupted a few days back. Bought seating for the living and entertainment rooms - and got stuff we really liked for under our budget (a nice change, vs the table and bed).
We decided, on the way back, to give the newly opened Brazilian place another go, so I dropped Dawnise off in front of the building and went to park the car. They had opened up the rest of their seating tonight, so we were seated without delay and after getting the obligatory "red mean stop brining meat, green means bring it on" talk, dinner was underway.
If you've never been to a Brazilian BBQ place before, one word of caution - vegetarians need not apply. It's all about meat. Chicken, Beef, Pork, Lamb, Sausages, you name it. Ipanema (their domain doesn't work yet, but that's the URL on their menus) is a prie-fix arrangement for dinner - you pay one price and "meat stewards" (called passadores) interrupt you every few minutes to offer you some cut or another. We tried everything they offered at least once.
Continue reading "Carnivore Mecca"
Posted by dberger at 8:15 PM | Comments (2)
January 28, 2005
Starstruck in Seattle...
When we moved into our apartment in November of last year, they were building a new Brazilian BBQ restaurant on the ground floor of the building. The other day Dawnise and I were walking past when we noticed they had put a menu up in their menu box, so we took a look, and discovered they were scheduled to open tonight (Friday the 28th).
We invited some friends (Brian and Dina, and Scott and Megan) to accompany us to the opening - we figured it might suck, but it was worth a shot. Scott had to take a rain check, but Brian and Dina were up for it - so at 6:30 Dina and their son Lucas picked Brian and I up from the office and we made our way down town. En-route I called Dawnise, who went down and discovered there was an hour wait for a table - too long for the small - so we decided to head up to the 5 Spot for dinner.
Along the way we changed course and decided to try the Fondue restaurant in Queen Ann, but they had a 75 minute wait, so the 5 Spot it was. We found parking with relative ease, and were seated pretty much immediately.
We hadn't been sitting for more than a few minutes, when the wait staff seated a couple with two kids at the booth behind us. I did a double-take. The guy sitting down could have been Dave Matthews' identical twin. I figured I was just imagining it 'till Dina turned around and I saw the same look on her face that must have been on mine.
Continue reading "Starstruck in Seattle..."
Posted by dberger at 9:35 PM | Comments (1)
January 27, 2005
I hate threatening people...
When we moved out of our house in CA, I called DirecTV and suspended our account through January - figuring we'd have moved in by then and it wouldn't be a problem. I had been meaning to call them to schedule installation at the new place for a few days, and today a bill arrived - seems they'd started billing us again in the middle of the month (despite our not having equipment hooked up).
So I called and got bounced around three times before getting a fellow on the phone who could handle the installation request, and I told him I had suspended the account, but that they had started billing again, and I asked him to reverse the twenty-odd dollar charge they had collected mid-month.
He confirmed that their records showed that I had suspended the account through 1/1, and I thought I had said "through January," which would mean 1/31. I agreed with him that there was some miscommunication, and didn't think it would be a big deal, but his response was:
"I'm sorry sir, there's nothing I can do about that - we told you when billing would resume."
Continue reading "I hate threatening people..."
Posted by dberger at 7:00 PM
Latest house news
We went over to Bainbridge and signed escrow/loan docs this morning - it's very nearly done. Went over the inspection report with the builder, and he agreed to remedy nearly all the items we asked for, so it's basically looking good for close on Monday. We should have keys in our possession Tuesday morning, and the movers are scheduled to deliver our "stuff" on Thursday and Friday of next week.
Posted by dberger at 6:56 PM
Damn this stuff is cool...
We did more furniture shopping last night - looking for sofas and assorted seating for the living, family, and entertainment rooms. This morning I was looking for the manufacturers we had liked, and found funkysofa.com. They're located - of course - in So. Cal. - and they have some wicked cool stuff. They'll even deliver - at a cost of about $200 per piece.
Next time we're in California, I suspect strongly we'll wander over to their showroom to check them out.
Posted by dberger at 8:35 AM
January 26, 2005
Quick house update
Went over to the house this morning with the inspector - spent about 3 hours there. They're behind schedule (surprise, surprise), and we have a medium length punch-list of stuff we'll be asking the builder to remedy, but nothing major. The upstairs carpet is installed in the common areas (the grey we chose looks good) and the installer was working on the lower floor. The driveway is in, as is the rear patio slab, and they were building the front deck.
We go over tomorrow morning to sign escrow papers.
Further bulletins as events warrant.
Posted by dberger at 2:13 PM
January 24, 2005
Our first purchase(s)
Well, we bought our first new bits of furniture today. We went back to Bassett Direct and bought the dresser, nightstands, and chest of drawers from the 5th Avenue collection. I think we got a reasonably good deal on the pieces, and they paid the sales tax. Not a trivial amount of money by any means, but it's cherry wood, well constructed, and pretty much the only bedroom furniture we've seen in lots of looking that we really liked.
The problem is, we hated the bed. So we went to Don Willis furniture to look at a bed made by Borkholder. It was only a couple hundred dollars more than the bed we hated - but that didn't make it much easier to spend that much money on a bed. To make matters worse, they had the dining table that we really liked, and the table with 6 chairs (the ones without arms) was definitely un-cheap. I felt the prices individually were reasonable given that the pieces are hand-crafted, but we hemmed and hawed enough that we managed to negotiate another couple hundred off the combined price, and since we had seen them at the Seattle Home Remodeling show, they gave us the no-sales tax special pricing that had technically ended with the show on Sunday.
No matter how you slice it, we spent a serious amount of money on furniture today - but I think I'm ok with it. We kept some proceeds from the sale of the house in CA back for furnishing and upgrading the new house, and Dawnise and I had decided that we wanted to "up-class" a bit - buying accouterments that fit the house. These definitely qualify. The Borkholder pieces are one-of-a-kind heirloom quality - and we'll have to update our wills to make sure they're explicitly handled (damn it Rob, see what you've done to me?).
Don Willis had an absolutely beautiful curio - also by Borkholder - but I had definitely hit the limit of my comfort zone. But I have to say, my fountain pen collection would look stunning displayed in that case... Perhaps, if it's still there, I'll reconsider once our budget has recovered a bit.
The lead time on the bedroom stuff is 4-6 weeks, and the Borkholder is more like 10, so we'll be living with empty rooms for a while, but that's ok.
Posted by dberger at 10:05 PM
Stop the ride, I wanna get off.
I was in a group status meeting this morning from 10-11, and my cel phone was ringing off the hook. I was ignoring it 'till I got to calls, nearly back to back, from Dawnise - our agreed upon signal for "I really need to talk to you." We came up with it when I was commuting on the motorcycle - I would ignore the first call, but if two came in rapid succession it meant I needed to pull over and call her back.
Returning that call launched the house fire-drill for the morning - apparently the paint color we had chosen for the trim (a muted blue, called "Urban Twilight") was going on really bright and garish - like those blue tarps they sell at Home Depot - and the builder was freaking out. The especially annoying thing was that we didn't just pick that color - for the first time in our lives we intentionally stuck with a pre-chosen set of coordinated colors, precisely to avoid this sort of situation.
I called him back and started trying to come up with a plan - but he pretty much cut off every workable avenue. I couldn't see what he was seeing, and if we didn't make a decision right now it would delay close -- there wasn't even time, apparently, for Dawnise to catch the next ferry over and see it with her own eyes.
Talk about being backed into a corner.
Continue reading "Stop the ride, I wanna get off."
Posted by dberger at 3:49 PM
January 23, 2005
The Best Laid Plans...
Seems that despite the builder of our new home's repeated insistence, we won't be closing on the 1st. See, it rained in Seattle yesterday.
I know - rain. In Seattle. In January. It's shocking.
So shocking, in fact, that a professional builder apparently couldn't foresee that the weather would have an affect on the build schedule.
As of last week, the builder and his agent were so positive we'd close on time, I made the mistake of scheduling the movers to deliver our stuff on the 3rd and 4th - a reservation it seems I'll now need to un-do.
The delay is annoying - it means we have to pay an obscene amount to stay in our temp housing (about $100/night), and some as yet unknown but almost certainly similarly obscene amount to keep our stuff in storage. It also means we'll have to sacrifice our nearly perfect delivery dates and get back on the movers delivery schedule, at their convenience.
But what's really annoying is that the builder didn't raise the red flag 'till just over a week before close. For several weeks, he said they'd be done early - glad I didn't bank on that one.
Continue reading "The Best Laid Plans..."
Posted by dberger at 6:38 PM
January 21, 2005
An interesting first
I got a call from Washington Mutual today. An unsolicited, unprovoked, unexpected, out of the blue call from the branch manager. While moving up here we discovered that our bank didn't have branches in WA, so we opened a checking account at Washington Mutual purely to get local access to money. And the manager at the branch where we opened the account called me.
"We've noticed you have a rather large balance in a free checking account, and we'd like to recommend a few investment possibilities that will allow you to earn a return on your funds."
Half the time you can't get anyone from the bank to answer simple questions - but apparently if you have enough money sitting around, they'll call you.
Too bad the vast majority of that money will leave the account next week, when we write a check to escrow for the new house. I imagine at that point, we'll go back to being "just another account." No more personal phone calls from branch managers.
Went to dinner this evening at Orrapin - a Thai restaurant in upper Queen Anne. Very tasty food, and reasonably priced. After dinner we caught Scott's set at El Diablo - the coffee and Mexican Hot Chocolate weren't as "on" as our last visit, but the set was entertaining.
Posted by dberger at 10:34 PM
January 20, 2005
Quote of the Day; Thursday January 20, 2005
"Americans may be undereducated, lazy, and disorganized, but they do one
thing better than any people on the face of the earth, and that is watch
television. The average eight-year old American has absorbed more about
media technology than a goddamn film student in most other countries.
You can tell lies to them and they'll never know. But if you try to lie
to them with the camera, they'll crucify you."
- Cy Ogle, "Interface"
Posted by dberger at 10:07 PM
Cars Suck...
Got my car back today - it's got a new alternator, a couple new serpentine belts, new rear brakes (and turned rotors), a new valve cover gasket, plugs, plug wires, fuel filter, and probably a few things I've forgotten.
$1100.
And I opted out of an additional $500 worth of recommended preventative maintenance - break system flush, injector service, transmission service, and coolant system service.
To put the icing on the cake, the drive side headlight has been rattling in it's mount at idle, which is driving me absolutely nuts, but without tools and a well-light place to inspect it, I can't do anything about it.
I am so ready to get out of this apartment and into our house.
Posted by dberger at 10:00 PM
Something Old and Something New
A while back I found a poor quality video capture of the video for "Middle of Nowhere" by Gina Schock's short lived solo project "House of Schock." The album was released on CD, but is long out of print.
I've been keeping my eye out for copies on ebay, and picked one up the other day when I finally found one for something approaching a reasonable price (they've sold for as much as $60 the past few times they've appeared).
Sitting in my office listening to it - it's pretty good. Not earth-shattering, or even ground-breaking - but I'm enjoying it. I'd say you should go pick it up - but that's problematic, so if you're interested, let me know and I'll loan it to you.
On the "something new" front - Scott Andrew is playing a set this Friday (tomorrow, the 21st of January) at El Diablo Coffee on Queen Ann at 8pm. I've mentioned Scott before - he's a good guy, and a talented musician. There's no cover - and ElDiablo makes great Mexican hot chocolate - so if you're in the Seattle area, you've really got nothing to lose. Check him out.
Posted by dberger at 8:46 AM
January 17, 2005
We do more by 10am... (Coda)
This morning was a flurry of activity as the Beltz clan packed their belongings (good god did they bring a lot of stuff). We went back to the Crumpet Shop for breakfast, and saw them off for their drive to Sequim around 11:30.
We had intended to go to the Lazy Boy showroom in Tukwila to do some furniture shopping, but found the car battery dead when we got there - seemingly owing to the dome light being left on. We borrowed a portable jump-start gadget from the parking garage company, but no dice, it was deader than that.
It took AAA about 40 minutes to arrive - and with their industrial strength gadget, the car started right up.
And died again about 3/4 of the way out of the garage. Just as I was pushing it out of the way, we saw the AAA truck turning around in the alley behind the apartments, so I sprinted out and got his attention. He, again, applied the jump start routine, and again the car started. This time - wise to it's deception, we agreed that I'd drive it out of the garage, and he'd wait for me.
It was obvious the moment I put it in gear it wasn't going to last - I barely out of the garage before it died again. We maneuvered it out of the way and called a tow-truck.
Not having needed an auto shop here in Seattle, we went with the AAA drivers recommendation and had it towed to "Downtown Automotive" (original name) - I'm hoping to hear back from them tonight or tomorrow...
Posted by dberger at 4:38 PM | Comments (1)
January 16, 2005
We do more by 10am... (Part Three of Three)
We met the out-of-towners in their hotel room and discussed the plans for the day. They had decided to extend their stay through Sunday - leaving for Sequim on Monday morning, and we decided that the hotel breakfast wasn't really up to scratch for commemorating Vince's birthday. Dawnise and I had heard good things about a place in Queen Ann called The Five Spot, so we hopped in their rental car, and drove the 2 miles to the restaurant. Managed to find parking, walk the block back, and were seated with a minimum of delay.
Our timing turned out to be excellent, by the time we had our coffee, the line had grown to fill the entry way. I have nothing but good things to say about breakfast at The Five Spot - we will definitely be going back. Good food, good service, and very reasonable prices.
From there Vince decided he wanted to check out the Science Fiction Museum in the Seattle Center. Figuring that many of our visiting friends were likely to have the same idea - Dawnise and I bought an annual membership (as we did at the aquarium on Friday). The museum, it turns out, is essentially Paul Allen's personal memorabilia showcase in a non-profit wrapper. There's stuff from other people - and even stuff (like the power-loader and queen alien) on loan from studios - but I was amazed at how much was from "The Allen Family Collection."
Stuff from all ages of SF - from Verne to Babylon 5 and everything in between (nothing from Firefly, though - very disappointing). Way too much to take in given the time we had.
Continue reading "We do more by 10am... (Part Three of Three)"
Posted by dberger at 11:59 PM
January 15, 2005
We do more by 10am... (Part Two of Three)
We met Vince, Donna & Ari for breakfast in the hotel around 8:30. By the time they were ready it was closer to 9. We invaded the hotel's breakfast, claiming to all be staying in room 11.
We had planned, after breakfast, to catch a ferry over to Bainbridge to look at that house - but our late start caused us to miss the ferry, so we decided to head to the Seattle Public Library. Vince is, perhaps, the biggest bibliophile I know - and after seeing Dawnise's occasional taunting pictures of our library, he had to visit before he left.
The plan (not my plan, just the plan) was to spend "a few minutes" in the library and catch the next ferry to Bainbridge. The Seattle Public Library is 11 stories tall - 9 of which house books. We started in the children's section, where we left Ari and Donna, and headed out into the stacks. About an hour later we had managed to run a full circuit - not stopping to look at much, and realized we had missed another ferry.
We caught the next one and spent some time at the house - where Dawnise and I saw (or rather didn't see) a disturbing lack of progress. The ground was frozen over and I managed for the first time to actually walk around the house. We had planned to pour a boat/RV parking slab next to the house, but the concrete contractor balked, saying we should wait 'till things had dried out next summer, and after walking on the frozen mud, that seemed like a pretty good idea.
Continue reading "We do more by 10am... (Part Two of Three)"
Posted by dberger at 11:59 PM | Comments (2)
January 14, 2005
We do more by 10am... (Part One of Three)
Vince, Donna & Ari flew in Thursday night to visit - and to surprise Dawnise for her birthday on Friday. Unbeknownst to Dawnise, they had taken a room in the Inn At the Harbor Steps, conveniently located in our apartment building. I took the day off under false pretense - despite Dawnise's repeated insistence that I should just go in late.
Friday morning, we went down to the lobby to head to the Crumpet Shop for breakfast - where Vince was playing the part of the spy, sitting on a sofa in the lobby (in)conspicuously reading the paper, and Donna and Ari were sitting on another sofa, primed to jump Dawnise.
Dawnise very nearly missed all three of them in her rush out the door. I had to pull her back in to give them time to spring the trap.
Vince tried to take some pictures of the joyous reunion - I think all he ended up with were blurry shots of backs - alternating between Dawnise and Ari as they spun 'round.
Continue reading "We do more by 10am... (Part One of Three)"
Posted by dberger at 8:33 PM
January 10, 2005
Fast, Slow, and Fuzzy
Seems both Nise and I are working on getting sick. Felt sorta crappy this morning, took some cold meds and went to work anyway. By the end of the day I was pretty wiped.
I had ordered parts to upgrade my machine, and the last of them (the case) came in today, so I had Nise pick me up from work. That, it turned out, was a mistake. There was a fatal traffic accident that completely snarled traffic in the Seattle grid - it took us nearly 45 minutes to get the 1.5 miles from my office back to the apartment. Blech.
Had dinner, and despite knowing better, I set to work upgrading my machine. Took me about 90 minutes to get the new CPU, Motherboard and RAM into the new case and migrate my drives over. Linux was happy as a clam going from two 1Ghz Pentium 3's to a single AMD Athlon 64 3400+. It figured out that a bunch of hardware had been removed and a bunch of different hardware had taken it's place, and within a minute (no reboots required, thank you very much) it was up and running.
My Windows XP install, well, it's not nearly as happy. I've had good luck in the past just moving the install - it'll take 6 or 7 reboots, but Windows will eventually figure things out. Not this time. When I try to boot Windows, the screen goes black for a moment, and the machine reboots. I suspect it's going to take some fairly serious massaging before it's willing to come out and play.
Anyway, enough sillyness for the evening - time to hit the sack.
Posted by dberger at 10:28 PM
January 9, 2005
A Lazy Sunday
It snowed this morning.
It had snowed overnight - just enough to dust everything in white, and was snowing again when we came out of Costco. This sort of snow I like - it looks nice, melts within the day, and basically has no negative effect on life at all.
Dawnise wasn't feeling to great, so we we scratched our plans for the Underground Tour, came home and she took a nap.
She woke up around 2:30 and wanted to get out of the apartment for a while, so we hopped int he car and drive to a mattress factory we'd seen an ad for in a local paper. May not sound like a fun outing, but we'd ditched our old mattress when we moved, so until we buy a new one, we'll be sleeping on the floor in our new house.
Walked in, were getting the spiel from the sales critter, and when he got to the "free delivery" part Dawnise asked: "Do you deliver to Bainbridge?"
He laughed.
Apparently not - not even for a fee. Which is odd, considering Custom Comfort, the company we bought our last matress from, will ship one up here for us.
We got the same cool reception at a "main land" furniture store we went to a week or so ago. Found a really cool sofa/loveseat/chaise set that we were about ready to buy - a couple thousand dollars in all, and they wouldn't take more of our money to deliver it. Seems penny wise, pound foolish.
Posted by dberger at 3:21 PM
January 8, 2005
Boredom and Claustrophobia
We slept late this morning - it was pretty much the first weekend since we've been here that we didn't have something we needed to do, and sleeping in was a nice change.
Trouble is - there was nothing we needed to do, and the one bedroom apartment is starting to feel really cramped.
We went to breakfast at the Tea & Crumpet shop, walked back through Pikes, and wandered through a few of the furniture stores on Western Ave near the apartment. Some absolutely beautiful, heirloom quality, stuff - but $4000 for a sideboard is more than I was looking to spend.
We decided to go over to the island to visit the house and see how much progress had been made since our last visit. I checked to confirm that there was bus service, and we walked onto an afternoon ferry. Got off on the other side and, viola, no bus.
Grumble.
Continue reading "Boredom and Claustrophobia"
Posted by dberger at 9:56 PM
January 7, 2005
A Bit of (Geek) Nostalgia
My lovely wife sent me this . I never had one as a kid - I wanted a video game system, I got a computer (and a career). Thanks a lot, mom & dad.
No, really.
Thanks.
Posted by dberger at 1:12 PM | Comments (1)
January 6, 2005
Give it up for the musical stylings of...
I basically leave my jukebox on random play - it's got most of my CD collection encoded on it (in Ogg Vorbis, of course), and can provide me with weeks of uninterrupted tunes.
Sometimes it picks a song that makes me interrupt it's random walk and play more of the same. It did that twice today.
The first time was when it hit a track by Vertical Horizon off the Go album. I've been a fan of Vertical Horizon since I stumbled across Running on Ice and bought it on impulse. Their first two albums are sorta folk-rock - mostly acoustic, with a couple very catchy songs between them. Then they re-invented themselves, added a few members, and put out Everything You Want. The first single (You're a God) got a bit of radio play in the LA market. Despite myself, I really liked the album (especially the last track, "Shackled") and found most of it's tracks to have that annoying "stuck in your head" quality. When "Go" came out, I was initially dissapointed - none of the songs grabbed me the way their previous stuff had, but over time, it's grown on me. It's a solid album.
The second time was in the middle of the afternoon, when - back on random play - it played a track by Scott Andrew LePera, a local Seattle musician who's way too good to be playing in bars and coffee houses. Scott's another artist I stumbled on by accident (gotta love the web, and his releasing a number of tracks under the Creative Commons License). During the first month I was in Seattle, before Dawnise had come up, I went to see Scott play at a pub in Ballard - opening for Granian (who's also very good, but that's a story for another time). We got to chatting a bit after his set - aside from being a hell of a musician, he's a really nice guy. You should check out a track or two - like Gravel Road Requiem, 2 AM, or Holding Back.
Posted by dberger at 9:59 PM
The happy snapper strikes again...
I realized that one of the USB cables I brought for my jukebox has the connector needed to talk to our Canon A70. Since that discovery, Dawnise has started taking pictures like mad.
She's started organizing them in our gallery for all to see. For those of you using RSS readers, there's an RSS Feed available at http://oubliette.org/gallery/rss.php
Posted by dberger at 9:52 PM
Screw the cold, I want my bikes back...
I'm not much of a Harley Davidson fan. Never really saw the attraction.
But I walk past an HD accessory shop every morning on the way to work, and they have a couple bikes in the window. You can't buy 'em there, all you can buy there are shirts, coffee mugs, golf balls, and anything else they can stamp with the Harley logo, but there are bikes there none the less.
The other morning I looked in the window and thought "I'd even ride that."
The weather here has been amazing for the last week - cool (ok, cold) and clear - great riding weather (well, assuming you have the right equipment it is). And my bikes are sitting in a storage facility in Tacoma, waiting for us to have a place to move into.
By the time I get 'em back, I'm sure the weather will have turned grey and soggy. But you know what? I may just go riding anyway.
Posted by dberger at 9:11 PM
January 2, 2005
About those vacation photos...
I've done a small update to our photo gallery. Added some pics from our visit with Scott & Amanda, and a visit with The Schemels before we left for Washington. I have more that I haven't categorized yet, I'll try to get to them later.
Tried iPhoto for the first time today - and I'm pretty impressed - it's a nice app.
Posted by dberger at 8:32 PM
January 1, 2005
Happy New Year [updated]
Our first New Years in Seattle was, all in all, pretty darn good. We went to Ray's Boathouse for dinner with some friends - Edmond, his cousin Harry, Fabrice, Brian, Dinah, and Lucas, their 8 month old. I had the cioppino, which was quite good, but not - as the waitress had described "spicy." (People in Seattle keep using that word, I don't think it means what they think it means.) Finished it off with pink grapefruit sorbet and a raspberry lemondrop for desert.
Edmond and Harry had planned to go see the fireworks at the Space Needle from on the ground, but it had started to rain, and Harry decided that the warmth of Edmond's apartment was preferable to standing in the cold getting wet. 'Course this was pretty obvious to us, since Edmond's apartment is on the 20th floor and pretty much directly across from the Needle. You couldn't really have asked for a better viewing spot. So Ed, Harry, Dawnise, Fabrice and I ended up at Ed's place after dinner - chatting about various and sundry stuff 'till the fireworks started just before midnight.
Ed and Harry both got some pretty good footage of the display which was set to music broadcast on the radio and local TV. Disneyland has nothing on Seattle, the pyrotechnics were awesome. After the fireworks (and ensuing barrage of phone calls) we got a ride back to our place from Fabrice, finally nodding off around 2 this morning.
We got up around 10 and walked down to Pikes Market to see if, by chance, our favorite Tea and Crumpet shop was opened. They weren't, so we walked on to Seattle Center and got a membership to the Pacific Science Center. We checked out the Candy Exhibit (ending tomorrow) and then wandered upstairs in the same building to check out some of the other stuff. A very cool place - glad we got a membership, by the time we were done with one building, we were getting hungry and knew there was no way we could see the whole thing.
Continue reading "Happy New Year [updated]"
Posted by dberger at 9:20 PM