ski season forecast

Looking good! 40% chance of below average temperatures and above average precipitation. No warn dry winter like last winter!

whitetail adventure

status update

weather for the week

Weak. And yes, that's my Lil' John weather theme. He's sleepy. He's
not awake at 6:15.

food court steak

sao paulo sunset

view from my cube for the week

door to the spaceship

rainier says hello

the local news

Where I get my local news:

The Capitol Hill Blog - Roanoke Tavern in "wait and see" mode

Seattle Crime Blog - The Morning Blotter: Creepy-Ass Attempted Robbery On First/Capitol Hill

Publicola - Seattle Proposes Not-So-Green “Green” Street

Seattle Transit Blog - Seattle gets $2.4M in Transit Livability Grants

so close...

Only about 900 more miles till I hit 200,000 with the Accord. Given how much I drive, that should take four months.

scale

Someone asked me the question a month or two back about how big Capitol Hill was compared to Shaker Heights (the town where I grew up). I thought they were about the same size. I was wrong.

Back in Shaker I'd walk to the middle school, which was 1.4 miles away. In Seattle, a walk of the same distance would bring me to to the Convention Center at the edge of downtown.

If I were to do a "long run," I'd head up to Horseshoe Lake, which is about 3 miles away from my parent's place. Here, a 3 mile run would take me to Queen Anne or the middle of UW. I guess a good long run here would be to run around Lake Union, passing by half the neighborhoods in Seattle. I should do that someday.

Some rough equivalent distances:
Downtown Seattle = Shaker Middle School
Seattle Chinatown = The Pearl of the Orient
Safeco and Qwest Fields = Legacy Village
Bellevue = Cleveland Chinatown
Microsoft = MetroHealth
Alpental Ski Area = Canton, OH
Richmond, BC = Pittsburgh, PA
Coeur d'Alene, ID = Scarborough, ON

Not to mention that within the distance it would take to walk to Mercer (1 block away in Shaker), I have pho (four, actually), restaurants, bars, my bank, a farmer's market, three grocery stores, two parks, 10 coffee shops (3 Starbucks), my dentist, and my optometrist.

vis a vis

2009 air mileage

4820 - New York (AA, DL)
4061 - Cleveland (UA, WN)
3868 - Cleveland, Detroit (DL, FL)
3420 - Chicago (AA)
16670 - Tel Aviv (DL)
4042 - Cleveland (CO)
4820 - New York (B6)
1356 - San Francisco (VX)
4820 - New York (DL)
15309 - Brazil, Argentina (AA, AS, JJ)
19400 - Delhi (CO)
3433 - Chicago (AA, NW)
4050 - Cleveland (AA)

90069 for 2009. Ugh.

quick browser review

#1 – Firefox

Why I use it:

• Great extension support – notably AdBlock Plus and xMarks
• I like how I can dock my bookmarks.  It’s a great way to make the screen narrower (in other words, more readable) while making good use of that space.
• It works.

Why I hate it:

• It’s slow.  Ridiculously slow to open, and then if I leave it open for more than two days (on my work computers, for example, or when I put my home computer on standby), it gobbles up enormous amount of memory.  I really want a better #1.

#2 – Chrome

Why I use it:

• It opens up really fast.  If I just turned on my computer and I don’t need to access my bookmarks and I’m doing basic browsing, I’ll just use Chrome.  This only happens on my desktop at home.
• Good extension support.  It now has AdBlock and xMarks.  Finally.

Why I hate it:

• Crappy page rendering and video playback.  Sometimes things just don’t work.
• It’s annoying to use bookmarks.  I need to make a new tab and then click on the bookmarks menu and then click some more?  No thanks.  I’d rather just click on the bookmark like I do in Firefox.

#3 – Safari

Why I use it:

• Best browser for the iPhone.

Why I hate it:

• On the PC it’s installs itself whenever anything Apple needs to be updated.  DOJ should get on it, because it’s not cool to have a new version of QuickTime, Safari, Bonjour, and whatever crap installed every time I upgrade iTunes (which is now a beast).
• Weird keyboard shortcuts.  Ctrl-T, Ctrl-Tab, Ctrl-L, Ctrl-E, Ctrl-W.  Thanks.

#4 – Internet Explorer 8

Why I use it:

• Work.  Intranet sites.
• It’s a good second browser if I want to be logged in using different accounts for different services (like Facebook, e-mail, etc.).  Any browser can do this, but I have IE installed on all my PCs so it’s the default.

Why I hate it:

• It takes several seconds to open up a new tab.  Unacceptable.

i am amused

Joakim Noah on Cleveland:



LeBron James on Chicago:

before, after, and after

google bike directions

I saw the press release and I thought "Sweet!" After playing around with it, it's not quite there yet. Maybe Bellevue is to blame for having crap bike maps, but it's not as helpful as I had hoped. It may be somewhat accurate in predicting time though, so long as I make some massive adjustments.

Work to home via the Burke Gilman:
147 minutes on Google Maps = 105 for me

Work to home via I-90:
116 minutes on Google Maps = 75 for me

Discovery park to home:
51 minutes on Google Maps = 30 for me

and hills!

One reason that I don't bike *to* work is that I would need to go up this 2 mile stretch that's at a 4% grade. Coming downhill I can hit 40mph on that hill. Going uphill I'll be lucky if I can maintain 7mph.

annoyances as a bicyclist

1. People who yield for me when they have the right of way. Thank you for the kind gesture, but it's faster if you just kept going. Since Seattle drivers love to go slow for no reason, I won't go until you've made a complete stop and signaled that you're stopping for me.
2. People who turn left at roundabouts by going the wrong way. Yes, technically the law is unclear about whether it's illegal to go clockwise around a roundabout for a left turn. Consider how everyone not turning left needs to go counterclockwise. If any other traffic that blindly enters the intersection is going counterclockwise, maybe you should do the same... unless you like head on collisions. I've seen more than one result from this idiocy.
3. Drivers who drive slower than me... especially if I let you go first thinking you'll be faster. I've noticed this happens a lot on side streets.
   
4. Unalert pedestrians. If you jump out from behind a parked car, you might get hit by a car... or bike. Both will hurt a lot. People who walk 6 abreast on a busy bike trail also fall into this category, especially if you don't respond to oncoming traffic, bells, or voice. The people walking towards you who can't get by and the two rollerbladers who slipped through your crowd should have been a hint. My bell should have been another hint. Me saying excuse me should have been super clear, especially since you turned around and looked at me, looked at me some more, looked at me some more, kept walking, turned around to look at me again, adjusted your sunglasses to verify that I was really there, continued walking, then continued adjusting your shades. Thankfully, you can't walk straight when adjusting your shades so I was able to slip through.
   
5. Wind. I was marveling at how I was going 20mph without much effort the other day. Then I remembered how it was a chore to go 16mph when I was going the other direction.
6. People with smelly cars.
7. Meandering children. Nothing against children, but its harder to avoid children regardless of speed. I really don't want to hit you or run you over, but your erratic path makes it really hard. I always fear that you'll turn your bike right under my wheels as I'm passing by.