We’re getting quiche!
I guess we must be incredibly entertaining house guests to deserve
this…xoxo Ana!
Sunday Bloody Mary Sunday
Aloha Boris!
Our ride to HNL
Coffee
South!
Black sand, wind and turtles
At a black sand beach…see if you can spot the turtle! It is W I N D
Y ! The sand it pelting us in the face…
Volcano!
Flying Hawaii
Kona to Hilo via Kohala coast, Upolu point, Hamakua coast and back via
Waimea. Cessna 182 N5692P 2.2 hours of time logged. Simply awesome.
Good morning!
Here’s the view from our condo in Kona town. Didn’t realize the
powerlines were there… Funny what your mind filters out. The
flowering trees below I believe are Gardenia trees. Whatever they are
they smell awesome!
Aloha!
A toast for good toast!
I had a toaster. I hated it. Despised it.
No more!
Look at my new toaster OVEN! I’m more excited about it than I
probably should be, but hey – it’s the little things in life, right?
I already know it makes great chicken nuggets
Cleaning; Cats…again!
Meet Junior…
He’s there on the right next to his brothers of various ages – isn’t
he cute?
I had wanted a smaller device to use while traveling and while
watching TV (it’s fab to lookup stuff/stars/stats while watching!)
I had high hopes for the Apple iPad but the first version that came
out a few weeks ago just didn’t meet my needs or expectations (no
flash player Apple? Come on now…that’s just dumb no matter what)
So I finally got a "netbook" – and it’s pretty neat. One inch thick
and about 2.5 pounds. 10 inch screen running Windows 7. Intel Atom
N450 processor (the very newest Atom processor) and 2 gigs memory.
Keyboard is more useable than it looks. It’s a sweet little dealie
and performs great.
Oh, and here’s the fun part… It’s a Gateway. Yep, remember them
cows? I was going for the highest rated and reviewed HP netbook but
found this little gem that just came out while researching for the
others. The specs beat the others and price was right so I got it.
Hopefully this little guy will continue to perform.
YAY – new toys!
Cat commas?
Or synchronized sleeping?
Feline open parenthesis?
Two cat posts in a row, I know, but they’re just so damned cute…
The poor things…
Blackout!
Power is out on Capitol Hill…kinda fun for a change…
took a shower real quick before the hot water became cold water. shopping at Safeway is fun – very dark and manual checkout.
hope it doesn’t last into the night!
NY Times quotes me!
Read to the end…the reporter chose to quote me! April and Steve (also quoted) are good friends of mine as well (fellow airplane geeks)
KOMO: 747? 787? They’re the same, right?
This just cries out to be ridiculed and made fun of as wide as possible. Seriously, this is a professional news organization in an area where aerospace is one of the top 2 industries.
Seriously, KOMO, you deserve all the raspberry you can get for this. It’s just sloppy and lazy. No excuses — you are NOT the average person who may not see the difference — you are in the business of ACCURACY and by god in the Seattle area you need to know your airplanes. Would a TV station in Detroit make a story with a caption about a Mustang yet have the picture be a F150 truck? Must I even explain this to you?!
Next you’ll show a screen shot of Apple Macintosh OS X in relation to a Microsoft Windows 7 story. Seriously, guys, this is that bad…and if you can’t see that — wow, I’m astonished and kind of embarrassed you are in my town. You guys are being THAT stupid. And you haven’t even corrected it after hours of people leaving comments on your own website!
Shame on you.
Here’s the link to the story, which hopefully they will correct. But I took a screen shot to proove KOMO’s stupidity:

Fudge FAIL
I swear I followed the instructions to a "t" — here’s hoping attempt
#2 will turn out better
“Perfect” brownies!
So we got suckered in to the "perfect brownie pan" after watching the
commercial so many times…thanks Christopher for the perfect
Christmas present! I’ll be damned If it doesn’t actually work, and
pretty well actually! Here are the second batch results (first batch
was little gingerbread cakes!). And yes, we are aware of the gigantic
cupcake mold commercial….only the future will tell
ENEMA!
I’m sorry, could you package this more conspicuously? I’d appreciate
it. Thanks…
Ahhhh…Christmas mixers…
So bad it’s truly awesome…
What do you get when you cross a young, pre-Miami Vice Don Johnson and the Brady Bunch’s dog Tiger who can now read minds and talk in a post-nuclear-WW4-apocalyptic world and marry it to a misogynistic film script made on a budget of about a buck fifty? Oh, and throw-in Jason Robards in mime makeup leading the extraction of, well, let’s call it viscous liquids, just to throw you for a loop…
Why, you get “A Boy and His Dog,” one of those movies that is so amazingly bad it’s completely awesome. Entrancing, even. You know the kind — so bad that after the first few minutes you simply must finish the entire thing. It’s the the biggest train wreak of a sci-fi movie ever! And I had the privilege of spending 90 minutes this Thanksgiving weekend watching it.
It’s now my favorite awesome worst movie to date. Highly recommended. Must see.
Mona! En guard!
Handerpants
Now *I* have the blanket with sleeves!

Now *I* have the blanket with sleeves!
In a fashionable zebra pattern nonetheless….plus bonus "press and
open" booklight, which provided the handy illumination for the photo.
Thanks Christopher!!!! Xoxo!
The cats are entranced
They now have a deeee-lux apartment in the sky…
Got it for free from a friend who’s moving….score! (thanks Brad!!)
A decade of blogging
I’ve been blogging for a decade. 10 years already… huh!
While this is certainly an interesting point in a time line, it’s really only an electronic analogue to a diary. I’m sure many people have been keeping diaries for longer. Nonetheless I’m kinda tickled to meet this milestone. I started “blogging” before “blog” was even a noun or a verb; indeed before it was even a popular catchphrase. Indeed I had my first web page back in 1995 (See my “Deep Archive” link above)
That’s a lot of time and bandwidth (timewidth?) dedicated to my own banter. What have I accomplished in that time?
As it turns out quite a bit. I became a true adult (still out for some debate). I had a successful consulting company (official corporation even!) and then transferred clients/closed it after my clients became successful and got gobbled-up by other, bigger corps in what became the dot com bomb. I moved to California and back. I bought a house. Got cats. Sold a house. Bought a condo. Used five different types of blogging software. Stumbled into a great relationship. And generally observed what made me laugh and ranted upon the stuff that irritated.
As I look back at some of my entries it makes me smile and laugh a lot. Also I cringe a lot…was I THAT shrill, really? Or was I THAT stupid, really? But that’s the deliciousness of time and becoming older — the cumulative benefit of your experiences always makes you wiser and wiser.
So what will the next decade have in store? Who knows….That is what is fun, and worth living!
-Garrett
1998:
http://www.gmwnet.com/archive/1998/
1999:
http://www.gmwnet.com/archive/1999/2/
http://www.gmwnet.com/archive/1999/3/
http://www.gmwnet.com/archive/1999/
2000:
http://www.gmwnet.com/archive/2000/1/
http://www.gmwnet.com/archive/2000/2/
http://www.gmwnet.com/archive/2000/3/
2002
http://www.gmwnet.com/archive/2003/1/
2003:
http://www.gmwnet.com/archive/2003/2/
2004:
http://www.gmwnet.com/archive/2004/1/
2005:
http://www.gmwnet.com/archive/2005/1/
http://www.gmwnet.com/archive/2005/2/
2006:
http://www.gmwnet.com/archive/2006/1/
P.S.: I’m going to attempt to add these old entries to my database. So if you subscribe to the RSS feed you may see a slew of new entries. I’ll be careful to set the date in the posts properly, but I’m unsure if they will appear in the RSS feed because they are “new” entries as far as the database is concerned…
Aviation, Capitol Hill Living, Cats, ColdFusion, Downtown Living, Evert, Food, Fun!, Holiday, Holidays, Politics, Rants, Technology, The Condo, The House, Travel, Virtual Aviation, WOW!, geek
The HEATERS turned on!!!
Fall is here!!! YAY! Hurray! Yippee! Ceeeeeellaabrate good times, come on! {dance, dance, dance}
Thank GOD Summer seems to be done.
That is all…
My ride to MSO
@PAX2009
And here is $39.42!
$39.42 Dinners With Melissa d

So I’m a partial slave to the Food Network. Can’t get enough of it. The recent win of Melissa D’Arabian as the Next Food Network Star was a major celebration for the household — much joy was had. We were routing for her. Then to find out that she and her family has moved from Texas to our very own Kirkland, WA! Well, some Eastside stalking may be in order. But I digress…. Anywhooo…
So her new show is titled “Ten Dollar Dinners With Melissa d’Arabian” Her whole thing is flavorful dinners for four people and 10 bucks. This is good. Flavor is good. Cheap is good. The Wiedmeier kitchen today was prepped to experiment with her “North African” episode for dinner. It includes some spicy meatballs, couscous and carrots altogether.
So, how did my $10 fare?
Not so much. It paid for the cumin ($5.28) and the olives ($3.24). You see, I didn’t have everything needed for the recipes at home. I’m pretty sure a lot of people are in a similar predicament. I have no clue as to how the ingredients, when counted in total, could ever equal less that $10 — even $20!
Now, don’t make me a hater — I still love Melissa and the show. My on/off plans for d’Arabian spottings on the Eastside are in full swing. I’m just dissapointed with the Food network to so flagrantly mis-title something. What new math are they using?
To wit: below is my recent shopping list with total. Even if you lay-off some of the ingredients which I think they assume you already have (Cumin??? Wine??? — they must think we’re all drunks….OK, well, I guess a good assumption) it’s still waaaaay over $10.
Dinner is in a few hours, so perhaps I’ll post the results and let you know if it was worth nearly four times the advertised deal…
Cumin $5.28
Brown Sugar $1.29
Diced Tomatoes $1.00
Chicken Broth $2.00
Tomato Paste $1.00
Unsalted butter $2.49
Ground Beef $3.19
Onion $0.52
Garlic $0.50
Ginger root $1.20
Cilantro $0.99
Parsely $0.99
Lemon $0.25
Carrots $0.99
Calmata Olives $3.24
White wine $5.98
Oats $2.49
Couscous $2.73
Dried Dates $3.29
TOTAL $39.42







































