RED!

Sunset light blasted me as I came in this evening…all in a devilish
glow…awesome!

Merry Christmas to us!!

I’m not normally such a brand name queen, but people rave about their
Le Creuset cookware. It’s damn pricey though.

But what should magically appear in the clearance rack at City
Kitchens?! Behold! For the enamel not taking hold to one of the
handles we got “Grand Pierre” for 50% off!!

Now, what to cook in him first??! So many things….

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

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…

Fall is here!!! YAY! Hurray! Yippee! Ceeeeeellaabrate good times, come on! {dance, dance, dance}

Thank GOD Summer seems to be done.

That is all…

Why I’m writing about this I’m not entirely sure, other than it’s really the little “wins” that are quite satisfying.

My main think tank was on the fritz. It was getting super bad — The water would keep running after the flush. bad bad. Couldn’t stop it, no matter how much handle jiggling. This is a major trauma for the household. Our master eliminator is just not working right.

So I donned gloves and went in for some exploratory surgery. Come to find out it was the rubber thingy at the bottom that opens and closes when you use the handle and normally closes the tank to let it fill after a flush — It about disintegrated when I took it off of the whatzit.

So I went to the other can in the bedroom, which I never use, turned off the water, extracted it’s rubber thingy, which was still in good shape, and transplanted said thingy to the main, yet now lobotomized crapper.

Viola!!!

I can now poop in peace.

You know you are feeling better when your fridge disgusts you and you
finally command yourself to do some Spring cleaning….

Introducing the latest nerdy thing — CatPostCam! I know — very old school these days. But bound to be entertaining for me when I’m at work and want a break or want to waste some time. And hey, if it makes me smile that’s all that counts on this here blog!!

You can see it over yonder –> in the sidebar.

Watch video here

More! More! More!

Since I moved to Capitol Hill, I’m able to receive Air Traffic Control (ATC) frequencies into Seattle’s Sea-Tac airport. In fact, I live 1,420 Ft from the imaginary airspace “intersection” that marks the start of the final approach from the north to Seattle.

So I decided to sponsor a live Internet audio stream of Air Traffic Control. You can listen to it at http://www.liveatc.net/ (click the “listen to Live ATC feeds” in the sidebar and scroll-down to “SEA Final” — there are a number of SEA feeds, actually. I’m the one with 133.65 as the only frequency)

133.65 is the final approach sector for KSEA — Seattle-Tacoma International. Busiest times seem to be around noon, 4-6PM and 8-10PM.

Seattle has 2 (soon to be 3) close parallel runways oriented north-south — named runways 16/34. You can click on the chart to the right to see a bigger image of this. When landing and departing to the south 16C is used mostly for arrivals, with 16L used for departures. When the weather is really bad or foggy they switch to the Instrument Landing System (ILS) on 16L as the ILS for 16C appears to not support bad weather CAT2/3 operations anymore because of contruction of the third runway.

In the summer, and in better winter weather, Seattle usually lands the other way to the north, using runways 34C for arrivals and 34R for departures

After-hours this frequency can be combined with one or all of the feeder arrival sectors, so you’ll hear ATC, but not pilots. Also sometimes you’ll hear some bleed-over of a Seattle radio station in the background — their main broadcast antenna is only 1 mile from me, so with it’s huge power output sometimes you’ll be stuck listening to Seattle’s best smooth jazz — sorry! Could be worse…

Here are charts and info for KSEA

Here is an airspace illustration I created of major arrival and departure routes into SEA. The triangle symbols are the major intersections along the routes (Imaginary places in the air programmed into aircraft navigation databases) The hexigonal-type symbols are actual radio navigation stations on the ground. The 3-letter acronyms you see are the codes for other radio navigation stations outside of the chart

This is far from complete, but a good intro into how traffic is sent in/out of the Seattle area.

So I just bought a condo — Yay for me! The location just couldn’t be beat, the price was right and it had basically everything I was looking for, so viola!

Here is the video tour with bonus shots of my super agent, Dave, and Claire.

Here are a few pics

Now the loan is in final process and awaiting underwriting, but everything else is complete. Hopefully no snags are left.

I’m excited.