This pleases me very much in a very sinister way...

For those not in the know here's the Wikipedia article on Kevin Mitnick, old-school cracker of the early Internet.

The best quote of that entire article (emphasis mine): "Mitnick states that he compromised computers solely by using passwords and codes that he gained by social engineering. It is notable that Mitnick did not use software programs or hacking tools for cracking passwords or otherwise exploiting computer or phone security."

People: beware.

Today I went to the McChord AFB Airshow with my airliners.net friends April and Steve -- was a complete blast and the weather was perfect. I got my airshow need taken care of for the year. It was great.

I took mostly videos instead of photos. Here's some of the best. The first two are experimenting with larger sized videos

An F/A-18 rips by at mach 0.99:
Watch video

Thunderbirds solo cross:

Watch video

B2 stealth:

Watch video

Thunderbirds loop:

Watch video

After waiting 2 hours to get out of the Parking lot, April MADE us stop at Ikea (where I left my car and carpooled with them) and eat meatballs, fries and gravy -- with the gravy over the fries...Hmmmm. Must be a Canadian thing... :)

My Dad was quite successful in his latest endeavor -- gone fishin'. Here's the results:

This was significantly larger than the 2" minnow we caught at Cranberry Lake while camping decades ago! :)

Natalie and I are once again joined in our relentless pursuit of all things beer & kitsch related.

So enjoying a weekend away at the beach. Even if it is a little cool, it hasn't rained much although the wind has been fierce. I got a great little condo unit right on the beach in Moclips, which is around 20 miles north of Ocean Shores. Other than an excursion to Ocean Shores itself, I've seen maybe 10 people. The beach is wide-open. Me likey!

Also got to take a ride in the parent's motorhome, as they came along as well -- stayed in Pacific Beach down the road. Was fun, until my Dad won at mini-golf. My mother and I are still debating his alleged 10-point win

Here's the photo album

So years ago I was reading articles about Mars and stumbled upon an article stating that the Planetary Society was producing a DVD full of Earth sounds, pictures, blah, blah, for an upcoming Mars mission. It also asked if you wanted to submit your name to be etched onto the DVD. So ever the geek I did, and added Mom, Dad and Grama for good measure.

Well, guess WHAT?! Tonight the Mars Phoenix lander...landed!

I watched it live and I had forgotten all about the name-on-DVD thing until I stumbled upon the old link in a news story. Yep, sure enough I had the certificates stored on my computer and viola!

Wiedmeiers on Mars.

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.

I finally had some time to clean my photo pile and get some of that organized. I downloaded Picasa from Google -- and I'll be if that ain't the best little utility ever for organizing and creating photo albums (once you find the time).

The scary part, though, was Picasa found everything -- and I mean everything. So some editing had to take place! :)

I organized a bunch of stuff including the full set of photos for my recent Paris trip. Here they are:

Full Paris Compilation:

• Paris Day 1
• Paris Day 2
• Paris Day 3
• Paris Day 4
• Paris Day 5
• Paris Day 6
• Paris Day 7
• Paris Day 8

Misc albums that amused me:

• Cats and Cookies
• Pace Visit 2007
• Flight Simulator
• More Cute Cats

OK, everyone knows I love travel -- but I must admit sometimes I get the better of myself. Let's see, depart Paris at 9 AM Paris time (get up at 6 AM), fly to JFK for 8 hours. 5 hour layover (turned into 6). Fly 5 hours home to Seattle. Arrive at 10 PM Seattle time. 30 minute delay waiting on plane for jetbridge to be fixed. Same day. Hmm -- what is that...a 36-hour day? I dunno. Too tired for math. Anyways, I'm home and being mauled by my cats for attention. Still, Paris was fantastic.

So we were going to cook today. Unfortunately the chef mis-scheduled others during the day and couldn't acommodate us -- a truly bummer deal. So we ended up doing some "left-overs" of our own and hit some places we missed or wanted more of.

THEN we set off for our last night at new hotel near the airport, since we have an early morning flight. Below is the video that pretty much sums up my thoughts on the hotel. It was better than I had dreamed of -- I'm such an airplane nerd. (Warning: I'm slightly a potty-mouth)

Watch video

Plus here's the photos:

Facebook album of Day 7 -- last day!

Wandering around Paris I went down this ally to a little park as I was waiting for Claire to finish on her own taking some last pictures of the Musee D'Orsay and what do I find out: France discriminates on gymnastic apparatus. Damn. My routine was all ready to go, too.

Here's the parks where the sign was -- cute little thing, but what an interesting welcome. It's obvious they mean not for you to slide on the railing there or jump it, but still – what an odd choice of communication, albeit effective. I love this sort of stuff. You can't make it up folks!

Today we hit the Hotel de ville and Musee D'Orsay, which was fabulous. Lots of impressionist-era paintings and interesting sculptures. Claire was in Monet heaven. Below is the link to photos plus a couple quick vids – a random Paris shot and a tour of D'Orsay Monet (mostly for Claire :) )

Facebook album of Day 6

Vid: A survey of a typical Paris neighborhood

Vid: A tour of Monet

I had the best ham omlette, of all things, for dinner tonight. The ham was real and tasty, cheese perfect and the eggs -- remarkably done, yet tender and fluffy. Amazing something so seemingly simple could be so vastly better than you've ever had before.

Today we went to the Centre Pompidou and saw the Musée National d'art Moderne. We also went to Galleries Lafayette -- a department store with the most amazing architecture. And HUGE! A cross between Macy's/Bloomingdales/Saks we think.

Anyways, below are more photos and videos!

Click here for facebook album of photos days 4-5

A rabid sparrow attacks!
Watch video

Paris Panorama from Centre Pompidou
Watch video

Eiffel Tower at night (+ bonus Claire talk about a "snake" in a building sculpture)
Watch video

OK, so my friends have cajoled and sucked me into using facebook. I must admit their photo page creator is pretty slick, so I used that to upload my photos so far:

My Facebook Photo Album

We had perhaps the last good day of weather in our schedule today, according to the forecasts. So we made the best of it! Click on them for bigger versions.

I have travel stories already. I made it my goal of staying awake the first day until a reasonable hour. Yay -- I did it. 10PM and it's bedtime on this Friday night! I am dog tired!

Speaking of dogs, I had always read and heard that Paris has dog crap laying all over the streets as people didn't pick up after their dogs. It must be one of those fallacies to keep people away -- kinda like Seattle and rain, because I have yet to come across any of this detrius on the streets. As a matter of fact most are pretty clean actually. Hmmpf. Must hunt for this elusive French dogshit. Will take photos. This is my new mission.

And speaking of the French -- I have yet to be truly offended by anyone's rude behavior yet either. I actually got a lot of smiles and good natured-ness even using my extremely limited French phrases. Although you do get a lot of "matter-of-factness" as I call it. Call it a smooth indifference. They absolutely give you what you want, but just no smile. I say -- so what?! That's not rude. That just...is. Which apparently is very French. Definitely not American style. But that's why you travel, isn't it -- to get out of your comfort zones, explore and witness that there are other ways of doing things just as good as your own.

OK, I'm nearly hitting the keyboard with my head nodding off to sleep. Pictures to come tomorrow and so does Claire!

J'attends avec intérêt mes vacances à Paris en 2 semaines ! (je ne sais pas le Français ceci bien. ayant l'amusement avec la traduction)

Watch video here

More! More! More!

I usually don't post misc. emails, but this one is so damn funny I just had to.

Take a few minutes...it's worth it

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.

Or at least that's what this cool new website, flightmemory.com, says.

This is a website where you enter all the details of your travels and it then spits-out maps and statistics for you. I totally got into this just being lazy today. Spent hours putting in my flights and travels, all from memory.

Then you start to remember trips you forgot! Like I vividly remember flying on Delta Airlines through Cincinnati once, and Northwest via Detroit -- but I can't remember what for!

*Highly* entertaining for an aviation/travel nerd such as myself.

View my Flight memory maps and stats here!

Highlights (And I'm far from complete!):

In Miles 167,658
In Kilometer 269,821
Earth Circumnavigation 6.73 x
Distance to the Moon 0.702 x
Distance to the Sun 0.0018 x
Total Airports 53
Total Airlines 16
Total Aircraft type 28
Total Routes 106
Total Countries 8

I'm off as a traveller again!

Super excited -- I just planned two cool trips. A short trip in December to the Bay Area to see some friends I haven't seen in ages and then a fantastic trip to Paris in March -- my favorite travel month.

I planned the trip to Paris first and then thought -- crap, that's 6 months away! I need a vacation to ease all that waiting...so I planned another.

Hopefully my friend Claire, who's going back to school on the East coast, will be able to join me as it's her spring break.

Pssst...I'm flying first class to Paris...yes, hate me...Bahahahaha!

Natalie and I have made it back from our road trip -- we covered a lot of territory. Sedona, Grand Canyon, Meteor Crater, Petrified Forest National Park.

I get back home tomorrow.

Check out the photo gallery

Vid: I find rain in Arizona

Vid: Natalie needs a new car

Vid: "Sleep in a Wigwam on route 66" said the sign! So we did!!

Today is 07/07/07 -- fun!

Got to see all the Boeing airplanes fly into BFI today -- saw it from my roof as they approached. The 707, 717, 727, 737, 747, 757, 767 and 777! Whew! I'm such an airplane freak. I almost peed my pants.

I must admit I'm getting very excited for the 787 rollout tomorrow. I won't be up in Everett as it's invite only and the best view will probably be on my HD TV. However, come first flight in Aug/Sep -- you bet I'll be there!!

Edit: Here's a great set of photos from the PI:

Boeing parade of 7-series planes

My good friend Lauren is running for Seattle city council!

Lauren Briel is a focused, independent new voice in Seattle politics running to restore accountability and rekindle the spark of decisive leadership in our City Council. Our city is a beautiful, diverse community, and it demands an inclusive political process involving not just the policy makers but key stakeholders and the community at large.

http://www.votelaurenbriel.com/

This summer just got a whole lot more interesting! :)

Just reserved tix to reunite with my best co-conspirator, Natalie, in Phoenix. So start saving for my bail money fund now ! We're planning on taking a road trip through Arizona – Sedona, Meteor crater, Grand Canyon, etc. We're so weird – take a road trip in July in Arizona. Who does that? Oh well, I'm sure there will be plenty of fun for us to be had, pointing at other crazy people and laughing out loud.

Work is going well. We are super busy. In one calculation, with all the project work we have for us to do, plus daily helpdesk stuff, we're being 166% utilized. Ouch! But managers have realized this and rose to the challenge and authorized another fulltime body for us in the helpdesk area, so things shouldn't be so manic hopefully soon!

In a trial run I've decided to add some music clips of what I was listening to on my recent trip. It was kinda fun and I hope you enjoy my weird tastes.

Click here to listen to what's in my head

So I'm home, and I'm slowly going through photos and writing a trip report. Most of the photos for Toronto are from the CN tower as it was a gorgeous day and any other photos look like any other city. I guess that is the noted curse of Toronto if the city has one -- it can stand-in for any big city. And it often does in film. But what "general" city-ness it may have it makes-up for in general appeal. Toronto is a really nice city!

Anyways, more writings later, but Here's the gallery

Or, puffs actually. This was funny -- While visiting the CN Tower in Toronto they have those new security devices that are supposed to detect explosives. It puffs air from your feet to your head and then, I guess, is supposed to sniff for the chemical traces of a bomb.

It was pretty funny -- most people were amused more than anything, I think the group think while standing in line was "yeah, right, this really works..." :)

And the air that blew out at you stank -- as you'll see by the reactions in this video of the sniffer in action!

What will they think of next...

Walked all around again, concentrating on the South side this time. Cute, cute buildings and neighborhoods steeped in history. I'm sure someone will call me on this and say they have been all reconstructed, or somethig like that. So what. The character remains.

Seee the pics here!

I did arrive in Toronto this evening. Already have lots to say, but I am tired! Off to bed and then a jump-start for the morning!

OK, I admit. It's cold. Rarely do you hear me say that, so soak it in, people! :)

First day in Boston -- walked all around Boston Commons, then through some of downtown, Fanueuil Hall, the North End and back. I was basically a popsicle after this. So I'm back at the hotel with warm cocoa and taking hot shower. Ahh.

Here's the photos so far!

Then it started to get windy and whoa! So I recorded a "Note to self" about traveling in Winter. Maybe sweating and perspiration in a hot climate is not so bad every once and a while.

Watch my confession (Warning: I'm a potty-mouth)

Greetings fellow life travellers -- I have arrived in Boston. Flights were pretty good -- Chicago to Boston was delayed, so I got in late. So I will hit the streets running tomorrow.

Obviously I had to venture out to get dinner once I checked in. I just settled on the local Rock Bottom. I know -- unimaginative -- but close to my hotel. My hotel is in the Theatre district of Boston -- Anyways so I'm walking back from dinner (only about 3 blocks) and get asked for money. OK big deal. But this guy decides to tag along for the walk. He keeps yammering on and on. This guy was just wacked out -- you know the ones -- how you know they're probably harmless and just on something... So I found this rather amusing. There were lots of other people around, 2 more blocks to the hotel -- big deal. However, then he asks "So are you gay or straight?" I say "Sorry, not looking" -- then he's like "not that I care. I go both ways. Mr Big takes it up the @$$ and Mr Tiny loves the ladies" "Oh" I said, "OK, thanks!" Then he asks "So, you want an airplane ticket to the moon?!" I Asked "What airline?" He said "Crack pot airlines" and then laughed so hard I thought he was gonna just die right on the street there. I said "Nope, sorry" and he was actually surprisingly cordial and said "no problem" and by that time I was at my hotel.

So if you are looking for a crack-smoking bi-curious homeless Bostontonian I may have your man...

You just can't make this shit up sometimes... :)

My March/spring trip is upon me! Since it's an odd year I usually stick to North America. So this year I've decided on Boston and Toronto for a 10-day for-sure winner! Yay for me!! :)

So I'm a complete aviation geek, so I used some of my miles to upgrade to first class round trip -- yes! I'm not expecting much on a domestic trans-con, but it will still be a helluva lot nicer than normal. From Boston I'm winging my way to Toronto for a few days, and might even meet up with my geek friends from airliners.net there. That leaves me 5-6 days in BOS, so I'm actually thinking of going to the Cape for a few days -- perhaps Ptown. Who knows. Would be nice to rest in a B&B with a fireplace and read for a couple days while I let the still wintertime weather play it's course.

Anyways, I'm surely excited!! If anyone has any tips, let me know! :)

I, however, was highly amused.

Time for cat baths! The boys keep themselves pretty clean, but a few times a year they need some extra help. It also serves as their flea dip and in Wintertime I do notice they get dandruff -- so of all things I crack an egg over them and smear it around after the shampoo and rinse real good -- I swear by it. Super soft and cuddly they are now!

Usually they are pretty well behaved, but this time Sam threw a fit -- he was just not in the mood and wasn't having it if he had anything to do with it. Unfortunately for him, he didn't, and in the tub he went...

Fred, on the other hand, was a champ this time -- it took me perhaps 5 minutes and I was done. I turned to get the towel--quickly--and there he was just standing there, in the water.

So I expect them to give me attitude all night, and then back to normal in the morning -- when the food dish is empty! :)

OK, so since I have a view of the Space Needle I decided to stream it live for the Seattle New Year's festivities. The thing explodes into fireworks at midnight -- it's pretty cool.

Below is the link -- I'll archive it as well so you can watch it later if you so choose.

Note: There is a delay of about a minute, so don't use this as your actual keeper of time for the New Year. If you're a local -- watch the TV. I'm just doing this because I'm a big dweeb and wanted to try out some server software. And plus the coolness factor is there, slightly.

Click here to watch New Year's at the Space Needle!

Requires Windows Media Player - will be on around 10 p.m. PST. I have the camera on fish-eye zoom so that hopefully all the fireworks will be in view. My actual view is much closer -- quite nice.

Happy New Year!!!

Peace to everyone...

Thanks!! I didn't know that!

My parents got this little pre-lit Christmas tree for me while I'm in my temporary apartment so that I don't have to drag out the big tree from storage. It's a great little thing and is perfect. So I open it up and start to spread-out the branches and I see these big orange tags...

Gotta love simple instructions. I wonder if they really think someone will put a small 4-ft, 2 piece Christmas tree backwards (keeping in mind there is no way to do so -- the top only fits into the base).

K.I.S.S. and Happy Holidays!! :) ;)

Thunderstorm in Seattle! Love it!! woo-hoo! Thunder bouncing off the buildings, it's great! We never get this. Of course, the lucky bastards in the convergence zone are getting it worse, but still -- small hail and lightening here.

Listening to live Air Traffic control and airplanes are going all over the place -- trying to get around it -- they are getting windshear on approach of +-20kts.

I'm so impressed. I am now a complete Apple fan.

Not that I ever was a detractor of Apple -- when they came out with their new operating system, OS X, that was cool. I even bought a Mac Mini to try it out. But as a sysadmin and enterprise technology geek it had limited applications for me other than as a novelty. Well, that has changed.

You might not know that Apple switched processors (the heart of any computer) from the PowerPC chip to modern Intel chips. These are the same processors that any "PC" uses. This was an incredible move on Apple's part. Now, insofar as all Macs come with OS X, which is very good on its own of course, the new Macs can also run Windows as their operating system! So with that in mind I finally made the plunge. I bought a decent iMac to check it out to see if the hype was worth it.

I am blown away. Apple has always been very good at designing hardware. This is no exception. The iMac is a beauty. The picture you see here is it -- that's it. No big "hard drive" case. It's all it is. A gorgeous 20 inch widescreen that contains everything. And yes, it could not be easier to install Windows XP onto any computer -- I downloaded the software that makes it happen from the Apple website and within 30 miniutes I was in business, completely. And if I so choose I can reboot the computer and go into Mac OS X and do Mac stuff.

And this thing is fast -- it's noticably faster than the PC I just got 3 months ago, by a significant margin even though that PC has, by the statistics, bettter hardware. This is running Windows on Mac hardware, folks. Apple's software installed all the drivers and things that make the PC work pretty effortlessly. And it just works. I am doing this blog entry on my new iMac, in Windows, staring at the Apple logo just beneath my screen. I have yet to run any of my high performance games, such as flight simulator, on my new iMac. I think this is where some performance may be lost. But hell, for 90% of people this is never an issue.

an interesting side note: I think Microsoft loves that Apple switched to Intel chips. They can sell more copies of Windows to Apple lovers. It's good for Apple, too, because they can sell hardware (which is where they make their money) and entice people to become Apple-addicted. Shrewd, shrewd move for Apple.

Anyways, my advice: Buy a Mac. And a copy of Windows. You will have the best of both worlds and never look back. I am astonished it was so easy and that I didn't do this before.

This morning was great -- for the first time in what seems like 30 years (only 3 weeks) there was minimal traffic coming into work. No rain, but many layers of clouds with some clear blue spots. The air is "fresh". It's not freezing cold, but crisp enough.

For the first time I got to admire a little bit of scenery -- the Fall colors are at a peak. It was gorgeous. Coming across the lake was incredible. And it's a Friday.

I needed that this morning like nobody's business...

This morning I'm slowly wakin' up, sippin' my coffee. Nice Saturday morning -- not much scheduled.

So nature calls for me to take my regular-like-an-alarm-clock morning ritual. I go to the bathroom, swing the door shut and hear it not latch totally -- big deal, it's just me. I sit down on my throne and prepare to do battle. I make note to buy more TP as I'm nearly at emergency levels -- I'm down to the last roll. I hear the door creak open. In comes Mr. Samuel. Not that this is odd, he visits me many times in the morning ritual usually and promptly leaves. However what he does this morning is pretty damn funny. He directly, without hesitation, goes and smashes himself into the basket I use to store extra toliet paper (gotta have backup ready, you know) sits up all pretty, and just stares at me, looking so proud of his accomplishment. I get the giggles, and I go into "toot-toot-toot" mode on the can. Which leads to more laughter and I can't stop and my gut hurts so bad. Maybe it's just me, I thought this was so funny! Sam sat there so proud and beaming, like this was his major accomplishment for the day.

Anyways, he sat there long enough for me to finish, get the camera, and take a shot.

Then while I'm composing this blog entry, apparently Sam was not satisfied with the ridicule, er, attention I gave him in the bathroom. So he decides to pick a fight with Fred. Again, my cats are just something. I feel kinda bad as they are getting used to such a smaller space compared to the house. It was still funny, though.

Watch video of cat fight in my messy apartment!

I got a new MP3 player this week. Needed something more than my 5-year-old iPOD. After a dreadful experience with a bad sync cable having to be replaced I am happy to report -- this thing is awesome!

It has the new Windows Media Mobile player on it, and this plus the new Windows Media Player 11 is really a slick little package. WATCH OUT Apple! This could be the iPOD killer. iTUNES is nice, but I've never cared for it's interface -- and comparing it now it's actually really staid and old looking compared to this new combination I have. Plus it effortlessly found all my pictures and videos, and synced them with the gigabeat player. Very slick.

The Toshiba gigabeat player itself is well designed -- 30GB hard drive player with good connection options. You can even output to a TV and watch the videos you have on it (cables came included). Volume and sound are great, and the screen is gorgeous.

So as a part of Windows Media Player 11, they have bundled the new URGE music store, run by MTV. So I signed-up for the free trial. I have to say I'm impressed. Every obscure song I looked for they had, and then I got into the "More music like this" feature which searches for other artists and songs that are similar to what you have selected. I found more cool stuff and songs I remembered and loved that needed to be in my collection immediately! It was easy to select them, they downloaded and synced, again, flawlessly. Even with album art to boot!

After the free trial it costs you $14 a month -- but it's for all you can eat. Or you can purchase songs for $0.99 each. So I guess you could get stuck and tethered to the service if you don't by the songs outright (which, I'm sure, is what they want). However, searching and sampling all these songs was very easy, and I'd spend the money just for the directory and searching service alone.

Anyways, enough fluff. None of this is new -- others have done it before. But the entire "package" of this combination is very nice -- This is good stuff. I can't believe something like this came from Microsoft.

The heat notwithstanding, I ventured out to the annual Seattle Music festival. To be honest, I was a little dissapointed at the lineup. Or perhaps I'm just getting old. The only selections I desired to see were Blondie and the Steve Miller Band. So on Saturday I walked the 3 blocks from my apartment (nice!) to Seattle Center. I had an hour and a half before Blondie. This event is now is so effed-up that would you believe that I finally got into Memorial Stadium and got to listen to the last 4 songs only!! And the stadium wasn't even full! What's up with that?! Could they not open more gates? I arrived in standard time an hour before I wanted to listen -- and the stadium wasn't even full! Very dissapointing. Bad Seattle people, bad.

(I've been doing a lot of rants lately, huh?!)

On the flip-side I did meet-up with my friend Lauren and had a hoot of a time watching the Rat City Rollers play in their roller derby tournament. It was oddly fascinating to watch, and fun! And plus the campy factor was high, so of course I was all in!

Click here to watch roller derby chicks battle it out!

So after tweaking this website blog a bit I noticed I had comments for some of my posts! Oh shit -- people ARE reading this crap. That's funny! :) Sorry if I seemed to ignore you -- I had the "moderated" type as all the bots out on the internet try to post stuff automatically and it's all garbage. Didn't realize this stuff was there!

Will check and see if I can get email notification when posts are made, though!!

[update 11/9/2006: with the new blog software, all the old comments went away ;( ]

Ahhh, Seafair!!

My friend Daniel from the Fly-In invited me to go out on his boat during the annual Seafair extravaganza in Seattle. We had a great time watching the Blue Angels. After the Blues we picked-up Claire and had great fun swimming, went to eat, and then watched the fireworks show that was new this year.

Even better was that I'm so close to the water, I just took a cab to the dock and walked back home (or at least that was the plan...it was so later after we got back that after dropping Claire off in Ballard I got off with her to save the boat a stop -- she gave me a ride home. But I could have done it!)

Here is the photo gallery

Vid: Here come the Blues!

Vid: High Delta break

Vid: Last pass --love the boat horns!

Vid: Fireworks, with bonus conversation about matching socks

So on a groggy-eyed Saturday morning I keep hearing this jackhammer sound around the house. It's driving me batty -- I'm going from room to room trying to find out what the heck it is.

So I go to my office and restart my computer, and notice the sound is louder -- Oh great. So I open the window and what do I find -- A Woodpecker has taken up residence on my neighbor's chimney! Whats hysterical is that it's an aluminum chimney -- so the bird just ain't gonna see any productive work. Or perhaps he's hot-to-trot for a lady woodpecker and showing off his manlyness...

Anyway, I got it on my camera. I had to laugh, not because it's a woodpecker (although funny enough) but that I was searching for this noise for about 20 minutes!

Watch video

OK, finally got all the Munich photos and stories all done

Click here to read and view them!

As you'll see, the Berlin stories and photos are in an entry below, and so are all the videos.

Geez, this was as much work as planning the trip almost!

Here is all the best videos I took (from my new camera of all things!!) Lots more photos to come from Munich, Berlin photos are below, but the videos are the funnest...and here's all of them. Requires Windows Media Player, which most PCs already have, and a high-speed connection

Ride the bus along the Kurfurstendamm in Berlin. Public transport is so awesome, except in Seattle. Berlin buses were the nicest I've been on.

Watch German TV. This was a "springer-esque" show -- gotta love the announcer guy and the look on the woman's face at the end!

Watch the Glockenspiel in Munich. I love the crowd's "ohh, ahh" at the start

More Glockenspiel

Drink with people at the Hofbrauhaus. This was between lunch and dinner, so not much of a c