Evite is down for, reportedly, "planned maintenance." Either this is actually planned (which seems like genuinely awful planning) or is a huge lie. I'm betting on the latter. Nobody will kill their invitation site on such a huge party night. P.S. evite.com itself was temporarily reporting that '/' is 404,...
I made a huge mess in my driveway and ate Chinese food. I also gained a little more weight than I would have liked, and made less progress on my yard than I was planning. How about you?...
Two notes now that we're in the cold part of the year.Replace your furnace filter. It's probably filthy. Rebalance your vent registers. Are some of your rooms colder than others? Open the registers in those rooms all the way and close the registers in the rooms that are warmer (not...
Rob and I went up to Stevens Pass today and boarded—mostly on the backside of the mountain. Conditions were spectacular. Stevens has switched to RFID ski passes for this year, and I've made two mistakes so far:I put my pass somewhere other than my front-left jacket pocket. The machines are...
I spotted this earlier tonight at the local Petco: it's Dog Whisperer-brand bottled water ... for your dog (screenshot for the day this inevitably goes off the market). I totally understand that some owners would want to keep their pets healthy, but this is a little over the top. And...
Now that the snow has melted a bit, I fixed a bunch of stuff on the truck that has gone wrong over the last few months. I lost a dashboard lamp a while back and finally pulled everything apart (again) just to replace it. I also took this opportunity to...
I took a peek at the total post counter on my blog today and noticed that I've published 1982 posts in all—a mere 66 shy of 211. Since I'm coming up on my fourth anniversary in just over a month, I figured I'd hit the gas and see if I...
Frozen deep in carbonite the inches-thick ice covering my driveway was an incredibly well-preserved specimen of The Wall Street Journal dating from December 18 of this year. I can't wait to see what treasures of the past this find will bring!...
The first generation Ford Focus (and specifically, the ZX3 hatchback) is one of the best domestic small cars ever made. It's interesting and lively, and all of the inevitable foibles of a small economy car are drowned out by the hum of drama eminating from the soul of the car....
The supermarkets are closed today so the parking lots are deserted. This was the best way through to the other side....
The biggest problem on the roads at the moment isn't the snow or the slush—it's the packed ice which is chipping away and is now creating huge potholes all over the place. I took this video (662kB, WMV) on a somewhat-bad stretch of road covered in these snowholes. It wasn't...
This actually works pretty well. I'm not sure if it's the chains or the mountain of snow in the bed (and on the cab) but I actually have traction now. This is my first year using chains. Amazing amount of traction they afford. Bonus question: what is one half of...
I got up to the slopes today for the first time this season. I have my own gear and pass this year, and it makes things go so much more smoothly. No more dealing with rentals, and no more standing at the ticket counter. Unfortunately, my new boots chewed up...
It's still coming down. The roads are reasonably passable with chains or 4WD, but I've got neither for the truck so it's just parked without any possibility of parole. The 914 is still waiting for me to get around to pressing new bearing races into the front rotors, so that's...
You'd think that any publication (you know, the ones that actually put stuff into print) would double-check their "Chinese poem" before printing it on the cover of their periodical. Why? Because it turns out this is actually some advertising copy for a brothel in Macau. At least it wasn't tattooed...
I just heard one of those emergency broadcast things on the radio. And it wasn't even a test. It was a warning about avalanches, which is of course a huge problem for those of us who live in the big flat suburbs. P.S. Just got another one. This time it's...
Full rental report forthcoming. Until then, more Focus snippets. This is the shifter. It's only got one low setting, "L." Usually I expect at least a "2" or, ideally, separate controls for overdrive and the lower gears. But the thing is that "L" actually does exactly what you (or I?)...
I started my drive to work this morning with a uniform 2" layer of snow on the hood of the truck. The airflow swept a bunch away and the engine heat melted some off, leaving this pattern....
We've just had our first serious snow of the season. Even though the numbers aren't too impressive, the snow's density and lack of plowing means that the roads are in horrific shape. State Road 520 (the main highway that feeds this part of Bellevue) has been shut down, and the...
OPEC today announced its biggest ever production cut of oil in an attempt to shock-and-awe the world and raise sagging oil prices. "I hope we surprised you ... If you're not surprised we need to so something about it," said OPEC President Chekib Khelil. Except, it didn't work. Crude prices...
How long until the Salvation Army guy outside the supermarket has a Visa reader? Really. I expect it to happen eventually....
Also spotted in Ballard....
I got news Thursday that we would have a major storm hit the Puget Sound region this weekend, starting Friday afternoon and resulting in feet of snow by Saturday evening. It makes sense that we would have a huge storm today, since my mom is flying into town and I...
One of first widespread "green" business phenomenons I recall was the "save our planet" placards at hotels asking you to keep your dirty towels for a few days to reduce water use. The policy of cleaning only old towels has little practical downside (hotel guests often don't actually need clean...
40 hours in a conference room, 12 hours in dinners, and a few more at the bar. I'm done with the week and it's not even Friday....
This is the dashboard of my Ford Focus rental car. Three things to note:These gauges are unreadable. Seriously, this whole white-with-grey-rim nonsense and the gear motif makes it incredibly difficult to tell what speed you're actually traveling1. I also just realized that I'm old. The radio rings are non-OCD-compatible. The...
So I've got a room at the Cardinal Hotel in Palo Alto while I'm in silicon valley for work. It's actually a bit of a drive from the place I'm working (it's in northern Santa Clara near Alviso) but when I'm spending 10+ hours every day in a conference room,...
I had 90 minutes to burn in San Jose after visiting the Fry's in Sunnyvale (super-secret work business1) so I went to the Winchester Mystery House. The house (mansion, really) is a labyrinthine mass of interconnected rooms scattered across 40 vertical feet (most rooms are not on integer floors) and...
When I'm driving in an unfamiliar far-away city, I prefer driving a rental car instead of own car since the local license plates on the rental don't scream that I'm an outsider. So it's a little obnoxious that my rental Focus—more on that later—happens to be fitted with license plates...
Two notable happenings happened this morning at the security checkpoint at Seatac:The TSA screener running the x-ray machine (or whatever it is now) commented that, "this is the best electronics packing job I've ever seen. Seriously. Thank you for making my job easier." And over the next minute he commented...
I just read that Coinstar is based here in Bellevue. I didn't know that....
I'm not a huge fan of Christmas lights, but I absolutely don't mind them when they're done tastefully and subtly. But this is right out. I think I've posted about these folks before, but every year it seems we're getting more and more people throwing more lights on their lawns...
In April of 2004, I bought a 256MB SD card for, as I recall, around $120. This is a cost of $480/GB. Today I bought an 8GB SD card for $40, or $5/GB. That means that in the ensuing 54 months, the cost of the technology has been cut in...
I just got our new Canon SD870 IS point-and-shoot. I really only looked at this camera in first place because of all you Canon-koolaid-drinking hippies but ultimately it turned out to be a damned good competitor to the Sony (and other) offerings. You may be wondering why I went with...
I'm getting a window office in January. This is pretty hot stuff. I've been in a ... sortof solarium part of the building with a fractional window since we moved buildings six months ago, but I haven't actually had a full window yet. But now I will. No, it doesn't...
OK technically we still have a few weeks. But the commute is starting to get dark and dumb, and snow is starting to accumulate up at Stevens Pass. I expect I'm going to have a full week of vacation I need to burn by the end of the year, so...
