everburning

As you may or may not know, I’m back in Seattle again for a couple weeks for work. I think this is actually my first Seattle trip where it isn’t grey and wet. The weather today is sunny and clear and reported to be more of the same tomorrow (although I may spend tomorrow hiding inside).

For those of my reading public with short attention spans, the following involves a 12km walk, beer, perusing books, buying books followed by 2-3 more kms of walking through another University referred too as UW. This was then capped off with some TV on DVD, some more drinking, some glass smashing and some more drinking. You may now feel free to skip to the comments section.

The rest of you, here we go.

Given the good weather, and Stacy constantly expounding on the coolness, I went for a wander to the University district. The wander itself was fun, a little tiring, but fun. I started out at the hotel, the W downtown, and stopped off at a hat store on Union. I acquired myself a jaunty chapeau. I’ve been looking for a hat for a while and I think I finally found something I like.

After that, I set off. Walking, walking and a little more walking proceeded. I got some good photos, of which I’ll be posting a selection to Flickr at some point. After about three hours I made it to Big Time Brewery in the University district. A tasty sandwich, four or five glasses of water and a pint that didn’t really do it for me later, I set off again.

This time the destination was the University bookstore. How can I resist a place referenced as having a fantastic Sci-Fi section? Words to turn a mans crank.

While I didn’t get any Sci-Fi books I did get a few others. One is for Stacy which I won’t mention until presented. The bookstore had a collection of Edward Tufte books. I picked up a copy of The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint: Pitching Out Corrupts Within and The Visual Data of Quantitative Information. I got through the first at dinner but, we’ll get to that. I’ve heard that Tufte has some fantastic books on data visualization and am hoping to learn something about presenting information.

After the bookstore I wandered into the University of Washington. I’ve got to say, the University of Washington has a really nice campus. Lots of cool buildings, lots of large trees, lots of goodness all around.

Have I mentioned just how sunny it was during this whole process? Well, consider it mentioned.

So, after the tour through the University my feet were in the process of holding a referendum to cede from the union so I caught a taxi back to the hotel. In the taxi I realized just how far I’d wandered from downtown. When you can crush the head of the buildings in the distance you’ve walked too far.

After Skyping Stacy I watched a couple more episodes of Californication before wandered out to the Rock Bottom Brewery for some dinner. I read through The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint: Pitching Out Corrupts Within over dinner. While I’m going to hold off giving any conclusions until I can read the ending with less beer in me, the overall idea, and analysis, of just how fucked PowerPoint presentations can be was fascinating. After dinner I got the beer sampler. In typical style after drinking, I piled the glasses together. This proceeded to the pile toppling and one of the glasses shattering. I managed to make my escape before anyone noticed the three whole glasses, one pile of glass shards and two whole glasses in a line on the table.

All in all a good day. I’ve spent the last few hours turning brighter shades of red but it’s a good burn.

Emeralds are pretty jewels. The emerald city isn’t so different.

I’ve done a bit of traveling over the last few weeks. Which is one of the reasons I’ve fallen behind with the blog yet again.

First up, Stacy and I rented a van and toured down to Niagara Falls to meet up with Nathan and Missy. A good time was had by all. We went to this Brazilian bar-b-que place called the Copacabana which was really, really good. This was the second time I’ve had the meat-spear-brought-to-your-table type dining. If you’re looking to eat a lot of good meat, it’s a good choice.

After Niagara Falls I went down to Seattle for a few weeks of work. Interestingly enough, I got invited out to another Brazilian bar-b-que called Ipanema which was again, really, really good. Seattle is a fun place to visit. There is a goodly amount of rain, but Seattle rain isn’t real rain. If you happen to be in Seattle and looking for a coffee you should check out Caffe Ladro. They make a good cup. You can pick up bags of beans as well, if you were looking for a gift for Stacy, heh.

In the middle of my Seattle stay I went over to LayerOne a security conference in Pasadena. My god, it’s hot in California. It was something like 109F while we were there. My talk seemed to go over pretty well. A few people came up to talk about it afterwards which is always nice. Hopefully the video will get put online soon so I can see how I did for myself. Overall, LayerOne was a lot of fun. Those guys sure know how to throw a party, er, conference. If you happen to be in the area next year you should check it out.

So, that’s it for a few weeks. I believe I’m due to spend another week in Seattle next month. Hopefully Stacy will be able to fly down with me and work from coffee shops or something. Would be a nice little working vacation.

So, I’m back in the city again for a while. In case you’ve been wondering where I’ve been, I spent a week in Owen Sound gaming, drinking, and doing other geeky things. I then ended up in North Carolina for two weeks for business related things.

North Carolina wasn’t bad except for the fact that I got threatened with arrest for taking pictures of some of the buildings downtown. I checked afterwards and it isn’t actually illegal to take pictures of buildings in the States yet but, I also read that if you argue with the cops they’ll find some other reason to arrest you.

The whole thing was pretty stupid since all it really did was stop me from shopping. I was downtown looking for something for Stacy and after the incident just went home. Talk about destroying your tourism dollars.

Anyway, got back from the States and had Owens bachelour party at my place on Saturday. That was more drinking, youtube videos, and a large quantity of Guitar Hero II. I bought a second guitar just for some hot guitar-on-guitar action. Hit up a few bars afterwards with a live band playing at the Hideout which was pretty cool.

That’s about it for now. Off to Owens wedding on the weekend and then I think we actually have a couple weekends without anything penciled into them. So, video game time, heh.

We’ve been back from Cuba for a week. Man it sucks going back to work after a vacation.

Cuba was a lot of fun. We didn’t do too much, sat by the pool, read some books. We didn’t leave the resort at all. Exactly what we wanted.

I’d like to go back at some point. Probably to another resort. The one we were at was pretty good. Food was excellent and it had a layout that felt big but everything was close together. My only complaint from the trip was that the service was bit slow. Other then that everything was good.

I’ve, of course, been swamped with work since I got back. A couple deadlines are looming so I’m not sure if I’ll have time to get any photos up or not. We’ll see.

Along with work I’ve been doing some Enlightenment stuff. I’ve been trying to split the Ewl_Text widget apart as it was pretty big. It’s a bit of a pain in the ass as there is a lot of code in there but it’s coming along. I’ve also been doing some work on the new website. I setup a planet for Enlightenment and got ViewVC installed and running.

Well, we’re off to Cuba for a week. Will be a much needed vacation after work going a bit nuts the last few weeks.

Anyway, if you’re looking for me, well, too bad. I’ll be disconnected.