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On Saturday morning the kids and I went to the store to get stuff for a picnic lunch, buying some fried chicken legs, grapes, watermelon, and cheesy poofs. Then we went to the farmer's market for some cheese curds and fresh baguette, and on the way home we stopped off at my brothers house to see cute little baby Sequoia.

Interestingly, the last two babies I've know were named Yaris and Sequoia, both names of Toyota products. B's close friend is having a baby, I wonder what name they'll pick. I figure 4Runner and Rav4 are out, but Tundra makes a good boy's name and Celica, Sienna, and Camry are good girl names.

We took our picnic lunch to Husky Stadium for the spring scrimmage football game. The weather was totally beautiful, we sat in the sun in the lower bowl and watched. It wasn't that great a game, the QBs tossed downfield at random, completions were rare, and with the QBs being sacked with 2-hand touch they couldn't use their mobility. Still, it was fun to see some sort of football.

I finished Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, the last 100 pages had a plot and it was better than the first 900 pages, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. I am still totally baffled at how it won the Hugo award.
posted 6:01 PM | link | 4 comments

Vegas was tons of fun, but halfway through I ended up with B's cold, which sucked.

On the poker front I ended up down $11. The poker room at Mandalay Bay had 11 tables, usually half were going, about 3/4 of which would be 1-2 no-limit, and 1-2 tables of $3-$6 limit. I exclusively played $3-$6 limit.

I had a hand with JJ down, and the flop was JJ9. I slow played the crap out of it, getting someone to bet on the river, and I raised him. I won a decent pot, and a $196 high-hand jackpot.

I had some bad beats: I had K5 suited, flop had a K57 rainbow, but the river had another 7 ruining my 2 pair, giving a guy with KQ the better kicker. Huge pot. Another hand I had big slick (AK), the flop had an A, the turn a K, but somebody had pocket 4s and had made a set (3 of a kind) on the flop, dooming me to a huge loss.

At one point this crazy guy sat down with $200-$300 in chips. (Most people buy in for $100). He raised pre-flop every time, and almost always raised everyone on anything. It was totally nuts. Sadly that hour or so was during a really cold streak for me, I wasn't getting anything worth paying $6-$15 to see the flop on. He even re-bought for another $200-$300, and lost that entire amount. As soon as he left a ton of other people left, nobody was going to leave while he was dumping that kind of money.
posted 11:02 AM | link | 2 comments

It's currently snowing in Seattle. Crickey. Glad I'm leaving in 2 hours to fly to Vegas for 3 days with my old high-school buddies.

This link from slashdot about a backup of the main Infocom server from 1989 coming to light, with all the inside scoop on the Hitchiker's sequel is facinating, especially the comments with many of the people involved commenting.
posted 8:00 AM | link | 0 comments

Man, all the more reason to go to Vegas on Sunday: The papers are now predicting snow down to 1000' this weekend. Brrr!
posted 3:17 PM | link | 0 comments

I know exactly what I want in a new vehicle, but it doesn't exist. I want someone to take a minivan, raise the floor 4", and use that space for batteries. Make it a plug-in hybrid, with a very small common-rail diesel engine. Have that engine not run at all unless the batteries reach 60% or so, and have it run at some set RPM that is it's most efficient, just charging the batteries. If you are going on a long trip, have a button you can press so the diesel runs from the beginning, and charges the batteries while you're at rest stops/etc, and have it able to run at a higher RPM if needed (just less efficient) for extended-range driving. It would get amazingly better mileage, especially for around-town trips. I'd of course fill it with biodiesel.

A diesel plug-in hybrid. Is that so much to ask for?

I've been reading the Hugo award winning "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell" for the past few weeks. I'm about 60% through this 1,000 page book, and this quote from Grandpa Simpson is the best summary I have for it:

We can't bust heads like we used to, but we have our ways. 
One trick is to tell 'em stories that don't go anywhere - like 
the time I caught the ferry over to Shelbyville. I needed a 
new heel for my shoe, so, I decided to go to Morganville, 
which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied
 an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, 
to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels
 had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. 'Give me five bees for
 a quarter,'  you'd say.
Now where were we? Oh yeah - the important thing was I 
had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. 
They didn't have white onions because of the war. The only 
thing you could get was those big yellow ones... 

Basically, it's sort of a weird rambling mess. I have ZERO idea how it could possibly win the Hugo other than a complete and utter lack of competition. Oh, and it's chock full of 2-4 page footnotes.
posted 8:37 AM | link | 0 comments

Last night B and I watched Stargate: The Ark of Truth, the first direct-to-video Stargate SG-1 movie since they cancelled the show. We only watched part of the last season, the whole Ori thing and new characters wasn't doing much for us. This movie was fine, it finished up that open plot arc, but it wasn't great. If you liked the last season it's a must-see. There is another one coming out later with MacGyver and Gou'uld, maybe it'll be better or maybe not.

My brother and his wife named their baby: Sequoia Boe Quanah Omaste.
posted 7:14 PM | link | 4 comments

Birthday was fun, we had a bunch of people over for a steak dinner, I cooked up a dozen ribeyes, but it turned out some people split 'em, so I had two extras for lunch the next two days. Mmmm, steak lunch.

So far we really like the Roomba. It's works pretty well, going under and around things and getting a bunch of crap that I wouldn't want to do by hand. Our floors are a mixture of hardwood, tile, wall-to-wall carpet, and non-fringed rugs, and it has no problem with any of them. Two thumbs up.

Saturday night was my friend's annual goat-shearing party, complete with bonfire. This year their house is being remodeled after being crushed by a 120' tree in a windstorm a year and a half ago. As a result, the roof and siding got torn off, and piled up where the slash pile goes. It was a truly impressive pile of dry cedar siding, aka "solid gasoline". Wendell has a tree that was dying and I kept asking permission to drop it, and he kept refusing. Earlier this year it fell on it's own, crushing the trailer to his lawn tractor and a chicken coop complete with 3 squished chickens. We tossed the lawn trailer carcass up on top of the pile.

For accelerants, we used 10 gallons of gasoline and 10 gallons of diesel/cooking oil mixture. That pile only needed air and a match to light it, but never let it be said that I was the voice of reason. Sigh. I did manage to spill gas all over my boots, jeans, and flannel shirt, I was a tad reeky.

Twenty years ago the local gun stores all had these "dragonsbreath" 12 gauge shotgun shells. They claimed to put out a 20' column of flame, and we always wanted to try them. Well, somehow 3 of them and a shotgun appeared. I wasn't able to fire it off since I was coated in accelerant, but El Parquito did the honors. I mentioned that firing off a shotgun would be rather on the loud side, and while we've never fired off one of these rounds before, even the lightest birdshot is louder than hell.

KA-BLAM! A huge jet of flame comes out of the shotgun. WA-FOOOOSH! The pile torches off gloriously, producing a nice 40-50' column of flame.

I had a few sheets of plywood stood up to act as a heat shield, aka John Wayne in The Hellfightersor a Hawaii volcano scientist. They let people get close to the pile if they choose.

Of course, like I'd predicted, we can have a massive fire, or we can fire off guns, but both exceeded the critical mass of fun. We heard a bunch of sirens, and then the fire department arrived. One of the neighbors heard the blast and saw the column of flame and figure the house had exploded. D'oh!

The fire two firemen to figure out how to get down the dirt road to us were really ticked off, wanted to know who's dumb idea it was to throw a cherry bomb onto a bonfire. We didn't think it politic to tell them it was really a flaming shotgun round.

After they left to guide the rest of them in to put the fire out, I took the gas cans up to the hills along with myself, since I *reeked* of accelerant. The fire dept sprayed 500 gallons of foam to "put the fire out", then left. Within 15 minutes the roaring coal bed had re-ignited the fire.

Finally, by 11pm our designated driver took El Parquito and I home. Others were there until 4am tending the fire. I still want a picture of what's left of that crushed lawn tractor trailer.
posted 6:50 PM | link | 3 comments

Happy Birthday to Me! Uff-da, I'm 40 now. If advancing medical technology doesn't let me down, I'm 20-25% of the way through my life. :)

The Roomba is pretty cool. Much larger than I expected (for some reason the pictures make it look dinner plate sized). We'll see how well we like it after a few weeks.

My plan for tonight was to go out to eat a nice steak. B kept trying to talk me into having a steak dinner at home. When we went over to my friend's house last night to pick up the Roomba (it arrived while we were in Cabo so he got it for us) he said "See ya at 6:30 tomorrow.". Ah-ha! B was like, "D'oh!!" The gig was up. Apparently there is some form of surprise party planned for me.
posted 4:14 PM | link | 2 comments

Man, after being in Cabo San Lucas for a week, with weather in the mid to upper 80s, it was a bit of a shock to land in Seattle and have it be 42F.

The trip was awesome. Lots of hours in the pool, not enough sunblock the first day so my shoulders got lightly burned, I caught a little 60-80 pound marlin, I drank 8-10 beers a day but only got a hangover on the night we went out and I had 15... A great week of vacation.

Today's my last day in my 30s. I was trying to remember my 30th birthday but can't remember what I did for it.

After 3 months of waiting, Harry's ants for his christmas present Ant Farm arrived in the mail while we were gone. There are maybe 4-5 of the 25 alive. I'm going to have to get replacements.

B's Roomba arrived. MUCH quieter than I expected. Also larger and heavier. We're giving it an overnight charge and we'll let it loose tomorrow. We did a 3' spot clean test and it was pretty cool.

Apparently B is planning some sort of suprise party for me tomorrow. I was going to go out for a steak dinner, but B was trying to talk me into having a steak dinner at home, and my friend Sean told me he'd see me tomorrow at 6:30. Oh really?
posted 7:12 PM | link | 0 comments