Get blogged on

I just finished my project, finally.

I won’t be reachable for the next 3 days because I will be doing this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBKPAZlo-OQ

A few interns and I went to Olympic National Park this weekend, and I took a few pictures.  Here they are!

Alex and I went to the Emerald City Comicon (EmeraldCityCon) today at the Seattle Convention Center and it was quite the adventure.  We saw all types of people dressed up in some pretty impressive costumes—many of which I did not recognize because, apparently, I did not read enough comic books as a child.  I didn’t take that many pictures because I didn’t want to seem like a creep, but I realized after a while that it was generally acceptable to snap pictures of anyone in costume.

Despite the massive amount of people, there was not a large line to meet some of the members of The Guild so I got to meet Robin (Clara), Jeff (Vork), and Sandeep (Zaboo)!  I almost got in line to meet Leonard Nimoy, but I soon realized that it was not worth the wait, especially since I have never really been a fan of Star Trek.  Jhonen Vasquez, the creator of Invader Zim, was also in attendance but his line was almost as long as Leonard Nimoy’s, so I skipped out on that too.

If you’re interested in seeing a few of the costumes, you can find the photos here.

Here’s the photo set from our trip to the Museum of Flight in Seattle, WA with Melissa!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/adamalix/sets/72157623586891236/

Alex, Pat, and I went out to try and find the best chicken wings in the city.  Along the way, we ended up near the University of Washington and went inside of one of their facilities to explore for a bit.  We tried 4 or 5 places, and came to the disheartening conclusion that Hooters actually had the best wings that we could find.  Perhaps we will continue the quest again this weekend?  I don’t know if I’ll be able to make it though, because I will probably be hitting the trails again!

I had my camera with me so I took the opportunity to snap a few shots.  I still have a lot to learn, but here goes nothing.  (Let me know what you think!)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/adamalix/sets/72157623452789723/

Sorry for the complete absence of posts for the past few weeks, I’ve been lost and now I’m back.  Here are the two rides I’ve done since you last heard from me:

Soaring Eagle, 2/20/2010

St. Edward’s Park, 2/27/2010

Both were relatively short, since we had fewer riders than usual, and yesterday I was sick :(  Hopefully, this upcoming week will yield a longer ride!

When you’re in grade school, being sick is usually a blessing.  Most of the time, you’re not actually that ill—even if you are you just watch tv all day while you eat soup.  Best of all you don’t fall behind because you can do your algebra problems between home room and first period the next day.  It’s ironic that when you’re in the work force being sick is a terrible thing.  You fall behind on work, you grow out of touch with what’s happening at work, and you lose money.  For the past 3 days, I have been working from home or bedridden on my couch wishing that I could be at work.  I really enjoy my job, so staying home is exceedingly boring.  I’ve read my camera’s manual 5 times now, and have practically memorized its menus; I’m going crazy.

Took my second ride today and boy was I huffing and puffing.  I pushed myself harder this time around and had a great time.  I hope that I can keep making this much ground (in terms of fitness) every week.  It’s been a blast so far; check out the ride here.

Huzzah!  Here are some updates to the sitch in Seattle:

1. Better internet connection.
2. I’ve finally figured out where stuff is.
3. I’m getting a camera.

What does this mean for you, the reader?  The internet is going to let me upload more pictures in a timely fashion.  Since I’ve figured out where most things are (or at least how to get there) I will be able to get out more and, in turn, post aplenty about Seattle’s night life.  The camera (in addition to the internets) means I will be posting many of high-resolution photos to my Flickr account.  Keep following and I promise that you’ll at least get some pretty pictures, or at least a few chuckles with regards to how I choose to spend my time.

Amazon has a yearly party celebrating the hard work of their employees; there are usually free drinks, live entertainment, music, dancing, and food—this year was no different.  When Alex & I arrived we received our “drink vouchers” which allowed you to use the open bar, and checked our coats in.  We started walking around and immediately I saw two acrobats starting a routine in front of us where a very small woman was hoisted up and flung around like a rag doll by a very large man.  It goes without saying that I was already impressed.  And that was when we saw the food.

They served some spinach quiche thing, salmon, meatballs, cheese & crackers and all kinds of assorted finger foods.  As if the wide variety of food wasn’t impressive enough, they displayed that they knew who they were catering for when I spotted the large bin of TATER TOTS at the end of it all.  Needless to say, a large line formed whenever fresh tots were made available.  After shoveling party goodies into my mouth, I made my way around and saw this woman serving cupcakes.  It was wild.  She made you whatever kind of cupcake you wanted, along will all the usual accoutrement; oh yeah, cupcakes made to order, and did I mention that she was serving them on the run because this cupcake station was built into her outfit?

Obviously this was the best thing that had been conceived since the wheel so I snapped a few thousand photos of her, none of which came out well since I was also trying to eat a cupcake and hold my food and drink.  But hey, what can a man do when he fleetingly sees the coolest invention ever, and then is forced to decide between documenting it and eating and drinking?  Beyond the women in cupcake serving outfits, lots of “peculiarly” dressed people wandered the museum because that was the theme of Amazon’s party.  Beyond the food selection and drinks, there was a live band who played really good covers of a lot of crowd favorites, and two DJ’s with accompanying dance floors.

No one really danced to the band or DJ’s but it was still entertaining, and the three different music selection were, on the whole, pretty good.  Walking around was interesting because it not only offered different kinds of stimulation in each area of the museum, but also reflected the myriad of people that Amazon employs.  There were the ones who dressed for the occasion by dressing outrageously, and complementing them were the people who thought, “oh man, I should’ve dressed up too!” and snapped tons of photos of those in costume.  There were the more serious business types, wearing nice suits and toting their family around, and Alex even spotted a few of “those couples” who were had clearly more than enough to drink and were, erm… appreciating each other’s presence.  The museum itself was very interesting, and there were tons of planes on display.

It was amazing to see all of the planes hanging from the ceiling.  The ceiling itself was a piece of architectural engineering that was interesting to study, because it’d been constructed to support the 20 or so planes that it supported, possibly planned with room to add more.  The layout was interesting, and directed you to the museum’s different wings in a method that made sense.  It encouraged the crowd to flow towards many informational displays with impressive visual displays for those of us who didn’t really want to read that night.  I got confused a few times when trying to reach a couple of the displays because a walkway looked like it went towards an area that it actually did not.  I’d like to pay the place at least one more visit to check out the paintings and WWII era planes without hordes of people and techno blaring.

In short, Bezos puts on a good show.  Check out the Flickr set for photos, and I’ll leave you all with a small preview:

I just took a marvelous ride on Tolt-MacDonald out here in Seattle and it was a blast.  Check it out here.