Peaboy

Since its New Years Eve I wanted to reflect on the major peavents of 2008 here’s a list of big moments in no particular order:

• Met Emma and Ella Kowalczyk
• Said goodbye Emma and learned a lot about life
• Babysat for the first time
• Elected a new president
• Bought a boat www.DeepPlaya.com
• Dawn got a job at Volt
• I changed roles from Program Manager to Test Manager at F5 Networks
• Learned a lot about Blaine, WA and several great weekend mornings at the Little Red Caboose
• Learned how to lay up fiberglass and fixed loose tabbing on Deep Playa
• Took a rigging class from Brion Toss Riggers
• Finished Condo Remodel
• Made a solar powered Theremin at Dorkbot and learned to solder in the process
• Bought my first Apple product ever an iPhone 3G
• Went to NC for Thanksgiving with My ‘rents and Dawn’s Mom
• Went to NYC to see J’aime dance
• Critical Massive ‘08
• Santarchy ‘08
• Snowmagedden ‘08
• Twitter took over from Instant Messaging except for work stuff
• Made a lot of new friends including KL8ON, Dave, Rahul and Nell to name a few
• Fired my financial advisor and took greater control over my finances

That’s a pretty big year… 2009 is starting out a little shaky financially with the market down, but as far as friends and events and plans to do an learn we’ve already got a lot planned. I’m excited about 2009!!!

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I’ve been pretty banged up since Santarchy where Dawn and I had a great time but I managed to pull my hamstring pretty badly. The past 3 days a bruise has been surfacing and its grown from the size of a quarter to about 5 inches around and its swollen. I was going to go see the ND today at Bastyr but they were closed. I know I need some more time with the acupuncturist some needles and cupping will fix me right up!

Anyway, so since then I’ve been keeping on the down-low, when I do go out its only to go someplace and sit. Christmas eve for instance Dawn, Rahul and I went to see It’s A Wonderful Life. I am pretty sure I’ve never seen that movie all the way through. We saw the 10pm show at the Seven Gables theater which is a tiny little art house theater in the U District. It was a lot of fun to be out that night after being coupled up because of the snow and to see a great movie that about hope and human spirit.

XMas Day Dawn, Rahul, Divide, Jacqueline, Anna, Leanne all went to Jade Garden - International District - Seattle, WA and a few of us went to Linda's Tavern - Capitol Hill - Seattle, WA for drinks which was packed.

Today I was pretty wiped out and my leg was throbbing a bit, but I’m back in chore mode. I did some work on my finances, very depressing declines in my 401K, but I won’t see that money for awhile anyway. I also paid some web bills, domain renewals, SSL certs, etc. I wish I could have done some work on the boat this weekend, but the leg won’t allow. I’m hoping that over the new year I’ll be able to do some of that.

I hope you’re having a great holiday! Talk with you soon!

Dawn and I took a lovely wintery snowy walk over to the Neptune Theater in the U District to see The Day The Earth Stood Still. First let me tell you that it is DAMN icy out there, especially in the corners and even on well worn streets like Roosevelt and 40th. Its 28F at the Dinghy right now and I have no intention of attempting to drive tomorrow morning. In the afternoon it might be very passable, but its only supposed to be 26F (colder than it is now) tomorrow.

The movie itself was pretty good. I have never seen the original which focused on Nuclear war and not people’s impact on the earth, but I could easily see how that plot line would have fit into the movie. The story was simple but impactful. Keanu Reeves does his “Neo” type role really well. Its a bit of a type cast for him but I wish I had a problem like that. ;-) If you like movies with a little bit of SciFi but with a human underpinning you’ll like this. If you’re a diehard Green you’ll leave with much to think about. If you drive a Hummer you’ll probably run over an endangered species on your way home.

You don’t have to see this in the theater though, if you have a decent home TV setup you will experience the film just fine there. For comparison, a James Bond or a Terminator movie have to be seen on the 20 foot screen. If you want to get out of the house its worth the ticket and popcorn money.

Live Photo Gallery is pretty cool and it has a new feature where it can identify that there are people in your photos and you can tag them. Funny thing is also recognizes faces in t-shirts. That little white rectangle on Joelle’s shirt is the software recognizing the face on her shirt, or possibly the app likes boobs… :-)

This is an amazing clock, watch the whole vide where he explains how it works and then think WOW!

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/09/the_corpus_clock.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890

Last night we were having a Condo meeting in our inner courtyard and we could hear Sea Ray's Alarm droning on for about 2 hours. I called Sea Ray today and the woman who answered the phone was very apologetic and said the alarm company was coming out today to work on it. Let's hope this does the trick!

For the past few weeks we've been hearing this alarm go on and on all night. It stops periodically and then just starts up again. I assumed it was a car alarm and that it was set to sensitive but tonight I jumped on the scoot and went looking to see who was the culprit.

Turns out it was Lake Union Sea Ray on THE OTHER SIDE OF THE LAKE!!! I was trying to take some pictures to figure out if it was a boat in the yard or if it was the building itself when some guy started yelling at me. He didn't know why the alarm was going off and he didn't respond furhter when I asked him why its been going off all the time and if he realized we could hear it on the other side of Lake Union which is about 1/3 of a mile away. Closer than I thought.

They obviously need to fix their alarm, turn down and re-aim the siren. No one is paying attention to it, there was a moving crew working just next door and no one cared one bit.

There was a Seattle cop hovering around when I left. I hope he's filing a noise complaint.

If you heard it too, feel free to let them know.

Lake Union Sea Ray
3201 Fairview Avenue East
Seattle, Wa 98102 USA
Phone: (206)284-3800

I have been having problems with Trillian staying connected and the UI acting funny. Admittedly I was running the beta version, but it was just not reliable enough so I decided to check out Digsby.

I should backup and let you know that these are both all-in-one IM clients, that is they allow you to login to all your IM services, check your email, etc. Digsby also lets you have multiple twitter accounts which Trillian does not. I have a few different twitter accounts and its nice to be able to post to them, although I love TweetDeck for my main twitter account where I can see all my friends and what's going on. It also lets you check all your email accounts including any pop or imap accounts.

Anyway, if you're looking for an all-in-one IM\Email\Twitter client check out Digsby.

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The Mural Amphitheater used to be one of my favorite places back in the Pain in the Grass days. Now they have weekend movies which I didn't know about till just now and its the last weekend. The Seattle center emails were going in my junk mail, doh!

The line up this weekend is as follows:

Friday - 8 August

• Dusk - The Goonies
  Yes back when Cyndi Lauper and Cpt. Lou Albano were buddies she was in a movie that I don't even think I liked as a kid although I did like Cyndi Lauper's music. Hey, Girls just wanna have fun is a classic and now I know you will have that song stuck in your head all weekend! She doesn't really have anything to do with the film, but for me they both mark the same moment in time.

Saturday  - 9 August

• Dusk - Batman Begins
  The year is 2005, and everyone has realized how stupid it was that Michael Keaton played Batman so they decided to remake the series but now they are gory and the heroines are hotter. I must say, big improvement. Oh yeah the 1989 Batman movie also wasn't making money so they needed to rip off today's HS and College kids who could have just rented the original.
• 11:59 - Rocky Horror Picture Show
  All you need to know about this is Meatloaf rocks and Susan Sarandon is very hot in a sort of innocent girl goes wild kind of way. Oh yeah you also need to bring about 150 different props, dress as your favorite character, memorize the lyrics, the dance, and the lines and the crowd refrains to the lines and then while the movie is on you need to sing and speak over the top of the movie and if you're good act out the whole thing on stage in front of the movie and basically not watch the movie at all. That's the sign of a good movie, when no one watches it for 33 years and yet its still being played every Saturday night at Midnight.

I might have to stop in to check out the crowd for RHPS. I had my high school moments of attending that every weekend back at Shawnee HS in Medford Lakes, NJ... ah the memories... RockyCon2008 is in Atlantic City, NJ, of course!

BTW, whatever DID happen to Saturday night?