C-O-L-I-N

It’s 2:38 am. I just got home from a concert. The story in brief:

Eric and I went to a Counting Crows / Goo Goo Dolls concert in Auburn tonight. He had had two tickets to the show and two tickets for a shuttle from the Azteca in Bellevue & back.

We went to the Azteca, got on the shuttle, and set off.

Thanks to traffic, we arrived 40 minutes after the show started.

Thanks to the opening act, we didn’t miss either band.

Fast-forward through a pretty good concert. (sorry, it’s late, I don’t have time to describe more than that)

Colin & Eric exit the amphitheater, and follow the sign marked “Shuttles/Taxis”

We arrive at a huge lineup of buses, thinking we may be in the wrong place, since we need one particular bus back to Bellevue.

We ask the guy doing crowd control if these buses take us to the shuttles.

He says “Yes.”

We get on the bus. 15 minutes later we’re at the Supermall in Auburn, WA, with no bus in sight.

The bus driver lady starts to take us back up to see if our shuttle might still be there, but she is radioed that a) the shuttle is gone, and b) she has to take us back to the Supermall.

We call my roommate (who’s a saint, btw) at about 12:25am and beg for help. He drives down to Auburn to pick us up, getting there at about 1am, and saving us probably $100+ in taxi fares.

Two side notes:
1) My cellphone battery had just died on the shuttle going out to the amphitheater from Bellevue, so I couldn’t do much calling. I never realized how inconvenient that is.
2) You cannot place an order at the Wendy’s so-called “pick up window open late” unless you are in a car. This has been observed experimentally.

We get back to the Azteca around 1:30.

I drive Eric home, and then myself. And now it’s 2:45.

What the adventure.

Good night.

[Update]: Well, it seems I’m actually rather stupid. Tim solved it in less than half an hour… over 5x faster than me 🙁 [/Update]

So I’ve been working this puzzle from the Google homepage ever since I noticed it (which would probably have been the day it came out). It looks like this:

The idea is to fill in 14 of those cirles with the numbers from 1 to 14 (inclusively), such that the distance between 1 and 2 is strictly less than the distance between 2 and 3, which is strictly less than the distance between 3 and 4, etc. (Distance is taken from the center of the circles, so assume the distance between two centers in the same row or column is 1, for simplicity’s sake.) You’ll note that there are 18 circles. You must leave 4 unfilled.

I’m pretty sure I worked on this puzzle for 2½ hours. Here is proof that I completed it. Note that I have blurred out the distance values calculated automatically by the puzzle, because it would be a huge clue as to how the solution works. [SPOILER WARNING] clicking this image will show you the solution. You have been warned.

It was a lot of fun, and I was pretty ecstatic when I solved it.

In other news:
I got to see Katie Roarty tonight! She was in town visiting her brother Matt, who (if I correctly understood) just graduated from college. Hurray for Matt, and for seeing Kate again (do you go by Kate now? sorry for not being sure…). I witnessed an intense nerf war and was nearly killed in the heavy crossfire. Fortunately the only true casualty of the night was a bit of free time when I got lost twice on the way home. (Yeah, so I wasn’t actually supposed to follow you quite that far, Kat[i]e… more like I should have veered left to end up on 520 again. Oh well, not like I was really going to break a record and make it home without turning around tonight, in a new place, in the dark!)

I also reinstalled Windows Vista as a clean install this time. Some fun statistics:
Installation time required for upgrade from Windows XP to Windows Vista, which resulted in a lot of broken or otherwise dead drivers & hardware (like my sound card): 2 hours and 20 minutes
Installation time for a clean install of Windows Vista onto a newly-formatted partition: 37 minutes.
Much nicer.

Here’s a fun UI bug: before activating Windows, this dialog box was exactly the right size. But now that I am reassured by the “Genuine Windows” emblem, it no longer fits, and thus I cannot see the whole emblem. Lol.

From my desktop, reassembled, restored to working order, and ready for the adventure of conversion to Windows Vista Beta 2, occurring live tomorrow at 9:00 am Pacific at the Windows Vista Install Fair in Building 33.

Problems I anticipate tomorrow:

1. Two massive (97.8GB and 111GB) ext2 partitions storing all of my data and media, which are accessible to windows via an open source driver and some registry hacks.
2. A messed up ITE integrated RAID controller that is flaky even with the official Windows XP drivers
3. Most of the programs that I have installed to test Vista with are designed for making rips of DVDs… not sure I really want to be filing bug reports about those.

Problems I never dreamed of that happened today:

All I can really say is UPS must have dropped this at least 3 times to pull this off:

“Please remain seated at all times while the vehicle is in motion”

You’ll note that that audio card WAS screwed in when it left Green Bay. So where’s the screw? Oh! There it is! Shorting out the video card! (Sorry, you can’t see it in this pic… bad angle) Good Lord.

But, since I had my camera handy, here’s a happier bonus picture of my office at Microsoft:

The two boxes at the left are mine. One’s a decent Dell, the other’s a 3.00 GHz Pentium D with 2GB RAM. It’s fast. You’ll see I’ve also got a pretty nice 19″ LCD (You have to be an FTE to get dual monitors), a wireless keyboard and mouse (though the “ergonomic” keyboard took some getting used to… even Enlight didn’t prepare me for using one full time.), a little 5-port switch and a 4-port KVM. I pretty much showed up on the first day, they handed me boxes with all this new stuff in it and said “go nuts!” It was cool 8-). Oh, and I almost forgot to mention the Microsoft cup, which I think at the time was just water, but could also have been free coffee, tea, hot chocolate, flavored carbonated water (“Sparkling Rain” or something like that), or almost any Coca-Cola product.

I’ll have to post another picture of my office next week, as I’m actually going to be moving offices into an “intern bay” with 5 or so other interns… that should be interesting.

lol. you have to love musicians for not being afraid to call it like they see it:

JPB: I’ve got good news and bad news and good news. And the good news is that you guys have managed to buy every major legislative body on the planet, and the courts are even with you. So you’ve done a great job there and you should congratulate yourself.

But you know the problem is – the bad news is that you’re up against a dedicated foe that is younger and smarter that you are and will be alive when you’re dead. You’re 55 years old and these kids are 17 and they’re just smarter than you. So you’re gonna lose that one.

But the good news is that you guys are mean sons of bitches and you’ve been figuring out ways of ripping off audiences and artists for centuries…..

– John Perry Barlow, one-time lyricist for The Grateful Dead, and co-founder of the EFF

Well, I’ve been in my new apartment in Seattle for a week, but my stuff only recently caught up with me. (Via 6 boxes from UPS. 6!) As you can see, it’s still a bit of a mess:

All of my cords & electronics that I couldn’t live without. (Ok Jeni, now I’m a bit pathetic)

All this junk is also mine, including the speaker precariously perched on the armrest of the couch, with the sole exception of the No Fear energy drink. That’s my roommate Casey’s.

More pics of the apartment to follow… after I do a bit of cleaning.

Meanwhile, I didn’t get home to make myself a delicious bowl-of-soup-from-a-can supper until 7:45 tonight, because I made a detour through Goodwill on my way home. The mission? Find a desk/work surface that I can a) set up my desktop on, b) build electronics on, c) get for very little money, and d) transport in my rental car. Well, for $25, I found exactly what I needed to fit the bill:

The only catch is, I forgot about requirement (d) until actually trying to fit it in my car. Let’s just say, it technically fit, but merging onto the highways around Seattle with no ability to see out your left back seat window nor the left half of your rear view mirror is Dangerous. DO NOT ATTEMPT. I will be disassembling the desk/counter before donating it back to Goodwill in August.

Check this out, it started at Goodwill the same day I started at Microsoft:

Now for some updates. For real. Just not as much as I promised. Yet.

I posted a bunch of pictures from this past weekend on my new photo gallery site. You should all go check it out, and bookmark the site for future reference. I’ll be putting up a lot more pictures as I find time between setting up computers, work, and hopefully some travel in the near future. (I would have used flickr, but this one gallery = 56MB zipped, and flickr limits you to 20MB / month. Here I’ve got 20GB storage and 1 TB / month bandwidth.)

Alright, that’s it for tonight. Must go to sleep now so I can go in to work early, so I can leave early, so I can catch a movie at a reasonable hour tomorrow night, so my roommate can invite his friend Kate, who must work very early on Friday.

Today in a mailing list thread discussing the property of circular manhole covers that they cannot fall through thier respective manholes (assuming the manhole has a lip of nonzero width):

They said “manhole cover” which I assumed meant a 3D object, made of steel or aluminium, impressed with a non-slip pattern and a city engineering sigil, and with a slight upwards dome shape to resist compression. Though I believe we’re supposed to call them “personholes” in this day and age of political correctness.
-Matt

And when it blows, it’s going to be bad. I watched a show on the History Channel tonight, Mega Disasters, which forecasts 18,000 deaths and 31,000 injured when (not if) Mt. Rainier explodes. The biggest risk? The mountain will flash-melt tons of snow up at the peak, which will result in boiling water mixing with pumice and ash pouring down the mountainside. These avalanches/waves will strip all the dirt from the mountain slopes as they go, and pick up other minor debris, like boulders the size of rooms. The whole muddy mess will roar down the mountain, filling valleys with a 40′ to 100′ tall wave of utter destruction with the viscosity of wet concrete and the force of a freight train. Bad News.

The area that will be worst hit is the little towns on the volcano (retarded place for a town), and the city of Tacoma, which is right in the path that the muddy destruction wave thing will take to reach Puget Sound. Fortunately I won’t be subjected to that up in Kirkland, but we will nevertheless be buried under hundreds of tons of ash falling over Seattle and afflicting its 2 million residents with a nasty cough and toxic dust.

Let me just say, for the record, that when that thing starts rumbling, I am getting the hell out of here. I’m not sticking around for pictures like people did when Mt. St. Helens was erupting. I’ll get my pictures off of Flickr after the fact.

Well, with that cheery revelation, I need to go to bed. All that stuff I promised in my last post is coming, I swear… I’ve been without internet since Sunday morning when Jeni & I left Salem, OR, so I haven’t had the opportunity to catch up just yet. In the mean time, I start work at Microsoft tomorrow, and I’d really like to be awake for it.

Good night all, and if you live near the Cascades, keep an eye on your neighborhood volcano.

At Lauren’s behest, I am updating my blog.

Expect (a lot) more later. Wifi is pretty scarce around Crater Lake, and you have to drive like 30 miles to get back in cellular range.

Since I guess I haven’t posted anything this side of normal life in Green Bay, I’ll summarize briefly where I’ve been for the last week:

• Friday, May 19: Green Bay, WI -> Madison, WI
• Saturday, May 20: Madison, WI -> Rapid City, SD
• Sunday, May 21: Rapid City, SD -> Missoula, MT
• Monday, May 22: Missoula, MT -> Seattle, WA
• Tuesday, May 23: Seattle, WA -> Aberdeen, WA -> Central Point, OR
• Wednesday, May 24: Central Point, OR and Medford, OR
• Thursday, May 25: Central Point, OR -> Crater Lake National Park -> hiking around Plymouth & Klamath counties -> Crater Lake National Park
• Friday, May 26: Crater Lake National Park -> Medford, OR -> Crater Lake National Park -> ?

I’m at the library in Medford right now, but I have to leave pretty soon because Jeni’s done with work in an hour and a half (which is how long it will take me to get back to Crater Lake).

I promise I’ll update later, and even go back and find all the other things I promised to post that I never did so Jeni doesn’t have to complain any more. I have a bunch of pictures from here & other trips that I haven’t posted, so I guess the moral is: stay tuned.

Subtitled: Why WIXX Sucks.

I was in the bank today picking up my passport from the safe deposit box. Natasha Bedingfield’s “Unwritten” came on the radio, which reminded me of why I hate the radio.

Last night I drove to Bay Port to watch the musical, and I thought “well, let’s see if there’s anything new on the radio, since I don’t have one at school and never really listen to one except Z104 in the weight room.” Bad call. Nothing new on the way to the musical. As I turned the car off in the parking lot, “Unwritten” was playing. I went to the musical, talked to people after a little bit, and then I came back out to my car again to drive home. I turn the key, the radio comes on, and damn if it isn’t “Unwritten” again, as if the radio just paused while I was inside. Talk about rediculous.

Let’s get more than a single CD’s worth of songs per radio station, PLEASE!

I went to Bay Port tonight to see their Summer Theater production of South Pacific. It was pretty awesome! I had stopped by on Tuesday to say hi to the crew, got to see the cool radio prop that Ben made, and even helped rebuild the wheel & pulley system that made a set of stairs mobile. Tonight I got to see the show from the audience for a change- it was a really great time. Left me pretty nostalgic for high school & the 7(?) plays and musicals we put on. It was good to see Ben (who will eventually look exactly like Tom from Gomez), Chris & Greg, Lance, Brent, Phil, Jared, Ashley, and even Mr. Frieder & Mr. Schlegel again, though it was bittersweet & short, very much a “hello, goodbye” type of deal.

Here’s Lance, who will actually be out in Seattle in August for a cruise. Hopefully I’ll seem him briefly then:

It’s weird… it’s not like it hasn’t been more than 3 months since I saw most of them last, because it’s really been more like 5 or 6, but I am much more aware of being away from all my high school friends now that I’ll be at least 7 hours away from everybody this summer. Hmm. Everyone be sure to email/write/IM/call this summer!

In other news this week, my Grandma Betty McCambridge (my dad’s mom) flew in to see us. She left the gate in Sioux Falls, SD, at about 11:20 yesterday morning, and didn’t get to Green Bay until 7:38 this morning. In between she sat on the runway for 45 minutes, sat on the runway for an hour, flew to Chicago, (missed her connecting flight), waited for the flight that was supposed to arrive here at 6:51, waited for a 30 minute delay, had that flight cancelled, waited for the flight that was supposed to arrive here at 10:12 pm, had that flight cancelled, waited until midnight before they were sure she couldn’t fly until the next day, got a blanket & pillow from a nice airline guy who had been following her from gate to gate, trying to get a plane to Green Bay off the ground, got up real early and finally caught a plane around 6:30am to get here around 7:40 this morning. Damn weather! At least she got here in time for me to see her a bit before Jeni & I go out west tomorrow. Her trips have been working out perfectly- Two years ago she was here for my graduation, then last year she was here for a week before I went to Europe, even helped me get some hiking shoes, and now this year she made it over in time to see me before I leave for Microsoft.

Kaisa’s news is that she got her hair colored from blonde to red yesterday, leaving my mother the only remaining non-redhead in our immediate family:

My other news of the week is that we got new cellphones & a new provider. We’re now with Verizon wireless, with four phones and nation-wide coverage. Interestingly enough, the base rate works out to be cheaper than our previous plan, which was three phones and a Wisconsin and UP-only home area. Even more interestingly, my dad and I priced out what we would get from Verizon and Sprint over lunch to make our final decision. The cost difference between the two carriers, with different phones, slightly different base minutes, different percent discounts available for my dad at WPS, and generally just a different situtation, over two years and ~$2226? $0.40. Forty cents. $2225.60 vs. $2226.00. How insane is that?

My cellphone is an LG VX8100, which the sales rep highly recommended over the RAZR. The phone is awesome, and was only $25. It’s got the works- 1.3 MP camera (nothing to write home about, but decent on the 2″ screen), speakerphone (actually pretty common now), bluetooth (with great support [no modification/hacking required] thanks to BitPim – upload custom ringers, download photos from phone, upload pix to phone, DUN, etc), mp3/mpeg player, etc. I think I’ll even be able to set it up for free WAP (counting only against minutes, aka, free after 9pm and all day on weekends), courtesy of HoTTProxy. To access the service menu on your LG VX8100, press [Menu] and then [0], followed by six [0]s for the password.

Jared also got a new phone. It was free w/ contract renewal and came with a belt clip. He once again claims an increase in his overall sex appeal of 10%. Sadly, he made the same numerical claim senior year of high school when he got his first phone. Anyone see any dramatic improvement in the last two years? Yeah, me neither. Have a good summer Mason! (and let me know if Connolly’s still going to be here for a party on August 20)

Well, that’s about it… still have to get up and pack clothes tomorrow, so good night!

No life can escape being blown about, by the winds of change and chance. And though you never know all the steps, you must learn to join the dance.