Virtual House

I just added a Virtual Earth rendering of our house (from space) on the right side of the blog. The cool thing is that this is a live control -- go ahead, put your mouse over it and use the scroll wheel or mouse buttons to zoom and pan around!

Now Taking Applications

With the trade of Randy Winn to the Giants last night, I find myself in need of a new favorite Mariner. My preference would be for every guy on the 25-man roster to submit an essay of 1000 words or less telling me why he should be my new guy. Somehow, I'm thinking that's not going to happen. Here are the rules: the salary cannot be over $5 million/year (extra bonus points if it's less than $1 million) - those guys don't need me - and the player has to play at least half the games. Pitchers need not apply. Frontrunners so far: Willie Bloomquist (he was my backup favorite anyway) and Raul Ibanez. Suggestions are welcome.

Laurel's running log for Saturday, July 30

Laurel's run at 9:12 AM on 7/30/2005:

• Time: 01:13:06
• Distance: 6.93 miles
• Average speed: 5.68 mph
• Average pace: 00:10:33 / mile
• Calories: 393

Run was in Bellevue, WA, United States.

Satellite map:

Street map:

Enjoy my noise

I used the Nyko Theater Experience to stabilize the Sony PSP on the treadmill today -- it worked GREAT. Without it, the PSP poor headphone connection design makes this frustrating at best. With it, you have the perfect viewing angle and a very stable platform.

However, if you try this yourself, be sure to plug your headphones into the left-hand slot instead of the right-hand slot. If you only have headphones in the right-hand slot, the external speakers on the Nyko are still active -- they only cut out when the left-hand slot is engaged.

Sorry to everyone at the Pro Club who had to listen to the Daily Show and Conan while I exercised!

I am experienced

If you have a Sony PSP (and you should), you should also get a Nyko Theater Experience. I got mine today after a long wait -- and it is very cool. It also marks the first time since I got the PSP that I had to turn the volume down from full blast.

Another one

Laurel's run on Alki

Somebody already did my idea

But the good news is, that's less work for me to do. Check this out (set the map style to "hybrid" and zoom in). It's one of Laurel's runs with a GPS, mapped on Virtual Earth!

Virtual Earth

Just playing around with Virtual Earth ... here is a link to the trailhead of the camping area in the Olympics that we're going to tackle at the end of August.

My brother ...

... has an Emmy. And a blog. Guess which gets him the most babes. (Answer: Neither has gotten him any babes at all. Kidding, it's the Emmy.)

... and of course

As soon as I put the refund claim form in the mailbox, we pull out a credit card bill for the exact amount of the refund. Oh well.

That'll teach 'em (probably not)

We got a little letter from the IRS a few weeks ago telling us that we owed a bit more money on our 2003 taxes (and by "a bit more," I mean approximately the cost of a new car).

We took the letter and our old tax forms to H&R Block this morning, and walked away with the IRS owing us enough money for a really ugly used car. But still.

All of this was my fault, because I didn't understand how to do Schedule D correctly, which means our 2004 taxes are ripe for re-doing, too!!!

Even better, the H&R Block guy wanted to charge us $100 for the service (worth it!) but couldn't take our credit card, so instead accepted all the cash we had on us ($96), so that's another four bucks in our pockets! (although I think I'll give them the $4 when we go in with our 2004 taxes).

Feet: Not just for breakfast anymore

Usually, whenever Laurel brings home something in the organic food category, I think it tastes like feet (specifically, hippie feet). Today, however, I had to eat a real foot -- a chicken foot at a dim sum restaurant as a "hazing" ritual for my new group at MS -- and it didn't taste like feet at all. It tasted like chicken.

Listening to "tftf36 - Top 7 Tips" by Christoph Marquardt from the album Digital Photography Tips From The Top Floor

Dave's Stuff outage on Saturday: What will you do?

I've been informed that the server that hosts my blog will be down for an hour sometime between 9 p.m. and 2 a.m. this Saturday/Sunday. Try to live without the blog during this outage. Perhaps you could use the time to catch up on your ironing.

Under pressure?

No, it's ice ... ice, baby.

Time-lapse done with Nikon D70 hooked up to my laptop.

We're back!

Actually, we've been back since Thursday night, but I was too lazy/busy to update the blog (Friday was spent doing laundry, working out, packing my office for my upcoming move to the new team, etc.)

Let me see if I can wrap up the last few days in NYC with some random thoughts.

On our last day there, the weather finally got decent, in that the humidity dipped below 99% for once.

We went through the public library, which was a pretty cool place. The famous Reading Room even has laptop power and wifi. Now all it needs is a Starbucks! Of course, on the way in to the library, I had to say "I ain't afraid of no ghosts!" and ended up having that Ghostbusters theme song going through my head the whole time (see the first scene of that movie again if you don't remember!)

We ate some Cuban food (my first halfway decent Cuban food) with Laurel's college friend Greg, and some Vietnamese food (my first ever) with my college friend Dan.

We went to the NY Transit Museum in Brooklyn, but I was so freakin' hot and sweaty that day, I couldn't enjoy it (plus it was a museum). So I mostly sat in an air-conditioned room and watched a movie about the making of the subway, but the sound was screwed up, so not much to report there. Perhaps Laurel will blog about it. We did pick up a nice gift for the soon-to-be-four-years-old Henry Hale (a "4" line subway T-shirt!)

We went to B&H Photo, the biggest camera store in the world. I didn't buy anything.

Speaking of buying things, it was a pretty light trip for purchases. We got some clothes at the GAP to replace some of our sweat-soaked garments; I bought a bunch of new stuff from the Art of Shaving, but I would have bought that online anyway. We got that shirt for Henry. I think that's about it! Cheap trip, phew!

Weird thing our last day there ... our hotel was shutting down to be converted into condos. We may have been the last hotel guests ever to check out from the Melrose! It's OK, because we already decided we weren't going to stay there again anyway (we've been there twice).

Laurel finally got her "street falafel" on the last day (from a food cart on the corner near the Museum of Modern Art, which thankfully we didn't have time to visit).

Tons of walking and subway riding. I got a blister on my heel, so we stopped into a drugstore at midnight to get some bandages, and the woman in front of me in line was buying a home pregnancy test: Good luck with that!

I'm sure there are other random bits I've forgotten, but Laurel wants to read this now, so I'll post it and let her add!