The trip plan

I've posted a webpage here with the latest trip plan from Microsoft Streets and Trips 2007.

A few notes:

• The little red dots you see are Harley-Davidson dealer locations.
• The driving plan skips "day 4" because that's the day I'm taking the train to the Grand Canyon.
• The plan after Las Vegas is not fleshed out yet, other than basically "return home." I'll figure that part out on the road, since I'm not sure if I'll want to stretch it out to an extra day or compress it to get home faster.

Training Day

I'm staying about an hour from the Grand Canyon during my trip. So how will I get to the Canyon itself? I decided to take a train. This will take me from near my hotel to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, where I'll spend about four hours and then take the train back. Four hours doesn't sound like much time, but this trip is more about the journey and not about exploring every nook and cranny of the canyon.

Driving it to the hole

Since I've very likely gone way past my mid-life, I figured it was time for a crisis. I'm going to take off for a long motorcycle trip in about a week (June 2) ... the destination was to be "wherever the wind takes me" but since I've made a reservation for a hotel at the Grand Canyon, the wind will at least take me there.

It's about a 3000-mile round trip in 8 or 9 days, with no other reservations, but of course a ton of general trip planning using Streets & Trips and Virtual Earth.

You can, of course, expect lots of photos, GPS tracks, blog posts, etc. from the road.

I'll even have my bluetooth headset on my helmet if you want to call me!

Disney photos

I found a few pictures from our last Disney trip that weren't uploaded from the camera yet, so I put them up and updated the Disney photos on Flickr.

More open source

Another of my friends on the Virtual Earth team has released an open source project ... this time, it is a Virtual Earth Bird's Eye Screen Saver. It's very cool -- we have it running on one of the plasma screens in the halls at Microsoft. Now you can be cool like us by downloading it, running it yourself, and even contributing new features!

Check out Keith's description on his blog.

The next step into the dark side

My trusty Sony Vaio finally gave up the ghost for good today (I think I stretched it about a year past its original death date). So ... I picked up a new MacBook Pro from the Apple Store today.

Although I've been pretty impressed with some of the neat things that OSX can do, I do have to work on Windows software, so I'm installing an app called Parallels Desktop that will let me run both OSX and Windows at the same time!

Keeping the flame alive

I found out today that a bunch of people at work here in MS building 116 have established a Dharma Initiative, complete with hatches/stations. My office is now the "Flame" station, in charge of communications, according to the logo now on my door.

Patent

Patent
Originally uploaded by Seattle Dave.

I have several MS patent awards, but those are given for just submitting a patent idea. Today, I received an actual US Patent! US Patent #7,191,190. I got a nice plaque to commemorate the event, too.

Big Thunder Mountain

The first minute is pretty much all dark, but it gets better.

Make a wish

I know what I was wishing for ... and I didn't get it

Just call me Peter Parker

No, I haven't seen Spiderman 3 yet (which makes sense, as it opens tomorrow) ... but as you may recall, Peter Parker makes his money as a photographer. No wonder he lives in such a hole of an apartment ... I just got another $82 from ShutterStock for my stock photos, bringing my three-year total up to $239.04! Thank God I have a day job.

By the way, Spiderman 1 was good. Spiderman 2 was great. Will Spiderman 3 be even better? I don't know ... we'll be in DisneyWorld when it comes out, so I doubt we'll spend much time at the movies.

Easement ain't easy

Lava rocks
Originally uploaded by Seattle Dave.

We just finished the first of our many landscaping projects for the year. Our easement has been nothing but a huge tangle of weeds and embarrassment for two years -- we took care of this by using a cultivator (Thanks, DH!) on all 500 sq. ft., then laid down sheets of black weed block, sprayed on some Roundup for good measure, laid down more than 200 bricks, put down mulch areas for the trees, and then, finally, today unloaded 83 bags of lava rocks (we have 17 bags left over, as I ordered 100 just in case). It looks a lot better than it did before, although a little uneven, but we're hoping a few good rains will help things settle a bit.