Skull Helmet

Skull Helmet
Originally uploaded by Seattle Dave.

Awesome.

Quest for the perfect mocha

Actually, I know where to get the perfect (Grande Non-Fat No-Whip) Mocha -- at Starbucks.  But Laurel got me this amazing new coffee machine (the Jura Capressa Impressa Z6), and it can make all kinds of coffee drinks, including those that take milk.  So I set off to create a replica of the Starbucks Mocha, and I think I've come pretty close.  It took five tries, but I got it down to 30 seconds of steamed milk, 2 tbsps of chocolate, 3 oz of espresso on "normal" aroma setting.  I think the taste is close but the "mouth feel" is a little off.  Laurel suggests perhaps oilier beans at a finer grind setting, which I'll try later ... as for now, I'm a little buzzed from too much coffee sampling!

Oh, yeah, we're back in Seattle

I guess I should mention we're no longer in Hawaii.  We got back into the house at 11:59 p.m. on Christmas Eve.  On Christmas day, it snowed, and I believe you could hear the winds howling, "Hahaha, you're not in Maui anymore, sucker!"  According to my logs, I also spent from 7 p.m. Xmas to 2:30 a.m. this morning working -- which I plan to do for the rest of the "vacation" ... at least I don't have to go into the office!

Celebrity spot (via iTunes)

Apple's iTunes has a feature where it will scour the local network and find other computers running iTunes that have "music sharing" turned on.  I sometimes have fun in hotels or at work sampling random strangers' music.  As I was doing just that this morning (listening to Clay Aiken's Invisible as a joke thanks to another hotel guest), Laurel said, "Is that from Sean Ono's playlist?"  She claims that at one point last night, she noticed Sean Ono (Lennon)'s playlist show up in my iTunes!  And she didn't click on it!  Who knows what treasures are contained therein?  Of course, she points out rightly that it might not be that Sean Ono, and in fact, some other hotel guest might be excited that Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics is sharing his playlist.

Above the clouds

DSC_6924.NEF
Originally uploaded by Seattle Dave.

(I'm not sure why my belly appears so full o' jelly in this photo, but I don't think I'm quite that poofy; I think/hope it is just my fleece getting bunched up -- it's hard to tell for sure, though, we've eaten so well on this trip!)

Today, we took a car trip with the goal of getting to the 10,023-foot summit of Haleakala, a dormant volcano. Along the way, we got lunch in Makewao and saw a goat farm in Kula.

But the top of the volcano was definitely the highlight. You literally drive through the clouds to get there, and the views are amazing (you could even see the telescopes on the Big Island in the distance). Through the clouds, you can see the crater of the volcano.

We ended our day with some great sandwiches from a place called Shaka that also sold large foam fingers in the classic "hang loose, dude!" configuration for $7. We just bought the sandwiches.

Time to Burn

Time to Burn
Originally uploaded by Seattle Dave.

The nice thing about vacation is having so much time to burn (of course, after it is over, you wonder why you "wasted" so much time). Today was a lazy day -- I slept till noon (mostly due to that hard drive to and from Hana), then met Laurel for lunch and went to the beach, where I slept again after a little swim in the ocean. Right before sundown, she and I walked the grounds looking to take some twilight photos -- we both got some great shots; check out Laurel's flickr and Dave's flickr.

The Road to Hana

This is one of the must-do trips/sights of Maui according to multiple guidebooks. Yet, I still have to ask, "why the hell would anyone ever want to go to Hana?" You could drive halfway to Hana and not miss anything. You could drive 1/4 of the way to Hana, stop in Paia, and have a great time. The goal for today is not to get in the car for any reason.

Laurel's photos

DSC02792.JPG
Originally uploaded by Seattle Laurel.

Laurel is becoming quite the photographer on this trip, with her trusty Sony DSC-W200. I might just have to give her my Nikon D70 (when I get the D3, that is!) You can see her new flickr page here with pix from Maui as she uploads them. I'm busy uploading the shots I took today during our "Road To Hana" trip, but the net connection here is so slow, it might take all night. The Road to Hana is a 30+ mile trek through the most curvy road in the world (imagine SF's Lombard Street going for 30 miles). We stopped at several viewpoints along the way, including watching surfers, buying a cheap picnic lunch, feeding some ducks, viewing waterfalls, walking in a huge lava tube, and finally seeing Charles Lindbergh's grave. Then, 30 winding miles back!

This is the life!

Yep, 81 degrees and sun ... for at least the next five days. We've already had three perfect days of weather in Maui. Day one was mostly travel and an early bedtime. Yesterday (Sunday), I got a massage treatment and did some ocean swimming, while Laurel walked the three-mile trail that connects the Wailea hotels. Today, we drove around to various spots in West Maui, including viewing some petroglyphs, going to the aquarium, and enjoying the town of Lahaina. Laurel will have a bigger write-up eventually. She is also becoming quite the photography nut! I'm posting my pix up on flickr -- no word yet where Laurel's gallery will be, but it is better than mine, by a long shot!

Skull helmet

Awesome. Did I order one? Oh, hell yes.

Living room panorama

Living room panorama
Originally uploaded by Seattle Dave.

My parents got me a special tripod attachment for my birthday/Xmas -- it allows you to take panoramic photos with ease. I quickly set it up, took 18 shots of our living room (every 20 degrees for a full circle), and put the results into a great Mac OSX program called "Double Take" which stitched the photos together in less than a minute, producing the result you see above.

Be a real developer on Virtual Earth

I got my great job on Microsoft's Virtual Earth Team by answering a personal blog posting from someone on the team -- here's your chance to do the same! We're looking for great developers (and testers) who are interested in local search, mapping, AJAX, ASP.NET, or who want to build the tools to make life easier for other people who are developing in those areas. Sound good? It really should -- we do some fun stuff and have a lot of exciting projects on the horizon. If you are interested, contact me directly (if you don't already know me personally, the best way to get my attention is to look up "Dave Stewart (VE)" in the Microsoft address book; if you aren't currently at MS, you can leave a comment here, although I can't guarantee a response to anonymous commenters).

How much do I love my iPhone?

I thought I lost my phone, and the last thing I did before I noticed
it was gone was throw some stuff in the trash. By the time I got to
the trash can (30 seconds later, maybe) a janitor had already dumped
it, so I chased him down and dug through his bin for 10 minutes.

The phone was in my car.

Sent from my iPhone

"Your son seems to be interested in only one thing"

Oh ... my ... God ... yes: Go, Speed Racer, Go! With Matthew Fox as Racer X and Christina Ricci as Trixie!!!

Anti-social

I finally got tired of moving from social network to social network, without actually being "social" at all -- to me, it seems like just doing a bunch of work to give some stranger my address book, while getting no value whatsoever out of it.

So, I decided to cancel my accounts on Facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace.

Facebook was easy to cancel; no problems at all, just hit some buttons and done.  LinkedIn made me wait for a human to process the cancellation, which took about a day.  I've tried three times to cancel MySpace, but it keeps saying it will send me an email with further instructions, and the mail never comes.

All three of these sites are just completely worthless to me: Facebook's main point seems to be to let me know the status of people whose only true status is "I'm using Facebook"; LinkedIn is good for job networking but I don't need a job and if I did, I have a real, human network to contact (plus actual experience and reputation); MySpace isn't good for anything but as an example of 1997 web design.

The sad thing is that I think there is some potential end-user value to "social networking" (or rather, "computer-aided contact linking"; real "social networking" has nothing to do with computers) but no one has provided this value yet -- instead, you're just being entertained with shiny objects while you hand someone your entire address book and list of interests, which is why they are worth billions and you are worth nothing.

So, hey, if I'm so smart and know what value there is to provide, why don't I go do it and be worth billions myself?  Eh, like I need that kind of hassle.

Final tally: Down $65

We had a lot of time between checkout and the airport this morning, so I had to chase after one more four-of-a-kind.  Lady Luck was not on my side (although Laurel was) ... I had $65 in my wallet and spent it all on the chase (if I had hit a four-of-a-kind, it would have paid off $69, so there was still a small chance of breaking even).  Oh well.  We're in the airport now with 90 minutes to spare, but we don't gamble here, so the final score is Vegas: 65, Dave: 0.

Be like Mike

I didn't even notice it until I happened to take a look at the full size version of my picture of Mike Tyson, but he's got an iPhone. Looks much smaller in his hands.

Mike Tyson

Mike Tyson
Originally uploaded by Seattle Dave.

I still had to buy a T-shirt, so after a several-hour nap (whoo hoo, the Stewarts in Vegas, baby!!!), I headed downstairs to buy an overpriced House of Blues shirt. As I left, Mike Tyson was just sitting at a slot machine. Fortunately for my "take pictures of celebrities without getting hit in the face" policy, someone else asked, "Can I take a picture?" and I just horned in on that, as you can see. I didn't risk going for another picture of his face tattoo when I got a bit closer later on.

As for the gambling, I had $60 in my pocket, so I figured I'd hit a video poker machine. I was down to the last draw when I hit a winning streak, then hit a four-of-a-kind (the second of the day on the same machine), and ended up cashing out a total of ... $60. So we're still exactly broken even for the trip.

The Mormon Shirt

We were walking down the Strip, and my eye was drawn to a stand of funny / crude / obscene T-shirt designs (I underpacked and need one more T-shirt for the trip, so I've had my eye out). Anyway, at one point, Laurel said, "There's a Mormon shirt."

Me: What's a Mormon shirt?

Laurel: You'll see it.

Me: (After looking for a few minutes) You mean that one?


Laurel: Yeah!

Me: That's ... I mean, are you being serious? Cuz that's not for Mormons, that's about a three-way.

Laurel: What? Oh! I thought they were married.

Me: I can't WAIT to put this on the blog.

Laurel's run

I've been blogged about our gambling status, but I haven't mentioned Laurel's half marathon yet ... that's because I didn't really know much about it.  Around 5:30 a.m., I woke up and saw her getting ready to go, and went back to sleep.  Then I got up at 7:30 a.m. and trekked to the finish line (which was practically a marathon in itself) and waited to see her finish.  About an hour later, the phone rang -- it was Laurel telling me she was back in the hotel; I had completely missed her dash past me to the finish line (there were a LOT of people there).  She says it was her best time yet, around 2 hours and 5 minutes, but I'll let her write about the details on her own blog.

Day 3 midday status

Just broke even for the trip

Broke (even) (almost)

End of day 2 trip gambling total:  Down $4.

Vegas giveth, Vegas taketh away

Well, now our take is only $56, but up is up!  Also, Laurel won a $50 gift certificate to the Paradise Gift Shop in the Hilton by playing the Game Show Game, hosted by Jamie Farr (I didn't go; I was at the Borg Invasion Star Trek show).

Gambling update

Ended day one down $40.

Currently up $116 midday of day two on the strength of quad aces (I
only play video poker.)