Fun with Insomnia: Not Quite Getting Away From It All

For some odd reason, I don’t think I have actually been writing a whole lot of these Fun With Insomnia posts lately, and I’m not sure if that’s supposed to be a good thing or not. Either I am actually getting most of the sleep that I should be getting, or I am just failing to make appropriate use of the time I spend lying awake in bed. I actually think that a lot of these posts that I have written recently have been travel related, mostly written from airplanes, trains, boats or other big moving things that I seem spectacularly incapable of sleeping on. And sure enough, once again I am writing this from an airplane on a cross country flight, although by the time it actually gets posted it will be coming from some airport (most likely Houston, where I have a connecting flight) since there isn’t any Wifi on the plane. Not sure how people managed to survive cross-country flights under these conditions, to be honest. Interestingly enough, this particular plane has DirecTV installed in each seat so I can watch television to pass the time, but given the fact that it’s somewhere around 1am right now Seattle time, most channels are deep into infomercial territory. I did find a random Italian soccer game to watch for a bit, but the satellite signal was a bit flaky, and I got a bit sick of the skips and stutters in the picture and sound. So now I’m just writing this and trying to figure out how to make it through the two-and-a-half remaining hours of flight time on this plane.

Owing to the previously discussed unexpected change to my employment situation, I actually considered bumping up my flight a couple of days and spending a couple of extra days in Florida prior to boarding the ship tomorrow, but ultimately I decided against it, mostly owing to the high cost of the airline change fees. To be honest, it was probably a good thing that I did, because I ended up having a couple of phone screens for potential jobs to deal with in that time. Besides, I am actually traveling with people this time around, so it was probably best to just stick to the original arrangements. I’m still thinking the return flight is looking a little iffy, but at least if we miss it I’ll have some company, right?

Anyway, from here in Houston it should just be another couple of hours of flight time to get to Miami, at which point I should be my usual nice and loopy self (I don’t know why, but I don’t think I’ve ever been down there without being somewhere around 36 hours of no sleep…). We board the ship tomorrow, and from there I should have some Internet, but very limited, so I may or may not post something along the way depending on how motivated I’m feeling about it at that point.

Scenes From a Snow Day in Downtown Bellevue

Given the relatively temperate climate of the Pacific Northwest, even in the middle of Winter snow is a fairly infrequent occurrence around here.  During most Winters here we rarely get more than 2 or 3 snow events, and most of them are relatively minor (at least unless you’re trying to drive in them, in which case you’re pretty much dealing with a horrendous mess no matter how much or how little snow actually ends up on the ground.)  Every so often we do get a major snowstorm here, but these are relatively rare, with the last really significant one being back in December of 2008.  The one we’ve got going on here right now doesn’t seem to be quite that bad (at least not here in Downtown Bellevue, I understand most of the really big snow totals happened to the North and South of here,) but it was still enough to close down all the schools and make a mess out of the roads. 

Fortunately, living in a walkable Downtown area means that even in the snow it’s not too terribly difficult to get around, even while leaving the car safely parked.  Even then, given a recent unexpected change in my employment situation (not that big a deal really,) I don’t really have anywhere to be right now anyway, so I can just stay at home and not have to worry about any of this.  Even so, after a while cabin fever does start to set in a bit, so I did took the opportunity to go for a little walk this afternoon and see how Bellevue is faring underneath all the snow.  After the jump, a look at a few scenes from a snow day in Downtown Bellevue.

How to Panic in the Snow

There’s no getting away from it now, at least not unless you’ve got travel plans already and happen to be able to get to the airport sometime in, oh, about the next 20 minutes or so.  That’s right, there’s snow on the way, and plenty of it (or a moderate quantity of it depending on where exactly you happen to be, but that’s just nitpicking anyway.)  A Winter Wonderland of Doom awaits all who dare to venture out into the elements.  While it’s true that reasonable precautions and preparation now can save you from serious trouble later, who’s got time for that?   Sure, the warnings have been out there for days now, but why bother being prudent and taking reasonable precautions when you can just put everything off to the last minute?  Besides, under certain circumstances, I hear that panicking can be quite rewarding.

That’s not to say that you should just go out and run around in circles screaming with your hands up in the air.  Sure, it’s a pretty standard method of panicking, but ultimately it doesn’t really accomplish much, and it mostly just makes you look silly.  You see, in order to panic properly, you need to combine the usual irrational with rash decisions and counterproductive overreactions.  There’s a fine art to proper weather-related panic, and with these handy tips, you can be panicking like a pro in no time.

• Start by cleaning out a supermarket or two.  Any experienced worrywart knows that the first thing you do when it looks like there might be snow on the way is to head for the nearest supermarket and go clean out the canned goods aisle, but anyone can do that.  In order to do it right, you can’t just go in with a shopping list like you’re making your weekly grocery run, you’ve got to rush in at the first sign of peril and fill a cart up with the first thing you see on the shelves.  Sure, that tends to mean you’re going to end up with a year’s supply of canned garbanzo beans and 12 boxes of Corrugated Fiber Crunchies (The world’s first 100% recycled breakfast cereal!) which doesn’t sound like much fun, especially when compared with the sumptuous looking boxes of Macaroni and Cheese  right next to it on the shelf, but remember, this is a crisis, and you’re not panicking properly unless you treat it like it’s a crisis.  Besides, you can always go download a few thousand recipes for canned garbanzo beans off the Internet, right?  Oh, and be sure to keep some of the stuff in the car, you never know when you might find yourself needing to live in there for a while…
• Don’t forget the essentials.  Even after you’ve cleaned out the nearest canned goods aisle, you’re going to need some other stuff to survive.  For example, you might want to consider having some firewood around, just in case.  Sure, you may happen to live in an apartment with no fireplace, but if you’re going to make it through this crisis you can’t let little details like that (or other insignificant trivialities like the terms of your apartment lease) deter you.  After all, the last thing you want to find yourself having to do is to burn up your supply of Corrugated Fiber Crunchies to stay warm, right?  (Then again, after you actually try the things, you might find yourself looking for a convenient excuse to do so…)  Oh, and according to some very reliable sources I’ve found on the Internet, just hours before a potentially threatening snowstorm is supposed to be a great time to go out and buy yourself a team of sled dogs.  If you buy them from the right place, I hear they’ll even throw in a handy instructional DVD, so all you need to do is get the dogs to watch it so they know what to do, and you’ll be ready for anything.
• Batten Down the Hatches.  Obviously the best way to keep yourself out of trouble is to stay away from it in the first place, and there’s no place to do that than in the comfort of your own home.  Sure it might be a little crowded in there now that you’ve filled the place with canned garbanzo beans, firewood and quite possibly even a pack of soon to be dangerously bored and undertrained sled dogs, but at least this way you won’t have to be out in the snow.  If you want to be extra careful you might even board up the windows and shove a dresser or two in front of the door.  Sure, you won’t be able to tell that is’s snowing outside, but isn’t that whatFacebook and Twitter are for?
• Go out for a nice drive.  Over the years, the denizens of the Pacific Northwest have become famous worldwide for their Winter driving prowess, and Northwest drivers in the snow have been the subject of many popular viral videos.  Sure, common sense tells you that you don’t want to go out driving in the snow if you don’t really have to, but why pass up what may be your only chance at Internet-wide fortune and fame?  (Well OK, maybe not the fortune part, unless you count your car insurance bills afterward.)  Sure, you may find yourself trying unsuccessfully to climb a 45-degree slope in an old beater Honda to get back to your house, sliding back to the bottom and hitting 2 or 3 Bimmers on the way back down, but remember, anything that is worth having is going to be difficult, and driving home in the middle of a snowstorm is no exception.  Then again, if it all gets to be too much for you to handle, you can always just ditch the car, walk home and go retreive it after the Spring thaw.  Sure, some people might have some issues with this (especially if you happen to do it right in the middle of the freeway) but when we’re in the middle of a weather-related crisis sometimes we must all make sacrifices. 
• When all else fails… Run away.  I hear Florida is lovely (or at least has a lot less crummy weather) around this time of year.  Granted, that leaves the problem of finding flights that don’t cost a small fortune and haven’t been delayed to next Thursday due to the weather, and then getting to the airport when there’s an inch of ice on the roads (as well as potentially a car you recently abandoned sitting in the middle of the freeway,) but that’s just a minor detail.  Maybe this would be a good time to try out those sled dogs, assuming you remembered to buy a dogsled to go along with them.  Um… you DID remember to buy a dogsled, right?

Anyway, with these tips, you’ll be well on your way to becoming a full-fledged Seattle snow panicker.  Now stay safe out there, and if you’d be so kind, try to leave some pasta on the shelf at the supermarket, I haven’t made it over there yet…

Things You Tend to Notice While Wandering Nonchalantly into Oncoming Traffic

Image credit: Flickr user Bill Kramme, Creative Commons

As I’ve talked about on a number of occasions here, one of the nice things about living where I do is the commute to work, or lack thereof.  I don’t have a commute so much as I have a ten minute walk between my apartment and the office.  In theory, this means that I’m not spending any money on commuting expenses (especially since I am no longer making a monthly car payment as of a few months ago,) but I’m pretty sure any money being saved by not driving to work and back is being swallowed up pretty well in the additional living expenses that come with life in Downtown Bellevue compared to what they would be living in a place a bit further out in the suburbs.  Even if I’m leaving the car parked at home all day, I’ve still got to pay the going rate for Downtown parking at home, which tends not to be particularly cheap.  So when it all boils down I’m probably not saving much money (if any at all) by living here and walking to work, but I suppose I’m at least getting a little bit of exercise in the process, right?

The walk that I make twice a day between here and the office comes out to roughly .4 miles in each direction and change, with very slight and ultimately insignificant variations in length depending on which of the several possible routes I actually take.  No matter which direction I go in, I will always have to cross the same three streets (NE 8th, 110th Ave NE and 108th Ave NE) although where I actually cross those streets may vary.  This means that quite often, I find myself waiting for walk signals at crosswalks.  Once you start crossing a particular street at a particular spot often enough, you quickly begin to learn the traffic patterns and stoplight timings, although it’s not like any of them are too terribly difficult to figure out in the first place.  Aside from a minor variation or two in patterns resulting from the presence or absence of cars in some left turn lanes, the stoplights all behave in a more or less predictable fashion.  This is, naturally, a good thing, the last thing you want when there’s several hundred very heavy objects traveling at high rates of speed is to have to guess what the traffic lights are going to do next.  Generally by the time you’ve crossed the street at a particular intersection enough times, you tend to have a pretty good handle on where in the cycle a light will be when you get there, and how long it’s going to take to cross the street. 

 

Or least that’s how it would work out if people were actually paying attention to this stuff.  If you wander around Downtown Bellevue (or Downtown Seattle, or pretty much any other major urban downtown I suspect) enough, it won’t take you long to find someone doing something they’re not supposed to be doing in a crosswalk.   Mostly it’s just little things like taking way too long to cross or starting to cross about three seconds before the light turns yellow, but occasionally you get the ones that just ignore the crossing signals entirely and just wander right into oncoming traffic.  Fortunately, it seems like most of these people at least have enough common sense to at least prevent themselves from finding new employment in the lucrative hood ornament industry, but sometimes you have to wonder.  Are they just too impatient to wait the 3o seconds it would take for the walk signal to show up?  Are they running to catch a bus?  Are they sick of playing Frogger as a video game and want to experience it in real life?  The world may never know.

 

While I can’t claim to know what causes presumably otherwise sane people to frequently throw caution to the wind and cross streets in lunatic-like fashion, one thing that seems to encourage bad crosswalk behavior is the timers on the crossing signals, a relatively recent addition to most of the stoplights in the Downtown area.  For those of you who aren’t familiar with these (which shouldn’t be a lot of people, as I’ve seen these become quite common around here over the past few years, and not just in Downtown,) instead of just a flashing Don’t Walk sign, these signals have a countdown timer telling you roughly how much time is left before the light is going to turn yellow.  If you’ve ever read one of those little guides you occasionally see on posts next to the crosswalk buttons, you’d know that you’re not supposed to begin crossing the street if a flashing Don’t Walk sign is on.  Apparently with the countdown timers on the lights, all bets are off on that one, and the flashing Don’t Walk sign has largely been downgraded to the level of a mere suggestion.  Sure, you’ve only got six seconds to cross, but you can still make it as long as you don’t mind inconveniencing the guy trying to make a right turn in front of you a bit, right?  After all, waiting for a second light builds character (for them, not you.) 

 

And yes, I know that this subject is putting me dangerously close to chasing-kids-off-the-lawn territory, but you have to wonder if people give much thought to the fact that they’re placing themselves into the path of multiple two-ton projectiles piloted by persons of unknown reaction time, which also happen to have the right of way at the present time, and expect to somehow not get smacked halfway to Renton if they happen to get themselves hit by one of the things.  Yes, I know it’s a pain to have to wait for the next light to cross the street, but at least if you do it that way you’ll usually make it across the street with at least as many unbroken bones as you began your trip with.

Statistical Overview of 2011

 Well, we’ve made to 2012, and one of the first things I do at the beginning of each new year (well, besides and sit around and complain about the fact that we don’t all have flying cars yet, I’m really starting to suspect that this whole Future thing is getting to be just a bit overrated) is to put together a brief summary of some of the Blog’s vital statistics.  Mostly I just do this for future reference, but I figure there might be a few people out there who are interested in this as well, so I might as well make it public.  The short version is that for the second year in a row, overall traffic was down, but over the past couple of months I’ve been seeing it recover a bit, mostly thanks to search engine traffic for a few particular posts.  As has been the case for most previous years, the vast majority of the traffic comes from a few specific posts, and most of that traffic comes from search engines and a few particular links that seem to generate a fair bit of traffic on their own, mostly posts that cover subjects that aren’t covered particularly well elsewhere on the Internet.  Interestingly, even though the Totem Lake Mall post I wrote back in 2007 continues to be by far the most popular overall post on this site, a different post (the Whitman’s Sampler post) was the most read post on this site in 2011, accounting for over 12% of the site’s traffic by itself.

Although I have long since cast off any notions of being able to make a living off my Blog (or even much money in the first place, for that matter,) I still think it will be an interesting challenge to try to reverse the decline in site traffic.  I suppose I could do a lot of this by just posting more often (I’ve been trying to maintain the standard of at least one post per week and generally trying to keep that post in the 1,000 word range, although I think I’ve been getting a little bit lazy on that one lately,) but there’s also something to be said for writing more of the types of posts that generate a fair bit of search traffic. 

Anyway, as usual, I would like to thank those of you who have been reading this Blog, and hope you’ll keep reading.

• Total Posts(all time, including this one):  534
• Total Posts (2011): 62
• Total Comments (all time):  850
• Total  Page Views (all time):  212,096
• Total Page Views in 2011: 42, 742
• Total Page Views in 2010:  52,228
• Total Page Views in 2009:  60, 939
• Total Page Views in 2008: 50, 219
• Average Visitors Per Day (2011):  121

Top posts (2011):

Sampling the Whitman’s Sampler: A Guide to America’s Favorite Box of Enigmatic Chocolates		5,136
Retail Wasteland – A Tour of the Totem Lake Mall		3,593
Classical Gas – Abandoned Route 66 Gas Stations		1,469
The Redmond Costco Moves Forward (Updated 9/9/09)		1,449
Malls of the Seattle Area: A Tour of the Factoria Mall		1,321
A Brief Tour of the Bellevue Galleria, Bungie’s Future Home		1,256
My Very Nearly Award-Winning Chili Recipe, and Other Deep Dark Secrets		1,153
A Tour of Crossroads Bellevue – Part 1: The Mall		1,005
Malls of the Seattle Area: A Tour of The Everett Mall		753
Off the Beaten Path: The World’s First KFC in Murray Utah		727

Top Posts (All Time):

Retail Wasteland – A Tour of the Totem Lake Mall		24,946
Sampling the Whitman’s Sampler: A Guide to America’s Favorite Box of Enigmatic Chocolates		10,716
Classical Gas – Abandoned Route 66 Gas Stations		9,764
Malls of the Seattle Area: A Tour of the Factoria Mall		9,407
A Tour of Crossroads Bellevue – Part 1: The Mall		6,441
The Redmond Costco Moves Forward (Updated 9/9/09)		6,189
My Very Nearly Award-Winning Chili Recipe, and Other Deep Dark Secrets		5,258
Malls of the Seattle Area: A Tour of The Everett Mall		4,383
A Brief Tour of the Bellevue Galleria, Bungie’s Future Home		3,447
The Beginning and the End of the Old Bellevue Safeway		2,977

Random Thoughts: Year End Blowout Edition

Second-to-last sunset of 2011.

Well, it’s just about time to put 2011 in the books and move onto 2012.  As tends to be the case with most of them, it’s certainly been an interesting year, and with the way things are going right now, I suspect that 2012 should prove equally interesting, albeit in completely different ways.  Then again, you can never truly tell what the future holds for you until you actually get around to living in it, so there’s really only one way to find out.  In the meantime, here’s a few random thoughts and loose ends to finish out 2011.

• Two days before Christmas, our family got a somewhat unexpected surprise when my sister Jacki had her third son and my fifth nephew several weeks earlier than her expected due date.  Tyson John Keenan arrived into the world on December 23rd at roughly 10:30am, healthy and weighing 6 pounds 5 ounces.  Nonetheless, even giving birth two days beforehand wasn’t enough to deter my sister from attending our usual family Christmas get-together, where the above photo was taken of Tyson with his cousin Isla, born just about four months ago at the end of August.  With all the kids around these days and most of them being boys, I don’t think there’s such a thing as a quiet family get-together in our family anymore. 
• Incidentally, I just spent a good 20 minutes digging through Facebook profiles to try to remember when Isla was born.  I suppose if I was a good uncle I’d actually remember this stuff…
• As I’ve said in the past, I’ve never been big on the whole concept of New Year’s resolutions.  To me, the whole concept seems rather arbitrary.  Nonetheless, back at the beginning of the year I set a number of goals for things I’d like to do over the course of the then coming year, found in this post.  To be honest, I didn’t really get anywhere with any of these, although 2 of the three goals were things that, now that I go back and look at them, were pretty frivolous in the first place.  Granted, all three of the goals (write a PC game from scratch, build a supergun so I can play my collection of arcade boards, write something significant) are still things that I would like to do at some point, but aside from the writing, they’re pretty much things that I wouldn’t be too disappointed in myself if I ended up never getting them done. 
• Speaking of writing, I think I’d still like to set a goal to do more of that in 2012, but I think I need to take a different approach to it.  For a number of years, I’ve had an idea or two for a novel in my head, but for some reason have never been able to develop it well enough to get much out of it.  I suspect that’s one of those things where I’m going to have to start small and work my way up to it.  Then again, sometimes these half-baked ideas may still be useful, but probably not at the scope I had originally envisioned.  Because of this, I would like to set a goal for myself to write a short story every month and post it here.  I have written a few of these here and there and posted them on the Blog (the most recent example being this one, written back in July)  but I’d like to do more of this.  Watch for more of these over the course of the next year.
• In addition to this, I would really like to spend some more time writing about software testing (which is what I do for a living,) most likely in the form of a series of posts discussing some of the basics of testing and explaining how the process works.  Hopefully it’s the type of thing some people out there might find useful.
• After months of putting up with the crummy office chair that I’ve been doing most of my Blogging from for the past several years, I finally got around to replacing it earlier this week.  I have actually been looking at new chairs for quite a while now, but quite frankly, I think for most people, the “perfect” office chair simply doesn’t exist, or at least it ends up being too expensive to bother with.  Even though I could probably afford one of the really nice ones like the dot-com bubble leftover I’ve got at my desk at work (a Herman Miller Mirra) it still seems like a lot of money to spend, even taking into account how much I would be using the thing.  In the end, I went with something that’s a little bit nicer than the gradually self-destructing Ikea chair I had before, but still tried not to spend a ton of money on it.  Chances are I’m just going to be replacing the thing in three years anyway, right?
• Music stuck in my head recently:  Between the Humble Indie Bundles and the holiday sales over on Steam, lately I’ve been picking up a number of indie games and playing them on my PC.  One of my favorites this year has been Jamestown, a well-made 2D shoot-em-up based on a war between Britain and Spain in 15th century… on Mars (um, yeah… don’t expect much in the way of historical accuracy.)  Admittedly, 2D shooters are one of the few niche genres I tend to enjoy, but the orchestral soundtrack to this game is the part that stands out to me the most.  Perhaps the most notable song in the game is this, the Lost Temple of Croatoa Suite, the first part of which accompanies the game’s final level.  The rest of the soundtrack can be found here.

• Somehow, I suspect that when I’m writing another one of these posts at the end of 2012, I’m going to find that there is quite a bit in my life that has changed significantly from where I am right now.  Of course, I can never really tell what the future is going to hold, but I do tend to think that things are (mostly) headed in the right direction. 
• As usual, I should be putting up my annual statistical Overview post sometime tomorrow.  Overall, traffic is down a fair bit from last year, but still pretty reasonable.
• Dear WordPress Spell Checker:  No, I did not misspell “from”, thank you very much for flagging it though.  Thanks, Brian.

Have a happy and safe New Year, and be sure to watch for more cool (or boring, depending on how motivated I’m feeling at the time) stuff here over the course of 2012.

The 2011 Sledgehammer Last-Minute Christmas Gift Guide: Good Things Don’t Come to Those Who Wait

Well, you waited until the last minute to do your Christmas shopping again, didn’t you?  Most people would learn their lesson on that one after the first five or six times they ruined Christmas with their novelty shaped waffle irons and dubiously colored sweaters, but year after year, some people continue to convince themselves that if they do their Christmas shopping in a blind panic at 2pm on Christmas Eve enough times, eventually it’ll all work out.  Here’s a hint for you:  It doesn’t.  As we’ve all learned from sad and repeated experience, waiting for the last minute generally results in a lot of sitting around in traffic just trying to get to the stores in the first place (and over the past couple of weeks I’ve witnessed quite a few fun little traffic jams pointed in the direction of Bellevue Square, which makes me really glad I don’t have to sit around in any of them,) lots of waiting for parking spots when you get there, and lots of wading through crowds of people who just happened to make the same mistakes.  In short, you really should have done all this weeks ago.

But in spite of your predicament, I’m here to help…  Sort of.  Once again, it’s time for the sort-of-annual Sledgehammer Last-Minute Christmas gift guide, chock full of gift-giving ideas that you should most likely consider not having if you can possibly help it.  As usual, you’re responsible for whatever consequences arise  if for some reason you happen to actually give any of the items on this list as a gift. If you try to blame me I’ll just deny everything.  You’ve been properly warned.  That said, you’ll find the complete list after the jump. 

Previous Gift Guides and Other Holiday Posts:

• 2010 :  Coal is Overrated:  The 2010 Sledgehammer Last-Minute Christmas Gift Guide
• 2009:  Deck the Halls With Something Or Other – A Roundup of Questionable Holiday Decorations 
• 2008:  Was too busy hanging out either at Disney World or buried under eighteen inches of snow to do much Holiday stuff, but I did put together this post on the Disney version of Christmas that some people may find vaguely interesting.
• 2007:  The First (And Quite Possibly Last) Ever Sledgehammer Last-Minute Christmas Gift Guide

Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One Before

Early last week, I found myself in one of the occasional vaguely scrambled mental states I manage to get into every once in a while, which resulted in one of my (very) occasional late-night trips to Denny’s to sort things out. As I’ve discussed previously, I can’t explain just why it is that I only ever seem to end up at Denny’s when my brain isn’t quite firing on all of its proverbial cylinders, but there’s a certain quiet and largely distraction-free solitude to a nearly deserted restaurant late at night that seems to be conducive to sorting out these types of mental states. Granted, this doesn’t really happen all that often, but apparently it happens often enough that I’m starting to recognize some of the people who frequent the place at that time of night, including some guy in one of the booths behind the counter who seems to be often engaged in phone conversations that are, even by my standards, incredibly nerdy. There’s also several of the waiters and waitresses who I’ve begun to recognize from multiple late-night visits. This seems to be a remnant of the culture that developed over the years (but has now largely vanished around here, although some holdouts still remain, largely unchanged) within the various greasy spoon diners, but it’s a culture that I doubt I could embrace, although I certainly don’t put myself above making the occasional visit.

As would be expected of most places around this time of year, the place was decorated for the Holidays, and the speaker system was quietly playing a variety of assorted Christmas tunes, mostly of the traditional variety. It’s one of those things that most of the time you’d hear in the background in some store or at some party and not give more than a passing thought to (although I’m sure just about anyone would notice the stuff if someone was playing it in the middle of April or something like that, but that’s beside the point.) And in my case, most of the time that’s pretty much how it works. In this case, perhaps it was the fact that I was sitting quietly at the counter waiting for an order of chicken strips, or perhaps I was just trying to find something for my brain to latch onto besides its own static, but for some reason I started actually listening to the stuff. And when I did this, pretty quickly the stuff all started sounding incredibly cheesy.

Coincidentally, it was just about this time that one of the nearby waitresses (one who definitely fits the diner waitress archetype, who you could easily picture calling for the cook to flop two over easy with a couple of zeppelins and a moo juice at some place out on the side of Highway 23) was clearing off a table behind me, and made an offhand comment to nobody in particular that, to paraphrase a bit, she’d have to shoot herself in the head if she had to listen to this stuff for another month. This resulted in a brief conversation on the subject in which I largely agreed with the assertion (minus the shooting in the head part of course) and noted that if I had to listen to the same twenty syrupy Holiday songs on continuous loop for a month, I’d probably have to consider a similar course of action. Granted, the fact that I don’t have to listen to the same twenty songs on a continuous loop for a month does tend to mean that I probably have a bit more tolerance than that, but when you think about it, we’re long overdue for some new “classic” Christmas songs.

I mean this with no offense intended to the Bing Crosbys and Burl Ives of the world (or at least their estates and the presumably generous royalty checks they continue to get around this time each year,) but there’s only so many times you can hear Baby, It’s Cold Outside, Happy Holidays or any of the other vaguely generic holiday songs that seem to inhabit many a tinny overhead speaker in the grocery store around this time of the year before the whole thing just starts sounding incredibly cheesy. I mean, exactly when was it decided that the theme to the Charlie Brown cartoons counts as Christmas music? Sure, there’s the classic Charlie Brown Christmas special that shows up around this time of year, but there’s at least another 50 Charlie Brown TV specials that have been produced over the years (only a handful of which are Christmas-related,) making the connection tenuous at best. For that matter, you can count most of the stuff from the various “classic” Christmas specials to be thoroughly overplayed with the other Holiday stuff. Frosty the Snowman may be a perfectly fine song when you’re playing it in a Rankin-Bass special, but when you take that same song and insert into the background of a department store selling rather expensive clothing, it tends to feel a little bit out-of-place.

Again, I don’t have anything against the playing of Christmas or other Holiday music around this time of year (in fact, there’s quite a bit of it that I like, although most of that tends to be the more overtly religious stuff that might tend to be just a bit too politically incorrect for most public places), but I’m thinking it’s about time we as a society start seriously thinking about making some new “classic” Christmas music. It’s not like we need to make a big production out of it or anything, just come up with a few interchangeable baritones to do the lead vocals, put together a breathy chorus or two for backing vocals, add in a decent sized jazz band to fill in the instrumentals, and you’ve pretty much got all the ingredients. Throw together some bouncy lyrics about snowflakes, sledding, cozy fires, presents and falling in love (possibly even all at once,) and before you know it you’ll have some stuff that’ll find a place on grocery store PA systems and easy-listening radio stations for at least a good 50 years. Sure, there’s still plenty of established performers and bands out there cranking out a Holiday album or two on the side when they happen to need an extra swimming pool for Christmas, but most of that stuff seems to be surprisingly forgettable, and you hardly hear any of the “new” stuff that’s more than a year or two old. I suspect most of it will probably be finding its way to the Dustbin of Christmas Past long before we stop hearing Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer being played unironically in public places.

Sure, even if we do manage to replace all the old and overplayed stuff with completely new and inevitably soon-to-be overplayed stuff, eventually we’ll be right back to the original problem of annoying the heck out of waitresses in all-night diners. At least by the time that happens, it’ll all be someone else’s problem to deal with, right?

Fun with Rockets and Lasers: Creating a 3D Do-It-Yourself Christmas Ornament (Some Assembly Required)

In my extended family, there’s been a longstanding tradition that we have an ornament exchange which takes place at Thanksgiving each year.  Although the ornaments that come up in the exchange each year range from the mundane to the sublime,  there are a lot of crafty people in the family, which means that store-bought ornaments tend to get a bit outclassed.  Over the years, I’ve gone mostly with the store-bought stuff anyway, with a couple of ill-advised attempts at handmade ornaments thrown in for good measure as well.  I actually kind of enjoy making ornaments myself, although to be honest, when I try to make stuff by hand, usually the results don’t quite add up to what I originally had in mind.  To give you some idea of this, I tend to consider a craft project to be successful if nothing got set on fire or maimed during the process.

It is because of this tendency that last year, I decided to take a different approach to the problem.  As outlined in the post that I wrote about last year’s ornaments, I found a place over on Capitol Hill in Seattle called Metrix Create:Space that has all sorts of cool toys like 3D printers and laser cutters.  Although I’m pretty sure the 3D printers are a bit out of my league for the time being (at least until I manage to get some idea what the heck I’m doing when it comes to 3D modeling) I found that through a combination of open source tools and following instructions found in several FAQs posted on the Internet, creating a design that would work with the laser cutter proved to be a lot less daunting task than it might sound.  The ornaments which resulted from this project turned out very nice, and were very well received.  The only real problem I had with these ornaments was the fact that they ended up being far more expensive than I had originally planned on.  In fact, I think I spent about twice as much on the project as I had originally budgeted, and given the costs of laser cutting, I had planned on quite a bit.

As a result of this, although the tools for this year’s ornaments were pretty much the same as last years, the approach taken to the project was quite different, as was the end result.  After the jump, you’ll find a description of the process used to create my ornaments for this year’s family Thanksgiving ornament exchange.

Going Around the Table, 2011 Edition

(TODO: Take a new Thanksgiving table picture so I don’t have to keep recycling old ones over and over again.)

Every year around this time Thanksgiving rolls around, and for some odd reason, every year around this time I always seem to mention something here about how Thanksgiving just seemingly snuck up on us out of nowhere.  Naturally this is a rather absurd notion, as anyone who has been paying attention probably would have noticed Halloween popping up on the calendar a few weeks ago, and taken that as a clear sign of impending turkey.  Nonetheless, it is with anticipation that we look at the arrival of Thanksgiving, as it provides one of the few chances we get each year to have the whole entire family together at once.  And as it always does, Thanksgiving also provides an opportunity to look back and take stock of the past year to see where I have been, and what blessings I have received.

For those of you who may not have read one of these posts before, every year at our big family Thanksgiving get-together, we have a tradition where we all go around the table, and each person takes a little bit of time to speak of some of the things that they are thankful for.  For those of you who are familiar with Agile development, the whole thing’s basically like a Scrum meeting, only with a lot more people, and last time I checked people usually don’t bring donuts to Thanksgiving.  When I started writing this Blog over four years ago, I also started doing a “going around the table” Blog post around Thanksgiving time each year as well, with several other members of the family (depending on their varying degrees of motivation to actually maintain their Blogs) making their own posts as well.  The previous Going Around the Table posts can be found here (2008), here (2009) and here (2010).  So without further ado, here are some of the things that I am thankful for as we once again approach Thanksgiving.

For those of you who have been reading this Blog for a while, you are probably aware of some of the various interesting circumstances of the year that preceded Thanksgiving 2010, and the couple of months prior to Thanksgiving in particular.  This year has, thankfully, been a lot less tumultuous for me, and has allowed me a chance to settle down a bit.  In particular, I’ve finally had the opportunity to settle down into a good and reasonably stable job after years of working as a contractor that resulted in the need to frequently be searching for the next job at the end of each contract.  Although this was far from being an ideal situation, I found that I would always be able to find the things that I needed at the times that I needed them, and it is through that period that I came to a firm belief that if I am doing the right things, one way or another things would work out (and quite often I’ve found things to happen in the “Or Another” category.)  Granted, I don’t intend this to be a claim that I am doing the right things all the time (or even most of the time, for that matter) but through these years of wandering from contract to contract, I saw it happen enough times that I can’t believe it to be mere coincidence.

I wouldn’t exactly say that this past year was marked by any sort of profound change from previous years, but in many ways it’s provided a chance to settle down a bit.  For the first time since I worked in my first Tech Support job out of high school (I don’t really like to talk about that one much to be honest) I’ve spent more than a year consecutively in the same job.  Granted, even in that there’s been a bit of turmoil here and there, but all in all, I have to say that I’m grateful for where I am right now.  The job I am in has given me an opportunity to grow in a number of the skills I need to achieve my long-term career goals, I have good managers who I get along with very well, and who trust in me enough to mostly just stay out of the way and let me do what needs to be done, my daily commute is a ten-minute walk to the office, I managed to finally get my car paid off a few months ago, and I have actual vacation time, something I’ve lacked for quite a while.  Sure, it might be nice if my stock options weren’t so far underwater that I don’t think even Jacques Cousteau could find them at this point, but all in all, I’m pretty happy with where I am right now.  I know I can’t expect this to last forever (and in fact, I know I’ll have to take some steps toward making some changes myself in the not-too-distant future as I come to realize that now is the time to seek out my eternal companion,) but I’m grateful to have a bit of stability for the time being. 

I’m also grateful for the fact that I’ve had the opportunity to do some traveling this year, as I know that this is something that not a lot of people get to do.  It’s always good to get the chance to expand one’s horizons, and even though I begin to worry that I might b getting myself a bit stuck in a rut with this whole cruise thing, I’m glad that I’ve had the opportunity to take several of them this year, and to bring my brother who I don’t see much of these days along with me for one of them.  I’m also grateful that I got to take a trip to Disneyland back in September with several friends, which gives an entirely different perspective than I’d get from traveling alone.  I know that for quite a while during my twenties, I had a tendency at times to be a bit of a loner.  Sure, I’d get along with people just fine, I just didn’t place as much importance on the friendship of other people as I really should have (which probably has a lot more to do with how I ended up being still single at age 30 than I’d really like to admit.)  It’s easy to let this become one of those things you don’t really think you need until you finally find friends like that and begin to realize what you’re missing.

All in all, I realize that I have a lot to be grateful for this year, even if I’m not always as good as I should be about expressing that gratitude.  Now, for anyone else in the family who still happens to be blogging (I know of one or two, not so sure about the others), it’s your turn.