The Terminal

I went to see this movie with work today. It was really good. I didn't know too much about it going on, but I was very impressed, definitely recommend it.

another test drive

I went to test drive the CR-V yesterday at Bellevue Honda, since they had some manuals in stock. I liked the way it drove, shifting seemed a bit more comfortable than the Rav4. Other nice features: floor space next to the driver's seat (if you fold down the tray that's there), reclining rear seats. Not so nice features: ABS only comes on the EX model (the more expensive one).

Funny quote from the dealer: "We're the biggest Honda dealership in the Northwest, and what that means for you is that you get a bigger selection."
Evidently, it doesn mean I'd get a better price there.

Still undecided

New Car decision

I'm getting a new car soon. I'm pretty sure it's going to be one of these three:


Honda CR-V


Toyota Rav4


Subaru Forrester

After the first one showed up on Google Images , I thought it would be funny to use all crash test pictures. But I couldn't find a picture of a crash test for the Forrester. Maybe the internet is trying to tell me something (other than that I have a strange sense of humor).

Cavities

I'm afraid I'm going to get some cavities. Well I'm not really afraid, but I have been eating a bunch of candy. "Why is that?" you might ask. Well there are two factors here. The first is that at work, people leave candy outside their office on the anniversary of their start date (typically 1 pound of m&m's per year they've been here). The second factor is that my office is very close to the corner of this building. Implications of being near the corner: There's a guy in a corner office with 8 pounds of candy outside his office, and hardly anyone ever walks by that part of the building. So I've been handfuls of runts every once in a while for the last couple days. They're good, but I know they're rotting my teeth.

Killers Rock

As I mentioned I was going to do, I went to a smallish concert this saturday night to see The Killers. It was at Neumo's on Capitol Hill (10th & E. Pike). The venue was cool, it's got a bit open area in front of the stage, then a bar off to the side, and a big balcony with some lounge-ish booths. We were on the balcony, just above stage right so we had a great view. I speculate that bands hire terrible opening acts in order to make themselves look better. The opening acts were Cobra High (which falls under "good music for people who like bad music") and Alien Crime Syndicate (they weren't that terrible, but following Cobra High helped their image), whose lead singer was a Kurt Cobain wannabee.

The Killers were awesome, their lead singer is really good. Robin said he sings like Clay Aiken (in terms of how he presents himself on stage, he's very casual, sort of walking around and playing to the crowd). I hadn't really heard much of their other music, but it was all good. They ended the set with 'Somebody Told Me', their hit single, then came back for a short encore.

Hometown Team

I really like this banner:


However I think it would be slightly classier without the translation.

Fun Adventure

Last night I went on a fun adventure. First a little backstory is necessary.
I really like this song called "Somebody Told Me" by a band called The Killers. It is played on the radio here a lot, you can listen to it here: Killers Music .
Turns out The Killers are playing a small show in Seattle this Saturday at a club called Neumo's. Tickets are only $10, but there's a $3.50 "[in]convience" charge if you buy them online. So I had the brilliant idea that we should go buy tickets at the box office, and combine it with having dinner somewhere in Seattle.
It should now be obvious that "fun adventure" was meant ironically as this barely qualifies as adventureous (though we did go to two places we hadn't been before).
So Scott, Erin, Adele, Luke and I went to dinner as T.S. McHugh's, an Irish pub in Queen Anne. We picked it more or less at random off the list of restaurants that take the Prime Card. Then we dropped Luke off (he lives in Seattle and took the bus to work) and went to get tickets. Neumo's uses the Bad Juju Lounge as their ticket office, which seems really strange. Tragically, they didn't have any tickets left. I think they only allocate a certain # to be sold at the "ticket office" and the rest are available online. What a ripoff. So long story short, I ended up getting the tickets online anyways. But at least we had a fun adventure.

Labor Day

Barring unforeseen circumstances, this is what I'll be doing on Labor Day:
Super jock'n jill Half Marathon

Pictures

Here are a few pictures from a small party I had at my apartment last weekend.

Interesting Fact about me

Here's a little known fact about me. When I am outside running, I really enjoy seeing people that I know. The most common scenario is to see someone I know driving by in a car, but occasionally I'll see someone walking, running, biking, etc. I was reminded of this yesterday as I was running along West Lake Sammamish and saw Jason drive by. That reminded me of two things. The first thing is this interesting fact that I'm currently writing about. The other, is that this now happens to me considerably less than it used to before I moved here. That makes sense, considering I know a lot more people in Somerville than I do in Redmond.
I'm now thinking that perhaps this interesting fact doesn't sound so interesting, probably because of the mundane way in which I phrased it. It's hard to explain, you might say I "get a kick out of it" or it "makes my day" or "puts a smile on my face." I think you know what I mean.

The Un-Friendly Skies

Turns out the Delta person I talked to on the phone yesterday lied to me, or at least didn't know what she was talking about. I had in my posession what they call "paper vouchers" and she thought I was talking about "evouchers". Roughly speaking, a paper voucher is something that is worthless unless you care to haul your butt to an airport or "ticket office" (the closest one is in Chicago i think). An e-voucher on the other hand, is something "they only started doing recently". Despite the similar names, there is no way to transfer one to the other.
I spent almost on hour on hold and speaking to Delta agents & supervisor last night, trying to get them to let me book my tickets over the phone or internet and pay for it with the "paper voucher" i had. These have a document number on them which I argued must be stored in some database somewhere that they could look up. This is apparently not the case. If you have a good printer and some cardboard stock, I recommend you start printing your own "paper vouchers" since they have no way of verifying their authenticity via these phantom "document numbers. At this point I decided to go ahead and put a hold on the tickets since the airfare wasn't that bad ($428 and I had $400 in vouchers). Of course that means I have to go to the airport today. I'm pretty busy today. So I woke up at 4:45 and drove to Sea-Tac, waited in line about 15 minutes, and was eventually told that I could only get $250 in credit towards my ticket since the kind Delta agents at Orlando had the foresight to give us two separate vouchers ($250 and $150) which cannot be combined with any other voucher. So my price just went from $28 to $178, or about a 600% increase. The remaining voucher expires on Jul 12, so I asked if there was any way I could get an extension for it. The woman at the counter informed me I should call Customer Care. I pointed out that Customer Care has no idea what I'd be talking about since these "Document Numbers" are stored nowhere and cannot be verified, so how could they make any changes to my document. She recommended I talk to them and could mail them in to get them extended. If there's one thing I can't wait to do, it's be on hold with delta for another half an hour, and then be told they can't help me.
The worst part of all this is that I have "paper tickets" rather than etickets, which means when I go on this trip, I will yet again have to wait in line at the Delta ticket counter. I really don't like waiting in lines.
Admittedly, it was clearly printed on the vouchers that a) they had to be redeemed at a ticket office and b) they couldn't be combined. But I don't like those rules anymore than I like driving to the airport at 5 in the morning. I got home at 6:30 and went for a run, then went right to work. Now I'm tired. But at least I have tickets to go home for 7/4.

Emeril's

When I was in Vegas, I ate at Emeril's restaurant at the Venetian, Delmonico. I'm still salivating from the experience. Here's something approximating what I had (thanks to Larry for the link) Ribeye et. al.

The worcestershire (that's 'wu-sta-sheeah') sauce was incredible. too bad it takes > 6 hours to cook. maybe it can be purchased...

Plane Tickets

I called Delta to find out what I had to do to use my vouchers to get tickets. backstory: Last summer when I went to Florida, we took a ~3 hour delay in Orlando and in return Delta gave us (all 8!! of us), $400 towards future travel. They expire at the end of July so I'm trying to use them to go home for July 4th.
It turns out that I can use them on their website by entering the numbers. Originally I thought I had to go to the Delta ticket office (i.e. Sea-Tac airport) to redeem the vouchers. But alas I am saved! There's a decent airfare right now, so I'm going to try to book tickets when I get home tonight.

First Actual Post

And now the fun really begins. I've decided that while I am waiting 2-5 minutes for code to compile, I will occasionally make entries here instead of compulsively checking my email. This is a very busy week for some odd reason. Tomorrow: game meeting + eli's birthday dinner. Thursday: Craig & Erin's birthday thing. Friday: another birthday event. Why so many birthdays in June? Saturday is my party, which I am still trying to figure out all the details for.
Other things I need to figure out the details for: Going home for July 4th.

First Post

Let The Fun Begin