Traveling again

Well, okay, not so much traveling again, as really just experimenting with posting on the blog again. Let's see what happens.

Dreams and Dragons: The Cursed-Disco-Ball-McGuffin Adventure!

I love computers; they are literally completely brain dead. 

For example, I just posted a comment to Dreams and Dragons: The Cursed-Disco-Ball-McGuffin Adventure! and the entire text of my remark was "A fun read :)"

The brain dead computer prompted me: "Prove you're not a robot. Enter the text from the image."

No worries, of course, and I'm not criticizing the Google programmers or program managers for such a brain dead algorithm - let's face it - spambots are a huge problem. I'm merely poking fun at how dumb computers are.

Now, I expect that before my child graduates high school, optical character recognition algorithms will have advanced to the point they can defeat these human-readable, but not machine-readable, images.

But, that's a different problem.

Farm Country... in Fife??

I have a long commute to and from work. There isn't much that can be done to shorten it, due to distance, until we perfect teleportation. So, I make it more bearable by finding alternate routes, generally more scenic and with fewer traffic lights.

There is a particular intersection in Fife, Washington, where I turn every day. I've turned there every day for over a year, and never thought much about it. Then, one day, two bits of data robbed together in my head and I started wondering if 1) going straight on my way home would be a viable route, and 2) what would it would like.

So, finally this week I decided to surrender to my curiosity and I went straight through the intersection.... 

Right into Farm Country. Yep. Suddenly I was in the Middle of Nowhere. Houses right by the road, but giant, tilled fields sprawling out behind them. Big, living cow right there by the road to greet me and make sure I Got The Point. Very funny. 

About three minutes later, I was back in The City. So, I confirmed the route is a viable alternative, and it is interesting. 

So I took the route again the next day, and one of the fields had filled with sheep. 

I’m really looking forward to the trip home tomorrow, just to see if anything else pops up.

Pioneer Bakery, Puyallup, Washington

I like to support "Mom & Pop" businesses. You find a lot of creativity and passion there, because the business is a labor of love instead of a retirement plan.

Recently, I dropped in at The Pioneer Bakery, in Puyallup Washington. This place has been open for several years, and I believe this was my second visit. They offer basic sandwiches for lunch, but their "bread and butter" is baking. Lots of fresh-baked bread, cookies, pastries, etc. Very tasty stuff, in a charming little shop.

I dropped in to purchase a custom-made cake. It was extremely attractive, very tasty (i.e. not too much sugar), and very reasonably priced for custom work. Consider dropping in if you happen to be in the area.

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May 2015 Update: Looks like the domain name is still owned by a real person (as opposed to one of those cyber-squatter aggregaters), but the website is gone. I suspect the business is gone, too, which sucks, since it was a nice place.

You try to follow a trail in a dark forest after sundown

Mount Rainier National Park is a gorgeous park with lots of hiking trails.

We went up there earlier this month. We enjoyed it so much, we went back the following weekend to try a different trail (and take advantage of the 7 days access pass you buy for $15, or an annual pass for $30 - we got the 7-day).

We've got some beautiful pix, and I'll have to post them when I get back to my native computer.

Do be advised that the forests of Rainier get very DARK after the sun sets. We miscalculated our timing on one of our hikes and I was extremely grateful that my wife is the smart one in the family and had thought to pack a flashlight! While one part of my brain did enjoy the idea of experiencing Rainier centuries ago, as the natives and later European explorers did, the other part of my brain remembered I'm a console-jockey and really shouldn't be stumbling about in a forest after sunset. Thankfully we made it out safely and had enough fun we went back the next weekend (only started much earlier in the day and left while there was still light to find our feet).

Virtual visit to India - way too much quality time with tech support

Here is a virtual visit. I spent a LOT of time today on the phone with Microsoft tech support engineers in Pune, India. Very nice people, one woman and one man. The woman was on the graveyard shift until around 6 AM local time, and then the fellow took over.

So, while we were on the phone (waiting for a messed up Windows 2008 server to reboot slooooooowly again and again) we talked a lot. Pune is surrounded by medium-size mountains, they have lots of parks and greenery, they speak very good English (which I am grateful for, since I speak none of the 108 languages of India), and they have a Big Barn Burger Cafe. The gent has never been there, but he recognized the place. I suspect the young woman before him had never heard of it until I read it to her off the Google Maps.

Pune is three hours from Mumbai. If you look at the Google map, you will see that, on the scale of india, Mumbai is a stone's throw away. That distance is about the Seattle-Portland run. In other words, India is friggin' HUGE.

So, there you go. The world is smaller than you think :)

M.I.L.O - Goodbye 09

M.I.L.O - Goodbye 09

Watch it. Share it. Honor your military personnel.

Met Milo at GI Film Fest in May, 2011. Great guy with a huge heart. Miracle he's still alive. Just watched this again and it needs to be shared.