Kirsty's birthday again this weekend, on Saturday to be precise. As usual for Kirsty's birthday it snowed! Craazy weather, it was sunny for a big part of the day, then hail and snow at night. We went to dine at Preservation Kitchen in Bothell. It was pretty good and reasonbably priced. The Wild Boar rack with chard etc was really good. The boar came out delicately pink in the center, tender and very tasty. Duck for appetizer was good as well, and the sorbets for desert were good. The restaurant itself is a little old house on teh 522, and the couple who own adn run the restaurant meet people at the door. Definitiely a nice building and good ambiance. Recommend it to people looking for well prepared slightly out of the ordinary food in plesent surroundings at a good price. Wine list is good and reasonable. Had a Sleight of Hand red blend that was very good.

The house is all dark wood and low lighting with tasteful decorations. It almost has a fading empire feel. Personally I find that a condusive atmosphere for enjoying fine company and food. Thanks Kirsty for having another great birthday.

No photos this time, but a report. On New Years eve went with a bunch of friends and their children to "Jump Planet". It is a place up in Bothell here that has an amazing selectin of bouncy castles. Generally for children, but if you book the whole place out then big kids are allowed as well. We spent about an hour and a half bouncing, catching, throwing and being jumped on over and around children. It was a blast, the best work out I have had in years. I think I used pretty much every muscle in my body, at least once of twice. Any parents that have not been there, I recomend it. And if you don't want to go, can I borrow your child so that I can go again?

Big thanks to Theresa and Q and all teh Ahdieh family for making it possilbe.

On vacation in Australia at the moment so I got to attend one of my sisters concerts! It was a concert in the grounds of one of the choristers houses, on a wonderful warm Brisbane evening. The concert was pretty good, and the food was yummy and a good time was had by all. I have added a couple of photos of the event so that you can get the feel for the event, I may try to work out how to put a video up there, if I can get a fast enough link. It was a fantastic experience to be able to see my sister in action conducting choirs that she has been developing. You rarely get this sort of oportunity to watch a sibling do things at which they are among the best there is. Looking forward to catching a rehersal before I head over to visit Mum and Dad in Perth as well.

Back in Australia for a visit for the first time in 3 years. Landed in Brisbane this morning for a stay with my sister and her family. Had a good day in the sun, and this evening there was a Halloween street party just down the road at the bay. Didn't see a cloud all day, which is a bit of a contrast to the usual weather in Seattle at this time of year.

Started reading the Saramago book "Blindness", so far it is pretty good. Also read through a new magazine that I got at the airport, "Seed", with the tag like Sicen as Culture. Its not a bad mag, a little bit shallow with most of its articles, but generally of interest and with enough data that you could find more pretty simply. Adding a coupld of photos from the Halloween party. One of the Phoenix fire performers is a little blurry, but you get the idea.

Given how frequently I seem to post here, I will change the theme a little and try to post a few things I find interesting. Been seeing a bunch of work recently about using cell phones as health awareness devices. It seems that in many less well off countries the cell phone is one of hte most pervasive devices. Lots of pre paid phones, for example South Africa hasabout 80% as many cell phones as people. Saw this article today about using the free SMS service that exists there to push out information to help raising the awareness of AIDS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7688268.stm

It is great to see technology hi jacked for the betterment of society :-) Gates Foundation is funding a bunch of things like this as well, it is interesting to different condition and problems that just don't occur to most of us. Examples are: computers are only useful to people who can read and write. That count out a huge portion of hte world population, so much for the internet. In many cases a couple of cell phones with a list of numbers and pictographic instructions give people communications with relatives, friends and information that they simply don't get access to otherwise. For example remote villages can call a central number for health care advice, agricultural advice, and crisis management can call the villages in case of disaster to get data on need. The fact that it can all be done either by speech, or by streaming a video to the phone device, makes lack of literacy less of a barrier.

Enough for now, this blogging thing is tiring. Cheers.

Another indication of the increasing irrelevance of the US at the global scale, this NYT article about OPEC oil production and good old GW

It isi interesting to see that even though OPEC did not reduce production at this time of year as it usually would, Mr GW Shrub is still trying to put the blame for the US economic decline at their feet. Good one GW. Even though pretty much every analyst has said the problems are the current US amdinistration is doing nothing to reduce the economic problems, Mr Bush will continue to do nothing and search for others to blame. Oh Yay.

The good news is that even though the federal government here is rather clueless and has much in common with a large flightless bird, the local scene is very different. There is already a consortium of mayors who get together and look at ways to reduce energy consumption and carbon footprint, and a bunch of states are gettign together to do the same thing.

Disappointingly, I am sitting at a conference on Virtualization and there is almost no interest in energy efficiency. People from VMWare in particular seem to b completely stuck in the performance improvement grind, they were baffled by questions around energy efficiency. Sigh. Particularly as their advertising talks all about how much energy their products will save you. Looks more and more like the real energy saver is doing a consolidation analysis. This usually precedes the implementation of virtualization in a large IT installation, so I guess it is still a good thing that virtualizatoin is becoming popular. It would be better if people recognised exactly where the improvement is coming from though.

No photos from this one sorry.

Yet another source of pride for the US. In a current conference on banning the use of cluster munitions due to the on going civilian casualties, the US has stated that they oppose banning such munitions. This on the tail of statements about how the US is doing all it can to prevent civilian casualties in Iraq and Afganestan. Who should we now believe in that discussion, the US military (who says no civilians killed or injured) or everyone else?

Here is the SPI article link:

 

Yes I know its been ages again. I keep trying to reform but there you go. Lived through Christmas and New Year, and had a pretty good time without packing on too much weight. Saw some movies, and recently I have been reading lots and lots of books. Read the latest in Perez-Reverte's Capitan Alatriste series, which was once again really good (Sun Over Breda) if you like romance novels. I mean romance in the true sense of the work as in Dumas three musketees etc. Also read a bunch of Palahniuk novels, all of which were really good. Definitely refutes the argument in this months Wired that SciFi is the only type of literature that is still about ideas. Also really enjoyed "The Zero" by Jess Walter. Interesting book and told in an interesting way, and well written and best of all, a great ending.

 

Peter Carey's "Theft" is the closest he has come to reaching the same heights he hit with "Oscar and Lucinda" in my opinion. Really enjoyed it, although typically first paragraph was sensational, and the ending a little disappointing. Carey excells at writing compelling first sentances :-)

 

Also one surprise, I went to see Cloverfield with a friend who is a B grade horror buff. Didn't ecpect much but was super impressed. Cloverfield is actually a pretty good movie. Not jsut a pretty good suspense movie, but a pretty good movie in general. Mostly focuses on human interactions and relations with some very good narative effects and a pretty good story line. Try it, you might like it.

Been doing a little travel around the US recently, this is part one of the notes. Started with a trip to the Columbia River gorge with a pretrip to Portland. Spent most of the time in Portland in Powell's book store, one of the world's great bookstores. Spent a moderate sum of money but got a lot of books as they had some great specials going. Got a lot of Nobel and Booker prize winners, in fact I have just finished Love in the Time of Cholera, which is very good. Marquez give a very good feel of life in those times, at least as he sees it. Very rigid and brief.

Currently reading Peter Carey's "Theft" which I think is his best since Oscar and Lucinda. It is a very good book, and I am racing through it, sigh.

While wandering through Portland we saw a huge bronze elephant, very suitable for climbing. Not sure if it has any significance, but kind of cool.

The scenic photos are from the foyer or just outside the foyer of the lodge we stayed in for SOSP. It was pretty majestic, and the conference went well. OK, back to work, and more photos soon from later parts of the trip.

I am going to be soudning really negative over this series of posts...

What the hell, $30 million for going to the moon. Really, the argument over advancing technology again? This was never really a viable argument when NASA used it, but now that we have been there and back, and have spun of a bunch of technology that we could probably have achieve with less expense, to say that going there agin is going to be advantageous in the same way is just silly.

Google has taken up a few worthwhile crusades recently, their claims are a little strident but the efforts were worthwhile, but this is silly. Oh, thats right, we are supposed to buy into the conspiracy theory that NASA never really went to the moon... LOOK THROUGH THE TELESCOPE!

If you want to throw money away in those sums, why not throw it at the homeless in California. Not the movie stars, but the people who wont have anywhere to live until a class action suit comes through on their insurance in a couple of years. Now that would be a good value effort. Or if you don't care too much about them, what about any of the other homeless.

Oh thats right, by sending a little toy robot to the moon, we will be indirectly helping them.

Just looking through the news again, and thinking about the Blackwater guys I saw on a plane flight recently. I came across this which I had suspected but not had confirmed:

"At present, foreign private security contractors have immunity from prosecution under Iraqi law but the Iraqi government is reportedly preparing a bill to make them accountable locally."

What the hell! The US sends 180,000 private security contractors to Iraq, and they are essentially given a get out of jail free card? I am really trying hard to see how this could be viewed as reasonable under any framework. 180,00 heavily armed private contractors in a war zone with no accountability for their actions? Does this really seem like a good way to stabilize a country and make them love you. I don't care how well trained or whatever these guys are, you give a bunch of guys guns, stick them in a highly charged war zone, and tell them that they can't be prosecuted and what do you think is going to happen. Oh dear, they got a little trigger happy? Sigh, how could anyone have predicted that.

 

Once again 180,000! Jeez.

Just reading about the displaced people in Iraq, now over 4 million! Thats just about the population of either Sydney or Seattle. All wandering around without shelter. OK so 2 million of them managed to cross a border befor ethey were closed, and are now in squalid refugee camps, and they are considered the lucky ones. It seems that the general feeling is that there is barely enough food, medicine or shelter to cover those not displaced in the war, so Iraqi towns are faced with the prospect of refusing refugees or seeing everyone starve slowly. Not a nice choice to make.

The general scale of the situation is being compared to Palestine soon after the Jewish state was formed. Given the long term success that has been (still going now bombings and shooting and the result is Palestine is being run by a terrorist org) and how fertile these refugee camps are for ingurgent recruitment, you have to ask what the hell is the US thinking? What are the goals of this effort, I mean really what? Sigh...

Cindy and I have been helping one of her friends with an animal rescue foudation called Kindred Souls. Generally they specialize in animals that the shelters will not take, or would put down immediately. Not too long ago they rescued a little Jindo dog named Ruby. Ruby has been a gift to a family that neither wanted nor needed a dog. They had been keeping Ruby outside and giving her very little attention. It ended when Ruby was found tied up in a vacant block.

Kindred Souls took Ruby in but was very short on foster homes at the time. A friend of mine, John had just lost his dog and agreed to take Ruby for a while. This became quite a while, but John and his girlfriend Jing were super good about keeping Ruby till a permanent home could be found. We eventually found someone who was interested in Ruby, even though she lacked some of the finer point of training (don't pull, stay, come when called...).

Cindy and I arranged to meet the potential adoptee (Sandy) at the Kent dog park. If you have a look at the photo attached you will see that Ruby is adorable to look at, so we had high hope that Sandy and Ruby would be a match. Turns out that Sandy runs a horse stud, so she is used to working with animals. In fact she started workign with Ruby on not pulling as soon as they met. We were impressed with how much progress she made in an hour at the dog park. Sandy thought that Ruby would be a good match, and took her home. Turns out that the horse stud is a bunch of land with medows and a stream on the property, so Ruby is now in a little patch of doggie heaven. All reports are that Sandy and Ruby are a great match.

 

After we shipped Vista the Windows team got the whole Thanksgiving week off. Nice. Luckily a bunch of the Aussies I know are on that team, so we decided to have a break, unwind, and get out of town :-)

While the weather was a little wild and wet, the house that Tim found to rent was spectacular! Right on the beach, with picture windows overlooking the ocean. We got to sit and read and watch the storms roll in over the Pacific. In addition, Chelsea got her first look at the endless expanse of the beach. Room to run and more sticks than you could possible chase in a day. She was understandably wild about the whole idea.

The house also had a huge Bali bed, that was ideal for playing with the children. Lucy thought it was the best thing ever.

Next time we have some guests, we will definitely try to get down to the house with them

Oh, and there is a hot tub on the deck lookin gout at the ocean :-)

Photos added are from the deck of the house looking at the beach, Chelsea sitting guard while Cindy plays with Rowan, and Chelsea looking very happy on the beach.

This is a very late posting, but just for those antipodean cycling fans, I though I would post a photo and a quick note about cyclocross. We are lucky that a round of the national series is held in Seattle, called StarCrossed. Kind of a cute name, attracts some names. One that stood out to me was Geoff Kabush, star of MTB and also it seems a keen cross rider. Some of the other names seemd vaguely familiar, turns out a lot of Canadians are keen cross riders, and a bunch of them were here.

What to say about cross. Imagine riding your road bike, with slightly knobly tires, on grass and sand, on a course that is essentially a series of 20-50 meter sprints. Some up up steep hills, with a turn at the end of each sprint of between 90 and 180 degrees. It looks like some one went, how can we make peoples legs feel like cardboard as quickly as possible. What would be the best course to make people get exhausted, lose concentration and fall over. The good riders are incredible. I can imagine riding like that for about 5 minutes, but they do it for an hour plus.

The other good thing about cross is that the twisting nature of the course means that spectators can see a large part of the course from one place, for some that is the beer tent. For others it means that from a reasonable vantage point, you can often see more than half the course.

Add beer and frites and a generally funky/crazy croud, and a good time was had by all.

Hypocracy, thats what it is I guess. Here is a brief excerpt from the New York Times:

The article also talks about the 34 children that were killed by a suicide bomber when they were "scooping up candy thrown from an American Humvee". I mean what the? is the US army really drivin around throwing candy to kids? Is that really the juvenile level of strategy that the worlds richest nation undertakes to help the people of Iraq? How can one be anything but embarassed that this is the best strategy they can come up with to make the world a better place, distribute candy.

 

Now a look at headlines: "U.S. Selecting Hybrid Design for Warheads". Now that sends a great message to both North Korea and Iran. Guys, the world can't trust you to have nuclear weapons of any type, but its important that we continue to advance our nuclear arsenal. I mean, look at Iraq, if intervention had not happened there, 3000 people a month would still be alive and ...? The belief is that if the US goes ahead with this plan it will have to resume underground testing of nuclear weapons. Lets see if there are sanctions applied to the us as they were to North Korea...

 

 

So, onging trials of living and working in the US as a non-citizen. It seems that the latest visa extension that was going to be a 1 year extension is actually only a 6 month extension. Given that it has taken 3 of those 6 months to get the extension and that I would ahve to wait 6-8 weeks to get an interview so that I might be given an entry visa in Vancouver Canada, and then the latest to apply for the next extension is 1 month before the current one expires... if you wade through that and do the math it gives me a best chance of slightly less than two weeks out of the country at the best. You can imagine how excited I am by that. So it looks like about 9-10 months where I can't get back into the country if I leave. Add to that the at least 3 years before I get to the next stage of Green card and existance here in the USA is looking less rosy. More soon, provided I retain my right to send electrons out of the country, no guarentee with the current climate.

It is about time I started adding a few more entries. I just uploaded some photos from the camera, and the date on some of them is July 14th! Well, a bit delayed but here is some info about summer activities. Cindy's friends Brian and Lorie Groth are also dog people, and they invited us to stay with them in Longview (industrial town in southern Washington) and hop into Portland for the day. I had never really seen Portland so why not? Bundled dog and stuff in the car and off we went. Drove down Friday, and after playing iwth the dogs in the back yard, Lorie prepared a pretty impressive sushi spread. You can take a look at it in the photos.

Spent Saturday in Portland, looking around the place. There are some nice bits of Portland, the river side park is pretty cool, and the Pearl district is great. Of course one of the great drawcards in Portland is Powell's bookstore. It takes up a whole city block, and has the broadest range of books that I have ever seen. I have been having trouble finding any Nicholas Mosely book, and they had all but one, wow. Had dinner in Silk, a really nice thai restaurant that we shose by chance. Turns out it was featured in the next edition of Gourmet Traveller, so I guess we will ahve to fight for a table if we go back. Had a cumquat, cilantro gimlet to drink, was pretty damn yummy. Sometimes choosing the weirdest thing on the menu comes through for you.

We took the dogs walking around Portland with us and they were both super well behaved. See attached photo of Brian with Milo being a very good dog.

Sunday morning Brian and I took the dogs to the Columbia River for a run. As you can see from the photos Chelsea and Milo found a stick and had a good time. We threw the stick into the river, Milo would wade in up to his chest but then stop if the stick was any deeper, leaving Chelsea to swim out for it. He would then lay in wait and try to take advantage of his longer legs to steal the stick as Chelsea swam in. Pretty funny to watch.

After cleaning up the house a little we all embarked back towards Seattle. We stopped in Tacoma at the south end of Pugot Sound for a dog walk and some dinner. Sat in the RAM brasserie on a peir over the sound and took in the warm evening and the scenary. Nice finish to a fun weekend. Photo attached does not really do justice to the view, but it does show you that, believe it or not, there is some good weather in Seattle. Sunny and warm, ahh. And this was taken at 7:35pm.

More soon.

OK, its been a long time between entries again. What can I say, finally Vista is out the door. Now I have some time again so I have no excuse to not rack up a few blog entries in short order. Especially since we got a little extra time off.

Most of you nay be aware that Jim Allchin anounced his retirement, and Bill Gates has said he will move on in a couple of years, and Brian Valentine has already left. So it is a time of significant change at Microsoft, interesting times as they say. Will see how that all goes. The good news is that Zune is out any time now, and it is a nice little box. Its going to raise the bar a little, I am sure Apple will react, but things should get a little stirred up.

It is a very wet grey day here, we have actually had floods in some areas, luckily most people I know live on hills :-) I have not heard of any loss of life which is good, but there has been significant property damage.

Still waiting on the INS over here to renew my Visa so I can travel outside the US again. THey seem to be taking their time about it but there is not much I can do about that. Probably heading home in Febuary or March, but that will ahve to wait on what happens Visa wise.

OK, I will get the camera out soon and some photos and stuff from recent gatherings. More soon.