Natebot
Grab Life by the Natebot.

Ah, it's almost been a month since my last post. I'll be lucky if I have any readers left. But thank you for stopping by.

Let's see, the trip to Germany and back lasted 8 days and was fairly painless except for the headcold I brought back. Nothing like descending from 30,000 ft with full sinus infection. Must. Remove. Icepick. From. Skull.

The 8 hour flight was pretty simple and enjoyable - It was night so I got to see the Aurora Borealis out the south side of the plane, three mile high rippling sheets of light dripping from below Orion's belt. Amazing. I guess because of our altitude the Northern Lights were silver-white rather than colored red or green. Or maybe not.

Imagine a steady stream of hot solar wind sweeping back the Earth's own magnetic field into a tear dropped shape. Some places these radioactive 'wind' particles get trapped in the magnetic field instead of being safely bounced into space. They then get sped up as if they were in a particle accelerator across the magnetic sky, dropping lower, until they hit the polar atmosphere and cause the light we see.

And that's what makes science sexy. More Germany and Denmark as I rember it soon.

Sounds morbid doesn't it? Sorry. Bear with me. Tonight I just wanted to walk down to the Penny Cafe - my regular cafe haunt reminiscent of Bloomington's Runcible spoon - for a coffee and a few chapters of reading of my book; but when I got to the homey ragamuffin of a place I found two disturbing facts: new carpeting and a snare drum. Carpeting can be a welcoming thing but I prefer the impression that stoic bare floors and mismatched threadbare furniture give of a eatery fronting for the Poetry Corp of the French Resistance. However a snare drum in your cafe is another animal altogether. I can't imagine anything more antithetical to the cafe experience. Even monkeys are more welcome if only in the Moroccan mystic. Anyway it seems you can't swing a dead cat, or lemur if you prefer, without hitting an amateur musician in Seattle, some with snare drums. So I left in desperate look of a quite place to read my book.

luckily you don't have to walk but a block in this town to find another coffee shop. Actually chai in this case as my destination is called the "Chai House." I had the "Hail Mary" which was a dubious brew of two shots of espresso and Chai tea. That must explain why I am up late typing this now...

anyway I managed to just get into my book when POP on goes a amp powered microphone and an electric guitar. I slammed what was left of my robust and spicy legal amphetamine and made for the door. Doesn't anyone play acoustic anymore? Does everyone feel like their fingers vibrate at 3.5MHz after 10oz of espresso and chai? Can you think thoughts so fast that you forget them before you even realize them?

So ends my woeful tale on this foggy night in the town that never stays quiet.

Well I'm back! DSL came back and I've got me back my slice 'o the interweb. St. Helen's did a big vertical spew today about noon. I wouldn't have known a thing about it, as I was hidden away in my cubical pounding out code when I got an IM from a buddy in Portland who has a eye on the mountain from his office. Helen is miles from here and in the wrong wind direction so we won't see any ash i'm sure. Now if Rainier is the next to go, well I better be a good fast swimmer....



Things are accelerating nicely - got my passport from the Feds, and memorized a few new German phrases - for my trip overseas.

It's just about 2 weeks away - ah the relaxing vacation of an 18 hour flight. My coworker is bringing along his kick ass palm computer that will play two full length movies. So it is lookin' like 4 movies, some readin' and a whole lotta sleepin' pills to get me over. 4 movies because last time i did the trip they had 2 full length movies - and by full length I mean edited to be below G. From what I read the carrier we are using has personal TVs for IFE (in-flight entertainment.)

A couple other things: I live in Ballard, a neighborhood on the north end of Seattle and if you were wondering what there is to do, well you could do worse than check out inballard your one stop site for all things Ballard. Here's a bit of history from the site:

Ballard was first settled in 1853. In 1889 it was incorporated in Washington State and in 1907, Ballard was annexed to Seattle. Proud of its Scandinavian heritage, Ballard has many reminders of its past including the annual Norwegian Constitution Day Parade on May 17, the Nordic Heritage Museum, and the Bergen Place mural that was dedicated by the King & Queen of Norway in 1996.

Now several folks are very serious about their Scandinavian heritage around here. You can hear it in their inflections and see it in the gift shops. Right down the street from me is Leif Ericson Hall - full of vikings and bee-keepers. Speaking of vikings, you know folks are serious Scandinavians when they buy Viking Insurance to protect them from looting or if you are on the other end of the sword Viking Risk Management -"Because living by the sword isn't what it used to be.?"


I'll leave you with this nice shot of Golden Gardens beach overlooking the Sound and the distant Olympics.