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I recently upgraded to a
Blackberry 8700g.
Email, cellphone, web
access, and PDA all-in-one.
I love Canon digicams.
I had an S330, then an S230,
now an SD400. They're solidly
made, they take great pictures,
and they're ultra-portable.
I've gone back to the dark
side. I once again have an iPod.
This time it's a 60gb iPod Photo.
The Dell Latitude D620
is my current work laptop.
It's a cleanly designed
Centrino Duo machine with
amazing battery
life and a nice screen.
My home laptop is a
15" Apple MacBook Pro
dual-booting both Mac OS X
and Windows XP. Hooray for
Boot Camp!
I recently upgraded to a 20"
Dell 2001fp LCD. It has great
image quality, and convenient
USB ports on the side.
My current PC is
a P4 system based on an Intel
D915GAG motherboard in an Antec
Sonata II case. 200gb Seagate
SATA hard drive, nVidia GeForce
6600GT video card, SB Live 5.1,
and NEC DVD-RW drive.
Just like with digicams,
I like Canon inkjet printers. My
i860 is quiet, fast, and produces
first-class color prints.
Not much to say here.
If you're an aviation enthusiast
and you have a fast PC,
go buy FS2004 now.
If you get hooked on
flight sims like I did, you'll want
a good flight controller. The
CH Products Flight Sim Yoke USB
is probably the best all-around
flight controller out there.
It ain't cheap, though....
My Current Reading List
Eastward to Tartary:
Travels in the Balkans,
the Middle East, and
the Caucasus
by Robert D. Kaplan
Falling Off the Map
by Pico Iyer
Great Bridge: The Epic
Story of the Building of
the Brooklyn Bridge
by David McCullough
The Polish Way: A Thousand
Year History of the Poles and
Their Culture
by Adam Zamoyski
Best of Europe 2006
by Rick Steves
2008
October (2 entries)August (1 entry)
June (1 entry)
May (2 entries)
February (2 entries)
2007
July (1 entry)June (7 entries)
April (5 entries)
February (4 entries)
January (11 entries)
2006
December (5 entries)November (3 entries)
October (10 entries)
September (6 entries)
August (4 entries)
July (7 entries)
June (5 entries)
May (7 entries)
April (15 entries)
March (9 entries)
February (7 entries)
January (15 entries)
2005
December (4 entries)November (6 entries)
October (15 entries)
September (4 entries)
August (9 entries)
July (18 entries)
June (10 entries)
May (12 entries)
April (19 entries)
March (18 entries)
February (10 entries)
January (20 entries)
2004
December (9 entries)November (21 entries)
October (9 entries)
September (15 entries)
August (7 entries)
July (7 entries)
June (8 entries)
May (10 entries)
April (5 entries)
March (12 entries)
February (18 entries)
January (9 entries)
| 10/31/2004 12:41 |
| I swiped the following passage from Rick Steves' website. I would heartily recommend you go there and read the whole article. Fourteen hundred years ago, Mohammad said “Don’t tell me how educated you are…tell me how much you’ve traveled.” Thomas Jefferson agreed, and wrote “Travel makes a person wiser…but less happy.” Mark Twain traveled through Europe, came home, and wrote “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.”
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| 10/31/2004 11:26 |
| Here is a great article (a rant or a screed, really) about how American car makers are about to miss a big trend, yet again, due to their prolonged infatuation with #$%$#%ing SUVs. AutoExtremist Below is a picture of an Audi A3, the car that the author refers to more than once. It's also one of the cars we saw being manufactured in Ingolstadt on our trip to Germany this month. Very impressive all around.
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| 10/30/2004 09:06 |
| After the straight scoop on our trip, I figured I should also throw in some random/weird/fun things, too. Here is an assortment of oddness. 1.) We ordered a dessert at the restaurant in Wurzburg, and it arrived with a little paper Canadian flag stuck in it. The waitress apologized for being out of American flags. 2.) There are vending machines selling beer (both light and dark) on the factory floor at the Audi plant in Ingolstadt. 3.) In Prague, there were carts on street corners selling "Euro Hot Dogs." In Berlin, there was a stand outside Zoo Station selling "Genuine USA Style Hot Dogs." 4.) KRW pointed out that you can now get a kebab in any city in Europe. This coincides with my theory that you can get decent pizza in any city in Europe. 5.) Some Japanese dudes were filming a car commercial on in Berlin, right in front of the I.M. Pei addition to the German Historical Museum. They were yelling everytime a pedestrian came anywhere near the scene. It reminded me of the scene in "Lost in Translation" where Bill Murray is filming the SunTory Whiskey commercial. The car, incidentally, was some brand I didn't recognize. I think it was an SM7? 6.) Has anyone in Europe considered the possibility that smoking is not mandatory? I'm just askin', that's all.... 7.) Czech dumplings are suspiciously like white bread minus the crusts. Not that they're bad, I'm just keeping my eye on things.... 8.) There are few things as peculiar as seeing a crappy old American car in Europe. There was a late '80s Pontiac Parisienne at the parking lot of the train station in Mittenwald, Germany. 9.) There is a coffee shop chain in Germany called Tchibo, that for some reason also sells a small selection of clothes, housewares, appliances, and general stuff. Not stuff with their logo on it, mind you, just stuff. You can buy underwear, a down comforter, and a cappucino. Weird. 10.) Two nights in a row, we saw a car fire in the exact same spot on a street near Zoo Station. People were going about their business like nothing was happening, and we couldn't figure out what was going on. We later learned that a movie was being filmed there.
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| 10/29/2004 18:45 |
| Well, we're finally back from our trip to Germany/Austria/Czech Republic. I hesitate to call it "our vacation" because the word "vacation" makes it sound like nothing much happens, which couldn't be further from the truth. Our trips are pretty much chock full of activity. It's "travel," but not necessarily "vacation," and that's fine with me. Anyway, here are some highlights: Day 1 - We arrived in Munich late in the afternoon. Our rental car was a Mercedes C class sedan from Sixt. Sixt also rents Lamborghinis, Audi TT roadsters, and all kinds of other cool stuff. Our hotel that night was in Freising, which is a small town just a couple miles from the airport. We found a great little family-run Turkish restaurant there, and had a nice (cheap!) meal. Freising has these weird bear sculptures all throughout the town, all decorated differently. Day 2 - We drove up to Ingolstadt to see the Audi factory, hoping we could get in on a tour. As it turned out, we arrived just in the nick of time to join the one English-language tour given each day. The tour was amazing, seeing how much automation and precision Audi puts into the construction of the A3 and A4. The tour guide said that the construction/assembly of the A3 is 95% automated--people don't touch the car until it's time for the interior furnishings/dashboard/equipment to be installed. A new A3 rolls off the line every 2 minutes. After the Audi tour, we drove through the Altmuhl valley and along the Danube (Donau!) to Weltenburg to see the cloister brewery there, the oldest cloister brewery in the world. It's scenically located on a sharp bend in the river. From there, we went to Regensburg where we got a hotel (Ibis!) and ate dinner at the oldest sausage kitchen (wursthaus) in the world. In the same spot since 1300-something. Big cheap plates of wurst and kraut, along with good beer. A good end to our first full day. Day 3 - We kind of took this day slow, since the important task was to pick our friend Byron up at the airport in the evening. We slept in (10am) then drove back to Munich, where we checked into our hotel near the airport. We took the S-bahn into the city, and walked around for a while. Munich isn't the most fascinating city, but we checked out some things we hadn't seen before, like the Viktualienmarkt. We walked around the Turkish neighborhood, which has a surprising number of computer shops. (Hey, even Turkish dudes need their cold cathode light tubes and fan bus controllers...) We headed back to the airport around 5pm, and picked Byron up when he arrived. We took him to the hotel, and had a slow dinner, all in order to keep him awake as long as possible--gotta avoid jet lag. Day 4 - For the first day we were all there, we drove down to the Bavarian Alps. We saw the Baroque church at Wies, checked out Garmisch for lunch, went on to Mittenwald, over the border at Seefeld, and on over the mountains and down into Hall in Tirol. There's a nice little gasthof in Hall where we've stayed before, so we stayed there again. Hall is a nice little town to walk around in, too. Day 5 - We drove through Innsbruck, but it didn't look interesting enough to warrant a stop, so we drove on down the autobahn in the direction of Reutte. We headed up through the mountains towards Reutte, where we hiked up to check out the Ehrenberg fortress ruins. Very impressive views from the castle ruins, indeed. From there, we drove all the way around to the Black Forest. Granted, you can make great time on the autobahn when you're driving 110mph, but it was still a long drive. We spent the night in Freiburg, and had a decent meal at an Italian restaurant. Day 6 - It was raining when we woke up, so I began to think about a drastic change of scenery. We drove down the Hollental and wandered through the Black Forest up to Triberg. Just outside of town there is Germany's highest waterfall. While not as impressive as Multnomah or Snoqualmie, it was still very scenic, and definitely worth a visit. The rain wasn't letting up, so we raced up to Wurzburg to ponder our future schedule. Standing on the Alte Mainbrucke, I noticed how similar the view was to Prague. That set me to planning, and so we decided to turn the car in and take the train to Prague. We did first have a great dinner at Wirtshaus zum Lammle and a night's sleep at another Ibis Hotel. Day 7 - We took the train to Nuremburg, where we changed to the train for Prague. It was a pretty slow train, making a couple of stops in Germany, then several in the Czech Republic, including Cheb, Plzen, Marianske Lazne, and others. We got to Prague in the mid-afternoon, and the weather there was much better. We got a big room at our favorite hotel, Dum U Velke Boty, and spent the evening strolling around seeing the major sites, and enjoying a great meal at the Balkan restaurant down the street. Day 8 - This morning we toured the castle, cathedral, and related sites up on Hradcany hill. We had never climbed the 289 steps to the top of the south tower of St. Vitus' Cathedral, so we did that. Oof. My thighs and quads were sore for the rest of the day. Another great Balkan meal, and more sightseeing on the other side of the Charles Bridge. Day 9 - The morning was spent seeing the collection of sights in the Jewish quarter, and the afternoon was spent seeing the rest of the Old Town. Prague has a ton of things to see, and it's a good walking city anyway. The only bummer deal about Prague this time around was the pitiful exchange rate. We had gotten used to getting 35-40Ck to 1USD, but this time we only got 25Ck. Oh well, it was still cheaper than a place like London... We had dinner at a Greek restaurant right around the corner from our hotel, the food was good, but our waitress was a little confused at times. Day 10 - We got a taxi to the train station, then caught our train to Berlin. The first couple hours' of the ride were very scenic, as the train ran right down the Vltava and Elbe valleys, towards Usti nad Labem, Decin, and Dresden. We got to Berlin in the afternoon, and got into our hotel just off Savignyplatz. After a nice late lunch at the Italian restaurant nearby, we tried to show Byron as many of the important sights as possible, since it was his last day of the trip. We went to Potsdamer Platz, the Brandenburg Gate, Unter Den Lindens, Checkpoint Charlie, and the Reichstag. The reconstructed Reichstag is very impressive architecturally, with its glass dome. Day 11 - Byron went on his way this morning, leaving Kristi and I to see more of Berlin. It was a beautiful weather day, so we went out to Potsdam to walk through the parks and see the palaces. There was a nifty pommes frites place at the Potsdam Hauptbahnhof, so we had french fries for lunch, then ice cream for dessert. I love vacation.... Day 12 - We went to the German History museum, and many of the sites in the former East Berlin. The remaining section of the Berlin Wall is kind of interesting--hard to believe it's been a "has been" for 15 years now. Great doner kebabs in (East) Berlin..... Day 13 - The Pergamon Museum, the Egyptian Museum at Charlottenburg, and various other piddling, trying to see the important stuff during our last full day. Berlin is huge, and we couldn't help but feel we we only seeing a tiny fraction of the stuff to see. Day 14 - Out to Tegel Airport, a short flight to Copenhagen, then the long flight back to Seattle. Dump out the backpack, download the digicam pix, do a bunch of laundry, and then collapse in bed. Another successful trip.
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| 10/08/2004 20:12 |
| President Bush puts words together into sentences in the same way you'd be making words if you were randomly drawing Scrabble tiles out of a bag.... |
| 10/08/2004 19:40 |
| I don't think this needs much explanation, do you?
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| 10/03/2004 18:22 |
| Well, it was the Mariners' last game of the year, and the last game in our 16-game season ticket package. I wasn't initially very enthusiastic about it, since the Mariners were 63-98 going into it--a pretty poor year all around. Still, it was Edgar Martinez's last game, Ichiro's last chance to tack some more hits onto his new single season record, and a generally nice day for a baseball game. It dawned on me how perfect things were, with the sun shining, the smell of grilling hamburgers, a full stadium, planes flying overhead on their approach to Sea-Tac, and Ichiro stroking a single up the middle.
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| 10/02/2004 14:09 |
| He he... You have to like the Germans... I'm searching around on the Internet for a hotel near the airport in Munich. I came across one that looks promising, based on locations, pictures, price, etc., and I noticed that their German --> English translation is a little wacky. For example, under the "Objectives" part of their website, it reads: "In a salutary cosiness our guest should sleep very well, as well as enough and variously can have breakfast.. For other we will always try to satisfy and to spoil our guest." I think I'm going to go ahead and reserve a room, and I'll see if it has "salutary cosiness." |
| 10/01/2004 11:50 |
| "I see on the TV screens how hard it is." - George W. Bush
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