Saturday brought news of a deadly landslide that happened east of the town of Oso here in Washington state. Three people have been killed, more in critical condition in the hospital; 6 houses destroyed and 16 others damaged. As of Saturday night a rescue effort was still underway to find more people trapped in the debris. The mud and debris also blocks the Stillaguamish river, and people are warned to stay out of the downstream area. The blocked body of water is increasing in size, and can break through at any time.
The scene on Highway 530 shortly after the landslide (from King5.com website).Here is a before and after picture of the landslide tweeted by Komo News.
I ran out today for lunch with an old friend. He and his partner have a condo on the 28th floor in downtown Seattle, so of course I had to take a picture of the city from there. I also took care of many little outstanding and annoying errands : new printer cartridge for my home office, new C-size battery for the alarm clock in the bathroom (yes, bathroom : so that I am not late for the cab at 4 am on Monday mornings! hurry up sleepy head!), food for the weekend, cash withdrawal from the bank, changed into some $5 bills ($20s are no good for cab fares* and tipping in Denver).
*I should try the cash-free slick Uber car service some time soon, and ditch the taxis that still want cash.
Here’s a 28th floor view of downtown Seattle, looking south. I marked up the picture with some notes that interest me!This montage of years now long gone in the city, is at the entrance of the Wells Fargo Bank on 5th Ave in downtown Seattle. Always with the horsies and the stage coach, part of the Wells Fargo logo. I am sure many of those were robbed of their cash in the Wild West.
My Sundays go very quickly when I have to prepare to travel on Monday. This one had an hour cut out of it, to boot : Daylight Savings Time is starting again in the USA, so we had to set our watches forward by one hour today. I did go for a walk this afternoon. The lawns and ground is soggy from all the rain, but the sidewalks were nice and dry.
The new apartment building on Mercer & 19th has been completed. The sides have glass, cedar and steel. One bedroom apartments go for $2,000 a month, and 2 bedroom apartments for $2,700. ‘Pet interview required’ says the website, which made me smile.
I canceled my travel to Denver for the week, so there was no early flight to Denver for me this morning. I’m much better but not yet able to fly.
We are in for a wet week here in Seattle. The up-to-date Yahoo Weather screen (very nicely done, the layout and all the information) even has an alert, warning of landslides in western Washington. The temperatures are well above freezing, though (in Celsius on the pictures below).
Here is a Tlingit whale carved into stone by the artist Ron White.
I ran some errands in downtown Seattle on Friday, and stepped on a Seattle City Light manhole cover (below) as I waited for the traffic light to change. Ok, I thought : I recog- nize this American Indian style of art, but I’ll be darned if I can figure out of this is an eagle or a bear or .. what? Turns out it’s a Tlingit whale.
[From Wikipedia] The Tlingit are an indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America. Their name for themselves is Lingít, meaning “People of the Tides”. They are actually not whale hunters. Delineating the modern territory of the Tlingit is complicated because they are spread across the border between the United States and Canada, they lack designated reservations, other complex legal and political concerns make the situation confusing, and there is a relatively high level of mobility among the population.
.. so let’s see if we can figure this picture out. Looks to me as if the tail is right above ‘Seattle’ and then clockwise around from it, is the head and the jaws of the whale. These hatch covers have been around for awhile. Artist Nathan Jackson was commissioned in 1976, and produced a Tlingit whale relief, originally carved in wood and later cast in iron. Thirty-two of these were made.
Several rain storms are moving across the Pacific Northwest this weekend (bringing snow in the mountains, not rain). It has not been a very wet winter, though; we’re at about 75% of the normal precipitation so far. But much further south on the west coast it is bone dry, for the third straight year. California is experiencing its driest year on record, dating back 119 years, and reservoirs throughout the state have very low water levels. Santa Clara county reservoirs are at 3 percent of capacity or lower.
Keeping dry under my umbrella. This is at a pedestrian/ traffic mirror in the South Lake Union area. I had just completed my Saturday afternoon workout at the gym, and was walking back to my car.
.. the sadly neglected old house with its corner turret here on 16th Avenue on Capitol Hill. It’s just a block from my house and I have walked by it many times. I knew it could be gone by the next time I had returned from Denver, though – that excavator was an ominous sign!
This house here on 16th Avenue has been torn down. I am not sure what is being built in its place, probably a set of 6 or 8 condominium homes.
(Hey! I see I have made 1,500 posts on this blog, how about that?). Saturday night’s snow had long stopped by the time I got up on Sunday morning .. but I felt compelled to go out and walk to Volunteer Park. We don’t get snow that often here in the city, and some of those times I would find myself away from home.
A panorama view of the street in front of my house.And here is a picture of Volunteer Park here on Capitol Hill.
Seattle’s weather report for Sat. night. After the temperatures in Denver this week, 34°F/ 1°C does not seem so cold at all !
It is snowing here in Seattle. It started around 6.30 pm, just as we walked a few blocks from my house to the Thai restaurant on 15th Ave. Earlier I understood from the weather forecast we could expect a few flurries and not much more, but the time we left the restaurant at around 8 pm, the snow had already started to stick on the streets. It is powdery and dry, and goes crunch-crunch-crunch as you step on it on the sidewalk.
Here are Dave, Bill, Steve, Paul, Ken, Gary and Bryan. We had just stepped out of the restaurant and are waiting to cross the street. ‘Hey! Take a picture of us instead!’ they yelled, as I was taking a picture of the intersection.This is 17th Ave here on Capitol Hill around 10 pm. There is about an inch of snow on the ground and on the streets, and not much more is expected.
Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson receives the trophy after his team’s Superbowl win on Sunday [Picture from Yahoo home page]The Seattle Seahawks are the Superbowl Champs! Congratulations! There was a little fireworks display at the Space Needle afterwards, and we could hear people cheering inside the apartments and condos and houses here in the downtown area. It was the Seahawks from the start .. just 12 seconds into the game they had 2 points on the board. In the game’s first snap* the ball flew by Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning and into their end zone for a a Seattle Seahawks safety (2 points). Confession : snap and safety are new terms for me. It would be 36-0 before the Broncos got on the scoreboard .. but they never really were in the game, once it had started.
*the backwards passing of the ball at the start of play from scrimmage
Dan Wentzel wrote on Yahoo Sports just after the game : Seattle plays in the Pacific Northwest, far from the nation’s traditional media centers, lacks many household stars and is led by a coach in Carroll who is rarely credited for his coaching acumen. Whatever doubts were out there, were unfounded. They didn’t need stars or gaudy stats. Seattle had a team – clearly the best team in the NFL.
The Superbowl is tomorrow, Sunday. Go Seahawks! Check out the gorgeous Boeing-owned 747-8 Freighter decked out in Seahawks colors and icons. (The 12 is for the ’12th man’, the Seahawks supporters). Is the plane a gesture from Boeing trying to make nice, though? For the upcoming manufacture of the new 777X, Boeing took US$8 billion in tax breaks from the State of Washington, then turned around and screwed its Puget Sound workers.
Boeing’s 747-8 Freighter painted in Seahawks colors does a fly-by over downtown Seattle.
From Bloomberg Businessweek, Jan 9 : Boeing won—and workers lost. Boeing’s decision to play hardball comes at a time of record prosperity for the company, which is boosting its dividend by 50 percent and buying back $10 billion in shares. For 2013, the company is likely to post record net income of $5 billion or more. Boeing’s corporate power play is more evidence that in the economic contest between labor and employer, most employees have little power to improve their collective lot.
Check out this diagram of MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, venue of the 48th Superbowl. As of Friday, there were still some 2,000 of the 82,000 tickets left. Average price around $2,000. But wait! Let’s sort from High to Low for prices, and there it is : a suite for 30 available for $507,000 and change. That’s more than $16,000 per person.
Go, go, go! get out of the house, I said to myself at 4pm, before it is dark. I didn’t want to go to the gym, and it was bearable outside (only just) to go for a walk. So I took the No 8 bus down Denny Way and to Seattle’s Queen Anne neighborhood, and walk around there for a bit, and back down to the Space Needle.
This odd urban park (no grass, just gravel!) is called Counterbalance Park. It is at the corner of Roy St. and Queen Anne Avenue North. I should have stayed a little while longer, because the walls are lit up in rainbow colors at night. It is just starting to show in the picture. NOTE : The panorama picture bends the lines in the middle of the picture. In reality the building is a perfect rectangle, and the low wall with the blue light runs in a straight line.This is right about 5.00 pm. I’m making my way down the steep Queen Anne Ave North. It’s up high enough to that the Space Needle and downtown Seattle’s skyline is visible; even Mount Rainier in the distance just to the right of the Space Needle.And here is the Space Needle up close as I walked by it.
The Seahawks will take on the Broncos on Feb 2 in the Superbowl. The Seahawks came out with a 23-17 victory over the San Francisco 49ers today. The Hawks were down 3-10 at halftime, and the game had a somewhat dramatic ending in the final minutes when a touchdown throw from 49ers QB Colin Kaepernick’s to teammate Malcolm Smith was intercepted by Richard Sherman. So my hometown team will take on my ‘work town’ team!
Here’s a great picture from CNN’s Sports page that shows the interception by Sherman that prevented the 49ers from staying in the game.From the NFL’s website .. how the Broncos and the Seahawks got to the Superbowl.
Here’s an interesting excerpt from the Wall Street Journal about the ‘Polar Star’ icebreaker that is based in Seattle.
SEATTLE—The 40-year-old Coast Guard icebreaker Polar Star returned to the Arctic Ocean this summer after seven years in semi-retirement, charging into a thinning polar ice sheet that U.S. defense officials predict will give way to new commercial waterways and a resource-rich frontier by mid-century. The Polar Star was originally supposed to be in service for 30 years. Its age and a lack of funding had prompted the Coast Guard to put the ship into semiretirement: afloat but not operational.
This summer, on its first voyage to the Arctic since 2001, veterans on the crew found a very different ocean. “Back in the day there were a lot more challenges, more multi-year ice, you had to pick your spots through it,” said Coast Guard Cmdr. Kenneth Boda, the ship’s executive officer. “This summer we set a course and go…We were teaching our young officers to drive around the thicker stuff but we could have gone right through.”
The changing conditions make the Arctic particularly unpredictable. Lt. j.g. Paul Garcia, on his first icebreaking mission this summer, steered the Polar Star into what the Coast Guard calls a “blind alley.” In the Arctic, moving ice floes can bunch up to form mountainous ridges of ice. When three or four floes ram together, the ice can be so thick that even the Polar Star—capable of 75,000 horsepower—can’t smash through, creating a blind alley.
Picture from the Wall Street Journal, 1/12/14 : The amount of polar ice in the Arctic shrinks in the summer and returns in the winter. Shown here is how much the ice retreated by late summer 2012. Scientists forecast the ice will further extend its annual retreat, opening new routes between Asia and Europe for commercial shippers by midcentury. (Source: U.S. Navy).. and here is the ice cover forecast for 2020... for 2025.. and for 2030
From my TV screen : This is Taima, an augur hawk. I assume the bird is handled by master falconer David Knudson (shown in the Seahawks website).Another shot from my TV screen, showing the stadium and the weather conditions at the start of the game.
So the Seahawks got it, with a win of 23-15 over the Saints. The Hawks will host and play in one more game (tickets start at $415). That final playoff game to get to the Superbowl that is in New York City this year, is Sunday Jan 19. Meanwhile, I ran all my errands on Saturday, also tracking down my vacation mail that was still held at my request by the US Postal Service. Boy, did they made me work for it. USPS moved the mail hold location from my local post office to the SODO (South of downtown) district. I finally found the right building, and with some luck, someone that found my mail. There were no signs, no door and no service counter. Come on USPS, you can do better than that! By the time I got out of there, the fans had started to show up for the Seahawks playoff game. The hardy ones had been tailgate-partying in parking lots around the stadium since early morning already, not seeming to mind the blustery conditions.
The view from the building on 4th Ave where I picked up my mail, looking north toward downtown. The first stadium after the McDonalds golden arch is the baseball stadium. The football stadium is further in the distance. Parking at local businesses and parking lots ran from $20 to $40, depending on how close to the stadium it was.
It was frosty early this morning, but by 9 am the sun was already at it, melting the iciness. The Pacific Northwest is escaping most of the arctic blast that is hitting the Midwest and East.
My bags are unpacked. I like to ‘discover’ the silly little souvenirs that I bought again, as I unpack my luggage and find it in there.
Clockwise : porcelain art from Iceland (not sure what creature that is), London bone china mug from Harrods, bead-and-wire lion from South Africa, porcelain dinner bell from Munich, Lowenbrau beer coaster also from Munich. Nine lions in all, in the picture! Those Bavarian lions are more symbolic than the South African one, though.
Google dedicated a homepage doodle to Ada Lovelace some time ago. In 1843, Ada published extensive notes on the Analytic Engine which included the first published sequence of operations for a computer, which she would have input to the Analytic Engine using punch cards. It is this program for calculating Bernoulli numbers which leads some to consider Ada Lovelace the world’s first computer programmer, as well as a visionary of the computing age.programming language is named for.
Ada’s Technical Books and Cafe has opened right here on 15th Avenue, so I went to check it out this afternoon. The place has a nice geeky vibe, with electronic gadgets and puzzles on display, and for sale, as well. I wanted to buy one of the puzzles on display but alas, it was sold out. They will get more of the handmade puzzles in by next Saturday, they said.
The Shipper’s Dilemma is a puzzle invented by British mathematician John Horton Conway from Cambridge, England some 40 years ago. It is almost impossible to solve just by randomly packing the 17 pieces into the box, says the descriptions of it. Sounds like a Rubik’s cube type of puzzle!The Ada Technical Books store has some really interesting geeky toys on display. Need a Geiger counter to measure radioactivity in your backyard? Want to build a very cool ‘I built it myself’ (OK, from a kit) electronic wrist watch?
I love this graphic design-style picture of Seattle, displayed in an art and frame shop here on 15th Avenue. It shows the Ferris wheel, a fairly recent addition to the Seattle waterfront.
I bundled up for my Sunday afternoon walk, but it was just too cold to stay out for too long. So I turned around after just 6 or 7 blocks, and walked back along 15th Avenue. The frosty ice crystals in the shadows on the lawns was still there late afternoon, despite a sunny day. But the days are short : the sun disappears soon after 4 pm already.
This is how cold it is ! I saw this Abominable Winter Ale at the grocery store. It is brewed by the Hopworks Urban Brewery in Portland, Oregon.
There has been no snow or sleet or rain here in Seattle this weekend, but it is ice-box cold outside. (Not nearly as cold as say, Denver, but below freezing).
Better grab the scarf and gloves to leave your warmed-up winter cocoon (the house). You’re about to step into a giant refrigerator! The city has opened more emergency shelters for homeless people, and Seattle Police are operating a ‘cold-weather van’ this weekend to help them find places to warm up.
Bertha, Seattle’s tunnel boring machine, is making some progress. Check out the Washington State Dept of Transportation’s web page here.
Here’s what the inside of the tunnel looks like. The tunnel is almost 60 ft wide. (It looks wider than that, actually .. probably the wide-angle lens of the camera that does that). Look for the ‘tiny’ human walking toward the exit. There will be two decks for traffic inside the tunnel when it is complete, with a little bit of room at the bottom, the top and the sides for utilities and for escaping out of the tunneInformation and a map from the Washington State Dept of Transportation (WSDOT) about the tunnel-boring machine Bertha.
