Author: Willem

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Monday/ the Facebook IPO

Social media giant Facebook is set to go public in the next few weeks, possibly as early as May 18, initially priced at between $28 and $35 a share.  Mark Koba from CNBC says the IPO is ‘set to raise the roof off Wall Street’.  The valuation may go as high as $100 billion (which most analysts deem extravagant; by most measures it should be closer to $50 billion).

The list of risk factors noted in the Facebook prospectus is sobering and in some ways I think I am Exhibit A for the risks.  I have a Facebook profile with 40-some ‘friends’ but I have stopped making posts there.  I don’t message my ‘friends’ or ‘poke’ them, or spam them with silly game requests (think Farmville) or with quizzes. I don’t like that Facebook mines information I write about to send me and my friends marketing messages.  And finally – I don’t like every one of my ‘friends’ (the non-friends ‘friends’) to know every thing about me.

But hey – maybe I am old and cranky (non-social?) and there is a return on an investment to be made if one lets the dust settle and see where the stock is a week or two from the IPO.

The first page of the Facebook Prospectus.
What's not to 'like'? (Statistics from the Prospectus).
Mission : 'To make the world more open and connected'. Yes - but you have to be on Facebook to 'connect', which is unlikely if you live in China, Russia or Japan where users have their own local social networking platforms.

 

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Sun-day

When the sun shines in Seattle, I feel I have to get out of the house.   And so I did on Sunday, went out the Space Needle, walked around it and thought I could take a few pictures of its orange-golden painted dome (it is 50 years old this year).  But I was too close and so I will go back another day, and go up Queen Anne hill so that I look down onto it.

The offices and studios of local TV station KOMO4 is close by the Space Needle.
Artwork in the little park at the base of the Space Needle.
Waiting at the red light where Aurora Ave turns into Denny Way on the way back. I liked the combination of the lime green Prius taxi and the Pink Elephant carwash sign in the back.

 

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Saturday/ the secret(ive) aardvark

The ‘secret aardvark’ sauce is from the Kingfish Cafe on 19th Ave here in Capitol Hill in Seattle. I had dinner there on Saturday night with my fiends Bill and Dave.  Aardvarks are very special from a classification point of view : the only living species of the order Tubulidentata – and genetically speaking a living fossil!  Check out the entry in Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aardvark.

The 'Secret Aardvark Trading Co.' sauce is very hot (too hot), made with habenero peppers.
This aardvark is resting and is from Himeji zoo in Japan (picture from Wikipedia).
The menu cover from Kingfish Cafe. They serve up traditional Southern food such as gumbo, buttermilk-fried chicken and fried green tomatoes.

 

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Friday/ pâté, pizza and wine

I had a pizza and wine dinner Friday night with my friends Bryan, Gary and Christopher.  We were very French with the pâté we had for starters (should I say hors d’œuvres? I usually think of a shrimp cocktail when hear ‘hors d’œuvres’!).  The pâté was brought to us all the way from Paris, France, by Christopher.  Pâté is a mixture of cooked ground meat and fat minced into a spreadable paste.

P.S.  I know my readers COULD NOT WAIT for the solution to the math problem, so here it is below.  I hope I got it right!  It took much longer than it should have to figure it out.

The red f(x) equation is a combination of three simple linear equations, and then the solutions can be worked out for the other expressions with f(x).

 

 

 

 

The collection of pâtés that our friend Christopher brought us. We opened the orange one : a duck and orange pâté.

 

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Thursday/ brush up on your math with MIT

A little rusty with your mathematics from way back when? I am. I have very fond memories of math in high school. I remember thinking, this is cheating.  It’s not biology or history – so you don’t even have to study! You just do the math in the test, and voila!  And now it’s 2012 and the venerable Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has put all its math and calculus courses on line (at http://math.mit.edu/classes/18.01/) and I can take a look and re-try some of the basic little problems of old times.

This is from Lecture 1. I'll draw these in and 'publish' my answers tomorrow : ). It's too late and I'm going to bed now!
And here are some notes from your professor's hand - thankfully he's not a doctor, so it's still legible.

 

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Tuesday/ May day! we have a rampage

Since it was May 1 and International Workers Day (which is not officially observed in the USA) there were peaceful protesters marching in Seattle yesterday.  They protested against broken immigration policies and income inequality.  There was also a mob of anarchists (that actually sounds too philosophical, l think vandals and criminals describe them better), out to do property destruction and lash out at people on the street and reporters.  Some were arrested but I have seen no reports of serious injuries.

Store fronts and windows were damaged at the following properties. My firm's office is in the building right across from Nike Town, so a good thing I worked from home on Tuesday!
The front page of the Seattle Times newspaper Wednesday morning.

 

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Monday/ cherry blossoms ‘forever’

The 2012 Cherry Blossom Centennial sheet of 'Forever' stamps. 'Forever' means that the stamps are still good regardless of future increases in the standard postage. But will there 'forever' be letters and post offices?

I always seem to return with a sheet of stamps after a trip to the post office.  These ‘Forever’ stamps are depicting the Cherry Blossom Centennial in Washington DC.  The post I made on April 6 was about these same cherry blossoms.  I just didn’t realize the trees in Washington DC actually came from Japan, a gift of 3,020 trees from the city of Tokyo .. which explains the Japanese woman and child in the corner of the stamp with their kimonos and sun umbrellas.  The first two cherry trees were planted on March 27, 1912.

Here is the close up that reveals the Japanese woman and child with their kimonos and sun umbrellas.

 

 

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Sunday/ Roaming Herds of Buffalo

This poster on 15th Ave here on Capitol Hill in my neighborhood is for a recording project (a music CD) of Seattle songwriter Scott Roots.

The Roaming Herds of Buffalo poster on 15th Ave : classic Seattle sub-culture with the other-worldly creatures and the doomsday undercurrents. Is that possibly a mud-slide after a Mount St Helens style volcanic eruption of Mount Rainier?
This colorful drawing is on the Roaming Herds of Buffalo home page.

 

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Friday/ so long, longhorn

This Texas Longhorn looked down at me as I was exiting the security clearance into the departure area at Bush Intercontinental Airport’s C Terminal to make the 4½ hr flight back to Seattle. These cattle are known for their diverse coloring and despite the fearsome and long pointed horns, generally have a gentle disposition and intelligence.  The longhorn is the official animal of Fort Worth, Texas, which is therefore nicknamed ‘Cowtown’.

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Thursday/ more Houston architecture

I finally had some time before the sun set on Thursday to walk around downtown Houston and snap some pictures.  At the courthouse a guard chided me, said I am not allowed to take pictures (because it’s a federal building).  What a sad state of affairs, I thought – if citizens cannot even take pictures of their own city’s or country’s courthouses and buildings.   But then one of my colleagues pointed me to a 2010 New York Times article http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/18/you-can-photograph-that-federal-building/ that says the guard was wrong.  As a general rule – a photographer can stand in a public place and take pictures of federal buildings.

Houston's starter light rail system runs from downtown to the the Fannin South station by Interstate 45.
This is the First United Methodist Church on Clay street in downtown Houston.
This is the elevated circular walkway at the base of the Chevron tower on 1400 Smith street.
The Allen Center is just a workhorse office block close by the Chevron tower but I like the glass-enclosed entrance with the escalators up to the entrance lobby.
This building was formerly the headquarters of Gulf Oil (whose gas stations have long since left the gulf coast but are still found in New England). It was built in 1929, and is a beautiful example of Art Deco architecture.
More art deco styling at 815 Walker Avenue in downtown.
More art deco from the JP Morgan Chase (formerly Gulf Oil) building.

 

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Wednesday/ a Starbucks breakfast

Wednesday morning had me in the office early to prepare some lessons for the day’s training. The slice of pumpkin bread from you-know-who (Starbucks) and a banana was breakfast.

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Tuesday/ more Houston

This is the Chevron tower on 1400 Smith which was built in 1982, formerly occupied by Enron.
The building with the stepped top is the Heritage Plaza, completed last major office building completed in downtown Houston in the midst of the collapse of the Texas real estate, banking, and oil industries in the 1980s.in 1987,
This is the view from the 29th floor in my firm's offices in downtown Houston where I do training instruction this week. The UFO sits atop the Hyatt Regency Hotel and houses the open-view elevator shafts.

 

It’s Thursday and I see I left this post in ‘Draft’ mode so it’s now late! but here it is.

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Monday/ arrival in Houston

I am staying downtown in Houston and still need to go out and take more pictures of the steel and glass architecture.

This is the view toward the east from my hotel room on the 19th floor in the Hyatt downtown with the setting sun's reflection.
Don't look down if you are afraid of heights! The windows from the inside elevators in the Hyatt's enormous 30 story tall inside lobby provides a spectacular view. I am on my way down to get a beer and a bite to eat right there in the lobby bar.
Arrival at Houston Intercontinental airport late Sunday afternoon.
Not all buildings downtown are perfectly square. I did not write down the names of these two office towers.

 

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Sunday/ to Houston

I’m on the way to Houston for the week for work.   What used to be a Continental flight is now United Airlines and there is no spare seat on the flight : that’s the way we fly these days, it seems.   (And no, I’m not sitting up front in the big seats, but I did get an exit row seat, so I have a little extra leg room).

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Saturday/ the Gourmet Noodle Bowl

Is it OK to put gourmet* together with ‘noodle bowl’ and call your Asian restaurant the Gourmet Noodle Bowl? .. given that gourmet is (from Wikipedia) a cultural ideal associated with  haute cuisine, which is characterized by elaborate preparations and presentations of large meals of small, often quite rich courses?   No matter, they serve up great Chinese, Taiwanese and Indonese food there, and we ended the meal with ice cream servings of mango, green tea and durian flavors.  There is a picture of durian – the king of fruit – on my post of Tue Mar 27.

The Gourmet Noodle Bowl is at 707 8th Ave South in Seattle's International District. (The restaurant entrance is on the left of the picture).
The Happy Times Bistro is across the street. A bistro is a small restaurant (orginally from Paris, France) serving moderately priced simple meals in a modest setting.
Here is the durian ice cream .. a nice way to get acquainted with the taste of durian, since it's sweeter and you do not have to deal with the very unusual smelliness of the fruit !

 

 

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Thursday/ vindaloo

My dinner was vindaloo, basmati rice and pita bread last night at The Elysian Pub here in Seattle. Vindaloo is an Indian curry dish popular in the region of Goa but also in many other parts of India. Goa is India’s smallest state by area and is south of Mumbai on the west coast.

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Wednesday/ the state capitol in Olympia

I drove down to our state’s capital city Olympia at the southernmost end of Puget Sound today to meet a colleague from work for dinner, about an hour’s drive.  On the way I stopped by the capitol building.   The Olympia waterfront and downtown are are both a stone’s throw from the capitol building.

Olympia is about an hour's drive south of Seattle on I-5 (but it can be much more if you drive during rush hour).
The main entrance to the Washington State capitol building in Olympia. Olympia became the capital city of the then-Washington Territory in 1853, but this building was completed only around 1923.
A view from the back of the dome of the capitol building in Olympia.
Another view from the back. The dome is atop the Legislative building, so that's where the State house and State senate representatives meet.
Here is the inside of the main atrium beneath the dome. There is a giant bronze seal in the middle on the floor.
Detail of the bronze seal on the floor.
This bust of George Washington is upstairs overlooking the floor. (Scout's honor : it was not me that rubbed his nose. Apparently visitors just can NOT resist touching it!).
I love the giant suspended light fixture in the center of the dome.
This is a waterfront scene nearby. The water is Puget Sound, a large inland body of water connected to the Pacific ocean.
Japanese style 'gazebo' nearby.
This is downtown Olympia. I first read 'grosvenor hotel' .. then saw no, it is the governor hotel.
This fairy tale brick-building with twin turrets is actually the OLD capitol building, across from the Governor Hotel in downtown.

 

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Monday/ Titanic 100 years on

The RMS Titanic sank on Apr 15, 1912 on her maiden voyage. These commemorative pictures were in the South China Morning Post’s weekend edition at Hong Kong airport.

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Sunday/ shopping BIG

I don’t have a membership card for Seattle’s Costco store*, but I have friends that do, and I went with them to the store today.  The store is no-frills and looks like a warehouse inside.

*A warehouse ‘club’ retail store selling a wide variety of merchandise, but only in large, wholesale quantities.

We were intrigued by this Coleman solar power generator kit. Should I have bought it, now that we finally are getting some sunlight in Seattle?
And here is a 190 lumen lantern to scare the hyenas away from the campfire that's dying. I recall a long time ago that Coleman sold a '1,000 candlelight' flash light. That is about equal to 79 lumens.
Nothing is more American than apple pie! (well, maybe Coca-Cola. And I have a picture of that as well).
These boneless legs of lamb are from Australia. (There are actually Costco stores in Australia as well - in Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne).
This bag with 3 pounds of peeled California-grown garlic should last a while!
The smallest offering of eggs : a box with 18 Extra Large ones.
And here's the Coca-Cola, in packs of 32 cans.