a weblog of whereabouts & interests, since 2010
I have new neighbors moving in, and so this U-haul Venture-across-America #116 truck with the striking picture of a goshawk from Alaska’s Tongass National Forest was parked in the alley this morning. The iconic white-and-orange trucks for do-it-themselves movers can be seen anywhere in the country. I love the gorgeous graphics that they put on the sides of the trucks. The whole collection can be seen on U-haul’s website, here.
Here are some of the interesting pictures I came across this weekend with my iPad (and a Scrabble picture).
We lost our friend Robin 
to cancer recently. She passed away on June 15, 2014 after a long and courageous battle, at age 60. As her sister Kate told us, “Our bird has gotten her wings.” She was able to spend the last few months of her life in Cincinnati with her sister Kate, step-father, and many nieces and nephews.
So Robin’s good friends Ken and Steve hosted a commemoration today for us : just a few of Robin’s friends and colleagues, telling stories of how she touched our lives.
Why do Americans Stink at Math? is the question a New York Times article asks in an article that I read on the airplane. Check it out here New York Times article.
As reported by the NYT, better ways to teach math has been invented several times in the USA, and applied successfully elsewhere in the world but not here. And school kids with poor math skills turn into adults that are shockingly innumerate. From the article : A 2012 study comparing 16-to-65-year-olds in 20 countries found that Americans rank in the bottom five in numeracy .. One of the most vivid arithmetic failings displayed by Americans occurred in the early 1980s, when the A&W restaurant chain released a new hamburger to rival the McDonald’s Quarter Pounder. With a third-pound of beef, the A&W burger had more meat than the Quarter Pounder; in taste tests, customers preferred A&W’s burger. And it was less expensive. A lavish A&W television and radio marketing campaign cited these benefits. Yet instead of leaping at the great value, customers snubbed it.
Only when the company held customer focus groups did it become clear why. The Third Pounder presented the American public with a test in fractions. And we failed. Misunderstanding the value of one-third, customers believed they were being overcharged. Why, they asked the researchers, should they pay the same amount for a third of a pound of meat as they did for a quarter-pound of meat at McDonald’s. The “4” in “¼,” larger than the “3” in “⅓,” led them astray.
My United Airlines flight back to Seattle was booked for the usual Thursday night fly-back (bought and paid for three weeks ago), but I wanted to take the first flight out Thursday morning*.
*Flight MH17, Air Algerie crash in Mali last night with 166 on board, Taiwan airplane crash on Wednesday that killed 48 .. maybe all of this made me just want to get the flying over with and get home!
Anyway – these days airlines charge $200 for any ticket change, and I wanted to avoid paying the penalty. My firm’s travel agent recommended to go to the airport early Thu morning, and have the airline agent change the ticket on the spot – then there would no change fee. ‘Plenty of seats left’, there should be no problem.
Alright. That meant I had to get up at 4.30 am, be there at 6.00 am for the 8.04 am flight. I actually did a check of the seats on the flight as I left the hotel : 5 open ones. So I had a shot at it. But forty minutes later when I showed up at the United Airlines counter to claim one, they were all gone. No other flights until the afternoon, and the afternoon flights were full, anyway. Of course. Great. (Not great). Plan B could have been to go to the gate for the 8.04 am flight and hope that seats for no-shows will open up .. but no – ‘I’m not going to do that’, I told the United Airlines agent.
What to do? Spend 12 hours at Denver airport? No. Go get a hotel room to catch up on the sleep I lost this week? Let me check Alaska Airlines, I still have some frequent flier miles in my account, I thought, as I considered my options. Sure enough, there was a 7.00 am flight with open seats. I booked it with miles – hey, why is the internet so slow? It’s 6.05 am already and I have to make it through security and to the gate! I thought.
Security was painfully slow, but done with that, I ran to gate A-52 (52 means it’s a long way there!) .. and made it with just a few minutes to spare. I was on my way home early. Yes!
I had a busy day here at the Denver office : wrapping up the hand-over of my duties to new team members, cleaning out my desk and cubicle, and finally doing the rounds and bidding my project’s team members good-bye.
So when a little bit of time opened up, I thought ‘You cannot have worked in Denver for almost a year, and not make it to the Denver Mint .. let’s go!’. I didn’t have enough time for a tour, and one has to sign up for that weeks ahead of the actual day of the tour anyway – but I could go to the gift shop and ogle the coins and souvenirs on display. I did came away with some souvenir coins. There were $1,600 one-ounce gold coins for sale as well, but I steered clear of those!
It was warm here in Denver today : 94 °F (34 °C), the skies clear for most of the day.
I took a few more pictures during lunch time and after work of my favorite Denver buildings.
It’s my last week working in Denver on the SAP implementation project for the oil and gas company here. The project only goes live at the end of the year, but I cannot stay. I will start working soon on a different project, at a gas and electric utility company in California.
So this last week or so I have been handing over my responsibilities to consulting colleagues from a company called Nimbl. Be nimble! is their tag line (naturally). I would say ‘nimble’ is a word that is not used in everyday language. And it reminds me of a guy called Jack*.
*From the nursery rhyme –
Jack be nimble
Jack be quick
Jack jump over
the candlestick.
[From Wikipedia] Jumping candlesticks was a form of fortune telling and a sport. Good luck was said to be signaled by clearing a candle without extinguishing the flame. A variation of this rhyme is featured in the classic song, ‘American Pie (1971)’, sung by Don McLean. It goes as follows:
Jack be nimble,
Jack be quick
Jack Flash sat on a candlestick
‘Cause fire is the devil’s only friend.
The boom of new apartment construction going on in and around my neighborhood of Capitol Hill is probably the most in several decades. The Capitol Hill Seattle blog has a map that shows all the construction, current and planned here. So it’s nice to see older buildings getting a make-over, or a fresh coat of paint – as was the case with the Canterbury Alehouse on 15th Avenue. The medieval castle gate in the middle of the building is the best ! .
I picked up this awe-inspiring picture below (awe at the destructive force of fire) from King5 News .. and I had to find out exactly where it was. The picture’s description only noted it to be in Tumwater canyon, but that was good enough. There is a tell-tale mile marker and ‘left turn ahead’ road sign in the picture. By zooming all the way in, I could just barely make out that the first digit on the mile marker might be a 9. Then I did a virtual mouse click ‘drive’ all along Highway 2 with Google Streetview and voila! there was the combination of mile marker 92 and the left turn sign, shown in broad daylight. The three tall pine trees on the right was a match as well. Will those tall trees survive the fire? Probably NOT. More than a 100 homes have been lost already in other fires nearby.
Ah, the joys of summer : long days of sunlight, nice weather*, hopefully some time away from work to relax. But for frequent travelers (me), there are even more people at the airport, the airplanes seem even fuller, and sometimes you have to wait 15 or 20 mins for a taxi whereas in winter there is no wait at all. (Admittedly winter brings other travel challenges like snow!).
*Or not so nice? It’s warm and very dry, and out in eastern Washington State howling winds fan a set of wildfires called the ‘Carlton Complex’ that have scorched 213,000 acres so far.
On Thursday night reports came out that 298 people were killed on board Malaysia Airlines MH17, apparently shot with a ground-to-air missile even though it was flying at 33,000 ft ! So who did it, and how to get to a crash site that is in a Ukranian rebel-controlled war zone?
From NPR news : As they try to piece together how Flight MH17 was brought down, U.S. experts are analyzing a recording released by Ukraine’s government that it says is a string of intercepted phone calls in which separatist rebels acknowledge that they shot down an airliner.
However, as NPR’s Dina Temple-Raston reports, U.S. intelligence has not yet publicly authenticated the recording.
“Privately, U.S. officials say they suspect separatist rebels were behind the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17,” Dina reports. “U.S. officials say they are still analyzing the audio. They are also using algorithms and mathematics to pinpoint where the missile was fired from.”
The fate of the flight’s “black box” data recorders remains in question. After the separatists said they had recovered them from the crash site, Ukrainian officials disputed that account. And while some reports stated that the flight recorders might be sent to Russia, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov says Moscow has “no plans to seize the flight recorders,” according to state-owned news agency RT.
The maps are all from the New York Times’s online edition.
I had previously posted a picture of the Denver Gas and Electric building lit up in orange and blue. Here is one of it lit up in lavender, the way I found it on Tuesday night after we had dinner. It’s hard to say if this building or the Colorado State Capitol is my favorite Denver building .. but I’d say this one wins!
I spotted an Oscar Meyer ‘Wienermobile’ at the hotel next door here in Denver tonight. The first version was created in way back in 1936 by by Oscar Mayer’s nephew, Carl G. Mayer. Wikipedia says there are currently eight active Wienermobiles, six of which are the full-sized familiar models (the other two are the Mini and the food truck versions) with each assigned a part of the country.
I am in Denver again for the week. My time of working on the project is coming to an end, though.
Namaste is a very polite and respectful way of greeting people in Nepal, said the menu athe Sherpa House Restaurant here in Golden, Colorado. (Golden is just north of Denver). The was a variety of Indian and Chinese dishes on the menu and we opted for a ‘house sampler’ that allowed us to try several of the foods with rice and with naan (Indian flat bread). There was yak stew on the menu as well ! My Indian colleagues deemed the Indian dishes just ordinary but we all agreed the restaurant’s setting inside and the ambiance was great.
I watched the World Cup final’s overtime period while folding my laundry – dreading the arrival of a penalty shoot-out to decide who the champion would be. But just then Mario Götze scored a goal, and that was all that the Germans needed to go 1-0 over the Argentinians. The Germans are the world champions (weltmeisters) for 2014. Götze was sent on only in overtime, and the first substitute to score in a World Cup final.
Bryan and I went out to Hansville on the Kitsap peninsula for Saturday. It’s a combination drive-ferry across the water-drive trip to get there. Either of the Edmonds-Kingston or Seattle-Bainbridge Island crossings can be used, and this time we used the one to Bainbridge Island on the way in.
On the way back we took the Kingston-Edmonds ferry.
A parfait food truck was out on 15th Avenue tonight, and I stopped by. Parfait is a French frozen dessert made of sugar syrup, egg, and cream. American parfait is the one with layers of ice cream, cream and colored gelatins.
I went for a walk again later to wait for my house to cool down. (Many houses in Seattle – including mine – have no air conditioning .. but opening the windows wide for a bit in the evening is usually good enough).
I had to report back at the Superior Court today for jury duty, but spent all morning in the jury pool without getting selected to actually serve on a jury. We were dismissed early afternoon. ‘Just don’t knock me down and run me over!’ joked the bailiff as she announced that we were free to go.
So since I was just a block away from Smith Tower, with another beautiful blue sky summer day here in the city, I decided to go up to the observation deck. The elevator on the 33rd floor opens into the Chinese Room, a large room decorated with Chinese artwork, wall and ceiling paneling and furniture. Legend has it that the room was furnished by the last Empress of China as a gift to Mr. Smith. (New York tycoon Lyman Cornelius Smith).
I reported for my summons to do jury duty today here in Seattle today, at the King County Superior Court in downtown. The Superior Court is where criminal cases* are brought by the State of Washington against defendants.
*[From www.findlaw.com] The American legal system is comprised of two very different types of cases, criminal and civil. Crimes are generally offenses against the state and society (murder, violent crimes), and are accordingly prosecuted by the State. Civil cases on the other hand, are typically disputes between individuals regarding the legal duties and responsibilities they owe one another. Criminal cases can result in jail time; in civil cases monetary damages are awarded. A defendant in a criminal case is entitled to an attorney, and if he or she can’t afford one, the State must provide an attorney. A defendant in a civil case is not given an attorney and must pay for one, or else defend him or herself.
Here are some King County Superior Court statistics –
> Serves the 14th most populous county in the nation
> Handled a caseload of almost 53,000 new cases in 2013
> Has 53 judges and 12 commissioners
> Supported by 520 staff in Superior Court and the Dept of Judicial Administration
So did I get to sit in on a court case as a juror? No, but I might tomorrow – on a short case. One of the cases is expected to go for 6 or 7 weeks, but enough jurors were found by the time my badge number was called. (Whew).
