a weblog of whereabouts & interests, since 2010
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.
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.
What a remarkable life, and to live to be 95 after all he had been through, I thought when I saw the news on about Nelson Mandela’s passing away on CNN in the lobby of our building yesterday. The taxi driver last night told me the entire day on National Public Radio (NPR) was dedicated to Mr Mandela.
I remember being a student in Stellenbosch in 1985 with the country in really bad shape : violent protests in cities and towns were going on across the country. In then-president minister PW Botha’s famous Rubicon speech, he refused to release Mandela from prison. (That happened five years later, in 1990 under pres.FW de Klerk. The ruling National Party had tried to create designated homelands inside South Africa where black South Africans were expected to exercise their political rights, but that had failed). The political activists on campus told us we would have a democratic election in seven years. They were not off by much, since that happened 9 years later in April 1994. As the election took place, I watched the long lines of people waiting to vote. I was not upset or angry, but emotional and entirely not sure what to think. It was a pivotal and watershed moment in the country’s history. For me, looking back now, apartheid was not only about oppressing black people. It was about brainwashing the privileged (me) into not questioning authority, and about doing one’s duty and serving one’s country.
But how far to other people, very different from oneself, does that duty extend, and what is the concept of country in one’s head? To this day here in the USA there are people that have a very hard time accepting Mr Obama as president, and accepting the concept of a rainbow nation where people of all colors live together in peace and harmony.
We get to go home on Thursday nights instead of on Fridays the next few weeks : a welcome change in the travel schedule. The snow had stopped here in Denver by Thursday morning. It was difficult to get around, though, and took an hour’s drive out to the airport (normally under 30 mins). The roads are not completely clear of snow and ice, and we left later in the afternoon. Our driver is from Casablanca in Morocco, and speaks his English with a French accent. (French and Arabic are the major languages in Morocco).
Late Thursday night update : We thought we were settled in and ready to go, but no. The captain announced that there’s a slight amount of smoke in the cockpit, from some electrical fault. We’re going to leave the airplane and fine another one. So we boarded the second plane, but then it still had to be de-iced, which took another 20 minutes (I’m not complaining, I’m just saying!). It was midnight by the time I made it in.
The snow plows were out in the wee hours of Wednesday morning already to clear the streets. Our hotel had a shuttle for us in to work, which was really nice. But on the way back my colleague and I had to strike out on foot back to the hotel with our winter wear (scarf, gloves, woolen skull cap) and tread carefully on the icy streets and sidewalks. It is really, really cold if one is not used to these temperatures (that would be me). I think I should go out and buy a few pairs of long johns.
We were ogling a fire across the street today from the 18th floor where we are working, but the Denver Fire Dept quickly got it under control. Meanwhile, the temperature outside has dropped into the teens°F tonight (almost -10°C) with snow sifting down. We made it back to the hotel after work, and have a shuttle lined up for the morning to take us to the office. Yes, we are wimps, would the locals say, or the hardy residents from Montana or Canada.
We flew away from a large winter storm system that is going to trek across the country from the Pacific Northwest from Monday night onwards.. but we won’t escape it even here in Denver. The weather service predicts the temperature is going to go from 41°F/ 5°C today to 4°F/-16°C on Wednesday, and to -12°F/-24°C on Thursday. I don’t think we can walk even the 7 blocks to work in -12°F/-24°C weather. Time will tell what happens !
Bertha, Seattle’s tunnel boring machine, is making some progress. Check out the Washington State Dept of Transportation’s web page here.
My friends Dave and Michael and I were at the Coastal Kitchen here on 15th Avenue on Saturday night. The ‘special’ menu item is ono, said the waitress. Ono? Is that a white fish? I wanted to know. (Yes). And so I ordered it, but had to look up the fish at home. Ono is its Hawaiian name; it is also called a wahoo. (Not to be confused with Yahoo, of course).
So Thanksgiving Day behind us, the shopping for Christmas can start in earnest. This year the Black Friday sales events at stores started on Thanksgiving evening already, on Thursday. The ugly face of capitalism clashing with family time? Yes. Should there be a law to keep stores closed? Probably not. Can a store force its workers to come in on Thanksgiving Day? Of course. But then it may have to deal with an unhappy workforce (or maybe it will keep the store in business, and save some jobs?). Doorbusters! 30% off ! screams the headlines. But most items were not meant to sell at the ‘full price’ at any time of the year, anyway. It’s marketing hype and marketing theater. As had been said already in the times of the Roman empire : caveat emptor. Buyer beware.
I am using my little feathered friend the peacock, to represent everything I am thankful for. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
The days are so short this time of year! – the sun sets shortly after at 4 pm. So when there is a long holiday weekend just ahead as well, it adds a sense of urgency to get things done before night has fallen and everyone is settled in, and you are not. So I write two e-mails for work, and then took some old clothes to Goodwill, dropped old electronics and light bulbs at a recycler and also made a stop at the Asian grocery store Uwajimaya. I cannot claim that I am a foodie, but I do like to ogle all the fresh and outlandish food that is on offer there. I came away with more mundane items like green tea from Japan, and a six pack of Asahi beer.
Chris Burton is vice president for global sponsorships at the technology company SAP, and writes in the New York Times about his extensive travels around the world .. also that he has racked up 6,343,603 miles on Delta Airlines. Which made me wonder how many miles I have. Well, I added it up for the three airlines I travel most frequently on, and it comes to 1,316,314 miles.
Then there’s Tom Stuker, the real-world equivalent of George Clooney’s character in the 2009 movie ‘Up in the Air’ that logged 10,000,000 flier miles on United Airlines. United named a Boeing 747 in his honor.
I’m playing with words in the heading .. it asks ‘more egg nog?’. (The Afrikaans word ‘nog’ loosely translates to ‘more’). Well, I have my new iPhone, and the two pictures below were taken with it. Amazing how crisp the pictures are.
It’s been awhile since I stopped by the flagship REI store (Recreational Equipment Inc.) here in Seattle. I need new gloves and was looking for a jacket for wearing in Denver. The Hilton Garden Inn is much further from the office, and a 15 to 20 minute walk. Indeed, there were forests of ski jackets to wade through, with inner layers and outer layers and Gore-Tex and all .. but they all seemed a little too much, and too colorful, too sporty to wear as an outer layer for an office job. So I will keep looking. The departments stores are sure to offer blander jackets and coats. It’s just that the Christmas season onslaught of music and displays and the Salvation Army jingling their bell all day long outside the Pacific Place mall have now started.
Alright! So I sprung for the iPad Air, since my iPad 2 was getting a little long in the tooth. (Apparently it is ‘Apple upgrade week for me’, since my iPhone 5s is waiting at the office for me to get picked up. I will do that on Monday).
Setting up the new iPad took a little bit of time, since I had to fix my music library on the PC that I synch to. (It’s a long story; some of the music files did not get transferred over to my new PC that I upgraded to earlier this year, and I had to manually import the 50 or so music files into the iTunes library one CD at a time. Only my iTunes music purchases were on the Apple cloud, and that’s still only about 5% of my music collection).
So what do I use my iPad for – now that I have had one for two years? Check out my punch list below. The iPad has its place, but I have an iPhone, and my 15 inch notebook computer from work, almost always with me to use as well. (Whatever happened to the idea that we will all have one and only one device for everything? My answer : Evolution and reality. A big screen is needed for maps and for reading, and a proper keyboard is needed for typing).
What I use my iPad for
> Read digital subscriptions for TIME magazine, Bloomberg Business Week and New York Times (more and more; I still get paper copies in the mailbox but I am about to cancel the paper copies completely)
> Read Twitter’s news feed (as opposed to e-mail, which I read mostly on my phone, and respond to mostly with my notebook computer)
> Do not read books on the iPad (prefer my books in paper mode!)
> Do not take pictures with the iPad (use my phone or full-fledged digital camera)
> Play Scrabble and SpellTower (and really nothing else at this point, so no Angry Birds or Candy Crush)
> Listen to music (on the airplane; as opposed to listening to music on my phone)
> Look at pictures in my synched photo albums (occasionally)
> Watch YouTube videos
> Do not watch movies on it yet (movies bought from the iTunes store, that is .. at home my whole movie collection is on DVD and Blu-ray. I have stopped buying movies on those formats since the whole disk format way of dealing with movies is rapidly changing to on-line streaming and downloading content – similar to what has been under way with music for many years now)
> Surf the web with Google Chrome
> Use various other really cool little apps, among my favorites is Google Translate (and I’m trying to figure out how to best use EverNote for reminders and notes)
Jet A is jet fuel : the stuff that modern jet airplanes burn in their engines. Jet A specification fuel has been used in the United States since the 1950s. In the rest of the world Jet A-1 is used. Wikipedia says the primary difference is the freezing point : Jet A’s is −40 °C (−40 °F), Jet A-1’s is −47 °C (−53 °F). There is also Jet B which is a fuel in the naphtha-kerosene region, a blend of 30% kerosene and 70% gasoline, with a freezing point of −60 °C (−76 °F). It is for use in very cold temperatures (those expeditions to Antarctica?).
Anyway : my project team compadres and I were very happy to go home after a long week of reviews that were well received. A project such as ours at this stage is at an inflection point : the team has to report back to the sponsors and show what has been designed, and what the system will cost to construct. And they might just say : Whoa! That’s too much, we cannot let you go forward. But we are OK and should get the green light to go ahead.
There will be a little more snow than expected : a total accumulation of 2 to 6 inches, said the weatherman in an updated forecast. But it will clear up later in the morning.
It was very mild outside today here in Denver, but that is about to change. The high temperature will plummet by 33°F (19°C) and there will be an inch or two of snow on the ground, making for an icy commute into downtown. What I have to do is watch my step on the sidewalk for the two blocks that I have to walk.
