Sunday was a beautiful blue-sky day. I went with my friends Bryan and Paul to the 50th Seattle RV* show in CenturyLink Field stadium (home of the Seattle Seahawks football team, and also the Seattle Sounders soccer team). Nearby is Safeco Field, home of the Seattle Mariners baseball team. These two stadiums are in SoDo (South of Downtown) and maybe there will be a third one in a few years. The Seattle Sonics basket ball team may come back to the city, and may get a new $490 million stadium even though there is the KeyArena stadium in downtown that they could use. (Pictures of the proposed new basketball stadium here http://bizj.us/dfu85/i/6).
*Recreational Vehicle, also called motor homes sometimes
We just stepped off the train at the Stadium Station. This is Safeco Field, the Seattle Mariners’ baseball stadium with a retractable roof.The Seattle Seahawks’ CenturyLink Field stadium is on the left. The tall black building is Columbia Center, the city’s tallest at 76 floors.Here is the King Street train station’s tower again (I posted a picture the other day), with the city’s skyline as seen from the south.
The restored Oxford Saloon front in the main street of Snohomish houses a restaurant but is undergoing renovations inside.The town of Snohomish is about 30 miles north of Seattle.One of a dozen or so antique stores in the main street. Antique stores typically have spaces inside for exhibitors (vendors) to set up their own displays.The World’s Fair Edition of the Seattle Times (April 8, 1962) had a whopping 380 pages !A beautiful mechanical street clock on the main street.I love the colors in this Texaco gas sign.For the serious collector only : a Victorian age diorama.Will this winged cupid lamp post fit somewhere in my house? Should I spend $1,195 on it? (No).A set of eight 1962 World’s Fair shot glasses goes for $199.
My friends Bill and Dave and I drove out to the town of Snohomish today to get some lunch and to go check out the antique stores in the historical downtown.
Some of the antique stores are very large, with several floors of spaces for dozens of sellers displaying their wares. Everything from porcelain, crystal, books, art, advertising signs, clocks, collectible cards, figurines, toys and even clothes such as mink coats, is on display.
You don’t have to spend big bucks to come away with something cute such as this vintage poster for Champion spark plugs.
I know we live in the information age, but I am still impressed every other day with the information I can get to with the internet and my smart phone. Check this out, a run-down from last night.
7.01 pm We have landed at Chicago, in from Pittsburgh. The snow in Chicago has started falling. I can see that, don’t need the iPhone weather app to tell me that! But what is the temperature? If it’s not too cold, the snow will melt quickly and not be a big problem for the runway and the aircraft. Well, it is 34 °F. Better get out of here before it drops to 30 °F in the next hour or so, though.
7.14 pm We’re still on the tarmac, waiting for the plane at gate B5 to get de-iced so that it can move and allow us to pull up. Hmm. Let me check with United’s app if my flight to Seattle is still scheduled for an on-time departure. Yes. I can even see where the incoming plane is from (Washington, DC). It has almost arrived and is scheduled to arrive 9 minutes early, in fact.
8.06 pm We have gotten to gate B5. I just have to walk over to gate B10 for the Seattle flight. Almost time to board. If I’m lucky I will get upgraded to the big seats in first class. Have I been? Yes! .. the upgrade list that used to be classified information available only the sometimes-surly ground personnel, is now available to everyone (to obsessively check every 3 minutes if you feel you have to?). That’s me in seat 3E on the Upgrade List. (Later, before we departed, the guy across the aisle in 3B made a fuss when he discovered his seat’s overhead light was not working. ‘I need it to read, my Kindle is not backlit!’, he complained to the stewardess. I knew exactly what was going to happen next : ‘Will I be so kind to consider trading seats with him?’ she asked. ‘Alright, then’ I said (thinking : Good Grief, the way that guy is carrying on, they’re going to hold the @#$% flight to call Maintenance to get it fixed. Can’t let that happen).
8.30 pm Our turn to get some de-icing done. It has actually stopped snowing and is raining now, so we should be in good shape for getting out.
8.45 pm We’re getting pushed back from the gate. Four hours to Seattle, and 1,720 miles for an 11 pm Pacific Time arrival, two time zones away from Chicago’s Central Time.
And what is the weather like in Seattle? I forgot to check before we left in Chicago. This flight does not have in-flight internet, so I will have to wait until we land to know – which was perfectly OK. It was great to be headed home to the Pacific Northwest, far, far away from the Northeast which was about to be pummeled with the blizzard of the century.
The view out of the plane at gate B10 in Chicago, almost ready to depart for Seattle.
I was the passenger in my colleague’s rental car to the airport, so I could take a few pictures on the way out. It looks like my connection in Chicago is still good (without delays due to the large weather system forming in the northeast).
This is Neville Island Bridge (opened in 1976), getting us across the Ohio river on I-79 on the way to the Pittsburgh airport.Is an airport beaver the same as a regular beaver? (I guess that’s me : the airport beaver).The entrance to PIttsburgh airport. There is a US Air Force base nearby, with the 171st Air Refueling Wing (171 ARW) of the Pennsylvania Air National Guard that operates sixteen KC-135T Stratotanker air refueling aircraft..This live map shows arriving and departing flights. I think the blue blob is winter storm Nemo moving in!
‘Winter Storm Nemo is now poised to become the latest example of a powerful, potentially historic, February storm’, says the Weather Channel. I am located north of Pittsburgh, just outside the storm area but it’s going to come down heavily north and east of here. The word ‘storm’ when snow is involved, is often the equivalent of Roberta Flack’s song ‘killing me softly with his song’ : soft fluffy white stuff that just keeps coming down, and eventually snarling up traffic, snapping tree limbs, damaging power lines, and all that. And when I was working at a utility company in California, I learned that there was something called a ‘heat storm’ : a term for an extended heat wave also has potential for widespread power outages due to increased use of air-conditioning.
The temperatures are in °F, so we just below or just above 0°C (32 F) in daytime, and dipping below freezing at night time. We’re going to bail out on Thu night, hopefully ahead of the next snow shower.
We have a lot of documentation to complete for our Blueprint, and so we’re knuckling down and cranking out the documentation. It is cold and snowy outside, but Salt Lake City taught me that there is still a long way down if you’re in the 20s (°F). The Japanese TV channel in the hotel room reports that Ulaanbataar, the capital city in Mongolia, is sporting a withering temperature of -18 °F (-28 °C).
The day is done and we are arriving back at the hotel .. but it’s actually right across from the offices where we work !
Google maps on my iPhone shows how to get from Moon to Mars.
I’m in Pennsylvania, in the Pittsburgh area again for a few days. Moon is just north of Pittsburgh airport, and Mars is where the hotel is. It’s a 40 min drive to the hotel. There is snow on the ground but the roads are clear of snow and ice. Just watch out on the turns for iced surfaces !
P.S. So the black birds (Ravens) won the Superbowl, and no word from officials at the Superdome and its energy company, Entergy, as to what caused the 34 minute black-out. A circuit breaker worked as designed, but why did the circuits become overloaded? ‘It’s NOT Beyoncé’s fault*’ says James L. Kirtley Jr., professor of electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
*Beyoncé and her dancers put on a dazzling, hologram-assisted halftime show on a lit-up LCD-like stage floor.
My cell phone could not quite handle the bright white of the Heinz ketchup sign. (I may have posted a picture of it before, but hey, here’s another). Heinz’s world headquarters is in Pittsburgh.
Alicia Keys singing the national anthem at the opening.
It’s Sunday afternoon in Seattle and I’m watching Superbowl XLVII. The San Francisco 49ers are playing against the Baltimore Ravens.
The teams are getting ready for the coin toss.Comedienne Amy Poehler is peppering the Best Buy (electronics store) assistant with questions such as ‘Is this in the cloud?’ ‘Where is the cloud? ‘What’s LTE? Is it contagious?’ ‘What’s the differences between all these phones? ‘Does it make you uncomfortable if I use the word ‘dongle’?” ‘Will my Kindle read 50 Shades of Grey to me in a sexy voice?’ ‘Will you?’
‘Those pads are worn UNDER your clothes’ whispers Sheldon to Leonard while Penny looks on (characters from the Big Bang Theory, a show so popular that it is called the new ‘Friends’).
[Doritos ad] The dad was enticed by his daughter’s bag of Doritos chips to dress up in drag. Five minutes later his buddies from outside joined. The mom shows up, not very upset at all, but then asks ‘Is that my WEDDING dress?’ ‘Maybe’ says the dad.[Article from New York Times Sunday magazine]. Master statistician Nate Silver (earned his stripes in politics, though) says the better defense team is the one that’s favored to win. San Francisco in this case BUT right now they are trailing badly, 6-21 just before half time.
There is new artwork up on the partition that separate Seattle City Light’s new substation construction site in South Lake Union from the street. There used to be a bus stop right here, but the sheltered bench and post were removed last year. But for now I see the No 8 bus is stopping there again .. must be because construction is currently scheduled to start only in Jan 2015.
‘Buses Stop Here by Request’ says the wall (and they do – standing right there is a request for it to stop!). The street names are all from Seattle’s downtown.This vintage bus must be – 50 years old?‘Our’ City of Seattle.
I am following the current discussions to make reforms to the broken US Immigration laws with interest. The 11 million illegal immigrants in the country will have to go ‘to the back of the line’, some people are fond of saying. Well, probably so – but that line is very, very long. Check out this chart that appeared in ‘Reason’ magazine in 2008 .. Legal Immigration Chart.
This was me (on the chart). My skills were in implementing the German enterprise software maker SAP’s system, that took off like wild fire in Fortune 500 companies some in the 90s... and this is me in 2007 (the beard is symbolic!), a citizen some 12 years after I had first arrived in the USA with an H1-B visa in 1995.
Pesos Kitchen & Lounge in Seattle’s Queen Anne neighborhood.The cast-iron artwork of the window burglar bars offers an opportunity to brush up on one’s basic Spanish vocabulary!
My lunch with my friend Doug on Wednesday was a chicken burrito from the Pesos Kitchen & Lounge in Seattle’s Queen Anne neighborhood.
The place has a ‘cantina’ atmosphere and my Ranchero style burrito was delicioso. The outside sign and doors and windows feature some cool cast-iron artwork.
I picked up my squeaky new, squeaky clean passport full of blank visa pages on Tuesday. Since I rarely park my car downtown, and still had some time on the meter afterwards, I took a little walkabout to check out the architecture around Pioneer Square.
Here is the King Street station just south of downtown Seattle. Construction was completed in 1906, and it is still a station for Amtrak and the ‘Sounder’ commuter trains.This Chinese gateway entrance to Seattle’s International District is relatively new .. only completed in 2008. It was privately funded, and two gate experts from Guangdong province in China actually came out to work on the project.Fire Station No 10 was also completed in 2008 .. it is 60,000 sq ft and very, very earthquake proof. (It would not do to have the city’s fire station crumble in an earthquake, now would it?).That’s Smith Tower in Pioneer Square on the right, completed in 1914. It stands 38 floors tall at 149 m (489 ft), and was only overtaken in 1962 by the Space Needle as the tallest structure on the West Coast. The building on the left is Frye Apartments. It used to be a grand hotel, but was converted to low-income apartments in the 1970s.
‘All first-class stamps will soon be ‘Forever’ stamps*’ said the guy at the postal services store here on 15th Ave. Yes, but will stamps be forever? I suppose so. We haven’t gotten rid of paper money – or of paper in the office yet, have we? Congress is supposed to take up legislation this year to improve the dire straits the Postal Service finds itself in.
*Forever Stamps are first-class stamps issued by the United States Postal Service with no explicit postage noted. So stamps are valid ‘forever’ even if the first-class postage rate goes up in future years,
This year’s ‘Forever’ 2013 Year of the Snake stamps. I see firecrackers, but no snakes on the stamps (boos to the stamp designer from me!). At least there is a cool snake design lurking in the background.Mail volumes continue to decline, so more red ink at the United States Postal Service. A First-Class postage stamp now costs 46c a penny more than last year. Why doesn’t the Postal Service just raise the stamp by 10c or even more? They cannot increase it by more than the inflation rate, by law.
Discovery channel’s documentary about the successful attempt to videotape a giant squid deep in the ocean aired last night here in the USA. It was quite an undertaking, as documented an this article on theverge.com (link below). The article points out that that’s not all — there is evidence of a squid even bigger than the giant squid out there, called the colossal squid. Whoah. How little we know about the deep sea.
Here are some facts about the giant squid.And this is a still shot from the first video ever taken of a live giant squid deep in the ocean about 2,000 m (6,000 ft) down, captured in July 2012. (In 2006 one was videotaped by Japanese scientists on the surface of the ocean as it took bait that was dangled from a ship).
The Amante Pizza parlor’s sign at the corner of Olive Way and Denny in Seattle’s Capitol Hill on Saturday afternoon shows a temperature of 47 ºF (9 ºC).
It was 47 ºF (9 ºC) and rainy in Seattle on Saturday, but not bad weather at all, considering that snow-and-ice storm Luna* is hitting the Midwest and Chicago area this weekend.
*The Weather Channel’s name. They explain that their goal with naming storms is to better communicate the threat and the timing of the significant impacts that accompany these events.
I took the bus downtown to 5th Ave to hand in my passport for an expedited replacement. I was almost late (you make an appointment), since the office moved 6 blocks and I did not know that beforehand. And inside the Department of Homeland Security does an airport-like security screening, but with guards with guns and dogs and all. Pretty intimidating, even though they were very friendly. Weird that these measures ‘protecting our freedom’ actually makes it feel as if you do not have any in there. Anyway, up on the 6th floor the agent – paging through my fully stamped passport with two sets of added pages – was impressed with all my business travel, and said ‘Wow. Do you not feel like retiring yet?’. ‘Oh, of course I do’, I replied, but I have to work at least ten more years’.
My OneBusAway app shows up-to-the-minute information about buses in Seattle. My bus is No 43, and it is 2 minutes late to the stop. NOW means you have to run (‘Run Forrest Run!’*) since the bus is approaching the stop, or already there. *A reference to Forrest Gump the movieAnd here it comes. I WOULD have gotten a perfect shot, had the stupid tree not jumped in front of me at the last second ! : )Making my way down 5th Ave, with the obligatory shot of the Seattle Library on the right.The YWCA building is at 1118 Fifth Ave is 100 years old ! (completed in 1913).The King County Administration building with its hexagaonal honeycomb theme in its walls and windows was built in 1971.Still on 5th Ave, but I’m now making my way back from Yesler Way where the passport offices are. That’s the Mars Hill church in the foreground. (The sun is making a spirited attempt to break through the clouds, its light reflecting off the buildings).These copper leaves in the sidewalk are part of the Homeless Remembrance Project of Seattle to remember people who have died while homeless in King County. This is outside the Seattle Municipal Court on 5th Ave.
We completed our ‘blueprinting’ phase workshops in for our project today. Weather wise, the light snow of the last few days gave way to freezing rain* in the Salt Lake City area. There was so much of the stuff that the airport was closed for a few hours after a JetBlue plane skidded after landing (no injuries, and it stayed on the runway). It also made for a slow and treacherous drive out to the airport from Ogden.
*[From Wikipedia] Freezing rain is made entirely of liquid droplets. The raindrops become super-cooled while passing through a sub-freezing layer of air many hundreds of feet above the surface, and then freeze upon impact with any object they encounter. The resulting ice, called glaze, can accumulate to a thickness of several centimeters.
Tweet from Mike Seidel reporting for the Weather Channel about the freezing rain in the Salt Lake City area.My little red rental wagon had an ice blanket as I was preparing to drive it back to the airport. And the parking lot was as slippery as an ice rink in places. Watch out !
The snooze button is a standard feature on bedside alarms in the USA. (A big button on the top that stops the alarm and sets it to ring again at a short time later, most commonly nine minutes .. yes – nine, not ten, did you know that?). I don’t use the snooze button, though. When my iPhone alarm goes off at 5.15 am here in the hotel, I know : time’s UP. Got to jump out of bed now to make breakfast downstairs at 6.00 am! Last week I actually proved that I can speed it up dramatically; was woken one morning at 6.00 am by my colleague’s phone call, and made it down by 6.15 am! Of course, for that to happen there is no morning shower, no tidying up the room a bit – and certainly no ironing my shirt.
Some statistics in today’s Wall Street Journal related to sleeping. Yes, 6 hrs of sleep is really not enough! I try to get 7 1/2, and definitely a little more on weekends,
(Late post). I had to work on Monday (which was also Martin Luther King Day), but I did catch the highlights of President Obama’s Inauguration speech.
From the White House Blog : This morning, at 11:55 AM Eastern Time, President Obama delivered his Second Inaugural Address. The speech was 2,137 words long and took 15 minutes to deliver. “America’s possibilities are limitless,” he said, “for we possess all the qualities that this world without boundaries demands: youth and drive; diversity and openness; an endless capacity for risk and a gift for reinvention. My fellow Americans, we are made for this moment, and we will seize it — so long as we seize it together.”[From the Wall Street Journal] Some interesting numbers at the top of this page, comparing 2009 and 2013 statistics of the US population.
