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September 24, 2007
Dinner
Our neighbors, and very good friends, Dave and Marcia are leaving for their month "on the cape" tomorrow - and they invited us to share dinner with them tonight before they left.
I made it a point to catch the 5:30 ferry home, and we walked up the hill and had a wonderful dinner of home-made pizza and salad from their garden, with wine and very pleasant conversation.
For a while we could leave life behind, not worry about "are we moving are we not," and just enjoy the company of some truly wonderful people.
Laughter and merriment. Just what the doctor ordered.
Posted by dberger at 9:20 PM | Comments (0)
Partying is Such Sweet Sorrow
Despite still not knowing for sure if we are moving
Nothing big, nothing fancy, but a chance to raise a glass with some of the best neighbors we could have hoped for when we moved to this side of the Sound.
Good people, a good neighborhood - we're sorry to leave them both behind.
Continue reading "Partying is Such Sweet Sorrow"
Posted by dberger at 6:18 AM | Comments (0)
September 19, 2007
From the Tin Foil Hat file
Not sure how I missed this when it first was published.
Posted by dberger at 5:09 PM | Comments (1)
Winamp: Album List
One of the features I like about Amarok is it's "random album" shuffle mode, and I kept meaning to find a WinAmp plugin to do something similar at work.
The annoying part is that Winamp knows what albums are in your library - so implementing this should be completely trivial, but it's not a standard feature.
I found Album List, which is close. In fact, if it would just base it's album list on id3 tags rather than directory structure, it'd be exactly what I want.
See, when I get a compilation album, the songs get ripped into track artist/album/## - track. So a soundtrack album like The Whole Nine Yards ends up sprinkling tracks into many artists - but I want to play it back as an album.
Is that too much to ask for?
Posted by dberger at 3:19 PM | Comments (0)
Fall has fallen
Over the past two days we've reached the tipping point between summer and fall. It's dark when I get up in the morning, nearly dark when I get home at night, and has been staying cool enough all day that I need to wear my over-pants on the ride home. Last night - an hour or so after I got home - the sky opened up and dumped on us, complete with a couple peals of thunder.
Three days ago it was still summer, now it's not. What's up with that?
Posted by dberger at 6:19 AM | Comments (0)
September 17, 2007
Weekend Recap
On Friday night, Dawnise attended the latest work-sponsored Spouse Event - a Mariner's game, viewed from a private box. There was a "party bus" from the office to the stadium, so Dawnise bussed to the ferry, walked to the next bus, bussed into Bellevue, hung out at the office for a half hour, then took the bus to the game (sheesh). I think she spent as much time in transit as she spent at the game.
Got a call from her around 10 asking if she could take the party bus back to the office and get a ride to the ferry from one of the other spouses. She fell into the hole in the ferry schedule, so I picked her up from the ferry on the island side around 1. She had a good time, which made me very happy.
Continue reading "Weekend Recap"
Posted by dberger at 9:18 AM | Comments (0)
Bloodsucking Fiends
Dawnise found a copy of Bloodsucking Fiends on sale at the library and picked it up for me. It's one of the last Christopher Moore books on my to-read list. (If you haven't read Lamb , you really should.)
It was a fast read, with some very funny moments - not likely to win any literary prizes, but a great break from the other (non-fiction) book I'm reading at the moment.
Posted by dberger at 6:24 AM | Comments (0)
September 12, 2007
10 Months Pregnant
We shipped today. The site, and thick client, have been in beta to a bunch of our users for a month or so, and today we unleashed them on the rest.
So far, so good. I'm sure we'll have little stuff to clean up over the next few days and weeks, but between announcing the upcoming TF2 beta, starting to take pre-orders for The Orange Box yesterday, and releasing Community today, it's been a big week.
Posted by dberger at 8:03 PM | Comments (0)
September 10, 2007
Spook Country
Got Gibson's latest - Spook Country from the library a week or so back, finished it on the ferry home today.
It wasn't a bad book, but it feels like a stretch to call it a good one - it really didn't have enough meat, in my opinion, to justify being a "full" novel. Conspicuously missing was the "texture" I've come to associate with Gibson's writing. There were lots of characters, but few of them were more than paper thin, and the book sprawled across several locales, yet failed to give me the sense of being in any of them. There were several levels of plot going on, but none aside from the "main" one really kept my interest.
I pretty much agree with the current Amazon ranking of 3/5 stars.
But who knows, I've been pretty distracted lately by the "are-we-moving-or-are-we-not" dance, so maybe it's me.
Posted by dberger at 7:10 PM | Comments (0)
Crunchy Corn Goodness
I am so screwed.
Last week, CornNuts joined the normal assortment of snacks and junkfood in the kitchen at work.
I could resist most of the other stuff - well, save the Gummy Bears - but CornNuts? That battle was lost before it began.
Posted by dberger at 1:12 PM | Comments (1)
September 9, 2007
Dark Sky
One of the strong memories I have from being a child was a camping trip, I can't remember exactly where, when I first saw the Milky Way stretch across the night sky.
Even today, thinking about that sight bring goose pimples to my arms, and raises the hair on the back of my neck.
This article in the New Yorker made me want to go in search of dark sky, and looking at light pollution maps made me realize that if we actually do move to the mainland, the sky over us will be getting brighter at night - one of the many trade-offs we'll make in moving off the island.
Dawnise, on her trip to S. Africa, passed through some of the darkest sky she's likely to ever be under - and of course, as fate would have it, she was there during the day...
We wonder why American's don't support the space program? I think a major part of it is that they can't see the stars at night. Looking up at night doesn't fill them with a sense of wonder - it's just the reflected glow of civilization.
That deeply saddens me.
Posted by dberger at 8:57 AM | Comments (2)
September 7, 2007
We've Been Invaded By Boxes
We just had new neighbors move in up the hill - and they were kind enough to give us a metric-crap-load of boxes and packing material, which Dawnise was good enough to fetch from up the hill yesterday.
Our library/guest room is now full of boxes, and great trash bags of packing paper have spilled out into the front room.
Now if only we'd actually close a transaction or two, we'd be ready to start packing...
Posted by dberger at 11:51 AM | Comments (0)
September 5, 2007
Battleship Grey
One of the tracks from Tiesto's In My Memory came up in the shuffle this morning, and it was perfect for the foggy sound crossing.
Have a listen.
Posted by dberger at 9:47 AM | Comments (0)
September 4, 2007
If You Like Animals, You'll Love Lamb
Despite the fact that life's in limbo at the moment owing to the move, we had a really good weekend.
Continue reading "If You Like Animals, You'll Love Lamb"
Posted by dberger at 6:11 AM | Comments (0)
September 2, 2007
Waiting to Exhale
Got a call last week from escrow saying that they needed to schedule an appointment with us to sign closing docs on the sale, so we're scheduled to be in their office in Bellevue on Tuesday.
I'm guessing that actually closing the deal next week is optimistic, but I have to say that actually making some concrete progress in this shell game would reduce the background stress level. Dawnise and I both feel like we're just waiting for something to go wrong and bring this house of cards tumbling down. We haven't really started thinking about or planning the move, 'cause the skeptic in both of us says that any such effort is wasted 'till the ink is dry.
Posted by dberger at 11:42 AM | Comments (0)