Where’s the peanut butter?!

• me about 11:10AM: “Hey, anybody want a coffee? I’m heading to Katy’s“
• the substantial collective: “no thanks”
• me 11:15AM txt to fast joey: “last coffee now!”
• 11:15 I’m making plans on the phone with Tom to play San Juan and can’t hear him very well over the sirens as I get to the coffee shop
• I meet Joe for coffee, but under the strict constraints of his religion, he merely looks on as I indulge in the industry that keeps this city alive through the winter.
• (a lot) More police cars and fire trucks fly down Union toward 23rd.
• 11:20 time to go, but the intersection three blocks down the hill is obviously blocked off - never knowing when to keep my nose out of trouble, I head to the cheese steak place
• Officer on the scene “. . . it could be someone you know, it could be someone in the community . . .”
• me to man with discolored teeth: “Do you know what happened?” - “Two people shot day-ed.”
• I quietly walk back, report to the barista and go back to work. Helicopters are starting to show up. At work I learn the suspect hasn’t been caught.

What’s the matter with the world? Couldn’t they have slept in? It’s hard to find any good news in this but the media reports at least say that neither victim has died.

I have a Western Digital external hard drive and have been frustrated with it on my laptop recently since it’s not been working. This morning I finally got it working again. The issue seems to be with the USB cable I was using - I’m now using a cable that’s about a foot and a half long and it seems a little beefier (this is probably the cable that came with the drive). This was probably sort of predictable - I think the drive (which is powered over the USB cable) probably wasn’t getting the power it needed to run, but it’s still frustrating. I wish computers could get some better diagnostics working explaining why the device wasn’t able to work rather than an infinite loop of “trying to find drivers…oops, no good…trying to find drivers…”

BUT - I have a working drive again. Yay!

wefeelfine, originally uploaded by Peru Tha Damaja.

This site and its associated API is really cool. You need Java to run the application, but basically it combs blogs and other human interaction sites and constructs a meme of the statement “I feel…” Really, really fascinating and usually, but not always, very sad.

Teewars - a serious contender for best online game evar.

I’m not sure when it happened but it feels like upcoming.org has become almost completely irrelevant. When I started using it they had the perfect combination:

• easy to search upcoming local events
• high density of relevant events

Today, it increasingly feels like the pool of interesting local events (usually to me this means “shows at clubs I want to see”) is almost totally dry, search never finds anything, and there are a lot more “events that people don’t seem to care about” than events that do matter. For instance — there are a total of 14 people attending events in Seattle today. Sure there will be days when there isn’t much going on, but that’s really far too few for a major metropolitan area to keep the social aspect of the site compelling and (and this is totally unsubstantiated quantitatively) seems way lower than the usage levels I’d seen 6 months ago.

It makes me sad, but I guess now is a fine time to switch more seriously to google calendar for my scheduling!

I’ve never heard of his work but these projects from Peter Callesen are really incredible:

Dolphins are such incredible animals.

There is more information about the physics and how the behavior might be learned here, but click the picture and check out the video - it’s just amazing.

F.W. Hunter, Army test pilot, Douglas Aircraft Company plant at Long Beach, Calif. (LOC), originally uploaded by The Library of Congress.

Cool - my newest Flickr contact is the library of congress.

(this may look like YARE (yet another running entry) but it’s really not…)

About a month ago I ordered tickets online for The Spirit of the Marathon, which will be showing in about a week and a half around the US. Then last Friday I went to see There Will Be Blood at the same theater where the marathon movie will be showing. When I bought my tickets from the electronic vendor I was confused when it spit out an extra ticket. An extra receipt? I looked at the tickets and realized the extra one was for the marathon movie. I was still confused until I realized that I’d probably bought the other ticket online with the same credit card and it was just sitting in an electronic will-call queue, waiting to see that same credit card.

That’s technology at work. Soon, doppleganger-Greg will be out of work at the Neptune, too.

Notes from yesterday’s long run. This one I projected to be 11-12 and it came out to just under 13, so my estimates are improving.

. . . takk… let’s go . . . olympics are stunningly clear! . . . still water, too - landing strip of reflected sunshine . . . is that sweat? warmer than I thought . . . uh oh - train in the way of the stairs - guess I can hop the cars - really need to order that roadid mom got me for christmas . . . over the magnolia bridge - I love this middle part of Sé Lest with the celestra . . . was that Lou Barlow??? . . . giant Starbucks - Catherine Blaine school . . . some day do a left turning find the cheese run here . . . visitors center - split: 40 minutes?? . . . quiet on the back trails . . . take the sandy fork on the bluffs - I was taught that’s the hard way . . . must - not - flatten - little - kids . . . hello, bernese mountain dog! . . . my favorite tree - 19 minutes . . . slow down - YESTERDAY was the race . . . visitors center - split: under 24 . . . snack time . . . Frank, please take me home . . . In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning will definitely help me hit the right pace . . . pretty dull roads, could I have gotten to commodore? . . . hello, jerky driver! . . . “Miss Beacon Plumbing”? these hydroplane guys have a great sense of humor . . . thankfully few bikers on the pier 91 trail . . . still low wind - still beautiful . . . Rainier!!! what a great day - need to go to the market . . . aaaahhhhhh - “I’ll Be Around” - where are the singers like this today? . . . finish through Eagle . . .