Ken Thompson makes good.

Further "what I did on my summer vacation" updates will be on hold, as all my writing time this weekend is taken up by sinnabor's going away party, as well as the fact that some family members are in town and I'm being taken down to Oregon for some wine tasting. It would be more exciting if I didn't already have an overabundance of the stuff, and, you know, it was voluntary and didn't involve my crazy sister. On the upside, I'll finally get to visit the Joel Palmer House.

The next travel phase of the trip was something special for me: Amtrak Acela. It's the closest thing we have in this country to High Speed Rail, and it was a destination by itself for me.

I arrived at Union Station with plenty of time, so I had a nice, relaxed breakfast at Au Bon Pain, yet another dearly missed thing from the east coast. I had not realized how expensive things are in Seattle, though; a breakfast sandwich, pastry, and coffee cost *far* less than they would out here. Sadly the Corner Cafe Bakery in Union Station did not have the whoopie pies that I drooled over in Denver. *harumph*

Got in line at the correct gate, the drug and/or bomb sniffing dog being the only security (Non-intrusive *and* effective! Someone page the TSA!), and boarded the train. Wow, was it nice. Lovely, well-kept leather seats, and the overhead compartment easily held my huge suitcase! Nice and smooth ride, with great scenery. Could we get this service everywhere, plzkthx? Seriously, it was even better than I had imagined. I cannot fathom how anyone would fly where Acela goes. We even did a fly-by of a station packed full of commuters. I had often seen a train roar past as I was waiting, and it was kinda awesome to be on the other side of that.

Got off in Philadelphia, where geeksdoitbetter was waiting for me. We made our way along the river through Fairmount Park. I remember seeing those boat houses from the highway countless times, and now I got to see them up close. After cruising up and down for a bit, we found a nice garden spot near the museum to just sit and take a break and chat.

Found a decent enough place to park the car, and went to DiBruno's Market for a lovely lunch. This is one of those places that has a great Italian market full of lovely cheeses and such, all with samples alongside, and deli and sandwich counter downstairs, and then upstairs has a huge bonus eat-in lunch area with even more awesome sandwiches as well as a hot meal bar. Seriously, the chicken marsala was total yum. Recommended!

We next headed over to the US Mint. On the way, we stopped at Naked Chocolate, where I fell to the temptation of drinking chocolate. Sadly, I went against my first instinct and passed over the unadorned version for the "salted caramel" one. Mistake. It was 99% salt and 1% caramel. Yuk. Oh, well.

Also on the way is when I started noticing just how nice and walkable downtown Philly was. I had seriously forgotten just how much I enjoyed it! This was further enhanced by the fact that I now had a reference point to see just why I didn't like Denver's downtown that much. Denver had much longer blocks, and much less human-scale building at ground level. Further, Denver's streets are a weird mix of light timings for pedestrians: instead of the bog standard "cross with the light", Denver sometimes would do that, but sometimes there was a dedicated walk period, sometimes it was an all-way walk, and sometimes it was mixed! You never knew until you saw it cycle! Not fun.

And this is also where I had my next comparison of transit systems. Philly apparently has a trolley system underground that connects with, but is distinct from, their subway system. I didn't quite grasp this at first, and it was a little disconcerting actually riding it. Still, the connection was painless, and the trains were much better than walking. I also didn't remember the Philly underground system being so grimy, though.

We did get to the Mint with no problem. The tour turned out not not to really be a tour as such. It was just a big hallway with signs and windows. Which, fine, was still interesting. There was some neat stuff there, and some machines in operation. I loved seeing the big stacks of coiled metal sheets which are all accessed solely by robots. But it was, as Cicely described it, a bit of a "bring your own fun" experience.

From there we cabbed it back to the hotel, and Cicely took the opportunity to just nap and hang out. I headed over to Reading Market. Sadly, many of the shops were closed. It turns out that not only are most of the Amish shops only open Wed-Sat, but it was Yom Kippur, so another large segment of the shops were out of the running. Still, there was enough open to be interesting; I got some lovely, lovely apple cake slices, and some outstanding chocolates. One was this huge brick-like construction of marshmallow on top of caramel, all inside in a thick dark chocolate coating. OM NOM NOM NOM

Went back to the hotel, and just in time, as the skies opened up thoroughly right as I got there. Hung around with Cicely a bit, and we headed over to Giovanni's Room. Seattle has lost its last gay bookstore, which I miss dearly, so it was great to give them some business (especially as they've had some construction woes as of late, apparently!). Resisted many, many items, bought a few random ones, including a copy of A Bear's Life magazine (this will appear again later).

From there, it was off to Dim Sum! Yes, Cicely had done the unthinkably awesome and found a somewhere that is not limited to Sunday afternoons! Woot! Had a decent enough dinner. Met many people there, some new friends and some old. Had a great time!

At this point, our friend James drove us back to Cicely's car, and we dropped me and my belongings back at the hotel before she drove off home. I was so happy to see you, geeksdoitbetter!

I'd considered going to Dave & Buster's, since they're open late, and they are yet another thing we don't have out here, but was way too dead to actually do anything but crash.

Next stop: New Jersey

Got up very early for my flight to DC. Once again, the flight was entirely uneventful, aside from the insanely long lines at DEN. It's a United hub, you'd think they could staff more than 1/3 of the counters they have.

Got into National, and bjarvis was waiting for me, decked out in his purple square dancing shirt. Drove out to his place in the pouring rain. I had forgotten just how nice and green the Potomac area can be; it was a sight to see. But of course, my love of green and
water was one of the things that drew me to Seattle in the first place. We also passed a truly impressive accident on the Washington Parkway: some midsize sedan was off the road, front bumper on the hill next to the road, rear bumper on the roadway, and the wheels touching absolutely nothing at all. It was suspended in mid-air, essentially. Wonder how you get it back on the road. Yikes.

Anyway, made it to his place safely, where we met kent4str and cuyahogarvr, as they had returned from their square dance calling. Had a lovely Thai dinner at a nearby restaurant, and then went for some cupcakes. Seattle is rife with cupcake shops, but none are quite perfect. Though very good, and with an excellent attitude towards cakery, cakelove was not perfect either. My memory fails here on the specifics, though. Ah, well, I guess I'll just have to keep looking. Darn. :)

After that, there remained the question of what to do that evening. None of us were terribly motivated to much, but I really didn't want to do nothing. Eventually, Brian and Michael agreed to go out with me to the Eagle in Baltimore. I do enjoy going out to the gayborhoods in different cities, and seeing different gay bars, so I was very glad to go. The Eagle was nice! Big place, three semi-separated areas (traditional bar, pool room, and sort of a back room), good, cheap drinks. A++, would go again.

Since the guys were all willing to do something together, and willing to drive somewhere, they suggested that we do something that I wouldn't be able to do if I were limited to the city. Specifically, that we go to the other Air and Space Museum.

Did you know there *was* another Air and Space Museum? Because I didn't.

It's called the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, and it's right near Dulles Airport. It's neat! And huge! It's a truly massive space, with lots of awesomeness inside. SR-71 Blackbird! The Enola Gay! The other Martian rover! THE ENTERPRISE SPACE SHUTTLE! I had a blast checking out all the old computer equipment as well as the air traffic control exhibit. Did I mention that one of the things I love most about United is listening to ATC on channel 9? Which reminds me, I need to write in to United in support of continuing that program. Allegedly, some people tape what they hear and then put the mistakes on YouTube or something. Jeebus. Really, people?

After stopping for some Coldstone Creamery, and a trip to a local diner (with a super-entertaining waiter!) for some dinner, it was back to the house, with a nice night in watching the PBS special on National Parks.

It was really great seeing those guys again, especially getting to see thier relationship dynamic. They really have their routine down, let me tell you. :) I'm glad they all get along so well.

In the morning, Brian graciously drove me to Union Station for the first Amtrak part of the trip...

If all goes as planned (ha!), I'll be posting about my trip daily over the next week or so. I've currently typed up through the middle of day 3, so this has a chance of actually happening. Most entries won't be as long as this one, though.

At long last, it was time for the Epic East Coast Adventure. It all started back when rwgill and ted_badger announced their engagement. There was no way I was going to miss the wedding, and given that I was going to be on the east coast already, why not visit my friends out there! Oh, and hey, since the Great American Beer Festival was the weekend before, why not go there too! Because if something's worth doing, it's worth overdoing.

Took the light rail (YAAAAAAAY) to the airport at some ungodly early hour. Flight from SEA to DEN was nice and calm. I wanted some free time in Denver before the festival started at 5:30pm, so I took the earlier flight which got me in around 11:40am. Of course, since the Denver airport is so gorram far outside the city, it takes forever to actually get downtown. An did I mention the sprawl that is just *endemic*? Ugh. Passed a "mall", which was more of an industrial park for retail: you couldn't walk from the football stadium-sized JCPenny's to the even larger sporting goods store, no, you had to drive or (probably) take a shuttle. Yikes.

Took the bus to Denver's light rail, figuring it would be a nice way to see some more of the city, and, hey, I'm a huge public transit geek, so taking it was a destination in and of itself. Sadly, it was clearly a much older design. The main cabin of their system is hugely off the ground, and the wheelchair ramps are these huge concrete structures that lead to a door just behind the driver, so the operator can manually let down the ramp to let people on (!). I've taken accessibility for granted, I suppose, and such things are useful even to those of us currently-abled, especially when wheeling around a huge suitcase, and this seemed almost like a retrofit to the system.

The upside to this (as we'll see again, repeatedly, later in the trip) was that I have a new appreciation for Seattle's rail system, not only how good it is, but where it fits in the spectrum between light and heavy rail (did I mention I'm a huge geek?).

Anyway, I got to my hotel (the Crowne Plaza) and checked in. Veged out for a bit, changed, and headed out to explore the city. Downtown Denver was nicer than I imagined; *lots* of surprisingly great architecture, both old and new. The convention center has a sculpture
of a *huge blue blue bear that's peeking in the window*. How awesome is that? But despite that, it still had a slightly oppressive feel that I could neither explain nor get past. I'll touch on this in future posts as well.

Took a long walk around, through the Theater and LoDo districts, stopped at a local place for a quick meatball sub, and wandered over to the 16th Street pedestrian mall. Now, this was actually a good idea: take a street in the middle of downtown, prohibit cars, run free shuttles with 2 minute headways along it, and turn the rest of the road into essentially a linear (if concrete) park. There were two big problems with execution, though. One, all of the fixtures were severely dated, and two, it had turned into tourist trap central. Wacky T-shirts and *INCREDIBLY* tacky western wear galore. Not much else. Well, there were two Corner Bakery Cafe locations along it, which was nice (yes, it's a chain, but they have a special place in my heart after their good pastries and truly excellent coffee saved my mornings at LISA in Dallas, TX). These locations' coffee didn't live up to my memories, but it was still pretty good, and what I was after at that point.

Because I was not feeling well at all, having gotten essentially zero sleep the night before. Now, when I passed the Convention Center around 2, there were already people lining up for the opening of GABF which wasn't for hours yet. And this kinda worried me, because I was NOT in the mood for standing in line. And my stomach was not doing well, even after the coffee. *sigh* So, as it was approaching 5, I walked back down to the Convention Center to see what the current
situation was...

There was a monster of a line. Just massive. Seriously, 4 people wide, two blocks down and two blocks back. At this point, I decided that I didn't really need to be at the festival for every possible moment, and took the light rail down to 10th & Osage to have an early dinner at the Buckhorn Exchange, which was recommended to me by several friends who were longtime residents. They specialize in exotic meats, and a high-protein dinner was just what I wanted.

This turned out to be the best decision I made all day. Not only was I able to score a table without a reservation (since it was just me, and I got there right when they opened at 5), but the dinner and experience was fantastic, and it really calmed my stomach. The hot waiter wearing the black leather apron didn't hurt the atmosphere none, either.

The place has a fascinating history, and quite the interior: every inch of the walls was taxidermy. This lead to interesting conversations between waitstaff and patrons ("What is this? Buffalo? What do they look like?" "If you go around the corner, you can see one mounted on the wall."). Really, go look at their website. I started with a cup of buffalo chili (forgoing the bread and salad), and had a dinner of roast quail, elk, and lamb. The chili and quail were excellent, the elk was disappointing (very tough), but I think that could have been the best lamb I've had in my life. The outside was a little more charred than I'd like, but the interior was properly medium rare, as requested. It was simply delicious: strong, gamey (in a good way!), and tender. Yum. Recommended! Would go again!

As I said, I felt much more human after dinner, and took the rail back to GABF. Even though it was now just after 6pm, there was still a *massive* line. Fortunately, it was moving very quickly, and I was finally inside.

I'm not really a beer person, but I wouldn't mind being one, and I have enjoyed going to several NW beer festivals. This was the big one, though, the national event that all the big names attended. So I had higher hopes. Now, on the positive side, the place was big enough, and was well put-together (water stations, big bathroom signs, extra capacity, &c.), and they did have their crowd control down pat. Unfortunately, there were three main problems with the festival,
and together they may keep me from going back. First, the brewers were organized by location and *nothing else*. There was no way to do something like try all the stouts, or all the cask-aged beers. Sure, you could pore through the guidebook (which, as far as I can tell, isn't available before you get to the festival) and try guessing from the names of the beers, and then draw out a battle plan, but really? That's the only way? Bleah. Second, many of the beers were already
gone by Friday, the second day of the festival. Really? You're not holding anything back for the other days? Seriously? Third, and this isn't the fault of the organizers, I suppose, but this festival was, as kitschparade would say, severely amateur hour. The crowd seemed full of warmed-over frat boys (in a bad way). Drop your cup? A big "OOOOOOOOOOHHH!" would rise and be picked up by half the crowd. Really, guys? Really? But, no worries, you could buy a big
boxing glove type thing that you could tie around your wrist that had a cup holder molded into it. Now you could get as drunk as you want and not drop your mug! Ugh. This was very much for the target audience at this place. Now, any two of those were not true, and I'd go again
for sure. If I lived in Denver, and didn't have to worry about airfare or hotel, I'd probably go also. But the way things stand, I will have to seriously reconsider going again. Which is a shame, because I actually had a lot of great beer!

Here are my finds for more standard beers, going from good to great:

• Left Coast Black Magic
• Dogfish Head Theobroma
• Ommegang Adoration
• Kona Pipeline Porter
• Dogfish Head Chateau Jiahu
• Black Dog Honey Raspberry Ale
• Dry Dock Vanilla Porter
• Golden City Imperial Stout
• Seabright Oatmeal Stout
• Dry Dock Apricot Blonde

Although 2 of the coconut beers I wanted were already out (argh!), and the one I did get to try was very disappointing, there were some very off-beat beers that were quite noteworthy! First was Six Rivers Chili Beer. The chili flavor was present, and really worked well with the beer, and there was even a mild amount of heat in the finish. This would be great with potato chips; I want some now just thinking about it. The second sounds like it could be terrible; a gimmick gone wrong. I want to promise you it wasn't! It's 21st Amendment Hell or High Watermelon Wheat Beer. Yes, watermelon beer! Listen, it was good! I was worried it'd be some awful artificial flavor, like someone dropped a Jolly Rancher in my glass, but it wasn't. It was a natural, mild flavor that went very well. Try it! Really!

Around 9pm, I wasn't quite ready to call it a day, but my stomach clearly was, so I ambled back to the hotel, and just crashed.

Next up: D.C.

Work has been just a killer since I got back from vacation. Release is coming up fast, and we're being pushed hard to close all our bugs. I finally found the root cause of my last bug tonight, but I want at least one day off, so fuck it, the fix will wait until Monday. I can't fix it on my own anyway.

Ugh. 99% of the time my job is awesome. This is not one of those times.

The trip reports will probably have to wait until the weekend, but the photos are up:

• Smithsonian Air and Space Museum (Udvar-Hazy Center) [243 photos]
• Hotties @ Air and Space Museum [59 photos]
• Photos taken while I was on trains [63 photos]
• Singing Beach and Manchester-by-the-Sea, MA [101 photos]
• Harvard and some campus hotties [74 photos]
• Bob and Ted's Wedding [135 photos]
• Beacon Hill, Boston, MA [17 photos]
• Random Boston photos [85 photos]
• Boston Public Library [25 photos]

Photos from Vancouver Pride [1,052 photos] are also up.

I am back home. Really need to sleep (soooo much work tomorrow :-( ) but I am too hyper. That was a MUCH MUCH needed vacation, and I got to have a mind-blowingly good time with so many people. Thank you all for making this an epic adventure.

I expect to be catching up on email and LJ this weekend, and may start posting about my trip the following week.

Time for my big East Coast adventure. Nearly ready to go. The agenda:

9/25: Fly to Denver. Go to Great American Beer Festival.
9/26: Fly to DC. Visit bjarvis, kent4str, and cuyahogarvr.
9/28: Train to Philly. Visit geeksdoitbetter.
9/29: Train to Newark. Visit cnjbrownbear, and hopefully pyrotekknik.
9/30: Train to Boston. Visit bear_left, kev_bot, kazmat, manley1, and, of course, the grooms: rwgill and ted_badger.
10/5: Fly back to Seattle.

This is going to be awesome.

Overall impressions of PAX: better than last year. Now that they had the entire convention center at their disposal, things were organized much, much better, and things *flowed* much more smoothly. Also, somehow the food options were *much* better this year, especially considering that I'm still boycotting Subway: the place at the back of the expo hall had decent sandwiches and side salads at relative bargain prices, and their personal pizzas were not awful. The other scattered dispensaries had decent-looking nachos, hot dogs, and chicken+rice bowls, and very little was ever out-of-stock (except for soda on Sunday evening). Tully's was in abundance this year, and I think one or two of the restaurants on the first floor have been upgraded since last time. Already looking forward to next year. Except, oh wait, PAX East is in another 6 months! I think I will be in Boston next March!

Most of my time on Friday was spent in panels (and, well, waiting in line for panels). First was Beyond Candyland, about boardgames and German strategy games. Discovered Dune board game which has an interesting mechanic: each player gets a different, totally broken ability (e.g. "Whenever anyone spends money, you get it instead of the bank", "If no one has won by turn 7, you do"). It's out of print and expensive to get; if I thought I could easily find the 4-6 players and many hours it takes to play, I would probably get it anyway.

After that was the Keynote and Penny Arcade Q&A panel, both excellent. Lots of laughs. Then there was the gaygamers.net panel, which I missed the first half of, frustratingly. Got some quick dinner () and toured the expo hall for a while. Everyone was gaga over Scribblenauts for the DS. It's cute, but I didn't see what all the fuss was about. The PAX10 were kinda cool: Machinarium was my clear favorite, and Liight was a decent 2nd. I liked the concept of Tag, but the game wasn't doing it for me.

Later was "An Evening with Scott Kurtz". This was such a strange panel: Kurtz is an excellent storyteller, with a lot of good ones to tell, but *wow* can he be inappropriate. I don't mean the swearing or being un-PC, I'm talking about the variety of gay jokes (paraphrase: "I'm not homophobic, so it's OK for me to say these things" No it isn't!) and self-deprecating fat jokes and things like that. Yikes. Anyway, he talked alot about the history of the rivalry between he and the Penny Arcade folks, and a lot of the details about the whole eFront saga were brought to light. Actually, in another panel, he and the PA guys actually talked about a lot of this stuff with each other for the first time, and in public, which was cool!

I didn't stay for much of the concert that night, just Anamanaguchi, who were quite good. Need to find out which CDs have their more "epic" stuff, as I liked that a lot better. After that was some freeplay console action, and I got home early, just after midnight.

Saturday was my second round of the expo hall, catching all the stuff I missed Friday. Most of the Nintendo stuff was disappointing, but the New Super Mario Bros. Wii looks absolutely kickass. Bought a bunch of dice from a vendor, as my previous online source has gone out of business, and these guys had a bunch of unusual stuff that I'd been wanting (pipped D10s, japanese D10s, binary dice, D10/12-inside-another, alphabet die) at reasonable prices. Another popular display was the Geek Chic gaming furniture. It's much less lol-worthy than that may sound: it's really high quality stuff. Strangely, their web site doesn't have what I consider their best stuff: the convertable dining tables. I am seriously considering getting an Alexandria Codex if and when I buy a place.

After the make-a-strip panel (see today's Penny Arcade news post for more details on how that went), it was time for what I consider one of the big highlights of every PAX: the Pitch Your Game panel. Usually, it's Jeff Kalles and two industry people; this year, it was Jeff, Porkfry (also from Penny Arcade), and Wil Wheaton. It was a blast! The theme this year, though, seemed to be great game titles with no actual thought behind the games. ( My list of highlights behind the cut. WARNING: contains highly inappropriate concepts! Do not read if easily offended! )

Immediately after that was the Harmonix Rock Band Network Panel. They are on the cusp of releasing this insanely awesome set of software that lets you author and sell your own Rock Band tracks. It's Windows/Xbox only at first (sucktastic!), but PS3 is coming very soon, and they're working on Wii support. If you have a band, you need to check this out! For the panel, the demo they used was Jonathon Coulton's "The Future Soon", and they did a live upload of the track to an Xbox and had people from the audience play it with Jonathon himself!!!! I was seriously and truly crushed that I was not chosen to sing it, because I know the song really well, and it's in my key, and because OMG getting to perform one of Jonathon's songs with him playing guitar, COME ON HOW AWESOME WOULD THAT HAVE BEEN. AUGH! Anyway, the panel was total rocksauce.

Later that night was a screening of the latest episodes of The Legend of Neil. My brother got me into this one; it's pretty funny. If you like dumb humor and The Legend of Zelda, I recommend checking it out.

The concerts that night were Freezepop (better than I expected), Paul and Storm (their opening number is outstanding, then they start sucking, and slowly build back up to being great), and Jonathon Coulton (as awesome was ever. Like I said, 3 encores!).

On Sunday, I didn't arrive at PAX until 11. Taking Friday off from work and spending it at PAX really made all the difference this year. No longer was Sunday a rush to get in that last half-day of fun, but rather a bonus day to enjoy myself at a leisurely pace. In fact, as I posted, I had had my fill of video gaming, and spent most of Sunday playing board games. First up was Dominon, which had been the most popular game at PAX all weekend. It was pretty neat: it uses deck building (kinda sorta like M:tG if you squint *really* hard) as the primary game mechanic. You start with 10 cards in your deck, and get 5 each turn. You keep adding new things to your deck from the cards on the board; some of which are victory points, some of which are money, and some of which actually do things. You need victory points to win, but they're just chaff in your hand, which provides a nice balance to the game. I liked it a lot, despite losing (I had 26 points, the others had 28 and 33). I misunderestimated the value of The Village, and the instructor told us 2 things about the rules that turned out to be completely wrong, so I overestimated the value of two other cards. Ah, well. It was still a blast, and we were playing the beginner setup, and there's apparently a much larger variety of cards available.

After that I wandered into the second Penny Arcade QA panel, because it had just started and there was no line to get in. Then it was back to the boardgame checkout room to find a new group to play with. There was this woman there with gloriously multi-colored hair, and she and I got to discussing games. She was also looking for a pickup game, so we started looking for one. An Enforcer (the volunteer staff) suggested The Stars are Right, a very new Steve Jackson game. Just released? By Steve Jackson? That description alone sold it for both of us! It uses a 5x5 board of tiles representing the stars in the night sky. On your turn you try to manipulate the sky (moving or flipping tiles) into certain patterns in order to summon cards (elder gods or their minions) out of your hand. It was a really good mechanic, and I love games where each card you get has multiple uses, so you not only have the joy of trying to figure out which use is best, but you also very rarely get a completely useless card. But based on my limited play (we only did 2 games), the luck factor is much higher than I'd like. I got a great opening hand the first game, and won 10-4-3, and another player got lucky early on, and he won 10-7-3-2. Those are wider spreads than I'd like. It could have just been luck (we finished 2 games, including setup and rules learning in 90m, and the online reports say you should expect 45-60m for a 3-4 person game), but I might want to try to tune it a bit, maybe play until 12 points. I dunno. I liked it a lot, but didn't buy it. I *did* buy a copy of Power Grid, because a local games store had it for a great price (~$25). Looking forward to playing that again.

So, yeah, PAX was a really, really great time. It was the most fun I've had in a while.

Notes for myself for next year:

• Definitely budget vacation days for taking Friday off, and the day after if it isn't Labor Day again
• Pitch my videogame idea if I haven't already turned it into reality.
• Take melatonin to PAX so I can get to bed earlier.
• Don't forget to buy a set of gay-themed shirts to wear.
• Test batteries a week before.
• Despite the hot men, *not* taking your camera was the correct decision.
• Consider purchasing a DSi or PSP or both.
• Consider not sucking at Tetris DS because that is what 80% of people want to play, apparently.
• Upgrade to an unlimited SMS plan to participate in in-line games.
• Prepare politics "PSA" based on chapter in yesthattom's book.
• Send suggestions to PAX folks about: earplugs, second "Get In Line Games" screen, shortest/longest distance prizes.
• Visit the info booth more often, as that is where many important things are posted that are not in the program for some reason.
• Finish my secret projects.

OH HAI 3am. Thank you Jonathon Coulton and your 3 encores. Rock!

Today's "Pitch Your Game" panel was not quite as good as last year's, but it was still excellent. A, not A+. I will post the list of what I thought the best concepts were on Monday. There's one (horribly, horribly twisted) title that I cannot even say without bursting into laughter.

I think I have had enough of the panels. Tomorrow shall be consoles and board games.

PAX is awesome. So very, very, very glad I took today off to go. One awesome part of many was the panel sponsored by gaygamers.net. It was held in the Unicorn room, but that is not the best part.

It was called, and I swear I am not making this up, "How to Make It in the Back Door: A Rainbow Colored Perspective of the Game Industry".

I have officially given up on Firefox 3. It crashes weekly and I never know why (thanks to bug 503645), and the session restore feature doesn't work for crap anymore, and I have no way to debug it. So, back to Firefox 2 (it crashes monthly, but session restore works). I've cleared out my profile, reloaded all my extensions and preferences, and goddamn is it good to have a fast, stable web browser again. Oh, internets, how I've missed you!

I've been kind of holed up for a while as work was throwing a bunch of deadlines at me all at once. That is now done with (please please please). My presentation that I barely had time to work on turned out to be the hit of the show! We had been instructed to come up with a presentation about the features we've been working on with the idea that it was supposed to be fun and to get people excited about using them and about selling them. The image of "Steve Jobs presenting the iPhone" was given as a model. Repeatedly. That... didn't work for me. I went in a different direction, and decided to emulate the other great marketing genius of our time: Ron Popeil. My first slide: "The following is a paid commercial presentation...".

I was very nervous that the humor wasn't going to track with the audience, but as soon as my first slide faded back to black, and I popped up from behind the podium now wearing an apron, and there was a huge round of applause, I knew it was going to work, so I just had fun. It was a huge hit! People kept coming up to me and emailing me (even the people videoconferenced in!) about how much they loved it. I've already been asked to give it three more times. There's also a possibility it will show up as a video you can all watch, but that won't be until November at least.

Anyway, things are awesome, and I now have a certain amount of free time again. If I've been out of contact with you, odds are good that will change soon. Fair warning! :-)

Or, more still photos. Whichever you prefer.

Pinnacle Peak and Mount Rainier National Park.

Orcas Island and Mount Constitution.

The infamous Turtle Boy statue.

And, at long last, Mount Monadnock and Camping with Ted.

Enjoy!

More photos are up. Seattle Pride and 4th of July @ Gasworks.

That's nearly all of my '09 summer photos, so probably the last batches for a while. Now to get caught up on the backlog...

I can't sleep.

Solstice photos are up. All 782 of them.

Happy Pi Approximation Day!

I brought pie in to work today. I've been waiting to do this for months.

Lots of random, horribly overdue info:

As I did mention, my family visited a bit ago. There were some good things that happened

• Went to the space needle. I have not been going that often for lunch, so my pass hasn't gotten as much of a workout as I'd like. It's still fun to go, though; it just doesn't get old! They have several new interactive kiosks on the observation deck, and they're actually kinda cool. The best one is a 360-degree panorama of the city, except it was taken once per minute over a whole day, and you can cycle through them! You know that scene from Wall-E where the captain misses the morning announcements and turns back the sun? It's like that.
• Another fun thing was the West Seattle community garage sale. Almost 200 families trying to get rid of their stuff. My Mom *loves* garage sales, so I knew this was right up her alley. It was fun for me, too. I scored a ton of pyrex and ceramic bakeware (pie plates and casserole dishes) for about $1.50 per piece, an old Bell Labs coffee mug ($2), and, best of all, a copy of TransAmerica (the board game, not the movie or the insurance) for only $2! If Ticket to Ride is the lite version of Eurorails, then TransAmerica is the lite version of Ticket to Ride. But it is tons of fun!
• The other fun thing we did was check out the Pierogi Festival at the Polish Home. The all-you-can-eat part was a little steep, so we just took home a bunch of frozen ones. Now, I have never been a fan of pierogi. At all. I was raised on the horrible Mrs. T's frozen ones, along with their cheaper cousins, and they are awful. Little pouches of tough dough with a meager portion of pasty mashed potato inside. Yuck! These were from Alexandra Foods, and they were fucking amazing. Wonderful light dough, filled to bursting with meat or cheese or fruit. The best ones, by far, were the mushroom uszka. Delicious.

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Saw Star Trek, in IMAX. It was... tolerable. Lots of good things and lots of bad things. Glad that it was on work's time and dollar. I'm neither anticipating nor dreading the sequel.

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A winner is me! I have had some great luck recently. At our long-overdue Holiday Party (held in May), I won a gift
certificate to a restaurant downtown (Juno) that looks quite decent.

I won my light rail ticket, as I mentioned.

Also recently, I went shopping at Safeway, and splurged on a nice big bag of shrimp that was on sale. Examining the receipt, though, showed that I had been charged $27 rather than the $17 it should have been. Not one to just shrug off $10, I went back to get a refund of the difference. Except, if Safeway charges you the wrong price, apparently, you get the item free. Win!

One other thing was when my family was here. My mother also likes to play the scratch-off lottery tickets, and visit the casinos. Out of about 25 lottery tickets, I'd say 20 were winners (most only a few dollars, but still!), and as usual, I exited the casino about $20 up.

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On the suggestion of a friend, I've arranged to be working nights next week, so that I can accomplish things during the working hours. I have a huge, huge list of things that need to get done. It will not be fun, but it will be worth it.

One of the things is to meet with my bank to get mortgage things rolling. I've been looking for places to buy in Seattle, and I'm not finding much. When the perfect place comes along, I need to be ready to go. Given the current state of financial affairs, I am not in any rush to buy, but if the right deal comes along, I will. If it doesn't happen in, say, a year, I'll probably just move to a nicer rental.

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Vancouver Pride is almost here! How'd that happen?!?

Second batch of light rail photos up. Coming soon: Solstice and Pride parades.