Category: Seattle

Had a great dinner last night at Wasabi Bistro with a crowd of fellow MBA new hires at my company, including one who lives down the hill from us and used to work at Jack Straw Productions. Also met some folks who are working at Amazon. I tried geoduck sushi–which was sadly somewhat tasteless and a little tough. But I thought the sashimi, particularly the sockeye salmon, was excellent.
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It’s been a fairly turbulent seven days. I worked hard for about two months on a strategy project only to have it taken away, and am pretty much starting from scratch trying to learn about a new market, product suite, and set of job skills. I have regained a little balance over the past few days, which is critical because I have to be executing pretty hard now.

The strategy project is probably in better hands now. While I had been looking forward to going onto the next phase, we had reached a point where all the decisions needed to be made at a higher organizational level. I’m looking forward to the challenge of redefining what I can deliver and doing some execution. It’s been a while.

The Seattle International Beer Festival was a good time but smaller than I expected. The main focus is international beers, meaning that the biggest representation is from importers rather than local brewers working in international styles (although there were some good examples). Brewery reps weren’t on hand either. But I did meet the ops manager from RealBeer.com (and signed up for a club subscription!). Standout beers included Lindeman’s Frambozenbier, a Polish porter from Ziewicz, and Harvieston’s Bitter & Twisted, along with the usual excellent Belgian brews.
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Lisa weeded this morning and ripped up a dead tree while I cleaned the house and cleaned up the garage. Nice having a space where you can just pound a nail into the wall or screw in a hook, hang something up, and youíre done.

Weíre going to head into town to pick up some Fiano di Avellino at the Pike and Western, then stop by the Seattle International Beerfest. Looking forward to seeing if it’s as good as itís hyped, but given the number of Belgian brews it should be worth the price of admission.
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Moving slowly this morning, thinking slower. Bad sign when there’s an executive review in 40 minutes. We’ve entered the slippery slope towards fall here in Seattle: two grey days in a row, beads of water on the cars. Paying bills, drinking coffee, waking up.

We’re sending my inlaws off in style tonight (their flight is tomorrow noonish) with dinner at Etta’s. Looking forward to it.

Spent the day yesterday doing a lot of not much at all. Helped my mother-in-law and Lisa in the garden; took them to Ikea with us (most targeted visit ever: 45 minutes in and out), then to Ivar’s Salmon House for dinner. You can get salmon any way you like as long as it’s alder-smoked. Not a bad way to go, all things considered.

Today Lisa’s dad and I assembled the things that were purchased at Ikea yesterday while Lisa bought more stuff at Sears. Then we all basically collapsed.

This area never fails to surprise me. The morning is cool and gray here, but light. Driving in this morning the local DJ announces a request from an Internet listener in LA. The car hums up 520, almost a shame to take the freeway for such a short hop but it brings my gas mileage up to 21.5 for the trip.

Driving down 40th Street onto the Microsoft campus, traffic stops. What’s going on? A line of ducks, five ducklings following their mother, are crossing from where a drainpipe emerges from the edge of campus to the wooded apartment complex on the other side. Jeff Tweedy sings “I am trying to break your heart.”

CNET reported that AT&T plans to roll out higher speed cable modem connections (3Mbps down/384k up), but at something like $82 a month I wonder if it’s the best bandwidth for the buck solution. What are other people out there doing for big pipes?

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Right now there is a new “Reflex Silver” Volkswagen Passat sitting in my driveway. It’s not the one I bought yesterday, though.

I had a great experience through most of the buying experience with this dealer, who shall remain nameless. The woman who followed up my request through Autobytel, M., was extremely helpful and very low pressure, but persistent, and I finally got myself around to the dealership yesterday afternoon. I decided that the standard 1.8 liter turbo four-cylinder engine would do just fine for us, and called Lisa so she could help me decide between cloth and leather seats. After deciding that the leather seats had perceptibly better upper back and neck support for Lisa, we did the paperwork, returned the Company Rental Car (the Alero is a fine vehicle, but I was ready to see the end of it), and were ready to go.

This is where we hit the snag. Sitting in the “Reflex Silver” Passat GLS that we settled on, M. walked us through the controls. Showing me the instrument cluster, she said, “And here is the windshield wiper control.” She clicked it and a blade went across the windshield. “Huh,” I said. “I didn’t know the Passat had a single wiper like the Volvo and Mercedes do.”

She said, “Oh my god! Where’s the other blade?” Somehow along the way to the lot, someone had broken off the wiper arm near the motor. Unfortunately, the dealership shop was already closed for the weekend. M. was embarrassed, apologetic. Could they give us a loaner car until Monday and pay for us to have dinner out?

We reluctantly assented—I had been looking forward to driving off the lot in my first new car since I sold my Golf in 2000. We got out of my car and looked at it. Forlornly. Then M. pulled up in another reflex silver Passat—a top of the line W8. The owner’s current show model. Would this do?

It would do nicely. We hopped in, dropped Lisa’s car at home, and headed for Etta’s. Oysters on the dealer!!! 🙂

…or just about everything. Lisa got a call from Delta saying they would bring her bag by later tonight. The plumbers are all but finished—just some touch up work in the bathroom they were remodeling. I may get a car this weekend. My DVD-ROM drive has been replaced in my laptop (more on that below). Feeling pretty good, if a little tired.
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…I was right about the size of the cabinet I got. All my CDs fit—after I went through and culled the collection a bit. (BTW, if you know me personally and are interested in the discards, email me and I’ll put a list together; otherwise, they’ll probably go to the local record shop.)

I stayed up until later than I should have last night and got all the jazz, classical, world music, and miscellany filed, leaving the rock for this morning. I was hoping I wouldn’t get much of a chance to finish them before the cable guy came to hook us up with digital (yay!), but I’m still waiting…

Customer service this afternoon at Ikea was pretty good, though it did take about half an hour to get me the right part from the other warehouse and bring it over. Bringing it home, I proceeded to start assembly. I managed to go for about two hours during which I assembled the bulk of the cabinet proper, except the butcher block countertop piece which tops the cabinet—I started the screws but was unable to finish screwing them in owing to poor upper body strength (the holes weren’t pre-drilled). I’ll have to dig out my electric screwdriver and see if I can make any progress.

By way of contrast, Lisa and I purchased an inexpensive small buffet at Crate and Barrel yesterday. I brought it home and had it out of the box and assembled in about ten minutes. I think Crate and Barrel could do a pretty good job of eating Ikea’s lunch if it really wanted to—and if it could get the capital to ramp up to that level of production and that big a product line.
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Funny article about Seattle driving “etiquette.” Lots of funny gripes about clueless drivers, including:

• When it is raining, look over to the side of the road. If you are traveling faster than pedestrians, slow down.
• If you see a giant ball of flame, that is the sun. It will not hurt you, but slow down, just to be sure.

Of course, as a recent Boston driver, I have to ask: why the fuss? After all, Seattle has broad, well marked, well maintained streets and drivers that can actually see, that yield right of way, that don’t treat running down pedestrians as a competitive sport, and who don’t knock bumpers with another car as a way to say “hi” …
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I’ll be trying to get some actual work done today, so don’t expect too much in the way of blogging.

Ben Hammersley: Whereever I lay my URL. Ben, a writer for O’Reilly, woke up one morning and realized that geography didn’t matter in his job. So he and his wife moved to Florence and cut their cost of living in half. Bastard. 🙂

That’s me, someday, maybe. Then again, moving off the east coast is traumatic enough. Lisa has one of those “geography independent” jobs, but it’s not always that simple. If you’re not a totally independent producer, like a writer or independent software developer, you have to have a really high level of trust with your coworkers to make it happen. I don’t take what Lisa is doing for granted for a second, though I don’t tell her that often enough.

[Thanks for the link, Doc.]
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