Same day, one year later

I did the polar bear swim down at Mathews Beach on Lake Washington again this year. We somehow got a little mixed up on the timing though - we thought that it started at 12:30 so we got there just a little after 12 noon, only to find ourselves being passed by dripping wet and freezing people walking the other way. Apparently it had been at noon. Not having the crowd to fortify us didn't keep us from running into the water anyway - we couldn't go all the way down there in our bathing suits and not jump in! We were rewarded with this year's "badge of courage" after joining the mob surrounding the volunteers passing them out. KC and I agree that this year's is cuter than last year's. Water temperature was 44 degrees fahrenheit, 2 degrees colder than 2006. The Seattle P-I reported that nearly 900 people participated this year! More proof that this city can be insane sometimes :)

Christmas was two weeks ago

But here are some pictures from the Bay Area. Mom and I went to check out the lights at this one house that always puts up a crazy display. This year was no different; they even put an arrow out by the main road so you'd know where to turn:

They do have a donations box, from which the proceeds go to the NY fire department. Santa was out the day we stopped by, despite the torrential downpour.

Our tree, decorated with our leis from the Luau on Maui:

And on Christmas morning:

Merry belated Christmas! And happy new year!

Beside myself!

Well, I've apparently had blogger's block for a while now, but I just had to post since I'm now officially a flickr pro member! See, a friend of mine, who is currently residing in Copenhagen, had a bit of a panic attack when leaving for the airport because he was still in possession of his Comcast cable modem despite having canceled his cable service while he's out of the country. To thank me for returning it for him, he got me a flickr pro account. Hurray!! I'm super-excited.

To those of you who are aware of the previous reason why I hadn't upgraded, sadly, I have not resolved the issue that was keeping me from doing so. I'm apparently paralyzed when it comes to deciding what I want to do with my life.

caterpillar and his handiwork
Originally uploaded by gecko_12.

This picture is of a castaway caterpillar that I found on one of my houseplants this winter. I put him on the counter to take some pictures of him, and gave him a leaf to sit on. He prompty munched away at it. (I later disinfected the counter).

I hope to blog more frequently now that I'm back in town and it's not the holidays. We're not calling it a resolution; it's a goal. I refuse to make resolutions, since it's inevitable that they'll be broken. Goals are much more ambiguous. Somehow that is better.

Fun and light, yet practical: the W300i.

About a year ago I took the plunge and got a new phone and new contract with Cingular. I loved my new phone and the plan I got was about the same as my old one, so I was pretty happy. Then, after just a few months, my phone started having an issue where it wouldn't ring anymore. It turned out that this was a common issue with all phones like mine, and it just required a firmware update. However, Cingular's method of updating the firmware is to send you a replacement phone and take the old one back. OK, fine.

Except, the replacement phone they sent me wouldn't even turn on reliably. I called them up, and they said, ok, fine, here's another phone. Luckily the 3rd phone worked, and I sent back my 1st and 2nd phones.

Fast-forward to November (phone worked great until then). All of a sudden my phone freezes up occasionally. Pushing the buttons has no effect. Sometimes I had to take the battery out to reboot, sometimes it resolved itself. I called up Cingular and they say it's a phone problem. Lucky for me, my phone is STILL under warranty. So they'll send me a new one.

A 4th phone of the same model? I ask them - Doesn't that seem like I'm asking for it again? No problem they tell me, you can pick a new one of these 4 models (LG CG300, Motorola V557, Nokia 6103, or Sony Ericsson W300i). So, in a miraculous bout of decisiveness on my part, I manage to pick a new phone - the Sony Ericsson W300i, one of Sony's "Walkman" phones (we've come a long way from portable tape players...). I decided to stick with Sony Ericsson because I have their chargers and I like their interface. As an added bonus for my troubles, I also got a car charger.

The W300 arrived a few days later and I have to say I like it quite a bit. It's nearly identical to my old phone (the Sony Ericsson Z520a) in many ways - the menu system, the crappy camera, the button layout, the infrared port for file transfer - but also has some improvements. For example, it doesn't have the take-a-picture-of-the-inside-of-my-pocket button. Instead it has the Walkman button and volume controls there. It also has an FM radio if you plug in the headphones that come with the phone (they act as the antenna). The reception so far has been pretty decent! Furthermore, you can load mp3s onto the phone's internal memory or a Micro Memory Stick (up to 1 GB so far) and listen to those too. It's like my own iPod Shuffle! The battery life is long (9 hours of talk time), so using the music features shouldn't drain the battery instantly (and thus far hasn't been an issue). And despite its slightly larger size (see photos below), the W300 is actually a bit lighter than the Z520a.

A few things I liked better about my old phone: the keypad buttons were easier to push, and the center button of the 4-way controller went to the menu instead of the Web (and thus charges everytime you accidentally push it), and the earpiece was actually more functional because it coveres a larger surface area instead of being 3 small holes. And sadly, the speakerphone function on the W300 is fairly hard to hear - ironic, since it's supposed to be a phone with good sound quality for music listening.

Here's a review (from whence the title of my post came), and here are some photos I took comparing the two phones before I returned the Z520a. The W300i is on the left, Z520a on the right. Happy calling!

New Whole Foods

After nearly two years of waiting (since we moved into our building), the Whole Foods on Westlake and Denny finally opened. I went there with pl on the first weekend it was open, and damn, produce never looked so good. We whipped out the cameras and were having a heyday - till an employee informed us that Whole Foods does not allow photography on the premises and that we should go over to customer services (presumably to erase the memory cards?). The latter part was thankfully not enforced. After a delightful sandwich from the deli counter (a bit more emphasis on the pre-made sandwiches than at the Roosevelt location), consumed at a table hard-won in the puny eating area, we ventured back out into the rain (it was November, after all), stopped by the new Starbucks on the upper level of the same complex (we are Seattleites, after all), and then went back to work (we are graduate students, after all).

Pure Genius

As I was walking through the B terminal of the SeaTac airport yesterday, I spotted this interesting contraption, the "chargecarte" - it's a machine that you use to charge your cell phone. It has slots for all of the major phone manufacturers. It makes a lot of sense- people forget to bring cell phone chargers all the time. When you need one, you really need one. Looks like it's made by the SmarteCarte people - you know, the ones who give you $0.25 back when you return the luggage cart that you rented for $3. Somehow, at $3 for 30 minutes, the price for this device actually seems surprisingly reasonable, especially given its utility!

Speaking of lightning...

A few years ago we had a fantastic lightning storm here. I spent a long time out on the balcony desperately trying to take pictures of the storm with my old Fuji digital camera. The camera could only go down to 1/4 of a second, and had no manual focus, so it was perpetually unhappy about the adventure. After some hundreds of completely black images, I did manage to catch a few pictures of lightning - this one originally looked like a mostly black picture with a small white line in the lower right, but some photoshopping by pl (thanks!) really brought out the details. Guess I should have used a tripod though, eh? Were such a storm to happen again I think I'd be able to get a better shot with my current camera - but storms are quite rare here, so I may have to wait a while longer :)

Seattle, MI?

Today my labmate tr and I ventured outside the building for lunch, determined to finally check out the newly relocated Dexter Deli [bwst]. After eating (I had a turkey sandwich - perfectly edible, a nice change of pace, though nothing to really write home about...) we looked outside and noticed it had started to rain. Then there was some lightening and a crack of thunder fewer than 5 seconds later. (tr, being from the midwest, scoffed at the paltry thunder and lightning.) Well, we thought to ourselves, best get back to lab before it starts raining harder. Heh. Apparently the gods were putting us in our place for daring to actually take a lunch break because no sooner did we get about a block down Dexter before the skies opened up and started pelting us with hail! Sideways hail, about the size of peas, and it HURT. We started running, but had to wait at a stoplight, so hid behind a telephone pole to escape the ravaging storm. By the time we made it back to the lab, my jeans and shoes were soaked. Glancing out the windows at the streets below we noticed that there were mini icebergs floating down the gutters of the inundated streets. Definitely crazy weather. Some 10 or 15 minutes later the storm abated for the most part. KOMO4's webcam managed to capture some of the excitement - not every day you see a shot like this.
Thanks to Samantha at metblogs for the link to the photo.

Stamps

Only a little over a week late, here is a shot of all the stamps I had to put on my absentee ballot this year. The ballot's large number of votable things contributed to its longer length, heavier weight, and requirement for 63 cents postage. The election, of course, turned out rather nicely.

The Windy City

Note to those who are as naive as me: if you're walking around Chicago on a windy afternoon, freezing your butt off as the wind whips between the buildings and makes you shiver to your core, and you decide to remark that Chicago's nickname sure is apt, you WILL get pounced on and told by anyone "in the know" that, in fact, that nickname did not arise because of Chicago's most famous weather pattern. Instead, it originated from olde-tyme Chicagonians' love for telling long stories (i.e., long-winded). Huh? I'm SURE that the irony of the nickname was not lost on whoever came up with it, but come on, it's WINDY there! Like, air moving fast, cold air at that, blowing your hair around, pushing you over, making the trees sway, WINDY. Sheesh.

That said, I spent a few days in Chicago last month for the BMES conference, which meant I didn't see much of the city except for the inside of the conference hotel for the majority of the time I was there. Luckily I had a little time after the conference was over to explore before flying home. I checked out the "Bean" - i.e. the Gehry structure at Millenium Park (see pic above), and also walked the "Mag Mile" - Michigan Avenue. I then turned south, but along the lakeshore, and walked down to Navy Pier and eventually down to Grant Park before heading north again to complete my loop. I was disappointed to miss the Art Institute - it came highly recommended - so I will have to go there the next time I'm in the gateway to the midwest. I also didn't have time to make it to the Sears or Hancock towers.

I was also fortunate to be in the company of people who grew up in Chicago, so I managed to get some great food while I was there! Italian food was wonderful at both Rosebud on Rush and Club Lucky. Giordano's for pizza tasted alarmingly like Delfino's - go figure. Lunch at Potbelly Sandwich works (twice!) was awesome (and so much better than the truly craptacular lunch the conference provided).

As for the bean, I actually went there twice - once in the evening and again the following day. As I first approached it, I thought it was enormously overrated - till I came within about 20 feet of it, and then it became obvious that it really was all it was cracked up to be. Ond of the neatest things about it is that if you stand underneath the curved part and look up, it looks like you are standing at the bast of a long cylindrical shaft - when in reality it's just a smooth surface. The picture only sort of conveys this phenomenon.

Anyway, the rest of my pics are here.