Fig Newtons Vs Fat Free Fig Newtons

Fat Free Fig Newtons sound too good to be true.  Are they?

Versus

The answer: Pretty much.

First, lets look at the numbers.  The two packages cost the same, but the regular Fig Newtons weigh in at 14 ounces, while that fat free version is just 12 ounces.

It's not that they made the cookies smaller; then didn't. Instead, you get fewer cookies in the Fat Free version.  The Regular version has 26 cookies.  The Fat Free version has 24.

 

So there's no cost advantage to the Fat Free.  It must be a great alternative for those on a diet right?

The label starts with the absurd notion that a serving is two cookies.  Seriously?!?! Who eats just two at a sitting? One of the most misleading things about nutrition information is the absolutely ridiculous servings sizes listed on the label. They are pure fiction for the vast majority of people.

Regardless, a "serving" of regular Fig Newtons is 110 calories with two grams of fat.  The Fat Free Fig Newtons are 90 calories per serving with 0 grams of fat.  They also have a little less sodium and potassium.  

So, a regular Fig Newton is 55 calories with 1 gram of fat and a fat free one is 45 calories.

Is it worth it to switch to fat free to save 10 calories per cookie? That's a little less than a 20% reduction in calories.

Let's looks look at the cookies themselves.

They look similar, but the Fat Free version has more color variation in the breading.

The crust also appears a little thinner on the Fat Free version.

That brings me to taste.  It tried them both, knowing which was Fat Free. 

The Fat Free version tasted okay (it's not the disaster that the Lean Pockets Cheeseburger was).  It did seem a little flat, however. The regular version had a fuller taste.  The fruit itself tasted the same; the difference was all in the breading.  The traditional Fig Newton crust was more flaky; it crumbled better.  The difference was less about flavor, and more about texture.

The GF tried them both in a blind taste test.  Historically, she hasn't been a big fan of Fig Newtons,and, with less invested in the process, was in a better position to offer some insight.

She tasted them both and clearly preferred the traditional version over the Fat Free. She described the crust on the fat free version as "more dense," and said the Fat Free version just didn't taste as fresh.

After this limited test, I'd say the traditional Fig Newtons just pop more.  The difference between them is all in the crust.  

If you plan to sit down and eat all 24-26 Fig Newtons at one, then if might be worthwhile to switch to the Fat Free to save 240 calories.  Of course, if you're eating them all at once, you're probably not concerned about the calories.

For a more normal sized snack (5-7), I'd say get the traditional Fig Newtons.  The calorie reduction in the Fat Free Fig Newtons just isn't worth the sacrifice in taste and texture.

Book Review 58: Company

Monday morning and there’s one less donut than there should be.

Keen observers note the reduced mass straightaway but stay silent, because saying, “Hey, is that only seven donuts?” would betray their donut experience. It’s not great for your career to be known as the person who can spot the difference between seven and eight donuts at a glance. Everyone studiously avoids mentioning the missing donut until Roger turns up and sees the empty plate.

Roger says, “Where’s my donut?”

Page 1

Occasionally a novel comes along that reminds me why I am so grateful that I work from home. Company, by Max Barry, is such a novel.

Like his previous novel, Jennifer Government, Company cynically skewers life in cubicle land. Unlike Jennifer Government, Company takes place in the present day, rather than some dystopian future. It’s the type of thing that could theoretically happen in most people’s lives. Since reading the book doesn’t require accepting an entirely different universe, it’s more relatable. Also, since Barry uses today’s world, the reader can focus more on the story itself, and less on understanding a new context.

The book is similar in tone to the movie “Office Space,” but the scope iis much bigger. If you enjoyed that movie, you may want to pick up this book.

Characters in the book cynically work around the impediments that senior management throws in front of them.

Jones says, “So with this freeze, how did you hire me?’

“It was Freddy’s idea. We process your salary as office expenses. Copy paper, specifically”

“That reminds me,” Freddy says to Holly, “do you have to xerox all of Elizabeth’s orders? Because the paper in that machine has to last until January.”

“We probably won’t last until January. I might as well xerox while I can.”

“I’m copy paper?” Jones says.

“Don’t worry, it’s just a paperwork thing. It doesn’t affect anything. Well, unless they cut our stationery budget. But there’s nothing to sweat about, this is just a little creative accounting. It goes on all the time.”

page 25-26

Large portions of the books are about the unintended consequences of senior management decisions. What happens when you cut the budgets so far that a department can’t function properly? Or when you pit departments against one another?

“Infrastructure Management bills for windows. Covering them up cut our overhead by 8 percent. But we’re just getting started. Today we’re getting rid of our desks and chairs. We figure we don’t really need them anymore, since we’re not doing any marketing. And it’s way better feng shui. We’ll put the computers on the carpet.”

“What do you use the computers for?”

The communications manager’s eyes widen. “Hey hey. That’s the kind of thinking we could use in marketing. That’s a great idea.”

Holly stops crunching. “If you’re not actually doing any marketing, aren’t you worried they’ll cut you?”

“With expenses this low? Which company do you work for?” She laughs. Her ponytail swishes.

Page 60

Salespeople who really focus on their clients are doomed to be disappointed. Especially because the clients they are selling to are other departments.

On level 14, Elizabeth is falling in love. This is what makes her such a good sales rep, and an emotional basket case: she falls in love with her customers. It is hard to convey just how wretchedly, boot-lickingly draining it is to be a salesperson. Sales is a business of relationships, and you must cultivate customers with tenderness and love, like cabbages in winter, even if the customer is an egomaniacal asshole you want to hit with a shovel. There is something wrong with the kind of person who becomes a sales rep, or if not, there is something wrong after six months.

Elizabeth doesn’t rely on the usual facades of friendship and illusions of intimacy: she forms actual attachments. For Elizabeth, each new lead is a handsome stranger in a nightclub. When they dance, she grows giddy with the rush of possibilities. If he doesn’t like her product offering. she dies. If he talks about sizable orders, she feels the urge to move in with him.

Page 11-12

My favorite story is one that explores how absurd practices can be perpetuated.

Holly folds her hands on her desk. “These chimps, they’re in a cage, and the scientists poke in a banana on a stick. The chimps try to grab it, but as soon as they do. the scientists electrify the floor, so all the chimps get a shock. This goes on until the chimps learn that touching a banana equals electric shock. Right? Then the scientists take one chimp out and put in a new one. This chimp, when he goes to grab the banana, he gets beaten up by all the others, because they don’t want to get shocked. You see?”

“That’s a terrible story,” Jones says.

“The scientists keep switching chimps, one at a time. until none of the originals are left. Then they add one more. The new chimp, he goes for the banana and the others jump him, same as before. But, see, none of them was ever shocked. They don’t know why they’re doing it. They just know that’s the way they do things.”

“So I’m the new chimp.”

“You’re the new chimp. Don’t try to understand the company. Just go with it.”

Page 49 - 50

The natural evolution of a company is to a slow, stagnating death.

Last is what The Omega Management System officially calls Realignment but is privately referred to by Project Alpha agents as “Evacuation.” This is when all the employees who are unhappy with their new role polish their resumes and start trying to find a better job somewhere else. If they’re successful, they leave; otherwise they stay, along with those who were close enough to Senior Management to be tossed a political scrap. In essence, the company is quickly reduced to to the incompetent and the corrupt. But it will struggle forward, laboring for as long as possible under the illusion that it is suffering from mere teething issues and not a deep, systemic sodomy of the entire corporate structure, until that becomes impossible and Senior Management does the only thing it can: announce a reorganization.

Page 220

The story has a number of surprise twists, and we get to follow the various characters along their growth paths. I don’t want to spoil the surprises, so I won’t go into detail on that, but the plot is solid and the moves at a decent pace.

The book does not glorify the cubicle worker who drives the white collar world. In political squabbles small and large, they are no better than the mythical senior management.

What I like most about the book is Barry’s humorous style. It’s funny despite its darkness. the characters are a little flat, but not distractingly slow.

The action sequences and epilogue could have been tighter and clearer, but they were still good.

If you’re interested in a novel that satirizes corporate life, or are just looking for something to read in your cube when you don’t think the boss is watching, pick up Max Barry’s “Company.”


You can see more of my book reviews here.

Tokyo Travels Part 16: Sensoji Temple and Nakamise-dori

After the Sumida River Cruise, we planned to visit the Sensoji Temple at the end of Nakamise-dori in Asakusa.

The plan did not quite work out.  We happen to be there on the last day of the Sanja-Matsuri festival, one of the three biggest festivals in Tokyo each year.  I suppose it's like trying to walk through Rockefeller Center on December 23.  With enough time and dedication you can do it, but it's not for the timid or those with a deadline.

The festival celebrates the founders of the Buddhist Sensoji Temple -- three fishermen who found a golden statue in the Sumida River.  The fesitval brings out people, music, and portable shrines from throughout the area.  You can learn more about it on Wikipedia.

It was an exciting afternoon, and I am still blown away by the crowds.

The temple is at the far end of Nakamise-dori (or Nakamise Street). The street is lined with permanent vendors who sell snacks and souvenirs to the visitors.  We made it only part way down the street when we visited with the tour.

Music played, people hoisted shrines, and Japanese visitors took pictures of one another flashing peace signs.

We started to walk through the main gate, but after a while we diverted through one of the side streets.  This video will give you a taste of the crowd. To shoot most of it, I put the video camera on a monopod, and held it way above my head.  The video is 5:36.

You can also see the video here.

I shot nearly 30 minutes of video.  You can see the raw, unedited footage here in Part 1 and Part 2

These are just a few of the pictures we took that afternoon.

Some of the temples and drums sets were built to be pulled/played by children.

Two days later, we went back.  The crowds were much thinner and we could see more of this important structure.

Of course, Denny's is nearby if you need a Grand Slam.

There were definitely a lot of shops.

Do you think this shop is targeting the locals or Western tourists?

The scale of the commercial operation contrasted with the peace of the Buddhist Shrine, but the two certainly coexisted.

As we headed back to the train, we couldn't help but smile when we saw this guy on the roof.

For more pictures of our trip to Asakusa and to Tokyo in general, click here.  I'll be adding more to the set over the next few months.

For more posts about our this trip to Tokyo, click here.

Coffee lids in public

Do you need a new neurosis?  Perhaps you already have this one.  But if not, here's something to think about.

This is the Seattle's Best Coffee shop in the South Satellite Concourse at the SeaTac airport.  This scene repeats itself at coffee shops and fast food restaurants around the country.

After you fill the serve-yourself soda, or you add the cream and sugar to your coffee, you take a lid from the stack and add put it on your cup.

I can never grab just one lid.  They stick together so I get two or three at a shot.  I peel off the lid I need, and then -- what?  What do you do with the extra lids?  Do you just throw these perfectly good lids in the trash?  Or, since they're unused, do you put them back on the stack?

I'm reasonably confident that the the staff at these facilities at least occasionally washes its hands. I'm not nearly as confident that the other customers do the same.

When I get the extra lids, despite my reasonably good hygiene, I toss them in the trash.Other customers do put them on the stack.

So the next customer to come along grabs the lid that will be in contact with their mouth and beverage from the stack, and they have no way of knowing who handled that lid before them.

That just seems kind of nasty.  And it's why I appreciate it when a store hands me the lid rather than just relegating them to the mass public pile.

Old images revisited

I was going through my old photos and I stumbled across this one.  I like it quite a bit.

It's a picture on a 10/100 Linksys ISA card that I installed in my desktop computer.  I tool the picture with a Toshiba PDRM70 3MP digital camera, back on 2000-07-29.  As I recall, I took the picture because I needed some numbers from the chips for some sort of tech support type of reason.

I hesitate to call it a Macro image because I don't think I was using those settings.  And I didn't put in the kind of effort that would be expected for "Macro Photography."

I think it does demonstrate the importance of going back and looking at old images from time-to-time.  What seemed dull then, may have become fascinating or beautiful over the ears, or with new eyes.

Do you have favorite image from the past that you only recently rediscovered?

Choose: Strip Search or Molestation

Do you want to be strip searched by the Back Scatter X-Ray or molested with TSA's "Enhanced Pat Down" at Seatac?

TSA is now installing the strip-o-matic machines at the North Satellite security check point. These machines use back scatter X-Ray technology to conduct a virtual strip search of passengers.You can see samples of these strip searches by doing a simple Google Image Search.

Some might say the images aren't so bad. Afterall the agent seeing them will never see the passenger being screened and will not be allowed to have any recording equipment in the room where they view the strip searches. Which, of course, confirms their explicitness.

TSA also claims the machines can't record images.

From the Seattle PI:

Regarding privacy, Parker said images from the machine go to a separate room, where a screener can radio back to the checkpoint if there's something suspicious. She said the screeners who see the passenger never see the image, while those who see the image never see the passenger.

The machines have no capacity to store imag [sic], and the screeners in the room may not have any cameras, cell phones or other recording devices. The TSA also applies a "privacy algorithm" that makes the images less explicit.

The don't appear to be segregating the machines and screeners by gender. You can't be sure who's looking at you and your kids.

Of course the claim that they don't store the images offers little reassurance. It's only a policy decision not to do it. It's not a hardware limitation.

In fact, the US Marshals service used similar machines in Florida at a courthouse.

From CNN:

The U.S. Marshals Service is confirming that it has stored more than 35,000 "whole body" images of people who had entered a U.S. courthouse in Orlando, Florida.

The images captured by millimeter wave technology are more ghost-like and far less detailed than those produced by "backscatter" machines commonly used by the Transportation Security Administration at airports nationwide.

Do you trust TSA to be more respectful or airline passengers than the US Marshals are of courthouse visitors?

Of course, it's entirely "optional." If you don't want TSA member virtually undressing you from a hidden room, you can opt instead for an Enhanced Pat Down. What is that like?

From The Consumerist:

"To call it a pat-down is a euphemism," said a spokesman for the ACLU in Massachusetts. "They really go for it."

He says that -- unlike the antiquated pat-down, which required TSA screeners to use the back of their hands when searching sensitive regions of your person -- the enhandced pat-down allows them to use their palms and fingers to feel and prod passengers.

One traveler who got the deluxe treatment at Logan sums it up thusly: "If anybody ever groped me like that in real life, I would have punched them in their nose."

From the Boston Herald:

Logan airport security just got more up close and personal as federal screeners launched a more aggressive palms-first, slide-down body search technique that has renewed the debate over privacy vs. safety.

For now, you can avoid this disgusting choice at SEA by not using the North Security Checkpoint. You can access all gates by clearing security at any checkpoint.

From the Seattle PI:

Starting Sunday, Sea-Tac Airport will close the North Security Checkpoint while the TSA reconfigures the layout to include the new scanners. Officials expect the closure to last approximately two weeks but say it should not cause delays because TSA will open extra lanes at the other checkpoints and have extra staff on hand to guide travelers.

So for you now, those who pay attention to the farce that is TSA do not have to make that choice at SEA. The only people subject to the strip search or TSA molesting will be those non-frequent travelers who are not familiar with the airport.

This insanity needs to stop. Treating everyone like they are being arrested is not going to help aviation security.  It's not making us safer.

And it is certainly not protecting our freedoms.

$2 million to study the lunch line

I know research is expensive.  And I know that $2 million is nothing in the big scheme of things. If it improves the health of tens of millions of kids, it's worth it.  But isn't there a better way?


Yes.  Skip the psychologists.  Talk to the marketers.


A recent article in the Seattle PI talks about psychological research to encourage kids to eat better.  It's worth a read.

Hide the chocolate milk behind the plain milk. Get those apples and oranges out of stainless steel bins and into pretty baskets. Cash only for desserts.

These subtle moves can entice kids to make healthier choices in school lunch lines, studies show. Food and restaurant marketers have long used similar tricks. Now the government wants in on the act.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced what it called a major new initiative Tuesday, giving $2 million to food behavior scientists to find ways to use psychology to improve kids' use of the federal school lunch program and fight childhood obesity.

A fresh approach is clearly needed, those behind the effort say.

...

Some tricks already judged a success by Cornell researchers: Keep ice cream in freezers without glass display tops so the treats are out of sight. Move salad bars next to the checkout registers, where students linger to pay, giving them more time to ponder a salad. And start a quick line for make-your-own subs and wraps, as Corning East High School in upstate New York did

...

The agency requested proposals from researchers on how to get kids to actually eat the good stuff. Cornell scientists Brian Wansink and David Just will get $1 million to establish the child nutrition center. Fourteen research sites around the country will share the other $1 million.

...

For example, some Corning schools had express lines for a la carte items - mostly chips, cookies and ice cream. The idea was to reduce bottlenecks caused by full tray lunches that took longer to ring up. But the result was a public health nightmare.

"We were making it very convenient for them to quickly go through the line and get a bunch of less nutritious items," Wallace said.

After studies by Wansink, they renamed some foods in the elementary schools - "X-ray vision carrots" and "lean, mean green beans" - and watched consumption rise. Cafeteria workers also got more involved, asking, "Would you rather have green beans or carrots today?" instead of waiting for a kid to request them.

...More

I hate to disappoint the USDA, but this research has already been done.  Maybe it's not published in psych journals, but it is done.  Talking to the psychologists is the wrong answer. They need to talk to people in Marketing.

This is a merchandising and marketing issue.  Grocery stores, retail stores, and markets around the country conduct this experiment everyday.  The experts in displaying foods and promoting one item over the over work it all out in aisles and cubicles around the world.  They know how to do it because their jobs depend on it everyday.

 The USDA needs to step away from the psychologists and work with the product marketing and store merchandising specialists who already know how to move the product.

Movie Review 15: The Social Network

John Keating: Language was developed for one endeavor, and that is - Mr. Anderson? Come on, are you a man or an amoeba?
John Keating: Mr. Perry?
Neil: To communicate.
John Keating: No! To woo women

That classic exchange from Dead Poets Society is the key theme that drives the story of “The Social Network” and likely the creation of Facebook in the real world, as well.
The Social Network, written by Aaron Sorkin, and based on the book, The Accidental Billionaires purports to be the story behind Facebook.  While the general content may be true, there are plenty of fictionalized accounts in the movie. Sorkin did not approach the subject matter and a journalist, but as a story teller.  And as a story teller, he did a great job.

When I first heard there was going to be a Facebook movie, I was skeptical.  When I saw the previews I thought, “Huh.  This might not suck.”  Now that I’ve seen it, I can honestly say this a surprisingly good movie.

The movie uses two legal depositions as the framework for telling the story of how Mark Zuckerberg and his friends at Harvard created Facebook. It seems an odd choice to use that framework since “website authoring” and “legal deposition” aren’t typically buzzwords that bring people into the theater. 

The film opens as Erica Albright, Mark Zuckerberg’s (fictional) girlfriend breaks up with him in a restaurant.  He goes back to his Harvard dorm room, blogs nastily about her while drunk (seriously, folks, BWI, or blogging while impaired, is rarely a good idea (come to think of it, BWI, or Baltimore Washington International airport is also rarely a good idea)), and then hacks several Harvard networks to create a website that ranks women based on attractiveness.  He crashes the network, and we are off to the races.


The reason the subject matter works as a movie is because the fact that we’re talking about Facebook is almost incidental.  The story is about friendship, betrayal, naiveté, revenge, pettiness, and honor.  The socially inept and obsessively driven Zuckerberg moves forward with his ideas and get caught up folks who are simultaneously exactly the right people and wrong people to be involved with.

In many respects, the story is about a bunch of kids who don’t have the wisdom or experience to realize they are in over their heads.

Jesse Eisenberg does a fantastic job as Mark Zuckerberg, and is all about the contrast.  He shows a great balance of awkwardness and smarminess. You’re never sure if his Zuckerberg needs a hug or a smack across the face.

Andrew Garfield does a good job playing Eduardo Saverin, though he seems to lack depth or definition at times.  Sorkin doesn’t flesh out the character or the relationship with Zuckerberg well enough. Saverin is supposed to be Zuckerberg’s best friend, but why?  Sorkin doesn’t do enough to establish that relationship, and Zuckerberg and Saverin are different enough, that we can’t just assume the friendship is natural.

Justin Timberlake plays a larger than life Sean Parker, the over the top Napster and Plaxo founder, who splits Zuckerberg and Saverin apart.  The Zuckerberg and Parker characters look an awful lot alike, which severs the story in interesting ways.  It shows Zuckerberg the person he can potentially be if things go right.  And it shows Parker the person he would like to be again.

The most interesting thing I learned about Facebook from this movie was that Sean Parker had such a role with the company.

At times, Timberlake’s portrayal is distracting.  His character reminded me less of the young genius who changed the record business for ever, and more of Neal Patrick Harris’s Barney from “How I Met Your Mother.”

Brenda Song, known to many as the Disney Channel’s London Tipton from “The Suite Life of Zack and Cody,” plays a very different character here.  As fellow Harvard Student Christy Ling, she connects Zuckerberg with Parker.  She appears several more times in the story, but I’m not sure why.  It’s as though Sorkin just wanted to add love interest but her presence doesn't really add much to plot or flesh out the characterizations of Zuckerberg or Saverin much.

Armie Hammer does a great job playing twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss.  I had not idea it was one actor playing both of them until I read about it on the movie’s website.  The characters felt different.  In the story, they are identical twins. But as I watched the movie, I thought they didn’t look that much alike.  In fact they were more a like than twins because it turns out they were the same actor.

Characterization, though, is not Sorkin’s strong point.  He wrote them and their business partner Divya Narendra (played by Max Minghella) as nothing more than spoiled, entitled rich kids who’ve never had to earn anything.  They were the “dumb jocks” of the movie, and that seems too simple. 

They’re in the story because they founded an early Facebook competitor called ConnectU and claim they hired Zuckerberg to code it for them.  They sue him, claiming he stole their idea and turned it into Facebook.
It’s possible Sorkin’s sketch of them is accurate, but I doubt it.  It was too flat and simple.  Whereas other aspects of the film and story were more nuanced, this thread was too black and white.

Despite those concerns, this is still an excellent movie.  Sorkin’s story telling is compelling. The cinematography is also excellent.  The crew race in England is beautifully shot. The pacing is crisp.
 
I don’t know how much it reflects the reality of the story of Facebook; doubtless there is plenty of fictional content.  It is, after all, a story and not a documentary.

It exceeded all my expectations, though, and is definitely worth seeing.

For more of my movie reviews, click here.

Here is the movie trailer:

Bringing Bacon to the masses

You may have seen the Shoebox Chef proclaim the awesomeness of Bacon Salt.  It's a great all around seasoning on sandwiches, meats, and, of course, Top Ramen.  I've yet to try it in coffee, but maybe someday...

The fine folks who produce this magical dust, and who also gave us Baconaise, run a Seattle-Based company that produces all things bacon related.

The Seattle PI recently profiled the company that I'm sure has a strong future ahead of it -- J&D Foods.

Their business cards say "Nice to meat you" on one side. Flip a card over and read: "Everything should taste like bacon."

That pretty much sums up the philosophy that spawned J&D's Foods, a Seattle company that might be giving Starbucks and Amazon.com a run for its money as the city's most-publicized company.

...More

These people are spreading the good word of bacon.  They're spreading it on Jon Stewart.  They're spreading it on Oprah.  They're spreading it on Ebay.  And They're spreading it on bread.

I wish them and their acolytes nothing but success.

Off to the cleaners

I'm not the best housekeeper.  My apartment is cluttered, but it is reasonably clean (defined as no odd smells or critters).  And I don't change my sheets as often as some people (of course they don't get much use consider the amount of time I spend on hotel sheets so it's okay).  But occasionally I get it in my head to actually clean something.  This year it was the bedding.

It started with the pillows.  I haven't been happy with my pillows for several years.  For a long time I had a stack of three that worked really well, but I had to get rid of them.  I think the oldest was about 25 years old.  The others were much newer -- only 10-20 years old.  But eventually, they had to go.  I've bought additional pillows here and there, but never got quite the right combination.  

So it was time to reboot.

I bought all new pillows to start from scratch, but they're still in their packaging.  I decided I needed new pillow protector things and new pillow cases, since I was getting new pillows.

That led to sheets.  As long as I'm getting pillow cases, why not replace the sheets, too?  That's now on order.

And why not throw a new mattress pad into the mix, too?  Cleaning the existing one typically meant soaking it in Oxyclean in the bathtub for a day before prying it into the washing machine.

I'm also been told I need to get a bed skirt now.  I guess that makes it easier to hide stuff under the bed.  That's also on the way.

All this new stuff brings me to this: Blankets. Lots of blankets. And comforter covers.  Some new blankets and some that I had as a baby.  Most are somewhere in between.

I have a washer and dryer in my apartment, but a single throw really tests the limits of its capacity.  I've struggled to squeeze in king size blankets in the past, and then tried to dry them, with middling success. I was able to convince myself I successfully washed them.

Over the weekend, I finally did it right.  I hauled them all to an actual laundromat.  It's the first time I stepped in one in over 13 years.  Fortunately, the attendant took pity on me and helped me with my machine choice.

3 Industrial 40 pound washing machines, 6 dryers, and about 100 quarters later, I know have the cleanest blankets I've had in years.

If there's a moral to this story, it's this.  If you need to do laundry in Seattle, head over to Transformation-Surprise Laundromat.  The place was clean.  The attendant was friendly.  The machine all worked.  The other customers were pleasant.  It was one of the nicest laundromats I've been in, and even has glowing Yelp reviews.  They have some spiritual or religious connection that I'm not familiar with, and maybe that's why it's such a nice place. Check it out if you need one.

Now I'm just waiting for the new sheets to arrive so I can use my freshly cleaned blankets.  I'm sure that's the day my next road trip will begin.

Why we need better science education in Washington state

From the Peninsula Daily News:

The Clallam County Sheriff's Office responded to a call early Thursday morning from a Blue Mountain Road resident who was concerned about an unidentified flying object spotted on the horizon, said Undersheriff Ron Peregrin.

“We took a look at it through our binoculars,” he said, and determined that it was Jupiter, the largest plant in the solar system.

Peregrin said dispatchers received several more calls that morning from people mistaking Jupiter for a UFO, although he didn't know how many.

Jupiter last week was the closest it has gotten to the Earth in decades, said John Gallagher, who heads Port Angeles High School's astronomy club. It passed 368 million miles away, its closest pass since 1963.

...More

Tokyo Travels Part 15: Escalator Discipline

When I'm in a hurry at the airport, I avoid the moving walkways. It's faster to walk beside them. Why?  Too many people just ignore the sign.  It's really simple -- Stand Right, Walk Left.  If you are riding on the moving walk way and standing on the left side, knock it off!  Get over to the right so those of us who want to move quickly and can get past you.  And don't leave your suitcase blocking the left either.

One of my favorite things about Japan was something I've never seen before -- Escalator Discipline.

There are no signs, but they're not needed.  This is the case for both escalators and moving walkways.  People stand on the left and they walk on the right.   At some of the busiest train stations, hundreds of people will get on the escalators and stand on the right or walk to the left.  If an escalator is mostly empty, people still stand on the left.

Those in a hurry zip on by on the right, those not in a rush, patiently stand to the side.  It's amazing!

If we could import one human behavior from Japan to the US, I'd nominate escalator discipline.

One Night in Camtasia...

Actually, it's turning into months in Camtasia but that doesn't sounds as cool.

I've been spending a lot of time this month creating screencasts for work.  I'm putting together product training videos and sales program training videos.

This has involved me sitting in front of the computer with my headset on, and recording scripts that I wrote.  Then there's the post production stuff of trimming a second here, a half second there, resyncing the video and audio after I break it, and then finding out after I rendered the final product that I misspelled something on a source graphic.

Here's a few of the things I've discovered as part of this process:

• It is weird talking into my headset when there's no one on the other end.
• I'm at the point in my life where I no longer worry about the neighbors calling the cops because of a loud party.  I'm worried they'll call the cops because I'm speaking too loudly into my microphone about SKUs, referral fees, and purchase orders.
• After playing back my audio over and over again, I'm glad I don't have to hear myself speak in real life.  I'd just like to apologize to the world that does.
• Portions of the script that I wrote, I can read and record with few problems.  As soon as I get to a section where I copied the text from somewhere else in the organization, my tongue trips more than a hypersensitive car alarm in a hail storm.  
• I'm becoming a reluctant fan the Quik Time format
• 5 seconds is an eternity
• Deciding when a project is done is much more complicated than it would seem

It's been quite a learning process.  If I had to offer one tip to Camtasia users, it would be this:  Don't record your audio while you record your screen actions.  Separating the two processes allows you to concentrate on one things at a time.  And it makes editing and correcting easier.

Any other screencast tips?

Cirque du Soleil: Alegria

On Sunday, The GF and I headed down to Tacoma to catch the latest Cirque du Soleil show to reach the Seattle area.  Alegria, the long running travelling show, took up about a third of the Tacoma Dome.  We had a great time at the show.

We had excellent seats in the third row on the floor and only had to deal with mild clown harrassment.  They weren't nearly as obnoxious at "interacting" with the audience as they are at many other shows.

It seemed like a decent crowd, but it certainly wasn't sold out.

Here's what the show is about, according the their website:

Alegría is a mood, a state of mind. The themes of the show, whose name means "jubilation" in Spanish, are many. Power and the handing down of power over time, the evolution from ancient monarchies to modern democracies, old age, youth—it is against this backdrop that the characters of Alegría play out their lives. Kings' fools, minstrels, beggars, old aristocrats and children make up its universe, along with the clowns, who alone are able to resist the passing of time and the social transformations that accompany it.

I don't know what that means, either, and I've seen the show.

In that respect, it's much like most Cirque shows. Alegria is an older show that first started touring in 1994 so it doesn't try as hard with the story.  Since there's not as much plot in this show, I didn't burn up as many brain cells as I often do at a Cirque show in a futile attempt to figure out what the heck is going on.

I had a great time at the show, but it did have a few flaws.  I always feel conflicted in commenting about what I see at these shows because there it no way I could do any of that. The feats these athletes perform are just amazing.

The White Singer, dressed in poofy hoop skirt, put on a nice performance.  In most shows, the singer is in the background, and really just functions as another instrument.  In Alegria , "The White Singer" is, according to the website:

The White Singer is the storyteller who echoes in song everything she sees around her. She sings of melancholy and despair, of joy and happiness. Her luminous white gown is exquisite – underneath a bodice and skirt-frame adorned with jewels and pearls, is miles of flowing crinoline. In her dress and long white gloves, she moves like a delicate porcelain doll in a jewelry box.

She conveys a surreal and, for lack of a better term, adorable innocence.

There were some great acts.  The fire dancers were amazing. I knew we were in for something special when they had a couple of guys strategically placed on the audience floor with extra safety equipment.

The dual trapeze act was great with the added risk of them tumbling into the audience.  It's not like baseball, though.  If  you catch a wayward performer you don't get to keep them.

Many of the clown interludes started off entertaining, but seemed to go on a bit too long.  And the one right before intermission, which had the richest story, didn't seem to resolve itself.

The contortionists were mind blowing.  The two woman twisted and bended and became pointy in all the wrong ways.  We were close enough to see the expressions on their faces, as they calmly rested their cheeks upside down on their feet. They were so calm and relaxed it was amazing.  They could bend backwards so far, it seemed they could lean the back of their heads on their own bellies.  The skill and talent they displayed defied reality.

The biggest problem with the show was the pacing.  They front loaded the most compelling acts in the beginning of the show.  Much of the second act was anticlimactic.

That was especially the case with the last act.  They took extra time to set up an impressive net for the performers.  There was a swing high in the air and several horizontal bars.  The performers twirled and spun around them, jumped to the swing, hung upside down, and caught one another.  At the end of the bit, they did some impressive gymnastic dismounts, flew through the air and slammed loudly into the net.  And that was pretty cool.  The problem is that the rest of the act just didn't live up to the other acts earlier in the show.  The big finale was just not on the same level as the other performances. If it appeared earlier in the show, it would have been much more impressive.

If you're a first time Cirque visitor, prepare to be amazed.  If you've seen a lot of Cirque shows, this is familiar territory.  It's still worth seeing; it's just not the same transformative experience you may be looking for.

One more note -- the snow blowing was fantastic.

You can see my thoughts on other Cirque shows in these posts:

Kooza
Corteo
Mystere

Book Review 57: Only the Paranoid Survive

I'll describe what a strategic inflection point is a bit later in this book. For now, let me just say that a strategic inflection point is a time in the life of a business when its fundamentals are about to change. That change can mean an opportunity to rise to new heights. But it may just as likely signal the beginning of the end.

Page 3

Andrew Grove’s well known book, “Only the Paranoid Survive” was quite different from what I expected. It was more narrowly focused than I anticipated. I’m not disappointed though. I learned some new things about my industry, and it made me think more about the challenges a corporation will face. While Grove does not discuss this part of it, it’s clear to me these challenges can affect smaller organizations within a corporation. That, however, goes to my thoughts on how managers need to think strategically about their role in the organization, and is a topic for another blog post.

The book is all about corporate Strategic Inflection Points. Those are points in a corporations life when suddenly the wold is a very different place. Grove’s discussion is detailed and frank.

Clearly, the old world was no more. Something had changed. And the more successful the players were in the earlier industry, the harder a time they had to change with it.

Page 48

As Grove discusses these changes in the business environment, he often uses the phrase, “Something has changed.” Of course, whenever I see that phrase I think of Elphaba from Wicked. While Grove isn’t discussing good versus evil, he is still talking about similar things. Something happens and you can never go back to the way things were before. When it happens to a company, either the company makes major changes and grows, or it slowly contracts and dies.

The trick is to spot these Strategic Inflections Points while they are happening, recognize their potential impact, and act accordingly.

For Intel, Grove says that point occurred with shift to a PC compatible computer market and Intel’s decision to get out of its primary business -- making memory chips and focus on a new business -- making processors.

He also discusses the Pentium flaw from 1994 and its impact on the company. Since the he wrote the book at the birth of the consumer Internet in 1995 (it was published in the middle of the Dot Com boom) he disccussed the web only briefly. Even then, though, it was obvious it would be a Strategic Inflection point, perhaps not for Intel, but definitely for the computer business in general.

All this suggests that the Internet is not a strategic inflection point for Intel. But while the classic signs suggest it isn't, the totality of all the changes is so overwhelming that deep down I think it is.

Page 181

I have only a basic knowledge of the computer business prior to the advent of the PC compatible. I’d heard the names Wang and DEC, but besides some vague commercial memories, I couldn’t tell you much about them. Grove sketched out how the computer business worked in that era.

The computer industry used to be vertically aligned... this means that an old-style computer company would have its own semiconductor chip implementation, build its own computer around these chips according to its own design and in its own factories, develop its own operating system software (the software that is fundamental to the workings of all computers) and market its own applications software (the software that does things like accounts payable or airline ticketing or department store inventory control). This combination of a company's own chips, own computers, own operating systems and own applications software would then be sold as a package by the company's own salespeople. This is what we mean by a vertical alignment. Note how often the word "own" occurs in this description. In fact, we might as well say "proprietary," which, in fact, was the byword of the old computer industry.

Page 40

As the industry shifted from horizontal to vertical orientations, and memory chips became a more commoditized business, Intel faced the prospect of dwindling profits and revenue. Intel ultimately made the decision to abandon its core business to focus on new opportunities in the CPU business. That decisions in the 80s made Intel the company it is today.

In retrospect, its clear Intel made the right choice, but it wasn’t obvious at the time. As Grove tells the story, it was a heart-wrenching decision and a risky one at that.

Grove goes on about how challenging this was to Intel’s identity. He also explains just how out of touch with the issue his executive team was. While they were struggling with the decisions, it was already happening on the ground.

Over time, more and more of our production resources were directed to the emerging microprocessor business, not as a result of any specific strategic direction by senior management but as a result of daily decisions by middle managers: the production planners and the finance people who sat around the table at endless production allocation meetings. Bit by bit, they allocated more and more of our silicon wafer production capacities to those lines which were more profitable, like microprocessors, by taking production capacity away from the money-losing memory business. Simply by doing their daily work, these middle manners were adjusting Intel's strategic posture. By the time we made the decision to exit the memory business, only one out of eight silicon fabrication plants was producing memories. The exit decision had less drastic consequences as a result of the actions of our middle managers.

Page 96-97

In the case of Intel's exit from the memory business, how did Intel, the memory company, get to where only one factory out of eight was producing memory chips by the mid-1980s, making our exit from memories less cataclysmic? It got there by the autonomous actions of the finance and production planning people who sat around painstakingly allocating wafer production capacity month by month, moving silicon wafers from products where they seemed wasteful—memories were the prime example of this—to other products which seemed to generate better margins, such as microprocessors. These people didn't have the authority to get us out of memories but they had the authority to fine-tune the production allocation process by lots of little steps. Over the course of many months, their actions made it easier to eventually pull the plug on our memory participation.

Page 111

The executives at Intel made the decision to exit the memory business after the rest of the company was already implementing the decisions based simply on day-to-day resource allocation. When Intel finally announced the decisions to its customers, they had a similar response.

In fact, when we informed them of the decision, some of them reacted with the comment, "It sure took you a long time." People who have no emotional stake in a decision can see what needs to be done sooner.

Page 92

Fear of making the decision delayed it for sometime. And Grove realizes that delay was probably a mistake. Echoing a sentiment I’ve heard other executives express, Grove says:

Looking back over my own career, I have never made a tough change, whether it involved resource shifts or personnel moves, that I haven't wished I had made a year or so earlier.

Page 132

(Come to think of it, Wil Wheaton expressed that same sentiment in his book, “Just a Geek.”)

Grove explains that an executive must listen to the Cassandras in the organization. They’re in a better position to anticipate Strategic Inflection Points than management is.

Although they can come from anywhere in the company, Cassandras are usually in middle management; often they work in the sales organization. They usually know more about upcoming change than the senior management because they spend so much time "outdoors" where the winds of the real world blow in their faces. In other words, their genes have not been selected to achieve perfection in the old way.

Because they are on the front lines of the company, the Cassandras also feel more vulnerable to danger than do senior managers in their more or less bolstered corporate headquarters. Bad news has a much more immediate impact on them personally. Lost sales affect a salesperson's commission, technology that never makes it to the marketplace disrupts an engineer's career. Therefore, they take the warning signs more seriously,

Page 108-109

In Greek mythology, Apollo gave Cassandra the gift of prophecy, but when she angered him, he cursed her so that no one would ever believer her prophecies. I’ve know some salespeople in my life who can relate to that.

While everything in the book comes back to Strategic Inflection Points, Grove does offer other key business insights. Here’s how he describes the new rules of the horizontal economy. The seem like fairly basic business precepts to me. Did the world use to operate differently?

One, don't differentiate without a difference.

Two, in this hypercompetitive horizontal world, opportunity knocks when a technology break or other fundamental change comes your way. Grab it.

Three, price for what the market will bear, price for volume, then work like the devil on your costs so that you can make money at that price. This will lead you to achieve economies of scale in which the large investments that are necessary can be effective and productive and will make sense because, by being a large-volume supplier, you can spread and recoup those costs. By contrast, cost-based pricing will often lead you into a niche position, which in a mass-production-based industry is not very lucrative.

Page 52

To be successful, a company has to be focused and take calculated risks. Trying to preserve as many options as possible and spreading its efforts thin will not work, according to Grove. An organization needs to choose a direction and go for it. That may limit options later on, but it is the key to success.

If competition is chasing you (and they always are—this is why "only the paranoid survive"), you only get out of the valley of death by outrunning the people who are after you. And you can only outrun them if you commit yourself to a particular direction and go as fast as you can. You could argue that, since they are chasing you, you should give yourself all sorts of alternative directions—in other words, hedge. I say, "No." Hedging is expensive and dilutes commitment. Without exquisite focus, the resources and energy of the organization will be spread a mile wide -- and they will be an inch deep.

Second, while you're going through the valley of death, you may think you see the other side, but you can't be sure whether it's truly the other side or just a mirage. Yet you have to commit yourself to a certain course and a certain pace, otherwise you will run out of water and energy before long.

If you're wrong, you will die. But most companies don't die because they are wrong; most die because they don't commit themselves. They fritter away their momentum and their valuable resources while attempting to make a decision. The greatest danger is in standing still.

Page 151-152

When a company is meandering, its management staff is demoralized. When the management staff is demoralized, nothing works: Every employee feels paralyzed. This is exactly when you need to have a strong leader setting a direction. And it doesn't even have to be the best direction—just a strong, clear one.

Page 152

Mark Twain is often credited with saying something similar and more succinctly.

Put all your eggs in the one basket and --- WATCH THAT BASKET.

Pudd'nhead Wilson, Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar, Chap. 15

In another note he explains that the telling others in the company what they CEO’s priorities are doesn’t matter nearly as much as showing what they are. How an executive spends their time demonstrates their priorities.

One more word about your own time: if you're in a leadership position, how you spend your time has enormous symbolic value. It will communicate what's important or what isn't far more powerfully than all the speeches you can give.

Strategic change doesn't just start at the top. It starts with your calendar.

Page 146

In theory, if you look at your calendar, the things that dominate that calendar should also match up with your job priorities. If they don't, it’s likely time to ask serious questions about calendar management or job descriptions.

The book may be 10-15 years old, but the key precepts still matter. If you’re looking for a general business book, you can probably skip this one. If Strategic Inflection Points intrigues you, or you are a fan of Grove’s, definitely check it out. It’s a fairly quick read (I got through 90% of it flying from Greensboro, NC to Seattle, WA). The writing style is entertaining, if not tightly organized.

I’ll leave you with a few of Grove’s thought about the Internet, right when it was starting it’s world-transforming growth.

Netscape went public as I was working on this book. I knew of the company, and I thought that they had a lot of promise. But the way the stock skyrocketed on the first day it was available for public purchase and its continuing growth just blew me away. I could find no obvious rational explanation for this incredibly rapid stock appreciation. Something was going on, beyond merely a promising new company being discovered by a growing number of investors.

Page 167

The second thing is that, when you explore these developments first hand, you'll discover that mostly they aren't what they're cracked up to be. In the early days, getting from one place to another on the Internet took forever and when you got there, more often than not, you found a stale marketing brochure. Electronic banking is still a clumsy way to replace a stamp. And interactive television seems to have vanished even before the ink dried on the mega-announcements.

Page 112

It is likely that the Internet appliance is a case of turning the clock backward, given that the trend over the last twenty to thirty years has consisted of pulling down intelligence from big computers to little ones. I don't believe that the Internet is about to reverse this trend. But then again, my genes were formed by those same twenty or thirty years. And I'm likely to be the last one to know.

Page 184

If you’d like to see more of my book reviews, you can find them here.

Woodland Park Zoo Wins Award for Penguin Exhibit

Apparently, Seattle is a good home for Humboldt penguins.  According to the Seattle Times:

The penguin exhibit at Woodland Park Zoo has won one of the most prestigious awards in the zoo and aquarium industry.

The Association of Zoos & Aquariums honored the zoo with the Exhibit Achievement Award, according to a news release from the zoo.

"We are honored that our peers at AZA have recognized our goal of encouraging our zoo guests to explore and discover more about the Humboldt penguins' natural history and their plight in the wild, the birds' connection to people and the collaborative work underway to help this endangered species," Woodland Park Zoo President and CEO Dr. Deborah Jensen said in the release.
...More

I'm not surprised.  It's a nice exhibit.  The GF and I visited it last August.  It's outdoors, but it let's you see the penguins both on dry land and swimming under water.  Unlike the more traditional and mechanized displays at Seaworld, this one is filled with twists and turns. It has round windows and Plexiglas barriers. The top is open, so while the penguins can't fly or jump out, other birds can visit.  The penguins don't seem to mind.  I guess they're friendly hosts.

Here are some pictures I took during that visit in August, 2009.

There aren't an penguins in this picture, but it is from the penguin habitat.  The sun shined through the windows to cast this refraction.

It's easy to pass an hour or more at the penguin exhibit, watching those critters go about their business.

You can see more penguin pictures from this exhibit here.

Sheriff's Helicopter -- N407KS

During the President's visit to Seattle on August 17, very few aircraft flew over the city.  The King County Sheriff's Department helicopter was one of them.  It was a gorgeous earlier in the day, and much more conducive to photography than when Air Force 1 lifted off later on.  Here are a few pictures I took of the helicopter.

More pictures are available in this set.

Looking back on it, perhaps standing on the roof with a zoom lens pointed at an aircraft while the President was in town may not have been thine wisest choice...

Movie Review 14: Inception

Inception is a tough film to write about for two reasons.  First of all, it has a complicated plot with twists and turns can be difficult to conceptualize, let alone vocalize (or in this case, literalize). Second, explaining key plot elements requires spoiling parts of the story, and I don't plan to do that.

The bottom line is that Inception is a good film.  It's worth seeing on the big screen, but the effects aren't so grandiose that it requires an Imax experience.  If you miss it in the theater, don't worry; it's still worth seeing on DVD.

Critics have compared its mind-bending properties to Memento and Mulholland Dr. I haven't seen Memento so I can't comment on that.  Inception is a better film than Mulholland Dr, however.  The story, while complex, is also more compelling.

Inception follows a team of "extractors" as they pursue their schemes.  Extractors can share and and enter the dreams of other people.  They do this for the purpose of corporate espionage.  In Inception, someone hires the extractors to implant an idea in someone's subconscious through their dreams so they think it's their own idea.

The surprises and plot twist come from the nature of dreams.  The characters have to be aware of whether they are dreaming or awake, and the audience needs to keep track of the various dream states as well.

It's a great premise and the story telling is, for the most part, quite strong.

The effects in the dream worlds are impressive in their execution, but disappointing in their vision.  While it's important for the dreamer to not see things that reveal to them that they are dreaming, the fact is that people's "normal" dream worlds -- that which they accept as real at that moment and without question -- are a lot weirder and more creative that those envisioned in Inception.  The mundanaity of most of the dream worlds detracts from their credibility in the film.

The bigger flaw with the film is the use of the characters. It's hard to keep track or who is whom once the action starts flying. While a few of the main characters are easy to distinguish, others blend into one another.  They're simply not drawn in enough detail to make it easy to tell them apart and understand what they are doing in different scenes.

The other problem with the way the movie draws the characters is that I'm not sure why most of the them are there.  In many "scheme" films, a leader assembles his or her team.  Each team member has a distinct role, and we get to see each of them execute their role.  In the TV world, shows like Leverage and Mission Impossible are prime examples of this.

With Inception, that doesn't happen. Some of them appear to have roles, but those roles don't necessarily carry through the film.  Additionally, while some of them may have a clear prep role in the plan, when they move to the execution stage, I'm not sure why everyone who participates is actually participating in that execution.

The action in the dream worlds is fairly easy to follow for the most part, though I did start to lose track once we got to what resembles Hoth.  Again I think part of the reason for this is that I had already started to lose track of who was whom and what they were doing.

Despite those concerns, this is still a very good movie, and it's one well worth seeing.

Marian Call and Molly Lewis in Fremont

From MarianCall.com:

Marian Call delivers whimsical Alaskan folk funk for the Coffee Counter-Culture. She sounds a little like Joni Mitchell &; Regina Spektor raising the child of Jason Mraz &; Erin McKeown. Call's sound is always soulful, honest, and clever, loved by all types -- computer geeks, church ladies, teenage thugs, NPR listeners, and urban hipsters worldwide.

I first learned about Marian Call on the Seattle Geekly podcast.  If you are interested in the geek goings on in Seattle, you should be listening to Matt and Shannon's show, too.

Marian Call's music is basically Lounge meets Torchsong meets Nerdcore.  When I learned should had a show coming up and -- wonder of wonders -- I was going to be in town for it, I knew I should go.

I almost skipped it, however.  I was tired from a prior trip, and since I hadn't purchased tickets in advance I wasn't forced to go.  It just seemed easier to skip it for no good reason.  I get that impulse from time to time, and I resist it.

For several years, I had a sign up in my bedroom that said, "Don't not do stuff you enjoy for stupid reasons."  This mantra is what got me out the door on Thursday evening.  And I'm glad I went to the show.

Molly Lewis opened for Marian.  Molly, you may recall, also plays at w00tstock! and she often tours with Jonathan Coulton.  Molly sings awesome ukulele songs about Wikipedia and the Abraham Lincoln assassination.  I've now been to 5 shows where Molly played, meaning I have seen more of her concerts than I've seen of Billy Joel concerts.

Molly really seems to have grown as a performer over the past two years.  She appears more confident on stage with both her music and her crown banter.  She's less self-conscious than she did the first time I saw her.

Bottom line is that she did an awesome job.

Image by Brian Adams at http://baphotos.com

Marian Call was a surprise in a couple ways. For one thing, she is a surprisingly petite woman.  With her voice I expected someone a little taller and, well, bigger. For a another, she seemed a little more self-conscious on stage than I expected. For a third, she used a mechanical typewriter as a musical instrument.

That's all minor stuff, though.  The amazing thing about Marian is the power and richness of her voice. There were probably about 100 people in the room (maybe more), and I think Marian could have performed without a mic if she needed to.

It's not just the volume, but also the richness and energy of he voice.

I can imagine listening to here sing while I sip  a cocktail in a lounge in Rio De Janeiro on the hot evening of day 3 of a 4 day artificial intelligence conference.  Other attendees will be whooping it up in a sports bar down the street watching soccer, while just half of the tables at the lounge are occupied by couples and singles who know they are experiencing something special, in a unique place and at a unique time as Marian slowly sings, and the waitresses slowly pour themselves around the tables.

At the Fremont show she sang songs about love and science fiction -- about space travel and pick up trucks. She sang about cheerleader zombies and karaoke. She sang about Geek pride and insecurity.

It was a great show.  It didn't have the same zany energy you see at other shows, but that's not what this one was about.  It was a lower key event and that was just fine.

The show did lack a sense of intimacy, but that's likely because Marian rarely performs with a band or (I gather) a crowd this size.  The show also seemed to be something of a homecoming for Marian.  And that's a tough balance.  I imagine that as Marian gains even more success (a given) she'll become more experienced with this format.

Regardless, if you get the chance, catch her show.  She has shows coming up in Vancouver, BC; Bellingham, WA; and all over the east coast as she strives to perform in all 50 states. You can see her upcoming schedule here.  You can also learn more about arranging a house concert on her site.

You can listen to her songs for free here.

It's certainly not a bad way to spend a Thursday evening.

WA-Boom!

Who’s that hiding behind a building?

Let’s take a closer look.

Oops.  It may have gotten away.

There it is.  My.  It looks like a 747 over Seattle. That’s not so unusual.

But which 747?  Why, it’s Air Force 1.

 

Since I grew up in NYC, the announcement that the President is visiting results not in excitement, but in eye rolling.  The traffic hassles of dignitaries can be real pain.  But it doesn't happen all that often in Seattle, so folks will line the street, hoping to catch a glimpse of the President. And they did just that on 2010-08-17.

The day was not without its adventure.  At about 1:50 in the afternoon, I heard what sounded like two loud explosions in the city.  I saw no smoke out the windows, and though it might have just been a truck.  But then Twitter burst with activity.  About 15 minutes later, the consensus emerged on line that the sounds were sonic booms.  More details here.

Apparently, while the President was at an event, someone in a float plane (who didn’t check airspace restrictions prior to taking off) violated the Seattle airspace restrictions.  Two fighter jets took off from Portland, and zipped up to Seattle at near maximum speed to intercept the potential threat.  It turned out to be nothing, but it certainly added some extra excitement to the day.

At the end of the day, the President took off from BFI, heading north out over Seattle.  The plane turned right over the Green lake area (I think) and headed east to Ohio.

I got a few pictures of the aircraft through what I later realized was a really dirty lens.  The hazy skies and thin clouds also made photography challenging.

Regardless of who the primary passenger is as any given time, I’ve always found Air Force 1 to be one of the most beautiful birds to ply the skies.

Shatner-Palooza: Why...does...he...speak...that...way?

In this clip, Shatner explains his unique cadence.

You can also find the clip here.