Exception: Cat with No Legs

Legless Cat

I said I don't post pictures of my cat, but I figure this is a good exception in that I am making fun of her.

Pleasant Surprise

My first meeting at work was a one-on-one with Chris. (For those that don't know, that's time where you and your manager, or in this case my "skip-level manager," get together to talk about things like career. With Michael, I meet weekly.) We have one scheduled for a half-hour every three months. That's two whole hours a year! Hmm. Sounds a little light, now that I mention it.

Anyway, Chris was a few minutes late and I was thinking that's kind of, well, lame, considering that we only get two hours a year and five minutes is just over 4% of that time. Yes, I actually did the math in my head while I waited in the hallway, which is why I didn't see his email saying he'd be late.

Then he shows up, we sit down in his office, and he says, "Hey, have you had breakfast? How about we go to the diner, 'cause I'm really hungry." He drove, we stopped at a bank so he could get cash, then we had breakfast. He paid for mine and took the time to talk through the biggest issue I face these days in my current job. The half-hour ended up being a catered hour-and-a-half. So my attribution of "lame" was completely misplaced. What a pleasant surprise. Seriously.

What I've really learned is that I need to make sure not to do that kind of attribution or pre-judgment in the future, but let the aggravation only happen after I know the whole story and determine that aggravation is truly warranted. Then, deal with it like an adult, not a petulant child. Sound like a plan?

New Guitar

I've started up my guitar lessons again after a hiatus of over a year, and I'm very excited about it. In the first lesson, my instructor, Colt Valenti, started me on some techniques for blues guitar. I can tell the difference in my playing after only one lesson.

I've also bought a new guitar, a Schecter Diamond Series, CSH-1, pictured to the right. The manufacturers website has all the specifications. I already had a very basic Fender acoustic and a Fernades electric. I think it's a Fernandes Revolver. At least after a look at their website, that's what seems to match it closest. It is about 15 years old now, so the minor differences are probably just the evolution of the product. Mine is also a purple color that is apparently no longer available in the new ones.

What's compelling to me about this particular guitar includes price (only $600 on sale at Guitar Center, which makes it on the inexpensive side,) the hollow body with F-cuts, and the lack of a floating tremolo. My Fernandes has the floating tremolo, which means it also has a locking nut. That means that to make more than minor adjustments to the tuning, you have to use an Allen wrench to unlock the strings. Some of the music Colt has tried to teach me involves doing stuff like dropping the bass E string to a D, like when playing music by Soundgarden. That's a five minute operation with a floating tremolo and really cuts into lesson time.

Having a second guitar also means I can have one at home and one at my office. Having a guitar at the office may seem really strange, but by keeping my Fernandes there the last month or so, I've actually practiced more. Sometimes I have ten minutes between finishing a task and an upcoming meeting, and I practice my guitar during that time. I'll also sometimes play when I get to the office early or stay late. All these things happen enough that I was actually getting better even without lessons, but the progress was way too slow.

Lessons, however, are a necessity. If you're thinking of learning to play an instrument, take lessons! You'll waste enormous amount of time trying to figure it out yourself from books or CDs when an instructor-led lesson will accelerate the learning process 100 times.

Attack of the Yellowjackets

Today, my kids were playing outside the house (this is in Maryland) and managed to kick up a ruckus on the part of some yellowjackets. There was a lot of screaming and stinging and tiny things chasing much bigger things which ran away. Fleeing to the house brought some of the little critters inside, which induced more screaming and flailing about. Paramedics were called, but everyone seems okay.

As usual, Katerina took the worst of it, getting nailed something like ten times. Katerina seems always to be the one getting hurt. She's the one that managed to find out which slats in the porch railing were rotted through by falling through them to the concrete six feet below (lots of screaming that time, too, mostly by people other than Katerina.) Despite nothing more than scrapes that time, Katerina ended up with a broken arm after being pushed to the blacktop in school by a neighborhood boy (that liked her a lot and felt really bad about it afterwards.) She also got so excited about Christmas morning one year that she wouldn't eat and when Olympia and I arrived to announce it was time to open some presents, she passed out, scaring the heck out of everyone else (a bunch more screaming - there's a lot of that around her.)

She takes it well, though. When I called today, she answered the phone and said, "Fine," when I asked her how she was - never mentioning she'd been stung repeatedly. She also cried as much when the doctor took her cast off her arm as when it was broken. She said her cast had become her friend and didn't want to see it go. What a trooper!

I think they've figured out to stay away from the far back corner of the yard now.

How My Shoes Got Wet

OK, between comments and email, apparently people want to know how I got my shoes so wet last night. Here it goes:

I went to get some dinner fairly late at TGI Friday's in Kirkland. (I actually wanted chicken wings from Wing Dome, but got there just minutes too late.) In front of the restaurant is a fountain and around the fountain are a bunch of bronze statues of people. One is of a little kid, pointing, who's standing right on the edge of the fountain.

I was walking around the fountain and didn't notice the kid statue until I suddenly thought there was someone there. I spun around to see who had snuck up behind me and whacked my side on hand of the statue. That hurt a lot (I have a bruise today) and I jumped back - directly into the fountain.

As I waded my way out, a woman walking by was laughing at me, which was okay, because I thought it was pretty funny, too. I told her, "Did you see that? That statue pushed me in! What a jerk!"

Mess with Their Heads

I got my sneakers really wet last night, so I needed to wear different shoes today. I wore dress shoes. Since I was going to wear dress shoes and a long-sleeved shirt anyway, I went ahead and wore dressier pants, too, instead of my usual jeans.

That really messes with the heads of your managers. They have to be thinking, "Is he interviewing? Is he planning to leave?" I think it might even make them treat you just a bit better in the hopes that it will distract you from aspects of work that you find less than pleasant.

I also picked up the book "Difficult Conversations" today at Kevin's recommendation. It's subtitled, "How to Discuss What Matters Most." It occurs to me that even if I never read it or read it and learned nothing, just having it conspicuously on my desk could improve the tenor of conversations I have with co-workers because it at least looks like I'm trying to figure out how to work with them better.

I didn't set out to mess with their heads, but it's so easy I can't help but do it without trying.

At Work Today

Something overheard at work today: "You know, I come in before him and leave after him, and I'm not even working all that hard."

Book Title

I was talking with Elizabeth about the topic of rewards versus efforts, which is one of the topics I'm thinking to include in a slowly forming book concept. I mentioned to her that I was thinking to put this into a book and she asked what the title might be.

I don't know what it'll be, but I bet it'll follow the formula and be called something like "Thing: A long phrase describing the contents."

Better Attitude About Review

It took me much less time to get past what I always see as terrible news with my annual review this year. That's surprising, because I was very disappointed with my final score at first. But then, I realized that getting a score that translates as "exceeded expectations" instead of "greatly exceeded expectations" really isn't so bad, especially when I work at one of the top software companies (and arguably one of the top companies period) in the world.

I've also received bonuses this year that exceed the U.S. poverty line for a family of three beyond my base pay, and a larger family than that if you include stock awards. I also received a raise that exceeded the estimated inflation rate for 2004. What is there in that such that complaining about it makes sense?

My manager's feedback on the review boils down to, "Dude, you are the awesome, but you really should learn to play nicer with others even when they annoy you, heck, even if they deserve it." It would be so cool if he just included that as a synopsis. I'm going to ask him to do so.

That's what I'll work on this coming year. Even if I personally produce less, I'll focus on getting less stressed out and making sure that those around me are more successful. An interesting side effect is that if I'm asked to cancel my plans and work some weekend, I'll be able to say, "No, that will make me very cranky and I don't get along with my peers as well when I'm cranky. I think I need to limit stuff like that."

*Cough, cough*, Dad?

I just got off the phone with my dad. Just after I hung up, I coughed twice. These two events, talking with Dad and coughing, in such time proximity to one another reminds me of how as an adult, I now cough exactly like my dad does. So does my brother, Adam. In fact, I pointed this out to Adam once and he said, "Yeah, I've noticed, too. When I do cough, it's always, *cough, cough*, Dad? Is that you?"

Eerie. I guess we do all become our parents eventually, in so many ways.

Reviews

It is currently review time at Microsoft. We're actually at the tail end of that time because as of September 15th, if your manager hasn't given you your review, you'll find out what "your numbers" are anyway, as you'll get a paycheck that reflects the changes. The "numbers" consists of a review score, a stock award, a raise, a bonus, and perhaps a promotion. Review scores run from 2.5 to 5.0: 2.5 if you're about to be fired, 3.0 if you are considered a weak performer (although there are exceptions, like for people who just joined a team and despite HR discouragement of such a policy often get a 3.0,) 3.5 for reasonable good performance, 4.0 for great performance, and 4.5 or 5.0 if you had great performance and get lucky (or something.)

My group is running late. No one on my team knows their numbers yet, and that's kind of exasperating because we're two months into the next review cycle and don't have a clear idea of the rewards for the past review cycle. I should get mine tomorrow, though, and that will be at least one huge relief because I really don't need additional areas of uncertainty in my life right now - I have more than enough of those already.

Reviews also include a sort of essay by your manager about your performance was over the year. This may or may not correspond to the actual review score since usually your manager doesn't have any direct control over the score you get. For example, my last review reads like a 4.0 review, but I actually received a 3.5. In my experience, reviews, even good ones like my "tracking to 4.0" review mid-year (where some groups give a "tracking to" score that may or may not mean anything during the actual yearly review) are basically demoralizing. Such reviews usually include a basic statement of the good things you did, without going very deep on the subject, followed by a detailed and excruciating picking apart of what could have gone better. As such, I generally dislike the review process, despite getting continually better reviews since I started at Microsoft.

If I were to go back to my small business and have employees again, this is not how I would handle reviews. I would fall back on Peter Drucker's suggestions to keep reviews positive and save the negative stuff for coaching sessions along the way. Peter Drucker is one of the world's foremost experts on management and I trust his opinions on things of this nature.

One last thing I'll add is something Trevor said to me and others about writing reviews, gleaned from some study he's done on writing good reviews, something that makes darn good sense: "When writing a review, you should try to include words like 'expectations.' You should avoid using words like 'idiot.'"

43 Things

http://www.43things.com/person/darktortoise

I've started my own list on 43 Things (and on the companion site, 43 Places.) This website is an incredibly cool idea, just the sort of thing that makes me happy to be living in the age of the Internet.

Call Me Overton?

I've been toying with the idea of asking people around me to refer to me as "Overton" rather than "Aaron." I like my last name better than my first anyway. I wonder if it would stick? Or just seem ridiculous?

My grandfather was always called Overton, even by my grandmother. She explained to me recently that she had met him at work where everyone was referred to by their last names rather than their first names. Even after they got married, she thought of him as Overton and just kept with it.

Think of the other examples: Wasn't it cool in the movie, "Aliens," that everyone called the heroine Ripley, her last name? On the TV series, "Alias," don't you like that Sid's romantic interest is called Vaughan rather than Michael? How about "The X-Files," with Scully and Mulder? No apparent lack of intimacy, but so much more interesting than "Dana and Fox."

My readers on this list are mostly the people that know me best, mostly. (Another little "Aliens" reference, there.) What do you think?

Car Accident Continues

When I imagine a car accident, I now picture it differently. Instead of engine oil, metal, and plastic flying around, I picture an enormous explosion of paper that covers the entire neighborhood.

Contributing to this mental image is the delivery of the civil case now filed against me King County Superior Court for unspecified damages covering a host of complaints. The trial date is set for February 12, 2007.

I guess I need to talk again to my insurance company (that's been uncomfortably quiet) and find an attorney that I can't afford but need to have.

GenCon Weekend

The rest of GenCon was great fun. Elizabeth and I played more games, including a second pass at the True Dungeon game, this time for the other adventure. There was one particular room in there that was worth the entire price of admission. In it, we entered a room with a silence spell over it. In play terms, that meant that anyone who communicated through sound would take damage. A riddle written on the wall indicated that to exit the room, we had to ring a bell that was there, which meant lifting the silence.

Lifting the silence required four different people to put their hands into the mouths of skulls mounted on the wall and "endure" the experience. I went first and it was really freaky. The mouth of the skull was filled with what felt like spiderwebs. Then, as I was standing there with my hand through a hole in the wall, it felt like something started licking my hand with a big, gross, slimy tongue. I almost yanked my hand out, but then settled down and let it happen. Finally, my hand was pushed out and had a letter stamped on it.

I knew Elizabeth was going to freak out at it, and two other members of our group had done it already. She put her hand through it and I moved over behind her and held her arm in place. The rest of the guys with us gathered around and encouraged her (silently) to keep quiet. It was totally obvious when the hand-licking thing started, because Elizabeth stiffened and clapped her other hand over her mouth. So there we are, six guys huddled around a teenage girl who's hand is stuck in the mouth of a skull where something unseen licks at her, all trying to stay totally quiet, the scene lit only by a couple of small green glowing bulbs. That's an incredibly tense situation that was about as entertaining as anything that weekend.

Most of the rest of our time was spent exploring the exhibit hall, although we played a game of Pirates of the Spanish Main with our newly acquired ships and participated in a free session where you get a free miniature and get to paint it using paints and brushes supplied by the sponsors, in this case Reaper Miniatures. It was the first time I'd painted a figure in quite some time, so I wasn't totally happy with it, but it certainly got me thinking about picking up painting again.

I think four days was enough (and Elizabeth agreed) but I'm looking forward to another convention when I can, and GenCon next year at a minimum.

GenCon Friday

Friday at GenCon started with some aggravation that was happily averted. Late Thursday, my badge fell off somewhere between when I looked at it while crossing a street coming back from dinner and entering the convention center a block away. I noticed it was missing no more than three minutes after it fell off, but after retracing my steps three times, I figure it was just gone. That's bad, because replacement of the badge was both necessary and $70. Fortunately, Zev was able to wrangle me a GM badge under the Z-Man Games name, and I was able to avoid paying for a new one.

I realize I forgot to mention that on Thursday, Elizabeth and I tried out Pirates of the Spanish Main by WizKids. You get these little plastic cards where you can punch out pieces and assemble them into pirate ships. Then, by taking turns moving them and firing with cannons, you fight the other players ships and try to sink them before they sink you. The basics are very simple and the game is very compact, so we bought a few packs of ships.

After some more time poking around the exhibit hall, we went to play the National Security Decision Making Game. Not the most exciting title, but it's a game of role-playing political leaders, military leaders, and so on in a real-world setting with a near infinite number of scenarios to play. Elizabeth found the briefing very confusing, so she instead went to watch some anime and go back to the exhibit hall. I stayed to play and ended up in a dual role of Air Force Chief of Staff and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. There were about 50 people in the game, half playing US roles, half playing Iranian roles. In the game, the Iranians were developing nukes, an Ebola outbreak was spreading through Africa and bounced to continental Europe, and internal intrigue was going on in both countries. The winners are determined by judgement call of the group of facilitators, and I nabbed a very respectable fourth place by being the instrumental player in containing the Ebola outbreak and building some Air Force-controlled bioweapons despite international treaties and without the Secretary of Defense or President knowing that it happened.

We also tracked down my good friend Bobby, who has left his "regular" job to become a full-time miniatures sculptor. I hadn't talked to him in some time, but we picked up right where we left off, which to me is the best indication of true friendship. No matter how long it's been, it's like no time has passed when you get together again. I caught him at his sculpting demonstration table, put my camera in front of my face, and called out, "Mr. Jackson, a picture please?" He looked up, I got the photo below, and he only figured out it was me when I lowered the camera. Warm welcome number two!


Bobby Jackson, Cool Sculptor Guy

Later, Elizabeth and I got into a game of Seafarers of Catan on a "giant" board. It wasn't as large as I expected, but it was still fun to play on a cool board. It was an incredibly close game, as I was prepared to win on my next turn when another player, Carol, picked up her last victory point and won ahead of me. Here's a look at the special board:


Giant Seafarers of Catan Board

We then went to a seminar, where I was the "expert." One of my StormReavers, Steve, helped me set up two seminar sessions where I would discuss the WarEngine rules with experienced players as we try to figure out what a new edition of the game might include. The seminar included only three attendees for this session, Steve, Ray, and David, but that was okay, as we worked through a better movement system, a better way to define weapon characteristics, and a few other smaller fixes. There's another session tonight and Bobby at least will likely join us for that one.

After the seminar, it was back to the Hong Kong Action Movie room, where Elizabeth again fell asleep, but I watched the last hour of a funny movie. I have no idea what it was, though, as I never saw the title.

Now, Elizabeth is ready to go and we're headed for the convention center again, prepared to fight for parking with fans coming to the Colts game in the RCA Dome right next to the convention. More True Dungeon today, too.

GenCon Thursday

Elizabeth and I have been very busy here at GenCon, doing lots of fun stuff. Thursday, we browsed the exhibit hall for a bit and found my friend Zev, working his booth for his company, Z-Man Games. Elizabeth was amazed at the warm reception I got when I found him. When I was running DemonBlade Games, she was really too young to appreciate the kinds of friendships I established with some other guys in the industry.

Just walking around is interesting in and of itself, not just because of exhibitors, but because of other people attending. These two guys posed for me in mock combat:


Elf Guy Battles a Ghost Buster

We signed up for several events, then we got to play in a True Dungeon adventure. This is really pretty cool, as you walk through these incredibly dark rooms that are tricked out to look like carved dungeon halls. In any given room, there are either traps to puzzle past or monsters to fight. I played the cleric of our group. To make it more interesting than just rolling dice, the power of the spells I cast was dependent on memory. They gave me a set of about 15 prayer beads, all different. Each corresponds to a word, such as piety or fortitude. When I want to cast a spell, I would tell the guy running the room which one and he would ask me to show him a particular one. "Show me your bead of grace," he'd say, and I'd pick out the one that looks like a little melon. The less tries to get the right bead, the better the effect of the spell. I got them on the first try every time, so I was very effective. In the end, out our group of seven characters, two were killed by a failed attempt past a puzzle room and the rest of us died in the last room by not figuring out the final puzzle fast enough. That wasn't all that uncommon, apparently, and it was still lots of fun. There's a second adventure, and Elizabeth and I will play that one later today.

We dropped by the miniatures hall after that to see how some of my old StormReaver demo guys were doing running games of Shock Force and variants, that being one of the games I wrote. There was a Shock Force game, a Stargate variant, a Civil War variant, and a WWII variant all going. It's so cool to see people still playing my games. The WWII game looked particularly well planned out, and I got a picture of one of the battles in progress that came out rather well:


WWII Action Using WarEngine Rules

We had dinner with Zev and Paul (Zev's friend that helps him with Z-Man.) Elizabeth and I then tried out a game of Memoir '44, a much simpler WWII battle game by Days of Wonder. Finally, we headed over to one of the hotels where Zev's company sponsors a Hong Kong Action Movie room that runs movies from 8am to midnight every day of the convention. We started watching Big Trouble in Little China, but by this time it was really getting late and we were both kind of nodding off, so we headed back to the hotel for the night.

Aaron and Elizabeth

Elizabeth's here now, too! I asked the woman at the hotel front desk to take this picture of us together. Actually, she was so happy to take pictures of us that she practically grabbed the camera out of my hand. She then raved about Elizabeth's hair, which is somehow the same hair Elizabeth herself had just said was so awful. Judge for yourself:


Aaron and Elizabeth

Coming to You Live from Indiana

I am in Indianapolis, Indiana, at the Courtyard by Marriott Indianapolis South. I arrived a short time ago and figured I'd go ahead and get my rental car and check into the hotel instead of just waiting three hours to get Elizabeth from the airport. She's arriving shortly on her first flight without parental escort.

We're here for GenCon 2005, a huge gaming convention I have attended before, but not in a few years and never with Elizabeth. I've also never been to the Indianapolis location for the convention, as it was still being held in Milwaukee the last time I went. I plan to take a lot of pictures, as there are lots of things to see, and to play a lot of games.

I did have a great conversation with two flight attendants on the flight from Seattle to Chicago. It was really good to get a different and positive experience from a previous one I've described elsewhere in this blog. For now, though, I'm going to go get Elizabeth and begin what should be a really fun extended weekend with my eldest daughter.

Don't Be That Guy

I went to a lecture today, "Getting Started in Podcasting." There were parts of it that were interesting although it certainly feels like there's a certain amount of much ado about nothing. Podcasting is mostly about recording some audio or video then posting it on the Internet. That's about it.

The thing is, part of the title is "Getting Started." It seems like there were several of "that guy" there, though. You know the one. He comes to the introductory session, but already knows all that stuff. Then, he doesn't just ask questions about advanced topics while the people sitting around him stare at him blankly, he peppers those questions with his own comments. Comments that effectively highjack the presentation so he can show how smart he is.

The first guy like this that I recall distinctly was in a college course in computer science. I forget the exact title of the class, but the examples were all written in Pascal. Almost every class session, and often multiple times in the same class session, he'd start his question or comment with, "Well, I use C and...." (For those that don't know, Pascal and C are two computer programming languages. Pascal was mostly used as an instructional language. C and its descendents are probably the most popular mainstream languages.) You could just hear it in the guy's voice that he thought he was just the coolest guy ever because he was in a college class and already was using C at work.

Eventually, whenever he'd be about to say something, I'd mutter under my breath, "Well, I use C and...." Seconds later he'd say it. When I say mutter, of course I mean "say quietly but not so quietly the half-dozen people around me couldn't hear me." It was all so entertaining for us, and way better than listening to that guy.

Don't be that guy.

Emmons Glacier Hike

Emmons Glacier

That's right, after several weeks of no wilderness hikes, I was out hiking again on Saturday. This time was to Emmons Glacier Basin in the Mount Rainier National Park, about seven miles. The best picture that I took was the one above, which happened to be only about 1.25 miles in, so someone wanting to get a great view would only have about 2.5 miles of walking. Of course, from Seattle that's about 90 miles of driving each way, so you'd really have to want to see this particular view to only walk 2.5 miles.

Emmons Glacier is the largest glacier in the "lower 48," and the trail to the glacier basin is a commonly used route for climbers headed to the summit of Mount Rainier. The Wikipedia entry for the glacier has some information on that and a good diagram of the area.

Gaurav went with me again, becoming my first two-hike companion. He vowed to quit smoking forever as we were driving back, but by the time I got around to writing this blog entry, he'd started again. What an insidious habit smoking is. I don't get it myself, because while I actually kind of like the smell of a lit cigarette, the couple of times I tried smoking back in college, it just wasn't all that appealing. I don't understand drinking coffee, either, for that matter.

We (and I use "we" to mean "me, while Gaurav listened) did chat a bit with a woman that was headed to the summit. She was going to spend the night at a shelter around 10,000 feet, then strike for the summit at the usual starting time of 1am, when the snow and ice near the top are at their most solid. She said it was her second time climbing Mount Rainier. The first time for her was four years ago and she described it as, "Easy." She started with a basic mountaineering course from The Mountaineers. They have a basic mountaineering course of study that starts in January and prepares you for a climb to the summit by mid-summer. Getting all of this information was my way of researching what it would take for me to climb the mountain myself. I plan to sign up for the course next January, so perhaps this time next year, I'll be headed to the summit.

In the meantime, it was great to be back in the wilderness again. It's a great contrast with my city walks. And today, Sunday, I was all primed to do Walk 5 in Seattle, for a total of some 14 miles of walking/hiking this weekend.

Jack of All Trades

Yesterday, I finished up some SQL views that will allow our internal customers to create ad hoc reports about beta program participation. This is a task that had been languishing for some time, waiting for a developer to come available who could do the work. But now, I'm doing it.

At Microsoft, there are six general disciplines defined on a team: Program Management (feature design and schedules,) Product Management (requirements and customer interaction,) Development, Test, User Experience (usability, documentation, and interface design,) and Release Management (deployment.)

With the work I just did for these views, it's my first work as a developer at Microsoft. My primary role is as a program manager. We don't have a dedicated product manager, so we're light on representation there, so I've picked up some of that work, too. I've filed as many bugs as anyone on the test team and have even had some days where my bug report total exceeds that of the entire test team combined. And I recently contributed as editor for our administration site's documentation. When we were deploying, I worked with the Passport team to make sure our site met compliance. That means I've now done some work in every discipline. And that is cool.

Something Interesting about Alaska

One thing that I always liked about Alaska is how it dominates US geography. Through a rather roundabout way, I was reminded of that tonight. I watched "xXx: State of the Union" and it was absolutely horrible. Rather than watch attentively, I ended up looking it up on IMDB while it was still playing. (4.0 out of 10, truly awful.) Then, I submitted a "goof" because they didn't even get the presidential order of succession right in the movie. I had to check my facts somewhere, and ended up on InfoPlease. I clicked around a bit there while I was already on the site and found a page on Extreme Points of the US.

If you check the footnote, you'll see that measuring from the Greenwich Meridian, Alaska is the most western, most eastern, and most northern state. (Maine gets most eastern only if you measure from the geographic center of the US - sure that makes more sense, but I'll stick with the one that makes Alaska even more interesting.) Since Denali, or Mt. McKinley as most people outside of Alaska know it, is the highest mountain in North America, Alaska picks up highest state, too. In fact, the sixteen highest mountains in the US are all in Alaska.

Incidentally, it has the largest land area of any state, more than twice Texas, the second largest (although with only 3% of the population of the Lone Star State.)

And remember, if you find any of these facts about Alaska boring, at least you're not watching "xXx: State of the Union!"

Some Random Thoughts

I have a bunch of relatively random, surprisingly serious things buzzing around in my head today, so I'm going to just write them down here. Perhaps I'll be mistaken for a big-name columnist.

People with big goals sometimes do stupid things in pursuit of them. Sometimes it works out for the best in the end, sometimes not. My latest was part of my Seattle City Walk, as I pushed for 20 miles in one day on Walk 4. There have been plenty of others.

Our executive branch of government became much stronger than originally intended around a century ago. More recently, over perhaps the last three decades or so, our judicial branch has become similarly overpowered. It seems our legislators are letting the balance of power get away from them at the expense of the American people. They should fix this while they still have the ability to do so.

Marriages that last a lifetime are much more challenging now that people's lives change so significantly in as little as a few years. The same is true for careers, homes, hobbies, and the like.

Racial segregation today is far more by choice than not. Go to, say, a university cafeteria and take a look the groups of students. Whites will be with whites, blacks with blacks, Asians with Asians, and so on. They aren't required to do so, but they feel more comfortable that way. I also don't think it's external pressure.

I'd rather have a member of today's Republican Party as commander-in-chief, but when it comes to spending, both our major political parties are absolutely out of control. Speaking of which, I'm not sure why the President gets all the blame for governmental overspending, since Congress has a say in the budget, too.

One last thing. I'm hungry.

Who's Afraid of an Empty Page?

Not me, not any more. I started blogging as a way to improve my writing, both in quality and quantity. Quality is much harder to self-judge, but I occasionally ask people like Trevor or Olympia what they think and I've had generally positive feedback.

Quantity, though, I can judge for myself. I always wanted to write when I was younger, but I'd get what many frustrated authors and artists get: fear of the empty page. How do you take the perfectly clean piece of white paper (or its digital equivalent) and dare to mark it with your lines?

A clean sheet of paper has a certain elegance to it. A piece of paper with your markings is changed. It no longer has the basic simplicity of a blank sheet and the complexity added may no longer have elegance. Let's face it, you may well have just ruined it. After a certain age, when quality and a desire to be excellent kicks in, ruining stuff that way is something we avoid. Little kids don't have this problem. Just watch a three year old with a stack of blank paper and a crayon. He'll go through twenty sheets, drawing grotesque and unidentifiable squiggles on each, in under three minutes if you let him. Some of the kids that keep it up become the famous artists of three decades later.

I realize my fear of the empty page is gone. My next post here will be number 250 since I started this blog over a year ago. When I comment on others' blogs, I find my comments are sometimes longer than their posts, but they just flow out of my head and onto the (digital) page. Hopefully, most of that is of value. (OK, I think it is. Setting aside the humility for a moment, I do feel my writing quality has improved significantly over the past year, and I don't think I was so bad to begin with. Now it would be up to you, the reader, to tell me I'm wrong instead of being not-so-subtly encouraged to tell me I'm right. I think it's easier that way.)

Andrew Tobias' Book

I just finished reading Andrew Tobias' book, "The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need." I think he's right. For anyone who wants the incredibly short version without needing to read the book: Get out of debt, then invest at least 10% of your income in no-load mutual funds.

If somehow that doesn't seem like enough, there's plenty more in the book. Tobias is an entertaining writer, which is hard to do with investment as the topic. I actually laughed out loud a couple of times. (Your mileage will vary. I have an admittedly unusual sense of humor.)

He starts out the book with a bunch of interesting tips on saving money and explains why saving money on your expenses is actually way better than any investment you'll ever find. Well, once I understood how the Microsoft Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP) works out to an 89% or better rate of return, I see that it's right up there, but that's an exception rather than a rule. If I could put 100% of my income into ESPP, I'd do immediately. But when he describes how simply buying your favorite wine by the case every quarter at a 10% discount rather than by the bottle once a week works out to a better than 40% return on investment equivalence, you're hooked. (In an appendix he goes on to describe how "better than 40%" in this particular case works out to 177%, which blows the socks off even ESPP.)

Later in the book, after warning the reader not to bother with playing the stock market in favor of those no-load mutual funds, he describes what all the terminology around stocks mean. If you've ever wondered what puts, shorts, limit orders, or margins are, you'll get it after you read this. In other sections, he describes the differences between 401k, regular IRAs, and Roth IRAs, and other mysterious acronyms related to investment.

I'll just say it one more time: what a good book, a must read for anyone that's trying to get back to zero (unfortunately, that's me) or finally has a positive net worth and has no idea what to do with it to make it grow.

Here's one of the things I thought was really funny, just to give you an idea. His definition of "margin calls": A margin call is what alerts you to the fact that your life is going to hell and that you never should have gotten into the market when you did, let alone on margin.

Get it and read it now.

Low Importance = High Interest

I've noticed that when I send or receive email marked with "Low Importance" it's actually another way to mark the email as particularly interesting. In essence, "It's low importance? Oh, then it's probably something personal or otherwise much more intriguing than a simple work-related message."

Do you read low importance messages before normal importance messages? Before high importance messages?

Back in Bellevue

It’s Sunday evening, and I’m home – in Bellevue, that is. One thing I’ve discovered is that in some ways, after living elsewhere for longer than I lived here, Fairbanks is still home. I kept looking around hoping to run into someone, anyone, I’d gone to school with in Fairbanks, but even after almost ten days, I didn’t. Granted, places like the clinic or Denny’s, where I took my grandmother for lunch a few times, might not have been the most likely places to run into people in their mid-thirties, like I am, but still, I had hopes. It’s hard to leave now, as I think my dad could really use my help here for another week, but while my manager at Microsoft has been very generous about letting me come up here for as long as I have, another week would probably be an unreasonable burden on my team.

On the good side, I’m an Alaska Airlines MVP from all the flying I did last year, and that means I’ve been upgrade to first class for my both segments of my flight home. I was also in first class on the trip up, so my pricey $730 coach flight (it’s a killer buying airfare on short notice) has become a pretty reasonably priced first class flight. If only I wasn’t getting back to Sea-Tac at 2am. If I’m keeping track of things correctly, I think I only need one more trip back to Maryland to reach MVP again for next year, so there are probably quite a few first class flights in my future.

After being away for ten days, there were tons of things I needed to get caught up on. My mailbox was incredibly full - enough that there was a slip in there that they were holding some of my mail (not the USPS, but the Pony Express place where I actually get my mail.) Except for a break to add to my Seattle City Walk project and dinner, I just ground away at a long list. I only finished about half of it anyway.

There was one other break this evening. The fire alarms went off in my apartment complex, all four buildings. What an incredibly obnoxious sound that was. My cat, Flicker, immediately ran over to me and was meowing piteously about the sound. I pulled out her carrier, stuffed her inside, and headed down to the courtyard. Only after I got down there did it occur to me that I brought her, but not stuff like my phone or my laptop. I'd had a conversation about that with Trevor once - what stuff do you own that you consider core. I'd figured I'd never leave either of those two items behind, since I can pretty much continue my present lifestyle with just that. But I guess when it comes to fire (or really, the horrible piercing noise of a fire alarm,) just getting my cat out of there was sufficient.

In the end, I think it was someone in the next building over that burned something in their oven, then opened the door to their apartment to try to keep their apartment alarm from going off. Instead, it set off the hallway detector, which triggers the entire complex' alarm system. Oops.

For now, though, I have to get to bed. I'm back at work tomorrow morning and I'm sure I'm going to have a long day ahead of me.

Grandma says "Thank You"

My grandmother just recorded this message in appreciation of all the well-wishing that's been done on her behalf.

Still in Alaska

I'm still in Alaska, but headed home the day after tomorrow. Hopefully not that Day After Tomorrow, though. I realized I hadn't taken a picture of my parent's house, so I did so today from the road.


My Parents' House

I'd never gone further down Edby Road, the road my parents live on, during the two years I'd lived here or during any of the visits. So, with trusty dog at hand, I did. I was surprised how many other roads and houses were back there. I never knew.

I walked a couple of miles on the back roads tonight. It smells of burning spruce trees everywhere today. There were massive forest fires last year in Alaska that made most of the state covered in smoke for much of the summer. Some of those fires smoldered away all winter in the bogs only to blaze up again this year. The smoke I was smelling tonight is from fires that are burning hundreds of miles away. It's enough that there's a haze over the hills and the sun is dimmed enough to look at directly. It looks like a glowing red ball in the sky. But don't let me just tell you, take a look for yourself. I took a picture of that, too.


Smoke and the Sun

Longhorn Beta on Connect

It's so incidentally to the main point of these news stories, but the newly released beta of Windows Longhorn (as Windows Vista) is directing people to the site my team has built to host beta programs:

http://www.hardwaregeeks.com/comments.php?shownews=3407
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Get-Ready-for-the-Longhorn-Beta-Testing-4592.shtml
http://www.techspot.com/news/18025-Longhorn-Beta-starts-rolling.html

Grandma-isms II

About how the dog will eat just about anything: "She'd eat your feet if they weren't hooked on."

Anger Management

I took my grandmother back to the clinic again today so they could draw some more blood. I swear they have vampires working in the back and won't be satisfied until she doesn't have any left.

Afterwards, we went for some lunch and I had the opportunity to chat with her for well over an hour. We talked a little about tempers and how people in our family handle getting mad. Apparently my grandfather (now gone some twenty years) and I had the same kinds of terrible, hot tempers. Grandpa, at fourteen, apparently blew up at his mother, though, and said some things to her that he regretted for a long time. At that point, he resolved that he would never again let his temper get the better of him. Grandma tells me that he did a really good job of that and never or rarely did. I went through a similar awakening at about sixteen when I realized that my temper was costing me far more than I ever gained from it. I haven't always been able to keep it under control, but it's rare when it gets the best of me and every time it does it reminds me why I need to be more careful.

My grandfather wasn't the only one with a temper on that side of the family, though. He had a sister, Mamie, that had quite a terrible temper, but unlike my grandfather, she seemed to enjoy it. Grandma described to me today how my aunt Mamie would go over to her grandkids house and get in a fight over something within ten minutes. Even though she might have been asked to stay over, she'd get out of there late at night and stomp home. Along the way, every block or so, was a relative of some sort. The grandkids would call my grandmother and tell her, "Mamie's mad and she's headed home. Watch for her."

So my grandparents would watch for Mamie and once she'd stomp by, they'd call the next relatives up the block and tell them, "Mamie's mad and she's headed home. Watch for her." And so it would go, block after block, until Mamie made it home, safely watched over by all her relatives all the way home, mad as hell, and with no idea that people were looking out for her every step of the way.

There's a lesson in there for all of us.

Chena River on a Kayak

This afternoon I got my dad out of the house and onto the Chena River for a couple hours on a kayak.


Afternoon on the Chena River

There's a place about halfway across town that rents kayaks, canoes, and bicycles. It's locate directly on the Chena River, which winds it way around and through town. A few miles downriver is the Pumphouse, a restaurant located directly on the river (and where I had my first job, working as a dishwasher for about a year when I was seventeen.) I got a good picture of my dad on his bright yellow kayak.


Dad in a Kayak 

It was really a gorgeous day for it. The summers in Alaska (when it's not down around 45 degrees out) are really beautiful. It was a little overcast here and there and there were some threatening stormclouds in the distance, but the rain held off until we were done with the kayaking and had our early dinner. Just look at this sky.


Chena Sky 

For a river in the middle of Alaska, there was plenty of traffic, though. There were a number of homemade floats that were constructed as part of a Golden Days event and although our launching point was the landing point for most of them, a few kept going and we would pass them by. The friendliest people we met were not on a float at all, though, but rather in a couple of little rubber boats. This woman with her dog and her daughter (who was off to the left) chatted with me and my dad for a bit. Her daughter kept offering us different kinds of food, which we refused until she offered watermelon. They had a third raft with a cooler in it. Then the mom got a cell phone call (how un-Alaskan!) and we went on ahead faster.


Company on the Chena 

The largest of the boats that travel up and down the river are the classic riverboats. Some of them are even steam powered, like the Discovery I, II, and III that cart tourists up and down the Chena and the Tanana, the much larger river the Chena joins just a couple miles from my parents' house. The one I show here is the Tanana Chief and I think is owned by someone other than the Discovery people. Mark Twain would be so pleased to see these boats still around.


Tanana Chief Paddleboat 

As I mentioned, we put ashore at the Pumphouse, where a shuttle came to get the kayaks. Lunch was merely mediocre and overpriced. I did, however, get some nice photos of the well-kept flower garden out front. I'm glad we got out of doors today. It would have been far too easy to just sit inside and monkey around with the computer.


Garden at the Pumphouse 

Fairbanks Golden Days

My grandmother is doing a lot better today, although we did need to take her back to the walk-in clinic to deal with some nausea problems. As I write this, she's sleeping just across the room. Stresses are running high here and I think it's a good thing I'm around to try to keep folks a bit calm and allow my parents to still go about their normal lives a bit.

On the way to the clinic, I dropped my dad off at the local convention center where he was committed to playing on the Fairbanks Community Band float in the Golden Days Parade. When he saw there were three other trombone players, he tried to back out of it and go with me to the clinic, but they kind of insisted, as apparently he's the only one of them that knew the second trombone piece. I think it's better he did it, as my mom and I were more than enough at the clinic. He enjoyed it and got to relax, which he needed. While I'm jumping ahead a bit, here's a great shot I took of him on the float (I had to get pretty close!) He's in the floppy hat.



After the clinic, my mom took my grandmother and headed toward home, so I walked up the street to where the parade would go by, which was all of a block from the clinic.

The parade grandstand was much further, probably a half-mile, but it was interesting that taking pictures seems to let you just walk in the street, cross back and forth, and generally get in the way without consequence. I got down to the grandstand and continued taking pictures there. I took about ninety of them, and I'm including some of the best ones that give the feel of the parade here.

The Golden Days event is a big deal for Fairbanks, as it commemorates the discovery of gold in the area by Felix Pedro on July 22, 1901, which was followed by the incorporation of Fairbanks as a town about a year later. This city wouldn't exist without Pedro's find.

For the week of the celebration, many people dress in early 1900s clothing, such as the woman pictured here with the long dress and fishnet stockings. Some of the men wear old-style garb as well, but they are more rare and are usually in journalism or politics. In the parade, though, the notable exceptions come out.

One float was set up to look like an early saloon, complete with gamblers. I got a good picture of them, and they were only too happy to pose and wave for me.



If you look closely, you might even notice the guy had a full house, fours and fives. Not a bad hand. I hope he wasn't cheating, as there were some floats with guns and even cannons on them.

I've actually realized I like the horses that you see in parades, and especially when there are Clydesdales. I think my fascination with adventure means that I really wish I had a horse that I could ride from place to place. Somehow that just seems like it would be much more satisfying. Better gas mileage, too.



Not everyone had the big horses, though. There was a little miniature horse pulling a cart with some kids in it, although I can't remember what that breed is called. There was also this fellow shown below, dressed up as a classic northern prospector and leading a mule. His gold pan is visible strapped onto the mule's back.



Incidentally, this picture reminds me that blue jeans have been around a long time and that they were originally designed for coal miners, who were very tough on their clothes. The sturdy, utilitarian clothing of the most downtrodden blue-collar working class has become the defacto standard for all of America.

With that, I have one last picture to share. Apparently, even in Alaska celebrating the 103rd anniversary of the discovery of gold, there's always some guy dressed up as Elvis. That he's a native Alaskan just makes this picture absolutely priceless.

A Values Based Organization

Our group at work (about 250 employees or so) has just been informed that the leadership team has completed figuring out what the three top values are key to our becoming a values based organization. The team has settled on, "Excellence, Collaboration, and Integrity." After a little wry humor at the expense of this decision, I'll discuss what I think we could have selected that would have been better.

First of all, it's great to see we are in fine company. The Albany Medical Center, California Polytechnic, the Muncie, Indiana Center Township Trustee’s Office, and the Le Bocage International School are just a few examples of other organizations that share this vision. On the other hand, by adopting these values, we may be locked out of other endeavors.

Dennis Nyback tells us that by not striving for mediocrity, rather than excellence, we may not have success in creating Hollywood movies. I've had trouble finding anyone who suggests that a lack of integrity is a good thing. I don't have to look far to find a culture that's generally the opposite of collaboration, as we have that right at home at Microsoft in our ingrained competitive culture. I compete with my peers for review scores, bonuses, and stock grants already, as we are reviewed annually on a curve. No matter how good you are at your job, if your peers are better, you get the low review score.

From that perspective, collaboration as a value for our organization seems relatively reasonable, although it will be a tough sell because when the rubber meets the road, Microsoft's all about competition. It seems like in the process of picking three values for our organization, we totally wasted two of the slots. Who, at least at an organization like Microsoft that at least tries to screen for excellence in the hiring process, isn't going to already have excellence and integrity as goals in their jobs? Don't you think this would come out in plenty of other ways such that those people would be gone from the organization in short order? Of course, many very advanced organizations have picked integrity as a core value they wish to express explicitly. A read through Man on a Mission, a blog of mission statements, reveals many instances of integrity as a stated value. (Incidentally, that's a blog that is well worth reading if you are involved in establish vision or mission statements for an organization.)

It seems to me that if we are going to stick with only three values as our focus, we've wasted two of the slots on things people are going to do anyway. So, if I can get behind collaboration, but not excellence and integrity (remember, just as stated values, not as values in general!) what would I replace them with? If I don't offer up alternatives, I'm just whining, after all.

Ownership: When faced with a problem, whether it's a customer issue, an organizational inefficiency, or some other sort of issue that can be corrected, an employee should exhibit ownership. That is, he should follow the discovered problem through to resolution, even if he is not the one to fix the problem personally. It's easy to refer a customer to a support alias and then forget about the problem. It's hard, but valuable to the organization, to watch that customer issue and make sure the problem is truly resolved, not delivered into the void somewhere leaving the customer dissatisfied. The same goes for other types of problems as well.

"Coventuring": The word "coventure" isn't in the dictionary. Rather, I took that from Why Not?, a book I read on the flight to Alaska on Wednesday. In the final chapter on how to persuade others to pursue the great ideas developed by using the techniques described earlier in the book, the authors describe coventuring as the process of convincing the target audience to become constructive critics interested in overcoming the obstacles with you rather than applying knee-jerk objections to dismiss the ideas. I imagine a culture where employees don't need to go through the persuasion process because the target audience naturally adopts a coventuring approach to new ideas as part of the organizational values, where the automatic answer to an innovative, "I have an idea" is "How can I help?"

Some might argue that these are just two more ways to say collaboration. Perhaps they are, but they are actionable facets of collaboration that really mean something and are a change to the day-to-day behaviors exhibited in our organization (and many others.) At worst, we end up with three overlapping values rather than one indistinct value and two that should be present by default. As I've said before in my post on synergistic goals, some level of overlap between goals is part of a recipe for greater success.

The group that did this work is intelligent, creative, and well-intentioned. That I think they could have done a better job shouldn't be taken that I think less of them - vision and mission development is a very tough task, ripe for Dilbertesque scenarios. At least they didn't settle on, "Quality is Job SP1."

Grandma-isms

My grandmother says some of the funniest things. I don't know where they come from, if it's stuff that used to get said all the time, whether it's from her eighty-something years in Texas, or what, but they are always just funny as anything and incredibly difficult to remember later.

I'm posting this immediately so I don't forget: "They don't keep enough bread around here to put in your eye."

If I catch any more of them, I'll post 'em.

Today in Alaska

It's a weird thing to wake up in the morning and head off to work not knowing that you'd go to sleep that night in your childhood bedroom thousands of miles away. Just to give you an idea of just how far, take a look at this map from Yahoo! when I punched up the driving directions:


Bellevue to Fairbanks

Yeah, I flew, so it took only about five hours plus transit time getting to and from airports, but still. I bought my ticket and was on the plane about nine hours later. (Incidentally, the Alaska Airlines MVP program is awesome - I was upgraded to first class for free on both legs of the trip.) I arrived in Fairbanks a little after 1am, then went and found my mom's car in the parking lot where my parents had left it for me. While a few highway connections had changed, I didn't really have any problem finding my way to their house. Nobody woke up when I let myself in except for Lily, their dog, whose kennel is now in my old room.


Lily

I spent most of the daytime with my grandmother, whose current illness is what brought me up here. Her spirits seem much raised over yesterday, so perhaps my visit is a boon to her. After getting really upset yesterday, I think she is likely to get through this and be just fine, but she needs some closer attention the next week and it's a lot for my parents to do because of their other commitments.

My dad seems really happy to see me, and I know I'm really happy to see him, even if it is under less than desireable circumstances. His stress levels had pretty well hit the roof and my arrival has helped ease that substantially. I'm thinking that coming up here this time is already proving to be as much for him as for my grandmother.

Fortunately, my manager at work is being very understanding. I will likely change my ticket to stay through next weekend and work out some things I can do remotely this week, effectively telecommuting.

The mix of emotions coming back to Alaska, where I spent most of my teenage years and where I graduated high school, is always hard to describe. I was very happy to leave here, as it was time to get some more exposure to the wider world. I'm happy to come back to visit, though, especially in the summer when it's beautiful weather. (I say beautiful, which in this case is low 40s at night, low 70s during the day - I can hear Olympia shivering from her perch some 5000 miles from here.) With my more recent return to more outdoors activities, I have a new appreciation for the location of my parents house. Just look at this picture, taken near there just today. (Although I have to say, even the large size of this picture you'll see by clicking on it just doesn't do it justice.)


Denali in the Distance

When my mom got home from work today, I had dinner with my dad. That's always entertaining, because it's much more fun to talk to him face-to-face than over the phone, especially when you get a couple drinks in him. After that, I went and walked with Lily for almost seven miles, starting and ending at my parents' house. Since it's July, it's basically light all night. Even as I write this at 1am local time, it's still light out. I took a picture of the road I was walking down at 10pm, and I didn't edit it to add any light to it.


Melanie Road, Fairbanks, Alaska, 10pm, July 21

Another interesting thing about being here is the way that as I walked down various roads and cars would pass, roughly half the time, the driver would wave at me as he went by. I'd make sure Lily was properly reined in and wave back. I didn't know any of these people, they were just being neighborly. A guy walking a dog down the road in their area is pretty much assumed to be a neighbor and someone you should wave at.

Finally, I'll leave you with one more photo. By no means do all the houses in Alaska look like the one pictured here, but this one was just so prototypical Alaskan, I just had to snap a picture of it and share it. A log cabin with snowshoes, a canoe, an Weber kettle grill - it's just classic.


An Alaskan Home

Heading North

Yeah, I'm in Seattle, which is already pretty northern, but there's always Alaska. I'm heading out tonight for Fairbanks. My grandmother is very sick with an uncertain near-term future and my father's under a lot of stress. He even said he needs my help, which is a big step for, well, anyone from our stubborn, independent, never-ask-for-anything family.

I'm hoping Grandma will pull through, but illness is always touch-and-go with people in their late nineties, like she is. I'm taking my laptop, so I'll post more along the way.

Synergistic Goals

"Synergy" is an incredibly overused word in the business world, but sometimes it makes sense to use it. I have a case where that's the case.

I'm developing a new theory that the reason that some people are incredibly successful is not so much about having goals that are individually more difficult to achieve, but rather that they find ways to have their goals around otherwise disparate activities play off one another. In other words, they develop a synergy between those goals.

This blog and my hiking activities are an example. I started blogging to get better at writing, both in terms of the quality of my writing and the ability to overcome the inertia that blocks me from writing in the first place. In the last year, I've made great strides in both areas, although the quality goal is not as directly measurable by me.

My hiking and the new Seattle City Walk project are designed to establish a regular exercise program. Goals such as hiking every hike in a particular guidebook or walking every street in Seattle are great SMART goals.

What I've noticed, though, is that I've been enthusiastic about blogging because I enjoy describing my hiking and sharing the pictures. At the same time, there have been several times already where I considered turning back on a hike because I was tired, but kept at it and completed the entire hike because I thought about how much better a blog entry about a completed hike is compared to an incomplete hike. Despite the lack of a direct connection between the two activities and their goals, I've effectively created one and each is more satisfying than what they would be individually.

Imagine how powerful an effect this synergistic increase in value would be if I had, say, six goal-oriented activities, all of which built upon each other. Perhaps this is how deeply successful people become that way.

Don't Let it Bring You Down

When I'm working on my laptop late at night, as I have been tonight, I sometimes put in a movie as background noise, which seems to help me focus somehow. I threw in "American Beauty" last night and noticed that the song "Don't Let it Bring You Down" caught my attention. In the movie, it's performed by Annie Lennox, although I didn't recognize her right off.

A search on MSN Music got me the song's various covers and informed me it was originally written and performed by Neil Young. If you want to hear a real contrast in two different performs, listen to the clips of Annie Lennox and Neil Young performing this same song. I think mayhaps Neil should stick to writing for others, although I know plenty of people seem happy to hear him sing.

Seattle City Walk Begins

I started my Seattle city walks today with a 5.4 mile walk near the south side of Lake Union. I've started a separate blog site called Seattle City Walk to record my efforts.

Combined with my hikes from the weekend, that's 23 miles of walking in three days.

A New Exercise Project?

One of the problems I've always had with maintaining a regular exercise routine is that exercise purely for the purpose of exercise (and its attendent benefits, like weight loss, general conditioning, and the like) leaves it difficult for me to see the goal. The absence of immediate feedback headed toward a meaningful goal, where you can see the progress every single time would be incredibly helpful.

I've thought about different kinds of targeted goals that might allow for that feedback. My goal to hike every one of the hikes in a particular guide book is one. That has my weekends well-occupied, but so far, that's the only exercise I get with any regularity. I've thought about goals like bench-pressing ten or a hundred tons, a hundred pounds at a time, or doing ten thousand sit-ups, but those things still bore me and I don't have any real mental investment in achieving the goal.

However, this weekend I read in Backpacker magazine about Caleb Smith, who completed the New York City Walk. You can read details at his website, but the short version is that he walked down every single street in all of Manhattan, over 700 miles and over roughly 2.5 years. This struck me as exactly the sort of goal I need, except I live in the Seattle area instead of New York City. Hiking various trails usually has to wait for the weekend, but as Smith points out, after work there are often hours of daylight. Since it's the city, rather than woods or mountains, even after dark you can still make progress. You can also make progress even if you only have an hour available.

As far as I can tell, no one is doing a Seattle city walk, although there are a few other comprehensive walks going on in various parts of the country right now. So, starting as early as tomorrow, I will begin one. I've sent email to Barbara Gray of the Seattle Department of Transportation to see if the maps I found online are the right ones to work from and just how many miles of streets Seattle has. Hopefully she'll get back to me promptly, but I'm not going to wait to be absolutely sure. I can keep track of what I've done until I have the right map.

I'm also going to take a lot of photos, since I'll then have a comprehensive look at the entire city. I'm excited to start, but it's exercise. How cool is that?

Wilderness Peak

Crossing Shy Bear Marsh

This is the first time I've done two hikes in the same weekend, and it was seriously challenging. Originally, I was thinking about going after Mount Dickerman again, but two "Most Difficult" hikes within two days seemed like asking for trouble. Wilderness Peak was listed as a merely "Difficult" trail, 6.2 miles long and about 1300 feet in elevation gain.

It was a truly gorgeous day, if perhaps a little hot, in the mid-eighties. The hike was a reasonable one for exercise, although there was little unique to photograph and virtually no views. There's a little side spur to a place called "Long View Peak" although considering the absence of any actual view aside from peeking through some trees nearby, it seems misnamed.

I had high hopes that Wilderness Peak, perched as it is on the south side of Cougar Mountain, would have a view of Mount Rainier, but like it's nearby cousin, it's pretty much surrounded by trees. The peak itself is pretty much a small cleared spot with a bench. I sat there for a bit resting before the final two miles down the side of the mountain, very steep with a lot of switchback.

It was still a good time, though. My next hike will probably be in two weeks, since I'm in a training session all next weekend. I think I'll be planning for something a little more spectacular, although they don't have to be that way.