Things that might be decidedly odd…

Photo Safari IV

I went to Daniel Brown’s 4th annual Photo Safari today and I’m exhausted. It was a much less stressful affair than last year’s, almost entirely because this year I knew what to expect and how to safari better (i.e., more time planning, less time driving around). Amazingly, my team (consisting of Marc, Christian and myself) placed second out of 10 after two teams lost a bunch of points for disqualified pictures in the detailed tallies. Ben and Jeff finished first by quite a few points.

This year there a special category for posed faceplants which particularly interesting. At one point, I was laying on the floor of the QFC in Lower Queen Anne, pretending to have lost a bag of frozen okra and a tub of “I can’t believe it’s not butter”.

Pictures are here.

Riding

Today was the second time in two weeks that I’ve managed to ride my bike home from work. This time I had my trusty new Garmin Edge 705 bike computer to collect all the stats too. The distance door-to-door is 46.6 km in distance, 619 m of ascent and 614 m of descent. Those last figures are somewhat surprising because that means work is actually at a lower elevation than home. All told, it took me about 2 hours, 10 minutes to ride the whole thing.

I’ve shared the ride page here, which has the above stats as well as some cool graphs. One of the more interesting graphs to check out is the one for elevation. Basically, there’s a drop of about 90 meters in Redmond right as I was leaving work. This is the giant hill between 51st Street and Leary Way. From there it’s then gradually uphill almost the entire way back except around the U District where there’s a decent downhill section.

I’m tired and starving, but I gotta jump in the shower so I can make sure to watch the new Ugly Betty that’s on tonight.

Late

It’s late and I should be sleeping, but I thought I’d do a quick update before heading off to bed.

The past few days have been really busy. Here’s a brief run-down:

1. Work’s been getting busier this week. I won’t go into details, but gears are predictably shifting once again with regard to what I’m doing on a day to day basis at work. The interesting thing about 2-3 year product cycles is that there are so many stages to go through, stretched over that time. It sort of keeps things fresh.
2. I’ve been finishing up the transition to the new OutVentures website. This is a volunteer project I’ve been working on since around September or October, so it’s nice that it’s mostly finished at this point.
3. On Saturday, Marc and I went “pan and hat shopping”. I didn’t buy any hats, although I did try a few on. I did buy a new set of pots and pans though. My existing ones go back to 1999 at the latest.
4. Today I had lunch with a friend from the swim team. He works in the fancy new Building 37. Lots of glass, impromptu lounges, fashionable design and a giant atrium. The building I work in doesn’t have any of that, but I guess I can’t complain too much.
5. Last week, I made plans to go to Puerto Vallarta for the week of MLK Jr’s birthday next year. I’ve already bought the plane tickets and put a 50% deposit down on the condo. Yikes, that’s some serious advanced planning but I guess it’s taken care of now and out of the way.

Dilemma Resolved

Yeah, my bike computer arrived! It was a close call–the UPS guy buzzed about 3 minutes after I got out of the shower today. It needs to charge for at least 3 hours before I can start playing with it, so I’ve plugged it in while I run off to race gokarts with my coworkers.

Tired Update

I can’t believe I’m still up, but alas I am. I’ve dealing with OutVentures volunteer website stuff all night. The good news is that the new site is basically done. The only thing I have left to do is copy the data from the old site’s database into the new site’s database. It’ll take some work, but hopefully not too much.

In other news, my bike computer is supposed to be arriving tomorrow. Unfortunately, I probably shouldn’t work from home tomorrow because I have a work morale event to go to from 1-3 on the Eastside. That means I’ll probably miss the UPS guy which probably means no package. I’m bummed about it, but the weather is supposed to be unseasonably cold and rainy all weekend anyways, so it doesn’t look like I’d even be able to take it out on a ride anyways.

Damn you Hannah Montana

Thanks to C89.5, I now this damn song stuck in my head. Actually, I think the version on the radio is some sort of dick sucking dance remix.

Its origins (15 year old daughter of Billy Rae Cyrus) and the lyrics (high school girl awkward drama bullshit) disturb me.

Damn you Hannah Montana!

Commuting under my own power

Today I decided I was going to ride my bike home from work. The weather this weekend is forecast to be cold and rainy (there may even be snow Friday night!), so I figured today was my best bet weather-wise. It actually turned out to be fine–50s and overcast the whole way, but no rain. Nothing spectacular of course, but perfectly comfortable.

I drove in this morning with my bike and my gear, changed at work this afternoon and left my car with my non-bike clothes on the Eastside for pickup tomorrow or later in the week. The path I took was 40th St down to the 520 bike trail, north to the Sammamish River Trail, followed until it becomes Burke-Gilman, exit onto the University Bridge in Seattle, Eastlake across to Franklin across to Lakeview, through that little park to Melrose to Mercer to Bellevue Ave and then home.

All told, it took about 2 hours and 15 minutes end-to-end. I think the route is a little less than 30 miles, so it was a decent work out too!

Who’s afraid of MRSA?

I got a strange postcard in the mail today from Carena. They’re a healthcare company Microsoft contracts out to provide a 24 hour health line and house call service as an employee benefit. The front of the postcard has a picture of a young woman dressed in black scratching her arm with a grimace on her face accompanied by the following text: “Don’t just scratch the surface when it comes to skin infections.” On the back, it goes into more detail:

Bacterial infections can be red and tender to the touch, and may be serious enough to require antibiotic treatment.

If you’re concerned about a skin infection, call the 24-Hour Health Line. Registered nurses will ask you questions to help determine if your skin condition is urgent. They may refer you to the Mobile Medicine pilot program if appropriate or suggest an alternative course of treatement.

Tips to remember: check your skin regularly and see our primary care physician if you notice any changes. Also, be aware that bacteria can spread easily in public places like a gym or spa.

That’s pretty much all the text.

Presumably, it’s in some sort of response to recent news about MRSA skin infections. Still, it seems weird to get a card about this and not one of dozens of other more common health problems.

Drunks

I stumbled across this list in a comment to a slog post.

Apparently King County (the county where Seattle and most of its surrounding suburbs like Redmond are located) is #12 on this list of counties with the highest percentage of residents who have drunk alcohol in the past month. It’s by far #1 on the west coast and #1 for counties with populations more than one million residents. Weird.

Most of the counties on the list are located in the northeast with a smattering through the rust belt and mountain west. No counties in California made the list, but another county I once lived in made the list. Orange County, NC which contains Chapel Hill and Carrboro is #57 or #1 in the south.

Bike computer on its way

On Sunday night, I got an email from the bike shop in Portland where I ordered the Garmin Edge 705 informing me that their inventory information was wrong and that my order had been canceled. Subsequent searching revealevd that practically nobody had it in stock online or locally. Eventually, I found another vendor through eBay. At least usually with eBay if somebody is advertising something, they really do tend to have it in stock. Anyhow, they shipped it out today from Texas by UPS Ground. It’s supposed to be here by Friday though!