But Did I Sleep Here? Noooo

So the first 48 or so hours in Seattle were split between this hotel and the one I slept in…or tried to sleep in when the Japanese girls next door could be convinced that 3AM was time to stop singing along with crappy Japanese soap operas. This hotel, the Westin, was nicer, but mainly I spent time in various conference rooms listening to panels discussing sustainable nonprofit consulting, how to use blogs in the nonprofit world, or how open APIs are the wave of the future except for Microsoft.

Oh, and trying to be Mr. Shake Hands Man, winning friends and influencing people in hopes of someday liberating them from their grant money. Unfortunately, the friendliest people I met were other consultants attempting to do the same thing. Tricksy! Tricksy!

Nonetheless, I did meet a couple of people and speak a few wise words on blogging, but I think next time to get noticed I’ll have to be on a panel. Even though our company name was on every friggin’ coffee cup in the place, people gave me a blank look when I said who I represented.

There was a brief interregnum in the Space Needle, as Salesforce.com threw a very nice party with a nice amount of booze. I ran into a couple of clients of ours, and met a few more consultants, including a Croat raised in Brazil (I think…one of the South American countries, anyway…I was a couple of Alaskan Ambers into it at this point).

I’ll spare you the work-oriented bits of it and just note that I think I got our money’s worth, or as near as I could come to it without being a natural salesman. That brought me to Friday night where I saw a couple of friends who had moved to Seattle–thus began the brief but intense tourism part of my stay, which shall await the next installment.

Emerald Pool — not hard to guess how they got the name

So a few last photos to clear out the creme de la creme of the Dominica Photos, after the break. As usual, click to see a larger version.

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I’m taking a break from wandering around downtown Seattle to indulge in coffee and wifi. I have been attending the NTEN conference, which ended yesterday. Last night, I met up with my friends Emily and Stephanie, both of whom I used to work with in DC and both of whom decided to move out here. Emily then took me around the neighborhoods north of downtown. We had lunch overlooking the sound, and then I’ve wandered around some more before deciding to participate in the coffeehouse culture.

I’m adding this to the list of places I could live. No plans to leave DC any time soon, but: mountains – check; culture – check; restaurants – check; not hectic – check. Also, I like places with obscene housing bubbles, though that’s not something I like about them.

Pics and a fuller report to follow early next week after I hook up my camera to my home machine.

The freakish summer-like weather having come in early March, I started off this season of hiking with my usual warm-up hike, Hawksbill Mountain. Yes, the same one Ginger mentioned in October, though this time Ginger and another friend wussed out–but I’d met a new friend the previous night, Olga, who was as determined to go as I.

The rocks fail to remind me of raptor beaks.

Typically, even though Olga would have been as happy as I to see snakes, bears, or salamanders–and it’s not often I find a traveling companion who shares my lack of ick factor–nary a one showed its furry or scaly hide. A bunch of whitetail deer, a pretty relaxed crow, some Brown Thrashers, a Hairy or Downy Woodpecker (too far to tell–odds would be that it’s a downy, but it looked a little bigger and Olga thought it had a bill more like a hairy), an Eastern Phoebe, and the ubiquitous Junkos were all that were in evidence. Oh, a squirrel and a couple of chipmunks. Whee.

Fortunately, the Not Global Warming, Nuh-Uh! had cleared off the ice except in crevasses like this.

Still, it was nice to be in the mountains again, and given that it was in the mid-sixties, the wind was blowing, and it was threatening to rain, the conditions weren’t too different from a couple of hikes I had in Dominica…but of course everything else was.

Olga Was Here

Her lack of ick came in handy when we discovered these little black things all over the rocks we were sitting on as we ate lunch:

Little. Black. Different. Like 3mm and slowly crawling at random. I guess rock lice. *Shrug*

Afterward, discretion being the better part of valor and cowardice the better part of discretion, we valiantly chickened out of what turned out not to be a very scary rainshower and headed down to Missy’s place to pet Sam, Jack, and Tillie (Gertie wasn’t having it, ‘cuz it was that time of year, if you know what I mean). After giving Bruce a chance to demonstrate just how surly and reclusive he utterly fails to be, we headed back to the shores of the Potomac.

Guess which phone I’d been wanting to get from Cingular once I was out from under Verizon’s thumb come Tuesday?

Cingular, T-Mobile stop Razr cell phone sales

Cingular Wireless and T-Mobile USA have temporarily stopped selling the Razr, Motorola’s flagship cell phone, due to a technical glitch that causes the phone to drop calls or shut down, the companies said Friday.

Here’s a map of the Air Defense Identification Zone around Washington, DC. That White House no-fly-zone in the center? I live just inside the southern edge of it. Of course, that area also contains National Airport and flights heading west from Andrews Air Force Base fly over my neighborhood, so I get lots of planes overhead.

…if reading the blogs I’ve subscribed to didn’t take up nearly my whole evening.

Sure, some good stuff, but I gotta trim the number of feeds I subscribe to again (stupid insightful, in-depth Ars Technica articles).

Other people get sick on Mondays or Fridays, but my germs seem to favor Saturdays and Sundays.

As Henry Bemis would say, “That’s not fair! That’s not fair at all!”

I’m sure Pat Robertson would insist it’s punishment for trying to divide Israel or something.

So at lunch today, we didn’t realize that the meeting in the conference room next to us left the door open. A coworker asked me why I “hate Canada.” I replied that I didn’t, but since they were so deliciously hypersensitive about their nationality, I had to tweak them anyway. I added a few witty bon mots aboot how a bunch that clubs baby seals shouldn’t brag about their nonviolence, and how there’s no way to tell a Canadian from an American unless they show their passport–or get offended over any less-than-glowing remark about Canada.

Sure enough, somebody in the meeting was Canadian.

Busted!

Except that she was upset, and so since the main thrust of my comment was how easily Canadians get upset over comments that aren’t even that critical (OK, the baby seal thing wasn’t glowing, but c’mon, I’m called a warmonger three times a day, lighten up), she pretty much embodied my point.

Canadian hypersensitivity Busted!

You guys up north really need to toughen your hides. It might help with the cold, too.

Looks like the “cuttlefish” I thought I was taking a picture of were actually Caribbean Reef Squid.