Went to Portland

I went to PDX last weekend to see peoples. I went shopping all day on Friday with my friend Lisa. We found the coolest store on N Dekum and N Interstate called Alex Sandra's. It is women's vintage clothes. I got two really cool dresses. You need to check it out. The owner is a blast. We had so much fun trying on stuff.

On Friday night I met up with a bunch of folks for Happy Hour at Kell's and enjoyed yummy martinis. Saturday eve I went to the movies with Ronnie and the kids. We saw Land of the Lost. It was alright...very Will Farrel.

Sunday the neighbor had a soup night so that I could catch up with all the old neighbors. It was good to see and talk to everyone. They can not believe I actually like the hot weather here. Whatever.

On Monday, I met my newest niece, she is 8 months old and this is the first time I met her. She is such a happy baby. And so cute

Of course I had to go to Voodoo Doughnuts. I even brought one home for Ross. It was a maple bar with bacon, in case you are wondering. It was nice to see everyone and hang out, but I am happy to be home in the heat again.

Shakesperian Arachnids

Two highlights of the day so far. First I was in an Apple store way out east in Santan Village, looking at headphones when suddenly a giant light brown spider comes crawling out from under the display racks. It was a good 4" around with it's legs all curled up! I resisted the urge to scream like a little girl, and pointed it out to a nearby staff member, who promptly did scream like a little girl ;-)

Secondly I discovered a cool new English pub called Shakesperes. So far Im liking it, sat here blogging and enjoying a Malibu & coke while waiting for my curry to arrive. If it wasn't sunny and hot outside I could almost be back in blighty...

Later Addendum: The curry was good, really good. Like 'couldn't finish it so got a to-go box for the rest' good, something I never normally do. Yum

Crack Your Bones

Just signed up for a long, intensive series of sessions with a local chiropractor. I've had a lot of neck pain lately which a couple of X-Rays revealed to be some nasty shenanigans from the vertebrae in my neck. Basically my once straight neck is now a pretzel thanks to years of staring at computer screens... with some possible help from some bad snowboarding tumbles I took a decade back. So the next month of my life I'm going to be spending 3 evenings a week getting my bones cracked, my shoulder muscles pushed back into their correct positions, and rocking in weird chairs with my neck in a noose - kinda fun actually, I feel like a kid again! Lets hope it works :-)

Geeky techy TV fun

We're currently stuck with no option but Qwest for our home phone/cable/internet needs, and unfortunately qwest just decided they were going to switch off their current service and change everything around. At first we were bummed out, but its actually turned into a revelation!

First problem was no more cable, only satellite TV, which our HOA is kind of against because dishes everywhere look ugly. Second problem was our 720p TV and my aging TiVo Series 2 both had analog tuners instead of digital and we have an upcoming digital switchover which meant no more TV at all! The solution turned out to be remarkably easy: a new TiVo HD and a digital tuner. Sure we now only get the basic cable channels but that's mostly all we watch anyway, and at least now it's all in lovely 720p resolution (and up to 1080i if we get a better TV in the future). The TiVo HD also has Netflix and Amazon Video built in too, so it's a one box does all solution!

Today Qwest flipped over to their new internet system which is finally using fiber optic cable, and we jumped from 3Mb to 12Mb download speed - yeah baby! Now we can watch all the Hulu, Netflix, iTunes & Amazon video we want, on demand :-) It's kinda nice to be cable free for the first time in a long, long time.

Hummer Tour

One of the perks of my new job is we get to do something fun one afternoon a month. This month we hired 3 Hummers and went off-roading in the desert thanks to the guys at Desert Storm Hummer Tours. They could fit 11 people in each Hummer, luckily we were all seat-belted in because these things bounced all over the place as we drove over rocks, up impossibly steep hills, and did 40+mph power-slides in loose sand :-)

Obviously not the best way to celebrate Earth Day (whoops!) but it was a lot of fun. Highly recommended for any of you guys coming into town soon...

Photos are here.

Look for me on Google Street View!

Driving home from Frys today I notice a car coming in the opposite direction with a little tower sticking out the roof with a ring of cameras around the top. My first thought was "Google Street View!" and sure enough as it drove by I notice a Google sticker in the back window. I made sure I had my best slack-jawed gawp going on as it passed me ;-) I was on 24th somewhere around Van Buren, I'll let you know if I show up...

Yay, I have a new job!

Ever since we moved to Phoenix (almost 3 years ago now) I have been intending to find a full time job here, but various opportunities kept getting in the way. First contracting for my old Portland based company Monsoon, then contracting for some of their clients, then my own little startup writing iPhone apps. But finally I was getting bored of only talking to Boo the cat every day, and decided to try & get a job at one of the best software companies in Phoenix - GoDaddy.

Well luckily, one hour long phone interview, one 4.5 hour on-site combo of math, english & programming tests followed by 2 interviews, and one more hour of on-site interviews later they offered me a job - yay!

If all goes well with the paperwork this week, I should be starting on Monday and I can't wait. A big thanks to Chad, Brian, Dan, Todd and everyone else involved, you actually made all those hours of interviewing fun. And a big thanks to Sally, without whose support I wouldn't have been able to take all the risks(?) of the last 3 years...