C-Objectively

I’d been meaning to check out the Tulip Festival that goes on in Washington every April but we hadn’t had very good weather all month long. Until yesterday that is. We finally had a sunny weekend in April and I decided to head up to Mount Vernon, along with about ten million other people apparently, to find out what all the buzz was about.

The line to get off on the exit into Mount Vernon and to the tulip fields extended about 0.5 mile into the 5 North. People were pulled over onto the shoulder to try to get off. Well some crazy man in a white Oldsmobile about three cars up from me got tired of waiting in the line and wanted out. Except, I don’t think he really looked before he tried to merge back into the two lanes of freeway traffic. Unfortunately for him and his wife, at that moment an 18-wheeler truck was barreling down the lane next to us at about 60 miles per hour. My mind slowed down the action as I saw what was about to happen. White Oldsmobile sticks his nose out into the lane and the truck just BARRELS through him like he was made of paper maché. Except that he wasn’t, and it made a big crunching sound as the 18-wheeler took half of the car’s hood and bumper with him.

Luckily there was no harm done to the people in the car. The same could not be said of the White Oldsmobile however. I witnessed two other near accidents while I was in Mount Vernon. There really should have been some police directing the traffic in the area. There were probably 10-20 times more cars in that area yesterday than there are usually.

Accidents and near-accidents aside, and after some misdirection on the part of my brain’s navigation computer, I found the tulip fields and snapped these glorious pictures which I will share with you now.

Skagit Valley Tulip Festival Photos

   

Pictures to go along with the story.

Phew, now that was a busy but fun month. To start off with, I joined the BMWCCA PSR for their Car Control Clinic over at Bremerton Raceway. This was a day-long program where forty participant cars broke up into four groups, and rotated four stations with their instructors, learning the handling and braking limits of their cars. After we were done rotating the stations, we set up two autocross courses on the track and just went at it for three hours. I’m going to follow up with more details on this event because I think its not only a lot of fun but a great learning experience as well.

Then I followed that up with a bevy of outings for my birthday including a night out with the guys, lunch with my team at work, lunch with the guys at work, and probably two more lunches or dinners I’m missing here somewhere. In the process, I was able to coin a couple of terms: the Lighthouse, which is a move I may describe later; and the nickname Texas Ranger for someone who shall remain nameless. We had a lot of fun with those though.

The next weekend my dad and brother came up to visit. I hadn’t seen them since the holidays so I was definitely glad to have them up here. We hung out and they finally got to see my place in person. Ara drove up with me on the move but I didn’t have my own place while he was here. We lucked out on the weather while they were here; it was mostly sunny and hit 67 on Monday. It was so warm, I was about ready to declare it the beginning of summer. On Sunday we hit up Salty’s on Alki for their out-of-this-world seafood brunch. Salty’s is on the water across from downtown Seattle so it has a fantastic view of the city, which you can see in the photos linked at the bottom of this post. The food is not too shabby either; we had so much seafood and dessert that we didn’t really eat another meal all that day. That was a first.

Not satisfied with two weekends of fun in a row, I headed out the following Thursday night to good old Los Angeles…

I’ll finish the story in another post. Its already the middle of April and this thing has been sitting here unfinished in my dock for days.

I live by a lake up here, and sometimes the ducks from the lake like to take a break from the super wet wetness of the lake to walk around the parking lot of our condo complex in the wetness of the rain instead. Here’s one of my little duck friends playing Parking Monitor.

Last week I started to feel a cold coming on in the middle of the week. I’ve already had a cold three time since I moved to Seattle, even though one of the times was while I was in Rome. That’s more than I’ve ever been sick in such a short time. Needless to say, I was tired of it so I decided to mobilize the troops at the first hint of the coming war.

I dropped by the drug store and bought some Airborne and Cold-Eeze. I started sucking them down every three hours on the hour. I also had some Echinacea “Immune Support” tea which I was drinking a couple times a day. The next day I started to feel the effects of the cold. That night I continued my barrage of anti-cold measures. By the second day, it was already packing its things and ready to leave. Couldn’t withstand the onslaught. Haha, I win!

Now a friend told me there’s a ping pong, sorry I mean table tennis, place that opened up here in Bellevue. That sounds very tempting.

Last Saturday I took advantage of what I think could have been the chance of a lifetime. A few very wealthy and generous people, all obviously big fans of the automobile, opened up their private car collections for a visit and tour by members and guests of the PSR BMW CCA chapter.

The collections in total included some of the most beautiful, famous, and collectible cars ever made. I was as giddy as a kid in a candy factory for the approximately two hours that we were there. Nick and Brian joined me on the tour that beautiful Seattle morning, along with about 500 other club members and guests. Here are only some of the cars that we saw on Saturday:

• Ferrari F40
• Ferrari F50
• Ferrari Enzo aka F60
• Ferrari F1 race car, driven by Michael Schumacher in 1997
• A couple Ferrari 512 Testarossas
• Ferrari 575M
• Mercedes 300SL Gullwing Coupe and Convertible
• Jaguar XKE (E-Type) in British Racing Green
• Ford GT40, one of the originals from the 60’s
• Ford GT, the 2005 remake, two of them, including the first delivered to a customer
• A handful of other rare classic European cars including Lotus, Maserati, Alfa Romeo, and Porsche
• Classic mint condition Thunderbird, Mustang, and Shelby Cobra
• Several Fords and Lincolns from the 1930s and 1940s including the Model A
• BMW Z8, M5’s, M3’s and others
• Chevrolet Corvette Z06, the new 2006 505hp beast

I probably missed some but that should at least whet your appetite for the pictures:

Armen’s Photos
Other Gallery #1 (taken same day as mine)
Other Gallery #2 (taken earlier)
Other Gallery #3 (taken earlier)
Other Gallery #4 (taken earlier)

Afterwards we hit up The Pancake House in Kirkland for some brunch. They have some pretty good pancakes there and some very big portions. Later in the day, inspired by the great (read: sunny in Seattle winter) weather and all of the awesome cars seen earlier in the day, I decided I’d like to go for a nice scenic drive.

I scoured Google Maps looking for some nice windy-looking back-roads that weren’t too far away. I was able to come up with a decent circular route that let me explore the nearby countryside and towns for a couple of hours until sunset. All in all it was a top notch way to spend a Saturday.

What’s up folks? I’d like to start by wishing you all a healthy and happy 2006. I don’t know about you guys but I’m looking forward to the year. I mean one might think that after 2005, when I graduated from Cal, moved to Seattle, started my new job, and caused all sorts of mayhem in Italy, that it would be hard to top last year. And yet, here I am trying.

Yeah so that little nugget in the last paragraph is true; I went to Italy around Thanksgiving to visit my brother who was studying there for the semester and to… well… see Italy duh! I saw Rome, Venice, and Florence while I was there. I also saw a bunch of ancient and Renaissance art and architecture and ate some awesome and not so awesome food. I’ll fill in more details as soon as I get around to touching up and sorting through all the photos I took over there. Man, these digital photos are seriously piling up and they take a not insignificant amount of time to sort through and fix up.

For the holidays I was able to head back to LA for the first time since I moved up here in July. (more…)

I went on another tour/drive with the local BMW club. The drive started in Issaquah, WA and ended Saturday night in Hood River, OR, along the Columbia River Gorge. Its an absolutely breathtaking area and also the nation’s windsurfing capital.

The club took off early Sunday morning for more twisties heading back home but I hung back to hunt out some waterfalls with Peter, Jackie, and Bert.

The waterfall we visited was in/near Panther Creek. I also drove over the Bridge of the Gods. They’re much better at naming stuff up here in the Northwest than in California I think.

Click here for the rest of the photos.

I’ve posted photos from my crabbing trip to Anacortes as well as the drive I went on to the Yakima River Valley with the local BMW CCA.

Crabbing in Anacortes

Yakima River Drive

Enjoy

Hey there. Yeah I’m a jerk for not posting for the month or so that I’ve been up in Seattle. What can I tell you, I’ve been busy starting my new job, finding a place to live, then finding things to fill that place with. It’s been hectic but things are finally settling down a bit.

I’d share the stories from the road-trip up but my brother has beaten me to it so I’ll save time and just point you to Ara’s blog for the details. Instead what I’ll do is illustrate his post with the pictures we took along the way and when we finally got here. I’ve got plenty more to share and I should have some more time to do it now so stay tuned…

Seattle Road-Trip Pictures

WWDC is over and I am back home in LA. Still can’t say much about the sessions but we did see some cool things all over the board. Core Data and Cocoa Bindings are quite neat but at the same time they are quite a bit confusing too when it comes to doing actually useful and slightly complicated things with them. I also learned that Core Data was a translation of WebObjects stuff into Cocoa.

I took the day off from the conference’s mostly boring and uninteresting schedule on Friday to bike across the Golden Gate Bridge with my roomy from the hotel room, George, and another guy from Australia, James. We went from Fisherman’s Wharf all the way to Sausalito, then took the ferry back to Pier 1, then rode back again to Pier 41. It was great fun and it happened to be great weather after a week of semi-cloudy or rainy weather. I’ve posted pics from the my trip here.

I also saw The Longest Yard, with Chris Rock and Adam Sandler. Normally I would not have enjoyed this movie very much; but after a long day in-doors at the conference talking code, it was great to sit back for some really brainless laughs. If that’s what you need it will serve you well.

FINISHED! I have officially graduated from UC Berkeley with my B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. It was a rough and tumble ride that went by much quicker than I can believe. I couldn’t be happier with my selection to attend Berkeley; it was right for me in many ways. I’ve learned a great deal about myself and life in general. Oh yeah, I learned some stuff about circuits and computers too I think

I’ll have a longer post with my thoughts and reflections on my college experience coming soon. Right now I am back home in LA (can I even call it that anymore?) and busy catching up with friends, family, and preparing for my move.

Congratulations to all the rest who are graduating this month as well. I wish you all the best in whatever adventure you’re heading off to next.