Yesterday I made my second annual homage to the Seattle Auto Show with Scott and Nick. Lest you all get excited or jealous that you didn’t make it, let me cool your boots right now. The Seattle Auto show is a joke of a show when compared to the LA Auto Show I have been visiting for years now. I would liken it more to a place where all your local dealers come together to showcase the same cars you could see in the showroom; they just save you from driving lot to lot.
Besides the usual showroom floor equipment, we were treated to these throwback concept cars from the show circuit of the last couple of years: Dodge Rampage, Ford Bronco, and Ford Shelby GR-1. We were just enamored with these cars, really. Meanwhile we were left pining to see new cars like the beautiful Audi R8 or even the new Audi TT.
Speaking of Audi, of all the cars at the show we probably were most impressed with their lineup. The cars are beautiful from the outside and even more amazing on the inside. The sound that of the A8L’s door being shut got us excited it sounded so solid and well-built. I can’t say that has ever happened to me. Every surface looks good and feels even better to touch; the door panels, the dash, the seats, you name it. Audi really has no competition when it comes to interior design and quality.
Quick hits on other new cars I finally saw in person at the show:
Acura MDX - Overbearing and ugly front fascia, interior seriously lacking in the luxury department
Acura RDX - Nifty little premium SUV, if you’re into that sort of thing
BMW M6 - Unpainted carbon fiber roof, V10 engine. I need not say more
BMW 3 Coupe - Looks good in person from the outside, nearly identical on the inside. Will continue to sell ridiculously well even though it costs more than others
Dodge Caliber - Looks good for a compact, hard pressed to find a cheaper interior though
Honda CR-V - Looks like a fish with an underbite. And who designed that awkward D-pillar??
Infiniti G35 - Looks like it got a bad facelift on the outside, inside is still overly busy with buttons and techno-gadgetry in a bad way
Lexus - Zzzzz… sorry, I fell asleep while walking through the Lexus section
VW Rabbit - Scotty keeps telling me what a great value this car is for under $15K. After sitting inside the new one I would have a hard time disagreeing with him.
Don’t get me wrong now, we still had a good time at the show. We just spent most of it riding our Euro-driving high horse, ripping on the cheap interiors of the domestics or the awkward exterior design of the Saab’s and Subaru’s of the world. And we topped it all off with a nice Oktoberfest meal at Gordon Biersch. I had been craving steak for a few days…
Cascading Style Sheets? More like Cascading Sheets of Seizures. If you have tried your hand at web design or development in recent years, then you have probably dabbled in using CSS as well. Of course if you tried to do anything complicated and have it work well across different browsers you also probably suffered a stroke.
I’m glad you have made enough progress in your recovery that you can read again. As a get-well gift, I point you to a cheat sheet for CSS that gives the breakdown of the CSS syntax, properties list, box model, selectors, etc. I think it is a fantastic resource; my thanks to Dave Child for coming up with it.
Back at the beginning of August, Anurag, Rodney, and I drove up to Vancouver to meet up with some more folks and check out the final night of Vancouver’s “Celebration of Lights” fireworks competition. The team representing Mexico was performing that night, plus the grand finale to close out the show.
The show takes place by English Bay, but they really should have called it Crazy-Rude-People’s Bay. Everyone who wants to see the show goes to sit at the beach on the bay. Now we’re not talking just a few hundred people here; there was probably tens of thousands of people there to check out the event. There were no open areas; the place was just crammed full of people sitting on towels and tarps on the sandy beach. Part of our group had arrived early and saved a spot for us very close to the water. All we had to do was get to them and we would have a place to sit and enjoy the show.
This was easier said than done since apparently the crazy Canucks at the event thought they were sitting in a VIP box at a stadium instead of an ultra-crowded beach filled with thousands of people trying to enjoy a free show. Groups of people would refuse to move the slightest bit to let us pass and get to our friends. Two girls got real cheeky when I tried to get by them and started screaming and cursing; one of them even threw her sandal at me.
Despite the barrage of footwear, and narrowly avoiding a fight after being mistaken for some guy who trampled a little girl, we did in fact finally get to our group and took our seats. The show put on by the group from Mexico was arguably the most impressive fireworks display I have ever seen. Lucky for me I don’t have to stumble over words to describe the show to you; you can just watch some of it below. I took a few two-minute clips of it on my digital camera and strung them together to make the video you see here.
I was also lucky since I happened to go to the show the night that the winning team performed (there were four nights/teams).
As promised in my last post, I took my first trip back to the Bay Area and Berkeley last week. I almost didn’t make it but some last-minute heroic driving on the part of myself and the airport parking shuttle driver saved the day. The football team apparently heard about my visit because they gave me a great “homecoming” gift: a 49-21 clobbering of Arizona State that was way more lop-sided that the score even shows. Ara and Geoff helped sneak me into the student section (shhh… don’t tell, plus the Chancellor snuck in too!) and we were cheering, yelling, helping people crowd-surf, avoiding falling, doing card stunts, and generally having a blast while our team put on a football clinic on offense, defense, AND special teams. We *may* also have had a part in the never-ending “Wave” that kept going around Memorial Stadium for about 5 minutes. Thank you Cal Bears. The memory of that painful game in Knoxville is almost erased. Beat Oregon next week and we shall never speak of it again.
Besides the game I got a chance to see some (but not all unfortunately) of my friends that are still in the area. After a fun impromptu get-together at my brother’s pad we grabbed some Top Dog while Ara rested on the futon. I had my childhood favorite of course, a Bratwurst. Other eateries I had the pleasure of visiting were Read the rest of this entry »
I haven’t spoken much (at all?) about my work here for a number of reasons. I will have something big to share about a project I have been working on since my third week at Expedia soon.
That said, I have been very busy the last few weeks trying to push a project out the door that was under tight deadlines and important to stake-holders. My work on it is pretty much coming to an end however and it is perfect timing in that regard. That’s because tomorrow night I will be heading back to Berkeley for the first time since I graduated over a year ago.
Next week I will be at the EECS Career Fair doing some recruiting for Expedia on campus, followed by a day of interviews. I’ll be in town before that though in order to catch the home football game vs Arizona State and catch up with friends that are still in the area. Oh, and to eat at all my favorite food places like Top Dog, Fat Slice, HOPR, and In N Out of course!
So this is a heads up to any Berkeley CS-type people who are interested in internships or jobs. Come see us at the Expedia booth for jobs and, of course, the real reason anyone goes to career fairs: the cool swag.
A couple of months back my mom, grandma, and brother came to visit me up here. I took a couple of days off and decided to make my first venture north of the border. We woke up before the crack of dawn to drive up to Anacortes to catch a ferry that left at 7:45am for Vancouver Island, by way of the San Juans. Our destination was the city of Victoria. As you might guess, there is a slight relation between a city called Victoria and the various “Victorian” things out there like architecture. Although we were in Canada, it felt like we were in a quaint British town near the coast. Or at the very least what I think that should feel like, since I have never been to Great Britain.
The most interesting that happened on Vancouver Island was probably our visit to the Butchart Gardens. There are plenty of photos that Ara and I took at the gardens in the photo gallery. We spent no more than a day and a half on the island. The funniest thing I saw while on the island was this kid with shoes that made a rubber ducky sound with every step she took. Allow me to show you a short clip of what we stood next to for several minutes while checking out a castle.
What you see is the 3200 parts of a Honda Racing F1 car suspended from wires. If you happen to be going to the British International Motor Show in the next couple of weeks, you can see this awesome exhibit in person.
If you are not in with that cool crowd though, head on over to see more pictures of the “View Suspended” F1 Exhibit.
Yeah so I went to LA for a wedding a few weeks ago and I somehow managed to catch a cold when it was a ridiculous 95+ degrees there. It took me a little while to recover from that. Then it was July 4th and there was lots of driving and fireworks.
Speaking of driving, I always knew that tires on cars, and of course especially race cars, experienced a lot of stress and pulling forces under acceleration, braking, and cornering. But this, I could not have imagined this.
Somebody used a high-speed camera capable of capturing 1000 frames per second (how the heck did they get it to do that???) to film drag race cars at the starting line. If you watch the video you get to see tires being twisted up like a wet towel you were trying to wring out. Plus you can catch each individual cyldiner firing in the dragster’s engine.
Oh and just for reference’s sake, movies are shot at 24 frames per second and your typical home video camera records at 30 fps.
I don’t know who the folks over at EepyBird.com are, but they sure do have a lot of time on their hands. They have gone and recreated the water show that happens in front of The Bellagio with some 200 liters of Diet Coke and a bunch of Mentos.
Seeing this gets me thinking about possibly putting in a fountain that runs Diet Coke instead of water sometime in the future when I design my own house. Normally it would just be a mild mannered fountain like lots of other people have in their backyards. But, when you felt the need to spice things up a little bit, you feed it some Mentos and BAM, instant Diet Coke geyser. I think I could have a lot of fun with that. Plus since it would be using Diet Coke instead of regular Coca Cola, we wouldn’t have to deal with the issue of sugary syrupy stuff clogging the pipes. Or so I think.
CNNMoney has an interesting article analyzing the housing markets in the United States and ranking them from the most overvalued to most undervalued. They cover almost 300 markets so odds are the one you are interested in is on there.
Interestingly enough it seems I have been moving to less overvalued markets as the years have gone by; today they claim Los Angeles is 54% overvalued, Oakland area 47%, and Seattle only 24%. Granted, these numbers are not representative of the valuations when I moved to these places but still, I think it is interesting. At this rate I guess I might be headed for Detroit or Boston shortly.
Anyway, here is a funny video of a skit from The Tonight Show with Jay Leno of newscasts at the gas pump -Pumpcasting. I also find the talking photo booth skits on that show very funny for some reason.
