Posts Tagged ‘condo’

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Unmistakably different animals

Sunday, January 31st, 2010

My team fell a few points short of the challengers this weekend, so our run was short-lived. It was still a fairly solid show on the whole… I don’t think I showcased my best work but I did a decent job and had a fun time doing it.

I had a moment of weakness a while ago and purchased a stick-on decal for my laptop. I’m not normally the kind of person who abides this kind of thing, but I simply couldn’t resist the idea of having Yoshi eating the apple in the middle of my Macbook Pro:

Yoshi Laptop

The construction continues on my condo; my building is now fully naked of its siding and wrapped in clear plastic. I was supposed to move my barbecue out of their way a while ago, but was unable to because I had lost the key to the cable I’ve used to secure it to the patio. They offered to cut the padlock for me and finally got around to doing so, and today I went to put the barbecue into my storage locker. I hadn’t been to my storage space in at least a year, and was shocked to discover that someone had apparently attempted to break into it. I don’t think they succeeded as the lock is still in place, but the metal hinge it’s on is all mangled from someone attempting to break it off. Unfortunately, their tampering deformed the hinge in such a way that I can no longer open the door, even after removing the lock. I tried using a couple of tools to bend it back close enough to its original shape that I might be able to open it again, but I think short of grabbing a hammer and bashing it clean off the door it’s beyond my abilities. I’ve notified the property manager, though, and I expect they’ll take responsibility for repairing it. In the meantime I’ve had to leave the barbecue in the hallway with an apologetic note for those it winds up obstructing. Oh well.

Moving to the States from Canada gives you a lot of perspective. As countries around the world go it is nearly identical to our own, but the differences are still so very striking… I think about how in the species of dogs you can have two labradors that are more alike to each other than to any of the terriers, poodles, beagles, etc. and still be completely and unmistakably different animals.

The subtler cultural and regional differences notwithstanding, I thought I had a firm grasp on the superficial differences when it came to brands and products. No Shreddies, Rowntree-brand chocolates, ketchup chips, Harveys/Swiss Chalet, Tim Hortons or President’s Choice to name just a few. Well after more than five years of living abroad in the States, I finally discovered another: frozen yogurt.

It’s not like I go out for frozen yogurt very often. The few times I’ve gone, though, I’ve been surprised that the places I’ve ended up only had soft-serve machines with pre-mixed flavours in them. The experience I’m used to and that I’ve had my entire lifetime before moving to the United States is far more robust: they have a machine that they drop a bar of plain frozen yogurt and a cup of fresh fruit into, which then proceeds to pulverize, grind and mix the two together so that what comes out is a made-to-order flavoured frozen yogurt. It’s an evolutionary leap forward in terms of quality, as not only can you have any flavour you choose instead of just picking from whatever few they already have prepared in the soft-serve machines, but the fresh fruit ground in there tastes immeasurably better than the pre-blended stuff.

At first I thought I was just having trouble finding the right chain, as they have quite a few out here. I furiously Googled, thinking that somewhere nearby must offer the genuine confection I was craving and not merely some pale shadow of it, but it turns out that in these parts, soft-serve is simply what frozen yogurt is understood to be. I even found an article about a Yogen Früz that had opened in San Francisco, and this innovative, futuristic technique they had for blending custom-flavoured frozen yogurts (which has, of course, been the status quo my entire life).

I am beside myself, apoplectic with disbelief and sadness. I mean, these cro-magnons are thumping around trying to figure out which end of the spear sticks into the animal, while everyone else is tilling soil, raising cattle and sleeping on beds instead of cave floors. There’s nothing to be done about it… but next time I go to Canada, I’m definitely paying a visit to Dutch Dreams.

Dan.

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A legitimate world of their own

Tuesday, January 19th, 2010

My new TV arrived yesterday! It is a Vizio VF552XVT, and at 55 glorious inches it’s a considerable upgrade from my previous 37″ Vizio. In fact, it fills the space of my living room quite nicely:

New TV

I’ve notably invested in a wall mount from Monoprice. This was both scary and difficult to install, especially seeing as the poorly-written instructions from China caused me to break one of the lag bolts off in the stud (I soon found better advice from the people who had rated the item on the website). But at the end of the day I got it up there and it seems pretty sturdy, and it’s super-convenient and easy to pull the TV away from the wall when I need to mess with the cables, or tilt it in any direction I please. Plus it frees up the top of the cabinet that my previous TV called its home.

Some things that are neat about it:

  • It refreshes at 240 Hz. I don’t personally put much stock in the difference between 240 Hz and 120 Hz, but compared to my previous 60 Hz television there’s a definite difference in the fluidity of motion, to the point where it almost actually lowers the cinematic quality by making the people seem too real and alive… it’s a lot more like they’re actually there, which I suppose is the idea, but it suddenly makes them look like performers on a set instead of characters in a legitimate world of their own.
  • At 55″, you really notice the difference between 480 (standard def), 720 (high-def), and 1080 (super-high-def?) resolutions. In fact, most TVs smaller than 42″ or so that support 1080 signals actually downscale them to 720, because you typically can’t tell anyway at that size. I didn’t realize all cable “high-def” broadcasts were only at 720, which on this TV is visibly blurrier than the 1080 signal from, say, a Blu-ray disc.
  • This is an LED TV, which supposedly provides better black levels than traditional compact-florescent back-lighting (because they can dim the LEDs selectively when parts of the screen are darker). This isn’t the kind of thing I normally notice or complained about on any of my previous LCD televisions, so we’ll have to wait and see if it makes an actual difference to me.
  • I waited for this model to come out because (at the same price as the previous-generation model) it has Internet connectivity to it. In fact, the remote control has a slide-out keyboard (which is absolutely terrible) and is Bluetooth instead of IR (which is extremely nice since I don’t ever have to aim it at the TV). The Internet features are (unsurprisingly) poorly designed and implemented in terms of user interface, but the advantage of it being software is they can keep pushing updates to me as it improves.

My plan of attack continues to be to run an Ethernet networking cable under the condo crawl space and into the living room, so all of my devices can be hooked up to the Internet without the encumbrances of wireless. I’m also hoping to run an HDMI cable so that I can plug my computer directly into the television, so I can watch anything can be downloaded to the computer directly on the big screen. Hopefully when the cable guy comes in a couple of weeks to reroute the cable I can make my changes as well.

In other news, my grandmother has been doing much better. She’s no longer in the ICU and is in a private hospital room where they are attempting to ween her off oxygen and build up enough strength for her to be discharged. Don’t know how long that will take, but it appears she is out of the woods for the moment, which is a tremendous relief to everyone.

I’ve been doing more of the improv performances at SecondStory this round, and while they are smaller shows than Theatresports at Unexpected they’re also more intimate… plus I’ve had some good friends in attendance and it’s been a swell opportunity to keep in practice. This weekend I’ll be doing both of them respectively on Friday and Saturday; Saturday will be my first Theatresports performance of the new year and I’m looking forward to getting back to it.

Dan.

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Under the heat lamp

Tuesday, January 12th, 2010

Happy 2010, everyone!

The past few weeks have been filled with adventure and mayhem. I surprised my parents by visiting them on their vacation in Sanibel Island, Florida. Elizabeth came with, and we spent eight days in the sun, six of which were the coldest on record for that region in decades. Which is to say that we spent most of the vacation in 50-degree weather rather than the 80-degree we were expecting, barely any warmer than it was in Seattle.

That had me bummed out considerably as it was an expensive trip (I’d even dropped a little bit extra to rent a convertible that saw almost no top-down use), but it was still nice to get away and relax, as well as see my family. The first two days were quite nice and we still managed to get in a respectable amount of biking and swimming, and at least it was sunny so I could get my vitamin D from somewhere other than an oral supplement.

On the list of curiosities was the Captiva Crab Races, where a few dozen people gambled on their hermit crabs to see which would reach the outer edge of the table first:

Crab Races

I named mine Humphrey and I’m pretty sure he died under the heat lamp on the table before the first race even began.

I’ve had a week or so to adjust back to home life. The construction workers have finally reached my building, and they have demolished the siding with zeal and gusto, and made working from home a challenging prospect. I had prepared for the opportunity to run more cables outside once they removed the siding, but after speaking to the construction manager I now know how to enter the crawl space beneath my condo from the storage locker… it seems the cable company will be rewiring my existing DIY-job for me in the next couple of weeks, so if I tag along when the contractor comes through I should be able to figure out the best way to run both my Ethernet and HDMI cables under the condo from the den to the living room.

I’ve also gone ahead and purchased the new television I’ve been eagerly awaiting the release of: the Vizio VF552XVT. I was originally going to wait and see if I could pick one up at Costco, but at the last minute I found out about a “VIP” program that Vizio was running where in exchange for 6 weeks of filling out brief surveys on their new Internet-TV features I was able to receive a significant discount, free shipping, and a free sound system and Blu-Ray player at the end of the 6 weeks. It should arrive in the next week or so… I managed to squeeze in the day before the program ended, so I feel I was somewhat fortunate in being able to jump on that opportunity.

In much sadder news, my remaining grandmother (on my father’s side) fell terribly ill this past weekend, and had to go into the intensive-care unit. The entire family is currently in hurry-up-and-wait mode, and I’m preparing to have to hop on a plane to Toronto at a moment’s notice if her condition declines any further. At the moment the antibiotics appear to be slowly kicking in and she is improving gradually, though, and may even leave the ICU in the next couple of days if she continues to improve, although it will take her weeks to recover.

It’s definitely had me on edge these past couple of days, and was compounded today when I checked my mail and found a birthday card she sent me, presumably back in December. (I was glad the post office was able to successfully deliver it at all; there were a number of little mistakes she’d made in the addressing of it.) I haven’t opened it yet… I’m not a superstitious person by any stretch of the imagination, but the timing of it makes me anxious. Everyone in the family is stressed, of course, and Izzy’s recent passing is still fresh in our memories. I really hope she gets through this.

Dan.

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Best described as “impossible”

Saturday, November 14th, 2009

The past few weeks have been busy, and the next few weeks don’t show any sign of slowing down. We are attempting to meet some deadlines that are best described as “impossible”, but I’ve always liked a challenge. I’m getting used to working from home; starting to enjoy it even (not commuting rocks). I set up my new desk and created myself a proper office space:

New Desk

I’m currently working on my personal laptop, with what would today be considered an ancient 17″ external monitor hooked up to it (yes, it’s a flat-panel LCD, but hey, I brought it all the way from Toronto more than five years ago!). I have a much sexier work computer coming my way eventually but Apple has yet to ship it.

I’ve got some photos of Cannibal that I’ve posted to my gallery. It’s not a thoroughly representative selection but it’s nice, and I think the cast photo looks great:

full_cast

I will miss the show, but we had a good run (three shows for five weekends with almost no small houses!) and I’m pleased to have left it on a high note. I still catch myself singing the tunes from it, and probably will continue to for a while. There is talk about us mounting again next year, which I would definitely be up for.

In other news, at long last the reconstruction of the exterior of our condo complex is underway. I had serious doubts it would ever actually happen, and I’m relieved to see actual progress being made after more than a year since we finally voted to approve the project and assessment. I’m a little anxious because I want to take advantage of this opportunity to add some connectivity to the living room… when I first moved in the living room didn’t have any cable TV access whatsoever, and there was no unobtrusive way to wire it from either the bedroom or the den. I had a cable run through the walls outside my condo from the den to the living room, and it was just tucked away under the siding in a very haphazard fashion. I know I’ll get a chance to improve it when they strip off the siding on my unit, but what I want to do is add two new cables: an Ethernet and an HDMI cable, so that I can have both wired Internet (instead of relying on wireless) and a high definition TV signal from my computer. This is tricky because I may have a fairly small chance to act, and a lot will depend on the attitude of the construction workers. It certainly helps that I’ll be working from home… when the siding comes off I know there’s plywood underneath, but am I even going to be able to go around things like beams and columns? I can’t really tell just by looking at it.

Another timing factor is that I want to upgrade my living room electronics in general. This primarily means a new (read: bigger) television, but it also might mean a sound system, something I’ve never considered in the past. If I want to install rear speakers, it would be a good idea to attempt to run speaker wire outdoors at the same time, but I don’t know if that will be possible, and won’t even know if it’s relevant until I get a new TV, which is still a tentative matter at best. It’s all so confusing and hectic, and with the holidays coming up is unlikely to get any less so.

Dan.

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Fairly big life change

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

The thinly and not-so-thinly veiled allusions to big changes in my life can finally be put to rest. My last day working for Ubermind was on Friday; on Monday I began working for deCarta, a company that provides various mapping services (“location-based services” or “LBS”) for both embedded devices and the Internet.

If it seems like a bizarre manoeuvre in navigating the path of my career, well, it is, but it’s not without rhyme or reason. Location-based services is a hugely growing field in technology with the advent of so many location-aware (ie. GPS-equipped) network devices like the iPhone. I strongly believe it’s the next frontier of the digital age, and we’ve already seen the initial wave, but the quality of the existing software lags tremendously behind what the hardware is now capable of. DeCarta is giving me the opportunity to change that, and to hopefully be a really influential player in this emerging marketplace. Which rocks. I am leaving Ubermind with something of a heavy heart, but the timing is right and it’s too good an opportunity to pass up.

So I have begun work as a Senior Software Engineer there, where I will be putting my game development skills to work on redefining the user experience when interacting with maps on various handheld devices.

DeCarta is headquartered in San Jose, California, but rather than uprooting my life for a third time I will be telecommuting from my home in Redmond. This is a fairly big and slightly scary change for me; I’ve worked from home before but it’s never been my main workplace. I’ve had to give away the futon in my den, one of the pair of matching futons that has loyally and obediently followed me since I first moved out to New York City in 2004; I can assure you my heart was pierced at that sacrifice. I’ve replaced it with an L-desk from Fry’s that required a borrowed pick-up truck and (if we’d been adequately prepared) a third person to move it into my condo, but we had to make do with only two of us. It currently sits on the floor in its two unbelievably heavy boxes; I hope to assemble it this weekend and finish turning my den into a proper office that will solidify the line between my home space and my work space.

In the meantime, deCarta flew me down to San Jose yesterday for my first week. It is the first of what will no doubt be many such business trips, especially for the immediate future, as I am diving into a project that has a major milestone next month. I generally dislike flying and the stress it causes me, but the company’s travel policy is a good one and keeps me comfortable when I’m away, and it doesn’t hurt that the weather here is immeasurably nicer than Seattle this time of year. They also have a smaller office in Portland which I may occasionally visit; it’s about three hours away by train.

So: fairly big life change there. My second job switch in under a year. I’m hoping it’s my last one for a while.

I went out for drinks with the Ubermind folks on my last day. It was a good time, and I will miss them and the work I was doing there. (I won’t miss commuting to Fremont or competing for parking around that crowded block, though.)

Cannibal is closing this weekend. We’ve had some spectacular houses, and I won’t be at all surprised if we sell out on Halloween. It’s one of the few shows I’ve done where people are actually coming back to see it a second and third time… which isn’t to say it’s necessarily good, but at the very least it’s enjoyably bad. You should get tickets if you haven’t already; it closes this Sunday, and if you miss it, you miss it.

Dan.

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