Ross Mckillop

I'm back!

2006-11-21T08:24:00.000-08:00

I've been relying on Val's site to be our primary source of information for the last few months, work has been hectic and it seems like we've been picking an Australian up from the airport every other week since August. Ross T and Dirk are both settling into Seattle well, and with Jodie joining Ross in about 3 weeks, and another friend from Perth starting at Microsoft in January, the colony is ever expanding.

Val and I are really excited to have Jo visit us in a few weeks, we've got a few things planned, but primarily we want to take her to do a lot of this....

We headed up to Mt. Baker for the first weekend of the ski season last Saturday and were lucky enough to have great conditions. There were a lot of people we know up there, we took up Dirk (for his first time snowboarding) and Ross and met up with Jacob and a couple of his housemates.

Dirk was a great sport, we left him to take a lesson and found him later in the day making his way down the hill with brief periods of what looked like snowboarding interspersed with periods of falling flat on his face (or arse, or back).

Exhibit A

The weather was great and they had about 8" of snow overnight, so the snow was really nice too. It was a lot of fun to be on the mountain with all the Australians, we've all got season passes to Snoqualmie (much closer to Seattle, but not really open yet) so there's going to be a lot more to come :)

Dirk, Me, Jacob, Ross T

Val and I

You can see the rest of the photos here

Yosemite!

2006-08-18T01:15:00.000-07:00

Val and I have been very busy over the last few weeks. Dirk came out for a week or so and saw Seattle and San Francisco, hopefully we'll be seeing him again soon. While he was out, we went on an awesome hike of Mt. Townsend. Nothing like the one Val went on to the exact same place the week before. Val's mum was also out for a week, and they headed to Mt St. Helens and Victoria, Canada. Val has a lot of photos up on her website.

We're heading out of town for about 9 days - flying to Reno then camping in Tahoe and Yosemite National park. We'll be taking plenty of photos so keep your eye on this space and Val's site for updates...

Photo Album

2006-07-10T09:57:00.000-07:00

We've been doing a lot of hiking recently and I've been uploading the pictures to a public gallery here.

The latest addition is Rachel Lake, where we hiked yesterday.

I'm terribly lazy

2006-06-20T14:20:00.000-07:00

My updates have become more and more sporadic on this blog, I've been relying on Val to keep people informed of our comings and goings, she's been putting a lot of photos up since we went to Australia.

Everything is going well in Seattle, work is good for both of us, and the weather is sort of almost getting warm. Warm enough to get outside at least which has been good. We've managed to get out hiking/camping most weekends for the last month or two (except when I've been on-call), and have some pretty nice photos to show for it. We've been on some nice long hikes, I've put some photos below of a recent 12km round-trip we did with about 800m of elevation gain. We started out in warm sunshine, and by the time we'd reached the lake we were walking through snow, and found the lake with ice still floating on the surface. That said, the air temperature was probably just below 20C.

Us starting out on the Annette Lake hike.

Val bathed in sunlight and pollen

Ubiquitous slow shutterspeed water shot

Log bridge

Val in the snow

Lake Annette under snow and ice

Very, very clean water

This was a great hike, a good workout and the route was quite picturesque. The lake itself was small but a nice spot to sit and have lunch. The water was really clean, and absolutely freezing - I took my shoes off and walked in a short way, that didn't last long. While we were having lunch a thunderstorm rolled in pretty quickly so we made tracks and managed to get down the mountain in under two hours without getting wet.

Australia

2006-02-10T09:05:00.000-08:00

Val and I have returned to the US after a three week trip home, which was fantastic. I want to thank everyone who put us up (especially Luke and Fi, you guys have to come and make use of our spare room!) and showed us a good time, our trip really highlighted how good we have it in Perth and what a great (if quiet) place it can be.

We generally had a pretty cruisy time, went to the beach almost every day, got in some surfing and diving, drank some little creatures and had a lot of barbecues.

Thanks Australia :)

Cottesloe Beach

Val has far more photos, videos etc up on her website.

Skiing!

2005-11-30T19:56:00.000-08:00

This winter is shaping up better than last for Seattle's skiiers, when we arrived in March, all the snow had melted and it wasn't coming back. Most resorts ended up only being open for a couple of weeks last season, and as such most are giving last season's season pass holders a free pass for this year.

The snow has arrived early and in abundance at a couple of the resorts near here, we took the opportunity to head to Crystal on Sunday with a few friends, it was a nice day out.

Janice and Val

The group we went with were all pretty relaxed and mainly interested in taking a gentle start to the season, it quickly became apparent that not having to sit down and strap in each time you get off the chairlift separates the skiiers from the snowboarders, and we lost various members of the party on more than one occasion.

I wear a helmet because I fall down a lot

Edgar, Janice, Jenny, Jason, Val, Ross

Having lunch..

I was surprised at the number of people who spent the afternoon watching football on TV after paying pretty exorbitant prices for lift passes. For the price of the lift pass, they could have saved a 2 hour drive from Seattle and gone to the game.

Caught with my pants down

Jason caught me changing in the front of his truck. He just got down to his boxers and bare feet in the parking lot (which had a good inch or two of ice coating it) to get changed. He grew up in Alaska and I think the cold broke a small part of his brain.

I tried to get artistic

Crystal ended up getting a further 18 inches of snow the day after we went, but the conditions were still pretty nice while we were there :)

Still alive

2005-11-23T09:20:00.000-08:00

After some prompting from someone who wanted to know if I was actually still alive, I felt I should put a brief message up. I am alive. Val and I booked our flights to Australia last night, we're flying in to Perth at about 1pm on the 16th of January, and flying out again at 1am on the 4th of February.

We're heading out skiing on Sunday, I'll get some photos while we're out and post them next week.

Take care all.

Greencard

2005-09-25T12:10:00.000-07:00

I got one :)

After close to two years of stressful, gruelling, frustrating, humbling interaction with the USCIS, 5 sets of fingerprints, 7 mugshots and expenses in the thousands of dollars, I have a little plastic card with my photo on it that allows me to "work and reside in the U.S.". The latest installment was quite surprising, I had to call the USCIS three times, submit a form and write a letter to the local Seattle field office to get them to transfer my case here, all the while wondering when my interview would be to get my permanent residence finalised. So while we were anxiously waiting for notification of my interview date, and hoping that it would be early enough for me to leave the country in January to visit everyone back home, we received a letter which reads something like this...

WELCOME TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
This is to notify you that your application for permanent residence has been approved. It is with great pleasure that we welcome you to permanent resident status in the United States.

It goes on to explain my rights and responsibilities (one of which is registering for the draft ;) ) and provides some links to visit on the web.

I'm very happy that I'm now a permanent resident, but the inconsistency of the USCIS is astonishing. It took us six months to convince them that we'd moved, yet somehow they managed to process my application for permanent residence without the interview. Needless to say, we were pretty surprised when the green card arrived in the mail.

Now I don't have to worry about the USCIS for almost two whole years!

Leavenworth

2005-09-14T08:50:00.000-07:00

Last weekend Val, Janice and I had decided to go back-country camping, where we would hike in about 3 hours, carrying all our supplies with us, camp for a couple of nights and then hike back out. In the end, the weather looked a little dubious and we decided to camp somewhere we could drive to, known to hardcore people as "car-camping", and frowned upon with much disdain. Car camping however has the bonuses of being able to just unpack the car and be done, being able to bring something larger than a windproof cigarette lighter to cook with, and not having to subsist on 2 minute noodles and iodine treated water for 2 days.

We headed out to Leavenworth, which is billed as "the Bavarian town". This is odd, because it's in the middle of Washington, not in Bavaria. I think there is some kind of town statute in Leavenworth that compells business owners to only build in imitation of "Bavarian" architecture, whatever that is. The result is that Leavenworth looks like a cheap theme park, complete with mountain goats and a "Starbuckshaus". I'm serious.

We camped about 15 minutes out of Leavenworth, in an area known for being a very popular rock-climbing destination. Various climbing associations maintain a lot of different routes on the various cliffs, there are a lot of rocks that have anchors set into them for the benefit of the climbing community. Janice brought along all of her rock-climbing equipment and gave Val and I a lesson in climbing up rocks.

Val showing her skills

Val proved to be quite adept at rock-climbing. I think I was better at belaying than climbing, partly because belaying happens on the ground and partly because the harness squeezes you funny while you climb.

Me trying not to fall off a rock..

Val enjoying the view

The next day, we hiked to Colchuck Lake, which was about a 14km round trip, with 650m of elevation gain. The hike took us about 6 hours round trip, including about an hour or so sitting by the lake eating and generally relaxing. The scenery was pretty incredible, I have more photos on the other digital camera, which I'll add later, but this gives you an idea of what the lake looks like...

Us on a rock, by a lake, up a mountain

I'll add some more photos to this when I get home..

Arrr

2005-08-30T08:48:00.000-07:00

September 19 be "International Talk Like a Pirate Day". If ye don't desire to feel the business end of the cutlass, swear to be Touched by the Noodly Appendage, lest we make ye walk the plank ye scurvy dog.

Arrr.

You owe me Tucker.

Smile

2005-08-29T14:20:00.000-07:00

Last night Val and I went to see Brian Wilson in concert at The Paramount.
I was excited about the concert, I'd read some good reviews about the tour, and was intrigued to say the least at how Smile would actually come together after all these years. I wasn't sure if it would live up to the hype and speculation that has surrounded it for 35 years, if it would be some beautiful revelation of a tortured youg man who finally has a hold on his life and is able to release this piece of artwork, or if it would be a disappointment, better left as a myth. The musicians that Brian has playing with him now are incredible. Extremely tight, and clearly proud to be involved in what could never avoid being a milestone in recent musical history. Whether the album deserves the attention and acclaim it has re ceived comes down to the individual and what they take away from the experience, I personally thought the music was beautiful, but I'm pretty sure it's not exactly what Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parkes wrote in 1967.

The first half of the concert was a lot of early Beach Boys material, which pleased the predominantly middle-aged crowd (including the heavy, grey-bearded guy in the Hawaiian shirt sitting a few seats down from us who was on his feet shaking our whole row for most of the concert). There were a number of tracks off Pet Sounds, God Only Knows, Wouldn't It Be Nice and Pet Sounds were all highlights of the evening. I was impressed that Brian can still sing well, especially after seeing Bob Dylan at the Amazon.com 10th anniversary concert (he was terrible). While it's good to see that he's overcome a lot of his neuroses about appearing in public, he never looked comfortable on stage, and didn't really interact with the crowd or his band. He also didn't play any instruments save a few bars on the keyboard in the closing minutes of the Smile set, and a couple of songs on the bass during the encore.

There was something about the concert that left me feeling a little sad. The music was beautiful, and it was great to hear Smile no matter how it compares to Brian's original vision. Brian Wilson's personal demons have clearly had a permanent effect on him, and I really hope that the release of Smile comes from his own desire to see it complete, and not the influence of friends or family that want to see him return to the success he had in the 1960s. Given his well documented history of being manipulated by those close to him, (the psychologist his family hired to "save" Brian dominated his life entirely for a number of years, to the point where his license to practice was suspended for breach of ethics), the latter is a disturbing possibility. I've read recent interviews where he has come out and said that he's reached a happy point in his life, and that he's proud of his work finally coming to fruition, but he was definitely uneasy on stage.

I would recommend listening to Smile to anyone who's interested in the history of Rock music, seeing it live was incredible, I just hope playing it for the world is a positive experience for it's composer.

Mt. Rainier

2005-07-31T22:30:00.000-07:00

You may notice a theme developing here... Val's folks were in town for the last week, and we took them around to see the sights, including a great trip down to Mt. Rainier. Until this weekend, we'd known Mt. Rainier as "that really big hill you can some times when it's not smoggy". We went up the Space Needle a couple of weeks ago and took some photos, we got some beautiful shots of the sun setting over the Olympic mountains on the other side of the Puget Sound, and some nice shots of Rainier, including the one below. The building I work in is at the bottom of the red arrow.

Mt. Rainier from the Space Needle

Rainier is about 70 miles (110km) from Seattle, so you get the idea from the photo above that it's bloody enormous. 14411 feet to be precise, or 4323m, which is really, really big, especially if you're from Western Australia. I took another photo of Rainier today from Blake Island, which is a 40 minute ferry ride west of Seattle..

Mt. Rainier from Blake Island

It took us a little over 2 hours to drive to Rainier, the views along the way are incredible, especially once you get inside the Mt. Rainier National Park.

The drive up to Mt. Rainier

Once we were inside the park, we stopped at Paradise, a turn of the century Inn situated at the trailhead of the hike up to Camp Muir, the most popular base camp for summit attempts at Rainier. Most people will hike up to Camp Muir, which takes between 3 and 6 hours, depending on how hardcore you are, then attempt the summit climb overnight to see the sunrise, or very early in the morning so that the snow is still hard and you don't fall to your death in a crevasse on one of the 26 glaciers. (The link above is a short video my friend Wes took after he hiked up to Camp Muir in some ridiculously short time, with a sprained ankle, in shorts and running shoes. You can see the shoes in the video, as he slides down the Muir Snowfield on his butt, without a sled) We walked a short way up the trail that heads up to Camp Muir, and took some photos in the alpine meadows just above Paradise.

Mt. Rainier Alpine Meadow

Val at Mt. Rainier

The mountain is awesome, Val and I are planning on doing the Camp Muir hike soon, until then, this will be the last lot of photos I post of mountains. I swear.

Mt. Pilchuck

2005-07-14T22:58:00.000-07:00

Val and I decided that we should go on another hike, so we met up with Janice, another Amazonian, got some take-away double ventti non-fat soy lattes and drove north-east for about an hour, until we arrived in Mount Pilchuck State Park. We stopped in at the ranger station to use the facilities and find out if the blueberries are ripe on Mt. Dickerman yet (a slightly more gruelling hike, 13km round trip, with 1500m elevation gain). Janice was very disappointed a couple of weeks ago when she hiked Dickerman and didn't come home with a backpack full of fresh blueberries. We're told it's worth the long painful round trip to see the views and get fresh wild berries. It might happen..

So anyway, we arrived at Pilchuck at around noon, and promptly headed up the mountain on what we first thought was "the trail", then "the wrong trail", but what turned out to in fact be "not a trail". An exciting 20 minutes was spent wandering around the foot of the mountain, demonstrating our mountaineering expertise, before we found the highway up the side of the mountain that every man and his dog appeared to have been able to find.

Once we got going on the trail, we wound our way up through second growth forest, which was still incredibly beautiful, and home to some really large fir trees. I think I'm going to have to get some waterproof footwear. All the trails seem to have a lot of creeks and little waterfalls running over them, forcing you to try to navigate a series of slippery stepping stones if you're inadequately prepared and don't want to walk the next 4 hours with wet socks...

Waterfall at the bottom of the mountain

After a good hour or so, the trail emerges into sunlight again in large boulder fields. The trees thin out and you get a really beautiful view back to the west, where you can see the Puget Sound and some of Seattle's outlying areas. We continued up the mountain, stopping periodically to take in the views and some clean air. The last half hour or so is quite rocky, and you eventually make your way to an absolutely incredible lookout at the very summit of the mountain.

The lookout literally looks as though they built it on the ground, then airlifted it to the top of the mountain and balanced it there. You climb up a rocky area then a ladder into the little hut, which has 360 degree views of the Puget Sound to the west, more of the Cascades to the North and East (including Mt. Baker if you're lucky), and all the way to Mt. Ranier in the south (again, if you're lucky and the NW weather doesn't block the view).

Mt. Pilchuck Summit Lookout

I took this photo of the summit lookout from another really pointy bit of the mountain, slightly to the right of where the people in the photo below are. I love the way the clouds look in this photo, and we really are at eye level with them. There was actually quite a lot of cloud below us, the peak of Mt. Pilchuck is at about 5200ft, which is roughly 1560m.

It really is a long way up here..

We got a Russian guy to take a photo of us while we were up on the pointy bit..

Janice, Val and Ross

Val and I are really getting into the whole mountains thing, they're still quite the novelty for me, and it's really great to get out into the fresh air and do something healthy after spending the whole week in the city.

His Excellency

2005-07-10T20:59:00.000-07:00

Val and I decided to take off our hiking boots, put down our lattes and go play some frisbee in Volunteer Park, a nice place at the top of Capitol Hill in Seattle. We're really taking to the whole Northwest lifestyle with gusto. We were having a great time, throwing the "disc" and trying to avoid hitting the hippies smoking up in the middle of the park, and trying to avoid the guy wandering amongst the fir trees on the edge of the park making screeching noises like a monkey.

After about twenty minutes, soaking in the crisp evening air and generally being fairly inconspicuous, one of the aforementioned hippies put down the bong and started calling out in our direction... "Hey! Hey!! You guys need a frisbee??" It was an odd question, given that there were two of us, standing about twenty metres apart, throwing what was inarguably a frisbee. The guy, a 60ish black guy whose teeth resembled the keys of a piano, walked over to us and asked us again if we needed a frisbee. We pointed out that we already had a frisbee, but he insisted. He ran back to where the other guys (two mid-twenties white guys with long dreads, piercings and goatees) had just pulled out their own frisbee. A nice shiny red number, but that's beside the point. Our friend picked up what looked like a white plastic shopping bag and came back to where we were standing. He started telling us something about Fox TV and a peace concert, and then the fact that they were looking for children (which did seem a little odd). It turns out that there's some promotion going on with a TV station that is looking for kids who are "going to change the world". The bag he brought with him contained an entry form, some assorted knick knacks, and a frisbee. Whatever. This was not the interesting part of our exchange. We talked to the guy for a while and he explained that while he had 5 kids of his own, he just wanted one that would stand up to the man and "change the system".

Our malodorous friend told us he had something he wanted to show us, and started walking toward the monument at the top of the park. There were plenty of people around and it was an open space, so we followed him, to see if he had any more amusing stories for us. He showed us the lily pond dedicated by a Japanese family in reconciliation after WWII, and then kept walking toward the tower at the entrance of the park. He was telling us that he "almost had to die to get a plaque in his name in this park". We didn't really know why there would be a plaque with his name on it, he didn't mention being a veteran and we couldn't think of any other reasons he would be deserving of having his own plaque. We asked him why he should have a plaque, at which point he said "because I'm the mayor! You've got to have a plaque with your name on it when you're the mayor". We kind of looked at him and said "the mayor??", so he explained that he's the Mayor of Volunteer Park. We started walking back towards the part of the park we'd come from, which was where we'd parked. We explained that we were coming up to our car, and that we were going to go home, so he just laughed, walked back down to the middle of the park where the other guys were still playing frisbee, and started smoking again.

Let this be a warning kids, if you smoke lots of drugs, you'll go crazy and start telling people you were elected to public office.

Snow Lake

2005-06-21T11:57:00.000-07:00

Last weekend Val and I decided to head out of the city, clear out our lungs and see what Washington has to offer other than an abundance of latte sipping, pierced, sandal wearing hippies, and went for a hike in the mountains.

We drove east on I-90 for about an hour until we reached the Snoqualmie and Alpental ski areas, then realised we don't really know anything about the area. We found the state forestry service hut, and met some really nice retirees who volunteer there on the weekends, got ourselves a National Park pass and a pamphlet about the various hikes in the area and decided on Snow Lake. As any other Australians will attest, just the name was exotic enough to convince me that this would be fun. WA (Western Australia, not Washington) is lacking in lakes, and we definitely don't have any snow, so the possibility of seeing something called "Snow Lake" was pretty exciting. After the 60 year old guy at the forestry service hut told us that he'd hiked up to Snow Lake in 45 minutes before, we were pretty sure we'd be able to make it.

We parked at the Alpental ski area, got a park pass and started up the trail.

Val, clearly excited about being in the forest

The hike was beautiful, the bottom half was in old growth fir forest, and we crossed about a dozen small streams on the way up. The one below had quite a drop off to the left, so Val decided to go the high way...

Val climbing over a little waterfall

It took us about an hour and 15 minutes (so much for the 45 minutes...) to reach the top of the ridge, at which point we looked down the other side and finally got to see Snow Lake.

Snow Lake

We had read at the bottom of the trail that it had been "snow-free" since the 17th of June (ie, the day before), which concerned me at first, as I was in shorts and t-shirt, but the 4.5km hike, which took us up 400m from the base of the trail to the ridge was plenty of activity to keep us warm. The lake itself is at about 1200m, and is fed from snow-melt each spring, and is usually frozen over for about 9 months of the year. I saw some photos of it still half frozen in late July, but this winter was really mild (the ski resorts closed in February).

The trip in and out took us about 4 hours, including a nice stop down by the lake, when we were on our way out, there were very few people left on the trail, perhaps 3 or 4, and a couple that were camping down by the lake. It was very quiet, and a nice change from being in the city.

I'm tired...

We plan on heading out again next weekend, and are thinking of doing some camping, but apparently you have to tie your food up in trees so that bears don't steal it. I like to imagine something like Yogi and Booboo, with some cute picnic basket shenanigans, but the Americans I talk to don't seem to think of bears the same way...

Craigslist

2005-06-14T13:21:00.000-07:00

I have discovered the joys of Craigslist. It astonishes me that you can advertise something that you basically can't be bothered carrying down to the garbage room (if you live in an apartment building), and someone will be at your house with a truck and three mates to take it off your hands within the hour.

We managed to move a room full of furniture over the course of last weekend, and have now reclaimed the second bedroom. Craigslist has even made it's way to Perth, which is awesome. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to have taken off there yet, and seems to be one of those things that only spreads by word of mouth.

I read a (dated) article about the current CEO of Craigslist, and their sources of revenue. I'm not sure if it's changed since last September, but it's pretty incredible that a site with no commercial advertising can turn over millions of dollars a year based solely on the fees it charges to post employment listings. That said, I have noticed recently that Amazon, Google and Microsoft have turned to Craigslist as another place to hunt potential job candidates.

I must admit that I didn't request to have my advertisement for "Free table: ugly" beamed into space, but I hear that's an option. Living in Capitol Hill, you could almost mistake some of the people that turn up looking for said ugly table as not quite being from this planet.

Now if I can just find a good set of jousting sticks...

I like them because they're shiny

2005-04-12T20:36:00.000-07:00

Let me preface this entry by saying that my first ever computer was a Mac, and I loved it. I could record up to 5 seconds of audio by plugging a microphone in the back of the little box with a screen, and I could make the Mac play that sound back when something special happened. As a twelve year old, this was very exciting. That was the only Mac I've ever owned, and as a comp sci student, I learned to shun my once beloved idol.

Over the last few years, I've found myself liking Macs again. OS X played a big part in the sway of my opinion, the credibility lent to the operating system by having it based on a BSD platform (BSD is a type of Unix, which is cool for Nerds, the platform is "the guts" in non-Nerdspeak) is almost enough to escape the scorn of (some of) my peers. So when Val and I decided that we really needed to get a computer, I started looking at Macs as a viable option.

I would love to have the dual G5 desktop variety with the ridiculously large flat panel display, but I'd also really like my own island in the Mediterranean, and I can't afford one of those either. Macs are a little more affordable in the good ol' US of A than in the land of "luxury tax", and I can get a discount at Amazon. There's also a $100 rebate on offer at Amazon at the moment, in case this little rant sways anybody toward the shiny side. To make a long-winded story more concise, we've ordered an iBook from Amazon, and it should arrive soon. It's technically going to be Val's computer, as I have a laptop courtesy of work, but I'm sure I will have ample opportunity to play with it.

Would you buy an operating system from this man?

Sicker than a dog

2005-03-21T21:14:00.000-08:00

So last Friday was supposed to be my 10th day on the new job, and I had to call in sick. I woke up at about 3:30 in the morning, and then was in the bathroom vomiting and generally feeling god-awful every half hour until it was light enough for me to move to the couch. I spent the rest of Friday making numerous calls on the big white telephone and driving the porcelain bus, and by that night, was well enough to keep down a cup of watered down chicken noodle soup.

Seattle is awesome, although the rain has started. I discovered today that there is a cricket league here, comprised almost entirely of Indian and Pakistani ex-pats, unfortunately there are not many cricket pitches around, and definitely no real turf pitches. I am seriously considering trying to join a team in the NW cricket league. Microsoft has three of the 12 teams in the competition, which says something of their willingness to source tech employees from India. Should be a lot of fun. I'm finding myself in the common situation of the transplanted Aussie, craving vegemite on toast (Val found me some vegemite on the weekend while I was sick, it was one of the first things I was able to eat), Little Creatures and a good pie. I'm also finding myself the butt of a lot of "that's not a [insert random object that someone is holding]!" jokes.

Wednesday night is quiz night at the Kangaroo and Kiwi pub, so there will be some Coopers to be had, which should make the craving for beer with flavoUr in it subside. I find it incomprehensible that a country advanced enough to produce the incomparable Chevrolet Suburban could be so bad at brewing beer that were there an international award for beers that taste the *least* like something you would like to drink, they would win that award and never relinquish it, like some Dream Team of substandard brewing. And they're happy with their near beer.

They do however have better Mexican food than Australia, which is probably due to the fact that there are no Mexicans in Australia, otherwise I'm sure our Mexicans would out-cook America's Mexicans in a heartbeat.

Sorry.

Seattle

2005-03-09T09:02:00.000-08:00

Ok, so it's been a long time since the last post, but Val and I are now in Seattle, I'm working at Amazon, and we've found an apartment.

Checkit
The View

Living Room

Kitchen

The floor to ceiling mirrors in every room are an interesting touch added by the previous owner. He also had bulletproof glass installed in the windows, leading me to believe that he was either a paranoid narcissist, or had some type of glass fetish.

So this is where we're going to move to some time in the next couple of weeks. At the moment, we're right in downtown Seattle, which is pretty nice, and means that I can be at work in under 10 mins on free public transport. Also, it hasn't rained yet, so all those naysayers that told me I would grow gills here have thus far been proven wrong.

Amazon III

2005-02-09T14:23:00.000-08:00

Well, they offered me a job! Val and I are moving to Seattle sometime in the next three weeks or so, and I'll start work on the 7th of March. I never thought I'd work at a book store, I wonder what it'll be like.

The whole process of getting a job at Amazon is incredible. If they decide that they're interested in you for an interview, they fly you out and put you up at the very trendy, and very noir/gothic W Hotel, which is awesome, if a little overwhelming for someone who doesn't typically dress entirely in black. The interview process is nuts, the first time I went out, I had eight 45 minute technical interviews, my only break being a pseudo-interview with a project manager over lunch. Some of the problems they asked were simple: "write a function that [counts the words in a string, reverses a linked list, divines the meaning of life]", and some were a little more complicated or abstract. There were none of the fabled brain teasers that I had expected after reading stuff on the web, and talking to RossT after his interviews with Microsoft.

Once they decide that they actually want to hire you, you're golden. I knew I was in with a chance of getting an offer when a mysterious package addressed to me arrived in Amazon.com packaging. There were three books; O'Reilly's "Programming Perl" and "Perl Cookbook", and the ubiquitous "Effective C++", along with a little note that said "Ross, we look forward to working with you. Hope you enjoy the books! Amazon Recruiting". This was before I heard from anyone at Amazon about how my interviews had gone. The rest was just downhill from there. They called and went over the package they wanted to offer me, and then after I called them back the next day and said I liked the sound of that, they sent me a contract. We're moving to Seattle!

Val's mum can no longer tell me to get a job. :)

Guitar

2005-01-30T08:13:00.000-08:00

I built a guitar, now if only I had an amplifier to play it through....

A little closer

Better now?

Snow

2005-01-29T14:48:00.000-08:00

This will only really be of interest to people who saw this house with a pitiful sprinkling of snow at the time of our wedding.

The back porch, complete with duck thermometer

The front of the house

The front walk. This is after I cut through the 30cm or so of snow with the snowblower.

Ouch

2005-01-29T14:35:00.000-08:00

I like to snowboard a lot. After we got 20" of snow last weekend, I knew that the local mountains were going to be *nice* this week. I missed out on Monday, as we didn't land in Albany until 9am, and I was knackered, but after a restless night on Monday, I was up early on Tuesday, eager to get to Belleayre, with the anticipation of some pretty good conditions. At about 7:30, I was making some coffee, when my snowboard, which was leaning up against the fridge, started to fall... Almost in slow motion, like some b-grade movie montage, or a scene from Baywatch, I saw the snowboard fall. I lunged forward, reaching to catch the board before it crashed to the floor, but I couldn't grasp it. The board fell through my fingers, and landed with a sickening crunch on the big toe of my right foot. See exhibit A

I was not happy. I let fly with a barrage of groans and colourful language, and did a lot of hopping around the kitchen in one sock (I had by this time removed the sock on the mangled toe). Val went outside and filled a ziplock bag with snow, and I laid on the couch with my foot up, in excruciating pain, cursing myself for ruining a perfectly good opportunity to go snowboarding.

By the time Val had to go to work at 11am, I was feeling a lot better, and could hobble around enough to make the logical decision that I would be ok to go up to the mountain and go snowboarding. It was worth it. The conditions were beautiful, cold, clear and not a breath of wind, and the snow was sweet. I kept my toe on ice all day, and when I went back up the next day, it didn't hurt at all. This is how it looked after two days of snowboarding.

Good as a bought one.

Club Contour

2005-01-23T19:45:00.000-08:00

Yes, it sounds like a gay bar, and on the inside, it kinda looked like one too... Val and I discovered the source of the cheapest beer and food in all of humankind. Some kind of portal to a parallel dimension, a better dimension, where pints of beer with names like "Rat Town I.P.A." and "Alaskan Amber Ale" cost $2.50, and $1.95 gets you a really nice burger with spanish onion and salad and home-made fries, or rosemary encrusted chicken strips with aioli and cajun dipping sauces. We had intended to go to a Thai restaurant that was recommended to us for our last meal here in Seattle, and saw Club Contour while we were walking. We thought it might be nice to have a cheap beer and an entree of some kind while we kill time tonight waiting to fly out, and ended up just staying and drinking pints and eating delicious snacks of the highest order.

Only 2 hours to go until we can get moving towards the airport and finally get home. Damn that 2 feet of snow. Snowboarding is going to be so taxing with such a lot of snow to get through... I don't have much else to do for the rest of the week though...

Amazon II

2005-01-22T16:03:00.000-08:00

So the interviews went really well, I'm feeling good about the way I presented myself and handled all the questions I was asked. If I get an offer, I'll be pretty stoked, Seattle is a really cool town, lots to do, and pretty laid back. The only down side to this trip is that we can't go home. Our flight from Chicago to Albany was cancelled, because a big mofo of a storm has hit the north-east, and NY city is forecast to receive somewhere in the range of 18-30" of snow. If you're not used to imperial measurements, or refuse to calculate it in metric, that's between 45 and 75cm of snow, which is a lot. United airlines called us and said that they could get us on an overnight flight on Sunday night, but we'd have to pay for our own accommodation in Seattle in the meantime. Their policy is that in the event of flight delays/cancellations due to inclement weather, their customers are shit out of luck, and can "pay for your own damn accommodation you leech".

So we're in Seattle for another day and a half, which I'm sure will be cool. We discovered the public library, which is the most impressive library I've every been in. It R0x0rs the B0x0r.

Amazon

2005-01-19T17:31:00.000-08:00

Val and I leave for Seattle tomorrow morning, hopefully I won't have to dig the car out in the dark. Amazon are putting me up at the "W" hotel again, very trendy, very gothic. Val and I were fortunate enough to be able to get her on the same flight as me, so I'll have someone to talk to on the plane, and Val will have someone to fall asleep on. I'm not as nervous this time as I was last time, I feel better prepared, and I pretty much know what I'm in for. Wish me luck, I will report back after it is all done.

Cold

2005-01-18T05:49:00.000-08:00

In keeping with my previous theme of complaining bitterly about the cold, here are a couple of photos I took this morning. Anyone who's been to Val's folks place will recognise the duck thermometer. Dirk, please feel free to post a comment about where to insert this device to check a duck's temperature, we're all waiting for it.

The big numbers are Farenheit, look a little closer at the small numbers.

That's right, it's cold as a goddamn mofo.

[edit]
In other news, tripod.com is crap, so if you can't see those photos, they're
here and here

[edit II]
I now have www.photobucket.com to thank for hosting my images. 25MB of free hosting, unfortunately there's only a 1500MB bandwidth limit per month for my images. My blog's popularity may see that cap reached each month, so get in quick.

Snow

2005-01-15T08:31:00.000-08:00

Snow. Whenever people from countries like Australia arrive here, all they want to do is see snow, play in the snow, eat the snow, you get the idea. I was one of these people, and I still enjoy doing all of the above, but one thing I hadn't counted on is becoming very evident to me. Snow sucks. Our driveway is about 60m long, and getting the snow off it so I can back the car out is an hour long bastard of a job. The first time it was amusing, and afterwards I had this sense of accomplishment as I blinked away the sweat to see the freshly scraped driveway. The second time it wasn't quite as much fun, and then when I had to shovel off a couple of inches of slush so wet you would send it back if it were pink and you had gotten it from a carney at the Royal Show, my patience wore thin. Shovelling snow is a crap job.

[Snowblowers]
"Why don't you use a snowblower?", I hear you ask. I do. Using the snowblower makes the removal of the snow somewhat easier, but using the machine is like trying to herd a drunk bear up and down your driveway in straight lines. It's ironic that you can drip with sweat in temperatures of -10C, using a machine that is supposed to (and in fact does) make snow removal easier.

Come visit me, and you can "play" in the snow with a shovel.

Allow me to vent...

2005-01-13T13:22:00.000-08:00

A local school is set to institute a ban on all winter coats, puffy vests and zippered sweatshirts, because the school's insurance company has informed them that their policy is contingent upon those restrictions. Apparently loose clothing is too easy for students to conceal weapons, drugs and alcohol under, and makes the school a higher liability than the insurance company is willing to underwrite.

The average daily temperature here in January is below freezing, and many days are well below freezing. Every single kid in that school is going to wear a coat, and be forced to remove it as soon as they enter the building. I can see that happening.