I'm not the only one who liked the eagle

What the Northwest does on a sunny summer weekend....

Today we had our first sunny day since I can't remember when.... On Saturday Sue and I heard what sounded like an amazing drag race happening down the hill. It went on all day and I finally realized what it was... Hydroplane racing at Lake Sammammish. On Sunday we went down to check it out. Here are some pictures (click on any picture to get a larger view)

OK.. I have a soft spot for the car shows... this was one of the cooler old cars, a Dodge Super Bee

The Hydroplane Pits:

I have to admit that the best thing we saw all day was a juvenile Blad Eagle who was cruising the water front and occasionally dipping into the water for his lunch...

Lifting the boats out onto the water when they raced

There were a lot of family teams

Here I am in front of one of the old boats

Sue's New Ride

We picked up a new Camry yesterday to replace the old grey mare (i.e. Avalon) .

The Rocket Bike

A long weekend in the Bay Area gave us a chance to get together with Dan. Besides some great meals (including breakfast at La Note and Jimmy Beans, our two favorite place in Berkeley to have breakfast) we got to see Dan's latest creation, the fixed gear bike he built from scratch this winter.

You can click on any of these pictures and get a larger view


Dan, Jake and Julia after their bike ride to the playground:



This is the crank and bottom bracket that Dan and I got at Recycled Cycles in Seattle when he was up for Christmas



The Completed Bike:



Not sure why Eric inserted the Boy Scout walking stick....

Easter In Taipei

Rachel turned the locals on to Peeps:

The Skagit Tulip Farms

We took a ride up north to an area that is famous for it's flower farms. Here are a couple of pictures. It sure would have been nicer if the fr*ckin rain would have let up..... (click on the picture to see a larger image)

One project finished....

We've been working for a while now to get some cabinets added to a space in our house (call it our Living Room...). Today the last bits were finally completed and we've been been moving stuff in. Here are some pictures. Some of you might notice that this looks an awful lot like a bar... well, it's not... it's just storage for all our, um, liquor and glasses...

smiller 

Building a Home Theater PC (pt1)

This note shows my latest project, building a Home Theater PC. This device will sit with the stereo, in the living room. I am going to rip all of my CD music to this box and use it as a jukebox. We'll also use it to play Internet Radio and for ripping and playing DVD movies. I will be putting all of my pictures on this PC. The PC has a 64 Bit AMD 3800 processor, 3 WD 250 Gig drives configured in a RAID5 configuration (that assures that a loss of any single disk will not result in any lost data.
















The case looks like a Stereo device (click on a picture to enlarge it)















This is the motherboard. The AMD processor is snapped into it's socket in the center of this picture














Here is the Motherboard in place with some of the connections in place. Because so much is packed into a small case, cooling is a big deal. there is an 80MM fam up in the front and 2 60MM fans in the back.

Girl Scout Cookie Time!

Today we went to a Volunteer Fair at the Town Building in Issaquah. Sue met the quintesential Girl Scout (pictured center with about a zillion badges on her vest) and bought our annual cookie allotment. Mmmmm, Samoas :)

The Car Ferry

Sue and I took a road trip around the end of Puget Sound yesterday, with a return trip via the Car Ferry. The boat took us from Bremerton into downtown Seattle. Ferries are a pretty common way of getting around this area. For our ride, we just pulled into the pier, paid our $10 and waited to drive onto the boat. The ride was about an hour long and wound in and out through the sound. Sue hung out in the car. It was a beautiful day with great views of Mount Rainier and the city of Seattle:

A wonderful day in our neighborhood

Today was a nice sunny day in Washington. I thought it would be nice to start to record some of the daily life to help our far away family stay in touch with things around here.

This weekend, I'm going to get a few things done. My prediction:
- Get a few mile hike in
- Ride my Bike
- Get to the Gym
- Drive a bucket of balls
- order parts for a media center pc to build
- Write a letter in french to my nephew/pen pal Aiden
- Look into New York travel

Let's see how many of these things get done :)

Second Try.. This time without Hello software

Here is another picture of Sweet Baboo, an intense little girl.

Pictures can be uploaded Pooh!

Hello World

Watching 40 Year Old Virgin with Andy