An American’s lament

I’ve been thinking about this day more than usual lately. Instead of sleeping, I’ve been trying to make sense of it all. Where are we going?

On September 11, 2001, I was 12 years old. The time between the end of the Cold War and the start of whatever this is—that was my childhood. My worldview had been shaped by the relative stability of the ’90s. As the September 11 attacks unfolded, I was just old enough to realize that the world would never be the same.

I don’t know anyone who was injured or killed that day, but it affected me just like it affected everybody. Once in a while, out of the blue, I remember all the things that happened that day, and I lose track of whatever else I was thinking about. I become quiet. And then I consider that today’s 12-year-olds must think the world is normal. That’s the really scary part.

Sure, things always change, but almost every turn America has taken in the last ten years has been for the worse. I don’t think that the attacks of September 11 are to blame for everything, but their repercussions have echoed through every aspect of our lives, serving as a leitmotif for the beginning of the end of America’s glory days. Seriously, what’s looking up for us now?

One of the big issues we’ve grappled with (or not) is the choice between freedom and safety. Presented with this false dichotomy, I’ve always stated a preference for the former. Right now, I’m not so sure. It’s easy to say that I don’t mind if a terrorist hijacks the plane I’m on, that I’ll be forever honored as a martyr for the cause of freedom. (When was the last time you saw an obituary that said, “This guy was a total asshole”?) But then I think about my future, and I think about the future without me in it. I’ll never have another life to live. Suddenly, the original question sounds very different.

But it is a false dichotomy… I guess. Surely people in other countries, where things like subtlety and nuances are appreciated, recognize a trade-off. There’s always going to be terrorism in some form or another, whether you do anything about it or not, and whether you call it that or not. When you obsess over terrorism to the point that it consumes you, that’s really when it works. The goal of the terrorist is to inspire terror. In that sense, the terrorists have been winning. Maybe the key is not to let them get to you, as horrific as their acts may have been.

I need go back only a few weeks for a possible example of what to do. The Prime Minister of Norway said that his country would respond to Anders Breivik’s terrorist attacks with “more democracy”: “It’s absolutely possible to have an open, democratic, inclusive society, and at the same time have security measures and not be naïve.” In doing so, they’d likely be getting at the cause of the problem rather than the symptoms. Plus, no domestic spying or rape flashbacks at the airport. Here in the US, however, millions of flag-waving dum-dums would be out for blood. And they were.

So, why don’t I move to Canada or something? It feels like a cop-out that wouldn’t solve the problem, though I’m not sure if anything else would work at all. I feel helpless. No matter what I say or do, America will keep going down the tubes. Huge corporations will keep bribing our representatives and writing laws on their behalf. The rich will keep getting richer while the poor lose more and grow in number. No president or ex-president is ever going to go on trial. The TSA will continue to use naked body scanners at airports. There will still be a TSA.

If this is how the politically apathetic feel, then for the first time, I totally get them. But as for me, I don’t know what to do. Stick to my ideals? I guess, but what does it matter?

Looking through my files, I found that 13-year-old me, writing a year after the attacks, got here first:

Sadly, I feel that the terrorist attacks will be America’s ultimate downfall. It showed us that we are not, as we seem to be, an invincible nation, and that we can’t handle what we dish out to many other countries. I’m really not sure how we should respond to this situation. I guess we should just let it be. Maybe America needs to learn its lesson and stop Americanizing the world.

I wasn’t a philosophy major. These opinions are just what I happen to have been thinking about over the past few days and are not particularly well thought out. I fully expect some or all of you to rip me to shreds.

My first vacation

I just took an extra-long Labor Day weekend to visit my family. It was my first trip back to Florida since I moved to Seattle in May; it was also my first vacation as a full-time worker.

I wasn’t sure how I’d feel once I finally got there, but everything ended up feeling really normal. It was as if I had never left and my life in Seattle had just been a dream.

I flew to Orlando on Thursday. My grandparents picked me up and took me to their house; I couldn’t remember the last time I had been there. Later, my parents arrived, and after we all had dinner at an Outback Steakhouse, I went with my parents back home, or to their house, or whatever I’m going to call it.

The next day, my sister joined us for Krishna Lunch at UF. I had alerted some former co-workers/friends that I’d be there, so they met with me during lunch. It was fun to catch up. After we were done eating, I went back to the office where I used to work so I could talk to my former supervisors and let them know how I was doing.

After that, we went to the Devil’s Millhopper. I had suggested going there simply because I had never been. It’s basically the remains of a giant sinkhole that you walk down to the bottom of. It’s more beautiful than it sounds like. And it’s pretty cool… literally!!

On Saturday, we went tubing down the Ichetucknee River and then got home in time to watch the Florida Gators’ first football game of the season. Sunday was a day for staying home and relaxing with a homemade brunch and all that good stuff. We didn’t go out.

On Monday, we went out for a little drive. Our first was stop a pottery gallery down the road. We met the artist and decided to buy a few of her works; I got a handmade mug. After that, we stopped at a few parks along the Suwannee River, one of which included a spring and an underwater cave. (No, we didn’t swim or dive there.)

Back at my parents’ house, I was looking forward to having s’mores over a campfire, but since it had been raining, we had s’mores over the grill instead. My sister suggested putting peanut butter on them. I did, and they tasted like Tagalongs! We’re on to you, Girl Scouts.

That evening, my grandparents came and spent the night. On Tuesday, while my parents were at work, my grandparents took me back to their house and then to the airport, where I was whisked back to my new life.

So yesterday was my first day back from work after a six-day weekend, and it felt strange: “I’ve been doing this for the past three months?” It’s been sinking in, though. Meanwhile, I’m trying to figure out when I’ll go back next.

The BBC enumerates 10 Strange Ways Tudors Died. Life was dangerous back then, apparently.

The West Coast: the best coast?

Four months ago, I lived in Florida and had never been to the West Coast. Now, I live in Seattle.

I’d lived in Florida my whole life—only 22 years, but still. One thing I’ve noticed is that when looking at a map of the United States, my eyes instinctively drift to the lower-right-hand corner. Now, when I watch the news forecast on TV, they show this corner of the country that, by itself, looks pretty alien to me. It’ll take me a while to get used to that.

Less off-putting but still noticeable are the little things that set the West Coast apart from the world I as I know it.

First of all, mayonnaise. I’d always seen on the label of Hellman’s mayonnaise that Hellman’s is known as Best Foods west of the Rockies, but dang if it isn’t weird to see this “Best Foods” mayo on the shelf where Hellman’s ought to be. And one thing I didn’t know before I got here that Arnold bread is called Oroweat. Yes, making sandwiches is a different experience here on the West Coast.

The media is also different out here. Growing up at the very edge of the Miami media market, I watched CBS 4, NBC 6, and Local 10, and I listened to Majic 102.7. Here, I watch KOMO, KING, and KIRO, and I listen to KEXP. I guess call signs that start with “K” lend themselves to catchier names. Decide for yourself: the Miami stations I mentioned are WFOR, WTVJ, WPLG, and WMXJ. (Okay, I don’t actually listen to KEXP very much.)

I can tackle any of the Indian place names in Florida: Okeechobee, Loxahatchee, and… well, there aren’t many others. Here, there are some crazy names that I’m having more trouble with: Snohomish, Sammamish, Duwamish, Suquamish, Issaquah, Snoqualmie, Puyallup (prononuced “Pyuallup”), Sequim (pronounced “Squim”??). Those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head.

It’s weird to see mountains everywhere. I still can’t get used to that. People hike a lot, and apparently they go skiing in the winter (or even in the summer, if it snows enough in the winter). Oh, and according to the news, people are always falling off cliffs and getting lost in the woods and stuff like that. No such things happen in Florida.

The Northwest is more sparsely populated than the Southeast. As a consequence (I think), people’s world is a little larger here. People don’t think much of going to California, even though going a similar distance up the East Coast would be a pretty big deal (to me). And a lot of the time on the news, they’ll talk about things going on in Oregon. That would be like if I were watching the news in Miami and they covered news in Orlando or Atlanta. It just doesn’t happen. They were like foreign countries to me when I was growing up.

Things are different here, but it’s not necessarily bad. For example, at least here in Seattle, Tim’s Cascade potato chips are widely available. They seem to be a local thing, and they are delicious. I’ve already sent a few bags to my family, and they agree!

Speaking of my family, I’m taking an extra-long Labor Day weekend—my first vacation as a working man—to visit them in Florida. I’m leaving tomorrow, and I probably won’t be posting while I’m there, but you can always follow me on Twitter if you’re into that sort of thing.

So, is the West Coast really the best coast? I don’t know; I was just trolling so you would read this. But you’re welcome to discuss the matter and offer your opinions here. I’d also be interested in hearing from people who grew up in the West Coast and then moved east (if any such people exist).

Here are a few anecdotes about kids growing up with today’s technology: Born Digital. It’s kind of frightening to think that small children mistake pieces of paper for iPads, but I’m sure adults had the same concerns about the first kids to grow up in front of the TV.

All dressed up and nowhere to go

Real life isn’t like TV. Either that or real life is just playing a trick on me, but I don’t know anyone whose life is like this: You have two best friends, one of the opposite sex, the other of a different race, and every day after work (if you even go to work), you all meet at the bar or at your house, and you have wacky, hilarious adventures. No, I’m pretty sure no one has ever lived like that at all in the history of anything ever.

Having friends around all the time: what an attractive idea it is. Well, is it really? I guess it depends on the kind of person you are. Society tells us we need to go out and interact with other people if we’re to be worth anything. Maybe they don’t say it outright, but I hear it. I can’t always be like that. I need to be alone sometimes. Sometimes I just don’t want to do anything. I think that’s normal.

I’ve been told, and I guess I believe, that here in my new city, I’ll slowly accumulate a new group of friends. I can see it starting. I’ve done a few things with some guys who graduated from my program at the same time as I did. They all came here to work at Microsoft. Through them I met another guy who also graduated from the same department at the same time. He lives in my apartment complex. We see each other at least twice a week, I’d say, and do fun stuff. He’s the only person I see with any regularity. Well, there’s also my friend Mark, but it’s not quite convenient for us to meet up as often.

People have been asking me if I’ve made any friends at work. I haven’t. I mean, my co-workers are great (well, were great… I’ll have to explain that one later. Oh, screw it, I’ll explain it now. A few weeks ago, I was moved to a different team that needs the help more. All my co-workers are different, and I’m doing different stuff. My job on this team involves working with other teams for a few months at a time. It gives me a chance to get a better idea of the various things that the company does, but it doesn’t do much for my friend-making prospects.), but yeah, there’s that thing I just mentioned. I guess I’m down with the interns, but one of them has already gone back to school.

Work isn’t like school. It’s really easy to make friends in school. You and your classmates are all pretty much coming from the same place, generationally, educationally, and socioculturally speaking. Being at work, it’s like I could be a first grader and everyone else is in sixth or above. That’s what it feels like sometimes (and probably actually was in 1995). To be sure, everyone I’ve worked with has been cool (including my manager), but I wouldn’t want to risk my professional relationships by having an innocent trip to the bar turn into something that would make morning greetings awkward. Hey, It Could Happen.

So, I know some people who work for Microsoft. That’s a start. I’ve gone to a community blog meeting, and I’ve patrolled the neighborhood with old and pseudonymous people, but it’s not enough. I’ve started a mailing list at work for people who live in my neighborhood, but I don’t know what to talk about. (My “Hey, let’s go to a bar,” which I was sure would get others to come out of the woodwork, turned into “Well, okay, I don’t really know what a good place would be… Okay… Tonight? Maybe that’s too short notice… Sometime next week, maybe? Maybe not…?”) Oh yeah, and I don’t have any hobbies… I mean, I wouldn’t really want to meet anyone with the same hobbies as me.

I thought that if I lived downtown, I’d have a lot of fun because there would always be things to do. I actually knew it wouldn’t be that easy, though. I knew I was going to have to force myself to get out there before it could become a normal, fun thing, and I just hoped that that would actually be possible. What I didn’t realize, I guess, is that it’s easier to do these things if you already have a lot of friends.

Don’t think I don’t like the friends I have here. I definitely do, and without them, I’d probably be an emotional wreck or something. It’s just that I don’t yet have as many friends as I’m used to having. Maybe I need to meet my friends’ friends. Maybe I need to—(a pause as I try to gain the composure necessary to utter this word without puking)—network. I hate that word, especially when it comes to making friends, because it’s sleazy and artificial and it has the word “work” in it. Making friends should not be work, but here I am overanalyzing it. Or am I?

I guess what I’m trying to say is this: I’ve been here for three months. I have a few friends. I feel like I could use some more, but I don’t know where to find them. I guess I do have to go out and look for them, although it seems hard. I’m wondering if there’s anything I can do to make that a little easier.

I could have sworn I’ve posted this link already, but I guess not: Literally Unbelievable, a blog featuring stories from satirical news site The Onion as (mis)interpreted by dummies on Facebook. Warning: This may cause you to lose faith in humanity if you haven’t done so already.

Tea for one

The first time I had hot tea (outside of Chinese restaurants), I was with my friend Andy at his relatives’ house in suburban London. One afternoon, they switched on the electric kettle—the likes of which I had never seen before—and each of us soon had a mug of hot, leafy water. I put a some milk in mine, and then it tasted like milky, leafy water. I didn’t know how they could stand the stuff.

Later in my European travels, I met Kate. Since then, she’s visited me from Russia several times, and each time, she’s had lots of tea: Russians love it too. When she first asked me to make some for her, I didn’t even know how. That’s because I didn’t know a single person who drank it, and it’s not like people make tea on TV (otherwise it would be called Tea-V or something, I’m sure). When I visited her in Russia this past winter, her tea breaks became our tea breaks as I reluctantly picked the tea that tasted the least like tea (because it wasn’t technically a tea) and actually ended up kind of liking it.

So, I was in my apartment on an unseasonably cold Saturday six or eight weeks ago when I realized I could really go for a hot drink. That’s when I remembered the tea bags that were left over from Kate’s last visit. I got out a pot in which to boil water (because I didn’t have a kettle) and a glass (because I didn’t have a mug) and made myself a cup. It tasted pretty nasty, but at least it was hot. And that made my day a little better.

A few weeks later, I was at work, and once again, I felt like having a hot drink. It came down to coffee or tea. I try to avoid putting sugar in things, and I can’t stomach coffee without sugar, so I opted for tea. And then, a few days after that, I actually had the weird sensation of wanting to drink tea. I actually started liking the taste. I never thought this could happen to me, but it did.

Since then, I’ve been drinking two to four cups of tea every day at work. It’s great if I’m cold, or if I’m looking for a quick break, or if I just need a pick-me-up (inasmuch as tea actually picks anyone up). The kitchen at work has 17 kinds of tea, but I’ve mostly gravitated toward the black teas, in particular Bigelow English Teatime, Cinnamon Stick, and Constant Comment. I’ve also bought a box of each of those for drinking at home (having run out of the tea that was left over from Kate’s visit), as well as a kettle and some mugs. At home I sometimes drink it with milk, but there isn’t any at work, so I’ve learned to do without. (I’m not sure if half-and-half would be quite the same.)

So, there I am. I drink tea now. Have any of you ever fallen into a habit so unexpectedly? I’d like to hear I’m not the only one.

In the meantime, I’ll be thinking about the next time I get to see Kate. I imagine there will be lots of tea.

And now, here are The Best Obnoxious Responses to Misspellings on Facebook. Although they claim otherwise, teenagers apparently don’t have strong feelings about Hippocrates.

Vim and vigor

(Nerd Alert: Non-nerds can safely ignore this post.)

I’ve been around the Internet block long enough to know that programmers tend to care a great deal about what program they use to edit text—usually for writing programs, but potentially for anything. For decades now, they’ve been arguing over which family of text editors is better: vi or emacs.

When you use Notepad, or Word, or whatever the kids are using nowadays, you use the mouse for pretty much everything except when you’re typing. Programmers often work on the command line, either because they want to or because they have to, so everything that you could do with a mouse they have to do with the keyboard. Vi and emacs have so many features that this becomes a problem, and this is where the two classes of editors diverge.

GNU Emacs and other emacs-style editors give each operation a unique shortcut that’s often fairly involved, consisting of multiple keystrokes. In Vim and other vi-style editors, different operations may have the same shortcut—but never at the same time. Shortcuts have different meanings depending on the mode of operation you’re in. For example, in the default mode, “w” moves the cursor forward through whatever text you have open. Typing “:” will put you in command-line mode, where “w” saves the file. And then typing “i” puts you into insert mode, where “w” inserts the letter “w” into the file; i.e., you’re typing. The advantage of this (arguably) is that you spend less time entering commands and more time getting things done. (Plenty of emacs users believe otherwise; it just comes down to a matter of preference.)

So, what does all this have to do with me? I had always been content to use graphical editors like gedit or, if I really needed, a very simple text editor like nano with all of the major commands listed on the screen. But a lot of my friends used Vim on a semi-regular basis, and in my upper-level classes, I even saw people taking notes in it. And finally, I happened upon my friends’ hacking club meeting, where people were wowing everyone with all the cool tricks they could do in Vim. It was intriguing.

In November, halfway through a big project for my Artificial Intelligence class, I decided to learn Vim by using the vimtutor command that comes with it. After a few days, I was able to move the cursor around and edit text pretty easily, and I used Vim to finish the project. As cheesy as it sounds, I haven’t looked back.

Vim’s commands are really intuitive, so it’s easy to apply what you learn. The commands are like the building blocks of a language, as others have put it. And I find it very satisfying to change hundreds of lines of a file at once or move large blocks of text hither and thither without having to take my hands off the keyboard. I also like being able to edit different files side-by-side or even the same file side-by-side. There are really no limits to what you can do with Vim.

As if that weren’t enough, Vim is very configurable. There’s a ridiculous number of options and settings that can help you get things exactly the way you like them, boosting your productivity. I’ve put my .vimrc file online mainly so I can download it for use at work, but you’re welcome to look at it and take stuff from it or just make fun of whatever preferences I have set that you think are weird. (“Ewww, tabs??” That’s a holy war for another time.)

Everyone who’s a master at Vim thought it was weird at first but decided to give it a try anyway, just like I did. I won’t say I’ve mastered it, though; there are so many features that I can’t even remember all the ones I’ve heard of or even used. But over time, especially if I use Vim a lot for work, I could become super-productive. That would be pretty awesome.

If you use Linux, you probably have Vim installed. You can find out more about getting Vim at the official site. The Vim Tips Wiki is also helpful, and Vim’s own documentation is extensive. Because I’m crazy, I’ve shrunk the quick reference guide and the index of commands down to one page apiece (front and back) and printed them out. Now you can do the same if you don’t mind reading 3-point text!

Any other Vim users out there? Have any cool tips ‘n’ tricks to share? No holy wars, please!

Plain Text Offenders tries to shame websites that store their users’ passwords in plaintext. (Via waxy.org)

Citizens on patrol

Summer is an exciting time for Seattleites. It’s the one time of the year when it’s not cloudy all the time. (And with the clouds usually comes rain, for which Seattle is infamous, although I feel obligated to mention that the rain here is almost always imperceptibly light, like mist, and that Seattle gets less precipitation annually than most cities on the East Coast.)

Ahem. Anyway, the summer event that every Seattleite looks forward to is Seafair. Seafair is actually a series of events, including a parade and some boat races and stuff. There may be more, but that’s all I’ve heard about.

Well, I didn’t just hear about the parade… I was there to see it. It went down my street on July 30. Yes, that makes two parades down my street in little more than a month. This parade was different from the Pride Parade in that it was in the evening and seemed to be a bigger production (although it was shorter). Also, Drew Carey was the Grand Marshal for some reason. (I actually met him in 2005. If you remember that, you’ve been reading this blog since at least 2005!)

The following weekend was the boat thing, and everyone was super pumped about the Blue Angels doing a show as part of that. (It was actually pretty funny to see how excited everyone was.) They had been practicing near my work for a few days, and then I snagged a couple of pictures of them flying past my apartment after putting on their show. I didn’t see any of the day’s festivities in person, but I watched them on TV.

That’s not all I’ve been up to; I’ve been doing more to get involved in my neighborhood, Belltown. I can’t remember where I first heard about Belltown Citizens on Patrol, but I’ve been following them on Facebook, and yesterday they posted an announcement saying that they’d be going out for a walk that evening. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I figured it would be a good way to become more familiar with the neighborhood and help make it a little nicer.

It turned out that it was mostly people my parents’ age and older who were taking part; there were about 15 of us in all. We put on bright yellow vests and walked around the neighborhood, looking for signs of crime and vandalism. Nobody saw anything, though, so it was more of a goodwill thing. You’re supposed to greet everyone you see, and plenty of people wanted to talk to us. We also had a videographer and someone from the Seattle P-I in tow.

Also, some superheroes accompanied us. They were led by a masked man who goes by the name of Phoenix Jones. (Here’s a recent article about him and his fellow superheroes.) They also patrol the streets for crime, so they figured they could come and help. After our walk, which only lasted an hour, Phoenix recorded a video for his fans with all of us standing in the background. (Evidently, he disguises his identity online by typing in all caps.)

The Citizens on Patrol have their walks every week, so it might become a routine for me. If only I could get people my own age to come along…

For the nerds: Cool but obscure Unix tools. (Via waxy.org)

The lost year

People have long known me as a guy who plays the guitar and is into music and things like that. For a long time, it’s been a part of who I am.

I’m also a freak when it comes to remembering dates. I got my first guitar ten years ago today, on August 13, 2001. It was a Hohner acoustic that my parents bought for me, almost on a whim, when we were visiting my aunt in Gainesville, Florida. It was a beginner’s guitar—the case cost more than it—but, having started a band with my friends, I practiced a lot and would get three more guitars within the next two years.

I wrote songs, but we never performed them as a group. (I can’t remember exactly why, but I think the others just weren’t interested in playing them. We couldn’t agree on anything. It’s a red flag when five people can’t agree on one of several hundred names.) We broke up, but I kept writing songs.

One year, I backed up my friend in our school’s talent show, and the following year, I wanted to perform one of my own songs with one of my other friends. During our audition, the teacher who was organizing the show interrupted us mid-song. She asked me, the singer, whether I had written it. I said yes. She said I should try singing it in a lower key. Instead, I didn’t come back.

As I entered college, my songwriting output slowed down. No longer was I free to crank up my amps as loud as I pleased. (Mom and Dad, thanks so much.) I was living in dorm rooms with strangers and, later, in an apartment with strangers (for the record, a terrible way to save money). By my junior year, I was playing the guitar maybe once every few weeks, and finally, about a year ago, I stopped. I just had other things to do in the way of schoolwork, and with graduation looming, I knew that I was never going to be a rock star.

Every day for years and years, whenever I’ve heard a good song, I’ve thought about being on stage again and performing it. What if I had played my own song in the talent show? I had dreams of recording an album with my band. What if we had shaped up and actually done that? I’ve asked myself those questions, and I’ve also doubted myself. I do try to sing higher than I’m actually capable of, and my voice is whiny. I’ve never been a virtuoso at the guitar, either. You’d see me play some chords, rarely deviating from a particular rhythm, or maybe a simple solo. I’ve always had some ambition, but never enough to put any of those roadblocks out of the way.

But now that I’m an adult and I have no roommates to annoy (only neighbors), I thought I’d get back into it today, ten years on. To my relief, it was like riding a bicycle. I was just as mediocre as I had ever been.

It’s still my hope someday to record an album. I don’t think I could handle all the starving-artist stuff that goes with really being in a band, but I’d just like to get my best songs out there with the treatment they deserve. I don’t care if I have to eat the costs of producing the album, either. I just want to meet some people who are easy to work with and fun to play with so we can make some great music together. And they’d better not tell me I’m singing too high.

The transition

Whenever I spend time with Kate, I spend five or ten posts writing all about what we did. Not this last time. As you may recall, I only devoted two posts to her visit. In particular, I barely mentioned our last few days together at all, so I’d like to fix that now.

Monday, May 30, was Memorial Day. It was my last day before I was due to start my new job, and Kate and I were still in Olympia. We were due to meet up with the guy who had given us a ride there a few days earlier, so we met him in the Subway parking lot where he had dropped us off. Kate wanted to sit next to me, so I asked the guy if I could sit in the back with her. The thought clearly made him uneasy. He started to explain that he used to be a taxi driver. I understood and took the passenger’s seat so I could chat with him. Whenever I’m traveling with Kate, I make enough small talk for both of us. She doesn’t mind because it’s not really her thing.

He gave us a ride back to my temporary apartment in Seattle, where we hung out for the rest of the day. We decided to order delivery from an Italian restaurant called Primo. It was only down the street, but I was feeling supremely lazy, so delivery it was. The food was really good, so it was worth it. I had pesto gnocchi, and Kate got a pesto chicken sandwich. That’s good stuff.

Tuesday, May 31, was my first day at work. I’ve mentioned how that day was, so I don’t have much to add about it. I met Kate downtown after I got out, and we looked for a place to have dinner. After a fairly exhaustive search, we ended up eating at an excellent place called Petra Mediterranean Bistro. It was a little pricey, it was worth it. The place was quiet and intimate, and the food and the service were great. (The portions were good too; I took Kate’s leftovers with me to work the next day as my lunch.)

Afterwards, we went across the street so Kate could have some coffee. Then we took a walk by the waterfront, and by then, it was getting late. We made it to the Space Needle not long before it closed because our City Pass tickets were about to expire. Unfortunately, this was the only time Kate and I went to the Space Needle, but I’m glad we went at least once. The view at night is beautiful.

After work on Wednesday, June 1, I again met Kate downtown, this time at the Levi’s Store on 6th Avenue. She was going to buy jeans for herself and her friends (they’re much cheaper here than they are in Russia), and the store was having a sale, so it turned out that it would only cost about $5 to get another pair. So, Kate bought a pair for me. We spent a good deal of time making sure that I got the exact style I wanted in the size I needed. I’m loath to try on clothes in a store, but it’s important for something that you’re going to wear a lot. I realized how loose all of my old jeans are. The ones Kate got me are tighter than I’m used to, but it seems like they’re the proper size.

After that, we went back to the apartment, and Kate made a Russian dish called French meat. It’s basically meat, cheese, tomatoes, and pasta. (I’m not sure if that’s the official way to make French meat, as I’d never heard of it before, but that’s how she served it, anyway.) Kate is a talented cook, so it was very nice. She also made banana nut muffins.

Thursday, June 2, was the last day of Kate’s visit. I met her at a restaurant during my lunch break. She had all her bags (it must have taken her forever to walk around with everything), and she was going right to the airport after that. I had decided on an apartment, so while we were waiting for our food, I darted across the street to the apartment complex to start the paperwork, which had to be done that day. I came back in time to get my food, and then it was time to say goodbye to Kate.

I haven’t thought about these days for a while—I guess I thought they weren’t as interesting as the rest of her visit—but I realize now that they were some of my favorites. Of course, any day with Kate is one of my favorite days, and I’m really missing her now as I think back on them. I’m happier than I used to be before I met her, and she genuinely cares about me and makes me a better person. I hope we’ll be able to see each other again soon.

My friend Reid Ewing, whom you may know from TV’s Modern Family, is starring in a new YouTube series called Reid-ing. Check out Episode 1, “It’s Free,” and Episode 2, “Free Fish.” (Watch his South Florida roots show through as he mentions manatees getting hit by boats and calls the aquarium a “seaquarium“).

On the media

In real apartments—outside of college towns—many utilities are not automatically provided, so you have to have them set up (and pay for them) yourself if you want them. Of course, the first thing I thought of when moving in to my own place was Internet access.

I don’t know if I’m just missing something obvious, but there seems to be no easy way to find out which ISPs serve your area. (The National Broadband Map website was inaccessible while I was doing my research.) Based on the information I was able to cobble together, Comcast and Qwest (which I guess is becoming CenturyLink) were the two main choices.

Comcast was the ISP at my temporary apartment, and their service wasn’t terrible, but one time I was having a hard time sending about 4 GiB of my photos and videos to Kate by BitTorrent. Turns out Comcast prevents seeding of torrents whether the content is authorized by the copyright holder or not. That, along with the many, many bad things I’ve heard about them over the years (maybe they were blocking the National Broadband Map too…), drove me into the arms of Qwest.

Well, I won’t say I’m in love with Qwest, but their service has been consistently good. My download speed is nominally 12 Mbps but actually around 10.2 Mbps (exactly as expected—the fine print says that their service may be up to 15% slower than advertised). The upload speed is 768 Kbps, which I guess is relatively slow, but it’s been fine so far.

I’m not known for watching a lot of TV. If I had gone with Comcast, I might have gotten basic cable. But Qwest’s TV offerings consist of reselling DirecTV packages, and I opine that satellite TV blows, so I decided to get an antenna. At first I thought I was being cool and/or subversive by going the old-fashioned route, but I guess it’s more common than I thought. I still think it’s kind of cool, though.

I have this old TV that used to belong to my roommate, so I needed a digital-to-analog converter box. My dad happened to have one unopened in the original box, so he sent it to me. It’s made by Coby, which totally isn’t a rip-off of Sony. The thing works great, though. As for the antenna, I had to do a fair amount of research. Based on my situation—I’m in a high-rise in the middle of a city, with broadcast towers nearby but in different directions—I chose an omnidirectional, unamplified, indoor antenna.

Although it took a bit of searching, they do exist. It turns out that none other than RCA has a whole line of omnidirectional indoor antennas, so it was just a matter of picking out the best unamplified one. That turned out to be the ANT1600, which I ordered from Amazon (full disclosure: I work for Amazon [although the opinions expressed here are mine alone {and I kind of just wanted to brag about it (sorry)}]). Scroll down a bit on the Amazon page, and you’ll see a matrix of features for the whole product line.

Turns out I get a total of 26 channels over the air. Well, actually, 26 subchannels from 10 distinct stations. I’ll just call them channels because they’re all pretty distinct from one another. For example, the local ABC station broadcasts its regular ABC stuff on channel 4.1 and another whole channel called This TV on 4.2. I’m counting them as two here.

Minus the foreign-language, religious, infomercial-only, and duplicate channels (all of which I’ve set my converter box to exclude), I get 14 channels. They include affiliates of ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, the CW, and Fox, as well as those stations’ secondary feeds (such as This TV) that play old movies, classic TV shows, weather forecasts, and obscure sports. Not bad, considering I only paid $34 one time for the antenna.

The antenna has a discreet, flat design that makes it easy to reorient. Despite the manufacturer’s claims, I do have to move it to get reception of some channels that are farther away or blocked by buildings, but not by too much. I have a direct line of sight to seven of the channels, and I believe I’ve found the sweet spot for getting six others. (Thirteen out of fourteen ain’t bad, especially when the fourteenth is the CW.) All of the broadcast towers are 1-2 miles away from me, except for that of KCPQ (Fox), which is 22 miles away.

So, what’s the effect of all this? I watch a lot more TV than I used to, which is to say, I watch some TV. I guess I want to get my money’s worth from my antenna. And besides, I don’t watch totally vapid stuff. I like Jeopardy!, some of the old movies, and PBS’s history and travel shows. I also watch the local news quite a bit. I’ve found it’s a good way to get acquainted with the area and to find out how to pronounce some of these crazy place names. (Snohomish? Issaquah? Puyallup?)

Speaking of which, today’s link: “If you watch Jeopardy backwards, it’s a show about three people paying alot [sic] of money to get bad answers on [sic] their stupid questions.”