A Thursday getaway and the Bettie Page House in Seattle - #vandalismsucks

Today is Thursday and like Arthur Dent in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy "I never quite got the hang of Thursdays", and after spending the last six weeks job searching I decided to take a short break and go for a drive just to get out of the house. So I hopped in the car and drove over to the Wallingford District in Seattle. I stopped for lunch at Dick's Drive-In on 45th, and even though this is the first Dick's Drive-In to take credit cards (refer to this article for further details) being a traditionalist I still paid cash for my lunch.

After lunch I drove around Wallingford for a bit and then I headed over to the University District to take a first hand look at a classic example of stupidity and jerkery.

You see in the U District next to I-5 there is a house which on the side facing the freeway there is beautiful  mural of 50's pin-up model Betty Page. This house has quite a number of admirers who refer to it as "The Bettie Page House". Photos and articles about the house can be found all over the Internet such as this Atlas Obscura article. Unfortunately sometime in the latter part of June someone decided to defaced the mural and this is the stupidity and jerkery I mentioned earlier.

Below are some photos I took today of the vandalism. Seriously who would do something like this?

(This last picture is of the alterations of the vandals comments made by the owners of the house)

Here are a few articles on the vandalism:

• Seattle Times - "Owners of Seattle’s vandalized Bettie Page house say ‘some feminists’ missed the point"
• Komo News - "Ravenna homeowners have message for 'feminists' who defaced their pinup mural"

In the last paragraph of the Seattle Times article one of the owners of the house made the following statement regarding donations for the restoration of the mural - “In lieu of donations for Bettie, I would like to draw people’s attentions to the Rape Abuse and Incest National Network. … Donate at Rainn.org.”

While the vandalism to this wonderful mural truly does suck, I guess some good can be found in the determination of the owners of the house, and their suggestion for donations.

Friday fun: Arduino Park

If you are a fan of the Arduino then you enjoy this mildly humorous introduction to the Arduino's layout courtesy of engineerzerochannel:



Unfortunately due to "life" (or lack there of) I haven't been able to take of tour of my Arduino lately, but recently I searched around for other Arduino fans in my home town of Seattle and came up with the following sites:

• Metrix Create:Space: http://metrixcreatespace.com/
• Arduino Blog - Teaching Arduino in Seattle: http://arduino.cc/blog/2011/04/07/teaching-arduino-in-seattle/
• Arduino Meetups - Seattle: http://arduino.meetup.com/cities/us/wa/seattle/
• SeattleArduino: http://arduino.seattleandrew.com/

Hopefully when I get some free time I can jump back in to working on my Arduino and start moving forward with my weather station project. Who knows, maybe meet some of the other Arduino fans here in Seattle. Feel free to drop me a line or leave a comment if you are an Arduino fan in the Seattle area (or even if you are not in the Seattle area).

Have a great weekend ~ Jim

Friday fun: Seattle, snow, and sliding. Well, maybe not so fun.

** Caution: This weeks Friday Fun video may not be work safe due to some profanity at the end, so use your own judgment. **

Everyone knows that Seattle has a perpetual rainy season (wink, wink, say no more, nudge, nudge), but Seattle has another dubious distinction. That other distinction is for having some of the worst traffic for when it snows. To be honest our topography has a lot to do with it as well as the fickleness of our weather. Below is a video from November 22, 2010 that was taken by fsayre of a car crashing on Seattle's Queen Anne Hill:



Hopefully no one was hurt in that accident, but it does show how much the weather can impact our lives and this is one of the reasons I am becoming more interested in meteorology. This interest is why I am choosing a weather station as a project for my Arduino.

Seattle also has some very interesting personalities in the field of meteorology and to me the most interesting of them is Cliff Mass who's blog I routinely read. One recent post on Cliff's blog really caught my attention. In the last paragraph of "WeatherFest, Money, and the Aftermath" Cliff writes on the topic of "nowcasting" (describing what is happening now and during the next few hours), and how he is working with the city of Seattle to develop a series of nowcasting applications to help provide up to the minute weather information. The concept of nowcasting is really intriguing to me, and I am going to be watching Cliff's blog to see how the project moves forward. If you are interested in the concept of nowcasting then check out Cliffs blog.

Well that's it for this Friday's Fun post. By the way, I am sorry I missed posting last week, but I had several emergencies to deal with.

Take care and have a great weekend ~ Jim

Wayward - the road ahead

Recently the Wayward Coffeehouse which is one of my favorite haunts was shut down due to fire that occurred just before Thanksgiving. The one thing that I really like about the Wayward is that it appeals to the geek in me, and for some time now I have been posting weekly notices on behalf Wayward Coffeehouse over on the NWSFS News Blog that I help maintain.

The last few notices I have posted for the Wayward have of course been about the fire, the possibility of reopening the business, and of the efforts of the Seattle Browncoats and their Wayward Phoenix Fund. I really think what the Seattle Browncoats are doing on behalf of the Wayward is a great, and I want to help them with their cause in any way I can, so I thought it might help the cause if I reposted the latest notice here in hopes of getting the word out to more people.

Check out the posting below and if you feel inclined send a few bucks to Wayward Phoenix Fund.

Cheers ~ Jim

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Greetings to all the friends of Wayward Coffeehouse. We miss you greatly and are wishing you all the magic of the season.

We have not sent out any recent updates as we had little new information to report and were waiting anxiously for word on when repairs would begin.

It is with great sadness that we must now report that we have been told that the property owners are refusing to repair the building. Although as far as we know the damage is well within the scope of repair we have no control over this decision.

But we believe in what we created with Wayward Coffeehouse and want fervently for it to continue. We have received your messages of support and encouragement and know that there is a need for Wayward Coffeehouse for the communities we embrace. We are reviewing our legal options in the matter and pursuing other means of reopening. But it is not an easy path.

Much of what still lies ahead is beyond the scope of our insurance and we are struggling to find the resources to move forward. Many friends and customers of Wayward have already made donations to the “Wayward Phoenix Fund” and we are immensely grateful for their support.

More help is needed as we face the continuing challenges of survival and reopening. If you would like to help us rise from the ashes, please go to: Wayward Phoenix Fund Donations (http://www.sbcharities.org/?page_id=16) and look for the Wayward logo to donate online or for information on donating by check. We again wish to thank SBCharities for their support and assistance.

We aim to keep flyin’ ...


Wayward Coffeehouse, it's better than a plan
Closed Until Further Notice
www.waywardcoffee.com
Twitter: WaywardCoffee
Facebook: Wayward Coffee House

Problems accessing Google via Qwest DSL

UPDATE TO THE ORIGINAL POST @ 6:30 PM PST 05/14/09: Computerworld - Google suffers major failure Well it does look like there was an issue with Google today, though not everyone affected in the same way. My plan now is to develop a protocol for dealing with such outages by taking such steps as "Don't panic", take a deep breath, do a little more research before calling tech support, and wait it out if all practical. I still believe though that ISPs should have a better way of alerting their staff when such acute outages occur so that they can change the way they deal with end users who call in.


ORIGINAL POST:

Sorry for throwing this entry up here, but I have been dealing with an ongoing problem, and I am trying to connect with others who have also been dealing with this same problem in the hope of getting to the root cause. I have been having problems with temporary outages to all Google services (search, GMail, Blogspot, etc.) via my DSL connection from Qwest. I am still able to access other sites when this problem occurs, it is only Google services that are affected.

So far the outages have occurred on the following days:

• Tuesday, May 12, 2009 from Noon to 1:00 PM PST
• Thursday, May 14, 2009 from 8:00 AM to 9:00 AM PST
• Note: My location is in Seattle, WA. and because I am expecting more outages I will update this list as they occur.

For the first two outages I went through the steps of calling Qwest customer service and went along with the standard triage of my DSL router/modem. Of course checking the DSL router/modem didn't fix the problem, and only after a lengthy conversation with Qwest was I told that there seems to be a problem with accessing Google. In each case prior to calling Qwest I checked with friends via chat to see if they could access Google and they could. Some of the friends were in the Seattle area while others were out of state, but in all instances they were using ISPs other than Qwest for Internet access.

If you live in the Seattle area and are a Qwest customer, and you have been having trouble accessing Google, please leave a comment or send me an email. I have been trying to find out what has been going on, but Qwest hasn't been very helpful. One manager even went so far as to tell me to call Google at 650-253-0000 which was useless, since Google doesn't offer tech support. By the way, if you work for either Qwest or Google, and you know what is going on feel free to leave an anonymous comment.

Thanks ~ Jim