With Proper Training…

Well I’m only about a month after the event with these shots. These are the pics taken that I figured total strangers wouldn’t really care about. For the remaining pics from the Sasquatch Festival, check out The PhiLL(er).

The open road on the east side of the Cascade Mountains as seen through Yaeka’s windshield. The Cascades do an amazing job of keeping all the clouds and rain on the west (seattle) side of the mountains. Eastern Washington might as well be a desert.

It is hard to see fromt his picture, but if you can see the amount of chop in the water and the guy holding firmly onto his hat, you should be able to tell that it was really windy. We stopped at a gas station and the door was nearly impossible to open due to the heavy wind resistance.

Our pitiful tent. We didn’t even end up staying the night. After the concert we decided traffic wasn’t bad and took off.

The campground had these old metro buses that they used to shuttle people over to the Gorge. Here’s Yaeka looking kind of weird.

And Matt…

And me…

Before Matt left, we were sure to see the sites. This included doing the Underground Tour. Upstairs they had these cool vintage arcade games. Matt got pretty good at this shooting game, but damn do I look like a pro.

Of course if you come to Seattle you have to get the imposing vertical shot with the Space Needle. Matt looks taller than Randy Johnson!

Don’t you hate it when someone links to an article on a newspaper site like The New York Times and that site makes you register in order to read the article? Well I do. Lucky for me, and you if you feel the same way, I ran across this site today. Basically it’s a storage house for a bunch of passwords to these types of sites. It’s called bugmenot.com. There are a couple of useful tools on the site so that you don’t have to open a new window manually to look up a password as well. Woo hoo for bookmarklets and browser extensions!

Recently Yaeka and I made a rare trip to Seattle’s U-District where I lived during the summer of 2000. Below are a few pictures of some notable areas from my last stay in the area.

Here’s a shot inside The Seven Gables theater. This was my second time at this independent theater the first being on my first date with Yaeka to see High Fidelity. I really like the feel of the theater with its cushy red seats that rock and the painted mural that rolls up just before show time. The lighting fixtures also raise into the ceiling so as not to obstruct anyone’s view.

This time we saw Super Size Me. I think the movie was very well done. It’d be very easy to go into making such a film with a very biased view, but Morgan Spurlock (director/writer/super-sizer) goes into his experiment with a solid set of rules and a team of doctor’s to present factual data. The film isn’t a commentary on McDonald’s but one on the current trend related to American eating.

Here’s a shot of “The Ave” which actually isn’t an avenue, it’s University Way. How it got the nickname “The Ave” I don’t know, but it’s been that way for a very long time. It’s a popular place for homeless kids and street performers (aka more homeless people). Highlights of The Ave include the only remaining Cellophane Square record store (the other two have closed).

When I was looking for a paying job in Y2K, Yaeka had jokingly suggested working in a poster store. After the Experience Music Project failed to call me back quickly, I applied here and got a job. After getting this job, I went home and found a message from EMP saying I got that job as well. This equalled the summer of 80 hour work weeks as I was also interning at Sub Pop. Back in 2000 this store was actually called “Beyond the Wall” and owned by Trent Graphics, the company that does those roaming poster sales at colleges and universities like Colgate.

Most important stop of the tour was my old apartment. I sublet a room in the basement from a guy for possibly the cheapest rate to be found in Seattle at $212.

You know, it’s amazing how many baseball games you can go to when you aren’t even trying. Here’s game number three of four attended so far this year. It was the opening game of a three-game series against Baltimore at Safeco Field.

Unlike our first game of the year, we actually had a full tank of gas for this one.

We utilized the super secret parking that we accidentally found during a prior game, but our quick walk to the field was interupted by this train that decided to go forward to the point where it had about 3 cars left and then go in reverse, then forward, and then reverse again. I believe this was due to it backing into a yard but the switch not getting pulled correctly. This also explained why the BNSF police guy was always there — to prevent people from running across the tracks.

As you can see from the sea of caps above and Yaeka’s modeling of a cap, it was floppy hat night at Safeco Field. Yaeka looks pretty funny here, but not quite as funny as the Japanese business man did in the picture below (black arrow).

There’s a lot going on here, first the previously mentioned Japanese business man in a floppy cap. While looking funny, this is actually to be expected by Asians. The vendor under the yellow arrow was selling some pretty good hot chocolate, but he was no match for the vendor straight out of the 70s (red arrow). This guy has the old school Mariner’s cap, tight yellow old t-shirt, big mustache and then the long braided pony tail — pretty amazing.

Despite the coolness of Mr. 70s, he is still no match for this guy. This is “The Peanut Guy”. He does not throw peanuts like any normal vendor. He only throws them backwards and he can hit you dead on over 10 rows up and 10 seats down. It is fucking amazing.

Nice shot of the Safeco Field sign for Marty who had asked about the look of the field. In the background is the former Seahawks Stadium just recently renamed Qwest Field.

Shot of John Olerud for Marty/Flynn to show how these seats were really similar to the ones we had at the Skydome.

Blurry shot of the Starbucks HQ from a moving car. It’s actually pretty cool looking with the mermaid head on the top around the tower. The Krispy Kreme donuts down the streets makes a killing after baseball games.

I actually haven’t played alchemy in a while, but my new favorite game site, Candystand was acting like a bitch so I had to go back to an old favorite. I blew away my old score and now have more proof that I have no life.

I’ve been talking about this idea for at least a year now, but I’ve finally taken some action. What’s this idea? Well basically it’s a website where you can either find a mix tape/cd placed somewhere near you or leave details regarding one you’ve left someplace so that others may discover it.

I was really surprised to find that the domain was not taken and had to scoop it up. Nothing is up yet and it’ll probably be a while before anything is near working condition, but the second a beta version is up, you bet you’ll hear about it here.

Just checked out this article on NYTimes.com regarding the new fight against spam since the passing of the anti-spam law earlier this year. Microsoft has budgeted $10 million a year to fight spam and even though this is a direct result of the spam present on their own hotmail.com servers, this will undoubtedly have a positive effect for all as these spammers are most likely targeting those not on hotmail as well.