Holy crap!

Today is the day that cute was born.

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Some pictures

I spent the day taking pictures of a cluster down in Tukwila. Getting their seriously sucked, the directions failed when half the local roads were closed for construction and their were no detours. It took 15 to 20 minutes to find the damn facility becuase of all the construction! The roads don't make a nice grid down there, rather they are all going at different angles, some turn in to highways, some curve around, basically not the kind of roads that make it easy to make your own detour if you've never been to your destination before. I saw several other cars driving back and forth over that period too, so clearly I wasn't the only person lost. Once I process the pictures I'll post a few of them, but mostly they are for promotional material at work.

For making it past the jump, you get a special treat. By popular demand (okay, only 2 people asked, but since I only have 4 people reading my blog that is a huge request!) more Lucy.
Alas, I did not take these pictures on my own.

New Toy

My trusty 18v Craftsman drill had its final battery die on Tuesday. A trip to Sears revealed that they no longer sell the battery I need in the store, it is only available via the special parts department. That's no good, my 1st battery had died a year ago so I had no backup, and I needed to screw some stuff in 'now'.
The 18v "limited anniversary edition" (I think it got the special name because it was the first 18v kit they had) drill & light kit was actually pretty nice. Adjustable angle light, two batteries, a smart charger with multiple status lights, a dual speed variable speed drill (there is a 2 speed switch on the top for either high speed or high torque, and you can also change the speed within the range set by the switch by how far you hold the trigger) with 18 levels of ratcheting action, a keyless chuck, and two slots to hold driver bits.

Well, the untimely death of my backup battery and the lack of battery at Sears meant it was time to upgrade. It is really hard to find a nice cordless drill/driver! They are either low power, really heavy, or have some other weird reason that I didn't like them.

I finally found the DeWalt DC759 18v cordless 'heavy duty' drill/driver. It was smaller (lengthwise and weightwise) than the 18v Makita I was looking at, and seems like a great little kit. It is actually shorter (lengthwise) than the Craftsman, so that will help in some weird spots I've had to drill. I don't like that it only has one slot to hold a screwdriver bit though. It holds a reversible straight/Philips bit rather than separate ones. This is a problem because the separate ones my Craftsman could hold were the type that I could lock in to the quick-change adaptor I mount in the chuck (allows quick swapping between various bits without unlocking and aligning). I'll replace the dual-sided bit with a single Philips quick change bit and if I need to do straight slots I'll just have to hold it separately. It also didn't come with a wrist strap, though it has a slot for one so I'll need to add one. It is very handy to be able to let the drill dangle from your wrist while you are manipulating something on top of a ladder.

The 18v battery system is compatible with a number of different DeWalt cordless tools, so I'm not going to be stuck with dozens of different types of batteries - so that's good. I do have a small cordless screwdriver that uses a separate battery, but it is a very small unit, so there is no chance for something like that to share a battery with everything else anyway.

Kung Fu Panda

The title says it all... There is a movie about a panda that learns Kung Fu.

The panda is Jack Black.


I don't understand why you aren't already trying to pre-order this.

Jackie Chan is the Kung Fu master.


Why are you still reading this instead of searching the internet for it?

Angelina Jolie is the tiger.


I don't see this on your Amazon Wish List yet.

Lucy Liu is the snake.


Why are you still here?

Here is the plot description from the IMDb:
A CG-animated comedy about a lazy, irreverent slacker panda, Po (Voiced by Jack Black), who must somehow become a Kung Fu Master in order to save the Valley of Peace from a villainous snow leopard, Tai Lung. Set in the legendary world of ancient China, this is the story of Po, our unlikely hero, who enters the rigid world of Kung Fu and turning it upside down. Po ultimately becomes a Kung Fu hero by learning that if he believes in himself, he can do anything.

Starcraft 2

As every person in the world should know by now, Blizzard recently announced Starcraft 2.

Starcraft, especially with the Brood War expansion, was an excellent game. How many computer games do you know of that are a decade old, is still being sold in stores, and still has tournaments?

I've had a wishlist for SC:2 for a long time. It looks like almost every thing on it has been delivered too!

My list of things I wanted in Starcraft 2 was always pretty short:

Required

1) Support higher resolutions - even when SC2 came out I didn’t have any friend who only had 640x480 monitors so the ‘don’t want to give unfair advantage’ reason Blizzard gave sucked.

This is clearly provided in SC:2

2) Updated sounds - the sounds were good for the time, but limited in diversity. It was a couple years after SC released that I got a dolby digital out on my Mac, but nowadays multi-channel audio is much more common. Increase the sound resolution, increase the number of clips, and provide directional audio

New sounds are definitely in SC:2, can't tell if individual units have more variety or not

3) Updated graphics - this goes along with ‘support higher resolutions’

Yep

4) Camera control - zooming in and out would be helpful for grabbing units, and being able to tilt/pan would sometimes be helpful too. Tilt & pan would generally imply going 3D too

Well, it is a 3D game now, so the camera is definitely controllable

5) Smarter AI - being able to click out a route is great, but I shouldn’t have to route around a rock, or micromanage units within a group because 2 of them decided to take a different path

Now the AI is smarter and newer, but is it as smart as I want it? If I assign an attack group with ground troops and flying (or the new jumping/climbing units) will they take the same path or will they split in to two groups? Assuming everyone in the group is stuck on the ground, and starting from the same point, will one of them still wander off on his own?

Nice to have

6) Enhanced groupings - I found the small group size, and the limited # groups to be restrictive in my game play. I’d often not even bother making certain types of units because I wouldn’t be able to group them usefully.

The demo video showed groups larger than 8 units being controller. Not sure if you have more hotkeys to assign groups to or not though.

7) Cross-platform voice chat

There has been no mention of voice chat so far.

8) New units - Broodwars brought some cool new units, new units are fun

Yep, some new units. A couple of them are strategy breakers - ground units that can jump over cliffs dramatically changes some base building strategies.

9) New race - being able to play the hybrid race could be interesting

Nope. Can't find the quote, but somewhere they said it would just be the original three.

10) Battle formations - In Myth you could tell a group to assume a formation (straight line, staggered, etc) rather than just having your guys rush in randomly

The demo videos do not show any formations, they just show the old 'everyone run in as close as necessary to attack and surround' pattern. One can hope they'll be added though.

11) Unit loaning - If I want to loan my Protoss teammate some Mutalisks, I should be able to do so. He’d be able to put them in his group and command them.

No mention of this yet. Though apparently there is a feature in Starcraft that allows teammates to control friendly units anyway. It is an all-or-nothing and it combines your resource allotment though, so it isn't quite what I had in mind. 

12) Combined bases - Terrain and Protoss can do it, but since you can’t build on a creep foundation a teammate can not supplement your defenses easily. I’m not sure what the solution is, whether it is simply allowing a pylon to be built on creep would break certain strategies, maybe a way for a drone to eat a spot of creep?

Nothing has been mentioned or shown about this yet.

There were some other things that I’ve thought of over the years, but the point is it was already a great game that only needed some ‘minor’ tweaks to bring it modern.

The rise and fall, and return of Spazzo

Once upon a time there was a little Mediterranean restaurant in the heart of Bellevue, WA at the top of one of the tall buildings. There weren't really a lot of skyscrapers in Bellevue back-in-the-day, like being on the 15th floor was plenty to get a decent view all the way to Seattle. It was a great little restaurant, with a good chef, a good view, and decent ambience. One of its specialties was having a wide variety of 'tapas', which is really just a fancy word for appetizer but they were small amounts (compared to current fat-America restaurants where appetizers end up containing more food than necessary for an entree!) great for getting a whole bunch and sharing - or as I'd like to do, purchasing 2 or 3 and eating them as a main course.

This restaurant was one of several owned by the Schwartz Brothers. Other SB properties include Daniel's Broiler and Chandler's Crabhouse. Neither of these are 5-star dining experiences, but they are upscale and quiet good. I'd go so far as to say that the filet at Daniel's is one of the best steaks I've had. (I hear the El Gaucho and Metropolitan crowd reving up their keyboards... Let me throw some fuel on the fire, El Gaucho was really good, but the Metropolitan's New York Strip would have been disappointing for $10 and was simply tragic for its real price) And Spazzos, I used to love going there, there sangria was fruity and great.

Then... then something happened. The Schwartz Brothers changed it from Spazzo (subtitle:Mediterranean Grill) to Spazzo (subtitle: Italian Grill). This change was very quiet, no one really knew until they went there. And when they went there, they were kicked in the mouth and that is when the discovered the truth. A little bit of sleuthing on review sites will reveal exactly when the change happened. Just look for the spot in the reviews where they go from 4-5 star "Loved it", "Great", "Good for family or wooing customers" to getting 1-3 star "Crap, WTF?", "Not worth the time" and my favorite (paraphrased, but I really did read it a few years ago) "I'd been raving about this restaurant to some East Coast business reps, so I took them here for dinner after one of their trips. I have never been so embarrassed in my life."

I can attest to those reviews. I went there one night and it was a train wreck. Even if I just reviewed that service on the "do-over" after the first failed attempt at cooking the food, it still would have only garnered a 2-star rating.

Not long after the restaurant went away. The Scwartz Brothers put up a press release claiming that the bank building decided they didn't want a restaurant in it anymore. That's their story, they are sticking by it, and I'm not going to call B.S. on it. I will say that it seems awfully suspicious that once everyone started saying it was nothing more than an expensive Cucina Cucina / Olive Garden riding on the name of a once-nice restaurant that it went out of business. It was also interesting to note that the formerly prominent Scwartz Brothers logo wasn't prominent on the "v2" restaurant. I, and some other people I talked with, thought that the Brothers had actually sold the restaurant.

So, when I saw a sign in late 2006 that Spazzos was going to re-open, with a giant Scwartz Brothers logo, and really really close to my house I was very excited. Not only because I'm tired of the restaurants near me, but also that it had the SB logo on it making me think it was going to be restored to its former glory (minus the Seattle view).

I tried to go on opening night, but was not interested in the wait since I had not planned ahead with a call. We did end up there during opening week.

The restaurant took the place of a Cucina Cucina, and upon entering you would be hard-pressed to figure out why it took months to remodel the place. The seating in the bar area was different, and there was a fresh coat of paint on the walls, but other than that it was virtually identical. Going in to the bathroom I don't think they even repainted (I rarely went to Cucina Cucina, it had probably been over a year so maybe my memory betrayed me).

Looking over the menu it was clear that something was not right. It looked like the menu from Cucina Cucina, not the menu from the 'real' Spazzo. The restaurant was also still called Spazzo Italian Grill (the name of the inferior version recall).

When the food was delivered, I immediately knew that I would never be back. It was not the 'good' Spazzo as I had hoped, it was the Olive Garden clone that I feared it would be. The spaghetti & meatballs was better than what you would get at a cafeteria. The second steak they brought me (I'm giving them a pass on serving me a medium rare steak the first time, chalking it up to opening week jitters) was slightly better than what you would expect out of a modern Outback Steakhouse. (which is not so much)

Iced Tea for $3, my medium-well filet for $32, and Rebecca's spaghetti for $16 put the total around $55. You can get a much better meal at many restaurants for that price - hell you can get an average (and therefore better) meal at one of the chain restaurants in Redmond for less than that.

In short? Pass on this restaurant, unless you are a fan of over-priced sub-par chain-style Italian food.