Author: James

General

July 4th Sale at Seattle Premier Outlets?

Initially Karen and I were planning to play some tennis on this gorgeous afternoon, but over lunch we heard about the super-duper July 4th deal at the Seattle Premier Outlets.  Figuring we have the rest of summer to play tennis but only one July 4th weekend sale, the balance tipped on the outlet side.

This mall was big, with a very good selection for outlet mall.  Take that comment for what it’s worth, though, because this is coming from someone who treats shopping at malls like a stealth mission.  You start with a target, you move in, acquire the target, and get out as fast as possible.  (Naturally, Karen is not very fond of this shopping behavior).

As for the July 4th sale, almost everything had a “sale” tag on it, so it wasn’t clear what was really for July 4th.  Also, at the entrance of Nautica, some lady handed us a coupon:

Not that we planned to spend $175 on clothes in one store, but we took a quick peek anyway.  Finding nothing of value, I tried to hand the coupon back to the lady, but she said, “Oh that’s okay, I don’t need it”.  Before I got a chance to say, “Well, I don’t want it either!” she continued, “It’s good until the rest of the year.”

So there you have it.  The July 4th sale is a sham, and the expiration dates are there to get you to buy compulsively.  That said, there are still deals to be had, but just like any mall, you still have to work to find them.  Just don’t buy anything you’re not sure of, because it’s a long way to the return line!

Tech

Maximizing Laptop Battery Life

Have you ever wondered why the battery life seems shorter and shorter? Karen is always envious of my laptop habits because her 5 minute battery life can’t touch the 5 hours from mine. Heck, she might as well be moving a desktop around if she’s always plugging in! I thought the problem might have been constant plugging in, so I began cycling my batteries by fully charging it and then running it almost all the way and fully charging it again. I was so wrong.

Most laptop batteries use Lithium Ion (Li-Ion), and the best thing to do is to discharge partially, and charge partially. Frequent full discharges are bad for the battery, and the effects are permanent. So if you’ve loved walking to the kitchen with your pajamas and surfing the web while you snack away, you may inadvertently be wearing out your battery! (reference for the skeptics: http://www.batteryuniversity.com)

So how do you check if your battery is worn out from abuse? Well, I found this nifty tool called Centrino Hardware Control that can tell you…

As you can see, after only owning my laptop for a few months, my battery wear level is already at 4%, but that’s not as bad as my coworker who bought his laptop later and is already at 15%! He’s also a cycler, and by that I don’t mean he joins Johnny on his biking expeditions. By the way, it is okay to cycle your batteries once a month to reset the memory electronics in the battery, but that’s about it. Now you know how to maximize your laptop battery life!

While we’re on the subject, I have a quick tip for you geeks out there. You can use the same tool to lower the voltage of your CPU. Why? To lower the temperature and increase battery life. I’ve lowered mine from 0.9 to 0.7 volts at 600 MHz, and it runs much quieter and cooler and longer. Except for the occasional smoke and burnt rubber smell, everything is good! Okay, I’m kidding there, but you do risk crashing your system if the voltage is too low, so tweak it at the lowest stable voltage and you’re golden! If you’re not a geek and would like to live on the edge, I recommend you make friends with some geeks and utilize the free support that comes along with it. 😛

Events

Happyfish @ Home

We had our first Bible Study tonight, and one thing we didn’t lack tonight was dessert.  Between Karen’s Italian fruit dessert and Grace’s Fritos with Chili, we had plenty to spare, but all attention were on Olivia’s Japanese feline cake imports.

A closer inspection reveals Japanese-quality detailing work, even on cakes…

Afterwards, some of us stayed for a game of Mexican Train.  In hindsight, perhaps it wasn’t the shortest game to play.  Grace whipped our butts pretty badly in the first couple rounds, but in the end Olivia pulled ahead, which was an amazing feat considering she was somewhat dazed from the effects of jet lag.  I was dead last until Jimmy began racking up points by collecting the wrong pieces toward the end of each round.  But hey, as we learned in Bible Study today, the last shall be first and the first shall be last, right?

That brings us to now, which is about 3:15 am, way past my bedtime and right around when Jimmy typically brushes his teeth.  I should just stop now.  Stop!

Travel

Bunnies, Bunnies, and More Bunnies

Okay, after hearing about the bunnies that flooded Greeklake, Karen and I decided to pay our tribute last weekend.  There weren’t as many as Grace and Carol saw, perhaps they were taking an early July 4th vacation, but we managed to catch the few lazy ones that remained…

It was early in the morning, so a bunny did the morning cleanup, which was slightly faster than the 40 minutes I usually take in the morning…

 

Because the weather was nice, the squirrel joined the Fellowship of the Fuzzballs.

Every story has a villian, and on this day, a man who wanted to lay at the field wasn’t generous enough to share the field with these poor, innocent rabbits.  He began chasing them away by flinging his jacket on the grass over and over again.  The rabbits ran…

… and went hiding.  Unfortunately some have not truly learned the art of stealth…

After a brief moment, the man settled at a corner of the field, so the rabbits developed enough courage to come crawling back.  One rabbit got so much courage that he was “close and personal” to me, void of any fear of human contact.  “What do you want, a glamour shot?!”  So I took one…

Unfortunately I don’t have his email address, so I can’t send it to him.  Maybe he can check find my xanga blog.  Speaking of blogs, I better stop here before people accuse me of taking a page out of Grace’s blog.  😛

General

Theological Worldview?

I noticed the little survey on theological worldview on Angela’s blog, so I decided to give it a try.  Here were is my result:

  You scored as Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan. You are an evangelical in the Wesleyan tradition. You believe that God’s grace enables you to choose to believe in him, even though you yourself are totally depraved. The gift of the Holy Spirit gives you assurance of your salvation, and he also enables you to live the life of obedience to which God has called us. You are influenced heavly by John Wesley and the Methodists.

Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan
 
93%
Fundamentalist
 
61%
Charismatic/Pentecostal
 
54%
Reformed Evangelical
 
50%
Neo orthodox
 
46%
Emergent/Postmodern
 
46%
Modern Liberal
 
36%
Classical Liberal
 
25%
Roman Catholic
 
18%

What’s your theological worldview?
created with QuizFarm.com

I don’t know who John Wesley is or what he did, but if he wants to believe what I believe, then hey, more power to him!

Sports

Kayaking

I had planned to save this for another day this week as I’ve bombed this blog with too many oversized entries lately, but unfortunately neither Carol nor Jun could hold their cool about withholding kayaking blogs.  I didn’t want to be old news, so here we go.

Over the weekend, Karen and I went kayaking, and even though we were only a tiny, little bit late (40 minutes), our beloved friends (David, Carol, Eddie, Jun, Allen) had forsaken us.  We had snubbed water sports in the past, as the inability of Karen keeping her head above water for more than 0.5 seconds may have had something to do with it.  With the shabby guarantee of the safety vest on her, we decided to take a plunge anyway.  First we headed toward Gas Works…

Then we saw a group of ducks and headed straight for it…

Unfortunately with Karen working against me, we had no chance of catching up.

Then we saw our beloved friends paddling over in our direction.  Strangely enough, the closer they got, the blonder their hair seemed.  Wait a minute!  Those are no friends… counterfeits!  I did receive a call from David, who mentioned they were at the UW draw bridge, but somehow I must have brought the wrong cognitive map with me because I thought the Ballard bridge was the draw bridge.  We turned around.  Then about 15 minutes later I realized my folly and turned around again. What a waste of energy!

By the time we found our friends, they were heading back already.  Because I wanted to show Karen the *real* UW draw bridge (not Ballard), we painstakingly parted with our friends and continued our path toward UW.

We took a slight detour toward the beautiful water lillies…

Then we headed toward the draw bridge…

That’s when I realized a real map was strapped about 4 inches from my face on top of the kayak.  Sheesh.  Rubbing it in my face.  We noticed a path toward the right and headed under a few bridges.  It was a cinematic experience to behold…

Padding out from under the 520 bridge was another gorgeous sight…

That’s when the low battery light on my camera came on.  A practical tip for the wise: charge your batteries.  At this point I received another call from David, and they have already paid and ready to leave.  When we disclosed our location of Huskie Stadium, I slightly underestimated our distance “Give me 20 minutes, we’ll be back.  No problem!”

David answered, “No way!  You’re about 40 minutes away!”

To prove I was no slouch, I kicked into overdrive, supercharged my neglected biceps and triceps, and blazed down the path as the kayak parted the water.  This feat lasted a whole…oh, 30 seconds before I decided to take a break.  That’s also when Karen politely pointed out her need for her break as well–a bathroom break.  Great.  Looked like it was going to be a *really* long trip back. 

On the way back, the wind was against us, and at times it seemed like it was winning the tug-a-war as the kayak stood still.  After an hour we managed to make it back, but the return trip instilled a soreness in my biceps, triceps, and any other ceps you can think of.  It has yet to wear off as of this day.

It was nice being out on a kayak though.  🙂  Maybe next time, our “friends” will wait for us!!

Family and Friends

Huey’s Wedding

First a word of wisdom from the Proverbs of James (this has nothing to do with the wedding by the way):

What I did today I shall blog later.
What I did yesterday I shall blog now.
What you call procrastination I call a strategic delay.

Let’s rewind to June 11th, 2004…  oops, I mean 2005.  It was Huey and Debbie’s wedding day and at their request, I became one of their photographers.  My scope was limited to taking pictures during reception when they go around the tables.  Cutting of the cake and everything else will be covered by the main photographer.

A couple weeks later, Huey amended that plan to include pictures of everyone who attended the wedding, but not necessarily mug shots.  Uh huh… as if I can keep track of anyone, seeing that I remembering names poses quite a challenge already.  I ended up just asking people for their mug shot as they come in anyway.  Despite my systematic approach in blockading the door with the effectiveness of a police line, I still noticed some undercover ninjas managing to sneak behind me.  Anyway, here’s one of the mug shots:

Then the wedding party decended down the stairs.  I noticed Pastor Sam checking his tie in the mirror, and I instinctively held up my camera and snapped.  In trying to capture the moment, I ended up with camera settings as far off as the moon is to the sun, so I ended up with:

Thankfully I shot in RAW, so I was able to salvage the picture with a little digital magic:

Amazed?  So was I.

Anyway, then came the ceremony.  The backlit background and the vicinity of the first row of seats offered no room for photographs without also capturing some audience member’s mesmerizing widow’s peak.  I didn’t want to be a copycat and duplicate the main photographer’s work, so I decided to crawl bootcamp style under the bar and to the left side, where I was able to capture this shot:

Then as I squatted in the front row, someone must have decided to head to the john because I saw a basket sitting on the floor with no one around.  I thought it would be neat to take a picture of this:

After the ceremony and at the announcement of food, the vultures headed upstairs for this:

Hmm, I’m salivating even looking at that picture.  Anyway, while waiting we decided to take some Happyfish pictures.  We started with the all-girl pic, but there was a disturbance in the force…

After settling down, we were able to take some nice, classy group photos such as:

Then we headed down for the reception.  That’s when I realized the main photographer was taking off before the cake cutting!  Oh oh, flashback to the nightmare of red-eyed monsters.  Anyway, after taking over main photographer duties, I first went around the tables with Huey and Debbie.  Of course, no reception is complete without some wacky games, like eat the ends of the noodle until the lips touch:

I have no idea what that dude in the middle is doing… practicing or catching his breath?

Afterwards came the cake cutting.  Thankfully there were no red-eyed monsters, but we did get one big, hungry cake monster who gobbled the cake in one byte!

Then after some speeches and toasts, Debbie changed and it was time to make an exit.  The guests formed two lines.  This is great, I thought, because I can try experimenting with various shots and angles and see what happens.  Yeah right. Before I finished my thought, Huey had already carried Debbie in his arms and darted toward me at 120 MPH!  If he had gone any faster, his head would have speared straight into my lens!  Thankfully I was able to pull off a couple of shots before Huey was literally 2 inches in front of me:

Then they were married and lived happily ever after.  Hmm, where have we heard that before recently?

So, being a wedding photographer isn’t as easy as it seems.  It’s fun, though, especially when you have the privilege of bossing people around by saying lines such as “Official Photographer Business! Ma’am, please step aside, thank you!”  Then you just flash your badge of authority–the overweighted camera–and all is forgiven.

For more information regarding this topic, in the form of pictures, you can visit The Happyfish Picture Gallery.

Travel

Eventful Saturday

This morning Karen and I woke up super early to attend the free Rick Steve seminar on Italy.  It was basically a sight-seeing slideshow, although she did offer some practical tips such as how to bypass the 2 hour lines at the Uffizi gallery.  Basically you calling ahead and reserve the ticket, and then just wave at all the silly people waiting in the insane line and walk straight up to the will-call.  There was quite a bit of good info in the seminar, although most of it can be found in Rick Steve’s Europe Through The Backdoor.  At the end, the man himself, who just returned from Italy, showed up and answered some questions.

After that we went to the Mac Store to buy Karen a new battery.  Karen has a Powerbook, and its battery life is exactly 5 minutes.  No more.  No less.  Yeah… a new battery is warranted.  Unfortunately Apple won’t sell them because it’s an older model, and Mac Store is sold out!  Okay, okay… internet here we come.  Selection at the expense of instant graification…

Being a hot day, we dropped by Starbucks for a Frappuchino before heading over to the Happyfish BBQ.  I didn’t realize the Starbucks cups are smaller than ever!  And I was complaining when they did their first downsizing.  At this rate, soon the Tall will be the size of a shot glass!

Now, can anyone tell me where this is?

You may be tempted to say Hawaii, but it’s actually Lincoln Park in West Seattle, where the Happyfish BBQ is!  Anyway, I don’t have a story today, but I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.  Let’s start with Johnny handing Ben a piece of … whatever.

Some people were definitely experiencing some football action…

While others were playing the bouncy rock game…

Amazingly, Karen actually bounced 4 times, as we can sort of witness in this next picture. Yes that’s four, not three, although the last two are sort of compressed…

Of course, that’s after 53,847 attempts, but it’s still reason to celebrate.

Even Allen and Justine joined us, along with Madeline whose head was gripped like a basketball by Allen.  First he cradles her like a football, and now basketball.  What’s next?  I hope not soccer!

While we were at it, we took a few other shots…

And of course, Angela was nice enough to offer to take one for Karen and I…

Here’s a picture I had a harder time getting cooperation for, but we managed to pull it off.

After that, we decided to try finding some interesting pictures take, including balancing on a log…

Or a rock…

Then we looked for … creative shots…

So that’s pretty much the Happyfish BBQ.  Okay, so there were more people at the BBQ, but this is a blog, not a picture gallery!  Keeping things interesting is the key, so only pictures that fit with my blog entry make it here.  Okay, time to check for sunburns and go to sleep!

Home

Bean Update

Looks like we need to conclude our bean journey.  No, the bean hasn’t withered and died yet from lack of nourishment, but it seemed to have assumed its final form.

As we can see, one side has:

And the other side has says:

Contrary to what I was told, the leaves didn’t have the Chinese writing:

So at this point, it would seem like we have closed the chapter on the development of the Magic Bean.  There’s nothing magical about it…  just some cheesy bean with patterns etched on.

Hey, to look on the bright side, I no longer need to worry about toxic containment of the genetic mutant.  Time to return that Space Suit (by Mattel) back to Walmart!

Travel

The Blair Witch Project III?

Yesterday, a man got lost in the wilderness when he sensed something odd moving around him.  He glanced around but noticed nothing but odd-looking trees.  When he turned back to look for the path, a golem grabbed him and imprisoned him within a thick, coarse trunk.

After a few hours of struggling, he managed to free himself from the tree and lept from the tree.  The noise from the perfect 10 landing disturbed the sleeping golem, whose thunderous thumping resonated across the forest as he rushed to the scene.  Wittingly, the agile man climbed up another trunk and hid in the tree.

At an opportune moment when the golem looked away, the man lept from the tree and headed for the cliff, with the golem and his pounding steps rushing behind.  Left without a choice, the man said a quick prayer and lept from the top of the cliff, landed in the river, and climbed his way up a boulder.

With the fearless golem also leaping from the top of the water fall, the man quickly fled from the boulder and looked for a place to hide.

He noticed a cliff nearby, so he used his bare hands to climb up the cliff, Mission Impossible style.

At this point, the golem had swum toward the boulder, climbed atop it, made a thunderous roar, and looked around for the man.

At that point, a golem huntress leaped out from nowhere and strangled the golem to death.

That’s when the man noticed that at the end of the double-rainbow sat a mermaid on a stump!

He took her home and lived happily everafter. Okay, I think my story has officially gone downhills.  Anyway, overall it was a fun trip to the Snoqualmie Falls.

THE END