Engaged

I got engaged last Saturday.  It was a fun and wonderful experience, and here are some details for the interested.So, I wanted to create a wonderful proposal.  My first idea was to have a very romantic dinner at the nice glade upon a mountaintop near McCall.  I was hoping to have tea lights and a table and a wonderful time.  However there is a strict 'burn ban,' due to massive amounts of forest fires this year, so no one can have any sort of fire at all.  So with some spots in mind, I decided to recon some places up in the woods... read more

Aero Ace

I returned to Idaho to find my brother's remote control airplane waiting for a new pilot. Twenty minutes later, I was hooked and ended up getting a plane myself. The little planes are called the Air Hogs Aero Aces, and are definitely one of the funnest hobby planes I have ever seen. I got the green one, which really is quite a performer for not having any control surfaces!

Olympic Hot Springs

A few weeks back, Melissa and I traveled to the Olympic Peninsula here in Washington and visited Olympic Hot Springs. It was a fun drive (riding the ferry from Edmonds to Kingston) over to Port Angeles, and a nice hike up to the hot springs. Not the best hot springs, but Washington doesn't have the greatest selection.

Website Maintenance

This website was recently moved by my hosting company, Dreamhost, from one webserver to another. This, unfortunately, hosed my database driven (and fairly slow) image gallery. However, the images weren't lost, except for names and descriptions of the photos. So, it's back up and running, and has some special functionality implemented. As well, I was spurred to setup a few cron jobs to automate backing up website content, etc.

Metroid Prime 2: Echoes

I've recently had a chance to play a little bit of Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. I remember renting a Nintendo Gamecube back in Dec. 2002 for a weekend to play Metroid Prime non-stop for a holiday weekend. This sequel came out two years later, and I have a chance to play it now (having a Wii, which is backward compatible with the Gamecube). It's been as much fun as the original, and shows the thought and depth that go into some of Nintendo's games. Plus, it's a fun refresher as Metroid Prime 3 for the Wii is coming out soon.

Victrola Coffee

Another coffeeshop I've been wanting to hit up for a while has been Victrola. I'd heard of Victrola from some latte art exposure four or so years back. Today I experienced their cafe and coffee, which was excellent. Stacks of laptops were to been seen, but I think I was the only person actually reading a real book: Richard Swinburne's Coherence of Theism.

Caffe Umbria

My roommate Matt is a coffee fiend/lover. Having been trained under the auspices of the once famous Crooked House, Matt developed a fine sense for espresso. He has since moved to Seattle, and been canvasing the city for years. His favorite coffee shop is Caffe Umbria. And this morning I spent some time at Caffe Umbria enjoying their coffee and the bustle of downtown Seattle; Pioneer Square style. Wonderful coffee, and wonderful ambiance to be had there. Have a look at someone's flickr photos documenting Caffe Umbria.