Wyszdom

Sometimes when I see joggers hopping around at an intersection, I want to get out of my car and dance next to them so they don’t feel awkward alone.

Okay, so yesterday I blogged about how I was unsubscribing from a mailing list for charity: water. Just a few minutes ago, I came across this post by Matt Cutts on the Official Google Blog as part of Blog Action Day. I didn’t know about Blog Action Day, so the timing of yesterday’s post was just a coincidence. However, now that I know about it, let me get in on the action.

Obviously, water is important and good stuff. So it’s pretty shocking to learn that there are still many people in this world, in 2010, who don’t have access to clean water. charity: water works to help out these people. You can donate here. My favorite part about donating to charity: water is that I know 100% of my money is going towards a water project, and not towards sending me return address labels.

I clicked “unsubscribe” on a recent email from charity: water and was given this offer:

I ended up choosing both options, but I appreciate the effort. Nothing against the organization; I just get too much email.

I attended two family weddings within seven weeks of each other this summer, and they were both in Philadelphia. Here are some of my pictures:

You can see more on Flickr.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m trying to figure out how to get Davio’s cheesesteak spring rolls out to California.

On the last weekend in September, Brandon, Maria, and I went to Telluride, Colorado to do some hiking and practice our photography skills on the fall colors.

I’ll share some pictures and stories below, but for further viewing or reading pleasure, you may wish to check out:

• All 492 of my pictures
• Maria’s blog posts: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Food
• Brandon’s pictures
• Maria’s pictures

This trip had three main focus areas: food, hiking, and fall leaves.

Food

Our first meal was actually at a place I had never been to before, but had passed by many times: Brown Dog Pizza, on the recommendation of a Colorado native. We had the “Dog Biscuits” appetizer, which is their cheesy breadsticks. It was delicious. We went back to Brown Dog another night for pizza, and while it was good and likely the best Telluride has to offer, I liked the breadsticks the best.

For our first dinner, we hit up Smugglers, which was as usual fun and full of good food. We had their house-brewed root beer as our beverage of choice. I don’t like to drink root beer that often, but when I do, it’s a nice change and reminds me of my childhood sitting on our deck enjoying a root beer float.

Our final dinner was at Rustico, one of my favorite restaurants. But what I was really looking forward to on this trip, what I was craving, was a fried Oreo sundae from The Sweet Life.

It was just as good as I had remembered from last time, and I’m reminiscing about the taste right now. Because of this, it’s best that I never learn how to fry things myself.

Hiking

We went out for a few hikes on the trip, but our longest and favorite was the hike to Bear Creek Falls. The fall weather was just about perfect for hiking. It wasn’t cold yet, but it wasn’t too hot either. And of course we saw plenty of golden aspen leaves.

2.5 miles later, we reached the falls. I don’t think I meant to take the first picture with a tilt, but I like it.

Leaves

Geeking out

As I mentioned before, I really want to get a new DSLR with a GPS receiver. I’ve carried around a GPS logger before and then matched things up with software, but I don’t like that process. This time I just took a reference shot with my Nexus One so I could see where the DSLR shots were taken and geotag appropriately. One reason that I wanted to geotag all of my photos was so that I could get them added to the cool photos layer in Google Maps, which also appears in Street View. My photos haven’t been included as of this writing, but I’ll keep checking back to see if they make it onto the map.

Speaking of gadgets, while we were watching the sunset we noticed two bright lights in the sky before the starts started appearing. Using Google Sky Map, we were able to identify them as Venus and Jupiter.

Well, we were pretty sure that this first one is Venus. It’s right next to Mars, so it was hard to tell, but I think Venus is easier to spot.

In the above photo you can see Venus to the left of Wilson Peak.

Jupiter looked like this:

It’s always sad to end a vacation, but at least we got to wait for our plane in this comfy lounge:

…which came equipped with this view:

Thanks, Telluride. Until we meet again…

I saw The Social Network (the Facebook movie) last night. It was entertaining. I’m not going to get into an extensive list of the factual inaccuracies of the story because I don’t know the true story and I don’t think that the film was intended to be historically accurate. However, I have two nitpicks that stuck out in my mind during the film:

1. I didn’t know that Harvard was located on the Johns Hopkins campus.
2. The CGI snow and breath condensation looked fake and was distracting.

I spent the first two weeks of August in Dublin, Ireland on a trip for work. What follows are some observations of the little things I noticed as an American without much international travel experience.

My pictures

Stuff I liked

Irish accents are cool. I wouldn’t mind having one (or one of the southern English accents). I was almost too embarrassed to speak at times because an American accent must sound horrible to them. And I know it may sound silly, but many times when I heard an Irish woman talking on the street, I turned around to see if it was Ríona, even though her accent is sadly waning.

Another thing that I enjoyed hearing was the ringback tone— the ringing sound that you hear when you’re calling someone. It’s a lot smoother than what you hear when calling a North American number.

I liked how technology enabled me to feel a little less like a tourist and a little more like a local. When it came to food, I was able to use Yelp to look for reviews, and then with my phone was able to confidently get walking directions to the restaurant’s location. I wasn’t limited to using tourist maps or judging a restaurant by what it looked like on the outside. And, since I checked in everywhere on Foursquare, I had a record of every place I visited which ended up being helpful when I did my expense report. I also have location history enabled on Google Latitude, which allowed me to look back and see things like the route our bus took from Dublin to Doolin. So, the two gadgety things that I’d recommend as an international traveler (besides a voltage converter) are a local prepaid SIM card with a data plan (likely much cheaper than roaming), as well as an extended or extra battery. If you’re in the US, you’re probably used to unlimited data, but you’re unlikely to find that when traveling. I found 3G Watchdog on my Android phone to be a helpful app for monitoring my data usage.

I like sandwiches (everybody does), and the sandwiches in Ireland were generally good. I especially liked that it was easier to find a sandwich with sundried tomatoes than it was to find one with avocados. My favorite meals came from Listons Food Store, which was highly rated on Yelp and navigated to using Google Maps on my phone. During both of my visits to Listons, I had a delicious ham and cheese panini. The first one I ate inside the store, but for the second one I took a short walk to St. Stephen’s Green and had a pleasant lunch on a park bench. One thing I have to say about Irish food though is that Dublin’s definition of “crispy” in the context of “crispy bacon” is not the same as it is in the US.

I really enjoyed my one-day trip to the west coast, particularly because I traveled through the countryside and saw the Cliffs of Moher. Those of you who know me personally know that I would never want to live in a city (though I don’t mind working or visiting one), so when I travel I enjoy getting outside of the cities. While they all have significant differences, in a way visiting a major city anywhere in the world is kind of like visiting a major airport anywhere in the world: many things are the same. Traveling outside of Dublin, I was able to experience the green of Ireland that I heard so much about. It really is a beautiful country, and the abundance of green reminded me of home. On my next trip, I’d like to spend more time on the west coast and in the countryside.

My self-confidence was constantly being boosted by their overuse of the word “brilliant,” which seems to be a UK thing as well. As an example, when I turned in my SIM card that I was borrowing during my stay, my Irish coworker responded with, “Excellent brilliant stuff, mate. Cheers.” And when I was in Heathrow, a woman who was handing out flyers for some survey asked if I would be using the Internet in New York (I was flying into JFK). When I indicated that I would in fact be using the Internet, her response was simply, “Brilliant.” Yes, I am. Thank you.

Of course I liked seeing my coworkers. The funny thing is though, due to the multilingual nature of our work, most of the people I work with (and therefore hung out with) in Dublin actually aren’t Irish at all. It was interesting to hear them proudly speak of their homelands (I think a trip to Berlin or Munich is in my future), and I think they were surprised at my ability to sympathize with them when they learned that a trip from California to Pennsylvania is actually longer than a trip from Dublin to most of their hometowns.

I only took three taxis during my stay, but they were a refreshing change from what we have to deal with in the US. Besides the “just round up to the nearest Euro” tipping custom (don’t get me started on how horribly awkward and confusing the tipping culture is in the US), I was relieved to find that the drivers were both courteous and knowledgeable. In the US, it’s such a crapshoot. You can take a cab in the morning and have a friendly driver who can give you helpful suggestions about the area, and then later that afternoon have a driver who seems to hate the idea that someone else got in his car, has no idea where your destination is, and has no map or GPS to help him out.

Even though I had to go through security multiple times on the way home (once in Dublin, twice in Heathrow), I liked that I didn’t have to take my shoes off. They still have the strange liquid restriction though, which didn’t affect me but I felt bad for the non-English-speaking family I saw trying to get medication though the screening process.

Stuff that was kind of weird

It was nearly impossible to find non-American television content, let alone Irish programs. Even when I settled on the BBC one night to catch some European material, they were showing Insomnia, an American film. Not a bad movie, though.

Everything closes early… even earlier than in the Bay Area. I tend to get in late and work late, so it was a challenge for me to rush out every night after work to get food. I thought I had found a solution when I discovered an “American diner,” but it closed at 10:00! That kind of defeats the whole purpose of a diner. When I tried to load up on some food at a convenience store instead, I discovered that they had closed at 9.

By the way, if you want to see more of Ireland, Google just launched Street View in that country, so start exploring.

As part of my Saturday ritual, I go to Quiznos, pick up an Italian hoagie, bag of Cheetos, and a bottle of lemonade and bring it back to my apartment, and eat it while I watch one of those cooking shows which features Gordon Ramsay yelling at people. I eat the hoagie first, so by the time I’m into the bag of Cheetos, my TV is usually showing a segment where there’s some competitive cooking going on. And so every Saturday, I have these two simultaneous thoughts:

1. I can’t believe he’s using frozen pasta! (or similar)
2. These Cheetos are delicious.

Oh, and after a long hiatus, I have two new cooking shows in post-production. I’ll be releasing them as soon as I get around to doing that.

On Saturday, Brandon and I went on a last-minute trip to Vegas to check out the new Aria hotel (part of the enormous CityCenter project) and its new Elvis-themed show.

Aria

The hotel is definitely one of the nicer Vegas offerings, and it certainly helps that everything is brand-new. They even pump a special scent into the building, so it smells more like spring than a smoky casino. As far as I can tell there’s no real theme to the hotel unlike some of the other major hotels on the strip, which I think works in their favor since themes can quickly look dated. It just feels like an upscale modern hotel with lots of glass and wood. The front desk service was a little slow but not terrible.

The standard room (it’s called a “deluxe” room, but there’s nothing cheaper than deluxe) is very comfortable. Here’s a shot that Brandon took:

Everything in the room, including the lights, curtains, temperature, and do not disturb sign, could be controlled from a touchscreen display next to the beds or via the TV remote.

We ate dinner at Jean Philippe Patisserie (I had a ham & cheese panini; it was good) before the show. At the end of the night, we ate at Café Vettro, which serves breakfast, lunch and dinner 24 hours a day. The menu looks very promising for a full meal, but we only had dessert. Here’s what the lava cake looks like:

I’d definitely eat there again.

CityCenter

CityCenter is massive, and one of its hotels is still under construction. We only checked out two of its buildings: Aria and Crystals. I think the only casino area is in Aria, so if you’re not into the whole gambling thing, CityCenter could be a nice escape if you wanted to stay on the strip but avoid the sounds of slot machines. We walked around Crystals a bit, which has some restaurants and high-end stores. One nice thing about CityCenter is that outside of most of the restaurants they had a touchscreen display with the restaurant’s menu.

These are some ice poles in the Crystals building.

This sculpture, also inside Crystals, contains a restaurant.

Viva Elvis

Overall, not a bad show, but certainly not the best Vegas production I’ve seen.

The theater was comfortable and had a classic look. I was seated in section 103 (row K, seat 7), which actually had benches instead of individual chairs for seating, with cup holders in front. The live musicians during the show were excellent, and seemed to be having fun throughout the performance. I think they also mixed in actual Elvis recordings for his vocals, since you never actually saw him sing on stage and there was just a slight hiss in the audio during his parts, but it was really well done. Like all of their productions (but especially Love), the show would still have been enjoyable if I sat through it with my eyes closed. But of course I kept my eyes open, as the talented circus performers that Cirque du Soleil is known for had some pretty good acts, mo”st notably the “Got A Lot of Livin’ To Do” super hero scene using trampolines. That was really fun to watch, and it looked like it would be fun to do.

Unfortunately, we didn’t get to experience the full show. At one point, it became clear that they were about to do “Jailhouse Rock.” It seemed like they were leading up to something big for the well-known song; a couple of people walked across the stage behind bars of light, and there was a video projection of a jail’s hallway. But that was it. 30-45 seconds would go by with nothing but the video projection, and there would be a few seconds of performers dancing across the stage in chains. This went on for the entire song, and about a minute into it, you could tell by the audience looking around that we were all thinking the same thing: “Something’s missing.” When the song ended, they moved on to the next act as if nothing had happened. The show must go on. The rest of the show seemed to go smoothly aside from a minor glitch where the mic cut out for two words (“Las Vegas!”) while the character of Elvis’s manager was speaking. I don’t think there’s any English-speaking character in the other Cirque shows aside from “no cameras” announcements, so maybe they should just stick to that tradition.

As we were walking out, I considered asking one of the ushers if something went wrong during the “Jailhouse Rock” scene, but didn’t say anything, afraid that I would sound like a jerk if there was nothing missing. Later that night, I did some searching for [viva elvis jailhouse rock] to see if others had similar thoughts. The first snippet was of a review saying that the “the ‘Jailhouse Rock’ set has potential.” There was no set… maybe the review was being sarcastic? I couldn’t tell because all Yelp wanted to do was plug their app once they discovered that I was on a mobile phone. I checked another result, and saw descriptions of the scene as “the show’s signature piece” and “walking upside down” and “has to be seen to be believed.” Obviously, we had not seen what they were talking about.

By the time I was able to confirm that there had indeed been a big error, the box office was closed and we had a 6:50 AM flight the next day, so the chance of a refund or explanation was pretty much non-existant. I can understand that there can be technical glitches for such a complex production, but considering the scene’s importance and the price of admission, it was pretty disappointing that the staff didn’t acknowledge the problem after the show. It wasn’t a horrible experience, and it would certainly be worth watching if you really like Elvis, but if you’re looking to be wowed, Vegas has many better alternatives to offer.

Update on 7/6/2010: After contacting customer service, I’ve been offered discounted tickets to another show. Sounds reasonable to me. They confirmed that the set was immobilized which is why we experienced the “minimized number.”

Fountains!

But let’s not end on a sad note… Vegas is fun! Check out these shots Brandon got of the Bellagio fountain, my favorite Las Vegas attraction:

It’s potentially embarrassing if I can’t remember your name, yet you remember mine. And the name of my plant.

I hope you don’t read my blog.