5.8 quake and aftershocks

At 1:51 in the afternoon when the earth quake hit I was sitting in my office on the 10th floor over looking the Potomac and DC (best view in the city). The quake had to different and distinct waves. The first was small in duration. I felt the building move for a few seconds. It was subtle but I definitely felt it. There was no sound and no reaction from within my office. Having never been in a quake before and not knowing what was going on I stood up and took a step towards my 10th floor window to observe what I could outside. Not the best advice during an earth quake. The second wave came just a second or two after the first and it was big and sustained. You’d think it was over and then it kept going. Up on the 10th floor there wasn’t a lot of impact. Nothing was falling over, no ceiling tiles falling or anything, just the swaying of the building. I looked around outside for some other evidence and I could see one person looking around and not exactly standing still. That verified to me it wasn’t just the building and I had just experienced my first quake. I always wanted to be in an earthquake.

Being in the mid-Atlantic no one knew what to do once the quake was over. People reacted in all sorts of ways. A few people, including Robie, dropped everything and immediately left the building. Of course they all stood outside under and between very tall office buildings. Other people (including Teri) sheltered under their desk. I figured everything was good and started checking out twitter and the USGS earthquake site. All the locals I followed on Twitter immediately confirmed that they felt the same thing. It took a bit before it showed up on USGS site (quake stats). I hung out in my office with many other coworkers wondering what to do. Apparently all over DC and Arlington there were thousands and thousands of people who emptied out on the streets. I was trying to text Robie to see what he was doing and what we should do. The feds evacuated all buildings and shut down for the day. Most other companies followed. Eventually we all went home. Of course just like when the feds let out early for snow it turned the commute to gridlock. The metro was running at 15 mph because they weren’t sure of all the tracks. Buses were completely full. As I rode home on my bike I noticed huge lines at the bus stops, empty taxi stands, and people everywhere trying unsuccessfully to hail a taxi.

I heard that people were running out of the Washington Monument for a good half hour or so. A 4 foot crack appeared at the top and it is closed indefinitely. The National Cathedral had some damage. An apartment building in Maryland with 110 units was totaled. A chandelier in Teri’s apartment lobby hit the floor. The center speaker screen on my entertainment center fell out but that is about all I noticed at my place. I popular picture online, which may have been taken by Michelle Winston’s friend, showed items all over the floor at a Fredericksburg CVS. The barbershop stayed open and I was able to get my haircut without waiting in line. The bars did the best happy hour business they have ever done.

There were over a dozen aftershocks. I felt a 4.2 aftershock but that was the only one. It was a topic of conversation for a week.

More info on the quake is here.

4th of July

Teri, Matt, and I went to the office to watch the fireworks after driving home from Super Ball. Robie and his family were supposed to be there. I was worried about who else might be there. Thankfully no one was there other than Robie’s clan. I met his son Robie and saw his brother Jodie again. All their kids were there. Teri, Matt, and I hung out in my office while drinking beers and eating some chips and dip. It is the perfect view. It was amazing how many other firework shows we saw. Pretty much from 8:30 on there were fireworks non-stop on the horizon. It was really cool to see. I wish I had a camera set up to take a time lapse shot. You would see fireworks across the whole horizon all at once.

The DC fireworks were nice. A few seemed to go off pretty low. Lots of shaped fireworks such as hearts. It seemed like a lot of fireworks over the 15 or 20 minute period. The river was full of boats as usual. Our location in Rosslyn was perfect because we didn’t have to deal with all the crowds. We decided to walk back. Teri attempted to take the metro but gave up when she saw the line of people waiting to get in. Next year maybe I’ll bike down to the mall again.

Picture by Kevin Ambrose of the Washington Post

Memorial Day Weekend

The Memorial Day Weekend snuck up on us. It is freakin’ June already? I’m going to wake up tomorrow and be 40 and my life will be almost over (just kiddin’ Mom & Dad).

I’ve got a lot of things lined up in June so this long weekend was a good chance to relax. On Friday Teri and I took a long lunch and went to Mad Fox Brewery. I took a growler of their new Elixer to work for my weekly PMO status meeting with the client on Friday afternoons. The Elixer is a great German lager. The description:

The Elixer (6.5% ABV)

A deep golden-colored, light bodied seasonal lager. Pilsner, Vienna and Dark Munich malts balanced by Tettnanger hops gives this beer it’s toasty nose, smooth yet crisp character and late dry finish. Notes of light honey and Hazelnut.

Thankfully the client canceled so I brought in Teri and Lewis to join Robie, Woody, and I to swill the growler. Everyone thought it was pretty tasty.

On Saturday I watched a quick version of Formula One qualifying. Teri had a PMP class so I waited for her to watch it all in detail. I took off to Arlington Cemetery for something to do outside on the Memorial Day weekend. I’ve only been there about two times previously because you are not allowed to ride your bike through. It was packed of course being probably the busiest day of the year for the Cemetery. I walked the loop in the heat. Saw the Kennedy’s and the Arlington House. The Arlington House has a great view up on the hill. I’m sure it was quite the property a few hundred years ago. I walked up to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier right when the changing of the guards was taking place. They also did an official wrath ceremony which I left in the middle of. The Tomb of the Unknown Solider looks out over quite a view. They really lined up the landscaping and the area that projects out towards the river and DC. I found myself actually in the center of this view and everyone at the wrath laying ceremony when I continued my walk down the hill during the ceremony. The road wraps around and past the area that projects out from the tomb. I felt the urge to distract everyone and divert their attention but that would have been most disrespectful.

Teri and I headed out to Mark and Michelle’s for some grillin’ and swillin’ that evening. We stopped by Mad Fox to bring a growler of that Elixer. Again everyone enjoyed it. Mark grilled up burgers, hot dogs, and steaks for four couples. Teri and I kicked some butt in corn hole.

One Sunday we watched all of Formula One qualifying and the race. Monaco is always an interesting race. There was also the Indy 500. I almost missed that thinking it was Monday. I did watch the second half. Boring like all oval races until the end. And this one had an exciting last lap. Bummer for the newbie.

After dinner Teri and decided to bike down to the Capitol and check out the free concert. We ended up arriving about when it was ending. I got a flat and fixed that real quick. Teri was swapping out her CaBi bike at each station as we cruised around.

Monday was a day of relaxing and getting stuff done at home. This is a big week of beer events leading up to SAVOR. The summer starts now for me and it’s going to go quick.

Bike to Work Day

Bike to Work Day turned out to be a nice day. Lots of people turned up at the pit stops for free food and goodies. They had a stunt rider this year to entertain the crowd. I got my shirt this time unlike last year because I didn't register.

Since my client was on vacation and I didn't have my normal Friday afternoon meeting I took off the last few hours of the day and did my normal loop around Arlington. There was some water that closed the trail near the river but people were riding around it. You could also see that Four Mile Run flooded the trail and left debris. Not a ton of people out because of the threatening weather. I did get a few drops on me but it turned out to be a nice ride.

GPS of loop ride

rainbow over DC

I captured this pic from my office window...

Later I saw this on my twitter feed by @WeatherBugMedia:

Nearly full rainbow across the Washington DC sky... from our @WeatherBug camera at WJLA studios around 5:30pm http://twitpic.com/4tffsi

federal protection

Not sure if it was the Secret Service or FPS. As Teri and I got off I-66 in Rosslyn on our way to work from her place we came upon a large blacked out Chevy SUV with police lights. It caught our attention not because of the lights but because some big bald guy in a suit and sun glasses kept waving off cars from the back seat window. It was hard to tell what exactly he was trying to communicate. Then we noticed the Caddy it was trailing that had some VIPs inside. The security crew were trying to help block off cars so the Caddy could change lanes on Lee Highway. It was odd. We were directly behind them coming off the highway when they started waving at us. In rush hour traffic it would be impossible to keep all cars away. They were successful at keeping away cars from the SUV but the Caddy just drove as normal in to backed up traffic. After following them on to Lee Highway we then followed them on a right turn in Rosslyn. They were definitely checking us out. At the next intersection they stopped to go straight and we pulled up on the left hand turn lane with guys in both cars eyeing us. I wasn't able to recongnize anyone in the Caddy as we went by. I assumed they were going to a State Department office on the same block as my office but their destination must have been some other location in Rosslyn.

crappy cell phone pics

DC United w/ coworkers

A group of coworkers went to go see DC United and we had a good time. There isn't 100,00 people but they tailgate and chant like the best of them.

pics and videos

craziness at work

The first half of this year was pretty nuts in the office. It started in January and has just recently calmed down. I took over responsibilities of the Program Management Office within our company and six project managers (3 of them brand new). I was a bit overwhelmed. I was literally running in the office from meeting to meeting. We were under all kinds of pressure, priorities were changing weekly, new systems and procedures were being implemented, it was a mess. Because of that most of my social life and all of my blogging stopped. I caught up with March a bit ago and have now made it through May. Half as many posts as usual.

Things are getting back to normal. The office will be a never ending subject of bewilderment. Looking forward to getting my life back and posting about it on a regular basis.

Coming next will be five days in a row of fine/rare craft beer being served by the well known brewers themselves. Some cool events.

some people have all the fun

My coworker was out in the mountains of Idaho surveying remote sites where we are developing network access capability for the Forest Service. The Forest Service recreation folks manage rafting permits at these sites and they are out in the middle of nowhere. One site is about 50 miles from the closest electrical outlet. Another site they had to fly in to with a small plane. We are going to set up access to the internet for them so they can manage permits electronically in real-time. I used to go hang out in the woods a lot but since I’m doing more project management and less solution development Lewis got to enjoy this trip. I did get out to Oregon, Montana, and Pennsylvania this summer and hope to visit those locations again soon.

One of the Forest Service folks that took him out to these locations had to go out and locate a dead body on Sunday after elk hunters came across him. He crashed on his motorcycle a couple weeks earlier on a remote road by himself. News article here.

There is a photo album for each site:

Corn Creek

Indian Creek

Boundary Creek

Also be sure to check out the video of them landing a small plane in a remote mountain landing strip.

new phone?

I think this will be my new phone. I'm way overdue; I've had mine since Janurary of 2008. The new phone is HTC's Touch Diamond 2. I assumed Verizon wouldn't get it for another year or so because it took them so long to get the first version. Verizon will call it the Whitestone or XV6975. It is not supposed to be out until September/October. Which means hopefully October.

Specs:

• WM6.1 (no WM6.5 on launch?)
• Qualcomm 7600 @ 528MHz
• 512MB ROM/256MB RAM
• 3.6-inch WVGA touchscreen
• 5-megapixel autofocus camera/Anti-handshaking
• gpsOne (aGPS and full GPS)
• GSM/CDMA World phone

I'm a lucky guy though. Just like with my current phone I expect to have one in my hands before it is out on the market. Through work I had my current XV6800 a month or two before it hit stores. I hope to have this new one in my hands in the next week or two. Looking forward to testing the virtual keyboard as I'm used to a full keyboard. It is fun to go in the Verizon store and watch them freak out when they see something many of them aren't even aware exists.

We'll see.

UPDATE: Apparently it is the Touch Pro 2, not the Touch Diamond 2, that I will be getting my hands on before the official release. The Touch Pro is the same thing but with a full keyboard. I'm a bit disappointed because I wanted to test the virtual keyboard. But I assume they will both be released about the same time so either way I hope to be purchasing one of them. It is still a sweet phone.

hangin’ with the bigwigs; and David Grisman

On Thursday I flew to Boise for a workshop put on for the CIOs of the various land management agencies. The Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, and others were represented. They originally got together to solve the issue of radio interoperability but have been looking at other areas as well. Since I work for an Assistant Director of the Forest Service CIO it was pretty important to us to make a presence. Especially since we are about to bid on a large contract to manage all the wildland fire IT applications. The event took place at the National Interagency Fire Center.

The night before I found the one 24 hour Kinkos in Boise and got some posters printed for our booth backdrop. It happened to be right next door to the Tablerock brewpub. I’ve been there once before. They had decent beer; nothing unique. I was about the only one there hanging with the employees on a late Thursday. Walking out some kid was giving me a parking ticket. I started asking him questions about how he was using his phone to create the ticket and then had it printed wirelessly on the mobile printer around his neck. He decided not to give me that ticket afterall.

We took part in a conference style workshop on Friday afternoon. Each of the projects that were invited had a booth with gadgets to show how they support the wildland fire effort. We took over the front of the room and had eye catching intel data displayed in Google Earth on a large screen. We made a good impression on the bigwigs. I got some key face time with top decision makers. The most significant was probably Sanjeev “Sonny” Bhagowalia. He is the CIO of the Department of Interior and has strong ties to the White House.

As luck would have it David Grisman was playing that night in downtown. He tours constantly (for many decades) and I usually see him about once year. Although lately I haven’t seen him in awhile and was looking forward to some Friday night fun. I picked up a ticket from someone who had an extra. It was a small nice theater downtown that fit less than 800. It was a good show. Although they only played one set and they always play two sets at the Birchmere. They did rock though. A fun crowd too. The beer was local and cheap as well.

When I walked out in to the streets of downtown Boise at 11pm it was rockin’. Unfortunately I was not staying downtown and had to drive back to the hotel. Next time I’ll be staying downtown on the weekends.

And then on the way home I got lucky. I had a nice big exit row and a first class seat on my way in to Boise. My first flight out of Boise to Salt Lake City was only 40 minutes and there wasn’t a first class section. The Salt Lake City airport was packed yesterday. Flights were overbooked. I saw the FS CTO at the ticket counter and apparently he didn’t make it on my flight. I was not looking forward to a four hour flight in coach as I had not gotten an upgrade to first class. Delta came through for me though and when I handed the lady my ticket to board a new seat assignment was printed and I was relaxing in first class. As we took off I heard a baby screaming in the back. I sat in my spacious seat, ate my free lunch, and had a free bloody mary before sleeping peacefully most of the flight.

Fourth o July

I took Shal to the office for the fireworks. Usually I ride down to the mall amongst the thousands of people but I’m still not healed. My office happens to be on the 10th floor of a building on the river overlooking DC. There is a great view of the river and the national mall. With DC’s height restriction you can see across the whole city. My coworker Sonny had about 10 people down on the plaza with beer, liquor, and various food. I brought a bottle of Allagash Victoria Ale and Shal brought some Magic Hat Wacko (summer ale). Our spot must not have been too secret as a whole bunch of other people joined us before the show. Shal and I went up to the office for a better view. Not a bad show. Everyone had a good time.

Allegheny NF

I went with my boss and a guy who works for me to the Allegheny National Forest in Pennsylvania this week. This is the third forest we have visited after the Deschutes in Oregon and the Bitterroot in Montana. The Allegheny is a pretty nice forest for the east. It has a big reservoir and a wild and scenic river. The other thing they have is a crap load of oil and gas development. Those with subterranean rights supersede those with land rights. The Forest Service only has land rights. The oil companies come in and drill wherever they want. Each drill needs a road. It’s a huge impact on the forest. There are thousands of them and thousands more being proposed. The Forest Service can’t keep track of all the drills and roads and the oil companies don’t maintain them. Hopefully we can help them out with a bit of mobile technology. After staying at the Microhotel in small little Marionville we found a nice new Hampton Inn in Warren. The residents of Warren had chairs already lined up on the Fourth of July parade route. It must be a pretty exciting parade. The forest is about a six hour drive from DC. No quick way to get there.

Pics and video

Big Sky

I'm back in Montana for work. We are doing bringing all kinds of funky technical gizmos to the remote wilderness. Tomorrow will be a very interesting test of a temporary wireless network that we are going to set up over some 10 or 20 square miles with wave relay nodes on the ground and aircraft in the air. We will be transmitting all kinds of valuable data over the network to mimic a large fire incident in the mountains. Let me know if you have Google Earth and I can send you a KMZ that shows what we are doing.

After hanging out in the remote wilderness all day we hit the Blacksmith Brewery in small little Stevensville yesterday. It’s a relatively new brewery and unfortunately their fine dry hopped IPA was out. After a few beers we headed over to Bob’s house, site of the homemade Google Earth crop circle, to shoot some golf balls on his newly created island green. They dug out a nice little pool in the irrigation ditch out back, created an island, and Bob laid down some sand with a green in the middle. My two golf playing coworkers thought this was the coolest thing ever. Cooler than Bob’s internet controlled gopher sniper gun and his 10 barrel 22 caliber gatling gun. Bob is a smart technical guy who doesn’t eat or sleep so he puts together some pretty slick toys. Of course yours truly was the only one who doesn't play golf and the only one who got a ball to stick on the green (with a broken clavicle).

When we are traveling we never get back to the hotel before 9. Last night we got back close to midnight. And there was still a slight glow of sunlight visible. It is nuts how late it stays light out here. Gets bright early as well.

All week long there has been a tiny yellow finch looking bird flying outside the windows of the hotel restaurant. The little guy goes nuts and continually tries to fly through the glass. He has been doing this for days. Someone suggested he was a house bird that got loose. I think this is a good theory, the little thing must be scared out of his wits flying around other birds 5x his size.

Stopped by Big Sky Brewery as usual after work today. Next time I’m making it a priority to hit Kettlehouse for the first time.

I flew out first class and I best get upgraded to first class on the way back!

Pics from Thursday field testing of wireless wave relay network

An afternoon in Oregon

On Friday our only commitment was a business development lunch with a guy from Northrop Grumman in Portland. He suggested a place called Henry’s 12th Street Tavern in the Pearl District. With over 100 fine beers on tap I was quite pleased with the choice. They had a ring of ice going around the bar to keep your beer cold. I had a Russian River Blind Pig IPA. I had this last Friday at the Lupulin Reunulin tasting for the first time and this one didn’t have that fresh hop taste I remembered. I could tried a few but being a business lunch we kept it at one. After lunch Robie and I headed west to the coast. I sorta wanted to head east, see Multnomah Falls, the Columbia River Gorge, drive past Mt Hood again, and stop by Full Sail Brewery in Hood River.

It was a nice drive out to Seaside, OR. We did see a lot of clear cuts although none on Forest Service land. I navigated with GPS and Google Maps on my phone. We stopped by Fort Clatsop National Memorial and learned more about Lewis and Clark. This is the point where they found the Pacific Ocean. Robie and I have seen some L&C history while driving around Montana. We walk a very short loop in the park and saw huge trees and a bunch blown over. We saw a ton of trees blown over on the drive and we forgot to ask the Rangers at the visitor center how that happened. Huge root systems were standing straight up all over the place. 

We drove in to Astoria on the huge Columbia River. A friend from work told me that it is difficult to sail in to the river from the ocean at times because of the strong current. Robie remembered that the Goonies was set in Astoria and the house was in some neighborhood here. The town isn’t all that big and the neighborhoods on the hill looked like they fit what I remembered from the movie. I did a quick Google search on my phone and the address came right up. It was only a block or two out of our way. In the five minutes we were there to snap pics two other cars stopped. They must have people coming by constantly because of a movie from 1985. 

Goonies pics

We drove along the river back to Portland. It was a long drive from McKenzie Bridge to Portland to the coast and back to Portland. We got some drizzle but it turned out to be a decent day. Back in Portland we passed all kinds of seedy strip joints on our way to the hotel by the airport. The Embassy Suites there is quite nice. I was happy to check in to first class on both of my connections back to DC that night. And the two beautiful 6’ tall African American flight attendants didn’t hurt.

I finally make it to the NW

We’ve talked about it at work for awhile and finally I scored a trip out to the Pacific Northwest. I was extra excited having just tasted some fine NW brews at SAVOR. We are going to implement some mobile technology on various forests around the country and the Deschutes National Forest happens to be one of them. Robie and I flew in to Portland where the Rogue Brewery brewpub was representing. Usually Robie and I travel in Montana and we like to laugh at the Hummer H3 drivers who look out of place among the outdoorsie Subarus. Robie has elite status so we just walk right up to our car and as I looked across the parking lot I saw that yes it was a H3. We took a nice drive past Mt Hood to Bend, OR. Central Oregon is pretty sweet with big thick forests on the mountains and dryer rangeland elsewhere. We learned that those in Bend hate Californians who come buying land and building houses and our H3 of course had California plates. 

In Bend we stayed at a place with a sweet view of the Deschutes River. We tried to go to the Deschutes brewpub on Monday but it was special night and that wasn’t happenin’. Instead we went to McMenamins Brewery. The next night I dragged Robie and Art back to the Deschutes brewpub and we had good food and beer. They had about a dozen beers available only on location. I sampled their Bachelor ESB on cask first and it was quite tasty. Next was some IPA on their in-house-only list and I enjoyed that a lot. I also had a taste of the Hop in the Dark which is a 90 IBU dark beer. Yummy yummy.

After two nights in Bend we drove a short distance away to Prineville. This is a very small town with some very interesting landscape. The whole town sits in a valley that is more like a gorge. Some study came out this week that said they have a 16% unemployment rate. We went to the Redmond Air Center to meet folks for work. They have an air tanker and smokejumper base there. We got to check out the smokejumper Sherpa plane. I tell you what those females who jump out of planes in to fires are damn sexy. They sell singles out of 6 packs at the grocery store so I picked up a Full Sail IPA and a New Belgium 1554. I wasn’t too impressed with their selection. My coworker Art who hooks up with hotel deals everywhere we go was the guest of the week at our hotel in Prineville.  See pic=>

After working at the Redmond Air Center we went “over the hill” from central Oregon to the western side. The scenery was amazing. We drove by the Three Sisters peaks and through the B&B fire of 2003 that burned about 91,000 acres. It was a site to see. We stopped at a nice overlook near Mt Washington. Unfortunately I didn’t bring my camera and my cell phone pics are pretty crappy (the one up top was stolen). The difference of the ecosystem between western and central Oregon was quite obvious. As mentioned, central Oregon is dry with lots of rangeland. Once over the “hill” the precipitation is like five fold. The forest is thick with moss and ferns. As Art said there are layers and layers of moss on top of ferns on top of other vegetation. We drove by Clear Lake and apparently there is a standing petrified forest under the water. There were also lots of ancient lava flows around. Robie, the former forester, said the cedars were bigger than he had ever seen.

Art hooked us up with some cabins on the McKenzie River. The river was flowing pretty good. Art took us up to his office in the H. J. Andrews Experimental Forest. It is quite the place to work. We saw his deer friend who visits his office often and an elk on the drive. We had dinner with his wife at a nice place before calling it a night. Ideally I wanted to hang out next to the river, have a fire, and swill some fine brews. But after dinner there nothing was open within 50 miles to get beer and we were all tired. So I started a fire in my cabin, scored an internet connection over my phone, and got a little crap done such as this post. 

I’m all about Oregon. It’s laid back, the terrain and forests are awesome, rivers and lakes everywhere to have fun in, mt bike trails, mountain climbing, snowboarding, fine beer, and all the other outdoor sports you can think of. I’ll be hanging out here some day.

back in Missoula

It has been about 9 months since I've been in Missoula. It is snowing! Unfortunately I didn't bring my snowboard. Lewis couldn't join me this trip and I decided I didn't want to do a one day weekend jaunt on my own. We stopped by Big Sky Brewery as we usually do and I tried their Stone Thrower and Belgium Blonde. I've also sampled the Bobo's Robust Porter and their seasonal Powder Hound at local establishments. 

Mt Sentinel still has its scares from last July. The pic above is the view from my hotel room. Usually guys are out fly fishing in the early morning.

I missed karting again tonight. So much for a podium finish to the championship.

The Negroni Trio and Ray's

On Wednesday Kirby and I went to see the Negroni Trio at Blues Alley. It is part of their week-long Latin Jazz Series. José Negroni is a Puerto Rican pianist and he was excellent. His son played the drums and was quite impressive as well. He was all over his kit with intricate timing and “rim clicks”. I could have watched them all night. The place was less than half full at the 10:00 show.

Last night Kevin, Laundrew, Lewis, Justin, Teri and I went to Ray’s. It was delicious as usual. I think I got three Ray’s virgins hooked which I always love to do. Afterwards we had a few drinks at Rhodeside even though people had to drive to Stafford, somewhere past Leesburg, and Virginia Beach afterwards. Laundrew happened to spill the beans on an interesting tid-bit about a co-worker.

I noticed it was -10 degrees in Pburg yesterday morning with a wind chill of -29. BBQ anyone?

work holiday party and not The Infamous Stringdusters

I thought I had a great night lined up. After a lax Friday at work Kirby and I were going to hit the open bar and good food at my work holiday party. The plan was to get out of there before too late and head to the State Theatre not far away to see The Infamous Stringdusters get down. I saw them open for the Seldom Scene years ago and have been waiting for them to come back ever since.  

The ISG company party was not bad. It was at Clyde's in Tyson's Corner just like last year. It started at 6:00 and we were to sit for dinner at 8:00. Lewis was having back issues and never came in to town. Andrea's furnace broke and she called making excuses while we were driving there. Sonny was sick and decided not to show. So I was a bit worried about who Kirby and I were going to enjoy hangin' with. Justin came with us and his wife was waiting when we arrived. Rodyna was there with an asian-french friend and they hit it off with Kirby. Josh showed up at the end of dinner and Laundrew walked in at the end as well. It wasn't bad but I wish everyone would have been there to liven things up a bit.

Kirby and I boogied to the State Theater before 10:00 to catch the Stringdusters. They throw down real raw bluegrass and I was looking forward to the ho-down. I had thought I had planned things perfectly yet again as we walked in right after the first band and before the presumed headliner. Unfortunately, little did I know that it was a double bill evening and apparently the bands choose who was going to play first. So after we sat down with a drink on came Old School Freight Train. The Stringdusters had played from 9 to 10:30. Bitch!

Old School Freight Train was ok but not what I was hoping to see. The best part of the night was spending time with Kirby after she was in NYC for a week. I'll wait another year or two and catch the Infamous Stringdusters next time they come around.

Google Earth graffiti

I work with a guy out in Montana who does R&D for the Forest Service putting together technology for wildland firefighters in the mountains. This is the same guy who lived next to the National X-mas Tree. He does things such as put cameras and wireless networks on UAVs. He has been a long time proponent of using Google Earth for work and has ties back to the Keyhole guys. When high resolution satellite imagery of Missoula became available he made a phone call and an update appeared in the public version of Google Earth. 

So he decided to leave his own mark. He owns some land in the Bitterroot Valley of Montana and mowed "AFF" in his backyard. AFF is an application that provides real-time geospatial information to dispatchers, aviation managers, and incident commanders. It uses Google Earth to display the geospatial information. 

The picture below is from a private satellite. Once the image is publicly available he'll have Google update the quad in Google Earth. Then when you zoom to Bob's backyard while using AFF you can see his AFF lawn sculpture.

You could paint your roof but without connections it might take a few years to appear in Google Earth. Google recently released the Google Maps street view for DC. I checked my walking routes and they didn't capture me. It appears the Google spy car drove around DC two winters ago.