Caps Rookie Game

Sarah scored "sold out" tickets to the Washington Capitals rookie game against the Philadelphia Flyers. It's our up-coming season prospects veruses theirs.  Tickets were free but you had to have one and they were gone weeks ago. Sarah's family has season tickets to everything so she dropped her uncle's name and wha-bam! she was hooked up. The game is at their practice rink which are rather new facilities not far from me. 

It was a full on game, people were getting in to it and lots of heckling to the opposing rookies. The crowd was fun because it was so small you could hear everyone and people could directly yell at the players or the refs (or the scoreboard guy when he forgets to acknowledge yet another Caps goal). And being that the crowd was mostly die-hard season ticket holders they were quite knowledgeable and adept at heckling. These guys were playing hard for their jobs. There was a ton of hitting and lots of fights. And there were some sweet plays.  Of course the Caps rocked them 7 - 0 but a good time was had by all. 

Except the Flyers, and the fans made sure they felt it. In fact Sarah was getting uncomfortable and feeling bad for the losers. She even wrote a positive cheer up note to her favorite Flyer when he was boo'ed in the penalty box.  That was funny.

Image stolen from Caps website.

urban road warrior

I bought a road bike a bit ago. First I bought a real clunker. I knew I wouldn't be happy with the weight and lack of smooth drive train so I kept looking and finally got a 2006 Cannondale SR 500. It was about $100 more than I wanted to spend on a bike I'm going to lock up in the city but other than that its perfect with the granny gear, B-lever brakes, and rack mountable frame.

I spent a bunch more money and got a new helmet, lock, hand pump, tool bag, rear rack, rack bag, and lights for the front and rear. I'm all set to tackle the paved trail or night-time city streets. Surprisingly I still have not gotten a flat on my thin tires. I've found I can get around in DC in much less time than the metro takes. Its been quite convenient and has gotten me a bit of exercise.

[pic goes here]

Potomac River run

Sarah and I opened the summer on Memorial Day and coincidently finished the summer in similar style on Labor Day. We couldn't have asked for a more perfect weekend. The river wasn't even that crowded. And we were only an hour and a half late to the pick up.

Pics & videos

new company goes live with Google Apps

I started using Google Apps for email, calendar, and online documents back in January. My last company, JPR Wood Consulting, migrated over in March. That was quite painless with a 5 person company. And it made a lot of sense for a small company that is working from various places. The online collaboration is great. Well right after I got pulled in to my new company they had email issues. I suggested we use Google Apps. Shockingly about 2 weeks later I migrated the whole company over. Its a 21 person organization and they are pretty much all non-technical. I ran in to a few limitations; there are some basic enterprise functions that are lacking and would be nice. Its great having the whole company using it and it was a fun little project that allowed me to do something different.

my own independent wine consultant

My sister is an independent wine consultant. No matter that I probably know more about wine than she does and I admittedly know nothing about wine. She put on her shindig at a friend's place in Fredericksburg, VA so I went down to hang out. It was interesting to see her do her thing. And of course since the party started at 3pm we never stopped drinking and were mostly passed out at midnight.

Brew @ the Zoo

The last few years I've wanted to check out this Brew at the Zoo event but it always sells out by the time I hear about it. Not this summer. It was expensive though at around $55 each I believe. They had lots of breweries and some very good food, even a band. The lines were super long for everything. They did give you a nice full size glass mug (with a 4 oz fill line at the bottom). 

While in one long line a little armadillo runs by. People started freaking out and taking pictures. Someone from the zoo had brought it out. Apparently it likes crowds unlike its brothers and sisters. It would scurry around and then start burrowing in the grass. Cute little guy. Sarah dug it.

See crappy cell phone pics.

Kirby saving the world

So I had just started dating this girl gal and she takes off on a secret activist mission in a foreign communist state with the intention of getting arrested. Its the Olympics in Beijing and China has been cracking down on human rights as opposed to opening up. Students for Tibet had actions going on all throughout the Olympics. Kirby was there for a week preparing with a "team". With a few exceptions the protesters were getting deported within a day. One of the first guys got punched, put in stress positions and seriously interrogated. Some of the later ones were held in prison for a week.

Here is the post about her "action".

And here she is speaking for the activists from DC when they arrived at the airport and were received by the local Tibetan community.