Fremont Oktoberfest

This weekend was Fremont Oktoberfest, a three-day beer festival two blocks from my apartment.  It's sort of like lawnparties for three days, but with Northwest craft beers instead of Beast and you have to pay for it, and it rains.  And it's not at Princeton.  OK, so it really has nothing in common with lawnparties except that you're drinking beer outside in the middle of the afternoon.  For some reason, about half of the beers were IPAs.  Now, don't get me wrong, I like hops as much as the next guy, but at a certain point enough is enough.  By the end of the weekend, I was desperately searching for the least hoppy beers available.  It is possible to make good beer where the dominant flavor is not hops, and I was able to find plenty.

I got my first taste of the infamous Seattle rainy season.  On Friday, when I biked to work, it was sort of raining - it was overcast, you could sort of make out droplets in the air, and the air felt wet.  I didn't get wet in the time I was out, but the ground seemed to be getting wet, so I think that counts.  Even if that doesn't count, Saturday we got hit with real rain.  Not New York rain; I was outside all day, and although I regretted wearing a light fleece instead of a waterproof jacket, I survived.  Nothing gets called off in Seattle due to rain; Oktoberfest was packed, and the BMX bikers jumping over kegs continued.

Before hitting the beer garden today, I ran my first 5K race in just over 5 years, the Fremont Brew-ha-ha.  Despite only training for two weeks and consuming a copious amount of beer yesterday, I was happy with my performance - I finished in 20:57, beating my unambitious goal of 22 minutes, and finishing 44th out of 815 runners.  Seeing my place shocked me, to say the least - I realized that the competitive pool at a weekend 5K road race is quite different than my high school cross country races.  I definitely miss the camaraderie of having a team to hang out with before and after the race; perhaps I'll have to start my own.

In other news, I got a new Windows Mobile Phone, the Samsung Blackjack II from AT&T.  So far my experience with Windows Mobile has been less than fantastic - it seems almost impossible to upgrade from 6.0 to 6.1, which is apparently much better, although the upgrade wipes out all of your data (it is theoretically possible to back it up and restore it) so I'm trying to do that before I put too much on it.  Unfortunately I don't get a company discount on an iPhone...

Clouds (finally) and Steve Ballmer, superstar

After two weeks in Seattle, the constant misery of 70 and sunny weather has finally given way to an overcast day.  Yes, the cynics have been proven right - it rains ALL THE TIME here and I hate it.  I'll be sure to post ASAP when as I feel the first drop.  In the mean time, my beautiful bike commute will continue.  When the rain does finally hit (my understanding is this will happen some time in November), I hope to continue biking through the light drizzle and skiing on the weekends while those of you in the Northeast and Midwest enjoy your beautiful winters, characterized by 20 degree days with ice, slush and dirty snow.  If you want some good skiing, please come visit me out here, I'll be more than happy to show you around.

I apologize for the bitterness, but along with the Vista and Google questions (see Mojave Experiment), the "did you know it rains a lot there" question has to rank up there with the most common and most irritating questions I have received about my new job/location.  We'll see if I change my mind once it starts raining, but so far I love Seattle and don't anticipate a little drizzle getting in my way.  From what I understand, our drizzle is much less irritating than the driving rain that periodically pelts New York and the Eastern seaboard, dropping more annual precipation than our rainy metropolis.

In other news, today was the Microsoft company meeting.  Unlike other companies, which can fit in a large conference hall, our company meeting has to happen at Safeco Field.  Attendance measured 22,500, allowing us to set the world record for most paper airplanes in the air at the same time (true story).  Rainn Wilson of The Office (American version) emceed.  Most of the day was spent watching demos of all of the new Microsoft products scheduled to be released in the next few years as well as some further off projects in development at Microsoft Research.  Very impressive stuff for the most part, although I think I'd be violating my NDA to go into too much detail.  Seeing all of the cool demos reminded me why I'm in software and why I'm working at Microsoft.  And nowhere else in the world does Steve Ballmer's entrance receive a standing ovation fit for a rock star.  Although I have to admit, that man is passionate about what he does and fairly entertaining to boot.

Western road trip facebook album/FolderShare

I've posted the best pictures of our road trip in a facebook album (you don't need to be on facebook to view it from this link). I figured this would reach a wider audience faster - I haven't yet decided whether or not I'm going to duplicate this on the higher quality Picasa. If anyone has thoughts on the pros and cons of various photo sharing methods I'd be curious to hear them. My thought on the subject is that it would be really cool if there was an open API for photo sharing that allowed me to tag and caption all of my photos in iPhoto or Windows Live Photo Gallery and then export it to any number of photo sharing sites. Good luck to whoever tries to implement that...

On a related note, the product I am working on, Windows Live FolderShare, is a great solution for peer-to-peer photo sharing, a problem that has nagged several trips I've been on recently. Until now, I haven't had a good method for quickly pooling the photos of an entire group in full quality. Most online publishing/sharing tools like Picasa and SkyDrive have poor support for Macs and work sketchily at best on PCs for large-scale sharing. FolderShare cuts out the middle man; the Windows Live servers merely coordinate synchronization between multiple computers, while files are transferred using peer-to-peer methods. I can synchronize my pictures between any of my computers, and invite friends to subscribe to my folders. For example, I could just share my Pictures folder with friends and give them read-only access, or I could create a group share folder that we could all edit. There's even a Mac client, so Alex Peters can participate. Synchronization happens instantly as long as both computers are online, and you don't have to worry about timing out the download because it will resume whenever both computers are online again.

Wyoming: National Zoos and Road Construction

Wyoming's two major industries, as far as I can tell, are tourism and road construction. We saw a lot of oil derricks too, but based on the price of oil in Wyoming, I suspect most of this gets consumed getting the construction workers to their jobs. I imagine commutes are generally fairly long, since we drove through the entire state and passed through only two towns whose populations are greater than their elevations.

The terrain of Wyoming is like Colorado in reverse. Colorado has a flat and somewhat barren Eastern section, followed by a whole lot of awesome. Wyoming has a flattish and really barren Eastern section, with a large Northwest corner of really awesome. Eastern Wyoming was a lot of fun to drive through - we managed to stay away from I-90, so we got to drive on some more interesting and deserted roads through the barren wasteland. I actually found this to be a welcome break from South Dakota, with its long flat straightaways filled with heavy truck traffic - despite being barren, the land was characterized by rolling hills, which I enjoy.

We stayed for our first night in Jackson with one of Hal's high school friends. We went to a good microbrewery (Snake River) for dinner and got to see some of Jackson's bars. The next day we embarked on a 4-day backpacking trip in Grand Teton National Park, to be described in detail in a future post. We went from there to Yellowstone, a huge park to which we unfairly gave only a day. As a backpacking and mountain enthusiast, I think this was probably the right allocation of time. I'd like to spend more time in Yellowstone some day, but Grand Teton is possibly the coolest place I've ever been.

Both Yellowstone and to a lesser degree Grand Teton are like giant zoos without fences. Our Tetons guidebook told us it is hard to go a day without seeing a moose. We were almost disappointed on day 3, when we saw our first moose. Not only did we see a moose, but it chased us the wrong way down our trail for about a mile or so. We also saw a black bear on day two, across Lake Solitude. Apparently it had gone about 100 feet from us while we were eating our lunch, but decided to wander up the trail without incident. This was reported to us by a couple hiking down from Paintbrush Divide with a view of the whole scene.

The other aspect that these parks are like zoos is in the vernacular sense. When you're within 5 miles of a trailhead, you don't go more than 5 minutes without seeing other hikers. This is why backpacking is nice, because the backcountry is well regulated by the National Park Service to limit overuse. Yellowstone is swarming with people, and parts of it feel like a big tourist trap. On the other hand, you get even more of the benefits of being in a zoo - it's pretty much impossible to avoid really awesome wildlife. There are bison everywhere (really frustrating waiting for them to cross the road) and we saw a grizzly feeding on a bison carcass across the Yellowstone River from us in Hayden Valley. Unfortunately we didn't manage to see any bighorn sheep or wolves; that will have to wait until next trip.

South Dakota: only the strong survive

On the first day of our road trip, Hal and I drove from Chicago to Badlands National Park in South Dakota, taking I-90 all the way. The beginning part of this drive goes through Madison, WI (where we stopped for breakfast) and the scenic rolling hills of Western Wisconsin. Southern Minnesota, east of the Mississippi, flattens out into relatively boring farmland characterized by enormous windmills. The size of these windmills makes me believe in T. Boone Pickens' alternative energy plan. Think big.

After leaving Minnesota for South Dakota, the terrain itself doesn't actually change. It's still totally flat farmland, but the giant windmills are replaced by giant billboards every 50 feet or so. Most of the billboards are advertisements for either the Corn Palace of Mitchell, SD or Wall Drug of Wall, SD, since there isn't a whole lot else to advertise in SD. Many of these signs highlight a curious cultural feature of SD: the proliferation of scare quotes. South Dakotans like to put everything in quotes - my favorite example was a Corn Palace billboard advertising "'Tourist Information.'" Using non-South Dakotan English, there's no logical explanation for these quotes. Are they quoting some famous person who said "tourist information" once? "In the words of the great Thomas Jefferson, stop at the Corn Palace for 'tourist information!'" I don't think that's it. Maybe they are using quotes because they don't actually mean tourist information - maybe it's like "tourist information" - get it? Like, we're selling "tourist information" that you can "smoke." No, that doesn't sound right either - I don't think the Corn Palace was a cover for a marijuana business.

In any case, we survived the Corn Palace - it's very close to I-90 if you follow Google Maps directions, so it's not too much of an inconvenience and it is somewhat interesting (as interesting as a building covered in corn can be). Only bother taking the time if you really need a break, and whatever you do don't follow the signs because they take you on a roundabout tour of the whole town (trust me, there's nothing else worth seeing in Mitchell, SD). After the corn palace, our next stop was the Badlands. Definitely the highlight of South Dakota - you turn a corner in this wide open cornfield land and suddenly you are beset by the barren landscape of the Badlands (pictures to be posted soon). It didn't hurt that we arrived right before sunset.

The next day we woke up for sunrise in the Badlands (about as cool as sunset) and headed toward Mt. Rushmore, stopping along the way at Wall Drug. After seeing hundreds of miles of hype, I actually wasn't dissapointed. The store is endless, and everything that was advertised was there - 5 cent coffee, free ice water, cowboy clothes, and a giant animatronic T-Rex that roars every 10 minutes. I'm into that kind of gimmicky stuff, so if you are too it's definitely a must stop, and it's even closer to I-90 than the Corn Palace.

Mt. Rushmore was less exciting for me. It looks exactly like it does in the pictures (big surprise) and it's about an hour round trip out of the way. Worth doing once if you're into big touristy monuments. We then went on to hike Crow Peak, a 7 mile round trip hike up a 1500' Black Hills peak with a great view of the Devil's Tower and 3 states from the top. This was a nice warmup for the trip, but if I were to redo the trip I would cut Rushmore and Crow Peak and just experience the Black Hills driving through scenic byway 14A, high-tailing it to the more exciting Wyoming.

Right before arriving at our campsite in the Black Hills, we encountered a herd of wild cattle in the middle of the road. I suppose they weren't wild so much as escaped, but it was still very amusing. They didn't seem too fazed by us, and we weren't really sure what to do - I really didn't want to risk pissing off the cows and having them destroy our car, leaving us stranded in South Dakota. Interestingly enough, after a minute of contemplation, they began observing OA road crossing protocol, crossing one by one. However, two stubborn cows stood in the middle of the road, staring at us disinterestedly. Finally, another car came in the other direction, and the two remaining cows exited the road peacefully. The campsite was very nice and worth the wait - for the rest of the night, there would be an occasional "moo" from down the road, and it never failed to get a laugh out of me.