New York...

I decided to mix things up a little bit for our fourth anniversary with the promise to whisk Sarah away on a “secret” weekend getaway. I did a pretty good job keeping the location a secret from Sarah, although I finally slipped up a week before the big announcement. I chose New York City, somewhere neither of us had been in several years and somewhere we have never been to together.

Given the short time we had up there, I planned the hell out of this trip and I probably could have generated an hour by hour schedule if the need arose. We left work early on Friday to head up to the Big Apple. I picked out a hotel in the Financial District downtown. It was close to some touristy things I wanted to do, cheaper than Midtown, and more importantly nice and quiet when you wanted to get some sleep at night. We arrived on Friday and headed to our restaurant reservation in Midtown at Becco. It is an Italian restaurant that had two nice features: a prix-fix menu of all-you-can eat home made pastas and a full selection of wines only $25 a bottle to encourage experimentation. The food was great and after getting a free glass of wine simply by being clutzy enough to break my glass at the end of the meal , we waddled over to Rockefeller Center. We headed up to the Top of the Rock, the observation deck on the top of the 70-story 30 Rock building. It wasn’t quite as high as the Empire State Building, but I liked the observation deck better – unobstructed, 360 degree views from the very top.

On Top of the Rock - Empire State Building in Background

Saturday was the day of walking, and thus we were glad the weather was perfect. We started by walking to the Ground Zero site. There is not really much to see there yet, just some construction cranes, but it was something I wanted to see to remember what happened. Next we took the subway to Brooklyn (Saturday wasn’t all walking) and then walked back to Manhattan across the Brooklyn Bridge. The bridge had great views and was an impressive engineering feat as well. After our walk back to Brooklyn we lunched at the first pizza place in North America: Lombardi’s in Little Italy. It was quite yummy.

Brooklyn Bridge Overlooking Downtown NYC

Our next stop was at Broadway to watch “Spamalot.” Being as uncultured as I am, it was my first trip to Broadway, although Sarah is an experienced theater goer. Spamalot, based on Monty Python and Holy Grail, did a great job of recreating some of the funniest scenes from the movie, but also was different enough to not just be a rehash. It was a lot of laughs and a really impressive production.

After an early dinner that was good but expensive, our final activity of the night (yes, I packed this trip full) was to go dancing at Swing 46. As we learned earlier in the day, the ultra convenient subway stop 50 feet from our hotel was closed on Saturday for track maintenance. So, we took a different line which put us about a mile from the club. Apparently after four years of marriage Sarah and I can still have communication breakdowns, because the message of how far away the club was never really got from me to her :) Anyway, a mile of walking later (with one us wearing high heeled shoes), and we were ready for some drinks. The club was a lot of fun; the small dance floor took a little bit of time to adjust to, but by the end of the night Sarah and I were cutting a rug.

Our last activity was to take the Staten Island Ferry from Manhattan to Staten Island on Sunday morning. We weren't that interested in seeing Staten Island, but since the Statue of Liberty tickets were already sold out, the ferry was a free way to get some great views of the Statue like below:


After that, it was back to the airport to give up the New York lifestyle and return to the Suburbs.

America's New Tanker...

The recent award by the Air Force of the KC-45 Tanker to Northrop Grumman over Boeing has been controversial by all accounts. This story has stayed in the business news an amazingly long time, so I'm finally going to chime in. It hits pretty close to home, although whatever happens probably wouldn't have much affect on me. I don't actually know a lot of the details, but I wanted to put a few facts out there and highlight some of the ridiculous statements made by some members of Congress. The back-story is basically this:

• The Air Force fleet of tankers used to refuel jets in mid-air is getting really old.
• In 2003, the Air Force tried to give the contract to Boeing to lease the Air Force new tankers. A major scandal erupted when Darleen Duryun, the chief acquisition officer for the Air Force was investigated for inflating the price of the tankers while negotiating a position at Boeing and ended up pleading guilty. Boeing executives were fired and Druyun went to jail. the contract had to be recompeted.
• Northrop teamed with EADS to take on Boeing for the new contract.
• Northrop and EADS won the competition. According to initial statements by the Air Force, they won by a big margin.
  
• Congress members in Washington state and Kansas (places with the largest concentration of Boeing workers) go ballistic.
• Boeing files a protest, and the GAO is currently investigating.
  

Now my collection of ridiculous quotes by the Boeing supporters:

From Forbes:

"House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., echoing the thoughts of many congressional Democrats, sees McCain's role in a less positive light. She said the earlier tanker deal was 'on course for Boeing' before McCain started railing against it."

Wow...blaming McCain for taking away the earlier contract from Boeing. In a sense, that's true, but perhaps you could blame the ethically-challenged Boeing executives and AF officials for destroying the first deal and not the person who found them cheating.

"The person that stopped (the tanker) from going to a U.S. company was Senator McCain," said Emanuel, "and now we are going to send major high-paying jobs overseas"

I'll be first to admit, I don't really know how they come up with job creation numbers, but the latest estimates from both companies are now relatively even on the number of jobs created for both tankers. I'll agree that this would move jobs from Washington and Kansas to Alabama, but no one ever explained what jobs would move to Europe. Plus, Northrop is a U.S company!! I mention this because after all the misinformation, some of my parent's neighbors thought Northrop was based out of France...

From the Kansas Star:

"I continue to believe the Air Force's shortsighted decision is a threat to our national defense and the future of America's aerospace industry," Murray said in a statement.

I don't understand the threat to our national defense argument, as this statement and others talk about military technology going to France. The Northrop plane would be assembled in Alabama from parts made in the US and around the world, but the militarization steps (like say integrating command and control software) would be done by Northrop in the US.

Also Friday, the Kansas state Senate unanimously passed a resolution calling on Congress and President Bush to block the contract award to Northrop-EADS. "This is an aircraft that should be built in the U.S.," said state Sen. Mike Petersen, R-Wichita.

Great, too bad no modern airplane is built completely in the U.S. The Northrop offering is estimated to have 60% American made parts, which exceeded the contract requirements. The Boeing offering does have more American made parts (estimated 85%), but I'd like to see how they will fly it without a fuselage made in Japan or a tail made in Italy.

It will be interesting to see how this all plays out, my guess is that there won't be enough evidence of anything improper to change the decision. However, when politics get involved, it's anybody's guess what will happen.

March Sadness...

It's the time of year when my favorite sport shines its brightest, and the whole country takes notice of college basketball. Unfortunately this year, my beloved Cavaliers of Virginia shockingly didn't get selected to the NCAA tournament; alas when you finish 5-11 in the ACC you don't typically have a lot of things to put on your tournament resume. The year started off promising, with an early win against Arizona, at Arizona. Unfortunately UVA had a horrible stretch during the middle of the season in which they lost 7 in a row and basically sank to the bottom of the ACC. Maybe the UVA football team used up all the availalbe karma when it broke the NCAA record for most number of close wins this past season, because the basketball team caught the brunt of several heartbreaking loses. Several losses came in OT, and a total of 7 games were lost by 4 points or less. Injuries certainly didn't help during this stretch, but several of our players never really seemed to "get it" or play with much heart. Sean Singletary, our star player who decided to come back for his senior season, looked tired trying to carry the team on his back. Things started to turn around a bit during the end of the season, Singletary was finally completely healthy and Lars Mikalauskas, who wears his emotions on his sleeve, gave us a spark on the inside. That was enough to win a few games at the end of the season (4 out of our last 6), and to win Sean's last game at JPJ while getting his jersey retired. As an added bonus, that last win essentially eliminated Maryland from the NCAA tournament (if I'm going to be suffering, might as well have Terps fans in the same boat).

The final redemption for UVA has come as a result of an age old adage: you can never have too much of a good thing. Although my Econ 101 professor Kenny Elzinga might disagree with that adage, we now live in the era of three post season college basketball tournaments. There is the famous field of 65 teams that compete in the NCAA tournament every year, the teams that at had an argument to make it on Selection Sunday that play in the NIT, and finally introducing the College Basketball Invitational or CBI. Selecting the best 16 teams in America, after the NCAA and NIT get the first 97 picks, the CBI doesn't even let records tarnish the image of its teams and doesn't have any restricting requirements on "winning" records (just ask 13-18 Cincinnati). UVA takes on Richmond tonight in the inaugural matchup, and if we can't get excited about playing in the third best post-season college backetball tournament in the land, well then I guess we're normal...

Top of the Mountain...

Yesterday was the day we conquered the mountain...Bruce, Dave, and I went to the top of Breckenridge today. I'd like to chart out what we did because it was an amazing day on the mountain, and I was able to do a lot of terrain that I haven't done before.

Even if you have been to Breck, the rest of the entry will be a little hard to follow unless you have a map. I highlighted the Breck map with all the trails and lifts we took, so that you might have a chance at understanding the next paragraph.



After the walk from our rental house to the mountain and a painfully slow lift ride, we ended up on Peak 9 and did a warm-up run (I went on American, I think Bruce and Dave went down Gold King). We then started toward our final destination. We headed down Volunteer and then down Shock to catch the Peak 8 Super Connect at the mid-load station. We did a quick run on Frosty's Freeway to Chair 6. Then it was now or never to the Imperial Lift up to the top of Peak 8. What a view! It was an unusually warm and clear day. The temp at the bottom of the mountain was near 40, and at the top, a balmy 25. Bruce did the final hike up to the very top, while Dave and I did a run down the Imperial Bowl (I have to give props to Bruce for doing the final hike up, I didn't have the energy and we didn't really know how we were going to get down from there). Dave and I did a second run down Imperial Bowl, and fortuitously met up with Bruce. We headed up the Imperial Lift to the top again. Our plan was to ski down the ridge line and head into the North Bowl, but that area was mostly closed. We ended up heading down Pika, then through a tree section and down Northstar all the way down to the base. What a run! Looking back up to the top where we just were was incredible, especially thinking that we hadn't been on a lift for a long time. We ended the day doing some of the Peak 8 Blacks that I'd never done before. We survived and headed back home triumphant.

Here is the top of the mountain in the distance from one of the lifts:



At the bottom of the Imperial Express lift looking up:



Dave and I at the elevation sign:



Bruce on the very top:

Blame Halo 3...

Sarah and I attended competing guys and girls parties on a recent weekend. The guys played Halo 3 all day (even getting some participation from Atlanta with Dr. Fancysocks and his silent guest with the flower icon), while the girls were doing things like watching movies and knitting. Shortly thereafter, I found this fitting clip on YouTube, which was good for a few laughs (I think the girls will appreciate it as much as the boys) mainly because it hit fairly close to home. I particularly appreciated the fact that the host of the party last weekend, Jeremy is expecting his first child. Now I won't say that Jeremy would miss the birth of his child due to Halo 3, but I'd rather not put him into that kind of dilemma...

Guitar Hero Rock Legend...

I figure this is the right forum to make my big announcement that I'm officially retiring from Guitar Hero. Oh sure, I'll still play an occasional song for fun, there may be a reunion tour in the works, but my professional career has come to an end. I feel like I accomplished a lot in my career, I started out as lead guitar for the up and coming band "Ben and the Diehls", working my way up to the big time. First we beat all the songs and face-offs on Easy, and then Medium. With some work, we could rip off 5-stars on every song on Medium and Easy, unlocking new characters and guitars at every turn. Then the pressure starts to get to you; they don't call the difficulty level "Hard" for nothing. I didn't turn to Heroin Hero, but I started having nightmares of the last few songs on Hard. I only had three songs left to beat on Hard, but my brain refused to process what appears as a solid series of notes coming towards me rapidly. Thinking about the time required to beat those three songs seemed a bit too daunting, and I took the easy way out. That coupled with a heated naming dispute on whether our band name was really "The Diehls and Ben" was pretty much the end of my run on Guitar Hero.

Given the popularity of Guitar Hero at big events (it took over New Year's and the Wisp ski trip a few weeks ago), I'm sure I'll probably participate at the occasional gathering. However, in general I'm letting the next generation of rock legends take the mantle.

P.S. You have to watch the South Park episode on the same subject. If you can't catch this episode on Comedy Central reruns, check out this link to watch the episode: http://www.southparkzone.com/episodes/1113/Guitar-Queer-o.html

Happy New Year...

After taking an unplanned month and a half sabbatical from blogging (I think my current status is disappointing on Penrock's blog) I find myself in a familiar predicament. Namely, I've got ample topics to write about but most of the events I want to write about are long since passed. I could hope that you haven't checked here in the last month and a half, backdate several entries, and pretend that nothing was amiss. However, I'm going to try a different approach; I'm going to talk about the past today, and dare you to criticize me.

That being said, Happy New Year!

I wanted to share some pictures from our recent New Year's party at our place. It was by no means a huge gathering, but Penrock managed to defy conventional wisdom and stay past midnight(barely). It must have been his stint on the exercise bike that let him go the extra mile:

Note that Yuengling is a key ingredient to any training regiment.

It was a fun evening, we had way too much food and drinks, and the usual shenanigans were afoot, as taking a simple posed picture turned into a challenge:






How did Ben end up in every pic??

Long Ride Home...

I recently went to Colorado Springs for nine days to oversee an install for work; most of the time I was stuck beneath a mountain in a computer lab, but I did have one adventure that I wanted to tell. The context is that since I was in Colorado over the weekend, I decided to go skiing at where else, but my favorite resort, Breckenridge.

2:40 - I've been skiing for several hours. My legs are tired, but I'm just starting to get into a rhythm, and get out of the "my first time skiing all season" feeling. I decide to do one more run to get practice on the rapidly forming moguls on Peak 8 before returning to Peak 9 to return my rental equipment. At this point I notice that the snow storm has picked up earlier than the predictions from this morning.

3:35 - I make it to my car in the parking lot after taking the bus back.

4:05 - I have driven the 10 miles to get to from Breck to Frisco to merge onto I-70 West. I quickly notice that the traffic is almost at a standstill. Commercial trucks are instructed to pull off to the side to put on chains.

The drive for the next 13 miles to the Eisenhower tunnel was the most difficult of my life.

4:20 - I pass an electronic sign that states the drive to the tunnel is taking 1 hr and 10 min. Traffic started moving at about 5 mph, over a series of climbs up steep grades. Five to six inches of snow has accumulated on the road and no plow has been able to come through due to the intense traffic. I see a pickup truck spin out and begin to slowly fish tail across the three lanes of traffic. In order to maintain momentum, I have to move to the far left and accelerate past him. My basic strategy was to follow in the tracks of the car in front of me to maintain traction and speed. The problem was cars kept fishtailing in front of me, so I had to continually change lanes to avoid getting stuck and hit. Thank God my Ford Taurus had traction control! I ended up in the right lane at one point and another truck spins out in front of me and goes basically off the road. I then had nothing but untracked, messy snow in front of me and my traction control light started going crazy as I began to spin out. I barely managed to make it over to the left lane. At some point I passed a section where two cars were stalled and only one lane was getting through (double tractor trailers had to merge around them). This was apparently one of the major choke points, as I actually started to get some momentum before slowing down again. I probably saw at least 5 cars spin out, 5 cars stalled on my way up the mountain, and one SUV with a guy pushing it from behind!

6:00 - I made it to the tunnel and the last major up hill section!!! The sign was wrong; it took over an hour and a half to get this far. At this point we are starting to move downhill which is a welcome change, and I can barely make out snow plows far ahead of me.

6:30 - I make it to the town of Georgetown. At this point my next crisis arrives; my windshield wiper accumulates enough ice to not actually wipe my windshield and it's beginning to get hard to see. Luckily all I'm focusing on is the headlights in front of me, but I'm getting nervous again. There is nowhere to pull off except for a small shoulder covered in deep snow. So of course I pump up the defrost to 90 degrees and then proceed to drive while reaching out my window and knocking of the ice when the wiper comes close enough (thank God for go-go gadget arms!). I manage to clear enough off to have a partial view.

7:00 - I come to a complete stop outside of Idaho Springs. I think I'm in the clear once we start moving again, but there are two more tough sections remaining. First another steep uphill, although this time traffic is moving at about 30. Again a few cars can't make it and stall or spin out, so it gets interesting but it was piece of cake compared to before. Finally a series of long, ride your brakes, down hill sections, to keep my nerves on edge.

7:45 - I see the sign: one mile to I-470. Finally a new road after almost 4 hours! I start the 26 miles on I-470. I ignore the common courtesy to only pass in the left lane because damn it, the left lane is the one most clear of snow and ice. I'm moving about 40 mph now, but a few SUVs are flying by me on the right.

8:30 - I make it back to Denver and merge onto I-25 S. I contemplate stopping to relieve my steadily numbing driving leg, but decide to push on. The going is relatively easy as there is not much snow falling at this point and the road is pretty clear. I probably average about 50 mph (the normal speed limit is 70).

9:45 - I see the Arby's sign two blocks from my hotel, and decide that man cannot live on trail mix alone. Only the drive-thru is open, so all feeling in my leg is lost.

10:00 - I pull into my hotel with my beef and cheddar and curly fries in hand. I hobble to my hotel room. Total drive time is just over 6 hours. I vow to stay in my hotel room all day Sunday!

B&B X the recap...

It's the time of year when I get to recap the infamous, 10th annual Blades and Booze Halloween party. Sarah and I put in much less effort than previous years, but still managed what I think were good (not great) costumes right out of the pages of your mythology book (hint: she is Medusa and I'm Perseus):



Since it has been a while since I've been a judge at the Blades and Booze party I figured this year for my post-party entry I'd give my own slate of somewhat non-conventional awards:

1) Most Costumes that are essentially a T-shirt: I'm not going to name names, but I think the evidence speaks for itself...



2) Most Innovative Costume not Present: Jaime R. apparently went as Admiral Spaceship from the SNL short Laser Cats. He didn't actually attend the party this year, instead favoring something closer to his neck of the woods in Seattle. Regardless, until actual pictorial evidence of his costume surfaces, we'll have to go with this artist's rendition.



3) Most Self-Deprecating Costumer: Rob S. did go as a Flower this year...yes, a flower. A bit of an inside joke, but the gist of it is that Rob semi-jokingly suggested going as a flower a few years ago. I and a few other friends of the male race thankfully stopped him that year. It has become quite of a joke, but I still can't believe Rob actually did it.



4) Most Costumes Imitated at a B&B Party: Not to toot my own horn here, but not only have I had a cat named after me, I've now had two people go as previous costumes I've worn. Can you tell the differences...



We caught up with old friends, we drank a lot, and we stayed up super late despite not having that extra hour to fall back -- all part of the recipe for a successful B&B party!

Painting Time...

The painting is finished! And when I mean finished, I mean we are finished painting for a while. Is all the painting finished that we want to do?? That's a big hearty NO. However, we did complete Phase I of house painting, the main level. We finished the foyer and the living room, so our main floor finally feels livable. We are taking a hiatus from painting to concentrate on other important things like:

• Recovering from ankle sprains: Unfortunately I randomly turned my ankle during volleyball practice that sidelined me for a couple of weeks. The good thing about widely spaced blog entries is that I'm better now and back to volleyball!
  
• Halo 3: Trying to keep up with Mr. Fancysocks (Mike P's screen name) Halo 3 skills is a full time job. I think since he doesn't have a full time job he has an unfair advantage.
  
• Halloween Costumes: Crazily, another B&B party is approaching faster than Milhouse can say "jiminy jillikers." We don't quite have our planning up to par compared to previous years, but we'll see what we can put together.

As promised in my last entry, more before and after photos! This time we went with a light green called "Celery" to replace the overwhelming yellow.

BEFORE


AFTER

Our New Home...

We've been busy, so I'll make this a short entry. We moved into our first house about two and half weeks ago! It's been really fun so far, but a lot of work. The first thing I noticed about owning rather than renting is that when you rent and notice something you don't like you either live with it or call maintenance. When you own the first thing you do is calculate how much work and how much it will cost to fix -- a completely different mindset. Needless to say our lives have been full of projects large and small. We started with things like unpacking, then moved to work like buying furniture (read: all day IKEA trips) and shaving doors so the would close. However, our first big project is painting. We are transforming our main level and I get to post my first before and after pictures for the blog. There were giant mirrors and yellow paint in the dining room -- now the yellow is not quite so overwhelming (the entire main floor is yellow) and we don't have to watch ourselves eating! We had to remove and dispose of mirrors, put up new crown molding, and repaint everything. Here are the results:

BEFORE



AFTER

The Commute...

I have returned to the "normal" DC area commute since starting my new job in Clarendon. I say normal in quotes because although it is a tad long for me, the DC area is repeatedly near the top of the rankings in terms of average commute times and it seems pretty normal for these parts. If you have already glanced at my nice graphic breaking down my everyday commute, you can see that I have embraced public transportation for the majority of my daily trip to work. The main reason is the dreaded 66 HOV restrictions inside the beltway for all lanes between 6:30-9:00 AM in the mornings and 4:00-6:30 PM in the evenings. It basically means I'd have to leave my house by 5:30 to beat the traffic and HOV restrictions. Luckily, we happen to live almost exactly 1 mile away from one of the main bus stations (known as the park & ride) in Fairfax County. So I can actually take the express bus from the park & ride to West Falls Chruch metro, then take that a few stops on the Orange line to Clarendon. Our building is so close to the metro station that there is actually an underground tunnel directly to our building check in. I hate getting up early and I hate driving in heavy traffic, so the public transportation route was a fairly easy choice. How long does it take? Well I haven't been timing it quite as often but going in takes an average of about 50 minutes (45-55 minutes) and coming back in the evenings takes 55 minutes (range from 50 - 60 minutes). Both the buses and the metro trains come pretty much continuously in the morning, but both come slightly less frequently in the afternoon. The bus is always faster in the morning because there is a "secret" exit from the park and ride to the highway, but unfortunately no secret entrance, which means you have to go through a few stop lights in heavy traffic on the way home.


That being said, sometimes public transportation blows...

1. Buses are damn hot in the summer: combine tons of people with spotty air conditioning and 90+ temperatures and prepare yourself for a sweaty bus ride. Never, ever sit on the back row on the bus in the summer - the engine is directly underneath the seat cushion. At first I was like "this isn't too bad its like the seat warmer in fancy cars", except this one goes to about 150 degrees and you can't turn it off
   
2. Being a Metro Sardine. It doesn't always happen but sometimes there are mechanical problems and every train is crowded or you just don't feel like waiting another 8 minutes and squeeze your way on...in any case less crowded are just more pleasant.
   
3. The Metro crazy guy. Why did I assume he was crazy you ask, well he did take the metro advertisement out and started writing (a monologue I presume) in long flowing cursive on the back. He also occasionally made strange grunting sounds and knocked on the ceiling and asked if anyone was there. Not something I usually do on the metro, but to each their own I guess.
   

Business Time...

Flight of the Conchords is a new HBO show about the self-proclaimed "formerly New Zealand's fourth most popular folk-parody duo." Generally the show has been pretty hit and miss and I can't really say that I like the show, but sometimes the songs during the episodes are hilarious. This is my favorite, and doesn't require ever having watched the show...

Almost there...

We are getting closer to being home owners by the minute. I don't think everyone knows the whole story so we'll play a quick game of catch up and recap:

1) We made our third offer on a townhouse a couple of weeks ago that was in a neighborhood we really like and was priced to sell
2) Intense negotiations ensued on things like the asking price, closing date, and if the fridge had an ice maker (surprisingly the fridge does not have one)
3) The sellers proceeded to change their mind about three times on when they actually wanted to move out, which left us with this complex agreement: closing on July 31st with an offer to pay our rent for August, plus they want to stay in the house until August 13th and rent back from us during that time.
4) Once the closing date was all of a sudden very soon, we began hustling on things like getting a loan, inspection, and insurance
5) Our home inspection revealed an interesting problem in the roof. As with many townhomes and condos built in the early 1980s, the roof contains plywood treated with a fire retardant chemical (called FRT plywood) that was designed to reduce the spreading of fire among adjacent units. Unfortunately, someone forget to check if attic temperatures over 120 or so degrees would cause the same chemical reaction to occur and essentially break down the plywood without a fire present. So half of our roof has plywood that is breaking down (apparently the sellers got gypped when getting a new a roof in 2002 because they were shocked as well), but it sounds like they will replace the roof
6) And finally we changed our lender at the last minute, to take advantage of less fees from a local lender on some good advice from our real estate agent - this was a pain to do but worth it for the extra $$.

In a nutshell, we are really close to finishing this up. Here are two pictures showing off the nice hardwood floors from the entry way and the back brick patio attached to the walkout basement:

An American Tradition...

Switching gears a little bit from previous posts (another housing update will hopefully appear soon), I was inspired by this post the other weekend after Ben pulled ahead of Rob and Sarah for most times spending the night in our apartment. One morning, we ended watching what was perhaps the greatest gladiator themed show of our generation, American Gladiators. Thankfully American Gladiators comes on Saturday morning on ESPN Classic, allowing us to continually enjoy this American classic.

We got to see a two of my favorite events:

• Powerball - the idea of this game was to insert balls into one of several cylinders before being killed by a gladiator (they were two players, three gladiators, and 5 cylinders). The hits in Powerball were pretty crazy: the tended to either be a vicious body slam or a shoulders and above hit. Check out the link to see Jazz rock in the woman's event.
  
• Assault - This was like the ultimate Nerf game. The player dodged tennis balls fired from a giant air cannon, and had to use various "nerf-like" weapons to try to hit a target. It always looked really fun to play, and you almost never saw a player hit the target.
  

While doing a little research for this article, I did stumble upon a game called Gauntlet, that I only very vaguely remembered seeing. I think this may prove to be a key clue to the origin of the game Gauntlet (or more like Super-Gauntlet) that we used to play in our college apartment that contained a long, narrow hallway. Instead of the one-on-one version we used to play, it was one player versus 5 gladiators. If you check out the video here you'll notice that some of the pads look strangely like a vacuum cleaner once used in the seldom played version called Super-Gauntlet.

Just one more clip that perfectly captures the cheese factor. If you never watched the show, I think its spirit is best summed up here:

Strike One...

Our quest to secure a residence in the Northern Virginia area has been temporarily stymied. We made it to the second major step in the process after spending several hours with our new best friend Stan (our friendly Real Estate agent) putting together what I thought was a fair offer on a townhouse in Vienna. Since much of the DC area is clearly a buyer's market, we smartly asked significantly less than the asking price. However, when we finally got the counter-offer back, we were a little weirded out. They came down a little bit, but also added two strange things: 1) they stated that the fireplace came as is (apparently there had been a chimney fire that they never repaired) and 2) they scratched out the home warranty.

It was a little disconcerting that they never got the fireplace repaired. It sort of gets you thinking what else is broken that they never repaired, and how are they going to respond to our home inspection if anything is wrong. The home warranty removal just didn't make sense period. At this point in the negotiation we are still $20K apart, why start quibbling on something that's only $400?? Even with those warning signs, we went ahead and countered, moving up the same amount they went down. When they came back a second time they wouldn't budge, so we countered with "see you in hell candy boy" because we have many more options to consider buying.

This would have been our living room as seen from our dining room if things would have worked out differently:

House Hunting...

As many of you have probably already heard it looks like Sarah and I are going to stay in the Northern Virginia area. We’re excited about staying in one place for a while, although Colorado still seems to be a possibility one day. I ended up accepting an offer for a job in the Clarendon area just a short while ago as the “permanent” job after my rotation program. It’s still with the same company I’m at now, just on a different project with a different customer. We’ve decided that we are ready to buy a place to call our own, and start building some equity. Given that I’m now going to work in Clarendon and Sarah will remain at her job in Herndon, we’re starting to zero in on Vienna as a good area to concentrate on. It just about splits the difference for our commutes, it’s metro accessible, and it’s not super ridiculous to buy a place there (at least for a town house). It will be a little more of a trek for volleyball outings, but I’m sure we won’t let a little bit longer drive get in the way of our volleyball fix.

As we dive into the real estate market, we are learning all sorts of new meanings for things like points, arms, and co-ops. I think we are starting to get the hang of things, but nothing beats the experience of doing something for the first time. We went on our first house hunting trip with our realtor just a few days ago and looked at seven townhouses in the Vienna area. Nothing struck our fancy so far, so we'll continue the search.

We’ll be in touch once we need people to help us move!

Vegas Baby…

I finally made it to the city of sin, and returned to tell the tale. Sarah has been working extremely hard over the past few months helping organize her company’s user conference in Las Vegas at the Venetian. Given the prospect of a free room at the Venetian for a couple of days and unfettered access to around the clock gambling…how could I say no??


All of my knowledge of Vegas so far has stemmed from seeing Casino one too many times on cable (the dubbing guy worked for his money on that movie) and occasionally reading the Sports Guy’s Vegas adventures on ESPN Page 2. Previously, anytime I got caught in conversations regarding Vegas, I had zero context for understanding the story…my mind would inevitably wander to something akin to the black and white cartoons that go through Homer Simpson’s brain. Now that I’ve finally taken the trip I want all my friends to repeat any Vegas stories previously told with me around, so that I can finally jump in with my own understanding and opinions.

Other Impressions:

- The environments are so tightly controlled and so precisely engineered at the Venetian that you start to lose touch with what the outside feels like. If we ever build a colony on the moon, we should build it like the Venetian
-The theme of Vegas appears to be boobies, money is a close second, but I have to go with boobies based on my time there
-If you’re cheap like Sarah and me and don’t want to lose lots of money, but actually want to play a game with some thinking /skill involved…Video Poker is the way to go. You can play for a long time on Video Poker with $10 at a quarter a hand. Plus you still get the free drinks! I think we lost more in 45 seconds failing to get the Super Spin on the Wheel of Fortune slot game then we did in probably 5 hours of Video Poker playing over the course of the weekend
-I believe that the time to get from Caesars to the taxi line to the Flamingo (this involves at less one hidden elevator and 2 scary hall ways) is still less time than waiting in a 100+ person taxi line in front of Caesars
-The fountains in front of the Bellagio are cool


-Does it seem odd to anyone else that that there these replicas of great artifacts from Italy, Greece, and Egypt just plunked down in the middle of the desert?

I think overall we liked it, although we ended up pretty exhausted by Sunday morning; we stayed up too late and our alcohol to water ratio was too high. We’ll probably end up going back someday (at least as a starting point for the Grand Canyon), but I wouldn’t say it’s one of our top destinations.

In Memory...

Sarah and I lost a good friend that many of my readers knew or at least met at one time or another. Matt Hodges died late Wednesday night after collapsing during a flag football game. He had a hereditary heart condition known as a thickened heart (or HCM). We were able to visit with his wife and family last night for a few hours before Sarah flew out to Vegas this morning for work; they are doing as well as can be expected given the circumstances. Please keep them in your thoughts and prayers in this time of shock and sadness.

Although its impact is now bittersweet, when I think of Matt, I think first of this picture when we showed up at a New Year's party wearing the same outfit and had a good laugh...

Outsourcing: The Next Generation...

Outsourcing is an interesting subject these days, typically referring to the the practice of American corporations using labor provided in other countries to perform some of their operations; exploiting the differences between the American economy and third-world nations to get services cheap. I don't want to get deep into this issue and whether the trade off of cost versus quality is beneficial to the end consumer and if it is really amounting to the loss of US jobs, because frankly that is not what this blog is about (if you want some commentary on outsourcing from a good non-validated source, I recommend wikipedia). What I thought was interesting was a Washington Post article I spied a couple of weeks ago (I started this entry when the article was fresh, but Mike P constantly cut into my blog writing time to play Halo2 on Live). It deals with the convergence of outsourcing with our entertainment culture.

The article talks about how you can now pay a third party company called IGE in Hong Kong to boost up your character in World of Warcraft. I must admit I'm commenting on this issue without direct experience playing this game. I played my share of the early Final Fantasy games, but there were more definite goals to achieve and this was before the subscription based model for all-human players in a universe came to fruition (in the so-called Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game genre).

On one level this seems rather ridiculous: you're buying a game to entertain yourself, then you actually pay someone else to play the game for you because you're not having enough fun. It's sort of like buying a baseball glove and paying someone else to break it in. Although maybe the payoff of the level boosting in WoW is a more than a broken-in glove, you'd think you'd enjoy the game enough to actually play it.

This genre of games essentially creates a virtual life for users to progress through, and just like real life it's more fun being rich, powerful, and having the prestige of a high level as opposed to someone weak, poor, and who gets beat up a lot. In this case you can pay someone to move you up to the next caste fairly quickly, and then you can enjoy your increased status without having to go through the pain to achieve it. Essentially you can skip past high school, and move right into all-night parties in college.

The interesting thing is that the game-maker doesn't want you to use these services, and will actually kick you off if it notices something fishy going on. I guess since they make oodles of money on the subscription services, they don't want anyone short-cutting the process. Why would Blizzard want to you to be able to finish your journey faster, and thus perhaps cancel your subscription. If you could get to the high level 10x faster, then you may also get bored with the game 10x as fast.