Blogging on and off since 2003
Blogthings – Are You a Feminist?:
***You Are 98% Feminist***
You are a total feminist. This doesn’t mean you’re a man hater (in fact, you may be a man).
You just think that men and women should be treated equally. It’s a simple idea but somehow complicated for the world to put into action.
Not sure where the 2% went, but never mind.
Everybody here at Ignite Seattle! seems to hve a Macbook [Pro]. The talks start in ~20 minutes. Conveniently, this place is just around the corner from Elysian Fields…
[LATER] I thought that was an excellent evening. Less time on fun and games, and more (and higher quality) talks. My favourites:
But they were all good. The next one is in October: I’m planning to be there. (There were a few Amazonians there tonight: more next time.)
Here’s the Ignite Seattle 4 Schedule.
Ken MacLeod links to all the important bits about 21st century atheism. ((Name corrected – sorry Ken!)) (Saves me the bother.) Plus I love the title of his blog, “The Early Days of a Better Nation”. The power of positive thinking, innit?
I just had a really great Seattle weekend. 
Yesterday was the Amazon.com summer picnic, which was held at Mountain Meadows Farm in North Bend, about half an hour east of here. The picnic was lots of fun – it was nice to meet colleagues away from work – but the big attraction for me was the location: at the foot of Mount Si. As you can see from the pictures, it’s a very photogenic mountain.
Of course, being in North Bend meant that I wasn’t here in Seattle for the Seafair events. 
But never mind: the Blue Angels were scheduled to perform on both Saturday and Sunday. Rather than trying to get to the shore of Lake Washington, I decided to watch from the 12th Avenue viaduct across I-90, just below the PacMed building where I work. It’s a great location, with photo opportunities limited only by the overhead wires for the trolleybuses that run up Beacon Hill. The first few photos show the Patriots aerobatic team, then “Fat Albert” ((the Blue Angels’ C-130 support aircraft)) made an appearance, and then the Blue Angels did their thing for about 45 minutes.
When the show was over, I headed downtown, intending to do a little domestic shopping. When I moved here a year ago, I bought so many things in such a short time that inevitably I made a few mistakes. Most of my household items came from IKEA, and in several areas I opted for convenience (and low price) rather than quality. And quality matters. So today I picked up some really good kitchen knives ((though not ceramic – I’m still a little hesitant about that technology)), and a couple of really thick bath sheets, and some Bodum double-wall glasses. Oh yes, and a decent cocktail shaker – because even though I’m living above a store that sells a hundred different varieties of sake, there are times when a martini is the right choice.
And finally, I stepped into a bookshop (yes, I know…) to pick up a magazine, and I heard some strangely compelling music being played. I asked who it was, and the saleswoman said “Regina Spektor”, with the eager smile that people have when they are glad to have shared a favourite. So I decided to treat myself, and bought a copy of the album (“Begin Hope”).
After the soap-opera of Saturday’s qualifying, it was nice to see the Hungarian Grand Prix come down to simple head-to-head driving. Yes, of course the track is hard to pass on – but not impossible, as Alonso showed early on. All of the top four (Hamilton, Raikkonen, Heidfeld and Alonso) drove well.
Which leaves Massa. OK, starting 14th is nobody’s idea of a good time, but the great drivers would accept it as a challenge and fight their way up the field. Instead, Massa spent a lot of his time stuck behind third-tier drivers like Sato, and he never looked competitive. More to the point, he didn’t look like a championship contender. Success in racing depends on driving skill, intelligence, physical fitness, and temperament. And is it merely coincidence that as soon as Michael Schumacher leaves the team, Ferrari starts to stumble, both operationally and technically? (Actually, I think Ross Brawn‘s “sabbatical” may be more significant.)
Here’s one for all of you who think “militant atheists” are making a lot of fuss over nothing. (And for the rest of us, check blood pressure before reading.)
Here I am, celebrating my first year of working at Amazon and living in Seattle, and feeling thoroughly acclimatized here ((As you can see, I’ve even changed my blog pic from the Boston skyline to the Seattle waterfront)), and then Alec goes and posts a little blog entry that makes me all homesick for England.
Sigh…
Some of my most popular blog entries from a year or two ago involved my choice of a new car: a Subaru Legacy GT with the license plate DARWIN. Even though my Amazon relocation package would have paid for the shipping, I decided not to bring it with me to Seattle, which was a smart move. And now I’ve finally signed it over to Chris and Celeste, who drove it from Massachusetts to California, covering “4233.3 miles in 13 days”. It’s a trip that I would have liked to do myself, but life’s a bit too busy right now. I hope they enjoy DARWIN (or whatever their new California plates are).