OMG - Snow is falling!
Breaking news in Seattle tonight!
Fingers crossed, maybe we’ll have a snow day tomorrow or later this week!
Saturday
Saturday afternoon John and I tagged along as Ming shopped for a new car. We test drove a 2002 Audi A4 and a 2002 Volvo S60. Having grown up on Volvo’s I am biased towards them, however, the 2002 Audio A4 Quattro seems like a hard deal to beat in the small sedan near luxury market segment. I figure if the Neon dies an early death, I’d seriously consider an A4 over a Volvo S40/S60. I’d also definitely get AWD. Getting a ride up skiing is always less stressful in Andrew’s AWD than in Ming or Laurie’s FWD (neither of whom carry chains). Alternatively if I want to tow the boat I’d look at a Jeep Grand Cherokee V8 (about the same price range with less luxury than the A4/S40/S60).
Side note: Not that I’m thinking of replacing the Neon because earlier this week AutoPro’s service manager’s boss spent some time brainstorming ways to keep the Neon on the road for what he figures could be another 60,000 miles (currently it’s at 140,000 miles). He figures instead of fixing the leaking head gasket (because the repair is so expensive) they can try some stop leak. He also walked me through all the different fluids and emphasized how important it is that I know stay on top of their levels (the power steer fluid also leaks). The only other big work item is replacing the muffler which I’ll postpone until next month. I figure I save $500 a month by continuing to drive the Neon and resisting the urge to get a flashy sports sedan.
After kicking tires I went to see the Seattle Thunderbirds beat Portland 6-2. It was a pretty exciting game: 4 fights, 6 goals, free pizzas (if Seattle scores 6 goals everyone in attendance gets a free pizza coupon), teddy bar toss after the first goal, and three fish were thrown on the ice. The highlight was really when one of the Portland players threw one of the fishes back in the crowd and got a 10 minute misconduct, while we got a 2 minute bench minor for disrupting the game (the crowd had been warned after the first fish was thrown, this was the second).
Today I did absolutely nothing save eat breakfast, read the NY Times and read a few business education books.
Comments(1)Zillow
Last night we ended up at the Zillow launch party. Apparently what we saw launch earlier this week is just the tip of the iceberg.
(Yummy Zillow jelly beans)
Before that we had been hanging out at Chop Suey and saw The Divorce and Wolfmother (apparently Wolfmother is the hottest Australian band right now. They sounded like a cross between The White Stripes and The Strokes).
Today I’m sitting around doing nothing, which doesn’t happen often :).
Bars.
It’s no secret that I want to own a bar. I often discussed this with my friend Liz who managed our local hangout. She’s since moved to Portland and now Travis is in charge so we started discussing it with him and one of his co-workers tonight. I’ve also discussed it with several other workers in the industry and the theme is consistent; don’t own a bar. Each has their own list of rules that must be followed before opening a bar; they’re all some variation of work in a restaurant for several years, work in a bad bar for several years, work in a good bar for several years and then work in an excellent bar for several years. And even then, be wary, they warn.
But I’m baffled. How much more complex can owning a bar be than shipping software?
Small scale transit systems
Given it’s large size, the Microsoft campus has it’s own transit system involving mini-buses and Prius cars. However, unless you’re going from one campus to another, it’s always more efficient to walk cross-campus. Even when you’re like me and in an outlier building. I’m not really complaining, because I like getting outside and enjoying the fresh air, but what’s the point of having such an obviously inefficient system? I’d prefer we ditch the buses and get a fleet of bikes/scooters/segways. Of course they aren’t so great for the three months of the year when it rains all day.
Early Retirement
Philip Greenspun on Early Retirement:
Retirement forces you to stop thinking that it is your job that holds you back. For most people the depressing truth is that they aren’t that organized, disciplined, or motivated.
More Sundance
Last Thursday after skiing some pretty vacant hills we headed into town to see some movies. Now we didn’t have tickets to any shows which meant that we needed to show up at least an hour early to try and get waitlist tickets. So we show up more than an hour in advance to the theater showing God Grew Tired of Us and proceeded to the tent outside where you have to line up to either get in the theater or for waitlist tickets. Unfortunately there was already about seven fifty people on the waitlist (this theater only seated about 150) so we decided ot waitlist for Shorts V instead. It’s too bad we didn’t get to see God Grew Tired of Us since it won the Grand Jury Price: Documentary, but we did see a few good shorts. My favorites were Aruba and Before Dawn (you can watch them online). John would have also enjoyed One Sung Hero about a karoke missionary (go watch it!). After the shorts they brought up all the directors for Q&A and I felt like an idiot when an audience member would ask ’so, why did you decide to do one long take for the entire movie? how many takes did it take before getting it’? I would sit there thinking, that movie was just one long take. Who knew! …After the shows and Q&A, the actress who played the karoke missionary in One Sung Hero tried to convince me to come out for some karoke but I wimped out.
Friday we skied some more. It wasn’t as sunny but still really good. After skiing we tried to see the world premier of Alpha Dog introducing Justin Timberlake. Again, even though we showed up way early there was a huge line. Fortunately someone approached us and sold us their tickets to the 9:30pm showing for $40 each. Festival tickets are normally $10, but these tickets were going on Craigslist for $125+, so we gladly paid $40. We later found out that NO ONE on the 6:30pm waitlist got in to the movie.
Having the tickets freed us up to go see Quinceanera. Quinceanera was a really good movie and ended up wining the Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic. It’s a movie about coming of age and gentrification in LA bookmarked by two Quinceanera celebrations. Definitely go see this when it gets picked up and released.
After Quinceanera we needed to grab a bite to eat before movies so we called our driver (uh yeah, the trip was paid for by someone else). And they called ahead to their sister-in-law’s restaurant, and we were whisked in past the line and were greeted with apetizers and a great meal before heading back out to see the later showing of Alpha Dog. The theater was packed (1200 seat theater in a highschool) and they started the show out by bringing out all those involved in the movie, including Justin Timberlake. Now while I’m sure this movie will take a bit of a ribbing because it’s Justin Timberlake’s introduction to movie stardom, it really is good. Unfortunately though none of the people involved in the production stayed around for Q&A (and we heard the 6:30 Q&A was really good), I guess they were too busy celebrating their premier.
After the movies on Friday night we headed out to Main Street to party. Our destination was Harry O’s the only club on Main Street that had been taken over by Cargo Magazine for private parties every night (you had to be on ‘the list’). Friday Liz Phair and Ben Folds Five played, but we missed them because we showed up so late. We also had a bit of a situation getting in, but one of our friends on the inside (who knew people) was crafty and got us in and up to the VIP room (free drinks!). Of course, we rolled in at 12:30 and in Utah they stop serving at 1:00am :P.
Saturday, again, we got a few tracks in and then tried to see some movies. Unfortunately we completely struck out! First we tried to go to see Kinky Boots and they didn’t let a single person from the waitlist in! (Originally we were like 140 on the waitlist, failed to by tickets on the street, but got someone else’s waitlist number and moved up to 45). Next we tried to see Friends With Money (a Jennifer Aniston movie) and again, were way back on the waitlist and had no luck. Even worse was that it was super snowy out. Here’s the line; keep in mind that there are several hundred people waiting inside for tickets and this was the overflow!
And needless to say the snow wasn’t good for my cold:
Pretty sucky we didn’t get to see any movies but we did get a decent dinner before heading back to Harry O’s for some partying. Now this team we didn’t have any connections inside but still high off my Las Vegas bribing success I tried similar tactics here. Unfortunately, Park City bouncers and hosts are unaccustomed to the practice of bribing and I got nowhere. Our other friends also got nowhere. However, because of the weird bar setup, we were able to cozy up to two people who were retrieving their coats from the coat check and we asked, and got, their VIP necklaces! This enabled us to waltz on in and see the Counting Crows (our other friends ended up being able to bribe their way in at $70/person):
Of course, Harry O’s is a complete b-list party scene. There were no famous people just a bunch of wannabe’s like ourselves. Next year, we’ll need to figure out how to get plugged into the a-list scene.
After Harry O’s shutdown we called our driver and had him pick us all up in the van:
And we headed off to our friend’s condo for more partying (last call at 1am sucks!).
Sunday was more skiing and then back to Seattle.
So would I go back? Would I recommend it? Any advice? Yes, I definitely recommend it and would go back. Next time I’d go for the first half of the festival (opening weekend) instead of the last half (closing weekend). I’d also ensure I had tickets ahead of time because the waitlist situation sucks. You have to wait at least an hour (some people would wait two or three) and even then our success rate was only 50%. I’d also adjust my expectations about random celeb sightings (though maybe there were more at the beginning of the festival), and Park City is no Vegas in terms of partying (unless you can get into those a-list parties with Paris). I’d also check out the skiing at Park City and Deer Valley.
Pro Club
I went to the Pro Club for the first time yesterday. For those who don’t know, it’s the ‘Microsoft gym’ and is supposedly one of the largest private clubs in the world (250,000 square feet). And while I sorta pay for it every month I actually have never been there until yesterday and today. However, I was only attending an offsite in one of their meeting rooms.