I’d hoped to throw one last cocktail party before leaving my apartment, sometime later this week, but I may have to give up on that idea. There is a lot of work to do this month!

I put in a couple hours of work on the bedroom at Heden yesterday, then went over to Stitches to help Katie M. make herself a pair of fuzzy light-up leggings. It took a while, and we didn’t get the lights finished, but we got all the sewing done and they will work just fine as unlit dancing clothes.

Met up with friends at ATC for Heater’s pre-func, then a dozen of us went over to the Fenix for the Bassnectar show. The opening band did not impress, and I felt totally out of place standing around listening to a jam band wearing lit up blue furry raver clothes, but once Bassnectar took the stage life was good. They put on an energetic, engaging show, the stage full of all kinds of craziness, and I danced until they quit.

This morning, got up around ten-thirty, met Alexis and went climbing. I haven’t been out to Vertical World in a few months and had less stamina than I expected, but it felt good to stretch my body out and pick my way up a few walls. (Idea: build a climbing wall at the Rocket Factory?)

The rest of the day I spent working on the electrical system at Heden. I climbed up into the attic and ran a ground wire from the junction box I’ve been working on over to the other wall, where I’m installing new grounded outlets. Some carpentry and lots of pushing, twisting, and wiring later, I had four outlets set up in my room and another four on the opposite side of the wall in Lesley’s room. I ran out of daylight before I could finish wiring up the cove lighting socket or the new switch, but I felt exhausted by that point anyway. I’ll do the rest on Tuesday.

Manu Chao is coming on a U.S./Canada tour. May 25th in Vancouver sounds good to me!

We recorded a few songs at practice last night, using a little digital note-taking gadget Greg brought. The sound quality is terrible, but even listening to what sounds like a bootleg of our own practice session is exciting. We’ve never heard ourselves play before, and… um… we’re not half bad. The recordings sound awful but the music rocks.

In other news, we got a letter from some Los Angeles band which claims to have trademarked the name “Three Against One”. Boo. Maybe we’ll end up being the Puget Sound Machine after all…

Right, the last couple of days: busy. Monday we shipped REALbasic 2007, release 2. We pulled my big new namespaces feature just before it went final, but my big new incremental compilation feature stayed in – not surprising, as it’s been finished for months. What’s more, all the devs upgraded our internal tool environments to 2007r2. We’ve been “dogfooding” RB for a long while now, but this is the first time we’ve been able to upgrade at the same time as our users.

Evening, I went over to Question House for dinner with Eric, Leah, and Connie. I helped Leah cook – we made a caprese salad and pasta with sauteed vegetables. Nice way to spend an evening with some good people.

Tuesday morning, company meeting, then a drive up to Lynnwood to drop my new Mars Rover off at the dealership (forced to move from its oh-so-convenient South Lake Union location by streetcar construction). Yeah, yeah, I just bought the machine and shouldn’t be having problems, but I somehow managed to break the traction control system, and there was an incident involving a snowbank up in Whistler… oh well. Land Rover likes to make their customers happy, and sent me off for the day in a shiny new silver LR3.

Onward: engineering meeting. Lots of work. Fixing various problems in 2007r2. Nothing serious, but there are always a few last minute discoveries. We’ve been having lots of discussions about ways to improve our QA processes lately.

Once work was done I rocketed over to Heden for more home improvement. I punched a hole through the bathroom wall, hooked a ground tap up to the cold water pipe, ran it sideways around the closet wall and up to the junction box on the wall by the door, and then ran romex down to the new outlet. I punched another hole high on the same wall for the cove lighting and installed a j-box, which took some careful fitting in order not to disturb the existing wiring.

Out of time: home, shower, new clothes, over to Kai’s Bistro in the U-district for happy hour, then dinner at Ruby’s with Jenny T. There was a storm of dodgeball checkins from Waid’s, where Tuesdays have become Burner Night, so we rolled over there. Lots of good people, some decent music, punctuated by a big horn the DJ occasionally blew for no apparent reason. Waid’s has a pillow room upstairs – instant burner magnet.

This morning, I drove back up to Lynnwood and swapped the LR3 for my own car, which I actually like much better than the newer Rover. The traction control / ABS works again, the marker light doesn’t fall out anymore, and I have an estimate for the body work…. eyyshhh.

I stopped by Guitar Center on the way home and picked up another mic. Now we’ll have one for each of us. Collin & Greg do most of the singing, but Dawn adds her voice to the mix on a few songs, and I’m singing lead on one of our recent songs. We flirt with harmonies every now and then, but haven’t done much in that direction – maybe I’ll push us a little more in that direction now.

It’s been a hard-working weekend. Saturday started with a trip up to Everett with a car full of Jenny T.’s stuff. She’s moving to San Francisco, and decided to use her mother’s house for storage. Many hands made light work, however, and we were done by two.

Next I drove over to Heden, by way of Home Depot, and started in on the electrical work. This mostly involved cutting holes in the walls and test-fitting junction boxes. When the light got too dim, I flipped the circuit breaker back on and put a starter coat of red on the north wall. I’d hoped to find conduit or plumbing or something I could attach a ground wire to, but no such luck: I’m going to have to do this the hard way.

After dinner I met Adam and Janet over at Goldie’s for a few rounds of darts. It was loud, and I was tired, and we decided that instead of staying out late we’d get up early-ish the next morning and go to work on our shop space.

Sunday morning, then, not exactly early (but not really quite late, either), I made it over to Home Depot just in time to help pay for the cart full of lumber Adam had assembled. Our project: an 8×16 storage loft. Our goal for the day was to buy all the parts and move them into the shop, then demolish the crooked and not particularly sturdy shelves that came with the place. Much to our mutual surprise, not only did we have the old stuff torn apart by lunchtime, but we started building and then finished the new floor in just over two hours! Adam had to go to work later in the afternoon, so we called it quits for the day and left, very happy with our project.

So there I was, out of the house and wearing dusty clothes, with a good six working hours left in the day: time for another trip to Home Depot, then back over to Heden for more electrical work. I enlarged some of yesterday’s exploratory holes, then ran wire and installed a new outlet box next to the door. I’m going to install a second outlet box on the same wall, up near the ceiling, for the cove lighting, and rig a two-gang switch to control it. I’m still thinking about the grounding strategy; my closet shares a wall with the bathroom, so I think I can punch through and attach the ground wire to the incoming water pipe there.

Once again, sunset forced me to give up the electrical work, so I rolled another coat of red paint on the wall and called it a day. I’m not sure I like this “eggshell” finish; it’s a little glossier than I expected. I’ll give it another coat and see what happens.

This kind of work is so much fun. I’m sure I could find some way to get along without redoing the electrical system in this bedroom, but why pass up the chance while I have it?

I went over to Heden after work and started redesigning the upstairs bedroom. I cleared out a bunch of pillows and things, swept the floor, then spent a while rubbing my chin, saying “hmm,” and trying to figure out where to start. It’s more complicated than it seems like it ought to be, since I have many little projects in mind which all affect each other. Should I replace the ceiling light first, or wait til I’ve painted the ceiling? Which color should I use for the ceiling? Should I paint the red wall, or replace the electrical sockets first? Is it worth doing the cove lighting now or is that too much for one month?

Eventually I decided to replace the ceiling light, because it annoys me, and get to work on the red wall, because it excites me. So I swapped the hanging chandelier looking thing with a simple frosted-glass dome lamp that won’t hit me in the head every time I walk across the room, and rolled a coat of hilariously pink primer onto the north wall. It’s a good start.

Whistler showed some signs of flirting with spring yesterday – we had brief windows of blue sky – and now that I’m back home in Seattle I find spring bursting out all over the place. The trees outside my window are all sprouting leaves, and I hadn’t even noticed the buds yet when I left!

Last night I played some music after dinner: improvising, looping, tweaking sounds, building up the percussion and breaking it back down again – doing the whole live-electronica thing I’ve been working up to. It felt good, it sounded okay, people were getting into it, and when I was done I was astonished to find out I had been playing for an hour – I thought it’d been more like twenty minutes. It felt good, playing for people. I like where it’s going; just need to keep practicing.

Skiing yesterday: went out with Geoff S. and Samantha P. After a warmup run, Geoff and I split off and did Peak-to-Creek, which is four miles long and drops just over 5000 vertical feet, from the peak of Whistler Mountain down to Creekside. Unbelievable. Exhausting. We stuck to more normal runs after that. Rejoined Samantha for the last run of the day, down to Whistler Village.

OK, tired. Time to go take a shower and maybe a nap before going to the Garage for drinks and pool.

Life is really good.

It’s raining today, and I have a bunch of work to get done, so I’m hanging out at the cabin. The others are currently in the kitchen playing a card game of some sort, and Barry’s big speakers are pumping out the psytrance at a steady 144 bpm.

I went boarding yesterday, for the second time ever; I borrowed Chris W.’s gear and spent the day with Leah P. riding up the gondola and falling down the green runs. I definitely made some progress over the course of the day, but I’m still not entirely sure why people prefer this to skiing – so far it just feels like another way to slide down a hill. Skiing experience definitely helps: I’m comfortable going downhill much faster than my level of boarding skill actually allows, so I can try hard things (and deal with the inevitable crashes) without feeling afraid that I’m going to fly out of control and die.

Wednesday was totally epic, despite only being a half day: there was lots of powder and it snowed all afternoon, so we were skiing on fresh snow almost all the time. I went out with Barry, Stuart, Geoff, and Colleen, though Colleen wasn’t feeling well and dropped out early. We basically skied the same loop all day: up to the top of Glacier chair, down to the bottom of Excelerator via Ridgerunner, and back. We kept going faster, and by the end of the day had each run and lift timed so that we could squeeze in the maximum number of runs before the lifts closed. It was great. Barry showed me a way to improve my technique that made it take a lot less work to stay in control, and I have never flown down a mountain so fast before. Terrific fun.

And then I went shopping in Whistler Village and bought a helmet. I’ve always been a skeptic, but Stuart and Barry both strongly encouraged me to look into it, and I decided that this was a good time to benefit from other people’s experience. I’m running much harder terrain and travelling much faster this season than I ever have before, so the risks have definitely increased.

I’m still up at Whistler. Great skiing: we had a good day with fresh fluffy snow. I spent most of the day by myself, and met up with Dave, Geoff, and Colleen after a late lunch. Dave and I rode the peak chair just before the lifts closed, so our last run of the day went from the top of Whistler Mountain down to the village, with a long delay after we took a wrong turn on a ridge and had to climb back up a very fluffy snowbank. I was plenty tired when we reached the base, but it was a good long run with some wide-open stretches (since most everyone else had already cleared off the mountain).

After my first run of the day I found that my “rocket” skis needed waxing and sharpening, so after turning them over to the ski tech I stopped into the demo tent next door and took off on a pair of Atomic Nomad Crimsons. Nice, nice skis: a little heavier than I’m used to, but smooth and just the right amount of float. Great edge control. And they are a gorgeous shade of red, which is far more important to me than it really ought to be. But, they’re also quite expensive, and I already have a couple pairs of perfectly decent skis…

Beautiful day on the snow. Spoiled somewhat when Barry triggered an avalanche and got whacked in the head with the tip of his own ski, resulting in lots of blood and eight stitches… but he’s OK and in good humor about it.

It’s been a quiet day here at Black Tusk Village. I spent a couple of hours this morning playing with my music system; after some adjustment I have everything set up within reach on top of the big blue flight case. After a couple of hours recording loops and playing with drum sequences, I even plugged in to the big speakers and played a song for everyone who happened to be in the living room. For the first semi-public demonstration of this system, I think it went fine.

We just finished dinner. I made tortellini in a vodka-based tomato sauce with sauteed andouille sausage and some stir-fried vegetables, with caramelized cinnamon mango slices for dessert. Seemed to go over well. I haven’t cooked for other people in some time, and it felt good.

I’m supposed to be in Canada by now, but felt very tired, took a nap after work instead of packing, and decided to relax tonight and drive up tomorrow morning instead. The snow report for tomorrow doesn’t sound promising anyway.

I have packed my table of electronica gear into a big blue flight case (where “packed” means “stuffed everything in and inserted foam into the gaps”) and will be bringing along my keyboard as well. I don’t know whether I’ll actually spend much time making music, but others will have their instruments along as well, so I’ll be equipped for a jam session if one occurs.

The skis are finished. I’m not completely happy with the texture of the finish, but it’s good enough for a fun little stunt, which is basically what this project is. They’re very, very red, and the rough stencil style looks great. They will be fun to play with.

I cut out of work a little early today and went up to Edmonds with Adam to retrieve my old Rover. It’ll sit over at Heden until I get a chance to sell it. Then we dug Adam’s tools out of the Heden garage, packed them into the new Rover, and drove down to the shop. An hour of poking around with a tape measure gave us a plan, which we refined over beer across the street at Jules Maes. For starters, we’re going to build a 160-square-foot storage loft, possibly with a stairway. Once storage needs are settled, we’ll set up workspaces using pegboard, 2x4s, and folding tables.

All this will have to wait for a couple of weeks, however; I’m leaving on Friday for a week and a half in Whistler. Barry B. rented a cabin up there for three weekends, and a couple dozen of us will be rotating through for various lengths of time. Ski during the day, relax with friends at night – I can’t wait! It won’t exactly be a vacation, though; I’m going to bring my laptop, so I can work during days when the snow isn’t great or I’m too tired to ski.

New shop, new car, lots of travel, and in a couple of weeks I’ll be moving; life is exciting right now.

M. A. Jackson‘s rules of optimization:

Rule 1: Don’t do it.
Rule 2 (for experts only): Don’t do it yet.

I spent this afternoon over at the new shop space, which I’m tentatively calling “the Rocket Factory”. I moved in a few things from my basement storage unit – table, chairs, tools – then went to Home Depot for a ladder and some cleaning supplies. The place is still almost empty, but now we can start building workbenches and shelving units.

Once I had the essentials in place I started in on my skis. I took off the bindings, scraped off the REI stickers, and sanded down the top surface. Then I pried off the rubber tip caps, which turned out not to be such a smart idea. I had imagined the rubber bits as caps over the ends of a normally shaped ski, but it turns out that the skis themselves are weird stubby-ended things, and the rubber is what makes them come to a point. I think I will solve this problem with bondo. In the meantime, I went over one of the skis with a light coat of paint, just to get started; it’s going to take a good few coats to make the color opaque, but once it’s done these are going to be some dramatic skis.

Draft of a custom decal for a pair of skis I plan to redecorate

Today was another Cedar River Watershed restoration project. Geoff S. picked me up at 8 and we drove out to Rattlesnake Lake. The YMCA was sponsoring some kind of youth service project, so a group of fifteen or so teenagers provided the bulk of the work force. Clay spent half an hour going over the map of the watershed and talking about its history, then we piled into the vans and went out to Taylor Creek.

Today we worked on another road decommissioning. These are always my favorite kind of restoration project. The City of Seattle tears up some 20 miles of road inside the watershed each year; today we planted about 300 trees along a half mile of an old logging road. They’d already removed the roadbed with bulldozers and backhoes, and torn out the culverts where the road crossed little creeks. Our project today was to plant along the edges of the streams, to protect against erosion and help encourage habitat development.

I’m awfully tired now, the more so as I was out late last night and thus didn’t get much sleep. Still, the ache in my muscles feels good, the wilderness is a beautiful place to spend a day, and it always feels satisfying to help roll back the damage from years of logging and other development.

I am back home and tired. I don’t think Melissa or I ever got to sleep before three during my visit. The flight home last night took off late (heavy traffic at JFK) and didn’t land in Seattle until midnight, so I got to bed around one, with an alarm set to go off six and a half hours later.

My work efficiency today is pretty low.

I’m sitting on a couch at the Devi Tea Lounge in Brooklyn. It’s a great little bar/teashop full of couches, newspapers, ceiling fans, overstuffed lounge-chairs, and laptops by the dozen. I showed up at my sister’s place around nine-thirty and promptly took a nap; now I’m relaxing and playing with my new toy while she’s at a hair salon a few blocks away.

Adam and I just rented a shop space, which we hope to share with Mark A. I got a message from him a few minutes ago – he’s dropped off the rent/deposit check and picked up the keys. Excellent! It’s a 400 sq. ft. room in big old brick place in Georgetown, across from the 9 Lb. Hammer. It’s basically just a big box with power outlets, lights, and 12-14 foot ceilings. There’s no direct vehicle access, so we won’t be building any more art cars there (whew!), but there’s plenty of room for tools, workbenches, and storage, and the neighbors won’t complain if we feel like playing with angle grinders at midnight.

I’m leaving for New York tonight to spend the weekend with my sister Melissa. She just finished taking the bar exam and needs to spend a few days relaxing. We don’t have much in the way of fixed plans but I’m sure we will have no trouble coming up with interesting things to do.

I’m sitting at a coffee shop a few blocks from home, working on REALbasic and occasionally chatting with a friend who is working on some kind of statistics project. My new, still-nameless MacBook is one of eleven visible computers. The place is full of books and there’s some chill indie-rock playing. Much as I like my office setup at home, nothing beats being able to unplug and go find a change of scene.

This article in Design News lists several “quick-turn” manufacturers. These four all offer injection molding: eMachineShop, Protomold, QuickParts, and ToolRoom Express. It still looks like eMachineShop has the easiest setup, with their custom CAD software and human-free quote system, but they seem to focus more on metalwork, so perhaps one of these other services will offer faster/better/cheaper results for plastic.

I am back home. Seattle appears to be largely as I left it.

I have brought back a sleek black MacBook, as yet unnamed, to replace Serena, my ancient, aged Titanium PowerBook.

Here’s a long, entertaining rant about “agile methodologies” that includes some interesting comments about the Google development process.

Three men have run all the way across the Sahara desert, 40-50 miles a day for 111 days.

This is the most beautiful computer keyboard ever made. The buttons used as extra keys are a particularly elegant solution.

I took off just after work and went up to Snoqualmie with Thomas, Matt, and one of Thomas’ coworkers. The rain turned to snow less than a mile before the summit, so it was pretty wet at first, but the temperature dropped after an hour or so and we had a great time bashing our way through piles of mostly-fresh powder. We called it quits after five hours or so and chugged back home through heavy rain. Lots of fun.

I was too busy working on the laserfingers last week to finish the prototype snow-visualization-laser-grid gadget, but decided I’d take my LAVI-zero backpack along just to see what might happen if I combined lasers and skiing. Two things happened, as it turned out: everyone who saw me wanted to know what that thing on my back was, and where they could get one; and the batteries died after about twenty minutes. Lesson learned: any ski-oriented electronic devices must be designed so that the battery pack can be kept inside my jacket where it will stay at least a little bit warm.

Here’s a set of instructions for decluttering a computer desk using zipties, pegboard, and a clever shackle/dowel lock system.

I spent today recovering from last night. It was a good night, though, and well worth recovering from. I spent a couple of hours at the Heden valentine’s day party, then with Michael, Thomas, Alison, and Sahni headed over to the Kinetic party at the Science Center. There were fewer of my friends there than at the Magnetic party (thrown by the same people) last fall, and I was less interested in the museum exhibits, so I just danced, danced, danced.

The laserfingers were a huge hit. It was almost too much; people came up to me all night to ask about the lasers, or to dance in the patterns they made on the floor, or just to tell me how cool they were. I spent a lot of time putting on little laser shows for people. I loved seeing how much fun people had watching the lasers. It was a bit distracting, though, and hard to just get lost in the music and move, like I’m used to; also, the lasers made me more aware of what my hands were doing, so I found myself dancing more with my upper body and less with my feet and hips. Still, the laserfingers worked really well, I had a lot of fun with them, and I think that the other people at the party were happy I brought them, so I’m calling it a success.

Two minor technical problems to solve: the battery pouches don’t hold themselves as flat as I’d expected, so when I’m waving my hands around a lot the battery packs can work their way out. I need to add velcro or snaps to keep them closed. I also had occasional problems with the batteries slipping out of the battery holders, so maybe an elastic strap would help.

At around two we got the group back together and drove back to Heden for the end of the Valentine’s day party. Much relaxation ensued, and I finally stumbled all groggy-headed out the door around five-thirty.

Today I pretty much just lazed around and did as little as possible. Went over to Heden for dinner with Mez, Alexis, and Lesley. Next I’m going to take a book to bed and laze around some more.

I’ve planned all week to spend this afternoon making a new outfit to go dancing in tonight, but now that I’m here I just don’t feel like sewing. I think I used up this week’s budget of making-stuff energy on the laserfingers. But that’s okay; I could stand to spend a few hours puttering around, washing dishes and running laundry.

What I’d really like to do is get in a nice little convertible, fold the top down, put on some big goggles and a scarf, and head east into the mountains. It’s a cold blue day, with a sharp edge in the air that says get out and breathe.