Checksum Arcanius

I woke up late and had no Capstone class today, so I went to work after my Networks class. As has become my custom when going to work in the afternoon, I took the 545 bus across the lake and then biked from the Bear Creek Park and Ride to Microvision. At work, I found a bug in the scanner that was mistaken for a bug in the ATF code; then I tightened up the ATF code a little anyway. After finishing up, I decided to bike home since most of my testing duties are on hold until additional units arrive.

I left work a little after 7:00, and started what I consider the real trip at 7:15, on the Sammamish River Trail heading North. Somewhere around Kenmore, the same trail becomes the Burke-Gilman Trail and heads back down to Seattle. The ride was very nice, but still challenging, as I was pushing myself. I completed the approximately 25 miles in about 1:45 before stopping at Safeway for some groceries. I think I could go somewhat faster on my road bike, as I feel that I lose a lot of energy to the shocks, larger tires, and more pliant frame of the mountain bike that I generally take to school. Oh, also, I’m always clipped in when I take the road bike, whereas I am only rarely clipped in on the mountain bike (which has dual platform/spd pedals).

Along the way, I passed the park where I started a geocaching expedition several years ago as well as numerous walkers, roller-bladers, and cyclists. A number of cyclists also passed me — I am pretty sure I was the swifted mountain bike on the trail, however. Somewhere past the halfway mark, I came across an area where a vast expanse of Lake Washington was visible with the Olympic mountains in the background. It was beautiful, but I didn’t think to take a picture at the time.

Once I got home, I made myself a burger for dinner — its been a long time since I’ve done that. It was quite good. I then settled in to watch the Mariners finish beating the Red Sox. A good day indeed.

Well, I think Jon chose the right day to invite me and Maura to the ballpark to watch Ken Griffey Junior’s first baseball playing trip back to Seattle since he was traded to the Reds. The Reds had two runs — both on solo home runs by Griffey — but the Mariners won on some late game clutch hitting and an awesome suicide squeeze play. Here is a picture I managed to capture of Griffey hitting his second home run:

It was good to see him do better than his somewhat abysmal game one performance that I watched on TV. It was also nice to see the Mariners eek out a close one. I haven’t jumped on the bandwagon yet, but I certainly haven’t given up on the season either. Thanks to Jon for getting the tickets; we all enjoyed the game:

On Saturday, in lieu of a using the beautiful day to play Frisbee, I was invited on another hike. Since Sunday’s Mariner’s game plans crapped all over my Sunday (mega)hike plans with Danielle & co, I decided to go on Saturday instead. Sure, I ended up hiking Mt. Si again, but this tiem the weather was great and some good pictures were had. The company was good too; Whitney from church brought her friend (CRAP I can’t remember her name). They were fun to hike with.

We made it to the top of the haystack this time and I took some pictures.

More hiking please!

This morning at 9:30 I had my first lab meeting with the Rubinstein lab group. I didn’t know quite what to expect, because I’ve never been in a lab group before. I ended up enjoying myself and leaving a little bit giddy about the skills I’m going to acquire and the information I’m going to learn during my capstone project. These guys truly are at the cutting edge; the state of the art. It is truly exciting to finally be here.

I also had a good meeting with my CREE project mentors — I finally have a pretty good idea of what exactly I will be doing and why it is exciting. I think this is going to be a great summer.

Today was the first day of summer classes. It was also the first day of trying out my last-minute schedule change. I started the day out at work, leaving at noon to head to school. However, I left my house keys at work, so I had to rely on my roommate Doug to get back into the house. Fortunately, I have an extra room key in my backpack, so I still had access to my room. That would soon change.

I left again to go to my 4:30 Capstone class, which went well enough although Christine didn’t show and has decided to drop the class because she enjoys her CREE activities more than she anticipates enjoying her Capstone activities. Then Dennis treated me and Teresa to dinner before I headed back home. Good thing too, because once again I was locked out, but this time I had to wait for Enpei to get back, about an hour later, to get into the house. I spent the time reading a journal article for my CREE project and catching some accidental sleep.

Not long after this, Hoyin came over to pick up a network cable, and I ended up dropping him off at his new condo on First Hill to avoid wallowing in deep thought about the way things might have been. After dropping Hoyin off and checking out his new pad, I decided to scurry on over to Bellevue to pick up the just-delivered new laptop of wonderfulness from my Mom’s office where it was delivered. More on the laptop (a Dell Latitude D630) another day.

Returning home, I let myself in to the house with just-departed roommate Daniel’s old key. Unfortunately, I had failed to bring along the extra room key, which was still in my backpack, locked securely inside the room. I tried carding the door and forcing it open without breaking anything with no success. Enlisting Enpei’s help yet again, we were about to climb up on his megavan to attempt to gain access to my room, but then I spotted a ladder. Finally, I climbed into the thankfully cracked open second story window to my room while Enpei stabilized the ladder below me.

So, there is a happy ending, to this day at least. Now I get to wish again for a happy ending to some other chapters of my life.

After dinner at a Mongolian Grill with Maria, we decided to rent and watch a movie. I had recently visited IMDB, where I saw again that the Shawshank Redemption was rated as the second best movie ever (The Godfather edges it slightly). Curious, I have always wanted to see the movie, and last night was the perfect opportunity. After eating, we stopped by Scarecrow, rented the movie, and headed back to my place to enjoy it on my recently acquired 22 inch widescreen LCD monitor.

The movie was very good, certainly a 5/5 on my scale. Score one for IMDB.