Diet

No matter how much pizza I eat, I can't seem to lose any weight.

Bing Maps

Bing Maps is now officially tied with Google Maps to be my favorite map program. Bing has recently added some click-and-drag functionality that Google has had for quite awhile, while Google has recently fixed some erroneous information (such as removing the Wenatchee Confluence State Park from Snoqualmie Pass!).

Bing has the great bird's-eye view for many areas, but Google has Streetview, contour maps, and better aerial photos for many areas.

The one part where Bing leaves Google far behind is calculating travel times on any road that's not a freeway. Google thinks you need to drive 30 mph on all back roads, even if the speed limit is actually 60!

As for Yahoo Maps and Mapquest, well . . . they can calculate all right, but they're not nearly user-friendly enough. Click and drag, man, click and drag!

They all need to get better at adding new roads, though. Some areas are years out of date.

UPDATE: One feature of Yahoo Maps that the others lack, however, is different colors for different cities and neighborhoods, depending on your zoom level.

North Dakota Still Looks Good

A year ago, I drew up a little map showing the unemployment rate in each state.

Here's another one, with the same color scheme:



Green states have unemployment below 4% (none in Sept. '09).
Olive states have unemployment between 4% and 5%.
Yellow states have unemployment between 5% and 6% (none in Sept. '09).
Maroon states have unemployment between 6% and 7%.
Red states have unemployment between 7% and 8%.
Magenta states have unemployment above 8%.

Things don't look so good this year, huh?

What should the government do? Perhaps they should take money away from citizens when the citizens need it most and also make it difficult for business owners to hire new employees? Does that sound good? What, no? Because that's what we're doing. . .

Wild Horse Wind Farm

Last Sunday, we stopped by this really huge art installation on Whiskey Dick Mountain in eastern Kittitas County.



The giant towers had these huge three-pronged blades slowly rotating (although, truth be told, not all of them were spinning). The sign at the gate claimed they were farming the wind.



It looked really expensive, but cool.



There was a visitor center on the ridge. It mentioned that these towers generated some electricity, but it wasn't really all that much. Just 337 kW for the whole art installation at the time of our visit.



Impressive structures, though.

Election Update

With King County's forced vote-by-mail, election totals are slow to tally. But here's an update on the two tightest races in the county:

STEVENS PASS SEWER DISTRICT
Ballots Cast/Registered Voters: 1/9 (11.11%)

Commissioner Position No. 1 - unexpired 2-year term
- Michael Crandall: 1 (100.00%)
- Write-in: 0 (0.00%)

Commissioner Position No. 2
- Tom Maher: 1 (100.00%)
- Write-in: 0 (0.00%)

I'll be sure to keep you posted!

V Recap

Some people love the aliens.

Some people hate the aliens.

Some people are the aliens.

Eat! Eat!

Happy Holy Day of Nokí!

She's the Goddess of Food, so you'd better be eating today. Or else She'll smack you with Her giant club o' death. Watch out!



That's the way to eat. Hooray for Nokí!

Hey, What's That?

"Hey, What's That?" is a cool website that will show you a panorama skyline from anywhere in the world.

Take a look at one I did for the west end of the I-90 bridge. Mt Rainier is the most prominent feature (apart from Mt Baker Ridge in Seattle), but Mt Baker is visible to the north, Mt Index to the northeast, and Tiger Mountain just visible over Mercer Island to the east.

You can click on anywhere on the map, and it will highlight the direction on the panorama, and vice versa. Click on a red triangle over a peak on the panorama and it will show you which mountain it is on the map. Can you find Glacier Peak?

On the map, if you click "Visibility cloak" in the upper right, it will shade everything you can see from the viewpoint. Then you can zoom in on Mt Rainier or wherever and see which features you can actually view from Seattle.

You can also click on "New panorama" near the top of the page and create your own!

Fun fun fun.

Happy United Nations Day!

Down with the U.N.!

Down with the Club of Tyrants!

Down with the U.N.!

Down with the Club of Tyrants!

Happy United Nations Day!

Dahlias

At our house, it appears the official dahlia month is October. We have six or seven different varieties blooming right now -- even more flowers than our year-round roses!

And here's a photo:

Celebrate Our Defender!

Rock on, Rékaré. Rock on.

When I Lend a Camera. . .

Chunlin took a business trip last week (her first!) to a convention in Raleigh. I lent her my small camera.

Unfortunately, I forgot that I'd left the camera set to take a group of sixteen photos, back to back, as one photo.

These are two of the photos she took while confusion reigned.



I can just imagine her asking, "What's wrong with this camera?"



She called me at about the same time she took this picture and I quickly realized the problem, but didn't remember where in the menu she could change the setting. Luckily Chunlin found the setting (at exactly the same time that I found the right page in the manual (after downloading it)) and correct the problem.

Nice photos, though!

Happy Ríhíví Day!

Heal us, o wondrous Ríhíví! Heal us with Your hot springs! Heal us with Your motherly touch!

Thank you. I promise to be nice to cats!