A Yankee in the Emerald City

I just finished reading The Road, which had been on my list for a while but always pre-empted by one trashy novel or another.  I'm not really sure what to say about it, other than I can't really remember the last time a book affected me so deeply.  I literally found myself tearing up on the bus to work yesterday as I made my way through the book's heart.

I guess what I'm saying is: If you haven't read this yet, you really need to do so as soon as possible.

My skip-level manager, Ryan, blogged today about our awesome recent achievement: a system running our product landed at #23 on the list of the Top 500 Super Computers.  While our focus as a team is on a more mainstream audience (the "Bottom 5000," if you will), our goal with these runs is to demonstrate that Windows can be used to run a computer cluster with blazing fast performance, matching the fastest systems running on other OSes.

This is something we're really proud of as a team . . . and another reason I can't wait to ship our next version (coming soon)!

The Mets have finally fired Willie.  The only question on my mind: How soon can the Mariners interview him?

Looks like the Mariners have finally gotten their act together enough to fire Bill Bavasi, GM of baseball's most overpaid underachievers for the past 5 seasons.

Delight is too strong a word for the emotion being felt by Mariners fans everywhere; it's definitely a case of too little too late for the 22-45 Seattle Mariners.  They are an elite team when ranked on pay roll, but dad last in the big leagues when ranked by what counts: winning ball games.

The firing of Bavasi is a nice start, but it won't solve the Mariner's myriad problems.  They've got a team full of aged, overpaid has-beens and young, lackadaisical show-offs.  Hopefully the replacement of Don McLaren with a more competent manager is next on the docket (I hear Willie Randolph may be available soon!), followed by a mass-purging of the ranks.

In all honesty, the list of keepers on this team is quite short.  Among the everyday players, I doubt anyone other than Ibanez, Ichiro, and maybe Beltre and Johjima, really have any place in a Major League lineup.

This was the first truly beautiful weekend of the year in Seattle (it's still beautiful today . . . looking out the Window across the hall from my office) and I had an absolute blast out in the sun.  I can only pray that this weather was not just another break in the clouds; with any luck it will be like this from now through October.  I think living in Seattle, the weather has started having a greater and greater effect on my life; summers are so nice (and the rest of the year is so drab) that July - September are easily cataloged as the happiest time of the year.

Megan's family was in town, so on Saturday we had brunch at C.J.'s, then headed over to the International Fountain in Seattle Center to hang out and watch the kids playing.  That is easily one of my favorite Seattle sites . . . it's very distinctly Seattle and a great place to hang out in the summer time.  After that it was Mini-Golfing at Newcastle Golf Club, which has an unbelievable view of the city followed by dinner at Senor Moose (highly recommended).

I spent all of Sunday hanging out with Becca, resulting in an excellent BBQ, a completed Sunday Times crossword puzzle, and the successful completion of the Friday-Saturday-Sunday Ice-Cream-Per-Day Trifecta.

It's tough getting back to work now . . . but the potential for a beach BBQ next weekend will keep me motivated :-)

I'm still here; still breathing; still traveling and working and playing and praying for BBQ season to finally start.

As you can see from this picture, I was in Europe at the beginning of the month on business; namely visits to Ferrari, Schlumberger, and Roxar, as well as Universities in Oxford, Bristol, and Southampton.  Other than that, I haven't been up to all that much.  I've been trying to ignore the slumping Yankees, Mets, and Mariners and trying to enjoy the occasional diversion.

Work is progressing nicely; we shipped our second beta last month and are pushing hard to ship the product soon.

Right now I feel a bit as if I'm waiting for something.  Maybe it's just for summer.  We've been so close to it on a few random days, only to be plunged back into drizzling darkness.  Supposedly the weather here is supposed to get to you over the long winter when the days are short and you are always a bit damp, but I find it most distressing in June when it is day until 10:30 PM but you so rarely see the sun.

I think I need a vacation.

Yesterday's Indians game included an incredible baseball feat: Asdrubal Cabrera turned an unassisted triple play.

But it's not all that exciting to watch, actually.

I'm the "Josh" referred to in today's Overheard in New York headline contest.  The primary purpose of this blog post is actually to inform you that if you don't yet read Overheard in New York, you should really start checking it out regularly.

The sun was actually shining this weekend in Seattle (finally!).  So I dusted off my old baseball glove, grabbed a few friends, and headed for . . . the sporting goods store, so we could all buy new gloves :-)  It was actually a something of a farce, the four of us all buying new baseball glove so we could go play in the sun.

We headed up to Discovery Park for the afternoon, and had a great time.  Other than a couple short games of catch with my cousins, it'd been quite a while since I tossed a ball around (and a LONG time since I last swung a bat), and we all had a great time.  Indeed the fun level on Sunday was as high as I've experienced in Seattle without a Beach BBQ (which are hopefully just around the corner!).

I'm starting to think I really should look to get involved in some sort of Softball league at some point.

There have been some snide remarks made over the past month or so about my lack of posting . . . rest assured that I have not abandoned this blog.  I'd been traveling quite a bit (to New York and L.A., specifically) and didn't have a chance to post.  In a way, that's actually a good thing: good trips seem to keep me too busy to post, while boring/lonely trips seem to leave me with nothing to do but post.

More travels are on the horizon, at the very least it seems like I'll be headed to New York and Reykjavik, and there may be stops in So-Cal and/or Boston on the horizon as well.