Eric Hodel

livejournal@segment7.net — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 19:50:10 GMT

I dreamed I was in a grocery store with my mom reading Seattle Weekly from sometime late at night until 11AM. The Seattle Weekly had an article about wardrobes non-creepily, decoratively covered in hands and arms. Each hand was a different shade of grey, usually very light. I want one.

Free Microwave! (and stuff)

livejournal@segment7.net — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 02:52:33 GMT

I have a convection oven microwave (this means you could bake a cake in a metal pan in it) I'd like to get rid of. If you or anyone you know would like it, it's theirs. Otherwise I'm donating it to some lucky craigslist person.

It's measurements are 25" wide, 15" tall and 18" deep. Delivery can be arranged at $1 per mile.

Also, I have a giant wooden box I made in middle school. It measures rougly 3' wide, 28" tall and 2' deep. It's too big to fit in my car, so no transportation will be provided.

In other news, my Sarah Palin Baby Name is Blaster Commando Palin, which is the sweetest name I've heard the thing give.

Also, here's my picture right after learning of my Sarah Palin baby name, since I was inspired by mizrobot:

Tools!

livejournal@segment7.net — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 07:39:07 GMT

Today I used several of my tools. My new Collector Vehicle plate arrived, so I retired the 948-MPC plates to my closet and attached the new plate. Since they didn't send me a front plate, I removed the bracket from the front, which makes the bumper look much better.

I also discovered that the wiring to the left license plate light separated from the grommet that connects it to the trunk sometime in the past three decades. It'll be a bit of a pain to find a new one.

I also got the squeegee off my showerhead, where it has been sitting for several years because I could never remember to get more teflon tape. Now I can squeegee off the walls of my shower again!

Softball, naps, vehicle, blood center

livejournal@segment7.net — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 07:27:42 GMT

This weekend was pretty awesome, and the week has started out pretty awesome too.

Saturday I drove out to my parents' place and picked up the title to my car. We drove into town and had lunch and looked at the classic car show there.

While I was at my parents' place, nishushan called and asked if I could sub for one of their softball players. I agreed, fought my way through traffic and arrived at the field ready to go, but then we got rained out in freaky midwest style.

I went home, showered, and took a nap.

Sunday I earned my seven gallon pin with a platelet donation, earned a platinum trophy on Uncharted, Drake's Fortune, and took some more naps.

Monday I went down to the DoL and ordered my Collector Vehicle plates and toured the Puget Sound Blood Center. Since I now have a collector vehicle, it "may be driven [...] for the pleasure of others without compensation", so if you want a ride somewhere, just ask!

At the blood center I got to see cool things like platelet rocker trays that gently rock platelets like newborns giving them happy dreams, a blood irradiator that destroys DNA in blood cells, a freezer full of blood, and a bucket of frozen heart valves along with several freezers full of bones.

I also learned some awesome stuff like the plastic bags they store platelets in transfuse oxygen and carbon dioxide to keep the platelets viable longer, that the blood center only throws out 1.5% of its donations, and that red cells can last in the freezer for a decade.

Free iPod and microwave

livejournal@segment7.net — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 01:24:27 GMT

~~Do you or someone you know want a free iPod?~~ (bostonsteamer's) I got an iPhone and don't need my 30GB iPod anymore. I'm not going to mail it anywhere, but we can meet somewhere around Capitol Hill for a hand-off. I think it's two and a half years old with minor wear and a decent battery life. Comes with dock, charger, and silly hybrid USB/firewire cable (USB-only data, though).

Also, I have a giant convection oven microwave, white, which is free to any takers. I will deliver it at the cost of $1 per mile (round trip).

Seattle welcomes me home

livejournal@segment7.net — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 06:49:16 GMT

Tonight I arrived home from a NYC friends' wedding in Memphis and decide I wanted a burger at Dick's. Unfortunately Dick's failed me in the burger department as the grill died, and I am not a fan of the trans fat free fries.

On the upside there was a pair of gutter punks to greet me instead. As I sat and muched my fries and sipped my chocolate shake they proceeded to shout obscenities about Obama and so-forth that were quite annoying. One had an amazingly bright pink face, so I find it highly likely they were incredibly intoxicated.

It was all fun and games until a group carrying a leftover pizza walked by, and the pair began to target the group with a fresh volley of personally crafted obscenities that I whipped out my phone and called the police. The more vocal of the pair quickly headed off as I met his gaze while describing him to the cops. When I turned to the second and began describing him to the 911 dispatcher he was courteous enough to leave me with an empty threat as he wandered off.

I hung out for about half an hour waiting for a police car to show back up, but I'm going to assume they were out actually looking for the two upstanding young gentleman and my services were no longer needed.

In other news, I learned I have some peripheral vision loss in my left eye around my nose (officially known as optic disc drusen). I can only notice it when my eyes are extremely dilated, so it isn't a problem, but I'm told it may get worse over time.

They took stereoscopic photos of my eye, but on slide film, and I haven't tried to get ahold of my slides so I can have scans of my eye. The eyeball photos were the second most annoying thing that's happened to my eye, as the flash of light nearly knocks you out of the chair. Fortunately it's almost bearable by the time they got to the eighth photo.

Also in the past couple months I've been to NYC where I hung out at my cousin's place in Manhattan and for a conference, to Worcester, MA for my sister's graduation, to Portland, OR for RailsConf, to LA to hang out with my boss, and to Memphis for an NYC friend's wedding. I'm looking forward to not traveling by airplane for the next couple months.

Push-ups! Pull-ups!

livejournal@segment7.net — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 09:17:02 GMT

Holly, my Physical Therapist, cleared me for push-ups and pull-ups, and let me drop the simpler rubber tube exercises! This is fantastic!

I'm just not supposed to do both on the same day, which is fine.

Waiting for the bus home I started talking to a woman who was worried about some dogs in a Dodge Avenger with rolled-up windows, I told her they were fine. We both avoided the smoke from the smokers sitting on the bus-stop bench, and spoke about smoking for a second. On the bus ride home she flipped through her pregnancy magazine and looked at her ultrasound (I'm guessing her first) and we found we were sort-of neighbors when we both had the same bus stop.

Australia

livejournal@segment7.net — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 09:44:10 GMT

Overall, Australia is awesome. In Melbourne it was 30º+ with a high of over 40º (86º to 105º in fake degrees) and dry, which was very pleasant. Walking around was easy even though the sidewalks were both huge (3 and 4 meter) and choked with people. Fox also made me an awesome hand-drawn map of Melbourne (even though it had one inaccuracy.)

The flight home was 20 hours total, but I ran into a girl I met first in Seattle on a flight to Sydney, so I had somebody to watch my bag while I went in search of food.

Things I like about Australia:

The bills are each different color and size: While paying for lunch one day I fished out a large bill then said "wait, I have one of the right color in here somewhere" automatically. (Our red $10 barely counts.)
No tipping: Everybody gets paid a proper wage, so food-service people seem to enjoy their jobs more, and are more enjoyable to interact with. (I'm not sure how subjective this is.)
$1 and $2 coins instead of bills: The $2 coin is about the size of a penny, maybe nickel, but thicker. The $1 is slightly larger than a quarter, and thicker. There was something more pleasant about using coin.
Constant coin redesign: While the bills were all the same, the $1 coins had many different designs. Far superior to our recent state quarter campaign.
Public transportation: Melbourne has an extensive tram and bus network. While downtown between 6:30 and 7 I saw three cars and several thousand people while sitting at an intersection. Similar appears to be true for Sydney, and they have a superior ferry system with more short runs than Seattle (like a Seattle, Federal Way, Tacoma passenger-only run.)

Things I don't like about the states:

Americans are fat: It's very depressing. On the whole, portion sizes are much larger here, and food is cheaper. I wonder how strong a corollary there is between $/Calorie and BMI.
We drive too much, and our cars are too big: Most vehicles in Australia were midsize sedans. I saw an occasional Land Rover, but none of our humongous SUVs or trucks.
Our airport security is stupid: Australia is at pre-911 security levels, which means anyone can go through security to the gate, and nobody cares about liquids (except international).

livejournal@segment7.net — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 07:55:55 GMT

I went canoeing today, which wasn't as fun as going at UW, but alright.

When I asked for a canoe for one, the guy asked me if I wanted a kayak, and gave me a funny look when I said no. He'd never had somebody ask for that before. They also wanted to give me a kayak paddle. Maybe it would have made things a little easier since the paddle in the canoe was too short.

I went up and down the 500m meters or so of allowed river travel a couple of times, handily passing the heavily laden rowboats several times.

It's really nice here, the temperature, while hot, is not unbearable, and I love all the public transportation and the walkability of Melbourne. Downtown I believe I saw four or five cars go by in half an hour, and all mid-size or compact cars. Giant SUVs and trucks are non-existent, and full-size sedans are incredibly rare.

I'd probably get killed crossing the street, though, as I'm very much hard-wired to look left instead of right. One of the times I got it right I wanted to catch a tram downtown, and looked right at the tram I was supposed to catch, crossed the street to the wrong side, then watched it pull away.

Australia

livejournal@segment7.net — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 13:20:54 GMT

Flying to Australia was awesome. I was called early in the morning and offered the LAX connection to Sydney over the SFO connection, and was given a free upgrade to an exit row seat. I also paid for the upgrade to more leg room for the Sydney flight, and ended up with my own row to stretch out in.

Australia is pretty awesome.

The beautiful Sydney library didn't have free internet, just free web, so I couldn't contact Evan, so I wandered through the Botanical gardens, past the Sydney Opera House and back to the hotel. The hotel had $.55/min internets which I used to confirm I could check in. I then had a shower and a nap and headed out to dinner and walked to the first abutment of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, arriving just in time for the first few drops of rain to come down. I returned to the hotel and played Zelda waiting for Evan to arrive.

The Rubinius sprint went awesome, Lincoln Stoll helped me polish off some bugs in RDoc and RubyGems, and to integrate RubyGems into Rubinius. In all we had about 40 or so patches added to Rubinius during the sprint.

Monday morning I ate breakfast with Evan, Shane, and Marcus at Bronte Beach before heading down to Melbourne to hang out with Fox for the rest of the week. We took a spin through Melbourne and out to St. Kilda for a late lunch and a walk along the beach. It's quite hot here, mid 30s, but quite dry, which is excellent.

I should have brought my sandals.

Will the wonders of bacon never cease?

livejournal@segment7.net — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 08:14:31 GMT

First there was bacon cake.

Next, the bacon mat.

And now, bacon cups!

X-Rays!

livejournal@segment7.net — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 04:40:47 GMT

I got my shoulder x-rayed on Wednesday, and on Thursday I found I could get a copy of them on CD for just $15!

Turns out there's nothing wrong with the bones of my shoulder, but I've got AC joint inflammation and left pectoralis major and minor strain. I was given some exercises to do, and the puny amount of resistance they're giving is working things just right.

Travel booking

livejournal@segment7.net — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 22:55:09 GMT

On Monday I tried to buy my airplane tickets to Australia, and Orbitz screwed up. They left pending charges for me twice on my credit card, and it took until today to get them to remove them.

Now that I've tried to book the flights for real with United, it seems that I already have a reservation for the entire trip and two extra flights from Sydney to Melbourne. At least I'm not getting charged for them.

1 Gross of Bottle Rockets

livejournal@segment7.net — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 21:23:06 GMT

At the McLeod Holiday Party I gift-exchanged a mug and cocoa for a gross of bottle rockets. Tonight would be an excellent night to use them, but that's too many bottle rockets for me alone.

This is where you come in, I'll gladly exchange bottle rockets for assistance in using them.

livejournal@segment7.net — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 01:23:54 GMT

I tried to give platelets on Sunday, but failed. One arm started to bruise, so they switched, and the second arm did the same, so we gave up. In the time I donated I got to watch my cousin (who plays football for Arizona) make a snap that was a bit too high for the kicker, who then got sacked for a safety. I think it's ok overall though, since it isn't like he threw an interception for a Seattle touchdown.

Just now I received an email from the blood center saying I was at a 1403 mL red cell loss, which seems like a lot. I don't feel like I lost nearly three donations worth of blood, so I hope it means something else.

Oh, and I saw Crutches (the one legged homeless guy) while walking to the blood center, so he's still alive.

I am a genius!

livejournal@segment7.net — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 22:31:07 GMT

You can tell this by my choice of dinner after biting my tongue at jujutsu practice last night, tortilla chips with hot salsa and basque chorizo sausage. I realized that this was a bad combination of foods before I started eating, and continued anyways. I believe the first several bites had expletives mixed in between. Genius indeed.

In other news, today at 11AM (ish) I was supposed to get my replacement washing machine since my previous one lit on fire two weeks ago and the repair guy never came to look at it.

I'm still waiting.

Two clothes washers down!

livejournal@segment7.net — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 06:26:51 GMT

I went to jujutsu practice today for the first time in two months, which was fun. It was just long enough that my out-of-shape body could handle it.

Upon returning I threw a towel, my judo jacket (heavier than a towel), my judo pants, and my hooded sweatshirt into the washing machine and stepped into the shower. As I finished I started smelling that electrical burning smell, so I quickly rushed out of the shower and ran downstairs, thinking something was happening with the fireplace.

Nope, it was off, and no burning smell. I checked my fan upstairs, also off, along with lamp and clock-radio. That left the washing machine.

It had run for five minutes before shutting down and attempting to light itself on fire. Fortunately it was unsuccessful. Terrifyingly it didn't trip the breaker.

Now I have forty pounds of wet clothes and a washer full of water. I'll syphon it out tomorrow when I call my landlord and tell him I've broken another washing machine.

Things I Have Done

livejournal@segment7.net — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 07:07:56 GMT

At the end of October I flew to Montreal, attended OOPSLA, and won a Beaver for finding the strangest thing on the internet as judged by Richard Gabriel (who is nerd-famous) which was

.

There was near silence throughout the video up until Cadillac turns into a bike. A moment of WTF? permeated the audience, and my victory was assured.

Buckminster the beaver is huge, bigger than four fat cats combined! Taking him back on the airport as my personal item was fun. I was offered $9000 for Buckminster, but I turned it down.

Then I worked for a week on my presentation, flew to Charlotte, NC for RubyConf and gave an awesome talk, or so people have told me. I did have a great Q&A section, though, so I'll believe it was awesome too. It was stressful, since I was spending too much time going over and over my talk, and not enough hanging out with other rubyists. Next year I'm not submitting a talk.

Then I flew to Washington DC and hung out for a couple days with bitbitch. The new Air and Space annex is impossible to get to without a car (or $$), so I went to the one on the mall instead, and it was much the same. I tried to go to the Industry and Arts museum, but it was closed, so I went to the Postal Museum instead, which is impossible to find. Mostly, just relaxing and doing nothing computer related.

Now I have a PS3 because my PS2 is coughing itself to death. The PS3 purchase probably has the lowest $/excitement ratio of any purchase I have made to date. I can watch HD movies now care of Netflix now though, which is cool.

Oh, I also started my SUPER AWESOME job, but I can't tell you about it yet, its Top Secret.

Blood

livejournal@segment7.net — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 07:46:07 GMT

I gave blood today, but I was supposed to give tomorrow. I suppose this kind of thing had to happen, considering they scheduled me for last week's Wednesday in Everett, and this week in Bellevue (Thursday, I suppose, even though I wanted Wednesday.)

I still haven't managed to break the five minute donation. This time was 5:40. After donation, my arm didn't want to stop. It sat there and tried to bleed for a good five minutes more before they got me an ice pack to chill my arm out.

Frame Straightening

livejournal@segment7.net — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 21:16:52 GMT

I was reading about Link Light Rail on the Sound Transit website and found that the Operations and Maintenance building will have "a body shop with frame straightening equipment" and wondered how in the world they'd need one of those. (A frame straightener is a concrete slab with steel slots in it that you use to bend the train or large truck's frame straight again.) Surely the trains won't hit anything big enough to bend the frame!

Then I saw this video, I guess people are dumb enough to turn in front of the train often enough that eventually it would be out of true.

Also, there's a few Link Light Rail-related events! Tomorrow is the Downtown Transit Tunnel: Press Conference and Public Tours from 11:30 to 1:30 where you'll get to walk in the tunnels without a major emergency (or tresspassing). Thursday is the Beacon Hill Neighborhood Construction Meeting and Tour where you get to run around on the construction site. Monday Next week is the Downtown Transit Tunnel Street Fair and Celebration where the tunnel reopens!

Still, nearly two more years of construction before Link Light Rail actually starts running. Lame!

livejournal@segment7.net — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 09:25:43 GMT

I just finished watching For A Few Dollars More, and damn was that bad-ass.

Also, Wolverine stole Monco's haircut.

I almost died today

livejournal@segment7.net — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 05:20:00 GMT

At lunch the blood center called me to donate platelets because one of the other donors was sick, so I agreed. I show up and they hook me up to the old machine, but somebody had ordered the two-needle kits instead of the one needle, which means I can't move at all while its pumping.

So I sit there helpless and have the staff bring me blankets and change the channel on the TV and whatnot which is just fine. Around 7PM a bunch of donors stream in, so everybody is busy.

Right at that time Entertainment Tonight comes on. It was terrible (Britney Spears might be dyeing her hair brown, so I had a 15 second clip of her buying hair dye drilled into my head). I couldn't move to change the channel. Everybody was busy. I was squirming in my chair trying to escape.

After ten minutes of ET I finally got the TV switched to Wheel of Fortune which is far superior television. I fear the damage may be permanent, however.

livejournal@segment7.net — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 04:08:20 GMT

I fixed my radio today. It had to be wiggled Just Right. Now the tuning light I totally forgot it had comes on, and the iTrip even works!

I'm home!

livejournal@segment7.net — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 05:32:39 GMT

And its so good to be here.

Headed out of West Yellowstone 9:30ish, arrived home 10ish. Enroute I:

Saw Quake Lake, formed by an earthquake-triggered landslide in 1959 that unfortunately killed 28 people
Had another flat tire. Les Schwab > Big-O Tires, by a ton. I bought a third new tire, as a preemptive measure on the tire guy's insistence.
Drove into the setting sun. Terribly annoying as it was dead ahead.
Smelled potato, peppermint, alfalfa and timothy hay in Eastern Washington. The latter triggered my alergies. The peppermint was awesome.
Was followed by some weirdo who sat just behind my blindspot for about 80 miles through Snoqualmie pass. They wouldn't pass when I changed lanes, they'd just sit there with their headlights in my side mirror.

livejournal@segment7.net — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 03:58:13 GMT

Yellowstone reminded me of how much I hate people. It should be legal to throw people into the thermal features if they walk off the boardwalk. Also, don't block the two-lane-wide one-way road to take pictures of the bison. I've seen the bison four times already. I want to see the geyser that's about to go off, let me through.

I waited two hours for Great Fountain Geyser to erupt, and it was well worth it, even with the two or three people saying "its about to go" when it really had 20 and 40 more minutes to go. I watched 45 minutes worth of geysering, then left just before another burst of activity.

Tomorrow, home!