Over the course of my life I have lived in multiple different states. These states include UT, FL, TX, NC, CA, VA, TN, and now WA. Living in WA is an interesting experience because the weather is weird. First off it rains 9 months out of the year. Basically October-June you can expect rain 90% of the time. Now this is not rain like the rest of the country experiences. There is no lightning or thunder, and the rain does not come down in a heavy down pour. What you can expect is over cast clouds, cold temperatures, and a constant, never ending drizzle of rain. For the most part you get use to such conditions. Everyone here wears coats (I love coats), no one uses an umbrella, and raining or not you still go outside and do stuff. In fact WA has one of the highest percentages of active people in the country.
What about the months between June and October? We get beautiful, gorgeous, sunny weather! However there is a downside to this. No one in WA knows how to deal with hot weather. This means you see some VERY interesting outfits on people, there is a mad rush to every store in the city for portable air conditioners, and fans, and you have a hard time sleeping at night because of the heat. Oh and I forgot to mention that most of us will burn at the very sight of the sun. I myself was sporting an impressive arm burn Saturday night from hanging my arm out my car window for to long.
For the most part however I love living in WA. Even though I dream from time to time about moving to FL some day, hot nights like yesterday remind me that I don’t do well in heat! So for the foreseeable future I will be living in WA, surrounded by moss, ferns, trees, and a lot of drizzly rain.
“Be nice to people on your way up because you’ll meet them on your way down”
Wilson Mizner
Have you ever had one of those days where you are just on edge, stressed, and everything irritates you for no reason? That was me around 1:00 pm yesterday. Nothing had happened to upset me, and to be honest I was having a pretty good day overall. However, around 1:00 I was agitated, upset, and had no where to vent my frustrations. As I pulled my car into the Seattle parking lot I use the attendant stopped me and told me I had to pay again to reenter the lot. I had left during lunch to drive my Wife to the airport, and had been gone 45 minutes. The attendant was brand new, and not the usual guy I knew and had worked with before. Now if this had been any other day the situation would have annoyed me, but I would let it go. Today, however, I didn’t. The classic “Heilpern” anger flared up, and I exploded. For no reason I started yelling at this poor attendant, telling him this was a rip off. I am not proud of this, and have been mulling the situation over in mind ever since.
I know the attendant was doing his job, and following his training. It was not his fault, and I should not have yelled at him. There were so many other ways I could have handled the whole thing, but I let my anger get the better of me. I feel, strongly, that I need to make this right. I have plans to apologize to the attendant later today, but I am also thinking about bringing him a coffee, or maybe some lunch to apologize. Thoughts on that?
OK I confess it was never that super secret of a project. Once I got the OK to move forward with this I starting talking about it with people right away. A few months ago I started listening to podcasts. I know your all thinking of something along the line of “Your just now getting into podcasts?”, and the answer is yes, so just let it go. Now I dont know what kind of podcasts all of you listen to, but I listen to very geeky podcasts…I know this comes as a huge surprise! Some of the podcasts I enjoy are Ace and Tj who are a local radio show in Charlotte NC. I remember listening to them when they first aired. In fact if I remember correctly I think my sister Jessica and I heard their very first show while we were driving to Seminary one morning.
Note: For all of my non-Mormon friends. Seminary is an early morning scripture class that is “voluntary” for all Mormon children to attend who are in high school. So each and everyday of the week Mormon kids all over the world get up at 5:30 in the morning and attend seminary from 6 to generally 6:45. Got to love those “voluntary” activities. And now back to our story.
I recently added two new podcasts into my ipod that I have not actually listened to yet, but have heard GREAT things about. The first is Seattle Geekly and the second is The Nerdist.
Now the problem with all things great is there is never enough of it. As all of you know I love all things geek. When I started listening to these podcasts I downloaded every episode and started listening to them from the beginning. I know that there are others out there who crave and yearn for more things Geek, so thanks to my Brother-in-Law Matt who has, and continues to send me great content for this blog (Thanks Matt!), has given me a great idea!
You see Matt is thinking of starting a podcast on a subject that he finds important. I wont spill the details yet, but rest assured when its up and running I will be posting a link. At first when I heard he was starting a podcast I was impressed, but not interested. Then the more I heard about how much time and effort he is putting into it I got more and more interested. So I have no doubt that its going to be a great podcast and am looking forward to sending you guys his way when it comes out!
Now the other day I was driving in my truck listening to a podcast. As I was doing so I was thinking about two things, Matts podcast, and all the geeks that surround me in this area. I thought to myself wouldnt it be cool to do a podcast here in Olympia? As I thought about it more I got an even greater idea. What if I teamed up with my friend Gabi over at Olympic Cards and Comics and we did a podcast together? This would be good for the shop, and good for Geeks in the local area. We could review comics, and games, talk about upcoming events, maybe get a nerd interview or two. The more I thought on it the more awesome it sounded, but would Gabi approve? So in an effort to be clear of what I wanted to do I sent Gabi an email in the early morning. By about 3:00 that afternoon I was REALLY nervous because Gabi had not responded back to my email. I waited I think another hour or so and then I decided to call her. She picked up and I explained what I wanted to do, and much to my delight and glee she said YES!!!!!!!!!
So now comes the organization. Below I have constructed a short list of things needed to make this happen, and on a few I am asking for help, advice, and suggestions from anyone who might have experience in this area.
1. The Name – Every podcast needs a good name, and right now the only suggestion that has been made is The United Federation of Geeks Podcast. What do you think? Any others?
2. The Equipment – As far as software goes I plan to use Garage Band on my Mac Book, but I do need help with things like microphones, and digital recorders.
3. A Website – We of course will need a website for show notes and cool links. Anyone have any good suggestions there? I kinda already have a handle on this one as I am already neck deep in redoing a website for another group I am a part of, but I wont turn down any suggestions.
4. The Content – I know I listed some things up top, but what do you the future listener want to hear about, talk about, reviewed, or discussed?
Let the Super Secret Podcast Project Begin!!!!!!!!!!!!
This week I am up in Seattle all week covering for one of my project safety guys. The project we are on requires us to have an on site safety person at all times we have crews working. On Monday I was informed that my safety guy would be out sick all week, and that I needed to cover for him till he returned. This really is not a major issue, and I have done this before, but trying to hold down the safety responsibilities of a project, and do my own job remotely is always a challenge. So when quitting time came yesterday I was anxious to get home and get a good run in with Terra and our running group. Now for those of you not familiar with Washington State and its ONE highway, consider yourself blessed. I left Seattle at 4:00PM, and it took me an hour and a half to get home. The drive usually (without traffic) takes 45 minutes to an hour. Our running group meets at 5:45, and Terra had already left for the meet up. So with 15 minutes I raced into the house changed into my running clothes, and rushed back out to the car. Terra and I had talked a few minutes prior, and since we were both sure I was going to be late we had decided to meet at a different location since by the time I would arrive they would have already started their run. So I would be meeting them on the trail. When I got there I saw no sign of the group, and figured after a few minutes that they had gone a different route that day. So I still wanted to run so I took off on my own.
Now the area we run winds its way around Capitol Lake. I decided since Tuesdays are usually our speed training day that I was going to run around the lake as fast I could go. I have no idea how fast I was going, due to the rain I did not want to take my Iphone out with me and expose it to the weather, but I was booking it. By the time I got to the end of the trail I was VERY winded, but felt like I had done a good run. Thats when I looked up and saw our running group heading straight for me. All I could think of was CRAP! So we met up and I turned around and started running with them….for about 20 seconds. I continued running, but had spent most of my energy on my first lap, so after the afore mentioned 20 seconds I started to fall behind. I finished the second lap, but it was not my best run.
After our run Terra and I headed home and began discussing what we wanted to do that night. I suggested we invite our friends over for dinner and gaming on the PS3. This is a usual thing for us about once every 2-3 weeks. Usually we will have our friends Kai and Eve over for dinner, and then Kai, Eve, and Myself will try our best to advance our level on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. We like to play the Special Ops portion of the game which has a series of levels that one must complete on a certain difficulty to advance to the next level. Until last night the three of us have always made some sort of progress in that direction. As I have mentioned before its usually Kai, Eve, and myself, but last night Eve couldn’t make it. So Kai and I did our best to take on the game by our selves. We failed miserably! The game kicked our butts! After multiple attempts we could not make a single progression in the game. FInally we called it a night and turned the game off disappointed in our lack of success.
However we made up for it by watching the pilot episode of The Tick: Live Action Show. Kai had never seen the show, and I think he was scared for life after he had. But not to worry I promised him that I would make him watch the entire 13 episodes of the show.
On May 7, 2010 Terra and I ventured up to the city of Seattle to Attend w00tstock. Both Terra and I had been looking forward to going since we attended Emerald City Comic Con. Our main draw was to go see Wil Wheaton, but we were encouraged about the other performances.
Our journey did not start off as we had hoped. After spending over two hours in the car, due to traffic we finally arrived in Seattle. (NOTE: from our house to seattle should only take an hour) We found parking reletivly easy, which is suprising for a Friday night, and headed out on foot toward the address given to us for The Moore Theater.
My plan at this point was to provide you with the same link I used for directions, however I have discovered that the address on the website has now changed, and the address google used has been removed. I have a feeling it was done so due to the large number of complaints I am sure both the theater and google may have received over this event, because both sites gave you an address of 94 Pike Street. If you follow the link to the Theater you will see this is not their address at all. So confused and still getting to know Seattle Terra and I ran around aimlessly trying to find where we were going. We asked a few people who knew we were close but couldn’t point us in the exact direction we needed to go. Terra even called her sister Megan and asked her to look it up on the net, and see if she could find a different address then I had. She could not, because she was given the same false address as I had. So at this point I turned to Foursquare. I quickly found the theater, and received directions from other people checked into the theater. Several of them mentioned how the address listed on google and the main theater site was false, and provided the correct one. Turns out from where we were standing we were only two blocks away.
Arriving almost 20 minutes late we carefully found our seats and sat down. Since we arrived late we missed the introduction….
And the opening song…..(10 points if you get the non related reference)
Molly Lewis was the next performance, and she was AWESOME!!! Before my mission I never really liked the ukulele as an instrument, but for some reason after the mission I suddenly developed a shine to it. Weird.
Following Molly Lewis we were entertained by James Ernest and Mike Selinker. Now you will notice in the video that they give us some sort of a video riddle. I have watched the video, and looked on the internet at other people who attended w00tstock, and really don’t know what the answer to the riddle is. Maybe you do?
This short video was next, and I must confess I think it may have been one of my favorite parts of w00tstock, because so many movie trailers are just like this! Is it sad that I wouldn’t mind watching that movie?
And now comes the moment we have all been waiting for….WIL WHEATON!!!! I never thought that one of the least liked Star Trek characters would turn out to be one of my favorite authors, bloggers, and performers. I had heard Terra talk about Wil for years, but honestly had no interest in looking into what Wil was all about until Emerald City Comic Con in Seattle WA. Here is a picture of Will after he signed my Star Wars Lando Action Figure (read his books to understand!)
So Wil took the stage and gave a GREAT performance about one of my favorite high school memories The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
After the AWESOME Wil Wheaton left the stage Paul from Paul and Storm made some merchandise plugs.
Now comes the moment in the show that I honestly dont know how to review. At this point in the show MC Frontalot took the stage. The reason I am having a hard time giving a review is I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THEY SAID. I could not understand a single word in their whole spot. The bass was up so loud and the vocals were so low that I cant tell you if I would like their music and lyrics or not. I am planning on looking into their music outside of w00tstock and I hope I will be able to understand them, so if I like them or don’t like them I will let you all know later.
After MC Frontalot, Paul and Storm along with Wil Wheaton took the stage and gave a wonderful performance of the European Lounge Singer. If you haven’t seen it, then shame on you!
And then Hank Green took to the stage, and was VERY funny. His rendition of “what would Captain Picard Do?” was in my top three moments of the night!
Im going to let Stephen Stepto speak for himself! (It was AWESOME!)
And then came Adam Savage. I really didnt excpect him to be funny, but WOW!
Then they tried to wrap the show up, but they found this VERY difficult! OK here is the thing I have been able to find every other part of the show BUT the finale sooooooooo I am using a finale video from another performance of w00tstock in another city. If I can find the Seattle performance I will post it.
Overall this was an AWESOME night, and will become a yearly thing for Terra and I!
What about the months between June and October? We get beautiful, gorgeous, sunny weather! However there is a downside to this. No one in WA knows how to deal with hot weather. This means you see some VERY interesting outfits on people, there is a mad rush to every store in the city for portable air conditioners, and fans, and you have a hard time sleeping at night because of the heat. Oh and I forgot to mention that most of us will burn at the very sight of the sun. I myself was sporting an impressive arm burn Saturday night from hanging my arm out my car window for to long.
