blog.circusgeek

a personal blog with nerdy bits thrown in

Author: ryan

  • The week in review

    The week has been both busy and lazy. Here’s the story…

    On Sunday, Kelly and I supported some local businesses. We started by going to a local pizza place, Bob’s Rocket Pizza, which we’d recently read rave reviews of. The staff were very friendly, and while there’s limited seating indoors (or outdoors) it’s well worth going to. The pizza was fantastic. Probably among the best I’ve ever had. And fortunately it’s right up the street! While waiting for our pizza, we visited a newcomer to the area, Rose’s, that specializes in hand-made ice-cream, hamburgers, fries, and shakes. We picked up a pint of Oreo Cookie ice cream while waiting for our pizza, which was also fantastic. Later that night (after filling ourselves on pizza and ice cream) we watched some of season three Doctor Who.

    Monday I met Miranda at Moon & Sixpence after work for a couple pints and some food before heading home. Miranda & Brian leave for Peru in a week. Jealous. Hrmph!

    Tuesday I met Snooks at Kennedy School for a few beers, and to chat about geeky television like Torchwood (and Doctor Who) among other geeky things before going home early and going to sleep.

    Wednesday I woke up feeling a bit ill and decided to work from home (and got quite a bit of work done). Kelly and I stayed in and watched several episodes of Heroes (season 1, on DVD). What a great show!

    Today after work I met Kelly at Lloyd Center so I could do my (pretty much) annual clothing run, where I finally break down and buy clothes, something I dislike doing. After that we met my brother Travis at Rose & Thistle for a couple pints and some dinner. Had a good night. Tired.

  • BBQ & Moon

    Company BBQ atop the Ecotrust building Tonight Kelly and I attended my employer’s annual BBQ, held this year at the Jean Vollum Natural Capital Center (aka ‘The Ecotrust Building’) in NW Portland. We’d taken the bus into town, not sure what would happen but figuring this way we were safe in case we had too much to drink. That’s right, we’re responsible that way. 🙂 We arrived at 6pm sharp, when the event started, and made our way to the rooftop of the building. Pretty fun spot to have such a gathering, fully catered and hosted, with two kegs of beer (Black Butte Porter and Mirror Pond Pale Ale, both from Deschutes Brewery), along with wine and mixed drinks. The food itself was OK, but nothing worth really mentioning. The atmosphere was however really nice. It was a cool day today, and an even cooler evening, but the skies were clear, and the view over the Pearl was great. Had a really fun time chatting with coworkers, and introducing Kelly to a few of my many new coworkers that had been hired over the past few months.

    Moon & Sixpence We left the party at around 9pm, walking down to take the MAX train towards home, with a “short” trip to the Moon & Sixpence. We ended up hanging out there for quite a while, chatting about art, travel, and my continued annoyance of how many tourist destinations in Europe don’t allow photography (I’ve determined that it’s all to force you to buy the books that they sell at the gift shops on way out, not about protecting the art / sculptures from the dangers of flash photography like they claim).

    After getting home, I got to try a beer I’d bought earlier today from the local grocery store to celebrate Oktoberfest, something from Bayern Brewing (oddly, from Missoula Montana) called Oktoberfest Lager, which wasn’t so much a lager as it was a dark, malty märzen style beer. But it was pretty tasty though.

  • Mash Tun, and Kelly the Chicken Eater

    Chicken, your days are numberedAfter one of those “why can’t things go my way?” work days, I went and got a haircut and met Kelly at Mash Tun for some beers.

    After that, we went to New Seasons to pick up some dinner. After Kelly’s post regarding her decision to start eating chicken again, we’d picked up a couple parmesan-breaded chicken breasts, figuring we could add some marinara sauce and cheese to make a delicious (and ‘low shock’) meal out of it. Kelly raved the whole way through the meal. It was both funny and odd, seeings how since we’d started dating she has been a vegetarian (well, kinda, as her post explains).

    Free-range, hormone-free chickens BEWARE! There’s another mouth to feed! 🙂

  • Shanghai’d again

    Tonight I met my brother Travis, and friends Eric M and Ghost Dog at the Shanghai Tunnel (yes, again) for some pool, grub, and beers after work. My kid bro Chad also showed up, as did Mrs. Ghost Dog and some of her friends later (picking up GD). Had a good time hanging out, though I was a feeling a bit slow, having been out until 1:30am the last night, running on almost 5 hours of sleep. I ended up eating the same noodle bowl I had the last night (yup, it’s that good), and had a Guinness or two too many before hopping the MAX -> bus -> home. Got home just after 11:30pm. So tired. So very, very tired.

  • The Tunnel, and Editors

    Editors at Berbati's Pan, September 19, 2007Tonight Kelly, Miranda and I went to see Editors play at Berbati’s Pan. We’d started out meeting next door at the Shanghai Tunnel for some drinks and dinner. Kelly and I met there at about 6pm. Miranda joined us shortly after. We had a great time chatting, and I had the delicious noodle bowl (veggies, chicken, and curry sauce) along with a few pints of Guinness. It wasn’t until we’d been there for a little bit when Miranda mentioned that the show didn’t start until 9:30… and there were two opening bands. Obviously this meant it was going to be a late night.

    We got into Berbati’s shortly after 9pm and decided not to stand around in the venue the whole time so went through to Berbati’s bar / restaurant area for a bit to sit down. We ended up missing the first opening act, Ra Ra Riot, but went in to catch the crazy, yet fun Biffy Clyro, a loud rock band from Scotland, the singer of whom Miranda commented looked like “a cross between Animal and Charles Manson“. Pretty fair description. They were really good, just not quite what I was expecting as an opening act for Editors.

    Editors came onstage at around 11:15pm, and put on a GREAT show. We’d seen them before last year at Dante’s, but this was a much better show. Not only was this show to support their fantastic second album An End Has A Start, so they had more material, but their stage presence had also grown. It was an awesome show.

  • Bro, Brew, & Bond… James Bond

    Last night my brother Travis and I got together at Moon & Sixpence for the first time in several weeks to chat over some beers and grub. It was a lot of fun hanging out with the bro again, and he’d loaded his iPod with dozens of photos of my nephew Henry which were pretty fun to flip through.

    Today SuperSweetCo released another version of the fancy product I’ve been working on, and ended another development cycle for for the next great version due out in three weeks. In the midst of the flurry of activity trying to get a lot of new changes in, I met several friends at a burger joint on Broadway called the Red Coach for a hamburger, fries, and a soda. Fun lunch, and a nice distraction from the hectic work day. At the end of the day, after scrambling to get one big improvement implemented, the team demo’d the new stuff, and then embarked on a helluva happy hour.

    Happy HourFor the past few months, during the ‘release week’ different groups or departments within the company have been “sponsoring” happy hours. It started with the engineering team, and has worked it’s way through support, sales, etc, until tonight which was the happy hour driven by the SuperSweetCo management. Each group has tried to top the previous one, and tonight was no exception, though there’s no doubt that the managers clearly outdid everything before it. The theme (each of these happy hours has had a theme of some sort) was James Bond. They dressed in tuxedos, had bartenders serving martinis, and hired a company to come in with blackjack, craps, and roulette tables. Everybody was given vouchers for chips to play with, and at a later point in the evening, people cashed in their chips for raffle tickets to win new iPod Nano’s and Shuffle’s. It was a blast.

    Afterward, I walked with Mr & Mrs L. to SC’s place in the Pearl before getting a taxi home. Overall a brilliant night out. Though I’m exhausted now, both from the work week, and the evening itself.

  • Fantastic photos

    Martin Klimas still life photographyI found this article from one of the design blogs I read regularly. A photographer named Martin Klimas has taken some amazing photos of clay figurines, the moment they shatter in to bits.

    From the interview: “I drop the figurine from the same height in complete darkness while the lens of the camera is open. When the figurine hits the ground, the sound triggers the lights to go off for a fraction of a second.”

    My favorites: 1, 2, 3, 4. And there are more at his website.

  • CircusTroubles

    Not sure what the heck I did, but sometime over the weekend, I managed to do something bad to circusgeek. This meant that anyone trying to reach the blog for the past couple days has either not been able to reach it at all, or it’s been insanely slow.

    Over the weekend, I did a number of things to the server, from trying to tweak the config files, to upgrading software (including upgrading my blog software, which, in case you haven’t noticed, includes some new sidebar items, like a tag cloud view of categories, a list of recent comments, and an inline login form). All of the blog upgrades I did yesterday. Most of the meatier server changes I did on Saturday. Of course, I was at home, connected directly to the server, so it wasn’t until last night while chatting with Snooks that I discovered that things weren’t working properly.

    I spent the past couple hours prodding at things, trying to figure out what was causing the slow connections to the server, only to finally try a reboot of the server. Magically, everything seems to be working normally again. I’m still not sure what was going on, the system wasn’t displaying any unusual behavior, but regardless, everything seems to be fine now (crosses fingers).

  • The week ends

    Hooray for short work weeks! Aside from continuing to tweak my home network & server setup, the week was pretty fun. I got to design and work on some pretty fun stuff for SuperSweetCo, and on Wednesday evening I (and some other neighborhood friends) visited Miranda & Brian at their new place. I had a great time hanging out in their yard, even if it meant we were keeping them from unpacking. 🙂

    Last night Kelly and I went to the Mash Tun for a pint and some grub. Had a nice time chatting and hanging out.

    This morning, however, I woke up feeling a bit wobbly in the stomach, so decided it best if I worked from home. That said, I managed to get a lot done and by the afternoon I felt fine. Not sure if it was the food at the Tun the previous night (which I doubt, since I’ve had their food many, many times) or the sickness that seems to be spreading around the office for the past week or two, but whatever, all I can say is that I’m no longer ill. Hooray!

    After the working hours, I grabbed a beer and moved from my home office to the back yard. I’m determined to make the most out of what’s left of the summer in my back yard, before it’s too late. I sat out and tinkered for a bit on the laptop, set out the sprinklers, and chatted with friends. A bit later, I got to IM’ing with a coworker who was going to dinner down the street from me (to the Concordia Ale House). While I had already decided to stay in for the night, it was nice to spend some time with my coworker/friend and his better half. After two pints of Hobgoblin and one pint of Terminal Gravity Extra Special Golden, I walked back home and chatted with Kelly a bit about her night at class, and her upcoming day.

    Oh, and in case you haven’t read it, Kelly posted about her trip to New York / Jersey last week. Read it, and be jealous (like I was). 🙂

  • Kelly’s home!

    Among mess I got myself into over the past few days, Kelly made it home safely on Monday from her trip to New York to visit some friends. She had a blast, and got to see a lot of cool stuff, which I’m sure she’ll blog about once she finishes going to interviews, working on papers for school, and working at her internship. No, she’s not busy at all!

    Also, in other news, our friends Miranda and Brian moved into their new house near to us, and over the past few days (today included) we’ve gone over to visit them. Glad to have more friends living in the neighborhood.