My favorite photo from the Yellowstone trip – a flower lying in the spring water, above Yellow sulfurous stones!
Yellowstone Road Trip Day 1: Getting to Yellowstone and Ol’ Faithful
Dated: Saturday, May 27, 2006
Given how dead tired we all were after our 500 mile overnight drive, we woke up later than we should have and ended up leaving Missoula only at 11:30 or so. The drive through Montana was absolutely beautiful through green meadows, silken mountains and a long straight stretch along I-90. The weather was also a little worse today with the sun trying hard to peer through the low clouds.
We had a reservation for a cabin at the Howlin’ Mad Moon Resort outside of Cameron, Montana. We stopped at a small town named Ennis on the way where the waitress was shocked that people could survive without eating Meat.
We reached the cabin at 3 or 4pm (I was all confused by the timezone change and decided to stick to PST for all my time calculations from there on…), checked in, unloaded all our stuff into the cabin and headed out to Yellowstone.
(view from our cabin porch)
Our plan was to cover Old Faithful and, if possible, Yellowstone Lake today. Once we entered the park and headed over to the first set of geysers, the fountain pot.
Our drive within the park was punctuated with Bison sightings… while we were excited by the first few herds we saw, we soon got bored of seeing bison and longed to see some other, more exciting animal. The only other animal we say today were the mule deer which we affectionately referred to as the white-butt deer due to the color of its… posterior.
The geysers were totally out-of-the-world… like the Martian landscape you’d see in some cheesy science fiction movie. The whole area smelt of sulfur, but the view made it totally worth it. The weather sucked – the temperate was close to freezing and there were random bursts of rain and gusts of wind… in the end of May!
We reached Old Faithful at around 7pm CST and hung around at the Visitors center till its 8:10pm eruption. I came away rather unimpressed by the size of the eruption but the punctuality was definitely cool.
Yellowstone Road Trip Day 0: On to Missoula
Dated: Friday, May 26, 2006
Ambi, Nanda, Anusha, Deepti & I headed out today to spend our long weekend in Yellowstone National Park. Given that it’s a 770 mile trip, we tried to get a head start by leaving on Friday evening with the intention of getting to Missoula, Montana by around midnight and resuming the trip in the morning.
Nanda, Ambi & I headed over to downtown to pick up the mini-van we rented by around 4pm. Our original plan was to leave Seattle by 6-6:30, but we ended up leaving from my place only by around 8 since we had some stuff, and Deepti, to pick up. The weather out of Seattle was lousy with pouring rain all the way to Snoqualmie. We heaved a sign of collective relief as we crossed the north cascades into Eastern Washington and the rain gave way to clear night skies.
The drive on to Missoula through eastern Washington was smooth all the way into Spokane and we made good time. The folks who weren’t driving, i.e. everyone except me, watched ‘Saw’ on the mini-van’s DVD player while I cruised along at 80-85mph. (The ‘features’ in the mini-van – a Pontiac Montana – and the odd placement of controls on its dashboard probably merit an entire post of its own).
We stopped to grab a takeout dinner at a Subway in non-descript town on the way and crossed the state border into Idaho close to midnight. Somewhere along the way, Ambi took over the steering and I fell asleep in the backseat with a vague recollection of winding through the mountains roads of Idaho.
It was 3am or so by the time we reached Missoula and checked into our Hotel err… Inn. Thankfully, they had free WiFi.
Mount St Helens
Ethnic Restaurants and Pan Africa Market
The Seattle Metropolitan Magazine (which someone on the stranger forums describes as a ‘A little predictable and upper-wad stuffiness.’) just published a list of the best ethnic restaurants in the Seattle metro area. The list itself, and the inclusion of places like Udupi Palace in it, has been the topic of discussion in many a mailing list.
All of that aside, D & I – being the foodies that we are – decided to make it a point to visit each one of the restaurants in their list over the next few summer months. We started at the top, with the Afghan restaurant Bamiyan, but were unable to find it in spite of the fact that it’s somewhere in (the only) shopping area in Issaquah. Next on the list was the African restaurant ‘Pan Africa’. Given our plans of attending the Bollywood party at Baltic room on Saturday night, we decided to make it a downtown evening and head out to the Pan African Market in Pike Place.
So here’s my review:
Name: Pan Africa Market
Location: 1521 First Ave. Seattle, WA
Our Order: Beef Tibs, Chicken Yassa, Veggie Combo.
Pros:
1. Great Ethiopian Food – the beef & veggie combos were both excellent.
2. Warm, Cozy Ambience and a great location right on Pike & 1st.
3. Reasonably priced.
Cons:
1. The Chicken Yassa was… er…interesting. It wasn’t spicy like the regular African fare. It had more of a Mediterranean taste. We didn’t expect that.
2. The place was rather small – we were lucky to get there late enough to get seating, but I’d imagine that the place is packed on a regular evening.
We weren’t adventurous enough to try the Senegalese chicken dishes or the fish stews from Madagascar, but overall, the food was great and reasonably priced, the ambience was warm and cozy and you’re right on Pike. Definitely an ‘A’, will visit again.
Picture Perfect Day
No wireless. Worse controller than a Wii. $500. Lame !
So, I don't want my place in prognostication history like CmdrTaco did with
his famous predicament, but I still
get the feeling that the PS3 isn't all it's hyped up to be. Or maybe the
trouble is something else… it tries to be too many things to too many
people and this has sent the cost soaring through the roof.
Next-gen console +
WiFi +
BluRay player +
HDMI output +
Accelerometric-cum-gyroscopic controller +
60 GB hard drive +
On-line gaming +
Marketplace =
———————
$600.00 + tax + games + subscription
Hmmm… guess where I won't be the night of November 17th…Best Buy,
Bellevue.
More coverage at http://www.engadget.com/2006/05/08/sony-playstation-3-launch-details
Early ‘Computers’
Fosfor gadgets has a short but interesting article that compares gadgets from the ’70s & ’80s to today’s versions.
While they talk about mobile phones, stereos and storage devices, they’ve missed out on comparing yesterday’s computers to today’s.
So, here’s a 2006 Macbook Pro:
Compare that to the NACA human computers at work from 1949!
http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/Gallery/Photo/People/Small/E49-0053.jpg
Wiring my home
I spent a Sunday a couple of weeks back rewiring a couple of rooms at home with Cat 5 cabling. Mostly just moving the cables from one outlet to another.
Some things I learned…
1. Making ethernet patch cables is easy: Get bulk cable and use the wiring schema from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_5e and some of these linked sites:
* http://www.incentre.net/incentre/frame/ethernet.html
* http://www.ertyu.org/steven_nikkel/ethernetcables.html
2. Radio shack has cheap pushdown tools and RJ45 Ends. (less than $5 each)
3. Of all the places I looked at, Home Depot has the cheapest crimping tool – a $20 tool that includes a wire stripper.