The main reason I ever setup a blog was to have a place to share photos with family across large distances. As a consequence, I usually don't have much to say here that would be news to any of my regular readers. What is new occasionally are photos I've taken recently and want to share. For me, photos are my real stream of content. The blog and whole website here are really just a framework to support delivering that content.

In the past, I've looked at a variety of photo hosting sites. Some cost money, some are free but limit uploads, some better integrate with my iPhoto library than others, some are prettier than other, etc. Fact is I don't like any of them. I'm going to be playing with this site and ultimately may just shut it down and replace it with some other photo gallery somewhere. Lucky for me, I hear there's a .mac update coming soon...

In the meantime, check out the new page in the Photos section called "iPhone Pics". It's a .mac gallery that is intriguing because now that I take casual photos with my iPhone I can also upload directly to that page from my camera wirelessly, wherever I am (yes, I know this is somewhat possibly with other galleries). For me, this is the killer app because it establishes a direct link between my content stream (photos) and my audience (family mostly).

Last weekend, without much planning, Susan & I strolled into a car dealership just to find out what my options were on ending my SmartBuy (lease) with my Grand Prix. Three test drives and eight (!!) hours later we had two new cars! And we realized that we're both young and don't have kids yet so rather than get practical cars, we left with a two door hardtop convertible (it is actually sunny in the summer here...) with little trunk space and a red 400HP muscle car with an even smaller trunk and a manual transmission (which I just learned how to drive). Oh, to be young!


You can check out my photos here.

Susan put some more up here.

Actually this is snow day #2 for me. A crazy snowstorm hit the Puget Sound Monday night (Nov 27) and caused all sorts of havoc. It took Susan and me about 6 hours to get home. And many people had it much worse!

When we got to the base of Cougar Mountain (where we live), we discovered our 3/4 mile long climb up the mountain was coated in ice and impassable. So we (along with 50 or more of our neighbors) decided to abandon our vehicle there and hike the rest of the way. That sucked. There's a cute photo I'll put up once I get a copy of it.

I've been working from home remotely but Susan only had yesterday off from school. However, I'd expect the freezing rain / snow expected tonight will probably close stuff down again tomorrow.

Check out the snowstorm pics!

I've made some fairly obvious changes to the appearance of this site. Hope you like them! In addition to the new look, I've also added a "Links" section. If you'd like to be in there but aren't, just drop me a line!

I apologize for the drought of updates lately, but when you're busy at work, come home tired and just don't have much to say, it's easy to neglect this.

Our cats have really grown! Harmony is now 7 pounds and Melody is 8! They're both doing great and still love laying on our laps just as much as ever. Next time I post photos of something, I'll try to remember to throw in a couple new ones of our girls. In other news, Susan has started her fall quarter at school and seems to like her new classes. She's taking a golf class which makes me very excited since that means we'll probably get to play together soon.

I bought a new battery for my laptop. I'm doing the calibration cycle right now actually. My old one was starting to really not last very long between charges (like 30 minutes down from about 3 1/2 hours originally). Oh well, at least it didn't explode...

Work is going well. I moved into a new office with about 25 extra square feet. The downside, of course, is that I got an office mate to share it with. He's cool though so it's not so bad. Too bad his name is also Jonathan! Annual reviews are over now and I came out pretty happy. While I'm thinking of it, I should plug my team's new blog, Mac Mojo. It's pretty cool, has a team of bloggers from a variety of positions and shows a lot of promise for customer interaction.

Lastly, if you've ever visited this site before and didn't leave a comment, please leave one! I'm really curious who some of my unidentified visitors are!!

-jonathan

My car just had approx. $2,000 worth of repairs yesterday. $1,300 of which was under warranty. But I'm not complaining, since the warranty is going to expire in 4 days or another 450 miles (which ever comes first...)! I actually feel really lucky to have dodged an even bigger bullet.

So what else makes this an "exciting week"? Well, i just updated for the 2nd time. BAM!

Well well well, look who's back...

Here's a summary since last time:

-- The kittens have doubled in weight to 4 pounds. They're still super cute. And now have names: Melody (formerly "Blue") and Harmony (formerly "Pink").
-- Susan is now back in school! She's taking summer classes at Bellevue Community College for now.
-- We took a fun trip to Portland and Mt. St. Helens with some friends from work.
-- It actually has warmed up here enough to go swimming!
-- Work is going well, I'm making progress on all sorts of stuff that i'm not supposed to talk about
-- I got my own office at work! And partly by accident, i have 2 sets of furniture. So I have a standing bookshelf, a hanging bookshelf, a cork board, and white board, and 4 desks all to myself. So I actually have a 10 foot long stretch of desk now...
-- We made some new friends! Our neighbors directly below us are actually pretty cool. So we hang out. Fun times.
-- We did some more exploring. Snoqualmie Falls was beautiful.
-- We spent 2 hours trying to get fireworks. But we got some finally. Fun times on the 4th of July!

In other news, congrats to my brother-in-law Daniel! He's getting his PhD in Biochemistry this week.

Lastly, here are some recent pictures for your amusement. Enjoy!

-jonathan

P.S. I'm reworking the website some. Minor changes mostly, things like reverse sorting the photo pages, etc...

Ever since we got married, Susan and I have known we wanted to get a cat. Now that we finally have space and money for a cat it seemed like the perfect time to start looking. Last weekend we found the cutest kittens ever at a local cat rescue in Kirkland. Needless to say, it was love at first sight.

These two are sisters and the shelter wouldn't let you adopt them seperately. Which frankly I think is fine, they're a lot happier having each other to play with. They were born in February and they really get along well. They've been doing really good adjusting to their new home and haven't had any problems eating / drinking / pooping / peeing. They don't have names yet (other than "Pink" and "Blue", like their collars) mainly because we want to come up with some really cute "couple" names that work as a pair. Like "Ping" and "Pong" only not stupid...

Check out some cute pictures here!

Wow, it's been a while. But at least I've been busy...

We are now officially moved into our new apartment in Issaquah, WA! You can check out some photos here! As you can see we bought some new toys. The tv was kind of my reward for getting an awesome job. As a birthday gift, Susan let me get it earlier than we had previously agreed on. She knows how to make me happy

Speaking of things that make me happy, we now have a DVR. That means that our cable box automatically records television shows we told it we like. So when we feel like watching tv we just watch a show we like that's already been recorded. And we skip over the commercials. That rocks.

In other news, Aaron (as in groomsman Aaron) was up here interviewing on Monday so we're all hoping he gets an offer! It'd be really awesome to have another IPRO 305 buddy up here. Regardless, it was nice to visit and catch up with Aaron.

Now that we're all settled in, things have calmed down and I'll try to post more regularly. I'm tired. Goodnight for now.

Last Friday we moved into our new home in Issaquah, WA. We've been amazingly busy the last few days unpacking over 70 boxes! The real problem is we had to keep all the boxes and packing material which will be picked up tomorrow. In order to manage the onslaught of boxes and paper we've spent hours upon hours folding paper to compress it and crushing boxes.

Things are coming along nicely now and it's looking more like a home and less like a warehouse. I really love it here - we have huge windows looking out into the forrest. 50 feet from our window there is a creek running through the woods. I enjoy falling asleep with the window open listening to it. It's very peaceful.

Once everything gets put together I'll post some pics!

We move in 8 days! For anybody who cares, here's the floor-plan to our new apartment. That's right, note the 2 walk-in closets!


(You can see a bigger image here.)

Well we're online at McDonald's again so I'll make this brief...

We passed on that awesome townhouse in favor of an more awesome place down the road. We signed the lease today!

Working for Microsoft is like being a freakin' King. (btw, i work in King County....hmm coincidence???) Example? The apartment complex is giving us essentially a $2235 discount just because I work at Microsoft.

So here's a crapload of unsorted pics of the new place and the area around it. The captions were typed quickly!! Enjoy!

Well, if it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

When we got to temp housing we plugged in our cable modem and everything magically worked! Sadly Friday evening, somebody (probably at Comcast) decided we shouldn't be online anymore. Now I don't mind paying, but they want $100 for a non-refundable hookup fee and $45 for a non-transferrable month of internet. And we're only planning on being here for another 2 weeks. Kinda crappy.

So how am I posting? Ah the joy of McDonalds. In addition to providing cheap cholesterol to our society, they are now also providing FREE WIFI INTERNET!! (At least McDonalds in Kirkland, WA)

We're apartment shopping today. Yesterday we found an AMAZING townhouse about 15 miles from work. This place is on the side of a mountain and has a view of the entire area. That includes snow-capped mountains, a huge lake and sunsets over the mountains every night. The view alone is worth the price. Oh yes, it has approx. DOUBLE the square footage of our previous place as well...

Tomorrow I start work, so stay tuned!

We're here....!

And after only 6 hours on a crowded, very hot airplane... what fun! Seriously though, you can't complain too much when everything was pretty much free. Of course when we arrived in Seattle it was raining. And even though this is my fourth time here, we instantly hit the worst traffic I'd seen yet. So much for a warm welcome...

Well after navigating our way to Redmond, we entered the secret code and found our keys. Then we drove to another apartment complex where I only had to turn the car around 4 times to get where we wanted to go. Finally we found our new (temporary) home. And you'll notice we spent little time finding a way online! You can check out some pictures here (or just use the menu on the left) of our pack, move, and temp housing.

Today we're gonna go make a major grocery run and then do some exploring. And we already have dinner plans with some friends tonight. Rock on! I'll keep you posted!

P.S. More comments = more posts...

I quit my job on Friday.  So I’d say it’s pretty official.  Here’s our schedule for the move:

FRIDAY:
- Quit my job
 
SUNDAY:
- Pick up rental car at Airport
 
MONDAY:
- Wash car
- My car gets picked up and shipped
- Pack our carry-on bags
 
TUESDAY:
 - Movers come pack our stuff.  Awesome!!
 - Check into a local hotel
 
WEDNESDAY:
 - Movers come load our stuff.  Super Awesome!!
 - Turn in our keys!
 
THURSDAY:
 - Check out of local hotel
 - Return rental car
 - Fly to Seattle!!
 - Get rental car
 - Check into temporary housing
 
Pretty sweet deal if I do say so myself!!  See ya on the other coast!

After weeks of planning to see things (and weeks of crappy weather / sleeping in / procrastinating) we finally got around to being tourists this last weekend.  We took the PATH train to the World Trade Center site.  That was crazy because the train actually goes through the wreckage and you’re looking out the window at the supports for two massive buildings that used to be there.  Its very eerie.
 
We also took a LONG walk down the Wall Street (yes, that Wall Street!) to the lower Eastside so we could check out the Brooklyn Bridge.  And man was it awesome.  The sky was so beautiful!  Then we walked around SOHO and explored the greatest city on Earth.  And that was just Saturday!
 
Susan and I decided the most appropriate place to begin our Westward Journey was Ellis Island.  Like so many before us, we passed through this famous gateway yesterday and had an awesome experience!  Unfortunately we were kind of rushed but both enjoyed the history around us.  We took a nerdy tour but it gave a good sense of what immigrating through Ellis Island was really like and it was pretty interesting.
 
Lastly, we knew we couldn’t leave New York City without paying The Statue of Liberty a visit.  I think the pictures speak for themselves.  Check out the whole weekend here!