Santa-con pictures
Here were some (well, actually about 300) photos taken at the start of the event: http://www.streetlampphoto.com/santacon07/
“Oh no. Here comes Santa Clause…”
This weekend was the annual Drunken Santa Rampage (aka SantaCon). It is put on by the Portland Cacophony society (who also do a city-wide pillow fights, bridezilla rampages, mad-hatter croquet parties with bowling balls in the park, etc). SantaCon is performed in other cities (I think SF was first), but Portland’s has been going strong for at least 10 years now. SantaCon is hundreds of folks that dress in Santa costumes then go on a 12-14 hour bender. They wander around town hitting dive bars around downtown. Yes – that’s right 12-14 straight HOURS. They start on Saturday at noon and go all afternoon/night/next morning.
It is decidedly not kid-friendly. Oh boy is it not kid friendly. I caught sight of the revelers around 9pm in my neighborhood (image 100’s of people dressed like Santa – both men and women) staggering down the streets and bouncing off street signs and newspaper vending boxes. Many folks carrying the requisite bad-Santa ‘brown paper bag with unknown bottle inside’ while singing modified versions of your favorite camp songs with key phrases interchanged with anatomical and reproductive references. There is even a printable PDF songbook on the site with such hits as “I’m dreaming of a White Russian” and that’s about the only one I could put on a public website (they are not safe for work reading).
Most of them seemed to be out for a night of some genuine fun, but there were some seriously sloshed folks in the crowd and debauchery of about every nature was definitely encouraged. Another friend of mine saw them later that night in the seedy part of town and mentioned that he saw Santas everywhere and in the worse possible shapes: passed out in alleyways, barfing in streets, and staggering in/out of bars and, shall we say, visiting “clothing optional dancers” clubs as far as the eye could see. I was hoping to get some pictures of this sad street parade but my 5D is in the shop getting a tune-up and cleaning after the fall shooting binge. It’s probably better I didn’t in hind-sight.
Ah Portland, you do keep the festive spirits bright.
More Santa references:
On the bright note, I-5 got opened up again this weekend. Now we can get between Seattle and Portland again without an extra 2-3 hour detour. Lots of truck drivers got hosed as their companies wouldn’t pay the extra mileage, so they were stuck waiting till it opened. Coast is still a bit of a mess, but cleanup is coming along and all the roads are open – and most utilities are all back. It was dubbed the “HoHo Blow” of 07 by one local radio station.
Not so bad…
Today of all things, it is sunny, 56 degrees, and warm. A beautiful day really – which is so different than yesterday. Most folks got out unscathed here at work save some falling limbs, cleaning up the yard from blown around debris, fixing an item or two blown down and shingles blown loose. The coast got the worst of it. But we’re looking at several good days of nice weather, and cleanup is already going faster because of that.
I-5 is still closed but the tree cutting along the major roadways is going well. As long as you aren’t trying to get to/from the coast you should do well. The flooding will take longer to clean up, and it’s definitely not so pretty. Vernonia is just 10 miles from here and it’s swamped. A lot of the little streams are flooded, and have taken over some of the smaller towns in OR and WA. I recommend going to Katu news and checking out the video/picture clips for first-hand looks.
It’s weird to see places you just drove without a problem days before covered in water…
100 mph winds at the coast
Over the last few days, Oregon has been getting pounded by a huge storm. That’s something of an understatement actually.
All the major interstates in and around Portland were closed at some point today, and some are still closed. Every single route out to the Oregon coast is closed due to flooding, mudslides, wind damaged trees falling across the roads, etc. As I write this, there isn’t a way out to the coast for hundreds of miles in either direction north or south. Everyone out at the coast was basically trapped without power. Could be days before it gets sorted out. Portland saw street flooding where sewers backed up, but things have been surprisingly ok (but sure windy and wet).
Here’s a few interesting tidbits:
- Train service north of Portland was shut down due to a landslide – there is no train route from CA to Canada until it’s cleared.
- I-5, the interstate between Seattle and Portland, may be closed for days due to the interstate being flooded
- The world’s largest Sitka spruce bit the big one today – after surviving over 700 years of storms
- Ocean buoys have been breaking from their mourings in 40 foot swells. Now as seawater gets to their batteries they fill with hydrogen gas and pose an explosion hazard
- Winds were clocked at over 100 mph at the coast, inland they’re much less – but it’s blowing all day.
- Road closures all over the place as streets and highways get flooded over, cleared, then flood somewhere else…
- We got about 4-5 inches of rain today in Portland, they got 10-15 in the cascade mountains between us and the coast
Overall, however, things are not doing bad here in Portland. We’re all still going to work and getting stuff done. Most things are open and we’ve had power all day. Should be an interesting week…
Marriage…mawwage is what bwings us here towday…
Visiting priest took the masses for this weekend at the Cathedral. Had a different style, but I loved the bit he did on marriage. I’m paraphrasing a bit, but he captured a lot of what goes on in our own minds/homes….
And marriage is hard too – it’s a lot of work. At some point we say, “Someone’s got to make the decisions. Someone needs to be in charge! Someone’s got to take initiative around here!” And then we do until we forget the other person. Christ is with each one of us all the time – and loves the something truly unique in us just as what is He loves the particular uniqueness of each other person in the world. Each one of us differently and in our differences. But *we* often forget to stop and see what it is Christ sees in them, just as he sees something beautiful in us. We get all wrapped up in what needs to be done, or what we want, and forget to take the time to discover and love that expression of Christ in our spouse. And then we forget to forgive them as Christ forgives and loves us. And we forget to offer forgiveness and support as we want that forgiveness and support from God. It’s all too easy.
This is how I’ve felt about marriage for a long time. I feel bad for folks that just wander into marriage – even more worried for those that don’t have a real Christian understanding of marriage (that includes a lot of Christians too by the way). Marriage is the monastery in which one joyfully/willingly enters to die to themselves. It’s the relationship in which you realize the Christian ideal that life isn’t about you any more. Hopefully, you see this before you decide to say “I do” and enter into that understanding/living willingly. Hopefully too, you find someone else to give that too that feels the same way! Sadly, even in the Christian community, most probably do not. To the Christian, marriage is the place and time and maturity where they are ready to stop living for/about themselves and can die to self in the ‘safe place’ of reciprocating love of another. This isn’t about being a floor-mat for another person – it’s about finding another that wishes the same thing for you. It requires two mature adults that have their stuff together. They need to be able to maturely call “schenanigans” on each others behavior when it’s selfish, they need to be able to challenge and support each other as equals. One can’t do this if they don’t have their own issues worked out. If both of you are looking out for the two of you, then the other, then themselves (in that order) you’ll find the real tranformative power of marriage.
That’s why having kids is so intimately linked to marriage for the Christian. If there was ever anything that teaches you life isn’t about what you want anymore, it’s having kids. Children are an extension and expansion of this self-giving. If one isn’t mature enough to be married, one is likely not mature enough to have kids – and vice versa. Yes, parenthood is often thrust on people due to poor choices, but the folks I know in those situations said they sure grew up a lot as soon as their kid was born. Often via a painful moment of ‘Come to Jesus’/realization about the way their lives are now going to go – very differently than they expected. So, hopefully, marriage is the place where children are welcomed into the world witnessing/seeing this kind of self-giving love between their parents.
Auditory illusions
This is amazing – simply amazing. You need to use headphones for it to work best, but it’s unbelievable how realistic it is. I had a nice set of headphones and it’s so convincing that I found myself totally convinced of the sounds around me – and kept subconsciously looking around for the guys talking. 🙂
Try the virtual haircut for a good sample.
“So….what do you do?”
My previous posts indicated that I took a new job recently – and there is now enough stuff out in the wild I can at least point to it. Here’s what the top 2 hits from Google will give you:
arsTechnica on the Larrabee project diagram
arsTechnica description of the Larrabee project
And most recently, Pat Gelsinger talks about Larrabee
Framed
I just got my photo of the Japanese Gardens printed and framed. I went and got a 24×20 print made on photo paper by a local high-quality printer who did a good job with the proofs and tweaking it for large prints. I then went over to a frame-it-yourself joint and got it put on foam-core, double-matted, and then framed. All said and done it was about $175 (framing being the majority of the cost), but it came out great.
Here’s a shot of it hanging on my wall. And least you think it’s not too big, I was using my wide-angle lens and that’s a Dell 2407 24″ screen to the side:
They think I can probably go as big as 30×24 without digital artifacts – which is huge.
If you think you might like a print (frame/unframed) let me know as now that I have the digital matte file saved with them, they can do further 24×20 (not exact dimensions) prints for a reasonable amount. Going up to 30×24 pushes it quickly to about $100/print (no frame) so just email me if you’re thinking about it, but the 24×20’s are very reasonable. Batch jobs are cheaper – so just email and if a group wants to go for prints, I’ll see what the rates are.
This one came out so good that I’m probably going to do a couple of my other photos.
Great day for hard drives
Finally.
After years of buying hard drives that say 400gb, but format out to 372.529gb, Seagate lost a class-action suit that accused hard drive manufacturers of using misleading statements about the capacity of their hard drives. Hard drives have traditionally used 1,000,000,000 (1 billion) bytes for 1 gigabyte, but everyone else uses 1,073,741,824 bytes = 1 gigabyte. The difference comes from using the next power of 2 (2^30 = 1 gigabyte) vs actual byte count (1 billion bytes = 1 gigabyte). All other computer components (i.e. memory) use the power of 2 notation; looks like HD manufacturers will need to start doing that now too.
But the good part is that you can cash in (or at least help the lawyers cash in). Go to this online form and fill it out if you’ve bought a hard drive before January 1, 2006.
DJ Justice Hit Portland – and I was there
About 2-3 weeks ago, I went to the sold-out DJ Justice concert on a Thursday night. A friend tipped me off on the tickets going on sale and I got like the 125th ticket for $15 (he actually got ticket #1) – which then apparently sold out in record time. The set got started about 11pm and I just about left about 1:30am when they were finishing up. Then, off to work the next day. Thankfully I’d gone home to bed right after work so it wasn’t too bad.
It was a good concert, but those midnight weekday midnights are hard to do. Probably why this was the first one I’d been to in almost a year. Still, they are famous for the song D.A.N.C.E. Turns out there were a few folks there with video/sound going. Here’s two clips from the actual event:
DJ Justice does the song DANCE @ holocene Portland
http://youtube.com/watch?v=bido5jzhUS0
DJ Justice @ holocene (as shot by my buddy on his little Canon camera. He didn’t know he was taking video while dancing – so just listen, don’t watch and it wasn’t him trying to be artistic)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=TvQLqPAPbDU
(hehe, I forgot they’d used the bit from Metallica at the end)