Fake News

Local Man, Happy With Job, Nonetheless Loses it at Work

Salt Lake City, UT, AP: “He just started alternating between singing pop goes the weasel and yelling angrily at his coffee cup to ‘stop being so condescending’.” Words spoken by a witness to the small mental breakdown that took place in a Salt Lake City engineering office this afternoon. The man, 25, was apparently attempting to work after returning from a vacation. “I love my job, I enjoy the people I work with, and I can honestly say I don’t know what caused this” said the man who apparently couldn’t hold it together, hours after being coaxed down from the top of his desk where he was pointing at the door, shouting “The outside is out there, I know it is!”.

Leading experts in the field of mind-loss point to the subject’s quick return to the workforce after a vacation filled with family, food, and beverage as the likely cause for the outburst. When asked for a closing remark, the subject, still hazy eyed, muttered some nonsense not worth reporting.

No one was hurt in the mind-loss, with the only injury coming to a keyboard which was found half-submerged in a toilet bowl. The keyboard refused to comment.

Note: this story is made up

Put the Oki in Okinawa

So, to say a lot has gone on since my last post would be a bigger understatement than saying Asange leaked a little information.

At the end of November 2010, Amy and I went on an adventure to Okinawa to see our good friends, Josh and Jenn. We had been planning on making this trip ever since Josh and Jenn left Klamath for Okinawa. Let me make my best attempt at summarizing the timeline of this crazy-awesome time. Take a breath before reading the following:

Last day at old job, finish packing for move to Salt Lake City, get on airplane bound for Okinawa Japan, fly/layover for 20hrs, arrive in Okinawa, have an absolutely incredible time (see slideshow), fly/layover for 18hrs, arrive in Portland, load Penske truck and clean rental home, start drive to SLC with intent of making it to Boise but only make it to La Grande due to road closures, make it the rest of the way to SLC, Unload Penske truck, start new job in SLC.

In case you were wondering, that covered about 18 days.

As for the new job, it has started out great! I have a large project for this next year and will be doing some travelling. I feel blessed to have a job like this in a down economy.

I had the full week before Christmas off so Amy and I drove from SLC to Merrill and Medford. As always, we had a great time with our family. It was very nice to see everyone and we got SPOILED with gifts!

My best friend got engaged over the holiday, and I will be his best man. I am thrilled for him, his wife-to-be is truly great and I am proud to be his best man. Best man means one major responsibility: The Bachelor Party. Don’t worry buddy, I am on it.

So, in the past each one of these life events would have been an entire post, but as you can see, I have been busy. I hope to get back to posting with something resembling consistency. If only there was a time coming up where it was customary to make resolutions…

Happy New Year!

Cheers to 2011, you have big shoes to fill!

SLC & Apple

Pretty big news for Amy and me: we are moving to Salt Lake City!

I accepted an engineering position in SLC with a company in mining and construction. Although I will miss everyone I worked with here in Vancouver and all the great friends we made up here, I am thrilled with the opportunity I have been presented in Utah!

Needless to say, Amy and I have been busy. Last weekend we did a quick trip (flying early Saturday and returning late Sunday) down to look for a place to live. We found a townhome we are very excited about in West Jordan.

One of the most appealing aspects of this new job is that I will be doing more mechanical design. Although I enjoy project management, which is what I have done exclusively for the past six months, I miss my original passion of machine design. The art of combining multiple disciplines into a functioning product was my motivation for starting this career, and it continues to get me to work every day. The field uses big equipment of course, which has always been my preference.

We have been very impressed with the Salt Lake area from our visits. It is very clean, has beautiful surroundings, and they actually have some good local beers (very important). West Jordan has a lot of new construction. We are excited to ski some of the area’s legendary snow!

We made sure to get a place that would allow us to welcome plenty of visitors, so come see us!

In unrelated news, I recently purchased an iMac. So far, I am very impressed! It was wicked easy to set up, and clearly very powerful. Ours has the i5 processor, which so far does not disappoint. This is my first Mac and it is too soon to say for sure, but I may be hooked.

Kool-Aid = Consumed

Next week, we visit Josh and Jenn in Okinawa!

Put it on Random, Dude!

Recently, I started a free trial of Rhapsody. So far, I have been pretty impressed. Those who know me know how eclectic my music taste can be. Rhapsody suits this tendency well, allowing me to build a queue that includes Outkast and My Morning Jacket. It also allows me to listen to artists that have piqued my interest, just not $10 or $15 worth. I will report back after a few months of paid service on whether or not it is a keeper. So far I have been discovered head and shoulder dancing twice in my cubicle thanks to the iPhone app. Thankfully my lack of rhythm is masked by my use of headphones. That’s right; they might just assume it is a song with ~1408 tempo changes.

Life has been full of softball lately. I am thankful for the leagues up here. It is great to be playing ball again. I have played short stop mostly, which has been a blast. Tourney time this weekend!

Amy and I went down to Klamath recently and visited my nephew. We had a great time! The trip was too short as always. Ty is growing so fast and looking great! Watch out future ladies in your aluminum-foil-esque dresses (this is how I imagine future ladies).

Work has been intense lately; I am starting to think that isn’t going to change any time soon. I am so intrigued by the way people work. We think of work as being a linear function. For example:

Figure 1 - Incorrect linear approximation of human work and time.

Figure 2 - Obnoxious morning person. Seriously person, I haven't even had a cup of coffee yet.

Figure 3 - My work/time function. Notice that it gets to the same point, but it involve ranges with slopes approaching infinity and others nearing zero. It even contains a range with a negative slope, once believed to be impossible. The JP T/W relationship might also describe afternoon feeling "I should just go home".

Figure 4 - We have all worked with this person.

I have been thinking about getting a Kindle. Anyone have any thoughts on the subject? Like it? Hate it? Don’t care? What is a Kindle? Where am I?

Real Wife - Fantasy Football

Amy and I celebrated our 4 year anniversary on August 26. I cannot believe it has been four years already. It is pretty amazing to look back on what we have done together and how much has changed in four years. One thing has not changed: I still cannot imagine life without her. Happy anniversary Famous!

So enough cheese for one day you say? OK, fine.

Fantasy football season is upon us folks. This year I am a member of three leagues. I am not sure how I am going to keep up with all three. Spreading my mediocrity over three leagues will likely render me the equivalent of the Cleveland Browns in all three leagues. Translation: you hate to play me, as I am so crappy you cannot improve your rep by beating me, but I can destroy your rep with a fluky big game.

How can I get better at fantasy football? Short of quitting my job and going all pale-skin internet addict cheetoh muncher, I have no idea. I do know I have to get over picking players I recognize the name of for my team. I used to be really into football, watching every Sunday and catching the same Sports Center two or three times in a weekend. I knew player’s stats and abilities intuitively based on excessive highlight watching. Time has caught up to me though. Turns out you should be careful with picking someone like Isaac Bruce… He is one of the top receivers in the game, if this was 1999.

Another concept I have to borrow from my friend Grant. When selecting a kicker, base your decision on one thing and one thing alone: The complexity of that kicker’s last name. The best kickers of all time have the most ridiculous and intricate surnames. So I will load up the bottom spot on the roster with as many consonants as possible.

Now I will put on my digital whistle, round up my virtual players, and head to the imaginary gridiron for another season of getting way too excited for mediocre achievements of mouse-clicking domination.

Summer Photos

In no particular order...

The wedding of Jake and Jen Bakker

Amy's feet at the beach we discovered close to our house

PGE Park

Cycle Oregon

Ruger and myself enjoying the Columbia

Ty!

Twitter

A familiar process:

1. Have No interest in a new technology

2. Judge others who are apparently addicted to new technology (ideally, this is the point where you make an outlandish claim that you will NEVER use this new technology)

3. Divert attention elsewhere when new technology is mentioned in pop culture

4. Get really bored one day

5. Sign up for new technology, under a smug pretense such as "I am just going to see what all THOSE people are talking about"

6. Enjoy new technology, and prepare to consume an expertly prepared crow

So follow me on Twitter! @japes1365

Cycle Oregon 2 - The Revenge of the Bike Seat

My second Cycle Oregon weekend was a minor success! I reached a level of physical preparedness on par with John Kruk reporting to spring training. Amy and I logged somewhere around 75 miles over the weekend. Not bad considering the serious lack of "saddle time" we had before the weekend. When I was younger, I struggled to understand when people said things like "I would love to, but I don't have the time". Now, I get it. With all the things I would like to do more of (or at all), it seems this statement defines reality. This is not a bad thing, but a fact with which we must live.

To say I was physically unprepared is actually not entirely correct. I was thankful for the workout schedule Amy and I have been pretty religious about. The problem, as any bike rider will sympathize with, was that I simply hadn't sat on my bike for that long in many months;meaning I lacked a certain type of preparation. [DISTURBING TERM AHEAD] My friends and I refer to the type of preparation as the "A$$ Callous". For the first few rides of the year your rear end will cause you to question your interest in the sport of bicycle ridery. After that, it gets better. Sometimes it stops ailing you all-together (every time I say that I think of "Airplane!" and a group of people repeating my sentence). There is no explainable reason for the pain going away, but the phenomena has been dubbed the "A$$ Callous".

Recap of day 1:

• Wow, this is beautiful
• Cool, a hill
• Nice, a pit stop
• Wow, this is beautiful
• Man, my wife is looking good
• Great, another pit stop
• Ouch, my rear
• Wow, this is pretty, but Ouch, my rear
• Alright!, all finished, lets drink a beer

Recap of Day 2:

• Ouch, my rear
• Optimism, this will probably go away soon
• OK, I can tough this out
• Calculating distance back to camp
• Yahoo, A$$ Callous achieved!
• Armstrong-ing this hill
• Amy is an animal, going over steep grades like speed-bumps
• Wow, this is beautiful country
• Success!, lets drink a beer and toast the trip!

The area around Monmouth is spectacular and the roads are so smooth. We will be back for more next year, hopefully somewhere new to us in Oregon!

Worky Worky

As I sat here in my office last night at 6:30pm, putting the cap on another 12 hour day, I was thankful that I enjoy engineering. I often talk to people who not only dislike their JOB, but also their WORK. This is what I was born to do: Build... From Lego bricks to structural steel, I have always loved creating things. Cheers to liking your work! (even for those who don't love their job)

Welcome Nephew

My nephew, Ty, was born July 3^rd in Klamath Falls! He was 8lbs 8oz and mom and baby are perfectly healthy! I am so thankful that he came on a weekend and I was able to drive down with Amy and see everyone, especially Ty! It was so hard to leave on Monday, but we will be back as often as possible…

When a new human comes along, it is a display of great potential and promise. It is a reminder of how beautiful it is to be truly objective, notion-less. Adults are called to think about what he could be. Me, I have one hope for him: That he will always be passionate.

Love will come to Ty easily, being surrounded as he will with caring people. He will be strong, courageous, compassionate, and courteous; a true man, as he will have in his company many true men. He will work, when the time comes, with great diligence as his family always has. All of these things and more will be passed on to him to supplement his built-in character by his parents and family. There is one thing, however, which he must learn on his own: passion!

The only constant element of greatness carried on from past generations is passion. The person’s personality deems their passion compass or rudder. Regardless, it is clear that from passion comes direction. The application of passion varies WILDLY. I am, for instance, passionate about family, engineering, music, and playing ball (to name a few). All are part of my greater passion for learning and living. Whatever his passion turns out to be, I know he will do great things and I am thankful to be a part of his life, wherever it goes!

Baseball Season and Travels

Baseball season is underway, and so begins the best time of the year. Vancouver weather is turning, weekend markets are opening, and people have already started wearing insufficient clothing (yes I am talking to you, guy whose shirt didn’t pass the belly test). It has been too long since my last blog post, but I am hoping to get back on track. Work has been very busy for me. Things are ramping up right now and the engineering department has been fighting to keep up. This is great, it just means I spend a lot more time at work and come home not wanting to look at a computer screen.

In Major League Baseball action, my Giants are on a terror and my Red Sox are making it possible for other teams to be on a terror. It seems the success of my favorite teams is inversely proportional. It is great to see San Francisco doing well though, the bay could use some success. Keep an eye on the Giants this year… the only thing they lack is depth in case of injury.

A lot has gone on since my last post. Amy and I visited family in Bellingham, WA for Easter (Glenn and Priya). We attended the farmer’s market up there and sampled some of the local IPA at lunch, along with some sweet potato fries. Good stuff on all counts. The highlight of the trip was being around little kids for Easter. Glenn and Priya have a 2.5 year old and a 7 month old. Also, we got to try some authentic Indian food as prepared by Priya. Delicious lamb curry was served to my delight.

We went home to Merrill for my sister’s baby shower. I still cannot believe that I will be an uncle soon, it is awesome! It was nice to be back and see everyone. I will always love the high desert and the weather was excellent. We visited with family and some great friends that we really miss up North. Shooting trap and some 0.22 blasting always hits the spot. It is so hard to come back to work after a weekend like that.

Amy and I are really enjoying Vancouver, realizing more and more how much we like it here. I have joined a softball league with games on Monday. We have joined a gym up here that we enjoy. Last weekend we went to Ester Shore Park in downtown Vancouver and spent some time perusing the farmer’s market. If you are in town on a Saturday or Sunday you should definitely check this out. The food vendors are diverse and the local products are really high quality. It doesn’t have quite the variety of the Portland Saturday Market, but it has its own flavor. I tried paella at the farmer’s market in Vancouver and I have become a fan!

We have recently met the neighbors up here in the Couve. We were hanging out one night and saw them outside (two sets of neighbors) drinking something in red cups. I, knowing that red cups are the universal sign of good times and never contain non-mischievous liquid, went over to introduce them to my wife and me. We immediately hit it off with them and proceeded to drink McNaughton (yeah, that’s right, just like old times) and BS. It is certainly nice to know people close to you. We really enjoy our neighborhood.

I hope to get back to regularly posting again. I miss blogging and realize that I need to take time, no matter how busy work and life become.

The Gym

I maintain that there is more awkward accidental eye contact at the gym than anywhere else. Someone feel free to tell me of a place that trumps...

Watch Your Unit(s)

Warning: Ranting and Sarcasm Ahead

As a kid I wondered why anyone would want to switch to the metric system. What is a meter anyway? A foot is easy to visualize; most of us have two after all. Now that I make my living doing, amongst other things, heat transfer and thermo calculations I have grown to love the metric system. I wonder how many engineers there are who run all their calculations in metric and convert the answer to English units like I do. I don’t have time to figure out whether I need to divide/multiply my answer by 32.2 or what a ft*lbforce is in BTU (This one, incidentally, is a breeze to remember, 778.1693 ft*lbforce/BTU).

Some units on my poo-list are: slugs, lbmass, BTU/hr, and inH2O just to name a few

I wouldn’t be surprised if English units for power can be properly reported as campfires/fortnight. Does my lack of love for English units mean I am not patriotic? NO. It means I am sick of using a unit system that is less user friendly than photo-editing in DOS. Sure, the first time I ordered a meter-long at subway might be a little embarrassing, but we would all be figuring out the new system together (and possibly sharing a sandwich).

Building to Maintaining

Please note that I am in no way an expert in, well, anything. These are just my observations from watching the news and talking with friends in the engineering field. Also, these items do not reflect the opinions of any company I do currently work or have worked for in the past. Also, I am not an economist or an accountant, just an engineer.

When I graduated from college, the economy was already starting to slip. One of the first things to get cut from a lot of bloated corporate budgets was capital (project) spending. A lot of companies changed their policy on project paybacks down to fractions of a year for full payback. This cut down the engineering workload for these companies to where, in some cases, layoffs were necessary. This has resulted in an unrecoverable loss of industry knowledge for many companies.

In the past, engineering has been so tightly bound to project work that this loss of jobs and, as a result, knowledge would always be tied to a decrease in project funding. I don’t know what the experts would say, but to me it seems like the tough times are the WORSE times to lose your experts. A lot of company structures however, are not flexible enough to reallocate this knowledge in times of minimal capital spending.

The reason, in my opinion, that a lot of corporations cannot reallocate their knowledge is simple: for the past half century they have been in a “building” life cycle. When things are good and you are building capacity there is a certain momentum that can carry a company through small dips in revenue. What is different now? A lot…

Customers are smarter now. They are also bigger. The days of selling to small distributors or direct are dead for a lot of companies. If you make widgets, ten other companies do too and they are all trying to get Boxmart’s business, just like you. Oh yeah, and Boxmart has one person, Dr. Widget, dedicated to buying widgets. This person, as a result, is a widget nerd. He will compare your product to everything on the market and pick it apart with an expert eye. This is not the same person who came into the local hardware store and picked the cheapest widget off the shelf. Now you have to convince Dr. Widget that you deserve to even be on his shelf. So, when things are slow, what does this mean for Dr. Widget? It means he has even more time to shop around. In slow times, you need your experts there to refine your widget so Boxmart decides you are the widget that sits on their shelf.

This is not a matter of building capacity (maybe it leads to that) but rather maintaining your product line. A company must look at all its processes and control its quality. It must get better at what it “does” and not dedicate all its time looking at what it “could do”. This is, believe it or not, a new thing for a lot of companies. Bean counters call this type of spending overhead, operating costs, probably a lot other things. I call it “Maintenance”. It is fundamentally different from capital costs, or “Building”. A lot of engineering firms/divisions within these companies are literally set up to be paid out of capital funding only, meaning they are handcuffed when the company might need them the most! A lot of companies are willing to fork over plenty of operating costs even in a tough time like right now. It makes sense to me to roll some of the expertise into this cost group to save a company’s knowledge base!

I am thankful to have been employed by two great companies since graduating. Many of the engineers I know, all quite bright, have not been so lucky. A lot of America’s best are sidelined right now due to an old-school, inflexible engineering/accounting approach. They can get by for a while that way, but pretty soon I fear a company who has embraced a company “maintenance” mentality will have all of Boxmarts shelf space. Hopefully for the sake of our economy and well-being, that company has a “Made in USA” sticker on the bottom of its widgets.

The Hood

Saturday I helped a co-worker move into a new place. I really enjoyed the day as I got to see some new parts of the region. The country outside of Washougal is beautiful, especially up on the hill with jaw dropping views of Mt. Hood. My co-worker moved to a small town in the Northeast Vancouver area, which was really cool too. Being a newbie to the area it was refreshing to get out of town and see the beautiful surrounding area. After moving, we enjoyed steak, brew, and BS which is a combination of quality you would be troubled to surpass.


We went on a small day trip Sunday to Multnomah Falls and Hood River. We met up with our friends Kacy and Jennifer for the hike to the top of the falls. We also were all able to take our dogs, which is always nice. The hike was really pleasant, paved all the way to the top with plenty of switchbacks with some area to stop, turn around, and take in the Columbia River.


A few pics of the falls.

After we finished the hike and got back to the cars, we hit 84 East towards Hood River. By this time, the dogs needed a toilet break so we pulled into the waterfront park on the Columbia. This small park has a really cool swimming beach we will have to try out when the water temperature creeps somewhere above “arctic summer”.

Hood River is a really cool little town, with an interesting layout and great vistas. As enjoyable as the town is to look at, I was there for one reason: Full Sail Brewery. Their pale remains my favorite pale ale, so I was pumped to check the place out. It did not disappoint! We arrived twenty minutes before the tour was supposed to start, plenty of time to go through a sampler tray. The tray was full of treats, but the biggest surprise is their dark lager, Session. This is a fantastic dark lager they are apparently struggling to keep up on production. They aren’t even kegging this beer yet and it is winning medals all over the world. If you get a chance to try this stuff, check it out.

Great Motto!

The tour was very high quality. The tour guide was funny, informative, and very interactive. He covered all the basics and really drew the crowd in. Full Sail is a cool company. The 47 employees mentioned on all of their merchandise represent the 47 employees who bought the company to make it employee owned. They actually have somewhere around 80 employees now and are hiring more in March as they tool up to make more Session. The facility was in tiptop shape, with high quality manual equipment and minimal automation. They still hand craft all of their brew, which is crazy when you see the throughput they require.


The restaurant also exceeded expectations. Everyone enjoyed their meal, and my beer battered halibut sandwich was so good when paired with some of their restaurant exclusive porter my waistline is thankful we do not live closer.


We keep trying new things up here, and the Portland area keeps on delivering. We are lucky to live in a place like this!

Coastal Tidings

Amy and I took a short trip to Newport Oregon this last weekend where we met up with my parents. Our hotel allowed dogs, so we brought Ruger and Riley along with us. This was the first time we had taken dogs with us to a hotel, and as we are weird dog people now, we really enjoyed that. The weather was great, a real rarity for the Oregon coast. With only a few shots of that famous coastal rain and a large share of sunshine, we were able to enjoy quality views of the rugged coast line. The dogs enjoyed the sand and let their humans enjoy some sweet barley nectar.

Speaking of barley nectar, you didn’t think I would go to Newport without visiting one of the world’s top breweries, did you? Well, I didn’t miss this opportunity. We toured the Rogue brewery on Sunday. The tour wasn’t the greatest, pretty quick and dirty, but I guess not everyone in the group was an engineer wanting to climb in to tanks and discuss their material handling. The beer we bought from their store however, was top shelf. My mom bought a Mom hefeweizen, dad bought some John John beer aged in a bourbon barrel, and I had some of their mocha porter as well as some Double Dead Guy Ale. I think I might have succeeded in turning my parents into beer snobs! Well, they have at least passed “Intro to Brew Snobbery”.

Touring Rogue brewery made me think a little bit about engineering philosophy. This brewery was not high tech, using a lot of repurposed equipment and in some cases insulating tanks with non-clad foam. The plant layout appeared to have been given little thought. Despite all of this, they produce some of the finest, award-winningest beer around. This focus on product quality is something I think some of the biggest companies have lost. Product quality is your public face, and regardless of how good you are at making a bad product it is still a bad product. Now, couple this quality with solid manufacturing technique and you really have something.

Another stop on our trip was the Oregon Coast Aquarium. Being the nerd that I am, I was uber-stoked to walk amongst some of the strange creatures of the ocean. This is the closest I will ever get to these animals though. SCUBA is not for me, something that is reinforced with every episode of Shark Week and every visit to an aquarium. You can tell me odds all day for getting attacked/bothered by a sea creature, but I prefer land. Humans swimming was obviously a design afterthought, added at the last minute. Probably at the last human design review someone said “oh, and we should probably give them some way to get back into the boats they will build” with the lead designer saying something along the lines of “web their hands a little bit and call it good”. The best among us, Michael Phelps, would become a nice treat for a fat, full, and lazy shark.

Engineering seems to be integrating more with architecture at a crazy pace. Lately it has been a hot topic here at work. Has anyone else in the field experienced this? BIM, Integrated Project Delivery, AIC, other three letter acronyms. Anyone digging into this stuff? I wonder…

Cycle Oregon 2010

Cycle Oregon Weekend ride location has been announced!

Cycle Oregon Weekend

The routes are shown below:


Looking forward to another great time! Bill, I can help you develop a wine budget if you want; just let me know.

Ms. Alaynious

Well here at Engineering, Film, Music, Books, and Brew it has mostly been engineering and a little film for the past month. I am enjoying my new job and I am thankful to be in an environment that is pushing me to learn new things and practice a little outside of the usual for me. Most of my experience over the past five+ years has been in machine design. Granted, I have ventured into some process design and evaluation, but the majority of my work has been in machine design and automation. For my new position, that is just part of the job. In my first few months I have done heat transfer, building ventilation and temperature control, Air duct sizing for pressure drop at elevated temperatures, thermal expansion analysis, AISC Structural Design, and more. It has been a nerd’s delight. A career in engineering, it would seem, is anything but predictable.

Vancouver/PDX area has been great for Amy and me. We have enjoyed downtown Portland on the weekends, hitting the Pearl for some brew and dining at some killer spots. We went to a great brewpub in East Portland called Hopworks, which has arguably the best black IPA around. For some reason, all I want to drink now is IPA. Maybe it’s just is a phase.

There is a theater in Vancouver, Cinetopia, which has theaters for adults only (wow, that sounds really bad. It is adults only because they serve alcohol there… perverts). This place is awesome! The chairs are comfortable, the screens are the latest and greatest, they have ottomans to put your feet up, and a pretty good beer selection. My favorite feature though, is the theater is 21 and over. I realize and embrace the fact that I am turning into a crotchety elder (I am 25 this coming week after all), but the theater was not filled with people texting and whispering to one another. There was, of course, the staple “Johnny Commentary” as I call people with brilliant in-movie color commentary such as: That was funny, Oh no!, Did you see that?, Oh jeeze!, etc. The length of the cord connecting their brain to the mouth must be short and filterless.

Beer at a theater seems out of place (well it does when it is not snuck in), but it is awesome! Rather spendy though, I didn’t think they could sell something that makes theater popcorn seem like a bargain; they pulled it off.

Movie Reviews:
Amy and I watch a ton of movies, especially lately. The more movies we watch, the crappier most of them seem. It has made it something special when a good one comes along. This last month, we watched two memorable movies: Up in the Air and 500 Days of Summer. When reading below, bear in mind that I am NOT a movie critic; just wanted to mention these.

Up in the Air was a great find. We ended up seeing this in the theater simply because it was playing at the right time and was in a 21+ theater. This is the best acting I have ever seen from George Clooney. I liked him in Burn after Reading, but this performance trumped. Basic story is a middle-aged man, portrayed by George, is a professional hatchet-man flying about the country firing people for companies lacking stomach for the task. This part of the story lands because of the economic sitch, but it is just part of the stories framework. Clooney’s character is a professional business traveler, and is written so perfectly I could not help but think of the three people I know who behave the same way. With these people it’s all about flyer miles, knowing which airline to fly with, which airport to fly into, which rewards program you are on, etc. This is spot on stuff. The story is excellent and I won’t go into detail in case you want to see it. I recommend this movie.

500 Days of Summer: I had no idea what to expect when I got this movie in the mail. Amy had wisely moved it to the top of our queue, and I sat down to watch it with no idea what it was about. This movie is a keeper. It doesn’t ever feel predictable or formulaic. If you feel like watching something entertaining that will draw you in, check this one out. The leading man, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, should be a star. I really liked the writing, sort of bizarre and doesn’t cram romantic garbage down your throat.

We went to Bend last weekend and visited G-man. Good time had by all. What did we do? Not a whole lot; and it ruled. Movies, beer, food, repeat. (Order varies)

New category for EFMBB is titled OOK, short for Oregon Outside of Klamath.
OOK:

The Costco up here had tables full of designer jeans. I found this hilarious.

In downtown Portland, you either need to ride an awesome new bike or the crappiest, most bizarre bike you can find. The middle ground is unacceptable.

If you do not wear a funny hat in downtown Portland, you do yourself, in fact, look funny.

Hope all is well with everyone. We miss you all (well, most of you (you know who you are)).