<This post is cross-posted between my old blog at Windows Live Spaces, and my new one, at Averbuch.net>

With my transition to Averbuch.net, a few key settings will need to be updated on your end, depending on how you follow my postings.

1. If you just visit the web site: Change your bookmarks to point to http://averbuch.net
2. If you follow the RSS feed: Change (or add) http://averbuch.net/feed/ to your RSS reader
3. If you like receiving email when I post, click here to signup.
4. If you read my postings on Facebook, I already updated the link, so you have nothing to change here.

Please contact me if you have any questions about changing over or something doesn't work for you.

NOTE: I will no longer be posting at http://averbuch.spaces.live.com again; all new postings will go to http://averbuch.net only.

<This post is cross-posted between my old blog at Windows Live Spaces, and my new one, at Averbuch.net>

I've been thinking about moving off of Spaces for a while, for a couple of reasons:

1. More flexibility in hosting (i.e. stats tracking, plugins, etc...)
2. A lot more theme choices
3. I wanted to host fully on my domain name, http://averbuch.net, rather than just having it as a redirect.
4. Microsoft locks down a bunch of functionality in the name of security, but this significantly impacts my ability to explore and play with various technologies.
5. I wanted a server to do some exploration with Ruby on Rails.

During the President's Day holiday yesterday, I spent time exploring various hosting options, and ended up setting up a plan at http://hostingrails.com, which had the price I was looking for (including coupons), along with providing Ruby access, WordPress, ssh/shell access, and a bunch of other exploratory needs.

I've got the new site up, so I am going to switch everything over there; you'll just need to switch over once, but don't be surprised if I change the look and feel a bit over time as I explore various options and plugins.

My next post will describe how to get setup on the new server.

In a previous post, I mentioned ordering an historic photo of our house. (along with, of course, my posts on sketch drawings of the place.)

We finally got in the photograph of our house, from back in 1938 (and yes, it's got for-sale signs in the window - it sold for 800 bucks that year. Quite a bargain!)

It's amazing how similar they look (click for larger views)

And yes, that tree got much much taller, so for the angular view, it's pretty dominating right now. In addition, notice the deck that wraps around the house that was put in during the 1980s.

Greg mentioned us playing Careers this weekend, which has become Joelle and I's favorite board game of choice recently.

Basically, we both had played a bunch growing up, and were looking for a copy at a couple of board game stores nearby. Turns out, they no longer make it, so before we turned to EBay, we realized that Joelle's mother still had a 1958 edition in her linen closet; on her last trip out, she brought it over.

It's amazing the difference in the world view of 1958; the careers people strive for are:

• Politics
• Hollywood
• Uranium Prospecting
• Moon Expedition (including being able to be the first man on the moon)
• Big Business
• Farming

But, having read the Wikipedia article on the game, it's clear that the game only continued to get even more sexist over time; what were they thinking with this "For girls" version?:

The "careers" available to players of the game have changed over 50 years of new editions, reflecting changes in popular perceptions. For example, "Farming" became "Ecology" and "Uranium Prospecting" became "Computer Programming". In 1990 Parker released a new version "Careers for Girls", featuring careers such as "School Teacher", "Fashion Designer" and "Super Mom". The strategy aspects of the game were also greatly simplified. This is discussed in the BoardGameGeek discussion thread,"most condescending game ever".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Careers_%28board_game%29

Even more so when you read some of the strategy differences detailed in the first post in the BoardGameGeek thread:

So, like, in the original Careers, there are these "Experience" cards you can get. To use them, you play them instead of rolling the die. This lets you
control what space you go to instead of going to a random space, and adds a substantial amount of strategy to the game.
Well, they removed those in "Careers for Girls". Apparently girls can't handle strategy in games.
Also, in the original game, you got to decide on a secret distribution; this meant that everyone had their own customized goal, and it's not as easy to tell who is closer to winning.
Well, they removed that in "Careers for Girls." Apparently all girls should share the same goals.
Oh, and there are the actual careers. First off, there
are six instead of eight. Apparently girls don't have
as many career choices. Of the surviving careers:
"Politics" has become "Fashion Designer", because girls
shouldn't go into politics.
"The Arts" has become "Rock Star". I guess girls don't know what "The Arts" mean.
One of the careers is called "Animal Doctor".
Apparently girls wouldn't know the word "veternarian".
Oh, and "Astronaut" is now called "Super Mom"!

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/33357

While our version does have it's sexist moments, (get a pretty secretary, gain happiness points, for example), they do try and be a bit ungendered - for example, the square where you can marry a prince is written as prince(ss). Apparently, we were more evolved as a people in 1958 than in 1990. Who knew?

Joelle and I have been taking an Introduction to Islam class that the local Hillel (Jewish Student Center) has been offering.

As part of the class, we visited a local mosque last weekend with our instructor (a Master's student in Islamic Studies at U-W, who also happens to be a Shiite Muslim and a US Marine). He was supposed to meet us at 7:30, but still wasn't there at 7:50 or so.

At 7:53 he comes walking in, and apologizes, and tells the following story (paraphrased):

I'm so sorry! We drove to Kirkland, and were getting off 405, and all of a sudden I turned to my wife and realized: "We forgot the Jews!"

Which reminds me; I need to write up more about this class and visit later, but wanted to share that fun comment first...

(By the way, I have today off from work due to President's Day... hence the goal of getting a couple of blog posts in)

In my last post, I mentioned how nice it was for neighbors to get together and talk. There's actually been a few opportunities for this recently, and it's one of the main reasons why I am so ecstatic moving where we did:

1. The leaf-blower discussion
2. Breaking out the bbq due to the good weather last night (hint: if you make a dry rub mix, use a lot less salt than I did, especially on kosher/salted meat), our next door neighbor and his family came out to talk to us about the 'hood and the changeover once the weather changes.
3. Caucusing 2 weekends ago.

Caucusing (it was the first time either Joelle or I had participated), was something I was very much looking forward to (especially since the Washington Primary doesn't count at all for Democrats this go-round). While I am still not sure I buy the full premise of the caucus (it does seem to disenfranchise voters who work during those hours), I do have to argue in favor of them just for the mass community spirit it brings out in everyone.

What I liked:

1. We met at the middle school across the street from us (across the park across the street from us to be specific).
2. Walking over there, we were amazed - the line was down the street, around the block. Democrats were everywhere!
3. Turns out, about 8 different precincts voted in our same building, and it was actually really nice to see a bunch of people we knew already hanging out and waiting in line (and in some cases, registering voters and running their local precinct).
4. People were excited to argue politics.
5. Parents brought their kids to experience politics in action.

What I would have liked to see changed:

1. Our particular precinct wasn't particularly well run; others in the same room were having much better conversations and new what was going on.
2. No one there knew that the King County Convention had received a date change. I wish someone would have - both Joelle and I would have been delegates!

And for the record, our precinct was 69-16 in favor of Obama.

Joelle and I have been pretty lazy about cleaning up leaves that had fallen on our front lawn this past fall. To be fair: there's a couple of reasons for this:

1. Seattle's been very rainy this fall/winter, and who wants to rake in the rain?
2. I hate raking!

As yesterday turned into a gorgeous day outside (50 and sunny), we decided it was finally time to tackle the challenge.

So I pulled out the rake: 

But then quickly realized, I still hate raking! Especially with the piles of wet leaves, this seemed like an impossible task, and I felt liking I was digging up the grass in the yard with each rake-stroke.

But, as a technologist ought to, I decided there has to be a better solution - so decided to make a quick trip to Home Depot and purchase a new Toro Super Blower/Vac. Highly, highly recommended. Not only did it do a much better job than the manual work. Actually made us want to finish cleaning up all of the leaves.

A couple of nice points:

1. The blower was powerful enough to disrupt all of the piles of wet leaves and move them around.
2. The vacuum swooped it up nice and easy.
3. A nice neighbor lady stopped by to ask how well it was working; she was thinking of getting one. Anything that gets neighbors talking is a plus in my book.

And perhaps, even more importantly, it's fun to use :)

I just realized you can automatically import blog postings onto Facebook notes - so if you are on Facebook, all of these postings will be cross-posted on there, under the "Notes" category, as they are posted. Of course, they bulk-imported the first bunch once I got setup.

By the way, if you are on Facebook, and are not marked as my friend, feel free to add me; if I know you, I'll accept. If I don't, I'll ignore.... http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=694272115 

Steps to do this if you have a blog and are on Facebook - posting since it took me a while to figure this out:

1. Log in (duh!)
2. On the upper-left side, under applications, click more
3. Click "Notes"
4. On the right side, under "Notes Settings", click "Edit Import Settings"
5. Type in the RSS or ATOM feed of your blog, and check the "this is my blog" checkbox.
6. Click OK.
7. Confirm the preview matches your feed
8. You are good to go!

For the record, relating to my last post - I also drew up my vision of a house at http://drawahouse.com. Of course, I didn't read the instructions that this was actually supposed to be our house - just an image a of a house in general.

Plus, my artistic skills just aren't the same as Joelle's:

So, no reason to put this one on the fridge!

Many of my loyal readers have asked me for a picture of what our new house looks like.... Thankfully, Joelle finally took a good photo of our place!
Great job - this one goes on the fridge :)

(from http://www.drawahouse.com - not drawn to scale)

See if you can make out the:

1. Wrap around deck
2. Bench we put together
3. Our chimneys (preserved for legacy sake - we've since gotten rid of one of them - damn rains!)
4. bird feeder in front, including the cute little birdy :)
5. rocks and plants and stuff

Missing, of course, are the raccoons :)

I love when people having historic photos of their houses up as artwork, so I decided to search for the information on they got these (so we can have one too...)

http://www.raincityguide.com/2007/04/14/historic-photos-of-your-seattle-home/

has all of the info. Sending an email to them now.

Update, February 18, 2008: Pictures are now in (actually they came a while ago, but just posting today).

Happy New Year all!

Zillow.com recently started posting neighborhood demographic reviews  (based off of US Census data). Interesting reading through them for all of the places I've lived to see how they compare to the type of person I was at the time. Pretty close, for the most part; I guess it's true that people live by people like them.

In order:

• Oak Park, MI (very, very young) - http://www.zillow.com/real-estate/MI-Oak-Park-neighbors
• Southfield, MI  (lived until  high school) - http://www.zillow.com/real-estate/MI-Southfield-neighbors
• West Bloomfield, MI (high school) - http://www.zillow.com/real-estate/MI-West-Bloomfield-neighbors
• St. Louis, MO ("the college")  - http://www.zillow.com/real-estate/MO-Clayton-neighbors
• Redmond, WA ("the apartment") - http://www.zillow.com/real-estate/WA-Redmond-neighbors
• Downtown Seattle ("the steps") - http://www.zillow.com/real-estate/WA-Seattle/Downtown-neighbors
• Eastlake, Seattle ("the condo") - http://www.zillow.com/real-estate/WA-Seattle/Eastlake-neighbors
• Queen Anne, Seattle ("the house") - http://www.zillow.com/real-estate/WA-Seattle/West-Queen-Anne-neighbors

I'll use this to read through these more and come up with some uber-analysis in the future, but for now, seemed like it was a good way to save away the full links.

About time my brother is blogging. Although, it does make me realize that somewhere along the way, he became a much better writer than I did!

http://jarsenalofdemocracy.blogspot.com/

(this post was written while I was flying and will be posted once I get online later- actual written time, 7:25 PM, Dec 11)

I am no good at FreeCell. Never have been. My goal for the rest of the flight (or as long as the battery lasts) is to get better.

Solitaire, I can win that (on the PC) often enough. FreeCell - not at all. Is it even possible?

Frustrating. (Then again, I haven't played it in years; just remembered it even existed).

(this post was written while I was flying and will be posted once I get online later- actual written time, 7:06 PM, Dec 11)

Sitting in the middle seat on my flight back (we got to the airport early so we took middle seats through standby in exchange for getting home an hour early), I realized quite a few things bother me about flying these days, so might as well enumerate them:

1. Coach seats (at least on Alaska Airlines) has absolutely zero room for laptops. Seriously, it is so crowded to be typing on these things - the keyboard area is pushing into my stomach, the screen is folded over to be even able to fit, and the tray is at a very unergonomic height, so my arms don't feel so comfortable. If I were a common business traveler, perhaps a smaller laptop would help - I'll have to try bringing the work mac-book with me next time, as it's much smaller.
2. Whatever happened to dinner on planes? Especially when they fly from that key 6-9 pm hours. When exactly are you supposed to eat dinner if you need to board at 5:15 or so?
3. No two TSA people say the same thing - one says to put your boarding pass away, the other says "reminder: we need to see your boarding pass", the video playing says both at the same time! Plus, people take way, way too long taking their shoes on and off.
4. Middle seats suck!
5. Why don't all planes have that movable headrest so you can make your own personal sleeping area? It can't cost the airline more than 50 cents extra per seat once at airplane purchase time to put those in. Makes me want to fly Continental, the only airline I know of that has those.
6. The food in airports is just not good. Granted they have a captive audience, but couldn't someone come up with a decent, ubiquitous eating venue? Especially for vegetarians. McDonald's and/or an awful caesar's salad just don't cut it.
7. Finally, airlines - stop seating me next to talkers. Really. I am all about striking up random conversations with people in most situations. But there are two I want people to just shut up - airplanes and barbers (cut my hair, in and out, no need to find out my or your lifestory).

On a random note, I did run into the condo upstair's neighbor randomly at the airport. It has been a good week for my goal of running into people I know at places - 3 or 4 different people at the Seahawks game on Sunday (including Pure's CEO), and now this. Also found out 2 or 3 more people from high school have moved to Seattle, and I didn't even know about it - weird; I usually know these things.

(this post was written while I was flying and will be posted once I get online later- actual written time, 8:33 AM, Dec 11)

(And yes, this is a safe-for-work story even though it may not seem like it as it progresses)

After the last car-magical-starting experience, I thought I should drive the car around for a bit just to rebuild the battery up since I had probably drained the battery a bit by trying to start and stop it so much.

So driving up Highway 99, I made my way up to Shoreline, where I turned around, and decided to grab a latte before heading home.

I pull over into one of those drive-through stands, where you have the person in the booth serving you coffee.

As I pullup, but before I could place my order, I hear the barista-lady say to me: "Oh sorry!" as she pulls off her sweater, and leaves herself wearing a see-through white T-shirt and a flowery bra.  I say: "No problem", but am not really sure what the apology is for yet.

The next comment from her is one that I will remember forever: "Sorry - normally I am not wearing much of anything, but I've worked 6 straight days and was just tired today." I'll be honest - that's not something I've ever had a coffee barista apologize to me for.

Highly confused, I look around the rest of the booth, and notice pictures of scantilly clad women on the roof of the booth, and all of their specials have suggestive names. I order a generic latte, which Kate, as she informs me her name is, decorates with a sticker of lips on the opening in the cup, along with a sticker advertising the coffee shop on the side. I drive away, highly confused, but determined to lookup the store when I get home.

Turns out the http://www.thesweetspotcafe.com is part of a growing trend in Seattle of barista-babe coffee shops where they use sexual suggestion to sell coffee. Apparently, it does very well in repeat business (i.e. men coming by every morning), and pulling people away from Starbucks, getting press recognition from USA Today, Northwest Cable News, MSNBC, and Fox News. They also get a ton of inquisitive (men, I assume) people stopping by "just to check it out."

Fascinating (albeit strange) branding strategy - I wonder what the long term success rate will be. That said, the brand is highly, highly confusing when you are just an accidental drive-by customer. I somehow suspect I won't get too many waitresses apologizing for wearing too much clothing elsewhere in the future!

(this post was written while I was flying and will be posted once I get online later- actual written time, 8:03 AM, Dec 11)

Two stories about my car recently and interactions with AAA. They must think I am crazy.

1. My car is about 5 years old, and a few weeks ago, the car wouldn't start, though it was sitting at home. As neither Joelle nor I had jumper cables (we do now), I called AAA over. An hour later they show up, and car still wouldn't start. We waited another minute, and tried again - boom, it started. WHAAAT? Oh well, the AAA guy left on his merry way. (he did run a test and tell me I should probably replace the battery at some point soon, as it was at the end of it's lifetime, and CCA or something like that was getting very low).
2. So I replace the battery (myself even, though I did have the Parts Plus guy standing over my shoulder telling me what to do :) ), and all was fine until late last week, when the car wouldn't start again. Waiting until the weekend when I had time, Joelle and I couldn't get the car started ourselves, so off I go to call AAA over. He gets there, and tries quite a few diagnostic attempts, failing each time (though the lights did turn on, as did the air, there was no starting). Finally, he decides we'll need to tow it to the nearest service station. As he pulls out the towing gear, the guy gets in the car to get the car ready to push forward manually.

He immediately is able to start the car, as he yells - "Your car was still in drive. It won't start unless it's in park!" AAAHHH! - a) Why does my car let me pull the key out while it's in drive? I feel like that is just a little dangerous... and b) I feel really stupid.

Probably the same reason caused the magical healing for #1. Oh well. At least I know what the issue is. And I am sure AAA thinks I am crazy!

(this post was written while I was flying and will be posted once I get online later - actual written time, 7:35 AM, Dec 11)

Taking another business trip this morning (I am writing this at about 40,000 feet, but will upload later), and failing to fall asleep on the ride down, I spent some time looking around at how and what people read while sitting on the plane (and trying not to be invasive).

It's fairly interesting; there are some sleepers, lots of fiction books (though none I have ever heard of, save the ubiquitius Harry Potter readers - I mean seriously, haven't you read them all yet?), a few people on their PCs, and surprisingly, no magazine or newspaper readers.  I wonder how this would change for a flight at a different time of day - our flight did take off at 6:40 AM, after all. I'll have to look around again later this evening when we return back (and yes, this makes a very, very long day).

That last fact shocks me; especially, as I love to utilize flights as a good opportunitiy to catch up on periodicals that I then leave behind in the airport in hopes that it gives someone else to read.

What I've read so far on the plane (and granted we've only been flying for an hour or so - I do read fast, after all):

1. Alaska Airlines In-Flight Magazine
2. Finished my copy of the Economist from this week (I usually read this as a back-and-forth over a couple of bus rides to and from work, but still had 15 or so pages to go)
3. A few sections of the Seattle Times (that someone had left on their seat on the airport - THANKS!)
   1. Article that makes me happiest: Yeah for Northwest Airlines starting Seattle-London service; more traffic on the straight to Europe route should make us booking flights for going to Israel next year easier.
4. Money Magazine (just came yesterday - it's part of a series of magazines that Joelle and I signed up for since she had a pretty small amount of Delta Airlines miles that were going to expire unless we used them - not enough to get a flight, might as well get something for them)
   1. Hints to self - they mention looking at the Treasury Departments website to see if there are outstanding savings bonds in your name; I have never done this - I wonder if there are some that have been lost along the way.
   2. Hint #2 - look up charity's and their financial statements online. I've never spent time investigating these, since I usually just go with organizations I am involved with.
5. Seattle Jewish Transcript (and the Happy Hannukah insert) - By the way, the last issue and this one have had the first 2 of a 3-part series on Christian Evangelical movements and Jews (mostly focused on the so-called "Jews for Jesus") - a couple of thoughts:
   1. It is sort of surprising there hasn't been a letters to the editor backlash against the newspaper giving these organizations any press.
   2. I find it hilarious (and scary) to the effort that these groups go through to try and woo just one Jew. Seriously - why do they care so much?
   3. The articles are, in the end, quite fascinating. It's probably the most interesting read they've had in there in a long time, so I, for one, am glad they are printing them.

My other reading material for the ride back (though I may need to pick up another reading material as well) is a book the President of Kavana recommended, but I haven't gotten around to... hopefully it will take up the time it states, and thus, half of the flight: "The Ultimate Board Member's Book: A 1-hour Guide"

I wonder what my reading list says about me?