Although you can certainly view all the pictures from the gallery on my blog, in a very small number of cases where the picture caption is particularly long, they may get cut off (due, I believe, to a small technical issue with Shadowbox JS). Also, due to another technical issue (maybe kPicasa Gallery?), videos don’t seem to be working through the gallery (there are only 4 or so, so not a substantial amount). If you want the full, unadulterated viewing experience–i.e., no captions ever clipped, and videos–you can view the album at my Picasa Web Albums page.

The Dominican Republic was both fun and beautiful, all wrapped into one happy holiday tropical package, and punctuated with Cindy’s and Andre’s touching and dazzling wedding ceremony. Although things got off to a wet start, by the time the ceremony started, the clouds had parted, the sun was shining, and they were getting married under the most beautiful and remarkable rainbow I’ve ever seen. It was simply perfect. Congratulations to the both of you!

As for my experience in the Dominican Republic, since I won’t be going into excruciating detail right now (my creative juices have been flowing all night and I’m getting close to empty) I’ll just say that I think I squeezed in a good amount of leisure time and typical tropical resort activities–and yes, I don’t think those categories are necessarily the same thing! I spent lots of time lounging on the beach (with waters bluer than I’ve ever seen in my life), kickin’ it by the pool, getting a massage, lounging in the sauna, and enjoying the bottomless supply of food and alcohol. I also went snorkeling for the first time, hit the tennis courts, ran across the beach a la Baywatch style (for some distance, at least) and partied it up at night, all while coping with a mild case of news withdrawal (I suspect the lack of a meaningful supply of newspapers in the resort was an intentional decision). The resort was just beautiful; picturesque, spacious, loaded to the brim with all sorts of restaurants, activities and clubs; pretty much everything you’d expect from a resort.

All in all, it was a great and much-needed tropical vacation. So, now when I’m looking at those ads for tropical vacations in the back of the airline magazines, I can say, “been there, done that.”

And man it’s nice to have Internet again!

There is an amazing assortment of digital music players on the market, and I have to confess that at times I’ve been a bit overwhelmed by all the choices. Chosing the right digital music player can be a bit of a process, and you probably don’t want to venture forth into this journey without a guide, or at the very least a sherpa. Anythingbutipod.com has helped a lot, and has a great compare feature, although I think there are some bugs in it. Anyway, for a while, I was intrigued by Microsoft’s oft-touted Zune–the wireless syncing feature seemed like a nice upgrade–but had to nix that idea after discovering it doesn’t even support Ogg Vorbis, my preffered audio compression format and the format in which the majority of my digital music library resides. Ultimately, I decided that it was pointless to find a new brand when I was so happy with iRiver. I’m very very close to settling on the iRiver LPlayer, pictured at right. It’s got all the features of my current player, with some added enhancements of course (auto FM tuning, wow–yes, I still want, and use a lot, the FM tuner on my player, to get all the NPR nuggets of knowledge that I can squeeze into the day), lots more size, and has very modest dimensions, something that is coming a bit of a de facto requirement for my electronic gadget purchases. The LPlayer also uses the nifty D-link navigation method – basically, you use the frame of the player to navigate menus and select options, which seems innovative to me. If it weren’t for all the new iRiver players that have been announced for CES 2009 this year… I would’ve gotten this player already.

In other news, I’ll be out of town for a while attending a wedding in the Domincan Republican. Oh yeah. This will be my first trip to a tropical island resort ever, and the first real vacation I’ve taken since I started working (that is to say, the first time that I’ve ever taken more than 2 consecutive days off of work for purely personal reasons). Needless to say, I am eagerly anticipating this trip. The camera is already charged, so pictures should be abound for this trip. And of course, while I’m enjoying the sun in tropical weathers, Seattle should be having its own personal time with temperatures in the upper 20s and snow showers. That’s fantastic.

Other random items of note: Charlie Wilson’s War is a very entertaining movie (although for some reason I keep referring to it as Charlie Gibson’s War…) and I was nearly speechless today when I was all set to pay $18 for a new version of Ryan Farish’s album Everlasting at the local CD store (yes, occassionaly I still buy CDs… mostly when Amazon doesn’t have an mp3 version available and I need to load up on my music before I set out on long international flights) and then I happened upon a used–yet pristine version–of the exact same album for $10. Sounds good to me!

By the way, you should all go see Slumdog Millionaire. What a great movie.

As a Chicago native, this was a great opportunity for me to get out and explore the state I now consider my home and also check off a few items on the great to-do list. A few of the more notable items:

Eastern Washington is… East of the Cascades. I often tell people I’ve never visited Spokane or Eastern Washington in general, and that I should try to do so one of these days. Although this almost always prompted a string of disclaimers that there’s really not much to see or experience in Eastern Washington (with the exception of Aplets & Cotlets) people would eventually agree that I should travel East of the Cascades at least once. Well, I’ve now done it! And I saw lots of rolling hills in the process. And grain fields. And long stretches of highway. And nothing. But I’ve done it! Hell, I even spent a night in Ellensburg, and spent some time driving around the city of Ritzville (which, let me tell you, is anything but…) Is there anything I didn’t do on this trip?

College football is fun. I went to a college whose greatest claim to sports fame was probably its fencing team. Needless to say, it was pretty darn impressive to watch a college football game between two D1 schools. What’s more, this was my first college football game ever. Yeah, I need to get out more. Given the level of excitement that surrounded this game (somewhat infamously referred to on ESPN as the “Crapple Cup”) I can only imagine what it must be like to go to a BCS bowl game, or pretty much any game involving LSU. Or any college football team with at least one win.

Traversing the Columbia. It’s the longest river in Washington State, it provides the backdrop to one of the premier and most scenic concert locations in North America, and it’s the star of the state’s folk song–it’s the Columbia River! Actually, it was a pretty fleeting moment when I saw the river, and we basically just drove over it and that was it. But I saw it. And it was pretty.

The “other” state university. I visited, for my first and probably last time, WSU’s campus in Pullman. I think I can now say I understand a little better the rivalry between the Huskies and the Cougars.

So that’s a small hit list of cool takeaways from my trip to the Apple Cup. If you’re interested, pictures are posted in the Gallery, complete with mildly intelligent captions. All in all, I have to say I had a blast on this trip; good times, good company, and good puns (that is, they weren’t too pedestrian).

On a completely unrelated note, there’s a great new Top 10 Video Game Themes Video at Gametrailers.com that you should check out. As the name suggests, this video takes on the formidable task of attempting to rank the top 10 best video game themes of all time. I won’t lie, video games were a big part of my childhood, so I get a lot of enjoyment out of sites like these, especially when they’re focused on the 8-bit/16-bit era, which I believe was, hands down, the golden era of video gaming. Sure, kids these days can get their super-graphics intensive, 7.1 dolby digital sound, full motion video, 10-way wireless rumble pack fix from Playstation and Xbox360, but I remain firmly convinced that nothing comes close to the video game fanaticism of the late 80′s through late 90′s. That’s when the video game industry produced all the gems that we still revere to this day: Super Mario Brothers, Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy, Metroid; you name the classic and chances are it was conceived during this period. And who doesn’t love the Nintendo/Genesis rivalry from this era? All of that was my childhood, and I have very fond memories of it all. And for what it’s worth, I think there are quite a few notable omissions from the video (Castlevania, most prominently) but to each his own!

And on a final random note, the Seahawks’ season this year has unfortunately been nothing short of disastrous. But, given the depth of their injuries, I guess you really can’t blame them. I do feel for Mike Holmgren though, who most assuredly does not deserve to finish out his coaching career like this. But, on a much happier sports note, at least the Red Sox will NOT be going to the World Series! Huzzah!

The gallery is … kind of up and running. There are apparently some stylesheet issues, but for the most part, it’s there, and it works. So woopie.

Had some friends in town last week. We managed to pack quite a few activities in, both in and out of the city. I’d never even been to a few of these places! I think the trip went quite well – sounds as though everyone had a good time. Joanne has some pics and a nice summary of the trip on her blog.

Today at Greenlake I saw a gentleman wearing a banner that said “Spanish lessons.” That’s an interesting way to advertise.

I discovered an interesting website/blog that collects information on Conjure One-esque electronic/ambient/chill out music. It’s called Celestial Voices. I discovered it after recently purchasing Worlds Apart, the new album by Blue Stone. Of course, it made its way onto my iRiver immediately (encoded with Ogg Vorbis Lancer aoTuV R1, no less).

Chicago, we’ll see you in the playoffs.

Anyway, it’s time for some updates. First, I’ve (finally) uploaded pictures from the Star Trek convention I went to about a month ago. Head on over to the gallery to check them out (note: the album is limited to registered users).

Second, I was in L.A. a couple weeks ago for my cousin’s birthday. I snapped a lot of pictures that I’m … sure I’ll be uploading in due course (which, as you can see from above, probably translates to about a month late… but better late than never!)

Finally, I attended my first Airline convention yesterday! It was at the Museum of Flight, and I added a couple models to the collection – a Thai A340-600, and a United Airlines Cargo DC-10-30. My United collection is now up to 58 pieces. It may be time to upload some pictures soon.

Well, I’m spent.