Posted in Culture, Seattle, tagged Agile, Corporate America, IT, modern culture, Seattle, software development on 04 Aug 2012| 8 Comments »
I’m going to say it. Kids today…
When I began working in IT, men wore ties to work. This wasn’t back in the Don Draper Days…this was only a couple of decades ago. The corporate culture was professional, dignified, and respectful. Not that I’m a fan of neckties—far from it—but they were an indicator of how we treated one another, and how we thought about ourselves. We were professionals, and we were adults.
Posted in Seattle, tagged Blue Angels, F-18, Hornet, Seafair, Seattle on 02 Aug 2012| Leave a Comment »
It’s that time of year again. It’s time for the caverns of downtown Seattle to rumble with the reverberated roar of afterburners.
Yep, Seafair 2012 is almost here, and the Blue Angels are practicing over Seattle. I know there are some people who complain, but frankly, I haven’t met any of them. Everyone I know finds any inconvenience created by the quintet of F/A-18 Hornets buzzing through our skies to be minor and totally, totally worth it.
Every year, during the break in Seafair’s hydro-races, there’s a air show and, for most of those years, the USN Blue Angels have been the headliner. But, like any good performing troupe, they have to rehearse, and that happens on the Thursday prior, so today, it’s like we’re at DefCon4. The skies are filled with contrails and the streets echo with the sound of sheer, unadulterated power.
If you’ve never been near one of these stupendous machines, here’s an example of what I mean.
A couple of years ago I left work and headed home at my regular time, 2:30pm (hey, I get in really early!). I got the bus stop just as the Blue Angels began their afternoon rehearsal. I saw one as it peeled off and zipped uptown. The jet was probably a mile away when the pilot turned away from me and hit the afterburner.
I felt it. I saw the fire of his exhaust and in my chest, I literally felt the power of that engine.
Sound and fury.
k
Posted in Food, Low Tech, Seattle, tagged brewing coffee, burr grinder, coffee, drip coffee, espresso, French press, low-tech solutions, Presso, Seattle, simplification on 24 Jul 2012| 4 Comments »
I live in Seattle, and we have a reputation for loving our coffee. I’m no different, however, I am not a purist by any means. I can’t tell if you brewed it with tap water or distilled water or filtered water or Artesian spring water, and unless your tap water is really awful, I bet you can’t either.
I have my favorite brands of coffee—Torrefazione Italia is the best I’ve had, but hard to find; Caffe D’arte is a close second, but not available in stores—but they’re so expensive that I only get them from a barista. For everyday brewing, I buy in bulk, try to get fair-trade beans of good quality, and grind it myself as needed in a good burr grinder.
But where I can make a huge difference is in the brewing.
I’ve tried almost every brewing method. I’ve tried brewing it cowboy-style in an open saucepan (toss in an eggshell to make the grounds sink), which I do not recommend, and for years we simply stuck with our standard drip-maker and a small Braun espresso machine.
On the more esoteric side, I’ve tried one of those vacuum-siphon brewers. Aside from the sheer coolness of watching it work, and the drama it imparts to the ritual cup of coffee, it only delivered a mildly better brew than standard drip coffee makers. High-maintenance to use, a bitch to clean, it also was so fragile that it broke after only a few days’ use; a disappointment, but not a tragedy, as I’d already made my decision that it wasn’t worth the trouble.
For pure outlandishness, I have also tried the Presso® espresso maker, which works solely on muscle power. A hand-pulled demitasse is pretty cool, and it cleans up pretty easily, too. It wasn’t expensive, and it’s very solidly built, so I’ll keep it around.
But, for the best cup of coffee you can brew, I say you can’t get better than the old-school, low-tech, tried-and-true method of the French press. We use a Freiling press (pictured top) that has double-sides of stainless steel, so it also acts as a thermal insulator, keeping the coffee warmer, longer. Put your burr grinder on “coarse” and brew up a cup. Steep it for 4 minutes (longer if you need a slice of coffee instead of a cup), keep the press on the table, and serve as needed. It is never bitter, never harsh. My wife, who gave up coffee because it upset her stomach, can drink it again, now that we brew it in the press.
Another win for low-tech!
k
Posted in Seattle, tagged cheap dates, entertainment, free, plays, Seattle, Shakespeare, theater on 18 Jul 2012| Leave a Comment »
Seattle peeps, it’s that time of year again.
The annual Shakespeare in the Park season is here, and there are some great, totally free performances for us to enjoy.
My personal favorite, “Twelfth Night,” along with “Taming of the Shrew,” “Henry VIII,” and “The Winter’s Tale” will all be performed, for free, in parks throughout the Seattle area. It is a great way to enjoy these plays, and both Greenstage and Wooden O promise some fun and entertaining interpretations and updates to these classics (“Shrew” in a trailer park? “Twelfth Night” on Gilligan’s Island?).
I can hardly wait!
k
Posted in Seattle, tagged crickets, fog, foghorns, Puget Sound, quiet living, seals, seashore, Seattle, simplification, sounds, trains on 17 Jul 2012| Leave a Comment »
Earlier, I waxed a little poetic about crickets and our lack of them here in Seattle. Anyone who’s read my novels might remember that crickets show up pretty regularly, there, and they will always be, for me, a comforting, blanket sound. “Blanket” sounds (in KRAG-speak) are sounds that fill the night air, but stay in the background; you don’t notice them until they’re gone. There are many other sounds that I find especially comforting and that, even when they wake me up in the middle of the night, immediately settle me back to sleep.
Foghorns are a big one. I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, where fog is a fact of life. Here, around the Puget Sound, it is similar. If you live anywhere near the shoreline, you quickly learn whence across the night water you can expect to see the blinking eye of a beacon and hear the comforting hoot of the horns. Foghorns ask their low, gentle questions across the Sound: Are you there? Can you hear me? Are you safe?
Trains, from a distance, evoke a similar mood. When we lived in Richmond Beach, closer to the shore, the coastline trains would sound their horns as they neared town. I always smile at their forlorn, two-toned call.
My favorite “blanket” sound, though, is one I’ve only experienced a few times in my life. Almost 30 years ago, my wife and I stayed in Anchor Bay, a small coastal town in Northern California. We stayed in a small cabin up on a bluff, overlooking the Pacific and a small rocky islet. On the shingled shore of that rock lay hundreds of seals, and they would bark all day and all night, their calls mixing with the rush of the surf to create a foundation of sound that waxed and waned with the strength of the ocean breeze. It took us two nights to become accustomed to this constant noise, but once we did, sleep was deep and satisfying.
I’m sure there are other sounds others find as relaxing as these. I would be interested in what your “blanket” sounds are…
k
Posted in Seattle, tagged meteorology, Seattle, weather on 13 Jul 2012| 2 Comments »
No, I’m not talking about some grunge-infused radical splinter sect. I’m talking about weathermen, in Seattle. Okay, okay…meteorologists in Seattle. (Doesn’t have the same ring to it, does it? Let’s go with “weather-peeps” instead, shall we?)
I am firmly convinced that Seattle is where they send weather-peeps that have misbehaved. Take, for example, the opening for this weekend’s forecast from the KOMO News weather page:
July weather in Western Washington is usually quite straightforward. Not so this weekend: Our weather the next several days will be quite complex.
What follows is a lengthy description of upper-level lows and low-level highs, with predictions of sun, clouds, rain, thunder, and lightning, unless of course you happen to be on the coast, where there will be lightning, thunder, rain, clouds, and sun. Seems to me, if the weather-peeps need to hedge their bets like this, they should just be honest and say:
If you want to know what the weather is going to do, look outside.
k
Posted in Low Tech, Seattle, tagged Clocks, crickets, Seattle, sleep on 03 Jul 2012| 1 Comment »
I was born in Northern California, and all my young life, I was lulled to sleep by sounds of the night.
In the spring, the tadpoles came into frog-hood and set up a chorus that filled the moonlit air. On mist-shrouded evenings, the foghorns mourned across San Rafael Bay. On trips to the coast, the darkness was awash with the rumble-rush of waves and the bark of seals. And always, everywhere, as soon as twilight settled in, crickets began to sing, each one weaving a thread into the tapestry of sound, one reedy note at a time, to blanket the night.
The sound of crickets, ubiquitous and constant, came to mean something to me. Unknowingly, cricketsong meant home, security, and peace.
Then I moved to Seattle.
For months after moving here, I felt uneasy, unsettled. Even after I got a permanent job, a spot in the regional orchestra, and moved into a cute bungalow in a quiet neighborhood, I felt…at odds with the place. It struck me one evening when I was out tending the garden. It was a bucolic scene: the light had moved from dusk into gloaming, the horses across the bridle trail that backed our yard munched contentedly at grass, and the scent of roses was thick after the day’s warmth.
And nothing made a sound. No frogs, no night-birds, not even a cricket.
Seattle, as it turns out, has no crickets. I’m guessing that this is due to the moisture and the lack of summer heat, but I don’t know. What I do know is that crickets will sing constantly through the evening unless you come near them. Thus, a night without cricketsong felt ominous, as if something was out there, lurking, silencing the crickets with its presence.
I got used to it, over time, learning to sleep well and find peace without cricket-aid. And then, last night, I replaced my electric alarm clock.
The Lux “Symphony” is a wonderful piece of Art Deco design from the 1930s and, after a good cleaning/oiling, mine now runs perfectly. Last night, I took my electric clock away and put the Lux on the nightstand.
Laying down to sleep, I felt suddenly younger. It wasn’t hard to pinpoint the source. The sound of the clock’s mechanism, the twice-per-second tick of the brass and steel escapement, made a quiet background noise that filled a void in my brain. The Lux had become, in essence, a mechanical cricket, and its constant, unerring heartbeat struck within me a chord long left silent. I slept well and woke refreshed; it may be coincidence, but something tells me otherwise.
Kurt R.A. Giambastiani 