Urban Craft Uprising recap

Every time I go to a street fair or art fair I get a bunch of great business cards from the merchants & crafts people, expecting to blog about it... and then never do. Today I'm rectifying that with a recap of my two (yes, two!) days spent at Urban Craft Uprising this weekend!

Well, maybe not a recap. More like a shopping list for the future. :-) I got a lot of great Christmas gifts from the vendors, but of course there's always so much more you want to buy than you can really justify. Happily, there were a ton of people at Urban Craft Uprising and it was really great to see so many supporting our local artists and craftsters!! It almost makes one optimistic about making a living in the handmade business.

I did most of my shopping on Saturday, but was so impressed with the vendors that I came back early on Sunday to wait in line for a swag bag. My two hours in the cold ended up being well worth it.

Here are some of the vendors that most caught my eye:

• Imps & Monsters (Justin Hillgrove)
  Very cute & unique prints & paintings. A lot of his work has a dark or lonely quality to it, but then you'll find one that you can't help but smile at. I may or may not have gotten a few of these as Christmas presents. :-)
• Texture
  Comfy, classic, casual-chic clothing made in Bellingham. After ooh-ing and aah-ing over the booth on Saturday, I went back on Sunday and got this irresistible skirt. Their palazzo pants looked pretty cozy, too.
• Belle Epoch
  OMG feathers! This was another booth that I drooled over on Saturday and came back to on Sunday. They collect molted feathers from fowl and make them into rockin' jewelry and hair accessories. From long & dramatic to irresistibly iridescent, their stuff is eye catching in every form.
• Queen Bee
  Everyone I know was drooling over her baby-soft faux leather bags and their beautiful embroidery. I was lucky enough to get this adorable coin purse in the swag bag I got on Sunday (squee!). When I went over to thank her I think she giggled at how excited I was. :-)
• The Sprinkle Factory
  Jewelry that looks like CANDY! This stuff was seriously adorable and looked good enough to eat. They have all manner of rings, necklaces, clips, charms, etc. that look like cookies, cakes, lollipops, sushi, donuts, and more. I got my mom a cute necklace that I think her kids will like (she teaches at an elementary school).
• Foamy Wader
  Delicate, sophisticated gemstone jewelry. I got a koi necklace here for someone who hopefully doesn't read this blog. :-P
• Jewels Curnow
  I liked these folks' gemstone rings, and had an interesting chat with Robbie. This full lotus ring was one of my favorites. They also had these cool rings where the stone is set off to the side so it looks like it's sitting between your fingers.
• Mermaid Empire (Rachel Rader)
  Rachel makes these great little flowers out of polymer clay—her earrings & brooches in particular grabbed me. I love her use of color—she stacks three or four gradations of color together to create a lot of depth in such small objects. I love combination of solid colors so this was right up my alley.
• Bella Sisters
  Painfully adorable jackets. They take thrift store jackets & vests and make them into new, stylish, you'd-never-recognize-it fashion items by adding felt appliqués, lace, bustles, embroidery, and awesomeness. I didn't even look at the prices because I knew it would only make me sad... it was all lovely and oh-so-hip.
• Slow Loris
  Screen printed clothing of all colors & shapes. This rockin' polo shirt dress caught my eye immediately. I'm not really into the bicycles, though, so I discovered that the base garment (minus the screen printing) is on sale for $17 right now...

Sooooo now you know what to get me for my birthday (you've got two weeks!). ;-)

Another round of fresh meat

Looks like it's that time of year again: Rat City held their mid-season tryouts this past weekend, and PFM rocked all rounds of the tryouts, ending up with nine members recruited onto Rat City:

• Throttle Rockets
  Sirius Mischief
  StarStruck
• Grave Danger
  Jody
  Jocelyn 4 Position
  Piston Vinegar
• Sockit Wenches
  Anna S
  Caddie Smack
  Trouble Loves Mimi
• DLF
  Drea the Slaya

We also have several alumnae in Jet City Booty Camp right now, and their tryouts are tonight. Good luck, ladies!!

Caucus or primary?

Since the Iowa caucuses kicked off the candidate selection process for the 2008 presidential election, I've learned way more than I ever knew previously about our country's electoral processes.

Historically, my political involvement has consisted of voting in the presidential election and calling it a day. I've never felt strongly about a candidate (big surprise: the only elections I've been legal to vote in were the Gore and Kerry elections. Or should I say, the Bush and Bush elections. And while I felt strongly about Kerry in that he was the-guy-who-wasn't-Bush, he certainly didn't stir my socks in his own right). The Democratic nominee always seemed like a foregone conclusion, so I never bothered learning about all this primary/caucus hoopla. Also, in 2004 I wasn't completely hooked on NPR yet, so I wasn't being inundated with daily stories about candidate selection.

But this year I'm both excited, and irrevocably glued to public radio. So after hearing this highly informative story about the Washington candidate selection process, I decided I should go caucus for the first time in my life.

Let me back up a little and explain the caucus/primary thing for those of you too impatient to listen to that clip. A primary is a ballot-based election just like most elections you're probably used to. You go to your polling place, get in the private booth, tick the little box by your candidate of choice, and you're done. Fast, private, and you can even vote by mail if, like Washington, your state allows that option. A caucus, on the other hand, is when voters get together and indicate their candidate preference in person. It's like voting with your body instead of by ballot. You can see how many people are voting for each candidate and you can see who they are, which means you can argue with each other and try to get people to switch sides. More coming soon on what actually goes on at a caucus.

So here's the deal with Washington: the Republican party holds both a primary and a caucus. They use the results from both to decide how to apportion their WA delegates. The Democratic party also holds both a primary and a caucus, but after everyone's taken the time to vote, they throw away the primary results and only use the caucus results to apportion delegates.

What?!? So what's the point of the primary? The chair of the WA Democratic party said, "The primary will be basically a fairly expensive $10M public opinion survey," and if you want your vote to count for more than entertainment value, you have to show up at the caucus. Which is why Nick and I attended.

So can someone explain to me what on earth the value is of having a primary that doesn't count for anything? In particular, I thought the Democratic party was all about promoting equality, and representing and enfranchising a wide variety of voters. Requiring you to show up in person at 1:00pm on a Saturday in order for your vote to count totally disenfranchises anyone who doesn't have a 9-5 Monday-Friday job. And guess what: that's way more likely to be lower-income voters. So all the upper-middle-class cubicle jockeys get to show up at the Saturday caucus and hobnob with their upper-middle-class neighbors, while the rest of their precinct is serving burgers and cleaning those folks' cubicles? That just doesn't seem right. Add to this the fact that it's not exactly common knowledge that the primary doesn't count (that's fairly non-intuitive, right? I generally assume that if an election is held, it's so that people can vote on something and those votes can be used to determine the outcome of the election. I don't generally feel compelled to read the fine print to find out whether my vote will be thrown away afterward). Holding a primary seems both pointless and misleading, and the fact that lower-income voters are more likely to be unable to attend just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

So can anyone justify this situation to me? I understand the interest of having a public forum to get people together and talking politics with each other (we did meet some new neighbors this weekend), but then why not hold both (primary & caucus) but have the primary votes count and the caucus results get thrown away? What are your thoughts on the situation?

Congratulations to Rat City's newest fresh meat!

Rat City held their annual tryouts this past weekend, and a bunch of my fellow skaters rocked the rink. Big shout-outs to these former PFMs and Rat City's newest fresh meat:

• Throttle Rockets
  Slutnik
  Ricki Balboa
  Sarah S.
• Grave Danger
  Alexis of Evil
  Scarlet Leather
  Della Terious
• Sockit Wenches
  Arsenio Brawl
• DLF
  Foxy Throwdown
  Summer Assault
  Seraphina Scorcher
  Cassassin

I can't wait to see y'all beating each other 'round on the rink... 2008 is gonna be the best season yet!!

The world in your radio... literally.

Today our local NPR station finished its week-long pledge drive (thank gods). Of course I dislike pledge drives as much as the next person, but I'm proud to say that Nick and I donated to the station on the first day of the drive. Last year's drive finally got to us and we decided that after years of avid NPR-listening it was time to become members. (And yes, even though it's hooooorribly cheesy to say so, you do listen differently once you've pledged. But only during the pledge drive, when you get to feel smarmy and superior for having donated. After that it feels like normal again.) :-P

Then on Saturday I considered taking it all back when, during the inane motivational prattle that inevitably accompanies pledge drives, one of the announcers said (during the Rick Steves travel show), "KUOW's in-depth reporting brings you the world through your radio. And right now we're literally bringing you the world with Rick Steves."

Literally? Really? I'm still waiting for someone from KUOW to show up at my door with the world. Maybe that was the thank-you gift for my particular pledge level?

Happily, however, I am not alone in my grammatical neuroses: there exists a blog all about misuse of the word "literally". I'm glad someone else is writing this sort of thing so that I don't have to.

InfoCamp 2007: Wrapup

I don't know if I have a whole lot to say that I haven't already. You can see all the posts I made from InfoCamp Seattle 2007 by checking out my infocampseattle2007 tag.

The event was great. I met some great people like the keynote speaker, Nick Finck, the plenary speaker, Bob Boiko, some of the organizers, Aaron Louie and Kristen Shuyler, and some innovative librarians, such as Whitney Edwards and Justin Otto.

My second session on short cut access to information was cancelled since there were only about 20 people left by the end of the second day and there were about 4 sessions competing for them. But I did get to attend a session that showed an example where a lot of work got done without enough user research and led to a lot of unanswered questions about how to proceed.

At the end of the day we had "five minute madness" where we all shared a few comments about what we liked, what we didn't like, and what we learned. Nick Finck pointed out what a great ROI we got from this un-conference: the whole thing cost $20 for registration, we got two days worth of breakfast and lunch, tons of sessions, a great keynote and plenary, and we got to meet a lot of smart people from across the information ecosystem. And he's totally right. InfoCamp Seattle 2007 was supported in a big way. From the InfoCamp Seattle 2007 wiki:

• ASIS&T - The American Society for Information Science & Technology
• UW iSchool
• Information Architecture Institute
• Ascentium - interactive marketing and technology
• Blink Interactive - user experience consulting
• Digital Web Magazine - online magazine for web designers, web developers and information architects
• One Economy - a nonprofit organization that brings broadband to the homes of low-income people
• ZAAZ - web design services with technical and creative design
• Ginger Palace Restaurant - sponsor for lunch on Saturday

InfoCamp 2007 Live: Plenary by Bob Boiko

Day two at InfoCamp Seattle 2007 is underway. We began the day with a YouTube video titled "Information R/evolution". It's pretty slick:

We just got a very interactive (reminds me of my best lectures back at Cornell) plenary session delivered by Bob Boiko, instructor at University of Washington's Information School, author of the Content Management Bible and Laughing at the CIO, and president of Mediatorial Services.

Bob started with a quote from the cover of an issue of (the now defunct) Business 2.0 magazine: "Forget everything you know about business". He argues that we don't actually throw away old information. In fact, he argues, we "reinvent, refine, [...] and rearrange" information, building on what has come in the past.

The plenary consisted of trying to answer the question, who are we as information professionals? A couple of highlights from the answers he elicited:

• We make the process of accessing information easier
• We deliver information of high quality
• We elicit the right question from users to answer their questions
• We improve the experience of finding the question and then answering that question

Bob rounded all this out with the statement:

We hook up the knowers with the want-to-knowers.

However, he argues that this process needs to be personal and typically should involve lots of people. He argues that there are tons of idle brains around; "this is not a limited resource" he says. This sounds a lot like the current trends in social sites (a.k.a. web 2.0).

Then there's the notion of "cross pollinators" which Arron Louie brought up while introducing the key note. Regarding this, Bob asked three questions:

• Are we cross pollinators?
• Is that valuable?
• How do we do it?

Regarding the first two, we all agreed that the answer is yes. As for the third, that's what this BarCamp is all about!

In fact, Bob asked me to give a session about making access to information "easier" (in this case, faster). This was after I brazenly argued that I know how to speed up access to a specific type of information by an order of magnitude in all cases. I think I'll call the session "Shortcuts to Information: Increasing Time to Access by an Order of Magnitude". By the way, an order of magnitude may just be a rhetorical device in this case...

InfoCamp 2007 Live: My Session on Calendaring

For my participation at InfoCamp Seattle 2007 I presented some user interface issues with calendaring systems which is something I've been doing for a while now. I'm far too modest to go into too many details (maybe I'll write a blog post about it in more detail later, plus I'm dead tired after Thingamajiggr last night, and a full day of InfoCamp), but below is a quick overview of some of the problems I'm interested in investigating and addressing. I also looked at some different calendaring systems and programming languages with regards to how they address these issues.

• Storing Time
• Storing Repeating Entries
• Editing and Deleting Repeating Entries
• DST and Repeating Entries
• Entries on the DST boundaries
• Users in multiple timezones (especially when not all observe DST)
• Programming Language Support for Date Arithmetic

So that sums up day one of InfoCamp Seattle 2007. So far, so good. By the way, my Lenovo Thinkpad X60's battery performed admirably: after a full day of note taking, blogging, and presenting I'm at 47% with an estimated three hours and 21 minutes remaining. Not too shabby.

I should also point out that I'm using photos (most graciously thankfully for) from Kristen Shuyler, one of the organizers of InfoCamp. You can find more at Flickr tag infocampseattle2007.

InfoCamp 2007 Live: Gateways to Information and Information Technologies in Public Libraries

The first session I attended at InfoCamp 2007 was titled "Gateways to Information" presented by Justin Otto, a librarian at Eastern Washington University. He was primarily interested in investigating how to bring the often vast information resources at libraries to library patrons. In fact this is a topic of interest to many of this weekend's participants, many of whom are librarians.

The session was part feedback session for EWU's library website, and part general discussion on accessing large amounts of information from many different (and often walled-garden style) data stores.

Consider the many kinds of information available at a library:

• Library Catalogue
• Research Databases (such as JSTOR and ProQuest)
• Subject Guides
• Library Events
• Information About Local Organizations

It seems as if most of these libraries traditionally present the user with lists of links (dozens), sometimes categorized, but typically along single dimensions (such as subject areas). Often there are search facilities, but either the search is not a unified or federated one (meaning you must already know what data store you're searching under first) or the search facility provides poorly ranked results (perhaps due to poor result integration).

My fellow session participants and I came up with a few general principles which we find useful:

Unified Search

Make all information from the library (events, catalog, research databases, etc.) available from a single search interface, with high quality results integration. Make this search facility available on every single page.

Bread Crumbs

Someone brought up Steve Krug's infamous Don't Make Me Think with respect to his comments on creating a bread crumb trail to help users navigate a site.

Card Sort Analysis

This is one I hadn't heard of before, but someone suggested placing content areas on cards, handing the cards to users, and asking them to categorize the content into a hierarchy. Given the amount of content at a library and its complex relationships, this seems like an excellent technique to get a feel for how users might want to navigate subject areas.

I stayed for a second session on Information Technology in Rural Libraries given by Whitney Edwards, Elliot Edwards, and Katy Herrick of the Libraries of Stevens County in Eastern Washington. It sounds like they're addressing some interesting problems with some innovative techniques.

Stevens County has nine very rural libraries, each with different resources and its own collection. The population of Stevens county is technologically literate (seemly very much so!); however, the internet service opportunities in Stevens County seem to be limited. Most patrons of the library have only dial-up access.

Whitney and her colleagues provide several important services to their community. A very popular one is high-speed internet access (available wirelessly). The Stevens County librarians also maintain a wiki for the library that also performs as a local organization repository.

InfoCamp 2007 Live: Keynote by Nick Finck

I'm attending InfoCamp 2007 today and tomorrow and (trying to) live blog it. I just sat through the keynote given by Nick Finck from Blue Flavor. What a great name eh? I was competing with him to present a session, but he gave up and rescheduled his once we saw my name go up :)

Nick started by bringing us into the context of the information age as it transitions into the age of information overload. He cited two studies, the first in 2000 discovered that each user produces over one exabit of information (I'll check on this when I get a chance). The second study, in 2002, revised this number up by double, and discovered that the amount of information doubles every three years. From this data he draws the conclusion that we're drinking from a fire hose of information.

Nick also lead us through the notion of differing user experiences and contexts. Specifically he noticed the difference between the developing world, our culture, and societies embracing ubiquitous, mobile computing experiences. Did you know that in Japan even posters are tagged with barcodes which mobile phones can read, automatically adding the event to your calendar? Nick asked the question, how can we create user experiences, and provide access to this wealth of information to all these various users, through their various modalities and contexts?

Finally Nick asked, what's next? And admitted to having no crystal ball. However he did note that he sees more and more ubiquitous computing (an LG internet fridge in the UK). And he sees a place for this ubiquitous access to information. He concluded that this is a good industry to be in, noting the many attractive job postings for "information professionals" (not the MS definition). This is good news for you and me :)

I gotta run to the first session now, I'll update later (and try to cite those two studies on information production rates and provide more concrete details)

2007 Roller Derby Championship

This weekend the eight best roller derby leagues in the nation have sent their all-stars down to Austin, TX for the 2007 WFTDA championship tournament. The contenders:

• Carolina Rollergirls (Raleigh, NC)
• Detroit Derby Girls (Detroit, MI)
• Gotham Girls Roller Derby (New York, NY)
• Kansas City Roller Warriors (Kansas City, MO)
• Rat City Rollergirls (Seattle, WA)
• Texas Rollergirls (Austin, TX)
• Tucson Roller Derby (Tucson, AZ)
• Windy City Rollers (Chicago, IL)

It's a big tournament for Rat City because Texas was the league that revived roller derby in the 00's, so they've been the dominant league for awhile (they've been skating and scheming for the longest), and they beat Rat City at the Bumberbout last year (on our home turf); but Rat City beat them in the 2007 Dust Devil regional tournament (earning the title 'Best of the West'), and again when Texas' Honky Tonk Heartbreakers played an invitational against our Derby Liberation Front here in Seattle in May. So Rat City has been showing strong and earning their reputation as one of the toughest, fastest leagues in the nation. Now the 2007 Nationals are on Texas' home turf, so we've all been biting our nails wondering what the outcome will be. Several girls from my skating squad have been texting us play-by-plays and news from rinkside.

I'm pleased to announce that, as of a few hours ago, Rat City beat Texas in a neck-and-neck bout, 89 to 79!!! Go Seattle! Lead Jammer has been live-blogging the bouts at Nationals and has a great play-by-play of the RCRG-TXRD bout here (click 'Archive' > 'Bout 6'). Sounds like it was an amazing game, especially since Texas was up by 11 points at halftime. If anyone finds video footage online, please let me know!

It's not just a good idea, it's the claw!

This most excellent piece of graffiti has been gracing the entry road to the mall near our house ever since we moved to Washington:

It seems The Claw is somewhat of a Seattle phenomenon; I've seen this same modification on signs in Redmond, Capitol Hill and downtown Seattle. (Unfortunately I couldn't take my own picture of it because they seem to have cleaned up the Redmond one in the last couple weeks. Too bad... it used to make my day every time I drove by.)

Anyway, today I found a guy who claims he started the Claw phenomenon. He sounds possessive enough about it that he just might be for real. Has anyone else sighted The Claw lately?

Dinner (and work) with the Stars

...at least the somewhat-well-known-internet-personalities. In the last week I've had dinner with two internet-semi-celebrities: Rand Fish, CEO of SEOMoz, and Brian Aker, Director of Architecture at MySQL. So what's it like eating with the stars (depending on your context and your definition of star)? Read on to find out what I think of these people after having seen them eat...

Last week Susan and I had Rand and Mystery_Guest over to dinner. This is actually the second time I've met Rand, a strike against his stardom for me, but not for you! Rand is super nice. Just look at the picture in Mystery_Guest's profile. Seriously, go look. Aren't they cute? After we attended his engagement party he (actually it was Mystery_Guest) sent us a thank you note for eating their food and drinking their booze (don't worry guys, a cute thank you note is on the way for eating our food). And he's really knowledgeable about that interweb thing and especially SEO. Plus the SEO crew has an awesome blog: lots of great content, a nice design, and amazing seo tools. How can you not call him a star? And by the way, he brought us Ben and Jerry's Americone Dream. That was just the coup de grâce. I'll forgive him for not liking Wikipedia. Oh yeah, he eats meat and is only alergic to—well, you'll have to ask him about that.

By the way, SEOMoz is hiring. Check out this comment. I almost agree:

Seriously, if I had a grunt level job at Microsoft I would jump at the opportunity trade in my MSFT for some MOZZ in a year.

I'm almost ready to jump all over some "MOZZ", so if you're interested you better hurry...

Last night I went to the MySQL Meetup in Seattle, where Brian Akers showed up. Or maybe he runs it? I was a Meetup virgin before last night. Only 3 other people showed up for this free (plus cost of food), public (everyone's welcome at the Elysian Brew Pub on Pike street) event. Does that dis-qualify Brian as a star? He's highly placed (director of architecture at MySQL, remember), pleasant to talk to, knowledgeable, generous with advice, and I've been reading his blog posts for quite some time. These are important factors in my book. One of the other guys who attended was interested in choosing a DBMS for his company. Brian asked a few questions (including asking importance of open source) and suggested MySQL (of course), but also Firebird. He also offered to follow up after the meetup, another important factor. I asked a bunch of questions about clustering, replication, and scale-out and Brian had a lot of general advice. Next time I'll have to come with more specific questions to better mine Brian's knowledge :) Don't worry, I'll share what I come up with.

Ok, so I didn't have much to say about how they eat. For goodness sake, it's eating. It's not like they've got extra mouths or something. Anyway, if you've met Rand or Brian—or better yet both!—leave a comment, and let us and our readers know.

Seattle Conference on Scalability

Databases are dinosaurs. This is what Werner Vogels, CTO of Amazon, had to say. And I think those three words do a great job of summing up the Seattle Conference on Scalability, which I attended last weekend.

The conference started off with a keynote by Jeff Dean of Google, giving a nice overview of the Google File System, MapReduce, and BigTable. Marissa Mayer also gave an brief history of some of the many challenges Google has faced in the last five or so years. I won't recap everything, check out the agenda for details. All the sessions should also be on YouTube by now.

"Databases are Dinosaurs". Vogels put this statement on the screen, and my first thought was that I had made a bad decision by skipping the YouTube session. But I was pleasantly surprised. You can read the details of Dynamo in an upcoming paper, it's going under the name "HASS" academically. A quick search indicates it's not out yet.

"You can't have high availability and high consistency at the same time." This statement is what really opened my eyes to one of the biggest challenges in web scale data management. Coming from Werner Vogels—CTO of Amazon, and a highly respected academic to boot—this is a strong statement. Conventional data management systems guarantee consistency and, following from the above statement, can never make strong high availability guarantees. I believe this to be the essence of Web Scalability.

Do you have an opinion on web scalability? Leave a comment and let me and our readers know.

Dreaming of light rail

It's a ~35 minute drive from our house to the airport, and costs $22/day to park there. So I can't help but get excited about the proposed light rail connection from the airport to Seattle, Bellevue, Redmond, and/or assorted locations as funding permits. How awesome would it be to just hop on a train and end up at the airport? Very European. :)

The only problem is, I'm gonna be in my 40's before the thing is finished. Most of the estimates I've heard put the completion date in the mid-2020's, by which time I could be living in the south of France, or dead, or rich enough to helicopter myself to the airport, so this light rail isn't gonna do me any good.

This article I read today rubs it in even more. Apparently Russia can build a 3,700-mile sub-ocean tunnel between two continents in less time than it takes Sound Transit to connect the 25 miles between our house and the airport?? Go figure.

RCRG Bout 3

Last night—on his birthday, no less—I dragged Nick out to his second-ever roller derby bout: Rat City Rollergirls, Season 3, Bout 3.

It was one helluva show. This season the league is trying something new: instead of having their four teams play each other at every bout (there are two games per event, A vs. B and C vs. D), they're inviting a visiting team to each bout; so you'll see two Rat City teams play each other, and then a third Rat City team playing the visiting team. At Bout 2 the visiting team was the Muñecas Muertas of Duke City Derby (Albuquerque, NM). They were good, but it was pretty clear from the beginning of the game that the Sockit Wenches were going to slowly crush them (which they eventually did).

Last night's visitors were the Bay Area Derby Girls' travel team. And they were good. They had a couple amazing jammers and really, really solid defense. The game was pretty close all the way through, but in the end they beat Grave Danger (I can't remember the score... I should start writing these down if I'm gonna blog them). I think the final point spread was < 10, which makes for a great edge-of-your-seat game all the way through.

The other game was between the Sockit Wenches and the DLF. DLF completely clobbered the Sockit Wenches; they pulled out ahead early in the first half and just kept growing their lead for the rest of the game. They won by almost 100 points. Along with some sexy jamming and all-around good skating, they pulled—twice—the most amazing thing I've ever seen on skates: a leg whip.

For those of you not in the know, a "whip" (or an "assist") is when one skater reaches out for another skater behind her and then pulls/propels that skater in front of her. It's a great way to help your jammer get some extra speed or shoot ahead of an enemy blocker. Not a terribly difficult move, but it does take some balance to stay on your feet and keep skating while whipping someone ahead of you.

But now, imagine doing that with your leg instead of with your hand. I had never even heard of this until I saw it last night... Check out the clip below (pilfered from Frenzy Lohan), or watch this video of it from last year's Bumberbout to see it in context (the leg whip happens ~45 seconds in).

This morning PFM (the squad I skate with) was lucky enough to get to share some rink time with the Rat City boys who are preparing for the Boy Bout (May 6 @ Bellevue Skate King) and some B.A.D.Girls who came out to scrimmage with us. Almost everyone was hung over from last night's post-bout after-party, but we got some hard skating in and had a good time. I've gotta say, there's nothing like skating w/ real rollergirls to teach you how much you've still got to learn about derby...

Snow donuts

It seems Washington was (once again) producing snow donuts today!

Or at least so said NPR this morning. And I said in reply, "What the heck is a snow donut?" Well, ask and the internet shall provide:

Snow doughnuts are a natural occurrence in nature. They form when there is a hard layer in the snow [which] is then covered by several inches of dense snow. Then you add a steep slope and a trigger, such as a clump of snow falling out of a tree... As gravity pulls the clump down, the snow rolls down the hill, and 99.9% of the time the center of the rolling snowball collapses in on itself and creates what we call a "pinwheel"... But, if the snow is the perfect density and temperature, it rolls around onto itself leaving the hole in the center, creating the doughnut-looking shape.
-WSDOT blog

Star-Struck

This past Wednesday we saw This American Life live at the Paramount in Seattle.

Ira Glass was walking around in the foyer before the show, and we got to meet him!
And talk to him!
And shake his hand!
Holy crap!

Of course I had absolutely nothing redeeming to say because I was completely star-struck. We even forgot to tell him that we named our kitten after him. But I got to cut in the bar line and buy a bottle of water for him! (I'm such a hopeless fan.) And he was (as is everyone) amused by the fact that Nick and I work for Microsoft and Google.

Oh my god, I bought him water! I am so 13 years old again.

Regnant

Last Wednesday I participated in the Kirkland Adult Spelling Bee. Unlike the traditional 'individual' bees that you may remember from middle school, this bee was played in teams of three, and you could confer on the spelling of the words with your team members. My teammates were Brian (a Googler) and Gretta (girlfriend of a Googler). Both were way better spellers than I; we quickly came to the end of the words I recognized (these weren't middle school words!), though I did manage to save us on fetial.

We ended up getting spelled out in the first half on the word regnant (French origin! Shame on me for not knowing that!), but the whole evening was a lot of fun. The team play and the generally laid-back atmosphere of the event made it a lot more relaxed and fun than the middle school bees I remember. And it turns out there's a monthly bee in a Seattle bar... Maybe this is my new subculture. :-)

This American Life, live!

This American Life is on tour again! I got Nick and myself tickets this morning to the Seattle show (March 7) by calling Ticketmaster several minutes before they went on sale and then making the lady put me on hold until she could start selling the tickets (I know, I have a problem). But I got us really awesome seats, front and center. We saw TAL live in Ithaca a couple years ago and it was great.

Some guys at work asked me about the live show and said they like TAL, but didn't want to go see the show because they didn't want to have a face to put to Ira Glass' voice—that it would break the magic. I definitely know what they mean; seeing Neal Conan in Wordplay was a shock (best quote from that movie, BTW: "Bring it, Shortz!!"). And don't ever image search Peter Sagal (host of Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me), you'll be sorely disappointed. But I think Ira Glass lives up to his voice pretty well. As a hopeless TAL addict, I'd much rather get to see a live show than savour the suspense of Ira's faceless voice... especially since that would mean I couldn't watch the TV show when it comes out!