The Ultimate Yuppie Gym

I was amused to see an advert for a new gym in Bellevue that is due to open in the new Bravern building soon. The gym, the first West Coast location in the David Barton Gym chain, makes most five-star hotels look shabby. Not surprisingly, it will share The Bravern with Neiman Marcus (a.k.a. "Needless Markup"), and Microsoft.

Barton was quoted saying , “My new gym will be so inspiring that even techies will start looking like their fantasy characters.” For a look at what the new gym will look like, see the gallery on their website.

The terms "ostentatious" and "poor taste" come to mind, but I'm sure nouveau riche Seattleites will be keen to show off by going to this gym. Just another sign that some people have more money than sense.

Tea at Butchart Gardens

Victoria Trip 2009
Originally uploaded by Mr Snootyhamper

This is the spread *for one person*! Way too much food - we tred to slowly make our way through this over the course of an hour or two, washed down with copious amounts of tea, but alas some things had to go unsampled (like to chocolate truffle).

The ginger and cucumber sandwiches were especially good.

BC Parliament in Victoria

Victoria Trip 2009
Originally uploaded by Mr Snootyhamper

I like the way they light up the building at night!

Victoria Sunset

Victoria Trip 2009
Originally uploaded by Mr Snootyhamper

Here is a nice shot of the sun setting over the inner harbour in Victoria, BC. You can't really tell from the photo, but it was actually raining a bit when we took this.

Good times in Victoria, BC

{A} and I recently went up to Victoria, BC in a seaplane to celebrate our 1-year anniversary.
Here are a few highlights from our trip:

• We had dinner and brunch at one of our favourite places in Victoria, ReBar. We first went to ReBar on our first Victoria trip several years ago, and their food is as good as always. Their fresh fruit and veggie drinks are also great (try the Sundance Kid!)
• The Royal BC Museum had an exhbition from the British Museum titled Treasures, that was amazing. Worth the trip just to see this stuff...
• We got to visit Butchart Gardens (finally!) Summer is definitely the time to go, although I hear the gardens are worth seeing in all the seasons. Some pics from the gardens are in the set on Flickr
• We had an amazing tea at the gardens. From what I've heard, the tea at the Empress hotel is more expensive and not as good. (I've not been to the Empress myself though). Good things about tea in the Butchart Gardens: you can sit on the veranda and enjoy the garden views, great tea and yummy food, and it's reasonably-priced!
• This list on Yelp.com pointed us at a few food places, which were all good. Notably...
• Decent brunch at MoLe (worth another look), a place with lots of veggie options and some yummy smoked tuna eggs benedict.
• Amazing cocktails and service at Solomon's. These folks take their drinks very seriously and have some fantastic, unique concoctions as well as making a great Sazerac. They also had great food, from tapas-style small plates to some interesting-looking main plates. A large table of chefs was there enjoying a tasting menu (it looked like they were tasting 10 courses!) - apaprently a regular gathering that I'd be happy to try duplicating next time I'm in town.
• A delicious Italian meal at Pagliacci's with live gypsy/Yiddish music. It looks like this place is a real institution and has been going for decades. A cosy, lively atmosphere and some of the tastiest Italian food I've have had for a while!

Peter Cook and Dudley Moore

I was reminded today of the great comedy duo of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. One of my favourite sketches (which I was sure I had posted here before, but it seems not) is the pub sketch. Here it is:

The next Iron Chef America could be from Seattle!

I spotted an interesting blog post today on the "Eat All About It" blog:

The Food Network released the names of contestents for The Next Iron Chef, and Holly Smith is on the list. Smith, of Cafe Juanita and Poco Carretto, joined nine other top chefs in five weeks of worldwide taping, flying ‘from Los Angeles to Japan to New York to compete in the food fight of their professional lives.’

"New Orleans is drinking better"

This is one of the interesting news snippets you get for friending New Orleans on Facebook: An article in the LA Times titled "New Orleans is drinking better lately". And the obligatory teaser:

Anyone invoking the world's great drinking cities has to place New Orleans pretty close to the top.It's the birthplace of Peychaud's bitters and Southern Comfort, of the Sazerac and the Ramos gin fizz. And it has a long-standing absinthe legacy, including in 2007 being the first port of entry for the liquor since it was outlawed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 1912. Not a bad inheritance.

However, the cocktail revolution sweeping New York, San Francisco and Chicago -- the speak-easies and fedora-sporting bartenders alchemizing booze into transcendent mixology -- has been slow to come to town. But a new crop of bars and bartenders are giving the Big Easy's drinking scene a decidedly upscale flavor.

LBJ Can Haz Pants?

A friend on Facebook posted a link to this classic recording of a phone call made by then-president Linden Johnson: Linden B. Johnson orders some new Haggar pants

In this telephone call, which has become one of the more famous exchanges LBJ
recorded, the President asked a leader of the Haggar clothing company for some
custom-made pants, providing specific (and sometimes graphic) instructions on
how they should be customized for him.

Never let it be said that I don't post educational information on this blog!

Chris Walker cameo in "Inked"

Chris Walker, of the Contemplative Programmer blog, recently was involved in the 48 Hour Film Project in Seattle, getting to act in one of the entries, titled "Inked". You can watch "Inked" here, and see prior films from various cities around the world here.

He has a single line in the film, a single word in fact, and it's very apt if you know him. In the security team at Microsoft, Chris had a knack for spotting bugs in code, and would often send out gems to the team with the email subject line "Code du jour". I miss those mails...

"Nothing up my sleeve" numbers

I just came across the term "nothing up my sleeve number" today, and it made me smile. Sometimes geeks chose pretty cute names for things :) See the Wikipedia entry here.

The related entries on differential cryptanalysis and S-boxes is interesting too. I am not a crypto geek, so the intricacies of this stuff is beyond me, but the higher-level descriptions and the history are fascinating.

Spam, spam, spam, bacon, egg and spam

One wonders what the advertising folks were smoking when they came up with this new TV advertisement for SPAM.

Attaching a VHD to a Windows 7/Server 2008 host from managed code

This past weekend I had "fun" working on a project to attach VHD files to a Windows 7/Server 2008 host machine. My aim was to have a C# app be able to do this and then read the files off the VHD...

It turns out the easiest part was opening and attaching the VHD file. The VHD APIs are pretty straight-forward, and a simple managed wrapper lets you call these from C#. (I chose a Managed C++ wrapper, but there is a C# wrapper here)

By default AttachVirtualDisk will mount all the volumes on the virtual disk, which is what I wanted. (You could also tell the VHD API to not mount them and do it yourself for the partitions you cared about, but that sounded like a lot of extra work to me...)

Now came the fun - which drive letters were assigned to the mounted partitions on the VHD? It turns out the VHD API doesn't provide this information - the most it will give you is the physical path for the drive device (see GetVirtualDiskPhysicalPath)

I looked around and found some examples of people using Powershell to mount VHDs and figure out the drive letters. Some folks were using the Virtual Disk Service (VDS), which has a managed wrapper in Server 2008 (Microsoft.Storage.Vds.dll) - Taylor Brown talks about this on his blog.

That wouldn't work on Windows 7 though, so I was left considering writing a managed wrapper for the VDS COM interface. My head was beginning to hurt... :)

Luckily I found some hints at using WMI to get the info - using WMI from .NET is not too complicated once you figure out which objects and queries to use. Here's the resulting code (Managed C++) which retrieves the logical drive for the first partition on the VHD:

// Return the logical disk for the VHD's first partition
property String^ LogicalDisk
{
  String^ get()
  {
      String^ physicalPath = this->PhysicalPath; // Calls GetVirtualDiskPhysicalPath API wrapper
      String^ logicalDisk = nullptr;
                       
      // Use WMI to get the logical drive for the first partition on the VHD disk
      RelatedObjectQuery^ q = gcnew RelatedObjectQuery(String::Format("\\\\.\\root\\cimv2:Win32_DiskDrive.DeviceID='{0}'", physicalPath), "Win32_DiskPartition");
      ManagementObjectSearcher^ searcher = gcnew ManagementObjectSearcher(q);
      String^ firstPartition = nullptr;  
      for each (ManagementObject^ o in searcher->Get())
      {
          firstPartition = o->Path->ToString();
          break;
      }
      if (firstPartition != nullptr)
      {
          // Now see which volumes are related to the partitions
          q = gcnew RelatedObjectQuery(firstPartition, "Win32_LogicalDisk");
          searcher->Query = q;
          for each (ManagementObject^ o in searcher->Get())
          {
              logicalDisk = o->GetPropertyValue("Name")->ToString();
              break;
          }
      }
      return logicalDisk;
  }
}

"Molecular biology for computer scientists"

I just saw this rather intriguing post on Bunnie's blog: On Influenza A

In it he muses about the similarities between the influenza virus and computer virii. Some really interesting stuff, and some links to other reading.

A snippet to entice you to click on the link above:

If you thought of organisms as computers with IP addresses, each functional group of cells in the organism would be listening to the environment through its own active port. So, as port 25 maps specifically to SMTP services on a computer, port H1 maps specifically to the windpipe region on a human. Interestingly, the same port H1 maps to the intestinal tract on a bird. Thus, the same H1N1 virus will attack the respiratory system of a human, and the gut of a bird.

The non-sucky re-finance experience

After complaining about my experience with WaMu/Chase, I'm pleased to report we've closed on our re-finance with Quicken Loans.

I called them the afternoon that I realized WaMu/Chase were not going to work out, and within a day I had received spoken to a loan officer and received an estimate. The next morning I signed forms electornically locking in our rate and starting the credit reviews, etc. Within a week of applying the property valuation was done, and the loan was approved. During the whole process I was able to easily speak to my loan officer (email and phone calls answered within a day). Title search took about a week and a half, and we then signed the papers at our house. The whole process took under 4 weeks.

I was also really impressed that Quicken Loans sent us the full set of papers we would be signing the day before, so we could review them and ask questions if needed. No other lender I've worked with has done that, or offered to do signing at a location that's convenient for you instead of them.

Another nice thing: The property valuation report was very detailed and has some great info, such as comparable properties in the neighbourhood that have sold or are listed for sale now. More data than most estate agents give you when you are considering listing your home and trying to figure out a realistic price...

All in all I was really impressed with these guys and would recommend them to my friends. If you are thinking of re-financing or purchasing a home, give them a try.

Abita Beer in Seattle

So, I have been a bad muppet and not posted anything about our trip to New Orleans. {A} has been much better and posted several entries already, so I recommend you read them in the meantime :)

One of the highlights of the trip for me was the discovery of a local brewery - Abita Beer.
Their Turbo Dog beer was quite nice and already had made an impression, but one night we had dinner at a cute cafe and I tried the seasonal Strawberry Beer from Abita. Wow.... Love at first taste?

This is one of the best summer beers ever - light, crisp and refreshing. The Strawberry refers to local, Louisiana strawberries. (The beer is a spring/early summer speciality, made in small amounts).

When the waiter suggested it, I thought "Ugh, it'll be too sweet". (I am not a huge fan of sweet beer or hefeweizen, although I do like some Belgian lambic beers like Kriek and Framboise).
I would say the Abita Strawberry beer captures the aroma and flavour of strawberries without picking up the sweetness - the beer is still nicely balanced and almost tart.

Now, on to Seattle. Not surprisingly, given the distance between Louisiana and Washington state, I have not seen Abita beer available here. Until I visited New Orleans, I had never heard of them. Looking at their website, though, it appears a few places in Seattle stock their stuff. On the eastside where I live, the only option seemed to be Larry's Market, which recently became a Top Food.

I can happily report that the Top Food in Redmond does sell Abita beer - only the Purple Haze was out when I was there, but there may be hope of getting Turbo Dog or some seasonal beers too... I will update this post if I find out more! :)

Update: 6/13
I spoke to the beer & wine buyer at Top Food in Redmond, and he said he'd be happy to order other kinds of Abita beer if I would be willing to buy a case. Sadly, though, the Washington State distributor, Columbia, only sells Purple Haze, Turbodog and Amber. No seasonal ales like the strawberry or satsuma.

I also found this discussion on Chowhound, which mentions that the Bellevue Whole Foods is an option. (I can report that the one in Redmond doesn't have any Abita beer...)

New Iain M. Banks book, "Transition"!

Ooh, goodie! I enjoyed The Algebraist and Matter and can't wait to get started on this one!

It sounds like a bit of a departure from his Culture and far-future sci-fi, as this one is set on Earth in the (near?) future. It sounds like it may be more like some of Ken Macleod's books (or dare I say it, "The Diamond Age"). There's not really enough info on Amazon's page to know, though. So I guess I should be patient :)

It's available now for pre-order from Amazon (hardcover)... The softcover version will be out later in the year.

There is also an interesting article featuring Banks and other sci-fi authors on the BBC website here. The topic is "Can science fiction keep up with modern science?"

Meet the Contemplative Programmer

Chris, who until very recently worked in my team at Microsoft, started a great blog. The official description is "musing about programming, management and old computers". He has lots of interesting anecdotes, such as the current post concerning Guest accounts, and an earlier post on core memory.

You can read the blog here: http://contemplativeprogrammer.com/

Powell's Sci-fi Recommendation

Powell's Sci-fi Recommendation
Originally uploaded by Mr Snootyhamper

The kind people at Powell's Books in Portland offer expert advice on science fiction books, as this sign shows.

I think I've seen this guy moonlighting where I work too...

What's Sue McCown been up to?

It turns out Sue McCown of Coco La Ti Da and Earht & Ocean dessert fame has not been hiding under a rock for the past few months. This blog post describes her work with Seattle's Cupcake Royale to help them improve the texture and longevity of their cupcakes. (They noticed that many people bought them to eat the next day, and they tended to dry out overnight...)

For some reason when I read the description of Sue making batch after batch of cake mix, tweaking one variable each time, I picture a female Alton Brown doing a "food science is fun" routine. I'm not sure Sue would like to be labeled "the female Alton Brown", though :)