Free Internet

So my free wireless has been on the fritz lately, meaning it hasn’t been working at all which would be annoying if I actually paid for it. I guess beggars can’t be choosers. If I wasn’t already getting screwed on my cable I would consider getting my own wireless router, but then again free wireless is available all over Seattle. I will post pictures from Mt. Rainer at some point.

My friend Michelle was in Seattle to visit last weekend. She took a day off to come and visit me in Seattle and to see the sights and experience the city. My brother was in town the weekend before so I got a pretty solid plan in place for what makes for a good tour. I won’t go into tremendous detail but it was a very good weekend.
Things we did include – Sushi, small local shops, seeing salmon migration (they really do jump), seafood, sun setting over mountains, the original Starbucks, a ferry ride, feeding seagulls, the public market, shopping, the space needle, a jazz club, a wine bar, and lastly a quick drive around the city on the way to the airport. I could go into much more detail as well – like how we saw a troll under a bridge but you’ll have to come to Seattle and see for yourself. The best part about the tour is that it’s very customizable as shopping could easily be replaced with a tour – brewery, winery, or some other exciting options like mountains.

This upcoming weekend will be spent in Austin Texas for a bachelor party for some Marquette friends. This will be my 3rd Friday in a row that will be spent out of the office. While that sounds good it is a pain in the butt to miss a bunch of days sporadically. Having the days off is nice but having the weekly work stack up is not as fun.

Today is Sept 11th and I’m watching a show on the difficulty surrounding the unexpected need to ground the entire United States airspace, something that had never been done in the history of American flight. The day had nearly perfect weather around the country and it took nearly 3 hours to ground nearly a million people airborne at the time of the attacks. More than a few close calls were had that day including the near shoot down of a Korean Air flight that was headed to Alaska. Amazingly enough it was determined after the fact that a detailed landing plan would have made things worse. Apparently on the fly decision making made by experienced air traffic controllers was better because they could take things like weather into account that a plan would not be able to handle. It feels surreal to watch all this stuff 6 years later especially now that I live on a coast and work in a real skyscraper. I’m not paranoid or particularly worried but it does make you think. There is something odd about watching a series of shows on the 9/11 attacks but I’m sure they will continue for a very long time similar to the JFK assignation or the Challenger shuttle explosion.

I feel like I had much more to write about the lack of Internet has dulled my memory and/or need to write.