Apparently Seattle loves the Seahawks again, if only because they're winning. Or at least, they love TV (which isn't news). Sunday’s game broke a local television record with 1.74 million viewers in greater Seattle, and a rating of 52.8, beating the previous local peak of 50.4 for the Seinfeld finale. That means 78% of the televisions that were on were watching football on Fox.

For myself, i learned the outgame of the game from a text message sent by my parents… from Montana… who were watching the game via satellite. I spent the afternoon under my car installing suspension bushings and playing Burnout Revenge with Clint. At 6.42pm i read “Sea hawks going 2 their first super bowl" - in the unique hybrid of emo-speak and choppy english indicative of my otherwise literate mom’s SMS language, mentioned it to Clint, and we both said “huh. neat." I wouldn't have been able to pick up the broadcast anyway; without any sort of antenna my tv doesn't pick up Fox at all. I get my Simpsons fix on dvd instead.

I can still fake an informed opinion, if needed, thanks to Seattlest’s 108 word summary of Seahawks history, which was 106 more words than i could previously have come up with on the subject. If i'm not a fan during the rest of the year, i'm not going to expend much more effort than that and am not going to fake fan-dom now just for a chance to cheer, so i appreciate Seattlest’s cliff notes. They're not, however, going to make a last-minute Hawk-jock out of me. Great for them and their supporters that they're better at an overly-commercialized sport than some other group of people. The real winners will be the advertisers, the merchandisers and the tv networks.

Technorati Tags: seattle, seahawks, tv ratings, bandwagon

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What a beautiful sunny day on Elliot Bay! Can even see the Olympics this morning.

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Meeting Lance during his layover at SeaTac, but i'm early so there's time for coffee and exploring. The airport remodel is shaping up really well, into a beautiful, spacious facility and i noticed these hybrid trash/recycle bins are becoming ubiquitous. I even saw people using them correctly! I'm thrilled to see this idea i admired throughout Germany more than two years ago taking hold in public spaces here and i hope it's time has come in Seattle.

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I realize it’s been a long couple of weeks. It has for me, too, but in a good way. I'm sure you've all been managing without me, finding your dosage of ridiculously cute websites and the ugly animal pictures that are their antidote. You've probably turned elsewhere for your stories of stupid people making the news and found new examples of clever hackers juxtaposing their electronical fetishes with vintage junk. There are new technologies that have arrived since we last chatted, weird new internet fads that disguse themselves as art projects and enough random humorous anecdotes to keep the internet spinning ’round in my absence. Really, i'd be surprised if you're back at all… there really is so much out there.

For my part, i've been keeping a full social calendar thus far in 2006, partly as a recovery from a holiday season filled with traveling, errands, career moves and 27 consecutive days of rain and partly because i feel i can afford it now, even though a first paycheck from the new job won't arrive until Feb. On the job subject, i've been doing a bit of working ;) and it’s going very well. A great new team that i'm really beginning to feel at home with and only one more week of walking halfway across downtown from my old parking spot because i refuse to not park in a spot that’s still paid for.

I've also been geeking out with my new phone and some of the most amazingly cool software that i was totally unaware of until i joined the Bluetooth cool kids' club. Unwrapping some new tech is always fun, and no disparagement intended for my new aluminum-clad desk ornament or it’s slender new LCD friend but my relationship to my cell phone is of a much higher order - about this [hold up pinched fingers] far removed from what i imagine the arrangement is between a cyborg and his/her neural implants. Upgrading my phone is akin to upgrading my *brain* and it had been three years since the last revision so the advances in pocket-able tech i'm now pocketing are making me giddy with geek-joy. With really barely any effort or expertise on my part i've got contact and calendar data flying thru the airwaves without even the press of a ’sync' button due to automatic proximity detection, i'm switching iTunes tracks with phone buttons and even poking around in a modded install of Apple’s FrontRow using my phone as the remote. And then there’s the RSS reader and the tiny-screen-sized versions of Opera, Google Maps and pretty much the rest of the internet. It’s such a powerful device i'm finding new things it’s capable of every day. You'll know these moments by the giggling accompanied by a look like there’s a balloon being blown up inside me and i just need to tell someone what i've discovered or i'm going to explode.

Regardless of my preoccupations, however, i'm still committed to pointing out the potentially useful and/or quirky inventions that cross my radar and providing you a steady stream of photographs of rusty things and urban decay. I'm also always digging for what makes or breaks Seattle - like this great story of a near-miss of huge proportions in the Puget Sound. So don't fret yourselves; i still have time for you… my Finnish mistress and i have a very open relationship.

Oh, and don't mind the beeping coming from my head. That’s just my neural implants reading my SMS messages.

Technorati Tags: boats, phones, nokia n70, bluetooth, salling clicker, cyborgs

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Just left happy hour at Contour with my new team - they're great, and i think this move is going to be the right one for me. Had delicious dumplings for lunch with some of the old team today, too - they're great as well, and i'm glad i stayed inside the company with them. Even had some chances today to impress some people. Overall, an excellent friday!

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Standing here in the rain, getting gas, thinking how strong the sea breeze is tonight that the salty, fishy smell of the waterfront has made it all the way up here. Then i looked around a bit. Duh.

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Just finished packing my things into my truck in the loading garage, turned in my key card, and left the office no longer an employee in transition but now in the full-time custody of a new gig. I know i'm excited about it, i think it will be great, but it's still a bittersweet day as i'll miss seeing in the halls all the great people i've been working alongside for the past 1.5 years. I know we're only a four digit extension apart but i still had to leave early before anyone had a chance to make a fuss or i had a chance to let the departure get to me.

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Posted at Cult of Mac last night is the rumor, credited to “an old friend, who is very highly placed in the Apple world", that Steve J’s keynote tuesday was supposed to include some other, new, even more exciting goodies that were cut at the last minute due to Intel Core Duo chip supply. It sounds as though there will be even hotter MacBook Pro’s and something “much cooler than that. Much cooler" coming down the Apple pipe once Intel fully spins up production. A tablet Mac? Maybe… Inkwell seems underused up to this point. An Intel-based MacMini media center? That would be the next logical step for Front Row and if i were Steve (i do, incidentally, own enough black sweaters to traverse a 4-day MacWorld without recycling, if the job should become available) with the success of the Mini and the clamour for a home theater-friendly version, i wouldn't want to announce one unless i was sure all the tires on the bus were turning.

Anyway, i don't have any high ranking friends at Apple so i'm not in a position to hypothesize much beyond the obvious, but i'll be watching and i expect to be wowed. I hope it’s not something disappointing like slamming iTunes into a crappy Moto phone.

Technorati Tags: apple, macword, intel.macbook, cult of mac

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The first sunny day in weeks! Hurrah!

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Obviously i'm not at Macworld SanFran today, and i wasn't in Las Vegas earlier this week for CES, but that doesn't mean i'm not drooling from afar at all the hot new shiny avenues for consuming electricity. Granted, i have my own shiny new toys to play with right now, but it’s not too early to start spending for 2006. :) Hot-hot-hot products of the week (that i'll never ever touch in a non-chained-to-the-table way, natch) are Apple’s new Powerbooks (called MacBook Pro’s now) and the new iMacs, both sporting dual-core Intel chips. As weird as it is that IBM’s PowerPC chips no longer run the numbers inside the box, the specs on the Intel-flavored machines are excitingly impressive, and Intel is much more involved in the personal computer chip business (obviously) with IBM primarily focusing these days on supplying the 52 Freescale chips required to build a BMW 7-series. Although i'm not totally sold on the name “MacBook" - even with the “Pro" tacked on the end it still lacks a certain professional-tool credibility - the “Power" in PowerBook was a reference to the PowerPC chip, and that obviously needed to be changed. Apple’s trend to stick “i" in front of words when naming products has thus far been reserved for the consumer product lines (and the millions of accessory, peripheral and knock-off manufacturers) so i suppose it makes enough sense that i'll learn to say it out loud non-awkwardly. And it won't keep me from losing sleep wanting one… ;)

Taking home the you-won't-see-this-in-stores category is the iPod DJ, really just an overly-cute stand for your white (or black - Apple’s all about the multiracial music players these days) plastic friend with what looks like integrated speakers. Korean music lovers will likely be enjoying it in their ridiculously high-tech homes by week’s end, but this photo of the prototype from CES is probably as close as an American will ever come to one.

In the “i'm glad to see this market is maturing enough that prices are becoming realistic and the quality of offerings is improving" category (or “IGTOSTMIMETPABRATQOOII" for short), the Jabra BT620s Bluetooth combo headset is actually something i would consider adding to my Christmas wishlist next year. It will pair with more than one device, meaning it could be simultaneously linked with both a Bluetooth phone and an iPod with a BT dongle, pumping stereo tracks wirelessly into your ears and auto-switching to incoming calls. The mic and all the controls needed to accept/reject calls and fiddle with music settings are in the headphones themselves - the only thing they're really missing is the wires (no tears shed here), and they charge over USB. What’s not to love?

The item i'd buy for my parents right now if i wasn't still recovering from Christmas is the eStarling Wifi LCD picture frame, an otherwise ordinary LCD frame that adds POP email and Flickr account support, so i could set it up, mail it to them, and seamlessly provide them with new slideshow fodder of my exciting (and often sordid) adventures with absolutely no work for them whatsoever. If the thing supports dialup then it would make a great grandparents gift, too - although my parents are tech-hip enough to have a WiFi network, my geek aura hasn't yet reached into the extended family. I'm watching the prices.

Finally, my favorite category: things i would love to rock in public if i thought i was cool enough to pull it off. You may remember my foray into this category for 2005, where i actually purchased an item from this theoretically non-purchasable list and i have actually since found one appropriate occasion to “rock it", and believe me, i did. Out loud. So perhaps this category is more realistic than i thought. Anyway, the only-cool-people-can-pull-this-off item for 2006 is admittedly a little girly anyway (at least in the picture) and would require my owning an iPod Nano (bringing my personal iPod collection to an unnecessary three), but despite that i still find the TuneBuckle ridiculously clever and i'm going to be keeping a mental inventory between now and Christmas of 2006 for friends who meet all the qualifications of wardrobe, iPod selection and coolness rating to receive one of these babies in their stocking. If i can't buy it for myself, i'm going to buy it for someone.

Technorati Tags: ces, macword, macbook, flickr, jabra, bluetooth, intel

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