Quasiordinary Adventures

If you've heard me make comments about Apple, you might have thought I would be one of the last people in the world to get an iPhone. I might have thought so too.

Ever since I had a few bad experiences with Macs back in college (late 90's), I have pretty much avoided and looked down on anything with the Apple logo. In the last couple years those annoying, misleading, and downright false Mac-vs-PC advertisements have only reinforced that tendency. On top of that, I can't stand the zealotry that Apple seems to inspire in many of ill-informed its users. And that branding strategy of putting a lowercase-i in front of any common word to make it their own? iHateIt.

But aside from their marketing I do have to admit that Apple has come a long way in the last 10 years. They have a real OS that runs on mostly-standard hardware components, their hardware engineering is very impressive, and they seem to be very in touch with what is important to mainstream consumers. So given all this I finally had to ask myself... Was I as big of an anti-Apple zealot as the pro-Apple flock I looked down on? Certainly not. :) But... was I being unfairly close-minded toward Apple? Probably.

When the original iPhone came out last year, I was aware of the hype but I mostly ignored it for its Appleness. Anyway that wasn't hard to do because while it looked slick, it had far less functionality than the phone I already carried. But the new "iPhone 3G" changed that in a few important ways: (1) I can sync my work (Exchange) email and calendar over the air. (2) 3G data speeds for fast web browsing. (3) The platform is opened up to 3rd-party developers to write new applications.

My overall impression after using it for 3 days is that it's clearly a leap beyond anything else currently available. You can be sure that competitors will be playing catch-up for the next couple years -- initially with some thin shells on top of the same old thing, but eventually with some real advances. Isn't competition great? You can read plenty of people's impressions on the web so I won't repeat everything, but I'll point out a few things that especially disappointed or impressed me. For comparison I've been using Windows Mobile phones for the last 3+ years.

Bad:

• No flags in email. I rely on flags to track which emails I need to follow-up on. I'm still not sure what I'll do instead to track my important emails.
• The unlock/home screen doesn't show upcoming appointments and unread message info. I have to unlock the phone and open the calendar app to see where and when my next meeting is.
• No support for sending or receiving picture messages (MMS). Very strange for a device which is all about multimedia. Yeah you can use email as a substitute but only if the person you're sending to or receiving from has email on their phone.

Good:

• The headphone jack works with ordinary headphones. This shouldn't even be worth mentioning except that many phone manufacturers persistently use proprietary connectors.
• The screen is big and beautiful while the overall phone is still small. It can get VERY bright and is unusually readable in direct sunlight.
• As advertised, the web-browsing experience (over 3G or WiFi) is remarkably great for the size of the device. It's the first phone I've had where I might use it to browse the web not out of necessity because I'm out somewhere, but just because I don't feel like getting up and walking over to the PC in the next room.

Support for 3rd-party apps means there is still a lot more in store for the iPhone. The SDK has only been available to developers for a few months and already there are some pretty cool applications. The user base of 3 million+ iPhones (and iPod Touches), combined with the store integrated into the phone in a way that makes impulse purchases VERY easy, will ensure that many developers will want to target the platform.

This past weekend I drove down to Portland, Oregon for the Portland Lindy Exchange. A "Lindy Exchange" is a type of big swing dancing weekend event hosted by various cities around (and outside) the country. It's basically an excuse for lots of out-of-town dancers to converge in one place to meet and dance with everyone else. There are typically no classes or workshops -- just big dance floors, great live music, and more DJ'd music late into the night. This was the first exchange I've been to, although later this year I plan to also go to at least the ones in San Francisco, Vancouver, and of course Seattle.

I'll spare you all the boring details and stick to a couple of the highlights. One neat part of the weekend was dancing in Pioneer Courthouse Square on a sunny Saturday afternoon in the middle of the city with lots of people watching. This was one of the planned events so there was a DJ and sound equipment there and plenty of others to dance with. I've never before danced outside in broad daylight, or had a large audience of non-dancers like that, and it was kind of fun to show off.

Sorry it's been a couple weeks, but I did promise you a report...

On Saturday morning I took the express bus into downtown Seattle and got off at King Street Station. It was a really nice train station... 100 years ago, but the years of neglect definitely show. They're trying to restore some of the original finishes now, but it will never return to its former glory -- especially with the new Link Light Rail line stopping at nearby Union Station instead.

Anyway, the station served its purpose well enough, and I got on the Amtrak train which left on-time at 7:40am. Overall, my impression of the train ride was... not bad. The seats are big and comfortable with plenty of legroom. The upper level of the central car (of three) of the train has floor-to-ceiling windows with unreserved seating facing outward, allowing some decent views of the coastline of northern Puget Sound. However I spent most of the time sleeping or reading. (Fortunately I don't have any problem with motion sickness from reading on a train or plane, though while riding in a bus or car I get terribly nauseous from reading nothing more than Trivial Pursuit cards every few minutes.)

Once we got out of the Seattle metro area, which admittedly takes a while, the train actually moved pretty fast: the GPS on my phone measured it at 77+ mph at multiple points along the way. I thought we were going to arrive nearly on time in Vancouver until the train stopped for about 15 minutes just before the bridge over the Fraser river into the city. We had a similar stop before that bridge on the way back, when they announced they had to pick up or file some paperwork or something before crossing the bridge... which doesn't make sense... and anyway couldn't they take care of that stuff ahead of time??

So the train finally arrived at the Vancouver station just before noon, about 20 minutes late. Fortunately the customs process was fairly quick. (It's always easy to get into Canada.) My first swing class, starting at 12:20, was a 15-minute walk away. I walked into the studio with just enough time to put on my dance shoes before the class started!

I thought the series of swing and related classes on Saturday and Sunday (8 hours total) were mostly very good. I polished up some of my basics and learned several new moves and techniques that will definitely stick with me. And I had fun dancing with a lot of new people, as well as a few that I sort of knew who were also from Seattle or had visited recently. There was a great band for the Saturday night dance at the Grandview Legion Auditorium. While that venue doesn't quite compare to Seattle's Century Ballroom in size or atmosphere, it was a fun night, and Vancouver clearly has a decent Lindy Hop scene.

After the dance Saturday night I took the nearby SkyTrain to my hotel and got a good night's sleep. After checking Sunday morning I had a few hours to kill so I took the SkyTrain into downtown Vancouver and walked around the waterfront and shopping areas. From that perspective it seemed like a nice and pedestrian friendly downtown. It's clear the city is doing a lot to prepare for hosting the 2010 Winter Olympics. (While all the snow sports will be up at Whistler, I guess Vancouver is really the "host" city.) Among other things, there's a huge new convention center under construction, and a major shopping street in the middle of downtown is a big long hole where they're building a new (misnamed?) underground SkyTrain line to connect to the airport.

From downtown I took the SkyTrain back to East Vancouver where the classes were that day, then after classes I took the SkyTrain (see a pattern here?) back to the train station and caught the 6pm train back to Seattle.

I slept most of the way back. The only annoying part of that train was U.S. customs. We had to go through customs before boarding the train. Fine. But then the train stopped at the border while customs agents went through the train and questioned everyone and checked passports again. Of course for me it's never a problem since I look like an ordinary white American and I'm gainfully employed and I don't mention the fruit and livestock I'm not transporting back into the states. But it takes a little while for the two agents per car to get through everyone. Still, it looked like a much longer wait by car to get into the U.S. (The train tracks are adjacent to the Peace Arch I-5 border crossing.)

I'm taking the Amtrak Cascades train up to Vancouver, BC for a weekend of swing classes and dancing. There's a special series of Lindy Hop workshops held by some famous instructors there this Saturday and Sunday, along with a great swing band playing Saturday night. Conveniently, all venues are within walking distance from the Vancouver Amtrak station, so I can make it a car-free trip! And the Vancouver SkyTrain is right there too, which should give me a chance to explore the city a bit during a few free hours on Sunday morning.

The Amtrak tickets cost me about $20 more than I would have paid for gas to drive up there, and it will take about an hour longer (4 hrs vs 3 hrs, including stops and border-crossing). But I expect it will be worth it just for the stress-free comfort -- I can sleep, read, watch the scenery, or get up and stretch my legs any time.

I've never taken a trip by rail in North America before (beyond metro transit systems), so I'm curious to see what it's like. If I like it, I may take future trips like this to Vancouver and Portland. I'm sure it won't compare though to the speed and convenience of the trains I experienced in Japan.

The PRO Club (huge Bellevue gym where I am a member) just opened their new Performance Center this week. It's 2 miles down the road from the main gym, in the opposite direction from my house but still not all that far away. Anyway I'm a little bit curious to check it out, and maybe try out the "sports conditioning" sessions they're promoting. Have you been there? What do you think?

The reason for my interest is that I've been quite amused and impressed by my own modest athleticism over the past couple years. It's not vanity if you understand that I was never athletic at all throughout high school and college. It was only about 2-3 years ago that I started getting more seriously into racquetball and ultimate, and now a lot of my friends and co-workers and sometimes teammates seem to perceive me as a very athletic person, which is really a new and strange identity for me.

Still, I've never trained much separately from just playing sports (a lot), and now I wonder, could I take it up another notch if I actually did put in some real, dedicated training time? I figure if I ever want to find out what I'm capable of, now is the best time to do it, before I get any older.

Starting this year, 100% of the electricity consumed by my house is coming from renewable sources, via Puget Sound Energy's Green Power program. I truly believe in renewable energy sources, so I figure I'd be a bit hypocritical if I didn't use green power myself when PSE makes it so easy. Of course, it does come at a slight premium over that ugly black power that most people settle for: I expect my electricity bill to be around 14% more. That's reasonable for now, though it might not be too long before fossil fuels surpass that cost anyway. (And I do trust that I'm actually getting what I pay for.)

Curiously, hydro is not included in the list of green power sources. In case you didn't know, nearly half of everyone's electricity in this area already comes from hydro. While I would consider hydro to be renewable as long as it keeps raining here, I guess there has been a lot of backlash in recent decades about the environmental impact of damming up rivers.

The only thing in my house not powered by electricity is the central heating, so in the winter months I'm still burning dead dinos. While efficient electric heat pumps are pretty suitable for the mild climate here, it isn't practical to replace my furnace now since it's only a few years old.

I last blogged about my swing dancing passion about four months ago. Since then, I've gotten into it more than ever. Especially this month, I think my dancing prowess has improved phenomenally. While I have been taking more lessons and workshops, it's mostly because I've been going out dancing two or three times a week recently. After dancing enough to become comfortable leading all the different moves that I've learned in classes for the past year, I'm gradually discovering an ability to go far beyond the simplicity of just stringing together the class moves in random order.

Apparently, dancing is better when done to the music -- who knew? Okay, everyone knows that, but to a beginning dancer it's really hard to actually listen to the music while at the same time thinking about all the other things you need to do to make the dance work. More than anything else, the ability to listen to and interpret the music in my dancing has made me feel like I've moved beyond being a beginner. While it helps that I've heard the more popular songs in the genre a few times now, some predictable patterns can even be pulled out of an unfamiliar song by an attentive listener. (My musical experience and music theory education from high school helps a little too.) It can be as simple as doing some slower slinky moves during the more mellow parts of a song, and throwing out big flashy moves for the crescendo. And while I can't get it right every time, it feels really great to hit a big accent or "break" in the song with a corresponding dance move -- and to lead my partner to do it with me!

Recently, I'm also starting to experiment with interesting footwork and other variations that fit in between or in the middle of other moves. Lindy hop as a dance style is very influenced by the improvisational spirit of the jazz music it is danced to. (Swing music is related to or a sub-genre of jazz.) So playful variations and improvisations around the basic structure and style are highly valued. Maybe this is somewhat true for other dance styles, but I think even more so for lindy hop. Anyway, some of my experimental moves work and I remember them for later, and some of them don't and I just keep on dancing. I think certain patterns and preferences I use now are starting to give me my own distinctive style which, I hope, will help me stand out in small ways from the other leads. I know there are still a lot of things I can improve on though.

I've never been a socially precocious individual, so you may find it a bit strange that I would choose to go hang out with a bunch of strangers all the time. Maybe that aspect was a bit uncomfortable to me at first, but it mostly doesn't feel like that anymore. Because when you see, and dance with, the same strangers every week, they're no longer strangers. While I can't say I've made any close friends yet, I have gotten to know several people reasonably well (mostly women, for obvious reasons). When I walk into, for instance, the Century Ballroom on a social dance night, I feel right at home and it's great to see and be greeted by all the familiar faces of the other regulars. The whole swing dance community is very friendly and welcoming. I didn't have that experience at all when I used to go salsa dancing in previous years.

It's very nice that a there are a lot of swing dancers around my age. This is true not only in the Seattle scene but across the country, and it's partially due to the great swing revival of the late 90's, which was right around our college years. (If nothing else, you may remember the famous Gap 'Khakis swing' commercials, or the movie Swingers, from that era.) Back then, neo-swing bands like Big Bad Voodoo Daddy and The Brian Setzer Orchestra became phenomenally popular, and lots of college kids took up swing dancing. I remember when Rich, a college friend/roommate, got into swing dancing in Saint Louis during that time, and he's still at it. Sadly, I wasn't convinced to join him at the time, but now I know what I was missing. Anyway, while swing today is not nearly as big as it was a decade ago, there is a good-sized community of dedicated people who mostly started in college back then and have continued to bring in others around their age, as well as introduce the dance to a slightly younger crowd.

So there are a lot of college-age dancers too, at least at the weekly Century all-ages dances on Sunday nights. Some of them can dance pretty well, though it seems like there's a constant cycle of young newbies who try it briefly and don't stick with it. Once I got beyond the point where I felt like a newbie myself, I used to not enjoy dancing with follows who didn't really know what they were doing. However, as my skills and experience improved further, my attitude on that has changed. I've found that as long as my partner knows the absolute basics, I can lead a variety of simpler moves well enough to really show her a good time. On the slower songs, I might even be able to throw in enough slinky musicality in there to make her nearly swoon! :) Yeah it's a bit of an ego boost, but also if that helps to convince more follows to stick with swing dancing, I am doing my part to bolster the community -- and I'm tipping the lead/follow ratio just a little bit in my favor. Sure it still feels great to dance with the good dancers (although it can be intimidating if she's a local superstar), but variety is also good so there's no reason for dance snobbery.

I'm afraid I have to admit that if I was talking about dating, college girls might be getting a bit too young for me. With the reality of me being in my late-late twenties now, they might be a full decade younger than me! Wow, I don't feel that old. And actually, they probably don't think I am either. I've been told before that I look a few years younger than I am, and several times this year I've been asked if I go to college around here. What do you think -- am I that young-looking? While it might have been annoying when I was 21 and looked 17, I don't think I'll mind any more.

Those of you who visited my house during the first year I lived here may recall that my garage door would occasionally open and close for no reason at all. Sometimes I would even come home to see my garage door wide open, inviting anyone to freely walk into my house. I wasn't too worried given that I'm in a very quiet cul-de-sac with only my one neighbor ever driving by, but still it was a little disconcerting. Finally that stopped happening about a year ago, around the same time the button on the wall in my garage stopped working. I didn't really need that button though as I usually use the remote in my car, so I didn't worry about fixing it at the time.

Then about a week ago my garage door stopped responding to any commands to open or close. Finally this weekend I got out my handy multimeter to investigate. I found one of the safety sensors at the bottom of the door wasn't getting any power, causing the garage door opener to think there was constantly something in the way, so it would refuse to move the door. The switch on the wall wasn't getting any power either, though the voltages all looked good at the connections to the opener unit. Most likely a loose connection in the switch wiring had been the cause of those random door movements, then that loose connection eventually disconnected altogether.

I actually know how things got into this state. When selling the house, the previous owner had new drywall installed in the garage -- one of the cheapest, sloppiest drywall jobs I've ever seen. I guess the quality normally wouldn't matter much in a garage, except that here they hid the garage door opener wiring behind the drywall, then managed to drive a screw through the wiring or something else to nearly break it, in two places no less.