Trick question

Costco called last night to let me know the tires I ordered were in — not that I expected to wait long for a set of all-weather radials compatible a 2002 Subaru, especially in this neck of the woods. I drove today, anticipating I’d be able to escape work early and have them mounted. On […]

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Elastic Computing

With my products’ release imminent, I spent last weekend coaxing Amazon’s Elastic Computing Cloud (ECC) into action. The ECC is appealing for a few reasons: It’s someone else’s high-throughput network – product distributions, especially with demo files, are in the hundreds of megabytes. The T1 at work is 1.4Mb/s. Sharing, firewalls, and proxies reduce my

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Traffic patterns

While I was driving around Tucson, I was struck by how differently the traffic lights sequenced.  (Phoenix didn’t seem to have the noticeable differences.)  Consider this intersection of Some Boulevard and No Way: Some Boulevard is the moderately-trafficked arterial going left-right. In this intersection, left turns have to yield to oncoming traffic. The pedestrian crosswalk

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Trip back

I arrived at the Tucson airport at around 3:30 pm, in plenty time to attempt to catch an earlier flight out. Whereas most airlines will let you on if there’s space, Delta insists on a secret handshake bestowed upon their elite SkyMiles members. While the miles I have pooled on Alaska Airlines will let me

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Off course

Yet another example of when leaving the interstate (I-10) can be rewarding. I missed the turn into the Tucson Mountain District section of Saguaro National Park and followed this road until it dead-ended into a privately-owned quarry. The view back was worth it. The park’s visitor center was closed, but enough daylight remained for a

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It’s a dry heat

I’m in an undisclosed coffee shop in Chandler, AZ, basking in its functional air conditioning while I await my next appointment. The greater Phoenix area is much like I imagined it would be: big, flat and hot. It was 86°F when I left my motel this morning, yet it didn’t feel as oppressive the equivalent

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Spokesongs

For most of August, I was lucky to have the morning and daylight to let me take the long loop around the northern part of Lake Sammamish in the morning. The extra ten miles is nearly flat, adding variety to my otherwise hilly commute. It also gets me away from the noise and deconstruction around

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