Mike Pirnat

Arch-itecture
Originally uploaded by mikepirnat.

I’ve uploaded the photos from our trip to New York. After my day of hacking in the hotel (during which we had a great rain storm), I met up with Liz and two of her classmates after their exam for beer and munchies at Luna Park. It was humid as hell, but I had the best grilled cheese sandwich ever, and discovered that, for being somewhat mass-market, Stella Artois is an acceptable beer. Sadly, our delivery Chinese experience later than night was pretty poor (after waiting two and a half hours, they delivered it to the wrong location), and the Cavs just couldn’t manage to get any traction against the spurs, so the late evening kind of fell apart.

The next day we went to Bliss for massages (nice) and then bopped up to the Fifth Avenue Apple Store, mostly so I could take pictures. We wandered a bit at FAO Schwartz, where we encountered some awesome LEGO sculptures. After lunch at BLT Steak (too expensive, but delicious), I got all spontaneous and we took a carriage ride through part of Central Park. A pre-dinner visit to Vino (an awesome Italian wine shop) resulted in a fun conversation and a few more bottles to add to the cellar. Unfortunately, our meal at I Trulli was fairly uneven: while all of Liz’s dishes were pretty decent, two of mine (a duck prosciutto appetizer and Piedmontese hanger steak) were serious misfires, and I found myself reluctantly slipping into the feeling of being an “Iron Chef” judge on a bad day. The service and pacing weren’t jiving either. The wine, however, was quite nice–if only the rest of the experience had lived up to it! Alas.

My overall dissatisfaction with NYC was further reinforced by our discovery that, once you go through security at LaGuardia, you don’t have any meal options that include protein. If you happen to be traveling with a pregnant woman at lunch time, this is, politely, less than good. As an added bonus, the TSA folks gave Liz a bunch of crap about going through the security line a second time after leaving to get something edible. Luckily, the cats were happy to see us when we got home. And really, that’s what matters.

beer, food, new-york, photos, travel, vacation, wine

After a long, long Friday night of staying up burning CDs for the rental car, and a long, long Saturday of airplanes, airports and power naps, we arrived in safely in Seattle and found our way to wolffire and gr0m1t’s (very lovely) house without incident. After a bit of catching up we walked to nearby Circa, a West Seattle alehouse with supremely tasty food; I’m very satisfied with my choice of a Boundary Bay Blonde and the halibut tacos, a nigh-religious experience after a day of airplane food.

Today we have an appointment at Chateau Ste. Michelle and a bit of sightseeing planned, and then dinner at Beàto. In the morning, we head off to the other side of the state to start the wine visits in earnest. We’re very happy to have made a better rental car selection than on our Napa trip (do not drive a Ford Taurus on windy, windy roads, kids); the comfy seats should be a nice bonus as we drive all over creation this week.

More later — must eat breakfast and get going.

beer, cars, food, friends, travel, vacation, wine

I’ve heard that the measure of a party’s excellence is how much one hurts the next day. By this metric, I have officially had the best birthday party ever. We wound down around four this morning, and I’ve just rolled out of bed to assess the situation, begin the first round of Advil, and start considering the degree to which I will be human today. My right shoulder hurts like hell from too much Wii Tennis, and I am generally crapulous. (I proclaim these proudly as merit badges earned by devotion to good partying.)

Many, many thanks to everyone who came, and especially to Liz for putting the whole thing together. It’s not often that I get to feel terribly special, so it was a real treat.

beer, birthday, life, liz, video-games

Fixing really esoteric and deeply buried, almost impossible bugs, the sorts of things that achieve near mythic proportions for their extreme rarity and ability to induce mass perplexion, is a rare and delicious treat. It brings such a sense of delicious righteousness once the cause of such an elegant problem is understood, and having been grokked, is crushed mercilessly out of existence.

However, it sucks when it keeps you in the office until nine o’clock.

But, besides making an eminently reheatable pizza, my adorably wonderful wife bought mini oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, which were utterly transcendent and perfectly paired with the Left Hand Imperial Stout that I’d had waiting in the fridge for me. Hooray, cookies and beer, I earned you today!

beer, food, work

IMG_1737
Originally uploaded by mikepirnat.

Friday continues as we hop a train from the airport and arrive in downtown Köln, in the shadow of the Dom. After picking our jaws up off the ground, we hike down to the Chocolate Museum, wherein we witness much chocolatey goodness. Continuing the train theme, we take the Shoko-Express from the Museum back to the Dom, where we wander around the interior for a while, followed by dinner at Hausbrauerei Päffgen, where we discover the joys of Kölsch, the local beer, and make friends with a bachelor party. We do a bit of sightseeing and souvenir shopping as we walk back toward the Dom (finally getting some good light on this otherwise grey and difficult photography day), then take the train back to the airport, by which point it’s time to head back to the hotel and make sure we’re all packed up for our return to the US.

At this point the map gets a bit moot; this batch of photos is all at number fifteen on the itinerary.

beer, chocolate, germany, photos, travel

Bloody hell, it’s been almost twelve days since I’ve posted any new photos from the Germany trip. Harrumph. I guess that’s what happens when I let myself get distracted by other things: houseguests, complete disassembly of the office/computer space to prep for painting, work, catching up with Tivo (I can’t believe I’ve gotten Liz hooked on “Eureka”, woot!), catching up on long-overdue library DVD’s (Paradise Now, Munich, and, somewhat embarassingly, Aeon Flux, which at least I didn’t have to pay for), slogging bravely through Neal Stephenson’s The Confusion, and going to Oktoberfest with geoffimusprime.

Today was part one of the annual two-day company pep rally thing for this year, which, on one simple fact alone, instantly qualifies as the best so far: free beer coupons for happy hour. Hooray, beer!

I have at least rated, retouched, and sorted the remainder of the vacation photos; hopefully I’ll get around to posting them over the coming days. And then I’ll have to find something else to blog about for a while.

beer, books, germany, house, life, movies, photos, travel, tv, work

Having (finally) had some success with Twisted and Jabber, I am taking a moment to celebrate with a bottle of Harp. The NerdBooks.com party was pretty cool, though mellow. They have an insane selection of books — everything from animation to signal processing. As it turns out, they have insanely great prices on things too, and I only now realized that books purchased on premises would ring up at their online prices rather than their cover prices. Argh!! On the plus side, they also seem to have surprisingly reasonable shipping rates too, so maybe I’ll pick up a few things as early birthday presents for myself. They put out a nice spread of food, and the extremely hot pepperjack cheese has enabled me to breathe freely once again.

Beyond that, it’s been a nice evening of chilling in the hotel lobby, taking advantage of the comfy chairs, interesting company, and the conference’s free wireless. Met a nice chap from Slovenia; chatted with Kevin Dangoor for a bit; tinkered with code; shot the proverbial breeze with fellow Clevelanders David Stanek and Ian Maurer.

Overheard in the lobby: “Is it a convention of Laptop People or something?”

My most quotable utterance of the evening: “We need something like WSGI, but for management.” (You kind of had to be there.)

Yep…. Good times. Definitely good times.

beer, geekery, health, humor, photos, pycon, python, twisted

12-07-05_2016.jpg
Originally uploaded by mikepirnat.

Okay, we are officially living in Bizarro World…

We went to the Brew Kettle with butterandjelly a couple of Wednesdays ago, and while there I tasted (and completed!) a sampler flight of beers. Amazingly, after years of hating beer with a vengeance, I’ve started to find things that, beyond merely not offending my palate, and pretty damn tasty! So far I’m mostly preferring porters, stouts, and Belgian things, as long as they are “good”–I think my previous issues, like those with seafood and wine, were due to the fact that I’d never really had anything worth having.

Still–no good can come of this!

beer, friends, photos

aquamindy, butterandjelly, and I are embarking on a survey of this year’s various Christmas ales, and being the geek that I am, I am attempting to blog the experience as it happens. All the bottles are interesting–and there are quite a number of them!–so for an added challenge I am photoing each bottle as we go and posting it to my Flickr account.

You can follow along here!

[Updated@21:01] Tasting is complete! A few clear-cut winners emerged from the fray: Weyerbacher’s Winter Ale, Delerium Noel, Lump of Coal, and Holiday Spice Lager Beer. Photos and tasting notes are over at the Flickr photoset. Cheers!

beer, friends, geekery, photos

Tuesday, 7/19:

Long day at work, followed by Beer School at Great Lakes. Despite not liking beer very much, found Beer School to be highly educational and well worth my time. Interesting to see how my palate has evolved to the point that I can clearly identify what I do and don’t like in the beers (which were quite good, once I correct for the horrible hops taste that I hate so much).

Prepped music for the long drives ahead — made copies of a few new CD’s that I want to listen to, as well as seven discs of mostly-random mixes. Consequently, did not get more than about 30 minutes of sleep (d’oh!) before…

beer, music, travel, vacation, wine