Lunch Break On Centennial Trail

The sun came out today (although I’m freakishly busy with work right now), Bogie and I decided to take lunch down at Centennial Trail. We only walked a couple miles and let Bogie take a quick dip in the Snohomish river. By 1PM, I’m back in the office doing some pixel wrangling for clients.

Bright February Day At Lime Kiln Trail

The sun came out and so did the wonder dog and I. I wanted to do a good trail but many of my favorites don’t open up until late spring. I thought about heading out to a trail by Index, one that was denied me by work done on the road up to its trailhead last September. Traffic was already getting a little whacky at 9AM and long weekend drives on highway 2 can be quite the drag. So I made a game time decision, stayed on highway 9 and wandered over to Granite Falls.


I decided the safest option would be the Lime Kiln trail and it turned out to be a delightful choice. There was only a few cars in the parking lot when we set out and absolutely packed when we got back. Because of this, Bogie was able to be “off leach” for 90% of our trail time!

You could tell that this had been a rough winter for the trail because there was quite a bit of tree and washout damage. However, the folks that maintain the trail had it in great shape. Thank you trail elves!





Lot of attempts at pictures but nothing remarkable until we got down to the river.






So thank you to the powers that be for a warm sunny day in the middle of February. The wonder dog has completely sacked out!

ION Portable USB Turntable Unboxed

I tend to check out the web site Woot.com just about everyday to see what specials they may have going. I’ve purchase a half dozen or so things from there in the last couple years. When the ION Portable USB Turntable came up for $49.00, I hopped right on it. In fact, I did a tweet on it and got a couple thank you tweets from those that follow me. They jumped on the special as well. The unit arrived a few days ago but I didn’t carve out any time to unbox it until today.



The unit was very quick to unpack and setup. I quickly installed the included software into my iBook. The software is ruthlessly simple and includes large Fisher Price like buttons. When you finish a side of the LP, the software builds the MP3 and puts it directly into iTunes.



Back with eBay was cool (1998 or so), I had purchasing some classic rock albums and some of the goofy LPs I used to listen to as a kid. It started off with a Tommy Bolin album called Teaser, then the SpiderMan Rockomic (1972 - listened to in junior high when I broke my ankle) and Jan & Dean Meet Batman (1966 - a sort of Beach Boys meet Batman). Listening to these goofy albums from my childhood brought back a lot of old memories.



The first pass at doing the SpiderMan Rockomic went smooth as can be and I listened to it passively on the built in speaker on the LP player during the capture process. However, the audio level of the created MP3 in iTunes was way too low to enjoy. That was when I looked into the manual to find out about the USB out level knob. Felt a little nervous when I noticed the knob was turned all the way up. With few other options, I decided to noodle with it. I noticed that turning the knob all the way down (to the left), the audio levels rose significantly. So the USB out level knob is wired backwards on my version and that is just fine with me. I’ve been accused of being wired backwards a time or two myself.

So another quick pass yielded better results and both MP3 captured sides of my first album sounded pretty good. I have a lot of FileMaker work to do these days and this will help keep me company during the extended hours of pixel wrangling.

Mike’s Chili Parlor And Tavern

For this years ... to do list ... I had put checking out some of the places featured on the Diners, Drive Ins And Dives food network television show. I have a client within walking distance of Mike’s Chili Parlor and decided to check it out today. I was a little disappointed with my visit and cannot say that I would recommend it.



I had a chili burger with fries and it was quite unremarkable. I don’t know what I was expecting ... well ... other than something worthy to blog about. It was OK but that is about all. The service was pretty slow at first but they did get around to me. The burger itself was below average, even for bar food. The bar sits right behind the grill, so I had a good look at the patty itself. It was a standard pre-fab hamburger patty and not that big at all. The chili was good but not exceptional. I'd put a good old Steak and Shake chili against it any day of the week. The fries were from fresh cut potatoes, tasty but also unremarkable.



So if you are in the area, I’d say it might be worth a stop in but not something you would drive out of your way to experience. Locally, I think Patties Egg Nest is much more remarkable and perhaps I’ll blog about that sometime. It hasn’t been put into the triple D show yet, but perhaps they take submissions?

Mike's Chili Parlor
1447 N.W. Ballard Way
Seattle, WA 98107
Tel: (206) 782-2808
Website: http://mikeschiliparlor.com/

Monday - Thursday
11am - 11pm
Friday 11am - midnight
Saturday noon - 8 p

Saturday At Marymoor Dog Park

Yesterday a friend and I headed down to Redmond to check out the Marymoor off leach dog park ( 6046 W Lake Sammamish Parkway NE., Redmond, WA 98073). I added the address just in case you wanted to add it to your iPhone address book under a doggie park group. Getting to the place was a bit of a weird set of twists and turns (but what isn’t in the greater Seattle area?).



To say the place is huge, is an understatement. Given enough time, I think bogie would have sniffed every square inch of the place but he finally got around to running and socializing.



This park also seems to be well-maintained, has water holes for those aquadogs, large open spaces for chucket launching, and usually has a healthy variety of dogs for the ever-important socialization factor. Human socialization is pretty high, too, as everyone likes to talk about their doggies as they all play together.



Here is one of the largest dogs I’ve seen in my life. The owner says he comes in at a whopping 215 pounds and he certainly acted like a gentle giant.

A tired dog is a very happy dog...

More Pictures At Clearview Nursery

Such a beautiful day (again, what is up with that?), so the wonder dog and I stopped into the Clearview Nursery for our afternoon walk. They have a remarkable amount of landscaping stuff and some very interesting yard art.

Bogie And The Crane

Another quick couple pictures from our walk today (one of our walks), down by the landscaping supply store (Clearview Nursery) that has all the neat stuff out front. This is bogie next to the big old crane in the northeast corner of their property. Hope to get a picture from a lot of their yard art but want to do it over time. Give me a reason to take bogie down that way on sunny days.