Catching up for the weekend

Considering how beautiful the area around Seattle is, I usually try to get out of the city at least once per weekend. That being said, I work for a company that supports on-call for engineering support for each feature that at team owns. Basically - your team (4-8 people) is responsible for the code/machines/service/etc you own. If there are problems - you'll get paged. So we rotate on-calls for a week at a time. My team is great in that we have very low pager load, but being on-call still means that I need to stick around internet-ready areas in case something does happen.

So - I am in the city. What to do? More like... what to choose to do? So much fun to be had - but this weekend was mainly about relaxing and hanging out with friends.

1/8/11


Saturday, my gym had their belated holiday party. A great way to see everyone not in their smelly workout clothes (well at least most people...), eat some delicious food, and do a white elephant exchange with all the gifts that we got for Christmas that we didn't want.

I spent some time snapping shots. My main attempt was capturing the dogs that various people brought running around the place. It just didn't work! Dogs do not stay still at all. I just could not figure out how to focus on them - was learning about focusing on only a part of the screen rather than the whole thing. Nope. Nothing. Well only after I got home did I realize I never upped by ISO from 100. Duh. Lesson for later.

This is the ONLY photo I took of any of the dogs that was in focus. Now thats impressive and depressing. Let this be a lesson I shall not forget. Yet another one.

1/9/11


I have better photos for Sunday, but I cannot post them as they were part of the Daring Bakers challenge for the month, to be revealed at the end of the month.

Sadly I did not take many photos apart from that. I went out to lunch at Japonessa and was going to take photos of the sushi... but I forgot. At the end of the meal Ryan remembered about the camera and took a photo of the full glass of hot sake that I had. Full because that is one of the most disgusting things I have ever tasted. But I had never tried hot sake before (cold sake is good!) and for a couple of bucks and happy hour I was willing to try. Never again.

So then I just have one salvageable shot from wandering around Pike's market before it started snowing from Beecher's cheese. Not interesting shot, and too much extra light reflected in it. But it is all I got. Even with having more fun at Knee High Stocking Co. with friends later and a board game night... camera remained forgotten.

Doing today's photo (1/10/11) separately as it comes with a recipe!