Pictures Of Our Journey To Buffalo

It's a little late (in keeping with the spirit of this blog for the past two or three years), but here are pictures from the long drive my wife and I took to get from Knoxville, TN, to Buffalo, NY. All pictures were taken by my iPhone camera, so please forgive the relative lack of image quality.


The first day of the drive started out nice and sunny. It was a very pretty farewell to a place I called home for 10 years.


As the day drew on, the snow on the ground got thicker, and the temps got lower. Here's me standing next to the Prius at a gas station, showing off the jerry-rigged setup Brent helped me put together to haul all our stuff to Buffalo. (It worked)


Towards the end of the day, we found ourselves driving through Columbus, Ohio. We didn't stop here, or see anything special in particular. It's just... we drove through Columbus, Ohio. I think the first Wendy's is here or something.


We stopped at a Days Inn a couple of hours after Columbus to rest for the night. The next morning, I decided to take a picture in what looked like about 2 feet of snow (my feet stopped sinking after about the first foot of snow or so because there was enough snow packed under my feet to stop me). I don't think it was cold enough.


We found ourselves driving through Cleveland around lunchtime, whipped out the handy-dandy iPhone, and had it direct us to the best (according to the internetz) Chinese restaurant in the city. It was pretty good, and the dim sum selection was the best I'd seen in a long time. I am partial towards steamed beef tripe, though, so my opinion may be a little skewed. As you can tell from the picture, Kyeonghi was plenty happy!


Next, it was Kyeonghi's turn to pose next to the Prius. We intended this to be a comparison shot with the earlier Prius pic. As you can clearly see, the car is... colder.


The further we drove, the taller the snow piles grew...


... until I could no longer contain my dismay. This particular shot is me lamenting the huge piles of snow that had grown taller than me at a gas station in Erie, Pennsylvania.


Unfortunately, by the time we hit Buffalo, it was late, and the iPhone camera does poorly at night. However, I *promise* the blurry lights out there represent Buffalo, NY!

Thanks for looking!

I Crack Me Up

Or should that be, "I Hadoken me up"?



Here's a creepier version:

It's A Little Late...

But here it is!



I've been settling into Buffalo, NY for this and last week. Almost done now (I think). There's a snowstorm going on outside, and it's kinda pretty as long as you don't think about going outside.

Pictures to come soon!

WOAH

Three more days!

Some Random Things I Will Miss About Knoxville

1) Hong Kong House: It's currently owned by a Sxechaun chef. I think it's currently the best it's ever been.
2) Doug Banister: My old pastor from Fellowship Church, now leading a smaller, cozier congregation at All Souls.
3) The Kroger at 4918 Kingston Pike: I think everyone there recognizes me.
4) Wondering how many weeks before the current new restaurant at 6400 Kingston Pike closes, and wondering what is it about that building that spells doom for every business that moves in there.
5) The fake bears they used to have all around town: My favorite was the bumblebee bear.
6) The Christmas tree lights on every commercial tall building: An annual tradition!
7) Brie the wonder dog: Brent and Marci's oldest kid!
8) The Korean grocery store on Sutherland Avenue: I think everyone there recognizes me.
9) Dippin Donuts: I just love the old-fashioned counter seating they have.
10) My friends: They are not really a "random" thing I would miss, more like a given thing I would miss. But I can't think of a random 10th thing!

I LOLed, I cried, and I :rolleyed:

Yoga Flame!

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/11/22/malaysia.yoga.banned.ap/index.html

"It is inappropriate. It can destroy the faith of a Muslim," Council chairman Abdul Shukor Husin told reporters.

It's true, yoga has awesome destructive power. Just ask Dhalsim.

My One Hip-Hop Artiste Plug For This Decade

It's been a busy month at work, but things are winding down. I've been working on a complete rewrite of an old Visual FoxPro application, porting it to C# in .NET. I did get to work in Visual Studio 2008, though, and it has been a pleasant experience. However, since it was a Windows app, I didn't get to use the integrated AJAX stuff. I still got to use a few nifty threading tricks, though, which was quite a learning experience in itself.

I've been listening to an online radio station called Pandora for quite a while. It allows you to specify a few seed artists and songs, and then it will try to pick out songs that it thinks you will like. Occasionally it hits the spot and I hear something I really like. Sometimes it plays things that drive me up the wall... thankfully you can tell it when you don't like something, and it will never bring it up again. For the most part, it seems to have me pinned pretty well now, and I'm rarely offended by what it picks out for me. However, it never occurred to me go out and buy something new I heard on the station. That finally changed last week, after hearing the hip hop of Emmanuel Jal.

There's a concise Wikipedia biography for Emmanuel here, which saves me the trouble of having to say to much about the man. In short, he was a former child soldier from Sudan who got rescued from his former way of life, found Jesus and a new purpose, and now spreads his message of peace and redemption through hip-hop. Though he preaches love, his message isn't sugar-coated or banal. It's often hard-edged, poignant, and personal. No matter what tone the music takes, it always sounds genuine.

The album I bought is the 2008 release, Warchild. You might expect someone with his past to hit the same notes over and over. However, there is a surprising amount of variety in what he sings about. Yes, he does sing about his past (on the title track 'Warchild'), the things he had to do to survive('Forced To Sin') , and the way he was rescued from that way of life('Emma'). Along the way, though, he takes time off to sound off on the state of America and its failure to help its own in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina ('Ninth Ward'), offer mainstream hip-hop some advice about the image and values they sell ('50 Cent', 'No Bling'), and even reflect on the insecurities of a young lady who reveals "too much" on a date ('Skirt Too Short'). He often injects a gentle-spirited humor into his lyrics, which makes the message both engaging and accessible.

I got the album on iTunes, which let's you preview a little bit of each track before making a purchase, so you can try that if you're not sure if this would be your cup of tea. There is some digital rights protection that comes with the files you get from iTunes, but a quick burn to CD and re-import later fixes that (am I allowed to say that?). Or you can just go out and get the CD!

Peace...