My wife wanted snow, and main Microsoft campus got it. Not much – less than an inch by my measurement – but enough to snarl traffic getting off campus. Jules and I decided it would make more sense for me to grab dinner in the campus cafe and wait out some of the crowds rather than brave the snow and traffic on a nearly empty tank of gas.

Of course, I don’t work on campus any more. My office is way down in Issaquah. Unluckily for me, I had a meeting on main campus today. It was a great meeting – talking about my project with some field architects. But I didn’t expect to get trapped on campus by snow or I would have blown it off. Next time, I need a meeting room with windows!

Update: It took me only 45 minutes to get home, which is actually fairly typical for me to get home from main campus in the evening. There must have been an accident on 520 because when I crossed the freeway by campus, it was bumper-to-bumper as far as I could see in both directions. But when I passed the 520 exit by my house, there was only a trickle of cars coming off it. The side streets were surprisingly empty. Maybe everyone was afraid they’d be impassible with snow? Takes more than an inch of snow to stop me and my 4WD Chevy Blazer.

I’m sure my wife will blog this in more detail, but we’re on vacation so blogging isn’t top of her mind. Today was my brother’s wedding – I was the best man with the whole speech giving and everything. We left the kids with my wife’s sister tonight, but last night we brought them to the rehearsal dinner. They were the only two kids there but there were straight up amazingly well behaved. All night. Long past their bedtime (though to be honest, we are in Washington DC and still sort of on west coast time). I mean, I expect my kids to behave – but this was above and beyond. We got to the restaurant around 6pm and didn’t leave until 9:30! Tonight, at the wedding, several people told us how impressed they were with our kids. I am too.

Just wanted to blog how incredibly proud I am of my kids.

I normally keep this blog clear of personal and political commentary, saving that talk for my personal blog on MSN Spaces. But this time I had to make an exception. Check out this awesome picture of my daughter Rileyanne in a field of buttercups. Isn’t she cute? 😄

Last weekend, I tried in vain to install a PIE GM9-AUX in my Chevy Blazer. The GM9-AUX converts the CD changer port on the stock CD player that came in the car to a standard RCA jack, which I can plug any one of my four Nomad media players into (though I imaging 99.9% of the time, it will be the Zen Micro) via a standard miniplug to RCA adapter cable. This weekend, my neighbor Dino helped out and we got it installed. He did most of the dashboard removal work and I did the cable installtion and threading it thru the dashboard to somewhere accessable from the driver seat. Thanks Dino!

I want to listen to my Nomad in my car. Turns out you can get a cable that plugs into the CD Changer port on the back of the stock stereo in my 2001 Chevy Blazer that converts it to an RCA jack for only $60. Add a $5 miniplug to RCA cable and I figured I was golden. That is, until I tried to install it.

A comedian named Rida Rutner once said she “only like cars because they take me to clothes”. I’m not a big fan of clothes, but I don’t like cars much either (I only like care because they take me to Fry’s?). Apparently, this simple sounding DIY project of “plug in cable” requires the disassembling of half the car. Well, half the dashboard anyway. I didn’t realy expect that removing the radio would require “releas[ing] the park brake release cable from the park brake lever”. Wow.

Of course, in my area of expertise I guess most non-experts would be equally lost. I’m setting up a website for some friends, so I sent them a quick email with the status, and the response came back “could you write this again, but this time in English?” 😄