Naveja.net » Observations

Overheard

Wade — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 06:32:30 +0000

Uber Tavern patron to bartender: “You guys should twitter every time you put on a new keg”.

Obligatory Space Needle / Monorail / Seattle snow photo

Wade — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 21:27:20 +0000

Man-made Mud Volcano

Wade — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 04:18:55 +0000

A flippin’ man-made mud volcano has been erupting in Sidoarjo, Indonesia since 2006. “It appears that the flow will continue indefinitely and so far all efforts to stem the flow have failed”. I’ll come clean and say that I didn’t realize volcanoes were on the list of things we were making these days. Go us!

View Larger Map

Lots of big pictures here.

935 Lies

Wade — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 07:21:57 +0000

The Center For Public Integrity has published an exhaustive study of the Bush administration’s efforts to manipulate the United States into war with Iraq, arriving at a total of 935 lies.

–Via Talking Points Memo and Seattlest.

Amazing Pumpkins!

Wade — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 19:10:02 +0000

If pumpkin carving was an Olympic event, I have no doubt that Josh and Cam would bring home gold medals for their jack-o-lanterns. Amazing!

Zoe’s Tale

Wade — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 22:30:35 +0000

Happy day. Zoe’s Tale, a new book from John Scalzi, is on the way. He says, “I don’t consider it the fourth book in the Old Man’s War trilogy”. That’s good, because four books won’t fit in a trilogy. Well, maybe if that fourth book was very tiny. Then you might be able to squeeze it in somewhere between the other three. Or maybe fold it up and hide inside of one of the other books? I don’t know. I’m not an author, so I’ll leave that kind of thing to the experts.

Better is the news that he’s got at least a few other books queued up immediately behind this one. A very good friend introduced me to Scalzi earlier this year, and so far I’ve managed to read just two of his books. That said, I already consider him to be in the same league as Niven, Simak, and Heinlein.

Evil Prank War

Wade — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 04:58:51 +0000

Prank War.

These guys are not friends. They should just beat each other with sticks and stop pretending that they’re on good terms. It gets worse with each episode.

Via Elsewhere.org

“It has a dampening effect on the housing market, no question.”

Wade — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 03:10:06 +0000

This Seattle Times article is the first story from a local paper I’ve seen that doesn’t firmly stick to the “Seattle is special” real estate mantra. I appreciate the Times’ smooth transition from their previous stance of “things are just different here than they are in the rest of the country” to today’s reference to an “inevitable correction”.

Key points:

Higher interest rates on jumbo loans – those larger than $417,000.
“Nearly half of the single-family houses for sale in King County, plus 21 percent of the condos, have sales prices high enough to require jumbo loans — and that’s if buyers reduce their loan amount by putting 20 percent down.”