Michael Hanscom

Enthusiastic ambivert. Geeky, liberal, friendly, curious, hopepunk; trying to be a good person. (he/him)

It’s the little things that count

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Two things that gave me a grin (for very different reasons) on my way home from lunch today:

  1. The fifty-something guy standing at the corner of 8th and Pike just outside the Convention Center wearing a bright yellow t-shirt paired with not just leopard-print parachute pants…but topped off the ensemble with leopard-print shoes as well. Obviously a very trendy thirty-something in the mid-80’s who’s never bothered to clear out his wardrobe.

  2. The lady driving the big obnoxious SUV who had to back out of the Convention Center’s parking garage because her behemoth of a car was too big and gave the “MAX HEIGHT 6’6″” sign a good whack when she tried to drive in. You spend that much money on a ridiculously impractical vehicle like that and then drive it through the city, you deserve every moment of frustration you have trying to find a place to park it.

Okay, I’m not always a very nice man. But I’m okay with that.

iTunes “Not My Slave” by Oingo Boingo from the album Best o’ Boingo (1986, 4:46).

So what’s the deal with the kilt, anyway?

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Update: Welcome, Utilikilt Newsletter readers! Seeing myself mentioned in the newsletter was a very pleasant surprise — good to (virtually) meet all of you! For more UK goodness, drop by the Flickr Utilikilts Group, going strong since 2004. :)

My first UKI got this via e-mail last night, and figured it was worth answering publicy as well as via e-mail.

On Aug 16, 2005, at 10:03 PM, Amy wrote:

I have a question about the utilikilt you wear. I’m sure you covered it somewhere on you blog but I wanted to know what’s the draw of the kilt? What I mean is, why is a utilikilt better than wearing shorts or pants? Do you take a lot of crap from strangers when you’re out in public?

I’ve been meaning to write you for a while now on one subject or another from your blog but this is my burning quesiton!!

(grin) Well, let’s see…

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Preparations

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Much of the weekend was spent running around, getting boxes, making plans, and generally starting to get things ready for the move. We’ve got a Hanscom family get together this coming weekend, and I managed to get a week off of work for the move and a bit of vacation, so our current game plan goes something like this:

  • M-F: Work (sigh). Prairie’s heading back out to Ellensburg to finalize everything there, and I’ll spend my evenings packing things up and getting ready to move.

  • Friday: Prairie comes back out to Seattle, picks me up from work, and we drive down to Corvallis, OR to spend a weekend with my parents, my brother, his wife, and their kiddo at my brother’s place to celebrate mom and dad’s anniversary and have a family gathering.

    (Parents: Prairie and I will probably crash out at her mom’s place in Vancouver on Friday night, then continue on down to Corvallis on Saturday morning. I’ll e-mail you later today or this evening with more details and to make sure we know where to go in Corvallis.)

  • Next Monday: Drive from Corvallis to E-burg (uff-da!) and meet up with Prairie’s dad.

  • Next Tuesday: Rent a U-Haul, load it and Prairie’s dad’s truck up with all of her stuff, and bring all of her stuff into Seattle. Get the big pieces (desk, dresser, futon, bookshelves) from my place over to the new apartment while we’ve got her dad around to help.

  • Next Wednesday-Sunday: Make short trips back and forth between this apartment and the new one getting the rest of my stuff moved, and rest as much as possible.

Seattle Car Theft Statistics

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Scary auto theft statistics for the Seattle area from a Seattle Times article:

  • King County car thefts last year: “…9,253 in Seattle and 3,624 in the rest of the county.”

  • “On average, a car is stolen every 12 minutes in Washington state. That’s an average of about 122 cars per day, according to the National Insurance Crime Bureau.

    “Seattle-King County auto thefts represented more than a quarter of the 43,070 cars stolen last year in the state. By comparison, there were 4,825 auto thefts in Snohomish County last year.”

  • “A car thief in Washington has about a 1-in-16 chance of being arrested for each car stolen, according to data provided by the prosecutor. And, because of sentencing guidelines, a car thief will face a year or more behind bars only after the seventh offense.”

  • “State sentencing guidelines call for zero to 60 days in jail for a first offense. Many car thieves are given parole or relatively short sentences for initial offenses.”

According to the article, the King County Sherrif’s Office is exploring ways to combat this, but have a way to go and little to no budget for it. Pretty eyebrow-raising.

The application is in!

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Well, we’ve gone and done it — we turned in the application for the apartment we looked at yesterday. The apartment Prairie looked at this morning was “nice, but not as nice,” and while the apartment we checked this evening was nice, we weren’t comfortable with the area. It was only three blocks away from Aurora (for my Anchorage readers, think north Muldoon/4th Ave./Spenard rolled into one, but bigger and seedier), and the neighborhood just didn’t give us the best vibes.

So, we went back over to yesterday’s option, turned in our application, and then zipped down the few blocks to Prairie’s sister’s place. After a few minutes chatting with them we left the car there (so as not to have to pay for parking in downtown Seattle all week) and hopped on a bus back to my apartment. The bus situation is nice, too — the apartments are just a block away from a stop for number 41, which is a straight shot to downtown Seattle, all of about half an hour.

If all goes well, we should hear back by midday tomorrow…and with luck, we’ll get the go and have our new place!

And then comes the moving…

iTunes “My Heart Belongs to Daddy” by Duchin, Eddie and his Orchestra feat. Martin, Mary from the album Pop Music: The Early Years 1890-1950 (1938, 2:57).

The Search Has Begun…

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Prairie and I looked at an apartment yesterday evening up in North Seattle (just off the 130th St. exit from I-5) that looks really good. A 1960’s-era apartment complex, decent sized 2-bedroom with fairly new appliances in the kitchen, ground level (but rather than being open to the street, it’s half-sunk and looks out into a rock garden with cherry trees), parking spaces, a storage locker, good laundry room (not in the unit, but good sized and with new machines), a pool (!), and only a few blocks away from her sister. Looks very promising, and the landlord was a sweet lady who’s very involved with the neighborhood community.

We’ve got two more to look at today — another also off the 130th St. exit that Prairie will be looking at today while I’m at work, and one roughly halfway between Green Lake and Carkeek Park that we’ll both see this evening — so with any luck, one of those three will be the place, and we’ll be able to put money down and start the process of moving within the next week or two.

I’m going to miss being with walking distance of downtown a bit, but the tradeoff is more than worth it (finding a 2-bedroom in the $800/mo range just isn’t very easy this close to central Seattle), and between Prairie’s car and the bus system, it’s still a quick jaunt into the core of Seattle for when I want to come in for clubbing, wandering around, or anything else I might want to do down here.

We’re keeping our fingers crossed, but at least judging by yesterday’s showing, things are looking very promising. Yay!

iTunes “So Much” by Impossibles, The from the album Ska: The 3rd Wave, Vol. 4: Punk it Up! (1998, 3:23).

Tyger, Tyger, Burning Bright…

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A few weeks ago, Prairie had a Monday off and was able to come out to the Vogue‘s Sunday Fetish night with me. While we were there, we heard a very nice track that caught our ear, with a slow, driving tempo, pulsing drums, and using William Blake’s The Tyger as its lyrics.

I went to ask DJ Eternal Darkness who the artist was, Googled it when I got home…and got nothing. No hits at all. When I asked Doug about it the next week, he told me that he’d gotten it straight from the artist.

I was pleasantly surprised, then, to notice that in his weekly playlists for this past week, Doug had included a link to download the song! A very little bit of web sleuthing (i.e., taking the filename out of the URL to go straight to the home directory) led me to Julie Rowlette’s site, where in addition to The Tiger, she has three other (more standard house style) tracks available to download on her music page.

The Tiger is by far my favorite, but the others certainly aren’t bad at all, and Julie’s got a gorgeous voice. Go give her a listen!

iTunes “Tiger, The” by Juliette 6 (2005, 6:26).

The Worst One of All

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Scoble’s playing with Vista’s security improvements:

Yup, I’m thinking of doing a honeypot computer running Windows Vista. You know, a computer where you visit the absolute worst sites you can find on the Internet and see if you get infected with stuff.

I’ve already visited the sites that my friends got spyware and malware from. So far so good. But, that’s a small set. Anyone have a good up-to-date list of places that put nasty stuff on your computer?

I was going to suggest www.microsoft.com, but he’s already been bit by that bug. ;)

(Seriously, though, while he hasn’t given much in the way of results yet, it’s good that they’re making some progress on this front. Too little too late? We’ll find out when Vista actually debuts.)

iTunes “Duty Free (full mix)” by Various Artists from the album Duty Free (full mix) (1999, 1:13:56).

Pre-release bloopers

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Harry at the graveI found this report on The Leaky Cauldron this evening:

Many readers have emailed us here at Leaky over this photo that appeared recently in Entertainment Weekly showing a scene from the upcoming Goblet of Fire film. The source of the uproar stemmed over the fact that in the photo Harry is shown standing in front of a grave with three names written on in, including one that reads “Tom Marvolo Riddle 1915-1943”. As we know, that is the name of Lord Voldemort, and who, despite his…err…unnatural state at the begining of the sequence of Goblet of Fire, was not buried in that grave. He also did not kill the Riddles until 1944 or 1945. Readers have also pointed out that even if this was the name of Voldemort’s father, then he would have only been 11 years old when Voldemort was born (and Voldemort’s father’s middle name would NOT be Marvolo; Marvolo being from his mother’s side of the family — phew!). Finally, many readers also pointed out that in Half-Blood Prince we learn of Voldemort’s birthdate as December 31st, 1926.

While there’s a certain amusement to all of this, what really struck me was that in this internet-centric age, fans are able to catch bloopers in movies before the movies are even finished — and in this case, possibly allowing the studio to correct the error before the final film is released. Pretty amazing.