Wedding season is upon us!  Dana's showers happened last and this weekend, and the Year of the Wedding "officially" commences next week with Justin and Maggie's wedding in Bellevue (warning: turn down your volume if you go there, no one taught Justin that web site music is annoying ;)).  3 weeks later, Dana and I head to PA for Tim and Bridget's wedding. then a month later we get hitched ourselves!  After a honeymoon in Tahiti (beaches!), New Zealand (adventure!), and the Cook Islands (beaches!), we cap of our journeys in the best destination yet -- New Jersey (...highways?)!  Luckily, it's for yet another wedding -- my brother Shawn and his fiancee Aly.  Then we get a "break" until August, when Dana's brother Eric and his fiancee Sarah tie the knot.  After that, we have a longer respite until the new year unless someone pulls an impromptu Vegas wedding and for some reason invites people.  And the best part is, despite buying a tux a couple of years ago for Lauren's wedding, I don't get to use it AT ALL this year, I need to rent a tux every time!  Justin, Tim, Shawn, Eric...let's make a deal here...we all choose the same groomsman tuxes, and it happens to be a version I can buy for $700 or less, instead of renting separately for each event ;).

And since I post quarterly...at best...no one will read this and my wish of an "expensive" tux for all weddings will not come to pass.

Dana has been on me for a while to get rid of my old Subaru.  Since she recently got a full time job at MS, this is much easier to do financially, so we started looking at a few cars more seriously.  It was a close race between the Lexus IS and the Ford Escape Hybrid.  The Lexus was fun and comfy (in the front anyway), and spoke to our desire for a "fun" car.  Plus, the turning radius made me dizzy (which was good, I guess :)).  The Escape was roomy, which was good for me coming from a wagon, and the ride was nice and quiet.  In the end, we went for the Escape due to it's utility (it can carry our new bikes), gas mileage (35 mpg right now!) and price (8K less than the Lexus, plus a tax credit this year).  The only annoying thing is that the hybrids are in such high demand right now that the dealerships won't do much negotiation (not even negotiating up for my trade in).  They offered $800 for my car, and currently we have a good amount of interest in the 3000-4000 price range, which is a large step up from their offer.

We'll post some pictures of the new car soon!  It's a deep blue with a leather interior, so use your imagination for now :)

• Bought house
• Might get promotion
• Have girlfriend

Yes, that much.  I have a lot of blogging to catch up on.

Josh's morning, Tuesday, May 17th 2005:

9:00 - Hit snooze on alarm

...

9:27 - Miss snooze button, decide to get up

9:45 - Showered, snazzily dressed for work in shorts and flip flops

9:49 - Head out the door

9:50 - "Where in the hell is my car?"

Isn't that the eternal question?  Where is my car?  Perhaps not, but it is the question that I found myself asking that morning.  I do not usually ask myself this question.  By 9:50 I am usually driving said car groggily to work, listening to The Morning Alternative wrap up on 107.7 The End.  But not this time.  Once the shock wore off, I went over the possibilities.  Was it towed?  I rent a covered spot in my apartment complex, for convenience, so I thought this was unlikely.  Asking the apartment managers and calling the towing company directly confirmed this, it was not towed.  Only one option remained: my car was stolen.  Yes, my 1995, scratched up, hubcap-missing, parking sticker-laden, Subaru Impreza wagon was stolen.  I went over how little sense this made as I walked...WALKED...to the police station that is a few hundred yards from my place.  Why would someone steal my car?  Isn't the BMW-density of this area roughly equivalent to the population density of Signapore?  Aren't they more lucrative targets?  Probably not, due to alarms and newer locks.  But still...MY CAR?

I reported the car stolen around 10:15 that morning.  The officer that took my information said that there had been a number of mid-90s Subarus stolen in the vicinity, and thought someone might have a key or set of keys that was working on most of these cars.  This is probably the case, since there was no broken glass or anything.  I found out later in the day that the Issaquah police (located 10 or so miles south of Redmond) ran my plates at 5 am that morning, but did not pull my car over.  As the Redmond police commenced what I can only imagine was a relentless search for my vehicle (they probably pulled 5 of the 600 cars they having lurking in speed traps for this one), I called my insurance company and got myself a rental car.  I decided to take a sick day (mental health, you know :)).  I had interviews the next day, and these two stresses combined would have been a bit of a burden at work that day.

Luckily, I wasn't kept waiting for very long.  My car was found in Renton on Wednesday, with "no apparent damage."  Unfortunately, I couldn't pick it up until Monday due to a police hold on the vehicle.  This was a bit annoying because it resulted it a $300 impound fee (120 for the tow, and 60 bucks a day which the police wouldn't pay...).  Add to this the $500 worth of stuff that was stolen from my car (because I pack it like a bum's shopping cart), and I'm out $800.  My insurance deductibles were perfectly priced to screw me here too, as I would have ended up paying $750 anyway, and my rates would have gone up.  Just great...

On the bright side, my car was indeed undamaged (though the cars surrounding it in the impound lot weren't so lucky, which made me a wee bit doubtful before I found my car).  It checked out with my mechanic, so everything seems to be in order again.

I don't take the presence of my car for granted anymore, though.  Kind of frustrating, but hey, every morning is now a pleasant surprise .

I recently discovered an extremely delicious iced tea drink.  It's one of those half-and-half deals...half iced tea, half lemonade.  It's called Calypso Island Tea Lemonade (or something).  It has little bits of lemon and tea floating around in it, and it's really tangy (the way I like lemonade).  I bring this up not only to shamelessly market this drink, but because I just had a craving for it.  Being the weird person that I am, I decided it wouldn't be right for me to just go to the store and buy some.  It has a few hundred calories, as most sugary drinks do, and my part-time health conscience decided today that it would be gluttonous to give into my craving outright.  Luckily, it also provided a solution.  "Bike to Woodinville and back," it said.  I decided that my conscience was right (or that my craving was powerful enough), so I am now heading out to bike to Woodinville and back, all so I can drink a bottle of cold, tangy, refreshing Calypso Island Tea.  <takes cash handout from Calypso advertising rep...they tried for Lebron, but he was busy sleeping>

As some of you know, I was getting a bit restless in my position at Microsoft (testing developer tools for Windows CE, basically) and I was exploring some of the other options within Microsoft.  Aside from some potential annual review consequences (i.e. sour grapes), moving around within Microsoft is pretty easy.  Combine this with the diversity of software products that Microsoft creates, and I think Microsoft is a pretty interesting place to work.

I did a bit of searching last April (2004) at the behest of my friends.  I found one position that would have been somewhat interesting (working as a developer on internal tools, instead of a tester), but it wasn't a knockout and my team was really busy at the time, so I didn't pursue it further.  I started looking again in April, doing "informational" interviews.  Basically, these are informal talks with members of other teams about open positions.  You discuss the responsibilities of the position and your qualifications and reasons for moving.  If there is sufficient interest on both sides, you can set up a formal interview loop, which is basically the same as non-internal Microsoft interviews (i.e. a whole day of one hour interviews).  This time around, I talked with my current team (Windows CE), MSN, and Windows Media.  Windows CE is a cool team to work on, because you get to see cool new devices and embedded technologies, and it's like a microcosm of Microsoft and the software industry as a whole, since they try to incorporate many of the current trends into the new devices.  I was given the opportunity to work on device drivers and DVD-related technology, which were both intriguing.  Then I talked with the Windows Media team and found a position that just exuded "cool" to me.  It is DVD-related as well, but it will let me work on the technology directly, instead of getting it second-hand from the Windows Media team if I worked on the same thing in Windows CE.

After much deliberation, I decided to interview with Windows Media instead of staying with Windows CE.  It wasn't an easy decision to make.  I like the CE team, the positions were very similar because I would be working on the same technology in both of them, and the in-group transition would have been smoother (no interviews, fewer review issues, easier to rebuild reputation).  However, the opportunity to work directly on a technology that I find so cool was just too much.  My interview day was stressful but good, and I ended up getting the position.  I will be starting in my new position in July, and I'm very excited!  I will definitely keep everyone apprised of how cool it is :) (to the extent that I'm able under my NDA, anyway).

As many of you know, I've been looking into buying a house recently.  I have a bit of money sitting around that I'm not properly investing, and using it to buy a house would not only take it off my hands, but would also give me more than twice the space that I have now in my apartment and would let my monthly "residence payments" contribute to something instead of just vanishing.  I started looking at houses about 2 weeks ago, and have seen some interesting ones, but nothing I am comfortable buying just yet.  I'll only be in this house for 5-7 years, so my priorities are a little skewed:

1. Resale potential.  This is kind of touchy-feely, but it means I won't buy a house that's too unusual, and may give more consideration to schools, neighborhood, etc. than I would for myself.
2. Usefully spacious.  I'm looking at 1800 square feet or more, but the layout is important.  I'm not particularly interested in having 5 bedrooms.  A place that has a large finished basement earns big points in my book, for television and table tennis space.
3. Croquet-ready yard.  I was never one to indulge in yardwork or gardening (sorry Dad ), but after looking at houses a bit, I really want a backyard in which I can relax, plant a few things, and play croquet if the family comes to visit.  The perfect back yard for me is flat, rectangular, and has a shed and a deck with a hot tub.  Not too much to ask for! (and you'd be surprised at the number of places I've seen that roughly meet this)

Hopefully I can find something soon that fits the bill.  The market now is pretty stressful (distinct seller's market), and it's scary to think about whether housing prices will continue to rise.  On one hand, if I get in now and it's the top of the market, my housing investment won't appreciate very well over the next few years.  On the other hand, if I don't get in now, the costs will be even more prohibitive next year.  Most places I'm looking at cost $100K less last year!

It looks like my browser issue magically resolved itself, so the blog is back!  I can only assume that the developers for MSN Spaces sensed my unstoppable bug followup skillz as I became more annoyed with the issue, and preemptively fixed the problem.

I had my bicycle repaired last week.  Until now, I'd only used by bike once while out in Washington, to ride to Justin's place on the first Sunday of the 2003 NFL season to watch his NFL Sunday Ticket package.  On this ride, it was quite evident that my bike was pretty unusable.  I was stuck in one gear and my brakes didn't work, which made riding a wee bit unpleasant.  So at the time I did the logical thing...I left the bike in his garage for more than a year.  Justin could finally bear to part with it last September, and he returned it to me, at which point I promptly stashed it on my small balcony for the entire winter.  This also helped with the bike's condition, I'm sure.  I dropped the bike off for repair during my awesome day off and got it back this week.

Since I haven't been working out much recently, I decided to appease my conscience and go for a ride.  I rode from my apartment to my office at work, to see if I could ever do such a thing on a semi-daily basis.  It was a fun ride.  I took a main road to the on ramp of 520, then took a bike trail that runs parallel to the highway for a bit.  The main road was my first experience riding in traffic on my bike in a non-residential setting, it was kind of stressful.  At multiple times, I wished I had rearview mirrors attached to my bike.  It took me about 30 minutes, but I actually made it.  The ride is mostly uphill, which really took it out of me.  I refueled with water and cranberry juice from work, then headed back.  This only took about 15 minutes, because it was all downhill.  If I could take the downhill route to and from work, I'd do it every day!  Plus, I found a cool trail that runs through Redmond that lets me more easily get from my apartment to the highway (no more merging for me!).

I plan to try riding to work at least once in the next month (on a day I expect to be lazy, so I can sit with my eyes glazed over from fatigue and no one will notice).  I'll try to make it a habit, but I don't know how keen I am about showering at work every day, and being tired to boot...

My blog will be on hiatus for a few days, until I figure out why the entry editing page won't load on my home computer.  Guess I'll need to talk to people.  Doh, how personal :).

Jason, Morrow, and I went on a hike last Saturday, at Rattlesnake Mountain.  I tried my best to keep up with them (they are both rather good runners and I'm...not).  They contented themselves by running up the trail and back a bit, while I fought to maintain a steady walking pace without having a heart attack.  I look a bit listless in a few of the pictures we took, because my cardiovascular system was consuming 99% of my body's energy, and I didn't have quite enough left to smile.

Check out the pictures I took here.  Be sure to get to the end, there are two pretty sweet panoramic shots.  The larger one is 17 vertical pictures wide, good enough for 1200 x 16000 pixels after cropping :).

The weather suddenly took a turn for the extremely beautiful out here.  Seventy-five degrees, blindingly sunny (especially if you're looking at a computer screen all day), and with daylight savings time it stays light until almost 8.  So what did I do with this great weather?  I took a day off and wasted it running errands.  In my defense, I did have lunch "outside" on the patio of Canyons, but I don't think that quite counts as enjoying the weather.  Normally I'd have run these errands on a weekend (or next weekend, or the next weekend...), but I have two free days off of work in April as a reward for extra hours during our last product release, and I figured it would be a good way to get some nagging errands off of my plate.

The most important of these errands was talking to a real estate agent.  I have been "thinking about" buying a house for the last year or so, but a combination of laziness and anxiety has prevented me from doing anything about it.  Most of this anxiety doesn't have a good basis.  I have a stable job that I don't plan on leaving for a while, and I'm slowly outgrowing the confines of my apartment, so why not buy a house?  Anxiety arises regarding where I will find a house (probably not in the middle of Redmond, at this point, due to increasing housing costs), whether I have enough money for a downpayment, how much I think I can afford, and so on.  Mainly, I need to reconcile my desire to be close to friends and work with the reality that I can't afford a $400,000 house and I don't want a cheaper old house that requires maintenance.  In the end, reason won out and I called a real estate agent that Justin recommended to me.  She forwarded me some mortgage broker contacts, so I can determine my price range.  Within a week I figure I'll be looking at houses...scary.

My other errands were much less important, relative to home buying :).  Shopping for groceries, scheduling car checkup/repair, inflating my tires, and getting my apartment complex to clean off my porch, which looks like it hosted a bird frat party, due to a nest that was teeming with newborn bird-life last summer.  Not a pretty picture...

Now, I'm off to the Mariners game (so technically I'll enjoy some of the nice weather).  I will consider it a success if I don't have a bout of road rage driving there, since it will be HORRIBLE without being able to use the carpool lane...

One random update...the hard drives from my old computer were unharmed by the massive explosion on Saturday.  The power supply seems to be the only casualty.  Go team lucky.

Board game night tonight at Brandon's.  Always something to look forward to because 1) I like board games, and 2) Brandon usually makes a dessert involving chocolate, undoubtedly in an attempt to cripple my mad board game skillz by sending me into a delirious ecstasy coma.  Today we played "Ticket to Ride," one of the roughly 12,000 train-themed board games to come out of Germany in the last decade.  Like two weeks ago, I came in second out of five, a placing I blame on the chocolate pecan gooooey delicious melt in your mouth lick your fudgy fingers...where was I going with this?  It doesn't matter.  What matters is that we followed up TtR with an informal game of Star Wars Trivial Pursuit.  This is the ultimate version of the game, the pursuit of the most trivial trivia in this galaxy (and also one far, far away).  Players are presented with Earth-shattering questions like the number of rank insignia on Grand Moff Tarkin's uniform (12) and the name of the Hoth base commander (General Carlist Rieekan).  Useful and insightful real-world information, to be sure.  The fact that I answered both of those questions correctly without hesitation, as well as about 80% of the other questions we had, is perhaps reason for concern.  Consider, though, that in high school my score would have been around 95% and I could have reenacted the scene.  Obivously, I have made significant progress in returning to the real world .  This progress will be lost on May 19th, when Episode III is released, but until then I can revel in those few moments that I'm not thinking about how bad a Tauntaun actually smells on the inside...

You know something is broken when...

• It is making loud screeching and squeaking noises for a year
• It responds intermittently to kicking or punching
• It simply won't turn on

Now, I'm a relatively smart guy, so one would think that I would deal with something of mine appropriately if it exhibited the above behavior.  Alas, I kept my old PC sitting around for a year while it squealed at me to fix it and I said "you don't need to be fixed, watch!" while using it with impunity. 

Today, I finally decided to hedge my bets and bought an external hard drive to back up the data on the old boy.  When I tried to turn the computer on, it wouldn't budge.  Great timing, I know.  I was not to be deterred.  I used all of my great computer skillz to unplug/replug and jam the power button at least 10 times, to no avail.  So I decided to swap the hard drives out and get the data later.  But I just had to try the power button one...more...time...

Back in went the power cord, on flipped the power switch, and I jammed the power button 3 more times.  Nothing...until 3 seconds later the power supply emitted a loud BANG and a burst of flame.  Needless to say, I was a little surprised.  After putting my heart back into my chest, I ended up dismantling the troublesome little guy and kicking him out of my apartment for his insolence (see pictures).

The moral of the story...if you know something's broken, just fucking fix it before it explodes in your face.