Ramblings From Justin Penney

Seattle, WA has stolen my heart! I was up there last week for the 2005 Supercomputing Conference and never once touched wheeled transportation. We stayed in some condos downtown by the convention center and were able to do everything via foot traffic.

The weather was actually awesome! It's was mid-40's to mid-50's but it was even throughout the day. It wasn't like the 30 degree mood swings that we have to deal with here in MO. It was definitely dreary and overcast, but I never saw any rain.

On Tuesday we went to a party sponsored by Microsoft (who is annoyingly making a big push into high performance computing) and Intel. They rented out the Experience Music Project, the Sci-Fi Museum (with a lot of exhibits from Paul Allen) and the associated bars and restaraunts. The kickers was completely open bar! There were at least 1000 people there and the booze was flowing. Microbrews, Guiness and mid-level liquors were being served. They did not cheap out on the booze.

After getting liquored up at the Wintel party we stopped at The Fun House and finished off a couple pitchers and watched this rocking girl playing. It was just her playing guitar and a guy on drums and it was good! She was very bluesy and gritty but still hard and aggressive. It kind of made me thing of Amy Farrand with drums, but dirtier. The bartender, Jessica, was awesome as well. She was extermely nice to us and had the coolest gun belt tattoo that I've ever seen. Granted, I haven't seen a lot of gun belt tattoos... but this one takes the prize.

Between the condo and the convention center there was this little place called Cyber Dogs. I thought it was just a hot dog place but on repeated lookings I noticed a little vegan sticker. I went in and asked if they had vegetarian options. I was given a stern, "no." by the heavily Russian accented woman behind the counter just as I looked at the chalkboard menu that had "100% Vegetarian" written all around it. The woman erupted into laughter and exclaimed, "It's all vegetarian!" The place is tiny and had computers all over as it's an internet café as well. I enjoyed my Wiener Dog Schnitzel immensely while hearing The Beatles, The Stones and David Bowie! Make sure to stop here if you visit the area.

This post will be continued when I'm not so tired...

# posted by Justin @ 9:56 PM