When we were in Spain in July, we visited the Dalí museum in Figueres. The museum is Salvador Dalí‘s monument to himself; he spent his latter years building it. The guided tour was well worth the money. I came away believing that Dalí was both enormously talented and full of shit.

The next day, purely by chance, we passed a sign for Gala’s castle at Pubol while driving around in the coun­try­side. We spent half the morning looking around the castle that Dalí had bought for Gala, his wife …continue.

Senator Patty Murray visited us at Cozi this morning. She was there to hear from small business people about healthcare reform and she met with half-a-dozen local small business owners, including our CEO, Robbie Cape. I sat in on the meeting as an observer to take photos.

We heard a number of stories.

Jason runs a record store. When they decided to insure all of their employees, it meant that everyone had to take a pay cut. One guy didn’t want to take part, but Jason convinced him. Weeks later, that guy broke his arm and ended up in the emergency room. Not long after, the same guy had another accident. Later he …continue.

Those town halls are getting uglier.

A dozen gun-toting paranoid guys walking around at Obama’s town hall in Arizona yesterday, some of them with ties to the violent Viper Militia.

In the video above, Barney Frank takes a question from some woman who’s comparing Obama to a Nazi and tells her she’s talking “vile, con­temptible nonsense”.

I hope it’s not going to escalate into outright violence.

Tommy Flood is another of Chris Moore’s Beta Males. He’s also a brand-new 19-year-old vampire, newly turned by his girlfriend Jody—her­self only a vampire for a few months. He’s not too keen about his new state, but he’s trying to cope. It doesn’t help that his former crew of shelf stockers at Safeway are trying to hunt his vampire ass. And he has a 16-year-old Goth chick for a minion who thinks the Lord Flood is like OMG totally hot.

Funny but not mean-spirited.

When using Lightroom before, I was never able to figure out how to move photos from one folder to another. You’d think that you could just click on a photo and drag it. I just spent twenty minutes figuring out what I’ve been doing wrong. After you’ve selected multiple photos, click on the photo thumbnail and not the sur­round­ing gray frame, and then you can drag the photos to the target folder.

I had become accustomed to clicking on the frames to multi-select photos, so naturally I assumed that was also how you dragged a set of photos. But clicking on a frame of a selected photo merely deselects all …continue.

After reading Layer Cake earlier this week, I decided to rewatch the movie. The screenplay was written by J.J. Connolly, adapting his own novel. Although the convoluted plot has been much simplified and somewhat rearranged, it’s still complex and tricky to follow. Most of the humor is gone, as director Matthew Vaughn didn’t want to make Lock Stock III. It’s more of a straight thriller. The Cockney is toned down, making it easier for a non-UK audience. And Daniel Craig is somewhat older and calmer than the narrator of the book.

The film succeeds both in its own right …continue.

The unnamed nar­ra­tor—My name? If I told you that you’d be as clever as me—is an up-and-coming London drug dealer who wants to retire by his thirtieth birthday. He’s pro­fes­sion­al, low-key, and a little bit cocky, and he has every chance of pulling it off. He re­luc­tant­ly does a favor for the crime boss Jimmy Price and suddenly his plans are derailed. Double-crosses, snitches, betrayals, murders, hold ups, and stings ensue. There’s little honor among thieves, save for our hero’s immediate circle.

It’s easy to see why Layer Cake …continue.

I rode Seattle’s new Light Rail system for the first time yesterday morning. I walked to the new Beacon Hill station. It took me just over 20 minutes at a brisk pace, so I’m not likely to walk there often. I could have taken the 60 bus to the station, but it only runs every 30 minutes.

When I got to the Beacon Hill station, I couldn’t figure out if my book of $2.00 tickets for Metro bus tickets were valid on the train or not. The first three workers I asked didn’t know either. The cop I asked said “yes”, so I took the elevator 167 feet down to the platform and rode the train into …continue.

Tonight was the annual Irish Night at the Mariners and we bought tickets for $11.

Even after 20 years in the States, I still know next to nothing about baseball. I picked up a copy of the Baseball Field Guide before last year’s Irish Night, and found the first chapter very helpful in explaining the basics. I re-read it last night and it helped me follow tonight’s game.

Neither the Mariners nor the White Sox could score a run. Inning after inning the game went on, zero-zero. No one had scored by the bottom of the ninth, so play continued. A tenth inning. An eleventh. We called it a night and took the new Light …continue.

After crusading financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist is convicted of libel, he re­luc­tant­ly agrees to in­ves­ti­gate the 40-year-old dis­ap­pear­ance of the teenaged Harriet Vanger for her great-uncle Henrik, a rich in­dus­tri­al­ist. He is aided by the antisocial hacker Lisabeth Salander, the eponymous tattooed girl.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was published shortly before Larsson’s untimely death, and later became an in­ter­na­tion­al bestseller. It’s a classic locked-room mys­tery—Har­ri­et dis­ap­peared from a sealed-off island full of the extended, ugly Vanger clan. It’s an indictment of the Nazism buried not …continue.