Tamales

Tonight we went to Coyoacan to buy tamales for dinner. In this bad picture, you can see the lady taking out the tamales from the pots they are heated in. See this location in Live Maps.

Market

Today I accompanied my mom and sister to a market in Mexico City. This is a stand with several types of mole. See this location in Live Maps.

Denver Airport

I was on my way to Mexico and went through the Denver airport. This is a statue of some Apollo astronaut. See this location in Live Maps.

Radnor Lake

Today in the afternoon we went hiking to Radnor Lake in Nashville. My Australian cousins are visiting for the holidays so we took them for a quick hike around the lake. See this location in Live Maps.

Graduation

My initial flight from Seattle to Chicago was over an hour late and I barely made it to my connecting flight to Nashville. When we arrived at the gate I had about 8 minutes to run across the entire Chicago airport. Once we arrived in Nashville, I took this picture as we disembarked from the plane. See this location in Live Maps.


Jose, Kristen, Ili and Tim picked me up and we went to Cookeville for Martha's graduation. The next picture is Martha and me after she graduated the graduation. She obtained her M.S. (Master in Science) in Electrical Engineering at Tennessee Tech University; which is the same place I got my M.S. See this location in Live Maps.

Blackout

Maybe I shouldn't have made fun of the weather yesterday. Last night the wind speed was between 50 and 77 mph in Seattle and by the coast 90 mph winds were recorder.

The wind was pretty amazing last night and it finally caused the lights to go out a little past 1 a.m. I was surprised they didn't go out sooner since they had been flickering on and off all night long. However, when I went to bed, I wasn't expecting them to still be out in the morning.

When I woke up, I managed to check my email over the phone and find out the entire Microsoft campus was closed due to lack of electricity. Yay, I thought, no work! But then I realized that also meant no hot water, no hot food and no heat. Darn you electricity! When I own a house, Ill have a propane heater and stove.

As I heard the news, I found out that most of Seattle was without electricity and in the surrounding areas about 700,000 (including me) were also without electricity. I heard that several trees had fallen and caused major problems. One of my coworkers had a tree fall on his house and another was helping his neighbor who also had a tree fall on his house. I went out for a while to see if I could find any fallen trees in my area, but they had all been removed. I can't copy pictures form my camera to my phone, so Ill post the image later.

This type of storm is rather uncommon in this part of the country. But apparently it happens about one every ten years. The last time it happened was in 1993, so we were well overdue for one.

Quartz

Nothing much happened today except for the torrential rain, flooding, mud slide and 55 mph gusts of wind. I wish I could have taken pictures of it, but I didn't have my camera with me when I was out. So instead, I took a picture of this quartz my brother Roberto gave me.

Twenty Six

4! + 2 = 13 + 13 = 1A = sqrt(676) = 7 + 19 = 11010

Potato Head Star Wars

Remember that my office mate was a Star Wars aficionado? Well, today he added to his collection of Star Wars memorabilia. He got these Mr. Potato Head Star Wars figures. These are actually kinda cool.

Bowling

As a reward for a year of hard work (I've only been here 6 months), the entire Virtual Earth team went bowling. It was actually nice only working half the day; especially on a Monday. It's been 8 or 9 years since I've gone bowling, so needless to say (yet, I'm saying it), I sucked. I was lucky the first game and actually had several strikes. But, my luck vanished for the rest of the afternoon. I took several pictures, but really none came out well at all. I'm blaming the lighting.

See this location on Live Maps.

Country Music

Hey yall! Here is some good ol' country music right next to the first Starbucks ever. Them sure know how to pick a good tune. See this location on Live Maps.

New Coffee Machines

Today was a long day at the office. Certainly not the type of day you want for a Friday. Anyway, today we got new Starbucks coffee machines installed in the kitchenettes at work. Not that Starbucks is that great, but it sure beats what we used to have. Yeah, I know. It's not an interesting picture, but like I said, it was a long day at work.

Sidewalk Chalk Drawing

The new Windows Mobile platform was released a few weeks ago. So, just like they did with IE 7, they drew some ads with chalk by the entrance of our buildings.

Reed

Took this picture on my way to work this morning.

Microsoft Visitor Center

Went over to the Company Store after work today. On my way out, I stopped by the Visitor Center. In this view you can see the exhibit for the new Zune and in the background the history of Microsoft products. The Visitor Center is actually rather small, but if you are ever in the area, I'll give you a tour.

Fall Colors At Night

I didn't really take this picture today. All the trees have already lost all their leafs. I didn't have a picture for today, so I decided to post one from my collection. I think I took this picture walking home from work one night sometime this past October.

Almost Full Moon

Today, the moon is 99% illuminated and tomorrow is full moon. I was going to wait until tomorrow to take some pictures, but it just looked so cool that I went to Marymoor Park and took a few pictures. I wasn't planning on posting any since I want to try to post only one per day. But, this one looked so cool that I had to post it. This picture was taken near the soccer fields and I was a bit surprised the lights didn't drown out the moon. It almost looks as if the nearest lights are shining on the moon itself. See this location in Live Maps.

University Presbyterian Church

Went to church here today in the morning. See this location in Live Maps.

Fremont Troll and Gas Works Park

Went sightseeing today. The first place I visited was the Fremont Troll. It's been part of Seattle since 1990 and can be found under the Aurora bridge and 35th street. His eye is made from a hubcap and in his left hand he clutches an old VW beetle. See this location in Live Maps.


After visiting the troll, I went to Gas Works Park which is near by. The park used to be an old gas manufacturing plant. It was eventually shut down and turned into a park. Besides it's green areas, it also has some remains of the old gas plant and several play areas for kids. See this location in Live Maps.


The park has a great view of Lake Union and provides an excellent northerly view of the Seattle skyline. Check out more pictures in my Picasa Web Album.

Christmas in Redmond

Santa's Workshop at the Redmond Town Center. See this location in Live Maps.