weill aspects

originally posted september 03, 2004

emerald city

Last week I went out to Seattle to visit family. It had been about 18 years since I was last out there. Some things have changed; I hear this whole "Internet" thing has been good for the area overall.

the rain

I remember very little about my 1986 Seattle trip. We flew on Piedmont Airlines. I was the ring bearer at my aunt and uncle's wedding. I had to wear a tuxedo. We went up to Vancouver for Expo '86 where it rained so much that my shoes bled into my socks.

Before I left for Seattle, one of my co-workers warned me that the whole rain thing is "just a myth used to scare away tourists." That's the same line I heard from tour guides as the rain fell for almost every day there. We nevertheless found plenty of worthwhile things to do in and around the area. We took a day to see the Cascades and the Bavarian Village of Leavenworth; later in the week we headed west for Hurricane Ridge at Olympic National Park. We visited my uncle who is now virtually retired after Active Voice, the software company he co-founded, was acquired by Cisco Systems. He and my aunt are still married and have three children aged 13, 15, and 17. Their house overlooking Puget Sound is lavishly furnished with fantastic art, technology, and enough Warhammer pieces to build a real army. If my current employer makes it onto the Inc. 500 as Active Voice did in 1992, I would love to retire to such a nice spot near such a nice city.

the ball

And yet the city isn't so small after all: on Wednesday I met up with Deanna, a Carnegie Mellon graduate who originally moved to Seattle to work at Amazon.com. Deanna's a season ticket holder at Safeco Field and a die-hard baseball fan in her own right. We had great seats on a night when Ichiro, seeking his 200th hit, went 0-for-4 with an intentional walk that was roundly booed by the crowd of over 33,000. Coming from Pittsburgh, I was surprised by the turnout for a weeknight game against an average team; while I don't expect 50,000 fans to watch the Pirates get blown out of the water like my beloved Yanks did this week, it's refreshing to know that Mariners fans are as loyal and supportive as ever during a disappointing season.

Deanna and I didn't actually catch much of the game we attended. We spent virtually all of it talking about baseball, about life in Pittsburgh and in Seattle, and about pretty much anything that came to mind. On our last day of the week, I went with my youngest brother David and my dad back to Safeco where we caught a single-admission afternoon doubleheader. Over 40,000 fans showed up to see the Mariners defeat Kansas City in the opener, and a small but vocal subset stayed until the 12th inning of the second game as Randy Winn belted a game-winning homer for the sweep. It was my first doubleheader and it was exhausting to sit through, but the weather was beautiful and the games exciting. Those Mariners fans who opted not to munch on sushi "Ichirolls" between games could visit the team store where t-shirts of former Mariners Jeff Cirillo and Kazuhiro Sasaki were just $5 each. Taking in the open-air atmosphere reminded me distinctly of PNC Park in Pittsburgh, which opened two years after Safeco Field but was not designed by the same architect.

the atmosphere

On my latest trip to the West Coast, I was once again impressed by the spirit of growth that is in Seattle. Paul Allen, who in 1986 was just starting to branch out from Microsoft, now owns two sports franchises in the Pacific Northwest. Allen has also bankrolled two of the most distinctive museums I've ever seen, the Experience Music Project and neighboring Science Fiction Musuem and Hall of Fame. All the technology growth has shaped Seattle's growth but has not dominated the city: as you browse Pike Place Market, you wouldn't know that RealNetworks' headquarters is just a few blocks away -- we were much more aware that Seattle Hempfest was even closer to the Market while we were there.

I'm not about to pick up and leave Pittsburgh anytime soon, but if I did I would love to try living and working in Seattle. There's a lot of opportunity, a lot of great people, and some beautiful sights within driving distance. I just wouldn't be caught dead on the roads during rush hour, where I had flashbacks to all the time I spent in February stopped on the freeways of Los Angeles. It's a good thing that software engineers are often allowed to work flexible hours.

meanwhile, in pittsburgh...

I came back to Pittsburgh just as classes resumed. All my friends who spent the summer at internships are now back, and my calendar shows it. Whereas a month ago it was a chore to plan social events, my Labor Day weekend starts with a trip to Pittsburgh's newly-opened Apple Store and a nearby churrascaria for dinnner.

The idle search for housing continues. At first I was only considering buying a condo for myself; now some of my friends are suggesting buying a house to share among three or more of us. There's still a lot to consider and a lot of time to make a decision. Most of that process can wait until 2005. In the meantime, it's time for me to get some sleep.

Back to September 2004, or to the year 2004.

Where am I?

This is Weill Aspects, the official news archive of Jason Weill Web Productions. All articles posted to the front page end up here. This page was generated automatically by a series of Perl scripts.

Articles in Weill Aspects are organized solely by date. You may find the Google search in the left column to be useful if you are looking for an article but do not know the date on which it was posted.

Weill Aspects is composed of static web pages generated as appropriate when a new article is posted. It was developed in May 2001 as a way of managing the content on this site. I also used it extensively while in Japan, during which time I did not have continuous access to the Internet. I was able to write daily updates during July and August 2002, pack the files onto a CD-R or memory device, and upload them from the Internet-connected computers at school.

These scripts are all hacked together in less than elegant fashion, and I don't plan to release them. Some of the design that went into Aspects also was used to develop Livestat, a suite of Perl scripts to process statistics for academic competition tournaments. Livestat is available freely.