Snowhome

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When we had our awful struggle to get to the airport a couple of weeks ago one of the things that sustained me was the knowledge that at least it wouldn't be this bad on the way back. 

Ha.

Turns out that Mother Nature (tm) had arranged another show of strength just as we got back into the country, with lots of thick snow and the prospect of blocked motorways. 

Fortunately, with jetlag you don't let such trifling things as icy roads worry you. All you want to do is sleep. So we got a train and a taxi back to our snowbound car, loaded it up and shot onto the M62 before fate noticed. And we got home just fine. 

We've had a lovely time away. All the better for not having to be at home. 

Seattle Museum of Pop Culture. And Microsoft Imagine Cup Alumni.

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It's hard to avoid the Seattle Museum of Pop Culture. For one thing the monorail actually drives through the middle of the building on the way to the Space Needle. For another it has the most amazing architecture. We've never got round to taking a proper look in the place. Until today.

To be honest I wasn't expecting that much, perhaps a few guitars in glass cases. But there was much more than that, including a really good Star Trek exhibition and stuff that kept us occupied for just about half of the day. They even had a David Bowie film where he actually mentioned Hull. 

This is a Star Trek console. Really. 

After our does of culture we headed back to Capitol Hill to meet up with a bunch of ex-Hull students who are now Microsoft folk. Quite a few of them got their big break as part of Imagine Cup teams. All doing very well, lots of great chat and lovely to see them all. They look so grown up. Probably because they are. And we got a bunch of recommendations for places to visit during our final days here. 

Seattle Space Needle. Again.

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Another day. More amazing weather. Apparently temperatures records are on the verge of being broken (They are back home in England too, but in an entirely less pleasant way). 

Anyhoo, whenever I'm in Seattle I go up the Space Needed. Always have. Always will. They're in the middle of a great big refurbishment exercise at the moment, replacing the sides of the viewing platform with enormous slabs of glass. This meant that we didn't get to walk all the way round the outside as we normally like to, but even so the view was rather nice, and you can actually see the mountain, which is nice. 

Heading for Capitol Hill

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Last night we went into the MVP party for a while. Great fun. They are usually very loud affairs, but not this time. They had loads of headphones that you could use to hear any one of a number of different disco soundtracks (including classical music). And you could even change the colour of the cool lights on their sides. Awesome. It's been a great summit. Lots of lovely technical content. Lots of chances to say what we thought of it, and a great place to catch up with folks. 

Today we're heading for an apartment in Capitol Hill, a rather nice part of Seattle for a few days. 

Whiskey and Gambling in Seattle

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One of the lovely things about the MVP Summit is the "appreciation night" that they organise for us each time we come. It's nice to be appreciated. This year we all descended on a whiskey distillery to sample a few, eat some good grub and maybe do a little light gambling. Great fun. 

Betting the farm (the dealer got 19)

The best gambler of the night earned a substantial donation to a charity of their choice. I was not the best gambler of the night. In fact it all served as a salutary lesson for me as to how fast you can burn through money, even if it is fake...

Beating the odds at roulette

Action at the blackjack table

Fancy a whiskey?

A great time was had by everybody. Thanks to the folks from Microsoft for setting up such an excellent event. 

Satnavs 0 Snow 1

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I thought we were being so clever. with our planning for the journey to the MVP summit.  Booking a hotel close to the airport  and ravelling a day early seemed like a good way to handle "The Beat from the East meets Storm Emma". What could go wrong?

Everything.

There are only a few roads between Hull and Manchester airport. And this afternoon they were either broken or impossible too get to. I chose to use Waze as my navigation weapon of choice. It's supposed to be able to detect road closures and automatically route you around them in advance. 

What it is not supposed to do is send you off the motorway and then back on at the same junction, put you into a half-hour queue to get onto a road that turned out to be shut, and send you down roads so scary that you turn back trembling. 

Rubbish.

Once we'd, rather sensibly in my opinion, not driven down the road marked as closed, Waze proceeded to try and take us back the same way. Idiot code. You;d think that a satnav would be able to reason that if I've not used the road, there's probably a good reason for this. At very least it should ask a question "Is the road you just tried to use blocked?" and then use the answer to get us where we want to be. 

Actually, I think the whole sorry affair threw up my rather worrying reliance on technology. In the "Good Old Days"(tm) I would spend a few minutes with the map before heading out. That way I'd know if a particular direction is a good idea or not. Nowadays I just wait for the navigation to catch up.

Oh well. At the moment we are in Leeds buying train tickets for the last leg of the journey.

Hardware

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We had another superb Hardware group meetup at c4di tonight. Two new members, plus a host of others braved the horrid snow to come and talk tech. I was telling everyone of my problems with my soldering iron, which had come un-soldered (see above) leading to some nice "Catch-22" issues (in the end I bought another iron and mended my "proper" one).

Plans are afoot for another soldering evening, and a "build your own LoRa node" event too. Turns out that it's all happening..