I recently got a digital camera and have been playing with it for the last 2 days. I got a Lumix DMZ-FZ8, which I got on discount on amazon and not only had great reviews, but also features a 12X zoom which is just on a different level for $200-$300 cameras. I have started playing with it and he features that I like the most are the manual focus mode and the scene mode, which was much more practical than I have seen in other cameras. Here are some pics I took today (all these are still me learning more about the camera):

1. This is a texture photo testing out the zoom. I like the level of detail that can be observed on the snow.

2. Here are 2 pictures of my car. The left one uses the High Sensitive Scene mode, while the right one uses the night portrait mode (which requires me to not shake the camera as much when I take the picture).

3. Another higher exposure picture. Those guys hit the drums fast!

This thanksgiving weekend Brad and Poya convinced me to leave work behind for a bit and head to New York. I had always wanted to go to New York, ever since I was in Brown, and I even had made plans with my then roommate Tyler to go see Conan O’Brian. Though that never happened, but I wasn’t going to let the same happen twice.

The trip was quite eventful, even from before it started, and there was a point right before we departed that I was convinced that I was not going to go (This is a long entry, sorry about that, you can still though scan through the highlighted items)

Tuesday November 20^st 2007

As is common in me, I leave things that do not involve work directly to the last minute. This trip was no exception. I was too busy with work and hadn’t even thought about the trip, but I knew we were going to leave soon. That day I got some bad news from home, which made me extremely anxious and also consider not going to the trip. I spent that night without much sleep, wondering whether I should still go to New York, aware of the situation back home, or stay.

Wednesday November 21^st 2007

On Thursday I woke up early and called home. My mom gave me an update about the situation, and then I spent 30 minutes, sitting on my bed, in front of the mirror, trying to figure out what I should do. After lots of thought, I had decided that it was better for me to not go, that it was more prudent to stay in Seattle given the situation.

After arriving to the office, I told Brad I might not be going. He immediately thought it was an excuse to stay in work, but he was more understanding once I explained the situation. We went and had lunch for a colleague who is leaving for maternity leave, and after coming back, I talked to another very wise colleague who I explained my situation to in more detail and advised me to still go. However after just talking to her I was pray of my own, when I looked at my cell phone and noticed 1 message, which was my mom telling me something bad had happened. I freaked out at that moment, only to find out it was an older message and that everything was fine. I then talked to my dad and he told me it was ok to go to NY, as long as I had my cell phone/documents with me in there at all time. At this time I was ready to go…

Or so I thought. I realized I hadn’t printed my confirmation number, and then realized I had no way of getting it back (a lot of things aligned for this to happen) and I took a pessimistic approach and thought it was just getting to hard to go and maybe it was just not meant to happen. I went back home, at this point convinced I was not going but Brad and Poya managed to convince me to still try to go to the airport. In the airport I didn’t need my confirmation number at all, and was now on my way to New York! Before leaving we had dinner at some sandwich place in the airport where I had a French dip sandwich which I didn’t like at all, and then we were on the plane.

Thursday November 22nd 2007

The flight went fine and before I knew it we were in New York. The taxi ride to Manhattan felt like too many movies, but with a twist, we were in the dawn of the Macy’s thanksgiving parade. Since we couldn’t yet check in, we headed to the parade (not without having some breakfast; an egg sandwich, orange juice and carrot cake for me) and soon enough we started seeing the giant balloons on Broadway. Highlights of the parade were the gigantic superhero Hello Kitty, Snoopy and a climbing wall in the shape of an elephant. The parade was fun, but there were way too many people, and as we hadn’t really slept we decided to head back to the hotel early. Something bad that happened on this time is that someone threw a bottle from a building to the crowd which ended up hitting a child. I was shocked by this, but luckily the kid was ok.

We then slept until about 2, took a shower and went out to discover the city (also at this point I was in better shape as my mom told me the danger had already gone by and everything was ok). We first headed towards Rockefeller center, saw the famous skating rink, went inside Saint Patrick’s cathedral (which has a very Mexican picture which some people may be able to realize what   it is), and then headed to Times Square. Times Square is vibrant, not because it has screens on any imaginable surface, but because of all the different people you see in there. There is a rich cultural mix there, and a lot of artistic display. Even the street performers were great. There of course were the huge flagship stores, but I didn’t pay attention or go to any of those. I also had a Pretzel while Poya had a very expensive NY hot dog. On Times Square we had dinner at the Hard Rock Café. Something that was cool is that they had live cams showing the hard rock cafes around the world. In there I had a way to big burger while singing some of the early 90s songs (I sang a lot this weekend), while Brad had a drink whose name I will not say.

After Hard Rock we went to Madame Tussauds. I had wanted to go but thought this wasn’t much of interest to Brad and Poya. I was wrong, this was a blast. We had pictures with a bunch of celebrities, but it was the historical figures which were a hit. My favorite pictures were solving problems with Einstein, dancing with Jessica Simpson and Beyonce, making “The Rock” face and jumping to match the Kareem Abdul Jabaar's height. We then left the museum and I realized the brutal truth: my clothes were not warm enough for the weather. I paid for this, only giving the occasional grunts of frozenness, through the trip. Back at the hotel room we realized we were missing a bed, and given the size of the beds, Poya was brave to sleep on an improvised bed.

Friday November 23rd 2007

We woke up around 10:00 (read Brad’s or probably Poya’s recollection for more info on me waking up. All I have to say is that I wasn’t aware about the alarm, and thus had not prepared myself for it). We had breakfast at the hotel; I had pancakes with strawberries, and then headed out. We first went to the locations we had seen the day before so we could get better pictures. We then went to the Grand Central Station, which has one of the coolest ceiling designs I’ve seen, and from there we went to lower Manhattan.

After getting off the subway we visited the 9/11 Memorial Center and joined the self-guided tour. It was really impressive to see  the site of the attack while listening to the recollection of some of the survivors, and I still cannot wrap my mind around how such towers could have collapsed in the way they did. After this, and after being wondered by a girl with mad piano skills, we headed to Battery Park to get on the Ferry for the Statue of Liberty. Getting into the Ferry took a while, and while we waited both Poya and I got our portraits drawn. Now, this is something I am not sure Brad or Poya elaborated on, but I am keeping the portrait hidden, although they swear it does look like me. It was getting cold already, but it was freezing on the ferry. We still got some good pictures after hitting Ellis Island, and a couple more at Liberty Island. The statue has more detail that I had anticipated, and was great to be face to face. At this time though my hair was looking more and more like Einstein’s!

After the statue of Liberty trip, we went to have dinner at Little Italy, at a restaurant called Lombardi’s, which is the first licensed Pizza place in New York. We had 2 pizzas: One with mushroom, pepperoni and roasted bell pepper, and the other with Italian sausage, olives and onions. The pizzas were very good (had 2.5 slices) and then we headed back to the hotel to relax a bit, as we were bound to Caroline’s in Broadway for a comedy show featuring Tracy Morgan (from SNL and 30 Rock fame)

At the comedy club we had 2 opening acts, which, despite being a bit colorful on their language were good. However I found Tracy Morgan’s show tasteless and just not funny. In comedy, I value clever jokes, twists on regular situations, bringing humor to think about things one usually doesn’t. Tracy Morgan was not like that, he seemed unprepared and it seemed as if he tried to win the audience by being vulgar instead of funny. One interesting thing is that while we were on line for this show, I noticed a sign about a suit store which had mad discounts and was about to close. In any case, after the show we went back to the hotel, making a necessary stop at starbucks on the way, and right before we went to sleep, Poya wanted us to tell scary stories. He started with a well known one, but as I didn’t think about one, I began to improvise on a story loosely based on an urban legend back in Mexico. This quickly evolved into a campfire storytelling exercise and Poya and I created a pretty scary story (Brad’s contribution were some grunts).

Saturday November 24th 2007

This was the day I was looking forward the most (and possibly Brad the least). We woke up around 10:30 and went to a small place to have some New York donuts. After that we went to the Museum of Modern Art…

In Moma, I was thrilled. We started visiting the art in architecture section followed by a Latin American artist section, which featured simple compositions which plenty of optical illusion components around them. We then headed to the photography section and some of the impressionist art galleries. Here I started to see some of the jewels of the Museum. First Andy Warhol’s Campbell Soup Cans, followed by his portrait of Marylyn Monroe. Then couple of Picassos (including Three Musicians and Les Demoiselles d'Avignon), Monet (The overwhelming Water Lilies triptych), Cézanne (The Bather), “American Flag” by Jasper Jones, and the highlight of the evening, Starry Night by Van Gogh. I must have stared this picture for several minutes, discussed it a bit with another Dilettante, and looked at the detail on each of the stars, how they are drawn, from the bright spot in the center out. Being able to see the texture of the painting was surreal, and realizing that it is just like when Van Gogh first painted it is just amazing. I was face to face with some of the greatest works of arts, products of genius minds. I was just in shock at that moment. Moma also had a  special display of some modernist art by Martin Puryear, with the highlight being the stairway. One downside was that Dalis "Persistence of Memory" was on loan, so I will have to go back in the future to see it.

After Moma, we headed east to the United Nations. We walked a bit but once we were inside, we were up for another ride. We had a tour through the installation and sat at both the General Assembly and the Security Council Hall. It is insane to think that these halls hold the key actors in our international political structure, and I only wondered if the walls could talk what would they say first. Something amazing also where the relics from war, including remainings from Hiroshima after the nuclear bomb, land mines, and other kinds of weapons. It really is an overwhelmingly huge commitment that the UN has.

After the UN visit we went back to lower Manhattan, took some pictures at the city hall and then walked on top of the Brooklyn Bridge. It was fun, but it was freezing! We then walked to Chinatown and had dinner at this very traditional Chinese restaurant. The food was good, specially a garlic beef dish, however we had a bit of trouble as we didn’t realize it was only cash and Poya had to run around Chinatown, without his coat, looking for an ATM, while the restaurant owner looked at Brad and I with an evil glare.

After dinner, we went back to the hotel and relaxed, and then went to a Jazz club right on Broadway called Iridium. The trio was very good (although I always feel drums are overdone) and the pianist was a genius. We enjoyed the evening as I ate a really good apple strudel, and then went back to the hotel, where we fell asleep right away.

Sunday November 25th 2007

We woke up around 9:00 to get ready to leave the hotel. We checked out, left our luggage in storage and headed to the Empire State building. In it we went to the top (and had to go up 6 floors of stairs, 13 steps each, ok wasn’t that bad). On the top it was cool to get the panoramic view of NY and being able to tell the different buildings. We then got some breakfast at Maccas (McDonalds in Australian slang) and headed to Times Square, as Poya and I were curious about that suit store, since we had been planning on getting new suites for a while. In the store, I realized that this was indeed a huge opportunity, as the store was closing and they were cutting down on clothes that are generally worth thousands of dollars. Poya and I got Valentini hand-made Italian suites with 80% discount, while I also got a bunch of shirts and ti ed with a good discount, as the owner liked me since he was my same size and also Hispanic. Brad doesn’t believe in suites so he instead went to the picket lines in Broadway and joined the protesters for a bit. Afterwards we headed to Central Park where we walked halfway through, taking a bunch of pictures and getting a nice look at the lake. We then headed back to the hotel, got our bags and got the subway to JFK to start our way home.

In case you are not already tired, some random extra things that happened here and there in no chronological order:

1. On the parade, there was a couple that were fighting and then made up every 10 minutes, all in Spanish with a Chihuahua dog in the mix.

2. There were a lot of Germans! Hadn’t seen that many in the US before

3. NY nuts are sweet! That was disappointing

4. Police/Airport people were nicer than usual

5. People dress up a lot in New York. I was pleased

6. The theme song of the whole trip was “Milkshake”. Poya was singing it often, but all became very bad once it also appeared on my zune card! (for the record, I didn’t play it on my Zune. I can explain)

7. Poya and I became a bit of a jukebox, and they started songs for which I knew the lyrics.

8. At Madame Tussauds there was a “terror” section. It was not that interesting.

9. The only celebrities I saw were NeYo and the girl from Hairspray at the parade.

10. At central park, my backpack doubled as a clothes rack

  It is alive!! It is alive!!!!!!!

Quote

Gym!

Hosted by: Federico Gomez Date and time: Saturday, October 13, 2007 at 11:30 AM Location name: Redmond Fall City Road Park (park), Washington, United States View this event on Windows Live

The last couple of weeks have been eventful, but with with the common full load of work and Isa coming to visit, I hadn't had much of a chance to write a proper entry. However Brad made sure that I stopped being a slacker, and so here I am, right next to lake crescent, watching Tony and Brad attempt to bring up a fire, and writing my very overdue blog post. 

Couple of weeks ago we hosted the intern puzzleday event. We had been working on the event for the last couple of months and I authored two puzzles (one of them coauthored with Jett). My main puzzle involved a text with words in multiple languages, which led to discovering a secret message in latin, which could eventually used to get the final answer, which happened to be Esperanto. I spent a long time tweaking this puzzle, trying to get words that would be easy to classify and fit well in the story. In the end several interns enjoyed the puzzle and more than half solved it, so it was worth the work.

Then last month Isa came by to visit me to Seattle! Isa is heading to Spain this fall so we wanted to meet before she left so we could sync up after a year of not seeing each other (and also buy some of the stuff that she was going to be needing for her trip to Spain). The first day of her visit we went to see Dolores O'riordan of the Cranberries! We have been following this band for a couple of years and wanting to see them live for long and finally it happened. This was in the showbox in Seattle, and Dolores opened with Zombie, moving them to old and new songs like Linger, Black Widow, Animal Instinct, Ordinary Day, This is the day and Angel Fire. She left the stage then but just minutes back she came back singing Ode to my family. This was an awesome moment, since this is a favorite for both Isa and I! She closed the concert with Dreams. Before the concert we did have a bit of an issue since they required Isa to show her passport, which she didn't bring with her at the time, so we had to drive to Redmond and then back, but in the end it was good.

The next few days we did a lot of different activities. We went and had dinner at multiple restaurants, with a certain inclination towards Asian cuisine, since there is not much of it back in Mexico. Isa met a couple of my coworkers and helped blow balloons for Dave's office, we went skating to Green Lake with Brad, we went to the top of the Space Needle, Isa met a very peculiar doctor in Redmond, we went shoe shopping in Bellevue Square and we went Road Tripping in Washington State. Brad has already done a good recollection of the event (Including the dinner with Vanesa at the end!) So I thought I would just show some highlights directly from our Street and Trips log (could have done it using local live, but oh well)

Day 1: Crazy road and the reason why you don't lend your car to Daron

Day 2: Mount Saint Hellens

Day 3: Olympic Peninsula

I have some photos in folders.live.com which is one of the new windows live offerings which is extremely cool. I have a picture to integrate with a vulcano but that will come later as I am sleepy and cold, the battery is dying and Tony and Brad as asleep already.

A couple coworkers and I decided to have a culinary showdown this weekend, which an Iron Chef style competition. We all had to use one ingredient and bring a dish to dinner, and we would then vote on who the iron chef was. In any case, these were the dishes:

Tony dazzled with 2 dishes. The bell pepper sushi was brilliant, with a clean presentation and great taste, a very creative dish. Tony used sticky sushi rice, bell pepper, as well as wasabe, soy sauce and other ingredients. He then presented in a square dish for extra presentations points. His second dish was roasted bell pepper soup. The soup had just a hint of spice and just tasted great.

Brad's dish was stuffed bell peppers with beef. He added a couple of vegetables and curry sauce to the mix and stuffed fresh bell pepper halves with it, so the contrast of the cooked meat and the fresh vegetable holding it worked very well. The dish was tasty and also nutritious.

I had in my original plan empanadas criollas, but couldn't find the ingredient for the dough, so I decided to go a bit experimental. I sauteed onions, garlic, red bell pepper, potatoes and carrots and boiled Chipotle peppers  with chicken consome. When the vegetables were ready, I added the consome to it to infuse a touch of smoky spice. I then fried the meat and added all together in the end, presented in french bread sandwiches with Cedar Cheese. I really liked the flavor of this dish. The bread was crunchy from the oven and the bell pepper stood out with the extra spike of the chipotle pepper (One of my secret ingredients in getting flavor into food and my favorite pepper).

Daron presented the most unique dish, cooked entirely in Microsoft's kitchen. Daron created Chocolate Ice cream inside of a bell pepper cone. Now, this might sound strange, but it was actually not bad, and the 2 flavors went oddly well enough together.

In the end, we all agreed that Tony deserved the title of Top Chef. The bell pepper sushi was just awesome!

This is the table after the bell pepper overdose!

After the event, we went to see Paprika, an over the top anime movie about technology that allowed people access to other people's dreams. It was a good movie though the logic gets strangely twisted torwards the end, but this seems to be a common paradigm in anime anyways. I think it is fun to wach to the least.

  
Video: Paprika

This weekend I ventured to cook a little harder dish, the valencian paella. This is my first leap into a rice dish, and also the first time I have used seafood cooking (I added shrimp to the paella). I cooked the dish twice, first Sunday, then again Monday for our evening BBQ. Saturday I missed a bit of water, which ended causing the rice not to be soft enough (although it was tasty, Jett agreed). On Monday I did get the water proportion right and the rice was soft and I was happy with the result. Brad, Tony and Poya tried it out and liked it, though I still have enough to eat throughout the week. I did the paella with chicken and shrimp using a cazuela pot as I didn't have a paellera, but it worked just fine.

Having cooked Paella, I feel like I am ready to take my next culinary challenge. I specially am interested in gaining more skills in Mexican and Spanish cuisines, as they are part of my heritage and use ingredients I am familiar with. Dishes I want to try are Horchata (which I have tried before but miserably failed), Adobo (actually making the Adobo sauce myself) and Pozole (this one will be interesting as it is also not that simple). Maybe later in the year I will give a try to fish dishes, but I am not at that point yet.

Today I changed my normal schedule and skipped evening work to go to the theater. I got season tickets for the ACT Seattle theatre season, and this evening's play was Souvenir. The play was excellent, and though I laughed the whole time, I was also impressed by how the story was presented and the performance of the lead actress (playing Florence Foster Jenkins). If you are in Seattle and are interested in theater, this play is very good.

I also have been listening to the new Tori Amos American Doll Posse lately. As I mentioned in a previous post, I was introduced to her by Pandora, and since I have the Zune subscription service, I downloaded her new album and have kept it in rotation since. Something key that I find in some of her songs is a strong piano melody and poetic lyrics, which she associated to fictional caricatures of herself. One of my favorites is Father Son, for which a live performance is shown below.

This is a very cool campaign. You can contribute to a series of causes just by using some of the windows live services. A part of the advertising earnings are going to help issues from poverty to child protection to others. I think this is an awesome idea, because it doesn't really cost the user anything and with little effort a lot of money can be put together.

I have a love/hate relationship with Pandora. On one side, I hate dearly that whenever I choose spanish music for my station it jumps from one genre to another as if there was all in big category. No Pandora, if I choose Mecano, Alejandro Sanz, Juanes and Shakira it doesn't mean I like cheesy 80s music (although Mecano...) or even worse Northern Mexican Music (for crying out loud!). I was about to give up on Pandora when I randomly saw in one blog a video by the UK sensation Lily Allen. The video is "Alfie" and I really liked it. Sweet and clever, bubblegum with razor blades. I then got interested in other Lily allen videos which led me to the big treasure chest that are MySpace artists. After going through myspace for a bit though I lost interest (I am sorry, but I just feel MySpace pages are really ugly), but that didn't stop me from creating my own Lily Allen station in Pandora, which leads to the part where I love Pandora.

Lily Allen led to Imogen Heap, who led to Frou Frou, who led to Tori Amos (Can't believe I never heard to some of her music) which led to The Cranberries. I guess I do like contemporary female artists with instrumental composition and deepful lyrics, but in any case, song after song I ended up discovering new artists whose music I liked, which then pushed me to getting a Zune for my car to play them all.

Talking about Lily Allen, I found a cute "Moster video" of Zune Arts for her song Smile

 
Video: Zune Arts: "Smile" by Lily Allen

The title of this post might be confusing, but it should make sense after reading this entry. Last weekend Jett and I flew down to Cambridge, MA for the 2007 MIT Mistery Hunt, which in a nutshell involves ~60 hours of constant puzzle solving. The whole experience was definitely crazy and I spent the longest time ever without sleeping. In the end we didn't win but I was happy I got some puzzles done, especially 2 that were particularly tricky. I didn't bring a Camera but I am currently photo hunting so I can add some images to this entry.

Getting there

It is fair to say that getting there and coming back was quite rocky. The night we left it was snowing and it was thanks to the braveness of a friend that we made it to the airport for a red-eye flight. We flew down to Dallas and then to Boston. The flights getting there were all right, especially since they involved solving the airplane's magazine crossword puzzle, which despite my basic crossword solving skills we got almost complete towards the end. Arriving to Boston, Paul (a member of our team) picked us up and took us right to our hotel right at the heart of the MIT.

The MIT

If I had to describe the MIT in one word, it would be large. With huge buildings, huge labs, and huge columns everything at the MIT seems to be of gigantic proportions. What I liked the most of the architecture has to be the 'main green' (don't remember the exact name) where around the central field buildings with the names of great scientists like Newton stand tall. However, MIT at moments feels more like a corporate campus or a factory district than a university, and the building interiors reflect that.

I didn’t visit the MIT in its entirety, missing key places like the Library (although sooner or later I will be there), but the area I saw, including the Math, Civil Engineering, Chemistry, Computer Science and Nanotechnology departments featured amazing labs (the fact that they have a nuclear reactor speaks for itself) which puts into perspective the kind of research that takes place inside those halls.

One thing that I also noticed about the MIT is the nerd pride (They even sell T-shirts!). I think that is representative of the MIT culture, which exalts the place that the so called “nerd” has in today’s world. It kind of makes ‘nerd’ a compliment (or maybe not)

The day before the hunt

Having barely slept, after lunch at the legal fish (where fish are examined by Microbiologists! Only at the MIT) we spent some time at the Coop, which is the campus store. I got tempted to buy a Machine learning book there, but ended up buying a less scientific book for a friend which involves cats J. I got all the required souvenirs of course and headed to building 4 for testing our internet connection (which my laptop had issues with, though they were solved eventually, not without pain for Jett though). After dinner it was time to sleep.

THE HUNT

With Silly Hats on (I wore my favorite hat of the bunch, the Mickey Mouse hat, which according to the organizers was very loud) we headed to the opening “ceremony” were we realized we needed 5 puzzles to “Do really really well at the mistery hunt by being really really awesome”. The puzzle I picked initially was Team dynamics which GREELANTN helped us solve. We got the location we needed to go next fairly quickly, were we realized we had Sold our soul to the devil for one penny. It now was our task to get it back, and how, well, by solving puzzles related to being really really evil. This is when the hunt really began.

The next hours had highs and downs, mostly linked to puzzles. Encore! Encore! Was just disastrous, Ducks playing poker was painful and we had Guest List all wrong. Yet, after a while we got The continental divide, Choose your weapon (Will never listen to a rap song the same way again!), one of my favorites The truth will set you free and of course what I called my puzzle (because it was the puzzle I worked on from beginning to the end and every single step of it) Atlas Shrugged (Figuring out all of those places, specially the flag, the water park and the ruins was insane). For this last puzzle I had the final answer in my hands for a while but mistakenly was reading INC as incorporated and not IN C which actually lead to the answer.

There were other puzzles that required going to certain places at certain times. I did the puzzle that had to do with Sloth (listening to lullabies at 4:00 am while trying to solve a puzzle and not writing anything down, which I did since I hadn’t realized of that) and Gluttony (what else? Stuff yourself with junk food!).

At the end we fared well enough. We were not close to winning but our team was remarkably smaller so it was fine. It was a great experience as I think I am slowly improving my puzzling skills. Now, let’s take on the next puzzle challenge!

Christmas is coming and it is a bittersweet feeling, specially since this is the very first Christmas I won't spend home. I had to say in the US to get my H1B Visa processed. Still, one cannot easily escape the joyful feeling from Christmas, but with every Christmas tree and every advent crown, I cannot help but think about the Christmas tree that now lies next to the stairway back home. This however doesn't mean I will have an uninteresting Christmas. I am planning on going to the Seattle St. James Cathedral for the midnight mass. It will surely be a great event and a reminder of what Christmas is all about.

I am not really interested in the Christmas presents though, as I already got mine! Last week I bought a Honda Civic Hybrid, and without further ado here are the pics, taken by Photographer in the making Tony.

After finally getting sound input to work on Vista in my laptop, I decided to try my hand at recording. Now, I am still a novice in piano, and even more novice when it comes to recording, but I thought it was time. So I recorded a very small song (which you can play in the windows media player control). I was hesitant to share it, mainly because it is flawed to it's core, but I decided to do it so that there would be a reference point. Please share your thoughts, specially regarding the whole composition if you can get over the multiple mistakes here and there.

The main problem I had recording this piece is that while recording, I couldn't hear what I played, mainly because the sound output was being directed to the computer, and there is about 1 second delay between me hitting the key and the computer playing the sound. Another problem was trying to introduce strings to the melody, I just couldn't make it sound right. I probably will keep on working on this piece fixing the many issues and extending it.

 In the topic of music (not bad music though) I got my GlasHaus CD about a week ago and I have been listening to them non-stop. Glashaus has a great mix of classic and contemporary sounds and great lyrics as well. Even if you do not speak german I highly recommend them.

A proyect I am now getting my hands on is Insomart generated by music, similar to the different art displays in windows media player. I am still figuring out how it will work, but I think I can now do it mainly because I was able to speed up the algorithm enough to have real time images.

Turkey, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie, ... tortilla española. Last Thursday I celebrated my second thanksgiving in the US. Different from 2 years ago, when I was a guest in a thanksgiving dinner for international students, this year we gathered at Katie's house for a thanksgiving eating and board-game playing extravaganza. We all brought a dish to the event, and I decided to make the Spanish tortilla (tortilla española), which I thought fit to the theme while still adding a little of diversity to the menu. The results were good, even though I couldn't find chorizo and had to replace it with pepperoni. In the end, it had a good taste and people liked it, so I was happy. My stomach was happy as well, as all the food was great, specially Katie's turkey. After eating way too much, we played some board games, including Betrayal in House of the Hill and the awesome Balderdash. It was a great thanksgiving, big kudos to Katie for being a great host.

The day before, I finally got my driver's license. I got some driver's training and thankfully everything went smoothly, with the exception of having to wait way too long to get the test. But now that I got a license it's car shopping time. I spent some time today doing some research and am down to 3 candidates:

 1. The mini cooper. From excellent comments to a great style, the mini is definitively the kind of car I would like to have. The photo shows the car I "built".  I began the process of getting a quote and a time estimate for the delivery. The downfall of this car is that I don't know when I would get it and it is a little on the expensive side. Also, the Mini's dealership is all the way to Tacoma.

2. I was really impressed by the hybrid civic when I saw it back in Mexico in a Honda dealership. My family has had Honda's and they are really reliable and good to drive. Also, I am interested in trying out a hybrid car even if it means it will cost a little more.

  3. The final candidate is the Toyota Prius. Jett has one and I definitely like it. It has a certain "futuristic"feel to it and it also is a hybrid, but similarly to the cooper, I am not sure about the availability.

Finally, I worked a little on some new Insomart artistic images, including my ever first self portrait: