After going back to the lodge and reporting it missing and hearing that no one had returned any phones that fit my description, I basically just gave up. I mean, who would have found my phone in any of the places that I would have gone that day. My friend and I don’t typically stay on groomed trails for that long, and those areas aren’t exactly groomers – all double black diamond runs. So I just got home, went to the store, and purchased a replacement G1, which I still use today.

Out of the blue, on Monday (June 21, 2010), I got an instant message from a man who happens to work at Boeing like I do. He said he found a phone and he thinks it could be mine. At first I thought, I didn’t lose any work-cell phone, and not even thinking it could be my G1 I lost a while back. And then he said, it was a T-Mobile phone, and I was like… “i did lose a personal phone a year ago. But it was while snowboarding at Alpental.” He then said something along the lines of “ya this must be yours. I found it while hiking in the mountains. It was on the Upper International trail!”

All I had to say was “wow.”

I had no idea that this phone would be found, and even if it was found, that it could be turned on and usable! He said he would send me the phone back if I told him how to play Alien Blood Bath, one of the first games for Android.

I got the phone back today, and to my surprise, it was barely scratched. In fact, it looks in much better condition, externally, than the G1 I am using now. The screen has a single small barely visible scratch on it, and there’s a minimal amount of pits in the soft rubberized casing, which may have been there before the day it was lost.

My co-worker and I turned the phone on and it booted up just like normal! We did notice that there was water damage to the LCD screen with some streaking and watermarks that are visible with white background, shown in the photo below. However, in colored backgrounds, its barely noticeable. Pretty amazing!

The touch screen is fully working, and it seems like the only other thing that doesnt work is external speaker — so no speaker phone or using my phone as a jambox. Using a headset or headphones works just fine. The handset still can make and receive calls, and it was running Android 1.1 pre-Cupcake at the time! Phone runs faster and smoother than my rooted, overclocked, eclair 2.1 rom.

I’m quite impressed how the phone survived this conditioning. Think about it, I lost in March 2009 at Alpental. It was DUMPING snow that month — I have a lot of videos of us snowboarding as reminder. It was probably stuck, buried in snow, and then had to go through a melt cycle, where it was sitting in running water and then buried in mud. In the late Spring and Summer it would have been subjected to very hot temperatures at that elevation and then rained upon in the fall and again snowed and frozen in the winter, and with the winter we saw in Seattle, it would have been rained upon heavily and then frozen at night over and over until being melted and buried in mud again, until being subjected to sun and warmth and to be found by a random stranger…. crazy.

update: so my last text message sent was to my buddy Bjorn: “Meeting at eidelweiss around noon!” (as you may know, eidelweiss is the name of Chair 2)

The lost and found G1 is the one on the left in the photo of 3 phones. The middle is my current phone.

—

i said i wanted 4 in the off-season and that 6 wouldnt be too far off after the LSU game…. so that’s what im shooting for.

either way, im happy with this year’s progress. i know that’s not exactly the best thing in the world, because as a life time dawgs fan since the james era, you expect the take on the world, but man, i love the rekindled enthusiasm and quality play and efforts of the sark team.

its great to be in every game, minus stanford.

- – - -

as for the hawks. all this talk about blowing up the team. i dont know if you can really do that. our biggest and most obvious deficiency is the offensive line. you just cant win if you’re starting practice squaders and guys who just sat on the couch a week before and expect to win.

while i’m not going to say our drafts in the past have been great or have been terrible (they’ve been about what other teams, minus the patriots, have done some good (trufant, curry) and some bad (spencer, jennings, tubbs only cause hes always hurt), they did a pretty awful job of evaluating OL. I think they did well with Unger pick and Sims has shown some signs of being solid, but they havent draft a good lineman since Locklear and Hutch… and thats a long stretch… very long.

I think the defense played alright on Sunday. The one thing that I thought was really poor on defense was the pass pressure. They also didnt have the best field position to deal with. Our defense is so dependent on the quality of our offense on any given sunday.

I thought the secondary played alright. I thought they covered the 3 WRs as well as you could expect them to. They were all over the ball on almost every man-to-man situation but Fitz is just sooooo good. Its tough. Breaston made an amazing catch in the end zone too. The problem is Warner had all the time in the world. That sucks. He’ll kill you if he has that time and with receivers where you can just throw the ball in the general area and they’ll make the play… its tough.

I thought the interior line did alright too. They didnt give up much on the run. But its all moot, when you can’t pass rush. It also isn’t going to help that Lofa is out and he’s a big cog for our rush defense. Getting Hill back may help. I hope they use Curry in pass rush situations more and more. That was his specialty in college…. and that would help Tapp and Lo-Jack out.

Ugh. The offense was so anemic… it just boggles my mind how we played so well vs Jacksonville and so bad against Arizona. One of the worst displays of offensive misery since 1992, I bet.

If you had done a twitter search for “gmail” and opened it up you would have found thousands of twitterers posting about gmail is down, in several different languages! Even more funny, if you waited 10 seconds for the page to collect the latest tweets, it would have displayed literally over 1500 more tweets every 10 seconds. Awesome.

So what’s this mean? Has Google and gmail taken us over, where we can’t live without it?

I know I cant…

This list may not be my Top 10 songs of this decade, but the first few that come to mind and are not in any specific order really… but here it is:

1. The Notwist – Consequence
…because this is my favorite song of the decade and it’s on repeat all the time for me. Before there was The Postal Service, there was The Notwist. This is electropop at its finest. This song is rather depressing though, but I love it so, so much.

2. Phoenix – Too Young
Another moody track from the nearly perfect Lost in Translation soundtrack, and from their debut 2001 album. Where most of the Lost in Translation soundtrack is atmospheric, this album is straight up pop, but captures not only the theme of the movie so well, but is about as catchy and wonderful as can be. It reminds me of Japan and my fun time there.

3. Radiohead – Idioteque
This was THE new direction for Radiohead. Straight up electronic. They never really did that, but this song had one of the most amazing beat and its simplicity was hiding layers upon layers of sounds.

4. Sigur Ros – Hljomalind
Picking a song from the stellar selection of one of my favorite bands is really hard, but Hljomalind, aka “The Rock Song”, makes the choice a little bit easier, as it is easily the most radio-friendly song that really captures the song, essence, and what makes this band from Iceland so special. It’s full of great earthy sonic noise, build-ups, out of this world vocals, and steady drum beat and bass line.

5. Muse – Newborn
Muse is the premiere arena rock band of this decade, and possibly this generation, and I am so glad I got to see them play at the small Neumo’s venue back in the day, after waiting years to see them. This song is on the list because it’s the first Muse track I heard, and it was a electronic remix, back when I was head deep in trance, dnb, house, and the like. This band blew me away, and brought me back to really liking solid rock and roll. I imported their albums, and paid a ridiculous amount of money for the Hungarian version of their Hulabaloo live DVD, which is probably my most favorite DVD I own to this day. And finally, after many years of waiting, they reached America… but Newborn was what started it out for me personally, even if it’s not really my favorite Muse track.

6. The Roots – Seed 2.0
Quite easily my favorite hip hop/rap group, ever. Seed 2.0 was something just a little bit different, and it worked amazingly well. Not only that, but its just one of the standout tracks on one of my favorite albums of this decade, Phrenology.

7. The Arcade Fire – Laika
There was alot of hype surrounding this band’s first album, and they blew that hype out of the water. This band went from indie kids to superstars in a matter of days thanks to constant promotion from the likes of David Bowie. Laika, my favorite track from Funeral, has all the fixin’s of an Arcade Fire track, with powerful vocals, heavy guitars, a blasting drum beat, some catchy keyboards, and just a fun dancey good time.

8. Broken Social Scene – Anthems for a Seventeen Year Old Girl
BSS came along with easily one of the most full featured and eclectic indie rock albums of the decade in 2002 with their Juno Award winning You Forgot it in People. The album was a clash of all sorts of songs, from thrashing guitars, to downtempo summer chill out tracks, to fast-paced rock songs, to an overly simplistic, heavily vocodized, electropop track like this one, which is rather simple in sound, yet powerful in listening.

9. Peter, Bjorn, and John – Up Against the Wall
This song reminds me of my times in Europe. I want to go back, and when I do, I’m sure this song, and this album will be with me. I really hope this band isn’t only known for “the whistling song” (Young Folks) because they have a ton of other great tracks, like this post-punk, inspired song.

10. Interpol – NYC
And finally, post-punk. One of the coolest, short-lived genres around, and it came back with a vengeance in the 2000s, thanks to bands like Interpol (see also The Editors), who were one of the first to bring it back to the mainstream, and they did it nearly perfectly on their Turn on the Bright Lights album in 2003. NYC captures the atmospheric, darkness of that genre, and while may not be as reminiscent of older Joy Division works as some of their other songs, it’s one of the few tracks that really pushed the genre to a whole new plane.

http://www.TragicPenguin.com/music/tragedy.mp3

Most runners run not because they want to live longer, but because they want to live life to the fullest. If you’re going to while away the years, it’s far better to live them with clear goals and fully alive, than in a fog, and I believe running helps you do that. Exerting yourself to the fullest within your individual limits…

It’s been a hectic summer thus far. I haven’t had much time to spend at home and just relax. Every night of the week, it seems, I’ve tied myself up with something and I’ve lacked the sleep I wish I could get. But you know what, it’s worth it. I’ve gotten to have a lot of fun, and spend time with many people, getting to know newer faces and getting closer to older ones. I guess I would say, I wouldn’t trade my experiences, relationships, and feelings for an extra hour or three of sleep.

But it’s catching up on me. It really took a bite out of me last night, when, on Wednesday I had a movie night at my friend’s place in Belltown and then got home and stayed up a little late to do some random things around the house and “chit-chat” with people online, and then had to get up 3.5 hours later to drive to Portland. That was brutal. I had to work down there at a supplier facility, and then made the trek up in rush hour traffic to meet up with my friends at the Red Hook Brewery in Woodinville. They have a moonlight movie night every Thursday in the summer, and yesterday, they were showing Tropic Thunder. Was it worth it? Tough to say: I have the film already and have seen it twice in the past year, plus I was practically dead tired, and had to pay $10 for parking and $5 to see the movie, but… you know what? To be able to sit down with your friends outside and relax is priceless. It also my last chance to see someone who’s moving away for a little while, and that in itself was worth all of that and more.

Anyway, that’s a ramble. I’m currently in San Jose, CA now. Three states in two days for separate things! Had a fun time with Dean, who traveled with me from Seattle, my cousin Lan, and one of my best buds Neil, who both live down here now. Tomorrow, I hope to meet up with others for Alcatraz and other things in San Francisco! And then… its the Sounders match in Santa Clara on Sunday!

I’m getting old. Turn 27 in a few weeks. I have to try to be young while I still can. Live life to the fullest!

Icons Among Us – Jazz Documentary

This documentary focused on the unevolution of jazz over the past 40 or so years. It tried to show the underground scene of “jazz” that’s trying to break away from the stereotypes and the bad rap that jazz gets for being uninspiring and unfresh. And while it seems to be quite redundent and may be a bit too long, it did give me personally a taste of what’s going on in the scene and a list of artists to check out, which was what I was hoping. All in all though, I felt the film was a little too long, and towards the end, it lost its direction. It never seemed to go anywhere either, though some of the interviews were very solid and entertaining.
Egon & Donci – Hungarian Animation

This was I’d call a eastern european version of a primitive WALL-E. The CGI animation is top notch, up there or better than the Shrek and Pixar movie franchises. The movie has little to no dialog; scientist Egon and his walking cat Donci just moan and groan for sounds, with the occasional “DOOOOOOOOOONNNNCIIIII!” (kinda like “WAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”) After an expeditionary ship crash lands near them, Egon is able to finish his space travel project and the pair travel through the solar system. While this may seem like a kid’s movie at first, I really don’t see how any child would understand what’s going on in this movie, let alone the ending, which puts the pieces together and dumps a massive social/economic message at you. Overall, I thought the movie was alright. Almost seemed like everything in the middle was filler and you really only needed to see the beginning and end. Actually, thinking back, there was quite a bit of filler everywhere, with the odd antics of both characters that really didn’t do anything to the movie but was there just for some comedic value. Eh.

Welcome – French Drama

This movie is about a teenager who left his home in Iraq on a quest to find the girl of his dreams in England, who he had met a few summers ago through a soccer teammate friend. It’s a great, sad, and inspiring story of this kid who’s an illegal immigrant in a foreign land, with one goal in mind and he’ll stop at nothing to achieve it. It’s also a story about a swim instructor who has fallen on hard times with the fallout of his marriage gone south, and neighbors that hate him and a mostly lonely life, and how this instructor reaches out to the teenager in his journey. This movie has been the best movie I’ve seen this year so far, though I havent seen alot of movies. It’s a french film, but suprisingly it’s split almost equally in french, english, and what I think is Kurdish.

Next films on the agenda:  Zombies of Mass Destruction (ZMD), Blind Pig Who Wants to Fly, Kimjongilia

Stereo:

Lots of changes, but my new set up will be nearly complete after tomorrow, when I get the last piece of the puzzle (for now)…

Before:
Parasound CA-220 Integrated Amplifier 20w/ch
Harman Kardon HD7325 CD Player
Numark PT-01 Portable Direct Drive Turntable
Monoprice RCA to Stereo Line Input for MP3
Monoprice IPOD Dock
Infinity Satellite Speakers x 4

After:
Cambridge Azur 640A Integrated Amplifier 75w/ch
Audio Control Model C-101 Series Two Graphic Equalizer
Harman Kardon HD7325 CD Player
Pro-Ject Debut III Belt-Drive Turntable
Logitech/Slim Devices Squeezebox v3 Internet Streaming Media Center
Athena AS-FS 2 Floorstanding Speakers
Acoustic Research 280V Bookshelf Speakers

It’s a good starter audiophile system I think. Lots of high quality stuff on the lower spectrum of audiophile equipment, which is all I can and should afford.

The squeezebox is quite an amazing piece of gadgetry. I’ll have to write a full article on it later.

Living Room:

The living space has seen quite a few upgrades the past 2 or 3 weeks which include the stereo equipment above, as well as the all new furniture everywhere. As we’re talking stereo, I also upgraded the ClosetMaid (from Target/Lowes) modular cabinet/shelfs which were barely supporting my equipment (weight issues!) with Sanus modular stereo racks which I found for cheap on craigslist. Those things were a bit difficult to decide to get because the pictures dont actually do them justice. They look a lot better with real components in them at home. I also bought a new couch, green fiber/fabric, to replace to futon which was moved upstairs, from kasala. In 2 weeks, I’ll finally get my Kasala chair in. I also decided to get a minature version of the Expedit Ikea shelf for up here even though I think its a little weird to have two of the same furnitures in one house. But this shelf is PERFECT for storing LPs so what can I say?

I also put up window blinds, faux wood, that I had bought custom made from Lowes last summer but never got to put it up. I bought a drill/driver finally and got it done pretty quickly!

To go along with all of this, I ordered up a couple Canvas prints of two of the photos I’ve taken with my DSLR that I really liked. I hope these turn out well, because canvas is freakin expensive! Also got some cheapo rugs from Ikea to fill some floor space for the chair coming in.

Landscaping:

Lots of stuff going on here. Mowing the lawn sucks. I got to finally lay down black plastic everywhere I wanted to and that’s actually a bigger pain than you’d imagine. Hopefully in a couple weeks the grass will be gone and I can start treating it with some round up to kill any remaining weeds. I also put some moss killer on my grass this past weekend, so I may have to follow that up with some grass growing stuff (fertilizer?) to fill in the missing holes. Lots of stuff! I also need to clean, scrub, and eventually stain my deck. Did a quick cleaning coat this past weekend, but really need to sand off some moldy areas.
LOTS OF STUFF. LOTS OF STIMULATING THE ECONOMY FROM ME. Yikes.

The WALL of Sound was redefined that night. I was at the giant Wamu Theater, an attachment of Qwest Field, and the whole place shook worse than any earthquake I’ve ever been in. You could feel the wind blowing from the monitors. How many Marshall Stacks did Kevin Shields have to his own? 6 full stacks and a handful of half stacks!

Incredible.

The Living Room – in-progress -
The living room is where I want the real audiophile stereo system. It’s got vaulted ceilings and open area that I think will make music really rich and engulfing. I started building this system with whatever I had lying around, which were parts of an Infinity HTS satellite speaker set, a 1988 Parasound CA2100 integrated amplifier, and a few other odds and ends. One day the Parasound stopped working, and that was when I decided to re-tool. (that was really a month ago)

Enter today, where I am now waiting for stuff to come in. I’m currently using a Pioneer Stereo Receiver from 1996 or so, and it flat out sucks. I can’t stand it. Sure it’s got some juice (75watts/ch) but it sounds like blah. That 20watt Parasound amp sounded so much better…. so what am I doing? I’m waiting til Friday to receive my new Cambridge Audio Azur 640A amplifier in the mail! I’m pretty excited about this amp. Found a great deal on ebay for it. I also just added a set of Athena AS-F2 tower speakers, which has been very highly rated and coveted, especially for the bargain price they used to sell for. I got them on craigslist. Stereophile once called them the best set of speakers you can find for under $2000… I also added some Acoustic Research bookshelfs to round out the room. On CD, I have a hi-fi Harman Kardon CD player from circa 1995, which still sounds great to this day. To tinker the sound a bit to match the room and the music, I have a Audio Control graphic equalizer. There’s also a cheesey, falling apart ipod dock, and a stereo-jack-line-in for mp3 players. And finally, I’m currently using a NuMark turntable, but am in the market to buy an upgrade at this. I’m looking at a Rega P1 or P2, Pro-Ject Debut or Xpression, or a Music Hall turntable. All three are extremely stylish, and great bang for the buck. Once those pieces fall, I’ll have to look into getting better storage for these toys.

Downstairs – Home Theater

The downstairs has always been thought of as my home theater, and I am making it exclusively that now. Nothing’s intending to change with it the way it is right now, except I’m pretty close to buying a center channel to complete the 5.1 set up. At that point, I’ll have to decide if I really want to add 2 rear surrounds (small wall mountable speakers) to make a 7.1 system for new Blu-Ray movies. But as it stands, I have the brain/nucleus of a Pioneer Elite VSX91 AV receiver controlling the inputs of an XBox360 (gaming, streaming movie and music), Playstation 3 (for blu ray movies), Toshiba HD-DVD player, and Verizon FiOS TV set top box, as well as line-in for ipods, stereo-jack in for other mp3 players, hdmi-in for laptop and a Sony LocationFree box to stream tv to my laptop or someone’s PSP. These components are being played over a set of Dahlquist (Profiles) PDQ-200 floorstanding speakers, and Polk Monitor 4 bookshelves on the rear on speaker stands. The low sounds are coming from a Martin Logan Dyanmo sub, which provides some very solid dynamic bass for a very small form-factor. I’m looking to add the Definitive Technology Mythos Seven center channel pretty shortly to complete the system. I badly need a center for this. Finally, it’s all being outputted to my little treasure, the Samsung LN-46A650 “Touch of Color” LCD tv. Such a great display.

Garage – I’m sorta turning half my garage (right side) into a mini play-room. It’s got a couple rugs down now and a foosball table and chairs. Along with it is a stereo system with no components at all except for a stereo line jack in for mp3 players. But the system cranking out the digital tunes is an analog day treat. A Nikko pre-amp controller is sending sound through a Kenwood power amp into a pair of home-made speakerlab oversized bookshelf speakers. It’s very focuses on mid-range sounds, but it’ll do for now.

Master Bedroom – I dont know what I want to do here yet, make it a music set up or a theater set up – more likely it’ll be both, with music-centric. I dont watch that much TV and even less in my room. In fact, I dont even have a working cable feed into my bedroom TV now, and dont ever turn that thing on. So it’ll probably be focused on music. Right now I’m using the Infinity sats with a Harman Kardon AV receiver to process. It’s actually connected to an Akai 27″ LCD and a Panasonic DVD player, which I use to play CDs. And of course it’s got line in for mp3 player. This is a work-in-progress, and it’s got a ways to go.

As you can see, I’m pretty obsessed with this stuff… it’s a bit insane. Once my living room is complete, and my center channel is purchased, I think I’ll be overly satisfied for quite a while. I hope.