Treetoe in flight

Scratch that

I'm going to New Zealand instead.

I'm leaving next Wednesday - which means I don't actually get to Auckland until Friday morning. And I'm returning the following Friday (4/13) ... which means I get back 7 hours before I left.

Tricky.

Anyway, I plan to rent a car in Auckland and take it from there. I've already gotten tons of good advice from Blogger's resident travel expert, Eric Case - and I'm currently re-reading Nelson's posts on the subject.

Woot!

Awesome

I'm going on vacation in 2 days. Two whole weeks off - the most unstructured time I've had since school.

I don't have much in the way of plans ... some camping with Sutter, some baseball, probably a lot of WoW. I've been thinking about taking a last minute flight to somewhere I've never been before. If you happen to live in one of those locations, give a shout.

News you can use

A Tempest arcade machine measures 26" x 32" x 68" and weighs a ton. This, according to my mom who has been kind enough not rid the behemoth from her basement in St. Louis and probably nearly killed herself trying to figure out for me if the thing still works.

Fortunately, it does!

Armed with this knowledge, I can now begin scheming in earnest as to how best relocate said machine to my living room in San Francisco.

Treetoe in Thousand Needles

...astride her new mount!

Promotion

When Lincoln made Ulysses S. Grant a three-star general in 1864, he was the first man to carry the rank of lieutenant general since George Washington. This according to the Ken Burns' Civil War documentary.

What's up with that?

First off, a rank of lieutenant general pretty much shows that you're gonna have the rank of general, right. But the Army's just holding onto that fourth star up until ... when exactly? I mean, if frickin' George Washington can be a four-star general, honestly, who's up for the job.

On the other hand though, maybe the Army just didn't need that organizational level until 1864. If that's the case, I've seriously got to applaud the military's foresight here. That's some serious capacity planning to invent ranks you're not even gonna need for a hundred years.

(And, yeah, I know that the American army didn't really invent anything so much as straight up steal it from the British, but still.)

Everyday Today

Eugene is posting new pictures over on his blog!

A neato subject

Test message from jason

Treetoe in Booty Bay

Sloppy

Since about 10p last night I've been hoping beyond hope that I could just jump ahead 24 hours and sorta skip past Thursday. It's not happened thus far, but there's still time.

Update: It's sorta working ... I mean, it's already 6p.

Migration

Aaron Fagerstrom moved into his new digs in the Mission this weekend - he was ably assisted by me, Sutter and Kemp Remillard. At the end of the evening, we celebrated at the Lucky Penny - possibly the last meal I'll have there with Mary and Eugene before they move away to Chicago.

It's a season of changes is my point.

Update: Thanks to today's launch of satellite imagery in Google Maps, you can see the birds-eye view of Aaron's new home.