April 2005 - Portland - Columbia Gorge

This set of pictures is from a day trip to the Columbia Gorge. The road is specifically set up to bring you close to great waterfalls and scenic views. It used to be land owned by railroad robber barons, donated to the goverment for this purpose.

April 2005 - Portland - Japanese Garden

We took so many pictures while in Portland, Oregon that we have to release them in batches. This batch came from a mid-trip visit to the Japanese Garden overlooking downtown Portland.

The Phone

Have you answered The Phone?

Review: Sin City

Rob, Suzy and I caught an afternoon matinee of Sin City. The visual style was extremely powerful ... in fact, there wasn't much to the movie beyond that. It really was a transcription of the comic books to the screen ... but the over-the-top blood, violence, brutality and deviant fetishistic sex may not work so well on the big screen.

It did have quite a few good lines and wasn't exactly boring. I've only skimmed the comic books, but I got the feeling they crammed too much in. Too often, characters arrive, have a couple of lines of hackneyed conversation, and disappear (often in a splash of blood). I think I prefer a more controlled build up, where the potential of the combatants is established over the course of time, leading to a final confrontation ... Once Upon A Time In China did this quite well, for example, but in Sin City most of the characters are all but invincible (for example, shrugging off multiple gun shot wounds, or impacts from speeding cars) ... and that undermines any tension.

Suzy and my final take: Pretty entertaining for such a bad movie.

Calling All Nerds

Keeping track of everyone's email addresses has been getting harder and harder. I've created a Yahoo Group, callingallnerds, for this purpose.

Samuel Kijima Day 2

Some pictures of David and Aya's new son, Samuel. Sam is very vocal, and at 8 lbs 4 oz and climbing, quite strong. He loves (needs?) the sounds of Aya's and Dave's heartbeat.

January 2005 Snowstorm

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I finally got around to uploading some pictures from the big January snowstorm. The whole album is available on shutterfly.com.

[RELEASE] SamuelKijima version 1.0.0

Yamaguchi-Goldman International Services have announced the immediate product release of their new flagship baby product, SamuelKijima.

SamuelKijima, code-named, "Samuel", has been in final production stage for over nine months, and in product planning stages considerably earlier than that.

"Samuel" rolled off the Aya Yamaguchi-Goldman production line Friday March 25 2005 at approximately 12:10am (EST). The entire 26 hour production run went more or less smoothly, though, as production supervisor David Goldman reports, "the last 2 1/2 hours was a real labor." Product Manager Aya Yamaguchi-Goldman was in the break room and unavailable for comment.

The "Samuel" product is loaded with interesting features (please see seperate press release). Initial product specifications indicate a shipping weight of eight pounds, 4 ounces, and an overall length of 19 1/2 inches. Although this appears to be at the high end (size and weight-wise) for the production facilities, no production problems (except for the expected initial production run delays) were experienced.

"Samuel" will be presented to the public at an official product roll out in the near future.

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That's about as far as I can stretch that joke. Aya and Dave are doing fine. Everyone is healthy and happy and exhausted. Aya is expected to return from the hospital on Sunday, possibly earlier. Dave's parents flew in last night (Aya's have been staying with them for a few weeks). Dave still sounds like (an exhausted, ecstatic, in-shock) Dave. They want to avoid a crowd scene at the hospital and will send out an "all clear" for visits next week.

I'm not sure if it was really "26 hours" ... I had a little trouble following Dave's timeline. He felt they got to the hospital a bit earlier than they should have.