After OSCON ended, I went to the [Oregon Brewers Festival](http://www.oregonbrewfest.com/) on Friday afternoon. This is the first time I have gone after living in Portland for five years and loving beer. I rode my bike downtown; they had guarded bike parking. The cost was $4 for the mug, $1 for tokens which give a taste […]
Last weekend, I took a ride on the [Portland Tram](http://www.portlandtram.org/). The Tram opened this February and goes from the South Waterfront to OHSU on Marquam Hill. The tower is easily visible just south of Ross Island Bridge and just south of I-5. The cost was a rather large $4. I went on Saturday but it […]
Two weeks ago, I went to [Silver Falls State Park](http://www.oregonstateparks.org/park_211.php) with my coworker Tim and his wife Nariyo. This was my fourth time going to Silver Falls, which is east of Salem, and their first time. Only did a little bit of hiking and saw North Falls, walked the short trial to Upper North Falls. […]
On May 12, I went to [BarCamp Portland](http://barcamp.org/BarCampPortland1), an ad-hoc tech mini-convention at [CubeSpace](http://www.cubespacepdx.com/). I got there late in the afternoon and only went to a couple of talks. I went to a talk on Open Hardware and one on scaling Ruby. I saw a couple of people I knew but didn’t really chat much. […]
On April 28, I saw [Gaelic Storm](http://gaelicstorm.musiccitynetworks.com/) at the [Aladdin Theater](http://www.aladdin-theater.com/). They are one of my favorite bands, a high energy Irish band. They also turned out to be an awesome live band.
A month ago I discovered a nice spot that I didn’t know existed in Vancouver. [Vancouver’s Waterfront Park](http://www.ci.vancouver.wa.us/parks-recreation/parks_trails/parks/west_vancouver/waterfront.htm) starts at the east end of the Interstate Bridge. It connects to a path that goes along the Columbia River passing through [Marine Park](http://www.ci.vancouver.wa.us/parks-recreation/parks_trails/parks/central_vancouver/marine.htm) and Tidewater Cove. The road, Columbia Way, and the sidewalk also go under […]
It has been cold in Portland for the last week or so. Last Thursday, there was a dusting of snow which caused problems with ice farther east. Yesterday was supposed to be the last day of cold. Instead, it stayed cold and we got moisture. The result was snow. It snowed over night and this […]
I did the Bridge Pedal for the third time yesterday. It is a signature Portland event where they open the bridges to bicyclist and 18,000 people come out for a mass ride. A big draw for me is that they close to the top decks of the two big freeway bridges which are normally not […]
Yesterday, I jumped out of a perfectly good airplane. A coworker’s, Mike, birthday was yesterday and to celebrate, we went skydiving. It was Mike, me, two other coworkers, Aaron and Michael, and a friend of Mike’s. Aaron’s wife and later another coworker came to watch. We went to [Skydive Oregon](http://www.skydiveoregon.com) in Molalla, which is thirty […]
I went for a bike ride today which turned out to be more interesting than normal. I took the same route I usually do, north on the Springwater Trail along the river to downtown. There are train tracks next to the trail and I encountered a steam train. I had seen this locomotive before; the […]