Scott Bush

We recently paid ATT Wireless/Cingular/ATT Wire­less again way more than they deserve because we ran over our “Fam­ily Talk” min­utes. Ouch. Our fault for not keep­ing up on it. That’s why I’m post­ing a cou­ple of use­ful tools for my “in-network” brethren (and sistren… is that a word?).

Check your min­utes
Dial

*646#

and hit send. You’ll get a mes­sage a moment later dis­play­ing your remain­ing min­utes in the billing cycle. This may not include recent calls, so if you’re get­ting low be con­ser­v­a­tive with this number.

Find out who you can dial for free

I dis­cov­ered a cool tool on ATT Wireless’s site that allows you to enter a phone num­ber and see if it’s “in-network.” If so, you can dial it for free if your plan has free mobile-to-mobile calls (and I think most if not all do). Log into ATT Wire­less and enter num­bers into their “in-network” tool. If the num­ber is found, I rec­om­mend you put that num­ber into a group (if your phone sup­ports it) with a dif­fer­ent ring­tone. That way you’ll know if you can talk with impunity.

A rather big day at the zoo, to be pre­cise. I spent Sat­ur­day, 25 Aug. at the Wood­land Park Zoo with my col­leagues from the mar­ket­ing depart­ment at a large North­west home­builder. We weren’t alone; about 4000 of our home­own­ers joined us. Quite an under­tak­ing, but it was grat­i­fy­ing (okay, reliev­ing) that it came off with­out any major hitches (except the miss­ing veg­gie burg­ers for the BBQ).

The weather was driz­zly and over­cast in the morn­ing and didn’t bode well, but but 11:30 or so the sky was peek­ing through; by 1:30 it was down­right hot. We expected roughly 5200 peo­ple, and the zoo’s esti­mate was about 4000: a good turnout.

I took a 20-minute break from the North meadow mad­ness to com­mune with the but­ter­flies in the exhibit next to the meadow. They were great, and so many vari­eties all in the same spot. The keeper was releas­ing newly-birthed but­ter­flies from an enclo­sure onto the trees, where they flapped their wings until they dried so they could take their inaguaral flight. I had hoped that if I stood still long enough, one would alight on me… and I was right! Very cool to see one so close to me that I could watch it furl and unfurl its proboscis.

To cel­e­brate our sec­ond anniver­sary, Crys­tal and I vis­ited Vic­to­ria, BC, the week­end prior to our actual anniver­sary. We had an excel­lent time up there, eh? Here’re the nota­bles from the trip.

The Clip­per

Want (nearly) all the secu­rity, cost, and wait­ing you’re used to when fly­ing, but none of the actual air travel? The Clip­per is for you! I’d never been on it and was impressed with how fast the thing went. But you can’t really spend any­time out­side like a reg­u­lar ferry. Then again, you can’t buy duty-free booze on the Edmonds-to-Kingston run, either. One pos­i­tive: 75-cent Tully’s bot­tom­less coffee.

Craigmyle B&B

Eschew­ing the class and high cost of the Empress Hotel or its kin around the inner har­bor, we stayed at a bed and break­fast about a 25-minute walk away. It’s named the Craigmyle because it’s lit­er­ally next door to Craig­daroch Cas­tle (read below for more on this mansion-cum-museum-cum-tourist-trap).

The Craigmyle, a four-story guest­house, wasn’t amaz­ing, but suited us okay. Our room was tiny but had its own bath­room (though the sink was across the room from it… odd). A “tra­di­tional Eng­lish” break­fast was included, which meant oat­meal or fruit fol­lowed by two eggs, toast, sautéed mush­rooms and tomato (and bacon if you wanted it). Pretty good, actually.

Down­town Victoria

Though touristy in the extreme, down­town Vic­to­ria is quite nice. Lots of lit­tle shops (the most bla­tant of which adver­tised “best sou­venirs here!” or had neon “cur­rency exchange” signs) offered plenty of diver­sion and food choices. The inner har­bor prom­e­nade was pop­u­lated with artists hop­ing to sketch your por­trait or sell you some hand­made jew­elry. We skipped the wax museum, har­bor tour, under­sea aquar­ium, and “Big Bus” tour, but did enjoy the  free tour of BC’s leg­isla­tive build­ing. Quite gor­geous and, accord­ing tour our guide, is worth half a bil­lion dollars.

High tea at the Empress Hotel

If you look up “worst value” in the dic­tio­nary, you’ll find high tea at the Empress Hotel sec­ond only to the $640 toi­let seat. We’d been told to treat our­selves with this fan­ci­est of tea ser­vices out­side of Buck­ing­ham Palace, so we did, despite the whop­ping $55 price tag. Each.

It’s quite a deal they have going there. Every­one tells you it’s the most won­der­ful, extrav­a­gant way to treat your­self so you’re built up for it. First you have to visit the reser­va­tions counter, where you’re told they can seat you tomor­row, or “we had a can­cel­la­tion so we can seat you right now.” Maybe I’m para­noid, but I think they do that a lot to get peo­ple to say yes because they can get in with­out waiting.

I felt awk­ward because I was in shorts and felt too casual, but appar­ently the only restric­tion to this fancy place is no jeans. We were sat in the library, which I actu­ally didn’t mind as it was more inti­mate. We sat down and was served our straw­ber­ries and whip cream. Very nice. We chose our tea (the Empress blend), then our three-tiered tray arrived with sand­wiches, scones, and desserts. Being on edge about how fancy it was, I noticed the chip in the bot­tom plate and how all three were tilt­ing slightly. We dug in, and hon­estly the sand­wiches were good: cream cheese and smoked salmon; car­rot gin­ger, chicken curry, and clas­sic cucum­ber. The scone was good with clot­ted cream and straw­berry pre­serves. Even the four bite-sized desserts were nice. Tasty, but hon­estly it was about $12-$15 worth of food. That was it. An expe­ri­ence and a good story to tell, but I’ll never do it again and cer­tainly not encour­age oth­ers to throw away their cash. For $55 you’d think they could give you a glass of cham­paign or some­thing, sheesh.

Craig­dar­roch Castle

Coal baron Robert Dun­smuir built a cas­tle for his wife in 1890, but died before it was fin­ished. His fam­ily lived in it briefly before sit­ting aban­doned, then serv­ing as a hos­pi­tal, var­i­ous schools, offices, and now a museum. Pretty cool to wan­der around and see the restora­tion work. Some rooms were restored to their 1890s glory; oth­ers remained as spar­tan offices from the 40s. The coolest thing about the tour were the two in-costume “guides” dis­cussing the cas­tle. One gen­tle­man in the bil­liard room was very enter­tain­ing, explain­ing things to “the futur­ists” gath­ered around him. The other was a ser­vant girl who was “sewing” dresses and explain­ing to the vis­i­tors about the impend­ing mar­riage of the youngest Dun­smuir daugh­ter. They were both quite good, and it was enter­tain­ing to watch the other tourists inter­act with them.

Over­all, it was a great anniver­sary trip.  The high­lights, though, had lit­tle to do with Vic­to­ria. They were the deli­cious and dirt-cheap Chi­nese meal we had Fri­day night and the fact that we finally fin­ished the Harry Pot­ter series Sun­day morn­ing before head­ing home. Good times!

It’s a foun­tain alright… of crap.

Maybe that’s a bit harsh. The 2006 film was ambi­tious but ulti­mately falls apart. The Foun­tain really is a vehi­cle for Hugh Jack­man to show audi­ences (well, those that skipped the Meg Ryan snoozer Kate and Leopold) that he’s more than just scruff, mus­cles, and adaman­tium claws as Wolver­ine.

The story is all over the place, jump­ing between three time­lines: 16th-century Spain, the present (pre­sum­ably in the US), and–according to the film’s synopsis–the 26th cen­tury, though how any­one would know that is beyond me. Jackman’s char­ac­ter and his co-star, Rachel Weisz, share a love inter­twined in these life­times. On paper, I bet this premise worked; the film’s trailer cer­tainly made it seem promising.

But if falls very short in exe­cu­tion. My pri­mary prob­lem was not with the para­dox­i­cal nature of the inter­sect­ing time­lines; I love Star Trek and can buy off on that. It’s the fact there was never any expla­na­tion of how the three are con­nected. Is the 16th-century con­quis­ta­dor Jack­man the same as the present-day sci­en­tist Jack­man? If so, how are they related to the Jack­man in the float­ing bub­ble in space? Flash­backs, time travel, and poorly-explained sit­u­a­tions abound, so I’m not sure if there’s some­thing deeper I missed or whether the script just sucked.

It’s not all bad, though. Visu­ally, the movie’s pretty excel­lent. Oh, and if you like to see Hugh Jack­man cry, this one is for you.

Update — This post was get­ting numer­ous com­ment spam, so I’ve dis­abled com­ments on this post.

Two years ago we received, as a wed­ding gift from my Uncle Rupe in Comox, B.C., a raclette grill. “Ooooh,” was my mom’s excited reply when I told her what we’d received. “That’s such a great gift, what a won­der­ful thing to have!”

“What is it?” I asked, hav­ing never heard of it nor guess­ing its pur­pose from its two-layer ovoid shape.

“A table­top grill, it’s French and very fancy,” she told me. “It’s very fun with a group, some­what like fon­due.” And she was right, though I wouldn’t know it until last Sun­day when we finally fired it up. It sat in our cup­board and we’d say “we should do that raclette thing soon.” Now that we finally have we’ll be doing it a lot more often: raclette is pretty sweet!

It’s basi­cally a grill and a broiler. Each per­son loads up one or two wedge-shaped bas­kets with pre­pared foods—potatoes, other veg­gies, meat (if you’re so inclined) and cheese—and puts them on the bot­tom layer, so they’re broiled by the heat­ing ele­ment above. Mean­while, you can put other foods on the top to be grilled.

We’d planned to have a friend over, but she wasn’t able to join us. So we expe­ri­enced it on our own but had a great time. Much like fon­due, you spend a lot of time prepar­ing the food (cub­ing the cheese, chop­ping and par-boiling veg­gies, etc.) and cook­ing it in small batches. This slower pace makes for a fun meal and ample oppor­tu­nity to talk with your guests.

One thing we didn’t know was how hot the thing gets (duh, it’s a grill). I was con­cerned we’d set off the fire alarm with the exces­sive heat and smoke from the occa­sional bas­ket piled too high with good­ies brush­ing against the heat­ing ele­ment. It’s def­i­nitely bet­ter suited for a winter’s din­ner than summer.

I’m lis­ten­ing to my col­leagues lead stu­dents in a Socratic sem­i­nar dis­cus­sion about the heady top­ics of prior review, man­ag­ing staff con­flicts, and deal­ing with con­tro­ver­sial top­ics (smok­ing, teen preg­nancy, cheat­ing, etc.). Any­one who thinks all teenagers are lazy, unin­tel­li­gent slack­ers needs to spend a day or two with these young journalists.

The WJEA Writes & Respon­si­bil­i­ties ses­sion at CWU is wrap­ping up and I must say I was glad to have been here. I had a few great teach­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties: Inter­me­di­ate InDe­sign, where I shared a few great tips that will really save time and pre­vent headaches for edi­tors. I also had a lack­lus­ter teach­ing expe­ri­ence: Design Basics, for which I was unpre­pared to teach and it showed.

But what I enjoyed most—and hope was the most useful—were the inter­ac­tions with stu­dents dur­ing the sched­uled work time. Rather than hang in the sun, these stu­dents came to me and asked for advice on their papers. The one-on-one (well, one-on-four in some cases) analy­sis of head­line hier­ar­chy, overuse of boxes and rules, inad­e­quate and incon­sis­tent spac­ing, low-resolution images, etc. really got me excited. It’s excel­lent to see them nod and get excited as they see what they can improve in their papers’ designs. And then to be able to show them exactly how those changes can be accom­plished in InDe­sign is even more fun.

If I’m invited back next year, I hope to teach an InDe­sign major ses­sion where I can walk through the entire process, rather than just explain­ing a few tips. Oh, and I’d have time to pre­pare some materials!