state radio show

went to see state radio last night with a kid named will who i met at my friend's party last friday. show was siiiiiick. the only thing that did suck was that we went a little late because we just figured that state radio was the headliner but it turned out they were opening for a band called rebelution. so we did miss about 20 minutes of state's set but it was still great. state radio put on a sweet show and the other band, rebelution ended up being really good. i would recommend that you check them out. they fall into the category of like south cali reggae rock with like sublime, long beach allstars, and slightly stoopid. and to make the show even better.... afterwards everyone was trying to talk to rebelution while chad from state radio (former lead singer of dispatch) was just chillin by himself. so i went over and got to talk to him for a little while which was real cool. you talk about your chill dudes.... you talk about chad. i got his autograph on one of his state radio banners too, then headed home.

snoqualmie falls

this past sunday while i was sitting around the house being lazy. i realized that i shouldn't do that so kyle and i (if you forgot or don't know, my roommate's name is also kyle) decided to go check out snoqualmie falls. its maybe about 25 minutes away, east on 90. which i still find weird that if i just kept going would take me all the way back to boston. but anyways it was beautiful. theres a nice lookout area at the top and also a trail you can take down to see it from the bottom area. of course their "trail" only goes so far but if you nevermind the signs its real easy to hop over the ledge and walk up to the base pool of the waterfall. here is some pics to check out.

royal bliss

so last night some new friends and i went to a bar called high dive to see a show. we went to see royal bliss, there was actually 4 bands playing but we showed up a little late on purpose so we caught some of the band on before them also. royal bliss was pretty decent. i didn't really know them at all but i wanted to see a show so i checked out different bands playing this weekend and thought they sounded pretty good. sorta modern rockish i would say. check em out here http://www.jambase.com/Artists/15337/Royal-Bliss 

defiance

saw this movie tonight. pretty good. you should see it.

new tent..... actually is awwwweeeesome

to excited so i had to set it up in the living room of course. think im going to sleep in it tonight. is that weird?

my first ticket.... awwwwwwesome

so driving to work this morning about 5 min after i left my house, i got pulled over by a cop and to add insult to injury it was a motorcycle cop. ughhhh. but yea the speed limit was 30 and i was going 38. he told me that i was getting pretty close to 40 so that was why he pulled me over. ARE YOU KIDDING ME DUDE? YOU'RE A TOOL. he gave me a 35 in a 30 and i was back on my way to work looking for any potenial residential area that i could speed through to run over small children. on a semi positive side i've been told that in washington you get to defer one ticket. this means that if i defer this ticket and dont get another ticket for a year in washington, this one would get dropped and i wouldn't have to pay a thing. so the question becomes...... am i going to get another ticket while im here? should i just pay this small ticket in anticipation of a bigger one or defer this one?

experience music project

this place was awesome. jimi hendrix is my new favorite musician. just wish he was still around and it sucks to think that he should be. its a real shame.

guitar sculpture

"The guitars that Hendrix broke and set aflame were often painted with psychedelic poems and imagery, presented as ritual offerings to the power of music."

original 3 day ticket to woodstock - only $24!!!!

space needle peering over the emp

mt. rainier in the distance, its awesome and im going to climb that

pike place public market

a pretty awesome farmers market

the flying fish area

puget sound

1st starbucks

my place

outside

my room

sweet poster flags from experience music project

other areas

first seattle weekend

after work on friday i came home and chilled for a bit after which i ended up being lame as i got real tired so i just stayed in and caught up on some sleep. woke up on saturday early enough to catch the end of the syracuse spanking of notre dame which was a nice thing to wake up to. i watched a little bit more bball and then decided to head downtown and see what that was all about. figured i would walk around a little bit and then find a sports bar to watch the pitt - louisville game. seattle's downtown is really quite cool. its very clean, people are great, and has a lot of nice shops and restaurants. all the types of stores that im into. i passed by a patagonia store but figured it was a good idea not to go into it as i didn't quite feel like spending 400 dollars right then. they've got a good bus system and also a monorail but every rips on it for some reason? the downtown is also right on the puget sound which is gorgeous and you can see the overwhelming silhouette of mt. rainier in the distance. i ended up walking into a restaurant bar called floyd's place which apparently is pretty well known for their bbq. the bartender here was awesome. if you don't know seattle has a huge micro brew community and collection of local beers, one of the biggest if not the biggest in the country. so he had me sample and try a bunch of local beers all of which were pretty damn great. mac and jacks african amber is probably my new favorite beer. but so anyways after talking to him for a while and watching most of the pitt - louisville game i mentioned to him that i was going to have to head home so i could catch the sabres game. to which he responded "well thats hockey right? you know we have the hockey package here?" jackpot. so needless to say i stayed and watched the game there. another great sabres win over my old city of raleigh which sucks. the game was fun, a guy by the name of quinn who was a cool dude had me teach him most of the rules of hockey and he definitely left as a new hockey fan and hopefully a sabres fan at that so thats good. so after a little while the bartenders changed and a hawaiian dude started working. after talking to him for awhile i mentioned that i was going to try and go to the pepper concert later that night and asked if he knew them because they are from the big island of hawaii. he started laughing and was like yea i know them, turns out he went to highschool with all of them and his mother even taught most of the band members in school. so that was pretty sweet. i also mentioned to him that i was thinking about moving to hawaii for a month or two after my job here in seattle ends in july and his only warning for me was to be careful because i was probably going to go there and never end up leaving. haha. i guess worst things could happen right? 

after a little while i headed down to the showbox where the pepper show was, my roommate was going to come with but we found out it was sold out so it wasn't worth him trying to come into the city without a ticket but since i was there i figured why not try to scalp a cheap ticket or something. when i got there the line was down and around like 2 blocks just to get in since the doors hadn't opened and scalpers were asking for $80 for a $20 ticket so i said fuck it and went into the bar called the green room directly next to it, actually its tied into the showbox. but anyways so i walk in figuring that ill wait til everyone goes in then maybe the scalpers will lower their prices. im looking around the bar and there aren't that many open seats but i see this one guy at the end of the bar by himself with an extra chair next to him. so i asked if i could use it and he was like oh yea man go ahead. so i sit down, order a beer, and i notice the guy is writing on a napkin and looked semi familiar. so the more i thought about it, i was realizing that it was classic musician, sitting at a bar writing lyrics on a napkin. i asked him if he was in a band to which he laughed and said that he was. i then realized as was like oh you're in pepper aren't you. he introduced himself and sure enough it was Kaleo of pepper. we talked a little bit about boston to which he said "dude! i fucking love that city!" and he talked some about performing there and how he always has such a good time there. then we talked about the bartender from before who went to school with him and stuff. it was pretty cool. he was a real chill dude. after a few he had to head back stage so he peaced out. i was going to ask him if he could hook me up with a way to get into the show but i didn't want to be that dude after having a solid convo with him so i didn't. probably should have but whatever. 

but now comes the reason why i officially can't stand and loath scumbag scalpers. when i came out they were all still asking for 80 and there were other scalpers who would keep walking around asking if people had extra tickets to try and buy them before we could and then sell it to us for a higher price. while waiting right outside the door hoping someone normal would come along with an extra ticket, a girl did. she mentioned she had an extra and as i went up to her to talk to her. one of the scalpers came up, ripped the ticket out of her hand and just threw 40 bucks at her and walked away. her and i both tried to stop him but he just said nope its been sold and walked away. a few minutes later he came back to try and keep doing the same thing. i just keep yelling very nice complements at him. but then to make them even worst a little while later this girl came up to her two friends who were next to me pretty much in tears because she was suppose to have all their tickets but they were gone, why? because one of the scalpers grabbed her ass when she walked by, but it was because she had the tickets in her back pocket and they stole them from her. ughhh i dont hate much if anything in this world but im pretty sure i hate those scalpers from that night. scumbags. and needless to say i didn't get to go to the show but still cool meeting Kaleo and chillin at floyds place.

sunday was a pretty solid day. roommate kyle and i went down pike place public market where i was going to meet up with a bunch of other microsoft interns to hang for the day. so we went there and met up with them, some cool kids, most were from australia but there was also two from vancouver. we hung out at the market for awhile, saw the throwing of the fish, went to the first ever starbucks, grabbed some lunch, and then headed to the experience music project. this place was sick. its basically a museum for music and all about ways to express and experience music. there were amazing exhibits on jimi hendrix, the grunge movement, guitars, and a bunch of other stuff. they also had an area where you could play different instruments and jam out. so that was real cool and i got two sick flags there, one of led zeppelin and one of jimi h. after that kyle and i peaced off home to watch the steelers ravens game and grill some dinner. did that, chilled and now im heading to bed. tomorrow is my birthday but prob won't be anything special as i have work and then have more work to do when i get home for my online english class. sweeeeeeet.

my job

so friday was a good day for me. after a couple meetings with my manager and the manager of our team we nailed down what my role on the team will be pretty well. i am on the cvp team which lives in the IT group, cvp stands for the customer velocity platform team. we pretty much build web apps for the website that is a connection for microsoft business customers and microsoft. this is definitely a relief as now i have something to grasp and start focusing on. i was originally placed as a developer which would definitely have been interesting as i have never truly wrote much code before. but anyways, my manager told me that it wasn't a big deal since they were also looking for a PM anyways so that it would be best to just place me there. so my role will be as a PM (program manager) which is sweet because thats what i had originally wanted to do when i first interviewed with them. basically i will be a middle man between the businesses and the developers, through meeting with the business reps and seeing what our customers want in our product, i will spec that up to present to the developers to decide on what can be done and the best way to do it. i think this will be a great role for me and something i will definitely be able to excel and succede at. so yea that starts on monday and should be cool so hopefully i can get up to speed quickly and start impressing some people.

1st day at MS

My picture on a huge projection screen in one of lobbys of a microsoft building. And a picture of what was in the middle of my table during orientation - rubicks cube, candy, silly putty, some tentacle thing, a twisty tubes toy, and of course legos.

Proof of the sunny day

Don't call me a liar. its just a bad pic from my cellphone. 

first days here

so sorry i've taken so long to get this deal started. been a little crazy getting settled in at home and work, just finally got my room cleaned and set. annnddddd now its going to have to wait a little bit longer because the sabres just came back and tied the game vs. the stars with 3 goals in the 3rd. yea. LETS GO BUFFALO! ...............

.... k after an awesome 7 round, i think, shootout win, im back. haha so yea seattle is pretty legit so far. it was sorta funny how i told everyone that the rain was just a myth and it wasn't really like that but then when we showed up it was pouring rain and there was a major flooding problem.  the gray and rain lasted for 5 days until i saw any sun at all but i did at last get my first sunny day yesterday and it was beautiful. the rain still is partly a myth however because this recent flooding being an exception, it doesn't actually rain a lot when it does rain, its more of a sprinkle or mist most days with a lot of clouds. 

im living on the east side in a town called newcastle which is just south of bellevue. its really nice and its a sick location with lots of stuff right around and a great commute to work so that i dont even have to take any expressways which can be bad here due to some serious traffic during rush hours. 

my place is a real nice condo that is already fur

nished by my roommate kyle who owns it, except for my room which did still have a desk and dresser in it for me to use. yes, i am living with another kyle. they just seem to be the coolest kinds of people. hes a good guy who i think im going to continue to get along with real well. he works as a programmer at a small start up in bellevue.

on to microsoft. the first two days were new employee orientation so that was pretty long but it was pretty helpful and informative, and we got some free stuff so thats always cool. actually won a free xbox 360 game too. everything is just so sweet there, they've got the surface tables all over the place and everywhere you look there is technology. the campus is huge and beautiful. basically they have one main campus and redmond and then other smaller campuses all over the puget sound area. i was pleasantly surprised to find that their cafeterias have awesome food at real low prices which def makes me happy cause i love food. a possible issue though could be the starbucks machine right by my office where you can get free coffees, hot cocoa, and spiced cider. i am on the cvp (customer velocity platfo

rm) team. more to come about what that actually means as i dont even have a complete grasp on what my job will exactly be yet. should have that figured out in the next day or two depending on my manager's decision. but yea ill get back to you then. later. heres a pic to prove its official.