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Some pictures of my new brother and sister. AJ and Michaela, the dogs, and grandma. It is hard to believe that I have a 1 year old brother and a 4 month old sister.

Three friends from Bakersfield, Jialan, Connie, and Rosalva, happened to be in Las Vegas for the weekend so we met up with them for lunch. Later that evening, at dinner, AJ decided to pose for some pictures.

Aliciana and I took the ferry from Seattle to Bainbridge Island. Next we drove up the 305 to Poulsbo and then down the 3 to the 16 and into Tacoma. Click here for a pretty map.

We ate dinner at the Spaghetti Factory in Tacoma, but I wouldn’t recommend it because the service sucked. Go to the Spaghetti Factory in Seattle instead.

Finally, someone scientifically proves that requiring the males in the household to lower the toilet seat does not minimize “the total cost of toilet seat operations per household.” I have been arguing this point with my wife since the day we moved in together. Now, I have game theory analysis on my side. Unfortunately, because the correctness of leaving the toilet seat up goes against currently entrenched social norms, I don’t see the male gender convincing society that their actions are inefficient anytime soon.

Article: THE SOCIAL NORM OF LEAVING THE TOILET SEAT DOWN: A GAME THEORETIC ANALYSIS

Vancouver is a very beautiful city. We did some shopping in the “Robson Street” area of the city. Then we headed to Stanley Park just west of downtown. It is quite amazing to have such a large park bordering a major city. We took a small hike though part of the park and enjoyed the many gardens. It was a very good first impression of Canada; I really wish we had more than just an afternoon to spend there.

On the trip home we spent 30 minutes trying to get back into the US. While sitting in line we took in the sites of the waterfront and the Peace Arch. After convincing the border patrol we weren’t terrorists, we were finally allowed on our way. It struck me as funny, and kinda sad, that it took 20 seconds to get into Canada, but a 10 minute interrogation, and 20 minute wait, to get back into the USA. I guess that is just the world we live in these days.

Linuxfest Northwest is like a giant LUG (Linux users group) meeting. We decided to check it out since we were planning on going up to Vancouver anyways. I figured it was a good excuse for our first trip into Canada.

Besides checking out some exhibitions and attending a talk on OpenID, we didn’t do a whole lot at the festival. It seemed like a lot of the geeks were having a good time but because we had just moved to the pacific northwest we didn’t know a single soul.

It was worth checking out the festival since we were in the area but I don’t think it would have been personally worth attending otherwise. I greatly enjoyed LinuxWorld last year in San Fransisco but this festival was nothing like it. But, the LinuxFest Northwest group was trying for more of an intimate get together of local Linux lovers, and it seemed like they accomplished that. I think Aliciana was expecting something a little more impressive… I definitely need to drag her to LinuxWorld in the future.