Ryan Prins' Blog

Waking up on Saturday morning in San Francisco, we had hoped that the weather would have turned for the better, even if the weatherman says otherwise. Opening the blinds to look outside gave us a false hope, there was sun out! As we scurried to make it out before it vanished, we just so happened to make it out in time for a pretty impressive five minute downpour. Yea, it was sweet. So, there we are, fresh off of our first bus and making our way to the next when it just pours out of nowhere. Having been soaked in the first 10 seconds of it, I get out my umbrella to fend off any other wetness that is falling from the sky. Then, we reach our bus stop and wait under an overhang with what had to be three dozen Asians and me, the lone white guy. Read more…

Well, Jamie and I are back from our weekend vacation to San Francisco. You may not have known that we left in the first place, but we did! It’s the first vacation that I’ve really taken since I was hired at Avanade, but it was nice to get away from work, if it only meant taking one day off. The trip was not exactly what I expected, but I really enjoyed it, despite our hotel selection, immature middle/high school students, and rain the first two days. Read more…

Tonight I was introduced to Google Finance by Aaron. At a first glance it’s very “Google”. Not a lot of data, a simple design, and information that they’ve harvested from the Internet. But, if you take a closer look at a stock chart, you will be blown away. Or, well, at least I was.

The ticker pages are very simple and easy to read and contains points on the chart that correspond to news stories from Google News. How cool is that? Now you have a pinpoint on when news breaks and how stocks react. This is great. No longer do you have to do this yourself. Or, well, if you did ever do that, now you don’t have to. Also, drag the top bar around and you can watch the chart and the new pins change in real time. Really neat stuff here.

Now, this does come at a cost. Google Finance only provides very basic data about each of the stocks. But, it provides the majority of data that you’d want: ticker, real time ECN, balance sheet, income statement, summary, competitors, their segment, and so on… There is not a ton of extra information listed, like you might find on Yahoo! Finance. But, the neat news visualization is worth the look.

One thing that they could to to fix it up is to use the ticker in the url everywhere. None of this number business in some places and the ticker in others. Take a note from Yahoo and almost any other site that deals with quotes. But besides that, I’m really impressed so far. Let’s see if it can replace my Yahoo Finance! page.

Update 3/20 @ 11:30p: Google Finance is now offline…

Update 3/21 @ 12:03p: It’s back online

Today in the PI there’s an article about Seattle thinking about installing cameras at intersections to detect cars that run red lights. What’s funny, to me at least, is that in Minnesota they’ve had these cameras up for a little bit, but the ACLU (and some angry drivers) got involved and claimed that drivers were not given due process. That, and you can’t tell who is driving, so ticketing the owner, isn’t really the best approach. So, a judge temporarily shut them down. In my opinion, if you’re caught running a red light, you’re caught. Deal with it. Now, if we all had RFID implanted in us they’d be able to tell who it is driving. But, implanting RFID and letting the government have access to that is an entirely different can of worms.

Yesterday morning I made a trip to South Seattle to pickup up my brand new phone (i-mate SP5). On my way to work I decided to take I-90/I-405/SR-520 to Microsoft since I was closer to I-90 than I was to 520. All was well, until we get to the first tunnel… an accident in my lane. So, that slowed things down a bit, but after that it was clear sailing until I-405.

All I have to say about 405 is that it is crazy. That was some intense traffic on that road and I’m glad I don’t have to drive in it every day, because if I did I think I would go nuts. I mean, I saw a Suburban cross all of the lanes of traffic, in rush hour congestion, in about 50 yards. It was crazy and ridiculous. But, eventually I made it to Microsoft, all crazy driving aside.

At the end of the day, I was heading home on 520 and there was another accident. I couldn’t have been so lucky! And guess what? Yup, it was in my lane this time too. It was nothing serious, just somebody rear ending somebody else, just like in the morning. So, what appeared to be clear sailing was actually slowed down considerably by an accident.

The only reason that I bring it up is because in the few weeks that I’ve been commuting to Redmond, I have only seen one accident thus far. So, it was surprising to me to see two in one day and both happened to be in my lane. Hopefully I can avoid days like this in the future, because accidents aren’t good for anyone.

Um, I don’t know what to say… well, maybe that “dildo wielding lesbionics” are ruling an un-fenced jail in a town very near to where I grew up. *sigh* At least they came to a compromise to put up a fence around the entire state.