June and July were filled with trips to the Hood Canal. The canal is now on my list of favorite spots – and a place that I would love to have a cabin some day. We “picked” oysters, mussels, and clams every morning and caught over 40 or so dungeness crabs. I picked up moon snails, held monstrous starfish, chased around tiny little crabs that littered the shore, and took some pretty cool macro pics. We spent time with friends, Jansci and Brianna (and family) and sat around playing board and card games.

July was also spent at a birthday party on Lake Cushman, at a Candlebox/Verve Pipe/Toad & the Wet Sprocket concert, at MCDM Game Night, at a Seattle Sounders vs Manchester United Game, at Julian’s birthday party where we saw the Blue Angels fly, and at the Seafair Torchlight Parade. The Sounders game was awesome, but I was a little bummed that more than half of the crowd was cheering for ManU. Yes, I love ManU – they’re my favorite team – but I also think you have to cheer for the home team when you can. The Sounders got creamed, but it was still impressive to see the two teams play. MCDM Game Night has been steadily growing since June which is awesome. I’m pretty bummed that I won’t be around for them after December. Hopefully I can get someone to take over the planning. One of the first things that I’m doing when I get home is setting up a Game Night for anyone to come to. There are so many “indie” games that are amazing. Until the gaming class, I had never really played anything aside from card games and the standard Milton Bradley-type games. Who knew that there were games like Werewolves, Guillotine, and Munchkin out there?

August was comprised of another Game Night, a Mariners vs Red Sox game, and touring with Linda. The Mariners game was excellent – we’re definitely going to have to hit up a Red Sox game at Fenway when we get home. Touring with Linda was awesome as well. We hit the Peninsula and made stops at several beaches including the La Push beaches. Those were amazing and I got some of the coolest pictures I’ve ever taken. We stayed the night in a camper that Dan’t brother Dave was nice enough to let us use. They said we’d be “roughing it” but it was the cleanest, nicest camper ever. Obviously, they have no idea that we lived in John’s cabin for a few years. Dave’s family has a huge lot of 20 acres with a trail that leads down to a secluded beach. Again – amazing. We walked down right before sunrise and watched the sun come up. Linda and I took the Victoria Clipper up to Victoria, BC for one of the days. It was pretty cool. Linda got tickets for a bus to take us to the Butchart Gardens which didn’t seem cool at first, but then I started taking photos and getting into all of the color arrangements – so then I was excited. The next day we hit up Jade Garden in the International District with Alison and Julian. It was Julian’s first time having dim sum – and chicken feet. He thoroughly enjoyed grossing us out.

August also consisted of PAX Prime. Incredible. There were 6 floors of the Washington State Convention Center full of board games, card games, and video games. I’ve never seen so many gamers – they actually set a PAX record of over 70,000 attendees. I probably won’t make it back to Prime, but I’m going to register for PAX East as soon as registration opens up. I’m glad that I bought two passes for Prime when I did – tickets sold out (all one and three days passes) within two weeks and the sale started in April. Ali and I ended up going to a bunch of education/games panel discussions and Zak and his buddies used the passes at night. It was a blast and the panels were inspiring. They weren’t telling Ali or I anything we didn’t already know, but it was inspiring that so many people are starting to get behind mixing games and learning. There is a worldwide movement to meld the two and it’s getting serious backing from game companies, as well as all major charity/grant foundations and the US government. PAX inspired us to change our independent study to focus on games and learning and we’re hoping to expand it into a post-grad capstone that will hopefully be funded by grants if we can secure them.

On to September. Game Night once again. The September one was huge compared to the rest – we had over 20 people show up and it was a blast. Zack came and stayed with us for two weeks. He seemed to like the city more than I thought he would. He was thoroughly interested to go to tourist attractions, museums, and even try dim sum (which I still haven’t been able to get John to try). We went to Bumbershoot. In general the festival was pretty cool, but the evening shows that we went to at the Key Arena were awesome. We decided to go sit for the act before Wiz Khalifa (which was the whole reason I picked Sunday for tickets). It turned out that the act before was a local artist that is turning superstar act – Macklemore & Ryan Lewis. It’s a hip-hop group that was extremely impressive from beats to lyrics to the light show. The crowd was going crazy for them. The arena was actually full to the brim. The finale act of the day, Wiz Khalifa was awesome. I love all of his songs to begin with, but not only did he keep the arean filled, teens were jumping over the walls to get closer to the stage. The thing that blew me away the most is that a few seconds after the show started the arena was full of smoke. It’s not something I had any interest to partake in, but I was stunned at how many people were. There were “clouds” all over the place. Crazy.

Speaking of crazy – we took Zack and my friend Derek down to Mount Rainier. That was awesome. I didn’t realize that they had  road that gets you very close to the mountain. The mountain and valleys were impressive. We walked over this crazy log bridge (literally a log stretched across rapids) out onto a trail that led to a hidden waterfall. I’m glad we made it down. It looks like we won’t make it to St. Helens, but there’s always another day.

September was also when Ali and I introduced ourselves to GrubWithUs. It’s basically a networking site involving food and trying different things with strangers. The owners of the site put together meals at city-specific restaurants once a week. You view the menu, pay for a seat, and show up. Five-to-eight other random people show up and you all eat together family-style. It’s an awesome idea and we attended two in the last month – one at Petra Mediterranean Bistro, and one at Kingfish Cafe (southern food). Both groups of attendees were great and although you’d think something like that would be awkward – it wasn’t at all. I’m thinking of trying one with John just for kicks. Wish me luck.

Plus, as of this weekend, the boys are going with us on the way back! They’re a little nervous about flying by themselves so I’ll be flying back home, meeting them, flying back to Seattle, and driving from there. So it looks like the trip will consist of: driving down the majority of Route 1 (right on the coast of California), the Redwood Forest, the Golden Gate Bridge, Route 66, Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, the Petrified Forest, and a bunch of other cities and national parks that look like good ideas. See a zoomed out map below.

UPDATE: I struck through Utah and changed the count to 14 because after posting the route on Facebook, several people said if we’re going towards Vegas, we mine as well go up to Zion in Utah and then down to the Grand Canyon instead of down and over. Sounds good to me.

So that’s July 9th. And on July 20th I got tickets to a Sounders game! Sounders vs. my favorite team – Manchester United. We’re in the nosebleed seats at the very top, but I asked someone at work and they said we’ll still be able to see just fine. I’m mostly interested in experiencing the game itself – with the pre-game march and such. It was one thing I definitely wanted to cross of the list before we head back – especially after having class with Brian Marr from Wexley and hearing about all of the marketing and branding that went into the Sounders as a team.

Oh yeah! And I totally forgot – I got two three-day passes to PAX Prime! “the largest gaming festival in the nation!” I got passes pretty early – they were completely sold out of all day and 3-day passes by Memorial Day and the conference isn’t until the beginning of September! That should be awesome as well. I had no idea Seattle is where PAX originated. If it’s good, I’ll probably try to go to Pax East every year in Boston. It’s one of those conferences that I wanted to go to, at least once. Lots of great speakers to see and games to play. Now, if I can just figure out a way to go to E3 and CES in the future…

Next to purchase: Bumbershoot tickets.

Other than school, there’s work of course – which is taking off in a million different directions. I have the full-time job at CampusCE, and then was asked to start getting into another project that is semi-related. Then there’s the freelance stuff. One third with Creative Circle (a creative staffing agency), one third doing my own thing, and one thing starting the beginning stages of a partnership with an IT/networking company back home.

When I’m not doing that, I’m going to make the most of exploring and events. Starting next weekend we’re going to a tribute Queen concert by the Seattle Rock Orchestra and two Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF) events. The first SIFF event I’m going to is being put on by the MCDM program, The Fusion of Film and Gaming in the Pacific Northwest. The second for next weekend is the movie Hooked (Russia). The two following weekends I got tickets for The Whistleblower (Canada) and Third Star (UK, North American Premier). There are so many movies at SIFF – a few hundred at least. I narrowed it down to three – one a weekend. Not only are they an expense that could add up quickly, but we’re getting close to finals. I’d go to see every movie if I could.

Things are going well. We’re both looking forward to seeing Georgette and the boys when they come to visit next month. There are so many sites that we have yet to see (which will make good sites to see with them). It looks like Nancy and Linda might visit one after the other in March. It also looks like Winn and then Jenett and Zeb might come out in April. I can’t wait for Spring and Summer weather – especially for the cherry tree blooming (the campus is covered with cherry trees).

The MCDM program is awesome. My classes this quarter require a significant amount of work compared to last quarter, but I’m managing (somehow). One class is basically a media theory class which requires a ton of reading, but is very interesting. Our final group assignment is to take a technology/media and show the history of it and future uses. My group picked motion-based user interfaces (e.g. Kinect) and we’re thinking of doing a user manual that looks like it’s from the past (as in someone from the future is reading it). Hard to describe, but it should be really fun. For our individual final projects we have to choose a technology/media and predict where it will be 2, 5, and 10 years from now. I have no clue what I am going to do, but I want to make it gaming related. Other than that, I have a marketing/branding class and an analytics class. They’re both great classes, but the media theory class (evolution & trends) is one of my favorites so far. I can’t wait until next quarter – I’m going to take a gaming/virtual worlds class and another mobile class.

It seems like I have somehow acquired a lot of clients here. So between clients from home and new clients from Seattle, that’s also keeping me pretty busy. Most of the time I wish I had as much time as John to play Call of Duty. *** Just got interrupted by a call from an agency I submitted a bid to. I quoted a job at a quarter of what another guy did (I was quoting how long it would actually take me) – I guess I should at least triple my usual numbers for work around here. UPDATE: The agency called back. Guess the client enjoyed talking to me on the phone and really wants to work with me. So… they asked if they could double what I quoted. Now I just have to find the time for the additional hours needed to put into it.

I would like to praise Facebook for connecting people, and connecting them better than other sites currently can. In the past few months I have been in touch with a half-brother I never knew, had my first conversation with an autistic mute whom I’ve known for years, felt connected to a group of people I just met, and stayed connected with family and friends that I’m currently over 3,000 miles away from. Facebook isn’t the only way that I could connect with these different people, but it’s a common site through which everyone is a part of and everyone is familiar enough to reach out to each other. I know there are many stories of family/friends connecting over great time and distance, and that’s great. Did it happen before? Of course. Did it happen as easily? I doubt it. My half-brother, Brad, initially was able to reach my Mom through more traditional mediums, but Facebook allowed my sister and I to get in on the conversation, see photos, etc. The contact, although across wires and timezones, felt like connecting through Facebook with any other friend I’ve known for years.

Could an autistic mute connect without Facebook? Sure. But did she? No. She discovered Facebook, and through Facebook, she discovered her voice – and I think it’s incredible. Imagine being excited about connecting with 17 people. I think I currently have over 500 friends on Facebook, and yes, I actually know all of them and have met all of them face-to-face. I don’t hold conversations with all of them all of the time, but I think it’s safe to say I connect with at least 17 people a day. These 17 people this woman was excited to connect with were the first 17 people she’s connected with in years. I think that’s exciting.

Through Facebook I can share photos of Seattle with family and friends in Vermont. I can keep in touch with everyone and get teased for my geeky posts. I can see what everyone is up to and stay up to date with businesses back home through Facebook Pages. I can connect with new colleagues and coworkers and stay on top of workshops and networking events. I can even keep on top of Playstation and Amazon updates without having to login or go through every one of my RSS feeds. So to that, I say, thank you, Facebook, and bravo!

It was nice to get out and explore a new area at least. We talked with the bus driver the whole way there. She said she’s been living in the city for 30 years, but before that she lived in Minnesota. She and her husband have visited every state in the US and much of Canada by motorcycle. Soon they’re headed to Cameroon to visit their son’s fiance’s village. I guess he met his fiance while he was stationed in Africa during a tour with the Peace Corp. The bus driver then went on to say how her coworkers tease her about how much she travels – like she’s already in retirement. She said she wants to experience traveling everywhere while she knows she can – and while she can still enjoy it. Sounds like a good plan to me.

John’s going to try to meet up with a friend from back home that lives on an island here. Hopefully they both get some work to keep them busy. At least John is appreciating the PS3. He didn’t want me to bring it, but right now it’s at least giving him something to do. Right now he’s working his way up through Call of Duty: Black Ops online. Alison and I thought maybe he’d like to get involved with the local Mountaineering group, but he’s not sure it’s his thing. I’m going to go to a few networking events at the end of the month and one of them is hosted by the Professional Builders Association, so maybe he can meet some new people there. We’ll see. He also has a tree job to do at the Indian reservation in Neah Bay, at the very tip of the Olympic Peninsula (for a co-worker’s brother). That should be a great trip.

At least we have lots of company coming to visit this Spring. The boys and Georgette are going to be coming at the end of February. I’m pretty sure Nancy’s coming in March. Then in April I think Zeb, Jenett, Winn, and Linda are all coming to visit. Good thing we got some furniture. We moved the good monitor and PS3 downstairs and got a few chairs and then ordered two cheap futons (one for the living room and one for the spare bedroom). Then we moved our junk TV upstairs with the Roku I won attached. It’s actually starting to look like an apartment now – we even have a toaster.

So, Merry Christmas everyone! We’re not up to much today – video games and sending out invoices. We took a walk through Magnuson Park. It’s weird being somewhere that has 50-degree weather on Christmas. We finally got some more furniture. Donna sent a Target gift certificate so I bought a few comfy chairs – and a toaster to finally make the apartment official.

The first quarter of school wrapped up quickly. I’m definitely appreciating my choice in graduate programs – this one is perfect. I’m really liking that I can work full-time (and get paid finally). I’m also really feeling connected to a lot of people in my class which is nice. Everyone is really into networking and learning from one another. After much struggle with myself, I finally decided to go to a happy hour. Even though my choice of drink was soda, it was still a blast. Ever since, I’ve gone to every happy hour that I can. Between work happy hours and school happy hours, I had a pretty busy last week of school. It seems like everyone wants to set up a happy hour for just about any occasion. I went and had my Shirley Temples and got some web work and projects lined up.  In the meantime I’m also getting a good survey of bars and restaurants for when people come and visit this Spring and Summer.

Mom got me PlayStation Move for Christmas. I’m pretty excited about it. It doesn’t really support too many games at the moment but there’s a shooter that’s coming out this Spring that should really show what the Move can do. Oh, and I also got wireless headphones – which is one of the best tech inventions ever (now we can each use the PlayStation without bothering each other)!

What else? Oh yeah! Our half-brother tracked down Mom on Facebook (and then of course found Ayla and I). I actually just got off the phone with him. His name is Brad, he’s 3 1/2 years older than me, and he lives in Southern New Hampshire. It’s very exciting and he seems pretty cool. It will be exciting to connect with him from here on out.

That’s all I can think of at the moment – and why I need to write a weekly update instead of a monthly one (so I don’t forget everything that happened in the last month)! Merry Christmas!

When I checked the news in the morning they were saying that some people were just barely getting home after leaving work the night before. I guess one bus was stuck – unmoving – for 7 hours on the highway with 50 passengers on board. A lot of people just gave up trying to drive through ice and traffic and ended up parking their cars wherever they could and walking. The weather was expected to stay that way until Thursday afternoon. I decided to make Tuesday and Wednesday “work-from-home” days because the last thing I wanted was to get stuck Downtown. John and I went out for a walk on Tuesday morning so I could capture the snow covered landscape on camera before it melted. We walked down to the 7/11 and then back through Magnuson Park. Hardly anyone was out and we managed to see a Bald Eagle soar over us and see a few different flocks of ducks swimming in one of the ponds.

By Wednesday afternoon we took a ride to the store to get ingredients for our Thanksgiving contributions. The roads we usually take were closed off halfway up the hill and totally covered with ice and snow. We were able to cut across to one of the main streets in the area which was actually pretty clear. By Thursday afternoon we decided we’d risk the roads to make it to Thanksgiving at Dan’s house (VP of the company I’m working for). Surprisingly, the roads were pretty good – the main ones.

I made a white chocolate key lime pie and spinach artichoke dip. The dip was a big hit. When we walked in Dan’s nephews were playing on a PS3 – turns out a had a bunch of games that they would’ve liked to play. Dan’s family is all really nice. Unfortunately, Dan and his partner lost a friend the night before. They left to go comfort the friend of their’s who had lost his partner – I wouldn’t have expected anything different. We were just happy to be invited to dinner with Dan & Steve’s family. Dan’s brothers are really easy going and we had met his brother Greg at a previous dinner. His brother Dave and his family live on Neah Bay (an Indian reservation/town on the tip of the Olympic Peninsula). We might actually go up there sometime so that John can cut down a few trees that Dave has looming over his yard. I hope we do because I heard about Neah Bay from a random woman I ran into at a bus stop and she was telling me all this cool stuff about it.

Yesterday, we took a bus Downtown to watch the Macy’s Holiday Parade. That was pretty cool. It wasn’t full of big floats like the New York one, but there were a bunch of small floats, marching bands, local dog clubs, gymnastic groups, and the like. The holiday tree lighting and fireworks were last night, but John didn’t want to stick around the city at night. We did go and visit Victor and his wife so that was nice.

Now for a weekend of catching up on school and freelance work. Next week I think I start getting paid at my internship. Just in time.

For starters, it’s great to be back at school. I’ve expressed this before, but there’s something about school that just strikes me the right way. I’m pretty sure I’m going to have to wrap up my career teaching. There are lots of great talks, workshops, and panels to attend – I just have to find the time to attend all of them!

My classes are really interesting – and right up my alley. My whole cohort is enrolled in the core class, Strategic Research & Business Practice. The class is great, but the most interesting parts for me aside from the lectures are the guest speakers and class discussions. There’s enough to learn just from how everyone reacts to different content. The guest speakers have been awesome – it’s great to learn new tools and hear how different companies are using various digital technologies. The mobile class took a little time to get into a rhythm but that class has me hooked because of my fascination with mobile anyways. The guest speakers in the mobile class are great. I think the best part about the mobile class is actually how it heightened my awareness to mobile content in general – news articles, design techniques, and advertisements. Every week we have to post a blog entry highlighting our experience testing out an ad geared towards mobile devices – it’s been an interesting set of trials – who thought so many large corporations would have no idea what they are doing.

My favorite part of the mobile class so far has probably been trying to track down a person to interview for our midterm paper. After some persistence I was able to land an interview with the Starbucks VP of Digital Ventures, Adam Brotman. Brotman presented to my other class (which was great) and I interviewed him after he was finished. Luckily, Brotman is really down-to-earth and you can tell he is super excited about where his company is headed – which of course brushes off. It was great to hear about Starbucks’s efforts “straight from the horse’s mouth.” I was most excited to hear that as much as blogs put Starbucks on a pedestal, they’re pretty unsure of their stance. I mean, they’re leading the way, but they have second thoughts and improvements to make, just like any company would. Personally, I can’t wait to dive into mobile more. I think I’ve taken the last mobile class I’ll take during the program (only because there are so many awesome classes and I want to get a taste of all of them), but I’m definitely going to work it into my personal projects and reading. I have to be ready for 2014.

Aside from the usual coursework, I’ve had group projects in both classes. The mobile group work went pretty well. We did a good job on our presentation, and the research was on augmented reality – something that I am very interested in. The group work in the other class is going okay, but so far not everyone is pulling his/her own weight. That’s alright though – we have peer grading at the end. We’ve had a lot of get-togethers and meetings with the client (Pacific Science Center) so that has been fun. It’s another situation where the material is interesting, but it’s even more interesting to hear what direction everyone wants to take. I think that’s one of the best things about grad school – everyone is coming from totally different backgrounds with varied experience and everyone wants to be here, wants to learn, and wants to share.

I had been thinking about squeezing in a third class next quarter to get the program over with by August, but there are too many great events that I wanted to help with and go to. Plus, the longer I’m here, the more connections I’ll make and things I’ll learn, right? I can’t wait for all of the other classes I plan to take. So much to learn! I’m going to make the most of it while I’m here… then enjoy the ride home – we’ve decided to go south through California and across to fit in Yosemite and the Grand Canyon.