theducks.dreamwidth

A preface.. a week or two ago, Boeing rolled out the first 787-8f. I wasn't a fan of the livery, and said so on twitter. The twitter rep for Boeing's Future of Flight noticed this, and invited me down to have a look at it in person, and take the tour of the factory, for free *Squee* :D

So we rented a car, and lizbyrd and her parents and I headed off down there.

Well, back up a second. I rented a Red, 3.5L V6 Dodge Charger. It was a freakin' awesome car, with only 2400kms on the clock (we did another 380kms). Shame it was raining most of the day. Second hand prices aren't too bad either. Hmm! :D

I went on the tour in 1999 with my mum, but I didn't have the plane-nerd background I do now, so I knew this was going to be different. Also, we almost got crashed into in a high speed car chase back in 1999, which fortunately didn't happen this time. The whole concept of being able to drive to another country for a day trip is cool. Back in 1999, they had a small shop in the middle of a parking lot. They now have a huge exhibition center + store. The exhibition center has all sorts of cool stuff to walk up to and touch and feel, such as a 747 tail, GE90 engine, a 787 carbon fibre re-enforced plastic section 41-43 or so and a 727 cockpit.

The tour starts in the 747 assembly hall, where they were making line number 2 - 6 of the 747-8f. I was reminded once again just how amazingly complex building a plane is. And that building is something else.. it's huge, and contains a mix of offices and assembly areas and cafeterias. I'd kind of like to work there, much in the same way that as a concept, working in an Apple store would be cool. You then hop back in the bus and go onto the 777/787 production area. Also interesting to see.

All up on the tour, I saw:

• N787EX - First 787 (as well as the next 12 or so in production)


• N7808A - First 747 Dreamlifter


• N747EX - First 747-8f (as well as the next 6 in various stages of production)


• A6-ECX - New 777-300 delivery flight for Emirates


• .. and some other stuff

So I've now seen the first 737, 747, 757 and 787. The first 727 is also at the Paine Field Airport, but I didn't see it. Eventually I'll see it and the first 707..

All up, good fun.

A few weeks ago, I bought a Acer Aspire X1301 + LCD, since it was a great deal.. C$399 + tax + enviro fees.

I then sold the LCD for $50, leaving me with a C$349 computer.

The plucky little Acer had some problems.. its power for gaming was.. limited, to say the least, and it only took half height cards, which meant it would be difficult to actually get a good card in there. Then I opened it to check something and the power switch stopped working..

So being me, I bought a new case, PSU and a Radeon 4890 1GB graphics card, and .. erm.. upgraded it. I swapped in the motherboard + drives from the Acer, which meant Windows 7 didn't need to reactivate, and then plugged in this grunty ATI giant of a card. And it works, I get 100+ fps in everything I've tried so far ;)

The only problem is that the graphic card doesn't have HDMI (despite the box saying in big letters that it does have HDMI, and then having a small weasel statement about requiring an adapter), which means right now.. no sound or use VGA. But I have the adapter on its way, courtesy of eBay.

n/t.

Don't the hours grow shorter as the days go by? It's starting to be dark when I wake up, and when I leave for work. But the colours of the trees are pretty.

Oh for a camera with the dynamic range of the human eye.

Firstly, via jwz, fascinating graphs and data about okCupid (data site) - http://blog.okcupid.com/ - from a maths and sociology point of view, it's pretty amazing.

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Secondly, we made it back safely from Portland. Including lizbyrd driving through downtown Seattle at 5:30PM. She did awesome. Had a great time down there, it was great of lazulisong and vampireborg to let us stay at Chez!Twins, and it was good to meet their friend tygati, and it was awesome to finally meet kashi and see velithya again :)

Returning the car was a bit of a pain.. the gas station I usually go to was closed, and I couldn't find the one at the airport, so I was delayed a bit getting it back, but that was ok. Also, something fell off a truck and hit our car while we were driving down to Seattle on friday night. It didn't do much damage (slight scratches), so I hope the rental car place doesn't want our spleen for it, but of course the guy at the desk couldn't comment.

Have arrived safely in Portland! Chillin with velithya, vampireborg, lazulisong and of course lizbyrd :)

- Booked rental car (C$420..)
- Applied for US ESTA (Approved!)
- Still need to find somewhere to spend Friday night in Everett/Mukilteo WA. *coughsomaybewe'regoingtotheboeingfactorytour*

Sure, I could avoid 3 hours of commuting per day (and transfer that task to elizabeth..) but we wouldn't have these spectacular views. What a country.

Now that Elizabeth passed her driving test (Yay!) I feel ok about showing off my BC driver's licence. It's actually pretty plain, and not shiny. It has a matte-finish, and my name and signature are laser engraved onto it.

High tech++

I'm bad at keeping track of stuff like this, but does anyone live in Portland Oregon?

Elizabeth and I are heading down for the weekend of October 3-4 (probably coming down friday night and back sunday) to see velithya and others.